LIGHT OF HUMAN LIVES--PHOTOGRAPHS AND BIOGRAPHS--THE LATE JONAS
WEBB, HIS LIFE, LABORS, AND MEMORY.
The next morning I resumed my walk and visited a locality bearing a
name and association of world-wide celebrity and interest. It is
the name of a small rural hamlet, hardly large enough to be called a
village, and marked by no trait of nature or art to give it
distinction.
There are conditions and characteristics both in the natural and
moral world which can hardly be described fully in Saxon, Latin, or
Greek terminology, even with the largest license of construction.
There are attributes or qualities attaching to certain locations, of
the simplest natural features, which cannot even be hinted at or
suggested by the terms, _geography, topography, or biography_. Put
the three together and condense or collocate their several meanings
in one compound qualification which you can write and another spell,
and you do not compass the signification you want to convey. The
soul of man has its immortality, and the feeblest-minded peasant
believes he shall wear it through the ages of the great hereafter.
The literature of human thoughts claims a life that shall endure as
long as the future existence of humanity. The memory of many human
actions and lives puts in a plea and promise of a duration that
shall distance the sun's, and overlap upon the bright centuries of
eternity. The human body, even, is promised its resurrection by the
divinest authority and illustration, and waits hopefully, under all
its pains and weaknesses, for the glory to be revealed in it when
the earth on which it dwells shall have become "a forgotten
circumstance." Human loves, remembrances, faiths, and fellowships
lift up all their meek hands to the Father of Spirits, praying to be
lifted up into His great immortality, and to be permitted to take
with them unbroken the associations that sweetened this earthly
life. Many humble souls that have passed through the furnace of
affliction, poverty, and trial seven times heated, and heated daily
here, have believed that He who went up through the same suffering
to His great White Throne, would let them sing beside the crystal
waters the same good old psalm tunes and songs of Sion which they
sang under the willows of this lower world of tears and tribulation.
How all the sparks of the undying life in man fly upward to the
zenith of this immortality! You may call the steep flights of this
faith pleasant and poetical diversions of a fervid imagination, but
they are winged with the pinions that angels lift when they soar;
pinions less ethereal than theirs, but formed and plumed to beat
upward on the Milky Way to their Source, instead of swimming in the
thinly-starred cerulean, in which spirits, never touched with the
down or dust of human attributes, descend and ascend on their
missions to the earth. Who can have the heart to handle harshly
these beautiful faiths? To say, this hope may go up, but this must
go down to the darkness of annihilation! Was it irreverent in the
pious singing-master of a New England village, when he said, that
often, while returning home late on bright winter nights, he had
dropped the reins upon his horse's neck, and sung Old Hundred from
the stars, set as notes to that holy tune, when they first sang
together in the morning of the creation? What spiritual good or
Christian end would be gained, to break up the charm and cheer of
this his belief? Or to dispel that other confidence, which so
helped him to bear earth's trials, that one day he should join all
the spirits of the just made perfect, and all the high angels in
heaven, and, on the plane of that golden gamut, they should sing
together their hymns of joy and praise, in that same, good, old
tune, from those same star-notes, which a thousand centuries should
not deflect nor transpose from their first order within those
everlasting staves and bars!
If the spirit's faith be allowed such wide confidences as these; if
it may carry up into the invisible and infinite so many precious
relics from the wreck of time, so many human circumstances and
associations, why may it not take with it, to hang up in its heaven,
photographs of those earthly localities rendered immortal here by
the lives of good and great men? Such a life is a sun, and it casts
a disk of light upon the very earth on which it shines; not that
flashy circle which the lens of the microscope casts upon the
opposite wall, to show how scarcely visible mites may be magnified;
but a soft and steady illumination that does not dim under the
beating storms and bleaching dews of centuries, but grows brighter
and brighter, as if the seed-rays that made it first multiplied
themselves from year to year. The earth becomes more and more
thickly dotted with these permanent disks of light, and each is
visited by pilgrims, who go and stand with reverence and admiration
within the cheering circle. Shakespeare's thought-life threw out a
brilliant illumination, of wide circumference, at Stratford-upon-
Avon, and no locality in England bears a biograph more venerated
than the birth-place of the great poet. His thought-life was a sun
that will never set as long as this above us shines. It is rising
every year to new generations that never saw its rays before. When
he laid down his pen, at the end of his last drama, the whole
English-speaking race in both hemispheres did not number twice the
present population of London. Now, seventy-five millions, peopling
mighty continents, speak the tongue he raised to the grandest of all
earth's speeches; and those who people the antipodes claim to offer
the best homage to his genius. Thus it will go on to the end of
time. As the language he clothed with such power and might shall
spread itself over the earth, and be spoken, too, by races born to
another tongue, his life-rays will permeate the minds of countless
myriads, and the more widely they diverge and the farther they
reach, the brighter and warmer will be the glow and the flow of that
disk of light that embosoms and illumines his birth-place in
England.
What is true of Stratford-upon-Avon is equally true of Abbotsford,
of the birth-place of Milton, Burns, Bunyan, Baxter, and other great
minds, which have shone each like a sun or star in its sphere. Now,
what one word, recognised as legitimate in scientific terminology,
would describe fully one of these disks of light cast by a human
life upon a certain space of earth, not as a fugitive flash, but as
a permanent illumination? _Photograph_ would not do it, because its
meaning is fixed and rigidly technical, as simple light-writing, or
sun-writing. The term is completely pre-occupied by this
signification, and you cannot inject the human life element into it.
_Biography_ is universally limited to an operation in which the life
is the subject, not the agent. It is simply the writing out of a
life's history by some one with a common goose-quill or steel pen.
Still, the word _biograph_ would be the best, of the same length,
that we could form to describe one of these disks of light, if it
were made the same verb active as _photograph_; or to mean that the
life is the agent, as well as the subject,--that it writes itself in
light upon a certain locality, just as the sun graves a human face
upon glass. Let us then call the bright and quenchless
planispheres, which such lives describe and fill around them,
_biographs_, assuming that the script is in rays of light. As
differ the stars above in glory, so these differ in the qualities of
their illumination. The brightest of them, to mere human seeming,
are those which shine with the sheer brilliancy of intellect and
genius. These chiefly halo the homes of "the grand old masters" of
poetry, painting, eloquence, and martial glory. These attract to
their disks pilgrims the most numerous and enthusiastic. But, as
the nearest stars are brightest, not largest, so these biographs are
brightest on their earth-side. There are thousands of less sharp
and spangling lustre to the eyes of the multitude, which shine with
tenfold more brilliancy from their eternity-face. These are they
that halo the homes of good men, whose great hearts drank in the
life of God's love in perpetual streams, and distilled it like a
luminous dew around them; men whose thoughts were not mere
scintillations of genius, but living labors of beneficence, bearing
the proof as well as promise of that immortality guaranteed to the
deeds of earth's saints. If the soul, after such long isolation, is
to take again to its embrace so much of the old human corporeity it
wore here below, does it transcend the prerogative of hope in the
great resurrection to believe that these biographs of God's loving
children on earth shall be taken up whole into the same immortality
as the bodies in which they worked His will among men? Is the faith
too fanciful or irreverent that believes, that the corridors and
inner temples of Heaven's Glory will be hung with these biographs of
His servants surrounding, like stars, the light-flood of His love
that radiated from His cross on earth? Is it too presumptuous to
think and say, that such pictures will be as precious in His sight
as any graven by the lives of angels on their outward or homeward
flights of duty and delight? These are they, therefore, that shall
give to the earth all the immortality to which it shall attain.
These are they that shall take up into the brilliant existence of
the hereafter, ten thousand sections of its corporeity; portions of
its surface, perhaps, as substantial as the human form that the
souls of men shall wear in another world. These are they that shall
shine as the stars, when those beaming so brilliantly in our eyes
around the shrines of mere intellect and genius, shall have "paled
their ineffectual fires" before the efflux of diviner light. Let
him, then, of thoughtful and attentive faculties think on these
great and holy possibilities, when he treads within the pale of a
good man's life, whose labors for human happiness "follow him"
according to divine promise; not out of the world, not down into the
grave with his resting body, but out among living generations,
breathing upon them and through them a blessed and everlasting
influence. Let him tread that disk of light reverentially, for it
is the holiest place on the earth's surface outside the immediate
circumference of Cavalry.
This is Babraham; and here lived Jonas Webb; a good man and true,
whose influence and usefulness had a broader circumference than the
widest empire in the world. A Frenchman has written the fullest
history of both, and an American here offers reverentially a tribute
to his worth. The light of his life was a soft and gentle
illumination on its earth-side; the lustre of the other was revealed
only by partial glimpses to those who leaned closest to him in the
testing-moments of his higher nature. He was one of the great
benefactors, whose lives and labors become the common inheritance of
mankind, and whose names go down through long generations with a
pleasant memory. To a certain extent, he was to the great primeval
industry of the world, what Arkwright, Watts, Stephenson, Fulton and
Morse were each to the mechanical and scientific activities of the
age. He did as much, perhaps, as any man that ever preceded him, to
honor that industry, and lift it up to the level of the first
occupations of modern times, which had claimed higher qualities of
intelligence, genius and enterprize. He was a farmer, and his
ancestors had been farmers from time immemorial. He did not bound
into the occupation as an enthusiastic amateur, who had acquired a
large fortune by manufacturing or commercial enterprize, which he
was eager to lavish upon bold and uncertain experiments. He
attained his highest eminence by the careful gradations of a
continuous experience, reaching back far into the labors of his
ancestors. The science, skill and judgment he brought to bear upon
his operations, came from his reading, thinking, observations and
experiments as a practical and hereditary farmer. The capital he
employed in expanding these operations to their culminating
magnitude, he acquired by farming. The mental culture, the generous
dispositions, the refined manners, the graceful and manly bearing
which made him one of the first gentlemen of the age, he acquired as
a farmer. The mansion which welcomed to its easy and large-hearted
hospitalities guests of such distinction from his own and other
countries, was a farmer's home, and few ever opened their doors to
more urbanity and cordial cheer. This is an aspect of his character
which all those who follow the profession he honored should admire
with a laudable esprit de corps.
As a back-ground is an important element in the portraiture of human
forms or natural scenery, so the ground on which the life and labors
of Jonas Webb should be sketched, merits a few preliminary lines.
Of all the occupations that employ and sustain the toiling myriads
of our race, agriculture leans closest to the bosom of Divine
Providence. It is an industry bound to the great and beautiful
economics of the creation by more visible and sensible ties than any
other worked by human hands. We will not here diverge to dwell upon
these high and interesting affiliations. In their place we will
give them a little extended thought. There is one feature of
agricultural enterprize, however, that should not be overlooked in
this connection. All its operations are above-board and open to the
wide world, just like the fields to which they are applied. Nothing
here is under lock and key. Nothing bears the grim warning over the
bolted door, "No admittance here except on business!"--meaning by
business, exclusively and sharply, the buying of certain wares of
the establishment at a good round profit to the manufacturer,
without carrying away a single scintillation or suggestion of his
skill. If he has invented or adopted machinery or a process of
labor which enables him to turn out cheap muslin at three farthings'
less cost per yard than his neighbors can make it, he seals up the
secret from them with the keenest vigilance. Not so in the great
and heaven-honored industry of agriculture. Its experiments and
improvements upon the earth's face are all put into the common stock
of human knowledge and happiness. They can no more be placed under
lock and key, as selfish secrets, than the stars themselves that
look down upon them with all their golden eyes. No new implement of
husbandry, no new mechanical force or chemical principle, no new
process of labor or line of economy is withheld from the great
commonwealth of mankind. As the broad skies above, as the sun and
moon, and stars, as the winds, the rains, the dews, the birds and
bees of heaven over-ride and ignore, in their missions, the
boundaries of jealous nations, so all the great activities of
agriculture prove their lineage by following the same generous rule.
They are bounded by no nationalities. They are shut up in no narrow
enclosure of self, but are put out as new vesicles of light to
brighten the general illumination of the world.
The department in which Jonas Webb attained to his position and
capacity of usefulness was peculiarly marked by this characteristic.
In a certain sense, it occupied a higher range of interest than that
section of agriculture which is connected solely with the growing of
grain, grass, and other crops. His great and distinguishing
husbandry was the cultivation of animal life. To make two spires of
grass grow where only one grew before has been pronounced as a great
benefaction; and greater still are the merit and the gain of making
one grow where nothing grew before. To go into the midst of
Dartmoor, and turn an acre of its cold, stony, water-soaked waste
into a fruitful field of golden grain, is going into co-partnership
with Providence in the work of creation to a very large and honored
degree. But to put the skilful hand of science upon creatures of
flesh and blood, to re-form their physical structures and shapes, to
add new inches to their stature, straighten their backs, expand
their reins, amplify their chests, reduce all the lines and curves
of their forms to an unborn symmetry, and then to give silky
softness and texture to their aboriginal clothing--this seems to be
mounting one step higher in the attainment and dignity of creative
faculties. And this pre-eminently was the department in which Jonas
Webb acquired a distinction perhaps unparalleled to the present
time. This has made his name familiar all over Christendom, and
honored among the world's benefactors. Never, before him, did a
farm-stead become such a centre and have such a wide-sweeping radius
as his. None ever possessed such centripetal attractions, or
exerted such centrifugal influences for the material well-being of
different and distant countries. Indeed, those most remote are most
specially indebted to his large and generous operations. America
and Australia will ever owe his memory an everlasting homage.
His operations filled and crowned two great departments of
improvement seldom, if ever, carried on simultaneously and evenly to
a great success by one man. His first distinguishing speciality was
sheep-culture. When he had brought this to the highest standard of
perfection ever attained, he devoted the surplus capital of skill,
experience and pecuniary means he had acquired from the process to
the breeding of cattle; and he became nearly as eminent in this
field of improvement as in the other. A few facts may serve as an
outline of his progress in both to the American reader who is
familiar with the general result of his efforts.
Jonas Webb was born at Great Thurlow, Suffolk, on the 10th of
November, 1796. His father, who died at the age of ninety-three,
was a veteran in agriculture, and had attained to honorable
distinction by his efforts to improve the old Norfolk breed of
sheep, and by his experiments with other races. The results
obtained from these operations convinced his son that more mutton
and better wool could be made per acre from the Southdown than from
any other breed, upon nine-tenths of the arable land of England,
where the sheep are regularly folded, especially where the land is
poor. In 1822, he commenced that agricultural career which won for
him such a world-wide celebrity, by taking the Babraham Farm,
occupying about 1,000 acres, some twelve miles south of Cambridge.
In a very interesting letter, addressed to the Farmers' Magazine,
about twenty years since, he gives a valuable resume of his
experience up to that time. In this he states several facts that
may be especially useful to American agriculturists. Having decided
in his own mind that the Southdowns were preferable to every other
breed, for the two properties mentioned, he went into Sussex, their
native county, and purchased the best rams and ewes that could be
obtained of the principal breeders, regardless of expense, and never
made a cross from any other breed afterwards. Nor was this all; he
never introduced new blood into his stock from flocks of the same
breed, but, by a virtually in-and-in process, he was able to produce
qualities till then unknown to the race, and to make them permanent
and distinctive properties. Now this achievement in itself has an
interest beyond its utilitarian value to the agricultural world. To
"Rejoice in the joy of well-created things"
is one of the best privileges and pleasures of a well-constituted
mind. But what higher honor can attach to human science or industry
than that of taking such a visible and effective part in that
creation?--in sending out into the world successive generations of
animal life, bearing each, through future ages and distant
countries, the shaping impress of human fingers, long since gone
back to their dust; features, forms, lines, curves, qualities and
characteristics which those fingers, working, as it were, on the
right wrist of Divine Providence, gave to the sheep and cattle upon
a thousand hills in both hemispheres? There are flocks and herds
now grazing upon the boundless prairies of America, the vast plains
of Australia, the steppes of Russia, as well as on the smaller and
greener pastures of England, France, and Germany, that bear these
finger-marks of Jonas Webb, as mindless but everlasting memories to
his worth. If the owners of these "well-created things" value the
joy and profit which they thus derive from his long and laborious
years of devotion to their interests, let them see that these
finger-prints of his be not obliterated by their neglect, but be
perpetuated for ever, both for their own good and for an ever-living
memorial to his name.
It is a fact of instructive suggestion, that although Mr. Webb
commenced his operations in 1822, he won his first prize for stock
ewes at the meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society at Cambridge
in 1840. Here he realised one of the serious disadvantages to which
stock-breeders in England are exposed, in "showing" sheep, cattle or
swine at these annual exhibitions. The great outside world, with
tastes that lean more to fat sirloins or shoulders than to the
better symmetries of animated nature, almost demands that every one
of these unfortunate beasts should be offered up as a bloated,
blowing sacrifice to those great twin idols of fleshy lust, Tallow
and Lard. If, therefore, a stock-raiser has not decided to drive
his Shorthorn cow or Southdown ewe immediately from the Fair-grounds
to the butcher's shambles, he runs an imminent risk of losing
entirely the use and value of the animal. So great is this risk,
that much of the stock that would be most useful for exhibition is
withheld, and can only be seen by visiting private establishments
scattered over the kingdom. They are too valuable to run the
terrible gauntlet of oil-cake, bean and barley-meal, through which
they must flounder on in cruel obesity to the prize. Especially is
this the case with breeding animals. Mr. Webb's experience at his
first trial of the process, will illustrate its tendencies and
results. Of the nine shearling ewes he "fed" for the Cambridge
Show, he lost _four_, and only raised two or three lambs from the
rest. At the Exhibition of 1841, at Liverpool, he won three out of
four of the prizes offered by the Royal Agricultural Society for
Southdowns, or any other short-woolled sheep; two out of four
offered at Bristol, in 1842, and three out of four offered at Derby,
in 1843. But here again he over-fed two of his best sheep, under
the inexorable rule of fat, which exercises such despotic sway over
these annual competitions, and was obliged to kill them before the
show. It will suffice to show the loss he incurred by this costly
homage to Tallow, to give his own words on the subject:--"I had
refused 180 guineas for the hire of the two sheep for the season. I
also quite destroyed the usefulness of two other aged sheep by over-
feeding them last year. Neither of them propogated [sic] through
the season, and I have had each of them killed in consequence, which
has so completely tired me of overfeeding that I never intend
exhibiting another aged ram, unless I greatly alter my mind, or can
find out some method of feeding them which will not destroy the
animals, and which I have hitherto failed to accomplish." The
conclusion which he adopted, in view of these liabilities, may be
useful to agriculturists in America as well as in England. He says,
"What I intend exhibiting in future will be shearlings only, as I
believe they are not so easily injured by extra feeding as aged
sheep, partly by being more active, and partly by having more time
to put on their extra condition, by which their constitutions are
not likely to be so much impaired."
At nearly every subsequent national exhibition, Mr. Webb carried off
the best prizes for Southdowns. At Dundee, in 1843, the Highland
Society paid him the compliment of having the likenesses of his
sheep taken for its museum in Edinburgh. He only received two
checks in these competitions after 1840, and these he rectified and
overcame in an interesting way. The first took place at the great
meeting at Exeter, in 1850, and the second at Chelmsford, in 1856.
On both of these occasions he was convinced that the judges had not
done justice to the qualities of his animals, and he resolved to
submit their judgment to a court of errors, or to the decision of a
subsequent meeting of the society. So, in 1851, he presented the
unsuccessful candidate at Exeter to the meeting at Windsor, and took
the first prize for it. This fully reversed the Exeter verdict. He
resorted to the same tribunal to set him right in regard to his
apparent defeat at Chelmsford, in 1856. Next year he presented the
ram beaten there to the Salisbury meeting, and another jury gave the
animal the highest meed of merit.
It was at the zenith of his fame as a sheep-breeder that Mr. Webb
"assisted," as the French say, at the Universal Exposition at Paris,
in 1855. Here his beautiful animals excited the liveliest
admiration. The Emperor came himself to examine them, and expressed
himself highly pleased at their splendid qualities. It was on this
occasion that Mr. Webb presented to the Emperor his prize ram, for
which, probably, he had refused the largest sum ever offered for a
single animal of the same race, or 500 guineas ($2,500). The
Emperor accepted the noble present, fully appreciating the spirit in
which it was offered, and some time afterwards sent the generous
breeder a magnificent candelabra, of solid silver, representing a
grand, old English oak, with a group of horses shading themselves
under its branches. This splendid token of the Emperor's regard is
only one of the numerous trophies and souvenirs that embellish the
farmer's home at Babraham, and which his children and remoter
posterity will treasure as precious heirlooms.
If Mr. Webb did not originate, he developed a system of usefulness
into a permanent and most valuable institution, which, perhaps, will
be the most novel to American stock-raisers. Having, by a long
course of scientific observations and experiments, _fixed_ the
qualities he desired to give his Southdowns; having brought them to
the highest perfection, he now adopted a system which would most
widely and cheaply diffuse the race thus cultivated all over the
civilized world. He instituted an annual ram-letting, which took
place in the month of July. This occasion constituted an important
event to the great agricultural world. A few Americans have been
present and witnessed the proceedings of these memorable days, and
they know the interest attaching to them better than can be inferred
from any description. M. De La Trehonnais, in the "Revue Agricole
de l'Angleterre," thus sketches some of the incidents and aspects of
the occasion:--
"It is a proceeding regarded in England as a public event, and all
the journals give an account of it with exact care, assembling from
every county and even from foreign countries. The sale begins about
two o'clock. A circle in formed with ropes in a small field near
the mansion, where the rams are introduced, and an auctioneer
announces the biddings, which are frequently very spirited. The
rams to be let are exposed around the field from the first of the
morning, and a ticket at the head of each pen indicates the weight
of the fleece of the animal it contains. Every one takes his notes,
chooses the animal he approves of, and can demand the last bidding
when he pleases. The evening after the letting, the numerous
company assembles under a rustic shed, ornamented with leaves and
agricultural devices. There tables are laid, around which are
placed two or three hundred guests, and then commences one of those
antique repasts described by Homer or Rabelais. The tables groan
under the enormous pieces of beef, gigantic hams, etc., which have
almost disappeared before the commencement of the sale. From eight
in the morning until two in the afternoon, tables laid out in the
dining-room and hall are furnished, only to be refurnished
immediately, the end being equal to the beginning."
This description refers to the thirty-second letting. Mr. Webb's
flock then consisted of seven hundred breeding ewes, a proportionate
number of lambs, and about four hundred rams of different ages. It
was from these rams that the animals were selected which were sent
into every country in the civilized world. The average price of
their lettings was nearly 24 pounds each, although some of the rams
brought the sum of 180 pounds, or nearly _nine hundred dollars_!
What would some of the old-fashioned farmers of New England, of
forty years ago, think of paying nearly a thousand dollars for the
rent of a ram for a single year, or even one-tenth of that sum? But
this rentage was not a fancy price. The farmer who paid it got back
his money many times over in the course of a few years. From this
infusion of the Babraham blood into his flock, he realised an
augmented production of mutton and wool annually per acre which he
could count definitely by pounds. The verdict of his balance-sheet
proved the profit of the investment. It would be impossible to
measure the benefit which the whole world reaped from Mr. Webb's
labors in this department of usefulness. An eminent authority has
stated that "it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a
Southdown flock of any reputation, in any country in the world, not
closely allied with the Babraham flock." It is a fact that
illustrates the skill and care, as well as demonstrates the value of
his system of improvement, that, after thirty-seven years as a
breeder, the tribes he founded maintained to the last those
distinguishing qualities which gave them such pre-eminence over all
other sheep bearing the general name of the Sussex race. So
valuable and distinctive were these qualities regarded by the best
judges in the country, that the twelfth ram-letting, which took
place at the time of the Cambridge Show, brought together 2,000
visitors, constituting, perhaps, the most distinguished assembly of
agriculturists ever convened. On this occasion the Duke of
Richmond, an hereditary and eminent breeder of Southdowns in their
native county, bid a hundred guineas for a ram lamb, which Mr. Webb
himself bought in.
Having attained to such eminence as a sheep-breeder, Mr. Webb
entered upon another sphere of improvement, in which he won almost
equal distinction. In 1837, he laid the foundation of the Babraham
Herd of Shorthorn cattle, made up of six different tribes, purchased
from the most valuable and celebrated branches of the race bearing
that name. An incident attaching to one of these purchases may
illustrate the nice care and cultivated skill which Mr. Webb
exercised in the treatment of choice animals. He bought out of Lord
Spencer's herd the celebrated cow, "Dodona." That eminent breeder,
it appears, had given her up as irretrievably sterile, and he parted
with her solely on that account. Mr. Webb, however, took her to
Babraham, and, as a result of the more intelligent treatment he
bestowed upon her, she produced successively four calves, which thus
formed one of the most valuable families of the Babraham herd. When
I visited the scene of his life and labors, all his sheep and cattle
had been sold. But two or three animals bought by an Australian
gentleman were still in the keeping of Mr. Webb's son, awaiting
arrangements for their transportation. One of these, a beautiful
heifer of fourteen months, was purchased at the winding-up sale, for
225 guineas. It was called the "Drawing-room Rose," from this
circumstance, as I afterwards learned. When it was first dropped by
the dam, Mr. Webb was confined to the house by indisposition. But
he had such a desire to see this new accession to his bovine family,
that he directed it to be brought into the drawing-room for that
purpose. Hence it received a more elegant and domestic appellation
than the variegated nomenclature of high-blooded animals often
allows.
When the last volume of the "English Herd-Book" was about to be
published, Mr. Webb sent for insertion a list of sixty-one cows,
with their products. He generally kept from twenty to thirty bulls
in his stalls.
Nor were his labors confined even to the two great spheres of
enterprise with which his name has been intimately and honorably
associated. If it was the great aim of his intelligent activities
to produce stock which should yield the most meat to the acre, he
also gave great attention to the augmented production of the land
itself. He was the principal originator and promoter of the great
Agricultural Hall, in London, for the exhibition of the fat stock
for the Smithfield Show. This may be called the Crystal Palace of
the animal world. It is the grandest structure ever erected for the
exhibition of cattle, sheep, swine, poultry, etc. I will essay no
description of it here, but it will carry through long generations
the name and memory of Jonas Webb of Babraham. He was chairman of
the company that built the superb edifice; also president of the
Nitro-phosphate or Blood-manure Company, a fertilizer in which he
had the greatest confidence, and which he used in great quantities
upon the large farm he cultivated, containing over 2,000 acres.
At the age of nearly sixty-six, Mr. Webb found that his health would
no longer stand the strain of the toil, care, and anxiety requisite
to keep up the Babraham flock to the high standard of perfection
which it had attained. So, after nearly forty years of devotion to
this great occupation of his life, he concluded to retire from it
altogether, dispersing his sheep and cattle as widely as purchasers
might be found. This breaking-up took place at Babraham on the 10th
of July, 1862. Then and there the long series of annual re-unions
terminated for ever. The occasion had a mournful interest to many
who had attended those meetings from year to year. It seemed like
the voluntary and unexpected abdication of an Alexander, still able
to add to his conquests and trophies. All present felt this; and
several tried to express it at the old table now spread for the last
time for such guests. But his inherent and invincible modesty
waived aside or intercepted the compliments that came from so many
lips. With a kind of ingenious delicacy, which one of the finest of
human sentiments could only inspire, he contrived to divert
attention or reference to himself and his life's labors. But he
could not make the company forget them, even if he gently checked
allusion to them.
The company on this interesting occasion was very large, about 1,000
persons having sat down to the collation. Not only were the
principal nobility and gentry of Great Britain interested in
agricultural pursuits present in large number, but the
representatives of nearly every other country in Christendom.
Several gentlemen from the United States were among the purchasers.
The total number of sheep sold was 969, which fetched under the
hammer the great aggregate of 10,926 pounds, or more than $54,000.
The most splendid ram in the flock went to the United States, being
knocked down to Mr. J. C. Taylor, of Holmdale, New Jersey; who is
doing so much to Americanise the Southdowns. Others went to the
Canadas, Australia, South America, and to nearly every country in
continental Europe.
Thus was formed, and thus was dispersed the famous Babraham flock.
And such were the labors of Jonas Webb for the material well-being
of mankind. These alone, detached from those qualities and
characteristics which make up and reflect a higher nature, entitle
his name to a wide and lasting memory among men. And these labors
and successes are they that those who have read of them in different
countries know him by. These comprise and present the character
they honor with respect. What he was in the temper and disposition
of his inner life, in daily walk and conversation, in the even and
gentle amenities of Christian humility, in sudden trials of his
faith and patience; what he was as a husband, father, friend and
neighbor, to the poor, to the afflicted in mind, body or estate,--
all this will remain unwritten, but not unremembered by those who
breathed and moved within that disk of light which his life shed
around him.
Few men have lived in whom so many personal and moral qualities
combined to command respect, esteem, and even admiration. In
stature, countenance, expression, and deportment, he was a noble
specimen of fully developed English manhood. To this first,
external aspect, his kindly and generous dispositions, his genial
manners, his delicate but dignified modesty, his large intelligence
and large-heartedness, gave the additional and crowning
characteristic of a Christian gentleman. Many Americans have
visited Babraham, and enjoyed the hospitalities which such a host
could only give and grace. They will remember the paintings hung
around the walls of that drawing-room, in which his commanding form,
in the strength and beauty of meridian life, towers up in the rural
landscape, surrounded by cattle and sheep bearing the impress of his
skill and care. A little incident occurred a few years ago, which
may illustrate this personal aspect better than any simile of
description. On the occasion of one of the great Agricultural
Expositions in Paris, a deputation or a company of gentlemen went
over to represent the Agricultural Society of England. Mr. Webb was
one of the number; and some French nobleman who had known him
personally, as well as by reputation, was very desirous of making
him a guest while in Paris. To be sure of this pleasure, he sent a
special courier all the way to Folkestone, charged with a letter
which he was himself to put into the hands of Mr. Webb, before the
steamer left the dock. "But how am I to know the gentleman?" asked
the courier; "I never saw him in my life." "N'importe," was the
reply. "Put the letter in the hand of the noblest-looking man on
board, and you will be sure to be right." The courier followed the
direction; and, stationing himself near the gangway, he took his
master's measure of every passenger as he entered. He could not be
mistaken. As soon as the plank was withdrawn, he approached Mr.
Webb, hat in hand, and, with a deferential word of recognition, done
in the best grace of French politeness, handed him the letter. One
of the deputation, noticing the incident, and wondering how the man
knew whom he was addressing without previous inquiry, questioned him
afterwards on the subject, and learned from him the ground on which
he proceeded. The photographic likeness presented in connection
with this notice was taken shortly before his decease, at the age of
nearly sixty-six, and when his health was greatly impaired.
Few men ever carried out so fully the injunction, not to let the
left hand know what the right hand did, in the quiet and steady
outflow of good will and good works, as Mr. Webb. Even those
nearest and dearest to him never knew what that right hand did as a
help in time of need, what that large heart felt in time of others'
affliction, what those lips said to the sorrowing, in tearful
moments of grief, until they had been stilled for ever on earth.
Then it came out, act by act, word by word, thought by thought, from
those who held the remembrances in their souls as precious souvenirs
of a good man's life. So earnest was his desire to do these things
in secret, that his own family heard of them only by accident, and
from those whom he so greatly helped with his kindness and
generosity. And when known by his wife and children, in this way,
they were put under the bann of secrecy. This it is that makes it
so difficult to delineate the home and heaven side of his character.
Those nearest to him, who breathed in the blessing of its daily
odor, so revere his repeated and earnest wish not to have his good
works talked of in public, that, even now he is dead and gone, they
hold it as a sacred obligation to his memory not to give up these
treasured secrets of his life. Thus, in giving a partial coup
d'oeil of that aspect of his character which fronted homeward and
heavenward, one can only glean, here and there, glimpses of
different traits, in acts, incidents, and anecdotes remembered by
neighbors and friends near and remote. Were it not that his
children are withheld, by this delicate veneration, from giving to
the public facts known to them alone, the moral beauty and
brightness of his life would shine out upon the outside world with
warmer rays and larger rayons. I hope that a single passage from a
letter written by one of them to a friend, even under the injunction
of confidence, may be given here, without rending the veil which
they hold so sacred. In referring to this disposition and habit of
her venerated father, she says--
"Often have I been so blessed as to be caused to shed tears of joy
and pride at hearing proofs of his tenderness, kindness, and
generosity related by the recipients of some token of his nobleness,
but of which we never should have heard from himself."
A little incident may illustrate this trait of his disposition. In
1862, a "Loan Court" was held in London, at which there was a most
magnificent display of jewels and plate of all kinds, contributed by
their owners to be exhibited for the gratification of the public. A
friend, who held him in the highest veneration, returning from this
brilliant show, expressed regret that Mr. Webb had not furnished one
of the stands, by sending the splendid silver candelabra presented
to him by the French Emperor, with the many silver cups and medals
he had won. Mr. Webb replied, that the mercies God had blessed him
with, and the successes He had awarded to him, might have been sent
to teach him humility, and not given to parade before the world.
It is one of the most striking proofs of his great and pure-
heartedness, that, notwithstanding nearly forty consecutive years of
vigorous and successful competition with the leading agriculturists
of Great Britain and other countries, none of the victories he won
over them, or the eminence he attained, ever made him an enemy.
When we consider the eager ambitions and excited sensibilities that
enter into these competitions, this fact in itself shows what manner
of man he was in his disposition and deportment. Referring to this
aspect of his character, the French writer already cited, M. De La
Trehonnais, says of him, while still living--
"There exists no person who has gained the esteem and goodwill of
his contemporaries to a higher degree than Mr. Webb. His probity,
his scrupulous good faith, his generosity, and the affable equality
of his character, have gained for him the respect and affection of
every one. Since I have had the honor of knowing him, which is
already many years, I have never known of his having a single enemy;
and in my constant intercourse with the agricultural classes of
England, I have never heard of a single malevolent insinuation
respecting him. When we consider how much those who raise
themselves in the world above others, are made the butt for the
attacks of envy in proportion with their elevation, we may conclude
that there are in the character of this wealthy man very solid
virtues, well fixed principles, transcendant [sic] merit, to have
passed through his long career of success and triumphs without
having drawn upon himself the ill-will of a single enemy, or the
calumnious shaft of envy."
Nor were these negative virtues, ending where they begun, or
enabling him to go through a long life of energetic activities
without an enemy. He not only lived at peace with all men, but did
his utmost to make them live at peace with each other. Says one who
knew him intimately--"I never heard him express a sentiment savoring
of enmity to any person, nor could he bear to see it entertained by
any one towards another. Even if he heard of an ill-feeling
existing between persons, he would, if possible, effect a
reconciliation; and his own bright example, and hearty, kind, genial
manners always warmed all hearts towards himself. Notwithstanding
the numerous calls upon his time, made by public and private
business, he did not lose his sweet cheerfulness of temper, and was
ever ready in his most busy moments to aid others, if he saw a
possibility of so doing." Energy, gentleness, conscientiousness and
courtesy were seldom, if ever, blended in such suave accord as in
him. These virtues came out, each in its distinctive lustre, under
the trials and vexations which try human nature most severely. All
who knew him marvelled that he was able to maintain such sweetness
and evenness of temper under provocations and difficulties which
would have greatly annoyed most men. What he was in these outer
circles of his influence, he was, to all the centralization of his
virtues, in the heart of his family. Here, indeed, the best graces
of his character had their full play and beauty. He was the centre
and soul of one of the happiest of earthly homes, attracting to him
the affections of every member of the hearth circle that moved in
the sleepless light of his life. Here he did not rule, but led by
love. It alone dictated, and it alone obeyed. It inspired its like
in domestic discipline. Spontaneous reverence for such a father's
wish and will superseded the unpleasant necessity of more active
parental constraint. To bring a shade of sadness to that venerated
face, or a speechless reproach to that benignant eye, was a greater
punishment to a temporarily wayward child than any corporal
correction could have inflicted.
No one of the hundreds that were present at the sale and dispersion
of the Babraham flock could have thought that the remaining days of
the great and good man were to be so few on earth. He was then
about sixty-five years of age, of stately, unbending form and face
radiant and genial with the florid flush of that Indian Summer which
so many Englishmen wear late in those autumnal years that bend and
pale American forms and faces to "the sere and yellow leaf" of life.
But the sequel proved that he did not abdicate his position too
early. In a little more than a year from this event, his spirit was
raised to higher fellowships and folded with those of the pure and
blest of bygone ages. The incidents and coincidents of the last,
great moments of his being here, were remarkable and affecting.
Neither he nor his wife died at the home they had made so happy with
the beauty and savor of their virtues. Under another and distant
roof they both laid themselves down to die. The husband's hand was
linked in his wife's, up to within a few short steps of the river's
brink, when, touched with the cold spray of the dark waters, it fell
from its hold and was superseded by the strong arm of the angel of
the covenant, sent to bear her fast across the flood. In life they
were united to a oneness seldom witnessed on earth; in death they
were not separated except by the thinnest partition. Though her
spirit was taken up first to the great and holy communion above, the
"ministering angel of God's love let her body remain with him as a
pledge until his own spirit was called to join hers in the joint
mansion of their eternal rest. On the very day that her body was
carried to its long home, his own unloosed, to its upward flight,
the soul that had made it shine for half a century like a temple
erected to the Divine Glory. The years allotted to him on earth
were even to a day. Just sixty-six were measured off to him, and
then "the wheel ceased to turn at the cistern," and he died on his
birthday. An affecting coincidence also marked the departure of his
beloved wife. She left on the birthday of her eldest son, who had
intended to make the anniversary the dating-day of domestic
happiness, by choosing it for his marriage.
A few facts will suffice for the history of the closing scene.
About the middle of October, 1862, Mrs. Webb, whose health seemed
failing, went to visit her brother, Henry Marshall, Esq., residing
in Cambridge. Here she suddenly became much worse, and the prospect
of her recovery more and more doubtful. Mr. Webb was with her
immediately on the first unfavorable turn of her illness, together
with other members of the family. When he realised her danger, and
the hope of her surviving broke down within him, his physical
constitution succumbed under the impending blow, and two days before
her death, he was prostrated by a nervous fever, from which he never
rallied, but died on the 10th of November. Although the great
visitation was too heavy for his flesh and blood to bear, his spirit
was strengthened to drink this last cup of earthly trial with
beautiful serenity and submission. It was strong enough to make his
quivering lips to say, in distinct and audible utterance, and his
closing eyes to pledge the truth and depth of the sentiment, "Thy
will be done!" One who stood over him in these last moments says,
that, when assured of his own danger, his countenance only seemed to
take on a light of greater happiness. He was conscious up to within
a few minutes of his death, and, though unable to speak
articulately, responded by expressions of his countenance to the
words and looks of affection addressed to him by the dear ones
surrounding his bed. One of them read to him a favorite hymn,
beginning with "Cling to the Comforter!" When she ceased, he signed
to her to repeat it; and, while the words were still on her lips,
the Comforter came at his call, and bore his waiting spirit away to
the heavenly companionship for which it longed. As it left the
stilled temple of its earthly habitation, it shed upon the
delicately-carved lines of its marble door and closed windows a
sweet gleam of the morning twilight of its own happy immortality.
A long funeral cortege attended the remains of the deceased from
Cambridge to their last resting place in the little village
churchyard of Babraham. Beside friends from neighboring villages,
the First Cambridgeshire Mounted Rifle Corps joined the procession,
together with a large number of the county police force. His body
was laid down to its last, long rest beside that of his wife, who
preceded him to the tomb only by a few days. Though Stratford-upon-
Avon, and Dryburgh Abbey may attract more American travellers to
their shrines, I am sure many of them, with due perception of moral
worth, will visit Babraham, and hold it in reverent estimation as
the home of one of the world's best worthies, who left on it a
biograph which shall have a place among the human-life-scapes which
the Saviour of mankind shall hang up in the inner temple of His
Father's glory, as the most precious tokens and trophies of the
earth, on which He shared the tearful experiences of humanity, and
bore back to His throne all the touching memories of its weaknesses,
griefs, and sorrows.
A movement is now on foot to erect a suitable monument to his
memory. It may indicate the public estimation in which his life and
labors are held that, already, about 10,000 pounds have been
subscribed towards this testimonial to his worth. The monument,
doubtless, will be placed in the great Agricultural Hall, which he
did so much to found. His name will wear down to coming generations
the crystal roofage of that magnificent edifice as a fitting crown
of honor.