which, though trifling in themselves, I prize as testimonies of his
sympathy and goodwill. I am fortunately able to add to them two papers
of some real interest,—the contemporary estimate of Tennyson’s first
poems by his friends, the Kembles; and the announcement of the death of
Arthur Hallam by his friend John Mitchell Kemble to Fanny Kemble. They
have come into my possession with a vast mass of family and other papers
given me by Mrs. Kemble several years ago, and belong to a series of
letters, marvellously long and closely written, by John Kemble, during
and after his romantic expedition to Spain along with the future
Archbishop Trench and the other young enthusiasts of 1830. The way in
which John Mitchell Kemble speaks of his friend Alfred Tennyson’s Poems
is satisfactory, but much more so is the beautiful testimony he renders
to the character of Hallam. It is touching, and uplifting too, to read
the rather singular words “of a holier heart,” applied to the subject of
“_In Memoriam_,” by his young companion.
“Farringford, Freshwater,
“Isle of Wight,
“June 4th, 1880.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I have subscribed my name, and I hope that it may be of some use to
your cause.
“My wife is grateful to you for remembrance of her, and
“I am, ever yours,
“A. TENNYSON.”
“Aldworth, Haslemere,
“Surrey, January 9th, 1882.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“I thank you for your essay, which I found very interesting, though
perhaps somewhat too vehement to serve your purpose. Have you seen
that terrible book by a Swiss (reviewed in the _Spectator_) _Ayez
Pitié_? Pray pardon my not answering you before. I am so harried with
letters and poems from all parts of the world, that my friends often
have to wait for an answer.
“Yours ever,
“A. TENNYSON.”
“Farringford, Freshwater,
“Isle of Wight, June 12th, 1882.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I am sorry to say that I shall not be in London the 21st, so that I
cannot be present at your meeting. Many thanks for asking me. My
father has been suffering from a bad attack of gout, and does not feel
inclined to _write_ more about Vivisection. You have, as you know, his
warmest good wishes in all your great struggle. When are we to see you
again? Can you not pay us a visit at Haslemere this summer?
“With our kindest regards,
“Yours very sincerely,
“HALLAM TENNYSON.”
Extract from letter from John M. Kemble to Fanny Kemble. No date. In
packet of 1830–1833:—
“I am very glad that you like Tennyson’s Poems; if you had any poetry
in you, you could not help it; for the general system of criticism,
and the notion that a poet is to be appreciated by everybody, if he be
a poet, are mighty fallacies. It was only the High Priest who was
privileged to enter the Holy of Holies; and so it is with that other
Holy of Holies, no less sacred and replete with divinity, a great
poet’s mind: therein no vulgar foot may tread. To meet this objection,
it is often said that all men appreciate, &c., &c., Shakespeare and
Milton, &c. To this I answer by a direct denial. Not one man in a
hundred thousand cares three straws for Milton; and though from being
a _dramatic_ Poet Shakespeare must be better understood, I believe I
may say that not one in a hundred thousand feels all that is to be
felt in him. There is no man who has done so much as Tennyson to
express poetical feeling by _sound_; Titian has done as much with
colours. Indeed, I believe no poet to have lived since Milton, so
perfect in his form, except Göthe. In this matter, Shelley and Keats
and Byron, even Wordsworth, have been found wanting. Coleridge
expresses the greatest admiration for Charles Tennyson’s sonnets; we
have sent him Alfred’s poems, which, I am sure, will delight him.”
Extract from letter from John Mitchell Kemble to Fanny Kemble:—
“It is with feelings of inexpressible pain that I announce to you the
death of poor Arthur Hallam, who expired suddenly from an attack of
apoplexy at Vienna, on the 15th of last month. Though this was always
feared by us as likely to occur, the shock has been a bitter one to
bear: and most of all so to the Tennysons, whose sister Emily he was
to have married. I have not yet had the courage to write to Alfred.
This is a loss which will most assuredly be felt by this age, for if
ever man was born for great things he was. Never was a more powerful
intellect joined to a purer and holier heart; and the whole
illuminated with the richest imagination, the most sparkling yet the
kindest wit. One cannot lament for him that he is gone to a far better
life, but we weep over his coffin and wonder that we cannot be
consoled. The Roman epitaph on two young children: _Sibi met ipsis
dolorem abstulerunt, suis reliquere_ (from themselves they took away
pain, to their friends they left it!) is always present to my mind,
and somehow the miserable feeling of loneliness comes over one even
though one knows that the dead are happier than the living. His poor
father was with him only. They had been travelling together in Hungary
and were on their return to England; but there had been nothing
whatever to announce the fatal termination of their journey; indeed,
bating fatigue, Arthur had been unusually well. Our other friends,
though all mourning for him as if he had been our brother, are well.”
In my chapter on Italy I have written some pages concerning Mr. and Mrs.
Browning, and printed two or three kind letters from him to me. It is a
great privilege, I now feel, to have known, even in such slight measure
these two great poets. But what an unspeakable blessing and honour it
has been for England all through the Victorian Age to have for her
representatives and teachers in the high realm of poetry, two such men
as Tennyson and Browning; men of immaculate honour, blameless and
beautiful lives, and lofty and pure inspiration! Not one word which
either has ever published need be blotted out by any recording angel,
and, widely different as they were, their high doctrine was the same.
The one tells us that “good” will be “the final goal of ill”; the other
that—
“God’s in His Heaven!
All’s right with the world!”
I have had also the good fortune to find other English poets ready to
sympathise with me on the subject of Vivisection. Sir Henry Taylor wrote
many letters to me upon it and called my attention to his own lines
which go so deep into the philosophy of the question, and which I have
since quoted so often;
“Pain in Man
Bears the high mission of the flail and fan,
In brutes ’tis purely piteous.”
Here is one of his notes to me:—
“The Roost, Bournemouth,
“November 25th, 1875.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I return your papers that they may not be wasted. I wish you all the
success you deserve, which is all you can desire. But I can do
nothing. My hands are full here, and my pockets are empty.
“Two months ago I succeeded in forming a local Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty in this place.
“We have ordered prosecutions every week since, and have obtained
convictions in every case. And these local operations are all that I
can undertake or assist.
“Believe me, yours sincerely,
“HENRY TAYLOR.”
He was also actively interested in an effort to improve the method of
slaughtering cattle by using a mask with a fixed hole in the centre,
through which a long nail may be easily driven, straight through the
exact suture of the skull to the brain, causing instant death. Sir Henry
specially approved the masks for this purpose, made, I believe, under
his own direction at Bournemouth, by Mr. Mendon, a saddler at Lansdowne.
Mr. Lewis Morris has also written some beautiful and striking poems
touching on the subject of scientific cruelty, and I have reason to hope
that a younger man, who many of us look upon as the poet of the future
in England, Mr. William Watson, is entirely on the same side. In short,
if the _Priests_ of Science are against us, the _Prophets_ of Humanity,
the Poets, are with us in this controversy, almost to a man.
It will be seen that we had Politicians, Historians, and thinkers of
various parties among our friends in London; but there were no Novelists
except that very agreeable woman Miss Jewsbury and the two Misses Betham
Edwards. Mr. Anthony Trollope I knew but slightly. I had also some
acquaintance with a very popular novelist, then a young man, who was
introduced in the full flush of his success to Mr. Carlyle, whereon the
“Sage of Chelsea” greeted him with the _encouraging_ question, “Well,
Mr. —— when do you intend to _begin to do something sairious_?”
With Mr. Wilkie Collins I exchanged several friendly letters concerning
some information he wanted for one of his books. The following letter
from him exhibits the “Sairius” spirit, at all events (as Mr. Carlyle
might admit), in which he set about spinning the elaborate web of his
exciting tales.
“90, Gloucester Place, Portman Square, W.,
“23rd June, 1882.
“Dear Madam,
“I most sincerely thank you for your kind letter and for the pamphlets
which preceded it. The ‘Address’ seems to me to possess the very rare
merit of forcible statement combined with a moderation of judgment
which sets a valuable example, not only to our enemies, but to some of
our friends. As to the ‘Portrait,’ I feel such a strong universal
interest in it that I must not venture on criticism. You have given me
exactly what I most wanted for the purpose that I have in view—and you
have spared me time and trouble in the best and kindest of ways. If I
require further help, you shall see that I am gratefully sensible of
the help that has been already given.
“I am writing to a very large public both at home and abroad; and it
is quite needless (when I am writing to _you_) to dwell on the
importance of producing the right impression by means which keep clear
of terrifying and revolting the ordinary reader. I shall leave the
detestable cruelties of the laboratory to be merely inferred, and, in
tracing the moral influence of those cruelties on the nature of the
man who practices them, and the result as to his social relations with
the persons about him, I shall be careful to present him to the reader
as a man _not_ infinitely wicked and cruel, and to show the efforts
made by his better instincts to resist the inevitable hardening of the
heart, the fatal stupefying of all the finer sensibilities, produced
by the deliberately merciless occupations of his life. If I can
succeed in making him, in some degree, an object of compassion as well
as of horror, my experience of readers of fiction tells me that the
right effect will be produced by the right means.
“Believe me, very truly yours,
“WILKIE COLLINS.”
Of another order of acquaintances was that excellent man Mr. James
Spedding; also Mr. Babbage, (in whose horror of street music I devoutly
sympathised); and Mr. James Fergusson the architect, in whose books and
ideas generally I found great interest. He avowed to me his opinion that
the ancient Jews were never builders of stone edifices, and that all the
relics of stone buildings in Palestine were the work either of Tyrians
or of the Idumean Herod, or of other non-Jewish rulers. His conversation
was always most instructive to me, and I rejoiced when I had the
opportunity of writing a long review (for _Fraser_ I think) of his _Tree
and Serpent Worship_; with which he was so well pleased that he made me
a present of the magnificent volume, of which I believe only a hundred
copies were printed. Mr. Fergusson taught me to see that the whole
civilization of a country has depended historically on the stones with
which it happens naturally to be furnished. If these stones be large and
hard and durable like those of Egypt, we find grand, everlasting
monuments and statues made of them. If they be delicate and beautiful
like Pentelic marble, we have the Parthenon. If they be plain limestone
or freestone as in our northern climes, richness of form and detail take
the place of greater simplicity, and we have the great cathedrals of
England, France and Germany. Where there is no good stone, only brick,
we may have fine mansions, but not great temples, and where there is
neither clay for bricks, nor good stone for building, the natives can
erect no durable edifices, and consequently have no places to be adorned
with statues and paintings and all the arts which go with them. I do not
know whether I do justice to Mr. Fergusson in giving this _résumé_ of
his lesson, but it is my recollection of it, and to my thinking worth
recording.
One of the friends of whom we saw most in London was Sir William Boxall,
whose exquisite artistic taste was specially congenial to my friend, and
his varied conversation and love of his poor, dear, old dog “Garry,” to
me. After Lord Coleridge’s charming obituary of him nothing need be
added in the way of tribute to his character and gifts, or to the
refined feeling which inspired him always. I may add, however (what the
Lord Chief Justice naturally would not say on his own account), namely,
that Boxall, in his latter years of weakness and almost constant
confinement to the house, frequently told us when we went to visit him
how Lord Coleridge had found time from all his labours to come
frequently to sit with him and cheer him; and after a whole day spent in
the hot Law Courts would dine on his old friend’s chops, and spend the
evening in his dingy rooms in Welbeck Street. Here is a letter from Sir
William which I happen to have preserved. It refers to an article I had
written in the _Echo_ on the death of Landseer:—
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“Your sympathetic notice of my old friend Landseer and his friends has
delighted me—a grain of such feeling is worth a newspaper load of
worn-out criticism. I thank you very sincerely for it.
“I should have called upon you, but I have been shut up with the cold
which threatened me when I last saw you.
“Yours very sincerely,
“W. BOXALL.
“October 6th, 1879.
“There is no hope of my getting to Dolgelly. It will be a great escape
for Miss Lloyd, for I am utterly worn out.”
I find that the most common opinion about Lord Shaftesbury is, that he
was an excellent and most disinterested man, who did a vast amount of
good in his time among the poor, and in the factories and on behalf of
the climbing-boy sweeps, but that he was somewhat narrowminded; and dry,
if not stern in character. Perhaps some would add that his extreme
Evangelicalism had in it a tinge of Calvinistic bigotry. I shared very
much such ideas about him till one day in 1875, when I had gone to
Stanhope Street to consult Lord and Lady Mount-Temple, my unfailing
helpers and advisers, about some matter connected with Lord Henniker’s
Bill then before Parliament,—for the restriction of Vivisection. After
explaining my difficulty, Lady Mount-Temple said, “We must consult Lord
Shaftesbury about this matter. Come with me now to his house.” I yielded
to my kind friend, but not without hesitation, fearing that Lord
Shaftesbury would, in the first place, be too much absorbed in his great
philanthropic undertakings to spare attention to the wrongs of the
brutes; and, in the second, that his religious views were too strict to
allow him to co-operate with such a heretic as I, even if (as I was
assured) he would tolerate my intrusion. How widely astray from the
truth I was as regarded his sentiments in both ways, the sequel proved.
He had already, it appeared, taken great interest in the
Anti-vivisection controversy then beginning, and entered into it with
all the warmth of his heart; not as something _taking him off_ from
service to mankind, but _as apart of his philanthropy_. He always
emphatically endorsed my view; that, if we could save Vivisectors from
persisting in the sin of Cruelty, we should be doing them a moral
service greater than to save them from becoming pickpockets or
drunkards. He also felt what I may call passionate pity for the tortured
brutes. He loved dogs, and always had a large beautiful Collie lying
under his writing-table; and was full of tenderness to his daughters’
Siamese cat, and spoke of all animals with intimate knowledge and
sympathy. As to my heresies, though he knew of them from the first, they
never interfered with his kindness and consideration for me, which were
such as I can never remember without emotion.
I shall speak in its place in another chapter of the share he took as
leader and champion of our party in all the subsequent events connected
with the Anti-vivisection agitation. I wish here only to give, (if it
may be possible for me), some small idea to the reader of what that good
man really was, and to remove some of the absurd misconceptions current
concerning him. For example. He was no bigot as to Sabbatarian
observances. I told him once that I belonged to the Society for opening
Museums on Sundays. He said: “I think you are mistaken—the working men
do not wish it. See! I have here the result of a large enquiry among
their Trades Unions and clubs. Nearly all of them deprecate the change.
But I am on this point not at all of the same opinion as most of my
friends. I have told them (and they have often been a little shocked at
it), that I think if a lawyer has a brief for a case on Monday and has
had no time to study it on Saturday, he is quite justified in reading it
up on Sunday after church.”
Neither did he share the very common bigotry of teetotalism. He said to
me, “The teetotallers have added an Eleventh Commandment, and think more
of it than of all the rest.” Again, when (as is well known) Lord
Palmerston left the choice of Bishops for many years practically in his
hands (I believe that seven owed their sees to him), and he, of course,
selected Evangelical clergymen who would uphold what he considered to be
vital religious truth, he was yet able to concur heartily in the
appointment of Arthur Stanley to the Deanery of Westminster. He told me
that Lord Palmerston had written to him before inviting Dr. Stanley, and
said that he would not do it if he, (Lord Shaftesbury) disapproved; and
that he had answered that he was well aware that Dr. Stanley’s
theological views differed widely from his own, but that he was an
admirable man and a gentleman, with special suitability for this post
and a claim to some such high office; and that he cordially approved
Lord Palmerston’s choice. I do not suppose that Dean Stanley ever knew
of this possible _veto_ in Lord Shaftesbury’s hands, but he entertained
the profoundest respect for him, and expressed it in the little poem
which he wrote about him (of which Lord Shaftesbury gave me an MS.
copy), which appears in Dean Stanley’s biography. He compares the aged
philanthropist to “a great rock’s shadow in a weary land.”
It was a charge against Howard and some other great philanthropists
that, while exhibiting the enthusiasm of humanity on the _largest_ scale
they failed to show it on a small one, and were scantily kind to those
immediately around them. Nothing could be less true of Lord Shaftesbury.
While the direction of a score of great charitable undertakings rested
on him, and his study was flooded with reports, Bills before Parliament
and letters by the hundred,—he would remember to perform all sorts of
little kindnesses to individuals having no special claim on him; and
never by any chance did he omit an act of courtesy. No more perfectly
high-bred gentleman ever graced the old school; and no young man, I may
add, ever had a fresher or warmer heart. Indeed, I know not where I
should look among old or young for such ready and full response of
feeling to each call for pity, for sympathy, for indignation, and, I may
add, for the enjoyment of humour, the least gleam of which caught his
eye a moment. He was always particularly tickled with the absurdities
involved in the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, and whenever a
clergyman or a bishop did anything he much disapproved, he was sure to
stigmatize it from that point of view. One day he was giving me a rather
long account of some Deputation which had waited on him and endeavoured
to bully him. As he described the scene: “There they stood in a crowd in
the room, and I said to them; Gentlemen! I’ll see you.”... (Good
Heavens! I thought: _Where_ did he say he would see them?)—“I’ll see you
_at the bottom of the Red Sea_ before I’ll do it!” The revulsion was so
ludicrous and the allusion to the “Red Sea” instead of “another place,”
so characteristic, that I broke into a peal of laughter which, when
explained, made him also laugh heartily. Another day I remember his
great amusement at a story not reported, I believe, in the _Times_, but
told me by an M.P. who was present in the House when Sir P. O. had
outdone Sir Boyle Roche. He spoke of “the ingratitude of the Irish to
Mr. Gladstone _who had broken down the bridges which divided them from
England_!”
A lady whose reputation was less unblemished than might have been
wished, and of whom I fought very shy in consequence, went to call on
him about some business. When I saw him next he told me of her visit,
and said, “When she left my study, I said to myself; ‘there goes a
_dashing Cyprian_!’” One needed to go back a century to recall this
droll old phrase. More than once he repeated, chuckling with amusement,
the speech of an old beggar woman to whom he had refused alms, and who
called after him, “You withered specimen of bygone philanthropy!” On
another occasion when he was in the Chair at a small meeting, one of the
speakers persisted in expressing over and over again his conviction that
the venerable Chairman could not be expected to live long. Lord
Shaftesbury turned aside to me and said _sotto voce_, “I declare he’s
telling me I’m going to die immediately!” “There he is saying it again!
Was there ever such a man?” Nobody was more awake than he to the
“dodges” of interested people trying to make capital out of his
religious party. A most ridiculous instance of this he described to me
with great glee. At the time of the excitement (now long forgotten)
about the Madiai family, Barnum actually called upon him (Lord
Shaftesbury) and entreated him to allow of the Madiai being taken over
to be _exhibited_ in New York! “It would be such an affecting sight,”
said Barnum, “to see _real_ Christian Martyrs!”
As an instance of his thoughtfulness, I may mention that having one day
just received a ticket for the Private View of the Academy, he offered
it to me and I accepted it gladly, observing that since the recent death
of Boxall I feared we should not have one given to us, and that my
friend would be pleased to use it. “O, I am so glad!” said Lord
Shaftesbury; and from that day every year till he died he never once
failed to send her, addressed by himself, his tickets for each of the
two annual exhibitions. When one thinks of how men who do not do in a
year as much as he did in a week, would have scoffed at the idea of
taking such trouble, one may estimate the good nature which prompted
this over-worked man to remember such a trifle, unfailingly.
The most touching interview I ever had with him, was one of the last, in
his study in Grosvenor Square, not long before his death. Our
conversation had fallen on the woes and wrongs of seduced girls and
ruined women; and he told me many facts which he had learned by personal
investigation and visits to dreadful haunts in London. He described all
he saw and heard with a compassion for the victims and yet a horror of
vice and impurity, which somehow made me think of Christ and the Woman
taken in adultery. After a few moments’ silence, during which we were
both rather overcome, he said, “When I feel age creeping on me, and know
I must soon die, I hope it is not wrong to say it, but I _cannot bear to
leave the world with all the misery in it_.” No words can describe how
this simple expression revealed to me the man, in his inmost spirit. He
had long passed the stage of moral effort which does good _as a duty_,
and had ascended to that wherein even the enjoyment of Heaven itself,
(which of course, his creed taught him to expect immediately after
death) had less attractions for him than the labour of mitigating the
sorrows of earth.