Chapter XVIII: Introduction (18)

“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.