TO turn again to narrative, and to far less serious thoughts. The last
eighteen months before I went to Cambridge, I was placed, or rather
placed myself, under the tuition of Mr. Robert Collyer, rector of Warham,
a living close to Holkham in the gift of my brother Leicester. Between
my Ely tutor and myself there was but little sympathy. He was a man of
much refinement, but with not much indulgence for such aberrant
proclivities as mine. Without my knowledge, he wrote to Mr. Ellice
lamenting my secret recusancy, and its moral dangers. Mr. Ellice came
expressly from London, and stayed a night at Ely. He dined with us in
the cloisters, and had a long private conversation with my tutor, and,
before he left, with me. I indignantly resented the clandestine
representations of Mr. S., and, without a word to Mr. Ellice or to anyone
else, wrote next day to Mr. Collyer to beg him to take me in at Warham,
and make what he could of me, before I went to Cambridge. It may here be
said that Mr. Collyer had been my father’s chaplain, and had lived at
Holkham for several years as family tutor to my brothers and myself, as
we in turn left the nursery. Mr. Collyer, upon receipt of my letter,
referred the matter to Mr. Ellice; with his approval I was duly installed
at Warham. Before describing my time there, I must tell of an incident
which came near to affecting me in a rather important way.
My mother lived at Longford in Derbyshire, an old place, now my home,
which had come into the Coke family in James I.’s reign, through the
marriage of a son of Chief Justice Coke’s with the heiress of the De
Langfords, an ancient family from that time extinct. While staying there
during my summer holidays, my mother confided to me that she had had an
offer of marriage from Mr. Motteux, the owner of considerable estates in
Norfolk, including two houses—Beachamwell and Sandringham. Mr.
Motteux—‘Johnny Motteux,’ as he was called—was, like Tristram Shandy’s
father, the son of a wealthy ‘Turkey merchant,’ which, until better
informed, I always took to mean a dealer in poultry. ‘Johnny,’ like
another man of some notoriety, whom I well remember in my younger
days—Mr. Creevey—had access to many large houses such as Holkham; not,
like Creevey, for the sake of his scandalous tongue, but for the sake of
his wealth. He had no (known) relatives; and big people, who had younger
sons to provide for, were quite willing that one of them should be his
heir. Johnny Motteux was an epicure with the best of _chefs_. His
capons came from Paris, his salmon from Christchurch, and his Strasburg
pies were made to order. One of these he always brought with him as a
present to my mother, who used to say, ‘Mr. Motteux evidently thinks the
nearest way to my heart is down my throat.’
A couple of years after my father’s death, Motteux wrote to my mother
proposing marriage, and, to enhance his personal attractions, (in figure
and dress he was a duplicate of the immortal Pickwick,) stated that he
had made his will and had bequeathed Sandringham to me, adding that,
should he die without issue, I was to inherit the remainder of his
estates.
Rather to my surprise, my mother handed the letter to me with evident
signs of embarrassment and distress. My first exclamation was: ‘How
jolly! The shooting’s first rate, and the old boy is over seventy, if
he’s a day.’
My mother apparently did not see it in this light. She clearly, to my
disappointments did not care for the shooting; and my exultation only
brought tears into her eyes.
‘Why, mother,’ I exclaimed, ‘what’s up? Don’t you—don’t you care for
Johnny Motteux?’
She confessed that she did not.
‘Then why don’t you tell him so, and not bother about his beastly
letter?’
‘If I refuse him you will lose Sandringham.’
‘But he says here he has already left it to me.’
‘He will alter his will.’
‘Let him!’ cried I, flying out at such prospective meanness. ‘Just you
tell him you don’t care a rap for him or for Sandringham either.’
In more lady-like terms she acted in accordance with my advice; and, it
may be added, not long afterwards married Mr. Ellice.
Mr. Motteux’s first love, or one of them, had been Lady Cowper, then Lady
Palmerston. Lady Palmerston’s youngest son was Mr. Spencer Cowper. Mr.
Motteux died a year or two after the above event. He made a codicil to
his will, and left Sandringham and all his property to Mr. Spencer
Cowper. Mr. Spencer Cowper was a young gentleman of costly habits.
Indeed, he bore the slightly modified name of ‘Expensive Cowper.’ As an
attaché at Paris he was famous for his patronage of dramatic art—or
artistes rather; the votaries of Terpsichore were especially indebted to
his liberality. At the time of Mr. Motteux’s demise, he was attached to
the Embassy at St. Petersburg. Mr. Motteux’s solicitors wrote
immediately to inform him of his accession to their late client’s wealth.
It being one of Mr. Cowper’s maxims never to read lawyers’ letters, (he
was in daily receipt of more than he could attend to,) he flung this one
unread into the fire; and only learnt his mistake through the
congratulations of his family.
The Prince Consort happened about this time to be in quest of a suitable
country seat for his present Majesty; and Sandringham, through the adroit
negotiations of Lord Palmerston, became the property of the Prince of
Wales. The soul of the ‘Turkey merchant,’ we cannot doubt, will repose
in peace.
The worthy rector of Warham St. Mary’s was an oddity deserving of passing
notice. Outwardly he was no Adonis. His plain features and shock head
of foxy hair, his antiquated and neglected garb, his copious jabot—much
affected by the clergy of those days—were becoming investitures of the
inward man. His temper was inflammatory, sometimes leading to excesses,
which I am sure he rued in mental sackcloth and ashes. But visitors at
Holkham (unaware of the excellent motives and moral courage which
inspired his conduct) were not a little amazed at the austerity with
which he obeyed the dictates of his conscience.
For example, one Sunday evening after dinner, when the drawing-room was
filled with guests, who more or less preserved the decorum which
etiquette demands in the presence of royalty, (the Duke of Sussex was of
the party,) Charles Fox and Lady Anson, great-grandmother of the present
Lord Lichfield, happened to be playing at chess. When the irascible
dominie beheld them he pushed his way through the bystanders, swept the
pieces from the board, and, with rigorous impartiality, denounced these
impious desecrators of the Sabbath eve.
As an example of his fidelity as a librarian, Mr. Panizzi used to relate
with much glee how, whenever he was at Holkham, Mr. Collyer dogged him
like a detective. One day, not wishing to detain the reverend gentleman
while he himself spent the forenoon in the manuscript library, (where not
only the ancient manuscripts, but the most valuable of the printed books,
are kept under lock and key,) he considerately begged Mr. Collyer to
leave him to his researches. The dominie replied ‘that he knew his duty,
and did not mean to neglect it.’ He did not lose sight of Mr. Panizzi.
The notion that he—the great custodian of the nation’s literary
treasures—would snip out and pocket the title-page of the folio edition
of Shakespeare, or of the Coverdale Bible, tickled Mr. Panizzi’s fancy
vastly.
In spite, however, of our rector’s fiery temperament, or perhaps in
consequence of it, he was remarkably susceptible to the charms of beauty.
We were constantly invited to dinner and garden parties in the
neighbourhood; nor was the good rector slow to return the compliment. It
must be confessed that the pupil shared to the full the impressibility of
the tutor; and, as it happened, unknown to both, the two were in one case
rivals.
As the young lady afterwards occupied a very distinguished position in
Oxford society, it can only be said that she was celebrated for her many
attractions. She was then sixteen, and the younger of her suitors but
two years older. As far as age was concerned, nothing could be more
compatible. Nor in the matter of mutual inclination was there any
disparity whatever. What, then, was the pupil’s dismay when, after a
dinner party at the rectory, and the company had left, the tutor, in a
frantic state of excitement, seized the pupil by both hands, and
exclaimed: ‘She has accepted me!’
‘Accepted you?’ I asked. ‘Who has accepted you?’
‘Who? Why, Miss —, of course! Who else do you suppose would accept me?’
‘No one,’ said I, with doleful sincerity. ‘But did you propose to her?
Did she understand what you said to her? Did she deliberately and
seriously say “Yes?”’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ and his disordered jabot and touzled hair echoed the
fatal word.
‘O Smintheus of the silver bow!’ I groaned. ‘It is the woman’s part to
create delusions, and—destroy them! To think of it! after all that has
passed between us these—these three weeks, next Monday! “Once and for
ever.” Did ever woman use such words before? And I—believed them!’
‘Did you speak to the mother?’ I asked in a fit of desperation.
‘There was no time for that. Mrs. — was in the carriage, and I didn’t
pop [the odious word!] till I was helping her on with her cloak. The
cloak, you see, made it less awkward. My offer was a sort of _obiter
dictum_—a by-the-way, as it were.’
‘To the carriage, yes. But wasn’t she taken by surprise?’
‘Not a bit of it. Bless you! they always know. She pretended not to
understand, but that’s a way they have.’
‘And when you explained?’
‘There wasn’t time for more. She laughed, and sprang into the carriage.’
‘And that was all?’
‘All! would you have had her spring into my arms?’
‘God forbid! You will have to face the mother to-morrow,’ said I,
recovering rapidly from my despondency.
‘Face? Well, I shall have to call upon Mrs. —, if that’s what you mean.
A mere matter of form. I shall go over after lunch. But it needn’t
interfere with your work. You can go on with the “Anabasis” till I come
back. And remember—_Neaniskos_ is not a proper name, ha! ha! ha! The
quadratics will keep till the evening.’ He was merry over his prospects,
and I was not altogether otherwise.
But there was no Xenophon, no algebra, that day! Dire was the distress
of my poor dominie when he found the mother as much bewildered as the
daughter was frightened, by the mistake. ‘She,’ the daughter, ‘had never
for a moment imagined, &c., &c.’
My tutor was not long disheartened by such caprices—so he deemed them, as
Miss Jemima’s (she had a prettier name, you may be sure), and I did my
best (it cost me little now) to encourage his fondest hopes. I proposed
that we should drink the health of the future mistress of Warham in tea,
which he cheerfully acceded to, all the more readily, that it gave him an
opportunity to vent one of his old college jokes. ‘Yes, yes,’ said he,
with a laugh, ‘there’s nothing like tea. _Te veniente die_, _te
decedente canebam_.’ Such sallies of innocent playfulness often smoothed
his path in life. He took a genuine pleasure in his own jokes. Some men
do. One day I dropped a pot of marmalade on a new carpet, and should
certainly have been reprimanded for carelessness, had it not occurred to
him to exclaim: ‘_Jam satis terris_!’ and then laugh immoderately at his
wit.
That there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, was a
maxim he acted upon, if he never heard it. Within a month of the above
incident he proposed to another lady upon the sole grounds that, when
playing a game of chess, an exchange of pieces being contemplated, she
innocently, but incautiously, observed, ‘If you take me, I will take
you.’ He referred the matter next day to my ripe judgment. As I had no
partiality for the lady in question, I strongly advised him to accept so
obvious a challenge, and go down on his knees to her at once. I laid
stress on the knees, as the accepted form of declaration, both in novels
and on the stage.
In this case the beloved object, who was not embarrassed by excess of
amiability, promptly desired him, when he urged his suit, ‘not to make a
fool of himself.’
My tutor’s peculiarities, however, were not confined to his endeavours to
meet with a lady rectoress. He sometimes surprised his hearers with the
originality of his abstruse theories. One morning he called me into the
stable yard to join in consultation with his gardener as to the
advisability of killing a pig. There were two, and it was not easy to
decide which was the fitter for the butcher. The rector selected one, I
the other, and the gardener, who had nurtured both from their tenderest
age, pleaded that they should be allowed to ‘put on another score.’ The
point was warmly argued all round.
‘The black sow,’ said I (they were both sows, you must know)—‘The black
sow had a litter of ten last time, and the white one only six. Ergo, if
history repeats itself, as I have heard you say, you should keep the
black, and sacrifice the white.’
‘But,’ objected the rector, ‘that was the white’s first litter, and the
black’s second. Why shouldn’t the white do as well as the black next
time?’
‘And better, your reverence,’ chimed in the gardener. ‘The number don’t
allays depend on the sow, do it?’
‘That is neither here nor there,’ returned the rector.
‘Well,’ said the gardener, who stood to his guns, ‘if your reverence is
right, as no doubt you will be, that’ll make just twenty little pigs for
the butcher, come Michaelmas.’
‘We can’t kill ’em before they are born,’ said the rector.
‘That’s true, your reverence. But it comes to the same thing.’
‘Not to the pigs,’ retorted the rector.
‘To your reverence, I means.’
‘A pig at the butcher’s,’ I suggested, ‘is worth a dozen unborn.’
‘No one can deny it,’ said the rector, as he fingered the small change in
his breeches pocket; and pointing with the other hand to the broad back
of the black sow, exclaimed, ‘This is the one, _Duplex agitur per lumbos
spina_! She’s got a back like an alderman’s chin.’
‘_Epicuri de grege porcus_,’ I assented, and the fate of the black sow
was sealed.
Next day an express came from Holkham, to say that Lady Leicester had
given birth to a daughter. My tutor jumped out of his chair to hand me
the note. ‘Did I not anticipate the event’? he cried. ‘What a wonderful
world we live in! Unconsciously I made room for the infant by
sacrificing the life of that pig.’ As I never heard him allude to the
doctrine of Pythagoras, as he had no leaning to Buddhism, and, as I am
sure he knew nothing of the correlation of forces, it must be admitted
that the conception was an original one.
Be this as it may, Mr. Collyer was an upright and conscientious man. I
owe him much, and respect his memory. He died at an advanced age, an
honorary canon, and—a bachelor.
Another portrait hangs amongst the many in my memory’s picture gallery.
It is that of his successor to the vicarage, the chaplaincy, and the
librarianship, at Holkham—Mr. Alexander Napier—at this time, and until
his death fifty years later, one of my closest and most cherished
friends. Alexander Napier was the son of Macvey Napier, first editor of
the ‘Edinburgh Review.’ Thus, associated with many eminent men of
letters, he also did some good literary work of his own. He edited Isaac
Barrow’s works for the University of Cambridge, also Boswell’s ‘Johnson,’
and gave various other proofs of his talents and his scholarship. He was
the most delightful of companions; liberal-minded in the highest degree;
full of quaint humour and quick sympathy; an excellent parish
priest,—looking upon Christianity as a life and not a dogma; beloved by
all, for he had a kind thought and a kind word for every needy or sick
being in his parish.
With such qualities, the man always predominated over the priest. Hence
his large-hearted charity and indulgence for the faults—nay, crimes—of
others. Yet, if taken aback by an outrage, or an act of gross stupidity,
which even the perpetrator himself had to suffer for, he would
momentarily lose his patience, and rap out an objurgation that would
stagger the straiter-laced gentlemen of his own cloth, or an outsider who
knew less of him than—the recording angel.
A fellow undergraduate of Napier’s told me a characteristic anecdote of
his impetuosity. Both were Trinity men, and had been keeping high jinks
at a supper party at Caius. The friend suddenly pointed to the clock,
reminding Napier they had but five minutes to get into college before
Trinity gates were closed. ‘D—n the clock!’ shouted Napier, and
snatching up the sugar basin (it was not _eau sucrée_ they were
drinking), incontinently flung it at the face of the offending timepiece.
This youthful vivacity did not desert him in later years. An old college
friend—also a Scotchman—had become Bishop of Edinburgh. Napier paid him
a visit (he described it to me himself). They talked of books, they
talked of politics, they talked of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, of
Brougham, Horner, Wilson, Macaulay, Jeffrey, of Carlyle’s dealings with
Napier’s father—‘Nosey,’ as Carlyle calls him. They chatted into the
small hours of the night, as boon companions, and as what Bacon calls
‘full’ men, are wont. The claret, once so famous in the ‘land of cakes,’
had given place to toddy; its flow was in due measure to the flow of
soul. But all that ends is short—the old friends had spent their last
evening together. Yes, their last, perhaps. It was bed-time, and quoth
Napier to his lordship, ‘I tell you what it is, Bishop, I am na fou’, but
I’ll be hanged if I haven’t got two left legs.’
‘I see something odd about them,’ says his lordship. ‘We’d better go to
bed.’
Who the bishop was I do not know, but I’ll answer for it he was one of
the right sort.
In 1846 I became an undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge. I do
not envy the man (though, of course, one ought) whose college days are
not the happiest to look back upon. One should hope that however
profitably a young man spends his time at the University, it is but the
preparation for something better. But happiness and utility are not
necessarily concomitant; and even when an undergraduate’s course is least
employed for its intended purpose (as, alas! mine was)—for happiness,
certainly not pure, but simple, give me life at a University.
Heaven forbid that any youth should be corrupted by my confession! But
surely there are some pleasures pertaining to this unique epoch that are
harmless in themselves, and are certainly not to be met with at any
other. These are the first years of comparative freedom, of manhood, of
responsibility. The novelty, the freshness of every pleasure, the
unsatiated appetite for enjoyment, the animal vigour, the ignorance of
care, the heedlessness of, or rather, the implicit faith in, the morrow,
the absence of mistrust or suspicion, the frank surrender to generous
impulses, the readiness to accept appearances for realities—to believe in
every profession or exhibition of good will, to rush into the arms of
every friendship, to lay bare one’s tenderest secrets, to listen eagerly
to the revelations which make us all akin, to offer one’s time, one’s
energies, one’s purse, one’s heart, without a selfish afterthought—these,
I say, are the priceless pleasures, never to be repeated, of healthful
average youth.
What has after-success, honour, wealth, fame, or, power—burdened, as they
always are, with ambitions, blunders, jealousies, cares, regrets, and
failing health—to match with this enjoyment of the young, the bright, the
bygone, hour? The wisdom of the worldly teacher—at least, the _carpe
diem_—was practised here before the injunction was ever thought of. _Du
bist so schön_ was the unuttered invocation, while the _Verweile doch_
was deemed unneedful.
Little, I am ashamed to own, did I add either to my small classical or
mathematical attainments. But I made friendships—lifelong friendships,
that I would not barter for the best of academical prizes.
Amongst my associates or acquaintances, two or three of whom have since
become known—were the last Lord Derby, Sir William Harcourt, the late
Lord Stanley of Alderley, Latimer Neville, late Master of Magdalen, Lord
Calthorpe, of racing fame, with whom I afterwards crossed the Rocky
Mountains, the last Lord Durham, my cousin, Sir Augustus Stephenson,
ex-solicitor to the Treasury, Julian Fane, whose lyrics were edited by
Lord Lytton, and my life-long friend Charles Barrington, private
secretary to Lord Palmerston and to Lord John Russell.
But the most intimate of them was George Cayley, son of the member for
the East Riding of Yorkshire. Cayley was a young man of much promise.
In his second year he won the University prize poem with his ‘Balder,’
and soon after published some other poems, and a novel, which met with
merited oblivion. But it was as a talker that he shone. His quick
intelligence, his ready wit, his command of language, made his
conversation always lively, and sometimes brilliant. For several years
after I left Cambridge I lived with him in his father’s house in Dean’s
Yard, and thus made the acquaintance of some celebrities whom his
fascinating and versatile talents attracted thither. As I shall return
to this later on, I will merely mention here the names of such men as
Thackeray, Tennyson, Frederick Locker, Stirling of Keir, Tom Taylor the
dramatist, Millais, Leighton, and others of lesser note. Cayley was a
member of, and regular attendant at, the Cosmopolitan Club; where he met
Dickens, Foster, Shirley Brooks, John Leech, Dicky Doyle, and the wits of
the day; many of whom occasionally formed part of our charming coterie in
the house I shared with his father.
Speaking of Tom Taylor reminds me of a good turn he once did me in my
college examination at Cambridge. Whewell was then Master of Trinity.
One of the subjects I had to take up was either the ‘Amicitia’ or the
‘Senectute’ (I forget which). Whewell, more formidable and alarming than
ever, opened the book at hazard, and set me on to construe. I broke
down. He turned over the page; again I stuck fast. The truth is, I had
hardly looked at my lesson,—trusting to my recollection of parts of it to
carry me through, if lucky, with the whole.
‘What’s your name, sir?’ was the Master’s gruff inquiry. He did not
catch it. But Tom Taylor—also an examiner—sitting next to him, repeated
my reply, with the addition, ‘Just returned from China, where he served
as a midshipman in the late war.’ He then took the book out of Whewell’s
hands, and giving it to me closed, said good-naturedly: ‘Let us have
another try, Mr. Coke.’ The chance was not thrown away; I turned to a
part I knew, and rattled off as if my first examiner had been to blame,
not I.