Chapter XVII: Introduction (17)

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.