Bygones Worth Remembering Volume Ii Part 1

Bygones Worth Remembering.

Vol. 2.

by George Jacob Holyoake.

CHAPTER XXIV. CONVERSATIONS WITH MR. GLADSTONE

Were I to edit a new journal again I should call it _Open Thought_. I know no characteristic of man so wise, so useful, so full of promise of progress as this. The great volume of Nature, of Man and of Society opens a new page every day, and Mr. Gladstone read it. It was this which gave him that richness of information in which he excited the admiration of all who conversed with him.

Were Plutarch at hand to write Historical Parallels of famous men of our time, he might compare Voltaire and Gladstone. Dissimilar as they were in nature, their points of resemblance were notable. Voltaire was the most conspicuous man in Europe in the eighteenth century, as Mr.

Gladstone became in the nineteenth. Both were men of wide knowledge beyond all their contemporaries. Each wrote more letters than any other man was ever known to write. Every Court in Europe was concerned about the movements of each, in his day. Both were deliverers of the oppressed, where no one else moved on their behalf. Both attained great age, and were ceaselessly active to the last In decision of conviction they were also alike. Voltaire was as determinedly Theistic as Mr.

Gladstone was Christian. They were alike also in the risks they undertook in defence of the right. Voltaire risked his life and Gladstone his reputation to save others. Mr. Morley relates of the Philosopher of Ferney, that when he made his triumphal journey through Paris, some one asked a woman in the street "why do so many people follow this man?" "Don't you know?" was the reply. "He was the deliverer of the Calas." No applause went to Voltaire's heart like that Mr.

Gladstone had also golden memories of deliverance no one else moved hand or foot to effect, and mult.i.tudes, even nations, followed him because of that.

On the first occasion of my going to breakfast with him he was living in Harley Street, in the house in which Sir Charles Lyell died. As Mr.

Gladstone entered the room, he apologised for not greeting me earlier, as his servant had indistinctly given him my name. He asked me to sit next to him at breakfast. There were seven or eight guests. The only one I knew was Mr. Walter. H. James, M.P., since Lord Northbourne--probably present from consideration for me. One was the editor of the _Jewish World_ a journal opposed to Mr. Gladstone's anti-Turkish policy. Others were military officers and travellers of contemporary renown. It was a breakfast to remember--Mr. Gladstone displayed such a bright, unembarra.s.sed vivacity. He told amusing anecdotes of the experiences of the wife of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, whose charm he said he could only describe by the use of the English rural term "buxom." On making a time-bargain with a cabman, he observed to her ladyship that "he wished the engagement was for life." Mr. Gladstone thought no English cabman would have said that. Another pleasantry was of one of Lord Lyttelton's sons, who was very tall and lank. He being in Birmingham and wishful to know the distance to a place he sought, asked a boy in the street who was pa.s.sing, "how far it was." "Oh, not far," was the a.s.suring but indefinite answer. "But can you not give me some better idea of the distance?" Mr. Lyttelton inquired. "Well, sir," said the lad, looking up at the obelisk-like interrogator before him, "if you was to fall down, you would be half way there."

These incidents were not new to me, but I was glad to hear what was probably the origin of them. From Mr. Gladstone's lips they had a sort of historic reality which was interesting to me.

Afterwards he spoke of the singular beauty of the "Dream of Gerontius"

by Cardinal Newman, and turning to me asked if I knew of it, as though he thought it unlikely my reading lay in that direction. He was very much surprised when I said I had read it with great admiration. He said it was strange, as he had mentioned the poem at three or four breakfast tables, without finding any one who knew it.

As I left, Mr. Gladstone accompanied me downstairs. On the way I took occasion to thank him for a paper that had appeared in the _Contemporary_ containing definitions of heretical forms of thought, so fair and accurate and actual, that Shakespeare or Bunyan, who had the power of possessing himself of the minds of those whose thoughts he expressed, might have produced. There had been nothing to compare with it in my time. Theological writers described heterodox tenets from their inferences of what they must be--never inquiring what they actually stood for in the minds of those who held them--whereas he had written with unimputative knowledge. Stopping on the first platform of the stairway we reached, he paused, and (holding the lapel of his coat with his hand, as I had seen him do in the House of Commons) he said he was glad I was able to think so, "for that is the quality in which you yourself excel." This amazed me, as I never imagined that he had ever taken notice of speeches or writings of mine, or formed any opinion upon them. Nor was he the man to say what I cite from mere courtesy.

The second time I breakfasted in Harley Street was in the days of the Eastern question. Mr. John Morley was one of the party. Mr. Gladstone had again the same disengaged manner. Before his guests broke up he entered the room, bearing on his arm a pile of letters and telegrams, and apologised for leaving us as he had to attend to them. That morning Mr. Bright came in, and seeing me, said, "Poor Acland is dead. Of course there was nothing in the house, and a few of us had to subscribe to bury him." James Acland was the rider on a white horse who preceded Cobden and Bright the day before their arrival to address the farmers on the anti-Corn Law tour in the counties. Mr. Gladstone's grand-daughter was to have arrived at Harley Street that morning, but her nurse missed the train. When she appeared, Bright, who had suggested dolorous adventures to account for her non-appearance, proposed, when the child was announced to be upstairs, that a charge of sixpence should be made for each person going to see her.

That morning one of the guests, who was an actor, maintained that it was not necessary that an actor should feel his part. Mr. Gladstone, to whom conviction was his inspiration--who never spoke without believing what he said--dissented from the actor's theory, as I had done.

Towards the end of his life, I saw Mr. Gladstone twice at the Lion Mansion in Brighton. On one occasion he said, after speaking of Cardinal Newman and his brother Francis, "I remember Dr. Martineau telling me that there was a third brother, a man also of remarkable power, but he was touched somewhere here," putting his finger to his forehead. "Do you know whether it was so? It is so long since Dr. Martineau named it to me, and my impression may be wrong." I answered, "It was true. At one time I had correspondence with Charles Newman. He would say at times, 'My mind is going from me for a time. Do not expect to hear from me until my mind returns.' In power of reasoning, he was, when he did reason, distinguished for boldness and vigour." Mr. Gladstone said, "When you write again to his brother Francis, convey to him for me the a.s.surance of my esteem. I am glad you believe that the cessation in his correspondence was not occasioned by anything on my part or any change of feeling on his. I must have been mistaken if I ever described Mr.

Francis Newman as 'a man of considerable talent.' He was much more than that. His powers of mind may be said to amount to genius."

Mr. Gladstone asked what I would advise as a rule of policy as to the Anarchists who threw the bombs in the French Chambers. I answered, "There were serious men who came to have Anarchical views from despair of the improvement of society. There were also foolish Anarchists who think they can put the world to rights, had they a clear field before them. There are also a cla.s.s who are quite persuaded that by killing people who have nothing to do with the evils they complain of, they will intimidate those who have. They take destruction to be a mode of progress. These persons are as mad as they are made, and you cannot legislate against insanity."

I mentioned the case of a Nonconformist minister, who was so incensed by the injustice done to Mr. Bradlaugh that he took a revolver, loaded, to Palace Yard, intending to shoot the policemen who maltreated him. But the member for Northampton was altogether against such proceedings. The determined rectifier of wrong in question had a project of throwing a bomb from the gallery on to the floor of the House. I had great difficulty in dissuading him from this frightful act. He was no coward, and was quite prepared to sacrifice his own life. To those ebullitions of vengeance society in every age has been subject, and its best protection lies in intrepid disdain and cool precaution. The affair of Phoenix Park showed that the English nation did not go mad in the face of desperate outrage. However, Mr. Gladstone himself gave the best answer to his inquiry. He said, "The Spanish Government had solicited him to join in a federation against Anarchists. But how could we do that? We cannot tell what other Governments may do, and we should be held responsible for their acts which we might deplore."

He added, "It fills me with surprise, not to say disgust, to see it said at times in Liberal papers that the Tories of to-day are superior to their cla.s.s formerly. Sir Robert Peel was a man of high honour, patriotism, and self-respect He would never have joined in nor countenanced the treatment to which Mr. Bradlaugh was subjected. I never knew the Tories do a meaner thing. Nothing could have induced Sir Robert Peel to consent to that."

On one occasion, after reference to out-of-the-way persons of whom I happened to have some knowledge, Mr. Gladstone said, "I have known many remarkable men. My position has brought me in contact with numbers of persons." Indeed, it seemed when talking to him that you were talking to mankind, so diversified and plentiful were the persons living in his memory, and who, as it were, stepped out in his conversation before you.

The individuality, the environment of persons, all came into light.

His conversation was like an oration in miniature. Its exactness, its modulation, its force of expression, its foreseeingness of all the issues of ideas, came at will. I never listened to conversation so easy, so natural, so precise, so full of colour and truth, spoken with such spontaneity and force.

Mr. Morley, in his "Life of Gladstone," cites a letter he sent to me in 1875: "Differing from you, I do not believe that secular motives are adequate either to propel or restrain the children of our race, but I earnestly desire to hear the other side, and I appreciate the advantage of having it stated by sincere and high-minded men." This shows his brave open-mindedness.

A few years later it came into my mind that my expressions of respect for persons whose Christian belief arose from honest conviction, and was a.s.sociated with efforts for the improvement of the material condition of the people, might lead him to suppose that I myself inclined to belief in Christian tenets of faith. I therefore sent him my new book on "The Origin and Nature of Secularism: Showing that where Free Thought commonly ends Secularism begins"--saying that as I had the honour of his correspondence, I ought not to leave him unaware of the nature of my own opinions. He answered that he thought my motive a right one in sending the book to him, and that he had read a considerable part with general concurrence, though, in other parts, the views expressed were painful to him. But this made no difference in his friendship, which continued to the end of his days.

An unknown aphorist of 1750, whom Mr. Bertram Dobell quotes, exclaims: "Freethinker! What a term of honour; or, if you will, dishonour; but where is he who can claim it?" Mr. Gladstone might claim it beyond any other eminent Christian I have known. It was he who, at the opening of the Liverpool College some years ago, warned the clergy that "they could no longer defend their tenets by railing or reticence"--a shaft that went through the soul of that policy of silence and defamation pursued by them for half a century. Mr. Gladstone was the first to see it must be abandoned.

It is Diderot who relates that one who was searching for a path through a dark forest by the light of a taper, met a man who said to him, "Friend, if thou wouldst find thy way here, blow out thy light." The taper was Reason, and the man who said blow it out was a priest Mr.

Gladstone would have said, "Take care of that taper, friend; and if you can convert it into a torch do so, for you will need it to see your way through the darkness of human life."

At our last interview he said, "You and I are growing old. The day is nearing when we shall enter----" Here he paused, as though he was going to say another life, but not wishing to say what I might not concur in, in his sense, he--before his pause was well noticeable--added, "enter a changed state." What my views were he knew, as I had told him in a letter: "I hope there is a future life, and, if so, my not being sure of it will not prevent it, and I know of no better way of deserving it than by conscious service of humanity. The universe never filled me with such wonder and awe as when I knew I could not account for it. I admit ignorance is a privation. But to submit not to know, where knowledge is withheld, seems but one of the sacrifices that reverence for truth imposes on us."

I had reason to acknowledge his n.o.ble personal courtesy, notwithstanding convictions of mine he must think seriously erroneous, upon which, as I told him, "I did not keep silence."

He had the fine spirit of the Abbe Lamennais, who, writing of a book of mark depicting the "pa.s.sive" Christian, said: "The active Christian who is ceaselessly fighting the enemies of humanity, without omitting to pardon and love them--of this type of Christian I find no trace whatever." Mr. Gladstone was of that type. It was his distinction that he applied this affectionate tolerance not only to the "enemies of humanity," but to the dissentients from the faith he loved so well.

At our last meeting in Brighton he asked my address, and said he would call upon me. He wished me to know Lord Acton, whom he would ask to see me. An official engagement compelled Lord Acton to defer his visit, of which Mr. Gladstone sent me notice. It was a great loss not to converse with one who knew so much as Lord Acton did.

Mr. Gladstone knew early what many do not know yet, that courtesy and even honour to adversaries do not imply coincidence in opinion. As I was for the right of free thought, I regarded all manifestations of it with interest, whether coinciding with or opposing views I hold. Shortly before his death I wrote to him, when Miss Helen Gladstone sent me word, "To-day I read to my father your letter, by which he was much touched and pleased, and he desired me to send you his best thanks." I shall always be proud to think that any words of mine gave even momentary pleasure to one who has given delight to millions, and will be an inspiration to millions more.

In former times, when an eminent woman contributed to the distinction of her consort, he alone received the applause. In these more discriminating days, when the n.o.ble companionship of a wife has made her husband's eminence possible, honour is due to her also. Therefore, on drawing the resolution of condolence to Mrs. Gladstone, adopted at the Peterborough Co-operative Congress, we made the acknowledgment how much was due to the wife as well as the husband. I believe no resolution sent to her, but ours, did this. Sympathy is not enough where honour is due.

In the splendid winter of Mr. Gladstone's days there was no ice in his heart Like the light that ever glowed in the temple of Montezuma the generous fire of his enthusiasm never went out. The nation mourned his loss with a pomp of sorrow more deep and universal than ever exalted the memory of a king.

CHAPTER XXV. HERBERT SPENCER, THE THINKER

A star of the first magnitude went out of the firmament of original thought by the death of Herbert Spencer. His was the most distinctive personality that remained with us after the death of Mr. Gladstone.

Spencer was as great in the kingdom of science as Mr. Gladstone was in that of politics and ecclesiasticism. Men have to go back to Aristotle to find Spencer's compeer in range of thought, and to Gibbon for a parallel to his protracted persistence in accomplishing his great design of creating a philosophy of evolution. Mr. Spencer's distinction was that he laid down new landmarks of evolutionary guidance in all the dominions of human knowledge. Gibbon lived to relinquish his pen in triumph at the end of years of devotion to his "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire "--Mr. Spencer planned the history of the rise and growth of a mightier, a more magnificent, and more beneficent Empire--that of Universal Law--and for forty years he pursued his mighty story in every vicissitude of strength with unfaltering purpose, and lived to complete it amid the applause of the world and the grat.i.tude of all who have the grand pa.s.sion to understand Nature, and advance the lofty destiny of humanity.

Herbert Spencer was born April 27, 1820, in the town of Derby, and died in his eighty-fourth year, December 8, 1903, at 5, Percival Terrace, Brighton, next door to his friend, Sir James Knowles, the editor of the _Nineteenth Century_. At the time of his birth, Derby was emerging from the sleepy, dreamy, stagnant, obfuscated condition in which it had lain since the days of the Romans.

It is difficult to write of Spencer without wondering how a thinker of his quality should have been born in Derby--a town which had a determined objection to individuality in ideas. It has a Charter--its first act of enterprise in a thousand years--obtained by the solicitations of the inhabitants from Richard I., which gave them the power of expelling every Jew who resided in the town, or ever after should approach it. Centuries later, in the reigns of Queen Anne and George I., not a Roman Catholic, an Independent, a Baptist, an Israelite, nor even an un-molesting Quaker could be found in Derby.

There still remains one lineal descendant of the stagnant race which procured the Charter of Darkness from Richard I.--Mr. Alderman W.

Winter, who opposed in the Town Council a resolution of honour in memory of Spencer, who had given Derby its great distinction, because his views contradicted the antediluvian Scriptural account of the Creation, when there was no man present to observe what took place, and no man of science existed capable of verifying the Mosaic tradition. The only recorded instance of independency of opinion was that of a humble Derby girl, who was born blind, yet could see, like others, into the nature of things. She doubted the Real Presence. What could it matter what the poor, helpless thing thought of that? But the town burned her alive. The brave, unchanging girl, whose convictions were torment-proof, was only twenty-two years old.

The only Derby man of free thought who preceded Herbert Spencer was William Hutton, a silk weaver, who became the historian of Derby and Birmingham. In sagacity, boldness and veracity he excelled. The wisdom of his opinions was a century in advance of his time (1770-1830).

There were no photographs in the time of Mr. Spencer's parents, and their lineaments are little known. Mr. Spencer's uncle I knew, the Rev.

Thomas Spencer, a clergyman of middle stature, slender, with a paternal Evangelical expression. But his sympathies were with Social Reform, in which field he was an insurgent worker for projects then unregarded or derided.

When I first knew Mr. Herbert Spencer, he was one of the writers on the _Leader_ newspaper. We dined at times at the Whittington Club, then recently founded by Douglas Jerrold. At this period Mr. Spencer had a half-rustic look. He was ruddy, and gave the impression of being a young country gentleman of the sporting farmer type, looking as unlike a philosopher as Thomas Henry Buckle looked like a historian, as he appeared to me on my first interview with him. Mr. Spencer at that time would take part in discussions in a determined tone, and was persistent in definite statement In that he resembled William Chambers, with whom I was present at a deputation to Lord Derby on the question of the Paper Duty. Lord Derby could not bow him out, nor bow him into silence, until he had stated his case.

In those days Mr. Spencer spoke with misgivings of his health. Mr.

Edward Pigott, chief proprietor of the _Leader_ (afterwards Public Examiner of Plays) asked me to try to disabuse Mr. Spencer of his apprehensiveness, which was const.i.tutional and never left his mind all his life, and I learned never to greet him in terms which implied that he was, or could be well. Coleridge complained of ailments of which no physical sign was apparent, and he was thought, like Mr. Spencer, to be an imaginary invalid. But after his death Coleridge was found to have a real cause of suffering, and the wonder was that he did not complain more.

There must be a distinct susceptibility of the nerves--which Sir Michael Foster could explain--peculiar to some persons. I have had two or three friends of some literary distinction, whom I made it a rule never to accost, or even to know when I met them, until they had recovered from the inevitable shock of meeting some unexpected person, when they would spontaneously become genial.

Mr. Spencer's high spirit was shown in this. Though he often had to abandon his thinking, he resumed it on his recovery. The continuity of his thought never ceased. One form of trouble was recurring depression, so difficult to sustain, which James Thompson, who oft experienced it, described--when a man has to endure--

"The same old solid hills and leas; The same old stupid, patient trees; The same old ocean, blue and green; The same sky, cloudy or serene; The old two dozen hours to run Between the settings of the sun."

Mr. Spencer was first known to London thinkers by being found the a.s.sociate of economists like Bagot; philosophers with a turn for enterprise in the kingdom of speculation--as George Henry Lewes, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall; and of great novelists like George Eliot. In those days the house of John Chapman, the publisher, was the meeting ground of French, Italian, German and other Continental thinkers. There, also, congregated ill.u.s.trious Americans like Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other unlicensed explorers in the new world of thought. There Mr. Spencer became known to men of mark in America, who made his fame before his countrymen recognised him. If it was England who "raised" Mr. Spencer, it was America that discovered him. Mr. George lies, a distinguished American friend of Mr. Spencer, sends me information of the validity of American admiration of him, on the authority of the _Daily Witness_: "Mr. Spencer's income is mainly drawn from the sale of his books in America, his copyrights there having yielded him 4,730 dollars in the last six months. A firm of publishers have paid in the last six months royalties amounting nearly to ten thousand dollars to Mr. Herbert Spencer and the heirs or executors of Darwin, Huxley and Tyndall. The sales of Spencer's and Darwin's books lead those of Huxley and Tyndall."

During the earlier publication of his famous volumes, his expenditure in printing and in employing a.s.sistants in gathering facts for his arguments, exhausted all his means. Lord Stanley, of that day, was understood to have offered him an appointment, which included leisure for his investigations. But he declined the thoughtful offer, deeming the office to be of the nature of a sinecure. Wordsworth accepted such an appointment, and repaid the State in song, as Spencer would have repaid it in philosophy.