CHAPTER II

_EARLY LIFE_

I. CHILDHOOD

In the beginning of 1829 my father settled in a house at Kensington

Gore--now 42 Hyde Park Gate. There his second son, James Fitzjames, was

born on March 3, 1829. James was the name upon which my grandfather

insisted because it was his own. My father, because the name was his

own, objected as long as he could, but at last compounded, and averted

the evil omen, by adding Fitzjames. Two other children, Leslie and

Caroline Emelia, were born in 1832 and 1834 at the same house. The

Kensington of those days was still distinctly separate from London. A

high wall divided Kensington Gardens from the Hounslow Road; there were

still deer in the Gardens; cavalry barracks close to Queen's Gate, and a

turnpike at the top of the Gloucester Road. The land upon which South

Kensington has since arisen was a region of market gardens, where in our

childhood we strolled with our nurse along genuine country lanes.

It would be in my power, if it were desirable, to give an unusually

minute account of my brother's early childhood. My mother kept a diary,

and, I believe, never missed a day for over sixty years. She was also in

the habit of compiling from this certain family 'annals' in which she

inserted everything that struck her as illustrative of the character of

her children. About 1884 my brother himself began a fragment of

autobiography, which he continued at intervals during the next two or

three years. For various reasons I cannot transfer it as a whole to

these pages, but it supplies me with some very important

indications.[49] A comparison with my mother's contemporary account of

the incidents common to both proves my brother's narrative to be

remarkably accurate. Indeed, though he disclaimed the possession of

unusual powers of memory in general, he had a singularly retentive

memory for facts and dates, and amused himself occasionally by

exercising his faculty. He had, for example, a certain walking-stick

upon which he made a notch after a day's march; it served instead of a

diary, and years afterwards he would explain what was the particular

expedition indicated by any one of the very numerous notches.

Although I do not wish to record trifles important only in the eyes of a

mother, or interesting only from private associations, I will give

enough from these sources to illustrate his early development; or rather

to show how much of the later man was already to be found in the infant.

It requires perhaps some faith in maternal insight to believe that

before he was three months old he showed an uncommon power of 'amusing

himself with his own thoughts,' and had 'a calm, composed dignity in his

countenance which was quite amusing in so young a creature.' It will be

more easily believed that he was healthy and strong, and by the age of

six months 'most determined to have his own way.' On August 15, 1830,

Wilberforce was looking at the baby, when he woke up, burst into a

laugh, and exclaimed 'Funny!' a declaration which Wilberforce no doubt

took in good part, though it seems to have been interpreted as a

reflection upon the philanthropist's peculiar figure. My brother himself

gives a detailed description of his grandfather from an interview which

occurred when the old gentleman was seventy-six and the infant very

little more than three years old. He remembers even the room and the

precise position of the persons present. He remembers too (and his

mother's diary confirms the fact) how in the same year he announced that

the Reform Bill had 'passed.' It was 'a very fine thing,' he said, being

in fact a bill stuck upon a newsboy's hat, inscribed, as his nurse

informed him, with the words 'Reform Bill.'

Although his memory implies early powers of observation, he did not show

the precocity of many clever children. He was still learning to read

about his fifth birthday, and making, as his mother complains, rather

slow progress. But if not specially quick at his lessons, he gave very

early and, as it seems to me, very noticeable proofs of thoughtfulness

and independence of character. He was, as he remained through life,

remarkable for that kind of sturdy strength which goes with a certain

awkwardness and even sluggishness. To use a modern phrase, he had a

great store of 'potential energy,' which was not easily convertible to

purposes of immediate application. His mind swarmed with ideas, which

would not run spontaneously into the regulation moulds. His mother's

influence is perceptible in an early taste for poetry. In his third year

he learnt by heart 'Sir John Moore's Burial,' 'Nelson and the North,'

Wordsworth's 'Address to the Winds,' and Lord F. L. Gower's translation

of Schiller ('When Jove had encircled this planet with light') from

hearing his brother's repetition. He especially delighted in this bit of

Schiller and in 'Chevy Chase,' though he resisted Watts' hymns. In the

next two or three years he learns a good deal of poetry, and on

September 5, 1834, repeats fifty lines of Henry the Fifth's speech

before Agincourt without a fault. 'Pilgrim's Progress' and 'Robinson

Crusoe' are read in due course as his reading improves, and he soon

delights in getting into a room by himself and surrounding himself with

books. His religious instruction of course began at the earliest

possible period, and he soon learnt by heart many simple passages of the

Bible. He made his first appearance at family prayers in November 1830,

when the ceremony struck him as 'funny,' but he soon became interested

and was taught to pray for himself. In 1832 his elder brother has

nicknamed him the 'little preacher,' from his love of virtuous

admonitions. In 1834 he confides to his mother that he has invented a

prayer for himself which is 'not, you know, a childish sort of

invention'; and in 1835 he explains that he has followed the advice

given in a sermon (he very carefully points out that it was only

_advice_, not an order) to pray regularly. Avowals of this kind,

however, have to be elicited from him by delicate maternal questioning.

He is markedly averse to any display of feeling. 'You should keep your

love locked up as I do' is a characteristic remark at the age of four to

his eldest brother. The effect of the religious training is apparently

perceptible in a great tendency to self-analysis. His thoughts sometimes

turn to other problems;--in October, 1835, for example, he asks the

question which has occurred to so many thoughtful children,'How do we

know that the world is not a dream?'--but he is chiefly interested in

his own motives. He complains in January 1834 that he has naughty

thoughts. His father tells him to send them away without even thinking

about them. He takes the advice, but afterwards explains that he is so

proud of sending them away that he 'wants to get them that he may send

them away.' He objects to a reward for being good, because it will make

him do right from a wrong motive. He shrinks from compliments. In

October 1835 he leaves a room where some carpenters were at work because

they had said something which he was sorry to have heard. They had said,

as it appeared upon anxious inquiry, that he would make a good

carpenter, and he felt that he was being cajoled. He remarks that even

pleasures become painful when they are ordered, and explains why his

sixth birthday was disappointing; he had expected too much.

His thoughtfulness took shapes which made him at times anything but easy

to manage. He could be intensely obstinate. The first conflict with

authority took place on June 28, 1831, when he resolutely declared that

he would not say the 'Busy Bee.' This event became famous in the

nursery, for in September 1834 he has to express contrition for having

in play used the words 'By the busy bee' as an infantile equivalent to

an oath. One difficulty was that he declined to repeat what was put into

his mouth, or to take first principles in ethics for granted. When his

mother reads a text to him (May 1832), he retorts, 'Then I will not be

like a little child; I do not want to go to heaven; I would rather stay

on earth.' He declines (in 1834) to join in a hymn which expresses a

desire to die and be with God. Even good people, he says, may prefer to

stay in this world. 'I don't want to be as good and wise as Tom

Macaulay' is a phrase of 1832, showing that even appeals to concrete

ideals of the most undeniable excellence fail to overpower him. He

gradually developed a theory which became characteristic, and which he

obstinately upheld when driven into a logical corner. A stubborn

conflict arose in 1833, when his mother was forced to put him in

solitary confinement during the family teatime. She overhears a long

soliloquy in which he admits his error, contrasts his position with that

of the happy who are perhaps even now having toast and sugar, and

compares his position to the 'last night of Pharaoh.' 'What a barbarian

I am to myself!' he exclaims, and resolves that this shall be his last

outbreak. On being set at liberty, he says that he was naughty on

purpose, and not only submits but requests to be punished. For a short

time he applies spontaneously for punishments, though he does not always

submit when the request is granted. But this is a concession under

difficulties. His general position is that by punishing him his mother

only 'procures him to be much more naughty,' and he declines as

resolutely as Jeremy Bentham to admit that naughtiness in itself

involves unhappiness, or that the happiness of naughtiness should not be

taken into account. He frequently urges that it is pleasanter while it

lasts to give way to temper, and that the discomfort only comes

afterwards. It follows logically, as he argues in 1835, that if a man

could be naughty all his life he would be quite happy. Some time later

(1838) he is still arguing the point, having now reached the conclusion

to which the Emperor Constantine gave a practical application. The

desirable thing would be to be naughty all your life, and to repent just

at the end.

These declarations are of course only interpolations in the midst of

many more edifying though less original remarks. He was exceedingly

conscientious, strongly attached to his parents, and very kind to his

younger brother and sister. I note that when he was four years old he

already thought it, as he did ever afterwards, one of the greatest of

treats to have a solitary talk with his father. He was, however, rather

unsociable and earned the nickname of 'Gruffian' for his occasionally

surly manner. This, with a stubborn disposition and occasional fits of

the sulks, must have made it difficult to manage a child who persisted

in justifying 'naughtiness' upon general principles. He was rather

inclined to be indolent, and his mother regrets that he is not so

persevering as Frederick (Gibbs). His great temptation, he says himself,

in his childhood was to be 'effeminate and lazy,' and 'to justify these

vices by intellectual and religious excuses.' A great deal of this, he

adds, has been 'knocked out of him'; he cannot call himself a sluggard

or a hypocrite, nor has he acted like a coward. 'Indeed,' he says, 'from

my very infancy I had an instinctive dislike of the maudlin way of

looking at things,' and he remembers how in his fifth year he had

declared that guns were not 'dreadful things.' They were good if put to

the proper uses. I do not think that there was ever much real

'effeminacy' to be knocked out of him. It is too harsh a word for the

slowness with which a massive and not very flexible character rouses

itself to action. His health was good, except for a trifling ailment

which made him for some time pass for a delicate child. But the delicacy

soon passed off and for the next fifty years he enjoyed almost unbroken

health.

In 1836 he explains some bluntness of behaviour by an argument learnt

from 'Sandford and Merton' that politeness is objectionable. In August

occurs a fit of obstinacy. He does not want to be forgiven but to be

'happy and comfortable.' 'I do not feel sorry, for I always make the

best of my condition in every possible way, and being sorry would make

me uncomfortable. That is not to make the best of my condition.' His

mother foresees a contest and remarks 'a daring and hardened spirit

which is not natural to him.' Soon after, I should perhaps say in

consequence of, these outbreaks he was sent to school. My mother's first

cousin, Henry Venn Elliott, was incumbent of St. Mary's Chapel at

Brighton and a leading evangelical preacher. At Brighton, too, lived his

sister, Miss Charlotte Elliott, author of some very popular hymns and

of some lively verses of a secular kind. Fitzjames would be under their

wing at Brighton, where Elliott recommended a school kept by the Rev. B.

Guest, at 7 Sussex Square. My mother took him down by the Brighton

coach, and he entered the school on November 10, 1836.[50] The school,

says Fitzjames, was in many ways very good; the boys were well taught

and well fed. But it was too decorous; there was no fighting and no

bullying and rather an excess of evangelical theology. The boys used to

be questioned at prayers. 'Gurney, what's the difference between

justification and sanctification?' 'Stephen, prove the Omnipotence of

God.' Many of the hymns sung by the boys remained permanently in my

brother's memory, and he says that he could give the names of all the

masters and most of the boys and a history of all incidents in

chronological order. Guest's eloquence about justification by faith

seems to have stimulated his pupil's childish speculations. He read a

tract in which four young men discuss the means of attaining holiness.

One says, 'Meditate on the goodness of God'; a second, 'on the happiness

of heaven'; a third, 'on the tortures of hell'; and a fourth, 'on the

love of Christ.' The last plan was approved in the tract; but Fitzjames

thought meditation on hell more to the purpose, and set about it

deliberately. He imagined the world transformed into a globe of iron,

white hot, with a place in the middle made to fit him so closely that he

could not even wink. The globe was split like an orange; he was thrust

by an angel into his place, immortal, unconsumable, and capable of

infinite suffering; and then the two halves were closed, and he left in

hideous isolation to suffer eternal torments. I guess from my own

experience that other children have had similar fancies. He adds,

however, a characteristic remark. 'It seemed to me then, as it seems

now, that no stronger motive, no motive anything like so strong, can be

applied to actuate any human creature toward any line of conduct. To

compare the love of God or anything else is to my mind simply childish.'

He refers to Mill's famous passage about going to hell rather than

worship a bad God, and asks what Mill would say after an experience of a

quarter of an hour. Fitzjames, however, did not dwell upon such fancies.

They were merely the childish mode of speculation by concrete imagery.

He became more sociable, played cricket, improved in health, and came

home with the highest of characters as being the best and most promising

boy in the school. He rose steadily, and seems to have been thoroughly

happy for the next five years and a half.

In 1840 my mother observed certain peculiarities in me which she took at

first to be indications of precocious genius. After a time, however, she

consulted an eminent physician, who informed her that they were really

symptoms of a disordered circulation. He added that I was in a fair way

to become feeble in mind and deformed in body, and strongly advised that

I should be sent to school, where my brain would be in less danger of

injudicious stimulation. He declared that even my life was at stake. My

father, much alarmed, took one of his prompt decisions. He feared to

trust so delicate a child away from home, and therefore resolved to take

a house in Brighton for a year or two, from which I might attend my

brother's school. The Kensington house was let, and my mother and sister

settled in Sussex Square, a few doors from Mr. Guest. My father, unable

to leave his work, took a lodging in town and came to Brighton for

Sundays, or occasionally twice a week. In those days the journey was

still by coach. When the railway began running in the course of 1841, I

find my father complaining that it could not be trusted, and had yet

made all other modes of travelling impossible. 'How many men turned of

fifty,' asks my brother, 'would have put themselves to such

inconvenience, discomfort, and separation from their wives for the sake

of screening a delicate lad from some of the troubles of a carefully

managed boarding school?' My brother was not aware of the apparent

gravity of the case when he wrote this. Such a measure would have pushed

parental tenderness to weakness had there been only a question of

comfort; but my father was seriously alarmed, and I can only think of

his conduct with the deepest gratitude.

To Fitzjames the plan brought the advantage that he became his father's

companion in Sunday strolls over the Downs. His father now found, as my

mother's diary remarks, that he could already talk to him as to a man,

and Fitzjames became dimly aware that there were difficulties about Mr.

Guest's theology. He went with my father, too, to hear Mr. Sortaine, a

popular preacher whose favourite topic was the denunciation of popery.

My father explained to the boy that some able men really defended the

doctrine of transubstantiation, and my brother, as he remarks, could not

then suspect that under certain conditions very able men like nonsense,

and are even not averse to 'impudent lying,' in defence of their own

authority. Incidentally, too, my father said that there were such people

as atheists, but that such views should be treated as we should treat

one who insulted the character of our dearest friend. This remark,

attributed to a man who was incapable of insulting anyone, and was a

friend of such freethinkers as Austin and J. S. Mill, must be regarded

as representing the impression made upon an inquisitive child by an

answer adapted to his capacity. The impression was, however, very

strong, and my brother notes that he heard it on a wettish evening on

the cliff near the south end of the old Steine.

Fitzjames had discussed the merits of Mr. Guest's school with great

intelligence and had expressed a wish to be sent to Rugby. He had heard

bad accounts of the state of Eton, and some rumours of Arnold's

influence had reached him. Arnold, someone had told him, could read a

boy's character at a glance. At Easter 1841, my father visited the

Diceys at Claybrook, and thence took his boy to see the great

schoolmaster at Rugby. Fitzjames draws a little diagram to show how

distinctly he remembers the scene. He looked at the dark, grave man and

wondered, 'Is he now reading my character at a glance?' It does not

appear that he was actually entered at Rugby, however, and my father had

presently devised another scheme. The inconveniences of the Brighton

plan had made themselves felt, and it now occurred to my father that he

might take a house in Windsor and send both Fitzjames and me to Eton. We

should thus, he hoped, get the advantages of a public school without

being exposed to some of its hardships and temptations. He would himself

be able to live with his family, although, as things then were, he had

to drive daily to and from the Slough station, besides having the double

journey from Paddington to Downing Street. We accordingly moved to

Windsor in Easter 1842. Fitzjames's last months at school had not been

quite so triumphant as the first, partly, it seems, from a slight

illness, and chiefly for the characteristic reason, according to his

master, that he would occupy himself with 'things too high for him.' He

read solid works (I find mention of Carlyle's 'French Revolution') out

of school hours and walked with an usher to whom he took a fancy,

discoursing upon absorbing topics when he should have been playing

cricket. Fitzjames left Brighton on the day, as he notes, upon which one

Mister was hanged for attempting murder--being almost the last man in

England hanged for anything short of actual murder. He entered Eton on

April 15, 1842, and was placed in the 'Remove,' the highest class

attainable at his age.

II. ETON

The Eton period[51] had marked effects. Fitzjames owed, as he said, a

debt of gratitude to the school, but it was for favours which would have

won gratitude from few recipients. The boys at a public school form, I

fancy, the most rigidly conservative body in existence. They hate every

deviation from the accepted type with the hatred of an ancient orthodox

divine for a heretic. The Eton boys of that day regarded an 'up-town

boy' with settled contempt. His motives or the motives of his parents

for adopting so abnormal a scheme were suspect. He might be the son of a

royal footman or a prosperous tradesman in Windsor, audaciously aspiring

to join the ranks of his superiors, and if so, clearly should be made to

know his place. In any case he was exceptional, and therefore a Pariah,

to associate with whom might be dangerous to one's caste. Mr. Coleridge

tells me that even the school authorities were not free from certain

suspicions. They wisely imagined, it appears, that my father had come

among them as a spy, instigated, no doubt, by some diabolical design of

'reforming' the school and desecrating the shrine of Henry's holy shade.

The poor man, already overpowered by struggling with refractory

colonists from Heligoland to New Zealand, was of malice prepense

stirring up this additional swarm of hornets. I can hardly suppose,

however, that this ingenious theory had much influence. Mr. Coleridge

also says that the masters connived at the systematic bullying of the

town boys. I can believe that they did not systematically repress it. I

must add, however, in justice to my school-fellows, that my personal

recollections do not reveal any particular tyranny. Such bullying as I

had to endure was very occasional, and has left no impression on my

memory. Yet I was far less capable than Fitzjames of defending myself,

and can hardly have forgotten any serious tormenting. The truth is that

the difference between me and my brother was the difference between the

willow and the oak, and that I evaded such assaults as he met with open

defiance.

My brother, as has been indicated, was far more developed in character,

if not in scholarship, than is at all common at his age. His talks with

my father and his own reading had familiarised him with thoughts lying

altogether beyond the horizon of the average boyish mind. He was

thoughtful beyond his years, although not conspicuously forward in the

school studies. He was already inclined to consider games as childish.

He looked down upon his companions and the school life generally as

silly and frivolous. The boys resented his contempt of their ways; and

his want of sociability and rather heavy exterior at the time made him a

natural butt for schoolboy wit. He was, he says, bullied and tormented

till, towards the end of his time, he plucked up spirit to resist. Of

the bullying there can be no doubt; nor (sooner or later) of the

resistance. Mr. Coleridge observes that he was anything but a passive

victim, and turned fiercely upon the ringleaders of his enemies.

'Often,' he adds, 'have I applauded his backhanders as the foremost in

the fray. He was only vanquished by numbers. His bill for hats at

Sanders' must have amounted to a stiff figure, for my visions of

Fitzjames are of a discrowned warrior, returning to Windsor bareheaded,

his hair moist with the steam of recent conflict.' My own childish

recollections of his school life refer mainly to pugilism. In October

1842, as I learn from my mother's diary, he found a big boy bullying me,

and gave the boy such a thrashing as was certain to prevent a repetition

of the crime. I more vividly recollect another occasion, when a strong

lad was approaching me with hostile intent. I can still perceive my

brother in the background; when an application of the toe of his boot

between the tails of my tyrant's coat disperses him instantaneously into

total oblivion. Other scenes dimly rise up, as of a tumult in the

school-yard, where Fitzjames was encountering one of the strongest boys

in the school amidst a delighted crowd, when the appearance of the

masters stopped the proceedings. Fitzjames says that in his sixteenth

year (i.e. 1844-5) he grew nearly five inches, and instead of outgrowing

his strength became a 'big, powerful young man, six feet high,'--and

certainly a very formidable opponent.

Other boys have had similar experiences without receiving the same

impression. 'I was on the whole,' he says, 'very unhappy at Eton, and I

deserved it; for I was shy, timid, and I must own cowardly. I was like a

sensible grown-up woman among a crowd of rough boys.' After speaking of

his early submission to tyranny, he adds: 'I still think with shame and

self-contempt of my boyish weakness, which, however, did not continue

in later years. The process taught me for life the lesson that to be

weak is to be wretched, that the state of nature is a state of war, and

_Vae Victis_ the great law of Nature. Many years afterwards I met R. Lowe

(Lord Sherbrooke) at dinner. He was speaking of Winchester, and said

with much animation that he had learnt one great lesson there, namely,

that a man can count on nothing in this world except what lies between

his hat and his boots. I learnt the same lesson at Eton, but alas! by

conjugating not _pulso_ but _vapulo_.' As I have intimated, I think that

his conscience must have rather exaggerated his sins of submission;

though I also cannot doubt that there was some ground for his

self-humiliation. In any case, he atoned for it fully. I must add that

he learnt another lesson, which, after his fashion, he refrains from

avowing. The 'kicks, cuffs, and hat smashing had no other result,' says

Mr. Coleridge, 'than to steel his mind for ever against oppression,

tyranny, and unfairness of every kind.' How often that lesson is

effectually taught by simple bullying I will not inquire. Undoubtedly

Fitzjames learnt it, though he expressed himself more frequently in

terms of indignation against the oppressor than of sympathy for the

oppressed; but the sentiment was equally strong, and I have no doubt

that it was stimulated by these acts of tyranny.

The teaching at Eton was 'wretched'; the hours irregular and very

unpunctual; the classes were excessively large, and the tutorial

instruction supposed to be given out of school frequently neglected. 'I

do not believe,' says my brother, 'that I was ever once called upon to

construe at my tutor's after I got into the fifth form.' An absurd

importance, too, was already attached to the athletic amusements.

Balston, our tutor, was a good scholar after the fashion of the day and

famous for Latin verse; but he was essentially a commonplace don.

'Stephen major,' he once said to my brother, 'if you do not take more

pains, how can you ever expect to write good longs and shorts? If you do

not write good longs and shorts, how can you ever be a man of taste? If

you are not a man of taste, how can you ever hope to be of use in the

world?'--a _sorites_, says my brother, which must, he thinks, be

somewhere defective.

The school, however, says Fitzjames, had two good points. The boys, in

the first place, were gentlemen by birth and breeding, and did not

forget their home training. The simple explanation of the defects of the

school was, as he remarks, that parents in this class did not care about

learning; they wished their children to be gentlemen, and to be 'bold

and active, and to make friends and to enjoy themselves, and most of

them had their wish.'

The second good point in the school is more remarkable. 'There was,'

says Fitzjames, 'a complete absence of moral and religious enthusiasm.

The tone of Rugby was absolutely absent.' Chapel was simply a kind of

drill. He vividly remembers a sermon delivered by one of the Fellows, a

pompous old gentleman, who solemnly gave out the bidding prayer, and

then began in these words, 'which ring in my ears after the lapse of

more than forty years.' 'The subject of my discourse this morning, my

brethren, will be the duties of the married state.' When Balston was

examined before a Public Schools Commission, he gave what Fitzjames

considers 'a perfectly admirable answer to one question.' He had said

that the Provost and Fellows did all the preaching, and was asked

whether he did not regret that he could not, as headmaster, use this

powerful mode of influencing the boys? 'No,' he said; 'I was always of

opinion that nothing was so important for boys as the preservation of

Christian simplicity.' 'This put into beautiful language,' says my

brother, 'the truth that at Eton there was absolutely no nonsense.' The

masters knew that they had 'nothing particular to teach in the way of

morals or religion, and they did not try to do so.'

The merits thus ascribed to Eton were chiefly due, it seems, to the

neglect of discipline and of teaching. My brother infers that good

teaching at school is of less importance than is generally supposed. I

shall not enter upon that question; but it is necessary to point out

that whatever the merits of an entire absence of moral and religious

instruction, my brother can hardly be taken as an instance. At this time

the intimacy with his father, already close, was rapidly developing. On

Sunday afternoons, in particular, my father used to walk to the little

chapel near Cumberland Lodge, in Windsor Park, and on the way would

delight in the conversations which so profoundly interested his son. The

boy's mind was ripening, and he was beginning to take an interest in

some of the questions of the day. It was the time of the Oxford

movement, and discussions upon that topic were frequent at home.

Frederick Gibbs held for a time a private tutorship at Eton while

reading for a fellowship at Trinity, and brought news of what was

exciting young men at the Universities. A quaint discussion recalled by

my brother indicates one topic which even reached the schoolboy mind. He

was arguing as to confirmation with Herbert Coleridge (1830-1861) whose

promising career as a philologist was cut short by an early death. 'If

you are right,' said Fitzjames, 'a bishop could not confirm with his

gloves on.' 'No more he could,' retorted Coleridge, boldly accepting the

position. Political questions turned up occasionally. O'Connell was

being denounced as 'the most impudent of created liars,' and a belief in

Free Trade was the mark of a dangerous radical. To the Eton time my

brother also refers a passionate contempt for the 'sentimental and

comic' writers then popular. He was disgusted not only by their

sentimentalism but by their vulgarity and their ridicule of all that he

respected.

One influence, at this time, mixed oddly with that exerted by my father.

My eldest brother, Herbert, had suffered from ill health, due, I

believe, to a severe illness in his infancy, which had made it

impossible to give him a regular education. He had grown up to be a

tall, large-limbed man, six feet two-and-a-half inches in height, but

loosely built, and with a deformity of one foot which made him rather

awkward. The delicacy of his constitution had caused much anxiety and

trouble, and he diverged from our family traditions by insisting upon

entering the army. There, as I divine, he was the object of a good deal

of practical joking, and found himself rather out of his element. He

used to tell a story which may have received a little embroidery in

tradition. He was at a ball at Gibraltar, which was attended by a naval

officer. When the ladies had retired this gentleman proposed pistol

shooting. After a candelabrum had been smashed, the sailor insisted upon

taking a shot at a man who was lying on a sofa, and lodged a bullet in

the wall just above his head. Herbert left the army about 1844 and

entered at Gray's Inn. He would probably have taken to literature, and

he wrote a few articles not without promise, but his life was a short

one. He was much at Windsor, and the anxiety which he had caused, as

well as a great sweetness and openness of temper, made him, I guess, the

most tenderly loved of his parents' children. He had, however, wandered

pretty widely outside the limits of the Clapham Sect. He became very

intimate with Fitzjames, and they had long and frank discussions. This

daring youth doubted the story of Noah's flood, and one phrase which

stuck in his brother's mind is significant. 'You,' he said, 'are a good

boy, and I suppose you will go to heaven. If you can enjoy yourself

there when you think of me and my like grilling in hell fire, upon my

soul I don't envy you.' One other little glance from a point of view

other than that of Clapham impressed the lad. He found among his

father's books a copy of 'State Trials,' and there read the trial of

Williams for publishing Paine's 'Age of Reason.' The extracts from Paine

impressed him; though, for a time, he had an impression from his father

that Coleridge and other wise men had made a satisfactory apology for

the Bible; and 'in his inexperience' he thought that Paine's coarseness

implied a weak case. 'There is a great deal of truth,' he says, 'in a

remark made by Paine. I have gone through the Bible as a man might go

through a wood, cutting down the trees. The priests can stick them in

again, but they will not make them grow.' For the present such thoughts

remained without result. Fitzjames was affected, he says, by the

combined influence of his father and brother. He thought that something

was to be said on both sides of the argument. Meanwhile the anxiety

caused to his father by Herbert's unfortunately broken, though in no

sense discreditable, career impressed him with a strong sense of the

evils of all irregularities of conduct. He often remembered Herbert in

connection with one of his odd anniversaries. 'This day eighteen years

ago,' he says (September 16, 1857), 'my brother Herbert and I killed a

snake in Windsor Forest. Poor dear fellow! we should have been great

friends, and please God! we shall be yet.'

Meanwhile Fitzjames had done well, though not brilliantly, at school. He

was eighth in his division, of which he gives the first twelve names

from memory. The first boy was Chenery, afterwards editor of the

'Times,' and the twelfth was Herbert Coleridge. With the exception of

Coleridge, his cousin Arthur, and W. J. Beamont (1828-1868), who at his

death was a Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, he had hardly any

intimates. Chitty, afterwards his colleague on the Bench, was then

famous as an athlete; but with athletics my brother had nothing to do.

His only amusement of that kind was the solitary sport of fishing. He

caught a few roach and dace, and vainly endeavoured to inveigle pike.

His failure was caused, perhaps, by scruples as to the use of live bait,

which led him to look up some elaborate recipes in Walton's 'Compleat

Angler.' Pike, though not very intelligent, have long seen through those

ancient secrets.

One of these friendships led to a characteristic little incident. In the

Christmas holidays of 1844 Fitzjames was invited to stay with the father

of his friend Beamont, who was a solicitor at Warrington. There could

not, as I had afterwards reason to know, have been a quieter or simpler

household. But they had certain gaieties. Indeed, if my memory does not

deceive me, Fitzjames there made his first and only appearance upon the

stage in the character of Tony Lumpkin. My father was alarmed by the

reports of these excesses, and, as he was going to the Diceys, at

Claybrook, wrote to my brother of his intentions. He hinted that

Fitzjames, if he were at liberty, might like a visit to his cousins.

Upon arriving at Rugby station he found Fitzjames upon the platform. The

lad had at once left Warrington, though a party had been specially

invited for his benefit, having interpreted the paternal hint in the

most decisive sense. My father, I must add, was shocked by the results

of his letter, and was not happy till he had put himself right with the

innocent Beamonts.

Under Balston's advice Fitzjames was beginning to read for the

Newcastle. Before much progress had been made in this, however, my

father discovered his son's unhappiness at school. Although the deep

designs of reform with which the masters seem to have credited him were

purely imaginary, my father had no high opinion of Eton, and devised

another scheme. Fitzjames went to the school for the last time about

September 23, 1845, and then tore off his white necktie and stamped upon

it. He went into the ante-chapel and scowled, he says, at the boys

inside, not with a benediction. It was the close of three years to which

he occasionally refers in his letters, and always much in the same

terms. They were, in the main, unhappy, and, as he emphatically

declared, the only unhappy years of his life, but they had taught him a

lesson.

III. KING'S COLLEGE

On October 1, 1845, he entered King's College, London. Lodgings were

taken for him at Highgate Hill, within a few doors of his uncle, Henry

Venn. He walked the four miles to the college, dined at the Colonial

Office at two, and returned by the omnibus. He was now his own master,

the only restriction imposed upon him being that he should every evening

attend family prayers at his uncle's house. The two years he spent at

King's College were, he says, 'most happy.' He felt himself changed from

a boy to a man. The King's College lads, who, indeed called themselves

'men,' were of a lower social rank than the Etonians, and, as Fitzjames

adds, unmistakably inferior in physique. Boys who had the Strand as the

only substitute for the playing-fields were hardly likely to show much

physical prowess. But they had qualities more important to him. They

were industrious, as became the sons of professional and business men.

Their moral tone was remarkably good; he never knew, he says, a more

thoroughly well-behaved set of lads, although he is careful to add that

he does not think that in this respect Eton was bad. His whole education

had been among youths 'singularly little disposed to vice or a riot in

any form.' But the great change for him was that he could now find

intellectual comradeship. There was a debating society, in which he

first learnt to hear his own voice, and indeed became a prominent

orator. He is reported to have won the surname 'Giant Grim.' His most

intimate friend was the present Dr. Kitchin, Dean of Durham. The lads

discussed politics and theology and literature, instead of putting down

to affectation any interest outside of the river and the playing-fields.

Fitzjames not only found himself in a more congenial atmosphere, but

could hold his own better among youths whose standard of scholarship was

less exalted than that of the crack Latin versemakers at Eton, although

the average level was perhaps higher. In 1846 he won a scholarship, and

at the summer examination was second in classics. In 1847 he was only

just defeated for a scholarship by an elder boy, and was first, both in

classics and English literature, in the examinations, besides winning a

prize essay.

Here, as elsewhere, he was much interested by the theological tone of

his little circle, which was oddly heterogeneous. There was, in the

first place, his uncle, Henry Venn, to whom he naturally looked up as

the exponent of the family orthodoxy. Long afterwards, upon Venn's

death, he wrote, 'Henry Venn was the most triumphant man I ever knew.'

'I never,' he adds, 'knew a sturdier man.' Such qualities naturally

commanded his respect, though he probably was not an unhesitating

disciple. At King's College, meanwhile, which prided itself upon its

Anglicanism, he came under a very different set of teachers. The

principal, Dr. Jelf, represented the high and dry variety of

Anglicanism. I can remember how, a little later, I used to listen with

wonder to his expositions of the Thirty-nine Articles. What a marvellous

piece of good fortune it was, I used dimly to consider, that the Church

of England had always hit off precisely the right solution in so many

and such tangled controversies! But King's College had a professor of a

very different order in F. D. Maurice. His personal charm was

remarkable, and if Fitzjames did not become exactly a disciple he was

fully sensible of Maurice's kindness of nature and loftiness of purpose.

He held, I imagine, in a vague kind of way, that here might perhaps be

the prophet who was to guide him across the deserts of infidelity into

the promised land where philosophy and religion will be finally

reconciled. Of this, however, I shall have more to say hereafter.

I must now briefly mention the changes which took place at this time in

our family. In 1846 my brother Herbert made a tour to Constantinople,

and on his return home was seized by a fever and died at Dresden on

October 22. My father and mother had started upon the first news of the

illness, but arrived too late to see their son alive. Fitzjames in the

interval came to Windsor, and, as my mother records, was like a father

to the younger children. The journey to Dresden, with its terrible

suspense and melancholy end, was a severe blow to my father. From that

time, as it seems to me, he was a changed man. He had already begun to

think of retiring from his post, and given notice that he must be

considered as only holding it during the convenience of his

superiors.[52] He gave up the house at Windsor, having, indeed, kept it

on chiefly because Herbert was fond of the place. We settled for a time

at Wimbledon. There my brother joined us in the early part of 1847. A

very severe illness in the autumn of 1847 finally induced my father to

resign his post. In recognition of his services he was made a privy

councillor and K.C.B. His retirement was at first provisional, and, on

recovering, he was anxious to be still employed in some capacity. The

Government of the day considered the pension to which he was entitled an

inadequate reward for his services. There was some talk of creating the

new office of Assessor to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council,

to which he was to be appointed. This proved to be impracticable, but

his claim was partly recognised in his appointment to succeed William

Smyth (died June 26, 1849) as Regius Professor of Modern History at

Cambridge.[53] I may as well mention here the later events of his life,

as they will not come into any precise connection with my brother's

history. The intimacy between the two strengthened as my brother

developed into manhood, and they were, as will be seen, in continual

intercourse. But after leaving King's College my brother followed his

own lines, though for a time an inmate of our household.

The Kensington house having been let, we lived in various suburban

places, and, for a time, at Cambridge. My father's professorship

occupied most of his energies in later years. He delivered his first

course in the May term of 1850. Another very serious illness,

threatening brain fever, interrupted him for a time, and he went abroad

in the autumn of 1850. He recovered, however, beyond expectation, and

was able to complete his lectures in the winter, and deliver a second

course in the summer of 1851. These lectures were published in 1852 as

'Lectures on the History of France.' They show, I think, the old

ability, but show also some failure of the old vivacity. My father did

not possess the profound antiquarian knowledge which is rightly demanded

in a professor of the present day; and, indeed, I think it is not a

little remarkable that, in the midst of his absorbing work, he had

acquired so much historical reading as they display. But, if I am not

mistaken, the lectures have this peculiar merit--that they are obviously

written by a man who had had vast practical experience of actual

administrative work. They show, therefore, an unusual appreciation of

the constitutional side of French history; and he anticipated some of

the results set forth with, of course, far greater knowledge of the

subject, in Tocqueville's 'Ancien Regime.' Tocqueville himself wrote

very cordially to my father upon the subject; and the lectures have been

valued by very good judges. Nothing, however, could be more depressing

than the position of a professor at Cambridge at that time. The first

courses delivered by my father were attended by a considerable number of

persons capable of feeling literary curiosity--a class which was then

less abundant than it would now be at Cambridge. But he very soon found

that his real duty was to speak to young gentlemen who had been driven

into his lecture-room by well-meant regulations; who were only anxious

to secure certificates for the 'poll' degree, and whose one aim was to

secure them on the cheapest possible terms. To candidates for honours,

the history school was at best a luxury for which they could rarely

spare time, and my father had to choose between speaking over the heads

of his audience and giving milk and water to babes. The society of the

Cambridge dons in those days was not much to his taste, and he soon gave

up residence there.

About the beginning of 1853 he took a house in Westbourne Terrace, which

became his headquarters. In 1855 he accepted a professorship at

Haileybury, which was then doomed to extinction, only to hold it during

the last three years of the existence of the college. These lectures

sufficiently occupied his strength, and he performed them to the best of

his ability. The lectures upon French history were, however, the last

performance which represented anything like his full powers.

IV. CAMBRIDGE

In October 1847 my brother went into residence at Trinity College,

Cambridge. 'My Cambridge career,' he says, 'was not to me so memorable

or important a period of life as it appears to some people.' He seems to

have extended the qualification to all his early years. 'Few men,' he

says, 'have worked harder than I have for the last thirty-five years,

but I was a very lazy, unsystematic lad up to the age of twenty-two.' He

would sometimes speak of himself as 'one of a slowly ripening race,' and

set little value upon the intellectual acquirements attained during the

immature period. Yet I have sufficiently shown that in some respects he

was even exceptionally developed. From his childhood he had shared the

thoughts of his elders; he had ceased to be a boy when he had left Eton

at sixteen; and he came up to Cambridge far more of a grown man than

nine in ten of his contemporaries. So far, indeed, as his character was

concerned, he had scarcely ever been a child: at Cambridge, as at Eton,

he regarded many of the ambitions of his contemporaries as puerile.

Even the most brilliant undergraduates are sometimes tempted to set an

excessive value upon academical distinction. A senior wranglership

appears to them to be the culminating point of human glory, instead of

the first term in the real battle of life. Fitzjames, far from sharing

this delusion, regarded it, perhaps, with rather too much contempt. His

thoughts were already upon his future career, and he cared for

University distinctions only as they might provide him with a good start

in the subsequent competition. But this marked maturity of character did

not imply the possession of corresponding intellectual gifts, or, as I

should rather say, of such gifts as led to success in the Senate House.

Fitzjames had done respectably at Eton, and had been among the first

lads at King's College. He probably came up to Cambridge with confidence

that he would make a mark in examinations. But his mind, however

powerful, was far from flexible. He had not the intellectual docility

which often enables a clever youth to surpass rivals of much greater

originality--as originality not unfrequently tempts a man outside the

strait and narrow path which leads to the maximum of marks. 'I have

always found myself,' says Fitzjames, in reference to his academical

career, 'one of the most unteachable of human beings. I cannot, to this

day, take in anything at second hand. I have in all cases to learn

whatever I want to learn in a way of my own. It has been so with law,

with languages, with Indian administration, with the machinery I have

had to study in patent cases, with English composition--in a word, with

everything whatever.' For other reasons, however, he was at a

disadvantage. He not only had not yet developed, but he never at any

time possessed, the intellectual qualities most valued at Cambridge.

The Cambridge of those days had merits, now more likely to be overlooked

than overvalued. The course was fitted to encourage strenuous masculine

industry, love of fair play, and contempt for mere showy displays of

cleverness. But it must be granted that it was strangely narrow. The

University was not to be despised which could turn out for successive

senior wranglers from 1840 to 1843 such men as Leslie Ellis, Sir George

Stokes, Professor Cayley, and Adams, the discoverer of Neptune, while

the present Lord Kelvin was second wrangler and first Smith's prizeman

in 1845. During the same period the great Latin scholar, Munro (1842),

and H. S. Maine (1844), were among the lights of the Classical Tripos.

But, outside of the two Triposes, there was no career for a man of any

ability. To parody a famous phrase of Hume's, Cambridge virtually said

to its pupils, 'Is this a treatise upon geometry or algebra? No. Is it,

then, a treatise upon Greek or Latin grammar, or on the grammatical

construction of classical authors? No. Then commit it to the flames, for

it contains nothing worth your study.' Now, in both these arenas

Fitzjames was comparatively feeble. He read classical books, not only at

Cambridge but in later life, when he was pleased to find his scholarship

equal to the task of translating. But he read them for their contents,

not from any interest in the forms of language. He was without that

subtlety and accuracy of mind which makes the born scholar. He was

capable of blunders surprising in a man of his general ability; and

every blunder takes away marks. He was still less of a mathematician. 'I

disliked,' as he says himself, 'and foolishly despised the studies of

the place, and did not care about accurate classical scholarship, in

which I was utterly wrong. I was clumsy at calculation, though I think I

have, and always have had, a good head for mathematical principles; and

I utterly loathed examinations, which seem to me to make learning all

but impossible.'

A letter from his friend, the Rev. H. W. Watson, second wrangler in

1850, who was a year his senior, has given me a very interesting account

of impressions made at this time. The two had been together at King's

College. Fitzjames's appearance at Trinity was, writes Mr. Watson, 'an

epoch in my college life. A close intimacy sprung up between us, and

made residence at Cambridge a totally different thing from what it had

been in my first year. Your brother's wide culture, his singular force

of character, his powerful but, at that time, rather unwieldy intellect,

his Johnsonian brusqueness of speech and manner, mingled with a

corresponding Johnsonian warmth of sympathy with and loyalty to friends

in trouble or anxiety, his sturdiness in the assertion of his opinions,

and the maintenance of his principles, disdaining the smallest

concession for popularity's sake ... all these traits combined in the

formation of an individuality which no one could know intimately and

fail to be convinced that only time was wanting for the achievement of

no ordinary distinction.' 'Yet,' says Mr. Watson, 'he was distanced by

men immeasurably his inferiors.' Nor can this, as Mr. Watson rightly

adds, be regarded as a condemnation of the system rather than of my

brother. 'I attempted to prepare him in mathematics, and the well-known

Dr. Scott, afterwards headmaster of Westminster, was his private tutor

in classics; and we agreed in marvelling at and deploring the

hopelessness of our tasks. For your brother's mind, acute and able as it

was in dealing with matters of concrete human interest, seemed to lose

grasp of things viewed purely in the abstract, and positively refused to

work upon questions of grammatical rules and algebraical formulae.' When

they were afterwards fellow-students for a short time in law, Mr. Watson

remarked in Fitzjames a similar impatience of legal technicalities. He

thinks that the less formal system at Oxford might have suited my

brother better. At that time, however, Cambridge was only beginning to

stir in its slumbers. The election of the Prince Consort to the

Chancellorship in 1847 (my brother's first year of residence) had roused

certain grumblings as to the probable 'Germanising' of our ancient

system; and a beginning was made, under Whewell's influence, by the

institution of the 'Moral Sciences' and 'Natural Sciences' Triposes in

1851. The theory was, apparently, that, if you ask questions often

enough, people will learn in time to answer them. But for the present

they were regarded as mere 'fancy' examinations. No rewards were

attainable by success; and the ambitious undergraduates kept to the

ancient paths.

I may as well dispose here of one other topic which seems appropriate to

University days. Fitzjames cared nothing for the athletic sports which

were so effectually popularised soon afterwards in the time of 'Tom

Brown's School Days.' Athletes, indeed, cast longing eyes at his

stalwart figure. One eminent oarsman persuaded my brother to take a seat

in a pair-oared boat, and found that he could hardly hold his own

against the strength of the neophyte. He tried to entice so promising a

recruit by offers of a place in the 'Third Trinity' crew and ultimate

hopes of a 'University Blue.' Fitzjames scorned the dazzling offer. I

remember how Ritson, the landlord at Wastdale Head, who had wrestled

with Christopher North, lamented in after years that Fitzjames had never

entered the ring. He spoke in the spirit of the prize-fighter who said

to Whewell, 'What a man was lost when they made you a parson!' His only

taste of the kind was his hereditary love of walking. His mother

incidentally observes in January 1846, that he has accomplished a walk

of thirty-three miles; and in later days that was a frequent allowance.

Though not a fast walker, he had immense endurance. He made several

Alpine tours, and once (in 1860) he accompanied me in an ascent of the

Jungfrau with a couple of guides. He was fresh from London; we had

passed a night in a comfortless cave; the day was hot, and his weight

made a plod through deep snow necessarily fatiguing. We reached the

summit with considerable difficulty. On the descent he slipped above a

certain famous bergschrund; the fall of so ponderous a body jerked me

out of the icy steps, and our combined weight dragged down the guides.

Happily the bergschrund was choked with snow, and we escaped with an

involuntary slide. As we plodded slowly homewards, we expected that his

exhaustion would cause a difficulty in reaching the inn. But by the time

we got there he was, I believe, the freshest of the party. I remember

another characteristic incident of the walk. He began in the most

toilsome part of the climb to expound to me a project for an article in

the 'Saturday Review.' I consigned that journal to a fate which I

believe it has hitherto escaped. But his walks were always enjoyed as

opportunities for reflection. Occasionally he took a gun or a rod, and I

am told was not a bad shot. He was, however, rather inclined to complain

of the appearance of a grouse as interrupting his thoughts. In sport of

the gambling variety he never took the slightest interest; and when he

became a judge, he shocked a Liverpool audience by asking in all

simplicity, 'What is the "Grand National"?' That, I understand, is like

asking a lawyer, What is a _Habeas Corpus_? He was never seized with the

athletic or sporting mania, much as he enjoyed a long pound through

pleasant scenery. In this as in some other things he came to think that

his early contempt for what appeared to be childish amusements had been

pushed rather to excess.

I return to Cambridge. My brother knew slightly some of the leading men

of the place. The omniscient Whewell, who concealed a warm heart and

genuine magnanimity under rather rough and overbearing manners, had

welcomed my father very cordially to Cambridge and condescended to be

polite to his son. But the gulf which divided him from an undergraduate

was too wide to allow the transmission of real personal influence.

Thompson, Whewell's successor in the mastership, was my brother's tutor.

He is now chiefly remembered for certain shrewd epigrams; but then

enjoyed a great reputation for his lectures upon Plato. My brother

attended them; but from want of natural Platonism or for other reasons

failed to profit by them, and thought the study was sheer waste of time.

Another great Cambridge man of those days, the poetical mathematician,

Leslie Ellis, was kind to my brother, who had an introduction to him

probably from Spedding. Ellis was already suffering from the illness

which confined him to his room at Trumpington, and prevented him from

ever giving full proofs of intellectual powers, rated by all who knew

him as astonishing. I may quote what Fitzjames says of one other

contemporary, the senior classic of his own year: 'Lightfoot's

reputation for accuracy and industry was unrivalled; but it was not

generally known what a depth of humour he had or what general force of

character.' Lightfoot's promotion to the Bishopric of Durham removed

him, as my brother thought, from his proper position as a teacher; and

he suffered 'under the general decay of all that belongs to theology.'

I do not find, however, that Lightfoot had any marked influence upon

Fitzjames.

The best thing that the ablest man learns at college, as somebody has

said, is that there are abler men than himself. My brother became

intimate with several very able men of his own age, and formed

friendships which lasted for life. He met them especially in two

societies, which influenced him as they have influenced many men

destined to achieve eminence. The first was the 'Union.' There his

oratory became famous. The 'Gruffian' and 'Giant Grim' was now known as

the 'British Lion'; and became, says Mr. Watson, 'a terror to the

shallow and wordy, and a merciless exposer of platitudes and shams.' Mr.

Watson describes a famous scene in the October term of 1849 which may

sufficiently illustrate his position. 'There was at that time at Trinity

a cleverish, excitable, worthy fellow whose mind was a marvellous

mixture of inconsistent opinions which he expounded with a kind of

oratory as grotesque as his views.' Tradition supplies me with one of

his flowers of speech. He alluded to the clergy as 'priests sitting upon

their golden middens and crunching the bones of the people.' These

oddities gave my brother irresistible opportunities for making fun of

his opponent. 'One night his victim's powers of endurance gave way. The

scene resembled the celebrated outburst of Canning when goaded by the

invectives of Brougham. The man darted across the room with the obvious

intention of making a physical onslaught, and then, under what impulse

and with what purpose I do not know, the whole meeting suddenly flashed

into a crowd of excited, wrangling boys. They leapt upon the seats,

climbed upon the benches, vociferated and gesticulated against each

other, heedless of the fines and threats of the bewildered President,

and altogether reproduced a scene of the French revolutionary

Assembly.' Mr. Llewelyn Davies was the unfortunate President on this

occasion, and mentions that my brother commemorated the scene in a

'heroic ballad' which has disappeared.

From the minutes of the Society[54] 'I learn further details of this

historic scene. The debate (November 27, 1849) arose upon a motion in

favour of Cobden. His panegyrist made 'such violent interruptions' that

a motion was made for his expulsion, but carried by an insufficient

majority. Another orator then 'became unruly' and was expelled by a

superabundant majority, while the original mover was fined 2_l._ The

motion was then unanimously negatived, 'the opener not being present to

reply.' From the records of other debates I learn that Fitzjames was in

favour of the existing Church Establishment as against advocates of

change, whether high churchmen or liberationists. He also opposed

motions for extension of the suffrage, without regard to education or

property, moved by Sir W. Harcourt. He agrees, however, with Harcourt in

condemning the game laws. His most characteristic utterance was when the

admirer of Cobden had moved that 'to all human appearance we are

warranted in tracing for our own country through the dim perspective of

coming time an exalted and glorious destiny.' Fitzjames moved as an

amendment 'that the House, while it acknowledges the many dangers to

which the country is exposed, trusts that through the help of God we may

survive them.' This amendment was carried by 60 to 0.

The other society was one which has included a very remarkable number of

eminent men. In my undergraduate days we used to speak with bated breath

of the 'Apostles'--the accepted nickname for what was officially called the

Cambridge Conversazione Society. It was founded about 1820, and had

included such men as Tennyson (who, as my brother reports, had to leave

the Society because he was too lazy to write an essay), the two younger

Hallams, Maurice, Sterling, Charles Buller, Arthur Helps, James

Spedding, Monckton Milnes, Tom Taylor, Charles Merivale, Canon

Blakesley, and others whom I shall have to mention. The existence of a

society intended to cultivate the freest discussion of all the great

topics excited some suspicion when, about 1834, there was a talk of

abolishing tests. It was then warmly defended by Thirlwall, the

historian, who said that many of its members had become ornaments of the

Church.[55]

But the very existence of this body was scarcely known to the University

at large; and its members held reticence to be a point of honour. You

might be aware that your most intimate friend belonged to it: you had

dimly inferred the fact from his familiarity with certain celebrities,

and from discovering that upon Saturday evenings he was always

mysteriously engaged. But he never mentioned his dignity; any more than

at the same period a Warrington would confess that he was a contributor

to the leading journals of the day. The members were on the look-out for

any indications of intellectual originality, academical or otherwise,

and specially contemptuous of humbug, cant, and the qualities of the

'windbag' in general. To be elected, therefore, was virtually to receive

a certificate from some of your cleverest contemporaries that they

regarded you as likely to be in future an eminent man. The judgment so

passed was perhaps as significant as that implied by University honours,

and a very large proportion of the apostles have justified the

anticipations of their fellows.

My brother owed his election at an unusually early period of his career

to one of the most important friendships of his life. In the summer

vacation of 1845 F. W. Gibbs was staying at Filey, reading for the

Trinity Fellowship, which he obtained in the following October.

Fitzjames joined him, and there met Henry Sumner Maine, who had recently

(1844) taken his degree at Cambridge, when he was not only 'senior

classic' but a senior classic of exceptional brilliancy. Both Maine and

Gibbs were apostles and, of course, friends. My brother's first

achievement was to come near blowing out his new friend's brains by the

accidental discharge of a gun. Maine happily escaped, and must have

taken a liking to the lad. In 1847 Maine was appointed to the Regius

Professorship of Civil Law in Cambridge. The study which he was to teach

had fallen into utter decay. Maine himself cannot at that time have had

any profound knowledge of the Civil Law--if, indeed, he ever acquired

such knowledge. But his genius enabled him to revive the study in

England--although no genius could galvanise the corpse of legal studies

at the Cambridge of those days into activity. Maine, as Fitzjames says,

'made in the most beautiful manner applications of history and

philosophy to Roman law, and transfigured one of the driest of subjects

into all sorts of beautiful things without knowing or caring much about

details.' He was also able to 'sniff at Bentham' for his ignorance in

this direction. 'I rebelled against Maine for many years,' says

Fitzjames, 'till at last I came to recognise, not only his wonderful

gifts, but the fact that at bottom he and I agreed fundamentally, though

it cost us both a good deal of trouble to find it out.' I quote this

because it bears upon my brother's later development of opinion. For

the present, the personal remark is more relevant. Maine, says

Fitzjames, 'was perfectly charming to me at college, as he is now. He

was most kind, friendly, and unassuming; and, though I was a freshman

and he a young don,[56] and he was twenty-six when I was twenty--one of

the greatest differences of age and rank which can exist between two

people having so much in common--we were always really and effectually

equal. We have been the closest of friends all through life.' I think,

indeed, that Maine's influence upon my brother was only second to that

of my father.

Maine brought Fitzjames into the apostles in his first term.[57] Maine,

says my brother, 'was a specially shining apostle, and in all

discussions not only took by far the first and best part, but did it so

well and unpretentiously, and in a strain so much above what the rest of

us could reach, that it was a great piece of education to hear him.'

Other members of the little society, which generally included only five

or six--the name 'apostles' referring to the limit of possible

numbers--were E. H. Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), who left in March

1848, Vernon Harcourt (now Sir William), H. W. Watson, Julian Fane,[58]

and the present Canon Holland. Old members--Monckton Milnes, James

Spedding, Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam, and W. H. Thompson (the

tutor)--occasionally attended meetings. The late Professor Hort and the

great physicist, Clerk Maxwell, joined about the time of my brother's

departure. He records one statement of Maxwell's which has, I suspect,

been modified in transmission. The old logicians, said Maxwell,

recognised four forms of syllogism. Hamilton had raised the number to 7,

but he had himself discovered 135. This, however, mattered little, as

the great majority could not be expressed in human language, and even if

expressed were not susceptible of any meaning.

This specimen would give a very inaccurate notion of the general line of

discussion. By the kindness of Professor Sidgwick, I am enabled to give

some specimens of the themes supported by my brother, which may be of

interest, not merely in regard to him, but as showing what topics

occupied the minds of intelligent youths at the time. The young

gentlemen met every Saturday night in term time and read essays. They

discussed all manner of topics. Sometimes they descended to mere

commonplaces--Is a little knowledge a dangerous thing? Is it possible

_ridentem dicere verum_? (which Fitzjames is solitary in denying)--but

more frequently they expatiate upon the literary, poetical, ethical, and

philosophical problems which can be answered so conclusively in our

undergraduate days. Fitzjames self-denyingly approves of the position

assigned to mathematics at Cambridge. In literary matters I notice that

he does not think the poetry of Byron of a 'high order'; that he reads

some essays of Shelley, which are unanimously voted 'unsatisfactory';

that he denies that Tennyson's 'Princess' shows higher powers than the

early poems (a rather ambiguous phrase); that he considers Adam, not

Satan, to be the hero of 'Paradise Lost'; and, more characteristically,

that he regards the novels of the present day as 'degenerate,' and, on

his last appearance, maintains the superiority of Miss Austen's 'Emma'

to Miss Bronte's 'Jane Eyre.' 'Jane Eyre' had then, I remember, some

especially passionate admirers at Cambridge. His philosophical theories

are not very clear. He thinks, like some other people, that Locke's

chapter on 'Substance' is 'unsatisfactory'; and agrees with some

'strictures' on the early chapters of Mill's 'Political Economy.' He

writes an essay to explode the poor old social contract. He holds that

the study of metaphysics is desirable, but adds the note, 'not including

ontological inquiries under the head of metaphysics.' He denies,

however, the proposition that 'all general truths are founded on

experience.' He thinks that a meaning can be attached to the term

'freewill'; but considers it impossible 'to frame a satisfactory

hypothesis as to the origin of evil.' Even the intellect of the apostles

had its limits. His ethical doctrines seem to have inclined to

utilitarianism. The whole society (four members present) agrees that the

system of expediency, 'so far from being a derogation from the moral

dignity of man, is the only method consistent with the conditions of his

action.' He is neutral upon the question whether 'self-love is the

immediate motive of all our actions,' and considers that question

unmeaning, 'as not believing it possible that a man should be at once

subject and object.' He writes an essay to show that there is no

foundation 'for a philosophy of history in the analogy between the

progressive improvement of mankind and that of which individuals are

capable,' and he holds (in opposition to Maine) that Carlyle is a

'philosophic historian.' The only direct reference to contemporary

politics is characteristic. Fane had argued that 'some elements of

socialism' should be 'employed in that reconstruction of society which

the spirit of the age demands.' Maine agrees, but Fitzjames denies that

any reconstruction of society is needed.

Theological discussions abound. Fitzjames thinks that there are grounds

independent of revelation for believing in the goodness and unity of an

intelligent First Cause. He reads an essay to prove that we can form a

notion of inspiration which does not involve dictation. He thinks it

'more agreeable to right reason' to explain the Biblical account of the

creation by literal interpretation than 'on scientific principles,' but

adds the rider, 'so far as it can be reconciled with geological facts.'

He denies that the Pentateuch shows 'traces of Egyptian origin.' He

thinks that Paley's views of the 'essential doctrines of Christianity'

are insufficient. He approves the 'strict observance of the Sabbath in

England,' but notes that he does not wish to 'confound the Christian

Sunday with the Jewish Sabbath.'

The instinct which leads a young man to provide himself with a good set

of dogmatic first principles is very natural; and the free and full

discussion of them with his fellows, however crude their opinions may

be, is among the very best means of education. I need only remark that

the apostles appear to have refrained from discussion of immediate

politics, and to have been little concerned in some questions which were

agitating the sister University. They have nothing to say about

Apostolical Succession and the like; nor are there any symptoms of

interest in German philosophy, which Hamilton and Mansel were beginning

to introduce. At Cambridge the young gentlemen are content with Locke

and Mill; and at most know something of Coleridge and Maurice. Mr.

Watson compares these meetings to those at Newman's rooms in Oxford as

described by Mark Pattison. There a luckless advocate of ill-judged

theories might be crushed for the evening by the polite sentence, _Very

likely_. At the Cambridge meetings, the trial to the nerves, as Mr.

Watson thinks, was even more severe. There was not the spell of common

reverence for a great man, in whose presence a modest reticence was

excusable. You were expected to speak out, and failure was the more

appalling. The contests between Stephen and Harcourt were especially

famous. Though, says Mr. Watson, your brother was 'not a match in

adroitness and chaff' for his great 'rival,' he showed himself at his

best in these struggles. 'The encounters were veritable battles of the

gods, and I recall them after forty years with the most vivid

recollection of the pleasure they caused.' When Sir William Harcourt

entered Parliament, my brother remarked to Mr. Llewelyn Davies, 'It does

not seem to be in the natural order of things that Harcourt should be in

the House and I not there to criticise him.'

Fitzjames's position in regard both to theology and politics requires a

little further notice. At this time my brother was not only a stern

moralist, but a 'zealous and reverential witness on behalf of dogma, and

that in the straitest school of the Evangelicals.' Mr. Watson mentions

the death at college of a fellow-student during the last term of my

brother's residence. In his last hours the poor fellow confided to his

family his gratitude to Fitzjames for having led him to think seriously

on religious matters. I find a very minute account of this written by my

brother at the time to a common friend. He expresses very strong

feeling, and had been most deeply moved by his first experience of a

deathbed; but he makes no explicit reflections. Though decidedly of the

evangelical persuasion at this period, and delighting in controversy

upon all subjects, great and small, his intense aversion to

sentimentalism was not only as marked as it ever became, but even led to

a kind of affectation of prosaic matter of fact stoicism, a rejection

of every concession to sentiment, which he afterwards regarded as

excessive.

The impression made upon him by contemporary politics was remarkable.

The events of 1848 stirred all young men in one way or the other; and

although the apostles were discussing the abstract problems of freewill

and utilitarianism, they were no doubt keenly interested in concrete

history. No one was more moved than Fitzjames. He speaks of the

optimistic views which were popular with the Liberals after 1832,

expounded by Cobden and Bright and supposed to be sanctioned by the

Exhibition of 1851. It was the favourite cant that Captain Pen 'had got

the best of Captain Sword, and that henceforth the kindly earth would

slumber, lapt in universal law. I cannot say how I personally loathed

this way of thinking, and how radically false, hollow and disgusting it

seemed to me then, and seems to me now.' The crash of 1848 came like a

thunderbolt, and 'history seemed to have come to life again with all its

wild elemental forces.' For the first time he was aware of actual war

within a small distance, and the settlement of great questions by sheer

force. 'How well I remember my own feelings, which were, I think, the

feelings of the great majority of my age and class, and which have ever

since remained in me as strong and as unmixed as they were in 1848. I

feel them now (1887) as keenly as ever, though the world has changed and

thinks and feels, as it seems, quite differently. They were feelings of

fierce, unqualified hatred for the revolution and revolutionists;

feelings of the most bitter contempt and indignation against those who

feared them, truckled to them, or failed to fight them whensoever they

could and as long as they could: feelings of zeal against all popular

aspirations and in favour of all established institutions whatever their

various defects or harshnesses (which, however, I wished to alter

slowly and moderately): in a word, the feelings of a scandalised

policeman towards a mob breaking windows in the cause of humanity. I

should have liked first to fire grapeshot down every street in Paris,

till the place ran with blood, and next to try Louis Philippe and those

who advised him not to fight by court martial, and to have hanged them

all as traitors and cowards. The only event in 1848 which gave me real

pleasure was the days of June, when Cavaignac did what, if he had been a

man or not got into a fright about his soul, or if he had had a real

sense of duty instead of a wretched consciousness of weakness and a

false position, Louis Philippe would have done months before.' He

cannot, he admits, write with calmness to this day of the king's

cowardice; and he never passed the Tuileries in later life without

feeling the sentiment about Louis XVI. and his 'heritage splendid'

expressed by Thackeray's drummer, 'Ah, shame on him, craven and coward,

that had not the heart to defend it!'

'I have often wondered,' adds Fitzjames, 'at my own vehement feelings on

these subjects, and I am not altogether prepared to say that they are

not more or less foolish. I have never seen war. I have never heard a

shot fired in anger, and I have never had my courage put to any proof

worth speaking of. Have I any right to talk of streets running with

blood? Is it not more likely that, at a pinch, I might myself run in

quite a different direction? It is one of the questions which will

probably remain unanswered for ever, whether I am a coward or not. But

that has nothing really to do with the question. If I am a coward, I am

contemptible: but Louis Philippe was a coward and contemptible whether I

am a coward or not; and my feelings on the whole of this subject are, at

all events, perfectly sincere, and are the very deepest and most

genuine feelings I have.' Fitzjames's only personal experience of

revolutionary proceedings was on the famous 10th of April, when he was

in London, but saw only special constables. The events of the day

confirmed him in the doctrine that every disorganised mob is more likely

to behave in the spirit of the lowest and most contemptible units than

in the spirit of what is highest in them.

I can only add one little anecdote of those days. A friend of my

brother's rushed into his rooms obviously to announce some very exciting

piece of news. Is the mob triumphant in Paris? 'I don't know,' was the

reply, 'but a point has been decided in the Gorham case.' Good

evangelical as Fitzjames then was, he felt that there were more

important controversies going on than squabbles over baptismal

regeneration. A curious set of letters written in his first vacation to

his friend Dr. Kitchin show, however, that he then took an eager

interest in this doctrine. He discusses it at great length in the

evangelical sense, with abundant quotations of texts.

While interested in these matters, winning fame at the Union and

enjoying the good opinion of the apostles, Fitzjames was failing in a

purely academical sense. He tried twice for a scholarship at Trinity,

and both times unsuccessfully, though he was not very far from success.

The failure excluded him, as things then were, from the possibility of a

fellowship, and a degree became valueless for its main purpose. He

resolved, therefore, to go abroad with my father, who had to travel in

search of health. He passed the winter of 1850-1 in Paris, where he

learnt French, and attended sittings of the Legislative Assembly, and

was especially interested by proceedings in the French law-courts. He

kept the May term of 1851 at Cambridge, and went out in the 'Poll.'

Judging from the performances of his rivals, he would probably have

been in the lower half of the first class in the Classical Tripos.

Although his last months at Cambridge were not cheering, he retained a

feeling for the place very unlike his feeling towards Eton. He had now

at least found himself firmly on his own legs, measured his strength

against other competitors, and made lasting friendships with some of the

strongest. It had been, he says, 'my greatest ambition to get a

fellowship at Trinity, but I got it at last, however, for I was elected

an honorary Fellow in the autumn of 1885. I have had my share of

compliments, but I never received one which gave me half so much

pleasure.' He visited Cambridge in later years and was my guest, and

long afterwards the guest of his friend Maine, at certain Christmas

festivities in Trinity Hall. He speaks in the warmest terms of his

appreciation of the place, 'old and dignified, yet fresh and vigorous.'

Nearly his last visit was in the autumn of 1885, when he gave a dinner

to the apostles, of whom his son James was then a member.

Fitzjames's friends were naturally surprised at his throwing up the

game. Most of them set, as I have intimated, a higher value upon

academical honours, considered by themselves, than he ever admitted to

be just. Possibly they exaggerated a little the disgust which was

implied by his absolute abandonment of the course. And yet, I find the

impression among those who saw most of him at the time, that the

disappointment was felt with great keenness. The explanation is given, I

think, in some remarks made by my father to Mr Watson. My father held

that the University system of distributing honours was very faulty. Men,

he said, wanted all the confidence they could acquire in their own

powers for the struggle of life. Whatever braced and stimulated

self-reliance was good. The honour system encouraged the few who

succeeded and inflicted upon the rest a 'demoralising sense of

failure.' I have no doubt that my father was, in fact, generalising from

the case of Fitzjames. What really stung the young man was a more or

less dim foreboding of the difficulties which were to meet him in the

world at large. He was not one of the men fitted for easy success. The

successful man is, I take it, the man with an eye for the line of least

resistance. He has an instinct, that is, for the applying his strength

in the direction in which it will tell most. And he has the faculty of

so falling in with other men's modes of thinking and feeling that they

may spontaneously, if unconsciously, form a band of supporters.

Obstacles become stepping-stones to such men. It was Fitzjames's fate

through life to take the bull by the horns; to hew a path through

jungles and up steep places along the steepest and most entangled

routes; and to shoulder his way by main strength and weight through a

crowd, instead of contriving to combine external pressures into an

agency for propulsion. At this time, the contrast between his acceptance

with the ablest of his contemporaries in private and his inability to

obtain the public stamp of merit perplexed and troubled him. Maine and

Thompson could recognise his abilities. Why could not the examiners?

Might not his ambition have to struggle with similar obstacles at the

bar or in the pulpit?

I quote from a letter written by my father during Fitzjames's academical

career to show what was the relation at this time between the two men.

My father dictates to my mother a letter to Fitzjames, dated January 19,

1849.[59] 'You well know,' he says, 'that I have long since surmounted

that paternal ambition which might have led me to thirst for your

eminence as a scholar.

It has not pleased God to give you that kind of bodily constitution and

mental temperament which is essential to such success.' He proceeds to

say that, although success in examinations is 'not essential to the

great ends of Fitzjames's existence, it is yet very desirable that he

should become a good scholar from higher motives--such,' he adds, 'as

are expounded in Bacon's "De Augmentis."' He solemnly recommends regular

prayer for guidance in studies for which the lower motives may be

insufficient. It then occurs to my mother that the advice may be a

little discouraging. 'I am reminded by my amanuensis that I have left

you in the dark as to my opinion of your probable success in the

literary labours to which I have exhorted you. You must be a very mole

if the darkness be real. From your childhood to this day I have ever

shown you by more than words how high an estimate I entertain both of

the depth and the breadth of your capacity. I have ever conversed with

you as with a man, not as with a child; and though parental partiality

has never concealed from me the fact of your deficiency in certain

powers of mind which are essential to early excellence in learning, yet

I have never been for a moment distrustful of your possessing an

intellect which, if well disciplined and well cultured, will continue to

expand, improve, and yield excellent fruit long after the mental

faculties of many of your more fortunate rivals will have passed from

their full maturity into premature decay. Faith in yourself (which is

but one of the many forms of faith in God) is the one thing needful to

your intellectual progress; and if your faith in yourself may but

survive the disappointment of your academical ambition, that

disappointment will be converted into a blessing.'

The letter shows, I think, under the rather elaborate phraseology, both

the perspicuity with which the father had estimated his son's talents

and the strong sympathy which bound them together. The reference to

Fitzjames's 'want of faith in himself' is significant. If want of faith

is to be measured by want of courage in tackling the difficulties of

life, no man could be really less open to the charge than Fitzjames. But

my father, himself disposed to anticipate ill fortune, had certain

reasons for attributing to his son a tendency in the same direction.

Fitzjames's hatred of all exaggeration, his resolute refusal to be

either sentimental or optimistic, led him to insist upon the gloomy side

of things. Moreover, he was still indolent; given to be slovenly in his

work, and rather unsocial in his ways, though warmly attached to a few

friends. My father, impressed by these symptoms, came to the conclusion

that Fitzjames was probably unsuited for the more active professions for

which a sanguine temper and a power of quickly attaching others are

obvious qualifications. He therefore looked forward to his son's

adoption of the clerical career, which his own deep piety as well as his

painful experience of official vexations had long made him regard as the

happiest of all careers. Circumstances strengthened this feeling. My

father's income had been diminished by his resignation, while the

education of his two sons became more expensive, and he had to

contribute to the support of his brother George. No human being could

have made us feel more clearly that he would willingly give us his last

penny or his last drop of blood. But he was for a time more than usually

vexed and anxious; and the fact could not be quite concealed.

Fitzjames's comparative failure at Cambridge suggests to him a

significant remark. After speaking of his 'unteachableness,' he observes

that his mind was over-full of thoughts about religion, about politics,

about morals, about metaphysics, about all sorts of subjects, except

art, literature, or physical science. For art of any kind I have never

cared, and do not care in the very least. For literature, as such, I

care hardly at all. I like to be amused and instructed on the particular

things I want to know; but works of genius, as such, give me very little

pleasure, and as to the physical sciences, they interest me only so far

as they illustrate the true method of inquiry. They, or rather some of

them, have the advantage of being particularly true, and so a guide in

the pursuit of moral and distinctively human truth. For their own sake,

I care very little about them.'

V. READING FOR THE BAR

My brother had definitely to make the choice of a profession upon which

he had been reflecting during his college career. He set about the task

in an eminently characteristic way. When he had failed in the last

scholarship examination, he sat down deliberately and wrote out a

careful discussion of the whole question. The result is before me in a

little manuscript book, which Fitzjames himself re-read and annotated in

1865, 1872, and 1880. He read it once more in 1893. Both text and

commentary are significant. He is anxious above all things to give

plain, tangible reasons for his conduct. He would have considered it

disgraceful to choose from mere impulse or from any such considerations

as would fall under the damnatory epithet 'sentimental.' He therefore

begins in the most prosaic fashion by an attempt to estimate the

pecuniary and social advantages of the different courses open to him.

These are in reality the Church and the Bar; although, by way of

exhibiting the openness of his mind, he adds a more perfunctory

discussion of the merits of the medical profession. Upon this his

uncle, Henry Venn, had made a sufficient comment. 'There is a

providential obstacle,' he said, 'to your becoming a doctor--you have

not humbug enough.' The argument from these practical considerations

leads to no conclusion. The main substance of the discussion is

therefore a consideration of the qualities requisite for the efficient

discharge of clerical or legal duties. A statement of these qualities,

he says, will form the major of his syllogism. The minor will then be,

'I possess or do not possess them'; and the conclusion will follow, 'I

ought to be a clergyman or a lawyer.' Although it is easy to see that

the 'major' is really constructed with a view to its applicability to

his own character, he does not explicitly give any opinions about

himself. He digested the results of the general discussions into

thirteen questions which are not stated, though it is clear that they

must have amounted to asking, Have I the desirable aptitudes? He has,

however, elaborately recorded his answers, 'Yes' or 'No,' and noted the

precise time and place of answering and the length of time devoted to

considering each. He began the inquiry on June 16, 1850. On September 23

he proceeds to answer the questions which he, acting (as he notes) as

judge, had left to himself as jury. Questions 1 and 2 can be answered

'immediately'; but No. 3 takes two hours. The 8th, 9th, and 10th were

considered together, and are estimated to have taken an hour and a half,

between 7 and 11.30 P.M.; though, as he was in an omnibus for part of

the time and there fell asleep, this must be conjectural. The 13th

question could not be answered at all; but was luckily not important. He

had answered the 11th and 12th during a railway journey to Paris on

October 2, and had thereupon made up his mind.

One peculiarity of this performance is the cramped and tortuous mode of

expressing himself. His thoughts are entangled, and are oddly crossed

by phrases clearly showing the influence of Maurice and Coleridge, and,

above all, of his father. 'Maurice's books,' he notes in 1865, 'did

their utmost to make me squint intellectually about this time, but I

never learnt the trick.' A very different writer of whom he read a good

deal at college was Baxter, introduced to him, I guess, by one of his

father's essays. 'What a little prig I was when I made all these

antitheses!' he says in 1865. 'I learnt it of my daddy' is the comment

of 1880. 'Was any other human being,' he asks in 1880, 'ever constructed

with such a clumsy, elaborate set of principles, setting his feelings

going as if they were clockwork?' This is the comment upon a passage

where he has twisted his thoughts into a cumbrous and perfectly needless

syllogism. He makes a similar comment on another passage in 1865, but 'I

think,' he says in 1880, 'that I was a heavy old man thirty years ago.

Fifteen years ago I was at the height of my strength. I am beginning to

feel now a little more tolerant towards the boy who wrote this than the

man who criticised it in 1865; but he was quite right.' The critic of

1865, I may note, is specially hard upon the lad of 1850 for his

ignorance of sound utilitarian authorities. He writes against an

allusion to Hobbes, 'Ignorant blasphemy of the greatest of English

philosophers!' The lad has misstated an argument from ignorance of

Bentham and Austin. 'I had looked at Bentham at the period (says 1865),

but felt a holy horror of him.' Harcourt, it is added, 'used to chaff me

about him.' 1880 admits that '1865, though a fine fellow, was rather too

hot in his Benthamism; 1880 takes it easier, and considers that 1850 was

fairly right, and that his language if not pharisaically accurate, was

plain enough for common-sense purposes.' In fact, both critics admit,

and I fully agree with them, that under all the crabbed phraseology

there was a very large substratum of good sense and sound judgment of

men, to which I add of high principle. Among the special qualifications

of a lawyer, the desire for justice takes a prominent place in his

argument.

Looking at the whole document from the vantage-ground of later

knowledge, the real, though unconscious, purpose seems to be pretty

evident. Fitzjames had felt a repugnance to the clerical career, and is

trying to convince himself that he has reasonable grounds for a feeling

which his father would be slow to approve. There is not the least trace

of any objection upon grounds of dissent from the Articles; though he

speaks of responsibility imposed by the solemn profession required upon

ordination. His real reason is explained in a long comparison between

the 'simple-minded' or 'sympathetic' and the 'casuistical' man. They may

both be good men; but one of them possesses what the other does not, a

power of at once placing himself in close relations to others, and

uttering his own thoughts eloquently and effectively without being

troubled by reserves and perplexed considerations of the precise meaning

of words. He thinks that every clergyman ought to be ready to undertake

the 'cure of souls,' and to be a capable spiritual guide. He has no

right to take up the profession merely with a view to intellectual

researches. In fact, he felt that he was without the qualifications

which make a man a popular preacher, if the word may be used without an

offensive connotation. He could argue vigorously, but was not good at

appealing to the feelings, or offering spiritual comfort, or attracting

the sympathies of the poor and ignorant. Substantially I think that he

was perfectly right not only in the conclusion but in the grounds upon

which it was based. He was a lawyer by nature, and would have been a

most awkward and cross-grained piece of timber to convert into a

priest. He points himself to such cases as Swift, Warburton, and Sydney

Smith to show the disadvantage of a secular man in a priest's vestments.

When his mind was made up, Fitzjames communicated his decision to his

father. The dangerous illness of 1850 had thrown his father into a

nervous condition which made him unable to read the quaint treatise I

have described. He appears, however, to have argued that a man might

fairly take orders with a view to literary work in the line of his

profession. Fitzjames yielded this ground but still held to the main

point. His father, though troubled, made no serious objection, and only

asked him to reconsider his decision and to consult Henry Venn. Henry

Venn wrote a letter, some extracts from which are appended to the volume

with characteristic comments. Venn was too sensible a man not to see

that Fitzjames had practically made up his mind. I need only observe

that Fitzjames, in reply to some hints in his uncle's letter, observes

very emphatically that a man may be serving God at the bar as in the

pulpit. His career was now fixed. 'I never did a wiser thing in my

life,' says 1865, 'than when I determined not to be a clergyman.'

'Amen!' says 1880, and I am sure that no other year in the calendar

would have given a different answer. 'If anyone should ever care to know

what sort of man I was then,' says Fitzjames in 1887, 'and, _mutatis

mutandis_, am still, that paper ought to be embodied by reference in

their recollections.'

Fitzjames took a lodging in London, for a year or so, and then joined my

father at Westbourne Terrace. He entered at the Inner Temple, and was

duly called to the bar on January 26, 1854. His legal education, he

says, was very bad. He was for a time in the chambers of Mr. (now Lord)

Field, then the leading junior on the Midland Circuit, but it was on the

distinct understanding that he was to receive no direct instruction

from his tutor. He was also in the chambers of a conveyancer. I learnt,

he says, 'a certain amount of conveyancing, but in a most mechanical,

laborious, wooden kind of way, which had no advantage at all, except

that it gave me some familiarity with deeds and abstracts. My tutor was

a pure conveyancer; so I saw nothing of equity drafting. I worked very

hard with him, however, but I was incapable of being taught and he of

teaching.' The year 1852 was memorable for the Act which altered the old

system of special pleading. 'The new system was by no means a bad

one.... I never learnt it, at least not properly, and while I ought to

have been learning, I was still under the spell of an unpractical frame

of mind which inclined me to generalities and vagueness, and had in it a

vast deal of laziness. When I look back on these times, I feel as if I

had been only half awake or had not come to my full growth, though I was

just under twenty-five when I was called. How I ever came to be a

moderately successful advocate, still more to be a rather distinguished

judge, is to me a mystery. I managed, however, to get used to legal ways

of looking at things and to the form and method of legal arguments.' He

was at the same time going through an apprenticeship to journalism, of

which it will be more convenient to speak in the next chapter. It is

enough to say for the present that his first efforts were awkward and

unsuccessful. After he was called to the bar, he read for the LL.B.

examination of the University of London; and not only obtained the

degree but enjoyed his only University success by winning a scholarship.

One of his competitors was the present Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff. This

performance is connected with some very important passages in his

development.

He had made some intimate friendships beyond the apostolic circle, of

whom Grant Duff was one of the first. They had already met at the rooms

of Charles Henry Pearson, one of my brother's King's College

friends.[60] Grant Duff was for a long time in very close intimacy, and

the friendship lasted for their lives, uninterrupted by political

differences. They were fellow-pupils in Field's chambers, were on

circuit together for a short time till Grant Duff gave up the

profession; and their marriages only brought new members into the

alliance. I must confine myself to saying that my brother's frequent

allusions prove that he fully appreciated the value of this friendship.

Another equally intimate friendship of the same date was with Henry John

Stephen Smith.[61] Smith was a godson of my uncle, Henry John Stephen.

He and his sister had been from very early years on terms of especial

intimacy with our cousins the Diceys. Where and when his friendship with

my brother began I do not precisely know, but it was already very close.

As in some later cases, of which I shall have to speak, the friendship

seemed to indicate that Fitzjames was attracted by complementary rather

than similar qualities in the men to whom he was most attached. No two

men of ability could be much less like each other. Smith's talents were

apparently equally adapted for fine classical scholarship and for the

most abstract mathematical investigations. If it was not exactly by the

toss of a shilling it was by an almost fortuitous combination of

circumstances that he was decided to take to mathematics, and in that

field won a European reputation. He soared, however, so far beyond

ordinary ken that even Europe must be taken to mean a small set of

competent judges who might almost be reckoned upon one's fingers. But

devoted as he was to these abstruse studies, Smith might also be

regarded as a typical example of the finest qualities of Oxford society.

His mathematical powers were recognised by his election to the Savilian

professorship in 1860, and the recognition of his other abilities was

sufficiently shown by the attempt to elect him member for the University

in 1878. He would indeed have been elected had the choice been confined

to the residents at Oxford. Smith could discourse upon nothing without

showing his powers, and he would have been a singular instance in the

House of Commons of a man respected at once for scholarship and for

profound scientific knowledge, and yet a chosen mouthpiece of the

political sentiments of the most cultivated constituency in the country.

The recognition of his genius was no doubt due in great part to the

singular urbanity which made him the pride and delight of all Oxford

common rooms. With the gentlest of manners and a refined and delicate

sense of humour, he had powers of launching epigrams the subtle flavour

of which necessarily disappears when detached from their context. But it

was his peculiar charm that he never used his powers to inflict pain.

His hearers felt that he could have pierced the thickest hide or laid

bare the ignorance of the most pretentious learning. But they could not

regret a self-restraint which so evidently proceeded from abounding

kindness of heart. Smith's good nature led him to lend too easy an ear

to applications for the employment of his abilities upon tasks to which

his inferiors would have been competent. I do not know whether it was to

diffidence and reserve or to the gentleness which shrinks from

dispelling illusions that another peculiarity is to be attributed. On

religious matters, says his biographer, he was 'absolutely reticent';

he would discuss such topics indeed, but without ever mentioning his own

faith.

I mention this because it is relevant to his relations with my brother.

Fitzjames was always in the habit of expressing his own convictions in

the most downright and uncompromising fashion. He loved nothing better

than an argument upon first principles. His intimacy with Smith was

confirmed by many long rambles together; and for many years he made a

practice of spending a night at Smith's house at Oxford on his way to

and from the Midland Circuit. There, as he says, 'we used to sit up

talking ethics and religion till 2 or 3 A.M.' I could not however, if I

wished, throw any light upon Smith's views; Smith, he says in 1862, is a

most delightful companion when he has got over his 'reserve'; and a year

later he says that Smith is 'nearly the only man who cordially and fully

sympathises with my pet views.' What were the pet views is more than I

can precisely say. I infer, however, from a phrase or two that Smith's

conversation was probably sceptical in the proper sense; that is, that

he discussed first principles as open questions, and suggested logical

puzzles. But my brother also admits that he never came to know what was

Smith's personal position. He always talked 'in the abstract' or 'in the

historical vein,' and 'seemed to have fewer personal plans, wishes and

objects of any kind than almost any man I have ever known.'

These talks at any rate, with distinguished Oxford men, must have helped

to widen my brother's intellectual horizon. They had looked at the

problems of the day from a point of view to which the apostles seem to

have been comparatively blind. Another influence had a more obvious

result. Fitzjames had to read Stephen's commentaries and Bentham[62]

for the London scholarship. Bentham now ceased to be an object of holy

horror. My brother, in fact, became before long what he always remained,

a thorough Benthamite with certain modifications. It was less a case of

influence, however, than of 'elective affinity' of intellect. The

account of Fitzjames's experience at Cambridge recalls memories of the

earlier group who discussed utilitarianism under the leadership of

Charles Austin and looked up to James Mill as their leader. The hatred

for 'sentimentalism' and 'vague generalities' and the indifference to

mere poetical and literary interests were common to both. The strong

points of Benthamism may, I think, be summed up in two words. It meant

reverence for facts. Knowledge was to be sought not by logical jugglery

but by scrupulous observation and systematic appeals to experience.

Whether in grasping at solid elements of knowledge Benthamists let drop

elements of equal value, though of less easy apprehension, is not to my

purpose. But to a man whose predominant faculty was strong common sense,

who was absolutely resolved that whatever paths he took should lead to

realities, and traverse solid ground instead of following some

will-o'-the-wisp through metaphysical quagmires amidst the delusive

mists of a lawless imagination, there was an obvious fascination in the

Bentham mode of thought. It must be added, too, that at this time J. S.

Mill, the inheritor of Bentham's influences, was at the height of his

great reputation. The young men who graduated in 1850 and the following

ten years found their philosophical teaching in Mill's 'Logic,' and only

a few daring heretics were beginning to pick holes in his system.

Fitzjames certainly became a disciple and before long an advocate of

these principles.

I find one or two other indications of disturbing studies. He says in a

letter that Greg's 'Creed of Christendom' (published in 1851) was the

first book of the kind which he read without the sense that he was

trespassing on forbidden ground. He told me that he had once studied

Lardner's famous 'Credibility of the Gospel History,' to which Greg may

not improbably have sent him. The impression made upon him was (though

the phrase was used long afterwards) that Lardner's case 'had not a leg

to stand upon.' From the Benthamite point of view, the argument for

Christianity must be simply the historical evidence. Paley, for whom

Fitzjames had always a great respect, put the argument most skilfully in

this shape. But if the facts are insufficient to a lawyer's eye, what is

to happen? For reasons which will partly appear, Fitzjames did not at

present draw the conclusions which to many seem obvious. It took him, in

fact, years to develope distinctly new conclusions. But from this time

his philosophical position was substantially that of Bentham, Mill, and

the empiricists, while the superstructure of belief was a modified

evangelicism.

My father's liberality of sentiment and the sceptical tendencies which

lay, in spite of himself, in his intellectual tendencies, had indeed

removed a good deal of the true evangelical dogmatism. Fitzjames for a

time, as I have intimated, seems to have sought for a guide in Maurice.

He had been attracted when at King's College by Maurice's personal

qualities, and when, in 1853, Maurice had to leave King's College on

account of his views about eternal punishment, Fitzjames took a leading

part in getting up a testimonial from the old pupils of his teacher.

When he became a law student he naturally frequented Maurice's sermons

at Lincoln's Inn. Nothing could be more impressive than the manner of

the preacher. His voice often trembled with emotion, and he spoke as

one who had a solemn message of vast importance to mankind. But what was

the message which could reach a hard-headed young 'lawyer by nature'

with a turn for Benthamism? Fitzjames gives a kind of general form of

Maurice's sermons. First would come an account of some dogma as

understood by the vulgar. Tom Paine could not put it more pithily or

expressively. Then his hearers were invited to look at the plain words

of Scripture. Do they not mean this or that, he would ask, which is

quite different to what they had been made to mean? My answer would have

been, says Fitzjames, that his questions were 'mere confused hints,'

which required all kinds of answers, but mostly the answer 'No, not at

all.' Then, however, came Maurice's own answers to them. About this time

his hearer used to become drowsy, with 'an indistinct consciousness of a

pathetic quavering set of entreaties to believe what, when it was

intelligible, was quite unsatisfactory.' Long afterwards he says

somewhere that it was 'like watching the struggles of a drowning creed.'

Fitzjames, however, fancied for a time that he was more or less of a

Mauricean.

From one of his friends, the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies, I have some

characteristic recollections of the time. Mr. Davies was a college

friend, and remembers his combativeness and his real underlying warmth

of feeling. He remembers how, in 1848, Fitzjames was confident that the

'haves' could beat the 'have nots,' 'set his teeth' and exclaimed, 'Let

them come on.' Mr. Davies was now engaged in clerical work at the

East-end of London. My brother took pleasure in visiting his friend

there, learnt something of the ways of the district, and gave a lecture

to a Limehouse audience. He attended a coffee-house discussion upon the

existence of God, and exposed the inconclusiveness of the atheistic

conclusions. On another occasion he went with 'Tom,' now Judge Hughes,

to support Mr. Davies, who addressed a crowd in Leman Street one Sunday

night. Hughes endeavoured to suppress a boy who was disposed for

mischief. The boy threw himself on the ground, with Hughes holding him

down. Fitzjames, raising a huge stick, plunged into the thick of the

crowd. No one, however, stood forth as a champion of disorder; and Mr.

Davies, guarded by his stalwart supporters, was able to speak to a quiet

audience. Fitzjames, says Mr. Davies, was always ready for an argument

in those days. He did not seek for a mere dialectical triumph; but he

was resolved to let no assumption pass unchallenged, and, above all, to

disperse sentiment and to insist upon what was actual and practical. He

wrote to Mr. Davies in reference to some newspaper controversies: 'As to

playing single-stick without being ever hit myself, I have no sort of

taste for it; the harder you hit the better. I always hit my hardest.'

'Some people profess,' he once said to the same friend, 'that the sermon

on the Mount is the only part of Christianity which they can accept. It

is to me the hardest part to accept.' In fact, he did not often turn the

second cheek. He said in the same vein that he should prefer the whole

of the Church service to be made 'colder and less personal, and to

revive the days of Paley and Sydney Smith.' (The Church of the

eighteenth century, only without the disturbing influence of Wesley,

was, as he once remarked long afterwards, his ideal.) 'After quoting

these words,' says Mr. Davies in conclusion, 'I may be permitted to add

those with which he closed the note written to me before he went to

India (November 4, 1869), "God bless you. It's not a mere phrase, nor

yet an unmeaning or insincere one in my mouth--affectionately yours."'

I shall venture to quote in this connection a letter from my father,

which needs a word of preface. Among his experiments in journalism,

Fitzjames had taken to writing for the 'Christian Observer,' an ancient,

and, I imagine, at the time, an almost moribund representative of the

evangelical party. Henry Venn had suggested, it seems, that Fitzjames

might become editor. Fitzjames appears to have urged that his theology

was not of the desired type. He consulted my father, however, who

admitted the difficulty to be insuperable, but thought for a moment that

they might act together as editor and sub-editor. My father says in his

letters (August 4 and 8, 1854): 'I adhere with no qualifications of

which I am conscious to the theological views of my old Clapham friends.

You, I suppose, are an adherent of Mr. Maurice. To myself it appears

that he is nothing more than a great theological rhetorician, and that

his only definite and appreciable meaning is that of wedding the gospel

to some form of philosophy, if so to conceal its baldness. But Paul of

Tarsus many ages ago forbade the banns.' In a second letter he says that

there does not seem to be much real difference between Fitzjames's creed

and his own. 'It seems to me quite easy to have a theological theory

quite complete and systematic enough for use; and scarcely possible to

reach such a theory with any view to speculation--easy, I mean, and

scarcely possible for the unlearned class to which I belong. The learned

are, I trust and hope, far more fixed and comprehensive in their views

than they seem to me to be, but if I dared trust to my own observation I

should say that they are determined to erect into a science a series of

propositions which God has communicated to us as so many detached and,

to us, irreconcilable verities; the common link or connecting principle

of which He has not seen fit to communicate. I am profoundly convinced

of the consistency of all the declarations of Scripture; but I am as

profoundly convinced of my own incapacity to perceive that they are

consistent. I can receive them each in turn, and to some extent I can,

however feebly, draw nutriment from each of them. To blend them one with

another into an harmonious or congruous whole surpasses my skill, or

perhaps my diligence. But what then? I am here not to speculate but to

repent, to believe and to obey; and I find no difficulty whatever in

believing, each in turn, doctrines which yet seem to me incompatible

with each other. It is in this sense and to this extent that I adopt the

whole of the creed called evangelical. I adopt it as a regulator of the

affections, as a rule of life and as a quietus, not as a stimulant to

inquiry. So, I gather, do you, and if so, I at least have no right to

quarrel with you on that account. Only, if you and I are unscientific

Christians, let us be patient and reverent towards those whose deeper

minds or more profound inquiries, or more abundant spiritual experience,

may carry them through difficulties which surpass our strength.'

My brother's reverence for his father probably prevented him from

criticising this letter as he would have criticised a similar utterance

from another teacher. He has, however, endorsed it--I cannot say whether

at the time--with a tolerably significant remark. 'This,' he says, 'is

in the nature of a surrebutter; only the parties, instead of being at

issue, are agreed. My opinion as to his opinions is that they are a sort

of humility which comes so very near to irony that I do not know how to

separate them. Fancy old Venn and Simeon having had more capacious minds

than Sir James (_credat Christianus_).'

The 'Christian Observer' was at this time edited by J. W. Cunningham,

vicar of Harrow, who was trying to save it from extinction. He had been

educated at Mr. Jowett's, at Little Dunham and at Cambridge, and had

been a curate of John Venn, of Clapham. He belonged, therefore, by

right, to the evangelical party, and had been more or less known to my

father for many years. His children were specially intimate with my

aunt, Mrs. Batten, whose husband was a master at Harrow. Emelia Batten,

now Mrs. Russell Gurney, was a friend of Cunningham's children, and at

this time was living in London, and on very affectionate terms with

Fitzjames. He used to pour out to her his difficulties in the matter of

profession choosing. There were thus various links between the

Cunninghams and ourselves. Mr. Cunningham happened to call upon my

father at Norwich, in the summer of 1850. With him came his eldest

daughter by his second wife, Mary Richenda Cunningham, and there my

brother saw her for the first time. He met her again in company with

Miss Batten, on March 2, 1851, as he records, and thereupon fell in

love, 'though in a quiet way at first. This feeling has never been

disturbed in the slightest degree. It has widened, deepened, and

strengthened itself without intermission from that day to this' (January

3, 1887).

The connection with the 'Christian Observer' was of value, not for the

few guineas earned, but as leading to occasional visits to Harrow.

Fitzjames says that he took great pains with his articles, and probably

improved his style, though 'kind old Mr. Cunningham' had to add a few

sentences to give them the proper tone. They got him some credit from

the small circle which they reached, but that was hardly his main

object. 'This period of my life closed by my being engaged on November

11, 1854, at Brighton, just eighteen years to the day after I went to

school there, and by my being married on April 19, 1855, at Harrow

church, where my father and mother were married forty years before.' The

marriage, he says, 'was a blessed revelation to me. It turned me from a

rather heavy, torpid youth into the happiest of men, and, for many

years, one of the most ardent and energetic. It was like the lines in

Tennyson--

A touch, a kiss, the charm was snapped

. . . . . . .

And all the long-pent stream of life

Dashed downward in a cataract.

I am surprised to find that, when I look back to that happiest and most

blessed of days through the haze of upwards of thirty-two years, I do

not feel in the least degree disposed to be pathetic over the lapse of

life or the near approach of old age. I have found life sweet, bright,

glorious. I should dearly like to live again; but I am not afraid, and I

hope, when the time comes, I shall not be averse to die.'

At this point the autobiographical fragment ceases. I am glad that it

has enabled me to use his own words in speaking of his marriage. No one,

I think, can doubt their sincerity, nor can anyone who was a witness of

his subsequent life think that they over-estimate the results to his

happiness. I need only add that the marriage had the incidental

advantage of providing him with a new brother and sister; for Henry (now

Sir Henry) Stewart Cunningham, and Emily Cunningham (now Lady Egerton),

were from this time as dear to him as if they had been connected by the

closest tie of blood relationship.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 49: I have quoted a few phrases from it in the previous

chapter.]

[Footnote 50: He says the 11th, and mentions more than once a date which

afterwards became interesting for another reason. The date given by my

mother at the time must be accepted; but this is the only error I have

found in my brother's statements--and it is not of profound importance.]

[Footnote 51: I have to thank Mr. Arthur D. Coleridge, my brother's

schoolfellow and lifelong friend for a letter containing his

recollections of this period.]

[Footnote 52: Macvey Napier correspondence.]

[Footnote 53: My father was sworn of H. M. Privy Council October 30,

1847, and on April 15, 1848, appointed by her Majesty in Council Member

of the Committee of Privy Council for the consideration of all matters

relating to trade and foreign plantations (Sir James Stephen and Sir

Edward Ryan were the last two appointed under that form and title); made

K.C.B. April 27, 1848, and finally retired on pension May 3, 1848,

having been on sick leave since October 1847.]

[Footnote 54: Kindly sent to me by Mr. Montague Butler, of Pembroke

College, Cambridge.]

[Footnote 55: See an article by W. D. Christie in _Macmillan's Magazine_

for November 1864.]

[Footnote 56: Maine was born August 22, 1822, and therefore six years

and a half older than Fitzjames.]

[Footnote 57: He was proposed by Maine on October 30, and elected

November 13, 1847.]

[Footnote 58: _The Life of Julian Fane_, by his intimate friend Lord

Lytton, was published in 1871. It includes some account of the

'apostles.']

[Footnote 59: It refers, I suppose, to the son's failure to get into the

first class in the college examination at Christmas 1848.]

[Footnote 60: Pearson died in 1894, after a career in England and

Australia much troubled by ill health. His book upon _National

Character_, published in 1803, first made his remarkable abilities

generally known, though he had written very ably upon history.]

[Footnote 61: Born November 2, 1826, d. February 9, 1883. See the memoir

by C. H. Pearson prefixed to the collection of Smith's _Mathematical

Papers_ (1894).]

[Footnote 62: I guess Dumont's 'Principles.']