talking of coming down to stay here, but I am not certain that he ever
came. In an undated letter from Vienna he says, “If you could get my
father’s likeness for me, I should be most grateful.” And my grandfather
writes to my father, 31 December 1854, “I have Mr Jackson’s picture and
have paid a pound for it. It is a much better thing than I expected: it
is very well done, and the colours are very good; but the paper is
rotten. He has but one eye: his dress resembles more of the nobility
than of the middle classes.” This suggests some earlier member of the
Jackson family; but I do not know which one had lost an eye.
He wrote my father letters of rather ponderous jocosity: thus, Vienna, 8
December 1855, “I have determined, on the whole, not to take immediate
notice of the aspersions which you have felt yourself called upon to
launch at my country in general, and at the hogs of my native state in
particular. If I recollect aright, there are certain points in the
British Isles where persons, who raise hogs, are in the habit of tying
knots in their tails to prevent them from getting entirely through such
holes as may be accidentally left in barn walls. I leave it to be
determined whether these would, or would not, be apt scholars in the art
of snake killing.” On sending her one of these letters to read, 11
December 1856, my father remarks to my mother that it is “a strange
contrast to the refined and classic taste of his poems.” His poems, I
believe, were never much known in England; or even in America, outside
the southern states. And the best of them, _My wife and child_, was
attributed to T. J. Jackson, usually called ‘Stonewall.’
H. R. Jackson had been a colonel in the Mexican war, and was made a
brigadier-general in the Confederate army at the beginning of the War of
Secession; and he went through it all, surrendering at last at
Nashville. He had a son whom I remember very well; and the boy went all
through it too, from the beginning (when he was under sixteen) down to
the bitter end. So late as 31 May 1864 he writes from Savannah, “I am
confident of our ultimate success.” Thirty years afterwards, when he
talked of it to me, he said the Southerners had not been beaten by the
Northerners themselves, but by an alien force: there were comparatively
few real Yankees amongst the prisoners and dead. No doubt, the South
would have enlisted foreigners too, had not the blockade excluded them.
People in England mostly saw things from the Southern point of view; and
when the Northern point of view was put before them, it was not always
put persuasively. A certain Dr Jephson of Boston, U.S., delivered an
address at the Athenæum at Exeter on 17 March 1863. “The present
murderous and fratricidal war in the United States has been fomented by
the American slave-holders and the cotton-brokers in England.... This
plot on the part of the American slave-holders and the cotton fraternity
in England conjointly, to destroy the American Union, has served to
evoke such a bitter feeling on the part of the American people against
England....” Here was a red rag for John Bull. What right had the
Northerners to call themselves the American people? They were only part
of it, and the Southerners were part as well. If this had been a
cotton-spinning district, there would have been a riot. In those years I
was often staying with an aunt of mine not far from Macclesfield and
Bollington, where there were cotton mills; and I saw something of the
misery and destitution there, when the mills ceased work for want of raw
material. No one cared a bit about the merits of the quarrel between the
North and South; but everyone could see it was the Northerners who
caused all this distress--the supply of cotton was stopped by their
blockade.
It usually was called a fratricidal war; but in many of the letters here
I find it called ‘this stupid war,’ and perhaps that was the better
epithet. Had the northern states said Go In Peace, the Wayward Sisters
would have been home again by now.
My father writes to my grandfather, Basle, 8 August 1849, “Mr Elihu
Burritt, the American writer, is travelling to get converts to the Peace
Congress, who are going to hold their next meeting at Paris on the 22nd.
I had several hours of conversation with him about America.... Four
Americans arrived here with us last evening, for a rapid run thro’ the
country and then on to attend the Peace Congress. They cannot speak
anything but English, and I had to translate for them at the stations,
else they would have got nothing to eat all day.”
My father always wrote home an account of little things to entertain the
old folks here. Thus, he writes from Exeter, 30 October 1838, “I went to
the Cathedral on Sunday morning: the Bishop seemed wonderfully devout.
He always is so in appearance, but there was less parade of it on
Sunday. I hope his sins, or at least a few of them, were wiped away by
his humility.”
He writes to one of his aunts, 19 August 1839, that he had been to
Windsor the day before (Sunday) and a friend at court had given him a
seat in the inner part of St George’s Chapel, and the Queen “wore a
white bonnet placed very far back over the head,” and “seemed tolerably
attentive to the service.”... “Afterwards she came out to walk on the
terrace, and walked all round amongst the people: we all made way, and
divided into two rows to let her pass between: she bowed to the people
as she passed, but walked through with a most royal air. She wore the
same little bonnet, and a blue gown and shawl. The Duchess of Kent
walked behind, occasionally by the side of her, but generally the Queen
walked on in front, very boldly, and seemed not to mind going in amongst
the crowd.”
He writes to my grandmother, 11 June 1840, “There has been a good deal
of talk here today in consequence of a young fellow having last evening
fired two pistols at the Queen as she was riding out: he was within
eight yards of her carriage, which was a low open one: the bullets
passed very near, but both missed her: he is in custody.... Last week I
had a ticket given me and was at the great Slave Trade Abolition meeting
at Exeter Hall. Prince Albert was in the chair: he looks at least 24 or
25, and has a regular German expression of face. He managed very well
and was not at all puzzled or frightened at facing so large a meeting.
He read his speech off his hat. There were some good speeches,
Archdeacon Wilberforce, Dr Lushington, Sir Robert Peel, the latter much
cheered, altho’ the applause to O’Connell beat everything else. It was
tremendous. I met him walking in Fleet Street a day or two previously.
He was then looking rather meanly dressed, but at the Meeting he was in
prime order, his best wig all nicely curled, a new hat, good coat, and
his face red and shining as a schoolboy’s.”
At that time of life my father thought a good deal of the way that
people dressed. I have seen two letters of his to young men coming up to
town: he tells them what things should be done and what things left
undone; but, before all things, they must not fail to wear black satin
stocks. The satin gleams in a daguerreotype of him, taken at Daguerre’s
on 7 or 8 October 1842, “on the roof of a seven story house, whence
there is a splendid view of Paris.” Later portraits of him show the
gradual decline of the stock into a chequered neckerchief, and then into
a lavender necktie taking only one turn round the neck.
He writes to one of his aunts, 9 May 1839, “We went to the National
Gallery and saw all the new paintings of the year.” From 1838 to 1868
the Royal Academy exhibitions were held at the National Gallery--I went
to several of them there--but they had previously been held at Somerset
House. He notes in his diary, 13 July 1832, “Went to Somerset House, saw
all the paintings,” and on 25 July, “Went to Angerstein’s paintings.”
The present National Gallery was not built then, and the pictures were
still at Angerstein’s in Pall Mall.--He also notes, 31 July, “Saw
Perkins’ steam gun, which fired 78 bullets in one minute against some
very thick iron plates at 30 yards distance, where the bullets were
immediately flattened with the force.”
He writes to her again from the Belle Vue at Brussels, 27 July 1839,
“The interior of the inn is all good, excepting as to carpets, which are
scarce, being of English manufacture and a heavy duty paid on them.” Yet
we talk of Brussels carpets: also of Vienna glass. I have a letter here
that I wrote to my mother from Vienna, 15 August 1875, “Not a bit of
Vienna glass to be seen anywhere.”
My father writes from Louvain, 11 October 1843, “We went out after the
rain to see the most remarkable object in the town, the magnificent
Hôtel de Ville: far surpassing the idea I had formed from the engravings
of it. The whole of the exterior is most elaborately and finely carved,
and delicate beyond description; and it is absolutely perfect as regards
repair, not one inch of carving being broken.”--Happily it is quite
perfect still, in spite of our great Propaganda lie of the Destruction
of Louvain.
He writes from Braine-le-Comte, 3 August 1849, “I don’t notice the
slightest difference in France caused by the Revolution: all seems just
as it used to be.” And from Basle, 8 August, “All the Baden territory is
under martial law and full of Prussian troops, but agriculture goes on
just as if nothing had happened.”
He writes from Dinan to my grandfather on 12 August 1847, “This morning
we went through the market and saw pigs there as tall and thin as
greyhounds.” And to my grandmother on 15 August, “You would be surprised
to see how exemplary the parish priests are here in their conduct: it
beats everything I have ever seen in England. Their whole time is
devoted to their flock. They have service _every_ day, and spend the
rest of it in calling on the different members of their congregation,
the poorest as well as the richest.”
Though my father’s letters were pretty full, my grandmother detected
gaps. She writes, 15 January 1840, “You don’t say who you were with at
Covent Garden seeing out the old year and bringing in the new. I should
like to know.” And then she gives him a little bit of good
advice--“Youth passes rapidly away: therefore, my dear son, make the
most and the best of it.” Later on she feared that he was making a
little too much of it. She writes him, 20 November 1842, “I hope never
to hear you express a wish to go on the Continent more. I recollect your
saying when you came to Wreyland that you had not been in bed for two
nights.” I see from his diary that it was three: one in the diligence,
Paris to Boulogne, the next in the steamer, Boulogne to London, and the
next in the train, London to Taunton, and in the coach from there. I see
also from his diary that he was at Covent Garden with persons of
complete respectability.
I have nearly a thousand letters that my grandfather and grandmother
wrote to him from here, and I suppose he wrote as many in reply; but few
of these survived. My grandfather writes to him, 29 October 1848, “I
looked all the house over for your letter, but could not find it, your
mother having destroyed lots of my papers, as she does when it takes her
in head, without asking whether it is of importance or not: which very
often inconveniences me.” I wish my grandfather had locked his papers
up.
People have told me that they have destroyed old parchments, “as nobody
could read such things.” And out of ignorance or wantonness people have
been destroying things year after year. In 1837 my father was taking
notes and copying documents, as if he meant to write a history of the
neighbourhood. On coming to Wrey Barton he observes, “The late owner is
said about fifteen years ago to have burnt all the deeds which were then
more than sixty years old.” In the winter of 1838-39 he copied out a
document of 20 August 1607 with a copy of a document of 21 September
1342 annexed to it, “which roll is now shewed forth to the said
commissioners, and the copy thereof is filed unto these presentments.”
The old roll sets out the customs of the manor of South Teign. That
manor extended into the parishes of Chagford, Moreton and North Bovey,
and first belonged to the Crown and then to the Duchy of Cornwall. Under
an Act of 13 July 1863 (26 & 27 Victoria, cap. 49) the Duchy was
empowered to sell the manor; and there is a letter from the Duchy
office, 4 November 1863, asking my father for a copy of his copy. I
suppose the original had disappeared since 1839.
My father once sent a friend a ‘short-copy’ of an article on the
interaction of the Anglo-Saxon and the Celtic languages. A ‘short-copy’
is a reprint of such pages in a publication as make up an article; but
the venerable man was not aware of this, and wrote back in a rage,
Moreton, 28 July 1857, “Some confounded rascal has torn away 38 pages
from the beginning of the work, and how many from the latter part I
cannot say, it ends at 94. If I could get hold of the ears of the
scoundrel, I would make them tingle. Such a gratuitous piece of mischief
is enough to make a saint mad, for I dare say the fellow could make no
more of his plunder than a pig.”
In the English edition of Hanotaux’s _Contemporary France_ there is a
footnote, vol. 1, page 127--“Demander a Bertrand le text Billet.”
Bertrand was the librarian at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and I
suppose Hanotaux wanted to quote the document at first hand from the
archives instead of quoting it at second hand as printed in Lamberty.
And his editor did not understand.
The ancients also made mistakes like that. There is a Greek inscription
at Stratoniceia, engraved in Fellows’ _Asia Minor_, pages 255, 256. It
looks just like a table of accounts--the words begin at the left end of
the lines, and at the right end there are figures, with an interval of
varying length between the figures and the words. It really is a set of
verses, and the figures give the number of letters in each line. They
probably were meant to guide the mason in his work, but he has carved it
all up on the temple wall. On the temple wall at Denderah there is a
long inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphics with portraits of the deities
who are mentioned in the text. At the portrait of Isis the hieroglyphics
say “wood: gold: eyes of precious stone: two cubits high,” at the
portrait of Heqit (the frog goddess) they say “silver overlaid with
gold: five spans high,” and so on--it is engraved in Mariette’s
_Denderah_, vol. IV, plate 88. The mason has carved his instructions on
the wall, not knowing the meaning of the hieroglyphs.
Goethe used often to dictate, but did not always look at what was
written down; and years afterwards (_Werke_, vol. XLV, pp. 158 ff., ed.
1835) he found that Tugendfreund had been taken down as Kuchenfreund,
John Hunter as Schon Hundert, and so on.
Printers sometimes make mistakes. In a proof that I was reading for a
friend, the nomen and pre-nomen of Rameses II had become his women and
pre-women. But very often it is not the printer’s fault. In my former
_Small Talk_ I wrote Anaxagoras for Aristagoras, and passed it in the
proofs, page 76. Had it been anybody else’s work, I should have seen the
error at once; but I suppose my mind was running on what I meant to say,
and I thought I saw it there. And this may also be the reason why
amateur artists very often fail to see the faults in their own work.
They see the picture that they meant to paint, and not the daub that
they have done.
Poets, I presume, use verse in preference to prose because it suits
their thoughts; and yet they often sacrifice the substance to the form.
In _Ye mariners of England_ Campbell wants a rhyme for ‘seas,’ and
therefore says their flag has braved ‘the battle and the breeze.’ It
ought to be ‘the battle and the blast’--the breeze needs no more braving
than sham-fights. In _Dies iræ_ Tommaso da Celano (or whoever it was)
had to find a rhyme for ‘favilla’ and ‘sibylla,’ and thus came down to
‘dies illa,’ which is much too mild a term for Doomsday. Translators
have avoided this by putting in some stronger term--Macaulay makes it
“On that great, that awful day.” And in translations this is possible,
though not in the original, as there is no fit word that rhymes.
According to Macaulay’s _Ivry_, the knights had only one spur each, “a
thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest, a thousand
knights,” etc. Tennyson says Six Hundred in _The Charge of the Light
Brigade_, but that was not actually the strength. If I were editing him,
I should put in a note in proper form--“six hundred: compare ‘sexcenta’
in Latin and ‘hexacosia’ in late Greek, a round number based on the
Babylonian sexagesimal system and used indefinitely, like myriad.”
Annotations and translations may explain things, but are never so neat
as emendations that make an author say just what you think he should
have said. Why should Saint Paul want ladies to cover their heads, ‘dia
tous aggelous,’ because of the angels? Listen to Jeremy Taylor, his
_Liberty of Prophesying_, section 3, “If it were read ‘dia tous
agelous,’ that the sense be, women in public assemblies must wear a
vail, by reason of the companies of young men there present, it would be
no ill exchange for the loss of a letter, to make so probable, so clear
a sense of the place.”
And very often emendations may be made without touching the letters at
all, Shakespeare says in his _Sonnets_, 107, “The prophetic soul of the
wide world, dreaming on things to come.” Homer might likewise say that
the future is in the dreams of the gods, ‘theôn en g’ounasi,’ instead of
saying that it is on their knees, ‘en gounasi.’ An apostrophe is all you
want. Change the vowel-points, and you may connect Magdalene with
‘megaddela,’ and so get Mary the Masseuse.
When Aristotle’s _Constitution of Athens_ was brought to light and
printed, I made some observations on it in the _Athenæum_, 7 February
1891, a few days after it came out. The editor had cited the passage in
chapter 54 which shows that it was written after 329 B.C., but had
overlooked a passage in chapter 46 which shows that it was written
before 325 B.C.; and I cited this passage, and thereby limited the date.
Amongst other things I proposed to read _architheô_ ... for _archiereô_
... in chapter 56, as I happened to remember that _architheôrois_ came
in the same context in an inscription of that period. I think my reading
was right--all subsequent editions have adopted it--but I should very
much like to know if the word went wrong in copying or dictation, or was
a slip of Aristotle’s own pen.
I fancy that the Greek and Latin authors wrote the wrong word now and
then, and never noticed it. That is not the view of textual critics and
editors: they ascribe all errors to the men who copied out the
manuscripts. But this limits them to errors that might arise in copying,
and thus restricts the choice of emendations far too much. Take such an
emendation as _Isara_ for _Arar_ in Livy, xxi. 31. This makes Livy say
that the river was the Isère, not the Saône; but the context requires
him to say it was the Durance, otherwise he would be saying ‘right’
instead of ‘left’ a few lines further on. A copyist might easily write
_arar_ for _isara_, so this emendation is accepted, although it does not
suit.
Such emendations are deceitful things. In this case they make Livy say
the Isère, and make Polybios say it also, iii. 49, though he says
something else; and then Members of the Alpine Club go saying that the
river must have been the Isère, since Livy and Polybios agree in saying
that it was. Other folk may say it does not matter what the river was;
but that is a reason for leaving the whole thing alone, not for getting
it wrong. If you take it up at all, you should not risk the sort of
snubbing that Westbury gave the herald after cross-examination--“Go
away, you silly man: you don’t even understand your own silly science.”
My father used to tell me of Westbury’s methods at the Bar. A judge
would put a question that seemed to be a poser. Westbury would pause,
and then he would not only answer it convincingly, but would put the
point with such lucidity that you could not understand how anyone had
failed to see it. And the judge would turn quite red, feeling that he
had asked a foolish question, and people in court would titter and
guffaw, though half of them could never have answered it at all.
But gifts that help an advocate, may be a hindrance to an author. It
does sometimes happen that a reviewer knows no more about a subject than
he could gather from the book he is reviewing. An author collects
materials till he is bewildered--“cannot see the wood for the
trees”--and he makes a bulky book, putting all this material in, but
doing nothing to clear the subject up. And the reviewer will praise him
for his wealth of learning, and will say he has done all that is humanly
possible towards the solution of a problem that really is insoluble.
Another author sifts the materials and solves the problem. He makes a
much smaller book, putting in nothing that is not essential, and stating
his conclusions so effectively that they command assent. And the
reviewer will dismiss it as a book of platitudes, which tells you
nothing that is not obvious to the meanest comprehension.--These, of
course, are extreme cases; but the reviewer often fails to see that mere
pomposity is not a guarantee of solid learning, and that frivolity need
not mean shallowness. There was an essay, _The critic as artist_,
written by Wilde in 1891, and full of epigram and paradox; and the
reviewers were so dazzled by his flippancy that hardly any of them saw
how much sound sense there was beneath it all. A good judge told me that
he considered it the best thing of its kind since Plato.
A friend of mine in the same house at Harrow went up to Oxford at the
same time that I went up to Cambridge, October 1876. He came over to see
me at Trinity, and I went over to see him at Magdalen. (It made me wish
that I had gone there too.) On the Sunday evening the Lessons were read
by one of the Demies. His reading was dramatically good, but his
appearance was astonishing, with his long hair hanging down upon his
surplice. I asked who on earth he was, and was told he was a man named
Wilde, who could be awfully amusing, but dressed just like a guy. I
never made his acquaintance; but, having once seen him, I knew him by
sight for evermore. The last time I saw him was in September 1897. I was
at Naples, and he was staying in the same hotel--under an assumed name.
My father was never a collector, but would sometimes buy a thing he
liked. My grandfather did not approve, and used to write him letters
about it, thus, 27 May 1855, “I should say your money might be more
advantageously employed than with coins and pictures.” When my
grandfather was eighty and my father fifty, this lecturing still went
on: 27 July 1869, “You may say No business of mine. I am your father.”
It was my turn next. I had a little money when I came of age, and I had
a wish to buy a picture by Burne Jones, _Laus Veneris_. My elders looked
askance, and talked about Consols; but I should have made a very much
better investment than Consols, had I bought that picture then and sold
it some years afterwards.
Amongst other presents when I came of age, I got a pair of old bronze
busts of Roman emperors. They have been a source of pleasure to me now
for forty years; but a dear old lady asked me on that festal day what
comfort I should find in them upon my death-bed. There is a precept in
the Talmud, _Bâbâ Bathrâ_, vol. VIII, page 60 _b_--“If they are merry at
a wedding-feast, cast ashes on the bridegroom’s head.” Happily, she did
not know of that. She would have done it, if she had.
I began collecting Greek vases soon after I had come of age, and I found
many pitfalls in the way. Thus, I bought three vases somewhere in
Etruria in 1883, and the owner undertook to smuggle them out of Italy;
but one of the three he sent me, was not one of the three I chose; and I
had no redress. There was never much risk of buying a vase that was a
downright sham. Plenty of ancient vases come to light in a dilapidated
state, and the forgers fake these up in preference to making new ones. I
got to know their tricks, but have not kept pace with them since I gave
up collecting. In looking at a vase not long ago, I said I could not see
the slightest difference between the new glaze and the old. A wiser man
said, “Lick it,” and then I found the new glaze had a different taste.