COLLECTIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS
George William Erskine Russell
THE MOST GENIAL OF COMPANIONS
JAMES PAYN
AT WHOSE SUGGESTION THESE PAPERS WERE WRITTEN AND TO WHOM THEY WERE
INSCRIBED
DIED MARCH 25, 1898
* * * * *
Is he gone to a land of no laughter--
This man that made mirth for us all?
Proves Death but a silence hereafter,
Where the echoes of earth cannot fall?
Once closed, have the lips no more duty?
No more pleasure the exquisite ears?
Has the heart done o'erflowing with beauty,
As the eyes have with tears?
Nay, if aught be sure, what can be surer
Than that earth's good decays not with earth?
And of all the heart's springs none are purer
Than the springs of the fountains of mirth?
He that sounds them has pierced the heart's hollows,
The places where tears are and sleep;
For the foam-flakes that dance in life's shallows
Are wrung from life's deep.
J. RHOADES
PREFACE.
It has been suggested by Mr. Reginald Smith, to whose friendliness and
skill the fortunes of this book have been so greatly indebted, that a
rather fuller preface might be suitably prefixed to this Edition.
When the book first appeared, it was stated on the title-page to be
written "by One who has kept a Diary." My claim to that modest title
will scarcely be challenged by even the most carping critic who is
conversant with the facts. On August 13, 1865, being then twelve years
old, I began my Diary. Several attempts at diary-keeping I had already
made and abandoned. This more serious endeavour was due to the fact that
a young lady gave me a manuscript-book attractively bound in scarlet
leather; and such a gift inspired a resolution to live up to it. Shall I
be deemed to lift the veil of private life too roughly if I transcribe
some early entries? "23rd: Dear Kate came; very nice." "25th: Kate is
very delightful." "26th: Kate is a darling girl. _She kissed me_."
Before long, Love's young dream was dispersed by the realities of
Harrow; but the scarlet book continued to receive my daily confidences.
Soon--alas for puerile fickleness!--the name of "Kate" disappears, and
is replaced by rougher appellations, such as "Bob" and "Charlie;"
"Carrots" this, and "Chaw" that. To Harrow succeeds Oxford, and now
more recognizable names begin to appear--"Liddon" and "Holland," "Gore"
and "Milner", and "Lymington."
But through all these personal permutations the continuous Life of the
Diary remained unbroken, and so remains even to the present date. Not a
day is missing. When I have been laid low by any of the rather numerous
ills to which, if to little else, my flesh has been heir, I have always
been able to jot down such pregnant entries as "Temperature 102°;"
"Salicine;" "Boiled Chicken;" "Bath Chair." It is many a year since the
scarlet book was laid aside; but it has had a long line of successors;
and together they contain the record of what I have been, done, seen,
and heard during thirty-eight years of chequered existence. Entertaining
a strong and well-founded suspicion that Posterity would burn these
precious volumes unread, I was moved, some few years ago, to compress
into small compass the little that seemed worth remembering. At that
time my friend Mr. James Payn was already confined to the house by the
beginnings of what proved to be his last illness. His host of friends
did what they could to relieve the tedium of his suffering days; and the
only contribution which I could make was to tell him at my weekly visits
anything interesting or amusing which I collected from the reperusal of
my diary. Greatly to my surprise, he urged me to make these
"Collections" into a book, and to add to them whatever "Recollections"
they might suggest. Acting on this advice, I published during the year
1897 a series of weekly papers in the _Manchester Guardian_. They were
received more kindly than I had any right to expect; and early in 1898 I
reproduced them in the present volume--just too late to offer it, except
in memory, to dear James Payn.
The fortunes of the book, from that time till now, would not interest
the public, but are extremely interesting to me. The book brought me
many friends. One story, at any rate, elicited the gracious laughter of
Queen Victoria. A pauper who had known better days wrote to thank me
for enlivening the monotony of a workhouse infirmary. Literary clerks
plied me with questions about the sources of my quotations. A Scotch
doctor demurred to the prayer--"Water that spark"--on the ground that
the water would put the spark out. Elderly clergymen in country
parsonages revived the rollicking memories of their undergraduate days,
and sent me academic quips of the forties and fifties. From the most
various quarters I received suggestions, corrections, and enrichments
which have made each edition an improvement on the last. The public
notices were, on the whole, extremely kind, and some were
unintentionally amusing. Thus one editor, putting two and two together,
calculated that the writer could not be less than eighty years old;
while another, like Mrs. Prig, "didn't believe there was no sich a
person," and acutely divined that the book was a journalistic squib
directed against my amiable garrulity. The most pleasing notice was that
of Jean La Frette, some extracts from which I venture to append. It is
true that competent judges have questioned the accuracy of M. La
Frette's idiom, but his sentiments are unimpeachable. The necessary
corrective was not wanting, for a weekly journal of high culture
described my poor handiwork as "Snobbery and Snippets." There was a
boisterousness--almost a brutality--about the phrase which deterred me
from reading the review; but I am fain to admit that there was a certain
rude justice in the implied criticism.
G.W.E.R.
_Christmas, 1903_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. LINKS WITH THE PAST
II. LORD RUSSELL
III. LORD SHAFTESBURY
IV. CARDINAL MANNING
V. LORD HOUGHTON
VI. RELIGION AND MORALITY
VII. SOCIAL EQUALIZATION
VIII. SOCIAL AMELIORATION
IX. THE EVANGELICAL INFLUENCE
X. POLITICS
XI. PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY
XII. PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY (_contd_.)
XIII. CONVERSATION
XIV. CONVERSATION (_continued_)
XV. CONVERSATION (_continued_)
XVI. CONVERSATION (_continued_)
XVII. CLERGYMEN
XVIII. CLERGYMEN (_continued_)
XIX. REPARTEE
XX. TITLES
XXI. THE QUEEN'S ACCESSION
XXII. "PRINCEDOMS, VIRTUES, POWERS"
XXIII. LORD BEACONSFIELD
XXIV. FLATTERERS AND BORES
XXV. ADVERTISEMENTS
XXVI. PARODIES IN PROSE
XXVII. PARODIES IN VERSE
XXVIII. PARODIES IN VERSE (_continued_)
XXIX. VERBAL INFELICITIES
XXX. THE ART OF PUTTING THINGS
XXXI. CHILDREN
XXXII. LETTER-WRITING
XXXIII. OFFICIALDOM
XXXIV. AN OLD PHOTOGRAPH-BOOK
INDEX.
I.
LINKS WITH THE PAST.
Of the celebrated Mrs. Disraeli her husband is reported to have said,
"She is an excellent creature, but she never can remember which came
first, the Greeks or the Romans." In my walk through life I have
constantly found myself among excellent creatures of this sort. The
world is full of vague people, and in the average man, and still more in
the average woman, the chronological sense seems to be entirely wanting.
Thus, when I have occasionally stated in a mixed company that my first
distinct recollection was the burning of Covent Garden Theatre, I have
seen a general expression of surprised interest, and have been told, in
a tone meant to be kind and complimentary, that my hearers would hardly
have thought that my memory went back so far. The explanation has been
that these excellent creatures had some vague notions of _Rejected
Addresses_ floating in their minds, and confounded the burning of Covent
Garden Theatre in 1856 with that of Drury Lane Theatre in 1809. It was
pleasant to feel that one bore one's years so well as to make the error
possible.
But events, however striking, are only landmarks in memory. They are
isolated and detached, and begin and end in themselves. The real
interest of one's early life is in its Links with the Past, through the
old people whom one has known. Though I place my first distinct
recollection in 1856, I have memories more or less hazy of an earlier
date.
There was an old Lady Robert Seymour, who lived in Portland Place, and
died there in 1855, in her ninety-first year. Probably she is my most
direct link with the past, for she carried down to the time of the
Crimean War the habits and phraseology of Queen Charlotte's early Court.
"Goold" of course she said for gold, and "yaller" for yellow, and
"laylock" for lilac. She laid the stress on the second syllable of
"balcony." She called her maid her "'ooman;" instead of sleeping at a
place, she "lay" there, and when she consulted the doctor she spoke of
having "used the 'potticary."
There still lives, in full possession of all her faculties, a venerable
lady who can say that her husband was born at Boston when America was a
British dependency. This is the widow of Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, who
was born in 1772, and helped to defeat Mr. Gladstone's Paper Bill in the
House of Lords on his eighty-eighth birthday. He died in 1862.[1]
A conspicuous figure in my early recollections is Sir Henry Holland,
M.D., father of the present Lord Knutsford. He was born in 1788, and
died in 1873. The stories of his superhuman vigour and activity would
fill a volume. In 1863 Bishop Wilberforce wrote to a friend abroad: "Sir
Henry Holland, who got back safe from all his American rambles, has been
taken by Palmerston through the river at Broadlands, and lies very
ill." However, he completely threw off the effects of this mischance,
and survived his aquaceous host for some eight years. I well remember
his telling me in 1868 that his first famous patient was the mysterious
"Pamela," who became the wife of the Irish patriot, Lord Edward
FitzGerald.
Every one who went about in London in the 'seventies will remember the
dyed locks and crimson velvet waistcoat of William, fifth Earl Bathurst,
who was born in 1791 and died in 1878. He told me that he was at a
private school at Sunbury-on-Thames with William and John Russell, the
latter of whom became the author of the Reform Bill and Prime Minister.
At this delightful seminary, the peers' sons, including my informant,
who was then the Hon. William Bathurst, had a bench to themselves.
William and John Russell were not peers' sons, as their father had not
then succeeded to the Dukedom of Bedford. In 1802 he succeeded, on the
sudden death of his elder brother, and became sixth Duke of Bedford; and
his sons, becoming _Lord_ William and _Lord_ John, were duly promoted to
the privileged bench. Nothing in _Pelham_ or _Vivian Grey_ quite equals
this.
When I went to Harrow, in 1868, there was an old woman, by name Polly
Arnold, still keeping a stationer's shop in the town, who had sold cribs
to Byron when he was a Harrow boy; and Byron's fag, a funny old
gentleman in a brown wig--called Baron Heath--was a standing dish on our
school Speech-Day.
Once at a London dinner I happened to say in the hearing of Mrs. Procter
(widow of "Barry Cornwall," and mother of the poetess) that I was going
next day to the Harrow Speeches. "Ah," said Mrs. Procter, "that used to
be a pleasant outing. The last time I went I drove down with Lord Byron
and Dr. Parr, who had been breakfasting with my father." Mrs. Procter
died in 1888.
Among the remarkable women of our time, if merely in respect of
longevity, must be reckoned Lady Louisa Stuart, sister and heir of the
last Earl of Traquair. She was a friend and correspondent of Sir Walter
Scott, who in describing "Tully Veolan" drew Traquair House with literal
exactness, even down to the rampant bears which still guard the locked
entrance-gates against all comers until the Royal Stuarts shall return
to claim their own. Lady Louisa Stuart lived to be ninety-nine, and died
in 1876.
Perhaps the most remarkable old lady whom I knew intimately was Caroline
Lowther, Duchess of Cleveland, who was born in 1792 and died in 1883.
She had been presented to Queen Charlotte when there were only forty
people at the Drawing-room, had danced with the Prince of Orange, and
had attended the "breakfasts" given by Albinia Countess of
Buckinghamshire (who died in 1816), at her villa just outside London.
The site of that villa is now Hobart Place, having taken its name from
that of the Buckinghamshire family. The trees of its orchard are still
discoverable in the back-gardens of Hobart Place and Wilton Street, and
I am looking out upon them as I write this page.
Stories of highwaymen are excellent Links with the Past, and here is
one. The fifth Earl of Berkeley, who died in 1810, had always declared
that any one might without disgrace be overcome by superior numbers, but
that he would never surrender to a single highwayman. As he was crossing
Hounslow Heath one night, on his way from Berkeley Castle to London, his
travelling carriage was stopped by a man on horseback, who put his head
in at the window and said, "I believe you are Lord Berkeley?" "I am." "I
believe you have always boasted that you would never surrender to a
single highwayman?" "I have." "Well," presenting a pistol, "I am a
single highwayman, and I say, 'Your money or your life.'" "You cowardly
dog," said Lord Berkeley, "do you think I can't see your confederate
skulking behind you?" The highwayman, who was really alone, looked
hurriedly round, and Lord Berkeley shot him through the head. I asked
Lady Caroline Maxse (1803-1886), who was born a Berkeley, if this story
was true. I can never forget my thrill when she replied, "Yes; and I am
proud to say that I am that man's daughter."
Sir Moses Montefiore was born in 1784, and died in 1885. It is a
disheartening fact for the teetotallers that he had drunk a bottle of
port wine every day since he grew up. He had dined with Lord Nelson on
board his ship, and vividly remembered the transcendent beauty of Lady
Hamilton. The last time Sir Moses appeared in public was, if I mistake
not, at a garden-party at Marlborough House. The party was given on a
Saturday. Sir Moses was restrained by religious scruples from using his
horses, and was of course too feeble to walk, so he was conveyed to the
party in a magnificent sedan-chair. That was the only occasion on which
I have seen such an article in use.
When I began to go out in London, a conspicuous figure in dinner-society
and on Protestant platforms was Captain Francis Maude, R.N. He was born
in 1798 and died in 1886. He used to say, "My grandfather was nine years
old when Charles II. died." And so, if pedigrees may be trusted, he was.
Charles II. died in 1685. Sir Robert Maude was born in 1676. His son,
the first Lord Hawarden, was born in 1727, and Captain Francis Maude was
this Lord Hawarden's youngest son. The year of his death (1880) saw also
that of a truly venerable woman, Mrs. Hodgson, mother of Kirkman and
Stewart Hodgson, the well-known partners in Barings' house. Her age was
not precisely known, but when a schoolgirl in Paris she had seen
Robespierre executed, and distinctly recollected the appearance of his
bandaged face. Her granddaughters, Mr. Stewart Hodgson's children, are
quite young women, and if they live to the age which, with such
ancestry, they are entitled to anticipate, they will carry down into the
middle of the twentieth century the account, derived from an
eye-witness, of the central event of the French Revolution.
One year later, in 1887, there died, at her house in St. James's Square,
Mrs. Anne Penelope Hoare, mother of the late Sir Henry Hoare, M.P. She
recollected being at a children's party when the lady of the house came
in and stopped the dancing because news had come that the King of France
had been put to death. Her range of conscious knowledge extended from
the execution of Louis XVI. to the Jubilee of Queen Victoria. So short a
thing is history.
Sir Walter Stirling, who was born in 1802 and died in 1888, was a little
old gentleman of ubiquitous activity, running about London with a yellow
wig, short trousers, and a cotton umbrella. I well remember his saying
to me, when Mr. Bradlaugh was committed to the Clock Tower, "I don't like
this. I am afraid it will mean mischief. I am old enough to remember
seeing Sir Francis Burdett taken to the Tower by the Sergeant-at-Arms
with a military force. I saw the riot then, and I am afraid I shall see
a riot again."
In the same year (1888) died Mrs. Thomson Hankey, wife of a former M.P.
for Peterborough. Her father, a Mr. Alexander, was born in 1729, and she
had inherited from him traditions of London as it appeared to a young
Scotsman in the year of the decapitation of the rebels after the rising
of 1745.
One of the most venerable and interesting figures in London, down to his
death in 1891, was George Thomas, sixth Earl of Albemarle. He was born
in 1799. He had played bat-trap-and-ball at St. Anne's Hill with Mr.
Fox, and, excepting his old comrade General Whichcote, who outlived him
by a few months, was the last survivor of Waterloo. A man whom I knew
longer and more intimately than any of those whom I have described was
the late Lord Charles James Fox Russell. He was born in 1807, and died
in 1894. His father's groom had led the uproar of London servants which
in the eighteenth century damned the play _High Life Below Stairs_. He
remembered a Highlander who had followed the army of Prince Charles
Edward in 1745, and had learned from another Highlander the Jacobite
soldiers' song--
"I would I were at Manchester,
A-sitting on the grass,
And by my side a bottle of wine,
And on my lap a lass."
He had officiated as a page at the coronation of George IV.; had
conversed with Sir Walter Scott about _The Bride of Lammermoor_ before
its authorship was disclosed; had served in the Blues under Ernest Duke
of Cumberland; and had lost his way in trying to find the newly
developed quarter of London called Belgrave Square.
Among living[2] links, I hope it is not ungallant to enumerate Lady
Georgiana Grey, only surviving child of
"That Earl, who forced his compeers to be just,
And wrought in brave old age what youth had planned;"
Lady Louisa Tighe, who as Lady Louisa Lennox buckled the Duke of
Wellington's sword when he set out from her mother's ball at Brussels
for the field of Waterloo; and Miss Eliza Smith of Brighton, the
vivacious and evergreen daughter of Horace Smith, who wrote the
_Rejected Addresses_. But these admirable and accomplished ladies hate
garrulity, and the mere mention of their names is a signal to bring
these disjointed reminiscences to a close.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Lady Lyndhurst died in 1901.
[2] "Living" alas! no longer. The last survivor of these ladies died
this year, 1903.
II.
LORD RUSSELL
These chapters are founded on Links with the Past. Let me now describe
in rather fuller detail three or four remarkable people with whom I had
more than a cursory acquaintance, and who allowed me for many years the
privilege of drawing without restriction on the rich stores of their
political and social recollections.
First among these in point of date, if of nothing else, I must place
John Earl Russell, the only person I have ever known who knew Napoleon
the Great. Lord Russell--or, to give him the name by which he was most
familiar to his countrymen, Lord John Russell--was born in 1792, and
when I first knew him he was already old; but it might have been said of
him with perfect truth that
"Votiva patuit veluti descripta tabella
Vita senis."
After he resigned the leadership of the Liberal party, at Christmas
1867, Lord Russell spent the greater part of his time at Pembroke Lodge,
a house in Richmond Park which takes its name from Elizabeth Countess of
Pembroke, long remembered as the object of King George the Third's
hopeless and pathetic love. As a token of his affection the King allowed
Lady Pembroke to build herself a "lodge" in the "vast wilderness" of
Richmond Park, amid surroundings which went far to realize Cowper's
idea of a "boundless contiguity of shade."
On her death, in 1831, Pembroke Lodge was assigned by William IV. to his
son-in-law, Lord Erroll, and in 1847 it was offered by the Queen to her
Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, who then had no home except his house
in Chesham Place. It was gratefully accepted, for indeed it had already
been coveted as an ideal residence for a busy politician who wanted
fresh air, and could not safely be far from the House of Commons. As
years went on Lord John spent more and more of his time in this
delicious retreat, and in his declining years it was practically his
only home.
A quarter of a century ago it was a curious and interesting privilege
for a young man to sit in the trellised dining-room of Pembroke Lodge,
or to pace its terrace-walk looking down upon the Thames, in intimate
converse with a statesman who had enjoyed the genial society of Charles
Fox, and had been the travelling companion of Lord Holland; had
corresponded with Tom Moore, debated with Francis Jeffrey, and dined
with Dr. Parr; had visited Melrose Abbey in the company of Sir Walter
Scott, and criticized the acting of Mrs. Siddons; conversed with
Napoleon in his seclusion at Elba, and ridden with the Duke of
Wellington along the lines of Torres Vedras.
The genius of John Leech, constantly exercised on the subject for twenty
years, has made all students of _Punch_ familiar with Lord John
Russell's outward aspect. We know from his boyish diary that on his
eleventh birthday he was "4 feet 2 inches high, and 3 stone 12 lb.
weight;" and though, as time went on, these extremely modest dimensions
were slightly exceeded, he was an unusually short man. His massive head
and broad shoulders gave him when he sate the appearance of greater
size, and when he rose to his feet the diminutive stature caused a
feeling of surprise. Sydney Smith declared that when Lord John first
contested Devonshire the burly electors were disappointed by the
exiguity of their candidate, but were satisfied when it was explained to
them that he had once been much larger, but was worn away by the
anxieties and struggles of the Reform Bill of 1832. Never was so robust
a spirit enshrined in so fragile a form. He inherited the miserable
legacy of congenital weakness. Even in those untender days he was
considered too delicate to remain at a Public School. It was thought
impossible for him to live through his first session of Parliament. When
he was fighting the Reform Bill through the House of Commons he had to
be fed with arrowroot by a benevolent lady who was moved to compassion
by his pitiful appearance. For years afterwards he was liable to
fainting-fits, had a wretched digestion, and was easily upset by hot
rooms, late hours, and bad air. These circumstances, combined with his
love of domestic life and his fondness for the country, led him to spend
every evening that he could spare in his seclusion at Pembroke Lodge,
and consequently cut him off, very much to his political disadvantage,
from constant and intimate associations with official colleagues and
parliamentary supporters.
There were other characteristics which enhanced this unfortunate
impression of aloofness. His voice had what used to be described in
satirical writings of the first half of the century as "an aristocratic
drawl," and his pronunciation was archaic. Like other high-bred people
of his time, he talked of "cowcumbers" and "laylocks," called a woman an
"'ooman," and was "much obleeged" where a degenerate age is content to
be obliged. The frigidity of his address and the seeming stiffness of
his manner, due really to an innate and incurable shyness, produced even
among people who ought to have known him well a totally erroneous notion
of his character and temperament. To Bulwer Lytton he seemed--
"How formed to lead, if not to proud to please!
His fame would fire you, but his manners freeze.
Like or dislike, he does not care a jot;
He wants your vote, but your affections not;
Vet human hearts need sun as well as oats--
So cold a climate plays the deuce with votes."
It must be admitted that in some of the small social arts which are so
valuable an equipment for a political leader Lord John was funnily
deficient. He had no memory for faces, and was painfully apt to ignore
his political followers when he met them beyond the walls of Parliament.
Once, staying in a Scotch country-house, he found himself thrown with
young Lord D----, now Earl of S----. He liked the young man's
conversation, and was pleased to find that he was a Whig. When the party
broke up, Lord John conquered his shyness sufficiently to say to his new
friend, "Well, Lord D----, I am very glad to have made your
acquaintance, and now you must come into the House of Commons and
support me there." "I have been doing that for the last ten years, Lord
John," was the reply of the gratified follower.
This inability to remember faces was allied in Lord John with a curious
artlessness of disposition which made it impossible for him to feign a
cordiality he did not feel. Once, at a concert at Buckingham Palace, he
was seen to get up suddenly, turn his back on the Duchess of Sutherland,
by whom he had been sitting, walk to the remotest part of the room, and
sit down by the Duchess of Inverness. When questioned afterwards as to
the cause of his unceremonious move, which had the look of a quarrel, he
said, "I could not have sate any longer by that great fire; I should
have fainted."
"Oh, that was a very good reason for moving; but I hope you told the
Duchess of Sutherland why you left her."
"Well--no; I don't think I did that. But I told the Duchess of Inverness
why I came and sate by her!"
Thus were opportunities of paying harmless compliments recklessly
thrown away.
It was once remarked by a competent critic that "there have been
Ministers who knew the springs of that public opinion which is delivered
ready digested to the nation every morning, and who have not scrupled to
work them for their own diurnal glorification, even although the recoil
might injure their colleagues. But Lord Russell has never bowed the knee
to the potentates of the Press; he has offered no sacrifice of
invitations to social editors; and social editors have accordingly
failed to discover the merits of a statesman who so little appreciated
them, until they have almost made the nation forget the services that
Lord Russell has so faithfully and courageously rendered."
Be this as it may, there is no doubt that the old Whig statesman lacked
those gifts or arts which make a man widely popular in a large society
of superficial acquaintances. On his deathbed he said with touching
pathos, "I have seemed cold to my friends, but it was not in my heart."
The friends needed no such assurance. He was the idol of those who were
most closely associated with him by the ties of blood or duty. Even to
people outside the innermost circle of intimacy there was something
peculiarly attractive in his singular mixture of gentleness and dignity.
He excelled as a host, doing the honours of his table with the
old-fashioned grace which he had learned at Woburn Abbey and at Holland
House when the century was young; and in the charm of his conversation
he was not easily equalled--never, in my experience, surpassed. He had
the happy knack of expressing a judgment which might be antagonistic to
the sentiments of those with whom he was dealing in language which,
while perfectly void of offence, was calmly decisive. His reply to Sir
Francis Burdett was pronounced by Mr. Gladstone to be the best repartee
ever made in Parliament. Sir Francis, an ex-Radical, attacking his
former associates with all the bitterness of a renegade, had said, "The
most offensive thing in the world is the cant of Patriotism." Lord John
replied, "I quite agree that the cant of Patriotism is a very offensive
thing; but the _recant_ of Patriotism is more offensive still." His
letter to the Dean of Hereford about the election of Bishop Hampden is a
classical instance of courteous controversy. Once a most Illustrious
Personage asked him if it was true that he taught that under certain
circumstances it was lawful for a subject to disobey the Sovereign.
"Well, speaking to a Sovereign of the House of Hanover, I can only
answer in the affirmative."
His copiousness of anecdote was inexhaustible. His stories always fitted
the point, and the droll gravity of his way of telling them added
greatly to their zest. Of his conversation with Napoleon at Elba I
recollect one curious question and answer. The Emperor took the little
Englishman by the ear and asked him what was thought in England of his
chances of returning to the throne of France. "I said, 'Sire, they think
you have no chance at all.'" The Emperor said that the English
Government had made a great mistake in sending the Duke of Wellington to
Paris--"On n'aime pas voir un homme par qui on a été battu;" and on War
he made this characteristic comment: "Eh bien, c'est un grand jeu--belle
occupation."
This interview took place when Lord John was making a tour with Lord and
Lady Holland, and much of his earlier life had been spent at Holland
House, in the heart of that brilliant society which Macaulay so
picturesquely described, and in which Luttrell and Samuel Rogers were
conspicuous figures. Their conversation supplied Lord John with an
anecdote which he used to bring out, with a twinkling eye and a
chuckling laugh, whenever he heard that any public reform was regarded
with misgiving by sensible men. Luttrell and Rogers were passing in a
wherry under old London Bridge when its destruction Was contemplated,
and Rogers said, "Some very sensible men think that, if these works are
carried into effect, the tide will flow so rapidly under the bridge that
dangerous consequences will follow." "My dear Rogers," answered
Luttrell, "if some very sensible men had been attended to, we should
still be eating acorns."
Of William and John Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell and Lord Eldon, Lord
Russell used to tell with infinite zest a story which he declared to be
highly characteristic of the methods by which they made their fortunes
and position. When they were young men at the Bar, having had a stroke
of professional luck, they determined to celebrate the occasion by
having a dinner at a tavern and going to the play. When it was time to
call for the reckoning, William Scott dropped a guinea. He and his
brother searched for it in vain, and came to the conclusion that it had
fallen between the boards of the uncarpeted floor.
"This is a bad job," said William; "we must give up the play."
"Stop a bit," said John; "I know a trick worth two of that," and called
the waitress.
"Betty," said he, "we've dropped two guineas. See if you can find them."
Betty went down on her hands and knees, and found the one guinea, which
had rolled under the fender.
"That's a very good girl, Betty," said John Scott, pocketing the coin;
"and when you find the other you can keep it for your trouble." And the
prudent brothers went with a light heart to the play, and so eventually
to the Bench and the Woolsack.
In spite of profound differences of political opinion, Lord Russell had
a high regard for the memory of the Duke of Wellington, and had been
much in his society in early life. Travelling in the Peninsula in 1812,
he visited Lord Wellington at his headquarters near Burgos. On the
morning after his arrival he rode out with his host and an aide-de-camp,
and surveyed the position of the French army. Lord Wellington, peering
through his glass, suddenly exclaimed, "By G----! they've changed their
position!" and said no more.
When they returned from their ride, the aide-de-camp said to Lord John,
"You had better get away as quick as you can. I am confident that Lord
Wellington means to make a move." Lord John took the hint, made his
excuses, and went on his way. That evening the British army was in full
retreat, and Lord Russell used to tell the story as illustrating the old
Duke's extreme reticence when there was a chance of a military secret
leaking out.
Lord Russell's father, the sixth Duke of Bedford, belonged to that
section of the Whigs who thought that, while a Whig ministry was
impossible, it was wiser to support the Duke of Wellington, whom they
believed to be a thoroughly honest man, than Canning, whom they regarded
as an unscrupulous adventurer. Accordingly the Duke of Wellington was a
frequent visitor at Woburn Abbey, and showed consistent friendliness to
Lord Russell and his many brothers, all of whom were full of anecdotes
illustrative of his grim humour and robust common sense. Let a few of
them be recorded.
The Government was contemplating the dispatch of an expedition to Burma,
with a view of taking Rangoon, and a question arose as to who would be
the fittest general to be sent in command of the expedition. The Cabinet
sent for the Duke of Wellington, and asked his advice. He instantly
replied, "Send Lord Combermere."
"But we have always understood that your Grace thought Lord Combermere a
fool."
"So he is a fool, and a d----d fool; but he can take Rangoon."
At the time of Queen Caroline's trial the mob of London sided with the
Queen, and the Duke's strong adhesion to the King made him extremely
unpopular. Riding up Grosvenor Place one day towards Apsley House, he
was beset by a gang of workmen who were mending the road. They formed a
cordon, shouldered their pickaxes, and swore they would not let the Duke
pass till he said "God save the Queen." "Well, gentlemen, since you will
have it so--'God save the Queen,' and may all your wives be like her!"
Mrs. Arbuthnot (wife of the Duke's private secretary, familiarly called
"Gosh") was fond of parading her intimacy with the Duke before
miscellaneous company. One day, in a large party, she said to him,--
"Duke, I know you won't mind my asking you, but is it true that you were
surprised at Waterloo?"
"By G----! not half as much surprised as I am now, mum."
When the Queen came to the throne her first public act was to go in
state to St. James's Palace to be proclaimed. She naturally wished to be
accompanied in her State coach only by the Duchess of Kent and one of
the Ladies of the Household; but Lord Albemarle, who was Master of the
Horse, insisted that he had a right to travel with her Majesty in the
coach, as he had done with William IV. The point was submitted to the
Duke of Wellington, as a kind of universal referee in matters of
precedence and usage. His judgment was delightfully unflattering to the
outraged magnate--"The Queen can make you go inside the coach or outside
the coach, or run behind like a tinker's dog."
And surely the whole literary profession, of which the present writer is
a feeble unit, must cherish a sentiment of grateful respect for the
memory of a man who, in refusing the dedication of a song, informed Mrs.
Norton that he had been obliged to make a rule of refusing dedications,
"because, in his situation as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, he
had been _much exposed to authors_."
III.
LORD SHAFTESBURY.
If the Christian Socialists ever frame a Kalendar of Worthies (after the
manner of Auguste Comte), it is to be hoped that they will mark among
the most sacred of their anniversaries the day--April 28, 1801--which
gave birth to Anthony Ashley, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury. His life of
eighty-four years was consecrated, from boyhood till death, to the
social service of humanity; and, for my own part, I must always regard
the privilege of his friendship as among the highest honours of my life.
Let me try to recall some of the outward and inward characteristics of
this truly illustrious man.
Lord Shaftesbury was tall and spare--almost gaunt--in figure, but
powerfully framed, and capable of great exertion. His features were
handsome and strongly marked--an aquiline nose and very prominent chin.
His complexion was as pale as marble, and contrasted effectively with a
thick crop of jet-black hair which extreme old age scarcely tinged with
silver.
When he first entered Parliament a contemporary observer wrote: "It
would be difficult to imagine a more complete beau-ideal of aristocracy.
His whole countenance has the coldness as well as the grace of a
chiselled one, and expresses precision, prudence, and determination in
no common degree." The stateliness of bearing, the unbroken figure, the
high glance of stern though melancholy resolve, he retained to the end.
But the incessant labour and anxiety of sixty years made their mark, and
Sir John Millais's noble portrait, painted in 1877, shows a countenance
on which a lifelong contact with human suffering had written its tale in
legible characters.
Temperament is, I suppose, hereditary. Lord Shaftesbury's father, who
was for nearly forty years Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords,
was distinguished by a strong intellect, an imperious temper, and a
character singularly deficient in amiability. His mother (whose childish
beauty is familiar to all lovers of Sir Joshua's art as the little girl
frightened by the mask in the great "Marlborough Group") was the
daughter of the third Duke of Marlborough by that Duchess whom Queen
Charlotte pronounced to be the proudest woman in England. It is
reasonable to suppose that from such a parentage and such an ancestry
Lord Shaftesbury derived some of the most conspicuous features of his
character. From his father he inherited his keenness of intellect, his
habits of laborious industry, and his iron tenacity of purpose. From his
mother he may have acquired that strong sense of personal dignity--that
intuitive and perhaps unconscious feeling of what was due to his station
as well as to his individuality--which made his presence and address so
impressive and sometimes alarming.
Dignity was indeed the quality which immediately struck one on one's
first encounter with Lord Shaftesbury; and with dignity were associated
a marked imperiousness and an eager rapidity of thought, utterance, and
action. As one got to know him better, one began to realize his intense
tenderness towards all weakness and suffering; his overflowing affection
for those who stood nearest to him; his almost morbid sensitiveness; his
passionate indignation against cruelty or oppression. Now and then his
conversation was brightened by brief and sudden gleams of genuine
humour, but these gleams were rare. He had seen too much of human misery
to be habitually jocose, and his whole nature was underlain by a
groundwork of melancholy.
The marble of manhood retained the impression stamped upon the wax of
childhood. His early years had been profoundly unhappy. His parents were
stern disciplinarians of the antique type. His private school was a hell
on earth; and yet he used to say that he feared the master and the
bullies less than he feared his parents. One element of joy, and one
only, he recognized in looking back to those dark days, and that was the
devotion of an old nurse, who comforted him in his childish sorrows, and
taught him the rudiments of Christian faith. In all the struggles and
distresses of boyhood and manhood, he used the words of prayer which he
had learned from this good woman before he was seven years old; and of a
keepsake which she left him--the gold watch which he wore to the last
day of his life--he used to say, "That was given to me by the best
friend I ever had in the world."
At twelve years old Anthony Ashley went to Harrow, where he boarded with
the Head Master, Dr. Butler, father of the present Master of Trinity. I
have heard him say that the master in whose form he was, being a bad
sleeper, held "first school" at four o'clock on a winter's morning; and
that the boy for whom he fagged, being anxious to shine as a reciter,
and finding it difficult to secure an audience, compelled him and his
fellow-fag to listen night after night to his recitations, perched on a
high stool where a nap was impossible.
But in spite of these austerities, Anthony Ashley was happy at Harrow;
and the place should be sacred in the eyes of all philanthropists,
because it was there that, when he was fourteen years old, he
consciously and definitely gave his life to the service of his
fellow-men. He chanced to see a scene of drunken indecency and neglect
at the funeral of one of the villagers, and exclaimed in horror, "Good
heavens! Can this be permitted simply because the man was poor and
friendless?" What resulted is told by a tablet on the wall of the Old
School, which bears the following inscription:--
_Love. Serve_.
NEAR THIS SPOT
ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER
AFTERWARDS 7TH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, K.G.
WHILE YET A BOY IN HARROW SCHOOL
SAW WITH SHAME AND INDIGNATION
THE PAUPER'S FUNERAL
WHICH HELPED TO AWAKEN HIS LIFELONG
DEVOTION TO THE SERVICE OF THE POOR
AND THE OPPRESSED.
_Blessed is he that considereth the poor_.
After leaving Harrow Lord Ashley (as he now was) spent two years at a
private tutor's, and in 1819 he went up to Christ Church. In 1822 he
took a First Class in Classics. The next four years were spent in study
and travel, and in 1826 he was returned to Parliament, by the influence
of his uncle the Duke of Marlborough, for the Borough of Woodstock. On
November 16 he recorded in his diary: "Took the oaths of Parliament with
great good will; a slight prayer for assistance in my thoughts and
deeds." Never was a politician's prayer more abundantly granted.
In 1830 Lord Ashley married a daughter of Lord Cowper, and this
marriage, independently of the radiant happiness which it brought, had
an important bearing on his political career; for Lady Ashley's uncle
was Lord Melbourne, and her mother became, by a second marriage, the
wife of Lord Palmerston. Of Lord Melbourne and his strong common sense
Lord Shaftesbury, in 1882, told me the following characteristic story.
When the Queen became engaged to Prince Albert, she wished him to be
made King Consort by Act of Parliament, and urged her wish upon the
Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. At first that sagacious man simply
evaded the point, but when her Majesty insisted on a categorical answer,
"I thought it my duty to be very plain with her. I said, 'For G----'s
sake, let's hear no more of it, ma'am; for if you once get the English
people into the way of making kings, you will get them into the way of
unmaking them.'"
By this time Lord Ashley was deeply immersed in those philanthropic
enterprises which he had deliberately chosen as the occupation of his
lifetime. Reform of the Lunacy Law and a humaner treatment of lunatics
were the earliest objects to which he devoted himself. To attain them
the more effectually he got himself made a member, and subsequently
chairman, of the Lunacy Commission, and threw himself into the work with
characteristic thoroughness. He used to pay "surprise visits" both by
day and night to public and private asylums, and discovered by those
means a system of regulated and sanctioned cruelty which, as he narrated
it in his old age, seemed almost too horrible for credence.
The abolition of slavery all over the world was a cause which very early
enlisted his sympathy, and he used to tell, with grim humour, how, when,
after he had become Lord Shaftesbury, he signed an Open Letter to
America in favour of emancipation, a Southern newspaper sarcastically
inquired, "Where was this Lord Shaftesbury when the noble-hearted Lord
Ashley was doing his single-handed work on behalf of the English slaves
in the factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire?"
Sanitary reform and the promotion of the public health were objects at
which, in the middle part of his life, he worked hard, both as a
landowner and as the unpaid Chairman of the Board of Health. The crusade
against vivisection warmed his heart and woke his indignant eloquence
in his declining years. His Memorial Service in Westminster Abbey was
attended by representatives of nearly two hundred religious and
philanthropic institutions with which he had been connected, and which,
in one way or another, he had served. But, of course, it is with the
reform of the Factory Laws that his name is most inseparably associated.
In 1833 Lord Ashley took up the Ten Hours Bill, previously in the charge
of Mr. Sadler, who had now lost his seat. He carried his Bill through
the Second Reading, but it was opposed by Lord Althorp, who threw it
out, and carried a modified proposal in 1833. In 1844 the introduction
of a new Bill for the regulation of labour in factories brought Lord
Ashley back to his old battlefield. A desperate struggle was made to
amend the Bill into a Ten Hours Bill, but this failed, owing to Sir
Robert Peel's threat of resignation. In 1845 Lord Ashley refused the
Chief Secretaryship for Ireland in order to be able to devote himself
wholly to the Ten Hours Bill; and, as soon as Parliament rose, he went
on a tour through the manufacturing districts, speaking in public,
mediating between masters and men, and organizing the Ten Hours
movement.
In 1847 the Bill passed into law. On June 1 in that year Lord Ashley
wrote in his diary: "News that the Factory Bill has just passed the
Third Reading. I am humbled that my heart is not bursting with
thankfulness to Almighty God--that I can find breath and sense to
express my joy. What reward shall we give unto the Lord for all the
benefits He hath conferred upon us?--God in His mercy prosper the work,
and grant that these operatives may receive the cup of salvation and
call upon the name of the Lord!"
The perfervid vein of philanthropic zeal which is apparent in this
extract animated every part of Lord Shaftesbury's nature and every
action of his life. He had, if ever man had, "the Enthusiasm of
Humanity." His religion, on its interior side, was rapt, emotional, and
sometimes mystic; but at the same time it was, in its outward
manifestations, definite, tangible, and, beyond most men's, practical.
At the age of twenty-seven he wrote in his diary: "On my soul, I believe
that I desire the welfare of mankind." At eighty-four he exclaimed, in
view of his approaching end, "I cannot bear to leave the world with all
the misery in it." And this was no mere effusive declamation, but the
genuine utterance of a zeal which condescended to the most minute and
laborious forms of practical expression. "Poor dear children!" he
exclaimed to the superintendent of a ragged school, after hearing from
some of the children their tale of cold and hunger. "What can we do for
them?"
"My God shall supply all their need," replied the superintendent with
easy faith.
"Yes," said Lord Shaftesbury, "He will, but they must have some food
directly." He drove home, and instantly sent two churns of soup, enough
to feed four hundred. That winter ten thousand basins of soup, made in
Grosvenor Square, were distributed among the "dear little hearts" of
Whitechapel.
And as in small things, so in great. One principle consecrated his whole
life. His love of God constrained him to the service of men, and no
earthly object or consideration--however natural, innocent, or even
laudable--was allowed for a moment to interpose itself between him and
the supreme purpose for which he lived. He was by nature a man of keen
ambition, and yet he twice refused office in the Household, once the
Chief Secretaryship, and three times a seat in the Cabinet, because
acceptance would have hindered him in his social legislation and
philanthropic business. When we consider his singular qualifications for
public life--his physical gifts, his power of speech, his habits of
business, his intimate connections with the official caste--when we
remember that he did not succeed to his paternal property till he was
fifty years old, and then found it grossly neglected and burdened with
debt; and that his purse had been constantly drained by his
philanthropic enterprises--we are justified in saying that very few men
have ever sacrificed so much for a cause which brought neither honours,
nor riches, nor power, nor any visible reward, except the diminished
suffering and increased happiness of multitudes who were the least able
to help themselves.