Chapter XX: Introduction (20)

In later years, I received at least half-a-dozen notes from time to time from his Eminence asking for details of our Anti-vivisection work, and exhibiting his anxiety to master the facts on which he proposed to speak at our Meetings. Here are some of these notes:—

“Archbishop’s House, Westminster, S.W.,
“June 12th, 1882.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I should be much obliged if you would send me some recent facts or
utterances of the Mantegazza kind, for the meeting at Lord
Shaftesbury’s. I have for a long time lost all reckoning from
overwork, and need to be posted up.

“Believe me, always faithfully yours,
“_Henry E._, Card. Archbp.”

“Cardinal Manning to Miss F. P. C.
“Eastern Road, Brighton.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I can assure you that my slowness in answering your letter has not
arisen from any diminution of care on Vivisection. I was never better
able to understand it, for I have been for nearly three weeks in pain
day and night from neuralgia in the right arm, which makes writing
difficult.

“I have not seen Mr. Holt’s Bill, and I do not know what it aims at.

“Before I can say anything, I wish to be fully informed. The Bill of
last year does not content me.

“But we must take care not to weaken what we have gained. I hope to
stay here over Sunday, and should be much obliged if you could desire
someone to send me a copy of Mr. Holt’s Bill.

“Has sufficient organised effort been made to enforce Mr. Cross’s Act?

“Believe me, always yours very truly,
“HENRY E., Card. Archbp.”

“Archbishop’s House, Westminster, S.W.,
“June 22nd, 1884.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I will attend the meeting of the 26th unless hindered by some
unforeseen necessity, but I must ask you to send me a brief. I am so
driven by work that for some time I have fallen behind your
proceedings. Send me one or two points marked and I will read them up.

“My mind is more than ever fixed on this subject.

“Believe me, yours faithfully,
“HENRY E., Card. Archbp.”

“Archbishop’s House, Westminster, S.W.,
“January 27th, 1887.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“For the last three weeks I have been kept to the house by one of my
yearly colds; but if possible I will be present at the Meeting of the
Society. If I should be unable to be there I will write a letter.

“I clearly see that the proposed Physiological and Pathological
Institute would be centre and sanction of ever advancing Vivisection.

“I hope you are recovering health and strength by your rest in the
country?

“Believe me, always faithfully yours,
“HENRY E., Card. Archbp.”

“Archbishop’s House, Westminster, S.W.,
“July 31st, 1889.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“My last days have been so full that I have not been able to write. I
thank you for your letter, and for the contents of it. The highest
counsel is always the safest and best, cost us what it may. We may
take the cost as the test of its rectitude.

“I hope you will go on writing against this inflation of vain glory
calling itself Science.

“Believe me, always, very truly yours,
“HENRY E., Card. Archbishop.”

At no less than seven of our annual Meetings (at one of which he presided) did Cardinal Manning make speeches. All these I have myself reprinted in an ornamental pamphlet to be obtained at 20, Victoria Street. The reasons for his adoption of our Anti-vivisection cause, were, I am sure, mainly moral and humane; but I think an incident which occurred in Rome not long before our campaign began may have impressed on his mind a regret that the Catholic Church had hitherto done nothing on behalf of the lower animals, and a desire to take part himself in a humane crusade and so rectify its position before the Protestant world.

Pope Pio IX. had been addressed by the English in Rome through Lord Ampthill, (then Mr. Odo Russell, our representative there)—with a request for permission to found a Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Rome; where, (as all the world knows) it was almost as deplorably needed as at Naples. After a considerable delay, the formal reply through the proper Office, was sent to Mr. Russell _refusing_ the (indispensable) permission. The document conveying this refusal expressly stated that “a Society for such a purpose could not be sanctioned in Rome. Man owed duties to his fellow men; but he owed no duties to the lower animals therefore, though such societies might exist in Protestant countries they could not be allowed to be established in Rome.”

The late Lord Arthur Russell, coming back from Italy to England just after this event, told me of it with great detail, and assured me that he had seen the Papal document in his brother’s possession; and that if I chose to publish the matter in England, he would guarantee the truth of the story at any time. I _did_ very much choose to publish it, thinking it was a thing which ought to be proclaimed on the housetops; and I repeated it in seven or eight different publications, ranging from the _Quarterly Review_ to the _Echo_. Soon after this, if I remember rightly, began the Anti-vivisection movement, and almost immediately when the Society for Protection of Animals from Vivisection (afterwards called the Victoria Street Society) was founded, by Dr. Hoggan and myself, Cardinal Manning gave us his name and active support. He took part in our first Deputation to the Home Office, and spoke at our first meeting, which was held on the 10th June, 1876, at the Westminster Palace Hotel. On that occasion, when it came to the Cardinal’s turn to speak, he began at once to say that “Much misapprehension existed as to the attitude of his Church on the subject of duty to animals.” [As he said this, with his usual clear, calm, deliberate enunciation, he looked me straight in the face and I looked at him!] He proceeded to say: “It was true that man owed no duty _directly_ to the brutes, but he owed it to God, whose creatures they are, to treat them mercifully.”

This was, I considered a very good way of reconciling adhesion to the Pope’s doctrine, with humane principles; and I greatly rejoiced that such a _mezzo-termine_ could be put forward on authority. Of course in my private opinion the Cardinal’s ethics were theoretically untenable, seeing that if it were possible to conceive of such a thing as a creature made by a man, (as people in the thirteenth century believed that Arnaldus de Villa-Nova had made a living man), or even such a thing as a creature made by the Devil,—that most wretched being would still have a right to be spared pain if _he were sensitive to pain_; and would assuredly be a proper object of measureless compassion. That a dog or horse is a creature of God; that its love and service to us come of God’s gracious provisions for us; that the animal is unoffending to its Creator, while we are suppliants for forgiveness for our offences; all these are true and tender reasons for _additional_ kindness and care for these our dumb fellow-creatures. But they are not (as the Cardinal’s argument would seem to imply) the _only_ reasons for showing mercy towards them.

Nevertheless it was a great step,—I may say an historical event,—that a principle practically including universal humanity to the lower animals, should have been enunciated publicly and formally by a “Prince of the Church” of Rome. That Cardinal Manning was not only the first great Roman prelate to lay down any such principle, but that he far outran many of his contemporaries and co-religionists in so doing, has become painfully manifest this year (1894) from the numerous letters from priests which have appeared in the _Tablet_ and _Catholic Times_, bearing a very different complexion. Cardinal Manning repeated almost _verbatim_ the same explanation of his own standpoint in his speech on March 9th, 1887, when he occupied the chair at our Annual Meeting. He said:

“It is perfectly true that obligations and duties are between moral
persons, and therefore the lower animals are not susceptible of those
moral obligations which we owe to one another; but we owe a seven-fold
obligation to the Creator of those animals. Our obligation and moral
duty is to Him who made them, and, if we wish to know the limit and
the broad outline of our obligation, I say at once it is His Nature
and His perfections; and, among those perfections, one is most
profoundly that of eternal mercy. (Hear, hear.) And, therefore,
although a poor mule or a poor horse is not indeed a moral person, yet
the Lord and Maker of that mule and that horse is the highest
law-giver, and His Nature is a law to Himself. And, in giving a
dominion over His creatures to man, He gave them subject to the
condition that they should be used in conformity to His own
perfections, which is His own law, and, therefore, our law.”

On the first occasion a generous Roman Catholic nobleman present gave me £20 to have the Cardinal’s speech translated into Italian and widely circulated in Italy.

I have good reason to believe that when Cardinal Manning went to Rome after the election of Leo XIII., he spoke earnestly to his Holiness on the subject of cruelty to animals generally in Italy, and especially concerning Vivisection, and that he understood the Pope to agree with him and sanction his attitude. I learned this from a private source, but his Eminence referred to it quite unmistakeably in his speech at Lord Shaftesbury’s house on the 21st June, 1882, as follows:—

“I am somewhat concerned to say it, but I know that an impression has
been made that those whom I represent look, if not with approbation,
at least with great indulgence, at the practice of Vivisection. I
grieve to say that abroad there are a great many (whom I beg to say I
do not represent) who do favour the practice; but this I do protest,
that there is not a religious instinct in nature, nor a religion of
nature, nor is there a word in revelation, either in the Old Testament
or the New Testament, nor is there to be found in the great theology
which I do represent, no, nor in any Act of the Church of which I am a
member; no, nor in the lives and utterances of any one of those great
servants of that Church who stand as examples, nor is there an
authoritative utterance anywhere to be found in favour of Vivisection.
There may be the chatter, the prating, and the talk of those who know
nothing about it. And I know what I have stated to be the fact, for
some years ago I took a step known to our excellent secretary, and
brought the subject under the notice and authority where alone I could
bring it. And those before whom it was laid soon proved to have been
profoundly ignorant of the outlines of the alphabet even of
Vivisection. They believed entirely that the practice of surgery and
the science of anatomy owed everything to the discoveries of
vivisectors. They were filled to the full with every false impression,
but when the facts were made known to them, they experienced a
revulsion of feeling.”

Cardinal Manning also, (as I happen likewise to know) made a great effort about 1878 or 1879, to induce the then General of the Franciscans, to support the Anti-vivisection movement _for love of St. Francis_, and his tenderness to animals. In this attempt, however, Cardinal Manning must have been entirely unsuccessful, as no modern Franciscan that ever I have heard of, has stirred a finger on behalf of animals anywhere, or given his name to any Society for protecting them, either from vulgar or from scientific cruelty. Knowing this, I confess to feeling some impatience when the name of St. Francis and his amiable fondness for birds and beasts is perpetually flaunted whenever the lack of common humanity to animals visible in Catholic countries happens to be mentioned. It is a very small matter that a Saint, six hundred years ago, sang with nightingales and fed wolves, if the monks of his own Order and the priests of the Church which has canonised him, never warn their flocks that to torment God’s creatures is even a venial sin, and when forced to notice barbarous cruelties to a brute, invariably reply, “_Non è Cristiano_,” as if all claims to compassion were dismissed by that consideration!

The answer of the General of the Franciscans to Cardinal Manning’s touching appeal was,—“that he had consulted his doctor and that his doctor assured him that _no such thing as Vivisection was ever practised in Italy_!”

I was kindly permitted to call at Archbishop’s House and see Cardinal Manning several times; and I find the following little record of one of my first visits in a letter to my friend, written the same, or next day:—

“I had a very interesting interview with the Cardinal. I was shown
into a vast, dreary dining-room quite monastic in its whitey-brown
walls, poverty-stricken furniture, crucifix, and pictures of
half-a-dozen Bishops who did not exhibit the ‘Beauty of Holiness.’ The
Cardinal received me most kindly, and said he was so glad to see me,
and that he was much better in health after a long illness. He is not
much changed. It was droll to sit talking _tête-à-tête_ with a man
with a pink _octagon_ on his venerable head, and various little scraps
of scarlet showing here and there to remind one that ‘_Grattez_’ the
English gentleman and you will find the Roman Cardinal! He told me,
really with effusion, that his heart was in our work; and he promised
to go to the Meeting to-morrow.... I told him we all wished _him_ to
take the chair. He said it would be much better for a layman like Lord
Coleridge to do so. I said, ‘I don’t think you know the place you hold
in English, (I paused and added _avec intention_,) _Protestant_
estimation’! He laughed very good-humouredly and said: ‘I think I do,
very well.’”

At the Meeting on the following day when he _did_ take the chair, I had opportunities as Hon. Sec., of which I did not fail to avail myself, of a little quiet conversation with his Eminence before the proceedings.

I spoke of the moral results of Darwinism on the character and remarked how paralyzing was the idea that Conscience was merely an hereditary instinct fixed in the brain by the interests of the tribe, and in no sense the voice of God in the heart or His law graven on the “fleshly tablets.” He abounded in my sense, and augured immeasurable evils from the general adoption of such a philosophy. I asked him what was the Catholic doctrine of the origin of Souls? He answered, promptly and emphatically: “O, that each one is a distinct creation of God.”

The last day on which His Eminence attended a Committee Meeting in Victoria Street I had a little conversation with him as usual, after business was over; and reminded him that on every occasion when he had previously attended, we had had our beloved President, Lord Shaftesbury present. “Shall I tell your Eminence,” I asked, “what Mrs. F.” (now Lady B.) “told me Lord Shaftesbury said to her shortly before he died, about our Committees here? He said that ‘if our Society had done nothing else but bring you and him together, and make you sit and work at the same table for the same object, it would have been well worth while to have founded it!’” “_Did_ Lord Shaftesbury say that?” said the Cardinal, with a moisture in his eyes, “_Did_ he say that? I _loved_ Lord Shaftesbury!”

And _these_, I reflected, were the men whom narrow bigots of both creeds, looked on as the very chiefs of opposing camps and bitter enemies! The one rejoiced at an _excuse_ for meeting the other in friendly co-operation! The other said as his last word: “I _loved_ him!”

I was greatly touched by this little scene, and going straight from it to the house of the friend who had told me of Lord Shaftesbury’s remark, I naturally described it to her and to Mr. Lowell, who was taking tea with us. “Ah, yes!” Lady B. said,—“I remember it well, and I could show you the very tree in the park where we were sitting when Lord Shaftesbury made that remark. But” (she added) “why did you not tell the Cardinal that he included _you_? What Lord Shaftesbury said was, that ‘the Society had brought the Cardinal and you and himself to work together.’” Mr. Lowell was interested in all this, and the evidence it afforded of the width of mind of the great philanthropist, so often supposed to be “a narrow Evangelical.”

Alas! he also has “gone over to the majority.” I met him often and liked him (as every one did) extremely. Though in so many ways different, he had some of Mr. Gladstone’s peculiar power of making every conversation wherein he took part interesting; of turning it off dusty roads into pleasant paths. He had not in the smallest degree that tiresome habit of _giving information_ instead of _conveying impressions_, which makes some worthy people so unspeakably fatiguing as companions. I had once the privilege of sitting between him and Lord Tennyson when they carried on an animated conversation, and I could see how much the great Poet was delighted with the lesser one; who was also a large-hearted Statesman; a silver link between two great nations.

I shall account it one of the chief honours which have fallen to my lot that Tennyson asked leave, through his son, to pay me a visit. Needless to say I accepted the offer with gratitude and, fortunately, I was at home, in our little house in Cheyne Walk, when he called on me. He sat for a long time over my fire, and talked of poetry; of the share melodious words ought to have in it; of the hatefulness of scientific cruelty, against which he was going to write again; and of the new and dangerous phases of thought then apparent. Much that he said on the latter subject was, I think, crystallised in his _Locksley Hall Sixty Years Later_. After he had risen to go and I had followed him to the stairs, I returned to my room and said from my heart, “_Thank God!_” The great poem which had been so much to me for half a lifetime, was not spoiled; the Man and the Poet were one. Nothing that I had now seen and heard of him in the flesh jarred with what I had known of him in the spirit.

After this first visit I had the pleasure of meeting Lord Tennyson several times and of making Lady Tennyson’s charming acquaintance; the present Lord Tennyson being exceedingly kind and friendly to me in welcoming me to their house. On one occasion when I met Lord Tennyson at the house of a mutual friend, he told me, (with an innocent surprise which I could not but find diverting,) that a certain great Professor had been positively angry and rude to him about his lines in the _Children’s Hospital_ concerning those who “carve the living hound”! I tried to explain to him the fury of the whole _clique_ at the discovery that the consciences of the rest of mankind has considerably outstepped theirs in the matter of humanity and that while they fancied themselves, (in his words,) “the heirs of all the ages, in the foremost files of Time,” it was really in the Dark Ages, as regarded humane sentiment,—or at least one or two centuries past,—in which they lingered; practising the Art of Torture on beasts, as men did on men in the sixteenth century. I also tried to explain to him that his ideal of a Vivisector with red face and coarse hands was quite wrong, and as false as the representation of Lady Macbeth as a tall and masculine woman. Lady Macbeth _must_ have been small, thin and concentrated, not a big, bony, conscientious Scotch woman; and Vivisectors (some of them at all events) are polished and handsome gentlemen, with peculiarly delicate fingers (for drawing out nerves, &c., as Cyon describes).

Lord Tennyson from the very first beginning of our Anti-vivisection movement, in 1874, to the hour of his death, never once failed to append his name to every successive Memorial and Petition,—and they were many,—which I, and my successors, sent to him; and he accepted and held our Hon. Membership and afterwards the Vice-Presidency of our Society from first to last.

The last time I saw Lord Tennyson was one day in London after I had taken luncheon at his house. When I rose to leave the table, and he shook hands with me at the door as we were parting, as we supposed, for that season; he said to me: “Good-Bye, Miss Cobbe—Fight the good Fight. Go on! Fight the good Fight.” I saw him no more; but I shall do his bidding, please God, to the end.

I shall insert here two letters which I received from Lord Tennyson which, though trifling in themselves, I prize as testimonies of his sympathy and goodwill. I am fortunately able to add to them two papers of some real interest,—the contemporary estimate of Tennyson’s first poems by his friends, the Kembles; and the announcement of the death of Arthur Hallam by his friend John Mitchell Kemble to Fanny Kemble. They have come into my possession with a vast mass of family and other papers given me by Mrs. Kemble several years ago, and belong to a series of letters, marvellously long and closely written, by John Kemble, during and after his romantic expedition to Spain along with the future Archbishop Trench and the other young enthusiasts of 1830. The way in which John Mitchell Kemble speaks of his friend Alfred Tennyson’s Poems is satisfactory, but much more so is the beautiful testimony he renders to the character of Hallam. It is touching, and uplifting too, to read the rather singular words “of a holier heart,” applied to the subject of “_In Memoriam_,” by his young companion.

“Farringford, Freshwater,
“Isle of Wight,
“June 4th, 1880.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I have subscribed my name, and I hope that it may be of some use to
your cause.

“My wife is grateful to you for remembrance of her, and

“I am, ever yours,
“A. TENNYSON.”

“Aldworth, Haslemere,
“Surrey, January 9th, 1882.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“I thank you for your essay, which I found very interesting, though
perhaps somewhat too vehement to serve your purpose. Have you seen
that terrible book by a Swiss (reviewed in the _Spectator_) _Ayez
Pitié_? Pray pardon my not answering you before. I am so harried with
letters and poems from all parts of the world, that my friends often
have to wait for an answer.

“Yours ever,
“A. TENNYSON.”

“Farringford, Freshwater,
“Isle of Wight, June 12th, 1882.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I am sorry to say that I shall not be in London the 21st, so that I
cannot be present at your meeting. Many thanks for asking me. My
father has been suffering from a bad attack of gout, and does not feel
inclined to _write_ more about Vivisection. You have, as you know, his
warmest good wishes in all your great struggle. When are we to see you
again? Can you not pay us a visit at Haslemere this summer?

“With our kindest regards,
“Yours very sincerely,
“HALLAM TENNYSON.”

Extract from letter from John M. Kemble to Fanny Kemble. No date. In packet of 1830–1833:—

“I am very glad that you like Tennyson’s Poems; if you had any poetry
in you, you could not help it; for the general system of criticism,
and the notion that a poet is to be appreciated by everybody, if he be
a poet, are mighty fallacies. It was only the High Priest who was
privileged to enter the Holy of Holies; and so it is with that other
Holy of Holies, no less sacred and replete with divinity, a great
poet’s mind: therein no vulgar foot may tread. To meet this objection,
it is often said that all men appreciate, &c., &c., Shakespeare and
Milton, &c. To this I answer by a direct denial. Not one man in a
hundred thousand cares three straws for Milton; and though from being
a _dramatic_ Poet Shakespeare must be better understood, I believe I
may say that not one in a hundred thousand feels all that is to be
felt in him. There is no man who has done so much as Tennyson to
express poetical feeling by _sound_; Titian has done as much with
colours. Indeed, I believe no poet to have lived since Milton, so
perfect in his form, except Göthe. In this matter, Shelley and Keats
and Byron, even Wordsworth, have been found wanting. Coleridge
expresses the greatest admiration for Charles Tennyson’s sonnets; we
have sent him Alfred’s poems, which, I am sure, will delight him.”

Extract from letter from John Mitchell Kemble to Fanny Kemble:—

“It is with feelings of inexpressible pain that I announce to you the
death of poor Arthur Hallam, who expired suddenly from an attack of
apoplexy at Vienna, on the 15th of last month. Though this was always
feared by us as likely to occur, the shock has been a bitter one to
bear: and most of all so to the Tennysons, whose sister Emily he was
to have married. I have not yet had the courage to write to Alfred.
This is a loss which will most assuredly be felt by this age, for if
ever man was born for great things he was. Never was a more powerful
intellect joined to a purer and holier heart; and the whole
illuminated with the richest imagination, the most sparkling yet the
kindest wit. One cannot lament for him that he is gone to a far better
life, but we weep over his coffin and wonder that we cannot be
consoled. The Roman epitaph on two young children: _Sibi met ipsis
dolorem abstulerunt, suis reliquere_ (from themselves they took away
pain, to their friends they left it!) is always present to my mind,
and somehow the miserable feeling of loneliness comes over one even
though one knows that the dead are happier than the living. His poor
father was with him only. They had been travelling together in Hungary
and were on their return to England; but there had been nothing
whatever to announce the fatal termination of their journey; indeed,
bating fatigue, Arthur had been unusually well. Our other friends,
though all mourning for him as if he had been our brother, are well.”

In my chapter on Italy I have written some pages concerning Mr. and Mrs. Browning, and printed two or three kind letters from him to me. It is a great privilege, I now feel, to have known, even in such slight measure these two great poets. But what an unspeakable blessing and honour it has been for England all through the Victorian Age to have for her representatives and teachers in the high realm of poetry, two such men as Tennyson and Browning; men of immaculate honour, blameless and beautiful lives, and lofty and pure inspiration! Not one word which either has ever published need be blotted out by any recording angel, and, widely different as they were, their high doctrine was the same. The one tells us that “good” will be “the final goal of ill”; the other that—

“God’s in His Heaven!
All’s right with the world!”

I have had also the good fortune to find other English poets ready to sympathise with me on the subject of Vivisection. Sir Henry Taylor wrote many letters to me upon it and called my attention to his own lines which go so deep into the philosophy of the question, and which I have since quoted so often;

“Pain in Man
Bears the high mission of the flail and fan,
In brutes ’tis purely piteous.”

Here is one of his notes to me:—

“The Roost, Bournemouth,
“November 25th, 1875.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I return your papers that they may not be wasted. I wish you all the
success you deserve, which is all you can desire. But I can do
nothing. My hands are full here, and my pockets are empty.

“Two months ago I succeeded in forming a local Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty in this place.

“We have ordered prosecutions every week since, and have obtained
convictions in every case. And these local operations are all that I
can undertake or assist.

“Believe me, yours sincerely,
“HENRY TAYLOR.”

He was also actively interested in an effort to improve the method of slaughtering cattle by using a mask with a fixed hole in the centre, through which a long nail may be easily driven, straight through the exact suture of the skull to the brain, causing instant death. Sir Henry specially approved the masks for this purpose, made, I believe, under his own direction at Bournemouth, by Mr. Mendon, a saddler at Lansdowne.

Mr. Lewis Morris has also written some beautiful and striking poems touching on the subject of scientific cruelty, and I have reason to hope that a younger man, who many of us look upon as the poet of the future in England, Mr. William Watson, is entirely on the same side. In short, if the _Priests_ of Science are against us, the _Prophets_ of Humanity, the Poets, are with us in this controversy, almost to a man.

It will be seen that we had Politicians, Historians, and thinkers of various parties among our friends in London; but there were no Novelists except that very agreeable woman Miss Jewsbury and the two Misses Betham Edwards. Mr. Anthony Trollope I knew but slightly. I had also some acquaintance with a very popular novelist, then a young man, who was introduced in the full flush of his success to Mr. Carlyle, whereon the “Sage of Chelsea” greeted him with the _encouraging_ question, “Well, Mr. —— when do you intend to _begin to do something sairious_?”

With Mr. Wilkie Collins I exchanged several friendly letters concerning some information he wanted for one of his books. The following letter from him exhibits the “Sairius” spirit, at all events (as Mr. Carlyle might admit), in which he set about spinning the elaborate web of his exciting tales.

“90, Gloucester Place, Portman Square, W.,
“23rd June, 1882.

“Dear Madam,

“I most sincerely thank you for your kind letter and for the pamphlets
which preceded it. The ‘Address’ seems to me to possess the very rare
merit of forcible statement combined with a moderation of judgment
which sets a valuable example, not only to our enemies, but to some of
our friends. As to the ‘Portrait,’ I feel such a strong universal
interest in it that I must not venture on criticism. You have given me
exactly what I most wanted for the purpose that I have in view—and you
have spared me time and trouble in the best and kindest of ways. If I
require further help, you shall see that I am gratefully sensible of
the help that has been already given.

“I am writing to a very large public both at home and abroad; and it
is quite needless (when I am writing to _you_) to dwell on the
importance of producing the right impression by means which keep clear
of terrifying and revolting the ordinary reader. I shall leave the
detestable cruelties of the laboratory to be merely inferred, and, in
tracing the moral influence of those cruelties on the nature of the
man who practices them, and the result as to his social relations with
the persons about him, I shall be careful to present him to the reader
as a man _not_ infinitely wicked and cruel, and to show the efforts
made by his better instincts to resist the inevitable hardening of the
heart, the fatal stupefying of all the finer sensibilities, produced
by the deliberately merciless occupations of his life. If I can
succeed in making him, in some degree, an object of compassion as well
as of horror, my experience of readers of fiction tells me that the
right effect will be produced by the right means.

“Believe me, very truly yours,
“WILKIE COLLINS.”

Of another order of acquaintances was that excellent man Mr. James Spedding; also Mr. Babbage, (in whose horror of street music I devoutly sympathised); and Mr. James Fergusson the architect, in whose books and ideas generally I found great interest. He avowed to me his opinion that the ancient Jews were never builders of stone edifices, and that all the relics of stone buildings in Palestine were the work either of Tyrians or of the Idumean Herod, or of other non-Jewish rulers. His conversation was always most instructive to me, and I rejoiced when I had the opportunity of writing a long review (for _Fraser_ I think) of his _Tree and Serpent Worship_; with which he was so well pleased that he made me a present of the magnificent volume, of which I believe only a hundred copies were printed. Mr. Fergusson taught me to see that the whole civilization of a country has depended historically on the stones with which it happens naturally to be furnished. If these stones be large and hard and durable like those of Egypt, we find grand, everlasting monuments and statues made of them. If they be delicate and beautiful like Pentelic marble, we have the Parthenon. If they be plain limestone or freestone as in our northern climes, richness of form and detail take the place of greater simplicity, and we have the great cathedrals of England, France and Germany. Where there is no good stone, only brick, we may have fine mansions, but not great temples, and where there is neither clay for bricks, nor good stone for building, the natives can erect no durable edifices, and consequently have no places to be adorned with statues and paintings and all the arts which go with them. I do not know whether I do justice to Mr. Fergusson in giving this _résumé_ of his lesson, but it is my recollection of it, and to my thinking worth recording.

One of the friends of whom we saw most in London was Sir William Boxall, whose exquisite artistic taste was specially congenial to my friend, and his varied conversation and love of his poor, dear, old dog “Garry,” to me. After Lord Coleridge’s charming obituary of him nothing need be added in the way of tribute to his character and gifts, or to the refined feeling which inspired him always. I may add, however (what the Lord Chief Justice naturally would not say on his own account), namely, that Boxall, in his latter years of weakness and almost constant confinement to the house, frequently told us when we went to visit him how Lord Coleridge had found time from all his labours to come frequently to sit with him and cheer him; and after a whole day spent in the hot Law Courts would dine on his old friend’s chops, and spend the evening in his dingy rooms in Welbeck Street. Here is a letter from Sir William which I happen to have preserved. It refers to an article I had written in the _Echo_ on the death of Landseer:—

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“Your sympathetic notice of my old friend Landseer and his friends has
delighted me—a grain of such feeling is worth a newspaper load of
worn-out criticism. I thank you very sincerely for it.

“I should have called upon you, but I have been shut up with the cold
which threatened me when I last saw you.

“Yours very sincerely,
“W. BOXALL.

“October 6th, 1879.

“There is no hope of my getting to Dolgelly. It will be a great escape
for Miss Lloyd, for I am utterly worn out.”

I find that the most common opinion about Lord Shaftesbury is, that he was an excellent and most disinterested man, who did a vast amount of good in his time among the poor, and in the factories and on behalf of the climbing-boy sweeps, but that he was somewhat narrowminded; and dry, if not stern in character. Perhaps some would add that his extreme Evangelicalism had in it a tinge of Calvinistic bigotry. I shared very much such ideas about him till one day in 1875, when I had gone to Stanhope Street to consult Lord and Lady Mount-Temple, my unfailing helpers and advisers, about some matter connected with Lord Henniker’s Bill then before Parliament,—for the restriction of Vivisection. After explaining my difficulty, Lady Mount-Temple said, “We must consult Lord Shaftesbury about this matter. Come with me now to his house.” I yielded to my kind friend, but not without hesitation, fearing that Lord Shaftesbury would, in the first place, be too much absorbed in his great philanthropic undertakings to spare attention to the wrongs of the brutes; and, in the second, that his religious views were too strict to allow him to co-operate with such a heretic as I, even if (as I was assured) he would tolerate my intrusion. How widely astray from the truth I was as regarded his sentiments in both ways, the sequel proved. He had already, it appeared, taken great interest in the Anti-vivisection controversy then beginning, and entered into it with all the warmth of his heart; not as something _taking him off_ from service to mankind, but _as apart of his philanthropy_. He always emphatically endorsed my view; that, if we could save Vivisectors from persisting in the sin of Cruelty, we should be doing them a moral service greater than to save them from becoming pickpockets or drunkards. He also felt what I may call passionate pity for the tortured brutes. He loved dogs, and always had a large beautiful Collie lying under his writing-table; and was full of tenderness to his daughters’ Siamese cat, and spoke of all animals with intimate knowledge and sympathy. As to my heresies, though he knew of them from the first, they never interfered with his kindness and consideration for me, which were such as I can never remember without emotion.

I shall speak in its place in another chapter of the share he took as leader and champion of our party in all the subsequent events connected with the Anti-vivisection agitation. I wish here only to give, (if it may be possible for me), some small idea to the reader of what that good man really was, and to remove some of the absurd misconceptions current concerning him. For example. He was no bigot as to Sabbatarian observances. I told him once that I belonged to the Society for opening Museums on Sundays. He said: “I think you are mistaken—the working men do not wish it. See! I have here the result of a large enquiry among their Trades Unions and clubs. Nearly all of them deprecate the change. But I am on this point not at all of the same opinion as most of my friends. I have told them (and they have often been a little shocked at it), that I think if a lawyer has a brief for a case on Monday and has had no time to study it on Saturday, he is quite justified in reading it up on Sunday after church.”

Neither did he share the very common bigotry of teetotalism. He said to me, “The teetotallers have added an Eleventh Commandment, and think more of it than of all the rest.” Again, when (as is well known) Lord Palmerston left the choice of Bishops for many years practically in his hands (I believe that seven owed their sees to him), and he, of course, selected Evangelical clergymen who would uphold what he considered to be vital religious truth, he was yet able to concur heartily in the appointment of Arthur Stanley to the Deanery of Westminster. He told me that Lord Palmerston had written to him before inviting Dr. Stanley, and said that he would not do it if he, (Lord Shaftesbury) disapproved; and that he had answered that he was well aware that Dr. Stanley’s theological views differed widely from his own, but that he was an admirable man and a gentleman, with special suitability for this post and a claim to some such high office; and that he cordially approved Lord Palmerston’s choice. I do not suppose that Dean Stanley ever knew of this possible _veto_ in Lord Shaftesbury’s hands, but he entertained the profoundest respect for him, and expressed it in the little poem which he wrote about him (of which Lord Shaftesbury gave me an MS. copy), which appears in Dean Stanley’s biography. He compares the aged philanthropist to “a great rock’s shadow in a weary land.”

It was a charge against Howard and some other great philanthropists that, while exhibiting the enthusiasm of humanity on the _largest_ scale they failed to show it on a small one, and were scantily kind to those immediately around them. Nothing could be less true of Lord Shaftesbury. While the direction of a score of great charitable undertakings rested on him, and his study was flooded with reports, Bills before Parliament and letters by the hundred,—he would remember to perform all sorts of little kindnesses to individuals having no special claim on him; and never by any chance did he omit an act of courtesy. No more perfectly high-bred gentleman ever graced the old school; and no young man, I may add, ever had a fresher or warmer heart. Indeed, I know not where I should look among old or young for such ready and full response of feeling to each call for pity, for sympathy, for indignation, and, I may add, for the enjoyment of humour, the least gleam of which caught his eye a moment. He was always particularly tickled with the absurdities involved in the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, and whenever a clergyman or a bishop did anything he much disapproved, he was sure to stigmatize it from that point of view. One day he was giving me a rather long account of some Deputation which had waited on him and endeavoured to bully him. As he described the scene: “There they stood in a crowd in the room, and I said to them; Gentlemen! I’ll see you.”... (Good Heavens! I thought: _Where_ did he say he would see them?)—“I’ll see you _at the bottom of the Red Sea_ before I’ll do it!” The revulsion was so ludicrous and the allusion to the “Red Sea” instead of “another place,” so characteristic, that I broke into a peal of laughter which, when explained, made him also laugh heartily. Another day I remember his great amusement at a story not reported, I believe, in the _Times_, but told me by an M.P. who was present in the House when Sir P. O. had outdone Sir Boyle Roche. He spoke of “the ingratitude of the Irish to Mr. Gladstone _who had broken down the bridges which divided them from England_!”

A lady whose reputation was less unblemished than might have been wished, and of whom I fought very shy in consequence, went to call on him about some business. When I saw him next he told me of her visit, and said, “When she left my study, I said to myself; ‘there goes a _dashing Cyprian_!’” One needed to go back a century to recall this droll old phrase. More than once he repeated, chuckling with amusement, the speech of an old beggar woman to whom he had refused alms, and who called after him, “You withered specimen of bygone philanthropy!” On another occasion when he was in the Chair at a small meeting, one of the speakers persisted in expressing over and over again his conviction that the venerable Chairman could not be expected to live long. Lord Shaftesbury turned aside to me and said _sotto voce_, “I declare he’s telling me I’m going to die immediately!” “There he is saying it again! Was there ever such a man?” Nobody was more awake than he to the “dodges” of interested people trying to make capital out of his religious party. A most ridiculous instance of this he described to me with great glee. At the time of the excitement (now long forgotten) about the Madiai family, Barnum actually called upon him (Lord Shaftesbury) and entreated him to allow of the Madiai being taken over to be _exhibited_ in New York! “It would be such an affecting sight,” said Barnum, “to see _real_ Christian Martyrs!”

As an instance of his thoughtfulness, I may mention that having one day just received a ticket for the Private View of the Academy, he offered it to me and I accepted it gladly, observing that since the recent death of Boxall I feared we should not have one given to us, and that my friend would be pleased to use it. “O, I am so glad!” said Lord Shaftesbury; and from that day every year till he died he never once failed to send her, addressed by himself, his tickets for each of the two annual exhibitions. When one thinks of how men who do not do in a year as much as he did in a week, would have scoffed at the idea of taking such trouble, one may estimate the good nature which prompted this over-worked man to remember such a trifle, unfailingly.

The most touching interview I ever had with him, was one of the last, in his study in Grosvenor Square, not long before his death. Our conversation had fallen on the woes and wrongs of seduced girls and ruined women; and he told me many facts which he had learned by personal investigation and visits to dreadful haunts in London. He described all he saw and heard with a compassion for the victims and yet a horror of vice and impurity, which somehow made me think of Christ and the Woman taken in adultery. After a few moments’ silence, during which we were both rather overcome, he said, “When I feel age creeping on me, and know I must soon die, I hope it is not wrong to say it, but I _cannot bear to leave the world with all the misery in it_.” No words can describe how this simple expression revealed to me the man, in his inmost spirit. He had long passed the stage of moral effort which does good _as a duty_, and had ascended to that wherein even the enjoyment of Heaven itself, (which of course, his creed taught him to expect immediately after death) had less attractions for him than the labour of mitigating the sorrows of earth.

I possess 280 letters and notes from Lord Shaftesbury written to me during the ten years which elapsed from 1875, when I first saw him, till his last illness in 1885. Many of them are merely brief notes, giving me information or advice about my work as Hon. Sec. of the Victoria Street Society, of which he was President. But many are long and interesting letters. The editor of his excellent Biography probably did not know I possessed these letters, nor did I know he was preparing Lord Shaftesbury’s _Life_ or I should have placed them at his disposal. I can only here quote a few as characteristic, or otherwise specially interesting to me.

“Castle Wemyss, Wemyss Bay, N.B.,
“September 3rd, 1878.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“Your letter is very cheering. We were right to make the experiment.
We were right to test the man and the law: Cross, and his
administration of it. Both have failed us, and we are bound in duty, I
think, to leap over all limitations, and go in for the total abolition
of this vile and cruel form of Idolatry; for idolatry it is, and, like
all idolatry, brutal, degrading, and deceptive....

“May God prosper us! These ill-used and tortured animals are as much
His Creatures as we are, and to say the truth, I had, in some
instances, rather be the animal tortured than the man who tortured it.
I should believe myself to have higher hopes, and a happier future.

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

“July 10th, 1879.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I have sent your letter to Judas of X——. I find no fault in it, but
that of too much courtesy to one so lost to every consideration of
feeling and truth.

“Did you know him, as I know him, you would find it difficult to
restrain your pen and your tongue.”...

* * * * *

“Some good will come out of the discussion.

“I have unmistakable evidence that many were deeply impressed, but
adhesion to political leaders is a higher law with most Politicians
than obedience to the law of truth.

“What do you think now of the Doctrine of ‘Apostolic Succession’?

“Would St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John have made such a speech as
that of my Lord of P——?

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

“Castle Wemyss, Wemyss Bay, N.B.,
“September 16th, 1879.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“You do that Bishop too much honour. He is not worth notice.

“It is frightful to see that the open champions of Vivisection are not
Bradlaugh and Mrs. B. but Bishops, ‘_Fathers in God_,’ and ‘Pastors’
of the People!

“We shall soon have Bradlaugh and his company claiming the Apostolical
Succession; and if that succession be founded on truth, mercy, and
love, with as good a right as Dr. G., Dr. M. or D.D. anything else.

“Your letter has crushed (if such a hard substance can be crushed) his
Lordship of C....

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

The next letter is in acknowledgment of the following verses which I had sent to him on his Eightieth Birthday. They were repeated by the late Chamberlain of the City of London, Sir Benjamin Scott, in his oration on the presentation of the Freedom of the City to Lord Shaftesbury. I print the letter, (though all too kind in its expression about my poor verses,) on account of the deeply interesting review of his own life which it contains:—

A BIRTHDAY ADDRESS

TO ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, 7TH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, K.G.
APRIL 28TH, 1881.

For eighty years! Many will count them over,
But none save He who knoweth all may guess
What those long years have held of high endeavour,
Of world-wide blessing and of blessedness.

For eighty years the champion of the right
Of hapless child neglected and forlorn;
Of maniac dungeon’d in his double night;
Of woman overtasked and labour-worn;

Of homeless boy in streets with peril rife;
Of workman sickening in his airless den;
Of Indian parching for the streams of life,
Of Negro slave in bonds of cruel men;

O! Friend of all the friendless ‘neath the sun,
Whose hand hath wiped away a thousand tears,
Whose fervent lips and clear strong brain have done
God’s holy service, lo! these eighty years,—

How meet it seems thy grand and vigorous age
Should find beyond man’s race fresh pangs to spare
And for the wrong’d and tortured brutes engage
In yet fresh labours and ungrudging care!

O tarry long amongst us! Live, we pray,
Hasten not yet to hear thy Lord’s “Well done!”
Let this world still seem better while it may
Contain one soul like thine amid its throng.

Whilst thou art here our inmost hearts confess,
Truth spake the kingly Seer of old who said—
“Found in the way of God and righteousness,
A crown of glory is the hoary head.”

“Lord Shaftesbury to Miss F. P. C.
“24, Grosvenor Square, W.,
“April 30th, 1881.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“Had I not known your handwriting, I should never have guessed, either
that you were the writer of the verses, or that I was the subject of
them.

“Had I judged them simply by their ability and force, I might have
ascribed them to the true Author; but it required the envelope, and
the ominous word ‘eighty,’ to justify me in applying them to myself.

“They both touched and gratified me, but I will tell you the origin of
my public career, which you have been so kind as to commend. It arose
while I was a boy at Harrow School, about, I should think, fourteen
years of age—an event occurred (the details of which I may give you
some other day), which brought painfully before me the scorn and
neglect manifested towards the Poor and helpless. I was deeply
affected; but, for many years afterwards, I acted only on feeling and
sentiment. As I advanced in life, all this grew up to a sense of duty;
and I was convinced that God had called me to devote whatever
advantages He might have bestowed upon me, to the cause of the weak,
the helpless, both man and beast, and those who had none to help them.

“I entered Parliament in 1826, and I commenced operations in 1828,
with an effort to ameliorate the conditions of lunatics, and then I
passed on in a succession of attempts to grapple with other evils, and
such has been my trade for more than half a century.