[2]Afterwards Lord Churston.[3]H. W. Statham, since dead.
[2]Afterwards Lord Churston.
[2]Afterwards Lord Churston.
[3]H. W. Statham, since dead.
[3]H. W. Statham, since dead.
Mrs. Rickards was a pretty creature, her husband was plain, her daughter was plainer, but when one looked at them, in the magic of the moment, they all looked alike,—happy and good. One forgot that beauty existed elsewhere, save as an art.
They were of course constant guests at the hall. Miss Rickards herself painted, baked, and glazed every window in Stowlangtoft Church.
The Rev. Mr. Mozley, well-known as belongingto the Tractarian reformation, was an intimate friend of the Rickards and Wilsons. He was one of three or four who wrote the leaders for theTimes. His account of the duty, told only in confidence to private friends, was that he and his colleagues attended at the office every night at twelve o’clock, one day excepted; and that a committee was there, at the same hour, to discuss the subjects of the articles for the day following, and to determine the line to be taken. Then a subject thus selected was handed to each of the writers who were in waiting, in separate rooms.
On one occasion when Mr. Mozley was staying at the hall, aTimescommissioner was present at the dinner. He was the bearer of introductions to the various landowners; his mission was to obtain information on subjects connected with the land. He was not what one calls refined, and he spoke with great freedom on the affairs of the journal, not knowing that Mr. Mozley was connected with theTimes, but who was greatly amused at this gentleman’s pretended knowledge about the most secret details of the paper.
I was myself of the party, and, knowing the situation, was equally amused, with the rest of the company.
It occurs to me that the commissioner was named Foster. He was sent about the country at the time of the incendiary fires. The circumstance brings to my mind a character living at Ashfield, near Stowlangtoft—Lord Thurlow, grandson of thegreat chancellor. He was a very shy man, and at the same time very able, being a good chemist. He conversed well, but with diffidence; the researches of Liebig, then fresh, made a strong impression on his mind, and I was able to draw him out, being equally interested in them myself. He had a fire-engine, and whenever a fire broke out, he mounted his engine and took the direction of the flames.
I am chary of introducing the names and places of men who lived only for themselves. There are families without any link between them and the world at large who fill up certain gaps, but when they die they seem to have been even of less use than they were. These are not only in the majority, but they constitute the bulk of the social class.
I must not omit the name of Henry Oakes, the Suffolk banker, who, though not a public man himself, gave his son to the Parliament as a Conservative member. He lived at Nowton Court, the residence of his father before him.
Henry Oakes was of a generous, confiding character in proportion to his means. His son, the borough member, inherited a kindly disposition not only from him, but from his truly amiable mother, the daughter of a bishop; and she, like her husband, was well beloved.
The charming daughter of the house was married to the son of Sir Henry Blake, whose title she now shares, if, as I trust, she still lives.
I have not yet spoken of the Mills family ofGreat Saxham Hall, which I do now out of pure affection. They were connections of mine by marriage, as were also the Carrighans of the adjoining parish of Barrow. Mr. Mills and Mrs. Carrighan were brother and sister. The Rev. Arthur Carrighan had the rectory; it was in the presentation of St. John’s College, and was once held by Dr. Francis, the noted translator of Horace, and father of Sir Philip Francis, the reputed author of the “Junius Letters.”
Carrighan was a student and Fellow of St. John’s, under the name of Gosli—a name adopted by his father as a Sligo man, he reversing the syllables. The history of this singular proceeding is associated with a duel in which Mr. Carrighan, the father, was led to believe he had killed his opponent. He thereupon changed his name, and in an unhappy state of mind wandered over the Continent for twenty years more or less; when, one day, he met the very man whom he supposed had received a death-blow at his hands. On this important discovery he restored his true name to his family.
Carrighan had many charms, but it will suffice to say he was a gentleman and a scholar, which includes all that is good besides. Sir Thomas Watson, his fellow-collegian, was his attached friend; I received the hearty thanks of that great physician for my attention to Arthur Carrighan in his last illness.
When one has been long on the Continent, he no sooner reaches Dover than every woman looksbeautiful. How would it have been with him if the first one whom his eyes fell upon had been Mrs. Mills? She had a daughter, Susan, as lovely as herself, who married Mr. Skrine, a considerable Somersetshire squire, whose estates are within a ride of Bath. Susan Mills had a most engaging expression. A neighbouring squire, in his simple way, said, “One can’t help falling in love with her, she holds her head on one side, so pretty!”
I took Mr. Borrow, who was my guest, to Saxham Hall with me to dinner once, but it was the black eyes of another daughter that played their conjuring trick on him. Long afterwards, his inquiries after the black eyes were unfailing. Saxham adjoins Ickworth, and Lord Bristol always found it a very pleasant place of call, on account of the charm which surrounded the family.
George Borrow was one of those whose mental powers are strong, and whose bodily frame is yet stronger—a conjunction of forces often detrimental to a literary career, in an age of intellectual predominance. His temper was good and bad; his pride was humility; his humility was pride; his vanity, in being negative, was of the most positive kind. He was reticent and candid, measured in speech, with an emphasis that made trifles significant.
Borrow was essentially hypochondriacal. Society he loved and hated alike: he loved it that he might be pointed out and talked of; he hated it because he was not the prince that he felt himself in its midst. His figure was tall, and his bearing very noble: he had a finely moulded head, and thick white hair—white from his youth; his brown eyes were soft, yet piercing; his nose somewhat of the “semitic” type, which gave his face the cast of the young Memnon. His mouth had a generous curve; and his features, for beauty and true power, were such as can have no parallel in our portrait gallery, where it is to be hoped the likeness of him, in Mr. Murray’s possession, may one day find a place.
Borrow and his family used to stay with me at Bury; I visited him, less often, at his cottage on the lake at Oulton, a fine sheet of water that flows into the sea at Lowestoft. He was much courted there by his neighbours and by visitors to the seaside. I there met Baron Alderson and his daughters who had ridden from Lowestoft to see him, and I had a long talk with the judge on wine. Borrow, being a lion, was invited to accompany me to some of the great houses in the neighbourhood. On one occasion we went to dine at Hardwick Hall, the residence of Sir Thomas and Lady Cullum. The party consisted of Lord Bristol; Lady Augusta Seymour, his daughter; Lord and Lady Arthur Hervey; Sir Fitzroy Kelly; Mr. Thackeray, and ourselves. At that date, Thackeray had made money by lectures onthe Satirists, and was in good swing; but he never could realize the independent feelings of those who happen to be born to fortune—a thing which a man of genius should be able to do with ease. He told Lady Cullum, which she repeated to me, that no one could conceive how it mortified him to be making a provision for his daughters by delivering lectures; and I thought she rather sympathized with him in this his degradation. He approached Borrow, who, however, received him very dryly. As a last attempt to get up a conversation with him, he said, “Have you read my Snob Papers inPunch?”
“InPunch?” asked Borrow. “It is a periodical I never look at!”
It was a very fine dinner. The plates at dessert were of gold; they once belonged to the Emperor of the French, and were marked with his “N” and his Eagle.
Thackeray, as if under the impression that the party was invited to look at him, thought it necessary to make a figure, and absorb attention during the dessert, by telling stories and more than half acting them; the aristocratic party listening, but appearing little amused. Borrow knew better how to behave in good company, and kept quiet; though, doubtless, he felt his mane.
Lady Cullum was a young woman of high principle; she became a firm friend of Borrow for many years after, looking him up in London when he moved to Hereford Square. Sir Thomas Cullumwas a quiet, kind-hearted man; he was the father-in-law of Mr. Milner Gibson, who married his only daughter, born of a first marriage. Gibson was a man of pleasing manners; I remember his saying that parliamentary life enabled one to bear anything of an adversary with temper, except being touched by him.
But I am sorry to say Borrow was not always on his best behaviour in company. He once went with me to a dinner at Mr. Bevan’s country house, Rougham Rookery, and placed me in an extremely awkward position.
Mr. Bevan was a Suffolk banker, a partner of Mr. Oakes. He was one of the kindest and most benevolent of men. His wife was gentle, unassuming, attentive to her guests. In fact, not only they, but their sons and daughters were beloved on account of their amiable dispositions.
A friend of Borrow, the heir to a very considerable estate, had run himself into difficulties, and owed money, which was not forthcoming, to the Bury banking house; and in order to secure repayment, Mr. Bevan was said to have “struck the docket.” I knew this beforehand from Borrow, who, however, accepted the invitation, and was seated at dinner at Mrs. Bevan’s side.
This lady, a simple, unpretending woman, desirous of pleasing him, said, “Oh, Mr. Borrow, I have read your books with so much pleasure!” On which he exclaimed, “Pray, what books do you mean, madam? Do you mean my account books?”On this he fretted and fumed, rose from the table and walked up and down among the servants, during the whole of dinner, and afterwards wandered about the rooms and passage, till the carriage could be ordered for our return home.
Mr. J. W. Donne, the librarian of the London library, and afterwards reader of plays, told me, while he was a resident at Bury, that Borrow had behaved in a somewhat like manner to Miss Agnes Strickland, who, hearing that Borrow was in the same room with her, at a reception, urged him to make her acquainted with her brother-author. Borrow was unwilling to be introduced, but was prevailed on to submit. He sat down at her side; before long, she spoke with rapture of his works, and asked his permission to send him a copy of her “Queens of England.” He exclaimed, “For God’s sake, don’t, madame; I should not know where to put them or what to do with them.” On this he rose, fuming, as was his wont when offended, and said to Mr. Donne, “What a damned fool that woman is!”
The fact is that, whenever Borrow was induced to do anything unwillingly, he lost his temper.
The Bullers, a political family, had a son who filled the rectory of Troston, and were often on a visit to him there. They were the parents ofCharles Buller, Lord Durham’s secretary in Canada, afterwards member for Liskeard, and the pet of the House.
These Bullers were much of the Lord John Russell set; were friends of the Grotes, the Nussau Seniors, the Thackerays, the Sidney Smiths, the Walshams, and their like, not to mention the Bunburys, all more or lessphilosophersof the advanced type.
I liked Charles Buller’s company. He was good-natured, moderate in his views, the friend of the opinionated without being conceited himself. He was a fine speaker, but afflicted with asthma, the greatest curse that can befall a rising statesman.
I heard much about Whigism in this circle, and always with disgust; they were too autocratic, too grasping, too well off to obtain the confidence of those who, at a glance, could see behind their scenes.
There was Lord John, who began life as the fool of the family; and this character in the Alabama business reached its highest pitch. He was a sprig of the dukedom, so he did not like that Mr. Delane (the editor of theTimes), and would not invite him to his receptions. Sothat Mr. Delane, who knew his own value, ordered the lord-John speeches in Parliament to be only indicated in brief, not reported. On this Lord John did like that Mr. Delane, and sent him invitations; so his speeches were reported once more in full.
He, too, must be an earl, and what are thesebeggars on England-back going to do with their titles after all? One would think that a true man would shrink from being mylorded by his filthy valet; but they can bear it!
Charles Buller was a man for every one to love, and he died too soon.
On the whole, Samuel Rickards’s parsonage was the most literary house to be at, though his knowledge was a good deal confined. But he and his wife were open to everything, botany especially, and antiquities. I recollect their showing me an iron ring that had been dug up on the glebe, which had an inscription on it that Rickards could not interpret. It wasBertus beriori. I suggested that it was monkish latin, and might signifyA greatest to a greater warrior, assuming it to be derived fromberus,berior,bertus, and this pleased him much.
Who, belonging to the days of which I write, does not remember the cheery voice and the bright, handsome face of Tom Thornhill, the son of the first winner of the Derby, and the inheritor of the Norfolk estate, Riddlesworth Hall! Who has forgotten his hospitality, and the famous still champagne, the bountiful stock of which was left by the father, and kept up by the son!
I often stayed at Riddlesworth with the Thornhills; they saw a good deal of company there, both from Norfolk and from town. Lord Sandwich was very fond of talking to doctors, so they said; and he often talked to me. I recollect his saying thathis father-in-law, Lord Anglesey, forgot, not unfrequently, that he had only one leg (for the sensation of every part of the body is cerebral), and he would sometimes jump out of bed in the morning as if he had two, and fall on the floor.
I once accidentally met Colonel Keppel, the late Earl of Albemarle, at the same house. I was then staying at Riddlesworth, but there was no company there, when Colonel Keppel was announced. This caused some perturbation, as only a family dinner was prepared. It appeared that the colonel was to be of a party there on the morrow, but had mistaken the day. All, however, went off well; and since, when I heard of the homage paid him on his almost last birthday, as almost the last survivor of the battle, on the field of Waterloo, it recalled to me the charm of his manner and conversation.
At the time his father and brother were still alive, residing at Quiddenham Hall.
What one missed in these great houses was the company of one’s own class, men in the pursuit of literature or science; but such things are of no use in the patrician circles, they would only be in the way. These lords of the soil love horses, carriages, plate, all of which one can see in great perfection in the parks, and at the silversmiths’, as well as in private houses, and the pleasure in any case is but momentary. In justice, however, it must be said that high-class people are often capable of conversing with those who have little to show besides their brains; and are not slow in eliciting informationfrom them. Lord Sandwich was a good example of such; but Lord Albemarle had anaïvetéand an intelligence so delightful as to need nothing at another’s hands. Then, a rich aristocracy has opportunities which do not belong to the men who have their money to make. The one class has not to consider in his dealings with others how he can make the most out of them, but is able to be generous; this alone has an ennobling influence. An American made the remark that, many as are the faults of the English nobility, they always kept their promise.
The reason why authors, deserving of encouragement from the intrinsic value of their work, are no longer patronized and brought into notice by the great, is that the influence of the nobility has wholly died out. The literary leaders, great editors, and the like, play but a minor part; they are not enough looked up to by the people at large, who do not understand them. They can confer fame on men among their own select class, but that fame cannot over-leap its boundary, and reach even the intelligent vulgar.
Even the Royal Society, begun by a king, was long afraid to venture in its career with anything less than a royal or noble president, and this within the memory of man; but happily it now runs alone, as do all the other learned bodies in its track.
The truth may lie here—though scientific men are not growing rich, rich men are growing scientific.
I must not leave Riddlesworth without a tribute to Mrs. Thornhill, a lady so conscientious; and that means gentle, kind and full of charity. She was the daughter of Mr. Waddington, of Cavenham Hall, the county member; a devoted mother, a constant friend.
I suppose, like everybody else, except myself, she is dead; that class of people live too luxuriously to last very long.
Mrs. Thornhill’s mother, Mrs. Waddington, was a lady of extraordinary beauty. She was of the Milnes family of which Moncton Milnes was the recent head, a wit and writer who tried to legitimize bad grammar on the liberal principle that every one had a right to do what he liked with his own language. He, too, like the brewers, could not do without being a lord, though already a patrician, which is greater, and which a king cannot create. He was called the “Cool of the Evening,” which must imply that he was a very pleasant guest on a hot summer’s night.
Our country parishes, with their resident squires, are really little republics with the squire himself at their head as president, and the clergyman acting as his prime minister. It is a form of paternal government without the despotism. The parish clerk, humble as he is, fills the office of a secretary of state, the rest are the people. Where the squire lives on his estate, how many of these happy republics may be seen! All the parishes, pretty much, that I have described are of this category,and I hold it beyond human wit to improve them. All are free!
Mrs. Newton of Elvedon was the sister of Mrs. Waddington. The place of that name has since become the property of Duleep Singh. In the time of the Newtons it was no exception to the happily-governed squirearchies of East Anglia.
Two or three places of mark remain to be mentioned, and as many to be omitted, before quitting the subject. One is the seat of the Duke of Grafton, Euston Hall, inherited by the family from Lord Arlington, in the time of Charles II. The duke, who was Earl of Euston when I first knew him, lived much on his Northamptonshire property, but was a good deal in Norfolk too, where his interests were large. He showed me the principal rooms in his fine mansion, which, though large, bespoke great comfort. The drawing-room, which was very long, had bay-windows, with a daïs under each for seats. There is a grand staircase; on one wall of this was hung a portrait of the duchess, mother of the first duke, then seven or eight generations ago, a lapse of time when the bar-sinister had ceased to cross the shield; nevertheless, it was retained in the armorial bearings of the house, and this may be regarded as a proper pride.
I was shown a picture of the hall as it was originally, with gilded pinnacles, but these had disappeared.
The usual entrance was at the back of the building, flanked by the stables; the front entrancewas approached through the park gates, which, as was an old custom, were never opened except to royalty.
The duke, regardless of the example set by his ancestors in contenting themselves with a life interest in so fine a property, for the good of those to come, was quite willing to sell Euston if he could have got his price, but it did not change hands.
I was not acquainted with the duke in fashionable life, so I know little of his character there; but I believe he was thought to be eccentric. All I know is that he was a benevolent and kind-hearted president of his village republic. He was married to the daughter of the last Earl of Berkeley—a sister of the famed colonel of that name—a lady of great worth. My acquaintance with the family was professional only; in this way. I had to advise several members of the house, and this sufficed to confirm me in the opinion that the higher you go the greater is the amiability you encounter. It may be good breeding only, but whatever its source may be, it is deserving of admiration.
One more place I will mention in Norfolk to which I was summoned, the seat of Mr. Angerstein. In point of decoration, it was a gilded palace, the most superb in its interior that I had ever seen. I remained there for the night, and had a most agreeable conversation with the head of the house and his two sons, the general and the member for Greenwich.
Some very fine pictures remain in the mansion.The one I was most gratified in seeing was a Rembrandt, the finest almost of that artist’s work; it was a Charles I., on horseback, under an archway. I never met with the equal of this fine painting, except in the equestrian figure of the Duke of Galiere,—Brignole Sale,—by the same hand, in the palazzo Rosso at Genoa.
I remember being told by General Angerstein that his father had always regretted the sale of the pictures to the nation, which was, however, made compulsory by the terms of his predecessor’s will.
As the Lady Abbess of St. Albans might have said, there was an abomination of parsons in the county town; some schoolmasters who were not in clerical practice, but cleric; some in actual service. They did not in those days wear livery as servants, not necessarily apostles, of I.H.S. Two of them I still see talking automatically, faster than they could think; one of these with the nose and mouth of Punch. I still see another, a pale-faced pulpiteer and a screamer; the confidence-reservoir of single ladies turned forty odd; a man who met you with a twirl of his glove by its finger, and a sort of whistling smile that seemed to say to itself, “I have done him before I have begun.” The men did not care for him because what gossip is to some was censoriousness in him; still the women liked him,and thought five of his ten toes were already in heaven.
The parsonics are the only professionals who do not seem able to get their own living by going into practice—they like to be endowed. Some are glad to get a hundred pounds per annum for life; some, doing the same work as they do, bid for two, four, six, eight, and ten hundred; others, with yet less work, accept much more than this; but they have uncles. Why don’t these guaranteed rats set up for themselves in practice like the nonconformists? They would be found churches. Doctors do so, and lawyers. They should obtain the licence like these, then preach what they liked within limits, prescribed by the Royal Church. Doctors do all this within the rules of their royal colleges.
Imagine the great profession of physic endowed, and its baronets, arch-doctors of Canterbury and York, giving away livings to their nephews and nieces: the doctor of St. James’s £1000 per annum, the doctor of St. Giles’s £150. It is a little so with the law—the chancellors, attorney-generals, and judges are endowed, but not so the barristers, except with wit; and what poor creatures would these be compared to what they are, if they had to begin on curacies, and, perhaps, end on them, say of £100 per annum, unless they had influence enough to get themselves made vicars of law, rectors of law, as well as deans of arches?
But no Church has ever reformed itself:non possumusis the motto of them all.
But the Church has got its large fortune safely invested, and in the best order, as if to make confiscation easy. Its proprietary consists of human beings not differing from others, and rich in worldly wisdom. If they really wished to save the Church, they would do their utmost to throw off the State and take their money with them, and reform themselves on the model of the civil service and the army, dividing the revenues into livings of equal amount, to be gained by competitive examinations. But human nature must have its way; it will last their time, and after them the deluge. In two or three more new parliaments they will be too late.
In the present condition of clericism, many do not know what to be at. An intimate of mine who would have liked to steal a spiritual march on me, which no man ever did yet, was a curate of twenty years’ standing, and so far a perpetual one in the sense of being the hireling of vicars and subject to a month’s warning, like the moon. He had subscribed his mite of belief to the doctrine of eternal punishment.
This good personification of humanity had a vivid notion, together with an unwholesome fear, of our modern Hades, formed originally out of a few metaphors of Scripture, and improved by Dantesque and Miltonic talent, though its latitude and longitude is still undiscovered among the heavenly bodies.
This well-meaning teacher, some two or three years after my accident (a leg divided against itself so that it could not stand, and made into twounequal halves at the socket), suggested persuasively that I must have felt very grateful to the Almighty at not being killed outright. But he was so much at fault that I avoided the discussion, and answered, “I am my own chaplain, and transact all my spiritual business myself, under my own frontal bone (os frontis); but should I be in want of spiritual assistance, my inclination would be to apply to the Archbishop of Canterbury or to the Bishop of London as the best authorities in Divine practice. However, not to be over reticent, I may tell you that no sense of future favours as regards gratitude arose in my mind; for we cannot entertain two ideas at once, and mine was to ask myself, as a scientific physician would do, whether my leg was as I last left it, or whether the head of the femur and the shaft had parted company. As to thankfulness at not having lost my life, that would have involved an emotion functionally incompatible with the faintness and pain that got hold of me. The pain has continued; I am taken prisoner by it, and condemned to an armchair for life. Not unfrequently, therefore, I think how much better it would have been for me had I been killed off at once. So you must perceive that your forecast is made without any knowledge of the facts.”
A doctor never gives his opinion of another without being called in; why, then, should a parson? But it was well meant, though deficient in the greatest of delicacies, called tact.
Among the clergy of Bury was a curate, I think of St. Mary’s, who was named Cookesley. His mother was a school-fellow of my mother at Exeter, now about a hundred years ago! He became intimate with me, and was often my guest. He was a son of Dr. Cookesley, D.D., and a brother of a well-known man who was long an assistant-master at Eton, and was as such spoken of with great favour by Beaconsfield in his novel of “Coningsby.” Afterwards he had a church at Hammersmith, St. Peter’s, and lived in that place, where I knew him, and attached much interest to his acquaintance. He used to dine with me at Alton Lodge, Roehampton, which was within a walk of his house. Cookesley was, above all things, a good fellow, besides being a good scholar and a most amusing companion. He was a sturdy Churchman, and much mixed up with the writers of “Essays and Reviews”—Dr. Temple (now Bishop of London), Dr. Williams, and their set.
I introduce the name here on account of Cookesley having attacked Donaldson’s work, by pamphlet, on the subject of “Jashar,” the name of a Latin book of great pretensions and no authority.
Donaldson, previously mentioned by me, was in many things a good fellow too, but owing to his overweening vanity, which had no repose, he was incapable of the higher virtues. That vanity which stands in the way of friendship, even of truth itself,was his to a degree that may be pronounced abnormal. He wanted to be thought the greatest of Bentleys, the cleverest of Christian Voltaires, the choicest of wits; but a man who is now two-thirds a scholar and one-third a wit may, if very vain, conceive himself to be a Dr. Parr.
I liked Donaldson much, not very much, and as character is of no use after a man is dead, it no longer subserving his human interests, I wish to do him justice, for better as well as for worse, since he was a man to be biographized for the common good. For some years I associated with him almost daily, walked and talked with him, dined with him in many houses, in his as well as my own, knew his thoughts, his opinions, and was conversant with whatever he was about.
His disposition was candid, genial, good-natured. He was a child in his love of fun, and had laughter enough in him to respond to all the humour ever uttered by word of mouth, from Rabelais to Molière. I was going to say he had not a bad heart; I will go further, and say that I am sure he had a good one for an occasion, but not one of a serious and responsible order.
But these excellent qualities were marred in him, not unfrequently, by a vanity which was incommensurable.
I would not undertake to pronounce him blamable in anything he did, said, or wrote; I am a physiologist in judging of good deeds, a pathologist in judging of bad. When I call up Donaldson’shead and face, and see a large, wide, overhanging forehead, big enough to be hydrocephalic, a forehead such as one meets with in cases of epilepsy and in cases of genius alike, I pause before criticising its function; and such was Donaldson’s forehead, while his mouth was the mouth of Punch. Its laugh, almost always silent, seemed loud, and suppressed only to make it last the longer. There was more going on always under that forehead of his than in any half-dozen brains of the common type. Fortunate for him was it that the mental workings are inaudible, or he would have been stunned by his own thoughts; so busy were they at all times, and so noisy.
He was a work of Nature, a thinking and sensitive machine, which set going must work on like the rapidest wheel moved by steam; so rapid sometimes as to acquire invisibility as it revolved before your eyes.
The fly-wheel—that wonderful invention of machinery that carries the largest wheel over the dead point—in him was vanity, and it never allowed its machinery to pause; it was, therefore, quite impossible for it to ask itself if it went wrong when it never stopped. All Donaldson knew about right and wrong was that what he achieved was perfect—that, even if a little wrong, the reason was not quite within reach of vulgar scrutiny.
Cookesley was the first to take unfavourable notice of his “Jashar;” Perowne was the next. Neither wrote of it dispassionately, but this was in novery unkind spirit. Their criticism was as they felt to be just. The origin of “Jashar” was partly told by Donaldson in his reply, but he was not over-candid in his details. From his account he was only going to pursue a course that others had taken: Welcker, in collecting the fragments of Æschylus; Meinche, in doing the same for the Comœdians; and so on for Alcæus and the Lyric Poets, without a thought, he said, on their part of also doing what he had done for Jashar—an omission at which he expressed his great surprise.
Now, the surprise he here expresses is not a real transcript from his memory; the labours of which he speaks he had been long acquainted with. He had himself edited the works of Pindar,with the fragments of his lost compositions; which circumstance would have included him among those at whose shortcomings his astonishment was expressed. But I may say he only imagined himself so astonished, on writing hisPræfatio; for I know perfectly well that one evening, when dining with Sir Thomas Cullum, the worthy baronet showed him Knights’s volume, with plates, “On the Worship of Priapus,” and that it so attracted his fancy that he borrowed it and took it home. He showed it to me soon after—it might have been the next day—and told me that he had caught from it an interpretation of a certain text of Scripture, viz. Genesis iii. 8-15.
Out of this, and a certain plate, came “Jashar,” which, whether true or false, scholarly or unscholarly, is a wonderful intellectual feat; and ifthe subject is susceptible of treatment under new accretions of knowledge, justice must be accorded it as a first and bold attempt. The part relating to the worship of Priapus, which immediately follows the Prolegomena, is a marvellous evolution of the verses cited.
The details would be in place if printed in an anatomical work; perhaps next to that they are best buried in Latin.
It was an easy task for a scholar like Perowne to penetrate Donaldson’s plot, but the marvel is that it should have deceived its author, who had so acute a mind. The pointing out of its obvious fallacies was a vexation, but the replying was a pleasure, and was intended for a fresh literary feat. The worst of it for Donaldson was that the day of invective had gone by; the finest satire that could be written would have remained unread. It was therefore a poor substitute in the case for a sound refutation, which alone could have extricated the offending scholar from his dilemma.
Perowne almost justly accused Donaldson of maliciousness; but I believe that it was boast, an attempt of the criticised to establish his superiority to criticism itself, unaware of the weakness of his weapon, the use of which a century before might have led to his being called the greatest controversionalistof his day; and, though his invective was powerless, he believed that he should be so esteemed in a century to come.
Donaldson had immense merit. While an articled clerk he attended lectures at University College, and, so disclosing a facility in acquiring Greek, went to Cambridge instead of pursuing law any further; and, in the short period of his terms, not only did the work necessary for the examinations, but came out the second classic, beaten only by Kennedy.
Such men should reap all their fame in their lifetime, like men of science. Their names are soon lost in the history of the knowledge wherein alone they survive, unless they are Scotts and Liddells, to be hourly referred to. Donaldson was a lifelong student, impelled by vanity, the motor-power of all noble work, but which, as in his case, often breaks up the brain prematurely. By his “Jasher” and his “Varronianus,” he was accused of striking a blow at the Church. He may have done so against its dogmatists and bigots, but he broke his knuckles even in that slight aim. They would have liked to have received him as Professor of Greek at Cambridge; they told him so, but they did not dare elect him.
Donaldson, as the world goes, was a good citizen, and unexceptionable as a husband and parent. He was not sympathetic; the advancement of friends delighted him as gossip, but did not touch him much within.
He was too active in his movements, mental aswell as bodily, to be profound; he had not sufficient pause. Expediency with him did not go against the grain. In matters of religion he was fully aware that, though the thumb-screw, rack, and faggot had fallen into disuse, their office was exercised by public feeling as their successor, through which men stood in terror, not of their lives, but of their living. On these grounds only Donaldson quoted Scripture against Perowne in his controversy with him. This served his purpose, as he had no other moral philosophy to quote. But he did not give the slightest adhesion, really, to any kind of dogma. Science alone will reveal to great and modest minds the truth that the best of men cannot credit themselves with their own goodness They might as well assume that they made themselves; but religion has to teach this to common understandings.
I can assert of Donaldson that what he says in his “Reply” is most strictly true of himself—
“Doubtless it is the duty of Christians to be patient under injuries. But our Saviour has expressly said (Luke xvii. 3), ‘If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.’ On this rule I shall always endeavour to act. I bear no malice against any man in this world. And those who are acquainted with my life, know that, when I have been wronged, I have always been willing to welcome the first advances towards reconciliation.”
I said to Donaldson once, “Why in your laboriousefforts do you refute the fallacies of our Church by learned quotation, when they are so obvious to the simplest reason?” His reply was, “You forget that I am a Doctor of Divinity.”
Verily the divines are the most potent of metaphysicians. What beautiful systems have come down to them from the ages that produced a Pythagoras and an Epicurus! They now anticipate all things, interpolating Nature at every point with dogma, to satisfy the desires of the millions in every new generation!
One cannot but admit that metaphysicians are clever, but they have not the active industry of the experimental classes, who realize that there is nothing for them beyond the actual phenomena, although it demands the most effective operation of their intellects to arrange these in the order of their succession.
The why and the wherefore of the universe, and of Nature as its conductor, is, for a very simple reason, quite impenetrable; so completely so that the uneducated peasant will always know as much about it as the president of any learned society.
For the benefit of those who do not quite see this, and who think that things may be one day cleared up, on this one spot, it cannot be too definitively stated what a human intellect is at the utmost, and within what limits its activity lies.
This intellect is a mere organic tool. It can only operate on efficient causes, which here mean the moving functions of a universal machine in fullactivity already. It can see, hear, taste, smell, and touch; it can set the results of sensation in order, and observe them as a whole, and choose a line of action coincident with them. It is a mere instrument for effecting these ends.
This is the whole story of Nature. She reveals herself as a function, acting continuously before senses which are mirrors; and here lies the absolute limit. She reveals her Efficient Causes without affording the remotest glimpse of her Predisposing Causes.
All know how tired the patrician gets of perpetual country life; and in that one respect I was a patrician. I had seen the things most worth seeing in the leading towns of Europe in my early days; and had a longing to witness how forty or fifty millions of people got on in the new country of Canada and the United States. I had a fancy to see Quebec. I had a grandfather who was on the staff of General Wolfe, and who saw him die. I had a great-grandfather, also a British officer, father of the above, one David Gordon, of Park, who was on duty at Halifax and there met his death and burial. Not that I would cross the waves on these accounts; I simply wanted change, so sought it in New-idea-land, U.S. I went to Philadelphia, thence to Columbus and Galena; from Galena round about, crossing theMississippi on foot over its admirable winter pavement when boats change places with sledges. Then I went to Boston, thence to Quebec; from Quebec to New York, not to mention all the stoppages at intervening places; from New York, after not a few circumgyrations, I found my way back to London again.
I saw a large portion of the New World; it proved to be exactly what a hundred people had described already, and I do not care to add my account, only to make up a hundred and one American nights entertainments.
My ghost of travel not being yet laid, I took to the waves again and sojourned for a while at Jersey, where I had relatives and friends. At length I settled down in Grosvenor Street, Park Lane; when I was invited to take charge of the Earl of Ripon’s health at his villa on Putney Heath. After a lapse of time, I took a small house in Spring Gardens; later on, I built myself a villa on three acres of park land at Roehampton; then, still later on, I lived for some years at Parson’s Green, Fulham; and after some more movements, in separate years, now to Florence, now to German-Saxony, now to Venice and Rome, which last visit was eighteen years ago, I am settled, perhaps for good, in St. John’s Wood, where I am within an easy distance of Highgate Cemetery; so I hope a one-horse coach will end my journeys.
On looking for the moss I have gathered I find its quantity very small.
At my leisure I hope to fill up the gaps left between the skeleton outlines of my map of life—what remains to be said, extending over the nett balance of my years, of which I seem to have more to say than can reasonably be expected of a man past his eighty-third birthday. But I have been asked to write a memoir, first by one, then by another; by one who has long been, and who continues to be, the greatest master of heart-finding fiction in our time. One comes to me and asks how I get on with it. One reads a portion and calls it interesting; so, in a way, I am urged on with my task.
At Boston I dined with Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence; he formerly filled the United States Embassy at our Court. He was gentleman enough to have been an English duke. He had nothing to say about the old country that was not good and admiring, and told me many anecdotes of his own country people while in London.
Remarking on the strict etiquette observed by us, in never addressing a man you are not introduced to, he observed that he sat opposite to another every morning at breakfast in the Athenæum Club, for two years, without their exchanging a word, when, one day a carriage called to take him to a country house, and he found his silent companion already seated in it. In this way they became known to each other and entered into conversation. To give effect to his own story, a countryman of his own, he said, came to England and travelled all over itwithout introductions, and calling on him he said that he had not been able to speak to any one for months, and being one day on the chain pier at Brighton, he could bear it no longer, and observed to a gentleman there: “It’s a fine day, sir!”
But Mr. Lawrence, instead of condoling with him in his trials, replied: “I wonder at your impudence!”
Mrs. Lawrence did not appear to have been at all Anglicized; she rather looked for perfection in the English undergoing the process of Americanization. Sir Charles Lyell had been a good republican when in the new country, she said, and had greatly improved through his visits, but not so fully as she should have liked; and this she emphasized in good Yankee brogue. I was acquainted with Sir Charles; it was on his introduction that I came to know the Lawrence family; and I never saw a sign in him of such improvement. I was among his friends in Boston; on his introductions I saw Mr. Prescott, but he did not impress me.
My experience of Americans is that they are less advanced in the art of humbug, and therefore more earnest and sincere than the British. They, therefore, perform the duties of friendship with great thoroughness.
An interesting feature of immorality has often struck me: it consists in the never-failing breach of promise made in all the apparent sincerity felt by men who do not fail to keep their word. Such men—I could give the names of many for recognition—arevery peculiarly framed. They are contented with the thanks one feels on a kindly proposition being made by them while they are with you; not caring to gather the gratitude attendant on the completion of a promise. I know men who play this skeleton part every day of their lives, and I class them with swindlers.
As one advances in life one gets to know the sowers of this harvest of tares, and to separate them from those of the wheat crops, without fouling one’s barn with the results of their labour; the effect of it being merely amusing at last. What cruelty it can inflict is practised on children and young people. They are born with implicit confidence: to them it acts educationally. It affords them a most thorough teaching of mistrust, which, more than any other branch of education, makes a bad citizen.
Some evils in life are unavoidable, but the training that comes from behind the falsehood habitually worn by an amateur friend is not one of these.
These moral ornaments of the social system have a game of their own to play; they know no other, and they play it with all thefinesseexercised over a game of whist.
This recalls Mr. Stillman to my mind, almost the only one of Rossetti’s set whom in this sense I can refer to with unmixed pleasure—Stillman, an American gentleman of high culture, and his faultless lady, a Greek by birth! He is now theTimescorrespondent in Rome. I have met him and lost sight of him often, and when I meet him after an intervalof years, he is always the same kind, attentive friend, though we have no interests in common beyond each other.
It having been made known at Boston that I had certain scientific tendencies, I was invited to deliver a lecture there. It was not the season for such a purpose, but the influence of the Lawrences sufficed to get an audience together of about fifteen hundred. I gave a choice of some subjects, as “The Correlation of Forces, Physical and Vital,” “The Cyclical Phenomena of the Universe,” and “Sleep, Dreams, Somnambulism, Sleep-talking, and the Mesmeric State.” The last subject was selected, and the lecture was received with great politeness by an attentive audience.
I had intercourse with several leading medical gentlemen at Boston, and was treated by them with much hospitality. They have a method of maintaining hospitals peculiarly their own, much of the money being subscribed out of their own pockets—all for the good of their science.
Dr. Warren was at that time the most noted physician in Boston. He gave me some brochures of his writing, one alluding to the reflex actions of the great sympathetic nerve. I found it very suggestive. He had taken the trouble to collect all that had been written on the sea-serpent, and to sift the statements of travellers by sea, with a resulting belief in its individuality.
It was at New York that I made the valued and intimate acquaintance of Mr. Bancroft, the historian,and his lady, a truly noble pair. Mr. Bancroft was a man of universal knowledge. This he showed conspicuously in a lecture, the title of which I have forgotten, but not the contents. Its purpose was to show the rapid and far-reaching advance that science had made up to that day.
I met again at New York that gifted artist, Mr. Lawrence, whom I had known in England. He preceded Richmond, and was his equal in drawing likenesses in chalks—works which are much prized—among them those of Thackeray, Tennyson, and other celebrities.
I visited Quebec, and at Lord Elgin’s, the governor-general’s, had the pleasure of meeting the present Lord Albemarle, then a youth. At the same party I became acquainted with Mr. Lawrence Oliphant, who, later, becoming a writer, I may as well depict the impression he made on me. He was a little man, his manner very gentle and sympathetic, with such amiability of countenance as to leave little room for intellectual expression, though no doubt his abilities fell little short of his good intentions.
I must mention the kindness shown me at New York by the eminent house of Middleton and Co., whose friendship in financial matters I have availed myself of to this day. The family belong to the West Indian islands and are British.
I pass over my explorations in the south and west; they were the same as other people’s, now well known to book-life; but I do not forget that I once walked across the Mississippi, a mile wide, onthe ice, from Wisconsin into Minnesota. There is another thing ever to be remembered: while at Philadelphia I was treated with a dish ofterrapine, a small sort of turtle, surpassing the gigantic species in flavour to such a degree as to wholly eclipse its merits. Why is it not imported? The very taste of it would raise the feeblest palate from the dead!
It is nearly forty years since I saw the United States: I have had plenty of time to think over what I thought of them then. The enthusiastic admirers of America are men who, being a little eminent before going, receive an ovation on their arrival. These men adore the worthy republicans, write about them, mention their names in print in the order in which they bestowed their attentions on them. If these men who, being a little eminent, went to ever-glorious France and received an ovation, which they don’t, their enthusiasm would alike tingle at the roots of their hair.
The Americans are nearly as good as older states, perhaps better than some. As three hundred years of civilization is, say, to six hundred, in that proportion they are as good as Europeans.
But the greatness of America has to come. Time will be when America, perhaps with Australian lands, will be arbiter of the civilized world—if it likes.
With some exceptions, if we take any one of the United States, it will be found to be monotonous; there is as much variety in an English county as in any one of these.
I compare the United States to a book: it is a new and cheap edition of England in one volume; price, one almighty dollar.
Altogether, there is no difference of moment between the best English and the best Americans, or the worst English and worst Americans.
Lawrence and Bancroft would have made good dukes!
I remember dining with a great merchant at Philadelphia, who told me that after receiving a classical education at the University of Dublin, he emigrated and became a clerk in an American house, and that after a time he saw his way to establish a business for himself, and had realized a large fortune. He told me this that he might add the singular assurance that he never once, in his almost lifelong residence in America, had an opportunity of showing how good his education had been, or of using a single Latin word.
It was after the good Lord Ripon’s death, which happened only too soon, that I went to Spring Gardens to live, purposing to resume my medical connection with the public, and to continue my duties as physician at the West London Hospital, to which I was attached. It then had not long been instituted, but it is now an extensive andflourishing establishment in a populous suburb, where it is much needed.
Mr. Cowell, a good and chivalrous benefactor of the sick poor, now senior surgeon of the Westminster Hospital, was resident surgeon of the West London at that time; and Mr. Bird, who, in conjunction with his father, was its founder, was one of the surgical staff.
The Countess Dowager of Ripon spent the season at Carlton Gardens, in the family mansion; and, continuing my professional engagement, after the earl’s death, to her, I had the pleasure of visiting her daily.
Lady Ripon was a woman who deserved to be remembered as long as the lives of the good and great have an interest for mankind, and let us hope that may be as long as the human race endures. Her belief was as implicit in a happy future, as it was in the morrow of every day; and she regulated her actions accordingly, as inseparable from the duties devolving on her responsible position.
There are many such women in every class who, if they changed places, would remain the same; but they have not an equal opportunity of making it manifest how true they are. The countess felt her position as the daughter and the wife of an earl; it made her feel the more for those whom circumstances made dependent on her. She had been a great heiress, born to the inheritance of Nocton and other estates, in Lincolnshire; and she firmly regarded herself as appointed by Heaven,or rather entrusted, to administer the large means that belonged to her for the good of those who had a claim on her for support.
When at Stutgard in 1833, during a wide continental tour, not so commonly made in those days as now, I became acquainted with Sir Edward Disbrowe, the British minister, and the other members of the embassy. These were Mr. Wellesley, the eldest son of Lord Cowley, and Mr. Gordon, the eldest son of Gordon, of Ellon Castle. At that house I met Count Pozzo di Borgo, and a young Buonaparte, who was a guest of the King of Wurtemburg.
Mr. Wellesley was quite a young man and very sociable; Mr. Gordon was yet younger, and of very engaging ways. Count Pozzo di Borgo was getting on in life, but very upright, and, with his orders on, made a brilliant show. He was perfectly free in his conversation, and spoke on political matters without any reserve. He remarked pretty plainly, but with a playfulnaïveté, to the young Prince Buonaparte, who was present, that if his advice had been followed in the days of Elba, the battle of Waterloo would not have been fought.
Some say how small the world is: certainly, in its fortuitous concourse of live atoms. There is not so much room but that many meet after long intervals again. So, after a lapse of some thirty years, the youthful Gordon, whom I knew so well as Sir Edward Disbrowe’sattaché, then as much boy as man, turns up again on a visit to Lady Ripon,with a grisly beard, and a face that showed no marks of having once been young. But this is not all: on a similar visit appeared two young ladies of fashion as daughters of Sir Edward Disbrowe. They were either babes or not born at the time when I knew their father so well.
The Gordons were cousins of Lady Ripon. A Colonel Gordon, the brother of Gordon who was soon to be Gordon of Ellon, was my particular friend as long as he lived. He had retired from active service on returning finally from India, but his desire was to die in the army, though, by not selling out, he was the loser by several thousand pounds.
I would mention one lady in particular, who consulted me while I was in Spring Gardens, because she was the Queen of Beauty at Lord Eglinton’s tournament, besides being the grand-daughter of Sheridan, and the wife of the Duke of Somerset. A beautiful youth, Lord Edward St. Maur, one afternoon drove up to my house and asked me if I would go with him to the Admiralty and see his mother, the duchess. It was on a slight matter affecting her daughter, and she afterwards asked me to see her son, Lord St. Maur. All this was easy work, but I was pleased at seeing another grandchild of Sheridan, for I had known Mrs. Norton over a quarter of a century before.
But the young man, Lord Edward, for him a sad fate was in waiting; more sad than that which later befel his elder brother.
The sons of great houses have few means of distinction, however ambitious, except in politics, which many of them abhor. They are shut out from the nobler professions. Lord Edward, a young man of courage, sought excitement in the jungles of India, and this ended in his being torn to pieces by a tiger.
Having an acute mind, which at all times lay parallel with truth, I was a good diagnostic of disease (agnostics were then in their infancy), and I was able to weigh a good many experiences under one in the same balance. I made this remarkably evident during the last illness of Lord Ripon, which was a very costly one, for all the celebrities in Physic were in attendance at Putney. Perhaps I took an unfair advantage, for I was so absolutely independent in my position that I could give an unbiassed opinion, while the physicians and surgeons, under the influence of expediency, agreed on a still favourable view of the case. That such could happen is the fault of the patient’s friends. If the physicians abandon hope while there is life, others are uselessly called in. After they left, with the assurance that the patient was all right, Lord Goderich and Sir Charles Douglas, who was a friend of the family, asked me to take a turn with them in the grounds, wishing to hear my opinion, which I frankly gave, to the effect that in a fortnight the earl would no longer be living.
But I was wrong, too, in my way, for he lived just seventeen days from that time.
While in Spring Gardens—this was in 1860—I got together my researches on “The Bones in Scrofula,” which Dr. Baly presented to the Medico-Chirurgical Society, before which it was read, and a very full abstract of it was published in their “Proceedings,” and in all the medical journals of the day.
Lord Goderich, a young man of great promise, then member for one of the Yorkshire Ridings, succeeded his father in the House of Lords, very unwillingly, as he liked the Commons better, and he humorously declared himself disfranchised. Three months later his uncle, Earl de Grey, died, whose title he took, and he then became sole owner of Studley Royal, which before him belonged to the two brothers.
Lord Goderich was married to a young lady who, to save time, I may say was possessed of every charm—animation, beauty, simplicity, humour, a hearty ringing laugh—and these shaped themselves into countless groups, all equally pleasing.
Now that I am unable to visit her, I have her promise of seeing her yet again, from time to time, and this alone is enough to keep me alive.
The present earl, now Marquis of Ripon, soon became a useful public servant under Lord Palmerston, as an under-secretary, first of the LocalGovernment Board, then of the India Office, and rose ultimately to be Viceroy of India, by the Queen’s express wish, her Majesty having known him when he was a child, and the playmate of the Prince of Wales. He has always been in sympathy with the classes beneath him, and his strictly conscientious character affords the clue to every action of his life.
He is a descendant both of Hampden and Cromwell. The head representative of the Cromwell family was Mr. Field, in my time the apothecary to Christ’s Hospital; the next is the Count of Palavicini, of Genoa; and then comes the Marquis of Ripon.
The Fields, I believe, are the same as those of Ozokerit fame.
In London I frequented the laboratory of my old friend, Dr. Marcet, at the Westminster Hospital, where he was the chemical professor; and I attended the meetings of the Chemical Society, which I belonged to, and there met again Dr. Faraday, whose lectures I had followed in early life. I had met him, too, at Brighton, at a scientific meeting. He was then asked to say something by way of an address, which he did, but told us that he was so accustomed to speak with apparatus in his hands, that he found it difficult to say anything without it. At that time I met Mr. Davies Gilbert. Seated by him and talking with him on the advanced state of knowledge, he remarked that all that was known of the sciences in his early days was contained inBoyle’s Dictionary. This was at a dinner given to the great geologist, Gideon Mantell.
During my visit to America, I read before a medical society at Boston a paper “On Vital Force, its Pulmonic Origin, and the General Laws of its Metamorphosis.” It was founded on a lecture that I delivered in 1853 at Bury, at the Young Men’s Institution, of which I was the president. This paper, which showed that carbon was the element out of which this force arose during its combustion at the lungs, was published in an American journal in 1854, and republished in London. This I mention because I was the first to take that view. Mayer saw it later, and I think has all the credit of it. I added to this republication some scientific views of interest, especially one on the water of organization.
While on these subjects I may as well mention that, between the years 1839 and 1853, I contributed largely to the medical press; my papers are noted from time to time in the Directory of those years. In one series that I gave to the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal of the Association, then edited by Dr. Streeter, “A Critical Analysis of the Principal Facts of Disease,” I showed by elaborate experiments that the movement of the blood in the capillary vessels was due to the spinal nerves, and not to the great sympathetic.
In the same series I pointed out the importance of taking the temperature of the body, internal and external, in disease, and constructed tables for notingthe variations, and this at a time (about 1840 or 1841) when the thermometer had not come into use in medical practice.
I would allude here to a physiological inquiry made by me, and which occupied much of my time for twenty years or more, on a grammatical subject, that of the sequence of sound in speech, with the laws of diphthongism and accent.
There is another work I would make a record of, it is unpublished, “A New Cosmogony.”
Stray papers, published or unpublished, I need hardly note, except one on Drapery, which sculptors and artists would do well to study. It was published not so very long ago inMerry England, a monthly magazine.
I have already alluded to the resuscitation of my work on Varicose Capillaries by the Pathological Society; it had been in a state of suspended animation for fifty-one years.