By REV. H. A. HAWEIS, M.A.
Before the publication of Mr. Green’s “Short History,” 86,000 copies of
which have been sold in England alone, Mr. Green, although a voluminous
essayist in the _Saturday Review_, was absolutely unknown by name
to the general public. It is not true, as was asserted in a leading
journal, that the success of his book surprised his friends. In 1863,
the clergyman whom he followed at Holy Trinity, Hoxton, said to me, “I
think we have a giant among us in Johnny Green.” “I made up my mind
about that,” I replied, “the very first night I saw and spoke to him.”
Mr. Freeman, Prof. Stubbs, Dr. Stanley, and, I may say, Archbishop
Tait, all knew of his powers before he became famous at a leap, and I
venture to say not one of them was surprised at his success. I think he
was more surprised himself.
He was filled with a great love of historical study, but was generally
diffident about his own work. “I read it over,” he said to me in the
old days, when I was favored with copious extracts; “and I write and
re-write, and wonder after all whether it is worth much—whether any one
else will read it!”
His own standard was so high, his knowledge so great, and his critical
friends, Freeman, Stubbs, Brewer, etc., so accomplished, that he
was inclined to be generally very modest about his own rank as an
historian, and at times even wavered in his general design.
When I first knew Mr. Green, he was revolving a work which should deal,
I believe, with the Plantagenet period, illustrate the story of the
Great Charter, and the making of the English political constitution.
The first fragment he put into my hand in type was Stephen’s Ride to
London.
At the instance of Mr. Macmillan, the publisher, he abandoned the
_magnum opus_ for a season, and taking, in one wide sweep, the whole
of English history, produced that unique and popular narrative which
raised him immediately into the very first rank of historians.
I remember his anxiety to bring the book within the reach of the
masses, to make it a cheap book, his battle with the publisher on that
ground, and his final victory.
“They will not see,” he said, “that by this horror of
_dead stock_ and constant issue of dear books, which
means small profits and quick returns to them, they
miss the bulk of the middle classes, who are the real
readers—the upper classes and the very poor don’t
read—and you make your new books so dear, that your
middle class, who do, can’t buy. Look at America; you
ought to bring literature to people’s doors. If I were
a publisher, I would have a vast hawking-system, and
send round my travelers with cheap books to every alley
and suburban district within ten miles of London.”
This intense sympathy with the people, no doubt, had to do with those
innate democratic and republican tendencies in Mr. Green which so
alarmed the _Quarterly Review_, but they were immensely quickened by
his many-sided experiences in the East-end of London.
In those Hoxton and Stepney districts, where he was my fellow curate,
and my constant friend and companion for two years, he was learning to
know the English people. He had read about them in books. In Stepney he
rubbed elbows with them. He had a student’s acquaintance with popular
movements; but the people are their own best interpreter; and if you
want to understand their ways in the past, you can not do better
than study our present poor-law guardian, navvy, artisan, East-end
weaver, parish Bumble, clerk, publican, and city tradesmen, in the
nineteenth-century flesh.
Mr. Green never worked more vigorously at his history than when he
was busy reading its turbulent popular movements, and mixed social
influences, secular and religious, in the light of mechanics’
institutes, poor-law difficulties, parochial squabbles, and dissenting
jealousies. The postponement of his history until the harvest of this
precious experience had been fully reaped, gave him that insight into
the secret springs of popular enthusiasm, suffering, and achievement
which makes his history alive with the heart-beats of our common
humanity, instead of mouldy with the smell of moth-eaten MSS. and dead
men’s bones.
That slight nervous figure, below the medium height; that tall
forehead, with the head prematurely bald; the quick but small eyes,
rather close together; the thin mouth, with lips seldom at rest, but
often closed tightly as though the teeth were clenched with an odd
kind of latent energy beneath them; the slight, almost feminine hands;
the little stoop; the quick, alert step; the flashing exuberance of
spirits; the sunny smile; the torrent of quick invective, scorn, or
badinage, exchanged in a moment for a burst of sympathy or a delightful
and prolonged flow of narrative—all this comes back to me, vividly! And
what narrative, what anecdote, what glancing wit! What a talker! A man
who shrank from society, and yet was so fitted to adorn and instruct
every company he approached, from a parochial assembly to a statesman’s
reception!
But how enchanting were my walks with him in the Victoria Park, that
one outlet of Stepney and Bethnal Green! I never in my life so lost
count of time with any one before or since.
Green would live through a period. Two hours on the Venetian Republic,
with every conceivable branch of allied history, literature, and
politics thrown in, yet willing to listen and gather up at any moment;
infinite speculations at other times on theology, philosophy; schemes
for the regeneration of mankind; minute plans for the management of our
East-end districts; anecdotes of the poor; rarer veins of sentiment and
personal criticism.
I have sometimes, after spending the evening with him at my lodgings,
walked back to St. Philip’s Parsonage, Stepney, toward midnight,
talking; then he has walked back with me in the summer night, talking;
and when the dawn broke it has found us belated somewhere in the lonely
Mile-end Road, still unexhausted, and still talking.
At such times we have neither of us undressed all night—that was so
especially in the cholera times—but I would go back to St. Philip’s and
sleep on a sofa till breakfast-time.
In those days we were both feeling our way, through similar
experiences, to conclusions of a somewhat different nature; but the
memory of many precious hours of soul-communion remains with me, as
something sacred and beautiful beyond words. I think at such times we
grow in mind and develop in character in days and nights, more than in
months and years of slower vitality and lessened intensity.
In 1866 the cholera broke out in the East-end of London. Mr. Green was
then Incumbent of St. Philip’s, Stepney, and I had just removed to a
curacy at the West-end; but his position at this time was very lonely,
and I was glad to go out to be with him whenever I could. I am sorry
to say that in the general cholera panic a good many who ought to have
remained at their posts forsook them, and this made the work very heavy
for people of any means and influence who still felt bound to reside in
the affected districts.
Although Mr. Green’s parish did not suffer as heavily as some, yet in
some streets the mortality was very great. The dead could hardly be got
away quickly enough. The neighbors often refused to touch them. I have
known Mr. Green take an active part in sending off the cholera beds for
burning, and getting the corpses out of the houses. The only people who
seemed willing to help him were the lowest women of the town. These
poor girls rallied round the active and public-spirited clergyman;
and it was no uncommon thing to see Mr. Green going down the lowest
back streets in Stepney, on his way to some infected house, between
two women of the town, who had volunteered with him on such sad and
perilous service to the dead and dying, as was daily to be done, and
was daily being left undone, in those dismal times.—_The Contemporary
Review._