(DR. W. H. THOMPSON)
THE interest that attaches to the life of a notable man is generally
very complex: it entwines itself with the great events which our hero
helped to bring about, his personal relations with the other great men
of his time, his view of the movements agitating society. And then there
is a further interest in his private life. We desire to see the secret
sources from which he drew the inspiration he carried into the outside
world; we are anxious to know whether he was most real when before the
public, and made his inner life subserve his outer, or whether he
withdrew from the dust of battle and the rush of the world, into the
quiet of his own circle, feeling that he was returning home. All these
varying moods are an attractive study: when the mask falls away and we
know that he was most dispirited when he seemed most serene, or in
reality buoyed up by a divine elation when apparently crushed by a
sorrow that seemed irreparable--the disentangling the central strand
from the variegated web is a task of fascinating difficulty.
But in the life which we are here endeavouring to trace there was no
such bewildering complexity. The secret history of an essentially
reticent mind cannot be written; it is at the best sympathetic guessing.
In a life where events are rare, circumstances monotonous, a character
with few friends and fewer intimates, withdrawn alike from the
political, the religious, the social arena, there can be little to
record, unless there has been some definite _line_ taken throughout,
some marked attitude which a nature has consistently maintained towards
the outer world.
In the case of the late Master of Trinity we can lay our finger at once
upon the characteristic which made him what he was--which gave to a
personality such an exclusive strength that when it fades from the world
we feel that no replacing is possible. He stood to the action and
thought of the present day in the character of a judge: like
Rhadamanthus in the old fables, who dealt not with motives or
tendencies, but with recorded acts, who sate to give judgment upon them,
his function was one of pure criticism. How much that is needed in an
age where on the one hand so much is excused on the score of
irresistible fatality, while on the other hand such an unreasonable
preponderance is given to the value of action, is acutely felt in the
face of such a loss as his.
It is a part of the strange irony of life that the personalities which
make themselves most strenuously felt among their own generation have a
way of slipping out of history. A man who is much occupied in leaving
his mark in life, in stemming or colouring the whirling stream that
passes him, has little time to spend in piling monuments on the banks to
be the envy and wonder of the fluid tides that come and go. The wild
grief that we often encounter in books, sometimes in real life, that
centres about the disappearance of some apparently unemphatic figure can
be thus explained: his vitality did not lend itself to visible labour;
it was content to modify the temporary and fluctuating. When such an
attitude is artistically maintained: when a character most highly
gifted, with a taste and delicacy of perception that overrides the
captiousness of less instinctive critics, is seen to devote itself not
to gathering straws, but to merely watching life, an atmosphere is
created which is at once intensely attractive and baffling. When a
patient silence is maintained upon questions which appear to the young
and fervent to be essential to the progress of the race; when an
impenetrable contempt for fanaticism and extravagance occasionally
steals out in pungent sentences; when the outbursts of not unnatural
emotions are drily repressed; when the overbalancing of enthusiasm is
not forgiven, a deep and provoking wonder grows gradually up as to what
standpoint such a critic has reached that such judgments should be
possible; as to what platforms, what further heights are visible, that
the plain should seem so low and despicable. Of all fascinations there
is none like the fascination of contempt, and when this is seen,
justified by a sure touch, a genuine grasp of ideas, a most piercing
intellect, and seen moreover steadfast in a place of which the very
atmosphere is that of generous and ardent spirits, the wonder becomes
almost intolerable.
There is a great and common misapprehension which accepts no criticism
as valid except what proceeds from a basis of superior capacity. The
ordinary man requires the critic to be a better man than the performer
whom he dissects, to be able to beat his victim on his own ground. But
this is a deep-seated error. The creative power often confers no
clearness of vision on its possessor; the best critics are seldom
originative men. The critic is, in fact, meant to clear the air about
great work for ordinary people; to ascertain the best points of view,
and to sting to death the crawling nerveless creatures who are just
capable of obscuring by the closeness of their imitative powers the
beauty of their great exemplar.
To this task the late Master of Trinity brought an instinctive taste of
the first order. He possessed a mind so delicate as to be only saved
from becoming hypercritical by a certain robustness and virility of
taste, a literary discrimination which led the men to whom he lectured
to scribble down his very epithets on the margins of their note-books,
and which carried into all he wrote a flavour few writers have leisure
to bestow. And yet he was no pedant.
But this critical faculty had its negative side; it grew at the expense
of the other sides of his intellect. No faculty can be sustained in such
perfection except by a loss of balance. And there is something like a
sense of failure that crosses us when we look over the list of works by
which he will soon be known: an edition of a dialogue or two of Plato's,
a few reviews, a sermon or two, occasional contributions to a classical
journal--and that is all.
There is a dissatisfaction attending the production of all work even in
the most creative minds; but when to this there is added a keenly
fastidious taste, working in a region where there can hardly be a
constant glow of enthusiasm to propel a student through his exertions,
it will be seen that natural difficulty must have been great. In his
later years, moreover, the Master had to contend with constant
ill-health--and ill-health, too, engendering a hypochondriacal tendency,
which is of all physical evils the hardest for a student to struggle
against. A _malaise_ which seems to require the distraction of the mind
is fatal to its attaining a firm standpoint for laborious origination.
And so his intellect turned aside into the easier path of wide and
various literary diversion, the impulse, the imperious conscience, so to
speak, of the writer to _produce_, growing fainter and fainter.
Such a mind as this, with its insight into philosophy, its unique power
of entering into the heart of subtle ideas and refined phrases, joined
with its keen discernment of the modern spirit, might have done a great
work of reconciliation. The Master was the founder of the present
Cambridge Platonic School; but he is more the suggester and inspirer of
the movement, than its leader--or even, to any great extent, its
pioneer. He was neither the hard progressive thinker nor the
revolutionary scholar--he was merely one of those who by their acute
touch, by the subtle mastery with which they present ideas, inspire
enthusiastic effort--the Master, indeed, made more than one subtle mind
which came under his influence, turn in that direction and do the tasks
that he was perhaps himself incapable of performing.
But to the outer world he was perhaps best known as a
conversationalist; he had the kind of reputation upon which stories are
fathered. Men who knew the oracular background from which Dr. Thompson's
utterances proceeded, who knew the inimitable air, the droop of the
eyelids, the inscrutable coldness of the eyes and lips, the poise of the
head, were ready to give a fictitious value to sayings that had the
sanction of his name. To couple his name, falsely or truly, with an
epigram gave it an indefinable prestige; his personality thrown into the
scale made a sarcasm that might have passed unnoticed into a crushing
hit.
Those of his epigrams that survive (and there are a considerable number
of a first-rate order) will appeal, it must be confessed, chiefly to
those whose humour is of the caustic and derisive order. When he said,
for instance, on hearing that the numbers of a rival college were
diminishing, that he had heard that emigration was increasing among the
lower classes, or that he had never realised what was the full force of
the expression in the bidding prayer, "the inferior clergy," till he saw
the minor canons of a northern cathedral--the fancy, though irresistibly
tickled by the collocation, will on reflection recognise the cruelty of
the expressions. And yet those who knew him best concur in saying that
the Master was an intrinsically _kind_ man; so promptly generous indeed
that in the days when he was a college tutor, undergraduates in trouble
went naturally to him for help and advice--a most weighty proof to those
who know the undergraduate world and its reticence.
The explanation is that these sayings were uttered solely with reference
to the amusement of those who heard them, with no ulterior idea: he had
no wish that the venom of these stings should circulate and
rankle--least of all that they should penetrate to those who formed the
subjects of them. But he could not resist an epigram--when, for
instance, on accompanying a popular preacher who was to preach at St.
Mary's, he found that they were so hampered by the crowd at the door as
to be almost unable to force an entrance--his suave utterance, "Make
way, gentlemen, or some of us will be disappointed," was genuinely
uttered, because the thought had occurred to him, and he was convinced
that it would amuse the throng, and with no sort of wish to harrow the
feelings or dash the satisfaction of the divine at his side.
Only two years before the Master's death, the writer of these pages
heard him say in a meditative manner at the Lodge at Trinity, speaking
of an offensive speaker at a meeting held the previous day, "So-and-so
was very unfortunate; he reminded me of his father"--whereupon, his
sentences having somewhat an oracular effect about them, those present
instinctively turned in his direction, thinking that some interesting
reminiscences had been aroused--when he continued "he succeeded in being
at once dull and flippant" (a pause), "no uncommon combination." This
last is a specially characteristic utterance--a strong personal judgment
relieved by a general application--if we may use the word--a
"back-hander" to humanity. This was what he delighted in doing. No one,
again, had a greater power of freezing enthusiasm, when expressed with
what he considered unnecessary vehemence. A well-known divine tells me
that in his undergraduate days he was once spending the evening in
Thompson's rooms, and the conversation turned on the respective merits
of certain celebrated Madonnas. This gentleman expressed himself
strongly in favour of Raffaell's "Madonna della Seggiola" as compared
with Lionardo's "Vierge aux Rochers," adding, "There can be no
reasonable doubt on the subject." "When you are older you will think
differently," said Thompson.
_"Have you forgotten my rusty sword?"_ muttered Bentley to some
contumacious Fellow of Trinity, threatening to revive an ancient
regulation long in abeyance. The late Master's sword was neither rusty,
nor were mankind ever suffered to forget it. About once in every
calendar year, at one of the college meetings, it would whistle flashing
from its sheath, and go straight to the heart of the opponent through
the vulnerable point of the harness. Thompson never thrust but he
killed.
When upon the discussion of some trivial point he turned stiffly to a
_dilettante_ Fellow who had professed ignorance of the question, and
said: "I am surprised Mr.----, that you are not acquainted with the
fact: it is so very unimportant"; or when, at a lecture, after closing a
list of books that he recommended, he ended by saying of one of the
works of his predecessor in the mastership, that "he had looked through
it and corrected some of the grosser blunders,"--we cannot help feeling
that such improvisations, though amazingly ingenious in themselves had
better not have been uttered if they were (as they actually were)
capable of personal application. If humour is the saline element, the
wholesome preservative of the tone of life, we sometimes meet it
concentrated, when its bitterness seems its only characteristic. It is
worth noting too, that though a deeply conscientious, nay religious man,
Thompson managed to create a very opposite impression upon his pupils.
An old pupil of his has told me that he experienced a curious shock of
surprise at finding Thompson's name on the title-page of a book of
family prayer. It had hardly occurred to him to think of him as a
clergyman.
The Mastership of Trinity is a unique position; with its traditions it
confers a kind of intellectual peerage upon its occupant. It is the
only great position at Cambridge which is of Crown appointment and not
elective. At another college the man who means to end by being Master
has to gain the confidence of and conciliate his colleagues; and a
Headship is generally conferred upon the man who has best deserved it by
worth and weight, and by cheerful labour spent in furthering the college
interests; but at Trinity no such exertions are needed. College opinion
is, of course, considered; but a man has far more need to impress the
outer world. If, on attaining this position, a man isolates himself from
his fellow-workers, makes no efforts to attain popularity, arrogates to
himself a critical position, no remarks are possible, so common
elsewhere, of the type of "kicking away the ladder by which the ascent
was made." It is a great testimony to Dr. Thompson's weight and
impressiveness, that among the remarks that have been made as to his
manner of administrating the position, it has never been hinted that he
was unworthy to succeed that intellectual Titan, Whewell. Dr. Thompson
had no encyclopaedic knowledge to show; he had no vast capacities of
dealing with general subjects; he had not a remarkably comprehensive
mind. But he was a man of whom it was impossible to think meanly; he
extorted admiration even where he did not win sympathy. His presence
among heads of houses, in the Senate House, at Boards and Syndicates,
was instinctively felt to confer an honour upon his associates; he had,
in fact, some of the "kingly" attributes about him. He moved naturally
in an atmosphere of deference, not only the deference conceded to a man
whose speech is feared; his manner had something to do with it, no
doubt. It was _majestic_; there is no other word.
It is to be feared that the impression he will leave will be that of a
man whose mind was deliberately depreciative; and it cannot be denied
that his best things were in the depreciatory manner. But they were only
occasional flashes in much conversation of the subtle, deft type that
perpetually flowed from him. Of course such a stream cannot be
remembered if it is not "photographed" at the time. It only exists in
beautiful impressions left on the hearer's mind. Friends who went to see
him for a few minutes' chat on business stayed an hour beguiled by the
entertainment. It is said of him, that "much of the enjoyment of talking
to him was that the expectation of conversational _friandises_ was so
frequently gratified." Such a delicate turn as occurs in the prefatory
remarks to his edition of the _Phaedrus_ will illustrate this. He says,
that in sorting "a heap of Neoplatonic rubbish, many remarks emerge that
are _learned, even sensible_"; the inversion of the two epithets--the
suspicion hinted that the ground covered by the first is by no means
conterminous with the ground of the second, is the kind of turn he
delighted to give.
At no period of his life was he probably a very arduous worker; though
always fond of serious and sustained reading he used to lament the
change of the dinner-hour--which, in the old barbarian days was at such
a time as four--as depriving him of his long peaceful evenings, when he
did all the work he ever did; and, as has been already said, he was the
victim for many years of a very hypochondriacal temperament--which may
account for many things--for his never applying himself to the
production of a _magnum opus_--for the acid turn of his wit. He was a
great smoker at one time; it is said to have affected him injuriously.
The wonderful magnificence of his face and figure will haunt those who
knew them well. The complexion like parchment; the large ear; the short
snow-white hair in such strange contrast to the coal-black mobile
eyebrows, with which, as is recorded of Dr. Keate, he seemed able to
_point_ at anything; then the critical wrinkles of the brow; the droop
of the eyelid, slowly raised as he turned to you, as though to give your
faltering remarks his more particular attention; the eye, formerly so
keen, in latter days so curiously dull and obscured; the depressed curve
of the lip drawn down at the corners--it was a face which it will be
absolutely impossible to forget, which it was impossible not to take
delight in watching; it was a face from which you could not help
expecting some memorable utterance.
There is a strange pathos in his criticism when he was first shown the
magnificent but somewhat appalling portrait of himself painted by Mr.
Herkomer, taken when he was not far from the end. "Do I really look as
though I held the world so cheap?" he said. It was like a kind of
recantation, a kind of protest against the opinion which held him to be
so innately an unkindly man; a kind of claim to be reckoned as one of
the human race whom he was popularly supposed to despise.
An impressive figure is gone from us. We cannot, without a pang, see our
characteristic types pass and disappear from the gallery of life. The
late Master of Trinity possessed, perhaps, a character that appealed
more to the older, to the humorous than to the young, the generous, the
ardent. But we shall terribly misunderstand him if we do not see that a
heart beat beneath the cynical mask, that the figure inside the sardonic
shrine was of pure gold.
1886.