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THOMAS HUGHES 
 
 OF ENGLAND AND HIS 
 VISITS TO CHICAGO IN 
 
 1870 AND 1880 
 
 BY Daniel Goodwin 
 
 Chicago Literary Club 
 i8q6 
 
.f noi^3 
 
 PRESS OP 
 
 ROGERS & SMITH CO. 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
THIS MEMORIAL of our late Honor- 
 ary member, Thomas Hughes, was 
 read at the meeting of the Chicago Literary- 
 Club on Monday evening, June 8, 1896, 
 and ordered printed and copies sent to 
 the members of the Club. 
 
 Frederick W. Gookin, 
 
 Recording Secretary. 
 
THOMAS HUGHES. 
 
 A MONG the star actors of this 19th cen- 
 -^*- tury, " in this great Globe Theatre, 
 whose scene-shifter is time and whose curtain 
 is rung down by death," there are few who have 
 given more pleasure, few who have contrib- 
 uted more to the building up of pure, manly, 
 robust and cheerful character than Thomas 
 Hughes. The Chicago Literary Club has 
 many reasons for making some record of his 
 life and character. In the first place he is 
 the only one of the many eminent English 
 writers whom we have elected to honorary 
 membership. We have entertained Matthew 
 Arnold, Canon Farrar, and other literary 
 celebrities, but we have placed none of them 
 upon our roll of membership, our highest 
 roll of honor. The relations of Tom Hughes 
 to our Chicago Literary Club are unique. 
 He gave to the world one of the most popular 
 books ever written ("Tom Brown's School 
 Days at Rugby "), and in doing so he brought 
 
into distinct prominence the marvelous beauty 
 of thought and expression of our well beloved 
 Lowell, and made him known to all readers 
 in England and America. When the Biglow 
 Papers were published, in 1848, Lowell was 
 little known outside his own small coterie at 
 Cambridge. Tom Brown, in 1856, went 
 traveling at once into almost every home in 
 England and America, and many of the chap- 
 ters were headed by the terse, keen, epigram- 
 matic, poetic verses of Hosea Biglow. No 
 book since Robinson Crusoe had such a run, 
 save, perhaps. Uncle Tom's Cabin and some 
 of Walter Scott's and Charles Dickens' nov- 
 els. It spread over every English-speaking 
 land, and, unlike Robinson Crusoe, which 
 Dickens declared had never caused a tear or 
 provoked a smile, Tom Brown made us both 
 laugh and cry, and instilled into us motives 
 of character which have influenced countless 
 thousands to a nobler manhood. 
 
 In the second place we love him because 
 he threw the whole weight of his immense 
 popularity unreservedly in our favor in the 
 great crisis of our Civil War ; and thirdly, 
 because, when our homes, our books and 
 libraries were turned to ashes, his time, his 
 
work and his influence were immediately 
 given to cheer and encourage us, to win for 
 us the sympathy of the scholars and authors, 
 the brains and the hearts of old England, to 
 set a corner-stone for us in the realm of 
 thought and literature. 
 
 The newspapers and magazines have been 
 so full of notices of him that it is deemed 
 unnecessary to do more than make a brief 
 memorial of his life, with a more particular 
 account of his visit to Chicago, and his sub- 
 sequent work in our behalf. 
 
 Thomas Hughes was born October 20, 
 1822, at Uffington, in Berkshire County, 
 England, and died at Brighton, March 22, 
 1896. His father was John Hughes of Don- 
 nington Priory, near Newbury. His mother 
 was Margaret Wilkinson. He had one 
 brother, George, only thirteen months his 
 elder, who was sent with him to Twyford, 
 near Winchester, in 1830, and to Rugby in 
 February, 1834. In his memorial of this 
 brother, published in 1873, he gives many of 
 his brother's letters written at Rugby to their 
 father and mother, and they supplement in a 
 very interesting way Tom Brown's experi- 
 ences as an ideal scholar. It was here that 
 
Hughes began his friendship with Dean 
 Stanley and Matthew Arnold and other men 
 of subsequent celebrity, and the choice selec- 
 tion of his friends followed him through life, 
 for wherever he went or lived we find him as- 
 sociating with the very best of their kind. It 
 has been often stated and commonly thought 
 that Tom Brown was a sort of biography or 
 portrait of his older brother, and that many 
 of the characters were representations from 
 real life, but in his second edition of his 
 " Tom Brown at Oxford "he says : " Neither 
 is the hero a portrait of myself, nor is there 
 any other portrait in either of the books, 
 except in the case of Dr. Arnold, where the 
 true name is given. My deep feeling of 
 gratitude to him, and reverence for his mem- 
 ory, emboldened me to risk the attempt at a 
 portrait in his case, so far as the character 
 was necessary for the work." I think, after 
 reading his memoir of his brother George and 
 George's letters to his father and the father's 
 letters, there can be no doubt that George 
 was the hero of his books. On page 40 he 
 says : " Since George was Captain of the 
 Big-Side Football and third in the eleven, 
 bullying had disappeared from the school- 
 
house and house fagging had lost its irksome- 
 ness. He had kicked the last goal from 'a 
 place' nearly sixty yards from the post." 
 But at that early day George the Hero was 
 always the victim of untoward circumstances 
 and was forever losing his chances. Thomas 
 writes on page 41 : " He had to learn, by 
 the loss of his exhibition, that neither boys 
 nor men do get second chances in this world. 
 We all get new chances till the end of our 
 lives, but not second chances in the same set 
 of circumstances ; and the great difference 
 between one boy and another is how he takes 
 hold of and uses his first chance, and how he 
 takes his fall if it is scored against him." 
 Before going to Oxford in 1840 Dr. Arnold 
 invited the boys to spend part of their holi- 
 days at the Lakes. In George's letter, Janu- 
 ary 6, 1840, he says : " Last Saturday week 
 I reached Ambleside. On Monday, hard 
 frost. We went up Lufrigg, the mountain 
 close by Foxhow, and I and Matt Arnold then 
 went down to a swampy sort of lake to shoot 
 snipes. Thursday we were determined to do 
 something, so Matt, Tom and I took horses 
 and rode to Keswick, and we had, a most 
 beautiful ride. We left Lady Flemming's on 
 
the right, went along the shores of Rydale 
 Lake, then from Rydale to Grasmere, then 
 through the pass called High Rocae, leaving 
 a remarkable mountain, called the Lion and 
 the Lamb, on the right, then to Thurlmere, 
 leaving Helvellyn on the right. Thurlmere 
 is a beautiful little lake ; there is a very fine 
 rock on the left bank called Ravenscrag and 
 on the right Helvellyn rises to an immense 
 height. Then the view of Keswick straight 
 before us was most beautiful, Derwentwater 
 on our left, Saddleback and Skiddaw on the 
 right, and Helvellyn behind us." How it kin- 
 dles the imagination to think of George and 
 Tom Hughes and Matt Arnold riding and 
 walking over and around those most beautiful 
 of English hills and lakes, made memorable by 
 those exquisite poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge 
 and Southey, and those fascinating writers, 
 De Quincy, Lockhart and th^ incomparable 
 Christopher North, himself poet, philosopher 
 critic, reviewer and athlete, all combined. 
 In a letter of Matthew Arnold's to Tom 
 Hughes, written May 23, 1872, he says : " Do 
 you remember our ride together to Keswick 
 some thirty-two years ago. We have all a 
 common ground in the past. Everything 
 
about George seemed so sound, his bodily 
 health and address was so felicitous, that one 
 thought of his moral and intellectual sound- 
 ness as a kind of reflex from them. The 
 glory and exploits of youth and strength and 
 coolness have their ideal for me in what I 
 remember of him and his era. His taking 
 the easy lead at golf latterly, as he did in 
 his old days at football and rowing seemed 
 to me quite affecting." 
 
 After spending six years at Rugby Thomas 
 entered Oriel College, at Oxford, where he 
 was graduated in 1845. He here studied not 
 only the classics and the usual curriculum, and 
 took an active part in all the games and plays 
 of the athletes, in which his brother George 
 was very remarkable, but he gave much time 
 to and took deep interest in the social and 
 political problems of the day. The Oxford 
 Movement at that time excited all earnest 
 thinkers and his broad nature led him enthu- 
 siastically into fellowship with Maurice, 
 Tennyson, Kingsley, and with the opponents 
 of Ritualism, and when he went from Oxford 
 to study law in Lincoln's Inn at the Temple, 
 he was an advanced liberal in social, polit- 
 ical and religious matters. 
 
If the boy and his trials and triumphs at 
 Rugby takes hold of us, how intense the 
 interest becomes when he goes through such 
 crises at Oxford as his temptation with 
 Peggy, and his own worst carnal nature. If 
 hundreds of thousands of boys and young 
 men have read this book, as we are told, 
 who can measure the good it must have 
 accomplished toward the upbuilding of per- 
 sonal virtue and purity ! The brave Hardy 
 sees Tom sinking night by night in his strug- 
 gle with a love, the sure outcome of which 
 must be the ruin of Peggy, the bar-maid, and 
 the debasement of his own soul and body. 
 Untold thousands of beautiful lives at Oxford, 
 at Cambridge and other colleges in the world 
 have been wrecked by the same passions as 
 tore the heart and pulses of poor Tom. 
 Thanks to the brave Hardy and the Christian 
 sentiments which stopped him on the very 
 brink of the pit, Tom was saved. The pic- 
 ture has taught other boys to stop and 
 remember the words of Hardy : " If you go 
 to Abbington Fair with her, you will return 
 a scoundrel, and she — ; in the name of the 
 honor of your mother and sister, in the name 
 of God, I warn you. May He help you 
 
through it. John Hardy." Tom groaned 
 and we groan with him. During the long 
 hours of the night the scenes of the last few 
 days came back to him and burned into his 
 soul. The gulf yawned before him now plain 
 enough, open at his feet, black, ghastly. He 
 shuddered at it, wondered if he should even 
 yet fall in, felt wildly about for strength to 
 stand firm and retrace his steps. In the mass 
 of erotic filth which has so corrupted French 
 literature and debased so much of our own, 
 much of it by authors whose books are seen 
 in almost every library and every home, 
 which we carelessly smile at on the stage and 
 read in many of our favorite poets, it is like a 
 northeast breeze over Lake Michigan from 
 Mackinaw to read of the struggles and the 
 triumphs of Tom Brown, how he conquered 
 the evil beast in his own nature, and to feel 
 that thousands of boys seeing how he con- 
 quered, know that they can conquer, too, if 
 they, like Tom, listen to the still small voice 
 appealing to the true manhood within them 
 to silence the roaring of the tempest of pas- 
 sion, remembering their sisters, their mothers 
 and their God. 
 
 Hughes was called, or, as we say, admitted 
 
to the Bar in January, 1848. The expression 
 recalls to my mind an interesting letter from 
 one of our early Presidents, Mr. Edwin C. 
 Lamed, who visited the Temple with Mr. 
 Hughes in 1873. He wrote from London in 
 July : "A visit to the Inns of Court under 
 the guidance of one of the Benchers of the 
 Temple is a very interesting thing, and when 
 that Bencher is the Hon. Thomas Hughes, 
 so well known in America as the author of 
 " Tom Brown at Rugby," it is still more 
 enjoyable. It is only a Bencher who can 
 give you access to the halls, parliament room 
 and inner places of these mammoth buildings. 
 The Inns of Court are the buildings which 
 have been for centuries specially devoted to 
 the Bar. In old times they were the places 
 of abode as well as of business of the law- 
 yers, and they are still so used to a limited 
 extent, but Mr. Hughes informed me that 
 the greater part of the lawyers now had their 
 homes or lodgings elsewhere and only their 
 places of business here. The law in England 
 is not as in America, a profession into which 
 any one may enter at pleasure. The right of 
 entry to the profession is given by a person 
 being called to become a member of one of 
 
the Inns of Court, or, in other words, callea 
 to the Bar. No one can practice before any 
 Court in England who has not been called 
 to the Bar by one of these Inns of Court. 
 The power to admit is vested in the Benchers 
 of each Inn, a body whose number cannot 
 exceed sixty. These Benchers not only have 
 the sole power to call a man to be a member 
 of an Inn of Court, but they have also the 
 power to expel him therefrom, and on notify- 
 ing the judges of his expulsion, he will not 
 be permitted to practice in any court of 
 England. The Benchers are composed of 
 the leading men of the profession. A man 
 after a certain time at the Bar, if his stand- 
 ing in the profession warrants it, is appointed 
 Queen's counsel, and after that is eligible to 
 be elected a Bencher of the Temple, so that 
 only lawers of standing and ability reach 
 this eminence. ... In Grey's Inn Mr. 
 Hughes pointed out to us the room which 
 Thackeray has invested with an abiding 
 interest as the home of Arthur Pendennis, 
 and on the way to the Temple he took us 
 into the celebrated Cock Tavern, in Fleet 
 Street, which Ben Johnson and Addison and 
 Goldsmith used to frequent, and in which 
 
 15 
 
Tennyson wrote his 'Will Waterproof's Lyr- 
 ical Monologue.' We sat and took our mug 
 of stout off the same wooden bench on which 
 the poet wrote his poem." 
 
 This is but a small part of Mr. Larned^s 
 long and interesting letter, and it now has an 
 added interest for the student of history or 
 antiquity from the fact that the old Cock 
 Tavern, as well as the Benchers and guests 
 who visited it in 1873, and every individual 
 mentioned in his letter, except Mr. Gladstone, 
 have disappeared forever from the old Tem- 
 ple grounds, and its fine old Elizabethan 
 fireplace, around which the Benchers and 
 wits and poets toasted their shins and smoked 
 their pipes for centuries, has come across the 
 ocean and found its next, and let us hope, its 
 final, resting place in Cornell University. 
 Mr. Lamed said it would take nothing from 
 the charms of this most interesting relic to 
 see it thousands of miles away, in a world 
 almost, if not wholly, unknown to the great 
 authors whose genius has consecrated this 
 relic. 
 
 From 1848 to 1856, or from his twenty- 
 fifth to his thirty-third year, Mr. Hughes was 
 an earnest young lawyer, studying and prac- 
 16 
 
ticing his profession by day, but giving up 
 his evenings and much of his time to all sorts 
 of public activities which tended to improve 
 the moral and material standards of the 
 laborer and the poor. With the same daunt- 
 less spirit which animated Tom Brown to 
 fight for his weaker friend, Arthur, at Rugby, 
 he engaged himself and drew his friends into 
 all sorts of schemes to brighten and elevate 
 the lives of his poorer countrymen. He 
 believed so thoroughly in the idea of co-op- 
 eration that he maintained membership in 
 nearly twenty different co-operative associa- 
 tions. As Mr. Charles D. Lanier finely says 
 (Review of Reviews, page 568) : " The group 
 of devoted men, among whom he was easily 
 the most restlessly active, were peculiarly 
 favored by temperament and creed to bring 
 conviction to the hearts of the poor people 
 they tried to help. Beautifully loyal to the 
 church, they were mutineers against the idea 
 which had gradually tainted England, that 
 piety and decency were to be expressed only 
 by meditative and timid lives protected from 
 the rough contact of the world. This effemi- 
 nate ideal of the righteous life could not, of 
 course, be appreciated by the people, and 
 
there was a general hunger extant for the 
 heathen virtues when Hughes and Kingsley 
 came on the scene with their " Christian So- 
 cialism" and "Muscular Christianity." This 
 mighty cricketer, this broad shouldered, 
 fresh-faced athlete, this cheery, sympathetic 
 man, Tom Hughes, who loved the things that 
 boys loved, who was too true to believe that 
 another man would lie — such a man was 
 as good as any heathen of them all, and 
 neither he nor the doctrine of Christ lost 
 through his interpretation of them to the 
 masses. '•' 
 
 It was at some time during this interval 
 from 1848 to 185s that Mr. Hughes wrote 
 his first book, and in 1856 it was published 
 by Macmillan. It is said that both Mac- 
 millan and Hughes made fortunes by it. 
 
 It is gratifying to our pride as Americans 
 that the books and poems most often quoted 
 by Hughes are those of Emerson and Lowell. 
 He was a writer, a scholar, a Queen's coun- 
 sellor, a Common Law Judge and a Preacher, 
 and so it was especially gratifying to our 
 pride that a whole nation which had been 
 brought up to remember the sneering ques- 
 tion "Who reads an American book ?" found 
 
the question answered in every book Thomas 
 Hughes ever wrote. 
 
 The headings of the chapters of " Tom 
 Brown at Rugby " are by eight different 
 poets ; he quotes from Shakespeare twice ; 
 Tennyson twice ; Scott, Wordsworth, Rowe, 
 Sterling and Clough each once ; and from 
 our own Lowell thrice. 
 
 In the famous chapter entitled " The War 
 of Independence," where Tom is roasted by 
 Flashman in the effort to force from him his 
 ticket for the Wanderer in the Derby race, 
 he begins with Lowell : 
 
 ' ' They are slaves who will not choose 
 Hatred, scoffing and abuse, 
 Rather than in silence shrink 
 From the truth they needs must think ; 
 They are slaves who dare not be 
 In the right with two or three." 
 
 In the beginning of the second part, the 
 turning point in our hero's school career, he 
 quotes Lowell's "Modern Crisis": 
 
 "Once to every man and nation, comes the 
 moment to decide, 
 In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the 
 good or evil side ; 
 
 19 
 
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the 
 
 coward stands aside, 
 Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is 
 
 crucified." 
 
 And at last, in chapter 7, recounting the 
 dilemmas and deliverances of Harry East, he 
 concentrates the pith of the history in Lowell's 
 lines of "The Vision of Sir Launfal": 
 
 " The Holy Supper is kept indeed. 
 In whatso we share with another's need — 
 Not that which we give, but what we share, 
 For the gift without the giver is bare : 
 Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three, 
 Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.'' 
 
 In "Tom Brown at Oxford," " The Scour- 
 ing of the White Horse," and " Memoir of 
 Daniel Macmillan," he used no poetical head- 
 ings, but in his " Life of James Fraser " he 
 used poetical headings from Wordsworth, 
 Herbert, Milton, and two from Lowell. 
 
 Part third of his "Manliness of Christ" 
 begins with Emerson : 
 
 " So close is glory to our dust, 
 So near is God to man; 
 When duty whispers low, Thou must. 
 The youth replies, I can." 
 
Other headings are from Clough, Milton, 
 Tennyson and Lowell. 
 Part eight begins : 
 
 " By the light of burning martyr fires Christ's 
 bleeding feet I track, 
 Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross 
 that turns not back." 
 
 And the last address is headed from the 
 Rev. R. Lowell : 
 
 " They crowd upon us in this shade, 
 The youth who own the coming years- 
 Be never God or land betrayed 
 By any son our Harvard rears." 
 
 Continuations are seldom successful or 
 satisfactory, but when " Tom Brown at 
 Oxford" appeared, in 1858, it was eagerly 
 devoured by a multitude of readers. The 
 circle was smaller, of course, because while 
 the "Rugby" appealed to the universal fond- 
 ness for boyhood and its games, fewer persons 
 were interested in an English University and 
 the lives and doings of a more aristocratic 
 class. 
 
 But The Speaker, page 340, says : " We 
 place ' Tom at Oxford ' not one whit behind 
 its predecessor. Running over in our minds 
 
the higher fiction which deals with University 
 life : Reginald Dalton, Vincent Eden, Peter 
 Priggins, Loss and Gain, Verdant Green, 
 the Oxford Chapter in Alton Locke, and the 
 Boniface Chapters in Pendennis, we place 
 Tom Brown before them all at once for the 
 vigor and completeness of its portrayal. 
 Every phase of undergraduate life, fast and 
 slow, tuft and Bible clerk, reading man and 
 lounger, profligacy and debt, summer terms 
 and commemorations, boat races and wines 
 and University sermons, passes easily in re- 
 view without Kingsley's priggery, without 
 Hewlett's vulgarity, without Lockhart's stilt- 
 edness, without Cuthbert Bede's burlesque. 
 The New Zealander in 4000 A. D., visiting 
 the tangled morass of the Upper Thames 
 which once was Oxford, the crumbling chaos 
 of rotted carriages and twisted rails which 
 once was Rugby, will annotate his monu- 
 mental work on ancient England by Tom 
 Brown's pictures of their ruined sites, and 
 Tom Brown's chronicles of their academic 
 humors. Hughes was a humorist in flannel 
 shirt and shooting jacket. 
 
 " Denison rode on a painted rocking-horse 
 to tilt with theological wind mills. Hughes 
 
rushed to spike the guns of selfish indiffer- 
 ence to social evils, like his own East in the 
 trenches of the Sutlej forts. Hughes was a 
 pioneer of a new and ardent realism, reshap- 
 ing itself to-day under fresh conditions, yet 
 essentially accordant with his creed, which 
 labors to alleviate the discontent of the 
 many by the self-sacrifice of the few, to ex- 
 tinguish class antagonism and bridge social 
 chasms, to replace an oligarchy of prescrip- 
 tive privilege, rank and wealth, by a nobler 
 aristocracy of proud and accepted eminence 
 at once in the completeness of intellectual 
 acquirement and in Christian generosity of 
 aim." 
 
 The great popularity of Mr. Hughes became 
 at once a part of the vested capital of the 
 United States. He knew the Biglow Papers 
 by heart, and had written a preface for the 
 second edition of the book published in 
 England. All the energy of his nature was 
 aroused on behalf of freedom and the North 
 in its death grapple with the greatest rebel- 
 lion of modern times. The aristocracy of 
 England was against us, but the same sort of 
 spirit which prevailed at Gettysburg and 
 Vicksburg was fighting our battles in Parlia- 
 
 23 
 
ment, and on the stump and in the factories 
 of England by such men as Cobden and 
 Bright and Forster and Kirkman, Hodson, 
 Baptist Noel, Newman Hall and Baring, 
 and by none of them with more zeal than by 
 Thomas Hughes. He and his gallant friends 
 held great meetings at Exeter Hall in London, 
 at Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol, Leeds, at 
 Liverpool, and in all the great centers of 
 population, and carried with acclamation 
 resolutions in favor of our Government, our 
 Union and emancipation. The answer of 
 England to their appeals was so hearty that, 
 in August, 1863, the Times, which had been 
 one of our worst enemies, supported the de- 
 mand of our friends on the British Govern- 
 ment for the stoppage of the steam rams. 
 
 Just at the close of our war, in 1865, Mr. 
 Hughes was elected to the British Parliament, 
 and continued there until 1874, and during 
 that time he exerted all his influence in 
 behalf of a peaceful and generous arbitra- 
 tion of the losses we had incurred by reason 
 of the Alabama and other Britirh cruisers 
 during the war. 
 
 In such critical and awful times the influ- 
 ence of one earnest hero often turns the 
 
scales. We are not willing ever to entertain 
 the thought that we could have been beaten, 
 or that God would have allowed one-half 
 this continent to perpetuate an everlasting 
 slavery, but if, in 1862 or '3 or '4, England 
 had yielded to the desires of Louis Napoleon 
 and Maximilian, and recognized and sided 
 with the South, this continent would scarcely 
 to-day be reading the books and living by 
 the principles of Thomas Hughes. 
 
 In 1870 Mr. Hughes, who, in his vacation 
 rambles, had wandered over Europe, and 
 knelt, as every boy in the world has done or 
 hopes to do some day, on the crown of the 
 Acropolis, and in the sacred center of the 
 Parthenon, now turned his face to the Land 
 of the Free and the Home of the Brave. His 
 first visit was to his friend Lowell, at Cam- 
 bridge, and in his spicy letters we all feel as 
 if we, too, were visitors there and a part of the 
 family. These letters were written to his 
 wife, and never published until a few weeks 
 ago. His son says his time was so much 
 occupied there that he could write only home- 
 letters. Mrs. Hughes allowed, extracts to 
 be made from them, thinking that they 
 served to introduce his later letters from 
 
America which were addressed to The Spec- 
 tator. 
 
 The first letter is from Elmwood, Cam- 
 bridge, 25th August, 1870 : 
 
 "Elmwood Avenue, in which Lowell lives, 
 is about half a mile beyond the College, a 
 broad road shaded on both sides by rows of 
 trees planted as in the boulevards, as indeed 
 is done along all the roads. The Professor's 
 house is a good, roomy, wooden one, standing 
 in the midst of some 30 acres of his own 
 land, on which stand many good trees, and 
 especially some fine revolutionary English 
 elms, of which he is very proud. He was sit- 
 ting on the piazza of the house, with his wife 
 and Holmes' brother, taking a pipe and not 
 the least expecting us. The Irish maid told 
 us to 'sit right down,' while she went to- 
 fetch him. In a minute he and his wife 
 came and put us at our ease, explaining that 
 no letter had ever come since we had landed." 
 
 On the 31st August he writes again to his 
 wife : 
 
 " I am not in the least disappointed with 
 Lowell. I have never met a more agreeable 
 talker, and his kindness to me is quite un- 
 bounded. There lurks not a grain of vanity 
 
in his composition, but is as simple and truth- 
 ful as the best kind of boy. The house is a 
 wooden one, as four-fifths of the houses in 
 N. E. are. It is roomy, airy, and furnished 
 with quaint old heavy pieces, bureaus like 
 ours and solid, heavy, little mahogany tables, 
 all dating from the last century. The plate, 
 in the same way, is all of the Queen Anne 
 shape, like your little tea service and my 
 grandmother's milk jugs and teapots. The 
 plainness and simplicity of the living, too, is 
 most attractive. On Thursday we took the car 
 into Boston and ascended the monument on 
 Bunker Hill, 290 steps up a dark spiral stair- 
 case. The view at the top pays you thoroughly 
 for the grind. Boston Harbor, where the tea 
 was thrown out of the English ships in 1775, 
 and the whole town and suburbs, lie below 
 you like a map, and are very striking. After 
 descending we hunted up a number of people, 
 including young Holmes, our Colonel, who 
 was as charming as ever, absorbed in his law 
 at which he is doing famously, and resolved, 
 in his first holiday, to revisit England. He 
 came out to dine, and with him young How- 
 ells, the editor of The Atlantic Monthly, whom 
 Conway had brought to our house years ago. 
 27 
 
Next day we had a"_long country drive in the 
 morning ; through broad avenues lined with 
 fascinating wooden' houses, each standing 
 with plenty of elbow-room in its own grounds, 
 up to a wooded hill, from which we got a 
 splendid view of the city. Then I went into 
 Boston and called on the Autocrat of the 
 Breakfast Table, who is one of the best 
 talkers I ever met, and quite worthy to be 
 the Colonel's father. He is one of Motley's 
 oldest friends, and deeply grieved, as all 
 good men here, at his recall. His chief talk 
 was of his memories of his English visits and 
 the folks he met, and so I find it with all the 
 best men and women here. Notwithstanding 
 the bitterness which our press created du- 
 ring the war, I am convinced that, with a 
 very little tact and judicious handling on our 
 side, the international relations may be easily 
 made all we can wish as far as New England 
 is concerned. On Saturday we dined with 
 the Saturday Club. I sat on the right of 
 Sumner, who was in the chair, and Emer- 
 son was on the other side of Sumner, so 
 you may fancy how I enjoyed the sitting. 
 Emerson is perfectly delightful, simple, wise 
 and full of humor and sunshine. The num- 
 
ber of good Yankee stories I shall bring 
 back, unless they burst me, will be a caution. 
 Wednesday we drove to Concord, to dine 
 with Judge Hoar, a very able, fine fellow. 
 We passed over classic ground, the very road 
 along which the English troops marched in 
 April, 1776, to destroy the stores when the 
 first collision of the War of Independence 
 took place at Concord Bridge and in the 
 village of Lexington. You may, perhaps, 
 remember in the second series of the Biglow 
 Papers ' Sumthin' in the Pastoral Line,' in 
 which old Concord Bridge and the Monu- 
 ment, which has been put up to commemorate 
 the fight, talked together over the Trent 
 affair. The Judge's two sons, very nice 
 young fellows, pulled us up Concord River, 
 which runs at the bottom of their garden, 
 to the spot. Heard a lot of capital Yankee 
 stories from the Judge. Dinner at three ; 
 Emerson came. I enjoyed the dinner and 
 smoke afterward immensely, and am at last 
 quite sure I am doing some good with some 
 of these men, all of whom are influential, 
 and most of them badly prejudiced against 
 us still as a nation. For myself it is quite 
 impossible to express their kindness." 
 
From New York he writes to his wife : 
 
 " I parted with Lowell and his home, feel- 
 ing that the meeting had been more than 
 successful. For these i8 or 19 years I have 
 reveled in his books. Indeed, have got so 
 much from them and learned to love the 
 parent so well, as I imagined him, that I 
 almost feared to meet him, lest pleasant 
 illusions should be broken. I found him 
 much better than his books." 
 
 In his ride from New York to Chicago, he 
 says : 
 
 " There was a drawing-room car on, but I 
 would not go in it. The other cars are quite 
 comfortable enough, and I like seeing and 
 being with the people, though they continue to 
 be the most silent and reserved of any race I 
 have ever been amongst." 
 
 "Chicago, 19 September, '70. 
 " I begin this in a spare three minutes 
 between packing and a testimonial which is 
 to be given me here by a lot of young gradu- 
 ates of the American Universities at the Club 
 at four o'clock. This place is the wonder of 
 the wonderful West. A gentleman I met to- 
 day tells me he came up to this place in 1830, 
 
when it consisted of a fort, with two com- 
 panies, a dozen little wooden huts, and an 
 encampment of 3,000 or 4,000 Indians, who 
 had come in to get their allowance under the 
 treaty with the U. S. Now it is one of the 
 handsomest cities I ever saw, with 300,000 
 inhabitants, and progressing at the rate of 
 1,500 a week. Yesterday I went twice to 
 hear Robert Collyer, a famous Unitarian 
 minister here. He was born in Yorkshire, 
 where he worked as a blacksmith, preaching 
 as a Methodist, and finally, 20 years ago, 
 came out to the West and established himself 
 here. He has great and deserved influence, 
 and is altogether the finest man of the kind I 
 have ever met. Robert Lincoln (Abe's son) 
 and a lot of his friends are our entertainers 
 to-day, and in the evening we go by the night 
 train to St. Louis. I laid aside the other 
 sheet to go off to this club dinner with the 
 young Chicago men, and I have never had a 
 more hearty greeting or kinder words and 
 looks than amongst these youngsters, all 
 graduates of some University, most of 
 them ofiScers in the last war, who are settled 
 down in the great money-making town, and 
 are living brave and sterling and earnest 
 
lives here. I really cannot tell you the sort 
 of thing they said (they drank your health 
 and the proposer made one of the prettiest 
 little speeches in proposing it I ever heard). 
 In short, I was positively ashamed and 
 scarcely knew how to meet it all, or what 
 to say to them, but it was less embarrassing 
 than it would have been with any other young 
 men, for this kind of young Americans, like 
 Holmes, is so transparently sincere that you 
 can come out quite square with him before 
 you have known him an hour." 
 
 I am sure I shall be pardoned for inter- 
 rupting the thread of Mr. Hughes' letters to 
 say that the eight young men who gave that 
 dinner to Mr. Hughes (and his traveling com- 
 panion, Mr. Rawlins) are all young men yet. 
 Twenty-six years have made no break in their 
 ranks, and they are still living brave, sterling 
 and earnest lives as they were in 1870. Two 
 of them, Hubert S. Brown and Sherburne B. 
 Eaton, have gone backward to the East, but 
 the other six are all members of this Club to- 
 day : Edward S. Isham, Huntington W. 
 Jackson, Robert T. Lincoln, Franklin Mac- 
 Veagh, Edward G. Mason and Norman 
 Williams. 
 
Several other charming letters follow, de- 
 scribing his visits to Cincinnati, Washington, 
 Philadelphia, Ithaca and New York, and end- 
 ing, where he began, at Cambridge. 
 On the 9th of October he writes : 
 " On Monday we got back to dear Elm- 
 wood. In the evening we went down to a 
 gathering of all the Harvard students, who 
 had petitioned me to come and talk to them. 
 They were gathered some 500 strong in the 
 Massachusetts Hall, and a finer and manlier 
 set of boys I have never seen. I talked to 
 them on ' Muscular Christianity and Its 
 Proper Limits," as they are likely to run into 
 professional athletics, like our boys at home. 
 The war has given a magnificent lift to all 
 the boys and young men of this country, and 
 I think the rising generation will put America 
 in a very different place from what she holds 
 now. Last night I gave my lecture in the 
 Boston Music Hall, which was crammed, and 
 the whole affair a great success. 'John to 
 Jonathan ' is printed verbatim in the morning 
 newspapers. On the platform sat the Gover- 
 nor of Massachusetts, two ex-Governors, 
 Senators Sumner and Wilson, Longfellow, 
 Hoar, Richard H. Dana, Jr., Oliver Wendell 
 
 33 
 
Holmes, Wendell Phillips and 3,000 of the 
 brainiest men in Massachusetts." 
 
 That admirable address, so full of sense, 
 fairness and pathetic eloquence, listened to 
 by thousands and read by millions on both 
 sides of the Atlantic, produced a profound 
 impression, and went a long way toward 
 bringing about a more friendly feeling be- 
 tween England and America and settling the 
 Alabama claims. 
 
 Among other things, he said : 
 
 "I earnestly long for the time when, by 
 wise consultation between our nations and 
 the modification of the public law bearing 
 upon such cases, all war at sea shall be ren- 
 dered impossible. The United States and 
 England have only to agree in this matter, 
 and there is an end to naval warfare through 
 the whole world." 
 
 Speaking of our war, he said : 
 
 "In 1863 the horizon was still dark. 
 Splendid as your efforts had been, and mag- 
 nificent as was the altitude of your nation, 
 tried in the fire as few nations have been in 
 all history, those efforts had not yet been 
 crowned with any marked success. With us 
 it was the darkest in the whole long agony, 
 
 34 
 
for in it came the crisis of that attempt of 
 the French Emperor to inveigle us in a joint 
 recognition of the Confederacy, on the suc- 
 cess of which his Mexican adventure was 
 supposed to hang. Then came the final 
 crisis. On the 30th of June, 1863, a daj' 
 memorable in our history as in yours, at 
 the very time that your Army of the Poto- 
 mac was hurrying through the streets of 
 Gettysburg to meet the swoop of those ter- 
 rible Southern legions, John Bright stood on 
 the floor of our House of Commons, on fire 
 with that righteous wrath which has so often 
 lifted him above the heads of other English 
 orators. From that moment the cause of the 
 Rebellion was lost in England, for by the 
 next mails came the news of the three-days' 
 fight and the melting away of Longstreet's 
 corps in the final and desperate effort to 
 break the Federal line on the slopes of Little 
 Roundtop. If I am wrong it is from no in- 
 sular prejudices or national conceit, and you 
 will, at any rate, think kindly and bear with 
 the errors of one who has always loved your 
 nation well, through good report and evil 
 report, and is now bound to it by a hundred 
 new and precious ties. If I am right, I beg 
 
of you to use your influences that all hatreds 
 and prejudices may disappear, and America 
 and England may march together as nations 
 redeemed by a common Savior toward a goal 
 which is set for them in a brighter future." 
 
 " Shall it be love or hate, John ? It's you 
 thet's to decide ; 
 Ain't your bonds held by Fate, John, 
 like all the world's beside." 
 
 " So runs the end of Lowell's solemn appeal 
 in 'Jonathan to John.' It comes from one 
 who never deals in wild words. He is the 
 American writer who did more thati any other 
 to teach such of us in the old country as ever 
 learned them at all, the rights and wrongs of 
 this great struggle of yours. Questions asked 
 by such men can never be safely left On one 
 side. Well, then, I say, we have answered 
 them. We know that no nation knows better. 
 Or confesses daily with niore awe, that bur 
 bonds are held by Fate ; that a strict account 
 of all the mighty talents which have been 
 committed to us will be required of us 
 English, though We do live in a sea fortress 
 in which the gleam of steel drawn in anger 
 has not been seen for more than a century. 
 We know that we are very far from being 
 
 36 
 
what we ought to be. We know that we 
 have great social problems to work out, 
 problems which go right down amongst the 
 roots of things, and the wrong solution of 
 which may shake the very foundations of 
 society. We have to face them manfully, 
 after the manner of our race, within the 
 four corners of an island not bigger than 
 one of your large states, while you have the 
 vast elbow-room of this wonderful continent, 
 with all its million outlets and opportunities 
 for every human being who is willing to 
 work. Yes, pur bonds are, indeed, held by 
 Fate, but we are taking strict account of the 
 number and amount of them, and mean, by 
 God's help, to dishonor none of them when 
 the time comes for taking them up. We 
 reckon, too, some of us, that as years roll on 
 and you get to understand us better, we may 
 yet hear the words, ' Well done, brother,' 
 from this side of the Atlantic ; and if the 
 strong old Islander, who after all is your 
 father, should happen some day to want a 
 name on the back of one of his bonds, I, for 
 one, should not wonder to hear that at the 
 time of presentation the name '■Jonathan ' is 
 found scrawled across them in very decided 
 
 37 
 
characters. It will be love and not hate 
 between the two freest of the great nations 
 of the earth, if our decision can so settle 
 it. The force of the decision of your 
 great struggle has not been spent on this 
 continent. Your victory has strengthened 
 the hands and hearts of those who are striv- 
 ing in the cause of government for the 
 people, by the people, in every corner of the 
 Old World. In another six years you will 
 have finished the first century of your national 
 life. When that centenary comes round, I 
 hope, if I live, to see the great family of 
 English-speaking nations girdling the earth 
 with a circle of free and happy communities, 
 in which the angels' message of peace on 
 earth and good will amongst men may not 
 be still a mockery and delusion." 
 
 The heartfelt admiration and love of Lowell 
 for Hughes was as strong as that of Hughes 
 for Lowell. Mr. Lowell says in a letter to 
 Charles F. Briggs : " I thank God for giving 
 me at least this talent, that I love my friends 
 better than I do my own pride, and can almost 
 persuade myself that I love them nearly as 
 well as my interest." In all the charming 
 letters of his to Hughes, extending over 
 38 
 
thirty years, which Professor Norton has 
 published, there is this spirit of fellowship 
 and love. 
 
 On the 13th of September, 1859, Lowell 
 writes to him : " It could not but be grati- 
 fying to the writer of the ' Biglow Papers ' 
 that Mr. Triibner should deem it worth his 
 while to publish an edition of them in Eng- 
 land. It gives him a particular pleasure that 
 the author of ' Tom Brown's School Days " 
 should have consented to see the work 
 through the press, for the remarkable favor 
 with which that work was received on both 
 sides of the Atlantic proved that all speakers 
 of the English tongue agree wholly in their 
 admiration for soundness of heart and man- 
 liness of character. Just behind me is the 
 portrait of some fine oaks painted for me by 
 an artist friend. He wanted a human figure 
 as a standard of size, and so put me in as I 
 lay there in the shade reading. So long as 
 the canvas lasts I shall lie there with the 
 book in my hand, and the book is ' Tom 
 Brown.' ' A man cannot read a book out-of- 
 doors that he does not love.' Q. E. D." 
 
 In his next letter, dated " St. Shakespeare 
 Day, i860," he asks him to sit to his friend 
 
 39 
 
S. W. Rowse for his portrait, and says: " He 
 is to draw Kossuth, Carlyle, Owen and 
 Tennyson. I hope you will consent to give 
 so much of your time and patience as to let 
 him draw you for me. If you do, I will ask 
 you to write your name on the drawing. It 
 will be in my study as long as I live, and 
 then will go to our college here with some 
 other portraits I have." 
 
 On the 1 8th of October, 1870, when the 
 fajTious visit was ended, Lowell again writes; 
 
 "Parting with you was like saying good- 
 by to sunshine. As I took my solitary whiff 
 o'baccy after I got home, my study looked 
 bare and my old cronies on the shelves could 
 not make up to me for my new loss. I sat 
 with my book on my knee and mused with a 
 queer feeling about my eyelids now and then. 
 And yet you have left so much behind that is 
 precious to me, that by and by I know that 
 my room will have a virtue in it never there 
 before, because of your presence. And now 
 it seems so short— r-a hail at sea with a Godr 
 speed and no more. I would rather havQ the 
 kind of welcome that met you in this country 
 than all the shouts of all the crowds on the 
 via sacra of fame. There was ' love ' in it, 
 40 
 
you beloved old boy, and no man ever earns 
 that for nothing — unless now and then from 
 a woman. I am holding ' good-by' at arm's 
 length as long as I can, but I must come to 
 it. Give my kindest regards to Rawlins, and 
 take all my heart yourself." 
 
 On the 19th of March, 1873, Lowell writes 
 him from Paris : 
 
 " The day I got your ' Memoir of a Brother,' 
 I began it in the hour before dinner, and at 
 last, when everybody had gone to bed, I sat 
 up (like a naughty boy) till half-past one, 
 and read every word of it. It interested me 
 very much and I quite fell in love with your 
 father, who seems to me to have been a 
 model of good sense, and that manliness 
 which it is, perhaps, our weakness to limit by 
 calling it gentle-manliness. I see where you 
 got a great deal of what I love in you." 
 
 On April i6th, 1887, Lowell writes again : 
 
 " I have just received your ' Life of Fraser*, 
 Bishop of Manchester, and have read enough 
 of it to see that I shall find it very interest- 
 ing. He was just the manly kind of fellow 
 to awaken all your sympathy, and accord- 
 ingly I *as not surprised to see (before I 
 got the book) that opinion Was unanimous 
 
 41 
 
as to how admirably you had written his 
 biography. Notwithstanding his Scottish 
 name, he was a peculiarly English type of 
 man, a type which, I trust, will long continue 
 to be characteristic of the dear old home. 
 I shall be glad to clasp your honest hand 
 again, which has done so much good work 
 for all good things." 
 
 Lowell's last letter, March 7, 1891, was 
 almost at the ebb of that tide of fun, frolic, 
 poetry and eloquence, which has made two 
 worlds laugh and cry. He says : " I am 
 glad you got my books and like them. I 
 didn't mean by this collected and uniform 
 edition to write ' Finis,' though I am not sure 
 my health won't write it for me. If the sum- 
 mer does as much for me as I hope, I suppose 
 that I shall wet my pen again." 
 
 Let us hope that some day the letters of 
 Hughes to Lowell may also delight us, for 
 the earthly correspondence of these two rare 
 creatures is now ended. The summer came, 
 but wet no pen for Mr. Lowell. The winds 
 of August sang his requiem above his grave 
 in Mt. Auburn, within sight and sound of the 
 ancestral trees he loved so well, in the home 
 where he was born and where he died. 
 
Between 1870 and 1880, when Mr. Hughes 
 came here the second time, he was a member 
 of Parliament and Judge of a northern cir- 
 cuit, and wrote a number of books ; among 
 others " Memoir of a Brother," " Manliness 
 of Christ," and "Rugby, Tennessee; being 
 some Account of the Settlement founded on 
 the Cumberland Plateau by the Board of Aid 
 to Land Ownership/' 
 
 The publishers of his letters home have 
 strangely omitted all that bear on his visit to 
 us in 1880. On October g of that year, at 
 the Grand Pacific Hotel, Mr. Hughes was 
 tendered a complimentary banquet by this 
 Club. The dining-room was handsomely 
 decorated with flowers, large hanging- 
 baskets and drooping ivy in the windows, 
 with magnificent large baskets of flowers on 
 the tables. There were four large tables 
 arranged like a letter E, which glittered with 
 plate, china and glass. At 6:30 Mr. Hughes 
 arrived in company with the President, 
 Brooke Herford. In the reception-room the 
 members of the Club were introduced to Mr. 
 Hughes. At the conclusion of the reception 
 the party went into the dining-room, where 
 seats were placed for eighty guests, Presi- 
 
dent Herford in the center of the long table, 
 having Mr. Hughes on his right, the others 
 next being Edwin C. Larned, Dr. William F. 
 Poole, Daniel L. Shorey, Dr. Hosmer A. John- 
 son, Edward G. Mason and Benjamin F. Ayer. 
 After grace by Reverend Arthur Little, the 
 Chairman called to order, and said that he 
 felt highly proud of the opportunity of taking 
 part with this Club in paying a tribute of re- 
 spect to their distinguished visitor. The 
 society would soon move into more spacious 
 rooms, where in the evening hour they study 
 the literature of the day and take their little 
 burnt offerings and enjoy themselves. In 
 their rooms they tried to cultivate literary 
 tastes and studies, and though those studies 
 were a good deal mixed, like the system of 
 education followed in Dotheboys Hall, they 
 still managed week by week to hold interest- 
 ing and valuable meetings, at which the frank 
 expression of thought and discussion of sub- 
 jects which prevailed, had been of great 
 assistance. These discussions were often of 
 a very high character, indeed, and were 
 always deeply interesting. They did not yet 
 claim to have advanced very high in the 
 realms of literature, but he could claim that 
 
they were able to appreciate a true literary 
 man — a man who had ever been found fight- 
 ing for the good cause, who was ever full of 
 earnestness in carrying on such good work 
 as it became his lot to perform. 
 
 The chairman called upon Mr. E. G. Mason 
 to make the welcoming address, and Mr. 
 Mason said that no gift of speech was 
 needed to utter the welcome from the hearts 
 of the people who had gathered to do honor 
 to their distinguished guest. The welcome 
 was not theirs alone. All the school and 
 college boys, young and old, joined with them 
 in the earnest, cordial greeting they gave to 
 Thomas Hughes. And though he belonged 
 to another nation, he was no stranger. All 
 in America felt that they had known him 
 long and well. More than twenty years had 
 elapsed since Thomas Hughes told us of Tom 
 Brown and Tom Brown told us of Thomas 
 Hughes, and the scenes of that royal book 
 were so vividly described that they seemed 
 to live in the memory and to become part of 
 ourselves. They had played with him on 
 the Rugby school ground ; had heard the 
 song sung in the hall on Saturday night ; 
 had helped Tom Brown in his fight with 
 
 45 
 
Bully Flashman, and finally had rejoiced that 
 such a book had been written, and that all 
 boys might be improved by reading it. And 
 when Tom Brown went to Oxford, they were 
 glad to follow him and find him there taking 
 part in the great college races, and those who 
 now saw and conversed with Mr. Hughes 
 could easily see in him the original of the 
 manly characteristics which are one or the 
 great charms of his book. 
 
 Mr. Mason made a graceful allusion to Mr. 
 Hughes' action in connection with the Chi- 
 cago Public Library, and assured him that 
 the American people had not forgotten the 
 stirring messages of sympathy and cheer 
 which he had sent them across the ocean at 
 the time that the people were engaged in 
 their strife for national existence. No one 
 from the other nations of the earth had at 
 this time spoken such encouraging words as 
 his, and the Republic would show him that 
 it was not ungrateful. As a friend to the 
 workingman Mr. Hughes had added to his 
 fame as a philanthropist, and his noble char- 
 acteristics were plainly shown in his enter- 
 prise of founding a colony of Englishmen in 
 East Tennessee, a new Rugby, which he 
 46 
 
hoped the colonists would build up into a 
 model community, where many Tom Browns 
 would grow up to honor its founder. As 
 citizens of the Republic they gave their 
 warmest welcome to the man of letters, of 
 live heart and large humanity. 
 
 Mr. Hughes said he was embarrassed by 
 the warmth of their reception, and in his sur- 
 prise he felt quite incompetent to rise to the 
 heights reached by the previous speaker. He 
 felt that he stood among sincere and loyal 
 friends. It was about ten years ago to-day 
 that he was entertained in Chicago by a 
 small body of its young men, several of 
 whom he had had the pleasure of meeting on 
 the present occasion, and all of whom he was 
 glad to learn were now prosperous citizens 
 of this great Republic. 
 
 His experience of America was that it was 
 a much better country than he had been led 
 to believe. In England the idea prevails that 
 the American people were given to surrender- 
 ing themselves too much to the pleasure and 
 excitement of life, certainly in a much greater 
 degree than do the people on the other side 
 of the Atlantic. He was not sure of that. 
 From the men he had met during the current 
 
day, it seemed to him as if the climate of the 
 country they lived in and the manner of their 
 lives were not more trying than those else- 
 where. He was sure that when he first 
 saw them, that the eight young men he had 
 met ten years ago could bear comparison 
 with eight young men he had anywhere seen, 
 and the present gathering, representing the 
 highest culture of the city, gathered to do 
 honor to a stranger — no, not a stranger — a 
 friend, from another country, was in magni- 
 tude compared with that small body, an apt 
 illustration of Chicago's progress during the 
 past ten years. 
 
 Alluding to the mention made by Mr. 
 Mason of his efforts in behalf of the Chicago 
 Public Library, Mr. Hughes said that when 
 he reached England after his first visit to 
 America, he felt that it was emphatically his 
 duty to acknowledge the debt he owed the 
 city of Chicago, and when the great calamity 
 fell upon it, and he saw how noble a stand 
 she was making against it, he thought of 
 what would be the best method of paying the 
 debt. At last he decided to do something 
 toward strengthening the intellectual life of 
 the city that was to rise again, and so he 
 
applied to the authors of England for assist- 
 ance to help Chicago refill its public library 
 shelves, and the applications met with a 
 singularly favorable reception, which enabled 
 him to send works containing the autographs 
 of the authors, among them the works of 
 Her Majesty Queen Victoria. 
 
 When he was here ten years ago the rela- 
 tions between the two great branches of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race were very different from 
 those at present prevailing, and which he 
 hoped would last. Whatever might happen 
 he hoped that these two great nations would 
 never be found again in antagonism to one 
 another. As an earnest of the deep interest 
 he took in America, he mentioned that sev- 
 eral members of his family had taken part in 
 the Rugby colony ; one of them was his son, 
 and he had two nephews in Texas, and all had 
 taken steps to become American citizens. 
 The work of civilization depended greatly 
 upon the Anglo-Saxon race for its progress, 
 and it would advance all the more rapidly 
 and certainly while the most cordial relations 
 existed between its two great branches. The 
 speaker closed his remarks with a pathetic 
 description of the feelings which were aroused 
 
 49 
 
when he viewed the military cemeteries near 
 the field of the battle of Missionary Ridge, 
 reciting a verse of the poem, " The Blue and 
 the Gray," as indicating the spirit which 
 should now prevail between the two sections 
 of this country : 
 
 " No more shall the war-cry sever, 
 Or the inland rivers run red ; 
 We have buried our anger forever, 
 In the sacred graves of the dead. 
 
 " Under the sod and the dew, 
 Waiting the Judgment Day; 
 Love and tears for the blue ! 
 Tears and love for the gray ! " 
 
 Mr. George Howland was called upon by 
 the Chair. Among other things, he said that 
 the present excellent condition of American 
 school life was due to two grand impulses. 
 The first of these was the life and labor of 
 Horace Mann. The second, the impulse 
 which was given through the publication of 
 " Tom Brown at Rugby." It had done 
 much to promote a change of heart in both 
 teacher and scholar, by showing the methods 
 with which Dr. Arnold gained at once the 
 love and respect of his pupils. Passing into 
 the hands of both teachers and children, it 
 
 50 
 
gave them an insight into that great man's 
 nobleness of character. Up to his coming 
 the schoolmaster had been made the subject 
 of ridicule ; he had been considered the 
 natural tormentor and enemy of the boys 
 under his teaching. Now his was shown to 
 be a noble calling, and he was the friend and 
 protector as well as the instructor of the 
 youth, just as those who had been noted as 
 eminently successful teachers always had 
 been. To his kindness, manly character and 
 personal influence. Dr. Arnold owed his suc- 
 cess in inspiring love of honor and truth in 
 his scholars, and to Thomas Hughes the 
 world owed a debt for his beautiful descrip- 
 tion of that almost perfect character. 
 
 The Chair then introduced Mr. Edwin C. 
 Larned and his subject as " The Closer Union 
 of Our Two Peoples." Mr. Larned made an 
 eloquent address, in which he argued that no 
 one could fail to be aroused by such a senti- 
 ment as that upon which he was to speak. 
 Everybody that belonged to England be- 
 longed also to America. Her great men 
 were our great men, her literature our lit- 
 erature ; her triumphs our triumphs, and 
 Americans were as proud of " Tom Brown " 
 
as were Englishmen themselves. When he 
 paid his first visit to England he went to see 
 Rugby, and he did so just because he had 
 read " Tom Brown." 
 
 The Sunday Times, October lo, 1880, said: 
 "It was the result either of a singular chance, 
 or a happy sense of the fitness of things, that 
 the Chicago Library Board should have given 
 Mr. Thomas Hughes a reception on the anni- 
 versary of the great fire. Mr. Hughes will 
 ever be held in grateful remembrance, not 
 only as an author of books which few are too 
 young and none are too old to read with 
 interest, and as an Englishman who was the 
 friend of this country when it needed friends 
 in En^?-land, but as in no small sense the 
 father of our public library, to whose ad- 
 mirable organization and manageixient Mr. 
 Hughes paid a cordial tribute. Mr. Hughes 
 is one of the best representatives of the class 
 of literary men whose worth is most readily 
 appreciated here. In him the literary tastes 
 and the literary habit have not destroyed a 
 lively interest in all that concerns his 
 fellow-men. His acquaintance with public 
 affairs, the breadth of his sympathies which 
 include other lands than his own, his interest 
 
 S2 
 
in those who toil with the spade as well as 
 those who toil with the pen, his love for all 
 that is good in man and boy — in short, the 
 completeness of his manhood — are calculated 
 to win for him the regard of people who might 
 not do full justice to a recluse who cultivated 
 the field of literature alone, and for its own 
 sake. It is appropriate that he in whom are 
 combined the author and colonizer, the writer 
 and the worker, should have laid in this 
 intensely commercial city the foundations of 
 a free public library. 
 
 " The literary and aesthetic taste that exists 
 in Chicago is usually underrated. The com- 
 mercial interests here are so vast, its growth 
 in size and industrial importance has been so 
 rapid, its disaster in 187 1 so overwhelming, 
 its recuperation so marvelous, that the city 
 is known only as a remarkable business cen- 
 ter, and all else is obscured. But its recovery 
 in the domain of thought and taste has been 
 nearly as rapid.'' 
 
 For our re-entrance into this domain of 
 thought and taste the Chicago Literary 
 Club admits with gratitude and pride, that 
 their honorary member, Thomas Hughes, 
 
opened the gates. The free library, of 
 which he laid the corner-stone, is already 
 one of the largest in the world, and the 
 temple, now nearly completed, in which its 
 treasures are to be shelved, is only surpassed 
 by that builded by our whole nation at Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 Whether it shall contain a portrait or 
 statue in marble or bronze of him whose 
 belief in Chicago outran its all-devouring 
 flames, we cannot tell, but sure we must be 
 that so long as sympathy with the best im- 
 pulses of boyhood shall prevail in our com- 
 mon schools and our colleges, there will be a 
 living and loving memory of Tom Hughes of 
 Rugby. 
 
 54 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 The Chicago Tribune, July 25, 1873. 
 
 There are now about seven thousand six hundred 
 volumes upon the shelves of our Free Library, about 
 half of which were the direct gift of English authors, 
 publishers, colleges, societies and the Government, 
 or purchased with the fund raised at the instance of 
 the Hon. Thomas Hughes. 
 
 The Queen contributes a copy of "The Early 
 Years of the Prince Consort, presented to the new 
 Free Public Library of Chicago by Victoria Regina, 
 Balmoral, November 13, 1871." 
 
 Then follow the English State Papers from 1812 
 to 1866; a Calendar of State Papers from Edward 
 the Third to the time of Elizabeth. Oxford sent the 
 best publications of the University, and the Claren- 
 don Press, Cambridge, sent the works of Barrow 
 and other eminent divines. Among the then living 
 authors who sent their works, with their autographs 
 attached, were Sir Charles Lyell, Robert Ferguson, 
 J. McGregor, Sir Roundell Palmer, John Bright, Sir 
 Charles Dilke, W. G. Palgrave, Alfred R. Wallace, 
 Charlotte Yonge, W. Stanley Jevons, John Stuart 
 Mill, Henry Maudsley, Julia C. Young, David 
 Masson, A. H. Layard, Charles Kingsley, Aubrey 
 DeVere, W. M. Rossetti, T. F. Palgrave, St. George 
 Mivart, Dean Stanley, R. A. Proctor, W. E. 
 
 55 
 
Korster, Octavius Morgan, Herbert Spencer, W. 
 Thornton, W. A. Freeman, Samuel Smiles, Glad- 
 stone, Disraeli, Carlyle, Huxley and Thomas 
 Hughes. 
 
 The Duke of Wellington sent the twenty-three 
 volumes of the Dispatches of the Iron Duke. 
 
 Monckton Milnes and Baron Houghton sent the 
 illustrated edition of Keats. 
 
 Lady Trevellyan sent the works of her brother 
 Macauley. 
 
 Thomas J. Bowles gave the three- volume Vanity 
 Fair Album. 
 
 The daughters of J. H. Wiffen contributed their 
 father's memoirs of the House of Russel. 
 
 Besides the authors there were gifts from other 
 prominent citizens, such as Lord Alfred Churchill, 
 F. J. Furnival and H. Lee Warner of Rugby. 
 
 56 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 List of Members and Guests present at the Dinner 
 given to Thomas Hughes, October 8, 1880, by 
 the Chicago Literary Club. 
 
 MEMBERS. 
 
 William K. Ackernian 
 George E. Adams 
 Joseph Adams 
 Owen F. Aldis 
 Edmund Andrews 
 Samuel Appleton 
 Benjamin F. Ayer 
 Henry H. Babcock 
 William H. Bamum 
 Henry W. Bishop 
 Samuel Bliss 
 Charles C. Bonney 
 Edward O. Brown 
 Clarence A. Burley 
 John C. Burroughs 
 Francis R. Butler 
 Thomas S. Chard 
 John M. Clark 
 Frederick W. Clarke 
 George C. Clarke 
 Albert M. Day 
 
 Franklin Denison 
 David Fales 
 Charles Norman Fay 
 William M. R. French 
 Frederick W. Gookin 
 Thomas W. Grover 
 George F. Harding 
 Brooke Herford 
 Homer N. Hibbard 
 James L. High 
 Oliver H. Horton 
 George Howland 
 Edward D. Hosmer 
 Thomas Hoyne 
 Henry A. Huntington 
 James Nevins Hyde 
 Huntington W. Jackson 
 John A. Jameson 
 James S. Jewell 
 Hosmer A. Johnson 
 Henry W. Jones 
 
Thomas D. Jones 
 Joseph Kirkland 
 John J. Lalor 
 Edwin C. Lamed 
 Walter C. Lamed 
 Bryan Lathrop 
 Charles B. Lawrence 
 Arthur Little 
 Henry D. Lloyd 
 Franklin MacVeagh 
 Victor Morawetz 
 Alfred Bishop Mason 
 Edward G. Mason 
 James S. Norton 
 Ephraim A. Otis 
 Robt. W. Patterson, Jr. 
 Abram M. Pence 
 William F. Poole 
 
 George Schneider 
 John J. Schobinger 
 Edwin H. Sheldon 
 Daniel L. Shorey 
 Charles Gilman Smith 
 Frederick B. Smith 
 George W. Smith 
 Henry T. Steele 
 Henry Strong 
 William E. Strong 
 Horatio L. Wait 
 Samuel H. Wheeler 
 Peter B. Wight 
 Norman Williams 
 Benjamin M. Wilson 
 John P. Wilson 
 Arthur W. Windett 
 
 GUESTS. 
 
 Thomas Hughes James Hughes Charles Deane 
 
 Of the eighty men present, twenty are dead. 
 Only thirty-four are now (November 24, 1896) 
 resident members of the Club. 
 
 58 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4809.H8Z61 
 
 Thomas Hughes of England, and his visits 
 
 3 1924 013 486 117