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 UCSB LIBRARY 
 
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 ALLEN
 
 JOHN ALLEN AND HIS 
 FRIENDS 
 
 BY 
 
 ANNA OTTER ALLEN 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON LTD. 
 
 TORONTO LONDON NEW YORK 
 
 ST. PAUL'S HOUSE WARWICK SQUARE E.C. 4
 
 Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld. 
 London and Aylesbury.
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 AT my friend's request, I prefix to this very interesting 
 book these few lines of hearty commendation. I 
 never met Archdeacon Allen personally, and only 
 became acquainted with his widow and daughters 
 after his death. My particular friendship was with 
 Miss May Allen, the well-known and highly esteemed 
 missionary of the U.M.C.A. at Zanzibar, who in later 
 years worked under Bishop Blyth in Palestine and 
 Egypt. To her the Archdeacon, in earlier days, 
 addressed the letters printed in Chapter XXV. 
 
 The book is not a biography in the ordinary sense. 
 The title is rightly John Allen and his Friends, as the 
 r< Friends," from Tennyson and Fitzgerald and 
 Thackeray to the young Winnington-Ingram who is 
 now Bishop of London, lend to the successive sketches 
 their peculiar interest. 
 
 EUGENE STOCK.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS book is not a biography. Its interest lies in 
 the light it throws on the ways, thoughts, feelings, 
 and interests of the University men in the days of 
 Tennyson, Fitzgerald, and Thackeray. 
 
 Most of the letters from Fitzgerald have appeared 
 in Mr. Aldis Wright's Life and Letters of Edward 
 Fitzgerald. Some of the family letters are taken 
 from Mrs. Litchfield's Emma Darwin. The letters of 
 Thackeray to Fitzgerald appeared in Lady Ritchie's 
 account of her father in an edition of Vanity Fair. 
 A letter of Mrs. Tennyson's to her son is from Lord 
 Tennyson's Life of the poet. Extracts from Sir James 
 Stephen's Diary are taken from an unpublished Life 
 by his daughter, Caroline Stephen. Julia Wedgwood's 
 letters are taken from her published Correspondence 
 with Mrs. Russell Gurney. 
 
 The scene in Lichfield Cathedral in the Introductory 
 Chapter may, at any time, be virtually true, but is 
 assuredly non-historical. 
 
 A. O. A.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FOREWORD ill 
 
 PREFACE V 
 
 INTRODUCTION TRINITY SUNDAY 192- (?) . ix 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. COLLEGE LIFE IN THE DAYS OF TENNYSON 
 
 AND HALLAM I 
 
 ii. FITZGERALD'S FRIENDSHIP . . . 14 
 
 III. SUMMER AND WINTER .... 21 
 
 IV; WINNOWING SEED-CORN. 2Q 
 
 V. RIPENING SUNBEAMS .... 39 
 
 VI. POETIC MOODS OF TENNYSON . . 46 
 
 VII. A CHARACTER SKETCH .... 58 
 
 VIII. LIFE AS FITZGERALD LIVED IT . 6l 
 
 IX. THACKERAY 72 
 
 X. EDUCATION 93 
 
 XI. KEBLE 106 
 
 XII. OMAR KHAYYAM . . . .114 
 
 XIII. A PASTOR 117 
 
 XIV. JOHN STERLING 127 
 
 XV. AN ARCHDEACON 136 
 
 vii
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 C HAPTER PACK 
 
 XVI. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN . . . 145 
 
 XVII. JAMES SPEDDING .... 149 
 
 XVIII. THOMAS CARLYLE .... 163 
 
 XIX. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY . . . 176 
 
 XX. GUESTS AT FREES I. F. D. MAURICE, 
 
 FITZGERALD, MADAME SISMONDI . 179 
 
 XXI. GUESTS AT FREES II. SIR JAMES STEPHEN, 
 
 COLONEL MARTIN . . . .192 
 
 XXII. GUESTS AT FREES III. LORD GRIM- 
 THORPE, BISHOP G. A. SELWYN, ETC. . 2OI 
 
 XXIII. GUESTS AT FREES IV. LUKE RIVINGTON, 
 
 MARY CHOLMONDELEY, ETC. . . 215 
 
 XXIV. DAUGHTERS 233 
 
 XXV. LETTERS TO MAY .... 237 
 
 XXVI. ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM . 253 
 
 XXVII. CONCLUSION 26l 
 
 INDEX 263
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 TRINITY SUNDAY, IQ2- (?) 
 
 GLOWING in the sunshine of a peaceful Sunday morning, 
 Lichfield's hoary Cathedral looked down upon the 
 picturesque houses around it, as an old priest with the 
 reflection of a serene glory on his face gazed from a 
 village altar upon the simple people gathered there. 
 
 A small procession, the candidates for Ordination, 
 attracting little notice, were wending slowly westwards. 
 A verger with an imposing wand, a few men in surplices, 
 an impassive Chaplain bearing a crook, a stately 
 Bishop, the purity of whose robes was embellished by 
 a hood of geranium-tinted silk, passed along, white 
 against the grey-green tree- trunks and brown earth, 
 like a drift of snow on a February morning. 
 
 The Cathedral doors stood open ; the soft, deep 
 swell of distant music, the echo of a hymn, was heard, 
 and then the high folding-doors closed, the bells 
 stopped ringing, and there was silence in the Close. 
 
 The inner life of men in uniform is difficult to 
 conceive of. Were those twelve novices, marching 
 beneath the intersecting boughs of lime-trees, sprinkled 
 now with flakes of the most joyous green nature knows, 
 all of the same mind, all thinking the same things ? 
 Surely each is an individual with a " heart beating to 
 the accent of its own music." 
 
 One among the Deacons, his eyebrows contracted 
 with temper, was muttering within his breast : " Young 
 cub ! young cub ! " 
 
 Neither the Bishop nor the Bishop's dog was thus 
 mentally apostrophised, but the Bishop's Chaplain, a 
 man with a boyishly shaped head and a small mind 
 overburdened with official details. r< I wish you 
 would be so good as to remember where you walk,"
 
 x TRINITY SUNDAY, 192- (?) 
 
 he had said irritably to this tall deacon, as the men in 
 their new surplices stood awaiting the Bishop. They 
 were right, and the Chaplain wrong, as the matter 
 chanced, but doubtless much was involved in the 
 order in which they presented themselves to the 
 episcopal hands at the altar. 
 
 So, deaf and blind to his surroundings, then furious 
 with himself for his own petty condition of mind, this 
 intellectual man after the strain of a week's preparation 
 entered the high-arched building, where he had hoped 
 that a publicly pledged sacrifice of his life's duty 
 would coerce in him some fresh attitude of surrender. 
 
 Then the solemn influence of the dim high roof, and 
 the distant Lady Chapel full of chastened brilliance, 
 with the measured music of the processional hymn, 
 stole over him, and his soul was rapt beyond self in an 
 enthusiasm of devotion. 
 
 The sermon introduced the service. The preacher, 
 a slight man with a great brain, a large flexible mouth, 
 and a weary face, gave out his text quietly : " If any 
 man will come after Me, let him take up his cross, and 
 follow Me." 
 
 ' It may seem strange to you, my brothers/' he 
 began, " that I should choose these words on this 
 happy day of your self-dedication to the glorious 
 office of a priest of God. What life can be nobler 
 than the life to which we welcome you ? " And with 
 long-sustained sentences which never missed their 
 mark, a pleading tone pervading his whole utterance, 
 now ringing itself aloft as into the " Song of Spirits," 
 now sinking in cadences of melodious heartiness, he 
 pictured the joys of a priest's life, pictured him 
 bringing comfort to the weary, solacing the aged, 
 brightening the smiles of children, restoring the fallen, 
 supporting the weak, and magnified his nearness to 
 Christ in the administration of the Sacraments, until, 
 abruptly checking himself, he cried : "But whose 
 followers are ye ? who is your Master ? " And, 
 suddenly changing his voice, brought into view, with 
 awed passion and fiery poetic emphasis, " the Man of 
 Sorrows," the bowed form of a Christ crowned with
 
 TRINITY SUNDAY, 192- (?) xi 
 
 thorns " Will you choose Him for your King ? ' he 
 asked ; ' then your hands must be pierced, and your 
 heart rent, the burden of souls shall lie upon you," 
 and, with uncompromising severity, his glowing 
 thoughts breaking forth in apt, burning words, he 
 depicted a human soul staggering under the load of 
 an awful responsibility. 
 
 That haughty Deacon sat among the other candi- 
 dates leaning forward, his ivory-tinted face quivering 
 with painful emotion, his long fingers clasped con- 
 vulsively. " And who is sufficient for these things ? ' 
 the preacher continued. " Brothers of the blood- 
 stained Cross, has the Master left us ? Is He unmindful 
 of His own ? Nay, is it not His Spirit that dwells 
 within us, urging us forward, giving us courage to 
 press on through difficulties, words to speak in the 
 sharpest crises of men's souls ? It is His arm that 
 grapples us to His side, His ear that bends to hear 
 our weakest whisper of appeal. The joy shines down 
 the sorrow ; the glory transcends the shame." 
 
 When the inspiring utterance ceased, our Deacon 
 found himself moving on towards the rich brightness 
 of the altar, while the words " How beautiful upon 
 the mountains," softly sung in varied appeals of 
 harmonised melody, echoing through the groined 
 roof, seemed to linger there " as loth to die." 
 
 Consciousness during the rest of the long service was 
 merged in ecstasy. And when he knelt before the 
 Bishop and the strong hands rested impressively upon 
 his head, an unexpected thrill shot through his soul, and 
 some fierce resolve to serve till death went up to God. 
 
 The awakening to daily life jarred upon his mood. 
 The long luncheon-table ; the many black coats ; the 
 freshly shaven, rather hungry faces ; the plentiful 
 plates of thickly cut beef ; the under-toned talk of 
 relieved minds in shy souls ; the Bishop's weary voice, 
 so much attuned to church services as hardly to 
 retain an every-day pitch, laboriously making con- 
 versation for the men at his end of the table, remained 
 with him unforgotten through life. 
 
 " Splendid sermon," said a man on his left.
 
 jcii TRINITY SUNDAY, 192- (?) 
 
 " Very beautiful indeed," responded the Chaplain, 
 looking up from his beef. 
 
 ' The man looks as if he were over-working himself," 
 put in our Deacon. 
 
 " Yes," went on the Chaplain sententiously, " the 
 soul, like a sharp knife, is wearing through its sheath," 
 the " sh's " of his sentence whistling through the air 
 like the lash of a whip. 
 
 "A wonderful oratorical gift," said another; "it 
 was all extempore." 
 
 " I should hardly think so," contended a sharp-eyed 
 young man, who had done some good papers for his 
 examination and knew it. " Such chiselled sentences 
 no more fall together by chance than the stones of yon 
 Cathedral could be hurled by the caprice of an earth- 
 quake." 
 
 " It is scarcely logical, is it," said the Chaplain, 
 brushing some imaginary crumbs from the side of his 
 now empty plate, ' to compare the thought of a 
 preacher, even if guided by an extempore effort, to 
 the caprice of an earthquake ? ' 
 
 ' There's a burning power in the unpremeditated 
 art of strong emotion, clothing itself in unconsidered 
 yet eloquent words, which no studied address could 
 ever reach," pronounced a fresh speaker, a man with 
 a beard, an ex-Congregational minister, who had passed 
 through the Theological College. 
 
 ' It is not a question of burning power, but of the 
 dry fact of the choice of words," urged the sharp-eyed 
 young man petulantly. ' The choice selection of 
 words to-day was undeniable ; I only question whether 
 any unpremeditated effort could have produced it ! " 
 He spoke with a sneer. 
 
 The Chaplain interfered ; one of his vocations as 
 Bishop's Chaplain was, as he expressed it, " to smooth 
 people down." " I should imagine," he began authori- 
 tatively, " that the sermon to-day was first written, 
 then carefully 'got up ' (not learnt but studied), then 
 possibly even rehearsed in the study. What Mr. 
 
 H said was probably not exactly what he wrote ; 
 
 it may have even sometimes, so to speak, transcended
 
 TRINITY SUNDAY, 192- (?) xiii 
 
 it. But a man who could preach such a sermon as 
 that would hardly be justified in not committing his 
 thoughts to paper." 
 
 " It was a great help to me," said a sturdy fellow 
 who had not yet spoken. 
 
 The bearded divine whispered something to his 
 neighbour about " not trusting to chairs and tables 
 for inspiration." 
 
 The haughty Deacon, looking across the table, said 
 gently, " You do not surely think God's Spirit would 
 be any the less likely to help a man because he put 
 much effort or even drudgery into his preparation for 
 so solemn a work as directing others ? >; 
 
 The man could not be angry with him, he spoke so 
 pleasantly. 
 
 After luncheon the Chaplain, a kindly man at heart, 
 made overtures of courtesy to the well-set-up young 
 man, who, excusing himself, went for a solitary walk, 
 to review life with its banished hopes and ambitions, 
 its present renunciations and responsibilities, with all 
 its future possibilities. 
 
 Entering the Cathedral at the north door, and 
 passing by a transept to the Lady Chapel, the Latin 
 of an interesting epitaph arrested his attention : 
 
 JOHANNIS ALLEN 
 
 PEMBROCKIAE NATUS A.S. MDCCCX. DECESSIT A.S. MDCCCLXXXVI 
 
 INERAT ILLI 
 PIETAS ERGA DEUM TANQUAM OCULIS PRESENTEM SINCERA 
 
 VULTU SERMONE HABITUQUE IPSO COMMENDATA 
 CUM SINGULARI MORUM ET NATURE SIMPLICITATE CONJUNCTA 
 
 VIR SUI GENERIS 
 BONORUM OMNIUM AMOREM JEQUABAT 
 
 INTER AMICOS HILARIS 
 LEPORE QUODAM AC SALE SPARSUS 
 BREVITATIS DILUCID^E STUDIOSUS 
 OMNIA PALAM NIHIL PRESTIGIAS AGEBAT 
 
 JUSTITLiE VINDEX ACERRIMUS 
 
 PROPOSITI TENAX ADVERSUS PR^EPOTENTES INTREPIDUS 
 PAUPERIBUS QUOTIDIANO USU CARISSIMUS 
 ALIIS CONSULEBAT SEMPER SIBI NUNQUAM 
 
 Carelessly he construed it thus : 
 
 " John Allen lived as one ever seeing God before 
 him, recommending his unfeigned piety by his
 
 xiv TRINITY SUNDAY, 192- (?) 
 
 countenance, his conversation, his bearing, and 
 by the singular simplicity of his character. A man 
 on whose like we shall not look again. The 
 affection felt for him by all good men he lovingly 
 and dutifully returned. Gifted with a bright 
 sense of humour, he was cheerful among his 
 friends ; intolerant of obscurity and prolixity, all 
 that he did was straightforward and transparent. 
 Ever a stout champion of righteousness, he held 
 to his purpose fearing the wrath of no man. To 
 the poor he was dear by his daily visits to their 
 homes. He knew no master but One, that is 
 Christ. Always the servant of others, he never 
 served himself." 
 
 Then the perplexed Deacon reviewed the lovely 
 Lady Chapel in the mellow light of the rich windows 
 set in its gloomy walls like the jewelled gates into a 
 diviner world, gazed for some minutes on the heroic 
 features of the great Missionary Bishop secluded in its 
 own niche, and, passing from the building through its 
 sunny south door, walked by the Pool to the Tomb of 
 its Saint, and round again towards the Cathedral 
 spires, which, purple against a brilliant sky, quivered 
 at his feet in the dreamy surface of the water like a 
 lofty purpose in a wavering heart. As he walked he 
 pondered the picture of that far-away pastoral life, 
 contrasting it with the somewhat hurried routine of 
 his own theological training. Sincerely endeavouring 
 to discipline himself for his ministerial labours, he had 
 kept all his five chapels a day without murmuring or 
 even yawning. Such attendances had cut up his 
 reading-time a little, and his lawn-tennis afternoons 
 more than his football hours ; for he had practised his 
 games as vehemently as the rest ; such things are 
 infectious at a Theological College. On returning to 
 the Cathedral half an hour before the evening service, 
 in seeking Selwyn's grave he found beneath his feet a 
 small granite tablet inscribed : ' John Allen. God 
 be merciful to me, a sinner." The Chaplain passed by, 
 sunning himself for ten minutes before he went into
 
 TRINITY SUNDAY 192- (?) xr 
 
 Church again " What about this man ' John Allen ' ? " 
 he inquired. " Did he fail like the rest of us ? or, at 
 any rate, some of us ? ' 
 
 " No, he was a fine fellow, a friend of Tennyson's. 
 I think he shone more and more as the perfect day 
 drew on. They say he glorified a procession, he was so 
 beautiful to look at." 
 
 " Did you know him ? ' 
 
 " He was before my time. My father knew some- 
 thing of him. In his last years he was Master of a 
 curious old Brotherhood in this place. The Bishop of 
 London was his Chaplain, and used to fill the little 
 Chapel yonder as he has since filled St. Paul's." 
 ' Why did they put that verse on his grave ? ' 
 
 " I suppose it was his wish. He was a very humble 
 man. Quite in his old age he would visit the cottages 
 m his daughter's district here, and, taking the babes 
 in his arms, put his hands upon the little heads and 
 bless them, and even attend the Bible-class and 
 take his place among the men. He kept a remarkable 
 Diary at Cambridge recording the ebbs and flows of 
 his spiritual life ; it is in the Trinity Library now . They 
 will show it to you if you ask for it. They have his 
 scrap-book too, full of Thackeray's, Fitzgerald's, and 
 Alford's drawings." 
 
 ' The man must have been in earnest." 
 
 " He did not hold many services, though." 
 
 " Perhaps he found his temple among the cottages 
 of his flock. I have sometimes wondered whether 
 there is not something Jewish in our view of these 
 temples built with hands." 
 
 ' Well, an old Bishop called him a Pillar of the 
 Church, but it would be*a regular bouleversement of our 
 ecclesiastical system if you meddled with our ideas 
 about the Temple." 
 
 " But it must have been an awful life's history for 
 a man of that sort to bury himself for some forty 
 years in a remote parish. Rather a waste of his 
 powers." 
 
 ' We are not sure of that. He is still remembered 
 there, though more than a generation has passed away.
 
 xvi TRINITY SUNDAY, 192- (?) 
 
 A man who followed him for a month or two, and 
 afterwards went out as a missionary to Melanesia, 
 said a very remarkable thing about his parish. Not 
 only that he did not suppose there was another parish 
 like it in the kingdom, but that he himself had learnt 
 more than he could say from the yokels in that country 
 place. I can lend you some of Allen's letters if you 
 would care to look over them." 
 
 " I should like to read his Diary. One wants to 
 watch a man climbing. Once on the Highway he 
 has reached his goal." 
 
 ' Yet there must be progress all through." 
 
 " Well, I shall have plenty of time on my hands at 
 Green-end ! " 
 
 " Just the time to make much of. Dean Pigou 
 taught himself music and some branch of natural 
 science in the year of his first curacy, and made good 
 use of both of them in after-life." 
 
 " I have no turn for science, and am a duffer at 
 music." 
 
 ' You might do worse than learn John Alienism." 
 
 " Not seriously ? '* said the amazed Deacon.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 COLLEGE LIFE IN THE DAYS OF TENNYSON AND HALLAM 
 
 EARLY in the last century that College lying under 
 the shadow of the glorious old Abbey where kings are 
 crowned and buried where the broad river, 
 
 " The most loved of all the Ocean's sons 
 By his old Sire, to his embraces runs, 
 Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea, 
 Like mortal life to meet eternity " 
 
 sent up to Trinity a young Samuel dedicated to the 
 service of the Most High. 
 
 A public school had tested his vocation. 
 
 " God grant you may always feel the abhorrence of 
 the vice taking place in College that you express in 
 your letter," his father wrote in 1824, " and that you 
 will always pray to the Almighty for His divine assist- 
 ance to enable you to withstand the temptations you 
 must meet with as you pass through life." 
 
 He was more than once compelled, for expressing 
 his abhorrence of some pictures forced upon his 
 attention and refusing to look at them again, to toast 
 bread at the fire with his naked hands; once he was 
 in considerable danger of his life through a pewter pot 
 being flung at his head, and once was roasted before 
 the fire until he fainted. He ascribed his resistance 
 to evil to the prayers of his parents and to verses from 
 the Book of Proverbs taught him by his mother. 
 
 This horror of sin was characteristic of John Allen. 
 Someone who knew him in his later years said, " A 
 look of intense, almost physical, agony rested upon his 
 countenance when he heard of the death under shameful 
 circumstances of one of Her Majesty's Judges. " O 
 my God," he cried, his whole frame trembling with 
 i
 
 2 COLLEGE LIFE IN THE DAYS OF 
 
 such emotion that he seemed about to fall, " surely it 
 cannot be true ? ' 
 
 At Cambridge the magnetic force of a life hid with 
 Christ at once made itself felt. Unendowed with 
 wealth, without introductions, with few claims on any 
 man's notice, admitting no easy-chair to his room lest 
 men should tempt him to waste his time, he would sit 
 of an evening with a folio on his knees on a straight- 
 backed chair before the fire. To these rooms, up a 
 double or treble flight of stairs in the Central Tower, 
 Thackeray would mount, and, sitting there through the 
 evening, drawing as he talked, leave the table strewn 
 with his sketches ; here Alford * awoke him in the 
 morning to read with him, and Fitzgerald * sought 
 him ; the learned Thompson,' Blakesley, 4 Spedding, 1 
 Hallam, Tennyson, Trench, 6 all felt the attraction of 
 the Man within the man. 
 
 And of what was their talk ? 
 
 " Jan. 26, 1830. When alone talked to Fitz- 
 gerald about thinking seriously of religion ; he 
 went away promising to think of it. I gave 
 him Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying." 
 
 Then follows a prayer. Seven years later Fitzgerald 
 writes to Allen for another copy of this book to give to 
 a friend. 
 
 " Feb. 3, 1830. Began looking over an essay, 
 but Thackeray came in. We had some conver- 
 sation, when I affected him to tears. He went 
 away with a determination to live a new life. 
 
 " Fitzgerald and myself afterwards in tears. 
 
 1 Dean Alford, author of Commentary on the Greek Testament and 
 Queen's English. 
 
 a Translator of Omar Khayyam. 
 
 8 Master of Trinity. 
 
 4 Dean of Lincoln. 
 
 6 Editor of Bacon. 
 
 Archbishop Trench, author of Trench on the Parables, and many 
 poems.
 
 TENNYSON AND HALLAM 3 
 
 " ' O God, grant it may be found hereafter that 
 I have not lived in vain.' ' 
 
 " Feb. 7, 1830. After Chapel Thackeray came 
 up. He expressed some doubts of Christ being 
 God ; we read over St. Matthew together, and he 
 was convinced. Went to bed very late, but I 
 hope the day was not spent in vain." 
 
 God gives Himself to the soul which is most lavish 
 of its secret wealth. A man's character is the one 
 thing in the world he can be sure of influencing, and 
 the one thing he can carry out of it. 
 
 John Allen writes on the opening page of his Diary : 
 
 ' Jan. i, 1830. O my God, as I write day by 
 day, the vices into which I have chiefly fallen 
 may I by the help of Thy Holy Spirit work out 
 in fear and trembling my salvation ; so that each 
 day, as it brings me nearer the close of my life, 
 may also bring me along the road to Heaven. 
 Lord, Thou hast promised to hear them that call 
 on Thee. Teach me to pray ; teach my efforts to 
 rely only on Thee." 
 
 The sinful habits referred to are catalogued at the 
 foot of each page of his Diary as he gave way to them : 
 
 " INDOLENCE." (Heads the list on most pages.) 
 
 " PRIDE. Self-complacency in my own powers 
 when I have the advantage in conversation." 
 
 ' WANT OF CHARITY. I am the most un- 
 charitable man in the world, and yet I hate to 
 hear of my own faults." 
 
 " NEGLECT OF GOD'S ORDINANCES." (When he 
 whispered in Chapel.) 
 
 " FOLLY. I cannot tell how it is, but I certainly 
 have a secret wish to be thought clever. This is 
 vanity and folly of the lowest order ; it is mean ; 
 yes, more, it is wicked. O God, grant me, I beseech 
 Thee, power to be careless, entirely careless about 
 the world's opinion in matters indifferent, so that
 
 4 COLLEGE LIFE IN THE DAYS OP 
 
 ever keeping my eye fixed on better things, I may 
 pass through this life as on a pilgrimage in very 
 deed most transitory." 
 
 " GLUTTONY."- (When, after fasting all day on 
 bread and water to humiliate himself, he ate brawn 
 for supper.) 
 
 In one of his sermons he said later: " If, when 
 carving at table, I keep the best piece for myself, I am 
 a child of Satan." 
 
 A comparison drawn between the vices he combated 
 and prayed against in his youth, and the virtues 
 distinguishing his character in mature life, would 
 hearten any man in striving against sin. 
 
 " Monday, Jan. 2, 1830. Read two sermons of 
 Doddridge's and one of Baxter's. Said my evening 
 prayer with more fervour and collectedness than 
 I am wont. Thank God for it." 
 
 " Jan. 4, 1830. Up very late, wasted my time. 
 Alas ! alas ! how soon one falls if one begins to 
 walk a little in the right path. This comes of 
 being self-confident and thinking we are able to 
 stand by ourselves. 
 
 " O God, I know I am weak ; I can do nothing 
 without Thee. Pour down on Thy servant the 
 outflowings of Thy Holy Spirit, so that I may be 
 preserved in the Way of Salvation." 
 
 " Jan. n, 1830. Whispered in morning Chapel 
 with a fellow. Why should I be ashamed of men 
 knowing I am trying to be good ? ' 
 
 " Jan. 15, 1830. Passed the most unprofitable 
 Sunday I have ever spent in my life. I have not 
 been to any place of worship aU this day." 
 
 One of the Dons told him it was a pleasure to hear 
 him read the lessons hi Chapel ; the satisfaction this 
 gave him he condemned as a sin. His reading was 
 simple, but, as he read God's Word, he listened to His 
 Voice.
 
 TENNYSON AND HALLAM 5 
 
 " Saturday, Jan. 28, 1830. Spent two hours 
 preparing myself for the Sacrament." 
 
 " Sunday, 2Qth. Meant to have risen early to 
 prepare again for the service, but was late for 
 breakfast. How soon are my best resolutions 
 broken ! " 
 
 He was had up and reproved for his late hours, for, 
 although his conduct was approved as exemplary, he 
 was sometimes out until three in the morning. 
 
 " March 9. Walked on the Trumpington Road 
 with five men, and made a great noise." 
 
 His daily pleasant walks were with Alford ; such 
 men would have deemed the mad pursuit of nothing 
 on the grass a waste of the time they could spend 
 boring for their native riches, gaining access to poetry 
 and the powers that constitute character ; realising 
 the Heaven above them and the abyss beneath them. 
 There is no book and no pleasure in life to be compared 
 with the pleasure of conversation ; in such hours men 
 have glimpses of the Eternal, of the far-darting lights 
 and shadows of a more majestic world ; intimations 
 of a power native to the soul. 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, some of them may have let their 
 spirits evaporate in single-stick or in firing off pistols, 
 and of an evening they often played whist or chess. 
 Alford was with him daily : they read the Greek Testa- 
 ment together and talked of publishing in concert a 
 commentary on the Bible extracted from old English 
 divines. Their tears fell as side by side they listened 
 to Hugh James Rose 1 preaching in Great St. Mary's. 
 
 The bond between Allen and Thackeray was so 
 close that when, this year, the latter left the University 
 without taking his degree, he persuaded John to follow 
 him to town, having found a Mastership for him in a 
 school in Pimlico. But Allen's father would not 
 hear of his son's interrupting his education. 
 
 1 See Dean Burgon's Twelve Great Men.
 
 6 COLLEGE LIFE IN THE DAYS OF 
 
 " April 30. Determined by God's help to 
 reform my life. ' O my God, cure me of my 
 extreme indolence. Teach me to know myself ; 
 cure my vanity/ 
 
 " Surely there never was one so wicked as I. 
 
 "Read Doddridge." 
 
 During the summer vacation his parents reproved 
 him for the waste of his time. His father, who 
 thought he ought to stand half-way up among the 
 Wranglers, was not satisfied with his work, and asked 
 to see his Diary, which John declined to show him. 
 When his mother spoke to him he wrote, " All mothers, 
 I suppose, think their sons geniuses." 
 
 In August he joined a reading party with Alford 
 and Blakesley. 
 
 " Aug. 2, 1830. Up late ; read some Newton ; 
 after dinner a little Plato. After tea went down 
 to Southsea ; talked about slang, school roughen- 
 ing manners, and so forth. I have been reading 
 in Doddridge' s ' Rise and Progress ' of the case of 
 God's hiding His face from us. How blessed I 
 am, and how thankful I ought to be that I never 
 recollect this happening to me ; for, although 
 numberless times have I wandered from Him in 
 sin and error, He has ever been the kindest Father 
 to me, receiving me with open arms did I but 
 think of Him ; supplying my soul with holy 
 thoughts did I but ask for them ; and sometimes 
 wrapping my spirit in transports when I reflected 
 on His mercy in holding out to me the means of 
 grace and hopes of glory." 
 
 " Aug. 3, 1830. After dinner read Coleridge's 
 ' Aids to Reflection/ I am often afraid that 
 when I think of becoming a clergyman, I am not 
 wholly without thoughts of taking orders as a 
 maintenance ; yet at other tunes I feel confident 
 that I could be fully contented with mere susten- 
 ance for my hire. O Lord, do thou so temper my 
 soul that I may be wholly regardless of temporal
 
 TENNYSON AND HALLAM 7 
 
 possessions, and may press forward cheerfully 
 through poverty to those riches which neither 
 moth nor rust can corrupt." 
 
 At Southsea a lady's charm attracted him, but on 
 hearing she was married he dismissed her image from 
 his thoughts. 
 
 " Aug. 9, 1830. Up just after six ; read 
 Aristotle, the second section of Newton, a little 
 integral calculus. Dined at three ; read an hour 
 at Plato, and then went to work at asymptotes 
 with Alf ord at Mason's for two hours ; later read 
 Sophocles for two hours." 
 
 " Aug. 10, 1830. This day Alf ord gave me a 
 bit of advice. There are few persons who ever 
 did me this kindness. I hope that I shall be truly 
 grateful for it." 
 
 " Aug. u, 1830. Thought much of Fitzgerald ; 
 there are some bright spots in everyone's life, 
 which are not only most sweet to look back upon, 
 but so affect us for the remainder of it as to make 
 us perceptibly happier and perhaps better. I 
 have many such. My intercourse with most dear 
 Fitzgerald is not one of the least brilliant. O 
 God ! my blessings are beyond all that anyone 
 could be worthy of, much less I wicked, foolish I." 
 
 " Aug. 25. Read Conic Sections till eleven a.m. 
 I begin to like Newton excessively ; his mighty 
 genius throws an atmosphere of delight around 
 him which is pleasing to breathe." 
 
 " Sept. 4, 1830. Walked from Portsmouth to 
 Southampton to see Fitzgerald, who was passing 
 through. On reaching his hotel I found he had 
 gone to bed." 
 
 " Sept. 5. Got up and went to Fitzgerald's 
 room, who jumped and almost *cried for joy to 
 see me, dear affectionate fellow ! After breakfast, 
 though very stiff, walked with him to Netley 
 Abbey, and tried to make him steady in his views 
 on religion.
 
 COLLEGE LIFE IN THE DAYS OF 
 
 " We had some pleasant chat about Cambridge 
 men ; we walked about the town and after 
 dinner saw the sun set most gloriously over the 
 hills and waters. 
 
 " Thought not a little of Fitzgerald." 
 
 " Oct. 10, 1830. Cambridge. Talked with 
 Spedding about Bacon." 
 
 " Oct. 18. Saw Charles and Fanny Kemble act ; 
 was much pleased with their acting. Determined 
 to give up theatre-going ; it is a sin." 
 
 " Oct. 19. Spedding repeated some of Alfred 
 Tennyson's poetry." 
 
 " Nov. 8. Met Alfred Tennyson." 
 
 " Nov. 30. I have had a great pleasure to-day : 
 a letter from my dear James, who having often 
 written to me about my work, now interests 
 himself in my spiritual welfare. A very affec- 
 tionate letter and unspeakably precious, filling my 
 heart all day with happiness and thankfulness." 
 
 " Jan. i, 1831. Met Arthur Hallam and 
 Frederic Tennyson at Garden's rooms. Hallam 
 read out Wordsworth." 
 
 ' Jan. 5. Heard Irving preach on the office of 
 the Holy Ghost." 
 
 ' Jan. ii. Gave myself to God to be His 
 servant unto my life's end." 
 
 " Jan. 23. Determined to read nine hours a 
 day." 
 
 " Jan. 31. Spedding and Thompson fetched 
 me to sup at Alford's to meet Brookfield and 
 Hallam." 
 
 " Feb. 2. Met again for a debate. Hallam 
 opened on the character of James I in a wonder- 
 fully fine speech. Alford uttered two paradoxes 
 and Thompson spake a jest." 
 
 " Feb. 4. Resolved to give up dancing." 
 
 " Feb. 5. Irving expounded part of the 
 Prophet Joel. He preached' a very fine sermon 
 on the answer of the wicked servant in the 
 Parable of the Talents. ' I knew Thee that Thou 
 
 1 Afterwards Dean of St. David's.
 
 TENNYSON AND HALLAM 9 
 
 art a hard man, reaping where Thou hast not 
 sown and gathering where Thou hast not strawed ; 
 therefore I hid Thy talent in the earth.' ' 
 
 " Feb. 12. Heard Simeon preach on ' Turn ye, 
 tirn ye, oh House of Israel, why will ye die ? ' 
 (This year he went regularly to hear Simeon 
 preach.) 
 
 " Feb. 23. Made a resolution to play cards no 
 more." 
 
 " Feb. 24. Walked with Thompson in the 
 cloisters, where he gave me the heads of Words- 
 worth's conversation." 
 
 " Feb. 25. Met Alford, Spedding, and Alfred 
 Tennyson, and walked with them about town." 
 
 " Feb. 26. Garden and I formed an old English 
 Divinity Club to meet every Sunday evening." 
 
 " March 6. Divinity Club met at Thompson's 
 to read Hooker. A most pleasant evening, and I 
 trust a profitable one." 
 
 " March 8. At Garden's rooms, where Hallam 
 read out to us some of Moore's philosophical 
 writings." 
 
 " March 21. Read over the Articles to see if I 
 could honestly sign them." 
 
 This spring Thackeray was in Weimar. He made a 
 pen-and-ink sketch of the " great lion of Weimar " for 
 Allen, doubtless the best portrait of him at that age 
 extant. 1 In Thackeray's opinion the old man was 
 probably even handsomer then than in his youth. 
 Here he stands with his hands behind his back in a 
 long coat, 8 a grey or drab redingote with a white 
 neckcloth and a red ribbon in his button-hole. His 
 features are haughty and benevolent, the nose long 
 and aquiline, almost heavy. Although the sketch is in 
 profile, the sense of his extraordinarily dark, piercing 
 and brilliant eyes is given eyes like those of the 
 Hero of Melmoth, who had made a bargain with a 
 Certain Person, and at an extreme old age retained 
 
 1 In Allen's Scrap-book, now in Trinity Library. 
 
 2 See Lewes's Life of Goethe.
 
 10 COLLEGE LIFE IN THE DAYS OF 
 
 those eyes in all their splendour. Goethe spoke French 
 with not a good accent. Thackeray, a good French 
 scholar himself, declared he was relieved to find this. 
 His voice was rich and sweet. He received hirr in a 
 little ante-chamber of his private apartments covered 
 all round with antique casts and bas-reliefs. 
 Lady Ritchie writes : 
 
 " One of my father's oldest friends was Arch- 
 deacon Allen, a commander in an army where 
 there are no Waterloos, no decisive victories and 
 treaties of peace, but where for men such as he was 
 the arms are never laid away, and the watches 
 are never relaxed." 
 
 The neophyte now keeping his vigils before the 
 invisible altar, fasting and praying, praying and 
 reading, endeavouring and failing, repenting and 
 doing better, searching his heart and kneeling before 
 his God to know of Him the truth of things, may 
 between his hours of self-examination and humiliation 
 have wandered with the " greatest Poet of the Cen- 
 tury " as those men recognised him to be : 
 
 " In the jolly spring-time 
 When the poplar and lime 
 Dishevel their tresses together," 
 
 through the scene of " The Dream of Fair Women," 
 the lovely wilderness of St. John's abutting on Trinity 
 grounds, beneath the broad curved branches of its 
 enormous elm-tree boles, ". new fledged with clearest 
 green, fresh from its silken sheath," by a tulip's crimson 
 gem glowing upon the " lush green grasses," through 
 " rank dark wood walks drenched in dew leading from 
 lawn to lawn," where " growths of jasmine twine their 
 humid arms festooning tree to tree," or by its sunnier 
 paths enamelled with the stars of frail-leaved anemones 
 on a groundwork of twisted ivy-nets when " those old 
 Mays had twice the life of ours." 
 
 Allen was not one of " the Twelve " ; while they 
 were discussing the relative merits of Byron and
 
 TENNYSON AND HALLAM 11 
 
 Shelley, he was reading Barrow and Sanderson. 
 Shelley's writings he detested, Byron he disliked, 
 Wordsworth he reverenced. 
 
 " Sept. 1830. Virgilium vidi ; I have seen 
 Wordsworth." 
 
 Shakespeare fascinated him ; he would read two plays 
 through in an evening ; yet, in comparing him with 
 Milton, he said, " Shakespeare is natural, but Milton is 
 divine." He doubted whether Shakespeare wrote all 
 that is attributed to him, and whether the writings of 
 Milton lately discovered by Mr. Lemon were authentic. 
 
 In the Trinity Library there is a manuscript volume 
 belonging to Allen of Tennyson's earlier poems, some 
 unpublished, in Hallam's handwriting, with a few of 
 Hallam's among them. 
 
 Fitzgerald writes : 
 
 " Have you got this beginning in your manu- 
 script of ' The Dream of Fair Women ' ? It is 
 very splendid : 
 
 ' As when a man that sails in a balloon 
 Down-looking sees the solid shining ground 
 Stream from beneath him in the broad blue noon 
 Tilth, hamlet, mead, and mound ; 
 
 ' And takes his flags and waves them to the mob 
 That shout below, all faces turned to where 
 Glows ruby-like the far-off crimson globe 
 Filled with a finer air : 
 
 ' So, lifted high, the poet at his will 
 Lets the great world flit from him, seeing all 
 Higher through secret splendours mounting still 
 Self-poised, nor fears to fall; 
 
 ' Hearing apart the echoes of his fame ' 
 
 This is in his best style ; no fretful epithet 
 nor a word too much. 
 
 E. F. G." 
 
 The third part of " The May Queen," which is not 
 in Moxon's '33 Edition, may bear a vestige of Allen's
 
 12 COLLEGE LIFE IN THE DAYS OF 
 
 influence ; it is .a beautiful foreshadowing of the 
 young warrior now girding on his armour, as in his 
 later life he passed among the cottages of his Shrop- 
 shire pastures " where the cowslip and the crowfoot 
 are over all the hill," ' the wild marsh marigold 
 shines like fire in swamps and hollows grey," and 
 " the faint sweet cuckoo-flower blows by the meadow 
 trenches," " where the honeysuckle weaves its wavy 
 bowers around the lowly porches " beneath which the 
 veteran's war-worn brow, hallowed then with the dawn 
 of a brighter life, bowed meekly by the bedside of the 
 dying in the presence of his God : 
 
 " It seem'd so hard at first, mother, to leave the blessed sun, 
 And now it seems as hard to stay, and yet His will be done ! 
 But still I think it can't be long before I find release ; 
 And that good man, the clergyman, has told me words of peace. 
 
 " O blessings on his kindly heart and on his silver head ! 
 A thousand times I blest him, as he knelt beside my bed. 
 He taught me all the mercy, for he show'd me all the sin, 
 Now tho' my lamp was lighted late, there's One will let me in." 
 
 On July 4, 1835, Fitzgerald wiites : 
 
 ' What you say of Tennyson and Wordsworth 
 is not I think wholly just. I don't think that a 
 man can turn himself so directly to the service of 
 humanity unless he is naturally inclined. I think 
 Wordsworth's is a natural bias that way. Besides 
 one must have labourers of different kinds in the 
 vineyard of morality, which I certainly look up 
 to as the chief object of our cultivation : Words- 
 worth is first in the craft ; but Tennyson does no 
 little, by raising and filling the brain with noble 
 images and thoughts, which, if they do not direct 
 us to our duty, purify and cleanse us from mean 
 and vicious objects and so prepare and fit us for 
 the reception of the highest philosophy. A man 
 might forsake a drunken party to read Byron's 
 ' Corsair,' and Byron's ' Corsair ' for Shelley's 
 ' Alastor,' and the ' Alastor ' for the ' Dream of 
 Fair Women ' or the ' Palace of Art,' and then I
 
 TENNYSON AND HALLAM 13 
 
 won't say that he would forsake these two last 
 for anything of Wordsworth's; but his mind 
 would be sufficiently refined and spiritualised to 
 admit Wordsworth and profit by him, and he 
 might keep all the former imaginations as so many 
 pictures or pieces of music in his mind. But I 
 think that you will see Tennyson acquire all, that 
 at present you miss ; when he has felt life he will 
 not die fruitless of instruction to man as he is. 
 But I dislike this kind of criticism, especially in a 
 letter. I don't know anyone who has thought 
 out anything so little as I have. I don't see to 
 any end, and should keep silent till I have got a 
 little more and that a little better arranged. 
 
 E. F. G."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 FITZGERALD'S FRIENDSHIP 
 
 EDWARD FITZGERALD, a Suffolk man of good family, 
 was a year senior to Allen, and went out, after some 
 doubts of his success, in the Poll early in 1830. A 
 skilful and a true musician, a fine artist, with poetical 
 and literary gifts that have made him famous in spite 
 of himself, he took more pains to avoid fame than 
 others do to seek it. Fame is more sought for than 
 any other wealth, and does no less good ; like a river, it 
 bears up light and swollen goods, but drowns much 
 bullion. Misled by the love of it, men often force 
 themselves into public life, and so fail to make the best 
 of themselves. Success may make a man happy; it 
 cannot make him great. 
 Like his old friend Chaucer, this man knew too : 
 
 " What did belong to writing Verse and Prose, 
 Ne'er stumbled at small faults, nor yet did view 
 With scornful eyes the works and books of those 
 That in his time did write. . . ." 
 
 Tennyson wrote of him : " I had no truer friend, 
 and have never known one of so fine and delicate a 
 wit." "Dear old Fitz " was the friend, of all his 
 many friends, whom Thackeray loved most. Carlyle 
 wrote : 
 
 To Fitzgerald 
 
 ' Thanks for your friendly human letter ; 
 which gave us much entertainment in the reading 
 (at breakfast-time the other day) and is still 
 pleasant to think of. One gets so many inhuman 
 letters, ovine, bovine, porcine, &c., &c. ; I wish 
 you would write a little oftener ; when the
 
 FITZGERALD'S FRIENDSHIP 15 
 
 beneficent Daimon suggests, fail not to lend ear 
 to him. 
 
 T. CARLYLE." 
 
 Often in the spring of their Cambridge days, " when 
 the breeze was blowing and the hedges and trees in full 
 leaf," 1 Fitzgerald and Allen so wrote the former 
 must have passed out together through the Cloisters 
 of Neville's Court upon " the open green before the 
 Library where the sun shone broad on the new-shaven 
 expanse of grass, and holiday-seeming people sauntered 
 along the river-side under the trees now flourishing in 
 freshest green the chestnut in full fan leaning down 
 his white cones over the sluggish current that washes 
 the walls and flows through the groves of Academe." 
 
 And having threaded their watery way amid the 
 closely packed barges of Magdalene, and by the Lock 
 to the Ferry, they would foot it over the fields, crop- 
 thick with daisy, clover, and buttercup (Crabbe used 
 to say the prime of the year fell with the mowing), 
 conversing on many topics, to Chesterton, to sit them 
 down in some green nook where lilac bushes in full 
 bloom and full odour sheltered them, to think and 
 feel in the Elysian Fields of youth, wooing that spirit 
 or state of mind which realises both the unseen Heaven 
 with its earthly symbols around them, and the power 
 of the Invisible Spirit to garrison the diviner man 
 within ; a state of mind which, by keeping men conver- 
 sant with all that is beautiful and sublime in the 
 intellectual and moral world, disposes them to heroic 
 and generous actions. What would the world be like 
 if it were full of old men ! 
 
 Such hours stir the pulses of the blood and lift the 
 common lives of men into a larger and sweeter air ; 
 then deep springs of aspiration are stored which shall 
 last all life's journey through with all its ups and 
 downs, and a moral courage to face the dangers of the 
 field is built up. 
 
 Preferring honour to advantage, virtue to ex- 
 pediency ; living by affection rather than by 
 
 1 See Euphranor.
 
 16 FITZGERALD'S FRIENDSHIP 
 
 reason, such men are warm friends and hearty com- 
 panions, because they delight in fellowship and judge 
 of nothing by utility, not even their friends. Energy 
 and dignity of character bear proportion to the degree 
 in which the mind is active or passive ; a healthy body 
 is good, but a soul in good health is better. Man's 
 body is subject to Heaven, but Heaven is subject to 
 his spirit. 
 
 Day by day Allen sought his God with strong 
 crying and with tears ; praying too, ever praying that 
 Fitzgerald " might think seriously of religion," that 
 " his heart might be turned " and " his great talents 
 not wasted." 
 
 For the lazy blossom of the " innocent far niente 
 life " of this " peaceable, affectionate, ultra-modest 
 man " (as Carlyle describes him), while it floated on 
 the sunny surface of the stream, had its root below. 
 
 In mature life he wrote : 
 
 " I heard a man preach at Bedford in a way 
 that shook my soul. He described the Crucifixion 
 so as to put the scene before his people no fine 
 words and metaphors : but first one nail struck 
 into one hand then into another, and, one through 
 both feet the cross lifted up with God in man's 
 image distended upon it. And the sneers of the 
 priests below ' Look at that fellow there Look 
 at Him He, talk of saving others, and so forth ' 
 and then the sun veiled his face in blood and 
 so forth 
 
 I certainly have heard oratory now of the Lord 
 Chatham kind, only this man had more faith in 
 Christ than Pitt in his majority I was almost as 
 much taken aback as the poor folk all about me 
 who sobbed ; and I hate this beastly London 
 more and more. As to pictures well, never mind 
 them. Farewell. 
 
 In the Chapel opposite this house (10 Charlotte 
 Street, Rathbone Place) preaches Robert Mont- 
 gomery ! 
 
 E. FITZGERALD."
 
 FITZGERALD'S FRIENDSHIP 17 
 
 Again he writes : 
 
 " Oh this wonderful world and we who stand hi 
 the middle of it are all in a maze except that man 
 at Bedford, who fixes his eyes upon a wooden 
 cross and has no misgivings whatever. When I 
 was at his chapel on Good Friday, he called at 
 the end of his grand sermon on some of the people 
 to say merely this, that they believed Christ had 
 redeemed them ; and first one got up and in sobs 
 declared she believed it ; and then another ; 
 and then another. I was quite overset : all 
 poor people : how much richer than all who fill 
 the London churches ! Theirs is the Kingdom of 
 Heaven ! " 
 
 Fitzgerald's father had a property at Naseby. 
 After he left the University he wrote to Allen : 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " NASEBY, November 1830. 
 
 ' This place is solitary enough, but I am well 
 off in a nice farm-house. I wish you could come 
 and see the primitive inhabitants and the fine 
 field of Naseby. There are grand views on every 
 side and all is interesting. Do you know, Allen, 
 that this is a very curious place with odd fossils ; 
 and mixed with bones and bullets of the fight at 
 Naseby ; and the identical spot where King 
 Charles stood to see the battle. ... I do wish you 
 were here to see the curiosities. Can't you come ? 
 I am quite the King here I promise you. I am 
 going to-day to dine with the carpenter and to 
 hear his daughter play on the pianoforte Fact. 
 
 ' ' My blue surtout daily does wonders. At church 
 its effect is truly delightful." 
 
 Here ' The Meadows in Spring " was written. 
 Fitzgerald wrote to the editor of the Athenceum, 
 anonymously :
 
 18 FITZGERALD'S FRIENDSHIP 
 
 " SIR, 
 
 These verses are something in the old style, 
 but not the worse for that : not that I mean to 
 call them good ; but I am sure they would not 
 have been better if dressed up in the newest 
 Montgomery fashion, for which I cannot say I 
 have much love. If they are fitted for your 
 paper you are welcome to them. I send them to 
 you because I find only in your paper a love of 
 our old literature, which is almost ' monstrous ' in 
 the eyes of modern ladies and gentlemen. My 
 verses are certainly not in the present fashion ; 
 but I must own, though there may not be the same 
 merit in the thoughts, I think the style much 
 better : and this with no credit to myself, but to 
 the merry old writers of more manly times. 
 
 Your humble servant, 
 
 EPSILON." 
 
 The editor printed them, supposing them to have 
 been written by Lamb. Judge from this extract if he 
 was justified : 
 
 " Tis a dull sight to see the year dying, 
 When winter winds set the yellow wood sighing ; 
 Sighing, oh ! sighing. 
 
 Then with an old friend I talk of our youth, 
 How 'twas gladsome but often foolish forsooth : 
 But gladsome, gladsome ! 
 
 " And ere to bed go we, go we, 
 Down on the ashes we kneel on the knee 
 
 Praying together ! 
 So winter passeth like a long sleep 
 From falling autumn to primrose peep 
 Then the clouds part, swallows soaring between ; 
 The spring is alive and the meadows are green ! " 
 
 (This copy from Allen's Commonplace Book is better 
 than that the author published ; Fitzgerald's first 
 thoughts were his best.) 
 Lamb wrote to Moxon :
 
 FITZGERALD'S FRIENDSHIP 19 
 
 " The Athenceum has been hoaxed with some 
 exquisite poetry, that was two or three months ago, 
 in Hone's Book. I don't know who wrote it ; but 
 'tis a poem I envy. I envy the writer because I 
 feel I could have done something like it." 
 
 Meanwhile, the severe apprenticeship of youth so 
 seasoned Allen that the impetuous vigour of his 
 manhood, green and fresh in the Old World, lived 
 undaunted by its decrepitude. All the reason of 
 mature life, prudence of age, experience of the world, 
 served not to freeze but to direct its genial current, 
 for the boy's heart within the man's never ceased to 
 throb even till remotest age let in new light through 
 the chinks of dilapidation : 
 
 " Ev'n while the vital heat drew down below, 
 Ev'n while the hoary head was lost in snow, 
 The Life was in the leaf, and still between 
 The fits of falling snow appeared the streaky green." 
 
 It is the mind that makes the man ; Napoleon believed 
 in the force of the soul. 
 
 Then in the summer days of 1831 the fascinating 
 Fitzgerald, something like one of the Pilgrims riding 
 eastward that he loved 
 
 " All embroidered as it were a mead 
 And full of fresh flowers white and rede," 
 
 travelled by coach and by sea westward to spend the 
 happiest days of his pleasant life with his Pembroke- 
 shire friend in Wales : 
 
 " Singing he was or floyting all the day; 
 He was as fresh as is the month of May. 
 He could songs make and well indite, 
 Jest, and eke dance and well pourtray and write. 
 Courteous he was, lowly and serviceable." 
 
 On his return to London he wrote : 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " As I lay in bed this morning half dozing, I 
 walked in imagination all the way from Tenby to
 
 20 FITZGERALD'S FRIENDSHIP 
 
 Freestone by the road I know so well : by the 
 water, by Gumfreston, Ivy Tower, and through 
 the gates, and the long road that leads to Carew." 
 
 And again later : 
 
 " I was made glad and sad last night in looking 
 over some of your letters to me. Ever since my 
 stay at Tenby, I wonder within myself if we are 
 changed since then. Do you remember that day 
 when we sat upon that rock that runs out into the 
 sea and looked down into the clear water below ? 
 I must go to Tenby one of these days and walk 
 the old walk to Freestone. How well I remember 
 what a quiet delight it was to walk out and meet 
 you when you were coming to stay a week with 
 me once in my lodgings." 
 
 And again : 
 
 ' The country is now shewing symptoms of 
 greenness and warmth ; yesterday I walked not 
 a common thing for me eleven miles : partly 
 over a heath just covered with furze bushes just 
 come out into bloom, whose odour the fresh wind 
 blew into my face. Such a day it was, only not 
 so warm, as when you and I used to sit on those 
 rocks overlooking the sea at Tenby, just eight 
 years ago. I am afraid you are growing too good 
 a Christian for me Master Allen, if you know what 
 I mean by that. Don't be alarmed, however. I 
 have just read the first number of Dickens's new 
 work, Master Humphrey's Clock : it does not 
 promise much I think. Love to all Coram Street. 
 
 E. F. G." 
 
 Thackeray was living in Coram Street.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SUMMER AND WINTER 
 
 IN the August of 1831 Allen went again to Portsmouth 
 with a reading-party. Sansum, a common friend of 
 his and Fitzgerald's, was invited with him to a 
 Southsea water-party. They framed as good a letter 
 of excuse as they could, having no excuse ; but when 
 Sansum clumsily upset the ink-bottle over it, they 
 merrily agreed that the best way out of the difficulty 
 was to go. 
 
 That afternoon Allen saw there the lady whose 
 sparkling eyes and gay, captivating smile had attracted 
 him a year ago ; and (to his joy) when the amateur 
 boatswain, in trimming his boat, shouted, " Married 
 ladies larboard ; single ladies starboard," she rose, and, 
 with a certain softness and majesty that encircled her, 
 took her seat on the starboard. 
 
 So he walked home with her that evening. They 
 talked of poetry ; she admired Byron, as he supposed 
 " all ladies do." But no more invitations were 
 refused. Penetrated and inspired with a feeling that 
 never forsook his heart, he sought her society at the 
 Public Rooms, sat by her when she played and sang 
 not to the improvement of her music, I have heard 
 played chess with her, lost his games, and visited at 
 her house. A graceful spray of white blossom lives 
 on a page of his College Diary, 1 for it once adorned 
 her hair a fair symbol of a love that never died. 
 
 Before he left Portsmouth he spoke of his present 
 poverty, of his hope of making an income when he 
 had left the University, and of his changeless love for 
 her. Could she love him ? 
 
 She hesitated they had known each other so short 
 
 1 Now in Trinity Library. 
 
 21 
 
 f
 
 22 SUMMER AND WINTER 
 
 a time. Yes, she did care for him but it was so 
 serious a step. No, it would not be wise to speak to 
 her parents now she could not write to him without 
 their consent. 
 
 Would she but write her name on a piece of paper 
 and give it to him to keep ? 
 
 No she did not think that would be quite right. 
 
 On his return to Cambridge he writes : 
 
 " Oct. 1831. Inexpressibly dear to me is the 
 remembrance of Harriet. She said, ' God bless 
 you/ and she has promised to pray for me. ' O 
 that I may be more worthy of such an angelic 
 being/ ' 
 
 Then Harriet was attacked by a low fever, and his 
 anxiety was extreme ; so she sent him a reassuring 
 message through a friend, and asked him to unite with 
 her in rejoicing over her recent affliction, for she 
 trusted it had been the means of winning her from 
 the world and enabling her to " count all things but 
 loss that she might win Christ." The letter continues : 
 
 " She wishes me to tell you how much she 
 esteems you for your delicate feelings of honour 
 towards her parents ; and, while perfectly con- 
 curring with your feelings on that subject, she 
 would say that her heart is not likely to change 
 towards you as long as she can have the exquisite 
 feeling which she now happily possesses that you 
 are seeking with permanent earnestness that 
 Wisdom which is from Above and which alone 
 can make you fit to become a guide to other 
 immortal souls." 
 
 " Nov. 12, 1831. 'O God, what right have I to 
 the affections of an angel like Harriet ! O God, 
 bless her in all her ways, and if it be not for her 
 happiness that I should be blessed with the
 
 SUMMER AND WINTER 23 
 
 possession of her hand, blot out the remembrance 
 of me from her heart. 
 
 "I fear I have not done right in engaging the 
 love of so perfect a being in behalf of such a one 
 as myself yet I hope in God that He will make 
 me less unworthy of the care of souls to which 
 office I have destined myself." 
 
 Fitzgerald, who was now in London, writes to Allen : 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " LONDON, November 21, 1831. 
 
 " MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 I suppose it must seem strange to you that 
 I should like writing letters : and indeed I don't 
 know that I do like it in general. However 
 here I see no companions, so I am pleased to talk 
 to my old friend John Allen : which indeed keeps 
 alive my humanity very much. ... I have been 
 about to divers book shops and have bought 
 several books a Bacon's Essays, Evelyn's Sylvia, 
 Browne's Religio Medici, 1 Hazlitt's Poets, etc. 
 The latter I bought to add to my Paradise/ which, 
 however, has stood still of late. 
 
 As to the Religio, I have read it again : and 
 keep my opinion of it : except admiring the 
 eloquence and beauty of the notions more. But 
 the arguments are not more convincing. Never- 
 theless, it is a very fine piece of English : which 
 is, I believe, all that you contend for. 
 
 Hazlitt's Poets is the best selection I have ever 
 seen. I have read some Chaucer too, which I 
 like. In short I have been reading a good deal 
 since I have been here ; but not much in the 
 way of knowledge. . . . 
 
 Yours most affectionately, 
 
 E." 
 
 1 When -Allen first read this book it was as the opening of windows 
 of light to him. He sprang up and walked about the room in his 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 1 They each had a Paradise of Poetry.
 
 24 SUMMER AND WINTER 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " LONDON, November 27, 1831. 
 
 " MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 The first thing I do in answering your 
 letter is to tell you that I am angry at your saying 
 that your conscience pricks you for not having 
 written to me before. I am of that superior race 
 of men, that are quite content to hear themselves 
 talk and read their own writing. But, in serious- 
 ness, I have such love of you, and of myself, 
 that once every week, at least, I feel spurred on 
 by a sort of gathering up of feelings to vent 
 myself in a letter upon you ; but if once I hear 
 you say that it makes your conscience thus 
 uneasy till you answer, I shall give it up. 
 
 I shall tell you of myself, that I have been 
 better since I wrote to you. Mazzinghi tells me 
 that November weather breeds Blue Devils so 
 that there is a French proverb, ' In October, de 
 Englishman shoot de pheasant : in November 
 he shoot himself/ This I suppose is the case 
 with me : so away with November as soon as 
 may be. 
 
 I am sorry you are getting so musical : and if 
 I take your advice about so big a thing as Chris- 
 tianity, take you mine about music. I am sure 
 that this pleasure of music grows so on people, 
 that many of the hours that you would have 
 devoted to Jeremy Taylor, etc., will be melted 
 down into tunes, and the idle train of thought 
 that music puts us into. 
 
 I fancy I have discovered the true philosophy 
 of this ; but I think you must have heard me 
 enlarge. Therefore ' satis.' You shall benefit by 
 a bit of poetry. I do not admit it into my Para- 
 dise, being too gloomy I admit nothing there 
 but such as breathes content and virtue-*-but it 
 will please both of us. It is the prototype of the 
 Penseroso :
 
 SUMMER AND WINTER 25 
 
 " Hence, all you vain delights ! 
 
 As short as are the nights 
 
 Wherein ye spend your folly ! 
 
 There's nought in this life sweet, 
 
 If man were wise to see't, 
 
 But only melancholy ; 
 
 Oh sweetest melancholy ! 
 Welcome folded arms and fix&l eyes, 
 A sigh that piercing mortifies, 
 A look that's fastened to the ground, 
 A tongue chained up without a sound ! 
 Fountain heads, and pathless groves, 
 Places which pale passion loves 1 
 Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 
 Are warmly hous'd, save bats and owls ! 
 A midnight dell, a passing groan ! 
 These are the sounds we feed upon ; 
 Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley ; 
 Nothing's so dainty sweet as melancholy." 
 
 (By Fletcher.) 
 
 I think these lines are quite of the finest order, 
 and have .a more headlong melancholy than 
 Milton's, which are distinctly copied from these, 
 as you must confess. And now this is a very 
 long letter, and the best thing you can do when 
 you get to the end, is to Da Capo, and read what 
 I ordered you about answering. My dear fellow, 
 it is a great pleasure to me to write to you. 
 Believe me that I am your very loving friend, 
 
 E. F. G." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " 7 December, 1831. 
 
 " MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 You can hardly have got through my last 
 letter by this time. I hope you liked the verses 
 I sent you. The news of this week is that 
 Thackeray has come to London, but is going to 
 leave it again for Devonshire directly. He came 
 very opportunely to divert my ' Blue Devils/ 
 notwithstanding we do not see very much of each 
 other. And he has now so many friends (especi- 
 ally the Bullers) that he has no such wish for my 
 society. He is as full of good humour and kind- 
 ness as ever. The next news is that a new volume
 
 26 SUMMER AND WINTER 
 
 of Tennyson's is out, containing nothing more 
 than you have in MS. except one or two things 
 not worth having. I have been poring over 
 Wordsworth lately ; which has had much effect 
 in bettering my ' Blue Devils ' ; for his philosophy 
 does not abjure melancholy, but puts a pleasant 
 countenance on it, and connects it with humanity. 
 It is very well if the sensibility that makes us 
 fearful of ourselves is diverted to become a cause 
 of sympathy and interest with Nature and 
 mankind : and this I think Wordsworth tends to 
 do. I cannot tell you what sweetness I find in 
 Shakespeare's sonnets. 
 
 " So by Shakespeare's sonnets roasted, and Wordsworth's poems 
 
 basted, 
 My heart will be well toasted and excellently tasted." 
 
 This beautiful couplet must delight you I think. 
 My sister (Andalusia) is far better ; we walk 
 very much and see such sights as the town 
 affords. To-day I have bought a little terrier to 
 keep me company. You will think that is from 
 my reading of Wordsworth, but if that were my 
 use I should go no further than keeping a primrose 
 in a pot for society. Farewell, dear Allen. I am 
 astonished to find myself writing a very long 
 letter once a week to you ; but it is next to 
 talking to you : and after having seen you so 
 much this summer I cannot break off so suddenly. 
 I am your most affectionate 
 
 E. F. G." 
 
 A day or so after this letter was despatched Fitzgerald 
 came down to Cambridge, taking rooms in the King's 
 Parade. Allen's rooms in the West Court are said to 
 have lodged Sir Isaac Newton, and had the famous 
 two openings in the door, one large enough for the cat 
 and a small one for her kitten. 
 
 " Sunday, Dec. n, 1831. After evening Chapel 
 Fitzgerald took tea with me. I finished reading
 
 SUMMER AND WINTER 27 
 
 Hooker's sermon and read half of S. Paul's Epistle 
 to the Romans. We talked of human life, its 
 chances and changes. He said he expected to 
 live to 35 or 38." 
 
 The two friends died, having passed the age of man, 
 within a year of each other. Fitzgerald fell asleep 
 like a tired child, when visiting a friend, the grandson 
 of Crabbe the poet, and never woke again ; Allen, 
 having ruined a magnificent constitution by a too rigid 
 self-severity and over-work each man has but one 
 life to live passed soon afterwards into the light, 
 war-worn, but not war-weary. Through his college 
 career he kept his Sundays holy, going twice to 
 church and employing the day in reading the Bible 
 and Saunderson's, Tillotson's, Barrow's, and Cudworth's 
 sermons ; often in writing out, too, the sermon he had 
 heard in church an effort sometimes interrupted by 
 Thackeray ! He attended Simeon's preaching in Holy 
 Trinity Church. 
 
 The love of wisdom, universal and eternal in the 
 heart of man, that swayed tHe heart of Fitzgerald with 
 his easy-travelling genius, full of fertility and sparkling 
 with good taste, unlocked, too, the reserve of the 
 learned Thompson. 
 
 " Dec. 24. Thompson came up ; I gave him 
 tea, and we had the most touching conversation I 
 ever had with him on the vanity of earthly things. 
 He said it was most necessary for a man to be 
 religious in his youth ; that the ardour of his 
 temperament might carry him some way on his 
 course in enthusiasm. In true Religion the 
 Providence that preserves the natural man whose 
 life hangs on a thread far more preserves the 
 spiritual man from perilous temptations and 
 combinations of circumstances which might 
 endanger his soul's career." 
 
 Youth is a power to be cherished and so bestowed as 
 to bring a man comfort in remembering it when it has
 
 28 SUMMER AND WINTER 
 
 forsaken him. Sin turns memory into a scourge ; a 
 man may avoid an accuser, himself he cannot escape 
 from. 
 
 Thompson was distinguished by a remarkable 
 beauty ; his strongly-marked eyebrows, inclining to 
 converge over magnificent eyes, lent authority to 
 his countenance ; the dignity of his pose and mien 
 were as conspicuous in the undergraduate as in the 
 Master of Trinity. 
 
 On a pleasant day, amid the manifold soft summer 
 glories of nature, John wrote : 
 
 " July 1831. I have been thinking that 
 amongst other blessings surely it is not the least 
 that, while the arrows of affliction have been 
 flying around me on my friends, I have been 
 graciously shielded from them. Yet the Bible 
 says, ' He that is not chastened by the Lord is 
 not His son.' ' O Lord, I beseech Thee that it be 
 not so with me. What have I but Thee ? I have 
 nothing on earth that I desire in comparison of 
 Thee. O Lord, grant that it may evermore be so.' ' 
 
 The following winter he writes : 
 
 ' Jan. 1832. Alas, I have not written in my 
 journal for nearly a month, and a mighty change 
 has taken place in all my feelings in that short 
 time. My father is dead ; but I must not and 
 will not mourn for him now. I will strive by 
 God's grace so to act that hereafter I may meet 
 him in that state of bliss to which he, through 
 Christ's sacrifice, has attained." 
 
 " Jan. 21, 1832. Admitted to the degree of 
 B.A. Left Cambridge for London at 2 p.m."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 WINNOWING SEED-CORN 
 
 ALLEN now accepted the second Mastership of the 
 Proprietary School in Pimlico to which Thackeray 
 had introduced him two years before, and set himself to 
 prepare for Ordination. A man may prepare himself 
 better for Holy Orders by earning his living and doing 
 something for the good of the world, than by paying 
 someone else to keep him (life is short enough), by 
 seeking God himself than by paying a man to seek 
 God for him. Labour is sacred ; God is worshipped 
 in an honest trade, honestly followed for the good of 
 mankind. There he can learn his duty ; the way to 
 mend the bad world by creating the right world. His 
 religious education can be pursued on Sundays ; he 
 has his Bible and his fald-stool ; good books and 
 churches. An ounce of knowledge earned is better 
 than a pound of knowledge given. 
 
 This man attended the Dean of St. Paul's (Cople- 
 ston's) preaching, Baptist Noel's church, and Edward 
 living's. He that seeks, finds. Once Irving, laying 
 his hand upon his shoulder, turned upon him the 
 searchlight of his flashing eyes, and, after inquiring 
 with awful severity, " Young man, do you come to 
 mock ? " admitted him to a gathering where the 
 " Gift of Tongues " was manifested. Allen never told 
 the impression that meeting made upon him. 
 
 His cousin, Miss Fanny Allen, thus describes an 
 early prayer-meeting : 
 
 ' It was perfectly dark when we reached the 
 church, which was faintly lighted by two small 
 globe-lights on a table under the reading-desk 
 where Mr. Irving sat. The usual prayers and 
 
 29
 
 30 WINNOWING SEED-CORN 
 
 two Psalms were sung, and a chapter read from 
 the Book of Kings about Elijah destroying the 
 prophets of Baal. This Mr. Irving in his prayer 
 afterwards likened to the ministry of our Church 
 generally, saying the ministry of Christ's Church 
 had fallen to them for they had the gifts of the 
 Spirit given to them. Then he lay back in his 
 chair and another man came forward who read 
 the ist of Acts, and recurring continually during 
 the course of his reading to the Prophets of Baal, 
 mixed up the ist of Acts, the chapter in Kings, 
 and all the Revelations together. Enthusiastic 
 as he was he seemed to me confused. 
 
 Mrs. Rich, 1 when walking home, spoke with 
 reverence of his repetitions and quoted the verse 
 " line upon line " and so forth as their authority. 
 
 The next time I went, Mr. living's tone was 
 lower, and the other man spoke in a sepulchral 
 voice of the probable persecutions they would 
 undergo, with a recommendation to his disciples 
 to behave as Christ did. Then another man 
 prayed in plaintive accents, and Miss Emily 
 Cardale in a shrill soprano, with her figure perfectly 
 still, repeated some brief phrases and texts of 
 Scripture over and over again for about ten 
 minutes. After which Mr. Irving thanked God 
 in prayer for the messages sent to us. 
 
 Mrs. Rich appeared much affected during the 
 whole course of the service, so I made no obser- 
 vation on our way back." 
 
 These repetitions were associated with the " Un- 
 known Tongues " ; Irving never claimed " the Gift," 
 but bowed before it in his disciples. His voice was 
 rich, flexible, and beautiful, and he would often be 
 drawn out for more than an hour in prayer, when, 
 extending his arms and gazing towards Heaven with 
 almost tears of rapture, he would cry to the Father 
 of our spirits. 
 
 Immense crowds thronged his church ; sometimes a 
 
 1 Sir James Mackintosh's daughter.
 
 WINNOWING SEED-CORN 31 
 
 riot broke out through the people outside fighting 
 their way in. Once, after leaving the church, where 
 Irving had besought all to make it known, to the 
 scoffing enemies of the Cross at whatever cost to 
 themselves, that they were Christ's, Allen's attention 
 was arrested by these words in the window of a 
 flaring gin-palace : " Damn the Cholera." After pray- 
 ing he went the next morning to the house, asked 
 for the proprietor, and reproved him solemnly in the 
 Name of God. The man was extremely angry, but 
 submitted to that Authority and took down the bill. 
 Standing ever before the Great Judgment Seat, Allen 
 lived too much in the blaze of eternity to fear any 
 man, prince or peasant. 
 So the current of his life flowed on : 
 
 " Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull ; 
 Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " CASTLE IRWELL, MANCHESTER, 
 
 24/A February, 1832. 
 
 " DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 I am fearful to boast lest I should lose 
 what I boast of, but I think I have achieved a 
 victory over my evil spirits here : for they have 
 full opportunity to come and I often observe 
 their approaches, but hitherto I have managed to 
 keep them off'. Lord Bacon's essay on friendship 
 is wonderful for its truth, and I often feel its 
 truth. He says that with a friend a man ' tosseth 
 his thoughts/ an admirable saying which one can 
 understand but not express otherwise. But I feel 
 that, being alone, one's thoughts and feelings from 
 want of communication become heaped up and 
 clotted together as it were, and so lie like 
 undigested food heavy upon the mind ; but with 
 a friend one tosseth them about, so that the air 
 gets between them and keeps them fresh and 
 sweet. I know not from what metaphor Bacon 
 took his ' tosseth ' ; but it seems to me it is
 
 32 WINNOWING SEED-CORN 
 
 from the way haymakers toss hay, so that it does 
 not press into a heavy lump, but is tossed about 
 in the air, and separated and thus kept sweet. 
 Your most affectionate friend, 
 
 E. FITZGERALD." 
 
 Fitzgerald was this spring in Paris with Thackeray. 
 He writes : 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen, 1832 
 
 " THE PALAIS ROYAL. 
 
 " If you see Roe (the Engraver, not the Haber- 
 dasher) give him my remembrance and tell him 
 I often wish for him in the Louvre : as I do for 
 you, my dear Allen, for I think you would like 
 it very much. 
 
 There are delightful portraits (which you love 
 most) and statues so beautiful that you would for 
 ever prefer statues to pictures. There are as fine 
 pictures in England ; but not one statue so -fine 
 as any here. There is a lovely and very modest 
 Venus ; and the Gladiator ; and a very majestic 
 Demosthenes, sitting in a chair with a roll of 
 writing in his hands, and seemingly meditating 
 before rising to speak. It is quite awful." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen, 1832 
 
 " THE PALAIS ROYAL. 
 
 " I start for England in a week. Tell Thackeray 
 that he is never to invite me to his house, as I 
 intend never to go : not that I would not go out 
 there rather than any place perhaps, but I cannot 
 stand seeing new faces in the polite circles. You 
 must know I am going to become a great bear, 
 and have got all sorts of Utopian ideas into my 
 head about society : these may all be very absurd, 
 but I try the experiment on myself, so I can do 
 no great hurt. I have bought A. Tennyson's 
 poems ; how good ' Mariana ' is ! ' 
 
 Later, after a long drive on a coach by night to London:
 
 WINNOWING SEED-CORN 33 
 
 ' I forgot to tell you that when I came up in 
 the mail and fell a dozing in the morning, the 
 sight of the pages in crimson and the funerals 
 which the Lady of Shallott saw and wove, floated 
 before me : really the poem has taken lodging in 
 my poor head." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " SOUTHAMPTON, 
 
 July 31, Tuesday, 1832. 
 
 " MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 I will tell you of a pilgrimage I made that 
 put me in mind of you much. I went to Salisbury 
 to see the Cathedral, but more to walk to Bemerton, 
 George Herbert's village. It is about a mile and 
 a half from Salisbury alongside a pleasant stream 
 with old-fashioned water-mills beside : through 
 fields very fertile. When I got to Bemerton I 
 scarcely knew what to do with myself. It is a 
 very pretty village, with the church and Parsonage 
 much as Herbert must have left it. But there is 
 no memorial of him in or outside the walls of the 
 church ; though there have been Bishops and 
 Deans and I know not what all, so close at hand 
 at Salisbury. This is a great shame indeed : I 
 would gladly put up a plain stone if I could get 
 the Rector's leave. I was very sorry to see no 
 tablet of any kind. The people in the cottages 
 had heard of a very pious man named ' Herbert/ 
 and had read his books but they don't know 
 where he lies. I have drawn the church and the 
 village 1 ; the little woodcut of it in Walton's Lives 
 is very like. I thought I must have passed along 
 the spot in the road where he assisted the men 
 with the fallen horse : and, to shew the benefit 
 of good examples, I was serviceable that very 
 evening in the town to some people coming in a 
 cart ; for the driver was drunk and driving 
 furiously home from the races, and I believe 
 would have fallen out, but that some folks, 
 
 1 Fitzgerald was an artist.
 
 34 WINNOWING SEED-CORN 
 
 among whom I was one, stopped the cart. This 
 long history is now at an end. I wanted John 
 Allen much to be with me. I noticed the little 
 window into which Herbert's friend looked, and 
 saw him kneeling so long before the altar, when he 
 was first ordained." 
 
 Allen had a profound reverence for George Herbert, 
 whose Country Parson gives an outline of Allen's life 
 when he had for thirty-seven years charge of the 
 parish of Frees in North Shropshire. The poems were 
 the breath of Herbert's heart, and portray his self-con- 
 flict, his deep humility, and his passionate love for his 
 Redeemer. " Grace," " Gratefulness," and " Employ- 
 ment " were his favourites ; " Love " was Harriet's, 
 when on their walks they recited them to each other. 
 
 During a vacation Allen acted as private tutor to 
 the son of Sir John Buchan of Athlone. Lady Buchan 
 writes to Mr. Allen : 
 
 " PORTLAND PLACE, 
 
 July 3, 1833. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, 
 
 I propose leaving town to-morrow morning 
 for Athlone. Sir John strongly recommends my 
 going by the rail-road, and says it would be a 
 great pity that you and Mark should miss the 
 opportunity of seeing it, as there is no danger 
 for those who remain quietly in the carriage. I 
 have therefore no objection to my son's travelling 
 by it if you find it agreeable and convenient." 
 
 It was left to Mr. John Bright to discover that one 
 of the safest places on the face of the earth was the 
 middle compartment of a first-class railway-carriage. 
 
 Allen's Ordination (to the Chaplaincy of King's 
 College, London) was now approaching. 
 
 " Nov. 20, 1833. Having felt that with God's 
 grace I may do all things, I have determined to 
 set down here the resolutions I make, the date
 
 WINNOWING SEED-CORN 35 
 
 and occasions of them, in humble trust that by 
 reading them often I may be enabled to fulfil 
 them. If I let go my trust in God I must fall 
 into every sort of wickedness. 
 
 I resolve, therefore, that I will endeavour 
 constantly : 
 
 (1) To look upon God as a Shepherd continually 
 employed in seeking my soul. 
 
 (2) To pray to God for the power of His grace 
 to enable me to overcome my spiritual 
 enemies : my lusts, my evil habits, the devil 
 and the world. 
 
 (3) To derive my earthly happiness solely from 
 the happiness of others ; to have a constant 
 eye, first to the spiritual good of all men, 
 and next to their pleasure and convenience." 
 
 " Nov. 27. To consider the continuance of life 
 a blessing and to act as if I so esteemed it." 
 
 " Dec. 22, 1833. My Ordination. I resolved 
 to read over the Ordination Service continually 
 and to pray to God to make me able to adhere to 
 every letter I have therein vowed." 
 
 He now gave up smoking as a wasteful, self-indul- 
 gent habit, unworthy of a soldier holding a commission 
 on life's battle-field, tending to relax energy, and to 
 deaden his sensibility to the fact of sin. 1 
 
 Dancing and theatres he had already resigned. 
 Self-sacrifice was a rule of his Commanding Officer. 
 The Way of the Cross is hard, but its wood blossoms 
 and fruit is sweet. Service is the shortest way to 
 God. Good things consumed vanish ; good things 
 done remain. 
 
 The Apostolical Succession was to him at once a 
 hallowed reality, a grave responsibility, and an inspiring 
 comfort. The Gift of Ordination is a great Gift ; but 
 the man who neglects that Gift is worse off than if he 
 had never received it. 
 
 Life is a responsibility man cannot escape from ; 
 
 1 The very influence which makes tobacco useful to a novelist must 
 make it enervating to a shepherd of souls.
 
 36 WINNOWING SEED-CORN 
 
 and the possibilities of life are infinite. Some men are 
 content to live and die without knowing what life is 
 or what are its possibilities. When a man says, " Thy 
 will be done," there is no passive endurance of evil 
 there ; a magnificent possibility of good rather, in the 
 union of his will with God's will. God is in all men, 
 but all men are not in God, and that is why they suffer. 
 
 From the time of his Ordination Allen saw more of 
 Tennyson and Thackeray in town than of Fitzgerald, 
 although since Jonathan no man ever loved another 
 with a purer or more loyal devotion than that with 
 which his dearest friend loved him. 
 
 But the pleasant fields of boyhood lay behind the 
 labourer toiling now " where the heavens are black 
 with sin and the din of iron branches sounds " ; so 
 when Fitzgerald, who detested London, came there to 
 see him he found the same John Allen, but John 
 Allen yoked to Duty's car. Realising how earnest a 
 thing it is to be alive in this world, it was for him a 
 necessity of that profession which was henceforth his 
 life, to live by faith in his unseen Master (not as a 
 Reality only, but as the only Reality) in the very Fact 
 of things. If all other men were trifling with eternity 
 he was in earnest. 
 
 His conviction of the truth of God, as revealed in 
 Holy Scripture, was the highest function of his being, 
 and to this height the human species are by God 
 created to attain. On looking back, any man can see 
 he has wasted or progressed as he looked towards or 
 away from God. 
 
 Did God send man into the world to enjoy it or to 
 make it better ? 
 
 Then, too, there were Mathematical Lectures to be 
 given ; private pupils at his door (the Maharajah 
 Dhuleep Singh was one of them) ; two sermons a week 
 to be thoughtfully studied and prepared, as well as 
 the Theological Lectures instituted by himself which 
 involved hours of reading at small apparent profit. 
 The additions made to criticism seemed to him slender, 
 the same material which served Chrysostom in the 
 fourth century (in the Greek Church) for the exposition
 
 WINNOWING SEED-CORN 37 
 
 of St. Matthew's Gospel, being served up with little 
 variation in the nineteenth. These lectures he made 
 as perfect as he could. The experiment, many of his 
 friends assured him, was likely to end in failure ; like 
 Truth, that buys not and sells not, he went on his 
 way and made no answer. To gain a soul is a greater 
 gain than all the profits of the best business. 
 
 The lectures were well attended, and have been 
 carried on since by a series of distinguished men. 
 Charles Kingsley was one of his mathematical pupils. 
 
 " I resolve to pray to God to make me ever 
 sensible of His Presence. 
 
 The most charitable judgment I can form of 
 other men is the most just. 
 
 Jesus is now making intercession for me in 
 Heaven. He is my Friend, ready to give me joy 
 by His converse ; may I thus look up to Him." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " WHERSTEAD LODGE, IPSWICH (his home), 
 
 June 30, 1834. 
 
 ' DEAR MY JOHNNY, 
 
 I have been reading the Spectator since I 
 have been here, and I like it very much : people 
 nowadays think it a poor book, but I' honour it. 
 What a noble kind of Journal it was ! There is 
 certainly a good deal of what may be called 
 ' pill,' but there is a great deal of wisdom, only 
 it is couched so simply that people can't believe 
 it to be real absolute wisdom. Don't you think 
 it would make a nice book to publish all the 
 papers about Sir Roger de Coverley alone, with 
 illustrations by Thackeray ? It is a thing that is 
 wanted : to bring that standard of the old 
 English Gentleman forward out of the mass of 
 little topics that occupy the greater part of the 
 Spectator. 
 
 I am here in the country in brave health ; 
 rising at six withal : and pruning of rose-trees in 
 the garden. Why don't you get up early ? in
 
 38 WINNOWING SEED-CORN. 
 
 the summer at least. The next time we meet in 
 town I mean to get an artist to make me your 
 portrait : for I often wish for it. It must be looking 
 at me. Now write very soon ; else I shall be 
 gone : and know that I am your very true 
 friend, 
 
 E. F. G." 
 
 " 1834. I will endeavour constantly to realise 
 that : ^ 
 
 I cannot expect too little from man or too 
 much from God. 
 
 To pray to be constantly convinced that it is 
 a sin not to love my Saviour more. 
 
 When I am so soon to be dismissed from this 
 life to go I know not where, how is it I take no 
 more pains about my reformation ? I will pray 
 God to make me sensible of my folly." 
 
 " I still find sin within me, but I resolve to 
 pray to God to deliver me from my sinfulness ; 
 and I trust to Him to cleanse me even, if not 
 before, at the hour of my death. ' My soul truly 
 waiteth still upon God ' ; Lord, make me patient, 
 but make me persevering." 
 
 Heaven's splendour is over man's head ; Hell's 
 darkness beneath his feet. He has power to create 
 good and evil. The law of gravity binds his body 
 here, but his soul can touch the stars.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 RIPENING SUNBEAMS 
 
 ON August 2, 1834, the morrow of his marriage, John 
 wrote thus to his mother, with church bells hailing the 
 Emancipation of Slaves in his ears, from " The White 
 Hart, Salisbury." For Harriet's father never hesi- 
 tated to give his cherished child into the keeping of a 
 man whom he at once saw " was not like ordinary 
 men ; there was something in him." 
 
 ' I was unfortunate enough in my journey up 
 to lose my carpet-bag. I was with Mrs. Matthews, 
 and therefore the near view of her sorrow made 
 the inconvenience I was put to seem of no import- 
 ance. I bought some linen and dressing apparatus 
 at Bristol, together with some cloth for a pair of 
 trousers which were duly made on the following 
 day at Droxford. I arrived about half-past seven 
 on the morning of Wednesday, after a very 
 pleasant journey, and to my great joy found all 
 the family well. 
 
 The morning of Thursday opened with rain, but 
 we walked to the wedding as it cleared a little at 
 half-past eight, although it came on to rain so 
 much while we were in church that we returned 
 in carriages. We were a party of twelve. I 
 liked the clergyman. He read the whole of the 
 service the sermon at the end as well, which, I 
 believe is unusual ; and it was done with such 
 affectionate solemnity that we were all pleased. 1 
 Some of the ladies shed a few tears in silence, but 
 everything went off well. 
 
 1 It was his custom, on his marriage anniversary, to read over this 
 service with his wife. 
 
 39
 
 40 RIPENING SUNBEAMS 
 
 After the service, before the breakfast, Mr. 
 Dusautoy officiated at family prayer. He read 
 the third chapter of Colossians and concluded with 
 a most beautiful extempore prayer. We had an 
 early luncheon-dinner at half-past one, and set 
 off about an hour afterwards in a post-chaise to 
 Southampton, where we took a walk for a couple 
 of hours and had tea. The next morning after 
 breakfast we came on by a day coach to Salisbury. 
 We saw the Cathedral to great advantage as the 
 evening service was being performed while we 
 walked up and down the aisles, where there are 
 some beautiful monuments by Flaxman, and the 
 finest recumbent modern statue I have ever seen 
 by Chantrey of the late Lord Malmesbury. In 
 the evening we walked out to Bemerton, George 
 Herbert's church. You may judge that I am in 
 the midst of a happiness which will be a good 
 deal increased by the joy of seeing you, dearest 
 Mother, next Wednesday morning and presenting 
 to you a daughter who sends you her kindest love, 
 and who I hope is almost worthy of such a Mother. 
 Your affectionate son, 
 
 JOHN ALLEN." 
 
 Love is in a man's own power ; let him take care 
 to bestow it well. Years afterwards he wrote to his 
 daughter : 
 
 " FREES VICARAGE, SHREWSBURY, 
 
 Jan. i, 1879. 
 
 " MY DEAREST MAY, 
 
 A sister cannot be the same to a man as a 
 thoroughly good wife. It is not good for men to 
 be alone. For women if they can make up their 
 minds to it, it is I think safer for them not to 
 marry. For, unless the husband be perfection in 
 all respects, trouble falls with double weight upon 
 the wife. We men get everything we want by 
 marriage counsel, service, comfort. 
 
 Your loving Father, 
 
 JOHN ALLEN."
 
 RIPENING SUNBEAMS 41 
 
 Four of his daughters followed his advice, but four 
 married. 
 
 Alford to Allen 
 
 " AMPTON, NR. BURY ST. EDMUNDS, 
 
 August 14, 1834. 
 
 " MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 I write immediately on hearing your 
 direction to congratulate you on the event, I and 
 all your Cambridge coterie, have been delighted 
 to hear of. So you are married ; and doesn't the 
 world seem to have an end, and the ancient 
 sayings of the Prophets to be accomplished ? We 
 bachelors go about in a constant state of seeking 
 and imperfection. Our talk is of fellowships and 
 pupils and such-like bufferings in the voyage of 
 life ; but you, happy fellow, have made your port 
 and are safe in the haven where you would be, 
 with your white sails in the sunshine. We are 
 cheated out of our better feelings by the impor- 
 tunate calls of worldly studies ; you seem to have 
 all the poetry of your life let loose upon you, and 
 to have discovered an inexhaustible treasure of 
 joy, quiet and unintermeddled with. I used to 
 think I knew you, but you have grown double, 
 and I only know half of you. Mysteries these, 
 and deep things of life. May you, my dear fellow, 
 never have a moment's cause to repent your 
 having been initiated in them. I have often 
 thought of the few minutes during which I had 
 the pleasure of seeing you in town, and I hope 
 the pleasure of many such meetings may be 
 reserved for us. You, I suppose, will continue 
 your King's College situation, as I hear you have 
 refused a curacy at Whitchurch in Shropshire 
 which I thought of taking. 
 
 As to my own love affair, it begins to draw to 
 a close I hope. Provided I can obtain a settled 
 residence I believe Easter is to be the time. 
 Nineteen years' courtship and three years' engage- 
 ment is, I should think, as long a time of pleasur-
 
 42 RIPENING SUNBEAMS 
 
 able suspense as most people can look back upon. 
 But I must go to my reading, so farewell. ..." 
 
 Alford, a good scholar and draughtsman, married 
 his cousin " Fanny," published an edition of the Greek 
 Testament, which held the field for many years as the 
 best, lived happily, and died Dean of Canterbury at 
 about fifty-three. 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen on the same Occasion 
 
 " GELDISTONE HALL, 9 Sept., 1834. 
 
 " DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 I have really nothing to say, and I am 
 ashamed of sending this letter all the way from 
 here to Pembrokeshire for no earthly purpose ; 
 but I have just received yours, and you will 
 know how very welcome all your letters are to 
 me when you see how the perusal of this one has 
 excited me to such an instant reply. It has indeed 
 been a long time coming, but it is all the more 
 delicious. Perhaps you can't imagine how wist- 
 fully I have looked for it : how after a walk my 
 eyes have turned to the table on coming into the 
 room to see it. Sometimes I have been tempted 
 to be angry with you ; but then I thought that I 
 was sure you would come a hundred miles to 
 serve me, though you were too lazy to sit down 
 to a letter. I suppose that people who are 
 engaged in serious ways of life and are of well- 
 filled minds don't think much about the inter- 
 change of letters ; but I am an idle fellow with a 
 very ladylike turn of sentiment, and my friendships 
 are more like loves I think. Your letter found 
 me reading The Merry Wives of Windsor too : I 
 had been laughing aloud to myself : think of what 
 another coat of happiness came over my former 
 mood ! You are a dear good fellow, and I love 
 you with all my heart and soul. The truth was 
 I was anxious about this letter as I really didn't 
 know whether you were married or not or ill
 
 RIPENING SUNBEAMS 43 
 
 I fancied you might be anything or anywhere. . . . 
 The little book you speak of I will order and buy. 
 
 I heard from Thackeray who is just upon the 
 point of going to France : indeed, he may be 
 there by this time. I shall miss him much. 
 
 Farewell, my dearest fellow ; you have made me 
 very happy to hear from you, and to know that 
 all is so well with you. 
 
 Believe me to be your ever affectionate friend, 
 
 E. FITZGERALD. 
 
 Come, I don't believe dear Allen that your 
 marriage will make any great difference to you 
 after all ; but when I meet you I shall not be 
 able to offend you by many loose and foolish 
 things that I am accustomed to scatter about 
 heedlessly when I meet you with others. I always 
 repent me of having done so ; but the joy of 
 meeting you puts me into the tip-top merriment 
 that makes me sin ; if I only loved you half as 
 well my conduct would be blameless to you. But 
 you forgive me and it is almost sad to me to 
 think that I shall never be able to sin, and repent 
 again in that fashion. 
 
 E. FITZGERALD." 
 
 At this time the Principal of King's College, then 
 lately founded, was Mr. Otter, who died early. On 
 his appointment to the Bishopric of Chichester, recog- 
 nising in Allen a man devout both in heart and head, 
 by nature and habit full of religious reverence, and of 
 common practical seriousness, made him, though he 
 was but twenty-six, his examining Chaplain, and 
 looked " with pleasure to his future preferment in his 
 diocese, as a bright spot likely to comfort the evening 
 of his days." 
 
 At Chichester the " simple, fearless character " * of 
 the young Chaplain won for him the life-long friend- 
 ship of its Archdeacon (Manning) ; nor could " Pusey- 
 
 1 Manning's description of Allen.
 
 44 RIPENING SUNBEAMS 
 
 ism " blind Allen's eyes to the sacred enthusiasm 
 burning in that great heart and ruling its brain. 
 
 Manning would have made a good Hildebrand. 
 Ambitious such a man must be l for the honour of the 
 Society he served ; but although, in the revelry of his 
 fresh union with the Papal Church, he wasted years in 
 establishing an Infallibility that is rather less than 
 more infallible for his pains he may have been hot- 
 headed it was no hard-hearted fanatic that fought 
 sin later with both hands in Westminster, doing 
 perhaps as great a work for the whole Body of Christian 
 people as though he had never forsaken its Anglican 
 Branch ? He championed heroically the causes of 
 Purity and Temperance, at a time when the one Cause 
 should not be spoken of, and, to believe it possible to 
 guard Christ's Members by self-sacrifice from a vice 
 decimating the population, or by the same method to 
 rescue them, was deemed an eccentric idiosyncrasy 
 liable to divert wholesome energy from the cause of 
 the Gospel, or from the diffusion of Church principles. 
 What a man calls himself is of less consequence than 
 what the power is God exercises upon his life and 
 what he draws day by day from God. W. T. Stead 
 and the Nonconformists giving their lives to these 
 conflicts regarded Archbishop Manning as a true Father 
 in God. 
 
 Once, about the Infallibility epoch, the friends, long 
 separated but never alienated, met in the park ; 
 Manning was driving there, with worn features and a 
 domed head looking as if its material covering were 
 withering upon the burning energy of his thoughts. 
 Allen greeted him with an expostulatory apostrophe, 
 " O Archbishop ! Archbishop ! " The friends wrung 
 each other's hands and parted for ever. Allen could 
 not recognise the confines which Romanism is bound 
 to emphasise to establish her position. 
 
 1 See the nose and brow of his portrait (National Portrait Gallery).
 
 RIPENING SUNBEAMS 45 
 
 To John Allen from (Abp.) Manning 
 
 " 14 QUEEN STREET, MAY FAIR, 
 Oct. 30, 1851. 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 I write these few words to convey to you 
 my thanks for your last kind letter and the 
 assurance that I shall ever cherish the memory 
 of our past regards. 
 
 With a sincere desire that all good may be 
 with you believe me always yours affectionately, 
 
 HENRY E. MANNING." 
 
 Allen's life was an object-lesson of his own prayers, 
 resolutions, and maxims. A humorist, a resident 
 pupil of his, said, " He was pre-eminently a holy man ; 
 one to whose presence ribaldry or profaneness would 
 be a more odious insult than to any other man. I 
 never felt this so strongly with the best of those I have 
 known."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 POETIC MOODS OF TENNYSON 
 
 FITZGERALD writes : 
 
 " 7 SOUTHAMPTON Row, BLOOMSBURY, 
 October 25, 1833. 
 
 ' Tennyson has been in town for some time ; 
 he has been making fresh poems which are finer 
 they say than any he has done. But I believe 
 he is chiefly meditating on the purging and 
 subliming of what he has already done ; and 
 repents that he has published at all yet. It is 
 fine to see how in each succeeding poem the smaller 
 ornaments and fancies drop away and leave the 
 grand ideas single. 
 
 His mother, to whom the poetic gift of the 
 whole family was attributed, read no book but 
 the Bible, ' the Concord of the Symphony of the 
 Universe/ 
 
 From Mrs. Tennyson to her son Alfred 
 
 " ROSE MANOR, WELL WARK. 
 
 " DEAREST ALLY, 
 
 I received a nice kind note from Alan Ker 
 a short time since, which I now enclose, thinking 
 it will give thee pleasure to know what he says 
 to thy last beautiful and interesting poems. It 
 does indeed (as he supposed it would) give me the 
 purest satisfaction to notice that a spirit of 
 Christianity is perceptible through the whole 
 volume. It gladdens my heart also to perceive 
 that Alan seems to estimate it greatly on that 
 account. O dearest Ally, how fervently have I 
 prayed for years that our merciful Redeemer 
 would intercede with our Heavenly Father to
 
 POETIC MOODS OF TENNYSON 47 
 
 grant thee His Holy Spirit to urge thee to employ 
 the talent He has given thee, by taking every 
 opportunity of endeavouring to impress the 
 precepts of His Holy Word on the minds of others. 
 My beloved son, words are too feeble to express 
 the joy of my heart in perceiving that thou art 
 earnestly endeavouring to do so. Dearest Ally, 
 there is nothing for a moment to be compared to 
 the favour of God ; I need not ask thee if thou 
 art of the same opinion. Thy writings are a 
 convincing proof that thou art. My beloved 
 child, when our Heavenly Father summons us 
 hence, may we meet, and all that are dear to us, 
 in that blessed state where sorrow is unknown, 
 never more to be separated. 
 Ever dearest Ally, 
 
 Thy attached and loving mother, 
 
 E. TENNYSON." 
 
 Alfred Tennyson and Wordsworth lived some forty 
 years in the world together, and forty years each 
 besides. 
 
 For the inward poet-life there must be long, unwearied 
 intercourse with Nature, free and wise meditations, 
 attention to her faint tokens and indications, a simple 
 and devout spirit ; without these essentials no man 
 can become her friend or attain true insight. Words- 
 worth would walk at night 
 
 " Under the quiet stars, and at that time must 
 Have felt whate'er there is of power in sound 
 To breathe an elevated mood, by form 
 Or image unprofaned ; and he would stand 
 If the night blackened with a coming storm, 
 Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are 
 The ghostly language of the ancient earth, 
 Or make their dim abodes in distant winds 
 Thence did he drink the visionary power ; 
 And deem'd not profitless those fleeting moods 
 Of shadowy exultation : not for this, 
 That they are kindred to our purer mind 
 And intellectual life ; but that the soul, 
 Remembering how she felt, but what she felt 
 Remembering not, retains an obscure sense 
 Of possible sublimity, whereto 
 With growing faculties she doth aspire."
 
 48 POETIC MOODS OF TENNYSON 
 
 So Tennyson, when a lad abroad on the wold, in 
 silence under the trembling stars, would watch with 
 the shepherd, not only the flock on the greensward, 
 but also the fleecy star, along with those other con- 
 stellations which Aries leads over the fields of Heaven ; 
 and, gazing up into night's starry domain, standing no 
 longer on earth, would touch the Creator while his 
 spirit drank immortality. Then he would observe, 
 too, some of the uncertain phenomena of night : 
 unsurmised apparitions of the Northern Aurora, by 
 some shy glimpses of which no winter no, nor even 
 summer night he said was utterly unvisited ; and 
 hearken to those strange voices, whether of creeping 
 brook, or copses muttering to themselves far off 
 perhaps the yet more impossible sea together with 
 " other sounds we know not whence they come, but 
 all inaudible to the ear of day" ; while Contemplation, 
 like the night-calm felt through earth and sky, spread 
 widely and sent deep into his soul its vanquishing 
 power until the rising dawn yellowed the western 
 hills. Then indeed a wise spirit was at work for him, 
 most prodigal of blessings and most studious of his 
 good, even in what might seem his most unfruitful 
 hours. 
 
 " He was not, I suppose, unless the word spon- 
 taneously came upon him, thinking how to turn 
 what he saw and heard into verse : a premedi- 
 tation that is likely to defeat itself, breathing, as 
 it were, upon the mirror which is to receive the 
 image that most assuredly flashes reality into 
 words." 
 
 The fairy Lilians, Adelines, Madelines, and pale 
 Margarets he wrote of were flesh and blood " pilots 
 of his boyish fancy unto the shores of nothing," and 
 in their morning modesty did not care for the publicity 
 the immortalisation of their airy graces and rare charms 
 brought them. 
 
 When Tennyson found himself " By the Banks of 
 Bonnie Doon "he " broke into a passion of tears of 
 tears which, during a pretty long and intimate inter-
 
 POETIC MOODS OF TENNYSON 49 
 
 course," said Fitzgerald, " I had never seen glistening 
 in his eye but once, when reading Virgil ' dear old 
 Virgil/ as he called him together ; and then of the 
 burning of Troy in the ' Second ^Eneid ' whether 
 moved by the catastrophe's self, or the majesty of the 
 verse it is told in or scarce knowing why. For no 
 young Edwin he, though, as a great poet, compre- 
 hending all the softer stops of human emotion in that 
 register where the Intellectual no less than what is 
 called the poetical faculty predominate." 
 
 At this time Wordsworth might still be seen travelling 
 with the shadow of a cloud up Helvellyn. Fitzgerald 
 wrote to Frederic Tennyson : 
 
 " Do you know anything of poor Sir Egerton 
 Brydges ? this in talking of sonnets. I certainly 
 don't like sonnets, as you know ; we have been 
 spoilt for them by Daddy Wordsworth. What 
 do they seem fit for but to serve as little 
 shapes in which a man may mould very mechani- 
 cally any single thought which comes into his 
 head, which thought is not lyrical enough in itself 
 to exhale in a more lyrical measure ? The 
 difficulty of the sonnet metre in English is a good 
 excuse for the dull didactic thoughts which 
 naturally incline towards it ; fellows know there 
 is no danger of decanting their muddy stuff ever 
 so slowly ; they are neither prose nor poetry. I 
 have rather a wish to tie old Wordsworth's volume 
 about his neck and pitch him into one of the 
 deepest holes of his dear Duddon." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " MANCHESTER, 23 May, 1835. 
 
 " DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 I think that the fatal two months have 
 elapsed by which a letter shall become due from 
 me to you. Mind I don't speak this upbraidingly, 
 because I know that you did not know where I 
 was. I will tell you all about this by degrees. 
 
 4
 
 50 POETIC MOODS OF TENNYSON 
 
 In the first place I stayed at Mirehouse l till 
 the beginning of May, and then spent a week at 
 Ambleside, which perhaps you don't know is 
 on the shores of Winandermere. It was very 
 pleasant there. Alfred Tennyson stayed with me. 
 
 I will say no more of Tennyson, than that the 
 more I have seen of him, the more I have cause 
 to think him great. His little humours and 
 grumpinesses were so droll, that I was always 
 laughing ; and was often put in mind (strange to 
 say) of my little unknown friend Undine. I 
 must however say further that I felt, what Charles 
 Lamb describes, a sense of depression at tunes 
 from the overshadowing of a so much more lofty 
 intellect than my own. This (though it may seem 
 vain to say so) I never experienced before though 
 I have often been with much greater intellects ; 
 but I could not be mistaken in the universality of 
 his mind, and perhaps I have received some 
 benefit in the now more distinct consciousness of 
 my dwarfishness. I think that you should keep 
 all this to yourself, my dear Allen. I mean that 
 it is only to you that I would write so freely of 
 myself. You know most of my secrets. And I 
 am not afraid of entrusting even my vanities to 
 so true a man. 
 
 I have not been reading very much (as if you 
 ever expected that I did), but I mean not very 
 much for me. Some Dante by the aid of a 
 dictionary ; and some Milton and some Words- 
 worth, and some selections from Jeremy Taylor, 
 Borrow, etc., compiled by Basil Montagu of 
 course you know the book ; it is published by 
 Pickering. I do not think that it is very well 
 done, but it has served to delight and I think to 
 instruct me much. 
 
 A single selection from Jeremy Taylor is fine ; 
 but it requires a skilful hand to put many de- 
 tached bits from him together : for a common 
 editor only picks out the flowery, metaphorical 
 
 1 The Speddings' place.
 
 POETIC MOODS OF TENNYSON 51 
 
 morsels, and so rather cloys, giving quite a 
 wrong estimate of the author to those who had 
 no previous acquaintance with him ; for, rich as 
 Taylor's illustrations, and grotesque as his images 
 are, no one keeps a grander proportion. He never 
 huddles illustration upon the matter so as to 
 overlay it, nor crowds images too thick together, 
 which these selections might make one unac- 
 quainted with him suppose. This is always 
 the fault of selections, but Taylor is particularly 
 liable to injury on this score. 
 
 What a man he is ! He has such a knowledge 
 of the nature of man, and such powers of expressing 
 its properties, that I sometimes feel as if he had 
 had some exact counterpart of my own individual 
 character under his eye when he lays open the 
 depth of the heart, or traces some sin to its root. 
 The eye of his portrait expresses this keen 
 intuition ; and I should less like to have stood 
 with a lie on my tongue before him than before 
 any other I know of. 
 
 Do you know South ? He must be very great. 
 It seems to me that our old divines will hereafter 
 be considered our classics (in prose I mean) 
 I am not aware that any other nations have such 
 books. 
 
 Believe me to be your ever affectionate friend, 
 
 EDWARD FITZGERALD." 
 
 Fitzgerald to a Descendant of Dr. Donne 
 
 " Allen read much of your ancestor at the 
 Museum, and has always spoken very highly of 
 him. As to doctrine I believe Jeremy Taylor has 
 never been quite blameless ; but then he wrote 
 many folios instead of Donne's one. One of the 
 disadvantages of much writing is that a man is 
 likely to contradict himself. If he does not 
 positively do so, he may seem to do so, by using 
 different expressions for the same thing, which 
 expressions many readers may construe diversely ;
 
 52 POETIC MOODS OF TENNYSON 
 
 and this is especially likely to be the case with 
 so copious and metaphorical a writer as Jeremy 
 Taylor." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Frederic Tennyson 
 
 " BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, 1844. 
 
 " I have heard from Alfred, who hates his 
 water life ' /3tos a/3ios ' he calls it, but hopes to 
 be cured in March. Poor fellow, I trust he may. 
 He is not in a happy plight I doubt. I wish I 
 lived in a pleasant country, where he might like 
 to come and stay with me ; but this is one of the 
 ugliest places in England one of the dullest it 
 has not the merit of being bleak on a grand scale 
 pollard trees over a flat clay with regular 
 hedges. I saw a stanza in an old book which 
 seems to describe my condition rather : 
 
 ' Far from thy kyn cast thee ; 
 Wrath not thy neighbour next thee ; 
 In a good corn country nest thee ; 
 And sit down Robin and rest thee.' 
 
 Why should not I live in London and see the 
 world ? you say. Why then I say, as before, I 
 don't like it. I think the dulness of country 
 people is better than the impudence of Londoners ; 
 and the fresh cold and wet of our clay fields better 
 than a fog that stinks per se ; and this room of 
 mine, clean at all events, better than a dirty 
 room in Charlotte Street. If you and Alfred 
 were more in London, I should be there more ; 
 but now there is but Spedding and Allen whom I 
 care a straw about. 
 
 I have read the Life of Arnold of Rugby, who 
 was a noble fellow ; and the letters of Burke, 
 which do not add to, or detract from, what I 
 knew and liked in him before. 
 
 Old Seneca, I have no doubt, was a great 
 humbug in deed, and his books have plenty of it 
 in word. But he had got together a vast deal of 
 what was not humbug from others ; and as far
 
 POETIC MOODS OF TENNYSON 53 
 
 as I can see, the old philosophers are available 
 now as much as two thousand years back. Perhaps 
 you will think that is not saying much. Don't 
 suppose I think it good philosophy in myself to 
 keep here out of the world and sport a gentle 
 Epicurism ; I do not : I only follow something 
 of a natural inclination, and know not if I could 
 do better under a more complex system. It is 
 very smooth sailing hitherto down here. No 
 velvet waistcoat and ever lustrous pumps to be 
 considered ; no bon-mots got up ; no information 
 necessary. If we could but feed our poor ! It is 
 now the 8th of December ; it has blown a most 
 desperate east wind all razors ; a wind like one 
 of those knives one sees at shops in London, with 
 365 blades all drawn and pointed ; the wheat is 
 all sown ; the fallows cannot be ploughed. What 
 are all the poor folks to do during the winter ? 
 And they persist in having the same enormous 
 families they used to do ; a woman came to me 
 two days ago who had seventeen children ! What 
 farmers are to employ all these ? What landlord 
 can find room for them ? The London press 
 does nothing but rail at us poor country folk for 
 our cruelty. I am glad they do so ; for there is 
 much to be set right. But I want to know if 
 the Editor of the Times is more attentive to 
 his devils, their wives . and families, than our 
 squires and squiresses and parsons are to their 
 fellow-parishioners. Punch also assumes a tone 
 of virtuous satire, from the mouth of Mr. Douglas 
 Jerrold ! It is easy to sit in arm-chairs at a club 
 in Pall Mall and rail on the stupidity and brutality 
 of those in High Suffolk. 
 
 E. F. G." 
 
 E. F. G. to John Allen 
 
 "July 16, 1844. 
 " MY DEAR GOOD ALLEN, 
 
 Let me hear from you if even but a line 
 before you leave London on your summer excur-
 
 54 POETIC MOODS OF TENNYSON 
 
 sion, whithersoever that may be. I conclude you 
 go somewhere. 
 
 I have nothing to tell you of myself. Here I 
 exist and read scraps of books, garden a little, 
 and am on good terms with my neighbours." 
 
 When in town in the thirties Tennyson would spend 
 long evenings in Coram Street, where Allen and 
 Thackeray had taken houses almost opposite to each 
 other, brooding sometimes in silence by the fire while 
 Allen worked, looking up at last to give forth in his 
 deep tones a line that had just come to him, thus : 
 " ' The flower she trod on dipped and rose and turned to 
 look at her ' ; that is graceful is it not ? " Or, stretching 
 out his great hands over the fire he would describe 
 some vivid scene or tale. Once he wrung Harriet's 
 maternal sensibility with a picture of a father and 
 mother hunted by wolves as they drove across a 
 desert of snow in Russia, and driven in their extremity 
 to cast out one child after another to stay the ravenous 
 pursuit, drawing it with solemn brows and terrible 
 power until at bed-time she promised herself a sleepless 
 night ! In about a quarter of an hour Alfred came 
 back to say he was sorry he had frightened her, but 
 when he saw her dimpled smile could not resist turning 
 as he opened the front door to murmur in his own 
 awful tones, " But it is all true you know." 
 
 Fitzgerald wrote to a friend from London about this 
 time : 
 
 ' We have had Alfred Tennyson here. Very 
 droll and very wayward : and much sitting up of 
 nights till two and three in the morning with 
 pipes in our mouths ; at which good hour we 
 would get Alfred to give us some of his magic 
 music, which he does between growling and 
 smoking ; and so to bed. 
 
 All this has not cured my influenza ; but these 
 hours shall be remembered long after my influenza 
 is forgotten."
 
 POETIC MOODS OF TENNYSON 55 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald to John Allen 
 
 ' I have been loitering in the garden this 
 golden day. The wood-pigeons coo in the cover ; 
 the frogs croak in the pond ; the bees hum about 
 some thyme ; and some of my smaller nieces 
 have been busy gathering primroses all to make 
 posies suitable to this present month (April). 
 
 I have now been home about three weeks, and 
 as you say one sees indications of lovely spring 
 about. I have read but very little of late ; I 
 caught a glimpse of the second volume of Sou they 's 
 life and letters ; interesting enough. I have also 
 bought Emerson's ' Representative Men/ with 
 very good scattered thoughts in it ; but scarcely 
 leaving any large impression with one, or estab- 
 lishing a theory. So at least it has seemed to 
 me ; but I have not read very carefully. 
 
 I found Alfred Tennyson in Chambers at 
 Lincoln's Inn ; and recreated myself with a sight 
 of his fine old mug, and got out of him all his 
 dear old stories, and many new ones. He is 
 republishing his poem ' The Princess ' with songs 
 interposed. I cannot say I thought them like 
 the old vintage of his earlier days, though perhaps 
 better than other people's. I wish I could take 
 twenty years off Alfred's shoulders, and set him 
 up in his youthful glory. He is the same mag- 
 nanimous, kindly, delightful fellow as ever ; 
 uttering by far the finest prose sayings of anyone. 
 Thackeray's Pendennis is very stupid I think ; 
 Dickens' s Copperfield on the whole very good. He 
 always lights one up somehow. I don't find 
 myself growing old about poetry. I believe I love 
 it almost as much as ever ; but then I have been 
 suffered to doze all these years in the enjoyment 
 of old childish habits and sympathies, without 
 being called on to more active and serious duties 
 of life. I have not put away childish things, 
 though a man. But at the same time the visionary 
 activity is better than the mischievous activity of
 
 56 POETIC MOODS OF TENNYSON 
 
 so many I see about me ; not better than the 
 useful and virtuous activity of a few others ; 
 John Allen among the number." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Frederic Tennyson 
 
 " GELDESTONE HALL, BECCLES, 
 10 April, 1839. 
 
 " MY DEAR TENNYSON, 
 
 I live on in a very seedy way, reading 
 occasionally in books that every one else has gone 
 through at school ; and what I do read is just in 
 the same way as ladies work : to pass the time 
 away. For little remains in my head. I daresay 
 you think it very absurd that an idle man like me 
 should poke about here in the country when I 
 might be in London seeing my friends ; but such 
 is the humour of the beast. 
 
 However, I shall see your good physiognomy 
 one of these days, and listen to Morton, saying 
 fine and wild things, ' starting the dull ear 
 of night ' with paradoxes that perhaps are 
 truisms in the world where spirits exist inde- 
 pendently of matter. 
 
 You two men have made great commotion in 
 my mind, and left your marks upon it, more than 
 most of the books I read. 
 
 What is Alfred about, and whore is he ? 
 Present my homage to him. 
 
 Don't you rather rejoice in the pickle the King 
 of the French finds himself in ? I don't know 
 why, but I have a sneaking dislike of the old 
 knave. How he must pine to summon up Talley- 
 rand' s"ghost, and what a ghost it must be wherever 
 it is ! " 
 
 E. F. G." 
 
 Fitzgerald writes in 1842 (March) : 
 
 " Alfred is busy preparing a new volume for 
 the press : full of doubts, troubles, etc. The 
 reviewers will doubtless be at him : and with
 
 POETIC MOODS OF TENNYSON 57 
 
 justice for many things ; but some of the poems 
 will outlive the reviewers." 
 
 And again in May : 
 
 " So Alfred is come out. I agree with you quite 
 about the skipping-rope. But Spedding would 
 tell you otherwise. 
 
 Alfred, whatever he may think, cannot trifle 
 many are the disputes we have had about his 
 powers of badinage, compliment, walzing, etc. : 
 his smile is rather a grim one. I am glad the 
 book is come out, though I grieve for the insertion 
 of these little things, on which reviewers and dull 
 readers will fix, so that the right appreciation of 
 the book will be retarded a dozen years."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A CHARACTER SKETCH BY LORD GRIMTHORPE 
 
 ' ' THAT remarkable man John Allen was abso- 
 lutely honest and fearless, devoted to his own 
 work and regardless of his own convenience. He 
 came to conclusions quickly over his work, and 
 did it. I have seen him put out a batch of 
 letters between the post coming in and breakfast 
 at 8.30. These letters ordinarily occupied one 
 side of a half-sheet of note-paper and were full of 
 the pithiest and most weighty matter. 
 
 " Liberal both in money and opinion, he was 
 tolerant and ready to work with men of views 
 very different from his own, yet he would have 
 made a splendid martyr if he had lived in burning 
 times. He never seemed to care whether any- 
 thing he undertook was a forlorn hope, or had 
 the best promise of success ; and undoubtedly 
 his forlorn hopes sometimes succeeded beyond any 
 expectation. 
 
 " There was in him a power of influencing others 
 without the least attempt at dictation. He ruled 
 his own household well, never passing over any- 
 thing he thought worthy of correction. He was 
 hi the best sense ' a man of the world ' that is, 
 he understood it and the men he had to deal with. 
 
 "If he said anything seriously (not jocosely) 
 condemnatory of anyone he had an extraordinary 
 notion, that he was bound to tell him of it. It is 
 superfluous to say that this got him into some 
 serious quarrels. Two Bishops were among the 
 victims of his candour. One wrote to his Bishop, 
 who told him he ought to apologise. So he 
 wrote this or something very near it : ' My Lord, 
 
 58
 
 A CHARACTER SKETCH 59 
 
 the Bishop of Lichfield tells me I ought to apolo- 
 gize for my letter to your lordship. Therefore I 
 do. Yours, etc., John Allen.' 
 
 " I have noticed those parts of his character 
 which a layman and a lawyer could judge of. 
 
 " It was impossible to have any intercourse with 
 him and not be the better for it." 
 
 SOME MAXIMS FROM ALLEN'S COMMONPLACE BOOK 
 
 ' The less you claim the more you will have." 
 
 ' Keep your temper." 
 
 ' Be slow to take and never give offence in 
 official correspondence, and abstain even from 
 doubtful expressions. ' ' 
 
 ' You cannot have too much consideration for 
 others in your manner of action." 
 
 " Humility is the cure for many a heart-ache." 
 
 " Take proper care of your reputation, and yet 
 be content to be judged at last." 
 
 ' When a question is once decided, whatever 
 difference of opinion may have existed, discussion 
 should give way to hearty co-operation." 
 
 " See that you have footing before you step, 
 yet with a worthy object all is not failure that 
 faHs." 
 
 Discouragement is often disenchanted egotism. 
 Men's instincts are truer than their thoughts. 
 
 " Take no account of who is for thee or against 
 thee ; but let it be thy business and thy care 
 that God is with thee in everything thou doest." 
 
 " Temper and perseverance in prayer will always 
 succeed for a right cause." 
 
 " Do not mind clamour when you have right 
 on your side." 
 
 " Improvement proceeds slowly." 
 
 ' In recommending new systems, people are 
 apt to think that men are mere machines on 
 which experiments are harmless."
 
 60 A CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 " Never show a slight to anyone, however 
 humble." 
 
 " All the writing in the world will not put 
 people right who will not learn how to go about a 
 thing." 
 
 " Our living comfortably with others depends 
 most on not offending their tastes. We must 
 avoid criticising and managing them. They are 
 not we." 
 
 " A true man does not think of what his hearers 
 are feeling but what he is saying." 
 
 " Our sincerity should have kindness in it." 
 
 " Men derive more pleasure and profit from the 
 company of superiors than from that of inferiors." 
 
 ' Be always displeased with what thou art, 
 if thou desirest to attain to what thou art 
 not. ' Always add, always walk, always proceed. 
 Neither stand still, nor go back, nor deviate/ says 
 Saint Augustine." 
 
 " Man's noble nature is the gift which God has 
 placed within his power." Though Allen's head was 
 in Heaven, his feet stood firm on earth. A man's 
 character may be influenced by circumstances, but it 
 is the walnut that shapes the shell and a man's own 
 will shapes his circumstances. Find a way or make 
 one, the world listens to a man with a will in him. It 
 is the mind that makes the man.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 LIFE AS FITZGERALD LIVED IT 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE, 1835. 
 
 ' I don't know what has come over me of late, 
 that I have not written to you nor to anybody 
 else for several months. I am sure it is not from 
 any decrease of affection towards you. I now 
 begin a letter more on the score of wanting one 
 from you : to let me know how you are and Mrs. 
 Allen too especially. I hope to hear good news of 
 her. Many things have happened to you since I 
 saw you. You may be a Bishop for anything I 
 know. . . . 
 
 I have just read Southey's Life of Cowper : 
 that is to say, the first volume. It is not a book 
 to be read by every man at the fall of the leaf. 
 It is a fearful book. Have you read it ? Southey 
 hits hard at Newton in the dark : which will give 
 offence to many people, but I perfectly agree with 
 him. At the same time I think that Newton was 
 a man of great power. Did you ever read his 
 Life by himself ? Pray do if you have not. His 
 journal at sea written to his wife contains some 
 of the most beautiful things I ever read ; fine 
 feelings, in very fine English. . . . 
 
 Pray do write to me, a few lines soon are better 
 than a three-decker a month hence, for I really 
 want to know where and how you are; and so 
 be a good boy for once in your life. 
 
 Ever yours lovingly, 
 E. F. G." 
 
 61
 
 62 LIFE AS FITZGERALD LIVED IT 
 
 To another friend he writes from London : 
 
 " I wish people would speak their minds more 
 sincerely than is the custom to do ; on this 
 principle I will tell you that I thought the second 
 volume of Sou they' s Life of Cowper rather 
 dull. But then I have only read it once, and one 
 is naturally impatient of all matter that does not 
 absolutely touch Cowper ; at the first reading I 
 mean, when one wants to know all about him. 
 I daresay that afterwards I shall relish all the 
 other relative matter. The Life of Coleridge (by 
 De Quincey) is indeed an unsatisfactory thing. I 
 believe everybody thinks so. You seem to think 
 that it is purposely unsatisfactory, or rather dis- 
 satisfactory ; but it seems to me to proceed from 
 a kind of enervation in De Quincey. However, I 
 don't know how he supports himself in other 
 writings." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 I often wish to see you and Spedding of an 
 evening as heretofore at this season in London ; 
 but I don't see any likelihood of my coming till 
 February at nearest. 
 
 When you go to the British Museum look out 
 for a poet named Vaughan. Do you know him ? 
 I read some fine sacred poems of his in a collection 
 of John Mitford's. He seems to have great fancy 
 and fervour and some deep thoughts. Yet many 
 of the things are in the tricksy spirit of that 
 time ; but there is a little poem beginning, 
 ' They are all gone into a world of Light,' etc., 
 which shews him to be capable of much. 
 
 My old lady will be glad of a new edition of 
 Jeremy Taylor besides the old one. She is 
 anxious to possess the book soon as she never 
 looks forward to living through a year, and she 
 finds that Jeremy Taylor sounds a good note of
 
 LIFE AS FITZGERALD LIVED IT 63 
 
 preparation for that last hour which she looks 
 upon as drawing nigh. 
 
 Sometimes I talk to her about you by report. 
 You never grudge any trouble for your friends. 
 Farewell, my dear Allen. 
 
 Believe me yours ever affectionately, 
 
 E. FITZGERALD." 
 
 ' I occasionally read sentences about the 
 Virtues out of my collection of Stobaecus, and 
 look into Sartor Resartus which has fine things 
 in it ; and a little Dante and a little Shakespeare. 
 But the great secret of cheerfulness is the not 
 eating meat. To that the world must come, I am 
 sure. Only it makes one grasshopper foolish. I 
 also receive letters from Moreton and F. Tennyson 
 full of fine accounts of Italy, finer than any I 
 ever read. They came all of a sudden on Cicero's 
 villa one of them at least, the Formian with a 
 mosaic pavement leading thro' lemon gardens 
 down to the sea, and a little fountain as old as the 
 Augustan age bubbling up as fresh, Tennyson says, 
 ' as when its silver sounds mixed with the deep 
 voice of the orator as he sate there in the stillness 
 of the noonday, devoting the siesta-hours to 
 study.' When I first read of these things I wish 
 to see them ; but, on reflection, I am sure I see 
 them much better in such letters as these. 
 
 I have seen one good picture about here : a 
 portrait of O. Cromwell by Lely so said unlike 
 other Lelys, but very carefully painted : and, I 
 should think, an original portrait. ... I also read 
 Hayley's Life of Romney the other day. Romney 
 wanted but education and reading to make him 
 a very fine painter ; but his ideal was not high 
 nor fixed. How touching is the close of his life ! 
 He married at nineteen, and, because Sir Joshua 
 and others had said that marriage spoilt an 
 artist, almost immediately left his wife in the 
 North, and scarce saw her till the end of his life, 
 when, old, nearly mad, and quite desolate, he
 
 64 LIFE AS FITZGERALD LIVED IT 
 
 went back to her, and she received him, and 
 nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is 
 worth all Romney's pictures ; even as a matter 
 of art, I am sure." x 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE, 1837. 
 
 " MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 There is a small cottage of my father's 
 close to the lawn gates, where I shall fit up a room 
 most probably. The garden I have already begun 
 to work in : sometimes when I have sat dreaming 
 about my own comforts, I have thought to 
 myself, ' If Allen would only come to stay with 
 me some day at my cottage, if I live there ' but 
 I think you would not ; ' could not,' you will say, 
 and perhaps truly. ... I am reading Plutarch's 
 Lives, which is one of the most delightful books I 
 have ever read. He must have been a gentleman. 
 My Aristophanes is nearly drained that is, for 
 the present first reading : for he will never be 
 dry, apply as often as I may. My sisters are 
 reading to me Ly ell's Geology of an evening : 
 there is an admirable chapter illustrative of human 
 error and prejudice retarding the truth which will 
 apply to all sciences I believe ; and if people 
 would consider it, would be more valuable than 
 the geological knowledge, though that is very 
 valuable I am sure. You see my reading is so 
 small that I can soon enumerate all my books ; 
 and here you have them. . . ." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE, 
 21 April, 1837. 
 
 " DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 Ah ! I wish you were here to walk with me 
 now that the warm weather is come at last ; things 
 have been delayed but to be more welcome, and 
 
 1 See Tennyson's " Romney's Remorse."
 
 LIFE AS FITZGERALD LIVED IT 65 
 
 to burst forth twice as thick and beautiful. This 
 is boasting, however, and counting of the chickens 
 before they are hatched. The east winds may 
 again plunge us back into winter ; but the 
 sunshine of this morning fills one's pores with 
 jollity, as if one had taken laughing gas. Then 
 my house is getting on : the books are up hi the 
 bookshelves, and do my heart good. 
 
 How I wish you were here for a day or two. 
 
 I have been doing very little, having accom- 
 plished only a few Idylls of Theocritus, which 
 harmonise with the opening of the fine weather. 
 Is all this poor occupation for a man who has a 
 soul to account for ? You think so certainly. 
 My dear Allen, you, with your accustomed 
 humility, asked me if I did not think you changed 
 when I was last in London : never did I see a 
 man less so ; indeed you stand on too sure a 
 footing to change, I am persuaded. But you will 
 not thank me for telling you these things ; but I 
 wish you to believe that I rejoice as much as ever 
 in the thought of you, and feel confident that you 
 will ever be to me the same best of friends that 
 you ever have been. I owe more to you than to 
 all others put together. I am sure for myself 
 that the main difference in our opinions (con- 
 sidered so destructive to friendship by so many 
 pious men) is a difference in the understanding, 
 not in the heart : and, though you may not agree 
 entirely in this, I am confident that it will never 
 separate you from me. 
 
 Yours ever most affectionately, 
 E. FITZGERALD." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " LOWESTOFT, SUFFOLK, August 28, 1838. 
 
 " DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 I have been spending a happy time here, 
 but the worst of it is, that the happier I am with 
 Browne the sorrier I am to leave him ; as usual
 
 66 LIFE AS FITZGERALD LIVED IT 
 
 my pleasure in his stay is proportionately darkened 
 by the anticipation of his going. Well, Carlyle 
 told us that we are not to expect to be so happy. 
 I have thought once or twice how equally happy 
 I was with you by the seaside at Tenby. You 
 and Browne (though in rather different ways) 
 have certainly made me more happy than any 
 men living. 
 
 I have gone through Homer's Iliad sorry to 
 have finished it. The account of the Zoolu 
 people, by Captain Allen Gardiner gives one a 
 very good idea of the Homeric heroes, who were 
 great brutes, but superior to the gods who 
 governed them : which also has been the case 
 with most nations. It is a lucky thing that God 
 made man, and that man has not to make God : 
 we should fare badly judging by the specimens 
 already produced monster gods formed out of 
 the rottenest scraps of humanity gigantic and 
 to turn destructively upon their creators. 
 
 ' But be of good cheer ! I have overcome the 
 world/ so speaks a gentle voice." 
 
 " 28 April, 1839. 
 
 " MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 Some one from this house is going to 
 London : and I will try and write you some lines 
 now in half an hour before dinner. I am going 
 out for the evening to my old lady who teaches 
 me the names of the stars, and other chaste 
 information. You see, Master John Allen, that if 
 I do not come to London (and I have no thought 
 of going yet) and you will not write, there is 
 likely to be an end of our communication ; not, 
 by the way, that I am never going to London 
 again, but not just yet. Here I live with tolerable 
 content, perhaps with as much as most people 
 arrive at, and what, if one were properly grateful, 
 one would call ' perfect happiness.' 
 
 Here is a glorious sunshiny day. All the 
 morning I read about Nero in Tacitus lying at
 
 LIFE AS FITZGERALD LIVED IT 67 
 
 full length on a bench in the garden : a nightingale 
 singing and some red anemonies eyeing the sun 
 manfully not far off. A funny mixture all this : 
 Nero and the delicacy of spring, all very human ; 
 however. So runs the world away. You think 
 I live in Epicurean ease ; but this happens to be 
 a jolly day. One isn't always well or tolerably 
 good, the weather is not always clear, nor nightin- 
 gales singing, nor Tacitus full of pleasant atrocity ; 
 but, such as life is, I believe I have got hold of a 
 good end of it. 
 
 Blake was quite mad, but of a madness that 
 was really the elements of great genius ill-sorted : 
 a genius with a screw loose, as we used to say. 
 To me there is a particular interest in this man's 
 writing and drawing, from the strangeness of the 
 constitution of his mind. He used to see visions 
 and make drawings and paintings of Alexander 
 the Great, Caesar, etc., who, he declared, stood 
 before him while he drew." 
 
 " BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, 4 April, 1840. 
 
 " MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 . . . The country is now shewing symptoms 
 of greenness and warmth. Yesterday I walked 
 (not a common thing for me) eleven miles ; partly 
 over a heath, covered with furze bushes just come 
 into bloom, whose odour the fresh wind blew into 
 my face. Such a day it was, only not so warm, 
 as when you and I used to sit on those rocks 
 overlooking the sea at Tenby, just eight years 
 ago. I am afraid you are growing too good a 
 Christian for me, Master Allen, if you know what 
 I mean by that ? Don't be alarmed, however. 
 
 Spedding and I went to see Macready in Hamlet 
 the other night : with which he was pretty well 
 content but not wholly. For my part, I have 
 given up deciding how Hamlet should be played 
 at all. I take pleasure in reading things I don't 
 wholly understand, just as the old women like 
 sermons ; it is of a piece with an admiration of
 
 68 LIFE AS FITZGERALD LIVED IT 
 
 all nature around us. I think there is greater 
 charm in the half meanings and glimpses of 
 meaning that come in through Blake's wilder 
 visions ; though his difficulties arose from a very 
 different source from Shakespeare's. But some- 
 what too much of this. I suspect I have found 
 out this as an useful solution when I am asked 
 the meaning of anything that I am admiring and 
 don't know it." 
 
 Fitzgerald writes to a friend in pleasant summer 
 weather, July 24, 1839, from Bedford : 
 
 " Here I am again in the land of old Bunyan 
 better still, in the land of the more perennial 
 Ouse (?) making many a fantastic winding and 
 going much out of his direct way to fertilize and 
 adorn. Fuller supposes that he lingers much in 
 the pleasant fields of Bedfordshire, being in no 
 hurry to enter the more barren fens of Lincoln- 
 shire. So he says. There is a garden on one 
 side of the house skirted by the public road 
 which again is skirted by a row of such poplars 
 as only the Ouse knows how to rear and 
 pleasantly they rustle now and the room in 
 which I write is quite cool and opens into a 
 greenhouse which opens into said garden ; and 
 it's all deuced pleasant. For in half an hour I 
 shall seek my Piscator and we shall go to a village 
 two miles off and fish, and have tea in a pothouse, 
 and so walk home. For all which idle ease I 
 think I must be damned. I begin to have a 
 dreadful suspicion that this fruitless way of life 
 is not looked upon with satisfaction by the open 
 eyes above. One really ought to dip for a little 
 misery : perhaps, however, all this ease is only 
 intended to turn sour by and by, and so to poison 
 one by one the very nature of self-indulgence. 
 
 Perhaps, again, as idleness is so very great a trial 
 of virtue, the idle man who keeps himself tolerably 
 chaste, etc., may deserve the highest reward ;
 
 LIFE AS FITZGERALD LIVED IT 69 
 
 the more idle, the more deserving. Really I 
 don't jest, but I don't propound these things as 
 certain. 
 
 There is a fair review of Shelley in the new 
 Edinburgh, saying the truth on many points 
 where the truth was not easily enunciated, as I 
 believe. 
 
 E. F. G." 
 
 " Our busy race examine and explore 
 Each creek and cavern of life's dangerous shore, 
 With care collect what in their eyes excels 
 Some shining pebbles, and some weeds and shells. ..." 
 
 Men live on earth wisely by looking ahead; 
 the life after death adjusts the scales of the balance 
 here. 
 
 His sister Andalusia was engaged to Commander 
 Bird Allen (John's brother), who gave his life on the 
 Niger Expedition. 
 
 Fitzgerald writes to a friend : 
 
 " January 24/42. 
 
 ' There is something poetical, and almost 
 heroic in this expedition to the Niger the motives 
 lofty and Christian the issue so disastrous. 
 
 Do you remember A. Cunningham's Scotch 
 song : " 
 
 ' We will go, maidens go, 
 To the primrose woods and mourn,' etc. ? 
 
 It applies to this business. Some Scotch young 
 folks went out to colonize Darien and never came 
 back : 
 
 ' Oh there were white hands wav'd, 
 
 And many a parting hail, 
 As their vessel stemm'd the tide, 
 And stretch'd her snowy sail.' 
 
 The sound of the sea hangs about it, as upon the 
 lips of a shell."
 
 70 LIFE AS FITZGERALD LIVED IT 
 
 Commander Bird Allen to Harriet Allen 
 
 " September 10, 1840. 
 
 " MY DEAREST HARRIET, 
 
 It is my duty to go. 1 I sometimes think 
 that if I had said, when it was first named to me, 
 I was engaged I might have got off. But under 
 all the circumstances I trust I may say I have 
 been led to the place I now occupy, and that the 
 Almighty Disposer of all events without Whom 
 not a hair of our head can perish, will overrule 
 all to the eternal benefit of my never-dying soul. 
 Oh this is a solemn prayer ; I wish it were as easy 
 always to make it the desire of the mind as it is 
 the words of the mouth. 
 
 We had a most agreeable passage from Teneriffe 
 of eight days that is, we had the finest weather 
 and a favourable wind. But we had one painful 
 accident : we lost our trumpeter overboard. It 
 was an awful dispensation in one minute for one 
 of our number to be summoned into eternity. 
 It was a fine and smooth forenoon, and he had 
 gone on to the platform on to which the entrance 
 ladder leads to wash a tub, and by some slight 
 unexpected roll he lost his balance and went 
 overboard. The life-buoy was soon let go and 
 we stopped, but it was full ten minutes before the 
 boat we lowered was at the spot, when alas ! 
 nothing but his hat was to be seen. Oh what a 
 painful thing it is, in such a case, to give up hope 
 and leave the spot ! " 
 
 "June i. I have a mark against the 2Qth of 
 this month when I hope to remember you, 
 dearest, most especially. God grant you may be 
 well and doing well both in body and spirit. 
 [Harriet's birthday.] 
 
 The Prince's watch 2 has reached me an engine- 
 turned handsome gold watch rather too large to 
 
 i On the Niger Expedition. 
 
 a Prince Albert, who presided over the meeting that inaugurated 
 the Niger Expedition shortly after his marriage to Queen Victoria.
 
 LIFE AS FITZGERALD LIVED IT 71 
 
 wear in fob, with the crown and ' A ' in the small 
 plain circle at the back, and a glass face, so very 
 suitable as a table watch. Should it return with- 
 out me, I should like my dearest mother to 
 have the pleasure of keeping it on her table for 
 her life. Then Andalusia may have it as long as 
 she wishes. I say so, desirous that she might 
 have whatever of me may return, so far and as 
 long as she pleases. The sooner she forgets me 
 the better for her happiness, which I ever desire 
 to have uppermost in my thoughts. I am not so 
 selfish as to wish her anything but happiness, 
 without my presence if it please God to take me. 
 O my heart, look into thyself and see thou art 
 sincere. Am I prepared to lay all at the foot of 
 the cross, and say, ' Thy will be done ' ? 
 
 I was much pleased with Captain Trotter the 
 second day after our arrival here. The four 
 Commissioners were summoned to attend, and, 
 after reading the Queen's Commission, he said, 
 ' The commission upon which we are engaged is 
 so important that we ought to commence with 
 prayer/ which, being unanimously agreed to, Mr. 
 Muller was sent for to offer up a prayer with us ; 
 and all our deeds as commissioners are to be 
 commenced in this way. God grant that His 
 glory and the happiness of Africa may be the 
 result of our labours. 
 
 I have dined alone with Trotter twice or thrice. 
 Once was on a quiet Sunday, remaining with him 
 to an early cold dinner after church, and then 
 back here to read my afternoon service to my own 
 crew." 
 
 Commander Allen died of fever six weeks after this 
 letter was written.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THACKERAY 
 
 Fitzgerald to Thackeray 
 
 "July 1835. 
 
 " MY DEAR BOY, 
 
 God bless thee a thousand times over ! 
 When are we to see thee ? How long are you 
 going to be at Paris ? What have you been 1 
 doing ? The drawing you sent me was very 
 pretty. So you don't like Raphael ! Well, I am 
 his inveterate admirer, and say, with as little 
 affectation as I can, that his worst scrap fills my 
 head more than all Rubens and Paul Veronese 
 together ' the mind, the mind, Master Shallow ! ' 
 You think this cant, I daresay ; but I say it truly 
 indeed. Raphael's are the only pictures that 
 cannot be described ; no one can get words to 
 describe their perfection. 
 
 There are plenty of pictures in London. Two 
 or three very vulgar portraits by Wilkie ; there 
 is always a spice of vulgarity about Wilkie. There 
 is an East-lake, but I missed it. Etty has boats 
 full of naked backs as usual ; but what they mean 
 I did not stop to enquire. He has one picture 
 however of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, which 
 is sublime, though I believe nobody saw it or 
 thought about it but myself." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " Give my love to Thackeray from your upper 
 window across the street. So he has lost a little 
 child : and, moreover, has been sorry to do so. 
 
 72
 
 THACKERAY 73 
 
 Well, good-bye my dear John Allen ; ' Auld Lang 
 Syne/ 
 
 ' Down to the vale this water steers ; 
 
 How merrily it goes ! 
 'Twill murmur on a thousand years, 
 And flow as now it flows.' 
 
 E. F. G. 
 
 " GELDESTONE HALL, BECCLES, '39." 
 
 Thackeray went across to John's house to tell him 
 of his loss. Harriet found him in the entrance-hall 
 with the tears flowing down upon the breast of his 
 coat. " O Mrs. Allen, we have lost our little baby. 
 Come and comfort my poor wife ! " The babe was 
 wonderfully forward and full of tender sensibility 
 one of those children who seem to carry a light from 
 some diviner world in their hearts and ways. In after- 
 years Thackeray wrote : " Yesterday I had a letter from 
 a lady, who has just lost a little child, and who ends 
 her letter, ' If anything can console his father, it will 
 be this heavenly weather.' And yet the woman feels 
 acutely the loss of the child." 
 
 Lady Ritchie writes : 
 
 ' The Aliens lived opposite to us ; they were 
 carriage people ; at least they had a wooden go-cart, 
 hi which I used to be taken out for drives with an 
 Allen baby (May) of my own standing. It was a 
 glorious sensation, combining ease to the legs with 
 proper pride and delightful society." 
 
 Lady Ritchie to Anna Allen 
 
 " CARLYLE MANSIONS, CHEYNE WALK, CHELSEA, 
 Wedy. ii Jan. 1891. 
 
 " MY DEAR Miss ALLEN, 
 
 Your letter came in the midst of the 
 Christmas rout of school-boys and new boots and 
 1,000 Martha-like preoccupations which always 
 flutter my feeble old soul, much as I enjoy them, 
 and I put off writing to you till I was a little 
 calmer.
 
 74 THACKERAY 
 
 The first book I ever had was Agathos, which 
 your Father gave me long before I could read. 
 
 My Father said success was a mere question of 
 taking pains, and that one man could by con- 
 stitution take more pains than another. I always 
 read my own things out loud to myself and when 
 they begin to get long I cut. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 ANNIE RITCHIE." 
 
 Fitzgerald to W. H. Thompson 
 
 " BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE, 
 18 Feb. 1841. 
 
 " MY DEAR THOMPSON, 
 
 Since I saw you I have entered into a 
 decidedly agricultural course of conduct : read 
 books about composts, etc. I walk about in the 
 fields also where the people are at work, and the 
 more dirt accumulates on my shoes the more I 
 think I know. Is not all this funny ? Gibbon 
 might elegantly compare my retirement from the 
 cares and splendours of the world to that of 
 Diocletian. Have you read Thackeray's little 
 book, The Second Funeral of Napoleon ? If not, 
 pray do ; and buy it and ask others to buy it, 
 as each copy sold puts j^d. into Thackeray's 
 pocket ; which is very empty just now, I take it. 
 I think this book is the best thing he has done. 
 Donne is very aesthetic in Kemble's last Review 
 (British and Foreign Review, 1840). What is the 
 meaning of ' exegetical ' ? Till I know that, how 
 can I understand the Review ? 
 
 Pray remember me kindly to Blakesley, Heath, 
 and such other potentates as I knew in the days 
 before they ' assumed the purple.' I am reading 
 Gibbon and see nothing but this colour before my 
 eyes. It changes occasionally to bright yellow, 
 which is (is it ?) the imperial colour in China, 
 and also the antithesis to purple (Goethe reduces 
 the primitive colours to two) even as the Western 
 and Eastern Dynasties are antithetical, and yet
 
 THACKERAY 75 
 
 by the law of extremes potentially the same 
 (vide Coleridge, etc.). Is this aesthetic ? is this 
 exegetical ? how glad I shall be if you can assure 
 me that it is. But, nonsense apart, and begged 
 pardon for, pray write me a line to say how you 
 
 are * E. F. G." 
 
 Thackeray to Fitzgerald 
 
 '' I have lots of work on hand, so much that I 
 am half distracted with it and do little ; but I am 
 going to do wonders directly. 
 
 ' Doctor Johnson/ says Mrs. Thrale, ' please 
 to read these manuscripts. I have several others 
 when you have done these ; for, doctor, I have 
 plenty of irons in the fire.' 
 
 To which the doctor replied, ' Madam, you had 
 better put them along with your other irons.' A 
 good fate for the works of most of us. I have 
 grown to hate letter-paper, as someone else does 
 holy water. 
 
 W. M. THACKERAY." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Thackeray 
 
 " DEAR THACKERAY, 
 
 I am very glad you are engaged in a way 
 of life you like ; that is a good thing indeed, 
 which most people miss. 
 
 I will exalt your name for ever as a politician, 
 if you will contrive to persuade me that we have 
 nothing to fear from Russia. It is not the present 
 fuss made about her that makes me tremble. I 
 always have been afraid that she was the power 
 kept in pickle to overwhelm Europe, just as men 
 were about to settle into a better state than the 
 world has yet seen." 
 
 W. M. Thackeray to Fitzgerald 
 
 " LEAMINGTON, May 1840. 
 
 " If you could but see how wonderful the 
 country is, the country of Shakespeare ; the old
 
 76 THACKERAY 
 
 homes of England standing pleasantly in smiling 
 cowslip lawns, where spring lofty elms, amidst 
 which the breezes whisper melodies, the birds 
 singing ravishing concerts; the sheep browsing 
 here and there, and waddling among the fresh 
 pastures like walking door-mats ; the tender 
 lambs trotting about on thick legs ; cows, 
 bullocks, or kine looking solemnly with large eyes 
 from behind their crooked horns. The lusty 
 rustics sauntering about whistling, the fat yeo- 
 manry cavalry swaggering through the green 
 lanes." 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald writes : 
 
 ' We have had such a spring and such verdure ! 
 White clouds moving over the new fledged tops of 
 oak-trees, and acres of grass striving with butter- 
 cups. How old to tell of, how new to see ! I 
 believe that Leslie's Life of Constable (a very 
 charming book) has given me a fresh love of 
 Spring. Constable loved it above all seasons ; he 
 hated Autumn. When Sir G. Beaumont, who was 
 of the old classical taste, asked him if he did not 
 find it difficult to place his brown tree in his 
 pictures, ' Not at all/ said Constable, ' I never 
 put one at all.' ' 
 
 Thackeray to Fitzgerald 
 
 " 1840. 
 
 " Thank God that the Chartists have not a man 
 of courage at their head who might set the kingdom 
 in a blaze. We might be the British Republic, 
 and Queen Victoria in her uncle's dominions of 
 Hanover for what I know. With the Chartist's 
 views about equalising property robbery, in 
 fact of course a revolution effected by them 
 could not last long ; the fight wo-ild soon be over, 
 but the deuce is that one must take and bear it, 
 and be in a fever for a couple of years until a deal 
 of blood-letting has brought the disease down."
 
 THACKERAY 77 
 
 Later, from Margate : 
 
 ' I am not a Chartist, but I am a republican. 
 I would like to see all men equal and the bloated 
 aristocracy blasted to the wings of all the winds. 
 It has been good and useful up to the present time, 
 nay, for a little longer perhaps just up to the 
 minute, when the great lion will shake his mane 
 and scatter all these absurd insects out of it ! 
 
 What stuff to write to be sure ! But I see how 
 in every point of morals the aristocracy is cursing 
 the country. 
 
 How delightful quiet this nature is ! The 
 ripple of the waters is most melodious. The 
 gas lamps round the little bay look as if they 
 were angels sticking flaming swords into it. What 
 is it that sets one's spirits chirping so on getting 
 out from London ? " 
 
 The " Book of Snobs " (Punch) made Thackeray's 
 fortune in one year. 
 
 Fitzgerald to F. Tennyson 
 
 " BOULGE, May 24/44. 
 
 ' I see in Punch a humorous catalogue of 
 supposed pictures at the exhibition : 
 
 ' Prince Albert's favourite spaniel and boot- 
 jack,' 
 
 ' The Queen's Macaw with a Muffin, by 
 Landseer,' 
 
 in which I recognise Thackeray's fancy. He is in 
 full vigour play and pay in London, writing in a 
 dozen reviews and a score of newspapers ; and 
 while health lasts he sails before the wind. 
 
 I have not heard of Alfred since March. 
 
 I daresay I should have stayed longer in London 
 had you been there : but the wits were too much 
 for me. Not Spedding, mind : who is a dear 
 fellow. But one finds few in London serious 
 men : I mean serious even in fun ; with a true
 
 78 THACKERAY 
 
 purpose and character whatsoever it may be. 
 London melts away all individuality into a common 
 lump of cleverness. I am amazed at the humour 
 and worth and noble-feeling in the country, 
 however railroads have mixed us up with metro- 
 politan civilisation. I can still find the heart of 
 England beating healthily down here, though no 
 one will believe it. 
 
 At evening I sit with open windows, up to 
 which China roses climb, while the blackbirds and 
 thrushes begin to rustle bedwards in the garden, 
 and the nightingale to have the neighbourhood 
 to herself." 
 
 Later he writes : 
 
 " Yesterday I dined with my dear old John 
 Allen, who remains whole and intact of the world 
 in the heart of London. He dined some while 
 ago at Lambeth, and the lady next him asked the 
 Archbishop if he read Punch. Allen thought this 
 was a misplaced question ; but I think the Arch- 
 bishop ought to see Punch, though not to read it 
 regularly perhaps. 
 
 I then asked Allen about the Vestiges l ; he had 
 heard of it laughed at the idea of its being 
 atheistical. ' No enquiry/ said he, ' can be 
 atheistical.' I doubt if the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury could say that ? " 
 
 Lyell said science and religion for him were not 
 only not divorced, but were one and indivisible. The 
 authority of revealed religion is vindicated by the 
 history of creation. ' The earth was waste or ruined " 
 (Gen. i. 2) " in the beginning," i.e. at the Well-head 
 of Time (Gen. i. i). 
 
 Fitzgerald writes : 
 
 " I have again taken up my Homer, yet, as I 
 often think, it is not the poetical imagination, but 
 
 1 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (R. Chambers).
 
 THACKERAY 79 
 
 bare science that every day more and more unrolls 
 a greater Epic than the Iliad ; the history of the 
 World, the infinitudes of Space and Time ! I 
 never take up a book of Geology or Astronomy 
 but this strikes me. And when we think that 
 Man must go on to discover in the same plodding 
 way, one fancies that the Poet of to-day may as 
 well fold his hands, or turn them to dig and delve, 
 considering how soon the march of discovery will 
 distance aU his imaginations, dissolve the language 
 hi which they are uttered. Martial, as you say, 
 lives now, after two thousand years, a space that 
 seems long to us whose lives are so brief ; but a 
 moment, the twinkling of an eye, if compared (not 
 to Eternity alone), but to the ages which it is now 
 known the world must have existed, and (unless 
 for some external violence) must continue to 
 exist. Lyell says that the falls of Niagara, if (as 
 seems certain) they have worked their way back 
 southwards, for seven miles, must have taken 
 35,000 years to do so, at the rate of' something 
 over a foot a year ! So that the Geologist, looking 
 at Niagara, forgets even the roar of its waters in 
 the contemplation of the awful processes of time 
 that it suggests. It is not only that this vision 
 of time must wither the Poet's hope of immor- 
 tality ; but it is in itself more wonderful than all 
 the conceptions of Dante and Milton." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Frederic Tennyson 
 
 " BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, Oct. 10/44. 
 
 " MY DEAR FREDERIC, 
 
 I am now returned to my dull home here, 
 after my usual pottering about in the midland 
 counties of England. A little Bedfordshire a 
 little Northamptonshire a little more folding of 
 the hands the same faces the same fields the 
 same thoughts occurring at the same turns of the 
 road this is all I have to tell you of ; nothing at 
 all added but the summer gone. My garden is
 
 80 THACKERAY 
 
 covered with yellow and brown leaves ; and a 
 man is digging up the garden-beds before my 
 window, and will plant some roots and bulbs for 
 next year. ' The round of life from hour to hour ' 
 alluding doubtless to a mill-horse. 
 
 Alfred is reported to be still at Park House, 
 where he has been sojourning for two months, I 
 think, but he never writes me a word. Hydro- 
 pathy has done its worst ; he writes the names 
 of his friends in water. 
 
 Is Italy become stale to you ? Are you going 
 to Cairo for fresh sensations ? Thackeray went oft 
 in a steam-boat about the time the French were 
 before Mogadore ; he was to see those coasts and 
 to visit Jerusalem ! Titmarsh (his nom-de-plume 
 then) at Jerusalem will certainly be an era in 
 Christianity. 
 
 Spedding is yet in his Highlands, considering 
 Grouse and Bacon." 
 
 In 1845 he writes : 
 
 " The Exhibition is full of bad things : there is 
 a grand Turner, however ; quite unlike anything 
 that was ever seen in Heaven above, or in Earth 
 beneath, or in the Waters under the earth. 
 
 If you want to know something of the Exhibi- 
 tion read Eraser's Magazine for this month ; 
 there Thackeray has a paper on the matter, full 
 of fun. Stone took me by the button in the 
 street and told me how, though he loved old 
 Thackeray, yet these yearly out-speakings of his 
 sorely tried him, not on account of himself, but 
 on account of some of his friends, Charles Land- 
 seer, Maclise, etc. He worked himself up to such 
 a pitch under the pressure of forced calmness 
 that he at last said Thackeray would get himself 
 horse-whipped one day by one of these infuriated 
 Appelleses. At this I, who had partly agreed 
 with Stone that ridicule, though true, needs not 
 always to be spoken, began to laugh, and told 
 him two could play at that game.
 
 THACKERAY 81 
 
 These painters cling together, and bolster each 
 other up, to such a degree that they really have 
 persuaded themselves that anyone who ventures 
 to laugh at one of their drawings exhibited publicly, 
 for the express purpose of criticism, insults the 
 whole corps. In the meanwhile, old Thackeray 
 laughs at all this, and goes on his own way, 
 writing hard for half a dozen Reviews and News- 
 papers all the morning ; dining, drinking, and 
 talking of a night ; managing to preserve a fresh 
 colour and perpetual flow of spirits under a wear 
 and tear of thinking and feeding that would have 
 knocked up any other man I know two years ago 
 at least. 
 
 Alfred was in London the first week of my stay 
 there. He was looking well, and in good spirits ; 
 and had got two hundred lines of a new poem 
 [The Princess] in a butcher's book. He and I 
 made a plan to go to the coast of Cornwall or 
 Wales this summer ; but I suppose we shall 
 manage never to do it. 
 
 We have had a dismal wet May ; but now June 
 is recompensing us for all, and Dr. Blow may be 
 said to be leading the great Garden Band in full 
 chorus. This is a pun, which, profound in itself, 
 you must not expect to enjoy at the first reading. 
 I am not sure that I am myself conscious of the 
 full meaning of it. I know it is very hot weather, 
 the distant woods steaming blue under the 
 noonday sun. 
 
 E. F. G." 
 
 Thackeray was now a great man, dining out with 
 Sir F. Pollock, Mrs. Dilke (76 Sloane Street), F. W. 
 Newman, Kenyon, Buller, Talfourd, Higgins (Allen's 
 father-in-law?), Macready, Proctor, Molesworth, Meri- 
 vale, Lord Holland, etc. 
 
 Thackeray to his Mother 
 
 ' What has happened since I wrote a year ago ? 
 The same story of every day work, work ; 
 
 6
 
 82 THACKERAY 
 
 gobble, gobble scuffling through the day with 
 business, a sort of pleasure which becomes a 
 business till bed-time, and no prospect of more 
 than temporary quiet. I have just got my 
 month's work done, and with Tuesday the next 
 month begins ; and the next work, etcetera. Was 
 ever such martyrdom ? On the best of victuals 
 to be sure. But I suppose there is no use in a 
 man thinking about what he does in this world. 
 What he is capable of doing and knowing is the 
 thing, and when we go hence into somewhere, 
 where there will be time and quiet sufficient, 
 doubtless, who knows what a deal of good may be 
 found in us yet ? What a thing it will be to be 
 made good and wise! You see I am always 
 thinking about ' Vanity Fair.' Everything is very 
 flat and dull. 
 
 Well, yesterday was my little Minnie's birthday, 
 and we had a day of heat and idleness at Hampton 
 Court ; the pictures did not charm the children 
 over much, but General McLeod's palace of 
 Moorshedabad, with a little Nawab palanquin, 
 elephants and bearers two inches high, delighted 
 them hugely, and so did the labyrinth and the 
 chestnut trees in full bloom, and the gardens all 
 over green and sunshine. We all went to bed 
 very tired at ten o'clock. 
 
 The night before, seeing ' King Lear ' was to be 
 performed, I took Annie [Annie was about twelve] 
 and some ladies. We all found the play a bore. 
 We are the most superstitious people in England. 
 It is almost blasphemy to say a play of Shake- 
 speare is bad, but I can't help it if I think so, and 
 there are other pieces of bookolatry, too, which 
 make me rebel. 
 
 And now I am going to dress in my best and 
 dine with Mr. Charles Buller. 
 
 God bless you, my dearest Mother; I am as 
 well as any mortal almost." 
 
 Charles Buller had delightful social qualities. Carlyle
 
 THACKERAY 83 
 
 called him " the genialest Radical " he had ever met. 
 His brother Arthur, one of the handsomest men in 
 England, had too considerable abilities. Mrs. Buller, 
 their mother, once a renowned beauty, the Queen of 
 Calcutta, still preserved traces of what she was. Her 
 conversation was brilliant and pleasant ; she could 
 talk of cookery, philosophers, or of metaphysics. In 
 1846 Charles was made Judge-Advocate ; in 1848 
 Thackeray writes : 
 
 ' I went to see poor dear old Mrs. Buller at 
 Richmond the other day. She has grown quite 
 into the state of old womanhood. Dear old 
 haggard eyes, how beautiful they were, even in 
 my time, and how kind and affectionate she has 
 always been to me. . . . 
 
 Buller [Charles] was dying downstairs, the lamp 
 of life just nickeling out." 
 
 Charles Buller died at forty-two, leaving behind him 
 a vast credit for undeveloped powers. 
 Thackeray writes : 
 
 " All the London gaieties are over : I dined 
 three days running at my own expense and 
 enjoyed that relaxation amazingly. 
 
 At the Literary Fund I made, I am told, an 
 excellent funny speech. It was curious ; I was 
 in such a panic, I did not know what I said, and 
 I don't know now." 
 
 In the green-room, behind a hall filled with a vast 
 fashionable, intellectual audience awaiting the eminent 
 novelist's first lecture on the Four Georges, the orator 
 was pacing the little room in real distress, when his 
 notes, on loose sheets of paper, so that each one 
 could be put aside when finished, were knocked by 
 some awkward hand from the table and strewed the 
 floor ! The culprit, looking up aghast, expecting to be 
 the victim of a well-earned storm, was surprised to 
 be greeted by Thackeray's well-known laugh and,
 
 84 THACKERAY 
 
 " There ! that is the best thing that could have hap- 
 pened to me. It will take the remaining fifteen 
 minutes to bring chaos into order and so keep me 
 quiet ! " 
 
 Fitzgerald to Frederick Tennyson 
 
 " May 4, 1848. 
 
 ' Thackeray is progressing greatly in his line ; 
 he publishes a novel in numbers Vanity Fair 
 which began dull, I thought, but gets better 
 every number, and has some very fine things in 
 it. He is become a great man I am told : goes 
 to Holland House and Devonshire House : and 
 for some reason or other will not write a word 
 to me. But I am sure this is not because he is 
 asked to Holland House. Dickens has fallen off 
 in his last novel, Dombey and Son, just com- 
 pleted ; but there are wonderful things in it too. 
 As to public affairs they are so wonderful that 
 one does not know where to begin. If England 
 maintains her own this year she must have the 
 elements of long lasting in her. 
 
 I had a note from Alfred three months ago. He 
 was then in London, but is now in Ireland adding 
 to his new Poem, The Princess. Have you 
 seen it ? I am considered a great heretic for 
 abusing it ; it seems to me a wretched waste of 
 power at a time of life when a man ought to be 
 doing his best ; and I almost feel hopeless about 
 Alfred now. I mean about his doing what he was 
 born to do." 
 
 " July 2, 1848. 
 
 " I saw Alfred and the rest of the sgavans in 
 London. Thackeray is a great man, and his 
 book (which is capital) is read by the Great ; and 
 will, I hope, do them good. Alfred seemed to me 
 in fair plight : much dining out ; and his last 
 poem is well liked."
 
 THACKERAY 85 
 
 Fitzgerald to Carlyle 
 
 " 1849- 
 
 ' . . . Don't you think Thackeray's Mrs. 
 Perkins' Ball very good ? I think the empty 
 faces of the dance room were never better done. 
 It seems to me wonderful that people can endure 
 to look on such things ; but I am forty, and got 
 out of the habit now, and certainly shall not try 
 to get it back ever again. 
 
 I am glad you and Mrs. Carlyle are in a milder 
 part of England during this changeable and cold 
 season. Yet for my own sake I shall be sorry to 
 see the winter go ; with its decided and reasonable 
 balance of daylight and candle-light." 
 
 In a letter to Edward Fitzgerald, not dated, 
 Thackeray writes : 
 
 " MY DEAR OLD YEDWARD, 
 
 It is not true what Carlyle has written to 
 you about my having become a tremenjous lion, 
 etc., too grand to write, etc. ; but what is true 
 is that a fellow who is writing all day for money, 
 gets sick of pens and paper when his work is 
 over, and I go on dawdling and thinking of writing, 
 and months pass away. All that about being a 
 lion is nonsense. I can't eat more dinners than I 
 used last year, and dine at home with my dear 
 little women three times a week ; but two or 
 three great people ask me to their houses and 
 Vanity Fair does everything but pay. I am glad 
 if you like it. I don't care if some other people 
 do or don't ; and always try to keep that damper 
 against flattery. What does it matter whether 
 this man who is an ass likes your book or not ? 
 Last Sunday I saw Jeames Spedding walking in 
 the park with some children and a lady from the 
 country. I am one of the swells there. I have 
 got a cob which is the admiration of all ; strong, 
 handsome, good-natured, fast, and never tired.
 
 86 THACKERAY 
 
 You shall have a ride behind me if you come to 
 London. Why don't you ? I am going to give 
 a party on the gth of May. Mrs. Dickens and 
 Mrs. Hogarth made me give it, and I am in a 
 great fright. I have not got a shilling isn't it 
 wonderful ? I make a great deal of money, and 
 it goes pouring and pouring out in a frightful 
 volubility. This letter has been delayed and 
 delayed until I fancied it would never finish. I 
 am always yours, and like you almost as much as 
 I did twenty years ago." 
 
 To a poor lady he gave a pill-box, " One to be taken 
 when required," containing two sovereigns. 
 
 Thackeray to his Mother 
 
 " CORAM STREET, 1839. 
 
 " If you were here and could be intimate with 
 John Allen, how you would like him ! The man 
 is just a perfect saint, nor more nor less, and not 
 the least dogmatical or presumptuous, working, 
 striving, yearning day and night in the most 
 sincere efforts to gain Christian perfection. . . . 
 No man can escape from his influence, which is 
 perfectly magnetical." 
 
 Solemn passages, which break like veins of gold 
 through the sparkling surface of his humour, may be 
 vestiges of this friendship. 
 
 Of Vanity Fair he wrote to his mother : 
 
 " What I want is to make a set of people 
 living without God in the world (only that is a 
 cant phrase), greedy, pompous men, perfectly 
 self-satisfied for the most part, and at ease about 
 their superior virtue. 
 
 " I was not going to write in this way when I 
 began, but these thoughts pursue me plentifully. 
 Will they ever come to a good end ? I should 
 doubt God who gave them if I doubted them."
 
 THACKERAY 87 
 
 Vide Vanity Fair : 
 
 ' My Lord Dives' remains are in the family 
 vault ; the statuaries are cutting an inscription 
 veraciously commemorating his virtues and the 
 sorrows of his heir, who is disposing of his goods. 
 What guest at Dives' table can pass the familiar 
 house without a sigh ? the familiar house of 
 which the lights used to shine so cheerfully at 
 seven o'clock, of which the hall door used to open 
 so readily, of which the obsequious servants, as 
 you passed up the comfortable stairs, sounded 
 your name from landing to landing, until it 
 reached the apartment where jolly old Dives 
 welcomed his friends. What a number of them he 
 had, and what a noble way of entertaining them ! 
 How witty people used to be here who were 
 morose when they got out of doors, and how 
 courteous and friendly men who slandered each 
 other everywhere else ! He was pompous, but 
 with such a good cook what would one not 
 swallow ? He was rather dull, perhaps, but 
 would not such wine make any conversation 
 pleasant ? ' 
 
 Out walking one evening with some friends the 
 sight of three lofty cranes against a golden sky startled 
 Thackeray : " Calvary," he said with awe, as a deep 
 silence fell upon him. For the rest of the evening his 
 mirth forsook him. 
 
 Fitzgerald writes : 
 
 " GOLDINGTON, BEDFORD, 1852. 
 
 ' I had to run through London several times. 
 I generally ran back as fast as I could, much 
 preferring the fresh air and the fields to the 
 smoke and the ' wilderness of monkeys ' in London. 
 
 Thackeray I saw for ten minutes ; he was just 
 in the agony of finishing a novel : which has 
 arisen out of the reading necessary for his lectures, 
 and relates to those times of Queen Anne, I
 
 88 THACKERAY 
 
 mean. He will get 1,000 for his novel. He was 
 wanting to finish it and rush off to the Continent 
 to shake off the fumes of it. 
 
 Old Spedding, that aged and most subtle Ser- 
 pent, was in his old haunts in Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields, up to any mischief. 
 
 It was supposed that Alfred was somewhere 
 near Malvern." 
 
 Thackeray to Fitzgerald 
 
 ' I shall send you a copy of Esmond to-morrow 
 or so, which you shall yawn over when you are 
 inclined. 
 
 But the great comfort I have in thinking about 
 my dear old boy ;s that recollection of our youth 
 when we loved each other as I do now while I 
 write. Farewell. 
 
 I sail from Liverpool on Saturday morning by 
 the Canada, for Boston. Well, who knows what 
 Fate is in store ? and I feel not at all downcast, 
 but very grave and solemn just at the brink of a 
 great voyage." 
 
 Once on an early visit to some little cousins, he 
 found them with bowed heads at family prayer. As 
 soon as he opened the door there was a rustle as of 
 awakening leaves in the morning breeze ; but it was 
 stilled by his uplifted hand as he stood there reverently 
 until " Amen " was said. When carving for them at 
 dinner he called out : 
 
 " If any little girl wants a little fowl 
 She must hold up her hand and give a little howl." 
 
 And then, with an imaginary cold in his head, which 
 gave the youngsters more pleasure than most colds 
 give pain, asked their mother if she would have some 
 " B'utton." 
 
 When asked to write in a lady's autograph book he 
 wrote : 
 
 " A wholesome thing is a hearty laugh, 
 To this I sign my autograph."
 
 THACKERAY 89 
 
 He was no great novel-reader. At seventeen he 
 writes : ' I have only read one novel since I came 
 back [from Charterhouse], and I daresay I shall not 
 read another. I have not yet drawn out a plan for 
 my stories, but certain germs thereof are budding in 
 my mind, which I hope, by assiduous application, will 
 flourish yet and bring forth fruit." 
 
 The early chapters of Vanity Fair were altered and 
 rewritten with many erasures, and with sentences 
 turned in different ways, while in Esmond and his 
 later books the manuscript flows on almost without a 
 correction. 
 
 Thackeray to his Mother 
 
 " Of course you are quite right about Vanity 
 Fair, and Amelia being selfish. It is mentioned 
 hi this very number. My object is not to make 
 a perfect character or anything like it. Don't 
 you see how odious all the people are in the book 
 (with the exception of Dobbin), behind all of 
 which there is a dark moral, I hope. 
 
 Amelia's humility is to come when her scoundrel 
 of a husband is well dead, and when she has had 
 sufferings, a child and a religion. But she has, at 
 present, a quality above most people, whizz 
 LOVE by which she shall be saved. 
 
 There are no end of quarrels in this wicked 
 Vanity Fair, and my feet are perpetually in hot 
 water. The last number you will like best, I 
 think ; it does everything but sell, and appears 
 really immensely to increase my reputation, if not 
 my income. 
 
 Towards the end of the month I get so nervous, 
 that I don't speak to anyone scarcely, and once 
 actually got up in the middle of the night and 
 came down and wrote in my night chimee ; but 
 that don't happen often." 
 
 Charlotte Bronte dedicated Jane Eyre to him when 
 he had never heard of her, and knew not whence the 
 book or its dedication came.
 
 90 THACKERAY 
 
 Fitzgerald to Allen 
 
 " I see a good deal of Alfred, who lives not far 
 off from me ; and he is still the same noble and 
 droll fellow he used to be. Thackeray I have 
 seen three or four times. He is just the same. 
 All the world admires Vanity Fair, and the 
 Author is courted by dukes and duchesses and 
 wits of both sexes. I like Pendennis much ; and 
 Alfred said he thought ' it was quite delicious ' : it 
 seemed to him so mature." 
 
 Years afterwards Thackeray said : ' Vanity Fair is 
 undoubtedly the best of my books. It has the best 
 story, and for another thing the title is such a good 
 one ; you could not have a better." 
 
 Thackeray to Fitzgerald 
 
 " I have been poring over the Life of David 
 Hume all day. The most amiable of honest 
 heathens. His life is coldly selfish and good- 
 humoured and correct, and he went out of the 
 world quite unconcerned, with a grin on his face, 
 entering into Eternity as if he were stepping into 
 a Court-Ball." 
 
 Sir James Stephen said of him : 
 
 ' Hume was a cold-blooded animal with a fine 
 perception of ugliness, and an exquisite taste in 
 writing, which he borrowed from the best French 
 models ; a mere thinking machine, and the range 
 of such machinery is at best very narrow. ' With 
 the heart man believeth/ says the sacred text, 
 and ' without a heart a man doth not understand,' 
 is no unfair parody on it. 
 
 His history, except when touching on religion 
 or party politics, is an incomparable abridgement." 
 
 In the summer of 1863 Thackeray, meeting Allen in 
 a street, made it ring with the laughter of their
 
 THACKERAY 91 
 
 pleasure. Looking at Harriet he exclaimed : ' Mrs. 
 Allen, how well you look ! Ah, good people wear 
 well ! " Then Allen must dine with him and bring 
 his ladies. But he was leaving town on Saturday 
 " Come to-morrow," urged the glad host. " Now I 
 must go home and see to beef and mutton." 
 
 On the appointed day they went to the pleasant 
 house in Kensington, where a pleasant company was 
 assembled, and the pleasant feast spread, but it was 
 robbed of the presence of its genial master, for 
 Thackeray was in bed with an attack of spasms. Yet 
 Annie, who had a genius for sympathy, kept the table 
 bright with her scintillating talk something like her 
 books. 
 
 Although her fame was but nascent, she had already, 
 at twenty-six, begun to write ; and her father, almost 
 with tears of joy, dropped the golden first-fruits of her 
 success into her lap. 
 
 Minnie was there. She was quieter, some said 
 cleverer than Annie ; but she married Leslie Stephen 
 and died young, leaving no evidence of her gifts. 
 Leslie wrote Agnostic Essays, which are not read now, 
 but the novels written by the brood they have 
 generated are. 
 
 " Cast forth thy word into the ever-living, ever- 
 working universe ; it is a seed-grain that cannot die ; 
 unnoticed to-day, it will be found flourishing as a 
 Banyan-grove (perhaps also as a Hemlock-forest !) 
 after a thousand years." 
 
 Leslie Stephen took orders for the sake of a fellow- 
 ship, but soon shook them off. Although he shut up 
 the Well-spring of happiness from many heavy-laden 
 souls, he managed to live a happy life himself ; two 
 well-loved wives went before him into the Unknown 
 Land, yet the sorrow of the world did not throw its 
 shadow too heavily over him. Without taking up 
 literature seriously, as Carlyle did, he worked at the 
 Dictionary of National Biography, was a great novel- 
 reader, and wrote much ; born, as his sister said, with 
 a pen in his mouth. 
 
 When a lad of twenty, Thackeray in Allen's rooms
 
 92 THACKERAY 
 
 at Cambridge, on a sheet of writing-paper, sketched in 
 ink with an ordinary pen, without one false line, a 
 street-show with a church spire in the background. 
 
 ' Walk up, ladies and gentlemen, and see what 
 you will see, 
 
 It costs you nothing, and nobody can see it more 
 than once ; 
 
 This exhibition, tho' it is so cheap, is wery fashion- 
 able. 
 
 Last year it was wisited by his Majesty King 
 
 George the IV and several of the nobility and 
 gentry." 
 
 ' This year it has been patronised by Field- 
 Marshal Diebitsch and several 1,000 officers and 
 soldiers of the Russian and Polish Army. Ladies 
 and Gemmen, now's your time." 
 
 The door to the show is an upright coffin, with this 
 superscription : 
 
 "PATRONISED BY THE ARMY AND NAVY 
 AND THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS " 
 
 The speaker is Death a smiling skeleton wearing an 
 undertaker's hat. 
 
 Striding up to the door three steps at a time is a 
 soldier ; before him an enraged mother ascends with a 
 feather in her bonnet and a merry babe in her arms. 
 Awaiting their turn to mount the steps are a common 
 man in a patched coat, and a little fat, staring boy ; 
 then comes a Piccadilly lounger strolling with a pipe 
 in his mouth. In the distance a motley crew advance 
 towards the show. The showman continues : 
 
 ' The trumpet will sound at the end of the 
 performance, after which it will be exhibited 
 never no more." l 
 
 Before the close of that dinner-party year Thackeray's 
 mirth and busy pen were still for ever. He was but 
 fifty-two. 
 
 1 This sketch is in Allen's Scrap-book, now in Trinity Library.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 IN 1839, when Lord John Russell constituted the 
 Board of Education, three inspectors, two laymen, and 
 one clergyman were selected to discover how far the 
 work of education had progressed in the country. 
 The clergyman must be a man of tact and judgment, 
 full of zeal for the spread of education, and proof 
 against the discouragement he was to meet with, 
 through bitter, though not unreasonable, prejudice. 
 Such men as Lord Shaftesbury, Samuel Morley, F. D. 
 Maurice, looked with aversion and alarm upon the 
 scheme. 
 
 John Allen doubted whether to accept the post 
 offered him by Lord Lansdowne. The income was 
 good : he would be able to carry on his work as a 
 clergyman ; he would not be required to put off the 
 character of a Christian clergyman on entering a 
 school, and, if the schools were willing to have their 
 religious education inspected, the Government would 
 be glad to learn how it was being carried on. 
 
 All Sir James K ay-Shut tleworth's efforts were 
 animated by two principles the importance of 
 religious teaching and the value of the local sympathy 
 of the best persons in the several neighbourhoods. 
 Sir James writes : " Their lordships," i.e. the Committee 
 of Council on Education, " are strongly of opinion that 
 no plan of education ought to be encouraged in which 
 intellectual instruction is not subordinate to the 
 regulation of the thoughts and habits of the children 
 by the doctrines and precepts of revealed religion." 
 
 For himself, Allen was unable to decide whether 
 what is called education without religion is better than 
 no education at all. By teaching a man to read, you 
 
 93
 
 94 EDUCATION 
 
 put into his hand a bunch of keys, with which he may 
 unlock treasures or offensive weapons. 
 
 He deplored the fact that numbers of baptized 
 Christians leave the tutelage of Doctors of Divinity, 
 able to repeat the whole of Horace, but hardly able to 
 repeat five consecutive verses from any part of the 
 Bible. He once said : " If I had my way, Ovid and 
 Terence should be banished from our schools." 
 
 " God's written word is the source of all that is 
 most precious in our boasted civilization the rule 
 of truth, purity, and charity; the charter of our 
 hopes for time and eternity. To exclude the 
 name of Him in Whom we live and move and have 
 our being from the education of the poor in this 
 Christian country must be a step in the wrong 
 direction." 
 
 Put true wisdom in the heart of the world, and the 
 world will fight its battles victoriously, and be the 
 best man can make it. 
 
 " If we go back to the first recorded legislation 
 as to the education of the young, we find there 
 God's Law is, ' Ye shall lay up these My words 
 in your heart and in your soul, and ye shall teach 
 them your children.' ' Come, ye children, hearken 
 unto me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord.' 
 
 The active, constant control of God over the 
 affairs of this life is an established fact. He takes 
 notice of what is done by communities as well as 
 by individuals, to give honour to His Name." 
 
 Of his acceptance of the post Lord Grimthorpe 
 writes : 
 
 " Allen thought it right to consult his Bishop. 
 He found him in his purple waiting for his carriage, 
 which was to take him to the Privy Council, at 
 which the Queen announced her intention of being 
 united to Prince Albert. The Bishop was gruff in
 
 EDUCATION 95 
 
 manner, and gave him no help, saying, ' You know 
 well that I disapprove of the whole scheme of 
 Government Education.' Whereupon Allen said, 
 ' Then I conclude your Lordship does not approve 
 of my taking the appointment, so I shall decline.' 
 Then Blomfield saw that would not do and said, 
 ' Stop, Mr. Allen ; don't be in such a hurry.' 
 Whereas it was he that had been hasty as usual. 
 ' If we are to have School Inspectors, it will be 
 better to have good men than bad ones ; perhaps 
 you had better accept it.' 
 
 So Allen became a School Inspector, the first of 
 them, under the old system, before it was trans- 
 formed by that School Board Act of Messrs. 
 Forster and Gladstone, which was carried under 
 the false pretence of being auxiliary to the Church 
 and other denominational schools ; whereas every 
 man of common sense ought to have seen that 
 its tendency was, and must be, to supplant them, 
 and to transfer the management of schools from 
 competent people to incompetent ones, and to 
 enable a majority of ignorant or mischievous rate- 
 payers to stop religious education altogether. The 
 Bishops quietly sat by, and the Tory majority in 
 the House of Lords with them let all that be 
 done, irrevocably I suppose, as all attempts to 
 return from bad ways to good ones are dismissed 
 as retrograde now. Allen told us that he had 
 met Mr. Forster some time after the Act had been 
 in action, and said to him that he ought to get 
 up in the House and confess that it had been a 
 mistake. He did not tell us Forster 's answer." 
 
 In his work as inspector, from good men and from 
 bad Allen met with opposition. Difficulty is a severe 
 instructor. By wrestling with us our antagonist helps 
 us ; he strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. 
 
 Dean Hook, then Vicar of Leeds, wished the religious 
 education in the Government schools to be conducted 
 by the clergyman of the parish, and by the Noncon- 
 formist ministers in a separate class-room.
 
 96 EDUCATION 
 
 I 
 
 John Allen to Dr. Hook 
 
 " July ii, 1846. 
 
 " SIR, 
 
 Through the kindness of Mr. Kay-Shuttle- 
 worth I have received a copy of your letter to the 
 Bishop of St. David's, on the means of rendering 
 more efficient the education of the people. 
 
 I admire the ability with which your views are 
 stated. As to their wisdom an older head than 
 mine may judge. I regret that you have thought 
 it right to attack others ; but all must hope that 
 good will come of what you have done. 
 
 You refer to one of my reports (as a school 
 Inspector) as containing an extract which dispenses 
 with Church principles. I dislike the term 
 ' Church Principles/ It appears to me to be (i) 
 not English, (2) not distinct. Some understand 
 by it the principles of Laud ; others those of 
 Ridley. 
 
 If you mean by it the principles laid down in 
 the formularies of our Church, I ask you what 
 principles that extract dispenses with ? 
 
 You and I believe the Church to be the pillar 
 and ground of the Truth, and that it is the witness 
 and keeper of Holy Writ. We have pledged 
 ourselves to teach the Scriptures to our charge, 
 and to go after such of our flock as are astray. 
 
 I have been anxious that the Scriptures should 
 be taught in our schools with understanding and 
 reverence, and that the children should be led to 
 worship God in the church. But I do not like to 
 hold out the offer of good instruction, or of any 
 other secular good, to draw children to church. 
 
 All will acknowledge the aim of a Christian 
 education to be to lead children to know and love 
 their Saviour. 
 
 I am, sir, with respect, 
 
 Your faithful servant, 
 
 JOHN ALLEN."
 
 EDUCATION 97 
 
 Dr. Hook to John Allen 
 
 14, 1846. 
 ' REVEREND SIR, 
 
 I believe your principles and mine are so 
 entirely opposed, upon almost every point of the 
 Christian Religion, that we could never come to 
 an understanding. 
 
 By ' Church Principles ' are usually meant the 
 principles of the Catholic Church, and the term 
 is in my opinion a good one. 
 
 I have the honour to be, reverend sir, 
 x Your obedient servant, 
 
 W. F. HOOK." 
 
 John Allen to Dean Hook 
 
 " J^y 17. 1846. 
 ' REVEREND SIR, 
 
 As both of us profess the same creeds, use 
 the same liturgy, and hold preferment on the faith 
 of our heartily assenting to the same Articles of 
 Religion, I hope that your principles and mine are 
 not so ' entirely opposed upon almost every point 
 of the Christian religion ' as you believe them to 
 be. But your principles need not come under 
 consideration in reference to this matter. 
 I am, reverend sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 JOHN ALLEN." 
 
 Other letters passed : some three years later Dr. 
 Hook wrote to Allen : 
 
 " VICARAGE, LEEDS, February 23, 1850. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 You never did a kinder, a more generous, 
 or more truly Christian act than that which you 
 performed when you wrote the letter which I had 
 the great happiness of receiving this morning. 
 
 I do, indeed, remember our correspondence, and 
 have long remembered it with feelings of deepest 
 regret. I have seen you several times since, and 
 
 7
 
 98 EDUCATION 
 
 how have I longed to ask you to hold out the hand 
 of reconciliation and forgiveness. 
 
 In that correspondence I was entirely to blame. 
 
 Now I rejoice in the opportunity of thanking 
 you, from the bottom of my heart, for the 
 happiness you have caused me this day. Most 
 fervently have I prayed for you this day, and 
 shah 1 hope to do so occasionally, and I trust I 
 shall have your prayers in return. 
 
 Believe me to be, dear sir, most gratefully yours, 
 
 W. F. HOOK. 
 
 P.S. I have been accustomed to hear your 
 name frequently mentioned, for some of my family 
 were present at the examination of the National 
 Schools in London last summer, when you were 
 examining the children. And they have con- 
 tinually quoted you as a model examiner, and 
 expressed a hope that I should hear you examine. 
 It was very pleasant to hear from my own children 
 these expressions, and will now be doubly so." 
 
 Allen's theory of examination was, that it was his 
 business to find out what the children did know ; any 
 simpleton could find out what they did not know. In 
 inspecting he was quick at discerning a thoughtful, 
 even if an ignorant answer. 
 
 When he inspected the schools in the parish where 
 Lord Palmerston lived, Lord Palmerston stood in his 
 long blue coat with brass buttons, listening attentively 
 all through the inspection, and at the close thanked 
 him for the pains he had taken. 
 
 As an inspector he would be out at work at nine in 
 the morning, and find no time for eating, with the 
 exception of five minutes in a biscuit shop, until 10 p.m., 
 or, setting off a quarter after six, would not return to 
 his inn until eleven at night ; for he enjoyed his work 
 more than his meals. His " indolence " was conquered 
 now. 
 
 Of education he says :
 
 EDUCATION 99 
 
 ' True religion is the only safeguard of common- 
 wealths. A regard to God's Will as our sure 
 guide, as the all-controlling authority, keeps the 
 mass of mankind from turning to corruption. 
 
 He who in the hands of God does most to write 
 on the mind of those about him the truths and the 
 precepts of God's Word is the greatest benefactor 
 of his fellow men. Those truths are best enforced 
 when the twig is yet pliable, when habits may be 
 formed, when character may be distinctly im- 
 pressed before the limbs of the tree have grown 
 hard and crooked. 
 
 Youth is the seed-time of life. 
 
 Let anyone observe in his own neighbourhood 
 how one man by his honest labour, by his courtesy 
 and consideration for others, by his love of justice, 
 by his modesty and self-control, is the holdfast of 
 society and the comfort of all that have to do 
 with him ; in his household there is quietness and 
 decency ; comfort and love. Each member of 
 such a happy family has for every day the work 
 of the day appointed and finds delight in fulfilling 
 his task. 
 
 Or, on the other hand, let a man observe the 
 misery of some other households, and the evils 
 and sorrows caused by the misconduct of indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 One man gives way to lust and affects, it may 
 be, in the way of direct consequence, those who 
 are yet unborn, contributing to their misery in 
 this present state, and to their remorse Hereafter. 
 Another to drunkenness, and so makes an open 
 road to unthought-of crimes. Another, through 
 lack of truthfulness and justice, loosens all the 
 bands of society. 
 
 A thoughtful man will then realize that educa- 
 tion must have a great effect on the comfort of 
 individuals, on the happiness of families, on the 
 well-being of society, and on that which is the 
 earnest desire of our Redeemer, the Salvation of 
 Souls.
 
 100 EDUCATION 
 
 We know, when we consider the state of our 
 streets at night, and when we look into our own 
 hearts, and into the course of our lives, how much 
 room there is for improvement, so must feel that 
 a call is made upon us to set forward God's will, 
 to do what in us lies to leave the world better 
 than we found it. 
 
 Our great hope is in education. God trusts the 
 coming generation to the care of us who are now 
 at work in the world. We shall meet with oppo- 
 sition, yet a Hebrew proverb says : ' May our 
 reward at the last be like that of him who, under 
 a false accusation, holds his peace.' ' 
 
 A good man has a force within him that puts in 
 motion the wisdom and power of other men, and the 
 religion of Jesus finds a new missionary in every pure 
 soul and every wise man. A conviction of the truth 
 of God was to Allen the highest function of his nature, 
 the beauty of goodness the only real possession. In 
 that mysterious communion of wisdom with ignorance 
 called instruction, his endeavour was to make every 
 scholar the servant of his Maker. " A man that has 
 a spiritual truth in him is stronger, not than ten men 
 without it, but than all men that have it not." 
 
 At King's College his influence was widely felt ; the 
 students said they listened week after week " with 
 growing attachment to the lessons of practical devo- 
 tion and fervent piety " he inculcated, and that many 
 were animated and encouraged by private counsel and 
 advice, while others came to him for the solution of 
 the difficulties and obstacles in their way. None, they 
 said, were dismissed unsatisfied or unimproved, and 
 they added their assurance that " wherever Providence 
 should call him he would find some whose eyes would 
 grow more joyous and whose hearts be lighter in his 
 presence." 
 
 To make some nook of God's creation fruitfuller, 
 better, more worthy of God ; to leave some human 
 hearts wiser, manfuller, happier, less accursed, is work 
 for the sons of God. To put straight a perverted
 
 EDUCATION 101 
 
 will, to gain a soul is beyond all profits of the best 
 business. 
 
 One of his pupils, Edward Plumptre, afterwards 
 Dean of Wells, said : 
 
 " A shy boy often needs the sympathy and 
 encouragement of one he respects and trusts ; I 
 owe much to John Allen. There was a transparent 
 sincerity and truthfulness in him that made me 
 instinctively feel his approval was worth having. 
 I trust that I learned something, too, from his 
 thoroughness, his large-heartedness, and his 
 manifest lowliness of spirit. 
 
 He was always ready to acknowledge a mistake, 
 and to accept correction when found to be in the 
 wrong. Perhaps few have acted more consistently 
 upon the apostolic precept, ' In lowliness of mind 
 let each esteem other better than themselves.' J 
 
 It is a solemn and awful thought for every man 
 that his earthly influence will never through all ages 
 have an end. What is done is done. 
 
 It is not by material, but by spiritual power, that 
 men and their actions are governed. 
 
 He catechised the children in his own church once 
 a month at the afternoon service, taking care they 
 were well taught beforehand ; it was instructive to his 
 people and interested them in the education of their 
 children. 
 
 Canon Norris said : 
 
 " Children he held in reverence ; to hear others 
 either scold or flatter them was distress and pain 
 to him. He would gather them round him to 
 explain some old engraving of Albert Diirer's ; 
 or to tell them of S. Christopher's vow to serve 
 the strongest and how it came to be fulfilled." 
 
 Allen's cousin, Madame Sismondi, writes thus to the 
 mother of Charles Darwin's children :
 
 102 EDUCATION 
 
 " If severity is a necessary quality for educating 
 well, my little Emma's children will be the worst 
 educated in Europe. You are a child after my 
 own heart to like the instructing part. When 
 your children become rational creatures they 
 should be more a pleasure than a plague to you. 
 We English lay too great stress on bringing 
 children forward in learning, so we give them 
 longer lessons than their little heads can take in, 
 which only serve to weary the poor teachers. 
 
 Mrs. Somerville, who taught hers, assured me 
 she never gave lessons longer than ten minutes at 
 a time. A longer lesson was only pernicious ; no 
 child could give undivided attention beyond that 
 period. She then sent them to amuse themselves 
 as they could and they always succeeded, and 
 were fresh to give their attention for another ten 
 minutes when she called them. This could not 
 fatigue any mother. 
 
 The learning that profits our understanding is 
 of our own acquiring later. Never mind if your 
 children are dunces." 
 
 In reproof Allen used the fewest words possible ; 
 and always spoke without witnesses. Taking a guilty 
 child to his study he would put a question to it : " Do 
 you think that was right ? ' Then if the culprit said, 
 " No, father," he would dismiss it. " Heaven bless 
 you, my child; that will do." 
 
 In his home his wife's will was law. When his 
 children asked his leave to do anything, his reply was, 
 " What does your mother say ? If she approves, I do." 
 
 The following rules he laid down for his own 
 guidance : 
 
 ' (i) The first thing we all of us desire for our 
 children is that they should be perfectly true ; 
 therefore we must be true ourselves, for children 
 learn more by the eye than the ear. 
 
 ' (2) We must be consistent ; love without 
 consistency may pass into mere fondness.
 
 EDUCATION 103 
 
 ' (3) A fault pardoned should be as a fault 
 forgotten. Bygones should be bygones. 
 
 " (4) A child, because he is a child, should never 
 be allowed to give trouble to anyone (trouble that 
 can reasonably be spared), to servants, parents, 
 or visitors. 
 
 ' (5) Don't be always don'ting ! It is impos- 
 sible to make children perfect, either by laying 
 down needless laws, or by thwarting them with 
 contradictions. Temper is one of the chief 
 matters to be considered in training children to 
 make others happy. Yet the first risings of evil 
 should be watched, guarded against, and checked. 
 
 ' (6) The elder children should be taught to 
 instruct the younger ones by showing them 
 pictures ; and thus to educate themselves. 
 
 ' Books educate as well as men. It is impos- 
 sible that a bad man can write a good book. We 
 should choose our books as we choose our friends, 
 and endeavour to keep company with the best." 
 
 Day by day he inquired of his children : ' What 
 good have you done to-day ? " His highest praise 
 was : ' You are beginning to be useful," or " You 
 have taken pains." 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald to John Allen 
 
 " BEDFORD, August 27. 
 
 ' DEAR GOOD ALLEN, 
 
 Do you know of any good books on 
 Education ? Not for the poor or Charity Schools* 
 but on modern Gentlemen's Grammar Schools. 
 Did not Combe write a book ? But he is the 
 driest Scotch Snuff. . . . 
 
 I am staying here with William Browne and 
 his wife. The father and mother of Mrs. Browne 
 bought old Mrs. Piozzi's house at Streatham, 
 thirty-five years ago ; all the Sir Joshua portraits 
 therein, which they sold directly afterwards for a 
 song ; and all the furniture, of which some yet 
 helps to fill the house I now stay in. In the
 
 104 EDUCATION 
 
 bedroom I write in is Dr. Johnson's own book- 
 case and secretaire ; with looking-glass in the 
 panels that often reflected his uncouth shape. 
 His own bed is also in the house ; but I do not 
 sleep in it. 
 
 Carlyle writes me word his Cromwell papers 
 will be out in October ; and that then we are all 
 to be convinced that Richard had no hump to 
 his back. I am strong in favour of the hump ; 
 I do not think the common sense of two centuries 
 is apt to be deceived in such a matter. 
 
 Now if your time is not wholly filled up, pray 
 do give me one line to say you have not wholly 
 given me up as a turncoat. I would rather have 
 sat with you on the cliffs of St. David's than 
 have done anything I have done for the last six 
 months. 
 
 Farewell, my dear Fellow. Don't forget un- 
 worthy me. We shall soon have known each 
 other 20 years, and soon 30, and 40, if we live a 
 little while. 
 
 E. F. G." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Barton (a Quaker Poet) 
 
 " BEDFORD, Sept. 8, '45. 
 
 " Do not accuse me of growing enamoured of 
 London ; I would have been in the country long 
 ago if I could. Nor do I think I shall get away 
 till the end of this month ; and then I will go. I 
 am not so bad as Tennyson, who has been for six 
 weeks intending to start every day for Switzer- 
 land or Cornwall, he doesn't quite know which. 
 However, his stay has been so much gain to me, 
 for he and John Allen are the two men that give 
 me pleasure here. 
 
 My noble preacher Matthews is dead ! He had 
 a long cold, which he promoted in all ways of 
 baptizing, watching late and early, travelling in 
 rain, etc. he got worse ; but would send for no 
 doctor, ' the Lord would raise him up if it were 
 good for him,' etc. Last Monday this cold broke
 
 EDUCATION 105 
 
 out into Typhus fever ; and on Thursday he died ! 
 I had been out to Naseby for three days, and as 
 I returned on Friday at dusk I saw a coffin 
 carrying down the street ; I knew whose it 
 must be. 
 
 I would have given a great deal to save his life ; 
 which might certainly have been saved with 
 common precautions. He died in perfect peace, 
 approving all the principles of his life to be genuine. 
 I am going this afternoon to attend his funeral. 
 
 E. F. G." 
 
 Fitzgerald writes of the Oxford movement : 
 
 ' I went to see a parson friend in Dorsetshire, 
 a quaint humorous man. Him I found in a most 
 out-of-the-way parish, on a fine open country ; 
 not so much wooded ; chalk hills. This man used 
 to wander about the fields of Cambridge with me 
 when we both wore caps and gowns, and then we 
 proposed and discussed many ambitious schemes 
 and subjects. He is now a quiet, saturnine 
 person with five children, taking a pipe to soothe 
 him when they bother him with their noise or 
 misbehaviour ; and I ! as the Bishop of London 
 said, ' By the grace of God I am what I am/ In 
 Dorsetshire I found the churches much occupied by 
 Puseyite parsons ; new chancels built with altars 
 and painted windows that officiously displayed 
 the Virgin Mary, etc. The people in those parts 
 call that party ' Pugicides/ and receive their 
 doctrine and doings peacefully. I am vext at 
 these silly men who are dishing themselves and 
 their Church as fast as they can/'
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 KEBLE 
 
 CHARLOTTE YONGE writes : 
 
 " Mr. Keble came back much pleased from the 
 first examination by the Government Inspector. 
 He said : ' I am convinced that examinations are 
 very good things. I wish I had been more 
 examined. It would have been very good for me.' ' 
 
 Miss Yonge did for Keble what Kingsley did for 
 F. D. MaUrice she made his teaching popular. Fiction 
 works wonders in the world ; History, that " divine 
 book of revelations, whereof a chapter is completed 
 from epoch to epoch, of whose plenary inspiration 
 doubt is not so much as possible," has not half the 
 influence of Fiction ; e.g. Keble said : " Edward VI was 
 Henry VIII in a bib and tucker ; Elizabeth was 
 Henry VIII in a hoop petticoat ; and Queen Mary was 
 the best of them ! " 
 
 It was curious to observe the contrast between the 
 estimation in which other people held this short- 
 sighted, shy man, and that in which he held himself. 
 Lowliness seemed second nature to him. His sweetest 
 fragrance, as George Herbert's, was bruised from his 
 heart ; and, like George Herbert, he intended his poems 
 to be published after his death ; they were published 
 anonymously at first. The book's effect and success 
 were a great surprise to him ; it ran into ninety-five 
 editions during his life- time ; his church was rebuilt 
 with the proceeds of it, while to the last he dis- 
 liked being spoken of as " the author of the Christian 
 Year." 
 
 106
 
 KEBLE 107 
 
 Yet his work is different from George Herbert's ; 
 his poems are meditations, often subjective medita- 
 tions ; his earlier ones which are incorporated in his 
 extensive scheme, are the best. Herbert's are psalms, 
 melodious or rugged outpourings of a heart athirst 
 for God, and second only to the Psalms of David. 
 
 Spencer, Scott, Dante, and Wordsworth were Keble's 
 favourite poets. His melody, rhythm, and metre are 
 sometimes so closely modelled on Scott's that the 
 reflection might hardly be distinguished from the 
 substance. 
 
 Wordsworth liked the poems, although the inequali- 
 ties in their metre may have offended his taste, and 
 proposed to Keble to arrange a meeting with a view 
 to " correcting the English together." 
 
 Sir James Stephen thought Mr. Keble would have 
 surpassed his master Wordsworth if he could have 
 attained to the exquisite felicities of his master's 
 occasional and better style. " He inhabited a world 
 in which the humblest and the most familiar incidents 
 were symbolical of whatever is most elevated in things 
 spiritual and most remote from our experience in 
 things visible." 
 
 Thomas Arnold, who saw the Christian Year in 
 manuscript, thought highly of it. He said nothing of 
 the kind existed in our language. Few songs have had 
 a more sanctifying influence in chapels as well as 
 churches than Keble's Evening Hymn. 
 
 Newman considered Keble the true and primary 
 author of the Oxford movement. 
 
 Keble followed Butler in thinking "probability, not 
 demonstration, the guide of life." 
 
 Allen regarded it as a serious blot on the Church's 
 system of patronage, of which he in the main approved, 
 that such a man as John Keble should be left to die 
 the Vicar of a small country parish. 
 
 His strong soul and great intellect bowed meekly 
 beneath the yoke ; 'he that by seeking hath his Lord 
 once found hath ever found a happy fortune," and 
 when Death comes obscurity shines like a nimbus 
 round a good man's head. For thirty years he minis-
 
 108 KEBLE 
 
 tered to his country people ; sometimes unable to 
 restrain his tears as, from the sick-bed of a dying girl, 
 he came to consult his wife upon what possible means 
 could be devised for her relief. 
 
 The windows of his home, hallowed by the daily 
 matins and evensong of its Church, looked east and 
 south framed by jessamine and white banksia roses, 
 over a trimly kept garden through which a gravel 
 path led down a slope to God's calm Acre. A paradise 
 of peace and tranquillity, " like a lark's nest sheltered 
 and warm, greenery all round and blue sky over- 
 head." 
 
 In one of his last sermons Mr. Keble said : ' What 
 I want you all to remember is; we must not content 
 ourselves with leading a random life ; we must each 
 have a definite aim in life, the aim of serving Christ." 
 
 John Allen to his Brother James 
 
 "July 25, 1844. 
 
 " MY DEAR JAMES, 
 
 I have lately been spending a couple of 
 days with Mr. John Keble. I reached the vicarage 
 at Hurstley Saturday last about 8.30 p.m. I had 
 scarcely got out of the fly when a man, perhaps 
 rather below the middle size, with grey hair and 
 some of his front teeth out, came to the door, 
 and with a great deal of kindness and simplicity 
 of manner welcomed me to the house. The first 
 impression reminded me somewhat of the plain 
 exterior of Wordsworth. He ushered me into the 
 dining-room, where his wife, his sister, and a Mrs. 
 Moore, staying in the house, were just finishing 
 tea. Over the fireplace was the engraving from 
 Domenichino's picture of St. John, opposite a real 
 Wilson, a very fine landscape, with two prints 
 from German designs, ' Christ blessing little 
 children ' (Overbeck) and St. John preaching in 
 the wilderness ; a print of Judge Coleridge, and 
 Strange' s engraving of the three faces of Charles I. 
 An engraving of Bishop Selwyn stood against some
 
 KEBLE 109 
 
 books. After tea we went to the drawing-room, 
 where hung two engravings after Raffaelle (the 
 Transfiguration, and the Marriage of Joseph), a 
 large head of our Saviour (after Guido), and one 
 or two drawings of landscapes. In his study 
 there is Westmacott's marble bust of Newman, and 
 a copy in oils of Jeremy Taylor's portrait. 
 
 The first evening Keble talked of the difficulty 
 of getting Hampshire properly stocked with 
 churches. He gave his farmers a good character. 
 Sir W. Heathcote took pains in the selection of 
 tenants. While Keble was out of the room 
 Arnold's Life was spoken of; the book lay on the 
 table. Mrs. Keble said it had been specially 
 painful to her husband. 1 
 
 At evening prayers everyone stood while Mr. 
 Keble read six or eight verses from the Scriptures : 
 then the sentences, ' We are now come to the 
 evening of another day/ etc., and then the servants 
 and all kneeled down, not at chairs, nor at the 
 table, but without support. 
 
 The next morning I had to walk and breakfast 
 with one of the Curates of a district church to 
 see the Sunday School. 
 
 I got back to church at Hurstley, where the 
 Curate read prayers. All that was noticeable was 
 that during the lesson Mr. Keble at the Com- 
 munion Table, and his family in his pew, stood. 
 Mr. Keble's sermon was to his young people after 
 confirmation, very scriptural, admirably arranged, 
 and, as I thought, among the very best I had ever 
 heard ; extremely simple. After the Communion 
 we went home to luncheon, where was Dr. 
 Moberly * (who during the holidays at Winchester, 
 lives at a farm, which he has purchased in 
 Hurstley parish), and Roundell Palmer.* The 
 
 1 Allen reckoned Stanley's Life of Arnold the best book produced 
 so far in the century. 
 
 2 Head Master of Winchester, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury. 
 
 3 Attorney-General, afterwards Lord Selborne ; the compiler of 
 The Book of Praise.
 
 110 KEBLE 
 
 talk went on Scripture prints and on those 
 published by Mr. Hopey, and by the S.P.C.K. 
 Palmer said that the essence of such a committee 
 as ours (that of General Literature) must be 
 caution. I recommended him to write a grumbling 
 letter about the giving up of the publishing of the 
 designs after Rafaelle, as such a letter would 
 strengthen the hands of those members of the 
 Committee who wished them continued. Keble 
 said that, as they must go on in a diagonal, the 
 great thing was to apply as much force as one 
 could in the right direction. Palmer said, ' And 
 beyond the right direction,, as Aristotle held that 
 the way to recover a bent stick was to force it in 
 the opposite curve.' Mr. Keble laughed approv- 
 ingly. I said, ' I am sure, Mr. Keble, you would 
 never recommend going on the other side of right 
 to get your neighbours to go exactly right.' He 
 rejoined, ' Why, I was not speaking of the morality 
 of such a proceeding, but only of its effects/ 
 
 In the afternoon Mr. Keble took me to his 
 Sunday School, and first examined the boys on 
 the Catechism, and afterwards asked me to take 
 them in Scripture, especially in the proofs of the 
 doctrine of the Trinity. The day was hot and 
 the room close, so we took them into the yard 
 under the shadow of some trees growing in the 
 churchyard, which adjoins the school. After 
 church Mr. Keble took me a walk in the park, to 
 see an old castle, or rather the moat of one built 
 by Bp. Henri de Blois (1129-71). On the road 
 we talked of the examination of candidates for 
 Orders, Keble having heard elsewhere of my being 
 Chaplain to Bp. Lonsdale. On my mentioning 
 that the only books we recommended were 
 Pearson, Hooker, Book V, and Butler, Keble 
 said he supposed these were our three English 
 classics. In talking about the study of Church 
 History he said he liked to look at it in reference 
 to some one man, who lived at the period he 
 was reading about, and to make out, as much
 
 KEBLE 111 
 
 as he could, what that person thought of what 
 was going on around him : to take at one 
 time Sceculum Ignatianum, at another Sceculum 
 Cyprianicum, etc. 
 
 Speaking of the mystical interpretation of 
 Scripture, I expressed a doubt as to following 
 Augustine. I said I preferred what I had read of 
 Chrysostom's expositions. Mr. Keble said he 
 thought Augustine's mind was rather oratorical 
 than poetical ; that he did not think his spiri- 
 tualizations of Scripture were inventions, but were 
 actually drawn from a stock of Catholic Interpre- 
 tations then accessible, and reaching from the 
 Apostles' days. Keble said he found that these 
 mystical interpretations took hold of the common 
 people. And again, on my expressing my fear of 
 adding anything to God's Word, he said that his 
 plan was, when he met with any mystical inter- 
 pretation which struck him as probable, to 
 consult the books within his reach, and if he found 
 the same view entertained by one or two of the 
 Ancients, he gave it to his people without scruple, 
 as feeling pretty sure that he was right. On my 
 mentioning Vogan, Keble said that with him he 
 could not go along, as his mystical interpretations 
 were not the interpretations after the ancient 
 Church. 
 
 Mr. Keble promised to write to me something 
 about the examinations for Orders, if, upon 
 reflection, he could think of anything likely to 
 help me. At dinner we had three Curates and 
 another clergyman. Some of the talk went on 
 the best modes of catechizing children, and of 
 managing Sunday Schools. I spoke of what I 
 thought could be done by a teacher to lead his 
 scholars to compare different passages of Scrip- 
 ture, and so in a measure to find out the interpre- 
 tation for themselves. Mr. Keble, dissenting, 
 asked how far I should think it wise to foster in 
 the scholars the notion that they could themselves 
 find out the meaning of Scripture, and was it not
 
 112 KEBLE 
 
 best to give them with authority the interpreta- 
 tion ? 
 
 The following day, talking of O. Cromwell, Mr. 
 Keble said that from the letters of O. Cromwell, 
 now in Sir W. Heathcote's possession, it appeared 
 he was as sharp at buying land as at other things. 
 Talking of Carlyle's making a hero of him Mr. 
 Keble said, ' Whitewashing is a very good trade, 
 and it ought to have clever fellows in it as well 
 as other trades. But/ after a pause he added, 
 ' the worst of this whitewashing is, that to be 
 successful in it one must blackwash such a num- 
 ber of other people/ And again, after another 
 pause, ' The most evident stain on Milton's moral 
 character would be removed could Carlyle be 
 successful in this/ alluding to his flattery of 
 O. Cromwell. 
 
 We had a long day's work in the school. The 
 boys' school is a remarkably good one ; the girls' 
 school respectable. Mr. Keble said afterwards 
 he thought he and I went on two different plans 
 in teaching children, and he thought it would be 
 better for the future to make the instruction a 
 mixture of analysis and synthesis. That he had 
 been in the habit, after reading a passage of 
 Scripture, of asking his boys what they learned 
 from it ; whereas I had put the conclusion before 
 them, asking for the premises, e.g. asking what 
 passages of Scripture taught us the fitting subj ects 
 of prayer, and the mode in which prayer should 
 be offered. We had some talk about the dutiful- 
 ness of following the Church's teaching in the 
 Sunday School so as, if possible, to make the 
 Epistle interpret the Gospel. 
 
 In the evening he took me to see the gardens of 
 Hurstley Park. We had some talk about the 
 best expositors of Scripture. He said that the 
 volume of ' Plain Sermons," now coming out, 
 was hitherto all his writing, the third volume 
 being Pusey's, the fifth volume Newman's ; that 
 he could not always distinguish between his
 
 KEBLE 113 
 
 brother's (T. Keble's) sermons and the editor's 
 (J. Williams). On my speaking of South Wales 
 he asked if I were related to you. 
 
 On Tuesday morning I left to visit Otterbourne 
 Schools. I hope to have the pleasure, however, 
 of paying him a yearly visit. 
 
 JOHN ALLEN." 
 
 8
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 OMAR KHAYYAM 
 
 THE Rubdiydt of Omar Khayyam, published anony- 
 mously in 1859, fell unnoticed from the Press. After 
 the lapse of years its attraction was discovered, and 
 further editions were called for. When its author 
 was an old man, men began, unheeded by him, to talk 
 of it. Since his death the Omar Khayyam Club has 
 been formed, and plans laid for again writing the life 
 of its celebrated author. One Christian young lady 
 received ten copies of the poem with its " transitions 
 from deadly fatalism to tavern house songs," in 
 various editions de luxe among her Christmas gifts ! 
 
 Even Carlyle, who greatly admired the art of his 
 rendering, thought his old friend Fitz might have 
 spent his time better than in translating the philosophy 
 of that old Mahommedan sinner (sic) Omar. 
 
 In 1857 Fitzgerald wrote to his friend E. H. Cowell, 
 a Persian scholar : 
 
 " Johnson said the poets were the best pre- 
 servers of a language ; for people must go to the 
 original to relish them. Omar Khayyam rings 
 like true metal ; his philosophy is, alas ! one that 
 never fails in the world. 
 
 ' Ah, my beloved, fill the cup that clears 
 TODAY of past regrets and future fears 
 To-morrow ? Why, to-morrow I may be 
 Myself with yesterday's sev'n thousand years.' " 
 
 Again, May 7, 1857 : 
 
 ' When in Bedfordshire I put away almost all 
 books, except Omar Khayyam ! which I could 
 
 114
 
 OMAR KHAYYAM 115 
 
 not help looking over, in a paddock covered with 
 buttercups and brushed by a delicious breeze, 
 while a dainty racing filly came startling up to 
 wonder and snuff about me. You would be 
 sorry to think that Omar breathes a sort of 
 consolation to me! Poor fellow, I shall perhaps 
 make some notes and inquiries as I go on." 
 
 Later, July 1857 : ^ 
 
 " June over ! A thing I think of with Omar- 
 like sorrow and the roses here are blowing and 
 going as abundantly as ever in Persia. I am 
 still looking at Omar by an open window which 
 gives over a greener landscape than yours [India]." 
 
 " September 3, 1858. 
 
 "As to my Omar : I gave it to Parker in 
 January, I think, he saying Fraser was agreeable 
 to take it. Since then I have heard no more ; 
 so, as I suppose, they don't care about it ; and 
 may be quite right. My translation is very un- 
 literal ; many quotation^ are mashed together ; 
 and something lost, I doubt, of Omar's simplicity, 
 which is so much a virtue in him. But there it 
 is, such as it is." 
 
 " November 2/58. 
 " MY DEAR CO WELL, 
 
 I took my Omar from Parker as I saw he 
 didn't care for it ; and also, I want to enlarge it 
 to near as much again, of such matter as he 
 wouldn't dare to put in Fraser. If I print it, I 
 shall do the impudence of quoting your apology 
 for Omar's free- thinking. I doubt you will repent 
 of ever having shewed me the book. My trans- 
 lation has its merit ; but it misses a main one 
 in Omar, which I will leave you to find out."
 
 116 OMAR KHAYYAM 
 
 Later, December 7, 1861 : 
 
 " MY DEAR COWELL, 
 
 I suppose you would think it a dangerous 
 thing to edit Omar, else who so proper ? Nay, are 
 you not the only man to do it ? And he certainly 
 is worth re-editing." 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald to W. H. Thompson 
 
 * " MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE, 
 
 Dec. 9/61. 
 
 "As to my own peccadilloes in verse, which 
 never pretend to be original, this is the story of 
 Rubaiyat. 1 I had translated them partly for 
 Cowell ; young Parker asked me for something 
 for Eraser, and I gave him the less wicked of these 
 to choose as he chose. As I saw he didn't want 
 them, I printed some copies with Quaritch. Cowell, 
 to whom I sent a copy, was naturally alarmed at 
 it, he being a very religious man : nor have I 
 given any other copies." 
 
 Fitzgerald never paid much attention to the book 
 or cared for it ; he sometimes printed his work to 
 judge of it : ' to see r^w it looked." 
 
 After his version of Omar was printed Fitzgerald 
 gave up Persian and studied Spanish (now much 
 recommended) ; he had a Quixotic love for Don 
 Quixote and thought Cervantes in the second part 
 had succumbed to the influence of the hero he ridiculed. 
 
 1 The quatrains.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A PASTOR 
 
 WHEN Allen went northwards Fitzgerald was inclined 
 to follow him. He went to Lichfield to look around ; 
 but the little Cathedral city was at that time some 
 six hours from Frees, which lay eighteen miles away 
 from a railway station, and, too, seven miles from the 
 Trent's busy, turbid stream, famous for the breweries 
 it supplied rather than for the sport it afforded. 
 
 Fitzgerald to John Allen 
 
 " BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, 
 
 March 2, 1848. 
 
 " MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 Every year I have less and less desire to 
 go to London, and now you are not there I have 
 one reason the less for not going there. I want 
 to settle myself in some town for good for 
 life ! A pleasant country town, a cathedral town 
 perhaps ! What sort of a place is Lichfield ? 
 
 I say nothing about French Revolutions, 
 which are too big for a little letter. I think we 
 shall all be in a war before the year is out ; I 
 know not how else the French can keep peace at 
 home, but by quarrelling abroad. But ' come 
 what come may. . . / ' 
 
 " BOULGE, Friday. 
 
 ' I suppose by a ' Minsterpool ' in Lichfield you 
 mean a select coterie of prebends, canons, etc. 
 These would never trouble me. I should much 
 prefer the society of the Doctor, the Lawyer (if 
 tolerably honest), and the singing men. I love 
 a small cathedral town ; and the dignified re- 
 
 117
 
 118 A PASTOR 
 
 spectability of the church potentates is a part of 
 the pleasure. I sometimes think of Salisbury ; 
 and have altogether long had an idea of settling 
 at forty years old. Perhaps it will be at Wood- 
 bridge after all ! " 
 
 Allen went down to his distant parish, and slept as 
 best he might with his budding family at the village 
 inn. Frees had been called "a hell upon earth"; 
 there had been no school to speak of in the place; 
 ten public-houses drove a thriving trade ; while cock- 
 fighting and badger-baiting were in vogue. And there 
 he lived with an ethereal power, wielding a sword out 
 of Heaven's own armoury, which no buckler can finally 
 withstand ; discerning in the toil-worn labourer and 
 the money-making farmer that divine significance 
 which lies in the being of every man ; teaching them 
 that God was still present in their lives to help them 
 upwards ; and there for nearly forty years he perse- 
 vered, guiding them through the waste of time to that 
 ' palace of which our sun is but a porch lamp " by a 
 road which even in decrepitude and decay they still 
 found to be the Path of Peace. 
 
 When, with some reluctance, Allen built a new 
 vicarage, his friend Lord Grimthorpe said : " He kept 
 a certain walk all askew in the garden because it was 
 his predecessor's, who was one of those parsons who 
 used to give out in church the meeting of the hounds 
 as they do now saints' days and meetings of district 
 visitors ! " 
 
 His Bishop remarked, " If I had thought you meant 
 to walk in his ways I should not have put you here ! " 
 But although he made as few changes as possible in 
 the organisation of the parish, the church services, 
 two in number, became events in the week. 
 
 Preparation was a law of Allen's life. A great 
 authority on meetings for the people said : ' They 
 hang on three ' P's ' : Preparation, Prayer, and Punc- 
 tuality. Punctuality in ending as in beginning. Allen 
 would spend hours in preparing what it took him 
 half an hour to deliver. " As the poor have but one
 
 A PASTOR 119 
 
 dish of theology a week," he said, " it ought to be 
 carefully dressed." 
 
 Before he took a service he prepared himself by 
 prayer in his study, never voluntarily speaking a word 
 between that prayer and the beginning of the service. 
 Then, strong in the power of two spiritual facts, the 
 power of God and God's nearness to man, he entered 
 His house reverently to confess with his people his 
 sins before God. 
 
 Reverence is the highest feeling man's nature is 
 capable of, the crown of his whole moral being, the 
 visible sign of a sense of an invisible Presence, and has 
 a principle of reason for its root. No injunctions move 
 men so much to reverence as a devout behaviour in 
 the act of praying ; for, if one man in a back bench 
 feel the presence of God in a church, it is there. The 
 sentences of hope fell from his lips as messages from 
 Heaven. The Psalms he read, the clerk leading the 
 responding verses. Psalms are more impressive, more 
 instructive and comforting when recited than when 
 sung. The Bible he read solemnly and with authority 
 as the Word of God. By doing faithfully his office in 
 the Litany as a leader of worship he united his people 
 with the Trinity of Compassion appealed to. Noise 
 is not prayer, though it may sound like it ; millions 
 of hours are daily passed in a business called prayer, 
 while the minutes spent in prayer are few. Only those 
 who believe that God is propitiated by seeing them 
 in a devout posture, or by the iteration of words, can 
 measure their prayers by the length of them, and by 
 the number of them reckon their services. 
 
 Once a month having read the Commandments, and 
 on the Sunday previous the exhortations prescribed, 
 with the authority of a great soul sure of the power 
 of God in man's life, he dispensed to his people the 
 symbols of their mystical union with each other and 
 with their common Head ; more anxious that the 
 Holy Table should be furnished with humble and 
 joyful guests, than that the communicants' roll should 
 be long at the end of the year. Reality is of God's 
 making ; it alone is strong.
 
 120 A PASTOR 
 
 His sermons were based thought by thought upon 
 the Bible, and aimed generally at simplicity and 
 familiar expressiveness. He once said : 
 
 " He is no friend to sinners who allows a word 
 to escape him tending to lessen men's fears as 
 to the consequences of sin. We are in a state of 
 ignorance, but our speculations cannot alter the 
 realities of our condition. So far as experience 
 teaches, the two roads on which men travel 
 diverge continually further and further apart. 
 We are sure that the Judge will do right ; but 
 on this side the grave no one can measure the 
 gulf that is fixed between Dives and Lazarus ; no 
 one can limit the awful declarations from the lips 
 of our Saviour as to what shall be at the Day 
 of Doom." 
 
 Religion, the distinction of good and evil, of thou 
 shalt, and thou shalt not, is the soul of man's history. 
 " A seer seeing into the life of things," he taught the 
 facts of eternity from the parables of Him who knew 
 them, and God's power to make men good from His 
 miracles ; nor did he hesitate to mention in God's 
 House the common sins of his people, e.g. " sitting 
 needlessly in the public-house," not paying their debts, 
 dusting the pepper in the shop, speaking evil one of 
 another, and using bad language. The sins of the 
 landlord were rebuked as well as those of the tenant, 
 and when remonstrated with he said, " Will the Master 
 find fault ? Ah, we must leave it all to the Day." 
 Death, judgment, and eternity lay at the background 
 of all John Allen thought and did. God's Word was 
 great and all else was little to him. His pupil-teachers 
 wrote out his sermons from memory and went forth 
 into the world to shine as lights in many places. One 
 took orders and became a powerful preacher among 
 the Lancashire miners, for a man's influence is not 
 limited by the bounds of his parish. A brother from 
 a neighbouring Anglican Brotherhood said he had 
 never felt the presence of God in any church as when
 
 A PASTOR 121 
 
 the Archdeacon read the service one week-day evening 
 to his people; " he seemed to lose himself in it." 
 
 Canon Norris said : " His parishioners, young and 
 old alike, heard him with breathless attention on 
 Sunday afternoons draw forth after the second 
 lesson, in wonderfully few and simple words, the 
 teaching of the chapter." 
 
 To spiritual worth the spirit must do reverence ; no 
 heart is so sunk and stupefied, so withered and 
 pampered that the felt presence of a nobler heart will 
 not inspire it and lead it captive. 
 
 Day by day, praying as he went, he passed among 
 his people, a light burning with mild, equable radiance, 
 as the enlightener of daily life bearing the Temple of 
 the Holy Ghost into the dwellings of the poor and 
 hard-worked, of the sinful and worldly-wise ; not 
 conscious of any special power to appeal to a wider 
 audience than that of his own parish or his own 
 Archdeaconry. 
 
 One of his clergy said : " George Herbert of Bemerton 
 was his ideal of a parish priest, and indeed he was no 
 inadequate reproduction of the original." 
 
 Before he went out at half-past two he knelt before 
 God, and could be overheard praying aloud in the 
 lonely lanes as he passed from house to house ; often 
 staying out until seven in the evening, visiting some 
 twenty houses and praying and reading the Bible in 
 many of them. The sick he visited daily, or every 
 other day, the infirm weekly, and every house in his 
 parish once in three months. 
 
 To a young clergyman he gave this advice : " Have 
 a fixed time for going out, and keep to it. Often in the 
 gloomy days of winter the pleasant warmth of your 
 fireside will tempt you not to leave it ; remind yourself 
 that, because the weather is depressing, your visit will 
 be the more acceptable to some sufferer less able to 
 contend with its effects upon the spirits than you are." 
 
 A parishioner wrote after his death : 
 
 " I was 19 years with my father, who was always 
 at home and 111 several times, at my mothers
 
 122 A PASTOR 
 
 Death the Archdeacon's prayers were such not 
 to be soon forgotten, that I might be inabled to 
 fill her place, which I believe have been answered 
 for I have been comforted and incouraged many 
 times when I have thought of what he has said 
 to me. the first thing that particularly struck 
 me was once he Called, I was going to milk he 
 waited for and walked with me, as far as he was 
 going my way, he said I looked better since I 
 came Home, I said I was very well, he said many 
 people considered good health the greatest thing 
 but he considered it 3rd on the list, the first and 
 greatest matter was to have the heart Right 
 towards God. the 2nd was to have a Happy 
 Home, and the 3rd good health, and if we had 
 these 3 things he thought we should not be far 
 wrong, my Father and him used to have a great 
 deal of talk as he often used to Call when he was 
 well, if by Chance anything had been said that 
 was not quite right about anybody he would say, 
 we should make much of the good and little of 
 the evil, once he called after we had a narrow 
 escape of having the House burned and if it had 
 been it would have been a serious loss to us, as it 
 was full of things for a larger House how he 
 rejoiced with us, and kneeled down with us to 
 offer a prayer of thankfulness for God's mercyful 
 pronvdance. that was the way he always taught 
 us. then I had a feaver myself he used often to 
 visit me and read just a few picked verses, sutable 
 never to weary me for I was very 111. he used to 
 say all things worked together for good to them 
 that loved God. he called before he left prees 
 and I said how very sorry I was that he was 
 leaving us ; for I had hoped he would have visited 
 my Father in his last illness ; he said if I thought 
 he had done his Duty the best way to Repay him 
 was to welcome his successor which I have tryed 
 to do. 
 
 if ever he came when we were at meals, he would 
 never come in he would say O you are at your
 
 A PASTOR 123 
 
 tea or diner I wont Come in thank you are you 
 all well, and if by Chance we were out, we knew 
 when he had been by a Cross he always made in 
 the sand and I believe he never missed Calling 
 on all his people at the beginning of the year to 
 wish them a happy new year, at least he took an 
 Interest in everything that concerned us he got 
 up a Bank for childrens pence and I started to 
 put all the girls got in it and when it broke up he 
 took the trouble to Come down to say he thought 
 it a pity they should leave of saving and if I 
 would send them to his study at 9 o'clock in 
 the morning he would go with them to the post 
 office and deposit it there and very likely had it 
 not been so they would not have had as much ; 
 for they have each saved a nice bit and as to 
 punctuality I should think there never was 
 anybody like him for he was to a minute in 
 everything and the Ladies often Called on us and 
 we were always delighted to see them the fact is 
 when I was at Weston I felt quite at a loss but it 
 prepared me a little before we lost them altogether, 
 and texts of scripture he used to tell us for 
 every occasion you could think at, such as set a 
 watch before my mouth O Lord and keep the 
 Door of my lips ; a soft answer turneth away 
 wrath ; thou that judgest another condemnest 
 thou thyself." 
 
 One old woman, after she had left his parish, said, 
 in speaking of him to her new clergyman, " Him and 
 me were very great. When I came to the door, he 
 would always say, ' May I come in ? ' The clergy- 
 man said, " I am afraid he was more polite than I am." 
 " I reckon so." After a pause she added, " He would 
 often say though, ' But I'm afraid I shall make you 
 angry/ ' Another said, " Eh, dear, he was wonderful 
 good company"; and another, "I could tell him 
 anything." Behaviour is a mirror in which every man 
 displays his image. 
 
 As the shepherd of all the souls in his parish, con-
 
 124 A PASTOR 
 
 formist and nonconformist, he went to them in their 
 sickness, and sent them comforts ; regarding their 
 ministers as soldiers, in the same army- with himself, 
 enlisted under Heaven's Captaincy to do battle against 
 the same enemy ; so the men's spiritual life throve 
 for there was no root of bitterness to defile it. When 
 one minister placarded the village with notices that 
 confirmation was unscriptural, he so continued his 
 kindness to him that the minister asked to be admitted 
 to Holy Orders ; and when a chapel with a handsome 
 frontage was erected in the heart of his little village 
 he was found praying within it that the footsteps of 
 the worshippers might be guided into the way of 
 peace. 
 
 Recognising it as part of a clergyman's duty to 
 encourage thrift and industry, he subscribed largely 
 to the cow club, and welcomed all efforts to increase 
 the material prosperity of the people. In the parish 
 of Frees all the cottagers had a pig, a great 
 number a cow, and many of them had gained 
 independence. 
 
 God loves all His children ; he that does His 
 children most good is best beloved of God. 
 
 " Land," he said, " has, as property, a character 
 of its own. Originally it was held as a trust 
 subject to certain responsibilities, and still bears 
 moral responsibilities of the gravest kind. 
 
 ' The present fashion of making the number 
 of birds and animals killed in a day a subject of 
 boast and rivalry is degrading and demoralising 
 to all who have to do with it. 
 
 ' There is a selfishness connected with the high 
 preservation of game. 
 
 ' When our Master comes He will make enquiry 
 as to these matters. 
 
 ' I cannot understand an employer not feeling 
 it his duty to say to his men, ' By all means 
 unite, if you think you can better yourselves. I 
 love freedom of action myself ; I am bound to 
 encourage freedom of action in others."
 
 A PASTOR 125 
 
 Men are endowed by their Creator with native 
 rights ; among these are life and liberty ; but the 
 pursuit of happiness is not among them. 
 
 He felt deeply the widespread evils of intemperance, 
 the crimes occasioned by it, the eternal ruin of souls 
 to which it tends. The blessing of God seemed to him 
 to rest upon every phase of the movement for its 
 reform ; and the conduct of the Rechabites and our 
 Saviour's precepts on self-sacrifice, to point the way 
 to voluntary abstinence. 
 
 His wife and daughters he asked to dedicate them- 
 selves to the service of his cure. Mrs. Allen, a busy 
 woman, taught, with her daughters, in the Sunday 
 School and in the night-school he opened for men, 
 helped the women to save their money and bring up 
 their children, and was their comforter on their sick- 
 beds. His children, from the time they could read, 
 were sent with food to the poor and taught to read 
 and pray with them. 
 
 The Curate of Frees, John Seymour Allen, said, " He 
 was one of those men who seemed to be entirely 
 removed above the meannesses and petty cares of this 
 world, and to have his conversation essentially in 
 heaven, so that no one could be in his company 
 without feeling himself lifted for the time being out 
 of the world. It might be said of his influence on 
 character, nihil tetigit quod non ornavit." 
 
 Speaking of his " industry and kindness, his prompt 
 action and true sayings," James Lonsdale said, " When 
 with him one felt one was with a man, if ever there was 
 one, determined to do his duty cost what it might ; 
 one quite ready to sacrifice a right hand if called to 
 do so. 
 
 " I feel grateful for his many attempts to do me 
 good, and for all the happy days we had together. ..." 
 
 The way of the Cross is hard ; but Allen said, " We 
 clergy do best when we keep our necks close to the 
 collar; as soon as we draw back from it the yoke 
 begins to gall." If at the end of life a man were asked, 
 " Why he had not served God," he would have to 
 reply, " It cost too much," but before he decide he
 
 126 A PASTOR 
 
 should consider what it costs to lose Christ. The Cross 
 may not attract him, but it may cost him more to 
 forsake it than to bear it. 
 
 ' Think of the Cross. Your Master is cold and 
 naked ; He is alone ; behind Him the sky is 
 dreary, and streaked with darkening clouds, for 
 the night comes on the night of God. His locks 
 are wet with the driving rain ; His beauty is 
 departed from Him ; all men have left Him all 
 men and God also, and the holy angels hide their 
 faces. He is crowned with thorns, but you with 
 garlands ; His hands are torn with piercing nails 
 while yours are full of gold. Will you tell me 
 you can still be faithful though in brave array ? 
 I fear the sword of persecution can find no entrance 
 to a heart so mantled no ! Hear you not the 
 voice of the Cross ? Follow Me. By His suffer- 
 ings, as we look on Him, we are engaged to suffer. 
 Suffering is our vow and profession. Love which 
 cannot suffer is unworthy of the name of Love." ' 
 
 Yet the shepherd who so cared for his sheep was 
 not sad ; the virgin lilies of his garden, the blue hills 
 that bounded his horizon, were to him an effluence of 
 the Fountain of all Beauty, the mysterious Garment 
 of the Unseen, the handwriting of his God. 
 
 Each man's course is the facsimile of no other man's ; 
 by its inward nature it must be original. It has to 
 combine a certain inward talent with a certain outward 
 environment. A wise combination of these two make 
 the possibilities of life infinite. 
 
 1 From the monk's sermon in John Inglesant.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 JOHN STERLING 
 
 JOHN ALLEN belonged to the Sterling Club. In 1849 
 the Record newspaper stated that the members of it 
 denied the inspiration of the Bible and did not believe 
 the Athanasian Creed. Allen wished the name of the 
 club to be changed lest, as he wrote to Spedding, there 
 should arise a suspicion in the heart of any member 
 of it that any man in the club were not sufficiently 
 careful about the integrity of the faith. The members, 
 however, would not condescend to change the name 
 of their club because of the criticism of a religious 
 newspaper, and urged Allen not to add the weight of 
 his authority to it. But, feeling he would do wrong 
 in perpetuating the name now attention had been 
 drawn to it, he felt bound to resist the wishes of his 
 friends, and to withdraw from the club. 
 
 This small club was formed by Sterling while he 
 was still in orders. Thackeray, Alfred Tennyson, 
 Monckton Milnes, Archdeacon Manning, Lord Lyttel- 
 ton, Thomas Carlyle, C. Romilly, F. D. Maurice, 
 Blakesley, Hartley Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, G. S. 
 Venables, and James Spedding were members. 
 
 Letter from F. D. Maurice 
 
 " March g, 1849. 
 
 " Storm is certainly rising, and the newspapers 
 are going to send hail-stones upon us. What do 
 you think is the last charge ? That the three 
 Wilberforces, Manning, Allen, Julius Hare, three 
 writers in Punch, Trench and I belong to a club 
 established in honour of Sterling ! the fact being 
 that we are all members of a club which meets to 
 
 127
 
 128 JOHN STERLING 
 
 dine once a month originally established by 
 Sterling and called by his name on that account. 
 He himself wished some other name to be adopted, 
 and implied that it ought to be changed when his 
 views had become what he thought would be 
 offensive. Think of this being the subject of a 
 long article which is copied to-day into the Morn- 
 ing Herald ! Alas ! what are we come to, what 
 shall we come to ? Love and truth seem to lose 
 all connection with the name of religion and God 
 to be utterly forgotten by those who use His 
 name every moment. I wish to confess the sins 
 of the time as my own. Ah ! how needful do I 
 feel it, for the sins of others produce such sin in 
 me and stir up my unsanctified nature terribly. 
 How one should feel that every idle word one 
 speaks may spread mischief and misery into 
 hundreds of hearts and kindle up the wrong that 
 is in them, and perhaps check many a true- 
 hearted man in his duties. 
 
 F. D. MAURICE." 
 
 John Sterling's character was not supremely original, 
 nor was his fate in the world wonderful ; he achieved 
 neither what men call greatness, nor what intrinsically 
 is such, yet a tumult arose around him. Both Thomas 
 Carlyle and Julius Hare (author of Guesses at Truth) 
 wrote his biography. 
 
 Sterling left Cambridge in 1827, and looked around 
 on life full of hope, in the glow of a young enthusiasm. 
 He wrote a little, some sketches, and brief essays, and 
 a novel called Arthur Coningsby. But when he was 
 twenty-seven a strong convulsion, rent the deepest 
 fountains of his heart. He took a fatal interest in the 
 desperate Spanish expedition of the refugee Torrijos 
 and his company, and encouraged Boyd to join it. 
 Sterling himself would have gone with them had it 
 not been for the tears that fell from a pair of blue 
 eyes. Their ships were pursued off the Spanish coast, 
 all treaty refused, and every man in the expedition, 
 Boyd included, was put to death. Sterling's distress
 
 JOHN STERLING 129 
 
 at this calamity was immense. ' I hear the sound of 
 that musketry," he wrote ; " it is as if the bullets were 
 tearing my own brain." 
 
 When this great remorseful misery came upon him 
 it kindled, as with a sudden lightning stroke, into 
 conflagration all the ruined structure of his past life. 
 
 Piety of heart, a certain reality of religious faith, 
 was always Sterling's, a possession he would not and 
 could not throw away. He began to struggle inwards 
 and upwards, to strive by prayer and longing en- 
 deavour to grope his way into the presence of God ; 
 searching for some sanctuary where he might make 
 expiation and find deliverance. 
 
 The result was that, in June 1834, Sterling was 
 installed curate at Hurstmonceaux under Julius Hare. 
 No priest of any church could more fervently address 
 himself to his functions than he. He went about 
 among the poor, and those that had need of help ; 
 zealously forwarded schools and beneficences ; strove 
 with his whole might to instruct and aid all who 
 suffered consciously in body, or, still worse, uncon- 
 sciously in mind. The Apostle Paul was his model ; 
 the perils, voyagings, and ultimate martyrdom of 
 Christian Paul in those old ages on the great scale, 
 were to be translated into detail and become the 
 practical emblem of Christian Sterling on the coast 
 of Sussex in this new age. It would be no longer 
 from Jerusalem to Damascus, to Arabia or Ephesus 
 that he would travel, but each house of his appointed 
 parish should be to him what each of those great 
 cities was a place where he would bend his whole 
 being for the conversion, purification, and elevation 
 of those under his influence. All his powers should be 
 directed to this end ; he was continually devising some 
 fresh scheme for improving the condition of the parish. 
 His aim was to awaken the minds of the people, to 
 arouse their conscience, to call forth their sense of 
 moral responsibility, to make them feel their own 
 sinfulness, their need of redemption, and thus lead 
 them to a recognition of the Divine Love by which 
 that redemption is offered to us.
 
 130 JOHN STERLING 
 
 In visiting them he was diligent in all weathers, to 
 the injury of his own health ; his gentleness and 
 considerate care for the sick soothed their sorrows and 
 won their affections. 
 
 His scorn of all meanness, of all false pretences and 
 conventional beliefs, softened as it was by compassion 
 for the victims of those besetting sins of a cultivated 
 age, his never-flagging impetuosity in pushing onward 
 to some unattained point of duty to the parish he 
 toiled in, were like a shower of rain bringing down 
 freshness and brightness on a dusty roadside hedge. 
 One poor cobbler gratefully ascribed a great change 
 in his life to Sterling's generous encouragement and 
 charitable care for him. But a clergyman's life, 
 pursued as Sterling pursued it, proved too strenuous 
 for a delicate constitution, and illness forced him to 
 forsake his work. 
 
 Coming up to town, he made Carlyle's acquaintance, 
 and talked often about Christianity, Church, Anglican 
 and other, how essential the belief in it is to man, 
 insisting on the need of a personal God. 
 
 Although of warm, quick feelings he never showed 
 anger towards an opponent ; one wrathful glance is 
 recorded, and it was but a glance, and gone in a 
 moment. " Flat Pantheism ! " he urged in the 
 warmth of a debate : " it is mere Pantheism, that ! " 
 " And suppose it were Pot- theism ? '" cried his friend, 
 " if the thing is true ! " Sterling did look hurt at this 
 flippant heterodoxy ; the soul of his own creed was 
 not indifferent to pot or pan in such departments of 
 inquiry. 
 
 Once, hi the fire of some discussion, he broke out 
 almost in the spirit of St. Paul : '" I could plunge into 
 the bottom of hell if I were sure of finding the devil 
 there and getting him strangled ! " 
 
 Goethe he held in abhorrence, detesting his want of 
 feeling. " Such an one is a worthless idol ; not excel- 
 lent, only sham excellent." 
 
 Of Carlyle he wrote : "I find in all my conversa- 
 tions with him that his fundamental position is, the 
 good of evil ; he is for ever quoting Goethe's epigram
 
 JOHN STERLING 131 
 
 about the idleness of wishing to ' jump off one's own 
 shadow.' ' 
 
 On one occasion he preached for Allen on the Resur- 
 rection. Carlyle was present ; they left the chapel 
 together. 
 
 The easier faith is made to us, the harder it is to 
 believe. Sterling would have made a good martyr 
 had he lived in the days of Diocletian ; and in those 
 days Arthur Clough would have been a boy hero, 
 famed throughout the ages. Plux crux quam tran- 
 quillitas invitat ad Christum. Opulent, full of sunny 
 hope, of noble valour and divine intention, Sterling 
 was no thinker ; his faculties were of the active, not 
 of the passive or contemplative sort. Our minds are 
 given us not that we may cavil and argue, but that 
 we may see into the realities of life, have a clear belief 
 and understanding about something upon which we 
 can act. 
 
 The war of belief against unbelief is a never- 
 ending warfare, and now, one more strong man fell in 
 the battle. Scepticism opened her Pandora box of 
 miseries ; and Sterling, so Carlyle triumphantly affirms, 
 lapsed at last into Goethism. 
 
 His later days were spent in continual flight for his 
 very existence ; ducking under like a poor unfledged 
 partridge bird before the mower ; darting continually 
 from nook to nook, and there crouching to escape the 
 scythe of Death. Sickness need not frustrate the 
 work of God in a man's heart, nor quench his influence ; 
 Blaise Pascal and George Herbert both died young, 
 after a life of ill-health. Agnosticism punishes its 
 victims. When a man dies his heirs ask what 
 property he has left behind him ; the Angel who 
 bends over him, asks what good deeds he has sent 
 before him. Sterling suffered much, and did com- 
 paratively little. 
 
 Nor is he the only man who has awakened to doubts 
 of his own faith after he has dedicated himself to the 
 sacred profession. Maybe it needed no courage or 
 self-sacrifice on his part to renounce his Orders, for his 
 father was a wealthy man, one of the principal writers
 
 132 JOHN STERLING 
 
 in the Times, " the thunderer of the Times news- 
 paper " ; but, in the case of hundreds of men, " it 
 would be impossible to do that," as they would say, 
 so they try to believe they believe ; and when the 
 organ is pealing, and banners are swaying, they almost 
 succeed ; but when, on the evening of the same day, 
 they sit by the fire with a pipe and a sceptical friend, 
 they are quite sure they do not. Nevertheless, they 
 apply themselves to what they call " the duties of 
 their profession," say a great number of services very 
 fast, often excel with the parish magazine, the boy 
 scouts, and other parochial machinery ; their sermons, 
 if not inspiring, are at any rate short, and their Vicars 
 are not censorious ; their visiting is perhaps a little 
 perfunctory, but " you cannot have everything." 
 
 They often become highly ecclesiastical, boasting of 
 their " loyalty to the Church," and showing it by 
 sweeping the hem of their cassocks aside from the 
 contamination of a dissenter's prayer. With agnostics 
 they are friendly if they conform, or, at any rate, do 
 not non-conform. 
 
 Carlyle says it is a melancholy fact that when 
 Belief waxes uncertain, Practice becomes unsound ; 
 and every work a man undertakes with an eye to the 
 look of it is a parent of new misery to someone or 
 another. Yet hi ten years' time these men become so 
 accustomed to their position, that they no longer 
 question whether it be necessary to believe the 
 doctrines they undertake to teach. But there will 
 come a time when God, who is silent now, will speak. 
 
 The wealth of a man lies in the number of souls he 
 loves and blesses, not the number he is loved and 
 blessed by. 
 
 Other men confess boldly (to themselves), " I do not 
 believe the creeds, but I like my profession." The 
 nobler sort like it for the leisure and opportunity it 
 affords for philanthropy ; and so purify their souls in 
 a sacred fellowship with Him " who loved them," and 
 without noise of words, without confusion of opinions, 
 without the shock of argument, but by service and 
 self-sacrifice, learn to know Him in whom they have
 
 JOHN STERLING 133 
 
 not believed ; living with God in the world, of God's 
 Light they are not bereft. All men feel and love the 
 moral sublimity of a devotion to purposes exempt 
 from selfishness ; and incalculable sources of inspiration 
 lie in God's work and in the attempt to do it. 
 
 On the other hand, men who love art better than 
 service, " staggered it may be by their own vast wits," 
 read a good deal and take pains with their sermons, 
 which are much admired, and sometimes win them 
 promotion. Those on moral questions are often 
 excellent, while those in their mystico-philosophico 
 vein are reckoned " lovely " and " very deep." Since 
 1886 (the appearance of Lux Mundi) they have 
 preached too often on Higher Criticism ; and while 
 most of their intelligent congregations are too ignorant 
 of the Holy Scriptures to know or care how many 
 Isaiahs there are likely to have been, the youths and 
 maidens among them leave their Sunday morning 
 orisons, complacently assured that ' you need not 
 believe what is in the Bible." 
 
 When the sighing of the sorrowful and sinful 
 penetrates to the ears of such pastors they soothe 
 themselves with their " faith which is large in tune 
 and that which shapes it to some perfect end." 
 
 But a man who will do faithfully needs to believe 
 firmly ; and the test of a Revelation is its power for 
 good, so when time's hoarfrost sprinkles their hair, 
 a grey mist enfolds their spirit. Life past was pleasant, 
 with all its pursuits or hobbies ; life present is jejune. 
 Their healthful sports fatigue instead of refreshing 
 them ; and the veil of life to come can only hide the 
 Judgment-seat of Him who died to restore the world 
 they have lived in and left as they found it. 
 
 Felicity must be distinguished from Prosperity. 
 Prosperity is seldom a spiritual tonic ; it leads to 
 ambition, and ambition leads to disappointment. The 
 wheel of Fortune turns but once, and then the course 
 is over. When a man rises from life's feast it can 
 make no difference to him whether he has enjoyed his 
 banquet or no ; but it must be a matter of supreme 
 importance whether he has sown some fertile seeds to
 
 134 JOHN STERLING 
 
 bring forth food for mankind in successive tilths and 
 ever-widening harvests. Luther said he would not 
 purchase Paradise at the price of another forty years 
 of life ! But, after all, life is short, and heaven is for 
 ever. 
 
 To other priests the doubt, whether they be true 
 men, comes as a blast from the furnace of hell. "Am I 
 an impostor, a hypocrite, a cloud without water, ' a 
 wandering star ' (misleading mariners) to whom is 
 reserved blackness and darkness for ever ? ' 
 
 In proportion to the sincerity of a man's nature is 
 his dizzy distress as he gazes into the abyss beneath 
 him, and his abhorrence of the degradation of a life- 
 long lie. 
 
 Yet, if with his sealed eyes, with their unspeakable 
 
 longing, he cannot see his Master, in his heart He is 
 
 present, and His Heaven-written Law still stands 
 
 sacred there ; so, holding fast by his resolve never to 
 
 pass by the stern reality of the Cross on the path of 
 
 pleasure, indolence, or indifference, day by day such a 
 
 man determines to act in the church, in his study, at 
 
 his fald-stool, by the bedside of the sick, and in his 
 
 conflict with the spirit of evil as if he could see 
 
 through the fog, and sets himself to " endure as seeing 
 
 Him who is invisible." To the devout prostration of 
 
 a struggling soul before the Giver of all light, be such 
 
 prayer spoken and articulate, or be it a voiceless sigh, 
 
 Heaven's Gate must open even though the arm that 
 
 knocks may waver in its weakness. Getting to believe 
 
 is a mysterious process, as all vital acts are ; and a 
 
 man's will is his only equipment for life's service. 
 
 Faith is the hand of his soul, it takes hold of what he 
 
 wills, and what he takes hold of is the most important 
 
 fact in his life. But a man must do violence to his 
 
 own nature ; men who live for pleasure are always 
 
 unfortunate, for comfort only makes them love 
 
 themselves. Christianity was founded on poverty, on 
 
 sorrow, contradiction, crucifixion, on every species of 
 
 worldly distress and degradation ; a man that has not 
 
 known these things and learnt from them the priceless 
 
 lessons they have to teach has not learnt to live.
 
 JOHN STERLING 135 
 
 Faith is the healthy act of a man's mind, and 
 demands the use of power and love ; dyam? is not a 
 disposition favourable to a man's self, it means self- 
 sacrifice, the laying down of a life for others, and is 
 the main organ of our salvation. 
 
 Thought rules the world, and faith, life's master-key, 
 demands Christians capable of saying " We will die 
 for this," and, above aft, Christians capable of saying, 
 ' We will live for this " ; men who, although unknown 
 to history, are like Dante and Bunyan, Loyola and 
 Wesley, the pillars (at irer/xu) on which Christ builds 
 His Church. ' The end of man is an action, not a 
 thought, though it were of the best/' 
 
 Every apology for agnosticism, a subjective rather 
 than an objective frame of mind, looking at what a 
 man is pleased to think of His Maker rather than at 
 what His Maker says to him, is based on the suppo- 
 sition that the Father of our spirits either cannot be 
 reached, or turns a deaf ear to the cry of His offspring, 
 that from the sanctuary of the divine Presence no 
 suggestions descend into the sanctuary of the human 
 heart.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 AN ARCHDEACON 
 
 WHEN Allen agreed to become one of his Archdeacons, 
 Bishop Lonsdale said, " I have now the satisfaction of 
 thinking I have done one good thing since I became 
 Bishop of Lichfield." A year or two later he wrote : 
 " I have always regarded it, and have repeatedly 
 spoken of it, as one of the greatest blessings of my life 
 to have become acquainted with you." 
 
 Allen undertook the work with humble energy, 
 copying into his private book of spiritual counsel these 
 words of his predecessor, Archdeacon Bather : " Let 
 me come to the throne of grace as bound and privileged. 
 Let me fight against sloth ; go plodding on, comfort 
 or none ; success or none ; easily or painfully. Let 
 me, and all for whom I ought to pray, always receive 
 through the services of Thy house such holy, lively 
 hearts so full of all good thoughts that evil ones may 
 find no room to enter." 
 
 The priest-in-charge of Frees wrote to Allen : ' You 
 have at least this singular qualification for the position 
 of Archdeacon, that you can take the clergy into your 
 own church to show them all that a church ought not 
 to be." 
 
 Little effort had been made to provide church 
 accommodation for the rapidly increasing population 
 of Shropshire. In the Archdeaconry there were fifty 
 livings with less than two hundred a year. Allen set 
 to work with courage and the faculty to do ; standing 
 based on the spiritual world, he so worked changes in 
 the material world that, when he left, every parish had 
 an income of at least two hundred a year ; and further, 
 in almost every parish a church had been built or 
 
 136
 
 AN ARCHDEACON 137 
 
 restored, or a parsonage-house or school added. For 
 the highest of all possessions is God's help. 
 
 In no case would he allow the clergyman of the 
 parish to bear any financial responsibility for these 
 buildings, but, having subscribed liberally himself, he 
 appealed to the land-owners and urged upon them their 
 responsibility to God for the welfare of the souls of 
 the people committed to their charge. The dukes, the 
 largest land-owners, received the sternest letters. One 
 nobleman had promised a subscription towards the 
 building of a church, but when the time came for its 
 payment the money was not forthcoming. The Arch- 
 deacon wrote for it ; receiving no reply, he wrote again 
 and again with no effect. He then called, and, after 
 being kept waiting, was admitted to an interview. On 
 the man's refusing to pay his subscription, Allen said, 
 " As I hold your promise, I shall put your lordship 
 into the county court." A cheque for the amount was 
 then written. The Archdeacon took it, and, saying 
 solemnly, " God loves a cheerful giver. He has no 
 regard for offerings extorted by fear," tore it up, threw 
 it into the fire, left the room and went from the house. 
 The money was afterwards sent to him with an apology 
 and was then gratefully accepted. 
 
 A rich Vicar had refused to allow a district church 
 to be built in his parish ; the Archdeacon pleaded 
 earnestly the great need of such a church. The Vicar 
 was stubborn, and Allen took his leave ; as he passed 
 out of the beautiful vicarage garden he admired a fine 
 mulberry- tree. " Do you like mulberries ? I never eat 
 them." So a basket was sent for and the two men 
 sat down beneath the pleasant shade of the tree and 
 talked of pleasant things. At the end of half an hour, 
 when his visitor look his leave, the Vicar said, " You 
 shall have that church," and so a new church was 
 built in Shrewsbury. Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re. 
 
 Speaking to the churchwardens of his Archdeaconry, 
 John Allen said : 
 
 " You are the guardians of the fabric of the 
 church and its property. I entreat you not to
 
 138 AN ARCHDEACON 
 
 be deterred by fear or favour from boldly doing 
 your duty in the distribution of pews and seats. 
 Will not our Master enquire of us at the last 
 whether we have done our best for His poor r 
 You must allow no one to overrule you in the 
 exercise of your judgement. You are, with the 
 minister of your respective parishes, entrusted 
 with the oversight of the morals and behaviour 
 of your fellow-parishioners and will surely give 
 your best endeavours to answer the demands for 
 help, which your clergyman has a right to claim, 
 in doing all the good that, together, you can be 
 the means of effecting among them. But we 
 must begin with ourselves. A churchwarden who 
 is not watchful as to the words that fall from his 
 lips, who indulges himself in acts of intemperance, 
 or rules his household ill, may seem to take good 
 care of the repairs of the church, but fails in the 
 matter of prime importance. A good church- 
 warden must be a faithful, good man." 
 
 The establishment of ruri-decanal Chapters brought 
 him into frequent contact with his clergy. Three were 
 held annually in each Rural Deanery, in spring, 
 summer, and autumn ; but, while he attended every one 
 himself , the Archdeacon would never preside, although 
 he had sometimes come thirty or forty miles to be 
 present, maintaining that the Chair belonged by right 
 to the Rural Dean. 
 
 These Chapters were not meetings where clergy 
 mainly of the same way of thinking met each other. 
 The papers read by the members at the Shropshire 
 Chapters were on moral or practical questions rather 
 than doctrinal ; on the conduct of the material work 
 of the Church, the duties of their holy calling, on the 
 importance of almsgiving, and the direction it should 
 take. John Allen said : 
 
 ' We are members of one Body ; each one 
 must ask himself, ' How much am I contributing 
 to the general well-being of that sacred Fellow-
 
 AN ARCHDEACON 139 
 
 ship ? Are we doing our duty to our people if 
 we give them no opportunity of supporting the 
 missionary work of the Church ? Are they in- 
 debted to us ? We and they must meet the great 
 account at the last. A man who could blot out 
 of the Scriptures all that is written of the duty of 
 almsgiving and self-denial might be able to urge 
 much in self-defence when he desired to shield 
 himself from repeated solicitations to raise money 
 for missionary work ; but, when we consider that 
 our Master's work is to be carried on by pressure, 
 through conflict, and that God puts in our way 
 opportunities for the sacrifice of our own will in 
 order that He may enrich us the more, we may 
 well fear lest we neglect some of those helps of 
 which God calls upon us to make use. Neverthe- 
 less, the great good that is to be accomplished by 
 us in the world will be realised by our being often 
 on our knees in secret, by our contentedly labour- 
 ing day by day in that field of the vineyard in 
 which we have been placed, by our readiness to be 
 the servants of all men, by our drawing out of the 
 great Storehouse of Grace the supplies we need. 
 
 ' When we patiently sit by the bedside of a 
 sick parishioner, fixing our hope on the Lord, we 
 may with confidence expect that word of counsel 
 which shall be a word of comfort and of help. 
 
 " When, standing up in the congregation to 
 minister, casting away all dependence on our- 
 selves, we say to our Lord, ' Thou must come down 
 and minister to this people ' ; we can hope that 
 our agency may be effective. 
 
 " But our great work is with ourselves. The 
 Master's approval is the thing we have to desire. 
 As we grow in self-denial and in self-control ; in 
 self-sacrifice and in holiness ; in truth and in 
 purity, so shall we contribute to the building of 
 the spiritual Temple. Riches do not help this, 
 nor does earthly station, or the flattering words 
 of our fellow-men ; the most helpful builders may 
 be now the least known.
 
 140 AN ARCHDEACON 
 
 ' Worldly failure is of little moment, not to be 
 regretted, if it contribute to our success at last. 
 
 "As we are ourselves sanctified by the Holy 
 Ghost we help forward the sanctification of our 
 people. And this we must do, or we do nothing ! 
 yes, worse than nothing. The minister who helps 
 men to be more holy and teaches his people to 
 know their Lord is sealed with the Seal of Christ." 
 
 Shall he give kindling in whose heart there is no 
 coal ? 
 
 Allen lent importance to the discussions by the 
 respect he paid to them, taking voluminous notes and 
 respecting every word of wisdom that, fell from the 
 humblest members. ' There will be many dull pages 
 in these Chapters," he said ; but none were dull at 
 which he was present. Upon all matters of a serious 
 nature he spoke with the solemnity which filled his 
 soul, and was eloquent upon his brow as upon his lips ; 
 yet, like his Bishop, he could always flavour business 
 with humour without the sacrifice of time or dignity, 
 and in lighter moments his keen sense of drollery, and 
 hearty laugh, bespoke his enjoyment of what was 
 witty. The Chapter dined together at the house of 
 the Vicar who had invited them ; the meetings, full of 
 suggestive usefulness, were popular and agreeable. 
 His skill in social intercourse was so great that smaller 
 minds did not perceive how high he stood above them. 
 Here, too, he learnt to know his clergy ; his kindness 
 to them and consideration for them knew no bounds ; 
 to the poorest, the least educated, the youngest of 
 them, he desired to be no more than a brother, asking 
 nothing for himself except that he might befriend 
 and help them. He comforted them in their sorrows, 
 studied their difficulties, and counselled them sym- 
 pathetically in their squabbles with their squires. If 
 they were in low spirits he asked them to his house, 
 for his hospitality flowed from a generous heart. 
 
 A married Curate said : "No one knows what the 
 Archdeacon has been to us younger clergy ; he has 
 been our father, and Frees has been our home."
 
 AN ARCHDEACON 141 
 
 Writing to the sick wife of one of his clergy, he said : 
 
 " FREES VICARAGE, SHREWSBURY, 
 Oct. 22, 1881. 
 
 " MY DEAR MRS. LEE, 
 
 Mrs. Allen and I desire earnestly to sym- 
 pathise with you. Weakness and over-pressure 
 of the nerves are among the heaviest of the 
 burdens laid upon us by our heavenly Father. 
 Surely for us our Lord endured the hiding of the 
 Father's Face ; and in the Psalms the deepest 
 sorrow is expressed. ' All Thy waves and Thy 
 billows are gone over me ' ; but then the Psalm 
 ends with, ' Why art thou cast down, O my soul ? 
 hope thou in God : for I shall yet praise Him, 
 Who is the help of my countenance and my God.' 
 ' Heaviness may endure for a night but joy 
 cometh in the morning.' 
 
 When I am most pressed, the words of Top- 
 lady's hymn, ' Rock of Ages,' bring me comfort. 
 I try every morning to pray for cleansing and for 
 the outpouring of the Divine Spirit, and to assure 
 my soul with the promises that my prayer will be 
 answered. I will set my feet on the Rock. O 
 Lord, in Thee have I trusted ; let me never be 
 ashamed. 
 
 The exhortations in the Visitations for the Sick, 
 often as I read them, always seem to me fresh. 
 Dear Mrs. Lee, 
 
 I am affectionately yours, 
 
 JOHN ALLEN." 
 
 A middle-aged, matter-of-fact clergyman said, when 
 Allen left the Archdeaconry : " We are all of us worse 
 men since the Archdeacon left us ; he kept up our 
 standard of duty and raised our spiritual pitch." 
 
 Of the teaching and ritual of all High Churchmen 
 he was entirely tolerant, and appreciated what was 
 zealous and earnest in all schools of thought which 
 differed from his own. As years rolled on, and the 
 work of the Church was developed, he threw himself 
 into the upward movement with all his heart ; never
 
 142 AN ARCHDEACON 
 
 by word or action did he discourage honest effort, or 
 place any hindrance in the path of a brother whose 
 mode of furthering the Master's cause was not identical 
 with his own. One ritualist made a pilgrimage to his 
 death-bed to thank him for a generosity he had not 
 recognised in the day of battle. 
 
 A member of the Diocesan Committee often opposed 
 him when the claims of their respective Archdeaconries 
 were at stake ; once, after a fierce controversy, Allen 
 said to his opponent, " My brother Archdeacon, I shall 
 never strive with you again." " Oh do not say that," 
 replied the other, who was possibly in the wrong. 
 " No," replied Allen, " I never shall " ; and he was as 
 good as his word : however often he differed from his 
 brother he held his peace. The powerful man controls 
 the storms of his own mind. 
 
 In Convocation Archdeacon Denison and the Arch- 
 deacon of Salop were often, if not always, opposed. 
 The redoubtable Archdeacon of Taunton generally 
 leading the majority, Allen often speaking on the 
 losing side ; content to be in a minority ; because if 
 he were wrong he did no harm, and if he were right he 
 had done his best. 
 
 Archdeacon Denison wrote to Allen's son : 
 
 " EAST BRENT, March 21, 1887. 
 
 " Among all, I thank God I can say many 
 friends, I know of no memory more near to my 
 heart upon every ground, whether of difference or 
 concurrence, than that of your dear father. He 
 won all men's reverence, as he did all men's love. 
 I live in hope of the blessedness which shall make 
 us of one company again, where there is nothing 
 but the unity of the love that endures for ever. 
 Yours ever affectionately, 
 
 GEORGE ANTHONY DENISON." 
 
 Allen was in some respects too good or too simple- 
 minded for the world in which he lived. He held and 
 acted on his belief that, if any public man or private 
 friend did or said what in his opinion was wrong, it
 
 AN ARCHDEACON 143 
 
 was his duty to address the man by letter or in person 
 and set his fault before him. Then, having borne his 
 testimony to the truth, he accepted with the utmost 
 meekness and patience the inevitable and usually dis- 
 agreeable result. ' Injuries made him more gracious, 
 and his nature then did breathe its sweetness out most 
 sensibly as aromatic flowers on Alpine turf when foot 
 hath crushed them." 
 
 Nothing is so inflexible as meekness sustained and 
 animated by the firm conviction of right. 
 
 His opinions were those held by most conscientious 
 men. The sale of livings would, he thought, lead the 
 people of a cure thus treated to look upon their pastor 
 as a merchant in the lowest sense of the word ; and 
 when the difficulties which are sure to confront every 
 parson who grapples with his duties arose, such a man 
 might feel he had only himself to blame for being 
 where he was, and so be weakened in the discharge of 
 his office. 
 
 The increase of the Diaconate by expanding the 
 blessing of Ordination might encourage men earning 
 their own living to serve the Church and care for souls ; 
 but he doubted whether a Deacon who had passed the 
 Bishop's examination should receive his commission to 
 preach until he had shown his fitness for the office. 
 
 ' The increase of the Episcopate would enable 
 Bishops to give more time to personal visitations, 
 accompanied by their Rural Deans, Archdeacons, 
 etc. ; visitations to be held in parishes where they 
 had reason to fear the souls of the people were 
 uncared for. For a Bishop's primary office is ' to 
 set in order things that are wanting.' ' 
 
 There are shepherds who smoke their pipes while 
 the wolf is coming, murmuring to themselves that 
 " God fulfils Himself in many ways." 
 
 " A Bishop's income is a secondary matter ; 
 although some Bishops may require the help of 
 three housemaids, a man can make as good a 
 Bishop without them.
 
 144 AN ARCHDEACON 
 
 " If a clergyman does not pay his debts, his 
 usefulness, though he were an angel from Heaven, 
 is at an end." 
 
 Anxious that nothing should be done to alter the 
 rubrics, he wrote : 
 
 " FREES VICARAGE, SALOP, 
 Oct. 31, 1874. 
 
 " DEAR DR. PUSEY, 
 
 I earnestly hope we may have some words 
 from you recommending that nothing be done at 
 this time to alter the rubrics. 
 
 The weight of opinion amongst the clergy of 
 this Archdeaconry is against meddling in any way 
 with the Prayer-book. 
 
 Yours, dear sir, dutifully, 
 
 JOHN ALLEN." 
 
 Such views firmly held must have brought him into 
 collision with many men. One Vicar was impertinent 
 about the Burials Bill when dining at his house in 
 1876. After stating his arguments in favour of it, 
 adding that Nonconformists could best be won to the 
 Church by the clergy " out-praying them, out- working 
 them, out-loving them," the host sat silent while the 
 man poured forth a torrent of insolence, and, when his 
 carriage was announced, took leave of his guest as if 
 he had behaved better, and asked him as generously 
 again to his house. 
 
 ' A good man is a living light-fountain, which it is 
 good and pleasant to be near. Celebrity is but candle- 
 light : it shows what a man is, but cannot make him 
 better or worse than other men." So, knowing his 
 duty and destiny in our mysterious universe, with no 
 selfish desire to shine over men, working ever in his 
 great Taskmaster's eye, this Archdeacon .saw that 
 every moment of time rests on eternity, and fought on 
 patiently, endeavouring that the perfect Heavenly Law 
 might be made the law of this earth of ours, which is 
 the threshold either of Heaven or of Hell.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 
 
 NEWMAN preached his first sermon on June 23, 1824, on 
 the text, " Man goeth forth to his work and to his 
 labour until the evening," and nineteen years later 
 his last, as an Anglican priest, from the same words. 
 
 A man of learning and genius, a profound theologian 
 and a logician of the extremist subtlety, he left our 
 Church, meaning to live a life of prayer, fasting, and 
 monastic seclusion. In his early youth he was taught 
 to read and love the Bible, and, under the influence of 
 Thomas Scott, drew pure water from that fountain- 
 head. The doctrine of the indefeasible supremacy of 
 conscience found in him the most eloquent, the most 
 unwearied of preachers. 
 
 Men live after their death not only in their writings 
 and chronicled history, but still more in that unwritten 
 memory exhibited in a school of pupils who trace their 
 moral parentage to them. 
 
 Professor Jowett said : '" Considering what he really 
 was, it is wonderful what a space he has filled in the 
 eyes of mankind/' 
 
 When Keble heard of Newman's secession the 
 woodland path, where he read the news, was for ever 
 overshadowed for him. 
 
 Conscience, like every other power of the soul, needs 
 education. 
 
 Allen, who was also deeply attached to him, could 
 not believe he had left us until he heard of it from 
 Newman himself. He thought perhaps Newman's 
 sensitive mind, buffeted with storms of doubt, baffled 
 with winds of doctrine, might be compared to the 
 sensibility of a traveller, who, amid the fury of a 
 
 10 '45
 
 146 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 
 
 tempest, runs to shelter in a church. The Church, 
 rightly understood, is but the home of God's family ; 
 the great city, wherein dwells Christ, at once Priest, 
 King, and Ruler of the world, calling on men in every 
 portion of the universe to unite within the eternal 
 law of intellect and love. 
 
 Carlyle said he was a kind, affectionate man, who 
 was much afraid of damnation and hoped to creep 
 into Heaven under the Pope's petticoats, adding, " but 
 he has no occiput." Woolner's bust shows that he had 
 no back to his head. 
 
 At the moment when Leslie Stephen's essays 
 (Plain Speaking) were harassing weak minds, Allen, 
 seeing the lucidity of the arguments which logically 
 deduced false conclusions from a false premise, begged 
 Newman to confute them. For, if the causes of all the 
 sin and all the mischief in the world were carefully 
 sought, we should find the chief of all to be infidelity 
 either total or gradual. 
 
 But Newman declined to enter the lists in so beautiful 
 a letter that the Master of Trinity said he would give 
 all the money in his pocket to possess it. Allen closed 
 with his offer, and so enriched the Central African 
 Mission with i 135. 6>d. 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald to John Allen 
 
 " July 25/40. 
 " MY DEAR FELLOW, 
 
 I am become an Oxford High Church 
 Divine after Newman, whose sermons are the 
 best that ever were written, in my judgment. 
 Cecil I have read ; and liked his good sense. 
 John Allen, I rejoice in you, 
 
 EDWARD FITZGERALD." 
 
 Newman's sermons, which convinced men of sin and 
 holiness with a subtle power, might, Allen thought, 
 depress aspiration by their absence of reference to the 
 Ladder between the two. 
 
 Yet what he did for the whole Church is immortal.
 
 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 147 
 
 His " Lead, kindly Light," arising " like a lark's song 
 from the furrow," was written on a night of deep 
 depression in the Mediterranean when, " a feeble unit 
 in the midst of a threatening Infinitude, he seemed to 
 have nothing given him but eyes to discern his own 
 wretchedness." It has a hallowing influence on all sorts 
 and conditions of men ; during the Welsh Revival it 
 would ascend in harmonised cadences from two corners 
 of a great chapel at once, quartets which no more 
 jarred upon each other than the songs of eight thrushes 
 in an orchard. On the other hand, during the war 
 the soldiers in their wildest moods could ever be drawn 
 at nightfall so to join in that hymn that it seemed to 
 hallow the wide camp. 
 
 Whether Newman ever regretted the step he took 
 after such long hesitation and self-interrogation cannot 
 be known ; but the fact that he bewailed with bitter 
 tears the sphere of usefulness Oxford once afforded 
 him is now well known. 
 
 He lived and died at Rednal, an annex to the 
 Oratory at Birmingham, where the most beautiful 
 crucifix in the world, carved in wood, slightly over 
 life-size, told him day by day its story ; and there, 
 when the day of existence declined, and with all its 
 toils sank in the stillness of eternity, he breathed out 
 his spirit in meek affiance on Him whom, amid the 
 shade of many doubts and some errors, he had loved 
 and trusted and obeyed from childhood. 
 
 Archdeacon Allen to the Rev. Henry Meynell 
 (Promoter of the Woodard Schools) 
 
 " FREES, SHREWSBURY, Nov. i, 1876. 
 
 " MY DEAR MEYNELL, 
 
 I hope you will have a happy visit at 
 Hawarden. 
 
 The greatest and noblest of English statesmen, 
 as I used to think, will be your host. His care of 
 the national expenditure set forward righteous- 
 ness ; his commercial treaties made him in God's 
 hands the minister of peace ; his repeal of the
 
 148 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 
 
 paper duties helped education ; his Post Office 
 Savings Banks have greatly helped thrift. But 
 when he disestablished the Irish Church and 
 provided that the surplus should relieve the 
 land-owners from the support of lunatic asylums 
 he seemed to me to commit a fatal mistake, and 
 appears to have had little success as a statesman 
 ever since. If he had divided the property among 
 Roman Catholics and Presbyterians I should have 
 found no fault. 
 
 Your kind letter has just come in. As regards 
 spiritual direction : we must not lead people to 
 look for better bread than can be made of wheat. 
 We have our condition here framed for our trial 
 by our Master. 
 
 Is it not a great responsibility to look for a 
 visible director ? Every Christian man who is 
 wise will be able to give in time of need a word of 
 fitting counsel, but each separate soul is directed 
 and commanded to go to our Lord for all it can 
 need. 
 
 ' If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and 
 drink.' 
 
 Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 JOHN ALLEN."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 JAMES SPEDDING 
 
 MR. SPEDDING, a good farmer and landlord, was the 
 Squire of Mirehouse, a beautiful place looking upon 
 the shore of Bassenthwaite and on Skiddaw, which 
 you could mount from your bedroom window, and, as 
 Fitzgerald suggested, ' begin your excursion before 
 breakfast " ! 
 
 Of his son " Jem " he hoped great things, wishing him 
 to serve his country in Parliament, where he was 
 bound to distinguish himself. Of this son Fitzgerald 
 said : "If not so illustrious in genius, he was certainly 
 not less wise than Thomas Carlyle." 
 
 But James Spedding had no sort of ambition ; he 
 refused a post at the Colonial Office when Sir James 
 Stephen vacated it, of some three thousand a year, " to 
 re-edit Bacon's works, which did not want such re- 
 edition, and to vindicate his character, which could 
 not be cleared." 
 
 " He liked to be kept at one long work which he 
 knew would not glorify himself, and to it he sacrificed 
 forty years which he might well have given to accom- 
 plish much greater things : Shakespeare for one." 
 
 Mr. Spedding' s elder son died young and was im- 
 mortalised by Tennyson in his poem to " J. S.," in his 
 1832 volume. 
 
 To " picturesque excrescences," as he called them, 
 Mr. Spedding showed much indulgence, receiving all 
 his son's friends with courtesy ; but he had seen 
 enough of poets not to like them or their trade. 
 Shelley once lived among the lakes, " stalking about 
 the mountains with pistols and other such vagaries " ; 
 Coleridge he had no use for; Southey, with whom 
 
 149
 
 150 JAMES SPEDDING 
 
 Coleridge lived for a time, perhaps he held in some 
 esteem ; Wordsworth he olid not value. 
 
 Fitzgerald stayed in his Cumberland home in the 
 month of May 1835, along with Alfred Tennyson, and 
 writes : 
 
 " Mr. Spedding was rather jealous of Jem, who 
 he hoped would do some available service in the 
 world, giving himself up to dreamers, and grudged 
 the time and thought his son spent in consulta- 
 tions about ' Morte d' Arthurs/ ' Lords of Bur- 
 leigh,' etc., which were then in MS. He more 
 than once questioned me, who was sometimes 
 present at the meetings : ' Well, Mr. Fitzgerald, 
 and what is it ? Mr. Tennyson reads and Jem 
 criticises, is that it ? ' etc. This as I might be 
 playing chess with Mrs. Spedding, while the 
 daffodils were dancing outside the hall-door." 
 
 Jem said of this visit (writing to Thompson) : 
 
 " I think Tennyson took in more pleasure and 
 inspiration [at Mirehouse] than anyone would 
 have supposed who did not know his almost 
 personal dislike of the present, whatever it may 
 be. Hartley Coleridge is mightily taken with 
 him." 
 
 Fitzgerald and Alfred went on to Ambleside, but 
 did not then make Wordsworth's acquaintance. Either 
 through pride or modesty, dignity or diffidence, Tenny- 
 son could not be persuaded to call upon him, although 
 the old poet was hospitably inclined towards the two 
 young members of his craft. Yarrow Revisited had 
 just come out, and Wordsworth published another 
 volume in 1842, the year in which the volume Tennyson 
 was now brooding appeared. 
 
 When admirers drove up to his cottage Wordsworth 
 would sometimes slip out of the room and down the 
 garden path to see what books (whether perhaps the 
 Excursion or the Lady of the Lake ?) accompanied the 
 travellers.
 
 JAMES SPEDDING 151 
 
 From James Spedding to John Allen 
 
 ' 1840. 
 
 ' Fitz is on his way to Bedford, in a state of 
 disgraceful indifference to everything except grass 
 and fresh air. What will become of him in this 
 world ? I have sent word to Mrs. Rhodes that 
 I have promised you, in her name, if you can find 
 your way to Mirehouse, more gooseberries and 
 milk than will be good for you. When you are 
 there you can take the opportunity to settle some 
 theological difficulties with which my two nephews 
 are troubled. One of them wants to know whether 
 God made the world out of nothing at all, and 
 then what He made people for : to which the other 
 (being half a year older, six and a half) replies 
 that he can tell what God made people for : 
 ' He made them to be good, but He know'd they 
 wouldn't be good.' Can more be said on the 
 subject ? I am, happily, a layman, but this seems 
 to me to be the sum of all that has been said 
 about it yet. Alfred Tennyson has reappeared, 
 and is going to-day or to-morrow to Florence, or 
 to Killarney, or to Madeira. Or to some place 
 where some ship is going, he does not know where. 
 He has been on a visit to a madhouse for the 
 last fortnight (not as a patient), and is delighted 
 with the mad people, whom he reports the most 
 agreeable and the most reasonable persons he has 
 met with. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 JAMES SPEDDING." 
 
 From Edward Fitzgerald to W. H, Thompson (after- 
 wards Greek Professor and Master of Trinity) 
 
 " BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE, 1841. 
 (Doesn't this name express heavy clay ?) 
 
 " MY DEAR THOMPSON, 
 
 You are, I suppose, at Cambridge : and I 
 am buried (with all my fine parts, what a shame !)
 
 152 JAMES SPEDDING 
 
 here : so that I hear of nobody except that 
 Speckling and I abuse each other about Shake- 
 speare occasionally, a subject on which you must 
 know that he has lost his conscience, if ever he 
 had any. For what did the phrenologist say 
 when he felt Spedding's head ? Why, that all 
 his bumps were so tempered that there was no 
 merit in his sobriety then what would have been 
 the use of a conscience to him ? Q.E.D. 
 
 Lawrence has given me a portrait of him ; not 
 swords, nor cannon, nor all the Bulls of Bashan 
 butting at it could, I feel sure, discompose that 
 venerable forehead. No wonder that no hair can 
 grow at such an altitude : no wonder his view of 
 Bacon's virtue is so rarefied that the common 
 consciences of men cannot endure it. Thackeray 
 and I occasionally amuse ourselves with the 
 idea of Spedding's forehead. We find it some- 
 how or other in all things, just peering out of all 
 things : you see it in a milestone, Thackeray says. 
 He also draws the forehead rising with a sober 
 light over Mont Blanc, and reflected in the lake 
 of Geneva. We have great laughing over this. 
 You have, of course, read the account of its 
 landing in America. English sailors hail it in the 
 Channel mistaking it for Beachy Head. There 
 is a Shakespeare cliff and a Spedding cliff. Good 
 old fellow, I hope he'll come back safe and sound, 
 forehead and all." 
 
 Mrs. Cameron, a friend of Tennyson's at Fresh- 
 water, a fervent admirer of Wordsworth and a pioneer 
 in artistic photography, made a successful portrait of 
 this forehead ; she softened her outline by taking the 
 face slightly out of focus on a huge lens and with 
 great skill cast a Rembrandt light on the " Spedding 
 cliff." She maintained no woman should be photo- 
 graphed between the ages of eighteen and seventy- 
 eight ! 
 
 Tennyson said of Spedding, " He was the Pope 
 among us young men the wisest man I knew." His
 
 JAMES SPEDDING 153 
 
 quiet but strong sense of humour made him a delightful 
 companion. 
 
 Carlyle called Spedding's Life and Letters of Bacon 
 " the faithfullest bit of literary navvy work he had 
 met with in this generation." " Bacon is washed clean 
 to the natural skin." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Frederic Tennyson 
 
 " BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, May 24/44. 
 
 " One finds few in London serious men I mean, 
 ' serious ' even in fun : with a true purpose and 
 character whatsoever it may be. London melts 
 away all individuality into a common lump of 
 cleverness. I am amazed at the humour and 
 worth and nobleness in the country, however rail- 
 roads have mixed us up with metropolitan civiliza- 
 tion. I can still find the heart of England beating 
 healthily down here, though no one will believe it." 
 
 He writes again from town : 
 
 " I was at a party of modern wits last night that 
 made me creep into myself, and wish myself away 
 talking to any Suffolk old woman in her cottage, 
 while the trees murmured without. The wicked- 
 ness of London appals me, and yet I am no 
 paragon ! Oh ! that I could look on my anemones 
 and hear the sighing of my Scotch firs. The 
 reign of primroses and cowslips is over, and the 
 oak now begins to take up the empire of the year 
 and wear a budding garment about his brows. 
 Over all this settles down the white cloud in the 
 west, and the morning and evening draw towards 
 summer." 
 
 The rich man is not the man who holds the freehold 
 of a county, but he is rich who knows what sweets and 
 virtues are in the fields, the streams, the flowers, and 
 the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments.
 
 154 JAMES SPEDDING 
 
 He who knows a sunset is beautiful is richer than the 
 possessor of Grosvenor Square. 
 
 Fitzgerald to F. Tennyson 
 
 " All the world has been, as I suppose you have 
 read, crazy about Jenny Lind : and they are now 
 giving her four hundred pounds to sing at a 
 concert ! What a frightful waste of money ! I 
 did not go to hear her ; partly out of contra- 
 diction perhaps ; and partly because I could not 
 make out she was a great singer like my old 
 Pasta. Now I will go and listen to any pretty 
 singer whom I can get to hear easily and unexpen- 
 sively ; but I will not pay and squeeze much for 
 any canary in the world. Perhaps Lind is a 
 nightingale ; but I want something more than 
 that. Spedding's cold blood has been moved to 
 hire stalls several times at an advanced rate. 
 Night after night is that bald head seen in one 
 particular position in the Opera House ; the 
 miserable man has forgot Bacon and philosophy ! 
 Is it not better for weaker vessels to keep out of 
 her way ? People rushed up madly from Suffolk 
 to hear her but once, and then die. I rather 
 doubted the value of this general appreciation. 
 And to perform in one's head one of Handel's 
 Choruses is better than most of the Exeter Hall 
 performances. I went to hear Mendelssohn's 
 Elijah last spring : and found it wasn't at all 
 worth the trouble. Though very good music, it 
 is not original ; Haydn much better. I think the 
 day of oratorios is gone, like the day for painting 
 Holy Families, etc. But we cannot get tired of 
 what has been done in oratorios any more than we 
 can get tired of Raphael. Mendelssohn is really 
 original and beautiful in romantic music : witness 
 his Midsummer Night's Dream and Fingal's 
 Cave."
 
 JAMES SPEDDING 155 
 
 Fitzgerald to F. Tennyson 
 
 " PORTLAND COFFEE HOUSE, LONDON, 
 April 1750. 
 
 " MY DEAR FREDERICK, 
 
 It really gives me pain to hear you or any 
 one else call me a philosopher, or any good thing 
 of the sort. I am none, I never was : and if I 
 pretended to be so, was a hypocrite. Some things, 
 such as wealth, rank, and respectability, I don't 
 care a straw about ; but no one can resent the 
 toothache more, nor fifty other little ills beside 
 that flesh is heir to. But let us leave all this. 
 Dear old Alfred is out of town ; Spedding is my 
 sheet-anchor, the truly wise and fine fellow ; I 
 am going to his rooms this very evening ; and 
 there I believe Thackeray, Venables, etc., are to 
 be. I hope not a large assembly : for I get shyer 
 and shyer even of those I know. Thackeray is 
 in such a great world that I am afraid of him ; 
 and we are content to regard each other at a dis- 
 tance. You, Alfred, Spedding and Allen are the 
 only men I ever care to see again. Spedding 
 came down and spent two days with us at Barn- 
 ford in those pleasant fields by the riverside. He 
 was delicious there ; always leaving a mark, as I 
 say, in all places one has been at with him, a sort 
 of Platonic perfume. For has he not all the 
 beauty of the Platonic Socrates with some per- 
 sonal beauty to boot ? He explained to us one 
 day about the laws of reflection in water. And I 
 said then that one never could look at the willow 
 whose branches furnished the text without think- 
 ing of him. How beastly this reads, as if he gave 
 us a lecture ! But you know the man, how 
 quietly it all came out, only because I petulantly 
 denied his plain assertion. For I really often 
 cross him only to draw him out ; and, vain as I 
 may be, he is one of those that I am well content 
 to make shine at my own expense."
 
 156 JAMES SPEDDING 
 
 John Allen to James Spedding 
 
 " FREES, SALOP, Nov. 29, 1873. 
 
 " MY DEAR SPEDDING, 
 
 I have been reading Mill's Autobiography ; 
 the book is very interesting, but is it not also 
 very sad ? This terrible putting forward of hell 
 as made by God, is it not an unfair, a mischievous 
 representation of the teaching of the Bible ? We 
 cannot indeed solve the mystery of evil. But 
 there may be some inherent venom in sin, sepa- 
 rating the soul from God, which venom is by no 
 means of God's creation and which is against 
 God's will. What do we atoms of a moment 
 know of these matters ? Yet looking within, we 
 in some sense know that we have something of 
 divinity within us, however the divine part of our 
 nature may be hindered by our lusts, our false- 
 hood, our pride, our other devilish ills. Every- 
 one knows that he can strive upwards, looking 
 upwards ; everyone knows, when he is yielding to 
 temptation, that it is his own fault. Our moral 
 sense, which J. S. Mill would ignore as so much 
 idle fancy, is real real as our sense of sweetness 
 or bitterness, though it may be clouded. 
 
 When J. S. Mill writes slightingly of Whewell, 
 the question is begged. Whewell, I think, speaks 
 somewhere as if man's constitution were impreg- 
 nated with certain forms which are not developed 
 till the circumstances of life develope them, as a 
 texture may be marked by a pattern which is not 
 visible till immersed in a dye. 
 
 There is one passage in J. S. Mill, which seems 
 to me to overthrow his theories : ' Though our 
 character is formed by circumstances, our own 
 desires can do much to shape those circumstances ; 
 what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the 
 doctrine of free will is the conviction that we have 
 real power over the formation of our own charac- 
 ter.' This, together with the postulate which all 
 Christian men require, ' God exists, and is a
 
 JAMES SPEDDING 157 
 
 rewarder of them that diligently seek Him,' seems 
 to me to grant all that any of us can wish for. 
 
 Certainly the history of bringing up a child 
 without any religious belief does not seem to help 
 man to the attainment of speculative truth or of 
 happiness. He that says the eye was not made 
 by a designer who knew the laws of light is con- 
 stituted differently from me. And I see no 
 reason why he should not also say that the Greek 
 letters being jumbled together from all eternity 
 at last composed the ' Iliad.' The world exists ; 
 how did it come ? I know not why anyone should 
 preach atheism. It is terribly cold to the heart ; 
 it separates us from those who in all ages have 
 done most to ameliorate the condition of their 
 fellow men ; it cannot (as I think) be preached 
 by anyone without some fears that the preaching 
 is a lie. 
 
 Then he who would encourage us to look 
 favourably on speculations that question the 
 principle of hereditary property (see page 163) 
 seems to me to strike at thrift, and he who desires 
 freer relations between the sexes (p. 107) seems 
 to me to strike at purity and at that which proves 
 man's greatest earthly happiness, family affection. 
 Most affectionately yours, 
 
 JOHN ALLEN." 
 
 Cecil Rhodes, who professed Agnosticism, always 
 declared he knew there was no hell. Here there seems 
 to be some inconsistency. 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald writes : 
 
 " 1850. 
 
 " I hope to see Alfred in London. Moxon told 
 me he was about to publish another edition of his 
 Princess, with interludes added between the parts ; 
 and also that he was about to print but (I think) 
 not to publish, those elegiacs on Hallam. Had 
 I Alfred's voice, I would not have mumbled for 
 years over In Memoriam and The Princess. What 
 can In Memoriam do but make us all sentimental ?
 
 158 JAMES SPEDDING 
 
 Don't you think the world wants other notes than 
 elegiac now ? Lycidas is the utmost length an 
 elegiac should reach. But Spedding praises ; and 
 I suppose the elegiacs will see daylight, public 
 daylight, one day. Carlyle goes on grumbling 
 with his Cromwell ; whom he finds more and 
 more faultless every day. So that his Paragon 
 also will one day see the light, an elegiac of a 
 different kind from Tennyson's ; as far apart 
 indeed as Cromwell and Hallam. Good night. 
 Before I take my pen again to finish this letter 
 the New Year will have dawned on some of us. 
 ' Thou fool, this night thy soul may be required 
 of thee ! ' Very well ; while it is in this body, 
 I will wish my dear old F. T. a happy New Year." 
 
 " Dec. 31, 1850. 
 
 " I have heard of Alfred's marriage from Sped- 
 ding, who also saw and was much pleased with 
 her indeed. But, you know, Alfred himself never 
 writes nor indeed cares a halfpenny about one, 
 though he is very well satisfied to see one when 
 one falls in his way. You will think I have a 
 spite against him for some neglect, when I say 
 this, and say besides that I cannot care for his 
 ' In Memoriam.' Not so ; if I know myself, I 
 always thought the same of him and was just as 
 well satisfied with it as now. This poem I did 
 never greatly affect, nor can I learn to do so ; 
 it is full of finest things, but it is monotonous and 
 has that air of being revolved by a poetical 
 machine of the highest order. So it seems to be 
 with him now, at least to me : the impetus, the 
 lyrical oestrus, is gone. It is the cursed in- 
 activity (very pleasant to me, who am no hero) 
 of this 1 9th century which has spoilt Alfred; I 
 mean, spoilt him for the great work he ought 
 now to be entering upon the lovely and noble 
 things he has done must remain. It is dangerous 
 work, this prophesying about great Men, for I 
 think the power of writing one fine line transcends
 
 JAMES SPEDDING 159 
 
 all the Able-Editor ability in the ably-edited 
 Universe." 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald writes : 
 
 "February 22, 1872. 
 
 ' What is become of Bacon ? are you one of 
 the converts that ' go the whole Hog ' ? What 
 a pity that Spedding has not employed some of 
 the twenty years he has lost in washing his 
 Blackamoor in helping an edition of Shakespeare, 
 though not in the way of minute archaeologic 
 questions! I never heard him read a page but 
 he threw some new light upon it." 
 
 Possibly Spedding felt in his subconscious soul some 
 relation between his "Blackamoor" and two- thirds 
 of that heterogeneous work the world calls " Shake- 
 speare " ? 
 
 In his wanderings when he was dying, he talked of 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Sir James Stephen writes : 
 
 " I have a great regard for Spedding. A mind 
 like the trade-wind regions of the Atlantic ; 
 always serene, always in motion, always pleasant 
 not passionless, but never agitated by passion 
 a most clear-sighted and equitable judge of men 
 and things wanting only strong impulses to 
 become a great man." 
 
 From James Spedding to John Allen 
 
 " 80 WESTBOURNE TERRACE, LONDON, W., 
 13 March, 1871. 
 
 " MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 I have not seen more than the outside of 
 Darwin's last book, and only heard in general of 
 what is inside. I cannot say that it is a subject 
 that especially interests me. All investigations 
 into the nature of things are of course to be 
 approved and encouraged ; because it is impos-
 
 160 JAMES SPEDDING 
 
 sible to know what may not depend upon them, 
 or how nearly we may be affected by the knowledge 
 of things that seem so remote from all our concerns. 
 Therefore I would give a man like Darwin, whom 
 I take to be an honest and earnest man, every 
 facility I could for the pursuit of his enquiries. 
 From what I hear of Darwin's book I gather that 
 it tends to the conclusion that man, instead of 
 being made at once out of clay, and made perfect in 
 his present form and faculties, was originally an 
 animal of inferior construction and that he has 
 arrived at his present condition through a long 
 struggle bequeathed from Sire to son through an 
 immense tract of time, against the disadvantages 
 of his birth. I think he deserves the greater 
 credit, and we have reason to be very proud of 
 our remote ancestors, and very hopeful also for 
 our remote progeny. For, if the present race has 
 had virtue enough to grow out of ape into man, 
 why may it not yet grow out of ape into angel ? 
 But at the same time the thing does not come 
 near enough to me to interest me. If the faculties 
 which have achieved so enormous a victory are 
 still within us, and if I have my share of them, I 
 presume that I shall contribute my share to the 
 victories that are yet in store for us in virtue of 
 that spirit and faculty, without knowing how I 
 came by it. I am here ; this thing I am ; a being 
 with a conscience, looking before and after, 
 believing that I have duties for the performance 
 of which I am accountable to God. What matter 
 whether I have grown to be what I am out of a 
 monkey or out of a lump of earth ? They tell me 
 indeed that if men should be convinced that they 
 have grown hi course of nature out of monkeys 
 they will be unable to believe in a future state. 
 Why not ? I do not know, nor do I much care, 
 whether my remotest ancestors were monkeys, 
 but I have every reason to believe that I was 
 myself originally not better than a homunculus 
 (see Tristram Shandy), and I believe it is not
 
 JAMES SPEDDING 161 
 
 generally thought that I was then possessed of 
 the title to immortality. It is true there was the 
 germ. But so there was (if Darwin's doctrine be 
 true) in the monkey. 
 
 I cannot see, therefore, how Darwin's enquiries 
 can even seem to tend to the conclusion ' that the 
 Universal frame is without a mind,' except as the 
 discovery of second causes seems to some people 
 a negative of the First Cause, in cases where they 
 have been accustomed to think that God acted 
 immediately. I have no doubt there was a time 
 when a scientific exposition of the conditions 
 necessary to produce a flash of lightning would 
 have seemed very dangerous to pious men, who 
 had been accustomed to believe that thunder 
 was the angry voice of God, and lightning the 
 blow of His arm. But we see that belief in God 
 has survived the establishment of that scientific 
 discovery, and I think the belief in a Mind govern- 
 ing the universe will survive the discovery (if it 
 should prove a discovery) that the design of the 
 Creator was that the creatures should develope 
 themselves by their own virtue and industry. 
 
 J. SPEDDING." 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald writes to Mrs. Tennyson : 
 
 " Archdeacon Allen sent me the other day a 
 letter from Spedding about Darwin's Philosophy, 
 so wise, so true, so far as I could judge, and 
 though written off, all fit to go as it was into 
 print and do all the world good." 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald writes : 
 
 " Nov. 30, 1880. 
 
 " One day I went into the Abbey at 3.30 p.m., 
 while a beautiful anthem was beautifully sung, 
 and then the prayers and collects, not less beautiful, 
 well intoned on one single note by the Minister. 
 And when I looked up and about me, I thought 
 
 II
 
 162 JAMES SPEDDING 
 
 that Abbey a wonderful structure for monkeys to 
 have raised." 
 
 Carlyle says : 
 
 " Animal conditions are miserable to a man, 
 for man has fallen from a higher state, and an 
 instinct he cannot repress raises him ; he has in 
 his own soul an Eternal, and can read something 
 of the Eternal, there if he will only look. His 
 heart is a mirror which can receive all that is 
 beautiful and hopeful in this mysterious world, or 
 the images of darkness and despair. 
 
 ' To forget Justice and Reverence is to have the 
 Universe against us, God and ourselves for enemies, 
 and only the supreme Liar as a Friend." 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald writes : 
 
 " March 13, 1881. 
 
 " Spedding was a Socrates in life and in death, 
 which he faced with all composure ; he died in 
 S. George's Hospital, to which he was taken, run 
 over by a cab, and could not be removed home 
 alive. I believe that, had Carlyle been alive, he 
 would have insisted on being carried to the 
 Hospital to see his Friend, whom he respected as 
 he did few others. 
 
 What a man ! as in life so in death, which, as 
 Montaigne says, proves what is at the bottom of 
 the Vessel. 
 
 He sent me back to old Wordsworth, who sings 
 (his best songs I think) about the mountains and 
 lakes they were both associated with : and with 
 a quiet feeling he sings that somehow comes 
 home to me more than ever it did before. 
 
 Spedding's loss makes one's life more dreary, 
 and ' en revanche ' the end of it less regretful." 
 
 Admiration, if rightly fixed, helps us to perceive 
 some of the features of God's Beauty.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 FITZGERALD heard Carlyle deliver his six famous 
 lectures on " Hero Worship." He looked very hand- 
 some and grand, with a sort of crucified expression. A 
 gaunt figure, with clothes hanging loose upon him, his 
 grave face overlapped roofwise by thick locks, then 
 still black, long and lank, his fine eyes deep-set under 
 their shaggy brows, he looked " with gleams of an 
 ethereal fire " into the mystery of the universe, and with 
 self-possession spoke to a select audience, holding 
 his extraordinary powers, lit up with flashes of effective 
 humour, in easy command. 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald writes to F. Tennyson : 
 
 "21 March, 1841. 
 
 " No new books except a perfectly insane one 
 of Carlyle's on ' Hero Worship ' (he is becoming 
 very obnoxious now that he has become popular), 
 nor new pictures, no music. 
 
 I should travel like you if I had the eyes to see 
 that you have ; but, as Goethe says, the eye can 
 but see what it brings with it, the power of seeing." 
 
 Later he writes to W. H. Thompson : 
 
 " Have you read poor Carlyle's raving book 
 about heroes ? Of course you have, or I would 
 ask you to buy my copy. I don't like to live with 
 it in the house. It smoulders. He ought to be 
 laughed at a little." 
 
 Thirty-five years later he said : " Carlyle's Heroes 
 seems to me now one of his best books." 
 
 163
 
 164 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 Again he writes : 
 
 " Do you see Carlyle's ' Latter Day ' pamphlets ? 
 They make the world laugh, and his friends rather 
 sorry for him. But that is because people will 
 still look for practical measures from him ; one 
 must be content with him as a great satirist, who 
 can make us feel when we are wrong, though he 
 cannot set us right. 
 
 There is a bottom of truth in his wildest rhap- 
 sodies." 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald writes, 1838 : 
 
 " Influenza has put a wet blanket over my 
 brains ; this state of head has not been improved 
 by trying to get through a new book much in 
 fashion Carlyle's French Revolution written in 
 a German style." 
 
 John Allen to Thomas Carlyle 
 
 " FREES VICARAGE, SHREWSBURY, 
 , Sept. 4, 1878. 
 
 " DEAR MR. CARLYLE, 
 
 Once Lord John Russell, Sir George Grey, 
 Sir F. Baring, and Mr. Spring Rice laid it down as 
 a rule of the Government that no national system 
 of education was to be encouraged, but such as 
 was based on the doctrines and precepts of 
 revealed religion. This held till 1870, when all 
 reference to Holy Scripture was struck out of the 
 Education Act. 
 
 Statesmen with nobler aims than Mr. Forster 
 or Mr. Gladstone have never ruled this country. 
 But when the Bible was left out of the State 
 Education of our children a fatal mistake was 
 made. 
 
 Perfect toleration must be right. But where 
 the school managers and the parents of the 
 children do not object, surely the Queen's In- 
 spectors should be free to examine the scholars 
 in their knowledge of the Holy Scriptures ?
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 165 
 
 If every man and woman in England who could 
 write their names were polled on this subject, 
 an enormous majority, I am persuaded, would be 
 on the side of recognising the Bible as the source 
 of that knowledge which is of prime importance 
 to man. 
 
 Your testimony to the value of the teaching 
 of the Bible would be of real service. 
 
 England owes much to the recognition of its 
 value, which was acknowledged in the days of 
 Henry the eighth. 
 
 Dear Mr. Carlyle, I am with respect your 
 servant, 
 
 JOHN ALLEN." 
 
 T. H. Huxley said : " When I was a member of the 
 London School Board I fought for the retention of the 
 Bible, that the mass of the people might not be deprived 
 of the one great literature open to them." 
 
 Tennyson maintained that the religion of a people 
 could never be founded on mere philosophy ; it could 
 only come home to them in the thoughts and facts of 
 a Scripture. ' Perfection beyond compare " he called 
 the teaching of the Gospels ; and the splendour of 
 Jesus Christ's purity, holiness, and infinite pity was 
 to him more wonderful than the greatest miracle. 
 
 Fitzgerald to John Allen 
 
 " 1842. 
 ' MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 I have been reading Burton's Anatomy 
 lately ; a captivating book certainly. I cannot 
 help fancying I see the foundation (partly) of 
 Carlyle' s style in Burton ! one passage is quite 
 like Sartor Resartus. Much of Burton's biography 
 may be picked up out of his own introduction 
 to the Anatomy. Maurice's introductory lectures 
 I shall be very glad to have. I do not fancy 
 I should read his Kingdom of Christ, should I ? 
 You know. 
 
 And now good-bye."
 
 166 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald writes : 
 
 " April 11/44. 
 
 " I smoked a pipe with Carlyle yesterday. We 
 ascended from his dining-room carrying pipes and 
 tobacco up through two stories of his house, and 
 got into a little dressing-room near the roof : there 
 we sat down. The window was open and looked 
 out on nursery gardens, their almond-trees in 
 blossom, and beyond were walls of houses, and 
 over these roofs and chimneys, and here and 
 there a steeple, and whole London crowned with 
 darkness gathering behind like the illimitable 
 resources of a dream. I tried to persuade him 
 to leave the accursed den, and he wished but 
 but perhaps he didn't wish on the whole. 
 
 Carlyle is very gloomy about the look of affairs/' 
 
 Fitzgerald to F. Tennyson 
 
 " Dec. 8/44. 
 
 " I heard from Carlyle that Alfred has passed 
 an evening at Chelsea, much to Carlyle's delight ; 
 who has opened the gates of his Valhalla to let 
 Alfred in." 
 
 From this time onward Fitzgerald often climbed to 
 the Watch-tower where Carlyle sat " alone with the 
 stars, contemplatively gazing into the clouds of his 
 tobacco-pipe in true sublimity, overlooking the life- 
 circulation of the great city in the stifled hum of 
 midnight, while fringes of lamplight struggled up 
 through smoke into the ancient reign of night ; when 
 traffic had lain down to rest ; and the chariot wheels 
 of vanity were bearing her to Halls roofed-in and 
 lighted to the due pitch for her ; and only Vice and 
 Misery, prowling and moaning like night-birds, were 
 abroad ; such work goes on under that smoke-counter- 
 pane ; and that hum, like the unquiet slumber of sick 
 life, is heard in Heaven ! " * 
 
 1 See Sartor Resartus.
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 167 
 
 Fitzgerald writes : 
 
 " Carlyle had just returned from the neighbour- 
 hood of Bury. He is full of Cromwell, and funny 
 enough went over from Rugby to Naseby this 
 Spring with poor Dr. Arnold. They saw nothing, 
 and walked over what was not the field of battle. 
 
 I want him to go down with me ; but he 
 thinks it would be too expensive." 
 
 From a letter to John Allen : 
 
 " Do you see Dickens' David Copper field ? I 
 think more carefully written than his later works. 
 But the melodramatic parts as usual, bad. Yet 
 he always lights one up somehow Carlyle says 
 he is a showman whom one gives a shilling to once 
 a month to see his show and then sends him about 
 his business." 
 
 In 1880 Fitzgerald said : 
 
 " Dickens was as pure an instance of Genius as 
 ever lived, and it seems to me a man I could love 
 also." r 
 
 Fitzgerald to T. Carlyle 
 
 " Squire told a story taken from an old Journal 
 now burnt of Oliver marching in to Peterboro' 
 Cathedral as the bells were ringing for service ; 
 bundling out canons, prebendaries, choristers, 
 with the flat of the sword ; and then standing up 
 to preach himself in his armour ! A grand 
 picture. Afterwards they broke the painted 
 windows, which I should count injudicious but 
 that I sometimes feel a desire that some boys 
 would go and do likewise to the Pusey votive 
 windows ; if you know that branch of art."
 
 168 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 E. Fitzgerald to T. Carlyle 
 
 " 20 Sept. 1847. 
 
 " DEAR CARLYLE, 
 
 I was very glad to get your letter : especi- 
 ally as regards that part of it about the Derby- 
 shire villages. In many other parts of England 
 (not to mention my own Suffolk) you would find 
 the same substantial goodness among the people, 
 resulting (as you say) from the funded virtues of 
 many good humble men gone by. I hope you 
 will continue to teach us all, as you have done, to 
 make some use and profit of all this : at least, not 
 to let what good remains to die away under 
 penury and neglect. I also hope you will have 
 some mercy, now and in future, on the ' Hebrew 
 rags ' which are grown offensive to you ; con- 
 sidering that it was these ' rags ' that really did 
 bind together those virtues which have transmitted 
 down to us all the good you noticed in Derby- 
 shire. If the old creed was so commendably 
 effective in the Generals and Counsellors of two 
 hundred years ago, I think we may be well content 
 to let it work still among the ploughmen and 
 weavers of to-day ; and even to suffer some 
 absurdities in the Form, if the Spirit does well 
 upon the whole. Even Exeter Hall ought, I 
 think, to be borne with ; it is at least better than 
 the wretched Oxford business. 
 
 When I was in Dorsetshire and saw chancels 
 done up in sky-blue and gold with niches, candles, 
 an Altar, rails to keep off the profane laity, and 
 the parson, like your ' Reverend Mr. Hitch ' [see 
 Carlyle's Cromwell], intoning with his back to the 
 people, I thought the Exeter Hall war-cry of 
 ' The Bible the whole Bible and nothing but 
 the Bible ' a good cry : I wanted Oliver and his 
 dragoons to march in and put an end to it all. 
 
 Yet our Established Parsons make good country 
 gentlemen and magistrates ; and I am glad to 
 secure one man of means and education in each
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 169 
 
 parish of England ; the people can always resort 
 to Wesley, Bunyan and Baxter, if they want 
 stronger food than the old Liturgy and the 
 orthodox discourse. I think you will not read 
 what I have written ; or be very bored with it. 
 But it is written now." 
 
 Carlyle said : 
 
 " Faith, for man's well being, is properly the 
 one thing needful, with it Martyrs otherwise weak 
 can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross ; 
 and without it, worldlings puke up their sick 
 existence by suicide in the midst of luxury. 
 
 My kind mother did me one invaluable 
 service ; she taught me, less indeed by word than 
 by act, and daily reverent look and habitude, her 
 own simple version of the Christian Faith. With 
 a true woman's heart, and fine though unculti- 
 vated sense, she was Religious. The highest I 
 knew on earth I saw day by day bowed down, 
 with awe unspeakable, before a Higher in Heaven ; 
 such things reach inwards to the very core of 
 your being ; mysteriously does a Holy of Holies 
 build itself in the mysterious deeps ; and Rever- 
 ence, the divinest in man, spring forth undying 
 from its mean envelopment of Fear. 
 
 Wouldst thou rather be a peasant's son that 
 
 . knew, were it never so rudely, there was a God 
 
 in Heaven and in Man ; or a duke's son that 
 
 only knew there were two and thirty quarters 
 
 on the family coach ? l 
 
 A blessed discovery indeed was that of an 
 old Latin Bible to Luther, it taught him that man 
 was saved not by singing masses, but by the 
 infinite Grace of God. He prized it as the Word 
 of the Highest, and as such he determined to 
 hold by it. 
 
 " The stone Pyramids stand looking over the 
 
 1 See Sartor Resartus.
 
 170 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 desert for 3,000 years; instead of journeying to 
 see them, canst thou not open thy Hebrew Bible ? 
 
 " I call the Book of Job one of the grandest 
 things ever written with pen. A noble univer- 
 sality reigns in it. A noble Book ; all men's 
 Book ! Our first, oldest statement of the never- 
 ending problem man's destiny, and God's ways 
 with him here in this earth. 
 
 " There is nothing written of equal literary 
 merit." 
 
 Tennyson was an ardent Hebrew scholar ; the Book 
 of Job, the Song of Solomon, and Genesis were his 
 favourite books. 
 
 Carlyle says further : 
 
 " David's life and history, as written for us in 
 those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest 
 emblems ever given of a man's moral progress and 
 warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever 
 discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest 
 human soul towards what is good and best ; a 
 struggle never ended, ever with tears, repentance, 
 true unconquerable purpose, begun anew." 
 
 Allen's cousin, afterwards Mrs. Charles Darwin, 
 writes in 1838 : 
 
 " Mr. Carlyle dined with us ; his look is quite 
 remarkably pleasant, and he has the most 
 straightforward manner in the world, and talks 
 the broadest Scotch." 
 
 Charles Darwin writes to his affianced bride, 
 November 1838 : 
 
 " On Sunday evening Erasmus took me to 
 drink tea with the Carlyles ; it was my first visit. 
 One must always like Thomas ; Jenny (Mrs. 
 Carlyle) sent some civil messages to you, but 
 which, from the effects of an hysterical giggle, 
 were not very intelligible. It is high treason, but 
 I cannot think that Jenny is quite natural."
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 171 
 
 Again, January 2, 1839 : 
 
 " Erasmus' dinner yesterday was a very 
 pleasant one. Carlyle was in high force and 
 talked away most pleasantly ; to my mind he is 
 the best worth listening to of any man I know. 
 Such society is worth all other more brilliant kinds 
 many times over. I find I cannot by any exertion 
 get up the due amount of admiration for Mrs. 
 Carlyle ; I am not able to understand half the 
 words she speaks, from her Scotch pronunciation. 
 She is certainly very far from natural ; or to use 
 the expression Hensleigh quotes, she is not an 
 unconscious person." 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald writes : 
 
 " NASEBY, Sept. 28, 1842. 
 
 " Carlyle has shewn great sagacity in guessing 
 at the locality of the battle of Naseby from the 
 vague description of contemporaries ; and his 
 short pasticcio of the battle is the best I have 
 seen. But he will spoil all by making a demi-god 
 of Cromwell, who certainly was so far from wise, 
 that he brought about the very thing he thought 
 to prevent the restoration of an unrestricted 
 monarchy. 
 
 ' This wild wide country looks well on these 
 blowing days with flying shadows running over 
 the distance." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " 1846. 
 
 " Carlyle goes on fretting and maddening as 
 usual. Have you read his Cromwell ? Are you 
 converted, or did you ever need conversion ? I 
 believe I remain pretty much where I was. I 
 think Milton, who is the best evidence Cromwell 
 has in his favour, warns him somewhat propheti- 
 cally at the end of his second defence against 
 taking on the King-ship, etc., and in the tract
 
 172 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 on the state of England in 1660 (just before it was 
 determined to bring back Charles II) he says 
 nothing at all of Cromwell, no panegyric ; but 
 glances at the evil ambitious men in the army 
 have done ; and now that all is open to choose, 
 prays for a pure republic ! So I herd with the 
 flunkies and lackies I doubt, but 
 
 am yours notwithstanding, 
 E. F. G." 
 
 Again, December 1851 : 
 
 " Carlyle has been undergoing the water system 
 at Malvern, and says it has done him a very 
 little good. 
 
 " He would be quite well, he says, if he threw 
 his books away and walked about the mountains ; 
 but that would be propter vitam, etc. Nature 
 made him a writer, so he must wear himself out 
 writing Lives of Sterling, etc., for the benefit of 
 the world." 
 
 Again, 1852 : 
 
 " Carlyle I did not go to see, for I really have 
 nothing to tell him, and I have got tired of hearing 
 him growl ; though I do not cease to admire him 
 as much as ever." 
 
 Speaking of Carlyle to a friend, Tennyson said : 
 '' You would like him for one day, but get tired of 
 him ; he is so vehement and destructive," and gave, 
 by way of a specimen of his talk in a deep, tragic 
 voice : " For God's sake away with gigs, thousand 
 million gigs in the world, away with them all in God's 
 name, spoke and axle, the world will never be right 
 until they are all swept into the lowest pit of Tophet." 
 Goethe was once Carlyle's hero ; now Cromwell is his 
 epitome of human excellence. He once spoke as if he 
 wished poets to be our statesmen ; fancy Burns 
 Prime Minister !
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 173 
 
 Fanny Allen writes to her sister of Ruskin's Stones 
 of Venice : 
 
 " Carlyle amused me yesterday by his summing 
 up the moral of the book that you must be ' a 
 good and true man to build a common dwelling- 
 house ! ' 
 
 W. E. Darwin (Charles' eldest son) writes to his 
 mother of a drive with Carlyle, with his infinitely sad 
 face looking out upon the world, of which he seemed 
 to bear all the sorrows : 
 
 " March 1879. 
 
 " MY DEAR MOTHER, 
 
 Our drive with Carlyle was interesting ; 
 but it was difficult to catch all he said. He 
 talked about a number of things, especially about 
 his ' French Revolution/ which I happened to be 
 reading. 
 
 His face was quite in a glow with an expression 
 of fury when he talked of it, and raising his hand 
 he said it was the most wonderful event in the 
 world, 25,000,000 rising up and saying ' by the 
 Almighty God we will put an end to these shams/ 
 
 He spoke of the frightful difficulty of re-writing 
 the first Volume when the manuscript had been 
 burnt ; it was the hardest job he ever had, he 
 had not a scrap of note or reference of any kind, 
 and it was like trying to float in the air without 
 wings, i.e. he used some metaphor to that effect. 
 He also said that he thought at one time he 
 should have gone mad with all the horror and 
 mystery of the world and his own difficulties, if 
 he had not come across Goethe ; yet Goethe 
 always carried about with him a feeling of the 
 perplexity of things and the misery of the world. 
 ... I said that Goethe had not felt the French 
 Revolution anything to the extent that he had, 
 and he smiled and said that was true, adding 
 afterwards that Goethe had always been pros-
 
 174 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 perous, while he had to struggle with money 
 difficulties. He said too that Goethe was far 
 the greatest man living in his time, and was very 
 kind to him ; every three months or so a box of 
 curiosities, books, etc., used to come to him in 
 Scotland ; adding with real sorrow in his voice, 
 that want of money had prevented him from 
 seeing Goethe. 
 
 Goethe believed he should live again and used 
 to write to him openly on the subject. 
 
 When his son died of drinking at Rome, all he 
 he said was that ' his son had stayed behind in 
 the Eternal City.' 
 
 I asked him if he ever read any of his own 
 works again, and he said he had read his 
 ' Frederick ' all through, and seemed to have 
 enjoyed it. As we came away he asked after my 
 father, and said, with a grin, ' But the " Origin of 
 Species " is nothing to me.' Altogether it was 
 very interesting, and he talked very easily and 
 without any condescension or oracularness." 
 
 Tennyson and Fitzgerald were standing before a 
 shop in Regent Street, where were two figures of 
 Dante and Goethe. Fitzgerald said, " What is there 
 in old Dante's face that is missing in Goethe's ? " 
 Tennyson, whose profile had then a remarkable likeness 
 to Dante's, responded : " The Divine." 
 
 Fitzgerald says : 
 
 " Carlyle went to visit Bishop Thirlwall in 
 Wales, and duly attended Morning Chapel as the 
 Bishop's guest should ; he said : ' It was very 
 well done ; it was like so many souls pouring in 
 through all the doors, to offer their orisons to 
 God who sent them on earth. We were no 
 longer men and had nothing to do with men's 
 usages ; and after it was all over, all these souls 
 seemed to disappear again, silent into space ; 
 and not till we all met afterwards in the common 
 room came the human greetings and civilities."
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 175 
 
 Fitzgerald writes in 1879 : 
 
 " Only think of old Carlyle, who was very feeble 
 indeed during the winter, having read through all 
 Shakespeare to himself during these latter spring 
 months. 
 
 I do not hear of his doing the like by his 
 Goethe. He is now pretty well, scolding away at 
 Darwin, etc." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " WOODBRIDGE, Feb. 20, 1881. 
 
 ' I have little to say about Carlyle, but that 
 my heart did follow him to Ecclefechan. I think 
 it was fine that he should anticipate all West- 
 minster Abbey honours, and determine to be laid 
 where he was born among his own kindred and 
 with all the simple and dignified obsequies of (I 
 suppose) his own old Puritan Church. The care 
 of his posthumous memory will be left in good 
 hands, I believe, if in those of Mr. Froude."
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 DEAN STANLEY was commonly believed to be the fair 
 delicate boy who dared to say his prayers in the school 
 dormitory at Rugby. His Life of Doctor Arnold is one 
 of the great books of the early Victorian Age, a book 
 that left its mark there. As travelling tutor to the 
 Prince of Wales he visited with him the Holy Land 
 and Egypt. 
 
 When, in 1864, he was both made Dean of West- 
 minster and won the hand of Lady Augusta Bruce, 
 lady-in-waiting to the Queen, Her Majesty said, Lady 
 Augusta and the Deanery of Westminster were two 
 blessings, too good to fall to the lot of one man in one 
 year. 
 
 From Miss Wedgwood to Mrs. Russell Gurney 
 
 " LlNLATHEN, 1867. 
 
 "It is curious and ought to be instructive as 
 to tolerance, to see three men whose goodness is 
 so mutually exclusive as Mr. Erskine, Mr. Camp- 
 bell and Dean Stanley, so far at least as one can 
 form an opinion from mere demeanour, which I 
 think is the largest element of one's opinion in any 
 case. In Mr. Campbell there is the look of calm 
 patience in his face, that is more to me the saintly 
 quality than the spiritual insight in which Mr. 
 Erskine goes beyond him. The characteristic 
 quality in each of the three is peculiar to himself. 
 Neither Mr. Campbell nor Mr. Erskine have 
 Stanley's breadth of view, but they have much 
 more that he has not. 
 
 Yet he is really a delightful little man, and 
 176
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 177 
 
 here he, as indeed everybody else, shows off to 
 great advantage, in sharing that bond of common 
 love that brings out all sympathy and obliterates 
 all divergence. 
 
 He has just been at breakfast quoting a saying 
 of Faraday, that came to me so wonderfully, and 
 yet the words are very commonplace as one writes 
 them down. Dr. Acland, talking to him of a 
 future state, said, ' What do you suppose we shall 
 be, Mr. Faraday ? ' ' Eye hath not seen nor ear 
 heard what He hath prepared for them that love 
 Him, but I know we shall be with Jesus Christ.' 
 Now it seems stupid to have written that, since I 
 cannot write down the Dean's voice in telling it ; 
 and somehow those words and tones come more 
 home to me from mundane men (I don't want to 
 use the word worldly) than from this beloved one 
 (Mr. Erskine) who so often seems to think light 
 is made to see, not to see by. 
 
 The Stanleys are just going. I grieve to lose 
 the crisp, cool brightness of the little Dean, so 
 alien from all gloom ; but I think I feel this more 
 than Mr. Erskine does. I am spiritually writing 
 advice to the aged all my tune, but it is true this 
 must all be prospective to the thirties and forties. 1 
 
 JULIA WEDGWOOD." 
 
 John Allen to Arthur Penrhyn Stanley 
 
 " FREES VICARAGE, SHREWSBURY, 
 July 1874. 
 
 " DEAR DEAN OF WESTMINSTER, 
 
 On Thursday the clergy of two Rural 
 Deaneries meet at this house to consider the ques- 
 tion, ' how far can an ordained minister, within 
 the limits of his own parish, co-operate in public 
 services with those who do not usually worship 
 with us.' 
 
 The question was suggested by the leading 
 Primitive Methodist in this parish, asking me if 
 
 1 She was now thirty-two. 
 12
 
 178 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 I would preach in his chapel at Frees. I am 
 under the impression that a parson in his own 
 parish may officiate in any meeting-house without 
 breaking any law of the Church. 
 
 Could you send to me references to any ser- 
 viceable books on the terms of Communion ? 
 
 I could not preach if I were not episcopally 
 ordained, but I must not judge others. We 
 should not look upon those who do not worship 
 with us as our enemies ; we should beg a blessing 
 on the religious labours of all who profess and 
 call themselves Christians, and we should make 
 it our main business, in striving after unity, to 
 draw ourselves to the centre of unity. 
 
 Yours, dear Dean of Westminster, sincerely, 
 
 JOHN ALLEN."
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 GUESTS AT FREES I 
 Maurice Fitzgerald Madame Sismondi 
 
 F. D. MAURICE (1805-72) was a Professor at King's 
 College. 
 
 Fanny Allen (John's cousin) writes to her sister : 
 
 " 42 CHESTER TERRACE, 
 Nov. 28, 1847. 
 
 " I wish you had been with us to-day in Lincoln's 
 Inn Chapel. Mr. Maurice gave us a beautiful 
 discourse and I heard every word. It amply 
 repaid me for my walk. It was partly on the 
 forgiveness of our sins and what Luther had done. 
 
 It is a sermon I should like to read. It began 
 with our quelling selfishness, but the link that 
 bound that to the latter part of his sermon I 
 cannot recollect. It was a sermon in contrast 
 to Dr. Pusey's in the morning, which was striking 
 and terrific." 
 
 Maurice received but little of what Carlyle calls 
 ' the gross incense of preaching popularity " during 
 the earh'er years of his ministry. 
 
 Sir James Stephen writes : 
 
 " On Sunday in the afternoon I went to Lin- 
 coln's Inn Chapel. We had a sermon from 
 Maurice, a man whose thoughts wear so loose, 
 strange and cumbrous a dress that one might as 
 well try to make out the figure of a Turk in full 
 apparel." 
 
 179
 
 180 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 His books contain a great deal of what is true and 
 what is new, but unfortunately what is true is not 
 new, and what is new is not true. 
 
 John Allen said : 
 
 " I never can understand any book that Mr. 
 Maurice writes, but I am never with him for ten 
 minutes without feeling that I am a better man 
 for it. He is so unaffectedly humble, so full of 
 love for others, and so unselfish that it is a con- 
 stant sermon of the most helpful kind to be in 
 his company." 
 
 Fitzgerald said, Maurice seemed to him in his 
 demeanour to say " You may trample on my body ; I 
 lay it in the road for you to walk over." 
 
 Samuel Lawrence said the face of the Child in 
 Leonardo da Vinci's " Madonna of the Rocks " re- 
 minded him of Maurice. 
 
 F. D. Maurice to John Allen 
 
 " Oct. 18, 1847. 
 
 " MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 I always had a great reverence and affec- 
 tion for the Bishop of Lichfield and a high opinion 
 of his wisdom ; you may be sure that his last 
 act has increased all these feelings prodigiously. 
 I rejoice that the Church has one more office well 
 filled, and that you will have more work to do for 
 her. The honour I should rather condole with 
 you upon, if I did not feel you would be able to 
 bear it, whatever it is, better than most men. 
 You have been kept hitherto from officiality, have 
 been taught to be a man in Office, and why should 
 we doubt that the same grace will be continued 
 and increased to you ? That it is grace I know 
 well, feeling how much I and others want it, and 
 that we might have it if we would ; but that 
 increases the security. If you had to depend 
 upon yourself, each new duty would be something
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 181 
 
 very terrible ; as you have not, it is as good a 
 ground as we can have for congratulation and 
 thankfulness. I think I could be glad to see you 
 a Bishop, which is saying a great deal about a 
 dear friend, but I have a strong faith that by 
 God's mercy you will not be spoiled by shovel 
 hat and lawn sleeves, or anything else that is 
 most dangerous. 
 
 Ever very affectionately yours, 
 F. D. MAURICE." 
 
 Maurice was a disciple of Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, 
 whose faith was : God is real ; He made us and sus- 
 tains us ; we and all things are but the shadow of 
 Him ; a transitory garment veiling the Eternal Splen- 
 dour. God is great ; we must submit to Him. Our 
 whole strength lies in resigned submission to Him 
 whatever He do to us. The thing he sends, were it 
 death and worse than death, shall be good, shall be 
 best ; we resign ourselves to Him. The worst and 
 cruellest to our eyes is not what it seems, evil itself is 
 but undeveloped good. We must receive whatever 
 befalls us as sent from God above and say, " it is good 
 and wise." 
 
 Allen's cousin Julia Wedgwood writes to Mrs. 
 Russell Gurney from Linlathen in 1867 : 
 
 'I do so long in this house for a little vista 
 towards the world. The eternal principles seem 
 to me somewhat impoverished by being contem- 
 plated so exclusively apart from all illustration in 
 the things of time. While we are changing our 
 king, electing a new sovereign by lot as the Spec- 
 tator puts it ; while we watch such a tragedy as 
 the Mexican issue ; and while all the thought 
 that connects itself with the physical world is 
 so active and potent it is to me almost stifling 
 to recede into this little nook where there is no 
 glimpse of these things. 
 
 Do you think me very wicked to feel all this 
 on the second day of my stay ? But the fact is,
 
 182 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 one feels this most at first. After a long time, 
 indeed, one comes back to it, but it is the first 
 taste of life without so many of its intellectual 
 condiments that is unpalatable, even when the 
 bread of life is a large part of one's fare." 
 
 Mazzini said of Goethe (who held this faith) that 
 he stood amid the storm and convulsion of Europe, 
 like a majestic stork that casts a glance at the warring 
 elements around him, and standing on one leg with 
 his head under his wing, composes himself to sleep. 
 
 Allen's cousin, Mrs. Charles Darwin, writes : 
 
 " Saturday, March 1884. 
 
 " I am deep in Maurice (Maurice's Life), and if 
 I could keep to my resolution of never even trying 
 to understand him I should quite enjoy the 
 book. I think his influence must have arisen 
 entirely from what he was and not from what he 
 taught." 
 
 Mrs. Darwin continues : 
 
 " Monday, April 1884. 
 
 " I find I do get more glimmerings about 
 Maurice's opinions ; but why could not he be 
 happier ? One feels almost angry with all his 
 self-reproach about his wife, whom he evidently 
 adored. Man was certainly intended to be made 
 of stouter stuff." 
 
 From Mrs. Russell Gurney to Julia Wedgwood : 
 
 " Did you see F. D. M. on the Athanasian 
 Creed ? I liked it particularly, but Russell says 
 he cannot see a glimmer of meaning in it as 
 applied to the Creed ; that it no more touches 
 the question than the system of Copernicus or 
 anything else ! "
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 183 
 
 Lonsdale thought Coleridgism by which he meant 
 Modernism in its germinal or milder form greatly 
 impaired the usefulness of some very able teachers. 
 
 Julia Wedgwood (1836-1911), Allen's cousin, the 
 granddaughter of Sir James Mackintosh,was a favoured 
 devotee of Linlathen. She wrote the Moral Ideal and 
 other books, and as a friend of Mr. Hutton was a 
 regular contributor to the Spectator in his day. But 
 successful as she may be called in literature, she 
 would warn her younger friends off its " thorny path." 
 
 From Julia Wedgwood to Mrs. Russell Gurney 
 
 " Dec. 8, 1865. 
 
 " I went in to Mr. Maurice for a little while, 
 and he was talking so characteristically of those 
 Pall Mall letters on Prayer. 
 
 I said I had not much sympathy with special 
 prayers. 
 
 He said, ' I don't think I should have much, 
 either, but those letters of Tyndall's have converted 
 me to that side.' And he went on very emphati- 
 cally, ' When anyone says " Disorder is a part of 
 order," I feel that at all events the argument 
 which leads to that must be wrong/ 
 
 I never can quite make out what Mr. Maurice 
 ultimately means ; he was arguing in favour of 
 the prayers against the cattle plague, yet he said 
 he entirely sympathised with my feeling that it 
 was unwise to bring wishes about wants into that 
 influence of prayer (so that we might ever feel 
 that God had disappointed us), and I cannot see 
 the consistency of these two views. 
 
 There is something in his mind which curiously 
 does not see that if a thing is true the contrary 
 of it must be false. I cannot quite make up my 
 mind whether it is that he sees further than most 
 people or (in this direction) not so far, for it is 
 something quite distinct from Robertson's feeling 
 about opposite truths, which always seems to me 
 the cardinal point of all truth."
 
 184 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 From Julia Wedgwood to Mrs. Russell Gurney 
 
 " April 21, 1869. 
 
 ' We had the Maurices here for three days, 
 and it was such an anxious time to me that, 
 though all went on velvet, and there was not a 
 jar anywhere, I could not help a sense of relief 
 when the poor dear people drove off. 
 
 It was all outside intercourse but nothing 
 could be more satisfactory. We sat spiritually in 
 ' the parlour ' all the time, and were not at all 
 ' cold ' I should not have been afraid altogether 
 of getting into the inner chamber, where the fire 
 is, but illness turns the key and one thinks thrice 
 before unlocking it. Everybody felt his goodness. 
 I wonder what it is. I have nothing to quote, 
 yet those two days gave me the feeling of coming 
 near a good man. Some souls are allowed to 
 manifest that directly. Still there is something 
 in what I should call (but how angry he would be 
 if he heard me) the rhetorical character of his 
 mind that jars against me ; the pouring out of 
 his indefinite yet vehement ideas over all the 
 difficulties that they do not touch, stirs in me an 
 almost bitter sense of all the difficulties." 
 
 Julia Wedgwood writes to Mrs. Russell Gurney 
 from Cambridge, March 1869, of F. D. Maurice : 
 
 ' I believe his is one of the most saintly natures 
 that ever were condemned to sojourn in this 
 world . . . every now and then one comes in 
 contact with such a lovely soul, one feels as if 
 there must be something in his most rhetorical 
 flights. He spoke yesterday of his own love of 
 arguing in such a beautiful spirit. He said his 
 whole life had been punishment for the indulgence 
 of this tendency in early life. I said I should 
 not mind any punishment if it did not always 
 make me worse ; and he said all changes, whether 
 of adversity or prosperity, made us worse at
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 185 
 
 first : somehow there was something in the words 
 that comforted me under a sense of strange 
 wickedness that was stirred up in me. But 
 perhaps you would have attained goals that I do 
 not see, which you would have felt more complet- 
 ing and perfecting." 
 
 Maurice stayed at Frees two or three times, and 
 preached in the village church there. His look of 
 concentrated attention as he knelt upright at the 
 family prayer was almost severe to a child's fancy. 
 
 His reading of the prayers at Freshwater was to the 
 poet's mind the " most earnest and holiest reading he 
 had ever known." 
 
 The exploits of the saints are the record of their 
 prayers. 
 
 Mrs. Maurice was an invalid who seemed to endure 
 life rather than to enjoy it, and when their divine 
 philosopher was seen by his admirers at the side of 
 her bath-chair, his humility almost shocked them as 
 a humiliation. 
 
 . His boys, Fred and Edmund, came with him some- 
 times to Frees. Frederick joined the army, and wrote 
 his father's life ; Edmund was a philanthropist, and 
 married a sister of Miss Octavia Hill. F. D. Maurice's 
 portrait may be seen on the right-hand side of Ford 
 Maddox Brown's great picture, " Toil and Vanity." 
 
 F. D. Maurice writes, June 6, 1849 : 
 
 ' I have been spending a most grievous five 
 hours at the National Society public meeting, 
 listening to speeches from clergymen that it 
 almost broke one's heart to hear, and seeing 
 demonstrations of a spirit which betokens schism 
 and destruction. The man who opened the 
 debate used the most sacred phrases for claptrap, 
 and throughout confounded the right of the 
 clergy to have their own, with Church principles. 
 No ' declaration of rights ' in France or Germany 
 ever more confounded the two most opposite 
 things in the world the powers with which God
 
 186 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 has entrusted us, and for which we must give 
 account to Him, with our privilege to claim a 
 position for ourselves and so lift ourselves above 
 others. Dear Allen spoke earnestly and affection- 
 ately, and therefore impressively, but without 
 sufficient coherency, yet I think his right feeling 
 and heart a little turned the tone of the meeting. 
 The poor children are passed by while we are 
 fighting. Tis very fearful. 
 
 F. D. MAURICE." 
 
 FITZGERALD 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald (1809-83) writes in 1852 : 
 
 " I am really going from home next week 
 towards the famous expedition into Shropshire, 
 which I mean to perform one day. Tom Church- 
 yard is going to America on Monday ! He makes 
 less fuss about it than I do about going to Shrop- 
 shire." 
 
 Something in his reserved but courteous mien and 
 tall uncouth figure made Fitzgerald formidable to 
 strangers ; his skin was dark and weather-beaten, his 
 lower lip drawn down by his pipe. 
 
 When strolling through the pastures and skirting the 
 flower-fringed meadows that slope southward towards 
 Hawkstone, Grinshill, and Ness Cliff ; and westwards 
 to the Long Mynd, the Breidden, the Berwyn range, 
 and Moel Vamma, with her troop of sister hills, with 
 Allen's daughters and their governess, little recked he 
 of the fame of the man now lifting the little maid, 
 with his merry " Come, little Ticket, it is your turn 
 now," over the frequent stiles leading from field to 
 field, or to the adjacent covers. 
 
 Such a man loved to brood over Gray's " Elegy " 
 on his walks ; but nevertheless fame pursued him. 
 
 Of an evening at Frees he would sit at the piano 
 and imitate " Madame Squalleany " with a brilliant 
 accompaniment and plenty of shakes and trills, or 
 teach the children to act Moliere whether they knew 
 what they were talking about or no. The greenery of
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 187 
 
 the place with his best-beloved friend's companionship 
 suited him well ; at last Allen had to urge his reluctant 
 departure to fulfil a duty incumbent upon him. 
 
 Their friendship remained unbroken to the end, but 
 the later letters of the long series sent by Allen to a 
 friend were lost. Fitzgerald burnt all Allen's letters 
 before his death. 
 
 In 1868 Fitzgerald wrote to E. B. Cowell : 
 
 ' You, I and John Allen are among the few, I 
 do say, who, having a good natural insight, 
 maintain it undimmed by public and private 
 regards." 
 
 At Freshwater he only stayed once, and seldom 
 wrote to Tennyson, grudging to give his delicate wife 
 the trouble of answering him. Little Grange, Wood- 
 bridge, was small and not very comfortable. Fitz- 
 gerald was too kind to his servants to let them waste 
 their strength in waiting upon him, so when the 
 great poet, who rarely paid visits, looked hi on him, 
 Fitzgerald had to put him up at the inn. The two 
 friends were together after twenty years' separation, 
 as if they had never been parted. 
 
 Endowed with a happy nature, enthusiastically 
 devoted to music, art, and literature, with a noble 
 passion for friendship ; a delightful companion, with a 
 heart so pure that vice, gambling, drink, or the pleasures 
 of the table had no power over him, Fitzgerald was 
 yet too fastidious to hear much music, too indolent to 
 enjoy the pictures he could so aptly appreciate, too 
 modest to care for his own art ; so as middle age came 
 on a grey mist crept over his life. Too shy to visit his 
 friends, he wrote to them with diffidence, thinking 
 men occupied with the serious business of life might 
 not care for conversational letters, and corresponded 
 chiefly with men across the water, such as Lowell and 
 Sir W. F. Pollock. Longfellow's poetry he loved, 
 Hawthorne he admired, but said he could not care for 
 as he ought. In writing to them he never forgot to 
 put the possessive pronoun plural before the name of 
 Cambridge to give their University its due respect.
 
 188 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 In later life a weakness of his eyesight interfered 
 with his classical studies ; during the day he walked 
 in the fields thinking of music, and read Cervantes and 
 Madame de Sevigne, of whom he made a personal 
 friend, loving her Brittany life even more than her 
 Court life, for " she loved the country " as he did. At 
 night a boy came to read to him, and he took a delight 
 in Scott's novels, especially the Scotch ones. Anthony 
 Trollope he also liked, but not George Eliot. 
 
 MADAME SISMONDI 
 
 Notwithstanding all Fitzgerald's crescent fame, 
 John Allen possibly thought that the friend of his 
 youth had not made the use of his magnificent gifts 
 which God had intended, that use to which Allen had 
 so perse veringly prayed he might turn them. 
 
 Madame Sismondi (1777-1853), John Allen's cousin, 
 a handsome woman of seventy summers, possessing 
 still the charm of a beautiful disposition, came to visit 
 him at Frees. 
 
 In the early years of the century she had known 
 Madame de Stae'l, Byron, and other stars of that date. 
 Byron she described as an interesting-looking man, 
 his pale face marked with strong lines ; when he spoke 
 his countenance, unlike most men's, took a much 
 severer expression ; he did not look ill-natured until 
 he spoke. 
 
 Lord Holland called Madame de Stae'l the most pre- 
 sumptuous woman he had ever met ! After dinner at 
 his house in 1813 she stood up and harangued the 
 company against Peace ! having already attacked 
 Lord Wellesley (the Duke's elder brother) for his 
 speech on the Swedish Treaty. Her assault was re- 
 pelled with such skill and courtesy that Wellesley won 
 the admiration of the table. She praised Bernadotte ; 
 saying the Swedes loved him, for he did all he could 
 for their happiness. 
 
 Mrs. Maclagan told a curious story of Bernadotte, 
 who when he was made King of Sweden by Napoleon 
 was fairly well received at the Court, except by the
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 189 
 
 Queen-Mother, who could not endure him. When at 
 last she was persuaded to invite him to an evening 
 party an anonymous letter reached him on the morn- 
 ing of the day, warning him against eating anything 
 there. As Bernadotte sat by the Queen-Mother on a 
 raised dais, she ordered the attendant to bring coffee, 
 took a cup and handed it to him. The King bowed 
 and said, " Apres vous, Madame." She changed colour, 
 but drank the coffee. The following morning the 
 news was published that the Queen-Mother had died 
 suddenly in the night. 
 
 He was a tall, graceful man, and although he spoke 
 with a strong Gascon accent had a most pleasant 
 address. He went into battle in a purple, gold- 
 embroidered tunic, with a plume of feathers in his 
 hat, and sat his horse unmoved amid a hailstorm of 
 bullets. 
 
 Madame de StaeTs harangues were generally so 
 eloquent, fraught with such outbursts of feeling, and 
 full of deep thought expressed with so much action 
 that they fascinated the world. 
 
 In common conversation she appeared only like 
 any other clever woman. 
 
 One evening she met Byron at Sir James Mackin- 
 tosh's house. Such celebrities should have glorified 
 any gathering. Not so ; the Baronne de Stael arrived 
 out of humour ; to make her talk Sir James put forth 
 all his brilliant powers in vain. She followed Lord 
 Byron restlessly about the room, while he continually 
 escaped from her. When he said he was going to 
 Athens, and thence to Persia and India, she affected 
 to believe he was not in earnest, that he could not 
 seriously mean to leave England, and proposed to him 
 the misery of " finding himself alone, abandoned, and 
 dying in a distant land." 
 
 " One is sufficiently fatigued with one's friends 
 during life," he replied. ' I should find it hard to be 
 bored with them in death also." 
 
 " Ah my lord ! you are happy ; you have felt the 
 happiness d'etre entoure, moi, je crains d'etre aban- 
 donnee."
 
 190 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 Her response sounded as she spoke it, inexpressibly 
 elegant. 
 
 Madame de Stae'l was at this time forty-five years 
 of age. 
 
 Sometimes this celebrated lady would arrive in a 
 charming humour and talk openly of her books ; it 
 was thought a sign of special favour when she brought 
 her daughter Albertine with her, a rather pretty, 
 modest, silent girl, afterwards the Duchesse de Broglie. 
 She came to England, she said, for the religious educa- 
 tion of her children. 
 
 Of Sir James Mackintosh Madame Sismondi saw 
 much ; he married her sister. When she was at Dul- 
 wich he invited a breakfast-party to her rooms intending 
 to give her great pleasure, summoning Madame de 
 Stae'l, the poet Campbell, etc. As he asked fourteen 
 guests and she had only room for eight, she had to 
 borrow an apartment in which to entertain the dis- 
 tinguished gathering ! 
 
 " I dared not tell him how very far from a 
 pleasure it was to me," she wrote, "or he 
 would accuse me of a brutal disregard of genius. 
 The fact is, I have little pleasure in such com- 
 pany ; after all, these people put forth their best 
 in writing. I would much rather read their 
 works ; that is surer than their society, which fails 
 in giving one pleasure, at least six times, for once 
 that it succeeds ; and then is seldom equal to 
 one's expectation. I foresee that Talleyrand 
 will not be the only one ' si fatigue d' esprit.' 
 There are a few already that venture to laugh, 
 one or two that acknowledge she wearies them, 
 and some prophesy that in the long run ' Mme. de 
 Stae'l would be very tiresome.' ' 
 
 After her marriage, Madame Sismondi saw some- 
 thing of Hortense, ex-Queen of Holland, now no longer 
 beautiful ; she talked openly of her past life, and gave 
 an account of Bonaparte's divorce from her mother. 
 Notwithstanding his sternness of purpose, there was
 
 GUESTS AT FREES . 191 
 
 tenderness and strength of affection in the bitter tears, 
 tears even to sobs, which broke from him at times in 
 carrying it through. She had a cast of Bonaparte 
 taken after his death, affecting, from an expression of 
 deep yet quiet suffering. His dying eyes were fixed 
 on the portrait of his second wife and child which hung 
 over his little camp-bed at St. Helena. Louis Napoleon, 
 a youth of twenty-five (in 1832), was with the ex- 
 Queen ; and when in 1838 they came to Geneva many 
 people in France objected to his proximity lest it 
 should disturb the peace of the realm. The people of 
 Geneva resented this feeling, and mocked at it, but 
 Sismondi saw, in the quiet, rather heavy young man, 
 the elements of danger. 
 
 Mrs. Marcet, whose writings had a vast circulation 
 as school-books (Conversations on Political Economy, 
 etc.), often came to Madame Sismondi's evenings, but 
 did not often add to their pleasure. She had a way 
 of spoiling conversation by creating a double strain 
 in which she spoke so loudly as to overpower that of 
 greater interest. Sismondi said conversation was an 
 art learnt by foreigners from the moment they could 
 speak, and tried to convince his English nieces of the 
 solid virtue of benevolence they could exercise, by 
 practising its art, and that in many moments of ennui 
 they might, by such a power, divert a real sorrow. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve speaks of the beneficent influence upon 
 Sismondi of his English wife, and notices that he 
 pointed out the insidious sophistry of Gibbon's argu- 
 ments against Christianity. Gibbon, in the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth chapters of his Decline and Fall of the Roman 
 Empire, asserts that the tide of human happiness rose 
 highest under Vespasian and the five good Emperors, 
 losing sight of the misery four-fifths of the population 
 (the slaves) endured.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 GUESTS AT FREES II 
 Sir James Stephen Colonel Martin 
 
 SIR JAMES STEPHEN 
 
 SIR JAMES STEPHEN (1789-1861) was a link with the 
 great past : he had known Thomas Clarkson, basked 
 in the sunshine of Wilberforce's spiritual enthusiasm, 
 reverenced Zachary Macaulay's long life of resolute 
 self-sacrifice in the cause of slaves, and had been the 
 friend and companion of Granville Sharpe the heroes 
 who spent their lives in winning relief for the oppressed. 
 Himself the son of James Stephen, and a barrister by 
 profession, he administered in the Colonial Office no 
 easy task the Act which these men had carried through 
 an unreformed Parliament. 
 
 His wisdom and energy, his conscientious work and 
 diligence, gave him such influence with his superiors 
 that his colleague, Sir Henry Taylor, said that for 
 more than twenty-five years he " literally ruled the 
 Colonial Empire " ; in derision he was called " King 
 Stephen." Not that he was otherwise than profoundly 
 subordinate, but he found the way to bring men to his 
 own conclusions. When Sir Henry once said to him, 
 " But surely the simple thing to do is, to do so-and-so," 
 he answered doubtfully, adding. ' The truth is, I am 
 not a simple man." 
 
 Stephen deeply appreciated Allen's friendship, the 
 beauty of his character, and the combination of sim- 
 plicity of life, with abundant interests, to be found at 
 Prees Vicarage. 
 
 His brilliant Ecclesiastical Essays were written as 
 a relaxation from his work. He said a man should 
 always write, as great singers sing, from a full chest. 
 Dr. Vaughan preferred them before Macaulay's. 
 
 192
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 193 
 
 Behind each word of his book the force of a noble 
 character is felt, the weight of a large capital of think- 
 ing and of being. His wisdom and insight, his firm 
 faith in the influence of God within the sanctuary of 
 the human heart, his passages of magnificent eloquence, 
 his pleasant irony, set his work on a level with the best 
 writing. 
 
 A man of marked dignity, good-looking, with 
 abundant white hair, neatly dressed (although it is 
 said he turned his mirror to the wall), he made his 
 presence felt wherever he went. Dinner-parties he 
 loathed ; his remembrance of the table of Dives and 
 the couch of Lazarus became painfully vivid to him 
 at the sight of them. A large college dinner-party he 
 thus described : " Nothing multiplied by nothing will 
 still be nothing ; and dullness is not the less dull 
 because there is a larger quantity of it." 
 
 On May 16, 1847, he wrote : 
 
 " I went to breakfast with Tom Macaulay and 
 met Hallam and Milman, and Bishops Wilberforce 
 and Thirl wall, Lord Glenelg, Empson, Robert 
 Wilberforce, Monckton Milnes, and Charles Buller 
 a very goodly company a most luxurious 
 use of the highest faculties for the mere purpose 
 of persiflage and entertainment. Many a good 
 story (good to laugh at), many a strange quotation 
 from Macaulay, but I did not and do not like it. 
 Too trifling for Bishops by a great deal and for 
 a society of men all above forty, most above 
 fifty, some turned sixty, too thoughtless, careless 
 and light, at least for noonday. 
 
 Have I done ill in declining this society almost 
 wholly ? I think not." 
 
 On December 9, 1854, ne writes : 
 
 " There was need of national humiliation ; and 
 humbling enough to us it is, to be the Allies of 
 such an Emperor as Louis Napoleon, and of such 
 a vile portion of the human family as the Turks. 
 
 13
 
 194 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 Some one described Louis Napoleon as a ' lazy 
 glutton/ ' 
 
 To Allen he wrote : 
 
 " EAST INDIA COLLEGE, 18 August, 1857. 
 
 " This is a sad society in which we are living 
 at Haileybury. We have no associate here whose 
 domestic affections are not deeply wounded by 
 the mutiny in India. Hodson is now among 
 the besieged of Delhi. 
 
 The problems, moral and political, to which our 
 Indian Empire gives rise would be more than 
 enough to puzzle Aristotle were he amongst us, to 
 speculate on the subject." 
 
 Stephen's " piety was reserved and unobtrusive like 
 the blood throbbing in every pulse and visiting every 
 fibre ; it was the latent and perennial source of his 
 mental health and energy." 
 
 Of his own religious views he said : 
 
 " In the great conflict of opinions and argu- 
 ments, one thing only seems to me clear, namely, 
 that the Words of Jesus Christ and His deeds, 
 earnestly studied in devout exercises and inter- 
 preted to the conscience by the Divine Spirit, 
 and familiarised to the heart by an obedient life, 
 must lead us right ; or that there is no trust- 
 worthy leading at all." 
 
 Once, after parting with Carlyle, Sir James wrote 
 him a long letter of apology, accusing himself of the 
 disposition to acquiesce in truths, if truly uttered, 
 whence the speaker deduced inferences from which he 
 dissented : a beautiful letter, setting forth at some 
 cost to himself the faith by which he lived. Carlyle 
 had concluded their talk with these words : ' Well ! I 
 believe that, after all, you think on these subjects 
 much as I do." 
 
 He responded in a charming letter of retractation 
 beginning thus :
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 195 
 
 " CHELSEA, 16 Oct. 1853. 
 
 " DEAR SIR^JAMES, 
 
 You are infinitelyjgentle, polite, and con- 
 siderate with your fellow creatures. I could only 
 have meant that the ' soul ' of your religion was 
 analogous to the ' soul ' of mine, however much 
 their embodiments might differ." 
 
 And concluded affectionately hoping " for another long 
 talk soon." 
 
 Sir James talked with his eyelids cast down, a 
 nervous trick which inclined him to a monologistic 
 style of conversation. His talk was never common- 
 place ; he always used the right, if sometimes an 
 unexpected, word ; while his clear-cut phrases and 
 lively illustrations put even familiar topics in an 
 effective light. 
 
 He placed Sir Robert Peel among really great 
 speakers " vehement, sarcastic, humorous, comprehen- 
 sive and full of large views and energetic resolves ; 
 everything short of the world in which poets live, 
 and into which orators attempt usually to soar. 
 His is the perfection of the human understanding of 
 the second order ; under the influence of the highest 
 possible and the most protracted culture." 
 
 His daughter Caroline joined the Society of Friends 
 and wrote a book, Quaker Strongholds, which, the 
 Quakers say, has unveiled their own religion to them. 
 Their hours of united silence are a Waiting to hear 
 the still small Voice ; and their Waiting in fellow- 
 ship is based upon the Master's promise to be 
 among those who gather around Him, and the 
 pledge He has given to those who agree in what they 
 ask of Him. 
 
 Early in the nineteenth century one old woman went 
 alone every week to worship at a Friends' Meeting 
 House beneath the shadow of Skiddaw. Later in the 
 century the sacred gatherings which have blessed the 
 Church were inaugurated at Keswick. 
 
 Year by year Caroline came to Frees and wrote :
 
 196 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 ' The picture of life at Frees is peaceful, and 
 gathers a deep interest from the Archdeacon's 
 fatherly figure, with its noble head and strongly- 
 marked, profoundly expressive features, the black 
 eyebrows and white hair in picturesque contrast, 
 the tall, spare form, and the deep impressive 
 voice, so ready to break into the heartiest laughter, 
 so gently lowered to ask pardon of the youngest 
 child or humblest servant for any little oversight 
 or accidental omission of courteous form. The 
 accents of his voice, the reverence of his bowed 
 head and lifted hand at family prayer, live ever in 
 my memory. 
 
 The influence of his life appealed to the deepest, 
 not to the most easily uttered feelings ; we felt in 
 his presence some sense of awe ; yet there was 
 nothing to check any innocent freedom, only a 
 moral effluence winnowing our words and thoughts. 
 The deep spring of reverence in his spirit so 
 diffused itself around him that other hearts were 
 drawn to revere what he felt worthy of reverence. 
 The instant and perfectly involuntary change in 
 his manner warning us of any danger in conver- 
 sation to fairness or charity, an earnestness in his 
 sudden gravity when any matter of principle was 
 touched, together with his tenderness at any 
 mention of suffering or weakness, exercised a 
 restful spell over his dinner-table. 
 
 Truth and justice, the law of kindness, good 
 men and little children, the face of nature, things 
 lovely and of good report, and, as shewn in word, 
 look, and manner, whatever related to the service 
 of God, all held the Archdeacon's mind as 
 by some spiritual law of gravity in a frame of 
 profound, but unconstrained veneration. 
 
 His rare and profound modesty with regard to 
 what we could not fail to recognise as the mam- 
 spring of his daily life guarded as with a sacred 
 jealousy the enclosure of the Fountain from 
 which all powers of healing and blessing must 
 flow.
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 197 
 
 It never seemed to occur to him to put himself 
 or anything that was his forward. 
 
 He was before all things a Priest ; not as having 
 been called to that office by any outward ordina- 
 tion, but as having been set apart in the divine 
 ordering, to be to others a channel of heavenly 
 influences, and a sustainer in others of the spirit 
 of worship. In his own household this was 
 strongly felt, and it must have affected anyone 
 who came into relation with him. Its depth was 
 unmistakeable, but it would be difficult to estimate 
 its extent. 
 
 There was nothing rhetorical in his language ; it 
 had the vigour which comes of the rejection of all 
 superfluous conventional expressions. He spoke 
 simply and with that dignity which a freedom 
 from self-conscious considerations often gives. 
 His sermons had, in common with those of F. D. 
 Maurice, a power to help at times hearers who 
 may have carried away nothing at all of the 
 thought set forth there. Face, voice, and manner 
 were all imbued with the eloquence of a holy life. 
 ' Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth 
 himself even as He is pure/ To listen to him in 
 his own church was like catching a glimpse of that 
 process at its source. The human nature of the 
 speaker brought the possibility of victory home 
 as nothing else could have done ; it taught us that 
 the faith which was overcoming everything in 
 him was not untried that it was not immunity 
 from temptation but faithfulness in service which 
 was working out that visible purification. 
 
 There was, too, a quaint charm in his homely 
 handling of local matters which he felt to be 
 bound up with important issues. 
 
 His unconventional methods, too, of carrying 
 out in daily life the teaching of our Lord, e.g. 
 with regard to telling a brother of his fault, had 
 a picturesque effect ; the outcome of a childlike 
 sincerity and single-mindedness, combined with an 
 instinctive courtesy. Although incapable of un-
 
 198 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 kindness, and ready tolbe judged by whatever 
 law he laid down, he may often have given offence, 
 no culprit could well have failed at last to love 
 him better for his reproof. 
 
 He never guessed how permanent was the 
 influence of his life ; had he known his hold upon 
 our hearts he might possibly have been led, even 
 against the grain, into wider fields of activity ; but 
 it seems doubtful whether any more freely uttered 
 appeals could have conveyed to his generation so 
 precious a blessing as the humble presence among 
 us of this servant of God." 
 
 Sir James Stephen wrote of the difficulty of finding 
 ' thoughts and language meet to be addressed by the 
 ephemeral dwellers upon earth to Him who inhabits 
 Eternity," yet so fervid and so eloquent were the words 
 which flowed from his own heart in family prayer that 
 his wife took them down in shorthand and printed 
 them for the benefit of those who could neither feel 
 as he felt or speak as he spoke. 
 
 Caroline Stephen to May Allen 
 
 " PETERSHAM TERRACE, W., 
 April 1869. 
 
 " MY DEAREST MAY, 
 
 I had an interview with Miss Nightingale 
 the other day, which was very interesting to me. 
 I took a great personal liking to her, to her cor- 
 diality and heartiness, which added to the pleasures 
 of the visit. Her talk was, like her writings, not 
 very orderly, indeed, decidedly disorderly, but 
 occasionally pointed and keen, and always inter- 
 esting. She had various things to tell me about 
 religious Orders abroad and about Sisters of 
 Charity in the Crimea and elsewhere which I was 
 glad to be able to inquire into from herself. . . . 
 
 Ever, dear May, your very affectionate 
 
 C; E. S."
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 199 
 
 COLONEL MARTIN 
 
 Colonel Martin was a man of prayer. When in 
 1849 Lord Hardinge subdued the Punjab, Martin was 
 serving in the Indian Army. Exactly three months 
 after Hardinge's successor had written, ' The last 
 obstacle to the complete pacification of India has been 
 removed," a Sikh revolt broke out and two English 
 officers were treacherously murdered at Multan ; one, 
 as he was dying, sent off a pencil note to the Commis- 
 sioner on the Frontier, and died exclaiming, " We are 
 not the last of the English." The Commander-in- 
 Chief hesitated to move his British soldiers across the 
 burning plains to Multan ; but the note fell into the 
 hands of a Lieutenant Edwardes, who with 400 men 
 dashed forward and, assisted by some Mohammedans, 
 drove 4,000 rebel Sikhs back into Multan, and for 
 some months held them there alone and unaided. 
 When, after this exploit, he was invalided home and 
 was, as some thought, being needlessly honoured, the 
 Duke of Wellington said, " My Lords, Lieutenant 
 Edwardes' s services have been unprecedented ; his 
 reward must be unprecedented, too." 
 
 After the advance into the Punjab had been success- 
 fully accomplished, Captain Martin, with some other 
 officers, believing that God had given India into our 
 hands not for our glory but for India's good, sent 
 round a circular to all the military stations to raise a 
 subscription for the establishment of a Christian 
 Mission in the Punjab as a thank-offering to God for 
 our victory. Daily Martin shut himself up for a well- 
 understood season of prayer, and, knowing that effort 
 without prayer is presumptuous, and prayer without 
 effort is hypocrisy, he himself subscribed more than a 
 thousand pounds to the work, and later supported one 
 of the missionaries sent by the C.M.S. by riding with 
 him through the dangers of his first missionary journey 
 over the mountains into Kashmir. 
 
 In 1853, when Peshawar, then a perilous outpost, 
 was occupied by the English, Martin came up there 
 with his native infantry. After solemn prayer (a
 
 200 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 prayer-meeting was held weekly at Peshawar by eight 
 officers), Major Martin went to the Commissioner and 
 asked his leave to establish a mission. ''No mis- 
 sionary shall cross the Indus while I am Commissioner 
 of Peshawar," was his answer ; "do you wish us all 
 to be killed ? '' The Commissioner, a magnificent 
 officer and brave man, had not over-estimated the 
 danger in which he stood, for soon afterwards, in 
 December 1853, a crafty Afghan crept up to him as he 
 was sitting in his verandah and, presenting a petition, 
 plunged a knife into his heart. Lord Dalhousie 
 appointed as his successor to this post the hero of 
 Multan, Herbert Edwardes : ' You hold the outpost 
 of the Indian Empire," he said ; " God speed you in 
 your career." Then the dauntless Major went to the 
 new Commissioner and renewed his request to establish 
 the Mission. " Certainly," replied Sir Herbert; " send 
 for a missionary, call a meeting, and I will preside." 
 Martin fell on his knees in the Commissioner's office 
 and poured out his heart in thanks to God. Men's 
 souls were stirred within them as they heard the brave 
 words of Sir Herbert at that meeting, while the blood 
 of his murdered predecessor was not yet effaced from 
 the verandah. ' We may be quite sure," he said, 
 ' that if we do our duty we are much safer than if we 
 neglect it." Major Martin gave anonymously a thou- 
 sand pounds at this meeting also to the Mission. 
 
 In the time of the Mutiny the Punjab had a large 
 share in saving India. Ruskin classed Herbert 
 Edwardes with Gordon and Havelock, and made him 
 the hero of his sketch, " The Knight of Faith." " I 
 put full confidence in Jesus," said Edwardes, " and I 
 couldn't do more if I lived a thousand years." 
 
 After Colonel Martin returned to the homeland he 
 came to Prees. John Allen was a lover of good men.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 GUESTS AT FREES III 
 
 Bishop Lonsdale Lord Grimthorpe W. H. Thompson Bishop 
 G. A. Selwyn Bishop John Selwyn F. W. H. Myers Julia Sterling. 
 
 BISHOP LONSDALE 
 
 WHEN John Lonsdale (1788-1867), the Principal of 
 King's College, with some misgivings accepted the vast 
 Bishopric of Lichfield, he, knowing the dignity of Allen's 
 soul and character, and realising the heavenly mystery 
 in that strong heart, asked him to join him in his 
 work, and offered him the best living in his gift. 
 
 Allen loved Lonsdale, for he instinctively appre- 
 hended in all men and things what is good and lovely. 
 
 Bishop Lonsdale often stayed at Prees. A wealthy 
 man, he lived in simplicity, and spent much money on 
 his diocese. Fastidious in scholarship and manner, he 
 was ever humble in heart. He could not say a harsh 
 word to anyone ; when it was necessary to call a man 
 to greater exactitude in duty his admonition was mainly 
 given by increased gentleness, kindness, and affection. 
 By his silent conduct he preached the most necessary 
 duties, ever overcoming evil with good. 
 
 He felt that one charged with the work of a diocese 
 must take up the burden of everyone in it, and, putting 
 his shoulder constantly to the wheel, must be the 
 servant of all, striving to remedy the error of the least 
 experienced curate, and to remove stumbling-blocks 
 out of the way of the weakest under his care. 
 
 He would often on a winter's morning be up by 
 candle-light responding to the claims of his clergy 
 upon his sympathy. His patronage he regarded as a 
 sacred charge from God, and instead of using it as a
 
 202 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 convenient promotion for men who had served long in 
 his diocese, or pleased him by their acquiescence, he 
 sought out for each flock of immortal souls committed 
 to him the man who, whether polished or unpolished, 
 learned or unlearned, would be most helpful to that 
 parish. ''' If a man's eye is single his whole body is 
 full of light" ; so, during a long Episcopate, he hardly 
 made more than two bad, or what men call " indif- 
 ferent," appointments. 
 
 ' In one sense," he said, " Holy Scripture is man's 
 word, in one sense it is God's. There is the human 
 and the Divine element. God works in us to will 
 and to do of His good pleasure. The writers claim 
 Divine inspiration for themselves and we admit the 
 claim." 
 
 John Allen also realised that the Holy Scriptures, 
 the Voice by which the silence between heaven and 
 earth has been broken, reveal our awful destiny and 
 the law of our hidden, as well as of our external life. 
 
 One of the family once made some jokes, asking 
 riddles out of the Bible, at which the others laughed. 
 On the following morning he called his children sepa- 
 rately to his study and solemnly rebuked them, saying, 
 to make a joke of God's Word was to warm our spirits 
 at the flames of the fire of hell. 
 
 The Bishop entertained his candidates for Holy 
 Orders with large-minded hospitality. An Irish candi- 
 date for priest's orders was once discussing the doctrine 
 of justification by faith with too much fluency ; and 
 to check irreverence the Bishop said the subject was 
 a difficult one. " Oh, my Lord," rejoined the candi- 
 date, " if you will just read my sermon on the subject 
 you can have no more difficulty about it." 
 
 The Bishop was seldom absent from his diocese. 
 To look forward to a holiday like a school-boy would 
 have seemed to him an impertinence. His diocese 
 was his home ; his work was his life. In his eightieth 
 year he did a long day's work, wrote his letters, sat 
 down to a late dinner, drooped his head, and passed 
 into the presence of the Master he had loved and 
 served with his harness heavy upon his back.
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 203 
 
 LORD GRIMTHORPE 
 
 Lord Grimthorpe (1825-1903) was a well-known 
 man in his day. As the leader of the Parliamentary 
 Bar he made a large fortune ; with Professor Airy, the 
 Astronomer Royal, he designed Big Ben and had 
 much to do with the casting of his bell, the largest in 
 the world. He wrote an amusing and severely critical 
 book on the Revision of the New Testament. His 
 devotion to the Bible was sincere. At his own expense, 
 and as his own architect, he restored St. Alban's Abbey. 
 
 " On Sunday afternoons," he said, " I sometimes 
 went to King's College Chapel, where Allen used to 
 preach to a small congregation (and almost in the dark 
 in winter), for the students were not required to go in 
 the afternoon. I was at once struck with his originality 
 and quaintness, and a kind of oratorical genius without 
 any pretence at eloquence. I have always taken likes 
 and dislikes pretty quickly, and soon became much 
 attached to Allen. He was then married and I was 
 not, and he sometimes asked me to his house, and I 
 was very glad to spend quiet Sunday evenings with 
 him and his wife, for whom I acquired as much regard 
 as for himself." Grimthorpe often stayed at Prees 
 with his wife and without her, and would walk out 
 making parish visits with Allen, " though he did not 
 join in the visitations." 
 
 He said : 
 
 " Allen was very good company when I was 
 walking with him among his cottages and in his 
 house. He was a lover and sayer of humorous 
 things, which owed some of their force to his 
 peculiar voice between a laugh and a lamentation. 
 While we were walking I once asked him, ' What 
 does that young Hill do ? ' He stopped and 
 struck his stick on the ground as his manner was, 
 and said, ' Well, he kills rats/ His severest things 
 often had a kind of fun in them, which was never 
 ill-natured, and he was never sarcastic. I by no 
 means mean to condemn sarcasm universally,
 
 204 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 which is often the best weapon to use (except for 
 people in authority, to whom it is fatal) ; but it 
 was not the line that his severity took." 
 
 On Sunday Lord Grimthorpe read the lessons in 
 church. 
 
 So fond of clocks was he that he would drive over 
 to Whitchurch and spend the whole day in a clock- 
 maker's workshop. As a child of six, he took a clock 
 to pieces and put it together in working order. 
 
 At the Vicarage he said he was like the Emperor 
 Caligula, who wished that all Rome had but one neck, 
 that he might sever it at a blow ; for he wished all 
 the Allen girls had but one hand that he might say 
 " good morning " as summarily. When John Allen 
 was having his hair cut in the work-room, he chose 
 to sit there with his book ; so Grace, the operator, 
 asked him if she might exercise her skill on his hair. 
 ' Yes," he replied, " if I may cut yours afterwards." 
 ' Very good, if you will promise to cut off mine only 
 as much as I take off yours." 
 
 'No, but I will leave you on as much as you leave 
 me." She wished, she said, she had taken him at his 
 word, and left her brown tresses to his mercy. 
 
 11 I was afraid perhaps you might," he retorted ; 
 ' but I would have been even with you." 
 
 At a dinner-party, if the company didn't interest 
 him, he would read a book, while his wife made herself 
 agreeable to everyone. He could sometimes be fierce, 
 even when out of the Law Courts. 
 
 W. H. THOMPSON 
 
 W. H. Thompson, Master of Trinity (1810-90), 
 wrote, Easter 1866 : 
 
 ' MY DEAR ALLEN, 
 
 I know a little of your country, and shall 
 be very glad to renew my acquaintance with it 
 under the guidance of your amiable daughters. 
 I am thankful you have sent away ' Mill on
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 205 
 
 Hamilton/ I had a good grind at that Mill last 
 summer. 'Oi/e Bea)v dXeovcrt /^,vXoi, dXeovo"i 8e XeTrrci. 
 
 This line, one would think, must have occurred 
 to the great ghost of Sir William, if posthumous 
 criticism reaches the souls of departed authors. 
 
 Let us hope that someone will be found to 
 perform the same pious task for the critic after 
 his departure. 
 
 I shall be very glad to turn the autumnal leaves 
 with you of some of those old divines and others 
 which we used to read, or pretend to read, on 
 Sunday evenings in the Queen's Gateway, you and 
 Alfred and I. 
 
 From you I shall drop down to Freshwater, 
 where I shall see the Laureate. 
 Yours ever, 
 
 W. H. THOMPSON." 
 
 Thompson's strength lay, more even than in the 
 amount of his reading, in his sure judgment and 
 fine tact. His criticisms were those of a lover of 
 literature rather than of a grammarian. He asso- 
 ciated himself with his pupils, and had their best 
 interests at heart. Still handsome, a stately man, 
 rather repressive in general society, one who could 
 hold his own with anyone, he passed a day or two in 
 the Shropshire fields with Allen, visiting the cottage 
 folk, who repaid their pastor's labours with untutored 
 reverence. 
 
 When the Judges came to Cambridge and took 
 possession of Trinity Lodge, it was Thompson's duty 
 to call upon them in his own house, and to ask them 
 at what time they would require the service in the 
 chapel on Sunday. Shown in by his butler, to his 
 own drawing-room, where he found them smoking and 
 much at their ease, he stood before them. 
 
 " Sit, sit, Dr. Thompson," said Judge Bramhall ; 
 an agnostic, but the cleverest Judge on the Bench. 
 
 " Thank you, 1 prefer the standing posture," said 
 Thompson. ' What time would it suit you to have 
 the service to-morrow ? '
 
 206 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 " Cleasby and I have talked it over, and he will 
 attend at ten." 
 
 " And for yourself, my Lord ? >; 
 
 " Cleasby will attend at ten." 
 
 " And for yourself, my Lord ? " 
 
 " Cleasby and I have talked it- over and we are of 
 one mind." 
 
 " And of one soul, too, I take it." 
 
 ' Very good, Doctor, extraordinary good," said 
 Bramhall, and used to tell the story against himself as 
 the only occasion when he was nonplussed after a 
 snub ; adding, however, " But it was not in court, it 
 was not in court." 
 
 When Kingsley took his son to Cambridge he intro- 
 duced him to Thompson at the Lodge. The Master 
 received him with chill courtesy. " I am glad to see 
 you ; a scholar I presume, Mr. Kingsley ? " (Kingsley 
 himself had been in the first class of the Classical 
 Tripos, though low down, and was afterwards Professor 
 of History.) 
 
 "No, sir," said Kingsley; " my son is a healthy 
 dunce, and I thank God for it." 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald to W. H. Thompson, in 1859 : 
 
 ' I read, or was told, they would not let old 
 Alfred's bust into your Trinity. They are right, 
 I think, to let no one in there (as it should be in 
 Westminster Abbey) until a hundred years are 
 past ; when, after too much admiration (perhaps), 
 and then a reaction of undue dis-esteem, men have 
 settled into some steady opinion on the subject ; 
 supposing always that the hero survives so long, 
 which, of itself, goes far to decide the question. 
 No doubt Alfred Tennyson will do that." 
 
 Allen wrote to his daughter, Mrs. Codrington, 
 October 31, 1870 : 
 
 " I went to tea with the Master of Trinity, and 
 had a very pleasant talk with him. I said he 
 must convert our old seventy-fours into ironclads.
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 207 
 
 ' Thompson : You speak in parables.' 
 ' Allen : You, with your capacity, your pursuits, 
 your position, are the man to tell our younger 
 clergymen how to get out of the old ruts of 
 thought into the new roads ; how, having received 
 the old statements of truth, they are to surmount 
 the difficulties raised by modern speculations.' 
 
 I then went to see F. D. Maurice. We talked 
 about Mr. W. E. Forster and his unflinching 
 honesty of purpose in carrying the Education 
 Bill, and discussed France. Maurice said that a 
 friend, when talking with him, had said that what 
 France needed was the Decalogue. 
 
 At breakfast at Trinity Lodge the next morning, 
 we were talking about my having first known 
 Thompson in Oct. 1828, and I laughed at a 
 bad pun he made the first time I ever spoke with 
 him how he said he had been breaking his 
 peace with the Peace of Aristophanes. 
 
 Thompson told Mrs. Thompson l that I had not 
 altered in manner since I was eighteen not 
 altered at all he made out, except that I was 
 then short, and my hair as black as my eyebrows 
 are now ; but he was full of kindness, and I was 
 full of cheerfulness from going back with him 
 over old days. 
 
 I said he ought to take up Renan by the scruff 
 of the neck, and give him a severe flogging for 
 what he said about St. Paul ; but Thompson said 
 that Matthew Arnold had already done this in 
 a very courteous, but effective manner in Mac- 
 millan. 
 
 We laughed at Lawrence's portrait of Thompson. 
 When he went to be painted Thompson said, 
 ' Now, Lawrence, I am come to that age that I 
 want to be flattered.' But Lawrence had gone 
 strongly in the other direction. 
 
 We both agreed that Spedding, with all his 
 pains and equity, had established that view of 
 Bacon's character which he wished to dissipate." 
 
 1 Bishop Selwyn's sister.
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 BISHOP SELWYN 
 
 Bishop Selwyn (1809-1878), the world's hero and 
 the Church's saint, was known at Cambridge as the 
 man who always took the labouring oar. When the 
 undergraduates scampered to the boats of Trinity to 
 secure the better oars, he headed the gang to appro- 
 priate the heavy unmanageable oar they all shunned ; 
 and, when rallied on his virtue, would say, smiling, 
 " Now, no one is in a bad temper." He was stroke in 
 the first University boat-race. 
 
 Once in New Zealand, a native lad, travelling with 
 him through the Bush, said he remembered shivering 
 in the chilly night, and then falling asleep until the 
 morning. On awakening he found the Bishop had 
 taken off his own coat to cover him. 
 
 A great athlete, Selwyn used to swim across the 
 Thames, like Leander, to woo his bride, the daughter 
 of Sir John Richardson. 
 
 The call of his distant Bishopric came to him when 
 he was a Master at Eton, a much-admired man in 
 delightful surroundings ; but with one who lived 
 habitually in that state of mind in which the remote 
 is converted into the present, the unseen into the 
 visible, all the charm of his position could not for one 
 moment weigh ; and his bright, fascinating bride put 
 her hand in his and consecrated her life to the Cause 
 he served. When she was breaking up her attractive 
 home in Eton, the centre of much intellectual pleasure 
 and mirth, a friend asked her how she liked her 
 prospect. ' I hate it with all my body," was her 
 reply, " but love it with all my soul " : for happiness 
 can never be the aim of a noble life ; wealth is less easy 
 to satisfy than poverty, and luxury than hunger. On 
 self-sacrifice, not on comfort, life's fortress is built. 
 
 The voyage out took some six months. In after- 
 years, when people complained to her of any quarters, 
 she would say smartly, " Well, if your room is small, 
 make the best of it. I have been very happy in a 
 ship's cabin, very happy indeed." Happier possibly 
 than in her lovely palace at Lichfield.
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 209 
 
 Mrs. Selwyn was a woman of great vivacity, more 
 fitted for a salon than to be a missionary. Some say 
 she had great beauty (there was but little trace of it 
 left in her old age) ; others that it was the charm 
 which is above beauty that drew her circle round her. 
 When the Bishop visited the Melanesian Islands, he 
 left her at Norfolk Island. She did her best to teach 
 her pupils the elements of the Faith, and would only 
 say of her lonely stay, " They were very good to me ; 
 very good, very good indeed." 
 
 When the Bishop brought a girl to Norfolk Island 
 
 for he wished the boys to have Christian wives he 
 
 made a garment for her out of an old sail, sewing it 
 
 with his own hands, and adding a red bow at the 
 
 fastening, cut out perhaps from a Union Jack. 
 
 No work was too humble for the disciple of Him 
 who was the servant of all men. When he was Bishop 
 of Lichneld this handsome, stately man would some- 
 times on market days go down to the public-house, 
 where the market women set off homewards, to help 
 them with their baskets into the common trap in 
 which they drove, and so encourage them to go home 
 in a sober, orderly way. His kindly nature attracted 
 children ; his palace at Lichneld was always full of 
 nieces and grandchildren who in a bevy lay in ambush 
 at the drawing-room door when he was expected home, 
 to suffocate him with their embraces. 
 
 In after-years a doctor from Lichneld, inspired 
 possibly by the example of the Bishop's own son, gave 
 up a good practice to follow in the Selwyns' steps. He 
 landed, and was left alone to draw the people to God 
 on an island two hundred miles in length. When, after 
 twenty years, Dr. Welchman laid down his life, he left 
 the island, once a barbarous head-hunting wilderness, 
 transformed into a well-ordered Christian kingdom. 
 
 Coleridge Patteson, who went out to cany on the 
 Melanesian work Selwyn had begun, was endowed 
 with a Pentecostal gift of tongues. How he could 
 talk languages he had never heard before puzzled his 
 fellows. He explained it in some simple way, saying, 
 he caught a word or two, and by the help of another 
 
 14
 
 210 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 dialect pieced together a sentence. But it was the 
 gift of God. His martyrdom was a grief from which 
 the Bishop of Lichfield never recovered. 
 
 JOHN SELWYN 
 
 John Selwyn (1843-1901) was Bishop of Melanesia 
 in succession to Patteson. He came to Frees in 1867, 
 a vigorous, handsome, happy lad, stroke of the Trinity 
 boat, devoted to his father. When the news of Patte- 
 son' s death came to England nothing could withhold 
 John Selwyn from snatching up the banner fallen 
 from the martyr's hand. 
 
 The Bishop had a long talk with his son the week 
 before he sailed, and when he had poured forth the 
 stores of his wisdom and great experience he con- 
 cluded with the words, " Now John, none of your 
 dash ! " 
 
 Before Bishop John set sail for the last time he 
 took a men's Bible-class in Lichfield, and explained 
 the seventh chapter of the Book of Revelation. 
 " I like to know that all nations will be standing 
 before the Throne," he said, with his invigorating 
 smile ; " the black people as well as the white. Palms 
 are the sign of victory. We like singing heavenly 
 songs here, but what will it be like there ? Here there 
 is tribulation, sorrow, and temptation. You men 
 know what temptation means, and God knows how 
 you have to fight. The black lads fought, too, in 
 Uganda. There were two young Christians there who 
 would not give up their faith ; and they had to fight 
 for it ! A cruel, persecuting chief cut off their arms 
 and legs and hung their bodies over a slow fire. But 
 they conquered, they won their palms ; as they hung 
 there they sang their hymns of victory." 
 
 The night before he went out, Wednesday, Novem- 
 ber n, 1885, ne preached in Lichfield Cathedral, 
 and referred to the beauty of the services, the help 
 they had been to him. " Christians," he said, " belong 
 to God ; to make everyone believe this would help 
 men to Jive better lives." On the bronze screen of the
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 211 
 
 cathedral, there is a brass cross.' " As the lights of 
 the cathedral go out this cross shines brighter against 
 the darkness. Let us pray," he said solemnly, "that, 
 as life darkens around us, the Cross may stand out 
 clearer before us." After the service he went to the 
 west end of the cathedral with his children to watch 
 the shining of the cross. 
 
 He returned in a few years entirely broken in health, 
 unable to stand, and died no.t long afterwards. 
 
 John Selwyn's mother lived on to a great age, a 
 bright-eyed frail old lady, in a pleasant house looking 
 eastward across Stowpool which lay " clear and ear- 
 nest" between her and the Saint's Well and church; 
 but she dwelt in a little room looking west on her 
 husband's grave. When a friend spoke to her of 
 her sorrowful hours in her old age, she said, "THEY 
 SHINE." 
 
 F. W. H. MYERS 
 
 F. W. H. Myers (1843-1901), a highly gifted man, 
 looked more like an overgrown school-boy than a poet. 
 Such a man stands in a workshop well stored with 
 sharp instruments ; with many he may do ill unless 
 he take heed ; and good with all if he have the will 
 so to employ them. A pleasant man, ready to give 
 forth of his best, he claimed the enjoj^ment of life, 
 saying that his breakfast hour was agreeable to him ; 
 so was the reading of the newspaper afterwards. His 
 journeys from school to school were refreshing ; school 
 inspecting was not tedious ; and recreation after 
 work was always welcome. 
 
 In early life he lost his faith and had displeased the 
 Cambridge examiners about a Prize Poem. Then that 
 sublime woman Mrs. Josephine Butler met him, and 
 assuming in him a spiritual discernment that enables 
 the mind to recognise God's Voice, subdued his unbelief. 
 Religion, the soul of man's history, bore fruits in his 
 heart. His poem "St. Paul " is a contribution to our 
 sacred literature of such value that it has been reckoned 
 the best transcript of the mind of St. Paul we possess.
 
 212 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 At the time he came to Frees, in 1872, this sacred 
 influence had passed and he was already bewitched 
 by the magic of Spiritualism. Psychological magazines 
 accompanied him, illustrated with photographs in 
 which ghostly figures interfered with the subject of the 
 picture. The Archdeacon's laughing daughters were 
 set round the table to discover their latent powers in 
 the occult realm. But the long Frees drawing-room 
 was hardly conducive to the atmosphere of a seance, 
 and the heavy round rosewood table stood stable as 
 Gibraltar's Rock. The next morning the Archdeacon 
 summoned his daughters to his study, and asked them 
 never to trifle with such a science again ; for, if there 
 were anything in it, the influence must come from 
 below, not from above. 
 
 On cold afternoons Myers would sit by the fire 
 learning German, using a good deal of dictionary, and 
 marking the words looked up to admonish himself if 
 they should be forgotten. The way to learn a lan- 
 guage is to abjure dictionaries and to discover the 
 meaning of words by comparing the passages of a 
 book where the same word occurs. 
 
 On other occasions he would join readily in drawing- 
 room games, making a poem out of a given question 
 with random rhymes, or would read poetry aloud, 
 perhaps Tennyson, or Wordsworth, whom his mother 
 had taught him to love. In early years he could only 
 appreciate his " White Doe of Rylstone " (a poor 
 imitation of Sir Walter's poetical tales). That he liked 
 " because it was so unlike Wordsworth ! " But when 
 he loved the great poet, he loved him enthusiastically, 
 and would repeat with glee the " Reverie of Poor 
 Susan," etc. 
 
 He refused to read his own poems, " the work of a 
 poetaster," with such great men at hand. His reading 
 of his own poetry in the schools was a monotonous 
 canter, with the middle of his long lines strongly 
 emphasized ; his voice was sonorous rather than 
 melodious. 
 
 In the commonplace book of one of the Prees 
 daughters, a tall, pale girl, he wrote a composi-
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 213 
 
 tion of his own about a fair, impassive Spanish 
 maiden : 
 
 " I paused, I would not wake to life 
 The tinted marble maid." 
 
 He was fond of foreign travel, but Venice he had never 
 visited. " Some day," he said, " I may want an 
 earthly paradise to frame my happiness." He married 
 Miss Eveleen Tenant. 
 
 After Spiritualism had dazzled him he wrote scarcely 
 anything of value, except a book on Wordsworth, and 
 some essays. Spiritualism paralyses great powers. He 
 lived in a pleasant house at Cambridge, and seemed 
 to look forward with a reverent curiosity to the Great 
 Change which should reveal so much to him. He 
 made some after-death promises which he has not 
 been able to fulfil. 
 
 JULIA STERLING 
 
 Julia Sterling (1836-1910), John Sterling's daughter, 
 was the " J. M. S." to whom Miss Wynne- Williams 's 
 Letters were addressed. She said : 
 
 " The Archdeacon's simplicity, his humour akin 
 to pathos, his laughter akin to tears, made him 
 unlike commonplace people. His sympathy was 
 loving and living ; the heart of a little child shone 
 out of his bright eyes shaded by wonderful black 
 brows, ready feeling and fun trembled in his voice. 
 His power of enjoyment in simple things made 
 his company refreshing, while the wisdom and 
 cultivation of his mind gave depth to his con- 
 versation. His unworldliness lent a rare dignity 
 to his character, behind all the intense naturalness 
 and fresh feeling which made conventional people 
 seem tame in comparison. So affectionate was he 
 that he won regard even from those he rebuked. 
 His humility was lovely and unmistakeable, and 
 his transparent truthfulness was a constant lesson 
 and a standard to live by."
 
 214 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 She was present at j Maurice's remarkable death-bed. 
 Deep depressionTmeekly endured had clouded his spirit 
 during his last illness, but when the doctor thought 
 all was over he raised himself in his bed and said, 
 solemnly and distinctly, " The grace of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy 
 Ghost, be with you with us all evermore," and then 
 fell back still for ever. 
 
 Julia was Maurice's niece. When Mrs. Maurice was 
 dying John Allen came to visit her ; she said, " I feel 
 that a man of God has been here." Julia added, " His 
 prayer reminded me that the pure in heart shall see 
 God. Happy is it that one such human spirit can 
 open for us windows into the infinite." 
 
 Julia Sterling built a charming little house near 
 Falmouth where she and Hester lived among the 
 myrtles. Julia was a guardian of the poor, and had 
 more friends than she could spare friendship for.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 GUESTS AT FREES IV 
 
 Luke Rivington Rowland Corbet Mary Cholmondeley R. M. 
 Grier William Lyttelton Athelstan Riley Canon Norris Arch- 
 deacon Holmes Edward German Randolph Caldecott Mrs. Wight- 
 man R. Catterall Newman Hall Samuel Morley John De Soyres 
 James Allen. 
 
 LUKE RIVINGTON 
 
 Luke Rivington (1845-90), for a short time one of 
 the greatest preachers in the Anglican Church, was 
 Father of the " Stoke Brotherhood " in Shropshire. 
 A small man, with small eyes, he mounted the Frees 
 pulpit one Sunday morning, gave out his text quietly, 
 and began with a simple illustration. "A man leav- 
 ing home for some years supplied his agent with a 
 store of precious materials to build him a house, and 
 found, on his return, when he looked for a palace, 
 nothing but a little mud hut the materials wasted, 
 and nothing there but a little MUD HUT \ " These 
 words he repeated with impressive emphasis, and then, 
 raising a voice as musical as an angel's trumpet, he 
 applied his parable, revealing with thrilling eloquence 
 the responsibility of life, its magnificent opportunities, 
 what God expected of His servants ; then, wringing 
 men's hearts, he showed them the paltriness of their 
 endeavours, the evanescence of their wealth and 
 earthly hopes, and pictured the patient face of the 
 crucified Christ waiting, waiting for their fealty and 
 their love. As he concluded his voice sank from the 
 melody of Heaven into the tones of common men. 
 
 In the afternoon of that Sunday, the large village 
 church was packed from end to end ; benches were 
 brought in from the school, and chairs from the 
 vicarage kitchen. Luke Rivington began again as 
 
 215
 
 216 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 quietly as before, with a simple illustration, a man 
 doubting which road to take. The narrow, steep path 
 led to his destination, but the wider way, with its 
 pleasant flowers and sweet fruits, might perhaps curve 
 round into the right direction. Then, as the divine 
 afflatus swelled the preacher' s heart, he urged in tones 
 liquid and penetrating, the pleasures that must be 
 forsaken, the wealth to be forgotten, the fame to be 
 despised ; concealing no thorn of self-sacrifice or steep 
 rock of difficulty, until at last, his lovely voice quivering 
 with emotion, he concluded with some grand appeal, 
 e.g. " Will you go back with Heaven before you ? " 
 and, as the afflatus passed, sank again into the same 
 little uninteresting and apparently uninterested man. 
 
 But Luke Rivington was no actor. Every word of 
 his sermon, the crucifying of the flesh, the taking up 
 of the cross branded on his own life, was no picturesque 
 sublimity with him. Soon he resigned the Headship 
 of the Stoke Brotherhood to become a subordinate 
 among the Cowley Fathers. The rule at Stoke was 
 strict enough, but now this man of power and genius 
 meekly bowed his head to the command to retire into 
 silence, not to preach again for two years ! 
 
 Eventually he joined the Church of Rome, and, 
 going forth as a missionary to India, sat upon the 
 ground among the natives plaiting rushes to win their 
 confidence. The colossal image of St. Peter in the 
 Westminster. Cathedral, more imposing than that at 
 Rome, has been erected by the Roman Church in 
 memory of their humble saint, Luke Rivington. 
 
 ROWLAND CORBET 
 
 Rowland Corbet (1845-1918), was a man of good 
 family, and, being at an early age appointed by his 
 father Rector of Stoke, founded there a promising 
 Brotherhood. Much of his patrimony was spent on the 
 rebuilding of the church ; the spacious rectory rang 
 with hymns and psalms ; and a neglected parish 
 became a centre of joyous church life. 
 
 In 1874 John Allen wrote to Dean Stanley :
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 217 
 
 ' It would rejoice your heart to see Stoke-on- 
 Trent church rebuilt after the old pattern, opened 
 last May. The Rector, Rowland Corbet, has a 
 Brotherhood of clergy and a noble library in his 
 house." 
 
 The young rector did not appoint himself Head of 
 his Brotherhood, but gave that office to Luke Riving- 
 ton. One or two lay brothers were admitted who did 
 the work of the house, sat among the Brethren, and 
 helped in the service of the church. One, a shepherd's 
 son, acted as cook, and was also a magnificent 
 organist. 
 
 Rowland himself, with an ardent, affectionate nature, 
 had a face with its large eyes, aquiline nose, and 
 enthusiastic brow resembling one of the best types of 
 our mediaeval monks. That God had called him into 
 being to wage war with sin was his conviction, and in 
 that service he sacrificed health, fortune, and repose. 
 
 The life at Stoke was ascetic ; and Rowland, on one 
 of his missions, took typhus fever, and became 
 desperately ill. His sister-in-law who nursed him 
 said that he died, but she restored him by pouring 
 down his throat (he was a teetotaller), a whole bottle 
 of wine. His account is this : 
 
 ' I lay feeling so weak that consciousness 
 seemed fading from me. It was a grey evening 
 and the window was open to the west ; a little 
 cloud floated there. I seemed to lose myself in 
 that cloud and thought, ' Is this dying ? How 
 dull it all is!' 3 
 
 On his recovery he reviewed his old methods, con- 
 vened the Brotherhood, of whom he was now the 
 Head, and suggested they should retire for six months 
 from the world to learn the will of God. At the end 
 of the six months the Brotherhood dissolved, the 
 threefold cord encircling them of poverty, chastity and 
 obedience was united, and they dispersed. 
 
 Rowland, now a disciple of Linlathen, a sympathetic
 
 218 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 man much dependent on the atmosphere in which he 
 found himself, became in some circles an admired 
 preacher. His letters to Mrs. Russell Gurney were 
 published by her as The Letters of a Mystic. To be 
 misty is not to be mystic. 
 
 Catholic in his views, he gave the Nonconformist 
 Minister 5 a year, as he said he helped him in an 
 outlying corner of his parish. Richard Cholmondeley 
 (the father of " Mary ") the Rector of an adjoining 
 parish, became a disciple. 
 
 Rowland married and had an interesting child, who 
 was taught when she hurt her little head against a 
 table to pity the table and apologise to it, " Oh, poor 
 table ! " Once, when she had lost her temper with her 
 governess, she said, the tears of passion still upon her 
 cheeks, " Oh, mother, why does God let me be so 
 wicked ? ' thus overthrowing in one sentence Mr. 
 Erskine's Tower of Babel. 
 
 The monastic life at Stoke had not, Rowland said, 
 been hard to him ; ' When you are all living it 
 together it comes easily enough." The old Brother- 
 hood days were ever mentioned with affection. Later 
 he gave up his living and lived in London, where on 
 Sunday evenings, he gave addresses in a handsome 
 drawing-room. Some intellectual ladies, as well as 
 others, gathered to hear him ; not always without 
 conscientious scruples as to how far it were right to 
 attend in church hours a meeting not held in a conse- 
 crated building ; to go to a chapel would certainly be 
 wrong. He was much at the Broadland meetings, 
 where great people gathered in the pleasant summer 
 weather for mutual edification. Mr. Edward Clifford, 
 the artist, who went out to the leper island to visit 
 Father Damien ; Antoinette Stirling, whose magnifi- 
 cent rendering of " O Rest in the Lord " would some- 
 times swell forth in a prayer-meeting ; F. W. Myers, 
 and others, frequented them. Rowland was especially 
 welcome as the interpreter of thought. When some 
 words were faltering from the lips of a diffident speaker, 
 he would interpose with all his charm of manner ' I 
 know exactly what you want to say ; you mean this,"
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 219 
 
 and so forth. " Oh, thank you ; how perfectly you 
 understand ! " 
 
 Mrs. Russell Gurney left in his hands 20,000 to 
 build and illustrate with sacred pictures the Chapel 
 of the Ascension in Bayswater (near the Marble Arch), 
 that in the hurry and turmoil of life a refuge might be 
 found by weary souls wherein to rest and meditate 
 on holy things. The pictures by Shields are original 
 and suggestive ; but the Chapel is no house of prayer, 
 rather a house of merchandise for postcards. St. 
 Martin's-in-the-Fields answers better the purpose for 
 which it was intended. 
 
 MARY CHOLMONDELEY 
 
 Mary Cholmondeley (1858), a tall, delicate girl, dined 
 at Frees in a white muslin gown. She was remark- 
 able for her quiet manner, and not sought out for 
 brilliant or amusing conversation. Her mother, a hand- 
 some woman, could talk of books or politics equally well. 
 When, as a girl, she dined out, her mother, a good 
 talker before her, used to signal on her fingers to her 
 across the table, " T-a-l-k." Mrs. Cholmondeley had 
 the perfect manner of a beautiful nature. She fell 
 early into ill-health, and as she lay on her sofa, would 
 gather her daughters round her and read to them the 
 Parliamentary Debates, explaining the character of 
 the speakers and the pros and cons of the contest. 
 ' Living as they do in so quiet a place as Hodnet," 
 she said, " I am anxious to keep my girls' minds 
 bright." 
 
 The younger daughters were handsome, with 
 beautiful eyes and long lashes, especially Victoria ; but 
 Hester was far more remarkable for her social instinct. 
 As a girl of eleven she had all the modesty of a child 
 with all the tact and intelligence of a woman, and would 
 entertain her mother's guests by drawing their atten- 
 tion to some illustrated paper and talking cleverly 
 about it. When Mrs. Cholmondeley was asked how 
 she had brought her up to follow so delightfully in 
 her own steps, she passed the question off with a
 
 220 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 laugh. " I don't remember teaching her anything, 
 except I believe I taught them all when they came 
 into a room never to think of themselves, but only to 
 try and find out if anyone there could be amused or 
 made happier." 
 
 Mr. Cholmondeley chaperoned his daughters to the 
 balls, and always stood through the evening in one 
 place, that after each dance they might have a safe 
 resort. 
 
 R. M. GRIER 
 
 Richard M. Grier (1833-94), an advanced Church- 
 man and an orator, had a horror of sin only equalled 
 by his compassion for sinners. Finding a drunkard 
 lying in a ditch not far from his own door at Rugeley, 
 a degraded clergyman unknown to him, he raised him 
 in his arms, took him into his Vicarage, laid him in his 
 own bed, and, having nursed him into recovery, kept 
 him for many weeks in his house, while he endeavoured 
 to rescue him from his vice. As a man blesses, he 
 gains power ; as his heart flows forth in mercy, he 
 learns God's secret. 
 
 His compassion for and success with inebriates 
 became so notorious that he opened a home for them 
 in his parish. His method was to allow them no money 
 in their pockets, to keep the sight, sound and smell of 
 drink from their senses, to forbid the public houses 
 to serve them, while he brought all the good influences 
 he could to bear upon their hearts. When these men 
 were under his immediate care his success was great, 
 but as soon as they left him relapses were apt to 
 sadden his hopes. One man behaved perfectly for 
 two years, and then, as a reformed son, was allowed 
 to visit his widowed and anxious mother. Stafford 
 Station and half a crown in his pocket were too much 
 for him ; he reached his mother's door quite drunk. 
 Again and again he was received back by Mr. Grier, 
 and again and again he failed. At last, after ten 
 relapses, his benevolent, patient friend told him he 
 could never on any condition or on any plea receive 
 him again, unless he had the self-control to keep him-
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 221 
 
 self from touching a single glass of any kind of alcohol. 
 Solemn promises were made amid many protestations 
 of an unchangeable resolution. On his return to 
 Rugeley he alighted from the train at Lichfield in a 
 drunken and disgraceful condition. In his despair he 
 went into a field, took out his pocket-knife, and was 
 preparing to open the artery in his wrist and so to put 
 an end for ever to the failure of his life. While he 
 was in that field God spoke to him ; a flash of lightning, 
 followed by an imminent clap of thunder, startled him 
 in the depth of his wickedness. He saw Eternity 
 before him and Hell seemed to open her mouth beneath 
 his feet. Putting up his knife, he dragged his painful 
 steps to Rugeley, forced his way into Richard Grier's 
 study, and entreated his pardon. No, this had hap- 
 pened too often ; it could not be. Mr. Grier was very 
 sorry, but for the sake of the other men in the Home 
 he could not, it would not be right to readmit him. 
 Then the poor drunkard told the awful story of his 
 desperate effort in the field, of what he had seen, and 
 how God had come to him. Grier's mercy was divine 
 in its length as well as breadth ; the man was once 
 more restored. 
 
 God must have more power than the devil over a 
 man's will ; so, if he cannot change his nature, he can 
 control it ; and good is stronger than evil. A tempta- 
 tion conquered is a blessing earned ; each man gains 
 the strength of the temptation he resists. This 
 drunkard became so eminent a penitent that he was 
 put in charge of the other men, and used to go round 
 the country winning sinners by his contrition more 
 than by his eloquence (for he was no speaker) to look 
 up and hope from the abyss of despair. And when, 
 some years afterwards, he was dying, and his doctor 
 insisted on his taking some brandy, he closed his 
 lips against it, saying, " Doctor, I am not afraid to 
 meet my God sober, but I am afraid to go before 
 Him drunk." 
 
 A humorist and orator as well as a philanthropist, 
 Grier knew how to use his humour in a good cause. 
 Public opinion was enlightened by his efforts ; the
 
 222 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 medical and economical aspects of temperance were 
 cleared up, and, above all, he established by his ex- 
 perience the possibility, questioned by some able men, 
 of reclaiming a drunkard. 
 
 When, at a great meeting, a speaker had worn out 
 the patience of an intelligent audience by his heavy 
 voice and dull proclamations, Mr. Grier springing to 
 his feet as the men were filing away fast to the door, 
 called out in his resonant voice, " Gentlemen, I feel 
 like that bachelor, who would fain enjoy the happiness 
 of the married state, but had not the courage of his 
 opinions. He had not the courage to woo a wife." 
 Immediately the stampede to the door ceased, some 
 resumed their seats, and all stood still to listen. " A 
 friend suggested to him a lady suitable in character 
 and habits to make him happy. ' Yes, yes/ he 
 replied, ' but, to tell you the truth, I have not the 
 courage to ask her/ ' Don't let a trifle like that 
 spoil your happiness for life/ said his friend. ' Why 
 not put the banns up and have done with it ? I feel 
 sure the lady would be willing to fall in with your 
 views/ So the following Sunday the banns were 
 solemnly given out between Thomas and Maria." 
 Here the audience sat breathless with interest. " But 
 the lady was deeply offended ; she called upon the 
 unfortunate bachelor, and reproved him sharply and 
 at some length for the liberty taken with her name." 
 (A sigh of sympathy with him (not her) went round 
 the great hall.) How had he dared to do such a 
 thing ? With a humble apology he promised to go 
 at once to the clerk and stop the banns. " No, no," 
 said the exasperated dame, " as the thing has gone so 
 far, the only thing now to be done is to carry it 
 through and I want," continued the speaker in one 
 breath, " to carry through a very important resolu- 
 tion and to ask our member to present such and such 
 a petition," etc. 
 
 And so Mr. Grier won his audience and won his 
 way. 
 
 He married Allen's daughter, Grace.
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 223 
 
 WILLIAM LYTTELTON 
 
 William Lyttelton (1834-90) and his brother, Lord 
 Lyttelton, understood that God's commandments are 
 laws that can be kept ; not arbitrary notices such as 
 " Keep off the grass," but warnings like " Keep off the 
 ice." That they are not grievous, William Lyttelton 
 proclaimed by a joyous life. The spell he exercised 
 was a charm none could resist, though few may be 
 able to explain it ; the earnest sincerity of his manner, 
 the animation and ease of his pleasant talk, fascinated 
 his compeers and his younger companions. The glad 
 voices of his many nephews found in his a merry echo, 
 and, rising to the level of their mirth, his spirits appeared 
 as unbroken as their own. At Hagley, with all the 
 cares of a parish on his shoulders, a responsibility to 
 which he was keenly alive, he and his brother would 
 romp like school-boys, and yet his thoughts, actuated 
 by heavenly wisdom, were ever guiding the young 
 men's steps. Nor was he ashamed to lead a lad into 
 his study and, kneeling down with his hand in his, 
 pray that he might continue God's for ever and daily 
 increase in His Holy Spirit. Purity and courage go 
 hand in hand ; Zoroaster said long ago, " Purity is, 
 next to life, the greatest good for man " ; for a pure 
 life is an antiseptic. The world may thank God for 
 the Lyttelton family. 
 
 To the lowliest cottager Mr. Lyttelton would render 
 an office of personal kindness with the same flowing 
 courtesy with which he interchanged the pleasant- 
 nesses of society among his equals. His gay laugh 
 filled the Prees drawing-room with sunshine when he 
 came there as best man to Richard Grier. 
 
 ATHELSTAN RILEY 
 
 Athelstan Riley (1858- ) was as modest about 
 his wealth as generous in the bestowal of it. When 
 the Archdeacon, on leaving Prees, bequeathed a library 
 of folios of the old English divines to the Vicars to 
 come, Mr. Riley had a book-plate fixed into the volumes
 
 224 GUESTS AT FREES , 
 
 of his gift ; these books still clothe the walls of that 
 audience-chamber of God. 
 
 He only knew the Archdeacon in the winter of his 
 days after illness had crippled his usefulness ; but he 
 says, " Full of enthusiasm as I was for the Church, 
 and deeply interested in religious matters, the old 
 man, of quiet, self-possessed confidence, with all his 
 religious lines clear-cut and distinct, the man of faith, 
 whom no power on earth could move from his position, 
 made an impression upon me which, difficult as it is 
 to describe, was nevertheless a profound one. Brought 
 up in the Tractarian school, I was as rigid as the Arch- 
 deacon ; perhaps it was his very rigidity that appealed 
 to me ? At any rate, it was his firmness and unflinching 
 loyalty to ideals. To be popular, a man must be like 
 a weathercock now, but such men as he are the men 
 that really count in human affairs ; if his character 
 impressed itself upon me, a chance and passing visitor 
 in his parish, and if his memory still inspires my 
 humble effort in battling for the right, how much 
 more must his life have meant for the Church of which 
 he was so worthy a servant 1 " 
 
 Riley, as a great entertainer, had some influence at 
 Oxford. His almost romantic attachment to the 
 Church led him at one time to think of taking Orders ; 
 but he determined to serve her as a layman. Those 
 were the days of John Inglesant. That book, seldom 
 asked for now, was by a friend of his perused in a 
 night of rapturous sympathy. 
 
 Mr. Riley went one summer to St. Petersburg to 
 study the Orthodox Church, and brought home some 
 eikons, valuable, not for their beauty they are all 
 " mediaeval " and many of them uncouth but for the 
 feeling consecrating them, or, from another point of 
 view, for the jewels framing them, and taught his babes 
 to share his devotion. Another summer he went to 
 Mount Athos and stayed in the ancient monastery, 
 where no woman is allowed to enter, not suffering the 
 drawbacks of a mediaeval resting-place to cancel his 
 interest in the monastic worship, which often lasted 
 through the night.
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 225 
 
 Bishop Maclagan shared Riley's yearning for union 
 with the Greek Church, and, when on some occasion he 
 went to Russia in full canonicals, was elated by the 
 friendly reception granted him. At the Walsall Church 
 Congress he asked Mr. Riley to read a paper on his 
 experience of it. 
 
 Atheist an Riley was able to do yeoman's service in 
 the cause of Church schools at the beginning of this 
 century ; but the " Passive Resistance " which his and 
 Mr. Balfour's success called out did much to establish 
 the Radicals in their long reign, with their Trades Dis- 
 putes Act, and Minimum Wage interference, which has 
 rilled London with salaried idlers, and also to stifle 
 the House of Lords. Lord Salisbury foretold that 
 that House would come to grief when he forsook its 
 helm. 
 
 CANON NORRIS 
 
 Canon Norris (1830-98), of Bristol, wrote some 
 books ; a small volume, Key to the Gospels, was prized 
 by Bishop Patteson, who said that men at home with 
 leisure to trace the chronology of the Master's Ministry 
 could do much for those who, busy with the ups and 
 downs of life at the Antipodes, cared to know what 
 they had not time to work out. 
 
 In the days when ladies' skirts resembled the petals 
 of an inverted full-blown rose, he asked his beautiful 
 wife to drape hers like a hyacinth bell ; in after-life 
 she said the notice this contravention of fashion 
 attracted to her had been trying. 
 
 At Allen's table Canon Norris related this incident. 
 Sir Robert Peel always secluded himself for an hour 
 before going down to the House. Once his wife was 
 obliged to interrupt him, and his tall figure rose from 
 its knees. " I beg your pardon," she said, " I did not 
 know. ..." " My wife," said he, " you don't think I 
 could attempt to guide the councils of this land unless 
 I sought wisdom from Him who has promised to grant 
 it." 
 
 Of John Allen he said : 
 
 15
 
 226 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 " His courtesy was perfect to all. I can see him 
 now, hat in hand, at the door of a cottage, asking 
 pardon for having disturbed them at a meal, ' Well, 
 ma'am, you are always very good to me,' when 
 pressed to enter. With all whom he respected he 
 was humble." 
 
 ARCHDEACON HOLMES 
 
 Dr. Holmes, Archdeacon of London (1854- ) as 
 an ideal deacon, tall and lissome, came to Frees for 
 his Vicar, Richard Grier's, marriage, and exercised his 
 latent literary gift in the composition of an account 
 of it for the Shrewsbury Chronicle. 
 
 Like his books, his goodness was charmingly illus- 
 trated, not only remarkable in his sermons, but in the 
 warmth and graciousness of temper that poured itself 
 into all the channels of social intercourse, as he wan- 
 dered ever in the green pastures and smiled beside the 
 sunny waters of religion. The early services in the 
 sweet, crisp, morning air, or the calm Evensong in the 
 light of a summer sun, were more lovable for his 
 infectious delight in them. 
 
 When asked how he had reached so fair a height on 
 the upward path, he said the study of the Life of Jesus 
 had helped him. 
 
 But he was delicate, and a troublesome throat, by 
 driving him to South Africa, put, as his admirers 
 thought, a full-stop to his career in the Anglican 
 Church. Now in the precincts of St. Paul's his 
 pleasant temperament, kindly and gay, balances the 
 gloom of the extreme new School of Criticism presiding 
 there. 
 
 EDWARD GERMAN 
 
 Edward German (1862- ) performed for the first 
 time in public at the age of nineteen in the Frees 
 schoolroom. What sums of money would its benches 
 have fetched could England have known that her 
 great modern composer, the musician who has 
 conducted every orchestra in the land, was to express
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 227 
 
 his soul on the four strings of a violin on that January 
 night to that rustic audience in 1881 ! 
 
 RANDOLPH CALDECOTT 
 
 Randolph Caldecott (1846-86) used to cash the 
 Archdeacon's cheques in the Whitchurch bank. 
 Lodging at a Cheshire farm, he had many opportunities 
 of studying milkmaids, kindly cows, and flat stretches 
 of green pasture, and the characteristic action of many 
 kind of horses. He was the first man to introduce or 
 to make popular the method of drawing with strong 
 outlines (to guide the inexperienced eye) filled in 
 with flat washes of colour, which Kate Greenaway 
 followed in her own charming manner, and John 
 Hassall has used with magnificent effect on his Posters. 
 Yet it was not his method alone, but his humour and 
 grace, that made Caldecott what he was to children 
 and to lovers of Art. 
 
 In modern Art there are many clever lines, but 
 humour is for the most part lacking, and grace not 
 there. An artist looking at a modern picture of some 
 dancing children full of spirit and life, said gently, " I 
 think it is almost too ugly." 
 
 MRS. WIGHTMAN 
 
 Mrs. Wightman (1825-95), a clergyman's wife, 
 neither beautiful nor interesting in appearance, leading 
 an invalid life, was so much affected by the wailings 
 of the women in her Shrewsbury district over the 
 cruelty and degradation of their good husbands 
 through drunkenness that, taking her courage in both 
 hands, she went out with a lantern in the winter nights 
 into the dark alleys of the town, and in the cottages 
 reasoned and pleaded with these men. Men do not 
 dislike being talked to if they are approached 
 respectfully, and are allowed to respond in their own 
 way. 
 
 Mrs. Wightman convinced so many of the folly and 
 wastefulness of their sinful conduct, of the shortness 
 of this life, and the length of the life to come, that they,
 
 228 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 reforming their ways, gathered round her in a Bible- 
 class, and the Working Men's Hall in Shrewsbury had to 
 be built to entertain them ! The character of the town 
 was changed . H er fame spread to America . J . B . Gough 
 alludes to her in one of his orations. She was a 
 modest, quiet woman, with a gentle, deliberate, not 
 dictatorial way of speaking. Her power lay in the 
 hidden, although real intercourse she maintained with 
 One who had taken up His abode in her heart, and in 
 her (consequent) heartfelt care for the men she influ- 
 enced ; the loss of a diamond brooch would have 
 meant less to her than the relapse of any one of them 
 into sin. 
 
 ROBERT CATTERALL 
 
 Robert Catterall (1859-1917), the son of the Frees 
 postman, who, living in a thatched cottage, earned 
 twelve shillings a week, drew to him a crowd when he 
 preached in his village church. A man is the artificer 
 of his own circumstances ; it is God's work to give 
 and ours to receive ; to receive is to make use of a 
 gift. Having been educated by John Allen's help, 
 Catterall took Orders, and was appointed Diocesan 
 Missioner in the Manchester Diocese. With some 
 histrionic gift, and a far-carrying voice, he was a 
 remote reflex (perhaps the last) of George Whitefield. 
 When he preached, the church doors were barred to 
 prevent men crushing each other in their determination 
 to hear him. He preached of eternity and the life to 
 come ; of Him who is still here with the key of Heaven 
 in His hand. Sometimes 800 letters of repentance and 
 fresh resolutions, black with coal-dust and wet with 
 tears, would be handed in to him at the close of a 
 service. 
 
 NEWMAN HALL 
 
 Newman Hall, the great Nonconformist preacher, 
 came to Frees to beg for funds for a hall in 
 building. The Archdeacon lent him his school and 
 took the chair at his meeting. A tall, fine-looking man, 
 he gave an earnest address upon Bartimaeus, delineating
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 229 
 
 his advance from darkness into light, and afterwards 
 begged with modest dignity for his hall. When the 
 meeting was over he bent down and spoke earnestly 
 to a little girl on the front bench ; the child responded 
 with a solemn gaze. She died young, having developed 
 into an intelligent good woman, a school teacher ; and 
 through her prudence and care Beverley Minster was 
 saved from a conflagration. A tablet there records 
 Churchmen's gratitude to " Caroline Hanks." 
 
 SAMUEL MORLEY 
 
 Samuel Morley (1809-86) realised a great fortune, 
 not by advertising his wares, but by the simple method 
 of selling at a moderate price goods so flawless that 
 no other firm could compete with him ; one hundred 
 shillings are worth more than twenty half-crowns. 
 His athletic sense and administrative gift were asso- 
 ciated with a warm and generous heart ; his work- 
 people were in his eyes breathing beings ; he re- 
 quired good work of them, and gave them generous 
 pensions. 
 
 From 1868 to a short time before his death he 
 represented Bristol; his statue, which a careless 
 observer might mistake for John Bright's, still graces 
 that busy port. 
 
 A philanthropist, with the courage of his opinions, 
 he supported Mr. Brace's Bill for closing public-houses 
 at ii p.m. That first hour of the darkness of night, 
 when the theatres and music-halls have poured forth 
 their excited throngs, is the disastrous hour for London's 
 morality. A river of sin, corrupting men, and ruined, 
 broken-hearted women could have been averted had 
 a few more men stood by those heroes in 1870. In the 
 public-houses men still call the striking of eleven " the 
 clock striking Bruce." 
 
 In the early days of the Salvation Army, when its 
 endeavour was scorned by the rich, and pitied by the 
 poor, Mrs. Booth called upon Mr. Morley and laid the 
 spiritual needs of the country before him, with her 
 husband's efforts to supply them. He listened at ten-
 
 230 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 lively to her story, and immediately wrote a cheque 
 for 1,000. She thanked him. 
 
 " Are you satisfied ? " he inquired. 
 " I had rather you had made it two." 
 " Give it me back then ; two thousand it shall be." 
 When he went with Allen to St. David's and saw the 
 restoration of that outwork and outcome of faith, 
 unsolicited he subscribed 50 to the work. 
 
 The hallowed concurrence of all the passages of his 
 own life, and the trend of them all towards one design, 
 rendered his conceptions of duty broad and consistent. 
 Late as the House often kept him at night, he read 
 prayers every morning with his family ; and refused 
 the peerage that would have strengthened the position 
 of his sons. 
 
 JOHN DE SOYRES 
 
 John de Soyres (1846-99) was Fitzgerald's nephew. 
 A great contrast to his uncle, he was for a time the 
 voluntary Curate of Frees, staying at the Vicarage. A 
 clever man, an ardent bibliophile, familiar with the 
 various editions of many valuable books, he had 
 written a learned book on Montanism (which had won 
 for him the Hulsean Prize) and would rather read the 
 most trifling writing in a cover than join in an ordinary 
 conversation that might have ventilated his thoughts, 
 or that he might have instructed ; but with a worthy 
 interlocutor he would pour forth his glittering rhetoric. 
 
 An " orthodox Broad Churchman," zealous and 
 generous in his work, of aristocratic appearance, he 
 created some sensation in his fine linen surplice and 
 embroidered stole, in the rustic church. His brilliant 
 sermons, with their heads developed pleasantly like 
 the branches of a symmetrical tree, never overpassed 
 the limit of fifteen minutes, and were delivered in a 
 rapid flow of perfect language without one faltering 
 pause or misplaced epithet. His notes were models of 
 composition, on a card the size of a square envelope, 
 the three heads in large characters I, II, III, were 
 developed by their respective subdivisions a, b, c in
 
 GUESTS AT FREES 231 
 
 smaller writing. One unsophisticated lady said, " I 
 am not sure that Mr. de Soyres' sermons seem to 
 have been quite as good when they are over as 
 they promised to be at the beginning, nor do they 
 seem to have done one quite as much good as they 
 should." 
 
 When, after some weeks' ministry, he left the parish, 
 and the Archdeacon sent him his salary, he refused 
 it, saying he had dedicated all his professional service 
 to God. The Vicar of Frees, however, returned it to 
 him, saying he might make what use of the money he 
 pleased, but as Vicar he could not allow him to share 
 the duties of the parish without sharing its income. 
 The cheque was sent back with a still briefer refusal. 
 " When Greek meets Greek. ..." Allen then sent 
 the sum to the S.P.G. in de Soyres' name, but when 
 the official receipt for his " handsome donation " came 
 to him, De Soyres was really offended, and never, it 
 is believed, wrote again to the old friend of Edward 
 Fitzgerald. 
 
 JAMES ALLEN 
 
 James Allen (1801-97), the brother of John and 
 the Dean of St. Davids, 1 had an unusual career. As a 
 lad at Cambridge, his interest was so much diverted 
 by the construction of Caius College, then in building, 
 as to interfere with the success of his degree. Later 
 he took Orders and became the Vicar of a little Welsh 
 parish with a solid church. At the age of seventy- two 
 he was made Canon, and afterwards Dean, of St. 
 David's. A man of means, he lived with his beauti- 
 ful daughter in the most ascetic simplicity ; exercising 
 hospitality to all, whether prince or peasant, that came 
 to his door ; lavishing nothing on himself, he devoted 
 his time and wealth to the restoration of the ruined 
 cathedral. A luxurious table and gay equipages 
 glitter and pass ; the Dean, when at ninety-six God 
 called him home, left a cathedral strong to withstand 
 the storms of another thousand years, a cathedral 
 
 1 See Allen's Diary, Chapter II.
 
 232 GUESTS AT FREES 
 
 that, with many additional beauties, had lost no single 
 grace of its ruined condition. Now St. David's 
 Cathedral, perhaps the most successful restoration on 
 our island, stands on its remote peninsula, the pride 
 and ornament of a romantic land.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 DAUGHTERS 
 
 A CLERGYMAN who had joined the Church of Rome 
 said that one of the fairest pictures to him, in the 
 gallery of memory, was John Allen of a summer's 
 Sunday evening in the garden at Frees among his 
 daughters in their evening dresses. 
 
 But when, one evening, Margaret, Maurice's god- 
 daughter, told her father she wished to go to a hospital 
 to nurse sick people, his heart stood still, and very 
 gently but firmly he refused his consent (she was but 
 twenty-three) : " My child, you don't know what it 
 would mean." 
 
 " You have always taught us, father, to serve, to 
 be useful." 
 
 " Yes, but there are sick and suffering people in 
 your father's parish to care for." 
 
 So Margaret continued praying, and in November 
 1870 alighted with her father's consent at the door of 
 King's College Hospital. Her knees may have faltered 
 as she mounted the stone staircase, but those first 
 months of service were the happiest of her life. One 
 lad said to her, " Sister, have you not been praying 
 for me ? I have felt a great light come into my heart 
 since you talked to me yesterday." 
 
 Then, when next she went forth, " May," Allen's 
 brilliant daughter, the friend of F. D. Maurice, who 
 illuminated, carved, and sketched all the churches and 
 old fonts in the Archdeaconry, who could talk to a 
 Bishop as charmingly as to a butcher, said she, too, 
 must learn to nurse : not that she cared for nursing, 
 but she " must serve." Then Grace, who was fond of 
 riding and dancing, followed ; and the younger, 
 
 233
 
 234 DAUGHTERS 
 
 Beatrice, as soon as she was old enough to be admitted 
 to the work, with no love for nursing, took up her 
 cross and went into a hospital. 
 
 John Allen's Letters to his Daughters 
 
 " TENBY, gth August 1865. 
 
 " I breakfasted this morning with Miss Fanny 
 Allen ; she said Lord Cranborne is, though sar- 
 castic in public life, most sweet in his temper at 
 home." 
 
 (Sir Henry Lucy says that behind his aloofness and 
 scornful mien he only partially concealed a kind heart 
 and highly sensitive nature.) 
 
 " Someone told Lady Alderson (his mother-in- 
 law) that Lord Palmerston said of him he was 
 the only man in his party who could think on his 
 legs. 
 
 When in town I went to the National Portrait 
 Gallery and saw there Mr. Clive of Styche (nephew 
 to the great man). Lord Clive' s picture is by 
 Dance, who married a lady of fortune, and then, 
 ashamed of being a portrait painter, bought up as 
 opportunity offered all his excellent pictures ; this 
 has made them extremely rare." 
 
 John Allen to May (then Superintendent of a Con- 
 valescent Home for Ladies in Scarborough) 
 
 January, 1873. 
 
 " Your Mother and I were rejoiced to see the last 
 Report of the Convalescent Home. There is no 
 greater happiness on this side of the grave to a 
 parent than the hope that his children are living 
 to do God's work in the world. Can there be any 
 work nobler, happier than that of soothing the 
 worried or helping the distressed to look to the 
 Source of all sympathy and help ? I have from 
 the first thought of the work as suited to your 
 attainments, ability, and experience. We miss
 
 DAUGHTERS 235 
 
 your loving and serviceable help at home much ; 
 but the work you are called to is a higher work, 
 a more enduring work. 
 
 A clergyman's Home hangs on one cord and 
 we are constantly warned of the uncertainty of 
 life. To live here is not our desire, but to bear 
 fruit as long as life continues. Thomas Scott, the 
 commentator, saw an apple-tree laden with fruit 
 suddenly blown down. ' Ah, this is the end,' 
 said he, ' that I desire : to be taken laden with 
 good fruit.' ' 
 
 "Aug. 13, 1873. 
 
 " Lately I went to Denstone for the laying of 
 the Foundation-stone of the Chapel of Denstone 
 College. Sir Percival Heywood laid the Stone 
 and spoke solemnly and earnestly. The Bishop 
 of Carlisle (Harvey Goodwin) preached an excel- 
 lent sermon. He was in high spirits and great 
 force. In giving away the prizes he said that, 
 some fifty years ago, he thought he knew some 
 little Latin and might have had some acquaintance 
 with Greek ; but now distance lent enchantment 
 to the view, and he felt, bowing his head before 
 the boys, that if they examined him, he would be 
 plucked. Whether this were calculated to stimu- 
 late their efforts may be questioned, but the joke 
 elicited much laughter and applause, and many 
 doubtless understood it as an expression of 
 sympathy. In private he told us of a man who 
 said he had never been flogged by his father but 
 once, and that was for telling the truth. One who 
 knew him retorted 'Ah, this explains it: your 
 father cured you.' ' 
 
 To Gertrude Codrington 
 
 April, 1877. 
 
 " We have been thinking, day after day, of you 
 and dear Richard, and of your children. If we 
 in humility cast all our care on God, He will most
 
 236 DAUGHTERS 
 
 assuredly make all our burdens His care. When 
 those we love are taken from us, we must look to 
 God with thankfulness for all the mercies which 
 we have received during our intercourse with 
 them. These mercies are permanent in their 
 character ; their recollection is a constant help 
 to us. Certain it is that the Lord will provide. 
 * O fear the Lord, ye His saints ; for there is no 
 want to them that fear Him.' We know, not 
 merely think and hope, but we know, that all 
 things work together for good to them that love 
 God. The thirty-fourth Psalm brings me com- 
 fort. 
 
 Bishop Field of Newfoundland, in his lonely 
 journeys in his ship on the coast of Labrador, 
 through a region of fog, tried sorely by the cold 
 and ill-fed, used to repeat this Psalm again and 
 again as he lay in his hard, narrow bed." 
 
 Some years later he wrote : 
 
 " How great a blessing is God to the fatherless 
 and widow ! Richard Codrington's prayers have 
 indeed been answered. The comfort of prayer is 
 great. ' And as He prayed the fashion of His 
 Countenance was altered.' Whatever our Master 
 did was done in prayer." 
 
 Gertrude's six children all grew up to do good work 
 in the world. One was the gallant Colonel Codrington, 
 who laid down his life at Kut.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 LETTERS TO MAY 
 
 IN 1875 May asked her father's leave to go as a mis- 
 sionary to Zanzibar. He earnestly dissuaded her : 
 " You are doing a good work where you are, God's 
 placings, as well as God's calls, must be considered." 
 Her reply was : " If you refuse your consent I shall not 
 feel it right to go, but there must be no divided 
 responsibility at the last day." Then he wrote : " I 
 cannot refuse my consent, though I do not wish you 
 to go." 
 
 So, blessed by Selwyn, the missionary Bishop of her 
 diocese, and followed by her father's prayers, May 
 went to Zanzibar. After she had sailed he said, " She 
 went against my wishes, but I am thankful to God she 
 persevered." 
 
 To promote the interests of the work to which she 
 had given herself became now his care ; he sent her 
 letters to the county paper, had her sketches of mis- 
 sionary work photographed that he might disseminate 
 them, published his missionary sermons in religious 
 periodicals, and, with a life charged with diocesan 
 labours, went through the land preaching for the 
 " Central African Mission." Many pulpits were open 
 to him, and many subscriptions and donations were 
 won by his energy, for the snows with which old age 
 had loaded his head could not quench the fire within. 
 
 " The more publicity we can give," he said, " to the 
 history and the aims of missionary enterprise the 
 better for the world. The Acts of the Apostles are 
 mainly a record of missionary work." 
 
 He broke down his health by his exertions, some- 
 times preaching five times in the six days of Convoca- 
 
 237
 
 238 LETTERS TO MAY 
 
 tion, filling up his annual twelve days' holiday with 
 sermons and addresses, travelling in winter across 
 England, preaching now at Kidderminster, where 
 Richard Baxter ministered two hundred years ago, 
 now for Dp. Gott, the pupil of Canon Pindar, or wher- 
 ever he could find a welcome ; sometimes collecting 
 forty-four pounds and sometimes four, but never 
 weary so long as the missionary cause were advanced. 
 He said, " When one strives to do one's best one feels 
 that all is somehow right." 
 
 Twice each month he wrote affectionate letters to 
 Zanzibar, full of spiritual encouragement and family 
 news, expressing his deep interest in the work and 
 collating all the stories and facts which he thought 
 might interest or amuse his daughter. 
 
 John Allen to May 
 
 " January 2, 1878. 
 
 " May God pour upon you the abundance of 
 His mercy. Life is measured to us by love. 
 Every effort we make to shew love to our brethren 
 deepens in our hearts the love of God. We have 
 delightful accounts of Margaret giving herself to 
 the care of the Hospital at Rugeley ; a blessing 
 seems to have come upon her as she waited by 
 her mother's bedside in her dangerous illness last 
 year. 
 
 I trust I may get some extracts of your letters 
 into the Record newspaper so that all parties may 
 sympathise in your Christian and happy work. 
 
 Dearest May, I pray that God's grace may ever 
 shield, comfort, and strengthen you." 
 
 " May 29, 1878. 
 
 " It makes me thankful to God that you are at 
 work with good Bishop Steere, though it makes 
 my heart bleed to think of him left without proper 
 support. 
 
 Mr. Body [the great Mission preacher] told 
 Beatrice that he heard your work among the Arab
 
 LETTERS TO MAY 239 
 
 ladies was a successful part of the Missionary 
 endeavour at Zanzibar. 
 
 I am sure you are continually looking upwards 
 for guidance and thus you will influence those who 
 come under your teaching ; may you, as you give 
 yourself to God, as you strive and pray to do His 
 Will and if need be to suffer His Will, receive 
 blessing from Him. What more can be desired 
 for this dying life ? The day will soon dawn with 
 unutterable joy. 
 
 However we may be scattered here, if we strive 
 through God's mercy to be united to our Lord, 
 we shall be sure of a happy meeting at last in His 
 life-giving Presence. Here am I, with every 
 mercy round me, looking out on the shrubs and 
 trees and lawn lit up by the sun. Although I 
 sadly feel all my dear daughters being away, I am 
 thankful, hoping that they are doing God's work. 
 We have had great Mercies. I pray God that we 
 may be made more and more sensible of the 
 greatest Mercy, so that by His help we may live 
 conformably to It." 
 
 " September 1878. 
 
 " I am thankful to God for your letter and for 
 your work. We shall, as I trust, continually help 
 one another forward by our Prayers. 
 
 " I have been interested reading Smiles' Life of 
 George Moore, a successful merchant who began 
 as a shop boy. During the last three years of 
 his life he gave away sixteen thousand pounds a 
 year, in works of piety and charity. His experi- 
 ence was that the more he gave the more he 
 received. Yet he was ever careful to get a good 
 return for the money he laid out in charity. When, 
 of a morning, his begging letters came in, he was 
 often riled, but quieted himself with the thought 
 that his money was God's money and that he 
 must seek to give it back aright to Him."
 
 240 LETTERS TO MAY 
 
 " February 3, 1879. 
 
 " We are pleased to get your interesting letter. 
 May God Almighty watch over you and direct 
 every thought, word and action for good ; and 
 bless abundantly the good seed sown. We know 
 not how far the Divine Spirit may be working 
 in the hearts of those who make enquiry about 
 our Saviour. All hearts are in His hands. And 
 if we use the means that He has given to us if 
 we study to fulfil His parting command, we may 
 leave the issue to Him. 
 
 We have been thinking much of you, the Bishop 
 away, your friend away, and one' nurse taken to 
 her rest, but you have our Lord by your side, and 
 while by His help you lighten the sorrow of the 
 world your work will not lose its reward. 
 
 May we by earnest prayer hold up your hands. 
 
 Richard Grier heard from Ellice Hopkins some 
 praise of Beatrice ; she said, ' She is full of energy 
 yet strong in administrative judgement ; there is 
 none like her/ It rejoiced my heart. I thought 
 how, under God's blessing, all your mother's chil- 
 dren had turned out well. 
 
 An abandoned woman had come under Beatrice's 
 teaching, she was willing to go into a Penitentiary 
 but had two children to be provided for, so 
 Beatrice arranged for the maintenance of them 
 both. Miss Hopkins gave a graphic account of 
 her carrying the boy to Dr. Barnardo, and the 
 mother the girl elsewhere ; of the little boy 
 clinging to her as if he knew he had found a 
 friend, and of his unwillingness to part with her 
 when left at Stepney Causeway." 
 
 Beatrice was at this time managing her brother's 
 house in Brompton Crescent, and giving herself with 
 enthusiasm to Rescue Work in London. She was 
 Hon. Secretary of the Pimlico Ladies' Association 
 during the fifteen years of its noblest achievements. 
 When her brother could spare her, she, too, went forth 
 as a missionary, under the C.M.S., to Japan, and in
 
 LETTERS TO MAY 241 
 
 ten years laid down her life. The angels of Martyrdom 
 and Victory are brothers. A short account of her, with 
 her letters, full of holy zeal and interesting missionary 
 exploits, have been published Our Sister Beatrice by 
 Messrs. Rivington. 
 Allen continues : 
 
 " Sir Edmund Beckett ' has written an able 
 article on Herbert Spencer's agnosticism. He says 
 Spencer's natural temperament was such, that 
 many things other men got along with placidly 
 gave him acute pain, or, as Sir H. Lucy puts it, 
 he was perhaps the most irascible man who had 
 ever been faced by the inconvenience of other 
 people presuming to inhabit the same globe. 
 
 Sir Edmund has also published a little book 
 against Professor Huxley's theories, for these 
 people crawling on a grain of dust are unwilling 
 to believe in any intelligent Being greater than 
 themselves. He has given a lecture on ' How can 
 the World evolve itself ? ' He says Ritualists are 
 only Papists with every man his own Pope ; and 
 that Blomfield (the architect) has spoiled Trinity 
 College Chapel with painting and gilding ! 
 
 Lord Powis was out shooting with his brother- 
 in-law, and by a mischance received shots in his 
 thigh and hand ; the results were not serious, 
 but all were deeply moved. This happened on 
 January loth, the very same date on which his 
 father was accidentally shot by one of his younger 
 sons and died of his wounds. 
 
 Your account of Mrs. Pritchard is very touching. 
 How much misery comes from war ! I can hardly 
 think of anything short of the invasion of one's 
 
 country that could justify it." 
 
 " 1879. 
 
 " When I was at Lichfield last week Mrs. 
 Maclagan told me that when her uncle, Lord 
 Barrington, was Chancellor of the Exchequer he 
 
 1 Later, Lord Grimthorpe. 
 
 16
 
 242 LETTERS TO MAY 
 
 brought home a ten-thousand pound Bank of 
 England note to shew some friends dining with 
 him. It was handed round for inspection, but 
 when the company were going to dinner the note 
 was missing. 
 
 ' Well, gentlemen/ said Lord Barrington, ' you 
 may go to dinner, but if I cannot find this note I 
 must leave the country to-night/ The note had 
 been shuffled under some papers on the table and 
 was in the end safely forthcoming. She also said 
 that when Tom Raikes (a dandy born about 1770), 
 a very ugly man, was told by Lord Glengall, 
 famous for drawing a long bow, that he heard he 
 was going to a fancy dress ball as Apollo, he 
 replied at once, ' Yes, and I shall take you as my 
 lyre (liar)/ 
 
 I went with the Bishop to Stafford, where he 
 was holding a devotional meeting with the clergy. 
 
 He gave a beautiful address on our Lord's 
 words, ' Ye have not chosen Me, but I have 
 chosen you/ and called upon us clergy not merely 
 to visit so many of our people, to preach so many 
 sermons or to go so many times to the school, but 
 to seek to bring forth fruit, fruit that should re- 
 main. 
 
 At Condover I met Lord Tollemache, Lord 
 Aberdare, G. S. Venables, an eminent Parlia- 
 mentary counsel who is commonly pitted against 
 Sir Edmund Beckett. He said that the misfortune 
 of being pitted against Sir Edmund is that he 
 declares your clients to be always fools or knaves. 
 Lord Aberdare talked about police ; I said we 
 ought to go back to ' stripes for the backs of fools/ 
 Lord Tollemache talked of the division of the 
 Diocese of Lichfield. 
 
 I hope and pray that God in His infinite mercy 
 will continue to bless you more and more. 
 
 The Report of the Archbishop of York's 1 
 speech at the opening of the Sheffield Congress 
 
 1 Thomson.
 
 LETTERS TO MAY 243 
 
 seemed to me excellent, but the high church 
 newspapers shew him little mercy. What was 
 said there on the light thrown on Bible history by 
 Assyrian and Egyptian monuments should help 
 forward faith in the Bible, yet the atheists grow 
 bolder every day. The line that Mr. Gladstone 
 has taken about Bradlaugh doesn't appear right 
 to me ; surely he should not have been helped to 
 proclaim himself an atheist before the House of 
 Commons. The silence, too, about religion in 
 our national system of education distresses me. 
 
 I went yesterday to Mr. Mundella, the new 
 Vice-President of the Board of Education, to ask 
 him if the Ministry could not formally recognize 
 Holy Scripture as the storehouse of that know- 
 ledge which is most necessary for man. He said 
 he entirely sympathised with me in theory, and 
 wished some practical means of bringing the 
 matter forward could be devised. When Mr. 
 Forster's Bill passed he had spoken of his sense 
 of the value of Holy Scripture in Education, and 
 if I would write to him a plan he would carefully 
 consider it. I do not know if I can produce any 
 plan that he will consider worthy of attention." 
 
 " February 1879. 
 
 " Bishop Wilberforce's Life is candid in its 
 revelations. He was continually desirous of 
 setting forward true religion. In the Oxford 
 Movement he separated from Newman and 
 Pusey ; at one time he wrote in The British 
 Critic, but the Editor (Newman) saw he was not 
 of their way of thinking. He held that the 
 Catechism and Creeds are, after Holy Scriptures, 
 our ultimate appeal in matters of faith ; and that 
 union with Christ by faith is the one thing 
 necessary for spiritual life. The difference between 
 a living faith and a dead faith he illustrates by 
 two seeds : both appear alike, yet one may be 
 dead and one alive ; God sees the difference, and
 
 244 LETTERS TO MAY 
 
 when these seeds are planted the living seed 
 sends up flowers and fruit, while the dead seed 
 remains inert and perishes. When he asked his 
 brother Robert to preach the sermon at his 
 Consecration, he asked him not to dwell on his 
 peculiar views, but on the more spiritual aspect 
 of our ministry, the work of testifying of Christ 
 and converting souls by the power of His name. 
 
 Robert's views led him at last to Rome. 
 
 Once, when sitting by Bishop Magee, Wilber- 
 force had to propose the health of an Alderman 
 Pigeon. Turning hastily to Magee he said, 
 ' Alderman Pigeon ? What can I say of him ? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! ' said Magee, ' say that you hope he will 
 die in a mayor's (mare's) nest.' 
 
 When the Foot and Mouth disease first broke 
 out he asked this riddle, ' What is the most 
 aggravated form of the Foot and Mouth disease ? ' 
 
 ' Kissing the Pope's toe.' 
 
 One thing in the book is perhaps unequalled in 
 literature, i.e. his Diaries and Letters when he 
 lost his wife ; out of this crushing sorrow he drew 
 the best of blessings. These pages, eight or ten, 
 ought to be printed as a comfort to mourners. 
 His life shews that, notwithstanding all his ac- 
 ceptance in society (he was a great favourite at 
 Court in the time of Prince Consort) his trials 
 lay heavy on his heart, yet acutely as he felt 
 them he bore them as a man would wish to 
 bear them. 
 
 Bishop Maclagan told me that the year he died 
 he was talking to him of his engagements, and 
 after reckoning them on his fingers, Wilberforce 
 said, ' Yes, and after June i8th I can make no 
 further engagements,' meaning he must have rest. 
 On June 18 he was taken to his Eternal Rest. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle said, when he heard of it, 'A 
 glad surprise.' 
 
 Farrar's ' Life of St. Paul ' I like better than 
 his ' Life of Christ.' It will help many to appre- 
 ciate St. Paul's teaching.
 
 LETTERS TO MAY 245 
 
 " 1880. 
 
 " I am thankful to God when I think of you and 
 your work. 
 
 Here am I on Holy Thursday before our early 
 Holy Communion sitting down to write to you. I 
 cannot help feeling anxious about your health, 
 but when we are turning our faces in the right 
 direction to live is to do our Master's will ; to die 
 is gain. When the Bishop of Lichfield stayed 
 here I asked his leave to invite the Congrega- 
 tionalist Minister and the Primitive Methodist 
 Minister to breakfast! with him ; the Congrega- 
 tionalist Minister came and was courteous and 
 pleasant ; he is a true Christian gentleman, modest 
 yet not shy. 
 
 At the Wrockwardine Chapter the subject was 
 Home Reunion. I said we ought to keep our lips 
 shut about Nonconformists ; ' Judge not ' 
 neither praise them, nor dispraise them. 
 
 We should pray for a blessing on the efforts of 
 all who profess to be Christians ; we should gladly 
 work with them where we could, e.g. in tHe Bible 
 Society, and we should show them acts of social 
 kindness. 
 
 I heard a story of the King of Prussia ; he 
 doesn't look upon himself as made of finer clay 
 than the rest of mankind, but has a great con- 
 sideration for others. He went into a Prussian 
 School and, holding out a rose, asked the children 
 ' To what kingdom does this belong ? ' The 
 answer came readily, ' To the vegetable king- 
 dom.' Then, holding up his ring, he asked, ' To 
 what kingdom does this belong ? ' ' The mineral 
 kingdom.' Then, putting his hand on his breast, 
 the aged Monarch asked, ' To what kingdom do 
 I belong ? ' There was a pause. Perhaps some 
 doubted whether he meant ' the kingdom of 
 Prussia.' At last a little girl held out her hand ; 
 the King encouraged her to speak. c To the King- 
 dom of Heaven,' she said. ' Ah, my child,' said
 
 246 LETTERS TO MAY 
 
 the King, ' if I become one of you I shall belong 
 to that Kingdom/ ' 
 
 " 2.7th July, 1880. 
 
 " Greatly thankful am I that you are a healer 
 of bodies as well as, I trust, a help in God's hands 
 in the healing of souls. Four and a half years 
 have past since we had you, dear May, with us 
 face to face, but if by God's unspeakable mercy 
 we can be united to our Lord we shall be with 
 Him, and with each other in His unclouded 
 Presence for ever in Paradise. This ought to fill 
 our hearts with joy. 
 
 Your drawings in the margin of your letters are 
 excellent ; Thackeray used to make admirable 
 drawings on the margins of his letters to Edward 
 Fitzgerald, but E. F. G., fearing they might come 
 into the hands of one who should publish them 
 for their value, burnt them all. 
 
 England is so powerful and has such great re- 
 sponsibilities that she claims from us all help in 
 every direction for Missions. Claudius Buchanan's 
 life tells of his earnestly pleading at the beginning 
 of this century that provision should be made for 
 the Christian occupation of India if we are to 
 preserve our power there." 
 
 " Aug. 1880. 
 
 " Although I do not contribute to Noncon- 
 formist Missions, I long for more unity of action 
 among those who confess that the Eternal Son 
 came into the world for our redemption and bore 
 the punishment of our sins. I see more in 
 Thomas-a-Kempis now than I ever saw before. 
 I heard of a Captain nursed by you who thinks he 
 owes his life to your care ; whenever he opened 
 his eyes you were at his side." 
 
 "14 BROMPTON CRESCENT, May 1881. 
 
 " I have come here for Convocation. It is a 
 subject of thankfulness to God that you are 
 enabled to work for Him.
 
 LETTERS TO MAY 247 
 
 On my way to Lichfield last week at Stafford 
 I saw Mr. Gladstone in the train. He stretched 
 out his hand, saying, ' I must speak to you of the 
 Lichfield Book (Sister Dora, written by Margaret 
 Lonsdale). He spoke in the warmest terms of the 
 character drawn, and the skill shown in drawing 
 it ; when I left him at Lichfield I said, ' Mr. 
 Gladstone, you delight in doing acts of kindness ; 
 write what you have just said to Canon Lonsdale. 
 Your words will be very pleasant to him and to 
 his daughter.' He said, ' I have written.' 
 
 The Bishop of Zanzibar has written to me ; 
 you must ask him to show you my letter. I only 
 wish for the best blessings on you and on your 
 work ; we ought to be able to give up all for our 
 Master. I am greatly thankful that you went 
 out, though I much disliked the idea of your 
 going. But I had little idea of how God in His 
 great mercy would bless your work. Your going 
 out has certainly stirred me up to do more in 
 speaking for Missions. We may humbly believe 
 that the more we do in His service, the more God 
 gives us the inclination to do ; the reward of 
 bearing fruit is the inclination and power to bring 
 forth more fruit." 
 
 A man who had once spent in 1866 a pleasant after- 
 noon with May, riding in the cork-woods of Spain, 
 seeing Allen's name and address in the newspaper, 
 wrote from America to inquire after " that bright-eyed 
 companion." John Allen replied that his daughter 
 was now a missionary, and all the five years she had 
 been abroad no single murmur or word of complaint 
 had come from her. 
 
 " Nov. 1880. 
 
 " At Condover Reginald Cholmondeley told us 
 that in Parliament an Alderman Moon, having a 
 grievance, was continually trying to get big men 
 like Harcourt and Knightley to take up the matter.
 
 248 LETTERS TO MAY 
 
 Sir William said it put him in mind of Addison's 
 lines, ' The Moon takes up the wondrous tale and 
 Knightley to the listening earth repeats the 
 story.' Once at Nuneham, a stately mansion 
 where Harcourt's brother lived, Sir William was 
 asked, ' Why is it that you are such an acid 
 Radical when your brother holds this magnificent 
 property ? ' ' Oh ! ' he replied laughing, ' if my 
 brother would give me his property I would gladly 
 make him a present of my opinions/ 
 
 An excellent clergyman, at times a little forgetful, 
 who was marrying a couple, read by mistake the 
 words of the wife to the husband. The bridegroom 
 tapped him on the shoulder, saying, " Doctor, I 
 doubt not the facts will be so, but I prefer being 
 married in the words of the Prayer Book.' ' 
 
 " Dec. 1880. 
 
 ' I strive and pray that I may not make of this 
 earth my home ; but I have had here so many 
 blessings that I feel I do not as I ought set my 
 affections on things above. I think of you and 
 pray for you every morning, and especially every 
 evening. May it be one of my practical con- 
 victions that in acts of love we are really in union 
 witfy our Lord, one with Him and one with the 
 Saints ; so that, when our earthly career is finished, 
 we may hope to be with Him for ever." 
 
 " 4th April, 1881. 
 
 " I am glad to see the notices of our Mission 
 work getting more and more into the newspapers. 
 
 Your dear Mother is well ; if we are spared to 
 the close of July we shall have had forty-seven 
 years of happiness together, and we have had the 
 joy of seeing all our nine children, as we trust, 
 living to do God's work in the world. I ought to 
 ask myself what can I render to God for all the 
 benefits I have received. Great indeed is the 
 mercy God has shewn us in giving us such
 
 LETTERS TO MAY 249 
 
 children. May our blessings draw us nearer to 
 God. What a help your Mother has been to me ! 
 happy will be her portion when she meets our 
 Lord face to face. We must not think of our 
 removal in any other light than of our meeting 
 with our perfect happiness. What men call 
 death is to all true Christians the Gate of Joy. 
 Let us pray that we may be found faithful unto 
 the end. My prayer is that I may daily set my 
 heart more and more on that Eternal Resting- 
 Place where true joys are to be found. 
 
 It is an honour from our Master that you 
 should be joined with Bishop Steere in his efforts 
 to make the Holy Scriptures plain to the people." 
 
 " May 1881. 
 
 " In Convocation we each received a handsome 
 gift of the Revised New Testament and two 
 Greek Testaments with the revised text. 
 
 We should, I think, welcome the improvements 
 hi the Revised Version. I am sorry so many 
 alterations have been made ; some seem needless 
 and insignificant. The enemies will take occasion 
 by them to snarl and find fault with a good work 
 for which we must thank God. As the oldest 
 member present, I moved a vote of thanks for the 
 Revised Version ; Archdeacon Denison opposed 
 with a scant following." 
 
 "Jan. 1882. 
 
 ' I write these words on my knees in thankful- 
 ness to God and in prayer, that if it be His 
 gracious will He may give us a happy meeting. I 
 feel that it is desirable for your work that you 
 should do all that you can to repair your strength. 
 And your presence will invigorate your dear 
 Mother and me. You will not see good Bishop 
 Selwyn, but you have, as I feel assured, been 
 blessed by the answers given to his, to dear Mrs. 
 Selwyn's, and to Bishop Abraham's prayers. 
 
 I slept at Lichfield last Monday and heard a
 
 250 LETTERS TO MAY 
 
 story of Whitefield after he had quarrelled with 
 Wesley, saying, when one of his adherents asked 
 him, ' Shall we meet John Wesley in Heaven ? ' 
 ' O ! no, he will be far above us out of our sight.' 
 Another story was of a lady who had a favourite 
 gardener ' John/ and who, having quarrelled with 
 every company of Christians, was finally reduced 
 to worshipping with the gardener alone. Some- 
 one expostulated with her thus : ' Surely you 
 cannot think the whole family of God consists 
 only of you and John ? ' ' Well/ she replied, ' I 
 have me doubts about John ! ' 
 
 You must expect, if God gives you an oppor- 
 tunity while you are at home, to do some work in 
 shewing your sketches, and in speaking at 
 Drawing-room meetings. We all of us need to be 
 stirred up to take more interest in Missions ; and 
 our interest in Missions depends on the knowledge 
 we have of what is being done. 
 
 With regard to finely dressed ladies, it seems 
 to me a duty to preach a crusade against the 
 tyranny exercised by a junta of Paris milliners 
 over the dresses of English Christian women. I 
 wish for a quaker-like simplicity of dress in those 
 who believe in the teaching of our Lord. 
 
 The prospect of your coming is a great joy to 
 me ; six years' labour may well be crowned with 
 a sabbath at home." 
 
 " 1881. 
 
 " It will be a great happiness to have you wor- 
 shipping again in Frees church ; and you must 
 tell us for what church privileges you wish, so 
 that they may be provided. 
 
 I have been pleased with Bishop ThirlwalTs 
 Life. The girls are reading out to us of an 
 evening ' Middlemarch/ George Eliot is said 
 to have received 10,000 for it, the largest sum 
 ever given for a work of fiction. It is amusing, 
 but shews the infidel tendencies of her mind 
 and some other displeasing features. We left
 
 LETTERS TO MAY 251 
 
 ' Romola ' in the middle ; I was made so wretched 
 by it ; one seemed to be watching the machina- 
 tions of the Evil One. 
 
 You must have enjoyed the first volume of 
 ' John Inglesant ' ; the second volume is wholly 
 different in character. There was an interval of 
 some twelve years between the writing of the two 
 books. The teaching of the book may be the 
 danger of surrendering our conscience to another." 
 
 In March 1882 May came home, and during 
 that year her father's health so failed that he felt it 
 right to resign his living, and accept the Mastership of 
 St. John's Hospital, Lichfield, a religious Foundation 
 for twelve old Brethren established in the days of 
 King John. 
 
 When called to leave his parish he said, " This place 
 has been a Paradise to me," for our best joys are found 
 in communicating to others the joy we have made 
 our own. 
 
 " May 1883. 
 
 ' To-day is one of the most beautiful days of 
 the year ; the green of the trees, the lilac, the 
 fair scenery make me feel how sad it will be to 
 leave this place for ever at the close of June. 
 But I must endeavour to fasten my affections on 
 a better place. I feel that the relief from the 
 pressure of this parish will be happy, though never 
 had anyone kinder or more loyal parishioners. 
 Not that they are what one would desire in 
 spiritual matters, but in this respect a younger 
 man will be of service." 
 
 In the early spring of 1883 May had returned to 
 her work in Zanzibar. 
 
 John Allen to May 
 
 " 20 July, 1883. 
 
 "We are all well, and if I can find time for no 
 other words than those of loving affection to you,
 
 252 LETTERS TO MAY 
 
 these will be worth sending half across the globe. 
 May the best blessings be with you and with your 
 work now and ever. 
 
 The parting from Frees was a severe trial, I 
 preached my last sermon June 24th, without any 
 thought of its being my last. I had intended 
 returning from town for July ist, but my plan 
 was frustrated. 
 
 The Bishop at the meeting of Church-workers 
 at Wolverhampton used a happy illustration, 
 saying : * We are all familiar with tools ; there are 
 tools of various kinds, but a master can only use 
 tools that are fit for his work. Some need much 
 sharpening and brightening before they can be 
 of service ; so some of us may have to go through 
 severe discipline before our Master can use us as 
 He would. ' 
 
 An allusion to the suffering the severance from his 
 parish cost him. 
 
 " Lady Martin has been taken home. Mrs. 
 Selwyn could not go to her, for she was ill herself. 
 She asked someone, ' What news ? I only expect 
 to hear what people call " the worst." Yet I am 
 sure I do not know why it should be called the 
 worst ! ' "
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM (1858) 
 
 ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-!NGRAM is one of a 
 family of ten. His father, the Rector and squire of 
 Stamford in Worcestershire, was a man full of bright 
 spirits and fond of jokes ; his mother, a handsome, 
 dignified lady, is the daughter of Bishop Pepys. 
 Arthur was of an affectionate disposition as a child ; 
 he would take his mother's hand out walking and say, 
 " O mother, I do love you so." After being educated 
 at Maryborough, as a scholar he went to Keble, where 
 his high standard, his clean life, his sobriety, and 
 attractive brightness changed the character of the 
 College while he was there. He was nephew by 
 marriage to William Lyttelton, and saw something of 
 him as a boy. 
 
 When he took his degree, first in Mods, second in 
 Greats, he was uncertain what line of life to pursue ; 
 he could not take Orders, being harassed by doubts, 
 although he never gave up saying his prayers. While 
 he was considering his vocation, he accepted a pleasant 
 tutorship and went to Dresden to superintend the 
 education of four lads. Their mother was a little 
 startled, when she first saw him, by his youthful appear- 
 ance. " Don't miss him on any account," said a 
 friend who knew him at Oxford ; nor did she wish to. 
 
 An incomparable teacher, he was for two or three 
 years happy enough teaching all day and dancing 
 three or four times a week, ever a welcome partner with 
 his easy address, perfect dancing, and winning smile. 
 
 But a sharp attack of illness recalled him to his 
 higher self, and about the same time a friend of his 
 own age died. He was in England at the time and 
 
 253
 
 254 ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM 
 
 followed the still form he had known so full of life and 
 spirit up the long ascent of the Great- Orme to the 
 little church of St. Tudno that crowns it. Infinitude 
 above and the blue ocean below, " In the centre of 
 Immensities in the conflux of Eternities," he learned 
 to realise the meaning of life, and never read Browning's 
 " Grammarian's Funeral " without thinking of that 
 ascent. 
 
 So, with an established faith in Him who holds the 
 Keys of Life and Death a man capable of rapture, 
 with instincts for the godlike acknowledging depen- 
 dency divine, he took Orders in 1883. The motto " I 
 serve " ever appealed to him. Nature, he said, must 
 be forced to do violence to itself; self-denial is the 
 passport to Heaven, and should be branded on lives 
 laid down for a crucified King. A man ought to be 
 ready to give up what seem to him important works 
 for trifling services, and to learn that he has no right 
 to some of his rights ; the gate to Heaven is narrow, 
 but by drifting the way to Hell is reached. 
 
 He set himself with ardour to work in Shrewsbury. 
 Bacon says that a man discovers his own nature best 
 in a new case or experience, for there custom forsakes 
 him and he has a fresh opportunity of adjusting his 
 best energies to his noblest purpose. All men value 
 goodness above any or all other qualities ; so his success 
 was immediate and complete. Character consists in 
 the subordination and self-fashioning of circumstances, 
 turning possibilities into acquisitions. Day by day 
 he applied himself to his task ; in the morning he read 
 and composed his sermons, in the afternoon he went 
 from house to house visiting his people ; compassion 
 assumed with him the form of a master-passion, and 
 he indulged it with a sublime disdain of the good 
 advice the generous have to undergo from the judicious ; 
 his rule was to give as much as he could possibly 
 afford, so as not to be at the mercy of his passing 
 feelings. Before you drive in a nail, he said, it is 
 better to bore a hole lest you split the wood : so pre- 
 pare the way of kindness for the message you are sent 
 to give. Conscious of no aims but such as might
 
 ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM 255 
 
 invite the scrutiny of any man, he pursued them in his 
 own happy fashion. Discord never agitated his eager 
 heart, lassitude never brooded over it ; those demons 
 quailed at the aspect of a man in whose soul peace 
 had found a resting-place, though his intellect was 
 incapable of repose. 
 
 His tenderness with the dying was divine. Holding 
 the trembling sufferer's hand in his, whispering to her 
 to rest her soul on Jesus, he would pray, while her 
 spirit passed, to God to support her in the Valley of 
 Death and land her safe upon the further shore. And 
 when, in long illnesses, some sufferer's pain became 
 almost more than she could bear, he would tell her to 
 send for him in the middle of the night that he might 
 watch with her in her agony. 
 
 The sinful he would seek early and late. " When we 
 see a man," he said, " we have known or passed in the 
 street, standing before God's Judgment Throne, how 
 the wish to help him will come to us then, yes, even if 
 we had hated him before ! To convince men of sin is 
 hard ; it is a good plan sometimes to take a command- 
 ment, e.g. ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart/ and say to a man ' have you done this ? ' 
 or to remind him of the fig-tree in the Gospel and 
 ask, ' What fruit have you borne ? ' this is better than 
 speaking of particular sins which put men on the 
 defensive. The way to improve ourselves is to feel 
 deeply our want of improvement. In a deep sense 
 of moral evil more perhaps than in anything else, 
 abides the knowledge of God. Improvement is ever 
 within the grasp of human effort." 
 
 The commonplace he would inspire, and rallied them 
 into a devoted staff of district visitors. 
 
 His sermons in St. Mary's Church were a revelation 
 to Shrewsbury ; he knew how to adapt the shows of 
 things to the desires of the mind. His text he gave 
 out with authority as a message from God. A great 
 sermon, remembered for years after he preached it, 
 was on the True Vine. Having portrayed a dismantled 
 vine dark against the sky, he asked after a moment's 
 pause, " Is that vine a failure ? ask the sick man."
 
 256 ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM 
 
 Then, pointing to the extended arms of the cross, he 
 asked again : "Is that Cross a failure ? ask the saints 
 of old and the sinners of to-day/' And in vibrating 
 tones applied the lesson of the Cross to his people. 
 " You are the branches of that vine ; is the vine careful 
 of her leaves, her flowers, or her grapes ? Waste not 
 your souls on pleasure, business, or popularity, draw 
 up the life of that Cross into your life ; the Vine 
 cannot bear fruit without her branches, your crucified 
 Master needs you. Won't you work for Him ? Never 
 mind if your earthly happiness is pruned away, the 
 life of love is sacrifice. Self-sacrifice is no negative 
 endurance ; it is the positive offering of a man's self 
 to his Master. To give out is better than to receive ; 
 yield all to Jesus, whatever He asks. Try and live so 
 that if a soul you care for ever reach Hell it shall be 
 over your mangled body, and, as you seek the Gate of 
 Heaven, go not in empty-handed but stand there 
 grasping some brand plucked from the burning. The 
 long winter will soon be over, the time of reaping will 
 come. Measure thy life by loss instead of gain, not 
 by the wine drunk but by the wine poured forth ; love's 
 strength standeth in love's sacrifice, and he that giveth 
 most hath still the most to give." The aptly chosen 
 quotation with which he concluded, well within the 
 due fifteen minutes, was always magnificently recited. 
 Soon, however, a change came ; his fame reached 
 the Bishop of the Diocese, who asked him to become 
 his secretary and to be the Chaplain of St. John's 
 Hospital, where Archdeacon Allen was now the 
 " Master." Such a request could not be refused ; it 
 meant much ; but it was unwelcome to his mood. So 
 on a grey October day he drove into the sordid little 
 city where he was to write episcopal letters in the 
 morning, and on Sundays preach to twelve old men, 
 some stone-deaf and others troubled with interrupting 
 coughs. Letters he never liked writing, although he 
 could pen them faster than anyone else ; perhaps this 
 is the reason why, to like writing letters, a man must 
 sit chatting pen in hand, and spend a happy hour with 
 the friend he has summoned to his side.
 
 ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM 257 
 
 However, with a heart fitted for Lichfield because 
 fitted for every duty, he attached himself in his vigorous 
 youth to the ebb of the current bearing John Allen 
 to his eternal reward. A man's dignity is not found 
 in space, but in the quality of his thoughts. He became 
 a lecturer at the Theological College, and recognised at 
 once the importance of the campaign to which he was 
 called. 
 
 His kindness expanded with such a happy prompti- 
 tude that he might have passed as the brother of 
 every youth in the college ; and, having won their 
 friendship, he set himself to do them good. A man's 
 unconscious is greater than his conscious influence. 
 We help men more by what we are, he said, than by 
 what we say ; the one power is like light, the other 
 like lightning. The way to do good is to be good, to 
 take in great heartfuls of God and bear witness to 
 Him, as the planets in the darkness of the night bear 
 witness to the hidden sun. One young priest went 
 back from his ordination with a totally new concep- 
 tion of the pastoral life. 
 
 He took up the work of the Archdeacon's daughters, 
 teaching their Bible-class, and visiting the sick, the 
 sinful, and the dying in their districts. Spiritual work 
 is the highest occupation, and that most resembling 
 his Creator's a man can busy himself with. At the 
 Bible-class he taught the men that our daily work 
 would be all joy could we but feel the love of the Son 
 of God for us ; "as the Father hath loved Me, so have 
 I loved you." " Do you think," he would say, " I 
 could come here and talk to you without asking the 
 help of the Lord Jesus before I came ? Do what God 
 wills, and soon God's Will will come to mean what you 
 will. When you pray over your Bible and try to 
 understand it, God will lead you to right conclusions. 
 The virgins' lamps are the outside profession of holi- 
 ness, the oil within is the Holiness of God. Loving 
 one another means caring for one another's souls ; in 
 that short two hours after a long day's work seek 
 souls for God. The talent God gives us has two sides 
 to it : the power of helping men more, and the power
 
 258 ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM 
 
 of growing more like God. At the Judgment Day we 
 shall see things as they are." His power with souls 
 was so great that a degraded sinner who had seen him 
 but once pleaded within an hour of his death, " Send 
 that young man to me again." 
 
 Then came a check. A new Vicar was appointed to 
 the parish, a well-meaning, unpopular man, who said 
 he did not wish for help with his people ; so a great 
 spiritual power was driven away from them, with 
 results disastrous to their souls and not without serious 
 loss to him to whom God had given so much. Powers 
 we do not use pass from us. An old woman in the 
 parish, whose mother may have been present at the 
 scene, reported that when John Wesley preached in 
 Lichfield he was stoned by the people, and, as the 
 blood streamed down his face he denounced the city, 
 saying it would ever drive from its streets the messen- 
 gers sent there by God. While the door was being 
 shut on God's servant, the ministers of Satan were 
 hard at work. A powerful bricklayer was preaching 
 night by night in every public-house that " man dies 
 like a dog " ; another artisan was affirming that there 
 was no devil and no hell ; and, too, a Christadelphian 
 enthusiast was propagating his doctrines ; a welcome 
 Wesleyan was visiting the sick-beds ; and the Romanist 
 priest was busy ; the only voice the pastor could silence 
 was the episcopally ordained minister of God. No 
 Bishop can, by the laying on of his apostolic hands, 
 transmit authority to any man to hunt away from his 
 hungry flock the bearer of the Bread of Life. 
 
 However, Mr. Ingram 's popularity as a preacher 
 increased ; he was called for hither and thither, and 
 helped in the Derby Mission, the last of the great 
 Missions ; for sermons no longer ran on the eternal 
 themes of the darkness of Hell, the craft of the Tempter, 
 and the Saving Power of the Cross. Here he worked 
 a little Mission Hall under Canon Draper, a missioner 
 at one of the churches, a great Browning scholar, now 
 Master of the Temple. The current of the felt presence 
 of the invisible Master before whom he stood swept 
 men's minds from their foothold into deeper waters
 
 ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM 259 
 
 with a drift they could not, or would not resist. " When 
 a funeral passes you," he said, ' you heed it not, 
 maybe, but some day that funeral will be your funeral, 
 your body will be lying there, your soul standing 
 before the Judgment Seat of God. When we speak 
 to men of the justice of God they reply that ' God is 
 merciful,' meaning that He is indifferent to sin. What 
 must sin cost you ? No torment can exceed the tor- 
 ment of an accusing conscience, and a man can do 
 more harm in an hour than he can forget in a life- time. 
 What does sin cost God ? Look at the Cross and learn 
 it there. Sin is atheism ; if a man believed that the 
 Holy Ghost has made his body His temple, sin would 
 be impossible to him. Those earnest pleadings you 
 have heard in the silence of the night or in an hour 
 of trouble are Christ knocking at the door of your 
 heart. When you sin you think God forsakes you, but 
 He does not ; He is seeking you, He is standing here in 
 this church now before the altar ready to help you and 
 make you holy ; but some day He will come again 
 to meet you as your Judge. Life is short compared 
 to eternity, a short hour hi which to earn eternal 
 glory." 
 
 He always came back from such missions exhausted 
 and ill, but Bishop Maclagan said a man cannot 
 expect to go on to the battle-field and come back 
 without a wound. 
 
 Mr. Ingram did, too, a good deal of reading at Lich- 
 field. He was not exactly fond of reading, but he 
 was a diligent and intelligent reader, and had won 
 Canon Liddon's prize for ecclesiastical study at Oxford. 
 Gibbon said he would not give up his love of reading 
 for all the wealth of the Indies ; a man of strong will 
 can make himself read whether he likes it or no. 
 While at Lichfield he read Maurice's Life, which is 
 said to have had a deeper influence on the minds of 
 the clergy than all his sermons ; its publication in the 
 eighties was an epoch in the Anglican Church. He 
 asked the Archdeacon whether he advised him to read 
 it. " Read Bishop Saunderson," was the reply; " men 
 went to him to have their consciences awakened."
 
 260 ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM 
 
 Mr. Ingram said it was often easier to find out what 
 Maurice did not wish you to believe than what he 
 did ; but reading his life made him so love the man 
 that he felt drawn to read his books. 
 
 In 1888 he was made the Head of Oxford House, 
 and in ten years was Bishop of London.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 As for John Allen, the soul that had touched at many 
 places and performed much business had now reached 
 its goal ; the long self-sacrifice of life was over. His 
 life was work. 
 
 From Anna Allen to Miss Lisa de Bunsen 
 
 "ST. JOHN'S, LICHFIELD, 
 
 Dec. 21, 1886. 
 r ' MY DEAREST LISA, 
 
 Thank you for thinking of us and for your 
 beautiful letter. It is hard to begin life again 
 without him. We all feel as if our standard of 
 truth and righteousness had drifted out to sea. 
 On Tuesday, when Beatrice helped ihe to venture 
 into the chamber of awe, he looked like a war- 
 worn Warrior who, having fought the good Fight 
 and finished his course, was still suffering from the 
 strife. On Wednesday a calm look of deep rest 
 had hallowed his features and we thought of the 
 verse, ' Lo, He giveth His Beloved Rest.' On 
 Thursday the look had changed again into an 
 expression of Divine Peace. ' The Peace of God 
 which passeth all 'understanding.' On Friday, 
 when we took our last Farewell of him as he lay 
 there in his robes of office in the little Temple of 
 his shell, there was a slight flush, as of the dawn, 
 on his face, and a look of celestial Love. We could 
 only say to each other ' Greater Love hath no man 
 than this, that a man lay down his life for his 
 friends.' Life does not seem quite worth living 
 
 261
 
 262 CONCLUSION 
 
 now he has gone, but when pleasure flies duty 
 remains to us. 
 
 Ever yours very affectionately, 
 
 ANNA O. ALLEN." 
 
 On God and Godlike men we build our trust. 
 Miss not the discourses of the elders. 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 " LET us now praise good men. The Lord hath 
 wrought great glory by them through His great power. 
 There be of them that have left a name behind them, 
 that their praises be reported. And some there be 
 which have no memorial ; which are perished as 
 though they had never been. 
 
 " God hath chosen and appointed them to bring 
 forth fruit fruit that shall remain." 
 
 FINIS
 
 INDEX 
 
 Aberdare, Lord, 299 (Mr. 
 
 Bruce). 242 
 Abraham, Bishop, 249 
 AJford, Dean, 2, 5, 7-9, 41, 
 
 42 
 
 Allen, AnnaO, 73, 261 
 Allen, Beatrice, 234, 238, 
 
 240 
 Allen, Commander Bird, 
 
 70, 71 
 Allen, Fanny, 29-31, 173, 
 
 179, 234 
 
 Allen, Grace, 204, 222, 233 
 Allen, Harriet, 21, 22, 39, 
 
 70, 73, 125, 203, 248 
 Allen, Dean James, 8-108, 
 
 231, 232 
 
 Allen, John, at Cam- 
 bridge, 1-2 8 
 
 Ordained to Chaplaincy 
 of King's College, 34, 
 36 
 
 Marriage (see 21, 22), 39 
 Examining Chaplain, 43 
 Inspector of Schools, 93- 
 
 105 
 Vicar of Frees, Salop, 
 
 117, 126 
 Archdeacon of Salop, 
 
 136-144 
 
 Guests at Frees, 179-232 
 Daughters, 233-252 
 Letters of 
 
 To Daughters, 40, 206, 
 
 234-236, 237-252 
 To Dean Hook, 96, 97 
 To James Allen, 108 
 To Mrs. Lee, 141 
 To Dr. Pusey, 144 
 To Meynell, 147 
 To Sped ding, 156 
 To Carlyle, 164 
 To Dean Stanley, 177 
 Letters to 
 
 From Fitzgerald, 11- 
 
 13, 17, 19, 23-25, 
 
 31-33, 37, 42, 49, 
 
 53, 55, 61-67, 72, 
 
 90, 103, 117, 146, 
 
 165, 167, 171 
 
 From Dean Alford, 41 
 
 From Cardinal Man - 
 
 ning, 45 
 
 From Dean Hook, 97 
 From F. D. Maurice, 
 
 127, 180, 185 
 From Spedding, 151, 
 
 159 
 
 Allen, John Seymour, 125 
 Allen, Margaret, 233, 238 
 Allen, May, 40, 73, 198, 
 
 233, 234, 236-252 
 Arnold, Matthew, 207 
 Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 52, 
 107, 109,167,176 
 
 Bacon, 8, 31, 80, 149 
 Barnardo, Dr., 240 
 Barrington, Lord, 241, 242 
 Barton, Bernard, Poet, 104 
 
 Bather, Archdeacon, 136 
 Beckett, Sir Edmund (see 
 
 Lord Grimthorpe) 
 Bernadotte, 188, 189 
 Blake, 68 
 Blakesley, Dean, 2 
 Blomfleld, Bishop, 94, 95 
 Body, Canon, 238 
 Bonaparte, 190 
 Booth, Mrs., 229 
 Boyd, 128 
 Bradlaugh, 243 
 Bramhall, Judge, 205, 206 
 Bright, John, 34, 229 
 Bronte, Charlotte, 89 
 Brydges, Sir Egerton, 49 
 Buchan, Lady, 34 
 Buller, Charles, 25, 81-83, 
 
 193 
 
 Bunsen, Lisa de, 261 
 Bunyan, 68, 135, 169 
 Burke, Edmund, 52 
 Butler, Dr., 107, 110 
 Butler, Mrs. Josephine, 
 
 211 
 Baron, 10, 12, 21 
 
 Caldecote, Ralph, 227 
 
 Cameron, Mrs., 152 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 14-16, 
 63, 104, 112, 114, 127, 
 130-132, 146, 153, 
 158, 162-175, 179, 
 194, 244 
 
 Carlyle, Mrs., 170, 171 
 
 Catterall, Robert, 228 
 
 Chaucer, 14 
 
 Cholmondeley, Hester, 219 
 
 Cholmondeley, Mary, 219 
 
 Cholmondeley, Reginald, 
 247 
 
 Cholmondeley, Rev. Rich- 
 ard, 128 
 
 Cholmondeley, Mrs., 219 
 
 Clifford, Edward, 218 
 
 Clive, Lord, 234 
 
 Clive, Mr., 234 
 
 Clough, Arthur, 131 
 
 Codrington, Colonel, 236 
 
 Codrington, Mrs. Gertrude, 
 206, 235, 236 
 
 Codrington, Rev. Richard. 
 235,236 
 
 Coleridge, Hartley, 127, 
 150 
 
 Coleridge, S.T.,75, 149, 183 
 
 Consort, Prince, 70, 94, 
 244 
 
 Corbet, Rowland, 216-219 
 
 Cowell, E. H., 114-116, 187 
 
 Crabbe, 15, 27 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 63, 104, 
 112U 58,167,171,12,2, 
 
 Dante, 107, 135, 174 
 Darwin, Charles, 101, 159, 
 
 161, 170, 175 
 Darwin, Mrs., 182 
 Darwin, Erasmus, 170, 171 
 Darwin, W. E., 173 
 263 
 
 Denison, Archdeacon, 142, 
 
 249 
 Diary, 3-9, 22, 26-28, 34, 
 
 35, 37, 38 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 84, 167 
 Dickens, Mrs., 86 
 Doddridge, 6 
 Donne, 51,78 
 Draper, Canon, 258 
 
 Edwardes, Sir Herbert, 
 
 199, 200 
 
 Eliot, George, 280 
 Erskine, Thomas of Lin- 
 
 lathen, 176, 177 
 
 Faraday, 177 
 Farrar, Dean, 244 
 Field, Bishop, 236 
 Fitzgerald, Andalusia, 26, 
 
 69, 71 
 Fitzgerald, Edward, on 
 
 Art, 32, 63, 72, 76, 80, 
 152 
 
 Cambridge days, 2, 8, 12, 
 14, 15 
 
 End, 27 
 
 Friendships, 7, 42, 43, 
 49, 65, 75, 81, 108, 
 149, 155, 158, 159, 
 162, 166, 175, 180, 
 206, 247 
 
 Lichfleld, 117, 118 
 
 Literature, 23-25, 33, 
 37, 46, 49-51, 55-57, 
 61-64, 66, 78, 90, 150, 
 157, 158, 162, 164, 
 165,167,171,172,174, 
 175, 187,188,207,243 
 
 Meadows in spring, 17, 
 18 
 
 Music, 24, 154 
 
 OmarKhayya'm, 1 1 4-1 1 6 
 
 Pembrokeshire, 19, 20, 
 67, 104 
 
 Philosophy, 52, 58, 79, 
 161 
 
 Pleasures, 19, 20, 67, 104 
 
 Religious impressions, 2, 
 16-18, 104, 105, 146, 
 
 Ford, Maddox Brown, 185, 
 Forster, W. E., 95, 164 
 
 Garden, 8, 9 
 
 German, Edward, 226, 227 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 164, 243, 
 
 247 
 
 Glenelg, Lord, 193 
 Goethe, 9, 10, 130, 131, 
 
 172, 173-175, 182 
 Goodwin, Harvey, Bishop, 
 
 235 
 
 Gordon, 200 
 Grier, R. M., 220-223, 226. 
 
 240 
 Grimthorpe, Lord (Beckett, 
 
 Sir Edmund), 58, 94, 
 
 118, 203,204,241,242 
 Gurney (see Russell)
 
 264 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hall, Newman, 228, 229 
 Hallam, Arthur, 2, 8, 9, 11, 
 
 157 
 
 Hanks, Caroline, 229 
 Harcourt, Sir William, 248 
 Harding, Lord, 198, 199 
 Havelock, 200 
 Herbert, George, 33, 34, 
 
 40, 106, 107, 121, 131 
 Heywood, Sir Percival, 235 
 Hodson, 194 
 Holland, Lord, 188 
 H olmes, Archdeacon, E . E . , 
 
 226 
 
 Hook, W. H. Dean, 95-98 
 Hopkins, Ellice, 240 
 Hortense, Queen, 190, 191 
 Hume, David, 90 
 Huxley, J. H., 165, 241 
 
 Ingram, Winnington, 
 
 Bishop, 253-260 
 Irving, Edward, 8, 29, 30 
 
 Johnson, Doctor, 75, 104 
 Jowett, Professor Benja- 
 min, 145 
 
 Kay-Shuttleworth, Sir 
 
 James, 93, 96 
 Keble, John, Rev.,|106-113 
 Keble, Mrs., 109 
 Kemble, Charles, 8, 74 
 Kemble, Fanny, 8 
 Kingsley, Charles, 37, 105, 
 
 266 
 Knightley, Sir R., 248 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 18, 19, 50 
 Lansdown'e, Lord, 93 
 Laurence, Samuel, 152, 
 
 180, 207 
 Lee, Mrs., 141 
 Liddon, Canon, 259 
 Lind, Jenny, 154 
 Linlathen (see Erskine) 
 London, Bishop of, 253- 
 
 260 
 Lonsdale, Bishop, 108, 
 
 118, 136, 180, 183, 
 
 210, 202 
 
 Lonsdale, James, 125 
 Lonsdale, Margaret, 247 
 Luther, Martin, 134, 169 
 Lyttelton, Lord, 127, 223 
 Lyttlelton, Rev. William, 
 
 223, 253 
 
 Macaulay, " Tom," Lord, 
 
 192, 193 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 
 
 183, 189, 190 
 Maclagan, Bishop, 225, 
 
 242, 244, 245, 252, 
 
 256, 259 
 
 Maclagan, Mrs., 189, 241 
 Magee, Bishop, 244 
 Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, 
 
 36 
 Manning, Archbishop, 43- 
 
 45, 127 
 
 Marcet, Mrs., 191 
 Martin, Colonel, 198-200 
 Maurice, F. D., 93, 106, 
 
 127, 165, 179-186, 
 
 197, 207, 214, 233, 
 
 250, 266. 
 
 Maurice, Mrs., 185, 214 
 Maurice, Edmund, 185 
 Maurice, Colonel Frederic, 
 
 185 
 
 Mazzinghi, 23 
 Meynell, Henry, 147 
 Mill, J. S., 127, 156 
 Milman, Dean, 193 
 Milton, John, 11, 121, 171 
 Moberly, Dr., 109 
 Monckton-Milnes, 127, 193 
 Montgomery, R., 16 
 Moore, 9 
 
 Moore, George, 239 
 Morley, Samuel, 93, 229, 
 
 230 
 
 Mundella, Mr., 243 
 Myers, F. W. H., 211-213, 
 
 218- 
 
 Napoleon, Louis, 191, 193, 
 
 194 
 Newman, J. H. Cardinal, 
 
 107, 109, 112, 145- 
 
 148, 243 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 26 
 Nightingale Miss, 198 
 Noel, Baptist, 29 
 Norris, Canon, 101, 121, 
 
 225, 226 
 
 Omar Khayyam (see Fitz- 
 gerald) 
 Otter, Bishop William, 43 
 
 Palmer, Roundell (Lord 
 
 Selborne), 109, 110 
 Palmerston, Lord, 98, 234 
 Parishioner, a, 121-123 
 Patteson, Coleridge, 
 
 Bishop, 209, 210, 2,25 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 195, 225 
 Plumptre, Dean Edward, 
 
 101 
 
 Powis, Lord, 241 
 Prussia, King of, 245 
 Pusey, Dr., 112, 144, 179, 
 
 243 
 
 Queen Victoria, 176 
 
 Raikes, Tom, 242 
 Rhodes, Cecil, 157 
 Rich, Mrs., 30 
 Ritchie, Lady, 10, 73, 74, 
 
 82, 91 
 Rivington, Luke, 215, 216, 
 
 217 
 Robertson (of Brighton), 
 
 183 
 
 Rose, Hugh James, 5 
 Ruskin, 173 
 
 Russell Gurney, Mr., 182 
 Russell Gumey, Mrs., 176, 
 
 181-184, 218, 219 
 Russell, Lord John, 93, 164 
 
 Salisbury, Lord (Cran- 
 
 borne), 234 
 Scott. Thomas, 145 
 Scott, Walter, 107, 212 
 Selborne Lord (see Roun- 
 
 dell-Palmer) 
 Selwyn, Bishop, G. A., 
 
 109,208-210,236,250 
 Selwyn, 208, 209, 211 
 Selwyn, John, 210, 211 
 Seneca, 52 
 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, 93 
 Shakespeare, 11, 26, 42, 67, 
 
 68, 75, 152, 159, 175 
 Shelley, 11, 12, 69, 149 
 Shrewsbury, 254, 255 
 Simeon, 69 
 Sismondi, 191 
 
 Sismondi, Mme, 101, 102, 
 
 188, 190, 191 
 Southey, 149 
 Soyres, John de, 230, 231 
 Spedding, James, 2, 8, 9, 
 50; 52, 67, 77, 80, 88, 
 127, 149-162, 207 
 Spencer, Sir Herbert, 241 
 Stael, Mme de, 188-190 
 Stanley Dean, A. P., 176- 
 
 178, 216 
 
 Steere, Bishop, 246-248 
 Stephen, Caroline, 195-198 
 Stephen, Sir James, 90, 
 107, 146, 149, 159, 
 
 179, 192-198 % 
 Stephen, Leslie, 91 
 Sterling, Antoinette, 218 
 Sterling, John, 127-133, 
 
 172 
 Sterling, Julia, 213, 214 
 
 Talleyrand, 190 
 Taylor, Sir Henry, 192 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 2, 23, 50, 
 
 109 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 2, 
 8-10, 11-14, 26, 32, 
 46-57, 77, 80, 81, 88, 
 90, 104, 127, 149-152, 
 155, 157, 158, 165, 
 166,170,172,174,187 
 Tennyson, E., Mrs., 46, 
 
 47 
 
 Tennyson, F., 49, 52, 56, 
 
 63,77,79,84,153-155 
 
 Tennyson, Lady, 161, 205, 
 
 212 
 Thackeray, Annie (see 
 
 Ritchie) 
 
 Thackeray, Minnie, 82, 91 
 
 Thackeray, W. M., 2, 3, 6, 
 
 9, 10, 14, 20, 25, 27, 
 
 29, 32,37, 72-92, 127, 
 
 247 
 
 Thackeray, Mrs., 46, 47 
 Thirlwall, Bishop, 174, 193, 
 
 250 
 
 Thompson, Mrs., 207 
 Thompson, W. H., 2, 8, 9, 
 27, 28, 74, 116, 146, 
 
 151, 163, 204-207 
 Thomson, Archbishop, 
 
 242 243 
 
 Trench, Archbishop, 2, 127 
 Trotter, Admiral, 71 
 Tyndall, Professor, 183 
 
 Vaughan, Dr., 192 
 Venables, G. S., 127,125 
 Virgil, 49 
 
 Wedgwood, Julia, 176, 
 
 177, 181-183, 184 
 Wellesley, Lord, 188 
 Wellington, Duke, 199 
 Wesley, John, 135, 169. 
 
 244, 249, 288 
 Whitefleld, George, 250 
 Wilberforce, Bishop, 193, 
 
 243, 244 
 Wilberforce, Robert, 243, 
 
 244 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 8, 
 9, 11-13, 26, 47, 49, 
 50, 107, 108, 149, 150, 
 
 152, 162, 212 
 
 Yonge, Miss, 106 
 Zanzibar, 237-239, 251
 
 UCSB LIBRARY
 
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