ONE LOOK 
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 One look back 
 
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ONE LOOK BACK 
 
John Russell, First Earl of Bedford, and Knight of the 
 Garter. 
 
 After Holbehu 
 
ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 BY THE RIGHT HON. 
 
 GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL 
 
 "Soever we wince, though none deplore as. 
 We, who go reaping that we sowed; 
 Cities at cock-crow wake before us — 
 
 Hey, for the lilt of the London road I 
 ONE LOOK SACK, and a rousing chorus I 
 Never a palinode I" 
 
 Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch 
 
 Garden City New York 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 1912 
 
AMmio 
 
 Copyright, igii, by 
 Wells Gardner, Daeton & Co., 
 
To ' 
 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 In honour o( the best gift 
 which Oxford gave me 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Beginnings i 
 
 II. Harrow 24 
 
 III. Harroviana 43 
 
 IV. Oxford 66 
 
 V. OXONIANA 85 
 
 VI. Home 106 
 
 VII. London 122 
 
 VIII. Hospitality 147 
 
 IX. Electioneering 169 
 
 X. Parliament 194 
 
 XI. Politics 232 
 
 XII. Oratory 266 
 
 XIII. Literature 290 
 
 XIV. Service 317 
 
 XV. Ecclesiastica 342 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 John Russell, First Earl of Bedford and Knight of the Garter. 
 After Holbein Frontispiece 
 
 Home Facing 8 
 
 By A. S. Rouse. 
 
 "The Hill" Facing 44 
 
 By A. S. Rouse. 
 
 Dorchester House, Park Lane: now the United States Em- 
 bassy Facing 130 
 
 By L. Russell Conway. 
 
 The Houses of Parliament by Night .... Facing 196 
 By A . S. Rouse. 
 
 The Lady Chapel, Southwark Cathedral .... Facing 356 
 By L. Russell Conway. 
 
BEGINNINGS 
 
 One look back — as we hurry o'er the plain, 
 
 Man's years speeding us along — 
 One look back! From the hollow past again. 
 
 Youth, come flooding into song! 
 Tell how once, in the breath of summer air, 
 
 Winds blew fresher than they blow; 
 Times long hid, with their triumph and their care, 
 
 Yesterday — many years ago! 
 
 E. E. BowBN. 
 
 The wayfarer who crosses Lincoln's Inn Fields 
 perceives in the midst of them a kind of wooden 
 temple, and passes by it unmoved. But, if his 
 curiosity tempts him to enter it, he sees, through 
 an aperture in the boarded floor, a slab of stone 
 bearing this inscription : 
 
 "On this spot was beheaded 
 
 William Lord Russell, 
 
 A lover of constitutional liberty, 
 
 2ist July, A.D. 1683." 
 
 Of the martyr thus temperately eulogized I am the 
 great-great-great-great-grandson, and I agree with 
 The Antiquary, that " it's a shame to the English 
 language that we have not a less clumsy way of 
 
2 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 expressing a relationship of which we have occa- 
 sion to think and speak so frequently." 
 
 Before we part company with what Sydney 
 Smith called my " acephalous ancestor," let me tell 
 a story bearing on his historical position. When 
 my father was a cornet in the Blues, he invited a 
 brother-officer to spend some of his leave at Wo- 
 burn Abbey. One day, when the weather was too 
 bad for any kind of sport, the visitor was induced 
 to have a look at the pictures. The Rembrandts, 
 and Cuyps, and Van Dykes and Sir Joshuas bored 
 him to extremity, but accidentally his eye lit on 
 Ha)^er's famous picture of Lord Russell's trial, 
 and, with a sudden gleam of intelligence, he ex- 
 claimed, "Hullo! What's this? It looks like a 
 trial." My father answered, with modest pride — 
 " It is a trial — the trial of my ancestor, William, 
 Lord Russell." " Good heavens ! my dear fellow 
 — an ancestor of yours tried? What a shocking 
 thing! I hope he got off." 
 
 So much for our Family Martyr. 
 
 In analysing one's nationality, it is natural to re- 
 gard one's four grand-parents as one's component 
 parts. Tried by this test, I am half an English- 
 man, one quarter a Highlander, and one quarter a 
 Welshman, for my father's father was wholly Eng- 
 lish; my father's mother wholly Scotch; my moth- 
 er's father wholly Welsh ; and my mother's mother 
 
BEGINNINGS 3 
 
 wholly English. My grandfather, the sixth Duke 
 of Bedford, was bom in 1766 and died in 1839. 
 He married, as his second wife, Lady Georgiana 
 Gordon, sister of the last Duke of Gordon, and her- 
 self " the last of the Gordons " of the senior line. 
 She died just after I was born, and from her and the 
 " gay Gordons " who preceded her, I derive my 
 characteristically Gordon name of George. It has 
 always been a comfort to me, when rebuked for 
 ritualistic tendencies, to recall that I am great- 
 great-nephew of that undeniable Protestant, Lord 
 George Gordon, whose icon I daily revere. My 
 grandmother had a numerous family, of whom my 
 father was the third. He was born in Dublin 
 Castle, his father being then Lord-Lieutenant of 
 Ireland in the Ministry of "All the Talents." 
 My grandfather had been a political and personal 
 friend of Charles James Fox, and Fox had prom- 
 ised to be godfather to his next child. But Fox 
 died on the 13th of September, 1806, and my fa- 
 ther did not appear till the loth of February, 1807. 
 Fox's nephew, Henry Lord Holland, took over 
 the sponsorship, and bestowed the names of 
 " Charles James Fox " on the infant Whig, who, 
 as became his father's viceregal state, was chris- 
 tened by the Archbishop of Dublin, with water 
 from a golden bowl. 
 
 The life so impressively auspicated lasted till the 
 
4 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 29th of June, 1894. So my father, who remem- 
 bered an old Highlander who had been out with 
 Prince Charlie in '45, lived to see the close of Mr. 
 Gladstone's fourth Premiership. He was educated 
 at Rotting^ean, at Westminster, where my family 
 had fagged and fought for many generations, and 
 at the University of Edinburgh, where he boarded 
 with that "paltry Pillans," who according to 
 Byron, "traduced his friend." From Edinburgh 
 he passed into the Blues, then commanded by 
 Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, and thence into the 
 52nd Regiment. In 1832 he was returned to the 
 first Reformed Parliament as Whig Member for 
 Bedfordshire. He finally retired in 1847, and 
 from that date till 1875 was Sergeant-at-Arms 
 attending the House of Commons. He married in 
 1834, and had six children, of whom I was the 
 youngest by eight years, being born on the 3rd of 
 February, 1853.* 
 
 * To the Editor of The Times. 
 
 Sir — As Links with the Past seem just now to be in fashion, 
 permit me to supply two which concern my near relations. 
 
 1. My uncle, Lord Russell (1792-1878) visited Napoleon at 
 Elba in December, 1814, and had a long conversation with him, 
 which is reported in Spencer Walpole's "Life of Lord John 
 Russell." There must be plenty of people now alive who con- 
 versed with my uncle, so this Link cannot be a very rare one. 
 
 2. My second Link is more remarkable. My father (1807- 
 1894) remembered an old Highlander who had been "out" with 
 Prince Charles Edward in 1745. Of course, this "linking" took 
 place at the extremes of age, my father being a little boy and 
 
BEGINNINGS s 
 
 My birthplace (not yet marked with a blue and 
 white medallion) was i6, Mansfield Street; but 
 very soon afterwards the official residences at the 
 Palace of Westminster were finished, and my fa- 
 ther took possession of the excellent but rather 
 gloomy house in the Speaker's Court, now occu- 
 pied by Mr. Erskine of Cardross. 
 
 Here my clear memories begin. I have indeed 
 some vague impressions of a visit to the widow of 
 my mother's grandfather — Lady Robert Seymour 
 — who died in her ninety-first year when I was two 
 years old; though, as those impressions are chiefly 
 connected with a jam-cupboard, I fancy that they 
 must pertain less to Lady Robert than to her house- 
 keeper. But two memories of my fourth year are 
 perfectly defined. The first is the fire which de- 
 stroyed Covent Garden Theatre on the 5th of 
 March, 1856. " During the operatic recess, Mr. 
 Gye, the lessee of the Theatre, had sub-let it to 
 one Anderson, a performer of sleight-of-hand feats, 
 and so-called ' Professor.' He brought his short 
 season to a close by an entertainment described as 
 a ' Grand Carnival Complimentary Benefit and 
 
 the Highlander a very old man. My grandfather, the sixth 
 Duke of Bedford, was one of the first Englishmen who took a 
 shooting in the Highlands (on the Spey), and the first time that 
 my father accompanied him to the north. Prince Charlie's fol- 
 lower was stiU living near the place which my grandfather rented. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 Sept. 6, iQio. Geqrqe; W. E. Russell. 
 
6 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Dramatic Gala, to commence on Monday morning-, 
 and terminate with a bal masque on Tuesday night.' 
 At 3 on the Wednesday morning, the Professor 
 thought it time to close the orgies. At this mo- 
 ment the gasfitter discovered the fire issuing from 
 the cracks of the ceiling, and, amid the wildest 
 shrieking and confusion, the drunken, panic- 
 stricken masquers rushed to the street. The flames 
 burst through the roof, sending high up into the 
 air columns of fire, which threw into bright re- 
 flection every tower and spire within the circuit of 
 the metropolis, brilliantly illuminating the whole 
 fabric of St. Paul's, and throwing a flood of light 
 across Waterloo Bridge, which set out in bold re- 
 lief the dark outline of the Surrey hills." That 
 " flood of light " was beheld by me, held up in my 
 nurse's arms at a window under " Big Ben," which 
 looks on Westminster Bridge. When in later 
 years I have occasionally stated in a mixed com- 
 pany that I could remember the burning of Covent 
 Garden Theatre, I have noticed a general expres- 
 sion of surprised interest, and have been told, in a 
 tone meant to be kind and complimentary, that my 
 hearers would hardly have thought that my mem- 
 ory went back so far. The explanation has been 
 that these good people had some vague notions of 
 Rejected Addresses floating through their minds, 
 and confounded the burning of Covent Garden 
 
BEGINNINGS 7 
 
 Theatre in 1856 with that of Drury Lane Theatre 
 in 1809. Most people have no chronological sense. 
 
 Our home was at Woburn, in a house belonging 
 to the Duke of Bedford, but given by my grand- 
 father to my parents for their joint and several 
 lives. My father's duties at the House of Com- 
 mons kept him in London during the Parliament- 
 ary Session, but my mother, who detested Lon- 
 don and worshipped her garden, used to return 
 with her family to Woburn, in time to superin- 
 tend the " bedding-out." My first memory is con- 
 nected with my home in London; my second with 
 my home in the country, and the rejoicings for the 
 termination of the Crimean War. 
 
 Under the date of May 29, 1856, we read in 
 Annals of Our Time, " Throughout the King- 
 dom, the day was marked by a cessation from 
 work, and, during the night, illuminations and 
 fireworks were all but universal." The banners 
 and bands of the triumphal procession which pa- 
 raded the streets of our little town — scarcely more 
 than a village in dimensions — made as strong an 
 impression on my mind as the conflagration which 
 had startled all London in the previous March. 
 
 People who have only known me as a double- 
 dyed Londoner always seem to find a difficulty in 
 believing that I once was a countr)rman; yet, for 
 the first twenty-five years of my life, I lived al- 
 
8 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 most entirely in the country. " We could never 
 have loved the earth so well, if we had had no 
 childhood in it — if it were not the earth where the 
 same flowers come up again every spring, that we 
 used to gathtr with our tiny fingers as we sat 
 lisping to ourselves on the grass — ^the same hips 
 and haws on the autumn hedgerows. . . . One's 
 delight in an elderberry bush overhanging the 
 confused leafage of a hedgerow bank, as a more 
 gladdening sight than the finest cistus or fuchsia 
 spreading itself on the softest undulating turf, is 
 an entirely unjustifiable preference to a Nursery- 
 Gardener. And there is no better reason for pre- 
 ferring this elderberry bush than that it stirs an 
 early memory — that it is no novelty in my life, 
 speaking to me merely through my present sensi- 
 bilities to form and colour, but the long compan- 
 ion of my existence, that wove itself into my joys 
 when joys were vivid." 
 
 I had the unspeakable advantage of being reared 
 in close contact with Nature, in an aspect beautiful 
 and wild. My father's house was remarkable for 
 its pretty garden, laid out with the old-fashioned 
 intricacy of pattern, and blazing, even into autumn, 
 with varied colour. In the midst of it, a large 
 and absolutely symmetrical cedar " spread its dark 
 green layers of shade," and supplied us in sum- 
 mer with a kind of al fresco sitting-room. The 
 
BEGINNINGS 9 
 
 background of the garden was formed by the tow- 
 ering trees of Woburn Park; and dose by there 
 were great tracts of woodland, which stretch far 
 into Buckinghamshire, and have the character and 
 effect of virgin forest. 
 
 Having no boy-companions (for my only brother 
 was ten years older than myself), of course I 
 played no games, except croquet. I was brought 
 up in a sporting home, my father being an enthu- 
 siastic foxhunter and a good all-round sportsman. 
 I abhorred shooting, and was badly bored by cours- 
 ing and fishing. Indeed, I believe I can say with 
 literal truth that I have never killed anything larger 
 than a wasp, and that only in self-defence. But 
 Woburn is an ideal country for riding, and I spent 
 a good deal of my time on an excellent pony, or 
 more strictly, galloway. An hour or two with the 
 hounds was the reward of virtue in the school- 
 room; and cub-hunting in a woodland country at 
 7 o'clock on a September morning still remains my 
 most cherished memory of physical enjoyment. 
 
 " That things are not as ill with you and me as 
 they might have been is half owing to the number 
 who lived faithfully a hidden life, and now rest 
 in unvisited tombs." Most true: and among that 
 faithful number I must remember our governess, 
 — Catherine Emily Runciman — who devoted forty 
 years of her life, in one capacity or another, to us 
 
lo ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 and to our parents. She was what boys call " jolly 
 out of school," but rather despotic in it; and, after 
 a few trials of strength, I was emancipated from 
 her control when I was eight. When we were in 
 London for the Session of Parliament, I attended 
 a Day School, kept by two sisters of John Leech, in 
 a curious little cottage, since destroyed, at the bot- 
 tom of Lower Belgrave Street. Just at the age 
 when, in the ordinary course, I should have gone 
 to a boarding-school, it was discovered that I was 
 physically unfit for the experiment; and then I had 
 a series of tutors at home. To one of these tutors 
 my father wrote — " I must warn you of your pu- 
 pil's powers of conversation, and tact in leading his 
 teachers into it." 
 
 But I was to a great extent self-taught. We had 
 an excellent, though old-fashioned, library, and I 
 spent a great deal of my time in miscellaneous 
 reading. The Waverley Novels gave me my first 
 taste of literary enjoyment, and Pickwick (in the 
 original green covers) came soon after. Shake- 
 speare and Don Quixote Were imposed by paternal 
 authority. Jeremy Taylor, Fielding, Smollett, 
 Swift, Dryden, Pope, Byron, Moore, Miss Edge- 
 worth, Macaulay, Bulwer-Lytton were among my 
 earliest friends, and I had an insatiable love of 
 dictionaries and encyclopasdias. Tennyson was 
 the first poet whom I really loved, but I also was 
 
BEGINNINGS ii 
 
 fond of Scott's poetry, the Lays of Ancient Rome, 
 the Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, and The Golden 
 Treasury. Milton, Shelley, Wordsworth, and 
 Matthew Arnold came later, but while I was still 
 a boy. George Eliot, Thackeray, Ruskin, and 
 Trollope came when I was at Oxford; and I am 
 not sure that Browning ever came. On the whole, 
 I owe my chief enjoyment to Scott, Dickens, 
 Wordsworth, and Tennyson, and to Pickwick 
 more than to any single book. But I think the 
 keenest thrill of intellectual pleasure which I ever 
 felt passed through me when, as a boy at Harrow, 
 I first read Wordsworth's " Daffodils." 
 
 Our home, in its outward aspects, was extremely 
 bright and cheerful. We had, as a family, a keen 
 sense of fun, much contempt for convention, and 
 great fluency of speech ; and our material surround- 
 ings were such as to make life enjoyable. Even as 
 a child, I used to say to myself, when cantering 
 among Scotch firs and rhododendrons, " The lines 
 are fallen unto me in pleasant places." A graver 
 element was supplied by a good deal of ill-health, by 
 bereavements, and, in some sense, by our way of 
 religion. My home was intensely Evangelical, and 
 I lived from my earliest days in an atmosphere 
 where the salvation of the individual soul was the 
 supreme and constant concern of life. No form of 
 worldliness entered into it, but it was full of good 
 
12 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 works, of social service, and of practical labour for 
 the poor. All life was lived, down to its minutest 
 detail, " as ever in the great task-Master's eye." 
 From our very earliest years we were taught the 
 Bible, at first dfally; and later on were encouraged 
 to read it, by gifts of handsomely bound copies. 
 I remember that our aids to study were Adam 
 Clarke's Commentary, Nicholl's Help to Reading 
 the Bible, and a book called Light in the Dwell- 
 ing. Hymns played a great part in our training. 
 As soon as we could speak, we learned " When 
 rising from the bed of death," and " Beautiful 
 Zion, built above." " Rock of Ages " and " Jesu, 
 Lover of my soul " were soon added. The Church 
 Catechism we were never taught. I was confirmed 
 without learning it. It was said to be too diffi- 
 cult ; it really was too sacramental. By way of an 
 easier exercise, I was constrained to learn " The 
 Shorter Catechism of the General Assembly of 
 Divines at Westminster." We had Family Prayers 
 twice every day. My father read a chapter, very 
 much as the fancy took him, or where the Bible 
 opened of itself; and he read without note or com- 
 ment. I recall a very distinct impression on my in- 
 fant mind that the passages of the Old Testament 
 which were read at prayers had no meaning, and 
 that the public reading of the words, without ref- 
 erence to sense, was an act of piety. After the 
 
BEGINNINGS 13 
 
 chapter, my father read one of Henry Thornton's 
 Family Prayers, replaced in later years by those 
 of Ashton Oxenden. 
 
 While we were still very young children, we 
 were carefully incited to acts of practical charity. 
 We began by carrying dinners to the sick and aged 
 poor ; then we went on to reading hymns and bits 
 of Bible to the blind and unlettered. As soon as 
 we were old enough, we became teachers in Sun- 
 day schools, and conducted classes and cottage 
 meetings. From the very beginning we were 
 taught to save up our money for good causes. 
 Each of us had a " missionary box," and I remem- 
 ber another box, in the counterfeit presentment of 
 a Gothic church, which received contributions for 
 the Church Pastoral Aid Society. When, on an 
 occasion of rare dissipation, I won some shillings at 
 " The Race-Game," they were impounded for the 
 service of the C.M.S., and an aunt of mine, mak- 
 ing her sole excursion into melody, wrote for the 
 benefit of her young friends : 
 
 "Would you like to be told the best use for a penny? 
 I can tell you a use which is better than any — 
 Not on toys or on fruit or on sweetmeats to spend it, 
 But over the seas to the heathen to send it." 
 
 I learned my religion from my mother, the 
 sweetest, brightest, and most persuasive of teach- 
 ers, and what she taught I received as gospel. 
 
14 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 "Oh that those lips had language! Life has past 
 With me but roughly since I heard thee last." 
 
 Sit anima mea cum Sanctis. May my lot be 
 with those EvangeHcal saints from whom I first 
 learned that, in the supreme work of salvation, no 
 human being and no created thing can interpose 
 between the soul and the Creator. Happy is the 
 man whose religious life has been built on the im- 
 pregnable rock of that belief. 
 
 So much for the foundation. The superstruc- 
 ture was rather accidental than designed. 
 
 From my very earliest days I had a natural love 
 of pomp and pageantry; and, though I never saw 
 them, I used to read of them with delight in books 
 of continental travel, and try to depict them in my 
 sketch-books, and even enact them with my toys. 
 Then came Sir Walter Scott, who inspired me, as 
 he inspired so many greater men, with the love of 
 ecclesiastical splendour, and so turned my vague 
 love of ceremony into a definite channel. Another 
 contribution to the same end was made, all unwit- 
 tingly, by my dear and deeply Protestant father. 
 He was an enthusiast for Gothic architecture, and 
 it was natural to enquire the uses of such things 
 as piscinas and sedilia in fabrics which he taught 
 me to admire. And then came the opportune dis- 
 covery (in an idle moment under a dull sermon) 
 of the Occasional Offices of the Prayer Book. If 
 
BEGINNINGS 15 
 
 language meant anything, those Offices meant the 
 sacramental system of the Catholic Church; and 
 the impression derived from the Prayer Book was 
 confirmed by Jeremy Taylor and The Christian 
 Year. I was always impatient of the attempt, even 
 when made by the most respectable people, to per- 
 vert plain English, and I felt perfect confidence in 
 building the Catholic superstructure on my Evan- 
 gelical foundation. 
 
 As soon as I had turned fourteen, I was con- 
 firmed by the Bishop of Ely (Harold Browne), 
 and made my first Communion in Woburn Church 
 on Easter Day, April 21, 1867. 
 
 After the Easter Recess, I went with my parents 
 to London, then seething with excitement over the 
 Tory Reform Bill, which created Household Suf- 
 frage in towns. My father, being Sergeant-at- 
 Arms, could give me a seat under the Gallery 
 whenever he chose, and I heard some of the most 
 memorable debates in that great controversy. In 
 the previous year my uncle. Lord Russell, with Mr. 
 Gladstone as Leader of the House of Commons, 
 had been beaten in an attempt to lower the fran- 
 chise; but the contest had left me cold. The de- 
 bates of 1867 awoke quite a fresh interest in me. 
 I began to understand the Democratic, as against 
 the Whig, ideal; and I was tremendously im- 
 pressed by Disraeli, who seemed to tower by a 
 
i6 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 head and shoulders above everyone in the House. 
 Gladstone played a secondary and ambiguous part; 
 and, if I heard him speak, which I doubt, the speech 
 left no dint in my memory. 
 
 At this pdnt of the narrative it is necessary to 
 make a passing allusion to Doctors, who, far more 
 than Premiers or Priests or any other class of 
 men, have determined the course and condition of 
 my life. I believe that I know, by personal ex- 
 perience, more about Doctors and Doctoring than 
 any other man of my age in England. I am, in 
 my own person, a monument of medical practice, 
 and have not only seen, but felt, the rise and fall 
 of several systems of physic and surgery. To have 
 experienced the art is also to have known the ar- 
 tist; and the portraits of all the practitioners with 
 whom at one time or another I have been brought 
 into intimate relations would fill the largest album, 
 and go some way towards furnishing a modest 
 Picture-Gallery. Broadly speaking, the Doctors 
 of the 'fifties and 'sixties were as Dickens drew 
 them. The famous consultant. Dr. Parker Peps; 
 the fashionable physician, Sir Tumley Snuffim; the 
 General Practitioner, Mr. Pilkins; and the Med- 
 ical Officer of the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested 
 Loan and Life Insurance Company, Dr. Jobling; 
 are in the highest degree representative and typ- 
 ical; but perhaps the Doctor — his name, unfortu- 
 
BEGINNINGS 17 
 
 nately, has perished — ^who was called to the bed- 
 side of Little Nell, and came with " a great bunch 
 of seals dangling below a waistcoat of ribbed 
 black satin," is the most carefully finished portrait. 
 Such, exactly, were the Family Physicians of my 
 youth. They always dressed in shiny black, — 
 trousers, neckcloth, and all; they were invariably 
 bald, and had shaved upper lips and chins, and 
 carefully-trimmed whiskers. They said " Hah ! " 
 and " Hum ! " in tones of omniscience which would 
 have converted a Christian Scientist; and, when 
 feeling one's pulse, they produced the largest and 
 most audibly-ticking gold watches conceivable by 
 the horologist's art. They had what were called 
 " the courtly manners of the old school " ; were 
 diffuse in style, and abounded in periphrasis. Thus 
 they spoke of " the gastric organ " where their suc- 
 cessors talk of the stomach, and referred to brandy 
 as " the domestic stimulant." When attending 
 families where religion was held in honour, they 
 were apt to say to the lady of the house, " We are 
 fearfully and wonderfully made " ; and, where 
 classical culture prevailed, they not infrequently 
 remarked — 
 
 Crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops. 
 
 By the way, my reference to " the domestic 
 stimulant " reminds me that on stimulants, do- 
 
1 8 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 mestic and other, this school of Physicians relied 
 with an unalterable confidence. For a delicate 
 child, a glass of port wine at ii was the inevitable 
 prescription, and a tea-spoonful of bark was often 
 added to this generous tonic. In all forms of Ian- 
 guor and debility and enfeebled circulation, brandy- 
 and-water was "exhibited," as the phrase went; 
 and, if the dose was not immediately successful, 
 the brandy was increased. I myself, when a sickly 
 boy of twelve, was ordered by a well-known prac- 
 titioner, called F. C. Skey, to drink mulled claret 
 at bedtime; and my recollection is that, as a night- 
 cap, it beat bromide and sulphonal hollow. In the 
 light of more recent science, I suppose that all this 
 alcoholic treatment was what Milton calls " the 
 sweet poison of misused wine," and wrought havoc 
 with one's nerves, digestion, and circulation. It 
 certainly had this single advantage, that when one 
 grew to man's estate, and passed from " that poor 
 creature, small beer," to the loaded port and fiery 
 sherry of a " Wine " at the University, it was im- 
 possible to make one drunk. And thereby hangs 
 a tale. I was once writing the same sentiment in 
 the same words for a medical journal, and the com- 
 positor substituted " disadvantage " for " advan- 
 tage," apparently thinking that my early regimen 
 had deprived me of a real happiness in after-life. 
 Such were the Doctors of my youth. By no 
 
BEGINNINGS 19 
 
 sudden wrench, no violent transition, but gently, 
 gradually, imperceptibly, the type has transformed 
 itself into that which we behold to-day. No doubt 
 an inward continuity has been maintained, but the 
 visible phenomena are so radically altered as to 
 suggest to the superficial observer the idea of a 
 new creation; and even we, who, as Matthew Ar- 
 nold said, " stand by the Sea of Time, and listen 
 to the solemn and rhythmical beat of its waves," 
 even we can scarcely point with confidence to the 
 date of each successive change. First, as to per- 
 sonal appearance. When did doctors abandon 
 black cloth, and betake themselves (like Newman, 
 when he seceded to the Church of Rome) to grey 
 trousers? Not, I feel pretty sure, till the 'seventies 
 were well advanced. Quite certainly the first time 
 that I ever fell into the hands of a moustached Doc- 
 tor was in 1877. Everyone condemned the hirsute 
 appendage as highly unprofessional, and when, 
 soon after, the poor man found his way into a 
 Lunatic Asylum, the neighbouring Doctors of the 
 older school said that they were not surprised ; that 
 " there was a bad family history " ; and that he 
 himself had shown marked signs of eccentricity. 
 That meant the moustache, and nothing else. 
 Then, again, when was it first recognized as pos- 
 sible to take a pulse without the assistance of a 
 gold chronometer? History is silent; but I am in- 
 
20 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 dined to assign that discovery to the same date as 
 the clinical thermometer, a toy unknown to the 
 Doctors of my youth, who, indeed, were disposed 
 to regard the stethoscope as new-fangled. Then 
 " the courtly* manners of the old school " — when 
 did they go out ? I do not mean to cast the slight- 
 est aspersion on the manners of my present doc- 
 tor, who is as polite and gentlemanlike a young 
 fellow as one could wish to meet. But his man- 
 ners are not " courtly," nor the least " of the old 
 school."' He does not bow when he enters my 
 room, but shakes hands and says it's an Ai day 
 and I had better get out in the motor. Whatever 
 the symptoms presented to his observation, he 
 never says " Hah ! " or " Hum ! " and he has never 
 once quoted the Bible or Horace, though I have 
 reason to believe that he has read both. Then, 
 again, as a mere matter of style, when did Doc- 
 tors abandon the majestic " We," which formerly 
 they shared with Kings and Editors ? " We shall 
 be all the better when we have had our luncheon 
 and a glass of sherry," said Sir Tumley Snuffim. 
 " We will continue the bark and linseed," mur- 
 mured Dr. Parker Peps, as he bowed himself out. 
 My Doctor says, " Do you feel as if you could 
 manage a chop? It would do you pounds of 
 good " ; and and " I know the peroxide dressing 
 is rather beastly, but I'd stick it another day or 
 
BEGINNINGS 21 
 
 two, if I were you." Medical conversation, too, is 
 an art which has greatly changed. In old days it 
 was thought an excellent method of lubricating the 
 first interview, for the Doctor to ask where one's 
 home was, and to state, quite irrespective of the 
 fact, that he was born in the same neighbourhood ; 
 having ascertained that one was, say, a Yorkshire- 
 man, to remark that he would have known it from 
 one's accent; to enlarge on his own connexions, 
 especially if of the territorial caste; to describe his 
 early travels in the South of Europe or the United 
 States; and to discourse on water-colour drawing 
 or the flute. " We doctors, too, have our hobbies ; 
 though, alas ! the demands of a profession in which 
 Ne otium quidem otiosum est, leave us little time 
 to enjoy them." 
 
 Quite different is the conversation of young 
 Tom Guy, if so I may nickname my medical ad- 
 viser. He does not lubricate the interview, but 
 goes straight to business — enquires, examines, 
 pronounces, prescribes — and then, if any time is 
 left for light discourse, discusses the rival merits 
 of " Rugger " and " Soccer," speculates on the re- 
 sult of the Hospital Cup Tie, or observes that the 
 British Thoroughbred is not deteriorating when he 
 can win with so much on his back; tells me that 
 the Opera last night was ripping, or that some 
 much-praised play is undiluted rot. Not thus did 
 
22 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Dr. Parker Peps regale Mrs. Dombey, or Sir 
 Tumley Snuffim soothe the shattered nerves of 
 Mrs. Wititterly. The reaction against alcoholic 
 treatment can, I believe, be definitely dated from 
 the loth of January, 1872, when the heads of the 
 medical profession published their opinion that 
 " alcohol, in whatever form, should be prescribed 
 with as much care as any powerful drug, and the 
 directions for its use should be so framed as not 
 to be interpreted as a sanction for excess." This 
 was a heavy blow and deep discouragement to the 
 school of SnufHm and Pilkins, and the system of 
 port at 1 1, and " the domestic stimulant " between 
 whiles, died hard. 
 
 But this is a long digression. I return from 
 Tom Guy, who tends my declining years, to the 
 Family Physician who prescribed for my youth. 
 He was Dr. T. Somerset Snuffim, son of the cele- 
 brated Sir Tumley, and successor to his lucrative 
 practice. His patients believed in him with an un- 
 questioning and even passionate faith, and his 
 lightest word was law. It was he who in 1862 
 pronounced me physically unfit for a Private 
 School, but held out hopes that, if I could be kept 
 alive till I was fourteen. I might then be fit for a 
 Public School. Four years passed, and nothing 
 particular happened. Then the time arrived when 
 the decision had to be made between Public School 
 
BEGINNINGS 23 
 
 and Private Tutor. After a vast amount of stetho- 
 scoping and pulse-feeling, Snuffim decided peremp- 
 torily against a Public School. My parents had a 
 strong and just detestation of " private study " 
 and its products, and they revolved a great many 
 schemes for avoiding it. Suddenly my mother, 
 who was not only the kindest but also the wisest 
 of mothers, bethought herself of making me a 
 Home-boarder at Harrow. She was one of those 
 persons who, when once they are persuaded that a 
 certain course is right, do not let the grass grow 
 under their feet, but act at once. We did not de- 
 sert our old home in Bedfordshire, and my father 
 had still his official residence in Speaker's Court; 
 but my parents took a house at Harrow, at the top 
 of Sudbury Hill, and there we established our- 
 selves in September, 1867. 
 
 On the 4th of November in that year, Matthew 
 Arnold, who was contemplating a similar move, 
 wrote to Lady de Rothschild : — " What you tell me 
 is very important and interesting. I think Lady 
 Charles Russell has a boy who, like my eldest boy, 
 is an invalid, and I dare say you will some time or 
 other be kind enough to ascertain from her whether 
 the school life is at all trying for him, or whether 
 she has any difficulty in getting him excused fag- 
 ging or violent exercises." 
 
II 
 
 HARROW 
 
 Not to River nor Royal Keep, 
 
 Low Meads nor level Close, 
 Up to the sturdy wind-worn steep, 
 
 Levavi oculos; 
 To four red walls on a skyward climb, 
 Towering over the fields and Time. 
 
 When Dr. Vaughan recreated Harrow School, 
 after its long- decadence under Longley and Words- 
 worth, he wished that the number should never 
 exceed five hundred. Of late years the school has 
 been greatly enlarged, but in my time we were al- 
 ways just about the number which, in Vaughan's 
 judgment, was the largest that a Head-master could 
 properly supervise. That number is embalmed in 
 Edward Howson's touching song: — 
 
 "Five hundred faces, and all so strangel 
 Life in front of me, Home behind — 
 I felt like a waif before the wind. 
 Tossed on an ocean of shock and change." 
 
 Some of those faces I shall presently describe; 
 but, in reviewing my life at Harrow, my first trib- 
 ute must be paid to my Head-master — for forty- 
 
HARROW 25 
 
 three years the kindest, most generous, and most 
 faithful of friends. Henry Montagu Butler, young- 
 est son of Dr. George Butler, Dean of Peterborough 
 and sometime Head-master of Harrow, was born in 
 1833, and educated at Harrow. He was Head of 
 the School, made the cock-score in the Eton match 
 at Lords, was Scholar and Fellow of Trinity, and 
 Senior Classic in 1855. He was elected to the 
 Head-mastership of Harrow, in succession to Dr. 
 Vaughan, when he was only a few months over 
 26, and entered on his reign in January, i860. It 
 is not easy to describe what a graceful and brilliant 
 creature he seemed to my boyish eyes, when I first 
 saw him in 1867, nor how unlike what one had 
 imagined a Head-master to be. He was then just 
 thirty-four and looked much younger than he was. 
 Gracefulness is the idea which I specially connect 
 with him. He was graceful in shape, gesture, and 
 carriage ; graceful in manners and ways, graceful in 
 scholarship, graceful in writing, pre-eminently 
 graceful in speech. It was his custom from time 
 to time, if any peculiar enormity displayed itself 
 in the school, to call us all together in the Speech- 
 Room, and give us what we called a " Pi-jaw." 
 One of these discourses I remember as well as if I 
 had heard it yesterday. It was directed against 
 Lying, as not only un-Christian but ungentleman- 
 like. As he stood on the dais, one hand grasping 
 
26 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 his gown behind his back and the other marking 
 his points, I. felt that, perhaps for the first time, I 
 was listening to pure and unstudied eloquence, suf- 
 fused with just as much scorn against base wrong- 
 doing as makes speech pungent without making it 
 abusive. It should be recorded to Butler's credit 
 that he was thoroughly feared. A Head-master 
 who is not feared should be at once dismissed from 
 his post. And, besides being feared, he was pro- 
 foundly detested by bad boys. The worse the boy's 
 moral character, the more he hated Butler. But 
 boys who were, in any sense or degree, on the right 
 side ; who were striving, however imperfectly, after 
 what is pure and lovely and of good report, felt 
 instinctively that Butler was their friend. His 
 preaching in the School Chapel (though perhaps a 
 little impeded by certain mannerisms) was direct, 
 interesting, and uplifting in no common degree. 
 Many of his sermons made a lifelong impression 
 on me. His written English was always beauti- 
 fully pellucid, and often adorned by some memor- 
 able anecdote or quotation, or by some telling 
 phrase. But once, when, owing to a broken arm, 
 he could not write his sermons, but preached to us 
 extempore three Sundays in succession, he fairly 
 fascinated us. As we rose in the School and came 
 into close contact with him, we found ever more 
 and more to admire. It would be impertinent for 
 
HARROW 27 
 
 me to praise the attainments of a Senior Classic, 
 but no one could fail to see that Butler's scholar- 
 ship was unusually graceful and literary. Indeed, 
 he was literary through and through. All fine lit- 
 erature appealed to him with compelling force, 
 and he was peculiarly fond of English oratory. 
 Chatham, Burke, Canning, Shell, and Bright are 
 some of the great orators to whom he introduced 
 us, and he was never so happy as when he could 
 quote them to illustrate some fine passage in Cicero 
 or Demosthenes. One other introduction which I 
 owe to him I must by no means forget — Lord Bea- 
 consfield's novels. I had read Lothair when it 
 came out, but I was then too inexperienced to dis- 
 cern the deep truths which underlie its glittering 
 satire. Butler introduced me to Sybils and 
 thereby opened up to me a new world of interest 
 and amusement. When Butler entertained boys at 
 breakfast or dinner, he was a most delightful host, 
 and threw off all magisterial awfulness as easily as 
 his gown. His conversation was full of fun and 
 sprightliness, and he could talk " Cricket-shop," an- 
 cient and modern, like Lillywhite or R. R. Lyttelton. 
 In time of illness or failure or conscience-stricken 
 remorse, he showed an Arthur-like simplicity of 
 religion which no one could ignore or gainsay. 
 
 Next to Dr. Butler, in my list of Harrow Mas- 
 ters, must be placed Farrar, afterwards Dean of 
 
28 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Canterbury, to whom I owed more in the way 
 of intellectual stimulus and encouragement than 
 to any other Master. I had, I believe, by na- 
 ture, some sense of beauty; and Farrar stimu- 
 lated and encouraged this sense to the top of its 
 bent. Himself inspired by Ruskin, he taught us to 
 admire rich colours and graceful forms — illumi- 
 nated missals, and Fra Angelico's blue angels on 
 gold grounds — and to see the exquisite beauty of 
 common things, such as sunsets, and spring grass, 
 and autumn leaves; the waters of a shoaling sea, 
 and the transparent amber of a mountain stream. 
 In literature his range was extremely wide. Noth- 
 ing worth reading seemed to have escaped him, 
 and he loved poetry as much as Butler loved ora- 
 tory. When he preached in Chapel his gorgeous 
 rhetoric, as yet not overwrought or over-coloured, 
 held us spellbound ; and though, or perhaps be- 
 cause, he was inclined to spoil the boys who re- 
 sponded to his appeals, and to rate them higher 
 than they deserved, we loved and admired him as, 
 I should think, few schoolmasters have been loved 
 and admired. 
 
 When I speak of Masters who were also friends, . 
 I should be ungrateful indeed if I omitted Arthur 
 George Watson, in whose House I was placed as 
 soon as the doctors were satisfied that the experi- 
 ment could be tried without undue risks. Mr. 
 
HARROW 29 
 
 Watson was a Fellow of All Souls', and was in all 
 respects what we should have expected a member 
 of' that Society (elected the same day as the late 
 Lord Salisbury) to be. It was said of C. P. Go- 
 lightly at Oxford that, when he was asked his opin- 
 ion of Dr. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, he replied: 
 " Well, if I were forced to choose the epithet which 
 should be least descriptive of the dear Provost, I 
 should choose gushing." Exactly the same might 
 be said of Mr. Watson; but he was the most high- 
 minded and conscientious of men, a thorough gen- 
 tleman, inflexibly just, and a perfect House-Mas- 
 ter. The days which I spent under his roof must 
 always be reckoned among the happiest of my life. 
 Among Masters who were also friends P must 
 assign a high place to the Rev. William Done 
 Bushell, who vainly endeavoured to teach me 
 mathematics, but found me more at home in the 
 sphere (which he also loved) of Ecclesiology. 
 And not even the most thoughtless or ill-condi- 
 tioned boy who was at Harrow between 1854 and 
 1882 could ever forget the Rev. John Smith, who, 
 through a life-time overshadowed by impending 
 calamity, was an Apostle to boys, if ever there was 
 one, and the Guardian Angel of youthful innocence. 
 Dr. Vaughan, no lover of exaggerated phrases, 
 called him, in a memorial sermon, " the Christ of 
 Harrow " ; and there must be many a man now liv- 
 
30 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 ing who, as he looks back, feels that he owed the 
 salvation of his soul to that Christlike character. 
 
 During my first two years at Harrow, Dr. West- 
 cott, afterwards Bishop of Durham, was one of 
 the Masters, and it has always been a matter 
 of deep regret to me that I had no opportunity 
 of getting to know him. He was hardly visible 
 in the common life of the School. He lived 
 remote, aloof, apart, alone. It must be presumed 
 that the boys who boarded in his House knew 
 something of him, but with the School in general 
 he never came in contact. His special work was 
 to supervise the composition, English and classical, 
 of the Sixth Form, and on this task he lavished all 
 his minute and scrupulous scholarship, all his gen- 
 uine enthusiasm for literary beauty. But, until we 
 were in the Sixth, we saw Westcott only on public 
 occasions, and one of these occasions was the call- 
 ing over of names on half-holidays, styled at Eton 
 " Absence," and at Harrow " Bill." To see West- 
 cott performing this function made one, even in 
 those puerile days, feel that the beautifully delicate 
 instrument was eminently unfitted for the rough 
 work of mere routine on which it was employed. 
 We had sense enough to know that Westcott was 
 a man of learning and distinction altogether out- 
 side the beaten track of schoolmasters' accomplish- 
 ments; and that he had performed achievements 
 
HARROW 31 
 
 in scholarship and divinity which great men recog- 
 nized as great. " Calling Bill " was an occupation 
 well enough suited for his colleagues — for Hug- 
 gins or Buggins or Brown or Green — but it was 
 actually pathetic to see this frail embodiment of 
 culture and piety contending with the clamour and 
 tumult of five hundred obstreperous boys. 
 
 It was not only as a. great scholar that we re- 
 vered Westcott. We knew, by that mysterious 
 process by which school-boys get to know some- 
 thing of the real, as distinct from the official, char- 
 acters of their masters, that he was a saint. There 
 were strange stories in the School about his ascetic 
 way of living. We were told that he wrote his 
 sermons on his knees. We heard that he never 
 went into local society, and that he read no news- 
 paper except The Guardian. Thus when Liddon, 
 at the height of his fame as the author of the great 
 Bampton Lectures, came to Harrow to preach on 
 Founder's Day, Westcott would not dine with the 
 Head-master to meet him. He could not spare 
 three hours from prayer and study; but he came in 
 for half an hour's conversation after dinner. 
 
 All that we saw and heard in Chapel confirmed 
 what we were told. We saw the bowed form, the 
 clasped hands, the rapt gaze, as of a man who in 
 worship was really solus cum Solo, and not, as the 
 manner of some of his colleagues was, sleeping the 
 
32 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 sleep of the just, or watching for the devotional 
 delinquencies of the Human Boy. His sermons 
 were rare events ; but some of us looked forward 
 to them as to something quite out of the common 
 groove. There were none of the accessories which 
 generally attract boyish admiration — no rhetoric, 
 no purple patches, no declamation, no pretence of 
 spontaneity. His anxious forehead crowned a 
 puny body, and his voice was so faint as to be al- 
 most inaudible. The language was totally un- 
 adorned; the sentences were closely packed with 
 meaning; and the meaning was not always easy. 
 But the charm lay in distinction, aloofness from 
 common ways of thinking and speaking, a wide 
 outlook on events and movements in the Church, 
 and a fiery enthusiasm all the more telling because 
 sedulously restrained. I remember as if I heard it 
 yesterday a reference in December, 1869, to " that 
 august assemblage which gathers to-morrow under 
 the dome of St. Peter's," and I remember feeling 
 pretty sure at the moment that there was no other 
 schoolmaster in England who would preach to his 
 boys about the Vatican Council. But by far the 
 most momentous of Westcott's sermons at Harrow 
 was that which he preached on the Twentieth Sun- 
 day after Trinity, 1868. The text was Ephesians 
 v. 15 : " See then that ye walk circumspectly." The 
 sermon was an earnest plea for the revival of the 
 
HARROW 33 
 
 ascetic life, and the preacher endeavoured to show 
 " what new blessings God has in store for absolute 
 self-sacrifice " by telling his hearers about the great 
 victories of asceticism in history. He took first the 
 instance of St. Antony, as the type of personal as- 
 ceticism; then that of St. Benedict, as the author 
 of the Common Life of equality and brotherhood; 
 and then that of St. Francis, who, "in the midst 
 of a Church endowed with all that art and learn- 
 ing and wealth and power could give, reasserted 
 the love of God to the poorest, the meanest, the 
 most repulsive of His children, and placed again 
 the simple Cross above all the treasures of the 
 world." Even " the unparalleled achievements, the 
 matchless energy, of the Jesuits " were duly recog- 
 nized as triumphs of faith and discipline; and the 
 sermon ended with a passionate appeal to the Har- 
 row boys to follow the example of young Antony 
 or the still younger Benedict, and prepare them- 
 selves to take their part in reviving the ascetic life 
 of the English Church. 
 
 " It is to a congregation like this that the call 
 comes with the most stirring and the most cheer- 
 ing voice. The young alone have the fresh enthu- 
 siasm which in former times God has been pleased 
 to consecrate to like services. . . . And if, as I do 
 believe most deeply, a work at present awaits Eng- 
 land, and our English Church, greater than the 
 
34 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 world has yet seen, I cannot but pray everyone 
 who hears me to listen humbly for the promptings 
 of God's Spirit, if so be that He is even now call- 
 ing him to take a foremost part in it. It is for us, 
 perhaps, first to hear the call, but it is for you to 
 interpret it and fulfil it. Our work is already 
 sealed by the past: yours is still rich in boundless 
 possibilities." 
 
 It may readily be believed that this discourse did 
 not please either the British Parent or the Com- 
 mon Schoolmaster. A rumour went abroad that 
 Mr. Westcott was going to turn all the boys into 
 monks, and loud was the clamour of ignorance and 
 superstition. Westcott made the only dignified re- 
 ply. He printed (without publishing) the peccant 
 sermon, under the title " Disciplined Life," and 
 gave a copy to every boy in the School, expressing 
 the hope that " God, in His great love, will even 
 thus, by words most unworthily spoken, lead some 
 one among us to think on one peculiar work of the 
 English Church, and in due time to offer himself 
 for the fulfilment of it as His Spirit shall teach." 
 Those who remember that Charles Gore was one 
 of the boys who heard the sermon may think that 
 the preacher's prayer was answered. 
 
 With the Masters generally I was on the best of 
 terms. Indeed, I can only remember two whom I 
 actively disliked, and of these two one was the ab- 
 
HARROW 35 
 
 solute reproduction of Mr. Creakle, only armed 
 with " thirty Greek lines " instead of the cane. 
 Some of the staff were not particularly friends, but 
 notable as curiosities; and at the head of them 
 must be placed the Rev. Thomas Henry Steel. 
 This truly remarkable man was born in 1806. He 
 was Second Classic and Twentieth Wrangler, and 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He be- 
 came a Master at Harrow under Dr. Wordsworth 
 in 1836; left the School in 1843, to take a country 
 living; returned to Harrow, under Dr. Vaughan, 
 in 1849, ^nd i'^ 1855 became (for the second time) 
 Master of The Grove, one of the largest boarding- 
 houses in Harrow, where he remained till 1881. 
 He was a keen, alert, and active old gentleman, 
 with a rosy face and long white beard, like Father 
 Christmas: and he carried, in season and out of 
 season, a bright blue umbrella. His degree suf- 
 ficiently proves that he was a ripe scholar, but, as 
 George Eliot says, " to all ripeness under the sun 
 there comes a further stage of development which 
 is less esteemed in the market " ; and, when I was 
 in his Form, it was chiefly characterized by an 
 agreeable laxity ' of discipline. As regards his 
 boarding-house of forty boys, it was currently re- 
 ported that he had never been seen in the boys' 
 side of it. Perhaps he went round it when they 
 were asleep. But it was on his preaching that his 
 
36 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 fame chiefly rested. His sermons were written in 
 a most exuberant style of old-fashioned rhetoric, 
 and abounded in phrases, allusions, and illustra- 
 tions, so quaint that, once heard, they could never 
 be forgotten. I believe that he kept a small stock 
 of these sermons, and seldom added to it; but, 
 knowing, I suppose, that if preached twice they 
 must inevitably be recognized, he never preached a 
 sermon a second time as long as there was even 
 one boy in the School who had heard it on its first 
 delivery. This was a very sensible precaution; but 
 he little knew that some of his most elaborate pas- 
 sages had, by their sheer oddity, imprinted them- 
 selves indelibly on the memories of the hearers, and 
 were handed down by oral tradition. One such 
 especially, about a lady who used to visit the hos- 
 pitals in the American War, and left a bun or a 
 rose on the pillow of the wounded according as 
 she thought that they would recover or die, had an 
 established place in our annals ; and it is not easy to 
 describe the rapture of hearing a passage which, as 
 repeated by one's schoolfellows, had seemed too 
 absurd for credence, delivered from the School- 
 pulpit, in a kind of solemn stage-whisper. How- 
 ever, " Tommy Steel " was a kind-hearted old gen- 
 tleman, who believed in letting boys alone, and by 
 a hundred eccentricities of speech and manner, 
 added daily to the gaiety of our life. For one 
 
HARROW 37 
 
 great boon I am eternally his debtor. He set me 
 
 on reading Wordsworth, and chose his favourite 
 
 bits with skill and judgment. I had been reared 
 in the school that derided — 
 
 "A drowsy, frowsy poem called The Excursion, 
 Writ in a manner which is my aversion," 
 
 and " Tommy Steel " opened my eyes to a new 
 world of beauty. By the way, he had known 
 Wordsworth, and had entertained him at Har- 
 row; and he told us that the Poet always said 
 " housen," where we say houses. 
 
 Another of our curiosities was Mr. Jacob Fran- 
 cis Marillier, a genial old gentleman without a de- 
 gree, who had been supposed to teach writing and 
 Mathematics, but long before ray time had dropped 
 the writing — I suppose as hopeless — and only 
 played a mathematical barrel-organ. He had 
 joined the staff at Harrow in 1819, and, as from 
 my earliest days I had a love of Links with the 
 Past, I learned from Mr. Marillier a vast amount 
 about the ancient traditions of the School, which, 
 even in 1869 (when he resigned), were becoming 
 faint and fprgotten. 
 
 Yet a third oddity must be commemorated; but 
 in this case it is desirable to use a pseudonym. I 
 think I remember in one of Bulwer-Lytton's nov- 
 
38 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 els a family called Sticktoright,'*' and that name 
 will do as well as another. The Rev. Samuel 
 Sticktoright was essentially what is called a " Mas- 
 ter of the old school." He was born in 1808, came 
 to Harrow in 1845, ^.nd had a large House for 
 thirty years. I have just been contemplating his 
 photograph in my Harrow album, and he certainly 
 looks " the old school " all over, with his carefully- 
 trimmed whiskers, double-breasted waistcoat, and 
 large white " choker," neatly tied. By the boys 
 generally he was regarded as an implacable tyrant, 
 and I have heard (though this was before my 
 time) that a special victim of his passionless se- 
 verity was a pink-faced youth with blue eyes called 
 Randall Thomas Davidson. Personally, I rather 
 liked him; partly, no doubt, on the principle on 
 which Homer called the .^Ethiopians blameless — 
 namely, that he had nothing to do with them. 
 But there was a sly twinkle in the corner of Mr. 
 Sticktoright's eye which suggested a lurking sense 
 of humour, and in the very few words which he 
 ever bestowed on me there generally was a sugges- 
 tion of dry — very dry — fun. He was, of course, 
 the most uncompromising of Tories, and every 
 form of change, in Church or State or School, was 
 
 ♦"The wood belonged to the Hazeldeans, the furze-land to 
 the Sticktorights — an old Saxon family if ever there was 
 one." My Novel. Book I. 
 
HARROW 39 
 
 equally abhorrent to him. In local society he 
 played a considerable part, both giving and receiv- 
 ing hospitality; and it was the traditional pleas- 
 antry to chaff him as an inveterate bachelor, at 
 whom all the young ladies of the place were set- 
 ting their virginal caps. These jests he received 
 very much as Tim Linkinwater received the allu- 
 sions of Mr. Cheeryble to the " uncommonly hand- 
 some spinster," rather encouraging them as trib- 
 utes to the fact that, though now advanced in 
 years, he was well preserved, and, as most people 
 surmised, well off. 
 
 These facetious passages were, of course, con- 
 fined to the society in which the Masters moved, 
 and we boys knew them only by hearsay. But 
 what we saw with our own eyes was that the only 
 human being who ever dared to " cheek " Mr. 
 Sticktoright, or to interfere with his arrangements, 
 or to disregard his orders, was his butler, whom 
 we will call Boniface. Everyone who knows 
 school-boys knows that they have a trick of say- 
 ing things about those in authority over them, 
 which really they do not the least believe but which 
 they make a bold pretence of believing. So in the 
 case of " Sticky " and Boniface. They were of 
 much the same age, and rather similar in appear- 
 ance; wherefore we said that they were brothers; 
 that they had risen from a lowly station in the 
 
40 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 world; and had tossed up, which should be master 
 and which butler; that "Sticky" had won the 
 toss, and that the disappointed Boniface held "his 
 brother in subjection by a veiled threat that, if he 
 were ofifended, 'he would reveal the whole story to 
 the world. This tradition seemed to present some 
 elements of unlikelihood, and yet it survived from 
 generation to generation; for not otherwise could 
 we account for the palpable fact that the iron se- 
 verity which held all boy-flesh in awe melted into 
 impotence when Boniface was the offender. 
 
 The solution of the mystery was romantic. Dr. 
 Butler, contrary to his usual practice, was spend- 
 ing the Christmas holidays of 1876-7 at Harrow. 
 One day a stranger was announced, and opened the 
 conversation by saying — " I regret to tell you that 
 your colleague, Mr. Sticktoright, is dead. He died 
 suddenly at Brighton, where he was spending the 
 holidays. I am his brother-in-law and executor, 
 and, in compliance with his instructions, I have to 
 ask you to accompany me to his house." Those 
 who know the present Master of Trinity can pic- 
 ture the genuine grief with which he received this 
 notification. Mr. Sticktoright had been a Master^ 
 when he was a boy at school, and a highly-re- 
 spected colleague ever since he became Head- 
 master. That the bearer of the sad news should 
 be Sticktoright's brother-in-law was all right, for 
 
HARROW 41 
 
 he must have married a , Miss Sticktoright ; and 
 the Head-master and the Executor went together 
 to the dead man's house. There, after some un- 
 locking of drawers and opening of cabinets they 
 came upon a document to this effect : " In case of 
 my dying away from Harrow, this is to certify 
 that on a certain day, in a certain place, I married 
 Mary Smith, sometime a housemaid in my service, 
 by whom I leave a family." 
 
 So there had really been much more foundation 
 for our tradition than we had ever dreamed, and 
 Boniface had probably known the romantic history 
 of his master's life. The extraordinary part of 
 the matter was that old Sticktoright had always 
 spent the Easter, Summer, and Christmas holi- 
 days in the bosom of his family at Brighton, and 
 that no one connected with Harrow had ever 
 chanced to see him basking in their smiles. [N.B. 
 — the names, personal and local, are fictitious.] 
 In the north aisle of Harrow School Chapel, where 
 departed Masters are commemorated, you may 
 search in vain for any memorial to the Rev. Sam- 
 uel Sticktoright. 
 
 Yet one more curiosity must be named, this time 
 not a Harrow Master. " Polly Arnold " kept a 
 stationer's shop, and, as a child, helping her grand- 
 mother in the same shop, had sold pens — some 
 added cribs — to Byron when a boy in the school. 
 
42 ONE LOOK BACK - 
 
 Here was a Link of the Past which exactly suited 
 me, and, if only Polly could have understood the 
 allusion, I should have said to her-^" Ah, did you 
 once see Byron plain?" I happened to have a 
 sister who, thcfugh exceptionally clever and lively, 
 had absolutely no chronological seiise. I took her 
 to see Polly Arnold one day, when this conversa- 
 tion ensued — " Well, Miss Arnold, I am very glad 
 to make your acquaintance. I have often heard of 
 you from my brother. He tells me you remember 
 John Lyon. How very interesting!" [N.B. — 
 John Lyon founded Harrow School in 1571.] To 
 this tribute Polly replied with much asperity—" I 
 know I'm getting on in life, Miss, but Fm not quite 
 three hundred years old yet " — while my sister 
 murmured in my ear — " Who w it she remembers? 
 I know it's someone who lived a long time ago." 
 ; But the name of Arnold, when connected with 
 Harrow, suggests quite another train of thought. 
 At Easter, 1868, Matthew Arnold came to live at 
 Harrow, with a view of placing his three boys in 
 the School. The eldest of the three was the in- 
 valid to whom his father referred in a letter quoted 
 in my first chapter: I was able to show him some 
 little kindnesses, and thus arose an intimacy with' 
 the parents, brothers, and sisters which I have al- 
 ways regarded as — 
 
 "Part of my life's unalterable good." 
 
Ill 
 
 HARROVIANA 
 
 "I may have failed, my school may fail; 
 I tremble, but this much I dare; 
 I love her. Let the critics rail, 
 
 My brethren and rny home are there." 
 W. Cory. 
 
 Every one who travels by the North Western 
 or the Great Central, or the Midland Railway,, 
 must be conversant with the appearance of that 
 " Pinnacle perched on a Precipice," which was 
 Charles II's idea of the Visible Church on Earth 
 — the Parish Church of Harrow on the Hill. An- 
 selm consecrated it, Becket said Mass in it, and 
 John Lyon, the Founder of Harrow School, lies 
 buiried in it. When I was a Harrow boy, the Cele- 
 brations of the Holy Communion in the School 
 Chapel were rare, and generally late; so some of 
 us were accustomed to communicate every Sunday 
 at the 8 o'clock service in the Parish Church. But 
 even' in holy places, and amid sacred associations, 
 the ludicrdus is apt to . assert itself ; and I could 
 never sufl&ciently admire a tablet in the North aisle, 
 
44 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 commemorating a gentleman who died of the first 
 Reform Bill. 
 
 "JOHN HENRY NORTH, 
 
 Judge of the Admiralty in Ireland. 
 
 Without an eqUal at the University, a rival at the Bar, or a 
 
 superior in chaste and classic eloquence 
 
 in Parliament. 
 
 Honoured, Revered, Admired, Beloved, Deplored, by the 
 
 Irish Bar, the Senate and his country. 
 He sunk beneath the efforts of a mind too great for His 
 
 earthly frame, 
 In opposing the Revolutionary Invasion of the Religion and 
 
 Constitution of England, 
 On the 29th of September, 1831, in the 44th year of his age." 
 
 Alas! poor Mr. North. What would he have 
 felt if he had lived to see the Reform Bills of 1867 
 and 1885? Clearly he was taken away from the 
 evil to come. 
 
 Until the Metropolitan Railway joined Harrow 
 to Baker Street, the Hill stood in the midst of 
 genuine and unspoilt country, separated by five 
 miles of grass from the nearest point of London, 
 and encompassed by isolated dwellings, ranging 
 in rank and scale from villas to country houses. 
 Most of these have fallen victims to the Specula- 
 tive Builder, and have been cut up into alleys of 
 brick and stucco, though one or two still remain 
 among their hay-fields and rhododendrons. When 
 I first ascended Harrow Hill, I drove there from 
 London with my mother; and, from Harlesden on- 
 

HARROVIANA 45 
 
 wards, our road lay between grass meadows, and 
 was shaded by hedgerow timber. Harrow was 
 then a much prettier place than it is now. The far- 
 seen elms under which Byron dreamed * were still 
 in their unlopped glory, and the whole effect of the 
 Hill was wooded. So an Eton man and Harrow 
 Master f wrote : — 
 
 "Collis incola frondei 
 Nympha, sive lufeentius 
 Nostra Pieris audies, 
 Lux adest; ades O tuis 
 
 Hergaf mater, alunmis!" 
 
 "Goddess of the leafy Hill, 
 Nymph, or Muse, or what you will, 
 .With the light begins the lay, — 
 Herga, be our guest to-day." 
 
 The site now covered by the externally hideous 
 Speech-Room — a cross between a swimming-bath 
 and a tennis-court — was then a garden. In truth, 
 it only grew strawberries and cabbages, but to the 
 imaginative eye, it was as beautiful as the hang- 
 ing pleasaunces of Semiramis. 
 
 Dr. Butler, with a hundred gifts and accomplish- 
 
 * Writing to John Murray in 1822, Byron said — "There is 
 a spot in the Churchyard, near the footpath, on the brow of 
 the Hill looking towards Windsor, and a tomb under a large 
 tree (bearing the name of Peachie, or Peachey) , where I used 
 to sit for hours and hours as a boy: this was my favourite 
 spot." 
 
 t The Rev. E. M. Young. 
 
 i Herga is the Anglo-Saxon name of Harrow. 
 
46 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 ments, had no aesthetic or artistic sense; and, under 
 his rule, the whole place was over-run by terrible 
 combinations of red and black brick ; and the beau- 
 tiful view from the School- Yard, stretching away 
 across the UxbrMge plain, was . obstructed by some 
 kind of play-sbed, with a little spout atop — the 
 very impertinence of ugliness. 
 
 Of the various buildings at Harrow, by far the 
 most interesting is what is now called " The 
 Fourth Form Room," in the West wing of the Old 
 School. It is the original room which John Lyon 
 designed — " A large and convenient school-house 
 with a chimney in it," — and in its appearance and 
 arrangements it exactly bespeaks the village Day 
 School that Harrow originally was. Its stout 
 brick walls have faced the western breezes of three 
 hundred years, and in their mellow richness of 
 tint remind one of Hatfield House and Hampton 
 Court. This single room has been the nucleus 
 round which all subsequent buildings — Chapel and 
 Library and School-Rooms and Boarding-Houses 
 — have gathered ; and, as long as it exists, Harrow 
 will be visibly and tangibly connected with its 
 Founder's prescient care. 
 
 John Lyon knew nothing of Conscience Clauses. 
 He ordained that all his school-boys should at- 
 tend the Parish Church; and so they did, stowed 
 away in galleries where hearing was difficult and 
 
HARROVIANA 47 
 
 kneeling impossible. In 1836 Dr. Christopher 
 Wordsworth, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, was 
 elected Head-master of Harrow, in succession to 
 the genial but too gentle Longley. Seeing that 
 Worship was practically impossible for the boys 
 under existing conditions, he set to work to build 
 a Chapel. It occupied the same site as the present 
 Chapel, but only one fragment of it remains, em- 
 bedded in the West wall of Sir Gilbert Scott's 
 more graceful structure. The Chapel was conse- 
 crated by the Visitor, Archbishop Howley, in 
 1839. Dr. Wordsworth, justly proud of his handi- 
 work, invited his brother-Master, Dr. Hawtrey of 
 Eton, to view it. Much to Wordsworth's surprise, 
 Hawtrey did not take off his hat on entering the 
 Chapel ; but, when he neared the altar, started back 
 in confusion, and exclaimed, in hasty apology, " I 
 assure you, my dear friend, I had no notion that 
 we were already inside the Sacred Edifice." 
 
 So much for the aesthetics of Harrow Chapel as 
 originally constructed, but time and piety have 
 completely changed it. In 1855, ^^- Vaughan 
 added a Chancel with an apsidal end, designed 
 by Sir Gilbert Scott. Next, the central passage 
 of the Chapel became a Nave, with pillars and a 
 North Aisle. Then the South Aisle was added, 
 and decorated with glass before which one shud- 
 ders, as a Memorial to Harrow men who fell in 
 
48 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 the Crimea. So the Chapel remained till 1903, 
 when two curious additions, something between 
 transepts and side-chapels, were added in memory 
 of Harrow men who fell in South Africa. The 
 tptal result of 'these successive changes is a build- 
 ing of remarkably irregular shape, but richly dec- 
 orated, and sanctified by innumerable memories of 
 friends long since loved and lost. A tablet, near 
 which as a new boy I used to sit, bears this in- 
 scription — 
 
 Inmoumful and 
 
 affectionate remembrance of 
 
 JOHN HYDE D'ARCY, 
 
 Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, 
 
 and formerly Head of this School. 
 
 He passed through the Strait Gate 
 
 of Humility, Toil, and Patience, 
 
 into the clear light and true knowledge of Him 
 
 Who is our Peace. 
 
 "If any man will do His Will, he shall know of the doc- 
 trine." 
 
 Few sermons have ever impressed me so power- 
 fully as this significant memorial of a life which 
 lasted only nineteen years. 
 
 The morning and evening services in the Chapel 
 were what is called " bright and cheerful " — in 
 other words, extremely noisy and not very har- 
 monious or reverent. We had two sermons every 
 Sunday. The Head-master preached in the even- 
 ing; the Assistant-masters in the morning. Occa- 
 
HARROVIANA 49 
 
 sionally, we had a stranger of repute. Dr. Butler's 
 preaching I have already described, and also that 
 of Farrar and Westcott. Mr. Steel's traditional 
 discourses were in a class by themselves. But 
 other preachers we had, not less remarkable. I 
 distinctly remember a sermon by Mr. Sticktoright, 
 who told us that we did not know in what way the 
 world would be destroyed — it might be by fire, or 
 it might be by water (though this latter alterna- 
 tive seems precluded by Genesis ix. 11). The 
 Rev. James Robertson, afterwards Head-master of 
 Haileybury, compared the difference between a 
 dull boy and a clever boy to that between an ox 
 and a dog. " To the ox, the universe comprises 
 only the impassive blue above, and the edible green 
 beneath; while the dog finds a world of excitement 
 in hunting, and a demi-god in man." Dean Stan- 
 ley, preaching on Trinity Sunday, 1868, thus ex- 
 plained away the doctrine of the Trinity — " God 
 the Father is God in Nature. God the Son is God 
 in History. God the Holy Ghost is God in the 
 Conscience." And Thring of Uppingham bel- 
 lowed an exposition of Psalm Ixxviii. 70 with such 
 surprising vigour that he acquired among us the 
 affectionate nickname of " Old Sheepfolds." It is 
 a pleasure to place in contrast with these absurdi- 
 ties the truly pastoral and moving sermons of Mr. 
 John Smith, whose apostolic work at Harrow I 
 
so ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 have already commemorated.* His paraphrase of 
 I. St. Peter iv. 7-8 still lingers in my ear — " Be 
 watchful, be prayerful, be very kind." It may 
 seem odd th^t one should remember so much 
 about sermons preached so long ago, but Bishop 
 Welldon's testimony illustrates the point. " When 
 I came to Harrow, I was greatly struck by the feel- 
 ing of the boys for the weekly Sermon ; they looked 
 for it as an element in their lives, they attended to 
 it, and passed judgment upon it." (I may remark 
 in passing that Dr. Welldon promptly and wisely 
 reduced the Sunday Sermons from two to one. ) 
 
 But the day of days in Harrow Chapel was 
 Founder's Day, October loth, 1868, when the 
 preacher at the Commemoration Service was Lid- 
 don, who had lately become famous by the 
 Bampton Lectures of 1866. The scene and the 
 sermon can never be forgotten. Prayers and 
 hymns and thanksgivings for Founder and Bene- 
 factors had been duly performed, and we had 
 
 * He is thus described on a Memorial Tablet in the Chapel : 
 
 To the Young a Father, 
 
 To friends in joy or grief a Brother, 
 
 To the poor, the suffering, and the tempted, 
 
 A minister of Hope and Strength. 
 
 Tried by more than common sorrows. 
 
 And upborne by more than common faith, 
 
 His holy life interpreted to many 
 
 The Mind which was in Christ Jesus, 
 
 The Promise of the Comforter, 
 
 And the Vision granted to the Pure in Heart. 
 
HARROVIANA 51 
 
 listened with becoming solemnity to that droll 
 chapter about " Such as found out musical tunes, 
 and recited verses in writing." When the preacher 
 entered the pulpit, his appearance instantly at- 
 tracted attention. We had heard vaguely of him 
 as " the great Oxford swell," but now that we saw 
 him we felt a livelier interest. " He looks like a 
 monk," one boy whispers to his neighbour; and 
 indeed it is a better description than the speaker 
 knows. The Oxford M.A. gown, worn over a 
 cassock, is the Benedictine habit modified by time 
 and place; the spare, thin figure suggests asceti- 
 cism; the beautifully chiselled, sharply-pointed 
 features, the close-shaved face, the tawny skin, the 
 jet-black hair, remind us vaguely of something by 
 Velasquez or Murillo, or of Ary Scheiifer's picture 
 of St. Augustine. And the interest aroused by sight 
 is intensified by sound. The vibrant voice strikes 
 like an electric shock. The exquisite, almost over- 
 refined, articulation seems the very note of culture. 
 The restrained passion which thrills through the 
 disciplined utterance warns even the most heedless 
 that something quite unlike the ordinary stufif of 
 school-sermons is coming. " Remember now thy 
 Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil 
 days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou 
 shalt say, I have no pleasure in them." The 
 speaker speaks of the blessedness and glory of boy- 
 
52 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 hood; the splendid inheritance of a Public School 
 built on Christian lines; the unequalled opportuni- 
 ties of learning while the faculties are still fresh 
 and the mind is still receptive; the worthlessness 
 of all merely secular attainment, however desir- 
 able, however necessary, when weighed in the bal- 
 ance against " the one thing needful." The con- 
 gregation still are boys, but soon they will be men. 
 Dark days will come, as Ecclesiastes warned — dark 
 in various ways and senses, darkest when, at the 
 University or elsewhere, we first are bidden to cast 
 faith aside and to believe nothing but what can be 
 demonstrated by " an appeal, in the last resort, to 
 the organs of sense." Now is the time, and this is 
 the place, so to " remember our Creator " that, 
 come what may, we shall never be able to forget 
 Him, or doubt His love, or question His revela- 
 tion. The preacher leans far out from the pulpit, 
 spreading himself, as it were, over the congrega- 
 tion, in an act of benediction. " From this place 
 may Christ ever be preached, in the fulness of His 
 creative, redemptive, and sacramental work. Here 
 may you learn to remember Him in the days of 
 your youth, and, in the last and most awful day of 
 all, may He remember you." 
 
 Five minutes afterwards we are in the open air. 
 Boys stare and gasp; masters hurry past, excited 
 and loquacious. Notes are compared, and watches 
 
HARROVIANA 53 
 
 consulted. Liddon has preached for an hour and a 
 quarter, and the school must go without its dinner. 
 Enough has now been said about the Chapel and 
 its memories. I must now turn to lighter themes. 
 I remember once hearing Mrs. Procter, who was 
 born in 1799 and died in 1888, say casually at a 
 London dinner-party, when someone mentioned 
 Harrow Speech-Day — •" Ah ! that used to be a 
 pleasant day. The last time I was there I drove 
 down with Lord Byron and Doctor Parr, who had 
 been breakfasting with my step-father, Basil Mon- 
 tagu." This reminiscence seemed to carry one 
 back some way, but I entirely agreed with Mrs. 
 Procter. Speech-Day at Harrow has been for 
 more than forty years one of my favourite holi- 
 days. In my time the present Speech-Room did 
 not exist. The old Speech-Room, added to John 
 Lyon's original building in 1819, was a well-pro- 
 portioned hall, with panelled walls and large win- 
 dows. Tiers of seats rose on three sides of the 
 room; on the fourth was the platform, and just 
 opposite the platform sat the Head-master, flanked 
 right and left by distinguished visitors. There was 
 a triumphal arch of evergreens over the gate, and 
 the presence of the Beadle of the Parish Church, 
 sumptuous in purple and gold, pointed to the his- 
 toric but obsolescent connexion between the Parish 
 and the Scliool. The material of the " Speeches," 
 
54 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 so-called, was much the same as that provided at 
 other schools— Shakespeare, Sheridan, Chatham, 
 Aristophanes, Plautus, Moliere, Schiller. An age- 
 long desire to play the Trial in Pickwick was only 
 attained, under the; liberal rule of Dr. Wood, in 
 1909. At the Speeches, one caught one's first 
 glimpse of celebrities whom one was destined to 
 see at closer quarters in the years to come. I never 
 can forget the radiant beauty of " Spencer's Faery 
 Queen," * as I saw her at the Speeches of 1869. 
 While I am speaking of Celebrities, I must make 
 a shbrt digression from Speech-Day to Holidays. 
 Dr. Vaughan, some time Head-master of Harrow 
 and afterwards Dean of Llandaff, was in 1868 
 Vicar of Doncaster. My only brother was one of 
 his curates ; the Vaughans asked my mother to stay 
 with them at the Vicarage, in order that she might 
 see her son, then newly ordained, at his work; and, 
 the visit falling in the Harrow holidays, they good- 
 naturedly said she might bring me with her. Dr. 
 Vaughan was always exceedingly kind to boys, 
 and one morning, on our way back from^ the 
 daily service, he said to me — " Sir Grosvenor Le 
 Draughte f has proposed to break his journey here, 
 
 * Charlotte Seymour, Countess Spencer, died 1903. 
 
 t The name is borrowed from "Sybil." The bearer of it 
 was an ancient physician, who had doctored all the famous 
 people of his time, beginning with "Pamela." 
 
HARROVIAN A 55 
 
 on his return from Scotland. Do you know 
 him ? No ? Well — observe Sir Grosvenor. He 
 i-s well worthy of observation. He is exactly 
 what the hymn-book calls ' a worldling.' " The 
 day advanced, and no Sir Grosvenor appeared. 
 The Doctor came into the drawing-room re- 
 peatedly, asking if " that tiresome old gentleman 
 had arrived," and Mrs. Vaughan plied him with 
 topics of consolation — " Perhaps he has missed his 
 train. Perhaps there has been an accident. Per- 
 haps he has been taken ill on the journey " — but 
 the Doctor shook his head and refused to be^com- 
 forted. After dinner, we sat in an awe-struck si- 
 lence, while the Vaughans, knowing the hour at 
 which the last train from Scotland came in, and 
 the length of time which it took to drive from the 
 station, listened with ears erect. Presently the 
 wheels of a fly came rumbling up, and Dr. Vaughan, 
 exclaiming, " Our worst anticipations are real- 
 ized!" hurried to the front door. Then, welcom- 
 ing the aged traveller with open arms, he said in 
 his blandest tones — " Now, my dear Sir Grosve- 
 nor, I know you must be dreadfully tired. You 
 shall go to bed at once." Sir Grosvenor, who 
 longed to sit up till midnight, telling anecdotes 
 and drinking brandy-and-water, feebly remon- 
 strated; but the remorseless Doctor led his un- 
 
5 6 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 willing captive upstairs.* It was a triumph of the 
 Swaviter in modo, and gave me an impressive les- 
 son on the welcome which awaits self-invited 
 guests, even when they are celebrities. But all 
 this is a parenthesis. 
 
 I should be shamefully ungrateful to a place of 
 peculiar enjoyment if I forbore to mention the Li- 
 brary at Harrow. It was opened in 1863, as a 
 Memorial of Dr. Vaughan's Head-mastership, and 
 its delicious bow-window, looking towards Hamp- 
 stead, was my favourite resort. On whole-holi- 
 days, when others were playing cricket, I used 
 to read there for hours at a stretch; and grati- 
 fied my insatiable thirst for Biographies, Memoirs, 
 and Encyclopaedias. The LiJjrary was also the 
 home of the Debating Society, and there I moved, 
 forty years ago, that a Hereditary Legislative 
 Body is incompatible with free institutions; and 
 supported the present Bishop of Birmingham in 
 declaring that a Republic is the best form of Gov- 
 ernment. The mention of the Debating Society 
 leads me to the subject of Politics. I have said in 
 a former chapter that the Conservative Reform 
 Bill of 1867 was the first political event which in- 
 
 * Cf. Dr. Vaughan's Words of Hope — ^p. 98. 
 
 "I can see nothing in that eflfete degenerate driveller, in 
 thg.t wreck of an intellect, in those dregs of what once (I 
 suppose) were affections, in that selfish, querulous, quarrel- 
 some imbecile, which testifies anything of Immortality." 
 
HARROVIAN A 57 
 
 terested me. It was a stirring time all over the 
 world, in France, in Italy, and in Mexico. There 
 were rebellions and rumours of rebellion. Mo- 
 narchical institutions were threatened. Secret So- 
 cieties were in full activity. The whole social 
 order seemed to be passing through a crisis, and 
 I, like the Abbe Sieyes, fell to framing constitu- 
 tions; my favourite scheme being a Republic, with 
 a President elected for life, and a Legislature 
 chosen by universal suffrage. But all these dreams 
 were dispelled by the realities of my new life at 
 Harrow, and, for a while, I perforce thought more 
 of Imperial than of Papal Rome, of Greek than of 
 English Republics. But in the summer of 1868, 
 Mr. Gladstone's first attack on the Irish Church 
 caused such an excitement as I had never before 
 known. It was a pitched battle between the two 
 great Parties of the State, and I was an enthusi- 
 astic follower of the Gladstonian standard. In No- 
 vember 1868 came the General Election which was 
 to decide the issue. Of course Harrow, like all 
 other schools, was Tory as the sea is salt. Out 
 of five hundred boys, I can only recall five who 
 showed the Liberal colour. These were the pres- 
 ent Lord Grey; Walter Leaf, the Homeric scholar; 
 W. A. Meek, now Recorder of York; M. G. 
 Dauglish, who edits the " Harrow Register," 
 and myself. On the polling day I received my 
 
58 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 " Baptism of Fire," or rather of mud, being rolled 
 over and over in the attempt to tear my colours 
 from me. The Tory colour was red; the Liberal 
 was blue; and my mother, chancing to drive 
 through Harrow with the light blue carriage- 
 wheels which my family have always used, was 
 playfully but loudly hissed by wearers of the red 
 rosette. Among the masters, political opinion was 
 divided. . Mr. Young, whom I quoted just now, 
 was a Liberal, and a Tory boy called Freddy Ben- 
 net (brother of the present Lord Tanker ville) 
 covered himself with glory by pinning a red 
 streamer to the back of Young's gown while he 
 was calling " Bill." 
 
 In the following year our Politics found a fresh 
 vent through the establishment of The Harrovian. 
 I had dabbled in composition ever since I was ten, 
 and had printed both prose and verse before I 
 entered Harrow School. So here was a heaven- 
 sent contributor, and one morning, in the autumn 
 of 1869, as I was coming out of First School, one * 
 of the Editors overtook me and said — • 
 
 " We want you to contribute to The Harrovian. 
 We are only going to employ fellows who can 
 write English — not such stuff as ' The following 
 boys were given prizes.' " Purism indeed ! 
 
 Here began my journalistic career. For three 
 * Mr. R. de C. Welch. 
 
HARROVIANA 59 
 
 years I wrote a considerable part of the paper, and 
 I was an Editor during my last year, in conjunc- 
 tion with my friends Dumbar Barton and Walter 
 Sichel. 
 
 Harrow is sometimes said to be the most musical 
 of Public Schools; and certainly our School Songs 
 have attained a wide popularity. I believe that 
 " Forty Years on " is sung all over the world. 
 But, when I went to Harrow, we were confined to 
 the traditional English songs and ballads, and to 
 some Latin ditties by Bradby and Westcott, which 
 we bellowed lustily but could not always construe. 
 E. E. Bowen's stirring, though often bizarre, com- 
 positions (admirably set to music by John 
 Farmer) began soon after I entered the school, 
 and E. W. Howson's really touching and melodi- 
 ous verses superseded Bowen's some ten years 
 after I had left. Other song-writers, of greater 
 or less merit, we have had; but from first to last, 
 the thrilling spell of a Harrow concert has been an 
 experience quite apart from all other musical en- 
 joyments. " The singing is the thing. When you 
 hear the great body of fresh voices leap up like a 
 lark from the ground, and rise and swell and swell 
 and rise till the rafters seem to crack and shiver, 
 then you seem to have discovered all the sources of 
 feeling." This was the tribute of a stranger, and 
 an Harrovian has recorded the same emotion: — 
 
6o ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 " John was singing like a lark, with a lark's 
 spontaneous delight in singing; with an ease and 
 self-abandonment which charmed eye almost as 
 much as ear. Higher and higher rose the clear, 
 sexless notes, till two of them met and mingled in 
 a triumphant trill. To Desmond, that trill was the 
 answer to the quavering, troubled cadences of the 
 first verse ; the vindication of the spirit soaring up- 
 wards unfettered by the flesh — the pure spirit, not 
 released from the human clay without a fierce 
 struggle. At that moment Desmond loved the 
 singer — the singer who called to him out of 
 heaven, who summoned his friend to join him, to 
 see what he saw — ' the vision splendid.' " * 
 
 I am conscious that, so far, I have treated the 
 Moloch of Athletics with such scant respect that 
 his worshippers may doubt if I ever was really a 
 boy. Certainly my physical inability to play games 
 was rendered less bitter by the fact that I did not 
 care about them. I well remember the astonish- 
 ment of my tutor, when he kindly asked me to 
 luncheon on his carriage at my first Eton and 
 Harrow match, and I replied that I should not be 
 there. 
 
 " Not be at Lord's, my boy? How very strange ! 
 Why?" 
 
 " Because there are three things which I partic- 
 * The Hill. Chapter vi. 
 
HARROVIAN A 6i 
 
 ularly dislike — heat, and crowds, and cricket." It 
 certainly was a rather priggish answer, but let me 
 say in self-defence that before I left the school I 
 had become as keen on " Lord's " as the best of 
 my compeers. 
 
 That, in spite of this reprehensible attitude to- 
 wards our national game, I was still, as Mr. Chad- 
 band said, " a human boy," is proved by the in- 
 tense interest with which I beheld the one and only 
 " Mill," which ever took place while I was at Har- 
 row.* It was fought on the 2Sth of February, 
 1868, with much form and ceremony. The " Mill- 
 ing-ground," now perverted to all sorts of base 
 uses, is immediately below the School- Yard. The 
 ground slopes rapidly, so that the wall of the yard 
 forms the gallery of the Milling-ground. The mo- 
 ment that " Bill " was over, I rushed to the wall 
 and secured an excellent place, leaning my elbows 
 on the wall, while a friend, who was a moment 
 later, sat on my shoulders and looked over my 
 bowed head. It would be indiscreet to mention the 
 names of the combatants, though I remember them 
 perfectly. One was a red-headed giant; the other 
 short, dark, and bow-legged. Neither had at all a 
 pleasant countenance, and I must admit that I en- 
 joyed seeing them pound each other into pulp. I 
 felt that two beasts were getting their deserts. To- 
 * Some authorities say that it was the last on record. . 
 
62 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 day such a sight would kill me; but this is the de- 
 generacy of old age. 
 
 Now that I am talking about school-fellows, sev- 
 eral names cali for special mention. As I disliked 
 athletics, it follows that I did not adore athletes. 
 I can safely say that I never admired a boy because 
 of his athletic skill, though I have admired many 
 in spite of it. Probably Sidney Pelham, Archdea- 
 con of Norfolk, who was in the Harrow Eleven 
 in 1867 and 1867, and the Oxford Eleven in 1871, 
 will never see this book; so I may safely say that 
 I have seldom envied anyone as keenly as I envied 
 him, when Dr. Butler, bidding him farewell before 
 the whole school, thanked him for " having set an 
 example which all might be proud to follow — un- 
 failing sweetness of temper, and perfect purity of 
 life." In one respect, the most conspicuous of my 
 school-fellows was H.R.H. Prince Thomas of 
 Savoy,- Duke of Genoa, nephew of Victor Em- 
 manuel, and now an Admiral in the Italian Navy. 
 He came to Harrow in 1869, and lived with Mr. 
 and Mrs. Matthew Arnold. He was elected King 
 of Spain by a vote of the Cortes on the 3rd of Oc- 
 tober 1869. He was quite a popular boy, and no 
 one had the slightest grudge against him; but, for 
 all that, everyone made a point of kicking him, in 
 the hope of being able to say in after-life that they 
 had kicked the King of Spain. Unfortunately 
 
HARROVIANA 63 
 
 Victor Emmanuel, fearing dynastic complications, 
 forbade him to accept the Crown ; so he got all the 
 Harrow kicks and none of the Spanish half-pence. 
 When I entered Harrow, the winner of all the 
 classical prizes was Andrew Graham Murray, now 
 Lord Dunedin and Lord President of the Court 
 of Session; a most graceful scholar, and also a 
 considerable mathematician. Just below him was 
 Walter Leaf, to whom no form of learning came 
 amiss; who was as likely to be Senior Wrangler 
 as Senior Classic, and whose performances in 
 Physical Science won the warm praise of Huxley. 
 Of the same standing as these were Arthur iEvans, 
 the Numismatist, Frank Balfour, the Physiologist, 
 and Gerald Rendall, Head-master of Charterhouse. 
 Among my contemporaries the most distinguished 
 was Charles Gore, whose subsequent career has only 
 fulfilled what all foresaw; and just after him came 
 (to call them by their present names) Lord Crewe, 
 Lord -Ribblesdale, Lord Spencer, Mr. Justice Bar- 
 ton of the Irish Bench, and Mr. Walter Long, in 
 whom Harrow may find her next Prime Minister. 
 Walter Sichel was at seventeen the cleverest school- 
 boy whom I have ever known. Sir Henry McKin- 
 non obtained his Commission in the Guards while 
 he was still in the Fifth Form. Pakenham Beatty 
 was the Swinburnian of the school, then, as now, 
 a true Poet of Liberty. Ion Keith-Falconer, 
 
64 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Orientalist and missionary, was a saint in boy- 
 hood as in manhood. Edward Eyre seemed fore- 
 ordained to be what in London and in Northumber- 
 land he has been — the model Parish-Priest; and 
 my closest friend of all was Charles Baldwyn 
 Childe-Pemberton, who, as Major Childe, fell at the 
 battle of Spion Kop, on a spot now called, in hon- 
 our of his memory, "Childe's Hill." De minimis 
 non curat Respublica; which, being interpreted, 
 signifies — The Com,monwealth will not care to 
 know the names of the urchins who fagged for 
 me.* But I cherish an ebony match-box carved 
 and given to me by one of these ministering spirits, 
 as a proof that, though my laziness may have made 
 me exacting, my exactions were not brutal. 
 
 On the 15th of June, 1871, Harrow School cele- 
 brated the three-hundredth anniversary of its foun- 
 dation. Harrovians came from every corner of 
 the globe to take part in this Tercentenary Fes- 
 tival. The arrangements were elaborated with the 
 most anxious care. The Duke of Abercorn, affec- 
 tionately and appropriately nicknamed " Old Splen- 
 did," presided over a banquet in the School- Yard; 
 and the programme of the day's proceedings had 
 announced, rather to the terror of intending vis- 
 itors, that after luncheon there would be " speeches, 
 * This paper appeared in The Commonwealth. 
 
HARROVIANA 65 
 
 interspersed with songs, from three hundred and 
 fifty of the boys." The aboHtion of the second 
 comma dispelled the dreadful vision of three-hun- 
 dred-and-fifty school-boy-speeches, and all went 
 merry as a marriage-bell^all, except the weather. 
 It seemed as if the accumulated rain of three centu- 
 ries were discharged on the devoted Hill. It was 
 raining when we went to the early Celebration in 
 the Chapel; it was raining harder when we came 
 out. At the culminating moment of the day's pro- 
 ceedings, when Dr. Vaughan was proposing " Pros- 
 perity to Harrow," the downpour and the thunder 
 drowned the speaker's voice ; and, when evening fell 
 on the sodden cricket-ground, the rain extinguished 
 the fireworks. 
 
 On that same cricket-ground nine days later, in 
 the golden afternoon of Midsummer Day, George 
 Clement Cottrell, a boy beautiful alike in face and 
 in character, was killed in an instant by a blow 
 from a ball, which struck him behind the ear when 
 he was umpiring in the Sixth Form game. On the 
 29th of June his five hundred school-fellows fol- 
 lowed him to his resting-place in the Churchyard 
 on the Hill, and I believe we unanimously felt that 
 he whom we had lost was the one, of all our number, 
 of whom we could say, with the surest confidence, 
 that he was fit to pass, without a moment's warn- 
 ing, into the invisible world. Beati mundo corde. 
 
IV 
 
 if 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 "For place, for grace, and for sweet companee, 
 Oxford is Heaven, if Heaven on Earth there be." 
 Sir John Davies. 
 
 The. faithful student of " Verdant Green " will 
 not have forgotten that Charlie Larkyns, when in- 
 troducing his Freshman-friend to the sights of Ox- 
 ford, called his attention to a mystic inscription on 
 a wall in Oriel Lane. " You see that ? Well, that's 
 one of the plates they put up to record the Vice's 
 height. F.P. — 7 feet, you see : the initials of his 
 name — Frederick Plumptre!" "He scarcely 
 seemed so tall as that," replied Verdant, " though 
 certainly a tall man. But the gown makes a dif- 
 ference, I suppose." 
 
 Dr. Plumptre was Vice-Chancellor of Oxford 
 from 1848 to 185 1, and Master of University Col- 
 lege for thirty-four years. He died in 1870, and 
 the College thereupon elected the Rev. G. G. Brad- 
 ley, then Head-master of Marlborough, and after- 
 wards Dean of Westminster, to the vacant post. It 
 was an unfortunate choice. Mr. Bradley was a 
 
OXFORD 67 
 
 man of many gifts and virtues, and a successful 
 schoolmaster; but the methods which had suc- 
 ceeded at Marlborough were not adapted to Ox- 
 ford, and he soon contrived to get at loggerheads 
 both with Dons and with Undergraduates. 
 
 However, there existed at that time — and I dare- 
 say it exists still — a nefarious kind of trades-union- 
 ism among the Head-masters of Public Schools; 
 and, as Bradley had been a Head-master, all the 
 Head-masters advised their best pupils to try for 
 scholarships at University College. 
 
 So far as I had any academical connexions, they 
 were exclusively with Trinity, Cambridge; and my 
 father was as ignorant of Oxford as myself. All 
 I knew about it was that it was the source and 
 home of the Oxford Movement, which some of my 
 friends at Harrow had taught me to admire. Two 
 or three of those friends were already there, and I 
 wished to rejoin them; but, as between the differ- 
 ent Colleges, I was fancy-free; so when, early in 
 1872, Dr. Butler suggested that I should try for a 
 scholarship at University, I assented, reserving 
 myself, in the too probable event of failure, for 
 Christ Church. However, I was elected at Uni- 
 versity on the 24th of February, 1872, and went 
 into residence there on the nth of the following 
 October. 
 
 The Vice-Chancellor who matriculated me was 
 
68 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 the majestic Liddell, who, with his six feet of 
 stately height draped in scarlet, his " argent au- 
 reole " of white hair, and his three silver maces 
 borne before him, always helped me to understand 
 what Sydney Smith meant when he said, of some 
 nonsensical proposition, that no power on earth, 
 save and except the Dean of Christ Church, should 
 induce him to believe it. As I write, I see the an- 
 nouncement of Mrs. Liddell's death; and my mind 
 travels back to the drawing-room and lawns of the 
 Deanery at Christ Church, and the garland of 
 beautiful faces 
 
 "Decking the matron temples of a place 
 So famous through the world." 
 
 The 13th of October was my first Sunday in 
 Oxford, and my friend Charles Gore took me to 
 the Choral Eucharist at Cowley St. John, and after- 
 wards to luncheon with the Fathers. So began my 
 acquaintance with a Society of which I have al- 
 ways been a grateful admirer. But more exciting 
 experiences were at hand: on the 20th of October 
 it was Liddon's turn, as Select Preacher, to occupy 
 the pulpit at St. Mary's. The impressions of that, 
 my first University sermon, have never faded from 
 my mind. A bright autumn morning, the yellow 
 sunlight streaming in upon the densely crowded 
 church, the long array of scarlet-robed doctors, the 
 
OXFORD 69 
 
 preacher's beautiful face looking down from the 
 high pulpit, with anxious brow and wistful gaze. 
 And then the rolling Latin hymn, and then the 
 Bidding Prayer, and then the pregnant text — He 
 that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and 
 he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but 
 the wrath of God abideth on him. Are we list- 
 ening to St. John the Baptist or St. John the Evange- 
 list ? The preacher holds that we are listening to the 
 Evangelist, and says that the purpose of St. John's 
 Gospel is condensed into his text. " If to be- 
 lieve Him is life, to have known and yet to reject 
 Him is death. There is no middle term or state 
 between the two. ... In fact, this stem, yet 
 truthful and merciful, claim makes all the differ- 
 ence between a Faith and a theory." And now 
 there is a moment's pause. Preacher and hearers 
 alike take breath. Some instinct assures us that we 
 are just coming to the crucial point. The preacher 
 resumes : " A statement of this truth in other terms 
 is at present occasioning a painful controversy, 
 which it would be better in this place to pass over 
 in silence, if too much was not at stake to warrant 
 a course from which I shall only depart with sin- 
 cere reluctance. Need I say that I allude to the 
 vexed question of the Athanasian Creed ? " The 
 great discourse which was thus introduced, with its 
 strong argument for the retention of the Creed as 
 
70 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 it stands, has long been the property of the Church, 
 and there is no need to recapitulate it. But the 
 concluding words, extolling " the high and rare 
 grace of an intrepid loyalty to known truth," spoke 
 with a force 'of personal appeal which demands 
 commemoration : " To be forced back upon the 
 central realities of the faith which we profess; to 
 learn, better than ever before, what are the con- 
 victions which we dare not surrender at any cost; 
 to renew the freshness of an early faith, which 
 affirms within us, clearly and irresistibly, that the 
 one thing worth thinking of, worth living for, if 
 need were, worth dying for, is the unmutilated 
 faith of Jesus Christ our Lord, — these may be the 
 results of inevitable differences, and, if they are, 
 they are blessings indeed." * 
 
 The same Sunday was marked by another un- 
 forgettable experience — my first visit to St. Bar- 
 nabas. The church was then just three years old. 
 Bishop Wilber force had consecrated it on the 19th 
 of October, 1869, and made this characteristic note 
 in his diary : — " Disagreeable service. Acolyte 
 running about. Paste squares for bread, etc., but 
 the church a great gift." Three years later, a boy 
 fresh from Harrow, and less sensitively Protestant 
 than the good Bishop, not only thought " the 
 
 * "The Life of Faith and the Athanasian Creed." Univer- 
 sity Sermons. Series II. 
 
OXFORD 71 
 
 church a great gift," but enjoyed the "acolyte 
 running about," and found the whole service the 
 most inspiring and uplifting worship in which he 
 had ever joined. My impressions of it are as clear 
 as yesterday's — the unadorned simplicity of the 
 fabric, emphasizing by contrast the blaze of light 
 and colour round the altar; the floating cloud of 
 incense; the expressive and unfussy ceremonial; 
 the straightforward preaching; and, most impress- 
 ive of all, the large congregation of men, old and 
 young, rich and poor, undergraduates and artizans, 
 all singing Evangelical hymns with one heart and 
 one voice. It was, if ever there was on earth, con- 
 gregational worship; and I, for one, have never 
 seen its like. The people's pride in the church was 
 very characteristic: they habitually spoke of it as 
 " our Barnabas." The clergy and the worshippers 
 were a family, and the church was a home. 
 
 At the Dedication Festival of 1872, there was 
 a strong list of preachers, including W. J. E. Ben- 
 nett, of Frome, and Edward King, then Principal 
 of Cuddesdon. But the sermon which made an in- 
 delible impression on me was preached by R. W. 
 Randall, then Vicar of All Saints,' Clifton, and 
 afterwards Dean of Chichester. It was indeed a 
 memorable performance. " Performance " is the 
 right word, for, young as one was, one realized 
 instinctively the wonderful art and mastery and 
 
72 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 technical perfection of the whole. There was the 
 exquisitely modulated voice, sinking lower, yet be- 
 coming more distinct, whenever any specially mov- 
 ing topic was touched; the restrained, yet em- 
 phatic action — I can see that uplifted forefinger 
 still — ^and the touch of personal reminiscence at 
 the close, so managed as to give the sense that we 
 were listening to an elder brother who, thirty 
 years before, had passed through the same experi- 
 ences, so awfully intermingled of hope and trag- 
 edy, which now lay before us on the threshold of 
 our Oxford life. It was, in brief, a sermon never 
 to be forgotten; it was "a night to be much re- 
 membered unto the Lord." 
 
 Some thirty years later, I was introduced to 
 Dean Randall at a London dinner-party. After 
 dinner, I drew my chair towards him, and said, 
 " Mr. Dean, I have always wished to have an op- 
 portunity of thanking you for a sermon which you 
 preached at St. Barnabas', Oxford, at the Dedica- 
 tion Festival, 1872." The Dean smiled, with the 
 graceful pleasure of an old man honoured by a 
 younger one, and said, " Yes ? What was the 
 text ?" " The text I have long forgotten, but I 
 remember the subject." "And what was that?" 
 " It was the insecurity of even the best-founded 
 hopes." " Rather a well-worn theme," said the 
 Dean, with a half-smile. " But not, sir," I said, 
 
OXFORD 73 
 
 " as you handled it. You told us, at the end of 
 the sermon, that you remembered a summer after- 
 noon when you were an undergraduate at Christ 
 Church, and were sitting over your Thucydides 
 close to your window, grappling with a long and 
 complicated passage which was to be the subject of 
 next morning's Lecture; and that, glancing for a 
 moment from your book, you saw the two most bril- 
 liant young Christ Church men of the day going 
 down to bathe in the Isis. You described the gifts 
 and graces of the pair, who, between them, seemed 
 to combine all that was best and most beautiful in 
 body and mind and soul. And then you told us 
 how, as your friends disappeared towards Christ 
 Church Meadows, you returned to your work; and 
 only were roused from it two hours later, when a 
 confused noise of grief and terror in the quad- 
 rangle below attracted your attention, and you saw 
 the dead bodies of Gaisford and Phillimore borne 
 past your window from their ' watery bier ' at 
 Sandford Lasher." 
 
 On Advent Sunday, December i, I saw and 
 heard Dr. Pusey for the first time. He was then 
 in broken health; but he gathered all his physical 
 and mental energies for a great sermon on " The 
 Responsibility of Intellect in Matters of Faith." 
 The theme of this sermon was that Intellect is a 
 great trust confided to us by God; that we are re- 
 
74 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 sponsible to Him for the use of it; and that we 
 must exercise it in submission to His revealed Will. 
 What He has declared, that it is our duty to be- 
 lieve. Our Lord Himself had uttered the most 
 solemn warning against wilful unbelief; the Atha- 
 nasian Creed only re-echoed His awful words; and 
 the storm which assailed the Creed was really di- 
 rected against the revealed Truth of God. " This 
 tornado will, I trust, by God's mercy, soon pass ; it 
 is a matter of life and death. To remove those 
 words of warning, or the Creed because it contains 
 them, would be emphatically to teach our people 
 that it is not necessary to salvation to believe faith- 
 fully the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, or 
 in One God as He has made Himself known to us." 
 
 Immediately after delivering himself of this 
 great apology for the Faith, Pusey went abroad 
 for the benefit of his health, and did not return to 
 Oxford till the Summer Term. I well remember 
 the crowd of ancient disciples, who had missed 
 their accustomed interview at Christmas, throng- 
 ing his door in Christ Church, like the impotent 
 folk at the Pool of Bethesda. 
 
 Another reminiscence, and of a very different 
 kind, belongs to my first Term. Dean Stanley had 
 been nominated as Select Preacher, and the old- 
 fashioned High Churchmen made common cause 
 with the Low Churchmen to oppose his appoint- 
 
OXFORD 75 
 
 ment. There was a prodigious clamour, but Dr. 
 Pusey held aloof from the agitation, believing — 
 and in this he was conspicuously right — that " op- 
 position would only aggravate the evil by enlisting 
 the enthusiasm of the young." The vote was taken, 
 in an unusually crowded Convocation, on the nth 
 of December. It was a noteworthy and rather an 
 amusing scene, and was well described by an eye- 
 witness.* " Oxford was fairly startled from the 
 serenity which usually marks the fag-end of the 
 Michaelmas Term by a sudden irruption of the 
 outer world. Recognitions took place at every 
 street-corner. The hotels were put upon their 
 mettle. The porter's lodges of the Colleges were 
 besieged, and Boffin's Refreshment Rooms ran 
 over with hungry parsons from the country. As 
 an evidence of the interest which the question of 
 Dean Stanley's appointment excited beyond the 
 walls of the University, I may mention that even 
 the guards and porters at the railway hallooed to 
 each other to know " the state of the betting " ; but 
 even they did not seem quite to have calculated on 
 the matter being so warmly taken up in London 
 and by the country at large." At half-past one 
 o'clock the bell of St. Mary's gave notice to the 
 combatants to prepare for the fray, and immedi- 
 ately the floor of the Theatre was sprinkled with 
 * Rev. C. M. Davies, D.D. 
 
76 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 representative men of all the schools. The non- 
 residents appeared in gowns of various degrees of 
 rustiness, some with chimney-pot hats and some 
 with wide-awakes. The early comers conversed in 
 small groups, Rugging instinctively those sides of 
 the building on which were written respectively 
 Placet or Non-Placet, giving thereby an inkling of 
 how they meant to vote. The gathering increased 
 every moment, and soon the Doctors in their scar- 
 let began to dot the seats around the Vice-Chan- 
 cellor's chair. Prince Leopold, by right of his roy- 
 alty, entered the sacred enclosure with Dr. Acland, 
 and afterwards took his seat among the Doctors. 
 Before two o'clock every inch of the floor was full, 
 the occupants standing in anticipation of the com- 
 ing encounter. " Still they gravitated towards 
 their respective voting doors, and on the Placet 
 side one descried the scholarly face of Professor 
 Jowett, the sharply-cut features of the Rev. Mark 
 Pattison, and the well-known physiognomy of Pro- 
 fessor Max Miiller. On the opposite side Mr. Bur- 
 gon was marshalling his forces, and Dean Goul- 
 bum, from the Doctor's benches, looked out over 
 the seething mass of M.A.'s below him." At two 
 o'clock the Vice-Chancellor arrived, and forthwith 
 commenced proceedings in Latin, which must have 
 been extremely edifying to the ladies who, in some 
 numbers, occupied the Strangers' Gallery, backed 
 
OXFORD 77 
 
 by a narrow fringe of Undergraduates. The ob- 
 ject of the Convocation was stated as being the ap- 
 pointment of Select Preachers, and the names were 
 then submitted to the Doctors and Masters for ap- 
 proval. " Placetne igitur vobis huic nomini assen- 
 tiref" being the form in which the question was 
 proposed. 
 
 The name first on the list was that of the Rev. 
 Harvey Goodwin ; and a faint buzz in the assembly 
 was interpreted by the Vice-Chancellor, skilled in 
 such sounds, as an expression of approval. There- 
 upon he passed on to name number two, which, 
 with some agitation, but with clear, resonant voice, 
 he read out as " Arthurus Penrhyn Stanley." Im- 
 mediately there ensued a scene of the wildest con- 
 fusion. On the Placet side, cheers and waving of 
 trencher-caps ; on the Non-Placet side feeble hisses ; 
 and from all sides, undergraduate as well as grad- 
 uate, mingled shouts of Placet and Non, with an 
 accompaniment of cheers and hisses ; until the ring- 
 ing voice of Dean Liddell breathed peace over the 
 troubled waters by pronouncing the magic words 
 Fiat scrutinium. Thereupon the two Proctors pro- 
 ceeded first of all to take the votes of the Doctors on 
 their benches; and, when this was done, they took 
 their station at the doors labelled Placet and Non- 
 placet. , During the process of polling we had an 
 opportunity of criticizing the constituents of that 
 
78 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 truly exceptional gathering. It was certainly not 
 true to say, as some said, that only the younger 
 Masters voted for Dean Stanley. There was quite 
 a fair proportion of white and bald heads on the 
 Placet side. " The country contingent was not so 
 numerous as one had expected, and I do not be- 
 lieve that all of these went out at the Non-placet 
 door. Evidently, parties were pretty evenly bal- 
 anced ; and, when the Norirplacets had all recorded 
 their votes, there were about twenty-five left on 
 Dean Stanley's side, which probably would have 
 nearly represented the actual majority, but, at the 
 last moment, some stragglers, who had only ar- 
 rived in Oxford by 2.25 train, hurried in and so 
 swelled the numbers. One late-comer arrived 
 without his academicals, and some zealous sup- 
 porter of the Dean had to denude himself, and pass 
 his cap and gown outside, to enable this gentleman 
 to vote." Soon it was over. The Proctors pre- 
 sented their lists to the Vice-Chancellor, who, amid 
 breathless silence, pronounced the fateful words — 
 "'Majori parti placet." Then there was indeed a 
 cheer, which rang through the building from base- 
 ment to upper gallery, and was taken up outside in 
 a way that reminded one of the trial of the Seven 
 Bishops. The hisses, if there were any, were fairly 
 drowned. Oxford had given its approval to Dean 
 Stanley, the numbers being — Placet, 349; Non- 
 placet, 287. 
 
OXFORD 79 
 
 When the fuss was over, Liddon wrote thus to a 
 friend: — "It was a discreditable nomination; but, 
 having been made, ought, in the interests of the 
 Faith, to have been allowed to pass sub silentio; 
 for, if opposed, it must either be defeated or af- 
 firmed by Convocation — a choice, me judice, of 
 nearly balanced evils. To have defeated it would 
 have been to invest Stanley with the cheap honours 
 of a petty martyrdom. To have affirmed it is, I 
 fear, to have given a new impetus to the barren, 
 unspiritual negations which he represents." 
 
 I went up to Oxford well supplied with introduc- 
 tions. Dr. Cradock, the well-beloved Principal of 
 Brasenose, scholar, gentleman, man of the world, 
 devout Wordsworthian, enthusiastic lover of cricket 
 and boating, had married a connexion of my own, 
 who had been a Maid of Honour in Queen Victoria's 
 first household. Their's was the most hospitable 
 house in Oxford, and a portrait of Mrs. Cradock, 
 not quite kind, but very lifelike, enlivens the serious 
 pages of Robert Elsmere. Dr., afterwards Sir 
 Henry, Acland, with his majestic presence, blandly 
 paternal address, and ample rhetoric, was not only 
 the Regius Professor of Medicine, but also the true 
 and patient friend of many undergraduate genera- 
 tions. Mrs. Acland is commemorated in what I 
 have always thought one of the grandest sermons in 
 the English language — Liddon's " Worth of Faith 
 
8o ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 in a Life to Come."* The ^yarden of Keble and 
 Mrs. Talbot (then the young wife of the young 
 Head of a very young College) were, as they have 
 been for 38 years, the kindest and most constant of 
 friends. Dr. Bright, Canon of Christ Church and 
 Professor of Ecclesiastical History, was a lavish en- 
 tertainer, " with an intense dramatic skill in telling 
 a story, an almost biblical knowledge of all the pages 
 of Dickens (and of Scott), with shouts of glee, and 
 outpourings of play and fancy and allusion." But 
 I need not elaborate the portrait, for everyone 
 ought to know Dr. Holland's " Personal Studies" 
 by heart. Edwin Palmer, Professor of Latin, 
 was reputed to be the best scholar in Oxford, 
 and Mrs. Palmer was a most genial hostess. 
 Henry Smith, Professor of Geometry, was, I sup- 
 pose, the most accomplished man of his time;t 
 yet he lives, not by his performances in the urk- 
 thinkable sphere of metaphysical mathematics, 
 but by his intervention at Gladstone's last contest 
 for the University. Those were the days of open 
 voting, and Smith was watching the votes in Glad- 
 
 * University Sermons. Series II. 
 
 t " He had gained University honours, such as have been 
 gained by no one now living, and will probably never be won 
 again. . . . He was one of the greatest mathematical geniuses 
 of the century. His chief and highest intellectual interests 
 lay in an unknown world into which not more than two or 
 three persons could follow. In that world he travelled alone." 
 — From a Memorial Sermon by B. Jowett. 
 
OXFORD 8 I 
 
 stone's interest. Professor , who never could 
 
 manage his h's, wished to vote for the Tory candi- 
 dates, Sir WilHam Heathcote and Mr. Gathorne 
 Hardy, but lost his head, and said : — " I vote for 
 Glad ." Then, suddenly correcting himself, ex- 
 claimed, " I mean for 'Eathcote and 'Ardy." There- 
 upon Smith said, " I claim that vote for Gladstone." 
 " But," said the Vice-Chancellor, " the voter did not 
 finish your candidate's name." " That is true," said 
 Smith, " But then he did not even begin the other 
 two." Henry Smith kept house with an admirable 
 and accomplished sister — the first woman, I believe, 
 to be elected to a School Board, and certainly the 
 only one to whom J. W. Burgon (afterwards Dean 
 of Chichester) devoted a whole sermon. " Miss 
 Smith's Sermon," with its whimsical protest against 
 femiAine activities, was a standing joke in those dis- 
 tant days. The Rev. H. R. Bramley, Fellow of 
 Magdalen, used to entertain us sumptuously in his 
 most beautiful College. He was a connecting link 
 between Dr. Routh, (1755-1854) and modern Ox- 
 ford, and in his rooms I was introduced to the ablest 
 man of my generation — a newly-elected Scholar of 
 Balliol called Alfred Milner. 
 
 It is anticipating, but only by a Term or two (for 
 Dr. King came to Christ Church in 1873) to speak 
 of Sunday luncheons at the house of the Regius Pro- 
 fessor of Pastoral Theology, and of Dr. Liddon's 
 
82 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 characteristic allusion to a remarkably bloated-look- 
 ing Bishop of Oxford in balloon sleeves and a wig, 
 whose portrait adorned the Professor's house. 
 " How singular, dear friend, to reflect that that 
 person should h^ve been chosen, in the providential 
 order, to connect Mr. Keble with the Apostles ! " 
 
 But, though the lines seem to have fallen unto me 
 in ritualistic places, I was not without Evangelical 
 advantages. Canon Linton, Rector of St. Peter-le- 
 Bailey, was a dear old gentleman, who used to enter- 
 tain undergraduates at breakfasts and luncheons, 
 and, after the meal, when more secularly-minded 
 hosts might have suggested pipes, would lead us to a 
 side-table, where a selection of theological works 
 was displayed, and bid us take our choice. " Kay 
 on the Psalms " was a possession thus acquired, and 
 has been used by me from that time to this. Nor 
 must this retrospective page omit some further ref- 
 erence to J. W. Burgon, Fellow of Oriel and Vicar 
 of St. Mary-the- Virgin. Dean Church called him 
 " the dear old learned Professor of Billingsgate," 
 and certainly his method of conducting controversy 
 savoured (as Sydney Smith said about Bishop 
 Monk) of the apostolic occupation of trafficking in 
 fish. But to those whom he liked, and who looked 
 up to him (for this was an essential condition), he 
 was kind, hospitable, courteous, and even playful. 
 His humour, which was of a crabbed kind quite pe- 
 
OXFORD 83 
 
 culiar to himself, found its best vent in his sermons. 
 I often wondered whether he realized that the ex- 
 treme grotesqueness of his preaching was the spell 
 which drew undergraduates to the Sunday evening 
 service at St. Mary's. 
 
 For my next reminiscence of hospitality to Fresh- 
 men I must rely on the assistance of a pseudonym. 
 At the time of which I am writing, Oxford num- 
 bered among her Professors one who had graduated, 
 at a rather advanced age, from Magdalen Hall. 
 Borrowing a name from Dickens, we will call him 
 " Professor Dingo, of European reputation." To 
 the kindness of Professor and Mrs. Dingo I was 
 commended by a friend who lived near my home in 
 Bedfordshire, and, soon after my arrival in Oxford, 
 they asked me to Sunday luncheon at their villa in 
 The Parks. The conversation turned on a new 
 book of Limericks (or " Nonsense Rhymes," as we 
 called them then) about the various Colleges. The 
 Professor had not seen it, and wanted to know if 
 it was amusing. In my virginal innocence I replied 
 that one rhyme had amused me. " Let's have it," 
 quoth the Professor, so off I went at score — 
 
 "There once was at Magdalen Hall 
 A Man who knew nothing at all; ' 
 
 When he took his degree 
 
 He was past fifty-three — 
 Which is youngish for Magdalen Hall." 
 
84 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 The Professor snarled like an angry dog, and said 
 witheringly, that, if that was a specimen, the book 
 must be sorry stuff indeed. After luncheon I 
 walked away with another undergraduate, rather 
 senior to myself, who said rejoicingly, " You've 
 made a good start. That rhyme is meant to de- 
 scribe old Dingo." 
 
V 
 
 OXONIANA 
 
 "Mind'st thou the bells? What a place it was for bells, lad! 
 Spires as sharp as thrushes' bills to pierce the sky with song. 
 How it shook the heart of one, the swaying and the swinging. 
 How it set the blood a-tramp and all the brains a-singing, 
 Aye, and what a world of thought the cahner chimes came 
 bringing. 
 
 Telling praises every hour 
 To His majesty and power. 
 Telling prayers with punctual service, summers, centttries, 
 
 how long? 
 The beads upon our rosary of immemorial song." 
 
 The Minstrelsy of I sis, 
 
 Oxford is a subject from which one cannot easily 
 tear oneself: so I make no apology for returning to 
 it. In that delightful book, " The Minstrelsy of 
 Isis," I have found an anonymous poem beginning 
 
 "Royal heart, loyal heart, comrade that I loved," 
 
 and, in the spirit of that line, I dedicate this chapter 
 to the friend whom I always regarded as the Ideal 
 Undergraduate. Other names and other faces of 
 contemporaries and companions come crowding 
 upon the memory, but it is better, on all accounts, 
 to leave them unspecified. I lived quite as much in 
 
86 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 other colleges as in my own, and in a fellowship 
 which was gathered from all sorts and sections of 
 undergraduate life. Let the reader imagine all the 
 best and brightest men in the University between 
 1872 and 1876,'and he will not go far wrong in as- 
 suming that my friends were arnong them. 
 
 My Oxford life was cut sharply into two halves 
 by a very definite dividing-line; the first half was 
 cheerful and irresponsible enough. A large part of 
 the cheerfulness was connected with the Church, and 
 my earliest friendships (after those which I brought 
 with me from Harrow) were formed in the circle 
 which frequented St. Barnabas. I am thankful to 
 remember that my eyes were even then open to see 
 the moral beauty and goodness all around me, and I 
 had a splendid dream of blending it all into one. In 
 my second term I founded an " Oxford University 
 Church Society," designed to unite religious under- 
 graduates of all shades of Churchmanship for com- 
 mon worship and interchange of views. We formed 
 ourselves on what we heard of a similar Society at 
 Cambridge; and, early in the Summer Term of 
 1873, a youth of ruddy countenance and graceful 
 address — now Canon Mason and Master of Pem- 
 broke — came over from Cambridge, and told us 
 how to set to work. The effort was indeed well- 
 meant. It was blessed by Churchmen as dissimilar 
 as Bishop Mackarness, Edwin Palmer, Burgon, 
 
OXONIAN A 87 
 
 Scott Holland, Illingworth, Ottley, Lacey, and 
 Jayne, now Bishop of Chester ; but it was not long- 
 lived. Very soon the " Victorian Persecution," 
 as we used to call it, engineered by Archbishop Tait 
 through the P.W.R. Act, made it difficult for rit- 
 ualists to feel that they had part or lot with those 
 who were imprisoning conscientious clergymen; so 
 the O.U.C.S. fell to pieces and disappeared, to be 
 revived after long years and under more peaceable 
 conditions, by the present Archbishop of York, 
 when Vicar of St. Mary's. 
 
 The accession of Dr. King to the Pastoral Pro- 
 fessorship brought a new element of social delight 
 into the ecclesiastical world of Oxford, and that was 
 just what was wanted. We revered our leaders, 
 but saw little of them. Dr. Pusey was buried in 
 Christ Church; and, though there were some who 
 fraudulently professed to be students of Hebrew, in 
 order that they might see him (and sketch him) at 
 his lectures, most of us only heard him in the pulpit 
 of St. Mary's. It was rather fun to take ritualistic 
 ladies, who had fashioned mental pictures of the 
 great Tractarian, to Evensong in Christ Church, 
 and to watch their dismay as that very unascetic fig- 
 ure, with tumbled surplice and hood awry, toddled 
 to his stall. " Dear me ! Is that Dr. Pusey ? 
 Somehow I had fancied quite a different-looking 
 man." Liddon was now a Canon of St. Paul's, and 
 
88 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 his home was at Amen Court ; so, when residing at 
 Oxford, he lived a sort of hermit-life in his rooms 
 in Christ Church, and did not hold much communi- 
 cation with undergraduates. I have lively recollec- 
 tions of eating a kind of plum dufiF on Fridays at 
 the Mission-House of Cowley, while one of the 
 Fathers read passages from TertuUian on the re- 
 marriage of widows ; but this, though edifying, was 
 scarcely social. 
 
 But the arrival of " Canon King," with the ad- 
 mirable mother who kept house for him, was like a 
 sunrise. All those notions of austerity and stiffness 
 and gloom which had somehow clung about Trac- 
 tarianism were dispelled at once by his fun and sym- 
 pathy and social tact. Under his roof, undergradu- 
 ates always felt happy and at home, and, in " Little 
 Bethel," as he called it, a kind of disused green- 
 house in his garden, he gathered week by week a 
 band of undergraduate hearers to whom religion 
 spoke through his lips, with her most searching yet 
 most persuasive accent. 
 
 Lovers of Friendship's Garland will remember 
 that, during their three years at Oxford, Lord 
 Lumpington and Esau Hittall were " so much occu- 
 pied with Bullingdon and hunting that there was 
 no great opportunity for those mental gymnastics 
 which train and brace the mind for future acquisi- 
 tion." My ways of wasting time were less strenu- 
 
OXONIANA 89 
 
 ous than theirs ,- and my desultory reading, and des- 
 ultory Church-work, were supplemented by a good 
 deal of desultory riding. I have some delicious 
 memories of autumnal canters over Shotover and 
 Boar's Hill, and racing gallops across Portmeadow, 
 and long ambles on summer afternoons, through the 
 meadows by the river-side, towards Radleyand Nune- 
 ham. Having been brought up in the country, and 
 having ridden ever since I was promoted from pan- 
 niers, I looked upon riding as a commonplace ac- 
 complishment, much on a par with swimming and 
 skating. Great, therefore, was my surprise to find 
 that many undergraduates, I suppose town-bred, re- 
 garded horsemanship not merely as a rare and diffi- 
 cult art, but also as implying a kind of moral dis- 
 tinction. When riding men met me riding, I saw 
 that they " looked at each other with a wild sur- 
 mise;" and soon, perhaps as a consequence, I was 
 elected to " Vincent's." When, after a term or two, 
 my father suggested that I had better have my own 
 horse sent from home, I was distinctly conscious of 
 a social elevation. Henceforward I might, if I 
 would, associate with " Bloods " ; but those whom 
 they would have contemned as " Ritualistic 
 Smugs " were more interesting companions. 
 
 The mention of " Vincent's " reminds me of the 
 Union, to which also I belonged, though I was a 
 sparing and infrequent participator in its debates. 
 
90 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 I disliked debating for debating's sake ; and, though 
 I have always loved speaking on Religion or Politics 
 or any other subject in which the spoken word might 
 influence practice, it has always seemed to me a 
 waste of effort to argue for abstract propositions. 
 If by speaking I can lead a man to give a vote on 
 the right side, or a boy to be more dutiful to his 
 mother, or a sin-burdened youth to " open his 
 grief," I am ready to speak all night; but the debates 
 of the Oxford Union on the Falck Laws and the 
 Imperial Titles Bill always left me cold. 
 
 The General Election of 1874 occurred during 
 my second year at Oxford. The City of Oxford 
 was contested by Harcourt, Cardwell, and the local 
 brewer. Harcourt and Cardwell were returned; 
 but immediately afterwards Cardwell was raised to 
 the peerage, and a bye-election ensued. I can viv- 
 idly recall the gratification which I felt when the 
 Liberal candidate — J. D. Lewis — warmly pressed 
 my hand, and, looking at my rosette, hoped that he 
 might count on my vote and interest. Not for the 
 world would I have revealed the damning fact that 
 I was a voteless undergraduate. 
 
 In connexion with the Election of 1874, my tutor 
 — C. A. Fyffe — told me a curious story. He was 
 canvassing the Borough of Woodstock on behalf 
 of George Brodrick, then an academic Liberal of the 
 deepest dye. Woodstock was what was called an 
 
OXONIAN A 91 
 
 " Agricultural Borough " — practically a division of 
 the County — and in an outlying district, in a soli- 
 tary cottage, the canvassers found an old man whom 
 his neighbours reported to be a Radical. He did 
 not disclaim the title, but no inducements could in- 
 duce him to go to the poll. Gradually, under per- 
 sistent cross-examination, he revealed his mind. 
 He was old enough to remember the days before the 
 Reform Bill of 1832. His father had been an ar- 
 dent reformer. Everyone believed that, if only the 
 Bill were passed, hunger and poverty and misery 
 would be abolished, and the poor would come by 
 their own. He said — and this was the curious 
 point — that firearms were stored in his father's 
 cottage, to be used in a popular rising if the Bill 
 were rejected by the Lords. Well, the Lords had 
 submitted, and the Bill had been passed ; and we had 
 got our reform — and no one was any better off. 
 The poor were still poor, and there was misery and 
 oppression, and the great people had it all their own 
 way. He had got his roof over his head, and a bit 
 of meat in his pot, and it was no good hoping for 
 anything more, and he was never going to take any 
 part in politics again. It was a notable echo from 
 the voices which, in 1832, had proclaimed the arrival 
 of the Millennium. 
 
 Oxford in those days was full of Celebrities. 
 Whenever one's friends came " up " to pay one a 
 
92 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 visit, one was pretty certain to be able, in a casual 
 stroll up the High or round Magdalen Walks or 
 Christ Church Meadows, to point out someone of 
 whom they had heard before. I have already 
 spoken of Liddell and Pusey and Liddon and Ac- 
 land and Burgon and Henry Smith. Chief perhaps 
 among our celebrities was Ruskin, who had lately 
 been made Slade Professor of Fine Art, and whose 
 Inaugural Lecture was incessantlyon the lips of such 
 undergraduates as cared for glorious declamation. 
 
 " There is a destiny now possible to us — the high- 
 est ever set before a nation to be accepted or refused. 
 We are still undegenerate in race ; a race mingled of 
 the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute 
 in temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and 
 the grace to obey. We have been taught a religion 
 of pure mercy, which we must either now finally be- 
 tray, or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are 
 rich in an inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us 
 through a thousand years of noble history, which it 
 should be our daily thirst to increase with splendid 
 avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet 
 honour, should be the most offending souls alive. 
 . . . Will you, youths of England, make your coun- 
 try again a royal throne of kings ; a sceptred isle, for 
 all the world a source of light, a centre of peace; 
 mistress of Learning and of the Arts; faithful gfuar- 
 
OXONIANA 93 
 
 dian of time-tried principles, under temptation from 
 fond experiments and licentious desires ; and, amidst 
 the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, 
 worshipped in her strange valour, of goodwill to- 
 wards men? Vexilla regis prodeunt. Yes, but of 
 which King? There are two oriflammes; which 
 shall we plant on the farthest islands — the one that 
 floats in heavenly fire, or that hangs heavy with foul 
 tissue of terrestrial gold ? " 
 
 Ruskin's lectures, ostensibly devoted to the Fine 
 Arts, ranged over every topic in earth and heaven, 
 and were attended by the largest, most representa- 
 tive, and most responsive audiences which had ever 
 been gathered in Oxford since Matthew Arnold de- 
 livered his Farewell Lecture on " Culture and its 
 Enemies." 
 
 Another of our professors — J. E. Thorold 
 Rogers — though perhaps scarcely a celebrity, was 
 well known outside Oxford, partly because he was 
 the first person to relinquish the clerical character 
 under the Act of 1870, partly because of his really 
 learned labours in history and economics, and 
 partly because of his Rabelaisian humour. He was 
 fond of writing sarcastic epigrams, and of reciting 
 them to his friends, and this habit produced a char- 
 acteristic retort from Jowett. Rogers had only an 
 imperfect sympathy with the historians of the new 
 
94 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 school, and thus derided the mutual admiration of 
 Green and Freeman — 
 
 "Where, ladling butter from a large tureen, 
 
 See blustering Freeman butter blundering Green." 
 
 * 
 
 To which Jowett replied, in his quavering treble, 
 " That's a false antithesis', Rogers. It's quite pos- 
 sible to bluster and blunder, too ! " 
 
 The mention of Oxford historians reminds me of 
 my friend Professor Dingo, to whom reference has 
 been made in an earlier chapter. He had a strong 
 admiration for the virile and masterful character of 
 Henry VIH., and was wont to conceal the blots on 
 his hero's career by this pathetic paraphrase — " The 
 later years of this excellent monarch's reign were 
 clouded by much domestic unhappiness." 
 
 Jowett has been mentioned more than once, and 
 there is no need for me to describe him. Lord Bea- 
 consfield, in Endymion, gave a snapshot of " a cer- 
 tain Dr. Comeley, an Oxford Don of the new school, 
 who were initiating Lord Montfort in all the myste- 
 ries of Neology. This celebrated divine, who, in a 
 sweet silky voice, quoted Socrates instead of St. 
 Paul, was opposed to all symbols and formulas as 
 essentially unphilosophical." Mr. Mallock, in the 
 New Republic, supplied us with a more finished por- 
 trait of " Dr. Jenkinson," and parodied his style of 
 preaching with a perfection which irritated the 
 
OXONIAN A 95 
 
 Master of Balliol out of his habitual calm. My own 
 intercourse with Jowett was not intimate, but I once 
 dined with him on an occasion which made an 
 equally deep impression on two of the guests — Lord 
 Milner and myself. When the ladies had left the 
 dining-room, an eminent diplomatist began an ex- 
 tremely full-flavoured conversation, which would 
 have been unpleasant anywhere, and, in the presence 
 of the diplomatist's son, a lad of sixteen, was dis- 
 gusting. For a few minutes the Master endured it, 
 though with visible annoyance; and then, suddenly 
 addressing the offender at the other end of the table, 
 said, in a birdlike chirp, " Sir ." " Yes, Mas- 
 ter." " Shall we continue this conversation in the 
 drawing-room ? " No rebuke was ever more neatly 
 administered. 
 
 Jowett' s name reminds me, rather obliquely, of 
 the Rev. H. O. Coxe, who in my time was Bodleian 
 Librarian. He was clergyman, sportsman, scholar, 
 all in one, with an infectious enthusiasm for the 
 treasures in his charge, and the most unfailing kind- 
 ness and patience in exhibiting them. " Those who 
 have enjoyed the real privilege of hearing Mr. Coxe 
 discuss points of historical detail, or have been in- 
 troduced by him to some of the rarer treasures of 
 the Bodleian, will bear witness to the living interest 
 which such subjects acquired in his hands. How he 
 would kindle while he recited Lord Clarendon's 
 
96 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 written resignation of the Chancellorship of the 
 University! With what dramatic zest he read out 
 the scraps of paper (carefully preserved by Claren- 
 don) which used to pass between himself and his 
 Royal Master I across the Council-table! " 
 
 I quote this life-like description from Burgon's 
 Twelve Good Men, and Burgon it is who supplies 
 the link with Jowett. " It was shortly after the 
 publication of Essays and Reviews that Jowett, 
 meeting Coxe, enquired : — " Have you read my es- 
 say ? " " No, my dear Jowett. We are good 
 friends now ; but I know that, if I were to read that 
 essay, I should have to cut you. So I haven't read 
 it, and I don't mean to." — A commendable way of 
 escape from theological controversy. 
 
 It is scarcely fair to reckon Cardinal Manning 
 among Oxford celebrities; but during my under- 
 graduateship he made two incursions into the Uni- 
 versity, which were attended by some quaint conse- 
 quences. In 1873 h^ was a guest at the banquet 
 held in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of the 
 foundation of the Union; and it was noted with 
 amusement that, though he was not then a Cardinal, 
 but merely a schismatic Archbishop, he contrived 
 to take precedence of the Bishop of Oxford in his 
 own cathedral city. Bishop Wilberforce had died 
 three months before, and I remember that all the 
 old stagers said : — " If Sam had still been Bishop of 
 
OXONIANA 9? 
 
 Oxford, this would not have happened." The 
 Roman CathoHcs of Oxford were of course de- 
 lighted; and when, soon afterwards. Manning re- 
 turned as Cardinal to open the Roman Catholic 
 Church in St. Giles's, great efforts were made to 
 bring all undergraduates who showed any Rome- 
 ward proclivities within the sphere of his influence. 
 To one rather bumptious youth he said : — " And 
 what are you going to do with your life ? " " I'm 
 thinking of taking Orders." " Take care you get 
 them, my friend." Another, quite unmoved by the 
 pectoral cross and purple soutane, asked artlessly, 
 " What was your college ? " The Archbishop re- 
 plied, with some dignity, " I was at Balliol, and 
 subsequently at Merton." " Oh ! that was like me. 
 I was at Exeter, and was sent down to a Hall for 
 not getting through Smalls." " I was a Fellow of 
 Merton." No powers of type can do justice to the 
 intonation. 
 
 At the time of which I speak Oxford was par- 
 ticularly rich in delightful and accomplished ladies. 
 I have already paid my tribute to Mrs. Cradock, 
 Mrs. Liddell, Mrs. Acland, Mrs. Talbot, and Miss 
 Eleanor Smith. Miss Felicia Skene was at once a 
 devoted servant of the poor and the outcast, and also 
 one of the most powerful writers of her time, al- 
 though she contrived almost entirely to escape ob- 
 servation. Let anyone who thinks that I rate her 
 
98 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 powers too highly read " The Divine Master," " La 
 Roquette— 1871," and " Hidden Depths." 
 
 No account of the famous women at Oxford 
 would be complete without a reference to Miss 
 Marion Hughes — the first Sister of Mercy in the 
 Church of England — professed on Trinity Sunday, 
 1841, and still the Foundress-Mother of the Convent 
 of the Holy and Undivided Trinity at Oxford. 
 
 I said at the beginning of this chapter that my 
 Oxford life was divided sharply into two halves. 
 Neither the climate nor the way of living ever suited 
 my health. In my first term I fell into the doctor's 
 hands, and never escaped from them so long as I 
 was an undergraduate. I well remember the de- 
 cisive counsel of the first doctor whom I consulted 
 (not Dr. Acland). "What wine do you drink?" 
 " None." " Oh ! that's all nonsense. You never 
 will be able to live in this climate unless you drink 
 port, and plenty of it." 
 
 To this generous prescription I dutifully sub- 
 mitted, but even port was powerless to keep me 
 well at Oxford. I always felt " seedy " ; and the 
 nervous worry inseparable from a time of spiritual 
 storm and stress (for four of my most intimate 
 friends seceded to Rome) told upon me more than 
 I knew. An accidental chill brought things to a cli- 
 max, and during the Christmas vacation of 1874 
 
OXONIANA 99 
 
 I was laid low by a sharp attack of myelitis, mis- 
 taken at the time for rheumatic fever. I heard the 
 last stroke of midnight, December 31, in a paroxysm 
 of pain which, for years after, I never could recall 
 without feeling sick. I lost two terms through ill- 
 ness, and the doctors were against my returning to 
 the damps of Oxford. However, I managed to 
 hobble back on two sticks, maimed for life, and with 
 all dreams of academical distinction at an end. But 
 what was more important was that my whole 
 scheme of life was dissipated. Henceforward it 
 was with me, as with Robert Elsmere after his ma- 
 laria at Cannes — " It was clear to himself and every- 
 body else that he must do what he could, and not 
 what he would, in the Christian vineyard." The 
 words have always made me smile; but the reality 
 was no smiling matter. The remainder of my life 
 at Oxford was of necessity lived at half-speed ; and 
 in this place I must commemorate, with a gratitude 
 which the lapse of years has never chilled, the ex- 
 traordinary kindness and tenderness with which my 
 undergraduate friends tended and nursed me in that 
 time of crippledom.* Prince Leopold, than an un- 
 dergraduate of Christ Church, and living at Wyke- 
 ham House in The Parks, used to lend me his pony- 
 carriage, which, as strictly it belonged to the Queen, 
 
 * Here I must depart from my rule, and mention a name — 
 FitzRoy Stewart. 
 
loo ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 and bore her crown and cypher, did not pay toll; 
 and, with an undergraduate friend at my side, I used 
 to snatch a fearful joy from driving- at full tilt 
 through turnpike gates, and mystifying the toll- 
 keeper by saying that the Queen's carriages paid no 
 toll. For the short remainder of my time at Ox- 
 ford I was cut oflf from riding and all active exer- 
 cise, and was not able even to go out in bad weather. 
 But it was with me as with Captain Harville in Per- 
 suasion — " His lameness prevented him from tak- 
 ing much exercise ; but a mind of usefulness and in- 
 genuity seemed to furnish him with constant em- 
 ployment within." 
 
 Here I must close my recollections of Oxford, 
 and, as I look back upon those four years — 1872- 
 1876 — I find ray thoughts best expressed by Sir 
 Arthur Quiller-Couch, who has done for Oxford 
 in his Alma Mater just what Matthew Arnold did 
 in the preface to Essays in Criticism. . . . 
 
 " Know you her secret none can utter ? 
 
 Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown? 
 Still on the spire the pigeons flutter; 
 
 Still by the gateway flits the gown; 
 Still on the street, from corbel and gutter. 
 
 Faces of stone look down. 
 
 Still on her spire the pigeons hover; 
 
 Still by her gateway haunts the gown; 
 Ah, but her secret? You, young lover. 
 
 Drumming her old ones forth from town. 
 Know you the secret none discover? 
 
 Tell it — when you go down." 
 
OXONIANA loi 
 
 Know you the secret none discover — none, that 
 is, while they still are undergraduates ? 
 
 Well, I think I do ; and, to begin with a negative, 
 it is not the secret of Nirvana. There are mis- 
 guided critics abroad in the land who seem to as- 
 sume that life lived easily in a beautiful place, amid 
 a society which includes all knowledge in its com- 
 prehensive survey, and far remote from the human 
 tragedy of poverty and toil and pain, must neces- 
 sarily be calm. And so, as regards the actual work 
 and warfare of mankind, it may be. The bitter cry 
 of starving Poplar does not very readily penetrate to 
 the well-spread tables of Halls and Common-rooms. 
 In a laburnum-clad villa in The Parks we can afford 
 to reason very temperately about life in cities where 
 five families camp in one room. But, when we 
 leave actualities, and come to the region of thought 
 and opinion, all the pent energy of Oxford seethes 
 and stirs. The Hebrew word for " Prophet " 
 comes, I believe, from a root which signifies to bub- 
 ble hke water on the flame; and it is just in this 
 fervency of thought and feeling that Oxford is 
 Prophetic. It is a tradition that in some year of 
 the storm-tossed 'Forties the subject for the New- 
 digate Prize Poem was Cromwell, whereas the sub- 
 ject for the corresponding poem at Cambridge was 
 Plato. In that selection Oxford was true to her- 
 self. For a century at least (even if we leave out 
 
I02 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 of sight her earlier convulsions) she has been the 
 battle-field of contending sects. Her air has re- 
 sounded with party-cries, and the dead bodies of 
 the controversially slain lie thick in her streets. All 
 the opposing l^orces of Church and State, of the- 
 ology and politics, of philosophy and science, of lit- 
 erary and social and economic theory, have con- 
 tended for mastery in the place which Matthew Ar- 
 nold, with fine irony, described as " so unruffled by 
 the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene ! " 
 Every succeeding generation of Oxford men has 
 borne its part in these ever-recurring strifes. To 
 hold aloof from them would have been poltroonery. 
 Passionately convinced (at twenty) that we had 
 sworn ourselves for life to each cause which we es- 
 poused, we have pleaded and planned and denounced 
 and persuaded; have struck the shrewdest blows 
 which our strength could compass, and devised the 
 most dangerous pitfalls for our opponents' feet 
 which wit could suggest. Nothing came of it all, 
 and nothing could come, except the ruin of our ap- 
 pointed studies and the resulting dislocation of all 
 subsequent life. But we were obeying the irresisti- 
 ble impulse of the time and the place in which our 
 lot was cast, and we were ready to risk our all upon 
 the venture. 
 
 But now all that passion, genuine enough while 
 it lasted, lies far back in the past, and we learn the 
 
OXONIANA 103 
 
 secret which we never discovered while as yet Ox- 
 ford held us in the thick of the fight. We thought 
 then that we were the most desperate partisans ; we 
 asked no quarter, and gave none ; pushed our argu- 
 mentative victories to their uttermost consequences, 
 and made short work of a fallen foe. But, when 
 all the old battle-cries have died out of our ears, 
 gentler voices begin to make themselves heard. All 
 at once we realize that a great part of our old con- 
 tentions was only sound and fury and self-decep- 
 tion, and that, though the causes for which we 
 strove may have been absolutely right, our oppo- 
 nents were not necessarily villains. In a word, we 
 have learnt the Secret of Oxford. All the time that 
 we were fighting and fuming, the higher and sub- 
 tler influences of the place were moulding us, un- 
 conscious though we were, to a more gracious ideal. 
 We had really learnt to distinguish between intel- 
 lectual error and moral obliquity. We could differ 
 from another on every point of the political and the- 
 ological compass, and yet in our hearts acknowledge 
 him to be the best of all good fellows. Without 
 surrendering a single conviction, we came to see 
 the virtue of so stating our beliefs as to persuade 
 and propitiate, instead of offending and alienating. 
 We had attained to that temper which, in the sphere 
 of thought and opinion, is analogous to the crown- 
 ing virtue of Christian charity. 
 
I04 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 "Tell it — when you go down." 
 
 Not long ago I was addressing a company of Ox- 
 ford undergraduates, all keenly alive to the interests 
 and controversies of the present hour, all devotedly 
 loyal to the tradition of Oxford as each understood 
 it, and all with their eyes eagerly fixed on " the wist- 
 ful limit of the world." With such an audience it 
 was inevitable to insist on the graces and benedic- 
 tions which Oxford can confer, and to dwell on Mr. 
 Gladstone's dogma that to call a man a " typically 
 Oxford man" is to bestow the highest possible 
 praise. 
 
 But this was not all. Something more remained 
 to be said. It was for a speaker whose undergrad- 
 uateship lay thirty years behind to state as plainly 
 as he could his own deepest obligation to the place 
 which had decided the course and complexion of his 
 life. Wherever philosophical insight is combined 
 with literary genius and personal charm, one says 
 instinctively, " That man is, or ought to be, an Ox- 
 ford man." Chiefest among the great names which 
 Oxford ought to claim but cannot is the name of 
 Edmund Burke ; and the " Secret " on which we 
 have been discoursing seems to be conveyed with 
 luminous precision in his description of the ideal 
 character : — " It is our business ... to bring the 
 dispositions that are lovely in private life into the 
 service and conduct of the commonwealth ; so to be 
 
OXONIANA los 
 
 patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen ; to culti- 
 vate friendships and to incur enmities ; to have both 
 strong, but both selected — in the one to be placable, 
 in the other immovable." 
 
 Whoso has attained to that ideal has learnt the 
 " Secret " of Oxford. 
 
VI 
 
 HOME 
 
 "Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam; 
 True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home." 
 
 Wordsworth, " To a Sky-lark." 
 
 I SAID good-bye to Oxford on the 17th of June, 
 1876. What was the next step to be ? As so often 
 in my life, the decision came through a doctor's lips. 
 He spoke in a figure, and this is what he said. 
 " When a man has had a severe illness, he has taken 
 a large sum out of his capital. Unless he has the 
 wisdom to replace it, he must be permanently 
 poorer; and, when the original stock was not large, 
 the necessity of economizing becomes more urgent. 
 You are in that case. My advice, therefore, is — 
 Do nothing for the next two or three years. Con- 
 centrate all your efforts on getting better. Live as 
 healthy a life as you can, and give mind and body 
 a complete rest. If you will obey this counsel, you 
 will find that you have replaced the capital, or, at 
 any rate, some of it; and you may, in spite of all 
 disabilities, be able to take your part in the life and 
 work of the world." The prescription of total ab- 
 
HOME 107 
 
 stinence from effort exactly suited my disposition 
 of the moment. Oxford, one way and another, had 
 taken more out of me than till then I had realized, 
 and I was only too thankful to have an opportunity 
 of making good the loss. 
 
 It being, for the time, my prime object to recover 
 some portion of health and strength, I was beyond 
 measure fortunate in the possession of an absolutely 
 ideal home. " ' Home ! Sweet Home ! ' Yes. 
 That is the song that goes straight to the heart of 
 every English man and woman. For forty years 
 we never asked Madame Adelina Patti to sing any- 
 thing else. The unhappy, decadent, Latin races 
 have not even a word in their language by which to 
 express it, poor things! Home is the secret of our 
 honest, British, Protestant virtues. It is the only 
 nursery of our Anglo-Saxon citizenship. Back to 
 it our far-flung children turn, with all their memo- 
 ries aflame. They may lapse into rough ways, but 
 they keep something sound at the core so long as 
 they are faithful to the old home. There is still a 
 tenderness in the voice, and tears are in their eyes, 
 as they speak together of the days that can never 
 die out of their lives, when they were at home in the 
 old familiar places, with father and mother, in the 
 healthy gladness of their childhood." * To me 
 home was all this and even more ; for not only had 
 * Henry Scott Holland. 
 
io8 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 it been my earthly Paradise when I was a child, 
 but now, in opening manhood, it was a sanctuary 
 and a resting-place, in which I could prepare my- 
 self to face whatever lot the future might have in 
 store for me. 
 
 That London as well as country may be, under 
 certain conditions. Home, I am well aware. For 
 many natures London has an attractiveness which is 
 all its own. And yet to indulge one's taste for it 
 may be a grave dereliction of duty. The State is 
 built upon the Home, and, as a training-place for 
 social virtue, there can surely be no comparison be- 
 tween a home in the country and a home in Lon- 
 don. All those educating influences which count 
 for so much in the true home are infinitely weaker 
 in the town than in the country. In a London 
 home there is nothing to fascinate the eye. The 
 contemplation of the mews and the chimney-pots 
 through the back-windows of the nursery will not 
 elevate even the most impressible child. There is 
 no mystery, no dreamland, no Enchanted Palace, 
 no Bluebeard's Chamber, in a stucco mansion built 
 by Cubitt, or a palace of terra-cotta on the Cadogan 
 estate. There can be no traditions of the past, no 
 inspiring memories of virtuous ancestry, in a house 
 which your father bought five years ago and of 
 which the previous owners are not known to you 
 even by name. " The Square " or " the Gardens " 
 
HOME 109 
 
 are sorry substitutes for the Park and the Pleasure- 
 grounds, the Common and the Downs. Crossing- 
 sweepers are a deserving folk, but you cannot cul- 
 tivate those intimate relations with them which bind 
 you to the lodge-keeper at home, or to the old 
 women in the alms-houses, or to the septuagenarian 
 waggoner who has driven your father's team ever 
 since he was ten years old. Holy Trinity, Sloane 
 Street, or All Saints', Margaret Street, may be beau- 
 tifully ornate, and the congregation what Lord Bea- 
 consfield called " sparkling and modish " ; but they 
 can never have the romantic charm of the Village 
 Church where you were confirmed side by side with 
 the keeper's son, or proposed to the Vicar's daugh- 
 ter when you were wreathing holly round the lec- 
 tern. There is a magic in the memory of a country 
 home with which no urban associations can compete. 
 Nowadays the world is perpetually on the move, 
 but in the old days people who possessed a country 
 house passed nine months out of twelve under its 
 sacred roof — sacred because it was inseparably con- 
 nected with memories of ancestry and parentage and 
 early association; with marriage and children, and 
 pure enjoyment and active benevolence and neigh- 
 bourly goodwill. In a word, the country house was 
 Home, and for those who dwelt in it the interests 
 of life were very much bound up in the Park and 
 the covers, the croquet-ground and the cricket- 
 
no ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 ground, the kennel, the stable, and the garden. I 
 remember, when I was an undergraduate, lionizing 
 some Yorkshire damsels on their first visit to Ox- 
 ford, then in the " high midsummer pomps " of its 
 beauty. But all they said was, in the pensive tone 
 of unwilling exiles, " How beautifully the sun must 
 be shining on the South Walk at home ! " 
 
 The Village Church was a great centre of domes- 
 tic aflfection. All the family had been christened 
 in it. The eldest sister had been married in it. 
 Generations of ancestry mouldered under the chan- 
 cel-floor. Christmas decorations were an occasion 
 of much innocent merriment, and a little ditty high 
 in favour in Tractarian homes warned the deco- 
 rators to be — 
 
 "Unselfish — ^looking not to see 
 Proofs of their own dexterity; 
 But quite contented that 'I' should 
 Forgotten be in brotherhood." 
 
 Of course, whether Tractarian or Evangelical, 
 religious people regarded church-going as a spirit- 
 ual privilege ; and everyone, religious or not, recog- 
 nized it as a civil duty. " When a gentleman is sur 
 ses terres," said Major Pendennis, " he must give an 
 example to the country people ; and, if I could turn 
 a tune, I even think I should sing. The Duke 
 of St. David's, whom I have the honour of 
 knowing, always sings in the country, and let me 
 
HOME III 
 
 tell you it has a doosed fine effect from the Family 
 Pew." Before the passion for " restoration " had 
 set in, and ere yet Sir Gilbert Scott had transmog- 
 rified the Parish Churches of England, the Family 
 Pew was indeed the ark and sanctuary of the terri- 
 torial system — and a very comfortable ark too. It 
 had a private entrance, a round table, a good assort- 
 ment of arm-chairs, a fire-place, and a wood-basket. 
 And I well remember a wash-leather glove of un- 
 usual size which was kept in the wood-basket for the 
 greater convenience of making up the fire during 
 divine service. " You may restore the church as 
 much as you like," said the lay-rector of our parish, 
 to an innovating Incumbent, " but I must insist on 
 my Family Pew not being touched. If I had to sit 
 in an open seat, I should never get a wink of sleep 
 again." 
 
 A country home left its mark for all time on those 
 who were brought up in it. The sons played cricket 
 and went bat-fowling with the village boys, and not 
 seldom joined with them in a poaching expedition' 
 to the paternal preserves. However popular or suc- 
 cessful or happy a Public-school boy might be at 
 Eton or Harrow, he counted the days till he could 
 return to his pony and his gun, his ferrets and rat- 
 trap and fishing-rod. In after years, amid all the 
 toil and worry of active life, he looked back lovingly 
 to the corner of the cover where he shot his first 
 
112 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 pheasant, or the precise spot in the middle of the 
 Vale where he first saw a fox killed, and underwent 
 the disgusting Baptism of Blood. 
 
 Girls, living more continuously at home, entered 
 even more intimately into the daily life of the place. 
 Their morning rides led them across the Village 
 Green ; their afternoon drives were often steered by 
 the claims of this or that cottage to a visit. They 
 were taught as soon as they could toddle never to 
 enter a door without knocking, never to sit down 
 without being asked, and never to call at meal-time. 
 They knew everyone in the village — old and young ; 
 played with the babies, taught the boys in Sunday 
 School, carried savoury messes to the old and im- 
 potent, read by the sick-beds, and brought flowers 
 for the coffin. Mamma knitted comforters and dis- 
 pensed warm clothing, organized relief in hard 
 winters and times of epidemic, and found places for 
 the hobbledehoys of both sexes. The pony-boy 
 and the scullery-maid were pretty sure to be prod- 
 ucts of the village. Very likely the young-ladies'- 
 maid was a village girl whom the doctor had pro- 
 nounced too delicate for factory or farm. I have 
 seen an excited young groom staring his eyes out of 
 his head at the Eton and Harrow match, and ex- 
 claiming with rapture at a good catch, " It was my 
 young governor as ' scouted ' that. 'E's nimble, 
 ain't he? " And I well remember an ancient stable- 
 
HOME 113 
 
 helper at a country house in Buckinghamshire who 
 was called " Old Bucks," because he had never slept 
 out of his native county, and very rarely out of his 
 native village, and had spent his whole life in the 
 service of one family. 
 
 Of course, when so much of the impressionable 
 part of life was lived amid the " sweet, sincere sur- 
 roundings of country life " ; there grew up, between 
 the family at the Hall and the families in the village, 
 a feeling which, in spite of our national unsentimen- 
 tality, had a chivalrous and almost feudal tone. 
 The interest of the poor in the life and doings of 
 " The Family " was keen and genuine. The Eng- 
 lish peasant is too much a gentleman to be a flatterer, 
 and compliments were often bestowed in very un- 
 expected forms. " They do tell me as 'is under- 
 standing's no worse than it always were," was a 
 ploughman's way of saying that an uncle of mine 
 was in full possession of his faculties. " We call 
 'im ' Lord Charles ' because 'e's so old and so cun- 
 ning," was another's description of a pony which 
 had belonged to my father. " Ah, I know you're 
 but a poor creature at the best ! " was the recog- 
 nized way of complimenting a lady on what she con- 
 sidered her bewitching and romantic delicacy. 
 
 But these eccentricities were merely verbal, and 
 under them lay a deep vein of genuine and lasting 
 regard. " I've lived under four dukes and four 
 
114 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 'ousekeepers, and I'm not going to be put upon in 
 my old age ! " was the exclamation of an ancient 
 poultry-woman, whose dignity had been offended by 
 some irregularity touching her Christmas dinner. 
 When the daughter of the house married and went 
 into a far country, she was sure to find some emi- 
 grant from her old home who welcomed her with 
 effusion, and was full of enquiries about his Lord- 
 ship and her Ladyship, and Miss Pinkerton the gov- 
 erness, and whether Mr. Wheeler was still coach- 
 man, and who lived now at the Entrance Lodge. 
 Whether the sons got commissions, or took ranches, 
 or become curates in slums, or contested remote 
 constituencies, some grinning face was sure to 
 emerge from the crowd with " You know me, sir? 
 Bill Juffs, as used to go birds-nesting with you " ; 
 or, " You remember my old dad, my lord ? He 
 used to shoe your black pony." When the eldest 
 son came of age, his condescension in taking this 
 step was hailed with genuine enthusiasm. When 
 he came into his kingdom, there might be some 
 grumbling if he went in for small economies, or al- 
 tered old practices, or was a " hard man " on the 
 Bench or at the Board of Guardians ; but, if he went 
 on in the good-natured old ways, the traditional loy- 
 alty was unabated. Lord Shaftesbury wrote thus 
 about the birth of his eldest son's eldest son : — " My 
 little village is all agog with the birth of a son and 
 
HOME 115 
 
 heir in the very midst of them, the first, it is be- 
 lieved, since 1600, when the first Lord Shaftesbury 
 was born. The christening yesterday was an ova- 
 tion. Every cottage had flags and flowers. We 
 had three triumphal arches ; and all the people were 
 exulting. ' He is one of us.' ' He is a fellow-vil- 
 lager.' ' We have now got a lord of our own.' 
 This is really gratifying. I did not think that there 
 remained so much of the old respect and afifection 
 between peasant and proprietor, landlord and ten- 
 ant." 
 
 In the present day, if a season of financial pres- 
 sure sets in, people shut up their country houses, 
 let their shooting, cut themselves off with a sigh of 
 relief from all the unexciting duties and simple 
 pleasures of the Home, and take refuge from bore- 
 dom in the delights of London. In London life 
 has no duties. Little is expected of one, and noth- 
 ing required. 
 
 But in old days, when people wished to econo- 
 mize, it was London that they deserted. They sold 
 the " Family Mansion " in Portland Place or Eaton 
 Square; and, if they revisited the glimpses of the 
 social moon, they took a furnished house for six 
 weeks in the summer ; the rest of the year they spent 
 in the country. This plan was a manifold saving. 
 There was no rent to pay, and only very small 
 rates, for everyone knows that country houses are 
 
ii6 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 shamefully under-assessed. Carriages did not re- 
 quire re-painting every season, and no new clothes 
 were wanted. As the ladies in Cranford said — ■ 
 " What can it matter what we wear here, where 
 every one krfows who we are ? " The products of 
 the Park, the Home Farm, the hot-houses, and the 
 kitchen-garden kept the family supplied with food. 
 A brother-magnate staying at Beaudesert with the 
 famous Lord Anglesey waxed enthusiastic over the 
 mutton, and venturing on the privilege of an old 
 friendship, asked how much it cost him. " Cost 
 me ? " screamed the hero. " Good Gad, it costs me 
 nothing! I don't buy it. It's my own," and he 
 was beyond measure astonished when his statistical 
 guest proved that " his own " cost him about a 
 guinea per pound. In another great house, con- 
 ducted on strictly economical lines, it was said that 
 the very numerous family were reared exclusively 
 on rabbits and garden-stuff, and that thyr enfeebled 
 constitutions and dismal appearance in later life 
 were due to this ascetic regimen. 
 
 People were always hospitable in the country ; but 
 rural entertaining was not a very costly business. 
 The " three square meals and a snack," which rep- 
 resent the minimum requirements of the present 
 day, are a huge development of the system which 
 prevailed in my youth. Breakfast had already 
 grown from the tea and coffee, and rolls and eggs, 
 
HOME 117 
 
 which Macaulay tells us were deemed sufficient at 
 Holland House, to an affair of covered dishes. 
 Luncheon-parties were sometimes given — terrible 
 ceremonies which lasted from two to four; but the 
 ordinary luncheon of the family was a snack from 
 the servants' joint or the children's rice pudding; 
 and five o'clock tea had only lately been invented. 
 To remember, as I just can, the Foundress* of that 
 divine refreshment seems like having known Ste- 
 phenson or Jenner. 
 
 Dinner was substantial enough in all conscience, 
 and the wine nearly as heavy as the food. Imagine 
 quenching one's thirst with sherry in the dog-days ! 
 Yet so we did, till about half-way through dinner, 
 and then, on great occasions, a dark-coloured rill of 
 champagne began to trickle into the V-shaped 
 glasses. At the epoch of cheese, port made its ap- 
 pearance in company with home-brewed beer; and, 
 as soon as the ladies and the schoolboys departed, 
 the men applied themselves, with much seriousness 
 of purpose, to the consumption of claret which was 
 really vinous. 
 
 Grace was said before and after dinner. There 
 was a famous squire in Hertfordshire whose love 
 of his dinner was constantly at war with his pietistic 
 traditions. He always had his glass of sherry 
 poured out before he sat down to dinner, so that he 
 * Anna Maria, Duchess of Bedford, died in 1857. 
 
ii8 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 might get at it without a moment's delay. One 
 night, in his generous eagerness, he upset the glass 
 just as he dropped into his seat at the end of grace, 
 and the formula ran on to an unexpected conclusion, 
 thus : " For what we are going to receive, the Lord 
 make us truly thankful — D — n ! " But, if the in- 
 congruities which attended grace before dinner were 
 disturbing, still more so were the solemnities of the 
 close. Grace after dinner always happened at the 
 moment of loudest and most general conversation. 
 For an hour and a half people had been stuffing as 
 if their lives depended on it — " one feeding like 
 forty." Out of the abundance of the mouth the 
 heart speaketh, and every one was talking at once, 
 and very loud. Perhaps the venue was laid in a 
 fox-hunting country, and then the air was full of 
 such voices as these : " Were you out with the 
 Squire to-day?" "Any sport?" "Yes, we'd 
 rather a nice gallop." " Plenty of the animal about, 
 I hope?" " Well, I don't know. I believe that 
 new keeper at Boreham Wood is a vulpicide. I 
 don't half like his looks," " What an infernal vil- 
 lain ! A man who would shoot a fox would poison 
 his own grandmother." "Sh! Sh!" " Whaf s 
 the matter?" 
 
 " For what we have received," &c. 
 
 " Do you know you've been talking at the top of 
 your voice all the time grace was going on ? " 
 
HOME 119 
 
 " Not really? I'm awfully sorry. But our host 
 mumbles so, I never can make out what he's say- 
 ing." 
 
 " I can't imagine why people don't have grace 
 after dessert. I know I'm much more thankful for 
 strawberry ice than for saddle of mutton." 
 
 And so on and so forth. On the whole, I am not 
 sure that the abolition of grace is a sign of moral 
 degeneracy, but I note it as a social change which 
 I have seen. 
 
 In this kind of hospitality there was no great ex- 
 pense. People made very little difference between 
 their way of living when they were alone, and their 
 way of living when they had company. A visitor 
 who wished to make himself agreeable sometimes 
 brought down a basket of fish or a barrel of oysters 
 from London; and, if one had no deer of one's own, 
 the arrival of a haunch from a neighbour's or kins- 
 man's park was the signal for a gathering of local 
 gastronomers. And in matters other than meals 
 life went on very much the same whether you had 
 friends staying with you or whether you were alone. 
 Your guests drove and rode, and walked and shot, 
 according to their tastes and the season of the year. 
 They were carried off, more or less willingly, to see 
 the sights of the neighbourhood — ruined castles, re- 
 stored cathedrals, famous views. In summer there 
 might be a picnic or a croquet-party; in winter a 
 
I20 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 lawn-meet or a hall. But all these entertainments 
 were of the most homely and inexpensive character. 
 There was very little outlay, no fuss, and no display. 
 But now an entirely different spirit prevails. 
 People seem to have lost the power of living quietly 
 and happily in their country homes. They all have 
 imbibed the urban philosophy of George Warring- 
 ton, who, when Pen gushed about the country with 
 its " long, calm days, and long calm evenings," bru- 
 tally replied, " Devilish long, and a great deal too 
 calm. I've tried 'em." People of that type desert 
 the country simply because they are bored by it. 
 They feel with the gentleman who stood for Mat- 
 thew Arnold in The New Republic, and who, after 
 talking about " liberal air," " sedged brooks," and 
 " meadow grass," admitted that it would be a dread- 
 ful bore to have no other society than the Clergy- 
 man of the parish, and no other topics of conversa- 
 tion than Justification by Faith and the measles. 
 They do not care for the country in itself ; they have 
 no eye for its beauty, no sense of its atmosphere, no 
 memory for its traditions. It is only made endura- 
 ble to them by sport and gambling and boisterous 
 house-parties ; and, when from one cause or another 
 these resources fail, they are frankly bored and long 
 for London. They are no longer content, as our 
 fathers were, to entertain their friends with hospi- 
 table simplicity. So profoundly has all society been 
 
HOME 121 
 
 vulgarized by the worship of the Golden Calf that, 
 unless people can vie with alien millionaires in the 
 sumptuousness with which they " do you " — de- 
 lightful phrase, — ^they prefer not to entertain at all. 
 An emulous ostentation has killed hospitality. All 
 this is treason to a high ideal. 
 
 Whatever tends to make the Home beautiful, at- 
 tractive, romantic — to associate it with the ideas of 
 pure pleasure and high duty — to connect it not only 
 with all that was happiest, but also with all that was 
 best, in early years — whatever fulfils these purposes 
 purifies the fountain of national life. A home, to be 
 perfectly a home, should " incorporate tradition, 
 and prolong the reign of the dead." It should ani- 
 mate those who dwell in it to virtue and beneficence, 
 by reminding them of what others did, who went 
 before them in the same place, and lived amid the 
 same surroundings. Thank God, such a home was 
 mine. 
 
VII 
 
 LONDON 
 
 "O'er royal London, in luxuriant May, 
 While lamps yet twinkled, dawning crept the day. 
 Home from the hell the pale-eyed gamester steals; 
 Home from the ball flash jaded Beauty's wheels; 
 From fields surburban rolls the early cart; 
 As rests the Revel, so awakes the Mart." 
 
 The New Timon. 
 
 When I was penning, in the last chapter, my 
 perfectly sincere praises of the country, an incon- 
 gruous reminiscence suddenly froze the genial cur- 
 rent of my soul. Something, I know not what, re- 
 minded me of the occasion when Mrs. Bardell and 
 her friends made the memorable expedition to the 
 " Spaniards Tea-Gardens " at Hampstead. " How 
 sweet the country is, to be sure ! " sighed Mrs. Rog- 
 ers; "I almost wish I lived in it always." To this 
 Mr. Raddle, full of sympathy, rejoined : " For lone 
 people as have got nobody to care for them, or as 
 have been hurt in their mind, or that sort of thing, 
 the country is all very well. The country for a 
 wounded spirit, they say." But the general verdict 
 of the company was that Mrs. Rogers was " a great 
 
LONDON 123 
 
 deal too lively and sought-after, to be content with 
 the country"; and, on second thoughts the lady 
 herself acquiesced. I feel that my natural tempera- 
 ment had something in common with that of Mrs. 
 Rogers. "My spirit" (and my body, too) had 
 been " wounded " by Oxford, and the country acted 
 as both a poultice and a tonic. But my social in- 
 stinct was always strong, and could not be perma- 
 nently content with " a lodge in the vast wilder- 
 ness " of Woburn Park, or dwell for ever in the 
 " boundless contiguity of shade " which obliterates 
 the line between Beds and Bucks. 
 
 I was very careful to observe the doctor's pre- 
 scription of total idleness, but I found it was quite 
 as easily obeyed in London as in the country. For 
 three or four months then, of every year, I forsook 
 the Home which just now I praised so lavishly, and 
 applied myself, circumspectly indeed but with keen 
 enjoyment, to the pleasures of the town. 
 
 " One look hack " — What was London like in 
 those distant days, which lie, say, between 1876 and 
 1886? 
 
 Structurally and visibly, it was a much uglier 
 place than now. The immeasurable wastes of Bel- 
 gravian stucco ; the " Baker Streets and Harley 
 Streets and Wimpole Streets, resembling each other 
 like a large family of plain children, with Portland 
 Place and Portman Square for their respectable 
 
124 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 parents," * were still unbroken by the red brick and 
 terra-cotta, white stone and green tiles, of our more 
 aesthetic age. The flower-beds in the Parks were 
 less brilliant, for that " Grand old gardener," Mr. 
 Harcourt, to whom we are much indebted, was still 
 at Eton. Piccadilly had not been widened. The 
 Arches at Hyde Park Corner had not been rear- 
 ranged. Glorious Whitehall was half occupied by 
 shabby shops; and labyrinths of slums covered the 
 sites of Kingsway and Shaftesbury Avenue. 
 
 But, though London is now a much prettier place 
 than it was then, I doubt if it is so socially magnifi- 
 cent. The divinity which hedged Queen Victoria 
 invested her occasional visits to her Capital with a 
 glamour which it is difficult to explain to those who 
 never felt it. Of beauty, stature, splendour, and 
 other fancied attributes of Queenship, there was 
 none ; but there was a dignity which can neither be 
 described nor imitated ; and, when her subjects knelt 
 to kiss her hand at Drawing Room, or Levee, or 
 Investiture, they felt a kind of sacred awe which 
 no other presence could inspire. 
 
 It was, of course, one of the elements of Queen 
 Victoria's mysterious power, that she was so sel- 
 dom seen in London. In the early days of her 
 widowhood she had resigned the command of so- 
 ciety into other hands; and social London, at the 
 *Lord Beaconsfield, Tancred. 
 
LONDON 125 
 
 time of which I write, was dominated by the Prince 
 of Wales. Just at this moment,* when those who 
 knew him well are genuinely mourning the loss of 
 King Edward VII., it would scarcely become me to 
 describe his influence on society when first I moved 
 in it. So I borrow the words of an anonymous 
 writer, who, at the time at which his book was 
 published, was generally admitted to know the sub- 
 jects of which he discoursed. 
 
 " The Social Ruler of the English realm is the 
 Prince of Wales. I call him the Social Ruler, be- 
 cause, in all matters pertaining to society and to 
 ceremonial, he plays vicariously the part of the Sov- 
 ereign. The English monarchy may be described 
 at the present moment as being in a state of com- 
 mission. Most of its official duties are performed 
 by the Queen. It is the Prince of Wales who trans- 
 acts its ceremonial business, and exhibits to the 
 masses the embodiment of the monarchical princi- 
 ple. If there were no Marlborough House, there 
 would be no Court in London. The house of the 
 Prince of Wales may be an unsatisfactory substi- 
 tute for a Court, but it is the only substitute which 
 exists, and it is the best which, under the circum- 
 stances, is attainable. 
 
 " In his attitude to English society, the Prince of 
 Wales, is a benevolent despot. He wishes it to 
 *May, 1910. 
 
126 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 enjoy itself, to disport itself, to dance, sing, and 
 play to its heart's content. But he desires that it 
 should do so in the right manner, at the right times, 
 and in the right places; and of these conditions he 
 holds that he is the best, and, indeed, an infallible, 
 judge. 
 
 " The Prince of Wales is the Bismarck of London 
 society: he is also its microcosm. All its idiosyn- 
 crasies are reflected in the person of His Royal 
 Highness. Its hopes, its fears, its aspirations, its 
 solicitudes, its susceptibilities, its philosophy, its 
 way of looking at life and of appraising character 
 — of each of these is the Heir-Apparent the mirror. 
 If a definition of Society were sought for, I should 
 be inclined to give it as the social area of which the 
 Prince of Wales is personally cognizant, within the 
 limits of which he visits, and every member of 
 which is to some extent in touch with the ideas and 
 wishes of His Royal Highness. But for this cen- 
 tral authority. Society in London would be in immi- 
 nent danger of falling into the same chaos and col- 
 lapse as the universe itself, were one of the great 
 laws of nature to be suspended for five minutes." 
 
 Of the loved and gracious lady who is now Queen 
 Mother, I may trust myself to speak. I first saw 
 her at Harrow Speeches, when I was a boy of i8, 
 and from that day to this I have admired her more 
 than any woman whom I have ever seen. To the 
 
LONDON 127 
 
 flawless beauty of the face there was added that 
 wonderful charm of innocence and unfading youth 
 which no sumptuosities of dress and decoration 
 could conceal. To see the Princess in Society was 
 in those days one of my chief delights, and the sight 
 always suggested to my mind the idea of a Puritan 
 Maiden set in the midst of Vanity Fair. 
 
 We have seen that the centre of Society at the 
 period which I am describing was Marlborough 
 House, and that centre was encircled by rings of 
 various compass, the widest extending to South 
 Kensington in the one direction, and Portman 
 Square in the other. The innermost ring was com- 
 posed of personal friends, and, as personal friend- 
 ship belongs to private life, we must not here dis- 
 cuss it. The second ring was composed of the great 
 houses — " The Palaces," as Pennialinus * calls 
 them, — the houses, I mean, which are not distin- 
 guished by numbers, but are called " House," with 
 a capital H. And first among these I must place 
 Grosvenor House. As I look back over all the en- 
 tertainments which I have ever seen in London, I 
 can recall nothing to compare with a Ball at Gros- 
 venor House, in the days of Hugh, Duke of West- 
 minster, and his glorious wife. No lesser epithet 
 than " glorious " expresses the combination of 
 
 * A nickname invented by the famous Eton tutor, " Billy 
 Johnson," for a florid journalist. 
 
128 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 beauty, splendour, and hospitable enjoyment, which 
 made Constance, Duchess of Westminster, so 
 unique a hostess. Let me try to recall the scene. 
 
 Dancing has begun in a tentative sort of way, 
 when there is 'a sudden pause, as " God Save the 
 Queen " is heard in the front hall. The Prince and 
 Princess of Wales have arrived, and their entrance 
 is a pageant worth seeing. With courtly grace and 
 pretty pomp, the host and hostess usher their royal 
 guests into the great gallery, walled with the can- 
 vasses of Rubens, which serves as a dancing-room. 
 Then the fun begins, and the bright hours fly 
 swiftly till one o'clock suggests the tender thought 
 of supper, which is served on gold plate and Sevres 
 china in a garden-tent of Gobelins tapestry. 
 " ' What a perfect family ! ' exclaimed Hugo 
 Bohun, as he extracted a couple of fat little birds 
 from their bed of aspic jelly. ' Everything they 
 do in such perfect taste. How safe you were to 
 have ortolans for supper ! ' " * 
 
 Next in my recollection to Grosvenor House, but 
 after a considerable interval, comes Stafford House. 
 This is a more pretentious building than the other ; 
 built by the Duke of York and bought by the Duke 
 of Sutherland, with a hall and staircase designed 
 by Barry, perfect in proportion, and so harmonious 
 in colouring that its purple and yellow scagliola 
 * Lord Beaconsfield, Lothair. 
 
LONDON 129 
 
 might deceive the very elect into the belief that 
 it is marble. There, as at Grosvenor House, 
 were wealth and splendour and the highest rank; 
 a hospitable host and a handsome hostess; but the 
 peculiar feeling of welcome, which distinguished 
 Grosvenor House, was lacking, and the aspect of 
 the whole place; on an evening of entertainment, 
 was rather that of a mob than of a party. 
 
 Northumberland House at Charing Cross, the 
 abode of the historic Percys, had disappeared before 
 I came to London, yielding place to Northumber- 
 land Avenue ; but there were plenty of " Houses " 
 left. Near where the Percys had flourished, the 
 Duke of Buccleuch, a magnifico of the patriarchal 
 type, kept court at Montagu House, and Londoners 
 have not yet forgotten that, when the Thames Em- 
 bankment was proposed, he suggested that the new 
 thoroughfare should be deflected, so that it might 
 not interfere with the ducal garden running down 
 to the river. In the famous Picture-Gallery of 
 Bridgewater House, Lord Beaconsfield harangued 
 his disconsolate supporters after the disastrous elec- 
 tion of 1880, and predicted that Conservative re- 
 vival which he did not live to see. Close by at 
 Spencer House, a beautiful specimen of the deco- 
 rative work of the Brothers Adam, the Liberal 
 Party used to gather round the host, who looked 
 like a Van Dyke. Another of their resorts was 
 
I30 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Devonshire House, which Horace Walpole pro- 
 nounced " good and plain as the Duke of Devon- 
 shire who built it." There the 7th Duke, who 
 was a mathematician and a scholar, but no 
 lover of society, used to hide behind the door 
 in sheer terror of his guests, while his son, Lord 
 Hartington, afterwards 8th Duke, gazed with ill- 
 concealed aversion on his political supporters. 
 Lansdowne House was, as it, still is, a Palace of 
 Art, with all the dignity and amenity of a country 
 house, planted in the very heart of London. Dur- 
 ing the last quarter of a century the creation of Lib- 
 eral Unionism has made it the headquarters of a 
 political party; but, at the time of which I write, 
 it was only a place of select and beautiful enter- 
 taining. 
 
 Apsley House, the abode of " The Son of Water- 
 loo," could not, in my time, be reckoned a social 
 centre, but was chiefly interesting as a museum of 
 Wellington relics. Norfolk House was, as it is, the 
 headquarters of Roman Catholic society, and there, 
 in 1880, was seen the unique sight of Matthew Ar- 
 nold doing obeisance to Cardinal Newman at an 
 evening party.* Dorchester House, architectur- 
 ally considered, is beyond doubt the finest thing 
 in London; in those days occupied by the accom- 
 plished Mr. Holford, who built it, and now let to 
 * See M. Arnold's Letters, May 15, 1880. 
 
< 
 
 < 
 
 %■ 
 
 o s 
 
LONDON 131 
 
 the American Ambassador. Chesterfield House, 
 with its arcaded staircase of marble and bronze 
 from the dismantled palace of the Dukes of Chan- 
 dos at Edgeware, was built by the fourth Lord 
 Chesterfield, as he tells us, " among the fields ; " and 
 contained the library in which he wrote his famous 
 letters to his son. Holland House, so long the 
 acknowledged sanctuary of the Whig party, still 
 stands amid its terraces and gardens, though its 
 hayfields have, I fear, fallen into the builders' 
 hands. Macaulay's Essay, if nothing else, will 
 always preserve it from oblivion. 
 
 I have written so far about these " Houses," be- 
 cause in virtue of their imposing characteristics 
 they formed, as it were, an inner, if not the inner- 
 most, circle round Marlborough House. But of 
 course Society did not dwell exclusively in 
 " Houses," and any social chronicler of the period 
 which I am describing will have to include in his 
 survey the long stretch of Piccadilly, dividing the 
 "W." from the " S.W." district. On the upper 
 side of it, Portman Square, Grosvenor Square, 
 Berkeley Square, the Grosvenor Streets and Brook 
 Streets, Curzon Street, Charles Street, Hill Street; 
 and below, St. James's Square and Carlton House 
 Terrace, Grosvenor Place, Belgrave Square and 
 Eaton Square, Lowndes Square and Chesham 
 Place. Following Piccadilly westward into Ken- 
 
132 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 sington, we come to Lowther Lodge, Norman 
 Shaw's most successful work, then beginning its 
 social career on the coming of age of the present 
 Speaker,* April ist, 1876. Below it. Prince's Gate 
 and Queen's tate and Prince's Gardens, and all 
 the wilds of South Kensington, then half re- 
 claimed; and that low-lying territory, not even 
 half reclaimed, which, under Lord Cadogan's skill- 
 ful management, has of late years developed 
 into a " residential quarter " of high repute. Fill 
 all these streets, and a dozen others like them, with 
 rank and wealth and fashion, youth and beauty, 
 pleasure-seeking and self-indulgence, and you have 
 described the concentric circles of which Marlbor- 
 ough House was the heart. Sydney Smith, no mean 
 authority on the social capacities of London, held 
 that " the parallelogram between Oxford Street, 
 Piccadilly, Regent Street, and Hyde Park, enclosed 
 more intelligence and ability, to say nothing of 
 wealth and beauty, than the world had ever collected 
 in such a space before." This was very well for 
 Sydney (who lived in Green Street) ; but he flour- 
 ished when Belgravia had barely been discovered, 
 when South Kensington was undreamed-of; and 
 above all, before the Heir Apparent had fixed his 
 abode in Pall Mall. Had he lived till 1863, he 
 would have had to enlarge his mental borders. 
 * Right Hon. J. W. Lowther. 
 
LONDON 133 
 
 Of the delightful women and beautiful girls who 
 adorned Society when I first knew it, I will not 
 speak. A sacred awe makes me mute. The " Pro- 
 fessional. Beauties " and " Frisky Matrons " who 
 disgraced it, have, I hope, long since repented, and 
 it would be unkind to revive their names. The 
 " Smart Men," old and young, the " cheery boys," 
 the " dancing dogs," — the Hugo Bohuns and the 
 Freddy Du Canes — can be imagined as easily as de- 
 scribed. They were, in the main, very good fel- 
 lows; friendly, sociable, and obliging; but their 
 most ardent admirers would scarcely call them in- 
 teresting ; and the companionship of a club or a ball- 
 room seemed rather vapid when compared with Ox- 
 ford :— 
 
 "The madness and the melody, the singing youth that went 
 there. 
 The shining, unforgettable, imperial days we spent there." 
 
 But here and there, swimming rare in the vast 
 whirlpool of Society, one used to encounter remark- 
 able faces. Most remarkable was the face of Lord 
 Beaconsfield, — past seventy, though nobody knows 
 how much ; with his black-dyed hair in painful con- 
 trast to the corpse-like pallor of his face; with his 
 Blue Ribbon and diamond Star; and the piercing 
 eyes which still bespoke his unconquerable vitality. 
 
 Sometimes Mr. Gladstone was to be seen, with 
 his white tie working round toward the back of his 
 
134 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 neck, and a rose in his button-hole, looking like a 
 rather unwilling captive in the hands of Mrs. Glad- 
 stone, who moved through the social crush with that 
 queenlike dignity of bearing which had distin- 
 guished her e^er since the days when she and her 
 sister. Lady Lyttelton, were " the beautiful Miss 
 Glynnes." Robert Lowe, not yet Lord Sherbrooke, 
 was a celebrity who might often be seen in Soci- 
 ety, — a noteworthy figure with his ruddy face, 
 snow-white hair, and purblind gaze. The first 
 Lord Lytton — Bulwer-Lytton, the novelist — was 
 dead before I came to London; but his brilliant 
 son, " Owen Meredith," in the intervals of official 
 employment abroad, was an interesting figure in So- 
 ciety; curled and oiled and decorated, with a coun- 
 tenance of Semitic type. 
 
 Lord Houghton — to me the kindest and most wel- 
 coming of hereditary friends — had a personality 
 and a position altogether his own. His appearance 
 was typically English ; his manner as free and forth- 
 coming as a Frenchman's. Thirty years before he 
 had been drawn by a master-hand as Mr. Vavasour 
 in Tancred, but no lapse of time could stale his 
 infinite variety. He was poet, essayist, politician, 
 public orator, country gentleman, railway-di- 
 rector, host, guest, ball-giver, and ball-goer, and 
 acted each part with equal zest and assiduity. 
 When I first knew him he was living in a house at 
 
LONDON 135 
 
 the top of Arlington Street, from which Hogarth 
 had copied the decoration for his " Marriage a la 
 mode ; " and his friendly ghost still seems to haunt 
 the Piccadilly which he loved. 
 
 "There on warm, midseason Sundays, Pyston's bard is wont 
 
 to wend. 
 Whom the Ridings trust and honour, Freedom's staunch 
 
 and genial friend; 
 Known where shrewd hard-handed craftsmen cluster round 
 
 the northern kilns, 
 He whom men style Baron Houghton, but the gods call 
 
 Dicky Milnes." * 
 
 When first I entered Society, I caught sight of a 
 face which instantly arrested my attention. A very 
 small man, both short and slim, with a rosy com- 
 plexion, protruding chin, and trenchant nose, the 
 remains of reddish hair, and an extremely alert and 
 vivacious expression. The broad Red Ribbon of a 
 G.C.B. marked him out as in some way a distin- 
 guished person; and I discovered that he was the 
 Lord Chief Justice of England, — Sir Alexander 
 Cockburn, one of the most conspicuous figures in the 
 social annals of the 'thirties and 'forties, the " Hor- 
 tensius " of Endymion, whose " sunny face and 
 voice of music " had carried him out of the ruck 
 of London dandies to the chief seat of the British 
 judicature, and had made him the hero of the 
 Tichborne Trial and the Alabama Arbitration. Yet 
 
 * Sir George Trevelyan, The Ladies in Parliament. 
 
136 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 another personage of intellectual fame who was 
 to be met in Society was Robert Browning, the 
 least poetical-looking of poets. Trim, spruce, alert, 
 with a cheerful manner and a flow of conversation, 
 he might have* been a Cabinet Minister, a diplo- 
 matist, or a successful financier, almost anything 
 except what he was. " Browning," growled Tenny- 
 son, " I'll predict your end. You'll die of apoplexy, 
 in a stiff choker, at a London dinner-party." 
 
 The streams of society and of politics have always 
 intermingled, and, at the period of which I am 
 writing. Lord Hartington, afterwards, as 8th Duke 
 of Devonshire, leader of the Liberal Unionists, 
 might still be seen lounging and sprawling in 
 doorways and corners. Mr. Arthur Balfour, 
 weedy and willowy, was remarked with interest as 
 a young man of great possessions, who had written 
 an unintelligible book but might yet do something 
 in Parliament; while Lord Rosebery, though look- 
 ing absurdly youthful, was spoken of as cherishing 
 lofty ambitions. 
 
 Later on, I may perhaps say more about private 
 entertainment and about those who figured in it; 
 but now I must turn to the public sights and shows. 
 Matthew Arnold once wrote to his mother : " I think 
 you will be struck with the aspect of London in 
 May; the wealth and brilliancy of it is more re- 
 markable every year. The carriages, the riders, and 
 
LONDON 137 
 
 the walkers in Hyde Park, on a fine evening in May- 
 or June, are alone worth coming to London to see." 
 This description, though written some years before, 
 was eminently true of Rotten Row and its adjacent 
 drives when I first frequented them. Frederick 
 Locker, a minor poet of Society, asked in some pen- 
 sive stanzas on Rotten Row : 
 
 "But where is now the courtly troop 
 That once rode laughing by? 
 I miss the curls of Cantilupe, 
 The laugh of Lady Di." 
 
 Lord Cantilupe, of whom I always heard that he 
 was the handsomest man of his generation, died be- 
 fore I was born, and Lady Di Beauclerck had mar- 
 ried Baron Huddleston and ceased to ride in Rotten 
 Row before I came to London; so my survey of the 
 scene was unmarred by Locker's reflective melan- 
 choly, and I could do full justice to its charm. " Is 
 there," asked Lord Beaconsfield, " a more gay and 
 graceful spectacle in this world than Hyde Park at 
 the end of a long summer morning in the merry 
 month of May? Where can we see such beautiful 
 women, such gallant cavaliers, such fine horses, such 
 brilliant equipages? The scene, too, is worthy of 
 such agreeable accessories — the groves, the gleam- 
 ing waters, and the triumphal arches. In the dis- 
 tance the misty heights of Surrey and the lovely' 
 glades of Kensington." This passage would need 
 
138 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 some re-touching if it were to describe the Park in 
 191 1, but in 1880 it was still a photograph. 
 
 With regard to Public Entertainments in the 
 more technical sense, the period of which I am writ- 
 ing was highly favoured. We had Irving and Miss 
 Terry at the height of their powers, with all the 
 gorgeous yet accurate " staging " which Irving had 
 originated. We had Lady Bancroft with that won- 
 derful undertone of pathos in even her brightest 
 comedy, and her accomplished husband, whose pecu- 
 liar art blended so harmoniously with her own. We 
 had John Hare, the "perfect gentleman " of Stage- 
 land, and the Kendals with their quiet excellence in 
 Drawing-Room Drama; and the riotous glory of 
 Mrs. John Wood, whose performances, with Arthur 
 Cecil, at the Court Theatre, will always remain the 
 most mirth-provoking memories of my life. Mid- 
 way between the Theatre and the Opera, there 
 was the long and lovely series of Gilbert and Sul- 
 livan, who surely must have afforded a larger 
 amount of absolutely innocent delight to a larger 
 number of people than any two artists who ever col- 
 laborated in the public service. 
 
 As to the Opera itself, I must quote a curious pas- 
 sage from Lord Beaconsfield, who figures so often 
 in these pages, because none ever understood Lon- 
 don so perfectly as he. 
 
 " What will strike you most at the Opera is that 
 
LONDON 139 
 
 you will not see a single person you ever saw before 
 in your life. It is strange; and it shows what a 
 mass of wealth and taste and refinement there is 
 in this wonderful metropolis of ours, quite irrespec- 
 tive of the circles in which we move, and which we 
 once thought entirely engrossed them." 
 
 Those words describe, roughly, the seasons of 
 1 867- 1 870; and they still hold good, to a consid- 
 erable extent, of my earlier years in London. The 
 Opera was then the resort of people who really 
 loved music. It had ceased to be, what it had been 
 in the 'thirties and 'forties, a merely fashionable 
 resort; and its social resurrection had scarcely 
 begun. 
 
 Personally, I have always been fonder of real life 
 than of its dramatic counterfeit ; and a form of Pub- 
 lic Entertainment which greatly attracted me was 
 that provided by the Law Courts. To follow the 
 intricacies of a really interesting trial; to observe 
 the demeanour and aspect of the witnesses ; to listen 
 to the impassioned flummery of the leading counsel ; 
 to note its effect on the Twelve Men in the Box; 
 and then to see the Chinese Puzzle of conflicting 
 evidence arranged in its damning exactness by a 
 skillful judge, is to me an intellectual enjoyment 
 which can hardly be equalled. I have never stayed 
 in court after the jury had retired in a capital case, 
 for I hold it impious to stare at the mortal agony 
 
140 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 of a fellow-creature; but the trial of Johann Most 
 for inciting to tyrranicide ; of Gallagher and his 
 gang of dynamiters for Treason-Felony ; and of Dr. 
 Lampson for poisoning his brother-in-law, can 
 never be forgotten. Not so thrilling, but quite as 
 interesting, were the " Jockey Trial," in 1888, the 
 " Baccarat Case," in 1891, and the " Trial at Bar," 
 of the Raiders in 1896. But they belong to a later 
 date than the period covered by this chapter. 
 
 My fondness for the Law Courts might suggest 
 that I was inclined to be a lawyer. Not so. Only 
 two professions ever attracted me in the slightest 
 degree, — Holy Orders and Parliament. But when 
 the dividing-line of 1874 cut my life in two, it oc- 
 curred to my Father that, aided by name and con- 
 nexions, I might pass a few years at the Parliamen- 
 tary Bar, pleasantly and not unprofitably, until an 
 opportunity of entering Parliament occurred. 
 Partly with that end in view, and partly because it 
 seemed disgraceful to have no definite occupation, 
 I became, in 1875, a student of the Inner Temple. 
 I duly ate my dinners; or, rather, as the Temple 
 dined at the unappetizing hour of six, went through 
 a form of eating them; and in so doing was con- 
 stantly reminded of the experiences of my favourite 
 " Pen." The ways of Law-students had altered 
 wonderfully little in the lapse of forty years. 
 
 " The ancient and liberal Inn of the Inner Tem- 
 
LONDON i4t 
 
 pie provides in its Hall, and for a most moderate 
 price, an excellent and wholesome dinner of soup, 
 meat, tarts, and port wine or sherry, for the Bar- 
 risters and Students who attend that place of re- 
 fection. The parties are arranged in messes of 
 four, each of which quartets has its piece of beef 
 or leg of mutton, its sufficient apple-pie, and its 
 bottle of wine. " This is boiled beef day, I believe. 
 Sir," said Lowton to Pen. " Upon my word, Sir, 
 I'm not aware," said Pen. " I'm a stranger ; this 
 is my first term ; " on which Lowton began to 
 point out to him the notabilities in the Hall. " Do 
 you see those four fellows seated opposite to us? 
 They are regular swells — tip-top fellows, I can tell 
 you — Mr. Trail, the Bishop of Ealing's son. Hon- 
 ourable Fred Ringwood, Lord Cinqbars' brother, 
 you know; and Bob Suckling, who's always with 
 him. I say, I'd like to mess with those chaps." 
 " And why? " asked Pen. " Why ! they don't come 
 down here to dine, you know, they only make be- 
 lieve to dine. They dine here, Lord bless you! 
 They go to some of the swell clubs, or else to some 
 grand dinner-party. You see their names in the 
 Morning Post at all the fine parties in London. 
 They dine! They won't dine these two hours, I 
 dare say." " But why should you like to mess with 
 them, if they don't eat any dinner?" Pen asked, 
 still puzzled. " There's plenty, isn't there ? " 
 
142 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 " How green you are ! " said Lowton. " Excuse 
 me, but you are green. They don't drink any wine, 
 don't you see, and a fellow gets the bottle to him- 
 self, if he likes it, when he messes with those three 
 chaps. That's fvhy Corkoran got in with them." 
 
 Such were dinners at the Temple in Thackeray's 
 time, and such they were in mine. My legal studies 
 were superintended by my friend Mr. J. S. Fox, 
 now K.C., and Recorder of Sheffield. Should this 
 book ever fall under his learned eye, I should be 
 interested to know if he has ever completed the eru- 
 dite work which in those distant days he contem- 
 plated undertaking, 
 
 "Tell a Lie and Stick to it:" 
 A Treatise on the Law of Estoppel. 
 
 But this is a digression. 
 
 Before I leave London as it was when first I 
 dwelt in it, I ought to recall some of the eminent 
 persons who adorned it. Lord Beaconsfield was at 
 the zenith of his power and popularity. Mr. Glad- 
 stone, though the crowning triumph of 1880 was 
 not far off, was so unpopular in Society that I was 
 asked to meet him at dinner as a favour to the host- 
 ess, who found it difficult to collect a party when he 
 was dining. Lord Salisbury had just emerged from 
 a seven years' retirement, and was beginning to play 
 for the Premiership. Mr. Chamberlain was spoken 
 of with a kind of awe, as a desperate demagogue 
 
LONDON 143 
 
 longing to head a revolution; and Lord Randolph 
 Churchill was hardly known outside the Turf Club. 
 
 Law was presided over, as I have already said, by 
 the brilliant Cockburn, and the mellifluous Coleridge 
 was palpably preparing to succeed him. People 
 whispered wonders about Charles Bowen; and 
 Henry James and Charles Russell had established 
 their positions. In the hierarchy of Medicine there 
 were several leaders. Jenner ruled his patients by 
 terror ; Gall by tact, and Andrew Clark by religious 
 mysticism. To me, complaining of dyspepsia, he 
 prescribed a diet with the Pauline formula : " I seek 
 to impose a yoke upon you that you may be truly 
 free." In the chief seat of the Church sat Arch- 
 bishop Tait, the most dignified prelate whom I have 
 ever met in our communion, and a really impressive 
 spokesman of the Church in the House of Lords. 
 The Northern Primate, Dr. Thomson, was styled 
 " The Archbishop of Society " ; and the Deanery at 
 Westminster sheltered the fine flower of grace and 
 culture in the fragile person of Dean Stanley. G. 
 H. Wilkinson, afterwards Bishop of Truro and of 
 St. Andrew's, had lately been appointed to St. 
 Peter's, Eaton Square, and had burst like a gunboat 
 into a Dead Sea of lethargy and formalism. 
 
 Of course, the list does not pretend to be exhaus- 
 tive. It only aims at commemorating a few of the 
 figures, in different walks of life, which commanded 
 
144 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 my attention when I began to know — otherwise than 
 as a schoolboy can know it — what London is, means, 
 and contains. Five and thirty years have sped 
 their course. My Home in the country has ceased/j 
 to exist; and I find myself numbered among that 
 goodly company who, in succeeding ages, have 
 loved London and found it their natural dwelling- 
 place. I fancy that Lord St. Aldwyn is too much 
 of a sportsman to applaud the sentiment of his an- 
 cestor who flourished in the reign of Charles II., 
 but it is exactly mine. 
 
 " London is the only place of England to winter 
 in, whereof many true men might be put for exam-, 
 pies. If the air of the streets be fulsome, then fields 
 be at hand. If you be weary of the city, you may 
 go to the Court. If you surfeit of the Court, you 
 may ride into the country; and so shoot, as it were, 
 at rounds with a roving arrow. You can wish for 
 no kind of meat, but here is a market; for no kind 
 of pastime, but here is a companion. ' If you be soli- 
 tary, here be friends to sit with you. If you be 
 sick, and one doctor will hot serve your turn, you 
 may have twain. When you are weary of your 
 lodging, you may walk into St. Paul's. ... in the 
 Middle Aisle you may hear what the Protestants 
 say, and in the others what the Papists whisper; 
 and, when you have heard both, believe but one, 
 for but one of both says true you may be assured." 
 
LONDON 145 
 
 We clear the chasm of a century, and hear Dr. 
 Johnson singing the same tune as Squire Hicks. 
 
 " The happiness of London is not to be conceived 
 but by those who have been in it. I'll venture to 
 say, there is more learning and science within the 
 circumference of ten miles from where we now 
 sit, than in all the rest of the kingdom." 
 
 " London is nothing to some people ; but to a 
 man whose pleasure is intellectual, London is the 
 place." 
 
 " The town is my element ; there are my friends, 
 there are my books, to which I have not yet bid 
 farewell, and there are my amusements." 
 
 But even Johnson, who is always quoted as the 
 typical lover of London, was not more enthusiastic 
 in its praise than Gibbon. To him " London was 
 never dull, there at least he could keep the monster 
 Ennui at a respectful distance." For him its heat 
 was always tempered ; even its solitude was " deli- 
 cious." In " the soft retirement of my bocage de 
 Bentinck Street " the dog-days pass unheeded. 
 " Charming hot weather ! I am just going to dine 
 alone. Afterwards I shall walk till dark in my gar- 
 dens at Kensington, and shall then return to a frugal 
 supper and early bed in Bentinck Street. I lead the 
 life of a philosopher, without any regard to the 
 world or to fashion." 
 
 So much for the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 
146 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 turies ; we now return to the nineteenth and are lis- 
 tening to Sydney Smith. " I look forward anx- 
 iously to the return of the bad weather, coal fires, 
 and good society in a crowded city." " The coun- 
 try is bad enough in summer, but in winter it is a 
 fit residence only for beings doomed to such misery 
 for misdeeds in another state of existence." " You 
 may depend upon it, all lives lived out of London 
 are mistakes, more or less grievous — ^but mistakes." 
 " I shall not be sorry to be in town. I am rather 
 tired of simple pleasures, bad reasoning, and worse 
 cookery." 
 
 Let Lord Beaconsfield have the last word, as is 
 his due ; for truly did he know and love his London. 
 
 " It was a mild winter evening, a little fog still 
 hanging about, but vanquished by the cheerful 
 lamps, and the voice of the mufifin-bell was heard 
 at intervals; a genial sound that calls up visions 
 of trim and happy hearths. If we could only so 
 contrive our lives as to go into the country for the 
 first note of the nightingale, and return to town 
 for the first note of the muffin-bell, existence, it is 
 humbly presumed, might be more enjoyable." 
 
VIII 
 
 HOSPITALITY 
 
 "I never eat and I never drink," said the Cardinal. "I am 
 sorry to say I cannot. I like dinner-society very much. You 
 see the world, and you hear things which you do not hear other- 
 wise." — Lord Bbaconsfield, Lothair. 
 
 The Cardinal was much to be pitied. He had 
 a real genius for society, and thoroughly enjoyed 
 such forms of it as his health and profession per- 
 mitted. Though he could not dine with Mr. Put- 
 ney Giles, he went to Mrs. Putney Giles's evening 
 party, where he made an important acquaintance. 
 He looked in at Lady St. Jerome's after dinner; 
 and his visits to Vauxe and to Muriel Towers were 
 fraught with memorable results. 
 
 Mrs. Putney Giles, though a staunch Protestant, 
 was delighted to receive a Cardinal, and not less so 
 that he should meet in her drawing-room the in- 
 expressibly magnificent Lothair. That is all in the 
 course of nature; but what has always puzzled me 
 is the ease with which a youth of no particular pre- 
 tensions, arriving in London from Oxford or Cam- 
 bridge or from a country home, swims into society. 
 
148 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 and finds himself welcomed by people whose names 
 he barely knows. I suppose that in this, as in more 
 important matters, the helpers of the social fledg- 
 ling are good-natured women. The fledgling' prob- 
 ably starts by being related to one or two, and 
 acquainted with three or four more; and each of 
 them says to a friend who entertains — " My cousin; 
 Freddy Du Cane, is a very nice fellow, and waltzes 
 capitally. Do send him a card for your dance " — 
 or " Tommy Tucker is a neighbour of ours in the 
 country. If ever you want an odd man to fill up a 
 place at dinner, I think you will find him useful." 
 Then there was in those days, and perhaps there is 
 still, a mysterious race of men — Hierophants of So- 
 ciety — ^who had great powers of helping or hinder- 
 ing the social beginner. They were bachelors, not 
 very young; who had seen active service as 
 dancers and diners for ten or twenty seasons; and 
 who kept lists of eligible youths which they were 
 perpetually renewing at White's or the Marlbor- 
 ough. To one of these the intending hostess 
 would turn, saying, " Dear Mr. Golightly, do give 
 me your list ; " and, if Freddy Du Cane had con- 
 trived to ingratiate himself with Mr. Golightly, in- 
 vitations to balls and dances, of every size and 
 sort, would soon begin to flutter down on him like 
 snow-flakes. It rnattered nothing that he had never 
 seen his host or hostess, nor they him. Corney 
 
HOSPITALITY 149 
 
 Grain expressed the situation in his own inimitable 
 verse : 
 
 "Old Mr. Parvenu gave a great ball — 
 And of all his smart guests he knew no one at all. 
 Old Mr. Parvenu went up to bed, 
 And the guests said 'Goodnight' to the butler instead." 
 
 But light come, light go. Ball-going is elysian 
 when one is very young and cheerful and active, 
 but it is a pleasure which, for nine men out of ten, 
 soon palls. Dinner-society, as Cardinal Grandison 
 knew, is a more serious afifair, and admission to it 
 is not so lightly attained. 
 
 When Sydney Smith returned from a visit to 
 Paris, he wrote, in the fulness of his heart : 
 
 " I care very little about dinners, but I shall not 
 easily forget a matelote at the ' Rochers de Can- 
 cale,' or an almond tart at Montreuil, or a poulet a 
 la Tartare at Grignon's. These are impressions 
 which no changes in future life can obliterate." 
 
 I am tempted to pursue the line of thought thus 
 invitingly opened, but I forbear; for it really has 
 no special connexion with the retrospective vein. 
 I am now describing the years 1876- 1880, and din- 
 ners then were pretty much what they are now. 
 The new age of dining had begun. Those fright- 
 ful hecatombs of sheep and oxen which Francatelii 
 decreed had made way for more ethereal fare. 
 The age-long tyranny of " The Joint " was already 
 
I50 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 undermined. I have indeed been one of a party 
 
 of forty in the dog-days, where a belated haunch of 
 
 venison cried aloud for decent burial; but such 
 
 outrages were even then becoming rare. The 
 
 champagne of which a poet had beautifully said : 
 
 "How sad and bad and mad it was, 
 And Oh! how it was sweet!" 
 
 had been banished in favour of the barely alcoholic 
 liquor which foams in modern glasses. And, 
 thanks to the influence of King Edward VII, after- 
 dinner drinking had been exorcised by cigarettes. 
 The portentous piles of clumsy silver which had 
 overshadowed our fathers' tables — effigies of Peace 
 and Plenty, Racing-Cups and Prizes for fat cattle 
 — had been banished to plate-closets; bright china 
 and brighter flowers reigned in their stead. In 
 short, a dinner thirty-five years ago was very like 
 a dinner to-day. It did not take me long to find 
 that (with Cardinal Grandison) " I liked dinner- 
 society very much," and that " you see the world 
 there and hear things which you do not hear other- 
 wise." 
 
 I have already described the methods by which 
 ball-society was, and perhaps is, recruited. An in- 
 cident which befell me in my second season threw a 
 similar light on the more obscure question of din- 
 ner-society. One day I received a large card which 
 intimated that Mr. and Mrs. Goldmore requested 
 
HOSPITALITY 151 
 
 the honour of my company at dinner on a certain 
 day. I was a little surprised, because, though I had 
 been to balls at the Goldmores' house and had made 
 my bow at the top of the stairs, I did not really 
 know them. They had newly arrived in London, 
 with a great fortune made in clay pipes and dolls' 
 eyes, and were making their way by entertaining 
 lavishly. However, it was very kind of them to 
 ask me to dinner, and I readily accepted. The ap- 
 pointed evening came, and I arrived rather late. 
 In an immense drawing-room there were some 
 thirty guests assembled, and, as I looked round, I 
 could not see a single face which I had ever seen 
 before. Worse than that, it was obvious that Mr. 
 and Mrs. Goldmore did not know me. They heard 
 my name announced, received me quite politely, and 
 then retired into a window, where their darkling 
 undertones, enquiring glances, and heads negatively 
 shaken, made it only too clear that they were ask- 
 ing one another who on earth the last arrival was. 
 However, their embarrassment and mine was soon 
 relieved by the announcement of dinner. As there 
 were more male guests than women, there was no 
 need to give me a partner; so we all swept down- 
 stairs in a promiscuous floods and soon were mak- 
 ing the vital choice between bisque and consomme. 
 Eating my dinner, I revolved my plans, and de- 
 cided to make a clean breast of it. So, when we 
 
152 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 went up into the drawing-room, I made straight 
 for my hostess. " I feel sure/' I said, " that you 
 and Mr. Goldmore did not expect me to-night." 
 " Oh," was the gracious reply, " I hope there was 
 nothing in our* manner which made you feel that 
 you were unwelcome." " Nothing," I replied, 
 " could have been kinder than your manner, but 
 one has a certain social instinct which tells one 
 when one has made a mistake. And yet what the 
 mistake was I cannot guess. I am sure it is the 
 right house and the right evening — Do please ex- 
 plain." "Well," said Mrs. Goldmore, "as you 
 have found out so much, I think I had better tell 
 you all. We were not expecting you. We have 
 not even now the pleasure of knowing who you are. 
 We were expecting Dr. Russell, the Times Corre- 
 spondent, and all these ladies and gentlemen have 
 been asked to meet him." So it was not my mis- 
 take after all, and I promptly rallied my forces. 
 " The card certainly had my first name, initials, 
 and address, all right, so there was nothing to 
 make me suspect a mistake. Besides, I should have 
 thought that everyone who knew the Times Russell 
 knew that his first name was William — he is al- 
 ways called ' Billy Russell.' " " Well "—and now 
 the truth coyly emerged — " the fact is that we 
 don't know him. We heard that he was a pleasant 
 man and fond of dining out, and so we looked him 
 
HOSPITALITY 153 
 
 up in the Court Guide, and sent the invitation. I 
 suppose we hit on your address by mistake for 
 his." I suppose so too; and that this is the method 
 by which newcomers build up a " Dinner-Society " 
 in London. 
 
 One particular form of dinner deserves a special 
 word of commemoration, because it has gone, never 
 to return. This was the " Fish Dinner " at Green- 
 wich or Blackwall, or even so far afield as Graves- 
 end. It was to a certain extent a picnic; without 
 the formality of dressing, and made pleasant by 
 opportunities of fun and fresh air, in the park or 
 on the river, before we addressed ourselves to the 
 serious business of the evening; but that was seri- 
 ous indeed. The " Menu " of a dinner at the Ship 
 Hotel at Greenwich lies before me as I write. It 
 contains turtle soup, eleven kinds of fish, two 
 entrees, a haunch of venison, poultry, ham, grouse, 
 leverets, five sweet dishes, and two kinds of ice. 
 Well, those were great days — we shall not look 
 upon their like again. Let a poet * who knew what 
 he was writing about have the last word on Dinner. 
 
 " We may live without poetry, music, and art; 
 We may live without conscience and live without heart; 
 We may live without friends: we may live without books; 
 But civilized man cannot live without Cooks. 
 
 He may live without lore — what is knowledge but grieving? 
 He may live without hope — what is hope but deceiving? 
 He may live without love — what is passion but pining? 
 But where is the man that can live without dining? " 
 * The second Lord Lytton. 
 
154 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 There is an exquisite truth in this lyrical cry, 
 but it stops short of the fulness of the subject. It 
 must be remembered that " dining " is not the only 
 form of eating. Mr. Gladstone, who thought 
 modern luxury i^ther disgusting, used to complain 
 that nowadays life in a country house meant three 
 dinners a day, and, if you reckoned sandwiches 
 and poached eggs at five o'clock tea, nearly four. 
 Indeed, the only difference that I can perceive be- 
 tween a modern luncheon and a modern dinner is 
 that at the former meal you don't have soup or a 
 printed Menu. There have always been some 
 houses where the luncheons were much more fa- 
 mous than the dinners. Dinner, after all, is some- 
 thing of a ceremony; it requires forethought, care, 
 and organization. Luncheon is more of a scramble, 
 and, in the case of a numerous and scattered family, 
 it is the pleasantest of reunions. 
 
 My uncle Lord John Russell (1792- 1878) pub- 
 lished in 1820 a book of Essays and Sketches, in 
 which he speaks of " women sitting down to a sub- 
 stantial luncheon at three or four," and observes 
 that men would be wise if they followed the ex- 
 ample. All contemporary evidence points to 
 luncheon as a female meal, at which men at- 
 tended, if at all, clandestinely. If a man habitu- 
 ally sat down to luncheon, and ate it through, he 
 was regarded as indifferent to the claims of din- 
 
HOSPITALITY 155 
 
 ner, and, moreover, was contemned as an idler. 
 No one who had anything to do could find time 
 for a square meal in the middle of the day. But, 
 as years went on, the feeling changed. Prince 
 Albert was notoriously fond of luncheon, and 
 Queen Victoria humoured him. They dined very 
 late, and the luncheon at the Palace became a very 
 real and fully recognized meal. The example, 
 communicated from the highest quarters, was soon 
 followed in Society; and, when I first knew Lon- 
 don, luncheon was as firmly established as dinner. 
 As a rule, it was not an affair of fixed invitation; 
 but a hostess would say, " You will always find us 
 at luncheon, somewhere about two " — and one 
 took her at her word. 
 
 The luncheon by invitation was a more formal, 
 and rather terrible, affair. I well remember a 
 house, where at two o'clock in June we had to sit 
 down with curtains drawn, lights ablaze, and rose- 
 coloured shades to the candles, because the hostess 
 thought, rightly as regarded herself, less so as re- 
 garded her guests, that no one's complexion could 
 stand the searching trial of midsummer sunshine. 
 
 " Sunday Luncheon " was always a thing apart. 
 For some reason, not altogether clear, perhaps be- 
 cause devotion long sustained makes a strong de- 
 mand on the nervous system, men who turned up 
 their noses at luncheon on weekdays devoured 
 
156 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Sundays, and 
 went forth, like giants refreshed, for a round of 
 afternoon calls. The Sunday Luncheon was a 
 recognized centre of social life. Where there was 
 even a moderate degree of intimacy a guest might 
 drop in and be sure of mayonnaise, chicken, and 
 welcome. I can recall an occasion of this kind 
 when I saw social Presence of Mind exemplified, 
 as I thought and think, on an heroic scale. Lunch- 
 eon was over. It had not been a particularly 
 bounteous meal; the guests had been many; the 
 chicken had been eaten to the drumstick and the 
 cutlets to the bone. Nothing remained but a huge 
 Trifle, of chromatic and threatening aspect, on 
 which no one had ventured to embark. Coffee was 
 just coming, when the servant entered with an anx- 
 ious expression, and murmured to the hostess that 
 Monsieur de Petitpois — a newly-arrived attache — 
 had come, and seemed to expect luncheon. The 
 hostess grasped the situation in an instant, and issued 
 her commands with a promptitude and a directness 
 which the Duke of Wellington could not have sur- 
 passed. " Clear everything away, but leave the 
 Trifle. Then show M. de Petitpois in." Enter de 
 Petitpois. " Delighted to see you. Quite right. 
 Always at home at Sunday Luncheon. Pray come 
 and sit here and have some Trifle. It is our na- 
 tional Sunday dish." Poor young de Petitpois, 
 
HOSPITALITY 157 
 
 actuated by the same principle which made the 
 Prodigal desire the husks, filled himself with 
 sponge-cake, jam, and whipped cream; and went 
 away looking rather pale. If he kept a journal, he 
 no doubt noted the English Sunday as one of our 
 most curious institutions, and " Le Trifle " as its 
 crowning horror. 
 
 Supper is a word of very different significances. 
 There is the Ball Supper, which I have described 
 in a previous chapter. There is the Supper 
 after the Missionary Meeting in the country, when 
 " The Deputation from the Parent Society " is en- 
 tertained with cold beef, boiled eggs, and cocoa. 
 There is the diurnal Supper, fruitful parent of our 
 national crudities, eaten by the social class that 
 dines at one ; and this Supper (as was disclosed at a 
 recent inquest) may consist of steak, tomatoes, and 
 tea. 
 
 And yet, again, there is the Theatrical Supper, 
 which, eaten in congenial company after Pa- 
 tience or The Whip, is our nearest approach to 
 the " Nights and Suppers of the Gods." This kind 
 of supper has a niche of its own in my retrospects. 
 It was my privilege when first I came to London 
 to know Lady Burdett-Coutts, famous all over the 
 world as a philanthropist, and also, in every tone 
 and gesture, a survival from the days when great 
 station and great manner went together. Lady 
 
158 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Burdett-Coutts was an enthusiastic devotee of 
 the drama; and, when her Evening Parties were 
 breaking up, she would gently glide round the 
 great rooms in Stratton Street, and say to a de- 
 parting guest : 
 
 " I hope you need not go just yet. I am expect- 
 ing Mr. Irving to supper after the play, and I am 
 asking a few friends to meet him." 
 
 As far as I know, I am the only survivor of those 
 delightful feasts. 
 
 Dinner and luncheon and supper must, I suppose, 
 be reckoned among the permanent facts of life; but 
 there is, or was, one meal of which I have wit- 
 nessed the unwept disappearance. It had its roots 
 in our historic past. It clung to its place in our so- 
 cial economy. It lived long and died hard. It was 
 the Breakfast-Party. When first I lived in Lon- 
 don, it was, like some types of human character, 
 vigorous but unpopular. No one could really like 
 going out to breakfast; but the people who gave 
 Breakfast-Parties were worthy and often agreeable 
 people ; and there were few who had the hardihood 
 to say them Nay. 
 
 The most famous breakfast-parties of the time 
 were given by Mr. Gladstone, on every Thursday 
 morning in the Session ; when, while we ate broiled 
 salmon and drank coffee, our host discoursed to an 
 admiring circle about the colour-sense in Homer, or 
 
HOSPITALITY 159 
 
 the polity of the ancient Hittites. Around the table 
 were gathered Lions and Lionesses of various 
 breeds and sizes, who, if I remember aright, did 
 not get quite as much opportunity for roaring as 
 they would have liked; for, when Mr. Gladstone 
 had started on a congenial theme, it was difficult to 
 get in a word edgeways. One of these breakfast- 
 parties at ID, Downing Street, stands out in mem- 
 ory more clearly than the rest, for it very nearly 
 had a part in that " Making of History," which 
 was then so much in vogue. The date was April 
 23, 1885. The party comprised Lady Ripon, Lord 
 Granville, Dean Church, and Miss Mary Anderson, 
 then in the height of her fame and beauty. We 
 were stolidly munching and listening, when sud- 
 denly we heard a crash as if heaven and earth had 
 come together; and presently we learned that there 
 had been an explosion of dynamite at the Ad- 
 miralty, about a hundred yards from where we were 
 sitting. The proximity of nitro-glycerine seemed to 
 operate as a check on conversation, and, as we rose 
 from the table, I heard Miss Anderson say to Miss 
 Gladstone, " Your pa seemed quite scared." 
 
 Other breakfast-givers of the time were Lord 
 Houghton, Lord Arthur Russell, Mr. Shaw-Le- 
 fevre (now Lord Eversley) and Sir John Lubbock 
 (now Lord Avebury) ; and there were even people 
 so desperately wedded to this terrible tradition that 
 
i6o ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 they formed themselves into Clubs with no other 
 object than to breakfast, and bound themselves by 
 solemn pledges to meet one morning in every week, 
 and eat and argue themselves into dyspepsia. Syd- 
 ney Smith vfrote thus to a friend : " I have 
 a breakfast of philosophers to-morrow at ten 
 punctually — muffins and metaphysics, crumpets and 
 contradiction. Will you come ? " That inviting 
 picture, though it was drawn before I was born, 
 exactly describes the breakfast-parties which I re- 
 member. One met all sorts of people, but very few 
 Mary Andersons. Breakfasters were generally old, 
 — politicians, diplomatists, authors, journalists, men 
 of science, political economists, and everyone else 
 who was most improving. No doubt it was a 
 priceless privilege to meet them; yet, as I heard 
 them prate and prose, I could not help recalling a 
 favourite passage from Mrs. Sherwood's quaint 
 tale of Henry Milner: — 
 
 " Mr. Dolben, as usual, gave utterance at break- 
 fast to several of those pure and wise and refined 
 principles, which sometimes distil as drops of 
 honey from the lips of pious and intellectual old 
 persons." It was breakfast that set Mr. Dolben off. 
 We are not told that he distilled his honey at din- 
 ner or supper; so his case must be added to the 
 long list of deleterious results produced by break- 
 fasting in public. 
 
HOSPITALITY i6i 
 
 Conversation must, I think, have been at rather 
 a low ebb when I first encountered it in London. 
 Men breakfasted in pubHc, as we have just seen, 
 in order to indulge in it ; and I remember a terrible 
 Club where it raged on two nights of every week, 
 in a large, dark, and draughty room, while men 
 sat round an indifferent fire, drinking barley-water, 
 and talking for talking's sake — the most melan- 
 choly of occupations. But at these dismal orgies 
 one never heard anything worth remembering. 
 The " pious and intellectual old persons " whom 
 Mrs. Sherwood admired had withdrawn from the 
 scehe, if indeed they had ever figured on it. Those 
 who remained were neither pious nor intellectual, 
 but compact of spite and greediness, with here and 
 there worse faults. But some brighter spirits were 
 coming on. To call them by the names which they 
 then bore, Mr. George Trevelyan and Mr. John 
 Morley were thought very promising, for social 
 fame in London takes a long time to establish it- 
 self. Sir William Harcourt was capital company 
 in the heavier style; and Lord Rosebery in the 
 lighter. But Mr. Herbert Paul was known only to 
 the Daily News, and Mr. Augustine Birrell's ray 
 had not emerged from the dim, unfathomed caves 
 of the Chancery Bar. 
 
 So far, I have been writing about Conversation 
 with a capital " C," — an elaborate and studied art 
 
i62 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 which in old days such men as Sharpe and Jekyll 
 and Luttrell illustrated, and, in times more modem, 
 Brookfield and Cockburn and Lowe and Hayward. 
 For the ordinary chit-chat of social intercourse — 
 chafif and repartee, gossip and fun and frolic — I be- 
 lieve that London was just as good in 1876 as it 
 had been fifty years before. We were young and 
 happy, enjoying ourselves, and on easy terms with 
 one another. " It was roses, roses all the way." 
 Our talk was unpremeditated and unstudied, quick 
 as lightning, springing out of the interest or the 
 situation of the moment, uttered in an instant and 
 as soon forgotten. Everyone who has ever made 
 the attempt must realize that to gather up the frag- 
 ments of such talk as this is as impossible as to col- 
 lect shooting stars, or to reconstruct a rainbow. 
 
 But, though I cannot say what we talked about 
 in those distant days, I believe I can indicate with 
 certainty two topics which were never mentioned. 
 One is Health, and the other is Money. I presume 
 that people had pretty much the same complaints as 
 now, but no one talked about them. We had been 
 told of a lady who died in agony because she in- 
 sisted on telling the doctor that the pain was in her 
 chest, whereas it really was in the unmentionable 
 organ of digestion. That martyr to propriety has 
 no imitator in the present day. Everyone has a 
 disease and a doctor, and young people of both sexes 
 
HOSPITALITY 163 
 
 are ready on the slightest acquaintance to describe 
 symptoms and compare experiences. " Ice ! " ex- 
 claimed a pretty girl at dessert. " Good gracious, 
 no. So bad for indy ! " And her companion, who 
 had not travelled with the times, learned with in- 
 terest that " indy " was the pet name for indiges- 
 tion. 
 
 Then, again, as to money. In the " Sacred Circle 
 of the Great Grandmotherhood," I never heard the 
 slightest reference to income. Not that the Whigs 
 despised money. They were at least as fond of it 
 as other people, and, even when it took the shape 
 of slum-rents, its odour was not displeasing; but it 
 was not a subject for conversation. People did not 
 chatter about their neighbours' incomes; and, if 
 they made their own money in trades or profes- 
 sions, they did not regale us with statistics of profit 
 and loss. To-day everyone seems to be, if I may 
 use the favourite colloquialism, " on the make " ; and 
 the devotion with which people worship money per- 
 vades their whole conversation, and colours their 
 whole view of life. " Scions of Aristocracy," to use 
 the good old phrase of Pennialinus, will produce 
 samples of tea or floor-cloth from their pockets, and 
 sue quite winningly for custom. A speculative 
 bottle of extraordinarily cheap peach-brandy will 
 arrive with the compliments of Lord Tom Noddy, 
 who has just gone into the wine-trade; and Lord 
 
i64 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Magnus Charters will tell you that, if you are going 
 to rearrange your electric light, his firm has got 
 some really artistic fittings which he can let you 
 have on specially easy terms. 
 
 So far I have spoken of Hospitality as if it con- 
 sisted wholly in eating and drinking. Not so. In 
 those days Evening Parties, or Receptions, or 
 Drums, or Tails, for so they were indifferently 
 called, took place on four or five nights of every 
 week. " Tails," as the name implies, were little 
 parties tacked on to the end of big dinners, where 
 a few people looked in, rather cross at not having 
 been invited to dine, or else in a desperate hurry 
 to get on to a larger party or a ball. The larger 
 parties were given generally on Saturday evenings ; 
 and then, amid a crushing crowd and a din which 
 recalled the Parrot-House at the Zoo, one might 
 rub shoulders with all the famous men and women 
 of the time. When Mr. St. Barbe in Endymion at- 
 tended a gathering of this kind, he said to his com- 
 panion, " I daresay that Ambassador has been blun- 
 dering all his life, and yet there is something in 
 that Star and Ribbon. I do not know how you feel, 
 but I could almost go down on my knees to him. 
 
 'Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven', 
 
 Byron wrote ; a silly line, he should have written — 
 
 'Ye stars which are the poetry of dress '". 
 
HOSPITALITY 165 
 
 Political " Drums " had a flavour which was all 
 their own. If they were given in any of the Great 
 Houses of London, where the stateliness and beauty 
 of the old world still survived, such guests as Lord 
 Beaconsfield's creations, Mr. Horocks, M.P., and 
 Trodgitts, the unsuccessful candidate, would look a 
 little subdued. But in the ordinary house, with a 
 back and front drawing-room and a buffet in the 
 dining-room, those good men were quite at horne, 
 and the air was thick with political shop — whether 
 we should lose Pedlington or save Shuffleborough 
 with a struggle — ^whether A would get office and 
 how disgusted B would be if he did. 
 
 Here and there a more thrilling note was sounded. 
 At a Liberal party in the spring of 1881 an ex- 
 Whip of the Liberal party said to a Liberal lady, as 
 he was giving her a cup of tea : " Have you heard 
 how ill old Dizzy is?" "Oh, yes!" replied the 
 lady, with a rapturous wink, " I know — dying ! " 
 Such are the amenities of political strife. 
 
 A much more agreeable form of hospitality was 
 the Garden-Party. When I came to live in Lon- 
 don, the old-fashioned phrase — a " Breakfast " — so 
 familiar in memoirs and novels, had almost passed 
 out of use. On the 22nd of June, 1868, Queen Vic- 
 toria signalized her partial return to social life by 
 commanding her lieges to a " Breakfast " in the 
 gardens of Buckingham Palace; and the newspa- 
 
i66 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 pers made merry over the notion of Breakfast which 
 began at four and ended at seven. The old title 
 gradually died out, and by 1876 people had begun 
 to talk about " Garden-Parties." 
 
 By whichever names they were called, they were, 
 and are, delightful festivals. Sometimes they car- 
 ried one as far as Hatfield, my unapproached fa- 
 vourite among all the " Stately homes of England " ; 
 but generally they were nearer London — at Syon 
 with the Thames floating gravely past its lawns — 
 Osterley, where the decorative skill of the Brothers 
 Adam is superimposed on Sir Thomas Gresham's 
 Elizabethan brickwork — Holland House, rife with 
 memories of Fox and Macaulay — Lowther Lodge, 
 with its patch of unspoiled country in the heart of 
 western London. Closely akin to these Garden- 
 Parties were other forms of out-door entertainment 
 — tea at Hurlingham or Ranelagh; and river-par- 
 ties where ardent youth might contrive to capsize 
 the adored one, and propose as he rescued her, drip- 
 ping, from the Thames. 
 
 It is only within the last few years that we have 
 begun to talk of " Week-Ends " and " Week-End- 
 ing." These terrible phrases have come down to us 
 from the North of England; but before they ar- 
 rived the thing which they signify was here. 
 " Saturday-to-Monday Parties " they were called. 
 They were not so frequent as now, because Satur- 
 
HOSPITALITY 167 
 
 day was a favourite night for entertaining in Lon- 
 don, and it was generally bespoken for dinners and 
 drums. But, as the summer advanced and hot rooms 
 became unendurable, people who lived only forty 
 or fifty miles out of London began to ask if one 
 would run down to them on Friday or Saturday, 
 and stay over Sunday. Of these hospitalities I 
 was a sparing and infrequent cultivator, for they al- 
 ways meant two sleepless nights; and, as someone 
 truly observed, just as you had begun to wear off 
 the corners of your soap, it was time to return to 
 London. But there were people, more happily con- 
 stituted, who could thoroughly enjoy and profit by 
 the weekly dose of fresh air and quiet. It was sel- 
 dom that Mrs. Gladstone failed to drag Mr. Glad- 
 stone to some country house from " Saturday to 
 Monday." 
 
 As I re-read what I have written in this chapter, 
 I seem to have lived from 1876 to 1880 in the con- 
 stant enjoyment of one kind or another of Hos- 
 pitality. It is true; and for the kindness of the 
 friends who then did so much to make my life 
 agreeable, I am as grateful as I was when I received 
 it. My social life in London seems to me, as I look 
 back, " a crystal river of unreproved enjoyment " ; 
 and some of those who shared it with me are still 
 among my closest friends. 
 
 One word more, and I have done with Hos- 
 
i68 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 pitality. I brought with me from Oxford a simple 
 lad who had been a College servant. In those more 
 courteous days a young man made it a rule to leave 
 his card at every house where he had been enter- 
 tained ; so I made a list of addresses, gave it to my 
 servant with a nicely-calculated batch of cards, and 
 told him to leave them all before dinner. When 
 I came in to dress, this dialogue ensued : " Have 
 you left all those cards ? " " Yes, sir." " You left 
 two at each of the houses on your list ? " " Oh no, 
 sir. I left one at each house, and all the rest at the 
 Duke of Leinster's." Surely Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 or Mr. H. G. Wells might make something of this 
 bewildering effect produced by exalted rank on the 
 untutored mind. 
 
IX. 
 
 ELECTIONEERING. 
 
 " Candidates are creatures not very susceptible of affronts, 
 and would rather, I suppose, climb in at a window than be 
 absolutely excluded. Mr. Grenville, advancing towards me, 
 shook me by the hand with a degree of cordiality that was 
 extremely seducing. . . . Mr. G. squeezed me by the hand 
 again, kissed the ladies and withdrew. He kissed likewise the 
 maid in the kitchen, and seemed upon the whole a most lov- 
 ing, kissing, kind-hearted gentleman. He is very young, gen- 
 teel, and handsome, and the town seems to be much at his 
 service." — W. Cowper, 1784. 
 
 Gladstone's first administration, which had be- 
 gun so gloriously in 1868, ended rather ignomini- ! 
 ously at the General Election of 1874. Matthew 
 Arnold wrote to his friend, Lady de Rothschild, 
 " What a beating it is ! You know that Liberalism 
 did not seem to me quite the beautiful and admir- 
 able thing it does to the Liberal party in general, 
 and I am not sorry that a new stage in its growth 
 should commence, and that the party should be 
 driven to examine itself, and to see how much real 
 stuff it has in its mind, and how much claptrap." 
 
 That wholesome discipline of self-examination 
 was greatly assisted by the progress of events. 
 
I70 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 England was now subjected to the personal rule 
 of Disraeli. In 1868 he had been for ten months 
 Prime Minister on Sufferance, but now for the first 
 time in his life he was in power. His colleagues 
 were serfs or cyphers. He had acquired an influ- 
 ence at Court such as no other Minister ever pos- 
 sessed. He had conciliated the House of Lords, 
 which in old days had looked askance at the pictur- 
 esque adventurer. He was supported by a strong, 
 compact, and determined majority in the House of 
 Commons. He was the idol of Society, of the 
 Clubs, and of the London Press. He was, in short, 
 as nearly a dictator as the forms of our constitution 
 permit; and the genius, which for thirty years had 
 been hampered and trammelled by the exigencies of 
 a precarious struggle, could now for the first time 
 display its true character and significance. Liberals 
 who had been bored and provoked by the incessant 
 blunders of the Liberal ministry in its last years, 
 and, like Matthew Arnold, had welcomed a change 
 of government, soon began to see that they had 
 exchanged what was merely fatuous and foolish 
 for what was actively mischievous. They were 
 forced to ask themselves how much of the political 
 faith which they had professed was " real stuff," 
 and how much was " claptrap." Disraeli soon 
 taught them that, even when all " claptrap " was 
 laid aside, the " real stuff " of Liberalism—- its 
 
ELECTIONEERING 171 
 
 vital and essential part — was utterly incompatible 
 with Disraelitish ideals. 
 
 The Session of 1874 began quietly enough, and 
 the first disturbance proceeded from a quite unex- 
 pected quarter. The two Primates of the English 
 Church were at this time Archbishop Tait and 
 Archbishop Thomson. Both were masterful men. 
 Both hated Ritualism; and both worshipped the 
 Man in the Street. The Man in the Street was 
 supposed to be an anti-Ritualist; so the two Arch- 
 bishops conceived the happy design of enlisting his 
 aid in the destruction of a religious movement 
 which, with their own unaided resources, they had 
 failed to crush. Bishop Wilberforce, who would 
 not have suffered the Ritualists to be bullied, had 
 been killed in the previous summer. Gladstone, 
 notoriously not unfriendly to ritualism, was de- 
 throned ; so all looked smooth and easy for a policy 
 of persecution. On the 20th of April, 1874, Arch- 
 bishop Tait introduced his " Public Worship Regu- 
 lation Bill " into the House of Lords ; and, in ex- 
 planation of this measure, Tait's biographers say 
 that it merely " aimed at reviving in a practical 
 shape the forum domesticum of the Bishops, with 
 just so much of coercive force added as seemed 
 necessary to meet the changed circumstances of 
 modern times." I have always loved this sentence. 
 Forum domesticum is distinctly good, and so is 
 
172 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 " coercive force." The forum domesticum has 
 quite a comfortable sound, and, as to the " co- 
 ercive force " which lurks in the background. 
 Ritualists must not enquire too curiously. The 
 Bishops were to have it all their own way, and 
 everyone was to be happy. Such was the Bill as 
 introduced; but in Committee it was made infi- 
 nitely more oppressive. Henceforward a single lay- 
 judge, to be appointed by the two Archbishops, 
 was to hear and determine all cases relating to ir- 
 regularities in Public Worship. 
 
 When the Bill reached the House of Commons, 
 it was powerfully opposed by Gladstone; but the 
 House was dead against him, and Sir William 
 Harcourt, who, six months before, had been his 
 Solicitor-General, distinguished himself by the 
 truculence with which he assailed the Ritualists. 
 On the 5th of August, Gladstone wrote to his wife : 
 " An able but yet frantic tirade from Harcourt, 
 extremely bad in tone and taste, and chiefly aimed 
 at poor me. ... I have really treated him 
 with forbearance before, but I was obliged to let 
 out a little to-day." 
 
 Meanwhile, Disraeli, seeing his opportunity, had 
 seized it with characteristic skill. He adopted the 
 Bill with great cordiality. He rejected all the gloz- 
 ing euphemisms which had lulled the House of 
 Lords. He uttered no pribbles and prabbles about 
 
ELECTIONEERING 173 
 
 forum domesticum, and paternal guidance, and the 
 authoritative interpretation of ambiguous formu- 
 laries. " This," he said, " is a Bill to put down 
 Ritualism." So the naked truth, carefully veiled 
 from view in episcopal aprons and lawn-sleeves, 
 was now displayed in all its native charm. Its 
 success was instant and complete. The Second 
 Reading passed unanimously; and the Archbish- 
 ops' masterpiece became at once a law and a laugh- 
 ing-stock. The instrument of tyranny broke in 
 the clumsy hands which had forged it, and its frag- 
 ments to-day lie rusting in the lumber-room of 
 archiepiscopal failures. 
 
 But in the meantime the debates on the Bill had 
 produced some political efifects which its authors 
 certainly had not desired. Gladstone's vehement 
 attacks on the Bill, and his exhilarating triumph 
 over the recalcitrant Harcourt, showed the Liberal 
 party that their chief, though temporarily with- 
 drawn from active service, was as vivacious and as 
 energetic as ever, as formidable in debate, and as 
 unquestionably supreme in his party whenever he 
 chose to assert his power. Another important re- 
 sult of the controversy was that Gladstone was now 
 the delight and glory of the Ritualists. The Com- 
 mittee organized to defend the clergy of St. Al- 
 ban's, Holborn, against the forum domesticum 
 and " coercive force " of Bishop Jackson, made a 
 
174 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 formal and public acknowledgment of their grati- 
 tude for Gladstone's " noble and unsupported de- 
 fence of the rights of the Church of England." 
 Cultivated and earnest Churchmen, even when they 
 had little sympathy with Ritualism, were attracted 
 to his standard, and turned in righteous disgust 
 from the perpetrator of clumsy witticisms about 
 " Mass in masquerade." In towns where, as at 
 Oxford and Brighton, the Church is powerful, the 
 effect of these desertions was unmistakably felt at 
 the General Election of 1880. 
 
 It has been truly said that among the subjects 
 which never fail to excite Englishmen is Slavery. 
 " No public man," said Matthew Arnold, " in this 
 country will be damaged by having even ' fanat- 
 icism ' in his hatred of slavery imputed to him." 
 In July, 1875, the Admiralty issued to Captains 
 of Her Majesty's ships a Circular of Instructions 
 which roused feelings of anger and of shame. 
 This circular ran counter alike to the jealousy of 
 patriots and to the sentiment of humanitarians. It 
 directed that a fugitive slave should not be re- 
 ceived on board a British vessel unless his life 
 was in danger, and that, if she were in territorial 
 waters, he should be surrendered on legal proof of 
 his condition. If the ship were at sea, he should 
 only be received and protected until she reached 
 the country to which he belonged. These strange 
 
ELECTIONEERING 175 
 
 and startling orders were not in harmony either 
 with the Law of Nations or with the law of Eng- 
 land. They infringed the invaluable rule which 
 prescribes that a man-of-war is British territory, 
 wherever she may be; and they seemed to chal- 
 lenge the famous decision of Lord Mansfield, that 
 a slave who enters British jurisdiction becomes 
 free for ever. Parliament had risen for the recess 
 just before the circular appeared, so it could not 
 be challenged in the House of Commons; but it 
 raised a storm of indignation out of doors which 
 astonished its authors. Disraeli wrote " The in- 
 cident is grave ; " and, though in the subsequent 
 session the Government tried to whittle down the 
 enormity, the " incident " proved to be graver than 
 even the Premier had imagined ; for it showed the 
 Liberals once again that Toryism is by instinct 
 hostile to freedom. 
 
 But events were now at hand before which the 
 Public Worship Regulation Act and the Slave Cir- 
 cular paled into insignificance. 
 
 In the autumn of 1875 an insurrection had 
 broken out in Bulgaria, and the Turkish Govern- 
 ment despatched a large force to repress it. This 
 was done, and repression was followed by a hid- 
 eous orgy of massacre and outrage. A rumour 
 of these horrors reached England, and public in- 
 dignation spontaneously awoke. Disraeli, with a 
 
176 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 strange frankness of cynical brutality, sneered at 
 the rumour as " Cofifee-house babble," and made 
 odious jokes about the Oriental way of executing 
 malefactors. But Christian England was not to 
 be pacified with these Asiatic pleasantries, and in 
 the autumn of 1876 the country rose in passionate 
 indignation against what were known as " the Bul- 
 garian Atrocities." Preaching in St. Paul's Ca- 
 thedral, Liddon made a signal departure from his 
 general rule of avoiding politics in the pulpit, and 
 gave splendid utterance to the passion which was 
 burning in his heart. " Day by day we English 
 are learning that this year of grace 1876 has been 
 signalized by a public tragedy which, I firmly be- 
 lieve, is without a parallel in modern times. . . . 
 Not merely armed men, but young women and 
 girls and babes, counted by hundreds, counted by 
 thousands, subjected to the most refined cruelties, 
 subjected to the last indignities, have been the vic- 
 tims of the Turk." And then came a fine burst of 
 patriotic indignation. " That which makes the 
 voice falter as we say it is that, through whatever 
 misunderstanding, the Government which is im- 
 mediately responsible for acts like these has turned 
 for sympathy, for encouragement, not to any of 
 the historical homes of despotism or oppression, 
 not to any other European Power, but alas! to 
 England — to free, humane, Christian England. 
 
ELECTIONEERING 177 
 
 The Turk has, not altogether without reason, be- 
 lieved himself, amid these scenes of cruelty, to be 
 leaning on our country's arm, to be sure of her 
 smile, or at least, of her acquiescence." 
 
 And soon a mightier voice than even Liddon's 
 was added to the chorus of righteous indignation. 
 Gladstone had resigned the leadership of the Lib- 
 eral Party at the beginning of 1875, and for six- 
 teen months he remained buried in his library at 
 Hawarden. But now he suddenly reappeared, and 
 flung himself into the agitation against Turkey 
 with a zeal which in his prime he had never ex- 
 celled, if, indeed, he had equalled it. On Christ- 
 mas Day, 1876, he wrote in his diary — " The most 
 solemn I have known for long; I see that eastward 
 sky of storm and of underlight ! " When Parlia- 
 ment met in February, 1877, he was ready with all 
 his unequalled resources of eloquence, argumenta- 
 tion, and inconvenient enquiry, to drive home his 
 great indictment against the Turkish Government 
 and its champion, Disraeli, who had now become 
 Lord Beaconsfield. For three arduous years he 
 sustained the high and holy strife with a versatil- 
 ity, a courage, and a resourcefulness, which raised 
 the enthusiasm of his followers to the highest pitch, 
 and filled his guilty and baffled antagonists with a 
 rage akin to frenzy. I well remember that in the 
 summer of 1878 a lady asked me as a special fa- 
 
178 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 vour to dine with her : " Because I have got the 
 Gladstones coming, and everyone declines to meet 
 him." Strange, but true. 
 
 1878 was perhaps the most critical year of the 
 Eastern Question. Russia and Turkey were at 
 death-grips, and Lord Beaconsfield seemed deter- 
 mined to commit this country to a war in defence 
 of the Mahomedan Power, which for centuries has 
 persecuted the worshippers of Christ in the East of 
 Europe. By frustrating the sinister design Glad- 
 stone saved England from the indelible disgrace 
 of a second Crimea. But it was not only in East- 
 ern Europe that he played the hero's part. In 
 Africa, and India, and wherever British arms were 
 exercised and British honour was involved, he 
 dealt (his resounding blows at that odious system 
 of bluster and swagger and might against right, 
 on which the Prime Minister and his colleagues 
 bestowed the tawdry nickname of Imperialism. 
 In his own phrase he devoted himself to " counter- 
 working the purpose of Lord Beaconsfield," and 
 all that was ardent and enthusiastic and adventur- 
 ous in Liberalism flocked to his standard. 
 
 " Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. 
 But to be young was very heaven ! " 
 
 One could not stand aloof — the call to arms was 
 too imperious. We saw our Leader contending 
 single-handed with " the obscene empires of Mam- 
 
ELECTIONEERING 179 
 
 mon and Belial," and we longed to be at his side 
 in the thick of the fight. To a man born and cir- 
 cumstanced as I was the call came with peculiar 
 power. I had the love of Freedom in my blood. 
 I had been trained to believe in and to serve the 
 Liberal cause. I was incessantly reminded of the 
 verse which, sixty years before, Moore had ad- 
 dressed to my uncle. Lord John Russell, 
 
 " Like the boughs of that laurel, by Delphi's decree 
 Set apart for the Fane and its service divine. 
 So the branches that spring from the old Russell tree 
 Are by Liberty claimed for the use of her shrine." 
 
 In 1 84 1 that same uncle wrote thus to his eldest 
 brother : " Whatever may be said about other 
 families, I do not think ours ought to retire from 
 active exertion. In all times of popular movement, 
 the Russells have been on the ' forward ' side. At 
 the Reformation, the first Earl of Bedford; in 
 Charles the First's days, Francis, the Great Earl; 
 in Charles the Second's, William, Lord Russell; 
 in later times Francis, Duke of Bedford; our fa- 
 ther; you; and lastly myself in the Reform Bill." 
 
 These hereditary appeals were strong, but there 
 were influences which were stronger. A kind of 
 romantic and religious glamour, such as one had 
 never before connected with politics, seemed to 
 surround this attack on the strongholds of Anti- 
 Christ. The campaign became a crusade. 
 
l8o ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Towards the end of 1879 ^ accepted an invita- 
 tion to contest " the Borough and Hundreds of 
 Aylesbury " at the next General Election. The 
 " Borough " was a compact and attractive-looking 
 town, and the " Hundreds " which surrounded it 
 covered an area nearly coextensive with the pres- 
 ent division of Mid Bucks. Close by was Hamp- 
 den House, unaltered since the day when four 
 thousand freeholders of Buckinghamshire rode up 
 to Westminster to defend their impeached member.* 
 All around were those beech-clad recesses of the 
 Chiltern Hills, in which, according to Lord Bea- 
 consfield, the Great Rebellion was hatched. I do 
 not vouch for that fact, but I can affirm that thirty 
 years ago those recesses sheltered some of the 
 stoutest Liberals whom I have ever known. The 
 town and its surroundings were, for parliament- 
 ary purposes, a Borough, and, as all householders 
 in Boroughs had been enfranchised by the Reform 
 Act of 1867, the Agricultural Labourers of the 
 district were already voters. 
 
 It happens that Agricultural Labourers are the 
 class of voters with which I am most familiar ; and 
 
 * " The feelings of the Colonies were formerly the feelings 
 of Mr. Hampden, when called upon for the payment of 
 twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr. 
 Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty 
 shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made 
 him a slave." — Burke, Speech on American Taxation, 1774. 
 
ELECTIONEERING i8l 
 
 an intimate acquaintance with these men has taught 
 me increasingly to admire their staunchness, their 
 shrewdness, and their racy humour. Two or three 
 of the old sayings come back to memory as I write. 
 " More pigs and less parsons " must have been a 
 survival from the days of Tithe. " The Black Re- 
 cruiting Sergeant " was a nickname for a canvass- 
 ing Incumbent. " I tell you how it is with a State- 
 Parson," cried a Village Hampden : " if you take 
 away his book, he can't preach. If you take away 
 his gown, he mayn't preach. If you take away 
 his screw, he'll be d — d if he'll preach." A Radi- 
 cal M.P. suddenly deserted his constituency and 
 took a peerage, and this was the verdict of the 
 Village Green : " Mister So-and-so says he's going 
 to the House of Lords to ' leaven it with Liberal 
 principles.' Bosh! Mr. So-and-so can't no 
 more leaven the House of Lords than you can 
 sweeten a cartload of muck with a pot of mar- 
 malade." 
 
 Aylesbury returned two Members to Parliament, 
 and its political history had been chequered. When 
 first I came to know it, the two members were 
 Mr. Samuel George Smith and Sir Nathaniel de 
 Rothschild (now Lord Rothschild). Mr. Smith 
 was a Tory. Sir Nathaniel professed to be a Lib- 
 eral; but, as his Liberalism was of the sort which 
 had doggedly supported Lord Beaconsfield all 
 
l82 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 through the Eastern Question, the more enthusi- 
 astic spirits in the constituency felt that they were 
 wholly unrepresented. It was they who invited 
 me to stand. From the first. Sir Nathaniel made 
 it known that Tie would not support or coalesce 
 with me; and perhaps, considering the dissimilar- 
 ity of our politics, it was just as well. So there 
 were three candidates, fighting independently for 
 two seats; there was no Corrupt Practices Act in 
 those days; and the situation was neatly summar- 
 ized by a tradesman of the town. " Our three can- 
 didates are Mr. S. G. Smith, head of ' Smith, Payne 
 & Co.' ; Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild, head of ' N. 
 M. Rothschild & Sons,' and Mr. George Russell, 
 who, we understand, has the Duke of Bedford be- 
 hind him. So we are looking forward to a very 
 interesting contest." That word interesting was 
 well chosen. 
 
 Now began the most vivid and enjoyable portion 
 of my life. Everything conspired to make it pleas- 
 ant. In the first place, I believed absolutely in my 
 cause. I was not, as Sydney Smith said, " stricken 
 by the palsy of candour." There were no doubts 
 or questionings or ambiguities in my mind. My 
 creed with regard both to foreign and to domestic 
 politics was clear, positive, and deliberate. I was 
 received with the most extraordinary kindness and 
 enthusiasm by people who really longed to have a 
 
ELECTIONEERING 183 
 
 hand in the dethronement of Lord Beaconsfield, 
 and who believed in their poHtics as part of their 
 religion. 
 
 After my first speech in the Corn Exchange of 
 Aylesbury I was severely reprehended because I 
 had called Lord Beaconsfield a " Jew." If I had 
 known better, I should have said " a Semite " or 
 " an Israelite," or — his own phrase — " a Mosaic 
 Arab," and all would have been well. I had and 
 have close friends among the Jews, so my use of 
 the offending word was not dictated by racial or 
 social prejudice. But it expressed a strong con- 
 viction. I held then, and I hold now, that it was a 
 heavy misfortune for England that, during the 
 Eastern Question, her Prime Minister was one of 
 the Ancient Race. The spiritual affinity between 
 Judaism and Mahomedanism, founded on a com- 
 mon denial of the Christian Creed, could not be 
 without its influence on a statesman whose deepest 
 convictions, from first to last, were with the re- 
 ligion of his forefathers. In 1876 Mr. Gladstone 
 wrote — " Some new lights about Disraeli's Judaic 
 feeling, in which he is both consistent and con- 
 scientious, have come in upon me." And similar 
 " lights " dictated my action and my language at 
 the crisis of 1879- 1880. 
 
 Another element of enjoyment was that I was 
 young — only twenty-six. Youth is an invaluable 
 
i84 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 asset in a first campaign. Youth can canvass all 
 day, and harangue all night. It can traverse im- 
 mense distances without fatigue, make speeches in 
 the open air without catching cold, sleep anywhere, 
 eat anything, and even drink port with a grocer's 
 label on it, at five in the afternoon. Then again, I 
 had a natural and inborn love of public speaking, 
 and I have known no enjoyment in life equal to that 
 of addressing a great audience which you feel to be 
 actively sympathetic. 
 
 Yes, that spring of 1880 was a delightful time. 
 As the condemned highwayman said to the chap- 
 lain who was exhorting him to repentance for his 
 life of adventure on the road — " You dog, it was 
 delicious." It was all so new. One emerged (like 
 the present Lord Gladstone) from the obscurity of 
 College rooms, or from the undistinguished herd of 
 London ball-goers, or from the stables and stubbles 
 of a country home, and became, all in a moment, 
 a Personage. For the first time in one's life, one 
 found that people — grown-up, sensible, vote-pos- 
 sessing people — wished to know one's opinions, 
 and gave heed to one's words. For the first time, 
 one had " Colours " of one's own, as if one were 
 a Regiment or a University; for the first time one 
 beheld one's portrait, flattering though perhaps 
 mud-bespattered, on every wall. For the first time 
 one was cheered in the street, and entered the 
 
ELECTIONEERING 185 
 
 Com-Exchange amid what the Liberal paper called 
 " thunders of applause," and the opponent's organ 
 whittled down to " cheers." 
 
 But canvassing cannot, I think, be reckoned 
 among the pleasures of a candidature. One must 
 be very young indeed to find it even tolerable. A 
 candidate engaged in a house-to-house canvass has 
 always seemed to me (and not least clearly when 
 I was the candidate) to sink beneath the level of 
 humanity. To beg for votes, as if they were alms 
 or broken victuals, is a form of mendicancy which 
 is incompatible with common self-respect, and yet 
 it is a self-abasement which thirty years ago cus- 
 tom imperatively demanded. " If my vote ain't 
 worth calling for, I suppose it ain't worth 'aving " 
 was the formula in which the elector stated his re- 
 quirement. 
 
 To trudge, weary and footsore, dusty and 
 deliquescent, from door to door; to ask, with 
 damnable iteration, if Mr. So-and-so is at home, 
 and to meet the invariable rejoinder, " No, he 
 isn't," not seldom running on with — " And, if he 
 was, he wouldn't see you " ; to find oneself (being 
 Blue) in a Red quarter, where the very children 
 hoot at you, and inebriate matrons shout person- 
 alities from upper windows — all this is detestable 
 enough. But to find the voter at home and un- 
 friendly is an experience which plunges the candi- 
 
1 86 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 date lower still. A curious tradition of privileged 
 insolence, which runs through all English history 
 from the days when great men kept Jesters and the 
 Universities had their Terra Filii, asserts itself, by 
 immemorial usage, at an election. People who 
 would be perfectly civil if one called on them in 
 the ordinary way, and even rapturously grateful 
 if they could sell one six boxes of lucifers or a 
 pound of toffee, permit themselves a freedom of 
 speech to the suppliant candidate, which tests the 
 fibre of his manhood. If he loses his temper and 
 answers in like sort, the door is shut on him with 
 some Parthian jeer, and, as he walks dejectedly 
 away, the agent says — " Ah, it's a pity you of- 
 fended that fellow. He's very influential in this 
 ward, and I believe a civil word would have won 
 him." If, on the other hand, the candidate en- 
 dures the raillery and smiles a sickly smile, he 
 really fares no better. After a prolonged battle of 
 wits (in which he takes care not to be too success- 
 ful) he discovers that the beery gentleman in shirt- 
 sleeves has no vote, and that, in the time which he 
 has spent in these fruitless pleasantries, he might 
 have canvassed half the street. 
 
 There is, of course, a pleasanter side to can- 
 vassing. It warms the cockles of one's heart to be 
 greeted with the words, " Don't waste your time 
 here, sir. My vote's yours before you ask for it. 
 
ELECTIONEERING 187 
 
 There's your picture over the chimney-piece." 
 And when a wife says, " My husband is out at 
 work, but I know he means to vote for you," one 
 is inclined to embrace her on the spot. 
 
 These are the amenities of electioneering; but 
 a man who enters on a political campaign expect- 
 ing fair treatment from his opponents is indeed 
 walking in a vain shadow. The ordinary rules 
 of fairplay and straightforward conduct are for- 
 gotten at an election. In a political contest people 
 say and do a great many things of which in every- 
 day life they would be heartily ashamed. An elec- 
 tion-agent of the old school once said to me in 
 the confidence of after-dinner claret, " For my own 
 part, when I go into a fight, I go in to win, and 
 I'm not particular to a shade or two." All this is 
 the common form of electioneering, but in one re- 
 spect I think my experience rather unusual. I have 
 been all my life as keen a Churchman as I am a 
 Liberal, and some of my closest friends are clergy- 
 men. I never found that the Nonconformists were 
 the least unfriendly to me on this account. They 
 had their own convictions, and they respected 
 mine; and we could work together in perfect con- 
 cord for the causes of Humanity and Freedom. 
 But the most unscrupulous opponents whom I have 
 ever encountered have been the parochial clergy of 
 the Church to which I belong, and the bands of 
 
i88 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 " workers " whom they direct. Tennyson once de- 
 picted a clergyman who — 
 
 " From a throne 
 Mounted in heaven should shoot into the dark 
 Arrows of lightnings," 
 
 and graciously added that he "would stand and 
 mark." But, when the Vicar from his pulpit- 
 throne launches barbed sayings about " those who 
 would convert our schools into seminaries of 
 Atheism or Socialism, and would degrade this 
 hallowed edifice into a Lecture-Hall — nay, a 
 Music-Hall," then the Liberal candidate, con- 
 strained to " sit and mark " these bolts aimed at 
 his cause, is tempted to a breach of charity. The 
 Vicar's " workers " follow suit, but descend a 
 little further into personalities. " You know that 
 the Radical Candidate arrived drunk at one of his 
 meetings ? He had to be lifted out of the carriage, 
 and kept in the Committee Room till he was sober. 
 Shocking, isn't it? and then such shameful hy- 
 pocrisy to talk about Local Option! But can you 
 wonder? You know he's an atheist? Oh yes, I 
 know he goes to Church, but that's all a blind. His 
 one object is to do away with Religion. Yes, they 
 do say he has been in the Divorce Court, but I 
 should not like to say I know it, though I quite be- 
 lieve it. His great friend, Mr. Comus, certainly 
 was, and Mr. Quickly only got off by paying an im- 
 
ELECTIONEERING 189 
 
 mense sum in hush-money. They're all tarred with 
 the same brush, and it really is a religious duty to 
 keep them out of Parliament." 
 
 Such I have observed to be the attitude of 
 parochial clergy and church-workers towards Lib- 
 eral candidates. 
 
 " They said their duty both to man and God 
 Required such conduct — which seemed very odd." 
 
 I suppose they would have justified it by that 
 zeal for Established Churches and Sectarian 
 Schools which, if it does not actually " eat up " 
 its votaries, certainly destroys their sense of pro- 
 portion and perspective.* 
 
 Though I have said so much about the pugnacity 
 of the clergy, I would not have it supposed that 
 the Tory laity were slack or backward in political 
 activity. To verbal abuse one soon became case- 
 hardened; but one had also to encounter physical 
 violence. In those days, stones and cabbage- 
 stalks and rotten eggs still played a considerable 
 part in electioneering. Squires hid their game- 
 keepers in dark coppices with instructions to pelt 
 one as one drove past after dark. The linch-pin 
 was taken out of one's carriage while one was 
 busy at a meeting; and it was thought seriously 
 
 * I must except from this general indictment the Rev. A. 
 T. Lloyd, Vicar of Aylesbury in 1880, and afterwards Bishop 
 of Newcastle. A strong Conservative, but eminently a Chris- 
 tian gentleman. 
 
I90 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 unsafe for the candidate to walk unescorted 
 through the hostile parts of the borough. 
 
 But, after all, this animosity, theological, moral, 
 physical, did no great harm. It quickened the zeal 
 and strengthened the resolve of one's supporters; 
 and it procured one the inestimable aid of young, 
 active, and pugnacious friends, who formed them- 
 selves into a body-guard and a cycle-corps, protect- 
 ing their candidate when the play was rough, and 
 spreading the light all over the constituency. 
 
 Why did not Lord Beaconsfield dissolve Parlia- 
 ment in July, 1878, when he returned in a blaze 
 of triumph from the Congress of Berlin? Prob- 
 ably because his nerve had failed him, and he 
 chose to retain his supremacy unquestioned, rather 
 than commit it to the chances of a General Elec- 
 tion. Anyhow, he let the moment pass; and from 
 that time on his Government began to lose ground. 
 In 1879 Vanity Fair, a strongly Disraelitish organ, 
 pronounced (under a cartoon) that Gladstone was 
 the most popular man in England. In the autumn 
 of that year, the " Mid-Lothian Campaign " raised 
 him to the very summit of his great career; and, 
 when Christmas came, most Liberals felt that it 
 was all over except the shouting. 
 
 On the 9th of March, 1880, Lord Beaconsfield 
 announced that he had " advised the Queen to re- 
 cur to the sense of her people." His opponents re- 
 
ELECTIONEERING 191 
 
 marked that the nonsense of her people was likely 
 to serve his turn a good deal better; and to the 
 task of exposing and correcting that nonsense we 
 vigorously applied ourselves during the remaining 
 weeks of Lent. It is true that the same statesman 
 had once declared himself " on the side of the 
 Angels " in order to reassure the clergy, and had 
 once dated a letter on " Maundy Thursday " in 
 order to secure the High Church vote. Encour- 
 aged by these signs of grace, some of his followers 
 mildly remonstrated against a Lenten dissolution 
 and an Easter poll. But counsels which might 
 have weighed with Mr. Disraeli, M.P. for Bucks, 
 (who had clerical constituents) were thrown away 
 on Lord Beaconsfield, who had the Crown, Lords, 
 and Commons on his side; and on the 24th of 
 March the Parliament which he had dominated for 
 six years was scattered to the winds. 
 
 Electioneering in rural districts was pure joy. 
 It was a delicious spring, bright and yet soft, and 
 the beech-forests of the Chilterns were in early 
 leafage. 
 
 "There is a rapturous movement, a green growing, 
 Among the hills and valleys once again, 
 And silent rivers of delight are flowing 
 
 Into the hearts of men. 
 There is a purple weaving on the heather, 
 
 Night drops down starry gold upon the furze; 
 Wild rivers and wild birds sing songs together, 
 Dead Nature breathes and stirs."* 
 * Archbishop Alexander. 
 
192 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 In the spring of 1880, Nature had no monopoly 
 of seasonable life. Humanity was up and doing. 
 Calm people were roused to passion, and lethargic 
 people to activity. There was hurrying and rush- 
 ing and plotting!, and planning, and all the fierce but 
 fascinating bustle of a great campaign. One hur- 
 ried across the Vale from a Farmers' Ordinary, 
 where one had been exposing Lord Beaconsfield's 
 nonsense about the " Three Profits " of agricul- 
 tural land, to a turbulent meeting in a chapel or a 
 bam (for the use of the schoolroom was denied to 
 the Liberal candidate). As we drove through 
 the primrose-studded lanes, or past the village 
 green, the bell was ringing from the grey tower 
 of the Parish Church, and summoning the vil- 
 lagers to the daily Evensong of Holy Week. The 
 contrast was too violent to be ignored ; and yet, for 
 a citizen who took his citizenship seriously, the 
 meeting was an even more imperative duty than the 
 service. Hostilities were suspended for Good Fri- 
 day, Easter Even, and Easter Day, but on Easter 
 Monday they broke out again with redoubled vig- 
 our; and, before the week was over, the Paschal 
 Alleluias were blending strangely with paeans of 
 victory over conquered foes. When even so grave 
 and spiritually-minded a man as Dean Church 
 wrote to a triumphant Gladstonian, " I don't won- 
 der at your remembering the Song of Miriam," it 
 
ELECTIONEERING 193 
 
 is manifest that political fervour had reached a very 
 unusual point. 
 
 On the 2nd of April I was returned to Parlia- 
 ment, as colleague of Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild, 
 in the representation of Aylesbury. We were the 
 last Members for that ancient Borough, for, before 
 the next General Election came round, it had been 
 merged, by Redistribution, in Mid Bucks. The Lib- 
 eral victory was overwhelming. Lord Beacons- 
 field, who had expected a very different result, re- 
 signed on the 1 8th of April, and Gladstone became 
 Prime Minister for the second time. Truly his 
 enemies had been made his footstool. On the 30th 
 of April I took the oath and my seat in the House 
 of Commons, and a fresh stage of life began. 
 
X 
 
 PARLIAMENT 
 
 " Still in the Senate, whatsoe'er we lack, 
 It is not genius; — call old giants back, 
 And men now living might as tall appear; 
 Judged by our sons, not us — we stand too near. 
 Ne'er of the living can the living judge — 
 Too blind the affection, or too fresh the grudge." 
 
 — Bulwer-Lytton, St. Stephen's. 
 
 " In old days it was the habit to think and say 
 that the House of Commons was an essentially 
 ' queer place,' which no one could understand until 
 he was a Member of it. It may, perhaps, be 
 doubted whether that somewhat mysterious quality 
 still altogether attaches to that assembly. ' Our 
 own Reporter ' has invaded it in all its purlieus. 
 No longer content with giving an account of the 
 speeches of its members, he is not satisfied unless 
 he describes their persons, their dress, and their 
 characteristic mannerisms. He tells us how they 
 dine, even the wines and dishes which they favour, 
 and follows them into the very mysteries of their 
 smoking-room. And yet there is perhaps a certain 
 fine sense of the feelings, and opinions, and hu- 
 
PARLIAMENT 195 
 
 mours of this Assembly, which cannot be acquired 
 by hasty notions and necessarily superficial re- 
 marks, but must be the result of long and patient 
 observation, and of that quick sympathy with hu- 
 man sentiment, in all its classes, which is involved 
 in the possession of that inestimable quality styled 
 tact. 
 
 " When Endymion Ferrars first took his seat in 
 the House of Commons, it still fully possessed its 
 character of enigmatic tradition. For himself, 
 Endymion entered the Chamber with a certain de- 
 gree of awe, which, with use, diminished, but 
 never entirely disappeared. The scene was one 
 over which his boyhood even had long mused, and 
 it was associated with all those traditions of ge- 
 nius, eloquence, and power that charm and in- 
 spire youth. His acquaintance with the forms and 
 habits of the House was of great advantage to 
 him, and restrained that excitement which danger- 
 ously accompanies us when we enter into a new 
 life, and especially a life of such deep and thrilling 
 interests and such large proportions." * 
 
 I quote these words from a statesman whO' knew 
 the House of Commons more thoroughly than any- 
 one else has ever known it; and, though Lord 
 Beaconsfield was describing the Parliament which 
 assembled in August, 1841, his description would 
 * Lord Beaconsfield. Endymion. 
 
196 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 fit, with scarcely the alteration of a word, the Par- 
 liament in which I took my seat in April, 1880.* 
 
 The " acquaintance with the forms and habits 
 of the House," which Lord Beaconsfield attributes 
 to his favourite Endymion, was also mine; 
 from my earliest years I had been familiar with 
 every nook and corner of the Palace of Westmin- 
 ster. My father's official residence in Speaker's 
 Court communicated by a private door with the 
 corridors of the Palace, and my father's privilege 
 as Sergeant-at-Arms enabled him to place me in, 
 or under, the Gallery whenever there was a debate 
 or a scene of special interest. I was early initiated 
 into all the forms and ceremonies of the House; 
 the manoeuvres of the mace, the obeisances to the 
 Chair, the rap of " Black Rod " on the locked 
 door, the daily procession of Mr. Speaker and his 
 attendants (which Sir Henry Irving pronounced 
 the most theatrically effective thing of its kind in 
 our public life). 
 
 *The following incident may be worth recording for the 
 information of such as are interested in the antiquities of 
 Parliament. I first took my seat on the highest bench above 
 and behind the Treasury Bench, under the shadow of the 
 Gallery. A few days later, an old Parliamentarian said to 
 me, "That's quite the wrong place for you. That belongs 
 to ancient Privy Councillors, and they sit there because, if 
 any difficulty arises, the Minister in charge of the business can 
 consult them, without being observed by everyone in the 
 House." That was the tradition in 1880, but it has long since 
 died out. 
 
o 
 X 
 
 a 
 a 
 
PARLIAMENT 197 
 
 The Sergeant-at-Arms has in his gift the ap- 
 pointment of all the doorkeepers, messengers, and 
 attendants of the House; and, as my father was 
 Sergeant from 1848 to 1875, the staff was almost 
 exclusively composed of men who had been ser- 
 vants in our own or our friends' families. This 
 circumstance was vividly brought home to me on 
 the day on which I first entered the House. In 
 the Members' Lobby I was greeted by a venerable- 
 looking official who bowed, smiled, and said, when 
 I shook hands with him, " Well, sir, I'm glad, in- 
 deed, to see you here; and, when I think that I 
 helped to put both your grandfather and your 
 grandmother into their coffins, it makes me feel 
 quite at home with you." 
 
 . The first duty of a new House of Commons is to 
 elect a Speaker, and on the 7th April, 1880, we 
 re-elected Mr. Henry Brand (afterwards Lord 
 Hampden), who had been Speaker since 1872. Mr. 
 Brand was a short man, but particularly well set 
 up, and in his wig and gown he carried himself 
 with a dignity which fully made up for the lack 
 of inches. His voice was mellow, and his utter- 
 ance slightly pompous, so that the lightest word 
 which fell from his lips conveyed a sense of 
 urbane majesty. He looked what he was, and 
 what the traditions of the House required — a 
 country gentleman of the highest type. One of 
 
198 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 the most noticeable traits was his complexion, 
 fresh and rosy as a boy's. I well remember one 
 day, after a stormy " all-night sitting," saying to 
 his train-bearer, " The Speaker has borne it won- 
 derfully. He* looks as fresh as paint." Where- 
 upon the train-bearer, a man of a depressed spirit, 
 made answer, " Ah ! sir, it's the Speaker's 'igh 
 colour that deceives you. 'E'll 'ave that same 'igh 
 colour when 'e's laid out in 'is coffin." 
 
 The election of the Speaker having been duly 
 accomplished, and the Members sworn in, the 
 House adjourned till the 20th of May, then to 
 meet for the despatch of business ; and this may be 
 a convenient point for a brief recapitulation of re- 
 cent events. 
 
 Lord Hartington (afterwards eighth Duke of 
 Devonshire) had been, ever since the beginning of 
 1875, the recognized Leader of the Liberal Party. 
 But, when Gladstone re-entered the field as the 
 foremost assailant of Lord Beaconsfield's policy. 
 Lord Hartington's authority over his party was 
 sensibly diminished. Indeed, it is not too much to 
 say that he was brushed on one side, and that all 
 the fervour and fighting power of the Liberal Party 
 were sworn to Gladstone's standard. 
 
 When the General Election of 1880 reached its 
 close, everyone felt that Gladstone was now the 
 
PARLIAMENT 199 
 
 real, though not the titular, leader of the Liberal 
 Party, and the inevitable Prime Minister. Lord 
 Beaconsfield did not wait for an adverse vote in 
 the new House, but resigned on the i8th of April. 
 We do not at present know, but no doubt we shall 
 know when Mr. Monypenny's " Life " is completed, 
 whether Queen Victoria consulted Lord Beacons^ 
 field as to his successor. A friend of mine once 
 asked the Queen this plain question : " When a 
 Prime Minister goes out, does he recommend a suc- 
 cessor ? " And the Queen replied, with equal plain- 
 ness, " Not unless I ask him to do so." There can, 
 I think, be little doubt that Her Majesty, in April, 
 1880, asked Lord Beaconsfield's advice in this deli- 
 cate matter, and we may presume that the advice 
 was that Her Majesty should follow the constitu- 
 tional practice, and send for Lord Hartington, as 
 being the head of the victorious party. This was 
 done, and on the 22d of April Lord Hartington 
 waited on Her Majesty at Windsor, and was in- 
 vited to form an Administration. Feeling in the 
 Liberal Party ran very high. It was not for this 
 that we had fought and won. If Gladstone did 
 not become Prime Minister, our victory would be 
 robbed of half its joy; and great was our jubila- 
 tion when we learned that the task had been de- 
 clined. As the precise nature of the transaction 
 
200 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 has often been misrepresented, it is as well to give 
 it in Lord Hartington's own words — 
 
 " The advice which Lord Hartington gave to 
 the Queen from first to last was that Her Majesty- 
 should send for Mr. Gladstone, and consult him as 
 to the formation of a Government; and that, if he 
 should be willing to undertake the task, she should 
 call upon him to form an Administration. 
 
 " Lord Hartington had up to that time had no 
 communication with Mr. Gladstone on the subject, 
 and did not know what his views as to returning 
 to office might be. ' With the Queen's permission, 
 Lord Hartington, on his return from Windsor, in- 
 formed Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, but no 
 other person, of what had passed between Her 
 Majesty and himself." 
 
 The result of that interview was a foregone con- 
 clusion. If Lord Hartington consented to form 
 an Administration, Gladstone would not take a 
 place in it. If he was not to be Prime Minister, 
 he must remain outside. Having put this point 
 beyond the reach of doubt. Lord Hartington re- 
 turned next day to Windsor, accompanied by Lord 
 Granville, who led the Liberal Party in the House 
 of Lords. They both assured the Queen that the 
 victory was Gladstone's, and that the Liberal 
 Party would be satisfied with no other Prime Min- 
 ister. The two statesmen returned to London in 
 
PARLIAMENT 2oi 
 
 the afternoon, and called on Gladstone. He was 
 expecting them and the message which they 
 brought. He went down to Windsor without an 
 hour's delay, and that evening " kissed hands " 
 as Prime Minister for the second time. 
 
 This was the climax of his career. He had de- 
 throned Lord Beaconsfield. He had vindicated 
 the cause of humanity and freedom all over the 
 world; and he had been recalled, by unanimous 
 acclamation, to the task of governing the British 
 Empire. On the 20th of May he met his twelfth 
 Parliament, and the second in which he had been 
 Chief Minister of the Crown. "At 4.15," he wrote 
 in his diary, " I went down to. the House with 
 Herbert.* There was a great and fervent crowd 
 in Palace Yard, and rnuch feeling in the House. It 
 almost overpowered me, as I thought by what deep 
 and hidden agencies I have been brought into the 
 midst of the vortex of political action and conten- 
 tion. . . . Looking calmly on the course of 
 experience, I do believe that the Almighty has em- 
 ployed me for His purposes in a manner larger or 
 more special than before, and has strengthened me 
 and led me on accordingly, though I must not for- 
 get the admirable saying of Hooker, that even 
 ministers of good things are like torches — a light 
 to others, waste and destruction to themselves." 
 * Now Lord Gladstone. 
 
202 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 The conviction so solemnly expressed by Glad- 
 stone was entertained by not a few of his fol- 
 lowers. We felt that, Deo adjuvante, we had won 
 a famous victory for the cause of Right; and, as 
 a Party, we " sfood on the top of golden hours." 
 An overwhelming triumph after a desperate fight; 
 an immense majority, in which internecine jeal- 
 ousies were, at least for the moment, happily com- 
 posed; a leader of extraordinary powers and pop- 
 ularity; an administration of All the Talents; an 
 attractive and practicable programme of Minis- 
 terial measures — these were some of the elements 
 in a condition unusually prosperous and promising. 
 But trained observers of political phenomena 
 laid even greater stress on Gladstone's personal 
 ascendancy over the House of Commons. Old and 
 experienced Members of Parliament instructed the 
 newcomer to watch carefully the methods of his 
 leadership, because it was remarkable for its com- 
 pleteness, its dexterity, and the willing submission 
 with which it was received. 
 
 The pre-eminence of the Premier was, indeed, 
 the most noteworthy feature which the new House 
 presented to the student of Parliamentary life. 
 Whether considered morally or intellectually, he 
 seemed to tower a head and shoulders above his 
 colleagues, and above the Front Opposition Bench. 
 The leader of the Opposition was the amiable and 
 
PARLIAMENT 203 
 
 accomplished Sir Stafford Northcote, afterwards 
 
 Lord Iddesleigh, a 
 
 " scrupulous, good man, 
 Who would not, with a peremptory tone. 
 Assert the nose upon his face his own." 
 
 In his youth he had been Gladstone's Private 
 Secretary, and he still seemed to tremble at his old 
 chief's glance. 
 
 But, when everything looked so fair and smil- 
 ing. Speaker Brand quietly noted in his diary, that 
 the Liberal Party " were not only strong, but de- 
 termined to have their way in spite of Mr. Glad- 
 stone." And this determination to " have their 
 way " was soon and startlingly manifested, and 
 challenged the personal ascendancy of which we 
 had heard so much. 
 
 Charles Bradlaugh, a defiant Atheist, and the 
 teacher of a social doctrine which decent people 
 abhor, had been returned as one of the Members 
 for Northampton. When the other Members were 
 sworn, he claimed a right to affirm, which was dis- 
 allowed on legal grounds. He thereupon proposed 
 to take the oath in the ordinary way; the Tories 
 objected, and the Speaker weakly gave way. The 
 House, on a division, decided that Bradlaugh must 
 neither affirm nor swear. In effect, it decreed that 
 a duly elected Member was not to take his seat. 
 On the 23d of June, Bradlaugh came to the table of 
 
204 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 the House, and again claimed his right to take the 
 oath. The Speaker read the Resolution of the 
 House forbidding it. Thereupon Bradlaugh asked 
 to be heard, and addressed the House from the 
 Bar. I happen^ to be dining that night with Mr. 
 and Mrs. Gladstone in Downing Street. Glad- 
 stone came in full of excitement, and pronounced 
 Bradlaugh's speech " consummate." However it 
 availed nothing. Bradlaugh was ordered to with- 
 draw from the House ; refused, and was committed 
 to a farcical imprisonment of two days in the Clock 
 Tower; and so, as Lord Morley says, there 
 " opened a series of incidents that went on as long 
 as the Parliament, clouded the radiance of the 
 Party triumph, threw the new Government at once 
 into a minority, dimmed the ascendancy of the 
 great Minister, and showed human nature at its 
 worst." From the day when Bradlaugh's case was 
 first mooted, it became apparent that the Liberal 
 Party contained a good many men who had only 
 the frailest hold on the primary principles of Lib- 
 eralism, and who, under the pressure of social and 
 theological prejudice, were quite ready to join the 
 Tories in a tyrannical negation of Religious Lib- 
 erty. Gladstone, though deserted and defeated 
 by his own followers, maintained the righteous 
 cause with a signal consistency and courage. 
 There was no one in the world to whom Brad- 
 
PARLIAMENT 205 
 
 laugh's special opinions could have been more ab- 
 horrent; but he felt — and we who followed him 
 felt the same — that the cause of God and morality 
 can never be served by the insolent refusal of a 
 civil right. 
 
 There is no need to recapitulate the story in all 
 its stages, but one incident deserves commenda- 
 tion. In April, 1883, Gladstone brought in an Af- 
 firmation Bill, permitting Members of Parliament 
 (as witnesses in Law-Courts were already per- 
 mitted) to affirm their allegiance instead of swear- 
 ing it. On the 26th of April he moved the Second 
 Reading of the Bill in the finest speech which I 
 have ever heard. Under the existing system 
 (which admitted Jews to Parliament, but excluded 
 Atheists) , to deny the existence of God was a fatal 
 bar, but to deny the Christian Creed was no bar 
 at all. This, as Gladstone contended, was a formal 
 disparagement of Christianity, which was thereby 
 relegated to a place of secondary importance. 
 And then, on the general question of attaching 
 civil penalties to religious misbelief, he uttered a 
 passage which no one who heard it can forget. 
 " Truth is the expression of the Divine Mind ; and, 
 however little our feeble vision may be able to dis- 
 cern the means by which God may provide for its 
 preservation, we may leave the matter in His 
 hands, and we may be sure that a firm and cour- 
 
2o6 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 ageous application of every principle of equity and 
 of justice is the best method we can adopt for the 
 preservation and influence of Truth." 
 
 The Bill was lost by a majority of three, recreant 
 Liberals again helping to defeat the just claim of 
 a man whom they disliked; and Bradlaugh did not 
 take his seat until the new Parliament in 1886 ad- 
 mitted, without a division, the right which the old 
 Parliament had denied. Meanwhile, a few of us, 
 actuated by the desperate hope of bringing the 
 clergy to a right view of the controversy, printed 
 Gladstone's speech as a pamphlet, and sent a copy, 
 with a covering letter, to every beneficed clergy- 
 man in England, Scotland, and Ireland. One of 
 the clergy thus addressed sent me the following 
 reply, which has ever since been hoarded among 
 my choicest treasures: 
 
 June i6th, 1883. 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 I have received your recommendation to read carefully the 
 speech of Mr. Gladstone in favour of admitting the infidel 
 Bradlaugh into Parliament. I did so, when it was delivered, 
 and I must say that the strength of argument rests with the 
 Opposition. I fully expect, in the event of a dissolution, the 
 Government will lose between SO and 60 seats. 
 
 Any conclusion can be arrived at, according to the premises 
 laid down. Mr. G. avoided the Scriptural lines and followed 
 his own. All parties knew the feeling of the country on the 
 subject, and, notwithstanding the bullying and majority of 
 Gladstone, he was defeated. 
 
 Before the Irish Church was robbed, I was nominated to 
 the Deanery of Tuam; but, Mr. Disraeh resigning, I was de- 
 
PARLIAMENT 207 
 
 frauded of my just right by Mr. Gladstone, and my wife, the 
 only surviving child of an Earl, was sadly disappointed, but 
 there is a just Judge above. The letter of nomination is still 
 in my possession. 
 
 I am, dear Sir, 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 , D.D. and LL.D. 
 
 One is often asked if Gladstone had any sense 
 of humour. My simple and sufficient reply is that, 
 when he had read this letter, he returned it to my 
 hands with a knitted brow and flashing eyes, and 
 this indignant question : " What does the fellow 
 mean by quoting an engagement entered into by 
 my predecessor as binding on me ? " 
 
 The good fortune, which had so signally at- 
 tended Gladstone's campaign against Lord Bea- 
 consfield, seemed to desert him as soon as the vic- 
 tory was won. The refusal of the House to follow 
 his lead in Bradlaugh's case put heart of grace into 
 his opponents, who saw thus early in the new Par- 
 liament a hopeful opening for vicious attack. The 
 Front Opposition Bench, left to its own devices, 
 would not have accomplished much, but it was 
 splendidly reinforced by the Fourth Party — a 
 Party of Four — Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir 
 Henry Drummond-Wolff, Sir John Gorst, and Mr. 
 Arthur Balfour. Some light has been cast by re- 
 cent memoirs on the mutual relations of the Four; 
 but beyond question the head and front of the 
 
2o8 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Party was Lord Randolph. That ingenious man 
 possessed a deadly knack of " drawing " Glad- 
 stone, as the boys say. He knew the great mans 
 " vulnerable temper and impetuous moods," * and 
 delighted in exercising them. He pelted Gladstone 
 with rebukes and taunts and gibes, and the recip- 
 ient of these attentions " rose freely." There was 
 something rather unpleasant in the spectacle of a 
 man of thirty playing these tricks uppn a man of 
 seventy; but one could not deny that the tricks 
 were extremely clever; and beyond doubt they did 
 a vast deal to consolidate the performer's popu- 
 larity out of doors. It is not too much to say that, 
 by allowing himself to be drawn, Gladstone made 
 Lord Randolph. 
 
 The most formidable enemy of the Liberal Party 
 in the House of Commons was Parnell; and, when 
 he joined forces with the Fourth Party and their 
 adherents, the conjunction was disastrous to Lib- 
 eralism. He figures in Lord Morley's " Life " of 
 Gladstone as a high-souled and amiable patriot. I 
 always thought him entirely destitute of humane 
 feeling, and a bitter enemy of England. I re- 
 member the present Lord Carlisle, then George 
 Howard and Member for East Cumberland, gaz- 
 ing at Parnell across the House and quoting from 
 The Newcomes. " The figure of this gargon is 
 * Gladstone's own phrase. 
 
PARLIAMENT 209 
 
 not agreeable. Of pale, he has become livid." A 
 lady who met him in a country house wrote me this 
 interesting account of him : 
 
 " I cannot exaggerate the impression he made 
 on me. I never before felt such power and mag- 
 netic force in any man. As for his eyes, if he looks 
 at you, you can't look away, and, if he doesn't, you 
 are wondering how soon he will look at you again. 
 I'm afraid I have very little trust in his goodness 
 — I should think it a very minus quantity ; but I be- 
 lieve absolutely in his strength and his power of 
 influence. I should be sorry if he were my enemy, 
 for I think he would stop at nothing." 
 
 At the General Election of 1880 Irish questions 
 were completely in the background. The demand 
 for Home Rule was not taken seriously, even by 
 Mr. John Morley,* who stood unsuccessfully for 
 Westminster. Ireland was politically tranquil, and 
 the distress due to the failure of the crops had been 
 alleviated by the combined action of Englishmen 
 irrespective of party. But during the summer of 
 1880 it was found that the Irish landlords were 
 evicting wholesale the tenants whom famine had 
 impoverished. To provide compensation for these 
 evicted tenants was the object of a well-meant but 
 hastily drawn " Disturbance Bill," which the Gov- 
 ernment passed through the Commons. It was re- 
 * Now Lord Morley of Blackburn. 
 
210 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 jected by an overwhelming majority in the Lords, 
 and the natural consequence of its rejection was 
 seen in the ghastly record of outrage and murder 
 which stained the following winter. 
 
 The Session of 1881 opened on the 6th of Janu- 
 ary. The speech from the Throne announced two 
 Irish Bills — one to reform the tenure of land, and 
 one to repress crime and outrage. The combina- 
 tion was stigmatized by Mr. T. P. O'Connor as 
 " weak reform and strong coercion " ; and the 
 same vivacious orator, alluding to Mr. Chamber- 
 lain's supposed sympathy with the Irish cause, 
 taunted the Right Honourable gentleman with 
 having had " if not the courage of his convictions, 
 at least the silence of his shame." 
 
 The debate on the Address in the Commons 
 lasted eleven nights, the Irish Members moving 
 endless amendments, with the avowed object of 
 delaying the Coercion Bill, which was eventually 
 brought in by Forster on the 24th January. The 
 gist of the Bill was arrest on suspicion and impris- 
 onment without trial. The Irish Members fought 
 it tooth and nail, and were defied by Gladstone in 
 a speech of unusual fire. " With fatal and painful 
 precision," he exclaimed, " the steps of crime 
 dogged the steps of the Land League ; and it is not 
 possible to get rid of facts such as I have stated, 
 by vague and general complaints, by imputations 
 
PARLIAMENT 21 1 
 
 against parties, imputations against England, or 
 imputations against Government. You must meet 
 them, and confute them, if you can. None will 
 rejoice more than myself if you can attain such an 
 end. But in the meantime they stand, and they 
 stand uncontradicted, in the face of the British 
 House of Commons." The speech in which this 
 tremendous indictment was delivered attracted 
 loud cheers from Liberals and Conservatives alike, 
 but stirred the Irish to fury. I remember Mr. 
 O'Connor saying to me, " If only Gladstone had 
 been in opposition, how he would have enjoyed 
 tearing into shreds the statistics which he has just 
 quoted ! " The resistance to the Bill became im- 
 passioned. The House sat continuously from the 
 afternoon of January 31st to the forenoon of Feb- 
 ruary 2nd. Members were divided, like miners, 
 into Day-Shifts and Night-Shifts. The Refresh- 
 ment-Rooms at the House were kept open all night, 
 and we recruited our exhausted energies with 
 grilled bones, oysters, and champagne, and went 
 to bed at breakfast-time. At 9.30 on Wednesday 
 morning, February 2nd, Mr. Speaker Brand, who 
 had been absent from the House for some hours, 
 suddenly resumed the Chair, and, without waiting 
 for J. G. Biggar to finish his speech, put the ques- 
 tion that leave be given to bring in the Coercion 
 Bill. The Irish raved and stormed, and cried out 
 
212 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 against the Speaker's action as " a Breach of 
 Privilege." That it was not; but it was an un- 
 expected and a salutary revolution. When ques- 
 tioned, later in the day, as to the authority on 
 which he had "acted, the Speaker said, "I acted 
 on my own responsibility, and from a sense of 
 my duty to the House." Thus was established, 
 summarily and under unprecedented circum- 
 stances, that principle of Closure which has since 
 developed into an indispensable feature of Par- 
 liamentary procedure. 
 
 The coercive action of the Government, and cer- 
 tain features of our Foreign and Colonial policy, 
 vexed the righteous soul of my good friend. Sir 
 Wilfrid Lawson,* who placed in my hands this 
 metrical protest : 
 
 " ' Don't embarrass the Government ! ' Fourteen good men — 
 We could never collect such a fourteen again ; 
 A firm bulwark, they stand for our ' prestige ' and glory, 
 They keep in the Whigs and they keep out the Tory. 
 Don't embarrass the Government! Leave them alone; 
 They're the very best Government ever was known. 
 'Peace, Retrenchment, Reform!' they proclaimed loud and 
 
 clear. 
 When boldly they went to the country last year. 
 ' Peace, Retrenchment, Reform ! ' we all shouted together, 
 ' The Liberal Party ! ' and ' Nothing like leather ! ' 
 Don't embarrass the men we thus put into power, 
 If they cannot set eversrthing right in an hour. 
 With what difficult matters the/ve had to contend ! 
 Nay, inherited troubles and toil without end I 
 
 * M. P. for Carlisle. 
 
PARLIAMENT 213 
 
 The deeds of those Tories, so mean and so base, 
 Left behind them a legacy rich in disgrace. 
 These fourteen good men were the heirs of entail: 
 'Tis unfair their proceedings as yet to assail, 
 Whate'er they do wrong is the fault of the Tory ; 
 Whate'er they do right but augments their own glory. 
 Make allowance. They're terribly hampered, you know, 
 ' Don't embarrass the Government ! ' never, dear no ! 
 ' Don't embarrass the Government ! ' pause first and think. 
 If you do, from a course such as that you will shrink. 
 You don't like Coercion ? I hate it, 'tis true ; 
 But only consider — what were they to do? 
 The Tories required it, Sir Stafford insisted; 
 And forces like these should be never resisted. 
 Besides, all respectable people are pleased 
 When the Members from Ireland are worried and teased. 
 How gladly we vote in each crushing division. 
 When 'the lot' were suspended, what shouts of derision! 
 Though we've fallen on curious political weather. 
 We've succeeded in 'keeping the Party together.' 
 You don't like Intervention with each foreign nation. 
 Or sending a fleet for a grand Demonstration? * 
 But consider a minute the fix we were in: 
 We were bound to enforce the decrees of Berlin. 
 The treaty was ' rot,' as we very well knew, 
 But once more I ask you, what were we to do ? 
 The world's full of Jingoes who must be obeyed. 
 And displays of our force must be frequently made. 
 Even dwellers in Mesopotamia must feel 
 The strength of our arm and the edge of our steel. 
 'You object to the shooting of Boers,' do you say? 
 Well, that's awkward, I'm bound to admit, in a way. 
 But remember our forces were thoroughly beat. 
 And the Tories would howl if we made a retreat. 
 We must keep up our power on Africa's shores, 
 And try if, in turn, we can't kill a few Boers. 
 Last session besides we secured a great name 
 By the measure we passed for destroying ' Ground Game.' 
 ♦Off Dulcigno, Sept-Oct., 1880. 
 
214 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 And even more pleased the Dissenters were still 
 
 When we pushed through the Commons their Burials Bill. 
 
 Don't attempt then the Government's action to fetter ; 
 
 Their deeds have been good — ^their intentions still better; 
 
 There's a Land Bill in store which is sure to impart 
 
 Warmth, comfor^ and joy to the- Liberal heart. 
 
 ' Don't embarrass the Government ! ' leave them quite free, 
 
 If you'll only do that you will see — what you'll see. 
 
 We may all be embarrassed again and again. 
 
 But we must not embarrass the Fourteen Good Men. 
 
 Let Boers be shot down till a desert is made; 
 
 Let Basutos be butchered and Greeks be betrayed; 
 
 Let millions on millions be squandered away. 
 
 And the Irish disturbance grow worse every day. 
 
 ' Don't embarrass the Government ! ' still I implore ; 
 
 The more blunders they make, only trust them the more. 
 
 Faith bids you the best to believe and assume ; 
 
 Hope bids you be cheerful in spite of the gloom. 
 
 While Charity tells you, forgiving all sins. 
 
 With firmness to stick to the party that wins. 
 
 So patiently wait till embarrassments cease, 
 
 And the Liberal Party be buried in peace." 
 
 The Session as a whole was extremely dull. 
 The Irish Land Bill was so complicated that, ac- 
 cording to common report, only three persons in 
 the House understood it, and they were Gladstone, 
 the Irish Chancellor,* and Mr. T. M. Healy. The 
 only amusing incident was that on the i6th of June, 
 owing to the attendance of Liberal Members at 
 Ascot Races, the majority on a critical division 
 fell to twenty-five. Having occupied the whole 
 Session, the Bill was so mangled by the House 
 of Lords that the best part of another year had 
 * Right Hon. Hugh Law. 
 
PARLIAMENT 215 
 
 to be spent on mending it. Meanwhile, the Co- 
 ercion Bill proved, in working, a total failure. 
 Forster had averred that the police knew the 
 " Village Ruffians " who incited to crime, and 
 that, if only he were empowered to imprison them 
 without trial, outrages would cease. But either 
 he did not lay hold of the right men, or else im- 
 prisonment had no terrors; for all through the 
 autumn and winter of 1881 agrarian crimes in- 
 creased with terrible rapidity. In a fit of despera- 
 tion, Forster cast Parnell into prison, and Glad- 
 stone announced the feat amid the tumultuous 
 applause of the Guildhall. But things only went 
 from bad to worse, and soon there were forty 
 agrarian murders unpunished. Having impris- 
 oned Parnell without trial, and kept him in prison 
 for six months, the Government now determined 
 to release him, in the hope, for certainly there was 
 no assurance, that he would behave like a repent- 
 ant child who has been locked up in a dark cup- 
 board, and would use his influence to restore 
 order in Ireland. Dissenting, as well he might, 
 from this policy, Forster resigned. His resigna- 
 tion was announced on the 2nd of May. That 
 evening I met Gladstone at a party, and, in an- 
 swer to an anxious friend, he said : " The state of 
 Ireland is very greatly improved." Ardent Lib- 
 erals on both sides of the Channel shared this san- 
 
2l6 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 guine faith, but they were doomed to a cruel dis- 
 appointment. On the 6th of May, the Queen per- 
 formed the public ceremony of dedicating Epping 
 Forest, then lately rescued from depredation, to the 
 service of the public. It was a forward spring; 
 the day was bright, and the forest looked more 
 beautiful than anything that Dore ever painted. I 
 was standing in the space reserved for the House 
 of Commons, by W. H. O'Sullivan, M. P., for the 
 County of Limerick. He was an ardent Na- 
 tionalist, but recent events had touched his heart, 
 and he overflowed with friendly feeling : " This 
 is a fine sight," he said to me, " but, please God, 
 we shall yet see something like it in Ireland. We 
 have entered at last upon the right path. You will 
 hear no more of the Irish difficulty." Within an 
 hour of the time at which he spoke, the newly-ap- 
 pointed Chief Secretary for Ireland — the gallant 
 and high-minded Lord Frederick Cavendish — and 
 the Under Secretary, Mr. Burke, were stabbed to 
 death in the Phoenix Park at Dublin, and the 
 " Irish difficulty " entered on the acutest phase 
 which it has ever known. 
 
 At that time Lord Northbrook was First Lord 
 of the Admiralty, and on Saturday evening, the 
 6th of May, he gave a party at his official residence. 
 The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh were among 
 the guests, and there was some music after dinner. 
 
PARLIAMENT 217 
 
 In the middle of the performance, I noticed a slight 
 commotion, and saw a friend leading Mrs. Glad- 
 stone out of the room. The incident attracted at- 
 tention, and people began to whisper that Glad- 
 stone, who was not at the party, must have been 
 taken suddenly ill. While we were all wondering 
 and guessing, a waiter leaned across the buffet in 
 the tea-room, and said to me, " Lord Frederick 
 Cavendish has been murdered in Dublin. I am a 
 Messenger at the Home Office, and we heard it 
 by telegram this evening." In an incredibly short 
 time the ghastly news spread from room to room, 
 and the guests trooped out in speechless horror. 
 That night brought a condition more like delirium 
 than repose. One felt as though Hell had opened 
 her mouth, and the Powers of Darkness had been 
 let loose. Next day London was like a city of the 
 dead, and by Monday all England was in mourn- 
 ing. Sir Wilfrid Lawson thus described that aw- 
 ful Sunday : " The effect was horrifying — almost 
 stupefying. No one who walked in the streets of 
 London that day can ever forget the sort of ghastly 
 depression which seemed to affect everyone. Per- 
 fect strangers seemed disposed to speak in sympa- 
 thizing, horror-stricken words with those whom 
 they met. In short, there was a moral gloom 
 which could be felt over the whole place." 
 
 On the loth of May — the Wednesday following 
 
2i8 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 the Phoenix Park Murders — I had to address my 
 constituents at Princes Risborough, near Ayles- 
 bury. If I venture to reproduce my speech, I do 
 so because people generally have forgotten the 
 crisis through which England was then passing, 
 and the speech seems fairly to reflect the horror 
 and consternation of the time. 
 
 " The Irish Murders " 
 
 " Our subject to-night is chosen for us, and we 
 must not try to evade it. Our words must be 
 few and solemn. There is one matter which fills 
 the minds of us all; and my duty is merely to put 
 into verbal form and expression the horror and 
 indignation which the brutal murders of last Sat- 
 urday have aroused in every English heart. I had 
 hoped to meet you to-day for a discussion of gen- 
 eral politics in one of those pleasant gatherings 
 which I always so highly value, but when, on Sat- 
 urday night, at Lord Northbrook's house, the 
 agonizing news from Ireland reached me, my first 
 impulse was to postpone the meeting. On second 
 thoughts, however, it seemed to me that our re- 
 spect for the dead would be best expressed, if we 
 were to assemble here, in accordance with our an- 
 nounced intention, and, dismissing all merely local. 
 
PARLIAMENT 219 
 
 personal, and controversial politics, gave brief but 
 unanimous expression to the emotions which have 
 so powerfully swayed us. With that view I am 
 here, and I venture to express a hope that our 
 speeches and resolutions will be strictly confined to 
 matters directly arising out of the terrible subject 
 which fills our thoughts. 
 
 " Let us take first the personal aspect of the ques- 
 tion: and here let me tell you of a curious and 
 melancholy coincidence. On Saturday evening I 
 stood, amid all the beauty of the opening summer, 
 among the invited guests who filled the amphithe- 
 atre at Epping Forest, and saw the Queen dedicate 
 that lovely woodland to the free enjoyment of the 
 people for all time. By my side stood an Irish 
 Member of Parliament, accounted indeed a man 
 of extreme opinions, but honest, loyal, and kindly. 
 He said to me : ' This is a fine sight ; but please 
 God we shall yet see something like it in Ireland. 
 We have entered at last upon the right path. You 
 will hear no more of the Irish difficulty.' Within 
 an hour of the time at which he spoke, amid 
 scenery as beautiful, in sunshine as bright, under 
 circumstances as full of hope and promise, Lord 
 Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke fell dead and 
 mangled beneath the knife of the assassin. I speak 
 the thoughts of you all when I here, publicly and 
 solemnly, record our horror and indignation at the 
 
220 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 bloody act (hear, hear) ; our deep and loving sym- 
 pathy with the widow and the kinsfolk; and our 
 earnest prayer that God will cleanse the land from 
 the stain of blood, and, in His own good time and 
 way, restore the blessings of humanity and peace 
 to the country which so sorely heeds them (cheers). 
 " Believe me, gentlemen, it is with no desire to 
 harrow your feelings unnecessarily, but merely 
 that I may bring out clearly before your minds 
 the wanton wickedness of the crime, that I invite 
 you to consider with me the personal history and 
 character of the victims. Mr. Burke was an Irish- 
 man by birth and descent, and a Roman Catholic 
 by faith — thus in all respects allied with the people 
 amongst whom he lived. He was a man, by all 
 accounts, of singularly humane and sympathetic 
 disposition; always inclined to side with the op- 
 pressed and needy tenant; invested by his ofSce 
 with no originating authority, but merely the of- 
 ficial instrument of his superiors; carrying out 
 with constant, laborious, and unrequited diligence 
 the dull, monotonous, but necessary duties of an 
 obscure but useful post. And of his companion in 
 death how can I trust myself to speak? Who that 
 ever knew him can henceforward so master him- 
 self as to utter, without a trembling voice and a 
 dimmed eye, the name of Frederick Cavendish? 
 He was born of the very highest strain of English 
 
PARLIAMENT 221 
 
 blood, of a long descent identified from its very 
 earliest history with the cause of popular freedom 
 — ^born to the enjoyment of all that rank and 
 wealth can give, yet consecrating all with absolute 
 self-forgetfulness to the onerous but unrecognized 
 labours of a Private Secretaryship and a Financial 
 office, because he loved work, because he was fired 
 with an honourable ambition to use his powers for 
 the good of the State, however little the State 
 might notice him in return, and yet prepared at 
 a moment's notice to throw up all this congenial 
 occupation, and to go to other and more trying 
 duties, because the crisis of the time seemed to de- 
 mand such sacrifice, and because he was called to 
 these new duties by the chief whom he loved and 
 honoured as a second father. A man who never 
 did a violent deed, or said an angry word; a man 
 who never harmed or hurt a living creature ; a man 
 distinguished above all others by gentleness, by 
 simplicity, and by a humility so profound that it 
 often concealed his unquestionable powers (cheers). 
 This is the man whom the assassins mark for their 
 victim — and at what a moment! When the strin- 
 gency of a stricter rule was just relaxed; when a 
 powerful Government had risked popularity — ^had 
 forfeited one of its most distinguished members; 
 nay, had endangered its very existence, in order 
 that it might deal even more liberally and gener- 
 
222 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 ously than before with a distracted and unhappy 
 people; and when the stranger just landed was 
 actually conferring with the Permanent Official al- 
 ready on the spot, for the better discharge of their 
 joint enterprise 'of mercy. Incredible and inscru- 
 table, unparalleled in wanton wickedness and dra- 
 matic horror since the day when President Lincoln 
 was shot down in the theatre at Washington, the 
 double murder of last Saturday must remain to the 
 close of life an awful and haunting memory, a 
 hideous and heartrending fact. 
 
 " Gentlemen, it is not given to human skill to 
 forecast the future. But our Christian faith throws 
 its light over the gloomiest scene (hear, hear). If 
 the Providential government of the world be no 
 fable, if ' doubtless there is a God that judgeth 
 the earth,' then most assuredly the death of these 
 two heroic men has not been allowed in vain. 
 Now, as of old, depend upon it that the blood of 
 martyrs is the seed of great causes, and these mar- 
 tyrs to the cause of justice in Ireland shall yet 
 ' see of the travail of their soul, and be satisfied.' 
 That blessed consummation may not be yet — not, 
 perhaps, in the lifetime of any living man — it is 
 not for us to fix times and seasons, but 'though 
 it tarry, wait for it; for surely it will come, it will 
 not tarry.' 
 
 " So much on the personal aspects of the case. 
 
PARLIAMENT 223 
 
 I turn now to its more general bearings. And here 
 I desire specially to guard myself against being led 
 into the region of controversial politics. In the 
 presence of a tragedy so awful and so unique, the 
 ' strife of tongues ' is wholly out of place. I 
 thankfully recognize the chivalry which has led 
 almost the whole London Press to refrain from 
 personal attacks and angry recrimination. This 
 marked propriety of language and demeanour only 
 serves to throw into more startling prominence the 
 gross indecency of such language as that in which 
 the St. James's Gazette of Monday night attacked 
 Mr. Gladstone. For him let me, turning aside for 
 one moment from the main purpose of my address, 
 bespeak your most tender sympathy. Consider his 
 case. An old man, of a temperament even mor- 
 bidly sensitive, tried almost beyond the limits of 
 human endurance by the cares of Government, by 
 the unscrupulous malice of foes, by the timorous 
 distrust of half-hearted friends, he is overwhelmed 
 at the crisis of a long and magnificent career by a 
 disaster the most signal and most horrible that has 
 ever overtaken a public man in this country. And, 
 to add horror to a horrible situation, one of the 
 victims of the tragedy was bound to him by ties 
 of relationship, by long and intimate ofiScial con- 
 nexion, and by the yet more endearing bond of 
 ardent personal affection. Whenever our hearts 
 
224 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 go out in passionate sympathy to the widow and 
 kinsfolk, let us not exclude from their embrace the 
 venerable and stricken statesman whose few broken 
 words on Monday last drew tears from the unac- 
 customed eyes of politicians and men of business, 
 and for the moment conciliated the compassion of 
 even his bitterest foes. 
 
 " On the origin, the cause, and the objects of a 
 crime so horrid and so mysterious it would at this 
 moment be worse than useless to speculate. When 
 the proper time comes I shall be fully prepared to 
 discuss with you the theory which has been and 
 will be advanced that this is the natural outcome of 
 recent Irish policy. Meanwhile I will content my- 
 self with three main considerations which arise 
 naturally and directly out of the subject; two of 
 them have relation to the past, one to the imme- 
 diate future. And first of the responsibility for 
 this crime. I thankfully and fully recognize the 
 claim that the Irish people as a whole are not to be 
 charged with any complicity in the horrid deed. 
 Their spontaneous dismay and prompt repudiation 
 of it suffice to clear them from that charge. Again, 
 I fully accept the assertion of the leaders of the 
 Land League that neither they nor the organiza- 
 tion over which they preside are consciously or 
 directly responsible for this last deed of blood. 
 I fully believe that it has been wrought by the 
 
PARLIAMENT 225 
 
 agency of foreign Fenians, without any agree- 
 ment or alliance with any considerable section of 
 the Irish people. But what I feel constrained to 
 emphasize is the terrible responsibility which rests 
 on those who have corrupted the public mind in 
 Ireland, and made it familiar with the idea of 
 political or agrarian murder. We know that a 
 healthy public opinion is the most powerful safe- 
 guard of a State. Where that exists, exotic crime 
 cannot take root and flourish. The air is fatal to 
 it — it fades and dies a natural death. How tre- 
 mendous, then, the accountability of those who, by 
 light and careless words, or seeming condonation, 
 or half-hearted blame, encourage in the minds of 
 a restless, an impressionable, and a discontented 
 people the notion that crimes of violence are less 
 heinous when directed against political opponents 
 than when committed under ordinary circum- 
 stances! We cannot forget who it was that 
 preached in Ireland the damnable doctrine that if 
 a man would not conform to the edicts of the Land 
 League he must be boycotted and ruined.* We 
 cannot forget who it was that commented on the 
 brutal murder of an innocent young man as ' a 
 method of procedure which is entirely unneces- 
 sary,' t or who said that shooting landlords was 
 
 * Parnell at Ennis. 
 
 t Parnell at New Ross. 
 
226 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 ' an extreme measure, and we cannot recommend 
 it.' We cannot forget what that organization is 
 which instigated and screened some forty agrarian 
 murders ; nor that its leaders had not one word of 
 sympathy for "the murdered lady or the wounded 
 children. Bitter, indeed, must be the remorse of 
 men who have thus sapped the public conscience 
 of their too-willing hearers, and accustomed the 
 public ear to hear without loathing and indignation 
 and righteous wrath of bloody deeds, of which last 
 Saturday's tragedy is certainly the most startling, 
 but in no way the most wicked. 
 
 " And the second consideration to which I invite 
 your attention is one on which I touch not without 
 some natural hesitation. And yet I feel it only due 
 to myself to refer to my own previous utterances 
 on the insufficiency of the law as at present admin- 
 istered in Ireland to cope with agrarian murder. 
 It will be within the recollection of you all that on 
 several occasions, while justifying the policy of 
 what was called coercion, with certain qualifica- 
 tions and for certain ends, I stated my conviction 
 that the continuance of undetected and unpunished 
 agrarian murders in Ireland was a scandal and an 
 outrage which called for the special interference of 
 Government. Where the jury-system had broken 
 down as completely as it had in Ireland, I an- 
 nounced beforehand my readiness to consent to its 
 
PARLIAMENT 227 
 
 suspension and the substitution of trial ty a Com- 
 mission of Judges in its stead. Such an alteration 
 of the law was deferred, and was, indeed, only an- 
 nounced last week, on the day when Mr. Forster's 
 resignation was made known. It is now being 
 vigorously pushed on, and to-morrow we shall 
 know the exact shape which it is to assume. It 
 must, alas, be powerless in cases like the present, 
 where the criminal escapes detection. But it will, 
 we trust, prove of much avail in cases where here- 
 tofore justice has been frustrated by the unwilling- 
 ness of the terrified jury to convict, even on posi- 
 tive evidence. I have only referred to this measure 
 in order to remind you that in supporting it I am 
 not merely wise after the event, but long ago 
 earnestly recommended it to your notice as the 
 only remedy for an intolerable scandal. 
 
 " We turn now to the immediate future. What 
 are our hopes? What is our duty? Primarily 
 and immediately we must rely on the prompt and 
 vigorous execution of the strengthened law for the 
 punishment of past crime, and its prevention in the 
 future. In a larger and more remote sense we 
 must rely on the healing influences of just and 
 remedial legislation. Now and hereafter alike we 
 have no hope either from repressive or conciliatory 
 measures, unless we can rely on our pure and 
 wholesome public opinion in Ireland, which shall 
 
228 .ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 brand these crimes with the sternest reprobation, 
 and insist on the supreme and imperious claims of 
 the moral law. How is this public opinion to be 
 fostered? Surely we may turn in this season of 
 horror and despair to the Church of Rome — the 
 Church of the majority of Irishmen — the Church 
 which, in spite of her theological errors, has al- 
 ways professed to be the guardian of morals, and 
 the champion of civil order — ^and claim from her 
 pastors and prelates a vigorous and unequivocal 
 statement of her mind in regard to these monstrous 
 crimes. To all alike who name the Name of Christ, 
 we appeal for sympathy and succour in our war- 
 fare against a gigantic and most daring moral 
 evil. 
 
 " Gentlemen, I have said we must look for the 
 pacification of Ireland and her deliverance from this 
 reign of terror to the action of law, to good admin- 
 istration, to a wholesome public opinion, to the au- 
 thoritative teaching of Christian churches, and I 
 would add one other quarter which we must not 
 overlook. We must rely upon ourselves (loud 
 cheers). Depend upon it, as long as the Queen's 
 Government administers the affairs of Ireland, so 
 long each of us English citizens is, in his measure 
 and station, responsible for her well-being. Never 
 let us ignore that responsibility. Never by rash or 
 inconsiderate speech, by hasty criticism, or ill- 
 
PARLIAMENT 229 
 
 founded theories, let us hamper the action or 
 weaken the hands of those whom Providence has 
 charged with the awful burden of her government, 
 or irritate into further implacability the morbidly 
 acute sensibilities of an impressionable and imagi- 
 native race. Rather let it be our daily endeavour, 
 by anxious thought and serious speech, and well- 
 weighed political action, to contribute all we can of 
 moral support and vigorous public sympathy to 
 those who, in this darkest moment of her for- 
 tunes, have forsaken peaceful homes and congenial 
 work, and old associations, for the perilous and 
 thankless, but glorious, task of raising Ireland to 
 the level of a civilized and Christian land. 
 
 " Gentlemen, it is little enough, in all conscience, 
 that we can do. Still ' We are greater than we 
 know,' and our lightest words and deeds may have 
 consequences far more momentous than anything 
 we can forecast. And surely our privilege and our 
 duty do not end there. At a moment so solemn as 
 this, you will forgive a tone of exhortation which 
 at an ordinary time I should be the last to adopt. 
 I know you will suffer the word of earnest in- 
 sistence which would remind you that if, in any- 
 thing more than mere name and profession, we 
 are disciples of the Christian creed, we have yet 
 one more weapon in our hands. In prayer 
 
 " ' We move the artjis of Him Who moves the world.' 
 
230 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 To Him, then, let our prayers ascend, that He 
 will be pleased to root out the hellish spirit which 
 plans and screens these murders ; that He will give 
 wisdom and courage to the rulers of Ireland ; that 
 He will graciously preserve those appointed to 
 death; that He will bind up the broken-hearted 
 and the bereaved, pouring into their wounds the 
 wine and oil of His own holy consolations; and 
 that He will, as and when He sees fit, work out of 
 these terrible evils, which for our sins have been 
 suffered to fall upon us. His own glorious purpose 
 of final and universal good. 
 
 " It is said that one of those women who suf- 
 fered by the guillotine in the first French Revolu- 
 tion asked for pen and ink at the foot of the scaf- 
 fold, that she might write down the prophetic vision 
 of that supreme moment. This incident has been 
 used by a great English novelist in a passage of 
 thrilling power.* And I was reminded of it by 
 Lord Granville's words on Monday in the House 
 of Lords, when he said : ' This death has left a 
 noble woman desolate, and may we all join in her 
 most courageous prayer at this moment, that God 
 may influence the result of this fearful crime in a 
 manner contrary to the hopes and expectations of 
 its perpetrators, and that it may result in the 
 eventual good of Ireland.' It is surely no unwar- 
 *A Tale of Two Cities. Book the Third, chapter 15. 
 
PARLIAMENT 231 
 
 rantable license to change that high aspiration into 
 the language of prophecy and to say, ' So, by His 
 mercy, it shall be' (cheers). Humbling ourselves 
 in the dust under this awful visitation, bewailing 
 the abominable crime, and resolved, God helping 
 us, to stamp it out, let us still repose in the un- 
 conquerable faith that He can and will ' bring to 
 naught the counsels of the ungodly,' and crown 
 with ultimate success the endeavours of those who 
 invite His mercy and invoke His name." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 POLITICS 
 
 " Ne'er to these chambers, where the mighty rest, 
 Since their foundation came a nobler guest ; 
 Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss conveyed 
 A fairer spirit, or more welcome shade." 
 
 — T. TiCKELL, On the death of Mr. Addison. 
 
 Lord Frederick Cavendish was laid to rest 
 with his forefathers at Edensor, near Chatsworth, 
 on the nth of May, 1882, and on the evening of 
 that day the Home Secretary, Sir WilHam Har- 
 court, brought in a " Prevention of Crimes Bill " 
 for Ireland, designed to supersede the Coercion 
 Act which had proved such a dismal failure. The 
 new Bill provided for the creation of special tribu- 
 nals composed of Judges of the Superior Courts, 
 who could sit without juries; and gave the police 
 the right of search at any time in proclaimed dis- 
 tricts, and authorized them to arrest any persons 
 unable to give an account of themselves. The Bill 
 was succinctly described as " Martial Law in a 
 Wig," and, as such, it was exactly adapted to the 
 needs of a country in which social war had raged 
 vinchecked for two years. The murderous con- 
 
POLITICS 233 
 
 spiracy died hard, but experience soon justified 
 those who had maintained that, as soon as a proper 
 tribunal was constituted, evidence would be forth- 
 coming. The Act was courageously administered 
 by Lord Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan, under 
 circumstances of personal and political peril which 
 the present generation can hardly realize. In less 
 than two years the murderers of Lord Frederick 
 Cavendish and Mr. Burke had been hanged; the 
 conspiracy which organized the murders had been 
 broken up; and social order was permanently re- 
 established. 
 
 Such were the excellent effects of the Crimes 
 Act of 1882, and annalists treating of this period 
 have commonly said that the Act was due to the 
 murders in the Phoenix Park. Some years ago an 
 ex-official who had been closely associated with 
 these events placed in my hands a written state- 
 ment of the circumstances in which the Act origi- 
 nated, and begged that, if possible, the truth of the 
 matter might be made known. This may be a con-^ 
 venient opportunity for giving his testimony. 
 
 " The Bill of 1882 was designed, and on the 
 stocks, during the month of April. I saw F. 
 Cavendish as to some of its details almost imme- 
 diately before his starting for Ireland. As Chief 
 Secretary, he discussed with me the provisions the 
 Bill should contain. On Sunday, May 7, 1882, 
 
234 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 when the news of F. Cavendish's murder became 
 known, I went to see Harcourt. He begged me to 
 see that the drawing of the Bill was hastened on. 
 About 2 o'clock I went to the Irish Office, and 
 found the Irish Attorney General hard at work on 
 the Bill. The first draft of it was then in print. 
 No doubt F. Cavendish's death tended to afifect 
 the subsequent framing of the Bill. Harcourt 
 
 came upon the scenes. T and J were 
 
 called to the assistance of the Irish draftsmen, and 
 no doubt the Bill was rendered stronger in conse- 
 quence of the events of May 6. 
 
 " I also well remember the change of front about 
 the power of Search. The Irish Members in the 
 most determined manner fought against the crea- 
 tion of this power. . . . Harcourt, who had 
 charge of the Bill, would listen to none of these 
 arguments, but Mr. Gladstone was much moved by 
 them. There was almost a crisis produced in con- 
 sequence of this disagreement; but Harcourt gave 
 way, and the concession was announced." 
 
 It is not my purpose in these chapters to speak 
 about my own performances in Parliament, but the 
 foregoing allusion to the concession on the Right 
 of Search tempts me to a personal confession. In 
 the Bill, as brought in, there was a most salutary 
 provision giving the police the right to search 
 houses in which murders were believed to be 
 
POLITICS 235 
 
 plotted. After making us vote for this clause 
 three times — on the First Reading, on the Second 
 Reading, and in Committee — the Government, as 
 we have just seen, yielded to clamour, and pro- 
 posed on Report to alter the clause by limiting the 
 Right of Search to day-time. I opposed this altera- 
 tion, as providing a " close time for murder," and 
 had the satisfaction of helping to defeat the Gov- 
 ernment. The Big-Wigs of the Party were ex- 
 tremely angry, and Mr. R. H. Hutton, in The 
 Spectator, rebuked us in his most grandmotherly 
 style. In reply, I quoted some words of his own. 
 " There is nothing which injures true Liberalism 
 more than the sympathy of its left wing with the 
 loose ruffianism of unsettled States." " Such a 
 State," I said, " is Ireland ; and if, under the pres- 
 sure of extraordinary difficulties. Ministers vacil- 
 late or waver in their dealings with it, the truest 
 Liberalism, I believe, is that which holds them 
 firmly to their duty." 
 
 In that sad Session of 1882 the troubles of the 
 
 Government 
 
 " came not single spies, 
 But in battalions, " 
 
 and the most enduring of those troubles arose in 
 Egypt. For the benefit of a younger generation, 
 let me recall the circumstances. 
 
 Ismail Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, had accimiu- 
 
236 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 lated a national debt of about £100,000,000, and 
 the pressure on the wretched peasants who had to 
 pay was crushing. Presently they broke out in 
 revolt, partly with the hope of shaking off this 
 burden, and partly with a view to establishing some 
 sort of self-government. But the financiers who 
 had lent money to Egypt took fright, and urged 
 the Government to interfere and suppress the in- 
 surrection. A meeting of Tories was held in Lon- 
 don on June 29th and the Tory Leaders made the 
 most inflammatory speeches. Unhappily, the Gov- 
 ernment yielded to this show of violence. It was 
 said by a close observer of Parliamentary institu- 
 tions that " When the Government of the day and 
 the Opposition of the day take the same side, one 
 may be almost sure that some great wrong is at 
 hand," and so it was now. On July loth our fleet 
 bombarded Alexandria, smashing its rotten forts 
 with the utmost ease, and killing plenty of Egyp- 
 tians. I remember to this day the sense of shame 
 with which I read our Admiral's telegraphic de- 
 spatch : " Enemy's fire weak and ineffectual." 
 
 The protest delivered on the following day, by 
 Sir Wilfrid Lawson, the most consistent and the 
 most disinterested politician whom I ever knew, 
 deserves to be remembered. 
 
 " I say deliberately, and in doing so I challenge 
 either Tory or Liberal to contradict me, that no 
 
POLITICS 237 
 
 Tory Government could have done vsrhat the Lib- 
 eral Government did yesterday in bombarding 
 those forts. If such a thing had been proposed, 
 what would have happened ? We should have had 
 Sir William Harcourt stumping the country, and 
 denouncing Government by Ultimatum. We 
 should have had Lord Hartington coming down, 
 and moving a Resolution condemning these pro- 
 ceedings being taken behind the back of Parlia- 
 ment. We should have had Mr. Chamberlain 
 summoning the Caucuses. We should have had 
 Mr. Bright declaiming in the Town Hall of Bir- 
 mingham against the wicked Tory Government; 
 and, as for Mr. Gladstone, we all know that there 
 would not have been a railway-train, passing a 
 roadside station, that he would not have pulled up 
 at, to proclaim non-intervention as the duty of the 
 Government." 
 
 On the I2th of July John Bright retired from 
 the Government, as a protest against the bombard- 
 ment, and made a short speech full of solemn dig- 
 nity. " I asked my calm judgment and my con- 
 science what was the path I ought to take. They 
 pointed it out to me, as I think, with an unerring 
 finger, and I am humbly endeavouring to follow it." 
 
 But it was too late. The mischief was done, 
 and has not been undone to this day. I remember 
 Mr. Chamberlain saying to me : " Well, I confess 
 
238 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 I was tired of having England kicked about all 
 over the world. I never condemned the Tory Gov- 
 ernment for going to war; only for going to war 
 on the wrong side." It was a characteristic say- 
 ing; but this amazing lapse into naked jingoism 
 spread wonder and indignation through the Lib- 
 eral Party, and.shook the faith of many who, down 
 to that time, had regarded Gladstone as a sworn 
 servant of Peace. The Egyptian policy of 1882 
 must, I fear, always remain the blot on Gladstone's 
 scutcheon; and three years later he gave away the 
 whole case for intervention, and threw the blame 
 on his predecessors in office. In his Address to the 
 Electors of Midlothian before the General Election 
 of 1885 he used the following words : " We have, 
 according to my conviction from the very first 
 (when the question was not within the sphere of 
 Party contentions), committed by our intervention 
 in Egypt a grave political error, and the conse- 
 quence which the Providential order commonly 
 allots to such error is not compensation, but retri- 
 bution." 
 
 But, though Providence eventually allotted 
 " retribution " to our crimes arid follies in Egypt, 
 and though they were always unpopular with the 
 Liberal Party out of doors, it was curious to ob- 
 serve that the position of the Government in the 
 House of Commons was stronger at the end of 
 
POLITICS 239 
 
 1882 than it was at the beginning. That this was 
 so was due, I think, in part to the fact that for 
 the moment we were victorious in Egypt,* and in 
 part to admiration for the vigour with which Lord 
 Spencer was fighting the murderous conspiracy 
 in Ireland. The Government enjoyed the dan- 
 gerous praise of the Opposition; obstruction col- 
 lapsed; and some new Rules of Procedure were 
 carried by overwhelming majorities. Here let me 
 
 interpolate an anecdote. Mr. M L was a 
 
 barrister, an obsequious supporter of the Govern- 
 ment, and, as was generally surmised, on the look- 
 out for preferment. Mr. Philip Callan, M. P., for 
 County Louth, was speaking on an amendment to 
 
 one of the new Rules, and Mr. M L 
 
 thrice tried to call him to order on the ground of 
 irrelevancy. Each time, the Chairman of Com- 
 mittee ruled that, though the Honourable Member 
 for Louth was certainly taking a wide sweep, he 
 was not out of order. Rising the third time from 
 the seat Callan said : " I may as well take the op- 
 portunity of giving notice that I propose to move 
 the insertion of a new Standing Order, which will 
 read as follows : * Any Hon. Member who three 
 times unsuccessfully calls another Hon. Member 
 to order, shall be ineligible for a County Court 
 
 *The British troops entered Cairo on the 14th of Sep- 
 tember, 1882. 
 
240 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Judgeship.' " Mr. M L — — looked coy, and 
 
 everyone else shouted with glee. 
 
 The Session of 1883 opened very quietly. The 
 speech from the Throne extolled the success of 
 the Ministeriafl policy in Ireland and Egypt, and 
 promised a series of useful but not exciting meas- 
 ures. Meanwhile the more active Members of the 
 Liberal Party, among whom I presumed to reckon 
 myself, began to agitate for more substantial re- 
 forms. We had entered on the fourth Session of 
 the Parliament. A noble majority was beginning 
 to decline, and we felt that there was no time to 
 lose if we were to secure the ends which we de- 
 sired. Knowing that I felt keenly on these sub- 
 jects, Mr. T. H. S. Escott, then Editor of the 
 Fortnightly, asked me to write an article for his 
 Review, and in that article I spoke my mind about 
 the Agricultural Labourers' Suffrage, the Game 
 Laws, the reform of the City of London, and an 
 English Land Bill. " The action of the Peers," I 
 said, " under Lord Salisbury's guidance will prob- 
 ably force on the question of a Second Chamber, 
 and those who flatter themselves that the Liberal 
 Party will shrink from discussing it will be griev- 
 ously disillusioned. Disestablishment, begun in 
 Ireland, will inevitably work round, by Scotland, 
 to England. And who is to preside over these 
 changes?" 
 
POLITICS 241 
 
 I returned to the charge in the June number of 
 the Nineteenth Century, and urged my points 
 more strongly. I pleaded for social reform, and 
 for "a Free Church in a Free State." I crossed 
 swords with a noble Lord who had pronounced 
 dogmatically that "A Second Chamber is abso- 
 lutely necessary." I gave my reasons for think- 
 ing that now-a-days there is very little danger of 
 hasty and ill-considered legislation, and I pointed 
 out that, when this danger disappears, the reason 
 for a Second Chamber disappears with it. " But," 
 I said, " granting, for the sake of argument, that 
 something of this danger still survives, would it 
 not be fully met by limiting the power of the Lords 
 to a Veto for a year on a measure passed by the 
 Commons ? " 
 
 These articles, coupled with my speeches in the 
 House and in my constituency, gave dire offence 
 to the Whigs; and I was chastened with rebukes 
 which, if not weighty, were at any rate ponderous. 
 " Not this way," wrote the St. James's Gazette, in 
 a humorous apostrophe, " not this way, O Junior 
 Member for Aylesbury, lies the road to the Treas- 
 ury Bench," and so, indeed, it seemed. But, on 
 returning from an evening party at Sir Matthew 
 Ridley's, on the 5th of June, 1883, T found a letter 
 from Mr. Gladstone, offering me the post of Par- 
 liamentary Secretary to the Local Government 
 
242 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Board. One sentence of that letter I may be al- 
 lowed to quote : 
 
 " Your name, and the recollections it suggests, 
 add much to the satisfaction which, independently 
 of relationships, I should have felt in submitting 
 to you this request." It was like Gladstone's cour- 
 tesy to call his offer a " request.". 
 
 Thus I became harnessed to the machine of 
 Government, and my friends, inside the House 
 and out of it, were extremely kind about the ap- 
 pointment. Nearly everyone who wrote to con- 
 gratulate me used the same image : " You have 
 now set your foot on the bottom rung of the lad- 
 der." But my staunch friend George Trevelyan 
 handled the matter more poetically, in the follow- 
 ing stanza : 
 
 " As long as a plank can float, or a bolt can hold together, 
 When the sea is smooth as glass, or the waves run itioun- 
 tains high, 
 In the brightest of summer skies, or the blackest of dirty 
 weather, 
 Wherever the ship swims, there swim I." 
 
 The part of " the ship " to which I was now 
 fastened was certainly not the most exalted or ex- 
 citing of the public offices. The estimation in 
 which it was held in official circles is aptly illus- 
 trated by a pleasantry of that eminent Civil Servant, 
 Sir Algernon West. When the Revised Version 
 
POLITICS 243 
 
 of the New Testament appeared, Gladstone asked 
 Sir Algernon (who had begun life in the Treas- 
 ury), if he thought it as good as the Authorized 
 Version. " Certainly not," was the reply. " It is 
 so painfully lacking in dignity." Gladstone, al- 
 ways delighted to hear an innovation censured 
 (unless he himself had made it), asked for an 
 illustration. "Well," said West, "look at the 
 Second Chapter of St. Luke. There went out a 
 decree from Casar Augustus that all the world 
 should be taxed. Now that always struck me as 
 a sublime conception — a tax levied on the whole 
 world by a stroke of the pen — an act worthy of an 
 Imperial Treasury. But I turn to the Revised Ver- 
 sion, and what do I read? That all the world 
 should be enrolled — a census — the sort of thing 
 the Local Government Board could do. That in- 
 stance, to my mind, settles the question between 
 Old and New." 
 
 But in the office thus contemned by the Paladins 
 of the Treasury, there was plenty of interesting 
 though little-observed work. In the autumn of 
 1883 I undertook, in conjunction with the Presi- 
 dent of the Board, a mission of enquiry into the 
 worst slums in London. There is no need to re- 
 capitulate here all the horrors we encountered, for 
 they can be read in the evidence given before the 
 Royal Commission on the Housing of the Poor 
 
244 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 which was appointed in the following year; but 
 one incident made a peculiar impression on my 
 mind. The Sanitary Officer reported some under- 
 ground dwellings in Spitalfields as being perhaps 
 the worst specimens of human habitation which 
 we should find, and he offered to be my guide. I 
 entered a cellar-like room in a basement, which, 
 till one's eyes got used to the dimness, seemed 
 pitch-dark. I felt, rather than saw, the presence 
 of a woman, and, when we began to talk, I dis- 
 cerned by her voice that she was not a Londoner. 
 " No, sir," she replied, " I come from Wantage, 
 in Berkshire." Having always heard of Wantage 
 as a kind of Earthly Paradise, where the Church, 
 the Sisterhood, and the " Great House " combined 
 to produce the millennium, I said, involuntarily, 
 " How you must wish to be back there ! " " Back 
 at Wantage ! " exclaimed the Lady of the Cellar. 
 " No, indeed, sir. This is a poor place, but it's 
 better than Wantage." It was instructive to find 
 this love of freedom, and resentment of interfer- 
 ence, in the bowels of the earth of Spitalfields. 
 
 A little incident which helps to illustrate Glad- 
 stone's personal ascendancy belongs to this period 
 of my life. Those were the days of agitation for 
 and against a Channel Tunnel, eagerly promoted 
 by speculative tunnel-makers, and resolutely op- 
 posed by Mr. Chamberlain. Gladstone, when 
 
POLITICS 245 
 
 asked if he was for or against the Tunnel, said 
 very characteristically, " I am not so much in fa- 
 vour of the Tunnel, as opposed to the opponents 
 of it " ; and this of course meant that he was 
 really in favour of it. About this time I met him 
 at dinner, and, after the ladies had gone, I think 
 we were eight men round the table. Gladstone 
 began praising the Tunnel; one of the hearers 
 echoed him, and the rest of us were silent. Look- 
 ing round triumphantly, Gladstone said, " Ah, this 
 is capital! Here we are — eight sensible men — and 
 all in favour of the Tunnel." Knowing that sev- 
 eral of us were against the Tunnel, I challenged 
 a division and collected the votes. Excepting 
 Gladstone and his echo, we all were anti-tunnelites, 
 and yet none of us would have had the hardihood 
 to say so. 
 
 In this year — 1883 — Gladstone's Government 
 had regained some portion of the popularity and 
 success which they had lost; but, when the year 
 ran out, their success was palpably on the wane, 
 and their popularity of course waned with it. 
 The endless contradictions and perplexities, crimes 
 and follies, of our Egyptian policy became too ob- 
 vious to be concealed or palliated, and at the be- 
 ginning of 1884 the Government resolved on their 
 crowning and fatal blunder. On the i8th day of 
 January, Lord Hartington (Secretary of State for 
 
246 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 War), Lord Granville, Lord Northbrook, and Sir 
 Charles Dilke had an interview with General Gor- 
 don, and determined that he should be sent to 
 evacuate the Soudan. Gladstone assented, and 
 Gordon started * that evening on his ill-starred 
 errand. In view of subsequent events, it is worth 
 recording that there were some Liberals who, from 
 the moment they heard of it, condemned the under- 
 taking. The dithyrambics of the Pall Mall Ga- 
 zette drew from William Cory * the following 
 protest : 
 
 " January 21, 1884. 
 " It's really ludicrous — the P. M. G. professing a clearly 
 supra-rational faith in an elderly Engineer, saying that he 
 will cook the goose if no one interferes with him ... as if 
 he could go to Suakim, ' summon ' a barbarous potentate, 
 make him supply his escort to Khartoum, and, when at Khar- 
 toum, issue edicts right and left; as if he could act without 
 subaltern officers, money, stores, gold, etc.; as if he were an 
 homme drapeau, and had an old army out there ready to 
 troop round him, as the French veterans round Bonaparte at 
 Frejus." 
 
 In Parliament, the principal work of 1884 was 
 to extend the Parliamentary Franchise to the 
 Agricultural Labourer. A Tory Member said in 
 debate that the labourers were no more fit to have 
 the franchise than the beasts they tended; and 
 Lord Goschen, who had remained outside the 
 Cabinet of 1880 sooner than be party to giving 
 
 * Better known as " Billy Johnson," the famous Eton Tutor. 
 
POLITICS 247 
 
 them the vote, used to say to the end of his life 
 that, if the Union were ever destroyed, it would 
 be by the agricultural labourers. I, however, who 
 had lived among them all my life and knew that 
 they were at least as fit for political responsibility 
 as the artizans, threw myself with ardour into the 
 advocacy of their cause. (By the way, my speech 
 of the Second Reading of the Franchise Bill was 
 answered by the present Speaker * in his maiden 
 speech. ) All through the summer the battle raged. 
 The Lords did not refuse to pass the Bill, but said 
 that, before they passed it, they must see the ac- 
 companying scheme of Redistribution. It was not 
 a very unreasonable demand, but Gladstone de- 
 nounced it as an unheard-of usurpation. We all 
 took our cue from him, and vowed that we would 
 smash the House of Lords into atoms before we 
 consented to this insolent claim. Throughout the 
 Parliamentary recess, the voices of protest re- 
 sounded from every Liberal platform, and even so 
 lethargic a politician as Lord Hartington ha- 
 rangued a huge gathering in the Park at Chats- 
 worth. Everything wore the appearance of a con- 
 stitutional crisis. Queen Victoria, as we now 
 know, was seriously perturbed, and did her utmost 
 to avert a rupture between Lords and Commons. 
 But still we persisted in our outcry. The Lords 
 * The Right Hon. J. W. Lowther. 
 
248 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 must pass the Franchise Bill without conditions, 
 and, when it was law, we would discuss Redistri- 
 bution. A new Session began on 23rd of Octo- 
 ber. The Franchise Bill was brought in again, 
 passed, and sent up to the Lords. At first the 
 Lords seemed resolved to insist on their terms; 
 then they wavered; and then again they hardened 
 their hearts. Lord Salisbury reported that they 
 would not let the Franchise Bill through till they 
 got the Redistribution Bill from the Commons. 
 Meanwhile, all sorts of mysterious negotiations 
 were going on between the " moderate " men on 
 both sides ; and it was known that Gladstone dared 
 not dissolve on the old franchise, as he was sure 
 to be beaten in the Boroughs. His only hope was 
 in the agricultural labourers. Then, acting under 
 pressure which is not known but can be easily 
 guessed, he suddenly announced, on the 17th No- 
 vember, that he was prepared to introduce the 
 Redistribution Bill before the Lords went into 
 Committee on the Franchise Bill. It was the point 
 for which the Tories had been contending all 
 along, and, by conceding it, Gladstone made an 
 absolute surrender. All the sound and fury of the 
 last six months had been expended in protesting 
 that we could never do what now we meekly did. 
 It was the beginning of troubles which have lasted 
 to this day. The House of Lords learned the wel- 
 
POLITICS 249 
 
 come lesson that, when the Liberal Party railed, 
 they only had to sit still; and the lesson learnt in 
 1884 has been practically applied in each succeeding 
 crisis. It has always been to me an amazing in- 
 stance of Gladstone's powers of self-deception that 
 to the end of his life he spoke of this pernicious 
 surrender as a signal victory. 
 
 Early in 1885, it became my duty to receive at 
 the Local Government Board a deputation of the 
 Unemployed, who then were beginning to agitate the 
 habitual calm of the well-fed and the easy-going. 
 It was a curious experience. The deputation con- 
 sisted of respectable-looking and apparently ear- 
 nest men, some of whom spoke the language of 
 Alton Locke, while others talked in a more mod- 
 ern strain of dynamite, Secret Societies, and " a 
 life for a life." The most conspicuous figure in 
 the deputation was an engineer called John Burns,* 
 and those who are interested in political develop- 
 ment may find something to their mind in the re- 
 port of the deputation in The Times of February 
 17th, 1885. There they will read that, after leav- 
 ing Whitehall, the crowd adjourned to the Em- 
 bankment, where the following resolution was 
 
 * Now the Right Hon. John Burns, M. P., President of the 
 Local Government Board. 
 
250 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 carried, and despatched to the President of the 
 Local Government Board : 
 
 " That this meeting of the unemployed, having 
 heard the answer given by the Local Government 
 Board to their deputation, considers the refusal to 
 start public works to be a sentence of death on 
 thousands of those out of work, and the recom- 
 mendation to bring pressure to bear on the local 
 bodies to be a direct incitement to violence; fur- 
 ther, it will hold Mr. G. W. E. Russell and the 
 members of the Government, individually and col- 
 lectively, guilty of the murder of those who may 
 die in the next few weeks, and whose lives would 
 have been saved had the suggestion of the deputa- 
 tion been acted on. 
 (Signed) John Burns, Engineer. 
 
 John E. Williams, Labourer. 
 
 William Henry, Foreman. 
 
 James Macdonald, Tailor." 
 
 The threats with which the leaders of the Unem- 
 ployed regaled us derived a pleasing actuality from 
 the fact that on the 24th of January simultaneous 
 explosions had occurred at the Tower and in the 
 House of Commons. I did not see the destruction 
 at the Tower, but I went straight across from my 
 office to the House of Commons, and saw a curious 
 object-lesson in scientific Fenianism. In Westmin- 
 
POLITICS 251 
 
 ster Hall there was a hole in the pavement six 
 feet wide, and another in the roof. I had scarcely 
 done examining these phenomena when another 
 crash shook the whole building, and we found that 
 an infernal machine had been exploded in the 
 House of Commons, tearing the doors off their 
 hinges, wrecking the galleries, and smashing the 
 Treasury Bench into matchwood. The French 
 Ambassador, M. Waddington, entered the House 
 with me, and for a while stood silent and amazed. 
 At length he said, " There's no other country in 
 the world where this could happen." Certainly it 
 must be admitted that at that moment our detec- 
 tive organization was not at its best. 
 
 However, neither mock-heroics nor actual out- 
 rage could obscure the fact that during the spring 
 of 1885 there was an immense amount of unem- 
 ployment, and consequent suffering, among the un- 
 skilled labourers. I suggested that we should issue 
 from the Local Government Board a Circular Let- 
 ter to all the Local Authorities in London, asking 
 them, not to invent work, but to push forward 
 works which, owing to the rapid extension of 
 London into the suburbs, were becoming absolutely 
 necessary. But the President of the Board, a 
 bondslave of Political Economy, would not sanc- 
 tion even this very mild departure from the pre- 
 cepts of the Dismal Science. The distress was 
 
252 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 peculiarly acute at the Docks, where work is pre- 
 carious and uncertain in the highest degree. Some 
 well-meaning people at the West End instituted a 
 plan of " Free Breakfasts " to be served at the 
 Dock-Gates to rnen who had failed to obtain em- 
 ployment for the day. On one of these occasions 
 — and very pathetic they were — I was the host, 
 and the Saturday Review treated me to some not 
 unkindly ridicule. 
 
 Child of the Whigs whose name you flout, 
 
 Slip of the tree you fain would fell ; 
 Your colleagues own, I cannot doubt, 
 
 Your plan, George Russell, likes them well. 
 " What will regain," you heard them cry, 
 
 "That popular praise we once enjoyed?" 
 And instant was your smart reply, 
 
 " Free Breakfasts to the Unemployed." 
 
 And then, after six more verses of rhythmical 
 chaff, this prophetic stanza: 
 
 And howsoe'er profusely flow 
 
 The tea and coffee round the board, 
 The hospitality you show 
 
 Shall nowise lack its due reward. 
 For soon, I trust, our turn 'twill be, 
 
 With joy by no regret alloyed. 
 To give the present Ministry 
 
 A Breakfast for the Unemployed. 
 
 The Parliamentary work of 1885 was Redistri- 
 bution. The principles had been settled in secret 
 
POLITICS 253 
 
 conclave by the leaders on both sides; and the de- 
 tails were exhaustively discussed in the House of 
 Commons. By this time we had become inured to 
 Tory votes of censure on our Egyptian policy, and 
 had always contrived to escape by the skin of our 
 teeth; but we were in a disturbed and uneasy con- 
 dition. We knew — for there was an incessant 
 leakage of official secrets — that the Cabinet was 
 rent by acute dissensions. The Whiggish section 
 was in favour of renewing the Irish Crimes Act. 
 The Radicals wished to let it expire, and proposed 
 to conciliate Ireland by a scheme of National 
 Councils. Between the middle of April and the 
 middle of May, nine members of the Cabinet, for 
 one cause or another, contemplated resignation. 
 After one of these disputes Gladstone said to a 
 friend : " A very fair Cabinet to-day — only three 
 resignations." Six months later, after his Gov- 
 ernment had fallen, he wrote : " A Cabinet does 
 not exist out of office, and no one in his senses 
 could covenant to call the late Cabinet together." 
 The solution of these difficulties came unexpect- 
 edly. The Budget introduced by Hugh Childers 
 on the 30th April proposed to meet a deficit by 
 additional duties on beer and spirits; and was 
 therefore extremely unpopular. Silently and skil- 
 fully, the Tories, the Irish, and the disaffected Lib- 
 erals laid their plans. On Sunday, June 7th, Lord 
 
254 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Henry Lennox — a leading Tory — told me at lunch- 
 eon that we were to be turned out on the following 
 day, and so, sure enough, we were, on an amend- 
 ment to the Budget moved by Sir Michael Hicks- 
 Beach.* It was'thought at the time that the Liberal 
 wirepullers welcomed this defeat, as a way out of 
 difficulties. Certainly no strenuous efforts were 
 made to avert it. The scene in the House when the 
 fatal figures were announced has been often de- 
 scribed, and in my mind's eye I see clearly the image 
 of Lord Randolph Churchill, dancing a kind of tri- 
 umphant hornpipe on the bench which for five mo- 
 mentous years had been the seat of the Fourth 
 Party. On the 24th of June Lord Salisbury be- 
 came Prime Minister for the jfirst time. 
 
 The break-up of the Government revealed to all 
 the world the fact that the Liberal Party was cleft 
 in twain. The Whig section was led by Lord 
 Hartington, and the Radical section by Mr. Cham- 
 berlain. Gladstone did his best to mediate between 
 the two, and so to present an unbroken front to 
 the common foe. But the parting of the ways soon 
 became painfully apparent. The fall of the Gov- 
 ernment involved, of course, the return of Lord 
 Spencer from Ireland, and some of his friends re- 
 solved, after the manner of admiring Englishmen, 
 to give him a public dinner. The current phrase 
 ♦Afterwards Lord St. Aldwyn. 
 
POLITICS 255 
 
 was that we were to " Dine Spencer for coercing 
 the Irish." As he had done that thoroughly for 
 the space of three years, and, at the risk of his own 
 Hfe, had destroyed a treasonable and murderous 
 conspiracy, he was well entitled to all the honours 
 which we could give him. So it was arranged that 
 the dinner was to take place at the Westminster 
 Palace Hotel on the 24th of July. Shortly before 
 the day arrived, Mr. Chamberlain said to me : " I 
 think you had better not attend that dinner to 
 Spencer. I am not going, nor is D . Cer- 
 tainly Spencer has done his duty, and shown capi- 
 tal pluck; but I hope we should all have done the 
 same, and there's no reason to mark it by a din- 
 ner. And, after all, coercion is not a nice business 
 for Liberals, though we may be forced into it." 
 However, as I had greatly admired Lord Spencer's 
 administration, and as his family and mine had 
 been politically associated for a century, I made a 
 point of attending, and a capital evening we had. 
 There was an enthusiastic and representative com- 
 pany of two hundred Liberals. Lord Hartington 
 presided, and extolled Lord Spencer to the skies; 
 and Lord Spencer justified the Crimes Act by say- 
 ing that, when it was passed, there was an or- 
 ganization of thirty thousand Fenians, aided by 
 branches in Scotland and England, and by funds 
 from America, defying the law of the land in Ire- 
 
256 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 land. Not a word in all this about Home Rule, 
 or the Union of Hearts, but we cheered it to the 
 echo, little dreaming what the next six months had 
 in store for us. 
 
 Though I was thoroughly in favour of resolute 
 dealing with murder and outrage, I was also — and 
 this was a combination which sorely puzzled The 
 Spectator — an enthusiastic Radical, and specially 
 keen on the side of social reform. My views on 
 domestic politics were substantially the same as 
 those set forth with extraordinary vigour and effect 
 in a long series of speeches by Mr. Chamberlain, 
 who was now unmuzzled, and was making the 
 fullest use of his freedom. He was then at the 
 very zenith of his powers, and the scheme of 
 political and social reform which he expounded 
 is still, in my opinion, the best compendium of 
 Radical politics; but it tended in the direction of 
 what old-fashioned people called Socialism, and 
 this was to Gladstone an abomination. One day, 
 to my consternation, he asked me if it was true that 
 Socialism had made some way among the younger 
 Liberals, of whom I was then one. Endeavouring 
 to parry a question which must have revealed my 
 own guilt, I feebly asked if by Socialism my ven- 
 erable Leader meant the practice of taking private 
 property for public uses, or the performance by the 
 State of what ought to be left to the individual; 
 
POLITICS 257 
 
 whereupon he replied, with startling emphasis : " I 
 mean both, but I reserve my worst Billingsgate for 
 the attack on private property." 
 
 On the i8th of September Gladstone issued his 
 Address to the Electors of Midlothian — an ex- 
 ceedingly long-winded document, which seemed to 
 commit the Liberal Party to nothing in particular. 
 Verbosa et grandis epistola, said Mr. John Morley. 
 " An old man's manifesto," wrote the Pall Mall. 
 By contrast with this colourless but authoritative 
 document, Mr. Chamberlain's scheme became 
 known as " The Unauthorized Programme," and 
 of that programme I was a zealous promoter. 
 
 As soon as the Franchise Bill and the Redistri- 
 bution Bill had passed into law, it was arranged 
 that the dissolution should take place in Novem- 
 ber. The whole autumn was given up to election- 
 eering. The newly-enfranchised labourers seemed 
 friendly to the Liberal cause, but our bewildered 
 candidates saw that their leaders were divided into 
 two sections — one might almost say, two camps. 
 This was a condition of things which boded dis- 
 aster to the Liberal Party; but Gladstone never 
 realized that Chamberlain was a power which it 
 wa;s madness to alienate. 
 
 On the 2nd of October I went on a visit to Haw- 
 arden, and next day Gladstone opened a conver- 
 sation on the state of the Party and the prospects 
 
258 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 of the Election. He said : " I believe you are in 
 Chamberlain's confidence. Can you tell me what 
 he means?" I replied that I was not the least in 
 Chamberlain's confidence, though he had always 
 been very fri^dly to me, and I admired his Pro- 
 gramme. " But," I said, " I think that what he 
 means is quite clear. He has no thought of trying 
 to oust you from the Leadership of the Liberal 
 Party; but he is determined that, when you resign 
 it, he, and not Hartington, shall succeed you." 
 This seemed to give the Chief some food for re- 
 flection, and then I ventured to follow up my ad- 
 vantage. " After all," I said, " Chamberlain has 
 been your colleague for five years. Surely your 
 best plan would be to invite him here, and ascer- 
 tain his intentions from himself." If I had sug- 
 gested that my host should invite the Sultan or the 
 Czar, he could not have looked more surprised. 
 " I have always made a point," he said, " of 
 keeping this place clear of political transactions. 
 We never invite anyone except private friends." 
 " Well," I said, " but we are within six weeks of 
 the Election, and it will never do for us to go to 
 the country with you and Chamberlain professing 
 two rival policies." 
 
 Backed by Mrs. Gladstone, I carried my point, 
 and with my own hand wrote the telegram inviting 
 Mr. Chamberlain. Unfortunately I had to leave 
 
POLITICS 259 
 
 Hawarden on the 6th of October, so I was not 
 present at the meeting which I had brought about; 
 but a few days later I had a letter from Mr. Cham- 
 berlain saying that, though his visit had been so- 
 cially pleasant, it had been politically useless. He 
 had not succeeded in making Gladstone see the im- 
 portance of the Unauthorized Programme, and 
 " if I were to drop it now," he said, " the stones 
 would immediately cry out." 
 
 What then ensued is matter of history. Parlia- 
 ment was dissolved on the i8th of November. 
 When the elections were finished, the Liberal 
 Party was just short of the numerical strength 
 which was requisite to defeat a combination of 
 Tories and Parnellites. Lord Salisbury, therefore, 
 retained office, but the life of his administration 
 hung by a thread. 
 
 On the 24th November, 1884, the great Lord 
 Shaftesbury, moved by the spirit of prophecy, had 
 written : " In a year or so we shall have Home Rule 
 disposed of (at all hazards) to save us from daily 
 and hourly bores." On the 17th of December, 
 1885, the world was astonished by an anonymous 
 announcement in two newspapers — and the rest 
 followed suit next day — that, if Gladstone were 
 returned to power, he would be prepared to deal, 
 in a liberal spirit, with the demand for Home 
 Rule. This announcement was an act of folly not 
 
26o ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 easy to explain or condone. We now know whose 
 act it was, and we know that it was committed 
 without Gladstone's privity. As Lord Morley 
 says : " Never was there a moment when every 
 consideration of political prudence more impera- 
 tively counselled silence." But now every political 
 tongue in the United Kingdom was set wagging, 
 and Gladstone could neither confirm nor deny. 
 Our bewilderment and confusion were absolute. 
 No one knew what was coming next; who was on 
 what side ; or whither his party — or, indeed, himself 
 — was tending. One point only was clear : if Glad- 
 stone meant what he seemed to mean, the Par- 
 nellites would support him, and the Tories would 
 be turned out. The new Parliament met on the 
 2 1st of January, 1886. The Government were de- 
 feated on an amendment to the Address, in favour 
 of Municipal Allotments, and Lord Salisbury re- 
 signed. It was a moment of intense excitement, 
 and everyone tasted for a day or two " the joy 
 of eventful living." 
 
 On the 29th of January, I dined with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Gladstone. The host was in a grim mood 
 of suppressed excitement, anger, and apprehension. 
 All day long he had been expecting a summons 
 from the Queen, and it had not arrived. " It be- 
 gins to look," he said, " as if the Government 
 meant after all to ignore the vote of the House of 
 
POLITICS 261 
 
 Commons, and go on. All I can say is that, if 
 they do, the Crown will be placed in a worse posi- 
 tion than it has ever occupied in my lifetime." 
 But after the party had broken up. Sir Henry Pon- 
 sonby arrived with the desired message from the 
 Queen; and on the ist of February Gladstone 
 kissed hands, as Prime Minister, for the third time. 
 " When Gladstone runs down a steep place, his 
 immense majority, like the pigs in Scripture but 
 hoping for a better issue, will go with him, roar- 
 ing in grunts of exultation." This was Lord 
 Shaftesbury's prediction in the previous year; but 
 it was based on an assumption which proved er- 
 roneous. It took for granted the unalterable do- 
 cility of the Liberal Party. I knew little at first 
 hand of the transactions and tumults which filled 
 the spring and early summer of 1886. At the be- 
 ginning of February I was laid low by serious 
 illness, resulting from the fatigue and exposure of 
 the Election; and when, after a long imprison- 
 ment, I was out of bed, I went off to the seaside 
 for convalescence. But even in the sick-room I 
 heard rumours of the obstinate perversity with 
 which the Liberal Government was rushing on its 
 fate, and the admirably effective resistance to 
 Home Rule engineered by Lord Hartington and 
 Mr. Chamberlain. The Liberal leaders ran down 
 the steep place, but an important minority of the 
 
262 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 pigs refused to follow them. The Home Rule Bill 
 was thrown out on the 8th of June. Parliament 
 was immediately dissolved. The General Election 
 gave a majority of more than a hundred against 
 Home Rule ; \he Government retired and ■ Lord 
 Salisbury again became Prime Minister. 
 
 In those distant days, there was a happy ar- 
 rangement by which once a year, when my father 
 was staying with me, Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone dined 
 with me to meet him. My father and Gladstone 
 had both entered public life at the General Election 
 of 1832, and my father loved to describe him as, 
 he appeared riding in Hyde Park on a grey 
 Arabian mare, " with his hat, narrow-brimmed, 
 high up on the centre of his head, sustained by a 
 crop of thick, curly hair," while a passer-by said : 
 " That's Gladstone. He is to make his maiden 
 speech to-night. It will be worth hearing." The 
 annual rencounter took place on the 21st of July, 
 1886. After dinner, Gladstone drew me into a 
 window and said : " Well, this Election has been 
 a great disappointment." I replied that we could 
 certainly have wished it better, but that the result 
 was not unexpected. To my amazement, Glad- 
 stone replied that it was completely unexpected. 
 " The experts assured me that we should sweep 
 the country." (I always wish that I could have 
 had an opportunity of speaking my mind to those 
 
POLITICS 263 
 
 " experts.") Pursuing the subject, Gladstone said 
 that the Queen had demurred to a second election 
 in six months, and that some of his colleagues had 
 recommended more moderate courses. " But I 
 said. that, if we didn't dissolve, we should be show- 
 ing the white feather." 
 
 It is no part of my purpose to trace the dismal 
 history of the Liberal Party between 1886 and 
 1892. But one incident in that time deserves to 
 be recorded. I was dining with Lord and Lady 
 Rosebery on the 4th of March, 1889; Gladstone 
 was of the company, and was indulging in passion- 
 ate diatribes against Pitt. One phrase has always 
 stuck in my memory. " There is no crime recorded 
 in history — I do not except the Massacre of St. 
 Bartholomew — which will compare for a moment 
 with the means by which the Union was brought 
 about." When the party was breaking up, one of 
 the diners said : " I hope Mr. Gladstone won't draw 
 that parallel between the Union and the Massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew on a public platform, or we 
 shall stand even less well with the thinking public 
 than we do now." 
 
 Parliament was dissolved in June, 1892, and, 
 when the elections were over, it was found that 
 the Liberal Party, including the Irish, had only a 
 majority of 40. When Gladstone knew the final 
 figures, he saw the impossibility of forcing Home 
 
264 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Rule through the Lords, and exclaimed : " My 
 life's work is done." However, as we all re- 
 member, he took the Premiership for a fourth 
 time, and during the Session of 1893 passed a 
 Home Rule Bill through the House of Commons. 
 The Lords threw it out by 419 to 41, the minority 
 being mainly wage-receivers. Other troubles there 
 were, both inside the Government and outside it, 
 Mr. Gladstone told his friends that the Naval Esti- 
 mates demanded by the Admiralty were " mad and 
 drunk," and people began to suspect that the great 
 change was at hand. 
 
 On the 1st of March, 1894, Gladstone made his 
 last speech in the House of Commons. In that 
 speech he bequeathed to his party the legacy of a 
 nobly-worded protest against the irresponsible 
 power of the " Nominated Chamber " ; and then, 
 having accomplished sixty-one years of Parlia- 
 mentary service, he simply disappeared, without 
 ceremony or farewell. In my mind's eye I see him 
 now, upright as ever, and walking fast, with his 
 despatch-box dangling from his right hand, as he 
 passed the Speaker's Chair, and quitted the scene 
 of his life's work for ever. 
 
 In spite of warnings and anticipations, the end 
 had, after all, come suddenly; and, with a sharp 
 pang of regretful surprise, we woke to the fact that 
 "our master was taken away from our head to- 
 
POLITICS 265 
 
 day." Strong men were shaken with emotion and 
 hard men were moved to unaccustomed tears, as we 
 passed out of the emptied House in the dusk of 
 that gloomy afternoon. 
 
 On the 6th of March, 1894, Gladstone wrote to 
 me as follows, in reply to my letter of farewell : 
 
 " My speculative view into the future shows me 
 a very mixed spectacle, and a doubtful atmosphere. 
 I am thankful to have borne a part in the emanci- 
 pating labours of the last sixty years; but entirely 
 uncertain how, had I now to begin my life, I could 
 face the very different problems of the next sixty 
 years. Of one thing I am, and always have been, 
 convinced — it is not by the State that man can be 
 regenerated, and the terrible woes of this darkened 
 world effectually dealt with. In some, and some 
 very important, respects, I yearn for the impossible 
 revival of the men and the ideas of my first twenty 
 years, which immediately followed the first Re- 
 form Act. But I am stepping out upon a bound- 
 less plain. 
 
 " May God give you strength of all kinds to per- 
 form your appointed work in the world." 
 
XII 
 
 ORATORY 
 
 fffTi 5' oix i Xo7As tow ^ijropos, Alax^vv, tIiuov, o4S' 4 rovbs rijs 
 ^lav^s, iWa tA rairci, vpoaipeurBai rots iroXXots, Kal tA toiSi airois 
 fuireiv Kal (piXeif, otaTrep hv ij TrarpU. 
 
 Demosthenes. De Corona. 
 
 The important thing in public speaking is neither the diction 
 nor the voice. What is important is that the speaker should 
 have the same predilections as the majority, and that his 
 country's friends and foes should be also his own. 
 
 I HOPE that I shall not be reproached with either 
 Pedantry or Vanity (though I deserve both) if, hav- 
 ing begun so classically, I here introduce some 
 verses which, when I was a boy at Harrow, my kind 
 Head Master addressed to my Father. The occa- 
 sion of these verses was that the recipient of them, 
 who was then Sergeant-at-Arms in the House of 
 Commons and was much exhausted by the long 
 Session which passed the first Irish Land Act, had 
 said in his haste that he wished all mankind were 
 dumb. This petulant ejaculation drew from Dr. 
 Butler the following remonstrance : 
 
 Semper ego auditor? Requies data nulla loquelae 
 Quae miseras aures hie et ubique premit? 
 
 Tot mala non tulit ipse Jobas, cui constat amicos 
 Septenos saltern conticuisse dies. 
 
ORATORY 267 
 
 Si mihi non dabitur taletn sperare quietem, 
 
 Sit, precor, humanum sit sine voce genus ! " 
 Mucius* hsec secum, sortem indignatus iniquam, 
 
 (Turn primum proavis creditus esse minor) 
 Seque malis negat esse parem: cui Musa querenti, 
 
 " Tu genus humanum voce carere cupis? 
 Tene adeo fatis diffidere! Non tibi Natus 
 
 Quern jam signavit Diva Loquela suum? 
 En ! ego quas vindex ' mutis quoque piscibus ' adsum, 
 
 Donatura cycni, si ferat hora, sonos, 
 Ipsa loquor vates : Patrije decus addere linguae 
 
 Hie sciet, ut titulis laus eat aucta tuis. 
 Hunc sua fata vocant; hunc, nostro numine fretum, 
 
 Apta jubent aptis ponere verba locis. 
 Hunc olim domus ipsa canet, silvaeque paternse, 
 
 Curiaque, et felix vatibus Herga parens. 
 Nee lingua caruisse voles, quo vindice vestrse 
 
 Gentis in aeternum fama superstes erit." 
 
 H. M. B., 
 Aug., 1870. 
 
 The prophecy has scarcely been fulfilled ; but it is 
 true that from my earliest days I have had an inborn 
 love of oratory. The witchery of words, powerful 
 enough on the printed page, is to me ten times more 
 powerful when it is reinforced by voice and glance 
 and gesture. Fine rhetoric and lofty declamation 
 have always stirred my blood ; and yet I suppose that 
 Demosthenes was right, and that, though rhetoric 
 and declamation are good, still the most valuable 
 asset for a public speaker is a complete identification 
 with the majority of his countrymen, in their preju- 
 dices, their Hkings, and their hatreds. 
 * Mucius Scsevola per multos annos " Princeps Senatus." 
 
268 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 If Oratory signifies the power of speaking with- 
 out premeditation, Gladstone stands in a class by 
 himself, far above all the public speakers whom I 
 have ever heard. The records of his speaking at 
 Eton and Oxford, and the reports of his earliest per- 
 formances in Parliament, alike give proof that he 
 had, as Coleridge said of Pitt, " a premature and 
 unnatural dexterity in the combination of words " ; 
 and this developed into " a power of pouring forth, 
 with endless facility, perfectly modulated sentences 
 of perfectly chosen language, which as far sur- 
 passed the reach of a normal intellect as the 
 feats of an acrobat exceed the capacities of a normal 
 body." 
 
 His voice was flexible and melodious (in singing 
 it was a baritone) ; though his utterance was per- 
 ceptibly marked by a Lancastrian " burr " ; his ges- 
 tures were free and graceful, though never violent ; 
 every muscle of his face seemed to play its part in his 
 nervous declamation ; and the flash of his deep-set 
 eyes revealed the fiery spirit that was at work within. 
 It may be remarked in passing that he considered a 
 moustache incompatible with effective speaking — 
 " Why should a man hide one of the most expressive 
 features of his face ? " With regard to the still 
 more expressive eyes, Lecky ruefully remarked that 
 Gladstone's glance was that of a bird of prey swoop- 
 ing on its victim. 
 
ORATORY 269 
 
 Lord Chief Justice Coleridge told me that he had 
 once asked Gladstone if he ever felt nervous in pub- 
 lic speaking. " In opening a subject," said Glad- 
 stone, "often; in reply never," and certainly his 
 most triumphant speeches were those in which, when 
 winding up a debate, he recapitulated and demol- 
 ished the hostile arguments that had gone before. 
 One writes glibly of his " most triumphant " 
 speeches ; and yet, when he was among us, he always 
 delivered each Session at least one speech, of which 
 we all used to say, with breathless enthusiasm, 
 "That's the finest speech he ever made." On the 
 platform he was incomparable. His fame as an 
 orator was made within the walls of Parliament; 
 but, when he ceased to represent the University of 
 Oxford, and was forced by the conditions of mod- 
 ern electioneering to face huge masses of electors in 
 halls and theatres and in the open air, he adapted 
 himself with the utmost ease to his new environ- 
 ment, and captivated the constituencies as he had 
 captivated the House. His activities increased as 
 his life advanced. He diffused himself over Eng- 
 land and Wales and Scotland. In every consid- 
 erable centre, men had the opportunity of seeing 
 and hearing this supreme actor of the political stage ; 
 but Midlothian was the scene of his most astonish- 
 ing efforts. When, on the 2nd September, 1884, 
 he spoke on the Franchise Bill in the Waverley 
 
270 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Market at Edinburgh, it was estimated ihat he ad- 
 dressed thirty thousand people. 
 
 "Beneath his feet the human ocean lay, 
 And wave pn wave flowed into space avi.iy. 
 Methought no clarion could have sent hi sound 
 Even to the centre of the hosts around ; 
 And, as I thought, rose the sonorous swell, 
 As from some church-tower swings the silvery beli. 
 Aloft and clear, from airy tide to tide. 
 It glided, easy as a bird may glide; 
 To the last verge of that vast audience sent. 
 It played with each wild passion as it went; 
 Now stirred the uproar, now the murmur stilled: 
 And sobs or laughter answered as it willed : " * 
 
 It is painful to descend too abruptly from sueh a 
 height as that : but one would be giving a false no- 
 tion of Gladstone's speaking if one suggested that 
 it was always equally effective. Masterly in his 
 appeal to a popular audience, supernaturally dexter- 
 ous in explaining a complicated subject to the House 
 of Commons, supremely solemn and pathetic in a 
 Memorial Oration, he was heard to least advantage 
 on a social or festive occasion. He would use a 
 Club-dinner or a wedding-breakfast, a flower-show 
 or an Exhibition, for the utterance of grave thoughts 
 which had perhaps been long fermenting in his 
 mind; and then his intensity, his absorption in his 
 theme, and his terrible gravity, disconcerted hearers 
 
 * Bulwer-Ljftton. St. Stephen's. 
 
ORATORY 271 
 
 who had expected a lighter touch. An illustration 
 of this quaint maladroitness recurs to my memory 
 as I write. In 1882 I was concerned with a few 
 Radical friends in founding the National Liberal 
 Club.* We certainly never foresaw the palatial pile 
 of terra-cotta and glazed tiles which now bears that 
 name.t Our modest object was to provide a 
 central meeting-place for Metropolitan and pro- 
 vincial Liberals, where all the comforts of life 
 shoulcl be attainable at what are called " popular 
 prices." Two years later, "Gladstone laid the foun- 
 dation-stone of the present Club-house, and, in one 
 of his most austere orations, drew a sharp contrast 
 between our poor handiwork and those " Temples 
 of Luxury and Ease " which gaze in haughty 
 grandeur on Pall Mall. We had hoped to provide 
 what might seem like " luxury " to the unsophisti- 
 cated citizen of Little Pedlington; and, at the least, 
 we meant our Club to be a place of " ease " to the 
 Radical toiler. But Gladstone insisted that it was 
 to be a workshop dedicated to strenuous labour; 
 
 *Mr. A. J. Williams, Mr. Walter Wren, Mr. J. A. Bright, 
 and Mr. J. J. Tylor were some of them. 
 
 t " The National Liberal Club is Liberalism made visible in 
 flesh — and Doultonware. It is an extraordinary big club done 
 in a bold, wholesale, shiny, marbled style, richly furnished 
 with numerous paintings, steel engravings, busts, and full- 
 length statues of the late Mr. Gladstone."— H. G. Wells, The 
 New Machiavelli. 
 
272 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 and all the fair promises of our Prospectus were 
 trodden under foot.* 
 
 I have often heard Gladstone say that, in the na- 
 ture of things, a speech cannot be adequately re- 
 ported. You may get the words with literal pre- 
 cision, but the loss of gesture, voice, and intonation, 
 will inevitably obscure the meaning and impede the 
 effect. Of no one's speaking is this more true than 
 of his own. Here and there, in the enormous mass 
 of his reported eloquence, you will come upon a 
 fine peroration, a poetic image, a verse aptly cited, 
 or a phrase which can be remembered. But they 
 are few and far between — oases in a wilderness 
 of what reads like verbiage. Quite certainly, his 
 speeches, in the mass, are not literature, as those 
 found to their cost who endeavoured to publish 
 them in ten volumes. 
 
 For speeches which are literature we must go to 
 John Bright; but then Bright's speaking was not 
 spontaneous, and therefore, according to the defini- 
 tion suggested above, could not be reckoned as 
 Oratory. Yet, when delivered in that penetrating 
 voice, with its varied emphasis of scorn and sym- 
 
 * " Speaking generally, I should say there could not be a 
 less interesting occasion than the laying of the foundation- 
 stone of a Club in London. For, after all, what are the Clubs 
 of London? I am afraid little else than temples of luxury 
 and ease. This, however, is a club of a very different char- 
 acter." 
 
ORATORY 273 
 
 pathy and passion; enforced by the dignity of that 
 noble head, and punctuated by the aptest gesture, 
 they sounded uncommonly like oratory. The fact 
 is that Bright's consummate art concealed the 
 elaborate preparation which went to make the per- 
 formance. When he was going to make a speech, 
 he was encompassed by safeguards against dis- 
 turbance and distraction, which suggested the rites 
 of Lucina. He was invisible and inaccessible. No 
 bell might ring, no door might bang, no foot tread 
 too heavily. There was a crisis, and everyone in 
 the house knew it; and, when at length the speech 
 had been safely uttered, there was the joy of a 
 great reaction. 
 
 My Father, unlike most of the Whigs, had a 
 warm admiration for Bright; and Bright showed 
 his appreciation of this feeling by being extremely 
 kind to me. Early in my Parliamentary career, he 
 gave me some hints on the art of speech-making, 
 which are interesting because they describe his own 
 practice. " You cannot," he said, " over-prepare the 
 substance of a speech. The more completely you 
 have mastered it, the better your speech will be. 
 But it is very easy to over-prepare your words. 
 Arrange your subject, according to its natural di- 
 visions, under three or four heads — not more. 
 Supply each division with an ' island ' ; by which 
 I mean a carefully-prepared sentence to clinch and 
 
274 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 enforce it. You must trust yourself to swim from 
 one ' island ' to another, without artificial aids. 
 Keep your best ' island ' — your most efifective 
 passage — for your peroration; and, when once you 
 have uttered ft, sit down at once. Let no power 
 induce you to go on." 
 
 Anyone who studies Bright's speeches will see 
 that he exactly followed his own rule. The order 
 and symmetry are perfect. The English is sim- 
 ple and unadorned. Each department of the 
 speech has its notable phrase; and the peroration 
 is a masterpiece of solemn rhetoric. And yet after 
 all what Demosthenes said is true of these two 
 great men — the Twin Stars of Victorian Ora- 
 tory. Each had all the graces of voice and 
 language, and yet each failed conspicuously in 
 practical effect whenever he ran counter to the 
 predilections and passions of his countrymen. 
 Gladstone succeeded when he attacked the Irish 
 Church, and denounced the abominations of 
 Turkish misrule : he failed when he tried to pal- 
 liate his blunders in E^ypt, and to force Home 
 Rule down the throat of the " Predominant Part- 
 ner." Bright succeeded when he pleaded for the 
 Repeal of the Com Laws and the extension of the 
 Suffrage: he failed when he opposed the Crimean 
 War, and lost his seat when he protested against 
 our aggression on China. It must often fall to the 
 
ORATORY 275 
 
 lot of the patriotic orator thus to set himself against 
 the drift of national sentiment, and to pay the 
 penalty. No such perils beset the Demagogue. 
 
 I should not ascribe the title of orator to Mr. 
 Chamberlain. He has nothing of the inspiration, 
 the poetry, the "vision splendid," the "faculty di- 
 vine," which make the genuine orator. But as a 
 speaker of the second, and perhaps most useful, 
 class, he has never been surpassed. His speaking 
 was the perfection of clearness. Each argument 
 seemed irresistible, each illustration told. His in- 
 vective was powerful, his passion seemed genuine, 
 his satire cut like steel and froze like ice. His 
 perception of his hearers' likes and dislikes was 
 intuitive, and was heightened by constant observa- 
 tion. His friends and his enemies were those 
 whom he esteemed the friends and the enemies of 
 England; and he never committed the heroic but 
 perilous error of setting himself against the pass- 
 ing mood of national feeling. He combined in 
 rare harmony the debating instinct which conquers 
 the House of Commons, with the power of appeal 
 to popular passion which is the glory of the Dema- 
 gogue. 
 
 The word with which my last sentence closed re- 
 calls inevitably the tragic figure of Lord Randolph 
 Churchill. The adroitness, the courage, and the 
 persistency with which between 1880 and 1885 ^^ 
 
276 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 sapped Gladstone's authority, deposed Northcote, 
 and made himself the most conspicuous man in the 
 Tory Party, have been described in his Biography, 
 and need not be recapitulated here. Mr. Cham- 
 berlain, who 'was exactly qualified to resist and 
 abate him, had not yet acquired a commanding po- 
 sition in the House of Commons; and on the plat- 
 form Churchill could not be beaten. In these two 
 men each party possessed a Demagogue of the 
 highest gifts, and it would have puzzled an expert 
 to say which was the better exponent of his pecul- 
 iar art. In January, 1884, Churchill made a speech 
 at Blackpool, and thus attacked his eminent rival 
 — " Mr. Chamberlain a short time ago attempted 
 to hold Lord Salisbury up to the execration of the 
 people as one who enjoyed great riches for which 
 he had neither toiled nor spun, and he savagely de- 
 nounced Lord Salisbury and his class. As a mat- 
 ter of fact. Lord Salisbury from his earliest days 
 has toiled and spun in the service of the State, and 
 for the advancement of his countrymen in learning, 
 in wealth, and in prosperity; but no Radical ever 
 yet allowed himself to be embarrassed by a ques- 
 tion of fact. Just look, however, at what Mr. 
 Chamberlain himself does; he goes to Newcastle, 
 and is entertained at a banquet there, and procures 
 for the president of the feast a live Earl — no less 
 a person than the Earl of Durham. Now, Lord 
 
ORATORY 2'!^ 
 
 Durham is a young person who has just come of 
 age, who is in the possession of immense heredi- 
 tary estates, who is well known on Newmarket 
 Heath, and prominent among the gilded youth who 
 throng the doors of the Gaiety Theatre; but he has 
 studied politics about as much as Barnum's new 
 white elephant, and the idea of rendering service 
 to the State has not yet commenced to dawn on 
 his ingenuous mind. If by any means it could be 
 legitimate, and I hold it is illegitimate, to stigma- 
 tize any individual as enjoying great riches for 
 which he has neither toiled nor spun, such a case 
 would be the case of the Earl of Durham; and yet 
 it is under the patronage of the Earl of Durham, 
 and basking in the smiles of the Earl of Durham, 
 and bandying vulgar compliments with the Earl of 
 Durham, that this stern patriot, this rigid moralist, 
 this unbending censor, the Right Honourable Jo- 
 seph Chamberlain, flaunts his Radical and levelling 
 doctrines before the astonished democrats of New- 
 castle. ' Vanity of Vanities,' saith the preacher, 
 ' all is vanity.' ' Humbug of Humbugs,' says the 
 Radical, ' all is humbug.' " 
 
 And with that most characteristic specimen of 
 popular eloquence, we may leave the two great 
 demagogues of the Victorian Age. 
 
 At the period of which I am speaking, the House 
 of Commons contained two or three orators sur- 
 
278 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 viving from a class which had almost died away. 
 These were men who, having no gift for extempore 
 speaking, used to study the earlier stages of a de- 
 bate, prepare a tremendous oration, and then de- 
 liver it by heart. Such, in days gone by, had been 
 the practice of Bulwer-Lytton, and, as far as one 
 can see, of Macaulay. In my day it was followed 
 by Patrick Smyth, Member for Tipperary, and 
 by Joseph Cowen, Member for Newcastle. Both 
 were real rhetoricians. Both could compose long 
 discourses, couched in the most flowery English, 
 interlarded with anecdotes and decorated with quo- 
 tations; and both could declaim these compositions 
 with grace and vigour. But the effect was very 
 droll. They would work, say, all Tuesday and 
 Wednesday at a point which had been exhausted 
 by discussion on Monday, and then on Thursday 
 they would burst into the debate just whenever they 
 could catch the Speaker's eye, and would discharge 
 these cascades of prepared eloquence without the 
 slightest reference to time, fitness, or occasion. 
 
 My uncle, Lord Russell, who entered Parlia- 
 ment in 1813, always said that the first Lord 
 Plunket was, on the whole, the finest speaker he 
 had ever heard, because he combined a most cogent 
 logic with the most moving eloquence; and these 
 gifts descended to Lord Plunket's grandson, now 
 Lord Rathmore, and, in the days of which I am 
 
ORATORY 279 
 
 speaking, Mr. David Plunket, Member for the 
 University of Dublin. Voice, manner, diction, de- 
 livery, were all alike delightful; and, though such 
 finished oratory could scarcely be unprepared, Mr. 
 Plunket had a great deal too much of his nation's 
 tact to produce it except when he knew that the 
 House was anxious to receive it. In view of all 
 that has happened since, it is curious to remember 
 that Mr. Arthur Balfour was, in those days, a re- 
 markably bad speaker. No one, I should think, 
 was ever born with less of the orator's faculty, or 
 was under heavier obligations to the Reporters' 
 Gallery. He shambled and stumbled, and clung to 
 the lapels of his coat, and made immense pauses 
 while he searched for the right word, and eventu- 
 ally got hold of the wrong one. In conflict with 
 Gladstone, he seemed to exude the very essence of 
 acrimonious partisanship, and yet he never ex- 
 actly scored. As Lord Beaconsfield said of Lord 
 Salisbury, " his invective lacked finish." 
 
 A precisely opposite description might befit Sir 
 Robert Peel, the strangely-contrasted son of the 
 great Free Trader. Peel was naturally an orator. 
 He could make the most slashing onslaughts with- 
 out the appearance of ill-temper, and could convulse 
 the House with laughter while he himself remained 
 to all appearance unconscious of the fun. His voice, 
 pronounced by Gladstone the most beautiful he ever 
 
28o ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 heard in Parliament, was low, rich, melodious, and 
 flexible. His appearance was striking and rather 
 un-English, his gestures were various and ani- 
 mated, and he enforced his points with beautifully 
 shaped hands. If voice and manner could make a 
 public speaker great, Sir Robert Peel might have 
 led the Tory Party; but Demosthenes was right 
 after all. The graces of oratory, though delightful 
 for the moment, have no permanent efifect. The 
 perfection of Parliamentary style is to utter cruel 
 platitudes with a grave and informing air; and, if 
 a little pomposity be superadded, the House will in- 
 stinctively recognize the speaker as a Statesman. 
 I have heard Sir William Harcourt say, "After 
 March, comes April," in a tone which carried con- 
 viction to every heart. 
 
 A word must be said about speakers who read 
 their speeches. I do not think I shall be contra- 
 dicted if I say that in those distant days Sir Wil- 
 liam Harcourt, Sir George Trevelyan, and Mr. 
 Gibson, now Lord Ashbourne, wrote every word, 
 and delivered their speeches from the manuscript. 
 In late years, when Harcourt had to pilot his fa- 
 mous Budget through Committee, he acquired a 
 perfect facility in extempore speech; but at the be- 
 ginning it was not so. The Irish are an eloquent 
 nation, and we are apt to send them rather prosy 
 rulers. " The Honourable Member for Bletherum 
 
ORATORY 281 
 
 was at that time perambulating the district with 
 very great activity, and, I need not say, with very 
 great ability." Such a sentence as that, laboriously 
 inscribed in the manuscript of a Chief Secretary's 
 speech, seems indeed to dissipate all thoughts of 
 oratory. Mr. Henry Richard, a " Stickit Minis- 
 ter " who represented Merthyr, was the worst of- 
 fender against the Standing Order which forbids a 
 Member to read his speech, though it allows him to 
 " refresh his memory with notes " ; and once, being 
 called to order for his offence, he palliated it by 
 saying that he was ready to hand his manuscript 
 to his censor, and challenged him to read a word 
 of it. 
 
 The least oratorical of mankind was the fifteenth 
 Lord Derby, whose formal adhesion to the Liberal 
 Party in 1882 supplied " Punch " with an admir- 
 able cartoon of a female Gladstone singing in im- 
 passioned strain — 
 
 " Always the same, Derby my own ! 
 Always the same to your old Glad-stone." 
 
 Lord Derby wrote every word of his speeches, 
 and sent them in advance to the press. It was said 
 that once he dropped his manuscript in the street, 
 and that, being picked up, it was found to contain 
 such entries as " Cheers," " Laughter," and " Loud 
 
282 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 applause," culminating in " ' But I am detaining you 
 too long.' (Cries of ' No, no,' and ' Go on.')" 
 
 The mention of Lord Derby reminds me of the 
 much-criticized body to which he belonged. When 
 I entered Parliament, the Chief Clerk of the House 
 of Commons was Sir Thomas Erskine May, after- 
 wards Lord Farnborough — an hereditary friend. 
 He gave me many useful hints, and this among the 
 rest — " Always go across to the House of Lords 
 when they are sitting, even if you only stop five 
 minutes. You may often happen on something 
 worth hearing; and on no account ever miss one 
 of their full-dress debates," I acted on the advice, 
 and soon became familiar with the oratory of " the 
 Gilded Chamber," as Pennialinus calls it. I have 
 spoken in a former chapter of the effect produced 
 on me as a boy by the predominance of Disraeli 
 during the debates on the Reform Bill of 1867. 
 He had left the House of Commons before I en- 
 tered it, but that same mysterious attribute of pre- 
 dominance followed him to the House of Lords, 
 and indeed increased with his increasing years. 
 His strange appearance — un-English features, 
 corpse-like pallor, blackened locks, and piercing 
 eyes — marked him out as someone quite aloof from 
 the common population of the House of Lords. 
 When he sat, silent and immovable, on his crim- 
 son bench, everyone kept watching him as though 
 
ORATORY 283 
 
 they were fascinated. When he rose to speak, there 
 was strained and awe-stricken attention. His voice 
 was deep, his utterance slow, his pronunciation 
 rather affected. He had said in early life that there 
 were two models of style for the two Houses 
 of Parliament — for the Commons, Don Juan: for 
 the Lords Paradise Lost. As the youthful Dis- 
 raeli, he had out-Juaned Juan; when, as the aged 
 Beaconsfield, he talked of " stamping a deleterious 
 doctrine with the reprobation of the Peers of Eng- 
 land," he approached the dignity of the Miltonic 
 Satan. It was more obviously true of him than of 
 most speakers that he " listened to himself while 
 he spoke"; and his complete mastery of all the 
 tricks of speech countervailed the decay of his 
 physical powers. He had always known the value 
 of an artificial pause, an effective hesitation, in 
 heralding the apt word or the memorable phrase; 
 and just at the close of his life he used the method 
 with a striking though unrehearsed effect. On the 
 4lh March, 1881, he was speaking in support of 
 Lord Lytton's motion condemning the evacuation 
 of Kandahar. " My Lords," he said, " the Key of 
 India is not Merv, or Herat, or," — here came a 
 long pause, and rather painful anxiety in the au- 
 dience ; and then the quiet resumption of the thread 
 — " It is not the place of which I cannot recall the 
 name — the Key of India is London." 
 
284 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 At a dinner at Lord Airlie's in the previous 
 month Lord Beaconsfield, talking to Matthew Ar- 
 nold, had described the great (that is, the four- 
 teenth) Lord Derby as having been " a man full of 
 nerve, dash, fire, and resource, who carried the 
 House irresistibly along with him." Bishop Sam- 
 uel Wilberforce was reckoned by Mr. Gladstone as 
 one of the three men who, of all his acquaintance, 
 had the greatest natural gift of public speaking.* 
 Both the Bishop and the Statesman found, each in 
 the other, a foeman worthy of his steel; but both 
 had passed beyond these voices before I entered 
 Parliament, leaving only tantalizing traditions — 
 " Ah ! but you should have heard Derby on the Irish 
 Church," or " It was a treat to hear ' Sam ' trounc- 
 ing Westbury." Failing those impossible enjoy- 
 ments, I found great pleasure in listening to Lord 
 Salisbury. I should reckon him as about the most 
 interesting speaker I ever heard. His appearance 
 was preeminently dignified : he looked, whether he 
 was in or out of office, the ideal Minister of a great 
 Empire — 
 
 " With that vast hulk of chest and limb assigned 
 So oft to men who subjugate their kind; 
 So sturdy Cromwell pushed broad-shouldered on; 
 So burly Luther breasted Babylon; 
 
 *The others were the late Duke of Argyll and the eighth 
 Lord Elgin. 
 
ORATORY 285 
 
 So brawny Cleon bawled his agora down; 
 
 And large-limb'd Mahomed clutched a Prophet's crown." 
 
 In public speaking, Lord Salisbury seemed to be 
 thinking aloud, and to be quite unconscious of his 
 audience. Though he was saturated with his sub- 
 ject, there was apparently no verbal preparation. 
 Yet his diction was peculiarly apt and pointed. 
 He never looked at a note; used no gesture; 
 scarcely raised or lowered his voice. But in a clear 
 and penetrating monotone he uttered the workings 
 of a profound and reflective mind, and the treas- 
 ures of a vast experience. Though massive, his 
 style was never ponderous : and it was constantly 
 lightened by the sallies of a pungent humour. In 
 the debate on the Second Reading of the Home 
 Rule Bill of 1893, Lord Ribblesdale, then recently 
 converted from Unionism to Gladstonianism, and 
 Master of the Buckhounds in the Liberal govern- 
 ment, had given the history of his mental change. 
 In replying, Lord Salisbury said, " The next speech, 
 my Lords, was a confession. Confessions are always 
 an interesting form of literature — from St. Au- 
 gustine to Rousseau, from Rousseau to Lord Rib- 
 blesdale." The House laughed, and the Master of 
 the Buckhounds laughed with it. 
 
 One of the most vigorous orators whom I have 
 ever heard, in the House of Lords or out of it, was 
 Dr. Magee, Bishop of Peterborough, and afterward 
 
286 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Archbishop of York. He had made his fame by his 
 speech on the Second Reading of the Irish Church 
 Bill, and was always at his best when defending 
 the temporal interests of ecclesiastical institutions. 
 No clergyman ever smacked so little of the pulpit. 
 His mind was essentially legal — clear, practical, 
 logical, cogent. No one on earth could make a 
 better case for a bad cause; no one could argue 
 more closely, or declaim more vigorously. When 
 his blood was up, he must either speak or burst; 
 but his indignation, though it found vent in flash- 
 ing sarcasms, never betrayed him into irrelevancies 
 or inexactitudes. 
 
 A fine speaker of a different type — and one bet- 
 ter fitted for a Churchman — was Archbishop Tait, 
 whose dignity of speech and bearing, clear judg- 
 ment, and forcible utterance, made him the wor- 
 thiest representative of the Church in Parliament 
 whom these latter days have seen. To contrast 
 Tait's stately calm with Benson's fluttering obse- 
 quiousness * or Temple's hammering force, was to 
 
 * " I had to speak in the House of Lords last night. It is 
 a really terrible place for the unaccustomed. Frigid impa- 
 tience and absolute goodwill, combined with a thorough con- 
 viction of the infallibility of laymen (if not too religious) on 
 all sacred subjects, are the tone, morale, and reason, of the 
 House as a living being. My whole self-possession departs, 
 and ejection from the House seems the best thing which could 
 happen to one." — Archbishop Benson to Bishop Westcott, 
 March 22, 1884. 
 
ORATORY 287 
 
 perceive the manner that is, and the manners that 
 are not, adapted to what Gladstone called " the 
 mixed sphere of Religion and the Scsculum." 
 
 By far the greatest orator whom the House of 
 Lords has possessed in my recollection was the late 
 Duke of Argyll. I have heard that Lord Beacons- 
 field, newly arrived in the House of Lords and hear- 
 ing the Duke for the first time, exclaimed, " And 
 has this been going on all these years, and I have 
 never found it out ? " It is true that the Duke's 
 reputation as an administrator, a writer, a natu- 
 ralist, and an amateur theologian, distracted public 
 attention from his power as an orator; and I have 
 been told that he himself did not realize it. Yet 
 orator indeed he was, in the highest implication of 
 the term. He spoke always under the influence of 
 fiery conviction, and the live coal from the altar 
 -seemed to touch his lips. He was absolute master 
 of every mood of oratory — pathos, satire, con- 
 temptuous humour, ethical passion, noble wrath; 
 and his unstudied eloquence flowed like a river 
 through the successive moods, taking a colour from 
 each, and gaining force as it rolled towards its close. 
 
 On the 6th of September, 1893, I heard the Duke 
 speaking on the Second Reading of the Home Rule 
 Bill. He was then an old man, and in broken 
 health; the speech attempted little in the way of 
 argument, and was desultory beyond belief. But 
 
288 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 suddenly there came a passage which lifted the 
 whole debate into a nobler air. The orator de- 
 scribed himself standing on the Western shores- of 
 Scotland, and gazing across towards the hills of 
 Antrim : " We*can see the colour of their fields, and 
 in the sunset we can see the glancing of the light 
 upon the windows of the cabins of the people. 
 This is the country, I thought the other day when 
 I looked on the scene — this is the country which the 
 greatest English statesman tells us must be gov- 
 erned as we govern the Antipodes." And he em- 
 phasized the last word with a downward sweep of 
 his right hand, which in a commonplace speaker 
 would have been frankly comic, but in this great 
 master of oratory was a master-stroke of dramatic 
 art. 
 
 Before I close this chapter, I should like to recall 
 a word of Gladstone's which at the time when he 
 said it struck me as memorable. In August, 1895, 
 I was staying at Hawarden. Gladstone's Parlia- 
 mentary life was done, and he talked about political 
 people and events with a freedom which I had never 
 before known in him. As perhaps was natural, we 
 fell to discussing the men who had been his col- 
 leagues in the late Liberal Ministry. We reviewed 
 in turn Lord Spencer, Sir William Harcourt, Lord 
 Rosebery, Mr. John Morley, Sir George Trevel- 
 yan, and Mr. Asquith. It is perhaps a little curi- 
 
ORATORY 289 
 
 Ous, in view of what happened later on, that Sir 
 Henry Campbell-Bannerman was not mentioned; 
 but, with regard to the foregoing names, I per- 
 fectly recollect, though there is no need to repeat, 
 the terse and trenchant judgment passed on each. 
 When we had to come to the end of our list, the ex- 
 Premier turned on me with one of those compelling 
 glances which we knew so well, and said with em- 
 phasis, " But you haven't mentioned the most im- 
 portant man of all." "Who is that?" "Edward 
 Grey — there is the man with the real Parliamentary 
 gift." I am happy to make the Foreign Secretary a 
 present of this handsome compliment. 
 
XIII 
 
 LITERATURE 
 
 There was Captain Sumph, an ex-beau, still about town, and 
 related in some indistinct manner to Literature and the Peer- 
 age. He was said to have written a book once, to have been a 
 friend of Lord Byron, to be related to Lord Sumphington . . . 
 This gentleman was listened to with great attention by Mrs. 
 Bungay; his anecdotes of the Aristocracy, of which he was a 
 middle-aged member, delighted the publisher's lady. 
 
 — W. M. Thackeray, Pendennis. 
 
 When I am writing Reminiscences, I always 
 feel dreadfully like Captain Sumph; but, in order 
 to make the resemblance quite exact, I must devote 
 a chapter to Literature. 
 
 I seem, from my earliest conscious years, to have 
 lived in a world of books ; and yet my home was by 
 no means " bookish." I was trained by people who 
 had not read much, but had read thoroughly ; who 
 regarded good literature with unfeigned admira- 
 tion; and who, though they would never have 
 dreamt of forcing or cramming, yet were pleased 
 when they saw a boy inclined to read, and did their 
 best to guide his reading aright. As I survey my 
 early life and compare it with the present day, one 
 of the social changes which impresses me most is 
 
LITERATURE 291 
 
 the general decay of intellectual cultivation. This 
 may sound paradoxical in an age which habitually 
 talks so much about Education and Culture; but I 
 am persuaded that it is true. Dilettantism is uni- 
 versal, and a smattering of erudition, infinitely 
 more offensive than honest and manly ignorance, 
 has usurped the place which was formerly occupied 
 by genuine and liberal learning. A vast deal of 
 specialism, " mugged up," as boys say, at the Brit- 
 ish Museum or the London Library, may co-exist 
 with a profound ignorance of all that is really 
 worth knowing. It sounds very intellectual to chat- 
 ter about the authorship of the Fourth Gospel, or 
 to scoff at St. John's " senile iterations and con- 
 torted metaphysics " ; but, when a clergyman read 
 St. Paul's eulogy on Charity, instead of an ad- 
 dress, at the end of a fashionable wedding, one of 
 his hearers said, " How very appropriate that was ! 
 Where did you get it from ? " Everyone can patter 
 nonsense about the traces of Bacon's influence in 
 The Merry Wives of Windsor, and can ransack 
 their family histories for the original of " Mr. W. 
 H." But, when Cymbeline was put on the stage; 
 Society was startled to find that the principal part 
 was not a woman's. When some excellent scenes 
 from Jane Austen were given in a Belgravian draw- 
 ing-room, a lady of the highest notoriety, enthusi- 
 astically praising the performance, enquired who 
 
292 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 was the author of the dialogue between Mr. and 
 Mrs. John Dashwood, and whether he had written 
 anything else. I have known a Lord Chief Justice 
 who had never seen the view from Richmond Hill ; 
 a publicist who had never heard of Lord Althorp; 
 and an authoress who did not know the name of 
 Izaak Walton. 
 
 Perhaps these curious " ignorances," as the 
 Prayer Book calls them, impressed me the more for- 
 cibly because I was born a Whig, and brought up in 
 a Whiggish society; for the Whigs were rather 
 specially the allies of learning; and made it a point 
 of honour to know, though never to parade, the 
 best that has been thought and written. Very likely 
 they had no monopoly of culture : the Tories may 
 have been just as well-informed. But a man " be- 
 longs to his belongings " ; one can only describe 
 what one has seen; and here the contrast between 
 Past and Present is palpable enough. I am not 
 thinking of professed scholars and students, such as 
 Lord Stanhope the Historian, and Sir Edward Bun- 
 bury the Senior Classic; or of professed blue-stock- 
 ings, such as Barbarina, Lady Dacre, and Georgi- 
 ana, Lady Chatterton; but of ordinary men and 
 women of good family and good position, who had 
 received the usual education of their class, and had 
 profited by it. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone used to say that, in his school- 
 
LITERATURE 293 
 
 days at Eton, a boy might learn much, or learn 
 nothing; but he could not learn superficially. A 
 similar remark would have applied to the attain- 
 ments of people who were old when I was young. 
 They might know much, or they might know noth- 
 ing; but they did not know superficially. What 
 they professed to know, that you could be sure they 
 knew. The affectation of culture was despised; 
 and ignorance, where it existed, was avowed. For 
 example, everyone knew Italian, but no one pre- 
 tended to know German. I remember men who 
 had never been at a University, but had passed 
 straight from a Public School to a Cavalry Regi- 
 ment or the House of Commons, and who yet could 
 quote Horace as easily as the present generation 
 quotes Kipling. These people inherited the tradi- 
 tions of Mrs. Montagu, who " vindicated the genius 
 of Shakespeare against the calumnies of Voltaire," 
 and they knew the greatest poet of all time with an 
 absolute ease and familiarity. They did not trou- 
 ble themselves about various readings, and corrupt 
 texts, and difficult passages. They had nothing in 
 common with that true father of all Shakespearean 
 criticism, Mr. Curdle, in Nicholas Nicklehy, who 
 had written a treatise on the question whether 
 Juliet's nurse's husband was really " a merry man," 
 or whether it was only his widow's affectionate 
 partiality that induced her so to report him. But 
 
294 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 they knew the whole mass of the Plays with a 
 natural and unforced intimacy; their speech was 
 saturated with the immortal diction, and Hamlet's 
 speculations were their nearest approach to meta- 
 physics. Pope was quoted whenever the occasion 
 suggested him, and Johnson was esteemed the 
 Prince of Critics. Broadly speaking, all educated 
 people knew the English poets down to the end of 
 the eighteenth century. Byron and Moore were 
 enjoyed with a sort of furtive and fearful pleasure ; 
 Wordsworth was tolerated, and Tennyson was 
 " coming in." Everyone knew Scott's novels by 
 heart, and had his or her favourite heroine and 
 hero. 
 
 I said in a former chapter that I had from my 
 earliest days free access to an excellent library; 
 and, even before I could read comfortably by my- 
 self, my interest in books was stimulated by listen- 
 ing to my elders as they read aloud. The magic 
 of words and cadence — the purely sensuous pleas- 
 ure of melodious sound — stirred me from the time 
 when I was quite a child. Poetry, of course, came 
 first; but prose was not much later. I had by na- 
 ture a good memory, and it retained, by no effort 
 on my part, my favourite bits of Macaulay and 
 Scott. The Battle of Lake Regillus and The Lay 
 of the Last Minstrel, the impeachment of Warren 
 Hastings and the death of Reginald Front-de- 
 
LITERATURE 295 
 
 Boeuf, are samples of the literature with which my 
 mind was stored. Every boy, I suppose, attempts 
 to imitate what he admires, and I was eternally 
 scribbling. When I was eleven, I began a novel, 
 of which the heroine was a modern Die Vernon. 
 At twelve, I took to versification, for which the 
 swinging couplets of English Bards and Scotch 
 Reviewers supplied the model. Fragments of 
 prose and verse came thick and fast. When I was 
 thirteen, I made my first appearance in print; with 
 a set of verses on a Volunteer Encampment, which 
 really were not at all bad; and at fourteen I pub- 
 lished (anonymously) a religious tract, which had 
 some success in Evangelical circles. 
 
 The effect of Harrow was both to stimulate and 
 to discipline my taste for literature. It was my 
 good fortune to be taught my Sophocles and Eurip- 
 ides, Tacitus and Virgil, by scholars who had 
 the literary sense, and could enrich school-lessons 
 with all the resources of a generous culture. My 
 sixteenth and seventeenth years brought me a real 
 and conscious growth in the things of the mind, 
 and with that period of my life I must always 
 gratefully associate the names of Frederic Farrar, 
 Edward Bowen, and Arthur Watson.* 
 
 Meanwhile, I was not only learning, but also 
 
 * To Mr. Watson I owed my introduction to Matthew Ar- 
 nold's Essays in Criticism — a real event in one's mental life 
 
296 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 practising. My teachers with one accord incited 
 me to write. Essay-writing formed a regular part 
 of our work in school and pupil-room, and I com- 
 posed a great deal for my own amusement. I 
 wrote both jft-ose and verse, and verse in a great 
 many metres; but it was soon borne in upon me — 
 conclusively after I had been beaten for the Prize 
 Poem* — that the Muse of Poetry was not mine. 
 In prose, I was more successful. My work for 
 The Harrovian gave me constant practice, and I 
 twice won the School-Prize for an English Essay. 
 In writing, I indulged to the full my taste for reso- 
 nant and rolling sound; and my style was ludi- 
 crously rhetorical. The subject for the Prize Essay 
 in 1872 was " Parliamentary Oratory : its History 
 and Influence," and the discourse which I com- 
 posed on that attractive theme has served me from 
 that day to this as the basis of a popular lecture. 
 The " Young Lion " of the Daily Telegraph thus 
 " roared " over my performance — 
 
 " The English Essay now takes a higher place 
 on Speech Day than it did in the old season; and 
 the essay which was crowned yesterday was notable 
 alike for the theme, the opinions, and the literary 
 promise of the writer. The young author bore 
 the historical name of Russell, and he was really 
 
 *By Sir Walter Strickland; whose poem on William Tyn- 
 (Jale was justly admired. 
 
LITERATURE 297 
 
 reviewing the forerunners and the fellow-workers 
 of his own ancestors, in describing the rhetorical 
 powers of the elder and the younger Pitt, Fox, 
 Burke, Sheridan, Canning and Grey. . . . The 
 well-known Constitutional note of Lord Russell 
 was heard in every page, and the sonorous English 
 was such as the Earl himself might have written 
 fifty years ago, if the undergraduates of that day 
 had been able to copy a Macaulay. The essayist 
 has read the prose of that dangerous model until 
 he has imitated the well-known and now hackneyed 
 devices of the great rhetorician with a closeness 
 which perilously brought to mind the show pas- 
 sages of the ' Essays ' and the ' History.' Mr. 
 Russell has caught the trick of cutting up his para- 
 graphs into rolling periods, and short, sharp, and 
 disjointed sentences ; but he will go to more subtle 
 and more simple masters of style than Macaulay, 
 when he shall have passed the rhetorical stage of 
 youth." 
 
 This prophecy was soon fulfilled, and indeed 
 the process of fulfilment had already begun. In 
 the Sixth Form, we naturally were influenced by 
 Dr. Butler, who, though he certainly did not de- 
 spise fine rhetoric, wrote a beautifully simple style, 
 and constantly instructed us in the difference be- 
 tween eloquence and journalese. " Let us leave 
 commence and partake to the newspapers," was an 
 
298 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 admonition often on his lips. Our Composition 
 Masters were Edward Young, an exquisite scholar 
 of the Eton type, and the accomplished Henry Net- 
 tleship, who detested flamboyancy, and taught us to 
 admire Newman's incomparable easiness and grace. 
 And there was Matthew Arnold living on the Hill, 
 generously encouraging every bud of literary prom- 
 ise, and always warning us against our tendency to 
 " Middle-class Macaulayese." 
 
 At Oxford, the chastening process went on apace. 
 Newman became my master, as far as language was 
 concerned; and I learned to bracket him with Ar- 
 nold and Church as possessing " The Oriel style." 
 Thackeray's Latinized constructions began to fas- 
 cinate me; and, though I still loved gorgeous 
 diction, I sought it from Ruskin instead of Ma- 
 caulay. 
 
 All this time I was writing — in a very humble 
 and obscure way, certainly, but still writing. I 
 wrote in local newspapers, and Parish Magazines. 
 I published anonymous comments on current topics. 
 I contributed secretly to ephemeral journals. I 
 gave lectures and printed them as pamphlets. It 
 was all very good exercise; but the odd part of it 
 seems to me, in looking back, that I never expected 
 pay, but rather spent my own money in printing 
 what I wrote. That last infirmity of literary minds 
 I laid aside soon after I left Oxford. I rather 
 
LITERATURE 299 
 
 think that the first money which I made with my 
 pen was payment for a character-study of my uncle, 
 Lord Russell, which I wrote for The World; there- 
 by eliciting from Matthew Arnold the urbane re- 
 mark, " Ah, my dear George, I hear you have be- 
 come one of Yates's hired stabbers." 
 
 After I entered Parliament, opportunities of 
 writing, and of writing for profit, became more fre- 
 quent. I contributed to the Quarterly, the New 
 Quarterly, the Nineteenth Century, the Fortnightly, 
 the Contemporary, the Spectator, and the Pall Mall. 
 Yet another magazine recurs pleasantly to my mind, 
 because of the warning which was inscribed on 
 one's proof-sheet — " The cost of corrigenda will be 
 deducted from honoraria." What fine language! 
 and what a base economy! 
 
 It did not take me long to find that the society 
 in which I habitually lived, and which I have de- 
 scribed in a former chapter, was profoundly igno- 
 rant. A most amusing law-suit between a Duchess 
 and her maid took place about the time of which 
 I am writing, and the Duchess's incriminated letter, 
 beginning in the third person, wandering off into 
 the first, and returning with an effort to the third, 
 was indeed an object-lesson in English composition. 
 A young sprig of fashion once said to me, in the 
 tone of a man who utters an accepted truth, " It is 
 so much more interesting to talk about people than 
 
300 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 things " — even though those " things " were the 
 literary triumphs of humour or tragedy. In one 
 great house, Books were a prohibited subject, 
 and the word " Books " was construed with such 
 Hberal latitude* that it seemed to include ever)rthing 
 except Bradshaw. Even where people did not 
 thus truculently declare war against literature, they 
 gave it an uncommonly wide berth, and shrank 
 with ill-concealed aversion from such names as 
 Meredith and Browning. "Meredith," said Oscar 
 Wilde, " is a prose-Browning — and so is Brown- 
 ing." And both those forms of prose were equally 
 eschewed by society. 
 
 Of course, when one is surveying a whole class, 
 one sees some conspicuous exceptions to the pre- 
 vailing colour; and here and there one had the 
 pleasure of meeting in society persons admirably 
 accomplished. I have already mentioned Lord 
 Houghton, poet, essayist, pamphleteer, book-lover, 
 and book-collector, who was equally at home in the 
 world of society and the world of literature. 
 Nothing that was good in books, whether ancient 
 or modern, escaped his curious scrutiny, and at his 
 hospitable table, which might truly be called a 
 " Festive Board," authors great and small rubbed 
 shoulders with dandies and diplomats and states- 
 men. On the i6th June, 1863, Matthew Arnold 
 wrote — " On Sunday I dined with Monckton 
 
LITERATURE 301 
 
 Milnes,* and met all the advanced Liberals in re- 
 ligion and politics, and a Cingalese in full costume. 
 . . . The philosophers were fearful! George 
 Lewes, Herbert Spencer, a sort of pseudo-Shelley 
 called Swinburne, and so on. Froude, however, 
 was there, and Browning, and Ruskin." 
 
 The mention of Matthew Arnold reminds me 
 that, though I had admired and liked him in a 
 reverent sort of way, when I was a Harrow boy 
 and he was a man, I found him even more fascinat- 
 ing when I met him on the more even terms of 
 social life in London. He was indeed the most de- 
 lightful of companions ; a man of the world entirely 
 free from worldliness, and a man of letters without 
 the faintest trace of pedantry. He walked through 
 the world enjoying it and loving it; and yet 
 all the time one felt that his' " eyes were on the 
 higher loadstars " of the intellect and the spirit. 
 In those days I used to say that, if one could 
 fashion oneself, I should wish to be like Matthew 
 Arnold; and the lapse of years has not altered my 
 desire. 
 
 Of Robert Browning, as he appeared in society, 
 I have already spoken; but here let me add an in- 
 stance which well illustrates his tact and readiness. 
 He once did me the honour of dining with me, and 
 
 * Richard Monckton Milnes was created Lord Houghton, 
 August 20, 1863. 
 
302 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 I had collected a group of eager disciples to meet 
 him. As soon as dinner was over, one of these 
 enthusiasts led the great man into a corner, and 
 began cross-examining him about the identity of 
 The Lost Leader and the meaning of Sordello. For 
 a space Browning bore the catechism with admir- 
 able patience ; and then, laying his hand on the ques- 
 tioner's shoulder, he exclaimed, " But, my dear fel- 
 low, this is too bad. / am monopolizing you" and 
 skipped out of the corner. 
 
 Lord Tennyson was scarcely ever to be encoun- 
 tered in society; but I was presented to him at a 
 garden-party by Mr. James Knowles, of the Nine- 
 teenth Century. He was, is, and always will be, 
 one of the chief divinities of my poetical heaven; 
 but he was more worshipful at a distance than at 
 close quarters, and I was determined not to dispel 
 illusion by a too near approach to the shrine. J. A. 
 Froude was a man of letters whom from time to 
 time one encountered in society. No one could 
 doubt his cleverness; but it was a cleverness which 
 rather repelled than attracted. With his thin 
 lips, his cold smile, and his remorseless, delib- 
 erate, way of speaking, he always seemed to be se- 
 cretly gloating over the hideous scene in the hall of 
 Fotheringay, or the last agonies of a disembowelled 
 Papist. Lord Acton was, or seemed to be, a man of 
 the world first and foremost ; a politician and a lover 
 
LITERATURE 303 
 
 of society ; a gossip, and, as his " Letters " * show, 
 not always a friendly gossip. His demeanour was 
 profoundly sphinx-like, and he seemed to enjoy the 
 sense that his hearers were anxious to learn what he 
 was able but unwilling to impart. His knowledge 
 and accomplishments it would, at this time of day, 
 be ridiculous to question ; and on the main concerns 
 of human life — Relgion and Freedom, — I was en- 
 tirely at one with him. All the more do I regret 
 that in society he so effectually concealed his higher 
 enthusiasms, and that, having lived on the vague 
 fame of his " History of Liberty," he died leaving it 
 unwritten. 
 
 I am writing of the years when I first knew Lon- 
 don socially, and I may extend them from 1876 to 
 1886. All through those years, as through many 
 before and since, the best representative of culture 
 in society was Mr., now Sir, George Trevelyan — 
 a poet, a scholar to his finger-tips, an enthusiast for 
 all that is best in literature, ancient or modern, and 
 author of one of the six great Biographies in the 
 English language. There is no need to recapitu- 
 late Sir George's services to the State or to criti- 
 cize his performances in literature. It is enough 
 to record my lively and lasting gratitude for the 
 unbroken kindness which began when I was a 
 
 * It is only fair to observe tliat those " Letters " were written 
 in the strictest confidence. 
 
304 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 boy at Harrow, and continues to the present 
 hour. 
 
 I have spoken, so far, of Hterary men who played 
 a more or less conspicuous part in society; but, as 
 this chapter is dedicated to Literature, I ought to 
 say a word about one or two men of Letters who 
 always avoided society, but who, when one sought 
 them out in their own surroundings, were delight- 
 ful company. Foremost among these I should 
 place James Payn. 
 
 Payn was a man who lived in, for, and by Litera- 
 ture. He detested exercise. He never travelled. 
 He scarcely ever left London. He took no holi- 
 days, for he hated them. If he was forced into the 
 country for a day or two, he used the exile as ma- 
 terial for a story or an essay. His life was one 
 incessant round of literary activity. From first to 
 last he wrote more than a hundred volumes of one 
 sort or another. By Proxy has been justly ad- 
 mired for the wonderful accuracy of its local col- 
 our, and for a masterly knowledge of Chinese char- 
 acter ; but the writer drew exclusively from encyclo- 
 paedias and books of travel. In my judgment, he 
 was at his best in the Short Story. He practised 
 that difficult art long before it became popular, and 
 a book called originally People, Places, and Things, 
 but now Humorous Stories, is a masterpiece of fun, 
 invention, and observation. In 1874, he became 
 
LITERATURE 305 
 
 " Reader " to Messrs. Smith and Elder, and in 
 that capacity had the happiness of discovering 
 Vice Versa, and the less felicitous experience of 
 rejecting John Inglesant as unreadable. 
 
 It was at this period of his life that I first en- 
 countered Payn, and I fell at once under his charm. 
 His was not a faultless character, for he was irrit- 
 able, petulant, and prejudiced. He took the strong- 
 est dislikes, sometimes on very slight grounds ; was 
 unrestrained in expressing them, and was apt to 
 treat opinions which he did not share very cava- 
 lierly. But none of these faults could obscure his 
 charm. He was the most tender-hearted of human 
 beings, and the sight, even the thought, of cruelty 
 set his blood on fire. But, though he was intensely 
 humane, he was absolutely free from mawkishness ; 
 and a wife-beater, or a child-torturer, or a cattle- 
 maimer would have had short shrift at his hands. 
 He was genuinely sympathetic, especially towards 
 the hopes and struggles of the young and the unbe- 
 friended. Many an author, once struggling but 
 now triumphant, could attest this trait. But his 
 chief charm was his humour. It was absolutely 
 natural; bubbled like a fountain, and danced like 
 light. Nothing escaped it, and solemnity only 
 stimulated it to further activities. He had the 
 power, which Sydney Smith described, of " abating 
 and dissolving pompous gentlemen with the most 
 
306 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 successful ridicule " ; and, when he was offended, 
 the ridicule had a remarkably sharp point. It was, 
 of course, impossible that all the humour of a man 
 who joked incessantly could be equally . good. 
 Sometimes it was rather boyish, playing on proper 
 names or personal peculiarities; and sometimes it 
 descended to puns. But, for sheer rapidity, I have 
 never known Payn's equal. When a casual word 
 annoyed him, his repartee flashed out like lightning. 
 I could give plenty of instances, but to make them 
 intelligible I should have to give a considerable 
 amount of introduction, and that would entirely 
 spoil the sense of flashing rapidity. There was no 
 appreciable interval of time between the provoking 
 word and the repartee which it provoked. 
 
 Another great element of charm in Payn was 
 his warm love of Life, 
 
 " And youth, and bloom, and this delightful world." 
 
 While he hated the black and savage and sordid 
 side of existence with a passionate hatred, he en- 
 joyed all its better — which he believed to be its 
 larger — part with an infectious relish. Never have 
 I known a more blithe and friendly spirit; never a 
 nature to which Literature and Society — ^books and 
 men — ^yielded a more constant and exhilarating joy. 
 He had unstinted admiration for the performances 
 of others, and was wholly free from jealousy. His 
 
LITERATURE 307 
 
 temperament indeed was not equable. He had ups 
 and downs, bright moods and dark, seasons of ex- 
 altation and seasons of depression. The one suc- 
 ceeded the other with startling rapidity, but the 
 bright moods triumphed, and it was impossible to 
 keep him permanently depressed. His health had 
 always been delicate, but illness neither crushed his 
 spirit nor paralysed his pen. Once he broke a 
 blood-vessel in the street, and was conveyed home 
 in an ambulance. During the transit, though he 
 was in some danger of bleeding to death, he began 
 to compose a narrative of his adventure, and next 
 week it appeared in the Illustrated London News. 
 
 During the last two years of his life he was pain- 
 fully crippled by arthritic rheumatism, and could 
 no longer visit the Reform Club, where for many 
 years he had every day eaten his luncheon and 
 played his rubber. Determining that he should 
 not completely lose his favourite, or I should rather 
 say his only, amusement, some members of the Club 
 banded themselves together to supply him with a 
 rubber in his own house twice a week; and this 
 practice was maintained to his death. It was a 
 striking testimony to the affection which he in- 
 spired. In those years I was a pretty frequent 
 visitor> and, on my way to the house, I used to be- 
 think me of stories which might amuse him, and I 
 used even to note them down between one visit and 
 
3o8 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 another, as a provision for next time. One day 
 Payn said, " A collection of your stories would 
 make a book, and I think Smith and Elder would 
 publish it." I thought my anecdotage scarcely 
 worthy of so'much honour ; but I promised to make 
 a weekly experiment in the Manchester Guardian. 
 My Collections and Recollections ran through the 
 year 1897, and appeared in book-form at Easter, 
 1898. But Payn died on the 25th of the previous 
 March; and the book, which I had hoped to put 
 in his hand, I could only inscribe to his delightful 
 memory. 
 
 Another remarkable man of letters, wholly re- 
 mote from the world, was Richard Holt Hutton, 
 for thirty-six years ( 186 1- 1897) the honoured 
 Editor of The Spectator. Hutton was a " stickit 
 minister " of the Unitarian persuasion, who had 
 been led, mainly by the teaching of F. D. Maurice, 
 to the acceptance of orthodox Christianity ; and who 
 devoted all the rest of his life to the inculcation of 
 what he conceived to bfe moral and religious truth, 
 through the medium of a weekly review. He lived, 
 a kind of married hermit, on the edge of Windsor 
 Forest, and could hardly be separated, even for a 
 week's holiday, from his beloved Spectator. His 
 output of work was enormous and incessant, and 
 was throughout critical and didactic. The style was 
 pre-eminently characteristic of the man — tangled. 
 
LITERATURE 309 
 
 untidy, ungraceful, disfigured by " trailing relatives" 
 and accumulated epithets ; and yet all the time con- 
 veying the sense of some real and even profound 
 thought that strove to express itself intelligibly. As 
 the style, so the substance. " The Spectator" 
 wrote Matthevir Arnold in 1865, " is all very well, 
 but the article has Hutton's fault of seeing so very 
 far into a mill-stone." And, two years later, "The 
 Spectator has an article in which Hutton shows his 
 strange aptitude for getting hold of the wrong end 
 of the stick." Both were sound criticisms. When 
 Hutton addressed himself to a deep topic of abstract 
 speculation, he " saw so very far into it " that even 
 his most earnest admirers could not follow the 
 visual act. When he handled the more common- 
 place subjects of thought or action with which or- 
 dinary men concern themselves, he seemed to miss 
 the most obvious and palpable points. He was a 
 philosophical thinker, with a natural bent towards 
 the abstract and the mystical — a Platonist rather 
 than an Aristotelian. He saw things invisible to 
 grosser eyes; he heard voices not audible to ordi- 
 nary ears; and, when he was once fairly launched 
 in speculation on such a theme as Personal Identity 
 or the Idea of God, 
 
 "He found no end, in wandering mazes lost." 
 But the very quality of aloofness from other men 
 
3IO ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 and their ways of thinking, which made it impossi- 
 ble for him to be the exponent of a system or the 
 founder of a school, made him a peculiarly inter- 
 esting friend. In homely phrase, you never knew 
 where to have him; he was always breaking out in 
 a fresh place. Whatever subject he handled, from 
 impaled Bulgarians to the credibility of miracles, 
 was certain to be presented in a new and unlooked- 
 for aspect. He was as full of splendid gleams as 
 a landscape by Turner, and as free from all formal 
 rules of art and method. He was an independent 
 thinker, if ever there was one, and as honest as he 
 was independent. In his belief, truth was the most 
 precious of treasures, to be sought at all hazards, 
 and, when acquired, to be safeguarded at all costs. 
 His zeal for truth was closely allied with his sense 
 of justice. His mind came as near absolute fair- 
 ness as is possible for a man who takes any part in 
 live controversies. He never used an unfair argu- 
 ment to establish his point, nor pressed a fair ar- 
 gument unduly. He was scrupulously careful in 
 stating his adversary's case, and did all in his power 
 to secure a judicial and patient hearing even for 
 the causes with which he had least sympathy. His 
 own convictions, which he had reached through 
 stern and self-sacrificing struggles, were absolutely 
 solid. By the incessant writing of some forty 
 years, he enforced the fundamental truth of human 
 
LITERATURE 3" 
 
 redemption through God made Man on the atten- 
 tion of people to whom professional preachers speak 
 in vain, and he steadily impressed on his fellow- 
 Christians those ethical duties of justice and mercy 
 which should be, but sometimes are not, the charac- 
 teristic fruits of their creed. It was a high func- 
 tion, excellently fulfilled. 
 
 The transition is abrupt, but no catalogue of the 
 literary men with whom I was brought in contact 
 could be complete without a mention of Mr. George 
 Augustus Sala. He was the very embodiment of 
 Bohemia; and, alike in his views and in his style, 
 the fine flower of such journalism as is associated 
 with the name of the Daily Telegraph. His por- 
 trait, sketched with rare felicity, may be found in 
 Letter XII. of that incomparable book, Friend- 
 ship's Garland. " Adolescens Leo " thus describes 
 him — " Sala, like us his disciples, has studied in 
 the book of the world even more than in the world 
 of books. But his career and genius have given 
 him somehow the secret of a literary mixture novel 
 and fascinating in the last degree: he blends the 
 airy epicureanism of the salons of Augustus with 
 the full-bodied gaiety of our English cider-cellar. 
 With our people and country, mon cher, this mix- 
 ture is now the very thing to go down ; there arises 
 every day a larger public for it ; and we, Sala's dis- 
 ciples, may be trusted not willingly to let it die." 
 
312 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 That was written in 1871 ; and, when sixteen 
 years had elapsed, I thought it would be safe, and 
 I knew it would be amusing, to bring Sala and 
 Matthew Arnold face to face at dinner. For the 
 credit of human nature let it be recorded that the 
 experiment was entirely successful; for, as Lord 
 Beaconsfield said, " Turtle makes all men equal," 
 and vindictiveness is exorcised by champagne. 
 
 The Journalist of Society in those days was Mr. 
 T. H. S. Escott, who was alsa Editor of the Fort- 
 nightly and leader-writer of the Standard. I should 
 be inclined to think that no writer in London 
 worked so hard; and he paid the penalty in shat- 
 tered health. It is a pleasure to me, who in those 
 days owed much to his kindness, to witness the re- 
 newal of his early activities, and to welcome volume 
 after volume from his prolific pen. Mr. Kegan 
 Paul, essayist, critic, editor, and ex-clergyman, was 
 always an interesting figure; and his successive 
 transitions from Tractarianism to Latitudinarianism, 
 and from Angnosticism to Ultramontanism, gave a 
 peculiar piquancy to his utterances on religion. He 
 deserves remembrance on two quite different scores 
 — one, that he was the first publisher to study pret- 
 tiness in the production of even cheap books; and 
 the other, that he was an early and enthusiastic 
 worker in the cause of National Temperance. It 
 was my privilege to be often with him in the suf- 
 
LITERATURE 313 
 
 fering and blindness of his last years, and I have 
 never seen a trying discipline more bravely borne. 
 
 More than once in these chapters I have referred 
 to " Billy Johnson," as his pupils and friends called 
 William Cory in remembrance of old times. He 
 was from 1845 to 1872 the most brilliant tutor at 
 Eton; an astonishing number of eminent men 
 passed through his hands, and retained through life 
 the influence of his teaching. After leaving Eton, 
 he changed his name from Johnson to Cory, and es- 
 tablished himself on the top of the hill at Hamp- 
 stead, where he freely imparted the treasures of his 
 exquisite scholarship to all who cared to seek them, 
 and not least willingly to young ladies. He was a 
 man of absolutely original mind; paradoxical, 
 prejudiced, and intellectually independent to the 
 point of eccentricity. His range was wide, his 
 taste infallible, and his love of the beautiful a pas- 
 sion. He lived, from boyhood to old age, the life 
 of the Intellect; and yet posterity will know him 
 only as having written one thin book of delightful 
 verse;* a fragmentary History of England; and 
 some of the most fascinating letters in the language. 
 
 A friend and brother-Scholar of mine at Oxford 
 
 was " Willy " Arnold, son of Mr. Thomas Arnold, 
 
 and nephew of Matthew. After taking his degree, 
 
 he joined the stafJ of the Manchester Guardian^ and 
 
 * lonica. 
 
314 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 before long became one of the first journalists of 
 his time. He was not merely a journalist, but also 
 a publicist, and could have made his mark in public 
 life by his exceptional knowledge of European 
 politics. We had not seen one another for a good 
 many years, when we met casually at dinner in the 
 summer of 1887. To that chance meeting I owed 
 my introduction to the Manchester Guardian. My 
 first contribution to it was a description of the Jubi- 
 lee Garden-Party at Buckingham Palace on the 29th 
 of June, 1887; so I can reckon almost a quarter of a 
 century of association with what I am bold to call 
 (defying all allusion to the fabled Tanner) the best 
 newspaper in Great Britain. 
 
 But journalism, though now practised on a more 
 dignified level, was only a continuation and develop- 
 ment of a life-long habit; whereas, though I had 
 been scribbling ever since I was a boy, I had never 
 written a book. In 1890 Messrs. Sampson Low 
 started a series of The Queen's Prime Ministers. 
 Froude led off, brilliantly, with Lord Beaconsfield; 
 and the editor* asked me to follow with Mr. Glad- 
 stone. Before acceding to this proposal, I thought 
 it right to ask whether Gladstone had any objec- 
 tion; and, supposing that he had not, whether he 
 would give me any help. His reply was eminently 
 characteristic, — 
 
 *Mr. Stuart J. Reid. 
 
LITERATURE 315 
 
 " When someone proposed to write a book about 
 Harry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, the Bishop pro- 
 cured an Injunction in Chancery to stop him. I shall 
 not seek an Injunction against you — ^but that is all 
 the help I can give you." 
 
 Thus encouraged, or rather, I should say, not dis- 
 couraged, I addressed myself to the task, and the 
 book came out in July, 1891. I was told that 
 Gladstone did not read it, and this assurance was 
 in many respects a relief. But someone told him 
 that I had stated, on the authority of one of his 
 school-fellows, that he played no games at Eton. 
 The next time I met him, he referred to this point; 
 declared that I had been misinformed ; and afhrmed 
 that he played both cricket and football, and " was 
 in the Second Eleven at Cricket." In obedience 
 to his request, I made the necessary correction in 
 the Second Edition; but a priori I should not have 
 been inclined to suspect my venerated leader of 
 having been a cricketer. 
 
 It is no part of my plan to narrate my own ex- 
 tremely humble performances in the way of author- 
 ship. The heading of the chapter speaks not of 
 Book-making, but of Literature; and for a man to 
 say that he has contributed to Literature would in- 
 deed be to invite rebuffs. I am thinking now, not 
 of what I have done, but of what I have received; 
 and my debt to Literature is great indeed. I do 
 
3i6 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 not know the sensation of dulness, but, like most 
 human beings, I know the sensation of sorrow ; and 
 with a grateful heart I record the fact that the dark- 
 est hours of my life have been made endurable by 
 the Companionship of Books. 
 
XIV 
 SERVICE 
 
 May He " in knowledge of Whom standeth our eternal life, 
 Whose service is perfect freedom" — Quern nosse vivere, Cut 
 servire regnare est — teach us the rules and laws of that eter- 
 nal service, which is now beginning on the scene of time. 
 R. W. Church, Human Life and its Conditions. 
 
 It was my happiness to be born and brought up 
 in a home where Religion habitually expressed it- 
 self in Social Service. I cannot remember a time 
 when those nearest to me were not actively engaged 
 in ministering to the poor, the sick, the underfed, 
 and the miserable. The motive of all this incessant 
 ministration was the Christian Faith, and its motto 
 was Charitas Christi urget nos. The religion in 
 which the children of an Evangelical home were 
 reared was an intensely vivid and energetic prin- 
 ciple, passionate on its emotional side, definite in its 
 theory, imperious in its demands, practical, visible, 
 and tangible in its effects. If a boy's heart — 
 
 " Were less insensible than sodden clay- 
 In a sea-river's bed at ebb of tide," 
 
3i8 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 it could scarcely fail to carry with it into the world 
 outside the impressions stamped by such a train- 
 ing. I can remember quite clearly that, even in my 
 Harrow days, the idea of Life as Service was al- 
 ways present to my mind: and it was constantly 
 enforced by the preaching of such men as Butler, 
 Westcott, and Farrar. 
 
 " Here you are being educated either for life or 
 for fashion. Which is it? What is your ambi- 
 tion? Is it to continue, with fewer restrictions, 
 the amusements which have engrossed you here? 
 Is it to be favourite or brilliant members of a so- 
 ciety which keeps want and misery at a distance? 
 Would this content you? Is this your idea of 
 life? Or may we not hope that you will have a 
 nobler conception of what a Christian manhood 
 may be made in a country so rich in opportunities 
 as our own now presents ? " * 
 
 In Dr. Butler's sermons our thoughts were di- 
 rected to such subjects as the Housing of the Work- 
 ing Classes, Popular Education, and the contrast 
 between the lot of the rich and the lot of the poor. 
 " May God never allow us to grow proud, or to 
 grow indolent, or to be deaf to the cry of human 
 suffering." " Pray that God may count you 
 worthy to be foremost in the truly holy and heroic 
 work of bringing purity to the homes of the labour- 
 *Dr. Butler's Harrow Sermons. Series II. 
 
SERVICE 319 
 
 ing classes, and so hastening the coming of the day 
 when the longing of our common Lord shall be 
 accomplished." " Forget not the complaints, and 
 the yet more fatal silence, of the poor, and pray that 
 the ennobling of your own life, and the gratifica- 
 tion of your own happiness, may be linked hereafter 
 with some public Christian labour." 
 
 Thus the influences of school co-operated with 
 the influences of home to give one, at the most im- 
 pressionable age, a lively interest in Social Service ; 
 and that interest found a practical outlet at Oxford. 
 When young men first attempt good works, they 
 always begin with teaching; and a Sunday School 
 at Cowley and a Night School at St. Frideswide's 
 were the scenes of my (very unsuccessful) attempts 
 in that direction. Through my devotion to St. 
 Barnabas', I became acquainted with the homes and 
 lives of the poor in the then squalid district of " Jeri- 
 cho " ; and the experience thus acquired was a valu- 
 able complement to the knowledge of the agricul- 
 tural poor which I had gained at home. It was 
 at this time that I first read Yeast and Alton Locke. 
 The living voice of Ruskin taught us the sanctity 
 of work for others. A fascinating but awful book 
 called Modern Christianity a Civilised Heathen- 
 ism laid compelling hands on some young hearts; 
 and in 1875 Dr. Pusey made that book the subject 
 of a sermon before the University, in which he 
 
320 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 pleaded the cause of the poor with an unforget- 
 table solemnity.* 
 
 For two or three years, illness and decrepitude 
 interfered with my active service, but the ideal was 
 still enthroned in my heart ; and, as health returned, 
 the shame of doing nothing for others became in- 
 tolerable. Return to activity was a very gradual 
 process, and, if one had ever " despised the day of 
 small things," one now learned to value it. When 
 I came up to London, two or three of us, who had 
 been undergraduate friends at Oxford, formed a 
 little party for workhouse-visiting. One of the 
 party has since been a Conservative Minister, one a 
 Liberal Minister, and one a high official of the 
 Central Conservative Association. Sisters joined 
 their brothers, and we used to jog off together on 
 Saturday afternoons to the Holborn Workhouse, 
 which, if I remember right, stood in a poetically- 
 named but prosaic-looking street called " Shepherd- 
 ess Walk." The girls visited the women, and we the 
 men. We used to take oranges and flowers to the 
 wards, give short readings from amusing books, and 
 gossip with the bedridden about the outside world. 
 We always had the kindest of welcomes from our 
 old friends; and great was their enthusiasm when 
 they learned that two of their visitors had been re- 
 
 * " Christianity without the Cross a Corruption of the Gos- 
 pel of Christ." 
 
SERVICE 321 
 
 turned to Parliament at the General Election of 
 1880. As one of the two was a Conservative and 
 one a Liberal, the political susceptibilities of the 
 ward were not ofifended, and we both received con- 
 gratulations from all alike. One quaint incident is 
 connected with these memories. Just outside the 
 Workhouse was a sort of booth, or " lean-to," 
 where a very respectable woman sold daffodils and 
 wall-flowers, which we used to buy for our friends 
 inside. One day, when one of the girls of our 
 party was making her purchase, the flower-seller 
 said, " Would your Ladyship like to go to the Lady 
 Mayoress's Fancy Dress Ball? If so, I can send 
 you and your brother tickets. You have been good 
 customers to me, and I should be very glad if you 
 would accept them." The explanation was that the 
 flower-seller was sister to the Lady Mayoress, 
 whom the Lord Mayor had married when he was 
 in a humbler station. The tickets were gratefully 
 accepted; and, when we asked the giver if she was 
 going to the Ball, she replied, with excellent sense 
 and taste, " Oh, no. My sister, in her position, is 
 bound to give these grand parties, but I should be 
 quite out of place there. You must tell me all 
 about it next time you come to the Workhouse." 
 
 Meanwhile, during this " day of small things " 
 a quiet but momentous revolution had been going 
 
322 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 on all round us, in the spheres of thought and con- 
 science; and the earlier idea of individual service 
 had been, not swamped by, but expanded into, the 
 nobler conception of corporate endeavour. 
 
 It had been a work of time. The Christian So- 
 cialism of 1848 — one of the finest episodes in our 
 moral history — had been trampled underfoot by the 
 wickedness of the Crimean War. To all appear- 
 ance, it fell into the ground and died. After two 
 years of aimless bloodshed, peace was restored in 
 1856, and a spell of national prosperity succeeded. 
 The Repeal of the Corn Laws had done its work; 
 food was cheaper; times were better; the revenue 
 advanced " by leaps and bounds." But commer- 
 cialism was rampant. It was the heyday of the 
 Ten Pound Householder and the Middle Class 
 Franchise. Mr. Podsnap and Mr. Gradgrind 
 enounced the social law. Bright and Cobden 
 dominated political thinking. The Universities 
 were fast bound in the misery and iron of Mill and 
 Bain. Everywhere the same grim idols were wor- 
 shipped — unrestricted competition, the survival of 
 the fittest, and universal selfishness enthroned in the 
 place which belonged to universal love. " The 
 Devil take the hindermost " was the motto of indus- 
 trial life. " In the huge and hideous cities, the 
 awful problem of Industry lay like a bad dream; 
 but Political Economy warned us off that ground. 
 
SERVICE 323 
 
 We were assured that the free play of competitive 
 forces was bound to discover the true equipoise. 
 No intervention could really affect the inevitable 
 outcome. It could only hinder and disturb." * 
 The Church, whose pride it had been in remoter 
 ages to be the Handmaid of the Poor, was bidden 
 to leave the Social Problem severely alone; and so 
 ten years rolled by, while the social pressure on 
 labour became daily more grievous to be borne. 
 But meanwhile the change was proceeding under- 
 ground, or at least out of sight. Forces were work- 
 ing side by side which knew nothing of each other, 
 but which were all tending to the same result. The 
 Church, boldly casting aside the trammels which 
 had bound her to wealth and culture, went down 
 into the slums ; brought the beauty and romance of 
 Worship to the poorest and the most depraved, and 
 compelled them to come in. Whenever such a 
 Church as St. Alban's, Holborn, or St. Barnabas, 
 Oxford, was established in the slums of a populous 
 city, it became a centre not only of religious influ- 
 ence, but of social, physical, and educational reform. 
 Ruskin's many-coloured wisdom, long recognized in 
 the domain of Art, began to win its way through 
 economic darkness, and charged cheerfully against 
 the dismal strongholds of Supply and Demand. Unto 
 this Last became a handbook for Social Reformers. 
 *Rev. H. Scott Holland, D.D. 
 
324 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 The teaching of Maurice filtered, through all sorts 
 of unsuspected channels, into literature and politics 
 and churchmanship. In the intellectual world, Hux- 
 ley transformed " the Survival of the Fittest," by 
 bidding us devote ourselves to the task of fitting as 
 many as possible to survive. At Oxford, the " home " 
 not of " lost " but of victorious " causes," T. H. 
 Green, wielding a spiritual influence which reached 
 farther than that of many bishops, taught that Free- 
 dom of Contract, if it is to be anything but a callous 
 fraud, implies conditions in which men are really 
 free to contract or to refuse; and insisted that all 
 wholesome competition implies " adequate equip- 
 ment for the competitors." 
 
 It is impossible to say exactly how all these in- 
 fluences intertwined and co-operated. One man 
 was swayed by one force ; another by another ; and, 
 after long years of subterranean working, a mo- 
 ment came, as it comes to the germinating seed 
 deep-hidden in the furrow, when it must pierce the 
 superincumbent mass, and show its tiny point of 
 life above ground.* The General Election of 
 1880, by dethroning Lord Beaconsfield and putting 
 Gladstone in power, had fulfilled the strictly politi- 
 
 * Honourable mention ought here to be made of "The 
 Guild of St. Matthew," founded by the Rev. Stewart Head- 
 lam in 1877. Its object was "To justify God to the People," 
 and it prepared the way for later organizations. 
 
SERVICE 325 
 
 cal objects which during the preceding three years 
 my friends and I had been trying to attain. So we, 
 who entered Parhament at that Election, were set 
 free, at the very outset of our public career, to work 
 for the Social Reform which we had at heart. We 
 earnestly desired to make the lives of our fellow- 
 men healthier, sweeter, brighter, and more humane ; 
 and it was an ennobling and invigorating ambition, 
 lifting the pursuit of politics, out of the vulgar dust 
 of office-seeking and wire-pulling, into the purer 
 air of unselfish endeavour. To some of us it was 
 much more ; for it meant the application of the Gos- 
 pel of Christ to the practical business of modern 
 life. But the difficulties were enormous. The Lib- 
 eral party still clung to its miserable old mumpsimus 
 of Laissez-faire, and steadily refused to learn the 
 new and nobler language of Social Service. Alone 
 among our leading men, Mr. Chamberlain seemed 
 to apprehend the truth that political reform is re- 
 lated to social reform as the means to the end, and 
 that Politics, in its widest sense, is the science of 
 human happiness. 
 
 But, in spite of all discouragements, we clung to 
 ' a Social Philosophy which, however materialistic 
 ' some of its tendencies might have become, had 
 ' been allied with the spiritual Hegelianism with 
 ' which we had been touched. It took its scientific 
 ' shape in the hands of Karl Marx, but it also 
 
326 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 " floated to us, in dreams and visions, using our 
 " own Christian language, and invoking the unity 
 " of the Social Body, as the Law of Love, and the 
 " Solidarity of Humanity." * 
 
 At the sound of these voices the old idols fell — 
 Laissez-faire and Laisses-aller, Individualism and 
 Self-content, Unrestricted Competition and the Sur- 
 vival of the Fittest. They all fell down with a 
 crash, like so many dishonoured Dagons; and, be- 
 fore their startled worshippers had time to reinstate 
 them, yet another voice of warning broke upon our 
 ears. The Bitter Cry of Outcast London, describ- 
 ing the enormous amount of preventable misery 
 caused by over-crowding, startled men into recog- 
 nising the duty of the State to cope with the evil. 
 Then came Henry George with his Progress and 
 Poverty and, as Dr. Holland says, he " forced us on 
 to new thinking." That " new thinking " took 
 something of this form — " Here are the urgent and 
 " grinding facts of human misery. The Political 
 " Economy of such blind guides as Ricardo and 
 " Bastiat and Fawcett has signally failed to cure or 
 " even mitigate them. Now comes a new prophet 
 " with his gospel of the Single Tax. He may, or 
 " may not, have found the remedy, but at any rate 
 " he has shown us more clearly than ever the im- 
 " mensity of the evil, and our responsibility for suf- 
 *Rev. H. S. Holland, D.D. 
 
SERVICE 327 
 
 " fering it to continue. We profess and call our- 
 " selves Christians. Is it not about time that, cast- 
 " ing aside all human teachings, whether Economic 
 " or Socialistic, we tried to see what the Gospel 
 " says about the subject, and about our duty in re- 
 "gardtoit?" 
 
 Out of this stress of mind and heart arose " The 
 Christian Social Union." It was founded in Lent, 
 1889, and it set forth its objects in the following 
 statement — 
 
 " This Union consists of Churchmen who have the follow- 
 ing objects at heart: — 
 
 (i) To claim for the Christian Law the ultimate authority 
 to rule social practice. 
 
 (ii) To study in common how to apply the moral truths 
 and principles of Christianity to the social and economic dif- 
 ficulties of the present time. 
 
 (iii) The present Christ in practical life as the Living 
 Master and King, the enemy of wrong and selfishness, the 
 power of righteousness and love." 
 
 The Christian Social Union, originating in Ox- 
 ford, was soon reinforced from Cambridge, which 
 had fallen under the inspiring though impalpable 
 influence of Westcott's teaching. Westcott was, 
 in some sense, the continuator of Mauricianism ; 
 and so, when Westcott joined the Union, the two 
 streams, of Mauricianism and of the Oxford 
 Movement, fused. Let Dr. Holland, with whom^ 
 the work began, tell the rest of the story — " We 
 " founded the C. S. U. under Westcott's president- 
 
328 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 " ship, leaving to the Guild of St. Matthew their 
 " old work of justifying God to the People, while 
 " we devoted ourselves to converting and impreg- 
 " nating the solid, stolid, flock of our own church 
 " folk withiji the fold. . . . We had our work cut 
 " out for us in dislodging the horrible cast-iron for- 
 " mulse, which were indeed wholly obsolete, but 
 " which seemed for that very reason to take tighter 
 " possession of their last refuge in the bulk of the 
 " Church's laity." 
 
 "Let no man think that sudden in a minute 
 
 All is accomplished and the work is done; — 
 Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it, 
 Scarce were it ended in thy setting sun." * 
 
 The spirit which created the Christian Social 
 Union found, in the same year, an unexpected out- 
 let in the secular sphere. In the Session of 1888, 
 the Conservative Ministry, noting the general dis- 
 gust which had been aroused by the corrupt mis- 
 government of Greater London, passed the " Local 
 Government Act," which, among other provisions, 
 made London into a County, gave it a " County 
 Council," and endowed that Council with far-reach- 
 ing powers. To social reformers this was a tre- 
 mendous event. For forty years they had been 
 labouring to procure something of the sort, and 
 now it dropped down from the skies, and seemed 
 *F. W. H. Myers. 
 
SERVICE 329 
 
 at ifirst almost too good to be true. Under the 
 shock of the surprise, London suddenly awoke to 
 the consciousness of a corporate life. On every 
 side men were stirred by an honest impulse to give 
 the experiment a good start; to work the new ma- 
 chine for all it was worth; and to make the ad- 
 ministration of Greater London a model for all 
 lesser Municipalities. The Divisions of London, 
 for the purposes of its new Council, were the same 
 as its Parliamentary Divisions, but each constitu- 
 ency returned two members, and the City four. 
 Every seat (except those for St. George's, Hanover 
 Square) was contested, and there were often as 
 many as six or seven candidates for one division. 
 It was said at the time that " the uncertainty of the 
 issues, the multitude of candidates, and the vague- 
 ness of parties made it impossible to tabulate the 
 results with the same accuracy and completeness 
 which are possible in the case of the House of 
 Commons." Some candidates stood professedly 
 as Liberals, and others as Conservatives. The ma- 
 jority, however, declared themselves to be " strictly 
 non-political." Some leading objects, such as 
 better Housing of the Poor, Sanitary Reform, and 
 the abolition of jobbery and corruption, were pro- 
 fessed by all alike; and the main issues in dispute 
 were the control of the Police by the Council, the 
 reform of the Corporation of London and of the 
 
330 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 City Guilds, the abolition of dues on coal coming 
 into the Port of London, and the taxation of 
 ground-rents 
 
 In such projects as these it was easy to discern 
 the working of the new spirit. Men were trying, 
 earnestly though amid much confusion, to translate 
 the doctrines of Social Reform into fact. " Prac- 
 ticable Socialism " became the ideal of the reform- 
 ing party, who styled themselves " Progressives." 
 Their opponents got the unfortunate name of 
 " Moderates " ; and between the ideas roughly in- 
 dicated by those two names the battle was fought. 
 The Election took place in January, 1889. The 
 result was that 71 candidates labelled " Progres- 
 sive " were returned, and 47 " Moderates." The 
 Act empowered the Council to complete its number 
 by electing 19 Aldermen. Of these, 18 were Pro- 
 gressives, and one was a Moderate; so the total 
 result was a " Progressive " majority of 41. 
 
 By the time of which I write I had become, by 
 habitual residence, a Londoner; and I hope I was 
 as keen on Social Reform as anyone in London, or 
 outside it. But, after what I said in an earlier 
 chapter, it will surprise no one that I declined to 
 be a candidate for the London County Council. 
 My dislike of electioiieering is so intense that noth- 
 ing on earth except the prospect of a seat in Parlia- 
 ment would tempt me to undertake it ; so to all sug- 
 
SERVICE 331 
 
 gestions that I should stand in the Progressive 
 interest I turned a resolutely deaf ear. But, 
 when the election was over and the Progres- 
 sive majority had to choose a list of Aldermen, I 
 saw my opportunity and volunteered my services. 
 By the goodwill of my friends on the Council, I 
 was placed on the " Progressive List," and on the 
 5th of February I was elected an Alderman for six 
 years. Among my colleagues were Lord Meath, 
 Lord Lingen, Lord Hobhouse, Mr. Quintin Hogg, 
 Sir Thomas Farrer, and Mr. Frederic Harrison. 
 Lord Meath was accepted by the Progressive party, 
 in recognition of his devoted services to the cause 
 of social amelioration, especially in the matter of 
 Public Gardens and Open Spaces; but, with this 
 sole exception, the list was frankly partisan. The 
 Progressives had got a majority on the new " Par- 
 liament of London," and had no notion of watering 
 it down. 
 
 Before the Council was created, the governing 
 body for Greater London had been the " Metropoli- 
 tan Board of Works," which had its dwelling in 
 Spring Gardens. The old building had to be 
 adapted to its new uses, and, while the reconstruc- 
 tion was in progress, the County Council was per- 
 mitted by the Corporation to meet in the Guildhall. 
 There we assembled on the 12th of February, a 
 highly-diversified, and, in some respects, an inter- 
 
332 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 esting company. A careful analysis of our quality 
 and occupations gave the following results : Peers, 
 4; M. P's and ex-M. P's, 9; Clergymen, 2; Bar- 
 risters, 14; Solicitors, 3; Soldiers, 4; Doctors, 5; 
 Tutors, 2 ; Architects, 2 ; Builders, 4 ; Engineers, 3 ; 
 Journalists, 4 ; Publisher, i ; Bankers, 5 ; Stock-Ex- 
 change men, 5 ; Auctioneers, 3 ; Brewer, i ; Cloth- 
 iers, 2 ; Confectioner, i ; Drapers, 2 ; Grocers, 2 ; 
 Mineral Water-maker, i ; Optician, i ; Shoemaker, 
 I ; Merchants, 22; Manufacturers, 13; Gentlemen at 
 large, 8 ; " Unspecified," 10. And to these must 
 be added three ladies, who had been illegally elected 
 and were soon unseated. A current joke of the 
 time represented one of our more highly-cultured 
 Councillors saying to a colleague drawn from an- 
 other rank, — "The acoustics of this Hall seem very 
 defective" — to which the colleague, after sniffing, 
 replies — " Indeed ? I don't perceive anything un- 
 pleasant." Which things were an allegory; but 
 conveyed a true impression of our social and educa- 
 tional diversities. 
 
 The first business which we had to transact was 
 the election of a Chairman. Lord Rosebery was 
 elected by 104 votes to 17; and so began the most 
 useful portion of his varied career. The honorary 
 office of Vice-Chairman was unanimously con- 
 ferred on Sir John Lubbock, afterwards Lord Ave- 
 bury; and for the Deputy Chairmanship, a salaried 
 
SERVICE 333 
 
 post of practical importance, the Council chose Mr. 
 J. F. B. Firth, who had made his name as an ex- 
 ponent of the intricacies of Metropolitan Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 To watch the methods of Lord Rosebery's chair- 
 manship was an interesting study. After much 
 experience of public bodies and public meetings, I 
 consider him the best chairman but one under 
 whom I ever sat. The best was Mr. Leonard 
 Courtney, now Lord Courtney of Penwith, who to 
 the gifts of accuracy, promptness, and mastery of 
 detail, added the rarer grace of absolute impar- 
 tiality. Lord Rosebery had the accuracy, the 
 promptness, and the mastery, but he was not im- 
 partial. He was inclined to add the functions of 
 Leader of the House to those of Speaker, which 
 were rightly his. When a subject on which he felt 
 strongly was under discussion, and opinion in the 
 Council was closely balanced. Lord Rosebery would 
 intervene just at the close of the debate, with a 
 short, strong, and emphatic speech, and so influ- 
 ence the division in favour of his own view. This 
 practice is, in my judgment, inconsistent with ideal 
 chairmanship, but in the early days of the Council, 
 it was not without its uses. 
 
 We had to furnish ourselves with a constitution, 
 to distribute our various powers, to frame rules of 
 debate, and to create an order of business. To do 
 
334 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 all this in a full Council of 137 members, most of 
 them quite unversed in public life, many of them 
 opinionated, all articulate, and not a few vocifer- 
 ous, was a work of the utmost difficulty, and Lord 
 Rosebery erjgineered it to perfection. He was 
 suave and courteous; smoothed acrid dissensions 
 with judicious humour; used sarcasm sparingly, 
 but with effect; and maintained a certain dignity 
 of bearing which profoundly impressed the repre- 
 sentatives of the Great Middle Class. " By Jove, 
 how these chaps funk Rosebery ! " was the candid 
 exclamation of Sir Howard Vincent; and his re- 
 mark applied quite equally to his own " Moderate " 
 friends and to my " Progressives." It was char- 
 acteristic of these gentry that they longed to call 
 Lord Rosebery " My Lord," and were with diffi- 
 culty induced to substitute " Mr. Chairman." The 
 one member of the Council who stands out in my 
 memory as not having " funked " the Chairman 
 is Mr. John Burns, whose action and bearing in 
 the Council formed one of my most interesting 
 studies. The events of February, 1885, were still 
 present to my memory, though the Councillor for 
 Battersea had probably forgotten them. The change 
 which four years had wrought was extraordinary. 
 He spoke cofistantly and effectively, but always with 
 moderation, good feeling, and common sense. At 
 the same time, he maintained a breezy independ- 
 
SERVICE 335 
 
 ence, and, when he thought that the Chair ought to 
 be defied, defied it. This was awkward, for the 
 Chairman had no disciplinary powers, and there 
 was no executive force to compel submission to his 
 rulings. As far as I could observe, Mr. Burns 
 never gave way, and yet he soon ceased to enter 
 into conflict with the Chair. What was the influ- 
 ence which tamed him? I often wondered, but 
 never knew. 
 
 The Council had got itself duly divided into 
 Committees, and it was noticeable that there was 
 an enormous rush of Councillors anxious to serve 
 on the Housing Committee. The " Bitter Cry of 
 Outcast London " had not been raised in vain, and 
 every man in the Council seemed anxious to bear 
 his part in the work of redressing an intolerable 
 wrong. The weekly Session of the Council was fixed 
 for Tuesday afternoon, to the disgust of some Pro- 
 gressives who hankered after the more democratic 
 hour of 7 p.m. The main part of the business was 
 the discussion of the Reports brought up from the 
 various Committees, and, when those were disposed 
 of, abstract motions could be debated. Some 
 earnest Liberals were always trying to raise such 
 questions as Home Rule, Land Law, Enfranchise- 
 ment of Leaseholds, and other matters vCliich lay 
 outside the purview of the Council; and it was de- 
 lightful to see Lord Rosebery damping down these 
 
336 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 irregular enthusiasms, and reminding his hearers 
 of the limits which Parliament had set to their 
 activities. Those limits were, in all conscience, 
 wide enough, and included in their scope Housing, 
 Asylums, fridges, Fire-Brigades, Highways, Re- 
 formatory Schools, Main Drainage, Parks, The- 
 atres, and Music-Halls, besides the complicated sys- 
 tem of finance by which all our practice was regu- 
 lated. The Committees, dealing with these sub- 
 jects, and several others of less importance, were 
 manned by able, zealous, and conscientious ser- 
 vants of the public, who gave ungrudgingly of their 
 time (which in many cases was also money), 
 thought, and labour. The Council as a whole dis- 
 played a voracious appetite for work, and rendered, 
 without fee or reward, a service to Greater London 
 which no money could have purchased. 
 
 In the autumn of this year — 1889 — some corre- 
 spondence appeared in newspapers and reviews 
 about what was called " The New Liberalism." By 
 that title was meant a Liberalism which could no 
 longer content itself with the crudities of official 
 politics, but longed to bear its part in the social 
 regeneration of the race. In an article in the Nine- 
 teenth Century, I commented on the insensibility 
 of the Liberal Leaders to this new inspiration. 
 " Who would lead our armies into Edom ? " I con- 
 fess that I thought of Lord Rosebery as our like- 
 
SERVICE 337 
 
 liest champion; but I put the cause above the man. 
 " Wherever our leader may come from, I am 
 confident that the movement will go on. Qa ira! 
 C"a ira! Malgre les mutins, tout reussira! The 
 cause of Social Service arouses that moral enthu- 
 siasm which cannot be bought and cannot be re- 
 sisted, and which carries in itself the pledge of vic- 
 tory. The terrible magnitude and urgency of the 
 evils with which we have to cope cannot be over- 
 stated. Those who set out to fight them will have 
 to encounter great and manifold difficulties — igno- 
 rance, stupidity, prejudice, greed, cruelty, self-in- 
 terest, instincts of class, cowardly distrust of popu- 
 lar movements, ' spiritual wickedness in high 
 places.' And, in the face of these opposing forces, 
 it is cheering to think that, after long years of 
 single-handed striving, the good cause now has its 
 workers everywhere. And to none does it make a 
 more direct or a more imperious appeal than to us 
 Liberal politicians. If we are worthy of the name, 
 we must be in earnest about a cause which promises 
 happiness, and health, and length of days to those 
 who by their daily labour of hand and head prin- 
 cipally maintain the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race. We must be impatient of a state of society in 
 which healthy dwellings and unadulterated food and 
 pure water and fresh air are made the monopolies 
 of the rich. We must be eager to do our part 
 
338 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 towards abolishing filth and eradicating disease, and 
 giving free scope to those beneficent laws of Nature, 
 which, if only we will obey them, are so manifestly 
 designed to promote the welfare and the longevity 
 of man. If we believe that every human being has 
 equally and indefeasibly the right to be happy, we 
 must find our chief interest and most satisfying oc- 
 cupation in Social Service. Our aim is, first, to 
 lighten the load of existence for those thronging 
 thousands of the human family whose experience of 
 life is one long suffering, and then to ' add sun- 
 shine to daylight by making the happy happier.' 
 The poor, the ignorant, the weak, the hungry, the 
 over-worked, all call for aid ; and, in ministering to 
 their wants, the adherent of the New Liberalism 
 knows that he is fulfilling the best function of the 
 character which he professes, and moreover is help- 
 ing to enlarge the boundaries of the Kingdom of 
 God." 
 
 When those words were written, the London 
 County Council had just begun its work. I served 
 on it till March, 1895 ; and during those six years 
 it had proved in practice what a right-minded Mu- 
 nicipality can do towards brightening and sweet- 
 ening human life. It cut broad roads through 
 squalid slums, letting in light and air where all had 
 been darkness and pollution. It cleared wide areas 
 of insanitary dwellings, where only vice could 
 
SERVICE 339 
 
 thrive, and re-housed the dispossessed. It broke 
 up the monotony of mean streets with beautiful 
 parks and health-giving pleasure-grounds. It 
 transfigured the Music-Halls, and showed that, by 
 the exercise of a little firmness and common sense, 
 the tone and character of the " Poor Man's 
 Theatre " could be raised to the level of what 
 would be applauded in a drawing-room. By for- 
 bidding the sale of refreshments in the auditorium, 
 it crushed the old-fashioned superstition that pub- 
 lic entertainment and alcoholic drink are insepara- 
 bly connected. In some of these good works it 
 was my privilege to bear a part; and, in that 
 matter of the purification of the Music-Hails, I was 
 proud to follow the lead of Sir John McDougall, 
 who has since been Chairman of the Council; and 
 who, at the time of which I am writing, fearlessly 
 exposed himself to unbounded calumny, and even 
 physical violence, in his crusade for the moral 
 purity of popular amusement. Those were six 
 years of fruitful service; and, though a long time 
 has elapsed since I left the Council, I have con- 
 stantly watched its labours, and can heartily 
 assent to the eulogy pronounced by my friend 
 Henry Scott Holland, when he was quitting his 
 Canonry at St. Paul's for his Professorship at 
 Oxford : 
 
 " As for London, my whole heart is still given 
 
340 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 " to the lines of the Progressive policy on the 
 " County Council. I still think that this has given 
 " London a soul ; and that it has been by far the 
 " most effective work that one has watched hap- 
 " pening. .* . . The hope of London lies with the 
 " County Council." 
 
 Before I say goodbye to this portion of my " One 
 Look Back," let me record the fact that the London 
 County Council produced a poet of its own. The 
 first Council came to an end in March, 1892, and 
 the second, elected on the sth of that month, gave 
 the Progressives a greatly increased majority. 
 One of the newly-elected Councillors uttered his 
 triumphant joy in song. 
 
 " Here then you have your answer, you that thought 
 To find our London unawakened still, 
 A sleeping plunder for you, thought to fill 
 
 The gorge of private greed, and count for naught 
 
 The common good. Time unto her has brought 
 Her glorious hour, her strength of public will 
 Grown conscious, and a civic soul to thrill 
 
 The once dull mass that for your spoil you sought. 
 
 Lo, where the alert majestic city stands. 
 
 Dreaming her dream of golden days to be. 
 
 With shaded eyes beneath her arching hands 
 Scanning the forward pathway, like a seer 
 To whom the riven future has made clear 
 
 The marvel of some mighty destiny."* 
 
 Moved by the desire to gratify a young ambition, 
 I introduced the poet to Mr. Gladstone, and that 
 *F. Henderson, By the Sea, and other poems. 
 
SERVICE 341 
 
 great man, who never damned with faint praise, 
 pronounced that this was the finest thing written 
 about London since Wordsworth's Sonnet " Com- 
 posed upon Westminster Bridge." 
 
 In August, 1892, Gladstone became Prime Min- 
 ister for the fourth time. He gave me a place in 
 his Government; and for the next three years my 
 activities were Hmited to North Bedfordshire 
 which I then represented, the House of Commons, 
 and Whitehall. I was restored to liberty by the 
 dissolution of July, 1895. In my chapter about Ox- 
 ford, I spoke of the Rev. E. S. Talbot, then Warden 
 of Keble, and now Bishop of Winchester, as one 
 of those whose friendship I had acquired in 
 under-graduate days. After serving for a while 
 as Vicar of Leeds, he was appointed to the See 
 of Rochester, which then included South Lon- 
 don, and was consecrated on St. Luke's Day, 1895, 
 Very soon after he had entered on his work, he said 
 to me, " Men of leisure are very scarce in South 
 London. Will you come across the Thames, and 
 lend us a hand ? " Thus I entered on an entirely 
 fresh line of activities, which will be more appropri- 
 ately described in the ensuing chapter. 
 
XV. 
 
 ECCLESIASTICA 
 
 The English Church, as established by the law of England, 
 offers the Supernatural to all who choose to come. It is like 
 the Divine Being Himself, Whose sun shines alike on the 
 evil and on the good. 
 
 — ^J. H. Shorthouse, Johm Inglesant. 
 
 Mr. Shorthouse, like most people who have 
 come over to the Church from Dissent, set an inor- 
 dinate value on the principle of Establishment. He 
 seemed (and in that particular he resembled Arch- 
 bishop Tait) incapable of conceiving the idea of a 
 Church as separate from, and independent of, the 
 State. The words " as established by the law of 
 England " in the passage which stands at the head 
 of this chapter appear to suggest a doubt whether 
 the English Church, if she ceased to be " estab- 
 lished," could still discharge her function as the di- 
 vinely-appointed dispenser of sacramental grace to 
 the English people. Those who, like Mr. Gladstone, 
 believe that no change in her worldly circumstances 
 could " compromise or impair her character as the 
 Catholic and Apostolic Church of this country," 
 would omit Mr. Shorthouse's qualifying words, and 
 would say, simply, that the English Church, whether 
 established or not, offers the Supernatural to all who 
 
ECCLESIASTICA 343 
 
 choose to come, and that she is, has been, and always 
 will be, " historically the same institution through 
 which the Gospel was originally preached to the 
 English Nation." But this is not the place for theo- 
 rization; so, for the moment, I am content to take 
 Mr. Shorthouse's statement as it stands, and to say 
 that a loving pride in the English Church has been 
 the permanent passion of my life. I hold with Dean 
 Church, a man not given to hyperbole, that " in spite 
 of inconsistencies and menacing troubles, she is still 
 the most glorious Church in Christendom." 
 
 I was baptized in the Parish Church of St. Mary 
 the Virgin, Woburn, formerly a chapel dependent 
 on the Cistercian Abbey hard by, which the first 
 Earl of Bedford received as a gift from Henry 
 VIII.* This truly interesting church was de- 
 stroyed, to please an innovating incumbent, in 1864; 
 but my earliest impressions of public worship are 
 connected with it, and in my mind's eye I can see it 
 as clearly as if it were still standing. It had never 
 been " restored " ; but had been decorated by my 
 grandfather, who inherited the ecclesiastical rights 
 of the Abbots of Woburn, and whose " Curate " the 
 incumbent was.* My grandfather was a liberal 
 giver, and did his best, according to his lights, to 
 
 *Cf. Froude's "Short Studies in Great Subjects." 
 *It may perhaps be worth noting that my parents were 
 married, in 1834, by a Special License issued by my grand- 
 father as Abbot of Woburn. 
 
344 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 make the Church beautiful. He filled the East Win- 
 dow with stained glass, the central subject being his 
 own coat of arms, with patriarchs and saints 
 grouped round it in due subordination. Beneath 
 the window was a fine picture, by Carlo Maratti, of 
 the Holy Family. The Holy Table was a table in- 
 deed, with legs and drawers after the manner of a 
 writing-table, and a cover of red velvet. The chan- 
 cel was long ; and the south side of it was engrossed 
 by " the Duke's Pew," which was enclosed within 
 high walls and thick curtains, and contained a fire- 
 place. The north side of the chancel was equally 
 engrossed by a pew for the Duke's servants. The 
 choir, male and female after their kind, surrounded 
 the organ in a gallery at the West End. The whole 
 church was pewed throughout, and white-washed, 
 the chancel being enriched with plaster mouldings. 
 On the capital of each pillar was a scutcheon, bear- 
 ing the arms of some family allied to our own. The 
 largest and most vivid presentment of the Royal 
 Arms which I have ever seen crowned the chancel- 
 arch. 
 
 Our clerical staff consisted of the incumbent 
 (who became a " Vicar " by Act of Parliament in 
 1868) and a curate. Our list of services was as 
 follows: Sunday — 11 a.m.. Morning Prayer, Lit- 
 any, Table-prayers, and Sermon; 6 p.m.. Evening 
 Prayer and Sermon. There was Evening Prayer 
 
ECCLESIASTICA 345 
 
 with a sermon on Thursdays, and a prayer-meeting 
 in the school-room on Tuesday evenings. There 
 were no extra services in Lent or Advent, nor on 
 any Holy Days except Good Friday and Ascension 
 Day. The Holy Communion was administered 
 after Morning Service on the first Sunday of the 
 month, and on Christmas and Easter Days; and 
 after Evening Service on the third Sunday. The 
 black gown was, of course, worn in the pulpit, and I 
 remember a mild sensation caused by the disuse of 
 bands. The prayers were preached; the Psalms 
 were read; and the hymn-book in use was "The 
 Church and Home Metrical Psalter and Hymnal " — 
 a quaint compilation which I have never seen else- 
 where. It would not be easy to describe the dreari- 
 ness of the services ; and the preaching corresponded 
 to them. This is curious, for Evangelical preaching 
 generally was rousing and effective. I remember 
 that we heard preaching of that type from strangers 
 who occasionally " took duty " or " pleaded for 
 Societies " ; but our own pastors always expatiated 
 on Justification by Faith only. I cannot recall any 
 other subject; and, even in enforcing this, " Pulpit- 
 eloquence," topical allusions, and illustrations 
 whether from nature or from books, were rigidly 
 eschewed. " As dull as a sermon " is a proverbial 
 saying which for me in early boyhood had an awful 
 truth. 
 
346 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 It has been stated in an earlier chapter that I 
 discovered the Sacramental System of the Church 
 by the simple method of studying the Prayer Book. 
 Certainly I got no help in that direction from my 
 
 spiritual pastors. The incumbent was, I should 
 
 * 
 
 think, the Lowest Churchman who ever lived. He 
 was a Cambridge man ; a thorough gentleman ; well- 
 read ; wholly devoted to his sacred calling ; and fear- 
 less in his assertion of what he believed to be right. 
 (He once refused to let Jowett preach in our pulpit, 
 though the noble patron made the request. ) He was 
 entirely insensible to poetry, beauty, romance, and 
 enthusiasm ; but his mind was essentially logical, and 
 he followed his creed to its extremest consequences. 
 Baptismal grace, of course, he absolutely denied. 
 He prepared me for Confirmation, and he began his ' 
 preparation by assailing my faith in the Presence 
 and the Succession. He defined Confirmation as " a 
 coming of age in the things of the soul." I perfectly 
 remember a sermon preached on " Sacrament Sun- 
 day," which ended with some such words as these, 
 " I go to yonder table to-day ; not expecting to meet 
 the Lord, because I know He will not be there." I 
 have seldom heard the doctrine of the Real Absence 
 stated with equal frankness. 
 
 All my religious associations were with the Evan- 
 gelical school, of which my parents were devoted 
 adherents. My Uncle, the Rev. Lord Wriothesley 
 
ECCLESIASTICA 347 
 
 Russell (1804-1886), had been a disciple of Charles 
 Simeon at Cambridge, but had completely discarded 
 such fragments of Churchmanship as lingered in his 
 master's teaching. My mother (1810-1884) had 
 been in early life closely allied with " the Clapham 
 Sect " ; and our friendship with the last survivor of 
 that sect. Miss Marianne Thornton (1797- 1887), 
 linked us to the Wilberforces, the Venns, and the 
 Macaulays. My acquaintance with Lord Shaftes- 
 bury (1801-1885) I have always esteemed one 
 of the chief honours of my life. He combined in a 
 singular degree the gifts which make a Leader. He 
 had an imperious will, a perfervid temper, un- 
 bounded enthusiasm, inexhaustible energy. Any 
 movement with which he was connected he con- 
 trolled. He brooked neither opposition nor criti- 
 cism. His authority was reinforced by advantages 
 of aspect and station; by a stately manner, by a 
 noble and commanding eloquence. But all these 
 gifts were as nothing when compared with the 
 power of his lifelong consistency. When he was a 
 boy at Harrow, a brutal scene at a pauper's funeral 
 awoke his devotion to the cause of the poor and 
 helpless. Seventy years later, when he lay on his 
 deathbed, his only regret was that he must leave the 
 world with so much misery in it. From first to 
 last, he was an Evangelical of the highest and purest 
 type, displaying all the religious and social virtues 
 
348 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 of that school in their perfection. Yet he left it on 
 record that he had been more harshly treated by the 
 Evangelical party than by any other. Perhaps the 
 explanation is that those excellent people were only 
 kicking agaijast the pricks of a too-absolute con- 
 trol. 
 
 Such were the religious associations of my early 
 life; and I am deeply thankful for them. I have 
 found, by much experiment, that there is no founda- 
 tion on which the superstructure of Catholic reli- 
 gion can be more securely built than on the Evan- 
 gelical confession of man's utter sinfulness, and 
 of the free pardon purchased by the Blood of Christ. 
 A man trained in that confession may, without sac- 
 rificing a jot of his earlier creed, learn to accept all 
 that the Catholic Church teaches about Orders and 
 Sacraments ; but to the end he will retain some char- 
 acteristic marks of his spiritual beginnings. For 
 my own part, I hold with Mr. Gladstone that to 
 labeloneselfwith an ecclesiastical nickname would be 
 to compromise " the first of earthly blessings — one's 
 mental freedom * " ; but, if anyone chose to call me a 
 " Catholic Evangelical," I should not quarrel with 
 the designation. 
 
 I said in an earlier chapter that I had an inborn 
 fondness for Catholic ceremonial, and this, I sup- 
 pose, was part of my general love of material beauty. 
 
 * Letters on the Church and Religion. Vol. I., p. 385. 
 
ECCLESIASTICA 349 
 
 Amid such surroundings as I have described, it 
 was a fondness not easily indulged. When I was 
 twelve years old, I was staying at Leamington in 
 August, and on a Holy Day I peeped into the 
 Roman Church there, and saw for the first time the 
 ceremonies of High Mass; and from that day on 
 I longed to see them reproduced in the Church of 
 England. During one of our periodical visits to 
 London, I discovered the beautiful church in Gor- 
 don Square where the " Adherents of a Restored 
 Apostolate" celebrate Divine Worship with be- 
 wildering splendour. The propinquity of our house 
 to Westminster Abbey enabled me to enter into the 
 more chastened, yet dignified, beauty of the English 
 rite. At Harrow the brightness and colour of our 
 School-Chapel struck my untutored eye as " ex- 
 ceeding magnifical " ; and the early celebrations in 
 the Parish Church had a solemnity which the 
 Chapel lacked. 
 
 But the happiest memory of all is connected with 
 a little Church * about two miles from my home. It 
 is a tiny structure of one aisle, with the altar fenced 
 off by a screen of carved oak. It served a group of 
 half a dozen houses, and it stood amid green fields, 
 remote from traffic, and scarcely visible except to 
 those who searched for it. There an enthusiastic 
 and devoted priest spent five and twenty years of 
 * Pottesgrove. 
 
350 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 an isolated ministry; and there, for the first time 
 in our communion, I saw the Divine Mysteries cele- 
 brated with the appropriate accessories. 
 
 My walks to that secluded altar, in the fresh 
 brightness o^ summer mornings,, can never be for- 
 gotten until the whole tablet is blotted. On the sky- 
 line, the great masses of distant woodland, half- 
 veiled in mist, lay like a blue cloud. Within, there 
 was " the fair white linen cloth upon the wooden 
 table, with fresh flowers above, and the worn slabs 
 beneath that record the dim names of the forgotten 
 dead " ; and there " amid the faint streaks of the 
 early dawn, the faithful, kneeling round the oaken 
 railing, took into their hands the worn silver of the 
 Grail — 
 
 " The chalice of the Grapes of God." * 
 
 Perhaps it was just as well for a boy that these 
 glimpses of beautiful worship were few and far be- 
 tween. One was saved from the perils of a mere 
 externalism, and was driven inward on the unseen 
 realities which ceremonial may sometimes obscure. 
 And then, when one got up to Oxford, one found 
 all the splendours of the sanctuary in rich abund- 
 ance, and enjoyed them with a whole-hearted self- 
 abandonment. I need not repeat what I have al- 
 ready said about St. Barnabas and Cowley and the 
 
 *J. H. Shorthouse — Introduction to George Herbert's 
 Temple. 
 
ECCLESIASTICA 35i 
 
 other strongholds of Catholic worship. I am eter- 
 nally their debtor, and the friends with whom I 
 shared them have helped to shape my life. 
 
 But, in spite of all these enjoyments, religious 
 life at Oxford between 1872 and 1876 was not al- 
 together happy. A strong flood of Romanism 
 burst upon the University, and carried some of my 
 best friends from my side; and, concurrently with 
 this disturbance, an American teacher — Mr. Pear- 
 sail Smith — attacked our faith from the opposite 
 quarter. He taught an absolute disregard of all 
 forms and rites, and, not content with the ordinary 
 doctrine of instantaneous conversion, preached the 
 absolute sinlessness of the believer. The movement 
 which, in 1874, he set on foot was marked by dis- 
 asters, of which the nature can best be inferred from 
 a characteristic saying, " The believer's conflict with 
 Sin is all stuff." This teaching had its natural con- 
 sequences, and the movement issued in spiritual 
 tragedy. 
 
 In the following year we were touched by the 
 much more wholesome enterprise of Messrs. Moody 
 and Sankey. Their teaching was wholly free from 
 the perilous stuff which had defiled the previous mis- 
 sion; and, though it shook the faith of some who 
 had cultivated the husk rather than the kernel of 
 ritualism, still one could join in the generous 
 tribute paid by Dr. Liddon on Whitsun Day, 1876: 
 
352 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 " Last year two American preachers visited this 
 country, to whom God had given, together with 
 earnest belief in some portions of the gospel, a cor- 
 responding spirit of fearless enterprise. Certainly 
 they had no. such credentials of an Apostolic Min- 
 istry as a well-instructed and believing Churchman 
 would require. . . . And yet, acting according to 
 the light which God had given them, they threw 
 themselves on our great cities with the ardour of 
 Apostles ; spoke of a higher world to thousands who 
 pass the greater part of life in dreaming only of 
 this ; and made many of us feel that we owe them at 
 least the debt of an example, which He Who 
 breatheth where He listeth must surely have in- 
 spired them to give us."* 
 
 When I came up to London, after leaving Ox- 
 ford, " the world was all before me where to 
 choose," and I made a pretty wide survey before de- 
 ciding on my habitual place of worship. St. Paul's 
 Cathedral had lately awoke from its long sleep, and, 
 under the wise guidance of Church, Gregory, and 
 Liddon, was beginning to show the perfection of 
 worship on the strict line of the English Prayer- 
 Book. 
 
 Being by temperament profoundly Gothic, I hold 
 (with Sir William Richmond) that Westminster 
 
 * Influences of the Holy Spirit. University Sermons, 
 Series II. 
 
ECCLESIASTICA 353 
 
 Abbey is the most beautiful church in the world. 
 But it had nothing to offer in the way of seemly 
 worship ; and, while Liddon was preaching the Gos- 
 pel at St. Paul's, Dean Stanley was delivering the 
 fine rhetoric and dubious history which were his 
 substitutes for theology, and with reference to 
 which a Jewish lady said to me, " I have heard the 
 Dean preach for eighteen years, and I have never 
 heard a word from him which I could not accept." 
 At the Temple, Dr. Vaughan was at the height of 
 his vogue, and Sunday after Sunday was teaching 
 the lawyers the effective grace of a nervous and fin- 
 ished style. 
 
 All Saints, Margaret Street, St. Paul's, Knights- 
 bridge, and St. Barnabas, Pimlico, showed a type 
 of worship refined, artistic, and rather prim. St. 
 Alban's, Holborn, " the Mother and Mistress " of 
 all ritualistic churches, combined Roman cere- 
 monial with the passionately Evangelical teach- 
 ing of the greatest extempore preacher I have 
 ever heard, Arthur Stanton. St. Michael's, Shore- 
 ditch, and St. Peter's, London Docks, were outposts 
 of the ritualistic army. The Low Church congre- 
 gated at Portman Chapel and Belgrave Chapel, and 
 Eaton Chapel (all since demolished), at St. Mich- 
 ael's, Chester Square, and St. John's, Paddington. 
 Broad Churchmen, as a rule, were hidden in holes 
 and corners; for the bizarre magnificence of Holy 
 
354 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 Trinity, Sloane Street, had not yet superseded the 
 humble structure in which Henry Blunt had for- 
 merly preached into the Duchess of Beaufort's* ear- 
 trumpet ; and St. Margaret's, Westminster, had 
 only just begun to reverberate the rolling eloquence 
 of Dr. Farraf. At St. Peter's, Eaton Square, amid 
 surroundings truly hideous, George Wilkinson, 
 afterward Bishop of St. Andrews, dominated, 
 sheerly by spiritual force, a congregation which, 
 having regard to the numbers, wealth, and impor- 
 tance of the men who composed it, was the most re- 
 markable that I have ever seen. Cabinet Ministers, 
 great noblemen, landed proprietors, Members of 
 Parliament, soldiers, lawyers, doctors, and " men 
 about town," were the clay which this master-potter 
 moulded at his will. 
 
 Then, as now. Society loved to be scolded, and 
 the more Mr. Wilkinson thundered, the more it 
 crowded to his feet. " Pay your bills." " Get up 
 when you are called." " Don't stay at a ball till 
 two, and then say you are too delicate for early 
 services." " Eat one dinner a day instead of three, 
 and try to earn that one." " Give up champagne 
 for the season, and what you save on your wine- 
 merchant's bill send to the Mission-Field." " You 
 are sixty-five years old, and have never been con- 
 
 *CharIotte Sophia, Duches of Beaufort, a leader of the Evan- 
 gelical party, died 1854 — aged eighty-four. 
 
ECCLESIASTICA 355 
 
 firmed. Never too late to mend. Join a Confirma- 
 tion Class at once, and try to remedy, by good ex- 
 ample now, the harm you have done your servants 
 or your neighbours by fifty years' indifference." 
 " Sell that diamond cross which you carry with you 
 into the sin-polluted atmosphere of the opera, give 
 the proceeds to feed the poor, and wear the only real 
 cross — the cross of self-discipline and self-denial." 
 These are echoes, faint, indeed, but not, I 
 think, unfaithful, of St. Peter's pulpit in its days 
 of glory. 
 
 When I look back upon the Church in London as 
 it was when I first knew it, and when I compare 
 my recollections with what I see now, I note, of 
 course, a good many changes, and not all of them 
 improvements. The Evangelicals, with their plain 
 teaching about sin and forgiveness, are gone, and 
 their place is taken by the professors of a flabby 
 latitudinarianism, which ignores sin — the central 
 fact of human life — and therefore can find no place 
 for the Atonement. Heresy is preached more un- 
 blushingly than it was thirty years ago; and, when 
 it tries to disguise itself in the frippery of aesthetic 
 Anglicanism, it leads captive not a few. In the 
 churches commonly called Ritualistic, I note one 
 great and significant improvement. English Church- 
 men have gradually discovered that they have an 
 indigenous ritual of their own — dignified, expres- 
 
356 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 sive, artistic, free from fuss and fidgets — ^and that 
 they have no need to import strange rites fr'om 
 France or Belgium. The evolution of the English 
 Rite is one of the wholesome signs of the times. 
 About preaching, I am not so clear. The almost 
 complete disuse of the written sermon is in many 
 ways a loss. The discipline of the paper protects the 
 flock alike against shambling inanities, and against a 
 too boisterous rhetoric. No doubt a really fine ex- 
 tempore sermon is a great work of art; but for 
 nine preachers out of ten the manuscript is the 
 safer way. 
 
 As regards the quality of the clergy, the change 
 is all to the good. When I was a boy at Harrow, 
 Dr. Vaughan, preaching to us on our Founder's 
 Day, spoke with just contempt of " men who choose 
 the Ministry because there is a Family Living 
 waiting for them; or because they think they can 
 make that profession — ^that, and none other — com- 
 patible with indolence and self-indulgence; or be- 
 cause they imagine that a scantier talent and a more 
 idle use of it can in that one calling be made to suf- 
 fice." " These notions," he added, " are out of 
 date, one Act of Disestablishment would annihilate 
 them." That Act of Disestablishment has not come 
 yet, but the change has come without waiting for 
 it. Even the " Family Living " no longer attracts. 
 Young men seek Holy Orders because they want 
 
Lady Chapel, St. Saviour's, Southwark. 
 
ECCLESIASTICA 357 
 
 work. Clerical dreams of laziness or avarice, self- 
 seeking or self-indulgence, have gone out for ever; 
 and the English Church has in her commissioned 
 service a band of men whose devotion and self-sac- 
 rifice would be a glory to any church in Chris- 
 tendom. 
 
 An active politician, as I was thirty years ago, 
 has not much leisure; but, all through my parlia- 
 mentary work, I sought to bear in mind that Life is 
 Service. I helped to found the White Cross League, 
 and worked hard for the cause which it represents. 
 I bore a hand in Missions and Bible-classes. I was 
 a member of a Diocesan Conference. I had ten 
 years of happy visiting in Hospitals, receiving in- 
 finitely more than I could ever give. And I should 
 think that no man of my age has spoken on so many 
 platforms, or at so many Drawing Room rheetings. 
 But all this was desultory business, and I always 
 desired a more definite obligation. 
 
 On St. Luke's Day, 1895, my loved and honoured 
 friend, Edward Talbot, formerly Warden of Keble, 
 was consecrated looth Bishop of Rochester; and 
 the diocese at that time included all South London. 
 As soon as he established himself there, the new 
 Bishop, so I have already stated, asked me to come 
 across the Thames, and do some definite work in 
 South London. At first, that work consisted of 
 service on a Public Morals Committee, and of lee- 
 
358 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 turing on ecclesiastical topics; but gradually the 
 field contracted in one direction and expanded in 
 another. 
 
 It was in 1891 that Dr. Temple, then Bishop of 
 London, and afterwards Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, being anxious to lighten the burden of 
 preaching which lies so heavily on hardworked 
 clergy, determined to license lay-readers to speak in 
 consecrated buildings. It was a bold step, and of 
 doubtful legality; but the Bishop characteristically 
 declared that he would chance the illegality, feeling 
 sure that, when the Vicar and Churchwardens in- 
 vited a lay-reader to speak, no one would be churlish 
 enough to raise legal objections. The result proved 
 that the Bishop was perfectly right, and the Diocese 
 of London has now a band of licensed lay-preach- 
 ers who render the clergy a great deal of valuable 
 aid. I was from the first a good deal attracted by 
 the prospect of joining this band, but Parliament 
 and Office left me no available leisure. When Dr. 
 Talbot became Bishop of Rochester, he at once took 
 in hand the reorganization of the Order of Lay- 
 Readers in his Diocese ; and before long had deter- 
 mined to follow the example set by Bishop Temple, 
 and to license some of his lay-readers to speak at 
 extra services in consecrated buildings. He made it 
 quite clear from the first — and the point has sub- 
 sequently been established by Convocation — that 
 
ECCLESIASTICA 359 
 
 there was no idea of reviving the Minor Orders. 
 The lay-reader was to be, in every sense, a layman ; 
 and, while he might speak, under proper restric- 
 tions, in a consecrated building, he still would speak 
 not " as one having authority," but simply as 
 brother-man to brother-men. 
 
 I was admitted to the ofHce of a Diocesan Lay- 
 Reader, in the Private Chapel of the Bishop's House 
 at Kennington, on the isth of January, 1898, and 
 have been permitted to spend thirteen years of 
 happy service in this informal ministry. Perhaps, 
 in a chapter dedicated to " Ecclesiastica " some rec- 
 ord of my experience may not be out of place. 
 
 It is a reproach commonly brought against the 
 Church of England by those who are not her 
 friends that she is rigid and inelastic, hidebound in 
 obsolete rules, and incapable of adapting herself 
 to the changing conditions of the world. This re- 
 proach is, I believe, quite unfounded. Indeed, I 
 should venture to affirm that one of the character- 
 istic virtues of the Church is her readiness to adopt 
 and adapt. Thus, within living memory, she has 
 borrowed a good deal of her ceremonial from 
 Rome, and a good deal of her hymnody from Dis- 
 sent. She has copied the " Three Hours " from the 
 Jesuits, and the " Watch-night " from the Wes- 
 leyans; and the Harvest Home and the Mothers' 
 Meeting from I don't know where. " Retreats " 
 
36o ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 were purely Roman ; and " Parochial Missions " 
 have an origin half Roman and half Methodistical. 
 All these things have been assimilated by the 
 Church, and have passed almost without observation 
 into her practical system. The latest addition to 
 her resources is the " Men's Service." This also is 
 borrowed from the Dissenters, and the history of it 
 is easily traced. 
 
 During the last twenty years the " Pleasant Sun- 
 day Afternoon " has become a conspicuous feature 
 of Dissenting devotion. We all know the look of 
 the placard outside some large Dissenting chapel; 
 "P. S.A." 
 
 Meeting for Men only. 
 
 Every Sunday afternoon 
 
 at 4 o'clock. 
 
 Brief, Bright, and Brotherly. 
 
 I have always cultivated friendly relations with 
 my Dissenting fellow-Christians, who, having been 
 baptized, are members of the Catholic Church, al- 
 though unhappily separated from her altars. Prob- 
 ably on this account I was often asked to speak at 
 P. S. A. gatherings, and I have sometimes found 
 them very uplifting. A gathering at Hanley Tab- 
 ernacle, where four thousand potters and miners 
 sang " Sons of Labour " (omitting the verse about 
 the Altar), can never be forgotten. These P. S. A. 
 gatherings consisted of a good deal of music, vo- 
 cal and instrumental, solos and choruses ; a reading 
 
ECCLESIASTICA 36X 
 
 from the Bible, with " a few words " on it ; a long 
 prayer, during which the congregation neither stood 
 nor knelt, but sat in the peculiar attitude of Protes- 
 tant devotion, with their heads protruded over their 
 knees ; and an Address. A curious feature was that 
 money was taken at the door, and at the end of the 
 year the money was spent on prize-books for the 
 most regular attendants, the object being apparently 
 to convert a casual gathering into a permanent class 
 or club. 
 
 Now, there was a great deal of good in these 
 P. S. A.'s. They presented religion in a simple and 
 attractive form to men who otherwise might never 
 have heard of it, and they promoted brotherliness, 
 good citizenship, and friendly feeling between dif- 
 ferent classes. But the fatal defects, from the 
 Churchman's point of view, were, (i) that the re- 
 ligion taught at these gatherings seemed to have no 
 dogmatic basis, and (2) that in practice it stopped 
 at the P. S. A. I am the last man in the world to 
 introduce controversial matter into gatherings for 
 edification; but before one can speak one must 
 know whether one's hearers and one's self have any 
 common ground. For me the basis of all religious 
 efifort is the Impregnable Rock of the Divine Incar- 
 nation. If I may take that for granted, I can speak 
 without constraint to Wesleyans or Independents, 
 Baptists or Quakers. But once when I asked a 
 
362 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 young minister in charge of a P. S. A. whether I 
 might assume that my audience were Christians, he 
 replied with a sweet smile, " We are not credal 
 here." 
 
 So much for the basis of the P. S. A., and the su- 
 perstructure was like unto it. There was no attempt 
 to lead the hearers onward and upward, from the 
 first principles of right and wrong, to the higher 
 regions of Christian privilege and duty. Of course, 
 there could be no appeal for Confession, or Con- 
 firmation, or the Holy Eucharist as we understand 
 It; but I never heard a word about the necessity of 
 Baptism, the duty of regular attendance at public 
 worship, or participation in the Memorial Feast as 
 it is observed in the Dissenting bodies. For those 
 who took part in it, the P. S. A. seemed the be-all 
 and end-all of Religion. 
 
 Some fifteen years ago certain clerg)mien, noting 
 the popularity of the P. S. A. in their districts, and 
 perceiving also the limitations of its usefulness, de- 
 termined to try the same idea on better lines. So 
 the " Men's Service " began, and it has spread rap- 
 idly and widely. Through my Lay-Readership, I 
 have seen a great deal of its working in the Dioceses 
 of London and Southwark, and have been allowed 
 to take some part in it. I have conferred with the 
 founders of the movement, and with some of those 
 who have developed it most successfully. I have 
 
ECCLESIASTICA 363 
 
 also had the not less instructive experience of seeing 
 it where it has proved a failure. I have thus accu- 
 mulated a good deal of experience, and have arrived 
 at some very definite conclusions. Perhaps it may 
 be worth while to put these before the reader in 
 the hope of collecting further hints from those who 
 have worked the system, and of helping others who 
 may be thinking of trying it. 
 
 1. First and foremost, the service must be for 
 men only. This is vital. Men who wish to go to 
 Church with their wives and children can easily do 
 so at the regular services. The Men's Service is 
 specially intended for those who, from whatever 
 cause, prefer to come as individuals and not as mem- 
 bers of a family. One such said : " I like your 
 service, for my wife can't throw it in my teeth if I 
 go and do contrary to what the speaker said." An- 
 other great advantage is that the exclusion of 
 women facilitates plain speaking on important 
 topics which cannot be handled in mixed audiences. 
 Another is that the absence of ladies' finery pre- 
 vents the dirty and the ragged from feeling ill at 
 ease. 
 
 2. The service must be held in Church. I know 
 some quite successful services which are held in 
 schools and parish-rooms. The service itself is just 
 as hearty and as reverent, but it does not educate. 
 The principal object of the Men's Service is to ac- 
 
364 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 custom men to church-going. When once they have 
 found by experience that there is nothing stiff or 
 alarming or unnatural in the inside of a church; 
 that they can sit where they like and behave as they 
 like — sing or pot sing, kneel or not kneel, as the 
 fancy takes them — many prejudices are dispelled. 
 The man who has enjoyed himself at the Men's 
 Service begins to feel a liking for the Church, and 
 perhaps slips in one night to Evensong; likes that,, 
 too, and so gradually passes on into regular churchr 
 going. 
 
 3. The service must only last an hour. That is 
 as much as the ordinary Britisher can stand. There 
 are the claims of dinner, the after-dinner pipe, and 
 tea, to be considered. The hour must be fixed in 
 conformity with local custom, so as not to interfere 
 with these institutions. In some districts three is 
 the best time, in some 3.30, in some four. But 
 whatever hour is fixed, strict punctuality must be 
 observed. No time must be cut to waste. Roughly 
 speaking, prayers, reading, and music should take 
 about half-an-hour, leaving the other half for the 
 speaker. Care should be taken, especially by diffuse 
 speakers, not to overflow the limit. 
 
 4. The service should be every Sunday. Once 
 a month won't do. If a man comes one Sunday as 
 an experiment and is pleased, very likely he will 
 come next Sunday ; then, if he finds the door locked. 
 
ECCLESIASTICA 365 
 
 he goes away in disgust' — perhaps tries the Dis- 
 senters' P. S. A., but more probably relapses into his 
 previous habit of going nowhere. A weekly service 
 is necessary to create a habit of attending. A diffi- 
 culty is sometimes found in procuring speakers 
 for weekly services, but this may be met by hav- 
 ing different types of service on different Sun- 
 days. At one very successful Mission which I 
 know, run entirely by young laymen, there is a 
 Bible-class on three Sundays in the month and an 
 address on the fourth. But every Sunday there is 
 something. 
 
 5. This leads me to the type of service. It is to 
 be borne in mind that men for whom these services 
 are primarily intended are not Church-goers. They 
 do not know the Prayer-Book, and cannot make re- 
 sponses. Our Father, and very plain, short, extem- 
 pore prayers make the best beginning. But the 
 prayers should be considered beforehand and the 
 words carefully chosen. A few collects from the 
 Prayer-Book slowly read, with simple words sub- 
 stituted for difficult ones, often do well. Before 
 long the Creed can be added, and it is quickly taken 
 up ; likewise the Confession, General Thanksgiving, 
 etc. Special prayers should be invited for special 
 objects, thus : 
 
 " Let us pray for those who were killed in such 
 and such a wreck or accident." 
 
366 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 " Let us pray that God will abate the sickness in 
 this parish." 
 
 " Let us pray for guidance at the General Elec- 
 tion." 
 
 " Let us pray for the crops and the harvest." 
 
 " Let us pra^ for the friend whom we have just 
 lost." 
 
 6. The music is a very important part of the 
 service. Great care should be taken in choosing 
 the hymns. They should be manly, not babyish; 
 intelligible, not mystical ; if possible, connected with 
 the subject of the address ; and sung to well-known 
 tunes. If it is thought well to have a special hymn- 
 book, the Durham Mission Hymn-book is good, and 
 the Church Army Hymn-book is in some ways even 
 better for an unlearned congregation. " Ancient 
 and Modern," with careful choosing, will do very 
 well. I emphasize the words with careful choosing, 
 for it is distressing to hear the conductor of the 
 service ask in the vestry when the clock is on the 
 stroke, " Is there any hymn you would like ? " and, 
 in reply to one's suggestion, say, " Oh, I don't know 
 if our men can sing that." The hymns and the sub- 
 ject of address should be carefully fixed before- 
 hand. Solos should be discouraged as tending to 
 vanity. Rightly said Mr. Nuttwood in Felix Holt, 
 " I cannot but think it a snare when a professing 
 Christian has a bass voice like Brother Kemp's. It 
 
ECCLESIASTICA 367 
 
 makes him desire to be heard of men; but the 
 weaker song of the humble may have more power 
 in the Ear of God." An orchestra is an immense 
 help if it is kept in its proper place ; but its tendency 
 is to overstep its province and make itself the centre 
 of the service. A good plain is to keep it till after 
 the address, and then those who like can stay to 
 listen to it, while those who want their tea can go 
 away without ofifence. 
 
 7. Who should conduct the service? It is well 
 that there should be one clergyman regularly re- 
 sponsible for it — perhaps the Vicar, perhaps one of 
 the curates. He need not speak every Sunday, but 
 he should always be at the service, say the prayers, 
 and give the blessing at the end. The speaker may 
 be anyone whom the clergyman invites. In some 
 dioceses, as I said just now, lay-readers are licensed 
 to speak in churches ; and a layman speaking to lay- 
 men is felt by some to have a certain access which 
 is denied to the clergymen. But no eloquence in 
 priest or layman — still less the mere announcement 
 that " there will be a Men's Service " — will collect 
 the men on Sunday afternoon unless they are per- 
 sonally visited and invited to come. They must be 
 canvassed like voters at an election. This is lay- 
 men's work, and all the most successful Men's Serv- 
 ices with which I am acquainted have been started 
 by a committee or council of laymen, who, having 
 
368 ONE LOOK BACK 
 
 caught the idea of a Men's Service, have put their 
 backs into the work, and have compelled their fel- 
 lows to come in. 
 
 8. What should be the subjects of speaking at a 
 Men's Service? They must be strictly religious sub- 
 jects. If men want literature or science, they can 
 find them at the Lecture-Hall or the Polytechnic. 
 But it is to be borne in mind that the hearers know 
 little or nothing about religion, and are absolutely 
 unacquainted with " Pulpit Phraseology." Intelli- 
 gible English — the English of the platform and the 
 newspaper— should therefore be used. Topical ref- 
 erences attract attention. An apt quotation always 
 helps. But all these are only means. The end of all 
 our speaking must be the Exaltation of the Cross. 
 
 THE END.