Factory Acts a touchstone of character. To the end of his days his view
of public men was largely governed by the part which they had played in
that great controversy. "Gladstone voted against me," was a stern
sentence not seldom on his lips. "Bright was the most malignant opponent
the Factory Bill ever had." "Cobden, though bitterly hostile, was better
than Bright." Even men whom on general grounds he disliked and
despised--such as Lord Beaconsfield and Bishop Wilberforce--found a
saving clause in his judgment if he could truthfully say, "He helped me
with the chimney-sweeps," or, "He felt for the wretched operatives."
But even apart from questions of humane sentiment and the supreme
interests of social legislation, I always felt in my intercourse with
Lord Shaftesbury that it would have been impossible for him to act for
long together in subordination to, or even in concert with, any
political leader. Resolute, self-reliant, inflexible; hating compromise;
never turning aside by a hair's-breadth from the path of duty; incapable
of flattering high or low; dreading leaps in the dark, but dreading more
than anything else the sacrifice of principle to party--he was
essentially the type of politician who is the despair of the official
wire-puller.
Oddly enough, Lord Palmerston was the statesman with whom, despite all
ethical dissimilarity, he had the most sympathy, and this arose partly
from their near relationship and partly from Lord Palmerston's
easy-going habit of placing his ecclesiastical patronage in Lord
Shaftesbury's hands. It was this unseen but not unfelt power as a
confidential yet irresponsible adviser that Lord Shaftesbury really
enjoyed and, indeed, his political opinions were too individual to have
allowed of binding association with either political party. He was, in
the truest and best sense of the word, a Conservative. To call him a
Tory would be quite misleading. He was not averse from Roman Catholic
emancipation. He took no prominent part against the first Reform Bill.
His resistance to the admission of the Jews to Parliament was directed
rather against the method than the principle. Though not friendly to
Women's Suffrage, he said: "I shall feel myself bound to conform to the
national will, but I am not prepared to stimulate it."
But while no blind and unreasoning opponent of all change, he had a deep
and lively veneration for the past. Institutions, doctrines, ceremonies,
dignities, even social customs, which had descended from old time, had
for him a fascination and an awe. In his high sense of the privileges
and the duties of kingship, of aristocracy, of territorial possession,
of established religions, he recalled the doctrine of Burke; and he
resembled that illustrious man in his passionate love of principle, in
his proud hatred of shifts and compromises, in his contempt for the
whole race of mechanical politicians and their ignoble strife for place
and power.
When Lord Derby formed his Government in 1866, on the defeat of Lord
Russell's second Reform Bill, he endeavoured to obtain the sanction of
Lord Shaftesbury's name and authority by offering him a seat in his
Cabinet. This offer was promptly declined; had it been accepted, it
might have had an important bearing on the following event, which was
narrated to me by Lord Shaftesbury in 1882. One winter evening in 1867
he was sitting in his library in Grosvenor Square, when the servant told
him that there was a poor man waiting to see him. The man was shown in,
and proved to be a labourer from Clerkenwell, and one of the innumerable
recipients of the old Earl's charity. He said, "My Lord, you have been
very good to me, and I have come to tell you what I have heard." It
appeared that at the public-house which he frequented he had overheard
some Irishmen of desperate character plotting to blow up Clerkenwell
prison. He gave Lord Shaftesbury the information to be used as he
thought best, but made it a condition that his name should not be
divulged. If it were, his life would not be worth an hour's purchase.
Lord Shaftesbury pledged himself to secrecy, ordered his carriage, and
drove instantly to Whitehall. The authorities there refused, on grounds
of official practice, to entertain the information without the name and
address of the informant. These, of course, could not be given. The
warning was rejected, and the jail blown up. Had Lord Shaftesbury been a
Cabinet Minister, this triumph of officialism would probably not have
occurred.
What I have said of this favourite hero of mine in his public aspects
will have prepared the sympathetic reader for the presentment of the man
as he appeared in private life. For what he was abroad that he was at
home. He was not a man who showed two natures or lived two lives. He was
profoundly religious, eagerly benevolent, utterly impatient of whatever
stood between him and the laudable object of the moment, warmly attached
to those who shared his sympathies and helped his enterprises--_Fort
comme le diamant; plus tendre qu'une mère_. The imperiousness which I
described at the outset remained a leading characteristic to the last.
His opinions were strong, his judgment was emphatic, his language
unmeasured. He had been, all through his public life, surrounded by a
cohort of admiring and obedient coadjutors, and he was unused to, and
intolerant of, disagreement or opposition. It was a disconcerting
experience to speak on a platform where he was chairman, and, just as
one was warming to an impressive passage, to feel a vigorous pull at
one's coat-tail, and to hear a quick, imperative voice say, in no
muffled tone, "My dear fellow, are you never going to stop? We shall be
here all night."
But when due allowance was made for this natural habit of command, Lord
Shaftesbury was delightful company. Given to hospitality, he did the
honours with stately grace; and, on the rare occasions when he could be
induced to dine out, his presence was sure to make the party a success.
In early life he had been pestered by a delicate digestion, and had
accustomed himself to a regimen of rigid simplicity; but, though the
most abstemious of men, he knew and liked a good glass of wine, and in a
small party would bring out of the treasures of his memory things new
and old with a copiousness and a vivacity which fairly fascinated his
hearers. His conversation had a certain flavour of literature. His
classical scholarship was easy and graceful. He had the Latin poets at
his fingers' ends, spoke French fluently, knew Milton by heart, and was
a great admirer of Crabbe. His own style, both in speech and writing,
was copious, vigorous, and often really eloquent. It had the same
ornamental precision as his exquisite handwriting. When he was among
friends whom he thoroughly enjoyed, the sombre dignity of his
conversation was constantly enlivened by flashes of a genuine humour,
which relieved, by the force of vivid contrast, the habitual austerity
of his demeanour.
A kind of proud humility was constantly present in his speech and
bearing. Ostentation, display, lavish expenditure would have been
abhorrent alike to his taste and his principles. The stately figure
which bore itself so majestically in Courts and Parliaments naturally
unbent among the costermongers of Whitechapel and the labourers of
Dorsetshire. His personal appointments were simple to a degree; his own
expenditure was restricted within the narrowest limits. But he loved,
and was honestly proud of, his beautiful home--St. Giles's House, near
Cranbourne; and when he received his guests, gentle or simple, at "The
Saint," as he affectionately called it, the mixture of stateliness and
geniality in his bearing and address was an object-lesson in high
breeding. Once Lord Beaconsfield, who was staying with Lord Alington at
Crichel, was driven over to call on Lord Shaftesbury at St. Giles's.
When he rose to take his leave, he said, with characteristic
magniloquence, but not without an element of truth, "Good-bye, my dear
Lord. You have given me the privilege of seeing one of the most
impressive of all spectacles--a great English nobleman living in
patriarchal state in his own hereditary halls."
IV.
CARDINAL MANNING.
I have described a great philanthropist and a great statesman. My
present subject is a man who combined in singular harmony the qualities
of philanthropy and of statesmanship--Henry Edward, Cardinal Manning,
and titular Archbishop of Westminster.
My acquaintance with Cardinal Manning began in 1833. Early in the
Parliamentary session of that year he intimated, through a common
friend, a desire to make my acquaintance. He wished to get an
independent Member of Parliament, and especially, if possible, a Liberal
and a Churchman, to take up in the House of Commons the cause of
Denominational Education. His scheme was much the same as that now[3]
adopted by the Government--the concurrent endowment of all
denominational schools; which, as he remarked, would practically come to
mean those of the Anglicans, the Romans, and the Wesleyans. In
compliance with his request, I presented myself at that barrack-like
building off the Vauxhall Bridge Road, which was formerly the Guards'
Institute, and is now the Archbishop's House. Of course, I had long been
familiar with the Cardinal's shrunken form and finely-cut features, and
that extraordinary dignity of bearing which gave him, though in reality
below the middle height, the air and aspect of a tall man. But I only
knew him as a conspicuous and impressive figure in society, on public
platforms, and (where he specially loved to be) in the precincts of the
House of Commons. I had never exchanged a word with him, and it was with
a feeling of very special interest that I entered his presence.
We had little in common. I was still a young man, and the Cardinal was
already old. I was a staunch Anglican; he, the most devoted of
Papalists. I was strongly opposed both to his Ultramontane policy and to
those dexterous methods by which he was commonly supposed to promote it;
and, as far as the circumstances of my life had given me any insight
into the interior of Romanism, I sympathized with the great Oratorian of
Birmingham rather than with his brother-cardinal of Westminster. But
though I hope that my principles stood firm, all my prejudices melted
away in that fascinating presence. Though there was something like half
a century's difference in our ages, I felt at once and completely at
home with him.
What made our perfect ease of intercourse more remarkable was that, as
far as the Cardinal's immediate object was concerned, my visit was a
total failure. I had no sympathy with his scheme for the endowment of
denominational teaching, and, with all the will in the world to please
him, I could not even meet him half way. But this untoward circumstance
did not import the least difficulty or restraint into our conversation.
He gently glided from business into general topics; knew all about my
career, congratulated me on some recent success, remembered some of my
belongings, inquired about my school and college, was interested to find
that, like himself, I had been at Harrow and Oxford, and, after an
hour's pleasant chat, said, "Now you must stay and have some luncheon."
From that day to the end of his life I was a frequent visitor at his
house, and every year that I knew him I learned to regard and respect
him increasingly.
Looking back over these fourteen years, and reviewing my impressions of
his personality, I must put first the physical aspect of the man. He
seemed older than he was, and even more ascetic, for he looked as if,
like the cardinal in _Lothair_, he lived on biscuits and soda-water;
whereas he had a hearty appetite for his midday meal, and, in his own
words, "enjoyed his tea." Still, he carried the irreducible minimum of
flesh on his bones, and his hollow cheeks and shrunken jaws threw his
massive forehead into striking prominence. His line of features was
absolutely faultless in its statuesque regularity, but his face was
saved from the insipidity of too great perfection by the
imperious--rather ruthless--lines of his mouth and the penetrating
lustre of his deep-set eyes. His dress--a black cassock edged and
buttoned with crimson, with a crimson skullcap and biretta, and a
pectoral cross of gold--enhanced the picturesqueness of his aspect, and
as he entered the anteroom where one awaited his approach, the most
Protestant knee instinctively bent.
His dignity was astonishing. The position of a cardinal with a princely
rank recognized abroad but officially ignored in England was difficult
to carry off, but his exquisite tact enabled him to sustain it to
perfection. He never put himself forward; never asserted his rank; never
exposed himself to rebuffs; still, he always contrived to be the most
conspicuous figure in any company which he entered; and whether one
greeted him with the homage due to a prince of the Church or merely with
the respect which no one refuses to a courtly old gentleman, his manner
was equally easy, natural, and unembarrassed. The fact that the
Cardinal's name, after due consideration, was inserted in the Royal
Commission on the Housing of the Poor immediately after that of the
Prince of Wales and before Lord Salisbury's was the formal recognition
of a social precedence which adroitness and judgment had already made
his own.
To imagine that Cardinal Manning regarded station, or dignity, or even
power, as treasures to be valued in themselves would be ridiculously to
misconceive the man. He had two supreme and absorbing objects in
life--if, indeed, they may not be more properly spoken of as one--the
glory of God and the salvation of men. These were, in his intellect and
conscience, identified with the victory of the Roman Church. To these
all else was subordinated; by its relation to these all else was weighed
and calculated. His ecclesiastical dignity, and the secular recognition
of it, were valuable as means to high ends. They attracted public notice
to his person and mission; they secured him a wider hearing; they gave
him access to circles which, perhaps, would otherwise have been closed.
Hence, and for no other reason, they were valuable.
It has always to be borne in mind that Manning was essentially a man of
the world, though he was much more than that. Be it far from me to
disparage the ordinary type of Roman ecclesiastic, who is bred in a
seminary, and perhaps spends his lifetime in a religious community. That
peculiar training produces, often enough, a character of saintliness and
unworldly grace on which one can only "look," to use a phrase of Mr.
Gladstone's, "as men look up at the stars." But it was a very different
process that had made Cardinal Manning what he was. He had touched life
at many points. A wealthy home, four years at Harrow, Balliol in its
palmiest days, a good degree, a College Fellowship, political and
secular ambitions of no common kind, apprenticeship to the practical
work of a Government office, a marriage brightly but all too briefly
happy, the charge of a country parish, and an early initiation into the
duties of ecclesiastical rulership--all these experiences had made
Henry Manning, by the time of his momentous change, an accomplished man
of the world.
His subsequent career, though, of course, it superadded certain
characteristics of its own, never obliterated or even concealed the
marks left by those earlier phases, and the octogenarian Cardinal was a
beautifully-mannered, well-informed, sagacious old gentleman who, but
for his dress, might have passed for a Cabinet Minister, an eminent
judge, or a great county magnate.
His mental alertness was remarkable. He seemed to read everything that
came out, and to know all that was going on. He probed character with a
glance, and was particularly sharp on pretentiousness and
self-importance. A well-known publicist, who perhaps thinks of himself
rather more highly than he ought to think, once ventured to tell the
Cardinal that he knew nothing about the subject of a painful agitation
which pervaded London in the summer of 1885. "I have been hearing
confessions in London for thirty years, and I fancy more people have
confided their secrets to me than to you, Mr. ----," was the Cardinal's
reply.
Once, when his burning sympathy with suffering and his profound contempt
for Political Economy had led him, in his own words, to "poke fun at the
Dismal Science," the _Times_ lectured him in its most superior manner,
and said that the venerable prelate seemed to mistake cause and effect.
"That," said the Cardinal to me, "is the sort of criticism that an
undergraduate makes, and thinks himself very clever. But I am told that
in the present day the _Times_ is chiefly written by undergraduates."
I once asked him what he thought of a high dignitary of the English
Church, who had gone a certain way in a public movement, and then had
been frightened back by clamour. His reply was the single word
"_infirmus_," accompanied by that peculiar sniff which every one who
ever conversed with him must remember as adding so much to the piquancy
of his terse judgments. When he was asked his opinion of a famous
biography in which a son had disclosed, with too absolute frankness, his
father's innermost thoughts and feelings, the Cardinal replied, "I think
that ---- has committed the sin of Ham."
His sense of humour was peculiarly keen, and though it was habitually
kept under control, it was sometimes used to point a moral with
admirable effect.
"What are you going to do in life?" he asked a rather flippant
undergraduate at Oxford.
"Oh, I'm going to take Holy Orders," was the airy reply.
"Take care you get them, my son."
Though he was intolerant of bumptiousness, the Cardinal liked young men.
He often had some about him, and in speaking to them the friendliness of
his manner was touched with fatherliness in a truly attractive fashion.
And as with young men, so with children. Surely nothing could be
prettier than this answer to a little girl in New York who had addressed
some of her domestic experiences to "Cardinal Manning, England."
"My Dear Child,--You ask me whether I am glad to receive letters from
little children. I am always glad, for they write kindly and give me no
trouble. I wish all my letters were like theirs. Give my blessing to
your father, and tell him that our good Master will reward him a
hundredfold for all he has lost for the sake of his faith. Tell him that
when he comes over to England he must come to see me. And mind you bring
your violin, for I love music, but seldom have any time to hear it. The
next three or four years of your life are very precious. They are like
the ploughing-time and the sowing-time in the year. You are learning to
know God, the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the presence and voice of
the Holy Ghost in the Church of Jesus Christ. Learn all these things
solidly, and you will love the Blessed Sacrament and our Blessed Mother
with all your heart. And now you will pray for me that I may make a good
end of a long life, which cannot be far off. And may God guide you and
guard you in innocence and in fidelity through this evil, evil world!
And may His blessing be on your home and all belonging to you! Believe
me always a true friend, Henry Edward, Card. Abp. of Westminster."
The Cardinal had, I should say, rather a contempt for women. He
exercised a great influence over them, but I question if he rated their
intellectual and moral qualities as highly as he ought, and their
"rights" he held in utter detestation. General society, though in his
later days he saw little of it except at the Athenaeum, he thoroughly
enjoyed. Like most old people, he was fond of talking about old days,
and as he had known hosts of important and interesting men, had a
tenacious memory, and spoke the most finished English, it was a pleasure
to listen to his reminiscences. He wrote as well as he talked. His
pointed and lucid style gave to his printed performances a semblance of
cogency which they did not really possess; and his letters--even his
shortest notes--were as exquisite in wording as in penmanship. As he
grew older, he became increasingly sensible of the charms of "Auld Lang
Syne," and he delighted to renew his acquaintance with the scenes and
associations of his youth.
On July 15, 1888, being the first day of the Eton and Harrow Match at
Lord's, a few old Harrovians of different generations met at a Harrow
dinner. The Cardinal, who had just turned eighty, was invited. He
declined to dine, on the ground that he never dined out, but he would on
no account forego the opportunity of meeting the members of his old
school, and he recalled with pride that he had played for two years in
the Harrow Eleven. He appeared as soon as dinner was over, gallantly
faced the cloud of cigar-smoke, was in his very best vein of anecdote
and reminiscence, and stayed till the party broke up.
The Cardinal's friendships were not, I believe, numerous, but his
affection for Mr. Gladstone is well known. It dated from Oxford. Through
Manning and Hope-Scott the influence of the Catholic revival reached the
young member for Newark, and they were the godfathers of his eldest son.
After their secession to Rome in 1851 this profound friendship fell into
abeyance. As far as Manning was concerned, it was renewed when, in 1868,
Mr. Gladstone took in hand to disestablish the Irish Church. It was
broken again by the controversy about _Vaticanism_, in 1875, and some
fifteen years later was happily revived by the good offices of a common
friend. "Gladstone is a very fine fellow," said the Cardinal to me in
1890. "He is not vindictive. You may fight him as hard as you like, and
when the fight is over you will find that it has left no rancour behind
it."
This affection for Mr. Gladstone was a personal matter, quite
independent of politics; but in political matters also they had much in
common. "You know," wrote the Cardinal to Mrs. Gladstone on her Golden
Wedding, "how nearly I have agreed in William's political career,
especially in his Irish policy of the last twenty years." He accepted
the principle of Home Rule, though he thought badly of the Bill of 1886,
and predicted its failure from the day when it was brought in. The
exclusion of the Irish members was in his eyes a fatal blot, as tending
rather to separation than to that Imperial federation which was his
political ideal. But the Cardinal always held his politics in
subordination to his religion, and at the General Election of 1885 his
vigorous intervention on behalf of denominational education which he
considered to be imperilled by the Radical policy, considerably
embarrassed the Liberal cause in those districts of London where there
is a Roman Catholic vote.
It is necessary to say a word about Cardinal Manning's method of
religious propagandism. He excelled in the art of driving a nail where
it would go. He never worried his acquaintance with controversy, never
introduced religious topics unseasonably, never cast his pearls before
unappreciative animals. But when he saw a chance, an opening, a
sympathetic tendency, or a weak spot, he fastened on it with unerring
instinct. His line was rather admonitory than persuasive. When he
thought that the person whom he was addressing had an inkling of the
truth, but was held back from avowing it by cowardice or indecision, he
would utter the most startling warnings about the danger of dallying
with grace.
"I promise you to become a Catholic when I am twenty-one," said a young
lady whom he was trying to convert.
"But can you promise to live so long?" was the searching rejoinder.