LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 

 
 TRecoUections of 
 
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 The Bowen-Merrill Compy, Publishers^ 
 Eighteen Ninety-Five. •■'} ,r/:c 
 
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 Copyright, 1895, 
 
 BY 
 
 THE BOWEN-MERRILL CO. 
 
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TO 
 THE HONORABLE JOHN M. HARLAN, 
 
 ONE OF THE JUSTICES OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED 
 
 AS A MARK OF ESTEEM FOR HIS HIGH CHARACTER AND GREAT 
 
 ABILITIES, AND OF GRATITUDE FOR HIS KINDNESS. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Going to England in May, 1891, I was 
 fortunate enough to have a letter from Mr. 
 Justice Harlan, of the Supreme Court, intro- 
 ducing me to Lord Coleridge. I delayed 
 sending it for some days after getting to 
 London, knowing that the courts and Parlia- 
 ment were in session, and supposing that his 
 duties on the Bench and in the House of 
 Lords would occupy his Lordship's time so 
 that he would have little leisure, if he had 
 the inclination, to show me any attention. 
 At last, however, I sent the letter by post 
 with my card, and the next day received the 
 following note from his Lordship : 
 
 I Sussex Square, Hyde Park, W., 
 
 9th July, 1 89 1. 
 
 My Dear Sir — I have received with great interest 
 
 Mr. Justice Harlan's note of introduction and I shall 
 
 be extremely glad to be of any service to you in my 
 
 (5) 
 
6 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 power. Any day next week except Saturday (and 
 Saturday in this week) I shall be very happy to see 
 you in my room and to give you a seat upon the Bench. 
 Do you chance to be disengaged on Thursday, the 
 i6th (this day week).? If you are and will come and 
 dine here on that day at 8 o'clock it will give Lady 
 Coleridge and me much pleasure. 
 
 Your faithful servant, 
 
 W. P. Fishback, Esq. Coleridge. 
 
 I called on Monday at his Lordship's room 
 in the Law Courts building, in the Strand, 
 and found his secretary in waiting. That 
 gentleman, a venerable-looking, mild-man- 
 nered person, was seated in the anteroom at 
 a table upon which there was a tray of goose- 
 quill pens. As soon as his Lordship arrived, 
 I was ushered into his presence. Lord Cole- 
 ridge was very tall, six feet three inches, I 
 should suppose, with an erect, stout, but not 
 corpulent figure. He had a fine, large head, 
 with a smooth, benignant face, a winning 
 smile, and a voice gentle and well modulated. 
 Since the first publication of this paper in June, 
 1894, I have read some reminiscences of 
 Lord Chief-Justice Coleridge, written by the 
 present Lord Chief-Justice, Lord Russell of 
 Killowen, which were published in the North 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 7 
 
 American Review, September, 1894. Lord 
 Russell says that Lord Coleridge possessed 
 "a voice, the beauty of which I have not 
 often known surpassed. Indeed, if I except 
 the voices perhaps of Sir Alexander Cock- 
 burn, Mr. Gladstone, the present Sir Robert 
 Peel, and the late Father Burke, of the Do- 
 minican order, I shall have exhausted the 
 list of those who may be said to have been 
 his superiors in this respect. ' ' 
 
 Lord Coleridge greeted me most cordially, 
 and, while his secretary was getting the gown 
 and wig, he said that when in the United States , 
 in 1883, the people had almost spoiled him by 
 their kindness. He spoke of our Presidents, 
 and said it was a matter of amazement to him, 
 when he considered our method of choosing a 
 chief magistrate, that we were so uniformly fort- 
 unate in selecting such able men. He spoke 
 especially of President Arthur, upon whom 
 he had made a call of courtesy at the White 
 House. When he rose to leave, the Presi- 
 dent said, " No, stay longer. I wish to have 
 a chat with you ; you have no idea what a 
 relief it is to have a visitor who is not after an 
 office." He was delighted with Mr. Arthur, 
 
8 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 whom he found to be a reader of good books 
 and full of interesting literary gossip. It was 
 a shame, he thought, that the chief magis- 
 trate of a republic of sixty million people 
 should be compelled to waste so much time 
 in settling disputes between claimants for 
 office. 
 
 During the talk Lord Coleridge's son Gil- 
 bert came in, and he was full of cordiality 
 and kindness. They both spoke of Secretary 
 Blaine's ability as a diplomat, and were es- 
 pecially complimentary in what they said of 
 his then recent note to Baron Fava, concern- 
 ing the New Orleans riot and the killing of 
 members of the Mafia, I expressed the 
 opinion then, which has since been confirmed, 
 that the credit of that matter belonged to 
 President Harrison, rather than to Mr. Blaine. 
 It is hard for an Englishman to understand 
 that the President is in the habit of taking a 
 personal hand in the management of inter- 
 national affairs; that he is his own Prime 
 Minister, and that his Cabinet officers, whom 
 he appoints and discharges at pleasure, are 
 his under-secretaries. 
 
 Speaking of the riot at New Orleans, Lord 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 9 
 
 Coleridge said that the respect for law which 
 is ingrained in the Anglo-Saxon character 
 sometimes yielded to the pressure of great 
 emergencies ; that there were times when the 
 swift methods of Judge Lynch became necessa- 
 ry in a community where crime is influential 
 and powerful enough to debauch or intimidate 
 courts or juries. This language, from the 
 Lord Chief-Justice of England, while he was 
 assuming the wig and gown, surprised me. 
 Lord Coleridge was Attorney-General in the 
 Gladstone Ministry before he went upon the 
 Bench, and will be remembered for the ability 
 and success with which he prosecuted the 
 Tichborne claimant. Speaking of Lord Cole- 
 ridge's cross-examination of the Tichborne 
 claimant Lord Russell says, in the reminis- 
 cences from which I have already quoted, 
 "For my ovm part, I thought it and still 
 think it the best thing he ever did. It was not 
 a cross-examination, calculated, nor should I 
 think even intended, for immediate effect. It 
 was not like the brilliant cross-examination of 
 the witness Baigent by Mr. Hawkins (now 
 Mr. Justice Hawkins), in which the observer 
 could follow the point and object, question by 
 
10 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 question, but it was one, the full force and 
 effect of which could only be appreciated 
 when the facts, as they ultimately appeared 
 in the defendant's case, were finally disclosed. 
 When indeed the subsequent prosecution for 
 perjury took place, it was then seen how thor- 
 ough and searching that cross-examination had 
 been ; how, in effect, if I may use a fox-hunt- 
 ing metaphor, all the earths had been effectu- 
 ally stopped." 
 
 Lord Coleridge gave this incident in his par- 
 liamentary career. A critical question was up 
 one night, in the Commons, and it was feared 
 that a division would come before the Liberals 
 could be brought in from the clubs . Gladstone 
 requested him to speak against time while the 
 "whips" were out, and to talk nonsense, if 
 nothing else, for an hour. He obeyed his chief 
 and when his task was done Mr. Lowe took the 
 floor and held it until the Government benches 
 were full and the Government was safe. 
 
 When the Secretary had adjusted the robe 
 and wig, his Lordship asked me what I 
 thought of the enormous tail to his gown. 
 ' ' This tail I am entitled to wear as a mark of 
 distinction," said he, as he gathered it in his 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. ii 
 
 hand and led the way to the court room, 
 where he had an officer bring me a chair, 
 which was placed beside him. The jury — a 
 special London jury — was in the box. The 
 oath was administered, the book kissed, and 
 Sir Charles Russell rose and addressed the 
 jury from an elaborate brief. The case was 
 North vs. Stopes. It grew out of the sub- 
 scription and sale of some corporation stock. 
 "Sir Charles," said his Lordship to me, "is 
 to-day the greatest lawyer at the English 
 bar." He theii handed me a slip with the 
 names of counsel — Sir Charles Russell, Q, 
 C; Mr. Home Payne, Q. C, and Mr. Mc- 
 Intyre, for plaintiff; Mr. Finlay, Q. C, Mr. 
 Candy, Q. C, and Mr. Duke, for the defend- 
 ant. The interests involved were large, and 
 the jury was made up of business men of the 
 best rank. Sir Charles's opening statement 
 showed the most perfect familiarity with the 
 case, and, before he had finished, it seemed 
 certain that he would win. Sir Charles, at 
 one time, manifested a little impatience or 
 petulance, if that is not too strong a word, at 
 the well-intentioned though mal apropos inter- 
 ruption of his junior who twitched his gown to 
 
12 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 remind him of some point which he may have 
 neglected to present. A quick backhanded 
 gesture was the rather discourteous response 
 he made to the proposed suggestion. I was 
 surprised to see him leave the court room as 
 soon as he was through, supposing that, be- 
 ing senior counsel, he would conduct the ex- 
 amination of the witnesses. I was informed, 
 however, that courtesy required that the 
 senior should absent himself while his junior 
 examined the plaintiff, who was the first wit- 
 ness. While this examination was in progress 
 Sir Charles Russell could step across the hall 
 and argue another case and earn a fat fee. 
 But all of his fees were large, his annual in- 
 come from his practice being, as I was in- 
 formed, in excess of $200,000. He is cer- 
 tainly a great lawyer, and has now succeeded 
 Coleridge as Lord Chief-Justice. With his 
 wig on. Sir Charles bears a resemblance to 
 the portraits of Washington. He talks good 
 American English, free from any trace of the 
 New England or Southern peculiarities; free, 
 also, from all signs of cockneyism or the 
 fashionable hesitancy of speech so much 
 affected by the peers and other English speak- 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 13 
 
 ers and a few Anglomaniacs in and about 
 New York. 
 
 While the plaintiff was testifying, the Chief- 
 Justice took careful notes of the principal 
 points, and when there was a pause to allow 
 him to finish a sentence, instead of the ordi- 
 nary " go on," or " proceed," he would say 
 " yes," with a rising inflection, and the wit- 
 ness would resume. The business went for- 
 ward rapidly, but with perfect order and dig- 
 nity. During the examination of Mr. North 
 an incident occurred which caused some mer- 
 riment and brought to mind the ludicrous 
 story of Dickens's about the red-faced judge 
 who presided at the trial of the case of Bar- 
 dell vs. Pickwick, in which Mr. Winkle vainly 
 tried to persuade the judge that his name 
 was plain Nathaniel, instead of Daniel Na- 
 thaniel, as the judge had it in his notes. In 
 computing the number of shares of stock sub- 
 scribed, the total was put at 1,715, divided 
 between A, B and C. The Chief-Justice 
 omitted one item, and his footing did not 
 agree with that of the counsel; but, being 
 down in the judge's notes, it was conclusive 
 until one of the counsel came to the relief of 
 
14 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 the court and in a bland way pointed out the 
 omission. 
 
 I noticed during the progress of the case 
 that when a paper was produced in evidence, 
 it was not allowed to be read until a revenue 
 officer in attendance inspected it to see if it re- 
 quired a stamp, and if the proper stamp had 
 been affixed and canceled. The rule for a 
 time was that an unstamped instrument was 
 absolutely void.* Now it is held that no 
 right can be asserted under a paper requiring 
 * a stamp until the stamp is affixed. Penalties 
 are enforced for the willful omission to stamp 
 a writing which the law requires to be 
 stamped. After the plaintiff's examination 
 was finished, there was an adjournment for 
 half an hour for luncheon in the room of the 
 Chief-Justice, where the standard English 
 chops, peas, potatoes and claret were served. 
 His Lordship, rising to go, said: "You 
 will see now how soon I shall dispose of that 
 case . It rests almost wholly upon the documen- 
 tary proofs, introduced in connection with 
 
 *Such was the rule in the courts of the United 
 States when our revenue laws first required stamps to 
 be affixed to deeds and other written instruments. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 15 
 
 plaintiff's testimony, and the lawyers on both 
 sides know what I am going to say to the jury." 
 Just then there was a tap at the door, and a 
 bailiff presented himself with a message, say- 
 ing if his Lordship would wait a few minutes 
 the case would be settled. Court convened 
 soon after, and the jury was discharged, the 
 judge saying to counsel, " Do not forget the 
 honorarium, gentlemen." This honorarium 
 was a guinea for each juror, the customary 
 fee. His Lordship expressed the opinion 
 that it would be better to adopt our system 
 of paying jurors from the public treasury. 
 
 He told me a story of a successful cross- 
 examination of a rascal who was trying to 
 prove a forged will. Lord Coleridge was 
 a junior in the case, with Mr. Rowley, Q. C, 
 senior. A man of fortune had bequeathed 
 the bulk of his estate to a niece and a nephew. 
 After his death a new will turned up, pur- 
 porting to have been made at Bath, where 
 the testator had gone a short time before 
 his death. The scoundrel who had a hand 
 in fabricating the will appeared as a wit- 
 ness, and told a story of great plausibility 
 about how the instructions were given by the 
 
i6 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 testator, and how he had followed these in- 
 structions in preparing the will. Rowley, 
 after working an hour or two, was discour- 
 aged, and said to his junior, " How can I 
 break that rascal down? He is lying and I 
 know it, but he is imposing on the court and 
 the jury," He resumed his questions, how- 
 ever, and the witness began to fidget, and 
 show signs of weakness ; he fumbled in his 
 waistcoat pocket and pulled out a slip of 
 paper, which he quickly put back after glanc- 
 ing at it. Rowley caught him and said, 
 "Let me have that paper." 
 
 "No, I won't," said the witness. "I 
 haven't used it, and you have no right 
 to it." 
 
 "Will you swear, sir," said the lawyer, 
 ' ' that it does not contain some memoranda 
 pertaining to this case? " 
 
 The fellow was confused, counsel on the 
 other side protested, the jurors became curi- 
 ous, and finally the paper was put in the 
 hands of the cross-examiner. There were 
 some words on it which did not seem to be 
 coherent, but the wily lawyer, assuming to 
 understand more than he really did, began to 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 17 
 
 prod the witness, who was soon freely per- 
 spiring and in a high state of excitement. 
 Counsel on the other side saw their case 
 going to pieces, and arose and told the court 
 they were satisfied that the witness was a liar 
 and that the will was forged. 
 
 I reminded him of the case mentioned by 
 Frederick W. Robertson, of Brighton, which 
 occurred at the Assizes, in which a rascal was 
 on trial for cheating at cards. Prosecutor 
 and witness had failed to discover the cheat's 
 trick. Jervis, the presiding judge, took the 
 pack of cards in his hand and gave them to 
 the foreman of the jury to shuffle, saying he 
 could pick out and name any card in the pack 
 without facing them. He did it, and pointed 
 out a marking which had escaped the notice 
 of everybody till then. Lord Coleridge re- 
 membered the case and said that Jervis had 
 tried a card-sharp a few days before at another 
 place, on the circuit, when he had acquired 
 the knowledge that enabled him to detect the 
 cheat. 
 
 The will case reminds me of the success of 
 Alexander Hamilton in cross-examining a 
 witness named Croucher, who was testifying 
 
i8 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 against Hamilton's client, who was on trial 
 for murder. It was dark and candles were 
 brought into the court room. Before taking 
 the witness in hand Hamilton placed a lighted 
 candle on each side of the witness's face and 
 asked the jury to look in the eyes of the wit- 
 ness while he testified. Counsel on the other 
 side protested, but Mr. Hamilton told the 
 court that in a short time it would appear 
 who the real murderer was. He then began 
 his cross-examination, and it was not long 
 before Croucher was utterly broken down and 
 the prosecution abandoned the case. The 
 witness fled to England, where he committed 
 some other crime, for which he was executed. 
 The ability to successfully conduct a cross- 
 examination of an intelligent and prejudiced 
 or rascally witness is rare. Some lawyers go 
 at a witness as a savage goes at his enemy, 
 with a knotted club, relying upon the mere 
 brute force of browbeating. This method of 
 attack is faulty in theory and usually results 
 in disaster to the lawyer. Quiet self-posses- 
 sion, patient perseverance, fairness to the wit- 
 ness, quick perception, good temper, or at 
 least no manifestation of ill-temper ; these are 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 19 
 
 the qualities which enable the great lawyer to 
 expose one who is trying to palm off upon a 
 jury a made-up story. 
 
20 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The invitation to dine with Lady and Lord 
 Coleridge was for 8 o'clock. Within five 
 or ten minutes of the time named the guests 
 were assembled, with the exception of the 
 Lord Chancellor, who did not arrive until the 
 others were seated. He explained that he 
 was kept at the House of Lords, where there 
 was a protracted discussion of the free edu- 
 cation bill, the Duke of Argyll holding the 
 floor till a late hour. Among others present 
 there were Mr. Russell, whose sketch of Glad- 
 stone had just been published; Mr. Harrison, 
 a brother of Frederic Harrison; Mrs. Eleanor 
 Woodehouse, daughter of Matthew Arnold, 
 whose husband is a son of Earl Kimberly, 
 formerly Irish Secretary in the Gladstone 
 Ministry, and now a member of Lord Rose- 
 bery's Cabinet; Mrs. Bigham, wife of Mr. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 21 
 
 Bigham, Q. C, who stands with Sir Charles 
 Russell in the front rank of England's great 
 lawyers; Lady Denison, Miss Baring Law- 
 ford, sister of Lady Coleridge, and others, 
 whose names I do not recall. 
 
 It might go without saying that a London 
 dinner party of English ladies and gentlemen, 
 made up by Lady and Lord Coleridge, would 
 be fairly typical of the intellectual aristocracy 
 as opposed to the horse-racing, prize-fighting 
 and baccarat nobility, who have inherited 
 social station instead of winning it. Schop- 
 enauer was in the habit of dining at a caie 
 which was much frequented by some scions 
 of the English nobility. It was noticed that 
 whenever the philosopher of pessimism took 
 his seat he placed a gold piece on the corner 
 of the table. After several days this conduct 
 excited curiosity, and some one was bold 
 enough to ask Schopenauer what it meant. 
 "Why," said he, "I have made a wager with 
 myself — that whenever I hear those young 
 Englishmen over there talk on any subject but 
 dogs, horses and women, I will give that 
 money to some charitable institution. From 
 
22 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 what I have seen and heard, however, I ex- 
 pect to keep my gold a long while." 
 
 Well, Lady Coleridge's company did not 
 indulge in that sort of talk. Here let me 
 mention a bit of Philistinism which cropped 
 out in a recent article on London society in 
 one of our leading magazines. The article 
 told of an American who was shocked at 
 what he regarded as the ill-breeding of a Lon- 
 don host or hostess at whose house he was 
 an invited guest. He doubtless expected to 
 have a jolly, effusive, hand-shaking and back- 
 slapping reception, something of the pluto- 
 cratic-cheerful-vulgarity style of New York. 
 He was amazed, after threading his way 
 through the lines of ushers into the drawing- 
 room, to discover that he was left alone to 
 make his way, as best he could in a strange 
 company, without a formal introduction to 
 the guests. So he made a wall flower of 
 himself, and wrote himself down an ass in an 
 ill-natured criticism of what is certainly one 
 of the greatest charms of well-bred society. 
 Persons invited to such a company are vouched 
 for by the host and are expected to make 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 23 
 
 themselves agreeable to one another without 
 preliminary introductions. 
 
 You address the lady or gentleman who 
 happens to be next to you at the table or in 
 the drawing-room, with the freedom of an 
 acquaintance. If the conversation which en- 
 sues is agreeable, the chance meeting may 
 lead to a familiar interchange of views, and 
 may possibly ripen into a lasting friendship. 
 This is immeasurably better than the awkward 
 formality which debars conversation among 
 guests who have not been "introduced." 
 Surely, we may learn from others something 
 of the social amenities and equities, and some 
 of the small, sweet courtesies of life which 
 are so essential to right living. 
 
 Our amiable and candid critic, Mr. Mat- 
 thew Arnold, gives us great praise. He 
 says our institutions fit us like a well-made 
 suit of clothes, our women are charming, we 
 have successfully solved the political problem, 
 we have solved the social problem also and 
 have established the principle of equality, but 
 he regrets to say that we have not solved the 
 ' ' human problem ' ' — there is a lack of ur- 
 banity in the newspaper style of writing, a 
 
24 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 tendency toward the penny-dreadful manner, 
 the flippant funny man is too much in evi- 
 dence, there is something bordering on indeh- 
 cacy in the way in which our leading news- 
 papers discuss the private and family affairs 
 of public men. When our editors tell us 
 that all this is because our people like it and 
 will have it so, it is an open confession that 
 Mr. Arnold's criticism is just. Is it not quite 
 likely that our blood kin of the tight little 
 island have not been fooling away their time 
 for a thousand years, and that they really 
 know how to do some things quite as well as 
 ourselves? 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 25 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 Seeing Matthew Arnold's daughter a guest 
 at Lord Coleridge's recalled the remark attrib- 
 uted to Lord Coleridge when Mr, Arnold was 
 lecturing in America, that Mr. Arnold was 
 the greatest living Englishman. I mentioned 
 it to him, and he said that he had not used 
 the word "greatest," but had called Mr. 
 Arnold the most ' ' distinguished ' ' living 
 Englishman, in the sense that he was unique 
 and set apart from his countrymen by such 
 marked peculiarities of style in prose and 
 poetry, by his great scholarship, his broad 
 sympathies, and his unerring and grateful ap- 
 preciation of what was best in literature, an- 
 cient and modern. Mr. Arnold and Lord 
 Coleridge, the one from Rugby and the other 
 from Eton, were fellow-students at Balliol 
 College, Oxford. Mr. Justice Coleridge, 
 
26 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Lord Coleridge's father, was one of the most 
 intimate friends of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, a 
 fact which is well attested by the correspond- 
 ence published in Dean Stanley's life of Dr. 
 Arnold. When Dean Stanley was prepar- 
 ing this life Mr. Justice Coleridge was re- 
 quested by Mrs. Arnold to prepare and de- 
 liver to her husband's biographer such 
 recollections as he had of Arnold's career 
 as an undergraduate at Oxford. He closes 
 his sketch with these words : * ' Within the 
 peaceful walls of Corpus I made friends, of 
 whom all are spared me but Arnold — he has 
 fallen asleep — but the bond there formed, 
 which the lapse of years and our differing walks 
 in life did not unloosen, and which strong 
 opposition of opinions only rendered more in- 
 timate, though interrupted in time I feel not 
 to be broken — may I venture without unsea- 
 sonable solemnity to express the firm trust 
 that it will endure forever in eternity?" This 
 bond of friendship was transmitted to their 
 more distinguished sons. It was pleasant to 
 hear Lord Coleridge speak feelingly and with 
 generous praise of his dead friend. At the 
 foot of the stairway in the Coleridge man- 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 27 
 
 sion was a fine bust of Matthew Arnold, a 
 copy of one which has been placed in West- 
 minster Abbey, Lord Coleridge being the 
 orator who pronounced the panegyric at the 
 public ceremony.* The two men were about 
 the same age, and always addressed one an- 
 other with the familiarity of boys. Arnold was 
 always ' ' Matt ' ' to Coleridge. ' ' Was Mr. Ar- 
 nold true to his teachings as the apostle of 
 the gospel of sweetness and light ?" " Per- 
 fectly and always," was Lord Coleridge's an- 
 swer. He told me that Arnold's ideal of a 
 happy home was realized in his cottage at 
 Cobham, in Surrey, where his widow still re- 
 sides. There were his family, his books and 
 his dogs. He was forever weeding his library 
 shelves and getting rid of cumbersome and 
 useless stuff. 
 
 He and Coleridge came under the spell of 
 Newman's influence at Oxford, and the 
 friendship there established was never broken 
 or weakened by Newman's forsaking Angli- 
 canism and going to Rome. "A most faith- 
 ful likeness," as Lord Coleridge called it, of 
 the Cardinal, made but a few months before 
 
 *This address is published in full in the Appendix. 
 
28 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 his death, hung on the wall in Coleridge's 
 library. It is a saintly face. Near it was a 
 splendid likeness of his Lordship, made by 
 his first wife, who was an accomplished ar- 
 tist. In his poem on Rugby Chapel, Matthew 
 Arnold speaks with triumphant faith, or shall 
 I say hope, rather, of there being a place 
 where "that strength, zealous, beneficent, 
 firm," of his father shall find occupation with 
 the immortals in ' ' the labor house vast of be- 
 ing." And now he is of them also, with 
 his father, and the two Coleridges, and New- 
 man, and Professor Jowett, the master of 
 Balliol, who went before Coleridge — the last 
 one — only a few months ago. Of Prof. 
 Jowett' s death Lord Coleridge wrote me in 
 October, 1893, saying: " The death of the 
 master of Balliol has hit me very hard. He 
 was the best and almost the oldest of my sur- 
 viving friends, and his death has made my 
 world much poorer and much smaller. He 
 was a really great man, a very good one, and 
 one of the tenderest, most loyal and truest of 
 friends." 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 29 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 I WAS interested to know something of Mr. 
 Arnold's daily life, and I count it no infrac- 
 tion of the rules of hospitality or propriety to 
 give some facts which I learned from Mrs. 
 Woodehouse, at dinner that day. Her father 
 was an incessant reader, and always read 
 with pen in hand, making copious notes. He 
 was an early riser, and worked in his library 
 without refreshment until the breakfast 
 hour at 9 o'clock. After breakfast he re- 
 sumed his work, and continued it until 2 or 
 3 o'clock, when he was ready for a long 
 ramble of an hour or two, in company with 
 his daughter, over the Surrey hills. He was 
 a good shot, and kept dogs, which he always 
 took with him in these excursions. 
 
 When I had the honor of entertaining Mr. 
 and Mrs. Arnold at Indianapolis, during his 
 
30 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 lecture tour in 1883, a partnership dog, 
 owned or claimed by Myron Reed and me, 
 presented himself at the hall door and insisted 
 upon coming in with the guests. It was a 
 sleety February day, and I was on the point 
 of shutting the door against " John," but 
 Mr. Arnold said, "Let John come in," as 
 he stooped and patted him on the head. 
 John recognized him by some sort of free- 
 masonry, and seemed to understand that he 
 was indebted to his new friend for the privi- 
 lege of curling up on the rug that evening, in 
 the midst of good company, instead of stay- 
 ing in his lonesome kennel. 
 
 John was a stray, and, so far as we could 
 learn, an unregistered pointer, which had 
 been abandoned by some pot-hunter who had 
 worn him out during the shooting season. He 
 was found in my outhouse, rheumatic and 
 emaciated, and by virtue of starvation and ill 
 treatment had become a pessimistic " tramp." 
 At first he snarled when food was offered to 
 him, but kindness brought him around at last, 
 and in a few months he became a favorite 
 with all the children in the neighborhood. 
 If the night were cold he would leave his 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 31 
 
 kennel and cross the street to Reed's 
 home, and if a Hght were burning in the 
 preacher's Hbrary, John would give one 
 peremptory knock at the door, and, being 
 admitted, he would stretch himself before the 
 fire, with his nose on his paws, and watch the 
 preacher while he was writing one of his in- 
 imitable sermons, or, if in the mood, reading 
 the very latest novel. Reed said he always 
 knew when our family had gone to bed by 
 John's signal at his door. John went to 
 Denver with the preacher and soon died. 
 
 One of the most pathetic things I ever 
 read was Reed's letter describing the last 
 hours of our old friend and the sadness of the 
 household at the time. He said he then re- 
 solved he would have no more dogs about 
 the house, but one day he came home and 
 found his little daughter fondling an ill-fav- 
 ored puppy with "a Websterian head, thick 
 tail and enormous feet." He ordered it out 
 of the house, but the child pleaded for her 
 pet and said she had taken it from a boy who 
 was about to "drown him in the cold -waXer ." 
 That settled it, and puppy became a member 
 of the family. If the dog is living yet you 
 
32 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 may be sure that he will stay by his friend 
 Myron — call him what you will, Populist, 
 Communist or Anarchist. It was Ouida, I 
 think, who said that the more she saw of men 
 the better she liked dogs. There is something 
 lacking in the make-up of a man who does 
 not take kindly to an affectionate dog. Reed 
 told me once he doubted the power of divine 
 grace to save one of the elect, a deacon of 
 the Presbyterian Church, because he had 
 poisoned two beautiful setters belonging to a 
 neighbor just before going to prayer-meet- 
 ing. 
 
 I told Mrs. Woodehouse that her father's 
 many friends would look with interest to the 
 publication of a biography, but she answered 
 that it would not be according to her father's 
 wish if his life were written. He had seen so 
 many caricatures under the guise of biog- 
 raphies that he preferred to rest his claims for 
 fame and usefulness on what he had written 
 and published. It is strange to many that 
 Mr. Arnold wrote very little poetry, during 
 the last twenty years of his life, a period dur- 
 ing which, in other lines of literary work, he 
 was so productive. His family and friends 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 33 
 
 say that his standard was so high and his 
 critical judgment so severe that he preferred 
 to write none, rather than to produce what 
 might be classed as unsound or inferior. He 
 was not much of a letter writer, and was in 
 the habit of using his daughter as his amanu- 
 ensis. 
 
 Notwithstanding Mr, Arnold's disinclina- 
 tion to have his life written, it would surely 
 be very grateful to the many and certainly 
 increasing number of the admirers of his writ- 
 ings to know as much as possible of the man 
 who has exercised such a powerful formative 
 influence upon the thought of the present 
 generation. I have heard also that Mr. Ar- 
 nold was in the habit of destroying letters 
 written to him. In this he was like Sydney 
 Smith, who wrote to the daughter of . Sir 
 James Mackintosh, when she, in collecting 
 materials for her father's biography, asked 
 him for letters, that he had made it a rule to 
 promptly destroy every letter he received 
 from any human being. This was a great 
 mistake. The world would know but one 
 side, and that not always the best, of some of 
 3 
 
34 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 its greatest men, were it not for the charming 
 letters they wrote. Where is there more de- 
 lightful reading than the letters of Cowper, 
 Swift, Heine, Carlyle, Emerson, Motley, Dr. 
 Arnold, and others that might be named? 
 Even the old bear, Dr. Johnson, shows the 
 velvet on his paws in the two volumes of his 
 letters to Mrs. Thrale and others. 
 
 When the ladies retired and the gentlemen 
 gathered about their host at the top of the 
 table, where the port was served, a remark of 
 Lord Coleridge led to a conversation about 
 the American judiciary. The Lord Chancel- 
 lor looks upon the short tenures of our state 
 judges and their election by a popular vote as 
 an abomination, and in this he is probably in 
 line with the current opinion among thought- 
 ful Americans. 
 
 There is something shocking in the spec- 
 tacle of a candidate for a place upon the 
 Bench going about with the ward workers and 
 heelers and counseling with the local bosses 
 concerning the best method of fixing things at 
 the primary, and taking an active part in all 
 the questionable proceedings which go by the 
 name of practical politics. How often have we 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 35 
 
 seen judges juggling with their consciences 
 in their efforts to do what they believed to be 
 right without offending some active party work- 
 ers who claimed to have fixed the delegates 
 in the convention for them, and thus secured 
 their nomination for the places they hold. 
 
 "See," said the Lord Chancellor, "the 
 contrast between your federal judges, who 
 are appointed and have a life tenure, and 
 your judges who are elected, and whose ten- 
 ure depends upon the whim of party man- 
 agers." When the mails are stopped ; when 
 business is paralyzed ; when many good peo- 
 ple fear that we are on the verge of anarchy 
 and that popular government is a failure, we 
 turn to the federal judiciary for the mainte- 
 nance of law and order, and for the protection 
 of life and property.* 
 
 Of many things said there about English 
 
 *This was written during the strike of 1894, when, 
 at the command of Debs, the railway system of the 
 West was tied up. Judge Woods, the United States 
 Circuit Judge of the Seventh Circuit, issued his injunc- 
 tion commanding Debs and his associates to stop in- 
 terfering with the operation of the railways. For dis- 
 obeying this order Debs has been tried for contempt of 
 court and sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment. 
 The prompt action of Judge Woods ended the strike. 
 
36 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 politicians and English politics, it is not for 
 me to speak ; only let me say that the En- 
 glish women are keenly alive to all public 
 questions, and discuss them with a relish and 
 vigor which would surprise those who imagine 
 that these high-bred ladies are wholly ab- 
 sorbed in frivolous occupations. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 37 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A DAY or two after the dinner at Lord Cole- 
 ridge's London mansion I received the fol- 
 lowing letter : 
 
 Star and Garter Hotel, ) 
 Richmond, 19th July, 1891 (Surrey).) 
 
 My Dear Sir — I mentioned to you that we should 
 be at Warwick on Saturday next and at Birmingham 
 the Wednesday following — on the circuit. If you 
 like to see something of our circuit ways and customs 
 I shall be glad to be your guide and host. I fear the 
 capacity of the lodgings will not allow me to oifer you 
 bed, but we shall be delighted to give you board, and 
 there are very decent inns, both at Warwick and 
 Birmingham. Warwick is an exceptionally beautiful 
 and interesting place — full of fine things, especially 
 the castle — and you will be in the very midst of Shaks- 
 pere's country, whose name I spell as above, but not 
 on the road to spell it Bacon. I have come here to rest 
 for the Sunday, and to-morrow I have to go into Kent 
 to have a " view " in a curious and important case be- 
 ing tried before me without a jury. I leave London 
 on Wednesday, but a line to i Sussex Square will 
 alwaj'-s find me. Sincerely yours, Coleridge. 
 
 W. P. Fishback, Esq. 
 
38 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Nothing could be more acceptable to an 
 American lawyer visiting England than such 
 an invitation, and I promptly answered that 
 I would be at Warwick at the opening of the 
 Assizes, The judge on the circuit is fur- 
 nished with a house for himself and family to 
 live in during the sessions, and as Lady Cole- 
 ridge, her brother and sister and her friend, 
 a Mrs. Barrington, of Devonshire, were on 
 the circuit with Lord Coleridge, the house 
 was full. I found comfortable lodgings at the 
 Woolpack Inn, where I got my breakfasts, 
 taking luncheon and dining with Lord Cole- 
 ridge and family at the Judge's Lodgings, as 
 it is called, a substantial structure designed 
 by Inigo Jones. 
 
 The expense of keeping up the judge's 
 house is borne by the local authorities during 
 the Assizes. By an ancient custom the lord 
 of a neighboring manor sends for the table 
 of the Lord Chief-Justice, when he is holding 
 the Assizes, a haunch or saddle of venison, 
 and sometimes an entire carcass. When the 
 gift is received the marshal of the Lord Chief- 
 Justice makes a formal and official acknowl- 
 edgment, sending a simple "thanks" if it is 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 39 
 
 a haunch, "thanks for the handsome pres- 
 ent" if it is a saddle, and "thanks for the 
 splendid gift" if it is the entire animal. It 
 was a splendid gift this time, and the venison 
 was good and well dressed. It sometimes 
 happens that owing to political differences or 
 personal dislike the donor and the donee are 
 not good friends, not even on speaking terms, 
 but this causes no breach of the custom, 
 which has been observed from a time whereof 
 the memory of man runneth not to the con- 
 trary. 
 
 By another custom as old, whenever the 
 Lord Chief-Justice comes to hold the Assizes 
 in the Midland Circuit, Balliol College, of the 
 University of Oxford, sends him a pair of 
 immaculate kid gauntlets, which he wears at 
 the opening ceremony. 
 
 Lord Coleridge and family arrived at War- 
 wick on Saturday, at 6 o'clock P. M., and the 
 event was announced by the ringing of church 
 bells. A corporation coach, attended by city 
 ofificials and preceded by trumpeters, conveyed 
 the city's guest to the Judge's Lodgings. An 
 hour later I sent a note to his Lordship advis- 
 
40 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 ing him of my presence and soon received 
 the following answer: 
 
 Judge's Lodgings. 
 Warwick, 26th July, 1891. 
 My Dear Sir — I am glad you are here. I go to 
 church in state at 11, which is a piece of our peacock 
 life you might perhaps like to see. I will see that you 
 have a place with my marshal if you like to come here 
 about ten minutes to 11. This afternoon I am engaged, 
 but I hope you will come and dine here at 7:45. Lady 
 Coleridge is most anxious to thank you for that beauti- 
 ful little volume of poems [Riley's " Old-fashioned 
 Roses," published by Longmans in London] you sent 
 her. She would have written yesterday, but she ar- 
 rived late from London quite used up. Believe me to 
 be yours very sincerely, Coleridge. 
 
 I arrived at the Judge's Lodgings a few 
 minutes before 1 1 and found everything in 
 readiness. The chaplain had sent a large 
 basket of roses which were beautifully ar- 
 ranged on a center table in the reception 
 room. And there was the Lord Chief-Justice, 
 arrayed in all the bravery of his official tog- 
 gery. His head was adorned with the enor- 
 mous wig which is never worn except on state 
 occasions and when the portrait painter is at 
 his work. He wore the crimson robe, with the 
 long "tail," and about his neck was a massive 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 41 
 
 gold chain which was first bestowed on 
 the Chief-Justice in the time of Henry VIL 
 His hands were encased in the white kid 
 gauntlets — the gift from Balliol, his Lord- 
 ship's college at Oxford. It was an impos- 
 ing sight to see the crowds on the streets 
 making way for the trumpeters who preceded 
 the corporation carriage in which the Lord 
 Chief-Justice, the mayor and the chaplain 
 were carried to St. Mary's Church, where the 
 chaplain preached a short and sensible ser- 
 mon from the text, "Wherefore, I was not 
 disobedient unto the heavenly vision." 
 
 The building is a pretty piece of architect- 
 ure, which was designed by Sir Christopher 
 Wren, the architect of St. Paul's. The 
 church was crowded, and the solemn service 
 of the English Church was reverently attended 
 to by everybody, from the Lord Chief-Justice 
 to the "boots" from the inn. There is a 
 democracy in the English churches which 
 might well be copied in such churches as 
 John Hall's, on Fifth avenue. New York, 
 where the holders of the cushioned pews 
 scowl at a stranger as if he were a Digger In- 
 dian. 
 
42 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Coming out after the service, I noticed 
 some shelves in the vestibule which were 
 filled with bread. Lady Coleridge informed 
 me that some charitable people in the time of 
 Lord Leicester (Amy Robsart's husband) 
 had, by their wills, set apart a fund to pro- 
 vide this bread for the poor of the parish 
 who have received it every Sunday since then. 
 
 Going back to theWoolpack Inn, after ser- 
 vice, I found there Mrs. Washington Gladden 
 and her daughter, of Columbus, Ohio, who 
 were staying over Sunday at Warwick, while 
 Mr. Gladden had gone off to preach in a 
 neighboring town, Leamington, I think ; a few 
 minutes after, a messenger came from Lord 
 Coleridge with his private key to the garden 
 and park attached to the castle. This gave 
 me a privilege seldom enjoyed by tourists, 
 who are usually excluded from the grounds 
 on Sundays, Mrs. Gladden and Miss Glad- 
 den accompanied me in an afternoon ramble 
 under the cedars and beeches, and along the 
 banks of the Avon, which flows under the 
 castle walls. Meeting the gardener, he con- 
 ducted us through the graperies and fruit 
 gardens, which showed the results of careful 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 43 
 
 and skillful tending, and gave splendid prom- 
 ise of profuse fruitage for autumn and winter. 
 At the turning of an alley we came suddenly 
 upon a gentleman who seemed much sur- 
 prised at our presence there. With perfect 
 courtesy he asked us how we expected to get 
 out of the grounds, which was, as we con- 
 strued it, a euphemistic way of saying, " how 
 did you happen to get in ? " When it was 
 explained that Lord Coleridge had kindly 
 given to me his private key, the gentleman 
 bowed an apology, but told us that as the 
 family were " in residence " at the castle, he 
 would request us not to go inside of the inner 
 court, a very proper request, which was 
 cheerfully obeyed. Nothing can be lovelier 
 than a bright July day amidst such scenes 
 and associations. But as to all that see 
 Baedeker passim. It was late in the after- 
 noon when we got back to our inn, and I had 
 barely time to dress for dinner at the Judge's 
 Lodgings with Lord Coleridge and his family. 
 
44 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 I HAD seen Lord Coleridge presiding as 
 Chief-Justice in the Law Courts at London, 
 and as host at a dinner party at his mansion 
 in Sussex Square. I had also witnessed the 
 "peacock" parade at church, of which he 
 was the central figure, and I was now to have 
 the pleasure of meeting him and his family 
 in a less formal way at a Sunday dinner. 
 Some correspondent in a letter recently pub- 
 lished spoke of Lord Coleridge's beautifully 
 modulated voice, and how, in cross-examin- 
 ing an unwilling witness, he could win him 
 over by the sweet courtesy of his words and 
 manner. He had no faith in the "bow- 
 wow ' ' style with which ignorant lawyers at- 
 tempt to browbeat witnesses until the jur}^ 
 and judge are exasperated, but took the 
 witness into his confidence, so to speak, and, 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 45 
 
 maintaining the attitude of an honest and 
 earnest seeker after the truth, usually suc- 
 ceeded in getting a perfect disclosure. This 
 voice of his was a great gift, or talent, rather, 
 and the play of it in familiar talk with the mem- 
 bers of his family was pleasant to hear. Without 
 abating one jot of his dignity, he put every- 
 body present upon a level with himself, and 
 for the time being the Lord Chief-Justice disap- 
 peared and the man Coleridge was manifest, 
 though the ladies invariably addressed him 
 in a half playful way as "Chief." 
 
 It is not necessary to speak of the dinner, 
 or of the manner in which it was set forth and 
 served. The English dinner is one of the 
 great triumphs of social life, and it is seen in 
 its perfection when given by such hosts as 
 Lord and Lady Coleridge. As to the menu, 
 I did not think of it; as to the ladies' toil- 
 ettes, they were in such perfect good taste 
 that they did not attract attention, and the 
 light-footed serving men came and went so 
 quietly that they seemed to perform their of- 
 fices by magic. 
 
 Lord Coleridge was a prince of talkers, and 
 his talk was of the great men he had known 
 
46 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 and of the great books with which he was fa- 
 miliar. He spoke much of his friend, Matthew 
 Arnold. They had lived as boys together in 
 Devonshire, when they were six and seven 
 years of age, Coleridge being Arnold's senior 
 by one year. Even then, deep in their studies 
 of Latin and Greek, there was formed a per- 
 sonal and literary friendship which was only 
 interrupted by death. At an age when our 
 American boys are making mud pies in the 
 kindergarten, Coleridge was reading Virgil 
 under the tuition of his celebrated aunt, Sara 
 T. Coleridge. Speaking of Arnold, he said 
 that as son^ husband, father, brother, chum, 
 friend and companion, he was always and 
 everywhere the same genuine gentleman. 
 Once Coleridge had the right to make a nom- 
 ination for membership of some society at 
 Oxford ; I do not remember what it was, but 
 it was absolutely necessary that the candidate 
 should make a speech, and Arnold had never 
 made one, Coleridge named Arnold for the 
 place, and notified him that he would be ex- 
 pected to make a speech. " Matt, you must 
 make a speech," said Coleridge. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 47 
 
 "But I can't," said Arnold, "I never 
 did such a thing in my life."' 
 
 ' ' But you must ; otherwise you can not be 
 elected." 
 
 "Well, ril try," said Arnold, despair- 
 ingly = 
 
 " It was a very poor speech, indeed," said 
 Lord Coleridge, " but it fulfilled the condi- 
 tion." 
 
 Lord Coleridge was severe in his criticism 
 of Louis Napoleon and the Empress Eugenie, 
 He had known the former personally, and 
 knew enough of him to know that he was a 
 beasto As Emperor of the French, he did 
 everything in his power to minister to the 
 lowest tastes of his people that they might 
 tolerate his dynasty. He said he had once de- 
 nounced Eugenie publicly, and she was the 
 only woman he had ever felt called upon to treat 
 in that manner. As Empress, she was a 
 cold-blooded, scheming woman, cruel and 
 ambitious, and she more than any one else 
 was responsible for the Franco-German war 
 and all the suffering it caused and the humilia- 
 tion of France. While he had no criticism to 
 make of the Queen's ofifiicial recognition of 
 
48 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 the deposed Empress, he found fault with 
 her fondness and liking for a woman of such 
 a history — it tended to salve over and give a 
 sort of approval to a character thoroughly- 
 unscrupulous. There has been an effort of 
 late in some of the English periodicals to ex- 
 cuse or palliate the conduct of Eugenie in 
 forcing her husband and son to take part in 
 the disastrous campaign which had such a 
 swift and disgraceful ending at Sedan, but 
 the public voice and the verdict of history 
 will be against her. 
 
 Lord Coleridge told a story of the elope- 
 ment of the late Charles Mathews, who ran 
 away with a Mrs. D., who had a son by her 
 lawful husband. Mathews carried away 
 mother and son, and he was such a jolly 
 good stepfather that the boy — now a man — 
 calls himself Mathews and is known by no 
 other name. Many of my readers will re- 
 member Mr. Mathews and his engagement at 
 Indianapolis about twenty-five years ago. 
 "Cool as a Cucumber" was the title of a 
 farce-comedy, which, I believe, he wrote 
 himself, and in which he played the leading 
 part. He was then on his way to England 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 49 
 
 and had been a year in Australia and Califor- 
 nia. He was tired of the everlasting sunshine 
 and was pining for an English drizzle and a 
 London fog. In company with Mr. Halford, 
 of the Indianapolis Journal, I called on him 
 at the Bates Hotel, where we found him in a 
 happy mood. We were having a nasty Feb- 
 ruary day, and Mathews said he began to feel 
 as though he were getting home again. He 
 did not allow us to go without cracking a 
 bottle of wine with him. Of Charles Math- 
 ews, the elder, Lord Coleridge said that he 
 was the most versatile and remarkable man 
 who had appeared on the modern English 
 stage. With a green curtain for a back- 
 ground, a plain table and chair and a box 
 filled with trumpery for a setting, Mathews 
 would come on in an ordinary dress, seat 
 himself at the table, and for two hours would 
 keep the audience in a roar of laughter at his 
 story telling and characterizations. During 
 the vacations Mathews would visit Yorkshire, 
 Lancashire and other localities to gather sto- 
 ries and learn the dialects. He confessed 
 that the Devonshire dialect was too much for 
 him. 
 
50 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Macready, Lord Coleridge said, was also 
 an actor of great power and versatility. The 
 actor who was to play Richmond to his Rich- 
 ard once asked: "Where shall I hit you, 
 Mr. Macready?" "Wherever you can, sir," 
 was the answer. Macready was a perfect 
 master of fence. 
 
 Invariably in addressing his wife's broth- 
 er and sister, Lord Coleridge called them 
 "brother" and "sister." "Mr. Fishback, 
 you will please take my sister to the table," 
 he would say. We are accustomed to ridi- 
 cule and laugh at the disinclination of the 
 House of Lords to pass the bill which has so 
 often gone through the Commons for remov- 
 ing the legal bar which prohibits marriage 
 with a "deceased wife's sister." Matthew 
 Arnold, in one of his essays, says that, while 
 upon principle there seems to be no excuse 
 for the existing law, it can be justified on the 
 ground of delicacy. And I can well see that 
 there would be a shock to the sensibilities of 
 a refined person in the bare suggestion of 
 such a relation. It may be called squeamish- 
 ness — ^but a little dash of that even might be 
 of value to our robust American character. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 51 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 On Monday morning, July 27, at 11 o'clock, 
 I went to the Judge's Lodgings, where I met 
 Mr. Baring Lawford, the brother of Lady 
 Coleridge, who conducted me to a seat on the 
 judge's bench in the court room. Presently 
 the Lord Chief-Justice, clad in his crimson 
 robe, a wig with long curls, wearing his im- 
 maculate kids and carrying about his neck 
 the massive gold chain, and escorted by the 
 high sheriff, clerk and bailiffs, came into the 
 room, and, after a stately bow to the barris- 
 ters and those present, who stood up at his 
 entrance, and the proclamation of the crier, 
 his Lordship took his seat and the Assizes were 
 open. The grand jurors arose, the oath was 
 first administered to the foreman and then to the 
 other jurors, three at a time, each juror obey- 
 ing the injunction given by the clerk at the 
 
52 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 end of the oath to "kiss the book." The 
 oath was in substance, and almost in words, 
 like the oath now administered to grand jurors 
 in all the American criminal courts. 
 
 I was peculiarly struck by the make-up of 
 the grand jury, which was composed of men of 
 education and of commanding influence in the 
 county. It is esteemed as a privilege and 
 an honor to serve in that capacity. Here 
 it is considered by many of our best citi- 
 zens as an intolerable burden. A short oral 
 charge was given by the judge, and the jury 
 retired to an upper chamber directly over 
 the judge's seat to consider the indictments 
 presented by the crown offtcers. The court 
 room was small, circular in form, with a 
 gallery supported by pillars running around 
 the entire room. The attorneys and solicitors, 
 clad in ordinary citizens' dress, occupied a 
 small space in the center, directly under the 
 judge's bench; the barristers, in wigs and 
 gowns, were ranged on two benches to the 
 left, and the jury box was on the opposite 
 side of the room, so that the barristers address- 
 ing the jury spoke over the heads of the at- 
 torneys and solicitors, who occupied the pit 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 53 
 
 in the center. To the right of the jury box 
 were the witness stand and the prisoner's 
 dock. While the grand jury were deliberating 
 Lord Coleridge turned to me and said: "I 
 will now go out and rid myself of some of this 
 superfluous toggery.* 
 
 *NotwithstandingLord Coleridge's talk about his wig 
 and "tail" and "toggery," he was certainly conscious of 
 the fact that these official belongings are not without 
 their use. Under the American system of an elective 
 judiciary and short tenures, the Bench has declined in 
 ability. Excepting the federal judges, and those who 
 are appointed or elected for long terms, it can not be 
 said that they are as a rule selected from the ablest 
 and most learned of the profession. Dependent upon 
 popular favor, and, worse still, often dependent upon 
 the wire-pullers and " practical politicians," so-called, 
 for their places, it is difficult for our elective judges to 
 maintain that independence and dignity of character 
 which are essential to a good judge. Some of our 
 candidates for the Bench, on the eve of elections, go 
 about with the " bosses " and " fixers " to the beer- 
 gardens soliciting votes. Colonel Ingersoll once said 
 that the Comanche Indians could be made peacea- 
 ble, if, instead of blankets, the government would com- 
 pel them to wear stove-pipe hats and dress coats. The 
 wearing of gowns by the judges of our state courts would 
 not make Marshalls and Story s of all of them, but it 
 would raise questions in the public mind, and in their 
 own minds possibly, as to their fitness for judicial 
 stations. Hooker, in his Church Polity, insists, with 
 
54 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Lord Coleridge returned in a short time with 
 a lighter wig with short curls. He had hardly- 
 resumed his seat when the foreman of the 
 grand jury, from the gallery above, handed 
 down to the clerk, whose desk \vas at the 
 right of the judge, an indictment which was 
 presented at the end of a staff about ten feet 
 long. 
 
 The clerk took the document from the 
 ring in which it was enclosed, inspected it a 
 moment to see if it were properly signed and 
 indorsed, announced the name of the defendant, 
 who immediately appeared in the dock, and, 
 after arraignment and plea, the petit jury was 
 sworn to try the case. The prisoners to be 
 tried had been committed by the examining 
 magistrates and the indictments had been pre- 
 pared before the assembling of the grand jury. 
 
 strong reason, upon the clergy wearing a dress befitting 
 their office. He sajs, " Notwithstanding both judges, 
 through the garments of judicial authority, and through 
 the ornaments of sovereignty princes, yea bishops 
 through the very attire of bishops, are made blessed, 
 that is to say, marked and manifested, they are to be 
 such as God hath poured his blessing upon by advanc- 
 ing them above others and placing them where they 
 may do Him powerful good service." 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 5 5 
 
 The examinations by the grand jury were 
 very brief, and the witnesses came at once 
 from the grand jury room into cou^rt to testify 
 at the trial. This was a very expeditious 
 way of transacting business, but the theory of 
 the EngHsh people is that the criminal laws 
 and the criminal courts are enacted and estab- 
 lished to punish offenders rather than to afford 
 tricky and eloquent advocates an opportunity 
 to befuddle witnesses and jurors, to the end 
 that felons may escape punishment. Upon 
 the whole, I prefer the swift, sure, but, at the 
 same time, careful methods of English crimi- 
 nal jurisprudence to our cumbersome, tech- 
 nical, dilatory way of dealing with criminals. 
 Even when supplemented by the proceedings 
 of Judge Lynch and the White Caps, our 
 efforts come short of what good citizens have 
 a right to expect in a civilized country. 
 
 The barrister, holding the brief for the 
 prosecution, rose in his place as soon as the 
 prisoner appeared and stated the case to the 
 jury. He then produced and examined his 
 witnesses. Following this came the address 
 of the barrister, defending, and, after the 
 witnesses for the defense were heard, the 
 
56 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 judge summed up, or, as we say, charged 
 the jury. There were no motions to quash 
 indictments, or to continue cases, or to 
 change the venue ; no instructions were pre- 
 pared by wily counsel to trap the court into 
 an error, and the charges were oral. The sum- 
 ming up by Lord Coleridge was comprehen- 
 sive and fair. No point in the evidence for 
 the prosecution or the defense was slurred or 
 unduly emphasized. A barrister told me that 
 there was no judge in England whose recol- 
 lection of testimony was so accurate. With- 
 out having taken a note he would state the 
 substance of every witness's story, so that 
 when the judge finished the jury were ready 
 to return their verdict. In every case the ver- 
 dict was returned after a short consultation in 
 the box ; the jury did not retire from the court 
 room once, and the longest time occupied in 
 their deliberations, on a single case, did not 
 exceed ten minutes. 
 
 In one case the jury acquitted a prisoner 
 who the judge thought should have been con- 
 victed, and he jokingly remarked that Mr. 
 W., the barrister for the defense, had beaten 
 him in that case. He was not seriously 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 57 
 
 offended, however. It was a charge of crimi- 
 nal assault upon a young woman, whose 
 testimony was very positive as to the fact, 
 but she did not make it quite clear why 
 no outcry was made until a couple of young 
 men coming over a stile in the hedge row 
 surprised her and the prisoner in a com- 
 promising position. What was remarkable 
 in the case was that the witnesses detailed the 
 facts without being allowed to dwell upon the 
 disgusting details, which are usually elicited 
 with so much gusto by dirty-minded attorneys 
 in our criminal courts. When the prosecu- 
 trix stated that the defendant was "taking pro- 
 ceedings" with her, the judge said "that is 
 sufficiently explicit." 
 
 A clerk in a Birmingham bank had been 
 guilty of forging checks amounting to $7,500. 
 The crime had been committed only a short 
 time before the trial. When the prisoner rose 
 to receive his sentence the Chief-Justice ad- 
 dressed him substantially as follows : "Young 
 man, you have been holding a position of great 
 trust, and you have betrayed it. I should 
 have very little respect for myself, per- 
 sonally, or for the great office I hold, if I 
 
58 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 should consider your offense a light one. I 
 give you ten years' penal servitude." 
 
 It will occur to my readers that this method 
 of dealing with bank wreckers is somewhat 
 summary when contrasted with our ways of 
 doing things. A few instances of sure, swift 
 and severe punishment in such cases would 
 have a wholesome effect upon the conduct of 
 our bank officials. No dilatory motions fol- 
 low the verdict. As soon as it is announced 
 sentence is pronounced and the convict is sent 
 to prison. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 59 
 
 CHAPTER Vin. 
 
 I NOTICED that Lord Coleridge had a doc- 
 ument which he examined with care just be- 
 fore pronouncing sentence. The following 
 letter, from Mr. Egerton B. Lawford, the 
 marshal of the court, and a brother of Lady- 
 Coleridge, explains it: 
 
 July 30, 1891. 
 Dear Mr. Fishback — I am directed by the Lord 
 Chief -Justice to forward to vou the inclosed calendar 
 of prisoners tried at Warwick this week. His Lord- 
 ship thinks it may be of interest to you containing, 
 as it does, a record of previous convictions against the 
 prisoners, which information is supplied for the sole 
 and exclusive use of the judge; such information being 
 carefully withheld from the knowledge of the jury. I 
 hope you may have a pleasant trip to Paris and a safe 
 journey home. 
 
 The calendar of prisoners to be tried at the 
 Summer Assizes, to be holden at the Shire 
 Hall, Warwick, on Saturday, the 25th day 
 
6o RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 of July, 1 89 1, contains the names of the 
 prisoners to be tried, with a record showing 
 description of the offenses with which they 
 are charged, and a statement of other crimes 
 of which they may have been convicted. To 
 this was afifixed the certificate of the governor 
 of the prison in these words : 
 
 " I certify that to the best of my knowledge and be- 
 lief, the several prisoners have been convicted as stated 
 above. H. W. Parr, Governor." 
 
 If the letter "N" were opposite the name, it 
 signified the prisoner could neither read nor 
 write ; the letter ' 'R" that he could read, but 
 not write ; ' ' Imp . ' ' that he could read and write 
 imperfectly, "Well" that he could read 
 and write well. ' ' Sup. ' ' meant superior edu- 
 cation. Then followed the mystery or call- 
 ing of the prisoner, as sailor, shoemaker, 
 watchmaker, painter, laborer, clerk, brass- 
 founder. Then followed some of the convic- 
 tions . For instance , A , " 5 years in reformatory 
 for having unlawful possession of an album;" 
 B, " one summary conviction for cruelty to a 
 dog;" C, " 14 days for stealing a hat, 21 
 days for stealing 31-2 lbs. beef, seven sum- 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 6i 
 
 mary convictions for assault and vagrancy." 
 D, " 5 years penal servitude for stealing 7 
 shillings and 6d." When the Chief-Justice 
 read this, his face flushed with indignation 
 and he said, "I can not understand these 
 ferocious penalties inflicted by the local mag- 
 istrates- — what would they do in cases of 
 crime with violence?" In view of this he let 
 the prisoner off with a mild sentence of four 
 months for burglary. I was informed that the 
 Chief-Justice often paid a barrister a fee for 
 defending a poor prisoner. The county pays 
 the barrister who prosecutes. To a prisoner 
 who was convicted of stealing 8 shillings and 
 some napkins from an old lady, whom he 
 knocked dov/n, the Chief-Justice said, " You 
 have committed a crime with violence, and I 
 visit your crime with a heavy hand, I give 
 you 18 months at hard labor," He also 
 read a lecture to the constable, " Why did 
 you arrest this man, sir ?" "I arrested and 
 searched him and made the charge against 
 him, because I knew him to be a thief." 
 " You had better be careful about arresting 
 people on suspicion, or you will be cast some 
 
62 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 day." * It so happened in the case on trial 
 that the proof justified the arrest. After one 
 of the adjournments, Lord Coleridge asked me 
 what I thought of his way of disposing of the 
 criminal calendar. I told him it seemed to me 
 to be a summary way of doing things, but that 
 I believed every man had had a fair trial, and 
 that the jury had done right in every case, 
 even in the one where they beat his Lordship 
 and acquitted a prisoner who, in his opinion, 
 was guilty. 
 
 The grand jury were in session two hours, 
 and at the end of that time they had returned 
 into court twelve indictments. These were 
 all disposed of in two days and a half. Dur- 
 ing the trial of one case, in which a number 
 of witnesses were examined, his Lordship nod- 
 ded as if he were asleep. The barrister de- 
 fending, a Mr. W,, went on with his examin- 
 ation of the witnesses, but seemed to be em- 
 barrassed, fearing that the judge was not 
 
 * This is in fine contrast with the disregard of the 
 rights of the citizen by Mayor Denny, of Indianapolis, 
 who in a communication to the Century Magazine 
 plumes himself upon the fact that he gave the police 
 carte blanche to seize, try, convict and iiog all persons 
 whom they had reason to suspect of being " tramps." 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 6z 
 
 hearing the testimony. When Mr. W, had 
 concluded, Lord Coleridge opened his eyes 
 and proceeded at once with his summing up, 
 which showed that he had not missed a syl- 
 lable of the evidence. In a former paper I 
 spoke of the charm of his voice. This was 
 shown in a marked manner in his charge to 
 the jury. Pure English, spoken as Lord Col- 
 eridge spoke it, may be made as musical as 
 Italian or French. Perfect enunciation, with 
 just enough stress and volume to be heard by 
 the persons addressed, without gesticulation 
 or undue waste of lung power, give the speak- 
 er an immense advantage over the hammer- 
 and-tongs oratory which mars the speech of 
 so many of our lawyers and public men. 
 
 Western lawyers have this fault in great 
 excess, and on a recent occasion in the Su- 
 preme Court at Washington the judges request- 
 ed an attorney to address them, if possible, 
 without making so much noise. Soon after 
 the case was disposed of an admiralty case 
 was heard by the court, in which it was 
 claimed that a collision of two vessels in a 
 fog was caused by the failure of one of them 
 to sound the fog-horn. It was shown that 
 
64 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 the machinery for sounding the horn was out 
 of order, but it was claimed that a sailor with 
 a powerful voice was used as an effective 
 substitute. One of the Supreme Judges re- 
 marked, that if it could be shown that Mr. 
 
 , of (naming the noisy attorney), 
 
 was on the vessel at the time the defense 
 might be good. 
 
 Once Chief-Justice Marshall sent the mar- 
 shal of the court to whisper to a Cincinnati at- 
 torney, who was addressing the court after the 
 manner of a horse auctioneer, that the judges 
 were not deaf. Governor Hendricks of Indiana 
 was an example of how effective a speech may 
 be made without vociferous ranting. I have seen 
 him leave the platform after speaking for an 
 hour to a crowd in the open air without show- 
 ing the slightest sign of fatigue. Americans 
 make a goodwdeal of fun of John Bull's way 
 of speaking his mother tongue, but careful 
 observation of the speech of cultivated English 
 ladies and gentlemen will convince any one 
 that they use the language with tolerable skill 
 and accuracy. 
 
 During the trial of one case a clownish wit- 
 ness with a mirth-provoking stutter was tell- 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 65 
 
 ing his story in the Cousin Sally Dillard 
 style and seemed to be utterly unable to get 
 through. He saw that the jury, the barris- 
 ters, the bystanders and even the Lord Chief- 
 Justice were all amused, but he overdid 
 the thing, and after the fun had gone far 
 enough his Lordship said: " Mr. Witness, 
 you have made us all laugh heartily, but you 
 must now get on with your story ; if you do 
 not you will go somewhere else." These 
 words, spoken with gentleness, firmness and 
 dignity, produced a magical effect and the 
 witness found his tongue without difficulty. 
 
66 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The barrister, Mr. W., who took dinner at 
 the Judge's Lodgings on Tuesday, gave me 
 some interesting information concerning the 
 relations the attorneys and barristers have to- 
 wards one another. A barrister may not 
 "tout" for retainers nor "hug" for business. 
 If on the circuit he must not eat at the same 
 table with the attorneys. If he chances to 
 stop at the same inn his meals must be served 
 in his own apartment; he must not ride in 
 the same coach with a solicitor or an attor- 
 ney, nor smoke in the same room, nor bestow 
 on him or receive from him any hospitality. 
 It would be a gross breach of professional de- 
 corum for a barrister to waltz or dance with 
 any member of a solicitor's family, for this 
 would be a gross example of "hugging" for 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 67 
 
 business.* The phrase "briefless barrister" 
 came to me with a meaning and emphasis 
 that were new to me. After several years of 
 circuit riding v/ithout a retainer, the young 
 barrister is apt to conclude that he has missed 
 his vocation, and he betakes himself to the 
 colonies, or does newspaper, or magazine, or 
 other literary work in London or the provinces. 
 It has been stated recently, on what seemed 
 
 •*When Jim Fisk and Jaj Gould were working out 
 Fisk's formula that it was " easier to rescue property 
 from the owners" than to acquire it bj^ legitimate 
 methods, thej retained some go-between attorneys 
 and hired Tammany judges to work the plan. The 
 judges were driven in disgrace from the Bench, but 
 the rascals retained the fruits of their crimes, and the 
 lawyers pocketed their fat fees without a twinge of con- 
 trition. What Fisk and Gould did in a sort of R.obin 
 Hood way is now accomplished by sneak-thief lawyers,, 
 who peddle to their clients their supposed influence 
 with judges upon whom they have or claim to have 
 some social or political " pull." There was an outcry 
 against this abuse during the last campaign in Indiana, 
 when it was alleged that the claims of certain candi- 
 dates for the Bench were being pushed by some lawyers 
 who it was charged had a pass-key to the back stairs 
 leading to the judges' chambers. This practice is sim- 
 ply shocking, and the fact that it is allowed by some 
 judges, and is used by otherwise reputable attorneys, 
 does not abate a jot of its enormity. 
 
68 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 to be good authority, that only about lO per 
 cent, of the young men who are called to the 
 bar succeed in making their way. This is a 
 melancholy showing when one considers how 
 much time and money they have spent in the 
 effort to qualify themselves for the work of 
 their profession. 
 
 It was at the Warwick Assizes, in March, 
 1 77 1, that the case of Rex vs. Donnelan was 
 tried before Justice Duller. I saw the origi- 
 nal records of the case, which are kept at the 
 Judge's Lodgings. Donnelan was tried for 
 murder, being charged with poisoning a kins- 
 man, a nephew, I think. The defendant was 
 a man of property and influence. The trial 
 began at 7: 30 A. M., on Friday, March 30; 
 at 6: 34 P. M. there was a verdict of guilty; 
 the prisoner was sentenced immediately and 
 was hanged early on the following Monday 
 morning. It was a case resting upon circum- 
 stantial evidence, and Justice Buller's charge 
 to the jury has, ever since that time, been 
 regarded as a leading authority on the prin- 
 ciples of presumptive proof. The celebrated 
 Dr. Hunter, whose bust is in Leicester Square, 
 London, came down to Warwick and testified 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 69 
 
 as an expert for the defense against several 
 other physicians who gave opinions as to the 
 cause of death. The jury discredited Hun- 
 ter, and at the time it was rumored that his 
 sworn statement was procured by the payment 
 of a large fee. "This," said Lord Coleridge, 
 "was the only stain upon the name of one of 
 the greatest physicians England ever had."* 
 
 *The hired professional expert witness has got to 
 be such a nuisance, such an obstruction to the admin- 
 istration of justice, that he has been expelled from the 
 courts of two civilized countries — France and Ger- 
 many — and has been denounced and discredited in the 
 highest courts of England and the United States. In 
 a case reported in 21 How., pp. 8S-100, Mr. Justice 
 Grier said in his opinion: " Experience has shown that 
 opposite opinions of persons professing to be experts 
 may be obtained to any amount ; and it often happens 
 that not only many days, but even weeks are consumed 
 in cross-examinations to test the knowledge or skill of 
 the witnesses and the correctness of their opinions, 
 wasting the time of the court and wearying its patience, 
 and perplexing instead of elucidating the questions in- 
 volved in the issue." Mr. Justice McLean, when on 
 the circuit, said in a case reported in 6 McLean 303, 
 that " the opinions of experts who have been examined 
 are in conflict, and, so far as my experience goes, this 
 has been uniformly the case where experts have been 
 examined." In the Tracy Peerage case, Lord Camp. 
 bell said of an expert: " I do not mean to throw any 
 
70 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Lord Coleridge met Grant when Grant was 
 in Europe, and met Sherman in America in 
 1883. At a banquet Sherman told him a 
 story, which may be an old one, about his oc- 
 cupation of Atlanta in 1864. The ministers 
 were much exercised about their worship and 
 consulted Sherman about it. He told them 
 to proceed as usual. "But how about pray- 
 ing for President Lincoln?" asked the minis- 
 reflection on Sir Frederick Madden. I dare saj he is 
 a very respectable gentleman, and did not mean to give 
 any evidence that was untrue, but really this confirms 
 my opinion that hardly any w^eight is to be given to 
 scientific witnesses ; they come with a bias on their 
 minds to support the cause in which they are embarked, 
 and it appears to me that Sir Frederick Madden, if he 
 had been a witness in a cause and had been asked on a 
 different occasion Avhat he thought of this handwriting, 
 would have given a totally different answer." The 
 abuse is notorious in patent cases. Hired liars march 
 in platoons to bolster up or destroy letters patent, and 
 the office of many a patent attorney is converted into 
 an incubator for hatching perjuries. It is high time 
 for some legislation to stop this disreputable business 
 in our courts. A law providing for unbiased experts 
 appointed by the court to report on scientific questions 
 involved in the litigation, would do much toward the 
 extermination of the pestilential brood, whose presence 
 in our courts recalls the old days when professional 
 perjurers wore straws in their shoes to let shysters 
 know that they were in the market. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 71 
 
 ter. "Don't do it," said Sherman. "Lin- 
 coln is doing very well and doesn't need your 
 prayers." "How about President Davis?" 
 "Oh," said Sherman, "pray for him with all 
 your might; he greatly needs your prayers." 
 When on exhibition, Grant seemed little in- 
 clined to talk, and made the impression on 
 Lord Coleridge that he was a very taciturn 
 person, an impression which is common with 
 those who do not know how glib and humor- 
 ous Grant's volubility was when he was with 
 his intimate friends. 
 
72 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Warwick was the birthplace or home of 
 Walter Savage Landor. The house was 
 shown me where he had lived. A friend of 
 Lord Coleridge, a Mr. M., who lived at War- 
 wick, was a very nice, precise gentleman, of 
 great delicacy of feeling and high sense of 
 propriety, a man much with the ladies, assist- 
 ing in their social affairs and church functions. 
 Landor and Mr. M. were once walking to- 
 gether, and just as they were opposite to 
 where some lady friends were standing, Lan- 
 dor, who was very violent and abusive at 
 times, was speaking of some duke whom, 
 with great emphasis and a violent gesture at 
 his walking companion, he denounced as an 
 "infernal scoundrel." M., fearing that the 
 ladies would suppose that he was the object 
 of Landor' s malediction, cried out, so that the 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 73 
 
 ladies could hear him, "That was what you 
 said to the duke, Mr. Landor?" 
 
 At dinner on Wednesday I met a Mr. Hill, 
 who was a nephew of the poet Southey, and 
 whose wife was Southey's daughter. Mr. 
 Hill is or was about eighty years old, and 
 was a tutor at Rugby under Dr. Arnold. His 
 unmarried daughter was with him, and is 
 the only surviving child of a large family. 
 Through the influence of his friends, who 
 knew him when they were boys at Rugby, 
 the old gentleman had a place in some en- 
 dowed school in Warwickshire, which yielded 
 him an income of £700. He was a gentle 
 old man, whose lifelong occupation as a 
 teacher had polished and softened his charac- 
 ter to a temper that was alert, intelligent and 
 courteous, and which at his great age gave 
 him a special charm. He was compelled to 
 go when the ladies retired, his health being 
 such as to forbid late hours. 
 
 The talk over the port was varied and inter- 
 esting. Sara T. Coleridge, the aunt of Lord 
 Coleridge, had put him through his paces in 
 Greek and Latin when he was too young to 
 go to Eton. He was warmly attached to 
 
74 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 her and revered and spoke of her as " a saint- 
 ly woman." Being at dinner once he heard 
 Carlyle say of his aunt: "Yes, she was a 
 vera fine creature — a vera fine creature — but 
 she was always drunk." Lord Coleridge 
 ftred up instantly and said : ' ' Mr. Carlyle, 
 if you mean to say that she was ever or fre- 
 quently under the influence of strong drink, 
 what you say is false. During the last two 
 years of her life, when she was dying of can- 
 cer, she may have occasionally taken opium 
 to deaden the pain, but in any other way she 
 was never drunk." The raspy old Scotch- 
 man, who. Lord Coleridge said, was an "old 
 brute," made no answer. I found among the 
 company generally an unfavorable opinion of 
 Carlyle, who is counted a man of powerful in- 
 tellect, but who was possessed of insane prej- 
 udices and Avorked upon very narrow lines. 
 
 Lord Coleridge said the stories of Sydney 
 Smith's wit were not exaggerated. He had 
 met him at dinners, and on such occa- 
 sions Smith kept the company in a roar of 
 laughter, until they suffered with pain from 
 side-ache. Once when Smith and a number 
 of guests were entertained at Holland House, 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 75 
 
 he dined with George IV, then Prince of 
 Wales, and remarked that the Duke of Or- 
 leans was a very bad man. " But," retorted 
 the Prince, " the Abbe — who was a friend to 
 the Duke — was a much more despicable 
 character, and he was a priest." For once 
 the clerical wit got the worst of it. This story 
 of Beau Brummel and George IV, which was 
 told by his lordship, may be new to some of 
 my readers. At a company where George 
 IV, then Prince of Wales, was entertaining a 
 number of friends, Brummel made a bet that 
 he could make the fat Prince ring the bell for 
 the servant. So he said: "Prince, will you 
 please ring the bell?" "Certainly," said 
 His Royal Highness. He rang the bell 
 promptly, and when the servant appeared 
 said: " Order Mr. Brummel's carriage im- 
 mediately, that he may go home." The 
 Beau won his bet, but he lost his night's 
 frolic. 
 
 Speaking of our late ministers to England, 
 Lord Coleridge said Lowell was a most lova- 
 ble man and very popular with the intellect- 
 ual and literary people, but that as a man of 
 affairs and diplomate Phelps was greatly his su- 
 
76 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 perior. He had hoped that Cleveland would 
 make Mr. Phelps Chief-Justice when Judge 
 Waite's death made a vacancy. Of Mr. Rob- 
 ert Lincoln, our minister, he said he had been 
 received kindly on account of the veneration en- 
 tertained for his father, but that he had fine ele- 
 ments of character, and by force of his own 
 merit was gaining rapidly in the esteem of the 
 people. At a banquet given to Mr. Lowell 
 soon after he came to England as minister. Lord 
 Coleridge, in some remarks made as toastmas- 
 ter, or in response to a toast, alluded in terms 
 of pleasantry to Mr. Lowell's celebrated essay 
 on "A Certain Condescension in Foreigners, ' ' 
 which is surcharged with Anglophobia. Mr. 
 Lowell took the allusion unkindly, fearing that 
 it would stir up a feeling of animosity against 
 him. This oversensitiveness was a grave 
 fault in Mr. Lowell's character. I went to 
 Chicago several years ago to hear his address 
 on "The Independent in Politics," which he 
 was invited to deliver on Washington's birth- 
 day in Central Music Hall before the Union 
 League Club and some Democratic society. 
 He was pleasantly entertained in Chicago by 
 men of both parties, and the audience was 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 77 
 
 prepared to hear him give the political work- 
 ers and the men who do "practical politics" 
 a good drubbing, and to take their punish- 
 ment good-naturedly. Coming upon the plat- 
 form in presence of several thousand expec- 
 tant listeners, he announced that he had 
 changed his topic and would deliver a literary 
 address to prove that Shakspere did not 
 write the play of " Richard IIL" It was a 
 melancholy sight to see the citizens of the 
 pig-sticking city sleep while Mr. Lowell went 
 through his labored and rather ineffectual lite- 
 rary performance. It was explained afterward 
 that Mr. Lowell had been so well treated by 
 the politicians of Chicago that he was afraid 
 his political address would give offense. 
 
 Sipping port after dinner Lord Coleridge 
 paid a high compliment to " Cook's Imperi- 
 al" wine, which he said was, in his judgment, 
 equal, if not superior, to most of the cham- 
 pagne imported from France. And this led 
 up to an amusing story of a country gentle- 
 man of Devonshire who gave a fete to the 
 villagers and tenants upon his estate. To do 
 the handsome thing the host served the best 
 brands of port, claret and champagne. A 
 
78 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 tenant, after refreshing himself by sampling 
 the drinks, was asked if he would have some 
 more. He answered that the high-priced 
 port and the claret were very good, but for 
 his part he ' ' would like a little more of the 
 plain cider," meaning the costly champagne, 
 which he had been guzzling with great gusto. 
 I was booked for a trip to Paris and was 
 compelled to decline Lord Coleridge's invita- 
 tion to go with him to the Birmingham As- 
 sizes. Upon taking my leave Lady and Lord 
 Coleridge expressed the hope that I might 
 go to their country home in Devonshire, 
 where they expected to be late in August, 
 but the Etruria, in which I had secured a 
 berth, was to sail for New York on the 2 2d 
 of August, and I had to deny myself the 
 pleasure of seeing them at Ottery St. Marys, 
 which, for several generations, has been the 
 home of the Coleridges. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 79 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Before leaving England I wrote to Lord 
 Coleridge, thanking him for the kindness he 
 had shown me. Coming back to London, 
 after a two weeks' visit to Paris, I found the 
 following letter awaiting me at the Tavistock 
 Hotel : 
 
 Judge's Lodgings, Edgbaston, Birmingham, 
 
 Aug. 8, 1891. 
 My Dear Mr. Fishback — It is a great pleasure to 
 me to have been able in any vv^ay to make your stay in 
 England more agreeable and interesting than it would 
 otherwise have been. I can assure you with per- 
 fect truth that I owe Mr. Justice Harlan a real 
 debt of gratitude for introducing you to me. All 
 around, we were equally delighted, and I shall not 
 forget those few days at Warwick spent in your 
 company. I am old and indolent, and a very bad cor- 
 respondent, but it will give me unfeigned pleasure to 
 hear from you when you get back to your own country. 
 To America I must always have the warmest feelings 
 of regard. From the first hour of my stay in the States 
 
8o RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 to the last I was feasted, honored — I had almost said 
 " petted," so that if it had gone on much longer, I 
 should have had my head turned. 
 
 I knew, however, to what I was coming back too 
 well. You have seen the best side of us, and I 
 am neither so polite nor disloyal as to question that we 
 have a good side. And bad as our politics seem to me 
 just now to be, and awful as the descent is from Sir 
 Robert Peel and Lord John Russell to " Dizzy," and 
 Lord Salisbury and Chamberlain, still we are at pres- 
 ent free from that personal corruption which seems to 
 taint your politics and that of the Dominion. But our 
 press, though rather better educated, is to the full as 
 vile as yours, and it has a swagger and insufferable 
 pretense and self-assertion from which you are free. 
 And our court and aristocracy degrade the independ- 
 ence and corrupt the manliness and integrity of the 
 vast numbers who are brought within their influence. 
 I don't suppose we are by nature worse than you, but 
 you are happily preserved from corrupting influences 
 to which we are all our lives exposed. 
 
 I am sorry to be obliged to say that we shall not be 
 at Heath's Court till the 22d of this month, and I 
 rather fear from what you said that this may be too 
 late for you to come to us there. But it will give us 
 real pleasure, if you should prolong your stay on this 
 side for a few days more, to receive you there on any 
 day after the 22d, if you can and will come to us. Be- 
 lieve me to be. Yours very sincerely, 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 Several things are to be noted about this 
 letter, I do not think I violate any rule of 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 8i 
 
 propriety in making it public, except, pos- 
 sibly, that part of it which makes reference 
 to myself. Modesty would probably have 
 suggested the suppression of so much of it;, 
 but, as Socrates would say, "at my time of 
 life" — being now several years past sixty — 
 my skin is getting to be somewhat tanned and 
 tough, and when I do blush, as I confess I 
 am often constrained to do for my own short- 
 comings, to say nothing of those of my 
 friends, I get no credit for it. This apart, 
 there is food for reflection in what Lord Cole- 
 ridge says about public matters here and in 
 England. Being out of active politics and 
 having once been a very active politician, he 
 was well qualified to take a fair view of social 
 and political tendencies in both countries. 
 And then he was a man broadened by thor- 
 ough education, extensive reading and fine 
 literary taste. To him, as to every right- 
 minded and intelligent person, there is some- 
 thing shocking in the prevalent spirit of he- 
 donism which seems to be running riot in the 
 civilized world. The English court and aris- 
 tocracy, no less than the corrupt and corrupt- 
 6 
 
82 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 ing coterie of politicians and jobbers of legis- 
 lation at Washington, are doing everything in 
 their power to poison the currents of social 
 and political life. 
 
 What Lord Coleridge says in Jiis letter of 
 the press and the aristocracy he has doubt- 
 less expressed more publicly in England, and 
 his well-known views have called forth much 
 unfriendly criticism of his public career. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 83 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 Some flunky correspondent of the Morning 
 Advertiser, of New York, in a letter published 
 in that paper May 27, 1894, while Lord Cole- 
 ridge was dying, echoes the wishes and re- 
 sentments of that part of the aristocracy who 
 have had titles thrust upon them and who 
 have not achieved greatness as such peers as 
 Coleridge and Russell, the present Lord Chief- 
 Justice, have done. This correspondent, who 
 signs himself "Wycollar," says : "The seri- 
 ous illness of Lord Coleridge has evoked feel- 
 ings on the part of the public the reverse of 
 sympathetic, and, although no newspaper has 
 ventured to make any reference thereto in 
 print, yet the almost universal expression of 
 opinion, in club and salon, has been to the 
 effect that it would be a good thing on the 
 
84 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 whole if he were not to recover." The frank 
 brutahty of this statement is, as I take it, a 
 pretty fair exhibition of the tone and temper 
 of that class of the aristocracy who coddle 
 "Buffalo Bill" and George Gould, and who 
 regard prize-fighting, horse-racing and gam- 
 bling as the chief occupations of a gentleman. 
 Let it be noted that Lord Coleridge, who 
 seemed to come between the wind and the 
 nobility of these gentlemen of the "club" and 
 "salon," was the lifelong and intimate friend 
 of Cardinal Newman, Professor Jowett, the 
 master of Balliol, and Matthew Arnold, all 
 members of what Lord Coleridge's illustrious 
 kinsman designated "the great peerage of 
 undying intellect." If a man is to be known 
 by his friends, I suggest to "Wycollar" and 
 other such journalistic vermin that the good 
 name of Lord Coleridge will not suffer by the 
 neglect or active hostility of the sporting gen- 
 tlemen who desired his death. 
 
 But it seems, according to "Wycol- 
 lar, ' ' that the Lord Chief-Justice did not de- 
 port himself with sufficient deference towards 
 the Duke of Rutland and his sons, the Mar- 
 quis of Granby and Lord Edward Manners, 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 85 
 
 in the trial of a lawsuit in which a humble 
 subject of her Majesty was plaintiff and these 
 noble gentlemen were defendants. There is 
 such a charming naivete in "Wycollar's" 
 way of telling the story, that I give it in his 
 own words : 
 
 " The plaintiff was a man who had served 
 a term in prison for poaching, and of the 
 professional agitator type, who used to make 
 a practice of purposely taking up a position 
 on the semi-public paths traversing the ducal 
 estates, when shooting was in progress, with 
 the express purpose of interfering with the 
 sport and angering the sportsmen. He would 
 often go so far as to gesticulate and shout wildly 
 while the drive was in progress, so as to pre- 
 vent the pheasants driven by the beaters 
 from flying in the direction where the guns 
 were ensconced. All this was tolerated by 
 the Duke with the utmost patience, but when 
 at length he added insulting language to his 
 behavior to the Duke and to his guests, one 
 of his Grace's gamekeepers took a hand and 
 knocked the fellow down, with the result that 
 a suit for damages was brought by the man 
 against the Duke and his sons. Lord Cole- 
 
86 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 ridge, presumably with the intention of get- 
 ting even with so recognized social leaders as 
 the Duke of Rutland and Marquis of Granby, 
 went out of his way to insult all three noble 
 defendants during the trial, wound up by de- 
 livering a charge most unduly biased against 
 them, and in direct contradiction with all the 
 established traditions and principles of the 
 sporting world in England. Of course, this 
 has not been forgotten of Lord Coleridge, 
 and inasmuch as the English people are es- 
 sentially a sporting race, it has added to the 
 popular antipathy against the aged Judge, 
 not only among the classes, but also the 
 masses." 
 
 This story presents as formidable an indict- 
 ment of the noble defendants, and as thor- 
 ough a vindication of Lord Coleridge, as it 
 would be possible to make. 
 
 This was only a year ago, " Wycollar " 
 says. Early in this century, Sydney Smith, 
 by his essays on the game laws, "raised the 
 hair," so to speak, upon the backs of the 
 noble dukes and their sons who used to set 
 spring guns, and send their gamekeepers 
 out to murder the half -starved peasants 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. ?>7 
 
 who occasionally snared a rabbit. Now, a 
 common man, standing in a public — " Wy- 
 collar " says a " semi-public " — path, fright- 
 ens some tame, hand-raised pheasants, so that 
 instead of flying toward the place where the 
 noble Duke and his sons were " ensconced," 
 with their guns, the poor birds avoided 
 the ambush. But he "gesticulated" and 
 " shouted wildly," and talked back to his 
 Grace, until his Grace's patience was worn 
 out, whereupon his Grace ordered one of his 
 lackeys to set upon and beat the offender and 
 knock him down. Then some low-bred bar- 
 rister, having the traditional courage of his 
 profession, accepted a brief for the man who 
 was thus beaten by the direction of the ' ' no- 
 ble defendants," and the trial came on before 
 Lord Coleridge and a jury. It was the duty 
 of the judge to ignore the fact that the de- 
 fendants were noble and the plaintiff ignoble, 
 and to tell the jury, as the law of England 
 has declared for centuries, that mere words 
 or gestures that do not amount to an assault 
 are no justification of an assault and battery. 
 But the gravamen of Lord Coleridge's of- 
 fense seems to have been that his charge, 
 
88 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 though accurately expressing the law, was 
 ' ' in direct contradiction with all the estab- 
 lished traditions and principles of the sport- 
 ing world in England ! " So it seems that 
 the common law of England does not ac- 
 cord with the traditions and principles of 
 the sporting gentlemen of the ' ' club ' ' and 
 "salon." Well, the noble Duke and his 
 sons, the Marquis of Granby and Lord Man- 
 ners, had better be looking up the abstracts 
 of the titles they have. As men were said 
 to be of more account than sheep and spar- 
 rows in the days of Christ, it may be that a day 
 is coming, and God speed it, when in England 
 there will be some method for ' ' facilitating 
 the descent of dullness ' ' to its proper level 
 — a great lack now in English society, as 
 Professor Huxley says — and when an in- 
 herited and unmerited title will go for noth- 
 ing. Sydney Smith once asked if a curate 
 trampled upon did not suffer as great a pang 
 as a bishop confuted. It may come to pass 
 in England that even "the classes" and "the 
 masses" will come to understand that knock- 
 ing down one of her Majesty's subjects is 
 as grave an offense as scaring a tame pheas- 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 89 
 
 ant beyond the range of an" ensconced " 
 gun in the hands of a noble duke.* 
 
 *Speaking of Lord Coleridge, in the reminiscences 
 already mentioned, Lord Russell, the present Lord 
 Chief-Justice, says : " Few~men, in his position, are 
 without'enemies, and he was no exception to the gen- 
 eral rule. For myself, I knew him as a kind, consider- 
 ate and generous friend, steady in his friendships and 
 probably constant also in his dislikes. There are many 
 now living who have experienced kindness at his hands 
 and who can recall, as I can, with gratitude, words of 
 encouragement, spoken in times of doubt and difficulty. 
 These count for much in the career of a barrister strug- 
 gling to emerge from the unknown crowd. No one, 
 however, will gainsay that by his death a great figure 
 has passed away. He was intellectually, as he was 
 physically, head and shoulders above the average of 
 his contemporaries. He had a high sense of the dig- 
 nity of his great office, and of its importance. For above 
 twenty years he sat upon the judicial bench, and I be- 
 lieve that during that long period he did honestly 
 strive 'to do right to all manner of people, after the 
 laws and usages of the realm, without fear or favor, af- 
 fection or ill-will.' " 
 
90 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTER Xin. 
 
 In my conversations with Lord Coleridge and 
 his guests I discovered a tone of depreciation 
 in what they had to say of President Harri- 
 son. This was an echo of the views of the 
 so-called mugwump press. In the same way 
 the members of the Reform Club — of which 
 I was for a few years an unworthy member — 
 are in the habit of belittling, or to use a milder 
 phrase, patronizing men of the West, who, 
 in public life, show ability of a high order. 
 This habit they should set themselves to work 
 to reform at once. Their judgments of men 
 are happily reversed in most cases, and no 
 serious harm is done in the long run. Sew- 
 ard was, to men of this class, the only great 
 statesman , and Lincoln an awkward , uncultured 
 country lawyer, a sort of Cheap John politi- 
 cian, and nothing more. McClellan was par 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 91 
 
 excellence the great military chieftain of the 
 war. Grant was a dull fellow. Phil Sheri- 
 dan was properly employed in buying mules 
 for the quartermaster's department. Sherman 
 was supposed to be insane because he dis- 
 sented from Seward's opinion that the war 
 was a "ninety days" affair, and had said that 
 it would take quite a large force to keep the 
 rebels out of Kentucky. And then Morton, 
 and John Sherman, and Garfield, and Harri- 
 son, bearing the bar sinister of Western birth, 
 were second-rate men. So they wrote and 
 talked in their little coteries in the East. But 
 even the most pronounced mugwump, rising 
 now from his salaams to the great statesman 
 of Gray Gables, will admit that Lincoln was 
 something of a man after all, and that Grant, 
 and Sherman, and McPherson, and Logan, 
 and Sheridan, handicapped as they were by 
 reason of their obscure birth in the wild West, 
 made tolerable figures as military leaders; 
 that Senator Sherman, and Harrison, and 
 Garfield did not appear at a disadvantage 
 alongside of the later specimens of Eastern 
 statesmanship, the Gormans, the Hills, the 
 Murphys, the Quays, the Camerons, etid ge- 
 
92 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 niis omne. Lord Coleridge being much with 
 these Eastern gentlemen when in this country 
 in 1883, and reading copies of the Nation 
 occasionally, had come to think that Harrison 
 was a sort of " boy statesman," whose ad- 
 ministration would be respectable and possi- 
 bly able under the guidance of Mr. Blaine, 
 who to the English mind stood as a sort of 
 Premier to a figure-head President. To dis- 
 abuse the mind of his Lordship I took occa- 
 sion to send him my sketch of the life and 
 public career of President Harrison, which 
 was published in the New York Evening Post, 
 December i, 1888, a few weeks after the 
 presidential election. In response I received 
 a letter dated January 10, 1892, from St. 
 Lawrence-on-the-Sea, in Kent, where Lord 
 Coleridge had gone for his Christmas vaca- 
 tion. Among other things he said: 
 
 " I thank you for the paper and for jour thought of 
 me in sending it. I have read it with great interest, 
 not only as being yours, but because it narrates and 
 explains a career very noble and touching in itself, and 
 it may be said impossible in England. There may 
 have been examples in the times of the Commonwealth, 
 perhaps, when Bishop Compton, Bishop of London, 
 certainly had been a cavalry officer, but they were very 
 
LORD COLERIDGE, 93 
 
 few. There were a few men who became eminent at 
 our bar who left the army at the peace and disarma- 
 ment after Waterloo, but that again was a very differ- 
 ent sort of thing. They were little more than boys 
 when they went on half paj-, and practically they lived 
 the ordinary humdrum life of barristers ever after. 
 With you it must have been more common, though 
 such a character as you describe could be common no- 
 where. I remember coming across a very interesting 
 and powerful man in Ohio, who had served as a pri- 
 vate, and was then (1883) one of the first men in his 
 State, a Mr. Lincoln, I believe, no relation to the great 
 President, but a man of very great vigor of mind and 
 character. There were very good stories of his force 
 and power told me, but all highly to his honor. It is 
 a poor return for your paper, but I send you a hasty 
 thing I had to write against time for the unveiling of 
 Matthew Arnold's bust. It is really as much about 
 Horace as Arnold, and in that view perhaps may interest 
 you. I often think of our pleasant time together in the 
 summer, and wish that it could have been prolonged 
 or could be repeated. I should be glad to have shown 
 you my Devonshire home merely as the sort of coun- 
 trj' house, not large and splendid, but comfortable, 
 which so many of us love so well. I was in one or 
 two country houses in America, particularly at the 
 town of Lenox, Mass., which seemed to me in itself 
 and in its surroundings very beautifvil and liveable, if 
 one may coin a word. That I did not see many more 
 such I attribute to my own journeying being so much 
 amongst the cities of America, which, indeed, with the 
 people, were what I went to see. But I suppose they 
 are at least rarer with you than with us, for I observe 
 cultivated Americans always were pleased with them 
 
94 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 here and speak with regret of their comparative ab- 
 sence in the States. I am here for our Christmas va- 
 cation, which I am sorry to say ends to-morrow; in 
 consequence of the serious illness of Lady Coleridge, 
 She is very weak and exhausted, and I can not help 
 feeling anxious about her. They say this corner of 
 Kent is the purest air in England. It is splendid, no 
 doubt, but Malvern, of which this piece of paper is a 
 relic, is still more to my taste. We spent October 
 there for the same reason. Lady Coleridge joins me 
 in very kind regards, and I am always, < 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 Coleridge. 
 Pray let me hear from you whenever you have time 
 to spare for such a purpose. 
 
 When President Harrison had completed 
 his tour across the country and his speeches 
 were collected, I sent Lord Coleridge a copy 
 of the book containing them. His Lordship 
 was much pleased, and, in a letter dated July 
 2, 1892, he said: 
 
 The speeches give me a very high idea of Mr. Har- 
 rison. We know very little here of your politicians, 
 and it is pleasant to be brought face to face with any 
 one so manly and high-minded as Mr. Harrison shows 
 himself in the book you have sent me. The perpetual 
 demand which American customs make upon any one 
 of the leaders of the parties in the way of speeches 
 must be very trj'ing. In a degree (not within a thou- 
 sand miles of the President) I found it so myself when 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 95 
 
 I was in America. But a private foreigner can say 
 what he likes; a President, of course, must watch his 
 words. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that Harrison's 
 administration fulfilled the expectations of his 
 friends, and that before Lord Coleridge died 
 he and other great men in England and else- 
 where had occasion to modify their previous 
 views concerning his ability as the chief ex- 
 ecutive of a great nation. 
 
 But Lord Coleridge loved the poets and 
 loved to talk about them. This little ex- 
 tract from the same letter gives a glimpse of 
 that side of his character. Whittier had just 
 died: 
 
 I see you have lost a very noble old man in Whit- 
 tier. A friend of mine in Philadelphia, who has many 
 Quaker connections, introduced me to him many years 
 ago and gave me all he had then written. It is a very 
 pure, bright spirit we have lost in him, and his poetry, 
 though perhaps not of the first order, was beautiful 
 and inspiring, and a great deal of it will live. I have 
 never been able to assimilate Walt Whitman, nor, even 
 as one sometimes can, see what others admire in art or 
 literature, though one can not agree in admiring one- 
 self. I still think your best poet, by far, is Bryant, be- 
 cause he is American. Longfellow might have been a 
 Belgian, an Italian or an Englishman, just as well as 
 
g6 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 an American, except perhaps for his too greatly under- 
 rated Hiawatha. But Whittier is, in his way, Ameri- 
 can also, and has always for that, as well as for other 
 reasons, strongly appealed to me. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 97 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Lord Coleridge entered Parliament as a 
 member of the House of Commons when he 
 was, as Lord Russell, his successor as Lord 
 Chief-Justice, says, forty-seven years old. He 
 was fairly successful as a political debater, but 
 lacked the experience necessary for a leader 
 in that body. Afterward he was a member 
 of the Gladstone Cabinet, from which he was 
 promoted to the Bench. His judicial career 
 covered a period of twenty years. To the 
 last he felt a lively interest in public affairs. 
 In a letter written in the summer of 1892, 
 from which I have already quoted, he says: 
 
 You are just entering on a great contest; ours is 
 just over, and has landed Gladstone once more in 
 power. It is the fashion here to say that he will not 
 keep it. He will not perhaps, for, wonderful though he 
 is, he will be eighty-three complete in three months 
 
 7 
 
98 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 more and he can not permanently suspend the laws of 
 nature. But I hope and believe the party Avill keep to- 
 gether long enough to extinguish the Unionists. I am 
 out of politics (at least present politics), of course, but 
 I would go far and do much to destroy the Unionists. 
 To them and them alone is due coercion and all the 
 train of evils and the denial of obvious and safe im- 
 provements in England and Scotland. I have no feel- 
 ing whatever against the Tories; there must be such 
 people in every old established and aristocratic coun- 
 try, and they at least are honest and act steadily on 
 their principles. But a Unionist, who pretends to be 
 and calls himself a Liberal, and who for seven long 
 years has voted for everything reactionary and utterly 
 opposed to his creed; I have no patience with these 
 men. They were masters of the situation; they had 
 only to say this and that must not be and it would not 
 have been. But they lent themselves, in their blind 
 hatred of Gladstone, to Balfour and his trade to hasten, 
 nay, more than to hasten, all their worst Tory meas- 
 ures, and the one thing I do gravely regret in the last 
 election is that it has left them still mischievously 
 strong. They can not stand alone, it is true, but forty- 
 seven is more than I like to think of as a phalanx on 
 the flank. 
 
 This letter was written from the city of 
 Gloucester, where Lord and Lady Coleridge 
 were attending a musical festival, which was 
 given in the cathedral. 
 
 "There is something," he says, " apart 
 from the acoustic properties of the building, 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 99 
 
 in the arches and grand roof, the stained 
 glass, the height, the age of the building, 
 which seems to increase the beauty and 
 grandeur even of Mozart and Beethoven. 
 The daughter of the bishop produced a piece 
 of real merit, but a gentleman named Parry 
 produced a work on the story of Job, which 
 seems to me one of the very finest things an 
 Englishman has done for many years. Per- 
 haps you know Gloucester. It is a most in- 
 teresting city, and the cathedral and its sur- 
 roundings are grand and yet quiet and beauti- 
 ful in no common degree. You are always 
 sending me things, and it seems greedy to 
 ask for more, but I did not get to Indiana 
 when I was in America, and I have no clear 
 idea of the country or its capital. Is there a 
 photograph of your city? I should greatly 
 value it if there is, and you would send it to 
 me. When are you coming again? The 
 sooner the better for your friends here. Next 
 year, of course, the whole habitable globe 
 will congregate upon the shores of Lake 
 Michigan, and the year after is a long pros- 
 pect for an old man. But I hope to meet 
 you once more." 
 
loo RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Though past three score and ten, it did not 
 occur to me to think of Lord Coleridge as an 
 old man. He wrote with the steadiness of a 
 strong man, and an autographic note of his, 
 written on the fly-leaf of a volume of Spenser 
 which he presented to his cousin, Sophia 
 Coleridge, on Good Friday, 1841, and which 
 is now in my possession, is a fac-simile of his 
 writing in the last letter I received from him 
 last autumn. It is a great pleasure to have 
 known a great man, great in his professional 
 and judicial career — so gifted, so scholarly, 
 such a lover of all good things in literature 
 and music, and all these things adorning and 
 strengthening, and not in the least impairing 
 his efficiency as a great lawyer and a great 
 judge. That he was both of these is the un- 
 grudging testimony of the present Lord Chief- 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. loi 
 
 Justice, whose article in the North American 
 Review for September, 1894, is a worthy 
 tribute to his predecessor. 
 
 Lord Coleridge sacrificed to the muses as 
 well as the graces, and never counted it a de- 
 fect in the character of a good politician or a 
 great lawyer that he loved poetry and music. 
 When President of the Salt schools at Ship- 
 ley, Yorkshire, an honorary title bestowed 
 upon him, he delivered an address on "Edu- 
 cation and Instruction." The address was 
 delivered in June, 1893, just one year before 
 his Lordship's death. At the risk of extend- 
 ing this paper beyond a reasonable limit I 
 will make a couple of extracts from this ad- 
 dress, which maybe read with profit by young 
 and old : 
 
 Speaking as an old lawyer especially, I may say 
 that few things compare in usefulness with a retentive, 
 accurate memory. It is in youth that this faculty is 
 formed and trained, and one of the best methods of 
 strengthening it is the habit of learning by heart pas- 
 sages we admire from authors, both in verse and prose. 
 What we learn in youth we are apt to remember well; 
 mental impressions at that period of life do not easily 
 fade; and although they are easily received, they are 
 indelibly retained; and if they are impressions of noble 
 thoughts, clothed in noble language, we are laying up 
 
I02 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 a store of intellectual pleasure at one___eiid-Q£-Iife for 
 enjo^^^ent3,t,-the other. Many of us live to grow old; 
 if we do, our minds, if not ourselves, grow lonely; the 
 interests of the world fade away, and the fashion and 
 beauty of it vanisheth, and a time comes when we feel 
 that: 
 
 " 'Tis meet that we should pause a while 
 
 Ere we put off this mortal coil. 
 
 And in the stillness of old age 
 
 Muse on our earthly pilgrimage." 
 At such times the recollection of great thoughts, of 
 lovely images, of musical words comes to us with a 
 comfort, with an innocent pleasure which it is difficult 
 to exaggerate. 
 
 I will tell a story which came to me a few 
 days ago, which illustrates the accuracy of 
 Lord Coleridge's memory. At a banquet in 
 New York, I think, some lawyer who had 
 tried to cover or adorn his literary leanness 
 by accumulating some scraps of poetry from 
 a Cheap John collection, in his response to a 
 toast, flung at the head of Lord Coleridge the 
 oft-repeated words, "The shallow murmur, 
 but the deep are dumb," which he attributed 
 to Roscoe Conkling ! Lord Coleridge, in his 
 talk, alluded to the matter and said that the 
 words had been familiar to him from his 
 youth, but that he had always been of the 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 103 
 
 impression, which was possibly erroneous, 
 that Sir Walter Raleigh, and not Roscoe 
 Conkling, was the author of them. But I 
 proceed with the quotation from his address : 
 
 And what should you learn? Speaking generally, 
 the safest rule to follow is to learn that which pleases 
 you best. I assume that it is not bad; but as to what 
 is best, taste is very varied, and that which commends 
 itself to one man perhaps repels another. My own 
 taste you must take just for what it is worth, but 
 (leaving out for obvious reasons all Greek and Latin 
 writers) before and above every one (including them) 
 I should myself place Shakspere; an inexhaustible 
 storehouse of wisdom, instruction and exquisite dic- 
 tion, indispensable to any one who has anything to do 
 with speaking or writing. I knew well, I think many 
 here must have known, a great advocate who was on 
 the Northern Circuit, of whom it used to be said that 
 perhaps he did not know much law, but he did know 
 a good deal of Shakspere. And a great judge who 
 knew both law and Shakspere said, when this was re- 
 peated to him, that although in a lawyer, perhaps, a 
 little law was desirable, yet if that could not be had, 
 the next best thing to have was a knowledge of Shaks- 
 pere. Next to Shakspere, I, for one, should put Mil- 
 ton. Have any of you not heard the magnificent 
 eloqence of John Bright.'' He told me himself that he 
 was built on Milton, and if you heard him, nay, even 
 if you read him, you can see that he is steeped in the 
 spirit of this great poet, and that though he does not 
 imitate Milton, he speaks after Milton. 
 
I04 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 All this must be very offensive to Hamlin 
 Garland and his school, who join in say- 
 ing to us that Shakspere, and Milton, and 
 Scott, and Thackeray, and Dickens are back 
 numbers. A year before Lord Coleridge de- 
 livered his address I spoke to the graduating 
 class of the Law School at DePauw University 
 and tried to utter and make application, in a 
 rather lame way, I confess, of one of the 
 thoughts of Lord Coleridge : ' 'The drudging, 
 dray-horse lawyer, who shows the marks of 
 his office collar, who rarely allows himself a 
 day off, who never has time to see a good 
 play, who doesn't know the difference be- 
 tween Yankee Doodle and a symphony of 
 Beethoven's, who never witnessed a game of 
 foot-ball or base-ball, who never killed a sal- 
 mon, bass or trout or winged a mallard or can- 
 vasback — how to be pitied is he ! It is abso- 
 lutely distressing to have a distinguished legal 
 friend look at you curiously Vifhen you quote an 
 opinion of Buckle's, or Lecky's, or Huxley's, 
 or Matthew Arnold's, or Spencer's, and ask 
 you who Buckle, or Lecky, or Arnold, or 
 Spencer is. A man who has not made him- 
 self more or less familiar with the drift of 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 105 
 
 modern literature is preparing himself for a 
 dull old age and is depriving himself of the 
 best things that life affords. Sir Samuel 
 Romilly pleaded with his professional breth- 
 ren to devote all the time they could to polite 
 literature; not simply for the pleasure it 
 affords, but because it tended to make them 
 better lawyers and more useful men. 'As soon 
 as I found,' said Romilly, 'that I was to be a 
 busy lawyer for life I resolved to keep up my 
 habit of non-professional reading; for I had 
 witnessed so much misery in the last years of 
 many great lawyers whom I had known from 
 their loss of all taste for books that I regarded 
 their fate as my warning.' " 
 
 There is a pathos in the concluding para- 
 graph of Lord Coleridge's address that must 
 touch every one. He was now in the last 
 year of his long labors and useful life. He 
 is speaking to the young students at Shipley 
 and his words come with equal emphasis to 
 the young everywhere. 
 
 One word, if I may, to counsel you to live faith- 
 fully and in earnest. Blessed are the pure in heart. 
 It can never be too early to begin. The temptations 
 of youth, of middle age, of old age; all life has its 
 
io6 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 temptations, all can be conquered. Do not believe 
 those who tell you that such an achievement is impos- 
 sible. It is perfectly possible, as many have proved. 
 I can have no kind of reason to mislead you, and my 
 age ought to give me, at least in this matter, some au- 
 thority. Nothing will more help you to it, nothing 
 will tend more to keep you from evil than the com- 
 pany of good books and the thoughts and counsels of 
 good men. They will fill you with good thoughts, and 
 good thoughts bring forth good deeds, and good deeds 
 are the only true happiness of life. 
 
 I will end in the words of a great American poet, 
 Bryant, written when he was very young, which I have 
 known and admired — I wish I might say I had lived 
 by — all my life: 
 
 " So live that when thy summons comes to join 
 The innumerable caravan which moves 
 To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
 His chamber in the silent Halls of Death, 
 Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
 Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
 By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
 Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
 About him and lies down to pleasant dreams." 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 107 
 
 CHAPTER XVL 
 
 Early in the spring of 1893 I engaged to 
 write a notice of ex-President Harrison for 
 the Appletons' new edition of their Cyclope- 
 dia of American Biography, and, wishing to 
 use a portion of one of his letters in which he 
 had said some complimentary things of General 
 Harrison, I wrote to Lord Coleridge for per- 
 mission. In answer he wrote the following: 
 
 I Sussex Square, W., 27th April, 1893. 
 My Dear Mr. Fishback — I have not time to prop- 
 erly answer your letter of the 13th, and shall not try. 
 But I write a line at once to say that anything I have 
 written (though I have quite forgotten what words I 
 used) is very much at your service if you desire to use 
 it. I have not the personal acquaintance of either Mr, 
 Harrison or Mr. Cleveland, but they both seem to me, 
 judging of their public speeches and acts only, to be 
 men of high character and pure motive; and certainly 
 the election seems to have been as fairly and honestly 
 conducted as is reasonably possible. Of course, an 
 
io8 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Englishman must needs think the Republicans dead 
 wrong in their political economy; but I don't expect 
 that Mr. Cleveland will be able to do much in a coun- 
 try so hopelessly protectionist, whatever he may hon- 
 estly wish. 
 
 The World's Fair will keep every American at home 
 this year; next year, if we should be alive, Lady Cole- 
 ridge and I reckon on seeing you, I will write about 
 the arbitration later on. I attended a session of it in 
 Paris, and was profoundly impressed with the ability 
 of the counsel, the great dignity and fairness of the 
 tribunal, and (last, not least) the princely manner in 
 which the French republic was conducting itself to- 
 ward every one connected with the arbitration. 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 Mr. Cleveland's wishes concerning tariff 
 reform and financial legislation have certainly 
 been frustrated by the antics of the "wild 
 horses" of his party. The good Sir Thomas 
 Browne tells us it is not wise to fish for whales 
 in the Euxine sea, and when Mr. Cleveland or 
 any other President expects to do great things 
 for the cause of reform in any of its phases 
 by means of such an aggregation of ignorance 
 and inexperience, to say nothing worse, as 
 controlled the Democratic majority in the last 
 Congress, he expects too much. Mr. Cleve- 
 land mounted the box, assumed the reins and 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 109 
 
 started his new Congress off in extra session 
 at a lively pace, after giving it a fillip with 
 his anti-silver-purchase message. But his 
 leaders balked, and it was only by the aid of 
 some hard-pulling Republicans that the repeal 
 bill became a law. In October, 1893, Lord 
 Coleridge said in a letter to me : 
 
 I have hardly heard much from you since Mr. 
 Cleveland's election. Both the candidates, to a for- 
 eigner, seem to have the merit of high character and 
 principles; but to an Englishman the leading lines of 
 Mr. Cleveland's policy appear to be those which a 
 great country ought to move along, and especially on 
 the silver question he seems to be clearly in the right. 
 I know many clever men who are bimetallists, but I 
 have never been able to comprehend how that policy 
 can be supported, except by giving an artificial value to 
 one of the precious metals, and then it is only another 
 form of inconvertible paper and so it will never work. 
 Of course, gold does alter somewhat, but returns show 
 that gold has varied so little for near one hundred years 
 that it is practically fixed in value, and if so, there 
 seems to be an end of the question. 
 
 In the same letter from which I have just 
 quoted, Lord Coleridge said: 
 
 I do not like the look of things on this side of the 
 water, and although I do rejoice over the success of 
 the arbitration between the two countries, I have never 
 
no RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 troubled myself as to the details of the controversy, but 
 I rejoice in the example set by two very powerful na- 
 tions, and I hope it may spread, though I suppose a 
 great military monarch, and, above all, a nation like 
 France, will never arbitrate. I believe we do quite as 
 unprincipled and high-handed things as the French do, 
 but we do them with less swagger and less outward 
 contempt for the opinion of the world. Apart from the 
 arbitration, I believe we are not going on very well. 
 Gladstone is a marvel, and perhaps the greatest in our 
 parliamentary history, but the laws of nature can not 
 be permanently suspended in favor of any one, and I 
 think he himself is showing the truth of what he said 
 himself now nearly twenty years ago, that " it doesn't 
 do," as he phrased it, to serve with an octogenarian 
 Prime Minister. He told me both Lord Russell and 
 Palmerston had remained ministers too long, and I think 
 he is showing it now. -s^ * * I have been much 
 struck, and I confess very much surprised, at the quiet 
 with which the escapade of the House of Lords (in 
 throwing out the home-rule bill) has been received. To 
 me it seems outrageous, but I do not think the people 
 care much about it — perhaps it has given them even a 
 new lease of a life, which Lord Salisbury's insolence 
 seemed to have and ought to have endangered. 
 
 We are just starting for London to recommence 
 another legal year. I should not wonder if it was the 
 last. Your letter interested me, as your letters always 
 do, and made me hope that some time before I go 
 hence, we may meet again and have some more talk 
 together. I often think of our pleasant times together, 
 and wish that they might recur. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. iii 
 
 CHAPTER XVn. 
 
 The premonition that he was entering upon 
 his last year was a true one. This letter was 
 the last one I had from him. His official la- 
 bors, his attendance at the House of Lords, 
 and the social demands of the London sea- 
 son broke him down. And then he was de- 
 pressed by the loss of three of his life-long 
 and intimate friends, Matthew Arnold, Pro- 
 fessor Jowett, master of Balliol College, and 
 Cardinal Newman. How he loved Newman 
 may be gathered from a passage in an ad- 
 dress which he delivered to the Institutes Un- 
 ion of Birmingham, on April 25, 1890, a copy 
 of which he sent me after I left England. 
 ' 'Thinking for Ourselves" was his theme. He 
 said : ' ' We are sent here by God with a 
 mind as well as a body, and it is our plain 
 duty to make the best we can of both of them. 
 * * The time will come when we 'shall per- 
 
112 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 ceive' — I use the words of a great living 
 writer — ' that there are but two beings in the 
 whole universe — our own soul and the God 
 who made it. Sublime, unlooked-for doctrine, 
 yet most true. To every one of us there are 
 but two beings in the whole world, himself 
 and God, for as to this outward scene, its 
 pleasures and pursuits, its honors and cares, 
 its contrivances, its personages, its kingdoms, 
 its multitude of busy slaves, what are they to 
 us? Nothing; no more than a show. Even 
 those near and dear, our friends and kinsfolk, 
 whom we do right to love, they can not get 
 at our souls or enter into our thoughts, so 
 that even they vanish before the clear vision 
 we have, first, of our existence, next of the 
 presence of the great God in us and over us 
 as our governor and judge, who dwells in us 
 by our conscience, which is His representa- 
 tive.' You will easily guess where those 
 words come from. Raffaelle is said to have 
 thanked God that he lived in the days of 
 Michael Angelo ; there are scores of men I 
 know, there are hundreds and thousands I 
 believe, who thank God that they have lived 
 in the days of John Henry Newman." I 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 113 
 
 think it a fitting close to these hastily written 
 recollections to link together the names of 
 these three friends — Arnold, Newman and 
 Coleridge — and to quote a passage from Mr. 
 Arnold's address delivered in this country on 
 Emerson. He began it as follows: 
 
 "Forty years ago, when I was an undergraduate at 
 Oxford, voices were in the air there which haunt my 
 memory still. Happy the man who in that suscepti- 
 ble season of youth hears such voices! They are a 
 possession to him forever. No such voices as those 
 which we heard in our youth at Oxford are sounding 
 there now. Oxford has more criticism now, more 
 knowledge, more light, but such voices as those of our 
 youth it has no longer. The name of Cardinal New- 
 man is a great name in imagination still; his genius 
 and his style are still things of power. But he is over 
 eighty years old; he is in the oratory at Bii-mingham; 
 he has adopted for the doubts and difficulties which 
 beset men's minds to-day a solution which, to speak 
 frankly, is impossible. Forty years ago he was in the 
 verj' prime of life; he was close at hand to us at Ox- 
 ford; he was preaching in St. Mary's pulpit every 
 Sunday; he seemed about to transform and to renew 
 what was for us the most national and rational institu- 
 tion in the world, the Church of England. Who could 
 resist the charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in 
 the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary's, 
 rising into the pulpit, and then, in the most entrancing 
 of voices, breaking the silence with words and thoughts 
 which were a religious music, subtle, sweet, mournful.? 
 
114 LORD COLERIDGE. 
 
 I seem to hear him still saying, "After the fever of life, 
 after wearinesses and sicknesses, fightings and despond- 
 ings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and succeed- 
 ing; after all the changes and chances of this troubled, 
 unhealthy state — at length comes death; at length the 
 white throne of God, at length the beatific vision." 
 
 Verily, these three were lovely and pleasant 
 in their lives, and together I doubt not they 
 are enjoying the beatific vision. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE ON MATTHEW 
 ARNOLD. 
 
 From the London Times of November 2, 1891. 
 A BUST of the late Mr. Matthew Arnold by 
 Mr. Bruce Joy, the sculptor of the Bright 
 statue recently erected at Manchester, was 
 unveiled by Lord Coleridge on Saturday in 
 the Baptistery of Westminster Abbey. Be- 
 fore the ceremony a large number of the 
 friends and admirers of the man filled to over- 
 flowing the Jerusalem Chamber, among them 
 being many members of the Arnold family. 
 Besides the Dean of Westminster and Lord 
 and Lady Coleridge, there were present Mrs. 
 Matthew Arnold and Miss Arnold, Mrs. W. 
 E. Forster, Mr. R. Arnold, Mr. Edwin Ar- 
 nold, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Arnold, General 
 and Mrs. Benson, Mr. and Mrs. Whitridge, 
 the Hon. Armine Woodhouse, Mr, Oakley 
 (117) 
 
ii8 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Arnold-Forster, Mr. W. Wood, Mr. A. Wood, 
 Mr. and Mrs, J. Cropper, Mrs. Edward Wing- 
 field, Constance Marchioness of Lothian, the 
 Earl and Countess of Pembroke, the Dow- 
 ager Lady Stanley of Alderley, Lord Han- 
 nen, Lord Shand, Lord Hobhouse, Lord and 
 Lady Sandford, Mr. John Morley, M. P. ; 
 Mr. Osborne Morgan, M. P. ; Mr. Cyril 
 Flower, M. P. ; Sir C. Butt, Sir G. F. Bowen, 
 Mr. Lyulph Stanley, Mrs. Farrar, Mr. Ham- 
 ilton Aide, Mr. George Russell (honorary 
 Secretary of the Memorial Committee), Canon 
 Duckworth, Canon Ronsell, the Rev. Dr. Al- 
 ton, the Rev. R. J. Simpson, and Mr. Bruce 
 Joy. 
 
 The Dean of Westminster said : As one 
 on whom the responsibility of adding to the 
 memorials in the Abbey that of one whose 
 name is dear to many here, I maybe allowed 
 to say one or two words. The responsibility 
 is often a perilous and an anxious one. In 
 this case I have accepted it; I discharge it 
 with the advice and help of those who are 
 better qualified than myself to judge, and I 
 have decided cheerfully and unhesitatingly. 
 I may say at once that I felt the danger of 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 119 
 
 my being biased by my long intercourse and 
 intimacy — dating back to the time when I 
 was a new boy at Rugby — with Matthew Ar- 
 nold. I do not care to dwell on the close- 
 ness of that intimacy when we were boys, but 
 this I may say — that as years went by, though 
 our paths in life and our occupations were 
 different, to say nothing of our gifts, — and I 
 would not venture for a moment to compare 
 myself with him — yet year by year I learnt to 
 form an increasingly higher idea of his gifts 
 and his genius as a poet. I am sure that it 
 is not merely as an early friend, not merely 
 from the thought of what I feel would be the 
 judgment of my dear and illustrious predeces- 
 sor, that I rejoice in thinking that in that se- 
 questered, yet most interesting corner of this 
 great fabric, some memorial will be placed 
 of him whom so many of us join in honoring. 
 I feel confident, so far as we may speak at 
 present, that future generations will not for- 
 get the works of one who has painted, though 
 in the colors of his own age, the eternal 
 thoughts and emotions of the human spirit, in 
 such stately rhythm as appealed to so many 
 of the highest feelings of the heart. I can not 
 
I20 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 for a moment think that the author of the 
 ' ' Scholar Gipsy, " of " Thyrsis, ' ' of " Rugby 
 Chapel," of the " Good Shepherd Carrying 
 the Kid," — and how many more could I add? 
 — will be neglected by thoughtful men among 
 generations to come. I must not detain you 
 long. You have come here to listen to one 
 who, himself the inheritor of a great poetic 
 name, would have been listened to more than 
 half a century ago as he will be listened to 
 to-day. In what circle of his contemporaries 
 is he not listened to ? But if I may add one 
 incident, one reminiscence that this bright 
 autumnal day has brought to my mind, I 
 think it might interest some here . Nearly fifty- 
 two years ago, on a visit to his father's home 
 among the lakes and mountains of Westmore- 
 land, from my own father's home, which lay 
 in what is now a crowded suburb of London, 
 I was one of the youngest of a group who 
 walked from Fox How by Rydal, calling at the 
 Mount by Grasmere, and home again on the 
 other side of the lake. The group was com- 
 posed of men and boys who were just on the 
 threshold of opening manhood. We were led 
 by Thomas Arnold, who sleeps in Rugby 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 121 
 
 Chapel, by William Wordsworth, whose 
 grave is among his own mountains, and by 
 Frederick Faber, who lies not far off from 
 what was then wooded and almost rural Sy- 
 denham, Of the young men — five or six of 
 them who were in the group — I am almost the 
 only survivor, and I remember well the beauty 
 and majesty of the day and some of the con- 
 versation, both light and serious, of those 
 with whom we walked. Strange we should 
 have thought it then, if we could have looked 
 far into the future, that perhaps the frailest of 
 those young members of the party should 
 live to see placed here, by the memorials of 
 William Wordsworth, Keble, and Charles 
 Kingsley, in a corner of the Abbey whose 
 dim light is broken by the hues of a window 
 placed to recall the memory of George Her- 
 bert, the bright and jocund friend who that 
 day walked by his side. I will now ask to do 
 honor to his memory one of the very fore- 
 most of a group of those scholars of Balliol — 
 over which a cloud of anxiety and distress is 
 now rising — one of the very foremost of a 
 group of whom only two survive, and of 
 whom Matthew Arnold was the youngest — a 
 
122 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 group portrayed in such touching colors by 
 J. C. Shairp, when he said, " I have never 
 found nor expect to find a more high-hearted 
 brotherhood." 
 
 Lord Coleridge said : I hope no one will 
 think, because I have yielded to a request 
 which I could not, without discourtesy, refuse, 
 that I suppose myself equal to appreciating 
 the genius or properly delineating the char- 
 acter of Matthew Arnold. It is because of 
 the difficulty of the task, and from my earn- 
 est desire not to say one word that shall be 
 hasty or unbecoming, that I follow the ex- 
 ample of a great man, Mr. Lowell, who read 
 in the Chapter-house of Westminster what he 
 had to say when he unveiled the bust of Cole- 
 ridge in Westminster Abbey, I have, indeed, 
 already tried to say, in print, what I felt about 
 my honored friend ; but I can not suppose 
 that any of you have read it, or, if you have, 
 that you remember it ; and yet to say it over 
 again would be to one man at least very dull 
 and dreary work. Yet if I say nothing new, 
 what I say shall, I hope, at least be true, and 
 if it is not, as it can not be worthy of his 
 genius, it may at least bear witness to the 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 123 
 
 depth and sincerity of the affection with which 
 he inspired his friends. We may revive with 
 the dews of love the fading flowers of memory 
 and twine them into a wreath for hope to wear. 
 In the year 1829 or 1830, I am not sure 
 which, a bright little fellow was put upon a 
 table in a room full of people at Laleham, 
 and recited with intelligence and effect Mr. 
 Burke's magnificent description of Hyder 
 All's ferocious desolation of the Carnatic; in 
 the year 1888 that bright boy, not one whit 
 less bright, scarcely one whit less youthful, 
 for the sixty years which had rolled away, was 
 laid to sleep in Laleham church-yard, almost 
 within earshot of the room, which still re- 
 mains, and which one who was there can 
 never think of except as illuminated with 
 that bright figure, that sunny face. Of him, 
 more than of most men, it was true, as Dry- 
 den says, that men are but children of a 
 larger growth, or, as Wordsworth puts it still 
 more profoundly, the child is father of the 
 man. His was above all things a consistent 
 life — ^what he was at school, what he was at 
 college, and till the last moment of his life; 
 the loyal son grew naturally into the loving 
 
124 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 father, the affections of his youth strength- 
 ened and deepened into the husband's stead- 
 fast love ; the clever, original, perhaps way- 
 w^ard, student and scholar became with no 
 external change the penetrating, delicate, 
 strong, yet subtle critic, the refined, the pa- 
 thetic, the philosophic, the great poet. Enough 
 has been said elsewhere of his uneventful yet 
 most interesting life ; of the gradual fashion 
 in which he overcame the sneers, the preju- 
 dices, the flippant judgments of men whose 
 words have long since ceased to influence, if 
 they ever influenced, the opinion of men of 
 cultivated, reflecting, independent minds, who 
 think for themselves, and who determine in 
 the last resort and without appeal the perma- 
 nent place of an author in the goodly fellow- 
 ship of his equals or superiors. It is, per- 
 haps, too soon in the case of Matthew Arnold 
 for a private man to speak with confidence as 
 to his final and conclusive judgment. Criti- 
 cisms upon him, which to my apprehension 
 are altogether beside the mark, have appeared 
 in publications of some temporary authority, 
 but which have no lasting effect upon an au- 
 thor's fame. Lord Jeffery did his best to 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 125 
 
 crush Wordsworth; he injured, for a time, 
 the sale of his poems, but he has not affected 
 his fame in the slightest degree — he has only 
 manifested his own hopeless incompetence. 
 The Quarterly Review — I may guess, but I 
 have no right to name, the author — attacked, 
 with brutal insolence, the dying Keats and 
 the youthful Tennyson. The Quarterly Re- 
 viewer is forgotten; but what Englishman 
 questions the greatness of Tennyson or Keats ? 
 In Arnold's case much that has been said will 
 be soon forgotten; that he will be soon for- 
 gotten every one even moderately acquainted 
 with him will confidently deny. I am well 
 aware that my own opinion is worth nothing, 
 but to-day and here I take the freedom to say 
 that in a combination of great qualities he 
 stands alone in his generation. Thackeray 
 may have written more pungent social satire, 
 Tennyson may be a greater poet, John Mor- 
 ley may be a greater critical biographer, 
 Cardinal Newman may have a more splendid 
 style, Lightfoot, or Ellicott, or Jowett may 
 be greater ecclesiastical scholars and have 
 done more for the interpretation of St. Paul. 
 But for a union of the satirist, the poet, the 
 
126 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 delineator of character, the wielder of an ad- 
 mirable style, the striver after the eternal 
 truths of Scripture and religion, he is, in my 
 judgment, not only first, but he is unique. 
 Calling back with the inexactitude of haste 
 the great names of literature, there is one 
 man between whom and Matthew Arnold I 
 seem to see a curious likeness — a very great 
 man — a man not, I think, the greatest, but 
 the most read and the oftenest quoted of all 
 Latin authors ; I mean Horace, Horace wrote 
 nothing without meter — nothing, at least, that 
 has survived ; but he wrote in two styles — he 
 was a great lyric poet, and he wrote satires 
 and epistles in hexameters, it is true, but, ex- 
 cept in a few bursts of noble language, his 
 hexameters were, as he said, hardly distin- 
 guishable from prose itself. As a satirist he 
 has been beautifully described by a successor 
 purer than himself, but, when we can under- 
 stand him, almost as gracious and refined. 
 
 " Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico 
 Tangit ; et admissus circum prsecordia ludit, 
 Callidus excusso populum suspendere naso." 
 
 — Persius. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 127 
 
 "And jet arch Horace, while he strove to mend, 
 Probed all the foibles of his smiling friend. 
 Played lightly round and round the peccant part, 
 And won, unfelt, an entrance to his heart ; 
 Well skilled the follies of the crowd to trace 
 And sneer with gay good humor in his face." 
 
 —Gifford. 
 
 This, surely, might almost pass for a de- 
 scription of much of Matthew Arnold's play- 
 ful, well-bred, humorous satire — satire, nev- 
 ertheless, severe and incisive, piercing to the 
 very quick the vulgarity, the insolence, the 
 ignorance of much which in England assumes 
 to be society, and powerful with the strength 
 of knowledge and the force of truth. I do 
 not know any other author who holds the 
 mirror up to English nature so steadily as he, 
 and yet always with an air of benign, com- 
 placent pity, infinitely irritating, no doubt, 
 but infinitely amusing. But there was an- 
 other side to both these men, a side, perhaps, 
 too little recognized, certainly too little dwelt 
 upon. I waive the discussion whether Hor- 
 ace was the greatest lyrical writer whom 
 Rome produced. When I think of Catullus 
 I am glad to waive it. But I think that late- 
 ly there has been a disposition to underrate 
 
128 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 and, like Lord Byron, "to understand, not 
 feel, his lyric flow"; to forget the splendor 
 of some of the odes and the exquisite pictur- 
 esque grace of others, the ode on Cleopatra 
 and the one to Maecenas, " Tyrrhena regum 
 progenies," in one class, and thirty or forty 
 lovely little poems in the other. Let that 
 pass. In lyric poetry certainly both hold a 
 place all but the highest; and there is one 
 quality not perhaps so commonly observed 
 in which they are strikingly alike — in melan- 
 choly. The melancholy of Matthew Arnold 
 was noted long since by Principal Shairp : 
 
 "Full of young strength, so blithe and debonair, 
 Rallying his friends with pleasant banter gay, 
 Or half in dreams, chaunting with jaunty air, 
 Great words of Goethe, catch of Beranger ; 
 We meet the banter sparkling in his prose. 
 But knew not that ground tone his songs disclose, 
 The calm which is not calm, but agony." 
 
 The melancholy of Horace was noted by Ar- 
 nold himself, and was one strong reason for 
 the love he felt for him. He was asked what 
 he thought the most beautiful and character- 
 istic passage in Horace, and he answered at 
 once: 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 129 
 
 " Linquenda tellus, et domus, et placens 
 Uxor; neque harum, quas colis, arborum, 
 Te, prseter invisas cupressos, 
 
 Ulla brevem dominum sequetur."* 
 
 I can not translate off-hand, and Francis is 
 detestable. Another passage I know was his 
 especial favorite, not only for its exquisite 
 music, but for its profound sadness : 
 
 " Damna tamen celeres reparant cselestia Lunse: 
 
 Nos, ubi decidimus 
 Qu6 pius ^neas, qu6 Tullus dives, et Ancus, 
 
 Pulvis et umbra sumus. 
 Quis scit an adjiciant hodiernEe crastina summse 
 
 Tempora Di superi ? 
 Cuncta manus avidas fugient heredis, amico 
 
 Qu32 dederis animo. 
 Cum semel occideris, et de te splendida Minos 
 
 Fecerit arbitria ; 
 Non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te 
 
 Restituet pietas." f 
 
 *Mr. Gladstone translates : 
 
 Earth, home, and winsome wife, thy fate 
 Will have thee leave ; and not one tree 
 Of all, save cypress that we hate, 
 O transient lord, shall follow thee. 
 
 — Carm. it: I4 
 
 fMr. Gladstone translates : 
 
 The hastening moons all waste in heaven repair 
 
 We, when we once descend 
 To Tullus, Ancus, sire ..^neas, there 
 In dust and shadow end. 
 
130 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 There is another matter in which they sympa- 
 thized entirely — the love of the country. Fit 
 to adorn and fond of adorning those chosen 
 companies which were fortunate enough to 
 secure his presence, Matthew Arnold lived 
 habitually, quite as much by choice as by 
 necessity, away from London, and even when 
 he took for a time a London house, he would 
 go down from time to time for a day into the 
 country, simply to refresh himself with a sight 
 of his dogs, his birds, his trees, his flowers, 
 and all those sights of fields and sky which 
 he needed to revive his spirits and keep his 
 mind in tune. In this he was human, natural, 
 simple, and, let me add, like Horace, who 
 has been described by a great poet in Ian- 
 
 Will the gods grant a morrow for to-daj ? 
 
 No mortal can declare ; 
 Give ! all thou giv'st with open hand away 
 
 Escapes thy greedy heir. 
 
 Once thou art dead, once Minos on his bench 
 
 Thy doom for thee hath writ, 
 Birth, eloquence, devotion, nought can wrench 
 
 Thy spirit from the pit. 
 
 —Carm. iv: 7. 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 131 
 
 guage, much of which might be applied to 
 him whom we have met this day to honor. 
 
 " That life— the flowery path that winds by stealth— 
 Which Horace needed for his spirits' health ; 
 Sighed for, in heart and genius, overcome 
 By noise and strife, and questions wearisome, 
 And the vain splendors of Imperial Rome! — 
 Let easy mirth his social hours inspire, 
 And fiction animate his sportive lyre. 
 Attuned to verse that, crowning light Distress 
 With garlands, cheats her into happiness ; 
 Give "me" the humblest note of those sad strains 
 Drawn forth by pressure of his gilded chains. 
 As a chance sun-beam from his memory fell 
 Upon the Sabine farm he loved so well; 
 Or when the prattle of Bandusia's spring 
 Haunted his ear— he only listening- 
 He, proud to please, above all rivals, fit 
 To win the palm of gaiety and wit. 
 He, doubt not, with involuntary dread, 
 Shrinking from each new favor to be shed, 
 By the world's Ruler, on his honored head!" 
 
 But there is one matter, at least, in which 
 the superiority of the younger author is un- 
 questioned and unquestionable. No word, 
 no thought in Matthew Arnold is unworthy 
 of the austere, religious beauty of the great 
 Abbey in which for centuries his countenance, 
 preserved to us by f^ne art, will be enshrined 
 
132 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 and where his memory will enjoy such im- 
 mortality as is possible on earth. Horace 
 had examples before him which in this mat- 
 ter he did not follow. Arnold had exam- 
 ples, also, of a different sort before him, from 
 whom he shrunk with disgust and scorn. No 
 nobler nature, no purer mind, no loftier char- 
 acter has it been in a long life my good for- 
 tune to know. Envy, jealousy, meanness 
 were unknown to him ; they withered in his 
 presence. His writings were but a revelation 
 of himself — now playful, now serious, always 
 aiming at making the world better and man- 
 kind happier. And, now, to unveil his like- 
 ness and leave him among the graves and 
 monuments of England's greatest men in that 
 magnificent church of which it may be said 
 that they dreamt not of a perishable home 
 who thus could build. Let your own memo- 
 ries pay a nobler tribute to Matthew Arnold 
 than his oldest friend has been able to ren- 
 der. 
 
 The company then went to the Baptistery, 
 where, on the invitation of the Dean, the 
 bust was unveiled by Lord Coleridge. It is 
 
LORD COLERIDGE. 133 
 
 considered an admirable likeness. As the 
 Baptistery is a place which is rather hidden 
 away by some gigantic monuments and may 
 easily escape the notice of the visitor to a place 
 where there are so many things to attract at- 
 tention, it may be well to mention that it is 
 to be found immediately on the right of the 
 west door. It is a little square nook which 
 one would never think had anything in it, 
 but within is a statue of Wordsworth, for 
 which no room could be found in Poets' Cor- 
 ner, and which, perhaps, not one in a hun- 
 dred of the visitors to the Abbey has ever 
 seen, and there are also a medallion of Pro- 
 fessor Fawcett with allegorical figures, and 
 busts of Keble, Charles Kingsley, and Fred- 
 erick Denison Maurice. The bust of Mat- 
 thew Arnold, which, like the other busts, is 
 of pure Carrara marble, stands between those 
 of Kingsley and Maurice, and right opposite 
 to that of Keble. The most suitable time 
 for seeing the bust is from i to 2 o'clock. 
 
The following extract is from * The Peerage, 
 Baronetage and Knightage of the British Em- 
 pire. By Joseph Foster. 
 
 John Duke Coleridge, Baron Coleridge, 
 of Ottery St. Mary, Devon, in the Peerage 
 of the United Kingdom, so created January 
 lo, 1874, Privy Councilor, Chief-Justice of 
 the common pleas June, 1873, barrister-at- 
 law M. T. 1847, Queen's Counsel 1861 ; 
 Recorder of Portsmouth 1855-65, Solicitor 
 General 1868-71, Attorney General 1871-73, 
 member of Parliament for Exeter 1865-73, 
 Lord Chief-Justice 1880; born December 3, 
 1820; died June 14, 1894. 
 
 Arms. — Arg. on a mount vert in base an otter ppr. 
 a chief gu. charged with a dove of the field between 
 two crosses pattee fitch^e or. 
 
 Crest. — On a mount vert therefrom issuing ears 
 of wheat ppr. in front of a cross gu. an otter also ppr. 
 
 Supporters. — Dexter, an otter ppr. Sinister, a 
 lion &a. each accolled with a garland of roses ppr. 
 
 Motto. — Time Deum cole regem. 
 
 Seat,— Heath's Court Otterj St. Mary. 
 
 Town House. — i, Sussex Square, W. 
 
 *Printed and published for the compiler by Nichols 
 Sons, Westminster. 
 
 (134) 
 
FAC-SIMILE OF 
 
 A LETTER FROM LORD COLERIDGE 
 
 TO W. P. FISHBACK, ESQ. 
 

 X^^^-^^^^^-^^y JylL.'-^ ^ ^-^ 
 

 ^D 
 
 
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 (Published in New Yori<.) r2mo, cloth, $1.50. 
 
 THE BOWEN-HERRILL COflPANY, 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS AND KANSAS CITY, U. S. A. 
 
 For sale by all booksellers, or v.'ill be sent by the publishers post- 
 age prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada or Mexico, on 
 receipt of the price.