had been the "Metropolitan Board of Works," which had its dwelling in
Spring Gardens. The old building had to be adapted to its new uses, and,
while the reconstruction was in progress, the County Council was
permitted by the Corporation to meet in the Guildhall. There we
assembled on the 12th of February, a highly-diversified, and, in some
respects, an interesting company. A careful analysis of our quality and
occupations gave the following results: Peers, 4; M.P.'s and ex-M.P.'s,
9; Clergymen, 2; Barristers, 14; Solicitors, 3; Soldiers, 4; Doctors, 5;
Tutors, 2; Architects, 2; Builders, 4; Engineers, 3; Journalists, 4;
Publisher, 1; Bankers, 5; Stock-Exchange men, 5; Auctioneers, 3; Brewer,
1; Clothiers, 2; Confectioner, 1; Drapers, 2; Grocers, 2; Mineral
Water-maker, 1; Optician, 1; Shoemaker, 1; Merchants, 22; Manufacturers,
13; Gentlemen at large, 8; "Unspecified," 10. And to these must be added
three ladies, who had been illegally elected and were soon unseated. A
current joke of the time represented one of our more highly-cultured
Councillors saying to a colleague drawn from another rank,--"The
acoustics of this Hall seem very defective"--to which the colleague,
after sniffing, replies--"Indeed? I don't perceive anything unpleasant."
Which things were an allegory; but conveyed a true impression of our
social and educational diversities.
The first business which we had to transact was the election of a
Chairman. Lord Rosebery was elected by 104 votes to 17; and so began the
most useful portion of his varied career. The honorary office of
Vice-Chairman was unanimously conferred on Sir John Lubbock, afterwards
Lord Avebury; and for the Deputy Chairmanship, a salaried post of
practical importance, the Council chose Mr. J. F. B. Firth, who had made
his name as an exponent of the intricacies of Metropolitan Government.
To watch the methods of Lord Rosebery's chairmanship was an interesting
study. After much experience of public bodies and public meetings, I
consider him the best chairman but one under whom I ever sat. The best
was Mr. Leonard Courtney, now Lord Courtney of Penwith, who to the gifts
of accuracy, promptness, and mastery of detail, added the rarer grace
of absolute impartiality. Lord Rosebery had the accuracy, the
promptness, and the mastery, but he was not impartial. He was inclined
to add the functions of Leader of the House to those of Speaker, which
were rightly his. When a subject on which he felt strongly was under
discussion, and opinion in the Council was closely balanced, Lord
Rosebery would intervene just at the close of the debate, with a short,
strong, and emphatic speech, and so influence the division in favour of
his own view. This practice is, in my judgment, inconsistent with ideal
chairmanship, but in the early days of the Council it was not without
its uses.
We had to furnish ourselves with a constitution, to distribute our
various powers, to frame rules of debate, and to create an order of
business. To do all this in a full Council of 137 members, most of them
quite unversed in public life, many of them opinionated, all articulate,
and not a few vociferous, was a work of the utmost difficulty, and Lord
Rosebery engineered it to perfection. He was suave and courteous;
smoothed acrid dissensions with judicious humour; used sarcasm
sparingly, but with effect; and maintained a certain dignity of bearing
which profoundly impressed the representatives of the Great Middle
Class. "By Jove, how these chaps funk Rosebery!" was the candid
exclamation of Sir Howard Vincent; and his remark applied quite equally
to his own "Moderate" friends and to my "Progressives." It was
characteristic of these gentry that they longed to call Lord Rosebery
"My Lord," and were with difficulty induced to substitute "Mr.
Chairman." The one member of the Council who stands out in my memory as
not having "funked" the Chairman is Mr. John Burns, whose action and
bearing in the Council formed one of my most interesting studies. The
events of February, 1885, were still present to my memory, though the
Councillor for Battersea had probably forgotten them. The change which
four years had wrought was extraordinary. He spoke constantly and
effectively, but always with moderation, good feeling, and common sense.
At the same time, he maintained a breezy independence, and, when he
thought that the Chair ought to be defied, defied it. This was awkward,
for the Chairman had no disciplinary powers, and there was no executive
force to compel submission to his rulings. As far as I could observe,
Mr. Burns never gave way, and yet he soon ceased to enter into conflict
with the Chair. What was the influence which tamed him? I often
wondered, but never knew.
The Council had got itself duly divided into Committees, and it was
noticeable that there was an enormous rush of Councillors anxious to
serve on the Housing Committee. The "Bitter Cry of Outcast London" had
not been raised in vain, and every man in the Council seemed anxious to
bear his part in the work of redressing an intolerable wrong. The weekly
Session of the Council was fixed for Tuesday afternoon, to the disgust
of some Progressives who hankered after the more democratic hour of 7
p.m. The main part of the business was the discussion of the Reports
brought up from the various Committees, and, when those were disposed
of, abstract motions could be debated. Some earnest Liberals were always
trying to raise such questions as Home Rule, Land Law, Enfranchisement
of Leaseholds, and other matters which lay outside the purview of the
Council; and it was delightful to see Lord Rosebery damping down these
irregular enthusiasms, and reminding his hearers of the limits which
Parliament had set to their activities. Those limits were, in all
conscience, wide enough, and included in their scope Housing, Asylums,
Bridges, Fire-Brigades, Highways, Reformatory Schools, Main Drainage,
Parks, Theatres, and Music-Halls, besides the complicated system of
finance by which all our practice was regulated. The Committees dealing
with these subjects, and several others of less importance, were manned
by able, zealous, and conscientious servants of the public, who gave
ungrudgingly of their time (which in many cases was also money),
thought, and labour. The Council as a whole displayed a voracious
appetite for work, and rendered, without fee or reward, a service to
Greater London which no money could have purchased.
In the autumn of this year--1889--some correspondence appeared in
newspapers and reviews about what was called "The New Liberalism." By
that title was meant a Liberalism which could no longer content itself
with the crudities of official politics, but longed to bear its part in
the social regeneration of the race. In an article in the _Nineteenth
Century_, I commented on the insensibility of the Liberal Leaders to
this new inspiration. "Who would lead our armies into Edom?" I confess
that I thought of Lord Rosebery as our likeliest champion; but I put the
cause above the man. "Wherever our leader may come from, I am confident
that the movement will go on. _Ça ira! Ça ira! Malgré les mutins, tout
réussira!_ The cause of Social Service arouses that moral enthusiasm
which cannot be bought and cannot be resisted, and which carries in
itself the pledge of victory. The terrible magnitude and urgency of the
evils with which we have to cope cannot be overstated. Those who set out
to fight them will have to encounter great and manifold
difficulties--ignorance, stupidity, prejudice, greed, cruelty,
self-interest, instincts of class, cowardly distrust of popular
movements, 'spiritual wickedness in high places.' And, in the face of
these opposing forces, it is cheering to think that, after long years of
single-handed striving, the good cause now has its workers everywhere.
And to none does it make a more direct or a more imperious appeal than
to us Liberal politicians. If we are worthy of the name, we must be in
earnest about a cause which promises happiness, and health, and length
of days to those who by their daily labour of hand and head principally
maintain the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race. We must be impatient of
a state of society in which healthy dwellings and unadulterated food and
pure water and fresh air are made the monopolies of the rich. We must be
eager to do our part towards abolishing filth and eradicating disease,
and giving free scope to those beneficent laws of Nature which, if only
we will obey them, are so manifestly designed to promote the welfare and
the longevity of man. If we believe that every human being has equally
and indefeasibly the right to be happy, we must find our chief interest
and most satisfying occupation in Social Service. Our aim is, first, to
lighten the load of existence for those thronging thousands of the human
family whose experience of life is one long suffering, and then to 'add
sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier.' The poor, the
ignorant, the weak, the hungry, the over-worked, all call for aid; and,
in ministering to their wants, the adherent of the New Liberalism knows
that he is fulfilling the best function of the character which he
professes, and moreover is helping to enlarge the boundaries of the
Kingdom of God."
When those words were written, the London County Council had just begun
its work. I served on it till March, 1895; and during those six years it
had proved in practice what a right-minded Municipality can do towards
brightening and sweetening human life. It cut broad roads through
squalid slums, letting in light and air where all had been darkness and
pollution. It cleared wide areas of insanitary dwellings, where only
vice could thrive, and re-housed the dispossessed. It broke up the
monotony of mean streets with beautiful parks and health-giving
pleasure-grounds. It transfigured the Music-Halls, and showed that, by
the exercise of a little firmness and common sense, the tone and
character of the "Poor Man's Theatre" could be raised to the level of
what would be applauded in a drawing-room. By forbidding the sale of
refreshments in the auditorium, it crushed the old-fashioned
superstition that public entertainment and alcoholic drink are
inseparably connected. In some of these good works it was my privilege
to bear a part; and, in that matter of the purification of the
Music-Halls, I was proud to follow the lead of Sir John McDougall, who
has since been Chairman of the Council, and who, at the time of which I
am writing, fearlessly exposed himself to unbounded calumny, and even
physical violence, in his crusade for the moral purity of popular
amusement. Those were six years of fruitful service; and, though a long
time has elapsed since I left the Council, I have constantly watched its
labours, and can heartily assent to the eulogy pronounced by my friend
Henry Scott Holland, when he was quitting his Canonry at St. Paul's for
his Professorship at Oxford:
"As for London, my whole heart is still given to the lines of the
Progressive policy on the County Council. I still think that this has
given London a soul; and that it has been by far the most effective work
that one has watched happening.... The hope of London lies with the
County Council."
Before I say goodbye to this portion of my "Autobiography," let me
record the fact that the London County Council produced a poet of its
own. The first Council came to an end in March, 1892, and the second,
elected on the 5th of that month, gave the Progressives a greatly
increased majority. One of the newly-elected Councillors uttered his
triumphant joy in song.
"Here then you have your answer, you that thought
To find our London unawakened still,
A sleeping plunder for you, thought to fill
The gorge of private greed, and count for naught
The common good. Time unto her has brought
Her glorious hour, her strength of public will
Grown conscious, and a civic soul to thrill
The once dull mass that for your spoil you sought.
Lo, where the alert majestic city stands,
Dreaming her dream of golden days to be,
With shaded eyes beneath her arching hands
Scanning the forward pathway, like a seer
To whom the riven future has made clear
The marvel of some mighty destiny."[61]
Moved by the desire to gratify a young ambition, I introduced the poet
to Mr. Gladstone, and that great man, who never damned with faint
praise, pronounced that this was the finest thing written about London
since Wordsworth's Sonnet "Composed upon Westminster Bridge."
In August, 1892, Gladstone became Prime Minister for the fourth time. He
gave me a place in his Government; and for the next three years my
activities were limited to North Bedfordshire, which I then represented,
the House of Commons, and Whitehall. I was restored to liberty by the
dissolution of July, 1895. In my chapter about Oxford, I spoke of the
Rev. E. S. Talbot, then Warden of Keble, and now Bishop of Winchester,
as one of those whose friendship I had acquired in undergraduate days.
After serving for a while as Vicar of Leeds, he was appointed in 1895 to
the See of Rochester, which then included South London. Soon after he
had entered on his new work, he said to me, "Men of leisure are very
scarce in South London. Will you come across the Thames, and lend us a
hand?"
FOOTNOTES:
[55] Dr. Butler's Harrow Sermons. Series II.
[56] "Christianity without the Cross a Corruption of the Gospel of
Christ."
[57] Rev. H. Scott Holland, D.D.
[58] Honourable mention ought here to be made of "The Guild of St.
Matthew," founded by the Rev. Stewart Headlam in 1877. Its object was
"To justify God to the People," and it prepared the way for later
organizations.
[59] The Rev. H. S. Holland, D.D.
[60] F. W. H. Myers.
[61] F. Henderson, _By the Sea, and other poems_.
XV
ECCLESIASTICA
The English Church, as established by the law of England, offers
the Supernatural to all who choose to come. It is like the Divine
Being Himself, Whose sun shines alike on the evil and on the good.
J. H. SHORTHOUSE, _John Inglesant_.
Mr. Shorthouse, like most people who have come over to the Church from
Dissent, set an inordinate value on the principle of Establishment. He
seemed (and in that particular he resembled Archbishop Tait) incapable
of conceiving the idea of a Church as separate from, and independent of,
the State. The words "as established by the law of England" in the
passage which stands at the head of this chapter appear to suggest a
doubt whether the English Church, if she ceased to be "established,"
could still discharge her function as the divinely-appointed dispenser
of sacramental grace to the English people. Those who, like Mr.
Gladstone, believe that no change in her worldly circumstances could
"compromise or impair her character as the Catholic and Apostolic Church
of this country," would omit Mr. Shorthouse's qualifying words, and
would say, simply, that the English Church, whether established or not,
offers the Supernatural to all who choose to come, and that she is, has
been, and always will be, "historically the same institution through
which the Gospel was originally preached to the English Nation." But
this is not the place for theorization; so, for the moment, I am content
to take Mr. Shorthouse's statement as it stands, and to say that a
loving pride in the English Church has been the permanent passion of my
life. I hold with Dean Church, a man not given to hyperbole, that "in
spite of inconsistencies and menacing troubles, she is still the most
glorious Church in Christendom."
I was baptized in the Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Woburn,
formerly a chapel dependent on the Cistercian Abbey hard by, which the
first Earl of Bedford received as a gift from Henry VIII.[62] This truly
interesting church was destroyed, to please an innovating incumbent, in
1864; but my earliest impressions of public worship are connected with
it, and in my mind's eye I can see it as clearly as if it were still
standing. It had never been "restored "; but had been decorated by my
grandfather, who inherited the ecclesiastical rights of the Abbots of
Woburn, and whose "Curate" the incumbent was.[63] My grandfather was a
liberal giver, and did his best, according to his lights, to make the
Church beautiful. He filled the East Window with stained glass, the
central subject being his own coat of arms, with patriarchs and saints
grouped round it in due subordination. Beneath the window was a fine
picture, by Carlo Maratti, of the Holy Family. The Holy Table was a
table indeed, with legs and drawers after the manner of a writing-table,
and a cover of red velvet. The chancel was long; and the south side of
it was engrossed by "the Duke's Pew," which was enclosed within high
walls and thick curtains, and contained a fireplace. The north side of
the chancel was equally engrossed by a pew for the Duke's servants. The
choir, male and female after their kind, surrounded the organ in a
gallery at the West End. The whole Church was pewed throughout, and
white-washed, the chancel being enriched with plaster mouldings. On the
capital of each pillar was a scutcheon, bearing the arms of some family
allied to our own. The largest and most vivid presentment of the Royal
Arms which I have ever seen crowned the chancel-arch.
Our clerical staff consisted of the incumbent (who became a "Vicar" by
Act of Parliament in 1868) and a curate. Our list of services was as
follows: Sunday--11 a.m., Morning Prayer, Litany, Table-prayers, and
Sermon; 6 p.m., Evening Prayer and Sermon. There was Evening Prayer with
a sermon on Thursdays, and a prayer-meeting in the schoolroom on Tuesday
evenings. There were no extra services in Lent or Advent, nor on any
Holy Days except Good Friday and Ascension Day. The Holy Communion was
administered after Morning Service on the first Sunday of the month, and
on Christmas and Easter Days; and after Evening Service on the third
Sunday. The black gown was, of course, worn in the pulpit, and I
remember a mild sensation caused by the disuse of bands. The prayers
were preached; the Psalms were read; and the hymn-book in use was "The
Church and Home Metrical Psalter and Hymnal"--a quaint compilation which
I have never seen elsewhere. It would not be easy to describe the
dreariness of the services; and the preaching corresponded to them.
This is curious, for Evangelical preaching generally was rousing and
effective. I remember that we heard preaching of that type from
strangers who occasionally "took duty" or "pleaded for Societies"; but
our own pastors always expatiated on Justification by Faith only. I
cannot recall any other subject; and, even in enforcing this,
"Pulpit-eloquence," topical allusions, and illustrations whether from
nature or from books, were rigidly eschewed. "As dull as a sermon" is a
proverbial saying which for me in early boyhood had an awful truth.
It has been stated in an earlier chapter that I discovered the
Sacramental System of the Church by the simple method of studying the
Prayer Book. Certainly I got no help in that direction from my spiritual
pastors. The incumbent was, I should think, the Lowest Churchman who
ever lived. He was a Cambridge man; a thorough gentleman; well-read;
wholly devoted to his sacred calling; and fearless in his assertion of
what he believed to be right. (He once refused to let Jowett preach in
our pulpit, though the noble patron made the request.) He was entirely
insensible to poetry, beauty, romance, and enthusiasm; but his mind was
essentially logical, and he followed his creed to its extremest
consequences. Baptismal grace, of course, he absolutely denied. He
prepared me for Confirmation, and he began his preparation by assailing
my faith in the Presence and the Succession. He defined Confirmation as
"a coming of age in the things of the soul." I perfectly remember a
sermon preached on "Sacrament Sunday," which ended with some such words
as these, "I go to yonder table to-day; not expecting to meet the Lord,
because I know He will not be there." I have seldom heard the doctrine
of the Real Absence stated with equal frankness.
All my religious associations were with the Evangelical school, of which
my parents were devoted adherents. My uncle, the Rev. Lord Wriothesley
Russell (1804-1886), had been a disciple of Charles Simeon at Cambridge,
but had completely discarded such fragments of Churchmanship as lingered
in his master's teaching. My mother (1810-1884) had been in early life
closely allied with "the Clapham Sect"; and our friendship with the last
survivor of that sect, Miss Marianne Thornton (1797-1887), linked us to
the Wilberforces, the Venns, and the Macaulays. My acquaintance with
Lord Shaftesbury (1801-1885) I have always esteemed one of the chief
honours of my life. He combined in a singular degree the gifts which
make a Leader. He had an imperious will, a perfervid temper, unbounded
enthusiasm, inexhaustible energy. Any movement with which he was
connected he controlled. He brooked neither opposition nor criticism.
His authority was reinforced by advantages of aspect and station; by a
stately manner, by a noble and commanding eloquence. But all these gifts
were as nothing when compared with the power of his lifelong
consistency. When he was a boy at Harrow, a brutal scene at a pauper's
funeral awoke his devotion to the cause of the poor and helpless.
Seventy years later, when he lay on his deathbed, his only regret was
that he must leave the world with so much misery in it. From first to
last, he was an Evangelical of the highest and purest type, displaying
all the religious and social virtues of that school in their perfection.
Yet he left it on record that he had been more harshly treated by the
Evangelical party than by any other. Perhaps the explanation is that
those excellent people were only kicking against the pricks of a
too-absolute control.
Such were the religious associations of my early life; and I am deeply
thankful for them. I have found, by much experiment, that there is no
foundation on which the superstructure of Catholic religion can be more
securely built than on the Evangelical confession of man's utter
sinfulness, and of the free pardon purchased by the Blood of Christ. A
man trained in that confession may, without sacrificing a jot of his
earlier creed, learn to accept all that the Catholic Church teaches
about Orders and Sacraments; but to the end he will retain some
characteristic marks of his spiritual beginnings. For my own part, I
hold with Mr. Gladstone that to label oneself with an ecclesiastical
nickname would be to compromise "the first of earthly blessings--one's
mental freedom[64]"; but if anyone chose to call me a "Catholic
Evangelical," I should not quarrel with the designation.
I said in an earlier chapter that I had an inborn fondness for Catholic
ceremonial, and this, I suppose, was part of my general love of material
beauty. Amid such surroundings as I have described, it was a fondness
not easily indulged. When I was twelve years old, I was staying at
Leamington in August, and on a Holy Day I peeped into the Roman Church
there, and saw for the first time the ceremonies of High Mass; and from
that day on I longed to see them reproduced in the Church of England.
During one of our periodical visits to London, I discovered the
beautiful church in Gordon Square where the "Adherents of a Restored
Apostolate" celebrate Divine Worship with bewildering splendour. The
propinquity of our house to Westminster Abbey enabled me to enter into
the more chastened, yet dignified, beauty of the English rite. At Harrow
the brightness and colour of our School-Chapel struck my untutored eye
as "exceeding magnifical"; and the early celebrations in the Parish
Church had a solemnity which the Chapel lacked.
But the happiest memory of all is connected with a little Church[65]
about two miles from my home. It is a tiny structure of one aisle, with
the altar fenced off by a screen of carved oak. It served a group of
half a dozen houses, and it stood amid green fields, remote from
traffic, and scarcely visible except to those who searched for it. There
an enthusiastic and devoted priest spent five and twenty years of an
isolated ministry; and there, for the first time in our communion, I saw
the Divine Mysteries celebrated with the appropriate accessories.
My walks to that secluded altar, in the fresh brightness of summer
mornings, can never be forgotten until the whole tablet is blotted. On
the sky-line, the great masses of distant woodland, half-veiled in mist,
lay like a blue cloud. Within, there was "the fair white linen cloth
upon the wooden table, with fresh flowers above, and the worn slabs
beneath that record the dim names of the forgotten dead"; and there
"amid the faint streaks of the early dawn, the faithful, kneeling round
the oaken railing, took into their hands the worn silver of the Grail--
"The chalice of the Grapes of God."[66]