There was a story going round Sicily then of some young scamp, who was hard up, and arranged with brigands to capture him and share the ransom that his parents were quite sure to pay. The parents paid up heavily, and the brigands kept their word and gave him half.
I was at Taormina in 1883—it was a quiet place then with only two small inns, not a suburb of hotels, as now—and I was reading in Goethe’s diary of his travels, 7 May 1787, how he sat there in a garden by the sea and plannedNausikaa, a five-act tragedy of which he wrote no more than sixty lines. I am only aWahrheitman myself, and have noDichtungin me: yet I have imagined Nausicaa in Corfu, when looking at the stone Phæacian ship there; and I have also imagined Ulysses in Sicily, when looking at the seven great rocks the Cyclops hurled at him at Aci; but Taormina brought me down to 735 B.C., with the first Greek colony in Sicily on the little headland there, and all that this portended for Carthage and for Rome. Being a real poet, Goethe only talks geology about the rocks at Aci, and rather regrets he did not picnic there and hammer off some specimens of zeolite. He says the Taormina scenery will provide him with a setting for his play: he will model Ulysses on himself, his own conversation being quite as entertaining and instructive as anything Ulysses can have said to the Phæacians; and he will model Nausicaa on the ladies he left broken-hearted at each place where he stayed.
A poet ought not to disclose the sources of his inspiration. One day Petrarch was thinking of Laura till his eyes were filled with tears, and he walked into a brook he did not see: henceDel mar Tirreno. And one day Toplady got underneath a rock and kept dry in a storm: henceRock of Ages. Toplady was here the wiser man, and the better poet too, for he says nothing of the rain, whereas Petrarch talks of his wet feet.
Goethe has disclosed his sources here; and his setting for the play seems just as inappropriate as his heroine and hero. The ancients were convinced that Corfu was Phæacia, and there is a certain austerity about Corfu that exactly suits the theme; whereas Taormina is all riotous luxuriance, befitting a Cyclops or a Satyr, but not Nausicaa. And surely Ulysses and Nausicaa are worlds away from Goethe and the ladies who adored him. Croce has called him ‘gran poeta’ and ‘borghese’ also, that is, ‘bourgeois’ or ‘middle-class’; and I think it hits him off.
Tradition has made Homer old and blind, and knows nothing of his maturity or youth. And from this I gather that he made his reputation late in life; and I suspect he made it with his later work, theOdyssey, or rather with the striking part of it, the travels of Ulysses, v. 1-xiii. 184. I fancy that Ulysses was to Homer what Hajji Baba was to Morier—a character of whom he could narrate all manner of tales collected from all sources; and his tales of Southern Italy and Sicily were just the tales to take the fancy of the Greeks, when they first thought of planting colonies there.
For my own part I believe that he lived on until about 800 B.C.—as Herodotos avers, ii. 53—and that he heard the first explorers’ tales of all the places that Ulysses visits. I do not underrate the difficulties of this, and have read some cubic feet of books about them; but, where the critics trace the handiwork of different poets, I cannot see anything but Homer at different stages of his life. He must have reached a good old age; and an author’s point of view may shift a long way with advancing years. In the Vatican Library they show you Henry the Eighth’s treatise against Martin Luther with the author’s dedication to the Pope.
There is an amusing little volcano near Girgenti, and I once spent the best part of a day there playing with it, 26 March 1885. It is called the Maccaluba, which clearly is the Arabicmaklûbah, ‘topsy-turvy,’ so that the name goes back to the days of Arab rule in Sicily. The mound is about 150 feet high, and on it there are little cones that shoot out gas and mud. You throw turf and stones into the mouth of a cone until you stop it up: then it wheezes and gurgles for a while, and finally shoots out the things you have put in; and you retire briskly, as the mud is scorching if it catches you. But the whole volcano was very quiet then, and seemed more bored than angry in the way it shot things out.
Apart from its great cone, Etna has always given me the notion of a big Bath Bun, the little cones being the lollipops. It covers more than four hundred square miles—twice the whole extent of Dartmoor—and it is only two miles high. It looks best at long distances, where the lower part is hidden and the cone stands out: the best view I ever had of it, was from a steamer going from Brindisi to Malta. With little more than a third of the height, Vesuvius made more show. But it is sad to see Vesuvius now, after the eruption of 1906: the cone fell in, and that has deprived the mountain of its former grace. Volcanoes have these ups and downs. I always wish I could have seen the rise of Monte Nuovo on the other side of the bay. It is 450 feet in height, and rose up from level ground in the course of a few hours.
We have an extinct volcano here, only half a mile from this house. One sees geologists going round there now and then with their little bags and hammers and going off with specimens. An eminent geologist came lecturing here in 1906, and he spoke of volcanoes breaking out again after long periods of calm, such outbreaks being usually most violent. One of the listeners was much disturbed at hearing this, and thought it hardly worth his while to go on putting in potatoes near such a dangerous place. So he inquired when that hillock were a-likely to be bustin’ forth. With the spaciousness of a true geologist, the lecturer replied, “In the science of geology a period of thirty thousand years is relatively....” The man went on with his potatoes.
Though living on the edge of a volcano, I do not worry about eruptions, but only about earthquakes. I can remember two earthquakes in England—I felt the shock in 1884 but slept through it in 1868—and I have seen what earthquakes do abroad (especially at Chios in 1881) and I do not want a heavy earthquake here. In these valleys it would be overwhelming. The hillsides are strewn with granite rocks that have weathered away till they have nearly lost their hold upon the ground—some actually are Logans and go seesaw—and a smart shock would send them racing down into the valleys below. Sometimes I see a rabbit start a stone off down a hill; and, when the stone comes bouncing by, I picture what would happen if the stone weighed ten or fifteen tons, and hundreds of such stones were coming like an avalanche.
A year or two ago the End of the World became a common topic of conversation, as a newspaper was exploiting some prediction of it. And a man here cleared the matter up with the remark—“In church it be World WithoutEnd.” About fifty years ago my brother and I used to go to the Scotch Church in Crown Court towards the end of December, to hear Dr Cumming announce the End of the World for the ensuing year. But after a few years he grew more wary, and he hedged—“And if the World does not indeed come to an End, something else very remarkable will certainly occur.” (I quote from memory, and may have got the words wrong, but they were to that effect.) About the same date I heard a preacher in a country church declaring that the World, “having now lasted for close upon six thousand years, cannot reasonably be expected to last much longer.”
Coming into Jerusalem by the Damascus gate, 14 March 1882, I noticed two unfamiliar objects standing out above the city walls against the evening sky. Upon inquiry I found that they were ventilating pipes. A family (American, I think) had taken a house there, as they thought the Day of Judgement was at hand, yet wished to have a sanitated home meanwhile. And other families had likewise taken houses at Jerusalem, the notion being that the Last Judgement was going to be held there and residents would get priority.
On a Good Friday morning I found a small girl standing on my door-step here, eating a hot-cross-bun. I asked what she was doing there, and she curtsied and said, “Please, zir, I be fasting.” And generally the seasons of the Christian year were marked by buns, lamb, goose, plum-pudding, pancakes and salt-fish far more than by observances at church. There were no week-day services at Lustleigh except on Christmas Day, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday; and the only recognition of a saint’s-day was the transfer of its collect to the following Sunday. There was Communion four times in the year, each time with a fresh bottle of wine at ten shillings per bottle. It was heralded by the reading of the exhortation on the previous Sunday, and perhaps was held in more esteem for being so uncommon.
A new Rector came to Lustleigh at the end of 1844, and remained there till his death at the end of 1887; and at first the parish did not like his innovations. My grandfather writes to my father on 15 December 1844—“I am informed that the parishioners will not submit to any alteration in the service, and that the churchwardens have gone over the parish to ascertain their opinions, and it is supposed the parson will not attempt anything further to annoy them,” and again on 29 December 1844—“I saw Mr*****on Thursday: he told me he had left the church for seven weeks until last Sunday, when he determined to go and shew his resentment by leaving the church on the parson going to the communion. He did so, and again on Christmas day, but no one followed him. They are opposed to the surplice and offertory, but have not spirit to resent it. His brother (who is churchwarden) says unless the parson goes back to the accustomed duties of the church, he will leave altogether. His father talks more than he does, but it appears he has stood the whole, offertory and all.”
He writes again, 20 January 1845, about people leaving the church—“What will they do then? I suppose they will dissent and erect more chapels, so we shall by and by have a plenty of ’Isms. I fancy we have quite enough already.” People left the church and went to chapel for very varied reasons. I remember an excellent old lady doing this because a child of hers had caught its death of cold by the parson a-baptizin’ of it without a-puttin’ of a kettleful o’ bilin’ water into that stoney font.
The new Rector was merely following the directions in the Book of Common Prayer. After the Sermon he is to “return to the Lord’s Table and begin the Offertory,” and then, “if there be no Communion,” he is to say a Prayer and Collect, concluding with the Blessing. And he kept his surplice on for finishing the service, instead of putting on a black gown to preach in, as was the custom when the Offertory and Prayer and Collect were omitted and the Blessing was given from the pulpit. He was right enough in what he did; but it was hardly worth doing, if it scared parishioners away.
The bishop was trying to stop all innovations. My grandfather writes to my father, 20 January 1845—“What do you think of the old bishop’s letter? I fancy it is very evasive: he gives them no direct instructions. They are to do as they are now doing: he does not tell them to withdraw any innovations.” It was only in more important matters that the bishop gave direct instructions to his clergy. My grandfather writes to my father, 27 October 1856—“The bishop has caused*****to shave off his beard: he was like a Crimean soldier.”
Innovations might have been accepted here at any other time; but this was the period of Puseyism, and every innovation was supposed to be the outcome of a plot to Romanize the church. People generally knew nothing of ritual or doctrine, and would not have been so vehement about such things, had there not been another cause behind—they thought the clergy were not altogether honest over this. A few had gone over to Rome, and there was a notion that many others would have done the same, if they could have done it without giving up their livings. And from this point of view Anglicanism was merely a fraudulent device for holding on to livings, while assenting to the doctrines and ritual of Rome; or, as my grandfather puts it, 10 November 1850, “to remain in receipt of the Protestant pay while practising all the eccentricities of Romanism.”
However, there was not much sign of Romanism here, or of its eccentricities. Once a stranger came to church and crossed herself, and no one knew what she was at. It was described to me—“Her were a-spot-in’ and a-stripe-in’ of herself”—as if it were telegraphy by dot and dash.
There was a policeman who used to work here in the garden before he joined the force; and, when he was home on leave, he came round to see the gardener. I found them in the cider-cellar, looking at a dozen empty casks that I had lately bought. These were port-pipes of over a hundred gallons each; and, on seeing them ranged round the cellar, I began to think of Ali Baba and the oil-jars for the Forty Thieves. The policeman did not know the story, and listened very attentively and thoughtfully while I recounted it to him; and then he said in a regretful way, “We ain’t allowed to do that now.” Some years afterwards he had a murderer in his hands, and the murderer died. It was really a very satisfactory ending to the case, as it saved all the time and trouble that is wasted on the trial and execution of a murderer caught red-handed in the act. I presume the murderer died legitimately, but I thought about the Forty Thieves.
I have a planisphere, and a young carpenter noticed it when he was working in the house; and he showed an interest in it that astonished me until I saw what he was at. He learnt the names of the constellations and their places in the sky; and then, when he took damsels for romantic walks, he had a topic of conversation that his rivals could not touch.—An astronomer tells me that he has sometimes given a popular lecture and invited questions at the end, and more than once he has been asked—“You say the spectres [spectra] showed you what the stars be made of, but how did you get at their names?”
Some years ago I transferred a youthful maidservant from my house here to my house in town, and for several evenings after her arrival I heard thunderous noises overhead. At last I made inquiry, and was informed that she took exercise last thing at night by turning somersaults in her room. Another time two youths from here were staying at my house in town, while they were up for an examination; and the ample staircase tempted them to descend it on their heads. Coming downstairs in the twilight, I just saw the soles of their shoes, and could not imagine what those four objects were, hovering in mid-air far down below me. This method of progression is much in vogue at Lustleigh. On a hot day I have seen a dozen boys going along the mill-leet upside down. Withsleeves tucked up, the water only wets the arms and scalp; but there is always a chance of overbalancing and going in full-length. That sends the water flying over anyone upon the path alongside; and sometimes, I think, they do it purposely for that. As an exasperated man once said, “they Lustleigh boys be hardly human.” Yet they might learn a little from the boys in Italy. When those boys go stealing fruit, they leave their clothes at home, as they run less risk of recognition, being naked. But the boys here keep their clothes on, and so are recognized at once.
On a Sunday morning I met a Lustleigh damsel on her way to church, wearing a new dress and evidently wishing it to be observed. For want of anything better to say, I said, “You don’t go in for hobble skirts, I see.” She answered, “No, not I: a proper fright I’d look in they.” And I inquired Why. The answer was, “Why, mother says my thighs be like prize marrows at a show.” Three old ladies, on their way to church, just caught the last remark, and passed on with averted eyes in consternation at our talk.
Some summers ago a young lady of about nineteen was lodging at a house near here; and, like many other townsfolk, she found the country more entrancing than the countryfolk find it themselves, “And her were proper mazed a-gettin’ up all hours of the mornin’ and goin’ out for walks. And her waked up everybody in the house a-bath-in’ of herself afore her went. And one of they mornin’s after her’d a-bath’d herself, her went off right across the valley without ever thinkin’ to put any of her clothes on. And Jim*****, he were a-goin’ early to his work, as he had a bit of thatchin’ to do four mile away, and he come sudden on her in that copse. And he saith, ‘Bide thee there ahind that rock, and I’ll tell my missis to bring’e a garment’.”
As a mid-Victorian bachelor, I was perturbed at post-Victorian spinsters coming down to stay with me unchaperoned. The custom is established now; but when it was an innovation, I wrote to one inquiring if she really meant to come alone. And she answered—“Yes, of course. Sans chaperon, sans culottes, sans everything.” Another one assured me that she could not possibly need a chaperon, as she was thirty and had three false teeth.
A man who often came to Lustleigh, was careless of the clothes he wore; and one of the Lustleigh people told him that he was lowering himself in everybody’s estimation by dressing in that untidy way. He was looking down the valley towards a house a long way off, as if he did not hear the other man’s remarks: then, nodding towards the house, he said—“Did you ever hear how old*****’s grandfather made all that money of his?” The other man pricked up his ears, and said he had not heard. The answer was—“Well, I can tell you, then. He always gave his whole attention to his own affairs.”
That was about sixty years ago, before the railway came here bringing fresh interests in. There were a good many people then who might have done much better in the world by giving as much attention to their own affairs as they were giving to other people’s. And in spite of all their curiosity they very often got things wrong. It was all ‘putting two and two together,’ drawing inferences and passing inferences on as facts. I hear echoes of it still. People tell me positively of things that happened in this neighbourhood at such or such a date, and I find diaries and letters and other papers contradicting them. Sometimes they tell me very unexpected things about myself, although they could have ascertained the facts at any time by merely asking me. I used often to go for a long Sunday walk, starting off along the Bovey road; and I was told I went to church at Bovey most Sunday afternoons.
This ‘putting two and two together’ is a ticklish process even for a careful man. I remember my father saying that he saw the Alabama at Calais and the Kearsarge waiting for her outside. Now, the Alabama never was at Calais: she went into Cherbourg, and the Kearsarge caught her coming out from there, 19 June 1864. I thought it was merely a slip of the tongue, Calais for Cherbourg; but his diary shows that he was not at Cherbourg at the time. There is an entry on 23 April 1864, “saw a Federal war-steamer lying off Calais, watching a Confederate vessel within the harbour,” and at that date the Alabama was about latitude 17° S. and longitude 32° W. I think he would have noted the ships’ names, if he had ascertained them at the time; and I suppose that some years afterwards he fancied that they must have been the Alabama and the Kearsarge.
My father was puzzled about a lady who lived at Moreton, where she could not possibly have many interests in life, yet seemed as active-minded and alert as if she mixed in the great world. He spent some time one afternoon in conversation with her, trying to discover where her interests lay; but the only thing that was elicited was this—she always made a point of knowing what everyone in Moreton had for dinner on a Sunday.
Very small things made a great commotion in a little town like that. There is a letter to my father from a friend there, 30 June 1843—“We had Sand’s Horsemen here on Friday last, who managed to take about 100l, which is a larger sum than they took in Exeter in one day or almost any other place. All the Beauty, Rank and Wealth of the neighbourhood for some miles were present—quite grand for Moreton—indeed I never saw so many persons in Moreton before.*****and his wife came to my house and brought two Miss*****s, and I escorted one of them to the Horsemanship. Next day I was told that people said I was after Miss*****and the cash—she has about 7000l.I am thoroughly sick of these reports.”
Not many years ago a man at Moreton said something slanderous about another man there. He was threatened with an action, and compromised it by agreeing to publish an apology and devote a sum of money to any public purpose that the injured party chose to name. The public purpose was chosen very astutely—taking the whitewash off the almshouses, a fine old granite building dated 1637. The building is mentioned in the guide-books, and many people go to see it. Finding it improved, they ask about it; and then (as the astute man had foreseen) they hear the story of the other man’s discomfiture.
In another country town a man did something that really was discreditable; but people went on exaggerating it until at last they dropped the real facts out, as these were much too trivial to be worth mentioning in such a lurid tale. And thus he found himself in a position to deny it all on oath. So he denied it, threatening prosecutions, and received a whitewashing that he did not at all deserve, the local papers denouncing “these unjustifiable aspersions on a man of blameless life.”
When people had to see a lawyer, they seldom told him the whole tale, and thus got bad advice, unless he knew enough of their affairs beforehand to enable him to get at all the facts. They would never trust a lawyer if he kept a clerk, and hesitated if he were in partnership, feeling that a clerk was sure to gossip and a partner might. And thus the little country towns were full of lawyers with small practices, each doing his own office work. There is a letter to my father, 12 September 1852, from a lawyer at Moreton, a very able man, who died in early life from no complaint but being bored to death. He says—“I copied 29 sheets draft and engrossed a deed and settled two mortgages and a lease yesterday: hard work that.”
There came a time when lawyers (and others) did not work so hard at Moreton. In his diary on 20 January 1870, two months before his death, my grandfather notes that he had been to Moreton in the morning to see the lawyer and the doctor—“neither at home, one hunting, the other shooting: so lost my labour.”
That lawyer who went hunting, used to tell his clients, when they had a good possessory title, they had much better burn their title-deeds, as these were certain to have some blunder in them that would cause trouble some day. He had drawn a good many of these deeds himself, so I suppose he knew what they were likely to contain.
Writing to my father on 3 December 1844, my grandfather says—“There is a literary society formed in Moreton. I suppose it must be a sort of mechanics’ institute. I fear the intellect of Moreton is too shallow to make much progress for some time. However, that is the way to make it better.”
A friend of my father’s writes to him from Moreton on 23 November 1844, “We have a meeting tomorrow for the purpose of establishing a Reading Room and Library for all classes,” and then on 13 December, “I enclose a copy of the rules of our Society for the promotion of knowledge.... We have £11 to lay out in books at once. We have expended a portion of that sum already in the purchase of selections from the ‘Family Library’ 2/6 per vol, Cabinet and Lardner’s Cyclopedia 3/-, and Chambers veryuseful elementary books on the sciences etc., all the nos (27) of Knights weekly volume 1/-each (the cheapest and best almost now publishing) and two or three of Murrays cheap edition etc. etc., in all nearly 90 volumes: cost about £7. We are going to take in weekly the ‘Athenæum’, Chambers Journal and Chambers Miscellany, some mechanics magazine and one or two other monthlys. Lectures once a week till April. The object of the Society is to benefit all classes and particularly tradesmen and their apprentices and mechanics etc. who will be much better in the reading room for a couple of hours than in a public house.” The reading room was to be open three times a week, and the librarian was to have £8 a year for the use of the room (it being in his house) including coals and candles and his own services.
There is now a Public Library at Moreton, an ostentatious building which must have cost at least a hundred times as much as the books that it contains. People can read newspapers there and bring away light literature to read at home. But such libraries are seldom of real use. There is not a library in Devon where real work can be done on very many subjects; and the buildings of these libraries might be turned to some account, if each one took a subject and acquired the proper books.
Being a Cambridge man, I can get books from the University Library—Oxford men cannot get books from theirs—and by going to the Reading Room at the British Museum, I can use the books in the immense collection there. That was all I needed when I had a house in town: if I wanted a book down here, I had only to wait till I went up. Now that I am always here, I feel the loss of it, and have to buy extensively. I have about four thousand books, and find I want quite eight or ten. If you have only a single subject, you may perhaps get the necessary books; but you can hardly manage that, if you have several subjects, and do not want mere books-of-reference or text-books, but the books containing the material on which such works are based. These books cannot always be obtained without delay, and therefore must be ordered in advance, as soon as you foresee that you will need them. And then, before a book arrives, you may perceive another way of dealing with the subject, and find you do not need the book at all.
I have tried to arrange my books by subjects, or alphabetically by author’s names—with Roger Ascham next to Daisy Ashcroft—but it always ends in my arranging them by sizes. If a book is higher or wider than the book alongside, it bulges at the edges where the other does not hold it in; and the slightest bulging lets the dust creep in between the leaves. Books are classed as 4to, 8vo, 16mo, &c., according to the folding of the sheets; but the sheets themselves are of all shapes and sizes, crown, royal, demy, and so on. And books come out in dozens of different heights and widths, as if they never were intended to stand in rows on shelves.
In the Pepysian Library at Cambridge the books are all arranged by sizes; and the arrangement is so rigid that the volumes of a work are separated if there is the slightest difference in their size. But then Mr Pepys had a catalogue of them that was “perfectly alphabeticall.” They are in the bookcases that Sympson made for him in 1666, and they number just three thousand. There is a story that he always kept that number, neither more nor less, turning one book out if he brought another in. But his catalogue has only 2474, and the other 526 were added by his nephew: so it must really be a story of his nephew, not of him.
There was a saying of Mark Pattison’s that no man can respect himself unless he has at least a thousand books, and I have heard it argued that no man need have more. But really it must all depend on what editions they are. There are ninety-four volumes in one edition of Voltaire’s works, and another edition is contained in three. I have these three volumes on my shelves: 6,250 pages with two columns to the page and 78 lines to the column, making about ten million words in all. Goethe’s works are only half that length, but they spread out into five-and-fifty volumes on my shelves: 18,000 pages of 29 lines each.
I have two dictionaries here, written by two old friends of mine—I have known one of them for nearly forty years and the other one for some years more. They both come down to stay with me, but I keep their works apart. Side by side upon a shelf, the dictionaries look like Dignity and Impudence in Landseer’s picture of the dogs. The dictionary of Egyptian Hieroglyphics is the mastiff, and theterrier is the dictionary of Colloquial Chinese. The mastiff is seven times the terrier’s weight and size. But the little one has 1038 pages, of which 1030 are vocabulary, with 45 lines of Chinese type per page. The big one has 1510 pages, of which 1065 are vocabulary, with 60 lines of Hieroglyphic type per page in double column of 30 lines apiece. So the little one is nearly three-quarters the length of the big one, measured in vocabularies, only the paper is much thinner and the type is small—in my eyes, much too small, the Chinese being only a third of the height of the Hieroglyphic, though the characters are more complex.
The author of the Chinese dictionary is also the inventor of a Chinese typewriter. The machine was built by Remingtons; but commercially it has not hitherto been much of a success, as there are no effective laws in China for securing an inventor’s rights. As a rule, it takes two taps to make a character complete, the left half coming with the first tap and the right half with the second. By combining each of the left halves with all the right halves in succession, it can produce a great variety of characters. These, however, are not the characters employed in classic Chinese writing, but more like modern characters evolved from them for ordinary use. Chinese is written in upright lines that are read from top to bottom and follow one another from right to left. Thus, instead of having the characters upright, the typewriter has them lying down. When the paper is taken out, the left edge is treated as the top, and the lines and characters then come in proper order, only the right halves are underneath the left halves instead of being beside them. And this defect could not be cured without making the machine much larger and more difficult to work.
The meaning of the characters varies with the tone in which they are pronounced; and there are similar tones in English. At the tea-party the little girl drawls out, “No, thanks”—tone 1: the hostess thereupon exclaims, “What, none”—tone 2: a friend remonstrates, “Oh, really, now”—tone 3; and the little girl then says what she has heard her father say, “Take the damned thing away”—tone 4. The typewriter puts down the number of the tone, and thus requires three taps in all, two for the character itself and one for this.
This led me into planning a Cuneiform typewriter. I did not have one built, but my plan was briefly this: I divided the wedges that are upright or slope down from the wedges that are level or slope up, and then picked out the commonest groups of each; and, instead of always moving on from left to right, I had a catch to check the automatic movement of the paper, so that one group could be printed on another with the level wedges running across the uprights. The compound groups are not exactly like the groups in printed books; but very often there is just as great a difference between these printed groups and their originals on the clay or stone. After studying Cuneiform in printed books, people are annoyed at finding that they cannot read a word of the real thing; and there are other kinds of print with that same fault.
Hebrew was written in letters that were practically the same as the Phœnician letters from which our English capitals have come: yet it is printed in letters that are not like ours nor like its own. In my Cambridge days the Regius Professor of Hebrew (the late Dr Jarrett) was trying hard to get this changed, and he brought out a Hebrew book in what he called a modified Roman alphabet. I think he might have gone a good deal further, and I do not know that anybody else has gone as far; but, really, something should be done. Hebrew type is just about as bad as any type can be, with half the letters so like others that they may be confused. Greek type is not so bad; but it is quite unlike the Greek of the inscriptions or the older manuscripts. And it expresses nothing that Roman or Italic type would not express as well. If anybody says Iota Subscript, I say iota was not subscript in good Greek, but kept its dressing in the line.
We write English in the same style as Italic type, yet print it with the Roman type that represents handwriting of four hundred years ago. If we are going to copy other writing than our own, we might as well adopt the Gothic type that still survives in Germany. Gothic and Italic both look well, but nothing can be uglier than Roman. I consider it clear proof of mania in a bibliomaniac, if he buys books in Roman type for anything but common use. We ought to scrap the ugly thing, and print English (as we write it) in Italic.
We should be merciful to children. There is quite enough for them to learn, without their learning to read English in one lettering and write it in another. And they might be spared some spelling. Why should they have to ‘proceed’ witheandetogether, and ‘recede’ witheandeapart? Both words are based upon the Latin ‘cedere.’ Its participle ‘cessus’ is the base of ‘process’ and of ‘recess’ and also of ‘decease’: yet they may not write ‘decess’ to match, though French has ‘décès’ matching ‘procès.’ Italian always treats the Greekphasf, and they may do the same in ‘fancy’ and in ‘frenzy,’ but may not do it in ‘philosophy.’ We might at least abolish all anomalies, and also downright blunders like thehin anchor. There are difficulties enough about our spelling without increasing them capriciously.
In early life the mind takes facts in and remembers them, but does not judge them critically, whereas it afterwards becomes more critical and less receptive. It would surely be good policy to feed the mind with facts in the years when it retains them, and leave the reasoning for the years when it can reason. But the policy has been to “make boys think”—at least, that was my experience at Harrow—and that policy defeats itself, as one cannot think effectively without a stock of facts to think about.
Looking back on my eight years of Harrow and Cambridge and judging them by results, I find that Classics have supplied me with a mass of interesting and amusing facts to think about, whereas Mathematics only taught me how to think on abstract things. Hardly any Mathematics linger in my mind. Sometimes, when I am going to sleep, I think of Space and wonder whether it is circumnavigated by the curves that go away to Negative Infinity and come back again from Positive Infinity, as if the two Infinities met. Sometimes I snap at people for saying Two and Two make Four as if it were an axiom, instead of being a result attained by rigid proof. And I sometimes lose my temper when they talk of what would happen if there were a Fourth Dimension. I tell them they can get a Fourth Dimension by putting Tetrahedrals for Cartesians, and it makes no more difference than putting Centigrade for Fahrenheit and thereby getting 15° of cold instead of 5° of heat.
Until I went to Harrow, I had a tutor at home, and he taught me to read Virgil as anyone reads Dante, not stopping over every word to consider it as grammar. But this did not assist me there. “Optative Future used where Indicative Future would be required in Direct Oration.” That is my note on Æschylos,Persæ, 360. I remember that my mind was far away at Athens, watching the gusts of passion sweep across the audience when the play recalled the battle they had fought at Salamis seven years before. And my mind came back to Harrow with a jerk at hearing the suave voice of Dr Butler addressing me by name, repeating this, and recommending me to note it down.
In my Cambridge days the Mathematical Tripos and the Classical Tripos were still in their primæval shape. It had gone on for half a century with little change, and lasted until 1882. If you were going in for either of these, you had no examinations (except Little Go) until the middle of your fourth year there, and then came these two Triposes with only four weeks interval between them. The system had worked well, but subjects were enlarged till it became unworkable—Electricity and Magnetism were reckoned as Mathematics, and so on with many other things. Down to 1850 nobody could go into the Classical Tripos unless he had already got honours in the Mathematical: in the next four years, 1851 to 1854, there were about thirty men each year who got honours in both; but in the four years I was there, 1877 to 1880, this average of thirty had fallen to an average of two, and in 1880 I was one of the two. I was a Senior Optime in the Mathematical Tripos and got a bad Third in the Classical—a result that always puzzles me, as I had a considerable knowledge of the Classics even then.
I knew Greek enough at Harrow to get the prize there for Greek epigram, but I did not go seriously into Greek until after I came down from Cambridge. A few years later on, German reviewers were remarking that I knew Greek inscriptions and Greek literature from Homer onwards to the Fathers of the Church and the Byzantine authors, and that nothing escaped me even in neglected writings like the Almagest. I was doing other things as well, and cannot imagine now how I found time for all.
But my interest in the Byzantines was not quite keen enough to satisfy Krumbacher. One day at Munich in 1896 he was advising me to read a book in Russian instead of its translation into French, and I said I knew too little of the language. He fired out—“You cannot read the Russian book? You go to Patmos. Go to Patmos.” I told him I had been to Jericho—or rather to its site—and had not found it very attractive; and Patmos had looked just as unattractive when I had seen it from a ship. But he meant it literally. I should learn good Russian from the monks, and could collate Byzantine manuscripts as well. It really was a first-rate plan, but somehow I did not go to Patmos.
He was remarkable to look at—his hair had turned snow-white when he was only twenty, and he had eyes like coals of fire. In his own line he was unquestionably the greatest man since Ducange; and there at Munich he was a colleague of Furtwaengler, the greatest since Winckelmann in one aspect of archæology. I knew Furtwaengler from 1885, when he was still at Berlin, and Krumbacher from 1891. They both died far too young, at 53 or 54. With a further twenty years of life, they might have achieved far greater things than they had yet attempted. They were unaffected men and never posed, as Mommsen sometimes did when he thought of his resemblance to Voltaire.
Once in Berlin I went to a sitting of the Archaeologische Gesellschaft, 3 March 1896. It was all plain living and high thinking there, and they debated Pheidias and Plato amidst great bursts of Wagner that came in from a concert-hall close by. I have a letter here that I wrote my brother next day—“They manage their meetings in a much more formal way than the people at the Institut at Paris; and they are more long-winded. One of the men last night got his notes in such a muddle that he made nearly all his statements three times over; but nobody seemed to mind.” In my next letter, Dresden, 10 March 1896, I said that I had been to call on Fleckeisen, and described him as “an old man with long white hair, toddling about his study in a dressing-gown.” I regret to see that in another letter I spoke of a society of learned men as “a cellar-ful of beer-barrels.”
Amongst the learned Germans whom I used to meet, some few talked politics quite freely; and I used to hear that everything that Bismarck did was right, and everything that the young Emperor did was wrong. I should like to hear what they are saying about the causes of this War.
I remember the abdication of the Emperor of the French in 1870; and now in 1918, at the abdication of the German Emperor, the feeling of relief is just the same. Both men had kept all Europe in alarm for years before their fall. In turn they had the greatest army on the Continent and a navy that was second to our own; and no one could foresee how they would use their strength, as their foreign policy was all adventure and sensation. There was very little sympathy with France at the disaster of Sedan. It is the fashion now to talk as if we sympathised with France all through. My recollection is that people were mostly against France in 1870 until Paris was besieged: then they realized that Germany was getting dangerous, and began to change their views.
After the war of 1870 the French did not get possession of their Lorraine frontier till the indemnity was paid and the occupying army was withdrawn. Then they fortified it so effectively from Belfort to Verdun that everybody said the Germans would come round through Switzerland or Belgium, if ever they came again. (I remember people saying this, about 1878 and onwards, quite as a matter of course.) Against Switzerland there was the fortress of Besançon, and against Belgium there was supposed to be a line from Verdun to Dunkirk through Lille. But this line never was made effective, and gradually fell into decay. That certainly was no affair of ours in the days of the Two Power standard, when we were building ships to fight the French and Russians. But after the Entente I thought we might request the French to pay attention to their Swiss and Belgian frontiers. No doubt, they could not make as strong a line from Dunkirk to Verdun as from Verdun to Belfort; but the Germans were not likely to embroil themselves by going through Belgium, if they had to face a line on the French frontier there of anything like the same strength as the French line in Lorraine.
One of those learned Germans was making a tour in England five-and-twenty years ago; and I met him at Portsmouth, and went over the Victory with him. He showed much emotion at it all; and when we reached the place where Nelson died, he quite broke down and burst out into tears. And the quartermaster said, “I’m blowed.”
He may have pictured it more vividly than we did, for he was a veteran of 1870, and knew what warfare meant. A great-uncle of mine was on the Impregnable at the battle of Algiers in 1816, and I have heard him say that it was really nauseous to have two hundred killed and wounded all crowded up in such a narrow space.
Unless a naval battle has been fought close by the shore, no landsman can well picture to himself what it was like. Looking down upon the island and the straits of Salamis, I have seen the battle as vividly as Trasimene or Waterloo; but I have never been able to conjure up Trafalgar by thinking of the latitude and longitude that I was in. I have tried it several times and always failed.
There have been many naval battles in the Dardanelles, in ancient times and in the middle ages; but I did not think of these when I was there in 1880. Our fleet had gone up through the straits two years before; and that seemed much more real. People criticised some things that Hornby did, especially his sending ships right up the gulf of Xeros; but everybody seemed quite sure that the strategic point was in the throat of the peninsula, five miles north-east of Gallipoli, not in its toes at Suvla bay and cape Helles, more than twenty and thirty miles south-west. So, being out of date, I imagined that our Gallipoli expedition would try to land near Yenikli-liman.
When people say that the Thermopylæ epitaph would suit Gallipoli, I rather wonder if they see how very suitable it really is. It is not the namby-pamby thing they think, “Go, tell the Spartans, thou that passest by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.” It really is a stinging thing, and the sting is in the tail, the last word of the line. “Tell the Spartans it washere—in an untenable position, with a flank that could be turned—it washerethat, in compliance with their orders, our lives were thrown away.”
In a list of the books here that were acquired before 1846, the German books are the collected works of Goethe, Schiller, Richter (Jean Paul) and Koerner, as well as separate works of theirs, a few things by Niemeyer, Tieck, Werner and Wilmsen, and some translations into German from the Danish and Swedish of Andersen and Bremer. All this, of course, is what is known as literature; and there is nothing at all utilitarian except a volume of travels in Surinam, published at Potsdam in 1782. The later acquisitions show how Germany has changed since 1846. These books are crammed with information, but devoid of literary merit.—No doubt, the recent books were chosen by myself, and the others by departed relatives whose tastes and interests were not the same as mine; but this will not explain the change. There was not the same scope for choice: there were few books then of such appalling industry as those that come out now, and there has not been another Goethe.
It is fifty years since I first travelled in Germany, 1868, and I have watched the later stages of the transformation that had been foretold. “But the Ideal is passing slowly away from the German mind ... and the memories that led their grandsires to contemplate, will urge the youth of the next generation to dare and to act.” Old Bulwer Lytton wrote that in 1834 in hisPilgrims of the Rhine. I remember my father reading it out to me in very early years.
He had a very dexterous way of giving me glowing accounts of places on the Continent, and making me long to go there. And then, whenever I said that I should like to go, he said to me, “Of course, you shall; but it’s no good your going till you can talk to people there.” I commend that dodge to parents whose children are disinclined to learn.
When my brother was at Harrow, my father was dissatisfied at his learning so little German there, but my grandfather took quite another view, 8 February 1863, “I should say, Let him be a proficient in the French language first, for that is spoken nearly all the world over, while German is more a flash thing than useful: all very well, if time permits after learning the more useful. So let him get on with Mathematics and the Classics, for that is what he will gain Honours on (if any) and not the German language: that is merely an accomplishment.”
Foreign languages ought to be begun in nurseries, and not left for schools: all good linguists have begun by learning words in different languages as soon as they could speak. If children are only told that a certain creature is a cat, they will afterwards learn the word ‘chat’ as a translation of the word ‘cat.’ But if they are told that the creature is called ‘cat’ by some people and ‘chat’ by others, they are prepared to find that other people call it ‘katze,’ others ‘gatto,’ and so on. And they connect the creature with its foreign names at once, instead of indirectly through the English name.—However, these nursery lessons are not always a success. I remember a Parisian who learnt her English from an Irish nurse, and always spoke it with a brogue.
Good linguists sometimes get confused, when languages have words with similar sounds but different meanings. Thus, the German ‘nehmen’ sounds like the English ‘name’ and ‘dumm’ like ‘dumb’ and ‘bekommen’ like ‘become.’ A man once said to me at breakfast, “I shall name bacon”: then, seeing that I did not grasp what he had said, he hurriedly corrected it, “Ach, I am dumb. I shall become bacon.”
When I first went to Greece, they still spelled Byron’s name phonetically, Mpairon. They pronounceblike ourv, butmplike ourb—a fact unknown to many of the people who talk about the Mpret of Albania. Similarly, the Spaniards spelled O’Donohue’s name O’Donojo. He was Cuesta’s chief-of-staff in the Peninsula. The veterans of that war picked up the foreign names by hearsay, and usually got them right; but now our veterans can read, they see how foreign names are spelled and mispronounce them sadly. Leekatoo suggests a cockatoo, but really is Le Câteau.
There is always a temptation to turn foreign names into some English words with which we are familiar: we still say Leg-horn for Livorno, though we have dropped Lush-bone for Lisboa, and call it Lisbon now. I was looking for a ship at Devonport, the Hecate, and thought I spotted her; so I asked, “Is that the Hekaty?” and was answered, “She’s the He Cat.” In the gardens here the Gloire de Lorraine begonia is always called the Lower End. I hear people talk of the Cornice as the Cornish road, and make Hague rhyme with ague.
After the Kruger telegramPunchprinted an imaginary letter to the German Emperor (18 January 1896) signed Grandmamma, but attributed on internal evidence to the Duke of York, there being a nautical breeziness about it, e.g. “Solche eine confounded Impertinenz habe ich nie gesehen.” I saw this in Vienna, reprinted in the February number ofProgress, the editor stating explicitly that it was “drollig.” In the ensuing War people on the Continent felt certain that our troops were using Dum-Dum bullets; and I saw a newspaper at Paris which said that we were slaughtering the Boers with our murderous Dam-Dams. And in 1912 or 1913 I saw one there which said that we expressed our highest hopes in singing “God shave the King.”
In looking through the obsolete music here I found the anthem in the good old form which should have been revived in 1910—“God save great George our King”—and also in a later form that seems to be forgotten—“God save Britannia’s King, William, our noble King.” There was also a good deal of dance-music, some “as performed at His Majesty’s balls, Almack’s, and the Court of France,” and some “as danced at Almack’s, the Nobility’s balls, and the Assembly Rooms, Ramsgate.” Judging by the music, the dancing was very animated then: inBeauties of the Ball Roomthe first dance is the Sailor’s Hornpipe. Pop Goes The Weasel is described as “now become so popular in fashionable circles,” and directions are given for dancing it and exclaiming at the right moments “Pop Goes The Weasel.”
Amongst the old pamphlets and sermons here (mostly presented by their authors) there isA Sermon preached in Trinity Church, Cambridge, on Feb. 1, 1857, the Sunday before the Bachelors’ Ball. The text seems inappropriate—“neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.” The sermon is chiefly aimed at candidates for ordination. They are to shun the Bachelors’ Ball, not only for their own sake, but for the sake of others who might be led astray by their example. And it gives an awful instance. “He received a pressing invitation to a public ball.... In that ball-room he found, it is stated, no fewer than six clergymen. To stifle the reproaches of conscience, he went up to those six clergymen, and asked them, one by one, if they thought there could be any harm in attending a public ball.... To sheltertheir own inconsistency, they at once answered that such amusements were perfectly harmless.... That night’s dissipation removed all his former scruples.... He plunged into extravagance, had recourse to gambling, became a bankrupt in his fortunes, perpetrated forgery, administered poison, and at last expiated his crimes upon the scaffold, the precincts of the prison receiving his strangled body, and hell, it is to be feared, receiving his lost soul.”
There is also a volume ofLetters from Abroadby the man who preached that sermon. After a brief residence in France, he knows all about the French. “Like people in a fever, the French complain of everything outside them, whereas the evil is within them. Had they in their churches and schools sound Scriptural teaching, they would be contented. But, being without the knowledge of the Bible,” etc.... “As I come from our Protestant service on Sunday, I meet men and women carrying bundles of firewood, which they have been gathering in the forest. It all arises from their ignorance of God’s Word. Had they Bibles, I might refer them to Num.XV. 36, where Moses asked God what was to be done to a man who was found gathering sticks on the Sabbath; and God Himself answered, Let the man be put to death.”
Then there is a sermon onThe Great Exhibition, preached by a much abler man, 4 May 1851. He also speaks of “our blessing of blessings, the opened Bible,” but is not so sure of its effects. “There is too much reason to apprehend that a vast increase of vice, and Sabbath-breaking, and profaneness, may be added to the iniquity already abounding in our demoralized metropolis ... and foreign visitors may leave our shores worse than when they arrived.”
Writing from Exeter, 23 October 1838, my father says, “I went to hear the Mayor preach on Sunday evening: he had an immense audience, and spoke for about an hour and a half. He holds up the Bible alone as the sole necessary book, condemns every creed and article framed by men, calls every system of religion in the world a money-getting system, etc., etc.” My father kept a copy of some verses on the Mayor, which were very popular in Exeter just then, especially the lines, “on Saturday sells gin to all, | preaches Sunday, | and on Monday, | sitting in judgment in the Hall, | inflicts the fine for fight or fray | caused by the gin of Saturday.”
I can still recall a conversation between my father and an old-fashioned country doctor at a place where we were staying in 1866. I had been readingTom Brown’s Schooldays, and I began to listen attentively, when I heard the doctor denouncing Rugby and speaking of Arnold’s “presumption” in undertaking to bring up other men’s sons when he could not bring up his own: every one of them had turned out badly. My father looked surprised, and mentioned Matthew Arnold. The answer came with several slaps upon the table—“Matthew, indeed! A free thinker, sir, a Free Thinker.” And then the doctor went on to talk of the “impiety” of bishop Colenso in remarking that the Book of Numbers had arranged the Hebrew camp in such a way that the Levites’ quarters would be more than a sabbath-day’s journey from the lavatories.
Colenso had begun his criticisms of the Pentateuch in 1862, and had enraged the partisans of Verbal Inspiration. They could not deny that his conclusions were arithmetically right, and they did just what the Jesuits did in the days of Pascal and hisProvinciales. In 1653 the Pope condemned some doctrines in a book, but mentioned the wrong book—the doctrines were not there. It was really no more than a slip of the pen; but, being in a Papal Bull, it could not be corrected. So the Jesuits cried “témérité” when anybody mentioned it, just as people like this doctor cried “impiety.” These people vindicated Moses as strenuously as Strabo vindicated Homer. They had no suspicion of misreadings in the Hebrew or the Greek, or mistranslations in the English version: they just adopted Burgon’s view, “every book, every chapter, every verse, every word, every syllable, every letter, was the direct utterance of the Most High.” In other words, the Most High would not merely send a message off, but would see that it got through.
Now-a-days superior persons scoff at these benighted folk, but very often seem to be astray in just as dark a night themselves. When I hear dignitaries talking of theFilioqueClause, I sometimes wonder if they know how Shu “proceeded” from Neb-er-Tcher, when that deity transformed himself into a Trinity by the emanation of Tefnut and Shu. The legend is recorded (in Egyptian hieratic) in the papyrus of Nesi-Amsu, which is considerably earlier than the Christian Era. And anyone who wants to know it, will find it printed and translated inArchæologia, vol.LII.
For many years there was a steady sale ofQuestions on Church Historyby my mother’s sister, Emma King, written in 1848 when she was twenty-seven. It begins with the church in Jerusalem, and deals with persecutions, councils, doctrines, heresies, schisms, sects, orders, missions, etc., ending with the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829; and every question is answered with brevity and precision and strictly in accordance with the Thirty Nine Articles. I have spoken of her water-colours in my formerSmall Talk; and she was well informed—knew Hebrew and Italian and many other things—but published no more books. She married a Fellow of Trinity, who accepted one of the College livings; and in that country Vicarage she spent the best part of her time in making garments for the poor. She did, however, find time to expurgate theIngoldsby Legends, thus rendering them presentable at Penny Readings. I have her copy with her pencillings. ‘There’s a cry and a shout and a deuce of a rout’—fordeuce of areadterrible. ‘The Devil must be in that little Jackdaw’—forThe DevilreadA Demon. And so on.
Like many books of that period, hers was “for Young Persons”. Others were “for Young Ladies,” not differing much from these except in the Use of the Globes, which was a subject for Young Ladies only. Few people realize how wide the subject was. ‘What is whalebone?’ ‘Who were the Sirens?’ ‘What are the properties of dogs?’ There are questions on Cetus, Eridanus and Canis on the celestial globe: pages 430, 431 in Butler’sExercises on the Globes, 11th edition, 1827. On the terrestrial globe (page 40) it asks, ‘What is the difference of latitude between the places where Burns was born and Lazarus was raised from the dead?’
In my early years there were books “suitable for Sunday reading.” If the Young Persons’ books were milk for babes, these books were the slops. I have several that were given to me then; and withSunday echoes in week-day hoursthere is a letter from the man who gave it. He said that he was sure I should enjoy it, as his own children had enjoyed it so very much indeed. After reading it, I wondered if they really had. Happily for me, my father said authoritatively that the Continental Bradshaw was a Sunday book, and so also Murray’s Guides. I thus had pleasant Sunday afternoons, travelling in my easy chair.
Two friends of my father’s bought Livings in the Church, and consulted him about the prices of the Next Presentations and Advowsons that were offered to them. Here is the offer of a parish adjoining this, 17 May 1853, “The sum asked is £2250, of which £1250 may remain on mortgage of the Advowson at 3½ per cent.... The present incumbent is in his 67th year.” These men were of a sort that any parish would be glad to get: kindly, courteous, generous, with considerable means and very considerable learning—one had taken a First in Greats and the other had been a Wrangler. They deserved the fattest of Livings, and yet they had to buy; and they never had any preferment, though Canonries were given to those two men who preached the sermons (that I have quoted) on dances and the opened Bible. Of course, the traffic in Livings is indefensible in theory, but in practice it may often lead to happier results than public or official patronage.
There were some letters here that I destroyed, as they mentioned many people’s names, and compromised them. Somebody wanted a seat in Parliament, and was prepared to pay for it, if he could get it cheap. (This was nearly seventy years ago.) Inquiries were made in various boroughs of bad repute, and the replies were pretty much the same. ‘Bribery and corruption are intolerable things, and ought to be put down; but, as men of the world, we have to take things as they are. The seat will certainly be sold, and may as well be sold to you as sold to anybody else. It probably will cost you so-and-so.’ The prices varied very much, not having an open market to control them.
The sale of seats was hindered by prospects of disfranchisement. These offers all stipulated that, whatever happened, there must be no petition. Things would come out on petition that would lead to a commission; and the commissioners would find out things enough to make disfranchisement a certainty. And that would be the death of the goose that laid those golden eggs.
After the general election of 1865 one of the commissioners was dining with us, and after dinner he told my father what he thought about it all: not in the measured terms of his report, but quite colloquially. I learnt a lot of practical politics that night before I was sent off to bed.
At the general election of 1868 the Liberal party was committed to disestablishing the Irish church; and many good Liberals disapproved of this, as they thought that disestablishment was not a matter for party politics at all. A county constituency (not very far from Devon) was in the hands of Liberals of that sort; and they refused strong candidates and picked out one who was so weak that he was sure to lose the seat. He lost it; and scrupulous people found fault with them for taking his money (£3000, I believe) when they knew quite well that he would be defeated.
These men cared more for Church than State, and thought the end might justify the means; but I have known seats lost without excuse. A breezy sailor was looking for a seat in 1885, and tried a London constituency in which I had a vote. He was a very strong candidate; but the local Conservative Association would not adopt him unless he paid them £400 a year. I cannot say (verbatim) where he told them all to go to; but he went elsewhere himself and was elected. They got their £400 a year from a nincompoop who lost the seat.
I remember a City man who was Vice-Chairman of one of the biggest undertakings there, but found he had no chance of being Chairman unless he was in Parliament—they wanted someone who could put their views before the House. He was a first-rate businessman, but not a showy speaker; so he got a brilliant young barrister to join him in contesting a borough with two seats. He paid the second candidate’s expenses, only “it must be understood that in his canvassing for himself, he of course supports me as senior Liberal candidate.” I remember that young barrister then—and also as a Judge long afterwards—and he was much too big a man to be subordinate to anyone. He made such brilliant speeches there that the senior Liberal candidate was totally eclipsed.
But his speeches did not really make much difference. A man writes to my father, 7 July 1864, “I was twice solicited to contest this most rotten borough, and will undertake to say that, whatever*****may do, the best bidder will gain the day. I never was so disgusted with any place. They stipulate for 2 or 3000land leave you to be prepared to double this sum or more. Depend upon it, nothing but money will do, and with a free use of that, all is safe.”
Two incidents in that election are imprinted on my mind.—The senior Liberal candidate was past the prime of life, but very tall and dignified, with a charming face and silvery hair, which really was a wig. Not having stood for Parliament before, he got a little flurried on the hustings; and, meaning to wave his hat, he waved his wig as well.—A voter happened to be coachman to a strong supporter of the other side, who was at his London house just then. The coachman said it was “as much as his place was worth” to ask his employer for leave to go down to record his vote. And, with very little scratching of his head, that man was able to reckon up, within a pound or two, how much his place was worth.
Barefaced bribery is not a bad thing, in its way. The voter got hard cash, and the candidate provided it; whereas the voter only gets wild promises now, and these always cost the country a good deal, even if they do no good to anybody. Moreover, when the voter could be bought, there was not the same necessity for cramming him with lies. With his pocket full of money and no illusions in his mind, he went gaily to the poll, feeling that it was all a festival at which he was an honoured guest. And in very many places it was very little else.
An old friend of the family writes to my mother from Brighton, 6 July 1841, “I was at Shoreham on Saturday. During the heat of the polling the scene was more amusing and lively than what you saw here. Lord Howard (who by the bye had on a shocking raffish dirty white hat) had between thirty to forty men and boys drest in white with pink bands round their bodies with ‘Howard for ever’ on them, shoulders and legs and hats also decorated with pink ribbons, and each with a wand with flag attached. There were also eight with huge flags, and two bands of music similarly drest. They altogether formed a very pretty tableau. Their province was to meet the voters coming up at the bridge, then form in procession and escort them to the polling booths. Sir Charles Burrell’s were in white with orange decorations: Goring’s white with red and ethereal blue. They of course had music, and neither party was idle: so what with four bands of music, a multitude of flags, vociferous cheers, horrid yells and groans, and now and then a shindy, it made as spirited and lively a contest as one would wish to see.”
Writing from Reigate on Sunday 13 May 1849, my father says, “I walked over to Bletchingley, a rotten borough and much gone to decay, and there I went to church. With the exception of about twenty well-dressed people, the congregation was composed of hard-featured rough farmers with lots of young girls and urchins belonging apparently to the parish school: the choir was a fiddle, bass-viol and clarionet; and every body and thing looking as uncouth as in the most remote districts.” Bletchingley was one of the rotten boroughs that were disfranchised by the Reform Bill of 1832. Till then it had two members. Shoreham had two members until 1885.
He came up to London from Carshalton on the morning of 10 April 1848 and “met Chartists all round Kennington.” Among my family relics I have a truncheon: there were 150,000 special constables then, and they stopped any Chartism. But the Charter itself seems harmless now: we have accepted five of its six points, and might very well accept the other one—annual parliaments. If we had general elections every year, they would soon cease to be such great events, and such great nuisances; and there might be greater continuity in our public policy. A moderate loss of seats would warn the Ministers, if they were taking a wrong course; and then they probably would alter course at once, instead of keeping on for several years, and then losing so many seats that they are superseded and their policy reversed.
We badly need a word (say Pleistarchy) for government by majority. We call it Democracy, but use that word in quite another sense. The arguments for democracy are embodied in stock phrases, ‘the will of the people,’ ‘vox populi,’ and so on, all implying that the people or populus or dêmos is always going to be unanimous, just like a jury. It may be necessary that the will of fifty-one should thwart the will of forty-nine; but it cannot be justified by saying that the will of the people must prevail, as that means the will of the whole hundred, if it means anything at all. We should come nearer to democracy by stipulating for majorities of two-thirds or three-fourths, as in America; but we ought to have majorities of nine-tenths or nineteen-twentieths before we talk about democracy here. And we might talk less nonsense, if we had a word like Pleistarchy expressing what we really mean.
Corruption was not confined to politics. A friend of my father’s writes to him from Torquay, 29 January 1845, about a younger brother who was causing him anxiety. “You perhaps are aware that I have endeavoured to obtain him a cadetship in the East India Company’s service.... I have been thinking that his best course is to purchase the appointment I have mentioned. These things are to be done, and are daily done, and it is far better for him to pay £500 or £600 than continue in his present course of life. I have strained all the efforts in my power with political friends, but in vain, and there is now but one course left—his purchasing the appointment. I am well aware that it is illegal, but there is little doubt that it can be done.”
Another friend also had a younger brother who caused him much anxiety, and he unburdens himself in his letters to my father—Dick has been getting drunk, Dick has been making love, Dick has been borrowing money, Dick is dragging our good name in the mire. Thirty years afterwards he writes, “The assizes are just over, and Richard has tried the cases here with great ability and dignity.” I need hardly say that I have changed his name.
There is a letter to my father from a friend of his who had just been made a judge—“I like my new occupation hugely. Whilst removing all strain and pressure, it gives the mind full play and exercise, and up to the present time it seems to suit body as well as mind.” Speaking of the necessity of going in procession in his robes, another one exclaims, “I often long to give a Whoop and cut a Caper in the midst of this Tomfoolery.”
Some of these letters to my father are very outspoken in their criticism of distinguished lawyers. Thus, 18 June 1876, “That ignoramus, the Attorney General, whose opinion I would not take on the title to an ant-heap....” Again, 20 December 1868, “Think of Collier being a judge. He was a capital caricaturist on circuit, and made his best speeches in cases of breach of promiseet id genus. But beyond that....” My father’s own criticisms were much more restrained. He writes to my grandfather, 18 July 1850, “Yesterday morning I saw Wilde take his seat as Lord Chancellor. He looked rather confused: he cannot possibly know much about Equity, and how he is to get on I cannot understand.”
In 1920 the parish-clerk of Lustleigh was convicted of stamping an insurance-card with stamps that had been used on another insurance-card the year before. Notwithstanding his good character, he was sentenced to nine months imprisonment; and this sentence was upheld by the Court of Criminal Appeal in London. The sentence was manifestly out of all proportion to the crime. The loss could not amount to more than 15s.2d.on a card, even if all the stamps on it were used a second time; and, if nine months imprisonment is commensurate with 15s.2d., I cannot conceive what punishments would be sufficient for big frauds of £50,000 or £100,000 that bring scores of families to destitution. The 15s.2d.would be public money; and here was the Law fussing about a loss of shillings at a time when hundreds and thousands of pounds of public money were being obtained all round on the flimsiest of false pretences, the Law being satisfied if some incompetent official had been bamboozled into sanctioning the payment.
There is, of course, a theory that the punishment of crimes should be proportionate to the difficulty of their detection, the chances of immunity being counterbalanced by the risks of heavy punishment. But with these insurance-cards there is more difficulty in committing the crime than in detecting it. The cards are collected every half-year; and, if the collection is efficient, there are not any cards about from which old stamps can be detached. I suppose the Legislature understands the workings of the criminal mind, but I sometimes wonder whether men can be deterred from crime by dread of seven years penal servitude, if they are not deterred by dread of five. If they reckon things up at all, they probably pick out the biggest crime they can commit for any specified sentence—“may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb”—and then act accordingly.
Fines would be far better than imprisonment in very many cases, that is, substantial fines with time allowed for payment by instalments. If this man had been fined £50, it would have helped the public revenue. As it was, the public had to maintain him for nine months and stopped his doing any useful work—and he was a hard-working and pains-taking man. Prisons are expensive things; and many of our prisons might be closed and a big revenue raised from fines, but for this silly craze for sending everyone to gaol.