on belief in Immortality reminds me that I repeated them soon after he
had made them, to another great man whom it was my privilege to
know—John Stuart Mill. We were spending an afternoon with him and Miss
Helen Taylor at Blackheath; and a quiet conversation between Mr. Mill
and myself having reached this subject, I told him of what Sir C. Lyell
had said. In a moment the quick blood suffused his cheeks and something
very like tears were in his eyes. The question, it was plain, touched
his very heart. This wonderful sensitiveness of a man generally supposed
to be “dry” and devoted to the driest studies, struck me, I think, more
than anything about him. His special characteristic was extreme delicacy
of feeling; and this showed itself, singularly enough, for a man
advanced in life, in transparency of skin, and changes of colour and
expression as rapid as those in a mountain lake when the clouds shift
over it. When Watts painted his fine portrait of him, he failed to
notice this peculiarity of his thin and delicate skin, and gave him the
common thick, muddy complexion of elderly Englishmen. The result is that
the _èthos_ of the face is missing—just as in the case of the portrait
of Dr. Martineau he is represented with weak, sloping shoulders and
narrow chest. The look of power which essentially belongs to him is not
to be seen. I remarked when I saw this picture first exhibited: “I
should never have ‘sat under’ _that_ Dr. Martineau!” Mill and I, of
course, met in deep sympathy on the Woman question; and he did me the
honour to present me with a copy of his “_Subjection of Women_” on its
publication. He tried to make me write and speak more on the subject of
Women’s Claims, and used jestingly to say that my laugh was worth—I
forget how much!—to the cause. I insert a letter from him showing the
minute care he took about matters hardly worthy of his attention.
“Avignon, Feb. 23rd, 1869.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I have lately received communication from the American publisher
Putnam, requesting me to write for their Magazine, and I understand
that they would be very glad if you would write anything for them,
more especially on the Women question, on which the Magazine (a new
one) has shown liberal tendencies from the first. The communications I
have received have been through Mrs. Hooker, sister of Mrs. Stowe and
Dr. Ward Beecher, and herself the author of two excellent articles in
the Magazine on the suffrage question, by which we had been much
struck before we knew the authorship. I enclose Mrs. Hooker’s last
letter to me, and I send by post copies of Mrs. Hooker’s articles and
some old numbers of the Magazine, the only ones we have here; and I
shall be very happy if I should be the medium of inducing you to write
on this question for the American public.
“My daughter desires to be kindly remembered, and I am,
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“Very truly yours,
“J. S. MILL.
“P.S.—May I ask you to be so kind as to forward Mrs. Hooker’s letter
to Mrs. P. A. Taylor, as she will see by it that Mrs. Hooker has no
objection to put her name to a reprint of her articles.”
There never was a more unassuming philosopher than Mr. Mill, just as
there never was a more unassuming poet than Mr. Browning. All the world
knows how Mr. Mill strove to give to his wife the chief credit of his
works; and, after her death, his attitude towards her daughter, who was
indeed a daughter also to him, was beautiful to witness, and a fine
exemplification of his own theories of the rightful position of women.
He was, however, equally unpretentious as regarded men. Talking one day
about the difficulty of doing mental work when disturbed by street
music, and of poor Mr. Babbage’s frenzy on the subject, Mr. Mill said it
did not much interfere with him. I told him how intensely Mr. Spencer
objected to disturbance. “Ah yes; of course! writing _Spencer’s_ works
one must want quiet!” As if nothing of the kind were needed for such
trivial books as his own _System of Logic_, or _Political Economy_! He
really was quite unconscious of the irony of his remark. I have been
told that he would allow his cat to interfere sadly with his literary
occupation when she preferred to lie on his table, or sometimes on his
neck,—a trait like that of Newton and his “Diamond.” This extreme
gentleness is ever, surely a note of the highest order of men.
Here are extracts from letters concerning Mr. Mill, which I wrote to
Miss Elliot in August, 1869. I believe I had been to Brighton and met
Mr. Mill there.
“We talked of many grave things, and in everything his love of right
and his immense underlying faith impressed me more than I can
describe. I asked him what he thought of coming changes, and he
entirely agreed with me about their danger, but thought that the
mischief they will entail must be but temporary. He thought the loss
of Reverence unspeakably deplorable, but an inevitable feature of an
age of such rapid transition that the son does actually outrun the
father. He added that he thought even the most sceptical of men
generally had an _inner altar to the Unseen Perfection_ while waiting
for the true one to be revealed to them. In a word the ‘dry old
philosopher’ showed himself to me as an enthusiast in faith and love.
The way in which he seemed to have thought out every great question
and to express his own so modestly and simply, and yet in such
clear-cut outlines, was most impressive. I felt (what one so seldom
does!) the delightful sense of being in communication with a mind
deeper than one would reach the end of, even after a lifetime of
intercourse. I never felt the same, so strongly, except towards Mr.
Martineau; and though the forms of _his_ creed and philosophy are, I
think, infinitely truer than those of Mill (not to speak of the
feelings one has for the man whose prayers one follows), I think it is
more in form than in spirit that the two men are distinguished. The
one has only an ‘inner,’ the other has an outward ‘altar;’ but both
_kneel_ at them.”
A month or two earlier in the same year I wrote to the same friend:—
“Last night I sat beside Mr. Mill at dinner and enjoyed myself
exceedingly. He is looking old and worn, and the nervous twitchings of
his face are painful to see, but he is so thoroughly genial and
gentlemanly, and laughs so heartily at one’s little jokes, and keeps
up an argument with so much play and good humour, that I never enjoyed
my dinner-neighbourhood more. Mr. Fawcett was objurgating some M.P.
for taking office, and said: ‘When I see _Tories_ rejoice, I know it
must be an injury to the Liberal Cause.’ ‘Do you never, then, feel a
qualm,’ I said, ‘all you Liberal gentlemen, when you see the _priests_
rejoice at what you have just done in Ireland? Do you reflect whether
_that_ is likely to be an injury to the Liberal Cause?’ The
observation somehow fell like a bomb; (the entire company, as I
remember, were Radicals, our host being Mr. P. A. Taylor). For two
minutes there was a dead silence. Then Mrs. Taylor said: ‘Ah, Miss
Cobbe is a bitter Conservative!’ ‘Not a _bitter_ one,’ said Mr. Mill.
‘Miss Cobbe is a Conservative. I am sorry for it; but Miss Cobbe is
never bitter.’”
It has been a constant subject of regret to me that Mr. Mill’s intention
(communicated to me by Miss Taylor) of spending the ensuing summer
holiday in Wales, on purpose to be near us, was frustrated by his
illness and death. How much pleasure and instruction I should have
derived from his near neighbourhood there is no need to say.
A friend of Mr. Mill for whom I had great regard was Prof. Cairnes. He
underwent treatment at Aix-les-Bains at the same time as I; and we used
to while away our long hours by interminable discussions, principally
concerning ethics, a subject on which Mr. Cairnes took the Utilitarian
side, and I, of course, that of the school of Independent Morality
(_i.e._, of Morality based on other grounds than Utility). He was an
ardent disciple of Mill, but his extreme candour caused him to admit
frankly that the “mystic extension” of the idea of _Usefulness_ into
_Right_, was unaccountable, or at least unaccounted for; and that when
we had proved an act to be pre-eminently useful and likely to promote
“the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” there yet remained the
question for each of us, “Why should _I_ perform that useful action, if
it cost _me_ a moment’s pain?” To find the answer (he admitted) we must
fall back on an inward “Categoric imperative,” “_ought_;” and having
done so, (I argued,) we must thenceforth admit that the basis of
Morality rests on something beside Utility. All these controversies are
rather bygone now, since we have been confronted with “hereditary sets
of the brain.” I think it was in these discussions with Prof. Cairnes
that I struck out what several friends (among others Lord Arthur
Russell) considered an “unanswerable” argument against the Utilitarian
philosophy; it ran thus:
“Mr. Mill has nobly said, that,—if an Almighty Tyrant were to order
him to worship him and threaten to send him to hell if he refused,
then, sooner than worship that unjust God, ‘_to Hell would I go!_’ Mr.
Mill, of course, desired every man to do what he himself thought
right; therefore it is conceivable that, in the given contingency, we
might behold the apostle of the Utilitarian philosophy _conducting the
whole human race to eternal perdition_, for the sake of,—shall we say
the ‘_Greatest Happiness of the Greatest number_?’”
Prof. Cairnes did great public service both to England and America at
the time of the war of Secession by his wise and able writing on the
subject. In a small way I tried to help the same cause by joining Mrs.
P. A. Taylor’s Committee formed to promote and express English sympathy
with the North; and wrote several little pamphlets, “_The Red Flag in
John Bull’s Eyes_”; “_Rejoinder to Mrs. Stowe_,” &c. This common
interest increased, of course, my regard for Mr. Cairnes, and it was
with real sorrow I saw him slowly sink under the terrible disease, (a
sort of general ossification of the joints) of which he died. I have
said he _sank_ under it, but assuredly it was only his piteously
stiffened _body_ which did so, for I never saw a grander triumph of mind
over matter than was shown by the courage and cheerfulness wherewith he
bore as dreadful a fate as that of any old martyr. I shall never forget
the impression of _the nobility of the human Soul_ rising over its
tenement of clay, which he made upon me, on the occasion of my last
visit to him at Blackheath.
Another man, much of the character and calibre of Prof. Cairnes, whom I
likewise had the privilege to know well, was Prof. Sheldon Amos. He
also, alas! died in the prime of life; to the loss and grief of the
friends of every generous movement.
The following is a memorandum of the first occasion on which I met Mr.
John Bright:—
“February 28th, 1866. Dined at Mr. S.’s, M.P. Sat between Bright and
Mr. Buxton. Bright so exquisitely _clean_ and with such a sweet voice!
His hands alone are coarse. Great discussion, in which Mr. B.
completely took the lead; the other gentlemen present seeming to hang
on his words as I never saw Englishmen do on those of one another.
Talking of Ireland he said he would, if he ever had the power, force
all the English Companies and great English landlords to sell their
estates there; the land to be cut up into small farms. I asked, did he
believe in small farming in 1866, and in Celtic capitalists ready to
purchase farms? He then told us how he picked up much information
travelling through Ireland _on cars_, from the drivers, (as if every
Irish car-driver did not recognise him in a moment from Punch’s
caricatures!) and how, especially, he visited the only small farm he
had heard of where the occupier was a freeholder; and how it was
exceedingly prosperous. I asked where this was? He said ‘in a place
called the Barony of Forth.’ Of course I explained that Forth and
Bargy in Wexford have been for four hundred years isolated English,
(or rather Welsh) colonies, and afford no sort of sample of _Irish_
farming. Bright’s way of speaking was dogmatic, but full of genial fun
and quiet little bits of wit. He spoke with great feeling of the
wrongs and miseries of the poor, but seemed to enjoy in full the
delusion that it only depended on rich people being ready to sacrifice
themselves, to remove them all to-morrow.
“I ventured to ask him why he laboured so hard to get votes for
working carpenters and bricklayers, and never stirred a finger to ask
them for women, who possessed already the property qualification? He
said: ‘Much was to be said for women,’ but then went on maundering
about our proper sphere, and ‘would they go into Parliament?’”
Again another time I sat beside him (I know not at whose hospitable
table), and he told me a most affecting story of a poor crippled woman
in a miserable cottage near Llandudno, where he usually spent his
holidays. He had got into the habit of visiting this poor creature, who
could not stir from her bed, but lay there all day long alone, her
husband being out at work as a labourer. Sometimes a neighbour would
look in and give her food, but unless one did so, she was entirely
helpless. Her only comforter was her dog, a fine collie, who lay beside
her on the floor, ran in and out, licked her poor useless hands, and
showed his affection in a hundred ways. Bright grew fond of the dog, and
the dog always welcomed him each year with gambols and joy. One summer
he came to the cottage, and the hapless cripple lay on her pallet still,
but the dog did not come out to him as usual, and his first question to
the woman was: “Where is your collie?” The answer was that _her husband
had drowned the dog_ to save the expense of feeding it.
Bright’s voice broke when he came to the end of this story, and we said
very little more to each other during that dinner.
Another day I was speaking to Mr. Bright of the extraordinary _canard_
which had appeared in the _Times_ the day before announcing (quite
falsely) that Lord Russell, then Premier, had resigned. “What on earth,”
I asked, “can have induced the _Times_ to publish such intelligence?”
(As it happened, it inconvenienced Lord Russell very much.) “I will tell
you,” said Bright; “I am sure it is because Delane is angry that Lady
Russell has not asked him to dinner. He expected to go to the Russells’
as he did to the Palmerstons’, and get his news at first hand!” A day or
two later I met Lord Russell, and told him what Mr. Bright had said was
the reason of the mischievous trick Mr. Delane had played him. Lord
Russell chuckled a great deal and said, rubbing his hands in his
characteristic way: “I believe it is! I do believe it is!”
My beautiful cousin, Laura, one of my father’s wards, had married (from
Newbridge in old days) Mr. John Locke, Q.C., who was for a long time
M.P. for Southwark. Their house, 63, Eaton Place, was always most
cordially opened to me, and beside Mr. Locke, who was generally brimful
of political news, I met at their table many clever barristers and
M.P.’s. Among the latter was Mr. Ayrton, against whom a virulent set was
made by the scientific _clique_, in consequence of his endeavours, on
behalf of the public, to open Kew Gardens earlier in the day. He was
rather saturnine, but an incorruptible, unbending sort of man, for whom
I felt respect. Another _habitué_ was Mr. Warren, author of _Ten
Thousand a Year_. He was a little ugly fellow, but full of fire and fun,
retorting right and left against the Liberals present. Sergeant Gazelee,
a worn-looking man, with keen eyes, one day answered him fairly. There
was an amusing discussion whether the Tories could match in ability the
men of the opposite party? Warren brought up an array of clever
Conservatives, but then pretended to throw up the sponge, exclaiming in
a dolorous voice, “but then you Liberals have got—Whalley!”
Beside my cousin Mrs. Locke and her good and able husband, I had the
pleasure for many years of constantly seeing in London her two younger
sisters, Sophia and Eliza Cobbe, who were my father’s favourite wards
and have been from their childhood, when they were always under my
charge in their holidays, till now in our old age, almost like younger
sisters to me. They were of course rarely absent from the Eaton Place
festivities.
There was a considerable difference between dinner parties in the
Sixties and those of thirty years later. They lasted longer at the
earlier date; a greater number of dishes were served at each course, and
much more wine was taken. I cannot but think that there must be a
certain declension in the general vitality of our race of late years
for, I think, few of us, young or old, would be inclined to share
equally now in those banquets of long ago which always lasted two hours
and sometimes three. There were scarcely any teetotalers, men or women,
at the time I speak of, in the circles to which I belonged; and the
butlers, who went round incessantly with half-a-dozen kinds of wine, and
(after dinner) liqueurs, were not, as now, continually interrupted in
their courses by “No wine, thank you! Have you Appolinaris or Seltzer?”
I never saw anyone the worse for the sherry and the milkpunch and the
hock or chablis, and champagne and claret; but certainly there was
generally a little more gaiety of a well-bred sort towards the end of
the long meals. My cousins kept a particularly good cook and good
cellar, and their guests—especially some who hailed from the
City—certainly enjoyed at their table other “feasts” beside those of
reason. And so I must confess did _I_, in those days of good appetite
after a long day’s literary work; and I sincerely pitied Dean Stanley,
who had no sense of taste, and scarcely knew the flavour of anything
which he put in his mouth. When the company was not quite up to his
mark, the tedium of the dinners which he attended must have been
dreadful to him; whereas, in my case, I could always,—provided the
_menu_ was good,—entertain myself satisfactorily with my plate and knife
and fork. The same great surgeon who had treated my sprained ankle so
unsuccessfully, told me with solemn warning when we were taking our
house in Hereford Square, that, if I lived in South Kensington and went
to dinner parties, I should be a regular victim to gout. As it happened
I lived in South Kensington for just twenty years, and went out, I
should think to some two thousand dinners, great and small, and I never
had the gout at all, but, on the contrary, by my own guidance, got rid
of the tendency before I left London. There has certainly been a
perceptible diminution in the _animal spirits_ of men and women in the
last thirty years, if not of their vital powers. Of course there was
always, among well-bred people a certain average of spirits in society,
neither boisterous nor yet depressed; and the better the company the
softer the general “_susurro_” of the conversation. I could have
recognized blindfold certain drawing-rooms wherein a mixed congregation
assembled, by the strident, high note which pervaded the crowded room.
But the ripple of gentle laughter in good company has decidedly fallen
some notes since the Sixties.
I am led to these reflections by remembering among my cousin’s guests
that admirable man—Mr. Fawcett. He was always, not merely fairly
cheerful, but more gay and apparently light-hearted than those around
him who were possessed of their eyesight. The last time I met him was at
the house of Madame Bodichon in Blandford Square, and we three were all
the company. One would have thought a blind statesman alone with two
elderly women, would not have been much exhilarated; but he seemed
actually bursting with boyish spirits; pouring out fun, and laughing
with all his heart. Certainly his devoted wife (in my humble opinion the
ablest woman of this day), succeeded in cheering his darkened lot quite
perfectly.
Mr. and Mrs. Fawcett were the third couple who in this century have
afforded a study for Mr. Francis Galton of “Hereditary Genius.” The
first were Shelley and his Mary (who again was the daughter of Godwin
and Mary Wollstoncraft). Their son, the late Sir Percy Shelley, was a
very kindly and pleasant gentleman, with good taste for private
theatricals, but not a genius. The second were Robert and Elizabeth
Barrett Browning. They also have left a son, of whose gifts as a painter
I do not presume to judge. The third were Mr. Fawcett and Millicent
Garrett, who, though not claiming the brilliant genius of the others,
were each, as all the world knows, very highly endowed persons. _Their_
daughter, Miss Philippa Garrett Fawcett,—the Senior Wrangler, _de
jure_,—has at all events vindicated Mr. Galton’s theories.
Many of us, in those days of the Sixties, were deeply interested in the
efforts of women to enter the medical profession in spite of the bitter
opposition which they encountered. Miss Elizabeth Garrett, Mrs.
Fawcett’s sister, occupied a particularly prominent place in our eyes,
succeeding as she did in obtaining her medical degree in Paris, and
afterwards a seat on the London School Board, which last was quite a new
kind of elevation for women. While still occupying the foreground of our
ambition for our sex, Miss Garrett resolved to make (what has proved, I
believe, to be) a happy and well assorted marriage, which put an end,
necessarily, to her further projects of public work. I sent her, with my
cordial good wishes, the following verses:—
The Woman’s cause was rising fast
When to the Surgeons’ College past
A maid who bore in fingers nice
A banner with the new device
Excelsior!
“Try not to pass”! the Dons exclaim,
“M.D. shall grace no woman’s name”—
“Bosh!” cried the maid, in accents free,
“To France I’ll go for my degree.”
Excelsior!
The School-Board seat came next in sight,
“Beware the foes of woman’s right!”
“Beware the awful husting’s fight!”
Such was the moan of many a soul—
A voice replied from top of poll—
Excelsior!
In patients’ homes she saw the light
Of household fires beam warm and bright
Lectures on Bones grew wondrous dry,
But still she murmured with a sigh
Excelsior!
“Oh, stay!”—a lover cried,—“Oh, rest
Thy much-learned head upon this breast;
Give up ambition! Be my bride!”
—Alas! _no_ clarion voice replied
Excelsior!
At end of day, when all is done,
And woman’s battle fought and won,
Honour will aye be paid to one
Who erst called foremost in the van
Excelsior!
But not for her that crown so bright,
Which hers had been, of surest right,
Had she still cried,—serene and blest—
“The Virgin throned by the West,”[22]
Excelsior!
Some years after this I brought from Rome as a present for my much
valued friend and lady-Doctor, Mrs. Hoggan, M.D. (widow of Dr. George
Hoggan), a large photograph of the statue in the Vatican of _Minerva
Medica_. Under it I wrote these lines:—
“_Minerva Medica!_ Shocking profanity!
How could these heathens their doctors vex,
Putting the cure of the ills of humanity
Into the hands of the ‘weaker sex?’
O Pallas sublime! Would you come back revealing
Your glory immortal, our doctors should see,—
Instead of proclaiming you Goddess of Healing,
They’d prohibit your practice, refuse your degree!”