and ought not to have been overlooked. No doubt a soul that can so
love and so feel its separation from the objects of its love, cannot
be wholly lost. It must still retain elements of recovery and
redemption, and qualities to win and to merit answering affection. The
lovingness of a nature—its capacity for strong and deep
attachment—must constitute, there as here, the most hopeful
characteristic out of which to elicit and foster all other good. No
doubt, again, if the sinful continue to love in spite of their
sinfulness, the blessed will not cease to love in consequence of their
blessedness.”
Later on he asks:—
“How can the blessed enjoy anything to be called Happiness if the bad
are writhing in hopeless anguish?” “Obviously only in one way. By
_ceasing_ to love, that is, by renouncing the best and purest part of
their nature.... Or, to put it in still bolder language, ‘_How,—given
a hell of torment and despair for millions of his friends and fellow
men—can the good enjoy Heaven_ except _by becoming bad_, and without
being miraculously changed for the worse?’”
The following flattering letters are unluckily all which I have kept of
Mr. Greg’s writing:—
“Park Lodge, Wimbledon Common, S.W.,
“February 19th.
“My Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I have been solacing myself this morning, after a month of harrowing
toil, with your paper in the last _Theological_, and I want to tell
you how much it has gratified me.
“I don’t mean your appreciative cordiality towards myself, nor your
criticisms on a portion of my speculations, which, however (though I
fancy you have rather misread me), I will refer to again and try to
profit by. I daresay you are mainly right, the more so as I see Mr.
Thom in the same number remonstrates in an identical tone.
“That your paper is, I think, not only beautiful in thought and much
of it original, but singularly full of rich suggestions, and one of
the most real _contributions_ to a further conception of a possible
future that I have met with for long. It is real _thought_—not like
most of mine, mere sentiment and imagination.
“I don’t know if you are still in town, or have began the villegiatura
you spoke of when I last saw you, but I daresay this note will be
forwarded.
“When did No. 1 appear?
“I particularly like your remark about self-_reprobation_, p. 456, and
from 463 onward. By the way, do you know Isaac Taylor’s ‘_Physical
Theory of Another Life_?’ It is very curious and interesting.
“Yours faithfully,
“W. R. GREG.
“I have just finished an Introduction (about 100 pp.) to a new edition
of “The Creed of Christendom,” which will be published in the autumn,
and it contains some thoughts very analogous to yours.”
“Park Lodge, Wimbledon Common, S.W.,
“August 6th.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“I have read your _Town and Country Mouse_ with much pleasure. I
should have enjoyed your Paper still more if I had not felt that it
was suggested by your intention to cut London, and the desire to put
as good a face upon that regrettable design as you could. However you
have stated the case with remarkable fairness. I, who am a passionate
lover of nature, who have never lived in Town, and should pine away if
I attempted it, still feel in the decline of years the increasing
necessity of creeping _towards_ the world rather than retiring from
it. I feel, as one grows old, the want of external stimulus to stave
off stagnation. The vividness of youthful thought is needed, I think,
to support solitude.
“I retired to Westmoreland for 15 years in the middle of life when I
was much worn, and it did me good: but I was glad to come back to
active life, and I think my present location—Wimbledon Common for a
cottage, within 5 miles of London, and coming in five days a week—is
perfection.
“I daresay you may be right; but all your friends will miss you much—I
not the least.
“Yours faithfully,
“W. R. GREG.”
Mr. Greg’s allusion to my _Town and Country Mouse_ reminds me of a
letter which was sent me by some unknown reader on the publication of
that article. It repeats a famous story worth recording as told thus by
an ear-witness who, though anonymous is obviously worthy of credit.
“Athenæum Club,
“Pall Mall, S.W.
“Will Miss Cobbe kindly pardon the liberty taken by a reader of her
delightful ‘Town and Country Mouse’ in venturing to substitute the
true version of Sir George Lewis’ too famous dictum?
“In the _hearing of the writer_ he was asked (by one of his
subordinates in the Government) as they were getting into the train,
returning to town,
“‘Well! How do you like life in Herefordshire?’
“‘Ah! It would be very tolerable, if it were not for _the
Amusements_’—was his reply.
“Miss Cobbe has high Authority for the mis-quotation: for the _Times_
invariably commits it; and the present writer has again and again
intended to correct it, and failed to execute the intention.
“If they _are_ pleasures, they are _pleasures_; and the paradox is
absurd, instead of amusing; but the oppressive stupidity of many of
the ‘_Amusements_’ (to the Author of ‘Influence of Authority,’ &c.!)
may well call up in the mind the sort of amiable cynicism, which was a
feature of his own character.
“On arriving late and unexpectedly at home for a fortnight’s _Rest_,
he found his own study occupied by two young ladies (sisters) as a
_Bedroom_—it being the night of Lady Theresa’s Ball! With his
exquisite good nature he simply set about finding some other roost;
and all the complaint he ever made was _that_, which has become
perhaps _not_ too famous!”
At the time of the Franco-Prussian war, as will be remembered by
everyone living at the time in London, the cleavage between the
sympathisers with the two contending countries was almost as sharp as it
had previously been during the American War between the partizans of the
North and of the South. Dean Stanley was one of our friends who took
warmly the side of the Germans, and I naturally sent him a letter I had
received from a Frenchman whom we both respected, remonstrating rather
bitterly against the attitude of England. The Dean, in returning M. P.’s
letter wrote as follows[24]:—
“Deanery, March 25th, 1871.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“Although you kindly excuse me from doing so, I cannot but express,
and almost, wish that you could convey to M. P. the melancholy
interest with which we have read his letter. Interesting of course it
is but to us—I know not whether to you—it is deeply sad to see a man
like M. P. so thoroughly blind to the true situation of his country.
Not a word of repentance for the aggressive and unjust war! not a word
of acknowledgment that, had the French, as they wished, invaded
Germany, they would have entered Berlin and seized the Rhenish
provinces without remorse or compunction!—not a spark of appreciation
of the moral superiority by which the Germans achieved their
successes! I do not doubt that excesses may have been committed by the
German troops; but I feel sure that they have been exceeded by those
of the French, and would have been yet more had the French entered
Germany.
“And how very superfluous to attack us for having done just the same
as in 1848! Our sad crime was not to have prevented the war by
remonstrating with the French Emperor and people in July, 1870, and of
_that_ poor P. takes no account! Alas! for France!
“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. STANLEY.”
The following is a rather important note as recording the Dean’s
sentiments as regarded Cardinal Newman. I cannot recall what was the
paper which I had sent him to which he alludes. I think I had spoken to
him of my friendship with Francis Newman, and of the information given
me by the latter that he could never remember his brother putting his
hand to a single cause of benevolence or moral reform. I had asked him
to solicit his support with that of Cardinal Manning (already obtained)
to the cause for which I was then beginning to work,—on behalf of
animals.
“Jan. 15th, 1875.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“I return this with many thanks. I think you must have sent it to me,
partly as a rebuke for having so nearly sailed in the same boat of
ignorance and inhumanity with Dr. Newman.
“I have just finished, with a mixture of weariness and nausea, his
letter to the Duke of Norfolk. Even the fierce innuendoes and deadly
thrusts at Manning cannot reconcile me to such a mass of cobwebs and
evasions. When the sum of the theological teaching of the two brothers
is weighed, will not ‘the _Soul_’ of Francis be found to
counterbalance, as a contribution to true, solid, catholic (even in
any sense of the word) Christianity, all the writings of John Henry?
“I have sent my paper on Vestments to the _Contemporary_.
“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. STANLEY.
“Read it in the light of his old letter to B. Ullathorne, published in
(illegible).”
The papers on “Vestments,” to which Dean Stanley alludes, had interested
and amused me much when he read it at Sion College, and I had urged him
to send it to one of the Reviews. Here is a report of that evening’s
proceedings which I sent next day to my friend Miss Elliot.
“January 14th, 1875.
“I do so much wish you had been with us last night at Sion College.
Dean Stanley was more delightful than ever. He read a splendid paper,
full of learning, wit, and sense on _Ecclesiastical Vestments_. In the
course of it, he said, referring to the position of the altar, &c.,
that on this subject he had nothing to add to the remarks of his
friend, the Dean of Bristol, ‘whose authority on all matters connected
with English ecclesiastical history was universally admitted to be the
best.’ After the reading of his paper, which lasted an hour and a
quarter, that odious Dr. L—— got up, and in his mincing brogue
attacked Dean Stanley very rudely. Then they called on Martineau, and
he made a charming speech, beginning by saying _he_ had nothing to do
with vestments, having received no ordination, and might for his part
repeat the poem “_Nothing to Wear!_” Then he went on to say that if
the Church were ever to regain the Nonconformists, it would certainly
_not_ be by proceeding in the sacerdotal direction. He was much
cheered. Rev. H. White made, I thought, one of the best speeches of
the evening. Altogether, it was exceedingly amusing.”
On the occasion of the interment of Sir Charles Lyell in Westminster
Abbey, I sent the Dean, by his request, some hints respecting Sir
Charles’ views and character, and received the following reply:
“February 25th, 1875.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“Your letter is invaluable to me. Long as was my acquaintance with Sir
Charles Lyell, and kind as he was to me, I never knew him intimately,
and therefore most of what you tell me was new. The last time he spoke
to me was in urging me with the greatest earnestness to ask Colenso to
preach. Can you tell me one small point? Had he a turn for music? I
must refer back to the last funeral (when I could not preach) of Sir
Sterndale Bennett, and it would be a convenience for me to know this,
_Yes_ or _No_.
“You will come (if you come to the sermon) and any friends,—_thro’ the
Deanery_ at 2.45 on Sunday.
“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. STANLEY.”
Some time after this I sent him one of my theological articles on the
Life after Death. He acknowledged it thus kindly:—
“Deanery, November 2nd.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“Many thanks. Your writing on this subject is to me more nearly to the
truth—at least more nearly to my hopes and desires—than almost any
others which are now floating around us.
“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. STANLEY.”
This next letter again referred to one of my books—and to Cardinal
Newman:—
“October 12th, 1876.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“Many thanks for your book. You will see by my letter last night that
I had already made good progress in it; as borrowed from the Library.
I shall much value it.
Do not trouble yourself about Newman’s letter. I am much more anxious
that the public should see it than that I should. I am amazed at the
impression made upon me by the “Characteristics” of Newman. Most of
the selections I had read before; but the net result is of a farrago
of fanciful, disingenuous nonentities; all except the personal
reminiscences.
“Yours truly,
“A. P. STANLEY.”
One day I had been calling on him at the Deanery, and said to him, after
describing my office in Victoria Street and our frequent Committee
meetings there: “Now Mr. Dean, _do_ you think it right and as it ought
to be, that _I_ should sit at that table as Hon. Sec. with Lord
Shaftesbury on my right, and Cardinal Manning on my left,—and that _you_
should not sit opposite to complete the “_Reunion of Christendom_?” He
laughed heartily, agreed he certainly ought to be there, and promised to
come. But time failed, and only his honoured name graced our lists.
The following is the last letter I have preserved of Dean Stanley’s
writing. It is needless to say how much pleasure it gave me:—
“October 16th, 1876.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I have just finished re-reading with real admiration and consolation
your “_Hopes of the Human Race_.” May I ask these questions: 1. Is it
in, or coming into, a second edition? If the latter, is it too much to
suggest that the note on p. 3 could, if not omitted, be modified? I
appreciate the motive for its insertion, but it makes the lending and
recommending of the book difficult. 2. Who is ‘one of the greatest men
of Science’—p. 20? 3. Where is there an authentic appearance of the
Pope’s reply to Odo Russell—p. 107?
“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. STANLEY.”
I afterwards learned from Dean Stanley, one day when I was visiting him
at the Deanery after his wife’s death, that he had read these Essays to
Lady Augusta in the last weeks of her life, finding them, as he told me,
the most satisfactory treatment of the subject he had met; and that
after her death he read them over again. He gave me with much feeling a
sad photograph of her as a dying woman, after telling me this. Mr.
Motley the historian of the Netherlands, having also lost his wife not
long afterwards, spoke to Dean Stanley of his desire for some book on
the subject which would meet his doubts, and Dean Stanley gave him this
one of mine.
Dean Stanley, it is needless to say, was the most welcome of guests in
every house which he entered. There was something in his
_high-mindedness_, I can use no other term, his sense of the glory of
England, his love of his church (on extremely Erastian principles!) as
the National Religion, his unfailing courtesy, his unaffected enjoyment
of drollery and gossip, and his almost youthful excitement about each
important subject which cropped up, which made him delightful to
everyone in turn. There was no man in London I think whom it gave me
such pleasure to meet “in the sixties and seventies” as the “Great
Dean”; and he was uniformly most kind to me. The last occasion, I think,
on which I saw him in full spirits was at a house where the pleasantest
people were constantly to be found,—that of Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, in
Cornwall Gardens. Renan and his wife were there, and I was so favoured
as to be seated next to Renan; Dean Stanley being on the other side of
our tactful hostess. The Dean had been showing Renan over the Abbey in
the morning, and they were both in the gayest mood, but I remember Dean
Stanley speaking to Renan with indescribable and concentrated
indignation of the avowal Mr. Gladstone had recently made that the
Clerkenwell explosion had caused him to determine on the
disestablishment of the Irish Church.
I have found an old letter to my friend describing this dinner:—
“I had a most amusing evening yesterday. Kind Mrs. Simpson made me sit
beside Renan; and Dean Stanley was across the corner, so we made, with
nice Mrs. W. R. G. and Mr. M., a very jolly little party at our end of
the table. The Dean began with grace, rather _sotto voce_, with a
blink at Renan, who kept on never minding. His (Renan’s) looks are
even worse than his picture leads one to expect. His face is exactly
like a _hog_, so stupendously broad across the ears and jowl! But he
is very gentlemanly in manner, very winning and full of fun and
_finesse_. We had to talk French with him, but the Dean’s French was
so much worse than mine that I felt quite at ease, and rattled away
about the _Triduos_ at Florence (to appease the wrath of Heaven on
account of his _Vie de Jésus_), and had some private jokes with him
about his malice in calling the Publicans of the Gospels ‘douaniers,’
and the ass a ‘baudet!’ He said he did it on purpose; and that when he
was last in Italy numbers of poor people came to him, and asked him
for the lucky number for the lotteries, because they thought he was
_so near the Devil_ he must know! I gave him your message about the
Hengwrt MSS., and he apologised for having written about the
‘mesquines’ considerations which had caused them to be locked up, [to
wit, that several leaves of the _Red Book of Hergest_ had been stolen
by too enthusiastic Welsh scholars!] and solemnly vowed to alter the
passage in the next edition, and thanked you for the promise of
obtaining leave for him to see them.
“I also talked to M. Renan of his Essay on the _Poésie de la Race
Celtique_, and made him laugh at his own assertion that Irishmen had
such a longing for ‘the Infinite’ that when they could not attain to
it otherwise they sought it through a strong liquor ‘_qui s’appelle le
Whiskey_.’”
Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff’s delightful volume on Renan has opened to my
mind many fresh reasons for admiring the great French scholar, whose
works I had falsely imagined I had known pretty well before reading it.
But when all is said, the impression he has left on me (and I should
think on most other people) is one of disappointment and short-falling.
M. Renan has written of himself the well-known and often laughed-at
boast: “_Seul dans mon siècle j’ai pu comprendre Jésus Christ et St.
François d’Assise!_” I do not know about his comprehension of St.
Francis, though I should think it a very great _tour de force_ for the
brilliant French academician and critic to throw himself into _that_
typical mediæval mind! But as regarded the former Person I should say
that of all the tens of thousands who have studied and written about him
during these last nineteen centuries, Renan was in some respects the
_least_ able to “comprehend” him. The man who could describe the story
of the Prodigal as a “_délicieuse parabole_,” is as far out of Christ’s
latitude as the pole from the equator. One abhors æsthetics when things
too sacred to be measured by their standard are commended in their name.
Renan seems to me to have been for practical purposes a Pantheist
without a glimmer of that sense of moral and personal relation to God
which was the supreme characteristic of Christ. When he translates
Christ’s pity for the Magdalenes as jealousy “_pour la gloire de son
Père dans ces belles créatures_;” and introduces the term “_femmes d’une
vie équivoque_” as a rendering for “sinners,” he strikes a note so false
that no praise lavished afterwards can restore harmony.
The late Lord Houghton was one of the men of note who I met occasionally
at the houses of friends. I had known him in Italy and he was always
kind to me and invited me to his Christmas parties at Frystone, which
were said to be delightful, but to which I did not go. For a poet he had
an extraordinarily rough exterior and blunt manner. One day we had a
regular set-to argument lasting a long time. He attacked the order of
things with the usual pessimist observations on all the evil in the
world, and implied that I had no reasonable right to my faith. I
answered as best I could, with some earnestness, and he finally
concluded the discussion by remarking with concentrated contempt: “You
might almost as well be a Christian!” Next day I went to Westminster
Abbey and was sitting in the Dean’s pew, when, to my amusement Lord
Houghton came in just below, with a party of ladies and took a seat
exactly opposite me. He behaved of course with edifying propriety, but I
could not help reflecting with a smile on our argument of the night
before, and wondering how many members of that and similar congregations
who were naturally counted by outsiders as faithful supporters of the
orthodox creed, were as little so, _au fond_, as either Lord Houghton or
I.
With Carlyle, though I saw him very frequently, I never interchanged
more than a few _banal_ words of civility. When his biography
appeared, I was, (as I frankly told the illustrious biographer)
exceedingly glad that I had never given him the chance of attaching
one of his pungent epigrams to my poor person. I had been introduced
to him by a lady at whose house he happened to call one afternoon when
I was sitting with her, and where he showed himself (as it seems to me
the roughest men invariably do in the society of amiable
Countesses),—extremely _apprivoisé_. Also I continually met him out
walking with one or other of his great historian friends, who were
also mine, but I avoided trespassing on their good nature; or
addressing him when he walked up and down alone daily before our door
in Cheyne Walk,—till one day when he had been very ill, I ventured to
express my satisfaction in seeing him out of doors again. He then
answered me kindly. I never shared the admiration felt for him by so
many able men who knew him personally, and therefore had means which I
did not possess, of estimating him aright. To me his books and himself
represented an anomalous sort of human Fruit. The original stock was a
hard and thorny Scotch peasant-character, with a splendid intellect
superadded. The graft was not wholly successful. A flavour of the old
acrid sloe was always perceptible in the plum.
The following letter was received by Dr. Hoggan in reply to a letter to
Mr. Carlyle concerning Vivisection:
“Keston Lodge, Beckenham,
“28th August, 1875.
“Dear Sir,
“Mr. Carlyle has received your letter, and has read it carefully. He
bids me say, that ever since he was a boy when he read the account of
Majendie’s atrocities, he has never thought of the practice of
vivisecting animals but with horror. I may mention that I have heard
him speak of it in the strongest terms of disgust long before there
was any speech about public agitation on the subject. He believes that
the reports about the good results said to be obtained from the
practice of vivisection to be immensely exaggerated; with the
exception of certain experiments by Harvey and certain others by Sir
Charles Bell, he is not aware of any conspicuous good that has
resulted from it. But even supposing the good results to be much
greater than Mr. Carlyle believes they are, and apart too from the
shocking pain inflicted on the helpless animals operated upon, he
would still think the practice so brutalising to the operators that he
would earnestly wish the law on the subject to be altered, so as to
make Vivisection even in Institutions like that with which you are
connected a most rare occurrence, and when practised by private
individuals an indictable offence.
“You are not sure that the operators on living animals ‘can be counted
on your fingers.’ Mr. Carlyle with an equal share of certainty
believes Vivisection and other kindred experiments on living animals
to be much more largely practised, and that they are by no means
uncommonly undertaken by doctors’ apprentices and ‘other miserable
persons.’
“You are mistaken if you look upon the _Times_ as a mirror of virtue;
on this very subject when it at first began to be publicly discussed
last winter, it printed a letter from ... which your letter itself
would prove to be altogether composed of falsehoods.
“With Mr. Carlyle’s compliments and good wishes,
“I remain, dear Sir,
“Yours truly,
“MARY CARLYLE AITKEN.”
Mr. Carlyle supported our Anti-vivisection Society from the outset, for
which I was very grateful to him; but having promised to join our first
important deputation to the Home Office, to urge the Government to bring
in a Bill in accordance with the recommendations of the Royal
Commission, he failed at the last moment to put in an appearance, having
learned that Cardinal Manning was to be also present. I was told that he
said he would not appear in public with the Cardinal, who was, he
thought, “the chief emissary of Beelzebub in England!” When this was
repeated to me, my remark was:—“Infidels _is riz_! Time was, when
Cardinals would not appear in public with infidels!”