_che hannoo perduto il ben del intelletto_
could have swallowed such shell-game propositions as those of Manning's,
quoted on p. 98, concerning response to prayer.
The next essay is a very different matter. Mr. Strachey, without
abandoning the acridity of his style, exposes Florence Nightingale as a
great constructor of civilization. Her achievement remains, early victim
of Christian voodooism, surrounded mainly by cads and imbeciles, it is a
wonder her temper was not a great deal worse. She may well be pardoned a
few hysterias, a few metaphysical bees in her cap. Even in metaphysics,
if she was unable to improve on Confucius and Epicurus, she seems to
have been quite as intelligent as many of her celebrated contemporaries
who had no more solid basis for reputation than their "philosophic"
writing. Our author has so branded Lord Stratford de Redcliffe and the
physician Hall that no amount of apologia will reinstate them. Panmure
is left as a goose, and Hawes as a goose with a touch of malevolence.
Queen Victoria appears several times in this essay, and effectively:
"It will be a very great satisfaction to me," Her Majesty added, "to
make the acquaintance of one who has set so bright an example to our
sex."
"The brooch, which was designed by the Prince Consort, bore a St.
George's cross in red enamel, and the Royal cypher surmounted by
diamonds. The whole was encircled by the inscription, 'Blessed are the
Merciful.'"
Dr. Arnold of Rugby, to be as brief as possible with a none too pleasant
subject, "substituted character for intellect in the training of British
youth."
The nineteenth century had a "letch" for unifications, it believed that,
in general, "all is one"; when this doctrine failed of a sort of
pragmatic sanction _in rem_, it tried to reduce things to the least
possible number. True, in the physical world, it did not attempt to use
steam and dynamite interchangeably, but, in affairs of the mind, such
was the indubitable tendency.
It is, however, a folly to "substitute" character for intelligence and
one would rather have been at the Grammar-School of Ashford, in Kent, in
1759, under Stephen Barrett, A.M., than at Rugby, in 1830, under Dr.
Arnold, or, later, under any of his successors. And I give thanks to
Zeus Sens _ὃσις ποτ' ἐσὶν_, that being an American, I have escaped the
British public school. Mrs. Ward is at liberty to write to the _Times_
as much as she likes, I do not envy her Dr. Arnold for grandfather.
Arnold stands pre-eminent as an "educator," and from him the term has
gradually taken its present meaning: "a man with no intellectual
interests."
Mr. Strachey completes his volume with a study of that extraordinary
crank, General Gordon. It takes him two lines to blast the reputation of
Lord Elgin. He does it quietly, but Elgin's name will stink in the
memory of the reader. It is difficult to attribute this wholly to the
author, for the facts are in connivance with him. But if his irony at
times descends to sarcasm, one must balance that with the general
quietude of his style. One can but hope that this book will not be his
last; one would welcome a treatment, by him, of The Members of the
British Academic Committee, British Publishers, The Asquith
Administration.
The religion of Tien Wang mentioned on p. 221 appears to have been as
intelligent as any other form of Christianity, and to have had much the
same active effects. However, Gordon was appointed to oppose it.
Throughout the rest of his life he seems to have been obsessed by the
curious medæval fallacy that the world is vanity and the body but ashes
and dust. He fell victim to the exaggerated monotheism of his era. But
he had the sense to follow his instinct in a period when instincts were
not thought quite respectable; this made him an historic figure; it also
must have lent him great charm (with perhaps rather picturesque
drawbacks). This valuable quality, charm, must have been singularly
lacking in Mr. Gladstone.
It is, indeed, difficult to restrain one's growing conviction that Mr.
Gladstone was not all his party had hoped for. Gordon was "difficult,"
at the time of his last expedition he was perhaps little better than a
lunatic, but Gladstone was decidedly unpleasant.
In all of the eminent was the quality of a singularly uncritical era. It
was a time when a prominent man _could_ form himself on a single volume
handed to him by "tradition"; when illiteracy, in the profounder sense
of that term, was no drawback to a vast public career. (An era, of
course, happily closed.)
I do not know that there is much use enquiring into the causes of the
Victorian era, or any good to be got from speculations. Its disease
might seem to have been an aggravated form of provincialism. Professor
Sir Henry Newbolt has recently pointed out that the English public is
"interested in politics rather than literature"; this may be a lingering
symptom.
If one sought, not perhaps to exonerate, but to explain the Victorian
era one might find some contributory cause in Napoleon. That is to say,
the Napoleonic wars had made Europe unpleasant, England was sensibly
glad to be insular. Geography leaked over into mentality. Eighteenth
century thought had indeed got rid of the Bourbons, but later events had
shown that eighteenth century thought might be dangerous. England cut
off her intellectual communications with the Continent. An era of
bigotry supervened. We have so thoroughly forgotten, if we ever knew,
the mental conditions preceding the Victorian era, save perhaps as they
appear in the scribblings of, let us say, Lady Blessington, that we
cannot tell whether the mentality of the Victorian reign was an advance
or an appalling retrogression. In any case we are glad to be out of it
... irregardless of what we may be into; irregardless of whether the
communications among intelligent people are but the mirage of a minute
Thebaid seen from a chaos wholly insuperable.[7]