the secluded women, and I can speak from bitter experience of what
their lives are; the intellect dwarfed, so that the woman of twenty or
thirty years of age is more like a child of eight intellectually,
while all the worst passions of human nature are stimulated and
developed in a fearful degree; jealousy, envy, murderous hate,
intrigue, running to such an extent that in some countries I have
hardly ever been in a woman’s house or near a woman’s tent without
being asked for drugs with which to disfigure the favourite wife, to
take away her life, or to take away the life of the favourite wife’s
infant son. This request has been made of me nearly two hundred
times.”
(_Quoted by Lady Henry Somerset in the Woman’s Signal_, April 12th,
1894).
I had the pleasure also of visits from several French and Belgian
gentlemen who were good enough to call on me. Several were Protestant
pastors of the _École Moderne_; M. Fontanés, M. Th. Bost, and M. Leblois
being among them. I had long kept up a correspondence with M. Felix
Pécaut, author of a beautiful book “_Le Christ et la Conscience_,” of
whom Dean Stanley told me that he (who knew him well) believed him to be
“the most pious of living men.” I never had the happiness to meet him,
but seeing, some twenty years later, in a Report by Mr. Matthew Arnold
on French Training Schools, enthusiastic praise of M. Pécaut’s school
for female teachers, at Fontenaye-aux-Roses, near Paris, I sent it to my
old friend, and we exchanged a mental handshake across time and space.
An illustrious neighbour of ours, in South Kensington sometimes came to
see me. Here is a lively complimentary letter from him:—
“From M. le Sénateur Victor Schœlcher to Miss Cobbe.
“Paris, 12, 1883.
“Dear, honoured Miss Power Cobbe,
“Je ne vous ai pas oubliée, on ne vous oublie pas quand on a eu
l’honneur et le plaisir de vous connaître. Moi je suis accablé
d’ouvrage et je ne fais pas la moitié de ce que je voudrais faire. Je
ne manque pas toutefois de lire votre _Zoophile_ Français qui aidera
puissamment notre Ligue à combattre les abus de la Vivisection. Tous
ceux qui ont quelque sentiment d’humanité écouteront votre voix en
faveur des pauvres animaux et vous aideront de toutes leur forces à
les protéger contre un genre d’étude veritablement barbare. Quand à
moi, l’activité, la persévérance et le talent que vous montrez dans
votre œuvre de charité m’inspirent le plus vif et le plus respectueux
intérêt.
“Ne croyez pas ceux qui tentent de vous décourager en prétendant que
votre journal est une substance trop aride pour attacher le lecteur
Français. Je le sais; il est convenu en Angleterre que les Français
sont un peuple léger. Mais c’est là un vieux préjugé que ne gardent
pas les Anglais instruits. Soyez bien assuré que vos efforts ne seront
pas plus peine perdue dans mon noble pays que dans le votre. Notre
Société Protectrice des Animaux a quarante ans d’existence.
“À mon prochain voyage à Londres je m’empresserai d’aller vous faire
visite pour retrouver le plaisir que j’ai gouté dans votre
conversation et pour vous répéter, Dear Miss Power Cobbe, that I am
your’s most respectfully and faithfully,
“V. SCHŒLCHER.
“Permettez moi de vous prier de me rappeler au souvenir de Madame la
Doctoresse, et de M. le Dr. Hoggan.”
It was M. Schœlcher who effected in 1848 the abolition of Negro Slavery
in the French Colonies. He was a charming companion and a most excellent
man. I interceded once with him to make interest with the proper
authorities in France for the relaxation of the extremely severe
penalties which Louise Michel had incurred by one of her extravagances.
To my surprise, I learned from him that I had gone to head-quarters,
since the matter would mainly rest in his hands. He was
Vice-President,—practically President—of the Department of Prisons in
France. He repeated with indulgence, “Mais, Madame, elle est folle! elle
est parfaitement folle, et très dangereuse.” I quite agreed, but still
thought she was well-meaning, and that her sentence was excessive. He
promised that when the first year of her imprisonment was over (with
which, he said, they made it a rule never to interfere so as not to
insult the judges,) he would see what could be done to let her off by
degrees. He observed, with more earnestness than I should have expected
from one of his political school, how wrong, dangerous and _wicked_ it
was to go about with a black flag at the head of a mob. Still he agreed
with my view that the length of Louise Michel’s sentence was unjustly
great. Eventually the penalty was actually commuted; I conclude through
the intervention of M. Schœlcher.
M. Schœlcher was the most attractive Frenchman I ever met. At the time I
knew him, he was old and feeble and had a miserable cough; but he was
most emphatically a gentleman, a tender, even soft-hearted man; and a
brilliantly agreeable talker. He had made a magnificent collection of
9,000 engravings, and told me he was going to present it to the _Beaux
Arts_ in Paris. While sitting talking in my drawing-room his eye
constantly turned to a particularly fine cast which I possess of the
Psyche of Praxiteles, made expressly for Harriet Hosmer and given by her
to me in Rome. When he rose to leave me, he stood under the lovely
creature and _worshipped_ her as she deserves!
We had also many delightful American visitors, whose visits gave me so
much pleasure and profit that I easily forgave one or two others who
provoked Fanny Kemble’s remark that “if the engineers would _lay on_
Miss P. or Mr. H. the Alps would be bored through without any trouble!”
Most of my American friendly visitors are, I rejoice to say, still
living, so I will only name them with an expression of my great esteem
for all and affection for several of them. Among them were Col.
Higginson, Mr. George Curtis, Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Livermore, Mr. and Mrs.
Loring-Brace, Rev. J. Freeman Clarke, Rev. W. Alger, Dr. O. W. Holmes,
Mr. Peabody, Miss Harriet Hosmer, Mr. Hazard, Mrs. Lockwood, and my
dearly beloved friends, W. H. Channing, Mrs. Apthorp, Mrs. Wister, Miss
Schuyler and Miss Georgina Schuyler. Sometimes American ladies would
come to me as perfect strangers with a letter from some mutual friend,
and would take me by storm and after a couple of hours’ conversation we
parted as if we had known and loved each other for years. There is
something to my mind unique in the attractiveness of American women,
when they are, as usual, attractive; but they are like the famous little
girl with the “curl in the middle of her forehead,”—
“When she was good, she was very, very good;
When she was bad, she was horrid”!
The wholesome horror felt by us, Londoners, of outstaying our welcome
when visiting acquaintances, and of trespassing too long at any hour,
seems to be an unknown sentiment to some Americans, and also to some
Australian ladies; and for my own part I fear that being bored is a kind
of martyrdom which I can never endure in a Christian spirit, or without
beginning to regard the man or woman who bores me with most uncharitable
sentiments. My young Hindoo visitors drove me distracted till I
discovered that they imagined a visit to me to be _an audience_, and
that it was for me to _dismiss_ them!
I met Longfellow during his last visit to England at the house of Mr.
Wynne-Finch. His large, leonine head, surmounted at that date by a
_nimbus_ of white hair, was very striking indeed. I saw him standing a
few moments alone, and ventured to introduce myself as a friend of his
friends, the Apthorps, of Boston, and when I gave my name he took both
my hands and pressed them with delightful cordiality. We talked for a
good while, but I cannot recall any particular remark he may have made.
Mr. Wynne-Finch was stepfather of Alice L’Estrange, who, before her
marriage with Laurence Oliphant was for a long time our most assiduous
and affectionate visitor, having taken a young girl’s _engouement_ for
us two elderly women. Never was there a more bewitching young creature,
so sweetly affectionate, so clever and brilliant in every way. It was
quite dazzling to see such youth and brightness flitting about us. An
old letter of hers to my friend which I chance to have fallen on is
alive still with her playfulness and tenderness. It begins thus:—
“4, Upper Brook Street,
“London, Oct. 3rd, 1871.
“O yes! I know! It isn’t so very long since I heard last, and _I am_
in London, which I am enjoying, and am busy in a thousand little messy
things which amuse me, and I was with Miss Cobbe on Tuesday which was
bliss absolute, and above all I heard about you from her (beside all
the talk on that forbidden subject,—it is _so_ disagreeable of us,
isn’t it?). I felt that ingratitude for mercies received which
characterises our race so strong in me that I want a sight of your
writing, as that is all I can get just now,” &c., &c.
Alice was of an extremely sceptical turn of mind (which made her
subsequent fanaticism the more inexplicable), and for months before she
fell in with Mr. Oliphant in Paris I had been labouring with all my
strength to lead her simply _to believe in God_. She did not see her way
to such faith at all, though she was docile enough to read the many
books I gave her, and to come with us and her stepfather to hear Dr.
Martineau’s sermons. She incessantly discussed theological questions,
but always from the point of view of the evil in creation, and, as she
used to say pathetically, of “the insufferableness of the suffering of
others.” She argued that the misery of the world was so great that a
good God if He could not relieve it, ought to hurl it to destruction. In
vain I argued that there is a higher end of creation than Happiness, to
be wrought out through trial and pain. She would never admit the loftier
conception of God’s purposes as they appeared to me, and was to all
intents and purposes an Atheist when she said good-bye to me, before a
short trip to Paris. She came back in a month or six weeks, not merely a
believer in the ordinary orthodox creed, but inspired with the zeal of
an _energumène_ for the doctrines, very much over and above orthodoxy,
of Mr. Harris! Our gentle, caressing, modest young friend was entirely
transformed. She stood upright and walked up and down our rooms, talking
with vehemence about Mr. Harris’ doctrines, and the necessity for
adopting his views, obeying his guidance, and going immediately to live
on the shores of Lake Erie! The transfiguration was, I suppose, _au
fond_, one of the many miracles of the little god with the bow and
arrows and Mr. Oliphant was certainly not unconcerned therein. But still
there was no adequate explanation of this change, or of the boasting
(difficult to hear with patience from a clever and sceptical woman) of
the famous “method” of obtaining fresh supplies of Divine spirit, by the
process of holding one’s breath for some minutes—according to Mr.
Harris’ pneumatology! The whole thing was infinitely distressing, even
revolting to us; and we sympathised much with her stepfather (my
friend’s old friend) who had loved her like a father, and was driven
wild by the insolent pretentions of Mr. Harris to stop the marriage, of
which all London had heard, unless his monstrous demands were previously
obeyed! At last Alice walked by herself one morning to her Bank, and
ordered her whole fortune to be transferred to Mr. Harris; and this
without the simplest settlement or security for her future support!
After this heroic proceeding, the Prophet of Lake Erie graciously
consented, (in a way,) to her marriage; and England saw her and Mr.
Oliphant no more for many years. What that very helpless and
self-indulgent young creature must have gone through in her solitary
cottage on Lake Erie, and subsequently in her poor little school in
California, can scarcely be guessed. When she returned to England she
wrote to us from Hunstanton Hall, (her brother’s house), offering to
come and see us, but we felt that it would cause us more pain than
pleasure to meet her again, and, in a kindly way, we declined the
proposal. Since her sad death, and that of Mr. Oliphant, an American
friend of mine, Dr. Leffingwell, travelling in Syria, wrote me a letter
from her house at Haifa. He found her books still on the shelves where
she had left them; and the first he took down was Parker’s _Discourse of
Religion_ inscribed “From Frances Power Cobbe to Alice L’Estrange.”
A less tragic _souvenir_ of poor Alice occurs to me as I write. It is so
good an illustration of the difference between English and French
politeness that I must record it.
Alice was going over to Paris alone, and as I happened to know that a
distinguished and very agreeable old French gentleman of my acquaintance
was crossing by the same train, I wrote and begged him to look after her
on the way. He replied in the kindest and most graceful manner as
follows:—
“Chère Mademoiselle,
“Vraiment vous me comblez de toutes les manières. Après l’aimable
accueil que vous avez bien voulu me faire, vous songez encore à mes
ennuis de voyage seul, et vous voulez bien me procurer la société la
plus agréable. Agréez en tous mes remercîments, quoique je ne puisse
m’empêcher de songer que s’il avait moins neigé sur la montagne (comme
disent les Orientaux) vous seriez moins confiante. Je serai trop
heureux de me mettre au service de votre amie.
“Agréez, chère Mademoiselle, les hommages respectueux de votre,
“Dévoué serviteur,
BARON DE T.”
“1 Déc., 1871.
They met at Charing Cross, and no man could be more charming than M. le
Baron de T. made himself in the train and on the boat. But on arrival at
Boulogne it appeared that Alice’s luggage had either gone astray or been
stopped by the custom-house people; and she was in a difficulty, the
train for Paris being ready to start, and the French officials paying no
attention to her entreaty that her trunks should be delivered and put
into the van to take with her. Of course the appearance by her side of a
French gentleman with the _Legion d’Honneur_ in his buttonhole would
have probably decided the case in her favour at once. But M. de T. had
not the least idea of losing his train and getting into an imbroglio for
sake of a damsel in distress,—so, with many assurances that he was quite
_désolé_ to lose the enchanting pleasure of her society up to Paris, he
got into his carriage and was quickly carried out of sight. Meanwhile a
rather ordinary-looking Englishman who had noted Miss L’Estrange’s
awkward situation, went up to her and asked in a gruff fashion; what was
the matter? When he was informed, he let his train go off and ran hither
and thither about the station, till at last the luggage was found and
restored to its owner. Then, when Alice strove naturally, to thank him,
he simply raised his hat,—said, it was of “no consequence,” and
disappeared to trouble her no more.
“Which, therefore, was neighbour to him that fell among thieves?”
POSTSCRIPT, 1898.
So many recollections of Mr. Gladstone have been published since his
death that it seems hardly worth while to record mine. I saw him only at
intervals and never had the honour of any intimate acquaintance with
him; but one or two glimpses of him may perhaps amuse my readers as
exhibiting his astonishing versatility.
I first met him, some time in the Sixties, in North Wales when he came
from Hawarden to visit at a house where I was spending a few days, and
joined me in walking to the summit of Penmaen-bach. He talked, I need
not say, delightfully all the way as we sauntered up, but I remember
only his sympathetic rejoinder to my dislike of mules for such mountain
expeditions,—that he had felt quite remorseful on concluding some tour
(I think in the Pyrenees), for hating so much a beast to which he had
often owed his life!
Some years after this pleasant climb, I was surprised and, of course,
much flattered to receive from him the following note. I know not who
was the friend who sent him my pamphlet. It had not occurred to me to do
so.
“4, Carlton Gardens,
“March 1st, 1876.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I do not know whom I have to thank for sending me your” (word
illegible) “article on Vivisection, but the obligation is great, for I
seldom read a paper possessed with such a spirit of nobleness from
first to last.
“It is long since we met on the slopes of Penmaen-bach. Do you ever go
out to breakfast, and could we persuade you to be so kind as to come
to us on Thursday, March 9, at ten?
“Believe me, faithfully yours,
“W. E. GLADSTONE.”
The breakfast in Carlton Gardens was a very interesting one. Before it
began Mr. Gladstone took me into his library, and we talked for a
considerable time on the subject of Vivisection. At the close of our
conversation, finding him apparently agreeing very cordially with me, I
asked, if he would not join the Victoria Street Society which I had then
recently founded? He replied that he would rather not do so; but that if
ever he returned to office, he would help me to the best of his power.
This promise, I may here say, was given very seriously after making the
observation that he was no longer (at that time) in the position of
influence he had occupied in previous years; but he obviously
anticipated his return to power,—which actually followed not long
afterwards. He repeated this promise of help to me four times in
conversation and once on one of his famous post-cards; and again in
writing to Lord Shaftesbury in reply to a Memorial which the latter
presented to him, signed by 100 of the foremost names, as regarded
intellect and character, in England. Always Mr. Gladstone repeated the
same assurance: “All his sympathies were” with us. Here is the letter on
the card, dated April 1st, 1877, in reply to my request that he would
write a few words to be read by Lord Shaftesbury at one of our Meetings.
It ran as follows:—
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“You are already aware that my sympathies and prepossessions are
greatly with you, nor do I wish this to be a secret, but I am
overwhelmed with occupations, and I cannot overtake my arrears, and my
letters have been so constantly put before the world (often, of
course, without warrant) that I cannot, I am afraid, appear in the
form of an epistle _ad hoc_, more than I can in person.
“Faithfully yours,
“W. E. GLADSTONE.
“April 1, 1877.”
(Half the words in his apology for _not_ writing would of course have
more than sufficed for the letter desired.)
Naturally, after all this, I looked to Mr. Gladstone as a most powerful
friend of the Anti-vivisection cause; and though I had no sympathy with
his religious views, and thought his policy very dangerous, I counted on
him as a man who, _since his suffrage had been obtained in a great moral
question_, was sure to give it his support in fitting time and place.
The sequel showed how delusive was my trust.
To return to the breakfast in Carlton Gardens. There sat down with us,
to my amusement, a gentleman with whom I had already made acquaintance,
an ex-priest of some distinction, Rev. Rudolph Suffield, who had
recently quitted the Church of Rome but retained enough of priestly
looks and manners to be rather antipathetic to me. Mr. Gladstone
ingeniously picked Mr. Suffield’s brains for half-an-hour, eliciting all
manner of information on Romish doctrines and practice, till the
conversation drifted to Pascal’s _Provinciales_, I expressed my
admiration for the book, and recalled Gibbon’s droll confession that he,
whom Byron styled “The Lord of irony, that master spell,” had learned
the _sanglant_ sarcasm of his XV. and XVI. chapters from the pious
author of the _Pensées_. Mr. Gladstone eagerly interposed with some fine
criticisms, and ended with the amazing remark: “I have read all the
Jesuit answers to Pascal (!) to ascertain whether he had misquoted
Suarez and Escobar and the rest, and I found that he had _not_ done so.
You may take my word for it.”
From this theological discussion there was a diversion when a gentleman
on the other side of the breakfast table handed across to Mr. Gladstone
certain drawings of the legs of horses. They proved to be sketches of
several pairs in the Panathenaic frieze and were produced to settle the
highly interesting question (to Mr. Gladstone) whether Greek horses ever
trotted, or only walked, cantered, and ambled. I forget how the drawings
were supposed finally to settle the controversy, but I made him laugh by
telling him that a party of the servants of one of my Irish friends
having paid a visit to the Elgin Gallery, the lady’s maid told her
mistress next morning that they had been puzzled to understand why all
those men without legs or arms had been stuck up on the wall? At last
the butler had suggested that they were “intended to commemorate the
railway accidents.”
From that time I met Mr. Gladstone occasionally at the houses of
friends, and was, of course, like all the world, charmed with his
winning manners and brilliant talk, though never, that I can recall,
struck by any thought expressed by him which could be called a “great”
one, or which lifted up one’s spirit. It seemed more as if half a dozen
splendidly cultivated and brilliant intellects—but all of medium
height—had been incarnated in one vivacious body, than a single Mind of
colossal altitude. The religious element in him was in almost feverish
activity, but it always appeared to me that it was not on the greatest
things of Religion that his attention fastened. It was on its fringe,
rather than on its robe.
That Mr. Gladstone was a sincerely pious man I do not question. But his
piety was of the Sacerdotal rather than of the Puritan type. The “single
eye” was never his. If it had been, he would not have employed the
tortuous and ambiguous oratory which so often left his friends and foes
to interpret his utterances in opposite senses. Neither did he appear—at
all events to his more distant observers—to feel adequately the
tremendous responsibility to God and man which rested on the well-nigh
omnipotent Prime Minister of England, during the years when it was rare
to open a newspaper without reading of some military disaster like the
death of Gordon, or of some Agrarian murder like the assassination of
Lord Frederick Cavendish and of a score of hapless Irish
landlords—calamities which his policy had _failed to prevent_ if it had
not directly occasioned. The gaiety of spirits and the animation of
interest respecting a hundred trivial topics which Mr. Gladstone
exhibited unfailingly through that fearfully anxious period, approached
perhaps sometimes too nearly to levity to accord with our older ideal of
a devout mind loaded with the weight “almost not to be borne” of
world-wide cares.
The differences between Church and dissent occupied Mr. Gladstone, I
fancy, very much at all times. One day he remarked to me—as if it were a
valuable new light on the subject—that an eminent Nonconformist had just
told him that the Dissenters generally “did not object either to the
_Doctrine_ or the _Discipline_ of the Church of England, but that they
found no warrant in Scripture for the existence of a State Church.” Mr.
Gladstone looked as if he were seeking an answer to this objection to
conformity. I replied that I wondered they did not see that the whole
Old Testament might be taken as the history of a Divinely appointed
State Church. Mr. Gladstone lifted his marvellous, eagle-like eyes with
a quick glance which might be held to signify “That’s an idea!” When the
little incident was told soon after to Dean Stanley he rubbed his hands
and laughingly said, “This may put off disestablishment yet awhile!”
As a member of society Mr. Gladstone, as everybody knows, was
inexhaustibly interesting. I once heard him after a small dinner party
criticise and describe with astonishing vividness and minuteness the
sermons of at least twenty popular preachers. At last I ventured to
interpose with some impatience and say: “But, Mr. Gladstone, you have
not mentioned the greatest of them all, _my_ pastor, Dr. Martineau?” He
paused, and then said, weighing his words, carefully: “Dr. Martineau is
unquestionably the greatest of living thinkers.”