Thebelief in phantoms, ghosts, or spirits, has frequently been discussed in connection with speculations on the origin of religion. According to Mr. Spencer (‘Principles of Sociology’) ‘the first traceable conception of a supernatural being is the conception of a ghost.’ Even Fetichism is ‘an extension of the ghost theory.’ The soul of the Fetich ‘in common with supernatural agents at large, is originally the double of a dead man.’ How do we get this notion—‘the double of a dead man?’ Through dreams. In the Old Testament we are told: ‘God came to’ Abimelech, Laban, Solomon, and others ‘in a dream’; also that ‘the angel of the Lord’ appeared to Joseph ‘in a dream.’ That is to say, these men dreamed that God came to them. So the savage, who dreams of his dead acquaintance, believes he has been visited by the dead man’s spirit. This belief in ghosts is confirmed, Mr. Spencer argues, by other phenomena. The savage who faints from the effect of a wound sustained in fight looks just like the dead man beside him. The spirit of the wounded man returns after a long or short period of absence: why should the spirit of the other not do likewise? If reanimation follows comatose states, why should it not follow death? Insensibility is but an affair of time. All the modes of preserving the dead, in the remotest ages, evince the belief in casual separation of body and soul, and of their possible reunion.
Take another theory. Comte tells us there is a primary tendency in man ‘to transfer the sense of his own nature, in the radical explanation of all phenomena whatever.’ Writing in the same key, Schopenhauer calls man ‘a metaphysical animal.’ He is speaking of the need man feels of a theory, in regard to the riddle of existence, which forces itself upon his notice; ‘a need arising from the consciousness that behind the physical in the world, there is a metaphysical something permanent as the foundation of constant change.’ Though not here alluding to the ghost theory, this bears indirectly on the conception, as I shall proceed to show.
We need not entangle ourselves in the vexed question of innate ideas, nor inquire whether the principle of casuality is, as Kant supposed, like space and time, a form of intuition givena priori. That every change has a cause must necessarily (without being thus formulated) be one of the initial beliefs of conscious beings far lower in the scale than man, whether derived solely from experience or otherwise. The reed that shakes is obviously shaken by the wind. But the riddle of the wind also forces itself into notice; and man explains this by transferring to the wind ‘the sense of his own nature.’ Thunderstorms, volcanic disturbances, ocean waves, running streams, the motions of the heavenly bodies, had to be accounted for as involving change. And the natural—the primitive—explanation was by reference to life, analogous, if not similar, to our own. Here then, it seems to me, we have the true origin of the belief in ghosts.
Take an illustration which supports this view. While sitting in my garden the other day a puff of wind blew a lady’s parasol across the lawn. It rolled away close to a dog lying quietly in the sun. The dog looked at it for a moment, but seeing nothing to account for its movements, barked nervously, put its tail between its legs, and ran away, turning occasionally to watch and again bark, with every sign of fear.
This was animism. The dog must have accounted for the eccentric behaviour of the parasol by endowing it with an uncanny spirit. The horse that shies at inanimate objects by the roadside, and will sometimes dash itself against a tree or a wall, is actuated by a similar superstition. Is there any essential difference between this belief of the dog or horse and the belief of primitive man? I maintain that an intuitive animistic tendency (which Mr. Spencer repudiates), and not dreams, lies at the root of all spiritualism. Would Mr. Spencer have had us believe that the dog’s fear of the rolling parasol was a logical deduction from its canine dreams? This would scarcely elucidate the problem. The dog and the horse share apparently Schopenhauer’s metaphysical propensity with man.
The familiar aphorism of Statius:Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor, points to the relation of animism first to the belief in ghosts, thence to Polytheism, and ultimately to Monotheism. I must apologise to those of the transcendental school who, like Max Müller for instance (Introduction to the ‘Science of Religion’), hold that we have ‘a primitive intuition of God’; which, after all, the professor derives, like many others, from the ‘yearning for something that neither sense nor reason can supply’; and from the assumption that ‘there was in the heart of man from the very first a feeling of incompleteness, of weakness, of dependency, &c.’ All this, I take it, is due to the aspirations of a much later creature than the ‘Pithecanthropus erectus,’ to whom we here refer.
Probably spirits and ghosts were originally of an evil kind. Sir John Lubbock (‘The Origin of Civilisation’) says: ‘The baying of the dog to the moon is as much an act of worship as some ceremonies which have been so described by travellers.’ I think he would admit that fear is the origin of the worship. In his essay on ‘Superstition,’ Hume writes: ‘Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are the true sources of superstition.’ Also ‘in such a state of mind, infinite unknown evils are dreaded from unknown agents.’
Man’s impotence to resist the forces of nature, and their terrible ability to injure him, would inspire a sense of terror; which in turn would give rise to the twofold notion of omnipotence and malignity. The savage of the present day lives in perpetual fear of evil spirits; and the superstitious dread, which I and most others have suffered, is inherited from our savage ancestry. How much further back we must seek it may be left to the sage philosophers of the future.
Thenext winter we lay for a couple of months off Chinhai, which we had stormed, blockading the mouth of the Ningpo river. Here, I regret to think, I committed an act which has often haunted my conscience as a crime; although I had frequently promised the captain of a gun a glass of grog to let me have a shot, and was mightily pleased if death and destruction rewarded my aim.
Off Chinhai, lorchers and fast sailing junks laden with merchandise would try to run the blockade before daylight. And it sometimes happened that we youngsters had a long chase in a cutter to overhaul them. This meant getting back to a nine or ten o’clock breakfast at the end of the morning’s watch; equivalent to five or six hours’ duty on an empty stomach.
One cold morning I had a hard job to stop a small junk. The men were sweating at their oars like galley slaves, and muttering curses at the apparent futility of their labour. I had fired a couple of shots from a ‘brown Bess’—the musket of the day—through the fugitive’s sails; and fearing punishment if I let her escape, I next aimed at the boat herself. Down came the mainsail in a crack. When I boarded our capture, I found I had put a bullet through the thigh of the man at the tiller. Boys are not much troubled with scruples about bloodguiltiness, and not unfrequently are very cruel, for cruelty as a rule (with exceptions) mostly proceeds from thoughtlessness. But when I realised what I had done, and heard the wretched man groan, I was seized with remorse for what, at a more hardened stage, I should have excused on the score of duty.
It was during this blockade that the accident, which I have already alluded to, befell my dear protector, Jack Johnson.
One night, during his and my middle watch, the forecastle sentries hailed a large sampan, like a Thames barge, drifting down stream and threatening to foul us. Sir Frederick Nicholson, the officer of the watch, ordered Johnson to take the cutter and tow her clear.
I begged leave to go with him. Sir Frederick refused, for he at once suspected mischief. The sampan was reached and diverted just before she swung athwart our bows. But scarcely was this achieved, when an explosion took place. My friend was knocked over, and one or two of the men fell back into the cutter. This is what had happened: Johnson finding no one in the sampan, cautiously raised one of the deck hatches with a boat-hook before he left the cutter. The mine (for such it proved) was so arranged that examination of this kind drew a lighted match on to the magazine, which instantly exploded.
Poor Jack! what was my horror when we got him on board! Every trace of his handsome features was gone. He was alive, and that seemed to be all. In a few minutes his head and face swelled so that all was a round black charred ball. One could hardly see where the eyes were, buried beneath the powder-ingrained and incrusted flesh.
For weeks, at night, I used to sit on a chest near his hammock, listening for his slightest movement, too happy if he called me for something I could get him. In time he recovered, and was invalided home, and I lost my dear companion and protector. A couple of years afterwards I had the happiness to dine with him on board another ship in Portsmouth, no longer in the midshipman’s berth, but in the wardroom.
Twice during this war, the ‘Blonde’ was caught in a typhoon. The first time was in waters now famous, but then unknown, the Gulf of Liau-tung, in full sight of China’s great wall. We were twenty-four hours battened down, and under storm staysails. The ‘Blenheim,’ with Captain Elliott our plenipotentiary on board, was with us, and the one circumstance left in my memory is the sight of a line-of-battle ship rolling and pitching so that one caught sight of the whole of her keel from stem to stern as if she had been a fishing smack. We had been wintering in the Yellow Sea, and at the time I speak of were on a foraging expedition round the Liau-tung peninsula. Those who have followed the events of the Japanese war will have noticed on the map, not far north of Ta-lien-wan in the Korean Bay, three groups of islands. So little was the geography of these parts then known, that they had no place on our charts. On this very occasion, one group was named after Captain Elliott, one was called the Bouchier Islands, and the other the Blonde Islands. The first surveying of the two latter groups, and the placing of them upon the map, was done by our naval instructor, and he always took me with him as his assistant.
Our second typhoon was while we were at anchor in Hong Kong harbour. Those who have knowledge only of the gales, however violent, of our latitudes, have no conception of what wind-force can mount to. To be the toy of it is enough to fill the stoutest heart with awe. The harbour was full of transports, merchant ships, opium clippers, besides four or five men-of-war, and a steamer belonging to the East India Company—the first steamship I had ever seen.
The coming of a typhoon is well known to the natives at least twenty-four hours beforehand, and every preparation is made for it. Boats are dragged far up the beach; buildings even are fortified for resistance. Every ship had laid out its anchors, lowered its yards, and housed its topmasts. We had both bowers down, with cables paid out to extreme length. The danger was either in drifting on shore or, what was more imminent, collision. When once the tornado struck us there was nothing more to be done; no men could have worked on deck. The seas broke by tons over all; boats beached as described were lifted from the ground, and hurled, in some instances, over the houses. The air was darkened by the spray.
But terrible as was the raging of wind and water, far more awful was the vain struggle for life of the human beings who succumbed to it. In a short time almost all the ships except the men-of-war, which were better provided with anchors, began to drift from their moorings. Then wreck followed wreck. I do not think the ‘Blonde’ moved; but from first to last we were threatened with the additional weight and strain of a drifting vessel. Had we been so hampered our anchorage must have given way. As a single example of the force of a typhoon, the ‘Phlegethon’ with three anchors down, and engines working at full speed, was blown past us out of the harbour.
One tragic incident I witnessed, which happened within a few fathoms of the ‘Blonde.’ An opium clipper had drifted athwart the bow of a large merchantman, which in turn was almost foul of us. In less than five minutes the clipper sank. One man alone reappeared on the surface. He was so close, that from where I was holding on and crouching under the lee of the mainmast I could see the expression of his face. He was a splendidly built man, and his strength and activity must have been prodigious. He clung to the cable of the merchantman, which he had managed to clasp. As the vessel reared between the seas he gained a few feet before he was again submerged. At last he reached the hawse-hole. Had he hoped, in spite of his knowledge, to find it large enough to admit his body? He must have known the truth; and yet he struggled on. Did he hope that, when thus within arms’ length of men in safety, some pitying hand would be stretched out to rescue him,—a rope’s end perhaps flung out to haul him inboard? Vain desperate hope! He looked upwards: an imploring look. Would Heaven be more compassionate than man? A mountain of sea towered above his head; and when again the bow was visible, the man was gone for ever.
Before taking leave of my seafaring days, I must say one word about corporal punishment. Sir Thomas Bouchier was a good sailor, a gallant officer, and a kind-hearted man; but he was one of the old school. Discipline was his watchword, and he endeavoured to maintain it by severity. I dare say that, on an average, there was a man flogged as often as once a month during the first two years the ‘Blonde’ was in commission. A flogging on board a man-of-war with a ‘cat,’ the nine tails of which were knotted, and the lashes of which were slowly delivered, up to the four dozen, at the full swing of the arm, and at the extremity of lash and handle, was very severe punishment. Each knot brought blood, and the shock of the blow knocked the breath out of a man with an involuntary ‘Ugh!’ however stoically he bore the pain.
I have seen many a bad man flogged for unpardonable conduct, and many a good man for a glass of grog too much. My firm conviction is that the bad man was very little the better; the good man very much the worse. The good man felt the disgrace, and was branded for life. His self-esteem was permanently maimed, and he rarely held up his head or did his best again. Besides which,—and this is true of all punishment—any sense of injustice destroys respect for the punisher. Still I am no sentimentalist; I have a contempt for, and even a dread of, sentimentalism. For boy housebreakers, and for ruffians who commit criminal assaults, the rod or the lash is the only treatment.
A comic piece of insubordination on my part recurs to me in connection with flogging. About the year 1840 or 1841, a midshipman on the Pacific station was flogged. I think the ship was the ‘Peak.’ The event created some sensation, and was brought before Parliament. Two frigates were sent out to furnish a quorum of post-captains to try the responsible commander. The verdict of the court-martial was a severe reprimand. This was, of course, nuts to every midshipman in the service.
Shortly after it became known I got into a scrape for laughing at, and disobeying the orders of, our first-lieutenant,—the head of the executive on board a frigate. As a matter of fact, the orders were ridiculous, for the said officer was tipsy. Nevertheless, I was reported, and had up before the captain. ‘Old Tommy’ was, or affected to be, very angry. I am afraid I was very ‘cheeky.’ Whereupon Sir Thomas did lose his temper, and threatened to send for the boatswain to tie me up and give me a dozen,—not on the back, but where the back leaves off. Undismayed by the threat, and mindful of the episode of the ‘Peak’ (?) I looked the old gentleman in the face, and shrilly piped out, ‘It’s as much as your commission is worth, sir.’ In spite of his previous wrath, he was so taken aback by my impudence that he burst out laughing, and, to hide it, kicked me out of the cabin.
After another severe attack of fever, and during a long convalescence, I was laid up at Macao, where I enjoyed the hospitality of Messrs. Dent and of Messrs. Jardine and Matheson. Thence I was invalided home, and took my passage to Bombay in one of the big East India tea-ships. As I was being carried up the side in the arms of one of the boatmen, I overheard another exclaim: ‘Poor little beggar. He’ll never see land again!’
The only other passenger was Colonel Frederick Cotton, of the Madras Engineers, one of a distinguished family. He, too, had been through the China campaign, and had also broken down. We touched at Manila, Batavia, Singapore, and several other ports in the Malay Archipelago, to take in cargo. While that was going on, Cotton, the captain, and I made excursions inland. Altogether I had a most pleasant time of it till we reached Bombay.
My health was now re-established; and after a couple of weeks at Bombay, where I lived in a merchant’s house, Cotton took me to Poonah and Ahmadnagar; in both of which places I stayed with his friends, and messed with the regiments. Here a copy of the ‘Times’ was put into my hands; and I saw a notice of the death of my father.
After a fortnight’s quarantine at La Valetta, where two young Englishmen—one an Oxford man—shared the same rooms in the fort with me, we three returned to England; and (I suppose few living people can say the same) travelled from Naples to Calais before there was a single railway on the Continent.
At the end of two months’ leave in England I was appointed to the ‘Caledonia,’ flagship at Plymouth. Sir Thomas Bouchier had written to the Admiral, Sir Edward Codrington, of Navarino fame (whose daughter Sir Thomas afterwards married), giving me ‘a character.’ Sir Edward sent for me, and was most kind. He told me I was to go to the Pacific in the first ship that left for South America, which would probably be in a week or two; and he gave me a letter to his friend, Admiral Thomas, who commanded on that station.
About this time, and for a year or two later, the relations between England and America were severely strained by what was called ‘the Oregon question.’ The dispute was concerning the right of ownership of the mouth of the Columbia river, and of Vancouver’s Island. The President as well as the American people took the matter up very warmly; and much discretion was needed to avert the outbreak of hostilities.
In Sir Edward’s letter, which he read out and gave to me open, he requested Admiral Thomas to put me into any ship ‘that was likely to see service’; and quoted a word or two from my dear old captain Sir Thomas, which would probably have given me a lift.
The prospect before me was brilliant. What could be more delectable than the chance of a war? My fancy pictured all sorts of opportunities, turned to the best account,—my seniors disposed of, and myself, with a pair of epaulets, commanding the smartest brig in the service.
Alack-a-day! what a climb down from such high flights my life has been. The ship in which I was to have sailed to the west was suddenly countermanded to the east. She was to leave for China the following week, and I was already appointed to her, not even as a ‘super.’
My courage and my ambition were wrecked at a blow. The notion of returning for another three years to China, where all was now peaceful and stale to me, the excitement of the war at an end, every port reminding me of my old comrades, visions of renewed fevers and horrible food,—were more than I could stand.
I instantly made up my mind to leave the Navy. It was a wilful, and perhaps a too hasty, impulse. But I am impulsive by nature; and now that my father was dead, I fancied myself to a certain extent my own master. I knew moreover, by my father’s will, that I should not be dependent upon a profession. Knowledge of such a fact has been the ruin of many a better man than I. I have no virtuous superstitions in favour of poverty—quite the reverse—but I am convinced that the rich man, who has never had to earn his position or his living, is more to be pitied and less respected than the poor man whose comforts certainly, if not his bread, have depended on his own exertions.
My mother had a strong will of her own, and I could not guess what line she might take. I also apprehended the opposition of my guardians. On the whole, I opined a woman’s heart would be the most suitable for an appealad misericordiam. So I pulled out the agony stop, and worked the pedals of despair with all the anguish at my command.
‘It was easy enough for her torevel in luxuryand consign me to a life worse than aconvict’s. But how wouldshelike to live onsalt junk, to keepnight watches, to have to cut up her blankets forponchos(I knew she had never heard the word, and that it would tell accordingly), to save her from beingfrozen to death? How wouldshelike to be mast-headed when a ship was rolling gunwale under? As to the wishes of my guardians, weretheir feelingsto be considered before mine? I should like to see Lord Rosebery or Lord Spencer in my place! They’d very soon wish they had a mother who &c. &c.’
When my letter was finished I got leave to go ashore to post it. Feeling utterly miserable, I had my hair cut; and, rendered perfectly reckless by my appearance, I consented to have what was left of it tightly curled with a pair of tongs. I cannot say that I shared in any sensible degree the pleasure which this operation seemed to give to the artist. But when I got back to the ship the sight of my adornment kept my messmates in an uproar for the rest of the afternoon.
Whether the touching appeal to my mother produced tears, or of what kind, matters little; it effectually determined my career. Before my new ship sailed for China, I was home again, and in full possession of my coveted freedom as a civilian.
Itwas settled that after a course of three years at a private tutor’s I was to go to Cambridge. The life I had led for the past three years was not the best training for the fellow-pupil of lads of fifteen or sixteen who had just left school. They were much more ready to follow my lead than I theirs, especially as mine was always in the pursuit of pleasure.
I was first sent to Mr. B.’s, about a couple of miles from Alnwick. Before my time, Alnwick itself was considered out of bounds. But as nearly half the sin in this world consists in being found out, my companions and I managed never to commit any in this direction.
We generally returned from the town with a bottle of some noxious compound called ‘port’ in our pockets, which was served out in our ‘study’ at night, while I read aloud the instructive adventures of Mr. Thomas Jones. We were, of course, supposed to employ these late hours in preparing our work for the morrow. One boy only protested that, under the combined seductions of the port and Miss Molly Seagrim, he could never make his verses scan.
Another of our recreations was poaching. From my earliest days I was taught to shoot, myself and my brothers being each provided with his little single-barrelled flint and steel ‘Joe Manton.’ At — we were surrounded by grouse moors on one side, and by well-preserved coverts on the other. The grouse I used to shoot in the evening while they fed amongst the corn stooks; for pheasants and hares, I used to get the other pupils to walk through the woods, while I with a gun walked outside. Scouts were posted to look out for keepers.
Did our tutor know? Of course he knew. But think of the saving in the butcher’s bill! Besides which, Mr. B. was otherwise preoccupied; he was in love with Mrs. B. I say ‘in love,’ for although I could not be sure of it then, (having no direct experience of theamantium iræ,) subsequent observation has persuaded me that their perpetual quarrels could mean nothing else. This was exceedingly favourable to the independence of Mr. B.’s pupils. But when asked by Mr. Ellice how I was getting on, I was forced in candour to admit that I was in a fair way to forget all I ever knew.
By the advice of Lord Spencer I was next placed under the tuition of one of the minor canons of Ely. The Bishop of Ely—Dr. Allen—had been Lord Spencer’s tutor, hence his elevation to the see. The Dean—Dr. Peacock, of algebraic and Trinity College fame—was good enough to promise ‘to keep an eye’ on me. Lord Spencer himself took me to Ely; and there I remained for two years. They were two very important years of my life. Having no fellow pupil to beguile me, I was the more industrious. But it was not from the better acquaintance with ancient literature that I mainly benefited,—it was from my initiation to modern thought. I was a constant guest at the Deanery; where I frequently met such men as Sedgwick, Airey the Astronomer-Royal, Selwyn, Phelps the Master of Sydney, Canon Heaviside the master of Haileybury, and many other friends of the Dean’s, distinguished in science, literature, and art. Here I heard discussed opinions on these subjects by some of their leading representatives. Naturally, as many of them were Churchmen, conversation often turned on the bearing of modern science, of geology especially if Sedgwick were of the party, upon Mosaic cosmogony, or Biblical exegesis generally.
The knowledge of these learned men, the lucidity with which they expressed their views, and the earnestness with which they defended them, captivated my attention, and opened to me a new world of surpassing interest and gravity.
What startled me most was the spirit in which a man of Sedgwick’s intellectual power protested against the possible encroachments of his own branch of science upon the orthodox tenets of the Church. Just about this time an anonymous book appeared, which, though long since forgotten, caused no slight disturbance amongst dogmatic theologians. The tendency of this book, ‘Vestiges of the Creation,’ was, or was then held to be, antagonistic to the arguments from design. Familiar as we now are with the theory of evolution, such a work as the ‘Vestiges’ would no more stir theodium theologicumthan Franklin’s kite. Sedgwick, however, attacked it with a vehemence and a rancour that would certainly have roasted its author had the professor held the office of Grand Inquisitor.
Though incapable of forming any opinion as to the scientific merits of such a book, or of Hugh Miller’s writings, which he also attacked upon purely religious grounds, I was staggered by the fact that the Bible could possibly be impeached, or that it was not profanity to defend it even. Was it not the ‘Word of God’? And if so, how could any theories of creation, any historical, any philological researches, shake its eternal truth?
Day and night I pondered over this new revelation. I bought the books—the wicked books—which nobody ought to read. TheIndex Expurgatoriusbecame my guide for books to be digested. I laid hands on every heretical work I could hear of. By chance I made the acquaintance of a young man who, together with his family, were Unitarians. I got, and devoured, Channing’s works. I found a splendid copy of Voltaire in the Holkham library, and hunted through the endless volumes, till I came to the ‘Dialogues Philosophiques.’ The world is too busy, fortunately, to disturb its peace with such profane satire, such withering sarcasm as flashes through an ‘entretien’ like that between ‘Frère Rigolet’ and ‘L’Empereur de la Chine.’ Every French man of letters knows it by heart; but it would wound our English susceptibilities were I to cite it here. Then, too, the impious paraphrase of the Athanasian Creed, with its terrible climax, from the converting Jesuit: ‘Or vous voyez bien . . . qu’un homme qui ne croit pas cette histoire doit être brûlé dans ce monde ci, et dans l’autre.’ To which ‘L’Empereur’ replies: ‘Ça c’est clair comme le jour.’
Could an ignorant youth, fevered with curiosity and the first goadings of the questioning spirit, resist such logic, such scorn, such scathing wit, as he met with here?
Then followed Rousseau; ‘Emile’ became my favourite. Froude’s ‘Nemesis of Faith’ I read, and many other books of a like tendency. Passive obedience, blind submission to authority, was never one of my virtues, and once my faith was shattered, I knew not where to stop—what to doubt, what to believe. If the injunction to ‘prove all things’ was anything more than an empty apophthegm, inquiry, in St. Paul’s eyes at any rate, could not be sacrilege.
It was not happiness I sought,—not peace of mind at least; for assuredly my thirst for knowledge, for truth, brought me anything but peace. I never was more restless, or, at times, more unhappy. Shallow, indeed, must be the soul that can lightly sever itself from beliefs which lie at the roots of our moral, intellectual, and emotional being, sanctified too by associations of our earliest love and reverence. I used to wander about the fields, and sit for hours in sequestered spots, longing for some friend, some confidant to take counsel with. I knew no such friend. I did not dare to speak of my misgivings to others. In spite of my earnest desire for guidance, for more light, the strong grip of childhood’s influences was impossible to shake off. I could not rid my conscience of the sin of doubt.
It is this difficulty, this primary dependence on others, which develops into the child’s first religion, that perpetuates the infantile character of human creeds; and, what is worse, generates the hideous bigotry which justifies that sad reflection of Lucretius: ‘Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum!’
Toturn again to narrative, and to far less serious thoughts. The last eighteen months before I went to Cambridge, I was placed, or rather placed myself, under the tuition of Mr. Robert Collyer, rector of Warham, a living close to Holkham in the gift of my brother Leicester. Between my Ely tutor and myself there was but little sympathy. He was a man of much refinement, but with not much indulgence for such aberrant proclivities as mine. Without my knowledge, he wrote to Mr. Ellice lamenting my secret recusancy, and its moral dangers. Mr. Ellice came expressly from London, and stayed a night at Ely. He dined with us in the cloisters, and had a long private conversation with my tutor, and, before he left, with me. I indignantly resented the clandestine representations of Mr. S., and, without a word to Mr. Ellice or to anyone else, wrote next day to Mr. Collyer to beg him to take me in at Warham, and make what he could of me, before I went to Cambridge. It may here be said that Mr. Collyer had been my father’s chaplain, and had lived at Holkham for several years as family tutor to my brothers and myself, as we in turn left the nursery. Mr. Collyer, upon receipt of my letter, referred the matter to Mr. Ellice; with his approval I was duly installed at Warham. Before describing my time there, I must tell of an incident which came near to affecting me in a rather important way.
My mother lived at Longford in Derbyshire, an old place, now my home, which had come into the Coke family in James I.’s reign, through the marriage of a son of Chief Justice Coke’s with the heiress of the De Langfords, an ancient family from that time extinct. While staying there during my summer holidays, my mother confided to me that she had had an offer of marriage from Mr. Motteux, the owner of considerable estates in Norfolk, including two houses—Beachamwell and Sandringham. Mr. Motteux—‘Johnny Motteux,’ as he was called—was, like Tristram Shandy’s father, the son of a wealthy ‘Turkey merchant,’ which, until better informed, I always took to mean a dealer in poultry. ‘Johnny,’ like another man of some notoriety, whom I well remember in my younger days—Mr. Creevey—had access to many large houses such as Holkham; not, like Creevey, for the sake of his scandalous tongue, but for the sake of his wealth. He had no (known) relatives; and big people, who had younger sons to provide for, were quite willing that one of them should be his heir. Johnny Motteux was an epicure with the best ofchefs. His capons came from Paris, his salmon from Christchurch, and his Strasburg pies were made to order. One of these he always brought with him as a present to my mother, who used to say, ‘Mr. Motteux evidently thinks the nearest way to my heart is down my throat.’
A couple of years after my father’s death, Motteux wrote to my mother proposing marriage, and, to enhance his personal attractions, (in figure and dress he was a duplicate of the immortal Pickwick,) stated that he had made his will and had bequeathed Sandringham to me, adding that, should he die without issue, I was to inherit the remainder of his estates.
Rather to my surprise, my mother handed the letter to me with evident signs of embarrassment and distress. My first exclamation was: ‘How jolly! The shooting’s first rate, and the old boy is over seventy, if he’s a day.’
My mother apparently did not see it in this light. She clearly, to my disappointments did not care for the shooting; and my exultation only brought tears into her eyes.
‘Why, mother,’ I exclaimed, ‘what’s up? Don’t you—don’t you care for Johnny Motteux?’
She confessed that she did not.
‘Then why don’t you tell him so, and not bother about his beastly letter?’
‘If I refuse him you will lose Sandringham.’
‘But he says here he has already left it to me.’
‘He will alter his will.’
‘Let him!’ cried I, flying out at such prospective meanness. ‘Just you tell him you don’t care a rap for him or for Sandringham either.’
In more lady-like terms she acted in accordance with my advice; and, it may be added, not long afterwards married Mr. Ellice.
Mr. Motteux’s first love, or one of them, had been Lady Cowper, then Lady Palmerston. Lady Palmerston’s youngest son was Mr. Spencer Cowper. Mr. Motteux died a year or two after the above event. He made a codicil to his will, and left Sandringham and all his property to Mr. Spencer Cowper. Mr. Spencer Cowper was a young gentleman of costly habits. Indeed, he bore the slightly modified name of ‘Expensive Cowper.’ As an attaché at Paris he was famous for his patronage of dramatic art—or artistes rather; the votaries of Terpsichore were especially indebted to his liberality. At the time of Mr. Motteux’s demise, he was attached to the Embassy at St. Petersburg. Mr. Motteux’s solicitors wrote immediately to inform him of his accession to their late client’s wealth. It being one of Mr. Cowper’s maxims never to read lawyers’ letters, (he was in daily receipt of more than he could attend to,) he flung this one unread into the fire; and only learnt his mistake through the congratulations of his family.
The Prince Consort happened about this time to be in quest of a suitable country seat for his present Majesty; and Sandringham, through the adroit negotiations of Lord Palmerston, became the property of the Prince of Wales. The soul of the ‘Turkey merchant,’ we cannot doubt, will repose in peace.
The worthy rector of Warham St. Mary’s was an oddity deserving of passing notice. Outwardly he was no Adonis. His plain features and shock head of foxy hair, his antiquated and neglected garb, his copious jabot—much affected by the clergy of those days—were becoming investitures of the inward man. His temper was inflammatory, sometimes leading to excesses, which I am sure he rued in mental sackcloth and ashes. But visitors at Holkham (unaware of the excellent motives and moral courage which inspired his conduct) were not a little amazed at the austerity with which he obeyed the dictates of his conscience.
For example, one Sunday evening after dinner, when the drawing-room was filled with guests, who more or less preserved the decorum which etiquette demands in the presence of royalty, (the Duke of Sussex was of the party,) Charles Fox and Lady Anson, great-grandmother of the present Lord Lichfield, happened to be playing at chess. When the irascible dominie beheld them he pushed his way through the bystanders, swept the pieces from the board, and, with rigorous impartiality, denounced these impious desecrators of the Sabbath eve.
As an example of his fidelity as a librarian, Mr. Panizzi used to relate with much glee how, whenever he was at Holkham, Mr. Collyer dogged him like a detective. One day, not wishing to detain the reverend gentleman while he himself spent the forenoon in the manuscript library, (where not only the ancient manuscripts, but the most valuable of the printed books, are kept under lock and key,) he considerately begged Mr. Collyer to leave him to his researches. The dominie replied ‘that he knew his duty, and did not mean to neglect it.’ He did not lose sight of Mr. Panizzi.
The notion that he—the great custodian of the nation’s literary treasures—would snip out and pocket the title-page of the folio edition of Shakespeare, or of the Coverdale Bible, tickled Mr. Panizzi’s fancy vastly.
In spite, however, of our rector’s fiery temperament, or perhaps in consequence of it, he was remarkably susceptible to the charms of beauty. We were constantly invited to dinner and garden parties in the neighbourhood; nor was the good rector slow to return the compliment. It must be confessed that the pupil shared to the full the impressibility of the tutor; and, as it happened, unknown to both, the two were in one case rivals.
As the young lady afterwards occupied a very distinguished position in Oxford society, it can only be said that she was celebrated for her many attractions. She was then sixteen, and the younger of her suitors but two years older. As far as age was concerned, nothing could be more compatible. Nor in the matter of mutual inclination was there any disparity whatever. What, then, was the pupil’s dismay when, after a dinner party at the rectory, and the company had left, the tutor, in a frantic state of excitement, seized the pupil by both hands, and exclaimed: ‘She has accepted me!’
‘Accepted you?’ I asked. ‘Who has accepted you?’
‘Who? Why, Miss —, of course! Who else do you suppose would accept me?’
‘No one,’ said I, with doleful sincerity. ‘But did you propose to her? Did she understand what you said to her? Did she deliberately and seriously say “Yes?”’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ and his disordered jabot and touzled hair echoed the fatal word.
‘O Smintheus of the silver bow!’ I groaned. ‘It is the woman’s part to create delusions, and—destroy them! To think of it! after all that has passed between us these—these three weeks, next Monday! “Once and for ever.” Did ever woman use such words before? And I—believed them!’ ‘Did you speak to the mother?’ I asked in a fit of desperation.
‘There was no time for that. Mrs. — was in the carriage, and I didn’t pop [the odious word!] till I was helping her on with her cloak. The cloak, you see, made it less awkward. My offer was a sort ofobiter dictum—a by-the-way, as it were.’
‘To the carriage, yes. But wasn’t she taken by surprise?’
‘Not a bit of it. Bless you! they always know. She pretended not to understand, but that’s a way they have.’
‘And when you explained?’
‘There wasn’t time for more. She laughed, and sprang into the carriage.’
‘And that was all?’
‘All! would you have had her spring into my arms?’
‘God forbid! You will have to face the mother to-morrow,’ said I, recovering rapidly from my despondency.
‘Face? Well, I shall have to call upon Mrs. —, if that’s what you mean. A mere matter of form. I shall go over after lunch. But it needn’t interfere with your work. You can go on with the “Anabasis” till I come back. And remember—Neaniskosis not a proper name, ha! ha! ha! The quadratics will keep till the evening.’ He was merry over his prospects, and I was not altogether otherwise.
But there was no Xenophon, no algebra, that day! Dire was the distress of my poor dominie when he found the mother as much bewildered as the daughter was frightened, by the mistake. ‘She,’ the daughter, ‘had never for a moment imagined, &c., &c.’
My tutor was not long disheartened by such caprices—so he deemed them, as Miss Jemima’s (she had a prettier name, you may be sure), and I did my best (it cost me little now) to encourage his fondest hopes. I proposed that we should drink the health of the future mistress of Warham in tea, which he cheerfully acceded to, all the more readily, that it gave him an opportunity to vent one of his old college jokes. ‘Yes, yes,’ said he, with a laugh, ‘there’s nothing like tea.Te veniente die,te decedente canebam.’ Such sallies of innocent playfulness often smoothed his path in life. He took a genuine pleasure in his own jokes. Some men do. One day I dropped a pot of marmalade on a new carpet, and should certainly have been reprimanded for carelessness, had it not occurred to him to exclaim: ‘Jam satis terris!’ and then laugh immoderately at his wit.
That there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, was a maxim he acted upon, if he never heard it. Within a month of the above incident he proposed to another lady upon the sole grounds that, when playing a game of chess, an exchange of pieces being contemplated, she innocently, but incautiously, observed, ‘If you take me, I will take you.’ He referred the matter next day to my ripe judgment. As I had no partiality for the lady in question, I strongly advised him to accept so obvious a challenge, and go down on his knees to her at once. I laid stress on the knees, as the accepted form of declaration, both in novels and on the stage.
In this case the beloved object, who was not embarrassed by excess of amiability, promptly desired him, when he urged his suit, ‘not to make a fool of himself.’
My tutor’s peculiarities, however, were not confined to his endeavours to meet with a lady rectoress. He sometimes surprised his hearers with the originality of his abstruse theories. One morning he called me into the stable yard to join in consultation with his gardener as to the advisability of killing a pig. There were two, and it was not easy to decide which was the fitter for the butcher. The rector selected one, I the other, and the gardener, who had nurtured both from their tenderest age, pleaded that they should be allowed to ‘put on another score.’ The point was warmly argued all round.
‘The black sow,’ said I (they were both sows, you must know)—‘The black sow had a litter of ten last time, and the white one only six. Ergo, if history repeats itself, as I have heard you say, you should keep the black, and sacrifice the white.’
‘But,’ objected the rector, ‘that was the white’s first litter, and the black’s second. Why shouldn’t the white do as well as the black next time?’
‘And better, your reverence,’ chimed in the gardener. ‘The number don’t allays depend on the sow, do it?’
‘That is neither here nor there,’ returned the rector.
‘Well,’ said the gardener, who stood to his guns, ‘if your reverence is right, as no doubt you will be, that’ll make just twenty little pigs for the butcher, come Michaelmas.’
‘We can’t kill ’em before they are born,’ said the rector.
‘That’s true, your reverence. But it comes to the same thing.’
‘Not to the pigs,’ retorted the rector.
‘To your reverence, I means.’
‘A pig at the butcher’s,’ I suggested, ‘is worth a dozen unborn.’
‘No one can deny it,’ said the rector, as he fingered the small change in his breeches pocket; and pointing with the other hand to the broad back of the black sow, exclaimed, ‘This is the one,Duplex agitur per lumbos spina! She’s got a back like an alderman’s chin.’
‘Epicuri de grege porcus,’ I assented, and the fate of the black sow was sealed.
Next day an express came from Holkham, to say that Lady Leicester had given birth to a daughter. My tutor jumped out of his chair to hand me the note. ‘Did I not anticipate the event’? he cried. ‘What a wonderful world we live in! Unconsciously I made room for the infant by sacrificing the life of that pig.’ As I never heard him allude to the doctrine of Pythagoras, as he had no leaning to Buddhism, and, as I am sure he knew nothing of the correlation of forces, it must be admitted that the conception was an original one.
Be this as it may, Mr. Collyer was an upright and conscientious man. I owe him much, and respect his memory. He died at an advanced age, an honorary canon, and—a bachelor.
Another portrait hangs amongst the many in my memory’s picture gallery. It is that of his successor to the vicarage, the chaplaincy, and the librarianship, at Holkham—Mr. Alexander Napier—at this time, and until his death fifty years later, one of my closest and most cherished friends. Alexander Napier was the son of Macvey Napier, first editor of the ‘Edinburgh Review.’ Thus, associated with many eminent men of letters, he also did some good literary work of his own. He edited Isaac Barrow’s works for the University of Cambridge, also Boswell’s ‘Johnson,’ and gave various other proofs of his talents and his scholarship. He was the most delightful of companions; liberal-minded in the highest degree; full of quaint humour and quick sympathy; an excellent parish priest,—looking upon Christianity as a life and not a dogma; beloved by all, for he had a kind thought and a kind word for every needy or sick being in his parish.
With such qualities, the man always predominated over the priest. Hence his large-hearted charity and indulgence for the faults—nay, crimes—of others. Yet, if taken aback by an outrage, or an act of gross stupidity, which even the perpetrator himself had to suffer for, he would momentarily lose his patience, and rap out an objurgation that would stagger the straiter-laced gentlemen of his own cloth, or an outsider who knew less of him than—the recording angel.
A fellow undergraduate of Napier’s told me a characteristic anecdote of his impetuosity. Both were Trinity men, and had been keeping high jinks at a supper party at Caius. The friend suddenly pointed to the clock, reminding Napier they had but five minutes to get into college before Trinity gates were closed. ‘D—n the clock!’ shouted Napier, and snatching up the sugar basin (it was noteau sucréethey were drinking), incontinently flung it at the face of the offending timepiece.
This youthful vivacity did not desert him in later years. An old college friend—also a Scotchman—had become Bishop of Edinburgh. Napier paid him a visit (he described it to me himself). They talked of books, they talked of politics, they talked of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, of Brougham, Horner, Wilson, Macaulay, Jeffrey, of Carlyle’s dealings with Napier’s father—‘Nosey,’ as Carlyle calls him. They chatted into the small hours of the night, as boon companions, and as what Bacon calls ‘full’ men, are wont. The claret, once so famous in the ‘land of cakes,’ had given place to toddy; its flow was in due measure to the flow of soul. But all that ends is short—the old friends had spent their last evening together. Yes, their last, perhaps. It was bed-time, and quoth Napier to his lordship, ‘I tell you what it is, Bishop, I am na fou’, but I’ll be hanged if I haven’t got two left legs.’
‘I see something odd about them,’ says his lordship. ‘We’d better go to bed.’
Who the bishop was I do not know, but I’ll answer for it he was one of the right sort.
In 1846 I became an undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge. I do not envy the man (though, of course, one ought) whose college days are not the happiest to look back upon. One should hope that however profitably a young man spends his time at the University, it is but the preparation for something better. But happiness and utility are not necessarily concomitant; and even when an undergraduate’s course is least employed for its intended purpose (as, alas! mine was)—for happiness, certainly not pure, but simple, give me life at a University.
Heaven forbid that any youth should be corrupted by my confession! But surely there are some pleasures pertaining to this unique epoch that are harmless in themselves, and are certainly not to be met with at any other. These are the first years of comparative freedom, of manhood, of responsibility. The novelty, the freshness of every pleasure, the unsatiated appetite for enjoyment, the animal vigour, the ignorance of care, the heedlessness of, or rather, the implicit faith in, the morrow, the absence of mistrust or suspicion, the frank surrender to generous impulses, the readiness to accept appearances for realities—to believe in every profession or exhibition of good will, to rush into the arms of every friendship, to lay bare one’s tenderest secrets, to listen eagerly to the revelations which make us all akin, to offer one’s time, one’s energies, one’s purse, one’s heart, without a selfish afterthought—these, I say, are the priceless pleasures, never to be repeated, of healthful average youth.
What has after-success, honour, wealth, fame, or, power—burdened, as they always are, with ambitions, blunders, jealousies, cares, regrets, and failing health—to match with this enjoyment of the young, the bright, the bygone, hour? The wisdom of the worldly teacher—at least, thecarpe diem—was practised here before the injunction was ever thought of.Du bist so schönwas the unuttered invocation, while theVerweile dochwas deemed unneedful.
Little, I am ashamed to own, did I add either to my small classical or mathematical attainments. But I made friendships—lifelong friendships, that I would not barter for the best of academical prizes.
Amongst my associates or acquaintances, two or three of whom have since become known—were the last Lord Derby, Sir William Harcourt, the late Lord Stanley of Alderley, Latimer Neville, late Master of Magdalen, Lord Calthorpe, of racing fame, with whom I afterwards crossed the Rocky Mountains, the last Lord Durham, my cousin, Sir Augustus Stephenson, ex-solicitor to the Treasury, Julian Fane, whose lyrics were edited by Lord Lytton, and my life-long friend Charles Barrington, private secretary to Lord Palmerston and to Lord John Russell.
But the most intimate of them was George Cayley, son of the member for the East Riding of Yorkshire. Cayley was a young man of much promise. In his second year he won the University prize poem with his ‘Balder,’ and soon after published some other poems, and a novel, which met with merited oblivion. But it was as a talker that he shone. His quick intelligence, his ready wit, his command of language, made his conversation always lively, and sometimes brilliant. For several years after I left Cambridge I lived with him in his father’s house in Dean’s Yard, and thus made the acquaintance of some celebrities whom his fascinating and versatile talents attracted thither. As I shall return to this later on, I will merely mention here the names of such men as Thackeray, Tennyson, Frederick Locker, Stirling of Keir, Tom Taylor the dramatist, Millais, Leighton, and others of lesser note. Cayley was a member of, and regular attendant at, the Cosmopolitan Club; where he met Dickens, Foster, Shirley Brooks, John Leech, Dicky Doyle, and the wits of the day; many of whom occasionally formed part of our charming coterie in the house I shared with his father.
Speaking of Tom Taylor reminds me of a good turn he once did me in my college examination at Cambridge. Whewell was then Master of Trinity. One of the subjects I had to take up was either the ‘Amicitia’ or the ‘Senectute’ (I forget which). Whewell, more formidable and alarming than ever, opened the book at hazard, and set me on to construe. I broke down. He turned over the page; again I stuck fast. The truth is, I had hardly looked at my lesson,—trusting to my recollection of parts of it to carry me through, if lucky, with the whole.
‘What’s your name, sir?’ was the Master’s gruff inquiry. He did not catch it. But Tom Taylor—also an examiner—sitting next to him, repeated my reply, with the addition, ‘Just returned from China, where he served as a midshipman in the late war.’ He then took the book out of Whewell’s hands, and giving it to me closed, said good-naturedly: ‘Let us have another try, Mr. Coke.’ The chance was not thrown away; I turned to a part I knew, and rattled off as if my first examiner had been to blame, not I.
Beforedropping the curtain on my college days I must relate a little adventure which is amusing as an illustration of my reverend friend Napier’s enthusiastic spontaneity. My own share in the farce is a subordinate matter.
During the Christmas party at Holkham I had ‘fallen in love,’ as the phrase goes, with a young lady whose uncle (she had neither father nor mother) had rented a place in the neighbourhood. At the end of his visit he invited me to shoot there the following week. For what else had I paid him assiduous attention, and listened like an angel to the interminable history of his gout? I went; and before I left, proposed to, and was accepted by, the young lady. I was still at Cambridge, not of age, and had but moderate means. As for the maiden, ‘my face is my fortune’ she might have said. The aunt, therefore, very properly pooh-poohed the whole affair, and declined to entertain the possibility of an engagement; the elderly gentleman got a bad attack of gout; and every wire of communication being cut, not an obstacle was wanting to render persistence the sweetest of miseries.
Napier was my confessor, and became as keen to circumvent the ‘old she-dragon,’ so he called her, as I was. Frequent and long were our consultations, but they generally ended in suggestions and schemes so preposterous, that the only result was an immoderate fit of laughter on both sides. At length it came to this (the proposition was not mine): we were to hire a post chaise and drive to the inn at G—. I was to write a note to the young lady requesting her to meet me at some trysting place. The note was to state that a clergyman would accompany me, who was ready and willing to unite us there and then in holy matrimony; that I would bring the licence in my pocket; that after the marriage we could confer as to ways and means; and that—she could leave therestto me.
No enterprise was ever more merrily conceived, or more seriously undertaken. (Please to remember that my friend was not so very much older than I; and, in other respects, was quite as juvenile.)
Whatever was to come of it, the drive was worth the venture. The number of possible and impossible contingencies provided for kept us occupied by the hour. Furnished with a well-filled luncheon basket, we regaled ourselves and fortified our courage; while our hilarity increased as we neared, or imagined that we neared, the climax. Unanimously we repeated Dr. Johnson’s exclamation in a post chaise: ‘Life has not many things better than this.’
But where were we? Our watches told us that we had been two hours covering a distance of eleven miles.
‘Hi! Hullo! Stop!’ shouted Napier. In those days post horses were ridden, not driven; and about all we could see of the post boy was what Mistress Tabitha Bramble saw of Humphrey Clinker. ‘Where the dickens have we got to now?’
‘Don’t know, I’m sure, sir,’ says the boy; ‘never was in these ’ere parts afore.’
‘Why,’ shouts the vicar, after a survey of the landscape, ‘if I can see a church by daylight, that’s Blakeney steeple; and we are only three miles from where we started.’
Sure enough it was so. There was nothing for it but to stop at the nearest house, give the horses a rest and a feed, and make a fresh start,—better informed as to our topography.
It was past four on that summer afternoon when we reached our destination. The plan of campaign was cut and dried. I called for writing materials, and indicted my epistle as agreed upon.
‘To whom are you telling her to address the answer?’ asked my accomplice. ‘We’reincog.you know. It won’t do for either of us to be known.’
‘Certainly not,’ said I. ‘What shall it be? White? Black? Brown? or Green?’
‘Try Browne with an E,’ said he. ‘The E gives an aristocratic flavour. We can’t afford to risk our respectability.’
The note sealed, I rang the bell for the landlord, desired him to send it up to the hall and tell the messenger to wait for an answer.
As our host was leaving the room he turned round, with his hand on the door, and said:
‘Beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Cook, would you and Mr. Napeer please to take dinner here? I’ve soom beatiful lamb chops, and you could have a ducklin’ and some nice young peas to your second course. The post-boy says the ’osses is pretty nigh done up; but by the time—’
‘How did you know our names?’ asked my companion.
‘Law sir! The post-boy, he told me. But, beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Napeer, my daughter, she lives in Holkham willage; and I’ve heard you preach afore now.’
‘Let’s have the dinner by all means,’ said I.
‘If the Bishop sequesters my living,’ cried Napier, with solemnity, ‘I’ll summon the landlord for defamation of character. But time’s up. You must make for the boat-house, which is on the other side of the park. I’ll go with you to the head of the lake.’
We had not gone far, when we heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. What did we see but an open carriage, with two ladies in it, not a hundred yards behind us.
‘The aunt! by all that’s—!’
What— I never heard; for, before the sentence was completed, the speaker’s long legs were scampering out of sight in the direction of a clump of trees, I following as hard as I could go.
As the carriage drove past, my Friar Lawrence was lying in a ditch, while I was behind an oak. We were near enough to discern the niece, and consequently we feared to be recognised. The situation was neither dignified nor romantic. My friend was sanguine, though big ardour was slightly damped by the ditch water. I doubted the expediency of trying the boat-house, but he urged the risk of her disappointment, which made the attempt imperative.
The padre returned to the inn to dry himself, and, in due course, I rejoined him. He met me with the answer to my note. ‘The boat-house,’ it declared, ‘was out of the question. But so, of course, was thepossibilityofchange. We must put our trust inProvidence. Time could makenodifference inourcase, whatever it might do withothers.She, at any rate, could wait forYEARS.’ Upon the whole the result was comforting—especially as the ‘years’ dispensed with the necessity of any immediate step more desperate than dinner. This we enjoyed like men who had earned it; and long before I deposited my dear friar in his cell both of us were snoring in our respective corners of the chaise.
A word or two will complete this romantic episode. The next long vacation I spent in London, bent, needless to say, on a happy issue to my engagement. How simple, in the retrospect, is the frustration of our hopes! I had not been a week in town, had only danced once with myfiancée, when, one day, taking a tennis lesson from the great Barre, a forced ball grazed the frame of my racket, and broke a blood vessel in my eye.
For five weeks I was shut up in a dark room. It was two more before I again met my charmer. She did not tell me, but her man did, that their wedding day was fixed for the 10th of the following month; and he ‘hoped they would have the pleasure of seeing me at the breakfast!’ [I made the following note of the fact: N.B.—A woman’s tears may cost her nothing; but her smiles may be expensive.]
I must, however, do the young lady the justice to state that, though her future husband was no great things as a ‘man,’ as she afterwards discovered, he was the heir to a peerage and great wealth. Both he and she, like most of my collaborators in this world, have long since passed into the other.
The fashions of bygone days have always an interest for the living: the greater perhaps the less remote. We like to think of our ancestors of two or three generations off—the heroes and heroines of Jane Austen, in their pantaloons and high-waisted, short-skirted frocks, their pigtails and powdered hair, their sandalled shoes, and Hessian boots. Our near connection with them entrances our self-esteem. Their prim manners, their affected bows and courtesies, the ‘dear Mr. So-and-So’ of the wife to her husband, the ‘Sir’ and ‘Madam’ of the children to their parents, make us wonder whether their flesh and blood were ever as warm as ours; or whether they were a race of prigs and puppets?
My memory carries me back to the remnants of these lost externals—that which is lost was nothing more; the men and women were every whit as human as ourselves. My half-sisters wore turbans with birds-of-paradise in them. My mother wore gigot sleeves; but objected to my father’s pigtail, so cut it off. But my father powdered his head, and kept to his knee-breeches to the last; so did all elderly gentlemen, when I was a boy. For the matter of that, I saw an old fellow with a pigtail walking in the Park as late as 1845. He, no doubt, was an ultra-conservative.
Fashions change so imperceptibly that it is difficult for the historian to assign their initiatory date. Does the young dandy of to-day want to know when white ties came into vogue?—he knows that his great-grandfather wore a white neckcloth, and takes it for granted, may be, that his grandfather did so too. Not a bit of it. The young Englander of the Coningsby type—the Count d’Orsays of my youth, scorned the white tie alike of their fathers and their sons. At dinner-parties or at balls, they adorned themselves in satin scarfs, with a jewelled pin or chained pair of pins stuck in them. I well remember the rebellion—the protest against effeminacy—which the white tie called forth amongst some of us upon its first invasion on evening dress. The women were in favour of it, and, of course, carried the day; but not without a struggle. One night at Holkham—we were a large party, I daresay at least fifty at dinner—the men came down in black scarfs, the women in white ‘chokers.’ To make the contest complete, these all sat on one side of the table, and we men on the other. The battle was not renewed; both factions surrendered. But the women, as usual, got their way, and—their men.
For my part I could never endure the original white neckcloth. It was stiffly starched, and wound twice round the neck; so I abjured it for the rest of my days; now and then I got the credit of being a coxcomb—not for my pains, but for my comfort. Once, when dining at the Viceregal Lodge at Dublin, I was ‘pulled up’ by an aide-de-camp for my unbecoming attire; but I stuck to my colours, and was none the worse. Another time my offence called forth a touch of good nature on the part of a great man, which I hardly know how to speak of without writing me down an ass. It was at a crowded party at Cambridge House. (Let me plead my youth; I was but two-and-twenty.) Stars and garters were scarcely a distinction. White ties were then as imperative as shoes and stockings; I was there in a black one. My candid friends suggested withdrawal, my relations cut me assiduously, strangers by my side whispered at me aloud, women turned their shoulders to me; and my only prayer was that my accursed tie would strangle me on the spot. One pair of sharp eyes, however, noticed my ignominy, and their owner was moved by compassion for my sufferings. As I was slinking away, Lord Palmerston, with abonhomiepeculiarly his own, came up to me; and with a shake of the hand and hearty manner, asked after my brother Leicester, and when he was going to bring me into Parliament?—ending with a smile: ‘Where are you off to in such a hurry?’ That is the sort of tact that makes a party leader. I went to bed a proud, instead of a humiliated, man; ready, if ever I had the chance, to vote that black was white, should he but state it was so.
Beards and moustache came into fashion after the Crimean war. It would have been an outrage to wear them before that time. When I came home from my travels across the Rocky Mountains in 1851, I was still unshaven. Meeting my younger brother—a fashionable guardsman—in St. James’s Street, he exclaimed, with horror and disgust at my barbarity, ‘I suppose you mean to cut off that thing!’
Smoking, as indulged in now, was quite out of the question half a century ago. A man would as soon have thought of making a call in his dressing-gown as of strolling about the West End with a cigar in his mouth. The first whom I ever saw smoke a cigarette at a dining-table after dinner was the King; some forty years ago, or more perhaps. One of the many social benefits we owe to his present Majesty.