MY stepfather, Mr. Ellice, having been in two Ministries—Lord Grey’s in
1830, and Lord Melbourne’s in 1834—had necessarily a large parliamentary
acquaintance; and as I could always dine at his house in Arlington Street
when I pleased, I had constant opportunities of meeting most of the
prominent Whig politicians, and many other eminent men of the day. One
of the dinner parties remains fresh in my memory—not because of the
distinguished men who happened to be there, but because of the statesman
whose name has since become so familiar to the world.
Some important question was before the House in which Mr. Ellice was
interested, and upon which he intended to speak. This made him late for
dinner, but he had sent word that his son was to take his place, and the
guests were not to wait. When he came Lord John Russell greeted him
with—
‘Well, Ellice, who’s up?’
‘A younger son of Salisbury’s,’ was the reply; ‘Robert Cecil, making his
maiden speech. If I hadn’t been in a hurry I should have stopped to
listen to him. Unless I am very much mistaken, he’ll make his mark, and
we shall hear more of him.’
There were others dining there that night whom it is interesting to
recall. The Grotes were there. Mrs. Grote, scarcely less remarkable
than her husband; Lord Mahon, another historian (who married a niece of
Mr. Ellice’s), Lord Brougham, and two curious old men both remarkable, if
for nothing else, for their great age. One was George Byng, father of
the first Lord Strafford, and ‘father’ of the House of Commons; the other
Sir Robert Adair, who was Ambassador at Constantinople when Byron was
there. Old Mr. Byng looked as aged as he was, and reminded one of Mr.
Smallweed doubled up in his porter’s chair. Quite different was his
compeer. We were standing in the recess of the drawing-room window after
dinner when Sir Robert said to me:
‘Very shaky, isn’t he! Ah! he was my fag at Eton, and I’ve got the best
of it still.’
Brougham having been twice in the same Government with Mr. Ellice, and
being devoted to young Mrs. Edward Ellice, his charming daughter-in-law,
was a constant visitor at 18 Arlington Street. Mrs. Ellice often told me
of his peculiarities, which must evidently have been known to others.
Walter Bagehot, speaking of him, says:
‘Singular stories of eccentricity and excitement, even of something more
than either of these, darken these latter years.’
What Mrs. Ellice told me was, that she had to keep a sharp watch on Lord
Brougham if he sat near her writing-table while he talked to her; for if
there was any pretty little knick-knack within his reach he would, if her
head were turned, slip it into his pocket. The truth is perhaps better
than the dark hint, for certainly we all laughed at it as nothing but
eccentricity.
But the man who interested me most (for though when in the Navy I had
heard a hundred legends of his exploits, I had never seen him before) was
Lord Dundonald. Mr. Ellice presented me to him, and the old hero asked
why I had left the Navy.
‘The finest service in the world; and likely, begad, to have something to
do before long.’
This was only a year before the Crimean war. With his strong rough
features and tousled mane, he looked like a grey lion. One expected to
see him pick his teeth with a pocket boarding-pike.
The thought of the old sailor always brings before me the often mooted
question raised by the sentimentalists and humanitarians concerning the
horrors of war. Not long after this time, the papers—the sentimentalist
papers—were furious with Lord Dundonald for suggesting the adoption by
the Navy of a torpedo which he himself, I think, had invented. The bare
idea of such wholesale slaughter was revolting to a Christian world. He
probably did not see much difference between sinking a ship with a
torpedo, and firing a shell into her magazine; and likely enough had as
much respect for the opinions of the woman-man as he had for the
man-woman.
There is always a large number of people in the world who suffer from
emotional sensitiveness and susceptibility to nervous shocks of all
kinds. It is curious to observe the different and apparently unallied
forms in which these characteristics manifest themselves. With some,
they exhibit extreme repugnance to the infliction of physical pain for
whatever end; with others there seems to be a morbid dread of violated
pudicity. Strangely enough the two phases are frequently associated in
the same individual. Both tendencies are eminently feminine; the
affinity lies in a hysterical nature. Thus, excessive pietism is a
frequent concomitant of excessive sexual passion; this, though notably
the case with women, is common enough with men of unduly neurotic
temperaments.
Only the other day some letters appeared in the ‘Times’ about the
flogging of boys in the Navy. And, as a sentimental argument against it,
we were told by the Humanitarian Leaguers that it is ‘obscene.’ This is
just what might be expected, and bears out the foregoing remarks. But
such saintly simplicity reminds us of the kind of squeamishness of which
our old acquaintance Mephisto observes:
Man darf das nicht vor keuschen Ohren nennen,
Was keusche Herzen nicht entbehren können.
(Chaste ears find nothing but the devil in
What nicest fancies love to revel in.)
The same astute critic might have added:
And eyes demure that look away when seen,
Lose ne’er a chance to peep behind the screen.
It is all of a piece. We have heard of the parlour-maid who fainted
because the dining-table had ‘ceder legs,’ but never before that a
‘switching’ was ‘obscene.’ We do not envy the unwholesomeness of a mind
so watchful for obscenity.
Be that as it may, so far as humanity is concerned, this hypersensitive
effeminacy has but a noxious influence; and all the more for the twofold
reason that it is sometimes sincere, though more often mere cant and
hypocrisy. At the best, it is a perversion of the truth; for emotion
combined with ignorance, as it is in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases
out of a thousand, is a serious obstacle in the path of rational
judgment.
Is sentimentalism on the increase? It seems to be so, if we are to judge
by a certain portion of the Press, and by speeches in Parliament. But
then, this may only mean that the propensity finds easier means of
expression than it did in the days of dearer paper and fewer newspapers,
and also that speakers find sentimental humanity an inexhaustible fund
for political capital. The excess of emotional attributes in man over
his reasoning powers must, one would think, have been at least as great
in times past as it is now. Yet it is doubtful whether it showed itself
then so conspicuously as it does at present. Compare the Elizabethan age
with our own. What would be said now of the piratical deeds of such men
as Frobisher, Raleigh, Gilbert, and Richard Greville? Suppose Lord
Roberts had sent word to President Kruger that if four English soldiers,
imprisoned at Pretoria, were molested, he would execute 2,000 Boers and
send him their heads? The clap-trap cry of ‘Barbaric Methods’ would have
gone forth to some purpose; it would have carried every constituency in
the country. Yet this is what Drake did when four English sailors were
captured by the Spaniards, and imprisoned by the Spanish Viceroy in
Mexico.
Take the Elizabethan drama, and compare it with ours. What should we
think of our best dramatist if, in one of his tragedies, a man’s eyes
were plucked out on the stage, and if he that did it exclaimed as he
trampled on them, ‘Out, vile jelly! where is thy lustre now?’ or of a
Titus Andronicus cutting two throats, while his daughter ‘’tween her
stumps doth hold a basin to receive their blood’?
‘Humanity,’ says Taine, speaking of these times, ‘is as much lacking as
decency. Blood, suffering, does not move them.’
Heaven forbid that we should return to such brutality! I cite these
passages merely to show how times are changed; and to suggest that with
the change there is a decided loss of manliness. Are men more virtuous,
do they love honour more, are they more chivalrous, than the Miltons, the
Lovelaces, the Sidneys of the past? Are the women chaster or more
gentle? No; there is more puritanism, but not more true piety. It is
only the outside of the cup and the platter that are made clean, the
inward part is just as full of wickedness, and all the worse for its
hysterical fastidiousness.
To what do we owe this tendency? Are we degenerating morally as well as
physically? Consider the physical side of the question. Fifty years ago
the standard height for admission to the army was five feet six inches.
It is now lowered to five feet. Within the last ten years the increase
in the urban population has been nearly three and a half millions.
Within the same period the increase in the rural population is less than
a quarter of one million. Three out of five recruits for the army are
rejected; a large proportion of them because their teeth are gone or
decayed. Do these figures need comment? Can you look for sound minds in
such unsound bodies? Can you look for manliness, for self-respect, and
self-control, or anything but animalistic sentimentality?
It is not the character of our drama or of our works of fiction that
promotes and fosters this propensity; but may it not be that the enormous
increase in the number of theatres, and the prodigious supply of novels,
may have a share in it, by their exorbitant appeal to the emotional, and
hence neurotic, elements of our nature? If such considerations apply
mainly to dwellers in overcrowded towns, there is yet another cause which
may operate on those more favoured,—the vast increase in wealth and
luxury. Wherever these have grown to excess, whether in Babylon, or
Nineveh, or Thebes, or Alexandria, or Rome, they have been the symptoms
of decadence, and forerunners of the nation’s collapse.
Let us be humane, let us abhor the horrors of war, and strain our utmost
energies to avert them. But we might as well forbid the use of surgical
instruments as the weapons that are most destructive in warfare. If a
limb is rotting with gangrene, shall it not be cut away? So if the
passions which occasion wars are inherent in human nature, we must face
the evil stout-heartedly; and, for one, I humbly question whether any
abolition of dum-dum bullets or other attempts to mitigate this disgrace
to humanity, do, in the end, more good than harm.
It is elsewhere that we must look for deliverance,—to the overwhelming
power of better educated peoples; to closer intercourse between the
nations; to the conviction that, from the most selfish point of view
even, peace is the only path to prosperity; to the restraint of the baser
Press which, for mere pelf, spurs the passions of the multitude instead
of curbing them; and, finally, to deliverance from the ‘all-potent wills
of Little Fathers by Divine right,’ and from the ignoble ambition of
bullet-headed uncles and brothers and cousins—a curse from which England,
thank the Gods! is, and let us hope, ever will be, free. But there are
more countries than one that are not so—just now; and the world may ere
long have to pay the bitter penalty.