life the sons, Henry and John, had a great influence upon my father;
Henry in particular was a man of very remarkable character. He was
educated by his father till 1813, when he was sent to live with Farish,
then Lucasian professor and resident at Chesterton, close to Cambridge.
He was at Queen's College, then flourishing under the patronage of
evangelical parents attracted by Milner's fame; was nineteenth wrangler
in 1818, and for a time was fellow and tutor of his college. In 1827
Wilberforce gave him the living of Drypool, a suburb of Hull, and there
in 1829 he married Martha, fourth daughter of Nicholas Sykes, of
Swanland, Yorkshire. In 1834 he became vicar of St. John's, Holloway, in
the parish of Islington. About 1838 he became subject to an affection of
the heart caused mainly by his efforts in carrying his wife upstairs
during her serious illness. The physician told him that the heart might
possibly adapt itself to a new condition, but that the chances were
greatly in favour of a fatal end to the illness. He was forced to retire
for two years from work, while his wife's illness developed into a
consumption. She died March 21, 1840. Venn's closest relations used to
speak with a kind of awe of the extraordinary strength of his conjugal
devotion. He was entreated to absent himself from some of the painful
ceremonials at her funeral, but declined. 'As if anything,' he said,
'could make any difference to me now.' His own health, however,
recovered contrary to expectation; and he resolutely took up his duties
in life. On October 5, 1841 he was appointed honorary secretary to the
Church Missionary Society, having been on the Committee since 1819, and
he devoted the rest of his life to its service with unflagging zeal. He
gave up his living of 700_l._ a year and refused to take any
remuneration for his work. He was appointed by Bishop Blomfield to a
prebend at St. Paul's, but received and desired no other preferment. He
gradually became infirm, and a few months before his death, January 12,
1873, was compelled to resign his post. Henry Venn laboured through life
in the interests of a cause which seemed to him among the highest, and
which even those who hold entirely different opinions must admit to be a
worthy one, the elevation that is, moral and spiritual, of the lower
races of mankind. He received no rewards except the approval of his
conscience and the sympathy of his fellows; and he worked with an energy
rarely paralleled by the most energetic public servant. His labours are
described in a rather shapeless book[30] to which I may refer for full
details. But I must add a few words upon his character. Venn was not an
eloquent man either in the pulpit or on paper; nor can I ascribe him any
power of speculative thought. He had been from youth steeped in the
evangelical doctrine, and was absolutely satisfied with it to the last.
'I knew,' he once said, 'as a young man all that could be said against
Christianity, and I put the thoughts aside as temptations of the devil.
They have never troubled me since.' Nor was he more troubled by the
speculative tendencies of other parties in the Church. His most obvious
mental characteristic was a shrewd common sense, which one of his
admirers suggests may have been caught by contagion in his Yorkshire
living. In truth it was an innate endowment shared by others of his
family. In him it was combined with a strong sense of humour which is
carefully kept out of his writing, and which, as I used to fancy, must
have been at times a rather awkward endowment. The evangelical party has
certain weaknesses to which, so far as I know, my uncle contrived to
shut his eyes. The humour, however, was always bubbling up in his talk,
and combined as it was with invariable cheeriness of spirit, with a
steady flow of the strongest domestic affection, and with a vigorous and
confident judgment, made him a delightful as well as an impressive
companion. Although outside of the paths which lead to preferment or to
general reputation, he carried a great weight in all the counsels of his
party. His judgment, no doubt, entitled him to their respect. Though a
most devoted clergyman, he had some of the qualities which go to make a
thoroughly trustworthy lawyer. He was a marked exception to the famous
observation of Clarendon that 'the clergymen understand the least, and
take the worst measure of human affairs of all mankind that can write
and read.' Henry Venn's example showed that the clergyman's gown need
not necessarily imply disqualification for a thorough man of business.
He was a man to do thoroughly whatever he undertook. 'What a mercy it
is,' said his sister Emelia, 'that Henry is a good man, for good or bad
he could never repent.'
His younger brother, John, was a man of much less intellectual force but
of singular charm of character. In 1833 he became incumbent of a church
at Hereford in the gift of the Simeon trustees, and lived there till his
death in 1890, having resigned his living about 1870. He had the
simplicity of character of a Dr. Primrose, and was always overflowing
with the kindliest feelings towards his relatives and mankind in
general. His enthusiasm was, directed not only to religious ends but to
various devices for the physical advantage of mankind. He set up a steam
corn mill in Hereford, which I believe worked very successfully for the
supply of pure flour to his parishioners, and he had theories about the
production of pigs and poultry upon which he could dilate with amusing
fervour. He showed his principles in a public disputation with a Roman
Catholic priest at Hereford. I do not know that either of them converted
anybody; but John Venn's loveableness was not dependent upon dialectical
ability. He was accepted, I may say, as the saint of our family; and
Aylstone Hill, Hereford, where he lived with his unmarried sister
Emelia, (a lady who in common sense and humour strongly resembled her
brother Henry), was a place of pilgrimage to which my father frequently
resorted, and where we all found a model of domestic happiness.
The youngest sister, Caroline, married the Rev. Ellis Batten, a master
at Harrow School. He died young in 1830, and she was left with two
daughters, the elder of whom, now Mrs. Russell Gurney, survives, and was
in early years one of the most familiar members of our inner home
circle.
I must now speak of my mother. 'In one's whole life,' says Gray, 'one
can never have any more than a single mother'--a trite observation, he
adds, which yet he never discovered till it was too late. Those who have
made the same discovery must feel also how impossible it is to
communicate to others their own experience, and indeed how painful it is
even to make the attempt. Almost every man's mother, one is happy to
observe, is the best of mothers. I will only assert what I could prove
by evidence other than my own impressions. My mother, then, must have
been a very handsome young woman. A portrait--not a very good
one--shows that she had regular features and a fine complexion, which
she preserved till old age. Her beauty was such as implies a thoroughly
good constitution and unbroken health. She was too a rather romantic
young lady. She knew by heart all such poetry as was not excluded from
the sacred common; she could repeat Cowper and Wordsworth and Campbell
and Scott, and her children learnt the 'Mariners of England' and the
'Death of Marmion' from her lips almost before they could read for
themselves. She accepted, of course, the religious opinions of her
family, but in what I may call a comparatively mild form. If she had not
the humour of her brother Henry and her sister Emelia, she possessed an
equal amount of common sense. Her most obvious characteristic as I knew
her was a singular serenity, which indicated a union of strong affection
and sound judgment with an entire absence of any morbid tendencies. Her
devotion to her husband and children may possibly have influenced her
estimate of their virtues and talents. But however strong her belief in
them, it never betrayed her to partiality of conduct. We were as sure of
her justice as of her affection. Her servants invariably became attached
to her. Our old nurse, Elizabeth Francis, lived with us for forty-three
years, and her death in 1865 was felt as a deep family sorrow. The
quaint Yorkshire cook, whose eccentricities had given trouble and whose
final parting had therefore been received with equanimity on the eve of
a journey abroad, was found calmly sitting in our kitchen when we
returned, and announcing, truly as it turned out, that she proposed to
stay during the rest of my mother's life. But this domestic loyalty was
won without the slightest concession of unusual privileges. Her
characteristic calmness appeared in another way. She suffered the
heaviest of blows in the death of her husband, after forty-five years
of unbroken married happiness, and of her eldest son. On both occasions
she recovered her serenity and even cheerfulness with marked rapidity,
not certainly from any want of feeling, but from her constitutional
incapacity for dwelling uselessly upon painful emotions. She had indeed
practised cheerfulness as a duty in order to soothe her husband's
anxieties, and it had become part of her character. The moral
equilibrium of her nature recovered itself spontaneously as wounds cure
by themselves quickly in thoroughly sound constitutions. She devoted her
spare time in earlier years and almost her whole time in later life to
labours among the poor, but was never tempted to mere philanthropic
sentimentalism. A sound common sense, in short, was her predominant
faculty; and, though her religious sentiments were very strong and deep,
she was so far from fanatical that she accepted with perfect calmness
the deviations of her children from the old orthodox faith. My brother
held, rightly as I think, that he inherited a large share of these
qualities. To my father himself, the influence of such a wife was of
inestimable value. He, the most nervous, sensitive of men, could always
retire to the serene atmosphere of a home governed by placid common
sense and be soothed by the gentlest affection. How necessary was such a
solace will soon be perceived.
V. JAMES STEPHEN, COLONIAL UNDER-SECRETARY
The young couple began prosperously enough. My father's business was
increasing; and after the peace they spent some summer vacations in
visits to the continent. They visited Switzerland, still unhackneyed,
though Byron and Shelley were celebrating its charms. Long afterwards I
used to hear from my mother of the superlative beauties of the Wengern
Alp and the Staubbach (though she never, I suspect, read 'Manfred'), and
she kept up for years a correspondence with a monk of the hospital on
the St. Bernard. Her first child, Herbert Venn Stephen, was born
September 30, 1822; and about this time a change took place in my
father's position. He had a severe illness, caused, it was thought, by
over-work. He had for a time to give up his chancery business and then
to consider whether he should return to it and abandon the Colonial
Office, or give up the bar to take a less precarious position now
offered to him in the office. His doubts of health and his new
responsibilities as a father decided him. On January 25, 1825, he was
appointed Counsel to the Colonial Office, and on August 2 following
Counsel to the Board of Trade, receiving 1,500_l._ a year for the two
offices, and abandoning his private practice. A daughter, Frances
Wilberforce, was born on September 8, 1824, but died on July 22
following. A quaint portrait in which she is represented with her elder
brother, in a bower of roses, is all that remains to commemorate her
brief existence. For some time Herbert was an only son; and a delicate
constitution made his education very difficult. My father hit upon the
most successful of several plans for the benefit of his children when,
at the beginning of 1829, he made arrangements under which Frederick
Waymouth Gibbs became an inmate of our family in order to give my
brother a companion. Although this plan was changed three years later,
Frederick Gibbs became, as he has ever since remained, a kind of adopted
brother to us, and was in due time in the closest intimacy with my
brother James Fitzjames.
After his acceptance of the permanent appointment my father's energies
were for twenty-two years devoted entirely to the Colonial Office. I
must dwell at some length upon his character and position, partly for
his sake and partly because it is impossible without understanding them
to understand my brother's career.
My brother's whole life was profoundly affected, as he fully recognised,
by his father's influence. Fitzjames prefixed a short life of my father
to a posthumous edition of the 'Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography.' The
concluding sentence is significant of the writer's mood. 'Of Sir James
Stephen's private life and character,' he says, 'nothing is said here,
as these are matters with which the public has no concern, and on which
the evidence of his son would not be impartial.' My brother would, I
think, have changed that view in later years. I, at any rate, do not
feel that my partiality, whatever it may be, is a disqualification for
attempting a portrait. And, though the public may have no right to
further knowledge, I think that such part of the public as reads these
pages may be the better for knowing something more of a man of whom even
a son may say that he was one of the conspicuously good and able men of
his generation.
The task, however, is no easy one. His character, in the first place, is
not one to be defined by a single epithet. 'Surely,' said his friend Sir
Henry Taylor to him upon some occasion, 'the simple thing to do is so
and so.' He answered doubtfully, adding, 'The truth is I am _not_ a
simple man.' 'No,' said Taylor, 'you are the most composite man that I
have met with in all my experience of human nature.'[31] Taylor entered
the Colonial Office in the beginning of 1824, and soon formed an
intimate and lifelong friendship with his colleague. His autobiography
contains some very vivid records of the impression made by my father's
character upon a very fine observer in possession of ample opportunities
for knowledge. It does something, though less than I could wish, to
diminish another difficulty which encounters me. My father's official
position necessarily throws an impenetrable veil over the work to which
his main energies were devoted. His chief writings were voluminous and
of great practical importance: but they repose in the archives of the
Colonial Office; and even such despatches of his as have seen the light
are signed by other names, and do not necessarily represent his
opinions. 'The understanding,' says my brother in the 'Life,' 'upon
which permanent offices in the civil service of the Crown are held is
that those who accept them shall give up all claim to personal
reputation on the one hand and be shielded from personal responsibility
on the other.' Of this compact, as Fitzjames adds, neither my father nor
his family could complain. His superiors might sometimes gain credit or
incur blame which was primarily due to the adoption of his principles.
He was sometimes attacked, on the other hand, for measures attributed to
his influence, but against which he had really protested, although he
was precluded from any defence of his conduct. To write the true history
of our colonial policy in his time would be as much beyond my powers as
it is outside my purpose; to discriminate his share in it would probably
be now impossible for anyone. I can only take a few hints from Sir Henry
Taylor and from my brother's account which will sufficiently illustrate
some of my father's characteristics.
'For a long period,' says Taylor,[32] 'Stephen might better have been
called the "Colonial Department" itself than "Counsel to the Colonial
Department."' During Lord Glenelg's tenure of office (1835-1839), and
for many years before and after, 'he literally ruled the Colonial
empire.'[33] This involved unremitting labour. Taylor observes that
Stephen 'had an enormous appetite for work,' and 'rather preferred not
to be helped. I,' he adds, humorously, 'could make him perfectly welcome
to any amount of it.' For years he never left London for a month, and,
though in the last five years preceding his retirement in 1847, he was
absent for rather longer periods, he took a clerk with him and did
business in the country as regularly as in town.
His duties were of the most various kind. The colonies, as my brother
observes, were a collection of states varying from youthful nations like
Canada down to a small settlement of Germans on the rock of Heligoland;
their populations differed in race, laws, religion, and languages; the
authority of the Crown varied from absolute power over an infant
settlement to supremacy over communities in some essential respects
independent. My father's duty was to be familiar with every detail of
these complicated relations, to know the state of parties and local
politics in each colony, and to be able to advise successive Secretaries
of State who came without special preparation to the task. He had to
prepare drafts of all important despatches and of the numerous Acts of
Parliament which were required during a period of rapid and important
changes. 'I have been told,' says my brother, elsewhere,[34] that 'he
was a perfectly admirable Under-Secretary of State, quick, firm,
courageous, and a perfect master of his profession and of all the
special knowledge which his position required, and which, I believe, no
other man in England possessed to anything like the same extent.'
A man of long experience, vast powers of work, and decided views
naturally obtained great influence with his superiors; and that such an
influence was potent became generally believed among persons interested
in and often aggrieved by the policy of the Government. Stephen was
nicknamed as 'King Stephen,' or 'Mr. Over-Secretary Stephen,' or 'Mr.
Mother-Country Stephen.' The last epithet, attributed to Charles Buller,
meant that when the colonies were exhorted to pay allegiance to the
mother country they were really called upon to obey the irrepressible
Under-Secretary. I dimly divine, though I am not much of a politician,
that there is an advantage in criticising the permanent official in a
department. He cannot answer an attack upon him, and it is also an
attack upon the superior who has yielded to his influence. At any rate,
though my father received the warmest commendation from his official
superiors, he acquired a considerable share of unpopularity. For this
there were other reasons, of which I shall presently speak.
Little as I can say of the details of this policy in which he was
concerned, there are one or two points of which I must speak. My father
had accepted the appointment, according to Taylor, partly with the view
of gaining an influence upon the slavery question. In this, says Taylor,
he was eminently successful, and his success raised the first outcry
against him.[35] His family and friends were all, as I have shown,
deeply engaged in the anti-slavery agitation. As an official he could of
course take no part in such action, and his father had to give solemn
assurances that the son had given him no information. But the power of
influencing the Government in the right direction was of equal
importance to the cause. The elaborate Act, still in force, by which
previous legislation against the slave trade was finally consolidated
and extended was passed in 1824 (5 George IV. cap. 113). It was drawn
by my father and dictated by him in one day and at one sitting.[36] It
fills twenty-three closely printed octavo pages. At this time the
Government was attempting to adopt a middle course between the
abolitionists and the planters by passing what were called 'meliorating
Acts,' Acts, that is, for improving the treatment of the slaves. The
Colonial Assemblies declined to accept the proposals. The Colonial
Office remonstrated, obtained reports and wrote despatches, pointing out
any abuses discovered: the despatches were laid before Parliament and
republished by Zachary Macaulay in the 'Anti-slavery Reporter.'
Agitation increased. An insurrection of slaves in Jamaica in 1831,
cruelly suppressed by the whites, gave indirectly a death blow to
slavery. Abolition, especially after the Reform Bill, became inevitable,
but the question remained whether the grant of freedom should be
immediate or gradual, and whether compensation should be granted to the
planters. The problem had been discussed by Stephen, Taylor, and Lord
Howick, afterwards Earl Grey (1802-1894), and various plans had been
considered. In March 1833, however, Mr. Stanley, afterwards Lord Derby,
became head of the Colonial Office; and the effect was at first to
reduce Stephen and Taylor to their 'original insignificance.' They had
already been attacked in the press for taking too much upon themselves,
and Stanley now prepared a measure without their assistance. He found
that he had not the necessary experience for a difficult task, and was
soon obliged to have recourse to Stephen, who prepared the measure which
was finally passed. The delay had made expedition necessary if slavery
was not to continue for another year. My father received notice to draw
the Act on Saturday morning. He went home and completed his task by the
middle of the day on Monday. The Act (3 & 4 William IV. c. 73) contains
sixty-six sections, fills twenty-six pages in the octavo edition of the
Statute-book, and creates a whole scheme of the most intricate and
elaborate kind. The amanuensis to whom it was dictated used to tell the
story as an illustration of his own physical powers. At that time, as
another clerk in the office tells my brother, 'it was no unusual thing
for your father to dictate before breakfast as much as would fill thirty
sides of office folio paper,' equal to about ten pages of the 'Edinburgh
Review,' The exertion, however, in this instance was exceptional: only
upon one other occasion did my father ever work upon a Sunday; it cost
him a severe nervous illness and not improbably sowed the seed of later
attacks.[37]
I can say little of my father's action in later years. On September 17,
1834, he was appointed to the newly created office of Assistant
Under-Secretary of State. He had, says Taylor, for many years done the
work of the Under-Secretary, and he objected to doing it any longer on
the same terms. The Under-Secretary complained to Lord Melbourne that
his subordinate desired to supplant him, and got only the characteristic
reply, 'It looks devilishly like it.'[38] In 1836 he had to retire, and
my father became Under-Secretary in his place, with a salary of
2,000_l._ a year, on February 4 of that year, and at the same time gave
up his connection with the Board of Trade. He was actively concerned in
the establishment of responsible government in Canada. The relations
with that colony were, as my brother says, 'confused and entangled in
every possible way by personal and party questions at home and by the
violent dissensions which existed in Canada itself.' The difficulty was
aggravated, he adds, by the fact that my father, whatever his personal
influence, had no authority whatever; and although his principles were
ultimately adopted he had constantly to take part in measures which he
disapproved. 'Stephen's opinions,' says Taylor, 'were more liberal than
those of most of his chiefs, and at one period he gave more power than
he intended to a Canadian Assembly from placing too much confidence in
their intentions.'[39] Upon this matter, however, Taylor admits that he
was not fully informed. I will only add that my father appears to have
shared the opinions then prevalent among the Liberal party that the
colonies would soon be detached from the mother country. On the
appointment of a Governor-General of Canada, shortly before his
resignation of office, he observes in a diary that it is not unlikely to
be the last that will ever be made.[40]
I have already noticed my father's unpopularity. It was a not unlikely
result of exercising a great and yet occult influence upon a department
of Government which is likely in any case to be more conspicuous for its
failures than for its successes. There were, however, more personal
reasons which I think indicate his peculiar characteristics. I have said
enough to illustrate his gluttony of work. I should guess that, without
intending it, he was also an exacting superior. He probably
over-estimated the average capacity for work of mankind, and condemned
their indolence too unsparingly. Certainly his estimate of the quantity
of good work got out of officials in a public office was not a high one.
Nor, I am sure, did he take a sanguine view of the utility of such work
as was done in the Colonial Office. 'Colonial Office being an Impotency'
(as Carlyle puts it in his 'Reminiscences,' 'as Stephen inarticulately,
though he never said or whispered it, well knew), what could an earnest
and honest kind of man do but try to teach you how not to do it?'[41] I
fancy that this gives in Carryle's manner the unpleasant side of a true
statement. My father gave his whole life to work, which he never thought
entirely satisfactory, although he did his duty without a word of
complaint. Once, when advising Taylor to trust rather to literature than
to Government employment, he remarked, 'You may write off the first
joints of your fingers for them, and then you may write off the second
joints, and all that they will say of you is, "What a remarkably
short-fingered man!"'[42] But he had far too much self-respect to
grumble at the inevitable results of the position.
My father, however, was a man of exquisitely sensitive nature--a man, as
my mother warned his children, 'without a skin,' and he felt very keenly
the attacks of which he could take no notice. In early days this had
shown itself by a shyness 'remarkable,' says Taylor, beyond all 'shyness
that you could imagine in anyone whose soul had not been pre-existent in
a wild duck.'[43] His extreme sensibility showed itself too in other
ways. He was the least sanguine of mankind. He had, as he said in a
letter, 'a morbidly vivid perception of possible evils and remote
dangers.' A sensitive nature dreads nothing so much as a shock, and
instinctively prepares for it by always anticipating the worst. He
always expected, if I may say so, to be disappointed in his
expectations. The tendency showed itself in a general conviction that
whatever was his own must therefore be bad. He could not bear to have a
looking-glass in his room lest he should be reminded of his own
appearance. 'I hate mirrors vitrical and human,' he says, when wondering
how he might appear to others. He could not bear that his birthday
should be even noticed, though he did not, like Swift, commemorate it by
a remorseful ceremonial. He shrank from every kind of self-assertion;
and in matters outside his own province often showed to men of abilities
very inferior to his own a deference which to those who did not know him
might pass for affectation. The life of a recluse had strong attractions
for him. He was profoundly convinced that the happiest of all lives was
that of a clergyman, who could devote himself to study and to the quiet
duties of his profession. Circumstances had forced a different career
upon him. He had as a very young man taken up a profession which is not
generally supposed to be propitious to retiring modesty; and was ever
afterwards plunged into active business, which brought him into rough
contact with politicians and men of business of all classes. The result
was that he formed a manner calculated to shield himself and keep his
interlocutors at a distance. It might be called pompous, and was at any
rate formal and elaborate. The natural man lurked behind a barrier of
ceremony, and he rarely showed himself unless in full dress. He could
unbend in his family, but in the outer world he put on his defensive
armour of stately politeness, which even for congenial minds made
familiarity difficult if it effectually repelled impertinence. But
beneath this sensitive nature lay an energetic and even impetuous
character, and an intellect singularly clear, subtle, and decisive. His
reasons were apt to be complicated, but he came to very definite
results, and was both rapid and resolute in action. He had 'a strong
will,' says Taylor, 'and great tenacity of opinion. When he made a
mistake, which was very seldom considering the prodigious quantity of
business he despatched, his subordinates could rarely venture to point
it out; he gave them so much trouble before he could be evicted from his
error.' In private life, as Taylor adds, his friends feared to suggest
any criticisms; not because he resented advice but because he suffered
so much from blame.
Another peculiarity was oddly blended with this. Among his topics of
self-humiliation, sufficiently frequent, one was his excess of
'loquacity.' A very shy man, it is often remarked, may shrink from
talking, but when he begins to talk he talks enormously. My father, at
any rate, had a natural gift for conversation. He could pour out a
stream of talk such as, to the best of my knowledge, I have never heard
equalled. The gift was perhaps stimulated by accidents. The weakness of
his eyes had forced him to depend very much upon dictation. I remember
vividly the sound of his tread as he tramped up and down his room,
dictating to my mother or sister, who took down his words in shorthand
and found it hard to keep pace with him. Even his ordinary conversation
might have been put into print with scarcely a correction, and was as
polished and grammatically perfect as his finished writing. The flow of
talk was no doubt at times excessive. Taylor tells of an indignant
gentleman who came to his room after attempting to make some
communication to the Under-Secretary. Mr. Stephen, he said, had at once
begun to speak, and after discoursing for half an hour without a
moment's pause, courteously bowed the gentleman out, thanking him for
the valuable information which still remained unuttered. Sir James
Stephen, said Lord Monteagle to Carlyle, 'shuts his eyes on you and
talks as if he were dictating a colonial despatch.'[44] This refers to a
nervous trick of shyness. When talking, his eyelids often had a
tremulous motion which concealed the eyes themselves, and gave to at
least one stranger the impression that he was being addressed by a blind
man.
The talk, however, was always pointed and very frequently as brilliant
as it was copious. With all the monotony of utterance, says Taylor,
'there was such a variety and richness of thought and language, and
often so much wit and humour, that one could not help being interested
and attentive.' On matters of business, he adds, 'the talk could not be
of the same quality and was of the same continuity.' He gives one
specimen of the 'richness of conversational diction' which I may quote.
My father mentioned to Taylor an illness from which the son of Lord
Derby was suffering. He explained his knowledge by saying that Lord
Derby had spoken of the case to him in a tone for which he was
unprepared. 'In all the time when I saw him daily I cannot recollect
that he ever said one word to me about anything but business; and _when
the stupendous glacier, which had towered over my head for so many
years, came to dissolve and descend upon me in parental dew, you may
imagine, &c., &c._[45] My brother gives an account to which I can fully
subscribe, so far as my knowledge goes. Our father's printed books, he
says, show his mind 'in full dress, as under restraint and subject to
the effect of habitual self-distrust. They give no idea of the vigour
and pungency and freedom with which he could speak or let himself loose
or think aloud as he did to me. Macaulay was infinitely more eloquent,
and his memory was a thing by itself. Carlyle was striking and
picturesque, and, after a fashion, forcible to the last degree. John
Austin discoursed with the greatest dignity and impressiveness. But my
father's richness of mind and union of wisdom, good sense, keenness and
ingenuity, put him, in my opinion, quite on the same sort of level as
these distinguished men; and gave me a feeling about him which attuned
itself with and ran into the conviction that he was also one of the very
kindest, most honourable, and best men I ever knew in my whole life.'
From my recollection, which is less perfect than was my brother's, I
should add that one thing which especially remains with me was the stamp
of fine literary quality which marked all my father's conversation. His
talk, however copious, was never commonplace; and, boy as I was when I
listened, I was constantly impressed by the singular skill with which
his clear-cut phrases and lively illustrations put even familiar topics
into an apparently new and effective light.
The comparison made by my brother between my father's talk and his
writings may be just, though I do not altogether agree with it. The
'Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography,' by which he is best known, were
written during the official career which I have described.
The composition was to him a relaxation, and they were written early in
the morning or late at night, or in the intervals of his brief holidays.
I will not express any critical judgment of their qualities; but this I
will say: putting aside Macaulay's 'Essays,' which possess merits of an
entirely different order, I do not think that any of the collected
essays republished from the 'Edinburgh Review' indicate a natural gift
for style equal to my father's. Judging from these, which are merely the
overflowing of a mind employed upon other most absorbing duties, I think
that my father, had he devoted his talents to literature, would have
gained a far higher place than has been reached by any of his
family.[46]
My father gave in his Essays a sufficient indication of his religious
creed. That creed, while it corresponded to his very deepest emotions,
took a peculiar and characteristic form. His essay upon the 'Clapham
Sect'[47] shows how deeply he had imbibed its teaching, while it yet
shows a noticeable divergence. All his youthful sympathies and aims had
identified him with the early evangelicals. As a lad he had known
Granville Sharp, the patriarch of the anti-slavery movement; and till
middle life he was as intimate as the difference of ages permitted with
Wilberforce and with Thomas Gisborne, the most refined if not most
effective preacher of the party. He revered many of the party from the
bottom of his heart. His loving remembrance of his intercourse with them
is shown in every line of his description, and to the end of his life he
retained his loyalty to the men, and, as he at least thought, to their
creed. The later generation, which called itself evangelical,
repudiated his claim. He was attacked in their chief organ. When some
remonstrance was made by his brother-in-law, Henry Venn, he wrote to the
paper (I quote from memory), 'I can only regret that any friend of mine
should have stooped to vindicate me from any censure of yours'; and
declined further controversy.
The occasion of this was an attack which had been made upon him at
Cambridge, where certain learned dons discovered on his appointment to
the professorship of history that he was a 'Cerinthian.' I do not
pretend to guess at their meaning. Anyhow he had avowed, in an
'epilogue' to his Essays, certain doubts as to the meaning of eternal
damnation--a doctrine which at that time enjoyed considerable
popularity. The explanation was in part simple. 'It is laid to my
charge,' he said, 'that I am a Latitudinarian. I have never met with a
single man who, like myself, had passed a long series of years in a free
intercourse with every class of society who was not more or less what is
called a Latitudinarian.' In fact, he had discovered that Clapham was
not the world, and that the conditions of salvation could hardly include
residence on the sacred common. This conviction, however, took a
peculiar form in his mind. His Essays show how widely he had sympathised
with many forms of the religious sentiment. He wrote with enthusiasm of
the great leaders of the Roman Catholic Church; of Hildebrand and St.
Francis, and even of Ignatius Loyola; and yet his enthusiasm does not
blind him to the merits of Martin Luther, or Baxter, or Wesley, or
Wilberforce. There were only two exceptions to his otherwise universal
sympathy. He always speaks of the rationalists in the ordinary tone of
dislike; and he looks coldly upon one school of orthodoxy. 'Sir James
Stephen,' as was said by someone, 'is tolerant towards every Church
except the Church of England.' This epigram indicated a fact. Although
he himself strenuously repudiated any charge of disloyalty to the Church
whose ordinances he scrupulously observed, he was entirely out of
sympathy with the specially Anglican movement of later years. This was
no doubt due in great part to the intensely strong sympathies of his
youth. When the Oxford movement began he was already in middle life and
thoroughly steeped in the doctrines which they attacked. He resembled
them, indeed, in his warm appreciation of the great men of Catholicism.
But the old churchmen appealed both to his instincts as a statesman and
to his strong love of the romantic. The Church of the middle ages had
wielded a vast power; men like Loyola and Xavier had been great
spiritual heroes. But what was to be said for the Church of England
since the Reformation? Henry Martyn, he says, in the 'Clapham Sect,' is
'the one heroic name which adorns her annals since the days of
Elizabeth. Her apostolic men either quitted or were cast out of her
communion. Her _Acta Sanctorum_ may be read from end to end with a dry
eye and an unquickened pulse.' He had perhaps heard too many sermons.
'Dear Mother Church,' he says after one such experience, 'thy spokesmen
are not selected so as to create any danger that we should be dazzled by
human eloquence or entangled by human wisdom.' The Church of England, as
he says elsewhere ('Baxter'), afforded a refuge for three centuries to
the great, the learned, and the worldly wise, but was long before it
took to the nobler end of raising the poor, and then, as he would have
added, under the influence of the Clapham Sect. The Church presented
itself to him mainly as the religious department of the State, in which
more care was taken to suppress eccentricity than to arouse enthusiasm;
it was eminently respectable, but at the very antipodes of the heroic.
Could he then lean to Rome? He could not do so without damning the men
he most loved, even could his keen and in some ways sceptical intellect
have consented to commit suicide. Or to the Romanising party in the
Church? The movement sprang from the cloister, and he had breathed the
bracing air of secular life. He was far too clear-headed not to see
whither they were tending. To him they appeared to be simply feeble
imitations of the real thing, dabbling with dangerous arguments, and
trying to revive beliefs long sentenced to extinction.
And yet, with his strong religious beliefs, he could not turn towards
the freethinkers. He perceived indeed with perfect clearness that the
Christian belief was being tried by new tests severer than the old, and
that schools of thought were arising with which the orthodox would have
to reckon. Occasional intimations to this effect dropped from him in his
conversations with my brother and others. But, on the whole, the simple
fact was that he never ventured to go deeply into the fundamental
questions. His official duties left him little time for abstract
thought; and his surpassingly ingenious and versatile mind employed
itself rather in framing excuses for not answering than in finding
thorough answers to possible doubts. He adopted a version of the
doctrine _crede ut intelligas_, and denounced the mere reasoning
machines like David Hume who appealed unequivocally to reason. But what
the faculty was which was to guide or to overrule reason in the search
for truth was a question to which I do not think that he could give any
distinct answer. He was too much a lover of clearness to be attracted by
the mysticism of Coleridge, and yet he shrank from the results of seeing
too clearly.
I have insisted upon this partly because my father's attitude greatly
affected my brother, as will be presently seen. My brother was not a man
to shrink from any conclusions, and he rather resented the humility
which led my father, in the absence of other popes, to attach an
excessive importance to the opinions of Henry and John Venn--men who, as
Fitzjames observes, were, in matters of speculative inquiry, not worthy
to tie his shoes. Meanwhile, as his health became weaker in later years,
my father seemed to grow more weary of the secular world, and to lean
more for consolation under anxiety to his religious beliefs. Whatever
doubts or tendencies to doubt might affect his intellect, they never
weakened his loyalty to his creed. He spoke of Christ, when such
references were desirable, in a tone of the deepest reverence blended
with personal affection, which, as I find, greatly impressed my brother.
Often, in his letters and his talk, he would dwell upon the charm of a
pious life, free from secular care and devoted to the cultivation of
religious ideals in ourselves and our neighbours. On very rare occasions
he would express his real feelings to companions who had mistaken his
habitual reserve for indifference. We had an old ivory carving, left to
him in token of gratitude by a gentleman whom he had on some such
occasion solemnly reproved for profane language, and who had at the
moment felt nothing but irritation.
The effect of these tendencies upon our little domestic circle was
marked. My father's occupations naturally brought him into contact with
many men of official and literary distinction. Some of them became his
warm friends. Besides Henry Taylor, of whom I have spoken, Taylor's
intimate friends, James Spedding and Aubrey de Vere, were among the
intimates of our household; and they and other men, younger than
himself, often joined him in his walks or listened to his overflowing
talk at home. A next-door neighbour for many years was Nassau Senior,
the political economist, and one main author of the Poor Law of 1834.
Senior, a very shrewd man of the world, was indifferent to my father's
religious speculations. Yet he and his family were among our closest
friends, and in habits of the most familiar intercourse with us. With
them was associated John Austin, regarded by all the Utilitarians as the
profoundest of jurists and famous for his conversational powers; and
Mrs. Austin, a literary lady, with her daughter, afterwards Lady Duff
Gordon. I think of her (though it makes me feel old when I so think) as
Lucy Austin. She was a brilliant girl, reported to keep a rifle and a
skull in her bedroom. She once startled the sense of propriety of her
elders by performing in our house a charade, in which she represented a
dying woman with a 'realism'--to use the modern phrase--worthy of Madame
Sarah Bernhardt. Other visitors were occasionally attracted. My father
knew John Mill, though never, I fancy, at all intimately. He knew
politicians such as Charles Greville, the diarist, who showed his
penetration characteristically, as I have been told, by especially
admiring my mother as a model of the domestic virtues which he could
appreciate from an outside point of view.
We looked, however, at the world from a certain distance, and, as it
were, through a veil. My father had little taste for general society. It
had once been intimated to him, as he told me, that he might find
admission to the meetings of Holland House, where, as Macaulay tells us,
you might have the privilege of seeing Mackintosh verify a reference to
Thomas Aquinas, and hearing Talleyrand describe his ride over the field
of Austerlitz. My father took a different view. He declined to take
advantage of this opening into the upper world, because, as he said, I
don't know from what experience, the conversation turned chiefly upon
petty personal gossip. The feasts of the great were not to his taste. He
was ascetic by temperament. He was, he said, one of the few people to
whom it was the same thing to eat a dinner and to perform an act of
self-denial. In fact, for many years he never ate a dinner, contenting
himself with a biscuit and a glass of sherry as lunch, and an egg at
tea, and thereby, as the doctors said, injuring his health. He once
smoked a cigar, and found it so delicious that he never smoked again. He
indulged in snuff until one day it occurred to him that snuff was
superfluous; when the box was solemnly emptied out of the window and
never refilled. Long sittings after dinner were an abomination to him,
and he spoke with horror of his father's belief in the virtues of port
wine. His systematic abstemiousness diminished any temptation to social
pleasures of the ordinary kind. His real delight was in quieter meetings
with his own family--with Stephens, and Diceys, and Garratts, and above
all, I think, with Henry and John Venn. At their houses, or in the
country walks where he could unfold his views to young men, whose
company he always enjoyed, he could pour out his mind in unceasing
discourse, and be sure of a congenial audience.
Our household must thus be regarded as stamped with the true evangelical
characteristics--and yet with a difference. The line between saints and
sinners or the Church and the world was not so deeply drawn as in some
cases. We felt, in a vague way, that we were, somehow, not quite as
other people, and yet I do not think that we could be called Pharisees.
My father felt it a point of honour to adhere to the ways of his youth.
Like Jonadab, the son of Rechab, as my brother observes, he would drink
no wine for the sake of his father's commandments (which, indeed, is
scarcely a felicitous application after what I have just said). He wore
the uniform of the old army, though he had ceased to bear unquestioning
allegiance. We never went to plays or balls; but neither were we taught
to regard such recreations as proofs of the corruption of man. My father
most carefully told us that there was nothing intrinsically wrong in
such things, though he felt strongly about certain abuses of them. At
most, in his favourite phrase, they were 'not convenient.' We no more
condemned people who frequented them than we blamed people in Hindostan
for riding elephants. A theatre was as remote from us as an elephant.
And therefore we grew up without acquiring or condemning such tastes.
They had neither the charm of early association nor the attraction of
forbidden fruit. To outsiders the household must have been pervaded by
an air of gravity, if not of austerity. But we did not feel it, for it
became the law of our natures, not a law imposed by external sanctions.
We certainly had a full allowance of sermons and Church services; but we
never, I think, felt them to be forced upon us. They were a part, and
not an unwelcome part, of the order of nature. In another respect we
differed from some families of the same creed. My father's fine taste
and his sensitive nature made him tremblingly alive to one risk. He
shrank from giving us any inducement to lay bare our own religious
emotions. To him and to our mother the needless revelation of the deeper
feelings seemed to be a kind of spiritual indelicacy. To encourage
children to use the conventional phrases could only stimulate to
unreality or actual hypocrisy. He recognised, indeed, the duty of
impressing upon us his own convictions, but he spoke only when speaking
was a duty. He read prayers daily in his family, and used to expound a
few verses of the Bible with characteristic unction. In earlier days I
find him accusing himself of a tendency to address 'homiletical
epistles' to his nearest connections; but he scrupulously kept such
addresses for some adequate occasion in his children's lives. We were,
indeed, fully aware, from a very early age, of his feelings, and could
not but be continuously conscious that we were under the eye of a father
governed by the loftiest and purest motives, and devoting himself
without stint to what he regarded as his duty. He was a living
'categorical imperative.' 'Did you ever know your father do a thing
because it was pleasant?' was a question put to my brother, when he was
a small boy, by his mother. She has apparently recorded it for the sake
of the childish answer: 'Yes, once--when he married you.' But we were
always conscious of the force of the tacit appeal.
I must not give the impression that he showed himself a stern parent. I
remember that when his first grandchild was born, I was struck by the
fact that he was the most skilful person in the family at playing with
the baby. Once, when some friends upon whom he was calling happened to
be just going out, he said, 'Leave me the baby and I shall be quite
happy.' Several little fragments of letters with doggerel rhymes and
anecdotes suited for children recall his playfulness with infants, and
as we grew up, although we learnt to regard him with a certain awe, he
conversed with us most freely, and discoursed upon politics, history,
and literature, and his personal recollections, as if we had been his
equals, though, of course, with a width of knowledge altogether beyond
our own. The risk of giving pain to a 'skinless' man was all that could
cause any reserve between us; but a downright outspoken boy like my
brother soon acquired and enjoyed a position on the most affectionate
terms of familiarity. We knew that he loved us; that his character was
not only pure but chivalrous; and that intellectually he was a most
capable guide into the most delightful pastures.
I will conclude by a word or two upon his physical characteristics. No
tolerable likeness has been preserved. My father was rather above middle
height, and became stout in later years. Though not handsome, his
appearance had a marked dignity. A very lofty brow was surmounted by
masses of soft fine hair, reddish in youth, which became almost white
before he died. The eyes, often concealed by the nervous trick I have
mentioned, were rather deeply set and of the purest blue. They could
flash into visibility and sparkle with indignation or softer emotion.
The nose was the nose of a scholar, rather massive though well cut, and
running to a sharp point. He had the long flexible lips of an orator,
while the mouth, compressed as if cut with a knife, indicated a nervous
reserve. The skull was very large, and the whole face, as I remember
him, was massive, though in youth he must have been comparatively
slender.
His health was interrupted by some severe illnesses, and he suffered
much at times from headache. His power of work, however, shows that he
was generally in good health; he never had occasion for a dentist. He
was a very early riser, scrupulously neat in dress, and even fanatical
in the matter of cleanliness. He had beautiful but curiously incompetent
hands. He was awkward even at tying his shoes; and though he liked
shaving himself because, he said, that it was the only thing he could do
with his hands, and he shaved every vestige of beard, he very often
inflicted gashes. His handwriting, however, was of the very best. He
occasionally rode and could, I believe, swim and row. But he enjoyed no
physical exercise except walking, a love of which was hereditary. I do
not suppose that he ever had a gun or a fishing-rod in his hand.
And now, having outlined such a portrait as I can of our home, I begin
my brother's life.[48]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: I learn by the courtesy of Mr. James Young Stephen that
this James Stephen was son of a previous James Stephen of Ardenbraught,
whose brother Thomas was provost of Dundee and died in 1728. James
Stephen of Ardenbraught had a younger son John, who was
great-grandfather of the present Mr. Oscar Leslie Stephen. Mr. O. L.
Stephen is father of Mr. James Young Stephen, Mr. Oscar Leslie Stephen,
junior, and Sir Alexander Condie Stephen, K.C.M.G.]
[Footnote 2: My friend, Professor Bonney, kindly refers me to Conybeare
and Philips' _Outlines of Geology of England and Wales_, p. 13, where
there is an account of certain beds of lignite, or imperfect coal, in
the neighbourhood of Poole. They burn with an odour of bitumen, and, no
doubt, misled my great-grandfather. Geology was not even outlined in
those days.]
[Footnote 3: 'Parleyings with Certain People'--_Works_ (1889) xvi.
148-160.]
[Footnote 4: See _Dictionary of National Biography_.]
[Footnote 5: Redgrave's _Dictionary of Painters_.]
[Footnote 6: I have copies of two pamphlets in which these proceedings
are described:--One is entitled 'Considerations on Imprisonment for
Debt, fully proving that the confining of the bodies of debtors is
contrary to Common Law, Magna Charta, Statute Law, Justice, Humanity,
and Policy; and that the practice is more cruel and oppressive than is
used in the most arbitrary kingdoms in Europe, with an account of
various applications, &c.; by James Stephen, 1770.' The other pamphlet,
to which is prefixed a letter by W. Jackson, reprints some of Stephen's
letters from the New Jail, wants a title and is imperfect. See also the
_Annual Register_ for 1770 (Chronicle), November 19, for 1771
(Chronicle), January 31.]
[Footnote 7: That mentioned in the previous note. See also the
'Chronicle' of the _Annual Register_ for November 19, 1770, and January
31 and November 2, 1771.]
[Footnote 8: The children were William and James (already mentioned);
Sibella, born about 1765, afterwards married to William Maxwell Morison,
editor of _Decisions of Court of Session_ (1801-1818); Hannah, born
about 1767, afterwards married to William Farish (1759-1837), Jacksonian
professor at Cambridge; Elizabeth, born about 1769, afterwards married
to her cousin, William Milner, of Comberton, near Cambridge; and John,
born about 1771.]
[Footnote 9: The parish register records his burial on September 9,
1779.]
[Footnote 10: See the trial reported by Gurney in 21 _State Trials_, pp.
486-651. It lasted from 8 A.M. on Monday till 5.15 A.M. on Tuesday
morning.]
[Footnote 11: See _Slavery Delineated_ (preface to vol. i.), where other
revolting details are given.]
[Footnote 12: _Slavery Delineated_, i. 54, 55.]
[Footnote 13: Sir George Stephen's _Life of J. Stephen_, p. 29.]
[Footnote 14: Reprinted in 13 _Hansard's Debates_, App. xxv.-cxxii.]
[Footnote 15: _Hansard's Debates_, June 20, 1814; and _Abbot's Diary_,
ii. 503.]
[Footnote 16: It is now occupied by my friend Dr. Robert Liveing.]
[Footnote 17: For the life of my grandfather, I have relied upon his
autobiography and upon the following among other works: _Life of the
late James Stephen_ by his son, Sir George Stephen, Victoria, 1875 (this
little book, written when the author's memory was failing, is full of
singular mistakes, a fact which I mention that I may not be supposed to
have overlooked the statements in question but which it is needless to
prove in detail); _Jottings from Memory_ (two interesting little
pamphlets privately printed by Sir Alfred Stephen in 1889 and 1891); and
Wilberforce's _Life and Letters_ (containing letters and incidental
references). In Colquhoun's _Wilberforce, his Friends and his Times_
(1886), pp. 180-198, is an account of Stephen's relations to
Wilberforce, chiefly founded upon this. See also Roberts' _Hannah More_
(several letters); Brougham's _Speeches_ (1838), i. pp. 402-414 (an
interesting account partly quoted in Sir J. Stephen's _Clapham Sect_, in
_Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography_); Henry Adam's _History of the
United States_ (1891), iii. pp. 50-52 and elsewhere; Walpole's _Life of
Perceval_.]
[Footnote 18: He served also in 1842 upon a Commission of Inquiry into
the forgery of Exchequer bills.]
[Footnote 19: Serjeant Stephen's wife and a daughter died before him. He
left two surviving children: Sarah, a lady of remarkable ability, author
of a popular religious story called _Anna; or, the Daughter at Home_,
and a chief founder of the 'Metropolitan Association for Befriending
Young Servants,' who died unmarried, aged 79, on January 5, 1895; and
James, who edited some of his father's books, was judge of the County
Court at Lincoln, and died in November 1894. A short notice of the
serjeant is in the _Law Times_ of December 24, 1894.]
[Footnote 20: _Life of James Stephen_, p. 36.]
[Footnote 21: By his wife, a Miss Ravenscroft, he had seven children,
who all emigrated with him. The eldest, James Wilberforce Stephen, was
fourth wrangler in 1844 and Fellow of St. John's College, and afterwards
a judge in the colony of Victoria.]
[Footnote 22: His _Constitution of a Christian Church_ (1846) was
republished, in 1874, as _Churches the Many and the One_, with
additional notes by his son, the Rev. Samuel Garratt, now rector of St.
Margaret's, Ipswich, and canon of Norwich.]
[Footnote 23: _Lectures_, vol. i. preface.]
[Footnote 24: Preface to _Slavery Delineated_, i. pp. lix.-lxx. My
grandfather takes some trouble to show--and, as I think, shows
conclusively--that the appointment mentioned in the text was not a job,
and that it involved a considerable saving of public money. But this
matter will interest no one at present.]
[Footnote 25: I have to thank Mr. Bryce, now President of the Board of
Trade, for kindly procuring me the dates of my father's official
appointments.]
[Footnote 26: Communicated by my friend Mr. J. Dykes Campbell.]
[Footnote 27: My cousin, Dr. John Venn, informs me that the first
traceable Venn was a farmer in Broad Hembury, Devonshire, whose son,
William Venn, was vicar of Otterton from 1599 to 1621.]
[Footnote 28: _Henry Venn's Life_, published by his grandson, Henry
Venn, in 1834, has gone through several editions.]
[Footnote 29: A short life of John Venn is prefixed to his _Sermons_. He
married Catherine King on October 22, 1789, and left seven children:--
1. Catherine Eling, born Dec. 2, 1791, died unmarried,
April 22, 1827.
2. Jane Catherine, Lady Stephen, b. May 16, 1793,
d. February 27, 1875.
3. Emelia, b. April 20, 1795, d. Feb. 1881.
4. Henry, b. February 10, 1796, d. January 13, 1873.
5. Caroline, Mrs. Ellis Batten, b. 1799, d. Jan. 26, 1870.
6. Maria, who died in infancy.
7. John, b. April 17, 1801, d. May 12, 1890.]
[Footnote 30: _Missionary Secretariat of Henry Venn, B.D._, by the Rev.
William Knight, with introductory chapter by his sons the Rev. John Venn
and the Rev. Henry Venn, 1880.]
[Footnote 31: Sir H. Taylor's _Autobiography_ (1885), ii. 303. Taylor
was b. October 18, 1800, and d. October 31, 1886.]
[Footnote 32: _Autobiography_, i. 136.]
[Footnote 33: P. 233.]
[Footnote 34: Autobiographical fragment.]
[Footnote 35: _Taylor_, ii. 301.]
[Footnote 36: Stephen's _History of the Criminal Law_, iii. 256. My
brother was generally accurate in such statements, though I cannot quite
resist the impression that he may at this time have been under some
confusion as to the time employed upon this occasion and the time
devoted to the Bill of 1833 to be mentioned directly.]
[Footnote 37: _Taylor_, i. 121-127. Sir Henry Taylor says that Stanley
prepared a measure with Sir James Graham which was introduced into the
House of Commons and 'forthwith was blown into the air.' I can find no
trace of this in Hansard or elsewhere, and as Stanley only became
Colonial Secretary (March 28) six weeks before introducing the measure
which passed, and no parliamentary discussion intervened, I fancy that
there must be some error. The facts as stated above seem to be at any
rate sufficiently proved by Taylor's contemporary letter. According to
Taylor, Stanley's great speech (May 14, 1833) upon introducing the
Government measure was founded upon my father's judicious cramming, and
the success of the measure was due to Stephen's putting his own design
into enactments and Mr. Stanley's into a preamble. Taylor at the time
thought that my father had been ill treated, but I have not the
knowledge necessary to form any opinion. My brother's _Life_ is the
authority for the circumstances under which the measure was prepared,
and rests on sufficient evidence.]
[Footnote 38: _Taylor_, i. 233.]
[Footnote 39: _Ibid._ ii. 303.]
[Footnote 40: I think it right to notice that in the first edition of T.
Mozley's _Reminiscences_ (1882), i. 111, there appeared an anecdote of
my father in his official capacity which was preposterous on the face of
it. It was completely demolished in a letter written by my brother which
appeared in the _Times_ of July 6, 1882, and withdrawn in a later
edition.]
[Footnote 41: _Reminiscences_, ii. 224.]
[Footnote 42: _Taylor_, i. 235.]
[Footnote 43: _Taylor_, ii. 304.]
[Footnote 44: _Reminiscences_, ii. 223.]
[Footnote 45: _Taylor_, ii. 302.]
[Footnote 46: Some of my father's letters are given in Macvey Napier's
correspondence. I think that they are the best in a collection which
includes letters from many of the most eminent men of the time. A few
others are in the collection of Sir H. Taylor's correspondence, edited
by Professor Dowden in 1888.]
[Footnote 47: The title, of course, was given by Sydney Smith.]
[Footnote 48: My father's children were:--
1. Herbert Venn, b. September 30, 1822, d. October 22, 1846.
2. Frances Wilberforce, b. September 8, 1824, d. July 22, 1825.
3. James Fitzjames, b. March 3, 1829, d. March 11, 1894.
4. Leslie, born November 28, 1832.
5. Caroline Emelia, born December 8, 1834.]