lively and interesting sketch of the ubiquity of the race all over the
globe, _except in Scotland_. The Scotch, he said, knew as well as they
the value of bawbees! There was a general laugh, and some one remarked:
“Why, then, are there so few in Ireland?” Mr. Gladstone answered that he
supposed the Irish were too poor to afford them fair pasture. I said:
“Perhaps so, now, but when _you_, Mr. Gladstone, have given the Irish
farmers fixity of tenure, so that they can give security for loans, we
shall see the Jews flocking over to Ireland.” This observation was made
in 1879; and in the intervening twenty years I am informed that the Jews
have settled down in Ireland like sea-gulls on the land after a storm.
The old “Gombeen man” has been ousted all over the country, and a whole
Jew quarter, (near the Circular Road) and a new synagogue in Dublin,
have verified my prophecy.
At last the day came when the sympathy of which Mr. Gladstone had so
often assured Lord Shaftesbury and myself, was to be put to the simplest
test. Mr. Reid (now Sir Robert Reid) was to introduce our Bill for the
Prohibition of Vivisection into Parliament (April 4th, 1883). I wrote to
Mr. Gladstone a short note imploring him to lift his hand to help us;
and if it were impossible for him to speak in the House in our favour,
at least to let his friends know that he wished well to our Bill. I do
not remember the words of that note. I know that it was a cry from my
very heart to the man who held it in his power to save the poor brutes
from their tortures for ever; to do what I was spending my life’s last
years in vainly trying to accomplish.
He _received_ the note; I had a formal acknowledgment of it. But Mr.
Gladstone _did nothing_. He left us to the tender mercies of Sir William
Harcourt, whose audacious (and mendacious) contradiction of Mr. George
Russell, our seconder, I have detailed elsewhere.[23] From that day I
never met, nor ever desired to meet, Mr. Gladstone again.
* * * * *
A friend whom I greatly admired and valued, and whose intercourse I
enjoyed during all my residence in London, from first to last, was Mr.
Froude. He died just after the first edition of this book (of which I
had of course sent him a copy) was published; and I was told it supplied
welcome amusement to him in his last days.
The world, I think, has never done quite justice to Mr. Froude; albeit,
when he was gone the newspapers spoke of him as “the last of the
giants.” He always seemed to me to belong to the loftier race, of whom
there were then not a few living; and though his unhappy _Nemesis of
Faith_ (for which I make no defence whatever) and his _Carlyle_ drew on
him endless blame, and his splendid _History_ equally endless cavil and
criticism, his greatness was to my apprehension something apart from his
books. His Essays,—especially the magnificent one on Job—give, I think,
a better idea of the man than was derivable from any other source,
except personal intimacy. “He touched nothing which he did not” enlarge,
if not “adorn.” Subjects expanded when talked of easily, and even
lightly, with him. There was a background of _space_ always above and
behind him. Though he had no little cause for it, he was not bitter. I
never saw him angry or heard him express resentment, except once when
his benevolent efforts had failed to obtain from Mr. Gladstone’s
Government a pension for a poverty-stricken, meritorious woman of
letters, while far less deserving persons received the bounty. But when
he let the Marah waters of Mr. Carlyle’s private reflexions loose on the
world their bitterness seemed to communicate itself to all the readers
of the book. Even the silver pen of Mrs. Oliphant for once was dipped in
gall; and it was she, if I mistake not, who in her wrath devised the
ferocious adjective “_Froudacious_” to convey her rage and scorn. As for
myself, when that book appeared I frankly told Mr. Froude that I
rejoiced, because I had always deprecated Mr. Carlyle’s influence, and I
thought this revelation of him would do much to destroy it. Mr. Froude
laughed good-humouredly, but naturally showed a little consternation.
His sentiment about the Saturday Reviewers, who at that time buzzed
round his writings and stung him every week, was much that of a St.
Bernard or a Newfoundland towards a pack of snarling terriers. One day a
clergyman very well known in London, wrote to me after one of our little
parties to beg that I would do him the favour, when next Mr. Froude was
coming to me, to invite him also, and permit him to bring his particular
friend Mr. X, who greatly desired to meet his brother historian. I was
very willing to oblige the clergyman in question, and before long we had
a gathering at our house of forty or fifty people, among whom were Mr.
Froude and Mr. X. I knew that the moment for the introduction had
arrived, but of course I was not going to take the liberty of presenting
any stranger to Mr. Froude without asking his consent. That consent was
not so readily granted as I had anticipated. “Who? Mr. X? Let me look at
him first.” “There he is,” I said, pointing to a small figure half
hidden in a group of ladies and gentlemen. “That is he, is it?” said Mr.
Froude. “Oh, No! No! Don’t introduce him to me. _He has the Saturday
Review written all over his face!_” There was nothing to do but to
laugh, and presently, when my clerical friend came up and urged me to
fulfil my promise and make the introduction, to hurry down on some
excuse into the tea room and never reappear till the disappointed Mr. X
had departed.
I have kept 34 letters received from Mr. Froude during the years in
which I had the good fortune to contribute to _Fraser’s Magazine_ when
he was the Editor, and later, when, as friends and neighbours in South
Kensington, we had the usual little interchange of message and
invitations. Among these, to me precious, letters there are some
passages which I shall venture to copy, assured that his representatives
cannot possibly object to my doing so. I may first as an introduction of
myself, quote one in a letter to my eldest brother, who had invited him
to stay at Newbridge during one of his visits to Ireland. Mr. Froude
wrote to him:—
“I knew your brother Henry intimately 30 years ago, and your sister is
one of the most valued friends of my later life.”
His affection for Carlyle spoke in this eager refutation of some idle
story in the newspapers:
“February 16th.
“There is hardly a single word in it which is not untrue. Ruskin is as
much attached to Mr. Carlyle as ever. There is not one of his friends
to whom he is not growing dearer as he approaches the end of his time,
nor has the wonderful beauty and noble tenderness of his character
been ever more conspicuous. The only difference visible in him from
what he was in past years is that his wife’s death has broken his
heart. He is gentler and more forbearing to human weakness. He feels
that his own work is finished, and he is waiting hopefully till it
please God to take him away.”
Here is evidence of his deep enjoyment of Nature. He writes, October
31st, from Dereen, Kenmare:—
“I return to London most reluctantly at the end of the week. The
summer refuses to leave us, and while you are shivering in the North
wind we retain here the still blue cloudlessness of August. This
morning is the loveliest I ever saw here. The woods swarm with
blackbirds and thrushes, the ‘autumn note not all unlike to that of
spring.’ I am so bewitched with the place that (having finished my
History) I mean to spend the winter here and try to throw the story of
the last Desmond into a novel.”
In reply to a request that he would attend an Anti-vivisection meeting
at Lord Shaftesbury’s house, he wrote:—
“Vivisection is a hateful illustration of the consequences of the
silent supersession of Morality by Utilitarianism. Until men can be
brought back to the old lines, neither this nor any other evil
tendency can be really stemmed. _Till the world learns again to hate
what is in itself evil, in spite of alleged advantages to be derived
from it_, it will never consent to violent legal restrictions.”
His last letter from Oxford is pleasant to recall:—
“I am strangely placed here. The Dons were shy of me when I first
came, but all is well now, and the undergraduates seem really
interested in what I have to tell them. I am quite free, and tell them
precisely what I think.”
I do not think that Mr. Froude was otherwise than a happy man. He was
particularly so as regarded his feminine surroundings, and a most genial
and indulgent husband and father. He had also intense enjoyment both of
Nature and of the great field of Literature into which he delved so
zealously. He once told me that he had visited every spot, _except the
Tower of London_ (!) where the great scenes of his History took place,
and had ransacked every library in Europe likely to contain materials
for his work; not omitting the record chambers of the Inquisition at
Simancas, where he spent many shuddering days which he vividly described
to me. He also greatly enjoyed his long voyages and visits to the West
Indies and to New Zealand; and especially the one he made to America. He
admired almost everything, I think, in America; and more than once
remarked to me (in reference particularly to the subject of mixed
education in which I was interested): “The young men are so nice! What
might be difficult here, is easy there. You have no idea what nice
fellows they are.” There was, however, certainly something in Mr.
Froude’s handsome and noble physiognomy which conveyed the idea of
mournfulness. His eyes were wells of darkness on which, by some
singularity, the light never seemed to fall either in life or when
represented in a photograph; and his laugh, which was not infrequent,
was mirthless. I never heard a laugh which it was so hard to echo, so
little contagious.
The last time I ever saw Mr. Froude was at the house of our common
friend, Miss Elliot, where he was always to be found at his best. Her
other visitors had departed and we three old friends sat on in the late
and quiet Sunday afternoon, talking of serious things, and at last of
our hopes and beliefs respecting a future life. Mr. Froude startled us
somewhat by saying he did not wish to live again. He felt that his life
had been enough, and would be well content not to awake when it was
over. “But,” said he, in conclusion, with sudden vigour, “I believe
there _is_ another life, you know! I am quite sure there is.” The
clearness and emphasis of this conviction were parallel to those he had
used before to me in talking of the probable extension of Atheism in
coming years. “But, as there _IS_ a God,” said Mr. Froude, “Religion can
never die.”
CHAPTER
XVIII.
_MY LIFE IN LONDON IN THE SEVENTIES AND EIGHTIES._
_SOCIAL_
I must not write here any personal sketch however slight of my revered
friend Dr. Martineau, since he is still,—God be thanked for it!—living,
and writing as profoundly and vigorously as ever, in his venerable age
of 89. But the weekly sermons which I had the privilege of hearing from
his lips for many years, down to 1872, beside several courses of his
Lectures on the Gospels and on Ethical Philosophy which I attended,
formed so very important, I might say, vital a part of my “Life” in
London, that I cannot omit some account of them in my story.
Little Portland Street Chapel is a building of very moderate dimensions,
with no pretensions whatever to ecclesiastical finery; whether of
architecture, or upholstery, or art of any kind. But it was, I always
thought, a fitting, simple place for serious people to meet to _think
in_; not to gaze round them in curiosity or admiration, or to be
intoxicated with colours, lights, incense and music; as would seem to be
the intention of the administrators of a neighbouring fane! Our
services, I suppose, would have been pronounced cold, bare and dull by
an _habitué_ of a Ritualistic or Romanist church; but for my own part I
should prefer even to be “cold,” (which we were _not_) rather than allow
my religious feelings to be excited through the gratification of my
æsthetic sense.
On this matter, however, each one must speak and choose for himself. For
me I was perfectly satisfied with my seat in the gallery in that simple
chapel, where I could well hear the noblest sermons and see the preacher
of whom they always seemed a part; his “_Word_” in the old sense; not
(like many other men’s sermons) things quite apart from the speaker, as
we know him in his home and in the street. Of all the men with whom I
have ever been acquainted the one who most impressed me with the
sense,—shall I call it of congruity? or homogeneity?—of being, in short,
_the same all through_, was he to whom I listened on those happy
Sundays.
They were very varied Sermons which Dr. Martineau preached. The general
effect, I used to think, was not that of receiving Lessons from a
Teacher, but of being invited to accompany a Guide on a mountain-walk.
From the upper regions of thought where he led us, we were able,—nay,
compelled,—to look down on our daily cares and duties from a loftier
point of view; and thence to return to them with fresh feelings and
resolutions. Sometimes these ascents were very steep and difficult; and
I have ventured to tell him that the richness of his metaphors and
similes, beautiful and original as they always were, made it harder to
climb after him, and that we sometimes wanted him to hold out to us a
shepherd’s crook, rather than a _jewelled crozier_! But the exercise, if
laborious, was to the last degree mentally healthful, and morally
strengthening. There was a great variety also, in these wonderful
sermons. To hear one of them only, a listener would come away deeming
the preacher _par éminence_ a profound and most discriminating Critic.
To hear another, he would consider him a Philosopher, occupied entirely
with the vastest problems of Science and Theology. Again another would
leave the impression of a Poet, as great in his prose as the author of
_In Memoriam_ in verse. And lastly and above all, there was always the
man filled with devout feeling, who, by his very presence and voice
communicated reverence and the sense of the nearness of an all-seeing
God.
I could write many pages concerning these Sunday experiences; but I
shall do better, I think, if I give my readers, who have never heard
them, some small samples of what I carried away from time to time of
them, as noted down in letters to my friend. Here are a few of them:
“Mr. Martineau preached of aiming at perfection. At the end he drew a
picture of a soul which has made such struggles but has failed. Then
he supposed what must be the feeling of such a soul entering on the
future life, its regrets; and then inquired what influence being
lifted above the things of sense, the nearness to God and holiness
would have on it? Would it then arise? _Yes!_ and the Father would
say, ‘This my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is
found for evermore.’ I cannot tell you how beautiful it was, how true
in the sense of those deepest intuitions which I hold to be certainly
true _because_ they bear with them the sense of being absolutely
_highest_, the echo of a higher harmony than belongs to our poor
minds. He seemed, for a moment, to be talking in the old conventional
way about repentance _when too late_; and then burst out in faith and
hope, so far transcending all such ideas that one felt it came from
another source.”
“Mr. Martineau gave us a magnificent sermon on Sunday. I was in great
luck not to miss it. One point was this. Our moral judgments are
always founded on what we suppose to be the _inward motive_ of the
actor, not on the mere external act itself, which may be mischievous
or beneficent in the highest degree, without, properly-speaking,
affecting our purely _ethical_ judgment—_e.g._, an unintentional
homicide. Now, if, (as our opponents affirm) our Moral Sense came to
us _ab extra_, merely as the current opinion which society has
attached to injurious or beneficial actions, then we should _not_ thus
decide our judgment by the _internal_, but by the external and visible
part of the act, by which alone society is hurt or benefitted. The
fact that our moral judgment regards _internal_ things exclusively, is
evidence that it springs from an _internal_ source; and that we judge
another, because we are compelled to judge ourselves in the same way.”
Here is a Note I took after hearing another Sermon:—
“Sunday, June 23rd.
“‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our
sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’
“There are two ways of looking at Sin common in our time. One is to
proclaim it so infinitely black that God _cannot_ forgive it except by
a method of Atonement itself the height of injustice. The other is to
treat it as so venial that God may be counted on as certain to pass it
over at the first moment of regret; and all the threats of conscience
may be looked on as those of a nurse to a refractory child, threats
which are never to be executed. The first of these views seems to
honour God most, but really dishonours Him, by representing Him as
governing the world on a principle abhorrent to reason and justice.
The second can never commend itself save to the most shallow minds who
make religion a thing of words, and treat sin and repentance as
trivial things, instead of the most awful. How shall we solve the
mystery? It is equally unjust for God to treat the guilty as if they
were innocent, and the penitent as if they were impenitent. Each fact
has to be taken into account, and the most important practical
consequences follow from the view we take of the matter. First we must
never lose hold of the truth, that, as Cause and Effect are never
severed in the natural world, and the whole order of nature would fall
to ruin were God ever to interfere with them, so likewise Guilt and
Pain are, in His Providence, indissolubly linked; and the order of the
moral world would be destroyed were they to be divided. But beside the
realm of Law, in which the Divine penalties are unalterable, there is
the free world of Spirit wherein our repentance avails. When we can
say to God, ‘Put me to grief—I have deserved it. Only restore me Thy
love,’ the great woe is gone. We shall be the weaker evermore for our
fall, but we shall be restored.”
The following remarks were in a letter to Miss Elliot:—
“January, 1867.
“I wish I could write a _résumé_ of a Sermon which Mr. Martineau
preached last Sunday. Just think how many sermons some people would
make of this one sentence of his text (speaking of the longing for
Rest):—‘If Duty become laborious, do it more fervently. If Love become
a source of care and pain, love more nobly and more tenderly. If
Doubts disturb and torture, face them with more earnest thought and
deeper study!’
“This was not a _peroration_, but just one phrase of a discourse full
of other such things.
“It seems to me that the spontaneous response of our inner souls to
such ideas is just the same proof of their truth as the shock we feel
in our nerves when a lecturer has delivered a current of electricity
proves _his_ lesson to be true.”
“January, 1867.
“While you were enjoying your Cathedral, I was enjoying Little
Portland Street Chapel, having bravely tramped through miles of snow
on the way, and been rewarded. Mr. Martineau said we were always
taunted with only having a _negative_ creed, and were often foolish
enough to deny it. But all Reformation is a negation of error and
return to the three pure articles of faith—God, Duty, Immortality....
The distinction was admirably drawn between _extent of creed_ and
_intensity of faith_.”
On February 5th, 1871, Mr. Martineau preached:—
“Philosophers might and do say that all Religion is only a projection
of Man himself on Nature, lending to Nature his own feelings,
brightened by a supreme Love or shadowed by infinite displeasure. Does
this disprove Religion? Is there no reliance to be placed on the
faculties which connect us with the Infinite? We have two sets of
faculties: our Senses, which reveal the outer world; and a deeper
series, giving us Poetry, Love, Religion. Should we say that these
last are more false than the others? They are true _all round_. In
fact, these are truest. Imagination is true. Affection is true. Do men
say that Affection is blind? No! It is the only thing which truly
sees. Love alone really perceives. The cynic draws over the world a
roof of dark and narrow thoughts and suspicions, and then complains of
the close, unhealthy air. Memory again is more than mere Recollection.
It has the true artist-power of seizing the points which determine the
character and reconstructing the image without details. Suppose there
be a God. By what faculties could we know Him save by those which now
tell us of Him. And why should they deceive us?”
Alas! the exercise of preaching every Sunday became too great for Dr.
Martineau to encounter after 1872, and, by his physician’s orders, those
noble sermons came to an end.
Beside Dr. Martineau, I had the privilege of friendship with three
eminent Unitarian Ministers, now alas! all departed—Rev. Charles Beard,
of Liverpool, for a long time editor of the _Theological Review_; the
venerable and beloved John James Tayler; and Rev. William Henry
Channing, to whom I was gratefully attached, both on account of
religious sympathies, and of his ardent adoption of our Anti-vivisection
cause, which he told me he had at first regarded as somewhat of a “fad”
of mine, but came to recognise as a moral crusade of deep significance.
Among living friends of the same body, I am happy to number Rev. Philip
Wicksteed, the successor of Dr. Martineau in Portland Street and the
exceedingly able President of University Hall, Gordon Square,—an
institution, in the foundation of which I gladly took part on the
invitation of Mrs. Humphry Ward.
A man in whose books I had felt great interest in my old studies at
Newbridge, and whose intercourse was a real pleasure to me in London,
was Mr. W. R. Greg. I intensely respected the courage which moved him,
in those early days of the Fifties, to publish such a book as the _Creed
of Christendom_. He was then a young man, entering public life with the
natural ambitions which his great abilities justified, and the avowal of
such exorbitant heresies (nothing short of pure Theism) as the book
contained, was enough at that date to spoil any man’s career. He was a
layman, too, and man of the world, “_Que Diable allait il faire_,
writing on theology at all?” That book remains to this day a most
valuable manual of arguments and evidences against the _Creed of
Christendom_; set forth in a grave and reverent spirit and in a clear
and manly style. His _Enigmas of Life_ had, I believe, a larger literary
success. The world had moved much nearer to his standpoint; and the
Enigmas concern the most interesting subjects. We had a little friendly
controversy over one passage in the essay, _Elsewhere_. Mr. Greg had
laid it down that, hereafter, Love must retreat from the discovery of
the sinfulness of the beloved; and that both saint and sinner will
accept as inevitable an eternal separation (_Enigmas_, 1st Edit., p.
263). To this I demurred strenuously in my _Hopes of the Human Race_ (p.
132–6). I said, “The poor self-condemned soul whom Mr. Greg images as
turning away in an agony of shame and hopelessness from the virtuous
friend he loved on earth, and loves still at an immeasurable
distance,—such a soul is not outside the pale of love, divine or human.
Nay, is he not,—even assuming his guilt to be black as night,—only in a
similar relation to the purest of created souls, which that purest soul
holds to the All-holy One above? If God can love _us_, is it not the
acme of moral presumption to think of a human soul being too pure to
love any sinner, so long as in him there remains any vestige of
affection? The whole problem is unreal and impossible. In the first
place, there is a potential moral equality between all souls capable of
equal love, and the one can never reach a height whence it may justly
despise the other. And, in the second place, the higher the virtuous
soul may have risen in the spiritual world, the more it must have
acquired the god-like Insight which beholds the good under the evil, and
not less the god-like Love which embraces the repentant Prodigal.
In the next edition of his _Enigmas_ (the 7th), after the issue of my
book, Mr. Greg wrote a most generous recantation of his former view. He
said:—