acquainted and had a good deal of correspondence. His later writings,
owing to their democratic tendencies and extreme outspokenness, received
much less public attention than the earlier ones; in _The New Rome_, in
particular, there were a number of trenchant poems denouncing the
savageries of an aggressive militarism, and pleading the cause of the
weak and suffering folk, whether human or sub-human, against the
tyrannous and strong. So marked, in his later years, became Buchanan’s
humanitarian sympathies, that when his biography was written by Miss
Harriett Jay, in 1903, I was asked to contribute a chapter on the
subject.
An anthologist, as I have said, meets with much courtesy from poets, yet
his path is not altogether a rose-strewn one. When I undertook the work,
I was warned by Mr. Bernard Shaw that the only certain result would be
that I should draw on myself the concentrated resentment of all the
authors concerned: this forecast was far from being verified; but in one
or two instances I did become aware of certain irritable symptoms on the
part of poetical acquaintances whose own songs of freedom had unluckily
escaped my notice. Then the over-anxiety of some authors as to which of
their master-pieces should be included, and which withheld, was at times
a trial to an editor. One of my contributors, who had moved in high
circles, was concerned to think that certain royalties of his
acquaintance might feel hurt by his arraignment of tyrants: “but if the
Czar,” he wrote, “takes it home to himself, I shall be only too
delighted.” Whether any protest from the Czar or other crowned heads was
received by the publishers of the Canterbury Poets Series, I never
heard.
But if poets are the forerunners of a future society, to
“poet-naturalists” also must a like function be assigned. Of Thoreau, to
whom that title was first and most fittingly given, I have already
spoken; and his was the genius which, to me, next to that of Shelley,
was the most astonishing of nineteenth-century portents; a scion of the
future, springing up, like some alien wild-flower, unclassed and
uncomprehended: like Shelley’s, too, his wisdom is still far ahead of
our age, and destined to be increasingly acknowledged.
It was with this thought in mind that I wrote a biography of Thoreau, in
which task I received valuable aid from his surviving friends, Mr.
Harrison Blake, Mr. Daniel Ricketson, Mr. Frank B. Sanborn, Dr. Edward
Emerson, and others. With Mr. Sanborn, the last of the Concord group, I
corresponded for nearly thirty years, and I had several long talks with
him on the occasions of his visiting England: he was a man of great
erudition and extraordinary memory, so that his store of information
amassed in a long life was almost encyclopedic. I learnt much from him
about Concord and its celebrities; and he collaborated with me in
editing a collection of Thoreau’s “Poems of Nature,” which was published
in 1895. Mr. Daniel Ricketson, the “Mr. D. R.” of Emerson’s edition of
Thoreau’s _Letters_, was another friend to whom I was greatly indebted;
his correspondence with me was printed in a memorial volume, _Daniel
Ricketson and his Friends_, in 1902. By no one was I more helped and
encouraged than by that most ardent of Thoreau-students, Dr. Samuel A.
Jones, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who, with his fellow-enthusiast, Mr.
Alfred W. Hosmer, of Concord, sent me at various times a large amount of
_Thoreauana_, and enabled me to make a number of corrections and
amplifications in a later edition of the _Life_. It was through our
common love of Thoreau that I first became acquainted with Mr. W. Sloane
Kennedy, of Belmont, Massachusetts, a true nature-lover with whom I have
had much pleasant and friendly intercourse both personally and by
letter.
Richard Jefferies, unlike Shelley or Thoreau, was so far a pessimist as
to believe that “lives spent in doing good have been lives nobly
wasted”; but while convinced that “the whole and the worst the worst
pessimist could say is far beneath the least particle of the truth, so
immense is the misery of man,” he could yet feel the hope of future
amelioration. “Full well aware that all has failed, yet side by side
with the sadness of that knowledge, there yet lives on in me an
unquenchable belief, thought burning like the sun, that there is yet
something to be found, something real, something to give each separate
personality sunshine and flowers in its own existence now.” If ever
there was an inspired work, a real book of prophecy, such a one is
Jefferies’s _Story of my Heart_, in which, with his gaze fixed on a
future society, where the term _pauper_ (“inexpressibly wicked word”)
shall be unknown, he speaks in scathing condemnation of the present lack
of just and equitable distribution, which keeps the bulk of the human
race still labouring for bare sustenance and shelter.
In a study of Jefferies’s life and ideals, published in 1894, I drew
attention to the marked change that came over his views, during his
later years, on social and religious questions, a ripening of thought,
accompanied by a corresponding growth of literary style, which can be
measured by the great superiority of _The Story_ over such books as _The
Gamekeeper at Home_; and in connection with this subject I pointed out
that the incident recorded by Sir Walter Besant in his _Eulogy of
Richard Jefferies_ of a death-bed return to the Christian faith, at a
time when Jefferies was physically and intellectually a wreck, could not
be accepted as in any way reversing the authoritative statement of his
religious convictions which he had himself published in his _Story_. For
this I was taken to task in several papers as having perverted biography
in the interest of my own prejudiced opinions; but under this censure,
not to mention that my views were shared by those friends and students
of Jefferies with whom I was brought in touch, I had one unsuspected
source of consolation in the fact that Sir Walter Besant told me in
private correspondence that, from what he had learnt since the
publication of his _Eulogy_, he was convinced that I was quite right. I
did not make this public until many years later, when a new edition of
my book appeared: there was then some further outcry in a section of the
press; but this was not repeated when Mr. Edward Thomas, in the latest
and fullest biography of Jefferies, dismissed the supposed conversion as
a wrong interpretation by “narrow sectarians” who ignored the work of
Jefferies’s maturity.
I have thought it worth while to refer to these facts, not that they are
themselves important, but as illustrating a Christianizing process which
is often carried on with boundless effrontery by “religious” writers
after the death of free-thinkers. Another instance may be seen in the
case of Francis W. Newman, where a similar attempt was made to represent
him as having abandoned his own deliberate convictions.
From Jefferies one’s thoughts pass naturally to Mr. W. H. Hudson. It
must be over twenty-five years since through the hospitality of Mrs. E.
Phillips, of Croydon, an ardent bird-lover and humanitarian, I had the
good fortune to be introduced to Mr. Hudson and to his books. A
philosopher and keen observer of all forms of life, he is far from being
an ornithologist only; but there are certain sympathies that give rise
to a sort of natural freemasonry among those who feel them; and of
these one of the pleasantest and most human is the love of birds--not of
cooked birds, if you please, associated with dining-room memories of
“the pleasures of the table,” nor of caged birds in drawing-rooms, nor
of stuffed birds in museums; but of real birds, live birds, wild birds,
free to exercise their marvellous faculties of flight and song. From
this love has sprung a corresponding bird-literature; and of the notable
names among the prophets and interpreters of bird life, the latest, and
in my opinion the greatest, is that of Mr. Hudson: his books, in not a
few chapters and passages, rise above the level of mere natural history,
and affect the imagination of the reader as only great literature can.
If he is an unequal writer and somewhat desultory, perhaps, in his
manner of work, yet at his best he is the greatest living master of
English prose. Such books as _The Naturalist in La Plata_ and _Nature in
Downland_ (to name two only) are classics that can never be forgotten.
And Mr. Hudson’s influence, it should be noted, has been thrown more and
more on the side of that humane study of natural history which Thoreau
adopted: his verdict is given in no uncertain language against the
barbarous habits of game-keeper and bird-catcher, fashionable milliner,
and amateur collector of “specimens.”
If a single title were to be sought for Mr. Hudson’s writings, the name
of one of his earlier books, _Birds and Man_, might be the most
appropriate; for there seems almost to be a mingling of the avian with
the human in his nature: I have sometimes fancied that he must be a
descendant of Picus, or of some other prehistoric hero who was changed
into a bird. There is a passage in Virgil’s _Æneid_ where Diomede is
represented as lamenting, as a “fearful prodigy,” such metamorphosis of
his companions.
Lost friends, to birds transfigured, skyward soar,
Or fill the rocky wold with wailing cries.
But if such a vicissitude were to befall any of Mr. Hudson’s friends, I
feel sure that, far from being dismayed by it, he would be able to
continue his acquaintance with them on terms of entire understanding:
they would in no sense be “lost” because they were feathered. To him a
much more fearful prodigy is the savage fashion of wearing the skins and
feathers of slaughtered birds as ornamental head-gear.
One of the most devoted followers of this new school of natural history,
and himself a naturalist of distinction, was Dr. Alexander H. Japp, who,
under the pen-name of “H. A. Page,” wrote the first account of Thoreau
published in this country. I have a recollection of many pleasant chats
with him, especially of a visit which he paid me with Mr. Walton
Ricketson, the sculptor, a son of that intimate friend of Thoreau’s of
whom I have spoken. Walton Ricketson was a boy at the time when Thoreau
used to visit his father at New Bedford; but he was present on the
occasion when the grave hermit of Walden surprised the company by a
sudden hilarious impulse, which prompted him to sing “Tom Bowling” and
to perform an improvised dance, in which, it is said, he kept time to
the music but executed some steps more like those of the Indians than
the usual ballroom figures.
Dr. Japp was also a biographer of De Quincey, and by his sympathetic
understanding did much to correct the disparaging judgments passed on
“the English opium-eater” by many critics and press-writers. As a result
of a study of De Quincey which I published in 1904, I made the
acquaintance, three years later, of Miss Emily de Quincey (she spelt her
name in that manner), his last surviving daughter. She was a most
charming old lady, full of vivacity and humour; and her letters, of
which I received a good many, were written with a sprightliness
recalling that of her father in his lighter moods; some of her
reminiscences, too, were very interesting. She remembered the opium
decanter and glass standing on the mantelpiece when she was a child, but
she said that De Quincey quite left off the use of the drug for years
before his death. She told me that the grudge against her father, which
frequently found expression in “grotesque descriptions” of him, was
caused in part by his neglect to answer the letters, many of a very
flattering kind, addressed to him by readers of his books; a remissness
which was due, not to any lack of courtesy or gratitude, but to his
inveterate procrastination; he would always be going to write
“to-morrow” or “when he had a good pen.” On one occasion an admirer
wrote to him from Australia, begging him for “some truths” that he might
give to his little son (who had been named after De Quincey) when he
should be able to understand them. De Quincey said sadly to his
daughter: “My dear, truths are very low with me just now. Do you think,
if I sent a couple of lies, they would answer the purpose?” She feared
that he never sent either truths or lies. Among the unanswered letters
which her father received she recollected that there was one from “three
brothers,” accompanied by a volume of poems by “Currer, Ellis and Acton
Bell.” It was by the poetry of Ellis that the De Quinceys were most
struck, but not till years afterwards did they guess that those
“brothers” were the Brontë sisters in disguise.
Were it not a common practice of reviewers, in estimating the work of a
great writer, to omit, as far as possible, any mention of humane
sympathies shown by him, it would be strange that De Quincey should be
represented as a mere “dreamer” and visionary; for in truth, in spite of
the transcendental Toryism of his politics, he was in several respects a
pioneer of advanced humanitarian thought, especially in the question of
corporal punishment, on which he spoke, a hundred years ago, with a
dignity and foresight which might put to shame many purblind
“progressives” of to-day. His profound regard for a suffering humanity
is one of the noblest features in his writings; he rejoiced, for
instance, at the interference of Parliament to amend the “ruinous social
evil” of female labour in mines; and he spoke of the cruelty of that
spirit which could look “lightly and indulgently on the affecting
spectacle of female prostitution.” “All I have ever had enjoyment of in
life,” he said, “seems to rise up to reproach me for my happiness, when
I see such misery, and think there is so much of it in the world.” It is
amusing to read animadversions on De Quincey’s “lack of moral fibre,”
written by critics who lag more than a century behind him in some of the
matters that afford an unequivocal test of man’s advance from barbarism
to civilization.
IX
A LEAGUE OF HUMANENESS
Hommes, soyez humains. C’est votre premier devoir. Quelle sagesse y
a-t-il pour vous, hors de l’humanité.--ROUSSEAU.
From the vaticinations of poets and prophets I now return to the
actualities of the present state. Thirty years ago there were already in
existence a number of societies which aimed at the humanizing of public
opinion, in regard not to war only but to various other savage and
uncivilized practices. The Vegetarian Society, founded in 1847,
advocated a radical amendment; and the cause of zoophily, represented by
the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, had been
strengthened by the establishment of several Anti-Vivisection Societies.
In like manner the philanthropic tendencies of the time, with respect to
prison management and the punishment or reclamation of offenders, were
reflected in the work of the Howard Association.
The purpose of the Humanitarian League, which was formed in 1891, was to
proclaim a _general_ principle of humaneness, as underlying the various
disconnected efforts, and to show that though the several societies were
necessarily working on separate lines, they were nevertheless inspired
and united by a single bond of fellowship. The promoters of the League
saw clearly that barbarous practices can be philosophically condemned on
no other ground than that of the broad democratic sentiment of universal
sympathy. Humanity and science between them have exploded the
time-honoured idea of a hard-and-fast line between white man and black
man, rich man and poor man, educated man and uneducated man, good man
and bad man: equally impossible to maintain, in the light of newer
knowledge, is the idea that there is any difference in kind, and not in
degree only, between human and non-human intelligence. The emancipation
of men from cruelty and injustice will bring with it in due course the
emancipation of animals also. The two reforms are inseparably connected,
and neither can be fully realized alone.
We were well aware that a movement of this character would meet with no
popular support; on the contrary, that those who took part in it would
be regarded as “faddists” and “visionaries”; but we knew also that the
direct opposite of this was the truth, and that while we were supposed
to be merely building “castles in the air,” we were in fact following
Thoreau’s most practical advice, and _putting the foundations under
them_. For what is “the basis of morality,” as laid down by so great a
thinker as Schopenhauer, except this very doctrine of a comprehensive
and reasoned sympathy?
A year or two before the founding of the League, I had read at a meeting
of the Fabian Society a paper on “Humanitarianism,” which afterwards
formed a starting-point for the League’s publications. The idea of a
humane society, with a wider scope than that of any previously existing
body, was suggested by Mr. Howard Williams; and it was at the house of a
very true friend of our cause, Mrs. Lewis (now Mrs. Drakoules), in Park
Square, London, that a small group of persons, among whom were Mrs.
Lewis, Mr. Edward Maitland, Mr. Howard Williams, Mr. Kenneth Romanes,
and the present writer,[26] assembled, early in 1891, to draw up a
manifesto and to launch the Humanitarian League. The title
“humanitarian” was chosen because, though fully aware of certain
objections to the word, we felt that it was the only term which
sufficiently expressed our meaning, and that, whether a good name or a
bad name, it must be taken up, like a gauntlet, by those who intended to
fight for the cause which it denotes.
For it was to be a fighting, not a talking Society that the League was
designed, even if it were a forlorn hope. In an interesting letter, read
at the first meeting, the opinion was expressed by our veteran friend,
Professor Francis W. Newman, that the time was not ripe for such a
venture as the assertion of a humanitarian ethic; but we came to the
conclusion that however small a beginning might be made, much good would
be done by a systematic protest against the numerous barbarisms of the
age--the cruelties inflicted by men on men, and the still more atrocious
ill-treatment of the lower animals.
Edward Maitland, who, in spite of his advanced years, took a good deal
of interest in our meetings, had had rather a remarkable career as
traveller, writer, and mystic; and his earlier book, _The Pilgrim and
the Shrine_, had been widely read. Those who knew him only as occultist
would have been surprised to see how extremely critical he was--to the
verge of fastidiousness--in discussing practical affairs; there was no
one on that committee more useful in bringing the cold light of reason
to bear on our consultations than the joint-author of Dr. Anna
Kingsford’s very strange revelations. At the time I knew him, he was
writing his _magnum opus_, the Life of Anna Kingsford, and he would
often discourse to me freely, after a committee meeting, on his
spiritual experiences, to the astonishment, perhaps, of our
fellow-travellers by rail or tram: on one occasion he described to me
on the top of an omnibus how he had been privileged to be a beholder of
the Great White Throne. There was something in these narrations so
natural and genuine as to compel the respectful attention of the
listener, whatever his personal belief might be as to the reality of the
visions described.
Mr. Howard Williams, on the other hand, was as pronounced a rationalist
as Maitland was a mystic, and one who by word and by pen, in private and
in public, was a quiet but untiring champion of the humanitarian cause.
His _Ethics of Diet_, which had the honour, at a later date, of being
highly commended by Tolstoy, whose essay entitled “The First Step” was
written as a preface to his Russian translation of the book, is a
veritable mine of knowledge, which ranges over every period of history
and covers not only the subject of humane dietetics but the whole field
of man’s attitude toward the non-human races: if Ethical Societies were
intended to be anything more than places of debate, they would long ago
have included this work among their standard text-books. For the writing
of such a treatise, Mr. Williams was specially qualified by the fact
that with a wide classical knowledge he united in a remarkable degree
the newer spirit and enthusiasm of humanity; he was in the truest sense
a student and professor of _literæ humaniores_. It is difficult to
estimate precisely the result of labours such as his; but that they have
had an appreciable influence upon the growth of a more humane public
opinion is not to be doubted.
The Committee was gradually strengthened by the inclusion of such
experienced workers as the Rev. J. Stratton, Colonel W. Lisle B.
Coulson, Mrs. L. T. Mallet, Mr. J. Frederick Green, Miss Elizabeth
Martyn, the first secretary of the League, and Mr. Ernest Bell, a member
of the well-known publishing firm and now President of the Vegetarian
Society, who for over twenty years was a bulwark of strength as
chairman and treasurer. A campaign against the Royal Buckhounds had at
once commanded respect; the pamphlets were well noticed in the
press--better, perhaps, in those days, when they were still a novelty,
than later, when they were taken as a matter of course--some successful
meetings were held, and the general interest shown in the League’s
doings was out of all proportion to its numerical strength.
It was in 1895 that the second phase of the League’s career began with
the acquirement of an office in Great Queen Street, and the institution
of a monthly journal, _Humanity_, so-called at first because its later
title, _The Humanitarian_, was at that time appropriated elsewhere. The
holding of a National Humanitarian Conference, at St. Martin’s Town
Hall, in the same year, was the first big public effort that the League
had made, and attracted a good deal of attention; and the scope of the
work was considerably extended by the appointment of special departments
for dealing with such subjects as Sports, Criminal Law and Prison
Reform, Humane Diet and Dress, and the Education of Children; and by a
much wider use of the press as a medium for propaganda, in which sphere
the League was now able to avail itself of the services of Mr. Joseph
Collinson, whose numerous press letters soon became a distinctive
feature of its work. In the summer of 1897 the League shifted its
headquarters to Chancery Lane, where it remained till it was brought to
an end in 1919.
The League was soon engaged in controversies of various kinds. A little
book entitled _Animals’ Rights_, which I wrote at the request of my
friend, Mr. Ernest Bell, and which was published by his firm in 1892,
led to a great deal of discussion, and passed through numerous editions,
besides being translated into French, German, Dutch, Swedish, and other
languages. Among its earliest critics was Professor D. G. Ritchie, who,
in his work on _Natural Rights_, maintained that though “we may be said
to have duties of _kindness towards_ the animals, it is incorrect to
represent these as strictly _duties towards_ the animals themselves, as
if they had rights against us.” (The italics are Mr. Ritchie’s.) There
is a puzzle for you, reader. I took it to mean that, in man’s duty of
kindness, it is the kindness only that has reference to the animals, the
duty being a private affair of the man’s; the convenience of which
arrangement is that the man can shut off the kindness whenever it suits
him to do so, the kindness being, as it were, the water, and the duty
the tap. For instance, when the question of vivisection arose, Mr.
Ritchie at once turned off the water of kindness, though it had been
very liberally turned on by him when he gave approval to the
humanitarian protests against the barbarities of sport.