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MEMORIES 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


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MEMORIES 


BY 

EDWARD    CLODD 


"  A  friend  is  a  chap  what  you  knows  everything  about 
but  you  likes  him  all  the  same." — Smith  Minor. 


WITH  PORTRAITS 


THIRD   EDITION 


LONDON 

CHAPMAN   AND    HALL,  LTD. 
1916 


: 

-"  ^ 


PRINTED  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN  BY 
RICHARD  CLAY  &  SONS,  LIMITED, 
BRUNSWICK  ST.,  STAMFORD  ST.,  S.E., 

AND  BUNGAY,    SUFFOLK. 


CT 


C55 


TO 
MY  COMRADE-WIFE 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

FRIENDS  whose  judgment  I  value  have  said  that  a 
duty  lies  upon  me  to  set  down  impressions  of  some  men 
and  women  whom  it  has  been  my  privilege  to  know 
more  or  less  intimately.  Otherwise,  I  should  not  have 
put  pen  to  paper. 

If  I  can  make  the  reader  who  cares  to  dip  into  these 
pages  feel  that  he  and  I  are  having  a  fireside  talk  about 
those  of  whom  portrayal  is  attempted,  my  purpose  will 
be  achieved.  Two  reasons  prompt  me  to  add  a  good 
many  letters,  (1)  because  they  contain  matters  of  varied 
interest  with  which  the  writers  deal  familiarly,  and 
(2)  because  they  give  me  warrant  to  say  with  York 
Powell :  "  I  have  met  men  I  am  proud  to  think  about," 
and,  I  would  add  with  him,  that  "  if  they  have  cared 
for  me  half  as  much  as  I  have  cared  for  them,  I  have 
not  been  badly  loved." 

E.  C. 

Stratford  House,  Aldeburgh, 
September  1916. 


CONTENTS 


PAQR 

I      A   FRAGMENT   OF   AUTOBIOGRAPHY             .            .  1 

II      GRANT   ALLEN 21 

III      W.  K.  CLIFFORD 37 

T.  H.  HUXLEY 40- 

SIR   HENRY   THOMPSON 46 

IV      HERBERT    SPENCER 50 

V      SIR   WILLIAM   HUGGINS  .....  54 

R.  A.  PROCTOR 56 

VI      H.  W.  BATES 63 

JOSEPH    THOMSON              .....  69 

PAUL   B.  DU    CHAILLU 71 

VII      MARY    HENRIETTA   KINGSLEY              .             .  75 

VIII      EDWARD    WHYMPER 83 

IX      WILLIAM    SIMPSON               .....  86 

X      EDWARD    FITZGERALD     .....  92 

XI      SIR   ALFRED    COMYN   LYALL      ....  99 

XII      J.  COTTER   MORISON Ill 

XIII  F.    YORK    POWELL 122 

SIR   JOHN    RHYS       .             .             .             .             .             .  131 

SIR    LAURENCE    GOMME 134 

XIV  GEORGE   MEREDITH 138 

ix 


x  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XV      GEORGE    GISSING 165 

XVI      W.  HOLMAN-HUNT 196 

XVII      ANDREW    LANG         ......  207 

XVIII      F.  HINDES    GROOME            .....  217 

XIX      J.  A.  PICTON 227 

MONCURE    D.  CONWAY 237 

XX      REV.  CHARLES    VOYSEY .             ....  243 

XXI      REV.  CHARLES    ANDERSON        ....  248 

SAMUEL   BUTLER 254 

XXII      ELIZA    LYNN    LINTON 264 

XXIII  DR.  GEORGE   BIRD               .....  270 
SIR    RICHARD    AND    LADY   BURTON               .             .  271 

SIR   B.  W.  RICHARDSON 271 

PAUL   BLOUET 273 

GEORGE    W.  CABLE             .....  274 

L.  F.  AUSTIN 276 

XXIV  PROFESSOR   A.  VAN    MILLINGEN         .             .             .  278 
INDEX  . 


LIST  OF   PORTRAITS 

To  face  page 

GRANT    ALLEN 20 

T.    H.    HUXLEY 40 

P.   B.    DU    CHAILLU 70 

MARY    H.    KINGSLEY  .......  74 

SIR   ALFRED    LYALL   .......  98 

J.   COTTER   MORISON 110 

A   NATIVE    AUSTRALIAN    CHRISTIAN     ....  124 

GEORGE   MEREDITH 138 

GEORGE   GISSING 164 

ANDREW    LANG 206 

SAMUEL    BUTLER 254 

ELIZA    LYNN    LINTON  264 


MEMORIES 


A  FRAGMENT  or  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

I  WAS  born  at  Margate  on  the  first  of  July  1840.  The 
brig  of  which  my  father  was  captain  traded  between 
that  port  and  the  North.  My  parents  lived  in  Queen 
Street,  Margate,  till  my  early  childhood,  when  they  re- 
moved to  Aldeburgh,  of  which  town  both  were  natives. 
I  come  of  sailor  and  farmer  stock.  The  ancestors  on  my 
father's  side  lived,  some  at  Parham  and  some  at  Fram- 
lingham;  my  maternal  grandfather  was  a  Greenland 
whaler.  Among  the  scanty  memories  of  boyhood  I  recall 
one  item  of  interest.  In  May  1845  Sir  John  Franklin's 
ships,  the  Erebus  and  Terror,  anchored  in  Aldeburgh 
Bay.  My  father  went  on  board  the  Erebus,  and  talking 
with  Sir  John  about  the  difficulties  to  be  met  when  he 
reached  the  vast  ice  region,  the  "  heroic  sailor  soul  " 
said,  "  If  I  can't  cut  through  it,  I'll  bite  it." 

Tables  whether  of  long  or  short  descent  have  never 
greatly  interested  me ;  compared  to  the  time  of  man's 
tenure  of  the  earth  they  are  all  so  recent !  To  trace 
his  divergence,  and  that  of  the  ape,  from  a  common 
stem  through  an  ageless  past,  and  to  learn  the  story 
of  the  tribulation  through  which  man  has  entered  into 
his  kingdom,  is  to  me  a  more  fascinating  subject  than 
search  after  pedigrees.1 

1  Writing  to  a  friend  on  the  like  matter,  Huxley  says  :  "  My  own 
genealogical  inquiries  have  taken  me  so  far  back  that  I  confess  ths 
later  stages  do  not  interest  me." — Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II.  p.  5. 
B 


2  MEMORIES 

But  I  must  confess  to  a  certain  quickening  of  interest 
in  my  ancestry  when  I  learnt  that  my  earthborn  name 
is  as  old  as  it  is  rare.  Staying  with  the  late  Felix 
Cobbold,  he  said  to  me,  "  Your  name  goes  a  long  while 
back  in  Suffolk."  In  proof  of  this  he  showed  me 
an  entry — Subsidy  Returns  of  the  County  of  Suffolk  in 
1327.  Villata  de  Otteleye  (Otley)  Carlford  Hundred. 
Johanne  Clod,  XII  pence.  Also,  with  a  leap  of  more 
than  three  centuries,  in  the  Hearth  Tax  Rates  for  Suffolk 
in  1674,  one  Charles  Clod  of  Debenham,  assessed. 
Enough.  Under  these  dusty  records  let 

"  The  rude  forefathers  of  the  hamlet  sleep." 

Seventy  years  ago,  Aldeburgh,  now  the  haunt  of 
golfers  and  yachtsmen,  retained  many  of  the  features 
of  an  old  fishing  and  smuggling  port  which  are  described 
with  the  minuteness  and  fidelity  of  a  Dutch  painting 
in  Crabbe's  Borough.  The  nearest  station  on  the 
Eastern  Counties  Railway,  as  it  was  then  named,  was 
at  Ipswich,  twenty-four  miles  distant;  hence  pas- 
sengers, parcels  and  newspapers  were  dependent  on  the 
coach  that  plied  daily  between  the  two  places.  My 
memory  recalls  how,  in  1854,  when  the  Crimean  War 
was  raging,  we  schoolboys  used  to  assemble  at  the 
Reading  Room  to  await  the  arrival  of  The  Times,  from 
which  the  Vicar  read  the  news  to  our  excited  ears. 
When,  many  years  later,  taking  a  trip  up  the  Gulf  of 
Finland,  I  saw  the  fortresses  of  Sveaborg  and  Cronstadt, 
the  past  came  back  to  me  with  a  strange  vividness. 

As  for  books,  they  were  far  to  seek  in  any  number. 
The  Bible,  PilgrMs  Progress  and  the  Holy  War,  Baxter's 
Saints1  Everlasting  Rest,  Hervey's  Meditations  among 
the  Tombs  and  some  odd  missionary  magazines,  com- 
plete the  serious  list.  I  consider  myself  fortunate  that 


A  FRAGMENT   OF  AUTOBIOGRAPHY         3 

it  did  not  include  the  Lives  of  Eminent  Christians  in 
twelve  volumes  and  the  series  of  death-bed  scenes 
entitled  The  Family  Sepulchre  which  my  friend  Nevinson 
tells  us,  in  his  delightful  Between  the  Acts,  were  among 
the  Sunday  books  of  his  boyhood.  But  then  Hervey 
was  a  host  in  himself  ! 

As  for  the  secular,  there  were,  to  the  joy  of  a  boy  avid 
for  reading,  some  volumes  of  the  Penny  Encyclopaedia, 
Peter  Parley's  Annual,  a  small  edition  of  Buff  on' s 
Natural  History  and  a  few  school  prizes,  among  which 
were  Scenes  and  Sketches  from  the  Bible  and  Maria 
Hack's  (she  was  a  sister  of  Bernard  Barton,  whose 
daughter  Edward  FitzGerald  married)  Lectures  at  Home. 
I  have  heard  my  mother  say  that  she  was  one  of  the 
crowd  of  girls  who  cried  over  Pamela,  or  Virtue  Re- 
warded ;  but  that  ponderous  novel  had  disappeared 
from  our  shelves,  and  neither  fiction  nor  fairy  tales 
found  a  place  on  them.  Nor  was  there  a  Shakespeare. 

Of  course,  all  worldly  books  and  toys  were  tabu  on 
Sunday.  That  day  was  filled  by  morning  and  evening 
attendances  at  chapel,  and  afternoons  at  the  Sunday 
school,  where  we  sang,  among  other  hymns,  one  whose 
unintended  effect  is  the  manufacture  of  prigs. 

"  I  thank  the  goodness  and  the  grace 

Which  on  my  birth  has  smiled, 
And  made  me  in  this  Christian  land 
A  happy  English  child. 

I  was  not  born  as  thousands  are 

Where  God  is  never  known, 
And  taught  to  pray  a  useless  prayer, 

To  blocks  of  wood  and  stone. 

My  God,  I  thank  Thee,  who  hast  planned 

A  better  lot  for  me, 
And  placed  me  in  this  happy  land 

Where  I  can  hear  of  Thee." 


4  MEMORIES 

But  the  priggish  and  the  pitiful  were  blended.  The 
missionary  box  was  always  under  our  eyes,  and  in  our 
ears  the  lesson  of  our  debt  to  heathen  countries  for  all 
the  nice  things  which  came  from  them.  What  better 
could  we  do  than  imitate  the  pattern  set  in  a  recent 
American  hymn-book  for  Young  Helpers  ? 

"  Now,  thought  little  Jack, 
What  can  I  send  back 
To  these  lands  for  their  presents  to  me  ? 
The  Bible,  indeed, 
Is  all  that  they  need, 
So  that  shall  go  over  the  sea." 

The  religion  taught  me  was  in  truth  "  the  fear  of  the 
Lord  " ;  the  object  being  to  frighten  me  into  being  good 
through  threat,  even  for  venial  sins,  of  an  eternal  hell 

"  Where  sinners  must  with  devils  dwell 
In  darkness,  fire  and  chains." 

As  for  heaven  the  attractive  prospect  to  a  high-spirited 
boy  was  of  a  place 

"  Where  congregations  ne'er  break  up, 
And  Sabbaths  have  no  end," 

while  his  wholesome  zest  in  life,  feeling  "it  in  every 
limb,"  was  to  be  stifled  by  the  maudlin  wish  in  the 
Sunday  school  hymn — 

"  I  want  to  be  an  angel, 

And  with  the  angels  stand, 
A  crown  upon  my  forehead, 
And  a  harp  within  my  hand." 

Happily,  once  challenged,  a  spurious  religion  of  that 
sort  yields  to  revolt  of  the  reason  and  to  the  sense  of 
justice  which  is  strong  in  a  child.  I  cannot  remember 
that  the  creed  I  was  taught  was  ever  very  real  to  me. 


A  FRAGMENT   OF  AUTOBIOGRAPHY         5 

Strict  as  was  the  discipline,  and  narrow  as  was  the 
teaching,  both  were  begotten  of  anxious  care  for  the 
spiritual  well-being  of  the  child.  Looking  back,  one 
sees  that  there  was  compensation  in  the  knowledge 
gained  of  the  contents  of  the  Bible  and  in  the  committal 
of  large  portions  of  it  to  memory.  For  that  I  cannot  be 
too  thankful.  But  it  was  not  until  the  time  of  my 
escape  in  early  manhood  from  the  theory  (nowadays 
confined  to  the  illiterate)  that  the  Bible  is  inspired  in 
every  word  and  letter — an  inspiration  which  would  be 
worthless  if  it  did  not  include  all  the  translations — that 
I  realized  the  supreme  value  of  that  miscellaneous  col- 
lection of  writings  of  unsettled  authorships  and  often 
of  uncertain  meaning.1 

Those  who  may  have  read  what  I  have  written  else- 
where will  not  suspect  me  of  any  recantation  when  I 
say  that  the  neglect  into  which  the  study  of  the  Bible 

1  There  are  scarcely  any  two  great  branches  of  the  Cliristian  Church 
which  are  even  agreed  as  to  what  constitutes  the  Bible. — The  Bible, 
its  Meaning  and  Supremacy,  by  F.  W.  Farrar,  Dean  of  Canterbury. 

Explain  it  how  we  may,  there  was  something  in  the  Hebrew  genius 
which  enabled  it  to  express  the  moral  and  spiritual  experiences  of 
successive  ages  in  forms  which  had  a  singular  attractiveness  for  the 
mixed  races  with  whom  lay  the  moulding  of  the  future  world.  That 
its  history  was  false,  its  morality  often  imperfect,  and  in  its  earlier 
records  repugnant,  is  now  extensively  admitted.  My  final  word  is 
that  the  Bible  is  not  dead  but  has  an  indefinite  if  not  immortal  life 
before  it;  for  the  entire  abandonment  of  supernatural  claims,  so  far 
from  lessening  its  influence,  will  confirm  and  extend  it." — Man  and 
the  Bible,  J.  A.  Picton,  p.  315. 

What  will  be  the  attitude  of  mind  towards  the  Bible  on  the  part 
of  boys  and  girls  who  are  asked  to  explain  such  fatuities  as  the  reforms 
in  religion  made  by  Jehu  and  Joash;  who  are  Baruch,  Huldah  and 
Necho;  and  how  Athaliah  and  Josiah  died?  These  questions  are 
copied  from  a  list  set  by  a  fool  of  an  examiner  whose  folly,  though 
he  were  "  brayed  in  a  mortar,"  could  not  be  squeezed  out  of  him. 
*Tis  pedants  of  this  type  that  cause  their  pupils  to  associate  the  Bible 
with  all  that  is  arid  and  repellent  and  to  throw  it  aside  when  they 
leave  school. 


6  MEMORIES 

has  fallen  nowadays  is  matter  for  grave  concern.  Where 
used  at  all  in  schools,  it  is  made  a  vehicle  of  dogmatic 
teaching,  while  in  most  families  it  is  never  read  at  all. 
If  you  quote  it,  people  look  puzzled  as  to  whether  your 
quotation  comes  from  it,  or  from  Sterne  or  Shakespeare. 
So  the  generation  is  growing  up  the  poorer  in  remaining 
ignorant,  to  cite  Huxley  (whom  none  can  charge  with 
Bibliolatry),  "  of  a  book  that  has  been  woven  into  the 
life  of  all  that  is  best  and  noblest  in  English  History; 
that  is  written  in  the  noblest  and  purest  English  and 
abounds  in  exquisite  beauties  of  mere  literary  form." 

I  was  first  sent  to  a  dame  school,  where  the  lesson- 
books  were  well-nigh  as  primitive  as  the  horn-books 
which  they  had  not  wholly  superseded.  For  as  late 
as  1845  these  were  in  use  in  schools  in  the  Midlands. 
Shenstone  thus  describes  them  in  the  School-mistress  : 

"  Eftsoons  the  Urchins  to  their  Tasks  repair, 
Their.  Books  of  Stature  small  they  take  in  hand, 
Which  with  pellucid  horn  secured  are 
To  save  from  Fingers  wet  the  Letters  fair.11 

In  due  time  I  passed  to  the  Aldeburgh  Grammar  school, 
of  which  Mr.  Buck  was  master.  "  A  dominie  man  ! — 
an  auld  dominie,  wha  keepit  a  schule  and  caa'ed  it 
an  acaademy !  "  Long  gathered  to  his  fathers,  there 
remains  a  debt  of  abiding  gratitude  to  Joseph  Buck.  He 
caned  us,  but  we  were  none  the  worse  for  that.  He  was 
of  the  class  of  teachers,  always  rare,  who  instilled  into 
his  scholars  a  love  of  learning  for  its  own  sake.  He 
practised  the  motto  Non  multa  sed  multum.  Outside 
the  three  R's,  the  subjects  included  only  Geography, 
Grammar,  English  and  Roman  History  and  Latin,  in 
all  of  which  the  boys  were  well  grounded.  Any  idea 

1  Collected  Essays,  Vol.  III.  p.  398. 


A  FRAGMENT   OF  AUTOBIOGRAPHY         7 

of  teaching  science  was  yet  unborn.  Athletics  played 
a  small  part  in  school  life  in  those  days.  Bathing  in 
the  sea  or  the  river,  baseball  and  fights  between  the 
boys  of  the  "  acaademy  "  and  the  National  School — these, 
fanned  by  the  rivalries  between  the  Up-Towners  and 
Down-Towners,  into  which  factions  the  small  town  was 
divided — completed  the  list  of  amusements,  for  amuse- 
ment there  was  in  fisticuffs  with  result  of  bloody 
noses. 

To  my  schoolmaster  and  to  my  mother — of  blessed 
memory — keen-witted  and  herself  eager  to  know  what- 
ever can  be  known,  I  owe,  in  Gibbon's  oft-quoted  words, 
"  that  early  and  invincible  love  of  reading  which  I 
would  not  exchange  for  the  treasures  of  India."  As 
I  have  spoken  of  my  training  in  a  narrow  orthodoxy,  I 
am  moved  to  say  that  my  mother's  receptive  and  elastic 
mind  gave  her  escape  from  the  creed  of  early  years,  and, 
as  showing  what  broad  sympathies  moved  her  to  the 
last,  among  her  dying  words  were  those  of  regret  that 
she  could  not  live  to  know  that  the  innocence  of 
Dreyfus,  of  which  she  had  no  doubt,  would  be  estab- 
lished. 

I  rejoice  that,  living  to  a  great  age,  she  came  to  know 
many  of  my  friends ;  I  treasure  the  letters  which  some 
of  them  wrote  to  me  when  she  died;  these  paying 
tribute  to  her  intelligence  and  charm. 

It  was  my  parents'  hope,  I  may  add  of  that  devo- 
tional age,  their  prayer,  that  I  should  become  a  minister 
of  the  Gospel,  as  the  phrase  went.  Their  wish  was  the 
deeper  because,  as  the  only  surviving  child  of  seven, 
they  desired  to  dedicate  me  to  the  service  of  their 
Master.  The  Baptist  preacher  whose  chapel  we  at- 
tended fostered  the  idea.  He  set  me  to  write  little 
sermons  on  given  texts,  which  he  read  and  corrected, 


8  MEMORIES 

and  whatever  trend  towards  scribbling  I  then  had  was 
further  encouraged  by  him  in  setting  me  papers  on  such 
ambitious  subjects  as  the  "  Abolition  of  Slavery  "  and 
the  "Character  of  Oliver  Cromwell."  The  Baptists 
were  among  the  active  sects  in  sending  anti-slavery 
missionaries  to  America,  and  the  fact  that  our  minister's 
brother  had  been  nearly  killed  by  a  mob  of  slave-owners 
only  added  to  a  zeal  which  he  infused  into  us  to  free 
the  negro  from  his  fetters.  We  meant  business  !  We 
boys  of  the  Sunday  school  read  and  solemnly  discussed 
our  several  essays  at  an  "  improvement  class "  held 
weekly  in  the  chapel  schoolroom,  when  the  minister 
presided. 

But,  all  unwittingly,  the  hopes  of  parents  and  parson 
were  dashed  to  pieces  when  my  mother  took  me  to  see 
the  Great  Exhibition  in  Hyde  Park  in  1851.  To  a  boy 
of  eleven,  whose  farthest  jaunts  had  been  on  holidays  to 
relatives  at  Framlingham,  this  was  to  enter  a  wonder- 
land which  surpassed  all  that  his  mind  could  conceive. 
It  made  me  secretly  resolve,  whatever  might  block  the 
way,  to  get  to  London  when  I  left  school.  Paying  a 
visit  there  to  an  uncle  and  aunt  in  the  spring  of  1855,  I 
seized  a  chance  to  offer  myself  as  clerk  to  an  accountant 
in  Cornhill.  Laying  stress  on  my  rawness,  he  stipulated 
that  I  should  serve  him  six  months  for  nothing.  Hence, 
needful  draft  on  the  family  purse,  and,  what  was  still 
more  needful,  my  parents'  consent  to  my  sitting  on 
a  stool  instead  of  standing  in  a  pulpit.  This  they 
reluctantly  gave. 

It  is  easy  to  be  tedious  and  brief  at  the  same  time, 
and  perchance  I  may  avoid  the  former  if  I  skip  altogether 
some  dry  details  as  to  the  three  employers  whom  I 
served  between  1855  and  1862,  when  I  obtained  a 
clerkship  in  the  London  Joint  Stock  Bank.  Ten  years 


A  FRAGMENT   OF  AUTOBIOGRAPHY         9 

after  that  I  was  promoted  to  the  Secretaryship,  from 
which  position  I  retired  in  June  1915. 

Life  in  London  brought  the  gain  of  another  and  far 
wider  outlook  and  especially  supplemented  the  defici- 
encies of  boyhood  by  putting  me  in  touch  with  good 
libraries.  Among  these,  that  of  the  Birkbeck  Institute 
gave  welcome  opportunity  for  study  in  various  branches. 
I  devoured  books  on  science  and  history,  and  read  on 
a  heap  of  miscellaneous  subjects.  Carlyle's  Sartor 
Resartus  and  Past  and  Present  were  tonics  to  me.  But 
I  did  not  care,  and  never  have  cared,  for  metaphysics. 
They  were  to  me,  to  quote  the  Book  of  Job,  as  "  the 
filling  of  the  belly  with  the  east  wind."  Jowett  said 
that  "  we  should  learn  enough  about  them  as  will  enable 
the  mind  to  get  rid  of  them."  ...  "  They  destroy 
the  power  of  observation  and  of  acquiring  knowledge."  * 
Lectures  were  more  the  order  of  the  day  than  they  now 
are,  and  the  town  was  rich  in  preachers  round  whom 
congregations  thronged.  As  a  rule,  amusements  were 
too  costly  for  frequent  indulgence,  but  now  and  again 
the  purse  did  allow  a  whole  or  a  half  evening2  at 
the  Haymarket  or  Sadler's  Wells  or  the  Adelphi.  At  the 
Haymarket,  Buckstone  was  the  great  draw;  at  the 
Adelphi  I  saw  Madame  Celeste,  then  an  old  woman, 
in  The  Green  Bushes.  At  Sadler's  Wells,  The  Hunch- 
back, The  Love  Chase  and  other  plays  by  James  Sheridan 
Knowles  were  often  performed.  He  afterwards  became 
a  Baptist  preacher  and  wrote  books  against  Popery  ! 
I  heard  him  preach  in  Cross  Street  Chapel,  Islington, 

1  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II.  p.  109. 

2  In  those  days  one  was  admitted  to  the  theatre  at  nine  o'clock, 
when  the  play  was  half  over,  by  paying  half  price.     Horace  Walpole 
speaks  of  the  riots  at  Covent  Garden  and  Drury  Lane  theatres  because 
of  the  refusal  of  the  managers  to  admit  spectators  at  half  price  after 
the  third  act.— Letter  863,  Vol.  I.  p.  289  (Toynbee's  Edition). 


10  MEMORIES 

and  can  recall  his  vivid  and  dramatic  reading  of  the 
parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son  as  the  lesson  before  the 
sermon.  The  actor  survived  in  the  reader. 

In  the  matter  of  church  and  chapel  going  my  Sundays 
were  usually  "  well  spent."  I  heard,  one  after  another, 
preachers  now  for  the  most  part  forgotten,  who  were 
a  power  in  their  day.  Among  these  were  Thomas 
Binney,  Newman  Hall,  Alexander  Raleigh,  Canon 
Liddon,  James  Martineau  (of  whom  more  anon)  and, 
not  least  of  the  company,  Frederick  Denison  Maurice 
and  Dr.  Jowett,  whose  heresies  incited  the  bolder  clergy 
to  invite  him  to  their  pulpits.  Among  these  were  Dean 
Stanley  and  the  Rev.  William  Rogers  of  Bishopsgate, 
known  as  "  Hang  Theology  Rogers." 

Later  on,  friendship  with  Mark  Wilks,  Allanson 
Picton,  Moncure  Conway  and  Charles  Voysey  drew  me, 
as  the  phrase  goes,  to  "  sit  under  "  them  occasionally. 
To  tell  of  this  is  to  recall  a  time  when  the  spacious  Non- 
conformist chapels  of  London  were  crowded  with  eager 
hearers.  There  was  then  no  need  of  posters  on  hoard- 
ings or  of  limelight  shows  to  draw  men  and  women  to 
places  of  worship  now  kept  going  by  these  and  other 
artificial  attractions.  Not  long  before  his  death,  Mark 
Wilks — staunchest  of  friends,  most  lovable  of  men  and 
most  eloquent  and  broad-minded  of  preachers — said  to 
me  :  "  We  Nonconformists  are  getting  flabby.  We  have 
no  grievances  left ;  our  political  and  religious  disabilities 
are  removed,  and  there  is  nothing  left  about  which  to 
fight.  Any  troubles  we  may  have  are  from  within  and 
not  from  without.  So  the  one  excitement  we  have  left 
us  is  when  some  daring  brother  preaches  doctrines 
other  than  those  that  are  set  down  in  the  trust  deed 
of  the  chapel  of  which  he  is  pastor.  Then  the  trustees, 
if  they  are  orthodox,  try  to  eject  him.  And  with  the 


A  FRAGMENT   OF  AUTOBIOGRAPHY       11 

advance  of  the  younger  generation  of  Dissenters  in  the 
social  scale  there  is,  on  the  one  hand,  drifting  towards 
the  Church  of  England  as  more  respectable,  or,  on  the 
other  hand,  blank  indifferentism." 

Books,  more  than  all;  next  to  these,  sermons  and 
lectures,  started  me  on  lines  of  reflection  which,  ulti- 
mately, were  fatal  to  the  creed  taught  in  boyhood.  But 
the  approach  to  the  terminus  reached  in  later  years  was 
very  slow. 

The  boy  must  be  dull  of  eye  who,  living  in  a  flat 
country,  is  not  impressed  by  the  spectacle  of  the  rising 
and  movements  of  the  stars,  and  the  succession  of  their 
constellations  which  these  afford.  I  loved  to  watch 
them  and  learn  their  names.  Hence  an  early  interest 
in  astronomy.  Maria  Hack's  book  set  me  on  the  mak- 
ing of  a  rude  telescope  with  cardboard  tubes,  the  lenses 
for  which  I  bought  from  the  local  watchmaker.  When, 
later  on,  Chalmer's  Astronomical  Discourses  came  into 
my  hands,  I  revelled  in  the  book.  To  this,  some  time 
after,  followed  the  reading  of  the  Bridgewater  Treatises 
and  other  books  whose  titles  I  cannot  recall.  But  all 
of  them  had,  as  their  main  theme,  "  The  power,  wisdom 
and  goodness  of  God  manifested  in  the  Creation." 
They  started  certain  lines  of  thought,  and  were  a  sort 
of  sliding  scale  towards  unorthodox  views.  As  I  have 
just  said,  the  arrival  was  slow.  Even  Darwin's  Origin 
of  Species,  which  came  out  when  I  was  reading  Bell 
On  the  Hand,  was  not  a  greatly  disturbing  force,  be- 
cause, after  only  hinting  that  his  theory  "  would  throw 
light  on  the  origin  of  man  and  his  history,"  he  added 
that  "  there  is  grandeur  in  the  view  of  life  with  its 
several  powers  having  originally  been  breathed  by  the 
Creator  into  a  few  forms  or  only  one." 

Only  those  who  were  on  the  threshold  of  full  manhood 


12  MEMORIES 

in  the  sixties  of  the  last  century  can  realize  through 
what  a  Sturm  und  Drang  period  they  passed.  It  was 
good,  and,  more  than  that,  it  was  a  glorious  thing  to  be 
alive.  It  was  an  epoch  not  of  Reform,  but  of  Revolu- 
tion :  old  things  were  passing  away ;  all  things  were 
becoming  new. 

1859 — Annus  mirdbilis — saw  the  publication  of  Dar- 
win's book,  about  which  everybody  knows  nowadays, 
and  of  Kirchoff  s  and  Bunsen's  Spectrum  Analysis,  not 
so  well  known,  but  a  book  revealing  the  story  of  the 
same  stuff  of  which  all  things  in  heaven  and  earth  are 
spun.  It  is  interesting  to  note,  by  the  way,  that  the 
same  year  gave  us  The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel  and 
Adam  Bede. 

In  June  1860,  at  the  meeting  of  the  British  Associa- 
tion at  Oxford,  there  was  a  memorable  duel  between 
Huxley  and  Bishop  Wilberforce  on  the  question  of 
man's  fundamental  relationship  to  the  great  apes.  Of 
course  the  bishop  knew  nothing  about  the  subject,  but 
he  had  been  coached  by  Sir  Richard  Owen,  who  had 
contended  that  there  are  marked  differences  between 
the  brains  of  man  and  ape.  Owen  was  proved  by 
Huxley  to  be  in  the  wrong,  but  he  never  admitted  it.1 
Huxley  had  an  easy  task  in  demolishing  the  specious 
arguments  of  the  bishop,  but  the  excitement  in  theological 
circles  caused  by  the  discussion  remained  at  fever  heat 
until  another  shock  diverted  attention  elsewhere. 

This  was  delivered  by  no  foe  outside  the  camp,  but 
by  six  clergymen  and  one  lay  member  of  the  Church  of 
England — septem  contra  Christum,  as  they  were  labelled. 
Under  the  innocent  title  of  Essays  and  Reviews,  these 
seven  published  a  series  of  papers  of  so  heterodox  a 
character — as  heterodoxy  then  went — as  to  create  an 
1  See  p.  129. 


A  FRAGMENT  OF  AUTOBIOGRAPHY       18 

agitation  of  whose  force  and  fury  the  present  genera- 
tion can  have  no  conception.  From  Archbishop  to 
pew-opener  every  Churchman  lost  his  head.  Oddly 
enough,  the  warning  note  as  to  the  dangerous  tendencies 
of  the  book  was  sounded  by  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  a 
disciple  of  Comte,  in  an  article  on  "  Neo- Christianity  " 
in  the  Westminster  Review  of  October  1860.  The  heavy 
guns  of  the  orthodox  Reviews  and  the  lighter  artillery 
of  the  religious  papers  were  levelled  on  the  Essayists. 
Two  of  them,  Dr.  Williams  and  Mr.  Wilson,  were  haled 
before  the  ecclesiastical  courts  and  suspended  from  their 
livings  for  a  year.  But  these  sentences  were  reversed 
on  appeal  by  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy 
Council,  when  the  Lord  Chancellor,  Baron  Westbury, 
delivered  his  famous  judgment  that  it  was  not  heretical 
for  a  clergyman  to  deny  the  doctrine  of  eternal  punish- 
ment. Mr.  Bowen,  afterwards  Lord  Bowen,  wrote  on 
the  margin  of  his  copy  of  tfie  Chancellor's  deliverance  : 
"  Hell  dismissed  with  costs."  l  The  addition  to  this 
laconic  comment  was  that  the  judgment  had  deprived 
the  British  Churchman  of  his  sure  and  certain  hope  of 
the  everlasting  damnation  of  the  wicked.  This  was  in 
1864.  But  in  1862  there  was  still  "  Woe  to  them  that 
are  at  ease  in  Zion,"  since  a  troubler  came  this  time  in 
the  person  of  a  Bishop.  Colenso's  Critical  Examination 
of  the  Pentateuch  challenged  the  historical  accuracy  of 
those  documents,  bringing  upon  its  author  a  sentence 
of  deposition  from  his  see  of  Natal  by  his  Metropolitan, 
an  act  which  the  Privy  Council  declared  to  be  null  and 
void. 

But  the  commotion  made  by  the  Essayists  and  the 
Bishop  was  mild  compared  with  that  which  was  stirred 
by  the  publication  of  Ecce  Homo  in  1865.     It  came  out 
1  Jowett's  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  I.  p.  302. 


14  MEMORIES 

anonymously,  and,  drolly  enough,  its  authorship  was 
attributed  to  persons  as  different  as  the  Archbishop  of 
York,  Napoleon  the  Third,  the  Poet  Laureate,  George 
Eliot,  and  the  Master  of  Trinity  !  As  is  now  known,  it 
was  written  by  the  late  Sir  John  Seeley,  Regius  Professor 
of  Modern  History  in  the  University  of  Cambridge. 
No  ecclesiastical  court  could  touch  him  !  Ecce  Homo 
sent  a  shudder  through  every  sect  in  Christendom; 
through  Nonconformists  as  well  as  Churchmen,  for 
these  had  also  proved  themselves  eager  heresy-hunters 
in  expelling  one  of  their  Professors  for  "  unsound  " 
views  about  the  Old  Testament.  That  the  Incarnate 
God  the  Son,  the  Saviour  of  Mankind,  should  be  de- 
scribed as  "  a  young  man  of  promise,  popular  with  those 
who  knew  him  and  appearing  to  enjoy  the  Divine 
favour "  l  so  infuriated  the  orthodox  that,  refutation 
lacking,  the  only  weapons  hurled  at  the  head  of  the 
blasphemous  author  were  the  usual  expletives.  That 
gentlest  of  men  and  most  unselfish  philanthropist, 
the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  was  moved  to  denounce 
Ecce  Homo  as  "  the  most  pestilential  volume  ever 
vomited  from  the  jaws  of  hell." 

Yes,  they  were  indeed  stirring  times,  and  if  the  Church 
has  survived  these  and  other  blows  dealt  at  her  creeds 
and  dogmas  by  the  hands  of  friends  and  foes,  it  is  be- 
cause she  has,  with  an  adaptability  which  marks  her 
earlier  history,  when  she  wisely  adopted  pagan  rites  and 
sacraments  and  transformed  the  old  gods  into  Christian 
saints,  silently  abandoned  certain  beliefs  as  no  longer 
"  necessary  to  salvation."  So,  after  all,  the  essayists, 
the  bishop  and  the  professor  did  not  fail  in  their  purpose 
of  liberalizing  a  venerable  institution  whose  existence, 
on  the  whole,  has  been  more  for  good  than  for  evil. 
1  Preface  to  Ecce  Homo. 


A  FRAGMENT   OF  AUTOBIOGRAPHY       15 

To  take  up  Essays  and  Reviews  nowadays  is  only  to 
beget  surprise  that  so  mildly  heterodox  a  book  could 
have  evoked  anger  and  dismay.  As  for  Colenso,  his 
book  recalls,  not  his  ingenious  calculations  on  the 
fecundity  of  Hebrew  matrons  and  on  the  number  of 
pigeons  which  the  Hebrew  priests  had  to  eat  daily,  so 
much  as  the  "  Limericks  "  which  his  Examination  of  the 
earlier  documents  of  the  Bible  provoked. 

"  A  Bishop  there  was  named  Colenso, 
Who  counted  from  one  up  to  ten  so, 

That  the  writings  Levitical 

He  found  were  uncritical, 
And  went  out  to  tell  the  black  men  so. 

A  Bishop  there  was  of  Natal, 
Who  had  a  Zulu  for  a  pal, 

Said  the  Zulu  :  '  Look  here, 

Ain't  the  Pentateuch  queer  ?  * 
Which  converted  my  Lord  of  Natal." 

A  cogent  example  of  the  change  of  outlook  wrought 
within  the  last  two  generations  is  supplied  by  the  late  Sir 
Francis  Galton.  In  his  Memoirs  of  My  Life  1  he  says  : 
"  When  I  was  at  Cambridge  the  horizon  of  the  anti- 
quarians was  so  narrow  that  the  whole  history  of  the 
early  world  was  literally  believed  by  many  of  the  best 
informed  men  to  be  contained  in  the  Pentateuch.  It 
was  also  practically  supposed  that  nothing  more  of 
importance  could  be  learnt  of  the  origins  of  civilization 
during  classical  times  than  was  to  be  found  definitely 
stated  in  classical  authors."  In  his  obituary  notice  of 
Dean  Milman,2  the  late  Dean  Stanley  speaks  of  the 
horror  created  by  the  Dean's  History  of  the  Jews,  one 
reason  being  that  Abraham,  "  the  friend  of  God,"  was 

1  p.  66. 

2  Macmillan's  Magazine,  January  1869. 


16  MEMORIES 

described  as  a  "  sheik  !  "  l  In  Oxford  the  book  was 
denounced  from  the  University  pulpit.  In  a  volume 
of  Essays  entitled  Authority  and  Archaeology,  the  late 
Canon  Driver  says  that  "  there  is  no  tittle  of  monumental 
evidence  whatever  that  the  Hebrew  patriarchs  lived 
in  Palestine."  He  adds,  "  not  one  of  the  many  facts 
adduced  by  Professor  Sayce  is  independent  evidence 
that  the  patriarchs  visited  Palestine  or  even  that  they 
existed  at  all."  2  And  nobody  turns  a  hair  ! 

My  waning  belief  in  the  Bible  as  in  any  sense  a  Reve- 
lation was  shattered  by  reading  Jowett's  article  on  the 
"  Interpretation  of  Scripture  "  in  Essays  and  Reviews. 
"  Interpret  it  like  any  other  book,"  was  the  counsel. 
But  the  two  books,  through  which,  ultimately,  I  was 
to  grasp  the  force  of  the  ancient  words  :  "  Ye  shall  know 
the  truth  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free,"  were 
Huxley's  Man's  Place  in  Nature,  published  in  1863,  and 
Sir  E.  B.  Tylor's  Primitive  Culture :  Researches  into  the 
development  of  Mythology,  Philosophy,  Religion,  Language, 
Art,  and  Customs,  published  in  1871.  Darwin's  hesita- 
tion to  apply  his  theory  to  man  was  due,  he  tells  us,  to 
a  desire  "  not  to  add  to  the  prejudices  against  his  views." 
Huxley  forced  his  hand.  In  1860  he  delivered  a  course 
of  lectures  to  working-men,  which,  three  years  after- 
wards, were  published  under  the  title  above-named. 
Their  purport  was  to  prove,  as  prove  they  did  to  the 
hilt,  that  no  barrier  exists,  either  in  body  or  mind, 
between  man  and  animal,  and  that  "  even  the  highest 

1  " The  monarch  [i.e.  of  Egypt]  possessed  a  numerous  seraglio 
which  was  supplied  by  any  means,  however  lawless  or  violent.     This 
was  so  notorious  that  Abraham,  though  an  independent  Sheik  or 
Emir,  if  his  fair-complexioned  Mesopotamian  wife  should  excite  the 
cupidity    of   the    swarthy   Egyptian,    might    apprehend    the    worst 
consequences."'— Vol.  I.  p.  9  (1829). 

2  p.  149. 


A  FRAGMENT  OF  AUTOBIOGRAPHY       17 

faculties  of  feeling  and  of  intellect  begin  to  germinate 
in  lower  forms  of  life." 

In  Primitive  Culture,  as  its  sub-title  indicates,  Tylor 
applied  the  theory  of  evolution  to  every  branch  of 
knowledge.  Within  its  limits  that  book  remains  a 
classic  of  Anthropology — the  youngest  and  most  im- 
portant of  all  the  sciences.  The  discoveries  which  are 
classed  under  that  general  term  have  acted  as  powerful 
solvents  on  every  opinion  of  the  past.  They  have 
proved  on  what  mythical  foundation  the  story  of  the 
fall  of  man  rests,  thereby  demolishing  the  raison  d'etre 
of  the  doctrine  of  his  redemption.  They  have  pene- 
trated the  mists  of  the  past  and  traced  the  legends 
of  Paradise,  Creation,  the  Deluge  and  other  stories  to 
their  birthplaces  in  the  valley  of  the  Euphrates  or  the 
uplands  of  Persia.  The  record  of  man's  slow,  tortuous 
advance  in  material  things  has  its  parallel  in  his  spiritual 
advance  from  naturalism,  or  belief  in  impersonal  powers, 
through  animism,  or  belief  in  spirit  indwelling  in  every- 
thing, to  the  higher  conception  of  deity. 

Satisfied,  by  study  of  these,  and  other  books  bearing 
on  the  subject,  as  to  Man  being  both  in  body  and  soul 
no  exception  in  the  processes  of  evolution,  and  as  to  his 
history  being  one  of  advance  from  savagery  to  civiliza- 
tion, there  followed  concern  as  to  what  should  be  taught 
to  my  children.  Were  they  to  learn  a  mass  of  fiction, 
with  the  cost  and  pain  of  unlearning  it  afterwards,  dis- 
covering that  what  I  had  taught  them  or  allowed  them 
to  be  taught  was  not  the  truth,  the  truth  which  alone 
can  make  us  "  free  "  ? 

Were  they  to  be  taught  that  the  Almighty  Maker  of 
all  things  visible  and  invisible  left  his  throne  in  heaven 
from  time  to  time,  and  came  to  this  earth  to  do  things 
of  which  man,  at  his  lowest,  would  be  ashamed  ?  Were 


18  MEMORIES 

they  to  be  taught  that  all  that  is  set  down  in  the  Bible 
about  God  actually  happened?     That  he  put  the  first 
man  and  woman  in  a  garden  and  threatened  them  that 
if  they  ate  of  the  fruit  of  a  certain  tree  they  would  be 
punished  with  death,  and  not  only  this,  but  that  their 
sin  would  be  visited  on  all  mankind,  whose  everlasting 
fate  would  be  determined  at  the  Judgment  Day  ?     Were 
they  to  be  taught  that  this  Almighty  One  played  the 
part  of  "  Peeping  Tom  "  to  see  what  Adam  and  Eve 
would  do,  knowing  all  the  time  what  would  happen  ? 
Were  they  to  be  taught  that  all  the  people  who  were 
afterwards  born  (how  any  could  be  born  seems  a  puzzler, 
since  no  mention  is  made  of  Cain's  wife)  would,  save  eight 
persons,  act  so  wickedly  as  to  cause  God  to  drown  them  ? 
Were  they  to  be  taught  that  he  walked  and  talked  as 
man;    that  he  was  fond  of  the  smell  of  roast  meats; 
that  he  showed  his  "  back  parts  "  to  the  leader  of  a  small 
tribe  whom  he  made  his  "  chosen  people" ;  that  he  be- 
came their  War  Lord,  aiding  them  as  best  he  could  ?     As 
best,  for  is  it  not  related  in  the  Book  of  Judges  (ch.  i.  19) 
that  while   he   helped  the   Hebrews  to   conquer  their 
mountain  enemies,  he  could  not  help  them  to  victory 
over  their   enemies   in  the   valley   because   these   had 
chariots  of  iron  !     He  commanded  that  of  his  chosen 
people    fifty    thousand    and    seventy   men    should    be 
put  to   death  because  they  had  been  so  curious  and 
so  wicked  as  to  look  into  a  sacred  box  called  the  ark, 
wherein  he  was  believed  to  dwell !     And  so  on ;    all 
through  the  repellent  stories  of  meannesses  and  mas- 
sacres, of  blessings  on  liars  and  tricksters,  filling  writings 
of  which  I  was  taught  to  believe  God  himself  was  the 
author — a  God  thus  made  his  own  libeller  !     At  what 
level  of  barbarism  must  the  people  have  been  who  could 
thus  conceive  of  their  God  ! 


A  FRAGMENT   OF   AUTOBIOGRAPHY       19 

On  this  matter  the  words  of  a  friend,  the  ever-lamented 
Professor  Clifford,  may  be  quoted.  He  bids  us  consider 
the  "  frightful  loss  and  disappointment  which  is  pre- 
pared for  the  child  who,  on  growing  up,  discovers  that 
what  he  has  been  taught  is  based  on  insufficient  evidence. 
It  is  not  merely  that  you  have  brought  him  up  as  a 
prince  to  find  himself  a  pauper  at  eighteen.  He  may 
have  allowed  the  teaching  to  get  inextricably  inter- 
twined with  his  feelings  of  right  and  wrong.  Then  the 
overthrow  of  one  will,  at  least  for  a  time,  endanger  the 
other.  You  leave  him  the  sad  task  of  gathering  to- 
gether the  wrecks  of  a  life  broken  by  disappointment  and 
wondering  whether  honour  itself  is  left  to  him  among 
them."  i 

Perhaps  I  have  said  enough  to  explain  how  I  came 
to  write  the  Childhood  of  the  World  (to  which  what  is 
already  set  down  is  designed  to  lead).  I  do  not  regret 
that  this  was  done  while  I  was  still  a  Theist,  because 
this  secured  the  book  a  hearing  which  it  would  certainly 
have  lacked  had  it  been  written  from  an  Agnostic  stand- 
point. As  it  was,  it  "  caught  on."  It  found  a  large 
public,  not  only  here,  but  in  America,  where  several 
pirate  publishers  captured  it.  Applications  for  permis- 
sion to  translate  it  into  Continental  languages — French, 
German,  Italian,  Dutch,  Swedish  and  Finnish  followed  ; 
then  into  some  "  heathen  "  tongues ;  and  what  gave  me 
special  satisfaction,  a  request  to  allow  it  to  be  embossed 
for  the  blind,  "  because,"  so  the  letter  ran,  "  it  had 
given  occasion  for  so  many  intelligent  questions  on  the 
part  of  the  boys,  and  for  the  blind  above  all  others  it  is 
necessary  to  have  books  that  make  them  think.  They 
say  it  is  something  different  from  what  they  have  ever 
seen  (sic)  before." 

1  Lectures  and  Essays,  Vol.  II.  p.  321. 


20  MEMORIES 

All  this,  adding  thereto  many  letters  from  unknown 
correspondents  which  the  reading  of  the  book  evoked, 
was  gratifying  to  an  unknown  author,  but  more  than 
this  were  the  friendships  which  it  brought  me  and  but 
for  which  these  pages  could  not  have  been  written. 

Of  the  immediate  personal  little  more  need  be  said. 
The  point  is  reached  for  such  record  as  memory  and 
fugitive  notes  supply  concerning  those  with  whom  one 
can  no  longer  take  deep  draughts  of  the  "  wine  of  life." 
There  is  temptation  to  tell  what  debts  are  owing  to 
many  friends,  happily,  still  living,  which  can  never  be 
discharged.  But  to  that  temptation  I  must  only  rarely 
yield. 


Photo,  Elliott  ct-  Fry.] 


[To  face  page  20. 


II 

GRANT  ALLEN  (1848-1899) 

IN  dwelling  on  friendships  it  is  interesting  to  trace 
the  varied  causes  which  beget  them,  causes  which  are 
often  in  inverse  proportion  to  their  effects.  The  intro- 
duction of  one  person  to  another  by  a  third  who  is 
known  to  both  accounts  for  the  larger  number,  while 
a  few  are  due  to  some  happy  chance.  Of  such  happy 
chance  my  friendship  with  Grant  Allen  supplies  an 
illustration.  When  he  was  Principal  of  a  Government 
College  in  Spanish  Town,  Jamaica,  he  took  a  brief 
holiday  to  the  Blue  Mountains.  There  was  no  hotel 
accommodation  in  the  little  settlement  where  he  wished 
to  stay,  so  he  put  up  at  a  store  kept  by  a  mulatto 
woman.  In  a  small  room  at  the  back  of  the  shop  there 
were  a  few  books  of  a  kind  that,  in  such  surroundings, 
surprised  him.  These  included  the  Origin  of  Species  and 
my  Childhood  of  the  World,  the  title  of  which  attracted 
him.  After  reading  it  he  noted  my  address,  and,  when 
he  came  home  in  1876,  called  on  me,  whence  began  a 
friendship  which  only  death  ended. 

The  College  was  founded  for  the  education  of  coloured 
youths,  and  had  as  its  first  Principal  a  Mr.  Chadwick. 
On  his  death,  Allen,  who  was  Professor  of  Mental  and 
Moral  Philosophy,  succeeded  him,  but  the  zeal  which 
he  brought  to  his  work  could  not  arrest  failure.  The 
scheme  "  was  too  ambitious  and  academic,"  he  told 

me;  "it  should  have  been  run  as  a  Board  School.'* 

21 


22  MEMORIES 

When  I  saw  the  derelict  building  in  1905  it  was  past 
repair;  there  were  cases  filled  with  insect-eaten  mortar- 
boards and  gowns,  and  ordure  of  birds  and  bats  clogged 
the  rickety  stairs. 

Allen's  daily  life  there  is  whimsically  told  in  this 
rhyming  letter,  which,  as  it  came  into  my  hands  after 
the  writing  of  my  Memoir  of  him,  may  have  place  here. 
It  is  addressed  to  his  brother-in-law,  the  late  Franklin 
Richards,  who  died  in  1905.  "  Gratefully  remem- 
bered ...  as  long  as  any  of  his  friends  survive  "  is 
the  tribute  paid  him  by  his  most  intimate  companion, 
James  Sutherland  Cotton. 

"  Here  I  am,  my  dear  Franklin,  in  Spanish  Town 
still,  as  usual,  grinding  away  at  my  mill.  On  Logic 
and  Ethics,  on  Latin  and  Greek  I  have  been  talking 
for  hours  till  I  scarcely  can  speak.  Then  I  have  come 
back  from  College  and  muddled  my  brain  with  getting 
up  lectures  on  Spencer  and  Bain,  so  I  think  that  by 
way  of  a  respite  I  had  better  sit  down  and  reply  to 
your  last  welcome  letter. 

"  But  how  to  reply  when  of  news  I  have  none,  there's 
the  rub  :  vide  Hamlet  (Act  in.  and  Scene  1).  There's 
really  nothing  on  earth  I  can  say  where  as  like  as  two 
peas  day  follows  on  day.  For  the  last  seven  weeks  it's 
been  raining  like  winking,  and  the  climate  is  far  too 
oppressive  for  thinking.  So  the  only  device  that  comes 
under  my  knowledge  is  to  tell  our  sad  fate  at  the  Spanish 
Town  College. 

"  At  seven  we  wake  from  our  innocent  sleep,  which 
at  least  has  been  long  if  it  has  not  been  deep.  Ten 
hours  per  noctem's  the  usual  number  we  allot  in  this 
idlest  of  islands  to  slumber.  Then  our  house-cleaner, 
Rose,  brings  us  in  a  farrago  of  arrowroot  gruel  or  boiled 


GRANT  ALLEN  23 

milk  and  sago,  which  we  swallow  in  bed — 'tis  the  way 
in  Jamaica — and  then  for  another  half  hour  we  take  a 
short  nap  (that's  abrupt,  but  4  monarchs  sometimes,' 
says  Byron,  4  are  far  less  despotic  than  rhymes ').  At 
eight  comes  my  bath,  the  one  single  joy  in  the  twenty- 
four  hours  unmixed  with  alloy.  Oh !  delight  of  delights, 
to  be  cool  for  a  minute ;  how  I  gloat  on  the  water  before 
I  get  in  it.  How  I  lovingly  linger  and  gaze  from  the 
brink  ere  I  make  up  my  mind  in  the  bosom  to  sink. 
How  I  dive ;  how  I  revel  awhile  in  its  arms ;  how  I  tear 
myself  sadly  at  last  from  its  charms.  If  fair  Arethusa 
was  only  as  cold,  I  can  quite  understand  she  had  lovers 
of  old. 

"  By  nine  we  have  slowly  completed  our  toilet,  for 
hurry  at  anything  here  is  to  spoil  it.  One  gives  oneself 
plenty  of  time  and  of  space,  reflects  for  a  bit  after 
washing  one's  face,  pulls  on  both  one's  boots  with  a 
solemn  delay,  and  feels  one's  cravat  an  event  of  the 
day.  For  if  collar  and  tie  you  too  rapidly  don,  you 
find  they  are  melted  before  they're  put  on.  Then  out 
to  our  breakfast,  which  needs  to  be  good,  for  man  has 
small  appetite  here  for  his  food,  where  a  lazy  condition 
of  liver  is  chronic  and  one  needs  to  be  drenched  with 
perpetual  tonic;  and  though  there  was  never  a  house- 
maid like  Nelly,  a  cook  in  Jamaica  is  no  Francatelli. 
So  we  pick  at  the  curry,  we  play  with  the  bacon,  and 
we  sigh  with  relief  when  the  meal  has  been  taken. 

"  At  ten  I  depart  for  the  College  to  lecture  on  every 
subject  of  human  conjecture,  from  the  weight  of  the 
sun  and  the  path  of  the  planets,  the  earthquake  that 
shakes  and  the  breezes  that  fan  it,  to  the  freedom  of 
will  and  the  nature  of  feeling,  on  the  relative  wrongness 
of  fibbing  and  stealing.  For,  this  being  but  a  one- 
manned  power  College,  I  alone  must  explore  the  whole 


24  MEMORIES 

circle  of  knowledge,  appraise  all  our  poets  from  Chaucer 
to  Tennyson,  prove  Hamilton  wrong  and  give  Bentham 
my  benison,  show  how  the  comitia  used  to  assemble 
and  crib  Anglo-Saxon  from  Palgrave  and  Kemble. 

"  Meanwhile,  in  the  household  department  dear  Nelly 
inspects  the  production  of  pudding  or  jelly,  and,  in 
short,  overlooks  the  entire  commissariat — no  easy  affair 
in  the  town  that  we  tarry  at,  where  we  count  ourselves 
lucky  if  five  days  a  week  we  can  get  us  some  jam  and 
a  morsel  of  steak. 

"  By  this  time  the  sun  has  risen  on  high,  and  is 
broiling  and  baking  the  air  in  the  sky,  till  its  vertical 
rays,  pouring  down  on  us,  kindle  such  unbearable  heat 
that  I  wish  Grove  or  Tyndall  would  invent  us  a  plan 
for  the  depths  of  the  ocean  to  absorb  this  too  active 
molecular  motion. 

"  But,  stop,  if  I  venture  so  far  on  detail  I  never  shall 
finish  in  time  for  the  mail.  I  will  be  brief — well,  at 
one  we  have  lunch,  after  which  I  return  until  three  to 
the  College  to  teach.  Then,  my  work  being  over,  we 
dawdle  till  five,  or  a  visitor  enters  to  keep  us  alive  by 
languidly  broadening  the  two  or  three  topics  which  form 
our  available  stock  in  the  Tropics.  Next,  we  take  a 
short  stroll ;  at  seven  we  dine  and  play  at  bezique  or  at 
reading  till  nine,  when  we  are  both  very  glad  to  retire 
to  rest  from  our  arduous  labour  and  struggle  our  best 
to  fall  off  asleep,  but  are  met  by  a  veto  in  the  bloodthirsty 
shape  of  a  buzzing  mosquito.  Not  the  lion  who  roams 
through  the  desert  for  food;  not  the  pard  or  the  tiger 
so  lusts  after  blood ;  not  the  wolverine  so  pounces  down 
on  his  quarry  as  that  fly  swoops  to  feast  on  his  live, 
human  swarry.  Like  the  Parthian,  he  flies  whene'er  I 
show  fight,  and  renews  the  attack  when  I  put  out  the 
light.  I  pursue,  and  he  makes  for  his  lair  in  the  curtain ; 


GRANT   ALLEN  25 

I  retreat,  and  on  pinions,  unerringly  certain,  once  more 
he  returns  to  this  cannibal  strife,  where  he  thirsts  for 
my  blood  and  I  thirst  for  his  life.  Once  more  my 
manoeuvres  he  deftly  outflanks  as  I  waste  my  assault 
on  my  innocent  shanks.  In  the  end  I  succumb,  sinking 
back  in  my  place,  while  the  conqueror  banquets  at  ease 
on  my  face.  So  at  last  I  doze  off,  let  him  bite  as  he 
may,  to  repeat  the  whole  programme  da  capo  next  day. 
"  And  here  this  epistle  at  length  must  be  ended.  It's 
double  as  long  as  I  ever  intended;  but,  having  begun, 
I  ran  on  by  the  gallon. 

44  Believe  me,  as  ever, 
"  Yours  truly, 

"  GRANT  ALLEN. 

"  P.S. — I  subscribe  myself  '  truly  '  instead  of  t  sin- 
cerely,' because  it  agrees  with  the  metre  more  nearly." 

Three  years  of  absence  had  put  him  out  of  touch  with 
the  literary  market,  and  he  had  to  learn  through  much 
tribulation  that  science,  outside  its  commercial  applica- 
tion, meant  slow  starvation.  But  it  was  a  means  to 
an  end.  He  wrote  a  book  entitled  Physiological 
^Esthetics,  the  publication  of  which  left  him  £50  to  the 
bad.  But  it  brought  him  into  friendly  relations  with 
Herbert  Spencer,  Alfred  Russel  Wallace,  and  other  men 
of  eminence,  and,  moreover,  secured  him  a  hearing  from 
editors  who  cared  for  things  of  the  mind — among  these 
Sir  Leslie  Stephen.  Thus  was  obtained  a  market  for  a 
series  of  popular  essays  on  science,  in  the  writing  of 
which  he  had  few  equals  and  has  had  no  superior. 
But,  as  happens  in  other  markets,  the  supply  exceeded 
the  demand,  and  he  was  driven  to  utilize  experiences 
gained  in  the  tropics  by  writing  short  stories  which  had 
unique  situations  for  their  motif.  The  earliest  of  these, 


26  MEMORIES 

entitled  the  Rev.  John  Creedy,  was  the  forerunner  of  a 
goodly  number  which,  that  his  reputation  as  a  scientific 
writer  might  not  be  prejudiced,  appeared  as  by  "  J. 
Arbuthnot  Wilson " — a  cryptic  for  JAW.  Meeting 
Richard  Proctor  at  my  house  one  evening,  when  talk 
fell  on  story-telling,  he  let  slip  some  fact  which  made 
Proctor,  who  also  used  a  nom  de  plume — "  Thomas 
Foster " — for  his  lighter  papers,  suddenly  exclaim, 
"  You  wrote  John  Creedy"  and  so  the  murder  was  out. 
Nevertheless,  Allen,  for  further  concealment,  published 
his  first  three-volume  novel,  Philistia,  under  the  pseu- 
donym of  "  Cecil  Power."  It  had  only  indifferent 
success.  It  dealt  mainly  with  Socialism — conversations 
about  which  the  ordinary  novel-reader  resents.  So  in 
the  novels  that  followed  he  had,  as  he  wrote  to  me,  to 
learn  "to  do  the  sensational  things  that  please  the 
editors."  In  one  of  these,  entitled  The  Great  Ruby 
Robbery,  he  unwittingly  catered  for  an  invalid.  He 
makes  one  of  the  characters  say  humorously  that 
Browning  is  "  splendid  for  the  nerves,"  whereupon  he 
received  the  following  naive  letter — 

"  DEAR  SIR, 

"  Pardon  the  liberty  I  am  taking.  In  your  clever 
story  of  The  Great  Ruby  Robbery  you  mention  Browning 
being  splendid,  for  the  nerves.  Is  there  such  a  thing, 
would  you  give  me  the  address  to  obtain.  I  am  a 
dreadful  sufferer  of  nervousness.  Under  such  circum- 
stances will  you  accept  my  apology  for  troubling." 

Two  years  after  Philistia  he  published  Kdlee's  Shrine. 
The  earlier  chapters  of  that  story  were  written  at  my 
house,  and  under  the  name  of  Thorborough-on-Sea 
(suggested  by  the  adjoining  hamlet  of  Thorpe)  he 


GRANT  ALLEN  27 

described  Aldeburgh  as  a  place  "  in  which  nothing 
commands  one's  love.  And  yet  everybody  who  has 
once  been  there,  still  would  go;  he  knows  not  why,  he 
asks  not  wherefore.  The  whole  borough,  like  the 
chameleon  of  natural  history,  lives  on  air,  for  the  air 
of  Thorborough  is  most  undeniable.  It  exhilarates  the 
heart  of  man  (and  woman)  like  the  best  Sillery." 

At  first  the  novel  hung  fire,  but  in  the  end  its  success 
as  a  "  seller  "  was  assured.  Andrew  Lang  wrote  thus 
about  it — 

"  1,  Marloes  Road,  W. 

[Undated.] 
11  DEAR  CLODD, 

"I'm  sorry  for  Kalee,  but  I've  shot  my  bolt 
and  written  two  puffs.  The  Times  might  be  of  service, 
but  I  know  not  that  Joseph,  nor  he  me.  I  hope  Allen 
will  soon  come  to  Roast  Beef,  which,  for  one,  I  hate. 

"  Thanks  for  the  nice  things  you  say  of  Letters  to 
Goners.1  I  wish  I  could  sell  4000  of  them. 

44  Yours  very  truly, 

44  A.  LANG." 

Best  of  good  company,  Allen  was  the  quintessence  of 
amiability,  but  sometimes  the  worm  would  turn.  Meet- 
ing a  common  friend,  the  late  Canon  Isaac  Taylor, 
author  of  Words  and  Places  and  other  books,  at  my 
house,  the  Canon,  who  had  a  certain  acidity  of  note 
at  times,  remarked  to  Allen  that  in  writing  his  novels 
he  must  now  and  again  have  some  difficulty  in  disposing 
of  his  rascals.  44  Not  at  all,"  retorted  Allen.  44 1  make 
them  into  Canons  !  "  Later  in  the  evening  he  said  to 
me,  "  I  should  like  to  further  score  off  the  Canon  by 
reading  Kipling's  Tomlinson."  Listening  to  it  did  not 
1  Letters  to  Dead  Authors. 


28  MEMORIES 

put  the  Canon  at  his  ease,  but  he  took  the  chastening 
kindly.  He,  in  turn,  loved  his  joke.  Visiting  him  at 
Settrington  Rectory  one  Easter,  on  the  Sunday  morning 
he  said  to  me,  "  I  know  that  you  do  not  go  to  Church, 
but  you  must  come  this  morning.  My  curate  will 
preach,  and  he  is  sometimes  amusing.  A  few  weeks 
back  he  began  a  sermon  on  the  text,  '  Redeeming  the 
time,'  by  saying  :  '  My  dear  friends,  procrastination  is 
often  the  cause  of  much  delay.'  '  After  family  prayers 
that  morning  he  told  me  an  amusing  story  anent  that 
function.  At  a  brother  clergyman's,  a  new  housemaid, 
after  attending  it,  flounced  out  of  the  room  in  a  manner 
showing  violent  temper.  The  mistress  hastened  after 
her  to  ask  what  it  meant.  The  girl  replied,  "  I  ain't 
a-going  to  stop  in  this  'ouse;  I've  never  been  so  hin- 
sulted  in  all  my  life  by  hanybody."  "  Whatever  do 
you  mean  ? "  asked  the  mistress.  "  Well,  ma'am, 
master  said,  '  O  God,  who  hatest  nothing  but  the 
'ousemaid."  The  girl  had  more  reason  on  her  side 
than  the  butler  who,  as  the  story  goes,  refused  to 
attend  family  prayers  because  he  was  on  board  wages  ! 

The  "  tightness  of  the  chest "  from  which  Allen 
suffered  gave,  on  another  occasion,  drollery  to  his  talk. 
Our  Whitsun  party  included  three  philologists  :  Canon 
Taylor,  Professor  (the  Rt.  Hon.  Sir  John,  as  he  after- 
wards became)  Rhys,  and  the  Rev.  Richard  Morris — 
all  of  cherished  memories.  One  day  the  talk  fell  on 
the  number  of  words  used  in  their  common  avocations 
by  country  working  folk.  Max  Miiller  was  cited  as 
authority  for  the  statement  that  some  rustics  have  not 
more  than  three  hundred  words  in  their  vocabulary. 
Allen  challenged  this,  and,  as  was  ever  his  wont  when 
talking,  twisting  his  platyscopic  lens  between  finger  and 
thumb,  began  recounting  all  the  things,  and  the  parts 


GRANT  ALLEN  29 

of  things,  with  which  an  agricultural  labourer  has  to 
deal  daily.  Ere  the  list  was  half  through  Allen  had 
well-nigh  reached  the  stated  limit  when  he  suddenly 
called  out,  "  Look  here,  you  fellows,  my  price  is  two 
guineas  a  thousand  words,  and  I'm  not  going  on  any 
longer." 

Like  Huxley,  the  study  of  the  evolution  of  religion 
interested  Allen  deeply.  He  attached  no  light  im- 
portance to  a  book  published  two  years  before  his 
death,  in  which,  under  the  title  of  The  Evolution  of  the 
Idea  of  God,  following  Herbert  Spencer,  he  sought  to 
show  that  the  one  ultimate  source  of  the  God-idea  is 
in  ancestor- worship,  the  dead  man  being  believed-in  as 
a  still  surviving  ghost  or  spirit,  endowed  with  super- 
natural powers.  In  the  copy  which  he  gave  me  he  in- 
scribed it  to  me  as  one  "  whose  encouragement  had  largely 
produced  it,"  and  this  despite  a  fundamental  difference  on 
the  subject  between  us.  This  is  not  the  place  to  enlarge 
on  the  matter,  but  it  is  the  place  to  insert  a  characteristic 
letter  about  that  book  from  Andrew  Lang,  who,  in  his 
obituary  notice  of  Allen,  spoke  of  himself  as  "  one  born 
to  differ  from  Allen  on  almost  every  conceivable  point." 
He  adds  :  "  I  never  could  irritate  him  by  opposition, 
and  this  I  am  anxious  to  record  as  a  proof  of  the  wonderful 
sweetness  of  his  nature." 

"  1,  Marloes  Road,  W., 

"  June  6,  1900. 
"  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  Drole  d'un  cove,  poor  Allen.  Why,  being  scien- 
tific, did  he  not  get  up  his  facts  in  his  book  on  deity? 
And  a  Martyr  and  Rebel  ought  not  to  make  these 
unparalleled  concessions  that  he  made.  I  like  him  very 
much,  and  I  daresay  the  celebrated  '  Celtic  '  element 
would  explain  many  things  if  I  believed  in  a  4  Celtic  ' 


80  MEMORIES 

element.  I  don't  think  he  ever  seriously  studied  any- 
thing .  .  .  not  that  he  was  aware  of  the  circumstance. 

44  But  his  heart  was  in  the  right  place  :  he  was  a 
gentleman  and,  sans  le  savoir,  a  Christian. 

"  Yours  very  truly, 

"  A.  LANG." 

When  any  outri  heterodox  opinion  was  broached, 
Allen,  with  a  droll  twinkle,  would  remind  us  that  he 
was  the  son  of  a  clergyman.  That  was  why,  he  said, 
whenever  liqueurs  were  offered  him,  he  chose  Benedic- 
tine, because  it  had  the  pious  initials  D.O.M.  on  the 
bottle  !  Had  he  lived  till  1906,  the  eventful  year  in 
which  "  Quaker  Didson's  Cordial  "  became  known  to 
me,  he  might  have  preferred  that,  because  each  bottle 
bears  in  raised  letters  the  monition,  "  Shud  at  the 
presence  of  God's  Word." 

He  who  wrote  the  stirring  lines — - 

"  If  systems  that  be  are  the  order  of  God, 
Revolt  is  a  part  of  the  order," 

was  no  defender  of  any  faith.  But  the  fact  that  he  was 
a  whole-hearted  evolutionist,  who,  in  consonance  with 
his  creed,  would  admit  no  break  in  the  chain  of  con- 
tinuity, explains  why,  in  a  talk  with  Prince  Kropotkin 
at  my  house,  he  condemned  the  misuse  and  destruction 
of  beautiful  and  historical  buildings  by  the  French 
Communists,  the  Prince  defending  their  acts  because  of 
the  shameful  associations  linked  with  cathedral,  palace 
and  hall  of  justice — Ecrasez  Vinfame. 

"  Viola,  Bromley,  Kent, 

"December  21,  1899. 
"  DEAR  MR.  CLODD, 

44 1  do  not  well  remember  our  conversation  with 
Grant  Allen,  although  I  very  well  remember  the  most 


GRANT   ALLEN  31 

pleasant    hours    we    spent    in    your    house    in    your 
company. 

"  Alas  !  demolition  alone  would  not  help  and  could 
only  increase  the  '  poetical  regret.'  So  long  as  scientific 
methods  of  thinking  remain  a  closed  letter,  not  only  with 
the  millions  and  millions,  but  even  with  the  immense 
majority  of  men  imagining  themselves  to  be  scientific 
(historians,  economists,  students  of  law,  etc.,  etc.),  so 
long  as  the  inculcation  of  these  methods  in  school  will 
be  kept  in  horror,  and  the  unscientific  methods  of 
thinking  will  be  inculcated  by  all  possible  means.  See 
three-quarters  of  the  education  of  this  country  in  the 
hands  of  men  who  have  no  suspicion  of  there  being 
such  a  thing  as  scientific  (inductive  and  deductive) 
thinking,  and  so  long  as  science  herself  will  do  every- 
thing in  her  power  to  preach  most  absurd  and  unethical 
conclusions,  such  as  woe  to  the  weak,  then  all  will  remain 
as  it  is.  Belief  in  mysterious  agencies,  and  the  un- 
reasonable need  of  man  for  ethical-poetical  conceptions, 
will  rebuild  cathedrals  and  worship  in  one  way  or  the 
other. 

"  The  would-be  science  of  the  privileged  ones  has  and 
can  have  no  hold  upon  the  very  springs  of  superstition 
and  want  of  poetical  understanding  of  Nature. 

"  I  should  be  delighted  to  meet  once  more  and  this — 
soon.  But  the  time  given  to  my  Memoirs  has  resulted 
in  so  many  arrears  that  I  really  don't  see  my  way  to 
clear  that  forest  soon. 

"  With  best  good  wishes  and  greetings, 
"  Yours  very  sincerely, 

"  P.  KROPOTKIN." 

That  Allen  could  handle  the  lyre  deftly,  both  in  light 
and  serious  touch,  is  evidenced  in  his  slender  volume  of 


32  MEMORIES 

poems,  The  Lower  Slopes.  What  thought-compelling 
themes  he  could  set  to  stately  music  is  shown  in  the 
poem  In  Magdalen  Tower,  which  holds  haunting  verses 
like  this — 

"  The  city  lies  below  me  wrapped  in  slumber; 
Mute  and  unmoved  in  all  her  streets  she  lies  : 
Mid  rapid  thoughts  that  throng  me  without  number 
Flashes  the  image  of  an  old  surmise. 
Her  hopes  and  griefs  and  fears  are  all  suspended ; 
Ten  thousand  souls  throughout  her  precincts  take 
Sleep,  in  whose  bosom  life  and  death  are  blended, 
And  I  alone  awake." 

Those  who,  among  "  the  high  Midsummer  pomps  "  of 
the  Thames  Valley — to  wit,  at  Great  Marlow — were  at 
the  dinner  of  the  Omar  Khayyam  Club  in  July  1896, 
will  not  readily  forget,  as  they  drank  their  red  wine 
and  toasted  their  guests,  what  fillip  was  given  to  the 
occasion  by  the  poem  which  Allen  contributed.  My 
friend,  Clement  Shorter,  who  was  President  of  the  Club 
that  year,  printed  it  in  the  Sketch,  of  which  he  was  then 
editor.  But  newspapers  are  of  "  the  things  which  to-day 
are  and  to-morrow  are  cast  into  the  oven,"  and  as  the 
poem  is  now  accessible  only  to  possessors  of  the  privately  - 
printed  Book  of  the  Omar  Khayyam  Club,  it  is  given  here. 

OMAR  AT  MARLOW 

"  Too  long  have  we  dallied,  my  Omar,  too  long 
With  metres  austere  and  iambic  : 
A  rapider  measure  I  ask  for  my  song, 
Anapaestic,  abrupt,  dithyrambic. 
The  reddest  of  roses  my  locks  shall  entwine, 
And — ho  there  !    Luigi  or  Carlo  ! 
A  beaker  this  way  of  the  ruddiest  wine 
That  lurks  in  the  cellars  of  Marlow  ! 

Is  it  chance,  is  it  fate,  that  has  guided  our  crew 
To  a  nook  by  the  eddying  river, 
Where  Shelley  gazed  down  upon  ripples  that  woo, 
And  rushes  that  listen  and  quiver  ? 


GRANT  ALLEN  33 

He  loved  not  to  look  on  the  wine  as  it  flows 
Blood-red  from  the  flagon  that  holds  it ; 
Yet  who  could  so  pierce  to  the  soul  of  a  rose 
Through  the  chalice  of  bloom  that  enfolds  it  ? 

Not  as  he,  not  as  he,  was  the  Seer  of  the  East, 

The  Master  and  Mage  that  we  follow ; 

He  knew,  as  he  smiled  on  the  amorous  feast, 

That  the  world — and  the  wine -cup — are  hollow ; 

But  he  knew  that  the  Power,  high-sceptred  above, 

Is  more  than  the  anchorite  spectre ; 

That  the  world  may  be  filled  with  the  greatness  of  love, 

And  the  wine-cup  with  roseate  nectar. 

No  saint — and  no  sot — was  Omar,  I  wis, 

But  a  singer  serene,  philosophic ; 

For  Philosophy  mellows  her  mouth  to  a  kiss 

With  each  step  she  takes  towards  the  tropic. 

Pale  gold  is  the  grain  in  the  vats  of  the  north ; 

Lush  purple  thy  grape,  Algeciras ; 

And  the  creed  that  is  cold  by  the  mists  of  the  Forth, 

Glows  pink  in  the  gardens  of  Shiraz. 

Of  fate  and  foreknowledge,  of  freedom  and  doom, 

He  sang ;  of  the  bud  and  the  blossom. 

Life,  whirled  in  a  flash  from  its  birth  to  its  tomb ; 

Death,  gathering  all  in  his  bosom ; 

Of  Allah,  who,  cloaked  by  the  World  and  the  Word, 

Still  veils  his  inscrutable  features ; 

Of  man,  and  his  debt  to  his  Maker  and  Lord ; 

Of  God,  and  his  debt  to  his  creatures. 

A  rebel  our  Shelley  !  a  rebel  our  Mage  ! 

That  brotherly  link  shall  suffice  us ; 

'Tis  in  vain  that  the  zealots,  O  Prophet  and  Sage, 

From  his  creed — and  from  thine — would  entice  us ; 

We  seek  not  to  stray  from  the  path  that  ye  trod, 

We  seek  but  to  widen  its  border ; 

If  systems  that  be  are  the  order  of  God, 

Revolt  is  a  part  of  the  order. 

But  whither,  oh,  whither,  my  petulant  Muse, 

To  heights  that  outsoar  and  surpass  us  ? 

Not  thine  to  be  sprent  with  ineffable  dews 

On  perilous  peaks  of  Parnassus. 

Leave  loftier  themes  of  the  fortunes  of  man 

To  our  orient's  Occident  herald, 

Who  grafted  a  rose  of  thy  stock,  Gulistan, 

Upon  English  sweetbriar — FitzGerald  ! 


34  MEMORIES 

These  three  be  the  tutelar  gods  of  our  feast, 
And,  to-night,  Jtwere  a  sin  to  divide  them ; 
Two  bards  of  the  West  and  a  bard  of  the  East, 
With  one  spirit  to  quicken  and  guide  them. 
So  Luigi  or  Carlo,  a  beaker  again, 
This  way,  of  your  liveliest  Pommard  ! 
We'll  drink  to  a  trio  whose  star  shall  not  wane — 
Here's  Shelley,  FitzGerald,  and  Omar." 

Until  within  a  year  or  two  of  his  death  Allen  made 
one  at  my  yearly  Whitsuntide  gatherings  at  Aldeburgh. 
How  "  we  tired  the  sun  with  talking  and  sent  him  down 
the  sky."  Every  occasion  was  a  convivium,  "  a  living 
together."  "It  is,"  says  Cicero  in  his  delightful  essay 
On  Old  Age,  "  a  better  term  than  the  Greek  symposium, 
which  means  a  drinking  or  an  eating  together."  Some 
of  the  occasions  were  marked  by  the  reading  of  a  poem 
composed  by  one  of  the  party.  Of  the  two  which  Allen 
wrote,  one  was  published  under  the  title  of  Whitsun  at 
Aldeburgh  in  my  Memoir  of  him.  The  other,  which  is 
not  in  that  volume,  is  given  here.  Added  to  this  are 
poems,  one,  published  without  his  permission,  which  I 
take  for  granted,  by  my  friend,  H.  W.  Massingham,  the 
other  by  that  prince  of  raconteurs,  the  late  Sir  Benjamin 
Ward  Richardson. 

Aldeburgh, 

Whitsunday,  1894. 

"  Oh,  how  we  laughed  until  we  cried 
In  Strafford  House,  at  Whitsuntide  ! 
What  words  we  spake  of  men  and  gods, 
Beneath  that  friendly  roof  of  Clodd's — 
A  party  that  was  none  the  limper 
For  holding  in  it  Edward  Whymper. 
How  grim  we  smiled  at  Alpine  grips 
Shot  bolt-wise  from  those  caustic  lips  : 
How  late  we  tarried,  slow  and  tardy, 
Yet  loth  to  lose  one  tale  from  Hardy  ! 
So  lightly  fled  the  hurrying  hours, 
Their  wings  just  dashed  with  summer  showers  : 


GRANT  ALLEN  85 

Wild  winds  might  blow  from  every  quarter ; 
Still  beamed  the  genial  face  of  Shorter  : 
Big  drops  might  patter  by  the  gallon  5 
Still  faster  flowed  the  tongue  of  Allen  : 
The  clock  might  point  a  warning  hand ; 
What  recked  of  clocks  that  jovial  band, 
While  Alps  with  virgin  snow  were  hoary, 
Or  Wessex  moors  lay  steeped  in  glory, 
While  wistful  wreaths  of  smoke  upcurled 
To  veil  an  all  too  solid  world, 
And  limpid  still,  on  souls  untroubled 
The  crystal  fount  of  whiskey  bubbled. 

Ah,  years  that  come,  ah,  years  that  go, 
You  bring  us  weal,  or  bring  us  woe, 
But  not  one  hour — I'll  lay  you  odds — 
To  match  that  Whitsun  week  at  Clodd's." 

GRANT  ALLEN, 

Whiten,  1895. 
HADRIAN'S  SONG 

What  is  my  hearts  desire  ? 


What  is  my  heart's  desire  ? 

To  know  !  to  know  ! 
Whence  comes  the  living  fire 
That  in  my  heart  doth  glow, 

And  whither  it  must  go  ! 

II 

What  is  my  heart's  desire  ? 

To  lay  up  gold ; 
Such  treasures  to  acquire 
And  such  possessions  hold ; 

As  cannot  all  be  toid, 

III 

What  is  my  heart's  desire  ? 

To  sit  on  high 
And  like  a  god  aspire 
To  conquer  destiny 

As  one  who  cannot  die, 


86  MEMORIES 


IV 

What  is  my  heart's  desire  ? 

A  woman?s  love 
Sweet  as  a  well-tuned  lyre ; 
Fixed  as  that  star  above 

Round  which  all  others  move. 

V 

What  is  my  heart's  desire 

Above  all  these  ? 
A  friend  who  will  not  tire 
Of  friendship's  subtleties, 

Though  all  my  faults  he  sees." 

B.  W.  R. 

[Sir  Benjamin  Ward  Richardson.] 


Aldeburgh, 

Whitsuntide,  1897. 

"  Sunlit  and  laughter-lit  our  days  have  sped, 
And  now,  dear  Clodd,  you  crave  a  farewell  ditty, 
Before  we  rattle  back,  with  eyes  averse, 
To  that  infernal  city. 

But  long  the  muse  has  fled,  and  left  my  heart 
Bare  as  these  sands,  a  dry  and  dusty  particle — 
My  pen  a  spoon  for  stirring  light  confections 
Of  frothy  leading  article. 

Compact  of  hero,1  scholar,2  artist,3  editor,4 
This  learned,  but  not  grimly  austere,  party 
Has  stripped  the  '  duds  *  off  he  and  she  divinities 
From  Siva  to  Astarte. 

And  now  dismayed,  it  seeks  a  guardian  saint 
To  stay  the  wrath  of  each  offended  god, 
And  calls  on  thee,  kind  host,  best  son  of  Earth, 
Warm-hearted  Clodd." 

H.  W.  MASSINGHAM. 

1  Sir  George  Scott  Robertson.  2  Grant  Allen. 

3  William  Simpson.  *  Clement  Shorter. 


Ill 

WILLIAM  KINGDON  CLIFFORD  (1845-1879).  THOMAS 
HENRY  HUXLEY  (1825-1895).  SIR  HENRY 
THOMPSON  (1820-1904) 

I  FIRST  met  Huxley  at  Professor  Clifford's.  The 
Sunday  afternoons  at  Colville  Road  are  linked  with 
fragrant  and  refreshing  memories.  You  were  sure  to 
meet  some  one  worth  the  knowing.  There  was  no  smart 
set  to  fill  their  empty  time  and  waste  yours  in  inane 
gossip ;  no  prigs  to  irritate  you  with  their  affectation, 
and  no  pedants  to  bore  you  with  their  academic  vague- 
ness, but  just  a  company  of  sane  and  healthy  men  and 
women,  gentle  and  simple,  who  wanted  to  meet  one 
another  and  have  a  full,  free  talk  which  was  "  gay 
without  frivolity." 

Old  friends — Sir  Frederick  Pollock,  the  Huxleys  and 
Colliers,  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  and  G.  J.  Romanes — were 
often  there.  More  rarely,  Cotter  Morison,  York  Powell, 
Mark  Pattison,  Grant  and  Nellie  Allen,  Thomas  Hardy, 
and  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton  dropped  in ;  with  these  and  others 
there  was  never  a  barren  time.  Vanished  are  many  of 
them,  but  the  remnant,  with  some  newcomers,  forgather 
in  another  house  where  Clifford's  gifted  and  genial 
wife  maintains  the  old  tradition.  For  herself,  she  has 
made  her  "  calling  and  election  sure "  among  those 
who  maintain  the  high  standard  of  English  fiction, 
unsoiled  by  the  erotic,  neurotic  and  Tommyrotic. 

A  break  may  here  be  permitted  for  reference  to 

37 


38  MEMORIES 

Romanes,  if  only  to  record  a  well-remembered  story. 
I  preface  this  to  say  that  he  was  of  Canadian  birth  and 
Scotch  descent,  with  probably  a  dash  of  gipsy  blood 
in  him.  A  happy  tide  in  the  family  fortunes  enabled 
him  to  follow  his  own  bent,  and  he  had  the  advantage 
of  studying  physiology  under  the  late  Sir  Michael 
Foster  at  Cambridge  University.  But  throughout  his 
career  he  was  theologian  as  much  as  he  was  biologist, 
and  our  talks  at  the  Savile  Club  ran  more  often  on 
religion  than  on  science.  While  at  Cambridge  he  won 
the  Burney  Prize  on  Christian  Prayer  and  General  Laws, 
and  it  was  no  long-kept  secret  that,  under  the  pseu- 
donym of  Physicus,  he  was  the  author  of  A  Candid 
Examination  of  Theism.  But  he  made  contributions 
of  value  to  animal  psychology  and  to  the  theory  of 
organic  evolution  generally,  which  were  arrested  by 
physical  and  mental  breakdown,  resulting  in  his  death 
at  the  age  of  forty-six.  Much  was  made  of  his  reputed 
acceptance  of  the  Christian  creed  by  his  orthodox  widow, 
who  was  also  his  biographer,  but  here,  as  in  other 
instances,  the  facts  proved  that  he  had  reached  a  stage 
of  brain  decay  which  made  any  confessions,  whether  of 
belief  or  disbelief,  worthless. 

The  story  is  as  follows  :  One  evening  at  Clifford's, 
Romanes,  who  was  pursuing  researches  into  the  exist- 
ence of  a  nervous  system  in  medusae  and  other  lower 
organisms,  talked  about  the  tests  that  he  was  applying. 
He  put  a  big  jelly-fish  into  a  glass  jar  of  salt  water, 
and  then  poured  in  some  whiskey.  Nothing  happened ; 
then  he  added  more ;  whereupon  the  hitherto  rhythmic 
movements  of  the  creature  became  irregular.  Then 
more  and  still  more  whiskey,  until  the  jelly-fish  subsided 
to  the  bottom  of  the  jar  in  a  state  of  helpless  drunken- 
ness. "  Well,"  said  Clifford,  "  I  hope  you  gave  it  a 


WILLIAM   KINGDON   CLIFFORD  39 

brandy-and-soda  next  morning."  It  was  by  careful 
and  repeated  experiments  that  Romanes  discovered 
the  rudiments  of  nerves  in  animals  which,  till  then,  had 
not  been  shown  to  possess  organs  linking  them  with 
the  highest  life  forms. 

It  was  not  till  after  his  marriage  in  1875  that  I  knew 
Clifford,  and  as  the  pulmonary  trouble  which  proved 
fatal  to  him  in  1879  was  manifest  soon  after,  he  was 
compelled  from  time  to  time  to  seek  abroad  the  recovery 
that  never  came.  Hence,  the  chances  of  seeing  much  of 
him  were  few.  His  career  was  marvellous  in  what  it 
covered.  Second  Wrangler;  Fellow  of  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  when  he  was  twenty -three ;  Professor  of 
Applied  Mathematics  in  University  College  at  twenty- 
six,  and  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  at  twenty-nine ; 
it  seemed  that  the  world  lay  at  the  feet  of  the  brilliant 
young  mathematician  who  was  so  much  else  beside. 
When  he  was  at  Cambridge  he  was  an  ardent  High 
Churchman,  but  from  that  creed  he  speedily  broke  away 
to  become  the  enthusiastic  propounder  and  defender  of 
the  faith  as  it  is  in  Darwin.  Nihil  quod  tetigit  non 
ornavit — whether  it  was  in  lecturing  on  ethics  or  atoms, 
while  his  joyous  nature  revelled  in  writing  fairy  tales 
and  songs  for  children,  to  whom  he  was  devoted. 

Those  whom  these  words  may  move  to  know  more 
about  Clifford,  should  read  the  biography  which  Sir 
Frederick  Pollock  contributed  to  the  posthumous 
Lectures  and  Essays.  This  extract  may  suffice  to  send 
them  to  the  book — 

"  Clifford's  patience,  cheerfulness,  unselfishness,  and 
continued  interest  in  his  friends  and  in  what  was  going 
on  in  the  world,  were  unbroken  and  unabated  through 
all  that  heavy  time.  Far  be  it  from  me,  as  it  was  from 


40  MEMORIES 

him,  to  grudge  to  any  man  or  woman  the  hope  or  com- 
fort of  sincere  expectation  of  a  better  life  to  come.  But 
let  this  be  set  down  and  remembered,  plainly  and 
openly,  for  the  instruction  and  rebuke  of  those  who 
fancy  that  their  dogmas  have  a  monopoly  of  happiness, 
and  will  not  face  the  fact  that  there  are  true  men,  aye, 
and  women,  to  whom  the  dignity  of  manhood  and  the 
fellowship  of  life,  undazzled  by  the  magic  of  any  revela- 
tion, unbroken  by  any  promises  holding  out  aught  as 
higher  or  more  enduring  than  the  fruition  of  human 
love  and  the  fulfilment  of  human  duties,  are  sufficient 
to  bear  the  weight  of  both  life  and  death.  Here  was  a 
man  who  utterly  dismissed  from  his  thoughts,  as  being 
unprofitable  or  worse,  all  speculations  on  a  future  or 
unseen  world ;  a  man  to  whom  life  was  holy  and  precious, 
a  thing  not  to  be  despised,  but  to  be  used  with  joyful- 
ness  ;  a  soul  full  of  life  and  light,  ever  longing  for  activity, 
ever  counting  what  was  achieved  as  not  worthy  to  be 
reckoned  in  comparison  with  what  was  left  to  do. 
And  this  is  the  witness  of  his  ending;  that  as  never 
man  loved  life  more,  so  never  man  feared  death  less. 
He  fulfilled  well  and  truly  that  great  saying  of  Spinoza, 
often  in  his  mind  and  on  his  lips  :  Homo  liber  de  nulla 
re  minus  quam  de  morte  cogitat."  l 

THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY  (1825-1895). 

It  was  worth  being  born  to  have  known  Huxley. 
In  the  words  of  Ben  Jonson  :  "I  loved  the  man  and  do 
honour  to  his  memory  on  this  side  idolatry  as  much  as 
any."  To  the  intellectual  nutriment  and  stimulus 
with  which  he  enriched  all  who  enjoyed  his  friendship 

1  "  The  free  man  thinks  of  nothing  less  than  of  death." — Ethics, 
prop.  Ixvii. 


THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY       41 

there  was  added  the  attraction  of  a  delightful  personality. 
Such,  to  all  who  knew  him,  was  "  that  uncouth  peda- 
gogue of  science,"  as  the  Hon.  Stephen  Coleridge,  to  his 
dishonour,  calls  him  in  his  Memoirs.1  On  the  strength 
of  what  was  then  a  slender  acquaintance,  I  ventured  to 
send  him  my  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  I  rarely  have  had 
a  happier  hour  than  that  in  which  I  received  his  acknow- 
ledgment in  the  following  letter — 

"  4,  Marlborough  Place,  N.W., 
December  21,  1879. 

"  MY  DEAR  MR.  CLODD, 

"  I  have  been  spending  all  this  Sunday  afternoon 
over  the  book  you  have  been  kind  enough  to  send  me, 
and,  being  a  swift  reader,  I  have  travelled  honestly 
from  cover  to  cover. 

"  It  is  the  book  I  have  been  longing  to  see ;  in  spirit, 
matter  and  form  it  appears  to  me  to  be  exactly  what 
people  like  myself  have  long  been  wanting.  For,  though 
for  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  I  have  done  all  that  lay 
in  my  power  to  oppose  and  destroy  the  idolatrous 
accretions  of  Judaism  and  Christianity,  I  have  never 
had  the  slightest  sympathy  with  those  who,  as  the 
Germans  say,  would  throw  the  child  away  along  with  the 
bath — and  when  I  was  a  member  of  the  London  School 
Board  I  fought  for  the  retention  of  the  Bible  to  the 
great  scandal  of  some  of  my  liberal  friends  who  cannot 
make  out  to  this  day  whether  I  was  a  hypocrite  or 
simply  a  fool  on  that  occasion.2 

"  But  my  meaning  was  that  the  mass  of  the  people 
should  not  be  deprived  of  the  one  great  literature  which 
is  open  to  them — not  shut  out  from  the  perception  of 
their  relation  with  the  whole  past  history  of  civilized 
mankind — not  excluded  from  such  a  view  of  Judaism 
1  p.  230.  2  p.  231  (infra). 


42  MEMORIES 

and  Jesus  of  Nazareth  as  that  which  at  last  you  have 
given  us.  I  cannot  doubt  that  your  work  will  have  a 
great  success  not  only  in  the  grosser,  but  the  better 
sense  of  the  word. 

"  We  have  a  way  of  making  Sunday  evenings  pleasant 
by  seeing  friends  who  come  in  without  ceremony  to  a 
4  tall  tea  '  at  half-past  six.  It  would  give  my  wife  and 
myself  great  pleasure  if  at  any  time  you  would  join  us. 

"  Yours  sincerely, 

"  T.  H.  HUXLEY." 

Needless  to  say,  my  first  free  Sunday  found  me  at 
Maryborough  Place.  To  have  the  entree  to  those  "  tall 
teas "  was  to  be  admitted  to  a  company  wherein 
affectations  and  social  insincerities  had  no  place,  and 
within  a  domestic  circle  of  which  the  guest  was  made 
to  feel  himself  a  member.  Playfulness  and  tenderness 
marked  the  home  life  of  Huxley ;  such  asperity  as  was 
in  him  was  a  necessary  reserve  fund  to  expend  on  fools  and 
bores  outside  his  doors  whom  he  could  not  "suffer  gladly." 

As  an  example  of  the  harmless  fun  which  enlivened 
the  gatherings,  I  remember  one  evening,  when  his  gifted 
and  beautiful  daughter  Marian,  an  artist  full  of  promise, 
whose  death  cast  an  abiding  shadow  on  the  life  of 
parents  and  of  husband,  said  something  pert  and 
pointed — the  words  have  slipped  my  memory — he  put 
his  hand  on  her  shoulder  and  smiling,  said  to  me,  "  You 
see  that  this  household  is  a  republic  tempered  by 
epigram."  On  my  commenting  on  his  house  being 
next  to  a  church,  he  said,  "  Yes,  I  need  not  quote  the 
adage  to  you." 

Full  of  "  go  "  as  was  the  table-talk,  there  was  an  added 
joy  when  we  were  tete-a-tete  in  his  "  smoking  den." 
Tobacco  alight,  the  host  smoking  a  briar-wood  pipe, 


THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY       43 

the  great  company  of  books  suggested  themes  to  set 
tongues  going.  Huxley's  omnivorous  reading  and 
retentive  memory  evidenced  on  what  intimate  terms  he 
lived  with  both  past  and  present  in  the  great  writers. 
He  loved  poetry,  and,  as  shown  in  some  felicitous  verses 
added  to  a  privately-printed  volume  of  Mrs.  Huxley's 
poems  (published  in  1913,  a  few  months  before  her 
death),  dabbled  in  it  himself.  One  of  his  favourite 
volumes  was  Meredith's  Modern  Love,  and  I  well  remem- 
ber his  reading  of  Juggling  Jerry  and  The  Old  Chartist. 
This  reminds  me  that  one  evening,  when  Meredith  was 
staying  with  me  at  Aldeburgh,  there  dropped-in  a 
prominent  politician  to  whose  ancestors,  Radicals  in 
those  days,  Meredith  made  reference.  Then  he  rolled 
out  a  stanza  of  his  Old  Chartist,  whereupon  the  book 
was  fetched  and,  after  a  deprecating  shake  of  the  head, 
he  read  the  whole  poem. 

One  densely  foggy  Sunday  evening,  when  only  Mrs. 
Clifford  and  I  turned  up,  Huxley  took  me  into  his  den 
for  a  talk.  Browsing  about  an  odd  corner,  I  noticed 
a  queer  collection  of  more  or  less  obsolete  books  on 
philosophy  and  theology,  and  expressed  my  wonder 
at  finding  that  he  kept  such  company.  "  Oh,"  he  said, 
44  they  are  in  what  I  call  the  '  Condemned  cell.'  "  He 
added  that  he  had  read  that  kind  of  stuff  so  that  he 
might  know  what  men  of  obscurantist  type  had  to  say 
for  themselves.  "  You  can,"  he  said,  "  only  success- 
fully oppose  clericalism  by  being  able  to  measure  the 
force  of  the  stock  arguments  on  which  it  rests.  It 
has  been,  and  always  will  be,  the  foe  of  progress.  There 
has  never  been  a  movement  towards  reform  of  abuses 
and  injustices  which  has  not  been  opposed  by  the 
parsons.  Why,  never  a  voice  was  lifted  by  your  gentle- 
men in  lawn  sleeves  in  the  House  of  Lords  against 


44  MEMORIES 

abolishing  hanging  for  petty  thefts,  or  for  the  removal 
of  any  of  the  disabilities  on  Jews,  Roman  Catholics  and 
Dissenters.  The  Dissenters  were  excluded  from  the 
Universities,  and  when  they  died,  could  not  be  buried 
with  their  own  simple  rites  in  the  parish  churchyard. 
And  it  was  not  through  the  help  of  the  Bishops  and 
parsons  that  Forster  carried  his  Education  Bill  in  1870." 

He  spoke  of  Hobbes'  Leviathan  as  the  book  which, 
in  the  degree  that  his  style  had  been  influenced  at  all 
by  reading,  had  been  formative  upon  him.  The  crisp- 
ness,  clearness  and  virility  of  that  treatise  attracted  a 
mind  to  which  verbosity  and  haziness  were  repellent. 
Hence  his  impatience  with  any  controversialist  whose 
arguments  were  of  the  cuttle-fish  type.  In  a  letter  to 
Colonel  Ingersoll,  which  was  published  after  Mr.  Leonard 
Huxley's  excellent  Life  and  Letters  of  his  father  appeared, 
there  occurs  this  sentence  :  "  Gladstone's  attack  on  you 
is  one  of  the  best  things  he  has  written.  I  do  not  think 
that  there  is  more  than  50  per  cent,  more  verbiage  than 
necessary,  nor  any  sentence  with  more  than  two  mean- 
ings." He  would  have  enjoyed  the  dialogue  in  Mr.  F. 
Manning's  Scenes  and  Portraits,  wherein  Leo  XIII  is 
made  to  say  :  "  The  impregnable  Rock  on  which  we 
build  is  the  impregnable  ignorance  of  the  majority." 

There  is  need  in  these  days  of  anaemic  beliefs  and  weak 
convictions  for  a  man  of  Huxley's  virile  type.  He  has 
left  no  successor.  I  remember  being  present  at  a  dinner 
of  the  Royal  Society  at  which  Mr.  Shaw  Lefevre,  in 
proposing  Huxley's  health,  expressed  regret  that  so 
skilful  a  dialectic  had  never  sat  in  Parliament.  Huxley, 
with  an  emphasis  not  to  be  forgotten,  replied  that  all 
his  life  he  had  been  consumed  by  a  passion  for  the 
discovery  of  truth  and  not  for  its  obscuration.  Hence 
he  never  had  any  ambition  to  enter  on  a  political  career. 


THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY       45 

Of  the  lectures  which  I  heard  him  deliver  none  stands 
out  so  clearly  as  that  On  the  Coming  of  Age  of  the  Origin 
of  Species.  It  was  at  the  Royal  Institution  on  April  9, 
1880.  Reviewing  the  fortunes  of  that  book  from  the 
time  when  the  usual  epithets  of  which  theology  has  a 
monopoly  were  hurled  at  it  to  its  ultimate  acceptance, 
Huxley  closed  his  lecture  in  these  words  :  "  Like  Harvey, 
Mr.  Darwin  has  lived  long  enough  to  outlast  detraction 
and  opposition  and  to  see  the  stone  which  the  builders 
rejected  become  the  head-stone  of  the  corner."  Among 
the  audience  that  filled  the  theatre  was  Ernest  Renan, 
sleek,  smooth-shaven  like  a  well-groomed  ecclesiastic, 
whom  it  was  my  privilege  to  meet  at  Sir  Frederick 
Pollock's  on  the  14th  following.  We  exchanged  a  few 
words;  he  in  bad  English,  I  in  worse  French. 

To  his  lasting  discredit  the  then  editor  of  Punch,  a 
Roman  Catholic,  admitted  a  cartoon  of  Huxley  with  the 
letters  £.  S.  D.  affixed  to  his  name,  implying  that  pursuit 
of  money  and  not  of  truth,  had  marked  his  career. 
Throughout  his  life,  he  had  to  struggle  with  moderate 
means  and,  through  ill  health,  to  retire  a  relatively  poor 
man  at  the  early  age  of  sixty  on  a  moderate  pension. 
Like  Faraday,  he  had  "  no  time  to  make  money."  To 
him  may  be  applied  this  stately  verse  from  Matthew 
Arnold's  poem  on  Dean  Stanley — 


And  truly  he  who  here 

Hath  run  his  bright  career, 

And  served  men  nobly  and  acceptance  found, 

And  borne  to  right  and  light  his  witness  high ; 

What  could  he  better  wish  than  then  to  die, 

And  wait  the  issue  sleeping  underground. 

Why  should  be  pray  to  range 

Down  the  long  age  of  truth  that  ripens  slow, 

And  break  his  heart  with  all  the  baffling  change, 

And  all  the  tedious  tossing  to  and  fro." 


46  MEMORIES 

In  1907  Mr.  Leonard  Huxley  had  to  write  to  the 
Daily  Mail  to  protest  against  its  circulation  of  a  slander 
that  Huxley  had  "  before  his  death  virtually  abandoned 
the  extreme  views  which  he  had  taken  up  in  sincere 
good  faith  and  owned  that  his  conception  of  a  world 
without  God  was  an  illogical  one."  Mr.  Leonard  Huxley's 
refutation  was  easy  and  complete.  He  gave  the  lie 
direct  to  the  statement.  His  father  "  remained  con- 
sistently in  the  attitude  which  he  denned  as  Agnosticism. 
When  the  Daily  Mail  solemnly  enunciates  a  misconcep- 
tion of  this  kind  barely  a  dozen  years  after  a  man's 
death  and  while  his  writings  are  open  for  all  the  world 
to  read,  one  ceases  to  be  astonished  at  the  wondrous 
growth  of  legend  elsewhere." 

Much  more  could  I  say,  but  this  would  be  only  to 
repeat  my  attempt  at  a  portrait  of  Huxley  in  his  many- 
sidedness  in  a  little  book  which  was  published  in  1902. 

SIR  HENRY  THOMPSON  (1820-1904). 

Sir  Henry  Thompson  was  a  native  of  Framlingham. 
His  parents  and  my  near  relatives  were  neighbours  and 
friends.  As  he  was  twenty  years  my  senior  and,  when 
I  was  eight  years  old,  was  a  student  at  University 
College  Hospital,  I  came  to  know  him  only  late  in  his 
life  when  I  was,  at  intervals,  a  guest  at  his  "  Octaves." 
They  were  unique.  They  were  so-called  because  the 
company  and  the  courses  alike  numbered  eight  and  the 
dinner  was  at  that  hour.  Each  menu  had  this  heading — 

Allegro  vivace 

The  guests  were  regarded  as  eight  musical  notes  forming 


SIR   HENRY   THOMPSON  47 

the  scale  of  C  major,  and  the  host  as  the  staff  which 
retains  them.  C  means  common  time;  the  sign  on 
the  last  note  meant,  "  Don't  be  in  a  hurry  to  go,"  and 
the  sign  before  the  double  bar  was  to  indicate  the  hope 
that  the  visit  would  be  repeated.  The  host,  Spartan 
in  his  diet  and  an  abstainer,  placed  before  his  guests 
the  choicest  viands  and  wines,  but,  better  than  these, 
was  the  skill  with  which  he  brought  together  men 
whose  talk  and  tastes  were  complementary  to  one 
another. 

Sir  Henry  Thompson  had  a  remarkable  career.  The 
fame  and  fortune  of  the  young  surgeon  was  secured  when, 
as  he  said  to  me,  it  was  "  a  case  of  curing  or  killing  a 
king."  The  success  of  his  operation — his  wonderful 
delicacy  of  touch  was  a  main  factor — of  lithotrity  on 
Leopold  I,  King  of  the  Belgians,  brought  him  into 
prominence;  with  large  practice  came  fortune  (one 
grateful  patient  left  him  £70,000),  enabling  him  to 
gratify  his  versatile  tastes.  He  was  devoted  to  art ;  he 
was  a  frequent  contributor  to  the  Royal  Academy; 
among  his  portraits  is  a  pencil  head  of  Thackeray,  a 
copy  of  which  hangs  on  my  study  walls,  inscribed, 
"  To  Edward  Clodd  from  his  friend  Henry  Thompson, 
the  author  of  the  sketch."  He  was  fond  of  music; 
Miss  Kate  Loder,  a  celebrated  pianist,  became  his  wife. 
He  was  the  author  of  more  than  one  novel,  Charley 
Kingston's  Aunt  being  the  best  known  of  the  series ;  he 
wrote  on  dietetics,  and,  caring  for  the  dead  as  well  as 
the  living,  plied  his  pen  in  favour  of  cremation,  being 
practically  the  founder  of  the  Cremation  Society. 
Reference  to  this  recalls  the  sexton's  remonstrative 
appeal  in  Punch — 

"  Can  we  earn  our  living 
If  you  urn  our  dead  ?  " 


48  MEMORIES 

Astronomy  was  more  than  a  hobby  with  him,  and 
when  he  gave  up  his  observatory  at  Molesey,  he  en- 
riched the  Greenwich  Observatory  with  a  couple  of 
noble  telescopes  and  needful  apparatus. 

His  parents  were  strict  Baptists;  so  strict  that,  at 
first,  his  father  opposed  his  becoming  a  doctor  on  the 
ground  that  all  doctors  are,  or  become,  infidels.  He 
justified  the  sad  prediction,  and  as  the  subjoined  letter 
shows,  became  an  Agnostic,  although  not  with  the 
sure-footedness  of  Huxley. 

In  full  measure  can  it  be  said  of  him  that  "  age  could 
not  wither,  nor  custom  stale  his  infinite  variety." 

"  35,  Wimpole  Street,  W., 

"  March  5,  1902. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  am  delighted  to  have  your  approval,  up  to  a 
certain  point — of  my  essay  in  the  Fortnightly,1  and  thank 
you  for  the  attention  and  care  you  have  given  to  the 
subject. 

44  Let  me  say  that  I  am  agnostic  to  the  backbone,  i.  e. 
I  believe  only  that — as  I  have  said  in  my  short  survey — 
for  which  I  have  satisfactory  grounds  for  so  doing.  I 
believe,  with  Huxley,  that  it  is  not  only  absolutely  neces- 
sary to  have  sufficient  evidence  for  one's  faith,  but  that 
it  is  sinful  to  believe  anything  without  it.  Now,  in  my 
opinion,  I  infer  nothing  in  that  article  for  which  I  do 
not  adduce  sufficient  evidence.  I  regard  the  beneficence 
of  the  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy  to  be  proved  beyond 
dispute.  The  existence  of  wars  and  misery  has  no 
difficulty  for  me.  Man  is  in  his  infancy — is  still  going 
through  the  process  of  education  and  evolution,  shown 
in  the  former  portion  of  the  essay,  as  long,  slow  and 

i  Fortnightly  Review,  Vol.  LXXVTI.  March  1902. 


SIR  HENRY  THOMPSON  49 

painful,  yet  the  only  possible  training  to  make  him  what 
he  is — and  I  look  for  a  more  highly  developed  being 
as  the  result  of  the  continuance  of  the  process,  during  the 
next  few  centuries — let  me  say  in  my  usual  scripture 
quoting  habit — but  '  a  little  lower  than  the  angels  * 
(whatever  they  may  be). 

"I  have  just  looked  to  the  Romanes  Lecture  where  it 
appeared  to  me  at  the  time,  Huxley  gave  the  real 
agnostic  position. 

"  Time  doesn't  permit  me  to  add  more  in  writing,  one 
could  only  discuss  the  point,  if  the  opportunity  offered. 
14  Very  sincerely  yours, 

"  HENRY  THOMPSON." 


IV 

HERBERT  SPENCER  (1820-1903) 

IT  was  at  Grant  Allen's  that,  in  1889,  I  first  met 
Herbert  Spencer.  Despite  all  dodges  on  Allen's  part 
to  frustrate  the  scheme,  Spencer  insisted  on  going  as  a 
paying  guest  to  the  Nook,  Dorking.  With  a  candour 
which  informs  all  his  writings,  Spencer  tells  us  in  his 
Autobiography  that  no  good  resulted  from  the  stay. 
The  reason  he  gives  is  that  there  "  was  a  little  too  much 
physical  effort  followed  by  a  little  too  much  mental 
excitement."  l  The  philosopher  was  hard  to  please, 
as  much  in  the  satisfaction  of  real  needs  as  of  imaginary 
wants.  The  eccentric  nature  of  his  demands  is  revealed 
with  unconscious  naivete  in  the  gossipy  booklet  entitled 
Home  Life  with  Herbert  Spencer  by  Two,  written  by  the 
ladies  who  kept  his  house.  They  say  in  the  preface  that 
it  had  its  origin  "  in  the  deep  sense  of  duty  we  feel  we 
owe  to  Mr.  Spencer."  It  is  doubtful  if  he  would  have 
been  satisfied  with  the  way  in  which  they  have  dis- 
charged the  debt.  Additions  to  examples  of  his  irritat- 
ing foibles  and  pettiness  are  superfluous,  but  a  couple 
will  bear  the  telling.  I  had  the  advantage  of  seeing 
in  full  working  the  ear-stoppers  whose  mechanism  is 
described  by  the  Two.  Probably  some  frivolous  remark 
of  mine  secured  me  this  privilege.  For  in  the  middle 
of  the  meal,  Spencer,  with  fixed  glance  on  me,  pressed 
the  spring  which  closed  the  hole  of  each  ear.  After 

1  Vol.  II.  p.  412. 
50 


HERBERT  SPENCER  51 

lunch  my  host  and  I  sat  chatting  in  the  garden,  when 
there  came  an  invitation  from  Spencer  to  us  to  take  a 
drive  with  him  in  his  rubber-tyred  carriage,  the  message 
adding,  "  that  we  were  not  to  talk."  What  answer,  I 
hope,  courteously  worded,  was  sent  back,  may  be  guessed. 

I  met  him  occasionally  at  the  Savile,  which  Club  he 
joined  because  he  could  play  billiards  there  on  Sundays, 
a  privilege  denied  at  the  Athenaeum — "  fogey-dom  " — 
as  Huxley  called  it.  Apropos  of  Spencer's  play,  Cotter 
Morison  told  me  that  Captain  Sterling,  son  of  John 
Sterling,  had  a  game  with  Spencer  at  the  Athenaeum  and 
beat  him  badly.  Whereupon  the  inevitable  philosophic 
comment  followed  :  "  Skill  in  billiards  is  often  a  proof 
of  an  ill-spent  youth  !  " 

When  we  were  returning  from  Spencer's  funeral  the 
late  Sir  Michael  Foster  told  me  this  story.  Spencer 
detested  cushions,  and  the  trouble  was  to  find  a  chair 
which  was  hard  in  the  seat,  and  yet  comfortable.  So, 
as  a  last  resource,  he  had  a  seat  covered  with  some  inches 
of  soft  plaster  of  Paris,  and  sitting  on  that,  made  an 
impress  from  which  a  wooden  seat  of  an  exactly  fitting 
pattern  was  cut.  But,  against  a  certain  unendurable 
fussiness,  there  should  be  set  the  fact  that  Spencer  had 
a  soft  place  in  a  heart  that  seemed  adamant,  and  I  know 
of  spontaneous  acts  of  kindness  and  of  offers  of  help  to 
the  troubled  and  bereaved  which  redeem  much  unlove- 
liness.  His  consideration  in  little  things  has  an  example 
in  the  following  hortatory  but  sensible  letter  which  he 
wrote  to  Grant  Allen  on  his  return  from  a  visit  to  Spencer 
in  June  1899,  only  four  months  before  Allen's  death. 
It  is  a  letter  which  every  one  who  "  bolts  his  food  " 
should  take  to  heart. 

"  I  am  glad  to  hear  that  your  wife  thinks  that  you 
profited  by  your  stay  here.  I  hope  that  the  corner  may 


52  MEMORIES 

be  by-and-by  turned  completely.  That  it  may  be  turned 
completely  it  is  clear  that  you  must  improve  your  mas- 
tication. ...  If  I  had  to  teach  children  I  should  give 
them,  among  other  things,  a  lesson  on  the  importance 
of  mastication,  and  should  illustrate  it  by  taking  a  small 
iron  nail  and  weighing  against  it  some  pinches  of  iron 
filings  till  the  two  balanced.  Then,  putting  them  into  two 
glasses,  pouring  into  each  a  quantity  of  dilute  sulphuric 
acid,  leaving  them  to  stir  the  two  from  time  to  time, 
and  showing  them  that  whereas  the  iron  filings  quickly 
dissolve,  the  dissolving  of  the  nail  would  be  a  business 
of  something  like  a  week.  This  would  impress  on  them 
the  importance  of  reducing  food  to  small  fragments.  .  .  . 
Excuse  me  for  saying  that  if  you  do  not  masticate  you 
do  not  deserve  to  be  well." 

As  some  set-off  to  the  ear-stopper  incident,  I  may  add 
that  when  Spencer  heard  from  Allen  that  I  was  writing 
my  Pioneers  of  Evolution  he  graciously  invited  me  to 
his  house  to  see  the  original  documents  of  his  scheme 
of  the  Synthetic  Philosophy.  This  evidenced  that  the 
theory  of  evolution,  as  a  whole,  that  is,  as  dealing  with 
the  non-living  as  well  as  the  living  contents  of  the 
universe,  was  formulated  by  him  some  years  before  the 
publication  of  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species,  in  1859. 

A  common  friend,  the  late  Charles  Miall,  younger 
brother  of  Edward  Miall,  editor  of  the  Nonconformist, 
to  which  Spencer  contributed,  in  early  manhood,  letters 
on  the  Proper  Sphere  of  Government,  told  me  how  he 
and  Spencer  had  as  young  fellows  taken  humble  lodgings 
together  in  London,  and  that  Spencer  said  to  him: 
"  Charley,  I  have  got  £100  a  year  clear.  I  shall  never 
marry.  I  shall  devote  my  time  and  means,  such  as  they 
may  be,  to  the  development  of  my  scheme  of  philosophy, 
and  that  will  be  the  work  of  my  life."  To  few  are  given 


HERBERT  SPENCER 


53 


the  satisfaction  of  bringing  the  conceptions  of  early  years 
to  fruition,  and  among  that  rare  company  is  Herbert 
Spencer.  My  last  memory  of  him  is  of  seeing  him,  shorn 
of  all  dignity,  squatting  on  the  floor  and  pushing  the 
precious  documents  which  he  had  shown  me  into  a 
strong  box.  Among  his  letters  which  I  treasure  is  one 
wherein  he  says,  "  Let  me  thank  you  for  the  many 
efforts  you  have  made  to  diffuse  the  doctrine  of 
evolution." 


SIR  WILLIAM  HUGGINS  (1824-1910) 
RICHARD  A.  PROCTOR  (1837-1888) 

AN  intimacy  of  more  than  forty  years  with  Sir  William 
Huggins  was  brought  about  by  my  chumming  with  a 
fellow  clerk  whose  father,  hearing  of  my  love  of  astro- 
nomy, took  me  to  Sir  William's  observatory  at  Tulse 
Hill.  Like  Huxley,  Tyndall,  Bates  and  others  who 
have  made  large  additions  to  our  knowledge  by  original 
research,  Huggins  had  no  University  training. 

His  father  was  a  draper  in  Gracechurch  Street,  and 
the  studious  son,  thanks  to  home  support  and  sympathy, 
was  able  to  leave  the  counter  in  early  manhood  to 
cultivate  his  passion  for  science,  notably  in  chemistry 
and  allied  subjects.  His  means  were  only  moderate, 
but  they  enabled  him  to  build  and  equip  an  observatory, 
which  became  world-famous  through  his  achievements. 
Armed  with  the  power  of  the  light-analyzing  spectro- 
scope, he  added  largely  to  what  had  been  discovered 
about  the  structure  of  the  stars  and,  specially,  as  to  the 
direction  in  which,  as  shown  by  the  relative  displace- 
ment of  the  lines  in  their  spectra,  they  are  moving.  He 
determined  the  gaseous  nature  of  the  nebulae — systems 
in  course  of  formation,  of  which  the  nebula  in  Orion 
is  an  example — and,  aided  by  the  photographic  dry 
plate,  revealed  the  existence  of  invisible  stars  "  as  the 
sands  of  the  sea  for  multitude."  These  were  the  earliest 

of  a  long  series  of  discoveries  whereby  the  fundamental 

54 


SIR  WILLIAM  HUGGINS  55 

oneness  of  the  contents  of  the  Universe  was  proved. 
When  I  first  knew  him  (in  1865)  he  was  an  orthodox 
but  broad-minded  Congregationalist.  Although  believ- 
ing at  the  time  in  a  spiritual  world,  he  brought  an  open 
mind  to  examination  of  the  claims  of  the  notorious 
medium  Daniel  Dunglas  Home  to  occult  powers.  The 
late  Alfred  Russel  Wallace  and  Mr.  (now  Sir)  William 
Crookes  were  among  the  "  very  elect  "  who  were  satisfied 
as  to  the  genuineness  of  Home's  performances.  But 
Huggins,  possessed  of  a  keenness  of  sight  which  Sir 
William,  who  is  very  myopic,  lacks,  saw  through  the 
tricks,  and  washed  his  hands  of  the  whole  affair.  The 
wish  to  believe,  the  prepossessions  which,  more  or  less, 
influence  all  of  us,  give  the  key  to  the  strange  fact  that 
men  whose  ability  and  keenness  in  their  own  sphere  are 
beyond  question,  can  prove  themselves  incapable  of 
detecting  the  sorriest  of  frauds.  The  mischief  done  by 
them  is  incalculable.  For  the  multitude  cannot  dis- 
criminate :  they  assume  that  he  who  can  speak  with 
unchallenged  authority  on  the  subject  of  which  he  is 
a  master  is  entitled  to  speak  with  like  authority  on 
everything  else.  Mr.  Labouchere  caustically  said  that 
"  mere  denial  of  the  existence  of  a  God  did  not  entitle 
a  man's  opinion  to  be  taken  without  scrutiny  on  matters 
of  greater  importance,"  l  and,  conversely,  it  may  be  said 
that  mere  assertion  of  belief  in  a  Creative  Power  and 
Ultimate  Purpose  in  the  Universe  cannot  carry  more 
weight  because  the  assertor  has  made  important  dis- 
coveries in  physical  science.  The  chapter  of  records 
of  human  credulity  will  never  be  closed.  The  admira- 
tion evoked  by  the  earlier  writings  of  Mr.  Edward 
Carpenter  may  lead  a  few  of  his  readers  to  be  influenced 
by  his  later  vagaries  declaring  his  belief  in  the  genuine- 
1  Preface  to  Life  of  Henry  Labouchere,  by  A.  L.  Thorold. 


56  MEMORIES 

ness  of  "  spirit "  photographs ;  also  in  the  existence 
of  the  soul,  because  experiments  show  that  the  body 
weighs  three-quarters  of  an  ounce  less  immediately  after 
death  !  But  Edward  Carpenter,  to  whose  Civilization, 
its  Cause  and  Cure  and  Love's  Coming  of  Age  I  desire 
to  pay  tribute,  is  a  man  of  poetic  temperament;  he 
carries  no  weight  in  scientific  matters.  Very  different 
is  the  influence  of  a  man  of  the  type  of  Sir  Oliver  Lodge, 
whom  a  crowd  of  presumably  intelligent  people  are 
always  quoting  as  the  champion  of  belief  in  spiritual 
phenomena.  "  You,"  they  say,  "  scoff  at  the  story 
of  the  appearance  of  angels  at  Mons  ?  Why,  men  of 
science  believe  in  angels  !  Dr.  Wallace  says  that  the 
Creator  called  them  into  existence  to  help  him  in  the 
shaping  of  the  sun  and  the  other  bodies  of  the  Universe  ! 
And  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  says  that  in  various  ways  we  are 
being  helped  by  other  beings,  and  you  dare  to  question 
what  these  great  men  tell  us  !  "  One  can  only  sigh  and 
say,  "  Ephraim  is  joined  to  his  idols,  let  him  alone."  l 

A  visit,  at  Huggins's  introduction,  to  a  meeting 
of  the  Royal  Astronomical  Society,  of  which,  on  his 
nomination,  I  was  elected  a  fellow  in  1869,  brought 
me  into  friendly  and,  afterwards,  close  relations  with 
Richard  Proctor.  I  became  a  contributor  to,  and, 
during  his  absences  on  lecturing  tours  in  America, 
assistant-editor  of,  Knowledge.  My  interest  in  him  was 
the  keener  when  he  told  me  that,  a  few  years  before  I 
entered  its  service,  he  had  been  a  clerk  in  the  London 
Joint  Stock  Bank.  But  he  was  there  only  a  short  time ; 
the  trend  of  his  mind  made  more  congenial  to  him  the 
calculations  of  a  transit  of  Venus  than  the  adding-up 
of  account  books  in  the  prosaic  service  of  Juno  Moneta. 

For  years  Huggins  and  he  fought  unsuccessfully 
1  Hosea  iv.  17. 


SIR  WILLIAM  HUGGINS  57 

against  an  exploiting  clique  of  men  of  far  lower  type  who 
clamoured  for  the  "  endowment  of  research,"  which 
Proctor  humorously  and  truly  described  as  too  often 
"  research  after  endowment."  They  argued  that  human 
nature  being  what  it  is,  the  impetus  to  work  is  weakened 
when  a  man  has  a  competence  for  life  assured  him. 
"  Soft  jobs  "  have  a  relaxing  tendency.  But  the  story 
of  the  creation  of  a  costly  department  of  the  State,  which 
has  not  justified  its  existence,  has  yet  to  be  told. 

Well -remembered  faces  at  those  Astronomical  meet- 
ings are  those  of  Warren  de  la  Rue,  who  did  much  for 
celestial  photography;  of  cheery  Captain  Noble — also 
a  foe  of  the  endowment-hunter;  of  John  Browning, 
grinder,  like  Spinoza,  of  glasses,  and,  like  him,  scorner 
of  ignoble  things,  caring  more  for  the  gain  to  science 
through  his  instruments  than  for  the  profit  on  them; 
and  of  gaunt  Airy,  Astronomer  Royal,  about  whom 
Huggins  told  me  a  story,  not  vouching  for  its  accuracy  ! 
After  a  distinguished  career  at  Cambridge,  the  University, 
anxious  to  keep  Airy  in  their  midst  as  the  man  who, 
in  the  estimate  of  all,  was  the  fittest  successor  of 
Pond,  Astronomer  Royal,  then  an  old  man,  gave  him 
a  professorship,  to  which  no  salary  was  attached, 
and  a  room  for  his  students.  A  wit  of  the  day  said 
that  the  University  had  given  to  "Airy  nothing  a 
local  habitation  and  a  name."  Anyway,  when  John 
Pond  died  in  1836,  George  Biddell  Airy  succeeded  him. 
He  laughingly  told  how,  written  to  as  "  Astrologer 
Royal,"  he  was  pestered  to  cast  nativities  and  tell 
fortunes.  Letters  came  from  Earth-flatteners  and 
Earth-squarers ;  from  poor  servant  girls  and  high-born 
dames.  One  of  the  latter  wrote  to  ask  him  to  work  the 
planets  for  her,  to  state  his  fee  and  what  reduction  he 
would  make  on  working  a  quantity  !  Every  letter  was 


58  MEMORIES 

answered,  because,  as  he  said  with  a  twinkle  in  his  eye, 
"  it  was  his  duty  as  a  public  man  to  answer  the  enquiries 
of  the  public."  And  every  letter  was  pigeon-holed  under 
the  general  heading  "  Insanity,"  with  sub-divisions 
"  Astrology  and  Squaring  the  Circle." 

Like  Grant  Allen,  Proctor  was  dependent  on  his  pen 
for  a  living.  But,  to  the  public,  it  was  not  all  loss  that 
men  who,  circumstances  permitting,  could  have  done 
much  in  original  work  (Proctor  did  a  good  deal,  as 
evidenced  by  his  book  on  The  Moon  and  by  his  theory 
of  stellar  distribution)  should  have  used  their  great 
gifts  of  popular  exposition  to  make  clear  the  results 
of  scientific  discovery.  For  the  combination  of  expert 
knowledge  with  vividness  and  clearness  of  style  in 
presenting  it  rarely  occurs  in  such  pre-eminent  degree 
as  in  both  these  writers.  Their  talk  never  flagged; 
their  keen  interest  sharpened  their  tongues  as  well  as 
their  pens,  and  the  pity  of  it  is  that  only  memory  of  the 
flavour  of  the  talk  remains;  the  ingredients  are  lost. 
"  Oh  !  for  a  phonograph  or  a  reporter,"  as  Allen  was 
wont  to  say  after  listening  to  the  flow  of  conversation 
from  Cotter  Morison,  Holman-Hunt  and  other  good 
talkers. 

Some  time  after  I  met  Proctor,  he  had  published 
(in  1870)  a  book  entitled  Other  Worlds  than  Ours.  To 
the  outer  world  a  polemic,  ever  delighting  in  controversy 
and  fulminating  against  abuses  in  high  places,  a  more 
tender-hearted  mortal  never  lived.  The  death  of  a 
darling  boy  caused  him  to  seek  consolation  in  the 
Roman  Catholic  communion.  In  the  closing  chapter 
of  his  book  he  quotes  Bacon  as  wisely  concluding  that 
"  to  survey  the  realm  of  sacred  or  inspired  theology  we 
must  quit  the  small  vessel  of  human  reason  and  put 
ourselves  on  board  the  ship  of  the  Church  which  alone 


RICHARD  A.   PROCTOR  59 

possesses  the  divine  needle  for  justly  shaping  the  course." 
His  perversion  came  upon  me  as  a  surprise,  and  there 
resulted  a  correspondence  between  us  in  which  I  got  the 
worst  of  it.  Let  me  explain.  At  that  time  I  was 
reposing  on  "  the  soft  feather-bed  for  falling  Christians," 
as  Unitarianism  has  been  caustically  defined.  Ten 
years  were  to  pass  before  my  earliest  books  were  to  be 
honoured  as  subjects  of  attack  in  the  Dublin  Review, 
and  of  a  warning  pamphlet  by  one  "  Catholicus,"  whose 
attention  had  been  called  to  them  by  a  lady  who  com- 
plained of  "the  effect  produced  on  the  mind  of  her 
daughter  at  school  by  their  perusal." 

I  was — as  the  phrase  goes — "  sitting  under "  Dr. 
James  Martineau,  the  eloquent  and  scholarly  hierarch 
of  the  now  well-nigh  moribund  Unitarian  sect.  His 
congregation  included  Sir  Charles  and  Lady  Lyell, 
Sir  Charles'  secretary,  Miss  Arabella  Buckley,  the  gifted 
author  of  Life  and  her  Children  and  other  books  of 
popular  science;  Dr.  W.  B.  Carpenter,  Miss  Frances 
Power  Cobbe,  and  other  prominent  people  of  the  time. 
Among  the  treasured  books  on  my  ex  dono  auctorum 
shelf  is  Dr.  Martineau's  Hours  of  Thought,  a  gift  on  his 
retirement  from  the  pulpit  of  Little  Portland  Street 
Chapel.  Forty  years  have  not  effaced  from  memory 
some  striking  passages  in  his  sermons.  Preaching  on 
the  text  "  Remember,  how  short  my  time  is  "  (Psalm 
Ixxxix.  47),  there  flashed,  with  the  force  of  an  epigram, 
"  God  is  the  great  I  am  :  his  verbs  have  no  tenses." 
Following  the  delivery  of  the  text,  "  Destroy  this  temple 
and  in  three  days  I  will  raise  it  up  "  (John  ii.  19), 
the  sermon  was  compressed  in  the  opening  words  : 
"  He  who  could  build  a  faith  might  well  destroy  a 
temple." 

A  long  time  was  to  pass  ere  I  came  to  see  that  there 


60  MEMORIES 

is  no  half-way  house  between  Catholicism  and  Agnos- 
ticism; and  that  the  intermediate  beliefs  lacked  the 
authority  which  has  the  glamour  of  antiquity  and  the 
audacious  assumption  of  finality.  Proctor  had  his  feet 
on  the  rock  of  Saint  Peter;  mine  were  on  the  shifting 
sands  of  Theism.  One  must  either  submit  to  the 
authority  claimed  by  the  Church  of  Rome  as  the  cock- 
sure infallible  guide  in  matters  of  belief,  or  accept  as 
valid  only  what  one's  experience  verifies,  and  confess 
ignorance  regarding  all  that  lies  outside  it.  That  which 
the  Church  of  Rome  asserts  to  be  "  necessary  to  salva- 
tion "  is  a  bundle  of  creeds  and  dogmas  having  no 
correspondence  to  realities,  while  that  which  science 
asks  us  to  accept  can  be  put  to  any  number  of  repeated 
tests  that  never  fail.  Science  has  not  banished  mystery 
from  the  Universe  :  it  has  fed,  and  will  feed,  our  sense 
of  wonder ;  while  the  mysteries,  on  belief  in  which  theo- 
logy would  hang  the  destinies  of  mankind,  are  cunningly 
devised  fables  whose  origin  and  growth  are  traceable 
to  the  age  of  Ignorance,  the  mother  of  Credulity. 

So,  as  I  had  only  the  authority  of  a  vague  and  unstable 
creed  appealing  to  intuitions  that  are  not  in  accord, 
and  to  documents  whence  different  inferences  are  drawn, 
to  oppose  to  an  Authority  which  speaks  with  no  uncer- 
tain voice,  Proctor  had  the  best  of  the  argument.  How- 
ever, the  illusions  begotten  of  his  unbalanced  emotions 
were  dispelled  in  later  years,  and  he  died  an  Agnostic. 
The  end  was  sad,  since,  ere  his  dear  ones  could  reach 
him,  he  died  of  yellow  fever  in  a  hospital  in  New 
York. 

Our  correspondence  was  mainly  on  business,  but  the 
following  letter,  dated  a  few  months  before  his  death, 
has  interest  as  bearing  on  the  writing  of  his  Old  and 
New  Astronomy :  the  first  portion  of  which  was  pub- 


RICHARD  A.   PROCTOR  61 

lished  six  months  before  he  died.     The  work  was  put 
into  final  shape  by  the  late  Mr.  A.  Cowper  Ranyard. 


"  S.  Joseph, 
"  August  31,  1887. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  must  have  seemed  wofully  negligent,  but 
truly  between  the  perfectly  awful  heat  we  had  here 
(over  104  in  the  shade  three  days  running,  and  moist 
heat  at  that)  with  a  touch  of  malarial  fever  which  pulled 
me  down  considerably,  and  a  perfect  crush  of  work  con- 
sequent on  the  sudden  irruption  of  the  New  Astronomy 
book  in  my  hands  already  full  of  other  work,  I  have  been 
much  troubled  to  do  letters. 

"  The  volume  on  Astronomy  makes  great  way  all  the 
same.  I  have  nearly  got  through  all  the  least  pleasant 
parts  of  the  work,  viz.  the  matter  relating  to  the  progress 
of  Astronomy — Copernicus,  Kepler,  Newton  and  the 
rest. 

"  You  would  hardly  believe  how  much  reason  I  have 
had  to  be  disgusted  at  the  kind  of  work  I  have  found  in 
books  from  which  I  had  expected  useful  hints.  I  need 
hardly  tell  you  I  have  felt  bound  to  study  all  the 
standard  works  and  many  works  not  standard.  No 
man,  however  widely  or  (so  far  as  he  could)  deeply  he 
may  have  studied,  can  afford  to  neglect  the  work  of 
others,  even  in  exposition. 

"Even  if  I  had  kept  a  record  of  difficulties  shirked 
or  avoided,  mistakes  made  by  men  who  have  had  and 
deserved  a  high  reputation  as  observers  or  college 
teachers,  it  would  astonish  you. 

"  Dear  old  Herschel,  though,  keeps  his  place  in  my 
esteem,  so  does  Grant.  Miss  A.  M.  Clerke's  book  is 
occasionally  useful,  but  she  herself  evidently  knows 


62  MEMORIES 

nothing  and  can  only  quote  other  folks'  opinions,  putting 
them  into  her  own  words,  and  sometimes,  nay,  often, 
showing  that  she  has  misunderstood  them. 

"  Will  you  kindly  forward  the  enclosed  to  Grant  Allen, 
with  my  thanks  for  his  always  charming  articles. 
"Ever  yours  most  sincerely, 

"  R.  A.  PROCTOR." 


VI 

HENRY   WALTER  BATES  (1825-1892).     JOSEPH  THOM- 
SON (1857-1895).    PAUL  B.  Du  CHAILLU  (1835-1903) 

I  HAD  the  good  fortune  to  have  as  my  near  neighbour 
for  some  years  one  of  the  most  lovable,  albeit  one  of  the 
shyest  of  men — Henry  Walter  Bates,  for  many  years 
Secretary  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society.  His 
Naturalist  on  the  River  Amazons  ranks  among  the  rare 
classics  of  travel.  As  his  executor  and  the  writer  of  a 
Memoir  prefaced  to  a  reprint  of  the  first  edition  of  that 
book,  a  good  deal  of  his  correspondence  passed  through 
my  hands.  The  letters  from  Darwin  pay  full  tribute 
to  the  value  of  his  researches  in  the  Amazons,  where  he 
gathered  the  material  for  formulating  his  theory  of 
mimicry  or  protective  resemblances  in  animals.  To 
the  book  itself,  when  submitted  to  him  in  manuscript, 
Darwin  gave  unstinted  praise.  In  an  unpublished 
letter  in  my  possession,  he  says  :  "I  have  read  your 
first  chapter  with  great  interest.  I  will  give  you  my 
opinion,  whatever  that  may  be  worth,  without  any 
exaggeration.  I  would  not  shorten  a  word  or  a  sentence, 
and  I  hardly  remember  any  travels  of  which  I  could 
say  that.  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  a  judge  of  style,  for 
I  have  never  attended  systematically  to  the  subject." 
Another  naturalist-traveller  famous  in  his  day,  John 
Gould,  said  to  Bates  :  "I  have  read  your  book  :  I  have 
seen  the  Amazons  !  " 

Among  Bates's  papers  I  found  the  following  tribute  to 

63 


64  MEMORIES 

his  book  from  his  co-explorer,  Alfred  Russel  Wallace. 
After  nearly  two  years'  work  together  they  parted 
company,  finding  it  more  convenient  to  explore  separate 
districts  and  collect  independently.  The  result  was 
Bates's  book  on  the  Amazons,  and  Wallace's  on  the 
Rio  Negro. 

"  5,  Westbourne  Grove  Terrace,  W., 

"  Thursday  [1863]. 

"  DEAR  BATES, 

"  Supposing  you  are  still  in  Leicester  I  write  a 
few  lines  to  tell  you  that  I  have  just  finished  reading 
your  book,  from  which  I  have  derived  much  pleasure. 
It  has  recalled  to  me  old  and  familiar  scenes  which  had 
almost  faded  away  from  memory  like  a  dream. 

"  I  am  therefore,  perhaps,  not  well -fitted  to  judge  of 
its  effect  on  the  public;  as  for  me  it  has  an  altogether 
peculiar  charm,  but  it  is  so  thoroughly  well  written,  the 
style  is  so  easy  and  the  matter  generally  so  new  and 
interesting  that  I  am  sure  most  persons  who  will  read 
it  carefully  will  be  pleased  and  delighted. 

"  The  bits  of  Natural  History  are  very  good,  and  they 
too  have  a  charm  for  me  on  account  of  our  opinions  on 
such  topics  which,  perhaps,  others  may  not  feel  in  an 
equal  degree.  Your  vindication  of  butterfly  study  at 
Vol.  II.  p.  326,  is  in  particular  most  admirable.  Your 
estimate  of  the  character  of  the  Indian  is,  I  think,  very 
just,  and  you  have  dwelt  upon  it  so  that  I  think  it  will 
leave  a  distinct  impression  upon  any  reader. 

"  The  most  interesting  part  to  me  is  the  latter  half 
of  Vol.  II.,  as  it  is  the  most  novel.  To  others  the  whole 
book  will  probably  be  equally  delightful. 

"  I  see  no  signs  of  labour  in  the  style,  neither  do  I 
detect  any  of  that  flowery  exaggeration  you  had  led 
me  to  expect.  There  is  not  a  line  nor  an  epithet  on 


HENRY   WALTER   BATES  65 

subjects  of  natural  scenery,  vegetable  and  animal  life, 
that  I  cannot  fully  support  and  agree  with.  On  the 
whole  I  must  congratulate  you  on  having  produced  so 
extremely  pleasant  and  interesting  a  book,  which  I  am 
sure  will  delight  all  who  know  you,  and  if  the  general 
public  do  not  also  appreciate  it,  it  will  show  that  they 
have  no  taste  left  for  unadulterated  and  unsensational 
books  of  travel.  Thanks  for  the  kind  manner  in  which 
you  have  mentioned  my  name. 

"  I  remain,  dear  Bates, 

"  Yours  very  faithfully, 

"  ALFRED  R.  WALLACE." 

As  is  well-known,  Wallace,  when  in  the  Malay 
Archipelago,  independently  arrived  at  exactly  the  same 
theory  of  the  origin  of  species  which  was  formulated  by 
Darwin  after  years  of  study  of  the  problem.  But  to 
the  end  of  his  life,  Wallace  rejected  the  theory  as  applic- 
able to  man's  intellectual  and  spiritual  nature,  contending 
that  these  can  have  an  adequate  cause  only  in  the 
unseen  universe  of  Spirit,  in  other  words,  that  there  was 
a  stage  in  man's  development  when  the  Almighty 
imported  a  "  soul  "  into  him.  At  what  stage  remains 
vague,  and  by  what  method,  undetermined.  The 
result,  in  Wallace's  case,  was  belief  in  Spiritualism  as 
adducing  evidence,  through  mediums,  of  survival 
after  death  as  a  definite,  real  and  practical  conviction. 
So  he  argues,  in  his  credulous  way,  in  his  book  on 
Miracles  and  Modern  Spiritualism. 

Concerning  this  aberration  of  a  presumably  keen 
intellect,  Bates  told  me  the  following.  When  the  two 
were  in  Leicester,  they  went  to  a  lecture  on  what  was 
then  called  "  Electro-biology  "  or  "  Animal  magnetism." 
One  of  the  audience  was  asked  to  come  on  the  platform 


66  MEMORIES 

to  submit  to  be  hypnotized,  this  being  effected  by 
continuous  staring  at  a  strong  light  until  the  nerve 
centres  of  the  eyes  were  fatigued  and  the  balance  of 
the  nervous  system  upset,  the  subject  falling  into 
paralysis  of  will  and  unconsciously  performing  all  sorts 
of  antics,  e.  g.  nursing  a  pillow  as  if  it  were  a  baby,  and 
dancing  ridiculously  to  music.  After  the  two  left  the 
hall,  Wallace  expressed  the  conviction  that  the  pheno- 
mena were  brought  about  by  spiritual,  that  is,  super- 
natural, influences  ! 

The  world  has  a  short  memory  even  for  its  greatest, 
and  my  readers  cannot  be  expected  to  share  my  interest 
in  any  one  who  may  be  only  a  name  to  them,  the  more 
so,  as  in  this  case,  no  words  of  mine  can  convey  the 
charm  infusing  the  memory  of  so  rare  a  soul  as  that 
which  dwelt  in  Bates.  I  recall  the  happy  hours  when, 
his  evening  employment  of  beetle-sticking  over,  the 
frugal  supper  eaten — (like  Darwin,  he  suffered  from 
chronic  indigestion) — the  pipe  lit  and  the  talk  started, 
he  discoursed  on  themes  evidencing  his  wide  and  varied 
reading.  For,  unlike  Darwin,  who  tells  us  in  the  auto- 
biography which  is  prefixed  to  his  Life  and  Letters  that 
for  many  years  he  "  could  not  endure  a  line  of  poetry 
and  found  Shakespeare  intolerably  dull,"  1  even  music 
disconcerting  him  and  natural  scenery  giving  him  little 
delight,  Bates  revelled  and  rejoiced  in  all  these  ministers 
to  the  completeness  of  life.  In  fact,  he  was  the  richer 
of  the  two  both  in  mental  grasp  and  equipment,  and  such 
letters  of  Darwin  to  him  as  have  survived  evidence 
that  Bates's  masterly  suggestiveness  impressed  him 
profoundly.  Darwin  tells  us  that  the  fiction  which 
interested  him  was  not  of  a  high  order.  By  contrast, 
Bates's  chief  favourites  were  Thackeray  and  Thomas 
1  Vol.  I.  p.  100, 


HENRY  WALTER  BATES  67 

Hardy;  he  loved  the  one  for  the  pathos  and  insight 
which  the  shallow  folk  who  call  Thackeray  cynical l 
cannot  see  underlying  the  seemingly  cold  analysis  of 
act  and  motive ;  he  loved  the  other  for  the  country  air 
that  blows  through  every  page.  He  loathed  the  modern 
school  of  didactic  and  introspective  fiction. 

The  love  of  Homer,  whom  he  learned  to  read  in  hours 
stolen  from  sleep  before  sweeping  out  his  father's  ware- 
house, never  cooled ;  he  preferred  the  Ionian  hexameters 
to  the  paraphrase  of  Pope  or  even  the  archaic  prose  of 
Myers  and  Lang.  Milton  and  his  more  immediate 
successors  were  favourite  authors,  but  when  I  brought 
Matthew  Arnold's  poetry  under  his  notice,  he  felt  as 
Keats  felt  when  first  reading  Chapman's  Homer,  "  a 
new  planet  swam  into  his  ken."  Its  classical  note,  its 
severity  of  restraint,  its  saneness  and  surefootedness, 
its  gospel  of  cheerful  acceptance  of  the  inevitable,  led 
him  to  give  Arnold  the  chief  place  in  his  appreciation 
of  modern  poets. 

He  had  been  steadily  re-reading  Gibbon  in  his  latter 
days,  and  had  reached  the  middle  of  the  last  volume 
when  he  died.  He  became  quite  "  the  old  man  eloquent  " 
in  following  the  great  historian  in  his  stately  march 
through  the  most  pregnant  ages  of  the  world's  history, 
dwelling  especially  on  the  graphic  narrative  of  the 
bloody  struggles  between  the  factions  of  Christendom 
and  of  the  Arabian  conquests  and  their  influence  on 
Western  civilization.  But  Dean  Milman's  notes  irri- 
tated him;  he  told  me  that  he  thought  them,  for  the 

1  "  There  are,  it  will  not  surprise  you,  some  honourable  women  and 
a  few  men  who  call  you  a  cynic,  who  speak  of  '  the  withered  v/orld  of 
Thackerayan  satire.'  .  .  .  The  quarrel  of  these  sentimentalists  is  really 
with  life,  not  with  you;  they  might  as  wisely  blame  Monsieur  BufTon 
because  there  are  snakes  in  his  Natural  History.1'' — Letters  to  Dead 
Authors,  Letter  I,  to  W.  M.  Thackeray,  by  Andrew  Lang. 


68  MEMORIES 

most  part,  an  impertinence.  How  he  would  have 
appreciated  the  notes  and  appendices  with  which 
Professor  Bury  has  enriched  and  illuminated  Gibbon's 
text! 

There  was  a  wonderful  freshness  in  all  that  he  said 
and  a  wonderful  magnetism  in  the  way  he  said  it.  His 
sentences  were  broken  by  curious  hyphen-like  pauses. 
He  talked,  as  he  wrote,  in  clear-cut,  pure  English,  so 
that  had  his  conversation  been  taken  down  not  a  word 
need  have  been  altered. 

Doyen  among  coleopterists,  every  finder  of  what 
looked  like  a  new  species  of  beetle  sent  it  to  Bates  to 
classify  and  name.  Sometimes  it  came  already  named. 
One  evening  he  showed  me  a  specimen  of  enormous  size 
which  had  arrived  from  South  America.  The  sender 
was  so  overjoyed  at  the  discovery  that  he  had  named  it 
Jehovah- Shalom  !  x  He  did  not  say  whether  he  had 
built  an  altar  to  it. 

Apropos  of  Bates' s  unique  collection  of  beetles,  which 
was  the  chief  asset  in  his  modest  estate,  and  the  disposal 
of  which  was  one  of  the  hardest  tasks  I  have  had  in  a 
fair  number  of  executorships,  I  was  recently  telling  a 
lady  what  trouble  Mrs.  Bates  and  I  had  to  keep  the 
thousands  of  specimens  in  saleable  condition.  Where- 
upon she  innocently  exclaimed,  "  But  how  did  you 
feed  them  ? "  There  was  silence :  then  there  was 
explosive  laughter. 

Every  traveller,  both  English  and  foreign,  who 
landed  on  our  shores  made  his  way  to  Bates  :  every 
budding  explorer  sought  from  him,  as  Nestor,  the  wise 
and  practical  counsel  stored  up  in  the  treasury  of  his 
rare  and  ripe  experience.  It  was  at  his  house  that  I 
had  the  privilege  of  meeting  some  renowned  explorers. 
1  Judges  vi.  24. 


JOSEPH   THOMSON  69 

Among  them  was  JOSEPH  THOMSON,  who,  unlike  some 
travellers  of  the  braggadocio  and  commercial  type, 
leaving  a  trail  of  blood  behind  them,  never  ill-treated 
or  lost  a  member  of  his  caravan,  and  who  could  laugh- 
ingly boast  that  he  was  the  one  African  traveller  who 
took  a  bottle  of  brandy  across  that  continent  and 
brought  it  back  unopened.  He  had  his  "  hour  of 
glorious  life."  A  stripling  of  twenty,  he  was  chosen 
as  geologist  and  naturalist  to  an  expedition  to  the 
Central  African  Lakes  headed  by  Keith  Johnston. 
Soon  after  landing,  Johnston  died  of  dysentery  and  the 
command  fell  on  Thomson.  He  proved  equal  to  it ;  he 
remembered,  he  said,  that  he  was  "  the  countryman  of 
Livingstone."  This  was  the  first  of  a  series  of  successful 
journeys  the  details  of  which  are  set  down  in  his  pub- 
lished narratives  and  summarized  in  an  admirable 
biography  by  his  brother.  Treasured  is  the  memory  of 
the  Sunday  evenings  when,  fresh  from  expeditions  full 
of  adventure,  Thomson  would  make  one  of  a  company 
which  included  Bates,  Du  Chaillu,  Robert  Brown  and 
William  Simpson. 

With  what  gusto  he  told  how,  when  impaled  on  the 
horns  of  a  buffalo  bull,  he  escaped  death  through  an 
opportune  shot  fired  by  one  of  his  men  which  killed 
the  ferocious  beast.  Du  Chaillu  chimed-in  with  the 
thrilling  account  of  how  he  shot  his  first  gorilla.  More 
amusingly,  Thomson  told  us  how,  when  in  Masai  Land, 
the  cattle  were  dying  by  thousands  and  the  superstitious 
folk  were  pointing  to  the  white  man  and  his  followers 
as  the  cause,  he  posed  as  a  lybon  or  "  medicine-man  " 
and  frightened  them  by  taking  out  and  replacing  his 
false  teeth  !  One  day  an  old  chief  brought  his  wife  to 
him  to  confess  their  admiration  and  seek  his  help. 
They  told  him  that  they  were  charmed  with  his  appear- 


70  MEMORIES 

ance  and  colour,  and  that  they  wanted  a  little  white  boy 
who  should  be  his  counterpart.  He  told  them  that  the 
matter  was  beyond  his  power,  being  entirely  in  the 
hands  of  the  god  N'gai,  to  whom  they  must  pray.  This 
didn't  content  them,  and  they  asked  him  to  spit  on 
them.  All  the  world  over,  saliva  plays  a  large  part  in 
magic,  being  connected  with  the  barbaric  belief  that 
anything  belonging  to,  or  coming  forth  from,  a  sorcerer 
or  a  man  reported  holy,  is  a  vehicle  of  black  or  white 
magic,  as  the  case  may  be.  Brand,  in  his  Popular 
Antiquities,  says  that  "  spittle  is  esteemed  a  charm 
against  all  kinds  of  fascination,"  e.  g.  against  the  "  Evil 
Eye."  As  a  curative,  an  example  is  given  in  the 
Gospels  when  Jesus  mixed  his  spittle  with  clay  and 
anointed  the  eyes  of  a  blind  man  with  it.1 

Still  the  couple  were  not  satisfied;  they  wanted  the 
white  man's  medicine,  so  Thomson  blessed  some  Eno's 
fruit  salts  and  gave  them  the  effervescing  stuff.  Then 
he  went  his  way. 

We  had  a  good  time  together  at  Tangier,  where  I 
met  him  on  his  return  from  his  trip  over  the  Atlas 
Mountains  in  October  1888.  We  saw  the  snake- 
charmers,  listened  to  the  story-tellers,  not  knowing 
what  they  said,  and  saw  (I  for  the  first  time)  a  dead 
donkey  in  the  "  sok  "  or  market  outside  the  town  walls. 
He  had  much  to  say  about  Mohammedanism  in  Morocco, 
contrasting  its  mischievous  effects  there  with  its  in- 
fluence for  good  in  the  Western  Sudan.  In  that  year 
Canon  Isaac  Taylor  had  published  a  sympathetic  study 
of  Islam  in  his  Leaves  from  an  Egyptian  Note-Book, 
and  Thomson  was  interested  to  hear  that  his  own  views 
and  those  of  a  dignitary  of  the  Established  Church  were 
in  accord. 

1  John  ix.  8. 


PAUL   B.   DU  CHAILLU  71 

Pioneer  work  in  Northern  Zambesi  followed  his 
journey  through  Morocco,  but  at  an  early  stage  of  his 
career,  dysentery,  the  white  man's  curse,  laid  the  seeds 
whose  fruit  was  death  in  his  thirty-eighth  year  in  1895. 
Nearly  all  his  letters  to  me  are  filled  with  a  story  of 
intermittent  but  great  suffering,  telling  of  "  a  grim  race 
with  the  inevitable."  There  is  a  beautifully  tender 
"  appreciation  "  of  him  by  Mr.  (now  Sir  James)  Barrie, 
in  the  biography,  while  among  the  tributes  which  the 
news  of  his  death  evoked  this  came  in  a  letter  to  me  from 
my  old  friend  Eliza  Lynn  Linton. 

"  It  is  strange  how  little  frequency  of  personal  in- 
timacy has  to  do  with  Love.  I  loved  Joseph  Thomson, 
far  more  than  I  had  the  right  by  knowledge.  But  his 
was  such  a  clear  candid  sincere  nature,  one  felt  to  know 
more  of  him  than  one  did.  .  .  ." 

Of  my  friendship  with  that  dear  woman,  traduced  in 
life  and  well-nigh  forgotten  in  death,  something  is  said 
later. 

Not  less  secure  place  in  the  affection  of  our  little 
group  was  held  by  PAUL  BELLONI  Du  CHAILLU,  known 
only  as  "  Paul."  Like  more  than  one  eminent  man, 
he  invented  more  than  one  birthplace  for  himself. 
One  day  it  was  New  York;  another  day  it  was  Paris, 
while  according  to  the  obituary  notice  of  him  in  The 
Times  (May  1,  1903),  it  was  New  Orleans.  The  truth 
is  that  he  was  born  in  the  island  of  Bourbon  or  Reunion. 
His  father  was  a  Frenchman,  clerk  to  a  Gaboon  trader, 
and  his  mother  was  a  mulatto.  He  was  not  much  over 
twenty  when, "  bitten  by  the  gad-fly,"  he  started  on  his 
own  account  on  travels  through  Equatorial  Africa. 
When,  in  1861,  his  narrative  of  Explorations  and 
Adventures  was  published,  it  was  a  good  deal,  in  slang 


72  MEMORIES 

terms,  "  blown  upon."  He  was  looked  on  as  a  sort  of 
modern  Munchausen,  largely  because  of  the  sprightli- 
ness  and  abandon  of  the  book,  but  chiefly  because  of 
what  it  had  to  tell  of  novelty  about  pygmies  and  gorillas. 
Dr.  Gray  and  other  naturalists  attacked  it  as  contain- 
ing a  minimum  of  fact  and  a  maximum  of  fiction.  But 
Paul  was  maligned.  With  him  is  the  credit  of  the  re- 
discovery of  the  great  apes  whose  existence  had  been 
lost  to  sight  since  Hanno,  the  Carthaginian,  voyaged  to 
West  Africa  about  400  B.C.  As  for  the  pygmies,  these 
races  are  found  in  other  countries  besides  the  Congo; 
and  to  the  folklorist  are  interesting,  because  in  the  stories 
about  "  the  little  people  "  may  be  sometimes  traced  the 
source  of  belief  in  dwarfs  and  fairies.  Paul's  diminutive 
stature,  his  negroid  face  and  his  swarthy  complexion, 
made  him  look  somewhat  akin  to  our  simian  relatives. 
Only  those  of  his  friends  who  survive  can  enter  fully 
into  the  drollery  of  the  story  of  his  appearance  in  a 
Baptist  pulpit  in  the  backwoods  of  America,  where  he 
was  on  a  lecturing  tour.  When  the  sermon  was  ended 
(of  the  text  and  nature  of  the  discourse  I  wish  that  I 
had  remembrance),  there  were  cries  from  the  congrega- 
tion :  "  Brother  Du  Chaillu,  you  have  told  us  nothing 
about  the  gorilla."  Whereupon  Paul  explained  that, 
being  in  the  Lord's  House  on  the  Lord's  Day,  he  did  not 
think  they  would  expect  him  to  do  that.  Then  spoke 
one  of  the  deacons  :  "  Brother  Paul,  did  not  the  Lord 
make  the  gorilla,  and  can  it  be  wrong  to  talk  about 
His  works  in  His  own  House  and  on  His  own  Day?  " 
So  Paul,  nowise  reluctant,  narrated  some  of  his  adven- 
tures, including  that  of  the  killing  of  his  first  gorilla. 
(My  children  will  never  forget  his  telling  it  to  them. 
His  vivid  imitation  of  the  awful  roar  of  the  animal  as 
he  beat  his  breast  with  his  huge  fists,  and  of  the  terrible 


PAUL   B.   DU   CHAILLU  73 

human  groan  with  which  he  fell  prone  on  his  face,  made 
them  shriek  with  fear,  so  realistic  was  it.)  The  deacon 
then  announced  that  a  collection  would  be  made. 
Silence  fell  upon  the  congregation.  Then  Paul  said, 
"  Brother  Ephraim,  to-day  there  will  be  no  collection." 
Great  cheers  from  the  congregation,  in  which  the  deacon 
did  not  join. 

When  he  was  in  Ashango  Land  in  1865  he  was  elected 
king  of  the  Apingi  tribe,  I  think  on  the  death  or  deposi- 
tion of  the  monarch.  But  although  the  honour  was 
unique,  there  were  drawbacks — the  harem  was  full  and 
the  exchequer  was  empty.  So,  one  night,  soon  after 
what  corresponded  to  his  coronation  had  been  celebrated, 
His  Majesty,  who  possessed  no  privy  purse  and  who 
preferred  to  remain  a  gay  bachelor,  "  folded  his  tent  like 
the  Arabs  and  as  silently  stole  away."  But,  as  he  would 
remind  us  from  time  to  time,  he  was  "  every  inch  a 
king,"  albeit  a  very  short  one,  and  on  his  stay  at  my 
house  one  Whitsuntide  there  was  a  right  merry  meeting. 
Never  until  then  having  had  the  privilege  of  entertaining 
Royalty  under  my  roof,  the  health  of  Du  Chaillu  the 
First,  king  of  the  Apingi,  was  loyally  drunk  by  Professor 
John  Rh^s,  Grant  Allen,  York  Powell  and  Joseph  Thom- 
son. The  subject  of  the  toast  rightly  insisted  on  a  share 
of  the  bottle,  for  after  all,  as  he  argued,  the  health  of 
the  toasted  is  of  greater  importance  to  himself  than  to 
his  friends. 

"  Hail  fellow,  well  met,"  was  Paul  everywhere, 
whether  among  the  snows  of  the  North  or  the  scorchings 
of  the  South,  and  hence,  by  way  of  variety,  he  hied 
himself  to  the  "  Land  of  the  Midnight  Sun,"  under  which 
title  he  told  a  good  deal,  and  doubtless  kept  back  more, 
of  the  good  time  that  he  had  there.  But  he  took  himself 
too  seriously  in  starting  on  an  historical  quest  whose 


74  MEMORIES 

result  was  to  convince  himself,  but  nobody  else,  that 
when  the  Romans  left  Britain,  the  invaders  were  Norse- 
men and  not,  as  we  have  all  been  taught,  Low-Dutch 
tribes.  The  book  embodying  this  theory  was  published 
in  two  stately  volumes  under  the  title  of  The  Viking  Age. 
It  is  of  no  value  and,  probably,  very  few  people  outside 
the  critics  ever  heard  of  it.  Paul  was  very  angry  with 
Canon  Taylor,  who  reviewed  the  book  sarcastically  and 
severely,  and  when  I  hinted  that  the  Canon  had  told  me 
he  would  like  to  meet  him,  Paul  broke  out  vehemently, 
"  I  will  not  come  to  Aldeburgh  if  that  old  man  is  there. 
I  should  pull  his  nose." 

On  his  way  home  from  Russia,  he  was  stricken  with 
paralysis  and  died  in  the  Alexandra  Hospital,  Petrograd, 
in  April  1903. 


Photo,  A.  G.  Dew-Smith,  Esq.] 


[To  face  paye  74. 


. 


Reproduced  by  kind  permission  of  Mrs.  Roy-Batty. 


VII 

MARY  HENRIETTA  KINGSLEY  (1862-1900) 

IN  the  first  instance,  I  met  Mary  Kingsley  in  the 
congenial  atmosphere  of  the  Folk  Lore  Society,  and,  next, 
at  Sir  Alfred  Ly all's.  There  followed  many  happy 
hours  together. 

"  I  do  wish,"  she  said  in  a  letter  to  me  dated  January  8, 
1898,  "  Du  Chaillu  were  in  town,  for  it  would  give  me 
more  pleasure  to  see  him  than  it  would  give  any  one 
pleasure  to  see  me.  I  would  like  half-an-hour  over  a 
map  with  that  man.  I  have  stood  up  for  his  work 
right  and  left,  for  it  was  terribly  underrated,  though  all 
the  time  I  had  a  MS.  biography  of  him  written  by  an 
old  enemy  of  his  and  sent  to  me  for  publication  which 
would  have  blown  the  roof  off  any  publisher's  house  in 
London — not  that  I  have  shown  it  to  any  one." 

The  two  never  met.  He  was  then  on  a  lecturing  tour 
in  America,  where  he  stayed  a  long  time.  She  died  in 
1900,  in  her  thirty-eighth  year.  Poor  health  notwith- 
standing, she  sailed  for  South  Africa  when  the  Boer  War 
was  raging,  to  "do  her  bit,"  and  while  nursing  the 
wounded,  caught  enteric  fever  and  died  in  Simonstown 
hospital.  She  had  the  signal  honour  of  a  naval  funeral ; 
her  body  was  borne  on  a  torpedo  boat,  and  committed 
to  the  deep.  Thousands  of  women  could  have  been 
better  spared  from  the  crowd  of  purposeless  lives.  It 
is  a  stirring  and  touching  story  of  a  life  of  self-sacrifice 
which  nurtured  no  hope  of  recompensing  glory  in  a  vision 
of  the  martyr's  crown. 

76 


76  MEMORIES 

Daughter  of  Dr.  George  Kingsley,  co-author  with  the 
Earl  of  Pembroke  of  South  Sea  Bubbles,  Mary  Kingsley 
was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  women  of  our  time. 
Those  who  knew  her  will  agree  with  me  when  I  say  that 
it  is  utterly  beyond  the  power  of  any  of  us  to  convey 
the  impression  which  this  brilliantly-gifted,  most  sym- 
pathetic and  plucky  woman — spare  in  figure,  blue -eyed, 
fair-haired — made  upon  all  who  met  her.  We  all  fell 
in  love  with  her.  York  Powell  said  to  me  :  "  If  I  were 
an  artist,  I  should  paint  her  as  my  type  of  the  Madonna." 

She  lost  both  parents  in  the  spring  of  1892 ;  for  four 
years  she  had  nursed  an  invalid  mother,  and,  for  recovery 
from  the  blow  wrought  by  her  double  bereavement  on 
a  constitution  never  strong,  she  took  a  trip  to  the 
Canaries.  Passion  for  travel  was  in  her  blood,  and  in 
1893  she  sailed  for  West  Africa.  Second  and  third 
journeys  followed  in  1894  and  1896  respectively,  the 
outcome  of  the  three  being  the  publication  of  her  Travels 
in  West  Africa,  1897.1  This  book  at  once  took  a  fore- 
most place  in  anthropology  and  the  study  of  the  folklore 
and  religion  of  the  lower  races.  An  Appendix  on 
"  Trade  and  Labour  in  West  Africa  "  made  such  appeal 
to  Liverpool  merchants  that  she  was  invited  to  lecture 
on  those  topics  for  the  edification  of  Chambers  of 
Commerce  1  In  her  Preface  she  speaks  of  the  "  brilliant 
apology  "  which  her  book  requires.  She  says  :  "  Recog- 
nizing this  fully  and  feeling  quite  incompetent  to  write 
such  a  masterpiece,  I  have  asked  several  literary  friends 
to  write  one  for  me.  But  they  have  kindly  but  firmly 
declined,  stating  that  it  is  impossible  satisfactorily  to 
apologize  for  my  liberties  with  Lindley  Murray  and  the 
Queen's  English." 

Brimful  of  humour,  she  wrote  in  what  may  be  defined 
1  Followed,  in  1899,  by  West  African  Studies. 


M.   H.   KINGSLEY  77 

as  educated  slang,  examples  of  which  may  be  noted  in 
the  following  letters  chosen  from  an  unpublished  bundle. 
I  should  explain  that  her  condemnation  of  missionaries 
as  making  the  native  African,  when  they  had  converted 
him,  the  "  Curse  of  the  Coast,"  and  her  charge  that  they 
greatly  overrated  the  evils  of  the  liquor  traffic  in  Africa, 
brought  upon  her  an  avalanche  of  criticism.  Talking 
of  missionaries,  she  chortled  over  a  story  which  I  found 
was  not  a  "  chestnut  "  to  her.  A  geologist  calling  on  an 
ardent  supporter  of  missionary  enterprise,  saw  a  map, 
large  portions  of  which  were  coloured  in  black  to  denote 
heathendom,  when  he  said  to  the  shocked  host,  "  I  had 
no  idea  the  coal  measures  of  the  globe  were  so  extensive.'* 

"  100,  Addison  Road,  Kensington,  W., 

"  January  7,  1898. 
"  DEAR  MR.  CLODD, 

"  I  will  gladly  come  on  the  19th  because  it  is  the 
first  day  you  name,  not  because  I  am  going  to  West 
Africa  at  the  end  of  this  month.  You  tell  Mr.  Milne 
those  papers  have  turned  his  brain.  I  am  just  off  to 
Ireland,  but  shall  be  back  on  the  14th.  I  want  to  ask 
you  some  questions  about  Deification  of  ancestors — a 
subject  on  which  I  am  in  trouble  just  now  :  also  on 
totemism — also  on  difficulties  in  the  employment  of  the 
term  fetish.  I  won't  say  this  is  all,  but  if  you  will  kindly 
settle  these  three  it  will  be  a  great  help — you  understand. 
"  I  shall  be  glad  to  see  Mr.  Keltic  again — but  I  don't 
fancy  you  will  get  him  to  come,  for  I  am  sure  he  is  not 
keen  on  me.  Kind  he  has  ever  been.  He  has  an  amaz- 
ing pretty  daughter,  which  is  an  excellent  thing  in  a  man, 
as  Mr.  Pepys  would  say,  but  I  believe  he  thinks  all 
women  want  to  get  into  his  society,  the  R.G.S.,1  I 
1  [Geographical.] 


78  MEMORIES 

mean.  Now  I  do  not.  I  have  no  objection  to  his 
domestic  society — but  I  am  not  a  believer  in  women  in 
learned  societies — and  this  puts  me  in  mind  of  another 
thing  which  Mr.  Keltic  and  you  could  help  me  in — I 
want  an  African  Society  formed  on  lines  I  have  all 
prepared.  I  dare  not  show  a  hand  in  it,  for  ladies  must 
not  be  admitted  for  reasons  I  will  state  if  called  upon. 
Now,  if  I  suggest  this  thing  and  say  ladies  not  admitted, 
my  remaining  hair  will  go,  and  my  most  intimate  friend 
tells  me  that  wearing  wigs  forces  him  into  smoking 
penny  Pickwicks,  because  they,  the  wigs,  you  under- 
stand, are  so  expensive.  I  need  hardly  say  he  lost  his 
hair  by  fever  on  the  West  Coast  of  Africa.  Mind  you 
don't  reveal  my  heresies. 

"  Believe  me, 

"  Yours  very  sincerely, 

"  M.    H.    KlNGSLEY." 


"  100,  Addison  Road,  W., 
"  January  31,  1898. 

"  DEAR  MR.  CLODD, 

"  After  all  your  kindness  I  feel  bound  to  report 
myself,  and  I  beg  to  report  myself  better.  I  cannot 
say  I  am  altogether  well,  as  I  am  shaky  on  my  legs  and 
generally  just  conscious  that  I  am  supremely  weak  and 
wretched.  But  I  made  my  first  venture  out  to-day  and 
was  brought  home  ignominiously  in  a  cab.  Still,  ten 
days  ago  if  I  had  gone  out  at  all  the  chances  were  that 
I  should  have  gone  in  a  hearse  and  not  come  home. 

"  I  am  exceedingly  indebted  to  you  for  those  two  books 
you  sent  me;  the  Myths  and  Dreams  particularly,  for 
it  interested  me  when  being  interested  was  important. 
I  have  a  host  of  things  to  say  to  you  about  it,  not  critical, 
but  questions  as  to  how  you  think  some  of  the  things 


M.   H.   KINGSLEY  79 

you  say  work  out.  I  wrote  a  note  to  Mr.  Lang  saying 
you  had  told  me  about  his  desire  for  crystal-gazing 
cannibals,  and  I  had  an  amusing  letter  from  him  that 
I  will  show  you.  Unfortunately  he  seems  to  take  it  as 
a  matter  of  course  that  I  sort  of  believe  in  ghosts,  as  he 
does  in  a  sort  of  a  way,  whereas  I  don't.  I  believe  in 
space  and  atoms  and  Darwinism  and  all  that  sort  of 
Ju-ju,  like  I  fancy  you  do,  for  I  was  brought  up  among 
an  agnostic  set  of  the  Huxley  school.  So  there  will 
have  to  be  some  painful  explanations  between  me  and 
Mr.  L.  some  day,  but  this  is  between  ourselves.  I  am 
just  about  to  publish  an  article  on  Africans  which  will 
bring  me  into  quite  as  many  rows  as  I  shall  be  able  to 
deal  with  for  some  time. 

"  I  suppose  it  would  be  useless  to  ask  you  to  come  and 
see  me  some  afternoon?  I  should  be  very  glad,  but  I 
do  not  feel  justified  in  doing  so.  I  live  up  so  many  stairs 
in  such  an  old  marine  store  of  a  place  that  I  am  not 
worthy  of  being  called  on  by  the  civilized,  but  if  you  were 
charitably  disposed  I  would  show  you  some  queer  things  l 
and  you  could  go  home  from  Uxbridge  Road  Station; 
only  I  pray  you,  if  you  do,  send  me  a  line  of  warning,  so 
I  may  be  in.  Thursday  and  Friday  are  the  only  days 
I  ought  to  be  out  this  week,  though  I  am  at  the  mercy 
of  Major  Lugard,  for  he  and  I  are  at  war  with  each  other 
and  we  have  now  and  then,  behind  the  scenes,  to  arrange 
details  of  the  next  fight. 

"  I  remain, 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  M.  H.  KINGSLEY." 

1  And  she  did.  One  was  a  hideous  human -shaped  idol,  with  a 
rope  of  coagulated  human  blood  round  its  neck.  Nails  had  been 
driven  into  every  part  of  its  body  to  "rivet"  the  god's  attention. 
See  on  this,  Frazer's  Golden  Bough,  ix.  p.  70. 


80  MEMORIES 

"  100,  Addison  Road, 

"  February  16,  1898. 

"  DEAR  MR.  CLODD, 

"  I  can  come  any  day  you  like  except  the  25th 
and  26th  of  this  month ;  next  month  I  have  no  engage- 
ments whatsoever,  so  please  let  me  know  which  day  will 
suit  you.  Please  forgive  me  for  not  writing  more 
promptly;  it  has  been  from  two  things,  one  my  lazy 
state,  and  the  other  the  liquor  traffic  with  West  Africa. 
This  subject  has  been  a  perfect  curse  to  me  ever  since  I 
said  the  mission  party  exaggerated  about  it  and  attribute 
to  it  things  that  arose  from  different  causes.  I  honestly 
believe  I  am  right.  I  have  not  that  blind  belief  in 
everything  that  comes  out  of  a  bottle  that  caused  one 
of  my  white  West  Coast  friends  to  drink  a  lot  of  water 
containing  leeches  which  a  black  lady  friend  of  mine  had 
just  put  down  in  the  parlour  for  a  moment.  I  merely 
think  from  what  I  know,  having  said  this  once,  and 
having  published  analysis  of  the  liquor  they  call  poison 
[see  Travels,  p.  664],  I  should  have  been  content,  for 
my  own  part,  to  let  them  say  what  they  liked,  but  then 
in  comes  another  affair.  Liverpool,  as  I  dare  say  you 
know,  hates  the  Royal  Niger  Company  like  the  devil. 
The  R.N.C.  has  got  its  back  against  a  door,  fighting 
France.  I,  from  my  statements  over  this  liquor  traffic, 
Liverpool's  trade  backbone,  have  a  certain  influence 
with  L.  and  that  influence  I  threw  into  getting  the 
Liverpool  merchants  not  to  harry  the  company  while 
it  was  in  this  French  row.  I  had  succeeded  beautifully, 
Liverpool  was  behaving  like  ten  saints  rolled  into  one, 
when  down  in  the  middle  of  it  comes  Major  Lugard's 
article  praising  the  Company  up  to  the  skies  for  its 
anti-liquor  policy — pitching  into  me  and  Liverpool 
right  and  left.  My  flock  broke  away  at  this,  and  I  have 


M.   H.    KINCxSLEY  81 

had  a  pretty  scratching  time  of  it,  getting  them  into  the 
fold  again,  and  have  only  done  it  by  saying  I  will  answer 
Lugard.  This  I  have  only  just  got  through  and  sent 
in  to  the  printer.  It  is  fire  and  brimstone  for  me  when 
it  comes  out,  and  all  Liverpool  can  do  is  to  put  up  a 
memorial  window  to  me.  It  would  be  a  friendly  thing 
of  you  to  do  to  think  out  a  suitable  design.  I  fear  Liver- 
pool in  its  devotion  to  me  might  select  a  West  African 
Ju-ju  hung  round  with  square-faced  gin  bottles.  I  need 
not  say  I  shall  only  be  too  glad  to  see  you  any  day  you 
can  spare  time  to  come.  Whenever  you  feel  like  doing 
it  send  me  a  postcard  and  I  will  be  in.  It  is  a  great 
treat  to  me  to  have  some  one,  who  like  myself,  wants 
praying  for,  according  to  Mr.  Lang,  to  talk  over  Fetish 
with.  Excuse  this  yarn. 

'*  Yours  very  truly, 

"  MARY  H.  KINGSLEY." 


"  32,  St.  Mary  Abbots  Terrace,  Kensington,  W., 
"August  30,  1898. 

"  DEAR  MR.  CLODD, 

"  Thank  you  most  sincerely.  I  have  written  to 
Dr.  Blyden,  but  if  you  would  send  him  a  note  to  say 
which  place  really  suits  you  best  I  am  sure  he  will  come. 
I  have,  in  duty  bound,  in  the  interests  of  truth,  in- 
formed him  that  you,  Lyall  and  Tylor  are  our  three 
best  men.  Lyall  is  in  Kent,  Tylor  in  Somerset,  both 
willing  enough  to  see  him,  but  too  far  off  for  him,  with 
his  slender  means,  to  go  to,  so  if  you  will  see  him  it  will 
be  a  boon. 

"  I  do  not  know  whether  I  told  you  he  was  as  black  as 
the  ace  of  spades.  If  this  will  alarm  the  Savile  you 
had  better  have  him  elsewhere,  but  his  manners  are 
perfect  and  he  is  a  perfect  type  of  the  kindly,  thoughtful, 


82  MEMORIES 

true  Negro.  I  had  a  specimen  of  the  other  type  here 
this  afternoon.  A  man  I  like  and  well  educated,  but 
who  is  ready  for  a  war  dance  any  time  and  who  alarms 
my  household,  who  choose  to  think  that  while  he  dances 
round  me  gesticulating,  battle,  murder  and  sudden 
death  are  in  the  air,  whereas  we  are  only  arguing  like 
anything. 

"  But,  of  course,  Blyden  is  quite  out  of  the  ordinary, 
a  man  a  head  and  shoulders  above  all  the  other  educated 
Africans,  and  I  enjoy  his  company  immensely.  I  know 
so  well  the  sure  slow  way  that  form  of  mind  moves  and 
the  absolute  reality  of  belief  it  holds.  I  really  want 
you  to  see  a  big  black  man's  mind  as  I  know  you  will  if 
you  see  Blyden.  I  have  to  say  if,  because  if  he  is — you 
cannot  say  frightened,  because  in  his  way  you  cannot 
frighten  a  negro — but  if  he  don't  take  to  a  person,  he 
is  silent,  civil,  but  to  put  it  mildly,  uninteresting. 

"  I  have  so  often  seen  that  sort  of  thing  with  them  out 
there.  Man  after  man  who  has  lived  on  the  coast  for 
years  will  tell  you  these  natives  will  never  tell  you  any- 
thing. Well,  I  always  found  them  quite  willing  to  tell 
me,  when  we  were  alone  together,  what  their  wife's 
mother's  aunt's  deceased  second  cousin's  cat  died  of,  or 
anything  else. 

"  I  shall  be  home  Friday  night,  so  if  you  have  an 
afternoon  next  week  to  fritter  away  please  let  me  know. 
"  Yours  very  truly, 

"  MARY  H.  KINGSLEY." 


VIII 

EDWARD  WHYMPER  (1840-1911) 

BATES  introduced  me  to  Whymper  at  a  dinner  of  the 
Geographical  Society  about  1890.  But  not  till  three 
years  after  that,  when  he  came  to  Aldeburgh,  did  we 
approach  into  nearer  relation.  There  he  met  Grant 
Allen,  York  Powell,  Henry  Moore,  R.A.,  and  James  S. 
Cotton  (of  these  four,  only  the  last  named,  my  oldest 
friend,  survives).  Of  course  talk  fell  on  Whymper's 
scaling  of  famous  peaks — both  in  the  Old  World  and 
the  New — in  Switzerland  and  the  Andes.  And,  of 
course,  he  told  the  story  of  the  tragedy  of  the  Matterhorn. 

The  grim,  tightly-drawn  face,  the  set  lips,  the  metallic 
voice,  all  gave  force  to  the  story  related  in  calm  tones 
as  if  it  was  of  small  import  and  not  a  notable  event  in  a 
man's  life. 

There  was  never  a  semblance  of  emotion  noticeable 
in  him,  yet,  underneath  the  dry  crust,  there  was  a  soft- 
ness of  nature  which,  speaking  from  my  own  experience, 
showed  itself  in  thoughtful  little  acts.  The  first  time 
he  came  he  brought  me  his  Scrambles  amongst  the  Alps 
in  the  Years  1860-1869— a  valued  addition  to  the  gifts 
I  have  received  from  many  authors.  His  humour  was 
sardonic.  On  this  first  visit,  when  called  to  breakfast 
and  asked  if  he  took  porridge,  there  came  an  answer, 
through  clouds  of  tobacco  smoke — for  Whymper  smoked 
in  bed  as  well  as  out  of  it — "  Porridge  !  I  would  rather 
leave  the  house  !  "  And  I  believe  he  meant  it ! 

83 


84  MEMORIES 

In  the  following  year  he  met  Thomas  Hardy  at 
Aldeburgh,  and  never  was  the  man  of  letters  more 
delighted  to  hear  the  oft-told  story  of  the  man  of 
adventure.  Whymper  gave  more  of  detail;  he  told  all 
that  can  ever  be  known  about  the  mystery  of  the  rope 
which,  breaking  on  the  descent  of  the  party  on  the 
fateful  July  14,  1865,  caused  the  death  of  three  climbers 
and  one  guide.  In  Whymper's  words  :  "  They  passed 
from  our  sight  uninjured,  disappeared  one  by  one,  and 
fell  from  precipice  to  precipice  on  to  the  Matterhorn 
gletscher  below,  a  depth  of  nearly  4000  feet.  From  the 
moment  the  rope  broke  it  was  impossible  to  help  them." 

Whymper  had  to  undergo  no  light  torture  of  suspicion 
based  on  rumours  that  he  had  cut  the  rope  to  save  his 
own  skin.  But  the  explanation  that  he  gave  concerning 
the  unwitting  selection  of  a  Manilla  rope  that  seemed 
the  strongest,  and  proved  so  tragically  to  be  the  weakest, 
of  three,  should  have  silenced  the  slanders.  The  ex- 
planation left  no  doubt  as  to  his  integrity  in  the  minds 
of  those  who  heard  it  verbally,  however  much  or  little 
that  doubt  may  linger  among  those  who  read  the  story 
in  the  twenty-second  chapter  of  the  Scrambles.  It 
deeply  impressed  Mr.  Hardy,  and  inspired  him  when,  in 
1897,  he  looked  on  the  Matterhorn  from  Zermatt,  to 
compose  a  sonnet  published  in  his  Wessex  Poems,  which 
I  have  his  permission  to  quote  here. 


Thirty-two  years  since,  up  against  the  sun, 
Seven  shapes,  thin  atomies  to  lower  sight, 
Labouringly  leapt  and  gained  thy  gabled  height ; 

And  four  lives  paid  for  what  the  seven  had  won. 

They  were  the  first  by  whom  the  deed  was  done. 
And  when  I  look  at  thee  my  mind  takes  flight 
To  that  day's  tragic  feat  of  manly  might 

As  though,  till  then  of  history  thou  hadst  none. 


EDWARD   WHYMPER  85 

Yet  ages  ere  man  topped  thee,  late  and  soon 
Thou  watch'dst  each  night  the  planets  lift  and  lower, 

Thou  gleam'dst  to  Joshua's  pausing  sun  and  moon, 
And  brav'dst  the  tokening  sky  when  Caesar's  power 

Approached  its  bloody  end ;  yea,  saw'st  that  noon 
When  darkness  filled  the  earth  till  the  ninth  hour." 

Should  the  story  of  Whymper's  career  ever  be  fully 
told,  it  will  include  record  of  his  contributions  to  geology 
and  entomology,  evidencing  that  he  was  something 
more  than  a  daring  climber  of  perilous  peaks.  It  will 
also  include  the  story  of  his  efforts  to  keep  alive  the 
exquisite,  but  seemingly  nowadays  doomed,  art  of  the 
wood  engraver. 

In  droll  contrast  to  the  foregoing,  my  last  reminiscence 
of  him  is  an  incoming  with  a  bag  of  shrimps  and  a 
small  jug  of  cream,  a  passage  to  the  kitchen  to  shell 
the  shrimps,  and  then  return  with  a  plate  of  them 
smothered  in  the  cream.  And  an  excellent  mixture  it 
proved.  His  departure  was  followed  by  a  letter  in 
which  occurs  this  commendation  of  another  mixture. 

"  I  send  herewith  for  your  acceptance  a  pinch  of 
sulphate  of  quinine.  A  few  grains  of  it  in  a  tumbler 
of  whisky  and  water  improves  the  quality  of  the  drink." 
I  have  not  yet  put  this  to  the  test. 

In  the  spring  of  1910  the  Wessex  poet  read  his  sonnet 
to  the  Conqueror  of  the  Matterhorn.  It  was  at  Mr. 
Hardy's  desire  that,  after  an  interval  of  sixteen  years, 
the  two  met  again  at  Aldeburgh.  Mr.  Hardy  brought 
with  him  a  copy  of  the  Ascent,  and,  at  his  request, 
Whymper  traced  in  red  ink  on  the  map  the  track  taken 
by  the  party  in  1865,  and  I  know  that  the  little  volume, 
thus  enriched,  is  one  of  the  treasures  of  Max  Gate, 
Dorchester.  In  the  autumn  of  the  next  year  he  passed 
away  at  the  age  of  seventy-one,  at  Chamonix — fitly  closing 
his  eyes  in  the  presence  of  the  snow-clad  mountains. 


IX 

WILLIAM  SIMPSON  (1823-1899) 

THE  work  of  another  man  whose  friendship,  through 
the  introduction  of  Mark  Wilks,  I  enjoyed  for  many 
years,  should  have  place  in  the  history  of  wood  engrav- 
ing, and  of  much  else.  The  career  of  William  Simpson, 
known  among  his  circle  as  "  Crimean  Simpson,"  was 
in  its  variety  and  interest  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
that  can  fall  to  the  lot  of  man. 

Starting  as  a  lithographer — "  Clyde-built,"  as  he 
loved  to  say — he  was  a  native  of  Glasgow.  He  came 
to  London  in  1851,  and  three  years  afterwards,  on  the 
outbreak  of  the  Crimean  War,  accepted  a  commission 
from  the  Colnaghis  to  go  as  their  artist  to  make  sketches 
of  the  war.  He  witnessed,  and  to  some  extent  shared 
in,  the  horrors  of  Balaclava  and  followed  the  campaign 
to  the  fall  of  Sebastopol.  One  indirect  result  of  our 
wars  is  to  Anglicize  the  menu,  and  he  told  me  how,  on 
his  return  to  Constantinople,  entering  a  dinirig-shop, 
he  saw  "  Ouarsh-too  "  on  the  list.  Curious  as  to  the 
strange  dish,  he  ordered  it,  and  found  that  it  was  the 
homely  "  Irish  stew  !  "  His  admirable  sketches  brought 
him  under  Royal  notice,  with  commissions  from  the 
Queen  for  drawings  which,  for  aught  that  I  know,  hang 
on  the  walls  of,  or  rest  in  portfolios  in,  Windsor  Castle. 
Up  to  the  time  of  his  marriage,  which  was  late  in  life, 
he  had  rooms  at  64,  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  arid  many  a 

good  time  we  had  with  him  there  on  his  return  from 

86 


WILLIAM   SIMPSON  87 

Abyssinia,  or  India,  or  China,  or  America,  as  the  case 
might  be.  One  day  a  Royal  command  compelled  a 
postponement  of  the  evening's  junketing.  Simpson 
was  summoned  to  Windsor.  Of  course,  he  had  to  hear 
the  old  joke  about  Sir  Benjamin  Brodie,  Sergeant- 
surgeon  to  Her  Majesty.  The  students  to  whom  he  was 
to  lecture  read  on  the  blackboard  the  announcement 
that  Sir  Benjamin  had  to  postpone  the  engagement 
"  being  commanded  to  attend  upon  the  Queen."  One 
of  the  students  chalked  underneath  :  "  God  save  the 
Queen  !  " 

Landing  at  Dover  after  one  of  his  many  travels,  Simp- 
son heard  the  following  dialogue  between  a  lady  and  a 
Customs  House  officer.  "  Have  you  anything  to  declare, 
madam  ?  "  "  No,  there  is  only  wearing  apparel  in  my 
trunk."  "  I  must  ask  you  to  open  it."  The  examina- 
tion disclosed  a  row  of  bottles  of  brandy.  "  Do  you 
call  these  wearing  apparel,  madam  ?  "  "  Oh  !  yes,  they 
are  my  husband's  nightcaps." 

The  story  of  Simpson's  life-work  is  largely  the  story 
of  our  own  times.  It  may  be  said,  with  a  touch  of 
exaggeration,  that  he  saw  every  one  of  note  and  every 
place  of  interest.  There  was  not  any  event  of  importance, 
from  the  Crimean  War  to  the  Franco-German  War, 
which  was  not  depicted  by  his  pencil  or  described  by 
his  pen.  And  he  was  so  much  more  than  an  artist. 
His  interest  in  the  history,  and  his  knowledge,  of 
ancient  architecture,  has  evidence  in  many  valuable, 
and  now  rare,  papers.  He  was  keenly  interested  in 
research  into  the  origin  of  primitive  cults.  He  took 
advantage  of  his  travels  to  make  a  series  of  remarkable 
drawings  of  phallic  symbols  copied  from  the  temples  of 
the  East  and  other  parts,  the  unknown  fate  of  which 
is  to  be  deplored.  The  worship  of  the  emblems  of 


88  MEMORIES 

fertility  is  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  man's  sense 
of  the  mystery  of  generation  and  the  lewdness  which 
is  associated  with  that  worship  must  not  blind  us  to 
its  deep  religious  significance.  Simpson's  book  on  The 
Buddhist  Praying  Wheel :  Circular  movements  in  Custom 
and  Religious  Ritual  is  a  valuable  contribution  to  the 
history  of  symbolic  ritual.  A  hymn  learned  in  my  boy- 
hood says  that  "  The  heathen  in  his  blindness  bows 
down  to  wood  and  stone."  But  if  he  genuflects  in 
person,  he  sings  his  hymns  by  deputy,  since,  as  Simpson 
shows,  the  praying-wheel  is  really  a  praising-wheel, 
having  sacred  words  written  on  it.  Evading  the 
jealously-guarded  frontier  of  Tibet,  he  secured  a  fine 
specimen  of  the  "  wheel,"  the  use  of  which,  he  tells  us, 
is  a  wise  economy  of  the  devotee,  who  sometimes  puts 
it  into  running  water  to  turn  it.  He  was  not  fortunate 
enough  to  see  a  Mahatma,  he  told  me. 
Here  is  a  characteristic  letter  from  him. 


"  Hotel  Golden  Ship,  Eisleben, 

"Novembers,  1883. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  learn  this  morning  that  you  have  sent  an 
invitation  to  No.  19  [i.  e.  to  his  house  at  Willesden]. 
I  believe  that  will  be  officially  answered  by  the  Authori- 
ties at  that  place,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  it  will 
interest  you  to  get  a  note  at  this  time  from  Luther's 
birthplace. 

"  I  went  to  Worms  and  saw  the  Luther  Drama  there. 
[The  occasion  was  the  quadricentennial  of  Luther's 
birth.]  And  then  I  got  to  Wittenberg  and  saw  the 
anniversary  ceremony  at  that  place  of  nailing  the  thesis 
on  the  Church  door.  I  came  here  last  Sunday  and 
hope  to  leave  on  Saturday  as  soon  as  the  ceremony  is 


WILLIAM   SIMPSON  89 

over.  So  I  may  get  the  material  in  the  Strand  [he  was 
acting  as  artist  of  the  Illustrated  London  News]  in  time 
to  be  out  on  the  Saturday  following. 

"  I  sent  a  long  letter  yesterday  to  the  Daily  News  and 
it  may  appear  on  Saturday.  If  you  see  it,  you  will 
learn  a  good  deal  about  Luther's  birthplace,  and  about 
what  is  going  on  here. 

"  I  have  thrown  away  Brahminism  and  Buddhism 
for  the  time  being.  Nirvana  is  nothing,  and  as  for  the 
Noble  Eightfold  Path,  I  renounce  it.  Justification  by 
Faith  is  all  in  all.  I  feel  Protestant  to  the  backbone, 
and  should  like  to  have  a  few  Papal  Bulls  to  destroy. 
I  am  bringing  home  some  acorns  from  the  oak  at  Witten- 
berg and  I  hope  to  have  a  tree  at  Willesden  of  my  own. 
Should  the  Scarlet  Thingummybob  send  any  Bulls 
there  we  will  be  prepared. 

"  The  way  the  people  here  get  up  their  costume 
processions  has  quite  delighted  me. 

"  From  yours  very  truly, 

"  WILLIAM  SIMPSON." 

Whether  from  the  acorns  there  sprang  oaks  at  Willes- 
den I  cannot  say.  Tempus  edax  rerum :  what  would  I 
not  do  to  keep  the  memory  of  William  Simpson  fresh  and 
lasting  !  Despite  all  that  he  did,  one  fears  that  his 
name  is  among  those  "  writ  in  water."  He  is  remem- 
bered only  by  a  few — a  vanishing  number — as  the 
enthusiast,  who,  when  acting  as  special  artist  of  the 
Illustrated  London  News  on  the  Afghan  Boundary  Com- 
mission in  1884,  rode  to  Naishapur  to  make  a  drawing 
of  the  tomb  of  Omar  Khayyam  and  to  gather  hips  from 
the  rose  bushes  growing  near  it.  These  were  fittingly 
sent  to  Bernard  Quaritch,  the  publisher  of  FitzGerald's 
"  mashed-up  Omar,"  as  he  called  his  translation.  From 


90  MEMORIES 

the  letter,  too  long  to  be  fully  printed  here,  I  quote 
the  salient  part. 


"  Naishapur, 
"  October  27,  1884. 

"  DEAR  MR.  QUARITCH, 

"  From  the  association  of  your  name  with  that 
of  Omar  Khayyam  I  feel  sure  that  what  I  enclose  in 
this  letter  will  be  acceptable.  The  rose-leaves  I  gathered 
to-day,  growing  beside  the  tomb  of  the  poet  at  this 
place,  and  the  seeds  are  from  the  same  bushes  on  which 
the  leaves  grew.  In  all  probability  they  are  the  par- 
ticular kind  of  roses  Omar  Khayyam  was  so  fond  of 
watching  as  he  pondered  and  composed  his  verses.  .  .  . 
I  hope  you  will  be  able  to  grow  them  in  England.  .  .  . 

"  Yours  very  truly, 

"  WILLIAM  SIMPSON." 

How,  by  happy  chance,  he  told  me  of  this  some  years 
afterwards,  and  wondered  at  the  fate  of  the  seeds ;  how 
this  put  me  on  the  quest,  with  result  of  hearing  that 
they  had  been  sent  to  Kew;  how,  with  the  help  of  Sir 
Thiselton  Dyer,  there  were  found  puny  plants  which 
had  sprung  from  them;  how,  by  his  directions,  these 
were  grafted  on  a  sweet-briar  bush,  cuttings  from  which 
were  in  due  time  taken  to  be  planted  by  the  grave  of 
Edward  FitzGerald;  are  not  these  things  faithfully 
recorded  in  the  Book  of  the  Omar  Khayydm  Club  ? 

The  rarity  of  that  Book  warrants  the  insertion  of  two 
poems  written  on  the  occasion  of  the  pilgrimage  of 
some  members  of  the  Club  to  plant  the,  now  lusty, 
bushes.  One  is  by  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse,  C.B.,  "  volunteer 
laureate,"  as  he  described  himself;  the  other  is  by  a 
second  "  volunteer,"  Grant  Allen. 


WILLIAM  SIMPSON  91 

"  Reign  here,  triumphant  Rose  from  Omar's  grave, 

Borne  by  a  fakir  o'er  the  Persian  wave ; 
Reign  with  fresh  pride,  since  here  a  heart  is  sleeping 
That  double  glory  to  your  Master  gave. 

Hither  let  many  a  pilgrim-step  be  bent 
To  greet  the  Rose  re-risen  in  banishment ; 

Here  richer  crimsons  may  its  cup  be  keeping 
That  brimmed  it  ere  from  Naishapur  it  went." 

E.  G. 

"  Here,  on  FitzGerald's  grave,  from  Omar's  tomb, 

To  lay  fit  tribute  pilgrim  singers  flock : 

Long  with  a  double  fragrance  may  it  bloom, 

This  Rose  of  Iran  on  an  English  stock." 

G.  A. 

In  connection  with  the  function  of  the  planting  a 
protest  came  from  the  then  Rector  of  Boulge.  "  His 
body  is  buried  in  peace,  but  his  name  liveth  for  ever- 
more "  among  Omarians.  "  I  personally"  he  wrote  to 
me,  "  cannot  object  to  your  proposal  of  planting  a  rose 
tree  with  a  fence  or  rail  for  its  protection  at  the  head 
of  Mr.  Edward  FitzGerald's  grave  in  Boulge  churchyard, 
though  I  should  much  prefer  the  proposed  plate  of 
inscription  having  no  reference  to  a  heathen  philosopher 
which  I  cannot  but  think  out  of  place  in  a  Christian 
Churchyard"  The  letter  has  as  many  italics  as  a  lady's. 


EDWARD  FITZGERALD  (1809-1883) 

Virgilium  vidi  tantum.  The  quotation  is  not  inapt, 
for  did  not  FitzGerald  say,  "  Horace  never  made  my 
eyes  wet  as  dear  old  Virgil  does  "  ?  One  June  morning, 
many  years  ago — the  exact  date  is  forgotten — walking 
near  my  house  with  a  fellow  townsman,  there  approached, 
with  slow  gait,  a  tall,  sea-bronzed  man  wrapped  in  a 
big  cloak  and  wearing  a  slouch  hat  kept  on  with  a 
handkerchief  tied  under  the  chin.  "  Don't  you  know  who 
that  is  coming  along?  "  said  my  friend,  adding,  "  That's 
FitzGerald.  He  has  written  some  poetry  :  you  know 
they  say  he's  .  .  ."  and  my  friend  tapped  finger  on 
forehead.  He  introduced  me,  and  there  passed  between 
"  Old  Fitz  "  and  myself  a  few  commonplaces  about  the 
weather  and  the  fishing.  He  was  often  at  Aldeburgh  x — 
"  There  is  no  sea  like  the  Aldeburgh  sea,"  he  said,  but 
as  I  was  for  some  years  able  to  go  there  only  at  week- 
ends and  holidays  this  was  my  first  and  last  sight  of  him. 
I  cannot  make  the  tame  incident  interesting. 

So  much  has  been  written  by  many  pens  about  him 
that  there  is  nothing  new  to  be  said,  and  but  for  this 
brief  personal  description  of  him,  there  is  small  warrant 
for  reference  in  these  pages.  But  I  had  the  privilege 
of  knowing  a  venerable  and  cultured  lady,  now  deceased, 

1  He  usually  sailed  from  the  Deben  to  the  Aide  in  his  little  yacht 
the  Scatidal,  so  named,  he  said,  because  "  that  was  the  staple  product 
of  Woodbridge." 

92 


EDWARD   FITZGERALD  93 

for  whom,  all  through  his  life,  there  was  a  warm  corner 
in  his  heart.  Of  her  he  writes,  in  a  letter  to  Fanny 
Kemble  three  years  before  his  death,  as  follows — 

"  Mary  Lynn  1 — a  pretty  name — who  is  of  our  age 
and  played  with  me  when  we  both  were  children  at 
that  very  same  Aldeburgh — is  gone  over  to  those 
mountains  which  you  are  so  fond  of,  having  the  same 
passion  for  them  as  you  have.  I  have  asked  her  to 
meet  me  at  that  Aldeburgh — that  we  might  ramble 
together  along  that  beach  where  once  we  played,  but 
she  was  gone." 

There  is  another  delightful  letter  in  which  he  says — 

44 1  have  been  again  to  Aldeburgh  when  my  contem- 
porary old  Beauty,  Mary  Lynn,  was  staying  there, 
and  pleasant  evenings  enough  we  had  talking  of  other 
days,  and  she  reading  to  me  some  of  her  Mudie  Books, 
finishing  with  a  nice  little  supper  and  some  hot  grog 
for  me  which  I  carried  back  to  the  fire,  and  set  on  the 
carpet." 

Miss  Lynn  was  a  niece  of  Major  Moor  of  Bealings,  an 
authority  on  Hindu  mythology  and  allied  subjects.  He 
is  more  widely  known  as  the  writer  of  a  book  entitled 
Bealings  Bells,  wherein  he  records  the  mysterious  ringing 
of  his  housebells,  at  intervals,  for  fifty-three  days.  He 
was  satisfied  that  this  was  "by  no  human  agency." 
But,  on  his  own  showing,  a  more  incompetent  witness 
was  not  possible.  However,  the  ever-credulous  spiritual- 
ists accepted  his  testimony  as  unchallengeable,  and 
added  the  ringing  to  the  stock  of  horseplay  indulged  in 
by  spirits,  probably  as  diversion  from  the  boredom  of 

1  Her  portrait  is  given  in  Thomas  Wright's  Life  of  Edward  Fitz- 
Gerald,  Vol.  II.  p.  203C 


94  MEMORIES 

their  surroundings.  Miss  Lynn's  relations  with  the 
Major  brought  her  into  literary  circles  which  made  her 
society  interesting.  I  was  selfishly  glad  to  lend  her 
books  from  time  to  time,  because  this  gave  me  excuse, 
when  taking  them,  for  getting  talks  with  her.  These, 
occasionally,  fell  upon  "  Edward,"  as  she  always  called 
him.  She  told  me  that  the  letters  between  them  were 
too  familiar  for  her  to  accede  to  a  request  from  Mr.  Aldis 
Wright  to  include  them  in  his  collection.  I  was  per- 
mitted to  see  a  few,  and,  of  her  courtesy,  was  allowed 
to  make  a  copy  of  the  following — 

"  Woodbridge, 

"  December  9,  1868. 

"  I  can't  find  any  copy  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  which 
you  write  about.  Two  of  his  works  you  would  read  or 
read  as  much  of  as  any  one  does  read  :  the  Urn  Burial 
and  Religio  Medici.  They  are  both  quaint,  but  both 
have  their  fine  passages,  and  the  Urn  Burial  has  a  last 
chapter  or  two  not  to  be  paralleled  in  our  language. 
There  may  be  things  as  fine — or  finer — but  nothing  as 
fine  in  their  way  :  which  is  a  fine  way.  It  is  exactly 
like  the  most  solemn  organ  playing  one  out  of  cathedral 
at  dusk.  I  enclose  you  my  yearly  note  from  Carlyle 
(which  I  do  not  want  again).  You  see  that  it  is  growing 
dusk  with  him  too,  and  the  organ  beginning  to  play 
out.  There  is  a  capital — not  long — book  on  America 
by  Mr.  Zincke,  vicar  of  Wherstead,  near  Ipswich.  It 
is  called,  I  think,  Last  Winter  in  America — with  table- 
talk  of  what  he  heard  and  saw  there.  It  is  quite 
unaffected,  simple  and  I  think  impartial,  praising 
country  and  people  on  the  whole,  but  not  believing 
they  will  pay  their  debt. 

"  I  have  seen  the  bridegroom  with  a  new  coat  and 
sub-cerulean  necktie;  alert,  loud,  long  striding  and 


EDWARD   FITZGERALD  95 

debonair  as  before  marriage.  No  one  could  have 
carried  off  the  whole  business  with  better  grace,  hold- 
ing his  own  and  going  his  way  gallantly,  but  the  Wood- 
bridge  heathen  fret  and  wonder  ever  so  much. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  E.  F.  G." 

Here  is  Carlyle's  letter — 

"  Chelsea, 
"  December  7,  1868. 

"  DEAR  FITZGERALD, 

"  Thanks  for  enquiring  after  me  again.  I  am 
in  my  usual  weak  state  of  bodily  health,  not  much 
worse  I  imagine  and  not  even  expecting  to  be  better. 
I  study  to  be  solitary,  in  general;  to  be  silent,  as  the 
state  that  suits  me  best,  my  thoughts  then  are  infinitely 
sad,  indeed,  but  capable,  too,  of  being  solemn,  mourn- 
fully beautiful,  useful ;  and  as  for  '  happiness  '  I  have 
that  of  employment  more  or  less  befitting  the  years  I 
have  arrived  at,  and  the  long  journey  that  cannot  now 
be  far  off. 

"  Your  letter  has  really  entertained  me  :  I  could 
willingly  accept  twelve  of  that  kind  in  the  year — 
twelve,  I  say,  or  even  fifty-two,  if  they  could  be  content 
with  an  answer  of  silent  thanks  and  friendly  thoughts 
and  remembrances.  But,  within  the  last  three  or  four 
years  my  right  hand  has  become  captious,  taken  to 
shaking  as  you  see,  and  all  writing  is  a  thing  I  require 
compulsion  and  close  necessity  to  drive  me  into.  Why 
not  call  when  you  come  to  Town  ?  I  again  assure  you 
it  will  give  me  pleasure  and  be  a  welcome  and  wholesome 
solace  to  me.  With  many  thanks  and  regards, 

"  I  am  always,  dear  FitzGerald, 
"  Sincerely  yours, 

"*T.  CARLYLE." 


96  MEMORIES 

In  Froude's  Carlyle *•  there  is  a  letter  written  by 
Carlyle  to  his  wife  from  FitzGerald's  house,  Farlingay 
Hall,  a  farmhouse  near  Woodbridge.  He  says  :  "  Fitz- 
Gerald  took  me  yesterday  to  Aldeburgh  ...  a  beautiful 
little  sea  town,  one  of  the  best  bathing-places  I  have 
seen.  .  .  .  My  notion  is,  if  you  have  yet  gone  nowhere, 
you  should  think  of  Aldeburgh." 

The  late  Charles  Eliot  Norton's  Letters  (published  in 
1913)  include  one  to  Lady  Burne- Jones  in  which  he 
reminds  her  that  in  1868  he  had  asked  her  about  the 
Quatrains  of  Omar  Khayyam,  and  that  she  had  told 
him  that  "  the  translator  was  a  certain  Rev.  Edward 
FitzGerald,  who  lived  somewhere  in  Norfolk  and  was 
fond  of  boating."  In  1873,  Carlyle  told  him  that  Fitz- 
Gerald was  no  "  Reverend  "  and  had  never  named  the 
translation  to  him.  Whereupon  Norton  sent  him  a 
copy,  which  evoked  this  reply  :  "  I  think  that  my  old 
friend  FitzGerald  might  have  spent  his  time  better  than 
in  busying  himself  with  the  verses  of  that  old  Moham- 
medan blackguard."  2 

We  owe  the  "  old  blackguard  "  a  good  deal  as  the 
unwitting  eponymous  founder  of  a  Club  which  has 
added  to  "  the  publick  stock  of  harmless  pleasure." 

In  Great  Thoughts  of  January  23,  1897,  my  friend 
Clement  Shorter  has  narrated  the  story  of  the  origin 
of  the  Omar  Khayyam  Club.  He  tells  how,  inspired 
by  common  enthusiasm  for  the  marvellous  translation — 
it  is  both  more  and  less  that — of  the  Rubaiyat,  and  by 
a  desire  to  come  into  nearer  fellowship  with  the  like- 
minded,  a  triumvirate,  namely,  himself,  George  Whale 
and  Frederic  Hudson,  asked  a  few  kindred  spirits  to 
dinner  at  Paganis  on  October  14,  1892.  Then  and  there 
the  Club  "  came  into  being."  Never  did  a  Club,  thus 
1  Vol.  II.  p.  177.  *  Vol.  I.  pp.  423-4. 


EDWARD   FITZGERALD  97 

quietly  created,  leap  into  such  sudden  fame  or  justify 
the  boast  that  age  has  not  withered,  nor  custom  staled 
its  infinite  variety.  At  its  table,  in  obedience  to  the 
command  of  the  Master,  "  O,  my  friends,  when  I  am 
sped,  appoint  a  Meeting,  and  when  ye  have  met  together 
be  ye  glad  thereof,  and  when  the  cup-bearer  holds  in 
her  l  hand  a  flagon  of  old  wine,  then  think  upon  Old 
Khayyam  and  drink  to  his  memory,"  there  has  gathered 
from  time  to  time  a  company  of  the  Great  Known  and 
the  Greater  Unknown.  With  no  rules  to  restrain  an 
irresponsible  Committee  (apparently  formed  on  the 
model  of  the  Tyrants  of  Athens),  with  no  official  archives 
whence  a  future  chronicler  could  have  drawn  materials 
for  its  history,  the  Omar  Khayyam  Club  proudly  rests 
on  unsullied  traditions. 

Speeches,  record  of  which,  in  their  wit  and  wisdom, 
would  have  carried  the  name  of  more  than  one  orator 
along  the  stream  of  Time  to  the  admiration  of  genera- 
tions yet  unborn ;  poems  whose  place  in  the  most  select 
of  Anthologies  would  have  been  unchallenged,  have 
added  to  the  joy  of  the  Club's  convivia. 

What  variety  was  infused  into  the  gatherings  when 
it  was  our  good  fortune  to  have  the  late  Walter  Emanuel, 
with  his  "  telegrams  from  absent  guests,"  of  the  com- 
pany !  Lloyd  George  "  refusing  to  have  anything  to 
do  with  a  man  who  speculated  in  futures  "  ;  the  Kaiser 
"  not  going  out  just  now  " ;  Marie  Corelli  :  "  Thanks, 
but  I  and  Shakespeare  are  particular  as  to  where  we 
dine.  He  never  goes  out,  and  I  very  seldom  "  ;  Hall 
Caine  wiring,  "  Why  boom  a  dead  Master  ?  Is  it  not 

1  Only  on  one  memorable  occasion  has  the  fair  sex  been  admitted 
to  the  Club's  revels.    From  its  start  it  has  followed  the  custom  of 
certain  meetings  at  the  now  defunct  Exeter  Hall,  whose  rule  was  "  For 
Men  Only/1 
H 


98  MEMORIES 

rather  our  duty,  my  dear  brethren,  to  advertise  a 
living  one  ?  "  and  so  forth,  as  the  fun  ran  fast  and 
furious. 

In  one  matter  which  it  had  at  heart,  the  Club  has 
to  admit  failure.  The  report  on  the  dilapidated  state 
of  Omar's  tomb  at  Naishapur  which,  after  his  visit 
there,  was  made  by  William  Simpson,  caused  the  Club 
to  solicit  the  good  offices  of  Sir  Mortimer  Durand,  then 
British  Minister  at  Teheran,  with  the  Shah,  to  put  the 
tomb — an  uninscribed  plaster  structure — into  decent 
repair.  Sir  Mortimer,  who,  in  this  year  of  grace  1916, 
is  President  of  the  Club,  has  told  the  story  of  his 
interview. 

"  The  Shah  said,  c  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  there 
is  a  society  in  London  connected  with  Omar  Khayyam  ?  ' 
When  answered  in  the  affirmative,  His  Majesty  leant 
back  in  his  big  chair,  laughed  loudly  and  at  last  said  : 
4  Why,  he  has  been  dead  a  thousand  years.'  I  replied, 
'  Yes,  but  surely  that  is  all  the  more  reason  for  doing 
honour  to  his  memory.'  The  Shah  retorted  :  '  No,  I 
cannot  order  the  tomb  to  be  repaired.  We  have  got 
many  better  poets  than  Omar  Khayyam.  Indeed,  I 
myself '  and  then  he  stopped." 

Nor  could  the  presence  of  the  Persian  Minister,  which 
was  secured  at  one  of  the  Club  dinners  through  the 
sagacity  of  a  President  who  shall  be  nameless,  effect 
the  desired  object.  His  Excellency  drank  only  sherbet, 
and,  consequently,  said  little.  The  Club  had  suspicions 
that  the  President  was  diplomatically  manoeuvring  to 
obtain  the  Persian  Order  of  the  Lion  and  the  Sun  !  It 
was  never  bestowed  upon  him  nor  on  any  other 
President.  There  was  aggravation  to  the  disappointed  in 
my  bringing  as  guest  a  friend  (G.  W.  Thomson)  to  whom 
it  had  been  accorded. 


Photo,  Elliott  &  Fry.] 


[To  face  page  98. 


V***    VYV^ 


XI 

SIR  ALFRED  COMYN  LYALL  (1835-1911) 

I  FIRST  met  Sir  Alfred  Lyall  at  St.  George's  Hall, 
Langham  Place,  on  November  30,  1890,  when  he 
delivered  a  lecture  on  the  Natural  Growth  of  Religion 
in  India  before  the  now  defunct  Sunday  Lecture 
Society.  To  this  meeting  followed  invitations  to  his 
house  and  Whitsuntides  spent  by  him  at  Aldeburgh — 
for  myself  ever  "  times  of  refreshing." 

A  faithful  and  fascinating  portrait  of  Sir  Alfred's 
many-sided  career  as  soldier,  diplomatist,  essayist  and 
poet,  has  been  given  by  his  comrade,  Sir  Henry 
Mortimer  Durand.  There  is  here  no  need  to  sketch  in 
kitcat  what  is  there  drawn  at  full  length. 

His  table  talk  would  make  a  brilliant  book,  fit  company 
with  Coleridge's  and  with  Goethe's  Conversations  with 
Eckermann.  No  printed  record  can  convey  the  in- 
effable charm  of  Sir  Alfred  Lyall  in  the  intimacy  of  social 
intercourse.  It  was  marked  by  an  old-world  courtesy 
which  is  becoming  a  lost  art.  This,  and  all  the  kindred 
graces  that  attract  a  man  to  his  fellows,  were  his  de- 
lightful endowment.  Naturally,  the  talk  would  more 
often  be  of  the  East,  of  whose  beliefs  and  customs  there 
has  never  been  a  more  accurate,  incisive  and  sympathetic 
interpreter.  His  bent  of  mind,  reflective,  tinged  with 
melancholy  and  deeply  coloured  by  scepticism,  found 
congenial  employment,  when  leisure  from  official  work 
permitted,  in  the  study  of  the  great  religions  which 
remain  living  forces;  factors  so  potent  in  India  that  a 


100  MEMORIES 

man  is  labelled  by  his  creed  and  not  by  his  race.  It  has 
always  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  there  is  not  one  India, 
but  many  Indias,  and  that  the  various  religions  are  their 
main  boundaries.1 

In  the  districts  where  some  of  his  work  was  centred 
it  was  his  fortune  not  only  to  come  into  specially  near 
contact  with  ancient  faiths,  but  to  observe  the  con- 
tinuous merging  of  the  lower  belief  in  the  higher.  No 
hard-and-fast  dogmas,  as  in  Western  creeds,  insulate  the 
old  from  the  new;  there  goes  on  to-day  the  absorption 
of  barbaric  conceptions  by  Brahmanism;  the  passage 
of  dead,  sometimes  of  living,  men,  into  the  ranks  of  the 
deified;  of  ghosts  into  godlings,  to  whom  a  venerable 
faith  accords  a  place  in  its  pantheon,  which  thereby 
retains  its  own  vitality.  All  this  Sir  Alfred  Lyall  has 
described  in  the  brilliant  essays  composing  the  two 
volumes  of  Asiatic  Studies.  Every  page  of  these  reveals 
what  appeal  the  magic  and  mystery  of  the  East  made 
to  a  man  of  contemplative  and  speculative  temperament, 
with  a  resulting  hesitation  to  theorize ;  the  more  so  as 
the  complexity  and  tangle  of  the  materials  were  borne 
in  upon  him. 

Whatever  comprehension  of  alien  faiths  and  tem- 
peraments he  secured  was  the  outcome  of  a  spirit  of 
sympathy.  What  Sir  Hugh  Clifford  says  about  the 
"brown  humanity"  which  he  loves  is  applicable  to 
LyalFs  attitude.  He  strove  throughout  "  to  appreciate 
the  native  point  of  view  and  to  judge  the  people  and 
their  actions  by  their  own  standards,  rather  than  by 
those  of  a  white  man  living  in  their  midst."2 

It  should  be  needless  to  refer  to  his  Verses  Written  in 

1  See  Lyall's  Asiatic  Studies,  Chap.  I.  passim,  and  Sir  Mortimer 
Durand's  Life  of  F.  M.  Sir  George  White,  Vol.  1.  pp.  49-67. 

2  In  Court  and  Kampong,  p.  9. 


SIR  ALFRED   COMYN  LYALL  101 

India.  Thin  in  bulk,  they  are  pregnant  in  thought, 
charged  with  their  recurrent  question,  "  And  what  do 
the  wisest  know  ?  "  "  Que  sqais  je  ?  "  he  asked,  with 
Montaigne,  and  herein  is  the  key  to  all  that  he  has  said 
and  written.  As  some  inadequate  contribution  to  in- 
sight into  the  mind  of  a  remarkable  man,  his  mitis 
sapientia,  here  are  a  few  disconnected  notes  of  his  talk 
at  various  times. 

"  I  sigh  for  the  old  pantheistic  belief  with  its  toleration 
and  creedlessness.  Missionary  work  is  good  only  in  the 
degree  that  it  is  undogmatic.  The  old  religions  are  only 
to  some  small  extent  reformed  by  it.  The  Hindu  mind 
is  not  impressed  when  it  hears  of  the  Christian  Trinity ; 
Hindu  triads  are  older  than  that.  You  talk  to  a  Brah- 
man about  miracles  and  resurrections ;  he  retorts  that 
miracles  are  always  happening  in  India,  and  as  for  a  man 
being  buried  and  rising  again,  there  are  undoubted  cases 
of  fakirs  being  entombed  and  remaining  by  some  means 
for  some  time  in  a  state  of  suspended  animation." 

"So  the  Hindu  has  already  what  you  bring  him; 
inspired  scriptures  with  their  stock  of  myths  and  wonders, 
all  of  which  go  into  the  melting-pot  of  pantheism. 

"  Why,  you  will  find  even  the  doctrine  of  grace  in  the 
Vedas. 

"  The  puzzle  the  theologians  can't  solve  is  at  what 
stage  in  man's  evolution  the  soul  comes  into  him. 
Spencer's  dream-theory  doesn't  account  for  it :  the 
ever-present  facts  of  death  and  resurrection  may  :  all 
we  can  say  is  that  you  can't  draw  a  line  between  the 
man  and  the  animal. 

"  But  the  gods  are  our  trouble.  If  you  bind  them 
within  time  and  space  they  are  done  for;  if  you  keep 
them  outside,  then  they  are  useless. 

'  Yes,    ethics   are   man-made,    but   there   is   always 


102  MEMORIES 

the  problem  to  find  some  authority,  because  you  must 
appeal  to  the  masses  on  that  basis.  And  the  authority 
seemingly  has  to  be  an  invisible  one.  So  you  can't 
put  religion  into  liquidation."  Apropos  of  this,  he  wrote 
in  a  letter  to  me  :  "  Religion  is  an  instinct  and  aspira- 
tion, and  even  as  a  social  institution  of  high  utility  is  not 
to  be  easily  or  safely  uprooted  and  will  long  be  a  mighty 
force  among  mankind." 

"  What  the  Anglican  parsons  can't  stomach  is  the 
refusal  of  the  Catholics  to  admit  the  validity  of  their 
4  orders ' ;  they  want  to  get  on  the  main  line  and  are 
kept  on  a  siding.  That  riles  them. 

44 1  think  it  is  Horace  Walpole  who  says  that  the 
Catholics  give  us  too  little  to  eat  and  too  much  to 
swallow.1 

"  Purgatory  was  described  by  a  Protestant  school- 
boy as  4  a  place  where  Roman  Catholics  stop  on  their 
way  to  hell ;  it  smells  badly,  but  they  use  incense.' 

44  Alexandria  was  a  clearing-house  for  all  the  creeds. 

44  By  the  way,  I  did  not  like  that  story  which  our 
friend  told  us  about  his  sending  home  some  hundreds 
of  skulls  from  Egypt  for  measurement  as  a  clue  to  race. 
I  was  tempted  to  tell  him  that  when  Sir  George  Campbell 
was  Governor  of  Bengal  he  sent  home  two  cases  of  skulls 
for  the  same  purpose.  His  orthodox  wife  promptly 
had  them  buried  in  consecrated  ground  ! 

44  You  can't  treat  art,  any  more  than  you  can  treat 
language,  as  any  test  of  race.  The  employment  of 
cunning  workmen  by  foreign  rulers  explains  a  good  deal. 

44  The  origin  of  caste  remains  obscure  :  no  one  factor 
explains  it :  religion,  trade,  race,  all  count. 

1  "  Damn  it,"  said  Wilmington  to  Lord  Stafford,  "  what  a  religion 
is  yours  I  They  let  you  eat  nothing  and  yet  make  you  swallow  every- 
thing !  "— H.  W.  to  Horace  Mann,  Vol.  I.  p.  368,  Letter  126  (Toynbee'j 
Edition). 


SIR  ALFRED    COMYN  LYALL  103 

"  The  wisest  scientific  men  have  given  up  search 
after  origins  :  the  doctrines  of  Evolution  and  of  the 
Conservation  of  Energy  give  them  enough  scope  for 
work.  Of  course,  you  remember  what  Bacon  says 
about  tha't."  (The  reference  is  :  "  The  inquisition  of 
Final  Causes l  is  barren  and  like  a  virgin  consecrated  to 
God,  produces  nothing.") 

"  They  have  enough  to  do  with  the  mysteries  of 
Science  in  the  realm  of  causation  to  which,  as  Huxley 
says,  the  mysteries  of  the  Church  are  child's  play.  By 
the  bye,  I  was  much  amused  to  see  the  announcement  of 
a  book ;  The  Mystery  of  Creation,  revised  and  enlarged !  " 

(I  said  that  an  entertaining  essay  could  be  written 
on  "A  certain  absence  of  humour  in  professing 
Christians."  It  was  suggested  when,  passing  a  Con- 
gregational chapel  in  the  North  of  London,  I  saw  posters 
advertising  a  series  of  Sunday  evening  Lectures.  The 
subject  of  the  last  was  "  The  World's  Final  Conflagra- 
tion "  and  immediately  under  this  was  the  announcement 
that  "  Collections  will  be  made  for  Repairs.") 

All  through  his  talk  ran  the  sceptical  note,  "  I  don't 
know  :  but,  then,  who  does  know  ?  " 

"  Whereof  the  priests  for  all  they  say  and  sing, 
Know  none  the  more,  nor  help  in  anything." 

44  Pragmatism  assumes  relativity  of  truth.  It  is 
better  to  say  that  the  actual,  not  the  true,  is  justified 
because  it  is  found  to  work. 

"  Trevelyan  said  that  '  force  is  no  remedy.'  Had  he 
lived  in  the  East,  he  would  have  learned  that  sometimes 
it  is  the  only  remedy. 

"  I  grow  more  interested  in  the  past  the  older  I  live. 
I  want  to  know  so  much  more  about  those  old  fellows 

1  Which  reminds  me  of  a  story  told  me  by  Sir  Leslie  Stephen.  A 
freshman,  asked  to  define  "Final  Causes,"  replied,  "It's  the  last 
straw  that  breaks  the  camel's  back." 


104  MEMORIES 

the  Cretans  and  the  pre-Mycenseans.  I  want  to  meet 
Ulysses  and  talk  to  him.  Herodotus  is  far  and  away 
the  best  of  the  ancients ;  he  had  travelled.  He  comes 
well  out  of  criticism.  You  should  read  Jebb  on  Sayce, 
but  Butcher  told  me  he  was  reluctant  to  republish  it. 
Xenophon  runs  Herodotus  hard;  and  what  he  says  of 
the  march,  etc.,  applies  through  the  East  to-day. 

"  Yes,  there  are  Solons  still  in  India.  I  remember 
hearing  of  a  case  in  which  a  man  who  had  deserted  his 
wife  for  some  time  came  back  to  claim  her.  In  the 
meanwhile  she  had  taken  up  with  another  man.  The 
judge  decided  that  the  runaway  husband  should  have 
his  wife  for  six  months  in  each  year  and  the  paramour 
the  other  six  months." 

(Not  wholly  analogous,  but  suggestive,  is  the  story  of 
the  American  who  advertised  :  "If  John  Robinson, 
with  whose  wife  I  eloped  six  months  go,  will  take  her 
back,  all  will  be  forgiven.") 

"Max  Miiller  invented  what  he  did  not  know;  all 
research  tends  to  prove  that  the  heroes  and  kings  of 
so-called  legend — Arthur  and  the  rest  of  them — really 
lived.  So  I  am  not  with  the  school  which  denies  the 
historicity  of  Jesus.  But  how  much  stronger  is  the 
evidence  for  the  existence  of  Buddha  who  lived  five 
hundred  years  before  him." 

It  will  be  gathered  from  the  foregoing  how  often  his 
talk  fell  upon  religious  and  allied  subjects.  So  with  the 
letters  between  us,  as  the  following  show. 

"  18,  Queen's  Gate,  S.W. 

"  February  27,  1902. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  We  must  endeavour  to  meet  again  some  day 
for  the  purpose  of  discussing  the  Controversial  chapter 


SIR  ALFRED   COMYN  LYALL  105 

in  your  book.  (Thomas  Henry  Huxley.)  My  ideas  on 
the  subject  are  hardly  worth  expounding  in  a  letter  and 
I  doubt  whether  I  could  put  them  down  briefly  and 
clearly.  I  am  certainly  in  agreement  with  those  who 
suggested  with  regard  to  the  dispute  between  Huxley 
and  Gladstone  over  the  story  of  the  Gadarene  swine 
that  the  disputants  might  have  been  better  occupied, 
and  I  think  that  no  important  controversialist  now 
thinks  himself  bound  to  adopt  the  demonology  of  the 
first  century.  I  doubt  whether  even  the  patristic 
writers  of  the  third  or  fourth  centuries  took  it  literally, 
and  I  imagine  that  the  whole  question,  so  treated,  is 
practically  obsolete. 

"  Huxley  seems  to  me  to  have  taken  it  too  seriously. 
There  is  to  me  something  ridiculous  about  his  charge 
against  Jesus  as  c  wantonly  destroying  other  people's 
property.'  Just  as  it  was  absurd  in  Gladstone  to  try 
to  prove  that  the  Jews  were  partly  punished  for  a 
breach  of  the  Mosaic  law  in  keeping  pigs.  These  are 
nineteenth-century  arguments  imported  into  the  re- 
ligious atmosphere  of  the  first  century  which  have  an 
air  of  incongruity  that  makes  them  futile  and  irrelevant 
to  my  mind. 

"  I  myself  believe  the  most  miraculous  legends,  as  this 
one,  are  always  attached  to  the  traditions  of  a  great 
spiritual  teacher  who  probably  had  nothing  to  do  with 
them  and  would  have  disowned  them  if  he  could  have 
done  so.  They  invariably  gather  round  the  figure  of 
some  founder  of  a  new  faith  or  worship,  however  past, 
in  India.  I  admit  that,  as  Huxley  says,  if  this  view  be 
admitted  it  follows  that  all  other  miraculous  stories  in 
the  Gospels  are  discredited;  but  from  the  earlier  ages 
there  has  been  a  tendency  not  to  take  these  stories 
literally,  and  at  the  present  time  I  don't  think  that 


106  MEMORIES 

the   literal  interpretation   was  worth    an   acrimonious 
controversy. 

"  You  think  (p.  184)  that  if  miracles  were  needed  to 
remove  unbelief,  they  are  just  as  much  or  more  wanted 
now  as  formerly.  Miracles  were  quoted,  in  the  old 
days,  I  think,  not  so  much  to  remove  unbelief  as  to 
accredit  a  new  message.  Our  theologians  might  reply 
to  you  that  when  a  new  message  comes,  the  miracles 
will  reappear,  as,  in  fact,  they  always  do  in  Asia.  Of 
course,  I  myself  do  not  believe  in  the  miracles,  but  I 
confess  that  Huxley's  peremptory  demand  for  scientific 
proof  of  these  antique  religions  seems  to  me  to  imply 
deficient  apprehension  of  their  nature  and  spirit.  I 
conceive  his  view  to  be  hardly  what  I  should  call 
philosophical. 

"  Always  yours  sincerely, 

"  A.  C.  LYALL." 

To  quote  Sydney  Smith's  pun,  the  dispute  seemed  to 
Lyall  like  that  of  two  women  wrangling  across  the  road 
from  their  respective  doorsteps,  agreement  being  im- 
possible because  they  were  arguing  from  opposite 
premises  ! 

Huxley  anticipated  Ly all's  objection  as  to  the  undue 
importance  of  the  Gadarene  story.  He  said  :  "If  these 
too -famous  swine  were  the  only  parties  to  the  suit  I, 
for  my  part,  should  fully  admit  the  justice  of  the  rebuke. 
But,  under  the  beneficent  rule  of  the  Court  of  Chancery, 
in  former  times,  it  was  not  uncommon  that  a  quarrel 
about  a  few  perches  of  worthless  land  ended  in  the  ruin 
of  ancient  families  and  the  engulfing  of  great  estates. 
And  I  think  that  our  admonitor  failed  to  observe  the 
analogy — to  note  the  momentous  consequences  of  the 
judgment  which  may  be  accorded  in  the  present  appar- 


SIR  ALFRED   COMYN  LYALL  107 

ently  insignificant  action  in  re  the  swineherds  of 
Gadara."  * 

That  was  the  point  at  issue.  Belief  in  demonology 
was  rife  in  Judaea  in  the  time  of  Jesus.  According  to 
the  record,  he  shared  a  belief  which  we  know  has  no 
validity.  Hence  what  value  can  be  attached  to  any 
statement  that  he  is  reported  to  have  made  about  a 
spiritual  world  ? 

"  On  the  whole,"  says  the  present  Bishop  of  Oxford, 
"it  is  impossible  to  treat  His  (i.  e.  Jesus' s)  language 
about  spirits  as  '  economical '  without  giving  profound 
unreality  to  His  teaching  as  a  whole."  2 

"  18,  Queen's  Gate,  S.W. 

"  February  14,  1906. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  Many  thanks  for  Animism,  a  closely  reasoned 
demonstration  of  a  genealogical  tree  which  strikes  its 
roots  into  primitive  earth. 

"  I  see  that,  like  myself,  you  are  a  close  reader  of  old 
Hobbes,  who  was  very  much  in  advance  of  his  age, 
and  has  a  very  luminous  glance  backward  into  origins. 
On  page  24  Mr.  Risley  says  that  the  idea  of  power  lies 
at  the  root  of  the  religion  in  Chota  Nagpore  folk.  But 
the  same  idea  is  in  the  highest  religious  minds  as  well 
as  in  poor  savages.  Hobbes,  in  Leviathan,  says,  '  God 
is  worshipped  for  His  irresistible  power?  Berkeley  and 
Sir  Isaac  Newton  may  be  quoted  to  the  same  effect. 
A  god  that  had  no  power  was  never  worshipped  in  any 
country  or  by  any  people.  In  short,  the  lowest  and 
the  highest  religion  and  worship  have  the  same  roots; 
but  cultivation  and  refinement  of  centuries  have  marked 
the  differences  between  first  and  last  stages. 

1  Collected  Essays,  V.  p.  414.         2  Dissertation  on  the  Incarnation. 


108  MEMORIES 

"  At  page  17  you  write  about  the  dog.  It  is  not 
snobbishness  ;  that,  it  may  be,  is  not  the  reason  why  he 
barks  at  shabby  clothes,  but  the  same  experience  that 
your  servant  is  guarded  by  when  he  will  or  will  not 
show  you  [?  a  stranger]  into  the  front  parlour.  As  to 
the  difference  in  sagacity  between  a  puppy  and  a  full- 
grown  dog,  some  animals  from  their  birth  have  great 
sagacity.  You  must  not  banish  hereditary  instincts, 
though  experience  has  great  influence  over  an  animal's 
education. 

"  In  England  there  are  no  wild  animals;  the  tame 
beast  is  a  poor  stupid  dull  slave  in  comparison. 

"  Yours  sincerely, 

"  A.  C.  LYALL." 


The  last  time  that  I  saw  him  was  at  Aldworth,  in 
September  1910.  I  shall  not  forget  an  evening  when, 
a  glorious  sunset  flooding  the  Weald,  we  stood  for  a  few 
moments  watching  the  mass  of  illumined  and  dissolving 
clouds.  Then  he  put  one  hand  on  my  shoulder  and 
pointing  the  other  hand  southwards,  said,  "  A  great 
artist." 

After  dinner,  talk  fell  on  the  psychology  of  dreams 
and,  Aldworth  being  an  isolated  spot,  also  about 
burglars,  of  whom  Lady  Lyall  had  a  chronic  fear.  The 
next  morning  he  told  me  that  he  had  had  an  odd  dream. 
It  was  of  burglars  invading  the  house  and  of  his  hurrying 
downstairs,  revolver  in  hand,  to  meet  them.  Suddenly 
the  front  door  burst  into  flames,  the  heat  was  awful. 
"  I  woke  up,"  he  said,  "  and  found  that  my  feet  were 
being  scorched  by  my  hot- water  bottle  !  " 

The  late  Henry  Dakyn  came  to  lunch.  As  an  intimate 
friend  of  Henry  Sidgwick,  letters  from  whom  form  a 


SIR  ALFRED   COMYN  LYALL  109 

large  part  of  the  correspondence  in  Sidgwick's  biography, 
there  was  pleasure  in  meeting  him,  because  he  talked 
freely  about  Sidgwick's  scepticism,  which  psychical 
research  only  deepened.  Some  capital  has  been  made 
out  of  his  supposed  belief  in  the  validity  of  occult 
phenomena. 

Among  LyalPs  latest  undertakings,  Sir  Mortimer 
Durand  says,  was  that  of  "  preparing  to  write,  at  the 
request  of  Lord  Tennyson,  a  paper  upon  the  relations 
between  Alfred  Tennyson  and  Edward  FitzGerald, 
which  paper  was  to  have  been  published  in  a  new  edition 
of  Lord  Tennyson's  Memoir  of  his  father."  l  Upon  this 
matter  two  letters  came  from  him. 

"  18,  Queen's  Gate,  S.W. 

"  February  15,  1911. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  have  under  consideration  some  writing,  by 
request,  about  FitzGerald,  of  Omar  Khayyam  fame. 
It  will  be  very  helpful  if  you  can  tell  me  whether  any 
biography  of  him  has  ever  been  published  from  which 
I  can  ascertain  facts  about  his  life  or  whether  there  are 
any  articles  or  notes  touching  upon  his  ways  and 
characteristics.  Possibly  you  yourself  have  written 
something  of  the  sort,  or  the  O.K.  Club  may  have  papers 
contributed.  Of  course,  his  Letters  are  the  best  illustra- 
tion of  his  mind  and  habits,  but  I  have  nothing  else. 

"  If  you  have  been  reading  Keary  2  you  will  find  much 
to  which  you  will  probably  demur,  and  the  concluding 
chapters  of  his  book  appear  to  me  weak,  but  the  general 
line  of  his  argument  is,  I  think,  effective. 

44  Yours  very  sincerely, 

44  A.  C.  LYALL." 

1  Life  of  Sir  A.  C.  Lyall,  p.  450. 

2  The  Pursuit  of  Reason,  by  C.  F.  Keary. 


110  MEMORIES 

"  The  Athenaeum,  Pall  Mall,  S.W. 

February  17,  1911. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  Many  thanks  for  your  reply  about  FitzGerald. 
I  have  taken  out  of  the  London  Library  Wright's  big 
biography  of  him,  so  I  won't  trouble  you  to  send  it. 
And  A.  C.  Benson's  monograph  I  can  easily  find.  If  you 
will  kindly  send  me  some  day  your  magazine  article  on 
him,  I  shall  be  thankful,  but  there  is  no  hurry,  as  I  shall 
not  begin  on  the  subject  for  some  time  to  come. 

"  As  for  Keary,  I  commended  him  to  you  merely 
for  his  chapter  on  Anthropology.  His  metaphysical 
speculations  are  of  very  small  import. 

"  Yours  very  sincerely, 

"  A.  C.  LYALL." 

Dis  aliter  visum.  The  paper  on  FitzGerald  was 
never  written.  What  Lyall  has  said  about  him  is  in 
whole-hearted  praise  of  the  Letters  in  an  article  on 
"  English  Letter- Writing  in  the  Nineteenth  Century," 
which  appeared  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  of  April  1896, 
and  is  reprinted  in  the  posthumous  volume  entitled 
Studies  in  Literature  and  History,  pp.  66-70.  This  extract 
may  send  the  reader  thereto.  "  Here  is  a  man  to  whom 
correspondence  was  a  real  solace  and  a  vehicle  of  thought 
and  feeling,  not  a  mere  notebook  of  travel,  not  a  conduit 
of  confidential  small  talk.  A  faint  odour  of  the  seasons 
hangs  round  some  of  these  letters,  of  the  sunshine  and 
rain,  of  dark  days,  and  roads  blocked  with  snow,  of  the 
first  spring  crocus  and  the  faded  autumnal  garden  plots." 

On  the  8th  of  the  following  April,  Lyall  went  to 
Farringford  on  a  visit  to  Lord  Tennyson.  "  Early  next 
morning,  there  was  the  sound  of  a  fall,  and  when  the 
door  was  opened  he  was  found  lying  on  the  floor  dead. 
The  weak  heart  had  failed." 


Photo,  Elliott  &  Fry.] 


[To  face  page  110. 


XII 

JAMES  COTTER  MORISON  (1832-1888) 

THEIR  common  interest  in  historical  studies  was 
sufficing  bond  between  York  Powell  and  Cotter  Morison. 
I  have  spoken  on  a  later  page  of  Powell  as  having 
scattered  his  energies  over  too  many  fields  to  cultivate 
any  single  one  to  profit.  In  like  manner  Morison  pro- 
duced little  which  is  adequately  representative  of  his 
exceptional  powers.  He  was  well-to-do;  he  had  great 
conversational  charm,  and  gave  too  willingly  to  society 
44  what  was  meant  for  mankind."  In  the  case  of  both 
men,  the  promise  of  life  was  never  fulfilled,  hence  the 
high  estimate  formed  by  their  private  friends  can  never 
be  shared  by  the  public.  Brilliant  talker,  and  none  the 
less  good  listener,  it  is  no  mean  loss  to  the  world's  stock 
of  table-talk  that  there  survives  no  record  of  things 
said  by  Morison.  I  remember  an  epigram  or  two ;  his 
calling  a  prominent  Liberal  Oxford  don  "  a  bitter  olive  "  ; 
a  still  living  novelist  "a  straw  fire  "  *;  while  his  laconic 
comment  when  reading  some  letters  which  I  had  received 
from  Ruskin  was,  "  insolent  capon."  From  what 
Holman-Hunt  told  me,  the  noun  had  no  warrant. 

Like  his  intimate  and  lifelong  friend,  Lord  Morley, 
Morison  passed  through  his  Oxford  career  without 

1  Opinions  differ.  The  late  Sir  Walter  Besant  said,  in  Morison's 
hearing,  that,  in  his  judgment  (which  was  ever  a  kindly  one),  the 
writer  in  question  had  "  the  greatest  imagination  since  Shakespeare.'' 
Pulling  his  beard,  as  was  his  habit,  Morison's  comment  was,  "  The 
rest  is  silence." 

Ill 


112  MEMORIES 

university  distinction.  They  were  among  the  founders 
— Morison  was  one  of  the  financial  backers — of  the 
Fortnightly  Review.  When  Lewes  retired  from  the 
editorship,  the  influence  of  Morison  secured  the  post  for 
Lord  (then  Mr.  John)  Morley.  Morison  told  me,  laugh- 
ingly, "  Why,  I  used  to  mend  Morley 's  quills  for  him 
when  he  was  writing  in  the  Review"  Morison  was  also 
a  contributor,  his  articles  being  anticipatory  portions  of 
a  history  of  France,  more  particularly  of  its  institutions 
from  the  reign  of  Charlemagne  to  the  fall  of  the  ancien 
regime  which  he  had  intended  to  write.  For  some  years 
he  made  his  home  in  Paris.  His  house  was  the  meeting- 
place  of  men  of  note  in  politics  and  letters ;  in  his 
affectionate  nature,  his  sympathetic  charm,  he  breathed 
the  spirit  of  Abou  ben  Adhem :  "  Write  me  as  one  who 
loves  his  fellow  men."  There  he  enjoyed  the  friendship 
of  the  leader  of  the  French  Positivists,  M.  Pierre  Laffitte. 
Their  intimacy  is  shown  in  this  letter — 


"  Clairvaux,  30,  FitzJohn's  Avenue,  N.W. 

"  May  19,  1887. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  am  much  vexed  to  have  to  tell  you  that  I 
shall  not  be  able  to  form  one  of  your  party  at  Whitsun- 
tide. The  reason  is  that  a  body  of  French  Positivists, 
headed  by  our  chief,  Laffitte,  is  coming  over  here  during 
those  holidays,  and  both  old  friendship  and  duty  require 
that  I  should  remain  at  home  to  do  what  I  can  to  make 
the  visit  agreeable  to  the  strangers.  I  shall  have  to  do 
a  deal  of  interpreting,  as  few  of  the  Frenchmen  know 
any  English. 

"  I  need  not  tell  you,  my  dear  Clodd,  how  disappointed 
I  am  at  this  sudden  and  unexpected  interference  with 
our  proposed  holiday  together  in  your  pleasant  seaside 


JAMES   COTTER  MORISON  118 

home,  the  delights  of  which  I  know  so  well,  together  with 
the  benefit  both  to  mind  and  body  which  I  always  derive 
from  an  outing  with  you.  But  you  see  I  have  no  option. 
To  go  away  from  London  just  when  Laffitte  came  here 
would  be  almost  base  on  my  part.  He  is  an  old  man, « 
and  will  in  all  probability  never  come  here  again.  I 
have  been  for  eighteen  years  on  terms  of  the  greatest 
intimacy  with  him  and  I  am  sure  you  would  be  the  last 
to  wish  me  to  do  anything  unkind  to  an  old  friend.  I 
was  most  annoyed  to  miss  you  both  on  Saturday  and 
Sunday  last.  You  had  only  just  left  the  Club. 
"  Ever  yours  lovingly, 

"  JAS.  COTTER  MORISON." 

I  first  met  him  at  the  Savile.  The  attractive  feature 
of  that  Club,  whose  motto  is  Sodalitas  convivium,  is  that 
members  mix  together  without  formal  introduction. 
During  more  than  thirty  years  of  membership,  one  came 
to  know  a  large  number,  especially  through  the  Saturday 
afternoon  gatherings  in  the  smoking-room.  There  I 
frequently  met  Thomas  Hardy,  Edmund  Gosse,  Walter 
Pollock,  Rudyard  Kipling,  Andrew  Lang,  Dr.  Harley 
and  others,  the  bare  recital  of  whose  names  would  have 
the  dry  ness  of  a  catalogue.  For  the  interest  in  such 
matters  lies  not  in  whom  you  met,  but  in  what  manner 
of  man  he  was,  and  in  what  he  said. 

Morison  was  in  Paris  at  the  time  of  the  Commune. 
The  fury  of  the  mob  had  pulled  down  the  Napoleon 
Column  in  the  Place  Venddme,  and  the  little  bronze 
statue  of  Victory  which  capped  it  was  carried  off  by  a 
young  man  and,  for  safe  keeping,  taken  to  Morison' s 
rooms,  where  he  hid  it  under  a  bed  on  which  Mr.  Frederic 
Harrison  slept  as  its  guardian.  But  the  thing  was  too 
risky  to  keep,  so  it  was  handed  back  to  the  Communists. 


114  MEMORIES 

Morison  told  me  that  it  was  dropped  into  the  Seine, 
but,  according  to  the  story  in  Mr.  Harrison's  Auto- 
biographic Memoirs,1  it  was  thrown  on  a  dung-heap. 
Of  its  real  fate  "  no  man  knoweth  to  this  day."  Ad- 
mirable as  are  Morison' s  monographs  on  Gibbon  and 
Macaulay  (in  the  "  English  Men  of  Letters  Series  ") 
they  do  not  reach  the  high  standard  of  his  less-known 
Life  and  Times  of  Saint  Bernard,  Abbot  of  Clairvaux. 
It  is  his  masterpiece  :  he  brought  the  sympathy  of  a 
deeply  religious  nature  to  his  work.  It  gives  a  vivid 
picture  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  the  twelfth  century 
and  of  the  great  spiritual,  and,  be  it  added,  fanatical, 
teacher  who  rendered  her  such  brilliant  service.  He 
told  me  an  amusing  story  about  the  book.  Like  the 
conscientious  amateur  actor  of  Othello  who,  for  the 
adequate  performance  of  that  part,  blacked  himself  all 
over,  Morison,  before  starting  on  the  writing  of  Saint 
Bernard's  life,  obtained,  through  the  influence  of 
Cardinal  Manning,  the  privilege  of  admission  for  some 
weeks  to  a  Cistercian  monastery,  where  he  went  through 
the  severe  discipline  imposed  on  the  brotherhood.  Only 
those  who  remember  how  he  enjoyed  good  living  can 
appreciate  the  humour  of  his  self-imposed  asceticism. 
The  earlier  editions  of  the  book  were  dedicated  to  Thomas 
Carlyle  "  with  deep  reverence  and  gratitude  " ;  this 
was  deleted  in  later  issues  because  of  his  revulsion  against 
the  dedicatee  on  reading  the  Reminiscences. 

Morison' s  last  book — never  completed  by  the  issue 
of  a  promised  second  part — was  entitled  The  Service 
of  Man  :  an  Essay  towards  the  Religion  of  the  Future. 
Its  aim  was  the  substitution  of  service  of  the  Known 
for  that  of  the  Unknown — of  Man  instead  of  God,  "  For 
he  that  loveth  not  his  brother  whom  he  hath  seen  how 
1  Vol.  II,  p,  27, 


JAMES   COTTER  MORISON  115 

can  he  love  God  whom  he  hath  not  seen?  "  That  he 
was  not  in  entire  sympathy  with  Positivism,  a  creed 
which  Huxley  denned  as  "  Catholicism  minus  Chris- 
tianity," is  evident  in  the  following  letter.  When  the 
book  was  finished,  his  days,  practically,  were  numbered, 
and  he  entrusted  me  with  arrangements  for  its 
publication. 

"  Clairvaux,  30,  FitzJohn's  Avenue,  N.W. 

"MaylG,  1886. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  The  book  which  I  wish  to  publish  is  entitled 
the  '  Service  of  Man,  or  an  Essay  towards  the  Religion 
of  the  Future.'  It  is,  of  course,  largely  founded  on 
Positivist  principles,  but  by  no  means  exclusively  so. 
And  as  a  matter  of  fact  Comte  is  never  referred  to  or 
even  named.  Great  harm  has  been  done  to  Positivism 
by  forcing  Comte  crude  and  simple  down  people's  throats 
and  winding  up  every  paragraph  in  the  Liturgy  with  a 
4  Through  Auguste  Comte  our  Lord.'  But  that  is  not 
the  chief  reason  why  I  have  chosen  this  course.  I  differ 
often  so  deeply  and  completely  from  Comte  that  I 
cannot  take  him  as  my  sole  authority,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  controvert  him  was  not  desirable  or  needed. 
The  object  of  this  book  is  to  show  how  the  Service  of 
God  or  of  Gods  leads  by  natural  evolution  to  the  Service 
of  Man,  from  Theolatry  to  Anthropolatry. 

"  Always  yours  most  sincerely, 

"  JAS.  COTTER  MORISON." 

This  letter  followed  the  publication  of  the  book— 

"  Clairvaux, 

"  January  20,  1887. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  have  not  been  often  more  grateful  for  a  letter 
than  I  was  for  yours,  for  to  tell  you  the  truth,  I  have 


116  MEMORIES 

been  already  somewhat  sharply  chidden  for  my  book 
by  honest,  sincere  friends  whose  opinion  and  esteem  I 
highly  value.  And  I  was  getting  a  little  crestfallen, 
when  you  picked  me  up,  and  gave  me  a  real  comforting. 
I  admit  entirely  the  mistake  of  the  Preface.  It  is  wholly 
out  of  place  and  should  have  been  at  the  end  of  the 
book  and  not  at  the  beginning.  Also,  as  you  say,  such 
a  gloomy  forecast  tends  to  blunt  the  appetite  for  what 
follows.  If  I  get  a  chance  in  consequence  of  a  second 
edition  I  will  try  and  alter  that.  My  intention  was  to 
add  three  more  chapters  on  politics,  economics,  and 
socialistics  which  would  have  made  the  book  better 
balanced,  but  one  cannot  help  such  breakdowns. 
"  Always,  dear  Clodd, 

"  Affectionately  yours, 

"  JAS.  COTTER  MORISON." 

On  the  first  of  March,  1888,  a  day  so  bleak  that  a 
tent  was  pitched  over  the  grave  to  protect  the  mourners, 
Morison  was  buried  in  Kensal  Green  Cemetery.  Among 
the  sparse  company,  which  included  Lord  Morley,  was 
George  Meredith,  who  took  me,  after  the  ceremony,  to 
lunch  at  the  Garrick  Club.  He  talked  of  the  mockery 
of  the  Burial  Service  which  had  been  read  in  full  over 
the  remains  of  a  man  who  lived  and  died  an  unbeliever, 
and  whose  last  book  was  a  trenchant  attack  on  Chris- 
tianity. And  he  said  that  if  we  did  not  give  directions 
to  the  contrary,  words,  all  unmeaning  to  those  who  die 
outside  the  Christian  pale,  will  be  spoken  at  our  grave- 
side. These  directions  he  himself  omitted  to  give. 

Shortly  after  Morison' s  death,  it  was  announced  that 
Mr.  John  (now  Lord)  Morley  was  preparing  for  the  press 
a  volume  of  essays — reprints  and  unpublished  MSS. 
(chiefly  connected  with  Morison' s  projected  history  of 


JAMES   COTTER  MORISON  117 

France).  And  it  was  hoped  that  a  memoir  of  their 
author  would  be  prefixed.  But  for  some  reason  the 
project  fell  through;  the  disjecta  membra  were  never 
collected  and  the  Memoir  was  never  written.  I  know 
that  Morison  expected  that  his  papers  would  take  book 
form,  for,  during  his  last  illness,  he  said  to  me  that  he 
wished  that  his  article  on  "  History  "  in  the  Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica  should  be  excluded,  because  he  was  not 
satisfied  with  it.  Among  his  privately-printed  miscel- 
lanies is  a  Lecture  on  the  Paston  Letters  ;  the  correspond- 
ence of  a  family  of  that  name  living  in  Norfolk  in  the 
fifteenth  century.  This  extract  therefrom  will  show  what 
historical  literature  has  lost  in  the  death  in  the  prime 
of  manhood,  of  James  Cotter  Morison. 

(I  recall  the  enjoyment  with  which  he  paid  a  visit  to 
Framlingham  Castle— the  "  Due  of  Norfolk's  Castell  of 
Framingham,"  thus  described  in  the  Paston  Letters. 
It  was  there  that,  on  the  death  of  Edward  VI,  Mary 
took  refuge  on  her  way  to  London  when  the  "  nine 
days  Queen  "  was  proclaimed.  The  castle  has  long  been 
a  mere  shell,  but  its  walls,  flanked  with  thirteen  square 
towers,  make  it  one  of  the  most  imposing  ruins  in  the 
country. 

"  Clairvaux, 

"  June  23,  1887. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

" 1  send  you  Lecture  on  the  Paston  Letters,  see 
page  25 — three  lines  from  top — for  the  reference  to 
Framlingham. 

'  You  were  quite  right  about  '  salarium '  after  all. 
I  find  in  Lewis  and  Short,  the  last  and  best  Latin  diction- 
ary, this  definition — 

"'Solarium — the  money  given  to  the  soldiers  for 
salt :  salt-money :  hence,  a  pension,  stipend,  allowance, 


118  MEMORIES 

salary.  It  is  a  lower  Latin  word  and  has  several  con- 
geners, as  Calcearium.,  shoe -money.  Congiarium,  a  gift 
divided  among  the  people  of  the  measure  of  a  congius 
(nearly  six  pints  English).  Originally  this  present  was 
in  food,  as  in  oil  or  wine.  Afterwards  congiarium  was 
also  used  for  a  largess  in  money  of  undefined  amount 
divided  among  the  soldiers.' 

"  There  appears  to  be  no  reason  to  suppose  that  salt 
was  particularly  precious.  The  soldiers'  pay  was  divided 
under  several  heads  and  salt  was  one. 

"  Keene  only  left  this  morning  for  the  Isle  of  Wight. 
"  Ever  yours  lovingly, 

"  JAS.  COTTER  MORISON.") 

"  On  looking  back  and  taking  a  summary  view  of  the 
whole  correspondence,  we  must  confess,  I  think,  that 
the  picture  it  offers  of  the  lives  of  our  ancestors  is  in  many 
respects  an  unattractive  one.  A  sordid  greediness  for 
gain  is  a  too  predominant  note.  Those  who  are  inclined 
to  think  that  an  inordinate  pursuit  of  wealth  is  a  specially 
modern  vice  unknown  to  the  good  old  times  will  change 
their  opinion  on  reading  the  Past  on  Letters.  Persons 
more  engrossed  with  the  pursuit  of  gain  than  these 
Pastons  and  their  numerous  correspondents,  who  belong 
to  all  grades  of  society,  it  would  be  difficult  to  conceive 
— and  the  love  of  gain  in  those  days,  owing  to  the 
economic  conditions  of  the  time,  took  a  particularly 
harsh  and  repulsive  form.  The  love  of  gain  is  a  pretty 
constant  factor  in  populations  of  the  Teutonic  race,  but 
in  the  fifteenth  century  it  could  be  satisfied  in  one  way 
— that  is  mutual  aggression  and  spoliation.  Industry 
and  commerce  were  in  their  infancy,  and  the  satisfaction 
they  now  afford  to  the  acquisitive  instincts  did  not 
exist.  A  man  then  could  hardly  become  wealthy  with- 


JAMES   COTTER  MORISON  119 

out  depriving  some  other  man  of  his  wealth.  The 
creation  of  new  wealth  by  working  up  the  raw  materials 
supplied  by  nature  was  comparatively  unknown.  If 
Peter  got  rich  it  was  generally  at  the  expense  of  Paul, 
who  was  made  poor.  There  was,  consequently,  a 
directness  of  collision  of  the  selfish  passions  which  our 
manufacturing  epoch  with  all  its  evils,  and  they  are 
many,  does  not  reproduce.  Neither  does  religion  throw 
a  softer  light  on  the  harsher  features  of  the  age.  Religion 
is  found  to  consist  merely  in  mechanical  forms  and  cere- 
monies and  stereotyped  phrases,  in  which  sacred  names 
are  freely  used  or  abused,  but  of  the  higher  spiritual 
life  there  is  scarcely  a  trace.  The  fifteenth  century 
is  not  one  of  the  ages  of  faith,  as  the  Crusades  was. 
The  single-hearted  and  sublime  piety  of  a  St.  Bernard  or 
St.  Anselm  has  disappeared,  but  the  forms  and  cere- 
monies which  a  previous  age  had  vivified  with  devotion 
were  still  preserved,  and  followed  with  a  sterile  and  dull 
routine.  An  amusing  instance  of  this  is  shown  in  a 
letter  of  John  Paston,  the  younger,  who  discovered,  much 
to  his  disgust,  that  by  a  mistake  of  somebody's,  a  priest 
had  run  him  a  bill  for  singing  masses  for  the  soul  of 
Sir  John  Fastolf,  which  far  exceeded  any  outlay  for  that 
purpose  which  he  had  expected.  '  By  St.  Mary,'  he 
says,  '  he  is  owing  more  money  than  I  had  supposed  ! ' 
He  evidently  looks  on  the  matter  as  a  piece  of  rather 
sharp  practice  on  the  part  of  the  priest,  as  we  might 
object  to  charges  in  a  lawyer's  bill  which  might  be  legal 
but  were  scarcely  just.  He  says  that  he  has  given  orders 
to  the  priest  to  stop  singing.  We  feel  we  are  not  far  from 
the  Reformation.  When  another  half  century  or  so  has 
passed,  facts  of  this  kind  will  not  excite  a  mere  vexation 
of  having  been  imposed  upon,  but  a  spirit  of  righteous 
anger,  which  will  purify  the  Temple  from  the  presence 


120  MEMORIES 

of  those  who  sell  and  buy  therein.    The  Middle  Ages  are 
drawing  to  a  close. 

"  But  they  have  not  ended  yet.     Outwardly  they 
seem  as  fair  and  vigorous  as  ever.     Dimly  as  in  a  dis- 
solving view  which  has  hardly  begun  to  change,  we  can 
trace  the  outline  of  the  coming  time  behind  the  actual 
time.      Other     institutions,    other     manners,    another 
architecture,  are  just  ready  to  advance,  as  it  were,  and 
displace  the  Catholic-feudal    policy  under  which  Eng- 
land has  lived  for  four  centuries.     But  little  visible 
change  as  yet  can  be  seen.     The  Middle  Age,  like  a 
flower  full-blown,  still  stands  in  that  perfection  of  bloom 
which  immediately  precedes  rapid  decay.     The  keen  air 
of  science  will  shortly  nip  its  gorgeous  blossoms,  the 
rude  hand  of  industry  will  loosen  its  roots,  and  it  will 
disappear.     But  this  is  not  yet.     We  are  still  in  the 
dim  dawn  of  the  modern  era,  when,  as  it  has  been  well 
said  by  a  German  author,  the  broad  moon  of  Romance 
still  hangs  in  the  sky,  and  only  a  faint  light  in  the  east 
betokens  the  rising  sun  of  exact   science.     Whatever 
men  might  be,  the  earth  was  then  exceeding  fair  to  look 
upon,  for  it  was  adorned  with  a  jewelled  robe  of  art  which 
three  centuries  since  have  done  their  best  to  destroy. 
Cathedrals,   castles,   manor-houses,   civic  and  religious 
buildings  of  all  kinds,  still  stood  in  the  perfection  of 
Gothic  beauty,  with  not  a  pane  knocked  out  of  the 
painted  windows,  or  a  carved  oak  stall  burnt  or  muti- 
lated.    The  castle-keeps  still  frowned  over  their  encir- 
cling moats,  spanned  by  the  drawbridge  and  defended 
by  the  portcullis.     The  England  of  that  age  was  per- 
haps not  a  very  pleasant  country  to  travel  in.     The  roads 
were  very  bad,  and  often  far  from  safe.     Still,  with  all 
the  drawbacks,  I  fancy  that  there  are  not  a  few  of  us 
who  would  be  willing  to  encounter  the  risks  of  a  ride 


JAMES   COTTER  MORISON  121 

across  country  in  those  days  if  we  could  only  do  it,  and 
see  the  deep  forests  and  spacious  moors,  and  the  strange 
large  birds  that  hovered  over  them.  Yes,  indeed,  many 
of  us  would  take  to  the  saddle,  and  join  a  party  of 
pilgrims  or  travellers,  and  listen  to  their  Chaucer  English, 
unheeding  the  chances  of  the  road  as  we  spurred  forward 
to  reach  the  hospitable  monastery  before  nightfall. 
The  pure  air,  unpolluted  by  a  factory  chimney  and 
scarcely  by  a  coal  fire,  and  the  novelty  of  the  scene, 
would  brace  our  nerves  and  kindle  our  curiosity.  We 
might  have  to  ford  or  swim  a  river  now  and  then,  but 
the  water  would  be  sweet,  as  it  descends  from  the  hills 
without  a  trace  of  sewage  or  chemical  poison  to  make  it 
deadly  to  man  and  beast.  With  what  wonder  should  we 
gaze  on  the  quaint  picturesque  costumes  of  our  fellow 
travellers,  the  astonishing  head-dresses  of  the  women,  and 
the  gorgeous  apparel  of  the  men.  We  should  meet  archers 
with  their  bows,  and  knights  on  their  war  horses  glitter- 
ing with  armour.  We  should  be  struck  with  the  various 
habits  of  the  numerous  orders  of  monks  and  nuns,  the 
splendour  of  religious  processions,  the  richness  of  the 
shrines,  and  the  crowds  of  pilgrims  wending  their  way  to 
them.  Many  of  us  would  like  to  see  with  our  own  eyes 
that  distant  epoch  of  our  country,  which  to  do  would  be 
vastly  more  instructive  and  interesting  than  an  hour's 
lecture  like  this  on  the  Paston  Letters  "  (pp.  33-37). 

We  generally  snatched  a  day  from  Whitsuntide  to 
drive  to  Framlingham,  and  I  recall  a  witticism  by  Pro- 
fessor Flinders  Petrie  when  he  and  Thomas  Hardy  were 
of  the  party.  The  "Crown  and  Castle"  is  faced  by  a 
large  shop  across  the  front  of  which  is  (or  was  then) 
affixed  in  bold  gilt  letters  GEORGE  JUDE  three  times. 
11  Well,"  said  Petrie  to  Hardy,  "  you  wouldn't  call  that 
Jude  the  Obscure." 


XIII 

FREDERICK  YORK  POWELL  (1850-1904).  RIGHT  HON. 
SIR  JOHN  RHYS  (1840-1915).  SIR  G.  LAURENCE 
GOMME  (1853-1916). 

IT  was  at  Cotter  Morison's  that  I  first  met  York 
Powell.  One  look  was  enough  to  impress  you  that  you 
were  in  the  presence  of  no  ordinary  man.  Tall,  well-knit, 
stalwart,  handsome,  blue-eyed,  curly-haired,  and  with 
full,  cheery  voice,  he  was  the  embodiment  of  all  that 
was  attractive.  He  ought  to  have  lived  to  a  hundred; 
he  died  of  a  worn-out  heart  at  fifty-four.1 

Unlike  Froude  and  other  predecessors  in  the  Chair  of 
Modern  History  at  Oxford,  Powell  has  left  only  brief 
and  scattered  writings  behind  him.  A  History  of  Early 
England  up  to  the  Roman  Conquest  and  a  History  of 
England  for  the  use  of  Middle  Forms  in  Schools  to  the 
Death  of  Henry  VII :  these  are  the  only  substantive 
books  from  his  own  pen ;  the  rest  of  the  list  is  made  up 
of  miscellanea.  His  versatility  beguiled  him  into  rapid 
traversing  of  fields  lying  outside  his  true  province. 

The  work  by  which  he  will  be  remembered  is  the 
Corpus  Poeticum  Boreale.  As  his  biographer,  Professor 
Oliver  Elton,  says  in  his  Memoir  and  Letters  of  Frederick 
York  Powell :  "  Powell  loved  heathendom,  being  himself 
a  heathen."  So,  in  collaboration  with  Dr.  Vigfusson, 
he  plunged  with  eagerness  into  the  task  of  preparing  a 

1  There  is  a  skilful  portrayal  of  him  from  the  sympathetic  pen  of 
Dr.  George  Haven  Putnam  in  his  Memories  of  a  Publisher,  pp.  209-214. 

122 


FREDERICK   YORK   POWELL  123 

definitive  text  and  translation  of  the  great  body  of 
Icelandic  legends  and  lays  in  the  thirteenth  century, 
enriching  these  with  introduction,  excursuses  and  ap- 
pendices easy  to  one  who  was  a  master  in  knowledge  of 
Scandinavian  history.  The  monumental  work,  issued 
in  two  volumes,  came  out  in  1883,  and  in  1889  the  brave 
tender-souled  man  lost  his  comrade  :  "  the  wise,  good 
and  kindly." 

There  must  have  been  a  dash  of  Drake  and  Frobisher 
in  Powell's  blood.  He  would  have  made  a  typical 
Viking,  and,  since  a  life  of  adventure  was  denied  him, 
his  delight  was  to  mix  with  men  of  the  romantic  sort, 
Paul  du  Chaillu  and  Louis  Becke,  to  wit.  Becke  was 
a  character  with  a  wild  career.  Born  in  New  South 
Wales  in  1848,1  his  youth  was  spent  in  an  office  which 
he  loathed.  Then  he  started  in  a  small  way  as  a  trader 
and  joined  an  old  captain  as  supercargo  on  a  schooner, 
these  two  being  the  only  white  men  on  board.  The  old 
man  took  to  drinking  hard  and  had  delirium  tremens, 
so  it  was  left  to  Becke  to  navigate  the  vessel  through 
perilous  seas.  For  years  he  lived  on  various  islands  of 
the  Pacific,  enduring  all  sorts  of  hardships  and  revelling 
in  exciting  adventures.  He  came  to  England  and  my 
friend  Massingham  (then  editor  of  the  Daily  Chronicle), 
acutely  marked  him  as  the  man  to  sift  the  genuineness 
of  the  extraordinary  story  with  which  Mr.  de  Rougemont 
startled  the  town  in  1898.  I  was  invited  to  be  present 
as  "  honest  broker."  All  that  I  can  do  is  to  refer  the 
curious  enquirer  to  the  reports  on  the  interview  in  the 
Daily  Chronicle  issues  of  September  20  and  October  15, 
1898.  I  read  some  time  back  a  story  of  a  widow  of  a 
prominent  townsman  in  Wisconsin  who  recovered 
damages  against  the  editor  of  the  local  paper  because, 
1  He  died  at  Sydney  in  March  1913, 


124  MEMORIES 

in  the  obituary  notice  he  said  that  her  husband  "  had 
gone  to  a  better  home."  Such  a  story  makes  one  careful. 

No  wonder,  therefore,  that  on  hearing  that  I  knew 
him,  Powell  asked  me  to  bring  Becke  up  to  Oxford  for 
a  week-end.  With  what  zest  did  he  listen  to  the  stories, 
some  of  them  more  "  broad "  than  long,  of  beach- 
combers and  more  disreputable  rascals.  How  he 
roared  when  Becke  showed  him  a  photograph  of  a 
"  converted  "  Australian  black  fellow  which,  with  the 
descriptive  comment,  faces  this  page. 

I  shall  not  forget  the  astonishment  of  Canon  Taylor, 
who  was  to  meet  Powell  for  the  first  time,  when  Powell, 
having,  as  usual,  missed  the  train  by  which  he  had 
promised  to  come,  rushed  into  the  study  with  a  bundle 
of  papers  comprising  Tit- Bits,  Answers  and  the  Pink  'Un, 
under  his  arm,  shouting,  "  Sorry,  old  chap,  I  am  so 
late."  The  Canon  had  not  met  that  type  of  Professor 
before  and  looked  at  me  suspiciously  as  if  I  had  brought 
in  the  "  Man  from  Blankley's." 

One  night,  when  staying  with  me  at  Easter,  an  offer 
came  to  my  party  to  join  the  crew  of  the  Aldeburgh 
lifeboat,  who  were  going  out  for  their  quarterly  practice. 
There  was  a  high  wind  and  a  heavy  sea,  but  Powell 
jumped  at  the  chance  and  came  back  about  2  a.m. 
drenched  and  radiant,  telling  what  fun  it  had  been  to 
don  a  cork  jacket  and  have  his  dole  of  grog. 

Professor  Elton  tells  a  story  how  Powell's  scout, 
accustomed  to  his  master's  disregard  of  bills,  thrust 
out  of  sight  a  letter  which  looked  like  a  final  demand 
for  payment.  It  contained  an  offer  of  the  Regius 
Professorship  of  Modern  History  from  Lord  Rosebery  ! 1 
Powell  often  acted  on  the  principle  that  if  letters  are 
left  unanswered  they  at  last  answer  themselves,  but  this 
1  Vol.  I.  p.  174. 


[To  lace  page  124. 

This  authentic  photograph,  recently  taken  by  a  Sydney  amateur 
on  behalf  of  the  Sydney  Bulletin — a  journal  deeply  interested  in  mis- 
sionary enterprise  in  the  South  Seas — will,  it  is  hoped,  supply  a  long- 
felt  want  to  those  who  desire  to  know  what  the  raging  heathen  looks 
like  after  he  has  given  up  his  debasing  superstitions  and  no  longer 
bows  down  to  wood  and  stone.  This  picture  will  enable  the  pious 
ladies  who  supply  funds  for  the  conversion  of  the  heathen  to  perceive 
that  all  their  money  is  not  spent  in  waistcoats.  His  Reverence  is  a 
real  parson,  and  has  got  'em  all  on :  holy  hat,  sacred  gamp,  orthodox 
coat,  and  carries  under  his  arm  seven  or  eight  pounds  of  the  Word. 
Also  he  is  an  unsophisticated  shepherd  and  evidently  possesses  most 
rudimentary  ideas  as  to  the  proper  manner  of  wearing  his  white  neck- 
tie. He  is  gazing  with  chastened  sorrow  at  some  heathen  English 
sailors  belonging  to  a  trading  schooner  who  are  violating  the  Lord's 
Day  by  bathing  their  toil -stained  bodies  in  a  river  of  the  Vineyard. 


FREDERICK   YORK  POWELL  125 

did  not  save  him  from  turning  up  at  a  house  to  dine, 
only  to  find  that  the  invitation  was  a  year  old.  Prob- 
ably he  shared  the  philosophy  of  the  Irishman  who, 
losing  his  train,  said,  "  Better  late  than  never."  To 
stay  in  his  rooms  at  Christ  Church  was  to  meet  the 
oddest  mixture  of  company,  and  to  stumble  over  the 
most  miscellaneous  contents.  His  dress,  his  demeanour 
and  outspokenness  were  all  protests  against  the  stiffness 
and  exclusiveness  of  University  and  clerical  coteries, 
to  whom  a  don  who  wore  a  pea  jacket  and  yachting  cap 
was  anathema.  "  Omniscience  was  his  foible " ;  he 
passed  without  hitch  or  effort  from  praise  of  Henry 
James  (whose  novels  he  told  me,  not  long  before  his 
death,  he  read  with  increasing  delight),  and  Meredith; 
to  vivid  narrative  of  famous  fights,  as  of  that  between 
Sayers  and  Heenan;  from  enthusiasms  over  Japanese 
prints  to  talk  on  the  scientific  treatment  of  history. 
Communist  refugees  had  been  sheltered  by  him.  Step- 
niak  was  one  of  his  closest  friends.  Born  to  be  a  man 
of  action,  but  fated  to  be  a  man  of  letters,  his  hand  would 
eagerly  clasp  his  who  had  done  some  brave  or  notable 
thing,  especially  if  the  man  had  not  been  advertised  as 
the  latest  sensation.  Powell  would  feast  him  at  the 
"high  table"  in  the  historic  hall  of  Christ  Church,  and 
then,  with  brief  look-in  at  the  "  common  room,"  leave 
his  fellow  dons  to  their  port,  and  carry  his  guest  off  to 
his  den,  whence  would  resound  laughter  that  shook  the 
walls  within  and  sobriety  without.  Better  than  any 
portrait  I  can  attempt  are  a  few  letters  in  proof  of  what 
manner  of  man  he  was.  Meredith  wrote  to  me  about 
him  :  "  I  had  a  fond  corner  for  him  as  well  as  an  admira- 
tion for  his  work  without  acquiescing  in  his  literary 
opinions."  Here  are  a  few  of  them.  "  Froude's  style 
is  journalistic  and  slip-shod.  Browning  I  cannot  away 


126  MEMORIES 

with."  He  begged  his  friend,  Professor  Tout,  "not 
to  be  mealy-mouthed  over  Rousseau,  Le  prophete  du 
faux,  the  eighteenth-century  Mahdi,  the  begetter  of 
more  follies  than  can  be  counted."  "  Bunyan's  prose 
intoxicates  me  with  pleasure."  "  Bernard  Shaw  is 
silly  to  sneer  at  Science  which  has  given  us  everything 
that  raises  us  from  the  ape.1  But  he  is  much  more  in 
earnest  than  he  seems."  "  Meredith  is  a  prophet  as 
well  as  an  artist ;  he  has  something  to  tell  us  :  '  We  bid 
you  to  hope.'  '  "  Tolstoy,  good  God  !  a  miserable 
Nonconformist  set  of  silly  preachments."  "  In  Hardy's 
verse  there  are  material  efforts  both  new  and  beautiful." 
"  Ibsen's  Ghosts  is  the  greatest  play  on  Heredity  since 
^Eschylus  and  Sophocles."  "  Omar  is  a  plain,  down- 
right man  and  his  '  Message  '  is  only  a  friendly  whisper 
to  them  that  care  to  sit  near  him,  bidding  them  trust 
to  the  real  and  front  life  squarely.  [Powell  translated 
a  few  stanzas  of  the  Rubdiydt  which  appeared  in  the 
Pageant,  1897].2  Rabelais  and  Whitman  are  of  the 
company.  Whitman  is  the  only  man  I  would  cross 
the  water  to  see." 

Characteristic  of  Powell  as  a  "  heathen  "  was  his  reply 
when  asked  to  join  the  newly-formed  Primrose  League. 
"  No :  there's  been  too  much  made  already  of  one  dead 
Jew  to  fuss  about  another." 

"  Bedford  Park, 

"April*,  1895. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  haven't  had  such  a  loss  as  Sime  since  Vig- 
fusson   died.     A  fine,    delicate,    sympathetic   man.     A 

1  The  measure  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's  capacity  for  judgment  on 
Darwin  is  shown  in  his  calling  him  "  muddle-headed  "•  and  a  "  pigeon 
fancier."    The   sciolist  whose  stuff  will  continue  to  be  read  "when 
Homer  and  Shakespeare  are  forgotten — but  not  till  then  " — gets  a  well- 
deserved  trouncing  in  Richard  Whiteing's  My  Harvest. 

2  Republished  by  H.  W.  Bell,  Oxford,  1901. 


FREDERICK  YORK   POWELL  127 

man  both  pleasant  and  comforting  to  his  friends  and 
full  of  charity  to  all.  I  never  heard  him  speak  ill  to 
any  man.  I  miss  him  terribly.  I  used  to  go  round  to 
him  once  a  week  at  least,  when  I  was  at  home  and  we 
talked  on  till  the  small  hours.  It  was  good  to  be  with 
such  a  man.  He  drew  the  best  out  of  one,  saw  the  best 
possibilities  in  one,  and  heartened  one  up.  Death's 
busy  dropping  shots  and  somehow  picks  the  best  out 
of  our  little  company  first. 

44  The  Book  of  Enoch  keep  till  its  use  is  fulfilled  to 
you.  The  Book  of  Jubilees  is  coming  and  there  is  a  good 
book  on  the  origins  of  monachism,  Philo's  treatise  de 
Vita  Contemplative,  (a  beautiful  example  of  keen  English 
scholarship)  by  Conybeare  just  out.  You  will  find  good 
pickings  in  it,  but  of  course  the  bulk  of  the  book  is 
for  professional  specialists,  and  discussions  of  textual 
criticism.  The  purport  of  the  book  is  striking.  Eusebius 
got  round  it  by  a  bold  assumption.  The  modern 
apologists  can't  do  that  now.  Have  you  read  Ho  worth's 
excellent  letter  on  the  Septuagint?  He  has  made 
some  discoveries  over  Ezra  and  the  later  prophets  that 
are  of  lasting  moment. 

"  Isn't '  argon '  and  '  helium '  fine  ?  We  can  make  our 
German  friends  sit  up  now  and  then.  You  can't  help 
being  patriotic  and  hopeful  over  such  things.  So  much 
German  work  is  sham  arid  insincere  whenever  one  tests 
it,  and  they  brag  so  over  their  work.  They  sicken  me 
as  the  Americans  do.  I  am  getting  more  and  more  jingo. 

"  Is  Allen  still  frightened  over  his  book  ?  *  I  tried  to 
reassure  him.  There  is  nothing  new  or  startling  in  it, 
but  he  has  managed  to  catch  the  Philistine's  ear.  It  is 
silly  to  bother  about  answering  his  critics  and  he  does 
not  do  it  well. 

1  The  Woman  who  Did,  by  Grant  Allen. 


128  MEMORIES 

"  He  is  such  a  good  fellow  and  so  earnest,  and  so  deaf 
to  the  comic  side  of  things  that  he  has  always  an  open 
place  to  be  attacked  in  —  and  it  hurts  him. 

"  Have  you  read  Emerson's  Birds,  Beasts  and  Fishes 
of  the  Broads  ?  It  is  excellent.  What  days  are  you  at 
the  Savile? 

"  Yours  faithfully, 

"  F.  YORK  POWELL." 

"  Bedford  Park, 


"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  have  knocked  it  about  shameful,  but  it  won't 
want  any  more  mending.1  It  does  not  seem  quite  so 
poor  and  inadequate  to  its  purpose  as  it  did  when  I  sent 
it  to  you,  and  I  hope  it  reflects  in  its  blurred  way  the 
real  Allen  I  knew  and  loved.  When  I  think  of  him  and 
Shute  and  Sime  2  and  Gleeson  and  my  dear  master 
Vigfusson  and  Charles  and  Henry  Stone  and  Walter 
Ferrier,  all  gone,  I  feel  that  though  the  noble  fellowship 
of  the  Round  Table  where  I  had  an  unworthy  seat  is 
broken  up  and  only  one  or  two  of  us  left  on  the  quest 
of  the  Grail  in  following  the  bete  glapissante  like  Pelli- 
nore,  yet  I  have  had  good  friends,  I  have  met  men  I 
am  proud  to  think  about,  and  if  they  have  cared  for  me 
half  as  much  as  I  have  cared  for  them,  I  have  not  been 
badly  loved. 

"  But  these  gaps  in  the  ring  of  our  lives  are  too  many, 
Clodd,  and  I  tremble  now  when  I  hear  of  a  friend's 
illness.  I  know  how  short  a  time  one  has  to  pass  with 
those  one  loves,  so  few  years,  such  a  brief  tale  of  days, 
opportunities  snatched  from  the  daily  business  and  the 

1  This  refers  to  his  "  appreciation  n  of  Grant  Allen  in  my  Memoir. 

2  James  Sime,  author  of  Lives  of  Goethe,  Schiller,  Lessing  and  other 
works. 


FREDERICK   YORK   POWELL  129 

daily  cares,  but  the  only  gold  beads  in  the  chequered 
necklace  of  one's  life.  I  am  so  glad  I  never  had  the 
slightest  even  momentary  feeling  of  coldness  in  the 
course  of  my  friendship  with  any  of  these  men.  The 
hours  I  passed  with  them  were  sunny  and  unclouded. 
That  is  much  to  remember.  But  it  was  to  their  gentle- 
ness, not  to  mine,  that  I  owe  the  pleasant  memory. 
They  were  patient  and  generous  and  gave  me  credit  for 
more  than  one  was  worth.  But  I  really  loved  them  all 
the  time  and  I  think  they  must  have  felt  that. 

"  You  have  got  some  nice  bits  from  Lang.  What  a 
good  creature  he  is,  how  generous  he  is,  and  how  fair. 
It  was  Allen  that  made  me  know  him  first. 

"  Yours  faithfully, 

"  F.  YORK  POWELL." 

"  Christ  Church,  Oxford, 

"  February  25,  1902. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  have  finished  the  book.1  I  like  it  very  much. 
I  think  it  gives  both  the  work  and  the  man  properly 
and  briefly. 

"  The  '  pig  '  controversy  you  have  handled  excellently, 
I  think.  It  wanted  stating  as  you  have  stated  it  and 
the  Gladstone  attitude  needed  exposing  in  its  true  light. 
What  an  extraordinary  thing  it  is  that  a  man  with  such 
brains  for  finance  shouldn't  be  able  to  throw  off  the 
superstitious  absurdities  of  the  past.  He  was  never 
really  honest  with  his  own  mind.  He  meant  to  be 
honest,  but  ...  he  was  a  terrific  self-deceiver. 

"  Owen  was  a  liar,  simply.  He  lied  for  God  and 
for  malice  :  a  bad  case. 

"  I  hope  Becke  is  better.     I  wish  I  could  come  to  you 

1  Thomas  Henry  Huxley,  by  E.  C. 


130  MEMORIES 

at  Easter  and  see  him  and  you  and  have  walks  and  talks. 
They  are  quiet  times  of  refreshing  for  me  and  do  me 
real  good.  I  learn  and  I  rest  and  have  a  good  time.  I 
have  to  be  in  Ireland  on  April  7  and  I  have  four  big 
lectures  to  write  and  all  of  them  to  be  printed,  I  expect, 
besides  my  regular  work.  I  wish  for  the  sun  and  mild 
S.W.  again.  It  is  this  raw  weather  with  melting  snow 
on  the  hills  when  one  always  gets  cold. 

"  I  am  so  glad  Cotton's  happily  suited  for  some  years.1 
What  a  brick  he  is. 

"  I  am  sick  over  this  damned  flunky  thing  of  a 
Royal  [ Y.  P.  meant  British]  Academy ;  pure  rot  : 
another  obstacle  to  every  one  who  wishes  to  do  some- 
thing. Gratuitous  red  tape.  How  Bryce  can  join  it 
I  can't  make  out.  It's  a  job  of  Jebb's,  I  hear. 

"  I  hope  your  book  will  sell  as  well  as  it  deserves,  for 
then  you  will  be  able  to  buy  a  large  piece  of  Aldeburgh 
and  will  then  roost  there  as  a  beneficent  Dictator  (the 
best  form  of  government,  I  fancy,  after  all).  FitzG.'s 
last  batch  of  letters  is  excellent,  as  good  as  ever,  surely. 
"  Yours  very  faithfully, 

"  F.  YORK  POWELL." 

There  is  pathos  in  this  letter  written  four  days  after 
a  report  of  his  death  appeared  in  the  papers.  "  He  was 
startled,"  says  Professor  Elton,  "  but  laughed,  and 
begged  that  any  obituary  notice  might  be  sent  for  his 
entertainment." 

"  Staverton  Grange, 

"  Banbury  Road,  Oxford, 

"April  21,  1904. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  can't  make  out  how  the  report  arose.     I  am 
slowly  getting  better.     It  is  kindly  of  you  to  speak  so 

1  As  editor  of  the  revised  edition  of  The  Imperial  Gazetteer  of  India. 


SIR  JOHN  RHtS  131 

warmly  of  my  work  and  me.  I  had  a  sort  of  '  set  back  ' 
owing  to  want  of  sleep,  but  opium  in  tiny  doses  cured 
that,  and  my  heart  seems  to  be  getting  better  (the 
mitral  valve  leaks)  steadily.  I  hope  Nauheim  will 
right  me  altogether  as  it  has  many  others.  I  am  still 
in  bed  and  can't  write  much.  Take  care  of  yourself. 

"  Yours  faithfully, 

"  F.  YORK  POWELL." 

He  never  reached  Nauheim  :  he  died  on  the  5th  of 
May  following.  He  was  buried  in  Wolvercote  Cemetery. 
A  large  company,  dignitaries  of  the  Church  and  of  men 
in  secular  ranks  of  life  were  present;  "  men  who  had 
not  met  for  long  and  found  each  other  older,  men  who 
did  not  know,  or  know  of,  one  another."  He  was 
buried,  by  his  own  instructions,  without  any  rite,  and 
in  silence. 

SIR  JOHN  RHYS  (1840-1915). 

"  Come  to  Jesus  "  was  not  a  call  to  me  to  obtain 
salvation,  but  an  invitation  to  the  College  of  that  name 
from  its  Principal  when  I  complained  of  the  doleful 
dulness  of  the  Common  Room  of  another  College. 
Acceptance  of  the  invitation  gained  me  a  friend  the  news 
of  whose  sudden  death  reached  me  while  writing  these 
pages.  The  numerous  public  and  patriotic  duties  which 
Sir  John  Rhys  discharged  sadly  lessened  chances  of 
intercourse  with  him  in  later  years,  but  there  was  no 
decay  of  a  friendship  which,  in  its  warmth  of  greeting 
and  largeness  of  hospitality,  can  never  be  excelled. 
Open  house  was  the  "  Lodgings  " ;  the  host,  hostess 
and  daughters  made  you  feel  at  home  ere  you  had 
crossed  its  threshold. 

Other  pens  will  tell  of  the  romantic  career  of  the 
farmer's  son  to  whom  English  was  almost  a  foreign 


132  MEMORIES 

tongue;  who,  entering  Jesus  College,  rose  by  power  of 
brain  and  force  of  high  character  to  become  its  Principal 
and  to  receive  a  much  more  coveted  distinction  than  his 
knighthood  in  elevation  to  the  rank  of  Privy  Councillor. 
They  will  tell  of  a  deep  and  wide  scholarship  which,  on 
the  creation  of  a  Chair  of  Celtic  in  the  University  of 
Oxford,  marked  him  as  the  only  possible  first  occupier. 
But  Rhys  was  never  wholly  at  ease  in  his  surroundings. 
Liberal  in  politics  and  heterodox  in  creed,  he  made  few 
intimates.  When  Sir  Edward  Tylor's  health  compelled 
him  to  leave  Oxford,  and  when  Professor  Morfill  died, 
he  spoke  pathetically  of  growing  isolation.  As  far  back 
as  1898,  he  says  in  a  letter  to  me  :  "  My  wife  wishes  to 
be  kindly  remembered  to  you ;  she  is  still  suffering  from 
rheumatism  and  I  am  unable  to  '  suffer  fools  gladly ' : 
there  are  so  many  of  them  let  loose  in  Oxford  this  time 
of  the  year.  So  neither  of  us  is  quite  happy." 

As  a  piece  of  fun,  I  recall  when,  on  a  week-end  visit, 
he  said  to  me  :  "  .  .  . "  naming  a  man  prominent, 
if  not  eminent,  in  science,  "  is  coming.  He  sent  me 
his  latest  book,  and  I  haven't  cut  the  leaves,  one  reason 
being  that  I  know  'tis  full  of  cranky  stuff."  "  Well," 
I  said,  "  I  have  reviewed  it,  pitching  into  it,  but  the 
review  isn't  yet  published ;  so  we  mustn't  give  each  other 
away."  "  But,"  said  he,  "  we  shall  be  dosed  with  it 
after  dinner."  And  dosed  we  were.  Rhys  made  non- 
committal comments,  and  I  was  all  the  time  in  a  funk, 
having  before  me  the  possible  appearance  of  my  review 
in  Monday's  issue  of  the  paper,  because  my  fellow-guest 
and  I  were  to  return  to  London  together.  The  review 
came  out  some  days  later.  Talking  of  reviewing 
reminds  me  how  Professor  Max  Miiller  "  went  for " 
Andrew  Lang  as  the  supposed  writer  of  an  adverse 
notice  of  the  last  volume  of  Chips  from  a  German  Work- 
shop, whereas  I  was  the  culprit.  Lang  was  too  amused 


SIR  JOHN   RHtS  138 

to  be  angry,  and  only  reproached  me  with  his  vicarious 
suffering  as  a  part  of  the  human  lot.  Nearly  all  Rh^s's 
letters  to  me  deal  with  philological  subjects,  Ogams, 
Runes  and  all  their  kin.  But  he  had  a  wide  variety  of 
interest,  as  these  will  show. 

"  Jesus  College,  Oxford, 
"  December  24,  1897. 

"...  [The  reference  is  to  a  review  of  mine  of 
Grant  Allen's  Evolution  of  the  Idea  of  God.}  I  am  quite 
with  you.  I  believe  in  the  animistic  origin  of  some  gods 
and  the  ghostly  origin  of  others ;  it  is  significant  that  no 
ghost  man  has  ever  been  able  to  appropriate  any  great 
members  of  the  Greek  or  Indo-European  Pantheon, 
such  as  Zeus  or  Apollo.  Allen  has  my  sympathy  also  : 
he  has  found  a  good  key,  but  he  unreasonably  expects 
it  to  open  every  lock,  and  that  it  won't  he  may  be  sure." 

"  Jesus  College,  Oxford, 

"  October  17,  1890. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  read  your  book  [Tom  Tit  Tot ;  an  Essay  on 
Savage  Philosophy  in  Folk  Tale}  at  once,  but  I  have 
delayed  inexcusably  writing  to  thank  you  most  cordially 
for  it.  I  have  marked  slices  here  and  there  which 
I  am  going  to  steal.  I  am  not  satisfied  that  my 
conclusion  as  to  name,  soul  and  breath  is  sufficiently 
definite,  so  I  have  been  trying  to  analyse  the  matter  a 
little  further  and  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  Aryans  must  have  at  a  very  early  date  associated 
the  name  with  the  breath. 

"  But  why  did  they  do  that  ?  Is  there  any  savage 
race  that  pronounces  the  name,  or  breathes  it  in  a 
whisper  over  the  new-born  babe  to  make  it  breathe  or 
in  order  to  facilitate  its  breathing  ?  Or  is  it  owing  to  the 
breath  being  the  breath  of  life;  a  sign  of  life,  etc.,  they 


134  MEMORIES 

would  associate  the  name  with  the  breath?     What  do 
you  think? 

"  This  time  I  see  you  have  gone  in  for  laying  your 
folklorist  hands  on  the  Ark  again.  This  time  baptism 
is  made  to  fall  into  line  :  you  will  come  to  a  bad  end, 
though  there  is  no  Gladstone l  to  be  set  at  you  now  ! 

"  Yours  very  truly, 

"  J.  RHYS." 

"  Gwalia  Hotel,  Llandrindod, 

"  September  5,  1899. 

11  [After  dealing  with  the  distinction  between  Ogams 
and  Runes.]  Have  you  seen  a  long  and  pathetic  letter 
from  Mrs.  Ward  in  The  Times  to-day?  She  is  longing 
to  see  all  who  cannot  believe  in  Virgin  births — that  is 
apparently  the  first  difficulty  present  to  her  mind — 
duly  acknowledged  members  of  the  Church  of  England. 
If  they  were  only  called  by  the  same  name  of  Christians 
it  matters  naught  that  they  are  ritualists  and  agnostics  : 
the  name  is  the  great  thing  which  would  enable  them  to 
enjoy  the  Eucharist  together.  Somebody  ought  to 
present  her  with  a  copy  of  the  Australian  book  2  reviewed 
in  one  of  the  Reviews  by  Frazer;  it  appears  that  to 
the  Australian  natives  every  birth  is  due  to  an  im- 
maculate conception.  The  whole  letter  affords  a  curious 
study  in  psychology  to  me  and  my  wife. 

"  Yours  very  truly, 

"  J.    RHtS." 

SIR  LAURENCE  GOMME  (1853-1916). 
The  pen  is  scarcely  dry  ere  it  has  to  be  re-dipped  to 
mourn  the  loss  of  a  friendship  of  nearly  forty  years  in 
the  death  of  Sir  Laurence  Gomme. 

1  P.  210  (infra). 

2  The  reference  is  to  Spencer  and  Gillen's  Native  Tribes  of  Central 
Australia,  p.  124. 


SIR  LAURENCE   GOMME  135 

The  formation  of  the  Folk  Lore  Society,  in  which  he 
took  a  leading  part,  brought  us  together,  community 
of  interest  cementing  intercourse.  The  Society  came, 
none  too  soon,  to  the  rescue  of  a  mass  of  oral  tradition 
whose  value  became  more  apparent  as  survivals  of 
primitive  ideas,  beliefs  and  customs,  when  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  was  extended  to  man's  spiritual  and 
intellectual  development.  What  had  been  more  or  less 
a  dilettante  pursuit  bf  came  a  serious  study.  Old  wives' 
sayings,  fables,  folk  and  fairy  tales;  in  brief,  the  vast 
body  of  superstitions,  were  shown  to  have  their  roots 
deep  down  in  the  primitive  soul.  While  anthropology, 
on  its  physical  side,  is  concerned  with  skull-measure- 
ments and  human  anatomy  generally  as  a  key  to  race ; 
on  its  psychical  side,  as  folklore,  it  teems  with  interest 
as  "  the  proper  study  of  mankind."  It  was  especially 
to  the  collection  of  quaint  and  archaic  customs,  and  their 
survival  in  our  midst,  that  Gomme  gave  of  the  leisure 
which  he  snatched  from  time  not  claimed  by  official  duties. 
I  remember  his  keen  interest  when  I  told  him  that  in 
this  manor  of  Aldeburgh  the  custom  of  what  is  known 
in  law  as  "  Borough  English "  prevails.  That  is,  if 
the  owner  of  copyhold  estates  or  tenements  dies  intestate, 
his  youngest  son  inherits.  In  some  rare  cases  elsewhere 
the  youngest  daughter  inherits.  And  this  custom  of 
ultimogeniture  overrides  the  law  of  the  land.  It  is 
widely,  but  sporadically,  distributed,  being  found  in 
various  parts  of  England,  and  westwards  across  Eurasia 
to  the  confines  of  China.  There  are  traces  of  it  among 
the  New  Zealanders  and  various  other  lower  races,  and 
that  a  like  system  of  inheritance  may  have  been  in  vogue 
among  the  Hebrews  is  shown  in  the  cases  of  Isaac, 
Jacob,  Joseph  and  others.  The  origin  of  the  custom  has 
long  puzzled  the  wits  of  antiquarians  and  jurists,  and 


136  MEMORIES 

many  explanations  have  been  offered  in  solution  of  a 
difficult  problem.  The  researches  of  a  distinguished 
lawyer,  the  late  Charles  Elton,  led  him  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  oldest  customs  of  inheritance  were  in  their 
remote  beginnings  based  on  the  worship  of  ancestors, 
whose  shrine  and  altar  were  essentially  the  family  hearth. 
The  father  and  elder  sons  would  pursue  war  and  hunting 
and  the  youngest  son  would  remain  at  home  as  hearth- 
guardian;  with  charge  to  perform  certain  funeral  rites 
on  the  death  of  his  father.  Hence,  by  gradations 
easy  to  follow,  his  succession  to  the  hearth  and 
homestead.1 

Not  less  interested  was  Gomme  when  talk  fell  on  the 
custom,  in  cases  of  private  partnerships  in  vessels,  of 
dividing  the  shares  into  sixty-fourths.  He  told  me  that 
among  village  communities  in  India  the  land  is  held  by 
the  original  settlers  in  the  same  way,  which  suggested 
as  probable  the  explanation  that  the  ships  of  our  roving 
sea-ancestors  were,  like  the  lands  of  these  Indian  com- 
munities, originally  tribal.  In  the  old  Viking  ship, 
preserved  in  Christiania,  there  are  sixteen  tholes  on 
each  side.  If  the  crew  worked  in  double  shifts,  this 
would  give  sixty-four  rowers. 

So  we  had  jolly  talks,  whetted  by  the  fascination  of 
the  manifold  vistas  which  these  and  other  subjects 
opened.  To  these,  both  in  books  and  fugitive  papers 
in  scientific  journals,  Gomme  was  constantly  con- 
tributing, and  when  warnings  of  a  breakdown  compelled 
his  retirement  from  the  Clerkship  of  the  London  County 
Council,  he  had  planned  more  than  one  addition  to  his 
treatises  on  tribal  customs.  There  was  a  touch  of  sad- 
ness in  the  reply  to  my  letter  wishing  him  health  for 
the  tasks  that  he  loved. 

1  Origins  of  English  History,  Chapter  on  "  Borough  English." 


SIR  LAURENCE   GOMME 


137 


"  Long  Crendon,  Bucks. 

"  March  1,  1914. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  Alas  !  I  am  no  longer  a  youngster  as  you 
suggest,  and  hence  the  necessity.  Your  cheer  onwards 
is  delightful,  reminding  one  of  the  old  days,  and  making 
one  hope  to  have  more  time  to  cultivate  one's  friends  and 
turn  to  matters  which  need  doing.  Thanks  and  again 
thanks  for  your  letter. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  LAURENCE  GOMME." 


XIV 

GEORGE  MEREDITH  (1828-1909) 

MY  first  meeting  with  George  Meredith  was  at  Cotter 
Morison's  house  in  May  1884.  Meredith  had  a  sobriquet, 
wherein  drollery  was  an  element,  for  his  intimates.  As 
the  author  of  a  life  of  the  saintly  Abbot  of  Cluny, 
Morison,  to  whom  the  term  ascetic  was  the  last  to  be 
applied,  was  dubbed  "  St.  Bernard."  Poems  and  Lyrics 
of  the  Joy  of  Earth  was  dedicated  to  him — Antistans  mihi 
milibus  trecentis  was  the  modest  quotation  that  followed 
the  name — and  when  Morison  died  in  1888  Meredith 
expressed  in  brief  threnody  what  loss  a  circle  of  loving 
friends  had  sustained — 

"  A  fountain  of  our  sweetest,  quick  to  spring 

In  fellowship  abounding,  here  subsides ; 
And  never  passage  of  a  cloud  on  wing 

To  gladden  blue  forgets  him ;  near  he  hides." 

Mr.  Lionel  Robinson  was  "  Poco  "  (poco  cur  ante) :  Sir 
William  Hardman  was  "Friar  Tuck";  I  was  "Sir 
Reynard."  Keen  is  my  memory  of  the  anticipation 
with  which  each  number  of  Once  a  Week  was  looked 
for,  because  a  novel — Evan  Harrington — by  the  author 
of  The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel  was  running  through 
that  serial.  But  in  my  acquaintance  with  the  writings 
of  Meredith  his  verse,  small  as  was  then  the  quantity, 
had  for  me  a  special  attraction,  and  when  Poems  and 
Lyrics  of  the  Joy  of  Earth,  with  its  magic  "  Woods  of 
Westermain  "  (the  quickening  inspiration  to  which  was 

138 

•     • 


GEORGE    MEREDITH    AT   ALDEBURGH,    1905. 

Photo  by  Clement  K.  Shorter,  and  published  with  his  permission. 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  139 

given  by  his  rambles  in  Nor  bury  Park),  and  "  Lark 
Ascending,"  appeared,  the  enchantment  was  complete. 

"  How  I  leapt  through  leagues  of  thought  in  the 
days  when  I  could  walk,'*  he  said,  as  he  lamented  the 
loss  of  to  him  the  keenest  of  enjoyments. 

His  song  is  the  vehicle  of  a  wider  philosophy  of  life 
than  is  embodied  in  his  stories,  and  the  quintessence 
of  that  philosophy  is  in  the  noble  poem,  "  Earth  and 
Man."  Quoting  therefrom  some  stanzas  that  impressed 
me  most,  Meredith  grasped  my  hand  as  one  accepted  in 
the  fellowship  of  the  spirit.  And  when,  later  on,  writing 
about  a  kindred  subject,  he  said,  "  when  we  two  touch 
earth  I  see  that  we  are  brothers,"  there  was  set  seal  to 
a  friendship  which  was  an  enriching  possession  for 
five-and-twenty  years. 

When  at  Aldeburgh  in  1891,  he  wrote  in  my  copy  of 
Poems  and  Lyrics  these  lines — 

NATURE  AND  MAN 

"  Where  all  is  black, 
Love  is  the  light  for  creatures  looking  in 
Behind  her  red  rose  blush  and  lily  skin ; 
A  lamp  that  yet  we  lack." 

I  shall  here  attempt  no  addition  to  the  appreciations 
of  Meredith's  place  in  literature.  Of  these  there  have  been 
and  will  be  no  lack ;  here  all  that  will  be  attempted  is  a 
thin  biographical  thread  on  which  to  string  a  record  of 
conversations  as  a  possible  conveyance  of  some  impres- 
sions of  the  talker.  Lacking  the  sonorous  voice  that 
rolled  from  the  cavernous  mouth  and  the  resounding 
laugh  that  came  from  the  heart;  the  animated  face 
and  gesture;  the  words,  Pactolian  in  their  flow,  now 
set  down  in  rigid  type,  are  lifeless  as  the  faded  and 
scentless  flowers  in  an  herbarium.  In  loyalty  to  a 
behest  in  a  letter  which  lies  before  me,  wherein  he  says, 


140  MEMORIES 

"  Horribly  will  I  haunt  the  man  who  writes  memoir  of 
me,"  little  of  what  is  biographical  is  here  set  down. 
Myths  rarely  accrete  round  men  of  note  until  they  die, 
but  Meredith's  reticence  about  his  parentage  and  birth- 
place gave  rise  to  a  host  of  legends  during  his  lifetime, 
none  of  which  he  was  ever  at  pains  to  dispel.  That  the 
curious  in  such  matters  could  get  at  the  facts  without 
much  difficulty  makes  his  reticence  the  more  inexplic- 
able. It  was  known  to  more  than  one  friend  in  his 
lifetime  and  has  been  made  public  property  since  his 
death  that  his  father,  Augustus  Urmston  Meredith,  was 
a  naval  outfitter  (the  actual  name  was  used  by  Marryat, 
when  he  makes  Peter  Simple  talk  about  "  calling  at 
Meredith's,  the  tailor,  to  be  fitted  complete  "J.1  He  was 
the  son  of  one  Melchisedec,  the  "  great  Mel,"  who,  in 
Evan  Harrington,  is  "  struck  off  the  list  of  living  tailors  " 
in  the  opening  sentence  of  that  novel. 

Meredith  was  born  at  73,  High  Street,  Portsmouth,  on 
February  12,  1828,  and  baptized  on  April  9  following 
in  the  parish  church  of  St.  Thomas.  His  mother,  so 
he  told  me,  died  when  he  was  in  his  fifth  year,  and 
the  father,  marrying  again,  emigrated  in  the  early 
'sixties  to  Cape  Town,  where  he  carried  on  the  business 
of  a  tailor  in  St.  George's  Street  for  about  four  years 
till  his  return,  when  he  settled  at  Southsea.  The  Cape 

1  Meredith's  oldest  surviving  friend,  Mr.  Lionel  Robinson,  says  in 
a  letter  to  me,  "  You  are  quite  right  in  what  you  say  about  G.  M.'B 
reticence  concerning  his  family.  But  he  always  told  me  that  he 
owed  his  education  to  an  Aunt  (Louisa  Meredith),  who  married  a 
Portuguese  and  who  figures  in  Evan  Harrington  as  the  Countess  de 
Saldar ;  though  she  wasn't  one."  In  his  article  on  "  George  Meredith's 
Childhood,'7  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  of  November  1912,  Mr.  Ellis 
says  that  Louisa  married  a  John  Read,  who  was  British  Consul  at 
Lisbon.  The  reconciliation  of  what  Meredith  told  his  friends  about 
his  relatives  and  his  early  years,  as  to  which  memory  must  sometimes 
have  played  him  false,  with  the  actual  facts,  is  difficult. 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  141 

Times  of  May  26,  1909,  contained  reminiscences  of, 
and  several  letters  from,  people  who  knew  him,  about 
him.  One  of  these,  Mr.  B.  T.  Lawton,  says  that 
entering  Meredith's  shop  one  morning,  he  found  him 
in  low  spirits.  He  asked  Mr.  Lawton  if  he  had  seen 
the  new  story,  Evan  Harrington,  in  Once  a  Week.  He 
added,  "  I  am  very  sore  about  it,  as  I  consider  it  aimed 
at  myself  and  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  the  author  is  my 
own  son."  Another  correspondent  describes  him  as  "  a 
smart,  dapper  little  man,  very  quiet  and  reserved,  a 
good  sample  of  a  self-respecting  and  courteous  shop 
keeper,  and  by  no  means  fond  of  allusions  to  his  son, 
whose  poems  were  published  in  1851."  On  his  personal 
appearance  the  other  letters  contradict  one  another, 
but  agree  in  refuting  the  statement  that  George  Meredith 
was  born  in  Cape  Town.  Of  his  parents  Meredith  spoke 
seldom.  "  My  father,"  said  he,  "  lived  to  be  seventy-five 
(he  died  in  1876).  He  was  a  muddler  and  a  fool.  I  have 
been  told  that  my  mother,  who  was  of  Irish  origin,  was 
handsome,  refined  and  witty.  I  think  that  there  must 
have  been  some  Saxon  strain  in  the  ancestry  to  account 
for  a  virility  of  temperament  which  corrected  the  Celtic 
in  me,  although  the  feminine  rules  in  so  far  as  my 
portraiture  of  womanhood  is  faithful.  Practically  left 
alone  in  boyhood,  I  was  placed  by  the  trustee  of  my 
mother's  small  property  at  school,  my  chief  remembrance 
of  which  is  three  dreary  services  on  Sundays,  the  giving 
out  of  the  text  being  the  signal  to  me  for  inventing 
tales  of  the  Saint  George  and  Dragon  type.  I  was  fond 
of  the  Arabian  Nights,  and  this  doubtless  fed  an  imagin- 
ation which  took  shape  in  The  Shaving  of  Shagpat, 
written,  I  may  tell  you,  at  Weybridge,  with  duns  at  the 
door.  I  learned  very  little  at  school,  until  I  was  sent 
to  Neuwied,  the  learning  of  German  proving  a  good 


142  MEMORIES 

thing  when  my  friend  Hardman,  of  the  Morning  Post, 
sent  me  as  correspondent  in  1866  on  the  outbreak  of 
war  between  Austria  and  Italy.  But  the  fighting  was 
soon  over,  and  I  went  on  to  Venice,  where  I  wrote  the 
greater  part  of  Vittoria.  When  I  came  back  from 
Germany,  I  found  that  the  trustee,  by  fraud  or  folly, 
had  squandered  the  little  estate,  but  enough  was  left  to 
article  me  to  a  London  lawyer,  Richard  Charnock.  He 
had  neither  business  nor  morals ;  and  I  had  no  stomach 
for  the  law,  so  I  drifted  into  journalism,  my  first  venture 
being  in  the  shape  of  a  leader  on  Lord  John  Manners, 
which  I  sent  to  the  Standard.  Very  little  came  of  that, 
but  I  got  work  on  one  of  your  Suffolk  papers,  The 
Ipswich  Journal,  which  kept  me  going.  Some  ghoul  has 
lately  threatened  to  make  search  for  these  articles;  may 
the  Commination  service  be  thundered  in  his  ears  !  " 

In  his  Life  of  Thomas  Love  Peacock,  Mr.  Van  Doren 
says  that  under  the  pseudonym  of  "  Aretched  Kooseg  " 
(Wretched  Quiz)  Charnock  wrote  articles  in  The  Monthly 
Observer,  a  magazine  started  by  Meredith  about  1848. 
Mr.  Lionel  Robinson  tells  me  that  Charnock  was  a 
"  character,"  a  real  antiquarian  of  doubtful  morals  and 
for  many  years  one  of  the  "  old  boys  "  of  the  Arundel 
Club  of  Bohemian  ways  and  days.  Meredith  put  him 
(much  disguised)  into  Richard  Feverel  as  the  uncle. 

In  1849  Meredith  married  Mary  Ellen  Nicolls,  widow 
of  Lieutenant  Nicolls,  R.N.,  and  daughter  of  Thomas 
Love  Peacock,  whose  acquaintance  Meredith  made 
through  Peacock's  son  Edward.  He  very  rarely  referred 
to  this ;  on  one  occasion  he  said,  "  No  sun  warmed  my 
roof-tree;  the  marriage  was  a  blunder;  she  was  nine 
years  my  senior;  "  on  another,  "  Peacock's  wife  became 
mad,  and  so  there  was  a  family  taint."  Both  Holman- 
Hunt  and  Mr.  Robinson  described  her  to  me  as  a  dashing 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  143 

type  of  horsewoman  who  attracted  much  notice  from 
the  "  bloods  "  of  the  day.  Others  who  knew  her  say 
that  she  was  charming,  with  intellectual  gifts  above  the 
average.  A  well-known  firm  of  antiquarian  booksellers 
has  on  sale  the  MS.  of  a  cookery  book  by  Mary  Meredith, 
for  which  she  received  £30  from  the  now  defunct  firm 
of  J.  W.  Parker  and  Son.1  That  house  did  not  venture 
to  issue  it.  Mrs.  Charles  Clarke,  the  daughter  of  the 
first  marriage,  contradicting  a  statement  that  Meredith 
was  once  in  the  India  House  (where  both  Peacock  and 
his  son  were  officials),  says,  "  I  first  saw  him  at  Halliford 
when  I  was  seven  years  old.  I  remember  it  perfectly; 
he  and  I  were  great  friends  in  those  days  even.  We 
played  cricket  together;  he  was  a  splendid  playfellow." 
The  sequel  to  the  marriage  is  indicated  in  Richard 
Feverel  and  told  in  Modern  Love — 

"  By  vain  regret  scrawled  over  the  blank  wall 
Like  sculptured  effigies  they  might  be  seen 
Upon  their  marriage  tomb,  the  sword  between ; 
Each  wishing  for  the  sword  that  severs  all." 

No  action  for  release  from  the  marriage  bond  was 
taken  by  Meredith;  death  severed  it  in  1860.  A  son, 
named  Arthur,  was  born  of  the  ill-mated  pair.  On  the 
flight  of  his  mother,  Lady  Nicolls,  his  grandmother, 
took  charge  of  him  until  he  was  seven,  when  he  lived 
with  his  father  at  Copsham  near  Esher.  His  letters  to 
and  about  the  boy  are  full  of  affectionate  solicitude,  but 
their  natures  were  divergent  and  the  boy  drifted  from 
home,  spent  some  years  abroad  in  various  employments, 

1  George  Meredith.  Autograph  MS.,  The  Art  and  Science  of 
Cookery.  With  occasional  notes  by  his  wife,  Mary  Ellen  Meredith, 
daughter  of  Thomas  Love  Peacock.  1849-1850.  White  Morocco.  The 
greater  part  of  the  MS.  is  in  George  Meredith's  handwriting.  For 
sale  by  Maggs  Brothers,  Strand,  London.  Some  interesting  extracts 
from  the  MS.  are  given  by  "  C.  K.  S.,"  in  the  Sphere,  March  25,  1916. 


144  MEMORIES 

broke  down  in  health,  and,  finally,  returning  to  England, 
was  nursed  by  his  half-sister,  Mrs.  Clarke,  at  whose 
house  at  Woking  he  died  in  1890.  Some  twenty  years 
of  happier  conditions  followed  when,  in  1864,  Meredith 
married  Miss  Vulliamy,  a  lady  of  French  descent,  who 
died  in  1885. 

"  Who  call  her  Mother  and  who  calls  her  Wife 
Look  on  her  grave  and  see  not  Death  but  Life.11 1 

To  what  Meredith,  from  time  to  time,  volunteered 
about  his  early  years,  may  be  added  what  he  told  me 
at  intervals  of  the  long  struggle  whose  end  did  not 
come  until  the  meridian  of  life  was  passed,  the  success 
of  Diana  of  the  Crossways,  published  when  he  was  fifty- 
seven,  marking  the  turning-point.  How  slender  were 
his  means  up  to  the  prime  of  manhood  is  shown  in 
his  supplementing  them  by  reading  to  an  elderly  lady,  a 
Mrs.  Wood,  aunt  of  Mrs.  O'Shea  whom  Parnell  married 
after  her  divorce,  and  by  acceptance  of  the  paid  post 
of  reader  2  to  Chapman  &  Hall  on  the  retirement  of 
John  Forster  in  1860.  In  the  Fortnightly  Review, 
August  1909,  Mr.  B.  W.  Matz  gives  an  interesting  selec- 
tion of  judgments  passed  by  Meredith  on  manuscripts 
that  came  before  him. 

Fortunately,  a  legacy  came  to  him  on  the  death  of 
an  aunt,  Eliza  Meredith,  and  he  told  me  of  another 
windfall  from  an  uncle,  in  whose  debt  his  father  had 
died.  On  learning  of  this,  although  he  could  ill  spare 
the  money,  Meredith  sent  a  cheque  for  the  amount, 
which  was  returned.  It  was  posted  a  second  time,  but 
never  presented,  and  recognition  of  Meredith's  high 
sense  of  integrity  came  in  welcome  shape. 

1  Epitaph  on  M.  M.,  A  Reading  of  Earth,  p.  133. 

2  How,  in  that  capacity,  "  he  damned  Erewhon,"  is  cause  of  angry, 
but  amusing,  comment  in  the  Note-books  of  Samuel  Butler,  p.  186. 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  145 

In  the  earlier  years  of  our  friendship,  Meredith  worked 
and  slept  in  the  little  chalet  overhanging  the  garden  by 
the  side  of  Flint  Cottage.  There,  amidst  the  "  high 
midsummer  pomps  "  of  the  lingering  lights,  or  in  the 
evenings  when  the  south-wester,  which  he  loved  and 
made  the  theme  of  immortal  verse,  swept  by,  deepening 
the  contrast  of  the  cosiness  within,  the  talk,  now  and 
then  reminiscent,  ran  full  and  free,  varied  by  the 
reading  of  some  poem  yet  unpublished,  or  of  some 
chapters  from  a  novel  on  the  stocks.  Well  remembered 
among  these  are  the  earlier  pages  of  One  of  Our  Con- 
querors or  of  The  Amazing  Marriage,  which,  he  drolly 
said,  apropos  of  questions  received  about  an  incident  as 
to  paternity  therein,  he  would  like  to  have  re-named  The 
Amazing  Baby  !  In  yet  deeper  imprint  on  the  memory 
is  the  recital,  in  a  voice  of  organ  roll,  of  poems  unwritten ; 
for  Meredith's  wonderful  memory,  keen  to  retain,  in  old 
age,  things  recent,  permitted  him  to  repeat  without  pause 
the  greater  part  of  a  poem  of  the  length  of  "  Napoleon  " 
of  which  not  a  line  had  then  been  put  on  paper.  Nodes 
coenceque  deum ;  nights  such  as  Cowley  sings  of  in  his 
stately  tribute  to  his  friend  Mr.  William  Hervey — 

"  How  oft  unwearied  have  we  spent  the  nights ; 
We  spent  them  not  in  toys,  or  lusts,  or  wine, 
But  search  of  deep  philosophy, 
Wit,  eloquence,  and  poetry, 
Arts  which  I  loved,  for  they,  my  friend,  were  thine." 

Hackneyed  as  is  the  quotation,  there  is  none  so  applic- 
able to  Meredith  as  that  from  the  Self -Tormentor  of 
Terence  :  Homo  sum  ;  humani  nihil  a  me  alienum  puto. 
His  mind,  polygonal  and  agile,  touched  life  on  all  sides ; 
every  pore  was  receptive  to  knowledge,  ethical,  scien- 
tific, and  especially  historical ;  markedly  in  all  appertain- 
ing to  his  beloved  France. 


146  MEMORIES 

"  I  wrote  verse,"  he  told  me,  "  before  I  was  nineteen ; 
some  of  it,  which  I  wish  could  be  suppressed,  and  has 
not  been  reprinted,  was  published  in  the  1851  volume 
which  I  brought  out  at  my  own  risk,  losing  £50  or  £60 
on  the  venture.  Chiefly  by  that  in  my  poetry  which 
emphasizes  the  unity  of  life,  the  soul  that  breathes 
through  the  universe,  do  I  wish  to  be  remembered;  for 
the  spiritual  is  the  eternal.  Only  a  few  read  my  verse, 
and  yet  it  is  that  for  which  I  care  most.  It  is  vexatious 
to  see  how  judges  from  whom  one  looks  for  discernment 
miss  the  point.  There  was  a  review  of  Trevelyan's 
book  on  my  poetry  in  last  week's  Times  1  complaining 
of  the  shadowy  figure  of  Ildico  in  the  "  Nuptials  of 
Attila."  I  was  not  telling  a  love-story;  my  subject  was 
the  fall  of  an  empire.  I  began  with  poetry  and  I  shall 
finish  with  it."  I  told  him  that  Thomas  Hardy  had 
said  the  same  thing  to  me.  The  attitude  of  the  public 
towards  Tess  and  Jude  had  made  him  abandon  novel- 
writing,  although  he  had  scores  of  plots  in  his  head. 
So  with  Meredith,  the  critics  charged  him  with  increasing 
obscurity  in  the  later  novels,  and  hence  his  resolve  not 
to  go  on  with  The  Journalist,  The  Sentimentalists,  and 
Sir  Harry  Firebrand  of  the  Beacon,  only  the  second  of 
which  was  partly  outlined.  "  They  say  this  or  that  is 
Meredithian;  I  have  become  an  adjective."  The  refer- 
ence to  Mr.  Hardy  evoked  the  remark,  "  I  keep  on  the 
causeway  between  the  bogs  of  optimism  and  pessimism." 
This  tempted  me  to  read  to  him  the  contrast  drawn  by 
Sellar  between  Lucretius  and  Epicurus  as  applicable  to 
himself  and  Hardy. 

To  the  one,  human  life  was  a  pleasant  sojourn  which 
should  be  temperately  enjoyed  and  gracefully  terminated 
at  the  appointed  time;  to  the  other,  it  was  the  more 
1  June  1,  1905. 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  147 

sombre  and  tragic  side  of  the  august  spectacle  which 
all  Nature  presents  to  the  contemplative  mind.1 

I  have  quoted  York  Powell's  comment  on  Meredith's 
philosophy,  "  We  bid  you  to  hope,"  and  the  spirit 
breathes  in  these  lines  written  by  Meredith  in  my  copy 
of  his  Reading  of  Life — 

"  Open  horizons  round 
O  mounting  mind  to  scenes  unsung, 
Wherein  shall  waltz  a  lusty  Time. 
Our  world  is  young ; 
Young,  and  of  measure  passing  bound  : 
Infinite  are  the  heights  to  climb, 
The  depths  to  sound." 

But  if,  like  Landor,  he  "  dined  late,"  the  guests  were 
ever  an  increasing  number.  Amusing  recognition  came 
one  day  in  the  shape  of  a  case  of  assorted  wines  from  a 
German  firm  in  London,  a  motto  from  The  Egoist  and 
other  novels  appropriate  to  the  several  bottles  being 
affixed  to  each.  I  can  speak  for  the  Burgundy  as 
excellent.  Although  Meredith  cared  nothing  for  decora- 
tions or  titles — he  would  have  refused  the  latter — it 
was  with  regret  that,  through  inability  to  walk,  he  could 
not  accept  the  D.C.L.  offered  him  by  Oxford,  and  the 
most  agreeable  association  with  the  conferring  of  the 
Order  of  Merit  was  the  considerate  act  of  Edward  VII, 
who  had  offered  to  receive  him  privately,  in  sending  Sir 
Arthur  Ellis  as  the  bearer  of  what  could  not  be  accepted 
in  person.  When  the  congratulatory  address  on  his 
seventieth  birthday  reached  him,  he  said  to  me,  "  I 
know  what  they  mean,  kindly  enough.  Poor  old  devil, 
he  will  go  on  writing;  let  us  cheer  him  up.  The  old 
fire  isn't  quite  out ;  a  stir  of  the  poker  may  bring  out  a 
shoot  of  gas." 

1  Roman  Poets  of  the  Republic,  p.  361, 


148  MEMORIES 

"  I  never  outline  my  novels  before  starting  on  them ; 
I  live  day  and  night  with  my  characters.  As  I  wrote 
of  Diana  and  other  leading  types  I  drew  nourishment, 
as  it  were,  from  their  breasts.  Fever  el  was  written  at 
7,  Hobury  Street,  Chelsea ;  so  were  the  earlier  chapters 
of  Evan  Harrington  ;  the  rest  was  finished  at  Esher. 
Feverel  took  me  a  year  to  write;  the  Egoist  was  begun 
and  finished  in  five  months.1  In  my  walks  I  often  came 
across  Carlyle,  and  longed  to  speak  to  him.  One  day 
my  publishers  received  a  letter  from  Mr.  Carlyle  asking 
about  me.  Then  I  called  on  them;  Carlyle  told  me 
that  his  wife  disliked  Feverel  at  first,  and  had  flung  it 
on  the  floor,  but  that  on  her  reading  some  of  it  to  him 
he  said,  '  The  man's  no  fool ' ;  so  they  persevered  to 
the  end.  He  said  that  I  had  the  making  of  an  historian 
in  me ;  but  I  answered  that  so  much  fiction  must  always 
enter  into  history  that  I  must  stick  to  novel  writing. 
Mudie's  '  select '  Library  would  not  circulate  it,  and  all 
the  parsons  banned  it  in  the  parish  book  clubs  as 
immoral.  Some  editor  has  asked  me  to  tell  the  public 
through  his  magazine  which  of  my  novels  I  like  best. 
I  shan't  do  this.  The  answer  given  at  one  time  would 
only  express  the  mood  of  the  moment.  Sometimes 
Harry  Richmond  is  my  favourite,  but  I  am  inclined  to 
give  the  palm  to  Beauchamp's  Career.  There  is  a 
breezy,  human  interest  about  it;  and  the  plot  has  a 
consistency  and  logical  evolution  which  Feverel  lacks. 
Then,  a  thing  that  weighs  with  me,  the  French  critics 
liked  it :  they  said  that  Renee  is  true  to  life.  I  miss  the 

1  A  well-known  actor,  with  suitable  conditions  as  to  "  leg,"  was 
prepared  to  play  Sir  Willoughby  Patterne,  and  the  novel  was  blue- 
pencilled  for  dramatizing.  But  the  matter  did  not  get  beyond  that, 
why,  perhaps  Mr.  Alfred  Sutro  may  know.  When  I  said  that  Evan 
Harrington  would  make  a  better  play,  Meredith  agreed,  but  added  : 
*  Find  me  the  actress  to  represent  the  Countess  de  Saldar." 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  149 

Admiral 1  very  much,  but  he  who  has  looked  through 
life  has  also  looked  through  death." 

The  Jameson  raid,  provocative  of  the  Boer  War, 
angered  him  :  the  Laureate's  poem  on  the  beleagured 
women  and  children  in  "  the  Gold-reefed  city "  was 
"  mischievous  balderdash.  He  ought  to  be  locked  up 
and  his  pen  impounded.  He  mistakes  rant  for  inspira- 
tion. He  is  a  mixture  of  Dr.  Watts  and  Wordsworth, 
with  rather  more  of  the  former."  Then,  parodying 
him,  Meredith  added,  "  This  is  the  sort  of  thing  you 
get  from  Alfred  the  Little,  as  he  called  Alfred  Austin — 

"  Three  cheers  for  lusty  winter 

That  blows  the  hunter's  horn, 
And  makes  the  branches  splinter, 
And  threshes  out  the  corn." 

"  What  surroundings  for  a  poet,"  said  a  lady  visitor 
to  the  Laureate,  as  they  walked  in  his  garden  at 
Swinford  Old  Manor. 

"  Madam,"  he  modestly  replied,  "  let  me  forget  my 
verse  for  a  moment." 

"  I  don't  think  that  Stevenson's  fiction  has  any  chance 
of  life.  Weir  of  Hermiston  was  the  likeliest,  but  'tis  a 
fragment.  Neither  are  his  essays  likely  to  have  perma- 
nence :  they  are  good,  but  competition  is  destructive 
and  only  the  rarest  will  survive. 

"  I  like  Dante  Rossetti  fairly  well,  but  his  pictures 
are  only  refinements  of  the  tousled;  their  thick  lips, 
cut  as  on  a  stencil  plate,  invite  a  kiss  to  which  they 
have  no  passion  to  respond.  It  was  a  pity  that  he 
painted  '  The  Blessed  Damozel,'  the  poem  will  only 
suffer  by  the  picture  of  that  brawny-armed  wench  on 
canvas.  I  think  that  he  was  influenced  by  real  senti- 
ment when  he  put  the  manuscript  of  his  poems  in  his 

1  Frederick  Augustus  Maxse,  the  hero  of  the  story. 


150  MEMORIES 

wife's  coffin."  This  was  in  comment  on  what  Holman- 
Hunt  told  me — that  the  thing  was  theatrical,  born  of 
the  posing  for  effect  which  was  in  his  Southern  blood. 
"  Gabriel,"  he  said,  "  had  a  copy  or  knew  his  poems  by 
heart."  He  had  the  poorest  opinion  of  Rossetti  as  a 
man  of  integrity. 

"  I  don't  agree  with  Matthew  Arnold  that  Shelley's 
prose  will  outlive  his  poetry.  Peacock  was  never 
enthusiastic  about  him,  he  said  to  me,  '  Shelley  has 
neither  head  nor  tail.'  Arnold  is  a  poor  judge ;  a  dandy 
Isaiah,  a  poet  frigid  and  without  passion,  whose  verse, 
written  in  a  surplice,  is  for  freshmen  and  for  gentle 
maidens  who  will  be  wooed  to  the  arms  of  these  future 
rectors.  Keats  is  a  greater  poet  than  Shelley  :  in  this 
Peacock  agreed.  Byron  has  humour  in  his  satires,  the 
roguish  element  in  these  is  unsurpassed,  but  his  high 
flights  are  theatrical;  he  was  a  sham  sentimentalist. 
Favourites  with  me  are  the  whole  of  Keats  and  the 
earlier  verse  of  Tennyson.  In  the  Lotus  Eaters  and 
(Enone  (which  I  could  get  neither  Peacock  nor  Jefferson 
Hogg  to  enjoy),  there  are  lines  perfect  in  sensuous  rich- 
ness and  imagery.  The  Idylls,  perhaps  I  should  except 
the  Morte  cT Arthur,  will  not  add  to  his  fame;  they  are 
a  part  of  the  '  poetical  baggage '  of  which  every  writer 
of  a  large  body  of  verse  must  be  unloaded."  I  reminded 
him  that  Edward  FitzGerald  had  said  the  same  thing. 
"  Yes,  Fitz  is  good  Suffolk  soil,  the  most  pleasing  of 
fogies.  His  literary  taste  in  the  classics  is  quite  sound, 
and  infantile  out  of  them.  Tennyson's  rich  diction 
and  marvellous  singing  power  cannot  be  overrated,  but 
the  thought  is  thin;  there  is  no  suggestiveness  which 
transcends  the  expression ;  nothing  is  left  to  the  imagin- 
ation. He  gave  high  praise  to  my  Love  in  the  Valley  ; 
would  like  to  have  been  its  author.  You  spoke  to 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  151 

me  some  time  ago  about  his  biography,  and  I  told  you 
not  to  call  it  that,  because  it  is  not  a  faithful  picture 
of  the  man  in  wholly  concealing  his  rough  side.  Call 
it  a  eulogy,  if  you  like ;  that's  what  it  is." 

"  Emerson's  poetry  is  as  an  Artesian  well :  the  bore 
is  narrow,  but  the  water  is  pure  and  sweet.  As  for 
Campbell  and  others  of  kindred  school  whom  you 
name,  you  can  only  call  them  poets  as  you  would  call 
a  bunk  a  bed.  Mrs.  Meynell  should  not  have  excluded 
Gray's  Elegy  from  her  Anthology,1  but  his  Bard,  with 
its  4  Ruin  seize  thee,  ruthless  King,'  is  mere  mouthing. 
I  must  chide  her,  next  time  she  comes,  for  her  attempt 
to  belittle  Gibbon  :  the  cause  may  be  in  the  odium 
theologicum  :  how  can  a  Catholic  love  him  ?  And,  yet, 
what  a  tribute  Newman  paid  him.2  By  the  bye,  you 
can  take  back  your  friend  Haynes's  book  on  Religious 
Persecution  :  an  excellent  summary  supplementing  what 
Gibbon  says  at  the  end  of  his  sixteenth  chapter." 

Talking  about  the  Browning  Letters  to  Leslie  Stephen 
and  myself,  he  said,  "  My  first  feeling  was  adverse  to 
the  publication,  but  this  wore  away  on  reading  them, 
because  of  the  high  level  reached.  You  see  Browning's 
love  for  the  unattractive-looking  invalid,  and  watch  the 
growth  of  love  in  her,  as  it  were,  under  the  microscope. 
You  see  a  spark  of  life,  then  the  tiny  red  spot  that 
shall  be  a  heart,  then  the  full  pulsation  of  each  blood- 
corpuscle.  So  Browning  made  her  a  woman,  and  in 

1  Mrs.  Meynell  tells  me  that  Meredith  approved  the  exclusion,  say- 
ing, "  I'm  glad  you  left  out  the  Undertaker's  Waltz  !  "     Doubtless  this 
is  so;   there  was  a  fantastic  waywardness  in  him  which  explains  some 
contradictory  judgments,  especially  on  his  own  books. 

2  The  reference  is  to  Newman's  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine. 
"  It  is  melancholy  to  say  it,  but  the  chief,  perhaps  the  only,  English 
writer  who  has  any  claims  to  be  considered  an  ecclesiastical  historian, 
is  Gibbon  ^  (p.  5), 


152  MEMORIES 

them  both  body  and  mind  at  full  tension  had  that 
development  which  her  father,  like  all  incomplete  men, 
repressed."  Stephen  admitted  the  force  of  this,  but 
said  that  the  publication  was  upholding  a  dangerous 
precedent,  adding,  however,  that  the  high  standard 
reached  by  the  Letters  would  make  all  others  fail  by 
comparison. 

Professor  Knapp's  Life  of  Borrow  had  just  appeared, 
when  Meredith  said,  "  I  never  met  Borrow;  his  lack  of 
manners  would  have  repelled  me."  Stephen  told  us 
how  he  had  tramped  to  Oulton  Broad  to  see  the  author 
of  Lavengro,  whom  he  found  garbed  in  an  overcoat 
that  reached  to  his  heels,  and,  spud  in  hand,  weeding 
his  garden.  He  said  that  gardening  and  books  divided 
his  time,  and  on  Stephen  asking  what  he  read,  he 
replied  :  "I  limit  my  reading  to  the  Bible  and  the 
Newgate  Calendar."  1  I  remember  Stephen  remarking 
with  a  twinkle,  "  There  is  much  in  common  between 
the  earlier  books  of  the  one  and  the  whole  of  the  other." 

Both  he  and  Meredith  agreed  that  Milton  is  the  one 
supreme  master  of  blank  verse.  Book  I  of  Paradise 
Lost  is  the  finest.  "  The  other  books,"  said  Meredith, 
"  have  oases  of  fine  passages  amid  arid  wastes;  all  the 
poem  has  helped  to  shape  beliefs  still  current.  Some 
of  the  conceptions  are  provocative  of  humour,  material 
for  which  will  sadly  decrease  as  dogma  decays."  Where- 
upon Stephen  told  a  story  of  the  examinee  in  Paley, 
who  said  that  "  Natural  Theology  proved  that  if  you 
can  believe  in  a  God,  you  can  believe  in  anything  !  " 
44  When  people,"  said  Meredith,  "  talk  to  me  of  a  great 

1  For  some  time,  when  a  hack  author  in  London,  Borrow,  prepared 
for  Richard  Phillips  "  an  edition  of  the  Newgate  Calendar,  from  the 
careful  study  of  which  he  has  often  been  heard  to  say  that  he  first 
learned  to  write  genuine  English." — George  Borrow  and  his  Circle,  by 
C.  K.  Shorter,  p.  5. 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  153 

theologian,  I  say  what  waste  of  time  and  energy,  if  he 
were  really  a  great  man  potentially.  When  I  was  quite 
a  boy  I  had  a  spasm  of  religion  which  lasted  about 
six  weeks,  during  which  I  made  myself  a  nuisance  in 
asking  everybody  whether  they  were  saved.  But  never 
since  have  I  swallowed  the  Christian  fable.  Parsondom 
has  always  been  against  progress ;  they  treat  Christianity, 
not  as  a  religion,  but  as  an  institution." 

I  never  heard  him  apply  any  other  term  than  "  fable  " 
to  the  orthodox  creed.  "  Was  there  ever,"  he  said,  "  a 
more  clumsy  set  of  thaumaturgic  fables  made  into 
fundamentals  of  a  revealed  religion  ?  As  for  the  belief 
in  a  future  life,  directly  you  try  to  put  your  ideas  into 
shape,  how  unreal  the  thing  becomes  !  I  read  with 
satisfaction  what  your  friend  Frazer  says  in  Psyche's 
Task  about  the  mischief  the  belief  has  wrought  in 
making  people  sacrifice  the  real  needs  of  the  living  to 
the  imaginary  wants  of  the  dead."  On  the  first  occa- 
sion when  I  took  my  friend  Nevinson  to  see  him,  he 
said  to  us  :  "  Every  night  when  I  go  to  bed  I  know  I 
may  not  wake  up.  That  is  nothing  to  me.  I  hope  I 
shall  die  with  a  good  laugh,  like  the  old  Frenchwoman. 
The  cure  came  preaching  to  her  about  her  salvation  : 
she  told  him  her  best  improper  story  and  died." 

No  Christian  creed,  with  its  baseless  consolations, 
but  the  belief,  unshakable,  in  this  oneness  with  Mother 
Earth,  delivered  him  who  wrote 

"  Into  the  breast  that  gives  the  rose, 
Shall  I  with  shuddering  fall  ?  "- 

from  the  "  fear  of  death."  He  was  a  freethinker  in  the 
broadest  sense  of  an  epithet  which,  even  to  this  day, 
carries  discredit  in  the  application.  "  The  man  who 
has  no  mind  of  his  own,"  he  said,  "  lends  it  to  the 


154  MEMORIES 

priests."  He  supported  secular  education  as  the  only 
solution  of  the  religious  difficulty;  he  aided  with  money 
the  aggressive  methods  of  the  late  Mr.  Foote,  to  whom 
was  addressed  the  last  letter  that  he  wrote,  promising 
support  to  the  Freethinker*  He  thus  showed  himself 
more  in  sympathy  with  these  methods  than  with  the 
persuasive  and  patient  policy  of  the  Rationalist  Press 
Association,  which  works  on  the  lines  laid  down  by 
Lord  Morley — "  we  do  not  attack,  we  explain."  This 
rejection  of  the  "  fable  "  did  not  affect  the  friendliest 
relations  with  clericals  of  the  more  liberal  type,  as 
Canon  Jessopp  and  Edward  Hawkins  (both  since 
gathered  to  their  fathers),  in  whom  he  saw  some  possible 
leaven  for  lightening  the  stodgy  mass.  What  Cotter 
Morison  has  said  of  Gibbon,  "  he  had  no  ear  for  the 
finer  vibrations  of  the  spirit,"  could  not  be  said  of 
him,  quick  as  was  his  response  to  every  influence  borne 
in  from  the  Nature  in  fellowship  with  which  he  "  lived, 
moved,  and  had  his  being."  Nature  and  spirit  were  to 
him  one,  the  expression  of  "  those  firm  laws  which  we 
name  Gods,"  and  in  his  disbelief  in  a  personal  God  and 
a  future  life  he  emphasized  the  more  the  oneness  which 
subsisted  between  Mother  Earth  and  man,  and  the 
cultivation  of  sympathy  and  fearlessness  which  are  the 
keys  to  that  unity.2  The  witnesses  to  this  which  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  brought  had  no  cross-examination 
at  his  hands ;  their  evidence  supplemented  what  to  him 
were  inborn  convictions.  There  was  prevision  of 
Weismann's  theory  of  the  continuity  of  the  germ-plasm 
in  his  rebuke  to  a  friend  who  cursed  his  parents  for 

1  English  Review,  March  1913,  "  George  Meredith  :    Freethinker," 
by  G.  W.  Foote. 

"  For  Love  we  Earth,  then  serve  we  all ; 
Her  mystic  secret  then  is  ours." 

The  Thrush  in  February. 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  155 

begetting  him.  "  They  couldn't  help  it ;  the  blame,  if 
there  be  any,  is  yours.  You  demanded  to  be,  and 
they  had  to  comply.  Thus  do  foolish  people  quarrel 
with  Nature — why  were  they  born,  when  they  were 
already  in  the  matrix  of  the  past  ?  " 

During  his  readership  at  Chapman  &  Hall's,  the 
earlier  novels  of  both  Hardy  and  Gissing  had  come 
before  him,  and,  as  will  be  seen  later  on,  each  has 
testified  to  the  encouraging  and,  withal,  faithful, 
criticism  bestowed  on  their  manuscripts.  Meredith 
had  no  spark  of  jealousy  of  other  men's  work  in  his 
nature,  and  the  neglect  and  contumely  which  for  long 
years  were  his  portion  and  discipline  only  deepened 
his  sympathy  for  every  member  of  his  craft  in  whose 
work  the  note  of  sincerity  was  struck.1 

Again  and  again  he  would  say,  "  When  I  was  young, 
had  there  been  given  me  a  little  sunshine  of  encourage- 
ment, what  an  impetus  to  better  work  would  have  been 
mine.  I  had  thoughts,  ideas,  ravishment,  but  all  fell 
on  a  frosty  soil ;  and  a  little  sunshine  would  have  been 
so  helpful  to  me.  So,  whenever  I  can  give  honest 
praise,  I  will  not  stint  it,  although  I  remind  those  who 
hunger  after  it  that,  if  they  will  be  drenched  with 
honey,  they  must  expect  the  wasps.  You  heard  me 
warn  Gissing  against  excessive  use  of  dialogue,  for  this 
should  always  be  sparingly  used,  and  be  more  broken 
by  reflective  or  descriptive  passages.  Most  of  the  young 
novelists  seem  to  me  not  to  have  read  and  observed 
enough  :  their  books  lack  the  allusiveness  which  is  a 
note  of  culture,  and  evidence  of  character  and  study." 
His  heart  went  out  to  Gissing,  as,  indeed,  to  all  struggling 

1  To  cite  one  among  several  examples,  his  appreciation  of  Mrs. 
Clement  Snorter's  skill  in  metrical  ballads  led  him  generously  to  add 
an  Introduction  to  her  Collected  Poems. 


156  MEMORIES 

authors  when  their  capacity  warranted  pursuit  of  a 
literary  career.  As  for  mediocrity,  he  said,  "  Let  it 
stick  to  the  pen,  if  it  must,  but  only  in  the  cash-book 
and  the  ledger."  Well  into  manhood  he  had  known, 
in  acute  form,  the  res  angusta  domi,  and  what  asperity 
there  was  in  his  virile  temperament  had  yielded  to  a 
mellowing  old  age  with  that  divine  gift  of  pity  "  which," 
as  Lord  Morley  says  in  his  Diderot,  "  one  that  has  it 
could  hardly  be  willing  to  barter  for  the  understanding 
of  an  Aristotle."  When  spending  a  week-end  with 
Gissing,  then  living  at  Dorking,  we  called  on  Meredith, 
who  on  Gissing  telling  him  that  he  was  writing  Veranilda, 
said  to  him — 

"  You  may  have  histories,  but  you  cannot  have 
novels  on  periods  so  long  ago.  A  novel  can  only  reflect 
successfully  the  moods  of  men  and  women  around  us, 
and,  after  all,  in  depicting  the  present  we  are  dealing 
with  the  past,  because  the  one  is  enfolded  in  the  other. 
I  cannot  stomach  the  modern  historical  novel  any  more 
than  I  can  novels  which  are  three-fourths  dialect. 
Thackeray's  note  was  too  monotonous;  the  Great 
Hoggarty  Diamond,  next  to  Vanity  Fair,  is  most  likely 
to  live;  it  is  full  of  excellent  fooling.  I  met  him  and 
Dickens  only  a  very  few  times.  Not  much  of  Dickens 
will  live,  because  it  has  so  little  correspondence  to  life. 
He  was  the  incarnation  of  cockneydom,  a  caricaturist 
who  aped  the  moralist;  he  should  have  kept  to  short 
stories.  If  his  novels  are  read  at  all  in  the  future, 
people  will  wonder  what  we  saw  in  them,  save  some 
possible  element  of  fun  meaningless  to  them.  The 
world  will  never  let  Mr.  Pickwick,  who  to  me  is  full  of 
the  lumber  of  imbecility,  share  honours  with  Don 
Quixote.  I  never  cared  for  William  Black's  novels  : 
there  is  nothing  in  them  but  fishing  and  sunsets.  Dear 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  157 

Besant,  good  fellow,  but  since  Rice's  death  unfertilized, 
for  all  that  was  virile  in  their  work  came  from  him. 
Stevenson  described  him  to  me  as  '  a  commercial  traveller, 
with  wings.'  I  agreed,  if  he  would  say  '  pinions.' 
George  Eliot  had  the  heart  of  Sappho;  but  the  face, 
with  the  long  proboscis,  the  protruding  teeth  as  of  the 
Apocalyptic  horse,  betrayed  animality."  What  of 
Lewes  ?  "  Oh,  he  was  the  son  of  a  clown,  he  had  the 
legs  of  his  father  in  his  brain." 

"  I  never  met  Edward  FitzGerald  :  the  third  line  of 
his  quatrains  is  as  the  march  of  a  king  with  his  train 
behind  him.  I  knew  Gerald  and  Maurice,  the  two  sons 
of  his  brother  John,  the  fanatical  preacher.1  Maurice 
and  I  were  great  friends  when  I  lived  at  Esher;  he  had 
gifts  :  he  translated  the  Crowned  Hippolytus  of  Euripides. 
He  apparently  knew  nothing  of  his  uncle's  works,  and 
spoke  of  him  to  me  only  as  a  man  with  literary  friends, 
Thackeray  among  them.  He  told  me  that  when  Gerald 
lay  dying  at  Seaford  his  father  came  to  see  him,  and 
there  ensued  an  altercation  as  to  the  place  where  he 
should  be  buried  :  the  father  insisting  on  Boulge,  and 
threatening  otherwise  not  to  pay  the  funeral  expenses." 
This  was  apropos  of  my  quoting  Edward  FitzGerald' s 
remark,  "  We  are  all  mad,  but  I  know  it." 

"  I  have  been  re-reading  Gibbon  with  increased 
appreciation.  The  subtlety  of  his  remarks  on  Christi- 
anity, and  the  dexterity  of  conveying  through  veiled 
implication  of  belief  his  scepticism,  is  delightful.  The 
wonder  of  the  book  increases  when  you  look  at  the 
pudding-face  of  the  author.  The  man  is  unique,  but 

1  I  remember,  as  a  boy,  hearing  "  John  the  Saint,"  as  his  brother 
Edward  called  him,  preach  at  an  open-air  service ;  he  mounted  the  old 
capstan  which  still  stands  in  front  of  my  house.  There  is  a  graphic 
account  of  him  in  Wright's  Life  of  Edward  FitzGtrald,  Vol.  II.  p.  67. 


158  MEMORIES 

he  has  been  in  some  ways  a  bad  influence  on  other 
historians.  Macaulay  was  attracted  by  his  balanced 
antithesis,  which  in  his  hand  became  metallic  and 
flagellatory.  He  loved  to  lay  bare  the  author's  bottom 
and  whack  him  well,  as  he  did  Wilson  Croker  and 
Robert  Montgomery.  I  dislike  Gibbon  for  his  treat- 
ment of  Mdlle.  Curchod,  but  I  should  gather  from  the 
Aiitobiography  and  the  History  that  he  had  only  an 
intellectual  appreciation  of  the  Priapic  energy.1  By 
the  way,  Dame  Gossip  tells  me  that  Rome  is  now 
doubly  famous.  Gibbon  conceived  the  idea  of  his 
Decline  and  Fall  when  he  sat  musing  amidst  the  ruins 
of  the  Capitol,  and  Hall  Caine  conceived  the  idea  of 
his  Eternal  City  when  musing  amidst  the  ruins  of  the 
Coliseum  !  But  as  champion  of  Christ  and  of  Shake- 
speare, I  think  that  Miss  Corelli  will  go  one  better  than 
Hall  Caine.  The  influence  of  Carlyle  on  '  St.  Bernard  ' 
was  so  strong  that  he  wrote  his  book  on  the  Abbot  in 
grotesque  imitation  of  Carlyle's  style,  and  only  on  my 
protest  that  this  would  damn  it  did  he  re-write  it  in 
his  own  natural  style,  and  an  admirable  style  it  was." 
I  reminded  Meredith  that  Morison  had  dedicated  the 
book  to  Carlyle,  but  cancelled  this  in  a  subsequent 
edition,  through  disgust  after  reading  the  Reminiscences. 
"  I  know  from  your  references  to  Hobbes'  Leviathan 
that  you  appraise  him  highly."  I  said  that  I  was  in 
good  company,  Huxley  and  Sir  Alfred  Lyall  being  of 
it.  "  Yes,  but  with  Hobbes  I  tread  only  the  pavement, 
with  Schopenhauer  I  dig  in  the  Earth's  bowels." 

"  Morley  has  sent  me  his  Gladstone :  the  life  of  the 
intellectual  gladiator  is  more  to  his  taste  than  the  life 
of  a  soldier-statesman  like  Cromwell,  because  Morley 

1  Meredith  had  not  read  the  Autobiographies  :  i.  e.  the  several  drafts 
published  under  that  title  by  John  Murray,  1896.  See  pp.  204,  263. 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  159 

has  no  stomach  for  fighting.  Hence  the  difference 
between  him  and  Carlyle,  whose  heart  was  in  the  story 
of  a  battle.  Gladstone  had  not  a  great  mind;  he  was 
a  great  debater,  but  his  scholarship  was  limited,  and 
his  theological  opinions  of  the  narrowest.  No  Homeric 
authority  agreed  with  his  fantastic  theories  of  Christian 
philosophy  latent  in  the  Iliad,  of,  for  example,  his 
equations  of  Athene  and  the  Logos ;  and  in  the  famous 
controversy  over  the  Gadarene  pigs  Huxley  pulverized 
him.  But  he  wouldn't  admit  that  he  was  beaten,  he 
was  a  crafty  controversialist."  * 

Meredith  was  a  born  tease  :  the  Comic  Spirit  was 
unquenchable  in  him,  and  not  even  the  discomfort  of 
his  victim  could  check  it,  till  in  the  mellowness  which, 
in  his  case,  old  age  happily  brought,  the  tartness 
vanished.  Some  years  ago,  as  the  result  of  an  opera- 
tion, he  was  put  for  a  time  on  low  diet,  farinaceous 
stuff,  and  the  like.  One  evening,  eating  only  half  of 
the  pudding  which  was  his  staple  (a  Barmecide  feast  in 
contrast  with  the  fare  set  before  his  guests),  the  maid, 
in  taking  away  the  dish,  said  :  "  Oh,  if  you  please,  sir, 
does  this  puddin'  want  savin'  ?  "  That  was  enough. 
Looking  at  her  solemnly,  he  said,  "  Now,  my  good  girl, 
you,  I  believe,  a  churchgoer,  ask  me  if  this  puddin' 
wants  savin'.  Do  you  think  that  the  puddin'  has  a 
soul,  that  it  stands  in  need  of  salvation,  as  we  are  told 
we  all  do  ?  Take  it  away,  Elizabeth,  and  let  me  never 
hear  you  ask  such  a  funny  question  again."  And  with 
trembling  hands  that  boded  ill  for  the  safe  deposit  of 
the  dish,  it  was  carried  to  the  kitchen. 

A  very  old  friendship  was  somewhat  strained  through 

1  There  was  a  diabolically  clever  review  of  a  mythical  book,  The 
Elements  of  Logic,  by  W.  E.  Gladstone,  Vols.  I  to  VI,  in  the  St.  James's 
Gazette,  March  21,  1885. 


160  MEMORIES 

Meredith  circulating  among  his  intimates  a  roguish 
legend  that  the  friend  in  question,  an  ardent  Wagnerian, 
had  played  the  master's  music  so  bewitchingly  in  the 
presence  of  Frau  Wagner  that  she  would  not  believe 
that  the  pianist  was  other  than  her  husband  re-incar- 
nated, and,  consequently,  so  followed  him  about  as  to 
make  his  life  a  veritable  misery.  As  a  last  example  of 
this  play  of  the  Comic  Spirit,  an  occasion  came  through 
an  article  of  mine,  contributed  to  the  Quarterly  Review, 
wherein  the  theory  of  evolution  was  pushed  to  its  logical 
issue  in  including  the  religions  of  the  world  in  its  pro- 
cesses. Assuming  that  the  episcopate  would  smell 
heresy  in  the  article,  Meredith  invented  the  droll  sequel 
which  he  tells  in  the  following  letter — 

"  Box  Hill, 
"  November  1,  1907. 

"  DEAR  SIR  REYNARD, 

"  While  in  the  hands  of  the  doctor  with  some 
fever  I  had  in  my  head  a  splendid,  partly  pathetic, 
ballad,  '  The  Hunting  of  Sir  Reynard  by  the  15  Merry 
Prelates.' 

"  They  started  full  of  Breakfast -luncheon  and  con- 
fidence, sure  of  him  in  whom  they  had  discovered  the 
Arch-disintegrator  of  their  Edifice.  They  returned, 
four  at  midnight,  seven  next  morning,  three  the  day 
after,  and  one  a  week  later.  This  one  nearly  came  to 
his  end.  It  was  the  first  dodge  of  the  Wily  One  to 
lead  them  to  a  chalk  quarry,  down  which  he  went  by 
a  way  he  knew.  Our  prelate's  horse  stood  with  stiffened 
legs,  and  the  rider  was  precipitated  to  the  edge  of  the 
cliff.  He  was  pulled  back  by  the  legs,  and  rode  home 
with  a  heart  intermittently  beating.  This  looked 
ominous.  But  at  sight  of  Sir  Reynard  cantering  easily 
and  jauntily  on  the  road  below,  irritation  spurred  the 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  161 

fourteen  to  continue  the  hunt.  They  were  led  to  a 
broad,  deep  ditch  swollen  from  recent  rains,  and  into 
it  four  of  the  prelates  plumped  and  were  soused,  and 
so  on;  very  exciting.  I  wish  I  could  remember  the 
verses.  Neighbouring  cottages  supplied  the  defeated 
prelates  with  beds,  stale  bread,  rank  bacon,  and  the 
remark,  '  Ah,  you'll  never  have  him.9 

"  I  am  still  weak,  not  companionable.  The  attack 
was  rather  sharp,  but  I  had  refreshment  from  the 
ballad." 

The  heading  to  this  and  other  letters  to  me  which 
are  included  in  his  Letters  skilfully  edited  by  his  son, 
Mr.  W.  Maxse  Meredith,  called  forth  inquiries  as  to  the 
reason  of  his  bestowing  on  me  that  vulpine  nickname. 
The  occasion  of  that  bestowal  is  among  the  most 
cherished  of  memories. 

In  1895,  when  I  was  President  of  the  Omar  Khayyam 
Club,  the  Burford  Bridge  Hotel  was  chosen  as  our 
summer  rendezvous.  Meredith  consented  to  join  us, 
but  only  after  dinner,  as  his  health  compelled  the 
simplest  fare,  and  in  consenting,  he  made  me  promise 
that  he  should  not  be  called  on  to  speak,  adding  that 
he  had  never  made  a  speech  in  public.  He  came  in, 
leaning  on  the  arm  of  Mr.  Clement  Shorter,  who  had 
escorted  him  from  Flint  Cottage,  and  as  he  passed 
between  the  tables,  all  rose  to  greet  him.  Thomas 
Hardy  was  on  my  right,  George  Gissing  on  my  left, 
and  as  for  the  rest  of  a  company  including  some  other 
notable  names,  are  these  not  written  in  the  Book  of 
the  Club  ?  I  could  do  no  less  than  offer  Meredith  the 
right  hand  of  fellowship,  and  there  followed  a  brace  of 
encomiums  from  Hardy  and  Gissing,  each  telling  how 

judgment  on  their  first  novels,  Hardy's  Poor  Man  and 
If 


162  MEMORIES 

the  Lady,  never  published,  and  Gissing's  Workers  in  the 
Dawn,  was  pronounced,  and  sage  counsel  given,  by 
Meredith,  when  he  was  reader  to  Chapman  &  Hall. 
Of  course  Meredith,  although  not  asked  to  speak,  could 
not  sit  silent.  Laying  his  hand  on  my  shoulder,  he 
made  chaffing  allusion  to  the  fox-like  trick  that  I  had 
played  him,  and  delivered  a  little  speech  the  more  rich 
and  heart-deep  in  that  it  was  unpremeditated.  In  this 
matter  of  nicknames,  there  was  bestowal  of  a  longer, 
but  not  titular,  appellation  apropos  of  my  being  memoir- 
ist of  certain  friends,  among  these,  Grant  Allen  and 
Henry  Walter  Bates.  On  a  visit  to  Box  Hill  I  was 
hailed  as  "  Conductor  of  the  Biographical  Bus  along 
the  Necrologic  Tram,"  and  there  followed  some  chaffing 
letters  in  which  the  importance  of  not  too  quickly 
filling-up  the  vacant  places  in  the  "  Bus  "  was  urged. 
Here  is  a  sample  of  one  of  them. 

"  Think  nothing  of  financial  fall  in  Bus  shares  when  it 
is  known  that  Kelvin  has  applied  for  a  seat,  and  he  is 
advised  and  well  advised.  If  you  can  get  one  Bishop 
on  board,  you  have  him.  It  is  true  that  you  will  have 
to  change  the  road,  and  the  crux  for  Sir  Reynard  is 
financial  advantage  or  conscientious  integrity." 

Meredith  has  said  so  much  in  his  writings,  and  also 
through  various  other  channels,  about  the  emancipation 
of  woman  and  the  larger  mission  of  which  he  has  been 
her  apostle,  that  there  is  no  need  here  to  draw  upon 
notes  which  could  only  repeat  things  familiar.  But  it 
may  be  well  to  say  that  the  last  time  I  saw  him,  just 
three  weeks  before  his  death,  he  emphasized  his  regret 
that  those  whom  he  desired  should  win  should  imperil 
their  cause  by  repellent  tactics.  "  And  then,"  he  added, 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  163 

"  they  want  the  incompatible,  Martyrdom  with  Com- 
fort." He  was  full  of  fun  and  badinage.  "  It  was  no 
longer  a  hunt  by  the  Merry  Prelates;  the  Vatican  had 
been  put  on  the  scent,  and  the  fate  of  the  quarry  was 
sealed."  There  had  been  "  an  invasion  of  Flint  Cottage 
by  Cupid,  who,  in  the  guise  of  a  railway  guard,  had 
made  one  of  his  maids  dance  off  to  the  sound  of  his 
whistle."  Then  he  talked  of  Swinburne,  and  the  re- 
gretted loss  of  intercourse  during  late  years  through 
their  common  deafness.  "  Second  to  none,  not  even 
to  Burns,  in  his  mastery  of  the  many-stringed  lyre," 
summed  up  his  estimate  of  Swinburne's  poetry  when 
he  heard  of  his  death.  "  But  he  became  too  torrential 
and  blustering  for  my  enjoyment  of  him.  As  to  the 
burial  service,"  he  said,  "you  remember  what  we  had 
to  undergo  at  Cotter  Morison's  funeral,  and  Swinburne 
should  have  had,  as  did  York  Powell,  silent  interment. 
Burn  me  and  scatter  the  ashes  where  they  will,  and  let 
there  be  no  Abracadabra  of  ritual,  is  my  wish  about 
myself." 

A  month  later,  at  a  Memorial  Service  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  there  was  sung  in  procession  from  the  nave  to 
the  choir  a  psalm  in  which  the  verse  "  offering  of  young 
bullocks  on  the  altar  "  occurs.  What  connection  that 
scrap  from  a  barbaric  ritual  had  with  the  service  those 
who  permitted  its  inclusion  may  best  know;  nor  less 
inconsistent  was  the  expression  of  "  hearty  thanks  "  that 
George  Meredith,  to  whom  this  fair  earth,  with  its 
flowers,  its  children,  and  its  dumb  offspring,  was  dear; 
and  life  to  the  end,  however  lightly  held,  aboundingly 
sweet ;  had  been  "  delivered  out  of  the  miseries  of  this 
sinful  world." 

There  were  humble  mourners  outside  the  Abbey,  a 
hundred  miles  away.  When  Meredith  was  last  at 


164,  MEMORIES 

Aldeburgh  it  was  his  delight  to  be  wheeled  to  the  ancient 
quay  along  which  Crabbe  had  rolled  the  barrels  of  salt 
which  were  under  his  father's  charge  as  collector  of 
duties.  Of  Crabbe,  he  said,  by  the  way,  "  it's  a  pity 
that  his  Tales  were  not  written  in  prose  :  they  would 
have  been  more  effective."  With  a  bunch  of  bladder- 
weed,  plucked  from  the  sodden  timbers  by  my  skipper 
Nickolls  and  held  to  his  nose  as  if  fragrant  as  the  choicest 
attar,  he  would  watch  John,  the  old  ferryman,  whom 
Charon  has  since  rowed  across  the  Styx,  plying  oars 
which  he  averred  were  dipped  twice  in  the  same  water. 
" 1  am  certain,"  he  said,  "  that  there  are  Nereids  under 
the  keel  to  help  the  boat  across." 

Meredith  did  not  forget  John  and  comrades  of  his 
in  welcome  ways.  And  when  he  died,  John  said  to  me, 
"  I'm  right  sorry,  sir,  we  shall  never  see  Mr.  Maradith 
agin.  But  what  made  me  fare  x  that  bad  was  their 
barnin'  of  him.  I  suppose  he  wanted  it."  "  Well, 
John,  he  didn't  want  it,  but  he  wished  it  to  be  done." 
"  Well,  sir,  that  makes  me  fare  bad,  that  du."  Others 
"  fare  bad,"  but  for  different  reasons.  They  will  never 
again  quaff  the  "  wine  of  life "  from  the  rich,  rare 
vintage  at  Box  Hill.  But  its  bouquet  will  not  depart 
from  the  palate.  And  there  will  remain  the  compensa- 
tion of  which  Callimachus  sings  in  his  peerless  lament — 

"  They  told  me,  Heraclitus,  they  told  me  you  were  dead; 
They  brought  me  bitter  news  to  hear  and  bitter  tears  to  shed. 
I  wept  when  I  remembered  how  often  you  and  I 
Had  tired  the  sun  with  talking  and  sent  him  down  the  sky. 

And  now  that  thou  art  lying,  my  dear  old  Carian  guest, 
A  handful  of  grey  ashes  laid  long  ago  at  rest ; 
Still  are  thy  pleasant  voices,  thy  nightingales  awake, 
For  Death,  he  taketh  all  away,  but  these  he  cannot  take.'! 

1  Feel  (Suffolk  prov.). 


Photo,  Elliott  A  Fry.lt 


[To  face  page  164. 


0 


XV 

GEORGE  GISSING  (1857-1903) 

IN  a  book  entitled  The  Private  Life  of  Henry  Maitland, 
the  story  of  Gissing's  life  has  been  fully  and  frankly 
told  by  his  old  college  and  intimate  friend,  Mr.  Morley 
Roberts. 

For  reasons  which  I  cannot  divine,  and  which  have 
puzzled  others,  Mr.  Roberts  has  altered  the  names  of 
persons  and  places  and  the  titles  of  Gissing's  novels  with 
the  result  of  some  confusion  to  readers  outside  the 
circle  of  Gissing's  intimates.  They  will  not  guess  that 
"  Harold  Edge  wood  "  is  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  that 
by  "  John  Harley "  and  the  Piccadilly  Gazette  are 
meant  John  Morley  and  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  ;  that 
"  John  Glass  "  is  the  late  James  Payn;  G.  H.  Rivers, 
Mr.  H.  G.  Wells;  Edward  Latter,  Mr.  Clement  Shorter; 
nor  will  they  easily  identify  me  under  the  disguise  of 
"  Edmund  Roden." 

I  met  Gissing  at  the  Rev.  Charles  Anderson's  in  1885. 
He  had  then  not  long  started  on  his  career  as  a  novelist. 
Workers  in  the  Dawn  was  published  in  1880;  The  Un- 
classed  in  1884.  He  was  shy;  he  had  a  hunted-hare 
look ;  he  struck  me  as  morbidly  self-conscious ;  all  that 
he  had  gone  through  tended  to  make  him  that;  he 
joined  but  little  in  the  talk.  Not  then  knowing  his 
early  history,  or  the  fugitive  life  he  was  living,  I  asked 
him  his  address.  He  said,  "  I  haven't  one,  but  let  me 

write  to  you."     Some  time  passed  before  we  met  again; 

165 


166  MEMORIES 

then,  in  the  intervals,  when  he  was  not  wandering,  we 
foregathered,  and  the  friendship  gradually  ripened  into 
fellowship.  I  love  to  think  of  him  :  I  treasure  his  every 
letter  to  me.  That  they  do  credit  to  his  head  and  heart 
has  evidence  in  the  selection  which  follows.1  As  to  his 
books,  in  the  Unclassed,  in  which  the  chief  character, 
Osmund  Waymark,  is  himself;  in  New  Grub  Street  and 
in  Born  in  Exile,  he  tells  much  of  his  life-story  of  storm 
and  suffering.  There  is  a  calmer  sequel  in  The  Private 
Papers  of  Henry  Ryecroft ;  a  book  which  release  from 
distracting  cares  permitted  him  to  write  in  the  seclusion 
of  the  country  at  Budleigh  Salterton. 

In  the  touches  of  scholarship  which,  among  other 
qualities,  lift  his  novels,  often  sordid  as  is  their  theme, 
above  the  average,  there  are  seen  evidences  of  pre- 
ferences which  could  not  have  their  full  satisfaction. 
Meeting  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  at  one  of  Sir  Henry 
Thompson's  "  Octaves,"  he  told  me  that  Gissing  sent  him 
his  first  novel,  Workers  in  the  Dawn.  He  saw  that  it 
came  from  a  cultured  pen  and  this  led  to  his  offering 
Gissing  the  post  of  tutor  to  his  sons,  which  he  accepted. 
Other  pupils  were  secured  him  by  Mr.  Harrison's  influence 
and  he  was  making,  for  him,  a  fair  income.  But  he 
was  restive ;  his  heart  was  set  on  literature  and  he  gave 
up  his  job. 

During  the  years  that  I  had  the  privilege  of  Gissing's 
friendship,  that  which  most  appealed  to  me  was  his 
craving  for  sympathy.  Early  misfortunes  had  increased 
a  hypersensitiveness  which  was  an  unenviable  portion 
of  his  mental  endowment,  yet  this  was  in  keeping  with 
the  joy  and  eagerness  into  which  he  flung  himself  when 

1  Permission  to  make  free  use  of  these,  as  also  to  include  two  un- 
published poems,  has  been  generously  given  me  by  Gissing's  brother 
and  executor,  Mr.  Algernon  Gissing. 


GEORGE   GISSING  167 

in  the  company  of  his  fellows.  Such  lighter  mood  comes 
out  in  the  following  lines  written  by  him  at  a  Whitsuntide 
gathering  at  Aldeburgh  in  1898 — 

"  The  Lotus  on  a  sunny  reach 

And  friends  aboard  her,  frankly  human, 
Chatting  o'er  all  that  tune  can  teach 

Of  heaven  and  earth,  of  man  and  woman. 

An  eddy  in  the  silent  flow 

Of  days  and  years  that  bear  us — whither 

We  know  not,  but  'tis  well  to  know 
We  spent  this  sunny  day  together." 

"  Siena, 
"  November  6,  1897. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  Many  thanks  to  you  for  your  delightful  letter. 
I  have  read  it  many  times,  and  shall  yet  do  so.  It 
comes  just  as  I  am  preparing  to  depart ;  for,  heaven  be 
thanked,  I  have  finished  my  little  bit  of  work,  and 
can  now  drench  myself  with  Italy.  It  has  been  rather 
a  tough  job,  owing  to  unlucky  circumstances.  Three 
weeks  ago  my  landlady's  husband  died  (he  having  been 
lying  paralysed  for  a  year)  and  immediately  after  his 
funeral  we  moved  to  a  new  flat.  Happily,  I  stuck  to 
my  desk  through  it  all — and  to-day  I  have  had  the 
pleasure  of  paying  4s.  for  the  transport  of  the  MS.  to 
England. 

4  Your  paper  on  Farrar's  painful  book  x  I  have,  of 
course,  enjoyed.  You  know  there  must  be  a  certain 
amount  of  dishonesty  in  such  an  attitude.  As  always, 
your  blade  twinkles  merrily  while  doing  execution.  I 
had  a  laugh  now  and  then  and  the  thing  did  me  good. 

"  By  the  bye,  it  vexes  me  that  I  should  not  have 
explained  to  you  in  detail  my  arrangements  during  the 

1  The  Bible  :  its  Meaning  and  Supremacy,  by  F.  W.  Farrar. 


168  MEMORIES 

days  before  I  left  England.  I  left  the  Normans  on 
Thursday,  September  9,  and  from  then  till  Friday  in  the 
week  following  was  overwhelmed  with  work — packing, 
etc.  On  Saturday,  September  18,  I  left  Epsom  and 
went  north.  On  Tuesday  after  I  came  to  London, 
where  I  was  engaged  to  spend  the  evening  with  Bullen 
(suddenly)  for  talking  over  business ;  and  at  eleven  next 
morning  I  started  for  the  Continent.  It  annoyed  me 
much  that  I  could  not  accept  your  invitation;  and  no 
less  (when  I  knew  of  it)  that  I  had  missed  Meredith's 
dinner.  The  letter  from  Box  Hill  never  got  to  me  till 
I  was  in  Italy ;  and  I  wrote  at  once  to  Meredith  explaining 
my  behaviour.  I  earnestly  hope  he  received  the  letter. 

"  Of  course  I  have  not  been  able  to  see  very  much  of 
Siena,  but  this  is  not  my  part  of  Italy.  I  have,  I  am 
sorry  to  say,  very  little  interest  in  the  Renaissance. 
On  the  other  hand  I  shout  with  joy  whenever  I  am 
brought  very  near  to  the  old  Romans.  Chiefly  I  am 
delighted  here  with  the  magnificent  white  oxen,  with 
huge  horns,  which  draw  carts  about  the  streets.  Oxen 
and  carts  are  precisely  those  of  Virgil. 

"  St.  Catherine  interests  me.  The  other  day  I  saw 
her  head — her  actual  head,  preserved  in  the  church 
of  San  Dominico.  A  ghastly  sight — but,  of  course, 
impressive. 

"  At  Rome  I  find  I  shall  not  be  able  to  stop.  The 
winter  advances,  and  I  am  in  a  great  hurry  to  get  into 
Calabria  before  much  snow  falls  on  the  mountains.  I 
stop  at  Naples,  to  see,  if  possible,  Marion  Crawford, 
who  may  be  able  to  give  me  some  useful  advice. 

"  The  only  safe  address  for  the  next  few  weeks  will 
be  :  Poste  Rest  ante,  Napoli.  The  people  there  will,  I 
think,  forward  my  letters  if  I  request  it  with  a  sufficient 
quantity  of  issimos. 


GEORGE   GISSING  169 

"  Some  one  sent  me  the  Chronicle  notice  of  Tennyson.1 
I  gather  that  the  book  is  not  bad,  though,  as  you  say, 
one  wishes  some  one  else  could  have  written  it.  Tenny- 
son is  a  weak  point  with  me.  I  have  such  admiration 
and  love  for  his  work  that  I  loathe  to  hear  such  things 
about  the  man  himself  as  are  constantly  being  told. 
If  he  was  not  in  essence  a  grand  creature,  well,  it  makes 
the  world  a  little  more  inexplicable  and  unpleasant. 

"  Grant  Allen's  book  2  will,  I  am  sure,  be  profoundly 
interesting.  Such  a  man  cannot  work  for  years  on  a 
subject  he  has  at  heart  without  producing  something 
really  good.  He  told  me  himself  a  little  about  it  when 
we  were  together  at  Aldeburgh — a  delightful  time  ! 
And  I  have  ever  since  looked  forward  to  the  publication. 

"  I  am  inflicting  a  very  long  letter  upon  you.  Take 
it,  I  beg,  as  meaning  that  your  friendship  and  sympathy 
are  very  valuable  to  me.  One  happy  result  of  a  residence 
abroad  is  the  strengthening  of  one's  natural  ties  in  the 
home  country. 

^lt  With  heartiest  and  kindest  remembrances, 
"  Always  yours, 
"  GEORGE  GISSING.'* 


"  9,  Wentworth  Terrace,  Wakefield, 
"  September  1,  1898. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  chuckled  with  pleasure  on  recognizing  your 
hand.  Many  thanks  for  letting  me  know  of  Longmans,* 
I  had  heard  nothing  of  it,  and  it  is  really  curious  how 
little  I  care  nowadays  to  read  printed  comment  on  my 


1  Alfred  Tennyson,  A  Memoir,  by  his  Son,  1897. 

2  The  Evolution  of  the  Idea  of  God. 

3  Andrew  Lang's  comments  on  Gissing's  Abridgment  of  Forster'a 
Life  of  Dickens  in  "  The  Sign  of  the  Ship." 


170  MEMORIES 

books.     But  this  kind  of  thing  helps  to  keep  one  out 
of  the  workhouse,  no  doubt. 

"  Thackeray  ?  I  suppose  Lang  suggests  a  companion 
volume  ?  Blackies  did  the  same,  and  I  declined ;  simply 
because  I  could  not  afford  to  work  for  six  months  or 
more  for  the  very  trifling  payment  they  suggested.  I 
should  like  to  try  my  hand  at  Thackeray,  who,  be  it 
said  between  us,  appeals  to  me  much  more  strongly 
than  Dickens.  If  I  ever  find  myself  in  anything  like  a 
quiet  state — mentally  and  materially — which  may  come 
to  pass  ten  years  hence,  I  shall  be  tempted  to  prose 
about  W.  M.  T. 

"  I  have  just  heard  from  Keary,  from  some  wild 
place  in  France.  He  writes  despondently  about  his 
literary  prospects,  and  speaks  of  a  novel  of  his  just  to 
be  published  by  Methuens.  It  amazes  me  that  a  man 
secure  from  penury  should  lament  the  failure  of  his 
work  to  become  popular.  But  then  I  am  so  preoccupied 
by  the  accursed  struggle  for  money  that  nothing  meta- 
physical seems  to  me  of  primary  importance. 

"  I  look  forward  to  the  winter,  when  there  will  be  a 
chance  of  seeing  you — at  all  events,  at  Frascati's.  It 
is  one  of  my  small  manias  to  imagine  that  friends  from 
whom  I  have  not  heard  for  some  time  are  utterly 
alienated.  I  imagine  causes  of  offence,  etc.  :  therefore 
I  am  particularly  glad  to  be  replying  to  your  cheery 
note. 

"  Believe  me,  my  dear  Clodd, 
"  Always  yours, 

"  GEORGE  GISSING. 

"  Have  you  seen  Tolstoy's  Qu'est  ce  que  Vart  ? 
Grant  Allen  has  a  place  in  it,  among  authorities  on 
aesthetics." 


GEORGE   GISSING  171 

"  13,  Rue  de  Siam,  Passy,  Paris, 

"  November  7,  1899. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  urge  no  technical  plea.  My  silence  has  no 
excuse.  Again  and  again  I  have  wished  to  write ;  again 
and  again  I  have  done  something  else.  It  is  more  than 
kind  of  you  to  take  the  thing  so  good-humouredly. 

"  I  felt  a  distinct  sense  of  loss  when  I  suddenly  came 
across  the  announcement  of  Grant  Allen's  death.  I 
liked  him ;  indeed,  I  liked  him  very  much.  I  found  his 
talk  delightful,  and  was  always  sorry  that  I  could  not 
have  more  of  it ;  there  was  a  great  charm  for  me  in  his 
honest,  gentle  personality — thoroughly  honest  and  gentle, 
spite  of  his  occasional  scoffing  at  himself  or  at  others. 
To  you  the  loss  must  be  sad  indeed.  I  am  so  sorry  I 
cannot  see  the  Chronicle  nowadays,  and  so  missed  what 
you  wrote  there.  It  was,  I  know,  much  more  to  the 
point  than  what  I  chanced  to  read  in  the  Aihenceum. 

"  Yes,  yes,  I  know  that  moment,  when  the  silence  of 
a  grey  day  makes  audible  the  voices  that  are  still.  It 
comes  very  often  when  one  has  passed  the  middle  point 
of  life.  To  me,  the  sadness  of  it  is  not  unwelcome,  for 
I  feel  more  and  more  how  little  wisdom  there  is  in  any- 
thing but  silent  thought — and  who  can  think  without 
sadness  ? 

"  So  you  have  seen  Meredith  lately.  I  had  a  letter 
from  him  about  my  book,1  for  which,  on  the  whole,  he 
does  not  greatly  care.  That  by  no  means  surprises  me ; 
I  feared  the  thing  had  small  value. 

"  All  the  same,  I  shall  send  you  a  copy  of  it — for  my 
pleasure,  not  for  yours.  I  await  only  the  arrival  of 
copies  from  America,  for  the  few  English  ones  I  had  to 
dispose  of  were  sent  to  addresses  rigorously  indicated  by 

1  The  Crown  of  Life. 


172  MEMORIES 

piety  or  self-interest.  Methuen  does  not  advertise  this 
book,  I  see,  and  I  suppose  no  novel  has  much  chance 
just  now. 

"  By  the  by,  Pinker  has  suggested  to  me  that  he 
should  try  to  get  all  my  books  into  the  hands  of  some 
one  publisher.  I  should  like  this,  but  I  have  a  doubt 
whether  the  time  has  come  yet;  there  is  a  curious 
blending  of  respect  and  contempt  in  the  publishers' 
mind  towards  me,  and  I  should  like  to  see  which  senti- 
ment will  prevail.  If  the  respect,  one  ought  to  be  able 
to  make  decent  terms  with  a  good  house;  if  the  con- 
tempt, one  must  relinquish  ambitions  proved  to  be  idle, 
and  so  attain  a  certain  tranquillity — even  if  it  be  that 
of  the  workhouse.  I  was  always  envious  of  workhouse 
folk ;  they  are  the  most  independent  of  all. 

44  You  write  from  Aldeburgh.  I  wonder  whether  you 
are  there  for  some  time,  or  only  for  the  week-end  (as 
north-country  people  say).  Perhaps  I  had  better 
address  to  you  there. 

"  Shorter  has  written  to  me,  asking  for  a  story  for 
his  new  Illustrated  Newspaper  for  the  Home.  What  an 
odd  title  !  I  suppose  he  really  means  a  '  newspaper  '  ? 
I  shall  do  my  best,  as  Shorter  was  kind  in  the  days 
when  he  headed  legions ;  but  that  legend  '  For  the 
Home '  troubles  me  and  puts  a  restraint  upon  my 
imagination. 

"  Naturally,  Meredith  does  not  speak  to  me  of  his 
health.  I  hope  no  operation  impends — the  thought  of 
such  things  makes  me  wince  angrily. 

"  I  hear  that  your  weather  is  fearful.  Here  on  the 
other  hand  there  has  been  a  fortnight  of  mild  bright 
skies.  Every  afternoon  I  walk  for  a  couple  of  hours, 
generally  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne — doing  my  best  to 
escape  death  under  motor-cars  and  motor-cycles  which 


GEORGE   GISSING  173 

go  (without  exaggeration)  considerably  quicker  than  an 
ordinary  railway  train. 

"  I  see  interesting  books  in  the  new  lists,  and  wish  I 
could  get  hold  of  them.  If,  in  the  end,  all  goes  well 
with  me  (a  great  if)  I  shall  pass  my  days  in  a  garden, 
or  by  the  fireside,  merely  reading.  Now  and  then  I 
have  such  a  hunger  for  books  that  I  loathe  the  work 
which  forbids  me  to  fall  upon  them. 

"  In  the  summer  I  saw  something  of  Switzerland,  and 
spent  the  last  week  or  two  of  holiday  by  the  Lago 
Maggiore.  But  I  notice  with  misgiving  that  I  cannot 
find  the  same  delight  in  travel  as  of  old.  My  sensibilities 
are  duller. 

"  All  good  things  be  with  you  !  And  believe  me,  my 
dear  Clodd, 

"  Ever  sincerely  yours, 

"  GEORGE  GISSING." 


"  13,  Rue  de  Siam,  Paris, 

"  May  6,  1900. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  On  getting  back  to  Paris  I  had  a  violent  attack 
of  intercostal  rheumatism,  which  even  kept  me  in  bed 
for  a  couple  of  days.  Now  I  am  able  to  enjoy  the 
brilliant  weather  and  to  think  about  a  little  story  I 
have  to  write  before  leaving  town  for  the  summer. 
Our  departure  is  fixed  for  the  25th  of  this  month,  and 
we  go  to  St.  Honore  (Nievre)  in  the  centre  of  France, 
where  we  have  taken  the  Villa  des  Roses  until  the  end 
of  October.  This  will  be  easier,  as  regards  journey, 
than  going  to  the  Alps  :  the  distance  is  only  six  hours 
from  Paris.  The  villa  is  roomy  and  comfortable  :  I  hope 
to  work  there  very  steadily  all  through  the  months  of 
sunshine.  If  I  find  any  time  for  rambling,  near  at 


174  MEMORIES 

hand  is  the  interesting  old  town  of  Autun  and  the 
site  of  the  Gallic  Bibracte. 

"  If  my  holiday  was  a  time  of  rest  and  pleasure,  I 
owe  that  very  greatly  to  you  :  your  house  remains  with 
me  as  a  memory  of  delightful  tranquillity.  I  am  bidden, 
moreover,  to  thank  you  very  heartily  for  the  really 
splendid  collection  of  autographs  you  enabled  me  to 
bring  back  to  my  wife.  If  fate  is  decent  to  us  all, 
some  day  you  will  look  through  the  autograph-albums 
of  which  I  spoke  to  you,  and  there  will  be  shouting  of 

joy* 

"  Your  articles  on  Herbert  Spencer  were  read  with 
interest  and  appreciation,  as  everything  else  of  yours 
will  be  which  I  am  able  to  put  into  Gabrielle's 
hands. 

"  I  wish  you  could  have  been  with  us  last  night.  We 
were  at  a  concert  given  by  Delaborde,  one  of  the 
finest  of  living  pianists.  I,  who  am  no  friend  of 
public  entertainments,  came  back  glad  in  heart  and 
mind. 

"  Of  course  I  shall  write  to  you  in  the  course  of  the 
summer;  perhaps  I  shall  have  news  about  my  luckless 
books,  which  Pinker  is  trying  to  get  all  together  into 
the  hands  of  Smith,  Elder. 

"  I  miss  your  talk  :  I  miss  it  seriously.  For  you  are 
one  of  only  two  or  three  people  I  know  whose  talk 
often  goes  below  the  surface  of  things — who  are  capable 
of  intellectual  wonder — who  do  not  confuse  reason  with 
materialism — who  (rarest  thing,  perhaps,  of  all)  know 
how  to  joke  in  earnest. 

"  Believe  always  that  to  us  here  you  are  a  friend 
whom  we  feel  it  impossible  to  overvalue. 

"  Ever  sincerely  yours, 

"  GEORGE  GISSING." 


GEORGE   GISSING  175 

"  Villa  des  Roses,  St.  Honore-les-Bains,  Nievre,  France, 

"  June  7,  1900. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  ought  to  have  thanked  you  before  this  for 
the  little  volume  on  the  Alphabet.  Getting  into  order 
here  and  forcing  myself  to  think  about  a  book  which 
must  be  written  this  summer,  has  taken  all  my  time. 
But  at  last  things  are  in  train,  and  I  can  have  the 
pleasure  of  writing  to  you  once  more. 

"  From  your  Story  of  the  Alphabet  I  have  learnt  much. 
Your  space  was  very  restricted;  I  felt  here  and  there 
that  you  would  have  liked  more  elbow  room.  But  I 
am  sure  it  is  a  good,  useful  little  book,  and  once  more 
you  have  come  as  a  helper  to  those  who  want  to  know 
something  t>f  a  subject,  but  have  no  time  to  investigate. 
How  you  yourself  find  time  to  investigate,  heaven 
knows  !  These  are  mysteries  which  one  must  be  con- 
tent to  accept  with  mere  emotion  of  gratitude. 

"  Next  came  your  long  kind  letter — a  true  delight  to 
me.  How  very  good  of  you  to  have  kept  in  mind  my 
old  garden  tent !  Why,  it  seems  to  me  as  if  that  tent 
were  part  of  some  prior  existence,  out  of  which  I  have 
long  passed.  Straining  my  memory,  I  recall  that  I 
succeeded  in  selling  the  thing,  together  with  some 
furniture,  before  I  left  Dorking.  But  thank  you  much 
for  the  suggestion  about  it. 

"  As  for  the  rattan,  no,  do  not  trouble  to  send  it.  Here 
I  use  a  sturdy  stick  of  Scotch  gorse,  and  the  cane  would 
seem  effeminate.  Let  it  lie  in  your  house  till  I  see  you 
again. 

'  Yesterday  arrived  Grant  Allen,1  which  I  read 
straight  away.  How  interesting  is  a  man's  life  !  And 
how  well  you  have  presented  this  particular  span  of 

1  Grant  Allen  :  A  Memoir,  by  Edward  Clodd. 


176  MEMORIES 

busy  years  !  The  writing  is  in  your  best  manner ;  so 
clear,  so  sympathetic  of  him,  so  pleasantly  touched 
with  humour.  Discretion  rules  from  beginning  to  end. 
I  should  say  that  you  have  done  the  greatest  possible 
service  to  Allen's  memory  to  divest  his  personality  of 
the  temporary,  the  unessential — and  to  show  the  core 
of  the  man,  his  potent  virtues,  his  amiable  character- 
istics, his  persistent  aims.  There  is  not  a  superfluity 
in  the  volume ;  the  selection  of  illustrative  letters,  etc., 
is  skilful,  no  reader  but  will  wish  the  book  were  longer ; 
no  one  who  knows  Grant  Allen  but  will  close  it  with  a 
sense  of  satisfaction  in  your  treatment  of  him. 

"  You  know  that  I  had  a  very  strong  liking  for  the 
man ;  a  great  admiration  of  his  powers.  After  reading 
your  memoir,  I  feel  both  liking  and  admiration  in- 
creased. 

"  How  excellent  those  two  letters  of  his  to  parsons  ! 
He  was  a  force,  or,  at  all  events,  a  steady  influence — 
on  the  side  of  civilization,  and  his  ideas  will  not  perish 
with  him.  Your  pages  199-200  rejoice  me.  This  is 
timely  speech  and  it,  too,  will  not  miss  its  mark. 

"  Thank  you  for  all  the  pleasure  you  have  given  me. 
I  enjoy  my  quiet  life  here  all  the  more  for  such  voices 
from  the  far  home.  St.  Honore  is  a  most  beautiful 
place ;  a  hilly  country  beautifully  wooded — some  of  the 
finest  oaks  and  chestnuts  I  ever  saw,  making  woodland 
glades  of  unutterable  delight  in  the  summer-time. 
Here  the  acacia  is  indigenous,  and  at  this  moment  it 
makes  the  countryside  a  mass  of  odorous  blossom. 
After  sunset  a  peculiar  feature  is  given  to  the  place  by 
certain  sounds  strange  to  England — the  ceaseless  shrilling 
of  crickets,  the  clamour  of  frogs,  and  the  queer  hooting 
of  toads.  Did  you  ever  hear  that  ? 

"  There  are  sulphur  baths  here  (a  casino,  etc.),  but  as 


GEORGE   GISSING  177 

yet  visitors  have  not  begun  to  arrive.  Happily  our 
house  is  remote  from  the  bathers'  quarter.  We  have  a 
beautiful  garden  of  fruit,  vegetables  and  flowers. 

"  The  invitation  with  which  your  letter  ends  is  a 
joy  to  me  as  often  as  I  think  of  it.  I  wonder  whether 
I  shall  ever  again  have  such  a  delightful  time  as  I 
enjoyed  lately  at  your  house  ?  One  must  not  expect 
too  much  of  fate.  But  I  assure  myself  that  the  house 
is  there  and  you  in  it.  Had  you,  after  all,  good  weather 
at  Aldeburgh?  I  heartily  hope  so. 

"  With  kind  remembrances  to  you  all, 
"  Ever  sincerely  yours, 

"  GEORGE  GISSING." 


"  Villa  Souvenir,  Arcachon,  Gironde,  France, 
"  January  8,  1902. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  A  letter  written  on  the  very  verge  of  the  New 
Year  I  take  as  a  peculiar  kindness.  The  prompting  to 
come  at  such  a  moment  does  not  come  unless  there  is 
an  often-present  sense  of  good-will ;  and  the  thought  of 
this,  here  in  the  distance,  warms  my  heart. 

"  I  look  forward  with  eagerness  to  your  Huxley 
volume.  It  will  be  written,  I  know,  with  love  and 
reverence ;  all  your  best  qualities  as  man  of  science  and 
man  of  letters  will  be  in  it.  As  I  think  I  have  said 
before,  you  have  points  of  strong  likeness  to  Huxley. 
No  one,  I  suspect,  can  speak  of  him  with  a  more  genial 
authority. 

"A  month  ago  I  had  a  kind  letter  from  Meredith; 
of  course  he  spoke  not  of  himself.  Is  it  true  (as  I 
was  amazed  to  read  in  an  English  newspaper)  that  he 
is  writing  his  autobiography,  and  having  it  revised  by 


178  MEMORIES 

John  Morley  ?  After  all,  such  things  ought  not  to  sur- 
prise one;  the  life-long  hidden  artist,  being  a  man  of 
somewhat  aggressive  personality,  might  well  think  of 
uttering  himself  in  proprid  persona  before  the  last 
silence  fell  upon  him. 

"  I  envy  you  your  proposed  course  of  historical 
reading.  My  Roman  novel,  alas,  is  suspended  by  the 
state  of  my  health;  a  little  also — I  admit — by  the 
reflection  that  so  many  people  have  of  late  written 
novels  about  Rome.  My  task  during  the  last  month 
or  two  has  been  an  abridged  and  generally  edited  edition 
of  Forster's  Dickens  :  I  can't  help  thinking  that  the 
little  volume  will  be  readable  enough.  An  odd  thing 
(not  a  novel)  called  An  Author  at  Grass,  which  I  have 
taken  two  years  to  write — at  intervals — will  begin  to 
appear  serially  in  the  Fortnightly.  I  shall  be  dis- 
appointed if  you  do  not  like  it.  For  it  is  written  for 
people  like  you,  whom  the  general  uproar  of  things  does 
not  deafen  to  still  small  voices. 

"  You  speak  of  my  wife.  Oh,  yes,  she  is  still  with 
me;  and,  I  devoutly  hope,  will  be  until  I  can  no  longer 
benefit  by  human  solace.  Our  marriage  begins  to  be 
an  old  story,  and  to  tell  you  the  truth — I  often  forget 
that  there  is  anything  exceptional  about  it.  So  many 
people  in  France  and  in  England  know  her  and  like 
her  and  speak  freely  of  her  that  I  no  longer  make  any 
mystery  of  the  matter.  It  has  been  justified  by  the 
event  and  with  quietness  and  indifference  to  past 
troubles.  I  shall  not  be  satisfied  until  she  has  made 
your  acquaintance;  but  one  cannot  say  when  I  shall 
be  again  in  England.  Meanwhile  she  knows  you  as  a 
trusty  friend  of  mine  and  holds  you  in  esteem. 

"  Arcachon  is  doing  me  good.  I  breathe  more  easily 
and  am  altogether  more  vigorous.  Sleep  does  not  yet 


GEORGE   GISSING  179 

visit  me  regularly  enough,  but  I  hope  for  that.     All 
good  be  with  you  in  the  New  Year. 
"  Believe  me  to  be, 

"  Always  sincerely  yours, 

"  GEORGE  GISSING." 

"  Villa  Souvenir,  Arcachon,  Gironde,  France, 

"  March  1,  1902. 

44  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  have  to  thank  you  for  a  long,  kind  letter 
and  for  a  delightful  book.1  Let  me  speak  of  the  book 
first. 

44  It  is  as  I  knew  it  would  be ;  you  have  written  con 
amore — which  is  saying  a  great  deal — in  language  worthy 
of  the  subject.  Do  you  not  know  that  common  kind  of 
book  in  which  extracts  from  the  writer  treated  of  shine 
with  painful  contrast  amid  the  author's  text?  Here  is 
no  such  distressing  inequality.  You  tell  me  of  diffi- 
culties in  the  composition  :  no  one  could  perceive  that 
you  had  not  written  the  book  at  perfect  ease  and  leisure. 
Nowhere  do  I  find  any  trace  of  haste  or  fatigue.  Ex- 
cellent is  the  arrangement;  admirable  the  choice  of 
illustrative  quotations;  the  outcome  of  it  all,  a  clear 
and  living  picture  of  this  great-brained  and  high- 
souled  man.  I  lay  down  the  book  with  profound 
admiration  of  Huxley — that  reasoned  admiration  that 
it  is  your  purpose  to  move  and  justify.  More  than  once, 
be  assured,  shall  I  return  to  this  volume  of  yours;  for 
it  seems  an  epoch  in  the  intellectual  and  social  history 
of  England.  I  could  quote  several  passages  for  which 
I  especially  thank  you.  Let  me  mention  one  on  p.  195. 
'  The  chains  of  custom,'  etc.  Very  true  and  all  the 
more  necessary  to  be  plainly  put,  because  its  very 

1  Thomas  Henry  Huxley,  by  Edward  Clcdd. 


180  MEMORIES 

obviousness  prevents  the  facts  from  being  perceived  by 
hosts  of  people. 

"  What  a  fine  fellow  he  was  !  I  have  just  been  read- 
ing in  The  Spectator  a  notice  of  Kidd's  new  book,  where 
I  find  that  Huxley  is  spoken  of  as  a  retrograde  force, 
as  one  who  misinterpreted  and  spoilt  the  message  of 
Darwin.  This,  I  fancy,  is  rubbish.  It  is  all  very  well 
for  the  sun  to  be  shining  in  heaven,  but  what  if  a  lot 
of  pestilent  chimneys  vomit  so  much  smoke  that  you 
wall?:  about  gasping  in  gloom?  Some  one  must  have  at 
the  folk  who  so  befoul  the  atmosphere  and  make  them 
consume  their  evil  vapours.  Huxley  was  a  great 
*  cloud-compeller.'  He  did,  to  a  wonderful  extent,  let 
in  the  light.  And  let  us  be  grateful  that  such  a  man 
standing  in  the  name  of  science,  stood  no  less  in  that 
of  literature.  It  is  this  remarkable  combination  of 
powers  which  makes  his  work  so  entirely  beneficent. 
The  plainest  of  plain  men  can  read  him  with  instruc- 
tion; the  finest  of  lettered  folk  can  read  him  with 
delight.  Assuredly  these  many  volumes  of  his  are 
among  the  best  things  bequeathed  to  the  future  by  our 
good  old  nineteenth  century. 

"  And  now  your  letter.  Oddly  enough,  I  have  just 
been  writing  to  Wells  with  very  much  the  same  criticism 
of  his  work  that  you  suggest.  I  have  asked  him  :  What 
do  you  mean  exactly  by  your  '  God '  and  your  '  pur- 
pose '  ?  I  rather  suspect  that  he  means  nothing  more 
definite  than  that  reverential  hopefulness  which  is 
natural  to  every  thoughtful  and  gentle -hearted  man. 
In  his  lecture  to  the  Royal  Institution,  he  goes,  I  think, 
entirely  too  far,  talking  about  eternal  activity  of  the 
spirit  of  man,  and  defying  the  threats  of  material  out- 
look. Well,  well,  let  us  agree  that  it  is  very  good  to 
acknowledge  a  great  mystery;  infinitely  better  than  to 


GEORGE   GISSING  181 

use  the  astounding  phrase  of  Bert  helot,  '  Le  monde  ria 
plus  de  mystere'  .J3pw  to  go  further  than  this  recogni- 
tion I  know  not. «  That  there  is  some  order,  some  purpose, 
seems  a  certainty;  my  mind,  at  all  events,  refuses  to 
grasp  an  idea  of  a  Universe  which  means  nothing  at  all. 
But  just  as  unable  am  I  to  accept  any  of  the  solutions 
ever  proposed.  Above  all  it  is  the  existence  of  natural 
beauty  which  haunts  my  thought.  I  can,  for  a  time, 
forget  the  world's  horrors ;  I  can  never  forget  the  flower 
by  the  wayside  and  the  sun  falling  in  the  west.  These 
things  have  a  meaning — but  I  doubt,  I  doubt — whether 
the  mind  of  man  will  ever  be  permitted  to  know  it. 

"  Glover's  book  on  the  fourth  century  I  is  known  to 
me  only  through  reviews.  I  must  get  hold  of  it  some 
day.  Dill's  book  is  the  last  I  read  before  saying  good- 
bye to  dear  old  Dorking,  nearly  three  years  ago.  Un- 
fortunately both  come  a  little  before  the  time  which 
specially  interests  me — the  age  of  Cassiodorus. 

"  How  I  wish  I  could  be  with  you  when  you  go  to 
Box  Hill !  I  had  a  line  from  Meredith  three  months 
ago,  so  wrote  him  some  account  of  myself — as  he  wished 
it.  Pray  speak  a  fitting  word  to  him  from  me  when 
you  have  the  chance. 

"  By  the  by,  it  was  a  perfectly  sober  paragraph  in 
the  Daily  News  which  told  of  Meredith's  Autobiography. 
I  marvel  that  you  have  not  heard  it  spoken  of. 

"  My  Author  at  Grass  2  is  perhaps  a  little  more  serious 
in  intention  than  the  title  would  suggest.  I  have  tried 
to  put  into  it  a  good  deal  of  what  I  really  feel  in  these 
latter  days  about  things  in  general,  that  is  to  say. 
But  the  Fortnightly  will  begin  the  publication  of  it  in 

1  Life  and  Letters  in  the  Fourth  Century,  by  T.  R.  Glover. 

2  Published  in  book  form  under  the  title  of  The  Private  Papers  of 
Henry  Ryecroft. 


182  MEMORIES 

April  or  May,   and  possibly  it  may  fall  under   your 
eyes. 

"  Spring  has  begun  here  :  it  is  warm  and  bright  and 
the  pine  forest  is  loud  with  birds.  As  far  as  I  can  see, 
wisdom  dictates  a  residence  for  some  time  to  come 
here  in  the  south-west  of  France.  The  climate  may 
very  likely  set  me  on  my  legs  again.  Arcachon  itself 
is  not  quite  the  place ;  so  am  thinking  of  Cambo  on  the 
slope  of  the  Pyrenees,  just  beyond  Bayonne.  There  is 
very  good  communication  with  England,  and  the 
summer  is  excessively  hot.  As  I  have  had  to  look 
death  in  the  face,  I  must  not  grumble  about  this  ex- 
patriation, if  indeed  it  helps  me  to  live  and  work  for  a 
few  years  more.  My  friends,  I  trust,  will  not  forget 
me,  and  there  is  always  the  hope  of  a  last  home  in 
England. 

"  Ever,  my  dear  Clodd, 

"  Sincerely  yours, 

"  GEORGE  GISSING." 


"  Villa  Lannes,  Ciboure,  St.  Jean  de  Luz,  France, 

"  July  6,  1902. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

'  Your  very  kind  answer  to  my  enquiry  has  put 
our  minds  at  rest.  Things  remain  as  they  were,  and  I 
am  glad  of  it. 

"  Well,  here  we  are  established  for  at  least  a  twelve- 
month, address  as  above.  I  hope  we  shall  not  suffer 
too  much  from  the  summer  heat,  but  for  a  month  or 
two  I  shall  probably  have  a  little  difficulty  in  working, 
the  temperature  of  the  French  and  Spanish  frontier  is 
not  that  of  Aldeburgh — where  I  hope  you  will  enjoy 
many  a  breezy  Sunday  before  the  bright  weather  ends. 

"  Last  night  I  saw  a  ceremony  which  would  have 


GEORGE   GISSTNG  183 

greatly  interested  you — the  lighting  of  the  fire  of  St. 
John.1  For  some  reason,  the  fete  has  been  postponed, 
this  year  for  a  week  or  two,  and  yesterday  was  the  Eve. 
Before  the  main  portal  of  the  church,  in  a  narrow  street 
of  old  and  very  picturesque  houses,  a  great  bonfire  was 
built  up — faggots  set  about  the  trunk  of  a  considerable 
tree,  which  stood  there  with  all  its  leaves  on  top  growing. 
At  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening,  amid  the  crowded  popu- 
lation, a  band  of  music  came  up,  preceded  by  Chinese 
lanterns  and  half-a-dozen  flaring  flambeaux.  Then 
from  the  church  issued  all  the  clergy  of  St.  Jean  de  Luz, 
and  the  cure,  to  the  sound  of  canticles,  solemnly  ignited 
the  pile,  which  blazed  gloriously.  I  never  saw  a  rite 
more  obviously  primitive;  it  impressed  me  strongly. 
Whilst  the  fire  was  blazing,  the  clergy  went  back  into 
the  church  and  there  sang  a  Te  Deum. 

"  Would  not  good  old  Grant  Allen  have  enjoyed 
seeing  this.  But  perhaps  he  did  see  it,  here  or  else- 
where, during  his  wanderings. 

"  I  am  sure  you  will  believe  me  when  I  say  that, 
glad  as  I  am  to  have  a  letter  from  you,  I  abhor  the 
thought  of  adding  to  your  work  by  exacting  one.  Let 
me  feel  that  you  write  only  when  there  comes  a  moment 
of  genuine  leisure.  Horrible  that  you  should  be  at  the 
bank  till  eleven  at  night !  Don't  let  that  go  on  much 
longer;  stand  firm  for  your  right  of  retirement.  It  is 
all  very  well  for  amiable  directors  to  bind  you  with 
compliment — but  they  cannot  add  one  day  to  your 
life.  I  shall  rejoice — quite  sincerely  rejoice — when  I 
hear  that,  like  Lamb,  you  have  gone  home  for  ever. 
No  man  can  make  a  better  use  of  tranquillity  than 
you. 

1  On  fire  festivals,  see  Frazer's  Golden  Bough,  III.,  Ch.  IV,  sect.  2 
(2nd  edition). 


184  MEMORIES 

"  There  was  a  praetorian  prefect  under  Hadrian,  a 
fine  old  fellow  called  Similis.  Permitted  at  length  to 
lay  down  office,  he  retired  to  his  country  estate,  where 
he  died  seven  years  later.  On  his  tomb  he  had  graven  : 
*v  t  Here  lies  Similis,  who  existed  for  sixty-four  years,  and 
lived  seven.9 

"  All  good  be  with  you, 
"  Ever  yours, 

"  GEORGE  GISSING." 


"  Villa  Lannes,  Ciboure,  St.  Jean  de  Luz,  France, 

"  November  30,  1902. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  Your  long  letter  was,  if  possible,  more  than 
usually  welcome,  for  a  cloudy  and  rainy  autumn  has 
kept  me  rather  down  in  spirits,  and  the  sense  of  not 
getting  much  '  forrader '  either  in  work  or  in  health 
sometimes  makes  me  groan  at  this  long  exile.  The 
truth  is,  however,  that  I  might  be  vastly  worse  off  in 
every  respect,  and  don't  think  I  am  going  to  write  you 
a  chapter  of  lamentations — which  would  be  a  detestable 
return  for  all  your  good  things. 

"  So  you  have  been  to  Tyrol.  I  know  nothing  of 
that  country,  save  what  may  be  seen  from  the  railway, 
on  the  way  over  the  Brenner  from  Italy  to  Germany; 
but  there  remains  with  me  a  picture  of  sunrise  striking 
on  the  snowy  cold  mountain-tops  and  turning  it  to 
rosy  glow.  When  you  were  on  the  Garda  Lake,  you 
do  not  seem  to  have  gone  to  Sirmione,  where  I  believe 
some  remains  are  to  be  seen  of  Catullus's  villa.  At  all 
events,  he  did  live  there,  and  there  wrote  one  at  least 
of  his  loveliest  poems,  and  I  grieve  that  I  was  never 
able  to  see  the  spot.  Yes,  yes,  I  know  that  colour  of 
the  beeches  in  North  Italy.  Yet  I  think  I  have  seen  a 


GEORGE   GISSING  185 

glory  not  inferior  in  the  woods  of  Cotswold — a  neglected 
part  of  England  which  would  rejoice  your  soul  at  the 
right  moment. 

"  Let  me  mention  another  Basque  custom  (after  the 
St.  John  fires)  which  may  perhaps  interest  you.  When 
the  head  of  a  family  dies  here,  at  a  country  house,  the 
bees'  hives  are  at  once  covered  with  crape;  they  say 
that  if  this  were  neglected,  the  bees  would  all  go  away. 
Talking  of  this  to  an  English  lady,  I  learnt  from  her 
that,  some  twenty  years  ago,  she  found  exactly  the 
same  practice  and  superstition  in  the  East  Riding  of 
Yorkshire.  Did  you  ever  hear  of  it  ? 

"  I  am  glad  to  hear  of  your  reading.  For  my  own 
part,  all  my  leisure  of  the  last  six  months  has  been 
given  to  Spanish.  It  has  always  been  one  of  my 
ambitions  to  read  Don  Quixote  in  the  original,  and 
now,  by  the  grace  of  heaven,  I  am  able  to  do  so — 
indeed,  I  draw  towards  the  end  of  this  glorious  book. 
The  translations  give  one  but  a  maimed  idea  of  Cer- 
vantes. For  one  thing,  they  (or  nearly  all)0omit  a  good 
deal  of  matter  deemed  untranslatable;  and  then,  only 
the  Elizabethan  Shelton  came  anything  near  a  worthy 
rendering  of  the  style.  Oh,  it  is  a  noble  work  !  It 
has  done  me  solid  good — even  physical  good,  I  believe, 
by  way  of  mental  animation. 

"  And  presently  I  am  going  to  make  an  invasion  into 
modern  Spanish  fiction ;  for  they  tell  me  that  a  few  good 
novels  exist,  especially  those  of  Perez  Galdos. 

"  A  recent  acquaintance  I  have  made  here  is  that  of 
Butler  Clarke,  an  Oxford  Don  who  passes  most  of  the 
year  at  St.  Jean  de  Luz.  Do  you  know  him?  His 
special  work  is  at  Spanish — he  has  published  a  history 
of  Spanish  literature,  and  sundry  editions  of  Spanish 
books.  A  pleasant  man,  and  lives  very  much  as  a  recluse 


186  MEMORIES 

while  here,  dreading  the  ordinary  English  who  come 
over  here  to  golf.  Then,  we  have  for  neighbour  Stuart- 
Menteath,  the  geologist,  probably  known  to  you  by 
name.  Another  sort  of  man,  he;  very  cantankerously 
bitter  against  all  men  of  science,  sore  because  of  his 
own  failure  to  become  prominent  in  the  English  scientific 
world.  Yet  I  imagine  that  his  attainments  are  con- 
siderable. 

"  Have  you  read  the  volume  Joseph  Conrad  has  just 
published,  Youth  and  two  other  Stories  ?  One  of  the 
three  stories  I  have  read  in  Blackwood,  and  it  is  a  most 
admirable  piece  of  work.  I  rejoice  to  see  a  very  well 
written  article  on  Conrad  in  this  week's  Spectator.  No 
man  at  present  writing  fiction  has  such  a  grip  at  reality, 
such  imaginative  vigour,  and  such  wonderful  command 
,of  language,  as  Joseph  Conrad.  I  think  him  a  great 
writer — there's  no  other  word.  And,  when  one  con- 
siders his  personal  history,  the  English  of  his  books 
is  something  like  a  miracle.  Do,  do  read  the  new 
volume,  if  you  have  not  yet  done  so,  and,  if  you  agree 
with  me,  talk  about  it  to  every  man  or  woman  capable 
of  understanding  good  things. 

"  Excellent,  your  batch  of  stories,  and  all  new  to  me. 
We  chuckled  much  over  them. 

"  Your  hard  winter's  work  has  begun  :  may  all  go 
well  with  you  through  these  dark  and  stern  winter 
months.  The  great  success  of  these  cheap  editions  must 
be  very  cheering  to  you. 

"  My  wife  thanks  you  for  your  kind  message  to  her, 
and  sends  her  very  kind  regards.  '  I  hope  I  shall  some 
day  know  Mr.  Clodd,'  is  always  her  comment  when  we 
speak  of  you. 

"  Ever  cordially  yours, 

"  GEORGE  GISSING." 


GEORGE   GISSING  187 

"  Ispoure,  St.  Jean  Pied-de-Port,  Basses  Pyrenees,  France, 

"  June  16,  1903. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  It  is  now  just  a  year  since  I  came  to  the  Basque 
country,  and  I  cannot  remember  in  all  my  life  a  year 
so  unprofitable.  All  the  time  I  have  been  ailing  and 
barely  capable  of  any  exertion.  In  some  degree,  I  fear, 
the  climate  may  be  chargeable  with  this;  it  has  done 
good  to  my  lungs,  but  has  reduced  my  vitality.  We 
are  now  on  the  point  of  going  for  the  summer  to  the 
place  named  above;  that,  after  July  1st  will  be  my 
address.  It  is  in  the  mountains,  some  thirty  miles 
inland,  not  very  high,  but  sufficiently  so  to  make  a 
good  change  from  this  seaboard  climate.  Well,  I  shall 
see  how  I  get  on  there.  The  future  is  full  of  difficulties. 
To  get  one's  breathing  apparatus  into  better  order  is 
obviously  a  good  thing,  and,  so  long  as  I  improve  in 
this  respect,  I  hesitate  to  return  to  the  north.  On  the 
other  hand,  my  inability  to  work  is  becoming  a  most 
serious  matter.  It  will  amuse  you  to  learn  that  all  the 
noise  about  Ryecroft  has  hitherto  resulted  in  a  total 
sale  which  means,  to  me,  not  quite  £200  !  x  There  is 
literary  success  for  you  !  Yet  I  have  nearly  three  score 
letters  from  strangers  about  this  book,  most  of  them 
enthusiastic.  The  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  some  men 
are  born  not  to  make  money.  I  do  not  touch  the  c  great 
public,'  and  I  suppose  never  shall.  Well,  as  you  know, 
I  don't  complain  of  this ;  what  right  have  I  to  complain  ? 
But  the  practical  issue  grows  very  serious. 

"  I  have  decided  to  write  my  sixth-century  story. 
For  the  moment  I  turn  with  disgust  from  modern  life, 

1  While  these  sheets  are  passing  through  the  Press,  there  comes  a 
bookseller's  catalogue  offering  the  MS.  of  Gissing's  The  Emancipated 
as  a  bargain  at  £120  !  I  question  if  he  made  half  the  sum  on  the  book 

itself. 


188  MEMORIES 

whereas  those  old  times  call  to  me  with  a  very  pleasant 
voice.  If  I  have  anything  like  decent  health  at  St. 
Jean  Pied-de-Port  (which,  by  the  bye,  is  quite  near  to 
Roncesvalles)  I  must  get  this  book  done.  I  think  I 
can  make  it  fairly  good,  for  I  have  saturated  myself 
with  the  spirit  of  that  age.  It  ought  to  be  infinitely 
picturesque. 

"  Extraordinary  weather  here  for  the  last  three 
weeks  :  all  but  ceaseless  rain  from  a  lowering  sky,  and 
the  temperature  that  of  southern  winter.  This  does 
not  improve  one's  spirits,  of  course.  I  wonder  whether 
you  are  better  off  in  England.  We  are  going,  I  suppose, 
through  the  familiar  cycle  of  bad  summers ;  this  is  the 
third  in  succession. 

"  I  see  that  Dent  is  just  issuing  in  the  Temple  Classics 
a  translation  of  Augustine's  City  of  God.  Did  you  ever 
read  that  book?  To  me,  one  of  the  most  interesting 
in  all  literature.  No  man  ever  had  such  an  occasion 
for  moralizing  as  that  offered  by  the  fall  of  Rome 
before  Alaric.  But — who  buys  and  reads  such  books 
as  this?  How  on  earth  can  it  pay  Dent  to  publish 
them? 

"  Oh,  the  delightful  story  in  your  last  letter  about 
'  these  Lears '  !  There  is  the  representative  of  the 
theatre  public.1 

"  I  received  this  morning  a  letter  about  Ryecroft  from 
one  R.  W.  Goulding,  who,  to  my  surprise,  dates  from 

1  The  "  story  "  was  of  two  ladies  who  sat  in  neighbouring  boxes  at 
the  Lyceum  Theatre,  when  Irving  was  acting  in  King  Lear.  When 
the  curtain  fell  at  end  of  Act  III,  one  lady,  reaching  forward  to  speak 
to  her  friend,  said,  with  a  yawn,  "  What  a  very  disagreeable  family 
these  Lears  must  have  been  to  live  with."' 

Analogous  to  this  is  the  comment  of  a  lady  to  her  friend  when  the 
curtain  fell  at  the  end  of  the  last  scene  in  the  play  when  Signora  Duse 
took  the  part  of  Cleopatra.  "  What  a  contrast  to  the  Court  of  our 
late  beloved  Queen  !  "— E.  C. 


GEORGE   GISSING  189 

Welbeck  Abbey.  I  had  a  vague  idea  that  Welbeck 
Abbey  belonged  to  some  ducal  house — Bedford,  perhaps  ? 
Do  you  by  any  chance  know  of  this  same  Goulding  ? 

"  Are  you  not  angered  by  the  course  of  the  Carlyle 
controversy  ?  This,  I  think,  is  decidedly  going  too  far. 
One  has  suspected  such  secrets,  but  why  the  '  many- 
headed  beast '  should  be  allowed  to  gloat  upon  them,  I 
cannot  understand.  The  affair  is  grossly  indecent,  in 
every  sense  of  the  word.  In  the  case  of  such  a  man 
as  Carlyle,  it  is  inevitable  that  the  external  facts  of  his 
domestic  life  should  be  written  about,  but  no  one  has 
any  business  to  go  beneath  the  surface  in  such  a  matter. 
Sufficient  to  know  that  his  marriage  was,  like  most 
marriages,  half  a  blessing  and  half  a  burden.  His  wife's 
view  on  the  matter  has  absolutely  no  relevance  for  the 
public. 

"  Note,  then,  I  beg  you,  my  new  address,  from 
July  1st ;  till  then  I  am  at  Ciboure.  I  wonder  where  you 
take  your  holiday  this  summer.  Is  your  house  by  the 
seaside  quite  finished?  Don't,  don't  speak  of  my 
coming  there  !  I  fear  I  shall  not  live  to  do  so,  and  the 
mere  thought  of  eating  an  English  potato  at  your  table 
makes  me  frantic  with  homesickness. 

"  My  wife  is  well,  and,  as  always,  desires  to  be  im- 
aginatively remembered  to  you. 

"  Ever  yours,  my  dear  Clodd, 
"  GEORGE  GISSING." 


"  Ispoure,  St.  Jean  Pied-de-Port,  B.  P.,  France, 

"  October  17,  1903. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

'  Your  holiday  is  over,  and  I  hope  it  makes  a 
pleasant  memory.  I  am  drawn  every  day,  in  spirit,  to 
that  other  side  of  Europe.  Here  I  cannot  feel  myself 


190  MEMORIES 

at  home ;  the  country  has  no  true  charm  for  me ;  I  want 
to  feel  the  Mediterranean  somewhere  near.  But  the 
fact  is  that  I  have  greatly  improved  in  health,  and  it 
would  not  be  wise  to  move  while  I  profit  so  much  by 
the  Basque  air.  Next  summer,  if  all  goes  well,  I  shall 
take  a  month  or  two  in  England,  and  then  we  must 
have  a  talk. 

"  Hearty  thanks  for  the  photographs  of  your  seaside 
house;  I  am  glad  to  have  them.  Book-shelves  in  the 
hall  are  delightfully  suggestive  of  an  overflow  of  all 
good  things.  It  must  be  a  great  satisfaction  to  you  to 
sit  down  under  that  ancestral  roof,  and  feel  that  you 
have  renewed  its  strength,  and  that  beneath  it  is  peace 
for  you  to  the  end  of  days.  The  one  thing  I  greatly 
envy  any  man  is  the  possession  of  a  house.  I  never  had 
one  since  I  was  a  boy,  and  now,  I  fear,  never  shall. 

"  So  you  got  Hardy  to  Aldeburgh  at  Whitsuntide. 
After  a  silence  of  years,  I  wrote  to  him  not  long  ago 
and  have  had  a  pleasant  reply.  He  has  evidently 
ceased  to  write  fiction.  Odd  this  turning  to  verse  late 
in  life ;  but  I  suppose  he  wrote  much  of  it  when  he  was 
young  and  the  golden  years  call  to  him. 

"  During  the  summer  my  wife  and  I  had  a  few  days 
in  Spain.  We  went  over  the  pass  to  Roncesvalles,  and 
thence  to  Pamplona.  A  wonderful  difference  between 
the  twro  sides  of  the  Pyrenees — here  warm,  green, 
watered  valleys ;  there  a  rolling  plateau,  burnt  in  summer 
and  in  winter  deadly  cold,  without  a  stream,  almost 
without  a  tree.  It  was  very  Spain  the  moment  one 
had  descended  from  the  mountains.  Roncesvalles,  with 
its  great  monastery  set  amid  woods  and  meadows  on 
the  mountain-top,  would  be  a  flawless  bit  of  the  middle 
ages,  had  not  the  scoundrel  monks  recently  taken  away 
their  roof  of  red  tiles,  and  replaced  it  with  one  of  zinc — 


GEORGE   GISSING  191 

an  unspeakable  horror,  ruin  to  the  landscape.  There 
we  saw  the  maces  of  Roland  and  of  Oliver,  and  the 
slippers  of  Archbishop  Turpin,  with  many  another  relic 
more  trustworthy.  I  sat  for  an  hour  in  the  old  library, 
gazing  at  giant  folios  of  Fathers  and  Schoolmen,  and 
wished  I  could  have  had  a  year  of  peace  there,  to  read 
what  I  would. 

;'  Well,  I  am  getting  on  with  my  book.  I  am  now 
well  past  the  middle  of  Veranilda,  and  hope  (with 
trembling)  that  I  may  finish  by  the  end  of  the  year. 
I  don't  think  it  will  be  bad ;  at  all  events,  it  gives  me  a 
certain  pleasure  in  writing.  But  it  is  harder  work  than 
any  I  ever  did— not  a  line  that  does  not  ask  sweat  of 
the  brain. 

"  All  good  be  with  you.  If  you  have  time,  look  out 
for  Roberts' s  new  book,  Rachel  Marr.  I  have  read  it 
in  an  advance  copy,  and,  upon  my  word,  it  is  very 
strong — far  and  away  the  best  thing  he  has  ever  done ; 
in  fact,  the  thing  he  has  been  endeavouring  all  his  life. 

"  Ever  yours, 

"  GEORGE  GISSING." 

In  most  of  the  "  appreciations  "  of  Gissing,  which 
have  appeared  at  intervals,  undue  prominence  to  his 
portrayal  of  the  seamy  and  squalid  side  of  things  has 
obscured  what  had  more  abiding  attraction  for  him  than 
the  slums  of  New  Cut  and  Whitechapel.  As  the  fore- 
going letters  show,  he  loved  to  follow  along  the  lines 
of  the  old  civilizations.  Their  art,  letters  and,  what 
includes  both,  their  life,  fascinated  him  :  Homer,  Virgil, 
Horace  and  Tibullus  were  among  his  well-thumbed 
books.  He  cared  little  for  Plato  or  for  any  speculative 
writers ;  Aristotle  awoke  in  him  only  a  languid  interest ; 
but  as  for  the  Anabasis,  he  took  Xenophon  to  his  heart, 


192  MEMORIES 

for  did  he  not,  as  he  says  in  Henry  Ryecroft,  "  create  the 
historical  romance  "  ?  He  was  more  at  home  in  Rome 
and  Athens  than  in  Chicago,  and  never  came  more 
joyful  fulfilment  of  desire  than  when  he  was  able  to 
pass  beneath  the  arch  of  Titus  and,  later  on,  roam 
through  Magna  Graecia  with  the  letters  of  Cassiodorus 
for  company. 

THE  HUMBLE  ASPIRATIONS  OF  G.  G.,  NOVELIST 
"  Hoc  erat  in  votis  " 

"  O  could  I  encounter  a  Gillman,1 

Who  would  board  me  and  lodge  me  for  aye, 
With  what  intellectual  skill,  man, 
My  life  should  be  frittered  away  ! 

What  visions  of  study  methodic 
My  leisurely  hours  would  beguile  ! — 

I  would  potter  with  details  prosodic, 
I  would  ponder  perfections  of  style. 

I  would  joke  in  a  vein  pessimistic 

At  all  the  disasters  of  earth ; 
I  would  trifle  with  schemes  socialistic 

And  turn  over  Malthus  for  mirth. 

From  the  quiddities  quaint  of  Quintilian 

I  would  flit  to  the  latest  critiques; 
I  would  visit  the  London  Pavilion, 

And  magnify  lion-comiques. 

With  the  grim  ghastly  gaze  of  a  Gorgon 

I  would  cut  Andersonian  bores. 
I  would  follow  the  ambulant  organ 

That  jingles  at  publicans'  doors. 

In  the  odorous  alleys  of  Wapping 
I  would  saunter  on  evenings  serene ; 

When  the  dews  of  the  Sabbath  were  dropping 
You  would  find  me  on  Clerkenwell  Green. 

1  The  later  years  of  Coleridge's  life  were  spent  under  the  hospitable 
roof  of  Mr.  Gillman  at  Highgate. 


GEORGE   GISSING  198 

At  the  Hall  Scientific  of  Bradlaugh 

I  would  revel  in  atheist  rant, 
Or  enjoy  an  attack  on  some  bad  laws 

By  the  notable  Mrs.  Besant. 

I  would  never  omit  an  oration 

Of  Cunninghame  Graham  or  Burns ; 
And  the  Army  miscalled  of  Salvation 

Should  finish  my  frolic  by  turns. 

Perchance  I  would  muse  o'er  a  mystic ; 

Perchance  I  would  booze  at  a  bar ; 
And  when  in  a  mind  journalistic 

I  would  read  the  Pall  Matt  and  the  Star. 

Never  more  would  I  toil  with  my  quill,  man, 

Or  plead  for  the  publisher's  pay. 
O  where  and  0  where  is  the  Gillman, 

Who  will  lodge  me  and  board  me  for  aye  ?  " 

HOPE  IN  VAIN 

"  Mine,  O  love,  you  were  mine  for  an  hour, 

You  and  the  world  for  an  hour  were  mine ; 

For  the  world  with  its  beauty  and  joy  and  power 

Lay  here,  flung  at  my  feet  as  dower, 

In  the  hour  when  life  had  grown  divine, 
And  you,  O  love,  were  mine,  all  mine. 

Flowers  of  face  and  fire  of  soul, 

Breath  of  your  life  for  an  hour  was  mine ; 

And  the  god  of  gods  in  whose  control 

Is  the  lightning  flash  and  the  thunder's  roll 
Knew  never  a  joy  that  was  more  divine 
Than  mine  in  the  hour  when  I  call'd  you  mine. 

Honey  of  lips  and  the  bosom's  beat, 

And  the  warm,  soft  arms  for  an  hour  were  mine, 
And  the  eager  pulse  of  hastening  feet 
Whose  echoes  the  words  of  love  repeat, 

And  the  sweet,  low  voice,  and  the  eyes'-  star-shine, 

All  of  them,  all,  for  an  hour  were  mine. 

All  that  the  years  to  come  could  show 

Throng'd  in  the  hour  when  you  were  mine  : 

Rapture  of  meeting,  and  parting's  woe, 

Tears,  and  passion's  sunset  glow, — 

Till  I  drank  the  wine  of  a  death  divine 
From  the  lips  whose  kisses  were  mine,  all  mine. 
O 


194  MEMORIES 

Alas,  alas,  that  it  all  was  a  dream, 

Only  a  dream  that  you  were  mine  ! 
And  that  one  hour  with  its  golden  gleam, 
Floated  past,  like  a  rose  on  the  stream, 

Tells  me  that  never  an  hour  shall  shine, 
Never  for  ever,  to  make  you  mine." 

G.  G. 
Hastings,  July  25,  1883. 

"  I  am,"  he  says,  "  in  a  great  hurry  to  get  into  Calabria 
before  much  snow  falls  on  the  mountains."  Arrived 
there,  he  sent  me  this  little  picture  :  "  What  say  you 
to  a  greeting  from  Cotrone?  The  town  is  on  the  site 
of  the  old  Acropolis;  indeed  there  has  been  a  town 
here  since  Pelasgian  days.  To  the  south  the  long 
Lucinian  promontory  with  one  last  column  (twenty-six 
feet  high,  visible  from  afar  like  a  lighthouse)  of  the 
great  temple  of  Hera.  Three  hundred  years  ago  an 
ecclesiastical  scoundrel  demolished  the  temple  to  build 
his  disgusting  Palazzo  here.  Strange  to  be  walking  on 
the  shore  of  a  ghostly  region." 

This  tempts  to  quotation  of  the  touching  words  which 
close  his  delightful  By  the  Ionian  Sea. 

"  Alone  and  quiet  I  hear  the  washing  of  the  waves ; 
I  saw  the  evening  fall  on  cloud -wreathed  Etna,  the 
twinkling  lights  come  forth  from  Scylla  and  Charybdis ; 
and,  as  I  looked  my  last  towards  the  Ionian  Sea,  I 
wished  it  were  mine  to  wander  endlessly  amid  the 
silence  of  the  ancient  world,  to-day  and  all  its  sounds 
forgotten." 

Let  me  say  for  myself  and,  perchance,  for  others  who 
knew  him  in  equal  intimacy,  that  there  is  pleasure  in 
turning  from  Born  in  Exile  and  New  Grub  Street  (which 
to  him  had  meant  No  Grub  Street)  to  thought  of  those 


GEORGE  GISSING  195 

serener  days  when  he  gave  us  The  Private  Papers  of 
Henry  Eyecroft  and  to  Veranilda,  his  historical  romance 
of  the  sixth  century,  the  writing  of  which  gave  him 
utmost  pleasure.  And  there  is  gladness  in  the  reflec- 
tion that,  after  storm-tossed  years,  with  their  carking 
cares,  there  came  a  season,  all  too  brief,  when  the  weary 
soul  could  rest  beside  green  pastures  and  still  waters. 

One  lie  about  him  should  be  nailed  to  the  counter. 
The  ecclesiastical  soul-snatchers,  on  the  news  of  Gissing's 
death,  spread  a  report  that  he  had  passed  away  in  "  the 
fear  of  God's  Holy  Name  and  with  the  comfort  and 
strength  of  the  Catholic  Faith  "  (Church  Times,  January 
9,  1904).  The  falsehood  was  based  on  the  fact  that 
his  devoted  Gabrielle,  thinking  that  he  would  be  glad 
to  see  an  English  face,  asked  the  chaplain  of  St.  Jean 
de  Luz  to  call  on  him.  But  he  was  already  in  the 
"  hour  and  article  of  death,"  and  only  able  to  shake 
the  chaplain  by  the  hand.  Could  he  have  chosen  what 
words  should  be  read  at  such  a  time,  these  would  not 
have  been  from  the  "  Prayer  for  the  Visitation  of  the 
Sick  "  in  the  Prayer  Book,  with  its  catechism  as  to  a 
dying  man's  belief.  Like  Mr.  Lawrence  in  the  New 
Republic,  more  probably,  he  would  have  asked  for  some 
passages  from  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  chapters  of 
the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire. 


XVI 

WILLIAM  HOLMAN-HUNT  (1827-1910) 

MY  relative,  Sir  Robert  Pearce  (M.P.  for  the  Leek 
Division  of  Staffordshire),  took  me  in  July  1880  to  his 
friend,  the  late  Robert  Hannah,  for  a  game  of  bowls 
and  supper  to  follow.  There,  to  my  pleased  surprise, 
I  met  Holman-Hunt.  Hannah  had  given  promise  of 
excellence  as  a  portrait  painter,  but  marriage  to  a  rich 
woman  had  the  sorry  result  of  his  abandonment  of  art, 
and  what  little  energy  was  left  him  was  wasted  mainly 
in  investigation  into  spiritualism  and  in  stances  at 
home.  He  remained  only  an  acquaintance. 

When  I  was  invited  by  Holman-Hunt  to  his  house 
in  Warwick  Gardens,  talk  fell  on  his  early  days  and 
struggles,  and  he  told  me  the  story  given  in  his  Pre- 
Raphaelitism  and  the  Pre-Raphaelite  Brotherhood,  that, 
when  an  office  boy,  he  drew  a  portrait  of  an  old  Jewish 
fruit-seller  well  known  in  the  City  as  "  Hannah." 
"  Why,"  I  said  to  him,  "  when  I  was  a  youth  of  sixteen, 
some  years  after  you  had  left  clerking  for  art,  old  Hannah 
was  still  carrying  her  basket  about  Aldermanbury  and 
I  often  used  to  sneak  off  my  stool  to  buy  from  her 
apples  and  penny  screws  of  almonds  and  raisins."  He 
heard  this  with  amused  surprise  :  it  created  a  bond 
between  us  :  it  awoke  a  grateful  feeling  towards  the  old 
Jewess  who,  all  unwittingly,  formed  a  link  in  a  friendship 
that  was  my  possession  for  thirty  years. 

With  a  rare  frankness,  which  was  one  of  many  attrac- 

196 


WILLIAM  HOLMAN-HUNT  197 

tive  qualities  endearing  him  to  his  friends,  Holman- 
Hunt  has  in  the  above-named  book  told  the  story  of  his 
life,  and  of  the  movement  to  which  he  gave  the  foremost 
impulse.  He  was  ever  a  fighter,  yet  none  the  less  an 
incarnation  of  patience.  I  shall  not  forget  his  indig- 
nation when  on  a  visit  to  Oxford  he  found  that  the 
authorities  of  Keble  College,  to  whom  "  The  Light  of  the 
World  "  had  been  bequeathed  by  the  widow  of  Thomas 
Combe,  its  original  purchaser,  had  shifted  the  picture 
into  a  perilous  place  near  some  hot-water '  pipes,  had 
altered  the  motto,  and  were  charging  the  public  sixpence 
to  see  it.  He  at  once  set  to  work  to  paint  a  replica 
which,  after  being  exhibited  round  the  colonies,  was 
given  by  its  owner,  Mr.  Charles  Booth,  to  the  Dean  and 
Chapter  of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral.  It  hangs  in  the 
southern  aisle. 

Apropos  of  the  original  "  Light  of  the  World,"  the 
subjoined  letter  deals  with  the  central  figure,  supplying 
details  which  are  not  given  in  Pre-Raphaelitism — 


"  Draycott  Lodge,  Fulham, 
"January  11,  1898. 

MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  have  been  shut  up  in  my  bedroom  for  the 
last  eight  days  with  an  attack  of  bronchial  asthma, 
which  came  upon  me  very  suddenly.  I  am  not  yet 
released,  but  I  am  able  to  write  a  few  lines  to  a  good 
friend. 

'  Your  marked  copy  of  the  Chronicle  came  in  due 
course.  What  Mr.  Bell  says  about  Miss  Christina  Rossetti 
sitting  for  the  head  in  the  '  Light  of  the  World  '  (after 
what  you  know  of  my  having  used  a  cast  from  a  clay 
model  made  by  me,  with  a  variety  of  male  sitters,  my 
father,  Millais,  John  Capper  and,  in  person,  furtively 


198  MEMORIES 

from  Carlyle,  also  from  many  departed  heroes  in  effigy — 
the  best  I  could  get  serving  as  my  models  for  different 
parts  of  the  head),  would  naturally  raise  a  question  in 
your  mind,  but  what  he  states  is  true,  because  I  felt 
that  I  had  secured  the  male  character  in  the  head.  As 
I  had  to  have  some  living  being  for  the  colour  of  the 
flesh — with  growth  of  eyebrows  and  eyelashes,  the 
solemn  expression,  when  the  face  was  quiescent,  of  Miss 
Rossetti  promised  to  help  me  with  some  shade  of 
earnestness  I  aimed  at  getting,  and  so  I  felt  grateful  to 
Mrs.  R.  and  herself  when  they  promised  to  come  to 
Chelsea  one  morning.  I  had  only  one  sitting,  and  spite 
of  my  general  plan  then  of  relying  upon  one  painting 
for  my  final  effect,  I  did  later-on  touch  on  the  head 
from  a  variety  of  men,  one  political  refugee  from  Paris 
lodging  above  me,  for  his  beard,  being  among  the 
number.  When  Mr.  Bell  came  to  pump  me  I  was  glad 
to  be  able  to  appear  interested  enough  in  the  sepulchral 
poetess  to  remember  the  fact  of  her  sitting ;  for  the  whole 
idea  of  poetry  and  religion  which  she  represents,  and 
also,  which  Gabriel  is  so  adored  for,  seems  like  a  night- 
mare in  English  thought.  .  .  . 

"  Yours  affectionately, 

"  W.    HOLMAN-HUNT." 

The  letters  which  follow  at  the  end  explain  them- 
selves. That  under  date  June  10,  1888,  is  a  defence  of 
the  symbolism  with  which  nearly  all  Holman-Hunt's 
pictures  are  charged.  ("  Art  is  not  a  rebus,"  said 
Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  to  me,  at  one  of  Sir  Henry 
Thompson's  "  Octaves.")  I  possess  a  photogravure 
of  his  "  Strayed  Sheep,"  a  gift  from  him,  and  when 
praising  the  beauty  of  the  drawing  of  the  sheep,  especially 
of  those  tangled  in  briars,  he  said  to  me,  "  But  does  not 


WILLIAM  HOLMAN-HUNT  199 

this  suggest  to  you  what  was  in  my  mind  ?  "  As  it 
didn't,  he  quoted  the  text,  "  Other  sheep  I  have,  which 
are  not  of  this  fold."  I  was  deeply  interested  in 
watching  the  progress  from  start  to  finish  of  the 
"  Miracle  of  the  Holy  Fire  in  the  Church  of  the  Sepulchre 
at  Jerusalem."  l  In  that  case  the  symbolism  which 
appealed  to  me  had  not,  I  gathered,  been  intended  by 
him.  To  see  in  that  church,  within  whose  walls  one 
might  expect  all  sweet  and  gentle  influences  to  rule, 
the  jostling  crowd  of  sects  "  that  profess  and  call  them- 
selves Christians  "  kept  from  flying  at  one  another's 
throats  by  the  muskets  of  the  Mohammedan  soldiers — 
44  Qa  donne  furieusement  d  penser." 

While  on  the  subject  of  his  pictures,  some  may 
remember  that  on  the  exhibition  of  his  latest  work, 
44  The  Lady  of  Shalott,"  a  rumour  that  the  larger  part 
of  it  was  painted  by  another  hand  had  credence.  Having 
seen  it  from  its  outline  on  the  canvas  and  at  frequent 
intervals  during  its  progress,  I  can  affirm  that  all  the 
essential  part  of  the  picture  was  his  work,  and  that  only 
in  the  later  stages,  when  near  its  completion,  did  his 
blindness  compel  him  to  call  in  the  help  of  an  artist- 
friend.  Never  a  murmur  escaped  his  lips  when  he 
could  no  longer  see  to  paint.  He  said  to  me, 4'  I  have  no 
reason  to  grumble,  when  for  more  than  eighty  years 
my  eyes  have  served  me  well." 

Much  has  been  said  by  critics  on  Holman-Hunt's 
over-elaboration  of  his  work,  and  this  has  some  founda- 
tion. With  his  usual  candour  he  inserted  in  his  book 
the  comment  of  a  Mr.  Lee,  head  of  a  popular  art  school 
in  London,  who  said,  4t  Holman-Hunt  is  so  superlatively 
conscientious  that  were  he  painting  a  picture  in  which 

1  A  detailed  description  of  the  church  and  ceremony  is  given  in  an 
appendix  to  Pre-Raphaelitism,  Vol.  II.  pp.  421-432. 


200  MEMORIES 

Everton  toffee  had  to  be  introduced  he  would  not  be 
satisfied  unless  he  went  to  Everton  to  paint  it."  Upon 
this,  he  wrote  in  his  book,  "  Such  comments  were 
harmlessly  amusing."  As  with  his  work,  so  with  his 
talk.  Everything  was  related  in  minutest  detail,  poured 
forth  from  a  phenomenal  memory,  suggesting  the  story 
of  the  Irish  sailor  who,  hauling-in  what  seemed  an 
interminable  rope,  said,  "  Sure  they've  cut  off  the  end 
of  it." 

One  Whitsuntide  he  told  the  story  of  a  pretty  girl  of 
humble  class  whom  he  had  engaged  as  his  model. 
There  was  the  making  of  an  intelligent  woman  in  her, 
and,  good-hearted  to  the  core,  he  had  arranged  to  have 
her  educated,  possibly,  so  he  hinted,  with  a  view  to 
marrying  her.  But  Rossetti,  whose  principles  were 
exceedingly  lax,  beguiled  the  girl  away  from  him. 
Years  afterwards  Holman-Hunt  met  her  by  chance, 
a  buxom  matron  with  a  carriage  full  of  children,  on 
Richmond  Hill,  and  learned  that  she  had  married  happily. 
A  very  simple  story,  but  recited  in  so  vivid  a  minuteness 
as  to  hold  the  hearers  spellbound ;  the  reciter's  wonder- 
ful memory  supplying  the  actual  conversations  between 
the  artist  and  his  model,  and  between  him  and  Rossetti. 
It  began  in  the  afternoon,  it  went  on  through  dinner 
to  bedtime,  it  was  finished  the  next  morning,  by  which 
time  it  had  reached  the  length  of  Sir  Charles  Grandison. 
Grant  Allen  was  impressed  beyond  measure.  He  saw 
materials  for  a  powerful  novel  in  the  story.  As  he  said 
to  me,  "  You  know  I  am  always  on  the  look-out  for 
4  copy,'  but  it  wouldn't  be  4  cricket '  to  use  that 
plot." 

Holman-Hunt  was  an  omnivorous  reader ;  history,  of 
course,  mainly  that  of  art,  poetry  and  travel  books  were 
his  chief  favourites,  and  like  men  of  his  time  who  had 


WILLIAM  HOLMAN-HUNT  201 

Nonconformist  upbringing,  he  knew  his  Bible  au  fond. 
He  was  more  orthodox  than  heterodox,  although  he 
did  not  attend  any  place  of  worship.  The  Patriarchs 
were  more  real  to  him  than  they  were  to  Canon  Driver,1 
and  he  believed  in  the  fulfilment  of  prophecy. 

"  I  have  heard  you  say,"  he  wrote  in  a  letter  to  me, 
"  that  some  German  critic  found  out  two  hundred  and 
fifty  (or  something  like  it)  unfulfilled  prophecies  in 
the  Bible.  I  do  not  believe  the  Biblical  critics  one  bit. 
I  know  that  when  I  go  to  the  site  of  Tiberias  the  only 
city  I  see  standing  there  is  Tiberias,  the  one  which  most 
of  all  was  hateful  to  Jesus.  Not  one  word  was  uttered 
against  it  by  Jesus,  but  Capernaum  and  the  other 
humble  and  comparatively  pious  places  were  denounced 
and  doomed,  and  not  one  of  them  exists.  Go  to  Tyre, 
to  Sidon,  to  Askelon,  to  Gaza,  and  you  will  find  these 
all  ruined,  while  Jaffa,  Beyrout,  against  which  nothing 
was  said,  remain  where  they  were.  .  .  . 

"  If  the  dream  of  Isaiah,  or,  rather,  the  elaboration 
of  it  by  him  of  the  Kingdom  of  Peace  was  only  a  poetic 
imagination,  it  was  still,  we  may  contend,  an  evolution 
divinely  inspired,  for  in  this  century  is  it  not  being  taken 
up  and  enforced,  and  will  it  not,  despite  of  kings  and 
Bismarcks,  soon  be  fulfilled?"  [1914-16  supplies  the 
answer  in  the  negative.] 

"  I  send  this  letter  with  no  hope  of  converting  such 
a  heretic  as  you,  but  rather  to  confess  how  great  a 
heretic  I  myself  am  in  another  way  and  to  give  some 
of  my  reasons  in  Divine  Rule  and  yet  not  anything 
but  a  freethinker." 

So  the  Messianic  prophecies  were  very  real  to  Holman- 
Hunt,  despite  the  unanswerable  argument  of  Dr.  Reuss 
1  See  ante,  p.  16. 


202  MEMORIES 

that  Ahaz  would  have  had  no  consolation  if  the  prophet 
had  said  to  him,  "  Do  not  fear  these  two  kings,  because 
in  seven  hundred  and  fifty  years  the  Messiah  will  be 
born."  l  His  conception  of  the  nature  of  the  Jesus 
whom  it  was  his  delight  to  portray  was  more  Arian  than 
Athanasian.  He  accepted  as  valid  the  claims  made  on 
behalf  of  the  Divine  Sonship  of  Jesus  as  put  forth  in 
the  gospels,  and  the  world  into  which  he  believed  his 
Saviour  has  withdrawn  was  very  real  to  him,  to  whom 
the  spiritual  was  the  actual. 

When  I  recall  all  that  he  said,  and  all  that  he  was  to 
me,  I  apply  to  him  what  Jesus  said  of  Nathaniel  : 
11  Behold  an  Israelite  indeed,  in  whom  is  no  guile." 


"  4,  King  Edward  Street,  Oxford, 

"  June  10,  1888. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  should  greatly  like  to  come  down  to  Aldeburgh 
and  meet  Grant  Allen  there.  But  I  feel  very  strongly 
the  importance  of  making  use  of  all  the  opportunities 
left  me  by  my  ailment  to  get  over  my  much  affected 
fortunes — and  this  subject  at  Magdalen  I  have  set 
myself  to  seems  to  me  an  important  one  for  me  to  have 
painted  next  year,  when  as  I  calculate  my  exasperating 
piece  will  be  a  picture  of  the  Lady  of  Shalott.  An  old 
gentleman  who  has  the  greatest  desire  to  look  favourably 
upon  my  art  pretensions  sometimes  visits  my  studio, 
and  asks  to  have  the  opportunity  of  talking  with  my 
wife  alone,  and  when  with  her  he  reveals  that  his  anxiety 
is  that  she  should  use  her  influence  to  persuade  me  to 
give  up  painting  pictures  with  mystic  suggestions  in 
them.  He  says,  '  Your  husband,  believe  me,  has  a 
partiality  for  mysteries  which  is  unfortunate  for  his 

1  Les  Prophetes,  Vol.  I.  p.  233. 


WILLIAM  HOLMAN-HUNT  208 

reception  by  the  world,  for  all  feel  the  difficulty  of 
defending  such  fancies.  If  I  could  I  would  persuade 
him  to  paint  out  the  strange  orb  in  the  Innocent 
painting,  but  I  have  tried  in  vain;  now  I  see  a  canvas 
with  a  female  figure  outlined  on  it — the  hair  blown 
upwards  in  the  most  unnatural  and  ungainly  manner, 
and  not  only  this,  but  a  web  tossing  itself  about  in  the 
most  confusing  manner.  Now  I  trust  you  can  prevail 
upon  him  to  paint  something  more  in  accordance  with 
sober  common  sense.'  Well,  the  old  gentleman  very 
faithfully  represents  the  fashion  among  picture  fanciers 
of  this  day  !  They  hate  imaginative  works  unless  they 
are  of  such  simple  characters  that  valentines  and  copy- 
books have  made  people  familiar  with  from  babyhood  1 
4  Evil  communications  corrupt  good  manners,*  done  in 
human  figures,  with  the  assurance  made  that  the  stout 
dark  figures  are  the  evil  communications  and  the  fair 
graceful  ones  the  good  manners.  Or  an  original  idea 
of  love  shooting  at  the  heart  of  some  one,  or  uniting  a 
couple  with  garlands.  Now  I  count  upon  the  Magdalen 
singing  scene  *  as  really  one  without  offence  in  it.  The 
old  gentleman  will  be  reassured  of  my  sanity ;  and  the 
public  may  even  look  at  my  other  pictures  with  more 
toleration,  and  it  may,  while  quite  satisfying  me  as  a 
subject  of  the  matter-of-fact  kind,  bring  much  needed 
grist  to  the  mill,  so  I  must  not  allow  myself  to  think  of 
my  own  pleasure  in  the  shape  of  recreation. 

"It  is  hard  work  to  get  up  at  a  quarter  to  four  and 
wind  my  way  up  the  narrow  and  steep  stairs  of  the 
tower,  and  paint  till  half-past  eleven  or  twelve  without 
regular  breakfast,  but  I  have  got  a  deal  of  my  scene 
done  and  soon  I  shall  begin  on  the  figures. 

1  The  reference  is  to  the  picture,  "May  Morning  on  Magdalen 
Tower." 


204  MEMORIES 

"  I  am  obliged  to  dress  to  go  out  to  dinner,  so  I  can 
write  not  more  than  that  I  wish  you  a  pleasant  holiday. 
"  Yours  affectionately, 

"  W.    HOLMAN-HUNT." 

"  25,  Holywell  Street,  Oxford, 
"  December  31,  1888. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  am  kept  here  with  my  picture,  but  the  people 
are  most  pleasant  and  kind  and  the  dons  at  Magdalen 
help  me  to  the  utmost.  In  a  week  I  may,  perhaps,  be 
beginning  to  think  of  moving,  and  when  I  come  home 
I  shall  feel  that  part  of  the  work  which  of  necessity  has 
been  trying  has  been  overcome  and  I  shall  enjoy  the 
delights  of  home  not  without  a  sense  that  I  have  earned 
them.  So  far,  I  think,  the  impression  grows  as  my 
picture  advances  that  it  is  a  very  worthy  subject  and 
growing  in  interest.  It  is  an  advantage,  of  course,  to 
work  with  such  a  feeling  and  so  one  encourages  shutting 
one's  eyes  too  much  at  times  to  other  possibilities,  but 
with  a  few  weeks  more  work  the  parts  will  come  together 
and  then  we  shall  be  able  to  sit  in  judgment  on  it. 
You  must  come,  then,  and  pronounce  your  verdict. 
"  Yours  affectionately, 

"  W.  HOLMAN-HUNT." 

"  Draycott  Lodge,  Fulham, 
"  May  6,  1889. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  What  old  sticks  the  Dean  and  Chapter  of  St. 
Paul's  are.  They  are  putting  up  some  mosaics  about 
as  dead  as  Thothmes  III,  and  what  a  splendid  life  it 
would  be  to  illustrate,  if  done  with  real  intelligence  and 
instinct !  Imagine  the  great  scope  for  consistent 
contrast  there  would  be  with  the  zealous  and  fiery 


WILLIAM  HOLMAN-HUNT  205 

creature  standing  by  at  the  death  of  St.  Stephen;  the 
heavens  opened  the  while.  And  then  his  vision;  his 
wilderness  life;  his  preaching;  his  tent-making;  his 
domestic  teaching;  his  writing  by  the  hands  of  an 
amanuensis ;  his  imprisonments ;  trials  in  the  arena  at 
Ephesus  and  in  the  Court ;  his  position  when  4  all  had 
forsook  me  and  fled,'  and  '  but  Christ  the  Lord  stood 
by  me.'  I  can  scarcely  imagine  a  more  splendid  series 
of  subjects  of  which  I  have  included  but  half,  and  to 
see  sprawling  figures  in  feeble  imitation  of  M.  Angelo, 
with  angels  to  match,  having  wings  on  shoulders  drawn 
with  writing-master's  flourish  against  a  gold  background, 
is  to  me  an  exhibition  of  silliness  that  induces  me  to 
say,  '  I  do  not  like  either  art  or  religion.' 

"  Yours  affectionately, 

"  W.  HOLMAN-HUNT." 


"  Draycott  Lodge,  Fulham,  S.W. 

"  April  3,  1899. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  Among  my  birthday  gifts  yesterday  not  the 
least  welcome  was  the  pretty  little  volume  of  the 
Rubdiydt  by  Omar  Khayyam,  with  your  very  pertin- 
ent inscription  and  quotation  in  front.  He,  or  it  may  be 
Edward  FitzGerald,  in  parts,  as  some  say,  is  such  a  jolly 
philosopher  of  the  expect-nothing  kind,  that  he  is  always 
a  treat  to  read  and,  for  his  poetic  gems,  a  lasting  glory. 
He  is  very  bracing  in  the  couplet  you  quote,  and  I  hope 
that  both  of  us  will  still  be  able  to  add  much  to  our  quota 
of  new  work,  although  it  will  be  done  by  me  without 
any  dimming  of  the  other  tent-maker's  dream. 
"  Yours  ever  affectionately, 

"  W.  HOLMAN-HUNT." 


206  MEMORIES 

"  18,  Melbury  Road,  Kensington,  W. 

"  July  4,  1909. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  If  now  your  extra  tax  of  the  half  year  is  a 
little  lightened  and  you  have  any  rare  leisure,  I  think 
you  might  find  it  worth  while  to  run  in  to  Christie's 
before  the  Quilter  sale  of  next  week.  The  collection  is 
one  of  very  catholic  interest,  which  used  in  the  days  of 
smoking  parties  at  the  hospitable  house  in  Audley  Street 
to  be  an  endless  source  of  delight  to  people  of  varied 
taste  in  art.  Among  the  good  Dutch  paintings,  one 
head  of  the  Burgomaster  would  claim  admiration  in 
any  gallery  of  Sir  Joshua's.  '  Venus  a  piping  boy ' 
is  an  enchanting  example  of  this  master's  when  he 
wandered  out  of  the  realms  of  portraiture.  Among 
many  excellent  examples  of  modern  English  painters, 
Frederick's  Walker's  '  Bathers  '  is  a  delectable  breezy 
painting.  When  I  look  at  the  i  Scapegoat,'  the  days 
of  peril  and  exhilarating  adventure  I  passed  down  at 
the  extreme  end  of  the  Dead  Sea  come  back  to  me 
vividly ;  and  it  is  a  pleasant  memory  that  Sir  Cuthbert, 
when  a  schoolboy  home  from  the  holidays,  seeing  the 
picture  for  the  first  time  at  the  Royal  Academy,  deter- 
mined if  ever  it  were  "in  his  power  in  mature  life  to 
purchase  it,  he  would  do  so. 

'*  After  twenty  or  so  years  the  opportunity  came  when 
Sir  Thomas  Fairbairn  sent  all  his  pictures  to  Christie's 
and  then  Sir  Cuthbert  became  the  possessor.  Of  course, 
Edith  will  go  to  see  the  pictures  and  I  shall  hear  from  her 
how  the  '  Scapegoat '  looks  as  to  varnish. 
"  Believe  me, 

"  Yours  affectionately, 

"  W.    HOLMAN-HUNT." 


XVII 
ANDREW  LANG  (1844-1912) 

"  I  OWN  I  do  not  see  the  use  of  lives  of  penmen  not 
being  Johnsons  or  Scotts.  .  .  .  Have  you  biographed 
Allen  ?  By  all  the  Totems  no  mortal  shall  do  aught  of 
the  sort  for  me,"  wrote  Andrew  Lang  to  me.  Although 
he  was  the  author  of  monographs  on  Lockhart,  Tennyson 
and  others,  and  of  The  Life,  Letters  and  Diaries  of  Sir 
Stafford  Northcote,  he,  in  another  letter  to  me,  wanted 
"  some  short  way  with  the  '  Life  and  Letters  '  plague." 

Grant  Allen  told  me  that  he  was  sure  that  Andrew 
Lang  had  gipsy  blood  in  his  veins.  Swarthy-com- 
plexioned,  and  dark-eyed,  he  looked  it,  and  in  his  Grass 
of  Parnassus  sings  about  it — 

"  Ye  wanderers  that  were  my  sires, 

Who  read  men's  fortunes  in  the  hand, 
Who  voyaged  with  your  smithy  fires 

From  waste  to  waste  across  the  land. 
Why  did  you  leave  for  earth  and  town 

Your  life  by  heath  and  river's  brink, 
Why  lay  your  gypsy  freedom  down 

And  doom  your  child  to  pen  and  ink  ?  " 

His  father  was  John  Lang  of  Selkirk;  his  mother's 
maiden  name  was  Jane  Sellar.  (The  name  recalls  his 
delightful  Memoir  of  his  uncle,  Professor  Sellar,  prefaced 
to  the  posthumous  volume  on  Horace  and  the  Elegiac 
Poets).  He  was  educated  at  Edinburgh  and  St. 
Andrews  Universities  and  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford, 
where  he  took  a  first  in  Mods,  and  in  Greats,  securing 

207 


208  MEMORIES 

election  to  a  fellowship  at  Merton  in  1868.  From  thence 
until  his  death  his  career  was  wholly  that  of  a  man  of 
letters.  Neither  in  golf,  nor  in  either  fishing  or  cricket 
did  he  excel ;  but,  in  the  spirit  of  Pindar,  he  sung  their 
praises. 

His  marvellous  versatility  (the  list  of  books  which  he 
wrote  or  edited  fills  sixteen  pages  of  the  British  Museum 
Catalogue)  has  obscured  much  in  his  work  which  is  of 
abiding  value.  This  was  in  the  twin  sciences  of  Folk- 
lore and  Comparative  Mythology.  Invaluable  as  these 
services  are  to  students  of  the  history  of  civilization,  the 
general  public  knows  little  and  cares  less  about  them, 
because  the  readers  who  looked  to  Andrew  Lang  for 
entertainment  far  outnumbered  those  who  sought 
instruction  from  him.  As  no  biography  of  him  is  prob- 
able, the  tribute  to  his  serious  work  should  not  fail  of 
record  so  far  as  an  old  friend  can  contribute  to  that 
service.  Only  those  who  were  born  two  generations 
back  can  remember  the  stir  made  by  Max  Muller 
on  the  publication  of  his  article  on  "  Comparative 
Mythology  "  in  the  Oxford  Essays  in  1856.  His  facile 
pen  drew  an  attractive  picture  of  the  ancestors  of  the 
leading  nations  of  Europe,  and  of  certain  peoples  in 
Asia,  dwelling  on  the  Bactrian  uplands,  speaking  a  tongue 
and  possessing  a  mythology  which  supplied  the  key  to 
the  language,  legends  and  traditions  of  the  Indo- 
European  races.  That  key,  Max  Muller  argued,  was 
found  in  tracing  to  their  root-elements  the  names  of 
Vedic  gods  and  heroes  which  he  and  Sir  George  Cox 
interpreted  as  those  of  the  sun,  the  dawn  and  other 
natural  phenomena.  Hence  was  formulated  that  "  Solar 
theory  "  which  so  dominated  us  for  many  years  as  to 
call  forth  Matthew  Arnold's  humorous  complaint  that 
11  One  could  scarcely  look  at  the  sun  without  having  the 


ANDREW  LANG  209 

sensations  of  a  moth."  Max  Miiller  contended  that  the 
meaning  of  the  name  gave  the  clue  to  the  meaning  of  the 
myth,  and  that  the  presence  of  coarse  and  grotesque 
features  in  the  mythology  of  Hindu,  Greek,  Roman  and 
Teuton  was  mainly  due  to  what  he  called  "  disease  of  lan- 
guage," by  which  the  primitive  and  purer  nature-myth 
was  corrupted.  E.  g.  the  story  of  Kronus  devouring 
his  offspring  was  the  result  of  a  vulgar  misunder- 
standing of  the  swallowing  of  the  Days  by  Time.  The 
theory  won  well-nigh  universal  acceptance,  and  held  the 
field  for  years  until  doubt  was  thrown  on  the  validity 
of  the  equations ;  e.  g.  while  Max  Miiller  translated  the 
Vedic  goddess  Urvasi  as  "  the  dawn,"  Dr.  Roth  trans- 
lated that  name  as  "  lewd  or  wanton  "  !  One  by  one 
the  assumed  equations  were  challenged,  with  the  result 
that  scarcely  any  have  survived  the  more  rigid  tests  of 
a  later  comparative  philology. 

Working,  as  he  says,  "  in  giant  ignorance  of  Mann- 
hardt,"  on  the  same  lines  of  enquiry,  Lang  reached  the 
conclusion  shrewdly  anticipated  by  Fontenelle,  a  nephew 
of  Corneille,  more  than  a  century  and  a  half  ago,  that 
"  all  nations  invented  the  astounding  part  of  their 
myths  while  they  were  savages,  and  retained  them 
from  custom  and  religious  conservatism."  Hence,  to 
understand  the  ugly  and  crazy  myths  of  civilized  races, 
we  must  make  ourselves  familiar  with  the  thoughts, 
manners,  and  myths  of  races  who  are  now  in  the  same 
savage  state  as  were  the  prehistoric  ancestors  of  Greeks, 
Romans,  and  other  advanced  peoples.  This  method  is 
summarized  in  Andrew  Lang's  last  words  on  the  subject 
in  a  posthumous  review  published  nine  days  after  his 
death.  ;t  We  knew  little  about  the  evolution  of  religion, 
or  of  social  organizations  and  institutions,  or  of  mytho- 
logy, till  we  began  to  study  them  comparatively,  by 


210  MEMORIES 

observing  their  forms,  and  as  far  as  possible  their  develop- 
ment, among  all  peoples  of  whom  we  have  sufficient 
knowledge.'* 

It  is,  then,  in  his  original  contributions  towards  the 
supersession  of  the  philological  by  the  anthropological 
method  of  interpretation  that  the  folklorist  and  the 
comparative  mythologist  owe  Andrew  Lang  an  incalcul- 
able debt. 

One  of  his  hobbies  was  to  establish  a  working  alliance 
between  the  Folklore  Society  and  the  Society  for 
Psychical  Research.  He  wanted  the  Folklorist  to  see 
that  the  stories  about  ghosts,  wraiths  and  all  their  kind, 
were  within  his  province  to  deal  with.  And  he  wanted 
the  Psychical  Researcher  not  to  neglect  the  evidence 
furnished  by  savage  and  even  civilized  superstition  and 
aught  else  that  comes  under  the  purview  of  folklore. 
In  this  attempt  to  intervene  as  "  honest  broker " 
Psycho -Folklorist — as  he  dubbed  himself,  when  we 
had  a  bloodless  duel  over  a  Presidential  Address  of  mine 
to  the  Folklore  Society,  he  admitted  that  he  had  "  not 
quite  succeeded."  *•  Nor  is  success  possible  where  the 

1  This  Address  caused  some  commotion  in  the  staid  circles  of  the 
Folklore  Society.  Among  other  withdrawals  from  membership  the 
most  notable  was  that  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  said  that  he  might 
"  possibly  think  it  right  to  make  public  the  circumstances  "  com- 
pelling that  step.  To  my  regret,  he  never  did  this,  since  thereby  an 
interesting  controversy  would  have  resulted.  He  resented  my  refer- 
ence to  the  barbaric  element  surviving  in  the  Eucharist  as  adminis- 
tered in  Hawarden  Church.  Cards  on  which  a  hymn  was  printed 
were  distributed  among  the  congregation.  The  hymn  opened  with 
the  couplet — 

"  Jesu,  mighty  Saviour, 
Thou  art  in  us  now." 

In  was  printed  in  italics,  and  a  note  was  added  instructing  those  who 
did  not  communicate  to  sing  with  instead  of  in.  Obviously,  the 
idea  underlying  this  falls  into  line  with  the  barbaric  belief  that 
by  eating  anything  the  qualities  are  acquired.  Sir  J.  G.  Frazer's 


ANDREW  LANG  211 

evidence  of  fact  and  the  prepossessions  of  fancy  attempt 
harmony.  "  I  have,"  he  says,  "  been  unable  to  reach 
any  conclusion,  negative  or  affirmative." 

He  accepted  the  presidency  of  the  Society  for  Psychical 
Research,  but  his  attitude  towards  the  whole  business 
of  the  occult  was  that  of  the  doubter.  When  the 
Neapolitan  "  medium,"  Eusapia  Palladino,  the  "  humor- 
ist "  as  he  called  her,  was  detected  in  tricks  which  had 
"  deceived  the  very  elect,"  he  remarked  that  "  it  looked 
as  if  pyschical  research  does  somehow  damage  and  per- 
vert the  logical  faculty  of  scientific  minds."  Discussing 
these  matters  with  him  at  the  Savile  Club  some  years 
ago,  I  quoted  the  verse,  "  The  devils  also  believe  and 
tremble,"  when,  with  a  twinkle,  he  said,  "  I  don't 
believe,  but  I  tremble."  Nevertheless,  he  gave  some 
comfort  to  the  psychists  when,  reviewing  the  late 
F.  W.  H.  Myers'  Human  Personality  after  Death,  he 
wrote :  "I  think,  religious  faith  apart,  that  human 
faculty  lends  fairly  strong  presumption  in  favour  of  the 
survival  of  human  consciousness." 

As  Montaigne  says  of  Aristotle,  "  he  hath  his  oare  in 
every  water,"  so  of  Lang.  He  sailed  on  the  wide  sea  of 
Comparative  Theology,  exploring  many  a  country  on 
the  voyage.  And  no  unbiassed  mind  can  pursue  that 
survey  without  discovering  that  the  differences  between 
all  the  religions  of  the  world  are  of  degree  and  not  of 

Golden  Bough  supplies  numerous  examples.  Lang's  comment  was 
amusing  :  "  The  new  President  has  made  a  Speech  or  an  Address  or 
sent  a  Message  (perhaps  that  is  the  right  phrase  in  speaking  of  a 
President)  which  has  turned  the  friends  of  Cinderella  upside  down. 
What  it  was  all  about  I  know  not,  still  less  do  I  see  how  you  can,  con- 
stitutionally, proceed  against  a  President.  In  such  cases  it  is  usual 
to  try  assassination.  But  the  Folklore  Society,  if  discontented,  have 
magic  and  spells  at  their  command,  and  can  perforate  a  sheep's  heart 
with  pins,  to  their  President's  '  intention,'  as  Cardinal  Manning  and 
Newman  did  Masses  at  each  other." 


212  MEMORIES 

kind;  all  having  their  origin  and  impulse  in  man's 
material  needs ;  needs  born,  primarily,  of  hunger.  He 
does  "  not  live  by  bread  alone "  because,  as  Smith 
Minor  says,  "  he  would  die  of  thirst,"  but  he  cannot 
live  without  it,  and  in  food-quest  lies  the  beginnings 
of  every  religion.  All  this  Lang  made  the  subject  of 
several  books,  one  of  which,  Myth,  Ritual  and  Religion, 
had  the  envied  honour  of  being  put  on  the  Index 
Expurgatorius,  under  the  pontificate  of  Leo  XIII. 
Lang  sought  an  explanation  of  this  through  one  of  the 
English  Catholic  bishops,  but  it  was  not  accorded. 
That  was  in  1896.  The  Church  could  hardly  be  expected 
to  remove  from  the  Index  the  work  of  a  man  who  wrote 
flippantly  on  the  excommunication  of  Dr.  St.  George 
Mivart  by  Cardinal  Vaughan.  One  grievance  of  the 
prelate  against  the  biologist  was  that  he  didn't  believe 
in  the  story  in  Bel  and  the  Dragon  (vv.  36,  37),  that  an 
angel  picked  up  Habakkuk  by  the  hair  and  carried  him 
from  Jewry  to  share  his  soup  (was  it  broth  ?  Lang  asks), 
with  Daniel  in  Babylon.  Lang  chaffingly  regrets  that 
Mivart  didn't  swallow  the  soup  story  and  points  out 
that  it  has  several  parallels  in  the  phenomena  of 
Spiritualism.  One  of  these  is  that  of  a  lady  who  flew 
in  a  few  moments  from  Bays  water  to  Mr.  Stead's  house 
at  Wimbledon. 

Meeting  him  at  the  Savile  one  day,  he  saluted  me  as 
"  Brer  Jackal."  Seeing  me  puzzled,  he  said,  "  Haven't 
you  seen  the  Catholic  Month  ?  You  get  it  and  then  you'll 
know  why  I  called  you  that."  Which  I  did,  and  found 
in  the  issue  of  September  1898  a  fierce  review  of  Lang's 
Making  of  Religion  by  the  Rev.  G.  Tyrrell.  That  polite 
priest  starts  with  describing  "  the  Clodds,  the  Aliens, 
the  Langs  and  other  popularizers  of  the  uncertain 
results  of  evolution-philosophy,"  as  "of  the  crowd  of 


ANDREW  LANG  213 

sciolists  who  follow  like  jackals  in  the   lion's  wake  " ; 
the  lion  being  Sir  E.  B.  Tylor. 

Speaking  "  as  man  to  man,"  as  the  phrase  goes,  there 
was  an  elusiveness  and  reserve  in  Lang's  talk  on  religious 
subjects.  Matthew  Arnold,  in  his  Introduction  to 
Gray  in  the  English  Poets,  quotes  a  remark  of  James 
Brown,  Master  of  Pembroke  Hall,  Cambridge,  Gray's 
executor,  that  he  "  never  spoke  out."  And  this  applies 
to  Lang.  The  hesitancy  is  shown,  the  humorous  blended 
with  the  serious,  in  this  letter.  It  acknowledges  a  copy 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  sent  to  him  through  the  publisher, 

Kegan  Paul. 

"  1,  Marloes  Road,  W., 

"  November  24,  1880. 
"  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  have  not  yet  recovered  your  new  address  and 
am  constrained  to  thank  you  through  Paul  for  Jesus. 
This  sounds  not  such  a  very  wrong  thing  to  do.  If  we 
lived  in  a  properly  holy  country  I  would  certainly 
denounce  you  to  the  Inquisition. 

"I  confine  my  blameless  studies  to  the  evolution  of 
Heathen  gods  concerning  which  the  Prophet  assures  us 
that  they  are  vanity.  Then  I  have  no  lore  in  Israelite 
matters,  except  that  Robertson  Smith  says  Rachel 
and  Leah  were  Totems.  For  plentiful  ignorance  I 
cannot  criticize  you  except  that  I  miss  the  Resurrection 
in  your  biography.  This  is,  or  ought  to  be,  a  burning 
question,  but  alas  !  il  y  a  fagots  et  fagots  but  none  for 
the  heretic.  Perhaps  the  more  Christian  plan  would 
be  to  convert  you,  but  it  is  longer  and  more  uncertain 
and  less  amusing  to  a  faithful  people. 

"  With  many  thanks  all  the  same,  though  I  do  not 
fancy  we  can  agree  on  the  subject, 

"  Yours  very  truly, 

"  A.  LANG." 


214  MEMORIES 

Here  is  a  letter  on  a  less  controversial  matter — 

"  1,  Marloes  Road,  W., 

"  October  22,  1908. 
"  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  The  anthropologist  gets  as  near  his  primitive 
man  as  he  can,  far  enough  away ;  and  the  psychist  takes 
what  evidence  he  gets  to  go  to  a  jury.  However,  as 
you  are  rather  too  old  a  bird  to  learn  a  new  tune  (while 
the  older  bird  tries  to  pick  up  the  melodies  as  he  goes 
along),  here  is  a  curious  psychological  game  with  nothing 
in  it  to  shock  the  retrograde  and  obsolete.  You  make 
your  mind  as  blank  of  conscious  thought  as  you  can 
and  you  wait  for  the  words — rather  than  thoughts — 
that  pop  into  your  head.  As  one  rapidly  forgets,  you 
write  down  every  clause  and  wait  for  more.  The  result 
would  make  a  boiled  owl  laugh.  I  found  this  out  only 
to-day  and  have  been  giggling  over  the  records.  Do 
try  it ;  one  catches  an  aspect  of  one's  nature  hitherto 
veiled.  As  for  you,  as  you  see  illusions  hypnagogique 
the  faces  spoken  of  [I  had  told  Lang  that  sometimes, 
before  getting  to  sleep,  a  row  of  leering  faces  would 
pass  before  me],  you  are  much  more  hallucinable  than 
most  people.  I  find  that  most  people  not  only  don't 
see  them  but  don't  believe  that  anybody  does.  This 
is  the  true  scientific  spirit.  Bless  you,  I  do  not  exclude 
wild  animals,  but  we  have  evidence  as  to  their  psychic 
faculties.  Dogs,  one  knows,  and  cats  are  highly 
psychical,  but  we  have  no  companionship  with  tigers, 
etc. 

"  Yours  sincerely, 

"  A.  LANG." 

In  the  Morning  Post  of  the  same  date  Lang  describes 
the  experiment  referred  to  in  the  above  letter.     He 


ANDREW  LANG  215 

made  his  mind  as  blank  as  possible  and  watched  for 
any  words  that  floated  into  his  consciousness.  "  These 
words,"  he  says,  "  I  wrote  down.  The  results  were  very 
laughable.  My  own  way  of  writing  is  not  Johnsonian. 
But  the  style  of  my  unpremeditated  writings  was  full  of 
long  words.  The  first  words  almost  that  swam  uncalled 
into  my  ken  were,  '  Affability  is  the  characteristic  of  the 
dawdling  persecutor.'  A  longer  '  message  '  began  thus  : 
'  Observing  the  down-grade  tendency  of  the  Sympneu- 
matic  currents,  the  Primate  remarked  that  he  could  no 
longer  regard  Kafoozleum  as  an  aid  to  hortatory 
eloquence.'  ' 

Some  of  the  obituary  notices  of  him — that  of  The 
Times,  for  example,  spoke  of  a  "  touch  of  supercilious- 
ness in  his  manner,"  and  of  an  aloofness  which  barred 
intimacy.  Meredith  said  to  me  :  "  Lang  had  no  heart, 
otherwise  he  might  have  been  a  good  poet."  Had  Mere- 
dith known  him,  he  would  have  modified  his  judgment. 
I  told  him  so,  and  on  a  later  visit  I  took  him  Rhymes  a  la 
Mode,  that  he  might  read  at  least  one  poem,  the  touching 
Desiderium  written  in  memory  of  Miss  Alleyne,  Lang's 
sister-in-law.  Here  are  two  stanzas — 

"  Ah,  you  that  loved  the  twilight  air, 

The  dim-lit  hour  of  quiet  best, 
At  last,  at  last,  you  have  your  share 
Of  what  life  gave  so  seldom,  rest ! 

Yes,  rest  beyond  all  dreaming  deep, 

Of  labour,  nearer  the  Divine, 
And  pure  from  fret,  and  smooth  as  sleep, 

And  gentle  as  thy  soul,  is  thine." 

The  aloofness  was  only  skin-deep,  thin  as  the  epiderm. 
Once  penetrated,  the  warm  human  blood  was  felt,  and 
if  Andrew  Lang  was  not  of  the  rare  company  who  have 
a  genius  for  friendship,  those  who  came  to  know  him 


216  MEMORIES 

longest  learned  to  appreciate  him  most.  This  was  my 
experience,  and  the  testimony  may  have  more  weight 
because  our  points  of  view  sometimes  differed  funda- 
mentally, and  there  was  more  than  one  skirmish  between 
us.  These  only  emphasized  many  kindly  acts — not 
least  among  them  the  thankless  task,  voluntarily  offered, 
of  reading  one's  proofs — a  labour  which,  in  his  own  case, 
he  detested.  I  know  that  sometimes  he  gave  offence 
by  the  tone  of  his  reviews,  the  temptation  to  banter 
being  too  great  to  be  resisted.  But  he  bore  no  malice ; 
and  they  who  submit  their  wares  to  the  critic  must  not 
be  too  squeamish  over  the  verdict.  Andrew  Lang  well 
and  worthily  maintained  the  high  traditions  of  his 
calling,  and  in  the  sweetness  and  purity  of  home  life 
he  kept  himself  "  unspotted  from  the  world."  He  died 
at  Banchory,  and  rests,  "  Life's  tired-out  guest,"  under 
the  shadow  of  the  ruined  cathedral  of  his  beloved 
St.  Andrews. 


XVIII 

FRANCIS  HINDES  GROOME  (1851-1902) 

IF  there  was  no  gipsy  blood  in  Francis  Hindes  Groome, 
the  nomad,  which  is  primitive  and  persistent,  was 
strong  in  him.  He  was  the  second  son  of  FitzGerald's 
intimate  neighbour,  Robert  Hindes  Groome,  Archdeacon 
of  Suffolk  and  Rector  of  Monk  Soham,  whose  grand- 
father was  master  and  owner  of  the  Unity  lugger  in 
which  the  poet  Crabbe  sailed  to  London.  The  Hindes 
were  connections  of  ours,  but,  despite  arboreal  instincts, 
I  have  not  climbed  that  genealogical  tree  of  many 
branches.  The  old  captain  made  enough  money  to  buy 
the  advowson  of  Monk  Soham,  where,  in  succession,  the 
Groomes  were  rectors.  There  Francis  Hindes  Groome 
was  born  in  1851.  It  was  his  privilege  in  boyhood  to 
hear  his  father  and  FitzGerald  and  William  Bodham 
Donne  talk  "  like  chapters  out  of  George  Eliot's  novels," 
so  he  tells  us  in  his  delightful  Two  Suffolk  Friends, 
wherein  are  masterly  portraits  of  his  father  and  Fitz- 
Gerald. FitzGerald's  Letters  tells  us  how  he  loved  "  the 
Old  Giant  Handel;  whose  coursers  with  necks  with 
thunder  clothed  and  long  resounding  pace,  never  tire."  l 
In  contrast,  with  a  taste  less  classical,  the  Archdeacon 
sang  popular  songs  at  village  concerts.  At  one  of 
these,  a  brother  parson,  who  was  in  the  chair,  announced 
that  the  Reverend  Robert  Groome  would  sing  Thomas 
Bowling !  The  village  greens  and  commons  of  East 

1  Letters,  Vol.  I.  p.  86. 
217 


218  MEMORIES 

Anglia  were  much  more  than  now  the  squatting-grounds 
of  caravans  of  gipsies,  with  whom  young  Groome  made 
friends,  drinking-in  their  roving  spirit.  In  time  he  could 
rokka  Romanes,  "speak  Gipsy,"  better  than  Borrow; 
in  fact  I  have  heard  Watts-Dunton  say  that  Borrow's 
knowledge  of  gipsy  life  and  language  was  superficial 
compared  with  Groome's;  so  far  as  a  Gorgio  could  be 
initiated,  he  had  been  made  a  Romany.  It  gave 
Meredith  no  small  pleasure  when  Groome  praised  his 
character-drawing  of  Kiomo  in  Harry  Richmond. 
44  Chastity  of  nature,  intense  personal  pride,  were  as 
proper  to  her  as  the  free  winds  are  to  the  heaths,  they 
were  as  visible  to  dull  divination  as  the  milky  blue 
about  the  iris  of  her  eyeballs."  In  Groome's  romantic 
novel  Kriegspiel  his  character-drawing  of  the  gipsy 
Ercilla  Beschale  surpasses  Borrow's  Ursula  and  equals 
Cervantes'  Gitanilla.  Here  is  an  interesting  letter 
anent  Kriegspiel — 

"  3,  Whitehouse  Loan,  Edinburgh, 
"  January  19,  1896. 

44  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

44  I  mean  to  come  south  for  a  week  next  month, 
and  was  wondering  whether  by  any  chance  there  will 
be  an  O.K.  dinner  on  then,  for  if  so  I  could  time  my  visit 
accordingly.  I  am  just  bringing  out  a  very  novel  ven- 
ture in  the  form  of  a  novel,  4  Kriegspiel  the  War  Game,' 
the  obscurity  of  which  title  is  meant  to  be  elucidated  by 
the  quotation — 

"  *  But  helpless  Pieces  of  the  Game  He  plays 
Upon  this  Chequer-board  of  Nights  and  Days; 
Hither  and  thither  moves  and  makes  and  slays, 
And  one  by  one  back  in  the  Cupboard  lays/ 

It  is  a  very  sensational    story,  if   not    indeed  mildly 
improbable.     Lang,  who   read   it   in   MS.,    pronounces 


FRANCIS   HINDES   GROOME  219 

it  '  Exciting  and  unsound  :  only  isn't  the  butter  spread 
rather  thick  ?  '  Which,  I  think,  is  a  very  just  criticism. 
The  scene  is  laid  largely  in  Suffolk,  and  you  will  recog- 
nize some  of  the  localities — Par  ham  Hall,  with  bits  of 
Letheringham  and  Hengrave.  I  wish  its  success  may 
be  half  as  good  as  that  of  my  little  '  Two  Suffolk  Friends,' 
a  success  as  amazing  and  largely  ascribable  to  yourself. 
I  shall  send  you  an  early  copy. 

"  Ever  most  truly  yours, 

44  FRANK  H.  GROOME." 

"  Whitehouse  Loan,  Edinburgh, 
"  May  27,  1896. 

"  I  believe  I  have  to  thank  you  for  the  most  kindly 
review  of  the  great  novel  in  the  Sketch,  where  the  por- 
trait reminds  me  that  I  have  been  owing  you  a  photo 
for  months  and  years  :  at  last  I  repay  the  debt.  If 
the  exertions  of  friends  avail  aught  K.  should  be  a 
success,  still,  I  don't  think  of  turning  a  professional 
novel-writer.  No,  I  am  engaged  just  now  on  a  Universal 
Pronouncing  Biographical  Dictionary,  the  compiling 
of  which  is  fine,  busy-lazy  work,  and  whose  sale  will  beat 
that  of  all  novels  but  Marie  Corelli's. 

44  Two  days  ago  I  walked  twenty  miles  over  the  Cauld 
Stane  Step  (1,254  feet) ;  if  you  have  read  R.  L.  S.'s  Weir 
ofHermiston  you  should  know  where  that  is,  at  the  back 
of  the  Pentlands.  I  was  quite  proud  at  the  finish,  not 
having  walked  twenty  miles  for  (I  daresay)  ten  years, 
and  at  once  arranged  for  a  little  walking  tour  this  next 
week-end  up  Loch  Lomond  way.  I  wish  I  could  be  at 
your  next  O.K.  dinner  at  Marlow.  (I  believe  I  recognize 
the  attraction)  but  I  am  thinking  of  revisiting  Germany 
in  July,  taking  London  (or  rather  Surrey)  and  Suffolk 
on  my  way  back. 


220  MEMORIES 

"  What  think  you  of  the  translation  of  our  friend 
Watts  ? — Dunton,  I  cannot  rightly  say  I  like  the  name. 
If,  or  when  rather,  you  see  Clement  Shorter,  pray 
express  to  him  that  he  has  '  done  me  proud,'  and  believe 

me  to  remain, 

"  Ever  most  truly  yours, 

"F.  H.  GROOME." 

Apropos  of  Theodore  Watts  double-barrelling  his 
name,  I  asked  Meredith  why  he  had  done  it.  "  Really, 
Sir  Reynard,  I'm  surprised  at  your  dulness."  "  Agreed," 
said  I,  "  but  other  fellows  are  as  dull.  I  thought  Mac- 
Coll  (then  Editor  of  the  Athenceum,  to  which  Watts- 
Dunton  was  a  regular  contributor)  could  tell  me,  but 
he  didn't  know."  "Well,"  said  Meredith,  "I  can. 
As  a  boy  you  were  taught  Dr.  Watts's  Divine  and  Moral 
Songs,  and  you  know  what  a  vogue  they  had,  and  for 
anything  I  know  to  the  contrary,  may  have  still.  So, 
of  course,  our  dear  Theodore  doesn't  want  to  run  the 
risk  of  being  confused,  years  hence,  with  the  author 
of  '  How  doth  the  little  busy  bee '  in  any  anthology 
in  which  his  poems  may  have  a  place."  I  thanked 
Meredith  for  so  lucid  an  explanation  ! 

In  Gipsy  Tents,  published  in  1881,  Groome  set  down 
in  vivacious  detail  the  story  of  his  vagabond  life  among 
the  Romani,  not,  however,  adding  how  he  stole  the  heart 
of  Esmeralda,  whose  tambourine,  by  the  way,  is  among 
the  many  unique  treasures  which  my  friend  Clement 
Shorter — optimo  hospitum — can  boast  of  in  his  wonder- 
ful collection  of  literary  relics  at  16,  Marlborough  Place. 
No  lover  of  Lavengro  and  Romany  Rye  should  neglect 
that  book. 

For  a  good  many  years  Groome  lived  in  Edinburgh, 
working  as  sub-editor  of  Chambers'  Encyclopaedia, 
which  explains  the  references  in  this  letter. 


FRANCIS   HINDES   GROOME  221 

"  339,  High  Street,  Edinburgh, 
"  July  30,  1892. 

"  Thanks  for  your  letter  and  the  inclosures.  Here- 
with R.  A.  Proctor.  As  to  Bates,  Patrick  will  be  much 
obliged  if  you  would  think-up  a  brief  article,  space  for 
which  may  be  squeezed  out  of  Batavia  and  Miss  Bate- 
man.  Also  Weismann,  you  will  judge  how  much  he 
must  have  whilst  remembering  we  are  rather  cramped 
for  space. 

"  I  got  back  here  Thursday  evening,  and  find  here 
the  loveliest  weather  (for  Scotland).  It  is  hard  settling 
down  to  work. 

"  I  return  Lady  Gurdon's  letter.  Appreciation  of 
my  Father's  stories  always  pleases  me  greatly.  Ah 
me  !  I  would  that  to-morrow  I  might  be  rowing  up 
again  your  Aldeburgh  river.  Well,  I  shall  look  back 
to  that  day  and  forward  to  just  such  another. 

"  Ever  truly  yours, 

"  F.  H.  GROOME." 

The  reference  in  the  foregoing  is  to  a  lamented  and 
accomplished  friend,  the  wife  of  Sir  Brampton  Gurdon 
(both  are  dead),  who  endeared  himself  to  his  fellow- 
Omarians  and  whose  generous  entertainment  of  the 
"  pilgrims  "  after  the  ceremony  of  the  planting  of  the 
rose-bushes  at  Boulge  is  a  cherished  remembrance. 
Lady  Camilla,  whose  tales  and  sketches  of  provincial 
life  were  posthumously  issued  under  the  title  of  Memories 
and  Fancies,  had  become  keenly  interested  in  folk- 
lore, and  gathered  a  valuable  collection  of  material 
which  was  published  by  the  Folklore  Society.1 

1  County  Folklore  (Suffolk).  Collected  and  edited  by  the  Lady 
Eveline  Camilla  Gurdon  (1893). 


222  MEMORIES 

"  Grundisburgh  Hall,  Woodbridge, 

"  July  25,  1892. 

"  DEAR  MR.  CLODD, 

"Thank  you  very  much  for  the  F.  L.  Journal 
containing  the  4  Philosophy  of  Rumpelstiltskin.'  It  is  a 
most  interesting  article  and  has  given  me  a  great  deal 
to  think  about.  If  you  can  come  on  Friday,  pray  do 
so,  the  Flower  Show  has  been  changed  to  an  earlier 
date,  so  we  shall  be  free  on  the  5th  and  so  glad  to  see 
you. 

44 1  have  not  got  Moor's  Oriental  Fragments,  but 
possibly  it  is  in  the  Ipswich  Museum,  or  failing  that, 
I  feel  sure  Capt.  Moor  of  Bealings  would  lend  me  a  copy, 
which  would  save  Mr.  Hindes  Groome  the  trouble  of 
sending  his  to  me. 

"  The  article  in  Blackwood  which  you  have  so  kindly 
sent  me  is  delightful  :  my  husband  and  I  read  it  to- 
gether, and  really  shouted  with  laughter.  The  beautiful 
story  of  the  '  Only  Darter '  I  had  already  read,  and 
been  very  much  impressed  by,  in  the  Suffolk  N.  and  Q. 
It  seems  to  me  quite  beautiful.  I  hardly  know  what  to 
compare  it  to — it  is  as  good  as  some  of  Barrie's  best  work 
and  Miss  Wilkins'  best  stories. 

44  When  you  come  I  have  an  interesting  letter  to  show 
you  from  a  cousin  in  Scotland  about  Firstfoot  :  she  has 
been  questioning  a  Perthshire  man. 

"  Yours  sincerely, 

44  E.  CAMILLA  GURDON." 

In  December  1892  Groome  wrote  to  me  about  Fitz- 
Gerald's  old  friend  John  Loder,  of  Woodbridge  book- 
selling fame,  who  has  enriched  my  library  with  two 
volumes  which  belonged  to  FitzGerald,  Persian  Miscel- 
lanies and  Russell's  Memorials  of  the  Life  and  Works 
of  Thomas  Fuller.  Groome  adds  that  Loder  4'  knows 


FRANCIS   HINDES   GROOME  223 

Canon  Ainger,  who  is  by  way  of  a  FitzGeraldian  if  not 
indeed  an  Omar  Khayyamist." 

Among  the  more  prominent  men  of  the  cloth  whom 
I  met  at  the  delightful  little  dinners  given  by  dear  old 
Edward  Hawkins,  father  of  "  Anthony  Hope,"  at  the 
snug  vicarage  in  Bridewell  Place,  was  Canon  Ainger. 
I  accepted  it  as  token  of  friendship  that  when  he  had 
undertaken  a  monograph  on  Crabbe  in  "  The  English 
Men  of  Letters  Series,"  he  invited  himself  to  stay  with 
me  at  Aldeburgh,  curious  to  see  what,  if  any,  traces  of 
the  poet  survived  there.  There  are  none  :  the  cottage 
in  which  he  was  born  has  long  vanished  beneath  the 
encroaching  sea;  the  old  "  Salt  House  "  at  Slaughden, 
where  he  assisted  his  father  as  collector  of  the  salt  duties, 
was  demolished  fifty  years  ago,  and  the  one  association 
that  remains  is  the  tumbling  old  quay  along  which 
the  poet  rolled  the  barrels.  Of  the  letters  from  Canon 
Ainger  which  I  have  preserved,  only  the  following  is 
free  from  personal  and  unimportant  matter. 

"  Master's  House,  Temple,  E.G., 

"  August  2,  1899. 
"  DEAII  MR.  CLODD, 

"  I  ought  sooner  to  have  acknowledged  your 
friendly  letter,  but  the  close  of  the  session  brings  many 
calls  upon  one's  time. 

"  Thanks  for  your  reference  to  Mrs.  FitzGerald's  letter 
to  Tennyson,  which  I  was  glad  to  have  recalled  to  me. 

"It  is  strange  that  after  seven  years  thinking  of  it, 
Fitz  did  not  realize  the  risk  of  the  step  he  was  taking. 
I  had  not  known  it  was  so  long  as  you  tell  me.1  I  am 
very  glad  to  find  you  so  entirely  agree  with  me  as  to  the 
merits  of  that  miniature  biography.2 

1  Fitz-Gerald's  marriage  to  Lucy  Barton. 

2  Poems  and  Letters  of  Bernard  Barton,  with  a  Memoir  by  E.  F.  G. 
(1853), 


224  MEMORIES 

"  There  has  just  come  into  my  possession  a  copy  of 
the  1821  Keats  (the  Lamia  and  other  poems)  with  some 
interesting  MS.  of  Keats  himself  in  it,  not  only  an  in- 
scription to  the  friend  to  whom  it  was  sent,  but  some 
sarcastic  remarks  on  the  Publisher's  Preface.  I  should 
much  like  to  show  it  to  you  some  day  after  the  coming 
vacation. 

"  After  next  Sunday  I  shall  be  a  good  deal  away 
until  we  re-open  our  Church  (if  all's  well)  on  the  first  of 
October.  Many  thanks  for  your  kind  offer  of  a  welcome 
when  I  am  next  'down  Aldeburgh  way.'  It  will  give 
me  great  pleasure  to  accept  it. 

44  Meanwhile,  believe  me,  dear  Mr.  Clodd, 
44  Very  truly  yours, 

44  ALFRED  AINGER." 

To  return  for  a  moment  to  Edward  Hawkins.  Sup- 
ping with  him  one  evening,  the  late  H.  R.  Haweis  being 
the  other  guest,  Hawkins  told  us  that,  on  the  previous 
Sunday,  they  had  heard  Haweis's  father  preach  in  the 
church  where  his  father  had  preached  one  hundred  and 
twenty  years  before  !  The  explanation  was  that  the 
grandfather  had  preached  at  his  ordination,  when  he 
was  twenty-three,  that  he  had  married  when  he  was 
past  sixty  and  that  his  son,  on  the  occasion  in  question, 
was  eighty-three. 

An  item  or  two  of  literary  gossip  and  criticism  in 
them  may  warrant  the  addition  of  these  letters. 


"  339,  High  Street,  Edinburgh, 

"  April  13,  1895. 
44  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

44  .  .  .  So  you  are  at  Aldeburgh  for  Easter.   I  would 
I  were  there  too,  and  I  wish  I  could  promise  to  come  later 


FRANCIS   HINDES   GROOME  225 

on.  But  my  ties  with  Suffolk  are  loosened,  now  my 
sisters  have  given  up  the  manor-house  at  Pakenham, 
and  my  doctor  brother  is  leaving  Stowmarket.  But  I 
shall  certainly  see  you.  I  should  like  to  manage  another 
O.K.  dinner  in  the  country,  for  the  last  one  survives 
as  a  pleasant  memory. 

"I  haven't  yet  read  The  Woman  who  Did.  4The 
Man  who  Couldn't '  would  make  a  fine  companion 
volume.  I  have  just  been  glancing  over  the  new  Men 
of  the  Time.  It  is  an  immense  improvement  on  Moon's 
edition,  but  the  omissions  are  still  remarkable.  Crockett, 
Luke  Fildes,  Mrs.  Clifford,  R.  Bridges,  Holyoake,  are  a 
few  out  of  a  list  of  forty  or  fifty. 

"  Very  truly  yours, 

"  F.  H.  GROOME." 


"  137,  Warrender  Park  Road,  Edinburgh, 
"  June  10,  1898. 

"  My  Gypsy  Folk  Tales  (Hurst  &  Blackett)  is  nearly 
finished — a  big  8vo.  of  over  400  pp.  I  hope  you  won't 
object  to  the  following,  '  To  MM.  Cosquin,  Clodd, 
Jacobs,  Lang,  and  their  fellow  Folklorists  this  Book  is 
respectfully  dedicated.'  I,  as  a  non-professional  folk- 
lorist,  address  the  book  to  those  who  are.  I  shall, 
of  course,  send  you  an  early  copy,  but  I  don't  quite 
know  when  it  will  be  out.  It  will  contain  a  good  deal 
of  controversial  (and  probably  controvertible)  matter, 
but  I  hope  and  think  that  you  will  be  surprised  at  the 
additions  it  makes  to  folk  tales  collected  within  the 
Anglo-Welsh  area — versions  of  c  The  Master  Thief ' ; 
'  Strong  Hans  ' ;  4  Our  Lady's  Child  ' ;  '  Oh  !  if  I  could 
but  shiver  ' ;  '  The  Battle  of  the  Birds  ' ;  4  Ferdinand  the 

Frightful,'   etc.,   etc.     There   are  also   hosts   of  Gypsy 
Q 


226  MEMORIES 

stories  from  Turkey,  Roumania,  the  Bukowina,  Trans- 
sylvania,  Galicia,  etc.  .  .  . 

"  Ever  truly  yours, 

"  F.  H.  GROOME." 

Besides  his  letters  and  the  gifts  of  his  books,  there  is  a 
little  green  volume  about  which  he  wrote  :  "  I  am  send- 
ing you  a  copy  of  FitzGerald's  Polonius  which  I  think 
you  will  like  to  have.  I  picked  it  up  the  other  day  for 
a  few  pence  in  a  bookseller's  catalogue,  where  it  was 
entered  under  the  heading  '  Facetiae.'  ' 

Within  four  years  after  the  publication  of  Gypsy  Folk 
Tales,  an  important  addition  to  material  for  the  com- 
parative study  of  the  folk  tales  of  the  world,  brain  trouble 
numbed  the  faculties  of  one  of  the  most  gifted  scholars 
and  lovable  men  whom  I  have  known  or  am  likely  to 
know.  Death  released  him  in  his  fifty-first  year. 


XIX 

J.  ALLANSON  PICTON  (1832-1910) 
MONCURE  D.  CONWAY  (1832-1907) 

"  THE  Club  that  most  interested  me  was  the  Omar 
Khayyam.  It  would  require  many  pages  to  tell  of 
my  delightful  memories  of  my  brother  Omarians." 
Thus  wrote  Moncure  Conway  in  his  Autobiography, 
wherein  he  goes  on  to  narrate  the  story  of  the  planting 
of  the  rose-bushes  on  FitzGerald's  grave  and  then 
coming  with  other  friends  for  a  week-end  convivium 
to  Strafford  House.  Then  he  speaks  of  the  Sunday 
gatherings  at  my  house  in  London  :  "  those  evenings 
at  Rosemont  as  a  time  when  we  grew.  Picton  was 
always  there."  Picton,  at  that  time,  had  abandoned 
preaching  for  educational  work,  being,  with  Huxley 
and  Mark  Wilks,  a  member  of  the  first  School  Board 
for  London. 

After  occupying  pulpits  in  Manchester  and  Leicester 
(which  latter  place  he  represented  in  Parliament  from 
1885  till  1894)  he  became  minister  of  a  Congregational 
Chapel  in  Hackney.  Always  tending  towards  liberalism 
in  theology,  he  delivered  a  series  of  lectures  on  the 
Religion  of  Jesus,  which  evidenced  such  divergence 
from  orthodox  theories  of  the  divinity  of  Jesus  that  he 
resigned  his  charge.  A  man  of  very  remarkable  gifts 
and  wide  scholarship,  the  possession  of  fair  means  and 
ample  leisure  enabled  him  to  follow  his  bent,  the  goal 
of  which  was  in  Pantheism.  "  If  I  am  to  be  remembered 

227 


228  MEMORIES 

at  all,"  he  said  to  me,  "  let  it  be  as  Picton  the  Pan- 
theist." More  than  one  of  his  books  is  given  to  making 
popular,  as  far  as  that  difficult  task  is  possible,  the 
Philosophy  of  Spinoza,  the  "  Great  Prophet,"  the  man 
who  looked  on  the  Universe  and  called  it  God.  He 
found  a  congenial  spirit  in  meeting  Sir  Frederick  Pollock, 
to  whose  masterly  and  definitive  book  on  Spinoza  he 
acknowledged  deep  obligation.  He  won,  what  was  not 
easily  secured  by  those  whom  he  met,  the  regard  of 
Sir  Alfred  Lyall.  An  ex-dissenting  parson  who  had 
become  an  ardent  convert  to  Pantheism  was  a  rara 
avis,  and  Picton's  story  of  his  passage  from  the  creed 
of  the  Congregationalists  to  the  most  creedless  of  all 
beliefs  interested  a  mind  like  Ly all's  which  had  been 
in  close  contact  with  the  contemplative  and  tolerant 
religions  of  the  East.  He  enjoyed  a  story  which  Picton 
repeated  in  his  Religion  of  the  Universe.  "  Things  are 
as  they  are.  To  ask  why  they  are  so  is  no  more  reason- 
able than  the  question  once  put  to  me  long  ago  by  a 
little  girl  of  eleven  or  twelve  years  and  which  I  think 
was  the  most  comprehensive  question  ever  put  to  me 
in  my  life.  4  Sir,'  she  said,  '  please  tell  me  why  there 
was  ever  anything  at  all  ?  '  How  could  I  reply  except 
as  I  did  ?  '  My  dear,  I  really  do  not  know,  but  here  the 
things  are  and  we  must  make  the  best  of  them.'  ' 
From  Picton's  many  letters  to  me  the  following  are 
chosen  as  showing  his  general  attitude  in  breadth  and 
variety  of  interest. 

"  Caerlyr,  Con  way, 

"  November  11,  1901. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  Your  letter  of  the  9th  has  given  me  great 
pleasure,  not  only  from  the  kindness  and  interest  it 
shows,  but  also  because  it  is  such  a  gratification  to  hear 


J.   ALLANSON   PICTON  229 

from  you  again.  I  thank  you  heartily  for  your  book,1 
of  which  I  had  heard  a  good  deal,  but  which  to  my  own 
loss  I  had  not  seen.  It  is  a  very  interesting  exposition 
of  the  great  world  of  Aberglaube  lurking  behind  and 
beneath  most  nursery  stories.  You  possess  a  style 
eminently  adapted  to  draw  readers  on  into  the  charmed 
circle  of  your  influence.  Some  of  your  remarks  come 
specially  home  to  me  in  my  sceva  indignatio  against 
prevalent  sacred  pretences.  Truly,  as  you  say  on 
p.  97, '  there  may  be  profit  in  the  reminder  of  the  shallow 
depth  to  which  knowledge  of  the  orderly  sequence  of 
things  has  yet  penetrated  in  the  many.'  As  to  the 
power  of  iron  as  a  charm,  is  it  possible  that  it  originated 
in  the  conservative  notion  probably  entertained  at  its 
first  introduction  that  it  was  offensive  to  unseen  powers  ? 
The  feeling  which  dictated  persistence  in  the  use  of 
stone  knives  for  sacred  purposes  must  have  been  as- 
sociated with  the  notion  that  iron  was  offensive  to  the 
spirit  world.  (But,  then,  perhaps  that  should  have 
applied  to  copper  and  bronze  as  well.) 

44  As  to  the  name — I  have  always  been  haunted  by  a 
curious  desire  to  tear  up  and  throw  out  of  the  railway 
carriage  windows  the  small  printed  labels  of  newspaper 
wrappers  addressed  to  me.  It  is  an  unreasoning  and 
instinctive  action — which  possibly  may  be  a  sort  of 
atavism.  The  philological  indentification  of  *  name ' 
with  c  soul '  is  very  interesting,  and  appears  to  me 
probable. 

"  I  need  scarcely  say  I  have  little  hope  of  any  result 
from  my  protest  against  the  present  demoralizing  in 
my  Bible  in  the  School.  Watts  asked  me  to  write  it 
and  I  did.  But  it  will  be  no  use.  I  can  understand 
the  state  of  mind  which  clings  desperately  to  disappear- 
1  Tom  Tit  Tot :  An  Essay  on  Savage  Philosophy  in  Folk  Tale. 


230  MEMORIES 

ing  supernatural  sanctions  because  they  still  seem  to  the 
perplexed  soul  necessary  to  morality.  But  I  cannot 
understand  the  state  of  mind  which  frankly  surrenders 
superstition  for  itself  as  utterly  false,  and  yet  insists 
on  teaching  it  to  children  as  true  in  the  interests  of 
morality. 

"  I  wish  you  would  take  an  opportunity  of  revisiting 
this  lovely  valley,  where  I  am  now  writing  with  my  bay 
window  wide  open  to  the  night.  I  hope  your  son, 
whom  I  was  so  glad  to  see  when  he  called,  gave  you 
a  good  account  of  my  eyrie.  It  is  not  Tai  Bach,  but  a 
new  house  built  by  myself  on  a  ledge  of  the  steep  hill 
above.  Pray  come  to  see  it  some  time. 
"  I  am  ever, 

"  Yours  most  truly, 

"  J.  ALLANSON  PICTON." 


**  Caerlyr,  Con  way, 

"  November  26,  1901. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  Really  I  am  very  sorry  that  I  have  exceeded 
the  bounds  of  propriety  in  delaying  my  acknowledge- 
ment of  your  exceedingly  kind  gift  of  a  second  book. 
The  truth  is  that  though  I  have  given  up  ploughing 
the  seashore  of  politics  I  have  a  good  many  public 
and  benevolent  duties  of  one  sort  or  another  here, 
though  of  course,  I  could  have  acknowledged  receipt, 
I  could  not  have  expressed  my  thanks  with  knowledge 
until  now. 

"  I  marvel  much  at  your  power  of  achieving  c  multum 
in  parvo.'  It  is  astonishing  how  much  is  compressed 
at  no  sacrifice  of  clearness  into  the  compass  of  this 
book  on  Primitive  Man.  As  to  iron,  I  find  on  p.  192 
a  statement  of  the  fact  that  special  powers  were  attrib- 


J.   ALLANSON  PICTON  231 

uted  to  the  metal  as  against  witches,  etc.  But  neither 
there  nor  in  other  passages  on  the  metals  do  I  find  an 
explanation,  unless  indeed  the  heavenly  origin  of 
meteoric  iron  suggests  it.  On  p.  97  you  make  a  remark 
which  touches  human  sympathies :  4  The  cost '  of 
4  escape  from  false  impressions  of  things  makes  the 
thoughtful  weep.'  I  have  also  been  saddened  by  the 
thought  of  the  long,  dark,  painful  course  of  human 
evolution.  But  I  have  comforted  myself  by  reflecting 
that  palaeolithic  or  neolithic  man  had  no  better  con- 
ditions of  things  with  which  to  compare  his  lot.  We 
think  how  we  should  feel  amidst  such  squalor.  Hence 
our  pity.  But  is  it  not  tolerably  certain  that  each 
generation,  being  adapted  to  its  surroundings,  was 
fairly  happy? 

"  Believe  me, 

"  Yours  very  sincerely, 

"  J.  ALLANSON  PICTON. 

"  P.S.  As  you  wish  to  make  use  of  Huxley's  words 
to  me  re  Bible  in  School  I  had  better  give  you  the  par- 
ticulars. It  was  in  the  street — Pall  Mall,  near  the 
Athenaeum,  not  very  long  before  his  death.  It  was  only 
a  momentary  conversation,  but  he  distinctly  regretted 
the  failure  of  his  proposal  for  selected  extracts  and 
added :  4  Indeed,  I  am  now  inclined  to  think  that  you 
were  right.'  I  will  not  guarantee  the  exact  syllables, 
but  they  were  certainly  to  that  effect. 

"J.  A.  P." 


"  Caerlyr,  Penmaenmawr,  R.S.O., 

"  May  13,  1904. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  Assuming  that  you  will  be  at  Straff ord  House 
on  Sunday,  I  write  to  say  how  deeply  I  appreciate  your 


232  MEMORIES 

kind  letter  of  the  8th  instant  re  The  Religion  of  the  Uni- 
verse. Your  sympathy  is  all  the  more  valuable  for  its 
discrimination.  Our  attitude  towards  the  Universe, 
especially  at  this  transitional  stage  of  religion,  when  the 
old  foundations  are  breaking  up  and  the  more  permanent 
clearly  discerned  below  is,  as  you  say,  very  much  a 
matter  of  temperament.  And  the  different  tempera- 
ments would  do  well  to  emulate  your  large  tolerance. 

"  Still  seeing  how  something  in  the  nature  of  religion, 
an  instinctive  sense  of  an  encompassment  by  a  life 
larger  than  one's  own  has  inveterately  accompanied 
every  step  of  human  evolution  since  the  word  human 
became  applicable  at  all,  I  find  it  impossible  to  believe 
that  the  disappearance  of  a  special  and  arbitrary  con- 
ception of  the  encompassing  Life  can  possibly  abrogate  so 
essentially  fundamental  an  element  in  the  spiritual  forces 
of  evolution.  I  write  in  some  haste,  for  I  have  to  go  out, 
but  shall  hope  for  viva  voce  continuation  and  correction. 
I  think  I  must  take  the  ten  o'clock  train  on  the  21st. 
"  Yours  very  truly, 

"  J.  ALLANSON  PICTON." 


"  Caerlyr,  Penmaenmawr,  R.S.O., 

"  February  5,  1905. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  I  have  a  good  many  things  to  say  and  I  hope 
I  shall  not  bore  you.  First  as  to  Professor  Barton's 
4  Semitic  Origins.'  I  am  very  thankful  for  the  oppor- 
tunity of  reading  it,  and  when  you  are  able  to  let  me 
know  whether  I  should  address  it  to  Aldeburgh  or 
otherwise,  will  return  it.  I  think  there  is  a  very  large, 
perhaps  one  might  say  an  overwhelming,  amount  of 
probability  in  his  main  theory  of  the  origin  of  Semitic 
religion  in  sexual  rites  connected  with  the  revival  of 


J.   ALLANSON   PICTON  233 

nature  in  whatever  season  answers  in  those  latitudes 
to  our  spring.  The  word  revival  reminds  me  of  a 
curious  letter  in  to-day's  Times  from  a  native  c  Cymro  ' 
on  the  sexual  associations  of  more  modern  religion.  As 
an  item  of  social  lore  it  is  worth  looking  at.  But  Barton 
deals  with  times  concerning  which  evidence  can  hardly 
be  said  to  be  available  except  by  way  of  indirect  in- 
ference from  later  facts.  I  fear  there  is  some  truth  in 
the  strictures  of  Man  [Sept.  1903]  pasted  on  cover, 
as  to  the  over  confidence  of  the  author.  You  can 
scarcely  get  Jahweh  out  of  Ishtar  except  as  you  get 
what  is  called  '  spontaneous  generation '  into  the 
beginning  of  organic  evolution.  You  have  a  feeling 
that  it  must  have  been  so,  and  there  is  no  more  to  be 
said.  By  the  way,  I  don't  know  why  Barton  and  Budde 
and  lots  of  others  drop  the  final  aspirate  of  Jahweh. 
and  write  Jahwe.  My  very  limited  Hebrew  at  least 
teaches  me  that  the  word  is  a  4  quadrilateral ' — i.  e. 
with  four  original  consonants  of  which  the  final  aspirate 
is  one.  Estlin  Carpenter  and  Bettersly  in  their  Hexa- 
teuch  always  render  it  as  I  do,  '  Jahweh.'  However,  I 
don't  pretend  to  any  authority  in  such  things.  I  think 
the  chapters  on  '  transformations  '  of  the  Ishtar  Cult 
are  admirable.  I  am  now  reading  Budde,  to  whom  I 
was  attracted  by  the  notes  of  Barton,  and  I  find  him 
amazingly  clear  and  concise  for  a  German.  (I  preferred 
the  German,  though  he  gave  the  lectures  in  English.) 
His  case  for  the  indebtedness  of  the  Hebrews  to  the 
Kenites  for  their  religion  is  very  strong. — But  what 
bothers  me  is  that  all  these  learned  men  persist  in 
talking  as  though  there  were  a  residium  of  supernatural 
4  revelation '  or  direction  in  the  evolution  of  Hebrew 
religion  such  as — at  least  by  implication — is  wanting 
in  other  religions.  So  far  as  I  know  neither  Flinders 


234  MEMORIES 

Petrie  nor  any  other  Egyptologist  has  found  any  evi- 
dence whatever  for  the  captivity  in  Egypt  or  the  Exodus. 
I  know  Estlin  Carpenter  thinks  that  the  legend  may  have 
arisen  from  a  temporary  entanglement  of  a  small  nomad 
Hebrew  clan  in  Egypt.  And  there  is  sense  in  that. 
But  a  good  deal  more  is  assumed  by  Barton  and  Budde. 
The  fact  is  I  am  a  good  deal  disheartened  in  my  old  age 
by  the  '  make-believe '  prevalent  among  educated  and 
even  cultured  people  on  the  subject  of  supernatural 
religion.  However,  I  must  draw  to  a  close.  I  have  got 
4  Pantheism,  its  Story  and  Significance,  a  sketch  by 
etc.'  type-written  in  duplicate.  I  wonder  whether 
you  would  mind  the  trouble  of  reading  it  when  you  are 
at  Aldeburgh.  I  should  value  your  opinion  much, 
while  of  course  retaining  freedom  of  judgment.  It 
is  probably  not  quite  what  you  would  expect.  I  treat 
nothing  as  genuine  Pantheism  which  does  not  absolutely 
exclude  any  other  Being — as  distinguished  from  exist- 
ence— than  that  of  God.  For  this  reason  I  have  nothing 
to  say  about  Plato — though  a  little  about  the  New 
Platonists  and  very  little  about  the  Christian  Mystics, 
who  were  not  real  Pantheists.  I  concentrate  attention 
on  Spinoza — and  endeavour — vain  hope  ! — to  give  a 
more  popular  exposition  than  Pollock. 

"  As  there  seems  no  hurry,  take  your  own  time  about 
replying  and  believe  me, 

"  Yours  very  truly, 

"  J.  ALLANSON  PICTON." 


"  Caerlyr,  Con  way, 

"July  26,  1906, 

"  MY  DEAK  CLODD, 

"  Many  thanks  for  the  Open  Court  frontispiece. 
I  don't  think  I  have  ever  before  seen  any  likeness  of 


J.   ALLANSON   PICTON  235 

Spinoza,  and  I  have  gazed  and  scrutinized  with  deep 
interest.  At  first  one  has  the  feeling  that  so  trans- 
cendent a  mind  ought  to  have  had  a  more  imposing 
face.  But,  as  Mrs.  Picton  pointed  out,  the  eyes  have 
the  glance  of  genius.  The  place  of  origin  is  not  named. 
Is  it  the  often-mentioned  portrait  at  the  Hague  ?  You 
don't  say  anything  about  expecting  it  back.  Perhaps 
you  have  another  copy.  In  any  case  I  am  obliged  to 
you  for  sending  it.  I  have  written  a  short  contribution 
to  the  Agnostic  Annual  on  '  The  Faith  of  a  Pantheist.' 
The  limits  imposed  were  such  that  it  has  been  like  an 
effort  to  distil  the  ocean  before  me  into  a  pint  pot. 
But  quite  possible  even  an  endeavour  at  impossible 
compression  may  be  useful. 

"  Constables  have  not  given  any  indication  as  to 
when  they  are  going  to  issue  the  '  Handbook,'  though 
in  sending  the  last  revised  MS.  I  asked  the  question. 
After  the  summer  I  shall  ask  again. 

44  Petrie's  book  on  Sinai  and  Serabut  is  a  wonderful 
record  of  research.  But  I  am  not  satisfied  with  his 
rationalization  of  the  Exodus.  I  fear  it  is  another 
instance  of  the  strange  prepossession  shown  by  even 
men  of  distinguished  intellect  to  take  for  granted  that 
Jewish  myths  must  have  a  core  of  history.  For  myself 
I  incline  more  to  '  Musre  '  and  the  consequent  '  Jerah- 
meel ! ' 

"  When  Petrie  finds  a  single  relic  in  situ  or  inscribed 
brick  in  Goshen  which  implies  the  Mosaic  story,  the 
question  may  be  re-opened. — Did  you  notice  in  the  first 
public  announcements  of  Grenf ell's  most  recent  finds 
in  the  Fayoum,  a  fragment  of  a  gospel  was  mentioned, 
showing  no  relation  to  the  four?  It  is  odd  that  it  is 
not  included  in  the  show  at  Somerset  House.  Should 
you  have  any  chance  of  enquiring  about  it  ? 


236  MEMORIES 

"  I  have  a  juvenile  banker  staying  with  me,  and  he 
thinks  you  must  be  free  by  now  from  the  Herculanean 
labours  of  July  and  therefore  I  have  written  the  more 
freely. 

"  Yours  very  truly, 

"  J.  ALLANSON  PICTON." 


"  Caerlyr,  Penmaenmawr,  R.S.O., 

"  August  7,  1908. 

"  My  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  In  your  Pioneers  of  Evolution  you  do  not — 
unless  I  am  sadly  blind — refer  to  the  part  played  by 
Astrology  and  Alchemy  in  preparing  the  way  for  Astro- 
nomy and  Chemistry.  I  must  say  that  I  have  only 
been  renewing  my  ancient  knowledge  of  your  work 
by  glancing  through  again  and  examining  the  Index. 

"  As  I  have  to  touch  on  both  the  above  subjects,  I 
have  looked  through  Ecclesiastical  histories  and  Cyclo- 
paedias, etc.,  to  find  any  evidence  that  the  Church 
condemned  either  Astrology  or  Alchemy  as  it  con- 
demned magic  and  witchcraft.  I  get  no  result.  I  have 
found  no  record  of  any  such  condemnation.  But  I 
know  your  reading  has  been  very  much  wider  than  mine. 
I  should  be  greatly  obliged  if  you  could  refer  me  to  any 
such  condemnation.  It  seems  to  me  that  so  long  as 
Astrologers  and  Alchemists  could  keep  clear  of  any 
suspicion  of  magic  they  were  safe.  They  did  not  deny 
anything  in  the  Bible  and  therefore  the  Church  was 
not  concerned.  Of  course  if  Astrologers  had  been  star- 
worshippers  it  would  have  been  a  different  thing.  Kepler 
wrote  horoscopes  for  gain — and  defended  it  in  a  magnifi- 
cent passage  which  I  quoted  nearly  fifty  years  ago  in 
Heroes  and  Martyrs  of  Science.  I  don't  want  to  trouble 
you,  but  if  at  your  convenience  you  can  let  me  know  of 


MONCURE   D.   CONWAY  237 

any  condemnation   you   have   met  with   I   should   be 
thankful. 

"  Yours  very  truly, 

"  J.  ALLANSON  PICTON." 

MONCURE  CONWAY  came  of  a  good  old  Virginian  stock. 
He  was  born  of  parents  opposed  to  slavery,  yet  they  were 
slave-owners  in  their  own  despite,  since  the  institution 
was  an  integral  part  of  social  conditions  in  the  Southern 
States  of  America.  He  has  told  in  detail  his  life  history 
from  the  time  when,  as  a  youth,  he  became  a  Methodist 
preacher  and  reproved  some  lady  members  of  his 
church  for  the  "  sin "  of  dancing,  to  his  settlement  in 
London  and  his  travels  in  the  East  in  old  age.  Passing 
from  creed  to  creed,  each  being  in  turn  more  liberal 
than  the  one  abandoned,  he  became  minister  of  the 
Ethical  Church  in  South  Place,  Finsbury.  I  enjoyed 
his  friendship  for  more  than  thirty  years — a  friendship 
sweetened  by  ever-growing  affection  for  a  brave  and 
brotherly  soul. 

Edward  FitzGerald  said  of  his  friendships  that  they 
were  like  "  loves,"  and  so  it  was  with  those  of  Moncure 
Conway.  His  letters  to  me  were  often  headed  "  Beloved." 
When  after  twenty-one  years'  ministry  at  South  Place, 
he  returned  to  America,  they  were  charged  with  the 
feeling,  almost  the  fear,  that  the  thousands  of  miles 
separating  him  might  estrange  him  from  old  friends  and 
be  the  bar  to  renewal  of  communion.  Happily,  the 
fear  was  falsified.  When  one  heard  he  was  in  New 
York,  a  letter  would  come  from  Paris  with  promise  of 
a  visit  to  London,  and  then,  on  his  arrival,  there  would 
be  the  merry  repetition  of  farewell  dinners  which  became 
as  numerous  as  the  "  last  appearances  "  of  a  popular 
actor. 


238  MEMORIES 

Con  way  had  "  warmed  both  hands  before  the  fire  of 
life,"  and  revelled  in  the  glow.  He  had  travelled  much, 
finding  most  delight  in  a  Pilgrimage  to  the  Wise  Men 
of  the  East,  the  title  of  his  last  book.  There  he  was  in 
the  birthplace  of  the  great  religions.  From  their  sacred 
scriptures  he  had  selected  the  material  of  his  Sacred 
Anthology — the  Bible  of  South  Place.  Little  escaped 
him,  as  this  extract  from  a  letter  shows. 

"  About  twenty  miles  out  of  Madras  I  drove  to  the 
ancient  church  of  St.  Thomas,  said  in  the  legend  to 
have  gone  there  and  suffered  martyrdom.  Not  far 
from  the  church  is  a  stone  with  reddish  stains  left  there 
by  St.  Thomas  who  (like  Kristna)  was  wounded  in  the 
head.  The  old  Portuguese  priest  told  me  that  an 
English  antiquarian,  a  '  Positivist '  (he  could  not  tell 
me  the  name1)  dug  under  the  stone  and  found  a  tablet 
on  which  was  a  rudely-designed  dove  and  an  inscription 
which  in  English  was  :  '  He  who  is  the  pure  God, 
blessed  for  ever.'  I  wonder  if  it  may  not  be  possible 
for  some  man  of  your  acquaintance  to  tell  me  who 
that  Positivist  was,  in  what  language  the  inscription 
was  written,  and  whether  the  details  above — pencilled 
on  the  spot,  almost  unreadably — are  correct  ?  I  would 
pay  an  investigator  or  verifier." 

He  had  read  many  books ;  he  had  mixed  with  many 
distinguished  contemporaries — Emerson  and  Carlyle, 
Darwin  and  Huxley,  Herbert  Spencer,  Martineau, 
Mazzini  and  others.  At  his  house  in  Hammersmith 
and  elsewhere,  graced  by  a  charming  and  cultured 
hostess  (Mrs.  Conway  was  a  sister  of  R.  H.  Dana, 
author  of  the  well-known  Two  Years  before  the  Mast), 
I  met  some  of  his  delightful  fellow-countrymen,  securing 
1  A.  G.  Burnell,  Mr.  Cotton  tells  me. 


MONCURE   D.   CONWAY  239 

me  pleasant  talks,  e.  g.  with  Lowell  and  John  Hay.  I 
wish  I  could  convey  the  dulcet  tones  in  which  Lowell 
spoke  of  the  charm  of  London — what  others  have  called 
its  "  soul."  It  brought  to  my  memory  an  amusing 
story  told  us  by  Professor  Ward  Howe,  whom  Grant 
Allen  and  I  met  when  we  were  in  Egypt.  An  English- 
man travelling  for  the  first  time  to  the  "  hub  of  culture  " 
(the  flattering  term  has  ceased  to  be  applicable)  asked 
the  ticket  collector,  as  the  train  neared  the  station, 
whether  it  was  Boston.  "  Yes,  sir."  "  Well,  I  am 
wondering,  because  I  hear  an  odd  sort  of  hum  as  of  a 
big  city,  but  it  is  unlike  any  other."  "  Yes,  sir,  what 
you  hear  is  the  Bostonians  reading  Browning  !  " 

Another  story  amused  us  :  Allen  loved  to  retell  it. 
Ward  Howe  said  that  in  his  college  days,  when  the 
lecturer's  eye  fell  on  an  inattentive  student,  he  would 
pounce  upon  him  with  a  question  to  wake  him  up.  On 
one  occasion,  a  student  had  this  put  to  him.  "  Mr. 
Smith,  answer  me  this — To  which  of  the  two,  prose  or 
poetry,  does  the  concurrent  voice  of  antiquity  assign 
the  priority  ?  "  "I  beg  your  pardon,  Professor,  but 
do  I  understand  that  you  ask  me,  to  which  of  the  two, 
prose  or  poetry,  does  the  concurrent  voice  of  antiquity 
assign  the  priority  ?  "  "  That  is  so,  Mr.  Smith."  "  Well, 
Professor,  to  which  of  the  two,  prose  or  poetry,  the 
concurrent  voice  of  antiquity  assigns  the  priority,  I 
don't  know,  and,  sir,  I  don't  care  a  damn  !  " 

Meeting  John  Hay  one  afternoon,  talk  turned  upon 
American  humour,  especially  in  its  laconic  essence, 
when  he  said,  "  The  neatest  example  I  can  give  you  is 
of  the  man  who  took-in  a  lady  to  dinner,  and  on  her 
telling  him  that  she  was  a  widow,  he  asked  whether 
she  was  grass  or  sod  ?  " 

To   return   to   Moncure   Conway.     In   our   last   talk 


240  MEMORIES 

together  at  the  Savile  Club  he  had  much  to  say  by  way 
of  criticism  of  Sir  George  Trevelyan's  American  Revolu- 
tion. He  thought  that  the  book  did  insufficient  justice 
to  the  British  case  and  that  time  will  bring  some  revision 
of  the  popular  verdict  on  Washington.  His  view,  he 
told  me,  was  based  on  an  intimate  acquaintance  with 
contemporary  documents.  I  cite  this  as  showing  that 
his  judgment  had  a  power  of  detachment  without 
which  true  focus  of  men  and  events  is  impossible.  He 
abhorred  war  :  he  had  seen  the  horrors  of  the  battle- 
field when  acting  as  correspondent  of  the  New  York 
World  with  the  French  army  in  the  Franco-German 
struggle.  He  had  long  co-operated  with  the  Inter- 
national League  of  Peace  and  Arbitration  in  Europe, 
and  was  disconcerted  when,  asking  the  support  of 
Herbert  Spencer  to  the  movement,  an  unsympathetic 
reply  came,  Spencer  prophesying  [how  the  carnage  of 
this  Great  War  has  justified  it]  that  "  there  is  a  bad  time 
coming  and  civilized  mankind  will  (morally)  be  un- 
civilized before  civilization  can  again  advance,"  and 
therefore  that  the  proposed  movement  "  would  be 
poohpoohed  as  sentimental  and  visionary." 


"  50  Rue  de  Richelieu,  Paris, 

"  August  26,  1900. 

"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  Thanks,  thanks,  thanks  !  The  way  in  which 
Stead  put  the  thing  was  such  that  I  resolved  to  make 
another  appeal  to  Spencer  to  lend  the  weight  of  his 
name  to  my  schemes  for  arbitration,  and  began  my 
letter  by  mentioning  that  I  had  heard  that  his  reply  to 
me  two  years  ago  was  printed  in  your  Grant  Allen — 
to  whom  I  supposed  he  had  communicated  it,  as  I  had 
n  ot.  Spencer  replied  that  he  could  not  remember  having 


MONCURE   D.   CONWAY  241 

any  communication  with  Grant  Allen  on  the  matter  and 
having  '  looked  through  the  book  pretty  completely,' 
did  not  remember  any  reference  to  it.1  This  gave  me 
a  fright.  Could  I  by  any  accident  have  allowed  Spencer's 
letter  to  get  out  of  my  hands,  and  thus  into  print  ?  So 
was  I  one  of  the  many  tormented,  as  Voltaire  observed, 
by  troubles  that  never  arrive — until  your  letter  came. 

"  As  to  my  scheme  for  arbitration  it  has  been  worked 
out  carefully,  and  is  now  under  discussion  of  the  leading 
peacemakers.  It  has  been  translated  into  French  and 
German ;  but  not  yet  printed.  Before  long  I  shall  send 
you  a  copy. 

"  Entre  nous  I  think  our  dear  Herbert  S.  is  showing 
his  age.  It  is  nothing  but  a  kind  of  Scientific  Calvinism 
to  decline  helping  an  effort  for  arbitration  on  the  ground 
that  '  we  are  in  course  of  rebarbarization,'  etc.,  etc. 
It  is  as  bad  as  yielding  to  the  majority.  If  natural 
selection  is  working  for  evil  it  is  all  the  more  necessary 
that  the  evolutionist  shall  introduce  intelligent  and 
purposed  selection.  For  the  rest  my  effort  was  not  to 
get  a  court  4  to  pass  opinions  on  international  relations,' 
but  to  have  every  particular  dispute  between  nations 
that  threatens  peace  arbitrated  by  the  most  eminent 
and  able  men  of  all  countries  (save  the  disputants), 
these  great  men  being  of  acknowledged  competency 
and  holding  no  office  under  their  governments.  The 
method  of  securing  the  consensus  of  the  competent 
and  unbiassed  has  been  elaborated  by  me  with  care, 
and  has  fair  prospect  of  being  adopted  by  the  Paris 
Congress  which  meets  in  Paris,  September  30  and  after. 

44  It  may  be  that  my  plan  will  be  found  impracticable, 
nevertheless,  amid  all  the  deluge  of  blood  I  have  found 
some  comfort  in  devising  my  rainbow.  At  any  rate 
1  Spencer  overlooked  it.  It  is  given  on  p.  199. 


242  MEMORIES 

we  can  find  here  and  there  an  ark,  but  I  fear  that  the 
arks  will  become  fewer  and  smaller.  Jingoism  has 
invaded  even  South  Place,  and  possibly  the  Omar 
Khayyam  Club.  O  my  lost  countries. 

"  With  affectionate  farewell, 

"  MONCURE    D.    CONWAY." 

But  the  enemy  with  whom  he  never  made  truce  or 
terms  was  that  obscurantism  which  in  every  field  opposes 
its  stolid  front  to  progress  and  all  that  of  spiritual  and 
intellectual  freedom  is  involved  therein.  In  defence 
of  that  most  sacred  of  causes  he  had  endured  much  ere 
he  came  to  England.  His  unwavering  efforts  to  remove 
the  curse  of  slavery  from  his  native  land  had  cost  him 
dear.  Slave-owners  found  their  defenders  in  pulpits; 
preachers  contending  that  slavery  was  an  institution 
justified  by  Hebrew  and  Christian  precedent.  The  line 
which  they  took  was  sarcastically  expressed  in  Lowell's 
Biglow  Papers. 

"  Ham's  seed  wuz  g'in  to  us  in  chairge,  an'  shouldn't  we  be  lible 
In  Kingdom  Come,  ef  we  kep'  back  their  privilege  in  the  Bible. 
All  things  wuz  g'in  to  man  for's  use,  his  sarvice  an'  delight ; 
An'  don't  the  Greek  an'  Hebrew  words  that  mean  a  Man  mean  White  ? 

When  Satan  sets  himself  to  work  to  raise  his  very  bes'  muss, 
He  scatters  roun*  onscriptural  views  relatin'  to  Ones'mus.'1 

After  doing  what  was  in  his  power  to  free  the  slave 
and  after  accomplishing  his  own  spiritual  liberty, 
bought  with  no  mean  price,  Conway  came  to  us  as  an 
exile.  He  found  an  abiding  home  in  the  land  he  loved 
so  deeply;  he  found  an  abiding  place  in  hearts  stirred 
to  noble  impulses  by  what  he  had  spoken  and  written, 
wherein  truth  was  never  subordinated  by  him  to  a 
fleeting  rhetoric. 


XX 

REV.  CHARLES  VOYSEY  (1828-1914) 

AMONG  the  happy  chances  spoken  of  as  bringers  of 
friendship  was  that  through  which  I  came  into  close 
relations  with  a  man  whose  heresies,  if  they  did  not 
shake,  at  least  perturbed,  the  Church  at  a  time  when  the 
agitation  caused  by  the  publication  of  Essays  and 
Reviews  and  Ecce  Homo  had  well-nigh  died  away. 

One  day  in  the  spring  of  1871  a  clerically-dressed 
gentleman  called  on  me  at  the  Bank  and  introduced 
himself  as  an  old  friend  of  our  late  manager,  about 
whose  family  he  asked  for  information.  On  his  giving 
his  name,  I  expressed  pleasure  at  seeing  him,  adding 
some  words  which  indicated  agreement  with  his  heresies. 
The  Rev.  Charles  Voysey — that  was  his  name — had 
just  before  then  been  deprived  of  the  living — "  passing 
rich  on  forty  pounds  a  year  " — of  Healaugh  in  York- 
shire for  denying  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ.  In  his 
case,  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council  had 
no  alternative  but  to  confirm  the  decree  of  the  Diocesan 
Court  at  York.  Foreseeing  that  this  was  inevitable, 
he  made  plans  for  removing  to  London  and  starting 
what  was  called  the  Theistic  Church,  whose  habitat 
for  some  time  was  St.  George's  Hall,  Langham  Place. 
There,  occasionally,  I  "  sat  under"  him;  and,  in  other 
ways,  our  intercourse,  socially,  became  frequent. 

In  the  latter  part  of  1875  he  came  to  me  in  a  state  of 

high  excitement  to  tell  me  that  a  wealthy  French  noble, 

243 


244  MEMORIES 

Count  de  Montagu,  a  convert  to  Theism,  had  offered 
liberal  support  to  the  "  cause,"  including,  since  the 
movement  had  no  organ,  the  subsidy  of  a  magazine 
the  title  of  which  Voysey  suggested  should  be  The 
Langham.  "  Will  you  contribute  to  it  ?  "  he  asked. 
Of  course,  the  answer  was  "  in  the  affirmative  "  as  they 
say  in  Parliament.  The  magazine  was  floated;  its 
contributors  duly  paid,  and  there  followed  an  invitation 
to  the  staff  to  meet  the  "  pious  founder  Count  "  at 
dinner  at  Voysey's.  There  we  assembled  on  March  16, 
1876.  The  company,  so  far  as  I  can  remember,  con- 
sisted of  Professor  F.  W.  Newman,  brother  of  the 
Cardinal,  Dr.  George  Wild,  H.  Baden  Pritchard,  R. 
Hope  Moncrieff  and  one  or  two  others  whose  names  I 
cannot  recall.  The  "  Count's  "  absence  from  the  re- 
ception room  was  explained  by  Voysey  as  due  to  lame- 
ness. Ushered  into  the  dining-room,  we  denied  before 
our  titled  host  and  sat  down  to  an  excellent  dinner. 
A  year  after  that  the  "  Count "  disappeared.  His 
story,  put  together  with  the  help  of  my  old  friend  Hope 
Moncrieff,  is  as  follows — 

The  "  Count's  "  real  name  was  Benson.  He  was  the 
son  of  a  Jewish  tradesman  in  Paris  and  a  born  rascal. 
He  first  gulled  the  British  public  by  posing  as  the  mayor 
of  a  French  town  burned  by  the  Prussians  in  the  Franco- 
German  War  of  1870.  He  induced  a  brother  magnate — 
no  less  a  personage  than  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London,  to 
open  a  fund  for  the  rebuilding  of  the  town;  he  even 
made  love  to  his  daughter  !  But  a  short  time  passed 
before  the  rogue  was  found  out :  he  was  laid  by  the 
heels  and  sentenced  to  two  years'  imprisonment  in 
Newgate.  There  he  set  fire  to  his  bed,  whereby  he 
was  helplessly  crippled.  Regaining  his  freedom,  he 
explained  his  lameness  as  due  to  a  railway  accident, 


REV.   CHARLES   VOYSEY  245 

and  was  carried  about  by  a  "  valet,"  one  of  the  gang 
of  swindlers  concerned  in  what  was  to  be  known  in 
criminal  annals  as  the  Great  Turf  Frauds.  For  the 
"  Count  de  Montagu "  was  no  other  than  Benson.  In 
1875,  when  he  placed  his  purse  at  the  disposal  of  Voysey, 
he  was  living  in  good  style  at  Shanklin  and  had  a  house 
in  Cavendish  Square.  He  played  the  piano  divinely; 
he  became  a  social  power,  winning  his  entry  into 
fashionable  circles  by  entertaining  lavishly.  Interest 
in  him  was  spread  by  the  rumour  that  he  was  plotting 
the  restoration  of  the  Imperial  dynasty.  In  1877  Benson 
was  arrested  in  connection  with  the  turf  frauds  and 
sentenced  to  fifteen  years'  imprisonment.  Released, 
I  don't  know  the  precise  date,  he  went  to  Mexico  City, 
put  up  at  a  first-class  hotel,  and  advertised  himself  as 
agent  in  advance  of  Madame  Adelina  Patti,  who  was 
announced  to  give  a  series  of  concerts  there.  He 
opened  an  office  for  the  sale  of  tickets,  raked-in  a  large 
sum,  with  which,  on  the  eve  of  Patti' s  arrival,  he  fled 
to  New  York.  Traced  there,  he  was  extradited  and 
sent  back  to  Mexico.  He  committed  suicide  by  throwing 
himself  over  the  stairs  in  his  prison. 

The  reconciliation  of  his  rascality  throughout  life 
with  his  allocation  of  a  part  of  his  stolen  money  to  the 
service  of  God  must  be  left  to  the  expert  in  mental 
pathology.  Benson's  morals — if  he  can  in  any  way  be 
credited  as  possessing  any — were  on  the  plane  of  the 
Italian  robbers  who  pray  to  the  Madonna  for  success 
and  promise  her  a  share  of  the  plunder. 

Needless  to  say  that  none  of  us  "  in  the  know  "  ever 
mentioned  the  word  "  Count "  in  Voysey's  hearing. 
My  drifting  from  the  Theistic  creed,  to  which  he  adhered 
until  death,  did  not  mean  any  cooling  of  our  friendship. 
He  did  me  the  service  of  preaching  a  sermon  against 


246  MEMORIES 

my  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  his  charge  against  which  was 
that  it  ignored  the  fact  that  the  history  of  Christianity 
evidences  that  its  influence  for  evil  has  been  scarcely 
less  than  its  influence  for  good.  It  is  a  somewhat 
rare  experience  to  have  written  a  book  which  was 
banned  by  a  Theist,  blessed  by  two  Agnostics  and 
which  irritated  Ruskin.  Huxley's  letter  about  it  was 
given  on  p.  41.  Here  is  George  Eliot's — 

"  The  Priory,  North  Bank,  Regent's  Park, 
"  January  4,  1880. 

"  DEAR  SIR, 

"  I  am  greatly  obliged  to  you  for  sending  me 
your  book  entitled  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  which  I  have  read 
with  much  interest  both  in  its  purpose  and  in  its  execu- 
tion. I  hardly  thought  before  that  we  had  among  us 
an  author  who  could  treat  biblical  subjects  for  the  young 
with  an  entire  freedom  from  the  coaxing,  dandling  style, 
and  from  the  rhetoric  of  the  showman  who  describes 
his  monstrous  outside  pictures  not  in  the  least  resembling 
the  creatures  within. 

"  My  mind  cannot  see  the  Gospel  histories  in  just 
the  same  proportions  as  those  you  have  given.  But 
on  this  widely  conjectural  subject  there  may  and  must 
be  shades  of  difference  which  do  not  affect  fundamental 

agreement. 

"  Believe  me, 

"  Yours  faithfully, 

"  M.  E.  LEWES." 

The  three  scolding  letters  from  Ruskin  were  (after 
Bowdlerization)  privately  printed  by  that  Maecenas  of 
bibliophiles,  my  friend  Thomas  Wise,  and  afterwards 
included  in  Sir  E.  T.  Cook's  edition  of  Ruskin's  works. 
They  were  followed  by  a  letter  from  his  secretary  asking 


REV.   CHARLES   VOYSEY  247 

me  not  to  take  them  too  seriously,  because  Ruskin  was 
suffering  at  the  time  from  mental  overstrain  which 
rendered  him  especially  oif  balance  when  dealing  with 
religious  subjects.  Hence,  this  short  extract  from  the 
last  letter  will  here  suffice. 

"  Your  book  makes  me  so  angry  every  time  I  open 
it  that  I  never  can  venture  to  write.  Yet  the  anger 
is  a  strange  phenomenon  in  one's  own  mind  about  a 
thing  where  no  harm  is  meant.  .  .  .  How  do  you  ever 
get  on  with  Holman-Hunt  ?  I  thought  he  was  more  of 
a  bigot  than  I — by  much." 

In  contrast,  here  is  a  chaffy  letter  from  Meredith — 

"  Box  Hill, 

"  November  8,  1905. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  REYNARD  OF  THE  ALDE,  ADMIRAL, 

"  Say  Monday  and  give  me  pleasure.  During 
my  time  of  the  swinging  of  the  leg  in  its  cathedral  gaiters 1 
I  read  your  life  of  J.  of  N.  and  was  impressed  by  the 
fairness  and  ability  of  it.  The  portrait  for  frontispiece 
in  the  place  of  J.  of  N.  was  very  interesting.2 

"  Warmly  yours, 

"  GEORGE  MEREDITH." 

1  A  bandaged,  broken  leg,  through  a  fall  over  the  threshold  at  Flint 
Cottage. 

2  The  edition  was  one  of  the  Rationalist  Press  reprints,  in  each  of 
which  a  portrait  of  the  author,  without  name  attached,  faces  the  title- 
page.     Hence,  when  I  next  saw  him,  Meredith  could  not  resist  the 
humorous  comment :  "  I  never  knew  that  J.  of  N.  looked  like  that." 


XXI 

THE  REV.  CHAKLES  ANDERSON  (1826-1893) 
SAMUEL  BUTLER  (1835-1902) 

CHARLES  ANDERSON,  an  eccentric  heterodox  clergy- 
man, was  Vicar  of  St.  John's,  Limehouse.  His  homely 
little  vicarage  faced  the  gasworks,  giving  occasion  to 
his  bluff,  hearty  friend,  the  Rev.  Harry  Jones,  to  say 
to  him  on  his  appointment  to  the  living  that  he  hoped 
he  would  "  diffuse  more  light  and  less  stink  "  in  that 
dolorous  neighbourhood.  He  was  in  the  habit  of  writ- 
ing to  authors  whose  books  interested  him  and  of  seeking 
their  acquaintance.  That  is  how  I  came  to  know  him, 
and,  through  him,  George  Gissing  and  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton. 
Without  a  soul  in  the  parish  who  had  anything  intel- 
lectual in  common  with  him,  Anderson  was  thrown  on 
his  own  resources  and  on  such  friendships  as  might 
come  to  him  in  the  way  named  above.  If  he  could 
not  get  a  talk,  then  he  relieved  his  tedium  by  writing 
letters,  of  which  the  following  are  samples.  The  first 
is  dated  five  days  after  the  death  of  Matthew  Arnold, 
whom,  as  Inspector  of  Schools,  he  occasionally  met. 

"  St.  John's, 

"  April  20,  1888. 

"  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  Have  you  read  or  are  you  reading  Robert  Els- 
mere  ?  The  book  is  able  and  interesting,  but  the  leading 
theory  that  East  London  (always  East  London)  may 

be  regenerated  by  a  new  religion,  an  agnostic  theism — 

243 


CHARLES   ANDERSON  249 

is  twaddle.  This  fighting  the  ground  inch  by  inch  to 
retain  some  fleeting  dogma  of  deity  is  a  losing  battle  all 
along  the  line.  It  will  be  far  wiser  to  throw  up  and  have 
done  with  it.  A  ghost  of  a  ghost  in  the  nature  of  things 
lacks  substance.  You  know  Mrs.  H.  W.  is  a  niece  of 
Matt's  ? 

"  I  am  re-reading  Arnold's  poems.  It  is  a  great  thing 
for  us  that  he  lives  as  much  as  ever  he  did  in  his  books. 
'  He  being  dead  yet  speaketh,'  and  with  a  new  and 
even  more  touching  ring  in  his  voice  as  it  sounds  from 
the  tomb.  I  have  just  finished  Grant  Allen's  Devil's 
Die.  It  seems  to  me  very  sad  that  a  man  of  his  parts 
should  have  to  earn  his  bread  by  writing  second-class, 
highly  sensational  novels.  Far  better  to  make  your 
*  tin  '  as,  say,  secretary  of  Joint  Stock  Mammon. 

"  What  a  funny  world  it  is  !  Arnold  lived  to  hate 
Gladstone  and  dies  to  be  buried  on  Primrose  Day. 

"  Ever  yours, 

"  C.  A." 

The  friendly  relations  between  him  and  Matthew 
Arnold  are  shown  in  the  following  unpublished  letter 
which  Anderson  gave  me — 

"Athenaeum  Club, 

March  25,  [1873]. 
"  MY  DEAR  MR.  ANDERSON, 

"  Thank  you  for  your  note ;    I  always  like  to 
think  of  you  as  one  of  my  readers. 

"  I  received  Philochristus,  and  learnt  by  enquiry  of 
Farrar  who  the  author  was.1  I  looked  through  the  book 
with  interest,  but  the  work  seems  to  me  to  have  the 
defect  of  being  neither  quite  a  work  of  art,  nor  quite  a 
direct  treatment  of  its  subject,  but  something  betwixt 

and  between. 

1  The  Rev.  Dr.  Abbott. 


250  MEMORIES 

"  We  shall  meet,  I  hope,  at  St.  Anne's,  in  a  few  weeks' 
time. 

"  Ever  truly  yours, 

"  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

"  P.S. — Seeley's  articles  l  are,  as  you  say,  signs  of 
the  times,  but  there,  too,  the  treatment  of  the  subject 
is  not  frank  and  direct  enough." 

"  St.  John's, 
"  December  30,  1888. 

"  DEAR  C., 

"  I  have  read  Huxley's  Science  and  Morals.  It  is 
in  his  best  and  cleverest  manner  and  is  unanswerable. 
But,  when  all  is  said,  there  remains  this — Man  regarded 
from  the  standpoint  of  a  scientific  freethinker,  say, 
Huxley,  is  altogether  a  different  being  from  man  re- 
garded from  the  standpoint  of  an  orthodox  Catholic, 
say,  Newman. 

"What  man  is,  what  he  will  be,  what  is  well  for  him, 
what  is  possible  for  him,  all  this  gets  quite  another 
answer  from  these  opposite  attitudes  of  enquiry.  Each 
system  offers  its  own  admixture  of  loss  and  gain.  But 
we  are  no  longer  in  the  position  of  making  choice.  In 
the  old  days  Catholicism  was  the  inevitable  belief.  Now, 
scientific  free  thought  is  the  inevitable.  Unhappily, 
at  the  present  moment  we  are  firmly  seated  nowhere, 
but  tend  so  far  to  fall  between  the  two  stools.  We  have 
neither  the  faith,  poetry  and  moral  force  of  the  super- 
natural past,  nor  the  sound  logic,  social  axioms  and  easy 
fatalism  of  the  scientific  future. 

"  I  am  reading  Luck  and  Cunning.  It  is  a  game  of 
blindman's  buff  with  the  first  principles  of  organic 
science.  A  metaphysician  in  a  scientific  laboratory 
is  as  mischievous  as  a  bull  in  a  china  shop.  All  either 
does  is  to  smash  things  up  in  rampant  ignorance.  Is 
1  Afterwards  published  under  the  title  of  Natural  Religion. 


CHARLES   ANDERSON  251 

Butler  shamming  when  he  professes  not  to  understand 
Darwin,  Spencer,  Romanes,  or  is  he  stone  blind  through 
insatiable  egotism  ?  His  endeavour  to  show  Darwin  up 
as  a  dishonest  writer  or  one  who  twists  words  with 
nature  to  mislead  is  evidence  that  the  one  thing  for  him 
is  a  good  sound  birching  to  thrash  the  nonsense  out  of 

him. 

"  Ever  yours, 

"  C.  A." 

Anderson  took  me  occasionally  to  meetings  of  the 
Curates  Clerical  Club,  known  as  the  C.C.C.  to  distin- 
guish it  from  the  Clerical  Club.  But  at  that  time,  about 
1875,  it  had  belied  its  name,  because  all  its  members 
were  either  rectors  or  vicars.1  They  were  a  genial, 
interesting  company.  Among  them  were  Harry  Jones, 
Brooke  Lambert,  Llewellyn  Davies,  W.  R.  Fremantle, 
and  John  R.  Green,  the  historian.  It  would  not  be 
doing  any  one  of  them  justice  to  say  what  the  church- 
warden said  of  his  parson  who  was  a  bon  vivant  but  a 
poor  preacher,  that  he  was  "  better  in  the  bottle  than 
the  wood."  To  recall  their  names  is  to  recall  prominent 
members  of  the  Broad  Church,  which,  with  the  help  of 
the  Essayists  and  Colenso,  had  won  freedom  of  utterance 
for  the  clergy  of  the  establishment,  but  which  nowadays, 
has  scarcely  a  representative  left. 

The  Club  and  their  guests  were  invited  by  Dean 
Stanley — the  date  was  June  24,  1878 — to  the  Deanery, 
when  he  read  a  paper  on  "  Advances  in  Liberal  Theo- 
logy." I  recall  the  occasion  because  one  of  the  clergy 
present  was  under  taboo  for  very  advanced  views.  The 

1  John  Jackson,  who  was  then  Bishop  of  London,  had  a  large  family 
of  daughters.  They  were  known  as  the  Curates*  Aid  Society  because 
the  parsons  who  married  them  secured  rapid  promotion.  Whether 
any  of  the  members  of  the  C.C.C.  were  among  the  fortunate  husbands 
I  cannot  say. 


252  MEMORIES 

brave  little  Dean  showed  what  he  thought  by  giving 
him  a  seat  on  his  right  at  the  supper  table. 

Anderson's  contributions  to  literature  were  in  the 
harmless  shape  of  two  or  three  volumes  of  sermons,  into 
which  creed  entered  little  and  conduct  much,  and  on 
which  the  dust  of  years  now  lies.  He  was  a  very  good 
story-teller.  When  he  was  a  curate  somewhere  in  the 
Midlands,  a  district  visitor  came  to  him  to  say  that  she 
despaired  of  her  work  and  must  give  it  up.  She  gave 
this  as  the  reason.  "  When  I  called  on  old  Mrs.  Brown, 
who,  you  know,  sir,  is  dying  of  cancer,  I  tried  to  make 
her  more  resigned  to  her  sufferings  by  reminding  her 
that  the  Squire's  lady  has  the  same  dreadful  thing,  and 
she  might  see  that  the  rich  are  just  like  the  poor  in  not 
being  able  to  stave  off  disease,  for  all  the  money  they 
have.  Then  she  said  to  me,  '  That's  all  very  true,  miss, 
but  you  see,  her  Ladyship  ain't  in  that  state  of  life  as 
how  she's  got  to  come  to  be  read  to  !  " 

Anderson's  move  to  London  was  to  a  curacy  at  St. 
Ann's,  Soho,  where  he  and  Mr.  Selwyn  Image  (now 
Slade  Professor  of  Fine  Art  at  Oxford)  were  colleagues. 
They  have  told  me  with  gusto  the  story  of  a  distinguished 
traveller  and  his  wife  who,  on  reaching  the  Holy  Land, 
made  their  way  to  the  river  Jordan,  whence  they  returned 
with  a  bottle  of  water  from  the  sacred  stream  to  be 
used  at  the  christening  of  an  expected  baby.  Duly 
corked  and  sealed,  the  bottle  was  kept  till  the  day  when 
the  rite  was  to  be  administered  to  the  new-born. 
Arrangements  were  perfected ;  the  procession  to  the  font 
in  St.  Ann's  Church  was  headed  by  a  manservant  carry- 
ing the  bottle,  the  precious  contents  of  which  Jeames 
poured  into  the  font  to  the  mystery  of  a  gurgling  sound. 
To  the  consternation  of  the  party  it  was  found  that 
the  plug  had  been  left  out,  and  recourse  had  to  be 


CHARLES  ANDERSON  253 

made  to  the  secular  water  supplied  by  the  New  River 
Company ! 

Settled  at  the  East  End,  Anderson,  who  had  con- 
siderable taste  in  such  matters,  told  me  how  impressed 
he  was  at  the  absence  of  any  sense  of  the  beautiful 
among  the  dock-labourers,  carters  and  others  ranked 
as  the  lower  classes.  Handsome  young  fellows  would 
lead  to  the  altar  brides  whose  faces  bore  on  the  hideous, 
the  bridegrooms  apparently  seeing  in  them  types  which 
to  them  may  have  had  all  the  charms  of  Venus.  Of 
course,  the  attraction  of  the  female  from  the  sexual 
standpoint  explained  the  indifference  of  the  male  about 
her  pug  nose,  mouth  stretching  from  ear  to  ear,  and 
wretched  complexion;  but  it  shows  that  the  sense  of 
the  beautiful  was  wholly  lacking,  and  so  far  suggests  an 
interesting  question  on  the  evolution  of  the  sesthetic 
faculty.  But  physical  charms  would  not  be  looked 
for  in  the  case  of  two  septuagenarians  who  presented 
themselves  before  him  for  marriage.  Anderson  had  as 
verger  an  old  sailor  who  came  with  a  sort  of  hangdog 
look  to  him  one  morning  with  the  needless  query,  "  You 
knows  old  Betty,  sir  ?  "  [Betty  was  Anderson's  char- 
woman.] "  Well,  sir,  I  know  you'll  laugh,  but  Betty  and 
I  are  going  to  be  spliced,  and  we  wants  you  to  splice 
us."  Both  bride  and  bridegroom  were,  as  hinted  above, 
past  seventy.  In  due  time  they  took  their  places  before 
the  altar.  When  the  old  man  was  called  upon  to  repeat 
the  words,  "  I  take  thee  my  wedded  wife,  to  have  and 
and  to  hold,"  he  broke  in  :  "  Very  true,  sir,  much  too  old, 
both  on  us,  sir." 

Somewhere  about  the  'eighties  Anderson  came  to  me 
on  a  matter  which  now  and  again  troubles  the  clerical 
conscience.  He  said  to  me  :  "  I  have  given  up  all  belief 
in  the  Creeds  and,  as  far  as  Agnosticism  can  be  denned, 


254  MEMORIES 

I  am  an  Agnostic.  I  have  only  my  income  of  £300  a 
year,  and  being  a  single  man  without  any  claims  on  me 
I  spend  more  than  two-thirds  of  it  on  the  upkeep  of  the 
church,  payment  of  the  choir  and  the  rest  of  it.  That 
leaves  me  under  £2  a  week  to  live  on,  which  I  manage  to 
do ;  so  if  I  chuck  the  thing  I  am  penniless ;  it  will  be  a 
case  of  standing  on  the  kerb  outside  your  Bank  with 
matches  and  bootlaces  for  sale.  Now  I  ask  you,  as 
an  old  friend,  what  shall  I  do  ?  " 

My  answer  was  :  "  Stick  to  your  job.  I  know  what 
a  lot  of  good  work  you  are  doing  down  there."  I 
couldn't  say  otherwise,  for  what  the  devil  was  my  poor 
old  friend  to  do,  and  I  did  know  all  about  his  unselfish 
work  in  a  dismal  neighbourhood  full  of  hopeless  lives  ? 

The  question  remains  beset  with  difficulties,  and  can 
only  be  settled  by  the  abolition  of  the  preposterous  de- 
mand made  on  men  at  a  fluent  period  of  life,  when  the 
emotions  are  excited  into  full  play,  to  declare  their 
unfeigned  belief  in  what  they  afterwards  discover  to  be 
false.1 

SAMUEL  BUTLER  (1835-1902). 

I  bracket  Anderson  and  Samuel  Butler  together  for 
this  quite  flimsy  reason.  To  Anderson,  practically,  is 
due  the  first  publication  of  Samuel  Butler's  Psalm  of 
Montreal.  This  was  in  the  Spectator  of  May  18,  1878. 
I  first  met  Butler  at  the  Century  Club,  of  which  select 
body  I  had  the  honour  to  be  elected  a  member  in  1877. 
Professor  Clifford  and  Sir  E.  B.  Tylor  were  my  sponsors. 

1  "  If  the  clergy  are  bound  down  and  the  laity  unbound ;  if  the 
teacher  may  not  seek  the  truth  and  the  taught  may,  if  the  Church 
puts  the  Bible  in  the  hand  of  one  as  a  living  spirit  and  in  the  hand  of 
the  other  as  a  dead  letter — what  is  to  come  of  it  ?  I  love  the  Church 
of  England.  But  what  is  to  become  of  such  a  monstrous  system,  such 
a  Godless  lie  as  this  ?  " — Letters  of  (the  then  Rev.)  John  Richard  Green, 
p.  110, 


Photo,  J.  Russell  &  Sons.'] 


[To  face  page  254. 


r 


-j 

(/  - 


SAMUEL   BUTLER  255 

The  Club,  heretical  though  it  was,  had  one  feature  in 
common  with  the  primitive  Christians;  namely,  that 
it  met  in  an  upper  room.  This  was  every  Sunday 
and  Wednesday  at  eight  o'clock  at  its  quarters,  6,  Pall 
Mall  Place,  for  purposes  wholly  convivial.  Along  one 
side  of  the  room  there  was  a  long  table  on  which  were 
spread  churchwarden  pipes,  tobacco  and  cigarettes, 
whiskey,  brandy  and  mineral  waters.  The  subscription 
was  one  guinea  a  year,  inclusive  of  smokes  and  drinks, 
consequently  those  who  did  not  come  to  the  Club  paid 
for  those  who  did.  Under  Rule  XI  no  newspapers, 
books,  cards  or  dice  were  permitted  in  the  Club  room. 
Our  one  annual  frivolity  was  an  invitation  to  ladies  to 
an  oyster  soiree.  Dropping-in  about  nine  o'clock,  one 
was  certain  of  a  free  and  easy  chat  with  Lewis  Morris, 
author  of  the  once  popular  Epic  of  Hades  (also  known  as 
the  Hades  of  an  Epic  ) ;  with  Samuel  Butler  and  Lionel 
Robinson  (our  honorary  secretary),  as  standing  dishes. 
Its  members  included  Walter  Bagehot,  W.  K.  Clifford, 
Henry  Fawcett,  David  Masson,  Admiral  Maxse  (the 
hero  of  Beauchamp's  Career),  Goldwin  Smith,  the  two 
Stephens  —  Fitzjames  and  Leslie  —  John  Tyndall  and 
Sir  E.  B.  Tylor — these  were  occasionally  in  evidence. 
The  Club  came  to  an  end  in  1881.  It  died  of  inanition; 
the  novelty  of  arriving  late  at  night,  and  staying  till 
the  small  hours,  wore  off,  and  there  were  defections 
among  the  single  members  who  "  kept  not  their  first 
estate,"  and  were  haunted  by  fears  of  curtain  lectures. 
From  its  ashes  rose  that  giant  caravanserai  of  Liberalism, 
the  National  Liberal  Club. 

On  the  first  Sunday  evening  in  March  1878  Butler 
and  I  were  early  arrivals,  and  after  talking  freely 
about  his  colonial  experiences,  he  recited  to  me  the 
Psalm  of  Montreal.  I  begged  him  to  give  me  a  copy, 


256  MEMORIES 

which  I  read  to  Anderson,  who  said,  "  Matt.  Arnold 
is  coming  to  inspect  my  school  next  week,  do  let  me  show 
it  to  him."  He  read  it,  and  said  he  should  like  Hutton, 
the  editor  of  the  Spectator,  to  see  it.  Thus  it  came  about 
that,  with  Butler's  consent,  the  poem  appeared  in  that 
orthodox  paper. 

Butler  spoke  to  me  more  than  once  of  a  novel  which 
he  had  on  the  stocks,  adding  that  it  could  not  be  pub- 
lished during  the  lifetime  of  his  father,  because  he  was 
one  of  the  chief  characters.  This  was  the  remarkable 
Way  of  all  Flesh,  which  was  posthumous.  He  was,  for  a 
time,  not  an  infrequent  visitor  at  my  house  on  Sunday 
evenings  and  I  recall  the  pleasure  which  he  expressed  in 
meeting  Grant  Allen  and  Richard  Proctor.  But  after 
his  deplorable  attack  on  Darwin  in  Unconscious  Memory, 
published  in  1880,  he  became  a  man  with  a  grievance. 
Unfortunately  he  nursed  the  delusion  that  every  man  of 
science  if  he  defended  Darwin  was  in  conspiracy  against 
himself  and  this  made  that  freedom  which  is  the  charm  of 
intercourse  very  difficult.  The  matter  is  one  for  deeper 
regret  because  a  pamphlet  entitled  Charles  Darwin  and 
Samuel  Butler,  a  Step  towards  Reconciliation,  published 
since  Butler's  death,  shows  that  his  charge  against  Darwin 
was  based  on  a  misunderstanding.  In  his  Life  and 
Habit,  published  in  1877,  he  had  paid  this  tribute,  "  I 
owe  it  to  Mr.  Darwin  that  I  believe  in  evolution  at  all." 

Characteristic  of  a  man  of  singularly  original  power, 
whose  company  was  always  entertaining,  is  the  following 

letter  about  that  book. 

"  15,  Clifford's  Inn,  E.G., 

"  January  2,  1878. 
"  DEAR  MR.  CLODD, 

"  Thank  you  very  much  for  sending  me  your  friend's 
notes  on  Life  and  Habit.     It  is  very  good  of  him  to  like 
1  Rev.  Charles  Anderson. 


SAMUEL  BUTLER  257 

my  book.  I  wanted  it  to  please  people  and  if  there 
was  anything  in  it  they  had  a  fancy  to,  to  keep  it  and 
set  it  straight  for  themselves.  Of  course  I  knew  I 
should  not  be  en  regie,  but  such  as  I  am  I  must  be  myself 
and  travel  by  lanes  rather  than  highways,  or  I  had 
better  shut  up  shop  at  once.  So  long  as  your  friend 
is  pleased  with  the  book  in  spite  of  its  errors  and  short- 
comings, I  am  satisfied.  Of  course  if  I  had  seen  Clifford 
and  G.  H.  Lewes's  books  referred  to,  I  should  have  said 
so,  but  in  these  days  one  cannot  consider  it  likely  that 
one  is  going  to  say  anything  new  and  makes  sure  that 
one  will  run  up  against  some  one  else  and  simply  goes 
ahead :  If  any  one  thinks  I  have  taken  any  of  their 
property  they  shall  have  it  back  whether  it  is  theirs  or 
no ;  on  the  first  chance  I  get  of  saying  that  they  said 
it  before  me  I  will  call  attention  to  their  having  said 
it :  this  is  the  only  system  on  which  one  can  keep 
a  quiet  mind.  I  think  of  writing  an  article  on  the 
supreme  happiness  of  having  no  breeches;  besides, 
living  people  can  take  care  of  themselves,  but  if  I 
catch  any  one  robbing  the  dead,  especially  the  dead 
that  have  fallen  honourably  in  battle,  poor  and  neglected 
in  their  own  day,  after  having  borne  its  burden  and 
heat,  I  will  rob  them  of  every  stitch  of  clothing 
they  have  on  their  backs,  so  far  as  the  law  will  allow 
me. 

"  Believe  me, 

"  Yours  truly, 

S.  BUTLER." 


Butler  was  of  the  genus  irritabile  ;  hence,  too  apt  to 
resent  adverse  criticism,  even  when,  as  in  the  example 
given  in  the  following  letter,  its  honesty  cannot  be 
challenged. 


258  MEMORIES 

"  Wilderhope  House,  Shrewsbury, 

"  March  26  [year  ?]. 

"  DEAR  MR.  CLODD, 

"  Your  kind  letter  has  been  forwarded  to  me 
here  where  I  am  staying — at  my  father's  house.  I 
shall  not  be  back  till  Saturday  evening  and  cannot 
therefore  dine  with  you  at  the  Savile.  I  will  meet 
you  there  say  at  9  o'clock — not  to  dine — but  to  smoke 
a  cigarette  and  have  a  chat.  The  Aihenceum  has  been 
a  very  great  lift  to  me  and  given  me  much  encourage- 
ment ;  really  I  was  beginning  to  think  I  had  no  chance, 
no  matter  what  I  did.  Even  more  encouraging  than 
the  Aihenceum  itself  is  the  fact  that  Romanes  &  Co. 
are  taking  the  line  which  I  have  insisted  upon,  in  com- 
pany with  others,  for  so  long — for  after  all  it  is  the 
theory  and  not  the  person  which  is  the  thing  to  be 
thought  of. 

"  I  have  a  quarrel  with  Grant  Allen,  so  you  will  not 
find  him  an  ally  of  mine.  I  did  not  like  his  heading 
off  the  reviews  of  Evolution,  Old  and  New,  with  two 
reviews  on  the  same  day  :  one  in  the  Academy  and  one 
in  the  Examiner — both  very  unfair  ones — one  signed 
and  the  other  not.  Grant  Allen  is  an  author  himself 
and  must  know  what  hard  work  we  find  it  to  make  the 
two  ends  meet ;  and  he  should  not  have  misrepresented 
me  as  grossly  as  he  did.  However,  it  doesn't  matter. 
The  editor  of  the  Examiner  told  me,  much  against  my 
will,  and,  indeed,  against  my  strongly  expressed  wish 
not  to  know — who  it  was  that  had  written  the  article, 
and  under  these  circumstances  I  have  more  than  once  in 
my  books  [referred]  to  the  article  as  Grant  Allen's,  which, 
under  any  other,  of  course,  I  should  not  have  done.1 

1  See  Appendix  to  second  edition  of  Evolution,  Old  and  New,  1882, 
and  to  reprint,  1911.  Also  Luck  or  Cunning,  Chap.  XVI,  "Mr. 
Grant  Allen's  Charles  Darwin,"  1887. 


SAMUEL   BUTLER  259 

"  I  think  the  formation  of  a  structure  is  as  much  an 
instinct  as  the  making  of  a  nest.  Von  Hartmann  is 
very  sound  upon  this  point,  though  not  in  any  part 
that  I  have  translated.  Of  course,  if  this  is  not  so, 
the  whole  theory  falls  to  pieces,  and  I  think  it  explains 
too  much  not  to  be  substantially  sound.  With  many 
thanks  for  your  kindness  in  writing, 
"  Believe  me, 

"  Yours  very  truly, 

"  S.  BUTLER." 

The  varied  matters  dealt  with  in  the  following  letters 
warrant  their  inclusion  here. 

"  15,  Clifford's  Inn,  Fleet  St.,  E.G., 
"  October  2  [1878?]. 

"  DEAR  SIR, 

"  I  have  to  thank  you  for  lending  me  Mivart's 
book.1  It  is  of  the  greatest  possible  use  to  me  all 
through.  May  I  keep  it  yet  longer?  I  blush  to  say 
that  I  have  not  yet  read  your  books  and  can  only  hope 
that  you  have  not  read  mine — if  so  I  shall  feel  easier  in 
my  mind,  but  I  assure  you  I  am  very  busy,  I  intend 
however,  going  down  into  the  country  next  week  to 
finish  my  book  and  shall  take  yours  with  me. 

"  Can  you  tell  me  whether  Darwin  ever  answered 
Mivart,2  or  might  I  without  impropriety  send  a  note 
to  Mivart  himself  and  ask  him  when  and  where  his  book 

was  answered,  if  at  all  ? 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  S.  BUTLER." 

1  The  reference  is  to  Professor  St.  George  Mivart's  Genesis  of  Species 
(1871). 

2  In  a  letter  to  Wallace,  dated  July  9,  1871,  Darwin  says  :    "I  am 
now  at  work  at  a  new  and  cheap  edition  of  the  Origin,  and  shall  answer 
several  points  in  Mivart's  book.'' — Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin, 
Vol.  Ill,  p.  144. 


260  MEMORIES 

"  15,  Clifford's  Inn,  E.G., 

"  May  5,  1879. 

"  DEAR  MR.  CLODD, 

"  I  enclose  review  in  Nature.  I  have  heard  this 
morning  that  Huxley  does  not  like  Life  and  Habit — on 
asking  the  grounds  I  was  told  he  said  that  I  had  not  the 
grasp  of  science  which  would  enable  me  to  deal  with 
such  questions  satisfactorily.  What  nonsense !  The 
matter  is  one  which  any  barrister  or  business  man  can 
judge  of  just  as  well  as  Huxley  himself.  Besides,  how 
is  it  that  though  the  scientists  are  very  ready  with  such 
general  remarks  as  this  I  cannot  get  chapter  and  verse 
for  a  single  blunder  from  any  one  of  them  ?  No  one 
would  be  more  heartily  obliged  to  them  than  I  if  they 
would  only  say,  '  You  have  maintained  so  and  so,  now 
this  cannot  be  for  such  and  such  a  reason.'  But  from 
no  single  source  have  any  such  attempts  reached  me. 
I  am  beginning  to  have  a  strong  suspicion  that  the  task 
of  doing  so  is  not  found  too  easy. 

"  Yours  very  truly, 
"  S.  BUTLER." 


"  15,  Clifford's  Inn,  E.G., 
[Undated]. 

"  I  return  Huxley's  Lay  Sermons  after  reading  '  The 
physical  basis  of  life '  with  much  interest.  I  am 
bothered  by  §  at  top  of  p.  80.  4  Let  water,  carbonic 
acid,  etc.'  This  should  be  a  further  simplification 
of  what  has  immediately  preceded  and  I  cannot 
make  it  out  to  be  so,  nor  quite  understand  what  is 
meant;  nor  do  I  catch  the  difference  between  pro- 
tein and  protoplasm,  p.  75.  Also  I  fail  to  see,  rather, 
somewhat  protest  against  the  attempt  to  make  out  that 
he  is  not  a  materialist — in  fact  the  last  8  or  10  pp. 


SAMUEL   BUTLER  261 

seem  to  me  rather  like  the  sort  of  thing  you  tell  me  he 
condemns  in  Fred.  Harrison,  but  I  was  very  much  in- 
terested in  the  essay  and  shall  be  able  I  hope  to  profit 
by  it. 

"  I  have  not  yet  been  to  Dr.  Williams' s  library — I  have 
been  to  the  Museum  every  day  till  1,  but  shall  go  soon. 

"  I  venture  to  send  you  along  with  this  one  of  the  many 
unsold  copies  I  have  of  The  Fair  Haven  in  the  hope 
that  the  first  25  pp.  of  the  introductory  memoir  may 
amuse  you. 

"  I  send  you  what  is  called  the  1st  edn.,  i.  e.  without  the 
preface,  because  it  is  better  without  it — the  preface 
being  written  without  due  thought  and  in  fact  a 
mistake. 

44 1  am, 

"  Yours  faithfully, 
"  S.  BUTLER." 

"  15,  Clifford's  Inn,  E.G., 
u  September  18  [year  ?]. 

"  Let  me  beg  of  you  not  to  give  me  a  copy  of  your  book. 
There  is  all  the  difference  between  a  book  which  sells 
and  a  book  which  does  not  sell.  I  am  only  too  thankful 
to  find  any  one  who  will  accept  a  copy  which  otherwise 
lies  and  will  lie  on  a  bookseller's  shelf  for  ever  so  far  as 
I  can  see.  I  have  borrowed  your  book  from  a  friend — 
or  rather  a  friend  has  promised  to  lend  it  me,  or  if  you 
like  to  lend  me  a  copy  it  would  give  me  pleasure,  but 
I  would  ask  you  to  let  this  be  the  extent  to  which  I  am 
to  be  your  debtor  in  this  particular  matter. 

"  If  you  know  any  one  else  who  you  think  would  like  a 
Fair  Haven  he  can  have  it,  at  any  time — strictly  speak- 
ing, I  ought  to  pay  any  one  for  taking  it — as  I  want  to 
get  rid  of  them. 


262  MEMORIES 

"  Thank  you  for  your  explanation  re  Huxley.  I  will  be 
at  Dr.  Williams's  library  about  3  o'clock  on  Wednesday. 
"  As  regards  the  particular  line  taken  in  the  Fair 
Haven  concerning  the  Resurrection — in  opposition  to 
Strauss — I  should  be  very  sorry  to  say  that  I  held  with 
it — but  if  I  could  with  tolerable  certainty  from  a  Johan- 
nian  source  for  the  account  of  the  Resn  given  in  the 
4th  gospel  I  think  I  should.  But  one  can't. 

"  Believe  me, 

"  Yours  faithfully, 
"  S.  BUTLER." 

To  the  new  reset  edition  of  the  Fair  Haven,  Mr. 
R.  A.  Streatfeild  contributes  an  Introduction  in  which  he 
says  that  that  ironical  work  was  misunderstood,  not 
only  by  reviewers,  some  of  whom  greeted  it  solemnly 
as  a  defence  of  orthodoxy,  but  by  divines  of  high  stand- 
ing, such  as  the  late  Canon  Ainger,  who  sent  it  to  a 
friend  whom  he  wished  to  convert.  This  was  more 
than  Butler  could  resist,  and  he  hastened  to  issue  a 
second  edition  bearing  his  name  and  accompanied  by  a 
preface  (given  in  the  present  reprint)  in  which  the 
deceived  elect  were  held  up  to  ridicule,  (p.  xi.) 

Butler  castigated  the  stupidity  which  construed  the 
arguments  in  that  book  into  a  defence  of  Christianity, 
and,  certainly,  he  had  warrant  when  such  a  Gibbonian 
sentence  as  this  could  thus  be  interpreted :  "  He," 
[that  is,  John  Pickard  Owen,  the  supposititious  author 
of  the  book]  "  stood  alone  as  recognizing  the  wisdom  of 
the  Divine  Counsels  in  having  ordained  the  wide  and 
apparently  inconceivable  divergencies  of  doctrine  and 
character  which  we  find  assigned  to  Christ  in  the  Gospels, 
and  as  finding  his  faith  confirmed,  not  by  the  supposition 
that  both  the  portraits  drawn  of  Christ  are  objectively 


SAMUEL  BUTLER 


263 


true,  but  that  both  are  objectively  inaccurate  and  that  the 
Almighty  intended  they  should  be  inaccurate"  etc.  (p.  23, 
1913  edition). 

And  yet  when  Butler  wrote  Life  and  Habit  as  a  serious 
contribution  to  the  doctrine  of  Evolution,  he  resented 
the  attitude  of  the  readers  of  Erewhon  and  the  Fair 
Haven,  when  he  was  asked  "  Where  was  the  joke  ?  " 
And  the  more  he  protested  "  that  there  was  no  joke," 
the  more  did  his  readers  laugh  and  say,  "  Oh  no,  we're 
not  such  fools  as  all  that,  we  know  it's  your  fun." 

As  Chauncey  Depew  said  :  "  When  once  you've  stood 
on  your  head,  the  public  won't  let  you  stand  on 
your  feet."  The  truth  of  this  was  Butler's  irritating 
experience. 


XXII 
ELIZA  LYNN  LINTON  (1822-1898) 

IT  was  at  Hayter  House,  Marylebone  Road,  that  I 
first  met  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton.  Charles  Anderson  took 
me  there.  For  some  years  after  that  she  lived  much 
abroad,  chiefly  in  Italy;  hence  we  met  rarely.  But  in 
the  spring  of  1883,  I  went  to  Rome  and  put  up  at  the 
H6tel  d' Italia,  where  she  was  staying,  with  the  result 
that  we  became  close  friends,  and,  during  her  absences 
from  England,  constant  correspondents.  Her  letters 
were  full  of  the  affection  which  she  lavished  on  those 
for  whom  she  cared. 

A  warmer-hearted,  braver,  more  chivalrous,  and 
candour  must  add,  less  discreet,  woman,  never  lived. 
She  loved  and  hated  "  not  at  all  or  all  in  all,"  and  in 
those  unsubdued  emotions  lay  the  cause  of  miscon- 
ceptions about  her,  begotten  among  those  who  knew 
her  only  as  a  writer  saying  in  plain  English  what  she 
meant.  By  such  persons  this  dear  woman,  who  was 
more  heart  than  head  when  pouring  out  what  grieved 
her  soul;  this  dear  woman  who  looked,  what  she  was, 
all  tenderness,  winning  you  by  the  softness  of  her  voice 
and  the  sweetness  of  her  smile,  was  denounced  as  a 
virago  and  a  scold.  True  champion  of  freer  life  for 
her  sex,  she  brought  on  herself  torrents  of  misrepre- 
sentation and  abuse  by  her  articles  on  the  Woman 
Question,  notablest  among  which  was  one  on  the  "  Girl 

of  the  Period  "  in  the  Saturday  Review  of  March  14, 

264 


ELIZA  LYNN  LINTON  265 

1868.  The  "  Shrieking  Sisterhood,"  who,  to  quote  from 
Sir  Walter  Besant's  poem  on  her  after  her  death — 

"  Made  them  masks  of  men  and  fondly  thought 
Like  men  to  do,  to  stand  where  men  have  stood," 

raised  "  hue  and  cry  "  after  a  woman  whose  crime  was 
insistence  on  the  immutable  distinction  of  sex  as 
sufficing  condemnation  of  movements  fatuously  striving 
to  ignore  that  distinction,  to  the  imperilment  of  the 
primal  duty  of  motherhood.  Concerning  this,  Mrs. 
Lynn  Linton's  views  were  of  the  freest  and  widest. 
She  was  not  of  "  the  thousands  who  are  afraid  of  God, 
but  more  of  Mrs.  Grundy."  And  her  contention  was 
that  the  education  of  girls  should  be  such  as  would  best 
qualify  them  to  become  the  comrades  and  helpers  of 
men,  not  their  competitors;  as  she  said,  "not  their 
bad  or  inferior  copies." 

She  was  a  very  accomplished  woman.  The  youngest 
of  twelve,  she  had  a  motherless  childhood,  while  a 
somewhat  erratic  father  (he  was  Vicar  of  Crosthwaite 
and,  it  is  interesting  to  note,  was  the  owner  of  Gadshill, 
which  was  sold,  after  his  death,  to  Charles  Dickens) 
did  not  make  for  the  comfort  of  the  bereaved  family. 
Thrown  on  her  own  resources,  she  taught  herself  French, 
German,  Italian  and  Spanish,  adding  a  smattering  of 
Latin  and  Greek.  All  her  life  she  pursued  knowledge  : 
she  said  to  me,  "  I  have  never  left  school."  To  her 
is  applicable  what  Plutarch  says  of  Solon — 

"  For  sure  he  was  very  desirous  of  knowledge  as 
appeareth  manifestly,  for  that  being  now  old,  he  com- 
monly used  to  say  this  verse — 

'  I  grow  old  learning  still.1 "  l 
1  Plutarch's  Ldters,  Solon,  Vol.  I.  pp.  284,  340  (Temple  Classics), 


266  MEMORIES 

At  the  age  of  twenty-three  she  settled  in  London, 
starting  on  her  long  career  as  novelist,  essayist  and 
journalist.  Her  second  book,  Amymone,  a  romance  of 
the  age  of  Pericles,  won  the  praise  and  secured  for  her 
the  lifelong  friendship  of  Walter  Savage  Landor  :  her 
"  dear  and  glorious  old  father,"  as  Swinburne  spoke  of 
him  in  a  letter  to  her.  For  "  father  "  and  "  daughter  " 
they  respectively  called  each  other.  On  my  shelves, 
among  the  books  which  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton  bequeathed 
to  me,  stands  Landor 's  The  Last  Fruit  off  an  Old  Tree, 
thus  inscribed — 

"  To  Eliza  Lynn,  from  her  affectionate  old  friend, 
W.  S.  Landor,  March  5,  1854." 

Facing  the  Preface  is  the  arrogant,  moving  quatrain — 

"  I  strove  with  none,  for  none  was  worth  my  strife  : 

Nature  I  loved,  and,  next  to  Nature,  Art, 
I  warmed  both  hands  before  the  fire  of  life ; 
It  sinks,  and  I  am  ready  to  depart." 

It  was  written  on  his  seventy-fifth  birthday,  at  Bath, 
where  Eliza  Lynn  (as  she  then  was)  was  staying  with 
him.  She  told  me  what  Mr.  Layard  has  set  down, 
also  from  her  lips,  in  his  biography  of  her. 

"  At  breakfast  he  would  not  touch  his  food  until  he 
had  scrawled  off  the  lines.  Then  he  read  them  with 
such  exquisite  pathos,  such  touching  dignity  and  manly 
resignation,  that  she  fell  to  weeping."  x 

The  discoveries  of  modern  science  keenly  interested 
her  eager  soul.  No  small  tribute  to  her  competency  in 
mastery  of  these  discoveries,  as  also  of  their  significance, 
was  paid  her  by  Herbert  Spencer.  When  the  late 
Professor  Drummond  published  his  Ascent  of  Man — one  of 

1  M rs.  Lynn  Linton  :  Her  Life,  Letters  and  Opinions,  by  G.  S.  Layard, 
p.  70.  As  I  had,  through  pressure  of  other  work,  to  decline  an  invita- 
tion to  write  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton's  biography,  I  was  glad  that  this  was 
undertaken  by  Mr.  Layard,  who,  although  he  knew  her  only  six  years 
before  her  death,  has  given  an  adequate  portrayal  of  a  noble  woman. 


ELIZA  LYNN  LINTON  267 

a  class  of  hybrid  books  which  sought  to  square  the 
fundamental  tenets  of  Christianity  with  the  doctrine  of 
Evolution — he  suggested  to  her  that  she  should  write 
an  article  on  it.  This  appeared  in  the  Fortnightly 
Review  of  September  1894,  and  received  his  warm 
approval.  Yet,  with  the  zeal  that  compasses  "  sea  and 
land  to  make  one  proselyte,"  the  Spiritualists  had 
claimed  her  as  a  believer  in  the  genuineness  of  the  frauds 
of  mediums.  What  her  attitude  to  this  travesty  of 
the  Unknown  was  can  be  gathered  from  the  following 
letter  to  me,  written  October  14,  1895. 

"  Malvern  House,  Great  Malvern. 

"  My  dear,  I  ordered  and  have  got  and  read  I  sis 
very  much  Unveiled.1  To  think  that  such  men  as 
Professor  Crookes  and  the  like  are  taken  in  by  these 
transparent  humbugs  and  trickeries  to  the  extent  of 
believing  in  new  unexplored  and  uncatalogued  forces  ! 
It  is  astounding  !  I  remember  the  portraits  (?)  spoken 
of,  as  painted  by  a  Russian  artist,  a  Mr.  Lehmilchan. 
They  were  in  his  studio,  with  special  light  thrown  on 
them.  One  was  a  Master  of  90,  looking  like  50;  one 
of  60,  looking  like  35.  What  rubbish  !  The  man  had 
never  seen  them  and  painted  only  from  description  and 
I  think  he  said  (spirit  ?)  photographs. 

"  Are  there  any  new  books  to  read  ?  .  .  .  I  have  not 
found  my  house  yet,  or,  rather,  the  one  I  want  is  in 
abeyance,  but  I  hope  to  settle  finally  and  permanently. 
"  Good-bye,  dear  and  good, 
"  Lovingly  yours, 

"  E.  LYNN  LINTON. 

"  P.S.— Such  a  dear,  kind  letter  from  blessed  Dr.  Bird 
and  dear  Lallah  [Dr.  Bird's  sister]." 

*  By  Edmund  Garrett.  The  book  was  an  exposure  of  Madame 
Blavatsky's  I  sis  Unveiled. 


268  MEMORIES 

At  her  flat  in  Queen  Anne's  Mansions,  her  home  for 
eleven  years,  there  gathered  men  and  women  of  varied 
interests.  What  those  meetings  recalled  to  him — 
unconsciously  reflecting  the  feelings  of  others — is  ex- 
pressed by  Henry  James  in  this  extract  from  a  letter 
written  at  the  H6tel  du  Sud,  Florence,  February  7, 
1887,  to  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton. 

"  I  am  sitting  by  the  yellow  Arno,  and  having  literally 
to  shut  out  the  dazzling  southern  sunshine;  yet  my 
imagination  takes  flight  on  the  wings  of  regret  to  the 
cosy  sky-parlour  from  which  you  look  down  on  the  fogs 
and  towers  of  Westminster,  and  I  feel  that  I  am  losing 
all  kinds  of  pleasant  things." 

The  "  Lynn  Linton  Correspondence,"  from  which  I 
quote  the  above,  and  which,  somehow,  after  her  death, 
was  offered  for  sale  by  Henry  Sotheran  &  Co.,  revealed 
the  largeness  of  the  circle  in  which  she  had  moved. 
Alfred  Austin  heads  the  list  and  Edmund  Yates  ends 
it ;  scarcely  a  letter  in  the  alphabet  of  authors  is  miss- 
ing !  The  finger  can  point  to  the  name  of  only  one 
writer  with  whom  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton' s  relations  were 
not  cordial — George  Eliot.1  This  was  not,  I  can  aver, 
due  to  any  professional  jealousy  :  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton 
was  incapable  of  that.  She  spoke  of  George  Eliot  as 
her  intellectual  superior.  But,  hating  shams  and 
snobbery,  she  was  angry  with  the  "  Society  "  crowd 
that  fawned  at  the  feet  of  a  woman  living  with  a  married 

1  "It  was  at  John  Chapman's  [publisher  of  the  Westminster  Review] 
that  I  first  met  George  Eliot — then  Marian  Evans,  having  neither  her 
pseudonym  nor  her  style  and  title  of  George  Lewes's  wife."  (My 
Literary  Life.  By  E.  Lynn  Linton,  p.  94.  Posthumously  published, 
1899.)  "To  me— {Chapman]  was  more  antipathetic  than  any  man  I 
have  ever  known  "  (Layard,  p.  251). 


ELIZA  LYNN  LINTON  269 

man  because  of  her  eminence  in  literature.  In  a  letter 
to  Herbert  Spencer  she  says :  "  There  were  people  who 
worshipped  these  two  [George  Henry  Lewes  and  Mary 
Ann  Evans]  who  cut  me  because  I  separated  from 
Mr.  Linton  and  who  would  have  held  Thornton  Hunt 
[he  went  off  with  Mrs.  Lewes]  good  for  stoning.  .  .  . 
Had  Miss  Evans  been  exactly  the  woman  she  was,  and 
not  the  authoress  she  was,  she  would  have  been  left  in 
the  shade  by  all  those  who  sought  her  in  the  sunlight." 

The  tragic  blunder  of  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton' s  life — due  to 
emotions  getting  the  better  of  judgment;  she  was  in 
her  thirty-sixth  year — was  her  marriage  to  W.  J. 
Linton  :  a  clever  craftsman  and  writer,  but  a  feckless, 
muddle-headed  enthusiast,  possessing,  it  would  seem, 
a  certain  charm  for  a  woman  nurturing  ideals.  Her 
ruling  motive  for  marrying  him  was  to  give  effect  to 
the  pleadings  of  his  dying  wife,  whom  she  had  self- 
sacrificingly  nursed,  to  look  after  her  children.  For 
nine  years  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton  kept  the  home  together, 
giving  of  her  strength,  time  and  money.  But  life  with 
such  a  husband  became  more  and  more  impossible,  and, 
after  nine  mismated  years  together,  the  two  parted  : 
he  emigrating  to  America  with  his  family,  to  remain 
more  or  less  dependent  on  his  wife's  bounty  until  his 
death  in  1897,  at  the  age  of  eighty-five. 


Very  inadequately  have  I  availed  myself  of  this 
opportunity  to  obey  the  behest  to  me  conveyed  in  a 
letter  dated  January  1,  1890  :  "  When  I  die  I  should  like 
you  to  write  a  little  line  for  me  and  put  me  right  in 
some  parts  of  my  character  so  misunderstood  now."  As 
she  says  in  Joshua  Davidson,  "Characters  are  crucified, 
if  men  are  not." 


XXIII 

DR.  GEORGE  BIRD  (1817-1900).  SIR  RICHARD  (1821- 
1890)  AND  LADY  BURTON  (1831-1896).  SIR  BEN- 
JAMIN WARD  RICHARDSON  (1828-1896).  PAUL 
BLOUET  (MAX  O'RELL)  (1848-1903).  GEORGE 
WASHINGTON  CABLE  (born  1844).  L.  F.  AUSTIN 
(1852-1905). 

DR.  GEORGE  BIRD  (1817-1900). 

FEW  have  heard  of,  fewer  still  survive  who  knew, 
Dr.  Bird,  truly  the  "  beloved  physician  "  of  Sir  Richard 
Burton,  Leigh  Hunt,  Swinburne  and  others  less  dis- 
tinguished. What  wealth  of  gossip  he  poured  forth 
about  these  men — gossip  unrecorded.  Only  a  story  or 
two  does  memory  hold.  One  is  of  Swinburne,  unsteady 
of  gait  through  drink,  grumbling,  as  he  was  helped  into 
a  hansom,  that  the  step  was  made  so  high  !  Another 
is  of  Burton  who,  complimenting  a  young  lady  on  her 
beauty  as  that  of  Helen  of  Troy,  was  asked  by  her 
"where  Helen  lived?"  She  was  not  as  versed  in 
classic  lore  as  the  very  stout  lady  who,  after  much 
thought  as  to  what  character  she  should  represent  at  a 
fancy-dress  ball,  told  her  husband  that  she  had  decided 
to  go  as  Helen  of  Troy,  whereupon  the  ungallant  spouse 
suggested  that  she  should  go  as  Helen  of  Avoir -du-pois. 

Sitting  "  under  the  spreading  chestnut-tree,"  Punch 
recently  illustrated  a  story  which  Bird  told  me  about 
Burton,  apropos  of  his  pilgrimage  in  disguise  to  the 
sacred  shrine  at  Mecca.  Detected,  through  some 

blunder  in  ritual,   he    would  have  been  killed  by  a 

270 


SIR  RICHARD   AND   LADY  BURTON      271 

fanatical  Moslem,  but  "  getting  there  first,"  killed  him. 
"  And  how  did  you  feel  when  you  had  killed  a  fellow 
creature?"  asked  Bird.  "All  right — and  you?"  re- 
torted Burton. 

SIR  RICHARD  (1821-1890)  AND  LADY  BURTON 
(1831-1896). 

It  was  from  Dr.  Bird's  house,  49,  Welbeck  Street,  that 
Richard  Burton  and  Isabel  Arundell  took  their  nuptial 
flight.  I  met  Burton  (then  Sir  Richard)  at  meetings 
of  the  Anthropological  and  Folk  Lore  Societies,  but  had 
no  talks  worth  recording  with  him,  because  these  bore 
on  the  papers  read  at  those  gatherings.  But  his  amaz- 
ing, dare-devil  career  has  had  more  than  one  narrator. 
I  saw  more  of  his  voluble,  excitable  widow  at  the  time 
when  she  was  living  in  apartments  in  Baker  Street. 
To  a  fanaticism  unusual  even  among  Catholics  she  added 
what  that  Church  bans — belief  in  spiritualism.  One 
afternoon,  after  general  talk,  she  suddenly  exclaimed, 
"  Richard  has  heard  all  we've  been  saying,"  which 
brought  the  blood  to  my  cheeks,  only  to  recede  when  I 
recalled  that  nothing  had  passed  in  the  conversation  to 
bring  a  blush  to  the  cheek  of  a  bishop. 

SIR  BENJAMIN  WARD  RICHARDSON  (1828-1896). 
It  was  at  a  meeting  of  "  Our  "  Club,  which  I  was 
told  is  the  lineal  descendant  of  the  "  Forty  Thieves  " 
Club,  a  rendezvous  of  Dickens,  Jerrold  and  other  men 
of  letters,  that  I  was  introduced  to  Sir  Benjamin  Ward 
Richardson  by  an  old  friend,  Professor  David  E.  Hughes 
(d.  1900),  who  is,  perhaps,  best  remembered  as  the 
inventor  of  the  microphone,  an  instrument  which  does 
for  faint  sounds  what  the  microscope  does  in  revealing 
ob j ects  beyond  unaided  vision .  For  this  and  other  inven- 


272  MEMORIES 

tions  (he  was  one  of  the  pioneers  in  wireless  telegraphy) 
Hughes  received  decorations  so  numerous  that  they 
covered  his  breast  and  his  back,  reminding  me  of 
what  the  late  Sir  Robert  Hart  said  to  me,  that  if  he  put 
on  all  his  orders  he  would  look  like  a  Christmas  tree  ! 
Hughes  promised  me  a  jolly  evening  at  "  Ours,"  but 
as  the  talk  was  led  by  one  Colonel  Heywood  (or  Hay- 
wood),  Chief  of  the  City  Police,  on  the  number  of 
murderers  whom  he  had  seen  hanged,  and  on  gruesome 
details  of  their  crimes,  the  evening  was  not  an  hilarious 
one  ! 

To  Richardson,  who,  by  the  way,  scoffed  at  the  germ 
theory  of  disease,  Sir  Wilfrid  Lawson,  a  fanatical 
teetotaler,  bequeathed  an  ancestral  cellar  of  wines  for 
experimental  purposes.  None  of  us  could  induce 
Richardson  to  give  us  samples  for  our  experiment  ! 
Of  its  ultimate  fate  I  know  nothing.  He  was  a  born 
raconteur,  and,  therefore,  a  welcome  guest  at  Whitsun- 
tide. I  recall  two  of  his  stories,  both  of  them  about 
specialists.  One  of  them  was  summoned  from  Edin- 
burgh to  the  bedside  of  a  lady  who  (for  the  concealment 
of  the  real  name)  shall  be  called  Lady  Strange  ways. 
After  leaving  her,  duty  took  him  to  a  house  some 
distance  from  Strangeways  Castle  to  see  another  patient, 
who  spoke  more  than  once  of  "  My  husband,  Lord 
Strangeways."  "  Excuse  me,  madam,"  said  the  doctor, 
"  I  have  been  attending  Lady  Strangeways  at  the 
Castle."  "  Oh,"  she  replied,  "  that's  the  hussy  who 
goes  about  with  him  in  public.  I'm  his  lordship's 
private  wife." 

Of  another  specialist  friend  he  told  this  story.  He 
had  been  suddenly  summoned  by  a  Scotch  millionaire 
whose  death  by  tetanus  was  imminent.  He  put  the 
jaw  right,  and  naming  his  fee,  was  offered  one  half  of 


PAUL  BLOUftT  273 

the  sum  by  the  patient.  Without  haggling,  he  relocked 
the  jaw,  and  told  the  man  that  his  fee  was  now  doubled, 
and  he  would  be  a  dead  'un  in  a  few  minutes  if  he 
didn't  pay  up. 

PAUL  BLOufiT  (MAX  O'RELL)  (1848-1903). 

Paul  Blouet,  better  known  as  Max  O'Rell,  had  stories 
to  tell  of  his  soldier  career  in  the  Franco-German  War 
which  I  have  wholly  forgotten.  Suffice  it  that  the  seeds 
of  disease,  brought  on  by  manifold  privations,  were 
then  sown,  making  him  incapable  of  bearing  the  strain 
imposed  by  lecturing  tours  and  resulting  in  his  death 
at  the  age  of  fifty-five. 

"  8,  Acacia  Road,  London,  N.W. 

"  March  27. 
"  MY  DEAR  CLODD, 

"  Like  most  preachers,  I  have  not  practised  what 
I  preached. 

"  I  preached  the  gospel  of  cheerfulness.  I  told  my 
hearers  that  to  be  cheerful  and  happy,  one  must  be 
moderate  in  everything.  And  you  should  have  heard 
and  seen  me  when  I  exclaimed  :  '  What's  the  use  to 
gain  the  whole  world  and  make  your  wife  a  widow  ! ' 
Humbug  !  The  whole  time  I  was  allowing  a  manager 
to  book  actually  156  lectures  for  me  during  the  season 
1897-98. 

"  My  health  and  strength  broke  down.  Then  I 
caught  a  cold,  which  would  have  been  nothing  had  I 
been  well  and  strong  when  I  caught  it,  but  which  in 
the  state  I  was  in,  turned  to  a  catarrh  of  the  stomach. 
And,  alas,  I  have  no  under-secretary  of  state,  no  under- 
study to  take  my  place,  so  I  go  on — and  have  now  to 
give  three  more  lectures.  Then,  by  doctor's  orders,  I 
must  go  to  Bournemouth  for  complete  rest — so  I  shall 


274  MEMORIES 

not  be  able  to  go  to  you  on  April  3rd.  Yes,  it  seems  an 
awful  long  time  since  we  saw  you.  In  June  and  July 
I  am  going  to  take  it  very  easy,  and  both  my  wife  and 
I  shall  look  forward  to  seeing  a  good  deal  of  you,  at 
your  hospitable  house  and  here — and  many  times,  we 
hope,  to  make  up  for  long  absence. 

"  Believe  me,  my  dear  Clodd, 
"  Yours  very  sincerely, 

"  PAUL  BLOUET." 

Among  his  Irish  stories  (related,  with  pardonable 
"  inexactitude,"  as  in  his  own  experiences)  was  the 
chestnut  of  the  Jarvey  who,  telling  his  inquiring  fare 
that  the  statues  outside  the  Dublin  post  office  were 
those  of  the  Apostles,  replied,  in  answer  to  the  comment 
that  there  were  only  three  of  them,  "  Sure,  yer  honner 
wouldn't  want  thim  all  out  at  once;  the  rest  are  inside 
sartin'  letthers."  The  other  was  new  to  me.  Driven 
round  Dublin  some  years  after  the  Fenian  agitation  of 
1867  the  Jarvey  told  Blouet  of  the  companies  of  men 
who  both  in  that  city  and  in  Cork  were  waiting  with 
swords  ready  to  leap  from  their  sheaths  and  guns  ready 
to  be  shouldered.  And  when  he  asked  why  they  didn't 
rise,  the  reply  was,  "  Sor,  the  police  won't  let  'em." 
Travelling  in  Australia,  and  leaving  the  town  where  he 
had  lectured  the  next  morning,  there  were  two  miners 
in  the  carriage  who  didn't  recognize  him.  Says  one  to 
his  mate,  "  Did  you  hear  that  chap  Max  O'Rell  last 
night  ?  "  "  Not  me,  do  you  think  I'd  waste  my  money 
on  a  ...  bloke  speaking  broken  English?  " 

GEORGE  WASHINGTON  CABLE  (born  1844). 
In  his  Diversions  of  a  Naturalist  my  old  friend — in 
biological  teaching,  next  to  Huxley,  my  master — Sir 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON  CABLE     275 

Ray  Lankester,  speaking  of  a  Whitsuntide  party  at 
Aldeburgh  in  1898,  tells  in  his  delightful  way  how 
George  W.  Cable,  author  of  Old  Creole  Days  and  other 
charmingly  vivid  presentments  of  life  in  the  Southern 
States,  filled  his  pockets  with  rolled  pebbles  from  the 
beach,  naively  asking  whether  they  had  not  been  put 
there  by  the  hotel  keepers  "  to  make  a  promenade  for 
the  visitors  !  "  It  was  Cable's  first  visit  to  England 
and  it  was  a  privilege  to  ask  him — especially  as  a  fellow 
countryman  of  valued  old  guests,  Moncure  Conway  and 
Dr.  George  Haven  Putnam — to  meet  men  as  varied  and 
distinguished  in  their  several  walks  of  life  as  Sir  Ray 
Lankester,  Sir  Frederick  Pollock,  Sir  George  Scott 
Robertson,  Clement  Shorter  and  George  Whale.  We 
took  him  down  the  river  to  Orford  Castle,  in  the  Lotus, 
and  as  the  others  did  not  care  to  climb  the  stairs  up 
which  they  had  toiled  in  previous  years,  I  piloted  him 
to  the  top.  The  view  from  the  ancient  keep — all  that 
remains  of  a  fine  Norman  fortress — impressed  him,  but 
more  than  this,  the  wild  flowers  blossoming  on  the 
time-worn  walls,  and  he  said  to  me,  "  You'll  think  me 
weak,  but  you  know  this  is  the  first  time  I've  seen  a 
castle,  and  I  feel  as  if  I  should  like  to  steal  into  a  corner, 
and  just  sit  down  and  cry."  Two  days  after  that,  the 
party  went  to  Framlingham  to  see  the  exquisitely 
sculptured  tombs  of  the  Norfolk  family  in  the  church, 
and  to  roam  inside  the  once  majestic  castle,  now  en- 
closing an  empty  space,  at  that  time  of  the  year,  full 
of  buttercups  and  daisies.  Again  impressed  by  the 
unfamiliar  scene,  Cable  gathered  some  of  these  homely 
flowers  to  send  to  his  children.  The  only  orthodox 
member  of  the  party,  moreover,  the  incarnation  of 
modesty  and  simplicity,  he  charmed  us  all.  His  sense 
of  humour  was  buffer  to  any  shock  delivered  in  fireside 


276  MEMORIES 

licence  of  speech.     I  recall  a  Limerick  by  Sir  Frederick 
Pollock— 

"  There  was  an  old  person  of  Barking 
Who  tired  of  this  world's  care  and  carking. 
When  they  said,  '  God  is  just  * ; 
He  replied,  *  I  mistrust 
That  Examiner's  system  of  marking.1 " 

Cable  just  smiled,  and  turned  the  current  talk  by 
reciting — 

"  There  was  a  young  lady  named  Perkins 
Who  just  simply  doted  on  gherkins, 
She  ate  such  large  numbers 
Of  unripe  cucumbers 
As  pickled  her  internal  workings," 

Which  of  the  party  was  it  who  capped  this  with 

"  There  was  an  old  man  of  Tarentum 
Who  sat  on  his  false  teeth  and  bent  ?em  : 
When  they  said,  '  You  have  lost 
What  must  much  have  you  cost ;  * 
*  Oh,  no,?  he  replied,  *  I  was  lent  Jem.J  " 

On  the  day  that  the  party  broke  up,  Cable  left, 
besides  a  sunny  memory,  this  quatrain  in  my  copy  of 
Old  Creole  Days— 

"To  Ed  ward  Clodd. 

"  To  find  fair  pictures  added  to  a  favourite  book 
Is  with  new  friends  to  meet  upon  an  old  highway ; 
To  have  bright  dreams  while  drowsing  in  a  leafy  nook, 
Or  blue  skies,  or  good  news,  upon  a  holiday  !  " 

L.  F.  AUSTIN  (1852-1905). 

Who  among  Omarian  diners  can  forget  with  what 
Elia-like  humour  L.  F.  Austin,  time  after  time,  proposed 
the  toast  of  the  guests  ?  Here  is  an  unpublished  poem 
which  he  wrote  in  my  copy  of  Andrew  Lang's  Letters  to 
Dead  Authors. 


L.  F.  AUSTIN  277 

THE  BALLAD  OF  ANDREW  LANG 

"  I  keep  quite  a  classical  Court, 

Fm  great  on  the  study  of  Greek, 
And  yet  on  a  fashion  or  sport 

I  gaily  descant  for  a  week. 
Believe  me,  no  log-rolling  clique 

Has  ever  exalted  my  horn, 
Nor  rival  asserted  in  pique, 

I  touch  what  I  do  not  adorn. 

From  Homer  to  Haggard  I  roam 

Cementing  incongruous  spheres, 
You'll  find  me  serenely  at  home 

In  golf  or  in  quaint  Elzevirs. 
I  compliment  Dickens  on  Squeers — 

His  mirth  was  a  sickle  in  corn — 
But  when  he  would  move  us  to  tears 

He  touched  what  he  did  not  adorn. 

Methinks  the  illustrious  dead 

Are  truly  enchanted  to  see 
My  manners  so  perfectly  bred 

That  Thackeray's  '  Mister '  to  me. 
And  when  my  own  weird  I  must  dree ; 

And  pass  from  life's  radiant  morn, 
The  voice  of  the  Shades  will  not  be — 

I  touched  what  I  did  not  adorn. 

ENVOY 

Old  friend,  as  you  list  to  my  lay 

Your  brows  are  not  writhing  with  scorn, 

For  none  who  have  known  me  can  say — 
I  touch  what  I  do  not  adorn." 

In  their  literary  skill,  their  quick  adaptability  and 
their  gift  of  allusiveness  drawn  from  wide  reading,  the 
two  writers  had  much  in  common.  Of  this  Austin 
supplies  proof  in  his  At  Random,  a  volume  of  essays 
dear  to  the  lover  of  light  literature.  He  who  playfully 
wrote  therein  "  On  the  Art  of  Not  Growing  Old  "  died 
in  his  fifty-third  year. 


XXIV 

PROFESSOR  A.  VAN  MILLINGEN  (1840-1915) 

THE  announcement  of  the  death  of  Alexander  Van 
Millingen  in  September  last  would  convey  little  to  the 
world  at  large,  since  his  work  lay  in  Constantinople 
and  his  visits  here  were  rare.  But  to  those  who  had 
the  privilege  of  his  friendship  their  lives  are  the  poorer 
in  his  loss ;  the  stock  of  sweetness  on  which  they  could 
draw  is  lessened.  I  knew  him  through  the  good  offices 
of  my  friend  Mrs.  Holman-Hunt's  nephew,  Consul 
Waugh,  who,  on  my  first  visit  to  Constantinople,  in 
1906,  made  me  free  of  a  delightful  club  and  introduced 
me  to  leading  English  residents  there,  to  whom,  for 
their  generous  hospitality,  my  debt  remains,  and  must 
remain,  unpaid.  I  was  fortunate  in  the  friendships 
thus  made.  The  Rev.  Robert  Frew,  than  whom  none 
knew  their  history  better,  piloted  me  round  the  wonder- 
ful, battered  walls,  concerning  which  Byron  wrote  to 
his  mother  :  "  I  have  seen  the  ruins  of  Athens,  Ephesus 
and  Delphi.  I  have  traversed  a  great  part  of  Turkey, 
of  Asia  and  of  Europe,  but  I  never  beheld  a  work  of 
nature  or  of  art  which  yielded  an  impression  like  the 
prospect  of  the  walls  of  Constantinople  from  the  end 
of  the  Golden  Horn  to  the  Seven  Towers."  Mr.  Frew 
won  the  hearts  of  the  Turks  during  the  war  with  Italy 
in  the  service  which  he  rendered  to  the  cholera-stricken 
troops.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  present  war,  he  was 
permitted  to  remain  in  Constantinople,  but  the  ingrates 

278 


PROFESSOR  A.   VAN  MILLINGEN        279 

searched  his  house  and  carried  off  fifteen  years'  stock 
of  sermons !  They  were  subsequently  restored :  I 
have  hesitated  whether  to  send  him  condolence  or 
congratulation. 

I  must  relate  a  small  adventure  which  his  help  carried 
to  successful  issue.  Through  Consul  Waugh's  kindness, 
my  name  was  sent  in  as  a  person  reputable  enough  to 
view  the  ceremony  of  the  Selamlik,  i.  e.  the  weekly 
procession  of  the  Sultan  from  the  Yildiz  Kiosk  to  the 
mosque  within  the  palace  grounds.  Telling  Frew  of  my 
luck,  he  said,  "  You  know,  it's  a  sort  of  levee,  and  you 
must  go  in  frock  coat  and  top  hat."  I  told  him  that  I 
had  brought  neither.  "  Well,"  he  said,  "  your  dark 
serge  suit  may  pass,  but  the  hat  is  de  rigueur.  You  had 
better  see  if  mine  fits  you."  I  did,  and  it  covered  my 
eyes  !  But  I  borrowed  it,  and  the  next  morning,  when  I 
arrived  at  the  palace  gates,  avoided  betrayal  of  the  mis- 
fit by  holding  it  in  my  hands  and  wiping  my  forehead  as 
if  perspiring.  So  I  succeeded  in  witnessing  a  brilliant 
spectacle  which  since  the  deposition  of  Abdul  Hamid 
is  shorn  of  its  glory.  The  short  route  was  lined  with 
troops — Turkish,  Arab,  Koord  and  others — moving  to 
martial  music  barbaric  in  its  notes  to  strangers'  ears; 
high  officers  of  state  in  resplendent  uniforms  awaited 
the  Sultan's  approach;  then  came  the  veiled  women  of 
the  harem  in  broughams,  which  were  ranged  round  the 
courtyard  of  the  mosque,  then,  amid  the  shouts  of 
the  soldiers,  "  Padisha  in  chok  yasha  " — "  Long  live  the 
Padisha,"  the  Shadow  of  God,  his  open  carriage  sur- 
rounded by  sleek  eunuchs,  came  at  a  brisk  pace.  Then 
he  entered  the  mosque  to  pray  to  the  Substance.  A 
blaze  of  colour;  a  shout;  more  music;  then  the  return 
journey,  when  the  Sultan  took  the  reins;  a  memory 
that  cannot  fade. 


280  MEMORIES 

Sir  Edwin  Pears,  doyen  of  the  English  colony, 
and  of  high  rank  as  an  historian  (witness  his  Fall  of 
Constantinople  which  is  the  story  of  the  infamous 
Fourth  Crusade;  and  his  Destruction  of  the  Greek 
Empire),  took  me  on  a  most  delightful  visit  to  Alexander 
Van  Millingen,  then  Professor  of  History  at  Robert 
College,  on  the  Bosporus.  He,  who  had  the  annals  of 
Byzantine  Constantinople  and  of  the  Byzantine  Churches 
of  Constantinople — I  quote  the  titles  of  his  more  im- 
portant works — in  the  hollow  of  his  hand,  was  my 
guide  among  the  beauties  and  intricacies  of  the  great 
church  of  the  Divine  Wisdom,  St.  Sophia.  No  words 
can  convey  the  impression  that  comes  to  one  who, 
realizing  a  dream  of  youthhood,  stands  in  old  age  under 
the  great  dome  of  that  wonderful,  venerable  building. 
And  to  have  had  all  its  details  made  clear  by  so  expert 
an  archaeologist  and  historian  was  a  privilege  given 
to  few. 

As  a  boy  to  whom  the  Crimean  War  was  the  excite- 
ment of  school  days,  it  was  a  chance  not  to  be  lost  to 
cross  with  Sir  Edwin  Pears  from  Europe  to  Asia  to  see 
the  cemetery  where  thousands  of  British  soldiers  lie  in 
unnamed  graves.  There  also  rest  the  remains  of  Pro- 
fessor Van  Millingen' s  father,  who  was  associated  with 
Byron  in  the  time  of  Greek  independence,  and  after- 
wards was  Court  Physician  to  four  Sultans. 

Then,  visiting  the  American  College  for  Girls,  the 
principal,  Miss  Patrick,  D.Ph.,  beguiled  me  into  a 
promise  to  lecture  to  the  students  when  I  came  to 
Constantinople  again.  The  promise  was  the  easier  to 
give  because  its  performance  seemed  most  improbable. 
But  a  happy  fate  took  me  there  the  following  year  as 
the  guest  of  Mr.  Frew,  and  I  found  myself  facing  a  very 
receptive  audience  of  girls  of  various  Eastern  nation- 


PROFESSOR  A.   VAN  MILLINGEN         281 

alities  (no  Turks  were  admitted  under  the  Hamidian 
regime)  who  were  sufficiently  educated  to  understand  a 
talk  on  Man's  early  history  in  simple  English.  To  me 
an  experience  as  agreeable  as  it  was  unique. 

Of  course,  Meredith  must  have  his  joke  when  I 
reported  my  return  to  England. 

"  You  will  be  most  welcome  on  Wednesday.  You 
will  tell  me  as  much  as  discretion  permits  of  your 
adventures  in  the  harems  of  Constantinople,  where  you 
confess  to  have  lost  your  heart.  Poor  Sultan  !  " 


INDEX 


AFGHAN    Boundary    Commission, 

89 

Agnosticism,  60,  253 
Ainger,  Canon,  223,  262 
Airy,  G.  B.,  57 
Aldeburgh,  1,  2,  6,  27,  34,  43,  74, 

83,  84,  92,  99,   123,   130,   135, 

139,    163,    169,    172,    177,   202 

221,  224 
Allen,  Grant,  21-36,  50,  52,  58  62 

73,  83,  90,  96,   127,   133,   162, 

167,    171,    183,   200,   202,   207, 

239,  249,  258 
Allen,  Mrs.  Grant,  23,  38 
Amazing  Marriage,  145 
American  College  for  Girls,  280 
Ancestors,  Worship  of,  29,  77, 100, 

136 

Anderson,  Rev.  C.,  165,  248-254 
Angels  at  Mons,  56 
Animism,  107 
Arbitration,  240 
Argon,  127 
Arnold,  Matthew,  46,  67,  150,  213, 

248,  256 

Asiatic  Studies,  100 
"  Astrologer  Royal,"  57 
Astrology,  236 
Austin,  Alfred,  149 
L.  F.,  276 

B 

Bacon,  Francis,  58,  103 

Baptists,  8,  48,  72 

Barrie,  Sir  J.  M.,  71,  222 

Barton,  Prof.,  232 

Bates,  H.  W.,  54,  63-68,  162,  221 

Beauchamp's  Career,  148 

Becke,  Louis,  123,  129 

Beehives,  mourning  on,  185 

Bel  and  the  Dragon,  212 

Bell,  Mackenzie,  197 

Berthelot,  181 

Besant,  Sir  W.,  Ill,  157,  265 


Bible  reading,  5,  42 
Bible  in  the  School,  229 
Bird,  Dr.  George,  267,  270 

„      Miss,  267 
Birkbeck  Institute,  9 
Black,  William,  156 
Blouet,  Paul  (Max  O'Rell),  273 
Blyden,  Dr.,  81 
Book  of  Enoch,  127 
Book  of  Jubilees,  127 
Booth,  Charles,  197 
Born  in  Exile,  166 
Borough  English,  135 
Borrow,  George,  152,  218 
Boulge,  Rector  of,  91 
Bridgewater  Treatises,  1 1 
British  Academy,  130 
British  Association,  Oxford,  12 
Brodie,  Sir  B.,  87 
Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  94 
Browning  and  nerves,  26 
„          John,  57 

Robert,  125,  151 
Browning  Letters,  151 
Buck,  Joseph,  6 
Buddhist  Praying  Wheel,  88 
Budleigh  Salterton,  166 
Bunyan,  John,  2,  126 
Burford  Bridge  Hotel,  161 
Burial  Service,  116,  163 
Burton,  Sir  R.,  271 
Lady,  271 

Bury,  Prof.  J.  B.,  68 
Butler,  Samuel,  144,  254-263 

»  „        and  Chas.  Darwin, 

256 

»  ,,        and  Grant  Allen, 

258 

•»  „         and  T.  H.  Hux- 

ley, 260 
By  the  Ionian  Sea,  194 


Cable,  G.  W.,  274-276 
Calabria,  194 


283 


284 


INDEX 


CalHmachus,  164 
Campbell,  Sir  G.,  102 

„         Thomas,  151 
Cape  Town,  140 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  9,  95,  96,   114, 

148,  158,  189,  198 
Carpenter,  Edward,  55 

J.  Estlin,  233,  234 
Cassiodorus,  181,  192 
Caste,  102 
Celeste,  Madame,  9 
Century  Club,  254 
Chalmers,  Dr.,  11 
Chapman,  John,  268 
Charnock,  Richard,  142 
Childhood  of  the  World,  19 
Church  Times,  195 
Christian  "fable,"  153 
Cicero,  34 
City  of  God,  188 
Clarke,  Mrs.  C.,  143 
Clericalism,  44 
Clifford,  Sir  Hugh,  100 

„       Prof.  W.  K.,  17,  37-40, 
254,  257 

„       Mrs.  W.  K.,  37,  43,  225 
Clod,  Charles,  2 

„       Johanne,  2 
Cobbold,  Felix,  2 
Colenso,  Bishop,  13,  15,  251 
Coleridge,  Hon.  S.,  41 
Commune,  113 
Comparative  Mythology,  208 
Comte,  Auguste,  115 
Conrad,  Joseph,  186 
Constantinople,  walls  of,  278 
Conway,  Moncure  D.,  227,  237- 

242,  275 

Corelli,  Marie,  97,  158,  219 
Corpus  Poeticum  Boreale,  122 
Cotrone,  194 
Cotton,  J.  S.,  22,  83,  130 
Cowley,  Abraham,  145 
Crabbe,  164,  217,  223 
Crabbe's  Borough,  2 
Cremation,  47 
Crimean  War,  2,  86,  280 
Crookes,  Sir  W.,  55,  267 
Curates  Clerical  Club,  251 


Dakyn,  Henry,  108 

Daily  Mail,  46 

Darwin,  Charles,  63,  66,  180,  251, 

256 

"  De  Montagu,  Count,"  244 
De  Rougemont,  Louis,  123 


Demonology,  107 

Desiderium,  215 

Dickens,  156,  170,  178 

Dill,  Sir  S.,  181 

Don  Quixote,  156,  185 

Driver,  Canon,  16,  201 

Drummond,  Prof.,  266 

Du  Chaillu,  Paul  B.,  69,  71-74,  75, 

123 

Dublin  Review,  59 
Durand,  Sir  Mortimer,  98,  99,  109 
Dyer,  Sir  Thiselton,  90 


Earstoppers,  Spencer's,  50 

Ecce  Homo,  13,  243 

Egoist,  148 

"  Electro-biology,"  65 

Eliot,  George,  157,  246,  268 

Ellis,  S.  M.,  140 

Elton,  Charles,  136 

„       Prof.  O.,  122,  124,  130 
Emanuel,  Walter,  97 
Emerson,  P.  H.,  128 
R.  W.,  151 

Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  117 
Eno's  Fruit  Salt,  70 
Erewhon,  144,  263 
Essayists,  prosecution  of,  12 
Essays  and  Reviews,   12,   15,   16, 

243 

Eucharist,  134,  210 
Evan  Harrington,  140,  148 
Everton  Toffee,  200 
Evil  eye,  70 
Evolution  of  the  Idea  of  God,  133, 

169 
Exodus,  234,  235 


Fair  Haven,  The,  261 
Farrar,  F.  W.,  5,  167,  249 
FitzGerald,  Edward,  3,  89,  91,  92- 
98,    109,  130,  150, 
157,  205,  217,  222, 
237 

Mrs.  E.,  223 
Gerald,  157 
John, 157 

„  Maurice,  157 

Flinders-Petrie,   Prof.,    121,   234, 

235 

Flint  Cottage,  145,  163 
Folk  Lore  Society,  135,  210,  221, 

271 

„     „         „          PresidentialAd- 
dress  to,  21 


INDEX 


285 


Fontenelle,  209 
Foote,  G.  W.,  154 
Fortnightly  Review,  112,  144 
Foster,  Sir  M.,  38,  51 
Framlingham,  1,  8,  46,  117,  275 
Franklin,  Sir  John,  1 
Frazer,SirJ.G.,  134,  153,  183,210 
Freethinker,  154 
Frew,  Rev.  Robert,  278 
Froude,  J.  A.,  125 

G 

Gadarene  swine,  105,  129,  159 
Galton,  Sir  Francis,  15 
GarrickClub,  116 
German  critics,  201 
„        shams,  127 

Gibbon,  7,  67,  151,  154,  157,  195 
Gipsy  Tents,  In,  220 
Girl  of  the  Period,  264 
Gissing,  Algernon,  166 

George,    155,    161,    165- 

195,  248 
Gladstone,  W.E.,  44, 105, 129, 134, 

159,  210,  249 
Glover,  T.  R.,  181 
God  in  Bible  Legend,  18 
Goethe,  99 

Golden  Bough,  79,  211 
Gomme,  Sir  L.,  134-137 
Gorilla,  72 

Gosse,  Edmund,  90,  113 
Grant  Allen:  a  Memoir,  175 
Gray's  Elegy,  151 
Great  Exhibition,  8 
Green,  J.  R.,  251,  254  n 
Groome,  Francis  Hindes,  217-226 
Gurdon,  Lady  E.  C.,  221 
Gypsy  Folk  Tales,  225 


Hack,  Marie,  3,  11 

Hall  Caine,  97,  158 

"  Hannah,"  Jewess,  196 

Hannah,  Robert,  196 

Hanno,  72 

Hardman,  Sir  W.,  138,  141 

Hardy,  Thomas,  34,  37,  67,  84,  85, 

121,  146,  155,  161,  190 
Harley,  Dr.,  113 
Harrison,  Frederic,  113,  165,  166, 

198,  261 

Harry  Richmond,  148,  218 
Hart,  Sir  R.,  272 
Hawkins,  Rev.  E.,  154,  223,  224 
Hay,  John,  239  , 


Haynes,  E.  S.  P.,  151 

Helium,  127 

Herodotus,  104 

History  of  Early  England,  122 

Hobbes'  Leviathan,  44,  107,  158 

Holman-Hunt,  Mrs.,  278 

„      William,   58,   111, 
142,  150,  196-206,  247 

Home,  D.  D.,  55 

Hornbooks,  6 

Hours  of  Thought,  59 

Howe,  Prof.  Ward,  239 

Howorth,  Sir  H.,  127 

Hudson,  Fred,  96 

Huggins,  Sir  W.,  54-57 

Hughes,  Prof.  D.  E.,  271 

Huxley,  Leonard,  44,  46 

Prof.,  In,  6,   12,  16,  29, 

37,  40-46,  48,  51,  54, 

79,  103,  105,  115,  158, 

159,  177,  180,  227,  260 

„        Mrs.,  poems  by,  43 


Ibsen,  126 
Image,  Selwyn,  252 
Index  Expurgatorius,  212 
Iron  as  a  charm,  229,  230 


Jahweh,  233 
Jamaica,  21,  23 
James,  Henry,  125,  268 
Jameson  raid,  149 
Jebb,  Prof.,  104,  130 
Jehovah- Shalom  beetle,  68 
Jesus  College,  131 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  41,  213,  246 
Jessopp,  Canon,  154 
Job,  Book  of,  9 
Joshua  Davidson,  269 
,Jowett,  Prof.,  9,  10,  13,  16 

K 

Kalee's  Shrine,  26 
Keary,  C.  F.,  109,  170 
Keats,  150,  224 
Keble  College,  197 
Keltie,  J.  S.,  77 
Kelvin,  Lord,  162 
Kidd,  Benjamin,  180 
Kingsley,  Mary  H.,  7fi-82 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  113 
Knapp,  Prof.,  152 


286 


INDEX 


Knowledge,  56 
Knowles,  James  Sheridan,  9 
Krieg spiel,  218 
Kropotkin,  Prince,  30 


Labouchere,  H.,  55 

"  Lady  of  Shalott,"  199,  202 

Laffitte,  P.,  112 

Lang,  Andrew,  27,  29,  67,  79,  81, 

132,  169,  207-216,  218,  277 
Lankester,  Sir  Ray,  275 
Landor,  W.  S.,  147,  266 
Lawson,  Sir  Wilfrid,  272 
Lawton,  B.  T.,  141         « 
Layard,  G.  S.,  266 
Lee,  Mr.,  199 
Legends,  Bible,  17 
Lewes,  G.  H.,  157 
Life  and  Habit,  256 
"  Light  of  the  World,"  197 
Linton,  W.  J.,  269 
Liquor  traffic,  77 
Loder,  John,  222 
Lodge,  Sir  Oliver,  56 
London  Joint  Stock  Bank,  8,  56 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  239,  242 
Lower  Slopes,  The,  32 
Luck  and  Cunning,  250 
Lugard,  Major,  79,  80 
Lyall,  Sir  Alfred,  75,  81,  99-110, 

158,  228 
Lynn,  Mary,  93 
Lynn  Linton,  Mrs.,   37,   71,   248, 

264-269 

M 

Macaulay,  114,  158 

Madras,  238 

Making  of  Religion,  212 

Man's  Place  in  Nature,  16 

Manning,  Cardinal,  114,  211 

Martineau,  Rev.  J.,  10,  59 

Massingham,  H.  W.,  34,  36,  123 

Matterhorn,  83 

Maxse,  Admiral,  149,  255 

"May     Morning     on     Magdalen 

Tower,"  203 
Medusae,  39 
Meredith,  Arthur,  143 
,,         Augustus,  140 
Eliza,  144 

George,  43,  116,  125, 
138-164,  168,  171, 
177,  181,  215,  247, 
281 


Meredith,  Louisa,  140 
Mary  E.,  143 
W.  M.,  161 
Meynell,  Mrs.,  151 
Metaphysics,  9 
Mi  all,  Charles,  52 
„     Edward,  52 
Microphone,  271 
Milman,  Dean,  15,  67 
Milton,  152 
Miracles,  101,  105, 
"  Miracle  of  the  Holy  Fire,"  199 
Missionaries,  77,  101 
Mivart,  Dr.  St.  George,  212,  259 
Mohammedanism,  70 
Moncrieff,  R.  Hope,  244 
Montaigne,  101,  211 
Moor,  Major,  93,  222 
Morfill,  Prof.,  132 
Morison,  J.  Cotter,  37,  51,  58,  111- 

121,  138,  154,  158,  163 
Morley,  Lord,  111,  116,  154,  156, 

158,  165,  178 
Morris,  Rev.  R.,  28 
Miiller,  Max,  28,  104,  132,  208 
Myers,  F.  W.,  211 
Mystery  of  Creation,  103 
Myth,  Ritual  and  Religion,  212 
Myths  and  Dreams,  78 

N 

Naishapur,  89,  91,  98 
New  Grub  Street,  166,  194 
New  Republic,  195 
Newgate  Calendar,  152 
Nevinson,  H.  W.,  3,  153 
Newman,  Cardinal,  151 

Prof.  F.  W.,  244 
Nicolls,  Lady,  143 
„        Lieut.  142 
M.  E.,  142 
Norbury  Park,  139 
Nonconformist  Chapels,  10 
Norton,  C.  E.,  96 


"  Octaves,"  46,  166,  198 
Ogams,  133 

Old  and  New  Astronomy,  60 
Omar  Khayyam,  Tomb  of,  89,  98 
Omar  Khayyam  Club,  32,  96, 109, 

161,  205,  227,  242 
One  of  our  Conquerors,  145 
Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel,  148 
Order  of  the  Lion  and  the  Sun,  98 
Order  of  Merit,  147 


INDEX 


287 


Orford  Castle,  275 
Origin  of  Species,  1 1 ,  52 
Other  Worlds  than  Ours,  58 
Owen,  Sir  Richard,  12,  129 
Oxford,  Bishop  of,  107 


Paley,  152 

Palladino,  Eusapia,  211 

Pamela,  3 

Pantheism,  101,  227,  234 

Parnell,  144 

Patrick,  Miss,  D.Ph.,  280 

Patti,  Madame  A.,  245 

Paston  Letters,  117 

Peacock,  T.  L.,  142,  150 

Pearce,  Sir  Robert,  196 

Pears,  Sir  Edwin,  280 

Phallic  symbols,  87 

Philochristus,  249 

Physiological  ^Esthetics,  25 

Picton,  J.  A.,  5,  227-237 

Pioneers  of  Evolution,  52,  236 

Plutarch,  265 

Poems  and  Lyrics  of  the  Joy  of 

Earth,  138 
Pollock,  Sir  Frederick,  37,  39,  228, 

234,  275,  276 
Polonius,  226 
Pond,  John,  57 

Popular  Antiquities,  Brand's,  70 
Positivism,  115,  238 
Powell,  F.  York,  37,  73,  76,  83, 

111,  122-131,  147,  163 
Pragmatism,  103 
Praying  Wheel,  88 
Pre-Raphaelitism,  196,  199 
Primitive  Culture,  16,  17 
Private  Papers  of  Henry  Ryecroft : 

(An  Author  at  Grass),  166,  178, 

181,  187 

Privy  Council,  13,  243 
Proctor,  R.  A.,  26,  56,  58-62,  221 
Psalm  of  Montreal,  254 
Psyche's  Task,  153 
Psychical  Research,  109,  210,  214 
Punch  and  Cremation,  47 

„       and  Huxley,  45 
Purgatory,  102 
Putnam,  Dr.  G.  H.,  122,  275 
Pygmies,  72 

Q 

"Quaker  Didson's  Cordial,"  30 
Quatrains,  of  Omar  Khayyam,  96 
Quarterly  Review,  160 


R 

Rachel  Marr,  191 

Rationalist  Press  Association,  154 

Religion  of  Jesus,  227 

„  the  Universe,  228,  232 
Renan,  Ernest,  45 
Reuss,  Dr.,  201 

Rhys,  Sir  John,  28,  73,  131-134 
Richards,  Franklin,  22 
Richardson,  Sir  B.  W.,  35,  271 
Robert  Elsmere,  248 
Roberts,  Morley,  165,  191 
Robertson,  Sir  G.  S.,  36,  275 
Robinson,  Lionel,  138,  140,  142, 

258 

Romanes,  G.  J.,  38,  251,  258 
Rome,  264 

Roman  Catholicism,  60,  102 
Roncesvalles,  188,  190 
Rosebery,  Lord,  124 
Rossetti,  Christina,  197 

Gabriel  D.,  149 
Royal  Niger  Company,  80 

„      Society,  45 
Roth,  Dr.,  209 
Ruskin,  111,  246 

S 

Sacred  Anthology,  238 

Saint  Bernard  of  Glavrvauxt  114 

Saint  Catherine,  168 

„     John's  Festival,  183 

„     Paul's,  Dean  of,  204 

„      Sophia,  280 
Solarium,  117 
Saliva-magic,  70 
Salt,  118 
Savile  Club,  38,  51,  81,  113,  128, 

211,  240,  258 
Sayce,  Prof.,  104 
"  Scapegoat,"  206 
Scrambles  Among  the  Alps,  83 
Seeley,  Sir  John,  14,  250 
Selamlik,  279 
Sellar,  Prof.,  146,  207 
Service  of  Man,  114 
Shaftesbury,  Earl  of,  14 
Shaving  of  Shagpat,  141 
Shaw,  Bernard,  126 
Shelley,  150 
Shenstone,  6 
Ships  as  communal,  136 
Shorter,  Clement  K.,  32,  96,  143 

152,  161,  165,  220 
Mrs.  C.  K.,  155 
Sidgwick,  Henry,  108 


288 


INDEX 


Sime,  James,  128 

Similis,  184 

Simpson,  William,  69,  86-91,  98 

Sirmione,  184 

Slaughden  Quay,  164,  223 

Slavery,  8 

Smith,  Robertson,  213 

Sydney,  106 
Soldier's  pay,' 117 
Soul,  56,  65,  101,  229 

„      and  breath,  133 

„      weight  of,  56 
South  Place  Institute,  237,  242 
South  Sea  Bubbles,  76 
Spectroscope,  54 
Spencer,  Herbert,  25,  29,  50-53, 

101,  174,  240,  251,  266 
Spinoza,  40,  57,  228,  235 
Spirit  photographs,  56 
Spiritualism,  65,  267,  271 
Stanley,  Dean,  10,  15,  46,  251 
Stead,  W.  T.,  240 
Stephen,  Sir  Leslie,  25,  37,   103, 

151,  152 

Sterling,  John,  51 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  149,  157,  219 
Story  of  the  Alphabet,  175 

„     „  Primitive  Man,  230 
Sunday  School,  3,  8 
Sutro,  A.,  148  n. 
Swinburne,  A.  C.,  163,  266,  270 


Taylor,  Canon  I.,  27,  70,  74,  124 
Tennyson,  Alfred  Lord,  150,  169, 
207 

Hallam,  Lord,  109,  110 
Terence,  145 
Thackeray,  67,  156,  170 
Theatres,  9 
Theistic  Church,  243 
Thomas  Henry  Huxley,  129,  179 
Thompson,  Sir  H.,  46-49,  166 
Thomson,  G.  W.,  98 

„         Joseph,  69-71 
Tolstoy,  126,  170 
Tom  Tit  Tot,  133,  229 
Tout,  Prof.,  126 
Trevelyan,  G.  M.,  146 

Sir  G.  O.,  103,  240 


Trinities,  101 

Tylor,  Sir  E.  B.,  16,  81,  132,  213, 
254 


Unclassed,  The,  165 
Unitarianism,  59 


Van  Millingen,  Prof.,  278-281 
Vaughan,  Cardinal,  212 
Veranilda,  156,  191 
Victory,  Statue  of ,  113 
Vigfusson,  G.,  122,  128 
Viking  Age,  The,  74 
Viking  ship,  136 
Virgil,  92,  168,  191 
Virgin  Birth,  134 
Vittoria,  142 

Voysey,  Rev.  C.,  243-247 
Vulliamy,  Miss,  144 

W 

Wagner,  Frau,  160 
Wallace,  A.  R.,  25,  55,  56,  64,  65 
Walpole,  Horace,  9,  102 
Ward,  Mrs.  H.,  134 
Watts,  Dr.,  220 
Watts-Dunton,  T.,  218,  220 
Waugh,  Consul,  279 
Way  of  All  Flesh,  256 
Weismann,  154,  221 
Wells,  H.  G.,  165,  180 
Westbury,  Baron,  13 
Whale,  George,  96,  275 
Whiteing,  R.,  126n 
Whitman,  Walt,  126 
Whitsuntides  at  Aldeburgh,   34, 

73,  99,  112,  167 
Whymper,  Edward,  35,  83-85 
Wilberforce,  Bishop,  12 
Wilks,  Mark,  10,  86,  227 
Wise,  T.  J.,  246 
Wittenberg,  88 
Woman  Question,  162,  264 
Woman  who  Did,  The,  127,  225 
Wood,  Mrs.,  144 
Words  and  Places,  27 
Workers  in  the  Dawn,  165 


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Author  of  "The  Mulberry  Tree,"  "  Letters  to  My  Son,"  etc. 

The  vivid  human  record  of  a  sojourn  in  a  far  country,  amid  uncongenial  surroundings, 
out  of  which  the  author's  indomitable  spirit  contrived  to  make  fun  and  entertainment. 


EDWIN   PUQH 

Crown  8vo.    5s.  net. 

SLINGS  AND  ARROWS 

A  BOOK  OF  ESSAYS 
By  EDWIN   PUGH 

Author  of  "The  City  of  the  World,"  "Charles  Dickens  the  Apostle  of 
the  People,"  "Tony  Drum,"  "  Punch  and  Judy,"  etc. 

Mr.  Edwin  Pugh,  though  his  name  is  best  known  as  a  writer  of  fiction,  has  the  true 
touch  of  the  literary  essayist.  Critic,  observer,  politician,  and  man  of  imagination,  he 
has  a  wide  range  and  a  penetrating  intellect.  This  book  contains  papers  on  a  variety  of 
subjects,  literary,  social  and  humane,  and  leaves  no  subject  which  it  attacks  without 
illuminating  and  widening  its  borders. 

LONDON:  CHAPMAN  &  HALL,  LTD. 


CT 
782 
C55 
1916 


Clodd,  Edward 

Memories  3d  ed, 


PLEASE  DO  NOT  REMOVE 
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