Chapter II (5)

In my early years there were books “suitable for Sunday reading.” If the Young Persons’ books were milk for babes, these books were the slops. I have several that were given to me then; and with _Sunday echoes in week-day hours_ there is a letter from the man who gave it. He said that he was sure I should enjoy it, as his own children had enjoyed it so very much indeed. After reading it, I wondered if they really had. Happily for me, my father said authoritatively that the Continental Bradshaw was a Sunday book, and so also Murray’s Guides. I thus had pleasant Sunday afternoons, travelling in my easy chair.

Two friends of my father’s bought Livings in the Church, and consulted him about the prices of the Next Presentations and Advowsons that were offered to them. Here is the offer of a parish adjoining this, 17 May 1853, “The sum asked is £2250, of which £1250 may remain on mortgage of the Advowson at 3½ per cent.... The present incumbent is in his 67th year.” These men were of a sort that any parish would be glad to get: kindly, courteous, generous, with considerable means and very considerable learning--one had taken a First in Greats and the other had been a Wrangler. They deserved the fattest of Livings, and yet they had to buy; and they never had any preferment, though Canonries were given to those two men who preached the sermons (that I have quoted) on dances and the opened Bible. Of course, the traffic in Livings is indefensible in theory, but in practice it may often lead to happier results than public or official patronage.

There were some letters here that I destroyed, as they mentioned many people’s names, and compromised them. Somebody wanted a seat in Parliament, and was prepared to pay for it, if he could get it cheap. (This was nearly seventy years ago.) Inquiries were made in various boroughs of bad repute, and the replies were pretty much the same. ‘Bribery and corruption are intolerable things, and ought to be put down; but, as men of the world, we have to take things as they are. The seat will certainly be sold, and may as well be sold to you as sold to anybody else. It probably will cost you so-and-so.’ The prices varied very much, not having an open market to control them.

The sale of seats was hindered by prospects of disfranchisement. These offers all stipulated that, whatever happened, there must be no petition. Things would come out on petition that would lead to a commission; and the commissioners would find out things enough to make disfranchisement a certainty. And that would be the death of the goose that laid those golden eggs.

After the general election of 1865 one of the commissioners was dining with us, and after dinner he told my father what he thought about it all: not in the measured terms of his report, but quite colloquially. I learnt a lot of practical politics that night before I was sent off to bed.

At the general election of 1868 the Liberal party was committed to disestablishing the Irish church; and many good Liberals disapproved of this, as they thought that disestablishment was not a matter for party politics at all. A county constituency (not very far from Devon) was in the hands of Liberals of that sort; and they refused strong candidates and picked out one who was so weak that he was sure to lose the seat. He lost it; and scrupulous people found fault with them for taking his money (£3000, I believe) when they knew quite well that he would be defeated.

These men cared more for Church than State, and thought the end might justify the means; but I have known seats lost without excuse. A breezy sailor was looking for a seat in 1885, and tried a London constituency in which I had a vote. He was a very strong candidate; but the local Conservative Association would not adopt him unless he paid them £400 a year. I cannot say (verbatim) where he told them all to go to; but he went elsewhere himself and was elected. They got their £400 a year from a nincompoop who lost the seat.

I remember a City man who was Vice-Chairman of one of the biggest undertakings there, but found he had no chance of being Chairman unless he was in Parliament--they wanted someone who could put their views before the House. He was a first-rate businessman, but not a showy speaker; so he got a brilliant young barrister to join him in contesting a borough with two seats. He paid the second candidate’s expenses, only “it must be understood that in his canvassing for himself, he of course supports me as senior Liberal candidate.” I remember that young barrister then--and also as a Judge long afterwards--and he was much too big a man to be subordinate to anyone. He made such brilliant speeches there that the senior Liberal candidate was totally eclipsed.

But his speeches did not really make much difference. A man writes to my father, 7 July 1864, “I was twice solicited to contest this most rotten borough, and will undertake to say that, whatever ***** may do, the best bidder will gain the day. I never was so disgusted with any place. They stipulate for 2 or 3000_l_ and leave you to be prepared to double this sum or more. Depend upon it, nothing but money will do, and with a free use of that, all is safe.”

Two incidents in that election are imprinted on my mind.--The senior Liberal candidate was past the prime of life, but very tall and dignified, with a charming face and silvery hair, which really was a wig. Not having stood for Parliament before, he got a little flurried on the hustings; and, meaning to wave his hat, he waved his wig as well.--A voter happened to be coachman to a strong supporter of the other side, who was at his London house just then. The coachman said it was “as much as his place was worth” to ask his employer for leave to go down to record his vote. And, with very little scratching of his head, that man was able to reckon up, within a pound or two, how much his place was worth.

Barefaced bribery is not a bad thing, in its way. The voter got hard cash, and the candidate provided it; whereas the voter only gets wild promises now, and these always cost the country a good deal, even if they do no good to anybody. Moreover, when the voter could be bought, there was not the same necessity for cramming him with lies. With his pocket full of money and no illusions in his mind, he went gaily to the poll, feeling that it was all a festival at which he was an honoured guest. And in very many places it was very little else.

An old friend of the family writes to my mother from Brighton, 6 July 1841, “I was at Shoreham on Saturday. During the heat of the polling the scene was more amusing and lively than what you saw here. Lord Howard (who by the bye had on a shocking raffish dirty white hat) had between thirty to forty men and boys drest in white with pink bands round their bodies with ‘Howard for ever’ on them, shoulders and legs and hats also decorated with pink ribbons, and each with a wand with flag attached. There were also eight with huge flags, and two bands of music similarly drest. They altogether formed a very pretty tableau. Their province was to meet the voters coming up at the bridge, then form in procession and escort them to the polling booths. Sir Charles Burrell’s were in white with orange decorations: Goring’s white with red and ethereal blue. They of course had music, and neither party was idle: so what with four bands of music, a multitude of flags, vociferous cheers, horrid yells and groans, and now and then a shindy, it made as spirited and lively a contest as one would wish to see.”

Writing from Reigate on Sunday 13 May 1849, my father says, “I walked over to Bletchingley, a rotten borough and much gone to decay, and there I went to church. With the exception of about twenty well-dressed people, the congregation was composed of hard-featured rough farmers with lots of young girls and urchins belonging apparently to the parish school: the choir was a fiddle, bass-viol and clarionet; and every body and thing looking as uncouth as in the most remote districts.” Bletchingley was one of the rotten boroughs that were disfranchised by the Reform Bill of 1832. Till then it had two members. Shoreham had two members until 1885.

He came up to London from Carshalton on the morning of 10 April 1848 and “met Chartists all round Kennington.” Among my family relics I have a truncheon: there were 150,000 special constables then, and they stopped any Chartism. But the Charter itself seems harmless now: we have accepted five of its six points, and might very well accept the other one--annual parliaments. If we had general elections every year, they would soon cease to be such great events, and such great nuisances; and there might be greater continuity in our public policy. A moderate loss of seats would warn the Ministers, if they were taking a wrong course; and then they probably would alter course at once, instead of keeping on for several years, and then losing so many seats that they are superseded and their policy reversed.

We badly need a word (say Pleistarchy) for government by majority. We call it Democracy, but use that word in quite another sense. The arguments for democracy are embodied in stock phrases, ‘the will of the people,’ ‘vox populi,’ and so on, all implying that the people or populus or dêmos is always going to be unanimous, just like a jury. It may be necessary that the will of fifty-one should thwart the will of forty-nine; but it cannot be justified by saying that the will of the people must prevail, as that means the will of the whole hundred, if it means anything at all. We should come nearer to democracy by stipulating for majorities of two-thirds or three-fourths, as in America; but we ought to have majorities of nine-tenths or nineteen-twentieths before we talk about democracy here. And we might talk less nonsense, if we had a word like Pleistarchy expressing what we really mean.

Corruption was not confined to politics. A friend of my father’s writes to him from Torquay, 29 January 1845, about a younger brother who was causing him anxiety. “You perhaps are aware that I have endeavoured to obtain him a cadetship in the East India Company’s service.... I have been thinking that his best course is to purchase the appointment I have mentioned. These things are to be done, and are daily done, and it is far better for him to pay £500 or £600 than continue in his present course of life. I have strained all the efforts in my power with political friends, but in vain, and there is now but one course left--his purchasing the appointment. I am well aware that it is illegal, but there is little doubt that it can be done.”

Another friend also had a younger brother who caused him much anxiety, and he unburdens himself in his letters to my father--Dick has been getting drunk, Dick has been making love, Dick has been borrowing money, Dick is dragging our good name in the mire. Thirty years afterwards he writes, “The assizes are just over, and Richard has tried the cases here with great ability and dignity.” I need hardly say that I have changed his name.

There is a letter to my father from a friend of his who had just been made a judge--“I like my new occupation hugely. Whilst removing all strain and pressure, it gives the mind full play and exercise, and up to the present time it seems to suit body as well as mind.” Speaking of the necessity of going in procession in his robes, another one exclaims, “I often long to give a Whoop and cut a Caper in the midst of this Tomfoolery.”

Some of these letters to my father are very outspoken in their criticism of distinguished lawyers. Thus, 18 June 1876, “That ignoramus, the Attorney General, whose opinion I would not take on the title to an ant-heap....” Again, 20 December 1868, “Think of Collier being a judge. He was a capital caricaturist on circuit, and made his best speeches in cases of breach of promise _et id genus_. But beyond that....” My father’s own criticisms were much more restrained. He writes to my grandfather, 18 July 1850, “Yesterday morning I saw Wilde take his seat as Lord Chancellor. He looked rather confused: he cannot possibly know much about Equity, and how he is to get on I cannot understand.”

In 1920 the parish-clerk of Lustleigh was convicted of stamping an insurance-card with stamps that had been used on another insurance-card the year before. Notwithstanding his good character, he was sentenced to nine months imprisonment; and this sentence was upheld by the Court of Criminal Appeal in London. The sentence was manifestly out of all proportion to the crime. The loss could not amount to more than 15_s._ 2_d._ on a card, even if all the stamps on it were used a second time; and, if nine months imprisonment is commensurate with 15_s._ 2_d._, I cannot conceive what punishments would be sufficient for big frauds of £50,000 or £100,000 that bring scores of families to destitution. The 15_s._ 2_d._ would be public money; and here was the Law fussing about a loss of shillings at a time when hundreds and thousands of pounds of public money were being obtained all round on the flimsiest of false pretences, the Law being satisfied if some incompetent official had been bamboozled into sanctioning the payment.

There is, of course, a theory that the punishment of crimes should be proportionate to the difficulty of their detection, the chances of immunity being counterbalanced by the risks of heavy punishment. But with these insurance-cards there is more difficulty in committing the crime than in detecting it. The cards are collected every half-year; and, if the collection is efficient, there are not any cards about from which old stamps can be detached. I suppose the Legislature understands the workings of the criminal mind, but I sometimes wonder whether men can be deterred from crime by dread of seven years penal servitude, if they are not deterred by dread of five. If they reckon things up at all, they probably pick out the biggest crime they can commit for any specified sentence--“may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb”--and then act accordingly.

Fines would be far better than imprisonment in very many cases, that is, substantial fines with time allowed for payment by instalments. If this man had been fined £50, it would have helped the public revenue. As it was, the public had to maintain him for nine months and stopped his doing any useful work--and he was a hard-working and pains-taking man. Prisons are expensive things; and many of our prisons might be closed and a big revenue raised from fines, but for this silly craze for sending everyone to gaol.

I have a letter to my grandmother, 1 June 1843, from a nephew who had gone out to Australia and settled at Sydney. “Our county, Cumberland, in which Sydney is placed, will next month be the arena of a very spirited contest. We send two members, and there are four candidates, one of whom (the most monied man, a large distiller) tho’ now Free, was sent a Convict. We immigrants think it impudence of him to offer as a candidate, and the other party are as strong in his favour. I really think he will be elected, tho’ the Press teems with his crimes, the number of lashes received, and so on: his five associates were hanged. These people have an hatred to immigrants, and will not support them if they can deal with one of their own sort, and so frequently we see them get on much better than if they had come to the colony of their own free will.”

In spite of Convict competition this relative of mine did pretty well out there. In a letter to my father, 9 July 1874, he says that he has managed to put by £100,000 in the course of thirty years: all of it made by steady work, and none by speculation.

In his letter of 1 June 1843 he says, “The colony is labouring under temporary difficulties, but altogether it is advancing most rapidly: every downfall drives people to some fresh resources. Keeping sheep used to be almost the only employment: now that does not pay, agriculture is gaining ground, and instead of sending our coin to America for wheat, we grow our own. Altho’ sprung up like a mushroom in relation to the older towns of England, Sydney is as large as Exeter, its market buildings as good, its streets wider and the houses (that is, those recently built) as good as any: our George Street is fully two miles long, with all the bustle of Exeter Fore Street.”

Another first-cousin of my father’s went out to the colonies in very different style. He was a Chancery barrister in London, and was so cantankerous that they made him Attorney General of a colony in order to get rid of him, and then made him Chief Justice there to prevent his coming back--at any rate, that is what ill-natured people said. He had plenty of ability, but little experience in criminal law. He felt that pirates wanted hanging, and he hanged them; but I fear that he was technically wrong.

There were three brothers at Moreton who went out to America. They were not relations of mine, but were connexions by the marriage of their eldest brother to one of my great-great-aunts, a sister of my father’s mother’s mother. So far as I know the family history, it begins with Clement Jackson of Moreton and Honor his wife, and goes on through their son Abraham, born 1678, their grandson Jabez, born 1700, and their great-grandson James, born 1730, to their great-great-grandsons Jabez, born 1756, James, born 1757, Abraham, born 1767, and Henry, born 1778. The last three went to America in 1772, 1783 and 1790, married there, and died there in 1806, 1809, and 1840. They all settled in Georgia. Their father had a friend out there, John Wereat; and Wereat looked after James, and James looked after his young brothers.

James sided with the colonists in the War of Independence. He was in a law-office at Savannah in the spring of 1776, when the British ships came down from Boston commandeering; and he joined in the resistance there and went on through the war, becoming a colonel then and a major-general ten years afterwards. He was in the House of Representatives in the first Congress of the United States, 1789 to 1791, and (after a disputed election) again till 1793, and then in the Senate from 1793 to 1795, when he resigned and went back to Georgia to attend to matters there. He was Governor of Georgia from 1798 to 1801, and a Senator again from 1801 until his death (at Washington) in 1806. It was a strange career for anybody born at Moreton.

His brothers Abraham and Henry did not go out to America until the war was over. Abraham became a colonel. He fought a dozen duels, and in the last one he and his opponent shot each other through the legs. They had no seconds and no doctor, and were fighting on a lonely island in a stream; and both were nearly dead when they were found. That was the story that my father always told me; but I see there is a similar story in Charlton’s _Life of James Jackson_, page 18--“They went upon the ground without seconds, and fought at the desperate distance of a few feet.... Mr Wells lost his life, and Major Jackson was badly wounded in both of his knees.” That was in 1780, and the Major was James, not Abraham, who was still in England then.

The youngest brother, Henry, came over to Paris in 1814 as secretary of legation under Crawford, the United States minister-plenipotentiary; and, when Crawford left, he stayed on as chargé d’affaires till a new minister came. And his son, Henry Rootes Jackson, came over to Vienna as chargé d’affaires in 1853, and was United States minister-resident there from 1854 till 1858. At that time Francis Joseph was quite young, and had not yet acquired the kindly dignity that graced his later years; and H. R. Jackson told my father how very difficult it was, in speaking to that great raw boy, to realize that one was speaking to an Apostolic Majesty.

He was staying in London with my father in July and August 1854, and was talking of coming down to stay here, but I am not certain that he ever came. In an undated letter from Vienna he says, “If you could get my father’s likeness for me, I should be most grateful.” And my grandfather writes to my father, 31 December 1854, “I have Mr Jackson’s picture and have paid a pound for it. It is a much better thing than I expected: it is very well done, and the colours are very good; but the paper is rotten. He has but one eye: his dress resembles more of the nobility than of the middle classes.” This suggests some earlier member of the Jackson family; but I do not know which one had lost an eye.

He wrote my father letters of rather ponderous jocosity: thus, Vienna, 8 December 1855, “I have determined, on the whole, not to take immediate notice of the aspersions which you have felt yourself called upon to launch at my country in general, and at the hogs of my native state in particular. If I recollect aright, there are certain points in the British Isles where persons, who raise hogs, are in the habit of tying knots in their tails to prevent them from getting entirely through such holes as may be accidentally left in barn walls. I leave it to be determined whether these would, or would not, be apt scholars in the art of snake killing.” On sending her one of these letters to read, 11 December 1856, my father remarks to my mother that it is “a strange contrast to the refined and classic taste of his poems.” His poems, I believe, were never much known in England; or even in America, outside the southern states. And the best of them, _My wife and child_, was attributed to T. J. Jackson, usually called ‘Stonewall.’

H. R. Jackson had been a colonel in the Mexican war, and was made a brigadier-general in the Confederate army at the beginning of the War of Secession; and he went through it all, surrendering at last at Nashville. He had a son whom I remember very well; and the boy went all through it too, from the beginning (when he was under sixteen) down to the bitter end. So late as 31 May 1864 he writes from Savannah, “I am confident of our ultimate success.” Thirty years afterwards, when he talked of it to me, he said the Southerners had not been beaten by the Northerners themselves, but by an alien force: there were comparatively few real Yankees amongst the prisoners and dead. No doubt, the South would have enlisted foreigners too, had not the blockade excluded them.

People in England mostly saw things from the Southern point of view; and when the Northern point of view was put before them, it was not always put persuasively. A certain Dr Jephson of Boston, U.S., delivered an address at the Athenæum at Exeter on 17 March 1863. “The present murderous and fratricidal war in the United States has been fomented by the American slave-holders and the cotton-brokers in England.... This plot on the part of the American slave-holders and the cotton fraternity in England conjointly, to destroy the American Union, has served to evoke such a bitter feeling on the part of the American people against England....” Here was a red rag for John Bull. What right had the Northerners to call themselves the American people? They were only part of it, and the Southerners were part as well. If this had been a cotton-spinning district, there would have been a riot. In those years I was often staying with an aunt of mine not far from Macclesfield and Bollington, where there were cotton mills; and I saw something of the misery and destitution there, when the mills ceased work for want of raw material. No one cared a bit about the merits of the quarrel between the North and South; but everyone could see it was the Northerners who caused all this distress--the supply of cotton was stopped by their blockade.

It usually was called a fratricidal war; but in many of the letters here I find it called ‘this stupid war,’ and perhaps that was the better epithet. Had the northern states said Go In Peace, the Wayward Sisters would have been home again by now.

My father writes to my grandfather, Basle, 8 August 1849, “Mr Elihu Burritt, the American writer, is travelling to get converts to the Peace Congress, who are going to hold their next meeting at Paris on the 22nd. I had several hours of conversation with him about America.... Four Americans arrived here with us last evening, for a rapid run thro’ the country and then on to attend the Peace Congress. They cannot speak anything but English, and I had to translate for them at the stations, else they would have got nothing to eat all day.”

My father always wrote home an account of little things to entertain the old folks here. Thus, he writes from Exeter, 30 October 1838, “I went to the Cathedral on Sunday morning: the Bishop seemed wonderfully devout. He always is so in appearance, but there was less parade of it on Sunday. I hope his sins, or at least a few of them, were wiped away by his humility.”

He writes to one of his aunts, 19 August 1839, that he had been to Windsor the day before (Sunday) and a friend at court had given him a seat in the inner part of St George’s Chapel, and the Queen “wore a white bonnet placed very far back over the head,” and “seemed tolerably attentive to the service.”... “Afterwards she came out to walk on the terrace, and walked all round amongst the people: we all made way, and divided into two rows to let her pass between: she bowed to the people as she passed, but walked through with a most royal air. She wore the same little bonnet, and a blue gown and shawl. The Duchess of Kent walked behind, occasionally by the side of her, but generally the Queen walked on in front, very boldly, and seemed not to mind going in amongst the crowd.”

He writes to my grandmother, 11 June 1840, “There has been a good deal of talk here today in consequence of a young fellow having last evening fired two pistols at the Queen as she was riding out: he was within eight yards of her carriage, which was a low open one: the bullets passed very near, but both missed her: he is in custody.... Last week I had a ticket given me and was at the great Slave Trade Abolition meeting at Exeter Hall. Prince Albert was in the chair: he looks at least 24 or 25, and has a regular German expression of face. He managed very well and was not at all puzzled or frightened at facing so large a meeting. He read his speech off his hat. There were some good speeches, Archdeacon Wilberforce, Dr Lushington, Sir Robert Peel, the latter much cheered, altho’ the applause to O’Connell beat everything else. It was tremendous. I met him walking in Fleet Street a day or two previously. He was then looking rather meanly dressed, but at the Meeting he was in prime order, his best wig all nicely curled, a new hat, good coat, and his face red and shining as a schoolboy’s.”

At that time of life my father thought a good deal of the way that people dressed. I have seen two letters of his to young men coming up to town: he tells them what things should be done and what things left undone; but, before all things, they must not fail to wear black satin stocks. The satin gleams in a daguerreotype of him, taken at Daguerre’s on 7 or 8 October 1842, “on the roof of a seven story house, whence there is a splendid view of Paris.” Later portraits of him show the gradual decline of the stock into a chequered neckerchief, and then into a lavender necktie taking only one turn round the neck.

He writes to one of his aunts, 9 May 1839, “We went to the National Gallery and saw all the new paintings of the year.” From 1838 to 1868 the Royal Academy exhibitions were held at the National Gallery--I went to several of them there--but they had previously been held at Somerset House. He notes in his diary, 13 July 1832, “Went to Somerset House, saw all the paintings,” and on 25 July, “Went to Angerstein’s paintings.” The present National Gallery was not built then, and the pictures were still at Angerstein’s in Pall Mall.--He also notes, 31 July, “Saw Perkins’ steam gun, which fired 78 bullets in one minute against some very thick iron plates at 30 yards distance, where the bullets were immediately flattened with the force.”

He writes to her again from the Belle Vue at Brussels, 27 July 1839, “The interior of the inn is all good, excepting as to carpets, which are scarce, being of English manufacture and a heavy duty paid on them.” Yet we talk of Brussels carpets: also of Vienna glass. I have a letter here that I wrote to my mother from Vienna, 15 August 1875, “Not a bit of Vienna glass to be seen anywhere.”

My father writes from Louvain, 11 October 1843, “We went out after the rain to see the most remarkable object in the town, the magnificent Hôtel de Ville: far surpassing the idea I had formed from the engravings of it. The whole of the exterior is most elaborately and finely carved, and delicate beyond description; and it is absolutely perfect as regards repair, not one inch of carving being broken.”--Happily it is quite perfect still, in spite of our great Propaganda lie of the Destruction of Louvain.

He writes from Braine-le-Comte, 3 August 1849, “I don’t notice the slightest difference in France caused by the Revolution: all seems just as it used to be.” And from Basle, 8 August, “All the Baden territory is under martial law and full of Prussian troops, but agriculture goes on just as if nothing had happened.”

He writes from Dinan to my grandfather on 12 August 1847, “This morning we went through the market and saw pigs there as tall and thin as greyhounds.” And to my grandmother on 15 August, “You would be surprised to see how exemplary the parish priests are here in their conduct: it beats everything I have ever seen in England. Their whole time is devoted to their flock. They have service _every_ day, and spend the rest of it in calling on the different members of their congregation, the poorest as well as the richest.”

Though my father’s letters were pretty full, my grandmother detected gaps. She writes, 15 January 1840, “You don’t say who you were with at Covent Garden seeing out the old year and bringing in the new. I should like to know.” And then she gives him a little bit of good advice--“Youth passes rapidly away: therefore, my dear son, make the most and the best of it.” Later on she feared that he was making a little too much of it. She writes him, 20 November 1842, “I hope never to hear you express a wish to go on the Continent more. I recollect your saying when you came to Wreyland that you had not been in bed for two nights.” I see from his diary that it was three: one in the diligence, Paris to Boulogne, the next in the steamer, Boulogne to London, and the next in the train, London to Taunton, and in the coach from there. I see also from his diary that he was at Covent Garden with persons of complete respectability.

I have nearly a thousand letters that my grandfather and grandmother wrote to him from here, and I suppose he wrote as many in reply; but few of these survived. My grandfather writes to him, 29 October 1848, “I looked all the house over for your letter, but could not find it, your mother having destroyed lots of my papers, as she does when it takes her in head, without asking whether it is of importance or not: which very often inconveniences me.” I wish my grandfather had locked his papers up.

People have told me that they have destroyed old parchments, “as nobody could read such things.” And out of ignorance or wantonness people have been destroying things year after year. In 1837 my father was taking notes and copying documents, as if he meant to write a history of the neighbourhood. On coming to Wrey Barton he observes, “The late owner is said about fifteen years ago to have burnt all the deeds which were then more than sixty years old.” In the winter of 1838-39 he copied out a document of 20 August 1607 with a copy of a document of 21 September 1342 annexed to it, “which roll is now shewed forth to the said commissioners, and the copy thereof is filed unto these presentments.” The old roll sets out the customs of the manor of South Teign. That manor extended into the parishes of Chagford, Moreton and North Bovey, and first belonged to the Crown and then to the Duchy of Cornwall. Under an Act of 13 July 1863 (26 & 27 Victoria, cap. 49) the Duchy was empowered to sell the manor; and there is a letter from the Duchy office, 4 November 1863, asking my father for a copy of his copy. I suppose the original had disappeared since 1839.

My father once sent a friend a ‘short-copy’ of an article on the interaction of the Anglo-Saxon and the Celtic languages. A ‘short-copy’ is a reprint of such pages in a publication as make up an article; but the venerable man was not aware of this, and wrote back in a rage, Moreton, 28 July 1857, “Some confounded rascal has torn away 38 pages from the beginning of the work, and how many from the latter part I cannot say, it ends at 94. If I could get hold of the ears of the scoundrel, I would make them tingle. Such a gratuitous piece of mischief is enough to make a saint mad, for I dare say the fellow could make no more of his plunder than a pig.”

In the English edition of Hanotaux’s _Contemporary France_ there is a footnote, vol. 1, page 127--“Demander a Bertrand le text Billet.” Bertrand was the librarian at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and I suppose Hanotaux wanted to quote the document at first hand from the archives instead of quoting it at second hand as printed in Lamberty. And his editor did not understand.

The ancients also made mistakes like that. There is a Greek inscription at Stratoniceia, engraved in Fellows’ _Asia Minor_, pages 255, 256. It looks just like a table of accounts--the words begin at the left end of the lines, and at the right end there are figures, with an interval of varying length between the figures and the words. It really is a set of verses, and the figures give the number of letters in each line. They probably were meant to guide the mason in his work, but he has carved it all up on the temple wall. On the temple wall at Denderah there is a long inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphics with portraits of the deities who are mentioned in the text. At the portrait of Isis the hieroglyphics say “wood: gold: eyes of precious stone: two cubits high,” at the portrait of Heqit (the frog goddess) they say “silver overlaid with gold: five spans high,” and so on--it is engraved in Mariette’s _Denderah_, vol. IV, plate 88. The mason has carved his instructions on the wall, not knowing the meaning of the hieroglyphs.

Goethe used often to dictate, but did not always look at what was written down; and years afterwards (_Werke_, vol. XLV, pp. 158 ff., ed. 1835) he found that Tugendfreund had been taken down as Kuchenfreund, John Hunter as Schon Hundert, and so on.

Printers sometimes make mistakes. In a proof that I was reading for a friend, the nomen and pre-nomen of Rameses II had become his women and pre-women. But very often it is not the printer’s fault. In my former _Small Talk_ I wrote Anaxagoras for Aristagoras, and passed it in the proofs, page 76. Had it been anybody else’s work, I should have seen the error at once; but I suppose my mind was running on what I meant to say, and I thought I saw it there. And this may also be the reason why amateur artists very often fail to see the faults in their own work. They see the picture that they meant to paint, and not the daub that they have done.

Poets, I presume, use verse in preference to prose because it suits their thoughts; and yet they often sacrifice the substance to the form. In _Ye mariners of England_ Campbell wants a rhyme for ‘seas,’ and therefore says their flag has braved ‘the battle and the breeze.’ It ought to be ‘the battle and the blast’--the breeze needs no more braving than sham-fights. In _Dies iræ_ Tommaso da Celano (or whoever it was) had to find a rhyme for ‘favilla’ and ‘sibylla,’ and thus came down to ‘dies illa,’ which is much too mild a term for Doomsday. Translators have avoided this by putting in some stronger term--Macaulay makes it “On that great, that awful day.” And in translations this is possible, though not in the original, as there is no fit word that rhymes.

According to Macaulay’s _Ivry_, the knights had only one spur each, “a thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest, a thousand knights,” etc. Tennyson says Six Hundred in _The Charge of the Light Brigade_, but that was not actually the strength. If I were editing him, I should put in a note in proper form--“six hundred: compare ‘sexcenta’ in Latin and ‘hexacosia’ in late Greek, a round number based on the Babylonian sexagesimal system and used indefinitely, like myriad.”

Annotations and translations may explain things, but are never so neat as emendations that make an author say just what you think he should have said. Why should Saint Paul want ladies to cover their heads, ‘dia tous aggelous,’ because of the angels? Listen to Jeremy Taylor, his _Liberty of Prophesying_, section 3, “If it were read ‘dia tous agelous,’ that the sense be, women in public assemblies must wear a vail, by reason of the companies of young men there present, it would be no ill exchange for the loss of a letter, to make so probable, so clear a sense of the place.”

And very often emendations may be made without touching the letters at all, Shakespeare says in his _Sonnets_, 107, “The prophetic soul of the wide world, dreaming on things to come.” Homer might likewise say that the future is in the dreams of the gods, ‘theôn en g’ounasi,’ instead of saying that it is on their knees, ‘en gounasi.’ An apostrophe is all you want. Change the vowel-points, and you may connect Magdalene with ‘megaddela,’ and so get Mary the Masseuse.

When Aristotle’s _Constitution of Athens_ was brought to light and printed, I made some observations on it in the _Athenæum_, 7 February 1891, a few days after it came out. The editor had cited the passage in chapter 54 which shows that it was written after 329 B.C., but had overlooked a passage in chapter 46 which shows that it was written before 325 B.C.; and I cited this passage, and thereby limited the date. Amongst other things I proposed to read _architheô_ ... for _archiereô_ ... in chapter 56, as I happened to remember that _architheôrois_ came in the same context in an inscription of that period. I think my reading was right--all subsequent editions have adopted it--but I should very much like to know if the word went wrong in copying or dictation, or was a slip of Aristotle’s own pen.

I fancy that the Greek and Latin authors wrote the wrong word now and then, and never noticed it. That is not the view of textual critics and editors: they ascribe all errors to the men who copied out the manuscripts. But this limits them to errors that might arise in copying, and thus restricts the choice of emendations far too much. Take such an emendation as _Isara_ for _Arar_ in Livy, xxi. 31. This makes Livy say that the river was the Isère, not the Saône; but the context requires him to say it was the Durance, otherwise he would be saying ‘right’ instead of ‘left’ a few lines further on. A copyist might easily write _arar_ for _isara_, so this emendation is accepted, although it does not suit.

Such emendations are deceitful things. In this case they make Livy say the Isère, and make Polybios say it also, iii. 49, though he says something else; and then Members of the Alpine Club go saying that the river must have been the Isère, since Livy and Polybios agree in saying that it was. Other folk may say it does not matter what the river was; but that is a reason for leaving the whole thing alone, not for getting it wrong. If you take it up at all, you should not risk the sort of snubbing that Westbury gave the herald after cross-examination--“Go away, you silly man: you don’t even understand your own silly science.”

My father used to tell me of Westbury’s methods at the Bar. A judge would put a question that seemed to be a poser. Westbury would pause, and then he would not only answer it convincingly, but would put the point with such lucidity that you could not understand how anyone had failed to see it. And the judge would turn quite red, feeling that he had asked a foolish question, and people in court would titter and guffaw, though half of them could never have answered it at all.

But gifts that help an advocate, may be a hindrance to an author. It does sometimes happen that a reviewer knows no more about a subject than he could gather from the book he is reviewing. An author collects materials till he is bewildered--“cannot see the wood for the trees”--and he makes a bulky book, putting all this material in, but doing nothing to clear the subject up. And the reviewer will praise him for his wealth of learning, and will say he has done all that is humanly possible towards the solution of a problem that really is insoluble. Another author sifts the materials and solves the problem. He makes a much smaller book, putting in nothing that is not essential, and stating his conclusions so effectively that they command assent. And the reviewer will dismiss it as a book of platitudes, which tells you nothing that is not obvious to the meanest comprehension.--These, of course, are extreme cases; but the reviewer often fails to see that mere pomposity is not a guarantee of solid learning, and that frivolity need not mean shallowness. There was an essay, _The critic as artist_, written by Wilde in 1891, and full of epigram and paradox; and the reviewers were so dazzled by his flippancy that hardly any of them saw how much sound sense there was beneath it all. A good judge told me that he considered it the best thing of its kind since Plato.

A friend of mine in the same house at Harrow went up to Oxford at the same time that I went up to Cambridge, October 1876. He came over to see me at Trinity, and I went over to see him at Magdalen. (It made me wish that I had gone there too.) On the Sunday evening the Lessons were read by one of the Demies. His reading was dramatically good, but his appearance was astonishing, with his long hair hanging down upon his surplice. I asked who on earth he was, and was told he was a man named Wilde, who could be awfully amusing, but dressed just like a guy. I never made his acquaintance; but, having once seen him, I knew him by sight for evermore. The last time I saw him was in September 1897. I was at Naples, and he was staying in the same hotel--under an assumed name.

My father was never a collector, but would sometimes buy a thing he liked. My grandfather did not approve, and used to write him letters about it, thus, 27 May 1855, “I should say your money might be more advantageously employed than with coins and pictures.” When my grandfather was eighty and my father fifty, this lecturing still went on: 27 July 1869, “You may say No business of mine. I am your father.” It was my turn next. I had a little money when I came of age, and I had a wish to buy a picture by Burne Jones, _Laus Veneris_. My elders looked askance, and talked about Consols; but I should have made a very much better investment than Consols, had I bought that picture then and sold it some years afterwards.

Amongst other presents when I came of age, I got a pair of old bronze busts of Roman emperors. They have been a source of pleasure to me now for forty years; but a dear old lady asked me on that festal day what comfort I should find in them upon my death-bed. There is a precept in the Talmud, _Bâbâ Bathrâ_, vol. VIII, page 60 _b_--“If they are merry at a wedding-feast, cast ashes on the bridegroom’s head.” Happily, she did not know of that. She would have done it, if she had.

I began collecting Greek vases soon after I had come of age, and I found many pitfalls in the way. Thus, I bought three vases somewhere in Etruria in 1883, and the owner undertook to smuggle them out of Italy; but one of the three he sent me, was not one of the three I chose; and I had no redress. There was never much risk of buying a vase that was a downright sham. Plenty of ancient vases come to light in a dilapidated state, and the forgers fake these up in preference to making new ones. I got to know their tricks, but have not kept pace with them since I gave up collecting. In looking at a vase not long ago, I said I could not see the slightest difference between the new glaze and the old. A wiser man said, “Lick it,” and then I found the new glaze had a different taste.

I was at a sale of antiquities at Sotheby’s in 1890, and one of the lots consisted of two Greek vases which were so much alike in style and shape and size that they would make a pair. But one of them was obviously a modern copy of the Amymone vase in the Jatta collection at Ruvo; and people in the auction room resented this, and called out to the auctioneer to go on to the next lot. He said, “But really, gentlemen, are there no bids at all for this?” and I said, “Oh, ten shillings,” and he knocked it down to me. And thus I not only got the copy but got the other vase as well; and this is genuine enough and very interesting too, as it depicts the race in which a lighted torch was carried by runners in relays.

All these Greek vases here were made between 600 and 400 B.C. or thereabouts. In the early style the figures are painted in black and purple on the pale yellow of the clay: in the next style the clay is orange and the painting is technically better, and large portions of the vases are painted black: in the next stage the process is reversed--instead of black figures on an orange or yellow background, there is now a black background with red figures, red being now the colour of the clay. These red-figured vases show Greek art at its very best, and the others mark the stages that led up to it. Personally, I do not care much for vases earlier than these. Very nice vases were found at Ialysos in the island of Rhodes, and Ruskin bought them for the British Museum; but they have none of those great qualities that make Greek art worth studying, nor even a foretaste of such qualities. In its maturity Greek art was far the greatest that the world has ever seen, but it was not so in its infancy or its senile decay.

Apart from any merit they may have as works of art, Greek vases often have a human interest, especially if they are inscribed. One vase here tells you as an interesting fact, “Tleson, the son of Nearchos, made me.” Another says, “Zephyria is a beauty”; and there is the lady herself, attired in a very big helmet and a little pair of drawers, wielding a shield and spear as she performs a Pyrrhic dance. (There is a picture of this vase in the _Revue Archéologique_ for 1895, vol. XXVI, page 221.) Another depicts a man conversing with a youth, and the man has the features of Socrates and satyr’s ears as well. This vase came out of a tomb at Siana in the island of Rhodes, and is as fresh as when it left the potter’s hands at Athens: its only blemish is the imprint of his thumb, made by touching it before the clay was dry. Others are interesting for their former owners’ sake. One belonged to Fergusson, the historian of architecture, and another to Samuel Rogers, the poet, and others to great collectors of the Vulci period, such as Beugnot and Durand.

Being at Burgos, 3 September 1877, I went out to the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, the burial-place of the Cid. The monastery had been uninhabited for forty years: the keys were kept at a village some way off, and the man who kept them had gone out shooting. (Whilst waiting for his return, I saw a little of Spanish agriculture: the oxen treading out the corn, and the peasants winnowing it by throwing it up into the air and trusting to the wind to blow the chaff away.) When he returned, we went down to the monastery; and in the library he suggested that I might like to take away a book or two in remembrance of the place. I had scruples, but he really was considering the best interests of the books themselves. If I had taken them, they might be here in safety; and they have rotted away.

The museums at Athens were a sore temptation to collectors, when I first went there more than forty years ago. There were a dozen of these museums scattered about the town: some of them mere sheds, and hardly any with glass cases for the smaller things, but only wire netting. And there were such beautiful little things that would so easily come through the mesh and go into a collector’s pocket; and they could not possibly be reclaimed, as they were not marked or numbered, and the inventories were vague. In my innocence I bought a vase from a distinguished man (a Greek) and paid him rather a high price for it, forgetting that he probably had stolen it, and I might just as well have stolen it myself.

A very curious vase was discovered in Ægina and placed in one of these museums, a shed on the Acropolis. The vase had a globular body and a griffin’s neck and head above, with the griffin’s beak as spout. A long time afterwards the British Museum bought a vase exactly like it, discovered (it was said) in Thera. As there was one vase of this kind, there might very well be others; but the vase from Ægina was no longer to be found in any museum at Athens.