Letters of Lord Acton Part 4

{14}

I hope, towards the end of the session, you will consult MacColl about the Bavarian mystery. It would be nice if Leeds does not require its member just then. Above all things keep a very regular diary. You will be so glad afterwards, unless you have some distant correspondent, and make your letters to him, or her, do for a regular diary, which is also a good plan.

[Sidenote: _Tegernsee June 1, 1880_]

I received your letter last night on my return from Italy, and read the enclosure with interest. There are two things to be said in its defence. It is true that Hartington has, of late, shown higher qualities than the world attributed to him, and so far his adoring kinsfolk may consider their higher estimate justified. His whole att.i.tude during the election was creditable, and his conduct towards Mr. Gladstone was correct.

Then, there is a grain of truth in the notion that the force that creates, and sustains in a crisis, is not quite the same that is wanted in time of prose to continue and to preserve; or in other words, that creative power makes a great consumption of party resources, and, if Burke gave up to party what was meant for mankind, it is better still to give up to mankind what some people mean to use for party. This is only a half truth, because party is not only, not so much, a group of men as a set of ideas and ideal aims; so that I do not admit Goldsmith's ant.i.thesis.[21] But taking party in the practical and popular sense, of an instrument for homing office, people are uneasily conscious that Mr. Gladstone will sacrifice it to loftier purpose sooner than they would like. Nothing is more untrue than the famous saying of an ancient historian, that power is retained by the same arts by which it is {15} acquired; untrue at least for men, though truer in the case of nations.

But don't you see, pervading the letter and guiding the pen, the great intellectual and moral defect of the present day? I mean, the habit of dwelling on appearances, not on realities, of preferring the report to the bullet, and the echo to the report. To spend and lose a majority in some great cause, to be abused and ridiculed and calumniated, seems to the writer a misfortune so great that it is worth while to haul down one's flag rather than incur the risk of it. This is the power of journalism, of salons and club life, which teaches people to depend on popularity and success and not on the guide within, to act not from knowledge, but from opinion, and to be led by opinion of others rather than by knowledge which is their own. Not only ----, nearly everybody yields up his conscience, his practical judgment, into the keeping of others. I do not accuse Hartington, but it is clear from the words of ---- and ----, that there was a scheme to get Mr. Gladstone out of the way. To expect him to take the first step was to expect him to resign.

It is so easy to do a dirty thing with self-satisfaction when it consists in abstaining from action. The one letter is only the plausible, affectionate, amplification of the other's impertinence, with a saving clause, on the first page, inserted from dictation, when the grievous indiscretion had been committed....

It does not matter seriously; but it serves to corroborate that grave speech of mine: trust n.o.body. I don't want you to think ill of people, or even to suspect them until the evidence is strong. It is not their virtue I question, but their attachment, and {16} consequently their discretion. And I question their attachment because I doubt their thorough agreement with Mr. Gladstone. I don't say they are perfidious; but they are bound by an alliance they do not mean to last for ever.

I do not cite Northcote and Carnarvon in confirmation. Soon after his resignation Carnarvon certainly wished to come over. At a solemn dinner inaugurating him as President of the Society of Antiquaries, he asked the secretaries to get me to propose his health. In a preceding speech he spoke of himself as a true Conservative at heart; and so I took those words up, congratulating him upon them in an Antiquarian, and eventually in a Liberal sense, indicating that they meant no more than we mean by const.i.tutional, that there were no Pyrenees between us, that we entirely agreed with each other. We became close friends from that hour, and he made it very clear that he was pleased to be so interpreted. But he got little encouragement afterwards; and I fancied he honestly took this line--there are intelligent High Church men who dread, in the looming future, an alliance between democratic nonconformity and the predestined chief of the stern and unbending Tories, on the basis of anti-Erastianism. They say that the late election, swamping the vulgar Whig, has made those two allies stronger than ever, making each depend upon the other. They would stand a Liberal Government made up of Spencers and Cowpers, but they say that the demagogues have been strong enough to force their way in, and will make their power felt. So that property and the Church are in danger.

I am ashamed to say that I thought this was Carnarvon's line. But Liddon knows what he says. {17} Be sure that I also know what I say when I a.s.sure you that the victoria pilgrimage will be a help to your father, and that Lady R.'s coachman will grease wheels more important than her own. Do go on, this summer at least, and see whether it is not true. Lady R. is, moreover, a friend of Lady Blennerha.s.sett, and will sympathise with your feelings.

I should not have supported our side in its attack on Sir Bartle Frere.

It was not merely a question of empire, but of lives he would be unable to protect, against a savage army[22] far stronger than the whole armed population of Natal. I fancy that the a.n.a.logy, or apparent a.n.a.logy, with the Cabul policy, which he had so much promoted, turned Liberal opinion against him. But Frere is a strong, an able, and a plausible man. It is true that his strength is akin to obstinacy and self-will, that he is rather too plausible, and that he will gain his ends by crooked paths when he has tried the straight in vain. He is a dangerous agent, but, I should think, a useful adviser. Indians are not generally a healthy element in the body politic, and he has the constant vice of Indians, belief in force. But he has a breadth of mind that is rare among them; and I have known people who hated him, because he is so good. I do not suggest that that is the motive of the three Anabaptists who ply you with advice from which I disagree.

Thanks, a thousand thanks, for all the kindness of your letter. I enjoyed the Sherbrooke-Airlie-Trevelyan dinner very much, and shall envy Lady R. every Monday to come....

{18}

[Sidenote: _Tegernsee June 9, 1880_]

My letter was posted with the one to you, though written, I think, the night before, so that it must have been stopped and opened by some postmaster whom the direction attracted, and who, like yourself, exaggerated its importance. There are truths so prosaic, so dense, so dull, that one can hardly state them without suggesting the idea of something subtler or more interesting beyond. Of course, to one who spends his time in watching and trying to understand the progress of political life and thought, no public event could equal the late progress from Dalmeny to Downing Street, and no prouder thing could happen than to be able to serve Mr. Gladstone's policy. Indeed, if I was not lured by his genius, his persistent friendship, and a curious sympathy in many deep questions, I should be, now, by qualities never so apparent as in the last few days, by the power of grasping principle in one hand and policy in the other, without clashing, which was shown in the opium speech, and just before, in the speech on the liability of employers. I don't know whether I could ever have been of use abroad, in other circ.u.mstances, if my nearest relation was not Foreign Secretary,[23] for there is only one place for which I could pretend to any special fitness. But as to trying to qualify as a candidate for anything at home, you would soon be satisfied that it is impossible, if I had a good opportunity of talking--if we climb a mountain, a very high mountain, or cross a broad and stormy lake some day.[24] But I think I must remind you of the old lady at Carlisle in Forty-Five, who shut herself up in terror of the Highlanders, and, not being pursued, {19} grew impatient, and cried out: "When are they going to begin?"

I am a little disturbed at the highly ingenious and easy solution of the great party[25] question. It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness. Now there is a source of future weakness in the idea of power a.s.sumed only for a term limited and defined. A Parliament near its end becomes helpless and unable to act. When the period fixed, or supposed to be fixed, is approaching, power will slip away. Disappointed people, men impatient of having to wait, hungry, jealous, reluctant supporters, will gravitate in other directions, will promote rivalry, will speed the parting chief, will magnify the rising sun. By having only Free and Easies, you establish a festive Centre elsewhere, and the world, revolving in an improper orbit, may lose its way. There has been, in this direction, a slight waste of capital....

[Sidenote: _June 9, 1880_]

Your card came just after my letter was posted. I shall be at Munich on Friday, and have written to Hallam Tennyson, _poste restante_; but I hope to waylay them at the station. It will be pleasant to pilot the great man through Munich, or on the road to Achensthal, and I will do my best....

I hope you will not quarrel with John Morley, for he seems to be making the _Pall Mall_ the best Liberal paper in England. But he has so many points of antagonism to Mr. Gladstone that I am afraid. He is a sceptic; his studies are all French, eighteenth century; in political economy he is a bald Cobdenite, and will do scant justice to the political aspects of the {20} French treaty; he is a friend of Lytton's, and I suspect, of the peccant Strachey;[26] he has the obstinacy of a very honest mind. But I perceive that I am getting to be a bore....

[Sidenote: _Tegernsee June 21, 1880_]

The Tennysons came and went, I am sorry to say, prematurely. They spent two days with us, and would have gone by Achensee to Innsbruck, but the rain sent them back to Munich, where they took the train for Italy. You will be surprised to learn that the Poet made a favourable impression on my ladies and children. He was not only a gracious Poet, but he told us lots of good stories, read aloud without pressure, walked repeatedly with M., and seemed interested in the books he carried to his room. Lady Acton took him to Kreuth and round the lake, and liked him well. Yet our ways were very strange to him, and he must have felt that he stood on the far verge of civilisation, without the enjoyments proper to savage life. Even I was tamed at last. There was a sh.e.l.l to crack, but I got at the kernel, chiefly at night, when everybody was in bed. His want of reality, his habit of walking on the clouds, the airiness of his metaphysics, the indefiniteness of his knowledge, his neglect of transitions, the looseness of his political reasonings--all this made up an alarming _cheval de frise_.

But then there was a gladness--not quickness--in taking a joke or story, a comic impatience of the external criticism of Taine and others found here, coupled with a simple dignity when reading ill-natured attacks, a grave groping for religious certainty, and a generosity in the treatment of rivals--of Browning and {21} Swinburne, though not of Taylor--that helped me through. He was not quite well, in consequence of the damp and of the mountain fare.

I write for news to your hotel at Venice, the weather having been against the Dolomites.

Hallam is a much better and clearer politician than his father, and the only time we differed he was the truer Blue. If I add that I discovered why he refused a baronetcy, I suspect it is no more than you know very well already.

I have made Liddon's acquaintance at last. Nothing but Tennyson prevented me from seeing more of him, for I found in him all that I love Oxford for, and only a very little of what I dislike in it.

... Let me suppress truths only when they are pleasant, and confess that I have a doubt about the scene with O'Donnell. Mr. Gladstone brought against him an engine as obsolete as the Veto,[27] not for the sake of France, for he could have his say in another way, but for a disorderly act which was not the worst on record. It seemed a stretch of severity when the claim to have been severely treated is the most telling feather in an Irish cap, when the fact of having been silenced in a new way inflates the lungs, if it does not strengthen the hands, of a Home Ruler. But perhaps I am so fresh from the history of the Plebs and their Tribunes that I am not quite sound as to the management of Obstructives.

{22}

Challemel Lacour is the scholar, the philosopher, the ascetic of that republican school of which Gambetta is the Tribune and the platform hero. He is their Minister in reserve; and Albert Gate is so manifestly the stepping-stone to power, he is so conspicuous a leader of untried policy, that the civility of his reception will be taken in France as a tribute to his party in a way there has been no example of.

He is probably the most interesting specimen in existence of the school from which Robespierre would have chosen his colleagues. I should very, very much like to know how he impresses you; and there is so much more I should very much like to know, that I must learn to be less obtrusive.

... If the Bavarian Fawcett[28] opened one of my letters, I suspect it was because they have not got over their perplexity at the Queen informing the King of Bavaria of the Rammingen misalliance. Only, when I ask indiscreet questions do not suspect me of asking for indiscreet answers.

I think Reay deserves a seat in the H. of L. (in the vulgar sense of those mystic letters),[29] because he would perhaps not recognise your portrait of a barren, contradictory, envious, dissolving cynic. But the cap fits only too well, and I must acknowledge the fidelity of the likeness, and the art of Lenbach in the deeper shades. Do you remember, now, my prophecy on the Piazzetta, when I rejoiced that you would not stay long enough to learn to hate me?

In worldly quarters you will probably meet with the objection to Reay that he is more instructive than amusing; but I hardly know a more genuine good fellow. {23} Do you know Morier, who is in town? Another man much objected to, but exceedingly able, resolute, and energetic....

I hope you will see Blennerha.s.sett, and think him worthy of his wife, who is still at Munich. Thank you for the good news you give from high places, and for the greasy wheels. Your sister's ears ought to have tingled at the good things said of her here last week.

[Sidenote: _Tegernsee July 1, 1880_]

... I hope you have not many correspondents as unmerciful as I am, or as much inclined to forget that you are living the most interesting of lives, by the intensest blaze of light in all the world. Only let me just thank you for your letter of yesterday and for your kindness in asking me to future entertainments. My prospects are too uncertain for me to accept. I must come only if I am wanted, and we shall hardly have any close divisions of importance until the end of July. Your invitations have doubled in value since Reay, whose particular group of friends is so well known as to betray him to the worst of guessers, has supplied you with a key--a false key--to my Venetian Mystery.

Don't get tired too easily of London and its duties, for they are very real. They will not get on without you. And it is of no use coming over, if you are away on all kinds of larks.

We must wait till Sunday before the result of this evening's debate reaches Tegernsee. There is not any doubt the motion[30] is right; but I can imagine a much {24} stronger statement of objections than the righteous indignation of the Tories produced.

Let us hope that John Morley was not discouraged by _encountering Sweet Caesar's ghost on Tuesday_. The _Pall Mall_ is getting a little personal, and too highly coloured in reports of fact. Do you know my intimate friend Lathbury, political editor of the _Economist_? A Weekly is easier to conduct than a Daily; but his articles seem to me excellent in tone, judgment, and impartiality. He wrote much formerly in the _Daily News_ and the _Pall Mall_, and I was negotiating with Delane to put him on the _Times_ when Bagehot's death gave him the other opening. His wife was Bonamy Price's daughter. You never saw a man more frank, cheery, and well-conditioned.

I suppose Hayward has brought ----. Let him bring Chenery, that he may be useful as well as ornamental. It is not a matter of indifference that, when other journalists come, he should be left to stay away.

Only don't let his sins be cast in his teeth.

I am afraid you will not take to Morier; but he is the greatest force in our diplomatic service, in spite of his discomfiture at Lisbon. He would be the very man to meet Challemel Lacour, who will be an offence to so many.