Life of Frances Power Cobbe as told by herself - with additions by the author, and introduction by Blanche Atkinson

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Title: Life of Frances Power Cobbe as told by herself - with additions by the author, and introduction by Blanche Atkinson
Author: Power, Cobbe Frances
Language: English
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TOLD BY HERSELF ***

LIFE OF FRANCES POWER COBBE

[Illustration:

_Frances Power Cobbe._
1894. [_Frontispiece._
]

LIFE OF FRANCES POWER COBBE
AS TOLD BY HERSELF

WITH

ADDITIONS BY THE AUTHOR

AND

INTRODUCTION BY BLANCHE ATKINSON

LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIM.
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1904

INTRODUCTION.

The story of the beautiful life which came to an end on the 5th of
April, 1904, is told by Miss Cobbe herself in the following pages up to
the close of 1898. Nothing is left for another pen but to sketch in the
events of the few remaining years.

But first a word or two as to the origin of the book. One spring day in
1891 or ’92, when Miss Cobbe was walking with me through the Hengwrt
grounds on my way to the station, after some hours spent in listening to
her brilliant stories of men and things, I asked her if she would not
some day write her autobiography. She stood still, laughing, and shook
her head. Nothing in her life, she said, was of sufficient importance to
record, or for other people to read. Naturally I urged that what had
interested me so greatly would interest others, and that her life told
by herself could not fail to make a delightful book. She still laughed
at the idea; and the next time I saw her and repeated my suggestion,
told me that she had not time for such an undertaking, and also that she
did not think her friend, Miss Lloyd, would like it. At last, however,
to my great satisfaction, I heard that the friends had talked the matter
over, and were busily engaged in looking at old letters and records of
past days, and both becoming interested in the retrospection. So the
book grew slowly into an accomplished fact, and Miss Cobbe often
referred to it laughingly as “your” book, to which I replied that then I
had not lived in vain! It is possible that the idea had occurred to her
before; but she always gave me to understand that my persuasion had
induced her to write the book. She came to enjoy writing it. Once when I
said:—“I want you to tell us everything; all your love-stories—and
_everything_!” she took me up to her study and read me the passage she
had written in the 1st Chapter concerning such matters. The great
success of the book was a real pleasure to both Miss Cobbe and her
friend. She told me that it brought her more profit than any of her
books. Most of them had merely a _succès d’estime_. Better still, it
brought her a number of kindly letters from old and new friends, and
from strangers in far off lands; and these proofs of the place she held
in many hearts was a true solace to a woman of tender affections, who
had to bear more than the usual share of the abuse and misrepresentation
which always fall to those who engage in public work and enter into
public controversies.

The sorrow of Miss Lloyd’s death changed the whole aspect of existence
for Miss Cobbe. The joy of life had gone. It had been such a friendship
as is rarely seen—perfect in love, sympathy, and mutual understanding.
No other friend—though Miss Cobbe was rich in friends—could fill the
vacant place, and henceforward her loneliness was great even when
surrounded by those she loved and valued. To the very last she could
never mention the name of “my dear Mary,” or of her own mother, without
a break in her voice. I remember once being alone with her in her study
when she had been showing me boxes filled with Miss Lloyd’s letters.
Suddenly she turned from me towards her bookshelves as though to look
for something, and throwing up her arms cried, with a little sob, “My
God! how lonely I am!”

It was always her custom, while health lasted, to rise early, and she
often went to Miss Lloyd’s grave in the fresh morning hours, especially
when she was in any trouble or perplexity. Up to within a few days of
her death she had visited this—to her—most dear and sacred spot.
Doubtless she seemed to find a closer communion possible with one who
had been her counsellor in all difficulties, her helper in all troubles,
at the graveside than elsewhere. She planted her choicest roses there,
and watched over them with tender care. Now she rests beside her friend.

Yet this anguish of heart was bravely borne. There was nothing morbid in
her grief. She took the same keen interest as before in the daily
affairs of life—in politics and literature and social matters. There
never was a nature more made for the enjoyment of social intercourse.
She loved to have visitors, to take them for drives about her beautiful
home, and to invite her neighbours to pleasant little luncheons and
dinners to meet them. Especially she enjoyed the summer glories of her
sweet old garden, and liked to give an occasional garden party, and
still oftener to take tea with her friends under the shade of the big
cherry tree on the lawn. How charming a hostess she was no one who has
ever enjoyed her hospitality can forget. “A good talk” never lost its
zest for her; until quite the end she would throw off langour and
fatigue under the spell of congenial companionship, and her talk would
sparkle with its old brilliance—her laugh ring with its old gaiety.

Her courtesy to guests was perfect. When they happened not to be in
accord with her in their views upon Vivisection (which was always in
these years the chief object of her work and thought), she never
obtruded the question, and it was her rule not to allow it to be
discussed at table. It was too painful and serious a subject to be an
accompaniment of what she thought should be one of the minor pleasures
of life. For though intensely religious, there was no touch of the
ascetic in Miss Cobbe’s nature. She enjoyed everything; and guests might
come and go and never dream that the genial, charming hostess, who
deferred to their opinions on art or music or books, who conversed so
brilliantly on every subject which came up, was all the time engaged in
a hand to hand struggle against an evil which she believed to be sapping
the courage and consciences of English men and women.

It is pleasant to look back upon sunny hours spent among the roses she
loved, or under the fine old trees she never ceased to admire; upon the
gay company gathered round the tea-table in the dark-panelled hall of
Hengwrt; best of all, on quiet twilight talks by the fireside or in the
great window of her drawing-room watching the last gleams of sunset fade
from hill and valley, and the stars come out above the trees. But it is
sadly true that the last few years of Miss Cobbe’s life were not as
peacefully happy as one would have loved to paint them to complete the
pleasant picture she had drawn in 1894. Even her cheery optimism would
hardly have led her to write that she would “gladly have lived over
again” this last decade.

The pain of separating herself from the old Victoria Street Society was
all the harder to bear because it came upon her when the loss of Miss
Lloyd was still almost fresh. Only those who saw much of her during that
anxious spring of 1898 can understand how bitter was this pain. Miss
Cobbe has sometimes been blamed for—as it is said—causing the division.
But in truth, no other course was possible to one of her character. When
the alternative was to give up a principle which she believed vital to
the cause of Anti-Vivisection, or to withdraw from her old Society, no
one who knew Miss Cobbe could doubt for an instant which course she
would take. It was deeply pathetic to see the brave old veteran of this
crusade brace up her failing strength to meet the trial, resolved that
she would never lower the flag she had upheld for five-and-twenty years.
It was a lesson to those who grow discouraged after a few
disappointments, and faint-hearted at the first failure. This, it seems
to me, was the strongest proof Miss Cobbe’s whole life affords of her
wonderful mental energy. Few men, well past 70, when the work they have
begun and brought to maturity is turned into what they feel to be a
wrong direction, have courage to begin again and lay the foundations of
a new enterprise. Miss Cobbe has herself told the story of how she
founded the “British Union;” and I dwell upon it here only because it
shows the intensity of her conviction that Vivisection was an evil thing
which she must oppose to the death, and with which no compromise was
possible. She did not flinch from the pain and labour and ceaseless
anxiety which she plainly foresaw. She never said—as most of us would
have held her justified in saying—“_I_ have done all I could. I have
spent myself—time, money, and strength—in this fight. Now I shall rest.”
She took no rest until death brought it to her. Probably few realise the
immense sacrifices Miss Cobbe made when she devoted herself to the
unpopular cause which absorbed the last 30 years of her life. It was not
only money and strength which were given. She lost many friends, and
much social influence and esteem. This was no light matter to a woman
who valued the regard of her fellows, and had heartily enjoyed the
position she had won for herself in the world of letters. She often
spoke sadly of this loss, though I am sure that she never for an instant
regretted that she had come forward as the helper of the helpless.

From 1898 until the last day of her life the interests of the new
Society occupied her brain and pen. It was at this time that I became
more closely intimate with her than before. Her help and encouragement
of those who worked under her were unfailing. No detail was too trifling
to bring to her consideration. Her immense knowledge of the whole
subject, her great experience and ready judgment were always at one’s
service. She soon had the care of all the branches of the Union on her
shoulders; she kept all the threads in her hand, and the particulars of
each small organisation clear in her mind. For myself, I can bear this
testimony. Never once did Miss Cobbe urge upon me any step or course of
action which I seriously disliked. When, on one or two occasions, I
ventured to object to her view of what was best, she instantly withdrew
her suggestion, and left me a free hand. If there were times when one
felt that she expected more than was possible, or when she showed a
slight impatience of one’s mistakes or failures, these were as nothing
compared with her generous praise for the little one achieved, her warm
congratulation for any small success. It was indeed easy to be loyal to
such a chief!

Much of Miss Cobbe’s leisure time during the years after Miss Lloyd’s
death was spent in reading over the records of their old life. I find
the following passage in a letter of December, 1900:—

“I have this last week broken open the lock of an old note-book of my
dear Mary’s, kept about 1882–85. Among many things of deep interest to
me are letters to and from various people and myself on matters of
theology, which I used to show her, and she took the trouble to copy
into this book, along with memoranda of our daily life. It is
unspeakably touching to me, you may well believe, to find our old life
thus revived, and such tokens of her interest in my mental problems. I
think several of the letters would be rather interesting to others,
and perhaps useful.”

There remain in my possession an immense number of letters, carefully
arranged in packets and docketed, to and from Miss Lloyd, Lord
Shaftesbury, Theodore Parker, Fanny Kemble, and others. These have all
been read through lately by Miss Cobbe, and endorsed to that effect. Up
to the very end Miss Cobbe’s large correspondence was kept up
punctually. She always found time to answer a letter, even on quite
trivial matters; and among the mass which fell into my hands on her
death were recent letters from America, India, Australia, South Africa,
and all parts of England, asking for advice on many subjects, thanking
for various kindnesses, and expressing warm affection and admiration for
the pioneer worker in so many good causes. With all these interests, her
life was very full. Nothing that took place in the world of politics,
history, or literature, was indifferent to her. She never lost her
pleasure in reading, though her eyes gave her some trouble of late
years. At night, two books—generally Biography, Egyptology, Biblical
Criticism, or Poetry—were placed by her bedside for study in the wakeful
hours of the early morning. In spite of all these resources within
herself, she sorely missed the companionship of kindred spirits. She
was, as I have said, eminently fitted for the enjoyment of social life,
and had missed it after she left London for North Wales. Up to the last,
even when visitors tired her, she was mentally cheered and refreshed by
contact with those who cared for the things she cared for.

In the winter of 1901–2 she was occupied in bringing out a new edition
of her first book, “The Theory of Intuitive Morals.” She wrote thus of
it to me at the time:—

“I have resolved not to leave the _magnum opus_ of my small literary
life out of print, so I am arranging to reprint ‘Intuitive Morals,’
with my essay on ‘Darwinism in Morals’ at the end of it, and a new
Preface, so that when I go out of the world, this, my _Credo_ for
moral science and religion, will remain after me. Nobody but myself
could correct it or preface it.... As I look back on it now, I feel
glad to be able to re-circulate it, though very few will read anything
so dry! It was written just 50 years ago, and I am able to say with
truth that I have not seen reason to abandon the position I then took,
although the ‘cocksureness’ of 30 can never be maintained to 80!”

During the same winter, Miss Cobbe joined the Women’s Liberal
Federation, moved to take this decided step not only by her strong
disapproval of the war in South Africa, but by her belief that the then
existing government was in opposition to all the movements which she
longed to see carried forward. Her accession to their ranks met with a
warm welcome from the President and Committee of the Women’s Liberal
Federation, many of whom were already her personal friends. To the end
she kept in close touch with all that concerned women; and only a few
days before her death, was asked to allow her name to be given to the
Council as an Honorary Vice-President of the National Union of Women
Workers of Great Britain and Ireland.

In the summer of 1902 an incident occurred—small in itself, but causing
such intense mortification to Miss Cobbe that it cannot be passed over
in any true account of the closing years of her life. In fact, those who
saw most of her at the time, and knew her best, believe that she never
recovered from the effects of it. A charge was brought against her of
cruelly overdriving an old horse—a horse which had been a special pet.
The absurdity of such a charge was the first thing that struck those who
heard of it; but to Miss Cobbe it came as a personal insult of the
cruellest kind. The charge was pressed on with what looked like
malicious vindictiveness, and though it failed, the intention to give
her pain did not fail. She wrote to me at the time that she was “wounded
to the quick.” The insult to her character, the attempt to throw
discredit upon her life’s work for the protection of animals from
suffering, the unchivalrousness of such an attack upon an old and lonely
woman—all this embittered the very springs of her life, and for a time
she felt as if she could not stay any longer in a neighbourhood where
such a thing had been possible. The results were very grievous for all
who loved her, as well as for herself. It had been one of her
pleasantest recreations to drive by the lovely road—which was full of
associations to her—between Hengwrt and Barmouth, to spend two or three
hours enjoying the sea air and sunshine, and the society of the old
friends who were delighted to meet her there. To Barmouth also she had a
few years previously bequeathed her library, and had taken great
interest and pleasure in the room prepared for the reception of her
“dear books.” Yet it was in Barmouth that the blow was struck, and she
never visited the little town again. It was pitiful! She had but a few
more months to live, and this was what a little group of her enemies did
to darken and embitter those few months!

On September 6th, she wrote to me:—

“This week I have had to keep quite to myself. I am, of course,
enduring now the results of the strain of the previous weeks, and they
are bad enough. The recuperative powers of 80 are—_nil_! My old
friends, Percy Bunting and his wife, offered themselves for a few days
last week, and I could not bear to refuse their offer. As it proved,
his fine talk on all things to me most interesting—modern theological
changes, Higher Criticism, etc.—and her splendid philanthropy on the
lines I once humbly followed (she is the leading woman on the
M.A.B.Y.S., which I had practically founded in Bristol forty years
ago), made me go back years of life, and seem as if I were once more
living in the blessed Seventies.... Altogether, their visit, though it
left me quite exhausted, did my brains and my heart good. O! what
friends I once had! How _rich_ I was! How poor I am now!”

In October of that year she decided to leave Hengwrt for the winter. It
was a great effort. She had not left her home for eight years, and
dreaded the uprooting. But it was a wise move. One is glad now to
remember how happy Miss Cobbe was during that winter in Clifton. She
lived over again the old days of her work in Bristol with Mary
Carpenter; visited the old scenes, and noted the changes that had taken
place. Some old friends were left, and greatly she enjoyed their
company. At Clifton she had many more opportunities of seeing people
engaged in the pursuits which interested her than in her remote Welsh
home. Her letters at that time were full of renewed cheeriness. I quote
a few sentences:

“November 13th.

“... I hope you have had as beautiful bright weather as we have had
here, and been able to get some walks on the mountain. Now I can no
longer ‘take a walk,’ I know how much such exercise helped me of old,
mentally and morally, quite as much as physically. I see a good many
old friends here, and a few new ones, and my niece comes to tea with
me every afternoon. They are all very kind, and make more of me than I
am worth; but it is a City of the Dead to me, so many are gone who
were my friends long ago; and what is harder to bear is that when I
was here last, eight or ten years ago, I was always thinking of
returning _home_, and writing daily all that happened to dear Mary—and
now, it is all a blank.”

“November 16th.

“... It is so nice to think I am missed and wanted! If I do get back
to Hengwrt, we must manage to see more of each other.... I have come
to the conclusion that for such little time as may remain for me, I
will not shut myself up again, and if I am at all able for it, I will
return home very early in the spring. I see a good many nice, kind
people here, old friends and new, and I have nice rooms; but I sadly
miss my own home and, still more, _garden_. And the eternal noise of a
town, the screaming children and detestable hurdy-gurdies, torment my
ears after their long enjoyment of peace—and thrushes.... I am shocked
to find that people here read nothing but novels; but they flock to
any abstruse lectures, _e.g._, those of Estlin Carpenter on Biblical
Criticism. I have just had an amusing experience—a journalist sent up
to gather my views as to changes in Bristol in the last forty years.
Goodness knows what a hash he will make of them!”

During this autumn, the thought occurred to me that as Miss Cobbe’s 80th
birthday was at hand, a congratulatory address from the men and women
who appreciated the work she had done for humanity and the lofty,
spiritual influence of her writings, might cheer her, and help to remove
some of the soreness of heart which the recent trouble at Barmouth had
left behind. Through the kind help of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting and Mr.
Verschoyle in England, and of Miss Schuyler and Mrs. Wister in America,
an address was drawn up, and a notable list of signatures quickly and
most cordially affixed to it. The address was as follows:—

“To FRANCES POWER COBBE

“DECEMBER 4th, 1902.

“On this your eightieth birthday, we, who recognize the strenuous
philanthropic activity and the high moral purpose of your long life,
wish to offer you this congratulatory address as an expression of
sincere regard.

“You were among the first publicly to urge the right of women to
university degrees, and your powerful pen has done much to advance
that movement towards equality of treatment for them, in educational
and other matters, which is one of the distinguishing marks of our
time.

“In social amelioration, such as Ragged Schools and Workhouse reform,
you did the work of a pioneer. By your lucid and thoughtful works on
religion and ethics, you have contributed in no small degree to that
broader and more humane view, which has so greatly influenced modern
theology in all creeds and all schools of thought.

“But it is your chief distinction that you were practically the first
to explore the dark continent of our relations to our dumb
fellow-creatures, to let in light on their wrongs, and to base on the
firm foundation of the moral law their rights and our duty towards
them. They cannot thank you, but we can.

“We hope that this expression of our regard and appreciation may bring
some contribution of warmth and light to the evening of a well spent
life, and may strengthen your sense of a fellowship that looks beyond
the grave.”

The Address happily gave Miss Cobbe all the gratification we had hoped.
I quote from her letters the following passages:—

“Clifton, December 5th.

“I learn that it is to you I owe what has certainly been the greatest
honour I have ever received in my long life—the address from English
and American friends on my 80th birthday. I can hardly say how touched
I am by this token of your great friendship, and the cheer which such
an address could not fail to give me. The handsome album containing it
and all the English signatures (the American ones—autographs—are on
their way, but I have the names in type-writing) was brought to me
yesterday by Mrs. Bunting and Mr. Verschoyle. I had three reporters
dodging in and out all day to get news of it, and have posted to you
the _Bristol Mercury_ with the best of their reports. It is really a
very splendid set of signatures, and a most flattering expression of
sympathy and approval from so many eminent men and women. It is
encouraging to think that they would _endorse_ the words about my care
for animals.”

“December 8th.

“You may not know that a very fair account of the address appeared in
the _Times_ of Saturday, and also in at least twenty other papers, so
my _fame_! has gone evidently through the land. I also had addresses
from the Women’s Suffrage people, with Lady Frances Balfour at their
head, and from the A.V. (German) Society at Dresden, Ragged School,
etc.... I am greatly enjoying the visits of many literary men and
women, old friends and new—people interested in theology and ethics
and Egypt, and all things which interest me....”

“December 24th.

“Only think that I am booked to make an address on Women Suffrage to a
ladies’ club, five doors off, on the 2nd.... The trouble you must have
taken (about the address) really overwhelms me! You certainly
succeeded in doing me a really great honour, and in _cheering_ me. I
confess I was very downhearted when I came here, but I am better now.
I feel like the man who ‘woke one morning and found himself famous.’”

“January 4th.

“I like to hear of your fine walk on the mountain. How good such walks
are for soul and body! I miss them dreadfully—for my temper as well as
my health and strength. Walking in the streets is most disagreeable to
me, especially now that I go slower than other people, so that I feel
myself an obstacle, and everybody brushes past me. I sigh for my own
private walks, small as they are, where nobody has a right to come but
myself, and my thoughts can go their ways uninterrupted. But oh, for
the old precipice walk and Moel Ispry solitudes! You will be amused to
hear that I actually gave an hour’s address to about 100 ladies at a
new club, five doors from me in this crescent, on Friday.... I was not
sorry to say a word more on that subject, and, of course, to bring in
how I trusted the votes of women to be against all sorts of cruelty,
including Vivisection. I found I had my voice and words still at
command.... They were nice, ladylike women in the club. One said she
would have seven votes if she were a man. I do believe that it would
be an immense gain for women themselves to have the larger interest
which politics would bring into their cramped lives, and to cease to
be de-considered as children.”

Miss Cobbe was too human, too full of sympathy with her
fellow-creatures, to know anything of the self-esteem which makes one
indifferent to the affection and admiration of others. She was simply
and openly pleased by this address, as the words I have quoted show; and
more than a year later, only a few days before her death, she wrote to
an old friend on _her_ 80th birthday:—

“My own experience of an 80th birthday was so much brightened by that
address ... that it stands out as a happy, albeit solemn, day in my
memory.”

While in Clifton, Miss Cobbe presided at the committee meetings of the
Bristol Branch of the British Union; and she even considered the
possibility of taking up the work once more in London. But a brief
visit, when she occupied rooms in Thurloe Gardens, proved too much for
her strength. The noise at night prevented her from sleeping, and she
was reluctantly—for she enjoyed this opportunity of seeing old
friends—obliged to return to North Wales. One Sunday morning when in
London, she told me that she walked to Hereford Square to see the little
house in which she and Miss Lloyd had spent the happiest years of their
lives. But the changed aspect of the rooms in which they had received
most of the distinguished men and women of that time distressed her, and
she regretted her visit. On February 21st, she wrote to me from
Hengwrt:—

“Dearest Blanche,

“As you see I have got home all right, and this morning meant to write
to announce my arrival.... I have heaps of things to tell you, but
to-day am dazed by fatigue and change of air. It was quite warm in
London, and the cold here is great. But oh, how glad I am to be in the
peace of Hengwrt again—how thankful that I have such a refuge in my
old age! You will be glad, I know, that I can tell you I am in a great
deal better health than when I left.”

The first time I went to see her after her return, I found her standing
in front of an immense chart which was spread out on a table, studying
the successions of Egyptian dynasties. The address she had given in
Clifton at the ladies’ club was about to be printed in the _Contemporary
Review_, and she wanted to verify a statement she had made in it about
an Egyptian queen. She told me that this elaborate chronological and
genealogical chart had been made by her, when a girl of 18, on her own
plan. “How happy I was doing it,” she said, “with my mother on her sofa
watching me, and taking such interest in it!” It was very delightful to
find the old woman of 80 consulting the work of the girl of 18.

Alas! the improvement in her health did not continue long. From that
time till the end, I hardly received a letter from Miss Cobbe without
some reference to the cheerless, gloomy weather. She was very sensitive
to the influences of the weather; and as one of her greatest pleasures
had always been to pass much time out of doors, it became a serious
deprivation to her when rain and cold made it impossible to take her
daily drive, or to walk and sit in her beloved garden. She thought that
some real and permanent change had come over our climate, and the want
of sunshine, during the last winter especially, terribly depressed her
spirits and health. I spent two or three happy days with her in the
spring, and one drive on an exquisite morning at the end of May will
long live in my memory. No one ever loved trees and flowers, mountain
and river, more than she, or took more delight in the pleasure they gave
to others.

Gradually, as the year went on, serious symptoms showed themselves—and
she knew them to be serious. Attacks of faintness and complete
exhaustion often prevented her from enjoying the society of even her
dearest friends, though in spite of increasing weakness she struggled on
with all the weight of private correspondence and the business of her
new society; and sometimes, when strangers went to see her, they would
find her so bright and animated that they came away thinking our fears
for her unfounded.

A visit from two American friends in the summer gave her much pleasure;
but all last year her anxieties and disappointments were great, and wore
down her strength. The Bayliss _v._ Coleridge case tried her grievously,
and the adverse verdict was a severe blow. The evident animus of the
public made her almost despair of ever obtaining that justice for
animals which had been the object of her efforts for so many years. Hope
deferred, and the growing opposition of principalities and powers, made
even her brave heart quail at times. One result of the trial, however,
gave her real satisfaction. The _Daily News_ opened its columns to a
correspondence on the subject of Vivisection, and the wide-spread
sympathy expressed with those who oppose it was, Miss Cobbe said, “the
greatest cheer she had known in this sad cause for years.” The two young
Swedish ladies who had been the principal witnesses at the trial,
visited her at Hengwrt in November, and I met them there one afternoon
at, I think, the last of her pleasant receptions. I have never seen her
more interested, more graciously hospitable, than on that day. She
listened to the account of the trial, sometimes with a smile of
approval, sometimes with tears in her eyes; and when we went into the
hall for tea, where the blazing wood fire lighted up the dark panelling,
and gleamed upon pictures, flowers, and curtains, and she moved about
talking to one and another with her sweet smile and kindly, earnest
words, some one present said to me, “How young she looks!” I think it
was the simplicity, the perfect naturalness of her manner and speech
that gave an aspect of almost childlikeness to the dear old face at
times. Every thought found expression in her countenance and voice. The
eyes, laughing or tearful, the gestures of her beautifully shaped hands,
were, to the last, full of animation.

There was indeed a perennial flow of vitality which seemed to overcome
all physical weakness in Miss Cobbe. But if others were deceived as to
her health, she was not. As the dark, dreary winter went on, she grew
more and more depressed. Four days before the end came, I received the
following sad letter. Illness and other causes had made it impossible
for me to go to Hengwrt for some weeks. The day after her death I was to
have gone.

“It is very sad how the weeks go by, and we, living almost within
_sight_ of each other, fail to meet. It is most horribly cold to-day,
and I would not have had you come for anything.... I think our best
plan by far will be to settle that whenever you make your proposed
start abroad, you come to me for three or four days on your way. This
will let us have a little peaceful confab. I really want very much to
do what I have been thinking of so long, but have never done yet, and
give you advice about your future editorship of my poor books. To tell
you my own conviction, even if I should be living when you return, I
do not think I shall be up to this sort of business. I am getting into
a wretched state of inability to give _attention_ to things, and now
the chances are all for a speedy collapse. This winter has been too
great a trial for my old worn brains, and now the cold returning is
killing.”

Happily for her, she was spared the pain of any protracted period of
mental or bodily weakness. On Monday, April 4th, she drove out as usual,
wrote her letters (one to me, received after she was dead), and in the
afternoon enjoyed the visit of a neighbour, who took tea with her. It
was a better day with her than many had been of late, and she went to
bed cheerful and well. In the morning, having opened her shutters to let
in the blessed daylight, and to look her last upon the familiar scene of
mountain, valley, river, and wood, with the grey headstone visible in
the churchyard where her friend rested, she passed swiftly away, and was
found dead, with a smile of peace upon her face. A short time before,
she had written to me:—

“I am touched by your affectionate words, dear Blanche, but _nobody_
must be sorry when that time comes, least of all those who love me.”

We can obey her request not to sorrow for her; but for all those—and
they are more than she ever realised—who loved her, the loss is beyond
words to tell.

Miss Cobbe’s personality breathes through all her writings. Yet there
was a charm about her which not even her autobiography is able to
convey. It was the charm of an intensely sympathetic nature, quickly
moved to laughter or to tears, passionately indignant at cruelty and
cowardice, tender to suffering, touched to a generous delight at any
story of heroism. As an instance of this, I may recall that in the
spring of 1899 Miss Cobbe started a memorial to Mrs. Rogers, stewardess
of the _Stella_, by the gift of £25. The closing words of the
inscription she wrote for the beautiful drinking fountain which was
erected to that brave woman’s memory are worth recording here:

“ACTIONS SUCH AS THESE—
SHOWING
STEADFAST PERFORMANCE OF DUTY IN THE FACE OF DEATH,
READY SELF-SACRIFICE FOR SAKE OF OTHERS,
RELIANCE ON GOD—
CONSTITUTE THE GLORIOUS HERITAGE OF OUR ENGLISH RACE.
THEY DESERVE PERPETUAL COMMEMORATION:
BECAUSE
AMONG THE TRIVIAL PLEASURES AND SORDID STRIFE OF THE WORLD
THEY REVEAL TO US FOR EVER
THE NOBILITY AND LOVE-WORTHINESS OF HUMAN NATURE.”

In Miss Cobbe’s nature a gift of humour was joined to strong practical
sense. No one who ever lived less deserved the term “Faddist” or
“Sentimentalist.” Miss Cobbe was impatient of fads. She liked “normal”
people best—those who ate and drank, and dressed and lived according to
ordinary conventions. Though, for convenience sake, she had adopted a
style of dress for herself to which she kept, letting “Fashions” come
and go unheeded, she was not indifferent to dress in other women, and
admired colours and materials, or noted eccentricities as quickly as
anyone. She once referred laughingly to her own dress as “obvious.” For
many years dressmaker’s dresses would have been impossible to her; but
she had no sympathy with the effort some women make to look peculiar at
all costs. She could thoroughly enjoy a good story, or even a bit of
amusing gossip. With her own strong religious convictions, she had the
utmost respect for other people’s opinions. Her chosen friends held
widely different creeds, and I do not think that she ever dreamt of
proselytising.

No literary person, surely, ever had less self-conceit. What she had
written was not flourished in one’s face; other people’s smallest doings
were not ignored. One felt always on leaving her that every one else was
lacking in something indefinable—was dull, uninteresting and
common-place. One felt, too, that the whole conception of womanhood was
raised. _This_ was what a woman might be. Whatever her faults, they were
the faults of a great-hearted, noble nature—faults which all generous
persons would be quick to forget. Nothing small or mean could be
tolerated by her.

Her character, as I read it, was drawn on large and simple lines, and
was of a type that is out of fashion to-day. She had many points of
resemblance to Samuel Johnson. With a strong and logical brain, she
scorned all sophistries, evasions, compromises, and half measures, and
was impatient of the wire-drawn subtleties in which modern moralists
revel. With intensely warm affections, she was, like the great doctor,
“a good hater.” He would undoubtedly have classified her as “a clubbable
woman”; and his famous saying, “Clear your mind of cant,” would have
come as appropriately from her lips as from his. If a sin was hateful to
her, she could not feel amiably towards the sinner; and for the
spiritual sins of selfishness, hypocrisy, avarice, cruelty, and
callousness, she had no mercy, ranking them as far more fatal to
character than the sins of the flesh. Like Johnson, too, she valued good
birth, good breeding, and good manners, and was instinctively
conservative, though liberal in her religious and political opinions.

She intensely disliked the license of modern life, both in manners and
morals, and had no toleration for the laxity so often pardoned in
persons of social or intellectual eminence. Her mind and her tastes were
strictly pure, orderly, and regular. It is characteristic of this type
of mind that she most admired the classical in architecture, the grand
style in art, the polished and finished verse of Pope and Tennyson in
poetry. These were the two whose words she most frequently quoted,
though she tells us that Shelley was her favourite poet.

Her gift of order was exemplified in the smallest details and the
kindred power of organisation was equally well marked. It was the
combination of impulsiveness and enthusiasm with practical judgment and
a due sense of proportion that made her so splendid a leader in any
cause she championed.

Miss Cobbe was what is often called “generous to a fault.” It was a
lesson in liberality to go with her into the garden when she cut flowers
to send away. She did not look for the defective blooms, or for those
which would not be missed. It was always the best and the finest which
she gave. How often I have held the basket while she cut rose after
rose, or great sprays of rhododendron or azælea with the knife she
wielded so vigorously. “Take as much as you like,” she would say, if she
sent you to help yourself. She gave not only material things, but
affection, interest sympathy, bountifully.

She hated a lie of any kind; her first instinct was always to stamp it
out when she came across one. Perhaps, in her stronger days, she “drank
delight of battle with her peers,” and did not crave over much for
peace. But she was not quarrelsome, and could differ without wrangling,
and dispute without bitterness.

A woman without husband or child is fortunate if, in her old age, she
has one or two friends who really love her. Miss Cobbe was devotedly
loved by a large number of men and women. Indeed, I do not think that
anyone could come close to her and not love her. She was so richly
gifted, and gave so freely of herself.

To many younger women she had become the inspiration of and guide to a
life of high endeavour, and the letters of gratitude and devotion which
were addressed to her from all parts of the world bear witness, as
nothing else can, to the extent of her splendid influence upon the
characters of others. Only a day or two before her death she received
letters from strangers who had lately read her autobiography and felt
impelled to write and thank her for this story of a brave life. It is in
the hope that through it her influence may go on growing, and that her
spirit of self-sacrifice, of service to humanity, and faithfulness to
the Divine law may spread until the causes she fought for so valiantly
are victorious, that this new edition of the “Life of Frances Power
Cobbe” is sent out.

BLANCHE ATKINSON.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE.

My life has been an interesting one to live and I hope that this record
of it may not prove too dull to read. The days are past when biographers
thought it necessary to apologize for the paucity of the adventures
which they could recall and the obscurity of the achievements which
their heroes might accomplish. We have gone far in the opposite
direction, and are wont to relate _in extenso_ details decidedly
trivial, and to reproduce in imposing type correspondence which was
scarcely worth the postage of the original manuscript. Our sense of the
intrinsic interest of Humanity, as depicted either in biography or
fiction,—that is, of the character of the _personages_ of the drama
going on upon our little stage,—has continually risen, while that of the
_action_ of the piece,—the “incidents” which our fathers chiefly
regarded,—has fallen into the second plane. I fear I have been guilty in
this book of recording many trifling memories and of reproducing some
letters of little importance; but only through small touches could a
happy childhood and youth be possibly depicted: and all the Letters
have, I think, a certain value as relics and tokens of friendship, if
not as expressions (as many of them are) of opinions carrying the weight
of honoured names.

As regards these Letters (exclusively, of course, those of friends and
correspondents now dead), I earnestly beg the heirs of the writers to
pardon me if I have not asked their permission for the publication of
them. To have ascertained, in the first place, who such representatives
are and where they might be addressed, would, in many cases, have been a
task presenting prohibitive difficulties; and as the contents of the
Letters are wholly honourable to the heads and hearts of their authors,
I may fairly hope that surviving relatives will be pleased that they
should see the light, and will not grudge the testimony they bear to
kindly sentiments entertained towards myself.[1]

There is in this book of mine a good deal of “_Old Woman’s Gossip_,” (I
hope of a harmless sort), concerning many interesting men and women with
whom it was my high privilege to associate freely twenty, thirty and
forty years ago. But if it correspond at all to my design, it is not
only, or chiefly, a collection of social sketches and friendly
correspondence. I have tried to make it the true and complete history of
a woman’s existence _as seen from within_; a real LIFE, which he who
reads may take as representing fairly the joys, sorrows and interests,
the powers and limitations, of one of my sex and class in the era which
is now drawing to a close. The world when I entered it was a very
different place from the world I must shortly quit, most markedly so as
regards the position in it of women and of persons like myself holding
heterodox opinions, and my experience practically bridges the gulf which
divides the English _ancien régime_ from the new.

Whether my readers will think at the end of these volumes that such a
life as mine was worth _recording_ I cannot foretell; but that it has
been a “_Life Worth Living_” I distinctly affirm; so well worth it,
that,—though I entirely believe in a higher existence hereafter, both
for myself and for those whose less happy lives on earth entitle them
far more to expect it from eternal love and justice,—I would gladly
accept the permission to run my earthly race once more from beginning to
end, taking sunshine and shade just as they have flickered over the long
vista of my seventy years. Even the retrospect of my life in these
volumes has been a pleasure; a chewing of the cud of memories,—mostly
sweet, none very bitter,—while I lie still a little while in the
sunshine, ere the soon-closing night.

F. P. C.

CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTION v
PREFACE xxvii
I. FAMILY AND HOME 1
II. CHILDHOOD 29
III. SCHOOL AND AFTER 55
IV. RELIGION 79
V. MY FIRST BOOK 107
VI. IRELAND IN THE FORTIES. THE PEASANTRY 135
VII. IRELAND IN THE FORTIES. THE GENTRY 163
VIII. UPROOTED 201
IX. LONG JOURNEY 217
X. BRISTOL. REFORMATORIES AND RAGGED SCHOOLS 273
XI. BRISTOL. THE SICK IN THE WORKHOUSE 301
XII. BRISTOL. WORKHOUSE GIRLS 325
XIII. BRISTOL FRIENDS 341
XIV. ITALY. 1857–1879 363
XV. MY LITERARY LIFE IN LONDON 397
XVI. MY JOURNALIST LIFE IN LONDON 427
XVII. MY SOCIAL LIFE IN LONDON IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES 441
XVIII. MY SOCIAL LIFE IN LONDON IN THE SEVENTIES AND EIGHTIES 517
XIX. THE CLAIMS OF WOMEN 581
XX. THE CLAIMS OF BRUTES 613
XXI. MY HOME IN WALES 693
INDEX 713

ERRATA

For Berwick read Bewick, p. 179, last line.
For Goldsmiths read Goldschmidts, p. 237, 8 lines from bottom.
For Goodwin read Godwin, p. 257, line 12.
For Macpelah read Machpelah, p. 237, line 12.

CHAPTER
I.
_FAMILY AND HOME._

I have enjoyed through life the advantage of being, in the true sense of
the words, “well-born.” My parents were good and wise; honourable and
honoured; sound in body and in mind. From them I have inherited a
physical frame which, however defective even to the verge of
grotesqueness from the æsthetic point of view, has been, as regards
health and energy, a source of endless enjoyment to me. From childhood
till now in my old age—except during a few years interval of lameness
from an accident,—mere natural existence has always been to me a
positive pleasure. Exercise and rest, food and warmth, work, play and
sleep, each in its turn has been delightful; and my spirits, though of
course now no longer as gay as in youth, have kept a level of
cheerfulness subject to no alternatives of depression save under the
stress of actual sorrow. How much of the optimism which I am aware has
coloured my philosophy ought to be laid to the account of this bodily
_bien être_, it would be superfluous to enquire too nicely. At least I
may fairly maintain that, as Health is the normal condition of
existence, the views which a particularly healthy person takes of things
are presumably more sound than those adopted by one habitually in the
abnormal condition of an invalid.

As regards the inheritance of mental faculties, of which so much has
been talked of late years, I cannot trace it in my own experience in any
way. My father was a very able, energetic man; but his abilities all lay
in the direction of administration, while those of my dear mother were
of the order which made the charming hostess and cultivated member of
society with the now forgotten grace of the eighteenth century. Neither
paternal nor maternal gifts or graces have descended to me; and such
faculties as have fallen to my lot have been of a different kind; a kind
which, I fear, my good father and his forbears would have regarded as
incongruous and unseemly for a daughter of their house to exhibit.
Sometimes I have pictured to myself the shock which “The old Master”
would have felt could he have seen me—for example—trudging three times a
week for seven years to an office in the purlieus of the Strand to write
articles for a half-penny newspaper. Not one of my ancestors, so far as
I have heard, ever dabbled in printer’s ink.

My brothers were all older than I; the eldest eleven, the youngest five
years older; and my mother, when I was born, was in her forty-seventh
year; a circumstance which perhaps makes it remarkable that the physical
energy and high animal spirits of which I have just made mention came to
me in so large a share. My old friend Harriet St. Leger, Fanny Kemble’s
“dear H. S.,” who knew us all well, said to me one day laughing: “You
know _you_ are your Father’s _Son_!” Had I been a man, and had possessed
my brother’s facilities for entering Parliament or any profession,[2] I
have sometimes dreamed I could have made my mark and done some masculine
service to my fellow-creatures. But the woman’s destiny which God
allotted to me has been, I do not question, the best and happiest for
me; nor have I ever seriously wished it had been otherwise, albeit I
have gone through life without that interest which has been styled
“woman’s whole existence.” Perhaps if this book be found to have any
value it will partly consist in the evidence it must afford of how
pleasant and interesting, and withal, I hope, not altogether useless a
life is open to a woman, though no man has ever desired to share it, nor
has she seen the man she would have wished to ask her to do so. The days
which many maidens my contemporaries and acquaintances,—

“Lost in wooing
In watching and pursuing,”—

(or in being pursued, which comes to the same thing); were spent by me,
free from all such distractions, in study and in the performance of
happy and healthful filial and housewifely duties. Destiny, too, was
kind to me, likewise, by relieving me from care respecting the other
great object of human anxiety,—to wit, Money. The prophet’s prayer,
“Give me neither poverty nor riches” was granted to me, and I have
probably needed to spend altogether fewer thoughts on £ s. d. than could
happen to anyone who has either to solve the problems “How to keep the
Wolf from the door” and “How to make both ends meet?” or “How, justly
and conscientiously, to expend a large income?” Wealth has only come to
me in my old age, and now it is easy to know how to spend it. Thus it
has happened that in early womanhood and middle life I enjoyed a degree
of real _leisure_ of mind possessed by few; and to it, I think, must be
chiefly attributed anything which in my doings may have worn the
semblance of exceptional ability. I had good, sound working brains to
start with, and much fewer hindrances than the majority of women in
improving and employing them. _Voilà tout._

I began by saying that I was well-born in the true sense of the words,
being the child of parents morally good and physically sound. I reckon
it also to have been an advantage,—though immeasurably a minor one,—to
have been well-born, likewise, in the conventional sense. My ancestors,
it is true, were rather like those of Sir Leicester Dedlock, “chiefly
remarkable for never having done anything remarkable for so many
generations.”[3] But they were honourable specimens of county squires;
and never, during the four centuries through which I have traced them,
do they seem to have been guilty of any action of which I need to be
ashamed.

My mother’s father was Captain Thomas Conway, of Morden Park,
representative of a branch of that family. Her only brother was Adjutant
General Conway, whose name Lord Roberts has kindly informed me is still,
after fifty years, an “honoured word in Madras.” My father’s progenitors
were, from the fifteenth century, for many generations owners of
Swarraton, now Lord Ashburton’s beautiful “Grange” in Hampshire; the
scene of poor Mrs. Carlyle’s mortifications. While at Swarraton the
heads of the family married, in their later generations, the daughters
of Welborne of Allington; of Sir John Owen; of Sir Richard Norton of
Rotherfield (whose wife was the daughter of Bishop Bilson, one of the
translators of the Bible); and of James Chaloner, Governor of the Isle
of Man, one of the Judges of Charles I. The wife of this last remarkable
man was Ursula Fairfax, niece of Lord Fairfax.[4]

On one occasion only do the Cobbes of Swarraton seem to have transcended
the “Dedlock” programme. Richard Cobbe was Knight of the Shire for Hants
in Cromwell’s short Parliament of 1656, with Richard Cromwell for a
colleague. What he did therein History saith not! The grandson of this
Richard Cobbe, a younger son named Charles, went to Ireland in 1717 as
Chaplain to the Duke of Bolton with whom he was connected through the
Norton’s; and a few years later he was appointed Archbishop of Dublin,—a
post which he held with great honour until his death in 1765. On every
occasion when penal laws against Catholics were proposed in the Irish
House of Lords Archbishop Cobbe contended vigorously against them,
dividing the House again and again on the Bills; and his numerous
letters and papers in the Irish State-Paper office (as Mr. Froude has
assured me after inspection) bear high testimony to his liberality and
integrity in that age of corruption. Two traditions concerning him have
a certain degree of general interest. One, that John Wesley called upon
him at his country house,—my old home, Newbridge;—and that the interview
was perfectly friendly; Wesley approving himself and his work to the
Archbishop’s mind. The other is; that when Handel came to Dublin,
bringing with him the MS. of the _Messiah_, of which he could not
succeed in obtaining the production in London, Archbishop Cobbe, then
Bishop of Kildare, took lively interest in the work, and under his
patronage, as well as that of several Irishmen of rank, the great
Oratorio was produced in Dublin.

Good Archbishop Cobbe had not neglected the affairs of his own
household. He bought considerable estates in Louth, Carlow, and Co.
Dublin, and on the latter, about twelve miles north of Dublin and two
miles from the pretty rocky coast of Portrane, he built his country
house of Newbridge, which has ever since been the home of our family. As
half my life is connected with this dear old place, I hope the reader
will look at the pictures of it which must be inserted in this book and
think of it as it was in my youth, bright and smiling and yet dignified;
bosomed among its old trees and with the green, wide-spreading park
opened out before the noble granite _perron_ of the hall door. There is
another country house on the adjoining estate, Turvey, the property of
Lord Trimleston, and I have often amused myself by comparing the two.
Turvey is really a _wicked-looking_ house, with half-moon windows which
suggest leering eyes, and partition walls so thick that secret passages
run through them; and bedrooms with tapestry and _ruelles_ and hidden
doors in the wainscot. There were there, also, when I was young, certain
very objectionable pictures, beside several portraits of the “beauties”
of Charles II.’s court, (to the last degree _decolletées_) who had been,
no doubt, friends of the first master of the house, their contemporary.
In the garden was a grotto with a deep cold bath in it, which, in the
climate of Ireland, suggested suicide rather than ablution. Altogether
the place had the same suggestiveness of “deeds of darkness” which I
remember feeling profoundly when I went over Holyrood with Dr. John
Brown; and it was quite natural to attach to Turvey one of the worst of
the traditional Irish curses. This curse was pronounced by the Abbess of
the neighbouring convent (long in ruins) of Grace-Dieu when Lord
Kingsland, then lord of Turvey, had by some nefarious means induced the
English Government of the day to make over the lands of the convent to
himself. On announcing this intelligence in his own hall to the
assembled nuns, the poor ladies took refuge very naturally in
malediction, went down simultaneously on their knees, and repeated after
their Abbess a denunciation of Heaven’s vengeance on the traitor. “There
should never want an idiot or a lawsuit in the family; and the rightful
heir should never see the smoke of the chimney.” Needless to add,
lawsuits and idiots have been plentiful ever since, and, after several
generations of absentees, Turvey stands in a treeless desert, and has
descended in the world from lordly to humble owners.

How different was Newbridge! Built not by a dissolute courtier of
Charles II., but by the sensible Whig, and eminently Protestant
Archbishop, it has as open and honest a countenance as its neighbour has
the reverse. The solid walls, about three feet and a-half thick in most
parts, keep out the cold, but neither darken the large, lofty rooms, nor
afford space for devious and secret passages. The house stands
broadly-built and strong, not high or frowning; its Portland-stone
colour warm against the green of Irish woods and grass. Within doors
every room is airy and lightsome, and more than one is beautiful. There
is a fine staircase out of the second hall, the walls of which are
covered with old family pictures which the Archbishop had obtained from
his elder brother, Col. Richard Chaloner Cobbe, who had somehow lost
Swarraton, and whose line ended in an heiress, wife of the 11th Earl of
Huntingdon. A long corridor downstairs was, I have heard, formerly hung
from end to end with arms intended for defence in case of attack. When
the Rebellion of 1798 took place the weapons were hidden in a hole into
which I have peered, under the floor of a room off the great
drawing-room, but what became of them afterwards I do not know. My
father possessed only a few pairs of handsome pistols, two or three
blunderbusses, sundry guns of various kinds, and his own regimental
sword which he had used at Assaye. All these hung in his study. The
drawing-room with its noble proportions and its fifty-three pictures by
Vandyke, Ruysdael, Guercino, Vanderveldt and other old masters, was the
glory of the house. In it the happiest hours of my life were passed.

Of this house and of the various estates bought and leased by the
Archbishop his only surviving son, Thomas Cobbe, my great-grandfather,
came into possession in the year 1765. Irreverently known to his
posterity as “Old Tommy” this gentleman after the fashion of his
contemporaries muddled away in keeping open house a good deal of the
property, and eventually sold one estate and (what was worse) his
father’s fine library. _Per contra_ he made the remarkable collection of
pictures of which I have spoken as adorning the walls of Newbridge.
Pilkington, the author of the _Dictionary of Painters_, was incumbent of
the little Vicarage of Donabate, and naturally somewhat in the relation
of chaplain to the squire of Newbridge, who had the good sense to send
him to Holland and Italy to buy the above-mentioned pictures, many of
which are described in the _Dictionary_. Some time previously, when
Pilkington had come out as an Art-critic, the Archbishop had
remonstrated with him on his unclerical pursuit; but the poor man
disarmed episcopal censure by replying, “Your Grace, I have preached for
a dozen years to an old woman who _can’t_ hear, and to a young woman who
_won’t_ hear; and now I think I may attend to other things!”

Thomas Cobbe’s wife’s name has been often before the public in
connection with the story, told by Crabbe, Walter Scott and many others,
of the lady who wore a black ribbon on her wrist to conceal the marks of
a ghost’s fingers. The real ghost-seer in question, Lady Beresford, was
confounded by many with her granddaughter Lady Eliza Beresford, or, as
she was commonly called after her marriage, Lady Betty Cobbe. How the
confusion came about I do not know, but Lady Betty, who was a spirited
woman much renowned in the palmy days of Bath, was very indignant when
asked any questions on the subject. Once she received a letter from one
of Queen Charlotte’s Ladies-in-Waiting begging her to tell the Queen the
true story. Lady Betty in reply “presented her compliments but was sure
the Queen of England would not pry into the private affairs of her
subjects, and had _no intention of gratifying the impertinent curiosity
of a Lady-in-Waiting_!” Considerable labour was expended some years ago
by the late Primate (Marcus Beresford) of Ireland, another descendant of
the ghost-seer in identifying the real personages and dates of this
curious tradition. The story which came to me directly through my
great-aunt, Hon. Mrs. Henry Pelham, Lady Betty’s favourite daughter,
was, that the ghost was John Le Poer, Second Earl of Tyrone; and the
ghost-seer was his cousin, Nichola Hamilton, daughter of Lord Glerawly,
wife of Sir Tristram Beresford. The cousins had promised each other to
appear,—whichever of them first departed this life,—to the survivor.
Lady Beresford, who did not know that Lord Tyrone was dead, awoke one
night and found him sitting by her bedside. He gave her (so goes the
story) a short, but, under the circumstances, no doubt impressive
lesson, in the elements of orthodox theology; and then to satisfy her of
the reality of his presence, which she persisted in doubting, he twisted
the curtains of her bed through a ring in the ceiling, placed his hand
on a wardrobe and left on it the ominous mark of five burning fingers
(the late Hon. and Rev. Edward Taylor of Ardgillan Castle told me he had
seen this wardrobe!) and finally touched her wrist, which shrunk
incontinently and never recovered its natural hue. Before he vanished
the Ghost told Lady Beresford that her son should marry his brother’s
daughter and heiress; and that she herself should die at the birth of a
child after a second marriage, in her forty-second year. All these
prophecies, of course, came to pass. From the marriage of Sir Marcus
Beresford with the ghost’s niece, Catharine, Baroness Le Poer of
Curraghmore, has descended the whole clan of Irish Beresfords. He was
created Earl of Tyrone; his eldest son was the first Marquis of
Waterford; another son was Archbishop of Tuam, created Lord Decies; and
his fifth daughter was the Lady Betty Cobbe, my great-grandmother,
concerning whom I have told this old story. In these days of
Psychological Research I could not take on myself to omit it, though my
own private impression is, that Lady Beresford accidentally gave her
wrist a severe blow against her bedstead while she was asleep; and that,
by a law of dreaming which I have endeavoured to trace in my essay on
the subject, her mind instantly created the _myth_ of Lord Tyrone’s
apparition. Allowing for a fair amount of subsequent agglomeration of
incidents and wonders in the tradition, this hypothesis, I think quite
meets the exigencies of the case; and in obedience to the law of
Parsimony, we need not run to a preternatural explanation of the Black
Ribbon on the Wrist, no doubt the actual nucleus of the tale.

I do not _dis_believe in ghosts; but unfortunately I have never been
able comfortably to believe in any particular ghost-story. The
overwhelming argument against the veracity of the majority of such
narrations is, that they contradict the great truth beautifully set
forth by Southey—

“They sin who tell us Love can die!—
With life all other passions fly
All others are but vanity—
In Heaven, Ambition cannot dwell,
Nor Avarice in the vaults of hell.
Earthly these passions as of earth,
They perish where they had their birth—
But Love is indestructible....”

The ghost of popular belief almost invariably exhibits the survival of
Avarice, Revenge, or some other thoroughly earthly passion, while for
the sake of the purest, noblest, tenderest Love scarcely ever has a
single Spirit of the departed been even supposed to return to comfort
the heart which death has left desolate. The famous story of Miss Lee is
one exception to this rule, and so is another tale which I found
recorded in an MS. Memorandum in the writing of my uncle the Rev. Henry
Cobbe, Rector of Templeton (_died_ 1823).

“Lady Moira[5] was at one time extremely uneasy about her sister, Lady
Selina Hastings, from whom she had not heard for a considerable time.
One night she dreamed that her sister came to her, sat down by her
bedside, and said to her, ‘My dear sister, I am dying of fever. They
will not tell you of it because of your situation’ (she was then with
child), ‘but I shall die, and the account will be brought to your
husband by letter directed like a foreign one in a foreign hand.’ She
told her dream to her attendant, Mrs. Moth, as soon as she awoke, was
extremely unhappy for letters, till at length, the day after, there
arrived one, directed as she had been told, which contained an account
of her sister’s death. It had been written by her brother, Lord
Huntingdon, and in a feigned hand, lest she should ask to know the
contents.

“She had many other extraordinary dreams, and it is very remarkable that
after the death of her attendant, Moth, who had educated her and her
children, and was the niece of the famous Bishop Hough, that she (Moth)
generally took a part in them, particularly if they related to any loss
in her family. Indeed, I believe she never dreamed of her except when
she was to undergo a loss. Lady Granard told me an instance of this: Her
second son Colonel Rawdon died very suddenly. He had not been on good
terms with Lady Moira for some time. One night she dreamed that Moth
came into the room, and upon her asking her what she wanted she said,
‘My lady, I am come to bring the Colonel to you.’ Then he entered, came
near her, and coming within the curtains, sat on the bed and said, ‘My
dearest mother, I am going a very long journey, and I cannot bear to go
without the assurance of your forgiveness.’ Then she threw her arms
about his neck and said, ‘Dear Son, can you doubt my forgiving you? But
where are you going?’ He replied, ‘A long journey, but I am happy now
that I have seen you.’ The next day she received an account of his
death.

“About a fortnight before her death, when Lady Granard and Lady
Charlotte Rawdon, her daughters, were sitting up in her room, she awoke
suddenly, very ill and very much agitated, saying that she had dreamed
that Mrs. Moth came into her room. When she saw her she was so full of
the idea that evils always attended her appearance that she said, ‘Ah,
Moth, I fear you are come for my Selina’ (Lady G.). Moth replied, ‘No,
my Lady, but I am come for Mr. John.’ They gave her composing drops and
soothed her; she soon fell asleep, and from that time never mentioned
her son’s name nor made any inquiry about him; but he died on the very
day of her dream, though she never knew it.”

Old Thomas Cobbe and after him his only son, Charles Cobbe, represented
the (exceedingly-rotten) Borough of Swords for a great many years in the
Irish Parliament, which was then in its glory, resonant with the
eloquence of Flood (who had married Lady Betty’s sister, Lady Jane) and
of Henry Grattan. On searching the archives of Dublin, however, in the
hope of discovering that our great-grandfather had done some public good
in his time, my brother and I had the mortification to find that on the
only occasion when reference was made to his name, it was in connection
with charges of bribery and corruption! On the other hand, it is
recorded to his honour that he was almost the only one among the Members
of the Irish Parliament who voted for the Union, and yet refused either
a peerage or money compensation for his seat. Instead of these he
obtained for Swords some educational endowments by which I believe the
little town still profits. In the record of corruption sent by Lord
Randolph Churchill to the _Times_ (May 29th, 1893), in which appears a
charge of interested motives against nearly every Member of the Irish
Parliament of 1784, “Mr. Cobbe” stands honourably alone as without any
“object” whatever.

Thomas Cobbe’s two daughters, my great-aunts and immediate predecessors
as the Misses Cobbe, of Newbridge, (my grandfather having only sons)
differed considerably in all respects from their unworthy niece. They
occupied, so said tradition, the large cheerful room which afterwards
became my nursery. A beam across the ceiling still bore, in my time, a
large iron staple firmly fixed in the centre from whence had dangled a
hand-swing. On this swing my great-aunts were wont to hang by their
arms, to enable their maids to lace their stays to greater advantage.
One of them, afterwards the Hon. Mrs. Henry Pelham, Lady-in-Waiting to
Queen Caroline, likewise wore the high-heeled shoes of the period; and
when she was an aged woman she showed her horribly deformed feet to one
of my brothers, and remarked to him: “See, Tom, what comes of
high-heeled shoes!” I am afraid many of the girls now wearing similarly
monstrous foot-gear will learn the same lesson too late. Mrs. Pelham, I
have heard, was the person who practically brought the house about the
ears of the unfortunate Queen Caroline; being the first to throw up her
appointment at Court when she became aware of the Queen’s private
on-goings. Her own character stood high; and the fact that she would no
longer serve the Queen naturally called attention to all the
circumstances. Bad as Queen Caroline was, George the Fourth was
assuredly worse than she. In his old age he was personally very
disgusting. My mother told me that when she received his kiss on
presentation at his Drawing-Room, the contact with his face was
sickening, like that with a corpse. I still possess the dress she wore
on that occasion.

Mrs. Pelham’s sister married Sir Henry Tuite, of Sonnagh, and for many
years of her widowhood lived in the Circus, Bath, and perhaps may still
be remembered there by a few as driving about her own team of four
horses in her curricle, in days when such doings by ladies were more
rare than they are now.

The only brother of these two Miss Cobbes of the past, Charles Cobbe, of
Newbridge, M.P., married Anne Power Trench, of Garbally, sister of the
first Earl of Clancarty. The multitudinous clans of Trenches and Moncks,
in addition to Lady Betty’s Beresford relations, of course thenceforth
adopted the habit of paying visitations at Newbridge. Arriving by
coachloads, with trains of servants, they remained for months at a time.
A pack of hounds was kept, and the whole _train de vie_ was liberal in
the extreme. Naturally, after a certain number of years of this kind of
thing, embarrassments beset the family finances; but fortunately at the
crisis Lady Betty came under the influence of her husband’s cousin, the
Methodist Countess of Huntingdon, and ere long renounced the vanities
and pleasures of the world, and persuaded her husband to retire with her
and live quietly at Bath, where they died and were buried in Weston
churchyard. Fifty years afterwards I found in the library at Newbridge
the little batch of books which had belonged to my great-grandmother in
this phase of her life, and were marked by her pencil: _Jacob Boehmen_
and the _Life of Madame Guyon_ being those which I now recall. The
peculiar, ecstatic pietism which these books breathe, differing _toto
cœlo_ from the “other worldliness” of the divines of about 1810, with
whose works the “Good-book Rows” of our library were replenished,
impressed me very vividly.[6]

I have often tried to construct in my mind some sort of picture of the
society which existed in Ireland a hundred years ago, and moved in those
old rooms wherein the first half of my life was spent, but I have found
it a very baffling undertaking. Apparently it combined a considerable
amount of æsthetic taste with traits of genuine barbarism; and high
religious pretension with a disregard of everyday duties and a
_penchant_ for gambling and drinking which would now place the most
avowedly worldly persons under a cloud of opprobrium. Card-playing was
carried on incessantly. Tradition says that the tables were laid for it
on rainy days at 10 o’clock in the morning in Newbridge drawing-room;
and on every day in the interminable evenings which followed the then
fashionable four o’clock dinner. My grandmother was so excellent a
whist-player that to extreme old age in Bath she habitually made a
small, but appreciable, addition to her income out of her “card purse”;
an ornamental appendage of the toilet then, and even in my time, in
universal use. I was given one as a birthday present in my tenth year.
She was greatly respected by all, and beloved by her five sons; every
one of whom, however, she had sent out to be nursed at a cottage in the
park till they were three years old. Her motherly duties were supposed
to be amply fulfilled by occasionally stopping her carriage to see how
the children were getting on.

As to the drinking among the men, (the women seem not to have shared the
vice) it must have prevailed to a disgusting extent upstairs and
downstairs. A fuddled condition after dinner was accepted as the normal
one of a gentleman, and entailed no sort of disgrace. On the contrary,
my father has told me that in his youth his own extreme sobriety gave
constant offence to his grandfather, and to his comrades in the army;
and only by showing the latter that he would sooner fight than be
bullied to drink to excess could he obtain peace. Unhappily, poor man!
while his grandfather, who seldom went to bed quite sober for forty
years, lived to the fine old age of 82, enjoying good health to the
last, his temperate grandson inherited the gout and in his latter years
was a martyr thereto. Among the exceedingly beautiful old Indian and old
Worcester china which belonged to Thomas Cobbe and showed his good taste
and also the splendid scale of his entertainments (one dessert-service
for 36 persons was magnificent) there stands a large goblet calculated
to hold _three bottles_ of wine. This glass (tradition avers) used to be
filled with claret, seven guineas were placed at the bottom, and he who
drank it pocketed the coin.

The behaviour of these Anglo-Irish gentry of the last century to their
tenants and dependants seems to have proceeded on the truly Irish
principle of being generous before you are just. The poor people lived
in miserable hovels which nobody dreamed of repairing; but then they
were welcome to come and eat and drink at the great house on every
excuse or without any excuse at all. This state of things was so
perfectly in harmony with Celtic ideas that the days when it prevailed
are still sighed after as the “good old times.” Of course there was a
great deal of Lady Bountiful business, and also of medical charity-work
going forward. Archbishop Cobbe was fully impressed with the merits of
the Tar-water so marvellously set forth by his suffragan, Bishop
Berkeley, and I have seen in his handwriting in a book of his wife’s
cookery receipts, a receipt for making it, beginning with the formidable
item: “Take six gallons of the best French brandy.” Lady Betty was a
famous compounder of simples, and of things that were not simple, and a
“Chilblain Plaister” which bore her name, was not many years ago still
to be procured in the chemists’ shops in Bath. I fear her prescriptions
were not always of so unambitious a kind as this. One day she stopped a
man on the road and asked his name—“Ah, then, my lady,” was the reply,
“don’t you remember me? Why, I am the husband of the woman your ladyship
gave the medicine to _and she died the next day. Long life to your
Ladyship!_”

As I have said, the open-housekeeping at Newbridge at last came to an
end, and the family migrated to No. 9 and No. 22, Marlborough Buildings,
Bath, where two generations spent their latter years, died, and were
buried in Weston churchyard, where I have lately restored their
tombstones.

My grandfather died long before his father, and my father, another
Charles Cobbe, found himself at eighteen pretty well his own master, the
eldest of five brothers. He had been educated at Winchester, where his
ancestors for eleven generations went to school in the old days of
Swarraton; and to the end of his life he was wont to recite lines of
Anacreon learned therein. But his tastes were active rather than
studious, and disliking the idea of hanging about his mother’s house
till his grandfather’s death should put him in possession of Newbridge,
he listened with an enchanted ear to a glowing account which somebody
gave him of India, where the Mahratta wars were just beginning.

Without much reflection or delay, he obtained a cornet’s commission in
the 19th Light Dragoons and sailed for Madras. Very shortly he was
engaged in active service under Wellesley, who always treated him with
special kindness as another Anglo-Irish gentleman. He fought at many
minor battles and sieges, and also at Assaye and Argaum; receiving his
medal for these two, just fifty years afterwards. I shall write of this
again a little further on in this book.

At last he fell ill of the fever of the country, which in those days was
called “ague,” and was left in a remote place absolutely helpless. He
was lying in bed one day in his tent when a Hindoo came in and addressed
him very courteously, asking after his health. My father incautiously
replied that he was quite prostrated by the fever. “What! Not able to
move at all, not to walk a step?” said his visitor. “No! I cannot stir,”
said my father. “Oh, in that case, then,” said the man,—and without more
ado he seized my father’s desk, in which were all his money and
valuables, and straightway made off with it before my father could
summon his servants. His condition, thus left alone in an enemy’s
country without money, was bad enough, but he managed to send a trusty
messenger to Sir Arthur Wellesley, who promptly lent him all he
required.

Finding that there was no chance of his health being sufficiently
restored in India to permit of further active service, and the Mahratta
wars being practically concluded, my father sold his commission of
Lieutenant and returned to England, quietly letting himself into his
mother’s house in Bath on his return by the latch-key, which he had
carried with him through all his journeys. All his life long the impress
made both on his outward bearing and character by those five years of
war were very visible. He was a fine soldier-like figure, six feet high,
and had ridden eighteen stone in his full equipment. His face was, I
suppose, ugly, but it was very intelligent, very strong willed, and very
unmistakeably that of a gentleman. He was under-jawed, very pale, with a
large nose, and small, grey, very lively eyes; but he had a beautiful
white forehead from which his hair, even in old age, grew handsomely,
and his head was very well set on his broad shoulders. The photograph in
the next volume represents him at 76. He rode admirably, and a better
figure on horseback could not be seen. At all times there was an aspect
of strength and command about him, which his vigorous will and (truth
compels me to add) his not seldom fiery temper, fully sustained. On the
many occasions when we had dinner parties at Newbridge, he was a
charming, gay and courteous host; and I remember being struck, when he
once wore a court dress and took me with him to pay his respects to a
Tory Lord Lieutenant, by the contrast which his figure and bearing
presented to that of nearly all the other men in similar attire. _They_
looked as if they were masquerading, and he as if the lace-ruffles and
plum coat and sword were his habitual dress. He had beautiful hands, of
extraordinary strength.

One day he was walking with one of his lady cousins on his arm in the
street. A certain famous prize-fighting bully, the Sayers or Heenan of
the period, came up hustling and elbowing every passenger off the
pavement. When my father saw him approach he made his cousin take his
left arm, and as the prize-fighter prepared to shoulder him, he
delivered with his right fist, without raising it, a blow which sent the
ruffian fainting into the arms of his companions. Having deposited his
cousin in a shop, my father went back for the sequel of the adventure,
and was told that the “Chicken” (or whatever he was called) had had his
ribs broken.

After his return from India, my father soon sought a wife. He flirted
sadly, I fear, with his beautiful cousin, Louisa Beresford, the daughter
of his great-uncle, the Archbishop of Tuam; and one of the ways in which
he endeavoured to ingratiate himself was to carry about at all times a
provision of bon-bons and barley-sugar with which to ply the venerable
and sweet-toothed prelate; who was generally known as “The Beauty of
Holiness.” How the wooing would have prospered cannot be told, but
before it had reached a crisis a far richer lover appeared on the
scene—Mr. Hope. “Anastasius Hope,” as he was called from the work of
which he was the author, was immensely wealthy, and a man of great taste
in art, but he had the misfortune to be so excessively ugly that a
painter whom he offended by not buying his picture, depicted him and
Miss Beresford as “Beauty and the Beast,” and exhibited his painting at
the Bath Pump-room, where her brother, John Beresford (afterwards the
second Lord Decies) cut it deliberately to pieces. An engagement between
Mr. Hope and Miss Beresford was announced not long after the arrival of
Mr. Hope in Bath; and my mother, then Miss Conway, going to pay a visit
of congratulation to Miss Beresford, found her reclining on a blue silk
sofa appropriately perusing _The Pleasures of Hope_. After the death of
Mr. Hope (by whom she was the mother of Mr. Beresford-Hope, Mr. Adrian
and Mr. Henry Hope), Mrs. Hope married the illegitimate son of her
uncle, the Marquis of Waterford—Field Marshal Lord Beresford—a fine old
veteran, with whom she long lived happily in the corner house in
Cavendish Square, where my father and brothers always found a warm
welcome.

At length, after some delays, my father had the great good fortune to
induce my dear mother to become his wife, and they were married at Bath,
March 13th, 1809. Frances Conway was, as I have said, daughter of Capt.
Thomas Conway, of Morden Park. Her father and mother both died whilst
she was young and she was sent to the famous school of Mrs. Devis, in
Queen Square, Bloomsbury, of which I shall have something presently to
say, and afterwards lived with her grandmother, who at her death
bequeathed to her a handsome legacy, at Southampton. When her
grandmother died, she being then sixteen years of age, received an
invitation from Colonel and Mrs. Champion to live with them and become
their adopted daughter. The history of this invitation is rather
touching. Mrs. Champion’s parents had, many years before, suffered great
reverses, and my mother’s grandfather had done much to help them, and,
in particular, had furnished means for Mrs. Champion to go out to India.
She returned after twenty years as the childless wife of the rich and
kindly old Colonel, the friend of Warren Hastings, who having been
commander-in-chief of the Forces of the East India Company had had a
good “shake of the Pagoda tree.” She repaid to the grandchild the
kindness done by the grandfather; and was henceforth really a mother to
my mother, who dearly loved both her and Col. Champion. In their
beautiful house, No. 29, Royal Crescent, she saw all the society of Bath
in its palmiest days, Mrs. Champion’s Wednesday evening parties being
among the most important in the place. My mother’s part as daughter of
the house was an agreeable one, and her social talents and
accomplishments fitted her perfectly for the part. The gentle gaiety,
the sweet dignity and ease of her manners and conversation remain to me
as the memory of something exquisite, far different even from the best
manner and talk of my own or the present generation; and I know that the
same impression was always made on her visitors in her old age. I can
compare it to nothing but the delicate odour of the dried rose leaves
with which her china vases were filled and her wardrobes perfumed.

I hardly know whether my mother were really beautiful, though many of
the friends who remembered her in early womanhood spoke of her as being
so. To me her face was always the loveliest in the world; indeed it was
the one through which my first dawning perception of beauty was
awakened. I can remember looking at her as I lay beside her on the sofa,
where many of her suffering hours were spent, and suddenly saying,
“Mamma you are so pretty!” She laughed and kissed me, saying, “I am glad
you think so my child;” but that moment really brought the revelation to
me of that wonderful thing in God’s creation, the _Beautiful_! She had
fine features, a particularly delicate, rather thin-lipped mouth;
magnificent chestnut hair, which remained scarcely changed in colour or
quantity till her death at seventy years of age; and the clear, pale
complexion and hazel eyes which belong to such hair. She always dressed
very well and carefully. I never remember seeing her downstairs except
in some rich dark silk, and with a good deal of fine lace about her cap
and old-fashioned _fichu_. Her voice and low laughter were singularly
sweet, and she possessed both in speaking and writing a full and varied
diction which in later years she carefully endeavoured to make me share,
instead of satisfying myself, in school-girl fashion, with making one
word serve a dozen purposes. She was an almost omnivorous reader; and,
according to the standard of female education in her generation, highly
cultivated in every way; a good musician with a very sweet touch of the
piano, and speaking French perfectly well.

Immediately after their marriage my parents took possession of
Newbridge, and my father began earnestly the fulfilment of all the
duties of a country gentleman, landlord and magistrate. My mother,
indeed, used laughingly to aver that he “went to jail on their wedding
day,” for he stopped at Bristol on the road and visited a new prison
with a view to introducing improvements into Irish jails. It was due
principally to his exertions that the county jail, the now celebrated
Kilmainham, was afterwards erected.

Newbridge having been deserted for nearly thirty years, the woods had
been sorely injured and the house and out-buildings dilapidated, but
with my father’s energy and my mother’s money things were put straight;
and from that time till his death in 1857 my father lived and worked
among his people.

Though often hard pressed to carry out with a very moderate income all
his projects of improvements, he was never in debt. One by one he
rebuilt or re-roofed almost every cottage on his estate, making what had
been little better than pig-styes, fit for human habitation; and when he
found that his annual rents could never suffice to do all that was
required in this way for his tenants in his mountain property, he
induced my eldest brother, then just of age, to join with him in selling
two of the pictures which were the heirlooms of the family and the pride
of the house, a Gaspar Poussin and a Hobbema, which last now adorns the
walls of Dorchester House. I remember as a child seeing the tears in his
eyes as this beautiful painting was taken out of the room in which it
had been like a perpetual ray of sunshine. But the sacrifice was
completed, and 80 good stone and slate “Hobbema Cottages,” as we called
them, soon rose all over Glenasmoil. Be it noted by those who deny every
merit in an Anglo-Irish landlord, that not a farthing was added to the
rent of the tenants who profited by this real act of self-denial.

All this however refers to later years. I have now reached to the period
when I may introduce myself on the scene. Before doing so, however, I am
tempted to print here a letter which my much valued friend, Miss Felicia
Skene, of Oxford, has written to me on learning that I am preparing this
autobiography. She is one of the very few now living who can remember my
mother, and I gratefully quote what she has written of her as
corroborating my own memories, else, perhaps, discounted by the reader
as coloured by a daughter’s partiality.

April 4th, 1894.

My dearest Frances,—

I know well that in recalling the days of your bright youth in your
grand old home, the most prominent figure amongst those who surrounded
you then, must be that of your justly idolised mother, and I cannot
help wishing to add my testimony, as of one unbiassed by family ties,
to all that you possessed in her while she remained with you; and all
that you so sadly lost when she was taken from you. To remember the
_châtelaine_ of Newbridge is to recall one of the fairest and sweetest
memories of my early life. When I first saw that lovely, gracious lady
with her almost angelic countenance and her perfect dignity of manner,
I had just come from a gay Eastern capital,—my home from childhood,
where no such vision of a typical English gentlewoman had ever
appeared before me; and the impression she made upon me was therefore
almost a revelation of what a refined, high-bred lady could be in all
that was pure and lovely and of good report, and yet I think I only
shared in the fascination which she exercised on all who came within
the sphere of her influence. To me, almost a stranger, whom she
welcomed as your friend under her roof, her exquisite courtesy would
alone have been most charming, but for your sake she showed me all the
tenderness of her sweet sympathetic nature, and it was no marvel to me
that she was the idol of her children and the object of deepest
respect and admiration to all who knew her.

Beautiful Newbridge with its splendid hospitality is like a dream to
me now, of what a gentleman’s estate and country home could be in
those days when ancient race and noble family traditions were still of
some account.

Ever affectionately yours,
F. M. F. SKENE.

13, New Inn Hall Street, Oxford.

CHAPTER
II.
_CHILDHOOD._

[Illustration:

_Newbridge, Co. Dublin._
]

I was born on the morning of the 4th December, 1822; at sunrise. There
had been a memorable storm during the night, and Dublin, where my father
had taken a house that my mother might be near her doctor, was strewn
with the wrecks of trees and chimney pots. My parents had already four
sons, and after the interval of five years since the birth of the
youngest, a girl was by no means welcome. I have never had reason,
however, to complain of being less cared for or less well treated in
every way than my brothers. If I have become in mature years a “Woman’s
Rights’ Woman” it has not been because in my own person I have been made
to feel a Woman’s Wrongs. On the contrary, my brothers’ kindness and
tenderness to me have been unfailing from my infancy. I was their
“little Fà’,” their pet and plaything when they came home for their
holidays; and rough words not to speak of knocks,—never reached me from
any of them or from my many masculine cousins, some of whom, as my
father’s wards, I hardly distinguished in childhood from brothers.

A few months after my birth my parents moved to a house named Bower Hill
Lodge in Melksham, which my father hired, I believe, to be near his boys
at school, and I have some dim recollections of the verandah of the
house, and also of certain raisins which I appropriated, and of
suffering direful punishment at my father’s hands for the crime! Before
I was four years old we returned to Newbridge, and I was duly installed
with my good old Irish nurse, Mary Malone, in the large nursery at the
end of the north corridor—the most charming room for a child’s abode I
have ever seen. It was so distant from the regions inhabited by my
parents that I was at full liberty to make any amount of noise I
pleased; and from the three windows I possessed a commanding view of the
stable yard, wherein there was always visible an enchanting spectacle of
dogs, cats, horses, grooms, gardeners, and milkmaids. A grand old
courtyard it is; a quadrangle about a rood in size surrounded by
stables, coach-houses, kennels, a laundry, a beautiful dairy, a
labourer’s room, a paint shop, a carpenter’s shop, a range of granaries
and fruitlofts with a great clock in the pediment in the centre; and a
well in the midst of all. Behind the stables and the kennels appear the
tops of walnut and chestnut trees and over the coach-houses on the other
side can be seen the beautiful old kitchen garden of six acres with its
lichen-covered red brick walls, backed again by trees; and its formal
straight terraces and broad grass walks.

In this healthful, delightful nursery, and in walks with my nurse about
the lawns and shrubberies, the first years of my happy childhood went
by; fed in body with the freshest milk and eggs and fruit, everything
best for a child; and in mind supplied only with the simple, sweet
lessons of my gentle mother. No unwholesome food, physical or moral, was
ever allowed to come in my way till body and soul had almost grown to
their full stature. When I compare such a lot as this (the common lot,
of course, of English girls of the richer classes, blessed with good
fathers and mothers) with the case of the hapless young creatures who
are fed from infancy with insufficient and unwholesome food, perhaps
dosed with gin and opium from the cradle, and who, even as they acquire
language, learn foul words, curses and blasphemies,—when I compare, I
say, my happy lot with the miserable one of tens of thousands of my
brother men and sister women, I feel appalled to reflect, by how
different a standard must they and I be judged by eternal Justice!

In such an infancy the events were few, but I can remember with
amusement the great exercise of my little mind concerning a certain
mythical being known as “Peter.” The story affords a droll example of
the way in which fetishes are created among child-minded savages. One
day, (as my mother long afterwards explained to me), I had been hungrily
eating a piece of bread and butter out of doors, when one of the
greyhounds, of which my father kept several couples, bounded past me and
snatched the bread and butter from my little hands. The outcry which I
was preparing to raise on my loss was suddenly stopped by the bystanders
judiciously awakening my sympathy in Peter’s enjoyment, and I was led up
to stroke the big dog and make friends with him. Seeing how successful
was this diversion, my nurse thenceforward adopted the practice of
seizing everything in the way of food, knives, &c., which it was
undesirable I should handle, and also of shutting objectionably open
doors and windows, exclaiming “O! Peter! Peter has got it! Peter has
shut it!”—as the case might be. Accustomed to succumb to this unseen
Fate under the name of Peter, and soon forgetting the dog, I came to
think there was an all-powerful, invisible Being constantly behind the
scenes, and had so far pictured him as distinct from the real original
Peter that on one occasion when I was taken to visit at some house where
there was an odd looking end of a beam jutting out under the ceiling, I
asked in awe-struck tones: “Mama! is that Peter’s head?”

My childhood, though a singularly happy, was an unusually lonely one. My
dear mother very soon after I was born became lame from a trifling
accident to her ankle (ill-treated, unhappily, by the doctors) and she
was never once able in all her life to take a walk with me. Of course I
was brought to her continually; first to be nursed,—for she fulfilled
that sacred duty of motherhood to all her children, believing that she
could never be so sure of the healthfulness of any other woman’s
constitution as of her own. Later, I seem to my own memory to have been
often cuddled up close to her on her sofa, or learning my little
lessons, mounted on my high chair beside her, or repeating the Lord’s
Prayer at her knee. All these memories are infinitely sweet to me. Her
low, gentle voice, her smile, her soft breast and arms, the atmosphere
of dignity which always surrounded her,—the very odour of her clothes
and lace, redolent of dried roses, come back to me after three-score
years with nothing to mar their sweetness. She never once spoke angrily
or harshly to me in all her life, much less struck or punished me; and
I—it is a comfort to think it—never, so far as I can recall, disobeyed
or seriously vexed her. She had regretted my birth, thinking that she
could not live to see me grow to womanhood, and shrinking from a renewal
of the cares of motherhood with the additional anxiety of a daughter’s
education. But I believe she soon reconciled herself to my existence,
and made me, first her pet, and then her companion and even her
counsellor. She told me, laughingly, how, when I was four years old, my
father happening to be away from home she made me dine with her, and as
I sat in great state beside her on my little chair I solemnly remarked:
“Mama, is it not a very _comflin_ thing to have a little girl?” an
observation which she justly thought went to prove that she had betrayed
sufficiently to my infantine perspicacity that she enjoyed my company at
least as much as hers was enjoyed by me.

My nurse who had attended all my brothers, was already an elderly woman
when recalled to Newbridge to take charge of me; and though a dear, kind
old soul and an excellent nurse, she was naturally not much of a
playfellow for a little child, and it was very rarely indeed that I had
any young visitor in my nursery or was taken to see any of my small
neighbours. Thus I was from infancy much thrown on my own resources for
play and amusement; and from that time to this I have been rather a
solitary mortal, enjoying above all things lonely walks and studies; and
always finding my spirits rise in hours and days of isolation. I think I
may say I have _never_ felt depressed when living alone. As a child I
have been told I was a very merry little chick, with a round, fair face
and abundance of golden hair; a typical sort of Saxon child. I was
subject then and for many years after, to furious fits of anger, and on
such occasions I misbehaved myself exceedingly. “Nanno” was then wont
peremptorily to push me out into the long corridor and bolt the nursery
door in my face, saying in her vernacular, “Ah, then! you _bould
Puckhawn_ (audacious child of Puck)! I’ll get _shut_ of you!” I think I
feel now the hardness of that door against my little toes, as I kicked
at it in frenzy. Sometimes, when things were very bad indeed, Nanno
conducted me to the end of the corridor at the top of a very long
winding stone stair, near the bottom of which my father occasionally
passed on his way to the stables. “Yes, Sir! Yes, Sir! She’ll be good
immadiently, Sir, you needn’t come upstairs, Sir!” Then, _sotto voce_,
to me, “Don’t ye hear the Masther? Be quiet now, my darlint, or he’ll
come up the stairs!” Of course, “the Masther” seldom or never was really
within earshot on these occasions. Had he been so Nanno would have been
the last person seriously to invoke his dreaded interference in my
discipline. But the alarm usually sufficed to reduce me to submission. I
had plenty of toddling about out of doors and sitting in the sweet grass
making daisy and dandelion chains, and at home playing with the remnants
of my brother’s Noah’s Ark, and a magnificent old baby-house which stood
in one of the bedrooms, and was so large that I can dimly remember
climbing up and getting into the doll’s drawing-room.

My fifth birthday was the first milestone on Life’s road which I can
recall. I recollect being brought in the morning into my mother’s
darkened bedroom (she was already then a confirmed invalid), and how she
kissed and blessed me, and gave me childish presents, and also a
beautiful emerald ring which I still possess, and pearl bracelets which
she fastened on my little arms. No doubt she wished to make sure that
whenever she might die these trinkets should be known to be mine. She
and my father also gave me a Bible and Prayer Book, which I could read
quite well, and proudly took next Sunday to church for my first
attendance, when the solemn occasion was much disturbed by a little girl
in a pew below howling for envy of my white beaver bonnet, displayed in
the fore-front of the gallery which formed our family seat. “Why did
little Miss Robinson cry?” I was deeply inquisitive on the subject,
having then and always during my childhood regarded “best clothes” with
abhorrence.

Two years later my grandmother, having bestowed on me, at Bath, a
sky-blue silk pelisse, I managed nefariously to tumble down on purpose
into a gutter full of melted snow the first day it was put on, so as to
be permitted to resume my little cloth coat.

Now, aged five, I was emancipated from the nursery and allowed to dine
thenceforward at my parents’ late dinner, while my good nurse was
settled for the rest of her days in a pretty ivy-covered cottage with
large garden, at the end of the shrubbery. She lived there for several
years with an old woman for servant, who I can well remember, but who
must have been of great age, for she had been under-dairymaid to my
great great-grandfather, the Archbishop, and used to tell us stories of
“old times.” This “old Ally’s” great grandchildren were still living,
recently, in the family service in the same cottage which poor “Nanno”
occupied. Ally was the last wearer of the real old Irish scarlet cloak
in our part of the country; and I can remember admiring it greatly when
I used to run by her side and help her to carry her bundle of sticks.
Since those days, even the long blue frieze cloak which succeeded
universally to the scarlet—a most comfortable, decent, and withal
graceful peasant garment, very like the blue cotton one of the Arab
fellah-women—has itself nearly or totally disappeared in Fingal.

On the retirement of my nurse, the charge of my little person was
committed to my mother’s maid and housekeeper, Martha Jones. She came to
my mother a blooming girl of eighteen, and she died of old age and
sorrow when I left Newbridge at my father’s death half-a-century
afterwards. She was a fine, fair, broad-shouldered woman, with a certain
refinement above her class. Her father had been an officer in the army,
and she was educated (not very extensively) at some little school in
Dublin where her particular friend was Moore’s (the poet’s) sister. She
used to tell us how Moore as a lad was always contriving to get into the
school and romping with the girls. The legend has sufficient
verisimilitude to need no confirmation!

“Joney” was indulgence itself, and under her mild sway, and with my
mother for instructress in my little lessons of spelling and geography,
Mrs. Barbauld, Dr. Watts and Jane Taylor, I was as happy a little animal
as well might be. One day being allowed as usual to play on the grass
before the drawing-room windows I took it into my head that I should
dearly like to go and pay a visit to my nurse at her cottage at the end
of the shrubbery. “Joney” had taken me there more than once, but still
the mile-long shrubbery, some of it very dark with fir trees and great
laurels, complicated with crossing walks, and containing two or three
alarming shelter-huts and _tonnelles_ (which I long after regarded with
awe), was a tremendous pilgrimage to encounter alone. After some
hesitation I set off; ran as long as I could, and then with panting
chest and beating heart, went on, daring not to look to right or left,
till (after ages as it seemed to me) I reached the little window of my
nurse’s house in the ivy wall; and set up—loud enough no doubt—a call
for “Nanno!” The good soul could not believe her eyes when she found me
alone but, hugging me in her arms, brought me back as fast as she could
to my distracted mother who had, of course, discovered my evasion. Two
years later, when I was seven years old, I was naughty enough to run
away again, this time in the streets of Bath, in company with a hoop,
and the Town Crier was engaged to “cry” me, but I found my way home at
last alone. How curiously vividly silly little incidents like these
stand out in the misty memory of childhood, like objects suddenly
perceived close to us in a fog! I seem now, after sixty years, to see my
nurse’s little brown figure and white kerchief, as she rushed out and
caught her stray “darlint” in her arms; and also I see a dignified,
gouty gentleman leaning on his stick, parading the broad pavement of
Bath Crescent, up whose whole person my misguided and muddy hoop went
bounding in my second escapade. I ought to apologise perhaps to the
reader for narrating such trivial incidents, but they have left a charm
in my memory.

At seven I was provided with a nursery governess, and my dear mother’s
lessons came to an end. So gentle and sweet had they been that I have
loved ever since everything she taught me, and have a vivid recollection
of the old map book from whence she had herself learned Geography, and
of Mrs. Trimmer’s Histories, “_Sacred_” and “_Profane_”; not forgetting
the almost incredibly bad accompanying volumes of woodcuts with poor Eli
a complete smudge and Sesostris driving the nine kings (with their
crowns, of course) harnessed to his chariot. Who would have dreamed we
should now possess photos of the mummy of the real Sesostris (Rameses
II.), who seemed then quite as mythical a personage as Polyphemus? To
remember the hideous aberrations of Art which then illustrated books for
children, and compare them to the exquisite pictures in “_Little
Folks_,” is to realise one of the many changes the world has seen since
my childhood. Mrs. Trimmer’s books cost, I remember being told, _ten
shillings_ apiece! My governess Miss Kinnear’s lessons, though not very
severe (our old doctor, bless him for it! solemnly advised that I should
never be called on to study after twelve o’clock), were far from being
as attractive as those of my mother, and as soon as I learned to write,
I drew on the gravel walk this, as I conceived, deeply touching and
impressive sentence: “_Lessons! Thou tyrant of the mind!_” I could not
at all understand my mother’s hilarity over this inscription, which
proved so convincingly my need, at all events of those particular
lessons of which Lindley Murray was the author. I envied the peacock who
could sit all day in the sun, and who ate bowls-full of the
griddle-bread of which I was so fond; and never was expected to learn
anything? Poor bird, he came to a sad end. A dog terrified him one day
and he took a great flight and was observed to go into one of the tall
limes near the house but was never seen alive again. When the leaves
fell in the autumn the rain-washed feathers and skeleton of poor Pe-ho
were found wedged in a fork of the tree. He had met the fate of “Lost
Sir Massingberd.”

Some years later, my antipathy to lessons having not at all diminished,
I read a book which had just appeared, and of which all the elders of
the house were talking, Keith’s _Signs of the Times_. In this work, as I
remember, it was set forth that a “Vial” was shortly to be emptied into
or near the Euphrates, after which the end of the world was to follow
immediately. The writer accordingly warned his readers that they would
soon hear startling news from the Euphrates. From that time I
persistently inquired of anybody whom I saw reading the newspaper (a
small sheet which in the Thirties only came three times a week) or who
seemed well-informed about public affairs, “What news was there from the
Euphrates?” The singular question at last called forth the inquiry, “Why
I wanted to know?” and I was obliged to confess that I was hoping for
the emptying of the “Vial” which would put an end to my sums and
spelling lessons.

My seventh year was spent with my parents at Bath, where we had a house
for the winter in James’ Square, where brothers and cousins came for the
holidays, and in London, where I well remember going with my mother to
see the Diorama in the Colosseum in Regent’s Park, of St. Peter’s, and a
Swiss Cottage, and the statues of Tam o’ Shanter and his wife (which I
had implored her to be allowed to see, having imagined them to be living
ogres) and vainly entreating to be taken to see the Siamese Twins. This
last longing, however, was gratified just thirty years afterwards. We
travelled back to Ireland, posting all the way to Holyhead by the then
new high road through Wales and over the Menai Bridge. My chief
recollection of the long journey is humiliating. A box of Shrewsbury
cakes, exactly like those now sold in the town, was bought for me _in
situ_, and I was told to bring it over to Ireland to give to my little
cousin Charley. I was pleased to give the cakes to Charley, but then
Charley was at the moment far away, and the cakes were always at hand in
the carriage; and the road was tedious and the cakes delicious; and so
it came to pass somehow that I broke off first a little bit, and then
another day a larger bit, till cake after cake vanished, and with sorrow
and shame I was obliged to present the empty box to Charley on my
arrival. Greediness alas! has been a besetting sin of mine all my life.

This Charley was a dear little boy, and about this date was occasionally
my companion. His father, my uncle, was Captain William Cobbe, R.N., who
had fought under Nelson, and at the end of the war, married and took a
house near Newbridge, where he acted as my father’s agent. He was a
fine, brave fellow, and much beloved by every one. One day, long after
his sudden, untimely death, we heard from a coastguardsman who had been
a sailor in his ship, that he had probably caught the disease of which
he died in the performance of a gallant action, of which he had never
told any one, even his wife. A man had fallen overboard from his ship
one bitterly cold night in the northern seas near Copenhagen. My uncle,
on hearing what had happened, jumped from his warm berth and plunged
into the sea, where he succeeded in rescuing the sailor, but in doing so
caught a chill which eventually shortened his days. He had five
children, the eldest being Charley, some months younger than I. When my
uncle came over to see his brother and do business, Charley, as he grew
old enough to take the walk, was often allowed to come with him; and
great was my enjoyment of the unwonted pleasure of a young companion.
Considerably greater, I believe, than that of my mother and governess,
who justly dreaded the escapades which our fertile little brains rarely
failed to devise. We climbed over everything climbable by aid of the
arrangement that Charley always mounted on my strong shoulders and then
helped me up. One day my father said to us: “Children, there is a savage
bull come, you must take care not to go near him.” Charley and I looked
at each other and mutually understood. The next moment we were alone we
whispered, “We must get some hairs of his tail!” and away we scampered
till we found the new bull in a shed in the cow-yard. Valiantly we
seized the tail, and as the bull fortunately paid no attention to his
Lilliputian foes, we escaped in triumph with the hairs. Another time, a
lovely April evening, I remember we were told it was damp, and that we
must not go out of the house. We had discovered, however, a door leading
out upon the roof,—and we agreed that “_on_” the house could not
properly be considered “_out_” of the house; and very soon we were
clambering up the slates, and walking along the parapet at a height of
fifty or sixty feet from the ground. My mother, passing through one of
the halls, observed a group of servants looking up in evident alarm and
making signs to us to come down. As quickly as her feebleness permitted
she climbed to our door of exit, and called to us over the roofs.
Charley and I felt like Adam and Eve on the fatal evening after they had
eaten the apple! After dreadful moments of hesitation we came down and
received the solemn rebuke and condemnation we deserved. It was not a
very severe chastisement allotted to us, though we considered it such.
We were told that the game of Pope Joan, promised for the evening,
should not be played. That was the severest, if not the only punishment,
my mother ever inflicted on me.

On rainy days when Charley and I were driven to amuse ourselves in the
great empty rooms and corridors upstairs, we were wont to discuss
profound problems of theology. I remember one conclusion relating
thereto at which we unanimously arrived. Both of us bore the name of
“Power” as a second name, in honour of our grandmother Anne Trench’s
mother, Fanny Power of Coreen. On this circumstance we founded the
certainty that we should both go to Heaven, because we heard it said in
church, “The Heavens and _all the Powers_ therein.”

Alas poor “Little Charley” as everybody called him, after growing to be
a fine six-foot fellow, and a very popular officer, died sadly while
still young, at the Cape.

In those early days, let us say about my tenth year, and for long
afterwards, it was my father’s habit to fill his house with all the
offshoots of the family at Christmas, and with a good many of them for
the Midsummer holidays, when my two eldest brothers and the youngest
came home from Charterhouse and Oxford, and the third from Sandhurst.
These brothers of mine were kind, dear lads, always gentle and petting
to their little sister, who was a mere baby when they were schoolboys,
and of course never really a companion to them. I recollect they once
tried to teach me Cricket, and straightway knocked me over with a ball;
and then carried me, all four in tears and despair, to our mother
thinking they had broken my ribs. I was very fond of them, and thought a
great deal about their holidays, but naturally in early years saw very
little of them.

Beside my brothers, and generally coming to Newbridge at the same
holiday seasons, there was a regiment of young cousins, male and female.
My mother’s only brother, Adjutant General Conway, had five children,
all of whom were practically my father’s wards during the years of their
education at Haileybury and in a ladies’ boarding-school in London.
Then, beside my father’s youngest brother William’s family of five, of
whom I have already spoken, his next eldest brother, George, of the
Horse Artillery (Lieut. General Cobbe in his later years), had five
more, and finally the third brother, Thomas, went out to India in his
youth as aide-de-camp to his cousin, the Marquis of Hastings, held
several good appointments (at Moorshedabad and elsewhere), married and
had ten children, (all of whom passed into my father’s charge) and
finally died, poor fellow! on his voyage home from India, after thirty
years’ absence. Thus there were, in fact, including his own children,
thirty young people more or less my father’s wards, and all of them
looking to Newbridge as the place where holidays were naturally spent,
and to my father’s not very long purse as the resource for everybody in
emergencies. One of them, indeed, carried this view of the case rather
unfortunately far. A gentleman visiting us, happening to mention that he
had lately been to Malta, we naturally asked him if he had met a young
officer of our name quartered there? “Oh dear, yes! a delightful fellow!
All the ladies adore him. He gives charming picnics, and gets nosegays
for them all from Naples.” “I am afraid he can scarcely afford that sort
of thing,” someone timidly observed. “Oh, he says,” replied the visitor,
“that he has an old uncle somewhere who——Good Lord! I am afraid I have
put my foot in it,” abruptly concluded our friend, noticing the looks
exchanged round the circle.

My father’s brother Henry, my god-father, died early and unmarried. He
was Rector of Templeton, and was very intimate with his neighbours
there, the Edgeworths and Granards. The greater part of the library at
Newbridge, as it was in my time, had been collected by him, and included
an alarming proportion of divinity. The story of his life might serve
for such a novel as his friend, Miss Edgeworth, would have written and
entitled “_Procrastination_.” He was much attached for a long time to a
charming Miss Lindsay, who was quite willing to accept his hand, had he
offered it. My poor uncle, however, continued to flirt and dangle and to
postpone any definite declaration, till at last the girl’s mother—who, I
rather believe, was a Lady Charlotte Lindsay, well known in her
generation—told her that a conclusion must be put to this sort of thing.
She would invite Mr. Cobbe to their house for a fortnight, and during
that time every opportunity should be afforded him of making a proposal
in form, if he should be so minded. If, however, at the end of this
probation, he had said nothing, Miss Lindsay was to give him up, and he
was to be allowed no more chances of addressing her. The visit was paid,
and nothing could be more agreeable or devoted than my uncle; but he did
not propose to Miss Lindsay! The days passed, and as the end of the
allotted time drew near, the lady innocently arranged a few walks _en
tête-à-tête_, and talked in a manner which afforded him every
opportunity of saying the words which seemed always on the tip of his
tongue. At last the final day arrived. “My dear,” said Lady Charlotte
(if such was the mother’s name) to her daughter, “I shall go out with
the rest of the party for the whole day and leave you and Mr. Cobbe
together. When I return, it must be decided one way or the other.”

The hours flew in pleasant and confidential talk—still no proposal! Miss
Lindsay, who knew that the final minutes of grace were passing for her
unconscious lover, once more despairingly tried, being really attached
to him, to make him say something which she could report to her mother.
As he afterwards averred he was on the very brink of asking her to marry
him when he caught the sound of her mother’s carriage returning to the
door, and said to himself, “I’ll wait for another opportunity.”

The opportunity was never granted to him. Lady Charlotte gave him his
_congé_ very peremptorily next morning. My uncle was furious, and in
despair; but it was too late! Like other disappointed men he went off
rashly, and almost immediately engaged himself (with no delay this time)
to Miss Flora Long of Rood Ashton, Wiltshire, a lady of considerable
fortune and attractions and of excellent connections, but of such
exceedingly rigid piety of the Calvinistic type of the period, that I
believe my uncle was soon fairly afraid of his promised bride. At all
events his procrastinations began afresh. He remained at Templeton on
one excuse after another, till Miss Long wrote to ask; “Whether he
wished to keep their engagement?” My poor uncle was nearly driven now to
the wall, but his health was bad and might prove his apology for fresh
delays. Before replying to his Flora, he went to Dublin and consulted
Sir Philip Crampton. After detailing his ailments, he asked what he
ought to do, hoping (I am afraid) that the great surgeon would say, “O
you must keep quiet!” Instead of this verdict Crampton said, “Go and get
married by all means!” No further excuse was possible, and my poor uncle
wrote to say he was on his way to claim his bride. Ere he reached her,
however, while stopping at his mother’s house in Bath, he was found dead
in his bed on the morning on which he should have gone to Rood Ashton.
He must have expired suddenly while reading a good little book. All this
happened somewhere about 1823.

To return to our old life at Newbridge, about 1833 and for many years
afterwards, the assembling of my father’s brothers, and brothers’ wives
and children at Christmas was the great event of the year in my almost
solitary childhood. Often a party of twenty or more sat down every day
for three or four weeks together in the dining-room, and we younger ones
naturally spent the short days and long evenings in boyish and girlish
sports and play. Certain very noisy and romping games—Blindman’s buff,
Prisoner’s Bass, Giant, and Puss in the Corner and Hunt the Hare—as we
played them through the halls below stairs, and the long corridors and
rooms above, still appear to me as among the most delightful things in a
world which was then all delight. As we grew a little older and my dear,
clever brother Tom came home from Oxford and Germany, charades and plays
and masquerading and dancing came into fashion. In short ours was, for
the time, like other large country houses, full of happy young people,
with the high spirits common in those old days. The rest of the year,
except during the summer vacation, when brothers and cousins mustered
again, the place was singularly quiet, and my life strangely solitary
for a child. Very early I made a _concordat_ with each of my four
successive governesses, that when lessons were ended, precisely at
twelve, I was free to wander where I pleased about the park and woods,
to row the boat on the pond or ride my pony on the sands of the
sea-shore two miles from the house. I was not to be expected to have any
concern with my instructress outside the doors. The arrangement suited
them, of course, perfectly; and my childhood was thus mainly a lonely
one. I was so uniformly happy that I was (what I suppose few children
are) quite conscious of my own happiness. I remember often thinking
whether other children were all as happy as I, and sometimes, especially
on a spring morning of the 18th March,—my mother’s birthday, when I had
a holiday, and used to make coronets of primroses and violets for her,—I
can recall walking along the grass walks of that beautiful old garden
and feeling as if everything in the world was perfect, and my life
complete bliss for which I could never thank God enough.

When the weather was too bad to spend my leisure hours out of doors I
plunged into the library at haphazard, often making “discovery” of books
of which I had never been told, but which, thus found for myself, were
doubly precious. Never shall I forget thus falling by chance on _Kubla
Khan_ in its first pamphlet-shape. I also gloated over Southey’s _Curse
of Kehama_, and _The Cid_ and Scott’s earlier works. My mother did very
wisely, I think, to allow me thus to rove over the shelves at my own
will. By degrees a genuine appetite for reading awoke in me, and I
became a studious girl, as I shall presently describe. Beside the
library, however, I had a play-house of my own for wet days. There were,
at that time, two garrets only in the house (the bedrooms having all
lofty coved ceilings), and these two garrets, over the lobbies, were
altogether disused. I took possession of them, and kept the keys lest
anybody should pry into them, and truly they must have been a remarkable
sight! On the sloping roofs I pinned the eyes of my peacock’s feathers
in the relative positions of the stars of the chief constellations; one
of my hobbies being Astronomy. On another wall I fastened a rack full of
carpenter’s tools, which I could use pretty deftly on the bench beneath.
The principal wall was an armoury of old court-swords, and home-made
pikes, decorated with green and white flags (I was an Irish patriot at
that epoch), sundry javelins, bows and arrows, and a magnificently
painted shield with the family arms. On the floor of one room was a
collection of shells from the neighbouring shore, and lastly there was a
table with pens, ink and paper; implements wherewith I perpetrated,
_inter alia_, several poems of which I can just recall one. The _motif_
of the story was obviously borrowed from a stanza in Moore’s Irish
Melodies. Even now I do not think the verses very bad for 12 or 13 years
old.

THE FISHERMAN OF LOUGH NEAGH.

The autumn wind was roaring high
And the tempest raved in the midnight sky,
When the fisherman’s father sank to rest
And left O’Nial the last and best
Of a race of kings who once held sway
From far Fingal to dark Lough Neagh.[7]

The morning shone and the fisherman’s bark
Was wafted o’er those waters dark.
And he thought as he sailed of his father’s name
Of the kings of Erin’s ancient fame,
Of days when ‘neath those waters green
The banners of Nial were ever seen,
And where the Knights of the Blood-Red-Tree
Had held of old their revelry;
And where O’Nial’s race alone
Had sat upon the regal throne.

While the fisherman thought of the days of old
The sun had left the western sky
And the moon had risen a lamp of gold,
Ere O’Nial deemed that the eve was nigh,
He turned his boat to the mountain side
And it darted away o’er the rippling tide;
Like arrow from an Indian bow
Shot o’er the waves the glancing prow.

The fisherman saw not the point beneath
Which beckoned him on to instant death.
It struck—yet he shrieked not, although his blood
Ran chill at the thought of that fatal flood;
And the voice of O’Nial was silent that day
As he sank ‘neath the waters of dark Lough Neagh;

Like when Adam rose from the dust of earth
And felt the joy of his glorious birth,
And where’er he gazed, and where’er he trod,
He felt the presence and smile of God,—
Like the breath of morning to him who long
Has ceased to hear the warblers’ song,
And who, in the chamber of death hath lain
With a sickening heart and a burning brain;
So rushed the joy through O’Nial’s mind
When the waters dark above him joined,
And he felt that Heaven had made him be
A spirit of light and eternity.

He gazed around, but his dazzled sight
Saw not the spot from whence he fell,
For beside him rose a spire so bright
No mortal tongue could its splendours tell
Nor human eye endure its light.
And he looked and saw that pillars of gold
The crystal column did proudly hold;
And he turned and walked in the light blue sea
Upon a silver balcony,
Which rolled around the spire of light
And laid on the golden pillars bright.

Descending from the pillars high,
He passed through portals of ivory
E’en to the hall of living gold
The palace of the kings of old.
The harp of Erin sounded high
And the crotal joined the melody,
And the voice of happy spirits round
Prolonged and harmonized the sound.

“All hail, O’Nial!”—

and so on, and so on! I wrote a great deal of this sort of thing then
and for a few years afterwards; and of course, like everyone else who
has ever been given to waste paper and ink, I tried my hand on a
tragedy. I had no real power or originality, only a little Fancy
perhaps, and a dangerous facility for flowing versification. After a
time my early ambition to become a Poet died out under the terrible hard
mental strain and very serious study through which I passed in seeking
religious faith. But I have always passionately loved poetry of a
certain kind, specially that of Shelley; and perhaps some of my prose
writings have been the better for my early efforts to cultivate harmony
and for my delight in good similes. This last propensity is even now
very strong in me, and whenever I write _con amore_, comparisons and
metaphors come tumbling out of my head, till my difficulty is to exclude
mixed ones!

My education at this time was of a simple kind. After Miss Kinnear left
us to marry, I had another nursery governess, a good creature properly
entitled “Miss Daly,” but called by my profane brothers, “the Daily
Nuisance.” After her came a real governess, the daughter of a bankrupt
Liverpool merchant who made my life a burden with her strict discipline
and her “I-have-seen-better-days” airs; and who, at last, I detected in
a trick which to me appeared one of unparalleled turpitude! She had
asked me to let her read something which I had written in a copy-book
and I had peremptorily declined to obey her request, and had locked up
my papers in my beloved little writing-desk which my dear brother Tom
had bought for me out of his school-boy’s pocket-money. The keys of this
desk I kept with other things in one of the old-fashioned pockets which
everybody then wore, and which formed a separate article of under
clothing. This pocket my maid naturally placed at night on the chair
beside my little bed, and the curtains of the bed being drawn, Miss W.
no doubt after a time concluded I was asleep and cautiously approached
the chair on tiptoe. As it happened I was wide awake, having at that
time the habit of repeating certain hymns and other religious things to
myself before I went to sleep; and when I perceived through the white
curtain the shadow of my governess close outside, and then heard the
slight jingle made by my keys as she abstracted them from my pocket, I
felt as if I were witness of a crime! Anything so base I had never
dreamed as existing outside story books of wicked children. Drawing the
curtain I could see that Miss W. had gone with her candle into the inner
room (one of the old “powdering closets” attached to all the rooms in
Newbridge) and was busy with the desk which lay on the table therein.
Very shortly I heard the desk close again with an angry click,—and no
wonder! Poor Miss W., who no doubt fancied she was going to detect her
strange pupil in some particular naughtiness, found the MS. in the desk,
to consist of solemn religious “Reflections,” in the style of Mrs.
Trimmer; and of a poetical description (in round hand) of the _Last
Judgment_! My governess replaced the bunch of keys in my pocket and
noiselessly withdrew, but it was long before I could sleep for sheer
horror; and next day I, of course, confided to my mother the terrible
incident. Nothing, I think, was said to Miss W. about it, but she was
very shortly afterwards allowed to return to her beloved Liverpool,
where, for all I know, she may be living still.

My fourth and last governess was a remarkable woman, a Mdlle. Montriou,
a person of considerable force of character, and in many respects an
admirable teacher. With her I read a good deal of solid history,
beginning with Rollin and going on to Plutarch and Gibbon; also some
modern historians. She further taught me systematically a scheme of
chronology and royal successions, till I had an amount of knowledge of
such things which I afterwards found was not shared by any of my
schoolfellows. She had the excellent sense also to allow me to use a
considerable part of my lesson hours with a map book before me, asking
her endless questions on all things connected with the various
countries; and as she was extremely well and widely informed, this was
almost the best part of my instruction. I became really interested in
these studies, and also in the great poets, French and English, to whom
she introduced me. Of course my governess taught me music, including
what was then called _Thorough Bass_, and now _Harmony_; but very little
of the practical part of performance could I learn then or at any time.
Independently of her, I read every book on Astronomy which I could lay
hold of, and I well remember the excitement wherewith I waited for years
for the appearance of the Comet of 1835, which one of these books had
foretold. At last a report reached me that the village tailor had seen
the comet the previous night. Of course I scanned the sky with renewed
ardour, and thought I had discovered the desired object in a
misty-looking star of which my planisphere gave no notice. My father
however pooh-poohed this bold hypothesis, and I was fain to wait till
the next night. Then, as soon as it was dark, I ran up to a window
whence I could command the constellation wherein the comet was bound to
show itself. A small hazy star—and a _long train of light from
it_—greeted my enchanted eyes! My limbs could hardly bear me as I tore
downstairs into the drawing-room, nor my voice publish the triumphant
intelligence, “It _is_ the comet!” “It _has_ a tail!” Everybody (in far
too leisurely a way as I considered) went up and saw it, and confessed
that the comet it certainly must be, with that appendage of the tail!
Few events in my long life have caused me such delightful excitement.
This was in 1835.

[Illustration:

_Newbridge, Co. Dublin._
]

CHAPTER
III.
_SCHOOL AND AFTER._

When my father, in 1836, had decided, by my governess’s advice, to send
me to school, my dear mother, though already old and feeble, made the
journey, long as it was in those days, from Ireland to Brighton to see
for herself where I was to be placed, and to invoke the kindness of my
schoolmistresses for me. We sailed to Bristol—a 30 hours’ passage
usually, but sometimes longer,—and then travelled by postchaises to
Brighton, taking, I think, three days on the road and visiting
Stonehenge by the way, to my mother’s great delight. My eldest brother,
then at Oxford, attended her and acted courier. When we came in sight of
Brighton the lamps were lighted along the long perspective of the shore.
Gas was still sufficiently a novelty to cause this sight to be immensely
impressive to us all.

Next day my mother took me to my future tyrants, and fondly bargained
(as she was paying enormously) that I should have sundry indulgences,
and principally a bedroom to myself. A room was shown to her with only
one small bed in it, and this she was told would be mine. When I went to
it next night, heart broken after her departure, I found that another
bed had been put up, and a schoolfellow was already asleep in it. I
flung myself down on my knees by my own and cried my heart out, and was
accordingly reprimanded next morning before the whole school for having
been seen to cry at my prayers.[8]

The education of women was probably at its lowest ebb about
half-a-century ago. It was at that period more pretentious than it had
ever been before, and infinitely more costly than it is now; and it was
likewise more shallow and senseless than can easily be believed. To
inspire young women with due gratitude for their present privileges, won
for them by my contemporaries, I can think of nothing better than to
acquaint them with some of the features of school life in England in the
days of their mothers. I say advisedly the days of their mothers, for in
those of their grandmothers, things were by no means equally bad. There
was much less pretence and more genuine instruction, so far as it
extended.

For a moment let us, however, go back to these earlier grandmothers’
schools, say those of the year 1790 or thereabouts. From the reports of
my own mother, and of a friend whose mother was educated in the same
place, I can accurately describe a school which flourished at that date
in the fashionable region of Queen Square, Bloomsbury. The mistress was
a certain Mrs. Devis, who must have been a woman of ability for she
published a very good little English Grammar for the express use of her
pupils; also a Geography, and a capital book of maps, which possessed
the inestimable advantage of recording only those towns, cities, rivers,
and mountains which were mentioned in the Geography, and not confusing
the mind (as maps are too apt to do) with extraneous and superfluous
towns and hills. I speak with personal gratitude of those venerable
books, for out of them chiefly I obtained such inklings of Geography as
have sufficed generally for my wants through life; the only disadvantage
they entailed being a firm impression, still rooted in my mind, that
there is a “Kingdom of Poland” somewhere about the middle of Europe.

Beside Grammar and Geography and a very fair share of history (“Ancient”
derived from Rollin, and “Sacred” from Mrs. Trimmer), the young ladies
at Mrs. Devis’ school learned to speak and read French with a very good
accent, and to play the harpsichord with taste, if not with a very
learned appreciation of “severe” music. The “Battle of Prague” and
Hook’s Sonatas were, I believe, their culminating achievements. But it
was not considered in those times that packing the brains of girls with
facts, or even teaching their fingers to run over the keys of
instruments, or to handle pen and pencil, was the Alpha and Omega of
education. William of Wykeham’s motto, “Manners makyth Manne,” was
understood to hold good emphatically concerning the making of Woman. The
abrupt speaking, courtesy-neglecting, slouching, slangy young damsel who
may now perhaps carry off the glories of a University degree, would have
seemed to Mrs. Devis still needing to be taught the very rudiments of
feminine knowledge. “Decorum” (delightful word! the very sound of which
brings back the smell of Maréchale powder) was the imperative law of a
lady’s inner life as well as of her outward habits; and in Queen Square
nothing that was not decorous was for a moment admitted. Every movement
of the body in entering and quitting a room, in taking a seat and rising
from it, was duly criticised. There was kept, in the back premises, a
carriage taken off the wheels, and propped up _en permanence_, for the
purpose of enabling the young ladies to practise ascending and
descending with calmness and grace, and without any unnecessary display
of their ankles. Every girl was dressed in the full fashion of the day.
My mother, like all her companions, wore hair-powder and rouge on her
cheeks when she entered the school a blooming girl of fifteen; that
excellent rouge at five guineas a pot, which (as she explained to me in
later years) did not spoil the complexion like ordinary compounds, and
which I can witness really left a beautiful, clear skin when disused
thirty years afterwards.

Beyond these matters of fashion, however,—so droll now to
remember,—there must have been at Mrs. Devis’ seminary a great deal of
careful training in what may be called the great Art of Society; the art
of properly paying and receiving visits, of saluting acquaintances in
the street and drawing-room; and of writing letters of compliment. When
I recall the type of perfect womanly gentleness and high breeding which
then and there was formed, it seems to me as if, in comparison, modern
manners are all rough and brusque. We have graceful women in abundance
still, but the peculiar old-fashioned suavity, the tact which made
everybody in a company happy and at ease,—most of all the humblest
individual present,—and which at the same time effectually prevented the
most audacious from transgressing _les bienséances_ by a hair; of that
suavity and tact we seem to have lost the tradition.

The great Bloomsbury school, however, passed away at length, good Mrs.
Devis having departed to the land where I trust the Rivers of Paradise
formed part of her new study of Geography. Nearly half-a-century later,
when it came to my turn to receive education, it was not in London but
in Brighton that the ladies’ schools most in estimation were to be
found. There were even then (about 1836) not less than a hundred such
establishments in the town, but that at No. 32, Brunswick Terrace, of
which Miss Runciman and Miss Roberts were mistresses, and which had been
founded some time before by a celebrated Miss Poggi, was supposed to be
_nec pluribus impar_. It was, at all events, the most outrageously
expensive, the nominal tariff of £120 or £130 per annum representing
scarcely a fourth of the charges for “extras” which actually appeared in
the bills of many of the pupils. My own, I know, amounted to £1,000 for
two years’ schooling.

I shall write of this school quite frankly, since the two poor ladies,
well-meaning but very unwise, to whom it belonged have been dead for
nearly thirty years, and it can hurt nobody to record my conviction that
a better system than theirs could scarcely have been devised had it been
designed to attain the maximum of cost and labour and the minimum of
solid results. It was the typical Higher Education of the period,
carried out to the extreme of expenditure and high pressure.

Profane persons were apt to describe our school as a Convent, and to
refer to the back door of our garden, whence we issued on our dismal
diurnal walks, as the “postern.” If we in any degree resembled nuns,
however, it was assuredly not those of either a Contemplative or Silent
Order. The din of our large double schoolrooms was something frightful.
Sitting in either of them, four pianos might be heard going at once in
rooms above and around us, while at numerous tables scattered about the
rooms there were girls reading aloud to the governesses and reciting
lessons in English, French, German, and Italian. This hideous clatter
continued the entire day till we went to bed at night, there being no
time whatever allowed for recreation, unless the dreary hour of walking
with our teachers (when we recited our verbs), could so be described by
a fantastic imagination. In the midst of the uproar we were obliged to
write our exercises, to compose our themes, and to commit to memory
whole pages of prose. On Saturday afternoons, instead of play, there was
a terrible ordeal generally known as the “Judgment Day.” The two
schoolmistresses sat side by side, solemn and stern, at the head of the
long table. Behind them sat all the governesses as Assessors. On the
table were the books wherein our evil deeds of the week were recorded;
and round the room against the wall, seated on stools of penitential
discomfort, we sat, five-and-twenty “damosels,” anything but “Blessed,”
expecting our sentences according to our ill-deserts. It must be
explained that the fiendish ingenuity of some teacher had invented for
our torment a system of imaginary “cards,” which we were supposed to
“lose” (though we never gained any) whenever we had not finished all our
various lessons and practisings every night before bed-time, or whenever
we had been given the mark for “stooping,” or had been impertinent, or
had been “turned” in our lessons, or had been marked “P” by the music
master, or had been convicted of “disorder” (_e.g._, having our long
shoe-strings untied), or, lastly, had told lies! Any one crime in this
heterogeneous list entailed the same penalty, namely, the sentence, “You
have lost your card, Miss So and so, for such and such a thing;” and
when Saturday came round, if three cards had been lost in the week, the
law wreaked its justice on the unhappy sinner’s head! Her confession
having been wrung from her at the awful judgment-seat above described,
and the books having been consulted, she was solemnly scolded and told
to sit in the corner for the rest of the evening! Anything more
ridiculous than the scene which followed can hardly be conceived. I have
seen (after a week in which a sort of feminine barring-out had taken
place) no less than nine young ladies obliged to sit for hours in the
angles of the three rooms, like naughty babies, with their faces to the
wall; half of them being quite of marriageable age, and all dressed, as
was _de rigueur_ with us every day, in full evening attire of silk or
muslin, with gloves and kid slippers. Naturally, Saturday evenings,
instead of affording some relief to the incessant overstrain of the
week, were looked upon with terror as the worst time of all. Those who
escaped the fell destiny of the corner were allowed, if they chose to
write to their parents, but our letters were perforce committed at night
to the schoolmistress to seal, and were not as may be imagined, exactly
the natural outpouring of our sentiments as regarded those ladies and
their school.

Our household was a large one. It consisted of the two schoolmistresses
and joint proprietors, of the sister of one of them and another English
governess; of a French, an Italian, and a German lady teacher; of a
considerable staff of respectable servants; and finally of twenty-five
or twenty-six pupils, varying in age from nine to nineteen. All the
pupils were daughters of men of some standing, mostly country gentlemen,
members of Parliament, and offshoots of the peerage. There were several
heiresses amongst us, and one girl whom we all liked and recognised as
the beauty of the school, the daughter of Horace Smith, author of
_Rejected Addresses_. On the whole, looking back after the long
interval, it seems to me that the young creatures there assembled were
full of capabilities for widely extended usefulness and influence. Many
were decidedly clever and nearly all were well disposed. There was very
little malice or any other vicious ideas or feelings, and no worldliness
at all amongst us. I make this last remark because the novel of _Rose,
Blanche and Violet_, by the late Mr. G. H. Lewes, is evidently intended
in sundry details to describe this particular school, and yet most
falsely represents the girls as thinking a great deal of each other’s
wealth or comparative poverty. Nothing was further from the fact. One of
our heiresses, I well remember, and another damsel of high degree, the
granddaughter of a duke, were our constant butts for their ignorance and
stupidity, rather than the objects of any preferential flattery. Of
vulgarity of feeling of the kind imagined by Mr. Lewes, I cannot recall
a trace.

But all this fine human material was deplorably wasted. Nobody dreamed
that any one of us could in later life be more or less than an “Ornament
of Society.” That a pupil in that school should ever become an artist,
or authoress, would have been looked upon by both Miss Runciman and Miss
Roberts as a deplorable dereliction. Not that which was good in itself
or useful to the community, or even that which would be delightful to
ourselves, but that which would make us admired in society, was the
_raison d’être_ of each acquirement. Everything was taught us in the
inverse ratio of its true importance. At the bottom of the scale were
Morals and Religion, and at the top were Music and Dancing; miserably
poor music, too, of the Italian school then in vogue, and generally
performed in a showy and tasteless manner on harp or piano. I can recall
an amusing instance in which the order of precedence above described was
naïvely betrayed by one of our schoolmistresses when she was admonishing
one of the girls who had been detected in a lie. “Don’t you know, you
naughty girl,” said Miss R. impressively, before the whole school:
“don’t you know we had _almost_ rather find you have a P——” (the mark of
Pretty Well) “in your music, than tell such falsehoods?”

It mattered nothing whether we had any “music in our souls” or any
voices in our throats, equally we were driven through the dreary course
of practising daily for a couple of hours under a German teacher, and
then receiving lessons twice or three times a week from a music master
(Griesbach by name) and a singing master. Many of us, myself in
particular, in addition to these had a harp master, a Frenchman named
Labarre, who gave us lessons at a guinea apiece, while we could only
play with one hand at a time. Lastly there were a few young ladies who
took instructions in the new instruments, the concertina and the
accordion!

The waste of money involved in all this, the piles of useless music, and
songs never to be sung, for which our parents had to pay, and the loss
of priceless time for ourselves, were truly deplorable; and the result
of course in many cases (as in my own) complete failure. One day I said
to the good little German teacher, who nourished a hopeless attachment
for Schiller’s Marquis Posa, and was altogether a sympathetic person,
“My dear Fraulein, I mean to practise this piece of Beethoven’s till I
conquer it.” “My dear,” responded the honest Fraulein, “you do practice
that piece for seex hours a day, and you do live till you are seexty, at
the end you will _not_ play it!” Yet so hopeless a pupil was compelled
to learn for years, not only the piano, but the harp and singing!

Next to music in importance in our curriculum came dancing. The famous
old Madame Michaud and her husband both attended us constantly, and we
danced to their direction in our large play-room (_lucus a non
lucendo_), till we had learned not only all the dances in use in England
in that ante-polka epoch, but almost every national dance in Europe, the
Minuet, the Gavotte, the Cachucha, the Bolero, the Mazurka, and the
Tarantella. To see the stout old lady in her heavy green velvet dress,
with furbelow a foot deep of sable, going through the latter cheerful
performance for our ensample, was a sight not to be forgotten. Beside
the dancing we had “calisthenic” lessons every week from a “Capitaine”
Somebody, who put us through manifold exercises with poles and
dumbbells. How much better a few good country scrambles would have been
than all these calisthenics it is needless to say, but our dismal walks
were confined to parading the esplanade and neighbouring terraces. Our
parties never exceeded six, a governess being one of the number, and we
looked down from an immeasurable height of superiority on the
processions of twenty and thirty girls belonging to other schools. The
governess who accompanied us had enough to do with her small party, for
it was her duty to utilise these brief hours of bodily exercise by
hearing us repeat our French, Italian or German verbs, according to her
own nationality.

Next to Music and Dancing and Deportment, came Drawing, but that was not
a sufficiently _voyant_ accomplishment, and no great attention was paid
to it; the instruction also being of a second-rate kind, except that it
included lessons in perspective which have been useful to me ever since.
Then followed Modern Languages. No Greek or Latin were heard of at the
school, but French, Italian and German were chattered all day long, our
tongues being only set at liberty at six o’clock to speak English.
_Such_ French, such Italian, and such German as we actually spoke may be
more easily imagined than described. We had bad “Marks” for speaking
wrong languages, _e.g._, French when we bound to speak Italian or
German, and a dreadful mark for bad French, which was transferred from
one to another all day long, and was a fertile source of tears and
quarrels, involving as it did a heavy lesson out of Noel et Chapsal’s
Grammar on the last holder at night. We also read in each language every
day to the French, Italian and German ladies, recited lessons to them,
and wrote exercises for the respective masters who attended every week.
One of these foreign masters, by the way, was the patriot Berchet; a
sad, grim-looking man of whom I am afraid we rather made fun; and on one
occasion, when he had gone back to Italy, a compatriot, whom we were
told was a very great personage indeed, took his classes to prevent them
from being transferred to any other of the Brighton teachers of Italian.
If my memory have not played me a trick, this illustrious substitute for
Berchet was Manzoni, the author of the _Promessi Sposi_; a
distinguished-looking middle-aged man, who won all our hearts by
pronouncing everything we did admirable, even, I think, on the occasion
when one young lady freely translated Tasso,—

“Fama e terre acquistasse,”

into French as follows:—

“Il acquit la femme et la terre!”

Naturally after (a very long way after) foreign languages came the study
of English. We had a writing and arithmetic master (whom we unanimously
abhorred and despised, though one and all of us grievously needed his
instructions) and an “English master,” who taught us to write “themes,”
and to whom I, for one, feel that I owe, perhaps, more than to any other
teacher in that school, few as were the hours which we were permitted to
waste on so insignificant an art as composition in our native tongue!

Beyond all this, our English studies embraced one long, awful lesson
each week to be repeated to the schoolmistress herself by a class, in
history one week, in geography the week following. Our first class, I
remember, had once to commit to memory—Heaven alone knows how—no less
than thirteen pages of Woodhouselee’s _Universal History_!

Lastly, as I have said, in point of importance, came our religious
instruction. Our well-meaning schoolmistresses thought it was obligatory
on them to teach us something of the kind, but, being very obviously
altogether worldly women themselves, they were puzzled how to carry out
their intentions. They marched us to church every Sunday when it did not
rain, and they made us on Sunday mornings repeat the Collect and
Catechism; but beyond these exercises of body and mind, it was hard for
them to see what to do for our spiritual welfare. One Ash Wednesday, I
remember, they provided us with a dish of salt-fish, and when this was
removed to make room for the roast mutton, they addressed us in a short
discourse, setting forth the merits of fasting, and ending by the remark
that they left us free to take meat or not as we pleased, but that they
hoped we should fast; “it would be good for our souls AND OUR FIGURES!”

Each morning we were bound publicly to repeat a text out of certain
little books, called _Daily Bread_, left in our bedrooms, and always
scanned in frantic haste while “doing-up” our hair at the glass, or
gabbled aloud by one damsel so occupied while her room-fellow (there
were never more than two in each bed-chamber) was splashing about behind
the screen in her bath. Down, when the prayer-bell rang, both were
obliged to hurry and breathlessly to await the chance of being called on
first to repeat the text of the day, the penalty for oblivion being the
loss of a “card.” Then came a chapter of the Bible, read verse by verse
amongst us, and then our books were shut and a solemn question was
asked. On one occasion I remember it was: “What have you just been
reading, Miss S——?” Miss S—— (now a lady of high rank and fashion, whose
small wits had been woolgathering) peeped surreptitiously into her Bible
again, and then responded with just confidence, “The First Epistle,
Ma’am, of _General Peter_.”

It is almost needless to add, in concluding these reminiscences, that
the heterogeneous studies pursued in this helter-skelter fashion were of
the smallest possible utility in later life; each acquirement being of
the shallowest and most imperfect kind, and all real education worthy of
the name having to be begun on our return home, after we had been
pronounced “finished.” Meanwhile the strain on our mental powers of
getting through daily, for six months at a time, this mass of
ill-arranged and miscellaneous lessons, was extremely great and trying.

One droll reminiscence must not be forgotten. The pupils at Miss
Runciman’s and Miss Roberts’ were all supposed to have obtained the
fullest instruction in Science by attending a course of Nine Lectures
delivered by a gentleman named Walker in a public room in Brighton. The
course comprised one Lecture on Electricity, another on Galvanism,
another on Optics, others I think, on Hydrostatics, Mechanics, and
Pneumatics, and finally three, which gave me infinite satisfaction, on
Astronomy.

If true education be the instilling into the mind, not so much
Knowledge, as the desire for Knowledge, mine at school certainly proved
a notable failure. I was brought home (no girl could travel in those
days alone) from Brighton by a coach called the _Red Rover_, which
performed, as a species of miracle, in one day the journey to Bristol,
from whence I embarked for Ireland. My convoy-brother naturally mounted
the box, and left me to enjoy the interior all day by myself; and the
reflections of those solitary hours of first emancipation remain with me
as lively as if they had taken place yesterday. “What a delightful thing
it is,” so ran my thoughts “to have done with study! Now I may really
enjoy myself! I know as much as any girl in our school, and since it is
the best school in England, I _must_ know all that it can ever be
necessary for a lady to know. I will not trouble my head ever again with
learning anything; but read novels and amuse myself for the rest of my
life.”

This noble resolve lasted I fancy a few months, and then, depth below
depth of my ignorance revealed itself very unpleasantly! I tried to
supply first one deficiency and then another, till after a year or
two, I began to educate myself in earnest. The reader need not be
troubled with a long story. I spent four years in the study of
History—constructing while I did so some Tables of Royal Successions
on a plan of my own which enabled me to see at a glance the descent,
succession and date of each reigning sovereign of every country,
ancient and modern, possessing any History of which I could find a
trace. These Tables I still have by me, and they certainly testify to
considerable industry. Then the parson of our parish, who had been a
tutor in Dublin College, came up three times a week for several years,
and taught me a little Greek (enough to read the Gospels and to
stumble through Plato’s _Krito_), and rather more geometry, to which
science I took an immense fancy, and in which he carried me over
Euclid and Conic Sections, and through two most delightful books of
Archimedes’ spherics. I tried Algebra, but had as much disinclination
for that form of mental labour as I had enjoyment in the reasoning
required by Geometry. My tutor told me he was able to teach me in one
lesson as many propositions as he habitually taught the undergraduates
of Dublin College in two. I have ever since strongly recommended this
study to women as specially fitted to counteract our habits of hasty
judgment and slovenly statement, and to impress upon us the nature of
real demonstration.

I also read at this time, by myself, as many of the great books of the
world as I could reach; making it a rule always (whether bored or not)
to go on to the end of each, and also following generally Gibbon’s
advice, viz., to rehearse in one’s mind in a walk before beginning a
great book all that one knows of the subject, and then, having finished
it, to take another walk, and register how much has been added to our
store of ideas. In these ways I read all the _Faery Queen_, all Milton’s
poetry, and the _Divina Commedia_ and _Gerusalemme Liberata_ in the
originals. Also (in translations) I read through the Iliad, Odyssey,
Æneid, Pharsalia, and all or nearly all, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
Ovid, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus, Thucydides, &c. There was a fairly
good library at Newbridge, and I could also go when I pleased, and read
in Archbishop Marsh’s old library in Dublin, where there were splendid
old books, though none I think more recent than a hundred and fifty
years before my time. My mother possessed a small collection of
classics—Dryden, Pope, Milton, Horace, &c., which she gave me, and I
bought for myself such other books as I needed out of my liberal
pin-money. Happily, I had at that time a really good memory for
literature, being able to carry away almost the words of passages which
much interested me in prose or verse, and to bring them into use when
required, though I had, oddly enough, at the same period so imperfect a
recollection of persons and daily events that, being very anxious to do
justice to our servants, I was obliged to keep a book of memoranda of
the characters and circumstances of all who left us, that I might give
accurate and truthful recommendations.

By degrees these discursive studies—I took up various hobbies from time
to time—Astronomy, Architecture, Heraldry, and many others—centred more
and more on the answers which have been made through the ages by
philosophers and prophets to the great questions of the human soul. I
read such translations as were accessible in those pre-Müller days, of
Eastern Sacred books; Anquetil du Perron’s _Zend Avesta_ (twice); and
Sir William Jones’s _Institutes of Menu_; and all I could learn about
the Greek and Alexandrian philosophers from Diogenes Laertius and the
old translators (Taylor, of Norwich, and others) and a large
Biographical Dictionary which we had in our library. Having always a
passion for Synopses, I constructed, somewhere about 1840, a Table, big
enough to cover a sheet of double-elephant paper, wherein the principal
Greek philosophers were ranged,—their lives, ethics, cosmogonies and
special doctrines,—in separate columns. After this I made a similar
Table of the early Gnostics and other heresiarchs, with the aid of
Mosheim, Sozomen, and Eusebius.

Does the reader smile to find these studies recorded as the principal
concern of the life of a young lady from 16 to 20, and in fact to 35
years of age? It was even so! They _were_ (beside Religion, of which I
shall speak elsewhere) my supreme interest. As I have said in the
beginning, I had neither cares of love, or cares of money to occupy my
mind or my heart. My parents wished me to go a little into society when
I was about 18, and I was, for the moment, pleased and interested in the
few balls and drawing-rooms (in Dublin) to which my father and
afterwards my uncle, General George Cobbe, conducted me. But I was
rather bored than amused by my dancing partners, and my dear mother,
already in declining years and completely an invalid, could never
accompany me, and I pined for her motherly presence and guidance, the
loss of which was only half compensated for by her comments on the long
reports of all I had seen and said and done, as I sat on her bed, on my
return home. By degrees also, my thoughts came to be so gravely employed
by efforts to find my way to religious truth, that the whole glamour of
social pleasures disappeared and became a weariness; and by the time I
was 19 I begged to be allowed to stay at home and only to receive our
own guests, and attend the occasional dinners in our neighbourhood. With
some regret my parents yielded the point, and except for a visit every
two or three years to London for a few weeks of sightseeing, and one or
two trips in Ireland to houses of our relations, my life, for a long
time, was perfectly secluded. I have found some verses in which I
described it.

“I live! I live! and never to man
More joy in life was given,
Or power to make, as I can make,
Of this bright world a heaven.

“My mind is free; my limbs are clad
With strength which few may know,
And every eye smiles lovingly;
On earth I have no foe.

“With pure and peaceful pleasures blessed
Speed my calm and studious days,
While the noblest works of mightiest minds
Lie open to my gaze.”

In one of our summer excursions I remember my father and one of my
brothers and I lionized Winchester, and came upon an exquisite chapel,
which was at that time, and perhaps still is, a sort of sanctuary of
books, in the midst of a lovely, silent cloister. To describe the
longing I felt then, and long after, to spend all my life studying there
in peace and undisturbed, “hiving learning with each studious
year,”—would be impossible!

I think there is a great, and it must be said lamentable, difference
between the genuine passion for study such as many men and women in my
time and before it experienced, and the hurried anxious _gobbling up_ of
knowledge which has been introduced by competitive examinations, and the
eternal necessity for _getting something else beside knowledge_;
something to be represented by M.A. or B.Sch., or, perhaps, by £ s. d.!
When I was young there were no honours, no rewards of any kind for a
woman’s learning; and as there were no examinations, there was no hurry
or anxiety. There was only healthy thirst for knowledge of one kind or
another, and of one kind after another. When I came across a reference
to a matter which I did not understand, it was not then necessary, as it
seems to be to young students now, to hasten over it, leaving the
unknown name, or event, or doctrine, like an enemy’s fortress on the
road of an advancing army. I stopped and sat down before it, perhaps for
days and weeks, but I conquered it at last, and then went on my way
strengthened by the victory. Recently, I have actually heard of students
at a college for ladies being advised by their “coach” to _skip a number
of propositions in Euclid_, as it was certain they would not be examined
in them! One might as well help a climber by taking rungs out of his
ladder! I can make no sort of pretensions to have acquired, even in my
best days, anything like the instruction which the young students of
Girton and Newnham and Lady Margaret Hall are so fortunate as to
possess; and much I envy their opportunities for obtaining accurate
scholarship. But I know not whether the method they follow can, on the
whole, convey as much of the pure delight in learning as did my solitary
early studies. When the summer morning sun rose over the trees and shone
as it often did into my bedroom finding me still over my books from the
evening before, and when I then sauntered out to take a sleep on one of
the garden seats in the shrubbery, the sense of having learned
something, or cleared up some hitherto doubted point, or added a store
of fresh ideas to my mental riches, was one of purest satisfaction.

As to writing as well as reading, I had very early a great love of the
art and frequently wrote small essays and stories, working my way
towards something of good style. Our English master at school on seeing
my first exercise (on Roman History, I think it was), had asked Miss
Runciman whether she were sure I had written it unaided, and observed
that the turn of the sentences was not girl-like, and that he “thought I
should grow up to be a fine writer.” My schoolmistress laughed, of
course, at the suggestion, and I fancy she thought less of poor Mr.
Turnbull for his absurd judgment. But as men and women who are to be
good musicians love their pianos and violins as children, so I early
began to love that noble instrument, the English Language, and in my
small way to study how to play upon it. At one time when quite young I
wrote several imitations of the style of Gibbon and other authors, just
as an exercise. Eventually without of course copying anybody in
particular, I fell into what I must suppose to be a style of my own,
since those familiar with it easily detect passages of my writing
wherever they come across them. I was at a later time much interested in
seeing many of my articles translated into French (chiefly in the French
Protestant periodicals) and to note how little it is possible to render
the real feeling of such words as those with which _our_ tongue supplies
us by those of that language. At a still later date, when I edited the
_Zoophile_, I was perpetually disappointed by the failures of the best
translators I could engage, to render my meaning. Among the things for
which to be thankful in life, I think we, English, ought to assign no
small place to our inheritance of that grand legacy of our forefathers,
the English Language.

While these studies were going on, from the time I left school in 1838
till I left Newbridge in 1857, it may be noted that I had the not
inconsiderable charge of keeping house for my father. My mother at once
put the whole responsibility of the matter in my hands, refusing even to
be told beforehand what I had ordered for the rather formal dinner
parties of those days, and I accepted the task with pleasure, both
because I could thus relieve her, and also because then and ever since I
have really liked housekeeping. I love a well-ordered house and table,
rooms pleasantly arranged and lighted, and decorated with flowers,
hospitable attentions to guests, and all the other pleasant cares of the
mistress of a family. In the midst of my studies I always went every
morning regularly to my housekeeper’s room and wrote out a careful
_menu_ for the upstairs and downstairs meals. I visited the larders and
the fine old kitchen frequently, and paid the servants’ wages on every
quarter day; and once a year went over my lists of everything in the
charge of either the men or women servants. In particular I took very
special care of the china, which happened to be magnificent; and hereby
hangs the memory of a droll incident with which I may close this
chapter.

A certain dignified old lady, the Hon. Mrs. X., had paid a visit to
Newbridge with her daughters, and in return she invited one of my
brothers and myself to spend some days at her “show” place in ——. While
stopping there I talked with the enthusiasm of my age to her very
charming young daughters of the pleasures of study, urging them
strenuously to learn Greek and Mathematics. Mrs. X., overhearing me,
intervened in the conversation, and said somewhat tartly, “I do not at
all agree with you, Miss Cobbe! I think the duty of a lady is to attend
to her house, and to her husband and children. I beg you will not incite
my girls to take up your studies.”

Of course I bowed to the decree, and soon after began admiring some of
the china about the room. “There is,” said Mrs. X., “some very fine old
china belonging to this house. There is one dessert-service which is
said to have cost £800 forty or fifty years ago. Would you like to see
it?”

Having gratefully accepted the invitation, I followed my hostess to the
basement of the house, and there, for the first time in my life, I
recognised that condition of disorder and slatternliness which I had
heard described as characteristic of Irish houses. At last we reached an
underground china closet, and after some delay and reluctance on the
part of the servant, a key was found and the door opened. There, on the
shelves and the floor, lay piled, higgledy-piggledy, dishes and plates
of exquisite china mixed up with the commonest earthenware jugs, basins,
cups, and willow-pattern kitchen dishes; and the great dessert-service
among the rest—_with the dessert of the previous summer rotting on the
plates_! Yes! there was no mistake. Some of the superb plates handed to
me by the servant for examination by the light of the window, had on
them peach and plum-stones and grape-stalks, obviously left as they had
been taken from the table in the dining-room many months before! Poor
Mrs. X. muttered some expressions of dismay and reproach to her
servants, which of course I did not seem to hear, but I had not the
strength of mind to resist saying: “Indeed this is a splendid service;
_Style de l’Empire_ I should call it. We have nothing like it, but when
next you do us the pleasure to come to Newbridge I shall like to show
you our Indian and Worcester services. Do you know I always take up all
the plates and dishes myself when they have been washed the day after a
party, and put them on their proper shelves with my own hands,—_though I
do know a little Greek and geometry_, Mrs. X.!”

CHAPTER
IV.
_RELIGION._

I do not think that any one not being a fanatic, can regret having been
brought up as an Evangelical Christian. I do not include Calvinistic
Christianity in this remark; for it must surely cloud all the years of
mortal life to have received the first impressions of Time and Eternity
through that dreadful, discoloured glass whereby the “Sun is turned into
darkness and the moon into blood.” I speak of the mild, devout,
philanthropic Arminianism of the Clapham School, which prevailed amongst
pious people in England and Ireland from the beginning of the century
till the rise of the Oxford movement, and of which William Wilberforce
and Lord Shaftesbury were successively representatives. To this school
my parents belonged. The conversion of my father’s grandmother by Lady
Huntingdon, of which I have spoken, had, no doubt, directed his
attention in early life to religion, but he was himself no Methodist, or
Quietist, but a typical Churchman as Churchmen were in the first half of
the century. All our relatives far and near, so far as I have ever
heard, were the same. We had five archbishops and a bishop among our
near kindred,—Cobbe, Beresfords, and Trenchs, great-grandfather, uncle,
and cousins,—and (as I have narrated) my father’s ablest brother, my
god-father, was a clergyman. I was the first heretic ever known amongst
us.

My earliest recollections include the lessons of both my father and
mother in religion. I can almost feel myself now kneeling at my dear
mother’s knees repeating the Lord’s Prayer after her clear sweet voice.
Then came learning the magnificent Collects, to be repeated to my father
on Sunday mornings in his study; and later the church catechism and a
great many hymns. Sunday was kept exceedingly strictly at Newbridge in
those days; and no books were allowed except religious ones, nor any
amusement, save a walk after church. Thus there was abundant time for
reading the Bible and looking over the pictures in various large
editions, and in Calmet’s great folio _Dictionary_, beside listening to
the sermon in church, and to another sermon which my father read in the
evening to the assembled household. Of course, every day of the week
there were Morning Prayers in the library,—and a “Short Discourse” from
good, prosy old Jay, of Bath’s “Exercises.” In this way, altogether I
received a good deal of direct religious instruction, beside very
frequent reference to God and Duty and Heaven, in the ordinary talk of
my parents with their children.

What was the result of this training? I can only suppose that my nature
was a favourable soil for such seed, for it took root early and grew
apace. I cannot recall any time when I could not have been described by
any one who knew my little heart (I was very shy about it, and few, if
any, did know it)—as a very religious child. Religious ideas were from
the first intensely interesting and exciting to me. In great measure I
fancy it was the element of the sublime in them which moved me first,
just as I was moved by the thunder, and the storm and was wont to go out
alone into the woods or into the long, solitary corridors to enjoy them
more fully. I recollect being stirred to rapture by a little poem which
I can repeat to this day, beginning:

Where is Thy dwelling place?
Is it in the realms of space,
By angels and just spirits only trod?
Or is it in the bright
And ever-burning light
Of the sun’s flaming disk that Thou art throned, O God?

One of the stanzas suggested that the Divine seat might be in some
region of the starry universe:

“Far in the unmeasured, unimagined Heaven,
So distant that its light
Could never reach our sight
Though with the speed of thought for endless ages driven.”

Ideas like these used to make my cheek turn pale and lift me as if on
wings; and naturally Religion was the great storehouse of them. But I
think, even in childhood, there was in me a good deal beside of the
_moral_, if not yet the _spiritual_ element of real Religion. Of course
the great beauty and glory of Evangelical Christianity, its thorough
amalgamation of the ideas of Duty and Devotion (elsewhere often so
lamentably distinct), was very prominent in my parents’ lessons. God was
always to me the All-seeing Judge. His eye looking into my heart and
beholding all its naughtiness and little duplicities (which of course I
was taught to consider serious sins) was so familiar a conception that I
might be said to live and move in the sense of it. Thus my life in
childhood morally, was much the same as it is physically to live in a
room full of sunlight. Later on, the evils which belong to this
Evangelical training, the excessive self-introspection and
self-consciousness, made themselves painfully felt, but in early years
there was nothing that was not perfectly wholesome in the religion which
I had so readily assimilated.

Further, I was, as I have said, a very happy child, even conscious of my
own happiness; and gratitude to God or man has always come to me as a
sentiment enhancing my enjoyment of the good for which I have been
thankful. Thus I was,—not conventionally merely,—but genuinely and
spontaneously grateful to the Giver of all the pleasures which were
poured on my head. I think I may say, that I _loved God_, when I was
quite a young child. I can even remember being dimly conscious that my
good father and mother performed their religious exercises more _as a
duty_,—whereas to me such things, so far as I could understand them,
were real _pleasures_; like being taken to see somebody I loved. I have
since recognised that both my parents were, in Evangelical parlance,
“under the law;” while in my childish heart the germ of the mysterious
New Life was already planted. I think my mother was aware of something
of the kind and looked with a little wonder, blended with her tenderness
at my violent outbursts of penitence, and at my strange fancy for
reading the most serious books in my playhours. My brothers had not
exhibited any such symptoms, but then they were healthy schoolboys,
always engaged eagerly in their natural sports and pursuits; while I was
a lonely, dreaming girl.

When I was seven years old, my father undertook to read the _Pilgrim’s
Progress_ to my brothers, then aged from 12 to 18, and I was allowed to
sit in the room and provided with a slate and sums. The sums, it
appeared, were never worked, while my eyes were fixed in absorbed
interest on the reader, evening after evening. Once or twice when the
delightful old copy of Bunyan was left about after the lesson, my slate
was covered with drawings of Apollyon and Great Heart which were
pronounced “wonderful for the child.” By the time Christian had come to
the Dark River, all pretence of arithmetic was abandoned and I was
permitted, proud and enchanted, to join the group of boys and listen
with my whole soul to the marvellous tale. When the reading was over my
father gave the volume (which had belonged to his grandmother) to me,
for my “very own”; and I read it over and over continually for years,
till the idea it is meant to convey,—Life a progress to Heaven—was
engraved indelibly on my mind. It seems to me that few of those who have
praised Bunyan most loudly have recognized that he was not only a great
religious genius, but a born poet, a _Puritan-Tinker-Shelley_; possessed
of what is almost the highest gift of poetry, the sense of the analogy
between outward nature and the human soul. He used allegory instead of
metaphor, a clumsier vehicle by far, but it carried the same exquisite
thoughts. I have the dear old book still, and it is one of my treasures
with its ineffably quaint old woodcuts and its delicious marginal notes;
as, for example, when “Giant Despair” is said to be unable one day to
maul the pilgrims in his dungeon, because he had fits. “For sometimes,”
says Bunyan, “in sunshiny weather Giant Despair has fits.” Could any one
believe that this gem of poetical thought and deep experience is noted
by the words in the margin, “_His Fits!_”? My father wrote on the
flyleaf of the blessed old book these still legible words:—

1830.

“This book, which belonged to my grandmother, was given as a present
to my dear daughter Fanny upon witnessing her delight in reading it.
May she keep the Celestial City steadfastly in view; may she surmount
the dangers and trials she must meet with on the road; and, finally,
be re-united with those she loved on earth in singing praises for ever
and ever to Him who loved them and gave himself for them, is the
fervent prayer of her affectionate father,

“CHARLES COBBE.”

The notion of “getting to Heaven” by means of a faithful pilgrimage
through this “Vale of Tears” was the prominent feature I think, always,
in my father’s religion, and naturally took great hold on me. When the
day came whereon I began to doubt whether there were any Heaven to be
reached, that moral earthquake, as was inevitable, shook not only my
religion but my morality to their foundations; and my experience of the
perils of those years, has made me ever since anxious to base religion
in every young mind, on ground liable to no such catastrophes. The
danger came to me on this wise.

Up to my eleventh year, my little life inward and outward had flown in a
bright and even current. Looking back at it and comparing my childhood
with that of others I seem to have been—probably from the effects of
solitude—_devout_ beyond what was normal at my age. I used to spend a
great deal of time secretly reading the Bible and that dullest of dull
books _The Whole Duty of Man_ (the latter a curious foretaste of my
subsequent life-long interest in the study of ethics)—not exactly
enjoying them but happy in the feeling that I was somehow approaching
God. I used to keep awake at night to repeat various prayers and
(wonderful to remember!) the Creed and Commandments! I made all sorts of
severe rules for myself, and if I broke them, manfully mulcted myself of
any little pleasures or endured some small self-imposed penance. Of none
of these things had any one, even my dear mother, the remotest idea,
except once when I felt driven like a veritable Cain, by my agonised
conscience to go and confess to her that I had said in a recent rage (to
myself) “_Curse them all!_” referring to my family in general and to my
governess in particular! The tempest of my tears and sobs on this
occasion evidently astonished her, and I remember lying exhausted on the
floor in a recess in her bedroom, for a long time before I was able to
move.

But the hour of doubt and difficulty was approaching. The first question
which ever arose in my mind was concerning the miracle of the Loaves and
Fishes. I can recall the scene vividly. It was a winter’s night, my
father was reading the Sunday evening Sermon in the dining-room. The
servants, whose attendance was _de rigueur_, were seated in a row down
the room. My father faced them, and my mother and I and my governess sat
round the fire near him. I was opposite the beautiful classic black
marble mantelpiece, surmounted with an antique head of Jupiter Serapis
(all photographed on my brain even now), and listening with all my
might, as in duty bound, to the sermon which described the miracle of
the Loaves and Fishes. “How did it happen exactly?” I began cheerfully
to think, quite imagining I was doing the right thing to try to
understand it all. “Well! first there were the fishes and the loaves.
But what was done to them? Did the fish grow and grow as they were eaten
and broken? And the bread the same? No! that is nonsense. And then the
twelve basketsful taken up at the end, when there was not nearly so much
at the beginning. It is not possible!” “O! Heavens! (was the next
thought) _I am doubting the Bible!_ God forgive me! I must never think
of it again.”

But the little rift had begun, and as time went on other difficulties
arose. Nothing very seriously, however, distracted my faith or altered
the intensity of my religious feelings for the next two years, till in
October, 1836, I was sent to school as I have narrated in the last
chapter, at Brighton and a new description of life opened. At school I
came under influence of two kinds. One was the preaching of the
Evangelical Mr. Vaughan, in whose church (Christ Church) were our seats;
and I recall vividly the emotion with which one winter’s night I
listened to his sermon on the great theme, “Though your sins be as
scarlet, they shall be white as wool.” The sense of “the exceeding
sinfulness of sin,” the rapturous joy of purification therefrom, came
home to me, and as I walked back to school with the waves thundering up
the Brighton beach beside us and the wind tossing the clouds in the
evening sky overhead, the whole tremendous realities of the moral life
seemed borne in on my heart. On the other hand, the perpetual overstrain
of schoolwork, and unjust blame and penalty for failure to do what it
was impossible to accomplish in the given time, drove me to all sorts of
faults for which I hated and despised myself. When I knelt by my bed at
night, after the schoolfellow who shared my room was, as I fancied,
asleep, she would get up and pound my head with a bolster, laughing and
crying out, “Get up, you horrid hypocrite; get up! I’ll go on beating
you till you do!” It was not strange if, under such circumstances, my
beautiful childish religion fell into abeyance and my conscience into
disquietude. But, as I have narrated, I came home at sixteen, and then,
once more able to enjoy the solitude of the woods and of my own bedroom
and its inner study where no one intruded, the old feelings, tinged with
deep remorse for the failures of my school life and for many present
faults (amongst others a very bitter and unforgiving temper) come back
with fresh vigour. I have always considered that in that summer in my
seventeenth year I went through what Evangelical Christians call
“conversion.” Religion became the supreme interest of life; and the
sense that I was pardoned its greatest joy. I was, of course, a
Christian of the usual Protestant type, finding infinite pleasure in the
simple old “Communion” of those pre-ritualistic days, and in endless
Bible readings to myself. Sometimes I rose in the early summer dawn and
read a whole Gospel before I dressed. I think I never ran up into my
room in the daytime for any change of attire without glancing into the
book and carrying away some echo of what I believed to be “God’s Word.”
Nobody knew anything about all this, of course; but as time went on
there were great and terrible perturbations in my inner life, and these
perhaps I did not always succeed in concealing from the watchful eyes of
my dear mother.

So far as I can recall, the ideas of Christ and of God the Father, were
for all practical religious purposes identified in my young mind. It was
as God upon earth,—the Redeemer God, that I worshipped Jesus. To be
pardoned through his “atonement” and at death to enter Heaven, were the
religious objects of life. But a new and most disturbing element here
entered my thoughts. How did anybody know all that story of Galilee to
be true? How could we believe the miracles? I had read very carefully
Gibbon’s XV. and XVI. chapters, and other books enough to teach me that
everything in historical Christianity had been questioned; and my own
awakening critical, and reasoning, and above all, ethical,—faculties
supplied fresh crops of doubts of the truth of the story and of the
morality of much of the Old Testament history, and of the scheme of
Atonement itself.

Then ensued four years on which I look back as pitiful in the extreme.
In complete mental solitude and great ignorance, I found myself facing
all the dread problems of human existence. For a long time my intense
desire to remain a Christian predominated, and brought me back from each
return to scepticism in a passion of repentance and prayer to Christ to
take my life or my reason sooner than allow me to stray from his fold.
In those days no such thing was heard of as “Broad” interpretations of
Scripture doctrines. We were fifty years before _Lux Mundi_ and thirty
before even _Essays and Reviews_. To be a “Christian,” then, was to
believe implicitly in the verbal inspiration of every word of the Bible,
and to adore Christ as “very God of very God.” With such implicit belief
it was permitted to hope we might, by a good life and through Christ’s
Atonement, attain after death to Heaven. Without the faith or the good
life, it was certain we should go to hell. It was taught us all that to
be good only from fear of Hell was not the highest motive; the _highest_
motive was the hope of Heaven! Had anything like modern rationalising
theories of the Atonement, or modern expositions of the Bible stories,
or finally modern loftier doctrines of disinterested morality and
religion, been known to me at this crisis of my life, it is possible
that the whole course of my spiritual history would have been different.
But of all such “raising up the astral spirits of dead creeds,” as
Carlyle called it, or as Broad churchmen say, “Liberating the kernel of
Christianity from the husk,” I knew, and could know nothing. Evangelical
Christianity in 1840 presented itself as a thing to be taken whole, or
rejected wholly; and for years the alternations went on in my poor young
heart and brain, one week or month of rational and moral disbelief, and
the next of vehement, remorseful return to the faith which I supposed
could alone give me the joy of religion. As time went on, and my reading
supplied me with a little more knowledge and my doubts deepened and
accumulated, the returns to Christian faith grew fewer and shorter, and,
as I had no idea of the possibility of reaching any other vital
religion, I saw all that had made to me the supreme joy and glory of
life fade out of it, while that motive which had been presented to me as
the mainspring of duty and curb of passion, namely, the Hope of Heaven,
vanished as a dream. I always had, as I have described, somewhat of that
_mal-du-ciel_ which Lamartine talks of, that longing, as from the very
depths of our being for an Eden of Divine eternal love. I could scarcely
in those days read even such poor stuff as the song of the Peri in
Moore’s _Lalla Rookh_ (not to speak of Bunyan’s vision of the Celestial
City) without tears rushing to my eyes. But this, I saw, must all go
with the rest. If, as Clough was saying, all unknown to me, about that
same time,—

“Christ is not risen, no!
He lies and moulders low.”

If all the Christian revelation were a mass of mistakes and errors, no
firmer ground on which to build than the promises of Mahomet, or of
Buddha, or of the Old Man of the Mountain,—of course there was (so far
as I saw) no reason left for believing in any Heaven at all, or any life
after death. Neither had the Moral Law, which had come to me through
that supposed revelation on Sinai and the Mount of Galilee, any claim to
my obedience other than might be made out by identifying it with
principles common to heathen and Christian alike; an identity of which,
at that epoch, I had as yet only the vaguest ideas. In short my poor
young soul was in a fearful dilemma. On the one hand I had the choice to
accept a whole mass of dogmas against which my reason and conscience
rebelled; on the other, to abandon those dogmas and strive no more to
believe the incredible, or to revere what I instinctively condemned; and
then, as a necessary sequel, to cast aside the laws of Duty which I had
hitherto cherished; to cease to pray or take the sacrament; and to
relinquish the hope of a life beyond the grave.

It was not very wonderful if, as I think I can recall, my disposition
underwent a considerable change for the worse while all these tremendous
questions were being debated in my solitary walks in the woods and by
the sea-shore, and in my room at night over my Gibbon or my Bible. I
know I was often bitter and morose and selfish; and then came the
alternate spell of paroxysms of self-reproach and fanciful
self-tormentings.

The life of a young woman in such a home as mine is so guarded round on
every side and the instincts of a girl are so healthy, that the dangers
incurred even in such a spiritual landslip as I have described are very
limited compared to what they must inevitably be in the case of young
men or of women less happily circumstanced. It has been my profound
sense of the awful perils of such a downfall of faith as I experienced,
the peril of moral shipwreck without compass or anchorage amid the
tempests of youth, which has spurred me ever since to strive to
forestall for others the hour of danger.

At last my efforts to believe in orthodox Christianity ceased
altogether. In the summer after my twentieth birthday I had reached the
end of the long struggle. The complete downfall of Evangelicalism,—which
seems to have been effected in George Eliot’s strong brain in a single
fortnight of intercourse with Mr. and Mrs. Bray,—had taken in my case
four long years of miserable mental conflict and unspeakable pain. It
left me with something as nearly like a _Tabula rasa_ of faith as can
well be imagined. I definitely disbelieved in human immortality and in a
supernatural revelation. The existence of God I neither denied nor
affirmed. I felt I had no means of coming to any knowledge of Him. I
was, in fact (long before the word was invented), precisely—an Agnostic.

One day, while thus literally creedless, I wandered out alone as was my
wont into a part of our park a little more wild than the rest, where
deer were formerly kept and sat down among the rocks and the gorse which
was then in its summer glory of odorous blossoms, ever since rich to me
with memories of that hour. It was a sunny day in May, and after reading
a little of my favourite Shelley, I fell, as often happened, into
mournful thought. I was profoundly miserable; profoundly conscious of
the deterioration and sliding down of all my feelings and conduct from
the high ambitions of righteousness and holiness which had been mine in
the days of my Christian faith and prayer; and at the same time I knew
that the whole scaffolding of that higher life had fallen to pieces and
could never be built up again. While I was thus musing despairingly,
something stirred within me, and I asked myself, “Can I not rise once
more, conquer my faults, and live up to my own idea of what is right and
good? Even though there be no life after death, I may yet deserve my own
respect here and now, and, if there be a God, He must approve me.”

The resolution was made very seriously. I came home to begin a new
course and to cultivate a different spirit. Was it strange that in a few
days I began instinctively, and almost without reflection, to pray
again? No longer did I make any kind of effort to believe this thing or
the other about God. I simply addressed Him as the Lord of conscience,
whom I implored to strengthen my good resolutions, to forgive my faults,
“to lift me out of the mire and clay and set my feet upon a rock and
order my goings.” Of course, there was Christian sentiment and the
results of Christian training in all I felt and did. I could no more
have cast them off than I could have leaped off my shadow. But of
dogmatical Christianity there was never any more. I have never from that
time, now more than fifty years ago, attached, or wished I could attach,
credence to any part of what Dr. Martineau has called the _Apocalyptic
side of Christianity_, nor (I may add with thankfulness) have I ever
lost faith in God.

The storms of my youth were over. Henceforth through many years there
was a progressive advance to Theism as I have attempted to describe it
in my books; and there were many, many hard moral fights with various
Apollyons all along the road; but no more spiritual revolutions.

About thirty years after that day, to me so memorable, I read in Mr.
Stopford Brooke’s _Life of Robertson_, these words which seem truly to
tell my own story and which I believe recorded Robertson’s own
experience, a little while later:

“It is an awful moment when the soul begins to find that the props on
which it blindly rested are many of them rotten.... I know but one way
in which a man can come forth from this agony scatheless: it is by
holding fast to those things which are certain still. In the darkest
hour through which a human soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful,
this at least is certain. If there be no God and no future state, even
then _it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be true than
false, better to be brave than a coward_. Blessed beyond all earthly
blessedness is the man who in the tempestuous darkness of the soul has
dared to hold fast to these landmarks. I appeal to the recollection of
any man who has passed through that agony and stood upon the rock at
last, with a faith and hope and trust no longer traditional but his
own.”

It may be asked, “What was my creed for those first years of what I may
call _indigenous_ religion?” Naturally, with no better guide than the
inductive philosophy of Locke and Bacon, I could have no outlook beyond
the Deism of the last century. Miracles and miraculous inspiration being
formally given up, there remained only (as I supposed) as testimony to
the existence and character of God such inductions as were drawn in
_Paley’s Theology_ and the _Bridgwater Treatises_; with all of which I
was very familiar. Voltaire’s “_Dieu Toutpuissant, Remunerateur
Vengeur_,” the God whose garb (as Goethe says,) is woven in “Nature’s
roaring loom”; the Beneficent Creator, from whom came all the blessings
which filled my cup; these were the outlines of Deity for me for the
time. The theoretical connection between such a God and my own duty I
had yet to work out through much hard study, but fortunately moral
instinct was practically sufficient to identify them; nay, it was, as I
have just narrated, _through_ such moral instincts that I was led back
straight to religion, and began to pray to my Maker as my Moral Lord, so
soon as ever I strove in earnest to obey my conscience.

There was nothing in such simple Deism to warrant a belief in a future
life, and I deliberately trained myself to abandon a hope which was
always very dear to me. As regards Christ, there was inevitably, at
first, some reaction in my mind from the worship of my Christian days. I
almost felt I had been led into idolatry, and I bitterly resented then
(and ever since) the paramount prominence, the genuflexions at the
creed, and the especially reverential voice and language applied
constantly by Christians to the Son, rather than to the Father. But
after I had read F. W. Newman’s book of the _Soul_, I recognised, with
relief, how many of the phenomena of the spiritual life which Christians
are wont to treat as exclusively bound up with their creed are, in
truth, phases of the natural history of all devout spirits; and my
longing has ever since been rather to find grounds of sympathy with
believers in Christ and for union with them on the broadest bases of
common gratitude, penitence, restoration and adoration, rather than to
accentuate our differences. The view which I eventually reached of
Christ as an historical human character, is set forth at large in my
_Broken Lights_. He was, I think, the man whose life was to the life of
Humanity what Regeneration is to the individual soul.

I may here conclude the story of my religious life extending through the
years after the above described momentous change. After a time, occupied
in part with study and with efforts to be useful to our poor neighbours
and to my parents, my Deism was lifted to a higher plane by one of those
inflowings of truth which seem the simplest things in the world, but are
as rain on the dry ground in summer to the mind which receives them. One
day while praying quietly, the thought came to me with extraordinary
lucidity: “God’s Goodness is what _I mean_ by Goodness! It is not a mere
title, like the ‘Majesty’ of a King. He has really that character which
we call ‘Good.’ He is Just, as I understand Justice, only more perfectly
just. He is Good as I understand Goodness, only more perfectly good. He
is not good in time and tremendous in eternity; not good to some of His
creatures and cruel to others, but wholly, eternally, universally good.
If I could know and understand all His acts from eternity, there would
not be one which would not deepen my reverence and call forth my adoring
praise.”

To some readers this discovery may seem a mere platitude and truism: the
assertion of a thing which they have never failed to understand. To me
it was a real revelation which transformed my religion from one of
reverence only into one of vivid love for that Infinite Goodness which I
then beheld unclouded. The deep shadow left for years on my soul by the
doctrine of eternal Hell had rolled away at last. Another truth came
home to me many years later, and not till after I had written my first
book. It was one night, after sitting up late in my room reading (for
once) no grave work, but a pretty little story by Mrs. Gaskell. Up to
that time I had found the pleasures of knowledge the keenest of all, and
gloried in the old philosopher’s _dictum_, “Man was created to know and
to contemplate.” I looked on the pleasures of the affections as
secondary and inferior to those of the intellect, and I strove to
perform my duties to those around me, rather in a spirit of moral
rectitude and obedience to law than in one of lovingkindness. Suddenly
again it came to me to see that Love is greater than Knowledge; that it
is more beautiful to serve our brothers freely and tenderly, than to
“hive up learning with each studious year,” to compassionate the
failures of others and ignore them when possible, rather than undertake
the hard process (I always found it so!) of forgiveness of injuries; to
say, “What may I be allowed to do to help and bless this one—or that?”
rather than “What am I bound by duty to do for him, or her; and how
little will suffice?” As these thoughts swelled in my heart, I threw
myself down in a passion of happy tears, and passed most of the night
thinking how I should work out what I had learned. I had scarcely fallen
asleep towards morning when I was wakened by the intelligence that one
of the servants, a young laundress, was dying. I hurried to the poor
woman’s room which was at a great distance from mine, and found all the
men and women servants collected round her. She wished for some one to
pray for her, and there was no one to do it but myself, and so, while
the innocent girl’s soul passed away, I led, for the first and only
time, the prayers of my father’s household.

I had read a good number of books by Deists during the preceding years.
Gibbon’s Miscellaneous Works (which I greatly admired), Hume, Tindal,
Collins, Voltaire, beside as many of the old heathen moralists and
philosophers as I could reach; Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus,
Plutarch’s _Moralia_, Xenophon’s _Memorabilia_, and a little of Plato.
But of any modern book touching on the particular questions which had
tortured me I knew nothing till, by the merest good fortune, I fell in
with _Blanco White’s Life_. How much comfort and help I found in his
_Meditations_ the reader may guess. Curiously enough, long years
afterwards, Bishop Colenso told me that the same book, falling into his
hands in Natal by the singular chance of a colonist possessing the
volumes, had determined him to come over to England and bring out his
_Pentateuch_. Thus poor Blanco White, after all prophesied rightly when
he said that he was “one of those who, falling in the ditch, help other
men to pass over”!

Another book some years later was very helpful to me—F. W. Newman’s
_Soul_. Dean Stanley told me that he thought in the far future that
single book would be held to outweigh in value all that the author’s
brother, Cardinal Newman, had ever written. I entered not long after
into correspondence with Professor Newman, and have had the pleasure of
calling him my friend ever since. We have interchanged letters, or at
least friendly greetings, at short intervals now for nearly fifty years.

But the epoch-making book for me was Theodore Parker’s _Discourse of
Religion_. Reading a notice of it in the _Athenæum_, soon after its
publication (somewhere about the year 1845), I sent for it, and words
fail to tell the satisfaction and encouragement it gave me. One must
have been isolated and care-laden as I to estimate the value of such a
book. I had come, as I have narrated above, to the main conclusions of
Parker,—namely, the absolute goodness of God and the non-veracity of
popular Christianity,—three years before; so that it has been a mistake
into which some of my friends have fallen when they have described me as
converted from orthodoxy by Parker. But his book threw a flood of light
on my difficult way. It was, in the first place, infinitely satisfactory
to find the ideas which I had hammered out painfully and often
imperfectly, at last welded together, set forth in lucid order,
supported by apparently adequate erudition and heartwarmed by fervent
piety. But, in the second place, the _Discourse_ helped me most
importantly by teaching me to regard Divine Inspiration no longer as a
miraculous and therefore incredible thing; but as normal, and in
accordance with the natural relations of the infinite and finite spirit;
a Divine inflowing of _mental_ Light precisely analogous to that _moral_
influence which divines call Grace. As every devout and obedient soul
may expect to share in Divine Grace, so the devout and obedient souls of
all the ages have shared (as Parker taught) in Divine Inspiration. And,
as the reception of Grace, even in large measure, does not render us
_impeccable_, so neither does the reception of Inspiration make us
_Infallible_. It is at this point that Deism stops and Theism begins;
namely, when our faith transcends all that can be gleaned from the
testimony of the bodily senses and accepts as supremely trustworthy the
direct Divine teaching, the “original revelation” of God’s holiness and
love in the depths of the soul. Theodore Parker adopted the alternative
synonym to mark the vital difference in the philosophy which underlies
the two creeds; a theoretic difference leading to most important
practical consequences in the whole temper and spirit of Theism as
distinct from Deism. I saw all this clearly ere long, and ranged myself
thenceforth as a THEIST: a name now familiar to everybody, but which,
when my family came to know I took it, led them to tell me with some
contempt that it was “a word in a Dictionary, not a Religion.”

A few months after I had absorbed Parker’s _Discourse_, the great sorrow
of my life befell me. My mother, whose health had been feeble ever since
I could remember her, and who was now seventy years of age, passed away
from a world which has surely held few spirits so pure and sweet. She
died with her weeping husband and sons beside her bed and with her head
resting on my breast. Almost her last words were to tell me I had been
“the pride and joy” of her life. The agony I suffered when I realised
that she was gone I shall not try to tell. She was the one being in the
world whom I truly loved through all the passionate years of youth and
early womanhood; the only one who really loved me. Never one word of
anger or bitterness had passed from her lips to me, nor (thank God!)
from mine to her in the twenty-four years in which she blessed my life;
and for the latter part of that time her physical weakness had drawn a
thousand tender cares of mine around her. No relationship in all the
world, I think, can ever be so perfect as that of mother and daughter
under such circumstances, when the strength of youth becomes the support
of age, and the sweet dependance of childhood is reversed.

But it was all over—I was alone; no more motherly love and tenderness
were ever again to reach my thirsting heart. But this was not as I
recall it, the worst pang in that dreadful agony. I had (as I said
above) ceased to believe in a future life, and therefore I had no choice
but to think that that most beautiful soul which was worth all the
kingdoms of earth had actually _ceased to be_. She was a “Memory;”
nothing more

I was not then or at any time one of those fortunate people who can
suddenly cast aside the conclusions which they have reached by careful
intellectual processes, and leap to opposite opinions at the call of
sentiment. I played no tricks with my convictions, but strove as best I
could to endure the awful strain, and to recognise the Divine Justice
and Goodness through the darkness of death. I need not and cannot say
more on the subject.

Happily for me, there were many duties waiting for me, and I could
recognise even then that, though _pleasure_ seemed gone for ever, yet it
was a relief to feel I had still _duties_. “Something to do for others”
was an assuagement of misery. My father claimed first and much
attention, and the position I now held of the female head of the family
and household gave me a good deal of employment. To this I added
teaching in my village school a mile from our house two or three times a
week, and looking after all the sick and hungry in the two villages of
Donabate and Balisk. Those were the years of Famine and Fever in
Ireland, and there was abundant call for all our energies to combat
them. I shall write of these matters in the next chapter.

I had, though with pain, kept my heresies secret during my mother’s
declining years and till my father had somewhat recovered from his
sorrow. I had continued to attend family prayers and church services,
with the exception of the Communion, and had only vaguely allowed it to
be understood that I was not in harmony with them all. When my poor
father learned the full extent of my “infidelity,” it was a terrible
blow to him, for which I have, in later years, sincerely pitied him. He
could not trust himself to speak to me, but though I was in his house,
he wrote to tell me I had better go away. My second brother, a
barrister, had a year before given up his house in Queen Anne Street
under a terrible affliction, and had gone, broken-hearted, to live on a
farm which he hired in the wilds of Donegal. There I went as my father
desired and remained for nearly a year; not knowing whether I should
ever be permitted to return home and rather expecting to be
disinherited. He wrote to me two or three times and said that if my
doubts only extended in certain directions he could bear with them, “but
if I rejected Christ and disbelieved the Bible, a man was called upon to
keep the plague of such opinions from his own house.” Then he required
me to answer him on those points categorically. Of course I did so
plainly, and told him I did _not_ believe that Christ was God; and I did
_not_ (in his sense) believe in the inspiration or authority of the
Bible. After this ensued a very long silence, in which I remained
entirely ignorant of my destiny and braced myself to think of earning my
future livelihood. I was absolutely lonely; my brother, though always
very kind to me, had not the least sympathy with my heresies, and
thought my father’s conduct (as I do) quite natural; and I had not a
friend or relative from whom I could look for any sort of comfort. A
young cousin to whom I had spoken of them freely, and who had, in a way,
adopted my ideas, wrote to me to say she had been shown the error of
them, and was shocked to think she had been so misguided. This was the
last straw. After I received this letter I wandered out in the dusk as
usual down to a favourite nook—a natural seat under the bank in a bend
of the river which ran through Bonny Glen,—and buried my face in the
grass. As I did so my lips touched a primrose which had blossomed in
that precise spot since I had last been there, and the soft, sweet
flower which I had in childhood chosen for my mother’s birthday garland
seemed actually to kiss my face. No one who has not experienced _utter_
loneliness can perhaps quite imagine how much comfort such an incident
can bring.

As I had no duties in Donegal, and seldom saw our few neighbours, I
occupied myself, often for seven or eight or even nine hours a day, in
writing an _Essay on True Religion_. I possess this MS. still, and have
been lately examining it. Of course, as a first literary effort, it has
many faults, and my limited opportunities for reference render parts of
it very incomplete; but it is not a bad piece of work. The first part is
employed in setting forth my reasons for belief in God. The second,
those for not believing in (the apocalyptic part of) Christianity. The
chapter on _Miracles_ and Prophecy (written from the literal and
matter-of-fact standpoint of that epoch) are not ill-done, while the
moral failure of the Bible and of the orthodox theology, the histories
of Jacob, Jael, David, &c., and the dogmas of Original Sin, the
Atonement, a Devil and eternal Hell, are criticised pretty successfully.
A considerable part of the book consists in a comparison in parallel
columns of moral precepts from the Old and New Testaments on one side,
and from non-Christian writers, Euripides, Socrates (Xenophon),
Plutarch, Sextius, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, the Zend Avesta
(Anquetil du Perron’s), The Institutes of Menu (Sir W. Jones’), the
Damma Padan, the Talmud, &c., on the other. For years I had seized every
opportunity of collecting the most striking ethical _dicta_, and I thus
marshalled them to what appeared to me good purpose, namely, the
disproof of the originality or exceptional loftiness of Christian
Morals. I did not apprehend till later years, how the supreme
achievement of Christianity was not the inculcation of a _new_, still
less of a _systematic_ Morality; but the introduction of a new spirit
into Morality; as Christ himself said, a leaven into the lump.

Reading Parker’s _Discourse_, as I did very naturally in my solitude
once again, it occurred to me to write to him and ask him to tell me on
what ground he based the faith which I perceived he held, in a life
after death? It had seemed to me that the guarantee of Revelation having
proved worthless, there remained no sufficient reason for hope to
counter-weigh the obvious difficulty of conceiving of a survival of the
soul. Parker answered me in a most kind letter, accompanied by his
_Sermon of the Immortal Life_. Of course I studied this with utmost care
and sympathy, and by slow, very slow degrees, as I came more to take in
the full scope of the Theistic, as distinguished from the Deistic view,
I saw my way to a renewal of _the Hope of the Human Race_ which, twenty
years later, I set forth as best as I could in the little book of that
name. I learned to trust the intuition of Immortality which is “written
in the heart of man by a Hand which writes no falsehoods.” I deemed also
that I could see (as Parker says) the evidence of “a summer yet to be in
the buds which lie folded through our northern winter;” the presence in
human nature of many efflorescences—and they the fairest of all—quite
unaccountable and unmeaning on the hypothesis that the end of the man is
in the grave. In later years I think, as the gloom of the evil and
cruelty of the world has shrouded more the almost cloudless skies of my
youth, I have almost fervently held by the doctrine of Immortality
because it is, to me _the indispensable corollary of that of the
Goodness of God_. I am not afraid to repeat the words, which so deeply
shocked, when they were first published, my old friend, F. W. Newman.
“_If Man be not immortal, God is not Just._”

Recovering this faith, as I may say, rationally and not by any gust of
emotion, I had the inexpressible happiness of thinking henceforth of my
mother as still existing in God’s universe, and (as well as I knew)
loving me wherever she might be, and under whatever loftier condition of
being. To meet her again “spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost,” has been to
me for forty years, the sweetest thought connected with death. Ere long,
now, it must be realised.

After nine or ten months of this, by no means harsh, exile, my father
summoned me to return home. I resumed my place as his daughter in doing
all I could for his comfort, and as the head of his house; merely
thenceforth abstaining from attendance either at Church or at family
prayer. I had several favourite nooks and huts near and far in the
woods, which I made into little Oratories for myself, and to one or
other of them I resorted almost every evening at dusk; making it a
habit—not broken for many years afterwards, to repeat a certain
versified Litany of Thanksgiving which I had written and read to my
mother. On Sundays, when the rest of the family went to the village
church, I had the old garden for a beautiful cathedral. Having let
myself in with my own key, and locked the doors, I knew I had the lovely
six acres within the high walls, free for hours from all observation or
intrusion. How much difference it makes in life to have at command such
peace and solitude it is hard to estimate. I look back to some of the
summer forenoons spent alone in that garden as to the flowering time of
my seventy years. God grant that the afterglow of such hours may remain
with me to the last, and that “at eventide it may be light!”

I knew that there were Unitarian chapels in Dublin at this time, and
much wished to attend them now and then; but I would not cause annoyance
to my father by the notice which my journey to the town on a Sunday
would have attracted. Only on New Year’s Day I thought I might go
unobserved and interpolate attendance at the service among my usual
engagements. I went accordingly to Dublin one 1st of January and drove
to the chapel of which I had heard in Eustace Street. It was a big,
dreary place with scarcely a quarter of the seats occupied, and a
middle-class congregation apparently very cool and indifferent. The
service was a miserable, hybrid affair, neither Christian as I
understood Christianity, nor yet Theistic; but it was a pleasure to me
merely to stand and kneel with other people at the hymns and prayers. At
last, the sermon, for which I might almost say, I was hungry, arrived.
The old Minister in his black-gown ascended the pulpit, having taken
with him—what?—could I believe my eyes? It was an _old printed book_,
bound in the blue and drab old fuzzy paper of the year 1810 or
thereabouts, and out of this he proceeded to read an erudite discourse
by some father of English Socinianism, on the precise value of the Greek
article when used before the word Θεός! My disappointment not to say
disgust were such that,—as it was easy from my seat to leave the place
without disturbing any one,—I escaped into the street, never (it may be
believed) to repeat my experiment.

It was an anomalous position that which I held at Newbridge from the
time of my return from Donegal, till my father’s death eight years
later. I took my place as head of the household at the family table and
in welcoming our guests, but I was all the time in a sort of moral
Coventry, under a vague atmosphere of disapprobation wherein all I said
was listened to cautiously as likely to conceal some poisonous heresy.
Everything of this kind, however, wears down and becomes easier and
softer as time goes on, and most so when people are, _au fond_,
just-minded and good-hearted; and the years during which I remained at
home till my father’s death, though mentally very lonely, were far from
unhappy. In particular, the perfect clearness and straightforwardness of
my position was, and has ever since been, a source of strength and
satisfaction to me, for which I have thanked God a thousand times. My
inner life was made happy by my simple faith in God’s infinite and
perfect love; and I never had any doubt whether I had erred in
abandoning the creed of my youth. On the contrary, as the whole tendency
of modern science and criticism showed itself stronger and stronger
against the old orthodoxy, my hopes were unduly raised of a not distant
New Reformation which I might even live to see. These sanguine hopes
have faded. As Dean Stanley seems to have felt, there was, somewhere
between the years ’74 and ’78, a turn in the tide of men’s thoughts
(due, I think, to the paramount influence and insolence which physical
science then assumed), which has postponed any decisive “broad” movement
for years beyond my possible span of life. But though nothing appears
quite so bright to my old eyes as all things did to me in youth, though
familiarity with human wickedness and misery, and still more with the
horrors of scientific cruelty to animals, have strained my faith in
God’s justice sometimes even to agony,—I know that no form of religious
creed could have helped me any more than my own or as much as it has
done to bear the brunt of such trial; and I remain to the present
unshaken both in respect to the denials and the affirmations of Theism.
There are great difficulties, soul-torturing difficulties besetting it;
but the same or worse, beset every other form of faith in God; and
infinitely more, and to my mind insurmountable ones, beset Atheism.

For fifty years Theism has been my staff of life. I must soon try how it
will support me down the last few steps of my earthly way. I believe it
will do so well.

CHAPTER
V.
_MY FIRST BOOK._

When I was thirty years of age I had an attack of bronchitis from which
I nearly died. When very ill and not expecting to recover, I reflected
that while my own life had been made happy and strong by the faith which
had been given to me, I had done nothing to help any other human soul to
find that solution of the dread problem which had brought such peace to
me. I felt, as Mrs. Browning says, that a Truth was “like bread at
Sacrament” to be passed on. When, unexpectedly to myself, I slowly
recovered after a sojourn in Devonshire, I resolved to set about writing
something which should convey as much as possible of my own convictions
to whosoever should read it. For a time I thought of enlarging and
completing my MS. _Essay on True Religion_, written for my own
instruction; but the more I reflected the less I cared to labour to pull
down hastily the crumbling walls which yet sheltered millions of souls,
and the more I longed to build up anew on solid base a stronghold of
refuge for those driven like myself from the old ground of faith in God
and Duty. Especially I felt that as the worst dangers of such
transitions lay in the sudden snapping of the supposed bond of Morality,
and collapse of the hopes of heaven and terrors of hell which had been
used as motives of virtue and deterrents from vice; so the most urgent
need lay in the direction of a system of ethics which should base Duty
on ground absolutely apart from that of the supposed supernatural
revelation and supply sanctions and motives unconnected therewith. As it
happened at this very time, my good (orthodox) friend, Miss Felicia
Skene, had recommended me to read Kant’s _Metaphysic of Ethics_, and I
had procured Semple’s translation and found it almost dazzlingly
enlightening to my mind. It would be presumptuous for me to say that
then, or at any time, I have thoroughly mastered either this book or the
_Reinun Vernunft_ of this greatest of thinkers; but, so far as I have
been able to do so, I can say for my own individual mind (as his German
disciples were wont to do for themselves), “God said, Let there be
Light! and there was—the Kantian Philosophy.” It has been, and no doubt
will be still further, modified by succeeding metaphysicians and
sometimes it may appear to have been superseded, but I cannot think
otherwise than that Kant was and will finally be recognised to have been
the Newton of the laws of Mind.

I shall now endeavour to explain the purpose of my first book (which is
also my _magnum opus_) by quoting the Preface at some length; and, as
the third edition has long been out of print and is unattainable in
England or America, I shall permit myself to embody in this chapter a
general account of the drift of it, with extracts sufficient to serve as
samples of the whole. Looking over it now, after the lapse of just forty
years, I can see that my reading at that time had lain so much among old
books that the style is almost that of a didactic Treatise of the
seventeenth century; and the ideas, likewise, are necessarily
exclusively those of the pre-Darwinian Era. Conceptions so familiar to
us now as that of an “hereditary set of the brain,” and of the
“Capitalised experience of the tribe,” were then utterly unthought of. I
have been well aware that it would, consequently, have been
necessary,—had the book been republished any time during the last twenty
years,—to rewrite much of it and define the standpoint of an
Intuitionist as regards the theory of Evolution in its bearing on the
foundation of ethics. For this task, however, I have always lacked
leisure: and my article on “_Darwinism in Morals_” (reprinted in the
book of that name) has been the best effort I have made in such
direction. I may here, perhaps, nevertheless be allowed to say as a last
word in favour of this Essay, namely, that such as it is, it has served
me, personally, as a scaffolding for all my life-work, a key to open
most of the locks which might have barred my way. If now I feel (as men
and women are wont to do at three-score years and ten), that I hold all
philosophic opinions with less tenacious grasp, less “cocksureness” than
in earlier days, and know that the great realities to which they led,
will remain realities for me still should those opinions prove here and
there unstable,—it is not that I am disposed in any way to abandon them,
still less that I have found any other systems of ethics or theology
more, or equally, sound and self-consistent.

I wrote the “_Essay on the Theory of Intuitive Morals_” between my
thirtieth and thirty-third years. I had a great deal else to do—to amuse
and help my father (then growing old); to direct our household,
entertain our guests, carry on the feminine correspondence of the
family, teach in my village school twice a week or so, and to attend
every case of illness or other tribulation in Donabate and Balisk. My
leisure for writing and for the preliminary reading for writing, was
principally at night or in the early morning; and at last it was
accomplished. No one but my dear old friend, Harriet St. Leger, had seen
any part of the MS., and, as I have said, nobody belonging to my family
had ever (so far as I know) employed a printer or publisher before. I
took the MS. with me to London, where my father and I were fortunately
going for a holiday, and called with it in Paternoster Row, on Mr.
William Longman, to whom I had a letter of business introduction from my
Dublin bookseller. When I opened my affair to Mr. Longman, it was truly
a case of Byron’s address to Murray—

“To thee with hope and terror dumb,
The unfledged MS. authors come;
Thou printest all, and sellest some,
My Murray!”

Mr. Longman politely veiled a smile, and adopted the voice of friendly
dissuasion from my enterprise, looking no doubt on a young lady (as I
still was) as a very unpromising author for a treatise on Kantian
ethics! My spirit, however, rose with the challenge. I poured out for
some minutes much that I had been thinking over for years, and as I
paused at last, Mr. Longman said briefly, but decidedly, “_I’ll publish
your book._”

After this fateful interview, I remember going into St. Paul’s and
sitting there a long while alone.

The sheets of the book passed rapidly through the press, and I usually
took them to the British Museum to verify quotations and work quietly
over difficulties, for in the house which we occupied in Connaught
Square I had no study to myself. The foot-notes to the book (collected
some in the Museum, some from my own books and some from old works in
Archbishop Marsh’s Library) were themselves a heavy part of the work.
Glancing over the pages as I write, I see extracts, for example, from
the following:—Cudworth (I had got at some inedited MSS. of his in the
British Museum), Montesquieu, Philo, Hooker, Proclus, Thomas Aquinas,
Aristotle, Descartes, Müller, Whewell, Mozley, Leibnitz, St. Augustine,
Phillipsohn, Strabo, St. Chrysostom, Morell, Lewes, Dugald Stewart,
Mill, Oërsted, the Adée-Grunt’h (sacred book of the Sikhs), Herbert
Spencer, Hume, Maximus Tyriensis, Institutes of Menu, Victor Cousin, Sir
William Hamilton, Lucian, Seneca, Cory’s Fragments, St. Gregory the
Great, Justin Martyr, Jeremy Taylor, the Yajur Veda, Shaftesbury, Plato,
Marcus Aurelius, Diogenes Laertius, Cicero, Confucius, and many more.
There are also in the Notes sketches of the history of the doctrines of
Predestination, and of Original Sin, which involved very considerable
research.

At last the proofs were corrected, the Notes verified, and the time had
come when the Preface must be written! How was I to find a quiet hour to
compose it? Like most women I was bound hand and foot by a fine web of
little duties and attentions, which men never feel or brush aside
remorselessly, (it was only Hooker, who rocked a cradle with his foot
while he wrote the Ecclesiastical Polity!); and it was a serious
question for me when I could find leisure and solitude. Luckily, just on
the critical day, my father was seized with a fancy to go to the play,
and, equally luckily, I had so bad a cold that it was out of question
that I should, as usual, accompany him. Accordingly I had an evening all
alone, and wrote fast and hard the pages which I shall presently quote,
finishing the last sentence of my _Preface_ as I heard my father’s knock
at the hall door.

I had all along told my father (though, alas; to his displeasure), that
I was going to publish a book; of course, anonymously, to save him
annoyance. When the printing was completed, the torn and defaced sheets
of the MS. lay together in a heap for removal by the housemaid. Pointing
to this, my poor father said solemnly to me: “Don’t leave those about;
_you don’t know into whose hands they may fall_.” It was needless to
observe to him, that I was on the point of _publishing_ the “perilous
stuff”!

The book was brought out by Longmans that year (1855) and afterwards by
Crosby and Nichols in Boston, and again by Trübner in London. It was
reviewed rather largely and, on the whole, very kindly, considering it
was by an unknown and altogether unfriended author; but sometimes also
in a manner which it is pleasant to know has gone out of fashion in
these latter days. It was amusing to see that not one of my critics had
a suspicion they were dealing with a woman’s work. They all said, “_He_
reasons clearly.” “_His_ spirit and manner are particularly well suited
to ethical discussion.” “_His_ treatment of morals” (said the
_Guardian_) “is often both true and beautiful.” “It is a most noble
performance,” (said the _Caledonian Mercury_), “the work of a
_masculine_ and lofty mind.” “It is impossible,” (said the _Scotsman_),
“to deny the ability of the writer, or not to admire _his_ high moral
tone, his earnestness and the fulness of his knowledge.” But the heresy
of the book brought down heavy denunciation from the “religious” papers
on the audacious writer who, “instead of walking softly and humbly on
the firm ground and taking the Word of God as a lamp,” &c., had indulged
in “insect reasonings.” A rumour at last went out that a woman was the
author of this “able and attractive but deceptive and dangerous work,”
and then the criticisms were barbed with sharper teeth. “The writer”
(says the _Christian Observer_), “we are told, is a lady, but there is
nothing feeble or even feminine in the tone of the work.... Our dislike
is increased when we are told it is a female (!) who has propounded so
unfeminine and stoical a theory ... and has contradicted openly the true
sayings of the living God!” The _Guardian_ (November 21st, 1855) finally
had this delightful paragraph: “The author professes great admiration
for Theodore Parker and Francis Newman, but his own pages are not
disfigured by the arrogance of the one or the shallow levity of the
other” (think of the _shallow levity_ of Newman’s book of the _Soul_!).
“He writes gravely, not defiantly, as befits a man giving utterance to
thoughts which he knows _will be generally regarded as impious_.”

I shall now offer the reader a few extracts; and first from the
_Preface_:—

“It cannot surely be questioned but that we want a System of Morals
better than any of those which are current amongst us. We want a
system which shall neither be too shallow for the requirements of
thinking men, nor too abstruse for popular acceptation; but which
shall be based upon the ultimate grounds of philosophy, and be
developed with such distinctness as to be understood by every one
capable of studying the subject. We want a System of Morals which
shall not entangle itself with sectarian creeds, nor imperil its
authority with that of tottering Churches, but which shall be
indissolubly blended with a Theology fulfilling all the demands of the
Religious Sentiment—a Theology forming a part, and the one living
part, of all the theologies which ever have been or shall be. We want
a system which shall not degrade the Law of the Eternal Right by
announcing it as a mere contrivance for the production of human
happiness, or by tracing our knowledge of it to the experience of the
senses, or by cajoling us into obeying it as a matter of expediency;
but a system which shall ascribe to that Law its own sublime office in
the universe, which shall recognise in man the faculties by which he
obtains a supersensible knowledge of it, and which shall inculcate
obedience to it on motives so pure and holy, that the mere statement
of them shall awaken in every breast that higher and better self which
can never be aroused by the call of interest or expediency.

“It would be in itself a presumption for me to disclaim the ability
necessary for supplying such a want as this. In writing this book, I
have aimed chiefly at two objects. First. I have sought to unite into
one homogeneous and self-consistent whole the purest and most enlarged
theories hitherto propounded on ethical science. Especially I have
endeavoured to popularise those of Kant, by giving the simplest
possible presentation to his doctrines regarding the Freedom of the
Will and the supersensible source of our knowledge of all Necessary
Truths, including those of Morals. I do not claim however, even so far
as regards these doctrines, to be an exact exponent of Kant’s
opinions.... Secondly. I have sought (and this has been my chief aim)
to place for the first time, at the foundation of ethics, the great
but neglected truth that the End of Creation is not the Happiness, but
the Virtue, of Rational Souls. I believe that this truth will be found
to throw most valuable light, not only upon the Theory, but upon all
the details of Practical Morals. Nay, more, I believe that we must
look to it for such a solution of the ‘Riddle of the World’ as shall
satisfy the demands of the Intellect while presenting to the Religious
Sentiment that same God of perfect Justice and Goodness whose ideal it
intuitively conceives and spontaneously adores. Only with this view of
the Designs of God can we understand how His Moral Attributes are
consistent with the creation of a race which is indeed ‘groaning in
sin’ and ‘travailing in sorrow’; but by whose freedom to sin and trial
of sorrow shall be worked out at last the most blessed End which
Infinite Love could devise. With this clew, we shall also see how (as
the Virtue of each individual must be produced by himself, and is the
share committed to him in the grand end of creation) all Duties must
necessarily range themselves accordingly—the Personal before the
Social—in a sequence entirely different from that which is comformable
with the hypothesis that Happiness is ‘our being’s end and aim’; but
which is, nevertheless, precisely the sequence in which Intuition has
always peremptorily demanded that they should be arranged. We shall
see how (as the bestowal of Happiness on man must always be postponed
by God to the still more blessed aim of conducing to his Virtue) the
greatest outward woes and trials, so far from inspiring us with doubts
of His Goodness, must be taken as evidences of the glory of that End
of Virtue to which they lead, even as the depths of the foundations of
a cathedral may show how high the towers and spires will one day
ascend.”—_Pref._, pp. V.–X.

In the first chapter, entitled _What is the Moral Law?_ I take for motto
Antigone’s great speech:—

“ἄγραπτα κᾀσφαλῆ θεῶν
νόμιμα....
οὐ γἀρ τι νῦν γε κᾀχθὲς, ἀλλ’ ἀεί ποτε
ζῇ ταῦτα, κοὐδεὶς οἶδεν ἐξ ὅτου ‘φάνη.
Σοφ. Ἀντιγ. 454.”

I begin by defining Moral actions and sentiments as those of Rational
Free Agents, to which alone may be applied the terms of Right or Wrong,
Good or Evil, Virtuous or Vicious. I then proceed to say:—

“This moral character of good or evil is a real, universal and eternal
distinction, existing through all worlds and for ever, wherever there
are rational creatures and free agents. As one kind of line is a
straight line, and another a crooked line, and as no line can be both
straight and crooked, so one kind of action or sentiment is right, and
another is wrong, and no action or sentiment can be both right or
wrong. And as the same line which is straight on this planet would be
straight in Sirius or Alcyone, and what constitutes straightness in
the nineteenth century will constitute straightness in the nineteenth
millennium, so that sentiment or action which is right in our world,
is right in all worlds; and that which constitutes righteousness now
will constitute righteousness through all eternity. And as the
character of straightness belongs to the line, by whatsoever hand it
may have been traced, so the character of righteousness belongs to the
sentiment or action, by what rational free agent soever it may have
been felt or performed.”

“And of this distinction language affords a reliable exponent. When we
have designated one kind of figure by the word Circle, and another by
the word Triangle, those terms, having become the names of the
respective figures, cannot be transposed without transgression of the
laws of language. Thus it would be absurd to argue that the figure we
call a circle, may not be a circle; that a ‘plane figure, containing a
point from which all right lines drawn to the circumference shall be
equal,’ may not be a circle, but a triangle. In like manner, when we
have designated one kind of sentiment or action as Right, and another
as Wrong, it becomes an absurdity to say that the kind of sentiments
or actions we call Right may, perhaps, be Wrong. If a figure be not a
circle, according to our sense of the word, it is not a circle at all,
but an Ellipse, a Triangle, Trapezium, or something else. If a
sentiment or action be not Right, according to our sense of the word,
it is not Right at all, but, according to the laws of language, must
be called Wrong.

“It is not maintained that we can commit no error in affixing the
_name_ of Circle to a particular figure, or of Right to a particular
sentiment or action. We may at a hasty glance pronounce an ellipse to
be a circle; but when we have proved the radii to be unequal, needs
must we arrive at a better judgment. Our error was caused by our first
haste and misjudgment, not by our inability to decide whether an
object presented to us bears or does not bear a character to which we
have agreed to affix a certain name. In like manner, from haste or
prejudice, we may pronounce a faulty sentiment or action to be Right;
but when we have examined it in all its bearings, we ourselves are the
first to call it Wrong.”—Pp. 4–7.

After much more on the _positive_ nature of Good, and the negative
nature of Evil, and on the relation of the Moral Law to God as
_impersonated_ in His Will, and not the result (as Ockham taught) of his
arbitrary decree,—I sum up the argument of this first chapter. To the
question, What is the Moral Law? I answer:—

“The Moral Law is the embodiment of the eternal Necessary obligation
of all Rational Free Agents to do and feel those actions and
sentiments which are Right. The identification of this law with His
will constitutes the _Holiness_ of the infinite God. Voluntary and
disinterested obedience to this law constitutes the _Virtue_ of all
finite creatures. Virtue is capable of infinite growth, of endless
approach to the Divine nature, and to perfect conformity with the law.
God has made all rational free agents for virtue, and (doubtless) all
worlds for rational free agents. The Moral Law, therefore, not only
reigns throughout His creation (its behests being finally enforced
therein by His power), but is itself the reason why that creation
exists. The material universe, with all its laws, and all the events
which result therefrom, has one great purpose, and tends to one great
end. It is that end which infinite Love has designed, and which
infinite Power shall surely accomplish,—the everlasting approximation
of all created souls to Goodness and to God.”—(Pp. 62, 63.)

The second chapter undertakes to answer the question, _Where is the
Moral Law Found?_ and begins by a brief analysis of the two great
classes of human knowledge as a preliminary to ascertaining to which of
these our knowledge of ethics belongs.

“All sciences are either Exact or Physical (or are applications of
Exact to Physical science).

“Exact sciences are deduced from axiomatic Necessary truths and
results in universal propositions, each of which is a Necessary Truth.

“Physical sciences are induced from Experimental Contingent truths,
and result in General Propositions, each of which is a contingent
truth.

“We obtain our knowledge of the Experimental Contingent Truths from
which Physical science is induced, by the united action of our bodily
senses and of our minds themselves, which must both in each case
contribute their proper quota to make knowledge possible. Every
perception necessitates this double element of sensation and
intuition,—the objective and subjective factor in combination.

“We obtain our knowledge of the axiomatic Necessary Truths from which
Exact science is deduced, by the _à priori_ operation of the mind
alone, and (_quoad_ the exact science in question) without the aid of
sensation (not, indeed, by _à priori_ operation of a mind which has
never worked with sensation, for such a mind would be altogether
barren; but of one which has reached normal development under normal
conditions; which conditions involve the continual united action
productive of perceptions of contingent truths).

“In this distinction between the sources of our knowledge lies the
most important discovery of philosophy. Into whatsoever knowledge the
element of Sensation necessarily enters as a constituent part, therein
there can be no absolute certainty of truth; the fallibility of
Sensation being recognised on all hands, and neutralising the
certainty of the pure mental element. But when we discover an order of
sciences which, without aid from sensation, are deduced by the mind’s
own operation from those Necessary truths which we hold on a tenure
marking indelibly their distinction from all contingent truths
whatsoever, then we obtain footing in a new realm....

“In the ensuing pages I shall endeavour to demonstrate that the
science of Morals belongs to the class of Exact sciences, and that it
has consequently a right to that credence wherewith we hold the truths
of arithmetic and geometry....”

The test which divides the two classes is as follows:—

“What truth soever is _Necessary_ and of universal extent is derived
by the mind from its own operation, and does not rest on observation
or experience; as, conversely, what truth or perception soever is
present to the mind with a consciousness, not of its Necessity, but of
its Contingency, is ascribable not to the original agency of the mind
itself, but derives its origin from observation and experience.”

After lengthened discussion on this head and on the supposed mistakes of
moral intuition, I go on to say:

“The consciousness of the Contingency, or the consciousness of the
Necessity (_i.e._, the consciousness that the truth _cannot_ be
contingent, but must hold good in all worlds for ever), these
consciousnesses are to be relied on, for they have their origin in,
and are the marks of, the different elements from which they have been
derived.[9] We may apply them to the fundamental truths of any
science, and by observing whether the reception of such truths into
our minds be accompanied by the consciousness of Necessity or of
Contingency, we may decide whether the science be rightfully Exact or
Physical, deductive or inductive.

“For example, we take the axioms of arithmetic and geometry, and we
find that we have distinct consciousness that they are Necessary
truths. We cannot conceive them altered any where or at any time. The
sciences which are deduced from these and from similar axioms are
then, Exact sciences.

“Again: we take the ultimate facts of geology and anatomy, and we find
that we have distinct consciousness that they are Contingent truths.
We can readily suppose them other than we find them. The sciences,
then, which are induced from these and similar facts are not Exact
sciences.

“If, then, morals can be shown to bear this test equally with
mathematics,—if there be any fundamental truths of morals holding in
our minds the status of those axioms of geometry and arithmetic of
whose Necessity we are conscious, then these fundamental truths of
morals are entitled to be made the basis of an Exact science the
subsequent theorems of which must all be deduced from them.—(P.
76.)...

“Men like Hume traverse the history of our race, to collect all the
piteous instances of aberrations which have resulted from neglect or
imperfect study of the moral consciousness; and then they cry, ‘Behold
what it teaches!’ Yet I suppose that it will be admitted that Man is
an animal capable of knowing geometry; though, if we were to go up and
down the world, asking rich and poor, Englishman and Esquimaux, what
are the ratios of solidity and superficies of a sphere, a right
cylinder and an equilateral cone circumscribed about it, there are
sundry chances that we should hear of other ratios besides the
sesquialterate.

“He who should argue that, because people ignorant of geometry did not
know the sesquialterate ratio of the sphere, cylinder and cone,
therefore no man could know it, or that because they disputed it, that
therefore it was uncertain, would argue no more absurdly than he who
urges the divergencies of half civilised and barbarian nations as a
reason why no man could know, or know with certainty, the higher
propositions of morals.”

After analysing the Utilitarian and other theories which derive Morality
from Contingent truths, I conclude that “the truths of Morals are
Necessary Truths. The origin of our knowledge of them is Intuitive, and
their proper treatment is Deductive.”

The third Chapter treats of the proposition, “That the Moral Law can be
obeyed,” and discusses the doctrine of Kant, that the true self of Man,
the _Homo Noumenon_, is free, self-legislative of Law fit for Law
Universal; while as the _Homo Phenomenon_, an inhabitant of the world of
sense, he is a mere link in the chain of causes and effects, and his
actions are locked up in mechanic laws which, had he no other rank,
would ensue exactly according to the physical impulses given by the
instincts and solicitations in the sensory. But as an inhabitant (also)
of the supersensitive world his position is among the causalities which
taking their rise therein, are the intimate ground of phenomena. The
discussion in this chapter on the above proposition cannot be condensed
into any space admissible here.

The fourth Chapter seeks to determine _Why the Moral Law should be
Obeyed_. It begins thus:—

“In the last Chapter (Chapter III.) I endeavoured to demonstrate that
the pure Will, the true self of man, is by nature righteous;
self-legislative of the only Universal Law, viz., the Moral; and that
by this spontaneous autonomy would all his actions be squared, were it
not for his lower nature, which is by its constitution unmoral,
neither righteous nor unrighteous, but capable only of determining its
choice by its instinctive propensities and the gratifications offered
to them. Thus these two are contrary one to another, ‘and the spirit
lusteth against the flesh, and the flesh against the spirit.’ In the
valour of the higher nature acquired by its victory over the lower, in
the virtue of the tried and conquering soul, we look for the glorious
end of creation, the sublime result contemplated by Infinite
Benevolence in calling man into existence and fitting him with the
complicated nature capable of developing that Virtue which alone can
be the crown of finite intelligences. The great practical problem of
human life is this: ‘How is the Moral Will to gain the victory over
the unmoral instincts, the _Homo Noumenon_ over the _Homo Phenomenon_,
Michael over the Evil One, Mithras over Hyle?’”

In pursuing this enquiry of how the Moral Will is to be rendered
victorious, I am led back to the question: Is Happiness “our end and
aim?” What relation does it bear to Morality as a motive?

“I have already argued, in Chapter I., that Happiness, properly
speaking, is the gratification of _all_ the desires of our compound
nature, and that moral, intellectual, affectional, and sensual
pleasures are all to be considered as integers, whose sum, when
complete, would constitute perfect Happiness. From this multiform
nature of Happiness it has arisen, that those systems of ethics which
set it forth as the proper motive of Virtue have differed immensely
from one another, according as the Happiness they respectively
contemplated was thought of as consisting in the pleasures of our
Moral, or of our Intellectual, Affectional, and Sensual natures;
whether the pleasures were to be sought by the virtuous man for his
own enjoyment, or for the general happiness of the community.

“The pursuit of Virtue for the sake of its intrinsic, _i.e._, Moral
pleasure, is designated EUTHUMISM.

“The pursuit of Virtue for the sake of the extrinsic Affectional,
Intellectual, and Sensual pleasure resulting from it, is designated
EUDAIMONISM.

“Euthumism is of one kind only, for the individual can only seek the
intrinsic pleasure of Virtue for his own enjoyment thereof.

“Eudaimonism, on the contrary, is of two most distinct lands. That
which I have called PUBLIC EUDAIMONISM sets forth the intellectual,
affectional, and sensual pleasures of _all mankind_ as the proper
object of the Virtue of each individual. PRIVATE EUDAIMONISM sets
forth the same pleasures of the _individual himself_ as the proper
object of his Virtue.

“These two latter systems are commonly confounded under the name of
‘UTILITARIAN ETHICS.’ Their principles, as I have stated them, will be
seen to be wide asunder; yet there are few of the advocates of either
who have not endeavoured to stand on the grounds of both, and even to
borrow elevation from those of the Euthumist. Thus, by appealing
alternately to philanthropy[10] and to a gross and a refined
Selfishness, they suit the purpose of the moment, and prevent their
scheme from deviating too far from the intuitive conscience of
mankind. It may be remarked, also, that the Private Eudaimonists
insist more particularly on the pleasure of a _Future Life_; and in
the exposition of them necessarily approach nearer to the Euthumists.”

I here proceeded to discuss the three systems which have arisen from the
above-defined different views of Happiness; each contemplating it as the
proper motive of Virtue: namely, 1st, Euthumism; 2nd, Public
Eudaimonism; and 3rd, Private Eudaimonism.

“1st. Euthumism. This system, as I have said, sets forth the _Moral
Pleasure_, the peace and cheerfulness of mind, and applause of
conscience enjoyed in Virtue, as the proper motive for its practice.
Conversely, it sets forth as the dissuadent from Vice, the pain of
remorse, the inward uneasiness and self-contempt which belong to it.

“Democritus appears to have been the first who gave clear utterance to
this doctrine, maintaining that Εύθυμία was the proper End of human
actions, and sharply distinguishing it from the ‘Ηδονή’ proposed as
such by Aristippus. The claims of a ‘_mens conscia recti_’ to be the
‘Summum Bonum,’ occupied, as is well known, a large portion of the
subsequent disputes of the Epicureans, Cynics, Stoics and Academics,
and were eagerly argued by Cicero, and even down to the time of
Boethius. Many of these sects, however, and in particular the Stoics,
though maintaining that Virtue alone is sufficient for Happiness (that
is, that the inward joy of Virtue is enough to constitute Happiness in
the midst of torments), yet by no means set forth that Happiness as
the sole _motive_ of Virtue. They held, on the contrary, the noblest
ideas of ‘living according to Nature,’ that is, as Chrysippus
explained it, according to the ‘Nature of the universe, the common Law
of all, which is the right reason spread everywhere, the same by which
Jupiter governs the world’; and that both Virtue and Happiness
consisted in so regulating our actions that they should produce
harmony between the Spirit in each of us, and the Will of Him who
rules the universe. There is little or no trace of Euthumism in the
Jewish or Christian Scriptures, or (to my knowledge) in the sacred
books of the Brahmins, Buddhists, or Parsees. The ethical problems
argued by the mediæval Schoolmen do not, so far as I am aware, embrace
the subject in question. The doctrine was revived, however, in the
seventeenth century, and besides blending with more or less
distinctness with the views of a vast number of lesser moralists, it
reckons among its professed adherents no less names than Henry More
and Bishop Cumberland. Euthumism, philosophically considered, will be
found to affix itself most properly on the doctrine of the ‘Moral
Sense’ laid down by Shaftesbury as the origin of our _knowledge_ of
moral distinctions, which, if it were, it would naturally follow that
it must afford also the right _motive_ of Virtue. Hutcheson, also,
still more distinctly stated that this Moral Pleasure in Virtue (which
both he and Shaftesbury likened to the æsthetic Pleasure in Beauty)
was the true ground of our choice. To this Balguy replied, that ‘to
make the rectitude of moral actions depend upon instinct, and, in
proportion to the warmth and strength of the Moral Sense, rise and
fall like spirits in a thermometer, is depreciating the most sacred
thing in the world, and almost exposing it to ridicule.’ And Whewell
has shown that the doctrine of the Moral Sense as the foundation of
Morals must always fail, whether understood as meaning a sense like
that of Beauty (which may or may not be merely a modification of the
Agreeable), or a sense like those of Touch or Taste (which no one can
fairly maintain that any of our moral perceptions really resemble).

“But though neither the true source of our _Knowledge_ of Moral
Distinctions nor yet the right _Motive_ why we are to choose the Good,
this Moral Sense of Pleasure in Virtue, and Pain in Vice, is a
psychological fact demanding the investigation of the Moralist.
Moreover, the error of allowing our moral choice to be decided by a
regard to the pure joy of Virtue or awful pangs of self-condemnation,
is an error so venial in comparison of other moral heresies, and so
easily to be confounded with a truer principle of Morals, that it is
particularly necessary to warn generous natures against it. ‘It is
quite beyond the grasp of human thought,’ says Kant, ‘to explain how
reason can be practical; how the mere Morality of the law,
independently of every object man can be interested in, can itself
beget an interest which is purely Ethical; how a naked thought,
containing in it nothing of the sensory, can bring forth an emotion of
pleasure or pain.’

“Unconsciously this Sense of Pleasure in a Virtuous Act, the thought
of the peace of conscience which will follow it, or the dread of
remorse for its neglect, must mingle with our motives. But we can
never be permitted, consciously to exhibit them to ourselves as the
ground of our resolution to obey the Law. That Law is not valid for
man because it interests him, but it interests him because it has
validity for him—because it springs from his true being, his proper
self. The interest he feels is an Effect, not a Cause; a Contingency,
not a Necessity. Were he to obey the Law merely from this Interest, it
would not be free Self-legislation (autonomy), but (heteronomy)
subservience of the Pure Will to a lower faculty—a Sense of Pleasure.
And, practically, we may perceive that all manner of mischiefs and
absurdities must arise if a man set forth Moral Pleasure as the
determinator of his Will....

“Thus, the maxim of Euthumism, ‘_Be virtuous for the sake of the Moral
Pleasure of Virtue_,’ may be pronounced false.

“2nd. Public Eudaimonism sets forth, both as the ground of our
knowledge of Virtue and the motive for our practice of it, ‘_The
Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number_.’ This Happiness, as Paley
understood it, is composed of Pleasures to be estimated only by their
Intensity and Duration; or, as Bentham added, by their Certainty,
Propinquity, Fecundity, and Purity (or freedom from admixture of
evil).

“Let it be granted for argument’s sake, that the calculable Happiness
resulting from actions can determine their Virtue (although all
experience teaches that resulting Happiness is not calculable, and
that the Virtue must at least be one of the items determining the
resulting Happiness). On the Utilitarian’s own assumption, what sort
of motive for Virtue can be his end of ‘_The Greatest Happiness of the
Greatest Number_?’

“No sooner had Paley laid down the grand principle of his system,
‘_Whatever is Expedient is Right_,’ than he proceeds (as he thinks) to
guard against its malapplication by arguing that nothing is expedient
which produces, along with _particular_ good consequences, _general_
bad ones, and that this is done by the violation of any general rule.
‘You cannot,’ says he, ‘permit one action, and forbid another without
showing a difference between them. Consequently the same sort of
actions must be generally permitted or generally forbidden. Where
therefore, the general permission of them would be pernicious, it
becomes necessary to lay down and support the rule which generally
forbids them.’

“Now, let the number of experienced consequences of actions be ever so
great, it must be admitted that the Inductions we draw therefrom can,
at the utmost, be only provisional, and subject to revision should new
facts be brought in to bear in an opposite scale....

“Further, the rules induced by experience must be not only
provisional, but partial. The lax term ‘general’ misleads us. A Moral
Rule must be either universal and open to no exception, or, properly
speaking, no _rule_ at all. Each case of Morals stands alone.

“Thus, the Experimentalist’s conclusion, for example, that ‘Lying does
more harm than good,’ may be quite remodelled by the fortunate
discovery of so prudent a kind of falsification as shall obviate the
mischief and leave the advantage. No doubt can remain on the mind of
any student of Paley, that this would have been his own line of
argument: ‘If we can only prove that a lie be expedient, then it
becomes a duty to lie.’ As he says himself of the rule (which if any
rule may do so may surely claim to be general) ‘Do not do evil that
good may come,’ that it is ‘salutary, for the most part, the advantage
seldom compensating for the violation of the rule.’ So to do evil is
sometimes salutary, and does now and then compensate for disregarding
even the Eudaimonist’s last resource—a General Rule!

“2nd. Private Eudaimonism. There are several formulas, in which this
system, (the lowest, but the most logical, of Moral heresies) is
embodied. Rutherford puts it thus: ‘Every man’s Happiness is the
ultimate end which Reason teaches him to pursue, and the constant and
uniform practice of Virtue towards all mankind becomes our duty, when
Revelation has informed us that God will make us finally happy in a
life after this.’ Paley (who properly belongs to this school, but
endeavours frequently to seat himself on the corners of the stools of
Euthumism and Public Eudaimonism), Paley, the standard Moralist of
England,[11] defines Virtue thus: ‘_Virtue is the doing good to
mankind in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of
Everlasting Happiness_. According to which definition, the good of
mankind is the subject; the will of God the rule; and Everlasting
Happiness the motive of Virtue.’

“Yet it seems to me, that if there be any one truth which intuition
does teach us more clearly than another, it is precisely this one—that
Virtue to be Virtue must be disinterested. The moment we picture any
species of reward becoming the bait of our Morality, that moment we
see the holy flame of Virtue annihilated in the noxious gas. A man is
not Virtuous at all who is honest because it is ‘good policy,’
beneficent from love of approbation, pious for the sake of heaven. All
this is prudence not virtue, selfishness not self-sacrifice. If he be
honest for sake of policy, would he be dishonest, if it could be
proved that it were more politic? If he would _not_, then he is not
really honest from policy but from some deeper principle thrust into
the background of his consciousness. If he _would_, then it is idlest
mockery to call that honesty Virtuous which only waits a bribe to
become dishonest.

“But there are many Eudaimonists who will be ready to acknowledge that
a prudent postponement of our happiness in _this_ world cannot
constitute virtue. But wherefore do they say we are to postpone it?
Not for present pleasure or pain, that would be base; but for that
anticipation of future pleasure or pain which we call Hope and Fear.
And this, not for the Hope and Fear of this world, which are still
admitted to be base motives; but for Hope and Fear extended one step
beyond the tomb—the Hope of Heaven and the Fear of Hell.”

After a general glance at the doctrine of Future Rewards and Punishments
as held by Christians and heathens, I go on to argue:

“But in truth this doctrine of the Hope of Heaven being the true
Motive of Virtue is (at least in theory) just as destructive of Virtue
as that which makes the rewards of this life—health, wealth, or
reputation—the motive of it. Well says brave Kingsley:

‘Is selfishness for time a sin,
Stretched out into eternity celestial prudence?’

“If to act for a small reward cannot be virtuous, to act for a large
one can certainly merit no more. To be bribed by a guinea is surely no
better than to be bribed by a penny. To be deterred from ruin by fear
of transportation for life, is no more noble than to be deterred by
fear of twenty-four hours in prison. There is no use multiplying
illustrations. He who can think that Virtue is the doing right for
pay, may think himself very judicious to leave his pay in the
savings-bank now and come into a fortune all at once by and by; but he
who thinks that Virtue is the doing right for Right’s own sake, cannot
possibly draw a distinction between small bribes and large ones; a
reward to be given to-day, and a reward to be given in eternity.

“Nevertheless it cannot be denied that the belief in immortal progress
is of incalculable value. Such belief, and that in an ever-present
God, may be called the two wings of human Virtue. I look on the
advantages of a faith in immortality to be two-fold. First, it cuts
the knot of the world, and gives to our apprehension a God whose
providence need no longer perplex us, and whose immeasurable and
never-ending goodness shines ever brighter before our contemplating
souls. Secondly, it gives an importance to personal progress which we
can hardly attribute to it so long as we deem it is to be arrested for
ever by death. The man who does not believe in Immortality may be, and
often actually is, more virtuous than his neighbour; and it is quite
certain that his Virtue is of far purer character than that which
bargains for Heaven as its pay. But his task is a very hard one, a
task without a result; and his road a dreary one, unenlightened even
by the distant dawn of

‘That great world of light which lies
Behind all human destinies.’

We can scarcely do him better service than by leading him to trust
that intuition of Immortality which is written in the heart of the
human race by that Hand which writes no falsehoods.

“But if the attainment of Heaven be no true motive for the pursuit of
Virtue, surely I may be held excused from denouncing that practice of
holding out the fear of Hell wherewith many fill up the measure of
moral degradation? Here it is vain to suppose that the fear is that of
the immortality of sin and banishment from God; as we are sometimes
told the hope of Heaven is that of an immortality of Virtue and union
with Him. The mind which sinks to the debasement of any Fear is
already below the level at which sin and estrangement are terrors. It
is his weakness of will which alone hinders the Prodigal from saying,
‘I will arise and go to my Father,’ and unless we can strengthen that
Will by some different motive, it is idle to threaten him with its own
persistence.

* * * * *

“Returning from the contemplation of the lowness of aim common to all
the forms of Eudaimonism, how magnificent seems the grand and holy
doctrine of true Intuitive Morality? DO RIGHT FOR THE RIGHT’S OWN
SAKE: Love God and Goodness because they are Good! The soul seems to
awake from death at such archangel’s call as this, and mortal man puts
on his rightful immortality. The prodigal grovels no longer, seeking
for Happiness amid the husks of pleasure; but, ‘coming to himself,’ he
arises and goes to his Father, heedless if it be but as the lowest of
His servants he may yet dwell beneath that Father’s smile. Hope and
fear for this life or the next, mercenary bargainings, and labour of
eye-service, all are at end. He is a Freeman, and free shall be the
oblation of his soul and body, the reasonable, holy, and acceptable
sacrifice.

“O Living Soul! wilt thou follow that mighty hand, and obey that
summons of the trumpet? Perchance thou hast reached life’s solemn
noon, and with the bright hues of thy morning have faded away the
beautiful aspirations of thy youth. Doubtless thou hast often
struggled for the Right; but, weary with frequent overthrows, thou
criest, ‘This also is vanity.’ But think again, O Soul, whose sun
shall never set! Have no poor and selfish ambitions mingled with those
struggles and made them vanity? Have no theologic dogmas from which
thy maturer reason revolts, been blended with thy purer principle?
Hast thou nourished no extravagant hope of becoming suddenly sinless,
or of heaping up with an hour’s labour a mountain of benefits on thy
race? Surely some mistake like these lies at the root of all moral
discouragement. But mark:—

“Pure morals forbid all base and selfish motives—all
happiness-seeking, fame-seeking, love-seeking—in this world or the
next, as motives of Virtue. Pure Morals rest not on any traditional
dogma, not on history, on philology, on criticism, but on those
intuitions, clear as the axioms of geometry, which thine own soul
finds in its depths, and knows to be necessary truths, which, short of
madness, it cannot disbelieve.

“Pure Morals offer no panacea to cure in a moment all the diseases of
the human heart, and transform the sinner into the saint. They teach
that the passions, which are the machinery of our moral life, are not
to be miraculously annihilated, but by slow and unwearying endeavour
to be brought into obedience to the Holy Will; while to fall and rise
again many a time in the path of virtue is the inevitable lot of every
pilgrim therein.... Our hearts burn within us when for a moment the
vision rises before our sight of what we might make our life even here
upon earth. Faintly can any words picture that vision!

“A life of Benevolence, in which every word of our lips, every work of
our hands, had been a contribution to human virtue or human happiness;
a life in which, ever wider and warmer through its three score years
and ten had grown our pure, unwavering, Godlike Love, till we had
spread the same philanthropy through a thousand hearts ere we passed
away from earth to love yet better still our brethren in the sky.

“A life of Personal Virtue, in which every evil disposition had been
trampled down, every noble sentiment called forth and strengthened; a
life in which, leaving day by day further behind us the pollutions of
sin, we had also ascended daily to fresh heights of purity, till
self-conquest, unceasingly achieved, became continually more secure
and more complete, and at last—

‘The lordly Will o’er its subject powers
Like a thronèd God prevailed,’

and we could look back upon the great task of earth, and say, ‘It is
finished!’

“A life of Religion, in which the delight in God’s presence, the
reverence for His moral attributes, the desire to obey His Will, and
the consciousness of His everlasting love, had grown continually
clearer and stronger, and of which Prayer, deepest and intensest, had
been the very heart and nucleus, till we had found God drawing ever
nearer to us as we drew near to him, and vouchsafing to us a communion
the bliss of which no human speech may ever tell; the dawning of that
day of adoration which shall grow brighter and brighter still while
all the clusters of the suns fade out and die.

“And turning from our own destiny, from the endless career opened to
our Benevolence, our Personal Virtue, and our Piety, we take in a yet
broader view, and behold the whole universe of God mapped out in one
stupendous Plan of Love. In the abyss of the past eternity we see the
Creator for ever designing and for ever accomplishing the supremest
end at which infinite Justice and Goodness could aim, and absolute
Wisdom and Power bring to pass. For this end, for the Virtue of all
finite Intelligences, we behold Him building up millions of starry
abodes and peopling them with immortal spirits clothed in the garbs of
flesh, and endowed with that moral freedom whose bestowal was the
highest boon of Omnipotence. As ages of millenniums roll away, we see
a double progress working through all the realms of space; a progress
of each race and of each individual. Slowly and securely, though with
many an apparent retrogression, does each world-family become better,
wiser, nobler, happier. Slowly and securely, though with many a
grievous backsliding, each living soul grows up to Virtue. Nor pauses
that awful march for a moment, even in the death of the being or the
cataclysm of the world. Over all Death and Change reigns that Almighty
changeless will which has decreed the holiness and happiness of every
spirit He hath made. Through the gates of the grave, and on the ruins
of worlds, shall those spirits climb, higher and yet higher through
the infinite ages, nearer and yet nearer to Goodness and to God.”

CHAPTER
VI.
_IRELAND IN THE FORTIES._
_THE PEASANTRY._

The prominence which Irish grievances have taken of late years in
English politics has caused me often to review with fresh eyes the state
of the country as it existed in my childhood and youth, when, of course,
both the good and evil of it appeared to me to be part of the order of
nature itself.

I will first speak of the condition of the working classes, then of the
gentry and clergy.

I had considerable opportunities for many years of hearing and seeing
all that was going on in our neighbourhood, which was in the district
known as “Fingal” (the White Strangers’ land), having been once the
territory of the Danes. Fingal extends along the sea-coast between
Dublin and Drogheda, and our part lay exactly between Malahide and Rush.
My father, and at a later time my eldest brother, were indefatigable as
magistrates, Poor law Guardians and landlords, in their efforts to
relieve the wants and improve the condition of the people; and it fell
on me naturally, as the only active woman of the family, to play the
part of Lady Bountiful on a rather large scale. There was my father’s
own small village of Donabate in the first place, claiming my attention;
and beyond it a larger straggling collection of mud cabins named
“Balisk”; the landlord of which, Lord Trimleston, was an absentee, and
the village a centre of fever and misery. In Donabate there was never
any real distress. In every house there were wage-earners or pensioners
enough to keep the wolf from the door. Only when sickness came was there
need for extra food, wine, and so on. The wages of a field-labourer
were, at that time, about 8s. a week; of course without keep. His diet
consisted of oatmeal porridge, wheaten griddle-bread, potatoes and
abundance of buttermilk. The potatoes, before the Famine, were delicious
tubers. Many of the best kinds disappeared at that time (notably I
recall the “Black Bangers”), and the Irish housewife cooked them in a
manner which no English or French _Cordon Bleu_ can approach. I remember
constantly seeing little girls bringing the mid-day dinners to their
fathers, who sat in summer under the trees, and in winter in a
comfortable room in our stable-yard, with fire and tables and chairs.
The cloth which carried the dinner being removed there appeared a plate
of “smiling” potatoes (_i.e._, with cracked and peeling skins) and in
the midst a _well_ of about a sixth of a pound of butter. Along with the
plate of potatoes was a big jug of milk, and a hunch of griddle-bread.
On this food the men worked in summer from six (or earlier, if mowing
was to be done) till breakfast, and from thence till one o’clock. After
an hour’s dinner the great bell tolled again, and work went on till 6.
In winter there was no cessation of work from 8 a.m. till 5 p.m., when
it ended. Of course these long hours of labour in the fields, without
the modern interruptions, were immensely valuable on the farm. I do not
think I err in saying that my father had thirty per cent. more
profitable labour from his men for 8s. a week, than is now to be had
from labourers at 16s.; at all events where I live here, in Wales. It is
fair to note that beside their wages my father’s men, and also the old
women whose daughters (eight in number) worked in the shrubberies and
other light work all the year round, were allowed each the grazing of a
cow on his pastures, and were able to get coal from the ships he
chartered every winter from Whitehaven for 11s. a ton, drawn to the
village by his horses. At Christmas an ox was divided among them, and
generally also a good quantity of frieze for the coats of the men, and
for the capes of the eight “Amazons.”

I cannot say what amount of genuine loyalty really existed among our
people at that time. Outwardly, it appeared they were happy and
contented, though, in talking to the old people, one never failed to
hear lamentations for the “good old times” of the past generations. In
those times, as we knew very well, nothing like the care we gave to the
wants of the working classes was so much as dreamed of by our
forefathers. But they kept open house, where all comers were welcome to
eat and drink in the servants’ hall when they came up on any pretext;
and this kind of hospitality has ever been a supreme merit in Celtic
eyes. Some readers will remember that the famous chieftainess, Grana
Uaile, invading Howth in one of her piratical expeditions in the
“spacious times of great Elizabeth,” found the gates of the ancient
castle of the St. Lawrences, closed, _though it was dinner-time_!
Indignant at this breach of decency, Grana Uaile kidnapped the heir of
the lordly house and carried him to her robbers’ fortress in Connaught,
whence she only released him in subsequent years on the solemn
engagement of the Lords of Howth always to dine with the doors of Howth
Castle wide open. I believe it is not more than 50 years, if so much,
since this practice was abolished.

I think the only act of “tyranny” with which I was charged when I kept
my father’s house, and which provoked violent recalcitration, was when I
gave orders that men coming from our mountains to Newbridge on business
with “the Master” should be served with largest platefuls of meat and
jugs of beer, but should not be left in the servants’ hall _en
tête-à-tête_ with whole rounds and sirloins of beef, of which no account
could afterwards be obtained!

Of course, the poor labourer in Ireland at that time after the failure
of the potatoes, who had no allowances, and had many young children
unable to earn anything for themselves, was cruelly tightly placed. I
shall copy here a calculation which I took down in a note-book, still in
my possession, after sifting enquiries concerning prices at our village
shops, in, or about, the year 1845:—

Wheatmeal costs 2s. 3d. per stone of 14 lbs.
Oatmeal costs 2s. 4d. per stone of 14 lbs.
India meal costs 1s. 8d. per stone of 14 lbs.
14 lbs. of wheatmeal makes 18 lbs. of griddle-bread.
1 lb. of oatmeal makes 3 lbs. of stirabout.

A man will require 4 lbs. food per day 28 lbs. per week.
A woman will require 3 lbs. food per day 21 lbs. per week.
Each child at least 2 lbs. food per day 14 lbs. per week.

A family of 3 will therefore require 63 lbs. of food per week—_e.g._,

_s._ _d._
1 stone wheat— 18 lbs. bread 2 3
1 stone oatmeal— 42 lbs. stirabout 2 4
-- - -
60 lbs. food; cost 4 7

A family of 5 will require—

Man 28 lbs.
Wife 21 lbs.
3 children 42 lbs.
——
91 lbs. food.

_s._ _d._
Say 30 lbs. bread—23 lbs. wheatmeal 3 10
61 lbs. stirabout—20 lbs. oatmeal 3 4
—— — ——
91 lbs. 7 2

Thus, when a man had five children to support, and no potatoes, his
weekly wages scarcely covered bare food.

Before the Famine and the great fever, the population of our part of
Ireland was exceedingly dense; more than 200 to the square mile. There
were an enormous number of mud cabins consisting of one room only, run
up at every corner of the roadside and generally allowed to sink into
miserable squat, _sottish_-looking hovels with no drainage at all; mud
floor; broken thatch, two or three rough boards for a door; and the four
panes of the sole window stuffed with rags or an old hat. Just 500,000
of these one-roomed cabins, the Registrar-General, Mr. William Donelly,
told me, disappeared between the census before, and the census after the
Famine! Nothing was easier than to run them up. Thatch was cheap, and
mud abundant, everywhere; and as to the beams (they called them
“_bames_”), I remember a man addressing my father coaxingly, “Ah yer
Honour will ye plaze spake to the steward to give me a ‘_handful of
sprigs_?’” “A handful of _sprigs_? What for?” asked my father; “Why for
the roof of me new little house, yer Honour, that I’m building fornenst
the ould wan!”

I never saw in an Irish cottage any of the fine old oak settles,
dressers and armchairs and coffers to be found usually in Welsh ones. A
good unpainted deal dresser and table, a wooden bedstead, a couple of
wooden chairs, and two or three straw “bosses” (stools) made like
beehives, completed the furniture of a well-to-do cabin, with a range of
white or willow-pattern plates on the dresser, and two or three
frightfully coloured woodcuts pasted on the walls for adornment. Flowers
in the gardens or against the walls were never to be seen. Enormous
chimney corners, with wooden stools or straw “bosses” under the
projecting walls, were the most noticeable feature. Nothing seems to be
more absurd and unhistorical than the common idea that the Celt is a
beauty-loving creature, æsthetically far above the Saxon. If he be so,
it is surprising that his home, his furniture, his dress, his garden
never show the smallest token of his taste! When the young girls from
the villages, even from very respectable families, were introduced into
our houses, it was a severe tax on the housekeepers’ supervision to
prevent them from resorting to the most outrageous shifts and misuse of
utensils of all sorts. I can recall, for example, one beautiful young
creature with the lovely Irish grey eyes and long lashes, and with
features so fine that we privately called her “Madonna.” For about two
years she acted as housemaid to my second brother, who, as I have
mentioned, had taken a place in Donegal, and whose excellent London
cook, carefully trained “Madonna” into what were (outwardly) ways of
pleasantness for her master. At last, and when apparently perfectly
“domesticated”—as English advertisers describe themselves,—Madonna
married the cowman; and my brother took pleasure in setting up the young
couple in a particularly neat and rather lonely cottage with new deal
furniture. After six months they emigrated; and when my brother visited
their deserted house he found it in a state of which it will suffice to
record one item. The pig had slept all the time under the bedstead; and
no attempt had been made to remove the resulting heap of manure!

My father had as strong a sense as any modern sanitary reformer of the
importance of good and healthy cottages; and having found his estate
covered with mud and thatched cabins, he (and my brother after him)
laboured incessantly, year by year, to replace them by mortared stone
and slated cottages, among which were five schoolhouses supported by
himself. As it was my frequent duty to draw for him the plans and
elevations of these cottages, farmhouses and village shops, with
calculations of the cost of each, it may be guessed how truly absurd it
seems to me to read exclusively, as I do so often now, of “tenants’
improvements” in Ireland. It is true that my father occasionally let, on
long leases and without fines, large farms (of the finest wheat-land in
Ireland, within ten miles of Dublin market), at the price of £2 per
Irish acre, with the express stipulation that the tenant should
undertake the re-building of the house or farm-buildings as the case
might be. But these were, of course, perfectly just bargains, made with
well-to-do farmers, who made excellent profits. I have already narrated
in an earlier chapter, how he sold the best pictures among his
heirlooms—one by Hobbema now in Dorchester House and one by Gaspar
Poussin,—to rebuild some eighty cottages on his mountains. These
cottages had each a small farm attached to it, which was generally held
at will, but often continued to the tenants’ family for generations. The
rent was, in some cases I think, as low as thirty or forty shillings a
year; and the tenants contrived to make a fair living with sheep and
potatoes; cutting their own turf on the bog, and very often earning a
good deal by storing ice in the winter from the river Dodder, and
selling it in Dublin in summer. I remember one of them who had been
allowed to fall into arrears of rent to the extent of £3, which he
loudly protested he could not pay, coming to my father to ask his help
as a magistrate to recover _forty pounds_, which an ill-conditioned
member of his family had stolen from him out of the usual Irish private
hiding-place “under the thatch.”

But outside my father’s property, when we passed into the next villages
on either side, Swords or Rush or Balisk, the state of things was bad
enough. I will give a detailed description of the latter village, some
of which was written when the memory of the scene and people was less
remote, than now. It is the most complete picture of Irish poverty,
fifty years ago, which I can offer.

Balisk was certainly _not_ the “loveliest village of the plain.”
Situated partly on the edge of an old common, partly on the skirts of
the domain of a nobleman who had not visited his estate for thirty
years, it enjoyed all the advantages of freedom from restraint upon the
architectual genius of its builders. The result was a long crooked,
straggling street, with mud cabins turned to it, and from it, in every
possible angle of incidence: some face to face, some back to back, some
sideways, some a little retired so as to admit of a larger than ordinary
heap of manure between the door and the road. Such is the ground-plan of
Balisk. The cabins were all of mud, with mud floors and thatched roofs;
some containing one room only, others two, and, perhaps, half-a-dozen,
three rooms: all, very literally, on the ground; that is on the bare
earth. Furniture, of course, was of the usual Irish description: a bed
(sometimes having a bedstead, oftener consisting of a heap of straw on
the floor), a table, a griddle, a kettle, a stool or two and a boss of
straw, with occasionally a grand adjunct of a settle; a window whose
normal condition was being stuffed with an old hat; a door, over and
under and around which all the winds and rains of heaven found their
way; a population consisting of six small children, a bedridden
grandmother, a husband and wife, a cock and three hens, a pig, a dog,
and a cat. Lastly, a decoration of coloured prints, including the Virgin
with seven swords in her heart, St. Joseph, the story of Dives and
Lazarus, and a caricature of a man tossed by a bull, and a fat woman
getting over a stile.

Of course as Balisk lies in the lowest ground in the neighbourhood and
the drains were originally planned to run at “their own sweet will,” the
town (as its inhabitants call it) is subject to the inconvenience of
being about two feet under water whenever there are any considerable
floods of rain. I have known a case of such a flood entering the door
and rising into the bed of a poor woman in childbirth, as in Mr.
Macdonald’s charming story of Alec Forbes. The woman, whom I knew,
however, did not die, but gave to the world that night a very fine
little child, whom I subsequently saw scampering along the roads with
true Irish hilarity. At other times, when there were no floods, only the
usual rains, Balisk presented the spectacle of a filthy green stream
slowly oozing down the central street, now and then draining off under
the door of any particularly lowly-placed cabin to form a pool in the
floor, and finally terminating in a lake of stagnant abomination under
the viaduct of a railway. Yes, reader! a railway ran through Balisk,
even while the description I have given of it held true in every
respect. The only result it seemed to have effected in the village was
the formation of the Stygian pool above-mentioned, where, heretofore,
the stream had escaped into a ditch.

Let us now consider the people who dwelt amid all this squalor. They
were mostly field-labourers, working for the usual wages of seven or
eight shillings a week. Many of them held their cabins as freeholds,
having built or inherited them from those who had “squatted” unmolested
on the common. A few paid rent to the noble landlord before-mentioned.
Work was seldom wanting, coals were cheap, excellent schools were open
for the children at a penny a week a head. Families which had not more
than three or four mouths to fill besides the breadwinners’, were not in
absolute want, save when disease, or a heavy snow, or a flood, or some
similar calamity arrived. Then, down on the ground, poor souls,
literally and metaphorically, they could fall no lower, and a week was
enough to bring them to the verge of starvation.

Let me try to recall some of the characters of the inhabitants of Balisk
in the Forties.

Here in the first cabin is a comfortable family where there are three
sons at work, and mother and three daughters at home. Enter at any hour
there is a hearty welcome and bright jest ready. Here is the
schoolmaster’s house, a little behind the others, and back to back with
them. It has an attempt at a curtain for the window, a knocker for the
door. The man is a curious deformed creature, of whom more will be said
hereafter. The wife is what is called in Ireland a “Voteen;” a person
given to religion, who spends most of her time in the chapel or
repeating prayers, and who wears as much semblance of black as her poor
means may allow. Balisk, be it said, is altogether Catholic and devout.
It is honoured by the possession of what is called “The Holy Griddle.”
Perhaps my readers have heard of the Holy Grail, the original
sacramental chalice so long sought by the chivalry of the middle ages,
and may ask if the Holy Griddle be akin thereto? I cannot trace any
likeness. A “griddle,” as all the Irish and Scotch world knows, is a
circular iron plate, on which the common unleavened cakes of wheatmeal
and oatmeal are baked. The Holy Griddle of Balisk was one of these
utensils, which was bequeathed to the village under the following
circumstances. Years ago, probably in the last century, a poor, “lone
widow” lay on her death-bed. She had none to pray for her after she was
gone, for she was childless and altogether desolate; neither had she any
money to give to the priest to pray for her soul. Yet the terrors of
purgatory were near. How should she escape them? She possessed but one
object of any value—a griddle, whereon she was wont to bake the meal of
the wheat she gleaned every harvest to help her through the winter. So
the widow left her griddle as a legacy to the village for ever, on one
condition. It was to pass from hand to hand as each might want it, but
every one who used her griddle was to say a prayer for her soul. Years
had passed away, but the griddle was still in my time in constant use,
as “the best griddle in the town.” The cakes baked on the Holy Griddle
were twice as good as any others. May the poor widow who so simply
bequeathed it have found long ago “rest for her soul” better than any
prayers have asked for her, even the favourite Irish prayer, “May you
sit in heaven on a golden chair!”

Here is another house, where an old man lives with his sister. The old
woman is the Mrs. Gamp of Balisk. Patrick Russell has a curious story
attached to him. Having laboured long and well on my father’s estate,
the latter finding him grow rheumatic and helpless, pensioned him with
his wages for life, and Paddy retired to the enjoyment of such privacy
as Balisk might afford. Growing more and more helpless, he at last for
some years hobbled about feebly on crutches, a confirmed cripple. One
day, with amazement, I saw him walking without his crutches, and
tolerably firmly, up to Newbridge House. My father went to speak to him,
and soon returned, saying: “Here is a strange thing. Paddy Russell says
he has been to Father Mathew, and Father Mathew has blessed him, and he
is cured! He came to tell me he wished to give up his pension, since he
returns to work at Smith’s farm next week.” Very naturally, and as might
be expected, poor Paddy, three weeks later, was again helpless, and a
suppliant for the restoration of his pension, which was of course
immediately renewed. But one who had witnessed only the scene of the
long-known cripple walking up stoutly to decline his pension (the very
best possible proof of his sincere belief in his own recovery) might
well be excused for narrating the story as a miracle wrought by a true
moral reformer, the Irish “Apostle of Temperance.”

Next door to Paddy Russell’s cabin stood “The Shop,” a cabin a trifle
better than the rest, where butter, flour, and dip candles, Ingy-male
(Indian meal), and possibly a small quantity of soap, were the chief
objects of commerce. Further on came a miserable hovel with the roof
broken in, and a pool of filth, _en permanence_, in the middle of the
floor. Here dwelt a miserable good-for-nothing old man and equally
good-for-nothing daughter; hopeless recipients of anybody’s bounty.
Opposite them, in a tidy little cabin, always as clean as whitewash and
sweeping could make its poor mud walls and earthen floor, lived an old
woman and her daughter. The daughter was deformed, the mother a
beautiful old woman, bedridden, but always perfectly clean, and provided
by her daughter’s hard labour in the fields and cockle-gathering on the
sea-shore, with all she could need. After years of devotion, when Mary
was no longer young, the mother died, and the daughter, left quite alone
in the world, was absolutely broken-hearted. Night after night she
strayed about the chapel-yard where her mother lay buried, hoping, as
she told me, to see her ghost.

“And do you think,” she asked, fixing her eyes on me, “do you think I
shall ever see her again? I asked Father M—— would I see her in heaven?
and all he said was, ‘I should see her in the glory of God.’ What does
that mean? I don’t understand what it means. Will I see her _herself_—my
poor old mother?”

After long years, I found this faithful heart still yearning to be
re-united to the “poor old mother,” and patiently labouring on in
solitude, waiting till God should call her home out of that little white
cabin to one of the “many mansions,” where her mother is waiting for
her.

Here is a house where there are many sons and daughters and some sort of
prosperity. Here, again, is a house with three rooms and several
inmates, and in one room lives a strange, tall old man, with something
of dignity in his aspect. He asked me once to come into his room, and
showed me the book over which all his spare hours seemed spent; “Thomas
à Kempis.”

“Ah, yes, that is a great book; a book full of beautiful things.”

“Do you know it? do Protestants read it?”

“Yes, to be sure; we read all sorts of books.”

“I’m glad of it. It’s a comfort to me to think you read this book.”

Here again is an old woman with hair as white as snow, who deliberately
informs me she is ninety-eight years of age, and next time I see her,
corrects herself, and “believes it is eighty-nine, but it is all the
same, she disremembers numbers.” This poor old soul in some way hurt her
foot, and after much suffering was obliged to have half of it amputated.
Strange to say, she recovered, but when I congratulated her on the happy
event, I shall never forget the outbreak of true feminine sentiment
which followed. Stretching out the poor mutilated and blackened limb,
and looking at it with woeful compassion, she exclaimed, “Ah, ma’am, but
it will never be a _purty_ foot again!” Age, squalor, poverty, and even
mutilation, had not sufficed to quench that little spark of vanity which
“springs eternal in the (female) breast.”

Here, again, are half-a-dozen cabins, each occupied by widows with one
or more daughters; eight of whom form my father’s pet corps of Amazons,
always kept working about the shrubberies and pleasure-grounds, or
haymaking or any light fieldwork; houses which, though poorest of all,
are by no means the most dirty or uncared for. Of course there are
dozens of others literally overflowing with children, children in the
cradle, children on the floor, children on the threshold, children on
the “midden” outside; rosy, bright, merry children, who thrive with the
smallest possible share of buttermilk and stirabout, are utterly
innocent of shoes and stockings, and learn at school all that is taught
to them at least half as fast again as a tribe of little Saxons. Several
of them in Balisk are the adopted children of the people who provide for
them. First sent down by their parents (generally domestic servants) to
be nursed in that salubrious spot, after a year or two it generally
happened that the pay ceased, the parent was not heard of, and the
foster-mother and father would no more have thought of sending the child
to the Poor-house than of sending it to the moon. The Poor-house,
indeed, occupied a very small space in the imagination of the people of
Balisk. It was beyond Purgatory, and hardly more real. Not that the
actual institution was conducted on other than the very mildest
principles, but there was a fearful Ordeal by Water—in the shape of a
warm bath—to be undergone on entrance; there were large rooms with
glaring windows, admitting a most uncomfortable degree of light, and
never shaded by any broken hats or petticoats; there were also stated
hours and rules thoroughly disgusting to the Celtic mind, and, lastly,
for the women, there were caps without borders!

Yes! cruelty had gone so far (masculine guardians, however
compassionate, little recking the woe they caused), till at length a
wail arose—a clamour—almost a Rebellion! “Would they make them wear caps
without borders?” The stern heart of manhood relented, and answered
“No!”

But I must return to Balisk. Does any one ask, was nothing done to
ameliorate the condition of that wretched place? Certainly; at all
events there was much attempted. Mrs. Evans, of Portrane, of whom I
shall say more by and by, built and endowed capital schools for both
boys and girls, and pensioned some of the poorest of the old people. My
father having a wholesome horror of pauperising, tried hard at more
complete reforms, by giving regular employment to as many as possible,
and aiding all efforts to improve the houses. Not being the landlord of
Balisk, however, he could do nothing effectually, nor enforce any kind
of sanitary measures; so that while his own villages were neat, trim and
healthy, poor Balisk went on year after year deserving the epithet it
bore among us, of the Slough of Despond. The failures of endeavours to
mend it would form a chapter of themselves. On one occasion my eldest
brother undertook the true task for a Hercules; to drain, _not_ the
stables of Augeas, but the town of Balisk. The result was that his main
drain was found soon afterwards effectually stopped up by the dam of an
old beaver bonnet. Again, he attempted to whitewash the entire village,
but many inhabitants objected to whitewash. Of course when any flood, or
snow, or storm came (and what wintry month did they not come in
Ireland?) I went to see the state of affairs at Balisk, and provide what
could be provided. And of course when anybody was born, or married, or
ill, or dead, or going to America, in or from Balisk, embassies were
sent to Newbridge seeking assistance; money for burial or passage; wine,
meat, coals, clothes; and (strange to say), in cases of death—always
jam! The connection between dying and wanting raspberry jam remained to
the last a mystery, but whatever was its nature, it was invariable.
“Mary Keogh,” or “Peter Reilly,” as the case might be, “isn’t expected,
and would be very thankful for some jam;” was the regular message. Be it
remarked that Irish delicacy has suggested the euphuism of “isn’t
expected” to signify that a person is likely to die. What it is that he
or she “is not expected” to do, is never mentioned. When the supplicant
was not supposed to be personally known at Newbridge, or a little extra
persuasion was thought needful to cover too frequent demands, it was
commonly urged that the petitioner was a “poor orphant,” commonly aged
thirty or forty, or else a “desolate widow.” The word desolate, however,
being always pronounced “dissolute,” the epithet proved less affecting
than it was intended to be. But absurd as their words might sometimes be
(and sometimes, on the contrary, they were full of touching pathos and
simplicity), the wants of the poor souls were only too real, as we very
well knew, and it was not often that a petitioner from Balisk to
Newbridge went empty away.

But such help was only of temporary avail. The Famine came and things
grew worse. In poor families, that is, families where there was only one
man to earn and five or six mouths to feed, the best wages given in the
country proved insufficient to buy the barest provision of food;
wheatmeal for “griddle” bread, oatmeal for stirabout, turnips to make up
for the lost potatoes. Strong men fainted at their work in the fields,
having left untasted for their little children the food they needed so
sorely. Beggars from the more distressed districts (for Balisk was in
one of those which suffered least in Ireland) swarmed through the
country, and rarely, at the poorest cabin, asked in vain for bread.
Often and often have I seen the master or mistress of some wretched
hovel bring out the “griddle cake,” and give half of it to some
wanderer, who answered simply with a blessing and passed on. Once I
remember passing by the house of a poor widow, who had seven children of
her own, and as if that were not enough, had adopted an orphan left by
her sister. At her cabin door one day, I saw, propped up against her
knees, a miserable “traveller,” a wanderer from what a native of Balisk
would call “other nations; a bowzy villiain from other nations,” that is
to say, a village eight or ten miles away. The traveller lay senseless,
starved to the bone and utterly famine-stricken. The widow tried
tenderly to make him swallow a spoonful of bread and water, but he
seemed unable to make the exertion. A few drops of whiskey by and by
restored him to consciousness. The poor “bowzy” leaned his head on his
hands and muttered feebly, “Glory be to God”! The widow looked up,
rejoicing, “Glory be to God, he’s saved anyhow.” Of course all the
neighbouring gentry joined in extensive soup-kitchens and the like, and
by one means or other the hard years of famine were passed over.

Then came the Fever, in many ways a worse scourge than the famine. Of
course it fell heavily on such ill-drained places as Balisk. After a
little time, as each patient remained ill for many weeks, it often
happened that three or four were in the fever in the same cabin, or even
all the family at once, huddled in the two or three beds, and with only
such attendance as the kindly neighbours, themselves overburdened, could
supply. Soon it became universally known that recovery was to be
effected only by improved food and wine; not by drugs. Those whose
condition was already good, and who caught the fever, invariably died;
those who were in a depressed state, if they could be raised, were
saved. It became precisely a question of life and death how to supply
nourishment to all the sick. As the fever lasted on and on, and
re-appeared time after time, the work was difficult, seeing that no
stores of any sort could ever be safely intrusted to Irish prudence and
frugality.

Then came Smith O’Brien’s rebellion. The country was excited. In every
village (Balisk nowise behindhand) certain clubs were formed, popularly
called “Cutthroat Clubs,” for the express purpose of purchasing pikes
and organising the expected insurrection in combination with leaders in
Dublin. Head-Centre of the club of Balisk was the ex-schoolmaster, of
whom we have already spoken. How he obtained that honour I know not;
possibly because he could write, which most probably was beyond the
achievements of any other member of the institution; possibly also
because he claimed to be the lawful owner of the adjoining estate of
Newbridge. How the schoolmaster’s claim was proved to the satisfaction
of himself and his friends is a secret which, if revealed, would
probably afford a clue to much of Irish ambition. Nearly every parish in
Ireland has thus its lord _de facto_, who dwells in a handsome house in
the midst of a park, and another lord who dwells in a mud-cabin in the
village and is fully persuaded he is the lord _de jure_. In the endless
changes of ownership and confiscation to which Irish land has been
subjected, there is always some heir of one or other of the dispossessed
families, who, if nothing had happened that did happen, and nobody had
been born of a score or two of persons who somehow, unfortunately, were
actually born, then he or she might, could, would, or should have
inherited the estate. In the present case my ancestor had purchased the
estate some 150 years before from another English family who had held it
for some generations. When and where the poor Celtic schoolmaster’s
forefathers had come upon the field none pretended to know. Anxious,
however, to calm the minds of his neighbours, my father thought fit to
address them in a paternal manifesto, posted about the different
villages, entreating them to forbear from entering the “Cutthroat
Clubs,” and pointing the moral of the recent death of the Archbishop of
Paris at the barricades. The result of this step was that the newspaper,
then published in Dublin under the audacious name of _The Felon_,
devoted half a column to exposing my father by name to the hatred of
good Clubbists, and pointing him out as “one of the very first for whose
benefit the pikes were procured.” Boxes of pikes were accordingly
actually sent by the railway before mentioned, and duly delivered to the
Club; and still the threat of rebellion rose higher, till even calm
people like ourselves began to wonder whether it were a volcano on which
we were treading, or the familiar mud of Balisk.

Newbridge, as described in the first chapter of this book, bore some
testimony to the troubles of the last century when it was erected. There
was a long corridor which had once been all hung with weapons, and there
was a certain board in the floor of an inner closet which could be taken
up when desirable, and beneath which appeared a large receptacle wherein
the aforesaid weapons were stored in times of danger. Stories of ’98
were familiar to us from infancy. There was the story of Le Hunts of
Wexford, when the daughter of the family dreamed three times that the
guns in her father’s hall were all broken and, on inducing Colonel Le
Hunt to examine them, the dream was found to be true and his own butler
the traitor. Horrible stories were there, also, of burnings and cardings
(_i.e._, tearing the back with the iron comb used in carding wool); and
nursery threats of rebels coming up back stairs on recalcitrant
“puckhawns” (naughty children—children of Puck), insomuch that to “play
at rebellion” had been our natural resource as children. Born and bred
in this atmosphere, it seemed like a bad dream come true that there were
actual pikes imported into well-known cabins, and that there were in the
world men stupid and wicked enough to wish to apply them to those who
laboured constantly for their benefit. Yet the papers teemed with
stories of murders of good and just landlords; yet threats each day more
loud, came with every post of what Smith O’Brien and his friends would
do if they but succeeded in raising the peasantry, alas! all too ready
to be raised. Looking over the miserable fiasco of that “cabbage garden”
rebellion now, it seems all too ridiculous to have ever excited the
least alarm. But at that time, while none could doubt the final triumph
of England, it was very possible to doubt whether aid could be given by
the English Government before every species of violence might be
committed by the besotted peasantry at our gates.

I have been told on good authority that Smith O’Brien made his escape
from the police in the “habit” of an Anglican Sisterhood, of which his
sister, Hon. Mrs. Monsell, was Superior.

A little incident which occurred at the moment rather confirmed the idea
that Balisk was transformed for the nonce into a little Hecla; not under
snow, but mud. I was visiting the fever patients, and was detained late
of a summer’s evening in the village. So many were ill, there seemed no
end of sick to be supplied with food, wine and other things needed. In
particular, three together were ill in a house already mentioned, where
there were several grown-up sons, and the people were somewhat better
off than usual, though by no means sufficiently so to be able to procure
meat or similar luxuries. Here I lingered, questioning and prescribing,
till at about nine o’clock my visit ended; and I left money to procure
some of the things required. Next morning my father addressed me:—

“So you were at Balisk last night?”

“Yes, I was kept there.”

“You stayed in Tyrell’s house till nine o’clock?”

“Yes; how do you know?”

“You gave six and sixpence to the mother to get provisions?”

“Yes; how do you know?”

“Well, very simply. The police were watching the door and saw you
through it. As soon as you were gone the Club assembled there. They were
waiting for your departure; and the money you gave was subscribed to buy
pikes; of course to _pike me_!”

A week later, the bubble burst in the memorable Cabbage garden. The
rebel chiefs were leniently dealt with by the Government, and their
would-be rebel followers fell back into all the old ways as if nothing
had happened. What became of the pikes no one knew. Possibly they exist
in Balisk still, waiting for a Home Rule Government to be brought forth.
At the end of a few months the poor schoolmaster, claimant of Newbridge,
died; and as I stood by his bedside and gave him the little succour
possible, the poor fellow lifted his eyes full of meaning, and said, “To
think _you_ should come to help me now!” It was the last reference made
to the once-dreaded rebellion.

After endless efforts my brother carried his point and drained the whole
village—beaver bonnets notwithstanding. Whitewash became popular.
“Middens” (as the Scotch call them, the Irish have a simpler phrase)
were placed more frequently behind houses than in front of them. Costume
underwent some vicissitudes, among which the introduction of shoes and
stockings, among even the juvenile population, was the most remarkable
feature; a great change truly, since I can remember an old woman, to
whom my youngest brother had given a pair, complaining that she had
caught cold in consequence of wearing, for the first time in her life,
those superfluous garments.

Many were drawn into the stream of the Exodus, and have left the
country. How helpless they are in their migrations, poor souls! was
proved by one sad story. A steady, good young woman, whose sister had
settled comfortably in New York, resolved to go out to join her, and for
the purpose took her passage at an Emigration Agency office in Dublin.
Coming to make her farewell respects at Newbridge, the following
conversation ensued between her and myself:

“So, Bessie, you are going to America?”

“Yes, ma’am, to join Biddy at New York. She wrote for me to come, and
sent the passage-money.”

“That is very good of her. Of course you have taken your passage direct
to New York?”

“Well, no, ma’am. The agent said there was no ship going to New York,
but one to some place close by, New-something-else.”

“New-something-else, near New York; I can’t think where that could be.”

“Yes, ma’am, New—New—I disremember what it was, but he told me I could
get from it to New York immadiently.”

“Oh, Bessie, it wasn’t New Orleans?”

“Yes, ma’am, that was it! New Orleans—New Orleans, close to New York, he
said.”

“And you have paid your passage-money?”

“Yes, ma’am, I must go there anyhow, now.”

“Oh, Bessie, Bessie, why would you never come to school and learn
geography? You are going to a terrible place, far away from your sister.
That wicked agent has cheated you horribly.”

The poor girl went to New Orleans, and there died of fever. The birds of
passage and fish which pass from sea to sea seem more capable of knowing
what they are about than the greater number of the emigrants driven by
scarcely less blind an instinct. Out of the three millions who are said
to have gone since the famine from Ireland to America, how many must
there have been who had no more knowledge than poor Bessie Mahon of the
land to which they went!

Before I conclude these reminiscences of Irish peasant life in the
Forties, I must mention an important feature of it—the Priests. Most of
those whom I saw in our villages were disagreeable-looking men with the
coarse mouth and jaw of the Irish peasant undisguised by the beards and
whiskers worn by their lay brethren; and often the purple and bloated
appearance of their cheeks suggested too abundant diet of bacon and
whisky-punch. They worried me dreadfully by clearing out all the
Catholic children from my school every now and then on the pretence of
withdrawing them from heretical instruction, though nothing was further
from the thoughts or wishes of any of us than proselytizing; nor was a
single charge ever formulated against our teachers of saying a word to
the children against their religion. What the priests really wanted was
to obstruct education itself and too close and friendly intercourse with
Protestants. For several winters I used to walk down to the school on
certain evenings in the week and give the older lads and lassies lessons
in Geography (with two huge maps of the world which I made myself, 11
ft. by 9 ft.!) and the first steps in Astronomy and history. Several
times, when the class had been well got together and began to be
interested, the priest announced that _he_ would give them lessons on
the same night, and they were to come to him instead of to me. Of course
I told them to do so, and that I was very glad he would take the
trouble. A fortnight or so later however I always learnt that the
priest’s lessons had dropped and all was to be recommenced.

The poor woman I mentioned above as so devoted to her mother went to
service with one of the priests in the neighbourhood in the hope that
she would receive religious consolation from him. Meeting her some time
after I expressed my hope that she had found it. “Ah, no Ma’am!” she
answered sorrowfully, “He never spakes to me unless about the bacon or
the like of that. _Priests does be dark!_” I thought the phrase
wonderfully significant.

My father, though a Protestant of the Protestants as the reader has
learned, thought it right to send regularly every year a cheque to the
priest of Donabate as an aid to his slender resources; and there never
was _openly_, anything but civility between the successive _curés_ and
ourselves. We bowed most respectfully to each other on the roads, but I
never interchanged a word with any of them save once when I was busy
attending a poor woman in Balisk in the cramps of cholera; the disease
being at the time raging through the country. With the help of the good
souls who in Ireland are always ready for any charitable deed, I was
applying mustard poultices, when Father M—— entered the cabin (a
revolting looking man he was, whose nose had somehow been frost-bitten),
and turned me out. I implored him to defer, or at least hasten his
ministrations; and stood outside the door in great impatience for half
an hour while I knew the hapless patient was in agony and peril of
death, inside. At last the priest came out,—and when I hurried back to
the bedside I found he had been gumming some “Prayers to the Holy
Virgin” on the wall. Happily we were not too late with our mustard and
“sperrits,” and the woman was saved; whether by Father M—— and the
Virgin or by me I cannot pretend to say.

I have spoken of our village school and must add that the boys and girls
who attended it were exceedingly clever and bright. They caught up
ideas, were moved by heroic or pathetic stories and understood jokes to
a degree quite unmatched by English children of the same humble class,
as I found later when I taught in Miss Carpenter’s Ragged Schools at
Bristol. The ingenuity with which, when they came to a difficult word in
reading, they substituted another was very diverting. One boy read that
St. John had a leathern _griddle_ about his loins; and a young man with
a deep manly voice, once startled me by announcing, “He casteth out
divils through,—through, through,—_Blazes_, the chief of the Divils!”

In Drumcar school a child, elaborately instructed by dear, good Lady
Elizabeth M‘Clintock concerning Pharisees, and then examined:—“What was
the sin of the Pharisees?” replied promptly: “_Ating camels_, my lady!”

Alas, I have reason to fear that the erudition of my little scholars, if
quickly obtained, was far from durable. Paying a visit to my old home
ten years later I asked my crack scholar, promoted to be second gardener
at Newbridge, “Well, Andrew, how much do you remember of all my
lessons?”

“Ah, Ma’am, then, never a word!”

“O, Andrew, Andrew! And have you forgotten all about the sun, the moon
and stars, the day and night, and the Seasons?”

“O, no, Ma’am! I do remember now, and you set them on the schoolroom
table, and Mars was a red gooseberry, and I ate him!”

CHAPTER
VII.
_IRELAND IN THE FORTIES._
_THE GENTRY._

I now turn to describe, as my memory may serve, the life of the Irish
gentry in the Forties. There never has been much of a middle class,
unhappily, in the country, and therefore in speaking of the gentry I
shall have in view mostly the landowners and their families. These, with
few and always much noted exceptions, were Protestants, of English
descent and almost exclusively of Saxon blood; the Anglo-Irish families
however long settled in Ireland, naturally intermarrying chiefly with
each other. So great was, in my time, the difference in outward looks
between the two races, that I have often remarked that I could walk down
Sackville Street and point to each passenger “Protestant,” “Catholic,”
“Protestant,” “Catholic”; and scarcely be liable to make a mistake.

As I have said, my memory bridges over the gulf between a very typical
_ancien régime_ household and the present order of things, and I may be
able to mark some changes, not unworthy of registration. But it must be
understood that I make no attempt to describe what would be precisely
called _Irish society_, for into this, I never really entered at all. I
wearied of the little I had seen of it after a few balls and
drawing-rooms in Dublin by the time I was eighteen and thenceforward
only shared in home entertainments and dinners among neighbours in our
own county, with a few visits to relatives at greater distance. I
believe the origin of my great boredom in Dublin balls (for I was very
fond of dancing) was the extraordinary inanity of the men whom I met.
The larger number were officers of Horse Artillery, then under the
command of my uncle, and I used to pity the poor youths, thinking that
they danced with me as in duty bound, while their really marvellous
silliness and dulness made conversation wearisome in the extreme. Many
of these same empty-headed young coxcombs afterwards fought like Trojans
through the Crimean War and came back,—transformed into heroes! I
remember my dentist telling me, much to the same purpose, that half the
officers in the garrison had come to him to have their teeth looked
after before they went to the Crimea and had behaved abominably in his
chair of torture, groaning and moaning and occasionally vituperating him
and kicking his shins. But it was another story when some of those very
men charged at Balaklava! We are not, I think, yet advanced far enough
to dispense altogether with the stern teaching of war, or the virtues
which spring out of the dreadful dust of the battlefield.

Railways were only beginning to be opened in 1840, and were much dreaded
by landed proprietors through whose lands they ran. When surveyors came
to plan the Dublin and Drogheda Railway my father and our neighbour Mrs.
Evans, were up in arms and our farmers ready to throttle the
trespassers. I suggested we should erect a Notice-board in Donabate with
this inscription:—

“Survey the world from China to Peru;
Survey not here,—we’ll shoot you if you do.”

The voyage to England, which most of us undertook at least once or twice
a year, was a wretched transit in miserable, ill-smelling vessels. From
Dublin to Bristol (our most convenient route) took at least thirty
hours. From Holyhead to London was a two days’ journey by coach. On one
of these journeys, having to stop at Bristol for two nights, I enjoyed
an opportunity (enchanting at sixteen) of being swung in a basket
backward and forward across the Avon, where the Suspension Bridge now
stands. Preparations for these journeys of ours to England were not
quite so serious as those which were necessarily made for our cousins
when they went out to India and were obliged for five or six months
wholly to dispense with the services of a laundress. Still, our
hardships were considerable, and youngsters who were going to school or
college were made up like little Micawbers “expecting dirty weather.”
Elderly ladies, I remember, usually travelled in mourning and sometimes
kept their little corkscrew curls in paper under their bonnet caps for
the whole journey; a less distressing proceeding, however, than that of
Lady Cahir thirty years earlier, who had her hair dressed, (powdered and
on a cushion) by a famous hairdresser in Bath, and came over to exhibit
it at St. Patrick’s ball in Dublin Castle, having passed five nights at
sea, desperately ill, but heroically refusing to lie down and disarrange
the magnificent structure on her aching head.

This lady by the way—of whom it was said that “Lady Cahir _cares_ for no
man”—had had a droll adventure in her youth, which my mother, who knew
her well and I think was her schoolfellow, recounted to me. Before she
married she lived with her mother, a rather extravagant widow, who
plunged heavily into debt. One day the long-expected bailiffs came to
arrest her and were announced as at the hall door. Quick as lightning
Lady Cahir (then, I think, Miss Townsend) made her mother exchange dress
and cap with her, to which she added the old lady’s wig and spectacles
and then sat in her armchair knitting sedulously, with the blinds drawn
down and her back to the window. The mother having vanished, the bailiff
was shown up, and, exhibiting his credentials, requested the lady to
accompany him to the sponging house. Of course there was a long palaver;
but at last the captive consented to obey and merely said, “Well! I will
go if you like, but I warn you that you are committing a great mistake
in apprehending me.”

“O, O! We all know about that, Ma’am! Please come along! I have a
hackney carriage at the door.”

The damsel, well wrapped in cloaks and furbelows and a great bonnet of
the period, went quietly to her destination; but when the time came for
closing the door on her as a prisoner, she jumped up, threw off wig,
spectacles and old woman’s cap, and disclosed the blue eyes, golden
hair, and radiant young beauty for which she was long afterwards
renowned. Meanwhile, of course, her mother had had abundance of time to
clear out of the way of her importunate creditors.

Many details of comforts and habits in those days were very much in
arrear of ours, perhaps about equally in Ireland and in England. It is
droll to remember, for example, as I do vividly, seeing in my childhood
the housemaids striving with infinite pains and great loss of time to
obtain a light with steel and flint and a tinder-box, when by some
untoward accident all the fires in the house (habitually burning all
night) had been extinguished.

The first matchbox I saw was a long upright red one containing a bottle
of phosphorus and a few matches which were lighted by insertion in the
bottle. After this we had Lucifers which nearly choked us with gas; but
in which we gloried as among the greatest discoveries of all time.
Seriously I believe few of the vaunted triumphs of science have
contributed so much as these easy illuminators of our long dark Northern
nights to the comfort and health of mankind.

Again our grandmothers had used exquisite China basins with round
long-necked jugs for all their ablutions and we had advanced to the use
of large basins and footpans, slipper baths and shower baths, when, as
nearly as possible in 1840, the first sponge bath was brought to
Ireland. I was paying a visit to my father’s cousin, Lady Elizabeth
M‘Clintock, at Drumcar in Co. Louth, when she exhibited with pride to me
and her other guests the novel piece of bedroom furniture. When I
returned home and described it my mother ordered a supply for our house,
and we were wont for a long time to enquire of each other, “how we
enjoyed our tubs?” as people are now supposed to ask: “Have you used
Pears’ soap?” I believe it was from India these excellent inventions
came.

Many other differences might be noted between the habits of those days
and of ours. _Diners Russes_ were, of course, not thought of. We dined
at six, or six-thirty, at latest; and after the soup and fish, all the
first course was placed at once on the table. For a party, for example,
of 16 or 18, there would be eight dishes; joints, fowls and entrées. It
was a triumph of good cookery, but rarely achieved, to serve them all
hot at once. Tea, made with an urn, was a regular meal taken in the
drawing-room about nine o’clock; _never_ before dinner. The modern five
o’clock tea was altogether unknown in the Forties, and when I ventured
sometimes to introduce it in the Fifties, I was so severely reprehended
that I used to hold a secret symposium for specially favoured guests in
my own room after our return from drives or walks. All old gentlemen
pronounced five o’clock tea an atrocious and disgraceful practice.

Another considerable difference in our lives was caused by the scarcity
of newspapers and periodicals. I can remember when the _Dublin Evening
Mail_,—then a single sheet, appearing three times a week and received at
Newbridge on the day after publication,—was our only source of news. I
do not think any one of our neighbours took the _Times_ or any English
paper. Of magazines we had _Blackwood_ and the _Quarterly_, but
illustrated ones were unknown. There was a tolerable circulating library
in Dublin, to which I subscribed and from whence I obtained a good many
French books; but the literary appetites of the Irish gentry generally
were frugal in the extreme!

The real differences, however, between Life in 1840 and Life in 1890
were much deeper than any record of these altered manners, or even any
references to the great changes caused by steam and the telegraph, can
convey. There were certain principles which in those days were almost
universally accepted and which profoundly influenced all our works and
ways. The first of them was Parental and Marital Authority. Perhaps my
particular circumstances as the daughter of a man of immense force of
will, caused me to see the matter especially clearly, but I am sure that
in the Thirties and Forties (at all events in Ireland) there was very
little declension generally from the old Roman _Patria Potestas_.
Fathers believed themselves to possess almost boundless rights over
their children in the matter of pursuits, professions, marriages and so
on; and the children usually felt that if they resisted any parental
command it was on their peril and an act of extreme audacity. My
brothers and I habitually spoke of our father, as did the servants and
tenants, as “_The Master_;” and never was title more thoroughly
deserved.

Another important difference was in the position of women. Of this I
shall have more to say hereafter; suffice it to note that it was the
universal opinion, that no gentlewoman could possibly earn money without
derogating altogether from her rank (unless, indeed, by card-playing as
my grandmother did regularly!); and that housekeeping and needlework (of
the most inartistic kinds) were her only fitting pursuits. The one
natural ambition of her life was supposed to be a “suitable” marriage;
the phrase always referring to _settlements_, rather than _sentiments_.
Study of any serious sort was disapproved, and “accomplishments” only
were cultivated. My father prohibited me when very young from learning
Latin from one of my brothers who kindly offered to teach me; but, as I
have recounted, he paid largely and generously that I might be taught
Music, for which I had no faculties at all. Other Irish girls my
contemporaries, were much worse off than I, for my dear mother always
did her utmost to help my studies and my liberal allowance permitted me
to buy books.

The laws which concerned women at that date were so frightfully unjust
that the most kindly disposed men inevitably took their cue from them,
and looked on their mothers, wives, and sisters as beings with wholly
inferior rights; with _no_ rights, indeed, which should ever stand
against theirs. The _deconsideration_ of women (as dear Barbara Bodichon
in later years used to say) was at once cause and result of our legal
disabilities. Let the happier women of these times reflect on the state
of things which existed when a married woman’s inheritance and even her
own earnings (if she could make any), were legally robbed from her by
her husband, and given, if he pleased, to his mistress! Let them
remember that she could make no will, but that her husband might make
one which should bequeath the control of her children to a man she
abhorred or to a woman of evil life. Let them remember that a husband
who had beaten and wronged his wife in every possible way could yet
force her by law to live with him and become the mother of his children.
Personally and most fortunately (for I know not of what crime I might
not have been guilty if so tried!) I never had cause of complaint on the
score of injustice or unkindness from any of the men with whom I had to
do. But the knowledge, when it came to me, of the legalised oppressions
under which other women groaned, lay heavy on my mind. I was not,
however, in those early days, interested in politics or large social
reforms; and did not covet the political franchise, finding in my
manifold duties and studies over-abundant outlets for my energies.

Another difference between the first and latter half of the century is,
I think, the far greater simplicity of character of the older
generation. No doubt there were, at the time of which I write, many fine
and subtle minds at work among the poets, philosophers and statesmen of
the day; but ordinary ladies and gentlemen, even clever and
well-educated ones, would, I think, if they could revive now, seem to us
rather like our boys and girls than our grandparents. Thousands of
allusions, ideas, shades of sentiment and reflection which have become
common-places to us, were novel and strange to them. What Cowper’s
poetry is to Tennyson’s, what the _Vicar of Wakefield_ is to
_Middlemarch_, so were their transparent minds to ours. I remember once
(for a trivial example of what I mean) walking with my father in his
later days in the old garden one exquisite spring day when the apple
trees were covered with blossoms and the birds were singing all round
us. As he leaned on my arm, having just recovered from an illness which
had threatened to be fatal and was in a mood unusually tender, I was
tempted to say, “Don’t you feel, Father, that a day like this is almost
too beautiful and delicious, that it softens one’s feelings to the verge
of pain?” In these times assuredly such a remark would have seemed to
most people too obvious to deserve discussion, but it only brought from
my father the reply: “God bless my soul, what nonsense you talk, my
dear! I never heard the like. Of course a fine day makes everybody
cheerful and a rainy day makes us dull and dismal.” Everyone I knew
then, was, more or less, similarly simple; and in some of the ablest
whom I met in later years of the same generation, (_e.g._, Mrs.
Somerville) I found the same single-mindedness, the same absence of all
experience of the subtler emotions. Conversation, as a natural
consequence, was more downright and matter of fact, and rarely if ever
was concerned with critical analyses of impressions. In short, (as I
have said) our fathers were in many respects, like children compared to
ourselves.

Another and a sad change has taken place in the amount of animal spirits
generally shared by young and old in the Thirties and Forties and down,
I think, to the Crimean War, which brought a great seriousness into all
our lives. It was not only the young who laughed in joyous “fits” in
those earlier days; the old laughed then more heartily and more often
than I fear many young people do now; that blessed laugh of hearty
amusement which causes the eyes to water and the sides to ache—a laugh
one hardly ever hears now in any class or at any age. An evidence of the
high level of ordinary spirits may be found in the readiness with which
such genuine laughter responded to the smallest provocation. It did not
need the delightful farce of the Keeley’s acting (though I recall the
helpless state into which Mr. Keeley’s pride in his red waistcoat
reduced half the house), but even an old, well-worn, good story, or
family catch-word with some ludicrous association, was enough to provoke
jovial mirth. It was part of a young lady’s and young gentleman’s home
training to learn how to indulge in the freest enjoyment of fun without
boisterousness or shrieks or discordance of any kind. Young people were
for ever devising pranks and jests among themselves, and even their
seniors occupied themselves in concocting jokes, many of which we should
now think childish; the order of the “April Fool,” being the general
type. Comic verse making; forging of love letters; disguising and
begging as tramps; sending boxes of bogus presents; making “ghosts” with
bolsters and burnt cork eyes to be placed in dark corners of passages;
these and a score of such monkey-tricks for which nobody now has
patience, were common diversions in every household, and were nearly
always taken good-humouredly. My father used to tell of one ridiculous
deception in which the chief actress and inventor was that very _grande
dame_ Elizabeth Hastings, Countess of Moira, daughter of the Methodist
Countess of Huntingdon. Lady Moira, my father and two other young men,
by means of advertising and letters, induced some wretched officer to
walk up and down a certain part of Sackville Street for an hour with a
red geranium in his buttonhole, to show himself off, as he thought, to a
young lady with a large fortune who proposed to marry him. The
conspirators sat in a window across the street watching their victim and
exploding with glee at his peacock behaviour. The sequel was better than
the joke. The poor man wrote a letter to his tormentress (whom he had at
last detected) so pitiful that her kind heart melted, and she exerted
her immense influence effectually on his behalf and provided for him
comfortably for life.

Henry, the third Marquis of Waterford, husband of the gifted and
beautiful lady whose charming biography Mr. Hare has recently written,
was the last example I imagine in Ireland of these redundant spirits. It
was told of him, and I remember hearing of it at the time, that a
somewhat grave and self-important gentleman had ridden up to Curraghmore
on business and left his bay horse at the door. Lord Waterford, seeing
the animal, caught up a pot of whitewash in use by some labourer and
rapidly _whitewashed the horse_; after which exploit he went indoors to
interview his visitor, and began by observing, “That is a handsome grey
horse of yours at the door.” “A bay, my Lord.”

“Not at all. It is a grey horse. I saw you on it.”

Eventually both parties adjourned to the front of the house and found
the whitewashed horse walking up and down with a groom. “You see it is
grey,” said the Marquis triumphantly.

Certainly no one in those days dreamed of asking the question, “Is Life
worth Living?” We were all, young and old, quite sure that life was
extremely valuable; a boon for which to be grateful to God. I recall the
amazement with which I first read of the Buddhist and Brahmin Doctrine
that Existence is _per se_ an evil, and that the reward of the highest
virtue will be Absorption, or Nirvana. The pessimism which prevails in
this _fin de siècle_ was as unknown in the Forties as the potato disease
before the great blight.

I much wish that some strong thinker would undertake the useful task of
tracking this mental and moral _anæmia_ of the present generation to its
true origin, whether that origin be the ebb of religious hope and faith
and the reaction from the extreme and too hasty optimism which
culminated in 1851, and has fallen rapidly since 1875, or whether, in
truth, our bodily conditions, though tending to prolong life and working
power to an amazing degree, are yet less conducive to the development of
the sanguine and hilarious temperament common in my youth. I have heard
as a defence for the revolution which has taken place in medical
treatment—from the depletory and antiphlogistic to the nourishing and
stimulating, and for the total abandonment of the practice of
bleeding—that it is not the doctors who have altered their minds, but
the patients, whose bodies have undergone a profound modification. I can
quite recall the time when (as all the novels of the period testify), if
anybody had a fall or a fit, or almost any other mishap, it was the
first business of the doctor to whip out his lancet, bare the sufferer’s
arm, and draw a large quantity of blood, when everybody and the
aforesaid novels always remarked; “It was providential that there was a
doctor at hand” to do it. I have myself seen this operation performed on
one of my brothers in our drawing-room about 1836, and I heard of it
every day occurring among our neighbours, rich and poor. My father’s
aunt, whom I well remember, Jane Power Trench (sister of the first Lord
Clancarty), who lived in Marlborough Buildings in Bath, was habitually
bled every year just before Easter, having previously spent the entire
winter in her bedroom of which the windows were pasted down and the
doors doubled. A few days after the phlebotomy the old lady invariably
bought a new bonnet and walked in it up to the top of Beacon Hill. She
continued the annual ritual unbroken till she died at 79. Surely these
people were made of stronger _pâte_ than we? In corroboration of this
theory I may record how much more hardy were the gentlemen of the
Forties in all their habits than are those of the Nineties. When my
father and his friends went on grouse-shooting expeditions to our
mountain-lodge, I used to provide for the large parties only abundance
of plain food for dinners, and for luncheons merely sandwiches, bread
and cheese, with a keg of ale, and a basket of apples. By degrees it
became necessary (to please my brother’s guests) to provide the best of
fish, fowl and flesh, champagne and peaches. The whole odious system of
_battues_, rendering sport unmanly as well as cruel, with all its
attendant waste and cost and disgusting butchery, has grown up within my
recollection by the extension of luxury, laziness and ostentation.

To turn to another subject. There was very little immorality at that
time in Ireland either in high or low life, and what there was received
no quarter. But there was, certainly, together with the absence of vice,
a lack of some of the virtues which have since developed amongst us. It
is not easy to realise that in my lifetime men were hanged for forgery
and for sheep-stealing; and that no one agitated for the repeal of such
Draconian legislation, but everybody placidly repeated the observation
(now-a-days so constantly applied to the scientific torture of animals),
that it was “NECESSARY.” Cruelties, wrongs and oppressions of all kinds
were rife, and there were (in Ireland at all events) none to raise an
outcry such as would echo now from one end of England to the other.

The Protestant pulpit was occupied by two distinct classes of men. There
were the younger sons of the gentry and nobles, who took the large
livings and were booked for bishoprics; and these were educated at
Oxford and Cambridge, were more or less cultivated men and associated of
course on equal terms with the best in the land. Not seldom they were
men of noble lives, and extreme piety; such for example, as the last
Protestant Archbishop of Tuam, and a certain Archdeacon Trench, whom I
remember regarding with awe and curiosity since I had heard that he had
once got up into his own pulpit, and (like Maxwell Gray’s _Dean
Maitland_) made a public confession of all his life’s misdoings. The
second class of Irish clergymen in those days were men of a rather lower
social grade, educated in Trinity College, often, no doubt, of excellent
character and devotion but generally extremely narrow in their views,
conducting all controversies by citations of isolated Bible-texts and
preaching to their sparse country congregations with Dublin brogues
which, not seldom, reduced the sublimity of their subjects to bathos.
There was one, for example, who said, as the peroration of his sermon on
the Fear of Death:—

“Me brethren the doying Christian lepps into the arrums of Death and
makes his hollow jaws ring with eternal hallelujahs!”

I have myself heard another read the concluding chapters of the gospels,
substituting with extraordinary effect the words “two Meal-factors,” for
the “two malefactors,” who were crucified. There was a chapter in the
Acts which we dreaded to hear, so difficult was it to help laughing when
we were told of “_Perthians_ and _Mades_, and the dwellers in
_Mesopotamia_ and the parts of Libya about _Cyraine_, streengers of
_Roum_, Jews and Proselytes, _Crates_ and Arabians.” It was also hard to
listen gravely to a vivid description of Jonah’s catastrophe, as I have
heard it, thus: “The weves bate against the ship, and the ship bate
against the weves;” (and, at last) “The Wheel swallowed Jonah!”

They had a difficult place to hold, these humbler Irish clergymen,
properly associating with no class of their parishioners; but to their
credit be it said, they were nearly all men of blameless lives, who did
their duty as they understood it, fairly well. The disestablishment of
the Irish Church which I had regarded beforehand with much prejudice,
did (I have since been inclined to think), very little mischief, and
certainly awakened in the minds of the Irish squirearchy who had to
settle their creed afresh, an interest in theology which was never
exhibited in my earlier days. I was absolutely astounded on paying a
visit to my old home a few years after disestablishment and while the
Convention (commonly called the _Contention_!) was going on, to hear
sundry recondite mysteries discussed at my brother’s table and to find
some of my old dancing partners actually greedily listening to what I
could tell them of the then recent discovery of Mr. Edmund
Ffoulkes,—that the doctrine of the Double Procession of the Holy Ghost
had been invented by King Reccared.

As regards any moral obligation or duty owed by men and women to the
lower animals, such ideas were as yet scarcely beginning to be
recognised. It was in 1822, the year in which I was born, that brave old
Richard Martin carried in Parliament the first Act ever passed by any
legislature in the world on behalf of the brutes. Tom Moore had laughed
at this early _Zoophilist_.

“Place me midst O’Rourkes, O’Tooles,
The ragged royal blood of Tara!
Place me where Dick Martin rules
The houseless wilds of Connemara

But in the history of human civilisation, “Martin’s Act” will hereafter
assuredly hold a distinct place of honour when many a more pompous
political piece of legislation is buried in oblivion. For a long time
the new law, and the Society for Prevention of Cruelty which arose to
work it, were objects of obloquy and jest even from such a man as Sydney
Smith, who did his best in the _Edinburgh Review_ to sneer them down.
But by degrees they formed, as Mr. Lecky says every system of
legislation _must_ do, a system of _moral education_. A sense of the
Rights of Animals has slowly been awakened, and is becoming, by not
imperceptible degrees, a new principle of ethics. In my youth there were
plenty of good people who were fond of dogs, cats and horses; but
nothing in their behaviour, or in that of any one I knew at that time,
testified to the existence of any latent idea that it was _morally
wrong_ to maltreat animals to any extent. Pious sportsmen were wont to
scourge their dogs with frightful dog-whips, for any disobedience or
mistake, with a savage violence which I shudder to remember; and which I
do not think the most brutal men would now exhibit openly. Miss
Edgeworth’s then recent novel of _Ennui_ had described her hero as
riding five horses to death to give himself a sensation, without (as it
would appear) forfeiting in the author’s opinion his claims to the
sympathies of the reader. I can myself recall only laughing, not crying
as I should be more inclined to do now, at the spectacle of miserable
half-starved horses made to gallop in Irish cars to win a bribe for the
driver, who flogged them over ruts and stones, shouting (as I have heard
them) “Never fare! I’ll _batther_ him out of that!” The picture of a
“_Rosinante_,” from Cervantes’ time till a dozen or two years ago,
instead of being one of the most pathetic objects in the world,—the
living symbol of human cruelty,—was always considered a particularly
laughable caricature. Only tender-hearted Bewick in his woodcut,
_Waiting for Death_, tried to move the hearts of his generation to
compassion for the starved and worn-out servant of ungrateful man.

The Irish peasantry do not habitually maltreat animals, but the
frightful mutilations and tortures which of late years they have
practised on cattle belonging to their obnoxious neighbours, is one of
the worst proofs of the existence in the Celtic character of that
undercurrent of ferocity of which I have spoken elsewhere.

Among Irish ladies and gentlemen in the Forties there was a great deal
of interest of course in our domestic pets, and I remember a beautiful
and beloved young bride coming to pay us a visit, and asking in a tone
of profound conviction: “What _would_ life be without dogs?” Still there
was nothing then existing, I think, in the world like the sentiment
which inspired Mathew Arnold’s _Geist_ or even his “_Kaiser Dead_.” The
gulf between the canine race and ours was thought to be measureless.
Darwin had not yet written the Descent of Man or made us imagine that
“God had made of one blood” at least all the mammals “upon earth.” No
one dreamed of trying to realise what must be the consciousness of
suffering animals; nor did anyone, I think, live under the slightest
sense of responsibility for their well-being. Even my dear old friend,
Harriet St. Leger, though she was renowned through the county for her
attachment to her great black Retrievers, said to me one day, many years
after I had left Ireland, “I don’t understand your feelings about
animals at all. To me a _dog is a dog_. To you it seems to be something
else!”

Another difference was, that there was very little popularity-hunting in
the Forties. The “working man” was seen, but not yet heard of; and, so
far as I remember, we thought as little of the public opinion of our
villages respecting us as we did of the public opinion of the stables.
The wretched religious bigotry which, as we knew, made the Catholics
look on us as infallibly condemned of God in this world and the next,
was an insuperable barrier to sympathy from them, and we never expected
them to understand either our acts or motives. But if we cared little or
nothing what they thought of us, I must in justice say that we did care
a great deal for _their_ comfort, and were genuinely unhappy in their
afflictions and active to relieve their miseries. When the famine came
there was scarcely one Irish lady or gentleman, I think, who did not
spend time, money and labour like water to supply food to the needy. I
remember the horror with which my father listened to a visitor, who was
not an Irishwoman but a purse-proud _nouveau riche_ married to a very
silly baronet in our neighbourhood, who told him that her husband’s Mayo
property had just cost them £70. “That will go some way in supplying
Indian meal to your tenants,” said my father, supposing that to such
purpose it must be devoted. “O dear, no! We are not sending it for any
such use,” said Lady —. “We are spending it _on evictions_!” “Good God!”
shouted my father; “how shocking! At such a time as this!”

It has been people like these who have ever since done the hard things
of which so much capital has been made by those whose interest it has
been to stir up strife in the “distressful country.”

I happen to be able to recall precisely the day, almost the hour, when
the blight fell on the potatoes and caused the great calamity. A party
of us were driving to a seven o’clock dinner at the house of our
neighbour, Mrs. Evans, of Portrane. As we passed a remarkably fine field
of potatoes in blossom, the scent came through the open windows of the
carriage and we remarked to each other how splendid was the crop. Three
or four hours later, as we returned home in the dark, a dreadful smell
came from the same field, and we exclaimed, “Something has happened to
those potatoes; they do not smell at all as they did when we passed them
on our way out.” Next morning there was a wail from one end of Ireland
to the other. Every field was black and every root rendered unfit for
human food. And there were nearly eight millions of people depending
principally upon these potatoes for existence!

The splendid generosity of the English public to us at that time warmed
all our Anglo-Irish hearts and cheered us to strain every nerve to feed
the people. But the agitators were afraid it would promote too much good
feeling between the nations, which would not have suited their game. I
myself heard O’Connell in Conciliation Hall (that ill-named place!)
endeavour to belittle English liberality. He spoke (a strange figure in
the red robes of his Mayoralty and with a little sandy wig on his head)
to the following purpose:—

“They have sent you over money in your distress. But do you think they
do it for love of you, or because they feel for you, and are sorry for
your trouble? Devil a bit! _They are afraid of you!_—that is it! _They
are afraid of you._ You are eight millions strong.”

It was as wicked a speech as ever man made, but it was never, that I
know of, reported or remarked upon. He spoke continually to similar
purpose no doubt, in that Hall, where my cousin—afterwards the wife of
John Locke, M.P. for Southwark—and I had gone to hear him out of girlish
curiosity.

The part played by Anglo-Irish ladies when the great fever which
followed the famine came on us, was the same. It became perfectly well
known that if any of the upper classes caught the fever, they almost
uniformly died. The working people could generally be cured by a total
change of diet and abundant meat and wine, but to the others no
difference could be made in that way, and numbers of ladies and
gentlemen lost their lives by attending their poor in the disease. It
was very infectious, or at least it was easily caught in each locality
by those who went into the cabins.

There were few people whom I met in Ireland in those early days whose
names would excite any interest in the reader’s mind. One was poor
Elliot Warburton, the author of the _Crescent and the Cross_, who came
many times to Newbridge as an acquaintance of my brother. He was very
refined and, as we considered, rather effeminate; but how grand, even
sublime, was he in his death! On the burning _Amazon_ in mid-Atlantic he
refused to take a place in the crowded boats, and was last seen standing
alone beside the faithful Captain at the helm as the doomed vessel was
wrapped in flames. I have never forgotten his pale, intellectual face
and somewhat puny frame, and pictured him thus—a true hero.

His brother, who was commonly known as _Hochelaga_, from the name of his
book on Canada, was a hale and genial young fellow, generally popular.
One rainy day he was prompted by a silly young lady-guest of ours to
sing a series of comic songs in our drawing-room, the point of the jokes
turning on the advances of women to men. My dear mother, then old and
feeble, after listening quietly for a time, slowly rose from her sofa,
walked painfully across the room, and leaning over the piano said in her
gentle way a few strong words of remonstrance. She could not bear, she
said, that men should ridicule women. Respect and chivalrous feeling for
them, even when they were foolish and ill-advised, were the part, she
always thought, of a generous man. She would beg Mr. Warburton to choose
some other songs for his fine voice. All this was done so gently and
with her sweet, kind smile, that no one could take offence. Mr.
Warburton was far from doing so. He was, I could see, touched with
tender reverence for his aged monitress, and rising hastily from the
piano, made the frankest apologies, which of course were instantly
accepted. I have described this trivial incident because I think it
illustrates the kind of influence which was exercised by women of the
old school of “_decorum_.”

Another man who sometimes came to our house, was Dr. Longley, then
Bishop of Ripon, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a very
charming person, without the slightest episcopal _morgue_ or
affectation, and with the kindest brown eyes in the world. His wife was
niece, and, I believe, eventually heiress, of our neighbour Mrs. Evans;
and he and his family spent some summers at Portrane in the Fifties when
we had many pleasant parties and picnics. I shall not forget how the
Bishop laughed when the young Longleys and I and a few guests of my own,
inaugurated some charades, and our party, all in disguise, were
announced on our arrival at Portrane, as “Lady Worldly,” “Miss Angelina
Worldly,” “Sir Bumpkin Blunderhead,” and the “Cardinal Lord Archbishop
of Rheims.”

Our word was “Novice.” I, as Lady Worldly, in my great-grandmother’s
petticoat and powdered _toupee_, gave my daughter Angelina a lecture on
the desirability of marrying “Sir Bumpkin Blunderhead” who was rich, and
of dismissing Captain Algernon who was poor. Sir Bumpkin then made his
proposals, to which Angelina emphatically answered “No.” In the second
scene I met Sir Bumpkin at the gaming table, and fleeced him utterly;
the end of his “VICE” being suicide on the adjacent sofa. Angelina then,
in horror took the veil, and became a “_No-vice_,” duly admitted to her
Nunnery by the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims (my youngest brother
in a superb scarlet dressing gown) who pronounced a Sermon on the
pleasures of fasting and going barefoot. Angelina retired to her cell,
but was soon disturbed by a voice outside the window (Henry Longley’s);
and exclaiming “Algernon, beloved Algernon!” a speedy elopement over the
back of the sofa concluded the fate of the _Novice_ and the charade.

There was another charade in which we held a debate in Parliament on a
Motion to “abolish the sun and moon,” which amused the bishop to the
last degree, especially as we made fun of Joseph Hume’s retrenchments;
he being a particular friend and frequent guest of our hostess. The
abolition of the Sun would, we feared, affect the tax on parasols.

At Ripon, as Dr. Longley told me, the Palace prepared for him (the first
bishop of the new see) had, as ornaments of the front of the house, two
full-sized stone (or plaster) Angels. One day a visitor asked him:
“Pray, my Lord, is it supposed by Divines that Angels wear the order of
the Garter?” On inspection it proved that the Ripon Angels had formerly
done service as statues of the Queen and Prince Albert, but that wings
had been added to fit them for the episcopal residence. Sufficient care,
however, had not been taken to efface the insignia of the Most
Illustrious Order; and “_Honi soit qui mal y pense_” might be dimly
deciphered on the leg of the male celestial visitant.

A lady nearly related to Mrs. Longley, who had married an English
nobleman, adopted the views of the Plymouth Brothers (or as all the Mrs.
Malaprops of the period invariably styled them, the “Yarmouth
Bloaters”), which had burst into sudden notoriety. When her husband died
leaving her a very wealthy woman, she thought it her duty to carry out
the ideas of her sect by putting down such superfluities of her
establishment as horses and carriages, and a well appointed table. She
accordingly wrote to her father and begged him to dispose of all her
plate and equipages. Lord C—— made no remonstrance and offered no
arguments; and after a year or two he received a letter from his
daughter couched in a different strain. She told him that she had now
reached the conviction that it was “the will of God that a peeress
should live as a peeress,” and she begged him to buy for her new
carriages and fresh plate. Lord C——’s answer must have been a little
mortifying. “I knew, my dear, that you would come sooner or later to
your senses. You will find your carriages at your coachmakers and your
plate at your bankers.”

Mrs. Evans, _née_ Sophia Parnell, the aunt of both these ladies, and a
great-aunt of Charles Stewart Parnell, was, as I have said, our nearest
neighbour and in the later years of my life at Newbridge my very kind
old friend. For a long time political differences between my father and
her husband,—George Hampden Evans, M.P., who had managed to wrest the
county from the Tories,—kept the families apart, but after his death we
were pleasantly intimate for many years. She often spoke to me of the
Avondale branch of her family, and more than once said: “There is
mischief brewing! I am troubled at what is going on at Avondale. My
nephew’s wife” (the American lady, Delia Stewart) “has a hatred of
England, and is educating my nephew, like a little Hannibal, to hate it
too!” How true was her foresight there is no need now to rehearse, nor
how near that “little Hannibal” came to our Rome! Charles Parnell was
very far from being a representative Irishman. He was of purely English
extraction, and even in the female line had no drop of Irish blood. His
mother, as all the world knows, was an American; his grandmother was one
of the Howards of the family of the Earls of Wicklow, his
great-grandmother a Brooke, of a branch of the old Cheshire house; and,
beyond this lady again, his grand-dames were Wards and Whitsheds. In
short, like other supposed “illustrious Irishmen”—Burke, Grattan,
Goldsmith, and Wellington—Mr. Parnell was only one example more of the
supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon intellect in every land of its adoption.

Mrs. Evans had known Madame de Stael, Condorcet and many other
interesting French people in her youth, and loved the Condorcets warmly.
She described to me a stiff, old-fashioned dinner at which she had been
present when Madame de Stael was a guest. After dinner, the ladies,
having retired to the drawing-room, sat apart from Madame de Stael in
terror, and she looked them over with undisguised contempt. After a
while she rose and, without asking the consent of the mistress of the
house, rang the bell. When the footman appeared, she delivered the
startling order: “Tell the gentlemen to come up!” The sensation among
the formal and scandalized ladies upstairs, and the gentlemen just
settling down to their usual long potations below, may be well imagined.

When her husband died, Mrs. Evans built in his memory a fine Round Tower
on the plan and of the size of the best of the old Irish towers. It
stands on high ground on what was her deer-park, and is a useful
landmark to sailors all along that dangerous coast, where the dreadful
wreck of the _Tayleur_ took place. On the shore below, under the lofty
black cliffs, are several very imposing caverns. In the largest of
these, which is lighted from above by a shaft, Mrs. Evans, on one
occasion, gave a great luncheon party, at which I was present. The
company were all in high spirits and thoroughly enjoying the pigeon-pies
and champagne, when some one observed that the tide might soon be
rising. Mrs. Evans replied that it was all right, there was plenty of
time, and the festival proceeded for another half-hour, when somebody
rose and strolled to the mouth of the cavern and soon uttered a cry of
alarm. The tide _had_ risen, and was already beating at a formidable
depth against both sides of the rocks which shut in the cave.
Consternation of course reigned among the party. A night spent in the
further recesses of that damp hole, even supposing the tide did not
reach the end (which was very doubtful), afforded anything but a
cheerful prospect. Could anybody get up through the shaft to the upper
cliff? Certainly, if they had a long ladder. But there were no ladders
lying about the cave; and, finally, everybody stood mournfully watching
the rising waters at the mouth of their prison. Mrs. Evans all this time
appeared singularly calm, and administered a little encouragement to
some of the almost fainting ladies. When the panic was at its climax,
Mrs. Evans’ own large boat was seen quietly rounding the projecting
rocks and was soon comfortably pushed up to the feet of the imprisoned
party, who had nothing to do but to embark in two or three detachments
and be safely landed in the bay outside, beyond the reach of the sea.
The whole incident, it is to be suspected, had been pre-arranged by the
hostess to infuse a little wholesome excitement among her country
guests.

Our small village church at Donabate was not often honoured by this
lady’s presence, but one Sunday she saw fit to attend service with some
visitors; and a big dog unluckily followed her into the pew and lay
extended on the floor, which he proceeded to beat with his tail after
the manner of impatient dogs under durance. This disturbance was too
much for the poor parson, who did not love Mrs. Evans. As he proceeded
with the service and the rappings were repeated again and again, his
patience gave way, and he read out this extraordinary lesson to his
astonished congregation:—“The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with
himself. Turn out that dog, if you please! It’s extremely wrong to bring
a dog into church.” During the winter Mrs. Evans was wont to live much
alone in her country house, surrounded only by her old servants and
multitudes of old books. When at last, in old age, she found herself
attacked by mortal disease she went to Paris to profit by the skill of
some French physician in whom she had confidence, and there, with
unshaken courage she passed away. Her remains, enclosed in a leaden
coffin, were brought back to Portrane, and her Irish terrier who adored
her, somehow recognised the dreadful chest and exhibited a frenzy of
grief; leaping upon it and tearing at the pall with piteous cries. Next
morning, strange to say, the poor brute was, with six others about the
place, in such a state of excitement as to be supposed to be rabid and
it was thought necessary to shoot them all. One of them leaped the gate
of the yard and escaping bit two of my father’s cows, which became
rabid, and were shot in my presence. Mrs. Evans was buried beside her
beloved husband in the little roofless and ruined church of Portrane,
close by the shore. On another grave in the same church belonging to the
same family, a dog had some years previously died of grief.

A brother of this lady, who walked over often to Newbridge from Portrane
to bring my mother some scented broom which she loved, was a very
singular and pathetic character. He was a younger brother of that
sufficiently astute man of the world, Sir Henry Parnell, afterwards Lord
Congleton, but was his antipodes in disposition. Thomas Parnell, “Old
Tom Parnell,” as all Dublin knew him for forty years, had a huge
ungainly figure like Dr. Johnson’s, and one of the sweetest, softest
faces ever worn by mortal man. He had, at some remote and long forgotten
period, been seized with a fervent and self-denying religious enthusiasm
of the ultra-Protestant type; and this had somehow given birth in his
brain to a scheme for arranging texts of the Bible in a mysterious order
which, when completed, should afford infallible answers to every
question of the human mind! To construct the interminable tables
required for this wonderful plan, poor Tom Parnell devoted his life and
fortune. For years which must have amounted to many decades, he laboured
at the work in a bare, gloomy, dusty room in what was called a
“Protestant Office” in Sackville Street. Money went speedily to clerks
and printers; and no doubt the good man (who himself lived, as he used
to say laughingly, on “a second-hand bone,”) gave money also freely in
alms. One way or another Mr. Parnell grew poorer and more poor, his coat
looked shabbier, and his beautiful long white hair more obviously in
need of a barber. Once or twice every summer he was prevailed on by his
sister to tear himself from his work and pay her a few weeks’ visit in
the country at Portrane; and to her and all her visitors he preached
incessantly his monotonous appeal: “Repent; and cease to eat good
dinners, and devote yourselves to compiling texts!” When his sister—who
had treated him as a mother would treat a silly boy—died, she left him a
small annuity, to be paid to him weekly in dribblets by trustees, lest
he should spend it at once and starve if he received it half-yearly.
After this epoch he worked on with fewer interruptions than ever at his
dreary text-books in that empty, grimy office. Summer’s sun and winter’s
snow were alike to the lonely old man. He ploughed on at his hopeless
task. There was no probability that he should live to fill up the
interminable columns, and no apparent reason to suppose that any human
being would use the books if he ever did so and supposing them to be
printed. But still he laboured on. Old friends—myself among them—who had
known him in their childhood, looked in now and then to shake hands with
him, and, noticing how pale and worn and aged he seemed, tried to induce
him to come to their homes. But he only exhorted them (like Tolstoi,
whom he rather resembled), as usual, to repent and give up good dinners
and help him with his texts, and denounced wildly all rich people who
lived in handsome parks with mud villages at their gates, as he said,
“like a velvet dress with a draggled skirt.” Then, when his visitor had
departed, Mr. Parnell returned patiently to his interminable texts. At
last one day, late in the autumn twilight, the porter, whose duty it was
to shut up the office, entered the room and found the old man sitting
quietly in the chair where he had laboured so long—fallen into the last
long sleep.

I never saw much of Irish society out of our own county. Once, when I
was eighteen, my father and I went a tour of visits to his relations in
Connaught, travelling, as was necessary in those days, very slowly with
post-horses to our carriage, my maid on the box, and obliged to stop at
inns on the way. Some of these inns were wretched places. I remember in
one finding a packet of letters addressed to some attorney, under my
bolster! At another, this dialogue took place between me and the
waiter:—

“What can we have for dinner?”

“Anything you please, Ma’am. _Anything_ you please.”

“Well, but exactly what can we have?”

(Waiter, triumphantly): “You can have a pair of ducks.”

“I am sorry to say Mr. Cobbe cannot eat ducks. What else?”

“They are very fine ducks, Ma’am.”

“I dare say. But what else?”

“You might have the ducks boiled, Ma’am!”

“No, no. Can we have mutton?”

“Well; not mutton, to-day, Ma’am.”

“Some beef?”

“No, Ma’am.”

“Some veal?”

“Not any veal, I’m afraid.”

“Well, then, a fowl?”

“We haven’t got a fowl.”

“What on earth have you got, then?”

“Well, then, Ma’am, I’m afeared if you won’t have the fine pair of
ducks, there’s nothing for it but bacon and eggs!”

We went first to Drumcar and next (a two days’ drive) to Moydrum Castle
which then belonged to my father’s cousin, old Lady Castlemaine. Another
old cousin in the house showed me where, between two towers covered with
ivy, she had looked one dark night out of her bedroom window on hearing
a wailing noise below, and had seen some white object larger than any
bird, floating slowly up and then sinking down into the shadow below
again, and yet again. Of course it was the Banshee; and somebody had
died afterwards! We also had our Banshee at Newbridge about that time.
One stormy and rainy Sunday night in October my father was reading a
sermon as usual to the assembled household, and the family, gathered
near the fire in what we were wont to call on these evenings “Sinner’s
chair” and the “Seat of the Scornful,” were rather somnolent, when the
most piercing and unearthly shrieks arose apparently just outside the
windows in the pleasure ground, and startled us all wide awake. At the
head of the row of servants sat our dear old housekeeper “Joney” then
the head-gardener’s wife, who had adopted a child of three years old,
and this evening had left him fast asleep in the housekeeper’s room,
which was under part of the drawing-room. Naturally she and all of us
supposed that “Johnny” had wakened and was screaming on finding himself
alone; and though the outcries were not like those of a child, “Joney”
rose and hastily passed down the room and went to look after her charge.
To reach the housekeeper’s room she necessarily passed the servants’
hall and out of it rushed the coachman—a big, usually red-faced
Englishman, whom she declared was on that occasion as pale as death. The
next instant one of the housemaids, who had likewise played truant from
prayers, came tottering down from a bedroom (so remote that I have
always wondered how _any_ noise below the drawing-room could have
reached it), and sunk fainting on a chair. The little boy meanwhile was
sleeping like a cherub in undisturbed repose in a clothes basket! What
that wild noise was,—heard by at least two dozen people,—we never
learned and somehow did not care much to investigate.

After our visit at Moydrum my father and I went to yet other cousins at
Garbally; his mother’s old home. At that time—I speak of more than half
a century ago,—the Clancarty family was much respected in Ireland; and
the household at Garbally was conducted on high religious principles and
in a very dignified manner. It was in the Forties that the annual Sheep
Fair of Ballinasloe was at its best, and something like 200,000 sheep
were then commonly herded at night in Garbally Park. The scene of the
Fair was described as curious, but (like a stupid young prig, as I must
have been) I declined the place offered me in one of the carriages and
stopped in the house on the plea of a cold, but really to enjoy a
private hunt in the magnificent library of which I had caught a glimpse.
When the various parties came back late in the day there was much talk
of a droll mishap. The Marquis of Downshire of that time, who was
stopping in the house, was a man of colossal strength, and rumour said
he had killed two men by accidental blows intended as friendly. However
this may be, he was on this occasion overthrown _by sheep_! He was
standing in the gangway between the hurdles in the great fair, when an
immense flock of terrified animals rushed through, overset him and
trampled him under their feet. When he came home, laughing good
humouredly at his disaster, he presented a marvellous spectacle with his
rather _voyant_ light costume of the morning in a frightful pickle.
Another agreeable man in the house was the Lord Devon of that day, a
very able and cultivated man (whom I straightway interrogated concerning
Gibbon’s chapter on the Courtenays!); and poor Lord Leitrim, a kindly
and good Irish landlord, afterwards most cruelly murdered. There were
also the Ernes and Lord Enniskillen and many others whom I have
forgotten, and a dear aged lady; the Marchioness of Ormonde. Hearing I
had a cold, she kindly proposed to treat me medically and said: “I
should advise you to try Brandy and Salt. For my own part I take
Morrison’s pills whenever I am ill, if I cannot get hydropathic baths;
but I have a very great opinion of Tar-water. Holloway’s ointment and
pills, too, are excellent. My son, you know, joined Mr. ——” (I have
forgotten the name) “to pay £15,000 to St. John Long for his famous
recipe; but it turned out no good when he had it. No! I advise you
decidedly to try brandy and salt.”

From Garbally we drove to Parsonstown, where Lady Rosse was good enough
to welcome us to indulge my intense longing to see the great telescope,
then quite recently erected. Lord Rosse at that time believed that, as
he had resolved into separate stars many of the nebulæ which were
irresolvable by Herschel’s telescope, there was a presumption that _all_
were resolvable; and consequently that the nebular hypothesis must be
abandoned. The later discovery of gaseous nebulæ by the spectroscope
re-established the theory. I was very anxious on the subject, having
pinned my faith already on the _Vestiges of Creation_ (then a new book),
in sequence to Nichol’s _Architecture of the Heavens_: that prose-poem
of science. Lord Rosse was infinitely indulgent to my girlish curiosity,
and took me to see the process of polishing the speculum of his second
telescope; a most ingenious piece of mechanism invented mainly by
himself. He also showed me models which he has made in plaster of lunar
craters. I saw the great telescope by day, but, alas, when darkness came
and it was to have been ready for me to look through it and I was
trembling with anticipation, the butler came to the drawing-room door
and announced: “A rainy night, my lord”! It was a life-long
disappointment, for we could not stay another day though hospitably
pressed to do so; and I never had another chance.

Lord Rosse had guessed already that Robert Chambers was the author of
the _Vestiges_. He explained to me the reason for the enormous mass of
masonry on which the seven-foot telescope rested, by the curious fact
that even where it stood within his park, the roll of a cart more than
two miles away, outside, was enough to make the ground tremble and to
disturb the observation.

There was a romantic story then current in Ireland about Lord and Lady
Rosse. It was said that, as a young man, he had gone _incog._ and worked
as a handicraftsman in some large foundry in the north of England to
learn the secrets of machine making. After a time his employer,
considering him a peculiarly promising young artisan, invited him
occasionally to a Sunday family dinner when young Lord Parsons, as he
then was, speedily fell in love with his host’s daughter. Observing what
was going on, the father put a veto on what he thought would be a
_mésalliance_ for Miss Green, and the supposed artisan left his
employment and the country; but not without receiving from the young
lady an assurance that she returned his attachment. Shortly afterwards,
having gone home and obtained his father, Lord Rosse’s consent, he
re-appeared and now made his proposals to Mr. Green, _père_, in all due
form as the heir of a good estate and an earldom. He was not rejected
this time.

I tell this story only as a pretty one current when I saw Lord and Lady
Rosse; a very happy and united couple with little children who have
since grown to be distinguished men. Very possibly it may be only a
myth!

I never saw Archbishop Whately except when he confirmed me in the church
of Malahide. He was no doubt a sincerely pious man, but, his rough and
irreverent manner (intended, I believe, as a protest against the
Pecksniffian tone then common among evangelical dignitaries) was almost
repulsive and certainly startling. Outside his palace in Stephen’s Green
there was at that time a row of short columns connected from top to top
by heavy chains which fell in festoons and guarded the gardens of the
square. Nothing would serve his Grace (we were told with horror by the
spectators) than to go of a morning after breakfast and sit on these
chains smoking his cigar as he swung gently back and forth, kicking the
ground to gain impetus.

On the occasion of my confirmation he exhibited one of his whims most
unpleasantly for me. This was, that he must actually touch, in his
episcopal benediction, the _head_, not merely the _hair_, of the
kneeling catechumen. Unhappily, my maid had not foreseen this
contingency, but had thought she could not have a finer opportunity for
displaying her skill in plaiting my redundant locks; and had built up
such an edifice with plaits and pins, (on the part of my head which
necessarily came under the Archbishop’s hand) that he had much ado to
overthrow the same! He did so, however, effectually; and I finally
walked back, through the church to my pew with all my _chevelure_
hanging down in disorder, far from “admired” by me or anybody.

Of all the phases of orthodoxy I think that of Whately,—well called the
_Hard Church_,—was the last which I could have adopted at any period of
my life. It was obviously his view that a chain of propositions might be
constructed by iron logic, beginning with the record of a miracle two
thousand years ago and ending with unavoidable conversion to the love of
God and Man!

The last person of whom I shall speak as known to me first in Ireland,
was that dear and noble woman, Fanny Kemble. She has not mentioned in
her delightful _Records_ how our acquaintance, destined to ripen into a
life-long friendship, began at Newbridge, but it was in a droll and
characteristic way.

Mrs. Kemble’s friend “H.S.”—Harriet St. Leger—lived at Ardgillan Castle,
eight Irish miles from Newbridge. Her sister, the wife of Hon. and Rev.
Edward Taylor and mother of the late Tory Whip, was my mother’s
best-liked neighbour, and at an early age I was taught to look with
respect on the somewhat singular figure of Miss St. Leger. In those days
any departure from the conventional dress of the time was talked of as
if it were altogether the most important fact connected with a woman, no
matter what might be the greatness of her character or abilities. Like
her contemporaries and fellow countrywomen, the Ladies of Llangollen,
(also Irish), Harriet St. Leger early adopted a costume consisting of a
riding habit (in her case with a skirt of sensible length) and a black
beaver hat. All the empty-headed men and women in the county prated
incessantly about these inoffensive garments, insomuch that I arrived
early at the conviction that, rational and convenient as such dress
would be, the game was not worth the candle. Things are altered so far
now that, could dear Harriet reappear, I believe the universal comment
on her dress would rather be: “How sensible and befitting”! rather than
the silly, “How odd”! Anyway I imagine she must have afforded a somewhat
singular contrast to her ever magnificent, not to say gorgeous friend
Fanny Kemble, when at the great Exhibition of 1851, they were the
observed of observers, sitting for a long time side by side close to the
crystal fountain.

Every reader of the charming _Records of a Girlhood_ and _Recollections
of Later Life_, must have felt some curiosity about the personality of
the friend to whom those letters of our English Sevigné were addressed.
I have before me as I write an excellent reproduction in platinotype
from a daguerreotype of herself which dear Harriet gave me some twenty
years ago. The pale, kind, sad face is, I think inexpressibly touching;
and the woman who wore it deserved all the affection which Fanny Kemble
gave her. She was a deep and singularly critical thinker and reader, and
had one of the warmest hearts which ever beat under a cold and shy
exterior. The iridescent genius of Fanny Kemble in the prime of her
splendid womanhood, and my poor young soul, overburdened with thoughts
too great and difficult for me, were equally drawn to seek her sympathy.

It happened once, somewhere in the early Fifties, that Mrs. Kemble was
paying a visit to Miss St. Leger at Ardgillan, and we arranged that she
should bring her over some day to Newbridge to luncheon. I was, of
course, prepared to receive my guest very cordially but, to my
astonishment, when Mrs. Kemble entered she made me the most formal
salutation conceivable and, after being seated, answered all my small
politenesses in monosyllables and with obvious annoyance and
disinclination to converse with me or with any of my friends whom I
presented to her. Something was evidently frightfully amiss, and Harriet
perceived it; but what could it be? What could be done? Happily the gong
sounded for luncheon, and, my father being absent, my eldest brother
offered his arm to Mrs. Kemble and led her, walking with more than her
usual stateliness across the two halls to the dining-room, where he
placed her, of course, beside himself. I was at the other end of the
table but I heard afterwards all that occurred. We were a party of
eighteen, and naturally the long table had a good many dishes on it in
the old fashion. My brother looked over it and asked: “What will you
take, Mrs. Kemble? Roast fowl? or galantine? or a little Mayonnaise, or
what else?”

“Thank you,” replied Mrs. Kemble, “_If there be a potato!_”

Of course there was a potato—nay, several; but a terrible _gêne_ hung
over us all till Miss Taylor hurriedly called for her carriage, and the
party drove off.

The moment they left the door after our formal farewells, Harriet St.
Leger (as she afterwards told me) fell on her friend: “Well, Fanny,
never, _never_ will I bring you anywhere again. How _could_ you behave
so to Fanny Cobbe?”

“I cannot permit any one,” said Mrs. Kemble, “to invite a number of
people to meet me without having asked my consent; I do not choose to be
made a gazing-stock to the county. Miss Cobbe had got up a regular party
of all those people, and you could see the room was decorated for it.”

“Good Heavens, what are you talking of?” said Harriet, “those ladies and
gentlemen are all her relations, stopping in the house. She could not
turn them out because you were coming, and her room is always full of
flowers.”

“Is that really so?” said Mrs. Kemble, “Then you shall tell Fanny Cobbe
that I ask her pardon for my bad behaviour, and if she will forgive me
and come to see me in London, _I will never behave badly to her again_?”

In a letter of hers to Harriet St. Leger given to me after her death, I
was touched to read the following reference to this droll incident:—

“Bilton Hotel,
“Wed. 9th.

“I am interrupted by a perfect bundle of fragrance and fresh colour
sent by Miss Cobbe with a note in which I am sorry to say she gives me
very little hope of seeing her at all while I am in Dublin. This, as
you know, is a real disappointment to me. I had rather fallen in love
with her, and wished very much to have had some opportunity of more
intercourse with her. Her face when I came to talk to her seemed to me
keen and sweet—a charming combination—and I was so grateful to her for
not being repelled by my ungracious demeanour at her house, that I had
quite looked forward to the pleasure of seeing her again.

“F. A. K.”

I did go to see her in London; and she kept her word, and was my dear
and affectionate friend and bore many things from me with perfect good
humour, for forty years; including (horrible to recall!) my falling fast
asleep while she was reading Shakespeare to Mary Lloyd and me in our
drawing-room here at Hengwrt! Among her many kindnesses was the gift of
a mass of her Correspondence from the beginning of her theatrical career
in 1821 to her last years. She also successively gave me the MSS. of all
her _Records_, but in each case I induced her to take them back and
publish them herself. I have now, as a priceless legacy, a large parcel
of her own letters, and five thick volumes of autograph letters
addressed to her by half the celebrated men and women of her time. They
testify uniformly to the admiration, affection and respect
wherewith,—her little foibles notwithstanding,—she was regarded by three
generations.

CHAPTER
VIII.
_UPROOTED._

I draw now to the closing years of my life at Newbridge, after I had
published my first book and before my father died. They were happy and
peaceful years, though gradually overshadowed by the sense that the long
tenure of that beloved home must soon end. It is one of the many
perversities of woman’s destiny that she is, not only by hereditary
instinct a home-making animal, but is encouraged to the uttermost to
centre all her interests in her home; every pursuit which would give her
anchorage elsewhere, (always excepting marriage) being more or less
under general disapproval. Yet when the young woman takes thoroughly to
this natural home-making, when she has, like a plant, sent her roots
down into the cellars and her tendrils up into the garrets and every
room bears the impress of her personality, when she glories in every
good picture on the walls or bit of choice china on the tables and
blushes for every stain on the carpets, when, in short, her home is, as
it should be, her outer garment, her nest, her shell, fitted to her like
that of a murex, then, almost invariably comes to her the order to leave
it all, tear herself out of it,—and go to make (if she can) some other
home elsewhere. Supposing her to have married early, and that she is
spared the late uprooting from her father’s house at his death, she has
usually to bear a similar transition when she survives her husband; and
in this case often with the failing health and spirits of old age. I do
not know how these heartbreaks are to be spared to women of the class of
the daughters and wives of country gentlemen or clergymen; but they are
hard to bear. Perhaps the most fortunate daughters (harsh as it seems to
say so) are those whose fathers die while they are themselves still in
full vigour and able to begin a new existence with spirit and make new
friends; as was my case. Some of my contemporaries, whose fathers lived
till they were fifty, or even older, had a bitterer trial in quitting
their homes and were never able to start afresh.

In my last few years at Newbridge my father and I were both cheered by
the frequent presence of my dear little niece, Helen, on whom he doted,
and towards whom flowed out the tenderness which had scarcely been
allowed its free course with his own children. _L’Art d’être Grandpère_
is surely the most beautiful of arts! When all personal pleasures have
pretty well died away then begins the reflected pleasure in the fresh,
innocent delights of the child; a moonlight of happiness perhaps more
sweet and tender than the garish joys of the noontide of life. To me,
who had never lived in a house with little children, it brought a whole
world of revelations to have this babe and afterwards her little sister,
in a nursery under my supervision during their mother’s long illnesses.
I understood for the first time all that a child may be in a woman’s
life, and how their little hands may pull our heart-strings. My nieces
were dear, good, little babes then; they are dear and good women now;
the comfort of my age, as they were the darlings of my middle life.

Having received sufficient encouragement from the _succès d’estime_ of
my _Theory of Intuitive Morals_, I proceeded now to write the first of
the three books on _Practical Morals_, with which I designed to complete
the work. My volume of _Religious Duty_, then written, has proved,
however, the only one of the series ever published. At a later time I
wrote some chapters on _Personal_ and on _Social Duty_, but was
dissatisfied with them, and destroyed the MSS.

As _Religious Duty_ (3rd edition) is still to be had (included by Mr.
Fisher Unwin in his late re-issue of my principal works), I need not
trouble the reader by any such analysis of it as I have given of the
former volume. In writing concerning _Religious Duty_ at the time, I
find in a letter of mine to Harriet St. Leger (returned to me when she
grew blind), that I spoke of it thus:—

“Newbridge, April 25th, 1857.

“You see I have, after all, inserted a little preface. I thought it
necessary to explain the object of the book, lest it might seem
superfluous where it coincides with orthodox teaching, and offensively
daring where it diverges from it. Your cousin’s doubt about my
Christianity lasting till she reached the end of _Intuitive Morals_,
made me resolve to forestall in this case any such danger of seeming
to fight without showing my colours. You see I have now nailed them
mast-high. But though I have done this, I cannot say that it has been
in any way to _make converts_ to my own creed that I have written this
book. I wanted to show those who are already Theists, actually or
approximately, that Theism is something far more than they seem
commonly to understand. I wanted, too, to show to those who have had
their historical faith shaken, but who still cling to it from the
belief that without it no real _religion_ is possible, that they may
find all which their hearts can need in a faith purely intuitive.
Perhaps I ought rather to say that these objects have been before me
in working at my book. I suppose in reality the impulse to such an
undertaking comes more simply. We think we have found some truths, and
we long to develop and communicate them. We do not sit down and say
‘Such and such sort of people want such and such a book. I will try
and write it.’”

The plan of this book is simple. After discussing in the first chapter
the _Canon of Religious Duty_, which I define to be “Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thine heart and soul and strength,”—I discuss, in
the next chapter, _Religious Offences_ against that Law,—Blasphemy,
Hypocrisy, Perjury, &c. The third chapter deals with _Religious Faults_
(failures of duty) such as Thanklessness, Irreverence, Worldliness, &c.
The fourth, which constitutes the main bulk of the book, consists of
what are practically six Sermons on Thanksgiving, Adoration, Prayer,
Repentance, Faith, and Self-Consecration.

The book has been very much liked by some readers, especially the
chapter on _Thanksgiving_, which I reprinted later in a tiny volume. It
is strange in these days of pessimism to read it again. I am glad I
wrote it when my heart was unchilled, my sight undimmed, by the frozen
fog which has been hanging over us for the last two decades. An incident
connected with this chapter touched me deeply. My father in his last
illness permitted it to be read to him. Having never before listened to
anything I had written, and having, even then, no idea who wrote the
book, he expressed pleasure and sympathy with it, especially with a
passage in which I speak of the hope of being, in the future life,
“young again in all that makes childhood beautiful and holy.” It was a
pledge to me of how near our hearts truly were, under apparently the
world-wide differences.

My father was now sinking slowly beneath the weight of years and of
frequent returns of the malarial fever of India,—in those days called
“Ague,”—which he had caught half a century before in the Mahratta wars.
I have said something already of his powerful character, his upright,
honourable, fearless nature; his strong sense of Duty. Of the lower sort
of faults and vices he was absolutely incapable. No one who knew him
could imagine him as saying a false or prevaricating word; of driving a
hard bargain; of eating or drinking beyond the strictest rules of
temperance; least of all, of faithlessness in thought or deed to his
wife or her memory. His mistakes and errors, such as they were, arose
solely from a fiery temper and a despotic will, nourished rather than
checked by his ideas concerning the rights of parents, and husbands,
masters and employers; and from his narrow religious creed. Such as he
was, every one honoured, some feared, and many loved him.

Before I pass on to detail more of the incidents of my own life, I shall
here narrate all that I can recall of his descriptions of the most
important occurrence in his career—the battle of Assaye.

In Mr. George Hooper’s delightful Life of Wellington (_English Men of
Action Series_) there is a spirited account of that battle, whereby
British supremacy in India was practically secured. Mr. Hooper speaks
enthusiastically of the behaviour, in that memorable fight, of the 19th
Light Dragoons, and of its “splendid charge,” which, with the
“irresistible sweep” of the 78th, proved the “decisive stroke” of the
great day. He describes this charge thus:—

... “The piquets, or leading troops on the right were by mistake led
off towards Assaye, uncovering the second line, and falling themselves
into a deadly converging fire. The Seventy-Fourth followed the piquets
into the cannonade, and a great gap was thus made in the array. The
enemy’s horse rode up to charge, and so serious was the peril on the
right that the Nineteenth Light Dragoons and a native cavalry regiment
were obliged to charge at once. Eager for the fray, they galloped up,
cheering as they went, and cheered by the wounded; and, riding home,
even to the batteries, saved the remnants of the piquets and of the
Seventy-Fourth.” (P. 76.)

My father, then a cornet in the regiment, carried the regimental flag of
the Nineteenth through that charge, and for the rest of the day; the
non-commissioned officer whose duty it was to bear it having been struck
dead at the first onset, and my father saving the flag from falling into
the hands of the Mahrattas.

The Nineteenth Light Dragoons of that epoch wore a grey uniform, and
heavy steel helmets with large red plumes, which caused the Mahrattas to
nickname them “The Red Headed Rascals.” On their shoulders were simple
epaulettes made of chains of some common white metal, one of which I
retrieved from a heap of rubbish fifty years after Assaye, and still
wear as a bracelet. The men could scarcely have deserved the name of
_Light_ if many of them weighed, as did my father at 18, no less than 18
stone, inclusive of his saddle and accoutrements! The fashion of long
hair, tied in “pig tails,” still prevailed; and my father often
laughingly boasted that the mass of his fair hair, duly tied with black
ribbon, had descended far enough to reach his saddle and to form an
efficient protection from sabre cuts on his back and shoulders. Mr.
Hooper estimates the total number of the British army at Assaye at
5,000; my father used to speak of it as about 4,500; while the _cavalry_
alone, of the enemy were some 30,000. The infantry were seemingly
innumerable, and altogether covered the plain. There was also a
considerable force of artillery on Scindias’ side, and, commanding them,
was a French officer whose name my father repeatedly mentioned, but
which I have unfortunately forgotten.[12] The handful of English troops
had done a full day’s march under an Indian sun before the battle began.
When the Nineteenth received orders to charge they had been sitting long
on their horses in a position which left them exposed to the _ricochet_
of the shot of the enemy, and the strain on the discipline of the men,
as one after another was picked off, had been enormous; not to prevent
them from _retreating_—they had no such idea,—but to stop them from
charging without orders. At last the word of command to charge came from
Wellesley, and the whole regiment responded with a _roar_! Then came the
fire of death and men and officers fell all around, as it seemed almost
every second man. Among the rest, as I have said, the colour-sergeant
was struck down, and my father, as was his duty, seized the flag from
the poor fellow’s hands as he fell and carried it, waving in front of
the regiment up to the guns of the enemy.

In one or other of the repeated charges which the Nineteenth continued
to make even after their commanding officer, Colonel Maxwell, had been
killed, my father found himself in hand to hand conflict with the French
General who was in command of the Mahratta artillery. He wore an
ordinary uniform and my father, having struck him with his sabre at the
back of his neck, expected to see terrible results from the blow of a
hand notorious all his life for its extraordinary strength. But
fortunately the General had prudently included a coat of armour under
his uniform; and the blow only resulted in a considerable dent in the
blade of my father’s sabre; a dent which (in Biblical language) “may be
seen unto this day,” where the weapon hangs in the study at Newbridge.

At another period of this awful battle the young Cornet dismounted
beside a stream to drink, and to allow his horse to do the same. While
so occupied, Colonel Wellesley came up to follow his example, and they
conversed for a few minutes while dipping their hands and faces in the
brook (or river). As they did so, there slowly oozed down upon them,
trickling through the water, a streamlet of blood. Of course they both
turned away in horror and remounted to return to the battle.

At last the tremendous struggle was over. An army of 4,500 or 5,000
tired English troops, had routed five times as many horsemen and perhaps
twenty times as many infantry of the warlike Mahrattas. The field was
clear and the English flag waved over the English Marathon.

After this the poor, wearied soldiers were compelled to ride back _ten
miles_ to camp for the night; and when they reached their ground and
dismounted, many of them—my father among the rest—fell on the earth and
slept where they lay. Next morning they marched back to the field of
Assaye and the scene which met their eyes was one which no lapse of
years could efface from memory. The pomp and glory and joy of victory
were past; the horror of it was before them in mangled corpses of men
and horses, over which hung clouds of flies and vultures. Fourteen
officers of his own regiment, whose last meal on earth he had shared in
convivial merriment, my father saw buried together in one grave. Then
the band of the regiment played “_The Rose Tree_” and the men marched
away with set faces. Long years afterwards I happened to play that old
air on the piano, but my father stopped me, “Do not play _that_ tune,
pray! I cannot bear the memories it brings to me.”

After Assaye my father fought at Argaon (or Argaum), a battle which Mr.
Turner describes as “even more decisive than the last”; and on December
14th he joined in the terrific storming of the great fortress of
Gawiljarh, with which the war in the Deccan terminated. He received
medals for Assaye and Argaum, just fifty years after those battles were
fought!

[Illustration:

_Charles Cobbe_,
1857.
]

After his return from India, my father remained at his mother’s house in
Bath till 1809, when he married my dear mother, then living with her
guardians close by, at 29, Royal Crescent; and brought her to Newbridge,
where they both lived, as I have described, with few and short
interruptions till she died in October, 1847, and he in November, 1857.
For all that half century he acted nobly the part to which he was
called, of landlord, magistrate and head of a family. There was nothing
in him of the ideal Irish, fox-hunting, happy-go-lucky, much indebted
Squire. There never was a year in his life in which every one of his
bills was not settled. His books, piled on his study table, showed the
regular payment, week by week, of all his labourers for fifty years. No
quarter day passed without every servant in the house receiving his, or
her wages. So far was Newbridge from a Castle Rackrent that though much
in it of the furniture and decorations belonged to the previous century,
everything was kept in perfect order and repair in the house and in the
stables, coach-houses and beautiful old garden. Punctuality reigned
under the old soldier’s _régime_; clocks and bells and gongs sounded
regularly for prayers and meals; and dinner was served sharply to the
moment. I should indeed be at a loss to say in what respect my father
betrayed his Anglo-Irish race, if it were not his high spirit.

At last, and very soon after the photograph which I am inserting in this
book was taken, the long, good life drew to its end in peace. I have
found a letter which I wrote to Harriet St. Leger a day or two after his
death, and I will here transcribe part of it, rather than narrate the
event afresh.

“Nov. 14th, 1857.

“Dearest Harriet,

“My poor father’s sufferings are over. He died on Wednesday evening,
without the least pain or struggle, having sunk gradually into an
unconscious state since Sunday morning. At all events it proved a most
merciful close to his long sufferings, for he never seemed even aware
of the terrible state into which the poor limbs fell, but became
weaker and weaker, and as the mortification advanced, died away as if
in the gentlest sleep he had known for many a day. It is all very
merciful, I can feel nothing else, though it is very sad to have had
no parting words of blessing, such as I am sure he would have given
me. All those he loved best were near him. He had Dotie till the last
day of his consciousness, and the little thing continually asked
afterwards to go to his study, and enquired, ‘Grandpa ‘seep?’ When he
had ceased to speak at all comprehensibly, the morning before he died
he pointed to her picture, and half smiled when I brought it to him.
Poor old father! He is free now from all his miseries—gone home to God
after his long, long life of good and honour! Fifty years he has lived
as master here. Who but God knows all the kind and generous actions he
has done in that half century! To the very last he completed
everything, paying his labourers and settling his books on Saturday;
and we find all his arrangements made in the most perfect and
thoughtful way for everybody. There was a letter left for me. It only
contained a £100 note and the words, ‘The last token of the love and
affection of a father to his daughter.’... ‘He is now looking so noble
and happy, I might say, so handsome; his features seem so glorified by
death, that it does one good to go and sit beside him. I never saw
Death look so little terrible. Would that the poor form could lie
there, ever! The grief will be far worse after to-day, when we shall
see it for the last time. Jessie has made an outline of the face as it
is now, very like. How wonderful and blessed is this glorifying power
of death; taking away the lines of age and weak distension of muscles,
and leaving only, as it would seem, the true face of the man as he was
beneath all surface weaknesses; the ‘garment by the soul laid by’
smoothed out and folded! My cousins and Jessie and I all feel very
much how blessedly this face speaks to us; how it is _not him_, but a
token of what he is now. I grieve that I was not more to him, that I
did not better win his love and do more to deserve it; but even this
sorrow has its comfort. Perhaps he knows now that with all my heart I
did feel the deepest tenderness for his sufferings and respect for his
great virtues. At all events the wall of _creed_ has fallen down from
between our souls for ever, and I believe that was the one great
obstacle which I could never overthrow entirely. Forbearing as he
proved himself, it was never forgotten. Now _all_ that divided us is
over.... It seems all very dream-like just now, long as we have
thought of it, and I know the waking will be a terrible pang when
_all_ is over and I have left _everything_ round which my heart roots
have twined in five and thirty years. But I don’t fear—how can I, when
my utmost hopes could not have pointed to an end so happy as God has
given to my poor old father? Everything is merciful about it—even to
the time when we were all together here, and when I am neither young
enough to need protection, or old enough to feel diminished
energies....”

I carried out my long formed resolution, of course, and started on my
pilgrimage just three weeks after my father’s death. Leaving Newbridge
was the worst wrench of my life. The home of my childhood and youth, of
which I had been mistress for nineteen years, for every corner of which
I had cared, and wherein there was not a room without its tender
associations,—it seemed almost impossible to drag myself away. To strip
my pretty bedroom of its pictures and books and ornaments, many of them
my mother’s gifts, and my mother’s work; to send off my harp to be sold;
and make over to my brother my private possessions of ponies and
carriage,—(luckily my dear dog was dead,)—and take leave of all the dear
old servants and village people, formed a whole series of pangs. I
remember feeling a distinct regret and smiling at myself for doing so,
when I locked for the last time the big, old-fashioned tea-chest out of
which I had made the family breakfast for twenty years. Then came the
last morning and as I drove out of the gates of Newbridge I felt I was
leaving behind me all and everything in the world which I had loved and
cherished.

I was going also, it must be said, not only from a family circle to
entire solitude, but also from comparative wealth to poverty.
Considering the interests of my eldest brother as paramount, and the
seriousness of his charge of keeping up the house and estate, my father
left me but a very small patrimony; amounting, at the rate of interest
then obtainable, to a trifle over £200 a year. For a woman who had
always had every possible service rendered to her by a regiment of
well-trained servants, and had had £130 a year pocket-money since she
left school, it must be confessed that this was a narrow provision. My
father intended me to continue to live at Newbridge with my brother and
sister-in-law; but such a plan was entirely contrary to my view of what
my life should thenceforth become, and I accepted my poverty cheerfully
enough, with the help of a little ready money wherewith to start on my
travels. I cut off half my hair, being totally unable to grapple with
the whole without a maid, and faced the future with the advantage of the
great calm which follows any immediate concern with Death. While that
Shadow hangs over our heads we perceive but dimly the thorns and pebbles
on our road.

A week after leaving Ireland I spent one night with Harriet St. Leger in
lodgings which she and her friend, Miss Dorothy Wilson, occupied on the
Marina at St. Leonard’s.

When I had gone to my room rather late that evening, I opened my window
and looked out for the last time before my exile, on an English scene.
There was the line of friendly lamps close by, but beyond it the sea,
dark as pitch on that December night, was only revealed by the sound of
the slow waves breaking sullenly on the beach beneath. It was like a
black wall before me; the sea and sky undistinguishable. I thought:
“To-morrow I shall go out into that darkness! How like to death is
this!”

CHAPTER
IX.
_LONG JOURNEY._

The journey which I undertook when my home duties ended at the death of
my father, would be considered a very moderate excursion in these latter
days, but in 1857 it was still accounted somewhat of an enterprise for a
“lone woman.” When I told my friends that I was going to Egypt and
Jerusalem, they said: “Ah, you will get as far as Rome and Naples, and
that will be very interesting; but you will find too many difficulties
in the way of going any further,” “When I say” (I replied) “that I am
going to Egypt and Jerusalem, I mean that to Egypt and Jerusalem I shall
go.” And so, as it proved, a wilful woman had her way; and I came back
after a year with the ever-delightful privilege of observing: “I told
you so.”

I shall not dream of dragging the reader again over the well-worn ground
at the slow pace of a writer of “_Impressions de Voyage_.” The best of
my reminiscences were given to the world, in _Fraser’s_ Magazine, and
reprinted in my _Cities of the Past_, before there was yet a prospect of
a railway to Jerusalem except in Martin’s picture of the “End of the
World”; or of a “_Service d’omnibus_” over the wild solitudes of
Lebanon, where I struggled ‘mid snows and torrents which nearly whelmed
me and my horse in destruction. I rejoice to think that I saw those holy
and wonderful lands of Palestine and Egypt while Cook’s tourists were
yet unborn, and Cairo had only one small English hotel and one solitary
wheel carriage; and the solemn gaze of the Sphinx encountered no
Golf-games on the desert sands.

My proceedings were very much like those of certain birds of the
farmyard (associated particularly with Michaelmas), who very rarely are
seen to rise on the wing but when they are once incited to do so, are
wont to take a very wide circle in their flight before they come back to
the barn door!

Paris, Marseilles, Rome, Naples, Messina, Malta, Alexandria, Cairo,
Jaffa, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, Dead Sea, Jordan, Beyrout, Lebanon,
Baalbec, Cyprus, Rhodes, Smyrna, Athens, Constantinople, Cape Matapan,
Corfu, Trieste, Adelsberg, Venice, Florence, Milan, Lucerne, Geneva,
Wiesbaden, Antwerp, London—such was my “swoop,” accomplished in 11
months and at a cost of only £400. To say that I brought home a crop of
new ideas would be a small way of indicating the whole harvest of them
wherewith I returned laden. There were (I think I may summarise), as the
results of such a journey, the following great additions to my mental
stock.

First. A totally fresh conception of the glory and beauty of Nature.
When crossing the Channel I fell into talk with a charming old lady and
told her how I was looking forward to seeing the great pictures and
buildings of Italy. “Ah,” she said, “but there is Italian _Nature_ to be
seen also. Do not miss it, looking only at works of art. _I_ go to Italy
to see it much more than the galleries and churches.” I was very much
astonished at this remark, but I came home after some months spent in a
villa on Bellosguardo entirely converted to her view. Travellers there
are who weary their feet and strain their eyes till they can no longer
see or receive impressions from the miles of painted canvas, the
regiments of statues, and the streets of palaces and churches wherewith
Italy abounds; yet have never spent a day riding over the desolate
Campagna with the far off Apennines closing the horizon, or enjoyed
nights of paradise, sitting amid the cypresses and the garlanded vines,
with the stars overhead, the nightingales singing, and the fireflies
darting around among the _Rose de Maggio_. Such travellers may come back
to England proud of having verified every line of _Murray_ on the spot,
yet they have failed to “see Italy” altogether. Never shall I forget the
revelation of loveliness of the Ægean and Ionian seas, of the lower
slopes of Lebanon, and of the Acropolis of Athens, seen, as I saw it
first, at sunrise. But when my heaviest journeys were done and I paused
and rested in Villa Niccolini, with Florence below and the Val d’ Arno
before me, I felt as if the beauty of the world, as I then and there saw
it, were joy enough for a lifetime. The old lines (I know not whose they
are) kept ringing in my ears.—

“And they shall summer high in bliss
Upon the hills of God.”

I shall quote here some verses which I wrote at that time, as they
described the scene in which I lived and revelled.

THE FESTA OF THE WORLD.

A Princess came to a southern strand,
Over a summer sea;
And the sky smiled down on the laughing land,
For that land was Italy.

The fruit trees bent their laden boughs
O’er the fields with harvest gold,
And the rich vines wreathed from tree to tree,
Like garlands in temples old.

And over all fell the glad sunlight,
So warm, so bright, so clear!
The earth shone out like an emerald set
In the diamond atmosphere.

Then down to greet that lady sweet
Came the Duke from his palace hall:
“I thank thee, gentle Sire,” she cried,
“For thy princely festival.”

“For honoured guests have towns ere now
Been decked right royally;
But thy whole land is garlanded
One bower of bloom for me!”

Then smiled the Duke at the lady’s thought,
And the thanks he had lightly won;
For Nature’s eternal Festa-day
She deemed for her alone!

A Poet stood by the Princess’s side;
“O lady raise thine eye,
The Giver of this great Festival,
He dwelleth in yon blue sky.

“Thy kinsman Prince hath welcomed thee,
But God hath His world arrayed
Not more for thee than yon beggar old
Who sleeps ‘neath the ilex shade.

“His sun doth shine on the peasant’s fields,
His rain on his vineyard pour,
His flowers bloom by the worn wayside
And creep o’er the cottage door.

“For each, for all is a welcome given
And spread the world’s great feast;
And the King of Kings is the loving Host
And each child of man a guest.”[13]

The beauty of Switzerland has at no time touched me as that of Italy has
always done. There is something in the sharp, hard atmosphere of
Switzerland (and I may add in the sharp, hard characters of the Swiss)
which disenchants me in the grandest scenes.

The second thing one learns in a journey like mine is, of course, the
wondrous achievements of human Art,—Temples and Churches, fountains and
obelisks, pyramids and statues and pictures without end. But on this
head I need say nothing. Enough has been said and to spare by those far
more competent than I to write of it.

Lastly, there is a thing which I, at all events, learned by knocking
about the world. It is the enormous amount of pure _human good nature_
which is to be found almost everywhere. I should weary the reader to
tell all the little kindnesses done to me by fellow-passengers in the
railways and steamers, and by the Captains of the vessels in which I
sailed; and of the trouble which strangers took to help me out of my
small difficulties. Of course men do not meet—because they do not
want,—such services; and women, who travel with men, or even two or
three together, seldom invite them. But for viewing human nature _en
beau_, commend me to a long journey by a woman of middle age, of no
beauty, and travelling as cheaply as possible, alone.

I believe the Psychical Society has started a theory that when places
where crimes have been committed are ever after “haunted” the
apparitions are not exactly good, old-fashioned _real_ ghosts, if I may
use such an expression, but some sort of atmospheric photographs (the
term is my own) left by the parties concerned, or sent telepathically
from their present _habitat_ (wherever that may be) to the scene of
their earthly suffering or wickedness. The hypothesis, of course,
relieves us from the very unpleasant surmise that the actual soul of the
victims of assassination and robbery may have nothing better to do in a
future life than to stand guard perpetually at the dark and dank
corners, cellars, and bottoms of stone staircases, where they were
cruelly done to death fifty or a hundred years before; or to loaf like
detectives about the spots where their jewelry and cash-boxes (_so_
useful and important to a disembodied spirit!) lie concealed. But the
atmospheric photograph or magic-lantern theory, whatever truth it may
hold, exactly answers to a sense which I should think all my readers
must have experienced, as I have done, in certain houses and cities; a
sense as if the crimes which had been committed therein have left an
indescribable miasma, a lurid, impalpable shadow, like that of the ashes
of the Polynesian volcano which darkened the sun for a year; or shall we
say, like the unrecognised effluvium which probably caused Mrs. Sleeman,
in her tent, to dream she was surrounded by naked murdered men, while 14
corpses were actually lying beneath her bed and were next day
disinterred?[14] Walking once through Holyrood with Dr. John Brown (who
had not visited the place for many years), I was quite overcome by this
sense of ancient crime, perpetuated as it seemed, almost like a physical
phenomenon in those gloomy chambers; and on describing my sensations,
Dr. Brown avowed that he experienced a very similar impression. It would
almost seem as if moral facts of a certain intensity, begin to throw a
cloudy shadow of Evil, as Romist saints were said to exhale an odour of
sanctity.

If there be a city in the world where this sense is most vivid, I think
it is Rome. I have felt it also in Paris, but Rome is worst. The air
(not of the Campagna with all its fevers, but of the city itself) seems
foul with the blood and corruption of a thousand years. On the finest
spring day, in the grand open spaces of the Piazza del Popolo, San
Pietro, and the Forum, it is the same as in the darkest and narrowest
streets. No person sensitive to this impression can be genuinely
light-hearted and gay in Rome, as we often are even in our own gloomy
London. Perhaps this is sheer fancifulness on my part, but I have been
many times in Rome, twice for an entire winter, and the same impression
never failed to overcome me. On my last visit I nearly died there and it
was not to be described how earnestly I longed to emerge, as if out of
one of Dante’s _Giri_, “anywhere, anywhere out of” this Rome!

On the occasion of my first journey at Christmas, 1857, I stopped only
three weeks in the Eternal City and then went on by sea to Naples. I was
ill from the fatigues and anxieties of the previous weeks, and after a
few half-dazed visits to the Colosseum, the Vatican, and Shelley’s
grave, I found myself unable to leave my solitary fourth-floor room in
the _Europa_. A card was brought to me one day while thus imprisoned,
bearing names (unknown to me) of “Mr. and Mrs. Robert Apthorp,” and with
the singular message: “Was I the Miss Cobbe who had corresponded with
Theodore Parker in America?” My first impression was one of alarm.
“What! more trouble about my heresies still?” It was, however, quite a
different matter. My visitors were a gentleman (a _real_ American
gentleman) and his wife, with two ladies who were all among Parker’s
intimate friends in America, and to whom he had showed my letters. They
came to hold out to me the right hands of fellowship; and friends indeed
we became, in such thorough sort that, after seven-and-thirty years I am
corresponding with dear Mrs. Apthorp still. She and her sister nursed me
through my illness; and thus my solitude in Rome came to an end.

Naples struck me on my first visit, as it has done again and again, as
presenting the proof that the Beautiful is not by itself, a root out of
which the Good spontaneously grows. If we want to cultivate Purity,
Honesty, Veracity, Unselfishness or any other virtue, it is vain to
think we shall achieve our end by giving the masses pretty
pleasure-grounds and “Palaces of Delight,” or even æsthetic cottages
with the best reproductions of Botticelli adorning the walls. Do what we
may we can never hope to surround our working men with such beauty as
that of the Bay of Naples, nor to show them Art to equal the treasures
of the Museo Borbonico. And what has come of all this familiar revelling
in Beauty for centuries and millenniums to the people of Naples? Only
that they resemble more closely in ignorance, in squalor and in
degradation the most wretched Irish who dwell in mud cabins amid the
bogs, than any other people in Europe.

I had intended remaining for some time to recuperate at Naples and took
a cheery little room in a certain Pension Schiassi (now abolished) on
the Chiajia. In this Pension I met a number of kindly and interesting
people of various nationalities; the most pleasant and cultivated of all
being Finns from Helsingfors. It was a great experience to me to enter
into some sort of society again, far removed from all my antecedents; no
longer the mistress of a large house and dispenser of its hospitality,
but a wandering tourist, known to nobody and dressed as plainly as might
be. I find I wrote to my old friend, Miss St. Leger, on the subject
under date January 21st, 1858, as follows: “I am really cheerful now.
Those days in the country (at Cumæ and Capo di Monte) cheered me very
much, and I am beginning altogether to look at the future differently.
There is one thing I feel really happy about. I see now my actual
position towards people, divested of the social advantages I have
hitherto held; and I find it a very pleasant one. I don’t think I
deceive myself in imagining that people easily like me, and get
interested in my ideas, while I find abundance to like and esteem in a
large proportion of those I meet.” (Optimism, once more! the reader will
say!)

It was not, however, “all beer and skittles” for me at the Schiassi
pension. I had, as I have mentioned, taken a pretty little room looking
out on the Villa Reale and the Bay and Vesuvius, and had put up the
photographs and miniatures I carried with me and my little knick-knacks
on the writing-table, and fondly flattered myself I should sit and write
there peacefully. But I reckoned without my neighbours! It was Sunday
when I arrived and settled myself so complacently. On Monday morning,
soon after day-break, I was rudely awakened by a dreadful four-handed
strumming on a piano, apparently in my very room! On rousing myself, I
perceived that a locked door close to my bed obviously opened into an
adjoining chamber, and being (after the manner of Italian doors) at
least two inches short of the uncarpeted floor, I was to all acoustic
intents and purposes actually in the room with this atrocious jangling
piano and the two thumping performers! The practising went on for two
hours, and when it stopped a masculine voice arose to read the Bible
aloud in family devotions. Then, after a brief interval for breakfast,
burst out again the intolerable strumming. I fled, and remained out of
doors for hours, but when I came back they were at it again! I appealed
to the mistress of the house, in vain. Sir Andrew——and his daughters (I
will call them the Misses Shocking-strum, their real name concerns
nobody now) had been there before me and would no doubt stop long after
me, and could not be prevented from playing from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every
day of the week. I took a large card and wrote on it this pathetic
appeal:—

“Pity the sorrows of a poor old maid,
Whose hapless lot has made her lodge next door,
Who fain would wish those morning airs delayed;
O practise less! And she will bless you more!”

I thrust this under the ill-fitting door well into the music-room, and
waited anxiously for some measure of mercy to be meted to me in
consequence. But no! the hateful thumping and crashing went on as
before. Then I girded up my loins and went down to the packet office and
took a berth in the next steamer for Alexandria.

After landing at Messina (lovely region!) and at Malta, I embarked in a
French screw-steamer, which began to roll before we were well under
weigh, and which, when a real Levanter came on three days later, played
pitch and toss with us passengers, insomuch that we often needed to lie
on mattresses on the floor and hold something to prevent our heads from
being knocked to pieces. One day, being fortunately a very good sailor,
I scrambled up on deck and beheld a glorious scene. Euroclydon was
playing with towering waves of lapis-lazulæ all flecked and veined like
a horse’s neck with white foam, and the African sun was shining down
cloudless over the turmoil.

There were some French Nuns on board going to a convent in Cairo, where
they were to be charitably engaged taking care of girls. The monastic
mind is always an interesting study. It brings us back to the days of
Bede, and times when miracles (if it be not a bull to say so) were the
rule and the ordinary course of nature the exception. People are then
constantly seen where they are not, and not seen where they are; and the
dead are as “prominent citizens” of this world (as an American would
say) as the living. Meanwhile the actual geography and history of the
modern world and all that is going on in politics, society, art and
literature, is as dark to the good Sister or Brother as if she or he had
really (as in Hans Andersen’s story) “walked back into the eleventh
century.” My nice French nuns were very kind and instructive to me. They
told me of the Virgin’s Tree which we should see at Heliopolis (though
they knew nothing of the obelisk there), and they informed me that if
anyone looked out on Trinity Sunday exactly at sunrise, he would see
“_toutes les trois personnes de la sainte Trinité_.”

I could not help asking: “Madame les aura vues?”

“Pas précisément, Madame. Madame sait qu’à cette saison le soleil se
lêve bien tôt.”

“Mais, Madame, pour voir _loutes_ les trois personnes?”

It was no use. The good soul persisted in believing what she liked to
believe and took care never to get up and look out on Trinity Sunday
morning,—just as ten thousand Englishmen and women, who think themselves
much wiser than the poor Nun, carefully avoid looking straight at facts
concerning which they do not wish to be set right. St. Thomas’ kind of
faith which dares to look and _see_, and, if it may be to _touch_, is a
much more real faith after all than that which will not venture to open
its eyes.

Landing at Alexandria (after being blown off the Egyptian coast nearly
as far as Crete) was an epoch in my life. No book, no gallery of
pictures, can ever be more interesting or instructive than the first
drive through an Eastern city; even such a hybrid one as Alexandria. But
all the world knows this now, and I need not dwell on so familiar a
topic. The only matter I care to record here is a visit I paid to a
subterranean church which had just been opened, and of which I was
fortunate enough to hear at the moment. I have never been able to learn
anything further concerning it than appears in the following extract
from one of my note-books, and I fear the church must long ago have been
destroyed, and the frescoes, of course, effaced:

“In certain excavations now making in one of the hills of the Old
City—within a few hundred yards of the Mahmoudié Canal—the workmen
have come upon a small subterranean church; for whose very high
antiquity many arguments may be adduced. The frescoes with which it is
adorned are still in tolerable preservation, and appear to belong to
the same period of art as those rescued from Pompeii. Though
altogether inferior to the better specimens in the Museo Borbonico,
there is yet the same simplicity of attitude and drapery; the same
breadth of outline and effect produced by few touches. It is
impossible to confound them for a moment with the stiff and
meretricious style of Byzantine painting.

“The form of the church is very peculiar, and I conceive antique. If
we suppose a shaft to have been cut into the hill, its base may be
considered to form the centre of a cross. To the west, in lieu of
nave, are two staircases; one ascending, the other descending to
various parts of the hillside. To the east is a small chancel, with
depressed elliptical arch and recesses at the back and sides, of the
same form. The north transept is a mere apse, supported by rather
elegant Ionic pilasters, and having a fan-shaped roof. Opposite this,
and in the place of a south transept, is the largest apartment of the
whole grotto: a chamber, presenting a singular transition between a
modern funeral-vault and an ancient columbarium. The walls are pierced
on all sides by deep holes, of the size and shape of coffins placed
endwise. There are in all thirty-two of these holes; in which,
however, I could find no evidence that they had ever been applied to
the purpose of interment. In the corner, between this chamber and the
chancel-arch, there is a deep stone cistern sunk in the ground; I
presume a font. The frescoes at the end of the chancel are small, and
much effaced. In the eastern apse there is a group representing the
Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. In the front walls of the
chancel-arch are two life-size figures; one representing an angel, the
other having the name of Christ inscribed over it in Greek letters.
This last struck me as peculiarly interesting; from the circumstance
that the face bears no resemblance whatever to the one conventionally
received among us, in modern times. The eyes, in the Alexandrian
fresco, are dark and widely opened; the eyebrows straight and strongly
marked; the hair nearly black and gathered in short, thick masses over
the ears. I was the more attracted by these peculiarities, as my
attention had shortly before been arrested very forcibly by the
splendid bronze bust from Herculaneum, in the Museo Borbonico. This
grand and beautiful head, which Murray calls ‘Speucippus’ and the
custodi, ‘Plato in the character of the Indian Bacchus,’ resembles so
perfectly the common representations of Christ, that I should be at a
loss to define any difference, unless it be that it has, perhaps, more
intellectual power than our paintings and sculptures usually convey,
and a more massive neck. If this Alexandrian fresco really represent
the tradition of the 3rd or 4th century, it becomes a question of some
curiosity: _whence_ do we derive our modern idea of Christ’s face?”

Cairo was a great delight to me. I could not afford to stop at
Shepheard’s Hotel but took up my abode with some kind Americans I had
met in the steamer, in a sort of Pension kept by an Italian named Ronch;
in old Cairo, actually on the bank of the Nile; so literally so, that I
might have dropped a stone from our balcony into the river, just
opposite the Isle of Rhoda. From this place I made two excursions to the
Pyramids and had a somewhat appalling experience in the “King’s Chamber”
in the vault of Cheops. I had gone rather recklessly to Ghiza without
either friend or Dragoman; and allowed the wretched Scheik at the door
to send five Arabs into the pyramid with me as guides. They had only two
miserable dip candles altogether, and the darkness, dust, heat and noise
of the Arabs chanting “Vera goot lady! Backsheeh! Backsheeh! Vera goot
lady,” and so on _da capo_, all in the narrow, steeply-slanting
passages, together with the intolerable sense of weight as of a mountain
of stone over me, proved trying to my nerves. Then, when we had reached
the central vault and I had glanced at the empty sarcophagus, which is
all it contains, the five men suddenly stopped their chanting, placed
themselves with their backs to the wall in rows, with crossed arms in
the attitude of the Osiride pilasters; and one of them in a businesslike
tone, demanded: “Backsheesh”! I instantly perceived into what a trap I
had fallen, and what a fool I had been to come there alone. The idea
that they might march out and leave me alone in that awful place, in the
darkness, very nearly made me quail. But I knew it was no time to betray
alarm, so I replied that I “Intended to pay them outside, but if they
wished it I would do so at once.” I took out my purse and gave them
three shillings to be divided between the five. They took the money and
then returned to their posture against the wall.

“We want Backsheesh!”

I took my courage _à deux mains_, and said, “If you give me any more
trouble the English Consul shall hear of it, and you will get the
stick.”

“We want Backsheesh!”

“I’ll have no more of this,” I cried in a very sharp voice, and, turning
to the ringleader, who held a candle, I said, “Here, you fellow! Take
that candle on in front and let me out. Go!” _He went!_—and I blessed my
stars, and all the stars, when I emerged out of that endless passage at
last, and stood safe under the bright Egyptian sun.

I am glad to remember Ghiza as it was in those days before hotels, or
even tents, were visible near it; when the solemn Sphinx,—so strangely
and affectingly human! stood gazing over the desert sands, and beside it
were only the ancient temple, the rifled tombs, and the three great
Pyramids. To me in those days it seemed the most impressive Field of
Death in the world.

The old Arab Mosques in Cairo also delighted me greatly both for their
beauty and as studies of the original early English architecture.
Needless to say I was enchanted with the streets and bazaars, and all
the dim, strange, lovely pictures they afforded, and the Eastern odours
which pervaded them in that bright, light air, wherein my chest grew
sound and strong after having been for years oppressed with bronchial
troubles. One day in my plenitude of enjoyment of health and vigour, I
walked alone a long way down the splendid Shoubra avenue of Acacia
Lebbex trees with the moving crowd of Arab men and women in all their
varied costumes, and trains of camels and asses laden with green
trefoil, glittering in the alternate sun and shade with never a cart or
carriage to disturb the even currents to and fro. At last I came in
sight of the Nile, and in the extreme excitement of the view, hastily
concluded that the yellow bank which sloped down beyond the grass must
be sand, and that I could actually plunge my hands in the River of
Egypt. I ran down the slope some little distance from the avenue, and
took a few steps on the supposed yellow sand. It proved to be merely
mud, like the banks of the Avon at low tide at Clifton, though of
different colour, and in a moment I felt myself sinking indefinitely.
Already it was nearly up to my knees, and in a few minutes I should have
been (quietly and unperceived by anybody) entombed for the investigation
of Egyptologers of future generations. It was a ludicrous position, and
even in the peril of it I believe I laughed outright. Any way I happily
remembered that I had read years before in a bad French novel, how
people saved themselves in quicksands in the Landes by throwing
themselves down and so dividing their weight over a much larger surface
than the soles of the feet. Instantly I turned back towards the bank,
and cast myself along forward, and then by dint of enormous efforts
withdrew my feet and struggled back to _terra firma_, much, I should
think, after the mode of locomotion of an Ichthyosaurus or other “dragon
of the prime.” Arrived at a place of safety I had next to reflect how I
was to walk home into the town in the pickle to which I had reduced
myself! Luckily the hot sun of Egypt dried the mud on my homely clothes
and enabled me to brush it off as dust in an incredibly quick time.
Before it had done so, however, a frog of exceptional ugliness mistook
me for part of the bank and jumped on my lap. He looked such an ill-made
creature that I constructed at once the (non-scientific) hypothesis that
he must have been descended from some of the frogs which Pharaoh’s
magicians are said to have made in rivalry to Moses; forerunners of
those modern pathologists who are just clever enough to _give us_ all
sorts of Plagues, but always stop short of _curing_ them.

I was very anxious, of course, to ascend the Nile to Philæ, or at the
very least to Thebes; but I was too poor by far to hire a dahabieh for
myself alone, and, in those days, excursion steamers were non-existent,
or very rare. I did hear of a gentleman who wanted to make up a party
and take a boat, but he coolly proposed that I should pay half of the
expenses of five people, and I did not view that arrangement in a
favourable light. Eventually I turned sorrowfully and disappointed back
to Alexandria with a pleasant party of English and American ladies and
gentlemen; and after a short passage to Jaffa, we rode up all together
in two days to Jerusalem. I had given up riding many years before and
taken to driving instead, but there was infinite exhilaration on finding
myself again on horseback, on one of the active little, half Arab,
Syrian steeds. That wonderful ride through the Jaffa orange groves and
the Plain of Sharon with all its flowers, to Lydda and Ramleh, and then,
next day, to Jerusalem, was beyond all words interesting. I think no one
who has been brought up as we English are, on the double literature of
Palestine and England, can visit the Holy Land with other than almost
breathless curiosity mingled with a thousand tender associations. What
England is to a cultivated American traveller of Washington Irving’s or
Lowell’s stamp, _that_ is Palestine to us all. As for me, my religious
views made it, I think, rather more than less congenial and interesting
to me than to many others. I find I wrote of it to my friend from
Jerusalem (March 6th, 1858):

“I feel very happy to be here. The land seems worthy to be that in
which from earliest history the human soul has highest and oftenest
soared up to God. One wants no miraculous story to make such a country
a ‘Holy Land;’ nor can such story make it less holy to me, as it does,
I think, to some who equally disbelieve it. It seems to me as if
Christians must be, and in fact are, overwhelmed and confounded to
find themselves in the scene of such events. To me it is all pleasure.
I believe that if Christ can see us now like other departed spirits,
it is those who revere him as I do, and not those who give to him his
Father’s place, whom he can regard most complacently. If I did not
feel this it would pain me to be here.”

When I went first into the church of the Holy Sepulchre it happened, on
account of some function going on elsewhere, to be unusually free from
the crowds of pilgrims. It seemed to me to be a real parable in stone.
All the different churches, Greek, Latin, Armenian Maronite, _opened
into_ the central Temple; as if to show that every creed has a Door
leading to the true Holy Place.

I loved also the little narrow marble shrine in the midst with its
small, low door, and the mere plain altar-tomb, with room to kneel
beside it and pray,—if we will,—to him who is believed to have rested
there for the mystic three days after his crucifixion; or if we will
(and as I did), to “his Father and our Father”; in a spot hallowed by
the associations of a hundred worshipping generations, and the memory of
the holiest of men.

Another day I was able to walk alone nearly all round outside the walls
of Jerusalem, beginning at the Jaffa gate and passing round through what
was then a desert, but is now, I am told, a populous suburb. I came
successively to Siloam and to the Valley of Hinnom, and of Jehoshaphat;
to the Tombs of the Prophets, and at last to Gethsemane. At the time of
my visit, this sacred spot, containing the ruins of an “oil press”
(whence its supposed identification), was a small walled garden kept by
monks who did their best to spoil its associations. Above it I sat for a
long time beside the path up to St. Stephen’s Gate, where tradition
places the scene of the great first Christian Martyrdom. The ground is
all strewed still, with large stones and boulders, making it easy to
conjure up the terrific picture of the kneeling saint and savage crowd,
and of Saul standing by watching the scene.

Leaving Jerusalem after a week with the same pleasant English and
American companions, and with a due provision of guards and tents and
baggage mules, I rode to Bethlehem and Hebron, visiting on the way
Abraham’s oak at Mamre, which is a magnificent old terebinth, and the
vineyard of Esh-kol, then in a very poor condition of culture. We
stopped the first night close to Solomon’s Pools, and I was profane
enough to bring my sponges at earliest dawn into Jacob’s Well at the
head of the waters, and enjoy a delicious bath. Ere we turned in on the
previous evening, a clergyman of our party read to us, sitting under the
walls of the old Saracenic castle, the pages in Stanley’s Palestine
which describe, with all his vivid truthfulness and historic sentiment,
the scene which lay before us; the three great ponds, “built by Solomon,
repaired by Pontius Pilate,” which have supplied Jerusalem with water
for 3,000 years.

I am much surprised that the problem offered by the contents of the
vault beneath the Mosque of Hebron has not long ago excited the
intensest curiosity among both Jews and Christians. Here, within small
and definite limits, must lie evidence of incalculable weight in favour
of or against the veracity of the Mosaic record. If the account in Gen.
L. be correct, the bones of Jacob were brought out of Egypt and
deposited here by Joseph; embalmed in the finest and most durable
manner. We are expressly told (Gen. L., 2 and 3) that Joseph ordered the
physicians to embalm his father, that “forty days were fulfilled for
him, for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed;” and
that Joseph went up to Canaan with “all the servants of Pharaoh and the
elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt,” (a rather
amazing exodus!) and “chariots and horsemen, a very great company.” They
finally buried Jacob (v. 13) “in the Cave of the field of Machpelah
which Abraham bought.” It was unquestionably, then, a first-class Mummy,
covered with wrappers and inscriptions, and enclosed, of course, in a
splendidly-painted Mummy-coffin, which was deposited in that unique
cave; and the extraordinary sanctity which has attached to the spot as
far as tradition reaches back, affords presumption amounting almost to
guarantee that _there_, if anywhere, below the six cenotaphs in the
upper chamber, in the vault under the small hole in the floor where the
Prince of Wales and Dean Stanley were privileged to look down into the
darkness,—lie the relics which would terminate more controversies, and
throw more light on the origin of Judaism than can be done by all the
Rabbis and Bishops of Europe and Asia together! Why do not the
Rothschilds and Hirschs and Montefiores and Goldschmidts put together a
modest little subscription of a million or two and buy up Hebron, and so
settle once for all whether the Jewish Ulysses were a myth or a man; and
whether there were really an Israel of whom they are the “Children?” I
have talked to Dean Stanley on the subject, who (as he tells us in his
delightful _Jewish Church_, I., 500) shared all my curiosity, but when I
urged the query: “_Did_ he think that the relics of the Patriarchs would
be found, if we could examine the cave?” he put up his hands in a
deprecating attitude, which all who knew and loved him will remember,
and said, “Ah! that is the question, indeed!”

Is it possible that the millionaire Jews of Germany, France and England
are, after all, like my poor friends the Nuns, who would not get up at
sunrise on Trinity Sunday to see “_toutes les trois personnes de la
sainte Trinité_,”—and that they prefer to believe that the bones of the
three Patriarchs are where they ought to be, but would rather not put
that confidence to the test?

One of the sights which affected me most in the course of our pilgrimage
through Judæa was beheld after a night spent by the ladies of our party
in our tent pitched among the sands (and centipedes!) of the desert of
the Mar Saba. (Our gentlemen-friends were privileged to sleep in the
vast old monastery whence they brought us next morning the most
excellent _raki_.) As we rode out of the little valley of our encampment
and down by the convent of Mar Saba, we obtained a complete view of the
whole _hermit burrow_; for such it may properly be considered. Mar Saba
is the very ideal of a desert. It lies amid the wilderness of hills, not
grand enough to be sublime but only monotonous and hopelessly barren. So
white are these hills that at first they appear to be of chalk, but
further inspection shows them to be of whitish rock, with hardly a trace
of vegetation growing anywhere over it. On the hills there is sometimes
an inch of soil over the rock; in the valleys there are torrents of
stones over the inch of soil. Between our mid-day halt at Derbinerbeit
(the highest land in Judæa), and the evening rest at Mar Saba, our whole
march had been in utter solitude; not a village, a tent, a caravan, a
human being in sight. Not a tree or bush. Of living creatures hardly a
bird to break the dead silence of the world, only a large and venomous
snake crawling beside our track. Thus, far from human haunts, in the
heart of the wilderness, lies Mar Saba. Fit approach to such a shrine!
Through the arid, burning rocks a profound and sharply-cut chasm
suddenly opens and winds, forming a hideous valley, such as may exist in
the unpeopled moon, but which probably has not its equal in our world
for rugged and blasted desolation. There is no brook or stream in the
depths of the ravine. If a torrent may ever rush down it after the
thunderstorms with which the country is often visited, no traces of
water remain even in early spring. Barren, burning, glaring rocks alone
are to be seen on every side. Far up on the cliff, like a fortress,
stand the gloomy, windowless walls of the convent; but along the ravine
in an almost inaccessible gorge of the hills, are caves and holes
half-way down the precipice,—the dwellings of the hermits. Here, in a
den fit for a fox or a hyæna, one poor soul had died just before my
visit, after five-and-forty years of self-incarceration. Death had
released him, but many more remained; and we could see some of them from
the distant road as we passed, sitting at the mouth of their caverns, or
walking on the little ledges of rock which they had smoothed for
terraces. Their food (such as it is) is sent from the convent and let
down from the cliffs at needful intervals. Otherwise they live
absolutely alone,—alone in this hideous desolation of nature, with the
lurid, blasted desert for their sole share in God’s beautiful universe.
We are all, I suppose, accustomed to think of a hermit as our poets have
painted him, dwelling serene in

“A lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless continuity of shade,”

undisturbed by all the ugly and jarring sights and sounds of our
grinding civilization; sleeping calmly on his bed of fern, feeding on
his pulse and cresses, and drinking the water from the brook.

“He kneels at morn at noon and eve,
He hath a cushion plump,
It is the moss that wholly hides
The rotted old oak stump.”

But the hermits of Mar Saba, how different are they from him who
assoiled the Ancient Mariner? No holy cloisters of the woods, and sound
of chanting brooks, and hymns of morning birds; only this silent,
burning waste, this “desolation deified.” It seemed as if some frightful
aberration of the religious sentiment could alone lead men to choose for
home, temple, prison, tomb, the one spot of earth where no flower
springs to tell of God’s tenderness, no soft dew or sweet sound ever
falls to preach faith and love.

There are many such hermits still in the Greek Church. I have seen their
eyries perched where only vultures should have their nests, on the
cliffs of Caramania, and among the caverns of the Cyclades. Anthony and
Stylites have indeed left behind them a track of evil glory, along which
many a poor wretch still “crawls to heaven along the devil’s trail.” Are
not lives wasted like these to be put into the account when we come to
estimate the _Gesta Christi_? Must we not, looking on these and on the
ten thousand, thousand hearts broken in monasteries and nunneries all
over Europe, admit that historical Christianity has not only done good
work in the world, but _bad_ work also: and that, diverging widely from
the Spirit of Christ, it has been far from uniformly beneficent?

It was while riding some hours from Mar Saba through the low hills
before coming out on the blighted flats of the Dead Sea, that one of
those pictures passed before me which are ever after hung up in the
mind’s gallery among the choicest of the spoils of Eastern travel. By
some chance I was alone, riding a few hundred yards in front of the
caravan, when, turning the corner of a hill, I met a man approaching me,
the only one I had seen for several hours since we passed a few black
tents eight or ten miles away. He was a noble-looking young shepherd,
dressed in the camel’s-hair robe, and with the lithesome, powerful limbs
and elastic step of the children of the desert. But the interest which
attached to him was the errand on which he had manifestly been engaged
on those Dead Sea plains from whence he was returning. Round his neck,
and with its little limbs held gently by his hand, lay a lamb he had
rescued and was doubtless carrying home. The little creature lay as if
perfectly contented and happy, and the man looked pleased as he strode
along lightly with his burden; and as I saluted him with the usual
gesture of pointing to heart and head and the “salaam alik!”, (Peace be
with you), he responded with a smile and a kindly glance at the lamb, to
which he saw my eyes were directed. It was actually the beautiful
parable of the gospel acted out before my sight. Every particular was
true to the story; the shepherd had doubtless left his “ninety-and-nine
in the wilderness,” round the black tents we had seen so far away, and
had sought for the lost lamb “till he found it,” where it must quickly
have perished without his help, among those blighted plains. Literally,
too, “when he had found it, he laid it on his shoulders, rejoicing.”

After this beautiful sight which I have longed ever since for a
painter’s power to place on canvas (a better subject a thousand-fold
than the cruel “_Scape-Goat_”), we reached the Dead Sea, and I managed
to dip into it, after wading out a very long way in the shallow, bitter,
biting water which stung my lips and nostrils, and tasted like a
horrible mixture of quinine and salt. From the shore, all strewed with
the white skeletons of trees washed down by the river, we made our way
(mostly galloping) in four hours to the Ford of Jordan; and there I had
the privilege of another dip, or rather of seven dips, taken in
commemoration of Naaman and to wash off the Dead Sea brine! It is the
spot supposed to have witnessed the transit of Joshua and the baptisms
of St. John. The following night our tents were pitched among the ruins
of Jericho. The wonder is, not that the once flourishing city should be
deserted and Herod’s great amphitheatre there a ruinous heap, but that a
town was ever built in such an insanitary place. Closed in by the
mountains on every side from whence a fresh breeze could blow upon it,
and open only to the unwholesome flats of the Dead Sea, the situation is
pestilential.

Next day we rode back to Jerusalem through the desolate mountains of the
Quarantania, where tradition places the mystic Fast and Temptation of
Christ; a dreary, lonely, burning desert. Here, also, is the supposed
scene of the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the ruins of a great
building, which may have been a Half-way House Inn beside the road, bear
out the tradition. I have often reflected that orthodox divines miss
half the point of that beautiful story when they omit to mark the fact
that the Samaritans were, in Christ’s time, boycotted by the Jews _as
heretics_; and that it was precisely one of these _heretics_ who was
made by Jesus the type for all time of genuine philanthropy,—in direct
and purposeful contrast to the representatives of Judaic orthodoxy, the
Priest and Levite.

The sun on my head during the latter hours of the ride became
intolerable; not like English heat, however excessive, but roasting my
very brains through all the folds of linen on my hat and of a damp
handkerchief within. It was like sitting before a kitchen fire with
one’s head in the position proper for a leg of mutton! I felt it was a
matter of life and death to escape, and galloped on by myself in advance
for many miles till suddenly I came, just under Bethany at the base of
the Mount of Olives, to a magnificent ancient fountain, with the cool
water gushing out, amid the massive old masonry. In a moment I leaped
from my equally eager horse, threw off my hat and bared my neck and put
my head under the blessed stream. Of course it was a perilous
proceeding, but it saved me from a sunstroke.

That evening in Jerusalem I wished good-bye to my pleasant
fellow-travellers, who were good enough to pass a vote of thanks to me
for my “unvarying pluck and hilarity during the fatigues and dangers of
the way!” I started next day for the two days’ ride to Jaffa,
accompanied only by a good Italian named Abengo, and a muleteer. There
was a small war going on between some of the tribes on the way, and a
certain chief named Aboo-Goosh (beneath whose robber’s castle I had been
pelted with stones on my way up to Jerusalem) was scouring the country.
We passed, in the valley of Ajalon, some wounded men borne home from a
battle, but otherwise encountered nothing alarming, and I obtained a
great deal of curious information from Abengo, who knew Palestine
intimately, and whose wife was a Christian woman of Nazareth. There is
no use in repeating now records of a state of things which has been
modified, no doubt, essentially in thirty years.

From Jaffa I sailed to Beyrout, and there, with kind help and advice
from the Consul, I obtained the services of an old Turk as a Dragoman,
and he and I and a muleteer laden with my bed and baggage started to
cross Lebanon and make our way to Baalbec and, as I hoped, also to
Damascus. The snows were still thick on the higher slopes of Lebanon,
and after the excessive heat I had just undergone in Syria, the cold was
trying. But the beauty and grandeur of those noble mountains, fringed
below with fig and olive, and with their snowy summits rising height
beyond height above, was compensation for all hardship. By a curious
chance, Lebanon was the first mountain range worthy of the name, which I
had ever crossed. It was an introduction, of course, to a whole world of
impressions and experiences.

I had a good many escapes in the course of my ride; there being nothing
to be called a road over much of the way, and such path as there was
being covered with snow or melting torrents. My strong little Syrian
horse walked and scrambled and stumbled up beds of streams running down
in cataracts over the rocks and boulders; and on one occasion he had to
bear me down a very steep descent, where we floundered forward,
sometimes up to his girths in the snow, in dread of descending with
irresistible impetus to the edge of a precipice which yawned at the
bottom. We did reach the verge in rather a shaky condition; but the good
beast struggled hard to save himself, and turned at the critical moment
safe along the edge.

A sad association belongs to my sojourn among the Maronites at Zachly; a
large village on the further side of Lebanon, on the slopes of the
Haraun. I slept there on my outward way in my tent pitched in an angle
of grass outside one of the first houses, and on my return journey I
obtained the use of the principal room of the same house from my kind
hosts, as the cold outside was too considerable for tent life in
comfort. Zachly was a very humble, simple place. The houses were all of
mud, with flat roofs made of branches laid across and covered with more
mud. A stem of a living tree usually stood in the middle of the house
supporting the whole erection, which was divided into two or three
chambers. A recess in the wall held piles of mats, and of the hard
cushions made of raw cotton, which form both seats, beds, and pillows.
The rough, unplaned door, with wooden lock, the window half stuffed up,
the abundant population of cocks and hens, cats and dogs and rosy little
boys and girls, strongly reminded me of Balisk! I was welcomed most
kindly after a brief negotiation with Hassan; and the simple women and
girls clustered round me with soft words and presents of carrots and
daffodils. One old woman having kissed my hands as a beginning,
proceeded to put her arms round my neck and embrace me in a most
motherly way. To amuse the party, I showed them my travelling bag,
luncheon and writing and drawing apparatus, and made them taste my
biscuits and smell my toilet vinegar. Screams of “Taib, Taib! Katiyeh!”
(good, very good) rewarded my small efforts, and then I made them tell
me all their names, which I wrote in my note-book. They were very
pretty: Helena, Mareen, Yasmeen, Myrrhi, Maroon, Georgi, Malachee,
Yussef, and several others, the last being Salieh, the young village
priest, a tall, grand-looking young man with high cylindrical black hat,
black robe and flowing brown hair. I made him a respectful salutation at
which he seemed pleased. On my second visit to Zachly I attended the
vesper service in his little chapel as the sun went down over Lebanon.
It was a plain quadrangle of mud walls, brown without and whitewashed
within; a flat roof of branches and mortar; a post for support in the
centre; a confessional at one side; a little lectern; an altar without
crucifix and only decorated by two candlesticks; a jar of fresh
daffodils; some poor prints; a blue tea-cup for sacramental plate, and a
little cottage-window into which the setting sun was shining
softly;—such was the chapel of Zachly. A few men knelt to the left, a
few women to the right; in front of the altar was a group of children,
also kneeling, and waiting to take their part in the service. At the
lectern stood the noble figure of young Papas Salieh, leaning on one of
the crutches which in all Eastern churches are provided to relieve the
fatigue of the attendants, who, like Abraham, “worship, leaning on the
top of a staff.” Beside the Papas stood a ragged but intelligent little
acolyte, who chanted very well, and on the other side of the lectern an
aged peasant, who also took his part. The prayers were, of course,
unintelligible to me, being in Arabic; but I recognised in the Gospel
the chapter of genealogies in Luke, over whose hard names the priest
helped his friend quite unaffectedly. The reading over, Papas Salieh
took off his black and red cap, and, kneeling before the altar,
commenced another chanted prayer, while the women beside me bowed till
they kissed the ground in Eastern prostration, beating their breasts
with resounding blows. The group of children made the responses at
intervals; and then the priest blessed us, and the simple service was
over, having occupied about twenty minutes. While we were departing, the
Papas seated himself in the confessional and a man went immediately into
the penitents’ place beside him. There was something very affecting to
me in this poor little church of clay, with its humble efforts at
cleanliness and flowers and music; all built and adorned by the
worshippers’ own hands, and served by the young peasant priest,
doubtless the son and brother of some of his own flock.

As I have said there are sad associations connected with this visit of
mine to Zachly. A very short time afterwards the Druses came down with
irresistible force,—massacred the greater number of the unhappy
Maronites and burned the village. The spot where I had been so kindly
received was left a heap of blackened ruins, and what became of sweet,
motherly Helena and her dear little children and good Papas Salieh and
the rest, I have never been able to learn.

It took six hours of hard riding in a bitter wind to carry me from
Zachly to Baalbec; but anticipation bore me on wings, and to beguile the
way I repeated to myself as my good memory permitted, the whole of
Moore’s poem of _Paradise and the Peri_, culminating in the scene which
the Peri beheld “When o’er the vale of Baalbec winging.” In vain,
however, I cross-questioned Hassan (we talked Italian _tant bien que
mal_) about Peris. He had never heard of such beings. But of Djinns in
general he knew only too much; and notably that they had built the vast
ruins of Baalbec, which no mortal hands _could_ have raised; and that to
the present time they haunt them so constantly and in such terrific
shape, that it is very perilous for anybody to go there alone and quite
impossible to do so after nightfall. I had reason to bless this belief
in the Djinns of Baalbec for it left me the undisturbed solitary
enjoyment of the mighty enclosure within the Saracenic walls for the
best part of two days, unvexed by the inquisitive presence or
observation of the population of the Arab village outside.

To pitch my tent among the ruins, however, was more than I could bring
Hassan to do by any cajoling, and I consented finally to sleep in a
small cabin consisting of a single chamber of which I could lock the
door inside. When I prepared for sleep on the hard cotton cushions laid
over a stone bench, and with the two unglazed windows admitting volumes
of cold air, I was frightened to find I had every symptom of approaching
fever. Into what an awful position,—I reflected,—had I put myself, with
no one but that old Turk Hassan, and the Arab from whom I had hired this
little house for the night, to take care of me should I have a real bad
fever, and be kept there between life and death for weeks! Reflecting
what I could possibly do to avert the danger, brought on, of course, by
cold and fatigue, I took from my bag the half-bottle of Raki (a very
pure spirit made from rice) which my travelling friends had brought from
the monastery at Mar Saba and had kindly shared with me; and to a large
dose of this I was able to add some hot water from a sort of coffee-pot
left, by good luck, in the yet warm brazier of charcoal in the middle of
my room. I drank my Raki-toddy to the last drop, and then slept the
sleep of the just,—to awaken quite well the next morning! And if any of
my teetotal friends think I did wrong to take it, I beg entirely to
differ from them on the subject.

The days which I spent in and around Baalbec were more than repayment
for the fatigues and perils of the passage of “Sainted Lebanon;” whose
famous Cedars, by the way, I was unable to visit; the region where they
stand being at that season too deeply covered with snow. Here is a
description I gave of Baalbec to Harriet St. Leger just after my visit:—

“I had two wonderful days indeed in Baalbec. The number of the vast
solitary ruins exceeded all my anticipations, and their grandeur
impresses one as no remains less completely isolated can do. Imagine a
space about that of Newbridge garden surrounded by enormous Saracenic
walls with a sweet, bright brook running round it, and then left to
entire solitude. A few cattle browse on the short grass, and now and
then, I suppose, some one enters by one or other of the different gaps
in the wall to look after them; but in the Temple of Jupiter, shut in
by its great walls, to which the displacement of a single stone makes
now the sole entrance, no one ever enters. The fear of Djinns renders
the place even doubly alarming! Among the most awful things in Baalbec
are stupendous subterranean tunnels running in various directions
under the ruined city. I groped through several of them, they opened
out with great doorways into others which, having no light, I would
not explore, but which seemed abysses of awe! The stones of all these
works are enormous. Those 5 or 6 feet and 12 or 15 feet long are among
the smallest. In the temple were some which I could not span with five
extensions of my arms, _i.e._, something like 30 feet, but there are
still larger elsewhere among the ruins.”

The shafts of the columns of the two Temples,—the six left standing of
the great Temple of the Sun which

“Stand sublime
Casting their shadows from on high
Like Dials which the wizard Time
Had raised to count his ages by”—

and those of the hypæthral temple of Zeus of which only a few have
fallen, are alike miracles of size and perfection of moulding. The
fragments of palaces reveal magnificence unparalleled. All these
enormous edifices are wrought with such lavish luxuriance of
imagination, such perfection of detail in harmony with the luscious
Corinthian style which pervades the whole, that the idea of the Arabs
that they are the work not of men but of Genii, seemed quite natural. I
recalled what Vitruvius (who wrote about the time in which the best of
these temples was erected), says of the methods by which, in his day,
the largest stones were moved from quarries and lifted to their places,
but I failed to comprehend how the colossal work was achieved here.

Passing out of the great ruined gateway I came to vast square and
hexagonal courts with walls forming exedræ, loaded with profusion of
ornaments; columns, entablatures, niches and seats overhung with
carvings of garlands of flowers and the wings of fanciful creatures.
Streets, gateways and palaces, hardly distinguishable in their ruin,
follow on beyond the courts and portico. I climbed up a shattered stair
to the summit of the Saracenic wall and felt a sort of shock to behold
the living world below me; the glittering brook, the almond trees in
blossom and Anti-Lebanon beyond. Here I caught sight of the well-known
exquisite little circular temple with its colonnade of six Corinthian
columns, of which the architraves are recurved inwards from column to
column. If I am not mistaken a reproduction of this lovely little
building was set up in Kew Gardens in the last century.

Last of all I returned to the Temple of Zeus—or of Baal as it is
sometimes called—to spend there in secure solitude (except for Djinns!)
the closing hours of that long, rich day. The large walls are almost
perfect; the colonnades of enormous pillars are mostly still standing.
From the inner portal with its magnificent lintel half fallen from its
place, the view is probably the finest of any fane of the ancient world,
and was to me impressive beyond description. Even the spot where the
statue of the god has stood can easily be traced. A great stone lying
overturned on the pavement was doubtless the pedestal. I remained for
hours in this temple; sometimes feebly trying to sketch what I saw,
sometimes lost in ponderings on the faiths and worships of the past and
present. A hawk, which probably had never before found a human visitor
at eventide in that weird place, came swooping over me; then gave a wild
shriek and flew away. A little later the moon rose over the walls. The
calm and silence and beauty of that scene can never be forgotten.

I was unable to pursue my journey to Damascus as I had designed. The
muleteer, with all my baggage, contrived to miss us on the road among
the hills in Anti-Lebanon; and, eventually, after another visit to the
ruins and to the quarries from whence the vast stones were taken, I rode
back to Zachly and thence (a two days’ ride) over Lebanon to Beyrout.

I remained a few days at the hotel which then existed a mile from the
town, while I waited for the steamer to take me to Athens, and much
enjoyed the lovely scene of rich mulberry and almond gardens beside the
shell-strewn strand, with snowy Lebanon behind, towering over the
fir-woods into the deep blue sky. The Syrian peasant women are sweet,
courteous creatures. One day as I sat under a cactus-hedge reading
Shelley, a pretty young mother came by, and after interchanging a “Peace
be with you,” proceeded unhesitatingly, and without a word of
explanation, to deposit her baby,—Mustapha by name,—in my lap. I was
very willing to nurse Mustapha, and we made friends at once as easily as
his mother had done; and my heart was the better for the encounter!

After I had paid off Hassan and settled my account at the hotel, I found
my financial condition exceedingly bad! I had just enough cash remaining
to carry me (omitting a few meals) by second-class passage to Athens:
which was the nearest place where I had opened a credit from my bankers,
or where I had any introductions. There was nothing for it but to take a
second-class place on board the Austrian Lloyd’s steamer
_L’Impératrice_; though it was not a pleasant arrangement, seeing that
there was no other woman passenger and no stewardess on the ship at all.
Nevertheless this was just one of the cases in which knocking about the
world brought me favourable experience of human nature. The Captain of
the _Impératrice_, an Italian gentleman, did his utmost, with extreme
delicacy and good taste, to make my position comfortable. He ordered his
own dinner to be served in the second cabin that he might preside at the
table instead of one of his subordinates; and during the day he came
often to see that I was well placed and shaded on deck, and to
interchange a little pleasant talk, without intrusion.

It is truly one of the silliest of the many silly things in the
education of women that we are taught little or nothing about the
simplest matters of banking and stock-and-share buying and selling. I,
who had always had money in abundance given me _straight into my hand_,
knew absolutely nothing, when my father’s death left me to arrange my
affairs, how such business is done, how shares are bought and sold, how
credits are open at corresponding bankers; how, even, _to draw a
cheque_! It all seemed to me a most perilous matter, and I feared that I
might, in those remote regions, come to grief any day by the refusal of
some local banker to honour my cheques or by the neglect of my London
bankers to bespeak credit for me. My means were so narrow, and I had so
little experience of the expenses of living and travelling, that I was
greatly exercised as to my small concerns. I brought with me (generally
tied by a string round my neck and concealed) a very valuable diamond
ring to sell in case I came to real disaster; but it had been constantly
worn by my mother; and I felt at Beyrout that, sooner than sell it, I
would live on short commons for much more than a week!

One day of our voyage I spent at Cyprus where I admired the ancient
church of San Lazzaro, half mosque, half church, and said to be the
final grave of Lazarus. I had visited his, supposed, _temporary_ one in
Bethany. Another day I landed at Rhodes and was able to see the ruined
street which bears over each house the arms of the Knight to whom it
belonged. At the upper end of the way are still visible the arch and
shattered relics of their church. Writing to Miss St. Leger March 28th,
I described my environment thus:

“Dearest Harriet,

“Behold me seated _à la Turque_ close to a party of Moslem gentlemen
who alternately smoke and say their prayers all day long. We are
steaming up through the lovely “Isles of Greece,” having left Rhodes
this morning and Cos an hour ago. As we pass each wild cape and green
shore I take up a certain opera glass with ‘H. S.’ on the top of the
box, and wish very much I could see through it the dear, kind eyes
that used it once. They would be pleasanter to see than all these
scenes, glorious as they are. The sun is going down into the calm blue
sea and throwing purple lights already on the countless islands
through which the vessel winds its way. White sea-gulls follow us and
beautiful little quaint-sailed boats appear every now and then round
the islands. The peculiar beauty of this famous passage is derived,
however, from the bold and varied outline of the islands and adjoining
coast of Asia Minor. From little rocks not larger than the ship
itself, up to large provinces with extensive towns like Cos, there is
an endless variety and boldness of form. Ireland’s Eye magnified to
twice the height, is, I should say, the commonest type. In some almost
inaccessible cliffs one sees hermitages; in others convents. I shall
post this at Smyrna.”

As the _Impératrice_ stopped two or three days in the magnificent
harbour of Smyrna, I had good opportunity to land and make my way to the
scene of Polycarp’s Martyrdom amid the colossal cypresses which outdo
all those of Italy except the quincentenarians in the Giusti garden in
Verona. It was Easter, and a ridiculous incident occurred on the
Saturday. I was busy writing in the cabin of the _Impératrice_ at
mid-day, when, _subito!_ there were explosions in our vessel and in a
hundred other vessels in the harbour, again and again and again, as if a
battle of Trafalgar were going on all round! I rushed on deck and found
the steward standing calm and cheerful amid the terrific noise and
smoke, “For God’s sake what has happened?” I cried breathless. “Nothing,
Signora, nothing! It is the Royal Salute all the ships are firing, of 21
guns.”

“In honour of whom?” I asked, somewhat less alarmed.

“Iddio, Signora! Gesù Cristo, sicuro! È il momento della Resurrezione,
si sà.”

“O, no!” I said, “Not on Saturday. It was on Sunday, you know!”

“Che, che! Dicono forse cosi i Protestanti! Sappiamo noi altri, che era
il Sabato.”

I never got to the bottom of this mystery, but can testify that at
Smyrna in 1858 there were many scores of these Royal Salutes (!) on Holy
Saturday at noon in honour of the Resurrection.

It was one of the brightest hours of my happy life, that on which I
stood on the deck of our ship at sunrise and passed under “Sunium’s
marble steep” and knew that I was approaching Athens. As we steamed up
the gulf, the red clouds flamed over Parnes and Hymettus and lighted up
the hills of Peloponnesus. The bright blue waves were dancing under our
prow, and I could see over them far away the “rocky brow which looks
o’er sea-born Salamis,” where Xerxes sat on his silver-footed throne on
such a morn as this. Above, to our right, over the olive woods with the
rising sun behind it, like a crowned hill was the Acropolis of Athens
and the Parthenon upon it.

Very soon I had landed at the Piræus and had engaged a carriage (there
was no railway then) to take me to Athens. The drive was enchanting,
between olive groves and vineyards, and with the Temple of Theseus and
the buildings on the Acropolis coming into view as I approached Athens,
till I was beside myself with delight and excitement. The first thing to
do was to drive to the private house of the banker to whom I was
recommended, to arouse the poor old gentleman (nothing loath apparently
to do business even at seven o’clock) to draw fifty sovereigns, and then
to go to the French Hotel, choose a room with a fine view of the
Parthenon, and to say to the master: “Send me the very best _déjeuner_
you can provide and a bottle of Samian wine, and let this letter be
taken to Mr. Finlay.” That breakfast, with that view, was a feast of the
gods after my many abstinencies, though I nearly “dashed down the cup of
Samian wine,” not in patriotic despair for Greece, but because it was so
abominably bad that no poetry could have been made out of it by Anacreon
himself. Hardly had I finished my meal, when Mr. Finlay appeared at my
door, having hurried with infinite kindness to welcome me, and do honour
to the introduction of his cousin, my dear sister-in-law. “I put
myself,” said he, “at your orders for the day. We will go wherever you
please.”

It would be unfair to inflict on the reader a detailed account of all I
saw at Athens under the admirable guidance of Mr. Finlay during a week
of intensest enjoyment. Mr. Finlay (it can scarcely yet be forgotten)
went out to Greece a few weeks or months before Byron and fought with
him and after him, through the War of Independence. After this, having
married a beautiful Armenian lady, he bought much land in Eubœa, built
himself a handsome house in Athens and lived there for the rest of his
life, writing his great History (in five volumes) of _Greece under
Foreign Domination_; making a magnificent collection of coins; and
acting for many years as the _Times_ correspondent at Athens. He was not
only a highly erudite archæologist, but an enthusiast for the land of
his adoption and all its triumphs of art; in short, the best of all
possible ciceroni. I was fortunately not wholly unprepared to profit by
his learned expositions and delicate observation on the architecture of
the glorious ruins, for I had made copies of prints of all at Athens and
elsewhere in Greece with ground-plans and restorations and notes of
everything I could learn about them, many years before when I was wont
to amuse myself with drawing, while my mother read to me. I found that I
knew beforehand nearly exactly what remained of the Parthenon and the
Erechtheum and the Temple of Victory, the Propylæum on the Acropolis and
the Theseium below; and it was of intensest interest to me to learn,
under Mr. Finlay’s guidance, precisely where the Elgin Marbles had
stood, and to note the extraordinary fact, on which he insisted
much,—that there is not a single straight line in the whole Parthenon.
_Everything_, down to single stones in the entablatures and friezes, is
curved, in some cases, he felt assured, _after_ they had been placed _in
situ_. The extreme entasis of the columns and the great pyramidal
inclination of the whole building, were most noticeable when attention
was once drawn to them. As we approached the majestic ruins of Adrian’s
Temple of Jupiter on the plains below, (that enormous temple which had
double rows of columns surrounding it and quadruple rows in front and
back, of ten columns each) I exclaimed “Why! there ought to be _three_
columns standing at that far angle!” “Quite true,” said Mr. Finlay, “one
of them fell just six weeks ago.”

Since this visit of mine to Athens a vast deal has been done to clear
away the remains of the Turkish tower and other barbaric buildings which
obstructed and desecrated the summit of the Acropolis; and the fortunate
visitor may now see the whole Propylæum and all the spaces open and
free, beside examining the very numerous statues and bas reliefs some
quaintly archaic, some of the best age and splendidly beautiful, which
have been dug out in recent years in Greece.

I envy every visitor to Athens now, but console myself by procuring
photographs of all the _finds_ from those excellent artists, Thomaïdes,
Brothers.

Mr. Finlay spoke much of Byron in answer to my questions, and described
him as a most singular combination of romance and astuteness. The Greeks
imagined that a man capable of such enthusiasm as to go to war for their
enfranchisement must have a rather soft head as well as warm heart; but
they were much mistaken when they tried in their simplicity to
_exploiter_ him in matters of finance. There were self-devoted and
disinterested patriots, but there were also (as was inevitable), among
the insurgents many others who had a sharp eye to their own financial
and political schemes Byron saw through these men (Mr. Finlay said),
with astounding quickness, and never allowed them to guide or get the
better of him in any negotiation. About money matters he considered he
was inclined to be “close-fisted.” This was an opinion strongly
confirmed to me some months later by Walter Savage Landor, who
repeatedly remarked that Byron’s behaviour in several occurrences, while
in Italy, was far from liberal and that, luxuriously as he chose to
live, he was by no means ready to pay freely for his luxury. Shelley on
the contrary, though he lived most simply and was always hard pressed
for money by William Godwin (who Fanny Kemble delightfully described to
me _àpropos_ of Dowden’s _Memoirs_, as “one of those greatly gifted _and
greatly borrowing_ people!”), was punctilious to the last degree in
paying his debts and even those of his friends. There was a story of a
boat purchased by both Byron and Shelley which I cannot trust my memory
to recall accurately as Mr. Landor told it to me, and which I do not
exactly recognise in the _Memoirs_, but which certainly amounted to
this,—that Byron left Shelley to pay for their joint purchase, and that
Shelley did so, though at the time he was in extreme straits for money.
All the impressions, I may here remark, which I gathered at that time in
Greece and Italy (1858), where there were yet a few alive who personally
knew both these great poets, was in favour of Shelley and against Byron.
Talking over them many years afterwards with Mazzini I was startled by
the vehemence with which he pronounced his preference for Byron, as the
one who had tried to put his sympathy with a struggling nation into
practice, and had died in the noble attempt. This was natural enough on
the part of the Italian patriot; but I think the vanity and tendency to
“pose,” which formed so large a part of Byron’s character had probably
more to do with this last _acted_ Canto of _Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage_,
than Mazzini, (who had no such foibles) was likely to understand. The
following curious glimpse of Byron at Venice before he went to Greece,
occurs in an autograph letter in my possession, by Mrs. Hemans to the
late Miss Margaret Lloyd. It seems worth quoting here.

“Bronwylfa, 8th April, 1819.

“Your affection of Lord Byron will not be much increased by the
description I am going to transcribe for you of his appearance and
manners abroad. My sister, who is now at Venice, has sent me the
following sketch of the _Giaour_:—‘We were presented at the
Governor’s, after which we went to a conversazione at Madlle.
Benzoni’s, where we saw Lord Byron; and now my curiosity is gratified,
I have no wish ever to see him again. A more wretched,
depraved-looking countenance it is impossible to imagine! His hair
streaming almost down to his shoulders and his whole appearance
slovenly and even dirty. Still there is a something which impels you
to look at his face, although it inspires you with aversion, a
something entirely different from any expression on any countenance I
ever beheld before. His character, I hear, is worse than ever;
dreadful it must be, since everyone says he is the most dissipated
person in Italy, exceeding even the Italians themselves.’”

Shortly before my visit to Athens an article, or book, by Mr. Trelawney
had been published in England, in which that writer asserted that
Byron’s lame leg was a most portentous deformity, like the fleshless leg
of a Satyr. I mentioned this to Mr. Finlay, who laughed, and said: “That
reminds me of what Byron said of Trelawney; ‘If we could but make
Trelawney wash his hands and speak the truth, we might make a gentleman
of him!’ Of course,” continued Mr. Finlay, “I saw Byron’s legs scores of
times, for we bathed together daily whenever we were near the sea or a
river, and there was nothing wrong with the _leg_, only an ordinary and
not very bad, club-_foot_.”

Among the interesting facts which Mr. Finlay gave me as the results of
his historical researches in Greece was that a school of philosophy
continued to be held in the Groves of the Academè (through which we were
walking at the moment), for 900 years from the time of Plato. A fine
collection of gold and silver coins which he had made, afforded, under
his guidance, a sort of running commentary on the history of the
Byzantine Empire. There were series of three and four reigns during
which the coins became visibly worse and worse, till at last there was
no silver in them at all, only base metal of some sort; and then, things
having come to the worst, there was a revolution, a new dynasty, and a
brand new and pure coinage.

The kindness of this very able man and of his charming wife was not
limited to playing cicerone to me. Nothing could exceed their
hospitality. The first day I dined at their house a party of agreeable
and particularly fashionably dressed Greek ladies and gentlemen were
assembled. As we waited for dinner the door opened and a magnificent
figure appeared, whom I naturally took for, at least, an Albanian Chief,
and prepared myself for an interesting presentation. He wore a short
green velvet jacket covered with gold embroidery, a crimson sash, an
enormous white muslin _kilt_ (I afterwards learned it contained 60 yards
of muslin, and that the washing thereof is a function of the highest
responsibility), and leggings of green and gold to match the jacket. One
moment this splendid vision stood six feet high in the doorway; the next
he bowed profoundly and pronounced the consecrated formula:—

“_Madame est servie!_”

and we went to dinner, where he waited admirably.

Some year or two later, after I had published some records of my
travels, and sent them to Mr. Finlay, I received from him the following
letter:—

“Athens, 26th May.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“Baron von Schmidthals sent me your letter of the 18th April with the
_Cities of the Past_ yesterday; his baggage having been detained at
Syria. This post brought me _Fraser_ with a ‘_Day at Athens_’ with due
regularity, and now accept my sincere thanks for both. I am ashamed of
my neglect in not thanking you sooner for _Fraser_, but I did not know
your address. I felt grateful for it, having been very, very often
tired of ‘Days at Athens!’ It was a treat to meet so pleasant a ‘day,’
and have another pleasant day recalled. Others to whom I lent
_Fraser_, told me the ‘Day,’ was delightful. I had heard of your
misfortune but I hoped you had entirely recovered, and I regret to
hear that you use crutches still. I, too, am weak and can walk little,
but my complaint is old age. The _Saturday Review_ has told me that
you have poured some valuable thoughts into the river that flows
through ages.

‘Rè degli altri; superbo, altero fiume!’

Solomon tried to couch its cataracts in vain. If you lived at Athens
you would hardly believe that man can grow wiser by being made to
think. It only makes him more wicked here in Greece. But the river of
thought must be intended to fertilize the future.

“I wish I could send you some news that would interest or amuse you,
but you may recollect that I live like a hermit and come into contact
with society chiefly in the matter of politics which I cannot expect
to render interesting to you and which is anything but an amusing
subject to me; I being one of the Greek landlords on whose head Kings
and National Assemblies practise the art of shaving. Our revolution
has done some good by clearing away old abuses, but the positive gain
has been small. England sent us a boy-king, and Denmark with him a
Count Sponneck, whom the Greeks, not inaccurately, call his ‘_alter_
NEMO.’ Still, though we are all very much dissatisfied, I fancy
sometimes that fate has served Greece better than England, Denmark, or
the National Assembly. The evils of this country were augmented by the
devotion of the people to power and pelf, but devotion to nullity or
its _alter ego_ is a weak sentiment, and an empty treasury turns the
devotion to pelf into useful channels.

“I was rather amused yesterday by learning that loyalty to King George
has extended the commercial relations of the Greeks with the Turks.
Greece has imported some boatloads of myrtle branches to make
triumphal arches at Syra where the King was expected yesterday. Queen
Amalia disciplined King Otho’s subjects to welcome him in this way.
The idea of Greeks being ‘green’ in anything, though it was only
loyalty, amused her in those days. I suppose she knows now that they
were not so ‘green’ as their myrtles made them look! It is odd,
however, to find that their outrageous loyalty succeeded in
exterminating myrtle plants in the islands of the Ægean, and that they
must now import their emblems of loyalty from the Sultan’s dominions.
If a new Venus rise out of the Grecian sea she will have to swim over
to the Turkish coast to hide herself in myrtles. There is a new fact
for Lord Strangford’s oriental Chaos!

“My wife desires to be most kindly remembered to you.

“Believe me, my dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours sincerely,
“GEORGE FINLAY.”

I left Athens and my kind friends with great regret and embarked at the
Piræus for Constantinople, but not before I had managed to secure a
luxurious swim in one of the exquisite rocky coves along the coast near
the Tomb of Themistocles.

Stamboul was rather a disappointment to me. The weather was cold and
cloudy and unfit to display the beauty of the Golden Horn; and I went
about with a _valet de place_ in rather a disheartened way to see the
Dolma Batchi Palace and a few other things accessible to me. The Scutari
Hospital across the Bosphorus where Miss Nightingale had worked only
four years before, of course, greatly attracted my interest. How much do
all women owe to that brave heart who led them on so far on the road to
their public duties, and who has paid for her marvellous achievements by
just forty years of invalidism! Those pages of Kinglake’s History in
which he pays tribute to her power, and compares her great
administrative triumph in bringing order out of chaos with the miserable
failures of the male officials who had brought about the disastrous
muddle, ought to be quoted again and again by all the friends of women,
and never suffered to drop into oblivion.

Of course the reader will assume that I saw St. Sophia. But I did not do
so, and to the last, I fear I shall owe a little grudge to the people
whose extraordinary behaviour made me lose my sole opportunity of
enjoying that most interesting sight. I told my _valet de place_ to
learn what parties of foreigners were going to obtain the needful
firmaun for visiting the Mosque and to arrange for me in the usual way
to join one of them, paying my share of the expense, which at that time
amounted to £5. Some days were lost, and then I learned that there was
only one party, consisting of American ladies and gentlemen, who were
then intending to visit the place, and that for some reason their
courier would not consent to my joining them. I thought it was some
stupid _imbroglio_ of servants wanting fees, and having the utmost
confidence in American kindness and good manners, I called on the family
in question at their hotel and begged they would do me the favour to
allow me to pay part of the £5, and to enter the doors of St. Sophia
with them accordingly; at such time as might suit them. To my amazement
the gentleman and ladies looked at each other; and then the gentleman
spoke, “O! I leave _all that_ to my courier!” “In that case,” I said, “I
wish you good morning.” It was a great bore for me, with my great love
for architecture, to fail to see so unique a building, but I could not
think of spending £5 on a firmaun myself, and had no choice but to
relinquish the hope of entering, and merely walk round the Mosque and
peep in where it was possible to do so. I was well cursed in doing this
by the old Turks for my presumption!

Nemesis overtook these unmannerly people ere long, for they reached
Florence a month after me and found I had naturally told my tale of
disappointment to the Brownings, (whom they particularly desired to
cultivate), the Somervilles, Trollopes and others who had become my
friends; and I believe they heard a good deal of the matter. Mrs.
Browning, I know, frankly expressed her astonishment at their behaviour;
and Mrs. Somerville would have nothing to say to them. They sent me
several messages of conciliation and apology, which of course I ignored.
They had done a rude and unkind thing to an unknown and friendless
woman. They were ready to make advances to one who had plenty of
friends. It was the only case, in all my experience of Americans, in
which I have found them wanting in either courtesy or kindness.

I had intended to go from Constantinople _viâ_ the Black Sea and the
Danube to Vienna and thence by the railway to Adelsberg and Trieste, but
a cold, stormy March morning rendered that excursion far less tempting
than a return to the sunny waters of Greece; and, as I had nobody to
consult, I simply embarked on a different steamer from the one I had
designed to take. At Syra (I think) I changed to the most luxurious and
delightful vessel on which I have ever sailed—the Austrian Lloyd’s
_Neptune_, Captain Braun. It was splendidly equipped, even to a _camera
obscura_ on deck; and every arrangement for luxurious baths and good
food was perfect, and the old Captain’s attention and kindness to
everyone extreme. I have still the picture of the _Neptune_, which he
drew in my little sketch book for me. There were several very pleasant
passengers on board, among others the Marquis of Headfort (nephew of our
old neighbour at Newbridge, Mr. Taylor of Ardgillan) and Lady Headfort,
who had gone through awful experiences in India, when married to her
first husband, Sir William Macnaghten. It was said that when Sir William
was cut to pieces, she offered large rewards for the poor relics and
received them all, _except his head_. Months afterwards when she had
returned to Calcutta and was expecting some ordinary box of clothes, or
the like, she opened a parcel hastily, and was suddenly confronted with
a frightful spectacle of her husband’s half-preserved head!

Whether this story be true I cannot say, but Lady Headfort made herself
a most agreeable fellow passenger, and we sat up every night till the
small hours telling ghost stories. At Corfu I paid a visit to my
father’s cousin, Lady Emily Kozzaris (_née_ Trench) whom I had known at
Newbridge and who welcomed me as a bit of Ireland, fallen on her

“Isle under Ionian skies
Beautiful as a wreck of paradise.”

I seemed to be _en pays de connaissance_ once more. After two days in
Trieste I went up by rail to Adelsberg through the extraordinary
district (geologically speaking) of Carniola, where the whole
superficial area of the ground is perfectly barren but honey-combed with
circular holes of varying depths and size and of the shape of inverted
truncated cones; the bottoms of each being highly fertile and cultivated
like gardens.

The cavern of Adelsberg was to me one of the most fearsome places in the
world. I cannot give any accurate description of it for the sense of awe
which always seizes me in the darkness and foul air of caverns and
tunnels and pyramids, renders me incapable of listening to details of
heights and lengths. I wrote my recollections not long afterwards.

“There were long, long galleries, and chambers, and domes succeeding
one another, as it seemed, for ever. Sometimes narrow and low,
compelling the visitor to bend and climb; sometimes so wide and lofty
that the eye vainly sought to pierce the expanse. And through all the
endless labyrinth appeared vaguely in the gloom the forms taken by the
stalactites, now white as salt, now yellow and stained as if with
age,—representing to the fancy all conceivable objects of earth and
sea, piled up in this cave as if in some vast lumberhouse of creation.
It was Chaos, when yet all things slept in darkness waiting the fiat
of existence. It was the final Ruin when all things shall return to
everlasting night, and man and all his works grow into stone and lie
buried beside the mammoth and the ichthyosaur. Here were temples and
tombs, and vast dim faces, and giant forms lying prone and headless,
and huge lions sleeping in dark dens, and white ghosts with phantom
raiment flickering in the gloom. And through the caverns, amid all the
forms of awe and wonder, rolled a river black as midnight; a deep and
rapid river which broke here and there over the rocks as in mockery of
the sunny waterfalls of the woods, and gleamed for a moment, white and
ghastly, then plunged lower under the black arch into

‘Caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.’

“It is in this deadly river, which never reflects the light of day,
that live those strange fleshy lizards without eyes, and seemingly
without natural skin, hideous reptiles which have dwelt in darkness
from unknown ages, till the organs of sight are effaced.[15]

“Over this dismal Styx the traveller passes on further and further
into the cavern, through seemingly endless corridors and vast
cathedral aisles and halls without number. One of these large spaces
is so enormous that it seemed as if St. Peter’s whole church and dome
could lie beneath it. The men who were with us scaled the walls, threw
coloured lights around and rockets up to the roof and dimly revealed
the stupendous expanse; an underground hall, where Eblis and all his
peers might hold the councils of hell. Further, on yet, through more
corridors, more chambers and aisles and domes, with the couchant lions
and the altar-tombs and the ghosts and the great white faces all
around; and then into a cavern, more lately found than the rest, where
the white and yellow marble took forms of screens and organ pipes and
richest Gothic tracery of windows,—the region where the Genius of the
Cavern had made his royal Oratory. It was all a great, dim, uneasy
dream. Things were, and were not. As in dreams we picture places and
identify them with those of waking life in some strange unreal
identity, while in every particular they vary from the actual place;
and as also in dreams we think we have beheld the same objects over
and over again, while we only dream we see them, and go on wandering
further and further, seeking for some unknown thing, and finding, not
that which we seek, but every other thing in existence, and pass
through all manner of narrow doors and impenetrable screens, and men
speak to us and we cannot hear them, and show us open graves holding
dead corpses whose features we cannot discern, and all the world is
dim and dark and full of doubt and dread—even so is the Cavern of
Adelsberg.”

Returning to Trieste I passed on to Venice, the beauty of which I
_learned_ (rather slowly perhaps), to feel by degrees as I rowed in my
gondola from church to church and from gallery to palace. The Austrians
were then masters of the city, and it was no doubt German music which I
heard for the first time at the church of the Scalzi, very finely
performed. It was not seldom in the usual English style of sacred music;
(I dare say it was not strictly _sacred_ music at all, perhaps quite a
profane opera!) but, in the mood I was in, it seemed to me to have a
great sanctity of its own; to be a _Week-day Song of Heaven_. This was
one of the rare occasions in my life in which music has reached the
deeper springs in me, and it affected me very much. I suppose as the
daffodils did Wordsworth.

Naturally being again in a town and at a good hotel, I resumed better
clothes than I had worn in my rough rides, and they were, of course that
year, deep mourning with much crape on them. I imagine it must have been
this English mourning apparel which provoked among the colour-loving
Venetians a strange display of _Heteropathy_,—that deep-seated animal
instinct of hatred and anger against grief and suffering, the exact
reverse of _sympathy_, which causes brutes and birds to gore and peck
and slay their diseased and dying companions and brutal men to trample
on their weeping, starving wives. I was walking alone rather sadly, bent
down over the shells on the beach of the Lido, comparing them in my mind
to the old venuses and pectens and beautiful pholases which I used to
collect on my father’s long stretch of sandy shore in Ireland,—when
suddenly I found myself assailed with a shower of stones. Looking up, I
saw a little crowd of women and boys jeering at me and pelting me with
whatever they could pick up. Of course they could not really hurt me,
but after an effort or two at remonstrance, I was fain to give up my
walk and return to my gondola and to Venice. Years afterwards, speaking
of this incident to Gibson, he told me he had seen at Venice a much
worse scene, for the victim was a poor helpless dog which had somehow
got into a position from whence it could not escape, and the miserable,
hooting, laughing crowd deliberately _stoned it to death_. The dog
looked from one to another of its persecutors as if appealing for mercy
and saying, “What have I done to deserve this?” But there was no mercy
in those hard hearts.

Ever since I sat on the spot where St. Stephen was stoned, I have felt
that that particular form of death must have been one of the most
_morally_ trying and dreadful to the sufferer, and the most utterly
destructive of the finer instincts in those who inflicted it. If Jews
be, as alleged, more prone to cruelty than other nations, the fact seems
to me almost explained by the “set of the brains” of a race accustomed
to account it a duty to join in stoning an offender to death and
watching pitilessly his agonies when mangled, blinded, deafened and
bleeding he lies crushed on the ground.

From Venice I travelled very pleasantly in a returning vettura which I
was fortunate enough to engage, by Padua and Ferrara over the Apennines
to Florence. One day I walked a long way in front during my vetturino’s
dinner-hour, and made friends with some poor peasants who welcomed me to
their house and to a share of their meal of Polenta and wine. The
Polenta was much inferior to Irish oatmeal stirabout or Scotch porridge;
and the black wine was like the coarsest vinegar. I tried in vain, out
of good manners to drink it. The lives of these poor _contadini_ are
obviously in all ways cruelly hard.

Spending one night in a desolate “ramshackle” inn on the road high up on
the Apennines, I sat up late writing a description of the place (as
“creepy” as I could make it!) to amuse my mother’s dear old servant
“Joney,” who possessed a volume of Washington Irving’s stories wherein
that of the “_Inn at Terracina_” had served constantly to excite
delightful awe in her breast and in my own as a child. I took my letter
next day with me to post in Florence, but alas! found there waiting for
me one from my brother announcing that our dear old servant was dead.
She had never held up her head after I had left Newbridge, and had cease
to drop into her cottage for tea.

At Florence I remained many months (or rather on the hill of
Bellosguardo above the city) and made some of the most precious
friendships of my life; Mrs. Somerville’s first of all, I also had the
privilege to know at that time both Mr. and Mrs. Browning, Adolphus
Trollope, Walter Savage Landor, Isa Blagden, Miss White (now Madame
Villari), and many other very interesting men and women. I shall,
however, write a separate chapter combining this and my subsequent
visits to Italy.

Late in the summer I travelled with a party through Milan over St.
Gothard to Lucerne, and thence to the Pays de Vaud, where I joined a
very pleasant couple,—Rev. W. and Mrs. Biedermann,—in taking the
_Château du Grand Clos_, in the Valley of the Rhone; a curious miniature
French country house, built some years before by the man who called
himself Louis XVII., or Duc de Normandie; and who had collected (as we
found) a considerable library of books, all relating to the French
Revolution.

From Switzerland I travelled back to England viâ the Rhine with my dear
American friends, the Apthorps, who had joined me at Montreux. The
perils and fatigues of my eleven months of solitary wanderings were
over. I was stronger and more active in body than I had ever been, and
so enriched in mind and heart by the things I had seen and the people I
had known, that I could afford to smile at the depression and loneliness
of my departure.

As we approached the Black Forest I had a fancy to quit my kind
companions for a few days; and leaving them to explore Strasburg, and
some other places, I went on to Heidelberg and thence made my way into
the beautiful woods. The following lines were written there, September
23rd, 1858:—

ALONE IN THE SCHWARZWALD.

Lord of the Forest Sanctuary! Thou
By the grey fathers of the world in these
Thine own self-fashioned shrines dimly adored,
“All-Father Odin,” “Mover” of the spheres;
Zeus! Brahm! Ormusd! Lord of Light Divine!
GOD, blessed God! the Good One! Best of names,
By noblest Saxon race found Thee at last,—
O Father! when the slow revolving years
Bring forth the day when men shall see Thy face
Unveiled from superstition’s web of errors old,
Shall they not seek Thee here amid the woods,
Rather than in the pillared aisle, or dome
By loftiest genius reared?

Six months have rolled
Since I stood solitary in the fane
Of desolate Baalbec. The huge walls closed
Round me sublime as when millenniums past
Lost nations worshipped there. I sate beside
The altar stone o’erthrown. For hours I sate
Until the homeward-winging hawk at even
Shrieked when he saw me there, a human form
Where human feet tread once perchance a year,
Then the moon slowly rose above the walls
And then I knelt. It was a glorious fane
All, all my own.

But not that grand Baalbec,
Nor Parthenon, nor Rome’s stupendous pile,
Nor lovelier Milan, nor the Sepulchre
So dark and solemn where the Christ was laid,
Nor even yet that dreadful field of death
At Ghizeh where the eternal Pyramids
Have, from a world of graves, pointed to Heav’n
For fifty ages past,—not all these shrines
Are holy to my soul as are the woods.
Lo! how God Himself has planned this place
So that all sweet and calm and solemn thoughts
Should have their nests amid the shadowy trees!
How the rude work-day world is all closed out
By the thick curtained foliage, and the sky
Alone revealed, a deep zenith heaven,
Fitly beheld through clasped and upraised arms
Of prayer-like trees. There is no sound more loud
Than the low insect hum, the chirp of birds,
The rustling murmur of embracing boughs,
The gentle dropping of the autumn leaves.
The wood’s sweet breath is incense. From the pines
And larch and chestnut come rich odours pure;
All things are pure and sweet and holy here.

I lie down underneath the firs. The moss
Makes richest cushion for my weary limbs!
Long I gaze upward while the dark green boughs
Moveless project against the azure sky,
Fringed with their russet cones. My satiate eyes
Sink down at length. I turn my cheek to earth.
What may this be, this sense of youth restored,
My happy childhood with its sunbright hours,
Returning once again as in a dream?
’Tis but the odour of the mossy ground,
The “field-smells known in infancy,” when yet,
Our childish sports were near to mother Earth,
Our child-like hearts near to the God in Heaven.

CHAPTER
X.
_BRISTOL._
_REFORMATORIES AND RAGGED SCHOOLS._

After I had spent two or three weeks once again at my old home after my
long journey to visit my eldest brother and his wife, and also had seen
my two other dear brothers, then married and settled in England with
their children; the time came for me to begin my independent life as I
had long planned it. I had taken my year’s pilgrimage as a sort of
conclusion to my self-education, and also because, at the beginning of
it, I was in no state of health or spirits to throw myself into new work
of any kind. Now I was well and strong, and full of hope of being of
some little use in the world. I was at a very good age for making a
fresh start; just 36; and I had my little independence of £200 a year
which, though small, was enough to allow me to work how and where I
pleased without need to earn anything. I may boast that I never got into
debt in my life; never borrowed money from anybody; never even asked my
brother for the advance of a week on the interest on my patrimony.

It had been somewhat of a difficulty to me after my home duties ended at
my father’s death, to decide where, with my heretical opinions, I could
find a field for any kind of usefulness to my fellow-creatures, but I
fortunately heard through Harriet St. Leger and Lady Byron, that Miss
Carpenter, of Bristol, was seeking for some lady to help in her
Reformatory and Ragged School work. Miss Bathurst, who had joined her
for the purpose, had died the previous year. The arrangement was, that
we paid Miss Carpenter a moderate sum (30s.) a week for board and
lodging in her house adjoining Red Lodge, and she provided us all day
long with abundant occupation. I had by mere chance read her “_Juvenile
Delinquents_,” and had admired the spirit of the book; but my special
attraction to Miss Carpenter was the belief that I should find in her at
once a very religious woman, and one so completely outside the pale of
orthodoxy that I should be sure to meet from her the sympathy I had
never yet been privileged to enjoy; and at all events be able to assist
her labours with freedom of conscience.

My first interview with Miss Carpenter (in November, 1858) was in the
doorway of my bedroom after my arrival at Red Lodge House; a small house
in the same street as Red Lodge. She had been absent from home on
business, and hastened upstairs to welcome me. It was rather a critical
moment, for I had been asking myself anxiously—“What manner of woman
shall I behold?” I knew I should see an able and an excellent person;
but it is quite possible for able and excellent women to be far from
agreeable companions for a _tête-à-tête_ of years; and nothing short of
this had I in contemplation. The first glimpse in that doorway set my
fears at rest! The plain and careworn face, the figure which, Dr.
Martineau says, had been “columnar” in youth, but which at fifty-two was
angular and stooping, were yet all alive with feeling and power. Her
large, light blue eyes, with their peculiar trick of showing the white
beneath the iris, had an extraordinary faculty of taking possession of
the person on whom they were fixed, like those of an amiable _Ancient
Mariner_ who only wanted to talk philanthropy, and not to tell stories
of weird voyages and murdered albatrosses. There was humour, also, in
every line of her face, and a readiness to catch the first gleam of a
joke. But the prevailing characteristic of Mary Carpenter, as I came
subsequently more perfectly to recognise, was a high and strong
Resolution, which made her whole path much like that of a plough in a
well-drawn furrow, which goes straight on in its own beneficent way, and
gently pushes aside into little ridges all intervening people and
things.

Long after this first interview, Miss Elliot showed Miss Carpenter’s
photograph to the Master of Balliol, without telling him whom it
represented. After looking at it carefully, he remarked, “This is the
portrait of a person who lives _under high moral excitement_.” There
could not be a truer summary of her habitual state.

Our days were very much alike, and “Sunday shone no Sabbath-day” for us.
Our little household consisted of one honest girl (a certain excellent
Marianne, who I often see now in her respectable widowhood and who well
deserves commemoration) and two little convicted thieves from the Red
Lodge. We assembled for prayers very early in the morning; and
breakfast, during the winter months, was got over before daylight; Miss
Carpenter always remarking brightly as she sat down, “How cheerful!” was
the gas. After this there were classes at the different schools, endless
arrangements and organisations, the looking-up of little truants from
the Ragged Schools, and a good deal of business in the way of writing
reports and so on. Altogether, nearly every hour of the day and week was
pretty well mapped out, leaving only space for the brief dinner and tea;
and at nine or ten o’clock at night, when we met at last, Miss Carpenter
was often so exhausted that I have seen her fall asleep with the spoon
half-way between her mouth and the cup of gruel which she ate for
supper. Her habits were all of the simplest and most self-denying kind.
Both by temperament and on principle she was essentially a Stoic. She
had no sympathy at all with Asceticism (which is a very different thing,
and implies a vivid sense of the attractiveness of luxury), and she
strongly condemned fasting, and all such practices on the Zoroastrian
principle, that they involve a culpable weakening of powers which are
intrusted to us for good use. But she was an ingrained Stoic, to whom
all the minor comforts of life are simply indifferent, and who can
scarcely even recognise the fact that other people take heed of them.
She once, with great simplicity, made to me the grave observation that
at a country house where she had just passed two or three days, “the
ladies and gentlemen all came down dressed for dinner, and evidently
thought the meal rather a pleasant part of the day!” For herself (as I
often told her) she had no idea of any Feast except that of the
Passover, and always ate with her loins girded and her umbrella at hand,
ready to rush off to the Red Lodge, if not to the Red Sea. In vain I
remonstrated on the unwholesomeness of the practice, and entreated on my
own behalf to be allowed time to swallow my food, and also some food (in
the shape of vegetables) to swallow, as well as the perpetual, too
easily ordered, salt beef and ham. Next day after an appeal of this kind
(made serious on my part by threats of gout), good Miss Carpenter
greeted me with a complacent smile on my entry into our little
dining-room. “You see I have not forgotten your wish for a dish of
vegetables!” There, surely enough, on a cheeseplate, stood six little
round radishes! Her special chair was a horsehair one with wooden arms,
and on the seat she had placed a small square cushion, as hard as a
board, likewise covered with horsehair. I took this up one day, and
taunted her with the _Sybaritism_ it betrayed; but she replied, with
infinite simplicity, “Yes, indeed! I am sorry to say that since my
illness I have been obliged to have recourse to these indulgencies (!).
I used to try, like St. Paul, to ‘endure hardness.’”

Her standard of conscientious rigour was even, it would appear,
applicable to animals. I never saw a more ludicrous little scene than
when she one day found my poor dog Hajjin, a splendid grey Pomeranian,
lying on the broad of her very broad back, luxuriating on the rug before
a good fire. After gravely inspecting her for some moments, Miss
Carpenter turned solemnly away, observing, in a tone of deep moral
disapprobation, “Self-indulgent dog!”

Much of our work lay in a certain Ragged School in a filthy lane named
St. James’ Back, now happily swept from the face of the earth. The long
line of Lewin’s Mead beyond the chapel was bad enough, especially at
nine or ten o’clock of a winter’s night, when half the gas lamps were
extinguished, and groups of drunken men and miserable women were to be
found shouting, screaming and fighting before the dens of drink and
infamy of which the street consisted. Miss Carpenter told me that a
short time previously some Bow Street constables had been sent down to
this place to ferret out a crime which had been committed there, and
that they reported there was not in all London such a nest of wickedness
as they had explored. The ordinary Bristol policemen were never to be
seen at night in Lewin’s Mead, and it was said they were afraid to show
themselves in the place. But St. James’ Back was a shade, I think, lower
than Lewin’s Mead; at all events it was further from the upper air of
decent life; and in these horrid slums that dauntless woman had bought
some tumble-down old buildings and turned them into schools—day-schools
for girls and night-schools for boys, all the very sweepings of those
wretched streets.

It was a wonderful spectacle to see Mary Carpenter sitting patiently
before the large school-gallery in this place, teaching, singing, and
praying with the wild street boys, in spite of endless interruptions
caused by such proceedings as shooting marbles into hats on the table
behind her, whistling, stamping, fighting, shrieking out “Amen” in the
middle of the prayer, and sometimes rising _en masse_ and tearing, like
a troop of bisons in hob-nailed shoes, down from the gallery, round the
great schoolroom and down the stairs, out into the street. These
irrepressible outbreaks she bore with infinite good humour and, what
seemed to me more marvellous still, she heeded, apparently, not at all
the indescribable abomination of the odours of a tripe-and-trotter shop
next door, wherein operations were frequently carried on which, together
with the _bouquet du peuple_ of the poor little unkempt scholars,
rendered the school of a hot summer’s evening little better than the
ill-smelling _giro_ of Dante’s “Inferno.” These trifles, however,
scarcely even attracted Mary Carpenter’s attention, fixed as it was on
the possibility of “taking hold” (as she used to say) of one little
urchin or another, on whom, for the moment her hopes were fixed.

The droll things which daily occurred in these schools, and the
wonderful replies received from the scholars to questions testing their
information, amused her intensely, and the more unruly were the young
scamps, the more, I think, in her secret heart, she liked them, and
gloried in taming them. She used to say, “Only to get them to use the
_school comb_ is something!” There was the boy who defined Conscience to
me as “a thing a gen’elman hasn’t got, who, when a boy finds his purse
and gives it back to him, doesn’t give the boy sixpence.” There was the
boy who, sharing in my Sunday evening lecture on “Thankfulness,”—wherein
I had pointed out the grass and blossoming trees on the Downs as
subjects for praise,—was interrogated as to which pleasure he enjoyed
most in the course of the year? replied candidly, “Cock-fightin’, ma’am.
There’s a pit up by the ‘Black Boy’ as is worth anythink in Brissel!”

The clergy troubled us little. One day an impressive young curate
entered and sat silent, sternly critical to note what heresies were
being instilled into the minds of his flock. “I am giving a lesson on
Palestine,” I said; “I have just been at Jerusalem.” “_In what sense?_”
said the awful young man, darkly discerning some mysticism (of the
Swedenborgian kind, perhaps) beneath the simple statement. The boys who
were dismissed from the school for obstreperous behaviour were a great
difficulty to us, usually employing themselves in shouting and hammering
at the door. One winter’s night when it was raining heavily, as I was
passing through Lewin’s Mead, I was greeted by a chorus of voices,
“Cob-web, Cob-web!” emanating from the depths of a black archway.
Standing still under my umbrella, and looking down the cavern, I
remarked, “Don’t you think I must be a little tougher than a cobweb to
come out such a night as this to teach such little scamps as you?”

“Indeed you is, Mum; that’s true! And stouter too!”

“Well, don’t you think you would be more comfortable in that nice warm
schoolroom than in this dark, cold place?”

“Yes, ’m, we would.”

“You’ll have to promise to be tremendously good, I can tell you, if I
bring you in again. Will you promise?”

Vows of everlasting order and obedience were tendered; and, to Miss
Carpenter’s intense amusement, I came into St. James’ Back, followed by
a whole troop of little outlaws reduced to temporary subjection. At all
events they never shouted “Cob-web” again. Indeed, at all times the
events of the day’s work, if they bordered on the ludicrous (as was
often the case), provoked her laughter till the tears ran down her
cheeks. One night she sat grieving over a piece of ingratitude on the
part of one of her teachers, and told me she had given him some
invitation for the purpose of conciliating him and “heaping coals of
fire on his head.” “It will take another scuttle, my dear friend,” I
remarked; and thereupon her tears stopped, and she burst into a hearty
fit of laughter. Next evening she said to me dolorously, “I tried that
other scuttle, but it was no go!”

Of course, like every mortal, Mary Carpenter had _les défauts de ses
qualités_. Her absorption in her work always blinded her to the fact
that other people might possibly be bored by hearing of it incessantly.

In India, I have been told that a Governor of Madras observed, after her
visit, “It is very astonishing; I listened to all Miss Carpenter had to
tell me, but when I began to tell her what _I_ knew of this country, she
dropped asleep.” Indeed, the poor wearied and over-worked brain, when it
had made its effort, generally collapsed, and in two or three minutes,
after “holding you with her eye” through a long philanthropic history,
Miss Carpenter might be seen to be, to all intents and purposes, asleep.

On one occasion, that most loveable old man, Samuel J. May, of Syracuse,
came to pass two or three days at Red Lodge House, and Miss Carpenter
was naturally delighted to take him about and show him her schools and
explain everything to him. Mr. May listened with great interest for a
time, but at last his attention flagged and two or three times he turned
to me; “When can we have our talk, which Theodore Parker promised me?”
“Oh, by and by,” Miss Carpenter always interposed; till one day, after
we had visited St. James’ Back, we arrived all three at the foot of the
tremendous stairs, almost like those of the Trinità, which then existed
in Bristol, and were called the Christmas Steps. “_Now_, Mr. May and
Miss Cobbe” (said Mary Carpenter, cheerfully), “you can have your talk.”
And so we had—till we got to the top, when she resumed the guidance of
the conversation. Good jokes were often made of this little weakness,
but it had its pathetic side. Never was there a word of real egotism in
her eager talk, or the evidence of the slightest wish to magnify her own
doings, or to impress her hearers with her immense share in the public
benefits she described. It was her deep conviction that to turn one of
these poor sinners from the errors of its ways, to reach to the roots of
the misery and corruption of the “perishing and dangerous classes,” was
the most important work which could possibly be undertaken; and she,
very naturally, in consequence made it the most prominent, indeed,
almost the sole, subject of discourse. I was once in her company at
Aubrey House in London, when there happened to be present half-a-dozen
people, each one devoted to some special political, religious or moral
agitation. Miss Carpenter remarked in a pause in the conversation; “It
is a thousand pities that everybody will not join and give the whole of
their minds to the great cause of the age, because, if they would, we
should carry it undoubtedly.” “What _is_ the great cause of the age?” we
simultaneously exclaimed. “Parliamentary Reform?” said our host, Mr.
Peter Taylor; “the Abolition of Slavery?” said Miss Remond, a Negress,
Mrs. Taylor’s companion; “Teetotalism?” said another; “Woman’s
Suffrage?” said another; “The conversion of the world to Theism?” said
I. In the midst of the clamour, Miss Carpenter looked serenely round,
“Why! the Industrial Schools Bill _of course_!” Nobody enjoyed the joke,
when we all began to laugh, more than the reformer herself.

It was, above all, in the Red Lodge Reformatory that Mary Carpenter’s
work was at its highest. The spiritual interest she took in the poor
little girls was, beyond words, admirable. When one of them whom she had
hoped was really reformed fell back into thievish or other evil ways,
her grief was a real _vicarious repentance_ for the little sinner; a
Christ-like sentiment infinitely sacred. Nor was she at all blind to the
children’s defects, or easily deceived by the usual sham reformations of
such institutions. In one of her letters to me she wrote these wise
words (July 9th, 1859):—

“I have pointed out in one of my reports why I have more trouble than
others (_e.g._, especially, Catholics). A system of steady repression
and order would make them sooner good scholars; but then I should not
have the least confidence in the real change of their characters. Even
with my free system in the Lodge, remember how little we knew of Hill’s
and Hawkins’ real characters, until they were in the house? (Her own
private house). I do not object to nature being kept under curbs of rule
and order for a time, until some principles are sufficiently rooted to
be appealed to. But _then_ it must have play, or we cannot possibly tell
what amount of reformation has taken place. The Catholics have an
enormous artificial help in their religion and priests; but I place no
confidence in the slavish obedience they produce and the hypocrisy which
I have generally found inseparable from Catholic influence. I would far
rather have M. A. M’Intyre coolly say, ‘I know it was wrong’” (a barring
and bolting out) “and Anne Crooks in the cell for outrageous conduct,
acknowledge the same—‘I know it was wrong, but I am _not_ sorry,’ than
any hypocritical and heartless acknowledgments.”

Indeed nobody had a keener eye to detect cant of any kind, or a greater
hatred of it. She told me one day of her visit to a celebrated
institution, said to be supported semi-miraculously by answers to prayer
in the specific shape of cheques. Miss Carpenter said that she asked the
matron (or some other official) whether it was supported by voluntary
subscriptions? “Oh, dear no! madam,” the woman replied; “Do you not know
it is entirely supported by Prayer?” “Oh, indeed,” replied Miss
Carpenter. “I dare say, however, when friends have once been moved to
send you money, they continue to do so regularly?” “Yes, certainly they
do.” “And they mostly send it at the beginning of the year?” “Yes, yes,
very regularly.” “Ah, well,” said Miss Carpenter, “when people send me
money for Red Lodge under those circumstances, I enter them in my
Reports as _Annual Subscribers_!”

When our poor children at last left the Reformatory, Mary Carpenter
always watched their subsequent career with deep interest, gloried in
receiving intelligence that they were behaving honestly and steadily, or
deplored their backslidings in the contrary event. In short, her
interest was truly _in the children themselves_, in their very souls;
and not (as such philanthropy too often becomes) an interest in _her
Institution_. Those who know most of such work will best understand how
wide is the distinction.

But Mary Carpenter was not only the guardian and teacher of the poor
young waifs and strays of Bristol when she had caught them in her
charity-traps. She was also their unwearied advocate with one Government
after another, and with every public man and magistrate whom she could
reasonably or unreasonably attack on their behalf. Never was there such
a case of the Widow and the Unjust Judge; till at last most English
statesmen came to recognise her wisdom, and to yield readily to her
pressure, and she was a “power in the State.” As she wrote to me about
her Industrial School, so was it in everything else:—

“The magistrates have been lapsing into their usual apathy; so I have
got a piece of artillery to help me in the shape of Mr. M. D. Hill....
They have found by painful experience that I cannot be made to rest
while justice is not done to these poor children.” (July 6th, 1859.)

And again, some years later, when I had told her I had sat at dinner
beside a gentleman who had opposed many of her good projects:—

“I am very sorry you did not see through Mr. ——, and annihilate him! Of
course, I shall never rest in this world till the children have their
birthrights in this so-called Christian country; but my next mode of
attack I have not decided on yet!” (February 13th, 1867.)

At last my residence under Mary Carpenter’s roof came to a close. My
health had broken down two or three times in succession under a _régime_
for which neither habit nor constitution had fitted me, and my kind
friend, Dr. Symonds’, peremptory orders necessitated arrangements of
meals which Miss Carpenter thought would occasion too much irregularity
in her little household, which (it must be remembered) was also a branch
of the Reformatory work. I also sadly perceived that I could be of no
real comfort or service as an inmate of her house, though I could still
help her, and perhaps more effectually, by attending her schools while
living alone in the neighbourhood. Her overwrought and nervous
temperament could ill bear the strain of a perpetual companionship, or
even the idea that any one in her house might expect companionship from
her; and if, while I was yet a stranger, she had found some fresh
interest in my society, it doubtless ceased when I had been a
twelvemonth under her roof, and knew everything which she could tell me
about her work and plans. As I often told her (more in earnest than she
supposed), I knew she would have been more interested in me had I been
either more of a sinner or more of a saint!

And so, a few weeks later, the separation was made in all friendliness,
and I went to live alone at Belgrave House, Durdham Down, where I took
lodgings, still working pretty regularly at the Red Lodge and Ragged
Schools, but gradually engaging more in Workhouse visiting and looking
after friendless girls, so that my intercourse with Miss Carpenter
became less and less frequent, though always cordial and pleasant.

Years afterwards when I had ceased to reside in the neighbourhood of
Bristol, I enjoyed several times the pleasure of receiving visits from
Miss Carpenter at my home in London, and hearing her accounts of her
Indian travels and other interests. In 1877, I went to Clifton to attend
an Anti-vivisection meeting, and also one for Woman Suffrage; and at the
latter of these I found myself with great pleasure on the same platform
with Mary Carpenter. (She was also an Anti-vivisectionist and always
signed our Memorials.) Her biographer and nephew, Professor Estlin
Carpenter, while fully stating her recognition of the rightfulness of
the demand for votes for women and also doing us the great service of
printing Mr. Mill’s most admirable letter to her on the subject (_Life_,
p. 493) seems unaware that she ever publicly advocated the cause of
political rights for women. But on this occasion, as I have said, she
took her place on the platform of the West of England Branch of the
Association, at its meeting in the Victoria Rooms; and, in my hearing,
either proposed or seconded one of the resolutions demanding the
franchise, adding a few words of cordial approval.

Before I returned to London on this occasion I called on Miss Carpenter,
bringing with me a young niece. I found her at Red Lodge; and she
insisted on my going with her over all our old haunts, and noting what
changes and improvements she had made. I was tenderly touched by her
great kindness to my young companion and to myself; and by the added
softness and gentleness which years had brought to her. She expressed
herself as very happy in every way; and, in truth, she seemed to me like
one who had reached the Land of Beulah, and for whom there would be
henceforth only peace within and around.

A few weeks later I was told that her servant had gone into her bedroom
one morning and found her weeping for her brother, Philip Carpenter, of
whose death she had just heard. The next morning the woman entered again
at the same hour, but Mary Carpenter was lying quite still, in the
posture in which she had lain in sleep. Her “six days’ work” was done.
She had “gone home,” and I doubt not “ta’en her wages.” Here is the last
letter she wrote to me:—

“Red Lodge House, Bristol,
“March 27th, 1877.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“There are some things of which the most clear and unanswerable
reasoning could not convince me! One of these is, that a wise, all
powerful and loving Father can create an immortal spirit for eternal
misery. Perhaps you are wiser than I and more accessible to arguments
(though I doubt this), and I send you the enclosed, which _I do not
want back_. Gógurth’s answer to such people is the best I ever
heard—‘If _you_ are child of Devil—_good_; but _I_ am child of God!’

“I was very glad to get a glimpse of you; I do not trouble you with my
doings, knowing that you have enough of your own. You may like to see
an abstract of my experience.

“Yours affectionately,
“M. C.”

And here is a Poem which she gave me in MS. the day she wrote it. I do
not think it has seen the light.

CHRISTMAS DAY PRAYER.
Dec. 25th, 1858.

Onward and upward, Heavenly Father, bear me,
Onward and upward bear me to my home;—
Onward and upward, be Thou ever near me,
While my beloved Father beckons me to come.

With Thy Holy Spirit, O do Thou renew me!
Cleanse me from all that turneth me from Thee!
Guide me and guard me, lead me and subdue me
Till I love not aught that centres not in Thee!

Thou hast filled my soul with brightness and with beauty
Thou hast made me feel the sweetness of Thy love.
Purify my heart, devote me all to duty,
Sanctify me _wholly_ for Thy realms above.

Holy, heavenly Parent of this earthborn spirit,
Onward and upward bear it to its home,
With Thy Firstborn Son eternal joys to inherit,
Where my blessed Father beckons me to come.—
December 25th, 1858.
M. C.

The teaching work in the Red Lodge and the Ragged Schools, which I
continued for a long time after leaving Miss Carpenter’s house, was not,
I have thought on calm reflection in after years, very well done by me.
I have always lacked imagination enough to realize what are the mental
limitations of children of the poorer classes; and in my eagerness to
interest them and convey my thoughts, I know I often spoke over their
heads, with too rapid utterance and using too many words not included in
their small vocabularies. I think my lessons amused and even sometimes
delighted them; I was always told they loved them; but they enjoyed them
rather I fear like fireworks than instruction! In the Red Lodge there
were fifty poor little girls from 10 to 15 years of age who constituted
our _prisoners_. They were regularly committed to the Lodge as to jail,
and when Miss Carpenter was absent I had to keep the great door key.
They used to sit on their benches in rows opposite to me in the
beautiful black oak-panelled room of the Lodge, and read their dreary
books, and rejoice (I have no doubt) when I broke in with explanations
and illustrations. Their poor faces, often scarred by disease, and
ill-shaped heads, were then lifted up with cheerful looks to me, and I
ploughed away as best I could, trying to get _any_ ideas into their
minds; in accordance with Mary Carpenter’s often repeated assurance that
_anything whatever_ which could pass from my thoughts to theirs would be
a benefit, as supplying other _pabulum_ than their past familiarity with
all things evil. When we had got through one school reading book in this
way I begged Miss Carpenter to find me another to afford a few fresh
themes for observations, but no; she preferred that I should go over the
same again. Some of the children had singular histories. There was one
little creature named Kitty, towards whom I confess my heart warmed
especially, for her leonine disposition! Whenever there was some
mischief discovered and the question asked Who was in fault? invariably
Kitty’s hand went up: “I did it, ma’am;” and the penalty, even of
incarceration in a certain dreaded “cell,” was heroically endured. Kitty
had been duly convicted at Sessions at the mature age of ten. Of what
high crime and misdemeanour does the reader suppose? Pilfering, perhaps,
a pocket handkerchief, or a penny? Not at all! Of nothing less than
_Horse-stealing_! She and her brother, a mite two years younger than
herself, were dispatched by their vagabond parents to journey by one
road, while they themselves travelled by another, and on the way the
children, who were, of course, directed to pick and steal all they could
lay hands on, observed an old grey mare feeding in a field near the road
and reflecting that a ride on horseback would be preferable to their
pilgrimage on foot, they scrambled on the mare’s back and by some means
guided her down the road and went off in triumph. The aggrieved farmer
to whom the mare belonged, brought the delinquents to justice, and after
being tried with all the solemn forms of British law (their heads
scarcely visible over the dock), the children were sent respectively to
a Boy’s Reformatory, and to Red Lodge. We kept Kitty, of course, till
her full term expired when she was 15, and I am afraid Miss Carpenter
strained the law a little in detaining her still longer to allow her to
gain more discretion before returning to those dreadful tramps, her
parents. She herself, indeed, felt the danger as she grew older, and
attached herself much to us both. A teacher whom I had imported from
Ireland (one of my own village pupils from Donabate) told me that Kitty
spoke of us with tears, and that she had seen her one day, when given a
stocking of mine whereupon to practise darning, furtively kissing it
when she thought no one was observing her. She once said, “God bless
Exeter jail! I should never have been here but for that.” But at last,
like George Eliot’s _Gipsy_, the claims of race over-mastered all her
other feelings. Kitty left us to rejoin her mother, who had perpetually
called to see her; and a month or two later the poor child died of
fever, caught in the wretched haunts of her family.

[Illustration:

_Door in Oak Room, Red Lodge,
Mary Carpenter, Kitty, etc._
]

In a visit which I made to Red Lodge two years ago, I was struck by the
improved physical aspect of the poor girls in the charge of our
successors. The depressed, almost flattened form of head which the
experienced eye of Sir Walter Crofton had caught (as I did), as a
terrible “Note” of hereditary crime, was no longer visible; nor was the
miserable blear-eyed, scrofulous appearance of the faces of many of my
old pupils to be seen any more. Thirty years have, I hope and believe,
raised even the very lowest stratum of the population of England.

Miss Carpenter’s work in founding the first Reformatory for
girl-criminals with the munificent aid of that generous woman Lady
Byron, has beyond question, contributed in no mean degree to thinning
the ranks of female crime during the last quarter of a century. Issuing
from the Red Lodge at the end of their four or five years’ term of
confinement and instruction, the girls rarely returned, like poor Kitty,
to their parents, but passed first through a probation as Miss
Carpenter’s own servants in her private house, under good Marianne and
her successors, and then into that humbler sort of domestic service
which is best for girls of their class; I mean that wherein the mistress
works and takes her meals with the servant. The pride and joy of these
girls when they settled into steady usefulness was often a pleasure to
witness. Miss Carpenter used to say, “When I hear one of them talk of
‘_My_ Kitchen,’ I know it is all right!” Of course many of them
eventually married respectably. On the whole I do not think that more
than five, or at the outside ten per cent. fell into either crime or
vice after leaving Red Lodge, and if we suppose that there have been
something like 500 girls in the Reformatory since Lady Byron bought the
Red Lodge and dedicated it to that benevolent use, we may fairly
estimate, that Mary Carpenter _deflected_ towards goodness the lives of
at least four hundred and fifty women, who, if she had not stirred in
their interest, would almost inevitably have spent their days in crime
or vice, and ended them either in jail or in the “Black Ward” of the
workhouse.

There is an epitaph on a good clergyman in one of the old churches of
Bristol which I have always thought remarkably fine. It runs thus as far
as I remember:—

“Marble may moulder, monuments decay,
Time sweeps memorials from the earth away;
But lasting records are to Brydges given,
The date Eternity, the archives Heaven;
_There_ living tablets with his worth engraved
Stand forth for ever in the souls he saved.”

We do not, in our day (unless we happen to belong to the Salvation Army)
talk much about “saving souls” in the old Evangelical sense; and I, at
least, hold very strongly, and have even preached to the purpose, that
every human soul is “_Doomed to be Saved_,” destined by irrevocable
Divine love and mercy to be sooner or later, in this world or far off
worlds to come, brought like the Prodigal to the Father’s feet. But
there is a very real sense in which a true philanthropist “saves” his
fellow-men from moral evil—the sense in which Plutarch uses the word,
and which every theology must accept, and in this sense I unhesitatingly
affirm, that Mary Carpenter SAVED four hundred human souls.

It must be borne in mind also that it was not only in her own special
Reformatory that her work was carried on. By advocating in her books and
by her active public pleading the modification of the laws touching
juvenile crime, she practically originated—in concert with Recorder
Hill—the immense improvement which has taken place in the whole
treatment of young criminals who, before her time, were simply sent to
jail, and there too often stamped with the hallmark of crime for life.

As regards the other part of Miss Carpenter’s work which she permitted
me to share,—the Ragged Schools and Streetboys’ Sunday School in St.
James’s Back,—I laboured, of course, under the same disadvantage as in
the Red Lodge of never clearly foreseeing how much would be understood
of my words or ideas; and what would be most decidedly “caviar to the
general.” A ludicrous example of this occurred on one occasion. I always
anxiously desired to instil into the minds of the children admiration
for brave and noble deeds, and therefore told them stories of heroism
whenever my subject afforded an opening for one. Having to give a lesson
on France, and some boy asking a question about the Guillotine, I
narrated, as vivaciously and dramatically as I knew how, the beautiful
tale of the Nuns who chanted the _Te Deum_ on the scaffold, till one
voice after another was silenced for ever, and the brave Abbess still
continued to sing the grand old hymn of Ambrose, till her turn came for
death. I fondly hoped that some of my own feelings in describing the
scene were communicated to my audience. But such hopes were dashed when,
a day or two later, Miss Carpenter came home from her lesson at the
school, and said: “My dear friend, what in the name of heaven can you
have been teaching those boys? They were all excited about some lesson
you had given them. They said you described cutting off a lot of heads;
and it was ‘chop! and a head fell into the basket; and chop! another
head in the basket! They said it was such a nice lesson!’ But _whose_
heads were cut off, or why, none of them remembered,—only chop! and a
head fell in the basket!”

I consoled myself, however, for this and many another defeat by the
belief that if my lessons did not much instruct their wild pates, their
hearts were benefitted in some small measure by being brought under my
friendly influence. Miss Carpenter always made the schoolmaster of the
Day School attend at our Sunday Night-School, fearing some wild outbreak
of the 100 and odd boys and hobbledehoys who formed our congregation.
The first Sunday, however, on which the school was given into my charge,
I told the schoolmaster he might leave me and go home; and I then
stopped alone (we had no assistants) with the little herd. My lessons, I
am quite sure, were all the more impressive; and though Miss Carpenter
was quite alarmed when she heard what I had done, she consented to my
following my own system of confidence, and I never had reason to repent
the adoption of it.

In my humble judgment (and I know it was also that of one much better
able to judge, Lord Shaftesbury) these elastic and irregular Ragged
Schools were far better institutions for the class for whom they were
designed than the cast-iron Board Schools of our time. They were
specially designed to _civilize_ the children: to _tame_ them enough to
induce them, for example, to sit reasonably still on a bench for
half-an-hour at a time; to wash their hands and faces; to comb their
hair; to forbear from shouting, singing, “turning wheels,” throwing
marbles, making faces, or similarly disporting themselves, while in
school; after which preliminaries they began to acquire the art of
learning lessons. It was not exactly Education in the literary sense,
but it was a Training, without which as a substructure the “Three R’s”
are of little avail,—if we may believe in William of Wykeham’s axiom
that “Manners makyth Manne.”

Another, and, as I think, great merit of the Ragged School system was,
that decent and self-respecting parents who strove to keep their
children from the contamination of the gutter and were willing to pay
their penny a week to send them to school, were not obliged, as now, to
suffer their boys and girls to associate in the Board Schools with the
very lowest and roughest of children fresh from the streets. Nothing has
made me more indignant than a report I read some time ago in one of the
newspapers of a poor widow who had “seen better days,” being summoned
and fined for engaging a non-certified poor governess to teach her
little girl, rather than allow the child to attend the Board School and
associate with the girls she would meet there. As if all the learning of
a person, if he could pour it into a child’s brain, would counterbalance
in a young girl’s mind the foul words and ideas familiar to the hapless
children of the “perishing and dangerous classes!”

People talk seriously of the _physical_ infection which may be conveyed
where many young children are gathered in close contiguity. They would,
if they knew more, much more anxiously deprecate the _moral_ contagion
which may be introduced into a school by a single girl who has been
initiated into the mysteries of a vicious home. On two separate
occasions Miss Carpenter and I were startled by what I can only describe
as a portentous wave of evil which passed over the entire community of
50 girls in the Red Lodge. In each case it was undeniably traceable to
the arrival of new comers who had been sent by mistake of magistrates to
our Reformatory when they ought to have gone to a Penitentiary. It was
impossible for us to guess how, with all the watchful guardianship of
the teachers, these unhappy girls had any opportunity for corrupting
their companions, but that they did so (temporarily only, as they were
immediately discovered and banished) I saw with my own eyes beyond
possibility of mistake.

It came to me as part of my work with Miss Carpenter to visit the homes
of all the children who attended our Ragged Schools—either Day Schools
or Night Schools; nominally to see whether they belonged to the class
which should properly benefit by gratuitous education, but also to find
out whether I could do anything to amend their condition. Many were the
lessons I learned respecting the “short” but by no means “simple” annals
of the poor, when I made those visits all over the slums of Bristol.

The shoemakers were a very numerous and a very miserable class among the
parents of our pupils. When anything interfered with trade they were at
once thrown into complete idleness and destitution. Over and over again
I tried to get the poor fellows, when they sat listless and lamenting,
to turn to any other kind of labour in their own line; to endeavour,
_e.g._, to make slippers for me, no matter how roughly, or to mend my
boots; promising similar orders from friends. Not one would, or could,
do anything but sew upper or under leathers, as the case might be! The
men sat all day long when there was work, sewing in their stuffy rooms
with their wives busy washing or attending to the children, and the
whole place in a muddle; but they would converse eagerly and
intelligently with me about politics or about other towns and countries,
whereas the poor over-worked women would never join in our talk. When I
addressed them they at once called my attention to Jenny’s torn frock
and Tom’s want of a new cap. One of these shoemakers, in whom I felt
rather special interest, turned to me one day, looked me straight in the
face, and said: “I want to ask you a question. Why does a lady like you
come and sit and talk to me?” I thought it a true token of confidence,
and was glad I could answer honestly that I had come first to see about
his children, but now came because I liked him.

Other cases which came to my knowledge in these rounds were dreadfully
sad. In one poor room I found a woman who had been confined only a few
days, sitting up in bed doing shopwork, her three or four _little_
children all endeavouring to work likewise for the miserable pay. Her
husband was out looking vainly for work. She showed me a sheaf of
pawntickets for a large quantity of table and house linen and plated
goods. Her husband and she had formerly kept a flourishing inn, but the
railway had ruined it, and they had been obliged to give it up and come
to live in Bristol, and get such work as they could do—at starvation
wages. She was a gentle, delicate, fair woman, who had been lady’s maid
in a wealthy family known to me by name. I asked her did she not go out
and bring the children to the Downs on a Sunday? “Ah! we tried it once
or twice,” she said, “but it was too terrible coming back to this room;
we never go now.”

Another case of extreme poverty was less tragic. There was a woman with
three children whose husband was a soldier in India, to whom she
longingly hoped to be eventually sent out by the military authorities.
Meanwhile she was in extreme poverty in Bristol, and so was her friend,
a fine young Irish woman. Their sole resource was a neighbour who
possessed a pair of good sheets, and was willing to lend them to them
_by day_, provided they were restored for her own use every night! This
did not appear a very promising source of income, but the two friends
contrived to make it one. They took the sheets of a morning to a
pawnbroker who allowed them,—I think it was two shillings, upon them.
With this they stocked a basket with oranges, apples, gooseberries, pins
and needles, match boxes, lace,—anything which could be had for such a
price, according to the season. Then one or other of the friends arrayed
herself in the solitary bonnet and shawl which they possessed between
them, and sallied out for the day to dispose of her wares, while the
other remained in their single room to take care of the children. The
evening meal was bought and brought home by the outgoing friend with the
proceeds of her day’s sales, and then the sheets were redeemed from pawn
at the price of a half-penny each day and gratefully restored to the
proprietor. This ingenious mode of filling five mouths went on, with a
little help, when I came to know of it, in the way of a fresh-filled
basket—for a whole winter. I thought it so curious that I described it
to dear Harriet St. Leger one day when she was passing through Bristol
and spent some hours with me. She was affected almost to tears and
pushed into my hand, at the last moment at the Station, all the silver
in her purse, to give to the friends. The money amounted to 7s. 6d., and
when Harriet was gone I hastened to give it to the poor souls. It proved
to be one of the numerous occasions in life in which I have experienced
a sort of fatality, as if the chance of doing a bit of good to somebody
were offered to us by Providence to take or leave and, if we postpone
taking it, the chance is lost. I was tired, and the room inhabited by
the poor women was, as it happened, at the other end of Bristol, and I
could not indulge myself with a fly, but I reflected that the money now
really belonged to them, and I was bound to take it to them without
delay. When I reached their room I found I was in the very nick of time.
An order had come for the soldier’s wife to present herself at some
military office next day with her children, and with a certain “kit” of
clothes and utensils for the voyage, and if all were right she would be
sent to join her husband’s regiment in India by a vessel to sail
immediately. Without the proper outfit she would not have been taken;
and of course the poor soul had no kit and was in an agony of anxiety.
Harriet’s gift, with some trifling addition, happily supplied all that
was wanted.

I did not see so much of drunkenness in Bristol as the prominence given
to the subject by many philanthropists led me to expect. Of course I
came across terrible cases of it now and then, as for example a little
boy of ten at our Ragged School who begged Miss Carpenter to let him go
home at mid-day, and on enquiry, it proved that he wanted to _release
his mother_, whom he had locked in, dead-drunk, at nine in the morning.
I also had a frightful experience of the case of the drunken wife of a
poor man dying of agonizing cancer. The doctor who attended him told me
that a little brandy was the only thing to help him, and I brought small
quantities to him frequently, till, when I was leaving home for three
weeks, I thought it best to give a whole bottle to his wife under
injunctions to administer it by proper degrees. Happening to pass by the
door of the wretched couple a day later, before I started, I saw a small
crowd, and asked what had happened? “Mrs. Whale had been drinking and
had fallen down stairs and broken her neck and was dead.” Horror-struck
I mounted the almost perpendicular stair and found it was so; the poor
hapless husband was still alive, and my empty brandy bottle was on the
table.

The other great form of vice however was thrust much more often on my
notice—the ghastly ruin of the wretched girls who fell into it and the
nameless damnation of the hags and Jews who traded on their souls and
bodies. The cruelty of the fate of some of the young women was often
piteous. Thankful I am that the law for assaults has been made since
those days far more stringent and is oftener put in force. There were
stories which came to my personal knowledge which would draw tears from
many eyes were I to tell them, but the more cruel the wrong done, the
more difficult it generally proved to induce anybody to undertake to
receive the victims into their houses on any terms.

A gentleman whom I met in Italy, who knew Bristol well, told me he had
watched a poor young sailor’s destruction under the influence of some of
the eighteen hundred miserable women then infesting the city. He had
just been paid off and had received £73 for a long service at sea. Mr.
Empson first saw him in the fangs of two of the wretched creatures, and
next, six weeks later, he found him dying in the Infirmary, having spent
every shilling of his money in drink and debauchery. He told Mr. Empson
that, after the first week, he had never taken any food at all, but
lived only on stimulants.

CHAPTER
XI.
_BRISTOL._
_THE SICK IN WORKHOUSES._

My new life on Durdham Down, though solitary, was a very happy one. I
had two nice rooms in Belgrave House (then the last house on the road
opening on the beautiful Downs from the Redland side), wherein a bright,
excellent, pretty widow, Mrs. Stone, kept several suites of lodgings. It
is not often, alas! that the relations of lodger and landlady are
altogether pleasant, but in my case they were eminently so, and resulted
in cordial and permanent mutual regard. My little bedroom opened by a
French window on a balcony leading to a small garden, and beyond it I
had an immense view of Bristol and the surrounding country, over the
smoke of which the rising sun often made Turneresque pictures. My
sitting room had a front and a corner view of the delightful Downs as
far as “Cook’s Folly” and the Nightingale Valley; and often, over the
“Sea Wall,” the setting sun went down in great glory. I walked down
every week-day into Bristol (of course I needed more than ever to
economise, and even the omnibus fare had to be considered), and went
about my various avocations in the schools and workhouse till I could do
no more, when I made my way home as cheaply as I could contrive, to
dinner. I had my dear dog Hajjin, a lovely mouse-coloured Pomeranian,
for companion at all times, and on Sundays we generally treated
ourselves to a good ramble over the Downs and beyond them, perhaps as
far as Kings’-Weston. The whole district is dear to me still.

The return to fresh air and to something like country life was
delightful. It had been, I must avow, an immense strain on my resolution
to live in Bristol among all the sordid surroundings of Miss Carpenter’s
house; and when once in a way in those days I left them and caught a
glimpse of the country, the effort to force myself back was a hard one.
One soft spring day, I remember, I had gone across the Downs and sat for
half an hour under a certain horse-chestnut tree, which was that day in
all the exquisite beauty of its young green leaves. I felt _this_ was
all I wanted to be happy—merely to live in the beauty and peace of
Nature, as of old at Newbridge; and I reflected that, of course, I
_could_ do it, at once, by breaking off with Miss Carpenter and giving
up my work in hideous Bristol. But, _per contra_, I had concluded that
this work was wanted to be done and that I could do it; and had
seriously given myself to it, believing that so I could best do God’s
will. Thus there went on in my mind for a little while a very stiff
fight, one of those which leave us either stronger or weaker ever after.
_Now_ at last, without any effort on my part, the bond which held me to
live in Red Lodge House, was loosened, and I was able both to go on with
my work in Bristol and also to breathe the fresh air in the morning and
to see the sun rise and set, and often to enjoy a healthful run over
those beautiful Downs. By degrees, also, I made several friendships in
the neighbourhood, some most dear and faithful ones which have lasted
ever since; and many people were very kind to me and helped me in
various ways in my work. I shall speak of these friends in another
chapter.

One of my superstitions has long been that if any particular task seems
to us at the first outlook specially against the grain, it will
continually happen that in the order of things it comes knocking at our
door and practically saying to our consciences: “Are you going to get up
and do what is wanted, or sit still and please yourself with something
else?” In this guise of disagreeability, workhouse visiting first
presented itself to me. Miss Carpenter frequently mentioned the
workhouse as a place which ought to be looked after; and which she
believed sadly wanted voluntary inspection; but the very name conveyed
to me such an impression of dreary hopelessness that I shrank from the
thought. When St. Paul coupled _Hope_ with Faith and Charity he might
have said “these three are one,” for without the Hope of achieving some
good (or at least of stopping some evil) it is hard to gird ourselves to
any practical exertion for our fellow-creatures. To lift up the criminal
and perishing classes of the community and cut off the root of crime and
vice by training children in morality and religion, this was a
soul-inspiring idea. But to bring a small modicum of cheer to the aged
and miserable paupers, who may be supposed generally to be undergoing
the inevitable penalties of idle or drunken lives, was far from equally
uplifting! However, my first chance-visit to St. Peter’s in Bristol with
Miss Elliot, showed me so much to be done, so many claims to sympathy
and pity, and the sore lack of somebody, unconnected officially with the
place, to meet them, that I at once felt that here I must put in my oar.

The condition of the English workhouses generally at that period (1859)
was very different from what it is now. I visited many of them in the
following year or two in London and the provincial towns, and _this_ is
what I saw. The sick lay on wretched beds, fit only for able-bodied
tramps, and were nursed mostly by old pauper women of the very lowest
class. The infirm wards were very frequently placed in the worst
possible positions. I remember one (in London) which resounded all day
long with din from an iron-foundry just beneath, so that one could not
hear oneself speak; and another, of which the windows could not be
opened in the hottest weather, because carpets were taken to be beaten
in the court below. The treatment of the pauper children was no less
deplorable. They were joyless, spiritless little creatures, without
“mothering” (as blessed Mrs. Senior said a few years later), without
toys, without the chance of learning anything practical for use in after
life, even to the lighting of a fire or cooking a potato. Their poor
faces were often scarred by disease and half blinded by ophthalmia. The
girls wore the hideous workhouse cotton frocks, not half warm enough to
keep them healthy in those bare, draughty wards, and heavy hob-nailed
shoes which acted like galley-slaves’ bullets on their feet when they
were turned to “play” in a high-walled, sunless yard, which was
sometimes, as I have seen, six inches deep in coarse gravel. As to the
infants, if they happened to have a good motherly matron it was so far
well, though even she (mostly busy elsewhere) could do but little to
make the crabbed old pauper nurses kind and patient. But how often, we
might ask, were the workhouse matrons of those days really kind-hearted
and motherly? Of course they were selected by the gentlemen guardians
(there were no ladies then on the Boards) for quite other merits; and as
Miss Carpenter once remarked to me from the depth of her experience:—

“_There never yet was man so clever but the Matron of an Institution
could bamboozle him about every department of her business!_”

I have sat in the Infants’ ward when an entire Board of about two dozen
gentlemen tramped through it, for what they considered to be
“inspection”; and anything more helpless and absurd than those masculine
“authorities” appeared as they glanced at the little cots (never daring
to open one of them) while the awakened babies screamed at them in
chorus, it has seldom been my lot to witness.

On one occasion I visited an enormous workhouse in a provincial town
where there were nearly 500 sick and infirm patients. The Matron told me
she had but lately been appointed to her post. I said, “It is a
tremendously heavy charge for you, especially with only these pauper
nurses. No doubt you have gone through a course of Hospital training,
and know how to direct everything?”

“O, dear. No! Madam!” replied the lady with a toss of her cap-strings;
“I never nursed anybody I can assure you, except my ’usband, before I
came here. It was misfortune brought me to this!”

How many other Masters and Matrons throughout the country received their
appointments with as little fitness for them and simply as favours from
influential or easy-going guardians, who may guess?

I had at this time become acquainted with the friend whose
comradeship—cemented in the dreary wards of Bristol Workhouse more than
30 years ago—has been ever since one of the great pleasures of my life.
All those who know Miss Elliot, daughter of the late Dean of Bristol,
will admit that it would be very superfluous, not to say impertinent, to
enlarge on the privileges of friendship with her. Miss Elliot was at
that time living at the old Deanery close to Bristol Cathedral, and
taking part in every good work which was going on in the city and
neighbourhood. Among other things she had been teaching regularly for
years in Miss Carpenter’s Reformatory, regardless of the prejudice
against her unitarianism; and one day she called at Miss Carpenter’s
house to ask her what was to be done with Kitty, who had been very
naughty. Miss Carpenter asked her to see the lady who had come to work
with her; and we met for the first time. Miss Elliot begged me to return
her visit, and though nothing was further from my mind at that time than
to enter into anything like society, I was tempted by the great
attractions of my brilliant young friend and her sister and of the witty
and wide-minded Dean, and before long (especially after I went to live
alone) I enjoyed much intercourse with the delightful household.

Miss Elliot had been in the habit of visiting a poor old woman named
Mrs. Buckley, who had formerly lived close to the Deanery and had been
removed to the workhouse; and one day she asked me to accompany her on
her errand. This being over, I wandered off to the various wards where
other poor women, and also the old and invalid men, spent their dreary
days, and soon perceived how large a field was open for usefulness in
the place.

The first matter which occupied us was the condition of the sick and
infirm paupers; first of the women only; later of both men and women.
The good Master and Matron admitted us quite freely to the wards, and we
saw and knew everything which was going on. St. Peter’s was an
exceptional workhouse in many respects. The house was evidently at one
time (about A.D. 1600, like Red Lodge) the mansion of some merchant
prince of Bristol, erected in the midst of the city. The outer walls are
still splendid specimens of old English wood and stonework; and, within,
the Board-room exhibits still a magnificent chimney-piece. The larger
part of the building, however, has been pulled about and fashioned into
large wards, with oak-beamed rafters on the upper floor, and intricate
stairs and passages in all directions. Able-bodied paupers and casuals
were lodged elsewhere (at Stapleton Workhouse) and were not admitted
here. There were only the sick, the aged, the infirm, the insane and
epileptic patients and lying-in women.

Here are some notes of the inmates of this place by Miss Elliot:—

“1. An old woman of nearly 80, and as I thought beyond power of
understanding me. Once however when I was saying ‘good-bye’ before an
absence of some months, I was attracted by her feeble efforts to catch
my attention. She took my hand and gasped out ‘God bless you; you wont
find me when you come back. Thank you for coming.’ I said most truly
that I had never been any good to her, and how sorry I was I had never
spoken to her. ‘Oh, but I see your face; it is always a great pleasure
and seems bright. I was praying for you last night. I don’t sleep much
of a night. I thank you for coming.’... 2. A woman between fifty and
sixty dying of liver disease. She had been early left a widow, had
struggled bravely, and reared her son so well that he became foreman
at one of the first printing establishments in the city. His master
gave us an excellent character of him. The poor mother unhappily had
some illness which long confined her in another hospital, and when she
left it her son was dead; dead without her care in his last hours. The
worn-out and broken-down mother, too weak and hopeless to work any
longer, came to her last place of refuge in the workhouse. There, day
by day, we found her sitting on the side of her bed, reading and
trying to talk cheerfully, but always breaking down utterly when she
came to speak of her son. 3. Opposite to her an old woman of ninety
lies, too weak to sit up. One day, not thinking her asleep, I went to
her bedside. I shall never forget the start of joy, the eager hand,
‘Oh, Mary, Mary, you are come! Is it you at last?’ ‘Ah, poor dear,’
said the women round her, ‘she most always dreams of Mary. ’Tis her
daughter, ladies, in London; she has written to her often, but don’t
get any answer.’ The poor old woman made profuse apologies for her
mistake, and laid her head wearily on the pillow where she had rested
and dreamed, literally for years, of Mary.

“4. Further on is a girl of sixteen, paralyzed hopelessly for life.
She had been maid-of-all-work in a family of twelve, and under her
fearful drudgery had broken down thus early. ‘Oh, ma’am,’ she said
with bursts of agony, ‘I did work; I was always willing to work, if
God would let me; I did work while I could, but I shall never get
well; Never!’ Alas, she may live as long as the poor cripple who died
here last summer, after lying forty-six years in the same bed, gazing
on the same blank, white wall. 5. The most cheerful woman in the ward
is one who can never rise from her bed; but she is a good needlewoman,
and is constantly employed in making _shrouds_. It would seem as if
the dismal work gave her an interest in something outside the ward,
and she is quite eager when the demand for her manufacture is
especially great!

“In the Surgical Ward are some eight or ten patients; all in painful
diseases. One is a young girl dying of consumption, complicated with
the most awful wounds on her poor limbs. ‘But they don’t hurt so bad,’
she says, ‘as any one would think who looked at them; and it will soon
be all over. I was just thinking it was four years to-day since I was
brought into the Penitentiary,’ (it was after an attempt to drown
herself after a sad life at Aldershot); ‘and now I have been here
three years. God has been very good to me, and brought me safe when I
didn’t deserve it.’ Over her head stands a print of the Lost Sheep,
and she likes to have that parable read to her. Very soon that sweet,
fair young face, as innocent as I have ever seen in the world, will
bear no more marks of pain. Life’s whole tragedy will have been ended,
and she is only just nineteen!”

[A few weeks later, on Easter Sunday morning when the rising sun was
shining into the curtainless ward, the few patients who were awake saw
this poor girl, who had not been able to raise herself or sit upright
for many weeks, suddenly start forward, sitting straight up in bed
with her arms lifted and an expression of ecstacy on her face, and
something like a cry of joy on her lips. Then she fell back, and all
was over. The incident, which was in every way striking and affecting,
helped me to recall the conviction (set forth in my _Peak in Darien_),
that the dying do, sometimes, catch a glimpse of blessed friends
waiting for them on the threshold.]

“A little way off lies a woman dying in severest sufferings which have
lasted long, and may yet last for weeks. Such part of her poor face as
may be seen expresses almost angelic patience and submission, and the
little she can say is all of gratitude to God and man. On the box
beside her bed there stands usually a cup with a few flowers, or even
leaves or weeds—something to which, in the midst of that sickening
disease, she can look for beauty. When we bring her flowers her
pleasure is almost too affecting to witness. She says she remembers
when she used to climb the hedge rows to gather them in the ‘beautiful
country.’”

Among the few ways open to us of relieving the miseries of these sick
wards and of the parallel ones on the other side occupied by male
sufferers, were the following:—The introduction of a few easy chairs
with cushions for those who could sit by the fire in winter, and whose
thinly-clothed frames could not bear the benches. Also bed-rests,—long
knitted ones, fastened to the lower posts of the bed and passed behind
the patient’s back, so as to form a kind of sitting hammock,—very great
comforts where there is only one small bolster or pillow and the patient
wants to sit up in bed. Occasionally we gave little packets of good tea;
workhouse tea at that time being almost too nauseous to drink. We also
brought pictures to hang on the walls. These we bought coloured and
cheaply framed or varnished. Their effect upon the old women, especially
pictures of children, was startling. One poor soul who had been lying
opposite the same blank wall for twenty years, when I laid one of the
coloured engravings on her bed preparatory to hanging it before her,
actually _kissed_ the face of the little child in the picture, and burst
into tears.

Further, we brought a canary in a cage to hang in the window. This seems
an odd gift, but it was so successful that I believe the good visitors
who came after us have maintained a series of canaries ever since our
time. The common interest excited by the bird brought friendliness and
cheerfulness among the poor old souls, some of whom had kept up “a
coolness” for years while living next to one another on their beds! The
sleepless ones gloried in the summer-morning-song of Dicky, and every
poor visitor, daughter or granddaughter, was sure to bring a handful of
groundsel to the general rejoicing of Dicky’s friends. Of course, we
also brought flowers whenever we could contrive it; or a little summer
fruit or winter apples.

Lastly, Books, magazines, and simple papers of various kinds; such as
_Household Words_, _Chambers’ Magazine_, &c. These were eagerly borrowed
and exchanged, especially among the men. Nothing could be more dreary
than the lives of those who were not actually suffering from any acute
malady but were paralysed or otherwise disabled from work. I remember a
ship-steward who had been struck with hemiplegia, and had spent the
savings of his life time—no less than £800,—in futile efforts at cure.
Another was a once-smart groom whom my friend exhorted to patience and
thankfulness. “Yes, Ma’am,” he replied promptly, “I will be _very_
thankful,—when I get out!”

As an example of the kind of way in which every sort of wretchedness
drains into a workhouse and of what need there is for someone to watch
for it there, I may record how we one day perceived at the far end of a
very large ward a figure not at all of the normal workhouse stamp,—an
unmistakeable gentleman,—sitting on the side of his bed. With some
diffidence we offered him the most recent and least childish of our
literature. He accepted the papers graciously, and we learnt from the
Master that the poor man had been found on the Downs a few days before
with his throat cut; happily not irreparably. He had come from Australia
to Europe to dispute some considerable property, and had lost both his
lawsuit and the friendship of all his English relatives, and was
starving, and totally unable to pay his passage back to his wife and
children at the Antipodes. We got up a little subscription, and the good
Freemasons, finding him to be a Brother, did the rest, and sent him home
across the seas, rejoicing, and with his throat mended!

But the cases of the _incurable_ poor weighed heavily on us, and as we
studied it more, we came to see how exceedingly piteous is their
destiny. We found that it is not an accidental misfortune, but a regular
descent down the well-worn channels of Poverty, Disease and Death, for
men and women to go to one or other of the 270 hospitals for _curable_
patients which then existed in England (there must be many more now),
and after a longer or shorter sojourn, to be pronounced “incurable,”
destined perhaps to linger for a year or several years, but to die
inevitably from Consumption, Cancer or some other of the dreadful
maladies which afflict human nature. What then becomes of them? Their
homes, if they had any before going into the hospital, are almost sure
to be too crowded to receive them back, or too poor to supply them with
both support and nursing for months of helplessness. There is no
resource for them but the workhouse, and there they sink down, hopeless
and miserable; the hospital comforts of good beds and furniture and
carefully prepared food and skilled nurses all lost, and only the hard
workhouse bed to lie, and _die_ upon. The burst of agony with which many
a poor creature has told me: “I am sent here because I am incurable,”
remains one of the saddest of my memories.

Miss Elliot’s keen and practical mind turned over the problem of how
this misery could be in some degree alleviated. There was no use in
trying to get sufficient Hospitals for Incurables opened to meet the
want. There were only two at that time in England, and they received (as
they do now) a rather different class from those with whom we are
concerned; namely, the deformed and permanently diseased. At the lowest
rate of £30 a year it would have needed £900,000 a year to house the
30,000 patients whom we should have wished to take from the workhouses.
The only possible plan was to improve their condition _in_ the
workhouses; and this we fondly hoped might be done (without burdening
the ratepayers) by our plan, which was as follows:—

That the incurables in workhouses should be avowedly distinguished from
other paupers, and separate wards be allowed to them. That into those
wards private charity be freely admitted and permitted to introduce,
with the sanction of the medical officer, such comforts as would
alleviate the sufferings of the inmates, _e.g._, good spring beds, or
air beds; easy-chairs, air-cushions, small refreshments such as good tea
and lemons and oranges (often an immense boon to the sick); also snuff,
cough lozenges, spectacles, flowers in the window, books and papers;
and, above all, kindly visitors.

The plan was approved by a great many experienced men and women; and, as
it would not have added a shilling anywhere to the rates, we were very
hopeful that it might be generally adopted. Several pamphlets which we
wrote, “_The Workhouse as a Hospital_,” “_Destitute Incurables_,” and
the “_Sick in Workhouses_,” and “_Remarks on Incurables_,” were widely
circulated. The newspapers were very kind, and leaders or letters giving
us a helping hand were inserted in nearly all, except the _Saturday
Review_, which refused even one of its own regular contributors’
requests to introduce the subject. I wrote an article called _Workhouse
Sketches_ for Macmillan’s Magazine, dealing with the whole subject, and
begged that it might be inserted gratuitously. To my delight the editor,
Mr. Masson, wrote to me the following kind letter which I have kept
among my pleasant souvenirs:—

“23, Henrietta Street,
“Covent Garden,
“February 18th, 1861.

“Dear Madam,

“As soon as possible in this part of the month, when there is much to
do with the forthcoming number, I have read your paper. Having an
almost countless number of MSS. in hand, I greatly feared I might,
though very reluctantly, be compelled to return it, but the reading of
it has so convinced me of the great importance of arousing interest in
the subject, and the paper itself is so touching, that I think I
ought, with whatever difficulty, to find a place for it....

“In any case accept my best thanks for the opportunity of reading so
admirable and powerful an experience; and allow me to express my
regret that I had not the pleasure of meeting you at Mrs. Reid’s.

“I am, dear Madam,
“Yours very truly,
“DAVID MASSON.

“Miss Frances Power Cobbe.

“Should you object to your name appearing in connexion with this
paper? It is our usual practice.”

The paper appeared and soon after, to my equal astonishment and delight,
came a cheque for £14. It was the first money I had ever earned and when
I had cashed the cheque I held the sovereigns in my hand and tossed them
with a sense of pride and satisfaction which the gold of the Indies, if
gained by inheritance, would not have given me! Naturally I went down
straight to St. Peter’s and gave the poor old souls such a tea as had
not been known before in the memory of the “oldest inhabitant.”

We also printed, and ourselves directed and posted circulars to the 666
Unions which then existed in England. We received a great many friendly
letters in reply, and promises of help from Guardians in carrying out
our plan. A certain number of Unions, I think 15, actually adopted it
and set it going. We also induced the Social Science people, then very
active and influential, to take it up, and papers on it were read at the
Congresses in Glasgow and Dublin; the latter by myself. The Hon. Sec.
(then the young poetess Isa Craig) wrote to me as follows:

“National Association
“For the Promotion of Social Science,
“3, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall,
“28th December, 1860.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“The case of the poor ‘incurables’ is truly heartrending. I cried over
the proof of your paper—a queer proceeding on the part of the
Sub-editor of the Social Science Transactions, but I hope an earnest
of the sympathy your noble appeal shall meet with wherever our volume
goes, setting in action the roused sense of humanity and _justice_ to
remedy such bitter wrong and misery.

“Yours sincerely,
“ISA CRAIG.”

A weightier testimony was that of the late Master of Balliol. The
following letters from him on the subject are, I think, very
characteristic and charming:—

“Coll. de Ball., Oxon.
“Hawhead, near Selkirk,
“Sept. 24th.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I am very much obliged to you for sending me the extract from the
newspaper which contains the plan for Destitute Incurables. I entirely
agree in the object and greatly like the touching and simple manner in
which you have described it.

“The only thing that occurs to me in passing is whether the system of
outdoor relief to incurables should not also be extended? Many would
still require to be received into the house (I do not wish in any
degree to take away from the poor the obligation to support their
Incurables outdoors, and it is, perhaps, better to trust to the
natural human pity of a cottage than to the better attendance, warmth,
&c., of a workhouse). But I daresay you are right in sticking to a
simple point.

“All the world seems to be divided into Political Economists, Poor Law
Commissioners, Guardians, Policemen, and Philanthropists, Enthusiasts,
and Christian Socialists. Is there not a large intermediate ground
which anyone who can write might occupy, and who could combine a real
knowledge of the problems to be solved with the enthusiasm which
impels a person to devote their life to solving them?

“The way would be to hide the philanthropy altogether as a weakness of
the flesh; and sensible people would then be willing to listen.

“I entirely like the plan and wish it success....

“I am afraid that I am not likely to have an opportunity of making the
scheme known. But if you have any other objects in which I can help
you I shall think it a great pleasure to do so.

“Remember me most kindly to the Dean and his daughters. I thought they
were not going to banish themselves to Cannes. Wherever they are I
cannot easily forget them.

“I hope you enjoy Garibaldi’s success. It is one of the very few
public events that seem to make life happier.

“Believe me, with sincere respect,
“Yours truly,
“B. JOWETT.”

“Coll. de Ball., Oxon.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I write a line to thank you for the little pamphlet you have sent me
which I read and like very much.

“There is no end of good that you may do by writing in that simple and
touching style upon social questions.

“But don’t go to war with Political Economy. 1st. Because the P. E.’s
are a powerful and dangerous class. 2nd. Because it is impossible for
ladies and gentlemen to fill up the interstices of legislation if they
run counter to the common motives of self-interest. 3rd. (You won’t
agree to this) Because the P. E.’s have really done more for the
labouring classes by their advocacy of free trade, &c., than all the
Philanthropists put together.

“I wish that it were possible as a matter of taste to get rid of all
philanthropic expressions, ‘missions, &c.,’ which are distasteful to
the educated. But I suppose they are necessary for the Collection of
Money. And no doubt as a matter of taste there is a good deal that
might be corrected in the Political Economists.

“The light of the feelings never teaches the best way of dealing with
the world _en masse_ and the dry light never finds its way to the
heart either of man or beast.

“You see I want all the humanities combined with Political Economy.
Perhaps, it may be replied that such a combination is not possible in
human nature.

“Excuse my speculations and believe me in haste,

“Yours very truly,
“B. JOWETT.”

About the same time that we began to visit the Bristol work house, Miss
Louisa Twining bravely undertook a systematic reform of the whole system
throughout the country. It was an enormous task, but she had great
energy, and a fund of good sense; and with the support of Lord
Mount-Temple (then Hon. William Cowper-Temple), Mrs. Tait, and several
other excellent and influential persons, she carried out a grand
reformation through the length and breadth of the land. Her _Workhouse
Visiting Society_, and the monthly _Journal_ she edited as its organ,
brought by degrees good sense and good feeling quietly and
unostentatiously to bear on the Boards of Guardians and their officials
all over the country, and one abuse after another was disclosed,
discussed, condemned, and finally, in most cases abolished. I went up
for a short visit to London at one time on purpose to learn all I could
from _General_ Twining (as I used to call her), and then returned to
Bristol. I have been gratified to read in her charming _Recollections_
published last year (1893), that in her well-qualified judgment Miss
Elliot’s work and mine was really the beginning of much that has
subsequently been done for the sick and for workhouse girls. She says:

“In 1861[16] began the consideration of ‘Destitute Incurables,’ which
was in its results to bring forth such a complete reform in the care
of the sick in Workhouses, or at least I am surely justified in
considering it one of the good seeds sown, which brought forth fruit
in due season. One of the first to press the claims of these helpless
ones on the notice of the public, who were, almost universally,
utterly ignorant of their existence and their needs, was Frances Power
Cobbe, who was then introduced to me; she lived near Bristol, and with
her friend Miss Elliot, also of that place, had long visited the
workhouse, and become acquainted with the inmates, helping more
especially the school children, and befriending the girls after they
went to service. This may be said to be one of the first beginnings of
all those efforts now so largely developed by more than one society
expressly for this object.

“I accompanied Miss Cobbe to the St. Giles’s Schools and to the
Strand, West London, and Holborn Unions, and to the Hospital for
Incurables at Putney, in aid of her plans.”—_Recollections_, p. 170.

While our plan for the Incurables was still in progress, I was obliged
to spend a winter in Italy for my health, and on my way I went over the
Hotel Dieu and the Salpêtrière in Paris, and several hospitals in Italy,
to learn how best to treat this class of sufferers. I did not gain much.
There were no arrangements that I noticed as better or more humane than
our own, and in many cases they seemed to be worse. In particular the
proximity of infectious with other cases in the Hotel Dieu was a great
evil. I was examining the bed of a poor victim of rheumatism when, on
looking a few feet across the floor, I beheld the most awful case of
small-pox which could be conceived. Both in Paris, Florence and the
great San-Spirito Hospital in Rome, the nurses, who in those days all
were Sisters of Charity, seemed to me very heartless; proud of their
tidy cupboards full of lint and bandages, but very indifferent to their
patients. Walking a little in advance of one of them in Florence, I came
into a ward where a poor woman was lying in a bed behind the door, in
the last “agony.” A label at the foot of her bed bore the inscription
“_Olio Santo_,” showing that her condition had been observed—yet there
was no friendly breast on which the poor creature’s head could rest, no
hand to wipe the deathsweats from her face. I called hastily to the Nun
for help, but she replied with great coolness, “_Ci vuole del cotone!_”
and seemed astonished when I used my own handkerchief. In San-Spirito
the doctor who conducted me, and who was personally known to me, told me
he would rather have our English pauper nurses than the Sisters. This,
however, may have been a choice grounded on other reasons beside
humanity to the patients. At the terrible hospital “degli Incurabili,”
in the via de’ Greci, Rome, I saw fearful cases of disease (cancer,
&c.), receiving so little comfort in the way of diet that the wretched
creatures rose all down the wards, literally _screaming_ to me for money
to buy food, coffee, and so on. I asked the Sister, “Had they no lady
visitors?” “O yes: there was the Princess So and so, and the Countess So
and so, saintly ladies, who came once a week or once a month.” “Then do
they not provide the things these poor souls want?” “No, Signora, they
don’t do that.” “Then, in Heaven’s name, what do they come to do for
them?” It was some moments before I could be made to understand, “_Per
pettinarle, Signora!_”—To comb their hair! The task was so disgusting
that the great ladies came on purpose to perform it as a work of merit;
for the good of their _own_ souls!

The saddest sight which I ever beheld, however, I think was not in these
Italian hospitals but in the Salpêtrière in Paris. As I was going round
the wards with a Sister, I noticed on a bed opposite us a very handsome
woman lying with her head a little raised and her marble neck somewhat
exposed, while her arms lay rigidly on each side out of the bed-clothes.
“What is the matter with that patient?” I asked. Before the Nun could
tell me that, (except in her head,) she was completely paralyzed, there
came in response to me an unearthly, inarticulate cry like that of an
animal in agony; and I understood that the hapless creature was trying
to call me. I went and stood over her and her eyes burnt into mine with
the hungry eagerness of a woman famishing for sympathy and comfort in
her awful affliction. She was a _living statue_; unable even to speak,
much less to move hand or foot; yet still young; not over thirty I
should think, and likely to live for years on that bed! The horror of
her fate and the piteousness of the appeal in her eyes, and her
inarticulate moans and cries, completely broke me down. I poured out all
I could think of to say to comfort her, of prayer and patience and
eternal hope; and at last was releasing her hand which I had been
holding, and on which my tears had been falling fast,—when I felt a
thrill run down her poor stiffened arm. It was the uttermost efforts she
could make, striving with all her might to return my pressure.

In recent years I have heard of “scientific experiments” conducted by
the late Dr. Charcot and a coterie of medical men, upon the patients of
the Salpêtrière. When I have read of these, I have thought of that
paralyzed woman with dread lest she might be yet alive to suffer; and
with indignation against the Science which counts cases like these of
uttermost human affliction, “interesting” subjects for investigation!

Some years after this time, hearing of the great Asylum designed by Mr.
Holloway, I made an effort to bring influence from many quarters to bear
on him to induce him to change its destination at that early stage, and
make it the much-needed Home for Incurables. Many ladies and gentlemen
whose names I hoped would carry weight with him, were kindly willing to
write to him on the subject. Among them was the Hon. Mrs. Monsell, then
Lady Superior of Clewer. Her letter to me on the subject was so wise
that I have preserved it. Mr. Holloway, however, was inexorable. Would
to Heaven that some other millionaire, instead of spending tens of
thousands on Palaces of Delight and places of public amusement, would
take to heart the case of those most wretched of human beings, the
Destitute Incurables, who are still sent every year by thousands to die
in the workhouses of England and Ireland with scarcely one of the
comforts which their miserable condition demands.

“House of Mercy,
“Clewer,
“Windsor.

“Madam,

“I have read your letter with much interest, and have at once
forwarded it to Mrs. Wellesley, asking her to show it to Princess
Christian, and also to speak to Mrs. Gladstone.

“I have no doubt that a large sum of money would be better expended on
an _Incurable_ than on a _Convalescent_ Hospital. It would be wiser
not to congregate so many Convalescents. For _Incurables_, under good
management and liberal Christian teaching, it would not signify how
many were gathered together, provided the space were large enough for
the work.

“By ‘liberal Christian teaching’ I mean, that, while I presume Mr.
Holloway would make it a Church of England Institution, Roman
Catholics ought to have the comfort of free access from their own
teachers.

“An Incurable Hospital without the religious element fairly
represented, and the blessing which Religion brings to each
individually, would be a miserable desolation. But there should be the
most entire freedom of conscience allowed to each, in what, if that
great sum were expended, must become a National Institution.

“I earnestly hope Mr. Holloway will take the subject of the needs of
Incurables into consideration. In our own Hospital, at St. Andrew’s,
and St. Raphael’s, Torquay, we shrink from turning out our dying
cases, and yet it does not do to let them die in the wards with
convalescent patients. Few can estimate the misery of the incurable
cases; and the expense connected with the nursing is so great, it is
not easy for private benevolence to provide Incurable Hospitals on a
small scale. Besides, they need room for classification. The truth is,
an Incurable Hospital is a far more difficult machine to work than a
Convalescent; and so the work, if well done, would be far nobler.

“Believe me, Madam,
“Yours faithfully,
“H. MONSELL.

“June 23rd, 1874.”

In concluding these observations generally on the _Sick in Workhouses_ I
should like to offer to humane visitors one definite result of my own
experience. “Do not imagine that what will best cheer the poor souls
will be _your_ conversation, however well designed to entertain or
instruct them. That which will really brighten their dreary lives is, to
be _made to talk themselves_, and to enjoy the privilege of a good
listener. Draw them out about their old homes in ‘the beautiful
country,’ as they always call it; or in whatever town sheltered them in
childhood. Ask about their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters,
everything connected with their early lives, and tell them if possible
any late news about the place and people connected therewith by ever so
slight a thread. But before all things make THEM talk; and show yourself
interested in what they say.”

CHAPTER
XII.
_BRISTOL._
_WORKHOUSE GIRLS._

Beside the poor sick and aged people in the Workhouse, the attention of
Miss Elliot and myself was much drawn to the girls who were sent out
from thence to service on attaining (about) their sixteenth year. On all
hands, and notably from Miss Twining and from some excellent Irish
philanthropists, we heard the most deplorable reports of the
incompetence of the poor children to perform the simplest duties of
domestic life, and their consequent dismissal from one place after
another till they ended in ruin. It was stated at the time (1862), on
good authority, that, on tracing the subsequent history of 80 girls who
had been brought up in a single London Workhouse, _every one_ was found
to be on the streets! In short these hapless “children of the State,” as
my friend Miss Florence Davenport Hill most properly named them, seemed
at that time as if they were being trained on purpose to fall into a
life of sin; having nothing to keep them out of it,—no friends, no
affections, no homes, no training for any kind of useful labour, no
habits of self-control or self-guidance.

It was never realized by the _men_ (who, in those days, alone managed
our pauper system) that girls cannot be trained _en masse_ to be general
servants, nurses, cooks, or anything else. The strict routine, the vast
half-furnished wards, the huge utensils and furnaces of a large
workhouse, have too little in common with the ways of family life and
the furniture of a common kitchen, to furnish any sort of practising
ground for household service. The Report of the Royal Commission on
Education, issued about that time, concluded that Workhouse Schools
leave the pauper taint on the children, _but_ “that District and
separate schools give an education to the children contained in them
which effectually tends to emancipate them from pauperism.” Accordingly,
the vast District schools, containing each the children from many
Unions, was then in full blast, and the girls were taught extremely well
to read, write and cipher; but were neither taught to cook for any
ordinary household, or to scour, or sweep, or nurse, or serve the
humblest table. What was far more deplorable, they were not, and could
not be, taught to love or trust any human being, since no one loved or
cared for them; or to exercise even so much self-control as should help
them to forbear from stealing lumps of sugar out of the first bowl left
in their way. “But,” we may be told, “they received excellent religious
instruction!” Let any one try to realize the idea of God which any child
can possibly reach _who has never been loved_; and he will then perhaps
rightly estimate the value of such “religious instruction” in a dreary
pauper school. I have never quite seen the force of the argument “If a
man love not his neighbour whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom
he hath not seen?” But the converse is very clear. “If a man _hath not
been beloved_ by his neighbour or his parents, how shall he believe in
the Love of the invisible God?” Religion is a plant which grows and
flourishes in an atmosphere of a certain degree of warmth and softness,
but not in the Frozen Zone of lovelessness, wherein is no sweetness, no
beauty, no tenderness.

How to prevent the girls who left Bristol workhouse from falling into
the same gulf as the unhappy ones in London, occupied very much the
thoughts of Miss Elliot and her sister (afterwards Mrs. Montague
Blackett) and myself, in 1851 and 1860–61. Our friend, Miss Sarah
Stephen (daughter of Sergeant Stephen, niece of Sir James), then
residing in Clifton, had for some time been working successfully a
Preventive Mission for the poorer class of girls in Bristol; with a good
motherly old woman as her agent to look after them. This naturally
helped us to an idea which developed itself into the following plan—

Miss Elliot and her sister, as I have said, resided at that time with
their father at the old Bristol Deanery, close to the Cathedral in
College Green. This house was known to every one in the city, which was
a great advantage at starting. A Sunday afternoon School for workhouse
girls only, was opened by the two kind and wise sisters; and soon
frequented by a happy little class. The first step in each case (which
eventually fell chiefly to my share of the business) was to receive
notice from the Workhouse of the address of every girl when sent out to
her first service, and thereupon to go at once and call on her new
mistress, and ask her permission for the little servant’s attendance at
the Deanery Class. As Miss Eliott wrote most truly, in speaking of the
need of haste in this preliminary visit—

“There are few times in a girl’s life when kindness is more valued by
her, or more necessary to her, than when she is taken from the shelter
and routine of school life and plunged suddenly and alone into a new
struggling world full of temptations and trials. That this is the
turning point in the life of many I feel confident, and I think delay
in beginning friendly intercourse most dangerous; they, like other
human beings, will seek friends of some kind. We found them very ready
to take good ones if the chance were offered, and, as it seemed,
grateful for such chance. But good friends failing them, they will
most assuredly find bad ones.”—(_Workhouse Girls. Notes by M. Elliot_,
p. 7.)

As a rule the mistresses, who were all of the humbler sort and of course
persons of good reputation, seemed to welcome my rather intrusive visit
and questions, which were, of course, made with every possible courtesy.
A little by-play about the insufficient outfit given by the Workhouse,
and an offer of small additional adornments for Sundays, was generally
well received; and the happy fact of having such an ostensibly and
unmistakeably respectable address for the Sunday school, secured many
assents which might otherwise have been denied. The mistresses were
generally in a state of chronic vexation at their little servants’
stupidity and incompetence; and on this head I could produce great
effect by inveighing against the useless Workhouse education. There was
often difficulty in getting leave of absence for the girls on Sunday
afternoon, but with the patience and good humour of the teachers (who
gave their lessons to as many or as few as came to them), there was
always something of a class, and the poor girls themselves were most
eager to lose no chance of attending.

A little reading of _Pilgrim’s Progress_ and other good books: more
explanations and talk; much hymn singing and repeating of hymns learned
during the week; and a penny banking account,—such were some of the
devices of the kind teachers to reach the hearts of their little pupils.
And very effectually they did so, as the 30 letters which they wrote
between them to Miss Elliot when she, or they, left Bristol, amply
testified. Here is one of these epistles; surely a model of prudence and
candour on the occasion of the approaching marriage of the writer! The
back-handed compliment to the looks of her betrothed is specially
delightful.

“You pointed out one thing in your kind letter, that to be sure that
the young man was steady. I have been with him now two years, and I
hope I know his failings; and I can say I have never known any one so
steady and trustworthy as he is. I might have bettered myself as
regards the outside looks; but, dear Madam, I think of the future, and
what my home would be then; and perhaps if I married a gay man, I
should always be unhappy. But John has a kind heart, and all he thinks
of is to make others happy; and I hope I shall never have a cause to
regret my choice, and I will try and do my best to do my duty, so that
one day you may see me comfortable. Dear Madam, I cannot thank you
enough for your kindness to me.”

The whole experiment was marvellously successful. Nearly all the poor
children seemed to have been improved in various ways as well as
certainly made happier by their Sundays at the Deanery, and not one of
them, I believe, turned out ill afterwards or fell into any serious
trouble. Many of them married respectably. In short it proved to be a
good plan, which we have had no hesitation in recommending ever since.
Eventually it was taken up by humane ladies in London, and there it
slowly developed into the now imposing society with the long name
(commonly abbreviated into M.A.B.Y.S.) the _Metropolitan Association for
Befriending Young Servants_. Two or three years ago when I attended and
spoke at the annual meeting of this large body, with the Lord Mayor of
London in the chair and a Bishop to address us, it seemed very
astonishing and delightful to Miss Elliot and me that our small
beginnings of thirty years before should have swelled to such an
assembly!

My experience of the wrongs and perils of young servant girls, acquired
during my work as _Whipper-in_ to the Deanery class, remains a painful
memory, and supplies strong arguments in favour of extending some such
protection to such girls generally. Some cases of oppression and
injustice on the part of mistresses (themselves, no doubt, poor and
over-strained, and not unnaturally exasperated by their poor little
slave’s incompetence) were very cruel. I heard of one case which had
occurred just before we began our work, wherein the girl had been left
in charge of a small shop. A man came in out of the street, and seeing
only this helpless child of fifteen behind the counter, laid hands on
something (worth sixpence as it proved) and walked off with it without
payment. When the mistress returned the girl told her what had happened,
whereupon she and her husband stormed and scolded; and eventually
_turned the girl out of the house_! This was at nine o’clock at night,
in one of the lowest parts of Bristol, and the unhappy girl had not a
shilling in her possession. A murder would scarcely have been more
wicked.

Sometimes the mistresses sent their servants away without paying them
any wages at all, making up their accounts in a style like this: “I owe
you five and sixpence; but you broke my teapot, which was worth three
shillings; and you burnt a tablecover worth two, and broke two plates
and a saucer, and lost a spoon, and I gave you an old pair of boots,
worth at least eighteen-pence, so _you owe me_ half-a-crown; and if you
don’t go away quietly I’ll call the police and give you in charge!” The
mere name of the police would inevitably terrify the poor little drudge
into submission to her oppressor. That the law could ever _defend_ and
not punish her would be quite outside her comprehension.

The wretched holes under stairs, or in cellars, or garrets, where these
girls were made to sleep, were often most unhealthy; and their exposure
to cold, with only the thin workhouse cotton frock, leaving arms and
neck bare, was cruel in winter. One day I had an example of this, not
easily to be forgotten. I had just received notice that a girl of
sixteen had been sent from the workhouse (Bristol or Clifton, I forget
which) to a place in St. Philip’s, at the far end of Bristol. It was a
snowy day but I walked to the place with the same odd conviction over me
of which I have spoken, that I was bound to go at _once_. When I reached
the house, I found it was one a little above the usual class for
workhouse-girl servants and had an area. The snow was falling fast, and
as I knocked I looked down into the area and saw a girl in her cotton
dress standing out at a wash-tub;—head, neck and arms all bare, and the
snow falling on them with the bitter wind eddying through the area.
Presently the door was opened and there stood the girl, in such a
condition of bronchitis as I hardly ever saw in my life. When the
mistress appeared I told her civilly that I was very sorry, but that the
girl was in mortal danger of inflammation of the lungs and _must_ be put
to bed immediately. “O, that was entirely out of the question.” “But it
_must_ be done,” I said. Eventually after much angry altercation, the
woman consented to my fetching a fly, putting the girl into it, driving
with her to the Infirmary (for which I had always tickets) and leaving
her there in charge of a friendly doctor. Next day when I called to
enquire, he told me she could scarcely have lived after another hour of
exposure, and that she could recover only by the most stringent and
immediate treatment. It was another instance of the verification of my
superstition.

Of course we tried to draw attention generally to the need for some
supervision of the poor Workhouse girls throughout the country. I wrote
and read at a Social Science Congress a paper on “_Friendless Girls and
How to Help them_,” giving a full account of Miss Stephen’s admirable
_Preventive Mission_; and this I had reason to hope, aroused some
interest. Several years later Miss Elliot wrote a charming little book
with full details about her girls and their letters; “_Workhouse Girls;
Notes of an attempt to help them_,” published by Nisbet. Also we managed
to get numerous articles and letters into newspapers touching on
Workhouse abuses and needs generally. Miss Elliot having many
influential friends was able to do a great deal in the way of getting
our ideas put before the public. I used to write my papers after coming
home in the evening and often late into the night. Sometimes, when I was
very anxious that something should go off by the early morning mail, I
got out of the side window of my sitting-room at two or three o’clock
and walked the half-mile to the solitary post-office near the _Black
Boy_ (Pillar posts were undreamed of in those days), and then climbed in
at the window again, to sleep soundly!

Some years afterwards I wrote in _Fraser’s Magazine_ and later again
republished in my _Studies: Ethical and Social_, a somewhat elaborate
article on the _Philosophy of the Poor Laws_ as I had come to understand
it after my experience at Bristol. This paper was so fortunate as to
fall in the way of an Australian philanthropic gentleman, President of a
Royal Commission to enquire into the question of Pauper legislation in
New South Wales. He, (Mr. Windeyer,) approved of several of my
suggestions and recommended them in the Report of his Commission, and
eventually procured their embodiment in the laws of the Colony.

The following is one of several letters which I received from him on the
subject.

“Chambers,
“Sydney,
“June 6th, 1874.

“My Dear Madam,

“Though personally unknown to you I take the liberty as a warm admirer
of your writings, to which I owe so much both of intellectual
entertainment and profoundest spiritual comfort, to send you herewith
a copy of a Report upon the Public Charities of New South Wales,
brought up by a Royal Commission of which I was the President. I may
add that the document was written by me; and that my brother
Commissioners did me the honour of adopting it without any alteration.
As the views to which I have endeavoured to give expression have been
so eloquently advocated by you, I have ventured to hope that my
attempt to give practical expression to them in this Colony may not be
without interest to you, as the first effort made in this young
country to promulgate sounder and more philosophic views as to the
training of pauper children.

“In your large heart the feeling _Homo sum_ will, I think, make room
for some kindly sympathy with those who, far off, in a small
provincial way, try to rouse the attention and direct the energies of
men for the benefit of their kind, and if any good comes of this bit
of work, I should like you to know how much I have been sustained
amidst much of the opposition which all new ideas encounter, by the
convictions which you have so materially aided in building up and
confirming. If you care to look further into our inquiry I shall be
sending a copy of the evidence to the Misses Hill, whose acquaintance
I had the great pleasure of making on their visit to this country, and
they doubtless would show it to you if caring to see it, but I have
not presumed to bore you with anything further than the Report.

“Believe me, your faithful servant,
“WILL. C. WINDEYER.”

I have since learned with great pleasure from an official Report sent
from Australia to a Congress held during the World’s Fair of 1893 at
Chicago, that the arrangement has been found perfectly successful, and
has been permanently adopted in the Colony.

While earnestly advocating some such friendly care and guardianship of
these Workhouse Girls as I have described, I would nevertheless enter
here my serious protest against the excessive lengths to which one
Society in particular—devoted to the welfare of the humbler class of
girls generally—has gone of late years in the matter of incessant
pleasure-parties for them. I do not think that encouragement to (what is
to them) dissipation, conduces to their real welfare or happiness. It is
always only too easy for all of us to remove the centre of our interest
from the _Business_ of life to its _Pleasures_. The moment this is done,
whether in the case of poor persons or rich, Duty becomes a weariness.
Success in our proper work is no longer an object of ambition, and the
hours necessarily occupied by it are grudged and curtailed. Amusement
usurps the foreground, instead of being kept in the background, of
thought. This is the kind of moral _dislocation_ which is even now
destroying, in the higher ranks, much of the duty-loving character
bequeathed to our Anglo-Saxon race by our Puritan fathers. Ladies and
gentlemen do not indeed now “live to eat” like the old epicures, but
they live to shoot, to hunt, to play tennis or golf; to give and attend
parties of one sort or another; and the result, I think, is to a great
degree traceable in the prevailing Pessimism. But bad as excessive
Pleasure-seeking and Duty-neglecting is for those who are not compelled
to earn their bread, it is absolutely fatal to those who must needs do
so. The temptations which lie in the way of a young servant who has
acquired a distaste for honest work and a passion for pleasure, require
no words of mine to set forth in their terrible colours. Even too much
and too exciting _reading_, and endless letter-writing may render
wholesome toil obnoxious. A good maid I once possessed simply observed
to me (on hearing that a friend’s servant had read twenty volumes in a
fortnight and neglected meanwhile to mend her mistress’s clothes), “I
never knew anyone who was so fond of books who did not _hate her work_!”
It is surely no kindness to train people to hate the means by which they
can honourably support themselves, and which might, in itself, be
interesting and pleasant to them. But incessant tea-parties and concerts
and excursions are much more calculated to distract and dissipate the
minds of girls than even the most exciting story books, and the good
folks who would be shocked to supply them with an unintermittent series
of novels, do not see the mischief of encouraging the perpetual
entertainments now in vogue all over the country. Let us make the girls,
first _safe_; then as _happy_ as we can. But it is an error to imagine
that overindulgence in dissipation,—even in the shape of the most
respectable tea-parties and excursions,—is the way to make them either
safe or happy.

The following is an account which Miss Florence D. Hill has kindly
written for me, of the details of her own work on behalf of pauper
children which dovetailed with ours for Workhouse girls:—

“March 27th, 1894.

“I well remember the deep interest with which I learnt from your own
lips the simple but effective plan by which you and Miss Elliot and
her sister befriended the elder girls from Bristol Workhouse, and
heard you read your paper, ‘_Friendless Girls, and How to Help Them_,’
at the meeting of the British Association in Dublin in 1861. Gradually
another benevolent scheme was coming into effect, which not only
bestows friends but a home and family affections on the forlorn pauper
child, taking it in hand from infancy. The reference in your
‘_Philosophy of the Poor Laws_’ to Mr. Greig’s Report on Boarding-out
as pursued for many years at Edinburgh, caused my cousin, Miss Clark,
to make the experiment in South Australia, which has developed into a
noble system for dealing under natural conditions with all destitute
and erring children in the great Colonies of the South Seas.
Meanwhile, at home the evidence of success attained by Mrs. Archer in
Wiltshire and her disciples elsewhere, and by other independent
workers, in placing orphan and deserted children in the care of foster
parents, enabled the late Dr. Goodeve, _ex-officio_ Guardian for
Clifton, to obtain the adoption of the plan by his Board; his wife
becoming President of one of the very first Committees formed to find
suitable homes and supervise the children.

After my efforts above detailed on behalf of the little Girl-thieves,
the Ragged street boys, the Incurables and other Sick in Workhouses, and
finally for Befriending young Servants, there was another undertaking in
which both Miss Elliot and I took great interest for some years after we
had ceased to live at Bristol. This was the Housing of the poor in large
Cities.

Among the many excellent citizens who then and always have done honour
to Bristol, there was a Town Councillor, Mr. T. Territ Taylor, a
jeweller, carrying on his business in College Green. At a time when a
bad fever seemed to have become endemic in the district of St. Jude’s,
this gentleman told us that in his opinion it would never be banished
till some fresh legislation were obtained for the _compulsory_
destruction of insanitary dwellings, such as abounded in that quarter.
We wondered whether it would be possible to interest some influential
M.P.’s among our acquaintances in Mr. Taylor’s views, and after many
delays and much consultation with them, I wrote an article in _Fraser’s
Magazine_ for February, 1866, in which I was able to print a full sketch
by Mr. Taylor of his matured project, and to give the reasons which
appeared to us to make such legislation as he advocated exceedingly
desirable. I said:—

“The supply of lodgings for the indigent classes in the great towns
has long failed to equal the demand. Each year the case becomes worse,
as population increases, and no tendency arises for capital to be
invested in meeting the want....

“But, it is asked, why does not capital come in here, as everywhere
else, and supply a want as soon as it exists? The reason is simple.
Property in our poor lodgings is very undesirable for large
capitalists. It can be made to pay a high interest only on three
conditions:—1st, That the labour of collecting the rents (which is
always excessive) shall not be deducted from the returns by agents;
2nd, That very little mercy shall be shown to tenants in distress;
3rd, That small expense be incurred in attempting to keep in repair,
paint, or otherwise refresh the houses, which, being inhabited by the
roughest of the community, require double outlay to preserve in
anything better than a squalid and rack-rent condition.

“Convinced long ago of this fact, philanthropists have for years
attempted to mitigate the evil by building, in London and other great
towns, model lodging-houses for the Working Classes, and after long
remaining a doubtful experiment, a success has been achieved in the
case of Mr. Peabody’s, Alderman Waterlow’s, and perhaps some others.
But as regards the two great objects we are considering,—the elevation
of the Indigent, and the prevention of pestilence,—these schemes only
point the way to an enterprise too large for any private funds. All
the existing model lodging-houses not only fix their rents above the
means of the Indigent class, but actually make it a rule not to admit
the persons of whom the class chiefly consists—namely, those who get
their living upon the streets. Thus, for the elevation of the Indigent
and the purifying of those cesspools of wretchedness, wherein cholera
and fever have their source, these model lodging-houses are even
professedly unavailing.”—Reprinted in _Hours of Work and Play_, pp.
46, 47.

Mr. Thomas Hare had, shortly before, set forth in the _Times_ a
startlingly magnificent scheme whereby a great Board should raise money,
partly from the Rates, to build splendid rows of workmen’s
lodging-houses, of which the workmen would eventually, in this ingenious
plan become freeholders. Mr. Taylor’s plan was much more modest, and
involved in fact only one principal point, the grant of compulsory
powers to purchase, indispensable where the refusal of one landlord
might invalidate, for sanitary purposes, the purification of a district;
and the greed of the class would inevitably render the proposed
renovation preposterously costly. Mr. Taylor’s Scheme, as drawn up by
himself and placed in our hands, was briefly as follows:—

“An Act of Parliament must be obtained to enable Town Councils and
Local Boards of Health (or other Boards, as may hereafter be thought
best) to purchase, under compulsory powers, the property in
overcrowded and pestilential districts within their jurisdiction, and
build thereon suitable dwellings for the labouring classes.

“The usual powers must be given to borrow money of the Government at a
low rate of interest, on condition of repayment within a specified
time, say from 15 to 20 years, as in the case of the County Lunatic
Asylums.”

Miss Elliot and I having shown this sketch to our friends, a Bill was
drawn up embodying it with some additions; “_For the improvement of the
Dwellings of the Working Classes_,” and was presented to Parliament by
Mr. McCullagh Torrens and my cousin John Locke, in 1867. But though both
the Governments of Lord Derby and of Lord Russell the latter of whom
Miss Elliot had interested personally in the matter were favourable to
the Bill, it was not passed till the following Session; when it became
law (with considerable modifications); as 31, 32 Vict., Cap. cxxx., “_An
Act to provide better dwellings for Artisans and Labourers_,” 31st July,
1868.

CHAPTER
XIII.
_BRISTOL._
_FRIENDS._

_What is Chance?_ How often does that question recur in the course of
every history, small or great? My whole course of life was deflected by
the mishap of stepping a little awry out of a train at Bath, and
miscalculating the height of the platform, which is there unusually low.
I had gone to spend a day with a friend, and on my way back to Bristol I
thus sprained my ankle. I was at that time forty years of age (a date I
now alas! regard as quite the prime of life!), and in splendid health
and spirits, fully intending to continue for the rest of my days
labouring on the same lines as prospects of usefulness might open. I
remember feeling the delight of walking over the springy sward of the
Downs and laughing as I said to myself “I do believe I could walk down
anybody and perhaps _talk_ down anybody too!” The next week I was a poor
cripple on crutches, never to take a step without them for four long
years, during which period I grew practically into an old woman, and
(unhappily for me) into a very large and heavy one for want of the
exercise to which I had been accustomed. The morning after my mishap,
finding my ankle much swollen and being in a great hurry to go on with
my work, I sent for one of the principal surgeons in Bristol, who bound
the limb so tightly that the circulation (always rather feeble) was
impeded, and every sort of distressful condition supervened. Of course
the surgeon threw the blame on me for attempting to use the leg; but it
was very little I _could_ do in this way even if I had tried, without
excessive pain; and, after a few weeks, I went to London in the full
confidence that I had only to bespeak “the best advice” to be speedily
cured. I did get what all the world would still consider the “best
advice;” but bad was that best. Guineas I could ill spare ran away like
water while the great surgeon came and went, doing me no good at all;
the evil conditions growing worse daily. I returned back from London and
spent some wretched months at Clifton. An artery, I believe, was
stopped, and there was danger of inflammation of the joint. At last with
infinite regret I gave up the hope of ever recovering such activity as
would permit me to carry on my work either in the schools or workhouse.
No one who has not known the miseries of lameness, the perpetual
contention with ignoble difficulties which it involves, can judge how
hard a trial it is to an active mind to become a cripple.

Still believing in my simplicity that great surgeons might remedy every
evil, I went again to London to consult the most eminent, and by the
mistake of a friend, it chanced that I summoned two very great
personages on the same day, though, fortunately, at different hours. The
case was, of course, of the simplest; but the two gentlemen gave me
precisely opposite advice. _One_ sent me abroad to certain baths, which
proved to be the wrong ones for my trouble, and gave me a letter to his
friend there, a certain Baron. The moment the Baron-Doctor saw my foot
he exclaimed that it ought never to have been allowed to get into the
state of swollen veins and arrested circulation in which he found it;
astringents and all sorts of measures ought to have been applied. In
truth I was in a most miserable condition, for I could not drop the limb
for two minutes without the blood running into it till it became like an
ink-bottle, when, if I held it up, it became as white as if dead. And
all this had been getting worse and worse while I was consulting ten
doctors in succession, and chiefly the most eminent in England! The
Baron-Doctor first told me that the waters _would_ bring out the gout,
and then, when I objected, assured me they should _not_ bring it out;
after which I relinquished the privilege of his visits and he charged me
for an entire course of treatment.

The _second_ great London surgeon told me _not_ to go abroad, but to
have a gutta-percha boot made for my leg to keep it stiff. I had the
boot made, (with much distress and expense), took it abroad in my trunk,
and asked the successor of the Baron-Doctor (who could make the waters
give the gout or not as he pleased), “Whether he advised me to wear the
wonderful machine?” The good old Frenchman, who was also Mayor of his
town, and who did me more good than anybody else, replied cautiously,
“If you wish, Madame, to be lame for life you will wear that boot. A
great many English come to us here to be unstiffened after having had
their joints stiffened by English surgeons’ devices of this sort, but we
can do nothing for them. A joint once thoroughly stiff can never be
restored.” It may be guessed that the expensive boot was quietly
deposited on the nearest heap of rubbish.

After that experience I tried the baths in Savoy and others in Italy.
But my lameness seemed permanent. A great Italian Doctor could think of
nothing better than to put a few walnut-leaves on my ankle—a process
which might perhaps have effected something in fifty years! Only the
good and great Nélaton, whom I consulted in Paris, told me he believed I
should recover some time; but he could not tell me anything to do to
hasten the event. Returned to London I sent for Sir William Fergusson,
and that honest man on hearing my story said simply: “And if you had
gone to nobody and not bandaged your ankle, but merely bathed it, you
would have been well in three weeks.” Thus I learned from the best
authority, that I had paid for the folly of consulting an eminent
surgeon for a common sprain, by four years of miserable helplessness and
by the breaking up of my whole plan of life.

I must conclude this dismal record by one last trait of medical
character. I had determined, after seeing Fergusson, to consult no other
doctor; indeed I could ill afford to do so. But a friend conveyed to me
a message from a London surgeon of repute (since dead) that he would
like to be allowed to treat me gratuitously; having felt much interest
in my books. I was simple enough to fall into the trap and to feel
grateful for his offer: and I paid him several visits, during which he
chatted pleasantly, and once did some trifling thing to relieve my foot.
One day I wrote and asked him kindly to advise me by letter about some
directions he had given me; whereupon he answered tartly that he “could
not correspond; and that I must always attend at his house.” The
suspicion dawned on me, and soon reached conviction, that what he wanted
was not so much to cure _me_, as to swell the scanty show of patients in
his waiting-room! Of course after this, I speedily retreated; offering
many thanks and some small, and as I hoped, acceptable _souvenir_ with
inscription to lie on his table. But when I thought this had concluded
my relations with Mr. ——, I found I had reckoned without my—_doctor_!
One after another he wrote to me three or four peremptory notes
requesting me to send him introductions for himself or his family, to
influential friends of mine rather out of his sphere. I would rather
have paid him fifty fees than have felt bound to give these
introductions.

Finally I ceased to do anything whatever to my unfortunate ankle, except
what most of my advisers had forbidden, namely, to walk upon it,—and a
year or two afterwards I climbed Cader Idris; walking quietly with my
friend to the summit. Sitting there, on the Giants’ Chair we passed an
unanimous resolution. It was: “_Hang the Doctors!_”

I must now set down a few recollections of the many friends and
interesting acquaintances whom I met at Bristol. In the first place I
may say briefly that all Miss Carpenter’s friends (mostly Unitarians)
were very kind to me, and that though I did not go out to any sort of
entertainment while I lived with her, it was not for lack of hospitable
invitations.

The family next to that of the Dean with which I became closely
acquainted and to which I owed most, was that of Matthew Davenport Hill,
the Recorder of Birmingham, whose labours (summed up in his own
_Repression of Crime_ and in his _Biography_ by his daughters) did more,
I believe, than those of any other philanthropist beside Mary Carpenter,
to improve the treatment of both adult and juvenile crime in England. I
am not competent to offer judgment on the many questions of
jurisprudence with which he dealt, but I can well testify to the
exceeding goodness of his large heart, the massiveness of his grasp of
his subjects, and (never-to-be-forgotten) his most delightful humour. He
was a man who from unlucky chances never attained a position
commensurate with his abilities and his worth, but who was beloved and
admired in no ordinary degree by all who came near him. His family of
sons and daughters formed a centre of usefulness in the neighbourhood of
Bristol as they have since done in London, where Miss Hill is, I
believe, now the senior member of the School Board, while her sister,
Miss Florence Davenport Hill, has been equally active as a Poor Law
Guardian, and most especially as the promoter of the great and
farreaching reform in the management of pauper orphans, known as the
system of Boarding-out, of which I have spoken in the last chapter. I
must not indulge myself by writing at too great length of such friends,
but will insert here a few notes I made of Recorder Hill’s wonderfully
interesting conversation during a Christmas visit I paid to him at Heath
House.

“Dec. 26th. I spent yesterday and last night with my kind friends the
Hills at Heath House. In the evening I drew out the Recorder to speak
of questions of evidence, and he told me many remarkable anecdotes in
his own practice at the Bar, of doubtful identity, &c. On one occasion
a case was tried three times; and he observed how the _certainty_ of
the witnesses, the clearness of details, and unhesitating asseveration
of facts which at first had been doubtfully stated, _grew_ in each
trial. He said ‘the most dangerous of all witnesses are those who
_honestly_ give _false_ witness—a most numerous class.’

“To-day he invited me to walk with him on his terrace and up and down
the approach. The snow lay thick on the grass, but the sun shone
bright, and I walked for more than an hour and a-half beside the dear
old man. He told me how he had by degrees learned to distrust all
ideas of Retribution, and to believe in the ‘aggressive power of love
and kindness,’ (a phrase Lady Byron had liked); and how at last it
struck him that all this was in the new Testament; and that few,
except religious Christians, ever aided the great causes of
philanthropy. I said, it was quite true, Christ had revealed that
religion of love; and that there were unhappily very few who, having
intellectually doubted the Christian creed, pressed on further to any
clear or fervent religion beyond; but that without religion, _i.e._,
love of God, I hardly believed it possible to work for man. He said he
had known nearly all the eminent men of his time in every line, and
had somehow got close to them, and had never found one of them really
believe Christianity. I said, ‘No; no strong intellect of our day
could do so, altogether; but that I thought it was faithless in us to
doubt that if we pushed bravely on to whatever seemed _truth_ we
should there find all the more reason to love God and man, and never
lose any _real_ good of Christianity.’ He agreed, but said, ‘You are a
watchmaker, I am a weaver; this is your work, I have a different
one,—and I cannot afford to part with the Evangelicals, who are my
best helpers. Thus though I wholly disagree with them about Sunday I
never publish my difference.’ I said I felt the great danger of
pushing uneducated people beyond the bounds of an authoritative creed,
and for my own part would think it safest that Jowett’s views should
prevail for a generation, preparatory to Theism.

“Then we spoke of Immortality, and he expressed himself nobly on the
thought that all our differences of rich and poor, wise or ignorant,
are lost in comparison of that one fact of our common Immortality. As
he said, he felt that waiting a moment jostled in a crowd at a railway
station, was a larger point in comparison of his whole life than this
life is, to the future. We joined in condemning Emerson and George
Eliot’s ideas of the ‘little value’ of ordinary souls. His burst of
indignation at her phrase ‘_Guano races of men_’ was very fine. He
said, talking of Reformatories, ‘A century hence,—in 1960,—some people
will walk this terrace and talk of the great improvement of the new
asylums where hopeless criminals and vicious persons will be
permanently consigned. They will not be formally condemned for life,
but we shall all know that they will never fulfil the conditions of
their release. They will not be made unhappy, but forced to work and
kept under strong control; the happiest state for them.’”

Here is a very flattering letter from Mr. Hill written a few years
later, on receipt of a copy of my _Italics_:—

“The Hawthorns,
“Edgbaston, Birmingham,
“25th Oct., 1864.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“Although I am kept out of court to-day at the instance of my
physician, who threatens me with bronchitis if I do not keep house,
yet it has been a day not devoid of much enjoyment. Your charming book
which, alas, I have nearly finished, is carrying me through it only
too rapidly. What a harvest of observation, thought, reading, and
discourse have you brought home from Italy! But I am too much
overwhelmed with it to talk much about it, especially in the
obfuscated state of my intellect to which I am just now reduced. But I
must just tell you how I am amused in midst of my admiration, with
your humility as regards your sex; said humility being a cloak which,
opening a little at one page, discloses a rich garment of pride
underneath (_vide_ page 438 towards the bottom). I say no more, only
as I don’t mean to give up the follies of youth for the next eight
years, that is until I am eighty, I don’t choose to be called
‘venerable.’ One might as well consent to become an Archdeacon at
once!

“Your portraits are delightful, some of the originals I know, and the
likeness is good, but alas, idealized!

“To call your book a ‘trifling’ work is just as absurd as to call me
‘venerable.’ It deals nobly, fearlessly, and I will add in many parts
_profoundly_, with the greatest questions that can employ human
intellect or touch the human heart, and although I do not always agree
with you, I always respect your opinions and learn from the arguments
by which they are supported. But certainly in the vast majority of
instances I do agree with you, and more than agree, which is a cold,
unimpressive term.

“Most truly yours,
“M. D. HILL.”

“Heath House, Stapleton, Bristol,
“17th August, 1871.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“That is to say falsest of woman-kind! You have cruelly jilted me.
Florry wrote to say you were coming here as you ought to have done
long ago. Well, as your countryman, Ossian, or his double, Macpherson,
says, ‘Age is dark and unlovely,’ and therefore the rival of the
American Giantess turns a broad back upon me. I must submit to my
fall....

“Though I take in the _Echo_, I have not lately seen any article which
I could confidently attribute to your pen.

“I have, however, been much gratified with your article on _The
Devil_, the only writing I ever read on the origin of evil which did
not appear to me absolutely contemptible. Talking of these matters,
Coleridge said to Thelwall (_ex relatione_ Thelwall), ‘God has all the
power that _is_, but there is no power over a contradiction expressed
or implied.’ Your suggestion that the existence of evil is due to
contradiction, is, I have no doubt, very just, but my stupid head is
this morning quite unable to put on paper what is foggily floating in
my mind, and so I leave it.

“I spent a good part of yesterday morning in reading the _Westminster
Review_ of Walt Whitman’s works, which quite laid hold of me.

“Most truly yours,
“M. D. HILL.”

Another interesting person whom I first came to know at Bristol, (where
he visited at the Deanery and at Dr. Symonds’ house,) was the late
Master of Balliol. I have already cited some kind letters from him
referring to our plans for Incurables and Workhouse Girls. I will be
vain enough to quote here, with the permission of the friend to whom
they were addressed, some of his remarks about my _Intuitive Morals_ and
_Broken Lights_; and also his opinion of Theodore Parker, which will
interest many readers:—

“From Rev. Benjamin Jowett.

“January 22nd, 1861.

“I heard of your friend Miss Cobbe the other day at Fulham.... Pray
urge her to go on with her books and try to make them more
interesting. (This can only be done by throwing more feeling into them
and adapting them more to what other people are thinking and feeling
about). I am not speaking of changing her ideas, but the mode of
expressing them. The great labour of writing is adapting what you say
to others. She has great ability, and there is something really fine
and striking in her views of things, so that it is worth while she
should consider the form of her writings.”...

“April 16th, 1861.

“Let me pass to a more interesting subject—Miss Cobbe. Since I wrote
to you last I have read the greater part of her book” (_Intuitive
Morals_) “which I quite agree with you in thinking full of interest.
It shows great power and knowledge of the subject, yet I should fear
it would be hardly intelligible to anyone who had not been nourished
at some time of their lives on the philosophy of Kant; and also she
seems to me to be too exclusive and antagonistic towards other
systems—_e.g._, the Utilitarian. All systems of Philosophy have their
place and use, and lay hold on some minds, and therefore though they
are not all equally true, it is no use to rail at Bentham and the
Utilitarians after the manner of _Blackwood’s Magazine_. Perhaps,
however, Miss Cobbe would retort on me that her attacks on the
Utilitarians have their place and their use too; only they were not
meant for people who ‘revel in Scepticism’ like me (the _Saturday
Review_ says, is it not very Irish of them to say so?) Pray exhort her
to write (for it is really worth while) and not to spend her money and
time wholly in schemes of philanthropy. For a woman of her ability,
writing offers a great field, better in many respects than practical
life.”

“October 10th, 1861.

“A day or two ago I was at Clifton and saw Miss Cobbe, who might be
truly described as very ‘jolly.’ I went to a five o’clock tea with her
and met various people—an aged physician named Dr. Brabant who about
thirty years ago gave up his practice to study Hebrew and became the
friend of German Theologians; Miss Blagden, whom you probably know, an
amiable lady who has written a novel and is the owner of a little
white puppy wearing a scarlet coat; Dr. Goodeve, an Indian Medical
Officer; and various others.”...

“February 2nd, 1862.

“Remember me to Miss Cobbe. I hope she gains from you sound notions on
Political Economy. I shall always maintain that Philanthropy is
intolerable when not based on sound ideas of Political Economy.”

“June 4th, 1862.

“The articles in the _Daily News_ I did not see. Were they Miss
Cobbe’s? I read her paper in Fraser in which the story of the Carnival
was extremely well told.”...

“March 15th, 1863.

“I write to thank you for Miss Cobbe’s pamphlet, which I have read
with great pleasure. I think her writing is always good and able. I
have never seen Theodore Parker’s works: he was, I imagine, a sort of
hero and prophet; but I think I would rather have the Church of
England large enough for us all with old memories and feelings,
notwithstanding many difficulties and some iniquities, than new
systems of Theism.”...

“March 10th, 1864.

“Miss Cobbe has also kindly sent me a little book called _Broken
Lights_, which appears to me to be extremely good. (I think the title
is rather a mistake.) I dare say that you have read the book. The
style is excellent, and the moderation and calmness with which the
different parties are treated is beyond praise. The only adverse
criticism that I should venture to make is that the latter part is too
much narrowed to Theodore Parker’s point of view, who was a great man,
but too confident, I think, that the world could be held together by
spiritual instincts.”

And here are three charming letters from Mr. Jowett to me, one of them
in reply to a letter from me from Rome, the others of a later date.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I write to thank you for the Fraser which I received this morning and
have read with great amusement and interest. I think that I should
really feel happier living to see the end of the Pope, at least in his
present mode of existence.

“I did indeed receive a most capital letter from you with a kind note
from Miss Elliot. And ‘I do remember me of my faults this day.’ The
truth is that being very busy with Plato (do you know the intolerable
burden of writing a fat book in two vols.?) I put off answering the
letters until I was not quite certain whether the kind writers of them
were still at Rome. I thought the Plato would have been out by this
time, but this was only one of the numerous delusions in which authors
indulge. The notes, however, are really finished, and the Essays will
be done in a few months. I suspect you can read Greek, and shall
therefore hope to send you a copy.

“I was always inclined to think well of the Romans from their defence
of Rome in 1848, and their greatness and strength really does seem to
show that they mean to be the centre of a great nation.

“Will you give my very kind regards to the Elliots? I should write to
them if I knew exactly where: I hear that the Dean is transformed into
a worshipper of the Virgin and of other pictures of the Saints.[17]

“Believe me, dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours very truly,
“B. JOWETT.

“Bal. Coll., May 19th.

“Coll. de Bal., Oxon.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I shall certainly read your paper on Political Economy. Political
Economy seems to me in this imperfect world to be Humanity on a large
scale (though not the whole of humanity). And I am always afraid of it
being partially supplanted by humanity on the small scale, which
relieves one-sixth of the poor whom we see, and pauperizes the mind of
five-sixths whom we don’t see.

“I won’t trouble you with any more reflections on such an old subject.
Remember me most kindly to the Dean and his daughters. I was going to
send him a copy of the Articles against Dr. Williams. But upon second
thoughts, I won’t. It is such an ungracious, unsavoury matter. I hope
that he won’t give up the Prolocutorship, or that, if he does, he will
state boldly his reasons for doing so. It is true that neither he nor
anyone can do much good there. But the mere fact of a great position
in the Church of England being held by a liberal clergyman is of great
importance.

“I should have much liked to go to Rome this winter. But I am so
entangled, first, with Plato, and, second, with the necessity of
getting rid of Plato and writing something on Theology, that I do not
feel justified in leaving my work. The vote of last Tuesday deferring
indefinitely the endowment of my Professorship makes me feel that life
is becoming a serious business to me. Not that I complain; the amount
of sympathy and support which I have received has been enough to
sustain anyone, if they needed it, (you should have seen an excellent
squib written by a young undergraduate). But my friends are sanguine
in imagining they will succeed hereafter. Next year it is true that
they probably will get a small majority in Congregation. This,
however, is of no use, as the other party will always bring up the
country clergy in Convocation. I have, therefore, requested Dr.
Stanley to take no further steps in the Council on the subject; it
seems to me undignified to keep the University squabbling about my
income.

“Excuse this long story which is partly suggested by your kind letter.
I hope you will enjoy Rome. With sincere regard,

“Believe me, yours truly,
“B. JOWETT.”

“Rev. Benjamin Jowett to Miss Cobbe.
“Coll. de Ball., Oxon,
“February 24th, 1865.

“My Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I write to thank you for your very kind note. I am much more pleased
at the rejoicings of my friends than at the result which has been so
long delayed as to be almost indifferent to me. I used to be annoyed
at feeling that I was such a bad example to young men, because they
saw, as they were intended to see, that unless they concealed their
opinions they would suffer. I hope they will have more cheerful
prospects now.

“I trust that some day I shall be able to write something more on
Theology. But the Plato has proved an enormous work, having expanded
into a sort of translation of the whole of the Dialogues. I believe
this will be finished and printed about Christmas, but not before.

“I have been sorry to hear of your continued illness. When I come to
London I shall hope to look in upon you in Hereford Square.

“In haste, believe me,
“Yours very truly,
“B. JOWETT.”

“I read a book of Theodore Parker’s the other day—‘Discourses on
Religion.’ He was a friend of yours, I believe? I admire his
character—a sort of religious Titan. But I thought his philosophy
seemed to rest too much on instincts.”

How much Mr. Jowett had to bear from the animosity of his orthodox
contemporaries in the Sixties at Oxford was illustrated by the following
incident. I was, one day about this time, showing his photograph to a
lady, when her son, late from Oxford, came into the room with a dog at
his heels. Seeing the photograph, he remarked, “Ah, yes! very like.
_This dog_ pinned him in quod one day, and was made so much of
afterwards! The Dean of —— especially invited him” (the dog) “to lunch.
Jowett complained of me, and I had to send all my dogs out of Oxford!”

The following is a Note which I made of two of his visits to me on
Durdham Down:

“Two visits from Mr. Jowett, who each time drank tea with me. He said
he felt writing to be a great labour; but regularly wrote one page
every day. The liberal, benevolent way he spoke of all creeds was
delightful. In particular he spoke of the temptation to Pantheism and
praised Hegel, whom, he said, he had studied deeply. Advising me
kindly to go on writing books, he maintained against me the vast power
of books in the world.”

Mr. Jowett was, of course, at all times a most interesting personality,
and one whose intercourse was delightful and highly exciting to the
intellect. But his excessive shyness, combined with his faculty for
saying exceedingly sharp things, must have precluded, I should think,
much ease of conversation between him and the majority of his friends.
As usually happens in the case of shy people, he exhibited rather less
of the characteristic with an acquaintance like myself who was never shy
(my mother’s training saved me from that affliction!) and who was not at
all afraid of him.

In later years Mr. Jowett obtained for me (in 1876) the signatures of
the Heads of every College in Oxford to a Petition which I had myself
written, to the House of Lords in favour of Lord Carnarvon’s original
Bill for the restriction of Vivisection. At a later date the Master of
Balliol declined to support me further in the agitation for the
prohibition of the practice; referring me to the assurances of a certain
eminent Boanerges of Science as guarantee for the necessity of the
practice and the humanity of vivisectors. It is very surprising to me
how good and strong men, who would disdain to accept a _religious_
principle or dogma from pope or Council, will take a _moral_ one without
hesitation from any doctor or professor of science who may lay down the
law for them, and present the facts so as to make the scale turn his
way. Where would Protestant divines be, if they squared their theologies
with all the historical statements and legends of Romanism? If we
construct our ethical judgments upon the statements and representations
of persons interested in maintaining a practice, what chance is there
that they should be sound?

I find, in a letter to a friend (dated May, 1868) the following
_souvenir_ of a sermon by Mr. Jowett, delivered in a church near Soho:—

“We went to that sermon on Sunday. It was really very fine and very
bold; much better than the report in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ made it.
Mr. Albert D—— was there, but few else who looked as if they could
understand him. He has a good voice and delivery, and the “cherubic”
countenance and appealing eyes suit the pulpit; but he _looks at one_
as I never knew any preacher do. We sat close to him, and it was as if
we were in a drawing-room. M. says that all the first part was taken
from my _Broken Lights_; that is,—it was a sketch of existing opinions
on the same plan. It was good when he said:

“The High church watchword is: _The Church; always and ever the same_.

“The Low church watchword is: _The Bible only the Religion of
Protestants_.

“The party of Knowledge has for its principle: ‘_The Truth ever and
always, and wherever it be found_.’

“He gave each their share of praise and blame, saying: ‘the fault of
the last party’ (his own, of course) was—that ‘sometimes in the
pursuit of _Knowledge_ they forgot _Goodness_.’”

I heard him preach more than once afterwards in the same gloomy old
church. His aspect in his surplice was exceedingly quaint. His face,
even in old age, was like that of an innocent, round-faced child; and
his short, slender figure, wrapped in the long white garment,
irresistibly suggested to me the idea of “an elderly cherub prepared for
bed”! Altogether, taking into account his entire career, the Master of
Balliol was an unique figure in English life, whom I much rejoice to
have known; a modern Melchisedek.

Here is another memorandum about the same date, respecting another
eminent man, interesting in another way:—

“Sept. 25th, 1860. A pleasant evening at Canon Guthrie’s. Introduced
to old Lord Lansdowne; a gentle, courteous old man with deep-set,
faded grey eyes, and heavy eyebrows; a blue coat and _brass buttons_!
In the course of the evening I was carrying on war in a corner of the
room against the Dean of Bristol, Mr. C—— and Margaret Elliot, about
Toryism. I argued that if _Justice to all_ were the chief end of
Government, the power should be lodged in the hands of the class who
_best understood Justice_; and that the consequence of the opposite
course was manifest in America, where the freest government which had
ever existed, supported also the most gigantic of all wrongs—Slavery.
On this Countess Rothkirch who sat by, clapped her hands with joy; and
the Dean came down on me saying, ‘That if power should only be given
to those who would use it justly, then the Tories should never have
any power at all; for they _never_ used it justly.’ Hearing the
laughter at my discomfiture, Lord Lansdowne toddled across the room
and sat down beside me saying: ‘What is it all about?’ I cried: ‘Oh
Lord Lansdowne! you are the very person in the whole world to help
me—_I am defending Tory principles!_’ He laughed heartily, and said ‘I
am afraid I can hardly do that.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, ‘you may be
converted at the eleventh hour!’ ‘Don’t you know,’ he said, ‘what a
child asked her mother: “Are Tories _born_ wicked, mother, or do they
only become so?”’ Margaret said this was really asked by a cousin of
her own, one of the Adam family. It ended in much laughter and talking
about ‘_Transformation_,’ and the ‘_Semi-attached Couple_‘—which Lord
Lansdowne said he was just reading. ‘I like novels very much,’ he
said, ‘only I take a little time between each of them.’ When I got up
to go away the kind old man rose in the most courtly way to shake
hands, and paid me a little old-world compliment.”

This was the eloquent statesman and patron of literature, Henry, third
Marquis of Lansdowne, in whose time his house, (Bowood,) was the resort
of the finest intellectual society of England. I have a droll letter in
my possession referring to this Bowood society, by Sydney Smith, written
to Mrs. Kemble, then Mrs. Butler. It has come to me with all her other
papers and with seven letters from Lord Lansdowne pressing her to pay
him visits. Sydney Smith writes on his invitation to her to come to
Combe Fleury; after minute directions about the route:—

“The interval between breakfast and dinner brings you to Combe Fleury.
We are the next stage (to Bowood). Lord Lansdowne’s guests commonly
come here _dilated and disordered_ with high living.”

In another letter conveying a similar invitation he says, with his usual
bitterness and injustice as regards America:

“Be brave my dear lady. Hoist the American flag. Barbarise your
manners. _Dissyntax_ your language. Fling a thick mantle over your
lively spirits, and become the fust of American women. You will always
remain a bright vision in my recollection. Do not forget me. Call me
Butler’s Hudibras. Any appellation provided I am not forgotten.”

Among the residents in Clifton and at Stoke Bishop over the Downs I had
many kind friends, some of whom helped me essentially in my work by
placing tickets for hospitals and money in my hands for the poor. One of
these whom I specially recall with gratitude was that ever zealous moral
reformer, Mrs. Woolcott Browne, who is still working bravely with her
daughter for many good causes in London. I must not write here without
permission of the many others whose names have not come before the
public, but whose affectionate consideration made my life very pleasant,
and whom I ever remember with tender regard. Of one excellent couple I
may venture to speak,—Dr. and Mrs. Goodeve of Cook’s Folly. Mrs. Goodeve
herself told me their singular and beautiful story, and since she and
her husband are now both dead, I think I may allow myself to repeat it.

Dr. Goodeve was a young medical man who had just married, and was going
out to seek his fortune in India, having no prospects in England. As
part of their honeymoon holiday the young couple went to visit Cook’s
Folly; then a small, half-ruinous, castellated building, standing in a
spot of extraordinary beauty over the Avon, looking down the Bristol
Channel. As they were descending the turret-stair and taking, as they
thought, a last look on the loveliness of England, the young wife
perceived that her husband’s head was bent down in deep depression. She
laid her hand on his shoulder and whispered “Never mind, Harry? You
shall make a fortune in India and we will come back and buy Cook’s
Folly.”

They went to Calcutta and were there most kindly received by a gentleman
named Hurry, who edited a newspaper and whose own history had been
strange and tragic. Started in his profession by his interest, Dr.
Goodeve soon fell into good practice, and by degrees became a very
successful physician, the founder (I believe) of the existing Medical
College of Calcutta. Going on a shooting party, his face was most
terribly shattered by a chance shot which threatened to prove mortal,
but Mrs. Goodeve, without help or appliances, alone with him in a tent
in a wild district, pulled him back to life. At last they returned to
England, wealthy and respected by all, and bringing a splendid
collection of Indian furniture and _curios_. The very week they landed,
Cook’s Folly was advertised to be sold! They remembered it well,—went to
see it,—bought it—and rebuilded it; making it a most charming and
beautiful house. A peculiarity of its structure as remodelled by them
was, that there was an entire suite of rooms,—a large library
overlooking the river Avon, bedroom, bathroom and servant’s room,—all
capable of being shut off from the rest of the house, by double doors,
so that the occupant might be quite undisturbed. When everything was
finished, and splendidly furnished, the Goodeves wrote to Mr. Hurry: “It
is time for you to give up your paper and come home. You acted a
father’s part to us when we went out first to India. Now come to us, and
live as with your son and daughter.”

Mr. Hurry accepted the invitation and found waiting for him and his
Indian servant the beautiful suite of rooms built for him, and the
tenderest welcome. I saw him often seated by their fireside just as a
father might have been. When the time came for him to die, Mrs. Goodeve
nursed him with such devoted care, and strained herself so much in
lifting and helping him, that her own health was irretrievably injured,
and she died not long afterwards.

I could write more of Bristol and Clifton friends, high and low, but
must draw this chapter of my life to a close. I went to Bristol an utter
stranger, knowing no human being there. I left it after a few years all
peopled, as it seemed to me, with kind souls; and without one single
remembrance of anything else but kindness received there either from
gentle or simple.

CHAPTER
XIV.
_ITALY. 1857–1879._

I visited Italy six times between the above dates. The reader need not
be wearied by reminiscences of such familiar journeyings, which, in my
case, were always made quickly through France, (a country which I
intensely dislike) and extended pretty evenly over the most beautiful
cities of Italy. I spent several seasons in Rome and Florence, and a
winter in Pisa; and I visited once, twice or three times, Venice,
Bologna, Naples, Perugia, Assisi, Verona, Padua, Genoa, Milan and Turin.
The only interest which these wanderings can claim belongs to the people
with whom they brought me into contact, and these include a somewhat
remarkable list: Mr. and Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Somerville, Theodore
Parker, Walter Savage Landor, Massimo d’ Azeglio, John Gibson, Charlotte
Cushman, Count Guido Usedom, Adolphus Trollope and his first wife, Mr.
W. W. Story, and Mrs. Beecher Stowe. Of many of these I gave slight
sketches in my book, _Italics_; and must refer to them very briefly
here. That book, I may mention, was written principally at Villa Gnecco,
a beautiful villa at Nervi on the Riviera di Levante, then rented by my
kind friend Count Usedom, the Prussian Ambassador and his English wife.
Count Guido Usedom,—now alas! gone over to the majority,—was an
extremely cultivated man, who had been at one time Secretary to Bunsen’s
Embassy in Rome. He was so good as to undertake what I may call my
(Italian) Political Education; instructing me not only of the facts of
recent history, but of the _dessous des cartes_ of each event as they
were known to the initiated. He placed all his despatches for many years
in my hands, and explained the policy of each nation concerned; and even
taught me the cryptographs then in diplomatic use. His own letters to
his King, the late Emperor Wilhelm I., were lively and delightful
sketches of Italian affairs; for, as he said, he had discovered that to
induce the King to read them they must be both amusing and beautifully
transcribed. From him and the Prefects and other influential men who
came to visit him at Villa Gnecco, I gained some views of politics not
perhaps unworthy of record.

One day I asked him, “Whether it were exactly true that Cavour had told
a distinct falsehood in the Chambers about Garibaldi’s invasion of
Naples?” Count Usedom replied, “He _did_; and I do not believe there is
a statesman in Europe who would not have done the same when a kingdom
was in question.” He obviously thought, (scrupulously conscientious as
he was himself) that, to diplomatists in general and their sovereigns,
the laws of morality and honour were like ladies’ bracelets, highly
ornamental and to be worn habitually, but to be slipped off when any
serious work was to be done which required free hands. He said: “People
(especially women) often asked me is such a King a _good man_? Is
Napoleon III. a _good man_? This is nonsense. They are all good men, in
so far that they will not do a cruel, or treacherous, or unjust thing
_without strong reasons_ for it. That would be not only a crime but a
blunder. But when great dynastic interests are concerned, Kings and
Emperors and their ministers are neither guided by moral considerations
or deterred from following their interests because a life, or many
lives, stand in the way.” He adduced Napoleon III.’s _Coup d’état_ as an
example. Napoleon was not a man to indulge in any cruel or vindictive
sentiment; but neither was he one to forego a step needed for his
policy.

The year following these studies under Count Usedom I was living in
London, and met Mazzini one evening by special invitation alone at the
house of Mr. and Mrs. James Stansfeld (I speak of Mr. Stansfeld’s first
wife, sister of Madame Venturi). After dinner our hosts left us alone,
and Mazzini, whom I had often met before and who was always very good to
me, asked me if I would listen to his version of the recent history of
Italy, since he thought I had been much misinformed on the subject? Of
course I could only express my sense of the honour he did me by the
proposal; and then, somewhat to my amazement and amusement, Mazzini
descended from his armchair, seated himself opposite me cross-legged on
the magnificent white rug before Mrs. Stansfeld’s blazing fire, and
proceeded to pour out,—I believe for quite two hours,—the entire story
of all that went before and after the siege of Rome, his Triumvirate,
and the subsequent risings, plots and battles. If any one could have
taken down that wonderful story in shorthand it would possess immense
value, and I regret profoundly that I did not at least attempt, when I
went home, to write my recollections of it. But I was merely bewildered.
Each event which Mazzini named,—sitting so coolly there on the rug at my
feet:—“I sent an army here, I ordered a rising there,” appeared under an
aspect so entirely different from that which it had borne as represented
to me by my political friends in Italy, that I was continually
mystified, and asked: “But Signor Mazzini, are you talking of such and
such an event?”—“_Ma sì, Signora_”—and off he would go again with vivid
and eloquent explanations and descriptions, which fairly took my breath
away. At last (I believe it was near midnight), Mrs. Stansfeld, who had,
of course, arranged this effort for my conversion to Italian
Republicanism, returned to the drawing-room; and I fear that the truly
noble-hearted man who had done me so high a favour, rose disappointed
from his lowly rug! He said to me at another time: “You English, who are
blessed with loyal sovereigns, cannot understand that one of our reasons
for being Republicans is, that we cannot trust our Kings and Grand Dukes
an inch. They are each one of them a _Rè Traditore_!” One could quite
concede that a constitutional government under a traitor-prince would
not hold out any prospect of success; but at all events Victor Emanuel
and Umberto have completely exonerated themselves from such suspicions.

To return to Italy and the men I know there. Count Usedom’s reference to
Napoleon’s _Coup d’état_ reminds me of the clever saying which I have
quoted elsewhere, of a greater diplomatist than he; Cavaliere Massimo d’
Azeglio. Talking with him, as I had the privilege of doing every day for
many months at the table d’hôte in the hotel where we both spent a
winter in Pisa, I made some remark about the mistake of founding
Religion on histories of Miracles. “Ah, les miracles!” exclaimed D’
Azeglio; “je n’en crois rien! _Ce sont des coups d’état célestes!_”
Could the strongest argument against them have been more neatly packed
in one simile? A _coup d’état_ is a practical confession that the
regular and orderly methods of Government _have failed_ in the hands of
the Governor, and that he is driven to have recourse to irregular and
lawless methods to compass his ends and vindicate his sovereignty. A
_coup d’état_ is like the act of an impatient chess player who, finding
himself losing the game while playing fairly, sweeps some pieces from
the board to recover his advantage. Is this to be believed of Divine
rule of the universe?

D’ Azeglio was one of those men, of whom I have met about a dozen in
life, who impressed me as having in their characters elements of real
_greatness_; not being merely clever or gifted, but large-souled. When I
knew him he was a fallen Statesman, an almost forgotten Author, a
General on the shelf, a Prime Minister reduced to living in a single
room at an hotel, without a secretary or even a valet; yet he was the
cheeriest Italian I ever knew. His spirits never seemed to falter. He
was the life of our table every day, and I used to hear him singing
continually over his watercolour drawing in his room adjoining mine at
the _Gran’ Bretagna_, on the dull Lung-Arno of Pisa. The fate of Italy,
which still hung in suspense, was, however, ever near his heart. One day
it was talked over at the _table d’hôte_, and D’ Azeglio looked grave,
and said: “We speak of this man and the other; but it is GOD who is
making Italy!” It was so unusual a sentiment for an Italian gentleman to
utter, that it impressed the listeners almost with awe. Another day,
talking of Thackeray and the ugliness of his school of novelists, he
observed: “It is all right to seek to express Truth. But why do these
people always seem to think _qu’il n’y a rien de vrai excepté le laid_?”
The reason,—I might have replied,—is, that it is extremely difficult to
depict Beauty, and extremely easy to create Ugliness! Beauty means
Proportion, Refinement, Elevation, Simplicity. How much harder it is to
convey _these_ truly, than Disproportion, Coarseness, Baseness,
Duplicity? Since D’ Azeglio spoke we have gone on creating Ugliness and
calling it Truth, till M. Zola has originated a literature in honour of
LE LAID, and given us books like _L’Assommoir_ in which it is perfected,
almost as Beauty was of old in a statue of Praxiteles or in the Dresden
Madonna.

One day that M. d’ Azeglio was doing me the honour of paying me a visit
in my room, he narrated to me the following singular little bit of
history. It seems that when he was Premier of Sardinia and Lord John
Russell of England, the latter sent him through Lord Minto a distinct
message,—“that he might safely undertake a certain line of policy,
since, if a given contingency arose, England would afford him armed
support.” The contingency did occur; but Lord Russell was unable to give
the armed support which he had promised; “and this,” said D’ Azeglio,
“caused my _fiasco_.” He resigned office, and, I think, then retired
from public life; but some years later, being in England, he was invited
to Windsor. There he happened to be laid up with a cold, and Lord
Russell and Lord Minto, who were also guests at the castle, paid him a
visit in his apartments. “Then,” said D’ Azeglio, “I turned on them
both, and challenged them to say whether Lord Minto had not conveyed
that message to me from Lord Russell, and whether he had not failed to
keep his engagement? They did not attempt to deny that it was so.” D’
Azeglio (I understood him to say) had himself sent the Sardinian
contingent to fight with our troops and the French in the Crimea, for
the express and sole purpose of making Europe recognise that there was a
_Question d’Italie_; (or possibly he spoke of this being the motive of
the Minister who did so). Another remark which this charming old man
made has remained very clearly on my memory for a reason to be presently
explained. He observed, laughing: “People seem to think that Ministers
have indefinite time at their disposal, but they have only 24 hours like
other men, and they must eat and sleep and rest like the remainder of
the human race. When I was Premier I calculated that dividing the
subjects which demanded attention and the time I had to bestow on them,
there were just _three minutes and a-half_ on an average for ordinary
subjects, and _eight_ minutes for important ones! And if that be so in a
little State like Piedmont, what must it be in the case of a Prime
Minister of England? I cannot think how mortal man can bear the office!”

Many years afterwards I told this to an English Statesman, and he
replied—with rather startling _gaieté de cœur_, considering the
responsibilities for Irish murders then resting on his shoulders:—“Quite
true, it is all a scuffle and a scramble from morning to night. If you
had seen me two hours ago you would have found me listening to a very
important dispatch read to me by one of my secretaries while I was
dictating another, equally important; to another. All a scuffle and a
scramble from morning to night!” Count Usedom told me that at one time
he had been Minister of War in Prussia, and that he knew a great battle
was imminent next day, the Prussian army having just come up with the
enemy. He lay awake all night reflecting on the horrors of the ensuing
fight; remembering that he had the power to telegraph to the General in
command to stop it, and longing with all his soul to do so, but knowing
that the act would be treachery to his country. Of this sort of anxiety
I strongly suspect some statesmen have never felt a twinge.

It was at Florence in 1860 that I met Theodore Parker for the first
time. After the letters of deep sympathy and agreement on religious
matters which had passed between us, it was a strange turn of fate which
brought him to die in Florence, and me to stand beside his death-bed and
his grave. The world has, as is natural, passed on over the road which
he did much to open, and his name is scarcely known to the younger
generation; but looking back at his work and at his books again after
thirty years, and when early enthusiasm has given place to the calm
judgment of age, I still feel that Theodore Parker was a very great
religious teacher and Confessor,—as Albert Reville wrote of him: “_Cet
homme fût un Prophète_.” That is, he received the truths of what he
called “Absolute Religion” at first hand in his own faithful soul, and
spoke them out, fearless of consequences, with unequalled
straightforwardness. He was not subtle-minded. He did not at all see
obliquely round corners, as men like Cardinal Newman always seem to have
done; nor estimate the limitations which his broad statements sometimes
required. It would have been scarcely possible to have been both the man
he was, and also a fine critic and metaphysician. But his was a clear,
trumpet voice, to which many a freed and rejoicing spirit responded; and
if he founded no sect or school, he did better. He infused into the
religious life of England and America an element, hardly present before,
of natural confidence in the absolute goodness of God independent of
theologies. No man did more than he to awaken the Protestant nations
from the hideous nightmare of an Eternal Hell, which within my own
recollection, hovered over the piety of England. As he was wont himself
to say, laughingly, he had “knocked the bottom out of hell!”

I will copy here some Notes of my only interviews with this honoured
friend and teacher, to whom I owed so much:

“28th April. Saw Mr. Parker for the first time. He was lying in bed
with his back to the light. Mrs. Parker brought me into the room. He
took my hand tenderly and said in a low, hurried voice, holding it:
‘After all our wishes to meet, Miss Cobbe, how strange it is we should
meet _thus_.’ I pressed his hand and he turned his eyes, which were
trembling painfully and evidently seeing nothing, towards me and said,
‘You must not think you have seen _me_. This is not _me_, only the
wreck of the man I was.’ Then, after a pause he added: ‘Those who love
me most can only wish me a quick passage to the other world. Of course
I am not _afraid_ to die (he smiled as he spoke) but there was so much
to be done!’ I said: ‘You have given your life to God and His truth as
truly as any martyr of old.’ He replied: ‘I do not know; I had great
powers committed to me, I have but half used them.’ I gave him a
nosegay of roses and lily-of-the-valley. He smiled and touched the
lily-of-the-valley, saying it was the sweetest of all flowers. I
begged him, if his lodgings were not all he desired, to come to villa
Brichieri” [a villa on Bellosguardo, which I then shared with Miss
Blagden], “but he said he was most comfortable where he was. Then his
mind wandered a little about a bad dream which haunted him, and I left
him.”

“April 29th. I was told on arriving that Mr. Parker had spoken very
tenderly of my visit of the day before, but had said, ‘I must not see
her often. It makes my heart swell too high. But you (to his wife)
must see her every day. Remember there is but one Miss Cobbe in the
world.’ Afterwards he told Dr. Appleton that he wanted him to get an
inkstand for me as a last gift. [This inkstand I have used ever
since.] He received me very kindly, but almost at once his mind
wandered, and he spoke of ‘going home immediately.’ He asked what day
of the week it was? I said: ‘This is the blessed day; it is Sunday.’
‘Ah yes!’ he said, ‘It is a blessed day when one has got over the
superstition of it. I will try to go to you to-morrow.’ (Of course
this was utterly out of the question.) Then he looked at the lily of
Florence which I had brought, and told him how I had got it down from
one of the old walls for him, and he smiled the same sweet smile as
yesterday, and touched the beautiful blue Iris, and soon seemed to
sleep.”

I called after this every day, generally twice a day, at the Pension
Molini where he lay; but rarely could interchange a word. Parker’s
friend, Dr. Appleton of Boston, who was faithfully attending him, sent
for another friend, Prof. Desor, and they and the three ladies of the
party nursed him, of course, devotedly. On the 10th May I saw him lying
breathing quietly, while life ebbed gently. I returned to Bellosguardo
and at eight o’clock in the evening Prof. Desor and Dr. Appleton came up
to tell me he had passed peacefully away.

Parker had, long before his death, desired that the first eleven verses
of the Sermon on the Mount should be read at his funeral. Whether he
intended that they should form the only service was not known; but Desor
and Appleton arranged that so it should be, and that they should be read
by Rev. W. Cunningham, an American Unitarian clergyman who was
fortunately at the time living near us on Bellosguardo, and who was a
man of much feeling and dignity of aspect. The funeral took place on
Sunday, the 13th May, at the beautiful old Campo Santo Inglese, outside
the walls of Florence, which contains the dust of Mrs. Browning, of
Arthur Hugh Clough, and many others dear to English memories. It was the
first funeral I had ever attended. The coffin when I arrived, was
already lying in the mortuary chapel. My companions placed a wreath of
laurels on it, and I added a large bunch of the lily-of-the-valley which
he had loved. Then eight Italian pall-bearers took up the coffin and
carried it on a side-walk to the grave. When it had been lowered with
some difficulty to the last resting-place, my notes say:—

“Dr. Appleton then handed a Bible to Mr. Cunningham. I was standing
close to him and heard his voice falter. He read like a man who felt
all the holy words he said, and those sacred Blessings came with
unspeakable rest to my heart. Then Desor, who had been pale as death,
threw in one handful of clay.... The burial ground is exquisitely
lovely, a very wilderness of flowers and perfume. Only a few cypresses
give it grandeur, not gloom. All Florence was decorated with flags in
honour of the anniversary of Piedmontese Constitution. We said to one
another: ‘It is a festival for us also—the solemn feast of an
Ascension.’”

Of course I visited this grave when I returned to Florence several years
afterwards. The cypresses had grown large and dark and somewhat shadowed
it. I had the violets, &c., renewed upon it more than once, but I heard
later that it had become somewhat dilapidated, and I was glad to join a
subscription got up by an American gentleman to erect a new tombstone. I
hope it has been done, as he would have desired, with simplicity. I
shall never see that grave again.

Two or three years later I edited all the twelve vols. of Parker’s Works
for Messrs. Trübner, and wrote a somewhat lengthy Preface for them;
afterwards reprinted as a separate pamphlet entitled the _Religious
Demands of the Age_. Three Biographies of Parker have appeared; the
shortest, published in England by Rev. Peter Dean, being in my opinion
the best. The letters which I received from Parker in the years before I
saw him are all printed by my permission in Mr. Weiss’ _Life_, and
therefore will not be reproduced here.

That venerable old man, Rev. John J. Tayler, writing to me a few years
later, summed up Parker’s character I think as justly as did Mr. Jowett
in calling him a “religious Titan.”

“I read lately with much pleasure your Preface to the forthcoming
edition of Theodore Parker’s works. I agree cordially with your
estimate of his character. His virtues were of the highest type of the
hero and the martyr. His faults, such as they were, were such as are
incident to every ardent and earnest soul fighting against wickedness
and hypocrisy; faults which colder and more worldly natures easily
avoid, faults which he shared with some of the best and noblest of our
race—a Milton, a Luther, and a Paul. When freedom and justice have
achieved some conquests yet to come, his memory will be cherished with
deeper reverence and affection than it is, except by a small number,
now.

“I remain, dear Miss Cobbe, very truly yours,
“J. J. TAYLER.”

At the time of Parker’s death I was sharing the apartment of my clever
and charming friend, Isa Blagden, in Villa Brichieri on Bellosguardo. It
was a delightful house with a small _podere_ off the road, and with a
broad balcony (accommodating any number of chairs) opening from the airy
drawing-room, and commanding a splendid view of Florence backed by
Fiesole and the Apennines. On the balcony, and in our drawing-rooms,
assembled regularly every week and often on other occasions, an
interesting and varied company. We were both of us poor, but in those
days poverty in Florence permitted us to rent 14 well-furnished rooms in
a charming villa, and to keep a maid and a man-servant. The latter
bought our meals every morning in Florence, cooked and served them;
being always clean and respectably dressed. He swept our floors and he
opened our doors and announced our company and served our ices and tea
with uniform quietness and success. A treasure, indeed, was good old
Ansano! Also we were able to engage an open carriage with a pair of
horses to do our shopping and pay our visits in Florence as often as we
needed. And what does the reader think it cost us to live like this,
fire and candles and food for four included? In those halcyon days under
the old _régime_, it was precisely £20 a month! We divided everything
exactly and it never exceeded £10 apiece.

Among our most frequent visitors was Mr. Browning. Mrs. Browning was
never able to drive so far, but her warm friendship for Miss Blagden was
heartily shared by her husband and we saw a great deal of him. Always
full of spirits, full of interest in everything from politics to
hedge-flowers, cordial and utterly unaffected, he was at all times a
charming member of society; but I confess that in those days I had no
adequate sense of his greatness as a poet. I could not read his poetry,
though he had not then written his most difficult pieces, and his
conversation was so playful and light that it never occurred to me that
I was wasting precious time chatting frivolously with him when I might
have been gaining high thoughts and instruction. There was always a
ripple of laughter round the sofa where he used to seat himself,
generally beside some lady of the company, towards whom, in his
eagerness, he would push nearer and nearer till she frequently rose to
avoid falling off at the end! When we drove out in parties he would
discuss every tree and weed, and get excited about the difference
between eglantine and eglatere (if there be any), and between either of
them and honeysuckle. He and Isa were always wrangling in an
affectionate way over some book or music; (he was a fine performer
himself on the piano), and one night when I had left Villa Brichieri and
was living at Villa Niccolini at least half-a-mile off, the air, being
in some singular condition of sonority, carried their voices between the
walls of the two villas so clearly across to me that I actually heard
some of the words of their quarrel, and closed my window lest I should
be an eavesdropper. I believe it was about Spirit-rapping they were
fighting, for which, and the professors of the art, Browning had a
horror. I have seen him stamping on the floor in a frenzy of rage at the
way some believers and mediums were deceiving Mrs. Browning.

Thirty years afterwards, the last time I ever had the privilege of
talking with Robert Browning (it was in Surrey House in London), I
referred to these old days and to our friend, long laid in that Campo
Santo at Florence. His voice fell and softened, and he said: “Ah, poor,
_dear_ Isa!” with deep feeling.

At that time I do not think that any one, certainly no one of the
society which surrounded him, thought of Mr. Browning as a great poet,
or as an equal one to his wife, whose _Aurora Leigh_ was then a new
book. The utter unselfishness and generosity wherewith he gloried in his
wife’s fame,—bringing us up constantly good reviews of her poems and
eagerly recounting how many editions had been called for,—perhaps helped
to blind us, stupid that we were! to his own claims. Never, certainly
did the proverb about the “_irritabile genus_” of Poets prove less true.
All through his life, even when the world had found him out, and
societies existed for what Mr. Frederic Harrison might justly have
called a “culte” of Browning, if not a “latria,” he remained the same
absolutely unaffected, unassuming, genial English gentleman.

Of Mrs. Browning I never saw much. Sundry visits we paid to each other
missed, and when I did find her at home in Casa Guidi we did not fall on
congenial themes. I was bubbling over with enthusiasm for her poetry,
but had not the audacity to express my admiration, (which, in truth, had
been my special reason for visiting Florence;) and she entangled me in
erudite discussions about Tuscan and Bolognese schools of painting,
concerning which I knew little and, perhaps, cared less. But I am glad I
looked into the splendid eyes which _lived_ like coals, in her pain-worn
face, and revealed the soul which Robert Browning trusted to meet again
on the threshold of eternity.[18] Was there ever such a testimony as
their _perfect_ marriage,—living on as it did in the survivor’s heart
for a quarter of a century,—to the possibility of the eternal union of
Genius and Love?

I received in later years from Mr. Browning several letters which I may
as well insert in this place.

“19, Warwick Crescent, W.,
“December 28th, 1874.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I return the Petition, for the one good reason, that I have just
signed its fellow forwarded to me by Mr. Leslie Stephen. You have
heard ‘I take an equal interest with yourself in the effort to
suppress Vivisection.’ I dare not so honour my mere wishes and prayers
as to put them for a moment beside your noble acts, but this I know, I
would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than
have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a
twinge or two. I return the paper, because I shall be probably shut up
here for the next week or two, and prevented from seeing my friends,
whoever would refuse to sign would certainly not be of the number.”

“Ever truly and gratefully yours,
“ROBERT BROWNING.”

“19, Warwick Crescent, W.,
“July 3rd, 1881.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I wish I were not irretrievably engaged on Monday afternoon, twice
over, as it prevents me from accepting your invitation. By all I hear,
Mr. Bishop’s performance must be instructive to those who need it, and
amusing to everybody.[19]

“Thank you very much,
“Ever truly yours,
“ROBERT BROWNING.”

“19, Warwick Crescent, W.,
“October 22nd, 1882,

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“It is about a week ago since I had to write to the new Editor of the
‘Fortnightly,’ Mr. Escott—and assure him that I was so tied and bound
by old promises ‘to give something to this and that Magazine if I gave
at all’—that it became impossible I could oblige anybody in even so
trifling a matter. It comes of making rash resolutions—but, once made,
there is no escape from the consequence—though I rarely have felt this
so much of a hardship as now when I am forced to leave a request of
yours uncomplied with. For the rest, I shall indeed rejoice if that
abominable and stupid cruelty of pigeon-shooting is put a stop to. The
other detestable practice, Vivisection, strikes deeper root, I fear;
but God bless whoever tugs at it!

“Ever yours most truly,
“ROBERT BROWNING.”

Another of our most frequent visitors at Villa Brichieri was Mr. T.
Adolphus Trollope, author of the _Girlhood of Catherine de’ Medici_, “_A
Decade of Italian Women_” and other books. Though not so successful an
author as his brilliant brother Anthony, he was an interesting man, whom
we much liked. One day he came up and pressed us to go back with him and
pay a visit to a guest at his Villino Trollope in the Piazza Maria
Antonia,—a lovely house he had built, with a broad verandah behind it,
opening on a garden of cypresses and oranges backed by the old
crenelated and Iris-decked walls of Florence. He had, he told us, a most
interesting person staying with him and Mrs. Trollope;—Mrs. Lewes—who
had written _Adam Bede_, and was then writing _Romola_. Miss Blagden
alone went with him, and was enchanted, like all the world, with George
Eliot.

Mr. Trollope told me many curious facts concerning Italian society
which, from his long residence, he knew more intimately than almost any
other foreigner. He described the marriage settlement of a nobleman
which had actually passed through his hands, wherein the intending
husband, with wondrous foresight and precaution, deliberately named
three or four gentlemen, amongst whom his future wife might choose her
_cavaliere servente_!

We had several other _habitués_ at our villas; Dall’ Ongaro, a poet and
ex-priest; Romanelli, the sculptor; and Miss Linda White, now Madame
Villari, the charming authoress and hostess of a brilliant _salon_, wife
of the eminent historian who was recently Minister of Education.

Perhaps the most interesting of our visitors, after Mr. Browning, was
Mrs. Beecher Stowe. She impressed me much, and the criticisms I have
read of her “_Sunny Memories_” and other books have failed to diminish
my admiration for her. She was one of the few women, I suppose, who have
actually _felt_ Fame, as heroes do who receive national Triumphs; and
she seemed to be as simple and unpretentious, as little elated as it was
possible to be. She had even a trick of looking down as if she had been
stared out of countenance; but this was perhaps a part of that singular
habit which most Evangelicals of her class exhibited thirty years ago,
of shyness in society and inability to converse except with the person
seated next them in company. It was the verification after eighteen
centuries of the old heathen taunt against the Christians, recorded in
the dialogues of Minucius Felix, “_In publicam muta, in angulis
garrula!_” I have recorded elsewhere Mrs. Stowe’s remark when I spoke
with grief of the end of Theodore Parker’s work. “Do you think,” she
said, suddenly looking up at me with flashing eyes, “that Theodore
Parker has no work to do for God _now_?” I must not repeat again her
interesting conversation as we sat on our balcony watching the sun go
down over the Val d’ Arno. After much serious talk as to the nearness of
the next life, Mrs. Stowe narrated a saying of her boy on which, (as I
told her), a good heterodox sermon _in my sense_ might be preached. She
taught the child that Anger was sinful, whereupon he asked: “Then why,
Mama, does the Bible say so often that God was angry?” She replied
motherlike: “You will understand it when you are older.” The boy
pondered seriously for awhile and then burst out: “O Mama, I have found
it out! God is angry, _because God is not a Christian_!”

Another of our _habitués_ on my first visit to Florence was Walter
Savage Landor. At that time he was, with his dear Pomeranian dog,
_Giallo_, living alone in very ordinary lodgings in Florence, having
quarrelled with his family and left his villa in their possession. He
had a grand, leonine head with long white hair and beard, and to hear
him denouncing his children was to witness a performance of Lear never
matched on any stage! He was very kind to me, and we often walked about
odd nooks of Florence together, while he poured out reminiscences of
Byron and Shelley, some of which I have recorded (Chap. IX., p. 257),
and of others of the older generation whom he had known, so that I
seemed in touch with them all. He was then about 88 years of age, and
perhaps his great and cultivated intellect was already failing. Much
that he said in wrath and even fury seemed like raving, but he was
gentle as a child to us women, and to his dog whom he passionately
loved. When I wrote the first Memorial against Prof. Schiff which
started the anti-vivisection crusade, Mr. Landor’s name was one of the
first appended to it. He added some words to his signature so fierce and
contemptuous that I never dared to publish them!

We also saw much of Dr. Grisanowski, a very clever Pole, who afterwards
became a prominent advocate of the science-tortured brutes. When I
discussed the matter with him he was entirely on the side of Science.
After some years he sent me his deeply thought-out pamphlet, with the
endorsement “For Miss Cobbe,—who was right when I was wrong;” a very
generous retractation. We also received Mr. Frederick Tennyson, (Lord
Tennyson’s brother), Madame Venturi, Madame Alberto Mario, the late Lord
Justice Bowen, (then a brilliant young man from Oxford,) and many more.

By far the best and dearest of my friends in Florence however, was one
who never came up our hill, and who was already then an aged woman—Mrs.
Somerville. I had brought a letter of introduction to her, being anxious
to see one who had been such an honour to womanhood; but I expected to
find her an incarnation of Science, having very little affinity with
such a person as I. Instead of this, I found in her the dearest old lady
in all the world, who took me to her heart as if I had been a
newly-found daughter, and for whom I soon felt such tender affection
that sitting beside her on her sofa, (as I mostly did on account of her
deafness) I could hardly keep myself from caressing her. In a letter to
Harriet St. Leger I wrote of her: “She is the very ideal of an old lady,
so gentle, cordial and dignified, like my mother; and as fresh, eager
and intelligent _now_, as she can ever have been.” Her religious ideas
proved to be exactly like my own; and being no doubt somewhat a-thirst
for sympathy on a subject on which she felt profoundly, (her daughters
differing from her), she opened her heart to me entirely. Here are a few
notes I made after talks with her:—

“Mrs. Somerville thinks no one can be eloquent who has not studied the
Bible. We discussed the character of Christ. She agreed to all I said,
adding she thought it clear the Apostles never thought he was God, only
the image of the perfection of God. She kissed me tenderly when I rose
to go and bade me come back at any hour—at three in the morning if I
liked!—May 18th. Mrs. Somerville gave me her photograph. She says she
always feels a regret thinking of the next life that we shall see no
more the flowers of this world. I said we should no doubt see others
still fairer. “Ah! yes,” she said, “but _our own_ roses and mignonette!
I shall miss them. The dear animals I believe we _shall_ meet. They
suffer so often here, they must live again.”—June 3rd. Wished farewell
to Mrs. Somerville. She said kissing me with many tears, “We shall meet
in Heaven! I shall claim you there.”

I saw Mrs. Somerville again on my other visits to Italy, at Genoa,
Spezzia and Naples; of course making it a great object of my plans to be
for some weeks near her. In my last journey, in 1879, I saw at Naples
the noble monument erected over her grave by her daughter. It represents
her (heroic size) reclining on a classic chair,—in somewhat the attitude
of the statue of Agrippina in the Vatican.

Mrs. Somerville ought to have been buried in Westminster Abbey. When I
saw her death announced on the posters of the newspapers in the streets
in London, I hurried as soon as I could recover myself, to ask Dean
Stanley to arrange for her interment in the Abbey. The Dean consented
freely and with hearty approval to my proposition, and Mrs. Somerville’s
nephew, Sir William Fairfax, promised at once to defray all expenses.
There was only one thing further needed, and that was the usual formal
request from some public body or official persons to the Dean and
Chapter of Westminster. Dean Stanley had immediately written to the
Astronomer Royal to suggest that he and the President of the Royal
Society, as the representatives of the sciences with which Mrs.
Somerville’s fame was connected, should address to him the demand which
would authorize his proceeding with the matter. But that gentleman
_refused_ to do it—on the ground that _he_ had never read Mrs.
Somerville’s books! Whether he had read one in which she took the
opposite side from his in the sharp and angry Adams-Le Verrier
controversy, it is not for me to say. Any way, jealousy, either
scientific or masculine, declined to admit Mary Somerville’s claims to a
place in the national Valhalla, wherein so many men neither
intellectually nor morally her equals have been welcomed.

From the time of our first meeting till her death in 1872, Mrs.
Somerville maintained a close correspondence with me. I have had all her
beautifully-written letters bound together, and they form a considerable
volume. Of course it was a delight to me to send her everything which
might interest her, and among other things I sent her a volume of
Theodore Parker’s Prayers; edited by myself. In October, 1863, I spent a
long time at Spezzia to enjoy the immense pleasure of her society. I was
then a cripple and unable to walk to her house, and wrote of her visits
as follows to Miss Elliot:

“Mrs. Somerville comes to me every day. She is looking younger than
three years ago and she talked to me for three hours yesterday,
pouring out such stores of recent science as I never heard before.
Then we talked a little heresy, and she thanked me with tears in her
eyes for Parker’s _Prayers_, saying she had found them the greatest
comfort and the most perfect expression of religious feeling of any
prayers she has known.”

Another time I sent her my _Hopes of the Human Race_. She wrote, three
weeks before her death, “God bless you dearest friend for your
irresistible argument for our Immortality! Not that I ever doubted of
it, but as I shall soon enter my ninety-third year, your words are an
inexpressible comfort.”

Mary Somerville was the living refutation of all the idle, foolish
things which have been said of intellectual women. There never existed a
more womanly woman. Her _Life_, edited by her eldest daughter Martha
Somerville (her son by her first marriage, Mr. Woronzow Greig, died long
before her), has been much read and liked. I reviewed it in the
_Quarterly_ (January, 1874), and am tempted to enclose a letter which
Martha Somerville (then and always my good friend) wrote about it:

“From Miss Somerville to F. P. C.

“22nd January, Naples.

“My dear Frances,

“I have this morning received the _Quarterly Review_ and some slips
from newspapers. What can I say to express my gratitude to you for the
article,—so admirably written; and giving so touching a picture of my
Mother,—as you, her best friend (notwithstanding the great difference
of age) knew her? Also I received lately the _Academy_ which pleased
me much, too. The Memoir has been received far more favourably than I
ventured to expect.”

A long time after this, I paid a visit to friends at St. Andrews and
stopped from Saturday to Monday, on my way, at Burntisland. Writing from
thence to Miss Elliot about her own country, and countrymen, I said:—

“I came here to look up the scene of Mrs. Somerville’s childhood, and
I have found everything just as she described it;—the Links; the
pretty hills and woods full of wild flowers; the rocky bit of shore
with boulders full of fossil shells which excited her childish wonder
when she wandered about, a beautiful little girl, as she must have
been. If ever there were a case of—

“‘Nourishing a youth sublime,
With the fairy tales of science and the long results of Time,’

it was surely hers. Very naturally I was thinking of her all day and
wondering whether she is _now_ studying the flora of Heaven, of which
she used to speak, and pursuing Astronomy among the stars; or whether
it _can_ be possible these things pass away for ever! I wanted very
much to make out where Sir William Fairfax’ house had been, and
finally was directed to the schoolmaster who, it was said, knew all
about it. I found the good man in a large schoolhouse where he has 600
pupils; and as soon as he learned my name he seized my hand and made
great demonstrations; and straightway proceeded to constitute himself
my guide to the localities in question. The joke however was this.
Hardly were we out of the house before he said, ‘I’ll send you a
pamphlet of mine—not about Science, I don’t care for Science, I care
for Morals;—and I’ve found out there is only _a very little thing to
be done, to stop all pauperism and all crime_! You are just the person
to understand me!’ The idea of this poor schoolmaster in Burntisland
compressing _that_ modest programme into a ‘pamphlet’ seems to me
deliciously characteristic of Scotland.”

A college for Ladies was opened some years ago at Oxford and named after
Mrs. Somerville. I greatly rejoiced at the time at this very fitting
tribute to her memory; and induced my brother to send his daughter, my
dear niece, Frances Conway Cobbe, to the Hall. I ceased to rejoice,
however, when I found that a lady bearing a name identified with
Vivisection in England was nominated for election as a member of the
Council of the College. I entered, (as a Subscriber,) the most vigorous
protest I could make against the proposed choice, but, alas! in vain.

One of our visitors at Villa Brichieri was a very pious French lady, who
came up to us one day to dinner straight from her devotions in the
Duomo, where a Triduo was going on against Renan; and, as it chanced,
she began to praise somewhat excessively a lady of rank whose reputation
had suffered more than one serious injury. My English friend remarked,
smiling, in mitigation of the eulogy:—

“Elle a eue ses petits délassements!”

the answer was deliciously XVIII. Century—

“C’est ce qui m’occupe le moins. Pourvu que cela soit fait avec du bon
goût! D’ailleurs on ne parle sérieusement que de deux ou trois. Le
Prince de S., par exemple. Encore est il mort celui-là!”

It was during one of my visits to Florence that I saw King Victor
Emanuel’s public entry into the city, which had just elected him King.
This is how I described the scene to Harriet St. Leger:—

“Happily we had a fine day for the king’s entry on Monday last. It was
a glorious sight! The beautiful old city blossomed out in flowers,
flags, garlands, hangings and gonfalons beyond all English
imagination. In every street there was a triumphal arch, while
_boulevards_ of artificial trees loaded with camelias, ran from the
railway to the gate and down the via Calzaiuoli. Even the mean little
sdrucciolo de’ Pitti was made into one long arbour by twenty green
arches sustaining hanging baskets of flowers. The Pitti itself had its
rugged old face decked with wreaths. I had the good fortune to stand
on a balcony commanding a view of the whole procession. Victor
Emanuel, riding his charger of Solferino, looked—coarse and fat as he
is,—a _man_ and a soldier, and more sympathetic than Kings in general.
Cavour has a Luther-like face, which wore a gleam of natural pleasure
at his reception. The people were quite mad with joy. They did not
cheer as we do, but uttered a sort of deep roar of ecstacy, flinging
clouds of flowers under the King’s horse’s feet, and seeming as if
they would fling themselves also from their balconies. Our hostess, an
Italian lady, went directly into hysterics, and all the party, men and
women cried and kissed and laughed in the wildest way. At night there
was a marvellous illumination, extending as far as the eye could
reach, in every palazzo and cottage down the Val d’ Arno and up the
slopes of the Apennines, where bonfires blazed on all the heights.”

In Florence my friends had been principally literary men and women. In
Rome they were chiefly artists. Harriet Hosmer, to whom I had letters,
was the first I knew. She was in those days the most bewitching sprite
the world ever saw. Never have I laughed so helplessly as at the
infinite fun of this bright Yankee girl. Even in later years when we
perforce grew a little graver, she needed only to begin one of her
descriptive stories to make us all young again. I have not seen her now
for many years since she has returned to America, nor yet any one in the
least like her; and it is vain to hope to convey to any reader the
contagion of her merriment. O! what a gift,—beyond rubies, are such
spirits! And what fools, what cruel fools, are those who damp them down
in children possessed of them!

Of Miss Hosmer’s sculpture I hoped, and every one hoped, great things.
Her _Zenobia_, her _Puck_, her _Sleeping Faun_ were beautiful creations
in a very pure style of art. But she was lured away from sculpture by
some invention of her own of a mechanical kind, over which many years of
her life have been lost. Now I believe she has achieved a fine statue of
Isabella of Spain, which has been erected in San Francisco.

Jealous rivals in Rome spread abroad at one time a slanderous story that
Harriet Hosmer did not make her own statues. I have in my possession an
autograph by her master, Gibson, which he wrote at the time to rebut
this falsehood, and which bears all the marks of his quaint style of
English composition.

“Finding that my pupil Miss Hosmer’s progress in her art begins to
agitate some rivals of the male sex, as proved by the following
malicious words printed in the Art journal;—

“‘Zenobia—said to be by Miss Hosmer, but really executed by an Italian
workman at Rome’;—

“I feel it is but justice on my part to state that Miss Hosmer became
my pupil on her arrival at Rome from America. I soon found that she
had uncommon talent. She studied under my own eyes for seven years,
modelling from the antique and her own original works from the living
models.

“The first report of her Zenobia was that it was the work of Mr.
Gibson. Afterwards that it is by a Roman workman. So far it is true
that it was built up by my man from her own original small model,
according to the practice of our profession; the long study and
finishing is by herself, like every other sculptor.

“If Miss Hosmer’s works were the productions of other artists and not
her own there would be in my studio two impostors—Miss Hosmer and
Myself.

“JOHN GIBSON, R.A.
“Rome, Nov., 1863.”

Gibson was himself a most interesting person; an old Greek soul, born by
haphazard in a Welsh village. He had wonderfully little (for a Welshman)
of anything like what Mr. Matthew Arnold calls Hebraism in his
composition. There was a story current among us of some one telling him
of a bet which had been made that another member of our society could
not repeat the Lord’s Prayer; and it was added that the party defied to
repeat it had begun (instead of it) with a doggerel American prayer for
children:—

“Before I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”

“Ah! you see,” said Gibson, “He _did_ know the Lord’s Prayer after all!”

Once he sat by me on the Pincian and said: “You know I don’t often read
the Bible, I have my sculpture to attend to. But I have had to look into
it for my bas-relief of the Children coming to Christ, and, do you know,
I find that Jesus Christ really said a good thing?”

I smothered my laughter, and said: “O certainly, Mr. Gibson, a great
many excellent things.” “Yes!” he said in his slow way. “Yes, he did.
There were some people called Pharisees who came and asked him
troublesome questions. And he said,—he said,—well, I forget exactly what
he said, but ‘Deeds not words,’ was what he meant to say.”

The exquisite grace of Gibson’s statues was all a part of the purity and
delicacy of his mind. He was in many respects an unique character; a
simple-hearted and single-minded worshipper of Beauty; and if my good
friend Lady Eastlake had not thought fit to prune his extraordinarily
quaint and original Autobiography, (which I have read in the MS.) to
ordinary book form and modernised style, I believe it would have been
deemed one of the gems of original literature, like Benvenuto Cellini’s,
and the renown of Gibson as a great artist would have been kept alive
thereby.

A merry party, of whom Mr. Gibson was usually one, used to meet
frequently that winter at the hospitable table of Charlotte Cushman, the
actress. She had, then, long retired from the stage, and had a handsome
house in the via Gregoriana, in which also lived her friend Miss
Stebbins and Miss Hosmer. Our dinners of American oysters and wild boar
with agro-dolce-sauce, and déjeuners including an awful refection
menacing sudden death, called “Woffles,” eaten with molasses (of which
woffles I have seen five plates divided between four American ladies!)
were extremely hilarious. There was a brightness, freedom and joyousness
among these gifted Americans, which was quite delightful to me. Miss
Cushman in particular I greatly admired and respected. She had, of
course, like all actors, the acquired habit of giving vivid outward
expression to every emotion, just as we quiet English ladies are taught
from our cradles to repress such signs, and to cultivate a calm
demeanour under all emergencies. But this vivacity rendered her all the
more interesting. She often read to us Mrs. Browning’s or Lowell’s
poetry in a very fine way indeed. Some years after this happy winter a
certain celebrated London surgeon pronounced her to be dying of a
terrible disease. She wished us farewell courageously, and went back to
New England, as we all sadly thought to die there. The next thing we
heard of Charlotte Cushman was, that she had returned to the stage and
was acting Meg Merrilies to immense and delighted audiences! Next we
heard that she had thus earned £5,000, and that she was building a house
with her earnings. Finally we learned that the house was finished, and
that she was living in it! She did so, and enjoyed it for some years
before the end came from other causes than the one threatened by the
great London surgeon.

One day when I had been lunching at her house, Miss Cushman asked
whether I would drive with her in her brougham to call on a friend of
Mrs. Somerville, who had particularly desired that she and I should
meet,—a Welsh lady, Miss Lloyd, of Hengwrt? I was, of course, very
willing indeed to meet a friend of Mrs. Somerville. We happily found
Miss Lloyd, busy in her sculptor’s studio over a model of her Arab
horse, and, on hearing that I was anxious to ride, she kindly offered to
mount me if I would join her in her rides on the Campagna. Then began an
acquaintance, which was further improved two years later when Miss Lloyd
came to meet and help me when I was a cripple, at Aix-les-Bains; and
from that time, now more than thirty years ago, she and I have lived
together. Of a friendship like this, which has been to my later life
what my mother’s affection was to my youth, I shall not be expected to
say more.

On my way home through France to Bristol from one of my earlier journeys
and before I became crippled, I had the pleasure of making for the first
time the acquaintance of Mdlle. Rosa Bonheur. Miss Lloyd, who knew her
very intimately and had worked in her studio, gave me an introduction to
her and I reported my visit in a letter to Miss Lloyd in Rome.

“Mdlle Bonheur received me most cordially when I sent up your note.
She was working in that most picturesque studio (at By, near Thoméry).
I had fancied from her picture that she was so much taller and larger
that I hardly supposed that it was she who greeted me, but her face is
_charming_; such fine, clear eyes looking straight into one’s own, and
frank bearing; an Englishwoman’s honesty with a Frenchwoman’s
courtesy. She spoke of you with great warmth of regard; remembered
everything you had said, and wanted to know all about your sculpture
studies in Rome. I said it had encouraged me to intrude on her to hope
I might persuade her to fulfil her promise of stopping with you next
winter, and added how very much you wished it, and described the
association she would have with you, sketching excursions, _bovi_, and
Thalaba” (Miss Lloyd’s Arab horse). “She said over and over she would
not go to Italy without going to see you; and that she hoped to go
soon, possibly next winter.... Somehow, from talking of Italy we
passed to talking of the North, which Mdlle. Bonheur thinks has a
deeper poetry than the South, and then to Ireland, where she wishes to
go next summer (I hope stopping at my brother’s _en passant_) and of
which country she said such beautiful, dreamy things that even I grew
poetic about our ‘_Brumes_,’—to which she quickly applied the epithet
‘grandiose,’—and our sea, looking, I said, like an angel’s eye with a
tear in it. At this simile she was so pleased that we grew quite
friends, and I can only hope she will not see that sea on a grey day
and think me an impostor! Nothing I liked about her, so much, however,
as her interest in Hattie Hosmer, and her delight in hearing about her
_Zenobia_[20] (_triumphans_) in the Exhibition; at which report of
mine she exclaimed: ‘That is the thing above all others I shall wish
to see in London! You know I have seen Miss Hosmer, but I have never
seen any of her works, and I do very much desire to do so’.... Her
one-eyed friend sat by painting all the time. She is not enticing to
look at, but I dare say, not bad. I said I always envied friends whom
I caught working together and that I lived alone; to which she replied
‘_Je vous plains alors!_’ in a tone of conviction, showing that, in
her case at all events, friendship was a very pleasant thing. Mdlle.
Bonheur showed me three or four fine pictures she is painting, and
some prints, but of course I was as stupid as usual in studios and
only remarked (as a buffalo might have done,) that Roman _bovi_ were
more majestic and like Homeric Junos than those wiry little Scotch
short-horns her soul delighteth to honour. But O! she has done a Dog,
_such_ a dog! Like Bush in outward dog, but the inner soul of him more
profoundly, unutterably wise than tongue may tell! a Dog to be set up
and worshipped as Anubis. Certainly Mdlle. Bonheur is a finer artist
than Landseer in this, his own line. I wish she would leave the cattle
and ‘go to the dogs.’”

My last journey but one to Italy was taken when I was lame; and, after
my sojourn at Aix-les-Bains, I spent the autumn in Florence and the
winter in Pisa; where I met Cav. d’ Azeglio as above recorded. Miss
Lloyd rejoined me at Genoa in the spring to help me to return to
England, as I was still (after four years!) miserably helpless. We
returned over Mont Cenis which had no tunnel through it in those days;
and, on the very summit, our carriage broke down. We were in a sad
dilemma, for I was quite unable to walk a hundred yards; but a train of
carts happily coming up and lending us ropes enough to hold our trap
together for my use alone, Miss Lloyd ran down the mountain, and at last
we found ourselves safe at the bottom.

After another very pleasant visit together to her friend Mdlle. Rosa
Bonheur, and many promises on her part to come to us in England (which,
alas! she never fulfilled) we made our way to London; and, within a few
weeks, Miss Lloyd—one morning before breakfast,—found, and, in an
incredibly short time, _bought_ the dear little house in South
Kensington which became our home with few interruptions for a quarter of
a century; No. 26, Hereford Square. It was at that time almost at the
end of London. All up the Gloucester Road between it and the Park were
market-gardens; and behind it and alongside of it, where Rosary Gardens
and Wetherby Place now stand, there were large fields of grass with
abundance of fine old lime trees and elms, and one magnificent walnut
tree which ought never to have been cut down. Behind us we had a large
piece of ground, which we rented temporarily and called the “_Boundless
Prairie_,” (!) where we gave afternoon tea to our friends under the
limes, when they were in bloom. On a part of our garden Miss Lloyd
erected a sculptor’s Studio. The House itself, though small, was very
pretty and airy; every room in it lightsome and pleasant, and somehow
capable of containing a good many people. We often had in it as many as
50 or 60 guests. In short, I had once more a home, and a most happy one;
and my lonely wanderings were over.

CHAPTER
XV.
_LONDON IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES._
_LITERARY LIFE._

For some time before I took up my abode in London I had been writing
busily for the press. When my active work at Bristol came to an end and
I became for four years a cripple, I naturally turned to use my pen,
and, finding from my happy experience of _Workhouse Sketches_ in
_Macmillan’s Magazine_ that I could make money without much difficulty,
I soon obtained almost as many openings as I could profit by to add to
my income. I wrote a series of articles for _Fraser’s Magazine_, then
edited by Mr. Froude, who had been my brother’s friend at Oxford, and
who from that time I had the high privilege to count as mine also. These
first papers were sketches of Rome, Cairo, Athens, Jerusalem, etc.; and
they were eventually reprinted in a rather successful little volume
called _Cities of the Past_, now long out of print. I also wrote many
papers connected with women’s affairs and claims, in both _Macmillan_
and _Fraser_; and these likewise were reprinted in a volume; _Pursuits
of Women_. Beside writing these longer articles, I acted as “Own
Correspondent” to the _Daily News_ in Rome one year, and in Florence
another, and sent a great many articles to the _Spectator_, _Economist_,
_Reader_, &c. In short I turned out (as a painter would say) a great
many _Pot-Boilers_. These, with my small patrimony, enabled me to bear
the expense of travelling and of keeping a maid; a luxury which had
become indispensable.

I also at this time edited, as I have mentioned, for Messrs. Trübner,
the 12 vols. of _Parker’s Works_, with a _Preface_. The arrangement of
the great mass of miscellaneous papers was very laborious and
perplexing, but I think I marshalled the volumes fairly well. I did not
perform as fully as I ought to have done my editorial duty of correcting
for the press; indeed I did not understand that it fell to my share, or
I must have declined to undertake the task. Mr. Trübner paid me £50 for
this editing, which I had proposed to do gratuitously.

I had much at heart,—from the time I gave up my practical work among the
poor folk at Bristol,—to write again on religious matters, and to help
so far as might be possible for me to clear a way through the maze of
new controversies which, in those days of _Essays_ and _Reviews_,
Colenso’s _Pentateuch_ and Renan’s _Vie de Jésus_, were remarkably
lively and wide-spread through all classes of society. With this hope,
and while spending a summer in my crippled condition at Aix-les-Bains,
and on the Diablerêts, I wrote to Harriet St. Leger:—

“I am now striving to write a book about present controversies and the
future basis of religious faith. I want to do justice to existing
parties, High, Low and Broad, yet to show (as of course I believe)
that none of them can really solve the problem; and that the faith of
the future must be one not _based_ on a special History, though
corroborated by all history.”

The plan of this book—named _Broken Lights_—is as follows: I
discriminate the different sections of thinkers from the point of view
of the answers they would respectively give to the supreme question,
“What are the ultimate grounds of our faith in God, in Duty and in
Immortality?” First, I distinguish between those who hold those grounds
to rest on the _Traditional Revelation_; and those who hold them to be
the _Original Revelation_ of the Divine Spirit in each faithful soul.
The former are divided again, naturally, into those who take their
authoritative tradition from a _Living Prophet_, a _Church_, or a
_Book_. But in Christian times we have only had a few obscure prophets
(Montanus, Joseph Smith, Swedenborg, Brother Prince, Mr. Harris, &c.),
and the choice practically lies between resting faith on a _Church_, or
resting it on a _Book_.

I classify both the parties in the English Church who rest respectively
on a Church and on a Book, as _Palæologians_, the one, the _High
Church_, whose ground of religious faith is: “_The Bible authenticated
and interpreted by the Church_;” and the other the _Low Church_, whose
theory is still the formula of Chillingworth: “_The Bible, and the Bible
only, is the religion of Protestants_.”

But it has come to pass that all the distinctive doctrines of
Christianity (over and above Theism) which the Traditionalists maintain,
are, in these days, more or less opposed to modern sentiment, criticism
and science; and among those who adhere to them, one or other attitude
as regards this opposition must be taken up. The Palæologian party in
both wings insists on the old doctrines more or less crudely and
strictly, and would fain _bend modern ideas_ to harmonize with them.
Another party, which is generally called the _Neologian_, endeavours to
_modify or explain the old doctrines_, so as to harmonize them with the
ethics and criticism of our generation.

After a somewhat careful study of the positions, merits and failures of
the two Palæologian parties, I proceed to define among the Neologians,
the _First Broad Church_ (of Maurice and Kingsley), whose programme was:
“To harmonize the doctrines of Church and Bible with modern thought.”
This end it attempted to reach by new readings and interpretations,
consonant with the highest modern sentiment; but it remained of course
obvious, that the supposed Divinely-inspired Authorities had failed to
convey the sense of these interpretations to men’s minds for eighteen
centuries; indeed had conveyed the reverse. The old received doctrine of
an eternal Hell, for example, was the absolute contradiction of the
doctrines of Divine universal love and everlasting Mercy, which the new
teachers professed to derive from the same traditional authority. This
school emphatically “put the new wine into old bottles;” and the success
of the experiment could only be temporary, since it rests on the
assumption that God has miraculously taught men in language which they
have, for fifty generations, uniformly misinterpreted.

The other branch of the Neologian party I call the _Second Broad Church_
(the party of Stanley and Jowett). It may be considered as forming the
Extreme Left of the Revelationists; the furthest from mere Authority and
the nearest to Rationalism; just as the High Church party forms the
Extreme Right; the nearest to Authority and furthest from Rationalism. I
endeavour to define the difference between the _First_ and _Second Broad
Church_ parties as follows:—

“The First Broad Church, as we have seen, maintains that the doctrines
of the Bible and the Church can be perfectly harmonized with the
results of modern thought, _by a new, but legitimate exegesis of the
Bible and interpretation of Church formulæ_. The Second Broad Church
seems prepared to admit that, in many cases, they can only be
harmonized _by the sacrifice of Biblical infallibility_. The First
Broad Church has recourse (to harmonize them) to various logical
processes, but principally to that of diverting the student, at all
difficult points, from criticism to edification. The Second Broad
Church uses no ambiguity, but frankly avows that when the Bible
contradicts Science, the Bible must be in error. The First Broad
Church maintains that the Inspiration of the Bible differs in _kind_
as well as in _degree_, from that of other books. The Second Broad
Church appears to hold that it differs in degree, but _not_ in kind.”

After a considerable discussion on the various doctrines of the nature
and limitations of Inspiration, I ask, p. 110, 111:—

“Admit the Inspiration of Prophets and Apostles to have been
substantially the same with that always granted to faithful
souls;—admit, therefore, the existence of a human element in
Revelation, can we still look to that Revelation as the safe
foundation for our Religion?”

“To this question the leaders of the Second Broad Church answer
unhesitatingly: ‘Yes. It has been an egregious error of modern times
to confound the Record of the Revelation with the Revelation itself,
and to assume that God’s lessons lose their value because they have
been transmitted to us through the natural channels of human reason
and conscience. Returning to the true view, we shall only get rid of
uncounted difficulties and objections which prevent the reception of
Christianity by the most honest minds here in England and in heathen
countries.’”

But in conclusion I ask—

“‘What influence can the Second Broad Church exercise on the future
religion of the world? What answer will it supply to the doubts of the
age, and whereon would it rest our faith in God and Immortality?’ The
reply seems to be brief. The Second Broad Church would, like all the
other parties in the Church, call on us to rest our faith on History;
but in their case, it is History corroborated by consciousness, not
opposed thereto. In the next Chapter it will be my effort to show that
under _no_ conditions is it probable that History can afford us our
ultimate grounds of faith. Meanwhile, it must appear that if any form
of Historical faith may escape such a conclusion and approve itself to
mankind in time to come, it is that which is proposed by the Second
Broad Church, and which it worthily presents,—to the intellect by its
learning, and to the religious sentiment by its profound and tender
piety.”—_Broken Lights_, p. 120.

These four parties, two Palæologian and two Neologian, thus examined,
included between them all the members of the Church of England, and all
the Orthodox Dissenters. There remained the Jews, Roman Catholics,
Quakers and Unitarians, and of each of these the book contains a sketch
and criticism; finally concluding with an exposition (so far as I could
give it) of _Theoretic_ and of _Practical Theism_.

The book contains further two _Appendices_. The first treats of Bishop
Colenso’s onslaught on the Pentateuch; then greatly disturbing English
orthodoxy. The second Appendix deals with the other most notable book of
that period; Renan’s _Vie de Jésus_. After maintaining that Renan has
failed in delineating his principal figure, while he has vastly
illuminated his environment, I give with diffidence my own view of
Christ, lest Traditionalists should, without contradiction, assume that
Renan has given the general Theistic idea of his character. After
referring to the measureless importance of the _palingenesia_ of which
Christ spoke to Nicodemus, I draw a comparison between the New Birth in
the individual soul, and the historically-traceable results of Christ’s
life on the human race. (P. 167.)

“Taking the whole ancient world in comparison with the modern, of
Heathendom with Christendom, the general character of the two is
absolutely analogous to that which in individuals we call Unregenerate
and Regenerate. Of course there were thousands of regenerated souls,
Hebrew, Greek, Indian, of all nations and languages, before Christ,
and of course there are millions unregenerate now. But nevertheless,
from this time onward we trace through history a _new spirit_ in the
world: a leaven working through the whole mass of souls.”...

The language of the old world was one of _self-satisfaction_, as its Art
was of _completeness_. On the other hand:

“The language of the new world, coming to us through the thousand
tongues of our multiform civilization, is one long cry of longing
aspiration: ‘Would that I could create the ineffable Beauty! Would
that I could discover the eternal and absolute Truth! Would! O, would
it were possible to live out the good, the noble, and the holy!’”...

“This great phenomenon of history surely points to some corresponding
great event whereby the revolution was accomplished. There must have
been a moment when the old order stopped and the new began. Some
action must have taken place upon the souls of men which thenceforth
started them in a different career, and opened the age of progressive
life. When did this moment arrive? What was the primal act of the
endless progress? By whom was that age opened?”

“Here we have really ground to go upon. There is no need to establish
the authenticity or veracity of special books or harmonize discordant
narratives to obtain an answer to our question. The whole voice of
human history unconsciously and without premeditation bears its
unmistakeable testimony. The turning point between the old world and
the new was the beginning of the Christian movement. The action upon
human nature which started it on its new course was the teaching and
example of Christ. Christ was he who opened the age of endless
progress.”

“The view, therefore, which seems to be the best fitting one for our
estimate of the character of Christ, is that which regards him as the
great Regenerator of Humanity. _His coming was to the life of humanity
what Regeneration is to the life of the individual._ This is not a
conclusion doubtfully deduced from questionable biographies; but a
broad, plain inference from the universal history of our race. We may
dispute all details; but the grand result is beyond criticism. The
world has changed, and that change is historically traceable to
Christ. The honour, then, which Christ demands of us must be in
proportion of our estimate of the value of such Regeneration. He is
not merely a Moral Reformer inculcating pure ethics; not merely a
Religious Reformer clearing away old theologic errors and teaching
higher ideas of God. These things he was; but he might, for all we can
tell, have been them both as fully, and yet have failed to be what he
has actually been to our race. He might have taught the world better
ethics and better theology, and yet have failed to infuse into it that
new Life which has ever since coursed through its arteries and
penetrated its minutest veins.”

_Broken Lights_ proved to be (with the exception of my _Duties of
Women_) the most successful of my books. It went through three English
editions, and I believe quite as many in America; but of these last all
I knew was the occasional present of a single specimen copy. It was very
favourably reviewed, but some of my fellow Theists rather disapproved of
the tribute I had paid to Christ (as quoted above); and my good friend,
Prof. F. W. Newman, actually wrote a severe pamphlet against me,
entitled “_Hero-Making Religion_.” It did not alter my view. I do not
believe that our _Religion_ (the relation of our souls to God) can ever
properly rest upon History. Nay I cannot understand how any one who
knows the intricacies and obscurities attendant on the verification of
any ancient History, should for a moment be content to suppose that God
has required of all men to rest their faith in Him on such grounds, or
on what others report to them of such grounds. In the case of
Christianity, where scholars like Renan and Martineau—profoundly learned
in ancient and obsolete tongues, and equipped with the whole arsenal of
criticism of modern Germany, France and England,—can differ about the
age and authority of the principal _piéce de conviction_ (the Gospel of
St. John), it is truly preposterous to suggest that ordinary men and
women should form any judgment at all on the matter. The _Ideal Christ_
needs only a good heart to find and love him. The _Historical_ Christ
needs the best critic in Europe, a Lightfoot, a Koenen, a Martineau, to
trace his footsteps on the sands of time. And _they_ differ as regards
nearly every one of them!

But though History cannot rightly _be_ Religion or the basis of
Religion, there is, and must be, _a History of Religion_; as there is a
history of geometry and astronomy; and of that History of the whole
world’s Religion the supreme interest centres in the record of

“The sinless years
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue.”

Yet, as regards my own personal feeling, I must avow that the halo which
has gathered round Jesus Christ obscures him to my eyes. I see that he
is much more real to many of my friends, both Orthodox and Unitarian,
than he can ever be to me. There is nothing, no, not one single sentence
or action attributed to him of which (if we open our minds to criticism)
we can feel sufficiently certain to base on it any definite conclusion,
and this to me envelopes him in a cloud. Each Christian age has indeed,
(as I remark in my _Dawning Lights_), seen a Christ of its own; so that
we could imagine students in the future arguing that there must have
been “several Christs,” as old scholars held there were several
Zoroasters and several Buddhas. Just as Michael Angelo’s Christ was the
production of that dark and stormy age when first his awful form loomed
out of the shadows of the Sistine, in no less a degree do the portraits
of _Ecce Homo_ and the _Vie de Jésus_ belong to our era of sentiment and
philanthropy. We have no sun-made photograph of his features; only such
wavering image of them as may have rested on the waters of Galilee,
rippling in the breeze. I must not however further prolong these
reflections on a subject discussed to the best of my poor ability in my
more serious books.

After BROKEN LIGHTS, I wrote the sequel: _Dawning Lights_ just quoted
above. In the first I had endeavoured to sketch the _Conditions and
Prospects_ of religious belief. In the second I speculated on the
_Results_ of the changes which were taking place in various articles of
that belief. The chapters deal consecutively with Changes in the _Method
of Theology_,—in the _Idea of God_; in the _Idea of Christ_; in the
_Doctrine of Sin_, theoretical and practical; in the idea of the
_Relation of this life to the next_; in the idea of the _Perfect Life_;
in the _Idea of Happiness_; in the _Doctrine of Prayer_; in the _Idea of
Death_; and in the _Doctrine of the eternity of Punishment_.

This book also was fairly successful, and went into a second edition.

Somewhere about this time (I have no exact record) I edited a little
book called _Alone to the Alone_, consisting of private prayers for
Theists. It contains contributions from fifteen men and women, of
Prayers, mostly written for personal use, before the idea of the book
had been suggested, under the influence of those occasional deeper
insights and more fervent feelings which all religious persons desire to
perpetuate. They are all anonymous. In the _Preface_ I say that the
result of such a compilation,

“‘Is necessarily altogether imperfect and fragmentary, but in the
great solitude where most of us pass our lives as regards our deeper
emotions, it may be more helpful to know that other human hearts are
feeling as we feel, and thinking as we think, rather than to read far
nobler words which come to us only as echoes of the Past.’ The book is
‘designed for the use of those who desire to cultivate the feelings
which culminate in Prayer, but who find the rich and beautiful
collections of the Churches of Christendom no longer available, either
because of the doctrines whose acceptance they imply or of the nature
of the requests to which they give utterance. Adequately to replace in
a generation, or in several generations, such books, through which the
piety of ages has been poured, is wholly beyond hope; and the ambition
to do so would betray ignorance of the way in which these precious
drops are distilled slowly year after year, from the great
Incense-tree of humanity.’”

The remainder of the _Preface_, which is somewhat lengthy, discusses the
validity of Prayer for the attainment of _spiritual_ (not physical)
benefits. It concludes thus—p. xxxvi.

“And, lastly, if Religion is still to be to mankind in the future what
it has been in the past, it must still be a religion of Prayer.
Nothing is changed in human nature because it has outgrown some of the
errors of the past. The spiritual experience of the saintly souls of
old was true and real experience, even when their intellectual creeds
were full of mistakes. By the gate through which they entered the
paradise of love and peace, even by that same narrow portal of Prayer
must we pass into it. No present or future discoveries in science will
ever transmute the moral dross in human nature into the pure gold of
virtue. No spectrum analysis of the light of the nebulæ will enable us
to find God. If we are to be made holy, we must ask the Holy One to
sanctify us. If we are to know the infinite joy of Divine Love, we
must seek it in Divine communion.”

This book was first published in 1871; one of the years of the rising
tide of liberal-religious hope. A third edition was called for in 1881,
when the ebb had set in. In a short _Preface_ to this third edition I
notice this fact, and say that those hopes were doubtless all too hasty
for the slow order of Divine things.

“Nay, it would seem that, far from the immediate aurora of such a
morning, the world is destined first to endure a great ‘horror of
darkness,’ and to pass through the dreary and disaster-laden
experience of a night of materialism and agnosticism. Perhaps it will
only be when men have seen with their eyes how the universe appears
without a thought of God to illumine its dark places, and gauged for
themselves where human life will sink without hope of immortality to
elevate it, that they will recognise aright the unutterable
preciousness of religion. Faith, when restored after such an eclipse,
will be prized as it has never been prized heretofore....

“And Faith _must_ return to mankind sooner or later. So sure as God
_is_, so sure must it be that he will not finally leave his creatures,
whom he has led upward for thousands of years, to lose sight of him
altogether, or to be drowned for ever in the slough of atheism and
carnalism. He will doubtless reveal himself afresh to the souls of men
in his own time and in his own way,—whether, as of old, through
prophet-souls filled with inspiration, or by other methods yet
unknown. God is over us, and Heaven is waiting for us all the same,
even though all the men of science in Europe unite to tell us there is
only Matter in the universe, and only corruption in the grave. Atheism
may prevail for a night, but faith cometh in the morning. Theism is
‘bound to win’ at last; not necessarily that special type of Theism
which our poor thoughts in this generation have striven to define; but
that great fundamental faith,—the needful substructure of every other
possible religious faith—the faith in a Righteous and loving God, and
in a life for man beyond the tomb.”

The book contains 72 Prayers; half of which refer to the outer and half
to the inner life. Among the former, are Noon and Sunset prayers;
thanksgivings for the love of friends, and for the beauty of the world;
also a Prayer respecting the sufferings of animals from human cruelty.
In the second part some of the Prayers are named, “In the Wilderness”;
“On the Right Way”; “God afar off”; “Doubt and Faith”; “_Fiat Lux_”;
“_Fiat Pax_”; “Thanksgiving for Religious Truth”; “For Pardon of a
Careless Life”; “For a Devoted Life”; “Joy in God”; “Here and
Hereafter.”

I never expected that more than a very few friends would have cared for
this book, and in fact printed it with the intention of almost private
circulation; but it has been continuously, though slowly, called for
during the 23 years which have elapsed since it was compiled.

I wrote the essays included in the volume “HOPES OF THE HUMAN RACE,” in
1873–1874. This has run through several editions. The long
_Introduction_ to this book was written immediately after the
publication of Mr. Mill’s _Essay on Religion_; a most important work of
which Miss Taylor had kindly put the proof sheets in my hands, and to
which I was eagerly anxious to offer such rejoinder from the side of
faith as might be in my power. Whether I succeeded in making an adequate
reply in the fifty pages I devoted to the subject, I cannot presume to
say. The Pessimist side, taken by Mr. Mill has been gaining ground ever
since, but there are symptoms that a reaction is taking place, beginning
(of all countries!) in France. I conclude this Preface thus—p. 53.

“But I quit the ungracious, and, in my case, most ungrateful, task of
offering my feeble protest against the last words given to us by a man
so good and great, that even his mistakes and deficiencies (as I needs
must deem them) are more instructive to us than a million platitudes
and truisms of teachers whom his transcendent intellectual honesty
should put to the blush, and whose souls never kindled with a spark of
the generous ardour for the welfare of his race which flamed in his
noble heart and animated his entire career.”

The book contains two long Essays on the _Life after Death_ contributed
originally to the _Theological Review_. In the first of these, after
stating at length the reasons for supposing that human existence ends at
death, I ask: “What have we to place against them in the scale of Hope?”
and I begin by observing that all the usual arguments for immortality
involve at the crucial point the assumption that we possess some
guarantee that mankind will _not_ be deceived, that Justice will
eventually triumph and that human affairs are the concern of a Power
whose purposes cannot fail. Were the faith which supplies such warrant
to fail, the whole structure raised upon it must fall to the ground.
Belief in Immortality is pre-eminently a matter of Faith; a corollary
from faith in God. To imagine that we can reach it by any other road is
vain. Heaven will always be (as Dr. Martineau has said) “a part of our
Religion, not a Branch of our Geography.” But in addressing men and
women who believe in God’s Justice and Love, I hope to show that, not by
one only but by many _convergent_ lines, Faith uniformly points to a
Life after Death; and that if we follow her guidance in any one
direction implicitly, we are invariably conducted to the same
conclusion. Nay more; we cannot stop short of this conclusion and retain
entire faith in any thing beyond the experience of the senses. Every
idea of Justice, of Love and of Duty is truncated if we deny to it the
extension of eternity; and as for our conception of God himself, I see
not how any one who has realised the dread darkness of “the riddle of
the painful earth,” can call him “Good” unless he can look forward to
the solution of that problem hereafter. The following are channels
through which Faith inevitably flows towards Immortality:

1st. The human race longs for Justice. Even “if the Heavens fall,” we
feel Justice ought to be done. All literature, from Æschylus and Job to
our own time, has for its highest theme the triumph of Justice, or the
tragedy of the disappointment of human hope thereof. But where did we
obtain this idea? The world has never seen a Reign of Astræa. Injustice
and Cruelty prevail largely, even now in the world; and as we go back up
the stream of time to ruder ages where Might was more completely
dominant over Right, the case was worse and worse. Where then, did Man
derive his idea that the Power ruling the world,—Zeus, or Jehovah, or
Ormusd,—was Just? Not only could no ancestral experience have caused the
“set of our brains” towards the expectation of Justice, but experience,
under many conditions of society, pointed quite the other way. It is
assuredly (if anything can be so reckoned) the Divine spirit in man
which causes him to love Justice, and to believe that his Maker is just,
for it is inconceivable how he could have arrived at such faith
otherwise. But if death be the end of human existence this expectation
of justice has been only a miserable delusion. God has created us, poor
children of the dust, to love and hope for Justice, but He Himself has
disregarded it, on the scale of a disappointed world. After referring to
the thousands of cases where the bad have died successful and
peacefully, and the good,—like Christ,—have perished in misery and
agony, I say “boldly and so much the more reverently: _Either Man is
Immortal or God is not Just_.”

2nd. The second line of thought leading us to belief in Immortality
is,—that if there be no future life, there are millions of human beings
whose existence has answered no purpose which we can rationally
attribute to a wise and merciful God. He is a _baffled_ God, if His
creature be extinguished before reaching _some_ end which He may
possibly have designed.

3rd. The incompleteness of the noblest part of man offers so strange a
contrast to the perfection of the other work of creation that we are
drawn to conclude that the human soul is only a _bud_ to blossom out
into full flower hereafter. No man has ever in his life reached the
plentitude of moral strength and beauty of which his nature gives
promise. A garden wherein all the buds should perish before blooming,
would be more hideous than a desert, and such a garden is God’s world if
man dies for ever when we see him no more.

4th. Human love urges an appeal to Faith which has been to millions of
hearts the most conclusive of all.

“To think of the one whose innermost self is to us the world’s chief
treasure, the most beautiful and blessed thing God ever made, and
believe that at any moment that mind and heart may cease to be, and
become only a memory, every noble gift and grace extinct, and all the
fond love for ourselves forgotten for ever,—this is such agony, that
having once known it we should never dare again to open our hearts to
affection, unless some ray of hope should dawn for us beyond the
grave. Love would be the curse of mortality were it to bring always
with it such unutterable pain of anxiety, and the knowledge that every
hour which knitted our heart more closely to our friend also brought
us nearer to an eternal separation. Better never to have ascended to
that high Vita Nuova where self-love is lost in another’s weal, better
to have lived like the cattle which browse and sleep while they wait
the butcher’s knife, than to endure such despair.

“But is there nothing in us which refuses to believe all this
nightmare of the final sundering of loving hearts? Love itself seems
to announce itself as an eternal thing. It has such an element of
infinity in its tenderness, that it never fails to seek for itself an
expression beyond the limits of time, and we talk, even when we know
not what we mean of “undying affection,” “immortal love.” It is the
only passion which in the nature of things we can carry with us into
another world, and it is fit to be prolonged, intensified, glorified
for ever. It is not so much a joy we may take with us, as the only joy
which can make any world a heaven when the affections of earth shall
be perfected in the supreme love of God. It is the sentiment which we
share with God, and by which we live in Him and He in us. All its
beautiful tenderness, its noble self-forgetfulness, its pure and
ineffable delight, are the rays of God’s Sun of Love reflected in our
souls.

“Is all this to end in two poor heaps of silent dust decaying slowly
in their coffins side by side in the vault? If so, let us have done
with prating of any Faith in Heaven or Earth. We are mocked by a
fiend.”—(_Hopes_, p. 52.)

5th. A remarkable argument is to be found in Prof. F. W. Newman’s
_Theism_ (p. 75). It insists on the fact that many men have certainly
loved God and that God must love them in return (else Man were better
than God); and we must reasonably infer that those whom God loves are
deathless, else would the Divine Blessedness be imperfect, nay, “a
yawning gulf of ever-increasing sorrow.”

6th. The extreme variability of the common human belief that the “soul
of man never dies” makes it difficult to discern its proper evidential
value, still it seems to have the _Note_ of a genuine instinct. It
begins early, though (probably) not at the earliest stage of human
development. It attains its maximum among the highest races of mankind
(the Vedic-Aryan, early Persian and Egyptian). It projects such varied
and even contrasted ideals of the other life (_e.g._, Valhalla and
Nirvana) that it cannot well have been borrowed by one race from another
but must have sprung up in each indigenously. Finally the instinct
begins to falter in ages of self-consciousness and criticism.

7th, lastly. The most perfect and direct faith in Immortality belongs to
saintly souls who personally feel that they have entered into relations
with the Divine Spirit which can never end. “_Faith in God and in our
eternal Union with Him_,” said one such devout man to me, “_are not two
dogmas but one_.” “Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades. Thou wilt guide
me by thy counsel and afterwards receive me to Glory.”

“Such, for a few blessed souls, seems to be the perfect evidence of
things not seen. But can their full faith supply our lack? Can we see
with their eyes and believe on their report? It is only possible in a
very inferior measure. Yet if our own spiritual life have received
even some faint gleams of the ‘light which never came from sun or
star,’ then, once more, will our faith point the way to Immortality;
for we shall know in what manner such truths come to the soul, and be
able to trust that what is dawn to us may be sunrise to those who have
journeyed nearer to the East than we; who have surmounted Duty more
perfectly, or passed through rivers of affliction into which our feet
have never dipped. God cannot have deluded them in their sacred hope
of His eternal Love. If their experience be a dream all prayer and
communion may be dreams likewise.”

In conclusion, while commending to the reader’s consideration what
appears to me the true method of solving the problem of a Life after
Death, I point to the fact that on the answer to that question must hang
the alternative, not only of the hope or despair of the Human Race, but
of the glory or the failure of the whole Kosmos, so far as our uttermost
vision can extend.

“Lions and eagles, oaks and roses, may be good after their kind; but
if the summit and crown of the whole work, the being in whose
consciousness it is all mirrored, be worse than incomplete and
imperfect, an undeveloped embryo, an acorn mouldered in its shell, a
bud blighted by the frost, then must the entire world he deemed a
failure also. Now, Man can only be reckoned on any ground as a
_provisionally_ successful work; successful, that is, provided we
regard him as _in transitu_, on his way to another and far more
perfect stage of development. We are content that the egg, the larva,
the bud, the half-painted canvas, the rough scaffolding, should only
faintly indicate what will be the future bird and butterfly and flower
and picture and temple. And thus to look on man (as by some deep
insight he has almost universally regarded himself) as a ‘sojourner
upon earth,’ upon his way to ‘another country, even a heavenly,’
destined to complete his pilgrimage and make up for all his
shortcomings elsewhere, is to leave a margin for believing him to be
even now a Divine work in its embryonic stage. But if we close out
this view of the future, and assure ourselves that nothing more is
ever to be expected of him than what we knew him to be during the last
days of his mortal life; if we are to believe we have seen the best
development which his intellect and heart, his powers of knowing,
feeling, enjoying, loving, blessing and being blessed, will ever
obtain while the heavens endure,—then, indeed, is the conclusion
inevitable and final. Man is a Failure, the consummate failure of
creation. Everything else,—star, ocean, mountain, forest, bird, beast
and insect—has a sort of completeness and perfection. It is fitting in
its own place, and it gives no hint that it ought to be other than it
is. ‘Every Lion,’ as Parker has said, ‘is a type of all lionhood; but
there is no Man who is a type of all Manhood.’ Even the best and
greatest of men have only been imperfect types of a single phase of
manhood—of the saint, the hero, the sage, the philanthropist, the
poet, the friend,—never of the full-orbed man who should be all these
together. If each perish at death, then,—as the seeds of all these
varied forms of good are in each,—every one is cut off prematurely,
blighted, spoiled. Nor is this criterion of success or failure solely
applicable to our small planet; a mere spark thrown off the wheel
whereon a million suns are turned into space. It is easy to believe
that much loftier beings, possessed of far greater mental and moral
powers than our own, inhabit other realms of immensity. But Thought
and Love are, after all, the grandest things which any world can show;
and if a whole race endowed with them should prove such a failure as
death-extinguished Mankind would undoubtedly be, there remains no
reason why all the spheres of the universe should not be similar
scenes of disappointment and frustration, and creation itself one huge
blunder and mishap. In vain may the President of the British Congress
of Science dazzle us with the splendid panorama of the material
universe unrolling itself ‘from out of the primal nebula’s fiery
cloud.’ Suns and planets swarming through the abysses of space are but
whirling sepulchres after all, if, while no grain of dust is shaken
from off their rolling sides, the conscious souls of whom they have
been the palaces are all for ever lost. Spreading continents and
flowing seas, soaring Alps and fertile plains are worse than failures,
if we, even we, poor feeble, sinful, dim-eyed creatures that we are,
shall ever ‘vanish like the streak of morning cloud in the infinite
azure of the past.’”

The second part of this essay discusses the possible _conditions_ of the
Life after Death. I cannot summarize it here.

The rest of the volume consists of a sermon which I read at Clerkenwell
Unitarian Chapel, in 1873, entitled “_Doomed to be Saved_.” I describe
the disastrous moral consequences to a man in old times who believed
himself to have sold his soul to the Evil One, and to have cast himself
off from God’s Goodness for ever; and I contrast this with what we ought
to feel when we recognize that we are _Doomed to be Saved_—destined
irretrievably to be brought back, in this life or in far future lives,
from all our wanderings in remorse and penitence to the feet of God.

The book concludes with an Essay on the _Evolution of the Social
Sentiment_, in which I maintain that the primary human feeling in the
savage which still lingers in the Aryan child, is _not_ Sympathy with
suffering, but quite an opposite, angry and even cruel sentiment, which
I have named _Heteropathy_; which inspires brutes and birds to kill
their wounded or diseased companions. Half-way after this, comes
_Aversion_; and last of all, _Sympathy_,—slowly extending from the
mother’s “pity for the son of her womb,” to the Family, the Tribe, the
Nation, and the Human Race; and, at last to the Brutes. I conclude thus:

“Such is, I believe, the great Hope of the human race. It does not lie
in the progress of the intellect, or in the conquest of fresh powers
over the realms of nature; not in the improvement of laws, or the more
harmonious adjustment of the relations of classes and states; not in
the glories of Art, or the triumphs of Science. All these things may,
and doubtless will, adorn the better and happier ages of the future.
But that which will truly constitute the blessedness of Man will be
the gradual dying out of his tiger passions, his cruelty and his
selfishness, and the growth within him of the god-like faculty of love
and self-sacrifice; the development of that holiest Sympathy wherein
all souls shall blend at last, like the tints of the rainbow which the
Seer beheld around the great White Throne on high.”

Beside these theological works I published more recently two slight
volumes on cognate subjects: _A Faithless World_, and _Health and
Holiness_. I wrote “_A Faithless World_” (first published in the
_Contemporary Review_) in reply to Sir Fitzjames Stephen’s remark in the
_Nineteenth Century_, No. 88, that “We get on very well without
religion” ... “Love, Friendship, Ambition, Science, literature, art,
politics, commerce, and a thousand other matters will go equally well as
far as I can see, whether there is or is not a God and a future state.”
I examine this view in detail and conclude that instead of life
remaining (in the event of the fall of religion) to most people much
what it is at present, there would, on the contrary, be actually
_nothing_ which would be left unchanged by such a catastrophe.

I sent a copy of this article when first published, (as I was bound in
courtesy to do), to Sir James, whom I had often met, and whose brother
and sister were my kind friends. He replied in such a manly and generous
spirit that I am tempted to give his letter.

“December 2nd,
“32, De Vere Gardens, W.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I am much obliged by your note and by the article in the
_Contemporary_, which is perfectly fair in itself and full of kind
things about myself personally.

“The subject is too large to write about, and I am only too glad to
take both the letter and the article in the spirit in which they were
written and ask no further discussion.

“It seems to me very possible that there may be a good deal of truth
in what you suggest as to the nature of the difference between the
points of view from which we look at these things, but it is not
unnatural that _I_ should think you rather exaggerate the amount of
suffering and sorrow which is to be found in the world. I may do the
opposite.

“However that may be, thank you heartily for both your letter and your
article.

“I am sure you will have been grieved to hear of poor Henry Dicey’s
death. His life had been practically despaired of for a considerable
time.

“I am, ever sincerely yours,
J. F. STEPHEN.”

Several of these books of mine, dealing with religious subjects, were
translated into French and published by my French and Swiss
fellow-religionists, and also in Danish by friends at Copenhagen. _Le
Monde Sans Religion_; _Coup d’œil sur le Monde à Venir_; _L’Humanité
destinée au Salut_; _La Maison sur le Rivage_; _Seul avec Dieu_ (Geneva
Cherbuliez, 1881), _En Verden uden Tro_, &c., &c.

But all the time during the intervals of writing these theological
books, I employed myself in studying and writing on various other
subjects of temporary or durable interest. I contributed a large number
of articles to the following periodicals:—

_The Quarterly Review_ (then edited by Sir William Smith).

_The Contemporary Review_ (edited by Mr. Bunting).

_Fraser’s Magazine_ (edited by Mr. Froude).

_Cornhill Magazine_ (edited by Mr. Leslie Stephen).

_The Fortnightly Review_ (edited by Mr. Morley).

_Macmillan’s Magazine_ (edited by Mr. Masson).

_The Theological Review_ (Unitarian Organ, edited by Rev. C. Beard).

_The Modern Review_ (Unitarian, edited by Rev. R. Armstrong).

_The New Quarterly Magazine_ (edited by W. Oswald Crawford).

One collection of these articles was published by Trübner in 1865,
entitled _Studies New and Old on Ethical and Social Subjects_; (1 vol.,
crown 8vo., pp. 466). This volume begins with an elaborate study of
“_Christian Ethics and the Ethics of Christ_” (_Theological Review_,
September, 1869), which I have often wished to reprint in a separate
form. Also a very long and careful study of the _Sacred Books of the
Zoroastrians_, which brought me the visits and friendships of a very
interesting Parsee gentleman, Nowrosjee Furdoonjee, President of the
Bombay Parsee Society, and of another Parsee gentleman resident in
London. Both expressed their entire approval of my representation of
their religion.

These _Studies_ also contain a long paper on the _Philosophy of the Poor
Laws_, which, as I have narrated in a previous chapter, fell into
fertile soil on the mind of an Australian gentleman and caused the
introduction of some of the reforms I advocated into the Poor Law system
of New South Wales.

There were also in this volume articles on “_Hades_”; on the “_Morals of
Literature_”; and on the “_Hierarchy of Art_,” which perhaps have some
value; but I have not of late years cared to press the book, and have
not included it in Mr. Fisher Unwin’s Re-issue of 1893 on account of the
paper it contains on “_The Rights of Man and the Claims of Brutes_.”
This article, which appeared first in _Fraser’s Magazine_, Nov., 1863,
was my earliest effort (so far as I know, the first effort of anybody)
to work out the very obscure and difficult ethical problem to which it
refers, in answer to the demands of Vivisectors. I am not satisfied with
the position I took up in this paper. In the thirty years which have
elapsed since I wrote it, my thoughts have been greatly exercised on the
subject, and I think I see the “Claims of Brutes” more clearly, and find
them higher than I did. But, though I believe that I expressed the most
advanced opinion _of that time_ on the duty of Man to the lower animals,
and of the offence of cruelty towards them, I here enter my _caveat_
against the quotation of this article (as was lately done by a zealous
Zoophilist) as if it still represented exactly what I think on the
subject after pondering upon it for thirty years, and taking part in the
Anti-vivisection crusade for two entire decades.

I have mentioned this matter especially, because it is of some
importance to me, and also because I do not find that there is any other
opinion which I have ever published in any book or article, on morals or
religion, which I now desire to withdraw, or even of which I care to
modify the expression. It is a great happiness to me at the end of a
long and busy literary life, to feel that I have never written anything
of which I repent, or which I wish to unsay.

A collection of minor articles, with several fresh papers of a lighter
sort,—an _Allegory_, _The Spectral Rout_, &c.—was also published by
Trübner in 1867, under the name of _Hours of Work and Play_.

In 1872 Messrs. Williams & Norgate published a rather large collection
of my Essays, under the name of _Darwinism in Morals and other Essays_.
The first is a review of the theory of ethics expounded in Darwin’s
_Descent of Man_. I argue that the moral history of mankind (so far as
it is known to us) gives no support whatever to Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis
that Conscience is the result of certain contingencies in our
development, and that it might, at an earlier stage, have been moulded
into quite another form, causing Good to appear to us Evil, and Evil
Good.

“I think we have a right to say that the suggestions offered by the
highest scientific intellects of our time to account for its existence
on principles which shall leave it on the level of other instincts,
have failed to approve themselves as true to the facts of the case.
And I think, therefore, that we are called on to believe still in the
validity of our own moral consciousness, even as we believe in the
validity of our other faculties; and to rest in the faith (well-nigh
universal) of the human race, in a fixed and supreme Law, of which the
will of God is the embodiment and Conscience the Divine
transcript.”—_Darwinism in Morals_, p. 32.

In this same volume (included in the re-issue) are essays on _Hereditary
Piety_ (a review of Mr. Galton’s _Hereditary Genius_); one on _The
Religion of Childhood_, on Robertson’s _Life_; on “A French Theist” (M.
Pécaut); and a series of studies on Eastern Religions; including reviews
of Mr. Ferguson’s _Tree and Serpent Worship_ (with which Mr. F. was so
pleased that he made me a present, of his magnificent book); Bunsen’s
_God in History_, Max Muller’s _Chips from a German Workshop_, and Mrs.
Manning’s _Ancient and Mediæval India_. Each of these is a careful essay
on one or other of the oriental faiths referring to many other books on
each subject. Beside these there are in the same volume two articles on
_Unconscious Cerebration_ and _Dreams_, which excited some interest in
their day; and seem to me (if I be not misled by vanity) to have
forestalled a good deal which has been written of late years about the
“subliminal” or “subjective” consciousness.

In 1875, Messrs. Ward, Lock & Tyler, for whose _New Quarterly Magazine_
I had written two long articles on _Animals in Fable and Art_ and the
_Fauna of Fancy_, asked my consent to re-publishing them in their
_Country House Library_. To this I gladly agreed, adding my article in
the _Quarterly Review_ on the _Consciousness of Dogs_; and that in _the
Cornhill_: “_Dogs whom I have met_.” The volume was prettily got up, and
published under the name of “_False Beasts and True_.”

From the close of 1874, when I undertook the Anti-vivisection crusade,
my literary activity dwindled down rapidly to small proportions. In the
course of eight years I wrote enough magazine articles to fill one
volume, published in 1882, and containing essays on _Magnanimous
Atheism_; _Pessimism and One of its Professors_, and a few other papers,
of which the most important,—the _Peak in Darien_,—gives its name to the
book. It is an argument, (with many facts cited in its support,) for
believing that the dying, as they are passing the threshold, not seldom
become aware of the presence of beloved ones waiting for them in the new
state of existence which they are actually entering.

After this book I wrote little for some years, but in 1888 I was asked
to contribute an article to the _Universal Review_ on the _Scientific
Spirit of the Age_. I gladly acceded, but the Editor desired to cut down
my MS., so I published it as a book with a few other older papers;
notably one on the _Town Mouse and the Country Mouse_; a half-humorous
study of the _pros_ and _cons_ of Life in London, and Life in a Country
house.

After this, again, I published two editions of a little compilation, the
“_Friend of Man and His Friends the Poets_;” a collection (with running
commentary) of Poems of all ages and countries relating to Dogs, which
were likely, I thought, to aid my poor, four-footed friends’ claims to
sympathy and respect.

Of my remaining books, the _Duties of Women_, and _The Modern Rack_ I
shall speak in the chapters which respectively concern my work for
Women, and the Anti-vivisection movement.

CHAPTER
XVI.
_MY LIFE IN LONDON IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES_
_JOURNALISM._

Journalism is, to my thinking, a delightful profession, full of
interest, and promise of ever-extending usefulness. During the years in
which I was a professional Journalist, when I had occasion to go into a
Bank or a lawyer’s office, I always pitied the clerks for their dull,
monotonous, ugly work, as compared with mine. If not carried on too long
or continuously,—so that the brain begins to _churn_ leaders sleeping or
waking (a dreadful state of things into which we _may_ fall),—it is
pre-eminently healthy, being so full of variety and calling for so many
different mental faculties one after another. Promptitude, clear and
quick judgment as to what is, and is not, expedient and decorous to say;
a ready memory well stored with illustrations and unworn quotations, a
bright and strong style; and, if it can be attained, a playful (not
saturnine) humour superadded,—all these qualities and attainments are
called for in writing for a daily newspaper; and the practice of them
cannot fail to sharpen their edge. To be in touch with the most striking
events of the whole world, and enjoy the privilege of giving your
opinion on them to 50,000 or 100,000 readers within a few hours, this
struck me, when I first recognised that such was my business as a
leader-writer, as something for which many prophets and preachers of old
would have given a house full of silver and gold. And I was to be _paid_
for accepting it! It is one thing to be a “Vox clamantis in Deserto,”
and quite another to speak in Fleet Street, and, without lifting up
one’s voice, to reach all at once, as many men as formed the population
of ancient Athens, not to say that of Jerusalem! But I must not “magnify
mine office” too fondly!

From the time of my second journey to Italy I obtained employment, as I
have mentioned, as Correspondent to the _Daily News_, with whose Italian
politics I was in sympathy. I also wrote all sorts of miscellaneous
papers and descriptions for the _Spectator_, the _Reader_, the
_Inquirer_, the _Academy_, and the _Examiner_. When in London I was
engaged on the staff of the short-lived _Day_ (1867); and much lamented
its untimely eclipse, when my friend Mr. Haweis, unkindly “chaffed” me
by mourning over it:—

“_Sweet_ Day!
How _cool_! how bright!”

I was paid, however, handsomely for all I had written for it, and a few
months later I received an invitation from Mr. Arthur Arnold (since M.P.
for Salford) to join his staff on the newly-founded _Echo_. It was a
great experiment on the part of the proprietors, Messrs. Petter &
Galpin, to start a half-penny paper. Such a thing did not then exist in
England, and the ridicule it encountered, and boycotting from the
news-agents who could not make enough profit on it to satisfy
themselves, were very serious obstacles to success. Nevertheless Mr.
Arnold’s great tact and ability cleared the way, and before many months
our circulation, I believe, was very large indeed. My share in the
undertaking was soon arranged after a few interviews and experiments. It
was agreed that I should go on three mornings every week at ten o’clock,
to the office in Catherine Street, Strand, and there in a private room
for my own use only, write a leading article on some social subject
after arranging with the editor what it should be. I am proud to say
that for seven years from that time till I retired, I never once failed
to keep my engagement. Of course I took a few weeks’ holiday every year;
but Mr. Arnold never expected his contributor in vain. Sometimes it was
hard work for me; I had a cold, or was otherwise ill, or the snow lay
thick and cabs from South Kensington were not to be had. Nevertheless I
made my way to my destination punctually; and, when there, I wrote my
leader, and as many “Notes” as were allotted to me, and thus proved, I
hope, once for all, that a woman may be relied on as a journalist no
less than a man. I do not think indeed, that very many masculine
journalists could make the same boast of regularity as I have done. My
first article appeared in the third number of the _Echo_, December 10th,
1868, and the last on, or about, March, 1875. Of course at first I found
it a little difficult to write exactly what, and how much was wanted,
neither more nor less; but practice made this easier. I wrote, of
course, on all manner of subjects, politics excepted; but chose in
preference those which offered some ethical interest,—or (on the other
hand) an opening for a little fun! The reader may see specimens of both,
_e.g._, the papers on the great _Divorce Case_; _Lent in Belgravia_; and
on _Fat People_; _Sweeping under the Mats_, &c., in _Re-echoes_, a
little book compiled from a selection of my _Echo_ articles which
Tauchnitz reproduced in his library. A few incidents in my experience in
Catherine Street recur to me, and may be worth recording.

Terrible stories of misery and death were continuously cropping up in
the reports of Coroners’ Inquests, and I found that if I took these
reports as they were published and wrote leading articles on them, we
were almost sure next day to receive several letters begging the Editor
to forward money (enclosed) to the surviving relations. It became a duty
for me to satisfy myself of the veracity of these stories before setting
them forth with claims for public sympathy; and in this way I came to
see some of the sadder sides of poverty in London. There was one case I
distinctly recall, of a poor lady, daughter of a country rector, who was
found (after having been missed for several days, but not sought for)
lying dead, scarcely clothed, on the bare floor of a room in a miserable
lodging-house in Drury Lane. I went to the house and found it a filthy
coffee-house, frequented by unwashed customers. The mistress, though
likewise unwashed, was obviously what is termed “respectable.” She told
me that her unhappy lodger was a woman of 40 or 50, perfectly sober and
well conducted in every way. She had been a governess in very good
families, but had remained unemployed till her clothes grew shabby. She
walked all day long over London for many weeks, seeking any kind of work
or means of support, and selling by degrees everything she possessed for
food. At last she returned to her wretched room in that house into which
it was a pain for any lady to enter,—and having begged a last cup of tea
from her landlady, telling her she could not pay for it, she locked her
door, and was heard of no more. Many days afterwards the busy landlady
noticed that she had not seen her going in or out, and finding her door
locked, called the police to open it. There was hardly an atom of flesh
on the poor worn frame, scarcely clothes for decency, no food, no coals
in the grate. “_Death from Starvation_” was the only possible verdict.
When the case had been made public, relatives, obviously belonging to a
very good class of society, came hastily and took away the corpse for
burial in some family vault. The sight, the sounds, the fetid smells of
that sordid lodging-house as endured by that lonely, dying, starving
lady, will haunt me while I live.

Another incident (in January, 1869) had a happier conclusion. There was
a case in the law Reports one day of a woman named Susannah Palmer, who
was sent to Newgate for stabbing her husband. The story was a piteous
one as I verified it. Her husband was a savage who had continually
beaten her; had turned her out of the house at night; brought in a bad
woman in her place; and then had deserted her for months, leaving her to
support herself and their children. After a time he would suddenly
return, take the money she had earned out of her pocket (as he had then
a legal right to do), sell up any furniture she possessed; kick and beat
her again; and then again desert her. One day she was cutting bread for
the children when he struck her, and the knife in her hand cut him;
whereupon he gave her in charge for “feloniously wounding”; and she was
sent to jail. The Common Sergeant humanely observed as he passed
sentence that “Newgate would be ten times better for her than the hell
in which she was compelled to live.” It was the old epitaph exemplified:

“Here lies the wife of Matthew Ford,
Whose soul we hope is with the Lord;
But if for Hell she’s changed this life
‘’Tis better than being Mat. Ford’s wife!’”

Having obtained through John Locke (the well-known Member for Southwark,
who had married my cousin) a special permit from the Lord Mayor, I saw
the poor, pale creature in Newgate and heard her long tale of wrong and
misery. The good Ordinary of the jail felt deeply with me for her; and
when I had seen the people who employed her as charwoman (barbers and
shoemakers in Cowcross Street) and received the best character of her, I
felt justified in appealing, in the _Echo_, for help for her, and also
in circulating a little pamphlet on her behalf. Eventually, when Mrs.
Palmer left Newgate a few weeks later, it was to take possession, as
_caretaker for the chaplain_, of nice, tidy rooms where she and her
children could live in peace, and where her brutal husband could not
follow her, since the place belonged legally to the chaplain.

When there was a dearth of interesting news on the mornings of my
leader-writing, it was my custom to send for a certain newspaper, the
organ of the extreme Ritualistic party, and out of this I seldom failed
to extract _Pabulum_ for a cheerful article! One day, just after the
29th of September, I found such a record of folly,—vestments,
processions, thuribles, and what not, that I proceeded with glee to
write a leader on _Michaelmas Geese_. Next day, to my intense amusement,
there was a letter at the office addressed to the author of the article,
in which one of the “Geese,” whom I had particularly attacked and who
naturally supposed me to be a man, invited me to come and dine with him,
and “talk of these matters over a good glass of sherry and a cigar!” The
worldly wisdom which induced the excellent clergyman to try and thus
“silence my guns” by inducing me to share his salt; and his idea of the
irresistible attractions of sherry and cigars to a “poor devil” (as he
obviously supposed) of a contributor to a half-penny paper, made a
delightful joke. I had the greatest mind in the world to accept the
invitation without betraying my sex till I should arrive at his door in
the fullest of my feminine finery, and claim his dinner; but I was
prudent, and he never knew who was the midge who had assailed him.

The incident reminds me of another journalistic experience not connected
with the _Echo_, which throws some light on certain charges recently
discussed about “commissions” given to newspaper writers who puff the
goods of tradesmen under the guise of instructing the public in the
latest fashions in dress, furniture and _bric-à-brac_. It was the only
case in which any bribe of the kind ever came to my door. Some _grandes
dames_ anxious for the health of work-girls, had opened a millinery
establishment in Clifford Street on purely philanthropic lines, and
begged me to write an appeal in the _Times_ for support for it. After
visiting the beautiful, airy workrooms and dormitories, I did this with
a clear conscience (of course gratuitously) to oblige my friends on the
Committee. Next day a smart brougham drove to my door in Hereford
Square, and an exquisitely dressed lady got out of it, and sent in her
card, “Madame D——.” I was so grossly ignorant of fashionable millinery,
that I did not know that my visitor was then at the very apex of that
lofty commerce. She remonstrated on my injustice in praising the
Clifford Street establishment, when _her_ girls were exactly as well
lodged and fed. “Would I not come and see for myself, and then write and
say so equally publicly?” I agreed that this would be only fair, and
fixed an hour for my inspection; on which she gracefully thanked me and
departed, murmuring as she disappeared that she would be happy to
present me with “_Une jolie toilette!_” Poor woman! She had come to the
only gentlewoman perhaps in London to whom a “toilette” by Madame D——
offered no attractions at all, and to whom (even if I would have
accepted one) it would have been useless, seeing that I never wore
anything but the simply-made skirts and jackets of my maid’s
manufacture. Of course I visited and justly praised her establishment,
as I had promised; and I suppose she long expected me to come and claim
her “_jolie toilette!_”

There was another story of which the memory is in my mind closely
associated with a dear young friend,—Miss Letitia Probyn, who helped me
ardently in my efforts, very shortly before her untimely death, while
bathing, at Hendaye near Arcachon. The case of a woman named Isabel
Grant moved us deeply. The poor creature, in a drunken struggle with her
husband at supper, had cut him with the bread knife in such manner that
he died next day. Her remorse was most genuine and extreme. She was
sentenced to be hanged; and just at the same time an Irishman who had
murdered his wife under circumstances of exceptional brutality and who
had from first to last gloried in his crime, was set free after a week’s
imprisonment! We got up a Memorial for Isabel Grant, Miss Probyn’s
family interest enabling her to obtain many influential signatures; and
we contrived that both the cases of exceptional severity to the
repentant woman and that of lenity to the unrepentant man, should be set
forth in juxtaposition in a score of newspapers. In the end Isabel Grant
obtained a commutation of her sentence.

In 1875 the proprietors of the _Echo_ sold the paper to Baron Grant; and
Mr. Arnold and I at once resigned our positions as Editor and
Contributor. He had created the paper,—I may say even more,—had created
first-class, half-penny journalism altogether; and it was deeply
regretted that his able and judicious guidance was lost to the _Echo_.
After an interval, the paper was redeemed from the first purchaser’s
hands by that generous gentleman, Mr. Passmore Edwards, than whom it
could have no better Proprietor.

I wrote on the whole more than 1,000 leading articles, and a vast number
of Notes, for the _Echo_ during the seven years in which I worked upon
its staff. The contributors who successively occupied the same columns
of second leaders on my off-days were willing, (as I believe Mr. Arnold
desired), to adopt on the whole the general line of sentiment and
principle which my articles maintained; and thus I had the comfort of
thinking that, as regarded social ethics, my work had given in some
measure the tone to the paper. It was _my pulpit_, with permission to
make in it (what other pulpits lack so sadly!) such jokes as pleased me;
and to put forward on hundreds of matters my views of what was right and
honourable. We did not profess to be “written by gentlemen for
gentlemen.” The saturnine jests, the snarls and the pessimisms of the
clubs were not in our way; and we did not affect to be _blasés_, or to
think the whole world was going to the dogs. There were of course
subjects on which a Liberal like Mr. Arnold and a Tory like myself
differed widely; and then I left them untouched, for (I need scarcely
say) I never wrote a line in that or any other paper not in fullest
accordance with my own opinions and convictions, on any subject small or
great. The work, I think, was at all events wholesome and harmless. I
hope that it also did, now and then, a little good.

After the sudden and unexpected termination of my connection with the
_Echo_ I accepted gladly an engagement, not requiring personal
attendance, on the staff of the _Standard_, and wrote two or three
leaders a week for that newspaper, for a considerable time. At last the
Vivisection controversy came in the way, when I resigned my post in
consequence of the appearance of a pro-vivisecting paragraph. The editor
assured me generally of his approval of my crusade, and I wrote a few
articles more, but the engagement finally dropped. My time had indeed
become too much absorbed by the other work to carry on regular
Journalism with the needful vigour.

It may interest women who are entering the profession in which I found
such pleasure and profit, to know that as regards “filthy lucre,” I
found it more remunerative than writing for the best monthly or
quarterly periodicals. I did both at the same period; often sitting down
to spend some hours of the afternoon over a “Study of Eastern Religion”
or some such subject, when I had gone to the Strand and written my
leader and notes in the forenoon. Putting all together and the profits
of my books, (which were small enough,) I made by my literary and
journalistic work at one time a fair income. This golden epoch ended,
however, when I threw myself into the Anti-vivisection movement, after
which date I do not think I have ever earned more than £100 a year, and
for the last 12 years not £20. I suppose in my whole life I have earned
nearly £5,000, rather more than my whole patrimony. What my poor father
would have felt had he known that his daughter eked out her subsistence
by going down in all weathers to write articles for a half-penny
newspaper in the Strand, I cannot guess. My brothers happily had no
objection to my industry, and the eldest—who drew, as usual with elder
sons in our class, more money every year from the family property than I
received for life,—kindly paid off my charges on the estate and added
£100 a year to the proceeds, so that I was thenceforth, for my moderate
wants, fairly well off, especially since I had a friend who shared all
expenses of housekeeping with me.

In reviewing my whole literary and journalistic life as I have done in
these two chapters, I perceive that I have been from first to last _an
Essayist_; almost _pur et simple_. I have done very little in any other
way than to try to put forward—either at large in a book or in a
magazine article, or, lastly, in a newspaper-leader—which was always a
miniature essay,—an appeal for some object, an argument for some truth,
a vindication of some principle, an exposure of what I conceived to be
an absurdity, a wrong, a falsehood, or a cruelty. At first I had
exaggerated hopes of success in these endeavours. Books had been a great
deal to me in my own solitary life, and I far over-estimated their
practical power. When editors and publishers readily accepted my
articles and books, and reviewers praised them, I fancied, (though they
never sold very freely,) that I was really given the great privilege of
moving many hearts. But by degrees as years went on I felt the sorrowful
limitation of literary influence. Sometimes I was wild with
disappointment and indignation when critics lauded the “style” of my
books while they never so much as noticed the _purpose_ for sake of
which I had laboured to make them good and strong literature.

For my own part I have shunned Review-writing; partly (as regarded
newspaper criticism) for the rather sordid reason that it involves the
double labour of reading and writing for the same pay per column, but
generally, and in all cases, because I cannot say,—as dear Fanny Kemble
used to remark in a sepulchral voice (quite falsely), “_I am nothing if
not critical_.” On the contrary, I am several other things, and very
little critical; and the pain and deadly injury I have seen inflicted by
a severe review is a form of cruelty for which I have no predilection.
It is necessary, no doubt, in the literary community that there should
be warders and executioners at the public command to birch juvenile
offenders, and flog garrotters, and hang anarchists; but I never felt
any vocation for those disagreeable offices. The few reviews I have ever
written have been properly Essays on given subjects, taking some book
which I could honestly praise for a peg. As in the old Egyptian _Book of
the Dead_ the soul of the deceased protests, among his forty-two
abjurations,—“I have not been the cause of others’ tears,”—so, I hope, I
may say, I have given no brother or sister of the pen the wound (and
often the ruinous loss) of a damaging critique of his or her books. If
my writings have given pain to any persons, it can only have been to men
whose dead consciences it would be an act of mercy to awaken, and
towards whom I feel not the smallest compunction. Briefly I conclude in
this book, (doubtless my last), a long and moderately successful
literary life, with no serious regrets, but with much thankfulness and
rejoicing for all the interest, the pleasure and the warm and precious
friendships which the profession of letters has brought to me ever since
I entered it,—just forty years ago,—when William Longman accepted my
_Intuitive Morals_.

CHAPTER
XVII.
_MY LIFE IN LONDON IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES._
_SOCIAL._

When we had settled down, as we did rapidly, into our pretty little
house in South Kensington, we began soon to enjoy many social pleasures
of a quiet kind. Into Society (with a big _S_!), we had no pretensions
to enter, but we had many friends, very genuine and delightful ones, ere
long; and a great many interesting acquaintances. Happily death has
spared not a few of these until now, and, of course, of them I shall not
write here; but of some of those who have “gone over to the majority” I
shall venture to record my recollections, interspersed in some cases
with their letters. I may premise that we were much given to dining out,
but not to attending late evening parties; and that in our small way we
gave little dinners now and then, and occasionally afternoon and evening
parties,—the former held sometimes in summer under the lime trees behind
our house. I attribute my long retention of good health to my
persistence in going to bed before eleven o’clock, and never accepting
late invitations.

I hope I shall be acquitted of the presumption of pretending to offer in
the scrappy _souvenirs_ I shall now put together any important
contribution to the memoirs of the future. At best, a woman’s knowledge
of the eminent men whom she only meets at dinner parties, and perhaps in
occasional quiet afternoon visits, is not to be compared to that of
their associates in their clubs, in Parliament and in all the work of
the world. Nevertheless as all of us, human beings, resemble diamonds in
having several distinct facets to our characters, and as we always turn
one of these to one person and another to another, there is generally
some fresh side to be seen in a particularly brilliant gem. The relation
too, which a good and kindly man (and such I am happy to say were most
of my acquaintances) bears to a woman who is neither his mother, sister,
daughter, wife or potential wife, but merely a reasonably intelligent
listener and companion of restful hours, is so different from that which
he holds to his masculine fellow-workers,—rivals, allies or enemies as
they may be,—that it can rarely happen but that she sees him in quite a
different light from theirs. Englishmen are not eaten up with _Invidia_,
like Italians and Frenchmen, such as made D’ Azeglio say to me that it
was a positive danger to a statesman to win a battle, or gain a
diplomatic triumph, so much envy did it excite among his own party. In
our country, men, and still more emphatically, women, glory
enthusiastically in the successes of their friends, if not of others.
But the masculine mind, so far as I have got to the bottom of it, (as
George Eliot says, “it is always so superior—_what there is of it_!”),
is not so quick in gathering impressions of character as ours of the
softer (and therefore, I suppose, more waxlike) sex; and when fifty men
have said their say on a great man I should always wish to hear _also_
what the women who knew him socially had to add to their testimony. In
short, dear Fanny Kemble’s “_Old Woman’s Gossip_” seems to me admissible
on the subject of the character and “little ways” of everybody worthy of
record.

It was certainly an advantage to us in London to be, as we were, without
any kind of ulterior aim or object in meeting our friends and
acquaintances, beyond the pleasure of the hour. We never had anything in
view in the way of social ambition; not even daughters to bring out! It
was not “_de l’Art pour l’Art_,” but _la Société pour la Société_, and
nothing beyond the amusement of the particular day and the interest of
the acquaintanceships we had the good fortune to make. We had no rank or
dignity of any kind to keep up. I think hardly any of our friends and
_habitués_ even knew who we were, from Burke’s point of view! I was
really pleased once, after I had been living for years in London, to
find at a large dinner-party, where at least half the company were my
acquaintances, that not one present suspected that I had any connection
with Ireland at all. Our host (a very prominent M.P. at the time) having
by chance elicited from me some information on Irish affairs, asked me,
“What do you know about Ireland?” “Simply that the first 36 years of my
life were spent there,” was my reply; which drew forth a general
expression of surprise. The few who had troubled themselves to think who
I was, had taken it for granted that I belonged to a family of the same
name, _minus_ the final letter, in Oxfordshire. In a country
neighbourhood the one prominent fact about me, known and repeated to
everyone, would have been that I was the daughter of Charles Cobbe of
Newbridge. I was proud to be accepted and, I hope, liked, on the
strength of my own talk and books, not on that of my father’s acres.

We did not (of course) live in London all the year round, but came every
summer to Wales to enable my friend to look after her estate; and I went
every two or three years to Ireland, and more frequently to the houses
of my two brothers in England,—Maulden Rectory, in Bedfordshire, and
Easton Lyss, near Petersfield,—where they respectively lived, and where
both they and their wives were always ready to welcome me
affectionately. I also paid occasional visits at two or three country
houses, notably Broadlands and Aston Clinton, where I was most kindly
invited by the beloved owners; and twice or three times we let our house
for a term, and went to live on one occasion in Cheyne Walk, and another
time at Byfleet. We always fell back, however, on our dear little house
in Hereford Square, till we let it finally to our old friend Mrs.
Kemble, and left London for good in the spring of 1884.

I think the first real acquaintances we made in London (whether through
Mrs. Somerville or otherwise I cannot recall) were Sir Charles and Lady
Lyell, and their brother and sister, Col. and Mrs. Lyell. The house, No.
73, Harley Street—in after years noticeable by its bright blue door, (so
painted to catch Sir Charles’ fading eyesight on his return from his
daily walks), became very dear to us, and I confess to a pang when it
was taken by Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone after the death of our dear old
friends. Like Lord Shaftesbury’s house in Grosvenor Square, pulled down
after his death and replaced by a brand new mansion in the latest
Londonesque architecture, there was a “bad-dreaminess” about both
transformation scenes. The Lyells regularly attended Mr. Martineau’s
chapel in Little Portland Street, as we did; and ere long it became a
habit for us to adjourn after the service to Harley Street and spend
some of the afternoon with our friends, discussing the large supply of
mental food which our pastor never failed to lay before us. Those were
never-to-be-forgotten Sundays.

Sir Charles Lyell realised to my mind the Man of Science as he was of
old; devout, and yet entirely free-thinking in the true sense; filled
with admiring, almost adoring love for Nature, and also (all the more
for that enthusiasm), simple and fresh-hearted as a child. When a good
story had tickled him he would come and tell it to us with infinite
relish. I recollect especially his delight in an American boy (I think
somehow connected with our friend Mr. Herman Merivale), who, being
directed to say his prayers night and morning, replied that he had no
objection to do so at _night_, but thought that “a boy who is worth
anything can take care of himself _by day_.”[21] Another time we had
been discussing Evolution, and some of us had betrayed the impression
that the doctrine, (which he had then recently adopted), involved always
the survival of the _best_, as well as of the “fittest.” Sir Charles
left the room and went downstairs, but suddenly rushed back into the
drawing-room, and said to me all in a breath, standing on the rug: “I’ll
explain it to you in one minute! Suppose _you_ had been living in Spain
three hundred years ago, and had had a sister who was a perfectly
common-place person, and believed everything she was told. Well! your
sister would have been happily married and had a numerous progeny, and
that would have been the survival of the fittest; but _you_ would have
been burnt at an _auto-da-fè_, and there would have been an end of you.
You would have been unsuited to your environment. There! that’s
Evolution! Good-bye!” On went his hat, and we heard the hall door close
after him before we had done laughing.

Sir Charles’ interest in his own particular science was eager as that of
a boy. One day I had a long conversation with him at his brother,
Colonel Lyell’s hospitable house, on the subject of the Glacial period.
He told me that he was employing regular calculators at Greenwich to
make out the results of the ice-cap and how it would affect land and
sea; whether it would cause double tides, &c. He said he had pointed out
(what no one else had noticed) that the water to form this ice-cap did
not come from another planet, but must have been deducted from the rest
of the water on the globe. Another day I met him at a very imposing
private concert in Regent’s Park. The following is my description of our
conversation in a letter to my friend, Miss Elliot:—

“Sir Charles sat beside me yesterday at a great musical party at the
D.’s, and I asked him, ‘Did he like music?’ He said, ‘Yes! _for it
allowed him to go on thinking his own thoughts._’ And so he evidently
did, while they were singing Mendelssohn and Handel! At every interval
he turned to me. ‘Agassiz has made a discovery. I can’t sleep for
thinking of it. He finds traces of the Glaciers in tropical America.’
(Here intervened a sacred song.) ‘Well, as I was saying, you know
230,000 years ago the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit was at one of
its maximum periods; and we were 11,000,000 miles further from the sun
in winter, and the cold of those winters must have been intense;
because heat varies, not according to direct ratio, but the squares of
the distances.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘but then the summers were as much
hotter?’ (Sacred song.) ‘No, the summers wern’t! They could not have
conquered the cold.’ ‘Then you think that the astronomical 230,000
years corresponded with the glacial period? Is that time enough for
all the strata since?’ (Handel.) ‘I don’t know. Perhaps we must go
back to the still greater period of the eccentricity of the orbit
three million years ago. Then we were 14 millions of miles out of the
circular path.’ (Mendelssohn.) ‘Good-bye, dear Sir Charles—I must be
off.’

“Another day last week, he came and sat with me for two hours. I would
not light candles, and we got very deep into talk. I was greatly
comforted and instructed by all he said. I asked him how the modern
attacks on the argument from Design in Nature, and Darwin’s views,
touched him religiously? He replied, ‘Not at all.’ He thought the
proofs in Nature of the Divine Goodness quite triumphant; and that he
watched with secret pleasure even sceptical men of science whenever
they forget their theories, instinctively using phrases, all
_implying_ designing wisdom.”

I remember on another occasion Sir Charles telling me with much glee of
two eminent Agnostic friends of ours who had been discussing some
question for a long time, when one said to the other, “You are getting
very _teleological_!” To which the friend responded, “I can’t help it!”

At another of his much prized visits to me (April 19th, 1866) he spoke
earnestly of the future life, and made this memorable remark of which I
took a note: “The further I advance in science, the less the mere
physical difficulties in believing in immortality disturb me. I have
learned to think nothing too amazing to be within the order of Nature.”

The great inequalities in the conditions of men and the sufferings of
many seemed to be his strongest reasons for believing in another life.
He added: “Aristotle says that every creature has its instincts given by
its Creator, and each instinct leads to its good. Now the belief in
immortality is an instinct tending to good.”

After the death of his beloved wife—the truest “helpmeet” ever man
possessed—he became even more absorbed in the problem of a future
existence, and very frequently came and talked with me on the subject.
The last time I had a real conversation with him was not long before his
death, when we met one sweet autumn day by chance in Regent’s Park, not
far from the Zoological Gardens. We sat down under a tree and had a long
discussion of the validity of religious faith. I think his argument
culminated in this position:—

“The presumption is enormous that all our faculties, though liable to
err, are true in the main, and point to real objects. The religious
faculty in man is one of the strongest of all. It existed in the
earliest ages, and instead of wearing out before advancing
civilization, it grows stronger and stronger; and is, to-day, more
developed among the highest races than ever it was before. I think we
may safely trust that it points to a great truth.”

Here is another glimpse of him from a letter:—

“After service I went to Harley Street, Sir Charles, I thought,
looking better than for a long time. He thinks the caves of Aurignac
can never be used as evidence; the witnesses were all tampered with
from the first. He saw a skeleton found at Mentone 15 feet deep, which
he thinks of the same age as the Gibraltar caves. The legs were
distinctly platycnemic, and there was also a curious process on the
front of the shoulder—like the breast of a chicken. The skull was
full-sized and good. I asked him how he accounted for the fact that
with the best will in the world we could not find the _least_
difference between the most ancient skulls and our own? He said the
theory had been suggested that all the first growth went to brain, so
that very early men acquired large brains, as was necessary. This is
not very Darwinian, is it?”

It is the destiny of all books of Science to be soon superseded and
superannuated, while those of Literature may live for all time. I
suppose Sir Charles Lyell’s _Principles of Geology_ has undergone, or
will undergo, this fate ere long; but the magnanimity and candour which
made him, in issuing the 10th edition of that book, abjure all his
previous arguments against Evolution and candidly own himself Darwin’s
convert, was an evidence of genuine loyalty to truth which I trust can
never be quite forgotten. He was, as Prof. Huxley called him, the
“greatest Geologist of his day,”—the man “who found Geology an infant
science feebly contending for a few scattered truths, and left it a
giant, grasping all the ages of the past.” But to my memory he will
always be something more than _an_ eminent man of Science. He was the
type of what _such men ought to be_; with the simplicity, humility and
gentleness which should be characteristic of the true student of Nature.
Of the priestlike arrogance of some representatives of the modern
scientific spirit he had not a taint. In one of his last letters to me,
he said:

“I am told that the same philosophy which is opposed to a belief in a
future state undertakes to prove that every one of our acts and
thoughts are the necessary result of antecedent events, and conditions
and that there can be no such thing as Free-will in man. I am quite
content that both doctrines should stand on the same foundation; for
as I cannot help being convinced that I have the power of exerting
Free-will, however great a mystery the possibility of this may be, so
the continuance of a spiritual life may be true, however inexplicable
or incapable of proof.

“I am told by some that if any of our traditionary beliefs make us
happier and lead us to estimate humanity more highly, we ought to be
careful not to endeavour to establish any scientific truths which
would lessen and lower our estimate of Man’s place in Nature; in
short, we should do nothing to disturb any man’s faith, if it be a
delusion which increases his happiness.

“But I hope and believe that the discovery and propagation of every
truth, and the dispelling of every error tends to improve and better
the condition of man, though the act of reforming old opinions causes
so much pain and misery.”

It will give me pleasure if these few reminiscences of my honoured
friend send fresh readers to his excellent and spirited biography by his
sister-in-law Mrs. Lyell, Lady Lyell’s sister, who was also his brother,
Colonel Lyell’s wife; the mother of Sir Leonard Lyell, M.P.

I saw a great deal of Dr. Colenso during the years he spent in England;
I think about 1864–5. He lived near us in a small house in Sussex Place,
Glo’ster Road (not Sussex Place, Onslow Square), where his large family
of sons and daughters practised the piano below stairs and produced
detonations with chemicals above, while visitors called incessantly,
interrupting his arduous and anxious studies! He was in all senses an
iron-grey man. Iron-grey hair, pale, strong face, fine but somewhat
rigid figure, a powerful, strong-willed, resolute man, if ever there
were one, and an honest one also, if such there have been on earth. His
friend, Sir George W. Cox, who I may venture to call mine also, has, in
his admirable biography, printed the three most important letters which
the Bishop of Natal wrote to me, and I can add nothing to Sir George’s
just estimate of the character of this modern _Confessor_. I will give
here, however, another letter I received from him at the very beginning
of our intercourse, when I had only met him once (at Dr. Carpenter’s
table); and also a record in a letter to a friend of a _tête-à-tête_
conversation with him, further on. I have always thought that he made a
mistake in returning to Natal, and that his true place would have been
at the head of a Christian-Theistic Church in London:—

“23, Sussex Place, Kensington,
“Feb. 6th, 1863.

“My Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I thank you sincerely for your letter, and for the volume which you
have sent me. I have read the preface with the deepest interest—and
heartily respond to _every_ word which you have written in it. A
friend at the Cape had lent me a German edition of De Wette, which I
had consulted carefully. But, about a fortnight ago, a lady, till then
a stranger to me, sent me a copy of Parker’s Edition. I value it most
highly for the sake both of the Author’s and Editor’s share in it. But
the criticism of the present day goes, if I am not mistaken,
considerably beyond even De Wette’s, in clearing up the question of
the Age and Authorship of the different parts of the Pentateuch. I
shall carefully consider the Tables of Elohistic and Jehovistic
portions, as given in De Wette; but, in many important respects, my
conclusions will be found to differ from his, and, as I think, upon
certain grounds. De W. leant too much to the judgment of Stäbelin.

“The above, however, is the only one of Th. Parker’s works, which has
yet come into my hands, till the arrival of your book this morning.
When I repeat that every word of your Preface went to my very
heart—and that many of them drew the tears from my eyes and the prayer
from my heart that God would grant me grace to be in any degree a
follower of the noble brother whose life you have sketched, and whose
feet have already trodden the path, which now lies open before me—you
will believe that I shall not leave long the rest of the volume
unread. But, whatever I may find there, your Preface will give comfort
and support to thousands, if only they can be brought to read it.
Would it not be possible to have it printed separate, as a _cheap
Tract_? It would have the effect of recommending the book itself, and
Parker’s works, generally, to multitudes, who might otherwise not have
them brought under their notice effectively? I think if largely
circulated it might help materially the progress of the great work, in
which I am now engaged.

“You will allow me, I hope, to have the pleasure of renewing my
acquaintance with you, by making a call upon you before long—and may I
bring with me Mrs. Colenso, who will be very glad to see you?

“Very truly yours,
“JO. NATAL.

“Please accept a copy of my ‘Romans,’ which Macmillan will send you.
The _spirit_ of it will remain, I trust, abiding, though much of the
_letter_ must now be changed.”

Writing of Dr. Colenso to a friend in February, 1865, I said:—

“I never felt for him so much as last night. We came to talk on what
we felt at standing so much alone; and he said that when the extent of
his discoveries burst on him he felt as if he had received a
paralyzing electric shock. A London clergyman wrote to him the other
day to give him solemn warning that he had led one of his parishioners
to destruction and drunkenness. Colenso answered him, that ‘it was not
_he_ who led men to doubt of God and duty, but those teachers who made
them rest their faith on God and Duty on a foundation of falsehood
which every new wave of thought was sweeping away.’ The clergyman
seems to have been immensely dumbfounded by this reply.”

Another most interesting man whom I met at Dr. Carpenter’s table was
Charles Kingsley.

One day, while I was still a miserable cripple, I went to dine in
Regent’s Park and came rather late into a drawing-room full of company,
supported by what my maid called my “_best_ crutches!” The servant did
not know me, and announced “Miss Cobble.” I corrected her loudly enough
for the guests to hear, in that moment of pause: “No! Miss Hobble!”
There was of course a laugh, and from the little crowd rushed forward to
greet me with both hands extended, a tall, slender, stooping figure with
that well-known face so full of feeling and tenderness—Charles Kingsley.
“At _last_, Miss Cobbe, at _last_ we meet,” he said, and a moment later
gave me his arm to dinner. This greeting touched me, for we had
exchanged, as theological opponents, some tolerably sharp blows for
years before, but his large, noble nature harboured no spark of
resentment. We talked all dinner-time and a good deal in the evening,
and then he offered to escort me home to South Kensington—a proposal
which I greedily accepted, but, somehow, when he found that I had a
brougham, and was not going in miscellaneous vehicles (in my best
evening toggery!) from one end of London to the other at night, he
retracted, and could not be induced to come with me. We met, however,
not unfrequently afterwards, and I always felt much attracted to him; as
did, I may mention, my friend’s little fox terrier, who, travelling one
day with her mistress in the Underground, spied Kingsley entering the
carriage, and incontinently leaving her usual safe retreat under the
seat made straight to him, and without invitation, leaped on his knee
and began gently kissing his face! The dog never did the same or
anything like it to any one else in her life before or afterwards. Of
course, my friend apologised to Mr. Kingsley, but he only said in his
deep voice, “Dogs always do that to me,”—and coaxed the little beast
kindly, till they left the train.

The last time I saw Canon Kingsley was one day late in the autumn some
months before he died. Somebody who, I thought, he would like to meet
was coming to dine with me at short notice, and I went to Westminster in
the hope of catching him and persuading him to come without losing time
by sending notes. The evening was closing, and it was growing very dark
in the cloisters, where I was seeking his door, when I saw a tall man,
strangely bent, coming towards me, evidently seeing neither me nor
anything else, and absorbed in some most painful thought. His whole
attitude and countenance expressed grief amounting to despair. So
terrible was it that I felt it an intrusion on a sacred privacy to have
seen it; and would fain have hidden myself, but this was impossible
where we were standing at the moment. When he saw me he woke out of his
reverie with a start, pulled himself together, shook hands, and begged
me to come into his house; which of course I did not do. He had an
engagement which prevented him from meeting my guest (I think it must
have been Keshub Chunder Sen), and I took myself off as quickly as
possible. I have often wondered what dreadful thought was occupying his
mind when I caught sight of him that day in the gloomy old cloisters of
Westminster in the autumn twilight.

The quotation made a few pages back of Sir Charles Lyell’s observations
on belief in Immortality reminds me that I repeated them soon after he
had made them, to another great man whom it was my privilege to
know—John Stuart Mill. We were spending an afternoon with him and Miss
Helen Taylor at Blackheath; and a quiet conversation between Mr. Mill
and myself having reached this subject, I told him of what Sir C. Lyell
had said. In a moment the quick blood suffused his cheeks and something
very like tears were in his eyes. The question, it was plain, touched
his very heart. This wonderful sensitiveness of a man generally supposed
to be “dry” and devoted to the driest studies, struck me, I think, more
than anything about him. His special characteristic was extreme delicacy
of feeling; and this showed itself, singularly enough, for a man
advanced in life, in transparency of skin, and changes of colour and
expression as rapid as those in a mountain lake when the clouds shift
over it. When Watts painted his fine portrait of him, he failed to
notice this peculiarity of his thin and delicate skin, and gave him the
common thick, muddy complexion of elderly Englishmen. The result is that
the _èthos_ of the face is missing—just as in the case of the portrait
of Dr. Martineau he is represented with weak, sloping shoulders and
narrow chest. The look of power which essentially belongs to him is not
to be seen. I remarked when I saw this picture first exhibited: “I
should never have ‘sat under’ _that_ Dr. Martineau!” Mill and I, of
course, met in deep sympathy on the Woman question; and he did me the
honour to present me with a copy of his “_Subjection of Women_” on its
publication. He tried to make me write and speak more on the subject of
Women’s Claims, and used jestingly to say that my laugh was worth—I
forget how much!—to the cause. I insert a letter from him showing the
minute care he took about matters hardly worthy of his attention.

“Avignon, Feb. 23rd, 1869.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I have lately received communication from the American publisher
Putnam, requesting me to write for their Magazine, and I understand
that they would be very glad if you would write anything for them,
more especially on the Women question, on which the Magazine (a new
one) has shown liberal tendencies from the first. The communications I
have received have been through Mrs. Hooker, sister of Mrs. Stowe and
Dr. Ward Beecher, and herself the author of two excellent articles in
the Magazine on the suffrage question, by which we had been much
struck before we knew the authorship. I enclose Mrs. Hooker’s last
letter to me, and I send by post copies of Mrs. Hooker’s articles and
some old numbers of the Magazine, the only ones we have here; and I
shall be very happy if I should be the medium of inducing you to write
on this question for the American public.

“My daughter desires to be kindly remembered, and I am,

“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“Very truly yours,
“J. S. MILL.

“P.S.—May I ask you to be so kind as to forward Mrs. Hooker’s letter
to Mrs. P. A. Taylor, as she will see by it that Mrs. Hooker has no
objection to put her name to a reprint of her articles.”

There never was a more unassuming philosopher than Mr. Mill, just as
there never was a more unassuming poet than Mr. Browning. All the world
knows how Mr. Mill strove to give to his wife the chief credit of his
works; and, after her death, his attitude towards her daughter, who was
indeed a daughter also to him, was beautiful to witness, and a fine
exemplification of his own theories of the rightful position of women.
He was, however, equally unpretentious as regarded men. Talking one day
about the difficulty of doing mental work when disturbed by street
music, and of poor Mr. Babbage’s frenzy on the subject, Mr. Mill said it
did not much interfere with him. I told him how intensely Mr. Spencer
objected to disturbance. “Ah yes; of course! writing _Spencer’s_ works
one must want quiet!” As if nothing of the kind were needed for such
trivial books as his own _System of Logic_, or _Political Economy_! He
really was quite unconscious of the irony of his remark. I have been
told that he would allow his cat to interfere sadly with his literary
occupation when she preferred to lie on his table, or sometimes on his
neck,—a trait like that of Newton and his “Diamond.” This extreme
gentleness is ever, surely a note of the highest order of men.

Here are extracts from letters concerning Mr. Mill, which I wrote to
Miss Elliot in August, 1869. I believe I had been to Brighton and met
Mr. Mill there.

“We talked of many grave things, and in everything his love of right
and his immense underlying faith impressed me more than I can
describe. I asked him what he thought of coming changes, and he
entirely agreed with me about their danger, but thought that the
mischief they will entail must be but temporary. He thought the loss
of Reverence unspeakably deplorable, but an inevitable feature of an
age of such rapid transition that the son does actually outrun the
father. He added that he thought even the most sceptical of men
generally had an _inner altar to the Unseen Perfection_ while waiting
for the true one to be revealed to them. In a word the ‘dry old
philosopher’ showed himself to me as an enthusiast in faith and love.
The way in which he seemed to have thought out every great question
and to express his own so modestly and simply, and yet in such
clear-cut outlines, was most impressive. I felt (what one so seldom
does!) the delightful sense of being in communication with a mind
deeper than one would reach the end of, even after a lifetime of
intercourse. I never felt the same, so strongly, except towards Mr.
Martineau; and though the forms of _his_ creed and philosophy are, I
think, infinitely truer than those of Mill (not to speak of the
feelings one has for the man whose prayers one follows), I think it is
more in form than in spirit that the two men are distinguished. The
one has only an ‘inner,’ the other has an outward ‘altar;’ but both
_kneel_ at them.”

A month or two earlier in the same year I wrote to the same friend:—

“Last night I sat beside Mr. Mill at dinner and enjoyed myself
exceedingly. He is looking old and worn, and the nervous twitchings of
his face are painful to see, but he is so thoroughly genial and
gentlemanly, and laughs so heartily at one’s little jokes, and keeps
up an argument with so much play and good humour, that I never enjoyed
my dinner-neighbourhood more. Mr. Fawcett was objurgating some M.P.
for taking office, and said: ‘When I see _Tories_ rejoice, I know it
must be an injury to the Liberal Cause.’ ‘Do you never, then, feel a
qualm,’ I said, ‘all you Liberal gentlemen, when you see the _priests_
rejoice at what you have just done in Ireland? Do you reflect whether
_that_ is likely to be an injury to the Liberal Cause?’ The
observation somehow fell like a bomb; (the entire company, as I
remember, were Radicals, our host being Mr. P. A. Taylor). For two
minutes there was a dead silence. Then Mrs. Taylor said: ‘Ah, Miss
Cobbe is a bitter Conservative!’ ‘Not a _bitter_ one,’ said Mr. Mill.
‘Miss Cobbe is a Conservative. I am sorry for it; but Miss Cobbe is
never bitter.’”

It has been a constant subject of regret to me that Mr. Mill’s intention
(communicated to me by Miss Taylor) of spending the ensuing summer
holiday in Wales, on purpose to be near us, was frustrated by his
illness and death. How much pleasure and instruction I should have
derived from his near neighbourhood there is no need to say.

A friend of Mr. Mill for whom I had great regard was Prof. Cairnes. He
underwent treatment at Aix-les-Bains at the same time as I; and we used
to while away our long hours by interminable discussions, principally
concerning ethics, a subject on which Mr. Cairnes took the Utilitarian
side, and I, of course, that of the school of Independent Morality
(_i.e._, of Morality based on other grounds than Utility). He was an
ardent disciple of Mill, but his extreme candour caused him to admit
frankly that the “mystic extension” of the idea of _Usefulness_ into
_Right_, was unaccountable, or at least unaccounted for; and that when
we had proved an act to be pre-eminently useful and likely to promote
“the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” there yet remained the
question for each of us, “Why should _I_ perform that useful action, if
it cost _me_ a moment’s pain?” To find the answer (he admitted) we must
fall back on an inward “Categoric imperative,” “_ought_;” and having
done so, (I argued,) we must thenceforth admit that the basis of
Morality rests on something beside Utility. All these controversies are
rather bygone now, since we have been confronted with “hereditary sets
of the brain.” I think it was in these discussions with Prof. Cairnes
that I struck out what several friends (among others Lord Arthur
Russell) considered an “unanswerable” argument against the Utilitarian
philosophy; it ran thus:

“Mr. Mill has nobly said, that,—if an Almighty Tyrant were to order
him to worship him and threaten to send him to hell if he refused,
then, sooner than worship that unjust God, ‘_to Hell would I go!_’ Mr.
Mill, of course, desired every man to do what he himself thought
right; therefore it is conceivable that, in the given contingency, we
might behold the apostle of the Utilitarian philosophy _conducting the
whole human race to eternal perdition_, for the sake of,—shall we say
the ‘_Greatest Happiness of the Greatest number_?’”

Prof. Cairnes did great public service both to England and America at
the time of the war of Secession by his wise and able writing on the
subject. In a small way I tried to help the same cause by joining Mrs.
P. A. Taylor’s Committee formed to promote and express English sympathy
with the North; and wrote several little pamphlets, “_The Red Flag in
John Bull’s Eyes_”; “_Rejoinder to Mrs. Stowe_,” &c. This common
interest increased, of course, my regard for Mr. Cairnes, and it was
with real sorrow I saw him slowly sink under the terrible disease, (a
sort of general ossification of the joints) of which he died. I have
said he _sank_ under it, but assuredly it was only his piteously
stiffened _body_ which did so, for I never saw a grander triumph of mind
over matter than was shown by the courage and cheerfulness wherewith he
bore as dreadful a fate as that of any old martyr. I shall never forget
the impression of _the nobility of the human Soul_ rising over its
tenement of clay, which he made upon me, on the occasion of my last
visit to him at Blackheath.

Another man, much of the character and calibre of Prof. Cairnes, whom I
likewise had the privilege to know well, was Prof. Sheldon Amos. He
also, alas! died in the prime of life; to the loss and grief of the
friends of every generous movement.

The following is a memorandum of the first occasion on which I met Mr.
John Bright:—

“February 28th, 1866. Dined at Mr. S.’s, M.P. Sat between Bright and
Mr. Buxton. Bright so exquisitely _clean_ and with such a sweet voice!
His hands alone are coarse. Great discussion, in which Mr. B.
completely took the lead; the other gentlemen present seeming to hang
on his words as I never saw Englishmen do on those of one another.
Talking of Ireland he said he would, if he ever had the power, force
all the English Companies and great English landlords to sell their
estates there; the land to be cut up into small farms. I asked, did he
believe in small farming in 1866, and in Celtic capitalists ready to
purchase farms? He then told us how he picked up much information
travelling through Ireland _on cars_, from the drivers, (as if every
Irish car-driver did not recognise him in a moment from Punch’s
caricatures!) and how, especially, he visited the only small farm he
had heard of where the occupier was a freeholder; and how it was
exceedingly prosperous. I asked where this was? He said ‘in a place
called the Barony of Forth.’ Of course I explained that Forth and
Bargy in Wexford have been for four hundred years isolated English,
(or rather Welsh) colonies, and afford no sort of sample of _Irish_
farming. Bright’s way of speaking was dogmatic, but full of genial fun
and quiet little bits of wit. He spoke with great feeling of the
wrongs and miseries of the poor, but seemed to enjoy in full the
delusion that it only depended on rich people being ready to sacrifice
themselves, to remove them all to-morrow.

“I ventured to ask him why he laboured so hard to get votes for
working carpenters and bricklayers, and never stirred a finger to ask
them for women, who possessed already the property qualification? He
said: ‘Much was to be said for women,’ but then went on maundering
about our proper sphere, and ‘would they go into Parliament?’”

Again another time I sat beside him (I know not at whose hospitable
table), and he told me a most affecting story of a poor crippled woman
in a miserable cottage near Llandudno, where he usually spent his
holidays. He had got into the habit of visiting this poor creature, who
could not stir from her bed, but lay there all day long alone, her
husband being out at work as a labourer. Sometimes a neighbour would
look in and give her food, but unless one did so, she was entirely
helpless. Her only comforter was her dog, a fine collie, who lay beside
her on the floor, ran in and out, licked her poor useless hands, and
showed his affection in a hundred ways. Bright grew fond of the dog, and
the dog always welcomed him each year with gambols and joy. One summer
he came to the cottage, and the hapless cripple lay on her pallet still,
but the dog did not come out to him as usual, and his first question to
the woman was: “Where is your collie?” The answer was that _her husband
had drowned the dog_ to save the expense of feeding it.

Bright’s voice broke when he came to the end of this story, and we said
very little more to each other during that dinner.

Another day I was speaking to Mr. Bright of the extraordinary _canard_
which had appeared in the _Times_ the day before announcing (quite
falsely) that Lord Russell, then Premier, had resigned. “What on earth,”
I asked, “can have induced the _Times_ to publish such intelligence?”
(As it happened, it inconvenienced Lord Russell very much.) “I will tell
you,” said Bright; “I am sure it is because Delane is angry that Lady
Russell has not asked him to dinner. He expected to go to the Russells’
as he did to the Palmerstons’, and get his news at first hand!” A day or
two later I met Lord Russell, and told him what Mr. Bright had said was
the reason of the mischievous trick Mr. Delane had played him. Lord
Russell chuckled a great deal and said, rubbing his hands in his
characteristic way: “I believe it is! I do believe it is!”

My beautiful cousin, Laura, one of my father’s wards, had married (from
Newbridge in old days) Mr. John Locke, Q.C., who was for a long time
M.P. for Southwark. Their house, 63, Eaton Place, was always most
cordially opened to me, and beside Mr. Locke, who was generally brimful
of political news, I met at their table many clever barristers and
M.P.’s. Among the latter was Mr. Ayrton, against whom a virulent set was
made by the scientific _clique_, in consequence of his endeavours, on
behalf of the public, to open Kew Gardens earlier in the day. He was
rather saturnine, but an incorruptible, unbending sort of man, for whom
I felt respect. Another _habitué_ was Mr. Warren, author of _Ten
Thousand a Year_. He was a little ugly fellow, but full of fire and fun,
retorting right and left against the Liberals present. Sergeant Gazelee,
a worn-looking man, with keen eyes, one day answered him fairly. There
was an amusing discussion whether the Tories could match in ability the
men of the opposite party? Warren brought up an array of clever
Conservatives, but then pretended to throw up the sponge, exclaiming in
a dolorous voice, “but then you Liberals have got—Whalley!”

Beside my cousin Mrs. Locke and her good and able husband, I had the
pleasure for many years of constantly seeing in London her two younger
sisters, Sophia and Eliza Cobbe, who were my father’s favourite wards
and have been from their childhood, when they were always under my
charge in their holidays, till now in our old age, almost like younger
sisters to me. They were of course rarely absent from the Eaton Place
festivities.

There was a considerable difference between dinner parties in the
Sixties and those of thirty years later. They lasted longer at the
earlier date; a greater number of dishes were served at each course, and
much more wine was taken. I cannot but think that there must be a
certain declension in the general vitality of our race of late years
for, I think, few of us, young or old, would be inclined to share
equally now in those banquets of long ago which always lasted two hours
and sometimes three. There were scarcely any teetotalers, men or women,
at the time I speak of, in the circles to which I belonged; and the
butlers, who went round incessantly with half-a-dozen kinds of wine, and
(after dinner) liqueurs, were not, as now, continually interrupted in
their courses by “No wine, thank you! Have you Appolinaris or Seltzer?”
I never saw anyone the worse for the sherry and the milkpunch and the
hock or chablis, and champagne and claret; but certainly there was
generally a little more gaiety of a well-bred sort towards the end of
the long meals. My cousins kept a particularly good cook and good
cellar, and their guests—especially some who hailed from the
City—certainly enjoyed at their table other “feasts” beside those of
reason. And so I must confess did _I_, in those days of good appetite
after a long day’s literary work; and I sincerely pitied Dean Stanley,
who had no sense of taste, and scarcely knew the flavour of anything
which he put in his mouth. When the company was not quite up to his
mark, the tedium of the dinners which he attended must have been
dreadful to him; whereas, in my case, I could always,—provided the
_menu_ was good,—entertain myself satisfactorily with my plate and knife
and fork. The same great surgeon who had treated my sprained ankle so
unsuccessfully, told me with solemn warning when we were taking our
house in Hereford Square, that, if I lived in South Kensington and went
to dinner parties, I should be a regular victim to gout. As it happened
I lived in South Kensington for just twenty years, and went out, I
should think to some two thousand dinners, great and small, and I never
had the gout at all, but, on the contrary, by my own guidance, got rid
of the tendency before I left London. There has certainly been a
perceptible diminution in the _animal spirits_ of men and women in the
last thirty years, if not of their vital powers. Of course there was
always, among well-bred people a certain average of spirits in society,
neither boisterous nor yet depressed; and the better the company the
softer the general “_susurro_” of the conversation. I could have
recognized blindfold certain drawing-rooms wherein a mixed congregation
assembled, by the strident, high note which pervaded the crowded room.
But the ripple of gentle laughter in good company has decidedly fallen
some notes since the Sixties.

I am led to these reflections by remembering among my cousin’s guests
that admirable man—Mr. Fawcett. He was always, not merely fairly
cheerful, but more gay and apparently light-hearted than those around
him who were possessed of their eyesight. The last time I met him was at
the house of Madame Bodichon in Blandford Square, and we three were all
the company. One would have thought a blind statesman alone with two
elderly women, would not have been much exhilarated; but he seemed
actually bursting with boyish spirits; pouring out fun, and laughing
with all his heart. Certainly his devoted wife (in my humble opinion the
ablest woman of this day), succeeded in cheering his darkened lot quite
perfectly.

Mr. and Mrs. Fawcett were the third couple who in this century have
afforded a study for Mr. Francis Galton of “Hereditary Genius.” The
first were Shelley and his Mary (who again was the daughter of Godwin
and Mary Wollstoncraft). Their son, the late Sir Percy Shelley, was a
very kindly and pleasant gentleman, with good taste for private
theatricals, but not a genius. The second were Robert and Elizabeth
Barrett Browning. They also have left a son, of whose gifts as a painter
I do not presume to judge. The third were Mr. Fawcett and Millicent
Garrett, who, though not claiming the brilliant genius of the others,
were each, as all the world knows, very highly endowed persons. _Their_
daughter, Miss Philippa Garrett Fawcett,—the Senior Wrangler, _de
jure_,—has at all events vindicated Mr. Galton’s theories.

Many of us, in those days of the Sixties, were deeply interested in the
efforts of women to enter the medical profession in spite of the bitter
opposition which they encountered. Miss Elizabeth Garrett, Mrs.
Fawcett’s sister, occupied a particularly prominent place in our eyes,
succeeding as she did in obtaining her medical degree in Paris, and
afterwards a seat on the London School Board, which last was quite a new
kind of elevation for women. While still occupying the foreground of our
ambition for our sex, Miss Garrett resolved to make (what has proved, I
believe, to be) a happy and well assorted marriage, which put an end,
necessarily, to her further projects of public work. I sent her, with my
cordial good wishes, the following verses:—

The Woman’s cause was rising fast
When to the Surgeons’ College past
A maid who bore in fingers nice
A banner with the new device
Excelsior!

“Try not to pass”! the Dons exclaim,
“M.D. shall grace no woman’s name”—
“Bosh!” cried the maid, in accents free,
“To France I’ll go for my degree.”
Excelsior!

The School-Board seat came next in sight,
“Beware the foes of woman’s right!”
“Beware the awful husting’s fight!”
Such was the moan of many a soul—
A voice replied from top of poll—
Excelsior!

In patients’ homes she saw the light
Of household fires beam warm and bright
Lectures on Bones grew wondrous dry,
But still she murmured with a sigh
Excelsior!

“Oh, stay!”—a lover cried,—“Oh, rest
Thy much-learned head upon this breast;
Give up ambition! Be my bride!”
—Alas! _no_ clarion voice replied
Excelsior!

At end of day, when all is done,
And woman’s battle fought and won,
Honour will aye be paid to one
Who erst called foremost in the van
Excelsior!

But not for her that crown so bright,
Which hers had been, of surest right,
Had she still cried,—serene and blest—
“The Virgin throned by the West,”[22]
Excelsior!

Some years after this I brought from Rome as a present for my much
valued friend and lady-Doctor, Mrs. Hoggan, M.D. (widow of Dr. George
Hoggan), a large photograph of the statue in the Vatican of _Minerva
Medica_. Under it I wrote these lines:—

“_Minerva Medica!_ Shocking profanity!
How could these heathens their doctors vex,
Putting the cure of the ills of humanity
Into the hands of the ‘weaker sex?’
O Pallas sublime! Would you come back revealing
Your glory immortal, our doctors should see,—
Instead of proclaiming you Goddess of Healing,
They’d prohibit your practice, refuse your degree!”

The first dinner-party I ever attended in London, before I went to live
in town, was at Mr. Bagehot’s house. I sat beside Mr. Richard Hutton,
who has been ever since my good friend, and opposite us there sat a
gentleman who at once attracted my attention. He had a strong dark face,
a low forehead and hair parted in the middle, the large loose mouth of
an orator and a manner quite unique; as if he were gently looking down
on the follies of mortality from the superior altitudes of Olympos, or
perhaps of Parnassus. “Do you know who that is sitting opposite to us?”
said Mr. Hutton. I looked at him again, and replied: “I never saw him
before, and I have never seen his picture, but I feel in my inner
consciousness that it can only be Mr. Matthew Arnold;” and Mr. Arnold,
of course, it was,—with an air which made me think him (what he was not)
an intellectual coxcomb. He wrote, about that time or soon afterwards,
some dreadfully derisive things of my Theism; not on account,
apparently, of its intrinsic demerits, but because of what he conceived
to be its _upstart_ character. We are all familiar with a certain tone
of lofty superiority common to Roman Catholics and Anglicans in dealing
with Dissenters of all classes; the tone, no doubt, in which the priests
of On talked of Moses when he led the Israelitish schism in the
wilderness. It comes naturally to everybody who stands serenely on “the
old paths,” and watches those who walk below, or strive to fray new ways
through the jungle of poor human thoughts. But when Mr. Arnold had
himself slipped off the old road so far as to have liquefied the
Articles of the Apostles’ Creed into a “_Stream of Tendency_;” and
compared the doctrine of the Trinity to a story of “_Three Lord
Shaftesburys_;” and reduced the Object of Worship to the lowest possible
denomination as “_a Power not ourselves which makes for righteousness_;”
he must, I think, have come to feel that it was scarcely his affair to
treat other people’s heresies as new-fangled, and lacking in the
sanctities of tradition. As one after another of his brilliant essays
appeared, and it became manifest that his own creed grew continually
thinner, more exiguous, and less and less substantial, I was reminded of
an old sporting story which my father told of a town-bred gentleman, the
“Mr. Briggs” of those days, who for the first time shot a cock-pheasant,
and after greatly admiring it laid it down on the grass. A keeper took
up the bird and stroked it, pretending to wonder at its size, and
presently shifted it aside and substituted a partridge, which he
likewise stroked and admired, till he had an opportunity of again
changing it for a snipe. At this crisis “Mr. Briggs” broke in furiously,
bidding the keeper to stop stroking his bird: “Be hanged to you! If you
go on like that, you’ll rub it down to a wren!” The creed of many
persons in these days seems to be undergoing the process of being patted
and praised, while all the time it is being rubbed down to a wren!

But whatever hard things Mr. Arnold said of me, I liked and admired him,
and he was always personally most kind to me. He had of all men I have
ever known the truest insight,—the true _Poet’s_ insight,—into the
feelings and characters of animals, especially of dogs. His poem,
_Geist’s Grave_, is to me the most affecting description of the death of
an animal in the range of literature. Indeed, the subject of Death
itself, whether of beasts or of men, viewed from the same standpoint of
hopelessness, has never, I think, been more tenderly touched. How deeply
true to every heart is the thought expressed in the stanzas, which
remind us that in all the vastness of the universe and of endless time
there is not, and never will be, another being like the one who is dead!
_That_ being (some of us believe) may revive and live for ever, but
_another_ who will “restore its little self” will never be.

“... Not the course
Of all the centuries to come,
And not the infinite resource
Of Nature, with her countless sum

“Of figures, with her fulness vast
Of new creation evermore,
Can ever quite repeat the past,
Or just thy little self restore.

“Stern law of every mortal lot!
Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear
And builds himself, I know not what
Of second life, I know not where.”

We knew dear _Geist_, I am glad to say. When Miss Lloyd and I came to
live at Byfleet Mr. Arnold and his most charming wife,—then living three
miles off at Cobham,—kindly permitted us to see a good deal of them, and
we were deeply interested in poor Geist’s last illness. He was a black
dachshund, not a handsome dog, but possessed of something which in
certain dogs and (those dogs only) seems to be the canine analogue of a
human soul. As to Mr. Arnold’s poem on his other dog, _Kaiser_, who is
there that enjoys a gleam of humour and dog-love can fail to be
enchanted with such a perfect picture of a dog,—not a dog of the
sentimental kind, but one—

“Teeming with plans, alert and glad
In work or play,
Like sunshine went and came, and bade
Live out the day!”

Does not every one feel how true is the likeness of a happy loving dog
to sunshine in a house?

I met Mr. Arnold one day in William and Norgate’s bookshop, and he
inquired after my dog, and when I told him the poor beast had “gone
where the good dogs go,” he said, with real feeling, “And you have not
replaced her? No! of course you could not.” I asked his leave to give a
copy of “Geist’s Grave” for a collection of poems on animals made for
the purpose of humane propaganda, and he gave it very cordially. I was,
however, deeply disappointed when he returned the following reply to my
application for his signature to our first Memorial inviting the
R.S.P.C.A. to undertake legislation for the restriction of vivisection.
I do not clearly understand what he meant by disliking “the English way
of employing for public ends private Societies and Memorials to them.”
The R.S.P.C.A. is scarcely a “private society;” and, if it were so, I
see no harm in “employing it for public ends,” instead of leaving
everything to Government to do; or to _leave undone_.

“Cobham, Surrey,
“January 8th, 1875.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“Your letter was directed to Oxford, a place with which I have now no
connection, and it reaches me too late for signing your Memorial, but
I should in any case have declined signing it, strongly as your cause
speaks to my feelings; because, first, I greatly dislike the English
way of employing, for public ends, private societies and Memorials to
them; secondly, the signatures you will profit by, in this case, are
not those of literary people, who will at once be disposed of as a set
of unpractical sentimentalists. To yourself this objection does not
apply, because you are distinguished not in letters only, but also as
a lover and student of animals. I hope if you read my paper in the
_Contemporary_, you observe how I apologise for calling them the
_lower_ animals, and how thoroughly I admit that they _think and
love_.

“Sincerely yours,
“MATTHEW ARNOLD.”

In my first journey to Italy on my way to Palestine I made acquaintance
with R. W. Mackay, the author of that enormously learned, but, perhaps,
not very well digested book, the _Progress of the Intellect_. I
afterwards renewed acquaintance with him and his nice wife in their
house in Hamilton Terrace. Mr. Mackay was somewhat of an invalid and a
nervous man, much absorbed in his studies. I have heard it said that he
was the original of George Elliot’s _Mr. Casaubon_. At all events Mrs.
Lewes had met him, and taken a strong prejudice against him. That
prejudice I think was unjust. He was a very honest and _real_ student,
and a modest one, not a pretender like Mr. Casaubon. His books contain
an amazing mass of knowledge, (presented, perhaps, in rather a crude
state) respecting all the great religious doctrines of the world. I had
once felt that both his books and talk were hard and steel-cold, and
that his religion, though dogmatically the same as mine, was all lodged
in his intellect. One day, however, when he called on me and we took a
drive and walk in the Park together, I learned to my surprise that he
entirely felt with me that the one _direct_ way of reaching truth about
religion was Prayer, and all the rest mere corroboration of what may so
be learned. To have _come round_ to this seemed to me a great evidence
of intellectual sincerity.

I forget now what particular point we had been discussing when he wrote
me the following curious bit of erudition:—

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“Dixit Rabbi Simeon Ben Lakis,—Nomina angelorum et mensium ascenderunt
in domum Israelis ex Babylone.”

“This occurs in the treatise _Rosh Haschanah_, which is part of the
Mischna.

“The Mischna (the earliest part of the Talmud) is said to have been
completed in the 3rd century, under the auspices of Rabbi Judah the
Holy, and his disciples.

“I send the above as promised, The professed aversion of the Jews for
foreign customs seems strangely at variance with their practice, as
seen, _e.g._, in their names for the divisions of the heavenly hosts;
the words ‘Legion and Sistra (castra) are evidently taken from the
Roman army. Four Chief Spirits or Archangels are occasionally
mentioned, as in _Pirke Eliezer_ and _Henoch_, cf. 48, 1. Others make
their number seven, as Tobit 12, 5; Revel. 2, 4–3, 1–4, 5. The angelic
doings are partly copied from the usages of the Jewish Temple, hence
the Jerusalem Targum renders Exod. 14, 24. ‘It happened in the morning
watch, the hour when the heavenly host sing praises before God’—comp.:
Luke 2, 13,—and the same reason is applied by the Targumist for the
sudden exit of the angel in Genes. 32, 26. One may perhaps, however,
be induced to ask whether (as in the case of Euthyphron in the
Platonic dialogue) a better cause for departure might not be found in
the inconvenience of remaining!

“Though I have Haug’s version of the Gathas, I am far from able to
decipher the grounds of difference between him and Spiegel. _Non
nostrum est tantas componere lites_, a volume entitled _Erân_ by Dr.
Spiegel contains, among other Essays, one entitled _Avesta and Veda_,
or the relation of Iran and India, and another _Avesta and Genesis_,
or the relation of Iran to the Semites. Weber’s _Morische Skizzen_
also contains interesting matter on similar subjects. We were speaking
about the magical significance of names. See as to this Origen against
Celsus, 1–24; Diod. Sicul, 1–22; Iamblicus de Myst, 2, 4, 5.

“Socrates himself appears superstitiously apprehensive about the use
of divine names in the Philebus 1, 2 and the Cratylus 400e. The
suppression of it among the Jews, (for instance in the Septuagint,
where Κυριος is substituted for Jehovah, and Sirach, Ch. 23, 9)
express the same feeling.

“We were talking of the original religion of Persia. You, of course,
recollect the passage on this subject in the first book of Herodotus,
Ch. 131, and Strabo 15, see 13, p. 732 Casaub. The practice of
prohibiting selfish prayer mentioned in the next following chapter in
Herodotus, is remarkable.

“I hope that in the above rigmarole a grain of useful matter may be
found. Mrs. Mackay is, I am glad to say, better to-day.

“I remain, sincerely yours,
“R. W. MACKAY.

“20th February, 1865,
“41, Hamilton Terrace, N.W.”

Another early acquaintance of mine in London was Lady Byron, the widow
of the poet. I called on her one day, having received from her a kind
note begging me to do so as she was unable to leave her house to come to
me. She had been exceedingly kind in procuring for me valuable letters
of introduction from Sir Moses Montefiore and others, which had been
very useful to me in my long wanderings.

Lady Byron was short in stature and, when I saw her, deadly pale; but
with a dignity which some of our friends called “royal,” albeit without
the smallest affectation or assumption. She talked to me eagerly about
all manner of good works wherein she was interested; notably concerning
Miss Carpenter’s Reformatory, to which she had practically subscribed
£1,000 by buying Red Lodge and making it over for such use. During the
larger part of the time of my visit she stood on the rug with her back
to the fire and the power and will revealed in her attitude and
conversation were very impressive. I bore in mind all the odious things
Byron had said of her:

“There was Miss Mill-pond, smooth as summer sea
That usual paragon, an only daughter,
Who seemed the cream of equanimity
Till skimmed, and then there was some milk and water.”

Also the sneers at her (very genuine) humour:

“Her wit, for she had wit, was Attic-all
Her favourite science was the mathematical” &c., &c.

I thought that for a man to hold up such a woman as _this_, and that
woman his wife, on the prongs of ridicule for public laughter was enough
to make him detestable.

A lady whom I met long afterwards told me, (I made a note of it Nov.
13th, 1869) that she had been stopping, at the time of Lady Byron’s
separation, at a very small seaside place in Norfolk. Lady Byron came
there on a visit to Mrs. Francis Cunningham, _née_ Gurney, as more
retired than Kirkby Mallory. She had then been separated about six weeks
or two months. She was (Mrs. B. said) singularly pleasing and healthful
looking, rather than pretty. She was grave and reticent rather than
depressed in spirits; and gave her friends to understand that there was
something she could not explain to them about her separation. Mrs. B.
_heard her say_ that Lord Byron always slept with pistols under his
pillow, and on one occasion had threatened to shoot her in the middle of
the night. There was much singing of duets going on in the two families,
but Lady Byron refused to take any part in it.

Miss Carpenter, who was entirely captivated by her, received from her
some charge amounting to literary executorship; but after one or two
furtive delvings into the trunks full of papers (since, I believe,
stored in Hoare’s bank), she gave up in despair. She told me that the
papers were in the most extraordinary confusion; letters both of the
most trivial and of the most serious and compromising kind, household
accounts, poems, and tradesmen’s bills, were all mixed together in
hopeless disorder and dust. As is well known, Byron’s famous verses:

“Fare thee well! and if for ever!”

were written on the back of a butcher’s bill—_unpaid_ like most of the
rest. Miss Carpenter vouched for this fact.

Lady Byron was at one time greatly attracted by Fanny Kemble. Among Mrs.
Kemble’s papers in my possession are seven letters from Lady Byron to
her. Here is one of them worth presenting:

“Dear Mrs. Kemble,

“The note you wrote to me before you left Brighton made me revert to a
train of thought which had been for some time in my mind. I alluded
once to “your Future.” I submit to be considered a Visionary, yet some
of my decided visions have come to pass in the course of years let me
tell you my Vision about _you_—That you are to be something _to the
People_; that your strong sympathy with them (though you will not let
them touch the hem of your garment) will bring your talents to bear
upon their welfare; that the way is open to you, after your personal
objects are fulfilled. My mind is so full of this, that though the
time has not arrived for putting it in practice, I cannot help telling
you of it. I am neither Democratic nor Aristocratic. I do not _see_
those distinctions in looking at Humanity, but I feel most strongly
that for every advantage we have received we are bound to offer
something to those who do not possess it. Happy they who have gifts to
place at the feet of their less favoured fellow-Christians!

“I cannot believe that a relation so truthful as yours and mine will
be merely casual. Time will show. I might not have an opportunity of
saying this in a visit.

“Yours most truly,
A. NOEL BYRON.”

“March 19th.

It is an unsolved mystery to me why such a woman did not definitely
adopt one of either of two courses. The first (and far the best) would,
of course, have been to bury her husband’s misdeeds in absolute silence
and oblivion, carefully destroying all papers relating to the tragedy of
their joint lives. Or, if she had not strength for this, to write
exactly what she thought ought to be known by posterity concerning him,
and put her account in safe hands with all the needful _pièces
justificatives_ before she died. That she did not adopt either one
course or the other must be a source of permanent regret to all who
recognized her great merits and honoured them as they deserved.

Among our neighbours in South Kensington, whom we were privileged to
know were many delightful people, who are still, I am happy to say,
living and taking active part in the world. Among them were Mr. Froude,
Mr. and Mrs. W. E. H. Lecky, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Mrs. Brookfield, Mrs.
Simpson, and Mrs. Richmond Ritchie. But of several others, alas! “the
place that knew them knows them no more.” Of these last were Mr. and
Mrs. Herman Merivale, Sir Henry Maine, Mrs. Dicey, Lady Monteagle (who
had written some of Wordsworth’s poems to his dictation as his
amanuensis), and my dear old friend Mrs. de Morgan.

Sir Henry Maine’s interest in the claims of women and his strong
statements on the subject, made me regard him with much gratitude. I
asked him once a question about St. Paul’s citizenship, to which he was
good enough to write so full and interesting a reply that I quote it
here _in extenso_:—

“Athenæum Club, Pall Mall, S.W.,
“April 6th, 1874.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“There is no question that for a considerable time before the
concession of the Roman citizenship to the whole empire, quite at all
events, B.C. 89 or 90,—it could be obtained in various ways by
individuals who possessed a lower franchise in virtue of their place
of birth or who were even foreigners. The legal writer, Ulpian,
mentions several of these modes of acquiring it; and Pliny, more than
once solicits the citizenship for protégés of his own. There is no
authority for supposing that it could be directly purchased (at least
_legally_), but it could be obtained by various processes which came
to the same thing as paying directly, _e.g._, building a ship of a
certain burden to carry corn to Rome.

“I suspect that St. Paul’s ancestor obtained the citizenship by
serving in some petty magistracy. The coins of Tarsus are said to show
that its citizens in the reign of Augustus, enjoyed one or other of
the lower Roman franchises; and this would facilitate the acquisition
by individuals of the full Roman citizenship.

“The Roman citizenship was necessarily hereditary. The children of the
person who became a Roman citizen came at once under his _Patria
Potestas_, and each of them acquired the capacity for becoming some
day a Roman _Paterfamilias_.

“St. Paul, as a Roman citizen, lived under the Roman Law of _Persons_,
but he remained under the local Law of _Property_. His allusions to
the _Patria Potestas_ and to the Roman Law of Wills and guardianship
(which was like the _Patria Potestas_), are quite unmistakeable, and
more numerous than is commonly supposed. In the obscure passage, for
example, about women having power over the head, “Power” and “Head”
are technical terms from the Roman Law.

“Believe me, very sincerely yours,
“H. S. MAINE.”

George Borrow who, if he were not a gipsy by blood _ought_ to have been
one, was, for some years, our near neighbour in Hereford Square. My
friend was amused by his quaint stories and his (real or sham)
enthusiasm for Wales, and cultivated his acquaintance. I never liked
him, thinking him more or less of a hypocrite. His missions, recorded in
the “_Bible in Spain_,” and his translations of the scriptures into the
out-of-the-way tongues, for which he had a gift, were by no means
consonant with his real opinions concerning the veracity of the said
Bible. Dr. Martineau once told me that he and Borrow had been
schoolfellows at Norwich some sixty years before. Borrow had persuaded
several of his other companions to rob their fathers’ tills, and then
the party set forth to join some smugglers on the coast. By degrees the
truants all fell out of line and were picked up, tired and hungry along
the road, and brought back to Norwich school where condign chastisement
awaited them. George Borrow it seems received his large share _horsed_
on James Martineau’s back! The early connection between the two old men
as I knew them, was irresistibly comic to my mind. Somehow when I asked
Mr. Borrow once to come and meet some friends at our house he accepted
our invitation as usual, but, on finding that Dr. Martineau was to be of
the party, hastily withdrew his acceptance on a transparent excuse; nor
did he ever after attend our little assemblies without first
ascertaining that Dr. Martineau would not be present!

I take the following from some old letters to my friend referring to
him:

“Mr. Borrow says his wife is very ill and anxious to keep the peace
with C. (a litigious neighbour). Poor old B. was very sad at first,
but I cheered him and sent him off quite brisk last night. He talked
all about the Fathers again, arguing that their quotations went to
prove that it was _not_ our gospels they had in their hands. I knew
most of it before, but it was admirably done. I talked a little
theology to him in a serious way (finding him talk of his ‘horrors’)
and he abounded in my sense of the non-existence of Hell, and of the
presence and action on the soul of _a_ Spirit, rewarding and
punishing. He would not say ‘God;’ but repeated over and over that he
spoke not from books but from his own personal experience.”

Some time later—after his wife’s death:

“Poor old Borrow is in a sad state. I hope he is starting in a day or
two for Scotland. I sent C. with a note begging him to come and eat
the Welsh mutton you sent me to-day, and he sent back word, ‘Yes.’
Then, an hour afterwards, he arrived, and in a most agitated manner
said he had come to say ‘he would rather not. He would not trouble
anyone with his sorrows.’ I made him sit down, and talked as gently to
him as possible, saying: ‘It won’t be a trouble Mr. Borrow, it will be
a pleasure to me’. But it was all of no use. He was so cross, so
_rude_, I had the greatest difficulty in talking to him. I asked about
his servant, and he said I could not help him. I asked him about
Bowring, and he said: ‘Don’t speak of it.’ [It was some dispute with
Sir John Bowring, who was an acquaintance of mine, and with whom I
offered to mediate.] ‘I asked him would he look at the photos of the
Siamese,’ and he said: ‘Don’t show them to me!’ So, in despair, as he
sat silent, I told him I had been at a pleasant dinner-party the night
before, and had met Mr. L——, who told me of certain curious books of
mediæval history. ‘Did he know them?’ ‘No, and he _dare said_ Mr. L——
did not, either! Who was Mr. L——?’ I described that _obscure_
individual, [one of the foremost writers of the day], and added that
he was immensely liked by everybody. Whereupon Borrow repeated at
least 12 times, ‘Immensely liked! As if a man could be immensely
liked!’ quite insultingly. To make a diversion (I was very patient
with him as he was in trouble) ‘I said I had just come home from the
Lyell’s and had heard—.’... But there was no time to say what I had
heard! Mr. Borrow asked: ‘Is that old Lyle I met here once, the man
who stands at the door (of some den or other) and _bets_?’ I explained
who Sir Charles was, (of course he knew very well), but he went on and
on, till I said gravely: ‘I don’t think you will meet those sort of
people here, Mr. Borrow. We don’t associate with blacklegs, exactly.’”

Here is an extract from another letter:

“Borrow also came, and I said something about the imperfect education
of women, and he said it was _right_ they should be ignorant, and that
no man could endure a clever wife. I laughed at him openly, and told
him some men knew better. What did he think of the Brownings? ‘Oh, he
had heard the name; he did not know anything of them. Since Scott, he
read no modern writer; Scott _was greater than Homer_! What he liked
were curious, old, erudite books about mediæval and northern things.’
I said I knew little of such literature, and preferred the writers of
our own age, but indeed I was no great student at all. Thereupon he
evidently wanted to astonish me; and, talking of Ireland, said, ‘Ah,
yes; a most curious, mixed race. First there were the Firbolgs,—the
old enchanters, who raised mists.’... ‘Don’t you think, Mr. Borrow,’ I
asked, ‘it was the Tuatha-de-Danaan who did that? Keatinge expressly
says that they conquered the Firbolgs by that means.’ (Mr. B.,
somewhat out of countenance), ‘Oh! Aye! Keatinge is _the_ authority; a
most extraordinary writer.’ ‘Well, I should call him the Geoffrey of
Monmouth of Ireland.’ (Mr. B., changing the _venue_), ‘I delight in
Norse-stories; they are far grander than the Greek. There is the story
of Olaf the Saint of Norway. Can anything be grander? What a noble
character!’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘what do you think of his putting all those
poor Druids on the Skerry of Shrieks and leaving them to be drowned by
the tide?’ (Thereupon Mr. B. looked at me askant out of his gipsy
eyes, as if he thought me an example of the evils of female
education!) ‘Well! well! I forgot about the Skerry of Shrieks. Then
there is the story of Beowulf the Saxon going out to sea in his
burning ship to die.’ ‘Oh, Mr. Borrow! that isn’t a Saxon story at
all. It is in the Heimskringla! It is told of Hakon of Norway.’ Then,
I asked him about the gipsies and their language, and if they were
certainly Aryans? He didn’t know (or pretended not to know) what
Aryans were; and altogether displayed a miraculous mixture of odd
knowledge and more odd ignorance. Whether the latter were real or
assumed, I know not!”

With the leading men of Science in the Sixties we had the honour of a
good deal of intercourse. Through Dr. W. B. Carpenter (who, as Miss
Carpenter’s brother, I had met often) and the two ever hospitable
families of Lyell, we came to know many of them. Sir William Grove was
also a particular friend of my friend Mrs. Grey. He and Lady Grove and
their daughter, Mrs. Hall, (Imogen), were all charming people, and we
had many pleasant dinners with them. Professor Tyndall was, of course,
one of the principal members of that scientific coterie, and in those
days we saw a good deal of him. He was very friendly as were also Mr.
and Mrs. Francis Galton. Mr. Galton’s speculations seemed always to me
exceedingly original and interesting, and I delighted in reviewing them.
The beginning of the Anti-vivisection controversy, however, put an end
to all these relations, so that since 1876, I have seen few of the
circle. It is curious to recall how nearly we joined hands on some
theological questions before this gulf of a great ethical difference
opened before us. Some readers may recall a curious controversy raised
by Prof. Tyndall on the subject of the efficacy of prayer for _physical_
benefits. Having read what he wrote on it, I sent him my own little
book, _Dawning Lights_, which vindicates the efficacy of prayer, for
spiritual benefits only. The following was his reply, to which I will
append another kindly note referring to a request I had proffered on
behalf of Mrs. Somerville.

“Professor Tyndall to F. P. C.
“Royal Institution of Great Britain,
“7th Nov., 1865.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“Our minds—that is yours and mine—sound the same note as regards the
economy of nature. With clearness and precision you have stated the
question. In fact, had I known that you had written upon the subject I
might have copied your words and put my name to them.

“I intend to _keep_ your book, but I have desired my publisher to send
you a book of mine in exchange—this is fair, is it not?

“Your book so far as I have read it is full of strength. Of course I
could not have written it all. Your images are too concrete and your
personification of the mystery of mysteries too intense for me. But as
long as you are tolerant of others—which you are—the shape into which
you mould the power of your soul must be determined by yourself alone.

“Believe me, yours most truly,
“JOHN TYNDALL.”

“Royal Institution of Great Britain,
“21st June.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I would do anything I could for _your_ sake and irrespectively of the
interest of your subject.

“Had I Faraday’s own letter, I could decipher at once what he meant,
for I was intimately acquainted with his course of thought during the
later years of his life. It would however be running a great risk to
attempt to supply this hiatus without seeing his letter.

“I should think it refers to the influence of _time_ on magnetic
action. About the date referred to he was speculating and trying to
prove experimentally whether magnetism required time to pass through
space.

“Always yours faithfully,
“JOHN TYNDALL.”

In a letter of mine to a friend written after meeting Prof. Tyndall at
dinner at Edgbaston during the Congress of the British Association in
Birmingham, after mentioning M. Vambéry and some others, I said; “The
one I liked best was Prof. Tyndall, with whom I had quite an ‘awful’
talk alone about the bearing of Science on Religion. He said in words
like a fine poem, that Knowledge seemed to him ‘like an instrument on
which we went up, note after note, and octave after octave; but at last
there came a note which our ears could not hear, and which was silent
for us. And at the other end of the scale there was another silent
note.’”

Many years after this, there appeared an article in the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ which I felt sure was by Prof. Tyndall, in which it was calmly
stated that the scientific intellect had settled the controversy between
Pantheism and Theism, and that the said Scientific Intellect “permitted
us to believe in an order of Development,” and would “allow the
religious instincts and the language of Religion to gather round that
idea;” but that the notion of a “Great Director” can by no means be
suffered by the same Scientific Intellect.

I wrote a reply, begging to be informed _when_ and _where_ the
controversy between Pantheism and Theism had been settled, as the
statement, dropped so coolly in a single paragraph, was, to say the
least, startling; and I concluded by saying, “We may be _driven_ into
the howling wilderness of a Godless world by the fiery swords of these
new Cherubim of Knowledge; but at least we will not shrink away into it
before their innuendoes!”

I have also lost in quitting this circle, the privilege of often meeting
Mr. Herbert Spencer; though he has never (to his honour be it
remembered!) pronounced a word in favour of painful experiments on
animals.

With the great naturalist who has revolutionized modern science I had
rather frequent intercourse till the same sad barrier of a great
difference of moral opinion arose between us. Mr. Charles Darwin’s
brother-in-law, Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, was, for a time tenant here at
Hengwrt; and afterwards took a house named Caer-Deon in this
neighbourhood, where Mr. and Mrs. Charles Darwin and their boys also
spent part of the summer. As it chanced, we also took a cottage that
summer close by Caer-deon and naturally saw our neighbours daily. I had
known Mr. Darwin previously, in London, and had also met his most
amiable brother, Mr. Erasmus Darwin, at the house of my kind old friend
Mrs. Reid, the foundress of Bedford Square College. The first thing we
heard concerning the illustrious arrivals was the report, that one of
the sons had had “_a fall off a Philosopher_;” word substituted by the
ingenious Welsh mind for “velocipede” (as bicycles were then called)
under an easily understood confusion between the rider and the machine
he rode!

Next,—the Welsh parson of the little church close by, having fondly
calculated that Mr. Darwin would certainly hasten to attend his
services, prepared for him a sermon which should slay this scientific
Goliath and spread dismay through the ranks of the sceptical host. He
told his congregation that there were in these days persons, puffed up
by science, falsely so called, and deluded by the pride of reason, who
had actually been so audacious as to question the story of the six days
Creation as detailed in Sacred Scripture. But let them note how idle
were these sceptical questionings! Did they not see that the events
recorded happened before there was any man existing to record them, and
that, therefore, Moses _must_ have learned them from God himself, since
there was no one else to tell him?

Alas! the philosopher, I fear, never went to be converted (as he surely
must have been) by this ingenious Welsh parson, and we were for a long
time merry over his logic. Mr. Darwin was never in good health, I
believe, after his Beagle experience of sea sickness, and he was glad to
use a peaceful and beautiful old pony of my friend’s, yclept Geraint,
which she placed at his disposal. His gentleness to this beast and
incessant efforts to keep off the flies from his head, and his fondness
for his dog Polly (concerning whose cleverness and breeding he indulged
in delusions which Matthew Arnold’s better dog-lore would have swiftly
dissipated), were very pleasing traits in his character.

In writing at this time to a friend I said:—

“I am glad you like Mill’s book. Mr. Charles Darwin, with whom I am
enchanted, is greatly excited about it, but says that Mill could learn
some things from physical science; and that it is in the struggle for
existence and (especially) for the possession of women that men
acquire their vigour and courage. Also he intensely agrees with what I
say in my review of Mill about _inherited_ qualities being more
important than _education_, on which alone Mill insists. All this the
philosopher told me yesterday, standing on a path 60 feet above me and
carrying on an animated dialogue from our respective standpoints!”

Mr. Darwin was walking on the footpath down from Caer-Deon among the
purple heather which clothes our mountains so royally; and impenetrable
brambles lay between him above and me on the road below; so we exchanged
our remarks at the top of our voices, being too eager to think of the
absurdity of the situation, till my friend coming along the road heard
with amazement words flying in the air which assuredly those “valleys
and rocks never heard” before, or since! When we drive past that spot,
as we often do now, we sigh as we look at the “Philosopher’s Path,” and
wish (O, _how_ one wishes!) that he could come back and tell us what he
has learned _since_!

At this time Mr. Darwin was writing his _Descent of Man_, and he told me
that he was going to introduce some new view of the nature of the Moral
Sense. I said: “Of course you have studied Kant’s _Grundlegung der
Sitten_?” No; he had not read Kant, and did not care to do so. I
ventured to urge him to study him, and observed that one could hardly
see one’s way in ethical speculation without some understanding of his
philosophy. My own knowledge of it was too imperfect to talk of it to
him, but I could lend him a very good translation. He declined my book,
but I nevertheless packed it up with the next parcel I sent him.

On returning the volume he wrote to me:—

“It was very good of you to send me _nolens volens_ Kant, together
with the other book. I have been extremely glad to look through the
former. It has interested me much to see how differently two men may
look at the same points. Though I fully feel how presumptuous it
sounds to put myself even for a moment in the same bracket with
Kant—the one man a great philosopher looking exclusively into his own
mind, the other a degraded wretch looking from the outside through
apes and savages at the moral sense of mankind.”

There was irony, and perhaps not a little pride in his reference to
himself as a “degraded wretch looking through apes and savages at the
moral sense of mankind”! Between the two great Schools of
thinkers,—those who study from the Inside (of human consciousness),
and those who study from the Outside,—there has always existed mutual
animosity and contempt. For my own part, while fully admitting that
the former needed to have their conclusions enlarged and tested by
outside experience, I must always hold that they were on a truer line
than the (exclusively) physico-scientific philosophers. Man’s
consciousness is not only _a_ fact in the world but the _greatest_ of
facts; and to overlook it and take our lessons from beasts and insects
is to repeat the old jest of Hamlet with Hamlet omitted. A philosophy
founded solely on the consciousness of man, _may_; and, very likely,
will, be imperfect; and certainly it will be incomplete. But a
philosophy which begins with inorganic matter and the lower animals,
and only includes the outward facts of anthropology, regardless of
human consciousness,—_must_ be worse than imperfect and incomplete. It
resembles a treatise on the Solar System which should omit to notice
the Sun.

I mentioned to him in a letter, that we had found some seeds of
Tropæolum, very carefully gathered from brilliant and multicoloured
varieties, all revert in a single year to plain scarlet. He
replied:—“You and Miss Lloyd need not have your faith in inheritance
shaken with respect to Tropæolum until you have prevented for six or
seven generations any crossing between the varieties in the same garden.
I have lately found the very shade of colour is transmitted of a most
fluctuating garden variety if the flowers are carefully self-fertilized
during six or seven generations.”

The _Descent of Man_ of which Mr. Darwin was kind enough to give me a
copy before publication, inspired me with the deadliest alarm. His new
theory therein set forth, respecting the nature and origin of
conscience, seemed to me then, and still seems to me, of absolutely
fatal import. I wrote the strongest answer to it in my power at once,
and published in the _Theological Review_, April, 1871 (reprinted in my
_Darwinism in Morals_, 1872). Of course I sent my review to Down House.
Here is a generous message which I received in reply:—

“Mr. Darwin is reading the _Review_ with the greatest interest and
attention and feels so much the kind way you speak of him and the
praise you give him, that it will make him bear your severity, when he
reaches that part of the review.”

Referring to an article of mine in the _Quarterly Review_ (Oct., 1872)
on the _Consciousness of Dogs_, Mr. Darwin wrote to me, Nov. 28th,
1872:—

“I have been greatly interested by your article in the _Quarterly_. It
seems to me the best analysis of the mind of an animal which I have
ever read, and I agree with you on most points. I have been
particularly glad to read what you say about the reasoning power of
dogs, and about that rather vague matter, their self-consciousness. I
dare say however that you would prefer criticism to admiration.

“I regret that you quote J. so often: I made enquiries about one case
(which quite broke down) from a man who certainly ought to know Mr. J.
well; and I was cautioned that he had not written in a scientific
spirit. I regret also that you quote old writers. It may be very
illiberal, but their statements go for nothing with me and I suspect
with many others. It passes my powers of belief that dogs ever commit
suicide. Assuming the statements to be true, I should think it more
probable that they were distraught, and did not know what they were
doing; nor am I able to credit about fetishes.

“One of the most interesting subjects in your article seems to me to
be about the moral sense. Since publishing the _Descent of Man_ I have
got to believe rather more than I did in dogs having what may be
called a conscience. When an honourable dog has committed an
undiscovered offence he certainly seems _ashamed_ (and this is the
term naturally and often used) rather than _afraid_ to meet his
master. My dog, the beloved and beautiful Polly, is at such times
extremely affectionate towards me; and this leads me to mention a
little anecdote. When I was a very little boy, I had committed some
offence, so that my conscience troubled me, and when I met my father,
I lavished so much affection on him, that he at once asked me what I
had done, and told me to confess. I was so utterly confounded at his
suspecting anything, that I remember the scene clearly to the present
day, and it seems to me that Polly’s frame of mind on such occasions
is much the same as was mine, for I was not then at all afraid of my
father.”

In a letter to a friend (Nov., 1869) I say:—

“We lunched with Mr. Charles Darwin at Mr. Erasmus D——’s house on
Sunday. He told us that a German man of science, (I think Carl Vogt),
the other day gave a lecture, in which he treated the Mass as the last
relic of that _Cannibalism_ which gradually took to eating only the
heart, or eyes of a man to acquire his courage. Whereupon the whole
audience rose and cheered the lecturer enthusiastically! Mr. Darwin
remarked how much more _decency_ there was in speaking on such
subjects in England.”

This pleasant intercourse with an illustrious man was, like many other
pleasant things, brought to a close for me in 1875 by the beginning of
the Anti-vivisection crusade. Mr. Darwin eventually became the centre of
an adoring _clique_ of vivisectors who (as his Biography shows) plied
him incessantly with encouragement to uphold their practice, till the
deplorable spectacle was exhibited of a man who would not allow a fly to
bite a pony’s neck, standing forth before all Europe (in his celebrated
letter to Prof. Holmgren of Sweden) as the advocate of Vivisection.

We had many interesting foreign visitors in Hereford Square. I have
mentioned the two Parsee gentlemen who came to thank me for having made
(as they considered) a just estimate of their religion in my article
“_The Sacred Books of the Zoroastrians_.” The elder of them, Mr.
Nowrozjee Furdoonjee, was President of the Parsee Society of Bombay; but
resided much in England, and had an astonishing knowledge of English and
American theological and philosophic literature. He asked me one day to
recommend him the best modern books on ethics. My small library
contained a good many, but he not only knew every one I possessed, but
almost all others which I named as worthy of his attention. We talked
very freely on religious matters and with a good deal of sympathy. I
pressed him one day with the question, “Do you really believe in
Ahriman?” “Of course I do!” “What! In a real personal Evil Being, who is
as much a _person_ as Ormusd?” “O no! I did not mean that! I believe in
Evil existing in the world;”—and obviously in nothing more!

My chief Eastern visitors, however (and they were so numerous that my
artist-minded friend was wont to call them my “Bronzes”), were the
Brahmos of Bengal, and one or two of the same faith from Bombay. There
were very remarkable young men at that date, members of the “Church of
the One God;” nearly all of them having risen from the gross idolatry in
which they had been educated into a purer Theistic faith, not without
encountering considerable family and social persecution. Their leader,
Keshub Chunder Sen at any other age of the world, would have taken his
place with such prophets as Nanuk (the founder of the Sikh religion) and
Gautama; or with the mediæval Saints like St. Augustine and St. Patrick,
who converted nations. He was, I think, the most _devout_ man with whose
mind I ever came in contact. When he left my drawing-room after long
conversations on the highest themes,—sometimes held alone together,
sometimes with the company of my dear friend William Henry Channing—the
impression left on me was one never-to-be-forgotten. I wrote of one such
interview at the time to my friend as follows (April 28, 1870):

“Keshub came and sat with me the other evening, and I was profoundly
impressed, not by his intellect but by his goodness. He seems really
to _live in God_, and the single-mindedness of the man seemed to me
utterly un-English; much more like Christ! He said some very profound
things, and seemed to feel that the joy of prayer was quite the
greatest thing in life. He said, ‘I don’t know anything about the
future, but I only know that when I pray I feel that my union with God
is eternal. In our faith the belief in God and in Immortality are not
two doctrines but one.’ He also said that we must believe in
intercessory prayer, else _the more we lived in Prayer the more
selfish we should grow_. He told me much of the _beginning_ of his own
religious life, and, wonderful to say, his words would have described
that of my own! He said, indeed, that he had often laid down my books
when reading them in India, and said to himself: ‘How can this English
woman have felt all this just as I?’”

In his outward man Keshub Chunder Sen was the ideal of a great teacher.
He had a tall, manly figure, always clothed in a long black robe of some
light cloth like a French _soutane_, a very handsome square face with
powerful jaw; the complexion and eyes of a southern Italian; and all the
Eastern gentle dignity of manner. He and his friend Mozoomdar and
several others of his party spoke English quite perfectly; making long
addresses and delivering extempore sermons in our language without error
of any kind, or a single betrayal of foreign accent. Keshub in
particular, was decidedly eloquent in English. I gathered many
influential men to meet him and they were impressed by him as much as I
was.

The career of this very remarkable man was cut short a few years after
his return from England by an early death. I believe he had taken to
ascetic practices, fasting and watching; against which I had most
urgently warned him, seeing his tendency towards them. I had argued with
him that, not only were they totally foreign to the spirit of simple
Theism, but dangerous to a man who, living habitually in the highest
realms of human emotion, needed _all the more for that reason_ that the
physical basis of his life should be absolutely sound and strong, and
not subject to the variabilities and possible hallucinations attendant
on abstinence. My friendly counsels were of no avail. Keshub became, I
believe, somewhat too near a “Yogi” (if I rightly understand that word)
and was almost worshipped by his congregation of Brahmos. The marriage
of his daughter—who has since visited England—to the Maharajah of Coosh
Behar, involved very painful discussions about the legal age of the
bride and the ceremonies of a Hindoo marriage, which were insisted on by
the bridegroom’s mother; and the last year or two of Keshub’s life were,
I fear, darkened by the secessions from his church which followed an
event otherwise gratifying.

Oddly enough this Indian _Saint_ was the only Eastern it has ever been
my chance to meet who could enjoy a joke thoroughly, like one of
ourselves. He came to me in Hereford Square one day bursting with
uncontrollable laughter at his own adventures. Lord Lawrence, when
Governor-General of India, had been particularly friendly to him and had
bidden him come and see him when he should arrive in England. Keshub’s
friends had found a lodging for him in Regent’s Park, and having
resolved to go and pay his respects to Lord Lawrence at once, he sent
for a four-wheeled cab, and simply told the cabman to drive to that
nobleman’s house; fondly imagining that all London must know it, as
Calcutta knew Government House. The cabman set off without the remotest
idea where to go; and after driving hither and thither about town for
three hours, set his fare down again at the door of his lodgings; told
him he could not find Lord Lawrence; and charged him fourteen shillings!
Poor Keshub paid the scandalous charge, and then referred to an old
letter to find Lord Lawrence’s address, “_Queen’s Gate_.” Oh, that was
quite right! No doubt the late Governor-General naturally lived close to
the Queen! “Drive to Queen’s Gate.” The new cabman drove straight enough
to “Queen’s Gate”; but about 185 houses appeared in a row, and there was
nothing to indicate which of them belonged to Lord Lawrence; not even a
solitary sentinel walking before the door! After knocking at many doors
in vain, the cabman had an inspiration! “We will try if the nearest
butcher knows which house it is;” and so they turned into Gloucester
Road, and the excellent butcher there did know which number in Queen’s
Gate belonged to Lord Lawrence, and Keshub was received and warmly
welcomed. But that he should have to seek out a _butcher’s shop_ (in his
Eastern eyes the most degraded of shops) to learn where he could find a
man whom he had last seen as Viceroy of India, was, to his thinking,
exquisitely ridiculous.

Ex-Governors-General and their wives must certainly find some difficulty
in descending all at once so many steps from the altitude of the
viceregal thrones of our great dependencies to the level of private
citizens, scarcely to be noticed more than others in society, and
dwelling in ordinary London houses unmarked by the “guard of honour” of
even a single policeman!

At a later date I had other Oriental visitors, one a gentleman who had
made a translation of the Bhagvat-Gita, and who brought his wife and
children to England, and to my tea-table. The wife wore a lovely,
delicate lilac robe wrapped about her in the most graceful folds, but
the effect was somewhat marred by the vulgar English side-spring boots,
(very short in the leg), which the poor soul had found needful for use
in London! The children sat opposite me at the tea-table, silently
devouring my cakes and bon-bons; staring at me with their large black
eyes, veritable _wells_ of mistrust and hatred, such as only Eastern
eyes can speak! I like dark _men_ and _women_ very well, but when the
little ones are in question, I must confess that a child is scarcely a
child to me unless it be a little Saxon, with golden hair and those
innocent blue eyes which make one think of forget-me-nots in a brook.
Where is the heart which can help growing soft at sight of one of these
little creatures toddling in the spring grass picking daisies and
cowslips, or laughing with sheer ecstacy in the joy of existence? A dark
child may be ten times as handsome, but it has no pretension, to my
mind, to pull one’s heart-strings in the same way as a blonde babykins.

A Hindoo lady, Ramabai, for whom I have deep respect, came to me before
I left London and impressed me most favourably. She, and a few other
Hindoo women who are striving to secure education and freedom for their
sisters, will be honoured hereafter more than John Howard, for he strove
only to mitigate the too severe punishment of _criminals_ and
delinquents; _they_ are labouring to relieve the quite equally dreadful
lot of millions of _innocent_ women. An American Missionary, Mr. Dall,
long resident in India, told me that thousands of these unhappy beings
_never put their feet to the earth_ or go a step from the house of their
husbands (to which they are carried from their father’s Zenana at 9 or
10 years old) till they were borne away as corpses! All life for them
has been one long imprisonment; its sole interest and concern the
passions of the baser sort of love and jealousy! While writing these
pages I have come across the following frightful testimony by the great
traveller Mrs. Bishop (_née_ Isabella Bird) to the truth of the above
observation concerning the dreadful condition of the women of India:—

“I have lived in Zenanas and harems, and have seen the daily life of
the secluded women, and I can speak from bitter experience of what
their lives are; the intellect dwarfed, so that the woman of twenty or
thirty years of age is more like a child of eight intellectually,
while all the worst passions of human nature are stimulated and
developed in a fearful degree; jealousy, envy, murderous hate,
intrigue, running to such an extent that in some countries I have
hardly ever been in a woman’s house or near a woman’s tent without
being asked for drugs with which to disfigure the favourite wife, to
take away her life, or to take away the life of the favourite wife’s
infant son. This request has been made of me nearly two hundred
times.”

(_Quoted by Lady Henry Somerset in the Woman’s Signal_, April 12th,
1894).

I had the pleasure also of visits from several French and Belgian
gentlemen who were good enough to call on me. Several were Protestant
pastors of the _École Moderne_; M. Fontanés, M. Th. Bost, and M. Leblois
being among them. I had long kept up a correspondence with M. Felix
Pécaut, author of a beautiful book “_Le Christ et la Conscience_,” of
whom Dean Stanley told me that he (who knew him well) believed him to be
“the most pious of living men.” I never had the happiness to meet him,
but seeing, some twenty years later, in a Report by Mr. Matthew Arnold
on French Training Schools, enthusiastic praise of M. Pécaut’s school
for female teachers, at Fontenaye-aux-Roses, near Paris, I sent it to my
old friend, and we exchanged a mental handshake across time and space.

An illustrious neighbour of ours, in South Kensington sometimes came to
see me. Here is a lively complimentary letter from him:—

“From M. le Sénateur Victor Schœlcher to Miss Cobbe.

“Paris, 12, 1883.

“Dear, honoured Miss Power Cobbe,

“Je ne vous ai pas oubliée, on ne vous oublie pas quand on a eu
l’honneur et le plaisir de vous connaître. Moi je suis accablé
d’ouvrage et je ne fais pas la moitié de ce que je voudrais faire. Je
ne manque pas toutefois de lire votre _Zoophile_ Français qui aidera
puissamment notre Ligue à combattre les abus de la Vivisection. Tous
ceux qui ont quelque sentiment d’humanité écouteront votre voix en
faveur des pauvres animaux et vous aideront de toutes leur forces à
les protéger contre un genre d’étude veritablement barbare. Quand à
moi, l’activité, la persévérance et le talent que vous montrez dans
votre œuvre de charité m’inspirent le plus vif et le plus respectueux
intérêt.

“Ne croyez pas ceux qui tentent de vous décourager en prétendant que
votre journal est une substance trop aride pour attacher le lecteur
Français. Je le sais; il est convenu en Angleterre que les Français
sont un peuple léger. Mais c’est là un vieux préjugé que ne gardent
pas les Anglais instruits. Soyez bien assuré que vos efforts ne seront
pas plus peine perdue dans mon noble pays que dans le votre. Notre
Société Protectrice des Animaux a quarante ans d’existence.

“À mon prochain voyage à Londres je m’empresserai d’aller vous faire
visite pour retrouver le plaisir que j’ai gouté dans votre
conversation et pour vous répéter, Dear Miss Power Cobbe, that I am
your’s most respectfully and faithfully,

“V. SCHŒLCHER.

“Permettez moi de vous prier de me rappeler au souvenir de Madame la
Doctoresse, et de M. le Dr. Hoggan.”

It was M. Schœlcher who effected in 1848 the abolition of Negro Slavery
in the French Colonies. He was a charming companion and a most excellent
man. I interceded once with him to make interest with the proper
authorities in France for the relaxation of the extremely severe
penalties which Louise Michel had incurred by one of her extravagances.
To my surprise, I learned from him that I had gone to head-quarters,
since the matter would mainly rest in his hands. He was
Vice-President,—practically President—of the Department of Prisons in
France. He repeated with indulgence, “Mais, Madame, elle est folle! elle
est parfaitement folle, et très dangereuse.” I quite agreed, but still
thought she was well-meaning, and that her sentence was excessive. He
promised that when the first year of her imprisonment was over (with
which, he said, they made it a rule never to interfere so as not to
insult the judges,) he would see what could be done to let her off by
degrees. He observed, with more earnestness than I should have expected
from one of his political school, how wrong, dangerous and _wicked_ it
was to go about with a black flag at the head of a mob. Still he agreed
with my view that the length of Louise Michel’s sentence was unjustly
great. Eventually the penalty was actually commuted; I conclude through
the intervention of M. Schœlcher.

M. Schœlcher was the most attractive Frenchman I ever met. At the time I
knew him, he was old and feeble and had a miserable cough; but he was
most emphatically a gentleman, a tender, even soft-hearted man; and a
brilliantly agreeable talker. He had made a magnificent collection of
9,000 engravings, and told me he was going to present it to the _Beaux
Arts_ in Paris. While sitting talking in my drawing-room his eye
constantly turned to a particularly fine cast which I possess of the
Psyche of Praxiteles, made expressly for Harriet Hosmer and given by her
to me in Rome. When he rose to leave me, he stood under the lovely
creature and _worshipped_ her as she deserves!

We had also many delightful American visitors, whose visits gave me so
much pleasure and profit that I easily forgave one or two others who
provoked Fanny Kemble’s remark that “if the engineers would _lay on_
Miss P. or Mr. H. the Alps would be bored through without any trouble!”
Most of my American friendly visitors are, I rejoice to say, still
living, so I will only name them with an expression of my great esteem
for all and affection for several of them. Among them were Col.
Higginson, Mr. George Curtis, Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Livermore, Mr. and Mrs.
Loring-Brace, Rev. J. Freeman Clarke, Rev. W. Alger, Dr. O. W. Holmes,
Mr. Peabody, Miss Harriet Hosmer, Mr. Hazard, Mrs. Lockwood, and my
dearly beloved friends, W. H. Channing, Mrs. Apthorp, Mrs. Wister, Miss
Schuyler and Miss Georgina Schuyler. Sometimes American ladies would
come to me as perfect strangers with a letter from some mutual friend,
and would take me by storm and after a couple of hours’ conversation we
parted as if we had known and loved each other for years. There is
something to my mind unique in the attractiveness of American women,
when they are, as usual, attractive; but they are like the famous little
girl with the “curl in the middle of her forehead,”—

“When she was good, she was very, very good;
When she was bad, she was horrid”!

The wholesome horror felt by us, Londoners, of outstaying our welcome
when visiting acquaintances, and of trespassing too long at any hour,
seems to be an unknown sentiment to some Americans, and also to some
Australian ladies; and for my own part I fear that being bored is a kind
of martyrdom which I can never endure in a Christian spirit, or without
beginning to regard the man or woman who bores me with most uncharitable
sentiments. My young Hindoo visitors drove me distracted till I
discovered that they imagined a visit to me to be _an audience_, and
that it was for me to _dismiss_ them!

I met Longfellow during his last visit to England at the house of Mr.
Wynne-Finch. His large, leonine head, surmounted at that date by a
_nimbus_ of white hair, was very striking indeed. I saw him standing a
few moments alone, and ventured to introduce myself as a friend of his
friends, the Apthorps, of Boston, and when I gave my name he took both
my hands and pressed them with delightful cordiality. We talked for a
good while, but I cannot recall any particular remark he may have made.

Mr. Wynne-Finch was stepfather of Alice L’Estrange, who, before her
marriage with Laurence Oliphant was for a long time our most assiduous
and affectionate visitor, having taken a young girl’s _engouement_ for
us two elderly women. Never was there a more bewitching young creature,
so sweetly affectionate, so clever and brilliant in every way. It was
quite dazzling to see such youth and brightness flitting about us. An
old letter of hers to my friend which I chance to have fallen on is
alive still with her playfulness and tenderness. It begins thus:—

“4, Upper Brook Street,
“London, Oct. 3rd, 1871.

“O yes! I know! It isn’t so very long since I heard last, and _I am_
in London, which I am enjoying, and am busy in a thousand little messy
things which amuse me, and I was with Miss Cobbe on Tuesday which was
bliss absolute, and above all I heard about you from her (beside all
the talk on that forbidden subject,—it is _so_ disagreeable of us,
isn’t it?). I felt that ingratitude for mercies received which
characterises our race so strong in me that I want a sight of your
writing, as that is all I can get just now,” &c., &c.

Alice was of an extremely sceptical turn of mind (which made her
subsequent fanaticism the more inexplicable), and for months before she
fell in with Mr. Oliphant in Paris I had been labouring with all my
strength to lead her simply _to believe in God_. She did not see her way
to such faith at all, though she was docile enough to read the many
books I gave her, and to come with us and her stepfather to hear Dr.
Martineau’s sermons. She incessantly discussed theological questions,
but always from the point of view of the evil in creation, and, as she
used to say pathetically, of “the insufferableness of the suffering of
others.” She argued that the misery of the world was so great that a
good God if He could not relieve it, ought to hurl it to destruction. In
vain I argued that there is a higher end of creation than Happiness, to
be wrought out through trial and pain. She would never admit the loftier
conception of God’s purposes as they appeared to me, and was to all
intents and purposes an Atheist when she said good-bye to me, before a
short trip to Paris. She came back in a month or six weeks, not merely a
believer in the ordinary orthodox creed, but inspired with the zeal of
an _energumène_ for the doctrines, very much over and above orthodoxy,
of Mr. Harris! Our gentle, caressing, modest young friend was entirely
transformed. She stood upright and walked up and down our rooms, talking
with vehemence about Mr. Harris’ doctrines, and the necessity for
adopting his views, obeying his guidance, and going immediately to live
on the shores of Lake Erie! The transfiguration was, I suppose, _au
fond_, one of the many miracles of the little god with the bow and
arrows and Mr. Oliphant was certainly not unconcerned therein. But still
there was no adequate explanation of this change, or of the boasting
(difficult to hear with patience from a clever and sceptical woman) of
the famous “method” of obtaining fresh supplies of Divine spirit, by the
process of holding one’s breath for some minutes—according to Mr.
Harris’ pneumatology! The whole thing was infinitely distressing, even
revolting to us; and we sympathised much with her stepfather (my
friend’s old friend) who had loved her like a father, and was driven
wild by the insolent pretentions of Mr. Harris to stop the marriage, of
which all London had heard, unless his monstrous demands were previously
obeyed! At last Alice walked by herself one morning to her Bank, and
ordered her whole fortune to be transferred to Mr. Harris; and this
without the simplest settlement or security for her future support!
After this heroic proceeding, the Prophet of Lake Erie graciously
consented, (in a way,) to her marriage; and England saw her and Mr.
Oliphant no more for many years. What that very helpless and
self-indulgent young creature must have gone through in her solitary
cottage on Lake Erie, and subsequently in her poor little school in
California, can scarcely be guessed. When she returned to England she
wrote to us from Hunstanton Hall, (her brother’s house), offering to
come and see us, but we felt that it would cause us more pain than
pleasure to meet her again, and, in a kindly way, we declined the
proposal. Since her sad death, and that of Mr. Oliphant, an American
friend of mine, Dr. Leffingwell, travelling in Syria, wrote me a letter
from her house at Haifa. He found her books still on the shelves where
she had left them; and the first he took down was Parker’s _Discourse of
Religion_ inscribed “From Frances Power Cobbe to Alice L’Estrange.”

A less tragic _souvenir_ of poor Alice occurs to me as I write. It is so
good an illustration of the difference between English and French
politeness that I must record it.

Alice was going over to Paris alone, and as I happened to know that a
distinguished and very agreeable old French gentleman of my acquaintance
was crossing by the same train, I wrote and begged him to look after her
on the way. He replied in the kindest and most graceful manner as
follows:—

“Chère Mademoiselle,

“Vraiment vous me comblez de toutes les manières. Après l’aimable
accueil que vous avez bien voulu me faire, vous songez encore à mes
ennuis de voyage seul, et vous voulez bien me procurer la société la
plus agréable. Agréez en tous mes remercîments, quoique je ne puisse
m’empêcher de songer que s’il avait moins neigé sur la montagne (comme
disent les Orientaux) vous seriez moins confiante. Je serai trop
heureux de me mettre au service de votre amie.

“Agréez, chère Mademoiselle, les hommages respectueux de votre,

“Dévoué serviteur,
BARON DE T.”

“1 Déc., 1871.

They met at Charing Cross, and no man could be more charming than M. le
Baron de T. made himself in the train and on the boat. But on arrival at
Boulogne it appeared that Alice’s luggage had either gone astray or been
stopped by the custom-house people; and she was in a difficulty, the
train for Paris being ready to start, and the French officials paying no
attention to her entreaty that her trunks should be delivered and put
into the van to take with her. Of course the appearance by her side of a
French gentleman with the _Legion d’Honneur_ in his buttonhole would
have probably decided the case in her favour at once. But M. de T. had
not the least idea of losing his train and getting into an imbroglio for
sake of a damsel in distress,—so, with many assurances that he was quite
_désolé_ to lose the enchanting pleasure of her society up to Paris, he
got into his carriage and was quickly carried out of sight. Meanwhile a
rather ordinary-looking Englishman who had noted Miss L’Estrange’s
awkward situation, went up to her and asked in a gruff fashion; what was
the matter? When he was informed, he let his train go off and ran hither
and thither about the station, till at last the luggage was found and
restored to its owner. Then, when Alice strove naturally, to thank him,
he simply raised his hat,—said, it was of “no consequence,” and
disappeared to trouble her no more.

“Which, therefore, was neighbour to him that fell among thieves?”

POSTSCRIPT, 1898.

So many recollections of Mr. Gladstone have been published since his
death that it seems hardly worth while to record mine. I saw him only at
intervals and never had the honour of any intimate acquaintance with
him; but one or two glimpses of him may perhaps amuse my readers as
exhibiting his astonishing versatility.

I first met him, some time in the Sixties, in North Wales when he came
from Hawarden to visit at a house where I was spending a few days, and
joined me in walking to the summit of Penmaen-bach. He talked, I need
not say, delightfully all the way as we sauntered up, but I remember
only his sympathetic rejoinder to my dislike of mules for such mountain
expeditions,—that he had felt quite remorseful on concluding some tour
(I think in the Pyrenees), for hating so much a beast to which he had
often owed his life!

Some years after this pleasant climb, I was surprised and, of course,
much flattered to receive from him the following note. I know not who
was the friend who sent him my pamphlet. It had not occurred to me to do
so.

“4, Carlton Gardens,
“March 1st, 1876.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I do not know whom I have to thank for sending me your” (word
illegible) “article on Vivisection, but the obligation is great, for I
seldom read a paper possessed with such a spirit of nobleness from
first to last.

“It is long since we met on the slopes of Penmaen-bach. Do you ever go
out to breakfast, and could we persuade you to be so kind as to come
to us on Thursday, March 9, at ten?

“Believe me, faithfully yours,
“W. E. GLADSTONE.”

The breakfast in Carlton Gardens was a very interesting one. Before it
began Mr. Gladstone took me into his library, and we talked for a
considerable time on the subject of Vivisection. At the close of our
conversation, finding him apparently agreeing very cordially with me, I
asked, if he would not join the Victoria Street Society which I had then
recently founded? He replied that he would rather not do so; but that if
ever he returned to office, he would help me to the best of his power.
This promise, I may here say, was given very seriously after making the
observation that he was no longer (at that time) in the position of
influence he had occupied in previous years; but he obviously
anticipated his return to power,—which actually followed not long
afterwards. He repeated this promise of help to me four times in
conversation and once on one of his famous post-cards; and again in
writing to Lord Shaftesbury in reply to a Memorial which the latter
presented to him, signed by 100 of the foremost names, as regarded
intellect and character, in England. Always Mr. Gladstone repeated the
same assurance: “All his sympathies were” with us. Here is the letter on
the card, dated April 1st, 1877, in reply to my request that he would
write a few words to be read by Lord Shaftesbury at one of our Meetings.
It ran as follows:—

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“You are already aware that my sympathies and prepossessions are
greatly with you, nor do I wish this to be a secret, but I am
overwhelmed with occupations, and I cannot overtake my arrears, and my
letters have been so constantly put before the world (often, of
course, without warrant) that I cannot, I am afraid, appear in the
form of an epistle _ad hoc_, more than I can in person.

“Faithfully yours,
“W. E. GLADSTONE.

“April 1, 1877.”

(Half the words in his apology for _not_ writing would of course have
more than sufficed for the letter desired.)

Naturally, after all this, I looked to Mr. Gladstone as a most powerful
friend of the Anti-vivisection cause; and though I had no sympathy with
his religious views, and thought his policy very dangerous, I counted on
him as a man who, _since his suffrage had been obtained in a great moral
question_, was sure to give it his support in fitting time and place.
The sequel showed how delusive was my trust.

To return to the breakfast in Carlton Gardens. There sat down with us,
to my amusement, a gentleman with whom I had already made acquaintance,
an ex-priest of some distinction, Rev. Rudolph Suffield, who had
recently quitted the Church of Rome but retained enough of priestly
looks and manners to be rather antipathetic to me. Mr. Gladstone
ingeniously picked Mr. Suffield’s brains for half-an-hour, eliciting all
manner of information on Romish doctrines and practice, till the
conversation drifted to Pascal’s _Provinciales_, I expressed my
admiration for the book, and recalled Gibbon’s droll confession that he,
whom Byron styled “The Lord of irony, that master spell,” had learned
the _sanglant_ sarcasm of his XV. and XVI. chapters from the pious
author of the _Pensées_. Mr. Gladstone eagerly interposed with some fine
criticisms, and ended with the amazing remark: “I have read all the
Jesuit answers to Pascal (!) to ascertain whether he had misquoted
Suarez and Escobar and the rest, and I found that he had _not_ done so.
You may take my word for it.”

From this theological discussion there was a diversion when a gentleman
on the other side of the breakfast table handed across to Mr. Gladstone
certain drawings of the legs of horses. They proved to be sketches of
several pairs in the Panathenaic frieze and were produced to settle the
highly interesting question (to Mr. Gladstone) whether Greek horses ever
trotted, or only walked, cantered, and ambled. I forget how the drawings
were supposed finally to settle the controversy, but I made him laugh by
telling him that a party of the servants of one of my Irish friends
having paid a visit to the Elgin Gallery, the lady’s maid told her
mistress next morning that they had been puzzled to understand why all
those men without legs or arms had been stuck up on the wall? At last
the butler had suggested that they were “intended to commemorate the
railway accidents.”

From that time I met Mr. Gladstone occasionally at the houses of
friends, and was, of course, like all the world, charmed with his
winning manners and brilliant talk, though never, that I can recall,
struck by any thought expressed by him which could be called a “great”
one, or which lifted up one’s spirit. It seemed more as if half a dozen
splendidly cultivated and brilliant intellects—but all of medium
height—had been incarnated in one vivacious body, than a single Mind of
colossal altitude. The religious element in him was in almost feverish
activity, but it always appeared to me that it was not on the greatest
things of Religion that his attention fastened. It was on its fringe,
rather than on its robe.

That Mr. Gladstone was a sincerely pious man I do not question. But his
piety was of the Sacerdotal rather than of the Puritan type. The “single
eye” was never his. If it had been, he would not have employed the
tortuous and ambiguous oratory which so often left his friends and foes
to interpret his utterances in opposite senses. Neither did he appear—at
all events to his more distant observers—to feel adequately the
tremendous responsibility to God and man which rested on the well-nigh
omnipotent Prime Minister of England, during the years when it was rare
to open a newspaper without reading of some military disaster like the
death of Gordon, or of some Agrarian murder like the assassination of
Lord Frederick Cavendish and of a score of hapless Irish
landlords—calamities which his policy had _failed to prevent_ if it had
not directly occasioned. The gaiety of spirits and the animation of
interest respecting a hundred trivial topics which Mr. Gladstone
exhibited unfailingly through that fearfully anxious period, approached
perhaps sometimes too nearly to levity to accord with our older ideal of
a devout mind loaded with the weight “almost not to be borne” of
world-wide cares.

The differences between Church and dissent occupied Mr. Gladstone, I
fancy, very much at all times. One day he remarked to me—as if it were a
valuable new light on the subject—that an eminent Nonconformist had just
told him that the Dissenters generally “did not object either to the
_Doctrine_ or the _Discipline_ of the Church of England, but that they
found no warrant in Scripture for the existence of a State Church.” Mr.
Gladstone looked as if he were seeking an answer to this objection to
conformity. I replied that I wondered they did not see that the whole
Old Testament might be taken as the history of a Divinely appointed
State Church. Mr. Gladstone lifted his marvellous, eagle-like eyes with
a quick glance which might be held to signify “That’s an idea!” When the
little incident was told soon after to Dean Stanley he rubbed his hands
and laughingly said, “This may put off disestablishment yet awhile!”

As a member of society Mr. Gladstone, as everybody knows, was
inexhaustibly interesting. I once heard him after a small dinner party
criticise and describe with astonishing vividness and minuteness the
sermons of at least twenty popular preachers. At last I ventured to
interpose with some impatience and say: “But, Mr. Gladstone, you have
not mentioned the greatest of them all, _my_ pastor, Dr. Martineau?” He
paused, and then said, weighing his words, carefully: “Dr. Martineau is
unquestionably the greatest of living thinkers.”

Speaking of the Jews, he once afforded the company at a dinner table a
lively and interesting sketch of the ubiquity of the race all over the
globe, _except in Scotland_. The Scotch, he said, knew as well as they
the value of bawbees! There was a general laugh, and some one remarked:
“Why, then, are there so few in Ireland?” Mr. Gladstone answered that he
supposed the Irish were too poor to afford them fair pasture. I said:
“Perhaps so, now, but when _you_, Mr. Gladstone, have given the Irish
farmers fixity of tenure, so that they can give security for loans, we
shall see the Jews flocking over to Ireland.” This observation was made
in 1879; and in the intervening twenty years I am informed that the Jews
have settled down in Ireland like sea-gulls on the land after a storm.
The old “Gombeen man” has been ousted all over the country, and a whole
Jew quarter, (near the Circular Road) and a new synagogue in Dublin,
have verified my prophecy.

At last the day came when the sympathy of which Mr. Gladstone had so
often assured Lord Shaftesbury and myself, was to be put to the simplest
test. Mr. Reid (now Sir Robert Reid) was to introduce our Bill for the
Prohibition of Vivisection into Parliament (April 4th, 1883). I wrote to
Mr. Gladstone a short note imploring him to lift his hand to help us;
and if it were impossible for him to speak in the House in our favour,
at least to let his friends know that he wished well to our Bill. I do
not remember the words of that note. I know that it was a cry from my
very heart to the man who held it in his power to save the poor brutes
from their tortures for ever; to do what I was spending my life’s last
years in vainly trying to accomplish.

He _received_ the note; I had a formal acknowledgment of it. But Mr.
Gladstone _did nothing_. He left us to the tender mercies of Sir William
Harcourt, whose audacious (and mendacious) contradiction of Mr. George
Russell, our seconder, I have detailed elsewhere.[23] From that day I
never met, nor ever desired to meet, Mr. Gladstone again.

* * * * *

A friend whom I greatly admired and valued, and whose intercourse I
enjoyed during all my residence in London, from first to last, was Mr.
Froude. He died just after the first edition of this book (of which I
had of course sent him a copy) was published; and I was told it supplied
welcome amusement to him in his last days.

The world, I think, has never done quite justice to Mr. Froude; albeit,
when he was gone the newspapers spoke of him as “the last of the
giants.” He always seemed to me to belong to the loftier race, of whom
there were then not a few living; and though his unhappy _Nemesis of
Faith_ (for which I make no defence whatever) and his _Carlyle_ drew on
him endless blame, and his splendid _History_ equally endless cavil and
criticism, his greatness was to my apprehension something apart from his
books. His Essays,—especially the magnificent one on Job—give, I think,
a better idea of the man than was derivable from any other source,
except personal intimacy. “He touched nothing which he did not” enlarge,
if not “adorn.” Subjects expanded when talked of easily, and even
lightly, with him. There was a background of _space_ always above and
behind him. Though he had no little cause for it, he was not bitter. I
never saw him angry or heard him express resentment, except once when
his benevolent efforts had failed to obtain from Mr. Gladstone’s
Government a pension for a poverty-stricken, meritorious woman of
letters, while far less deserving persons received the bounty. But when
he let the Marah waters of Mr. Carlyle’s private reflexions loose on the
world their bitterness seemed to communicate itself to all the readers
of the book. Even the silver pen of Mrs. Oliphant for once was dipped in
gall; and it was she, if I mistake not, who in her wrath devised the
ferocious adjective “_Froudacious_” to convey her rage and scorn. As for
myself, when that book appeared I frankly told Mr. Froude that I
rejoiced, because I had always deprecated Mr. Carlyle’s influence, and I
thought this revelation of him would do much to destroy it. Mr. Froude
laughed good-humouredly, but naturally showed a little consternation.
His sentiment about the Saturday Reviewers, who at that time buzzed
round his writings and stung him every week, was much that of a St.
Bernard or a Newfoundland towards a pack of snarling terriers. One day a
clergyman very well known in London, wrote to me after one of our little
parties to beg that I would do him the favour, when next Mr. Froude was
coming to me, to invite him also, and permit him to bring his particular
friend Mr. X, who greatly desired to meet his brother historian. I was
very willing to oblige the clergyman in question, and before long we had
a gathering at our house of forty or fifty people, among whom were Mr.
Froude and Mr. X. I knew that the moment for the introduction had
arrived, but of course I was not going to take the liberty of presenting
any stranger to Mr. Froude without asking his consent. That consent was
not so readily granted as I had anticipated. “Who? Mr. X? Let me look at
him first.” “There he is,” I said, pointing to a small figure half
hidden in a group of ladies and gentlemen. “That is he, is it?” said Mr.
Froude. “Oh, No! No! Don’t introduce him to me. _He has the Saturday
Review written all over his face!_” There was nothing to do but to
laugh, and presently, when my clerical friend came up and urged me to
fulfil my promise and make the introduction, to hurry down on some
excuse into the tea room and never reappear till the disappointed Mr. X
had departed.

I have kept 34 letters received from Mr. Froude during the years in
which I had the good fortune to contribute to _Fraser’s Magazine_ when
he was the Editor, and later, when, as friends and neighbours in South
Kensington, we had the usual little interchange of message and
invitations. Among these, to me precious, letters there are some
passages which I shall venture to copy, assured that his representatives
cannot possibly object to my doing so. I may first as an introduction of
myself, quote one in a letter to my eldest brother, who had invited him
to stay at Newbridge during one of his visits to Ireland. Mr. Froude
wrote to him:—

“I knew your brother Henry intimately 30 years ago, and your sister is
one of the most valued friends of my later life.”

His affection for Carlyle spoke in this eager refutation of some idle
story in the newspapers:

“February 16th.

“There is hardly a single word in it which is not untrue. Ruskin is as
much attached to Mr. Carlyle as ever. There is not one of his friends
to whom he is not growing dearer as he approaches the end of his time,
nor has the wonderful beauty and noble tenderness of his character
been ever more conspicuous. The only difference visible in him from
what he was in past years is that his wife’s death has broken his
heart. He is gentler and more forbearing to human weakness. He feels
that his own work is finished, and he is waiting hopefully till it
please God to take him away.”

Here is evidence of his deep enjoyment of Nature. He writes, October
31st, from Dereen, Kenmare:—

“I return to London most reluctantly at the end of the week. The
summer refuses to leave us, and while you are shivering in the North
wind we retain here the still blue cloudlessness of August. This
morning is the loveliest I ever saw here. The woods swarm with
blackbirds and thrushes, the ‘autumn note not all unlike to that of
spring.’ I am so bewitched with the place that (having finished my
History) I mean to spend the winter here and try to throw the story of
the last Desmond into a novel.”

In reply to a request that he would attend an Anti-vivisection meeting
at Lord Shaftesbury’s house, he wrote:—

“Vivisection is a hateful illustration of the consequences of the
silent supersession of Morality by Utilitarianism. Until men can be
brought back to the old lines, neither this nor any other evil
tendency can be really stemmed. _Till the world learns again to hate
what is in itself evil, in spite of alleged advantages to be derived
from it_, it will never consent to violent legal restrictions.”

His last letter from Oxford is pleasant to recall:—

“I am strangely placed here. The Dons were shy of me when I first
came, but all is well now, and the undergraduates seem really
interested in what I have to tell them. I am quite free, and tell them
precisely what I think.”

I do not think that Mr. Froude was otherwise than a happy man. He was
particularly so as regarded his feminine surroundings, and a most genial
and indulgent husband and father. He had also intense enjoyment both of
Nature and of the great field of Literature into which he delved so
zealously. He once told me that he had visited every spot, _except the
Tower of London_ (!) where the great scenes of his History took place,
and had ransacked every library in Europe likely to contain materials
for his work; not omitting the record chambers of the Inquisition at
Simancas, where he spent many shuddering days which he vividly described
to me. He also greatly enjoyed his long voyages and visits to the West
Indies and to New Zealand; and especially the one he made to America. He
admired almost everything, I think, in America; and more than once
remarked to me (in reference particularly to the subject of mixed
education in which I was interested): “The young men are so nice! What
might be difficult here, is easy there. You have no idea what nice
fellows they are.” There was, however, certainly something in Mr.
Froude’s handsome and noble physiognomy which conveyed the idea of
mournfulness. His eyes were wells of darkness on which, by some
singularity, the light never seemed to fall either in life or when
represented in a photograph; and his laugh, which was not infrequent,
was mirthless. I never heard a laugh which it was so hard to echo, so
little contagious.

The last time I ever saw Mr. Froude was at the house of our common
friend, Miss Elliot, where he was always to be found at his best. Her
other visitors had departed and we three old friends sat on in the late
and quiet Sunday afternoon, talking of serious things, and at last of
our hopes and beliefs respecting a future life. Mr. Froude startled us
somewhat by saying he did not wish to live again. He felt that his life
had been enough, and would be well content not to awake when it was
over. “But,” said he, in conclusion, with sudden vigour, “I believe
there _is_ another life, you know! I am quite sure there is.” The
clearness and emphasis of this conviction were parallel to those he had
used before to me in talking of the probable extension of Atheism in
coming years. “But, as there _IS_ a God,” said Mr. Froude, “Religion can
never die.”

CHAPTER
XVIII.
_MY LIFE IN LONDON IN THE SEVENTIES AND EIGHTIES._
_SOCIAL_

I must not write here any personal sketch however slight of my revered
friend Dr. Martineau, since he is still,—God be thanked for it!—living,
and writing as profoundly and vigorously as ever, in his venerable age
of 89. But the weekly sermons which I had the privilege of hearing from
his lips for many years, down to 1872, beside several courses of his
Lectures on the Gospels and on Ethical Philosophy which I attended,
formed so very important, I might say, vital a part of my “Life” in
London, that I cannot omit some account of them in my story.

Little Portland Street Chapel is a building of very moderate dimensions,
with no pretensions whatever to ecclesiastical finery; whether of
architecture, or upholstery, or art of any kind. But it was, I always
thought, a fitting, simple place for serious people to meet to _think
in_; not to gaze round them in curiosity or admiration, or to be
intoxicated with colours, lights, incense and music; as would seem to be
the intention of the administrators of a neighbouring fane! Our
services, I suppose, would have been pronounced cold, bare and dull by
an _habitué_ of a Ritualistic or Romanist church; but for my own part I
should prefer even to be “cold,” (which we were _not_) rather than allow
my religious feelings to be excited through the gratification of my
æsthetic sense.

On this matter, however, each one must speak and choose for himself. For
me I was perfectly satisfied with my seat in the gallery in that simple
chapel, where I could well hear the noblest sermons and see the preacher
of whom they always seemed a part; his “_Word_” in the old sense; not
(like many other men’s sermons) things quite apart from the speaker, as
we know him in his home and in the street. Of all the men with whom I
have ever been acquainted the one who most impressed me with the
sense,—shall I call it of congruity? or homogeneity?—of being, in short,
_the same all through_, was he to whom I listened on those happy
Sundays.

They were very varied Sermons which Dr. Martineau preached. The general
effect, I used to think, was not that of receiving Lessons from a
Teacher, but of being invited to accompany a Guide on a mountain-walk.
From the upper regions of thought where he led us, we were able,—nay,
compelled,—to look down on our daily cares and duties from a loftier
point of view; and thence to return to them with fresh feelings and
resolutions. Sometimes these ascents were very steep and difficult; and
I have ventured to tell him that the richness of his metaphors and
similes, beautiful and original as they always were, made it harder to
climb after him, and that we sometimes wanted him to hold out to us a
shepherd’s crook, rather than a _jewelled crozier_! But the exercise, if
laborious, was to the last degree mentally healthful, and morally
strengthening. There was a great variety also, in these wonderful
sermons. To hear one of them only, a listener would come away deeming
the preacher _par éminence_ a profound and most discriminating Critic.
To hear another, he would consider him a Philosopher, occupied entirely
with the vastest problems of Science and Theology. Again another would
leave the impression of a Poet, as great in his prose as the author of
_In Memoriam_ in verse. And lastly and above all, there was always the
man filled with devout feeling, who, by his very presence and voice
communicated reverence and the sense of the nearness of an all-seeing
God.

I could write many pages concerning these Sunday experiences; but I
shall do better, I think, if I give my readers, who have never heard
them, some small samples of what I carried away from time to time of
them, as noted down in letters to my friend. Here are a few of them:

“Mr. Martineau preached of aiming at perfection. At the end he drew a
picture of a soul which has made such struggles but has failed. Then
he supposed what must be the feeling of such a soul entering on the
future life, its regrets; and then inquired what influence being
lifted above the things of sense, the nearness to God and holiness
would have on it? Would it then arise? _Yes!_ and the Father would
say, ‘This my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is
found for evermore.’ I cannot tell you how beautiful it was, how true
in the sense of those deepest intuitions which I hold to be certainly
true _because_ they bear with them the sense of being absolutely
_highest_, the echo of a higher harmony than belongs to our poor
minds. He seemed, for a moment, to be talking in the old conventional
way about repentance _when too late_; and then burst out in faith and
hope, so far transcending all such ideas that one felt it came from
another source.”

“Mr. Martineau gave us a magnificent sermon on Sunday. I was in great
luck not to miss it. One point was this. Our moral judgments are
always founded on what we suppose to be the _inward motive_ of the
actor, not on the mere external act itself, which may be mischievous
or beneficent in the highest degree, without, properly-speaking,
affecting our purely _ethical_ judgment—_e.g._, an unintentional
homicide. Now, if, (as our opponents affirm) our Moral Sense came to
us _ab extra_, merely as the current opinion which society has
attached to injurious or beneficial actions, then we should _not_ thus
decide our judgment by the _internal_, but by the external and visible
part of the act, by which alone society is hurt or benefitted. The
fact that our moral judgment regards _internal_ things exclusively, is
evidence that it springs from an _internal_ source; and that we judge
another, because we are compelled to judge ourselves in the same way.”

Here is a Note I took after hearing another Sermon:—

“Sunday, June 23rd.

“‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our
sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’

“There are two ways of looking at Sin common in our time. One is to
proclaim it so infinitely black that God _cannot_ forgive it except by
a method of Atonement itself the height of injustice. The other is to
treat it as so venial that God may be counted on as certain to pass it
over at the first moment of regret; and all the threats of conscience
may be looked on as those of a nurse to a refractory child, threats
which are never to be executed. The first of these views seems to
honour God most, but really dishonours Him, by representing Him as
governing the world on a principle abhorrent to reason and justice.
The second can never commend itself save to the most shallow minds who
make religion a thing of words, and treat sin and repentance as
trivial things, instead of the most awful. How shall we solve the
mystery? It is equally unjust for God to treat the guilty as if they
were innocent, and the penitent as if they were impenitent. Each fact
has to be taken into account, and the most important practical
consequences follow from the view we take of the matter. First we must
never lose hold of the truth, that, as Cause and Effect are never
severed in the natural world, and the whole order of nature would fall
to ruin were God ever to interfere with them, so likewise Guilt and
Pain are, in His Providence, indissolubly linked; and the order of the
moral world would be destroyed were they to be divided. But beside the
realm of Law, in which the Divine penalties are unalterable, there is
the free world of Spirit wherein our repentance avails. When we can
say to God, ‘Put me to grief—I have deserved it. Only restore me Thy
love,’ the great woe is gone. We shall be the weaker evermore for our
fall, but we shall be restored.”

The following remarks were in a letter to Miss Elliot:—

“January, 1867.

“I wish I could write a _résumé_ of a Sermon which Mr. Martineau
preached last Sunday. Just think how many sermons some people would
make of this one sentence of his text (speaking of the longing for
Rest):—‘If Duty become laborious, do it more fervently. If Love become
a source of care and pain, love more nobly and more tenderly. If
Doubts disturb and torture, face them with more earnest thought and
deeper study!’

“This was not a _peroration_, but just one phrase of a discourse full
of other such things.

“It seems to me that the spontaneous response of our inner souls to
such ideas is just the same proof of their truth as the shock we feel
in our nerves when a lecturer has delivered a current of electricity
proves _his_ lesson to be true.”

“January, 1867.

“While you were enjoying your Cathedral, I was enjoying Little
Portland Street Chapel, having bravely tramped through miles of snow
on the way, and been rewarded. Mr. Martineau said we were always
taunted with only having a _negative_ creed, and were often foolish
enough to deny it. But all Reformation is a negation of error and
return to the three pure articles of faith—God, Duty, Immortality....
The distinction was admirably drawn between _extent of creed_ and
_intensity of faith_.”

On February 5th, 1871, Mr. Martineau preached:—

“Philosophers might and do say that all Religion is only a projection
of Man himself on Nature, lending to Nature his own feelings,
brightened by a supreme Love or shadowed by infinite displeasure. Does
this disprove Religion? Is there no reliance to be placed on the
faculties which connect us with the Infinite? We have two sets of
faculties: our Senses, which reveal the outer world; and a deeper
series, giving us Poetry, Love, Religion. Should we say that these
last are more false than the others? They are true _all round_. In
fact, these are truest. Imagination is true. Affection is true. Do men
say that Affection is blind? No! It is the only thing which truly
sees. Love alone really perceives. The cynic draws over the world a
roof of dark and narrow thoughts and suspicions, and then complains of
the close, unhealthy air. Memory again is more than mere Recollection.
It has the true artist-power of seizing the points which determine the
character and reconstructing the image without details. Suppose there
be a God. By what faculties could we know Him save by those which now
tell us of Him. And why should they deceive us?”

Alas! the exercise of preaching every Sunday became too great for Dr.
Martineau to encounter after 1872, and, by his physician’s orders, those
noble sermons came to an end.

Beside Dr. Martineau, I had the privilege of friendship with three
eminent Unitarian Ministers, now alas! all departed—Rev. Charles Beard,
of Liverpool, for a long time editor of the _Theological Review_; the
venerable and beloved John James Tayler; and Rev. William Henry
Channing, to whom I was gratefully attached, both on account of
religious sympathies, and of his ardent adoption of our Anti-vivisection
cause, which he told me he had at first regarded as somewhat of a “fad”
of mine, but came to recognise as a moral crusade of deep significance.
Among living friends of the same body, I am happy to number Rev. Philip
Wicksteed, the successor of Dr. Martineau in Portland Street and the
exceedingly able President of University Hall, Gordon Square,—an
institution, in the foundation of which I gladly took part on the
invitation of Mrs. Humphry Ward.

A man in whose books I had felt great interest in my old studies at
Newbridge, and whose intercourse was a real pleasure to me in London,
was Mr. W. R. Greg. I intensely respected the courage which moved him,
in those early days of the Fifties, to publish such a book as the _Creed
of Christendom_. He was then a young man, entering public life with the
natural ambitions which his great abilities justified, and the avowal of
such exorbitant heresies (nothing short of pure Theism) as the book
contained, was enough at that date to spoil any man’s career. He was a
layman, too, and man of the world, “_Que Diable allait il faire_,
writing on theology at all?” That book remains to this day a most
valuable manual of arguments and evidences against the _Creed of
Christendom_; set forth in a grave and reverent spirit and in a clear
and manly style. His _Enigmas of Life_ had, I believe, a larger literary
success. The world had moved much nearer to his standpoint; and the
Enigmas concern the most interesting subjects. We had a little friendly
controversy over one passage in the essay, _Elsewhere_. Mr. Greg had
laid it down that, hereafter, Love must retreat from the discovery of
the sinfulness of the beloved; and that both saint and sinner will
accept as inevitable an eternal separation (_Enigmas_, 1st Edit., p.
263). To this I demurred strenuously in my _Hopes of the Human Race_ (p.
132–6). I said, “The poor self-condemned soul whom Mr. Greg images as
turning away in an agony of shame and hopelessness from the virtuous
friend he loved on earth, and loves still at an immeasurable
distance,—such a soul is not outside the pale of love, divine or human.
Nay, is he not,—even assuming his guilt to be black as night,—only in a
similar relation to the purest of created souls, which that purest soul
holds to the All-holy One above? If God can love _us_, is it not the
acme of moral presumption to think of a human soul being too pure to
love any sinner, so long as in him there remains any vestige of
affection? The whole problem is unreal and impossible. In the first
place, there is a potential moral equality between all souls capable of
equal love, and the one can never reach a height whence it may justly
despise the other. And, in the second place, the higher the virtuous
soul may have risen in the spiritual world, the more it must have
acquired the god-like Insight which beholds the good under the evil, and
not less the god-like Love which embraces the repentant Prodigal.

In the next edition of his _Enigmas_ (the 7th), after the issue of my
book, Mr. Greg wrote a most generous recantation of his former view. He
said:—

“The force of these objections to my delineation cannot be gainsaid,
and ought not to have been overlooked. No doubt a soul that can so
love and so feel its separation from the objects of its love, cannot
be wholly lost. It must still retain elements of recovery and
redemption, and qualities to win and to merit answering affection. The
lovingness of a nature—its capacity for strong and deep
attachment—must constitute, there as here, the most hopeful
characteristic out of which to elicit and foster all other good. No
doubt, again, if the sinful continue to love in spite of their
sinfulness, the blessed will not cease to love in consequence of their
blessedness.”

Later on he asks:—

“How can the blessed enjoy anything to be called Happiness if the bad
are writhing in hopeless anguish?” “Obviously only in one way. By
_ceasing_ to love, that is, by renouncing the best and purest part of
their nature.... Or, to put it in still bolder language, ‘_How,—given
a hell of torment and despair for millions of his friends and fellow
men—can the good enjoy Heaven_ except _by becoming bad_, and without
being miraculously changed for the worse?’”

The following flattering letters are unluckily all which I have kept of
Mr. Greg’s writing:—

“Park Lodge, Wimbledon Common, S.W.,
“February 19th.

“My Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I have been solacing myself this morning, after a month of harrowing
toil, with your paper in the last _Theological_, and I want to tell
you how much it has gratified me.

“I don’t mean your appreciative cordiality towards myself, nor your
criticisms on a portion of my speculations, which, however (though I
fancy you have rather misread me), I will refer to again and try to
profit by. I daresay you are mainly right, the more so as I see Mr.
Thom in the same number remonstrates in an identical tone.

“That your paper is, I think, not only beautiful in thought and much
of it original, but singularly full of rich suggestions, and one of
the most real _contributions_ to a further conception of a possible
future that I have met with for long. It is real _thought_—not like
most of mine, mere sentiment and imagination.

“I don’t know if you are still in town, or have began the villegiatura
you spoke of when I last saw you, but I daresay this note will be
forwarded.

“When did No. 1 appear?

“I particularly like your remark about self-_reprobation_, p. 456, and
from 463 onward. By the way, do you know Isaac Taylor’s ‘_Physical
Theory of Another Life_?’ It is very curious and interesting.

“Yours faithfully,
“W. R. GREG.

“I have just finished an Introduction (about 100 pp.) to a new edition
of “The Creed of Christendom,” which will be published in the autumn,
and it contains some thoughts very analogous to yours.”

“Park Lodge, Wimbledon Common, S.W.,
“August 6th.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I have read your _Town and Country Mouse_ with much pleasure. I
should have enjoyed your Paper still more if I had not felt that it
was suggested by your intention to cut London, and the desire to put
as good a face upon that regrettable design as you could. However you
have stated the case with remarkable fairness. I, who am a passionate
lover of nature, who have never lived in Town, and should pine away if
I attempted it, still feel in the decline of years the increasing
necessity of creeping _towards_ the world rather than retiring from
it. I feel, as one grows old, the want of external stimulus to stave
off stagnation. The vividness of youthful thought is needed, I think,
to support solitude.

“I retired to Westmoreland for 15 years in the middle of life when I
was much worn, and it did me good: but I was glad to come back to
active life, and I think my present location—Wimbledon Common for a
cottage, within 5 miles of London, and coming in five days a week—is
perfection.

“I daresay you may be right; but all your friends will miss you much—I
not the least.

“Yours faithfully,
“W. R. GREG.”

Mr. Greg’s allusion to my _Town and Country Mouse_ reminds me of a
letter which was sent me by some unknown reader on the publication of
that article. It repeats a famous story worth recording as told thus by
an ear-witness who, though anonymous is obviously worthy of credit.

“Athenæum Club,
“Pall Mall, S.W.

“Will Miss Cobbe kindly pardon the liberty taken by a reader of her
delightful ‘Town and Country Mouse’ in venturing to substitute the
true version of Sir George Lewis’ too famous dictum?

“In the _hearing of the writer_ he was asked (by one of his
subordinates in the Government) as they were getting into the train,
returning to town,

“‘Well! How do you like life in Herefordshire?’

“‘Ah! It would be very tolerable, if it were not for _the
Amusements_’—was his reply.

“Miss Cobbe has high Authority for the mis-quotation: for the _Times_
invariably commits it; and the present writer has again and again
intended to correct it, and failed to execute the intention.

“If they _are_ pleasures, they are _pleasures_; and the paradox is
absurd, instead of amusing; but the oppressive stupidity of many of
the ‘_Amusements_’ (to the Author of ‘Influence of Authority,’ &c.!)
may well call up in the mind the sort of amiable cynicism, which was a
feature of his own character.

“On arriving late and unexpectedly at home for a fortnight’s _Rest_,
he found his own study occupied by two young ladies (sisters) as a
_Bedroom_—it being the night of Lady Theresa’s Ball! With his
exquisite good nature he simply set about finding some other roost;
and all the complaint he ever made was _that_, which has become
perhaps _not_ too famous!”

At the time of the Franco-Prussian war, as will be remembered by
everyone living at the time in London, the cleavage between the
sympathisers with the two contending countries was almost as sharp as it
had previously been during the American War between the partizans of the
North and of the South. Dean Stanley was one of our friends who took
warmly the side of the Germans, and I naturally sent him a letter I had
received from a Frenchman whom we both respected, remonstrating rather
bitterly against the attitude of England. The Dean, in returning M. P.’s
letter wrote as follows[24]:—

“Deanery, March 25th, 1871.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“Although you kindly excuse me from doing so, I cannot but express,
and almost, wish that you could convey to M. P. the melancholy
interest with which we have read his letter. Interesting of course it
is but to us—I know not whether to you—it is deeply sad to see a man
like M. P. so thoroughly blind to the true situation of his country.
Not a word of repentance for the aggressive and unjust war! not a word
of acknowledgment that, had the French, as they wished, invaded
Germany, they would have entered Berlin and seized the Rhenish
provinces without remorse or compunction!—not a spark of appreciation
of the moral superiority by which the Germans achieved their
successes! I do not doubt that excesses may have been committed by the
German troops; but I feel sure that they have been exceeded by those
of the French, and would have been yet more had the French entered
Germany.

“And how very superfluous to attack us for having done just the same
as in 1848! Our sad crime was not to have prevented the war by
remonstrating with the French Emperor and people in July, 1870, and of
_that_ poor P. takes no account! Alas! for France!

“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. STANLEY.”

The following is a rather important note as recording the Dean’s
sentiments as regarded Cardinal Newman. I cannot recall what was the
paper which I had sent him to which he alludes. I think I had spoken to
him of my friendship with Francis Newman, and of the information given
me by the latter that he could never remember his brother putting his
hand to a single cause of benevolence or moral reform. I had asked him
to solicit his support with that of Cardinal Manning (already obtained)
to the cause for which I was then beginning to work,—on behalf of
animals.

“Jan. 15th, 1875.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I return this with many thanks. I think you must have sent it to me,
partly as a rebuke for having so nearly sailed in the same boat of
ignorance and inhumanity with Dr. Newman.

“I have just finished, with a mixture of weariness and nausea, his
letter to the Duke of Norfolk. Even the fierce innuendoes and deadly
thrusts at Manning cannot reconcile me to such a mass of cobwebs and
evasions. When the sum of the theological teaching of the two brothers
is weighed, will not ‘the _Soul_’ of Francis be found to
counterbalance, as a contribution to true, solid, catholic (even in
any sense of the word) Christianity, all the writings of John Henry?

“I have sent my paper on Vestments to the _Contemporary_.

“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. STANLEY.

“Read it in the light of his old letter to B. Ullathorne, published in
(illegible).”

The papers on “Vestments,” to which Dean Stanley alludes, had interested
and amused me much when he read it at Sion College, and I had urged him
to send it to one of the Reviews. Here is a report of that evening’s
proceedings which I sent next day to my friend Miss Elliot.

“January 14th, 1875.

“I do so much wish you had been with us last night at Sion College.
Dean Stanley was more delightful than ever. He read a splendid paper,
full of learning, wit, and sense on _Ecclesiastical Vestments_. In the
course of it, he said, referring to the position of the altar, &c.,
that on this subject he had nothing to add to the remarks of his
friend, the Dean of Bristol, ‘whose authority on all matters connected
with English ecclesiastical history was universally admitted to be the
best.’ After the reading of his paper, which lasted an hour and a
quarter, that odious Dr. L—— got up, and in his mincing brogue
attacked Dean Stanley very rudely. Then they called on Martineau, and
he made a charming speech, beginning by saying _he_ had nothing to do
with vestments, having received no ordination, and might for his part
repeat the poem “_Nothing to Wear!_” Then he went on to say that if
the Church were ever to regain the Nonconformists, it would certainly
_not_ be by proceeding in the sacerdotal direction. He was much
cheered. Rev. H. White made, I thought, one of the best speeches of
the evening. Altogether, it was exceedingly amusing.”

On the occasion of the interment of Sir Charles Lyell in Westminster
Abbey, I sent the Dean, by his request, some hints respecting Sir
Charles’ views and character, and received the following reply:

“February 25th, 1875.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“Your letter is invaluable to me. Long as was my acquaintance with Sir
Charles Lyell, and kind as he was to me, I never knew him intimately,
and therefore most of what you tell me was new. The last time he spoke
to me was in urging me with the greatest earnestness to ask Colenso to
preach. Can you tell me one small point? Had he a turn for music? I
must refer back to the last funeral (when I could not preach) of Sir
Sterndale Bennett, and it would be a convenience for me to know this,
_Yes_ or _No_.

“You will come (if you come to the sermon) and any friends,—_thro’ the
Deanery_ at 2.45 on Sunday.

“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. STANLEY.”

Some time after this I sent him one of my theological articles on the
Life after Death. He acknowledged it thus kindly:—

“Deanery, November 2nd.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“Many thanks. Your writing on this subject is to me more nearly to the
truth—at least more nearly to my hopes and desires—than almost any
others which are now floating around us.

“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. STANLEY.”

This next letter again referred to one of my books—and to Cardinal
Newman:—

“October 12th, 1876.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“Many thanks for your book. You will see by my letter last night that
I had already made good progress in it; as borrowed from the Library.
I shall much value it.

Do not trouble yourself about Newman’s letter. I am much more anxious
that the public should see it than that I should. I am amazed at the
impression made upon me by the “Characteristics” of Newman. Most of
the selections I had read before; but the net result is of a farrago
of fanciful, disingenuous nonentities; all except the personal
reminiscences.

“Yours truly,
“A. P. STANLEY.”

One day I had been calling on him at the Deanery, and said to him, after
describing my office in Victoria Street and our frequent Committee
meetings there: “Now Mr. Dean, _do_ you think it right and as it ought
to be, that _I_ should sit at that table as Hon. Sec. with Lord
Shaftesbury on my right, and Cardinal Manning on my left,—and that _you_
should not sit opposite to complete the “_Reunion of Christendom_?” He
laughed heartily, agreed he certainly ought to be there, and promised to
come. But time failed, and only his honoured name graced our lists.

The following is the last letter I have preserved of Dean Stanley’s
writing. It is needless to say how much pleasure it gave me:—

“October 16th, 1876.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I have just finished re-reading with real admiration and consolation
your “_Hopes of the Human Race_.” May I ask these questions: 1. Is it
in, or coming into, a second edition? If the latter, is it too much to
suggest that the note on p. 3 could, if not omitted, be modified? I
appreciate the motive for its insertion, but it makes the lending and
recommending of the book difficult. 2. Who is ‘one of the greatest men
of Science’—p. 20? 3. Where is there an authentic appearance of the
Pope’s reply to Odo Russell—p. 107?

“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. STANLEY.”

I afterwards learned from Dean Stanley, one day when I was visiting him
at the Deanery after his wife’s death, that he had read these Essays to
Lady Augusta in the last weeks of her life, finding them, as he told me,
the most satisfactory treatment of the subject he had met; and that
after her death he read them over again. He gave me with much feeling a
sad photograph of her as a dying woman, after telling me this. Mr.
Motley the historian of the Netherlands, having also lost his wife not
long afterwards, spoke to Dean Stanley of his desire for some book on
the subject which would meet his doubts, and Dean Stanley gave him this
one of mine.

Dean Stanley, it is needless to say, was the most welcome of guests in
every house which he entered. There was something in his
_high-mindedness_, I can use no other term, his sense of the glory of
England, his love of his church (on extremely Erastian principles!) as
the National Religion, his unfailing courtesy, his unaffected enjoyment
of drollery and gossip, and his almost youthful excitement about each
important subject which cropped up, which made him delightful to
everyone in turn. There was no man in London I think whom it gave me
such pleasure to meet “in the sixties and seventies” as the “Great
Dean”; and he was uniformly most kind to me. The last occasion, I think,
on which I saw him in full spirits was at a house where the pleasantest
people were constantly to be found,—that of Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, in
Cornwall Gardens. Renan and his wife were there, and I was so favoured
as to be seated next to Renan; Dean Stanley being on the other side of
our tactful hostess. The Dean had been showing Renan over the Abbey in
the morning, and they were both in the gayest mood, but I remember Dean
Stanley speaking to Renan with indescribable and concentrated
indignation of the avowal Mr. Gladstone had recently made that the
Clerkenwell explosion had caused him to determine on the
disestablishment of the Irish Church.

I have found an old letter to my friend describing this dinner:—

“I had a most amusing evening yesterday. Kind Mrs. Simpson made me sit
beside Renan; and Dean Stanley was across the corner, so we made, with
nice Mrs. W. R. G. and Mr. M., a very jolly little party at our end of
the table. The Dean began with grace, rather _sotto voce_, with a
blink at Renan, who kept on never minding. His (Renan’s) looks are
even worse than his picture leads one to expect. His face is exactly
like a _hog_, so stupendously broad across the ears and jowl! But he
is very gentlemanly in manner, very winning and full of fun and
_finesse_. We had to talk French with him, but the Dean’s French was
so much worse than mine that I felt quite at ease, and rattled away
about the _Triduos_ at Florence (to appease the wrath of Heaven on
account of his _Vie de Jésus_), and had some private jokes with him
about his malice in calling the Publicans of the Gospels ‘douaniers,’
and the ass a ‘baudet!’ He said he did it on purpose; and that when he
was last in Italy numbers of poor people came to him, and asked him
for the lucky number for the lotteries, because they thought he was
_so near the Devil_ he must know! I gave him your message about the
Hengwrt MSS., and he apologised for having written about the
‘mesquines’ considerations which had caused them to be locked up, [to
wit, that several leaves of the _Red Book of Hergest_ had been stolen
by too enthusiastic Welsh scholars!] and solemnly vowed to alter the
passage in the next edition, and thanked you for the promise of
obtaining leave for him to see them.

“I also talked to M. Renan of his Essay on the _Poésie de la Race
Celtique_, and made him laugh at his own assertion that Irishmen had
such a longing for ‘the Infinite’ that when they could not attain to
it otherwise they sought it through a strong liquor ‘_qui s’appelle le
Whiskey_.’”

Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff’s delightful volume on Renan has opened to my
mind many fresh reasons for admiring the great French scholar, whose
works I had falsely imagined I had known pretty well before reading it.
But when all is said, the impression he has left on me (and I should
think on most other people) is one of disappointment and short-falling.

M. Renan has written of himself the well-known and often laughed-at
boast: “_Seul dans mon siècle j’ai pu comprendre Jésus Christ et St.
François d’Assise!_” I do not know about his comprehension of St.
Francis, though I should think it a very great _tour de force_ for the
brilliant French academician and critic to throw himself into _that_
typical mediæval mind! But as regarded the former Person I should say
that of all the tens of thousands who have studied and written about him
during these last nineteen centuries, Renan was in some respects the
_least_ able to “comprehend” him. The man who could describe the story
of the Prodigal as a “_délicieuse parabole_,” is as far out of Christ’s
latitude as the pole from the equator. One abhors æsthetics when things
too sacred to be measured by their standard are commended in their name.
Renan seems to me to have been for practical purposes a Pantheist
without a glimmer of that sense of moral and personal relation to God
which was the supreme characteristic of Christ. When he translates
Christ’s pity for the Magdalenes as jealousy “_pour la gloire de son
Père dans ces belles créatures_;” and introduces the term “_femmes d’une
vie équivoque_” as a rendering for “sinners,” he strikes a note so false
that no praise lavished afterwards can restore harmony.

The late Lord Houghton was one of the men of note who I met occasionally
at the houses of friends. I had known him in Italy and he was always
kind to me and invited me to his Christmas parties at Frystone, which
were said to be delightful, but to which I did not go. For a poet he had
an extraordinarily rough exterior and blunt manner. One day we had a
regular set-to argument lasting a long time. He attacked the order of
things with the usual pessimist observations on all the evil in the
world, and implied that I had no reasonable right to my faith. I
answered as best I could, with some earnestness, and he finally
concluded the discussion by remarking with concentrated contempt: “You
might almost as well be a Christian!” Next day I went to Westminster
Abbey and was sitting in the Dean’s pew, when, to my amusement Lord
Houghton came in just below, with a party of ladies and took a seat
exactly opposite me. He behaved of course with edifying propriety, but I
could not help reflecting with a smile on our argument of the night
before, and wondering how many members of that and similar congregations
who were naturally counted by outsiders as faithful supporters of the
orthodox creed, were as little so, _au fond_, as either Lord Houghton or
I.

With Carlyle, though I saw him very frequently, I never interchanged
more than a few _banal_ words of civility. When his biography
appeared, I was, (as I frankly told the illustrious biographer)
exceedingly glad that I had never given him the chance of attaching
one of his pungent epigrams to my poor person. I had been introduced
to him by a lady at whose house he happened to call one afternoon when
I was sitting with her, and where he showed himself (as it seems to me
the roughest men invariably do in the society of amiable
Countesses),—extremely _apprivoisé_. Also I continually met him out
walking with one or other of his great historian friends, who were
also mine, but I avoided trespassing on their good nature; or
addressing him when he walked up and down alone daily before our door
in Cheyne Walk,—till one day when he had been very ill, I ventured to
express my satisfaction in seeing him out of doors again. He then
answered me kindly. I never shared the admiration felt for him by so
many able men who knew him personally, and therefore had means which I
did not possess, of estimating him aright. To me his books and himself
represented an anomalous sort of human Fruit. The original stock was a
hard and thorny Scotch peasant-character, with a splendid intellect
superadded. The graft was not wholly successful. A flavour of the old
acrid sloe was always perceptible in the plum.

The following letter was received by Dr. Hoggan in reply to a letter to
Mr. Carlyle concerning Vivisection:

“Keston Lodge, Beckenham,
“28th August, 1875.

“Dear Sir,

“Mr. Carlyle has received your letter, and has read it carefully. He
bids me say, that ever since he was a boy when he read the account of
Majendie’s atrocities, he has never thought of the practice of
vivisecting animals but with horror. I may mention that I have heard
him speak of it in the strongest terms of disgust long before there
was any speech about public agitation on the subject. He believes that
the reports about the good results said to be obtained from the
practice of vivisection to be immensely exaggerated; with the
exception of certain experiments by Harvey and certain others by Sir
Charles Bell, he is not aware of any conspicuous good that has
resulted from it. But even supposing the good results to be much
greater than Mr. Carlyle believes they are, and apart too from the
shocking pain inflicted on the helpless animals operated upon, he
would still think the practice so brutalising to the operators that he
would earnestly wish the law on the subject to be altered, so as to
make Vivisection even in Institutions like that with which you are
connected a most rare occurrence, and when practised by private
individuals an indictable offence.

“You are not sure that the operators on living animals ‘can be counted
on your fingers.’ Mr. Carlyle with an equal share of certainty
believes Vivisection and other kindred experiments on living animals
to be much more largely practised, and that they are by no means
uncommonly undertaken by doctors’ apprentices and ‘other miserable
persons.’

“You are mistaken if you look upon the _Times_ as a mirror of virtue;
on this very subject when it at first began to be publicly discussed
last winter, it printed a letter from ... which your letter itself
would prove to be altogether composed of falsehoods.

“With Mr. Carlyle’s compliments and good wishes,

“I remain, dear Sir,
“Yours truly,
“MARY CARLYLE AITKEN.”

Mr. Carlyle supported our Anti-vivisection Society from the outset, for
which I was very grateful to him; but having promised to join our first
important deputation to the Home Office, to urge the Government to bring
in a Bill in accordance with the recommendations of the Royal
Commission, he failed at the last moment to put in an appearance, having
learned that Cardinal Manning was to be also present. I was told that he
said he would not appear in public with the Cardinal, who was, he
thought, “the chief emissary of Beelzebub in England!” When this was
repeated to me, my remark was:—“Infidels _is riz_! Time was, when
Cardinals would not appear in public with infidels!”

Nothing has surprised me more in reading the memoirs and letters of
Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle than the small interest either of them seems to
have felt in the great subjects which formed the life-work of their
many illustrious visitors. While humbler folk who touched the same
circles were vehemently attracted, or else repelled, by the
political, philosophical and theological theories and labours of
such men as Mazzini, Mill, Colenso, Jowett, Martineau and Darwin,
and every conversation and almost every letter contained new facts,
or animated discussions regarding them, the Carlyles received visits
from these great men continually, with (it would seem) little or no
interest in their aims or views one way or the other, in approval or
disapproval; and wrote and talked much more seriously about the
delinquencies of their own maidservants, and the great and
never-to-be-sufficiently-appealed-against cock and hen nuisance.

I had known Cardinal Manning in Rome about 1861 or 1863 when he was
“Monsignor Manning,” and went a little into English society, resplendent
in a beautiful violet robe. He was very busy in those days making
converts among English young ladies, and one with whom we were
acquainted, the daughter of a celebrated authoress, fell into his net.
He had, at all times, a gentle way of ridiculing English doings and
prejudices which was no doubt telling. One of the stories he told me was
of an Italian sacristan asking him “what was the _Red Prayer Book_ which
all the English tourists carried about and read so devoutly in the
churches?” (of course Murray’s _Hand-books_).[25]

A few years afterwards when he had returned to England as Archbishop of
Westminster, I met him pretty frequently at Miss Stanley’s house in
Grosvenor Crescent. He there attacked me cheerfully one evening: “Miss
Cobbe I have found out something against you. I have discovered that
Voltaire was part-owner of a Slave-ship!”

“I beg you to believe,” said I, “that I have no responsibility whatever
respecting Voltaire! But I would ask your Grace, whether it be not true
that Las Casas, the saintly Dominican, _founded_ Negro Slavery in
America?” A Church of England friend coming up and laughing, I
discharged a second barrel: “And was not the Protestant Saint, Newton of
Olney,—much worse than all,—the _Captain_ of a Slave-ship?”[26]

One evening at this pleasant house I was standing on the rug in one of
the rooms talking to Mr. Matthew Arnold and two or three other
acquaintances of the same set. The Archbishop, on entering shook hands
with each of us, and we were all talking in the usual easy,
sub-humorous, London way when a tall military-looking man, a Major G.,
came in, and seeing Manning, walked straight up to him, went down on one
knee and kissed his ring! A bomb falling amongst us would scarcely have
been more startling; and Manning, Englishman as he was to the backbone
under his fine Roman feathers, was obviously disconcerted, though
dignified as ever.

In a letter to a friend dated Feb. 19th, 1867, I find I said:

“I had an amusing conversation with Archbishop Manning the other night
at Miss Stanley’s. He was most good-humoured, coming up to me as I was
talking to Sir C. Trevelyan, about Rome, and saying ‘I am glad you
think of going to Rome next winter, Miss Cobbe. It proves you expect
the Pope to be firmly established there still.’ We had rather a long
talk about Passaglia who he says _has_ recanted,—[a fact I heard
strongly contradicted later.] Mr. J. (now Sir H. J.) came behind him
in the midst of our talk and almost pitched the Archbishop on me, with
such a push as I never saw given in a drawing-room! The Dean and Lady
Augusta came in later, and she asked eagerly: ‘Where was Manning?’
having never seen him. He had gone away, so I told her of the
enthusiastic meeting which had afforded a spectacle to us all an hour
before, between him and Archdeacon Denison. It was quite a scene of
ecclesiastical reconciliation; a ‘Reunion of Christendom!’ (They had
been told each that the other was in the adjoining room, and
Archdeacon Denison literally rushed with both hands outspread to meet
the Cardinal, whom he had not seen since his conversion.)”

In later years, I received at least half-a-dozen notes from time to time
from his Eminence asking for details of our Anti-vivisection work, and
exhibiting his anxiety to master the facts on which he proposed to speak
at our Meetings. Here are some of these notes:—

“Archbishop’s House, Westminster, S.W.,
“June 12th, 1882.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I should be much obliged if you would send me some recent facts or
utterances of the Mantegazza kind, for the meeting at Lord
Shaftesbury’s. I have for a long time lost all reckoning from
overwork, and need to be posted up.

“Believe me, always faithfully yours,
“_Henry E._, Card. Archbp.”

“Cardinal Manning to Miss F. P. C.
“Eastern Road, Brighton.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I can assure you that my slowness in answering your letter has not
arisen from any diminution of care on Vivisection. I was never better
able to understand it, for I have been for nearly three weeks in pain
day and night from neuralgia in the right arm, which makes writing
difficult.

“I have not seen Mr. Holt’s Bill, and I do not know what it aims at.

“Before I can say anything, I wish to be fully informed. The Bill of
last year does not content me.

“But we must take care not to weaken what we have gained. I hope to
stay here over Sunday, and should be much obliged if you could desire
someone to send me a copy of Mr. Holt’s Bill.

“Has sufficient organised effort been made to enforce Mr. Cross’s Act?

“Believe me, always yours very truly,
“HENRY E., Card. Archbp.”

“Archbishop’s House, Westminster, S.W.,
“June 22nd, 1884.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I will attend the meeting of the 26th unless hindered by some
unforeseen necessity, but I must ask you to send me a brief. I am so
driven by work that for some time I have fallen behind your
proceedings. Send me one or two points marked and I will read them up.

“My mind is more than ever fixed on this subject.

“Believe me, yours faithfully,
“HENRY E., Card. Archbp.”

“Archbishop’s House, Westminster, S.W.,
“January 27th, 1887.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“For the last three weeks I have been kept to the house by one of my
yearly colds; but if possible I will be present at the Meeting of the
Society. If I should be unable to be there I will write a letter.

“I clearly see that the proposed Physiological and Pathological
Institute would be centre and sanction of ever advancing Vivisection.

“I hope you are recovering health and strength by your rest in the
country?

“Believe me, always faithfully yours,
“HENRY E., Card. Archbp.”

“Archbishop’s House, Westminster, S.W.,
“July 31st, 1889.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“My last days have been so full that I have not been able to write. I
thank you for your letter, and for the contents of it. The highest
counsel is always the safest and best, cost us what it may. We may
take the cost as the test of its rectitude.

“I hope you will go on writing against this inflation of vain glory
calling itself Science.

“Believe me, always, very truly yours,
“HENRY E., Card. Archbishop.”

At no less than seven of our annual Meetings (at one of which he
presided) did Cardinal Manning make speeches. All these I have myself
reprinted in an ornamental pamphlet to be obtained at 20, Victoria
Street. The reasons for his adoption of our Anti-vivisection cause,
were, I am sure, mainly moral and humane; but I think an incident which
occurred in Rome not long before our campaign began may have impressed
on his mind a regret that the Catholic Church had hitherto done nothing
on behalf of the lower animals, and a desire to take part himself in a
humane crusade and so rectify its position before the Protestant world.

Pope Pio IX. had been addressed by the English in Rome through Lord
Ampthill, (then Mr. Odo Russell, our representative there)—with a
request for permission to found a Society for Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals in Rome; where, (as all the world knows) it was almost as
deplorably needed as at Naples. After a considerable delay, the formal
reply through the proper Office, was sent to Mr. Russell _refusing_ the
(indispensable) permission. The document conveying this refusal
expressly stated that “a Society for such a purpose could not be
sanctioned in Rome. Man owed duties to his fellow men; but he owed no
duties to the lower animals therefore, though such societies might exist
in Protestant countries they could not be allowed to be established in
Rome.”

The late Lord Arthur Russell, coming back from Italy to England just
after this event, told me of it with great detail, and assured me that
he had seen the Papal document in his brother’s possession; and that if
I chose to publish the matter in England, he would guarantee the truth
of the story at any time. I _did_ very much choose to publish it,
thinking it was a thing which ought to be proclaimed on the housetops;
and I repeated it in seven or eight different publications, ranging from
the _Quarterly Review_ to the _Echo_. Soon after this, if I remember
rightly, began the Anti-vivisection movement, and almost immediately
when the Society for Protection of Animals from Vivisection (afterwards
called the Victoria Street Society) was founded, by Dr. Hoggan and
myself, Cardinal Manning gave us his name and active support. He took
part in our first Deputation to the Home Office, and spoke at our first
meeting, which was held on the 10th June, 1876, at the Westminster
Palace Hotel. On that occasion, when it came to the Cardinal’s turn to
speak, he began at once to say that “Much misapprehension existed as to
the attitude of his Church on the subject of duty to animals.” [As he
said this, with his usual clear, calm, deliberate enunciation, he looked
me straight in the face and I looked at him!] He proceeded to say: “It
was true that man owed no duty _directly_ to the brutes, but he owed it
to God, whose creatures they are, to treat them mercifully.”

This was, I considered a very good way of reconciling adhesion to the
Pope’s doctrine, with humane principles; and I greatly rejoiced that
such a _mezzo-termine_ could be put forward on authority. Of course in
my private opinion the Cardinal’s ethics were theoretically untenable,
seeing that if it were possible to conceive of such a thing as a
creature made by a man, (as people in the thirteenth century believed
that Arnaldus de Villa-Nova had made a living man), or even such a thing
as a creature made by the Devil,—that most wretched being would still
have a right to be spared pain if _he were sensitive to pain_; and would
assuredly be a proper object of measureless compassion. That a dog or
horse is a creature of God; that its love and service to us come of
God’s gracious provisions for us; that the animal is unoffending to its
Creator, while we are suppliants for forgiveness for our offences; all
these are true and tender reasons for _additional_ kindness and care for
these our dumb fellow-creatures. But they are not (as the Cardinal’s
argument would seem to imply) the _only_ reasons for showing mercy
towards them.

Nevertheless it was a great step,—I may say an historical event,—that a
principle practically including universal humanity to the lower animals,
should have been enunciated publicly and formally by a “Prince of the
Church” of Rome. That Cardinal Manning was not only the first great
Roman prelate to lay down any such principle, but that he far outran
many of his contemporaries and co-religionists in so doing, has become
painfully manifest this year (1894) from the numerous letters from
priests which have appeared in the _Tablet_ and _Catholic Times_,
bearing a very different complexion. Cardinal Manning repeated almost
_verbatim_ the same explanation of his own standpoint in his speech on
March 9th, 1887, when he occupied the chair at our Annual Meeting. He
said:

“It is perfectly true that obligations and duties are between moral
persons, and therefore the lower animals are not susceptible of those
moral obligations which we owe to one another; but we owe a seven-fold
obligation to the Creator of those animals. Our obligation and moral
duty is to Him who made them, and, if we wish to know the limit and
the broad outline of our obligation, I say at once it is His Nature
and His perfections; and, among those perfections, one is most
profoundly that of eternal mercy. (Hear, hear.) And, therefore,
although a poor mule or a poor horse is not indeed a moral person, yet
the Lord and Maker of that mule and that horse is the highest
law-giver, and His Nature is a law to Himself. And, in giving a
dominion over His creatures to man, He gave them subject to the
condition that they should be used in conformity to His own
perfections, which is His own law, and, therefore, our law.”

On the first occasion a generous Roman Catholic nobleman present gave me
£20 to have the Cardinal’s speech translated into Italian and widely
circulated in Italy.

I have good reason to believe that when Cardinal Manning went to Rome
after the election of Leo XIII., he spoke earnestly to his Holiness on
the subject of cruelty to animals generally in Italy, and especially
concerning Vivisection, and that he understood the Pope to agree with
him and sanction his attitude. I learned this from a private source, but
his Eminence referred to it quite unmistakeably in his speech at Lord
Shaftesbury’s house on the 21st June, 1882, as follows:—

“I am somewhat concerned to say it, but I know that an impression has
been made that those whom I represent look, if not with approbation,
at least with great indulgence, at the practice of Vivisection. I
grieve to say that abroad there are a great many (whom I beg to say I
do not represent) who do favour the practice; but this I do protest,
that there is not a religious instinct in nature, nor a religion of
nature, nor is there a word in revelation, either in the Old Testament
or the New Testament, nor is there to be found in the great theology
which I do represent, no, nor in any Act of the Church of which I am a
member; no, nor in the lives and utterances of any one of those great
servants of that Church who stand as examples, nor is there an
authoritative utterance anywhere to be found in favour of Vivisection.
There may be the chatter, the prating, and the talk of those who know
nothing about it. And I know what I have stated to be the fact, for
some years ago I took a step known to our excellent secretary, and
brought the subject under the notice and authority where alone I could
bring it. And those before whom it was laid soon proved to have been
profoundly ignorant of the outlines of the alphabet even of
Vivisection. They believed entirely that the practice of surgery and
the science of anatomy owed everything to the discoveries of
vivisectors. They were filled to the full with every false impression,
but when the facts were made known to them, they experienced a
revulsion of feeling.”

Cardinal Manning also, (as I happen likewise to know) made a great
effort about 1878 or 1879, to induce the then General of the
Franciscans, to support the Anti-vivisection movement _for love of St.
Francis_, and his tenderness to animals. In this attempt, however,
Cardinal Manning must have been entirely unsuccessful, as no modern
Franciscan that ever I have heard of, has stirred a finger on behalf of
animals anywhere, or given his name to any Society for protecting them,
either from vulgar or from scientific cruelty. Knowing this, I confess
to feeling some impatience when the name of St. Francis and his amiable
fondness for birds and beasts is perpetually flaunted whenever the lack
of common humanity to animals visible in Catholic countries happens to
be mentioned. It is a very small matter that a Saint, six hundred years
ago, sang with nightingales and fed wolves, if the monks of his own
Order and the priests of the Church which has canonised him, never warn
their flocks that to torment God’s creatures is even a venial sin, and
when forced to notice barbarous cruelties to a brute, invariably reply,
“_Non è Cristiano_,” as if all claims to compassion were dismissed by
that consideration!

The answer of the General of the Franciscans to Cardinal Manning’s
touching appeal was,—“that he had consulted his doctor and that his
doctor assured him that _no such thing as Vivisection was ever practised
in Italy_!”

I was kindly permitted to call at Archbishop’s House and see Cardinal
Manning several times; and I find the following little record of one of
my first visits in a letter to my friend, written the same, or next
day:—

“I had a very interesting interview with the Cardinal. I was shown
into a vast, dreary dining-room quite monastic in its whitey-brown
walls, poverty-stricken furniture, crucifix, and pictures of
half-a-dozen Bishops who did not exhibit the ‘Beauty of Holiness.’ The
Cardinal received me most kindly, and said he was so glad to see me,
and that he was much better in health after a long illness. He is not
much changed. It was droll to sit talking _tête-à-tête_ with a man
with a pink _octagon_ on his venerable head, and various little scraps
of scarlet showing here and there to remind one that ‘_Grattez_’ the
English gentleman and you will find the Roman Cardinal! He told me,
really with effusion, that his heart was in our work; and he promised
to go to the Meeting to-morrow.... I told him we all wished _him_ to
take the chair. He said it would be much better for a layman like Lord
Coleridge to do so. I said, ‘I don’t think you know the place you hold
in English, (I paused and added _avec intention_,) _Protestant_
estimation’! He laughed very good-humouredly and said: ‘I think I do,
very well.’”

At the Meeting on the following day when he _did_ take the chair, I had
opportunities as Hon. Sec., of which I did not fail to avail myself, of
a little quiet conversation with his Eminence before the proceedings.

I spoke of the moral results of Darwinism on the character and remarked
how paralyzing was the idea that Conscience was merely an hereditary
instinct fixed in the brain by the interests of the tribe, and in no
sense the voice of God in the heart or His law graven on the “fleshly
tablets.” He abounded in my sense, and augured immeasurable evils from
the general adoption of such a philosophy. I asked him what was the
Catholic doctrine of the origin of Souls? He answered, promptly and
emphatically: “O, that each one is a distinct creation of God.”

The last day on which His Eminence attended a Committee Meeting in
Victoria Street I had a little conversation with him as usual, after
business was over; and reminded him that on every occasion when he had
previously attended, we had had our beloved President, Lord Shaftesbury
present. “Shall I tell your Eminence,” I asked, “what Mrs. F.” (now Lady
B.) “told me Lord Shaftesbury said to her shortly before he died, about
our Committees here? He said that ‘if our Society had done nothing else
but bring you and him together, and make you sit and work at the same
table for the same object, it would have been well worth while to have
founded it!’” “_Did_ Lord Shaftesbury say that?” said the Cardinal, with
a moisture in his eyes, “_Did_ he say that? I _loved_ Lord Shaftesbury!”

And _these_, I reflected, were the men whom narrow bigots of both
creeds, looked on as the very chiefs of opposing camps and bitter
enemies! The one rejoiced at an _excuse_ for meeting the other in
friendly co-operation! The other said as his last word: “I _loved_ him!”

I was greatly touched by this little scene, and going straight from it
to the house of the friend who had told me of Lord Shaftesbury’s remark,
I naturally described it to her and to Mr. Lowell, who was taking tea
with us. “Ah, yes!” Lady B. said,—“I remember it well, and I could show
you the very tree in the park where we were sitting when Lord
Shaftesbury made that remark. But” (she added) “why did you not tell the
Cardinal that he included _you_? What Lord Shaftesbury said was, that
‘the Society had brought the Cardinal and you and himself to work
together.’” Mr. Lowell was interested in all this, and the evidence it
afforded of the width of mind of the great philanthropist, so often
supposed to be “a narrow Evangelical.”

Alas! he also has “gone over to the majority.” I met him often and liked
him (as every one did) extremely. Though in so many ways different, he
had some of Mr. Gladstone’s peculiar power of making every conversation
wherein he took part interesting; of turning it off dusty roads into
pleasant paths. He had not in the smallest degree that tiresome habit of
_giving information_ instead of _conveying impressions_, which makes
some worthy people so unspeakably fatiguing as companions. I had once
the privilege of sitting between him and Lord Tennyson when they carried
on an animated conversation, and I could see how much the great Poet was
delighted with the lesser one; who was also a large-hearted Statesman; a
silver link between two great nations.

I shall account it one of the chief honours which have fallen to my lot
that Tennyson asked leave, through his son, to pay me a visit. Needless
to say I accepted the offer with gratitude and, fortunately, I was at
home, in our little house in Cheyne Walk, when he called on me. He sat
for a long time over my fire, and talked of poetry; of the share
melodious words ought to have in it; of the hatefulness of scientific
cruelty, against which he was going to write again; and of the new and
dangerous phases of thought then apparent. Much that he said on the
latter subject was, I think, crystallised in his _Locksley Hall Sixty
Years Later_. After he had risen to go and I had followed him to the
stairs, I returned to my room and said from my heart, “_Thank God!_” The
great poem which had been so much to me for half a lifetime, was not
spoiled; the Man and the Poet were one. Nothing that I had now seen and
heard of him in the flesh jarred with what I had known of him in the
spirit.

After this first visit I had the pleasure of meeting Lord Tennyson
several times and of making Lady Tennyson’s charming acquaintance; the
present Lord Tennyson being exceedingly kind and friendly to me in
welcoming me to their house. On one occasion when I met Lord Tennyson at
the house of a mutual friend, he told me, (with an innocent surprise
which I could not but find diverting,) that a certain great Professor
had been positively angry and rude to him about his lines in the
_Children’s Hospital_ concerning those who “carve the living hound”! I
tried to explain to him the fury of the whole _clique_ at the discovery
that the consciences of the rest of mankind has considerably outstepped
theirs in the matter of humanity and that while they fancied themselves,
(in his words,) “the heirs of all the ages, in the foremost files of
Time,” it was really in the Dark Ages, as regarded humane sentiment,—or
at least one or two centuries past,—in which they lingered; practising
the Art of Torture on beasts, as men did on men in the sixteenth
century. I also tried to explain to him that his ideal of a Vivisector
with red face and coarse hands was quite wrong, and as false as the
representation of Lady Macbeth as a tall and masculine woman. Lady
Macbeth _must_ have been small, thin and concentrated, not a big, bony,
conscientious Scotch woman; and Vivisectors (some of them at all events)
are polished and handsome gentlemen, with peculiarly delicate fingers
(for drawing out nerves, &c., as Cyon describes).

Lord Tennyson from the very first beginning of our Anti-vivisection
movement, in 1874, to the hour of his death, never once failed to append
his name to every successive Memorial and Petition,—and they were
many,—which I, and my successors, sent to him; and he accepted and held
our Hon. Membership and afterwards the Vice-Presidency of our Society
from first to last.

The last time I saw Lord Tennyson was one day in London after I had
taken luncheon at his house. When I rose to leave the table, and he
shook hands with me at the door as we were parting, as we supposed, for
that season; he said to me: “Good-Bye, Miss Cobbe—Fight the good Fight.
Go on! Fight the good Fight.” I saw him no more; but I shall do his
bidding, please God, to the end.

I shall insert here two letters which I received from Lord Tennyson
which, though trifling in themselves, I prize as testimonies of his
sympathy and goodwill. I am fortunately able to add to them two papers
of some real interest,—the contemporary estimate of Tennyson’s first
poems by his friends, the Kembles; and the announcement of the death of
Arthur Hallam by his friend John Mitchell Kemble to Fanny Kemble. They
have come into my possession with a vast mass of family and other papers
given me by Mrs. Kemble several years ago, and belong to a series of
letters, marvellously long and closely written, by John Kemble, during
and after his romantic expedition to Spain along with the future
Archbishop Trench and the other young enthusiasts of 1830. The way in
which John Mitchell Kemble speaks of his friend Alfred Tennyson’s Poems
is satisfactory, but much more so is the beautiful testimony he renders
to the character of Hallam. It is touching, and uplifting too, to read
the rather singular words “of a holier heart,” applied to the subject of
“_In Memoriam_,” by his young companion.

“Farringford, Freshwater,
“Isle of Wight,
“June 4th, 1880.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I have subscribed my name, and I hope that it may be of some use to
your cause.

“My wife is grateful to you for remembrance of her, and

“I am, ever yours,
“A. TENNYSON.”

“Aldworth, Haslemere,
“Surrey, January 9th, 1882.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I thank you for your essay, which I found very interesting, though
perhaps somewhat too vehement to serve your purpose. Have you seen
that terrible book by a Swiss (reviewed in the _Spectator_) _Ayez
Pitié_? Pray pardon my not answering you before. I am so harried with
letters and poems from all parts of the world, that my friends often
have to wait for an answer.

“Yours ever,
“A. TENNYSON.”

“Farringford, Freshwater,
“Isle of Wight, June 12th, 1882.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I am sorry to say that I shall not be in London the 21st, so that I
cannot be present at your meeting. Many thanks for asking me. My
father has been suffering from a bad attack of gout, and does not feel
inclined to _write_ more about Vivisection. You have, as you know, his
warmest good wishes in all your great struggle. When are we to see you
again? Can you not pay us a visit at Haslemere this summer?

“With our kindest regards,
“Yours very sincerely,
“HALLAM TENNYSON.”

Extract from letter from John M. Kemble to Fanny Kemble. No date. In
packet of 1830–1833:—

“I am very glad that you like Tennyson’s Poems; if you had any poetry
in you, you could not help it; for the general system of criticism,
and the notion that a poet is to be appreciated by everybody, if he be
a poet, are mighty fallacies. It was only the High Priest who was
privileged to enter the Holy of Holies; and so it is with that other
Holy of Holies, no less sacred and replete with divinity, a great
poet’s mind: therein no vulgar foot may tread. To meet this objection,
it is often said that all men appreciate, &c., &c., Shakespeare and
Milton, &c. To this I answer by a direct denial. Not one man in a
hundred thousand cares three straws for Milton; and though from being
a _dramatic_ Poet Shakespeare must be better understood, I believe I
may say that not one in a hundred thousand feels all that is to be
felt in him. There is no man who has done so much as Tennyson to
express poetical feeling by _sound_; Titian has done as much with
colours. Indeed, I believe no poet to have lived since Milton, so
perfect in his form, except Göthe. In this matter, Shelley and Keats
and Byron, even Wordsworth, have been found wanting. Coleridge
expresses the greatest admiration for Charles Tennyson’s sonnets; we
have sent him Alfred’s poems, which, I am sure, will delight him.”

Extract from letter from John Mitchell Kemble to Fanny Kemble:—

“It is with feelings of inexpressible pain that I announce to you the
death of poor Arthur Hallam, who expired suddenly from an attack of
apoplexy at Vienna, on the 15th of last month. Though this was always
feared by us as likely to occur, the shock has been a bitter one to
bear: and most of all so to the Tennysons, whose sister Emily he was
to have married. I have not yet had the courage to write to Alfred.
This is a loss which will most assuredly be felt by this age, for if
ever man was born for great things he was. Never was a more powerful
intellect joined to a purer and holier heart; and the whole
illuminated with the richest imagination, the most sparkling yet the
kindest wit. One cannot lament for him that he is gone to a far better
life, but we weep over his coffin and wonder that we cannot be
consoled. The Roman epitaph on two young children: _Sibi met ipsis
dolorem abstulerunt, suis reliquere_ (from themselves they took away
pain, to their friends they left it!) is always present to my mind,
and somehow the miserable feeling of loneliness comes over one even
though one knows that the dead are happier than the living. His poor
father was with him only. They had been travelling together in Hungary
and were on their return to England; but there had been nothing
whatever to announce the fatal termination of their journey; indeed,
bating fatigue, Arthur had been unusually well. Our other friends,
though all mourning for him as if he had been our brother, are well.”

In my chapter on Italy I have written some pages concerning Mr. and Mrs.
Browning, and printed two or three kind letters from him to me. It is a
great privilege, I now feel, to have known, even in such slight measure
these two great poets. But what an unspeakable blessing and honour it
has been for England all through the Victorian Age to have for her
representatives and teachers in the high realm of poetry, two such men
as Tennyson and Browning; men of immaculate honour, blameless and
beautiful lives, and lofty and pure inspiration! Not one word which
either has ever published need be blotted out by any recording angel,
and, widely different as they were, their high doctrine was the same.
The one tells us that “good” will be “the final goal of ill”; the other
that—

“God’s in His Heaven!
All’s right with the world!”

I have had also the good fortune to find other English poets ready to
sympathise with me on the subject of Vivisection. Sir Henry Taylor wrote
many letters to me upon it and called my attention to his own lines
which go so deep into the philosophy of the question, and which I have
since quoted so often;

“Pain in Man
Bears the high mission of the flail and fan,
In brutes ’tis purely piteous.”

Here is one of his notes to me:—

“The Roost, Bournemouth,
“November 25th, 1875.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I return your papers that they may not be wasted. I wish you all the
success you deserve, which is all you can desire. But I can do
nothing. My hands are full here, and my pockets are empty.

“Two months ago I succeeded in forming a local Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty in this place.

“We have ordered prosecutions every week since, and have obtained
convictions in every case. And these local operations are all that I
can undertake or assist.

“Believe me, yours sincerely,
“HENRY TAYLOR.”

He was also actively interested in an effort to improve the method of
slaughtering cattle by using a mask with a fixed hole in the centre,
through which a long nail may be easily driven, straight through the
exact suture of the skull to the brain, causing instant death. Sir Henry
specially approved the masks for this purpose, made, I believe, under
his own direction at Bournemouth, by Mr. Mendon, a saddler at Lansdowne.

Mr. Lewis Morris has also written some beautiful and striking poems
touching on the subject of scientific cruelty, and I have reason to hope
that a younger man, who many of us look upon as the poet of the future
in England, Mr. William Watson, is entirely on the same side. In short,
if the _Priests_ of Science are against us, the _Prophets_ of Humanity,
the Poets, are with us in this controversy, almost to a man.

It will be seen that we had Politicians, Historians, and thinkers of
various parties among our friends in London; but there were no Novelists
except that very agreeable woman Miss Jewsbury and the two Misses Betham
Edwards. Mr. Anthony Trollope I knew but slightly. I had also some
acquaintance with a very popular novelist, then a young man, who was
introduced in the full flush of his success to Mr. Carlyle, whereon the
“Sage of Chelsea” greeted him with the _encouraging_ question, “Well,
Mr. —— when do you intend to _begin to do something sairious_?”

With Mr. Wilkie Collins I exchanged several friendly letters concerning
some information he wanted for one of his books. The following letter
from him exhibits the “Sairius” spirit, at all events (as Mr. Carlyle
might admit), in which he set about spinning the elaborate web of his
exciting tales.

“90, Gloucester Place, Portman Square, W.,
“23rd June, 1882.

“Dear Madam,

“I most sincerely thank you for your kind letter and for the pamphlets
which preceded it. The ‘Address’ seems to me to possess the very rare
merit of forcible statement combined with a moderation of judgment
which sets a valuable example, not only to our enemies, but to some of
our friends. As to the ‘Portrait,’ I feel such a strong universal
interest in it that I must not venture on criticism. You have given me
exactly what I most wanted for the purpose that I have in view—and you
have spared me time and trouble in the best and kindest of ways. If I
require further help, you shall see that I am gratefully sensible of
the help that has been already given.

“I am writing to a very large public both at home and abroad; and it
is quite needless (when I am writing to _you_) to dwell on the
importance of producing the right impression by means which keep clear
of terrifying and revolting the ordinary reader. I shall leave the
detestable cruelties of the laboratory to be merely inferred, and, in
tracing the moral influence of those cruelties on the nature of the
man who practices them, and the result as to his social relations with
the persons about him, I shall be careful to present him to the reader
as a man _not_ infinitely wicked and cruel, and to show the efforts
made by his better instincts to resist the inevitable hardening of the
heart, the fatal stupefying of all the finer sensibilities, produced
by the deliberately merciless occupations of his life. If I can
succeed in making him, in some degree, an object of compassion as well
as of horror, my experience of readers of fiction tells me that the
right effect will be produced by the right means.

“Believe me, very truly yours,
“WILKIE COLLINS.”

Of another order of acquaintances was that excellent man Mr. James
Spedding; also Mr. Babbage, (in whose horror of street music I devoutly
sympathised); and Mr. James Fergusson the architect, in whose books and
ideas generally I found great interest. He avowed to me his opinion that
the ancient Jews were never builders of stone edifices, and that all the
relics of stone buildings in Palestine were the work either of Tyrians
or of the Idumean Herod, or of other non-Jewish rulers. His conversation
was always most instructive to me, and I rejoiced when I had the
opportunity of writing a long review (for _Fraser_ I think) of his _Tree
and Serpent Worship_; with which he was so well pleased that he made me
a present of the magnificent volume, of which I believe only a hundred
copies were printed. Mr. Fergusson taught me to see that the whole
civilization of a country has depended historically on the stones with
which it happens naturally to be furnished. If these stones be large and
hard and durable like those of Egypt, we find grand, everlasting
monuments and statues made of them. If they be delicate and beautiful
like Pentelic marble, we have the Parthenon. If they be plain limestone
or freestone as in our northern climes, richness of form and detail take
the place of greater simplicity, and we have the great cathedrals of
England, France and Germany. Where there is no good stone, only brick,
we may have fine mansions, but not great temples, and where there is
neither clay for bricks, nor good stone for building, the natives can
erect no durable edifices, and consequently have no places to be adorned
with statues and paintings and all the arts which go with them. I do not
know whether I do justice to Mr. Fergusson in giving this _résumé_ of
his lesson, but it is my recollection of it, and to my thinking worth
recording.

One of the friends of whom we saw most in London was Sir William Boxall,
whose exquisite artistic taste was specially congenial to my friend, and
his varied conversation and love of his poor, dear, old dog “Garry,” to
me. After Lord Coleridge’s charming obituary of him nothing need be
added in the way of tribute to his character and gifts, or to the
refined feeling which inspired him always. I may add, however (what the
Lord Chief Justice naturally would not say on his own account), namely,
that Boxall, in his latter years of weakness and almost constant
confinement to the house, frequently told us when we went to visit him
how Lord Coleridge had found time from all his labours to come
frequently to sit with him and cheer him; and after a whole day spent in
the hot Law Courts would dine on his old friend’s chops, and spend the
evening in his dingy rooms in Welbeck Street. Here is a letter from Sir
William which I happen to have preserved. It refers to an article I had
written in the _Echo_ on the death of Landseer:—

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“Your sympathetic notice of my old friend Landseer and his friends has
delighted me—a grain of such feeling is worth a newspaper load of
worn-out criticism. I thank you very sincerely for it.

“I should have called upon you, but I have been shut up with the cold
which threatened me when I last saw you.

“Yours very sincerely,
“W. BOXALL.

“October 6th, 1879.

“There is no hope of my getting to Dolgelly. It will be a great escape
for Miss Lloyd, for I am utterly worn out.”

I find that the most common opinion about Lord Shaftesbury is, that he
was an excellent and most disinterested man, who did a vast amount of
good in his time among the poor, and in the factories and on behalf of
the climbing-boy sweeps, but that he was somewhat narrowminded; and dry,
if not stern in character. Perhaps some would add that his extreme
Evangelicalism had in it a tinge of Calvinistic bigotry. I shared very
much such ideas about him till one day in 1875, when I had gone to
Stanhope Street to consult Lord and Lady Mount-Temple, my unfailing
helpers and advisers, about some matter connected with Lord Henniker’s
Bill then before Parliament,—for the restriction of Vivisection. After
explaining my difficulty, Lady Mount-Temple said, “We must consult Lord
Shaftesbury about this matter. Come with me now to his house.” I yielded
to my kind friend, but not without hesitation, fearing that Lord
Shaftesbury would, in the first place, be too much absorbed in his great
philanthropic undertakings to spare attention to the wrongs of the
brutes; and, in the second, that his religious views were too strict to
allow him to co-operate with such a heretic as I, even if (as I was
assured) he would tolerate my intrusion. How widely astray from the
truth I was as regarded his sentiments in both ways, the sequel proved.
He had already, it appeared, taken great interest in the
Anti-vivisection controversy then beginning, and entered into it with
all the warmth of his heart; not as something _taking him off_ from
service to mankind, but _as apart of his philanthropy_. He always
emphatically endorsed my view; that, if we could save Vivisectors from
persisting in the sin of Cruelty, we should be doing them a moral
service greater than to save them from becoming pickpockets or
drunkards. He also felt what I may call passionate pity for the tortured
brutes. He loved dogs, and always had a large beautiful Collie lying
under his writing-table; and was full of tenderness to his daughters’
Siamese cat, and spoke of all animals with intimate knowledge and
sympathy. As to my heresies, though he knew of them from the first, they
never interfered with his kindness and consideration for me, which were
such as I can never remember without emotion.

I shall speak in its place in another chapter of the share he took as
leader and champion of our party in all the subsequent events connected
with the Anti-vivisection agitation. I wish here only to give, (if it
may be possible for me), some small idea to the reader of what that good
man really was, and to remove some of the absurd misconceptions current
concerning him. For example. He was no bigot as to Sabbatarian
observances. I told him once that I belonged to the Society for opening
Museums on Sundays. He said: “I think you are mistaken—the working men
do not wish it. See! I have here the result of a large enquiry among
their Trades Unions and clubs. Nearly all of them deprecate the change.
But I am on this point not at all of the same opinion as most of my
friends. I have told them (and they have often been a little shocked at
it), that I think if a lawyer has a brief for a case on Monday and has
had no time to study it on Saturday, he is quite justified in reading it
up on Sunday after church.”

Neither did he share the very common bigotry of teetotalism. He said to
me, “The teetotallers have added an Eleventh Commandment, and think more
of it than of all the rest.” Again, when (as is well known) Lord
Palmerston left the choice of Bishops for many years practically in his
hands (I believe that seven owed their sees to him), and he, of course,
selected Evangelical clergymen who would uphold what he considered to be
vital religious truth, he was yet able to concur heartily in the
appointment of Arthur Stanley to the Deanery of Westminster. He told me
that Lord Palmerston had written to him before inviting Dr. Stanley, and
said that he would not do it if he, (Lord Shaftesbury) disapproved; and
that he had answered that he was well aware that Dr. Stanley’s
theological views differed widely from his own, but that he was an
admirable man and a gentleman, with special suitability for this post
and a claim to some such high office; and that he cordially approved
Lord Palmerston’s choice. I do not suppose that Dean Stanley ever knew
of this possible _veto_ in Lord Shaftesbury’s hands, but he entertained
the profoundest respect for him, and expressed it in the little poem
which he wrote about him (of which Lord Shaftesbury gave me an MS.
copy), which appears in Dean Stanley’s biography. He compares the aged
philanthropist to “a great rock’s shadow in a weary land.”

It was a charge against Howard and some other great philanthropists
that, while exhibiting the enthusiasm of humanity on the _largest_ scale
they failed to show it on a small one, and were scantily kind to those
immediately around them. Nothing could be less true of Lord Shaftesbury.
While the direction of a score of great charitable undertakings rested
on him, and his study was flooded with reports, Bills before Parliament
and letters by the hundred,—he would remember to perform all sorts of
little kindnesses to individuals having no special claim on him; and
never by any chance did he omit an act of courtesy. No more perfectly
high-bred gentleman ever graced the old school; and no young man, I may
add, ever had a fresher or warmer heart. Indeed, I know not where I
should look among old or young for such ready and full response of
feeling to each call for pity, for sympathy, for indignation, and, I may
add, for the enjoyment of humour, the least gleam of which caught his
eye a moment. He was always particularly tickled with the absurdities
involved in the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, and whenever a
clergyman or a bishop did anything he much disapproved, he was sure to
stigmatize it from that point of view. One day he was giving me a rather
long account of some Deputation which had waited on him and endeavoured
to bully him. As he described the scene: “There they stood in a crowd in
the room, and I said to them; Gentlemen! I’ll see you.”... (Good
Heavens! I thought: _Where_ did he say he would see them?)—“I’ll see you
_at the bottom of the Red Sea_ before I’ll do it!” The revulsion was so
ludicrous and the allusion to the “Red Sea” instead of “another place,”
so characteristic, that I broke into a peal of laughter which, when
explained, made him also laugh heartily. Another day I remember his
great amusement at a story not reported, I believe, in the _Times_, but
told me by an M.P. who was present in the House when Sir P. O. had
outdone Sir Boyle Roche. He spoke of “the ingratitude of the Irish to
Mr. Gladstone _who had broken down the bridges which divided them from
England_!”

A lady whose reputation was less unblemished than might have been
wished, and of whom I fought very shy in consequence, went to call on
him about some business. When I saw him next he told me of her visit,
and said, “When she left my study, I said to myself; ‘there goes a
_dashing Cyprian_!’” One needed to go back a century to recall this
droll old phrase. More than once he repeated, chuckling with amusement,
the speech of an old beggar woman to whom he had refused alms, and who
called after him, “You withered specimen of bygone philanthropy!” On
another occasion when he was in the Chair at a small meeting, one of the
speakers persisted in expressing over and over again his conviction that
the venerable Chairman could not be expected to live long. Lord
Shaftesbury turned aside to me and said _sotto voce_, “I declare he’s
telling me I’m going to die immediately!” “There he is saying it again!
Was there ever such a man?” Nobody was more awake than he to the
“dodges” of interested people trying to make capital out of his
religious party. A most ridiculous instance of this he described to me
with great glee. At the time of the excitement (now long forgotten)
about the Madiai family, Barnum actually called upon him (Lord
Shaftesbury) and entreated him to allow of the Madiai being taken over
to be _exhibited_ in New York! “It would be such an affecting sight,”
said Barnum, “to see _real_ Christian Martyrs!”

As an instance of his thoughtfulness, I may mention that having one day
just received a ticket for the Private View of the Academy, he offered
it to me and I accepted it gladly, observing that since the recent death
of Boxall I feared we should not have one given to us, and that my
friend would be pleased to use it. “O, I am so glad!” said Lord
Shaftesbury; and from that day every year till he died he never once
failed to send her, addressed by himself, his tickets for each of the
two annual exhibitions. When one thinks of how men who do not do in a
year as much as he did in a week, would have scoffed at the idea of
taking such trouble, one may estimate the good nature which prompted
this over-worked man to remember such a trifle, unfailingly.

The most touching interview I ever had with him, was one of the last, in
his study in Grosvenor Square, not long before his death. Our
conversation had fallen on the woes and wrongs of seduced girls and
ruined women; and he told me many facts which he had learned by personal
investigation and visits to dreadful haunts in London. He described all
he saw and heard with a compassion for the victims and yet a horror of
vice and impurity, which somehow made me think of Christ and the Woman
taken in adultery. After a few moments’ silence, during which we were
both rather overcome, he said, “When I feel age creeping on me, and know
I must soon die, I hope it is not wrong to say it, but I _cannot bear to
leave the world with all the misery in it_.” No words can describe how
this simple expression revealed to me the man, in his inmost spirit. He
had long passed the stage of moral effort which does good _as a duty_,
and had ascended to that wherein even the enjoyment of Heaven itself,
(which of course, his creed taught him to expect immediately after
death) had less attractions for him than the labour of mitigating the
sorrows of earth.

I possess 280 letters and notes from Lord Shaftesbury written to me
during the ten years which elapsed from 1875, when I first saw him, till
his last illness in 1885. Many of them are merely brief notes, giving me
information or advice about my work as Hon. Sec. of the Victoria Street
Society, of which he was President. But many are long and interesting
letters. The editor of his excellent Biography probably did not know I
possessed these letters, nor did I know he was preparing Lord
Shaftesbury’s _Life_ or I should have placed them at his disposal. I can
only here quote a few as characteristic, or otherwise specially
interesting to me.

“Castle Wemyss, Wemyss Bay, N.B.,
“September 3rd, 1878.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“Your letter is very cheering. We were right to make the experiment.
We were right to test the man and the law: Cross, and his
administration of it. Both have failed us, and we are bound in duty, I
think, to leap over all limitations, and go in for the total abolition
of this vile and cruel form of Idolatry; for idolatry it is, and, like
all idolatry, brutal, degrading, and deceptive....

“May God prosper us! These ill-used and tortured animals are as much
His Creatures as we are, and to say the truth, I had, in some
instances, rather be the animal tortured than the man who tortured it.
I should believe myself to have higher hopes, and a happier future.

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

“July 10th, 1879.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I have sent your letter to Judas of X——. I find no fault in it, but
that of too much courtesy to one so lost to every consideration of
feeling and truth.

“Did you know him, as I know him, you would find it difficult to
restrain your pen and your tongue.”...

* * * * *

“Some good will come out of the discussion.

“I have unmistakable evidence that many were deeply impressed, but
adhesion to political leaders is a higher law with most Politicians
than obedience to the law of truth.

“What do you think now of the Doctrine of ‘Apostolic Succession’?

“Would St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John have made such a speech as
that of my Lord of P——?

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

“Castle Wemyss, Wemyss Bay, N.B.,
“September 16th, 1879.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“You do that Bishop too much honour. He is not worth notice.

“It is frightful to see that the open champions of Vivisection are not
Bradlaugh and Mrs. B. but Bishops, ‘_Fathers in God_,’ and ‘Pastors’
of the People!

“We shall soon have Bradlaugh and his company claiming the Apostolical
Succession; and if that succession be founded on truth, mercy, and
love, with as good a right as Dr. G., Dr. M. or D.D. anything else.

“Your letter has crushed (if such a hard substance can be crushed) his
Lordship of C....

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

The next letter is in acknowledgment of the following verses which I had
sent to him on his Eightieth Birthday. They were repeated by the late
Chamberlain of the City of London, Sir Benjamin Scott, in his oration on
the presentation of the Freedom of the City to Lord Shaftesbury. I print
the letter, (though all too kind in its expression about my poor
verses,) on account of the deeply interesting review of his own life
which it contains:—

A BIRTHDAY ADDRESS

TO ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, 7TH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, K.G.
APRIL 28TH, 1881.

For eighty years! Many will count them over,
But none save He who knoweth all may guess
What those long years have held of high endeavour,
Of world-wide blessing and of blessedness.

For eighty years the champion of the right
Of hapless child neglected and forlorn;
Of maniac dungeon’d in his double night;
Of woman overtasked and labour-worn;

Of homeless boy in streets with peril rife;
Of workman sickening in his airless den;
Of Indian parching for the streams of life,
Of Negro slave in bonds of cruel men;

O! Friend of all the friendless ‘neath the sun,
Whose hand hath wiped away a thousand tears,
Whose fervent lips and clear strong brain have done
God’s holy service, lo! these eighty years,—

How meet it seems thy grand and vigorous age
Should find beyond man’s race fresh pangs to spare
And for the wrong’d and tortured brutes engage
In yet fresh labours and ungrudging care!

O tarry long amongst us! Live, we pray,
Hasten not yet to hear thy Lord’s “Well done!”
Let this world still seem better while it may
Contain one soul like thine amid its throng.

Whilst thou art here our inmost hearts confess,
Truth spake the kingly Seer of old who said—
“Found in the way of God and righteousness,
A crown of glory is the hoary head.”

“Lord Shaftesbury to Miss F. P. C.
“24, Grosvenor Square, W.,
“April 30th, 1881.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“Had I not known your handwriting, I should never have guessed, either
that you were the writer of the verses, or that I was the subject of
them.

“Had I judged them simply by their ability and force, I might have
ascribed them to the true Author; but it required the envelope, and
the ominous word ‘eighty,’ to justify me in applying them to myself.

“They both touched and gratified me, but I will tell you the origin of
my public career, which you have been so kind as to commend. It arose
while I was a boy at Harrow School, about, I should think, fourteen
years of age—an event occurred (the details of which I may give you
some other day), which brought painfully before me the scorn and
neglect manifested towards the Poor and helpless. I was deeply
affected; but, for many years afterwards, I acted only on feeling and
sentiment. As I advanced in life, all this grew up to a sense of duty;
and I was convinced that God had called me to devote whatever
advantages He might have bestowed upon me, to the cause of the weak,
the helpless, both man and beast, and those who had none to help them.

“I entered Parliament in 1826, and I commenced operations in 1828,
with an effort to ameliorate the conditions of lunatics, and then I
passed on in a succession of attempts to grapple with other evils, and
such has been my trade for more than half a century.

“Do not think for a moment that I claim any merit. If there be any
doctrine that I dislike and fear more than another, it is the
‘Doctrine of Works.’ Whatever I have done has been given to me; what I
have done I was enabled to do; and all happy results (if any there be)
must be credited, not to the servant, but to the great Master, who led
and sustained him.

“My course, however, has raised up for me many enemies, and very few
friends, but among those friends I hope that you may be numbered.

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

I sent him another little _souvenir_ two years later:—

TO LORD SHAFTESBURY ON HIS 82ND BIRTHDAY.

WITH A CHINA TABLET.

The Lord of Rome, historians say,
Lamented he had “lost a day,”
When no good deed was done.
Scarce one such day, methinks, appears
In the long record of the years
Of England’s worthier son.

If on this tablet’s surface light
His hourly toils should Shaftesbury write
All may be soon effaced:
But in our grateful memories graven
And in the registers of Heaven
They will not be erased.

_London, April 28th, 1883._

The next letter refers to my Lectures on the _Duties of Women_ which I
had just delivered.

“24, Grosvenor Square, W.,
“May 14th, 1880.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“... I admire your Lectures. But do you not try to make, ‘the sex’ a
little too pugnacious? And why do you give ‘truth’ to the men, and
deny it to the women?

“If you mean by ‘truth’ abstinence from fibs, I think that the females
are as good as the males. But if you mean steadiness of friendship,
adherence to principles, conscientiously not superficially
entertained, and sincerity in a good cause, why, the women are far
superior.

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

“24, Grosvenor Square, W.,
“May 21st, 1880.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“... Your lecture on Vivisection was admirable—we must be ‘mealy
mouthed’ no longer.

“Shall you and I have a conversation on your lectures and the ‘Duties
of Women’? We shall not, I believe, have much difference of opinion;
perhaps none. I approve them heartily, but there are one or two
expressions which, though intelligible to myself, would be greatly
misconstrued by a certain portion of Englishmen.

“I could give you instances by the hundred of the wonderful success
that, by a merciful Providence, has followed with our Ragged children,
male and female.[27] In fact, though after long intervals we have lost
sight of a good many, we have very few cases, indeed, of the failure
of our hopes and efforts.

“In thirty years we took off the streets of London, and sent to
service, or provided with means of honest livelihood more than two
hundred and twenty thousand ‘waifs and strays.’

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

“July 23rd, 1880.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I have had a very friendly letter from Gladstone; but on reference to
him for permission to publish it, he seems unwilling to assent.

“Our testimony, thank God, is cumulative for good. We may hope, and we
must pray, for better things.

“I send you Gladstone’s letter. Pray return it to me, and take care
that it does not appear in print.[28]

“I am glad that you liked the ‘Dinner.’ It was, I think, a success in
showing civility to foreign friends.

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

Lord Shaftesbury made the following remarks about the Future State of
Animals, in a very sympathizing reply to a letter I had written to him
in which I mentioned to him that my dog had died:—

“September 29th, 1883.

“I have ever believed in a happy future for animals; I cannot say or
conjecture how or where; but sure I am that the love, so manifested,
by dogs especially, is an emanation from the Divine essence, and, as
such, it can, or rather it _will_ never be extinguished.”[29]

“24, Grosvenor Square, W.,
“May 14th, 1885.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“You must not suppose that because I did not answer your letter, at
the moment, I am indifferent to you or your correspondence.

“Far from it, but when I have little to do, being almost confined to
the house, I have much to write, and to get through my work, I must
frequently be relieved by a recumbent posture.

“Nevertheless, by God’s mercy, I am certainly better; and I think that
were we blessed with some warm, genial, weather, I should recover more
rapidly.

“Bryan[30] is a good man, he is able, diligent, zealous and has an
excellent judgment. I have not been able to attend his Committee, but
his reports to me show attention and good sense.

“I have left, as perhaps you have seen, the Lunacy Commission. It was
at the close of 56 years of service that I did so. I dare say that you
have had time to read my letter of resignation in the _Times_ of the
8th.

“I am very glad that Miss Lloyd is determined to print those lines.
They are very beautiful; and you must be sure to send a copy to Miss
Marsh. She admires them as much as I do.

“The thought of Calvary[31] is the strength that has governed all the
sentiments and actions of my manhood and later life; and you can well
believe that I greatly rejoice to find that one, whom I prize so
highly, has kindred sympathies....

“May God prosper you.

“Yours truly,

“SHAFTESBURY.”

The most remarkable woman I have known, not excepting Mrs. Somerville
(described in my chapter on Italy), Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mrs.
Beecher Stowe, was, beyond any doubt or question, my dear friend, Fanny
Kemble. I have told of the droll circumstances of our first meeting at
Newbridge in the early Fifties. From that time till her death in 1892,
her brilliant, iridescent genius, her wit, her spirit, her tenderness,
the immense “go” and momentum of her whole nature, were sources of
endless pleasure to me. When I was lame, I used to feel that for days
after talking with her I could almost dispense with my crutches, so much
did she, literally, lift me up!

Mrs. Kemble paid us several visits here in Wales, and was perhaps even
more delightful in our quiet country quarters than in London. She would
sit out for many hours at a time in our beautiful old garden, which she
said was to her “an idyll;” and talk of all things in heaven and earth;
touching in turn every note in the gamut of emotion from sorrowful to
joyous. One summer she came to us early, and thus sat daily under a
great cherry tree “in the midst of the garden,” which was at the time a
mass of odorous and snowy blossoms. Alas! the blossoms have returned and
are blooming as I write;—but the friend sleeps under the sod in Kensal
Green.

Mr. Henry James’ obituary article and Mr. Bentley’s generous-hearted
letter concerning her in the _Times_—in rebuke of the mean and grudging
notice of her which that paper had published,—seem to me to have been by
far the most truthful sketches which appeared of the “grand old
lioness;” as Thackeray called her. Everybody could admire, and most
people a little feared her; but it needed to come very close to her and
brush past her formidable thorns of irony and sarcasm, to know and
_love_ her, as she most truly deserved to be loved.

There is always something startling and perhaps the reverse of
attractive to those of us who have been brought up in the usual English
way to _repress_ our emotions, in women who have been trained reversely
by histrionic life, to give all possible outwardness and vividness of
expression to those same emotions. It is only when we get below both the
extreme demonstrativeness on one hand, and the conventional reserve and
self-restraint on the other, and meet on common ground of deep
sympathies, that real friendship is established; a friendship which in
my case was at once an honour and a delight.

Mrs. Kemble in her generous affection made a present to me of the MSS.
of her Memoirs, which subsequently I induced her to take back, and
publish herself, as her “_Old Woman’s Gossip_,” her _Records of a
Girlhood_ and _Records of Later Life_. Beside these, which, as I have
said, I returned to her one after another, she gave me, and I still
possess, an immense packet of her own old letters to her beloved H. S.
(Harriet St. Leger) and others; and the materials of five large and
thick volumes of autograph letters addressed to her, extending over more
than 50 years. They include whole correspondences with W. Donne, Edward
Fitzgerald, Henry Greville, Mrs. Jameson, John Mitchell Kemble, George
Combe, and several others; and besides these there are either one or
half-a-dozen letters from almost every man and woman of eminence in
England in her time. Mr. Bentley has very liberally purchased from me
for publication about 100 letters from Edward Fitzgerald to Mrs. Kemble.
The rest of the Mrs. Kemble’s correspondence I have, as I have
mentioned, bound together in five volumes, and I do not intend to
publish them. Had any of Mrs. Kemble’s “_Records_” remained inedited at
the time of her death I should have undertaken, (as she no doubt
intended me to do) the task of writing her biography. The work was,
however, so fully done by herself in her long series of volumes that
there was neither need nor room for more. I am happy to add, in
conclusion, that in the arrangements I have made regarding my dear old
friend’s literary remains, I have the consent and approval of her
daughters.

I knew Mrs. Gaskell a little, but not enough to harmonize in my mind the
woman I saw in the flesh with the books I liked so well as _Mary Barton_
and _Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras_. Of Mrs. Stowe’s delightful conversation
on the terrace of our villa on Bellosguardo, I have written my
recollections, and recorded the glimpses I had of Mrs. Browning. I have
also described Harriet Hosmer and Rosa Bonheur; our sculptor and painter
friends, from the latter of whom I have just (1898) received the kindest
letters and her impressive photograph; and Mary Carpenter, my leader and
fellow-worker at Bristol. I must not speak here of the affection and
admiration I entertain for my dear, living friend Anna Swanwick, the
translator of Æschylus and Faust; and for Louisa Lee Schuyler, one of
the leaders in the organization of relief in the great Civil War of
America and who founded and carried to its present marvellous extent of
power and usefulness the _State Charities Aid Association_ of New York.
Again, I have known in England Mdme. Bodichon (who furnished Girton with
its first thousand pounds); Mrs. Josephine Butler; Mrs. Webster the
classic poetess; and Mrs. Emily Pfeiffer, another poetess and very
beautiful woman at whose house I once witnessed an interesting scene,—a
large party of ladies and gentlemen dressed in the attire of Athenians
of the Periclean age. Miss Swanwick and I, who were alone permitted to
attend in English costume, were immensely impressed by the _ennobling_
effect of the classic dress, not only on young and graceful people, but
on those who were quite the reverse.

I never saw Harriet Martineau; but was so desirous of doing it that I
intended to make a journey to Ambleside for the purpose, and with that
view begged our mutual friend, the late Mrs. Hensleigh Wedgwood, to ask
leave to introduce me to her. It was an unfortunate moment, and I only
received the following kind message:—

“I need not say how happy I should have been to become acquainted with
Miss Cobbe; but the time is past and I am only fit for old friends who
can excuse my shortcomings. I have lost ground so much of late that
the case is clear. I must give up all hopes of so great a pleasure.
Will you say this to her and ask her to receive my kind and thankful
regards, I venture to send on the grounds of our common friendships?”

Of my living, beloved and honoured friends, Mrs. William Grey, Lady
Mount-Temple, Miss Shirreff, Mrs. Fawcett, Miss Caroline Stephen, Miss
Julia Wedgwood, Lady Battersea, and Miss Florence Davenport Hill, I must
not here speak. I have had the pleasure also of meeting that very fine
woman-worker Miss Octavia Hill.

George Eliot I did not know, nor, as I have just said, did I ever meet
Harriet Martineau. But with those two great exceptions I think I may
boast of having come into contact with nearly all the more gifted
Englishwomen of the Victorian era; and thus when I speak, as I shall do
in the next chapter, of my efforts to put the claims of my sex fairly
before the world, I may boast of writing with practical personal
knowledge of what women are and can be, both as to character and
ability.

The decade which began in 1880 brought me many sorrows. The first was
the death of my second brother, Thomas Cobbe, of Easton Lyss. I loved
him much for his own sweet and affectionate nature; and much, too, for
the love of our mother which he shared especially with me. I was also
warmly attached to his beautiful and good Scotch wife, who survived him
only a few years; and to his dear children, who were my pets in infancy
and have been almost like my own daughters ever since. My brother ought
to have been a very successful and brilliant barrister, but his life was
broken by the faults of others, and when in advanced years he wrote,
with immense patience and research, a really valuable _History of the
Norman Kings_ (thought to be so by such competent judges as Mr. William
Longman, and the Historical Society of Normandy, which asked leave to
translate it), the book was practically _killed_ by a cruel and most
unfair review which attributed to him mistakes which he had not made,
and refused to publish his refutation of the charge. If this review were
written (as we could not but surmise) by an eminent historian, now dead,
whose own book my brother had, very unwisely, ignored, I can only say it
was a malicious and spiteful deed. My brother’s ambition was not strong
enough to carry him over such a disappointment, and he never attempted
to write again for the press, but spent his later years in the solitary
study of his favourite old chronicles and his Shakespeare. A little
later my eldest brother also died, leaving no children. I must be
thankful at my age that the youngest, the Rector of Maulden, though five
years older than I, still survives in health and vigour, rejoicing in
his happy home and family of affectionate daughters. I trust yet to
welcome him into the brotherhood of the pen when his great monograph on
LUTON CHURCH, HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE, sees the light this year.

I lost also in this same decade, my earliest friend Harriet St. Leger;
and a younger, very dear one, Emily Shaen. Mrs. Shaen and her admirable
husband had been much drawn to me by religious sympathies; and I
regarded her with more heartfelt respect, I might say reverence, than I
can well express. She endured twenty years of seclusion and suffering,
with the spirit at once of a saint and of a philosopher. Had her health
enabled her to take her natural place in the world, I have always felt
assured she would have been recognised as one of the ablest as well as
one of the best women of the day, and more than the equal of her two
gifted sisters; Catharine and Susanna Winkworth. The friendship between
us was of the closest kind. I often said that I _went to church_ to her
sick-room. In her last days, when utterly crushed by incessant suffering
and by the death of her beloved husband and her favourite son, she bore
in whispers, to me, (she could scarcely speak for mortal weakness,) this
testimony to our common faith: “I sent for you,—to tell you,—_I am more
sure than ever that God is Good_.”

All these deaths and the heart-wearing Anti-vivisection work combined
with my own increasing years to make my life in London less and less a
source of enjoyment and more of strain than I could bear. In 1884 Miss
Lloyd, with my entire concurrence, let our dear little house in Hereford
Square to our friend, Mrs. Kemble, and we left London altogether and
came to live in Wales.

CHAPTER
XIX.
_CLAIMS OF WOMEN._

It was not till I was actively engaged in the work of Mary Carpenter at
Bristol, and had begun to desire earnestly various changes of law
relating to young criminals and paupers, that I became an advocate of
“Women’s Rights.” It was good old Rev. Samuel J. May, of Syracuse, New
York, who, when paying us a visit, pressed on my attention the question:
“_Why should you not have a vote?_ Why should not women be enabled to
influence the making of the laws in which they have as great an interest
as men?”

My experience probably explains largely the indifference of thousands of
women, not deficient in intelligence, in England and America to the
possession of political rights. They have much anxiety to fulfil their
home duties, and the notion of undertaking others, requiring (as they
fully understand) conscientious enquiry and reflection, rather alarms
than attracts them. But the time comes to every woman worth her salt to
take ardent interest in some question which touches legislation. Then
she begins to ask herself, as Mr. May asked me; “Why should the fact of
being a woman, close to me the use of the plain, direct means, of
helping to achieve some large public good or stopping some evil?” The
timid, the indolent, the conventional will here retreat, and try to
believe that it concerns men only to right the wrongs of the world in
some more effectual way than by single-handed personal efforts in
special cases. Others again,—and of their number was I—become deeply
impressed with the need of woman’s voice in public affairs, and
thenceforth attach themselves to the “Woman’s Cause” more or less
earnestly. For my own part I confess I have been chiefly moved by
reflection on the sufferings and wrongs borne by women, in great measure
owing to the _deconsideration_ they endure consequent on their political
and civil disabilities. Whilst I and other happily circumstanced women,
have had no immediate wrongs of our own to gall us, we should still have
been very poor creatures had we not felt bitterly those of our less
fortunate sisters, the robbed and trampled wives, the mothers whose
children were torn from them at the bidding of a dead or living father,
the daughters kept in ignorance and poverty while their brothers were
educated in costly schools and fitted for honourable professions. Such
wrongs as these have inspired me with the persistent resolution to do
everything in my power to protect the property, the persons and the
parental rights of women.

I do not think that this resolve has any necessary connection with
theories concerning the equality of the sexes; and I am sure that a
great deal of our force has been wasted on fruitless discussions such
as: “Why has there never been a female Shakespeare?” A Celt claiming
equal representation with a Saxon, _or any representation at all_, might
just as fairly be challenged to explain why there has never been a
Celtic Shakespeare, or a Celtic Tennyson? My own opinion is, that women
_en masse_ are by no means the intellectual equals of men _en
masse_;—and whether this inequality arise from irremediable causes or
from alterable circumstances of education and heredity, is not worth
debating. If the nation had established an intellectual test for
political equality, and admission to the franchise were confined to
persons passing a given Standard; well and good. Then, no doubt, there
would be (as things now stand) fifty per cent. of men who would win
votes, and perhaps only thirty per cent. of women. So much may be freely
admitted. But then that thirty per cent. of females _would_ obtain
political rights; and those who failed, would be debarred by a natural
and real, not an arbitrary inferiority. Such a state of things would not
present such ludicrous injustice as that which obtains,—for example,—in
a parish not a hundred miles from my present abode. There is in the
village in question a man universally known therein as “The _Idiot_;” a
poor slouching, squinting fellow, who yet rents a house and can do rough
field work, though he can scarcely speak intelligibly. _He_ has a vote,
of course. The owner of his house and of half the parish, who holds also
the advowson of the living, is a lady who has travelled widely,
understands three or four languages, and studies the political news of
Europe daily in the columns of the _Times_. That lady, equally of
course, has _no_ vote, no power whatever to keep the representation of
her county out of the hands of the demagogues naturally admired by the
Idiot and his compeers. Under the regulations which create inequalities
of this kind is it not rather absurd to insist perpetually, (as is the
practise of our opponents,) on the _intellectual_ inferiority of
women,—as if it were really in question?

I hold, however, that whatever be our real mental rank,—to be tested
thoroughly only in future generations, under changed conditions of
training and heredity,—we women are the _equivalents_, though not the
_equals_, of men. And to refuse a share in the law-making of a nation to
the most law-abiding half of it; to exclude on all largest questions the
votes of the most conscientious, temperate, religious and (above all)
most merciful and tender-hearted moiety, is a mistake which cannot fail,
and _has_ not failed, to entail great evil and loss.

I wrote, as I have mentioned in Chapter XV., a great many articles,
(chiefly in _Fraser_ and _Macmillan_,) on women’s concerns about the
years 1861–2–3: “_What shall we do with our Old Maids?_”; “_Female
Charity, Lay and Monastic_;” “_Women in Italy in 1862_;” “_The Education
of Women_;” “_Social Science Congress and Women’s Part in them_;” and,
later, “_The Fitness of Women for the Ministry of Religion_.” These made
me known to many women who were fighting in the woman’s cause; Miss
Bessie Parkes (now Madame Belloc), Madame Bodichon, Mrs. Grey, Miss
Shirreff, Mrs. Peter Taylor, Miss Becker, and others; and when
Committees were formed for promoting Woman Suffrage, I was invited to
join them. I did so; and frequently attended the meetings, though not
regularly. We had several Members of Parliament and other gentlemen
(notably Mr. Frederick Hill, brother of my old friend Recorder Hill and
of Sir Rowland), who generally helped our deliberations; and many able
women, among others Mrs. Augusta Webster, the poetess; and Lady Anna
Gore Langton, an exceedingly sensible woman, who also held Drawing-Room
Suffrage Meetings (at which I spoke) in her house. We had for secretary
Miss Lydia Becker; a woman of singular political ability, for whom I had
a sincere respect. Her premature death has been an incalculable loss to
the women of England. She gave me the impression of one of those
ill-fated people whose outward persons do not represent their inward
selves. I am sure she had a large element of softness and sensitiveness
in her nature, unsuspected by most of those with whom she laboured. She
was a most courageous and straightforward woman, with a single eye to
the great political work which she had undertaken, and which I think no
one has understood so well as she.

After Miss Becker’s lamented death the great schism between Unionists
and Home Rulers extended far enough to split even our Committee, (which
was avowedly of no party,) into two bodies. I naturally followed my
fellow-Unionist, Mrs. Fawcett when she re-organized the moiety of the
Society and established an office for it in College Street, Westminster.
Believing her to be quite the ablest woman-economist and politician in
England, I entertain the hope that she may at last carry a Woman
Suffrage Bill and live to see qualified single women recording their
votes at Parliamentary elections. When that time arrives every one will
scoff at the objections which have so long closed the “right of way,” to
us of the “weaker sex.”

Beside the Committee of the Society for _Woman Suffrage_, I also joined
for a time the Committee which,—long afterwards,—effected the splendid
achievement of procuring the passage of the _Married Women’s Property
Act_; the greatest step gained up to the present time for women in
England. I can claim no part of that real honour, which is due in
greatest measure to Mrs. Jacob Bright.

The question of granting University Degrees to women, was opened as far
back as 1862. In that year I read, in the Guildhall in London at the
Social Science Congress, a paper, pleading for the privilege. Dean
Milman, who occupied the Chair, was very kind in praising my crude
address, and enjoyed the little jokes wherewith it was sprinkled; but
next morning every daily paper in London laughed at my demand, and for a
week or two I was the butt of universal ridicule. Nevertheless, just 17
years afterwards, I was invited to join a Deputation headed by Lady
Stanley of Alderley, to thank Lord Granville for having (as President of
London University) conceded those degrees to women, precisely as I had
demanded! I took occasion at the close of the pleasant interview, to
present him with one of the very few remaining copies of my original and
much ridiculed appeal.

From this time I wrote and spoke not unfrequently on behalf of women’s
political and civil claims. One article of mine in _Fraser_, 1868, was
reprinted more than once. It was headed “_Criminals, Idiots, Women and
Minors_;” and enquired “Whether the classification should be counted
sound?” I hope that the discussion it involved on the laws relating to
the property of married women was of some service in helping on the
great measure of justice afterwards granted.

Another paper of mine, circulated by the _London National Society for
Women’s Suffrage_, for whom I wrote it, was entitled “_Our Policy_.” It
was, in effect, an address to women concerning the best way to secure
the suffrage. I began this pamphlet by the following remarks:—

“There is an instructive story, told by Herodotus, of an African
nation which went to war with the South Wind. The wind had greatly
annoyed these Psyllians by drying up their cisterns, so they organised
a campaign and set off to attack the enemy at head-quarters—somewhere,
I presume, about the Sahara. The army was admirably equipped with all
the military engines of those days; swords and spears, darts and
javelins, battering rams and catapults. It happened that the South
Wind did not, however, suffer much from these weapons, but got up one
fine morning and blew!—The sands of the desert have lain for a great
many ages over those unfortunate Psyllians; and, as Herodotus placidly
concludes the story, ‘The Nasamones possess the territory of those who
thus perished.’

“It seems to me that we, women, who have been fighting for the
Suffrage with logical arguments—syllogisms, analogies, demonstrations,
and reductions-to-the-absurd of our antagonists’ position, in short,
all the weapons of ratiocinative warfare—have been behaving very much
like those poor Psyllians, who imagined that darts, and swords, and
catapults would avail against the Simoom. The obvious fact is, that it
is _Sentiment_ we have to contend against, not Reason; Feeling and
Prepossession, not intellectual Conviction. Had Logic been the only
obstacle in our way, we should long ago have been polling our votes
for Parliamentary as well as for Municipal and School Board elections.
To those who hold that Property is the thing intended to be
represented by the Constitution of England, we have shown that we
possess such property. To those who say that Tax-paying and
Representation should go together, we have pointed to the
tax-gatherers’ papers, which, alas! lie on our hall-tables wholly
irrespective of the touching fact that we belong to the ‘protected
sex.’ Where Intelligence, Education, and freedom from crime are
considered enough to confer rights of citizenship, we have remarked
that we are quite ready to challenge rivalry in such particulars with
those Illiterates for whose exercise of political functions our Senate
has taken such exemplary care. Finally, to the ever-recurring charge
that we cannot fight, and therefore ought not to vote, we have replied
that the logic of the exclusion will be manifest when all the men too
weak, too short, or too old for the military standard be likewise
disfranchised, and when the actual soldiers of our army are accorded
the suffrage.

“But it is Sentiment, not Logic, against which we have to struggle;
and we shall best do so, I think, by endeavouring to understand and
make full allowance for it; and then by steady working, shoulder to
shoulder so as to conquer, or rather _win_ it over to our side.”

In 1876, May 13th, I made a rather long and elaborate speech on the
subject of women’s suffrage in a meeting in St. George’s Hall, at which
Mr. Russell Gurney, the Recorder of London, took the chair. John Bright
had spoken against our Bill in the House, and though I had not intended
to speak at our meeting, I was spurred by indignation to reply to him.
In this address I spoke chiefly of the wrongs of mothers whose children
are taken from them at the will of a living or dead father. I ended by
saying:—

“I advocate Woman Suffrage as the natural and needful constitutional
means of protection for the rights of the weaker half of the nation. I
do this as a woman pleading for women. But I do it also, and none the
less confidently, as a citizen, and for the sake of the whole
community, because it is my conviction that such a measure is no less
expedient for men than just for women; and that it will redound in
coming years ever more and more to the happiness, the virtue and the
honour of our country.”

Several years after this, I wrote a letter which was printed in the
(American) _Woman’s Tribune_, May 1st, 1884. It expresses so exactly
what I feel still on the subject that I shall redeem it if possible from
oblivion. The following are the passages for which I should like to ask
the reader’s attention:

“If I may presume to offer an old woman’s counsel to the younger
workers in our cause, it would be that they should adopt the point of
view—that it is before all things our _Duty_ to obtain the franchise.
If we undertake the work in this spirit, and with the object of using
the power it confers, whenever we gain it, for the promotion of
justice and mercy and the kingdom of God upon earth, we shall carry on
all our agitation in a corresponding manner, firmly and bravely, and
also calmly and with generous good temper. And when our opponents come
to understand that this is the motive underlying our efforts, they, on
their part, will cease to feel bitterly and scornfully toward us, even
when they think we are altogether mistaken.

“That people MAY conscientiously consider that we are mistaken in
asking for woman suffrage, is another point which it surely behoves us
to carry in mind.

“We naturally think almost exclusively of many advantages which would
follow to our sex and to both sexes from the entrance of woman into
political life. But that there are some ‘lions in the way,’ and rather
formidable lions, too, ought not to be forgotten.

“For myself, I would far rather that women should remain without
political rights to the end of time than that they should lose those
qualities which we comprise in the word ‘womanliness;’ and I think
nearly every one of the leaders of our party in America and in England
agrees with me in this feeling.

“The idea that the possession of political rights will destroy
‘womanliness,’ absurd as it may seem to us, is very deeply rooted in
the minds of men; and when they oppose our demands, it is only just to
give them credit for doing so on grounds which we should recognize as
valid, _if their premises were true_. It is not so much that our
opponents (at least the better part of them) despise women, as that
they really prize what women _now are_ in the home and in society so
highly that they cannot bear to risk losing it by any serious change
in their condition. These fears are futile and faithless, but there is
nothing in them to affront us. To remove them, we must not use violent
words, for every such violent word confirms their fears; but, on the
contrary, show the world that while the revolutions wrought by men
have been full of bitterness and rancour, and stormy passions, if not
of bloodshed, we women will at least strive to accomplish our great
emancipation calmly and by persuasion and reason.”

I was honoured about this time by several friendly advances from
American ladies and gentlemen interested like myself in woman’s
advancement. The astronomer, Prof. Maria Mitchell, wrote me a charming
letter, which I exceedingly regret should have been lost, as I felt
particular interest in her great achievements. I had the pleasure of
receiving Mrs. Julia Ward Howe in Hereford Square, and also Mrs.
Livermore, whose speech at one of our Suffrage Meetings realised my
highest ideal of a woman’s public address. Her noble face and figure
like that of a Roman Matron, her sweet manners and playful humour
without a scintilla of bitterness in it,—as if she were a mother
remonstrating with a foolish, school-boy son,—were all delightful to me.

Col. J. W. Higginson, who has been so good a friend and adviser to
women, also came to see me, and gave me some bright hours of
conversation on his wonderful experiences in the war, during which he
commanded a coloured regiment, which fought valiantly under his
leadership. Finally I had the privilege of being elected a member of the
famous _Sorosis_ Club of New York, and of receiving the following very
pleasant letter conveying the gift of a pretty gold and enamel brooch,
the badge of the Sisterhood.

“Dear Madam,

“The ladies of _Sorosis_—The Woman’s Club of New York—beg your
acceptance of the accompanying Pin, the insignia of their
organization, which they send by the hand of their foreign
correspondent, Mrs. Laura Curtis Ballard.

“Trifling as is this testimonial in itself, they feel that if you knew
the genuine appreciation of you and your work that goes with it—the
gratitude with which each one regards you as a faithful worker for
women—you would not consider it unworthy your acceptance. With best
wishes for your continued health, which in your case means continued
usefulness,

“I am, dear Madam,
“With great respect and esteem,
“Your obedient Servant,
“CELIA BURLEIGH,
“Cor. Sec. Sorosis.

“37, Huntingdon Street, Brooklyn, New York,
“June 21st, 1869.”

The part of my work for women, however, to which I look back with most
satisfaction was that in which I laboured to obtain protection for
unhappy wives, beaten, mangled, mutilated or trampled on by brutal
husbands. One day in 1878 I was by chance reading a newspaper in which a
whole series of frightful cases of this kind were recorded, here and
there, among the ordinary news of the time. I got up out of my armchair,
half dazed, and said to myself: “I will never rest till I have tried
what I can do to stop this.”

I thought anxiously what was the sort of remedy I ought to endeavour to
put forward. A Parliamentary Blue Book had been printed in 1875
entitled: “Reports on the State _of the law relating to Brutal
Assaults_,” and the following is a summary of the results. There was a
large consensus of opinion that the law as it now stands is insufficient
for its purpose. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Mr. Justice Lush, Mr.
Justice Mellor, Chief Baron Kelly, Barons Bramwell, Pigott and Pollock,
all expressed the same judgment (pp. 7–19). The following gave their
opinion in favour of flogging offenders in cases of brutal assaults.
Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Mr. Justices Blackburn, Mellor, Lush,
Quain, Archibald, Brett, Grove, Chief Baron Kelly, Barons Bramwell,
Pigott, Pollock, Charles, and Amphlett. Only Lord Coleridge and Lord
Denman hesitated, and Mr. Justice Keating opposed flogging. Of Chairmen
of Quarter Sessions 64 (out of 68, whose answers were sent to the Home
Office,) and the Recorders of 41 towns, were in favour of flogging.
After all this testimony of the opinions of experts (collected of course
at the public expense), _three years_ elapsed during which absolutely
nothing was done to make any practical use of it! During the interval,
scores of Bills, _interesting to the represented sex_, passed through
Parliament; but _this_ question on which the lives of women literally
hung, was never mooted! Something like 5,000 women, judging by the
published judicial statistics, were in those years “brutally assaulted;”
_i.e._, not merely struck, but maimed, blinded, burned, trampled on by
strong men in heavy shoes, and, in many cases, murdered outright; and
thousands of children were brought up to witness scenes which (as
Colonel Leigh said) “infernalise a whole generation.” Where lay the
fault? Scarcely with the Government, or even with Parliament, but with
the simple fact that, under our present constitution, Women, having no
votes, can only exceptionally and through favour, bring pressure to bear
to force attention even to the most crying of injustices under which
they suffer. The Home Office _must_ attend first to the claims of those
who can bring pressure to bear on it; and Members of Parliament _must_
bring in the measures pressed by their constituents; and thus the
unrepresented _must_ go to the wall.

The cases of cruelty of which I obtained statistics, furnished to me
mainly by the kindness of Miss A. Shore, almost surpassed belief. It
appeared that about 1,500 cases of aggravated (over and above ordinary)
assaults on wives took place every year in England; on an average about
four a day. Many of them were of truly incredible savagery; and the
victims were, in the vast majority of cases, not drunken viragos (who
usually escape violence or give as good as they receive), but poor,
pale, shrinking creatures, who strove to earn bread for their children
and to keep together their miserable homes; and whose very tears and
pallor were reproaches which provoked the _heteropathy_ and cruelty of
their tyrants.

After much reflection I came to the conclusion that in spite of all the
authority in favour of flogging the delinquents, it was _not_ expedient
on the women’s behalf that they should be so punished, since after they
had undergone such chastisement, however well merited, the ruffians
would inevitably return more brutalised and infuriated than ever; and
again have their wives at their mercy. The only thing really effective,
I considered, was to give the wife the power of separating herself and
her children from her tyrant. Of course in the upper ranks, where people
could afford to pay for a suit in the Divorce Court, the law had for
some years opened to the assaulted wife this door of escape. But among
the working classes, where the assaults were ten-fold as numerous and
twenty times more cruel, no legal means whatever existed of escaping
from the husband returning after punishment to beat and torture his wife
again. I thought the thing to be desired was the extension of the
privilege of rich women to their poorer sisters, to be effected by an
Act of Parliament which should give a wife whose husband had been
convicted of an aggravated assault on her, the power to obtain a
Separation Order under Summary Jurisdiction.

Mr. Alfred Hill, J.P., of Birmingham, son of my old friend Recorder
Hill, most kindly interested himself in my project, and drafted a Bill
to be presented to Parliament embodying my wishes. Meanwhile; I set
about writing an article setting forth the extent of the evil, the
failure of the measures hitherto taken in various Acts of Parliament,
and, finally, the remedy I proposed. This article my friend Mr. Percy
Bunting was good enough to publish in the _Contemporary Review_ in the
spring of 1878. I also wrote an article in _Truth_ on _Wife Torture_,
afterwards reprinted. Meanwhile, I had obtained the most cordial
assistance from Mr. Frederick Pennington and Mr. Hopwood, both of whom
were then in Parliament, and it was agreed that I should beg Mr. Russell
Gurney to take charge of the Bill which these gentlemen would support. I
went accordingly, armed with the draft Bill, to the Recorder’s house in
Kensington Palace Gardens, and, as I anxiously desired to find him at
home, I ventured to call as early as 10.30. Mr. Gurney read the draft
Bill carefully, and entirely approved it. “Then,” I said, “you will take
charge of it, I earnestly hope?” “No,” said Mr. Gurney, “I cannot do
that; I am too old and over-worked to undertake all the watching and
labour which may be necessary; but I will put my name on the back of it,
with pleasure.”

I knew, of course, that his name would give the measure great importance
and also help me to find some other M.P. to take charge of it, so I
could not but thank him gratefully. At that moment of our interview, his
charming wife entered the room leading a little boy; I believe his
nephew. Naturally I apologized to Mrs. Gurney for my presence at that
unholy hour of the morning; and said, “I came to Mr. Gurney in my
anxiety, as the Friend of Women.” Mr. Gurney, hearing me, put his hands
on the little lad’s shoulder and said to him, “Do you hear that, my boy?
I hope that when you are an old man, as I am, some lady like Miss Cobbe
may call you _the Friend of Women_!”

At last, the Bill embodying precisely the purport of that drawn up for
me by Mr. Hill, and subsequently published in the _Contemporary Review_,
was read a first time, the names of Mr. Herschell (now Lord Herschell)
and Sir Henry Holland (afterwards Lord Knutsford) being on the back of
it. Every arrangement was made for the second Reading; and for avoiding
the opposition which we expected to meet from a party which seems always
to think that by _calling_ certain unions “Holy” a Church can sanctify
that which has become a bond of savage cruelty on one side, and
soul-degrading slavery on the other. Just at this crisis, Lord Penzance,
who was bringing a Bill into the House of Lords to remedy some defects
concerning the costs of the intervention of the Queen’s Proctor in
Matrimonial causes, introduced into it a clause dealing with the case of
the assaulted wives, and giving them precisely the benefit contemplated
in our Bill and in my article; namely, that of Separation Orders to be
granted by the same magistrates who have convicted the husband of
aggravated assaults upon them. That Lord Penzance had seen our Bill,
then before the Lower House, (it was ordered to be printed February
14th) and had had his attention called to the subject, either by it, or
by my article in the _Contemporary Review_, I have taken as probable,
but have no exact knowledge. I went at once to call on him and thank him
from my heart for undertaking to do this great service of mercy to
women; and also to pray him to consider certain points about the custody
of the children of such assaulted wives. Lord Penzance received me with
the utmost kindness and likewise gave favourable consideration to a
letter or two which I ventured to address to him. It is needless to say
that his advocacy of the measure carried it through the House of Lords
without opposition. I believe that in speaking for it he said that if
any noble Lord needed proof of the grievous want of such protection for
wives they would find it in my article, which he held in his hand.

There was still, we feared, an ordeal to go through in the House of
Commons; but the fates and hours were propitious, and the Bill, coming
in late one night as already passed by the House of Lords and with Lord
Penzance’s great name on it,—escaped opposition and was accepted without
debate. By the 27th May, 1878, it had become the law of the land, and
has since taken its place as Chapter 19 of the 41st Vict. _An Act to
amend the Matrimonial Causes Acts._ The following are the clauses which
concern the assaulted Wives:—

4. If a husband shall be convicted summarily or otherwise of an
aggravated assault within the meaning of the statute twenty-fourth and
twenty-fifth Victoria, chapter one hundred, section forty-three, upon
his wife, the Court or magistrate before whom he shall be so convicted
may, if satisfied that the future safety of the wife is in peril,
order that the wife shall be no longer bound to cohabit with her
husband; and such order shall have the force and effect in all
respects of a decree of judicial separation on the ground of cruelty;
and such order may further provide,

1. That the husband shall pay to his wife such weekly sum as the Court
or magistrate may consider to be in accordance with his means, and
with any means which the wife may have for her support, and the
payment of any sum of money so ordered shall be enforceable and
enforced against the husband in the same manner as the payment of
money is enforced under an order of affiliation; and the Court or
magistrate by whom any such order for payment of money shall be made
shall have power from time to time to vary the same on the
application of either the husband or the wife, upon proof that the
means of the husband or wife have been altered in amount since the
original order or any subsequent order varying it shall have been
made.

2. That the legal custody of any children of the marriage under the
age of ten years shall, in the discretion of the Court or
magistrate, be given to the wife.

At first the magistrates were very chary of granting the Separation
Orders. One London Police Magistrate had said that the House of Commons
would never put such power in the hands of one of the body, and he was,
I suppose, proportionately startled when just six weeks later, it
actually lay in his own. By degrees, however, the practice of granting
the Orders on proper occasions became common, and appears now to be
almost a matter of course. I hope that at least a hundred poor souls
each year thus obtain release from their tormentors, and probably the
deterrent effect of witnessing such manumission of ill-treated slaves
may have still more largely served to protect women from the violence of
brutal husbands.

Six years after the Act had passed in 1884, I received a letter from a
very energetic and prominent woman-worker with whom I had a slight
acquaintance, in which the following passages occur. I quote them here
(though with some hesitation on the score of vanity) for they have
comforted me much and deeply, and will do so to my life’s end.

“On Wednesday last I was two hours with a widow,—of O——, near W——; one
of those persons who _make_ a country so good, brave, loving and
hardworking! For 33 long years she lived with a fiend of a husband,
and suffered furious blows, kicks, and attacks with ropes, hot water,
and crockery; was hurled down cellar-steps, &c., starved and insulted.
All the time, up early and at work managing a large shop and
superintending 35 girls....

“I wish you could have been there to hear her tell me that ‘the law
was altered now,’ and how her niece had got a separation for brutal
treatment; and (best of all) ‘her two bairns’ (children). As for the
8s. a week ordered,—the wife never ‘bothers after that.’ ‘The Lord has
stopped that villain’s ways, and she wants no more.’ I could not help
crying, as I looked at the exquisitely clean person and home,—the
determined face, and thought of the diabolical horrors this good,
clever woman had gone through. I told her how you had got the law
altered—and she kept saying ‘She’s a lady—she’s a lady. Bring her to
O——, Missis! and we’ll _percession_ her down t’ street!’...

“You have love and gratitude from our hearts, I assure you; we live
wider lives and better for your presence. I have ventured to write
freely on a subject some would find wearisome, but your heart is big
and will sympathise; and I am always longing for you to know the
active result of your achieved work. This! that poor battered, bruised
women are relieved—are safer—and bless you, and so do I, from a full
heart.

“I am, dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours faithfully,
“A. S.”

If I could hear before I die that I had been able to do as much for
tortured brutes, I should say “_Nunc Dimittis_,” and wish no more.

Some time after this (I have kept no copy or record of date) I delivered
a Lecture, which was a good deal noticed at the time, on the _Little
Health of Ladies_. It was an exposure of the evils resulting to families
from the state of semi-invalidism in which so many women live, usually
gently lapped therein by interested advisers. I exhorted women to do, as
a duty to God and man, everything possible to avoid falling into this
wretched condition, with the self-indulgence and neglect of home and
social duties leading to it or consequent on it. I did not then know as
much as I subsequently learned of the inner history of a great deal of
this misery, or I might have added to my warning some remarkable
denunciations by honourable doctors of the practices of their
colleagues.[32]

A singular incident followed the publication of this address in one of
the Magazines.

There was a lady, whose husband was a wealthy manufacturer in the North
of England, who came to London once or twice a year, and for several
years called on me; having much sympathy with my various interests. She
appeared to be a confirmed invalid, crawling with great difficulty out
of her carriage into our dining-room, and lying on a sofa during her
visits. One day I was told she had come, and I was hastening to receive
her downstairs, when a tall, elegant woman, whom I scarcely recognized,
walked firmly and lightly, into my drawing-room, and greeted me
cordially with laughter in her eyes at my astonishment.

“So glad to see you so well!” I exclaimed, “but what has happened to
you?”

“It is _you_ who have effected the cure!” she answered.

“Good gracious! How?”

“Why, I read your _Little Health of Ladies_, and I resolved to set my
doctor at naught and go about like other people. And you see how well I
am! There was really nothing the matter with me but want of exercise!”

I saw her several times afterwards in good health; and once she brought
me a beautiful gold bracelet with clasp of diamonds set in black enamel,
which she had had made for me, and which she forced me to accept as a
token of her gratitude. I am fond of wearing it still.

Another incident strongly confirmed my belief in the source of much of
the evil and misery arising from the _Little Health of Ladies_.
Travelling one day from Brighton I fell into conversation with a
nice-looking, well-bred woman the only other occupant of the railway
carriage. Speaking of the salubrity of Brighton, she said, “I am sure I
have reason enough to bless it. I was for fourteen years a miserable
invalid on my sofa in London; my doctor telling me I must never go out
or move. At last I said to my husband, ‘It is better to die than to go
on thus;’ and, in defiance of our Doctor, he brought me away to
Brighton, and there I soon grew, as you see, quite strong; and—and,—I
must tell you, _I have a little baby_, and my husband is so happy!”

That clever Gynæcologist lost, I daresay, a hundred, or perhaps two
hundred, a year by the escape of his patient from his assiduous
visitations; but the lady gained health and happiness; her husband his
wife’s companionship; and both of them a child! How much of the miseries
and ill-health, and, in many cases, death of women (of the poorer
classes especially) lies at the door of medical practitioners and
operators, too fond by half of the knife, is known to those who have
read the recent articles and correspondence respecting the Women’s
Hospitals and “Human Vivisection” therein in the _Daily Chronicle_ (May,
1894) and in the _Homœopathic World_ for June.

Quite apart from the doctors, however, a great deal of the sickliness of
women is undoubtedly due to wretched fashions of tight-lacing, and
wearing long and heavy skirts, and tight, thin boots, which render free
exercise of their limbs impossible. Nothing makes me really despair of
my sex, except looking at fashion-plates; or seeing (what is much worse
still, being wicked, as well as foolish) the adornments so many women
use of dead birds, stuck on their empty heads and heartless breasts.
These things are a disgrace to women for which I have often felt they
_deserve_ to be despised and swept aside by men as soulless creatures
unworthy of freedom. But alas! it is precisely the women who adopt these
idiotic fashions in dress, and wear (abominable cruelty!) Egrets as
ornaments, who are _not_ despised but admired by men, who reserve their
indifference and contempt for their homely and sensible sisters. Men in
these respects are as silly as the fish in the river caught by a gaudy
artificial fly on a hook, or enticed into a net by a scrap of scarlet
cloth, and a glittering morsel of brass. I often wonder whether women
are generally, as little capable of forming a discriminating judgment of
men?

Lastly, there is a cause of female ill-health which always impresses me
with profoundest pity, and which has never, I think, been fairly brought
to the front as the origin of a large part of feminine feebleness. I
mean the common want, among women who earn their livelihood, of
sufficiently brain-nourishing and stimulating food. Let any man, the
strongest in the land in body and mind, subsist for one week on tea
without milk, and bread and butter, and at the end of that time, he
will, I venture to predict, have lost half his superiority. His nervous
excitability and cheerfulness may remain, or even be enhanced, but the
faculty of largely grasping and strongly dealing with the subjects
presented to him, and of doing thorough and complete work, nay even the
_desire_ of such perfection and finish, will have abated; and the fatal
_slovenliness_ of women’s work will probably have begun to show itself.
The physical conditions under which the human spirit can alone (in this
life) carry out its purpose and attain its maximum of vigour, are more
or less lacking to half the women even in our country; and almost
completely wanting to the poor prisoners of the Zenanas of India and the
cripples of China. Exercise in the open air, wholesome and sufficient
food, plenty of sleep at night,—every one of these _sine qua non_
elements of real Health of Mind, as well as of Body, are out of reach of
one woman out of every two; yet we remark, curiously, on the inferiority
of their work! It is a vicious circle in which they are caught. They
take lower wages because they can live more cheaply than men; and they
necessarily live on those low wages too poorly to do anything but poor
work;—and again their wages are paltry because their work is so poor!

I confess, however, that—on the other hand—the spectacle of feminine
feebleness and futility when (as continually happens) it is exhibited
without the smallest excuse from inadequate food supply, is
indescribably irritating, nay, to me, humiliating and exasperating.
Watch (for example of what I mean by “feminine futility”) a woman asked
to open a just-arrived box, or a bottle of champagne or of soda-water.
She has been given a cold-chisel for opening the box, and a hammer; but
they are invariably “astray” when required, or she does not think it
worth while to fetch them from up or downstairs, so she kneels down
before the box and begins by fumbling with her fingers at the knots in
the cord. After five minutes’ efforts and broken nails, she gives this
up in despair, and “thinks she must cut it.” But how? She never by any
chance has a knife in her pocket; so she first tries her scissors, which
she _does_ keep there, but which, being always quite blunt, fail to
sever the rope; and then she fetches a dinner-knife, and gives one
cut,—when the feminine passion for economy suggests to her that she can
save the rest of the cord by pushing it (with immense effort) an inch or
two along the box, first at one side and then at the other. Then she
hopes by breaking open the top of the box at one end only, to get out
the contents without dealing further with the recalcitrant rope; and she
endeavours to pull it open where the nails seem least firm. Alas! those
nails will never yield to her weak hands; so her scissors are in
requisition again, and being inserted and used as a wedge, immediately
break off at the points, and are hastily withdrawn with an exclamation
of agonising regret for the blunt, but precious, instrument. Something
must be thrust in, however, to prize open the box. The cold-chisel and
hammer having been at last sought, but sought in vain, the kitchen
cleaver, covered with the fat of the last joint it has cut, is brought
into play; or, happy thought! she knows where her master keeps a fine
sharp chisel, and this is pushed in,—of course against a nail which
breaks the edge and makes it useless for ever. The poker serves
sufficiently well as a hammer to knock in the chisel, or the cleaver,
and to bang up the protruding lid of the box; and at last one plank of
the top is loosened, and she tears it off triumphantly, with a cry of
rejoicing: “There! Now, we shall get at everything in the box!” The
goods, however, stubbornly refuse to be extricated through the hole on
any terms; and eventually all the planks have to be successively broken
up, and the long-cared-for cord (for the preservation of which so much
trouble has been undergone) is cut into little pieces of a foot or two
in length, each attached to a hopelessly entangled knot, while the box
itself is entirely wrecked.

The case of the soda-water, or champagne bottle is worse again; so much
so that experience warns the wise to forbear from calling for
effervescent drinks where parlour-maids prevail. The preliminary
ineffectual attempt to loosen the wires with the fingers (the proper
pliers being, of course, missing); the resort to a steel carving-fork to
open them, and, in default of the steel fork, to a silver one, which is,
of course, bent immediately; the endeavour to cut the hempen cord with
the bread knife with the result of blunting that tool against the wire;
the struggle to cause the cork to fly by wobbling it with the right
hand, while clasping the neck of the bottle till it and the contents are
hot in the left; then (on the failure of this bold attempt) the cutting
off the head of the cork with a carving knife, and at the same time a
small slice of the operator’s hand, which, of course, bleeds profusely;
the consequent hasty transference of the bottle and the job to a second
attendant; the hurried search of the same in the side-table drawer for
the corkscrew; her rush to the kitchen to fetch that instrument where it
has been nefariously borrowed and where the point of the screw has been
broken off; the difficult (and crooked) insertion of the broken screw
into the cork; the repeated frantic tugs at the bottle, held tight
between the knees, finally the climax, when the cork bursts out and the
champagne along with it, up in the reddening face and over the white
muslin apron of the poor anxious woman, who hurries nervously to wipe it
off, and then pours the small quantity of liquor which remains bubbling
over the glasses, till the table-cloth is swamped;—such in brief is
Feminine Futility, as exhibited in the drawing of corks! Luckily it is
possible to find parlour-maids who know how to use, and will keep at
hand, both cold-chisels and corkscrews. But they are exceptions. The
normal woman, in the presence of a nailed-down box or a champagne
bottle, behaves as I have depicted from careful study; and the
irritation she produces in me is past words, especially if a man be
waiting for his beverage and observing the spectacle of the helplessness
of my sex. If “Man” be “a tool-making animal,” I am afraid that “Woman”
is a “tool-breaking” one. I think every girl, as well as every boy,
ought to be given a month’s training in a carpenter’s shop to teach her
how to strike a nail straight; what is the difference between the proper
insertion and extraction of nails and of screws; why chisels should not
be employed as screw-drivers; how far preferable for making holes are
gimlets to hairpins or the points of scissors; and, finally, the general
superiority of glue over paste or gum for sticking wooden furniture when
broken by her besom of destruction!

My dear friend Emily Shaen wrote an excellent tract which I should like
to see republished, urging that it is absurd to go on talking of the
House being the proper sphere of a woman, while we neglect to teach her
the very rudiments of a _Hausfrau’s_ duties, and leave her to find them
all out, at her husband’s expense, when she marries. The nature of gas
and of gasometers, and how _not_ to cause explosions nor be cheated in
the bill; the arrangements of water-works in houses, pipes, drains,
cisterns, ball-cocks and all the rest, for hot and cold water; the
choice of properly morticed, not merely glued, furniture; what
constitutes a good kitchen range, and how coal should be economised in
it; how to choose fresh meat, &c., such should be her lessons. To this
might be usefully added an inkling of the laws relating to masters and
servants, debts, bills, &c., &c., and of the elementary arrangements of
banking and investing money. It was once discovered at my school that a
very clever young lady, who could speak four languages and play two
instruments well, _could not read the clock_! I think there are many
grown up women, well-educated according to the ordinary standard of
their class, whose ignorance concerning the simplest matters of
household duty is not a whit less absurd.

In 1881—I prepared and delivered to an audience of about 150 ladies, in
the Westminster Palace Hotel, a course of six Lectures on the _Duties of
Women_. My dear friend, Miss Anna Swanwick took the chair for me on
these occasions, and performed her part with such tact and geniality as
to give me every advantage. My auditors were very attentive and
sympathetic, and altogether the task was made very pleasant to me. I
repeated the course again at Clifton the same year, Mrs. Beddoe, the
wife of Dr. John Beddoe the anthropologist who was then living at that
place, most obligingly lending me her large drawing-rooms.

These Lectures when printed, went through three editions in England and,
I think, eight in America, the last being brought out by Miss Willard,
who adopted the little book as the first of a series on women’s
concerns, published by her vast and wonderful organisation, the W.C.T.U.

My object in giving these Lectures was to impress women as strongly as
might be in my power, with the unspeakable importance of adding to our
claims for just _Rights_ of all kinds, the adoption of the highest
standard of _Duty_; and the strict preservation amongst us of all
womanly virtues, while adding to them those others to the growth of
which our conditions have hitherto been unfavourable,—namely, Truth and
Courage. I desired also to discuss the new views current amongst us
respecting filial and conjugal “obedience;” the proper attitude to be
held towards (unrepentant) vice, and many other topics. Finally I wished
to place the efforts to obtain political freedom on what I deem to be
their proper ground. I ask:

“What ought we to do at present, as concerns all public work wherein
it is possible for us to obtain a share?

“The question seems to answer itself in its mere statement. We are
bound to do all we can to promote the virtue and happiness of our
fellow-men and women, and _therefore_ we must accept and seize every
instrument of power, every vote, every influence which we can obtain,
to enable us to promote virtue and happiness.

“... Why are we not to wish and strive to be allowed to place our
hands on that vast machinery whereby, in a constitutional realm, the
great work of the world is carried on, and which achieves by its
enormous power, ten-fold either the good or the harm which any
individual can reach; which may be turned to good or turned to harm
according to the hands which touch it? In almost every case it is only
by legislation that the roots of great evils can be reached at all,
and that the social diseases of pauperism, vice and crime can be
brought within hope of cure.

“You will judge from these remarks the ground on which, as a matter of
duty, I place the demand for woman’s political emancipation. I think
we are bound to seek it, in the first place, as a means,—a very great
means,—of fulfilling our Social Duty, of contributing to the virtue
and happiness of mankind, and advancing the Kingdom of God. There are
many other reasons, viewed from the point of Expediency; but this is
the view from that of Duty. We know too well that men who possess
political rights do not always, or often, regard them in this fashion;
but this is no reason why we should not do so. We also know that the
individual power of one vote at any election seems rarely to effect
any appreciable difference; but this also need not trouble us, for,
little or great, if we can obtain any influence at all, we ought to
seek for it, and the multiplication of the votes of women bent on
securing conscientious candidates, would soon make it not only
appreciable, but weighty. Nay, further, the direct influence of a vote
is but a small part of the power which the possession of the political
franchise confers. Its indirect influence is far more important. In a
government like ours, where the basis of representation is so
immensely extensive the whole business of legislation is carried on by
pressure—the pressure of each represented class and party to get its
grievances redressed, to make its interests prevail.... It is one of
the sore grievances of women that, not possessing representation, the
measures which concern them are for ever postponed to the bills
promoted by the represented classes (_e.g._, the Married Woman’s
Property Bill, was, if I mistake not, six times set down for reading
in one Session in vain, the House being counted out on every
occasion).

“Thus, in asking for the Parliamentary Franchise, we are asking, as I
understand it, for the power to influence legislation generally; and
in every other kind of franchise, municipal, parochial, or otherwise,
for similar power to bring our sense of justice and righteousness to
bear on public affairs....

“What is this, after all, my friends, but _Public Spirit_; in one
shape called Patriotism, in another Philanthropy; the extension of our
sympathies beyond the narrow bounds of our homes, and disinterested
enthusiasm for every good and sacred cause? As I said at first, all
the world has recognised from the earliest times how good and noble
and wholesome a thing it is for men to have their breasts filled with
such public spirit; and we look upon them when they exhibit it as
glorified thereby. Do you think it is not equally an ennobling thing
for a _woman’s_ soul to be likewise filled with these large and
generous and unselfish emotions?”

I draw the Lectures to a conclusion thus:—

“None of us, I am sure, realise how blessed a thing we might make of
our lives if we would but give ourselves, heart and soul, to fulfil
_all_ the obligations, personal, social and religious which rest upon
us; to gain the strength—

‘To think, to feel, to do, only the holy Right,
To yield no step in the awful race, no blow in the fearful fight,’

to live, in purity and truth and courage, a life of love to God and to
man; striving to make every spot where we dwell, every region to which
our influence can extend GOD’S KINGDOM, where His Will shall be done
on earth as it is done in heaven.”

Some time after the delivery of these addresses when the Primrose League
was in full activity I wrote at the request of the Committee of the
Women’s Suffrage Association a circular-letter to the “Dames” (of whom I
am one) begging them to endeavour to make the granting of votes to women
a “plank” in their platform. I received many friendly letters in
reply—but the men who influenced the League, apparently finding that
they could make the Dames do their political work for them _without
votes_, discouraged all movement in the desired direction, and I do not
suppose that anything was gained by my attempt.

My last effort on behalf of women was to read a paper on _Women’s Duty
to Women_ at the Conference of Women workers held at Birmingham in Nov.,
1890. This address was received with such exceeding kindness and
sympathy by my audience that the little event has left very tender
recollections which I am glad to carry with me.

I will record here two paragraphs which I should like to leave as my
last appeal on behalf of my sex.

“It may be an open question whether any individual woman suffers more
severely in body or mind than any individual man. There are some who
say that all our passions matched with theirs

‘Are as moonlight is to sunlight, and as water is to wine.’

A sentiment, which I am happy to tell you, Lord Tennyson has angrily
disclaimed as his own, declaring that he only ‘put it into the mouth
of an impatient fool.’ But that our _whole sex together_ suffers more
physical pain, more want, more grief, than the other, is not, I think,
open to doubt. Even if we put aside the poor Chinese women maimed from
infancy, the Hindoo women against whose cruel wrongs their noble
countryman, Malabari, has just been pleading so eloquently in
London,—if we put these and all the other prisoners of Eastern Harems,
and miserable wives of African and Australian savages out of question,
and think only of the comparatively free and happy women of
Christendom, how much more _liable to suffering_, if not always
actually condemned to suffer, is the life of women! ‘To be weak is to
be miserable,’ and we _are_ weak; always comparatively to our
companions, and weak often, absolutely, and in reference to the wants
we must supply, the duties we must perform. Now, it seems to me that
just in proportion as any one is possessed of strength of mind or of
body, or of wealth or influence, so far it behoves him, or her, to
turn with sympathy and tender helpfulness to the weakest and most
forlorn of God’s creatures, whether it be man or woman or child, or
even brute. The weight of the claim is in exact ratio of the
feebleness and helplessness and misery of the claimant.

* * * * *

“Thus, then, I would sum up the counsels which I am presuming to offer
to you. You will all remember the famous line of Terence, at which the
old Roman audience rose in a tumult of applause: ‘I am a _Man_—nothing
human is alien to me.’ I would have each of you add to this in an
emphatic way. ‘_Mulier sum. Nihil muliebre a me alienum puto._’ ‘I am
a _woman_. Nothing concerning the interests of women is alien to me.’
Take the sorrows, the wants, the dangers (above all the dangers) of
our sisters closely to heart, and, without ceasing to interest
yourself in charities having men and boys for their objects, recognise
that your earlier care should be for the weakest, the poorest, those
whose dangers are worst of all—for, (after all) ruin can only drive a
_Man_ to the workhouse; it may drive a woman to perdition! Think of
all the weak, the helpless, the wronged women and little children, and
the harmless brutes; and save and shield them as best you can; even as
the mother-bird will shelter and fight for her little helpless
fledgelings. This is the natural field of feminine courage. Then, when
you have found your work, whatever it be, give yourself to it with all
your heart, and make the resolution in God’s sight never to go to your
rest leaving a stone unturned which may help your aims. Half-and-half
charity does very little good to the objects; and is a miserable,
slovenly affair for the workers. And when the end comes and the night
closes in, the long, last night of earth, when no man can work any
more in this world, your milk-and-water, half-hearted charities will
bring no memories of comfort to you. They are not so many ‘good works’
which you can place on the credit side of your account, in the mean,
commercial spirit taught by some of the churches. Nay, rather they are
only solemn evidences that you _knew your duty_, knew you _might_ do
good, and did it not, or did it half-heartedly! What a thought for
those last days when we know ourselves to be going home to God,
God—whom at bottom after all, we have loved and shall love for
ever;—that we _might_ have served Him here, _might_ have blessed his
creatures, _might_ have done His will on earth as it is done in
Heaven, but we have let the glorious chance slip by us for ever.”

CHAPTER
XX.
_CLAIMS OF BRUTES._

Readers who have reached this twentieth Chapter of my Life will smile
(as I have often done of late years) at the ascription to me in sundry
not very friendly publications, of exclusive sympathy for animals and
total indifference to human interests. I have seen myself frequently
described as a woman “who would sacrifice any number of men, women and
children, sooner than that a few rabbits should be inconvenienced.” Many
good people apparently suppose me to represent a personal survival of
Totemism in England; and to worship Dogs and Cats, while ready to
consign the human race generally to destruction.

The foregoing pages, describing my life in old days in Ireland and the
years which I spent afterwards working in the slums in Bristol, ought, I
think, to suffice to dissipate this fancy picture. As a matter of fact,
it has only been of late years and since their wrongs have appealed
alike to my feelings of pity and to my moral sense, that I have come to
bestow any peculiar attention on animals; or have been concerned with
them more than is common with the daughters of country squires to whom
dogs, horses and cattle are familiar subjects of interest from
childhood. I have indeed always felt much affection for dogs: that is to
say, for those who exhibit the true Dog-character,—which is far from
being the case of every canine creature! Their eagerness, their
joyousness, their transparent little wiles, their caressing and devoted
affection, are to me more winning, even I may say, more really and
intensely _human_ (in the sense in which a child is human), than the
artificial, cold and selfish characters one meets too often in the guise
of ladies and gentlemen. It is not the four legs, nor the silky or
shaggy coat of the dog which should prevent us from discerning his inner
nature of Thought and Love; limited Thought, it is true; but quite
unlimited Love. That he is dumb, is, to me, only another claim (as it
would be in a human child) on my consideration. But because I love good
dogs, and, in their measure also, good horses and cats and birds, (I had
once a dear and lovely white pea-hen), I am not therefore a morbid
_Zoophilist_. I should be very sorry indeed to say or think like Byron
when my dog dies, that I “had but one true friend, and here he lies!” I
have,—thank God!—known many men and women, who have all a dog’s merits
of honesty and single-hearted devotion _plus_ the virtues which can only
flourish on the high level of humanity; and to them I give a friendship
which the best of dogs cannot share.

That there are some Timons in the world whose hearts, embittered by
human ingratitude, have turned with relief to the faithful love of a
dog, I am very well aware. Surely the fact makes one appeal the more on
behalf of the creatures who thus by their humble devotion heal the
wounds of disappointed or betrayed affection; and who come to cheer the
lonely, the unloved, the dull-witted, the blind, the poverty-stricken
whom the world forsakes? I think Lamartine was right to treat this love
of the Dog for Man as a special provision of Divine mercy, and to
marvel,—

“Par quelle pitié pour nos cœurs Il vous donne
Pour aimer celui que n’aime plus personne!”

Not a few deep thanksgivings, I believe, have gone up to the Maker of
man and brute for the silent sympathy,—expressed perhaps in no nobler
way than by the gentle licking of a passive hand,—which has yet saved a
human heart from the sense of utter abandonment.

But _I_ have no such sorrowful or embittering experience of human
affection. I do not say, “The more I know of men the more I love dogs”;
but, “The more I know of dogs the more I love _them_,” without any
invidious comparisons with men, women, or children. As regards the
children, indeed, I have been always fond of those which came in my way;
and if the Tenth Commandment had gone on to forbid coveting one’s
neighbour’s “_child_,” I am not sure that I should not have had to plead
guilty to breaking it many times.

In my old home I possessed a dear Pomeranian dog of whom I was very
fond, who, being lame, used constantly to ensconce herself (though
forbidden by my father) in my mother’s carriage under the seat, and
never showed her little pointed nose till the britzska had got so far
from home that she knew no one would put her down on the road. Then she
would peer out and lie against my mother’s dress and be fondled. Later
on I had the companionship of another beautiful, mouse-coloured
Pomeranian, brought as a puppy from Switzerland. In my hardworking life
in Bristol in the schools and workhouse she followed me and ingratiated
herself everywhere, and my solitary evenings were much the happier for
dear Hajjin’s company. Many years afterwards she was laid under the sod
of our garden in Hereford Square. Another dog of the same breed whom I
sent away at one year old to live in the country, was returned to me
_eight years_ afterwards, old and diseased. The poor beast recognized me
after a few moments’ eager examination, and uttered an actual scream of
joy when I called her by name; exhibiting every token of tender
affection for me ever afterwards. When one reflects what eight years
signify in the life of a dog,—almost equivalent to the distance between
sixteen and sixty in a human being,—some measure is afforded by this
incident of the durability of a dog’s attachment. Happily, kind Dr.
Hoggan cured poor Dee of her malady, and she and I enjoyed five happy
years of companionship ere she died here in Hengwrt. I have dedicated my
_Friend of Man_ to her memory.

Among my smaller literary tasks in London I wrote an article for which
Mr. Leslie Stephen (then editing the _Cornhill Magazine_ in which it
appeared) was kind enough to express particular liking. It was called
“_Dogs whom I have met_;” and gave an account of many canine
individualities of my acquaintance. I also wrote an article in the
_Quarterly Review_ on the _Consciousness of Dogs_ of which I have given
above (p. 127) Mr. Darwin’s favourable opinion. Both of these papers are
reprinted in my _False Beasts and True_. Such has been the sum total, I
may say, of my personal concern with animals before and apart from my
endeavours to deliver them from their scientific tormentors.

It was, as I have stated, the abominable wrongs endured by animals which
first aroused, and has permanently maintained, my special interest in
them. My great-grandfather had an office in the yard at Newbridge for
his magisterial work, and over his own seat he caused to be inscribed
the text: “_Deliver him that is oppressed from the hand of the
adversary_.” I know not whether it were a juvenile impression, but I
have felt all my life an irresistible impulse to rush in wherever anyone
is “oppressed” and try to “deliver” him, her, or _it_, as the case may
be, from the “adversary!” In the case of beasts, their helplessness and
speechlessness appeal, I think, to every spark of generosity in one’s
heart; and the command, “Open thy mouth for the dumb,” seems the very
echo of our consciences. Everything in us, manly or womanly, (and the
best in us all is _both_) answers it back.

When I was a little child, living in a house where hunting, coursing,
shooting, and fishing, were carried on by all the men and boys, I took
such field sports as part of the order of things, and learned with
delight from my father to fish in our ponds on my own account. Somehow
it came to pass that when, at sixteen, my mind went through that strange
process which Evangelicals call “Conversion,” among the first things
which my freshly-awakened moral sense pointed out was,—that I must give
up fishing! I reflected that the poor fishes were happy in their way in
their proper element; that we did not in the least need, or indeed often
use them for food; and that I must no longer take pleasure in giving
pain to any creature of God. It was a little effort to me to relinquish
this amusement in my very quiet, uneventful life; but, as the good
Quaker’s say, it was “borne in on me,” that I had to do it, and from
that time I have never held a rod or line (though I have been out in
boats where large quantities of fish were caught on the Atlantic coast),
and I freely admit that angling scarcely comes under the head of cruelty
at all, and is perfectly right and justifiable when the fish are wanted
for food and are killed quickly. I used to stand sometimes after I had
ceased to fish, over one of the ponds in our park and watch the bright
creatures dart hither and thither, and say in my heart a little
thanksgiving on their behalf instead of trying to catch them.

Fifty years after this incident, I read in John Woolman’s, (the Quaker
Saint’s,) _Journal_, Chap. XI., this remark:—

“I believe, where the love of God is verily perfected and the true
spirit of government watchfully attended, a tenderness towards all
creatures made subject to us will be experienced, and a care felt in
us that we do not lessen that sweetness of life in the animal creation
which the great Creator intends for them under our government.”

To me as I have said it was almost the _first_, and not an _advanced_,
much less “perfected,” religious impulse, which led me to begin to
recognise the claims of the lower animals on our compassion. Of course,
I disliked then, and always, hunting, coursing and shooting; but as a
woman I was not expected to join in such pursuits, and I did not take on
myself to blame those who followed them. I do not now allow of any
comparison between the cruelty of such _Field Sports_ and the deliberate
_Chamber-Sport_ of Vivisection.

I shall now relate as succinctly as possible the history of the
Anti-vivisection Movement, so far as I have had to do with it. Of course
an immense amount of work for the same end has been carried on all these
twenty years by other Zoophilists with whom I have had no immediate
connection, or perhaps cognizance of their labours, but without whose
assistance the Society which I helped to found certainly could not have
made as much way as it has done. I only presume here to tell the story
of the Victoria Street Society, and the occurrences which led to its
formation.

In the year 1863, there appeared in several English newspapers
complaints of the cruelties practised in the Veterinary Schools at
Alfort near Paris. The students were taught there, as in most other
continental veterinary schools, to perform operations on _living_
animals, and so to acquire, (at the cost, of course, of untold suffering
to the victims,) the same manipulative skill which English students gain
equally well by practising on dead carcases. Living horses were supplied
to the Alfort students on which, at the time I speak of, they performed
sixty operations apiece, including every one in common use, and many
which were purely academic, being never employed in actual practice
because the horse, after enduring them, becomes necessarily useless.
These operations lasted eight hours, and the aspect of the mangled
creatures, hoofless, eyeless, burned, gashed, eviscerated, skinned,
mutilated in every conceivable way, appalled the visitors, who reported
the facts, while it afforded, they said, a subject of merriment to the
horde of students. The English _Society for Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals_ laudably exerted itself to stop these atrocities, and appealed
to the Emperor to interfere; not, perhaps, very hopefully, since, as I
have heard, Napoleon III. was in the habit of attending these hideous
spectacles in his own imperial person on the Thursdays on which they
took place. This circumstance, taken in connection with the Empress’
patronage of Bull-Fights, has made Sedan seem to me an event on which
the animal world, at all events, has to be congratulated.

Some years later Mr. James Cowie took over to France an Appeal, signed
by 500 English Veterinarians entreating their French colleagues to adopt
the English practice of using only dead carcases for the exercises of
students. Through this and other good offices it is understood that the
number and severity of the operations performed at Alfort, and elsewhere
in France, were then greatly reduced. Unhappily the humane regulations
made in 1878 are now evaded, and the dreadful cruelties above described
have been actually witnessed by Mr. Peabody and Dr. Baudry, in 1895.

On reading of these cruelties I wrote an article, _The Rights of Man and
the Claims of Brutes_, which I hoped might help to direct public
attention to them. In this paper I endeavoured to work out as best I
could the ethical problem (which I at once perceived to be beset with
difficulties) of a definition of the limits of human rights over
animals. My article was published by Mr. Froude in _Fraser’s Magazine_
for Nov., 1863, and was subsequently reprinted in my _Studies Ethical
and Social_. It was, so far as I know the first effort made to deal with
the moral questions involved in the torture of animals either for sake
of scientific and therapeutic research, or for the acquirement of
manipulative skill. In the 30 years which have elapsed since I wrote it
I have seen reason to raise considerably the “claims” which I then urged
on behalf of the brutes, but I observe that new recruits to our
Anti-vivisection party usually begin exactly where I stood at that time,
and announce their ideas to me as their mature conclusions.

The same month of November, 1863, in which my article, (written some
weeks before, while I was ill and lame at Aix-les-Bains), appeared in
_Fraser_, I was living near Florence, and was startled by hearing of
similar cruelties practised at the _Specola_, where Prof. Schiff had his
laboratory. My friend Miss Blagden and I were holding our usual weekly
reception in Villa Brichieri on Bellosguardo, and we learned that many
of our guests had been shocked by the rumours which had reached them. In
particular the American physician who had accompanied Theodore Parker to
Florence and attended him in his last days,—Dr. Appleton, of Harvard
University,—told us that he himself had gone over Prof. Schiff’s
laboratory, and had seen dogs, pigeons and other animals in a
frightfully mangled and suffering state. A Tuscan officer had seen a cat
so tortured that he forced Schiff to kill it. Some 50 or 60 letters had
been (or were afterwards) lodged at the Mairie from neighbours
complaining of the disturbance caused by the cries and moans of the
victims in the _Specola_. After much conversation I asked, What could be
done to check these systematic cruelties, which no Tuscan law could then
touch in any way? It was suggested that a Memorial should be addressed
to Prof. Schiff himself, urging him to spare his victims as much as
possible. This Memorial I drafted at once, and it was translated into
Italian and sent round Florence for signatures. Mrs. Somerville placed
her name at the head of it; and through her earnest exertions and those
of her daughters and of several other friends, the list of supporters
soon became very weighty. Among the English signatures was those of
Walter Savage Landor (who added some words so violent that I was obliged
to suppress them!); and among the Italians almost the whole historic
aristocracy of old Florence,—Corsi’s and Corsini’s, and Aldobrandini’s
and Strozzi’s, and a hundred more, the reading of whose names recalled
Medicean times. In all, there were 783 signatories. Very few of them
were of the _mezzo-ceto_ class, and _none_ belonged to the (Red)
Republican party. Schiff was himself a “Red,” and, as such, he might,
apparently, commit any cruelty he thought fit, inasmuch as he and the
other vivisectors (we were told by a lady prominent in that party) were
seeking “the religion of the future”—in the brains and entrails of the
tortured beasts! The same lady expressed to me her wish that “every
animal in creation should be immolated, if only to discover a single
fact of science.” Another Englishwoman (also married to a foreigner)
wrote to the _Daily News_ to praise Schiff for “actively pursuing
Vivisection.”

The Memorial, as often happens, did no _direct_ good; Professor Schiff
tossing it aside, and politely qualifying the signatories, (in the
_Nazione_ newspaper,) as “_un tas de Marquis_.” But it certainly caused
the subject to be much discussed, and doubtless prepared the way for the
complaints and lawsuits concerning the “nuisances” of the moaning dogs,
which eventually made Florence an unpleasant abode for Professor Schiff.
He retreated thence to Geneva in 1877. The Florentine _Società
Protettrice degli Animali_ was founded by Countess Baldelli in 1873, and
has led the agitation there against Vivisection ever since.

Meanwhile on the presentation of the Memorial, Professor Schiff wrote a
letter in the _Nazione_ (the chief newspaper of Florence) denying the
facts mentioned in the letter of the official Correspondent of the
_Daily News_, and challenging the said correspondent to come forward and
make good the statement. I instantly wrote a letter saying that I was
the _Daily News’_ Correspondent in Florence; that the letter complained
of was mine; and that for verification of my assertions therein I
appended a full and signed statement by Dr. Appleton of what he had
himself witnessed in the _Specola_.

It was rather difficult for me then to believe that this letter of mine
(in Italian of course) duly signed and authenticated with name, date and
place, was refused publication in the paper wherein I had been
challenged to come forward! On learning this amazing fact, I requested
Dr. Appleton to go down again to Florence and ask the editor of the
_Nazione_ to publish my letter if in no other way, at least _as a paid
advertisement_. The answer made by the editor to Dr. Appleton was, that
it might be inserted, but only among the advertisements in certain
columns of the paper where no decent reader would look for it. N.B.—the
_Nazione_ replenished its exchequer by the help of that class of notices
which are declined by every reputable English newspaper. After this Dr.
Appleton went in despair to Professor Schiff himself, and told him he
was bound in honour, (seeing he had made the challenge to us,) to compel
the editor to print our answer. The learned and scientific gentleman
shrugged his shoulders and laughed in the face of the American who could
imagine him to be so simple!

I left Florence soon after this first brush with the demon of
Vivisection, but retained (as will easily be understood) very strong
feelings on the subject.

At a meeting of the British Association in Liverpool in 1870 a Committee
was appointed to consider the subject of “Physiological
Experimentation,” and their Report was published in the _Medical Times
and Gazette_, Feb. 25th, 1871; and in _British Assoc. Reports_, 1871, p.
144. It consists of the following four Rules or Recommendations on the
subject of Vivisection:—

“(I.) No experiment which can be performed under the influence of an
anæsthetic ought to be done without it. (II.) No painful experiment is
justifiable for the mere purpose of illustrating a law or fact already
demonstrated; in other words, experimentation without the employment
of anæsthetics is not a fitting exhibition for teaching purposes.
(III.) Whenever, for the investigation of new truth, it is necessary
to make a painful experiment, every effort should be made to ensure
success, in order that the sufferings inflicted may not be wasted. For
this reason, no painful experiment ought to be performed by an
unskilled person, with insufficient instruments and assistants, or in
places not suitable to the purpose; that is to say, anywhere except in
physiological and pathological laboratories, under proper regulations.
(IV.) In the scientific preparation for veterinary practice,
operations ought not to be performed upon living animals for the mere
purpose of obtaining greater operative dexterity.”

These four Rules were countersigned by _M. A. Lawson_, _G. M. Humphry_
(now Sir George Humphry), _J. H. Balfour_, _Arthur Gamgee_, _William
Flower_, _J. Burdon-Sanderson_, and _George Rolleston_. Of course we,
who attended that celebrated Liverpool Meeting of the British
Association and had heard the President laud Dr. Brown-Séquard
enthusiastically, greatly rejoiced at this humane Ukase of autocratic
Science.

But as time passed we were surprised to find that nothing was done to
enforce these rules in any way or at any place; and that the particular
practice which they most distinctly condemn, namely, the use of
vivisections as Illustrations of recognised facts,—was flourishing more
than ever without let or hindrance. The prospectuses of _University
College_ for 1874–5, of _Guy’s Hospital Medical School 1874–5_, of _St.
Thomas’s Hospital_, of _Westminster Hospital Medical School_, etc., all
mentioned among their attractions: “Demonstrations on living animals;”
“Gentlemen will themselves perform the experiments;” &c., and quite as
if nothing whatever had been said against them.

But worse remained. One of the signatories of the above Rules (or as
perhaps we may more properly call them, these “_Pious Opinions_”?),—the
most eminent of English physiologists, Prof. Burdon-Sanderson himself,
edited and brought out in 1873, the _Handbook of the Physiological
Laboratory_, to which he, Dr. Lauder-Brunton, Dr. Klein, and Dr. Foster
were joint contributors. This celebrated work is a Manual of Exercises
in Vivisection, intended (as the _Preface_ says) “for beginners in
Physiological work.” The following are observations on this book
furnished to the Royal Commission by Mr. Colam, and printed in Appendix
iv., p. 379, of their _Report_ and _Minutes_ of Evidence:—

“That the object of the editor and his coadjutors was to induce young
persons to perform experiments on their own account and without
adequate surveillance is manifest throughout the work, by the supply
of elementary knowledge and elaborate data. Not only are the names and
quantities of necessary chemicals given, but the most careful
description is provided in letter-press and plates of implements for
holding animals during their struggles, so that a novice may learn at
home without a teacher. Besides, the editor’s preface states, that the
book is ‘intended for beginners,’ and that ‘difficult and complicated’
experiments consequently have been omitted; and that of Dr. Foster
allures the student by assurances of inexpensive as well as easy
manipulation.... Very seldom indeed is the student told to
anæsthetise, and then only during an operation. It cannot be alleged
that ‘beginners’ know when to narcotise, and when not; but if they do
then the few directions to use chloral, &c., are unnecessary. No doubt
should have been left on this point in a Handbook designed ‘for
beginners.’ Besides, where will students find cautions against the
infliction of unnecessary pain, and wanton experimentation? On the
contrary, the student is encouraged to repeat the torture ‘any number
of times.’ These facts are significant.”

In the _Minutes of Evidence_ of the Royal Commission we find that the
late Prof. Rolleston, of Oxford, being under examination, was asked by
Mr. Hutton: “Then I understand that your opinion about the _Handbook_
is, that it is a dangerous book to society, and that it has warranted to
some extent the feeling of anxiety in the public which its publication
has created?” Prof. Rolleston: “_I am sorry to have to say that I do
think it is so_” (1351). In his own examination Prof. Burdon-Sanderson
admitted that the use of anæsthetics whenever possible “ought to have
been stated much more distinctly at the beginning of his book” (2265),
and agreed to Lord Cardwell’s suggestion, “Then I may assume that in any
future communication with ‘beginners’ _greater pains will be taken to
make them distinctly understand how animals may be saved from suffering
than has been taken in this book_?” “Yes,” said Dr. B.-S., “I am quite
willing to say that” (2266).

Esoteric Vivisection it will be observed, as revealed in _Handbooks_ for
“Beginners,” is a very different thing from Exoteric Vivisection,
described for the benefit of the outside public as if regulated by the
_Four Rules_ above quoted!

The following year, 1874, certain experiments were performed before a
Medical Congress at Norwich. They consisted in the injection of alcohol
and of absinthe into the veins of dogs; and were done by M. Magnan, an
eminent French physiologist, who has in recent years described sympathy
for animals as a special form of insanity. Mr. Colam, on behalf of the
R.S.P.C.A., very properly instituted a prosecution against M. Magnan,
under the Act 12 and 13 Vict., c. 92; and brought Sir William Fergusson,
and Dr. Tufnell (the President of the Irish College of Surgeons) to
swear that his experiments were useless. M. Magnan withdrew speedily to
his own country or a conviction would certainly have been obtained
against him. But it was not merely on proof of the _infliction of
torture_ that Mr. Colam’s Society relied to obtain such conviction, but
on the high scientific authority which they were able to bring to prove
that the torture was _scientifically useless_. Failing such testimony,
which would generally be unattainable, it was recognised that the
application of the Act in question (Martin’s Act amended) to
_scientific_ cruelties, which it had not been framed to meet, would
always be beset with difficulties. It became thenceforth apparent to the
friends of animals that some new legislation, calculated to reach
offenders pleading scientific purpose for barbarous experiments was
urgently needed; and the existence of the _Handbook_, with minute
directions for performing hundreds of operations,—many of them of
extreme severity,—proved that the danger was not remote or theoretical;
but already present and at our doors.

A few weeks after this trial at Norwich had taken place, and had justly
gained great applause for Mr. Colam and the R.S.P.C.A., Mrs. Luther
Holden, wife of the eminent surgeon, then Senior Surgeon of St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital, called on me in Hereford Square to talk over the
matter and take counsel as to what could be done to strengthen the law
in the desired direction. The great and wealthy R.S.P.C.A. was obviously
the body with which it properly lay to promote the needed legislation;
and it only seemed necessary to give the Committee of that Society proof
that public opinion would strongly support them in calling for it, to
induce them to bring a suitable Bill, into Parliament backed by their
abundant influence. I agreed to draft a _Memorial_ to the Committee of
the R.S.P.C.A. praying it to undertake this task; after learning from
Mr. Colam that such an appeal would be altogether welcome; and I may add
that I received cordial assistance from him in arranging for its
presentation.

It was a difficult task for me to draw up that Memorial, but, such as it
was, it acted as a spark to tinder, showing how much latent feeling
existed on the subject. Many ladies and gentlemen: notably the Countess
of Camperdown, the Countess of Portsmouth (now the Dowager Countess),
General Colin Mackenzie, Col. Wood (now Sir Evelyn) and others, exerted
themselves most earnestly to obtain influential signatures in their
circles, and distributed in all directions copies of the _Memorial_ and
of two pamphlets I wrote to accompany it—“_Reasons for Interference_”
and “_Need of a Bill_.” With their help in the course of about six
weeks, (without advertisements or paid agency of any kind), we obtained
600 signatures; every one of which represented a man or woman of some
social importance. The first to sign it was my neighbour and friend,
Rev. Gerald Blunt, rector of Chelsea. After him came Mr. Carlyle,
Tennyson, Browning, Mr. Lecky, Sir Arthur Helps, Sir W. Fergusson, John
Bright, Mr. Jowett, the Archbishop of York (Dr. Thomson), Sir Edwin
Arnold, the Primate of Ireland (Marcus Beresford), Cardinal Manning
(then Archbishop of Westminster), the Duke and Duchess of
Northumberland, John Ruskin, James Martineau, the Duke of Rutland, the
Duke of Wellington, Lord Coleridge, Lord Selborne, Sir Fitzroy Kelly,
the Bishops of Winchester, Exeter, Salisbury, Manchester, Bath and
Wells, Hereford, St. Asaph, and Derry, Lord Russell, and many other
peers and M.P.’s, and no less than 78 medical men, several of whom were
eminent in the profession.

I shall insert here a few of the replies, favourable and otherwise,
which I received to my invitations to sign the Memorial.

“Bishopthorpe, York,
“Dec. 28th, 1874.

“The Archbishop of York presents his compliments to Miss Cobbe and
begs to enclose the Memorial signed by him.

“‘Exception to suggestion 3rd,’ on the prohibition of publishing,
which he thinks unworkable, and therefore (illegible) to the Memorial.
If however it is too late to alter it, he will not stand out even on
that point.

“He thinks the practices in question detestable. The Norwich case was
a disgrace to the country.

“The Archbishop thanks Miss Cobbe for inviting him to sign.”

“A. B. Beresford-Hope to Miss F. P. C.
“Bedgebury Park, Cranbrook,
“Jan. 26th, 1875.

“Dear Madam,

“Lady Mildred and myself trust that it is not too late to enclose to
you the accompanying signatures to the Memorial against Vivisection,
although the day fixed for its return has unfortunately been allowed
to elapse. We can assure you of our very hearty sympathy in the cause;
the delay has wholly come of oversight.

“In regard to the details of the suggestions, I must be allowed to
express my doubt as to the feasibility of the 3rd suggestion. Its
stringency would I fear defeat its own object. I sympathise too much
with the question in itself to decline signing on account of this
proposal, but I must request to be considered as a dissentient on that
head.

“Believe me, dear Madam, yours very faithfully,

“A. B. BERESFORD-HOPE.”

“B. Jowett to Miss F. P. C.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I have much pleasure in signing the paper which you kindly sent me.

“Yours very sincerely,
“B. JOWETT.

“Jan. 15th, Oxford.”

“5, Gordon Street, London, W.C.,
“January 5th, 1875.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I should have been very sorry not to join in the Protest against this
hideous offence, and am truly obliged to you for furnishing me with
the opportunity. The simultaneous loss, from the Morals of our
‘advanced’ scientific men, of all reverent sentiment towards beings
_above_ them and towards beings _below_, is a curious and instructive
phenomenon, highly significant of the process which their nature is
undergoing at both ends.

“With truest wishes for many a happy and beneficent year

“Ever faithfully yours,
“JAMES MARTINEAU.”

“Manchester,
“December 26th, 1874.

“The Bishop of Manchester” [Dr. Fraser] “presents his compliments to
Miss Cobbe, and thanks her for giving him the opportunity of appending
his name to this Memorial, which has his most hearty concurrence.”

“Palace, Salisbury,
“11th January, 1875.

“The Bishop of Salisbury’s compliments to Miss Cobbe. He cannot
withhold his signature to her Paper after reading the ‘reasons which
she has kindly sent him.’”

“Addington Park, Croydon,
“January 2nd, 1875.

“Madam,

“I have received your letter of the 31st ult. on the subject of the
Memorial to the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals with
regard to Vivisection.

“I hardly think I should be right, considering my imperfect
acquaintance with the subject, in adding my name thereto at present.

“Believe me to be, yours faithfully,
“A. C. CANTUAR.”
(Archbishop Tait.)

“Deanery, Carlisle,
“January 20th, 1875.

“Dear Madam,

“If I had a hundred signatures you should have them all!

“My heart has long burned with indignation against these murderers and
torturers of innocent animals.

“Was it for _this_ that the great God made man the Lord of the
creation?

“It is incredible hypocrisy and folly to pretend that such wholesale
torture is necessary to enlighten these stupid doctors!

“It seems to me peculiarly ungrateful in man, to break forth in this
wholesale _Animal Inquisition_ when Providence has so recently
revealed to us several new natural powers whereby human suffering is
so much diminished.

“But I must restrain my feelings, and _you_ must pardon me. I did not
know that this good work was begun.

“Only get some thoroughgoing and able friend of the animal world to
tell the tale to a British House of Parliament, and these philosophic
torturers will be stayed in their detestable course.

“Yours,
“F. CLOSE.”
(Dean of Carlisle.)

“27, Cornwall Gardens, S.W.,
“December 30th, 1874.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I have an impression that the subject of Vivisection is to be brought
before the Senate of the University of London, which consists mainly
of great physicians and surgeons, but of which I am a member. Hence I
think I hardly ought to sign the paper you have sent me.

“This, you see is an official answer, but I am glad to be able to make
it, for the truth is I have neither thought nor enquired sufficiently
about Vivisection to be ready with a clear opinion.

“Even if the utmost be proved against the vivisectors, I am inclined
to think that they ought to be dealt with as guilty of a _new_
offence, and not of an old one. I do not at all like the notion of
bringing old laws such as Martin’s Act against cruelty to animals, to
bear on a class of cases never contemplated at the time of their
enactment. It has a certain resemblance to enforcing the old law of
blasphemy against persons who discuss Christianity in the modern
philosophical spirit. Perhaps I am the more sensitive on this point
since a friend elaborately demonstrated to me that I was liable to
prosecution for what seemed to me a very innocent passage in a book of
mine!

“Believe me, very truly yours,
“H. S. MAINE.”
(Sir Henry Sumner Maine.)

“16, George Street, Hanover Square, W.,
“19th December, 1874.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I have affixed my name with much satisfaction to this Memorial, and I
presume that you intend that men should be in largest number on the
list.

“Yours faithfully,
“W. FERGUSSON.”
(Sir William Fergusson, F.R.S.,
Serjeant-Surgeon to the Queen.)

* * * * *

This Memorial having a certain importance in the history of our
movement, I quote the principal paragraphs here:

“The practice of Vivisection has received of recent years enormous
extension. Instead of an occasional experiment, made by a man of high
scientific attainment, to determine some important problem of
physiology, or to test the feasibility of a new surgical operation, it
has now become the everyday exercise of hundreds of physiologists and
young students of physiology throughout Europe and America. In the
latter country, lecturers in most of the schools employ living animals
instead of dead for ordinary illustrations, and in Italy one
physiologist alone has for some years past experimented on more than
800 dogs annually. A recent correspondence in the _Spectator_ shows
that many English physiologists contemplate the indefinite
multiplication of such vivisections; some (as Dr. Pye-Smith) defending
them as illustrations of lectures, and some (as Mr. Ray-Lankester)
frankly avowing that one experiment must lead to another _ad
infinitum_. Every real or supposed discovery of one physiologist
immediately causes the repetition of his experiments by scores of
students. The most numerous and important of these researches being
connected with the nervous system, the use of complete anæsthetics is
practically prohibited. Even when employed during an operation, the
effect of the anæsthetic of course shortly ceases, and, for the
completion of the experiment, the animal is left to suffer the pain of
the laceration to which it has been subjected. Another class of
experiments consists in superinducing some special disease; such as
alcoholism (tried by M. Magnan on dogs at Norwich), and the peculiar
malady arising from eating diseased pork (Trichiniasis), superinduced
on a number of rabbits in Germany by Dr. Virchow. How far public
opinion is becoming deadened to these practices is proved by the
frequent recurrence in the newspapers of paragraphs simply alluding to
them as matters of scientific interest involving no moral question
whatever. One such recently appeared in a highly respectable Review,
detailing a French physiologist’s efforts, first to drench the veins
of dogs with alcohol, and then to produce spontaneous combustion. Such
experiments as these, it is needless to remark, cannot be justified as
endeavours to mitigate the sufferings of humanity, and are rather to
be characterised as gratifications of the ‘dilettantism of discovery.’

“The recent trial at Norwich has established the fact that, in a
public Medical Congress, and sanctioned by a majority of the members,
an experiment was tried which has since been formally pronounced by
two of the most eminent surgeons in the kingdom to have been ‘cruel
and unnecessary.’ We have, therefore, too much reason to fear that in
laboratories less exposed to public view, and among inconsiderate
young students, very much greater abuses take place which call for
repression.

“It is earnestly urged by your Memorialists that the great and
influential Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals may
see fit to undertake the task (which appears strictly to fall within
its province) of placing suitable restrictions on this rapidly
increasing evil. The vast benefit to the cause of humanity which the
Society has in the past half century effected, would, in our humble
estimation, remain altogether one-sided and incomplete; if, while
brutal carters and ignorant costermongers are brought to punishment
for maltreating the animals under their charge, learned and refined
gentlemen should be left unquestioned to inflict far more exquisite
pain upon still more sensitive creatures; as if the mere allegation of
a scientific purpose removed them above all legal or moral
responsibility.

“We therefore beg respectfully to urge on the Committee the immediate
adoption of such measures as may approve themselves to their judgment
as most suitable to promote the end in view, namely, the Restriction
of Vivisection; and we trust that it may not be left to others, who
possess neither the wealth or organization of the Royal Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, to make such efforts in the same
direction as might prove to be in their power.”

It was arranged that the Memorial should be presented in Jermyn Street
in a formal manner on the 25th January, 1875, by a deputation introduced
by my cousin’s husband, Mr. John Locke, M.P., Q.C., and consisting of
Sir Frederick Elliot, Lord Jocelyn Percy, General G. Lawrence, Mr. R. H.
Hutton, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Dr. Walker, Col. Wood (now Sir Evelyn) and
several ladies.

Prince Lucian Bonaparte, who always warmly befriended the cause, took
the chair at first, and was succeeded by Lord Harrowby, President of the
R.S.P.C.A., supported by Lady Burdett Coutts, Lord Mount-Temple (then
Mr. Cowper-Temple) and others.

After some friendly discussion it was agreed that the Committee of the
R.S.P.C.A. would give the subject their most zealous attention; and a
sub-Committee to deal with the matter was accordingly appointed
immediately afterwards.

When I drove home to Hereford Square from Jermyn Street that day, I
rejoiced to think that I had accomplished a step towards obtaining the
protection of the law for the victims of science; and I fully believed
that I was free to return to my own literary pursuits and to the
journalism which then occupied most of my time. A few days later I was
requested to attend (for the occasion only) the first Meeting of the
sub-Committee for Vivisection of the R.S.P.C.A. On entering the room my
spirits sank, for I saw round the table a number of worthy gentlemen,
mostly elderly, but not one of the more distinguished members of their
Committee or, (I think), a single Peer or Member of Parliament. In
short, they were not the men to take the lead in such a movement and
make a bold stand against the claims of science. After a few minutes the
Chairman himself asked me: “Whether _I_ could not undertake to get a
Bill into Parliament for the object we desired?” As if all my labour
with the Memorial had not been spent to make _them_ do this very thing!
It was obviously felt by others present that this suggestion was out of
place, and I soon retired, leaving the sub-Committee to send Mr. Colam
round to make enquiries among the physiologists—a mission which might,
perhaps, be represented as a friendly request to be told frankly
“whether they were really cruel?” I understood, later, that he was shown
a painless vivisection on a cat and offered a glass of sherry; and there
(so far as I know or ever heard) the labours of that sub-Committee
ended. Mr. Colam afterwards took immense pains to collect evidence from
the published works of Vivisectors of the extent and severity of their
operations; and this very valuable mass of materials was presented by
him some months later to the Royal Commission, and is published in the
Blue Book as an Appendix to their Minutes.

I was, of course, miserably disappointed at this stage of affairs, but
on the 2nd February, 1875, there appeared in the _Morning Post_ the
celebrated letter from Dr. George Hoggan, in which (without naming
Claude Bernard) he described what he had himself witnessed in his
laboratory when recently working there for several months. This letter
was absolutely invaluable to our cause, giving, as it did, reality and
firsthand testimony to all we had asserted from books and reports. In
the course of it Dr. Hoggan said:—

“I venture to record a little of my own experience in the matter, part
of which was gained as an assistant in the laboratory of one of the
greatest living experimental physiologists. In that laboratory we
sacrificed daily from one to three dogs, besides rabbits and other
animals, and after four months’ experience I am of opinion that not
one of those experiments on animals was justified or necessary. The
idea of the good of humanity was simply out of the question, and would
be laughed at, the great aim being to keep up with, or get ahead of,
one’s contemporaries in science, even at the price of an incalculable
amount of torture needlessly and iniquitously inflicted on the poor
animals. During three campaigns I have witnessed many harsh sights,
but I think the saddest sight I ever witnessed was when the dogs were
brought up from the cellar to the laboratory for sacrifice. Instead of
appearing pleased with the change from darkness to light, they seemed
seized with horror as soon as they smelt the air of the place,
divining, apparently, their approaching fate. They would make friendly
advances to each of the three or four persons present, and as far as
eyes, ears, and tail could make a mute appeal for mercy eloquent, they
tried it in vain.

“Were the feelings of the experimental physiologists not blunted, they
could not long continue the practice of vivisection. They are always
ready to repudiate any implied want of tender feeling, but I must say
that they seldom show much pity; on the contrary, in practice they
frequently show the reverse. Hundreds of times I have seen, when an
animal writhed with pain and thereby deranged the tissues, during a
delicate dissection, instead of being soothed, it would receive a slap
and an angry order to be quiet and behave itself. At other times, when
an animal had endured great pain for hours without struggling or
giving more than an occasional low whine, instead of letting the poor
mangled wretch loose to crawl painfully about the place in reserve for
another day’s torture, it would receive pity so far that it would be
said to have behaved well enough to merit death; and, as a reward,
would be killed at once by breaking up the medulla with a needle, or
‘pithing,’ as this operation is called. I have often heard the
professor say when one side of an animal had been so mangled and the
tissues so obscured by clotted blood that it was difficult to find the
part searched for, ‘Why don’t you begin on the other side?’ or ‘Why
don’t you take another dog? What is the use of being so economical?’
One of the most revolting features in the laboratory was the custom of
giving an animal, on which the professor had completed his experiment,
and which had still some life left, to the assistants to practice the
finding of arteries, nerves, &c., in the living animal, or for
performing what are called fundamental experiments upon it—in other
words, repeating those which are recommended in the laboratory
hand-books. I am inclined to look upon anæsthetics as the greatest
curse to vivisectible animals. They alter too much the normal
conditions of life to give accurate results, and they are therefore
little depended upon. They, indeed, prove far more efficacious in
lulling public feeling towards the vivisectors than pain in the
vivisected.”

I had met Dr. Hoggan one day just before this occurrence at Mdme.
Bodichon’s house, but I had no idea that he would, or could, bear such
valuable testimony; and I have never ceased to feel that in thus nobly
coming forward to offer it spontaneously, he struck the greatest blow on
our side in the whole battle. Of course I expressed to him all the
gratitude I felt, and we thenceforth took counsel frequently as to the
policy to be pursued in opposing vivisection.

It soon became evident that if a Bill were to be presented to Parliament
that session it must be promoted by some parties other than the
Committee of the R.S.P.C.A. Indeed in the following December _The Animal
World_, in a leading article, avowed that “the Royal Society (P.C.A.) is
not so entirely unanimous as to desire the passing of any special
legislative enactment on this subject” (vivisection). Feeling convinced
that some such obstacle was in the way I turned to my friends to see if
it might be possible to push on a Bill independently, and with the most
kind help of Sir William Hart Dyke (the Conservative whip), it was
arranged that a Bill for “Regulating the Practice of Vivisection” should
be introduced with the sanction of Government into the House of Lords by
Lord Henniker (Lord Hartismere). It is impossible to describe all the
anxiety I endured during the interval up to the 4th May, when this Bill
was actually presented. Lord Henniker was exceedingly good about it and
took much pains with the draft prepared at first by Sir Frederick
Elliot, and afterwards completed for Lord Henniker by Mr. Fitzgerald.
Lord Coleridge also took great interest in it, and gave most valuable
advice, and Mr. Lowe (who afterwards bitterly opposed the almost
identical measure of Lord Cross in the Commons), was willing to give
this earlier Bill much consideration. I met him one day at luncheon at
Airlie Lodge, where were also Lord Henniker, Lady Minto, Lord Airlie and
others interested, and the Bill was gone over clause by clause till
adjusted to Mr. Lowe’s counsels.

Lord Henniker introduced the Bill thus drafted “for _Regulating the
Practice of Vivisection_” into the House of Lords on the 4th May, 1875;
but on the 12th May, to our great surprise another Bill _to prevent
Abuse in Experiments on Animals_ was introduced into the House of
Commons by Dr. (now Lord) Playfair. On the appearance of this latter
Bill, which was understood to be promoted by the physiologists
themselves—notably by Dr. Burdon-Sanderson, and by Mr. Charles
Darwin—the Government, which had sanctioned Lord Henniker’s Bill,
thought it necessary to issue a Royal Commission of Enquiry into the
subject before any legislation should be proceeded with. This was done
accordingly on the 22nd June, and both Bills were then withdrawn.

The student of this old chapter of the history of the Anti-vivisection
Crusade will find both of the above-named Bills (and also the
ineffective sketch of what might have been the Bill of the R.S.P.C.A.)
in the Appendix to the _Report of the Royal Commission_, pp. 336–8. Mr.
Charles Darwin, in a letter to the _Times_, April 18th, 1881, said that
he “took an active part in trying to get a Bill passed such as would
have removed all just cause of complaint, and at the same time have left
the physiologists free to pursue their researches,”—a “_Bill very
different from that which has since been passed_.” As Mr. Darwin’s
biographer, while reprinting this letter, has not quoted my challenge to
him in the _Times_ of the 23rd to point out “_in what respect the former
Bill is very different from the Act of 1876_,” I think it well to cite
here the lucid definition of that difference as delineated in the
_Spectator_ of May 15th, doubtless by the editor, Mr. Hutton.

“THE VIVISECTION-RESTRICTION BILLS.

“On Wednesday afternoon last, Dr. Lyon Playfair laid on the table of
the House of Commons a Bill for the Restriction of Vivisection, which
has been drawn up by physiologists, no doubt in part, in the interest
of physiological science, but also in part, no doubt in the interest
of humanity. The contents of this Bill are the best answer which it is
possible to give to the ignorant attack made in a daily contemporary
on Tuesday on Lord Henniker’s Bill, introduced into the House of Lords
last week. The two Bills differ in principle only on one important
point. Both of them clearly have been maturely considered by men of
science as well as by humanitarians. Both of them assume the great and
increasing character of the evil which has to be dealt with. Both of
them approach that evil in the same manner, by insisting that
scientific experiments which are painful to animals shall be tried
only on the avowed responsibility of men of the highest education,
whose right to try them may be withdrawn if it be abused. Both of them
aim at compelling the physiologists who are permitted to try such
experiments at all, to use anæsthetics throughout the experiment,
whenever the use of anæsthetics is not fatal to the investigation
itself.... The Bills differ, however, on a most important point. It is
certain that all the contempt showered on Lord Henniker’s Bill by the
ignorant assailants of the humanitarian party might equally have been
showered on Dr. Lyon Playfair’s. But Lord Henniker’s Bill contemplates
making physiological and pathological experiments on living animals,
even under complete anæsthesia, illegal, except under the same
responsibility and on the same conditions as those experiments which
are not, and cannot be, conducted under complete anæsthesia,—while Dr.
Lyon Playfair leaves all experiments conducted under anæsthetics,—and
will practically, though not theoretically, leave, we fear, those
which only PROFESS to be so conducted (a very different thing),—as
utterly without restriction as they now are. Indeed, it attempts no
sort of limitation upon them. If a whole hecatomb of guinea-pigs, or
even dogs, were known to be imported, and their carcases exported
daily from the private house of any man who declared that he _always
used anæsthetics_, Dr. Playfair’s Bill provides, we believe, no sort
of machinery by which the truth of his assertion could be even
tested.... It is, however, no small matter to have obtained this clear
admission on scientific authority that the victimisation of animals in
the interest of science is an evil of a growing and serious kind which
needs legislative interference, and calls for at least the threat of
serious penalties....”

In short, the Bill promoted by the physiologists and Mr. Darwin, was,
like the Resolutions of the Liverpool British Association, a “Pious
Opinion” or _Brutum fulmen_. Nothing more.

The Royal Commission on Vivisection was issued, as I have said, on the
22nd June, 1875, and the _Report_ was dated January 8th, 1876. The
intervening months were filled with anxiety. I heard constantly all that
went on at the Commission, and my hopes and fears rose and fell week by
week. Of the constitution of the Commission much might be said. Writing
of it in the _British Friend_, May, 1876, the late Mr. J. B. Firth,
M.P., Q.C., remarked:—

“If it were possible for a Royal Commission to be appointed to inquire
into the practice of Thuggee, I should have very little confidence in
their report if one-third of the Commissioners were prominent practisers
of the art. On the same principle the constitution of this Commission is
open to the observation that it included two notorious advocates of
vivisection, Dr. Erichsen and Professor Huxley, both of whom had to
‘explain’ their writings and practices in connection with it, in the
course of the inquiry.”

Certain it is, as I heard at the time, and as anyone may verify by
looking over the _Minutes of Evidence_, these two able gentlemen acted,
not as Judges on the Bench examining evidence dispassionately, but as
exceedingly vigorous and keen-eyed Counsel for the Physiologists. On the
humanitarian side there was but a single pronounced opponent of
Vivisection,—Mr. R. H. Hutton,—who nobly sacrificed his time for half a
year to doing all that was in the power of a single Member of the
Commission, and he a layman, to elicit the truth concerning the alleged
cruelty of the practice. At the end, after receiving a mass of evidence
in answer to 3,764 questions from 53 witnesses, the Commission reported
distinctly _in favour of legislative interference_. They say:—

“Even if the weight of authority on the side of legislative
interference had been less considerable, we should have thought
ourselves called upon to recommend it by the reason of the thing. It
is manifest that the practice is, from its very nature, liable to
great abuse, and that since it is impossible for society to entertain
the idea of putting an end to it, it ought to be subjected to due
regulation and control.... It is not to be doubted that inhumanity may
be found in persons of very high position as physiologists.... Beside
the cases in which inhumanity exists, we are satisfied that there are
others in which carelessness and indifference prevail to an extent
sufficient to form a ground for legislative interference.”

Yet in the face of these and other weighty sentences to the same
purpose, it has been persistently asserted that the Royal Commission
_exonerated_ English physiologists from all charge of cruelty! In Mr.
Darwin’s celebrated letter to Professor Holmgren, of Upsala, published
in the _Times_, April, 1881, he said: “The investigation of the matter
by a Royal Commission proved that the accusations made against our
English physiologists _were false_.” Commenting on this letter the
_Spectator_, April 23rd, 1881 (doubtless Mr. Hutton himself) observed:

“The Royal Commission did not report this. They came to no such
conclusion, and though that may be Mr. Darwin’s own inference from
what they did say, it is only his inference, not theirs. In our
opinion it was proved that very great cruelty had been practised, with
hardly any appreciable results, by more than one British
physiologist.”

Nor must it be left out of sight in estimating the disingenuousness of
the advocates of vivisection, that the above quoted sentences from the
_Report_ of the Commission were countersigned by those representatives
of Science, Prof. Huxley and Mr. Erichsen; as were, of course, also the
subsequent paragraphs, formally recommending a measure almost identical
with Lord Carnarvon’s Bill. In spite of this the Vivisecting clique has
not ceased to assert that English physiologists were exculpated, and to
protest against the measure which we introduced in strict accordance
with that recommendation; a measure which was even still further
mitigated, (as regarded freedom to the vivisectors,) under the pressure
of their Deputation to the Home Office, till it became the present
_quasi_ ineffectual Act.

While the Royal Commission was still sitting in the autumn, and when it
had become obvious that much would remain to be done before any
effectual check could be placed on Vivisection, Dr. Hoggan suggested to
me that we should form a Society to carry on the work. I abhorred
Societies, and knew only too well the huge additional labour of working
the machinery of one, over and above any direct help to the object in
view. I had hitherto worked independently and freely, taking always the
advice of the eminent men who were so good as to counsel me at every
step. But I felt that this plan could not suffice much longer, and that
the authority of a formally constituted Society was needed to make
headway against an evil which daily revealed itself as more formidable.
Accordingly I agreed with Dr. Hoggan that we should do well to form such
a Society, he and I being the Honorary Secretaries, _provided_ we could
obtain the countenance of some men of eminence to form the nucleus. “I
will write,” I said, “to Lord Shaftesbury and to the Archbishop of York.
If they will give me their names, we can conjure with them. If _not_, I
will not undertake to form a Society.”

I wrote that night to those two eminent persons. I received next day
from Lord Shaftesbury a telegram (which he must have dispatched
_instantly_ on receiving my letter) which answered “Yes.” Next day the
post brought from him the letter which I shall here print. The next post
brought also the letter from Archbishop Thomson. Thus the Society
consisted for two days of Lord Shaftesbury, the Archbishop, Dr. Hoggan
and myself!

“Lord Shaftesbury to Miss F. P. C.

“St. Giles’s House, Cranbourne, Salisbury,
“November 17th, 1875.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“It is needful I am sure, to found a Society, in order to have unity
and persistency of action.

“I judge, by the terms of the circular, that the object of the Society
will be restriction and not prohibition.

“Possibly, this end is as much as you will be able to attain.
Prohibition, I doubt not, would be evaded; but restriction will, I am
certain, be exceeded.

“Not but that a little is better than nothing.

“But you will find many who will think with much show of reason, that,
by surrendering the principle, you have surrendered the great
argument.

“Faithfully yours, SHAFTESBURY.”

“Bishopthorpe, York,
“November 16th, 1875.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I am quite ready to join the Society for restricting Vivisection. I
agree with you; total prohibition would be impossible.

“I am, yours very truly,
“W. EBOR.”

With these names to “conjure with,” as I have said, we found it easy to
enrol a goodly company in the ranks of our new Society. Cardinal Manning
was one of the first to join us. On the 2nd Dec., 1875, the first
Committee meeting was held in the house of Dr. and Mrs. Hoggan, 13,
Granville Place, Portman Square, Mr. Stansfeld taking the chair. Mrs.
Wedgwood, wife of Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood and mother of my friend Miss
Julia Wedgwood, was present at that first meeting, and (so long as her
health permitted,) at those which followed,—a worthy example of
“heredity,” since her father and mother, Sir James and Lady Mackintosh,
had been among the principal supporters of Richard Martin, and founders
of the R.S.P.C.A. At the third meeting of the Committee, on Feb. 18th,
1876, Lord Shaftesbury took the Chair, for the first time, and again he
took it on the occasion of a memorable meeting on the 1st of March, but
vacated it on the arrival of Archbishop Thomson, who proved to be an
admirably efficient Chairman. We had a serious job, that day; that of
discussing the “_Statement_” of our position and objects. I had drafted
this _Statement_ in preparation, as well as compiled from the _Minutes
of Evidence_, a series of Extracts exhibiting the extension and abuses
of Vivisection; and also evidence regarding Anæsthetics and regarding
foreign physiologists. These appendices were all accepted and appear in
the pamphlet; but my _Statement_ was most minutely debated, clause for
clause, and at last adopted, not without several modifications. After
summarising the Report of the Royal Commission which “has been in some
respects seriously misconstrued” (I might add, persistently misconstrued
ever since) and also Mr. Hutton’s independent _Report_, in which he
desired that the “Household Animals” should be exempted from
Vivisection, the Committee carefully criticise this Report and express
their confident hope that “a Bill may be introduced immediately by
Government to carry out the recommendations of the Commission.” They
observe, in conclusion, that they find “a just summary of their
sentiments in Mr. Hutton’s expression of his view:—

“‘The measure will not at all satisfy my own conceptions of the needs
of the case, unless it result in putting an end to all experiments
involving not merely torture _but anything at all approaching
thereto_.’”

Such was our attitude at that memorable date when we commenced the
regular steady work which has now gone on for just 18 years. On the 2nd
or 3rd of March I took possession of the offices where so large a part
of my life was henceforth to be spent. When my kind colleagues had left
me and I locked the outer door of the offices and knew myself to be
alone, I resolved very seriously to devote myself, so long as might be
needful, to this work of trying to save God’s poor creatures from their
intolerable doom; and I resolved “never to go to bed at night leaving a
stone unturned which might help to stop Vivisection.” I believe I have
kept that resolution. I commend it to other workers.

It may interest the reader to know who were the persons then actually
aiding and supporting our movement.

There was,—first and most important,—my colleague and friend Dr. George
Hoggan, who laboured incessantly (and wholly gratuitously) for the
cause. His wife, Dr. Frances Hoggan, who I am thankful to say, still
survives, was also a most useful member of the Committee.

The other Members of the Executive were: Sir Frederick Elliot, K.C.M.G.
who had long been Permanent Secretary at the Colonial Office;
Major-General Colin Mackenzie, a noble old hero of the Afghan wars and
the Mutiny; Mr. Leslie Stephen; Mrs. Hensleigh Wedgwood; Dr. Vaughan
(the late Master of the Temple); the Countess of Portsmouth; the
Countess of Camperdown; my friend Miss Lloyd; my cousin, Mr. Locke,
M.P., Q.C.; Mr. William Shaen; Col. (now Sir Evelyn) Wood; and Mr.
Edward de Fonblanque. The latter gentleman was one of the most useful
members of the Committee, whose retirement three years later after our
adoption of a more advanced policy, I have never ceased to regret.

Beside these Members of the Committee we had then as Vice-Presidents,
the Archbishop of York, the Marquis of Bute, Cardinal Manning, Lord
Portsmouth, Mr. Cowper-Temple (afterwards Lord Mount-Temple), Right Hon.
James Stansfeld, Lord Shaftesbury, the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol
(Dr. Ellicott), the Bishop of Manchester (Dr. Fraser), Lord Chief
Justice Coleridge, and the Lord Chief Baron, Sir Fitzroy Kelly.

Dr. Hoggan had invited Mr. Spurgeon to join our Society, but received
from him the following reply:—

“Rev. C. H. Spurgeon to Dr. Hoggan.
“Nightingale Lane, Clapham,
“Dec. 24th.

“Dear Sir,

“I do not like to become an officer of a Society for I have no time to
attend to the duties of such an office, and it strikes me as a false
system which is now so general, which allows names to appear on
Committees and requires no service from the individuals.

“In all efforts to spare animals from needless pain I wish you the
utmost success. There are cases in which they _must_ suffer, as we
also must, but not one pang ought to be endured by them from which we
can screen them.

“Yours heartily,
“C. H. SPURGEON.

“I shall aid your effort in my own way.”

Mr. Spurgeon wrote on one occasion a letter to Lord Shaftesbury to be
read from the Chair at a Meeting; but, much as we wished to use it, the
extreme strength of the _expletives_ was considered to transgress the
borders of expediency!

We invited Prof. Rolleston to give us his support. The following was his
reply:—

“Oxford, Nov. 28th, 1875.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I would have answered your letter before had I been able to make up
my mind to do as you ask. This, however, I think I should not, in the
interests of the line of legislation which I advocate, do well to do.
I believe I speak with greater weight from keeping an independent
position. And as I have a great desire to throw away none of the
advantages which that position gives me, I am obliged to decline your
invitation. Allow me to say that I am much gratified by your writing
to ask me to do what I decline to do out of considerations of
expediency.

“It is also a great pleasure to me to think that what I said at
Bristol has met with your approbation. The bearing of parts at the end
or towards the end of that Address upon the future of Vivisection was,
I hope, tolerably obvious.

“I am,
“Yours very truly,
“GEORGE ROLLESTON.”

The newly-formed Society had been clumsily named by Dr. Hoggan: “The
_Society for Protection of Animals liable to Vivisection_,” and its aim
was: “_to obtain the greatest possible protection for animals liable to
vivisection_.” I was obliged to yield to my colleague as regarded this
awkward title which exactly defined the position he desired to take up;
but it was a constant source of worry and loss to us. As soon as
possible, however, after we had taken our offices in Victoria Street, I
called our Society, unofficially and for popular use, simply “_The
Victoria Street Society_.”

These offices are large and handsome, and so conveniently situated that
the Society has retained them ever since. They are on the first floor of
a house—formerly numbered “1,” now numbered “20,”—in Victoria Street,
ten or eleven doors up the street from the Broad Sanctuary and the
Westminster Palace Hotel; and with Westminster Abbey and the Towers of
the Houses of Parliament in view from the street door. The offices
contain an ante-room (now piled with our papers), a large airy room with
two windows for the clerks, a Secretary’s private room, and a spacious
and lightsome Committee-room with three windows. Out of this last
another room was accessible, which at one time was taken for my especial
use. I put up bookshelves, pictures, curtains, and various little
feminine relaxations, and thus covered, as far as might be, the
frightful character of our work, so that friends should find our office
no painful place to visit.

We did not let the grass grow under our feet after we had settled down
in these offices. On the 20th March there went out from them to the
neighbouring Home Office a Deputation to Mr. (now Lord) Cross to urge
the Government to bring in a Bill in accordance with the recommendations
of the Royal Commission. The Deputation was headed by Lord Shaftesbury,
and included the Earl of Minto, Cardinal Manning, Mr. Froude, Mr.
Mundella, Sir Frederick Elliot, Col. Evelyn Wood, and Mr. Cowper-Temple.
Mr. Carlyle was to have joined the Deputation, but held back sooner than
accompany the Cardinal.

Chief Baron Kelly wrote us the following cordial expressions of regret
for non-attendance:—

“Western Circuit, Winchester,
“4th March, 1876.

“The Lord Chief Baron presents his compliments to Miss Cobbe, and very
greatly regrets that, being engaged at the assize on the Western
Circuit until nearly the middle of April, he will be unable to
accompany the deputation to Mr. Cross on the subject of Vivisection,
to which, however, he earnestly wishes success.”

We had invited Canon Liddon, who was a subscriber to our funds from the
first, to join this Deputation, but received from him the following
reply:

“Amen Court, 6th March, 1876.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I should be sincerely glad to be able to obey your kind wishes in the
matter of the proposed Deputation, if I could. But I am unable to be
in London again between to-morrow and April 1st, and this, I fear will
make it impossible.

“I shall be sincerely glad to hear that the Deputation succeeds in
persuading the Home Secretary to make legislation on the Report of the
Vivisection Commission a Government question. Mr. Hutton appeared to
me to resist the —— criticisms of the _Times_ on the Report very
admirably!

“Thanking you for your note,
“I am, my dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours very truly,
“H. P. LIDDON.”

A few weeks afterwards when I invited him to attend a meeting he wrote
again a letter, to the last sentence of which I desire to call attention
as embodying the opinion of this eminent man on the _human_ moral
interest involved in our crusade.

“Christ Church, Oxford,
“May 22nd, 1876.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I sincerely wish that I could obey your summons. But, as a professor
here, I have public duties on Thursday, the 1st of June, which I
cannot decline or transfer to other hands.

“I think I told you I was a useless person for these good purposes;
and so, you see, it is.

“Still you are very well off in the way of speakers, and will not miss
such a person as I. Heartily do I hope that the meeting may reward the
trouble you have taken about it by strengthening Lord Carnarvon’s
hands. The cause you have at heart is of _even greater importance to
human character than to the physical comfort of those of our ‘fellow
creatures’ who are most immediately concerned_.

“I am, my dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours very truly,
“H. P. LIDDON.”

The Deputation of March 20th to the Home Office was most favourably
received, and our Society was invited to submit to Government
suggestions respecting the provisions of the intended Bill. These
suggestions were framed at a Committee held at our office on the 30th
March, and they were adopted by Government after being approved by its
official advisers, and presented by Lord Carnarvon in the House of
Lords. The second reading took place on the 22nd May. On that occasion
Lord Coleridge made a most judicious speech in defence of the Bill, and
Lord Shaftesbury the long and beautiful one reprinted in our pamphlet,
“_In Memoriam_.” The next morning all the newspapers came out with
leading articles in praise of the Bill. It is hard now to realise that,
previous to undergoing the medical pressure which has twisted the
minds—(or at least the _pens_)—of three-fourths of the press, even the
great paper which has been our relentless opponent for 17 years was then
our cordial supporter. Everything at that time looked fair for us. The
Bill, as we had drafted it, did, practically, fulfil Mr. Hutton’s
aspiration. No experiment whatever under any circumstances was permitted
on a dog, cat, horse, ass, or mule; nor any on any other animal except
under conditions of complete anæsthesia from beginning to end. The Bill
included Licenses, but no Certificates dispensing with the above
provisions. Our hopes of carrying this bill seemed amply justified by
the reception it received from the House of Lords and the Press; and
from a great Conference of the R.S.P.C.A. and its branches, held on the
23rd May. We held our first General Meeting at Westminster Palace Hotel
on the 1st June and resolutions in support of the Bill were passed
enthusiastically; Lord Shaftesbury presiding, and the Marquis of Bute,
Lord Glasgow, Cardinal Manning and others speaking with great spirit. It
only needed, to all appearance, that the Bill should be pushed through
its final stage in the Lords and sent down to the House of Commons, to
secure its passage intact that same Session.

At this most critical moment, and through the whole month of June, Lord
Carnarvon, in whose hands the Bill lay, was drawn away from London and
occupied by the illness and death of Lady Carnarvon. No words can tell
the anxiety and alarm this occasioned us, when we learned that a large
section of the medical profession, which had so far seemed quiescent if
not approving, had been roused by their chief wire-puller into a state
of exasperation at the supposed “insult” of proposing to submit them to
legal control in experimenting on living animals, (as they were already
subjected to it, by the Anatomy Act, in dissecting dead bodies). These
doctors, to the number of 3,000, signed a Memorial to the Home
Secretary, calling on him to modify the Bill so as practically to
reverse its character, and make it a measure, no longer protecting
vivisected animals from torture, but vivisectors from prosecution under
Martin’s Act. This Memorial was presented on the 10th July by a
Deputation, variously estimated at 300 and at 800 doctors, who, in
either case, were sufficiently numerous to overflow the purlieus of the
Home Office and to overawe Mr. Cross. On the 10th of August the
Bill—essentially altered in submission to the medical memorialists—was
brought by Mr. Cross into the House of Commons, and was read a second
time. On the 15th August, 1876, it received the Royal Assent and became
the Act 39–40 Vict., c. 77, commonly called the “Vivisection Act.”

The world has never seemed to me quite the same since that dreadful
time. My hopes had been raised so high to be dashed so low as even to
make me fear that I had done harm instead of good, and brought fresh
danger to the hapless brutes for whose sake, as I realised more and more
their agonies, I would have gladly died. I was baffled in an aim nearer
to my heart than any other had ever been, and for which I had strained
every nerve for many months; and of all the hundreds of people who had
seemed to sympathise and had signed our Memorials and petitions, there
were none to say: “_This shall not be!_” Justice and Mercy seemed to
have gone from the earth.

We left London,—the Session and the summer being over, and came as usual
to Wales; but our enjoyment of the beauty of this lovely land had in
great measure vanished. Even after twenty years my friend and I look
back to our joyous summers before that miserable one, and say, “Ah!
_that_ was when we knew very little of Vivisection.”

In my despair I wrote several letters of bitter reproach to the friends
in Parliament who had allowed our Bill to be so mutilated as that the
_British Medical Journal_ crowed over it, as affording full liberty to
“science”; and I also wrote to several newspapers saying that after this
failure to obtain a reasonable restrictive Bill, I, for one, should
labour henceforth to obtain total prohibition. In reply to my letter (I
fear a very petulant one) Lord Shaftesbury wrote me this full and
important explanation which I commend to the careful reading of such of
our friends as desire now to rescind the Act of 1876.

“Castle Wemyss, Wemyss Bay, N.B.,
“Aug. 16th, 1876.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“Until we shall have seen the Act in print we cannot form a just
estimate of the force of the amendments. Some few, so I see by the
papers, were introduced in Committee, after my last interview with Mr.
Cross; but of their character I know nothing. I am disposed, however,
to believe that he would not have admitted anything of real
importance.

“Mr. Cross’s difficulties were very great at all times; but they
increased much as the Session was drawing to a close. The want of
time, the extreme pressure of business, the active malignity of the
Scientific men, and the indifference of his Colleagues, left the
Secretary of State in a very weak and embarrassing position.

“Your letter, which I have just received, asks whether ‘the Bill
cannot be turned out in the House of Lords?’ The reply is that,
whether advisable or unadvisable, it cannot now be done, for the
Parliament is prorogued.

“In the Bill as submitted to me, just before the second reading at a
final interview with Mr. Cross, Mr. Holt and Lord Cardwell being
present, some changes were made which I by no means approved. But the
question, then, was simply, ‘The Bill as propounded, or no Bill,’ for
Mr. Cross stoutly maintained that, without the alterations suggested,
he had no hope of carrying anything at all. I reverted, therefore, to
my first opinion, stated at the very commencement of my co-operation
with your Committee, that it was of great importance, nay
indispensable, to obtain a Bill, however imperfect, which should
condemn the practice, put a limit on the exercise of it, and give us a
foundation on which to build amendments hereafter as evidence and
opportunity shall be offered to us.

“The Bill is of that character. I apprehended that if there were no
Bill then, there would be none at any time. No private Member, I
believe, and I still believe, could undertake such a measure with even
a shadow of hope and there was more than doubt, whether a Secretary of
State would, again, entangle himself with so bitter and so wearisome a
question in the face of all Science, and the antipathies of most of
his Colleagues. Public sympathy would have declined, and would not
have easily been aroused a second time. The public sympathy at its
best, was only noisy, and not effective; and this assertion is proved
by the few signatures to petitions, compared with the professed
feeling; and by the extreme difficulty to raise any funds in
proportion to the exigency of the case.

“The evidence, too, given to the Commission, which was, after all, our
main reliance, would have grown stale; and, the Physiologists would
have taken good care that, for some time at least, nothing should
transpire to take its place.

“We have gained an enactment that Experiments shall be performed by
none but Licensed Persons, thereby excluding, should the Act be well
enforced, the host of young students and their bed-chamber practices.

“We have gained an enactment that all experiments shall be performed
under the influence of Anæsthetics;[33] and, thirdly, the greatest
enactment of all, that the Secretary of State is responsible for the
due execution of all these provisions in Parliament, and in his
Office, instead of the College of Physicians, or some such
unreachable, and intangible Body, as many Secretaries of State, except
Mr. Cross, would have evasively, appointed.

“This provision under the Statutes, so unexpected, and valuable, could
have been suggested to Parliament by a Secretary of State only, and I
feel sure that no Secretary of State in any ‘Liberal’ Administration
would listen to the proposal; and I very much doubt whether Mr. Cross
himself, had his present Bill been rejected, would have, in the case
of a new Bill, repeated his offer of making it a measure for which the
Cabinet has to answer.

“I have seen your letter to the _Echo_ and the _Daily News_. You are
quite justified in your determination to agitate the country on the
subject of vivisection, and obtain, if it be possible, the total
abolition of it. Such an issue may be within reach, and it is only by
experience that we can ascertain how far such a blessed consummation
is practicable. You will have a good deal of sympathy with your
efforts, and from no one more than from myself.

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

When we all returned to town in October, the Committee placed on the
_Minutes_ a letter from me, saying that I could only retain the office
of Honorary Secretary if the Society should adopt the principle of total
prohibition. A circular was sent out calling for votes on the point, and
by the 22nd November, 1876, the Resolution was carried, “That the
Society would watch the existing Act with a view to the enforcement of
its restrictions and its extension to the total prohibition of painful
experiments on animals.”

In February, 1877, the Committee, to my satisfaction, unanimously agreed
to support Mr. Holt’s Bill for total prohibition; and in aid thereof
exhibited on the hoardings of London 1,700 handbills and 300 posters,
which were enlarged reproductions of the illustrations of vivisection
from the Physiological Hand-books. These posters certainly were more
effective than as many thousands of speeches and pamphlets; and the
indignation of the scientific party sufficiently proved that such was
the case. On the 27th April we held our second annual meeting in support
of Mr. Holt’s Bill, and had for speakers Lord Shaftesbury, the good
Bishop of Winchester Dr. Harold-Browne, (now, alas! dead), Lord
Mount-Temple, Prof. Sheldon Amos, Cardinal Manning, and Prince Lucien
Bonaparte. The last remarkable man and erudite scholar (who most closely
resembled his uncle in person, if we could imagine Napoleon I.
commanding only armies _of books_!), was, from first to last, a warm
friend of our cause. After this meeting we elected him Vice-President
and here is his letter of acknowledgment:—

“Prince Lucien Bonaparte to Miss F. P. C.
“6, Norfolk Terrace, Bayswater,
“4th May, 1877.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I feel highly honoured at being nominated one of the Vice-Presidents
of the Society for Protection of Animals liable to vivisection, and
ask you to return the Committee my best thanks.

“I am a great admirer of a Society which, like yours, opposes so
strongly the abominable practice of vivisection, because for my own
part, I consider it, even in its mildest form, as a shame to Science,
a dishonour to modern civilisation, and (what I think more important)
a great offence against the law of God.

“Believe me, my dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours very sincerely,
“L. BONAPARTE.”

Here are some further letters concerned with that meeting or written to
me soon afterwards:—

“Christ Church, Oxford,
“March 26th, 1877.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I beg to thank you sincerely for your kind letter.

“So far as I can see there is, I fear, little chance of my being at
liberty to take part in the proceedings on the 27th of April.

“However, with the names which you announce, you will be more than
able to dispense with any assistance that I could lend to the common
object. You will, I trust, be able to strengthen Mr. Holt’s hands. If
what I have heard of his measure is at all accurate, it seems to be at
once moderate and efficient.

“I was much struck by an observation which you were, I think, said to
have made the other day at Bristol, to the effect that as matters now
stand everything depends upon the discretion, or rather, upon the
moral sympathies of the Home Secretary. Mr. Cross, I believe, would
always do well in all such matters. But it does not do to reckon with
the Roman Empire as if it were always to be governed by a Marcus
Aurelius.

“I am, my dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours very truly,
“H. P. LIDDON.”

“House of Commons,
“26th March.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I am sorry I cannot undertake to speak at your meeting on the 27th
April. I am not sure that I shall be in London on that day, but
request you to send me any notice of the meeting.

“My time and strength are somewhat overtaxed owing to an inability,
and I may add indisposition, to say No when I think I may be useful. I
am, however, I can assure you, in sympathy with you in your attempt to
put down torture in every form.

“I am, yours very sincerely,
“S. MORLEY.”
(Samuel Morley, M.P.)

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I will come in at some stage of your proceedings. I am bound first to
Convocation—and am engaged at Kingston before 5.

“What I should like would be to thank Lord Shaftesbury; but this must
depend on the time that I come, and _that_ must depend on the
exigencies of Convocation.

“Yours truly,
“A. P. STANLEY.
(The Dean of Westminster.)

“April 25th, 1877.”

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I am very sorry that through absence from home my answer to your note
has been delayed. I shall not be able to take part in your meeting on
the 27th, for I am not in a state of health to take part in any public
meeting; but if I am at all able I should like much to attend it and
hear for myself the views of the speakers. I have not expressed
publicly any opinion on the question of Vivisection, being anxious at
first to await the determination of the Commission, and then to see
how the restrictions were likely to work.

“I confess that my own mind is leaning very strongly to the conclusion
that there is no safe, right course other than entire prohibition. The
more I think of it the more I dread the brutality which in spite of
the influence of the best men will inevitably be developed in our
young Experimenters, in these days of almost fanatical devotion to
scientific research. It seems to me to more than counterbalance the
physical advantages to our sick what may grow out of the practice of
vivisection.

“And I am very sceptical about these physical advantages. I doubt
whether the secrets of nature can be successfully discovered by
torture, any more than the secrets of hearts. We have abandoned the
one endeavour, finding the results to be by no means worth the cost. I
am persuaded that we shall soon, for the same reason, have to abandon
the other.

“I am not able, as I say, to take part in a meeting, but as soon as I
am able I intend to preach on the subject, and if you can forward to
me any information which will be useful I shall be much obliged to
you. Believe me

“Ever my dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours very faithfully,
“J. BALDWIN BROWN.”
(Rev. J. B. Brown.)

By this time there were two other Anti-vivisection Societies in London,
beside Mr. Jesse’s Society at Macclesfield, all working for total
prohibition; and though of course we had various small difficulties and
rivalries in the course of time, yet practically we all helped each
other and the cause. Eventually the _International Society_, of which
Mr. and Mrs. Adlam were the spirited leaders, coalesced with ours and
added to our Committee several of its most valuable members including
our present much respected Chairman, Mr. Ernest Bell. The _London
Anti-vivisection Society_, though I expended all my blandishments on it,
has never consented to amalgamation, but has done a great work of its
own for which we have all reason to hold it in honour.

The revolt against the cruelties of science spread also about this time
to the continent. Baron Weber read his _Torture Chamber of Science_ in
Dresden, and created thereby a great sensation, followed by the
formation of the German League, of which he is President, and the
foundation of its organ, the _Thier-und-Menschen-Freund_, edited by Dr.
Paul Förster, now a member of the Reichstag. Other Anti-vivisection
Societies were founded then or in subsequent years in Hanover, in
Berlin, and in Stockholm. In Copenhagen those devoted friends of
animals, M. and Mdme. Lembcké, had long contended vigorously against the
local vivisector, Panum. In Italy the Florence _Società Protettrice_, of
which our Queen is Patroness and Countess Baldelli the indefatigable
Hon. Sec., has steadily worked against vivisection from its foundation;
and so has the Torinese Society of which Dr. Riboli is President and
Countess Biandrate Morelli the leading member. In Riga there has also
been a persevering movement against Vivisection by the excellent Society
of which the _Anwalt der Thiere_ is the (first-class) organ, and Madame
V. Schilling the presiding spirit.

In short, by the end of the decade, though we had been so cruelly
defeated, we were conscious that our movement had extended and had
become to all appearance one of those permanent agitations, which, once
begun, go on till the abuses which aroused them are abolished. In
America the movement only took definite shape in February, 1883, when,
under the auspices of the indefatigable Mrs. White, the _American
Anti-vivisection Society_ was founded at Philadelphia; to be followed up
by its most flourishing Illinois Branch, carried on with immense spirit
by Mrs. Fairchild Allen. Mr. Peabody and Mr. Greene have since
established at Boston the _New England Anti-vivisection Society_, which
has already become one of our most powerful allies.

On the 2nd May, Mr. Holt’s Bill for total prohibition was debated in the
House of Commons, and on a division there were 83 votes in its favour
and 222 against it.

At last the Committee of the Victoria Street Society formally adopted
the thoroughgoing policy; and at a Meeting, August 7th, 1878, resolved
“to appeal henceforth to public opinion in favour of the total
prohibition of Vivisection.” We then changed our title to that of the
_Society for Protection of Animals from Vivisection_. Dr. Hoggan and his
wife, Mrs. Hoggan, M.D., and also Mr. de Fonblanque retired from the
Committee with cordial goodwill on both sides, and the Archbishop of
York withdrew from the Vice-Presidency. But, beside these losses, I do
not believe that we had any others, and there was soon a large batch of
fresh recruits of new Members who had long resented our previous
half-hearted policy,—as they considered it to have been.

For my own part I had accepted from the outset the assurance I received
on all hands that a Bill for the total prohibition of Vivisection had
not the remotest chance of passing through Parliament in the present
state of public opinion; but that a Bill might be framed, which,
proceeding only on the grounds of Restriction, might effectually and
thoroughly exclude “_not only torture but anything at all approaching
thereto_”; and that such a Bill had every chance of becoming law. To
promote such a Bill had been my single aim and hope, and when it had
been prepared and presented and received so favourably, it really
appeared as if we were on the right and reasonable tack; much as we
hated any concession whatever to the demands of the vivisectors.

But when we found that the compromise which we proposed had failed, and
that our Bill providing the _minimum_ of protection for animals at all
acceptable by their friends, was twisted into a Bill protecting their
tormentors, we were driven to raise our demands to the total prohibition
of the practice, and to determine to work upon that basis for any number
of years till public opinion be ripe for our measure.

This was one aspect of our position; but there was another. We had in
truth gone into this crusade almost as our forefathers had set off for
the Holy Land, with scarcely any knowledge of the Power which we were
invading. We knew that dreadful cruelties had been done; but we fondly
imagined they were abuses which were _separable_ from the _practice_ of
experimenting on living animals. We accepted blindly the representation
of Vivisection by its advocates as a rare resource of baffled surgeons
and physicians, intent on some discovery for the immediate benefit of
humanity or the solution of some pressing and important physiological
problem; and we thought that with due and well considered restrictions
and safeguards on these occasional experiments, we might effectually
shut out cruelty. By slow, very slow degrees, we learned that nothing
was much further from the truth than these fancy pictures of ideal
Vivisection, and that real Vivisection is _not_ the occasional and
regretfully-adopted resource of a few, but the _daily employment_ (Carl
Vogt called it his “daily bread”) of hundreds of men and students,
devoted to it as completely and professionally as butchers to cutting up
carcases. Finally we found that to extend protection by any conceivable
Act of Parliament to animals once delivered to the physiologists in
their laboratories, was chimerical. Vivisection, we recognized at last
to be a _Method of Research_ which may be either sanctioned or
prohibited as a Method, but which cannot be restricted efficiently by
rules founded on humane considerations wholly irrelevant to the
scientific enquiry.

On the moral side also, we became profoundly impressed with the truth of
the principle to which Canon Liddon refers in the letter I have quoted,
viz., that the Anti-Vivisection cause is “of even greater importance to
human character than to the physical comfort of our fellow-creatures who
are most immediately concerned.” As I wrote of it, about this time in
_Bernard’s Martyrs_:—

“We stand face to face with a _New Vice_, new, at least in its vast
modern development and the passion wherewith it is pursued—the Vice of
Scientific Cruelty. It is not the old vice of _Cruelty for Cruelty’s
sake_. It is not the careless brutal cruelty of the half-savage
drunken drover, the low ruffian who skins living cats for gain, or of
the classic Roman or modern Spaniard, watching the sports of the arena
with fierce delight in the sight of blood and death. The new vice is
nothing of this kind.... It is not like most other human vices, hot
and thoughtless. The man possessed by it is calm, cool, deliberate;
perfectly cognisant of what he is doing; understanding, as indeed no
other man understands, the full meaning and extent of the waves and
spasms of agony he deliberately creates. It does not seize the
ignorant or hunger-driven or brutalized classes; but the cultivated,
the well-fed, the well-dressed, the civilized, and (it is said) the
otherwise kindly disposed and genial men of science, forming part of
the most intellectual circles in Europe. Sometimes it would appear as
we read of these horrors,—the baking alive of dogs, the slow
dissecting out of quivering nerves, and so on,—that it would be a
relief to picture the doer of such deeds as some unhappy, half-witted
wretch, hideous and filthy in mien or stupified by drink, so that the
full responsibility of a rational and educated human being should not
belong to him, and that we might say of him, ‘He scarcely understands
what he does.’ But, alas! this _New Vice_ has no such palliations; and
is exhibited not by such unhappy outcasts, but by some of the very
foremost men of our time; men who would think scornfully of being
asked to share the butcher’s honest trade: men addicted to high
speculation on all the mysteries of the universe; men who hope to
found the Religion of the Future, and to leave the impress of their
minds upon their age, and upon generations yet to be born.”

Regarding the matter from this point of view,—as our leaders, the most
eminent philanthropists of their generation, Lord Shaftesbury, Lord
Mount-Temple, Samuel Morley, and Cardinal Manning, emphatically did,—the
reasons for calling for the total Prohibition of Vivisection rather than
for its Restriction became actually clearer in our eyes on the side of
the human moral interests than on that of the physical interests of the
poor brutes. We felt that so long as the practice should be sanctioned
at all, so long the Vice of Scientific Cruelty would spring up in the
fresh minds of students, and be kept alive everywhere. It was therefore
absolutely needful to reach the germ of the disease, and not merely to
endeavour to allay the worst symptoms and outbreaks. It is the _passion
itself_ which needs to be sternly suppressed; and this can only be done
by stopping altogether the practice which is its outcome, and on which
it feeds and grows.

But (say our opponents), “Are you prepared to relinquish all the
benefits which this practice brings to humanity at large?”

Our answer to them, of course, is, that we question the reality of those
benefits altogether, but that, placing them at their highest estimation,
they are of no appreciable weight compared to the certain moral injury
done to the community by the sanction of cruelty. The discovery of the
_Elixir Vitæ_ itself would be too dearly purchased if the hearts of men
were to be rendered one degree more callous and selfish than they are
now. And that the practice of vivisection by a body of men at the
intellectual summit of our social system, whose influence must dribble
down through every stratum of society, would infallibly tend to increase
such callousness, there can exist no reasonable doubt. For my own part,
though believing that little or nothing worth mentioning has been
discovered for the Healing Art through Vivisection, and that Dr.
Leffingwell is right in saying that “if agony could be measured in
money, no Mining Company in the world would sanction prospecting in such
barren regions,” I yet deprecate the emphasis which many of our friends
have laid on this argument against vivisection. We have gone off our
rightful ground of the simple moral issues of the question and have
seemed to admit (what very few of us would deliberately do) that _if_
some important discovery _had been_ made by Vivisection, our case
against it would be lost or weakened. I have been so anxious to warn our
friends against this, as I think, very grave mistake in tactics, that I
circulated some time ago a little _Parable_ which I may as well
summarize here:—

“A party of Filibusters once proposed to ravage a neighbouring island,
inhabited by poor and humble people who had always been faithful
servants and friends of our country, and had in no way deserved
ill-treatment. Some friends of justice protested that the Filibusters
ought to be prohibited from carrying on their expedition, but
unluckily they did not simply arraign the moral lawfulness of the
project, but went on to discuss the _inexpediency_ of the invasion,
arguing that the island was very poor and barren, and would not repay
the cost of conquest. Here the Filibusters saw their advantage and
broke in: ‘No such thing! _We_ are the only people who know anything
about the island, and we assure you it is full of mines of gold and
silver.’ ‘Bosh!’ replied the just men; ‘we defy you to show us a
single nugget.’ On this there was a good deal of shuffling of feet
among the Filibusters, and they exhibited some glittering fragments as
gold, but being tested these proved to be worthless, and again other
fragments which they produced were traced to quite another part of the
district, far away from the island. Still it became evident that the
Filibusters would go on interminably bringing up specimens, and some
day might possibly produce one the value of which could not be well
disputed. Moreover the Filibusters (who, like other pirates, were
addicted to telling fearful yarns) had the great advantage of talking
all along of things they had studied and seen, whereas the men of the
party of justice were imperfectly informed about the resources of the
island, having never gone thither, and thus they were easily placed at
a disadvantage and made to appear foolish. It is true that the
Filibusters had set them on the wrong track by clamouring for the
invasion on the avowed ground of the spoil they should gather for the
nation, and they had only tried to nullify the effect of such appeals
to general selfishness by showing that there was really no spoil to be
had; and that the invasion was a blunder as well as a crime. But in
bandying such appeals to expediency they had put themselves in the
wrong box; because _to discuss the value of the spoil was_, by
implication _to admit that, if it only were rich, it might possibly be
justifiable to go and seize it_!”

I have made this long explanation of our policy, because I am painfully
aware that among practical people and men of the world, accustomed to
compromise on public questions, our adoption of the demand for total
prohibition has placed us at a great disadvantage as “irreconcilables;”
and our movement has appeared as the “fad” of enthusiasts and fanatics.
For the reasons I have given above I think it will appear that while
compromise offered any hope of protecting our poor clients from the very
worst cruelties, we tried it frankly and in earnest; first in Lord
Henniker’s and secondly in Lord Carnarvon’s Bill. When this last effort
failed we were left no choice but either to abandon our dumb friends to
their fate, or demand for them the removal of the source of their
danger.

It will not be necessary for me to recount further with as much detail
the history of the Victoria Street Society, of which I continued to act
as Hon. Secretary till I finally left London in 1884. Abundance of other
friends of animals, active and energetic, were in the field, and our
movement, in spite of a score of checks and defeats, continued to spread
and deepen. Campbell’s familiar line often occurred to me (with a
variation)—

“The cause of _Mercy_ once begun,
Though often lost is always won!”

On July 15th, 1879, Lord Truro brought into the House of Lords a Bill
for the Prohibition of Vivisection. It was not promoted by us, and was
in many respects unfortunately managed, but our Society, of course,
supported it, Lord Shaftesbury made in defence of it one of his longest
speeches. I was in the House of Lords at the time, and thought that
there could never be a much more affecting sight than that of the noble
old man, who had pleaded so often in that “gilded chamber” for men,
women and children, standing there at last in his venerable age, urging
with all his simple eloquence the claims of dumb animals to mercy.
Against him rose and spoke Lord Aberdare, actually (as he took pains to
explain) _as President_ of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals! The Bishop of Peterborough, Dr. Magee, afterwards Archbishop of
York, also made then his unhappy speech about the rabbits and the
surgical operation; (with which the inventor of that operation, Dr.
Clay, said they had “no more to do than the Pope of Rome”). Only 16
Peers voted for the Bill, 97 against it.

On the 16th March, 1880, Mr. Holt’s Bill for total prohibition was down
for second reading in the House of Commons, but was stopped by notice of
dissolution. From that time our friend, Sir Eardley Wilmot, took charge
of a similar Bill promoted by our Society. Notice of it was given by Mr.
Firth on the 3rd February, 1881. The second reading was postponed, first
to July 13th, next to July 27th, and then that day was taken by
government. In October of that year (1881) Mr. R. T. Reid took charge of
our Bill, on the resignation of Sir Eardley Wilmot. The second reading
was postponed on June 28th, 1882, and not till the 4th of April, 1883,
after all these heart-breaking postponements and failures, there was at
last a Debate. Mr. Reid and Mr. George Russell spoke admirably in favour
of the Bill, but they were talked out without a division by a whole
series of advocates of vivisection, of whom Sir William Harcourt, Mr.
Cartwright, and Lord Playfair, were most eminent. This was the last
occasion on which we have been able to obtain a debate in either House.
Mr. Reid brought in his Bill again in 1884, but could obtain no day for
a second reading.

One touching incident of these earlier years I must not omit. Our Hon.
Correspondent at the Hague, Madame van Manen-Thesingh, had written me
several letters exhibiting remarkable good sense as well as ardent
feeling. One day I received a short note from her telling me that she
was dying; and begging me to send over some trustworthy agent at once to
the Hague, if, (as she feared) I could not go to her myself. I
telegraphed that I would be with her next day, and accordingly sailed
that night to Flushing. When I reached her house M. van Manen received
me very kindly; but as a man half bewildered with grief. His wife’s
disease was cancer of the tongue, and she could no longer speak. She was
waiting for me in her drawing-room. It may be imagined how affecting was
our half-speechless interview. After a time M. van Manen, at a sign from
his wife, unlocked a bureau and took out a large packet of papers. These
he placed before her on the table and then left the room. Of course I
understood this proceeding was intended to satisfy me that it was with
her husband’s entire consent that Madame van Manen gave these papers to
me. There were a great many of them, Dutch, Russian, and American
securities of one sort or another, and she marked them off one by one on
a list which she had prepared. Then she wrote down that she gave me all
these, and also some laces and jewellery, to further the
Anti-vivisection cause in whatever way I thought best; reserving a
donation for the _London Anti-vivisection Society_. A few efforts to
convey my gratitude and sympathy were all I could make. The dear, noble
woman stood calm and brave in the immediate prospect of death in its
most painful form, and all her anxiety seemed to be that the poor brutes
should be effectually aided by her gifts. I left her sorrowfully, and
carried her parcel in my travelling bag, first to Amsterdam for a day or
two, and then to London, where having summoned our Finance Committee, I
placed it in their hands. The contents (duly estimated and sold through
the _Army and Navy Society_) realised (over and above the legacy to the
_London Society_) about £1,350. With this sum we started the
_Zoophilist_.

The _Zoophilist_ thus founded (May 2nd, 1881) under the editorship of
Mr. Adams, then our Secretary, has of course been of enormous value to
our cause. A new series began on the 1st January, 1883, which I edited
till my resignation of the Hon. Secretaryship June, 1884. I also started
and edited a French journal of the same size and character, _Le
Zoophile_, from November 1st, 1883, to April, 1884, when the undertaking
was abandoned, French readers having obviously found the paper too dry
for their taste. Some of them also remonstrated with me against the
occasional references in it to religious considerations, and I was
frankly counselled by a very influential French gentleman to _cease
altogether to mention God_,—a piece of advice which I distinctly
declined to take! The late celebrated Mdlle. Deraismes sent me a
beautiful article for _Le Zoophile_, of which I should have gladly
availed myself if she would have allowed me the editorial privilege of
dropping about half a page of aggressive atheism; but this, after a
pretty sharp correspondence, she refused peremptorily to do. Altogether
I was evidently out of touch both with my French staff and French
readers.

Beside these two periodicals our Society from the first issued an almost
incredible multitude of pamphlets and leaflets. I should be afraid to
make any calculation of the number of them and of the thousands of
copies sent into circulation. My own share must have exceeded four
hundred. Beside these and those of our successive Secretaries (some
extremely able) we printed valuable pamphlets, Sermons and Speeches by
Lord Shaftesbury, Cardinal Manning, the Lord Chief Justice, the Dean of
Llandaff, Professor Ruskin, Bishop Barry, Mr. R. T. Reid, Hon. B.
Coleridge, Lady Paget, Canon Wilberforce, Mr. Mark Thornhill, Mr. Leslie
Stephen, the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Mackarness), Rev. F. O. Morris, Dr.
Arnold, George Macdonald, Mr. Ernest Bell, Baron Weber, and (above all
for scientific importance) Mr. Lawson Tait, Dr. Bell Taylor, Dr. Berdoe,
and Dr. Clarke.

Some of my own Anti-vivisection pamphlets were collected a few years ago
and published by Messrs. Sonnenschein in a volume (crown 8vo., pp. 272)
entitled the _Modern Rack_. Several very useful books of reference were
compiled by our Secretary, Mr. Bryan, and published by the Society;
notably the _Vivisectors’ Directory_, the _English Vivisectors’
Directory_, and _Anti-vivisection Evidences_. Of the _Nine Circles_,
compiled for me and printed (first edition) at my expense, I shall speak
presently.

I must here be allowed to say that the spirited letters, pamphlets and
articles by our medical allies, Dr. Berdoe, Dr. Clarke, Dr. Bowie and
Dr. Arnold,—above all Dr. Berdoe’s contributions to our scientific
literature, have been an immeasurable value to our cause. The day of Dr.
Berdoe’s accession to our party at one of our annual meetings must ever
be remembered by me with gratitude. His ability, courage and
disinterestedness have been far beyond any praise I can give them. Mr.
Mark Thornhill also (a distinguished Indian Civil Servant, author of
_The Indian Mutiny_, etc.), has done us invaluable service by his calm,
lucid and most convincing writings, notably “_The Case against
Vivisection_,” and “_Experiments on Hospital Patients_.” Mr. Pirkis,
R.N., has been for many years not only by his steady attendance at the
Committee but by his unwearied exertions in preparing and disseminating
anti-Pasteur literature, one of the chief benefactors of the Society.

Among our undertakings on behalf of the victims of science was the
prosecution of Prof. Ferrier at Bow Street on the 17th November, 1881,
on the strength of certain reports in the two leading Medical Journals.
We had ascertained that he had no license for Vivisection and yet we
read as follows in a report of the proceedings at the International
Medical Congress of 1881:—

“The members were shown two of the monkeys, a portion of whose cortex
had been removed by Professor Ferrier.”—_British Medical Journal_, 20th
August, 1881.

“The interest attaching to the discussion was greatly enhanced by the
fact that Professor Ferrier was willing to exhibit two monkeys which he
had operated upon some months previously....

“In startling contrast to the dog were two monkeys exhibited by
Professor Ferrier. One of them had been operated upon in the middle of
January, the left motor area having been destroyed.”—_Lancet_, October
8th, 1881.

When the reporters who had sent in their reports to the two journals
were produced, the following ludicrous examination took place in court:—

Dr. Charles Smart Roy (the Reporter for the _British Medical Journal_)
was asked—

“_Q._ Did Professor Ferrier offer to exhibit two of the monkeys upon
which he had so operated?

“_A._ At the Congress, no.

“_Q._ Did he subsequently?

“_A._ No; he showed certain of the members of the Congress two monkeys
at King’s College.

“_Q._ What two monkeys?

“_A._ Two monkeys upon which an operation had been performed.

“_Q._ By whom?

“_A._ BY PROFESSOR YEO” (!!)

The Editor of the _Lancet_, Dr. Wakeley, was next examined:—

Dr. Wakeley, _sworn, examined by Mr. Waddy_:—

“_Q._ Are you the Editor of the _Lancet_?

“_A._ I am.

“_Q._ Can you tell me who it was furnished his Report?

“_A._ I have the permission of the gentleman to give his name,
Professor Gamgee, of Owen’s College, Manchester.

“Mr. Waddy: What I should ask is that one might have an opportunity of
calling Professor Gamgee.

“Mr. Gully (Counsel for the defendant): We have communicated with
Professor Gamgee, and I know very well he will say precisely what was
said by Dr. Roy.”

—_Report of Trial_, November 17th, 1881.

The position of the Anti-vivisectionists on the occasion was, it must be
confessed, like that of the simple countryman in the fair. “You lay your
money that Professor Ferrier is under that cup?” “Yes, certainly! I saw
both Professor Roy and Professor Gamgee put him there about five minutes
ago.” “Here then, see! Hay Presto! Hocus-pocus! There is only Professor
Yeo!”

The group of Vivisectors and their allies, Dr. Michael Foster, Dr.
Burdon-Sanderson, Dr. Ernest Hart, Prof. Ferrier, Dr. Roy and many more
who filled the court, all evinced the utmost hilarity at the success of
the device whereby (as a matter of necessity) the Anti-vivisection case
collapsed.

At last, in the _Philosophical Transactions_ of the Royal Society for
1884, the truth came to light. In the Prefatory Note to a record of
Experiments by David Ferrier and Gerald F. Yeo, M.D., occurs the
statement:—

“The facts recorded in this paper are partly the results of a research
made conjointly by Drs. Ferrier and Yeo, aided by a grant from the
British Medical Association, and partly of a research made by Dr.
Ferrier alone, aided by a grant from the Royal Society.”

The conjoint experiences are distinguished by an asterisk; and among
them we find those of the two monkeys which formed the subject of the
trial. Thus it stands confessed,—actually in the _Transactions of the
Royal Society_,—that Professor Ferrier _had_ the leading share (his name
always appears first) in the experiments; and that, conjointly with
Professor Yeo, he received a grant from the British Medical Association
for performing the same!

If after this experience we have ceased to hope much from proceedings in
Courts of Justice against our antagonists, it will not be thought
surprising. The Society has been frequently twitted with the failure of
this prosecution, “for which” our opponents say, we “had not a tittle of
evidence.” Elaborate reports in the two leading Medical journals do not,
it appears, afford even “a tittle of evidence!”[34]

Among other modes in which we endeavoured to push forward our cause,
have been special appeals to win over particular churches or other
bodies to adopt our principles. Enormous numbers of circulars have been
addressed in this manner by our Society to the Clergy of the Church of
England, and it is believed that at least 4,000 are on our side in the
controversy; more than 2,000 had signed our Memorial several years ago.

Another appeal was addressed by me personally to the Society of Friends
through the Clerks of the Monthly and Quarterly Meetings in England and
Ireland.

It has proved eminently successful, and has led to the formation of a
powerful “_Friends’ Anti-vivisection Society_,” which lately issued an
appeal to other members of their body signed by 2,000 friends, many of
them being among the most eminent in England. This has again formed the
ground of a fresh appeal on an immense scale in Pennsylvania. Another
recent appeal to the Congregationalists has, I hear, been very well
received. On one occasion a special Petition to the House of Lords was
signed by every Unitarian Minister in London. It was presented by the
Archbishop of York, who also presented a Memorial (for Restriction) in
1876 signed by all the heads of Colleges in Oxford.

Another appeal which I ventured to make (printed as a large pamphlet) to
“_the Humane Jews of England_,” entreating them to remonstrate with the
40 German Jews who are the worst vivisectors in Europe, was,
unfortunately, a deplorable failure. Four of my own private friends,
Jewesses, all expressed their sympathy warmly, and sent handsome
contributions to our funds; but _not one_ other Jew or Jewess, high or
low, rallied to us, albeit I presented pamphlets to nearly 200
recommended to me as specially well disposed. I shall never be tempted
to address the “_Humane_” Jews of England again!

One other circular I may mention as more successful. I sent to seven
hundred Head Schoolmasters the following Letter, with which were
enclosed the pamphlets mentioned therein:—

“Hengwrt, Dolgelly,
“September, 1886.

“Dear Sir,

“Permit me respectfully to ask your perusal of the accompanying little
paper on ‘Physiology as a Branch of Education.’ I have written it
under a strong sense of the necessity which at present exists for some
similar caution.

“The leaflet describing a ‘Specimen of Modern Physiological
Instruction,’ refers to a scene in Paris which could not be precisely
paralleled in an English school, so far as concerns the actual torture
of the animals used for exhibition, since the Vivisection Act of 1876
provided that anæsthetics must be used in all cases of Vivisection for
Illustration of Lectures.

“It is, however, to be seriously questioned whether even painless,
(and therefore not _shocking_), operations on living animals,
performed before boys and girls, by the enthusiastic English admirers
of Claude Bernard and Paul Bert, may not excite in the minds of the
young witnesses a curiosity unmingled with pity, such as may
subsequently prompt them to become the most merciless experimenters;
or, at least, advocates and apologists of scientific cruelty.

“Trusting, Sir, that you will pardon the trespass of this letter,

“I am, sincerely yours,
“FRANCES POWER COBBE.”

Twelve of these Head Masters, including some of the most eminent,
_e.g._, Mr. Welldon, of Harrow; Dr. Haig, of the Charterhouse; and the
lamented Mr. Thring, of Uppingham, wrote me most interesting letters in
reply expressing approval of my views. I shall here insert that of Mr.
Thring as in many respects noteworthy.

“Rev. Edward Thring to Miss F. P. C.
“Pitlochry, Perthshire, N.B.,
“September 6th, 1889.

“My dear Madam,

“I received your little pamphlet on physiology, but I hardly know what
you expect me to do. My writings on Education sufficiently show how
strongly I feel on the subject of a Literary Education; or rather how
confident I am in the judgment that there can be no worthy education
which is not based on the study of the highest thoughts of the highest
men, in the best shape.

“As for Science (most of it falsely so called) if a few leading minds
are excepted, it simply amounts, to the average dull worker, to no
more than a kind of upper shopwork, weighing out, and labelling, and
learning alphabetical formulæ; a superior Grocery-assistant’s work;
and has not a single element of higher mental training in it. Not to
mention that it leaves out all knowledge of man and life, and
_therefore_ is eminently fitted to train men for life and its
struggles! Physiology, in its worser sense adds to this a brutalising
of the average practitioner, or rather a devilish combination of
intellect-worship and cruelty at the expense of feeling and character.
For my part, if it were true that vivisection had wonderfully relieved
bodily disease for men, if it were at the cost of lost spirits, then I
should say, Let the body perish! And it _is_ at the cost of lost
spirits! I do not say that under no circumstances should an experiment
take place, but I do say that under no circumstance should an
experiment take place for teaching purposes. You will see how decided
my judgment is on this matter. I send you three Addresses on
Education, which in smaller space than my books, will illustrate the
positive side of my experience and beliefs.

“Yours faithfully,
“EDWARD THRING.”

Our Committee was, in all the years in which I had to do with it, the
most harmonious and friendly of which I have ever heard. Lord
Shaftesbury, who presided 49 times, and never once failed us when he was
expected, was, of course, as all the world knows, a first-rate Chairman,
getting through an immense amount of business, while allowing every
member his, or her, legitimate rights of speech and voting. He never
showed himself, (I have been told,) anywhere more genial and zealous
than with us. Lord Mount-Temple attended very frequently, and Lady
Mount-Temple from first to last has been one of our warmest and wisest
friends. General Colin Mackenzie, a devout and noble old soldier, spoke
little, but what he did say was always straight to the mark, and the
affectionate respect we all felt for him made his presence delightful.
Lady Portsmouth (now the Dowager Countess) attended in those days very
regularly and Lady Camperdown has given us her unwearied help from that
time to this. I have spoken of the very valuable services of Mr. E. de
Fonblanque. In later years my friend Rev. William Henry Channing was a
great support to me. The Cardinal was, perhaps, a little reserved, but
always carefully kind and courteous, and whatever he said bore great
weight. Lord Bute’s advice was very valuable and full of good sense. Mr.
Shaen’s legal knowledge served us often. In brief, each member was
useful. There never were any parties or cabals in the Committee. It was
my business as Hon. Sec. (especially after my colleague, Dr. Hoggan,
retired) to lay proposals for action before the Committee. They were
sometimes rejected and often completely modified; but we all felt that
the one thing we desired was simply to find the best way of forwarding
our cause, and we were thankful for the guidance of the wise and
experienced men who were our leaders. In short, the feelings which
inspired us round that long oak office-table were not ill befitting our
work; and now that so many of those who sat there beside me in the
earlier years have passed from earth, I find myself pondering whether
they have met “_Elsewhere_;” where, ere long I may join them. They must
form a blessed company in any world. May my place be with _them_, please
God! rather than with the votaries of Science, in the “secular to be.”

In later years the _personnel_ of the Committee has of course been
largely renewed. Lady Mount-Temple, Lady Camperdown and Mrs. Frank
Morrison almost alone remain from the earlier body. Miss Marston also,
who originally founded the _London Anti-vivisection Society_, has been
for many years one of the firmest and wisest friends of the Victoria
Street Society also. I have spoken above of all that we owe to Capt.
Pirkis’ unfailing help at the Committee, even while residing far out of
town; and of the zeal wherewith he and his gifted wife founded the first
of our Branches, and have laboured in circulating our literature. Miss
Monro, Miss Rees, Miss Bryant, and Mrs. Arthur Arnold have never wearied
through many years in patiently and vigorously aiding our work. Of our
excellent chairman, Mr. Ernest Bell’s services to the Anti-vivisection
cause it is needless for me to speak as they must be recognised
gratefully by the whole party throughout England.

We have had several successive Secretaries who sometimes took the work
much off my hands, sometimes left it to fall very heavily on me and Miss
Lloyd. On one occasion, we two, having also lost the clerk, did the
entire work of the office for many weeks, inclusive of writing, editing,
folding, addressing, and actually _posting_ an issue of the
_Zoophilist_! But my toils and many of my anxieties ended when I was
fortunate enough to obtain the services, as Secretary, of Mr. Benjamin
Bryan, who had long shown his genuine interest in the cause as editor of
a Northern newspaper; and, after a year or two of work in concert with
him, I felt free to leave the whole burden on his shoulders and tendered
my resignation. The constant presence on the Committee of my long-tried
and most valued allies Mr. Ernest Bell, Capt. Pirkis, and Miss Marston
left me entirely at rest respecting the course of our future policy in
the straight direction of Prohibition.

The last event which I need record is a disagreeable incident which
occurred in the autumn of 1892. I had been seriously ill with acute
sciatica, and had been only partially relieved by a large subcutaneous
dose of morphia given me by my country doctor. In this state, with my
head still swimming and scarcely able to sit at a table, I found myself
involved in the most acrimonious newspaper controversy which I ever
remember to have seen in any respectable journal. It will be best that
another pen than mine should tell the story, so I will quote the calm
and lucid statement of the author of the excellent pamphlet,
“_Vivisection at the Folkestone Church Congress_” (page 6).

After a _résumé_ of the notorious debate at Folkestone the writer says:—

“The main point of attack in Mr. Victor Horsley’s paper was a book
called the _Nine Circles_ which had been published some months before,
and contained reports of different classes of cruel experiments on
animals, both in England and on the Continent. To this book Miss Cobbe
had given the sanction of her name, but she was not personally
responsible for any of the quotations, having intrusted the
compilation of the book to friends living in London, and who had
access to the journals and papers in which the experiments were
recorded. Mr. Horsley’s indignation was roused because in a certain
number of cases—22 out of the 170 narratives of different classes of
experiments, many of them involving a _series_, and the use of large
numbers of animals in each—the mention of the use of morphia or
chloroform was omitted. Miss Cobbe, in a letter to the _Times_ of
October 11th, while acknowledging that the compilers were bound to
quote the fact if stated, expressed her conviction that such
statements are misleading, because insensibility is not and cannot be
complete during the whole period of the experiment. Dr. Berdoe also
wrote in several papers defending Miss Cobbe against Mr. Horsley’s
imputations of fraud and intent to deceive, &c., and explaining that
the compilers of the book were alone responsible for the omissions. He
added, however, a further explanation that, as it was often the
painful results, and not the operations which caused them, that it was
desired to illustrate, and as these results lasted sometimes for many
days or weeks or months and to maintain insensibility during that
period was impossible, the omissions were not so important after
all.”...

“... The assailant, however, returned to the charge and in a more
violent style than before. His letter to the _Times_ of October 17th,
was a tirade against Miss Cobbe, worthy, as the _Spectator_ remarked,
only of the fifteenth century, in which the words ‘false’ and ‘lie’
were freely used. It was a letter of so libellous a character that it
is a matter for wonder that it obtained publication. Miss Cobbe very
naturally and properly at once retired from a controversy conducted,
as she expressed it in a letter to the _Times_, ‘outside of all my
experience of civilised journalism.’ She concluded with these words:
‘I need scarcely say that I maintain the veracity of every word of the
letter which you did me the honour to publish of the 15th inst., as
well as the _bona fides_ of all I have spoken or written on this or
other subjects during my three-score years and ten.’”

After a week or two I went to Bath to recruit my health after the attack
of sciatica; and the first newspaper I took up at the York Hotel,
contained a still more violent attack on me than those which had
preceded it. On reading it I walked into the telegraph office next door,
wired for rooms at my favourite South Kensington Hotel and went up to
town with my maid, presenting myself at once to our Committee, which
happened to be sitting and arranging for the impending meeting in St.
James’s Hall. “Shall I attend,” said I, “and speak, or not? I will do
exactly what you wish.” The Committee were unanimously of opinion that I
should go to the meeting and take part in the proceedings, and I have
ever since rejoiced that I did so. It was on the evening of October
27th. My ever kind friend, Canon Basil Wilberforce took the chair, Col.
Lockwood, Bishop Barry, Dr. Berdoe, Mr. Bell, and Captain Pirkis were on
the platform supporting me, but above all Mr. George W. E. Russell (then
Under Secretary of State for India) made a speech on my behalf for which
I shall feel grateful to him so long as I live. We had but slight
acquaintance previously, and I shall always feel that it was a most
generous and chivalrous action on his part to stand forth in so public a
manner as my champion on such an occasion. The audience was more than
sympathetic. There was a storm of genuine feeling when I rose to make my
explanation, and I found it, for once, hard to command my voice. This is
what I said, as reported in the _Zoophilist_, November 1st, 1892:

“Now to come to the story of the _Nine Circles_, which I will tell as
quickly as possible. When I gave up the Honorary Secretaryship of the
Victoria Street Society six years ago, I retired to live among the
mountains in Wales; and the chief thing which remained for me to do
was to publish as many pamphlets and papers as seemed likely to help
the cause. I have just got here my printer’s list of the papers which
I have printed in those six years. I have made up the totals, and I
find that the number in the six years of books, pamphlets, and
leaflets has been 320—that is about one a week—and that 271,350 copies
of them were printed; 173 papers having been written by myself.
(Cheers.) Some of these were adopted by the Society and honoured by
coming out under its auspices; and others I issued quite
independently. Amongst those which I issued ‘on my own hook,’ I am
happy to say, was this book called the _Nine Circles_. Therefore our
dear and honoured Society is not responsible for that book. I am alone
responsible; it was printed at my expense, and Messrs. Sonnenschein
published it for me. Therefore, I am the only person concerned with
it, and the Society has nothing to do with it. I am thankful to hear
that the revised edition will come out under the auspices of the
Society. My only privilege will be to pay for it, and that I shall
most thankfully do, in order to wipe out the wrong I have done as
concerns the present edition. When the present book was got up, I
sketched a plan of it, and asked a lady often employed by us who was
living in London, and is a good German scholar, to make extracts for
me. She knows a great deal about the subject; she also knows German
(which I do not do sufficiently for the purpose), and she was living
in London while I was 200 miles away. Therefore I asked her to make
the extracts of which this book is compiled, and it was afterwards
revised,—as Dr. Berdoe has told us,—by him. The book came out; and it
appears now that there are some mistakes in it. My assistant had left
out certain things which ought to have been stated. I took it for
granted,—I was quite wrong to do so,—that all my directions had been
carried out, and I made myself responsible for the book. Therefore,
whatever error there is in the matter is mine, and I beg that that
will be quite understood. (Cheers.) But what is all this tremendous
storm which has been raised, and this pulling of the house down about
these mistakes? Do they wish us to understand that there are no such
things as painful experiments in England? Apparently that is what they
are trying to make us think—that there never has been anything of the
kind; that they are perfectly incapable of putting any animal to pain.
Do they really mean that? Is that what they wish us to understand? If
they do _not_ mean that, I do not know what it is they mean. It seems
to me that they are raising this tremendous storm very much as if the
old slave-holders were to have danced a war-dance round Mrs. Stowe and
scalped her for having said that Legree had flogged Uncle Tom with a
thousand lashes, when really there were only nine hundred and
ninety-nine. (Laughter.) That seems to me to be the case in a
nutshell.”—_Zoophilist_, November 1st, 1892.

I had the gratification to receive soon after the following most kind
Address and expression of confidence from the leading Members of the
Victoria Street Society:—

ADDRESS.

_To Miss Frances Power Cobbe_,

We, the undersigned, being supporters of the Victoria Street Society,
and others interested in the movement against Vivisection, wish to
express the strong feeling of indignation with which we have seen your
integrity called in question by men who seem unable to conceive of the
pure unselfish devotion of high intellectual gifts to the service of
God’s humbler creatures.

It is impossible for those who know anything of the early history of
this movement to forget the great personal sacrifice at which you
undertook to make it the chief work of your life.

It is equally impossible for us who have watched its progress, to say
how highly we have esteemed the indomitable courage and forcible
eloquence with which you have exposed the evils inseparable from
experiments on living animals.

Further, we wish to record our firm conviction that you have,
throughout, recognised the wisdom and the duty of founding your attack
on Vivisection upon the truth, and nothing but the truth, so far as
you have been able to arrive at it.

We wish, in conclusion, to assure you not only of our special sympathy
with you at a time when you have been subjected to a personal attack
of an unusually coarse and violent character, but also of our
determination to give still more earnest support to the Cause to which
you have, at so great a cost, devoted yourself:

Strafford (_Earl of Strafford_)
Coleridge (_Lord Chief Justice_)
Worcester (_Marquis of Worcester_)
Haddington (_Earl of Haddington_)
Arthur, Bath and Wells (_Bishop of Bath and Wells_)
J., Manchester (_Bishop of Manchester_)
W. Walsham, Wakefield (_Bishop of Wakefield_)
H. B., Coventry (_Bishop of Coventry_)
John Mitchinson (_Bishop_)
F. Cramer-Roberts (_Bishop_)
Edward G. Bagshawe (_R. C. Bishop of Nottingham_)
Sidmouth (_Viscount Sidmouth_)
Pollington (_Viscount Pollington_)
Colville of Culross (_Lord Colville of Culross_)
Cardross (_Lord Cardross_)
H. Abinger (_Lady Abinger_)
Robartes (_Lord Robartes_)
Leigh (_Lord Leigh_)
C. Buchan (_Dow. Countess of Buchan_)
Harriet de Clifford (_Dow. Lady de Clifford_)
F. Camperdown (_Countess of Camperdown_)
Kinnaird (_Lord Kinnaird_)
Alma Kinnaird (_Lady Kinnaird_)
Clementine Mitford (_Lady Clementine Mitford_)
Eveline Portsmouth (_Dowager Countess of Portsmouth_)
Georgina Mount-Temple (_Lady Mount-Temple_)
H. Kemball (_Lady Kemball_)
J. Brotherton (_Lady Brotherton_)
Evelyn Ashley (_Hon. Evelyn Ashley_)
Bernard Coleridge (_Hon. B. Coleridge, M.P._)
Geraldine Coleridge (_Hon. Mrs. S. Coleridge_)
Stephen Coleridge (_Hon. Stephen Coleridge_)
George Duckett (_Sir George Duckett, Bt._)
Henry A. Hoare (_Sir Henry Hoare, Bt._)
Geo. F. Shaw, LL.D.
Samuel Smith, M.P.
Theodore Fry, M.P.
George W. E. Russell, M.P.
Jacob Bright, M.P.
Th. Burt, M.P.
Julius Barras (Colonel)
Richard H. Hutton
R. Payne Smith
H. Wilson White, D.D., LL.D.
Edward Whately (_Archdeacon Whately_)
George W. Cox (_Revd. Sir George Cox, Bart._)
R. M. Grier (_Prebendary Grier_)
Eleanor Vere C. Boyle (_Hon. Mrs. R. C. Boyle_)
E. G. Deane Morgan (_Hon. Mrs. Deane Morgan_)
Charles Bell Taylor, M.D.
Edward Berdoe, M.R.C.S.
Alex. Bowie, M.D., C.M.
John H. Clarke, M.D.
Henry Downes, M.D.
Henry M. Duncalfe
William Adamson, D.D.
William Adlam
Amelia E. Arnold
Ernest Bell
Rhoda Broughton
Olive S. Bryant
W. K. Burford
A. Gallenga and Mrs. Gallenga
Maria G. Grey
Emily A. E. Shirreff
Frances Holden
Eleanor Mary James
Francis Griffith Jones
E. J. Kennedy
Edith Leycester
W. S. Lilly
Mary Charlotte Lloyd
Ann Marston
Mary J. Martin
S. S. Munro
Frank Morrison
Harriet Morrison
Josiah Oldfield
Rose Pender
Fred. Pennington
Herbert Philips
Fred. E. Pirkis and Mrs. Pirkis
R. Ll. Price
Evelyn Price
R. M. Price
Lester Reed
Ellen Elcum Rees
J. Herbert Satchell
Mark Thornhill, J.P.

Looking back on this long struggle of twenty years, in which so much of
my happiness and the happiness of others dearer than myself, has been
engulfed, I can see that, starting from the apparently small and
subordinate question of Scientific Cruelty, the controversy has been
growing and widening till the whole department of ethics dealing with
man’s relation to the lower animals has gradually been included in it.
That this department is an obscure one, and that neither the Christian
Churches nor yet philosophic moralists have hitherto paid it sufficient
attention, is now admitted. That it is time that it should be carefully
studied and worked out, is also clear.

Sometimes I have thought (as by a law of our being we seem driven to do
whenever our hearts are deeply concerned) that a Divine guidance may
have presided over all the heart-breaking delays and disappointments of
this weary movement; and that it has not been allowed to terminate, as
it would certainly have done, had we carried our Bill of 1876 in its
original form through Parliament. _Then_ our Society would have
dissolved at once; and, after a time, perhaps, the Act, however well
designed, would have become more or less a dead letter; and the
hydra-heads of Vivisection would have reared themselves once more. But,
as it has actually happened, the delay and failure of our earlier
efforts and our consequent persistence in them, have fixed attention on
this culminating sin against the lower animals, and through it on all
other sins against them. A great revision of opinion on the subject is
undoubtedly taking place; and while some (especially Roman Catholic)
Zoophilists have diligently sought in decrees and manuals and treatises
of casuistry for some authority defining Cruelty to animals to be a Sin,
the poverty of the results of all such investigations, and of the
anxious collation of Biblical texts by Protestants, is gradually
revealing the fact that, in this whole department of human duty, we must
look to the God-enlightened consciences of _living_ men rather than to
the _dicta_ of departed saints, or casuists, whose attention was
directed exclusively to the relations of human beings with each other
and with God, and who obviously never contemplated those which we hold
to the brutes with adequate seriousness,—if at all. Of course we are
here met, just as the first anti-Slavery apostles were met, and as the
advocates of every fresh development of morality will be met for many a
day to come, by the fundamental fallacy of the Christian Churches (in
that respect resembling Islam) that there is a finality in Divine
teaching, and that they have been for two thousand years in possession
of the last word of God to man. Protestants are certainly not bound in
any way to occupy such a position, or to assume that a final revise has
ever been issued, or ever will be issued by Divine authority, of a
_Whole Duty of Man_. Rather are they called on piously and gratefully to
look for fresh light to come down, age after age, from the Father of
lights: or (if they please rather so to consider it) further development
of the Christian Spirit to be manifested as men learn better to
incarnate it in their minds and lives. As for Theists like myself, it is
natural for us and in accordance with all our opinions, to believe that
such a movement as is now taking place over the civilised world on
behalf of dumb animals, is a fresh Divine impulse of Mercy, stirring in
thousands of human hearts, and deserving of reverent cherishing and
thankful acceptance.

It is my supreme hope that when, with God’s help, our Anti-vivisection
controversy ends in years to come, long after I have passed away,
mankind will have attained _through it_ a recognition of our duties
towards the lower animals far in advance of that which we now commonly
hold. If the beautiful dream of the later Isaiah can never be perfectly
realised on this planet and none may ever find that thrice “Holy
Mountain” whereon they “shall not hurt nor destroy”—yet at least the
time will come when no man worthy of the name will take _pleasure_ in
killing; and he who would torture an animal will be looked upon as (in
the truest sense) “_inhuman_”; unworthy of the friendship of man or love
of woman. The long-oppressed and suffering brutes will then be spared
many a pang and their innocent lives made far happier; while the hearts
of men will grow more tender to their own kind by cultivating pity and
tenderness to the beasts and birds. The earth will at last cease to be
“full of violence and cruel habitations.”

September, 1898.

The too confident expectations which I entertained of my permanent
connection till death with the Society which I had founded and which I
designed to make my heir, have alas! been disappointed. It was perhaps
natural that in my long exile from London and consequent absence from
the Committee, my continual letters of enquiry, advice, and (as I fondly
and foolishly imagined) assistance in the work were felt to be
obtrusive,—especially by the newer members. One change after another in
the Constitution and in the Name of the Society, left me more or less in
opposition to the ruling spirits; and before long a much more serious
difference arose. The very able and energetic Hon. Sec., Hon. Stephen
Coleridge, (who had entered on his office in April, 1897), after making
the changes to which I have referred, proposed that we should introduce
a Bill into Parliament, no longer on the old lines, asking for the Total
Prohibition of Vivisection, but on quite a different basis; demanding
certain “Lesser Measures,” not yet distinctly formulated, but intended
to supply checks to the practical lawlessness of licensed Vivisectors.
Mr. Coleridge and his brother (now Lord Coleridge), had, twelve or
fourteen years before, urged me to abandon the demand for Total
Prohibition, and to adopt the policy of Restriction and bring in a bill
accordingly. But to this proposal I had made the most strenuous
resistance, writing a long pamphlet on the _Fallacy of Restriction_ for
the purpose; and it had been (as I thought), altogether given up and
forgotten. It would appear, however, that the idea remained in Mr.
Coleridge’s mind,—with the modification that he now regarded “Lesser
Measures” not as final Restriction, but as steps to Prohibition; and for
this policy he obtained the suffrage of the majority of the Council,
though not of the oldest members.

The reader who will kindly glance back over the preceding pages
(300–306), will see the exceeding importance I attach to the maintenance
of the strict principle of Abolition,—whereby our party renounces all
compromise with the “abominable sin,” and refuses to be again cheated by
the hocus-pocus of Vivisectors and their deceptive anæsthetics. But an
over-estimate (as it seems to me) of the importance of Parliamentary
action, and certainly an under-estimate of that of the great popular
propaganda whereon our hopes must ultimately rest,—a propaganda which
would be paralyzed by the advocacy of half measures,—caused Mr.
Coleridge and his friends to take an opposite view. After a long and, to
me, heart-breaking struggle, I was finally defeated by a vote of 29 to
23, at a Council Meeting on the 9th February, 1898. The policy of Lesser
Measures was adopted by the newly-christened _National Society_; and I
and all the oldest members and founders of the Victoria Street Society
sorrowfully withdrew from what we had proudly, but very mistakenly,
called “our” Society. Amongst us were Mr. Mark Thornhill, Miss Marston,
Mr. and Mrs. Adlam, Lady Mount-Temple, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Morrison, Lady
Paget, Madame Van Eys, and Countess Baldelli. To all workers in the
cause these names will stand as representing the very nucleus of the
whole party since it began its life 23 years ago. The oldest and most
faithful worker of all, Lady Camperdown, who had aided me with the first
memorial in 1874, and who had attended the Committee from first to last,
had risen from her death-bed to write a letter imploring the Chairman
not to support the demand for Lesser Measures. She died before the
decision was reached, and her touching letter, in spite of my
entreaties, was not read to the Congress.

After leaving the old Society with unspeakable pain and mortification I
felt it incumbent on me, while I yet had a little strength left for work
and was not wholly “played out” (as I believe I was supposed to be by
the new spirits at the office) to establish some centre where the only
principle on which the cause can, in my opinion, be safely maintained
should be permanently established, and to which I could transfer the
legacy of £10,000 which then stood in my Will bequeathed unconditionally
to the Committee of the National Society. My first effort was to request
the Committee of the _London Anti-vivisection Society_ to give me such
pledge as it was competent to afford that it would not promote any
measure in Parliament short of Abolition. This pledge being formally
refused, there remained for me no resource but to attempt once more in
my old age to create a new Anti-Vivisection Society; and I resolved to
call it THE BRITISH UNION FOR THE ABOLITION OF VIVISECTION, and to make
it a Federation of Branch Societies, having its centre in Bristol where
my staunch old fellow-workers had had their office for many years
established and in first-rate order. I invited as many friends as seemed
desirous of joining in my undertaking, to a private Conference here at
Hengwrt; and I had the pleasure of receiving and entertaining them for
three days while we quietly arranged the constitution of the new Union
with the invaluable help of our Chairman, Mr. Norris, K.C., late one of
the Justices of the Supreme Court, Calcutta.

The _British Union_ was, in the following month, (June, 1898), formally
constituted at a public conference in Bristol; and it is at present
working vigorously in Bristol and in its various Branches in Wales,
Liverpool, York, Macclesfield, Sheffield, Yarmouth and London. All
information concerning it and its special constitution (whereby the
Branches will all profit by bequests to the Union) may be obtained by
enquiry from either our admirable Hon. Sec., Mrs. Roscoe (Crete Hill,
Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol); our zealous Secretary, Miss Baker, 20,
Triangle, Bristol; or our Hon. Treasurer, John Norris, Esq., K.C.,
Devonshire Club, London.

To those of my readers who may desire to contribute to the
Anti-Vivisection Cause, and who have shared my views on it as set forth
in my numberless pamphlets and letters, and to those specially who, like
myself, intend to bequeath money to carry on the war against Scientific
Cruelty, I now earnestly say as my final Counsel: SUPPORT THE BRITISH
UNION!

CHAPTER
XXI.
_MY HOME IN WALES._

[Illustration:

_Hengwrt._
]

In April, 1884, my friend and I quitted London, having permanently let
our house in South Kensington to Mrs. Kemble. The strain of London life
had become too great for me, and advancing years and narrowed income
together counselled retreat in good time. I continued then and ever
since, of course, to work for the Anti-vivisection cause; but I resigned
my Honorary Secretaryship, June 26th, 1884, and left the entire charge
of the office and of editing the _Zoophilist_ to Mr. Bryan.[35]

A few months later I was disturbed to hear that the Hon. Stephen
Coleridge (Lord Coleridge’s second son) who had always been particularly
kind and considerate towards me, had started a fund to form a farewell
testimonial to me from my fellow-workers. Mr. Coleridge addressed our
leading members and friends in the following letter:—

“12, Ovington Gardens, S.W.,
“August, 1884.

“Sir or Madam,

“At the general meeting of the Victoria Street and International
Societies for the Total Abolition of Vivisection, on the 26th June,
Miss Frances Power Cobbe, for reasons set forth in the annual report,
gave in her resignation of the post of Honorary Secretary, and it was
accepted with deep reluctance.

“The executive committee, meeting shortly afterwards unanimously
passed a resolution to the effect that the occasion ought not to be
passed over by the Society unrecognised, and a list of subscribers to
a testimonial for Miss Cobbe has been opened. The object of this
letter is to acquaint you of these facts and to afford you the
opportunity of adding your name to the list should you desire to do
so.

“Year after year from the foundation of the Societies and before, Miss
Cobbe has fought against the practice of the torture of animals with
constant earnestness, conspicuous power, and enthusiasm born of a
noble cause.

“That testimonials are too plentiful it may perhaps be urged with
truth; but many of us who deprecate the practice of Vivisection feel
that such a life as this, of honour and devotion, were it to stand
unrecognised and unacknowledged, would mark us as entirely ungrateful.

“I remain,
“Your faithful servant,
“STEPHEN COLERIDGE.”
(Honorary Secretary and Treasurer to the fund.)

In a short space of time, I was told, a thousand pounds was collected;
and it was kindly and thoughtfully expended in buying me an annuity of
£100 a year. The amount of labour and trouble which all these
arrangements must have cost Mr. Stephen Coleridge must have been very
great indeed, and only most genuine kindness of heart and regard for me
could have induced him to undertake them. I was very much startled when
I heard of this gift and very unwilling to accept it, as in some degree
taking away the pleasurable sense I had had of working all along
gratuitously for the poor beasts, and of having sacrificed for some
years nearly all my literary earnings to devote myself to their cause.
My objections were over-ruled by friendly insistence, and Lord
Shaftesbury presented the Testimonial to me in the following letter:—

“24, Grosvenor Square, W.,
“February 26th, 1885.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“The Committee of the Anti-vivisection Society, and other
contributors, have assigned to me the agreeable duty of requesting you
to do them the kindness and the honour, to accept the accompanying
Testimonial.

“It expresses, I can assure you, their deep and real sense of the vast
services you have rendered to the world, by the devotion of your time,
your talents and indefatigable zeal, to the assertion of principles
which, though primarily brought into action for the benefit and
protection of the inferior orders of the Creation, are of paramount
importance to the honour and security of the whole Human Race.

“We heartily pray that you may enjoy all health and happiness in your
retirement, which, we trust, will be but temporary. We shall
frequently ask the aid of your counsels and live in hope of your
speedy return to active exertion, in the career in which you have
laboured so vigorously, and which you so sincerely love.

“Believe me to be,
“Very truly yours,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

I acknowledged Lord Shaftesbury’s letter as follows:—

“Hengwrt, Dolgelly, N. Wales,
“February 27th.

“Dear Lord Shaftesbury,

“I find it very difficult to express to you the feelings with which I
have just read your letter, and received the noble gift which
accompanied it. You and all the good friends and fellow-workers who
have thus done me honour and kindness will have added much to the
material comfort and enjoyment of such years as may remain to me; but
you have done still more for me, by filling my heart with the happy
sense of being cared for.

“That you should estimate such work as I have been able to do so
highly as your letter expresses, while it far surpasses anything I can
myself think I have accomplished, yet makes me very proud and very
thankful to God.

“Whatever has been done by me in the way of raising up opposition to
scientific cruelty has been attained only because I had the
inestimable advantage of being supported and guided by you from first
to last, and aided step by step by the unwearied sympathy and
co-operation of my dear and generous fellow-labourers.

“These words are very inadequate to convey my thanks to you for this
gift and all your past goodness towards me, and those which I would
fain offer through you to the Committee and all the Subscribers to
this splendid Testimonial; especially to the Hon. Secretary, who has
undertaken the great trouble which the collection of it must have
involved. I can but repeat, I thank you and them with my whole heart.

“Most sincerely, dear Lord Shaftesbury, and
“Gratefully yours,
“FRANCES POWER COBBE.”

This addition to my little income made up for certain losses which I had
incurred, and raised it to about its original moderate level, enabling
me to share the expenses of our Welsh cottage. I was, however, of
course, a poor woman, and not in a position to help my friend to live
(as we both earnestly desired to do) in her larger house in Hengwrt. We
made an effort to arrange it so, loving the place and enjoying the
beauty of the woods and gardens exceedingly. But we knew it could not be
our permanent home; and a suitable tenant having come on the field,
offering to take it for a term of years which would naturally reach
beyond our lives, we felt that the end of our possession was drawing
near. I was very sorrowful for my own sake, and still more for that of
my friend who had always had peculiar attachment to the place. I
reflected painfully that if I had been only a little better off, she
might not have been obliged to relinquish her proper home.

All this was occupying me much. It was a Thursday morning, and the
gentleman who proposed to become the tenant of Hengwrt was to come on
Monday to make a definite offer which,—once accepted,—would have been
held to bind my friend.

I went downstairs into the old oak hall in the morning and opened the
post-bag. Among the large packet of letters which usually awaits me
there was one from a solicitor in Liverpool. I knew that my kind old
friend Mrs. Yates had died the week before, and I had been informed that
she had left me her residuary legatee; but I imagined her to be in
narrow circumstances, and that a few hundreds would be the uttermost of
my possible inheritance; not sufficient, at all events, to affect
appreciably my available income. I opened the Solicitor’s letter very
coolly and found myself to be,—so far as all my wants and wishes
extend,—a rich woman.

The story of this legacy is a very touching one. I never saw or heard of
Mrs. Yates till a few years before her death, and when she was already
very aged. She began by sending large and generous donations of £50, and
£80, at a time to our Society. Later, she came up from Liverpool to
London when I was managing affairs without a Secretary, and, finding me
at the office, she gave me a still larger donation, actually in
bank-notes. She was an Unitarian, or rather a Theist, like myself; and
having taken very warm interest in my books, she seemed to be drawn to
me by a double sympathy, both on account of religious sympathies, and
those we shared on behalf of the vivisected animals. Of course I
explained to her the details of my work, and she took the warmest
interest in it. After I resigned my office of Honorary Secretary, she
seemed to prefer to give her principal contributions personally to me to
expend for the cause according to my judgment, and twice she sent me
large sums, with strictest injunction to keep her name, and even the
locality of the donor, secret. I called these gifts my _Trust Fund_, and
made grants from it to working allies all over the world. I also spent a
great deal of it in printing large quantities of papers. Of course I
began by sending her a balance sheet of my expenditure; but this she
forbade me to repeat, so I could only from time to time write her long
letters (copied for me by my friend as my writing taxed her sight),
telling her all we were doing. At last she came to see us here in answer
to our repeated invitations, but could not be persuaded to stop more
than one night. Talking to me out walking, she asked me: “Would I take
charge of some money she wished to leave for protection of animals _in
Liverpool_?” I answered that I could not engage to do this, and begged
her to entrust it (as she eventually did) to some friend resident in the
place. Then she said shyly: “Well, you do not object to my leaving you
something for yourself—to my making you my residuary legatee?” adding to
the question some words of affection. Of course I could only press her
hand and say I was grateful for her kind thought. She did it all so
simply, that, being prepossessed with the idea that she was in rather
narrow circumstances, and that she had already given me the savings of
her lifetime in the Trust Fund, it never even occurred to me that this
residuary legateeship could be an important matter, after she had
provided (as she was sure to do) for all legitimate claims upon her.
Nothing could exceed my astonishment when I found how large was the sum
bequeathed in this unpretending way. My friend thought I must be ill
from the difficulty I seem to have found in commanding my voice to tell
her the strange news when she came into the hall, a quarter of an hour
after I had read that epoch-making letter!

Certainly never was a great gift made with such perfect delicacy. Mrs.
Yates had taken care that I should have no reason, so long as she lived,
to suppose myself under any personal obligation to her. Since then, it
may be believed that my heart has never ceased to cherish her memory
with tender gratitude, and to associate the thought of her with all the
comforts of the home which her wealth has secured for me.

Mrs. Yates, at the time I knew her, had been for thirty or forty years
the widow of Mr. Richard Vaughan Yates, a Liverpool Merchant. The
following obituary notice of her appeared in the _Zoophilist_, November
2nd, 1891. I may add that beside her personal legacy to me (given simply
by her will to “her friend Miss Frances Power Cobbe,” without comment of
any kind) Mrs. Yates gave £1,000 to the Victoria Street Society, as well
as £1,000 to the Liverpool Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals;
both bequests being over and above legacies to her executors, relatives
and dependents:—

“OBITUARY.

“THE LATE MRS. YATES.

“The Victoria Street Society and the cause of Anti-vivisection have
lost their most generous supporter in Mrs. Richard Yates, of
Liverpool; a good and noble woman if ever there were one. Born in
humble circumstances, she was one of the truest gentlewomen who ever
lived. Her wide cultivation of mind, broadly liberal but deeply
religious spirit and sound, clear judgment, remained conspicuous even
in extreme old age. The hearts of those whom she aided in their toil
for the poor brutes, with a generosity only equalled by the delicacy
of its manifestations, will ever keep her memory in tender and
grateful respect.”

A warmly-feeling article in the _Inquirer_, October 10th, 1891, known to
be by her friend and pastor, Rev. Valentine Davies, gave the following
sketch of her life. It is due to her whose generosity has so brightened
my later years, that my autobiography should contain some such record of
her goodness and usefulness.

“MRS. RICHARD VAUGHAN YATES.

“On Thursday evening, October 1st, there passed peacefully away one
who was the last of her generation; bearing a name honoured in
Liverpool since the Rev. John Yates, in the latter part of last
century and the early years of this, ministered in Paradise Street
Chapel, and his sons took their places in the first rank of the
merchants and philanthropic citizens of the town. Anne Simpson was
born November 10th, 1805, and to the last retained happy recollections
of her childhood’s home, a simple cottage in the pleasant Cheshire
country. She married, in the midsummer of 1832, Mr. Richard Vaughan
Yates, having first spent a year (for purposes of education) in the
household of Dr. Lant Carpenter, at Bristol, of whom she always spoke
with great veneration. Richly endowed with natural grace and delicacy
of feeling, true nobility of heart, and great simplicity, sustained by
earnest religious feeling and a strong sense of duty, there was never
happier choice than this, which gave to Mrs. Yates the larger
opportunities of wealth and freedom in society. She shared her
husband’s interest in many philanthropic labours, his care for the
Harrington Schools, founded by his father, and for the Liverpool
Institute, his pleasure and his anxieties in the making of the
Prince’s Park, opened in 1849, as his gift to the town. She shared
also to the full his delight in works of art and in foreign travel.
The late Rev. Charles Wicksteed published some charming reminiscences
of one of their Italian journeys; and still more notable was that
journey through Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine, recorded by Miss Harriet
Martineau in her _Eastern Travel_.

“Since her husband’s death, in 1856, Mrs. Yates has stood bravely
alone, living very quietly, but keenly alive to all the interests of
the world, with ardent sympathy for every righteous cause, and
generous help ever ready for public needs as for private charity. No
one will ever know the full measure of her acts of kindness, her care
for the least defended, her many quiet ways of doing good. She was a
great lover of dumb creatures, and felt a passionate indignation at
every kind of cruelty. Four-footed waifs and strays often found a
pleasant refuge in her house, and for many years she was an active
worker for the local branch of the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals. The cabmen and donkey-boys of Liverpool at their
annual suppers have long been familiar with her kindly face and
gracious word, and many a time has her intrepid protest checked an act
of cruelty in the public streets. The friend of Frances Power Cobbe,
she took a deep and painful interest in the work of the Victoria
Street Society for the Suppression of Vivisection, and sustained its
work through many years by generous gifts. Herself a solitary woman in
these later years, it was to the solitary and defenceless that her
sympathies most quickly went. She desired for women larger powers to
defend their own helplessness, to share in government for the
amelioration of society, and to share also in the world’s work. She
had a surprising energy and persistence of will in attending to her
own affairs and doing the unselfish work she had most at heart. With a
plain tenacity to the duty that was clear, she went out to the last,
whenever it was possible, to vote at every election where she had a
vote to give, and to attend meetings of a political and useful social
character. Hers was a life of great unselfishness and true humility.
Suffering most of all through sympathy with others, she longed for
more light to dissipate the darker shadows of the world. And she
herself, wherever it was possible to her patient faithfulness and
generous kindness, drove away the darkness, praying thus the best of
prayers, and making light and gladness in innumerable hearts.

“After only a few days of illness she fell asleep. A memorial service
was held on Sunday last in the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth, where for
many years she regularly worshipped. The Rev. V. D. Davis preached the
sermon, and also on the following day, at the Birkenhead Flaybrick
Hill Cemetery, spoke the words of faith at her grave.”—_Inquirer_,
October 10th.

I have erected over her last resting-place (as I learned that she
disliked heavy horizontal tombstones), a large upright slab of polished
red Aberdeen granite. After her name and the dates of her birth and
death, Shakespeare’s singularly appropriate line is inscribed on the
stone:—

“SWEET MERCY IS NOBILITY’S TRUE BADGE.”

On receiving that eventful Thursday morning the news of the unlooked-for
riches which had fallen to my lot, our first act was naturally to
telegraph to the would-be tenant that “another offer” (to wit mine!)
“had been accepted for Hengwrt.” The miseries of house-letting and
home-leaving were over for us, we trust, so long as our lives may last.

There is not much more to be told in this last chapter of my story. The
expansion of life in many directions which wealth brings with it, is as
easy and pleasant as the contraction of it by poverty is the reverse.
Yet I have not altered the opinion I formed long ago when I became poor
after my father’s death, that the importance we commonly attach to
pecuniary conditions is somewhat exaggerated, (so long as a competence
is left) and that other things,—for example, the possession of good
walking powers, or of strong eyesight or of good hearing, not to speak
of the still more precious things of the affections and spirit,—are
larger elements, by far, in human happiness than that which riches
contributes thereto. Of course I have been very glad of this
unlooked-for wealth in my old age. I have felt, first and before all
things else, the immense satisfaction of being able to help the
Anti-vivisection cause in all parts of the world while I live, and to
provide for some further continuance of such help after I die. And next
to this I have rejoiced that the comfort and repose of our beautiful and
beloved home is secured to my friend and myself.

The friendly reader who has travelled with me through the journey of my
three-score years and ten, from my singularly happy childhood in my old
home at Newbridge to this far bourne on the road, will now, I hope,
leave me with kindly wishes for a peaceful evening, and a
not-too-distant curfew bell; in this dear old house, and with my beloved
friend for companion.

The photograph of Hengwrt, which will be inserted in these last pages,
gives a good idea of the house itself, but can convey none of the beauty
of the rivers, woods and mountains all round. No spot in the kingdom I
think, not even in the lovely Lake country, unites so many elements of
beauty as this part of Wales. The mountains are not very lofty,—even
glorious Cader where the giant Idris, (so says the legend) sat in the
rocky “chair” (_Cader_) on the summit and studied the stars,—is trifling
compared to Alpine height, and a molehill to Andes and Himalayas; yet is
its form, and that of all these Cambrian rocks, so majestic, and their
_tilt_ so great, that no one could treat them as merely hills, or liken
them to Irish mountains which resemble banks of rainclouds on the
horizon. The deep, true, purple heather and the emerald-green fern robe
these Welsh mountains in summer in regal splendour of colouring; and in
autumn wrap them in rich russet brown cloaks. Down between every chain
and ridge rush brooks, always bright and clear, and in many places
leaping into lovely waterfalls. The “broad and brawling Mawddach” runs
through all the valley from heights far out of sight, till, just below
Hengwrt, it meets the almost equally beautiful stream of the Wnion, and
the two together wind their way through the tidal estuary out into the
sea at “Aber-mawddach” or “Abermaw,”—in English “Barmouth,” eight miles
to the west. On both north and south of the valley and on the sides of
the mountains, are woods, endless woods, of oak and larch and Scotch
fir, interspersed with sycamore, wild cherry, horse-chestnut, elm,
holly, and an occasional beech. Never was there a country in which were
to be found growing freely and almost wild, so many different kinds of
trees, creating of course the loveliest wood-scenery and variety of
colouring. The oaks and elms and sycamores which grow in Hengwrt itself,
are the oldest and some of the finest in this part of Wales; and here
also flourish the largest laurels and rhododendrons I have ever seen
anywhere. The luxuriance of their growth, towering high on each side of
the avenue and in the shrubberies is a constant subject of astonishment
to our visitors. The blossoms of the rhodos are sometimes twenty or
twenty-five feet from the ground; and the laurels almost resemble forest
trees. It has been one of my chief pleasures here to prune and clip and
clear the way for these beautiful shrubs. Through the midst of them all,
from one end of the place to the other, rushes the dearest little brook
in the world, singing away constantly in so human a tone that over and
over again I have paused in my labours of saw and clippers, and said to
myself: “There _must_ be some one talking in that walk! It is a lady’s
voice, too! It _can’t_ be only the brook this time!” But the brook it
has always proved to be on further investigation.

Of the interior of this dear old home I shall not write now. It is
interesting from its age,—one of the oak-panelled rooms contains a bed
placed there at the dissolution of the neighbouring monastery of Cymmer
Abbey,—but it is not in the least a gloomy house; altogether the
reverse. The drawing-room commands a view to right and left of almost
the whole valley of the Mawddach for nine or ten miles; and just
opposite lies the pretty village of Llanelltyd, at the foot of the
wooded hills which rise up behind it to the heights of Moel Ispry and
Cefn Cam. It is a panorama of splendid scenery, not darkening the room,
but making one side of it into a great picture full of exquisite details
of old stone bridge and ruined abbey, rivers, woods, and rocks.

Among the objects in that wide view, and also in the still more
extensive one from my bedroom above, is the little ivy-covered church of
Llanelltyd; and below it a bit of ground sloping to the westering sun,
dotted over with grey and white stones where “the rude forefathers of
the hamlet sleep,” together with a few others who have been our friends
and neighbours. There, in that quiet enclosure, will, in all
probability, be the bourne of my long journey of life, with a grey
headstone for the “_Finis_” of the last chapter of the Book which I have
first lived, and now have written.

I hope that the reader, who perhaps may drive some day along the road
below, in the enjoyment of an autumn holiday in this lovely land, will
cast a glance upon that churchyard, and give a kindly thought to me when
I have gone to rest.

* * * * *

September, 1898.

The grey granite stone is standing already in Llanelltyd burying ground,
though my place beneath it still waits for me. The friend who made my
life so happy when I wrote the last pages of this book, and who had then
done so for thirty-four blessed years,—lies there, under the rose trees
and the mignonette; alone, till I may be laid beside her.

It would be some poor comfort to me in my loneliness to write here some
little account of Mary Charlotte Lloyd, and to describe her keen,
highly-cultivated intellect, her quick sense of humour, her gifts as
sculptor and painter (the pupil and friend of John Gibson and of Rosa
Bonheur); her practical ability and strict justice in the administration
of her estate; above all to speak of her character, “cast”—as one who
knew her from childhood said,—“in an heroic mould,” of fortitude and
loftiness; her absolute unselfishness in all things large and small. But
the reticence which belonged to the greatness of her nature made her
always refuse to allow me to lead her into the more public life whereto
my work necessarily brought me, and in her last sacred directions she
forbids me to commemorate her by any written record. Only, then, in the
hearts of the few who really knew her must her noble memory live.

I wrote the following lines to her some twenty-five years ago when
spending a few days away from her and our home in London. I found them
again after her death among her papers. They have a doubled meaning for
me now, when the time has come for me to need her most of all.

TO MARY C. LLOYD.

_Written in Hartley Combe, Liss, about 1873._

Friend of my life! Whene’er my eyes
Beat with sudden, glad surprise
On Nature’s scenes of earth and air
Sublimely grand, or sweetly fair,
I want you—Mary.

When men and women, gifted, free,
Speak their fresh thoughts ungrudgingly,
And springing forth, each kindling mind
Streams like a meteor in the wind,
I want you—Mary.

When soft the summer evenings close,
And crimson in the sunset rose,
Our Cader glows, majestic, grand,
The crown of all your lovely land,
I want you—Mary.

And when the winter nights come round,
To our “ain fireside,” cheerly bound,
With our dear Rembrandt Girl, so brown,
Smiling serenely on us down,
I want you—Mary.

_Now_,—while the vigorous pulses leap
Still strong within my spirit’s deep,
_Now_, while my yet unwearied brain
Weaves its thick web of thoughts amain,
I want you—Mary.

_Hereafter_, when slow ebbs the tide,
And age drains out my strength and pride,
And dim-grown eyes and trembling hand
No longer list my soul’s command,
I’ll want you—Mary.

In joy and grief, in good and ill,
Friend of my heart! I need you still;
My Playmate, Friend, Companion, Love,
To dwell with here, to clasp above,
I want you—Mary.

For O! if past the gates of Death
To me the Unseen openeth
Immortal joys to angels given,
Upon the holy heights of Heaven
I’ll want you—Mary!

* * * * *

God has given me two priceless benedictions in life;—in my youth a
perfect Mother; in my later years, a perfect Friend. No other gifts, had
I possessed them, Genius, or beauty, or fame, or the wealth of the
Indies, would have been worthy to compare with the joy of those
affections. To live in companionship, almost unbroken by separation and
never marred by a doubt or a rough word, with a mind in whose workings
my own found inexhaustible interest, and my heart its rest; a friend who
knew me better than any one beside could ever know me, and yet,—strange
to think!—could love me better than any other,—this was happiness for
which, even now that it is over, I thank God from the depths of my soul.
I thank Him that I have _had_ such a Friend. And I thank Him that she
died without prolonged suffering or distress, with her head resting on
my breast and her hand pressing mine; calm and courageous to the last.
Her old physician said when all was over: “I have seen many, a _great_
many, men and women die; but I never saw one die so bravely.”

It has been possible for me through the kindness of my friend’s sister,
to whom Hengwrt now belongs, to obtain for my remaining months or years
a lease of this dear old house and beautiful grounds; and my winters of
entire solitude, and summers, when a few friends and relations gather
round me, glide rapidly away. I am still struggling on, as my friend
bade me (literally with her dying breath), working for the cause of the
science-tortured brutes, and I have even spoken again in public, and
written many pamphlets and letters for the press. I hope, as Tennyson
told me to do, to “fight the good fight” quite to the end. But there is
a price which every aged heart perforce must pay for the long enjoyment
of one soul-satisfying affection. When that affection is lost, it must
be evermore lonely.

* * * * *

INDEX

Abengo, 243

Adams, Mr., 670

Adelsburg, Cave of, 265

Adlam, Mr. and Mrs., 661

Airlie, Lord, 639

Aitken, Mary Carlyle, 539

Ajalon, Valley of, 243

Aldobrandini, 623

Alexandria, 229

Alfort, 620

Alger, Rev. W., 499

Allbut, Dr. Clifford, 600

Allen, Mrs. Fairchild, 662

“Alone, to the Alone,” 408

American Visitors, 499

Amos, Sheldon, 461, 657

Amphlett, Mr. Justice, 593

Amsterdam, 670

Ansano, 376

Apennines, 268, 375

Appleton, Dr., 373, 624

Apthorp, Mr. and Mrs., 225, 269, 499

Archer, Mrs., 337

Archibald, Mr. Justice, 593

Ardgillan, 12, 197

Argaum, 20, 210

Armstrong, Rev. R., 421

Arnold, Mr. Arthur, 430, 436
Mrs., 679

Arnold, Sir Edwin, 629

Arnold, Matthew, 180, 390, 469, 486, 497

Arnold, Dr., 672

Ashburton, Lord, 7

Assaye, 20, 210

Assisi, 365

Athens, 254, 256

Ayrton, Mr., 464

d’Azeglio, Massimo, 365, 369, 395, 444

Baalbec, 243, 246, 248

Babbage, Mr., 458, 559

Bacon, 94

Bagehot, Mr., 468

Baldelli, Countess of, 661

Balfour, J. H., 625

Ballard, Mrs. Laura Curtis, 592

Balisk, 137, 144, 147, 156

Barbauld, Mrs., 37

Barmouth, 706

Barnum, 565

Barry, Bishop, 671

Baths (Introduction of into England), 169

Bath, 16, 20, 24, 40, 682

Bath and Wells, Bishop of, 629

Bathurst, Miss, 275

Beard, Rev. C., 421, 524

Becker, Miss, 586

Beddoe, Mrs., 607

Beddoe, Dr. John, 607

Bell, Sir C., 538

Bell, Mr. E., 661, 677

Belloc, Madame, 586

Bellosguardo, 269, 375

Bennett, Sir Sterndale, 532

Bentley, Mr., 575–576

Berchet, 66

Berdoe, Dr., 671, 672, 681

Beresford, Marcus, Primate of Ireland, 11, 629

Beresford, Lady, 11

Beresford, Sir Tristram, 11

Berkeley, Bishop, 19

Berlin, 661

Bernard, Claude, 637, 676

Bert, Paul, 676

Bethany, 243

Bethlehem, 236

Bewick, 179

Beyrout, 243, 250

Bhagvat-Gita, 495

Biedermann, Rev. W. and Mrs., 269

Bilson, Bishop, 7

Bishop, Mr., 379

Bishop, Mrs., 496

Blackburn, Justice, 593

Black Forest, (Poem composed in), 270

Blagden, Miss, 269, 352, 375, 376, 622

Blunt, Rev. Gerard, 629

Bodichon, Madame, 171, 466, 577, 638

Boehmen, Jacob, 17

Bologna, 365

Bombay Parsee Society, 421

Bonheur, Rosa, 393, _seq._, 708

Bonaparte, Prince Lucien, 635, 657

Borrow, George, 479, _seq._

Boston, 113

Bost, M. Theodore, 496

Botticelli, 225

Bowie, Dr., 672

Bowen, Lord Justice, 383

Bowring, Sir John, 480

Boxall, Sir W., 560, _seq._

Brabant, Dr., 352

Brahmos of Bengal, 491

Bramwell, Baron, 593

Bray, Mr. and Mrs., 92

Bright, John, 461, 589, 629

Bright, Mrs. Jacob, 587

Brighton, 57

Bristol, 57, chapter x. 617

British Union, 691

“Broken Lights,” 400

Brooke, Stopford, 93

Brookfield, Mrs., 478

Brown, Baldwin, 660

Brown, Dr. J., 9, 224

Browne, Mrs. Woolcott, 360

Browning, Robert and Mrs., 263, 269, 365, 374, 378, _seq._, 457, 466,
556, 575, 577, 629

Brunton, Dr. Lauder, 626

Bryan, Mr., 672, 680, 695

Bryant, Miss, 679

Buckley, Mrs., 308

Burleigh, Celia, 592

Bunsen, 365

Bunting, Mr., 421, 595

Burntisland, 387

Bute, Marquis of, 653, 679

Butler, Mrs. J., 577

Buxton, Mr., 461

Byfleet, 471, 446

Byron, 257, 258, 383, 475, 616

Byron, Lady, 275, 291, 475, _seq._

Cader, Idris, 346, 705

Cahir, Lady, 167

Cairo, 231

Cairnes, Professor, 461

Calmet (Dictionary), 82

Campbell, 668

Camperdown, Countess of, 629, 647, 679

Canary, 311

Cardwell, Lord, 627, 655

Carlow, 8

Carlyle, Thomas, 538, _seq._, 558, 629, 650

Carnarvon, Lord, 653, 668

Caramania, 240

Carpenter, Mary, 275, _seq._, 475, 577, 583

Carpenter, Professor Estlin, 287

Carpenter, Philip, 287

Carpenter, Dr., 452, 454, 482

Cartwright, Mr., 669, 675

Castlemaine, Lady, 192

Cavour, 366, 389

Cellini, 391

Cervantes, 179

Chambers, Robert, 195

Champion, Colonel and Mrs., 23, 24

Channing, Rev. W. H., 492, 499, 524, 678

Charles, Justice, 593

Charley, 40, _seq._

Chaloner, James, 7

Charcot, Dr., 321

Churchill, Lord R., 15

“Cities of the Past,” 399

Clarke, Rev. J. Freeman, 499

Clarke, Dr., 671, 672

Clay, Dr., 669

Clewer, 322

Clerk, Miss, 337

Clifton, 338, 352, 360

Close, Dean of Carlisle, 632

Clough, Arthur, 90, 374

Cobbe, Frances Power, Birth, 31;
School, 57;
Mother’s death, 99;
First book, 110;
Leaves Newbridge, 213;
in Bristol, 275;
Settles in London, 395;
Leaves London, 580

Cobbe, Lady Betty, 11

Cobbe, Frances Conway, 388

Cobbe, Rev. Henry, 13, 44

Cobbe, George, 43

Cobbe, William, 41, 43

Cobbe, Thomas, 10, 43, 578

Cobbe, Charles, 20, _seq._, 100, _seq._, 206, _seq._, 212

Cobbe, Sophia and Eliza, 464

Cobbe, Helen, 204, 212

Cockburn, Lord, Chief Justice, 593

Colam, Mr., 626, _seq._, 636

Colenso, Bishop, 97, 400, 404, 451, 540

Colenso, Mrs., 453

Coleridge, Hon. Bernard, 671

Coleridge, Lord, 549, 560, 561, 593, 629, 648, 695

Coleridge, Hon. Stephen, 689, 690, 695, 696

Collins, Wilkie, 558

Combe, George, 576

Comet (of 1835), 52

Condorcet, 187

Constantinople, 261

Conversion, 88

Conway, Captain T., 7

Conway, Adjutant General, 43

Copenhagen, 661

Corsi, 623

Corsini, 623

Corfu, 264

Coutts, Lady Burdett, 636

Cowie, Mr. James, 621

Cowper-Temple, Hon. W., 318

Cox, Sir G. W., 452

Crabbe, 11

Craig, Isa, 316

Crampton, Sir Philip, 46

Crawford, Mr. Oswald, 421

Crimean War, 173

Crofton, Sir Walter, 291

Crosby & Nichols, 113

Cross, Lord, 639

Cross, Mr., 653, _seq._

Cunningham, Rev. W., 373, 374

Curtis, Mr. George, 499

Curraghmore, 12

Cushman, Charlotte, 365, 391, 392

Cyon, 553

Cyclades, 240

Cyprus, 252

Dall, Mr., 496

Daly, Miss, 50

Damascus, 243

Darwin, Charles, 180, 423, 485, _seq._, 540, 618, 640, 643

Darwin, Erasmus, 485, 490

Davies, Rev. V., 702

“Dawning Lights,” 483

Dead Sea, 240

Dean, Rev. Peter, 375

Decies, Lord, 22

Denison, Archdeacon, 542

Denman, Mr. Justice, 593

Deraismes, Mademoiselle, 671

Devis, Mrs., 23, 58

Devon, Lord, 194

De Wette, 452

Dicey, Mrs., 478

Djinns, 247

Donabate, 100, 137

Donegal, 101

Donne, W., 576

Donnelly, Mr. William, 141

Dorchester House, 26, 143

Downshire, Marquis of, 193

Drumcar, 169, 192

Dublin, 8, 104

Durdham Down, 303

“Duties of Women,” 570, 601

Dyke, Sir W. Hart, 639

Eastlake, Lady, 391

Easton Lyss, 445, 578

Edgeworth, Miss, 44, 179

Edwards, The Misses Betham, 558

Edwards, Passmore, 436

Egypt, 219

Eliot, George, 92, 444, 578

Elliot, Dean, 359

Elliot, Miss, 277, 307, _seq._, 333, 359, 385, 387, 448, 458

Elliot, Sir Frederick, 635, 639, 647, 650

Ellicott, Bishop, 648

Emigration, 157

Empson, Mr., 300

Enniskillen, Lord, 194

Erichsen, Dr., 642, 644

Escott, Mr., 380

Essays and Reviews, 89

Euphrates, 40

Evans, Mrs., 186, _seq._

Evans, George H., 186

Exeter, Bishop of, 629

Fairfax, Ursula, 7

Fairfax, Sir William, 385, 387

Fauveau, Mademoiselle F., 222

Fawcett, Mr. and Mrs., 459, 466, 467, 578, 586

Ferguson, Mr., 423

Ferguson, Mr. J., 559, 560

Fergusson, Sir W., 345, 627, 629, 633

Ferrier, Professor, 672, _seq._

Ferrars, Selina, Countess of, 17

Ffoulkes, Edmund, 178

Fiésolé, 375

Finlay, Mr., 254, _seq._

Firth, Mr. J. B., 642

Fisherman of Loch Neagh, 48

Fitzgerald, Edward, 576

Fitzgerald, Mr., 639

Flood, 15

Florence, 221, 268, 320, 365, 375, 388, 389, 622, _seq._, 661

Flower, William, 625

Fonblanque, Mr. E. de, 648, 662

Fontanés, M., 496

Förster, Dr. Paul, 661

Foster, Dr. Michael, 626, 674

Francis, Saint, 536

Froude, J. A., 8, 421, 478, 510, _seq._, 621, 650

Furdoonjee, Nowrosjee, 421, 491

Galton, 423, 466, 483

Gamgee, Professor A., 625, 673

Garbally, 16, 193

Garibaldi, 366

Garrett, Miss E., 467

Gaskell, Mrs., 577

Geist, 470, 471

Genoa, 365, 384

Germany, 46

George IV., 16

Ghiza, 232

Ghosts, 13

Greene, Mr., 662

Gibbon, 52, 74, 89, 97

Gibson, John, 268, 365, 390, 708

Gladstone, W. E., 446, 504, _seq._, 551

Glasgow, Lord, 653

Godwin, William, 257, 466

Goethe, 555

Goldschmidts, 237

Goodeve, Dr., 338, 361

Gothard, 269

Grana Uaile, 139

Granard, Lady, 14, 44

Grant, Isabel, 435

Grant, Baron, 436

Grant Duff, Sir M., 536

Granville, Lord, 587

Grattan, 15

Green, Miss, 195

Greg, Mr. W. R., 524, _seq._

Grey, Mrs. William, 578, 586

Greville, Henry, 576

Grisanowski, Dr., 383

Grove, Sir W., 482

Guillotine (Nuns chanting at), 293

Gully, Mr., 673

Gurney, Mr. Russell, 589, 595

Guthrie, Canon, 359

Guyon, Madame, 17

Hague, The, 669

Hajjin, 278, 617

Hall, Mrs., 482

Hallam, Arthur, 553, 555

Hamilton, Nichola, 11

Handel, 8

Hanover, 661

Harcourt, Sir W., 669

“Hard Church,” 196

Harris, Mr., 401, 501 _seq._

Harrison, Frederic, 377

Harrowby, Lord, 636

Hart, Dr. Ernest, 674

Harvey, 538

Hastings, Lady Selina, 13

Hastings, Lord, 43

Haweis, Mr., 430

Hazard, Mr., 499

Headfort, Marquis of, 264

Hebron, 236

Heidelburg, 270

Helps, Sir A., 629

Hemans, Mrs., 258

Hengwrt, 392, 485, 699, 704, 706, 710

Henniker, Lord, 639, _seq._, 668

Hereford, Bishop of, 629

Herodotus, 588

Herschell, Mr., 596

Higginson, Colonel, 499, 592

Hill, Alfred, 595, _seq._

Hill, Frederick, 586

Hill, Sir Rowland, 586

Hill, Matthew D., 285, 347, 586

Hill, F. D., 327, 337, 347, 578, 586

Hill, Miss, 347

Hill, Miss Octavia, 578

Hobbema, 26, 143

Hoggan, Dr. and Mrs., 468, 538, 545, 617, 637, _seq._, 647, _seq._

Holden, Mrs. Luther, 628

Holland, Sir H., 596

Holloway, Mr., 322

Holmes, Dr. O. W., 499

Holmgren, Professor, 491, 643

Holt, Mr., 655, 657, 662, 669

Holyhead, 40

Holyrood, 9

“Holy Griddle,” The, 147

Hooker, 113

Hooker, Mrs., 457

Hooper, Mr. G., 207, 208

Hopwood, Mr., 595

Hope, Mr. (“Anastasius”), 22

Horsley, Mr. Victor, 680

Hosmer, Harriet, 289, 392, 499, 577

Houghton, Lord, 537

Hough, Bishop, 14

Howe, Mrs., 499, 591

Howard, John, 495, 564

Howth, 139

Hume, 97

Humphry, Sir G., 625

Huntingdon, Earl of, 10

Huntingdon, Lady, 81

Hutton, Richard, 469, 627, 635, 643, 647, 652

Huxley, Professor, 642, 644

Isle of Man, 7

Italy, 222

Jaffa, 234, 243

James, Mr. H., 575

Jameson, Mrs., 576

Jericho, 242

Jerusalem, 220, 234

Jesse, Mr., 660

Jewsbury, Miss, 558

Jones, Martha, 37, 268

Jordan, 242

Jowett, Benjamin, 316, 318, 349, 351, 402, 540, 629

Kant, 115, 122, 487

Keats, 555

Keating, Justice, 593

Keeley, Mr., 173

Kelly, Chief Baron, 593

Kelly, Sir Fitzroy, 629, 648, 650

Kemble, Fanny, 4, 197, _seq._, 257, 360, 439, 446, 553, 555, 575, 580,
695

Kemble, John, 553, 555

Kempis, Thomas à, 149

Keshub Chunder Sen, 455, 491, _seq._

Kilmainham, 25

Kingsley, Charles, 401, 454, _seq._

Kingsland, Lord, 9

Kinnear, Miss, 39, 50

Kitty, 290

Klein, Professor, 626

Kozzaris, Lady Emily, 264

Kubla Khan, 47

Lamartine, 90

Landsdown, Lord, 359

Landor, W. S., 257, 269, 382, 622

Landseer, Sir E., 394, 561

Langton, Anna Gore, 586

Lankester, Mr. Ray, 634

Lawrence, Lord, 493, _seq._

Lawrence, General, 635

Lawson, M. A., 625

Lebanon, 243, 250

Leblois, Mons., 496

Lecky, Mr., 179, 478, 629

Lee, Miss, 13

Leffingwell, Dr., 502, 666

Le Hunt, Colonel, 155

Leigh, Colonel, 593

Leitrim, Lord, 194

Lembcké, M. and Mdme., 661

Le Poer, John, 11

L’Estrange, Alice, 500, _seq._

Levinge, Dorothy, 17

Lewes, George H., 63

Lewis, Sir George, 528

Liddon, Canon, 651, _seq._, 659, 664

Lindsay, Lady Charlotte, 44

Livermore, Mrs., 591

Liverpool, 51, 52, 624, 625, 701

Llandaff, Dean of, 671

Llanelltyd, 707, 708

Llangollen (Ladies of), 197

Lloyd, Miss, 200, 392, 395, 471, 438, 574, 647, 680, 708, _seq._

Locke, 94

Locke, John, M.P., 463

Lockwood, Mrs., 499

London, 40, chapters xvi., xvii., xviii.

Longfellow, 500

Longley, Bishop, 184

Longman, Mr. W., 111, 579

Loring-Brace, Mr. and Mrs., 499

Louth, 8

Louis Philippe, 222

Lowell, J. R., 234, 392, 551

Lush, Justice, 593

Lux Mundi, 89

Lydda, 234

Lyell, Sir Charles and Lady, 446, _seq._, 481

Lyell, Colonel and Mrs., 446, 447

Macdonald, George, 145, 671

Machpelah, 237

Macintosh, Sir James, 646

Mackenzie, General Colin, 629, 647, 678

Mackarness, Bishop, 671

Mackay, R. W., 472, _seq._

Madiai (Family of), 565

Madras, 7, 20, 282

Magee, Bishop, 668

Magnan, M., 627, 634

Maine, Sir H., 478, 633

Majendie, 538

Malabari, 611

Malone, Mary, 32

Malta, 228

Mamre, 236

Manchester, Bishop of 629, 631, 648

Manen, Madame von, 669

Manning, Mrs., 423

Manning, Archbishop, 540, _seq._, 629, 657

Manzoni, 66

Mario, Madame Alberto, 383

Marsh, Archbishop, 112

Marston, Miss, 690

Martin, Richard, 178, 646

Martineau, Dr., 93, 412, 446, 519, _seq._, 629

Martineau, Harriet, 577

Mar Saba, 238, 247

Masson, David, 314, 421

Matthew, Father, 147

Maulden Rectory, 445

Maurice, F. D., 401

Mawddach, 706

Maxwell, Colonel, 209

May, Rev. Samuel J., 282, 583

Mazzini, 257, 366, 367

M‘Clintock, Lady E., 160, 169

Mellor, Mr. Justice, 593

Merivale, Mr. Herman, 446, 478

Messina, 228

Michaud, Madame, 65

Michel, Louise, 498

Mill, J. S.,411, 457, 486, 540

Milan, 269, 365

Minto, Lord 369, 650

Minto, Lady, 639

Mischna, The, 473

Mitchell, Professor Maria, 591

Moira, Lady, 14, 174

Moncks, 17

Monsell, Hon. Mrs., 155, 322

Monro, Miss, 679

Monteagle, Lady, 478

Montefiores, 237;
Sir Moses, 475

Montriou, Mademoiselle, 52

Montreux, 269

Moore, 37, 48

Morelli, Countess, 661

Morgan, Mrs. de, 478

Morley, John, 421

Morley, Samuel, 659, 665

Morris, Rev. F. O., 671

Morris, Lewis, 558

Morrison, Mrs. Frank, 679, 690

Moth, Mrs., 14

Mount of Olives, 243

Mount-Temple, Lord and Lady, 318, 561, 578, 636, 648, 657, 665, 679,
690

Moydrum Castle, 192

Mozoomdar, 493

Müller, Max, 423

Mundella, Mr., 650

Murray, 112

Naples, 226, 365, 384

Napoleon, 368, 621

Newbridge, 9, 20, 25, 46, 75, 154, 169, 203, 209, 264, 304

Newman, Cardinal, 97, 371, 530

Newman, Francis, 95, 97, 103, 406, 415, 530

Newspapers, 169

New York, 157

Nightingale, Miss, 262

Nile, 234

Noel, Major, 4

Norris, Mr. John, 691

Norton, Sir Richard, 7

Northumberland, Duke of, 629

Norwich, 627, 634

O’Brien, Smith, 153, _seq._

O’Connell, 182

Oliphant, Laurence, 500

Ormonde, Marchioness of, 194

Owen, Sir John, 7

Padua, 268

Paley, 94

Palestine, 234

Palmer, Susannah, 432

Palmerston, Lord, 563

Paris, 224, 320

Parkes, Miss Bessie, 586

Parker, Theodore, 97, 103, 225, 351, 353, 371, 502, 622

Parnell, Sophia, 186

Parnell, C. S., 186

Parnell, Sir Henry, 189

Parnell, Thomas, 189

Parsonstown, 194

Parthenon, 255

Pays de Vaud, 269

Peabody, Mr., 499, 662

Pécaut, M. Felix, 496

Pelham, Mrs. H., 11, 16

Pennington, Frederick, 595

Penzance, Lord, 596

Percy, Lord Jocelyn, 635

Perugia, 365

Pfeiffer, Mrs., 577

Philæ, 234

Pigott, Baron, 593

Pilgrim’s Progress, 84

Pirkis, Mr., 672, 679

Pisa, 365, 369

Playfair, Lord, 640, 669

Plutarch, 52

Poggi, Miss, 60

Pollock, Baron, 593

Portrane, 8, 189

Portsmouth, Countess of, 629, 647, 678

Poussin, Gaspar, 26, 143

Powers, 42

Primrose, (in Bonny Glen), 101

Probyn, Miss Letitia, 435

Putnam, Messrs., 457

Pye-Smith, Dr., 634

Pyramids, 231

Quain, Mr. Justice, 593

Quarantania, Mountains of, 242

Ragged Schools, 286

Ramabai, 495

Ramleh, 234

Rawdon, Colonel, 14

Red Lodge, 275, _seq._

Remond, Miss, 283

Renan, Ernest, 400, 404, 535

Reville, Albert, 371

Reid, Mrs., 485

Reid, Mr. R. T., 669, 671, 675

Rees, Miss, 679

Rhine, 269

Rhodes, 252

Rhone, 269

Riboli, Dr., 661

Riga, 661

Ritchie, Mrs. Richmond, 478

Roberts, Lord, 7

Roberts, Miss, 60

Robertson, Frederick, 93, 423

Rolleston, George, 625, 627, 649

Rollin, 52

Rome, 224, 365

Roscoe, Mrs., 692

Rosse, Lord and Lady, 194

Rothkirch, Countess, 359

Roy, Dr. C. S., 673

Runciman, Miss, 60, 74

Ruskin, John, 629, 671

Russell, Mr. Patrick, 147

Russell, Lord Arthur, 460, 545

Russell, Lord John, 369

Russell, Lord Odo, 534, 544

Russell, Mr. George, 669

Rutland, Duke of, 629

Salisbury, Bishop of, 629

Sanderson, Burdon, Dr., 625, 626, 640, 674

Schœlcher, M. le Sénateur V., 497

Schiff, Professor, 383, 622, _seq._

Schilling, Madame V., 661

Schuyler, Misses, 499, 577

Scott, Sir Walter, 11, 47

Scutari, 262

Sedan, 621

Selborne, Lord, 629

Sesostris, 39

Shaftesbury, Lord, 81, 294, 561, _seq._, 645, _seq._, 657, 671, 697

Shaen, Mr. W., 647, 679

Shaen, Emily, 579, 606

Shelley, 50, 92, 225, 383, 466, 555

Shelley, Sir Percy, 466

Shirreff, Miss, 578, 586

Shore, Augusta, 594

Simpson, Mrs., 478, 535

Skene, Miss Felicia, 26, 27, 109

Sleeman, Mrs., 224

Smith, Horace, 63

Smith, Sydney, 179

Smith, Joseph, 401

Smith, Sir W., 421

Smyrna, 253

Somerville, Mrs., 172, 263, 269, 365, 383, 446, 575, 622

Somerset, Lady Henry, 496

Sonnenschein, Messrs. Swan, 671

Southey, 13, 47

Spedding, James, 559

Spencer, Herbert, 485

Spezzia, 384

Spurgeon, Rev. C. H., 648

Stael, Madame de, 187

Stanley, Dean, 97, 237, 385, 402, 465, 496, 529, _seq._, 563, 659

Stanley, Lady Augusta, 534

Stanley, Miss, 541

Stanley, Lady, of Alderley, 587

Stansfeld, Mr. and Mrs., 367, 646, 648

Stebbins, Miss, 391

Stephen, Miss Sarah, 328, 333

Stephen, Leslie, 421, 478, 618, 635, 671

Stephen, Miss Caroline, 578

Stephens, Sir Fitzjames, 419

Stewart, Delia, 186

Stockholm, 661

Story, W. W., 365

Stowe, Mrs., 365, 382, 457, 575, 577

Strozzi, 623

St. Asaph, Bishop of, 629

St. Sophia, 262

St. Leger, Harriet, 4, 111, 180, 197, 205, 211, 214, 275, 298, 384,
388, 576, 579

St. Paul’s, 112

Sunday, (at Newbridge), 82

Swanwick, Anna, 577, 607

Swarraton, 7, 20

Swedenborg, 401

Switzerland, 222, 269

Symonds, Dr., 286

Syra, 264

Syracuse, 282

Tait, Archbishop, 631

Tait, Mrs., 318

Tait, Lawson, 671

Tayler, Rev. J. J., 375, 524

Taylor, Rev. Edward, 12, 197

Taylor, Jane, 37

Taylor, Mr. and Mrs. P. A., 283, 457, 459, 461, 586

Taylor, Sir Henry, 557

Taylor, Miss, 199, 411, 456

Taylor, Dr. Bell, 671

Templeton, 13, 44

Tennyson, Alfred, 551, _seq._, 611, 629

Tennyson, Emily, 556

Tennyson, Frederick, 383

Tennyson, Hallam, 555

Thebes, 234

Theism, 93

Themistocles, Tomb of, 261

Thompson, Archbishop, 629, 645, 662, 675

Thornhill, Mark, 671, 672

Thring, Mr., 677

Trelawney, Mr., 258

Trench, Anne Power, 16

Trench, Jane Power, 176

Trench, Archdeacon, 177

Trench, Archbishop, 553

Trevelyan, Sir C., 541

Trieste, 264, 267

Trimleston, Lord, 8, 137

Trimmer, Mrs., 38

Trollope, Adolphus, 263, 269, 365, 381

Trollope, Anthony, 558

Trübner, 113, 400, 421

Truro, Lord, 668

Tufnell, Dr., 627

Tuam, Archbishop of, 12, 22, 177

Turin, 365

Turner, Mr., 210

Turvey, 8, 9

Twining, Louisa, 318, 327

Tyndall, Professor, 482, _seq._

Tyrone, Lord, 12

Umberto, 368

Unwin, Fisher, Messrs., 205, 422

Upsala, 643

Usedom, Count Guido, 365, 368, 371

Vambéry, Mons., 484

Vaughan, Rev. Mr., 87

Vaughan, Rev. Dr., 647

Venice, 258, 267, 365

Verona, 365

Vestiges of Creation, 194

Vesuvius, 226

Victor Emmanuel, 368, 388

Villari, Madame, 269, 381

Virchow, Dr., 634

Vivisection (Movement against), chapter xx.

Vogt, Carl, 490, 663

Voltaire, 94, 97

Waddy, Mr., 673

Wakeley, Dr., 673

Walker, Dr., 635

Warburton, Elliot, 183

Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 524

Warren, Mr., 464

Waterford, Marquis of, 12, 23, 174

Watson, William, 558

Watts, Dr., 37

Watts, G. F., 456

Weber, Baron, 661, 671

Webster, Mrs., 577, 586

Wedgwood, Mr. H., 646

Wedgwood, Miss Julia, 578, 646

Weiss, Mr., 375

Wellborne, 7

Welldon, Mr., 677

Wellesley, 20, 209

Wellington, Duke of, 629

Weston, 20

Whately, Archbishop, 196

White, Blanco, 97

White, Rev. H., 532

White, Mrs., 662

Wicksteed, Rev. P., 524

Wilberforce, Canon, 671

Wilhelm, Emperor, 366

Willard, Miss, 607

Williams & Norgate, Messrs., 422, 471

Wilmot, Sir Eardley, 669

Windeyer, W. C., 334

Winchester, Bishop of, 629

Winkworth, Misses, 580

Wilson, Miss Dorothy, 214

Wister, Mrs., 499

Wollstoncraft, Mary, 466

Wood, Colonel Sir Evelyn, 629, 635, 648, 650

Woolman, John, 619

Workhouses, 286, chapter xi.

Wynne-Finch, Mr., 500

Yates, Mrs. Richard Vaughan, 699, _seq._

Yeo, Professor, 674

Zachly, 244

Zola, 369

Zoophilist, 670, 680, 682

-----

Footnote 1:

With respect to the Letters and Extracts from Letters to myself and to
Miss Elliot, from the late Master of Balliol,—(to be found Vol. I.,
pp. 316, 317, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, and 354),—I beg to record that
I have received the very kind permission of Mr. Jowett’s Executors for
their publication.

Footnote 2:

It is always amusing to me to read the complacent arguments of
despisers of women when they think to prove the inevitable mental
inferiority of my sex by specifying the smaller circumference of
our heads. On this line of logic an elephant should be twice as
wise as a man. But in my case, as it happens, their argument leans
the wrong way, for my head is larger than those of most of my
countrymen,—Doctors included. As measured carefully with proper
instruments by a skilled phrenologist (the late Major Noel) the
dimensions are as follows:—Circumference, twenty-three and a
quarter inches; greatest height from external orifice of ear to
summit of crown, 6²⁄₈ inches. On the other hand dear Mrs.
Somerville’s little head, which held three times as much as mine
has ever done, was below the average of that of women. So much for
that argument!

Footnote 3:

The aphorism so often applied to little girls, that “it is better to
be good than pretty,” may, with greater hope of success, be applied to
family names; but I fear mine is neither imposing nor sonorous. I may
say of it (as I remarked to the charming Teresa Doria when she
ridiculed the Swiss for their _mesquin_ names, all ending in “_in_”),
“Everybody cannot have the luck to be able to sign themselves Doria
_nata_ Durazzo!” Nevertheless “Cobbe” is a very old name (Leuricus
Cobbe held lands in Suffolk, _vide_ Domesday), and it is curiously
wide-spread as a word in most Aryan languages, signifying either the
_head_ (literal or metaphorical), or a head-shaped object. I am no
philologist, and I dare say my examples offend against some “law,” and
therefore cannot be admitted; but it is at least odd that we should
find Latin, “_Caput_;” Italian, _Capo_; Spanish, _Cabo_; Saxon, _Cop_;
German, _Kopf_. Then we have, as derivates from the physical head,
_Cape_, _Capstan_, _Cap_, _Cope_, _Copse_ or _Coppice_, _Coping
Stone_, _Copped_, _Cup_, _Cupola_, _Cub_, _Cubicle_, _Kobbold_,
_Gobbo_; and from the metaphorical Head or Chief, _Captain_,
_Capital_, _Capitation_, _Capitulate_, &c. And again, we have a
multitude of names for objects obviously signifying head-shaped,
_e.g._, _Cob-horse_, _Cob-nut_, _Cob-gull_, _Cob-herring_, _Cob-swan_,
_Cob-coal_, _Cob-iron_, _Cob-wall_; a _Cock_ (of hay), according to
Johnson, properly a “_Cop_” of hay; the _Cobb_ (or Headland) at Lyme
Regis, &c., &c.; the Kobbé fiord in Norway, &c.

Footnote 4:

As such things as mythical pedigrees are not _altogether_ unknown in
the world, I beg to say that I have myself noted the above from
Harleian MS. in British Museum 1473 and 1139. Also in the College of
Arms, G. 16, p. 74, and C. 19, p. 104.

Footnote 5:

Wife of Thomas Cobbe’s half-brother.

Footnote 6:

Lady Huntingdon was doubly connected with Thomas Cobbe. She was his
first cousin, daughter of his maternal aunt Selina Countess of
Ferrers, and mother of his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Countess of Moira.
The pictures of Dorothy Levinge, and of her father; of Lady Ferrers;
and of Lord Moira and his wife, all of which hang in the halls at
Newbridge, made me as a child, think of them as familiar people.
Unfortunately the portrait of chief interest, that of Lady Huntingdon,
is missing in the series.

Footnote 7:

Pronounced “Lock Nay.”

Footnote 8:

Part of the following description of my own and my mother’s school
appeared some years ago in a periodical, now, I believe, extinct.

Footnote 9:

“It is a fact of Consciousness to which all experience bears witness
and which it is the duty of the philosopher to admit and account for,
instead of disguising or mutilating it to suit the demands of a
system, that there are certain truths which when once acquired, no
matter how, it is impossible by any effort of thought to conceive as
reversed or reversible.”—Mansel’s _Metaphysics_, p. 248.

Footnote 10:

We should now say _Altruism_.

Footnote 11:

I am thankful to believe that he would be no longer accorded such a
rank in 1890 as in 1850!

Footnote 12:

Mr. Hutton, whose exceedingly interesting and brilliant _Life of the
Marquess of Wellesley_ (in the “_Rulers of India_” series) includes an
account of the whole campaign, has been so kind as to endeavour to
identify this Frenchman for me, and tells me that in a note to
Wellington’s _Despatches_, Vol. II., p. 323, it is given as _Dupont_;
Wellington speaking of him as commanding a “brigade of infantry.” My
father certainly spoke of him or some other Frenchman as commanding
Scindias’ artillery. Mr. Hutton has also been good enough to refer me
to Grant Duff’s _History of the Mahrattas_, Vol. III., p. 240, with
regard to the number of British troops engaged at Assaye. He (Mr.
Grant Duff) says the handful of British troops did not exceed 4,500 as
my father also estimated them.

Footnote 13:

The mistake recorded in these little verses was made by a daughter of
Louis Philippe when visiting her uncle, the Grand Duke of Lucca. The
incident was narrated to me by the sculpturess, Mdlle. Felicie
Fauveau, attendant on the Duchesse de Berri.

Footnote 14:

See General Sleeman’s _India_.

Footnote 15:

The Proteus Anguinus.

Footnote 16:

Miss Elliot and I had begun it a year sooner, as stated above.

Footnote 17:

Mr. Jowett referred to Dean Elliot’s purchases of some fine old
pictures.

Footnote 18:

“Then, soul of my soul! I shall meet thee again,
And with God be the rest!”

Footnote 19:

This refers to an afternoon party we gave to witness poor Mr. Bishop’s
interesting thought-reading performances. He was wonderfully
successful throughout, and the company, which consisted of about 30
clever men and women, were unanimous in applauding his art, of
whatever nature it may have been. I may add that after my guests were
departed, when I took out my cheque-book and begged to know his fee,
Mr. Bishop positively refused to accept any remuneration whatever for
the charming entertainment he had given us. The tragic circumstances
of the death of this unhappy young man will be remembered. He either
died, or fell into a deathlike trance, at a supper party in New York,
in 1889; and within _four hours_ of his real (or apparent) decease,
three medical men who had been supping with him, dissected his brain.
One doctor who conducted this autopsy alleged that Bishop had been
extremely anxious that his brain should be examined _post mortem_, but
his mother asserted on the contrary, that he had a peculiar horror of
dissection, and had left directions that no _post mortem_ should be
held on his remains. It was also stated that he had a card in his
pocket warning those who might find him at any time in a trance, to
beware of burying him before signs of dissolution should be visible.
In a leading article on the subject in the _Liverpool Daily Post_, May
21st, 1889, it is stated that by the laws of the United States “it is
distinctly enacted that no dissection shall take place without the
fiat of the coroner, or at the request of the relatives of the
deceased; so that some explanation of the anxiety which induced so
manifest a breach of both laws and custom is eminently desirable. A
second examination of the body at the instance of the coroner, has
revealed the fact that all the organs were in a healthy state, and
that it was impossible to ascribe death to any specific cause or to
say whether Mr. Bishop were alive or dead at the time of the first
autopsy.” Both wife and mother believed he was “murdered;” and ordered
that word to be engraved on his coffin. His mother had herself
experienced a cataleptic trance of six days’ duration, during the
whole of which she was fully conscious. The three doctors were
proceeded against by her and the widow, and were put under bonds of
£500 each; but, as the experts alleged that it was impossible to
decide the cause of death, the case eventually dropped. Whether it
were one of “_Human Vivisection_” or not, can never now be known. If
the three physicians who performed the autopsy on Mr. Bishop did not
commit a murder of appalling barbarity on the helpless companion of
their supper-table, they certainly _risked_ incurring that guilt with
unparalleled levity and callousness.

Footnote 20:

A statue of Miss Hosmer exhibited in London, purchased by an American
gentleman for £1,000.

Footnote 21:

Not quite so good a story as that of another American child who,
having been naughty and punished, was sent up to her room by her
mother and told to ask for forgiveness. On returning downstairs the
mother asked her whether she had done as she had directed? “Oh yes!
Mama,” answered the child, “_And God said to me, Pray don’t mention
it, Miss Perkins!_”

Footnote 22:

See Spenser—The “West” District of London was the one which elected
Miss Garrett for the School Board.

Footnote 23:

Sir W. Harcourt interrupted Mr. Russell when speaking of Vivisections
before students, by the assertion—

“Under the Act demonstrations were forbidden.”—_Times_, April 5th,
1883.

In the Act in question—39 & 40 Vict., c. 77, Clause 3, Sect. 1—are
these words, “Experiments _may be performed_ ... by a person giving
illustrations of lectures,” &c., &c. By the Returns issued from Sir W.
Harcourt’s own (Home) Office in the previous year, _sixteen_ persons
had been registered as holding certificates permitting experiments in
illustration of lectures. It seems to me a shocking feature of modern
politics that an outrageous falsehood—or must we call it mistake?—of
this kind is allowed to serve its purpose at the moment but the author
never apologizes for it afterwards.

Footnote 24:

Most of the following letters were lent by me to Mr. Walrond when he
was preparing the biography of Dean Stanley, and in returning them he
said that he had kept copies of them, and meant to include them in his
book. The present Editor not having used them, I feel myself at
liberty to print them here.

Footnote 25:

We had many good stories floating about in Rome at that time and he
was always ready to enjoy them, but one, I think, told me by the
painter Penry Williams, would not have tickled him as it did us
heretics. The Pope, it seems, offered one of his Cardinals (whose
reputation was far from immaculate) a pinch of snuff. The Cardinal
replied more facetiously than respectfully “_Non ho questo vizio,
Santo Padre_.” Pius IX. observed quietly, snapping his snuffbox, “_Se
vizio fosse, l’avreste_” (If it had been a vice you would have had
it)!

Footnote 26:

Curiously enough I have had occasion to repeat this remark this Spring
(1894) in a controversy in the columns of the _Catholic Times_.

Footnote 27:

I had talked to him of our Ragged School at Bristol.

Footnote 28:

When our Bill was debated in Parliament in 1883, Mr. Gladstone left
us, totally unaided, to the mercies (not tender) of Sir William
Harcourt, who interrupted Mr. George Russell’s speech in support of
our Bill by the remark that the demonstrations to students, to which
he referred, were forbidden by the Vivisection Act. _Sixteen_
certificates granting permission for the performance of such
experiments in demonstration to students passed through his own office
that year!

Footnote 29:

This opinion of the great _Philanthropist_ deserves to be remembered
with those of the many thinkers who have reached the same conclusion
from other sides.

Footnote 30:

The General Secretary, then, and, I am happy to say, still,—of the
Victoria Street Society.

Footnote 31:

The lines to which Lord Shaftesbury refers—“Best in the Lord” (since
included in many collections) begin with the words:

“God draws a cloud over each gleaming morn.
Wouldst thou ask, why?
It is because all noblest things are born
In agony.

Only upon some Cross of pain or woe
God’s Son may lie.
Each soul redeemed from self and sin must know
Its Calvary.”

Lord Shaftesbury entirely understood the point of view from which I
regarded that sacred spot.

Footnote 32:

Here is what Dr. Russell Reynolds, F.R.S., said in 1881 in an address
to the Medical Society of University College:—“There is meddling and
muddling of a most disreputable sort, and the patients” (he is
speaking of women) “grow sick of it, and give it all up and get well;
or they go from bad to worse.”... “Physicians have coined names for
trifling maladies, if they have not invented them, and have set
fashions of disease. They have treated or maltreated their patients by
endless examinations, applications, and the like, and this sometimes
for months, sometimes for years, and then, when by some accident the
patient has been removed from their care, she has become quite well
and there has been no more need for caustic,” &c., &c.

And here is what Dr. Clifford Allbut said in the Gulstonian Lecture
for 1884 at the Royal College of Physicians. After admitting that
women feel more pain than men, he mentioned the “_morbid chains_,” the
“_mental abasement_,” into which fall “the flock of women who lie
under the wand of the Gynæcologist” (specialist of women’s diseases);
“the women who are _caged up in London back drawing-rooms_, and
visited almost daily; their brave and active spirits broken under a
_false_ (!!) _belief in the presence of a secret and over-mastering
local malady_; and the best years of their lives honoured only by a
distressful victory over pain.” (Italics mine.)—_Medical Press_, March
19th, 1884.

Footnote 33:

The certificate (A) dispensing with Anæsthetics was doubtless inserted
after Lord Shaftesbury saw the Bill.

Footnote 34:

Mr. Cartwright, speaking in the House of Commons, April 4th, 1883, in
reply to Mr. R. T. Reid, said: “The hon. member should have said
something about the prosecution of Dr. Ferrier for having evaded the
Act. He does not do that. He has wisely given the go-by to it, for
that prosecution lamentably failed, altogether broke down. The charge
brought against Dr. Ferrier was that he operated without a licence and
infringed the law by doing those things to which the hon. and learned
member referred; but the charge was not supported by one tittle of
evidence.”

Footnote 35:

Many persons have supposed that I am still concerned with the
management of that journal; but, except as an occasional contributor,
such is not the case. The credit of the editorship for the last ten
years (which I consider to be great) rests entirely with Mr. Bryan.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. P. 169, changed “but really achieved” to “but rarely achieved”.
2. P. 277, changed “straight on end” to “straight on in”.
3. P. 319, changed “bought forth fruit” to “brought forth fruit”.
4. P. 354, changed “thoughts, I don’t” to “thoughts, I won’t”.
5. Corrected the issues identified in the Errata.
6. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
7. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
8. Re-indexed foot-notes using numbers and collected together at the
end of the last chapter.
9. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Life of Frances Power Cobbe as told by herself - with additions by the author, and introduction by Blanche Atkinson" ***

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