Philip Gilbert Hamerton Part 6

The other occasion was, when in the vigor of youthful Protestantism I happened to say something against the Church of Rome. Mr. Uttley very quietly and kindly told me that I was unjust towards that Church, and I asked him where the injustice lay. "It lies in this," he replied, "that you despise the dogmas of the Church of Rome as resting only on the authority of priests, whereas the case of that Church is not exceptional or peculiar, as _all_ dogmas rest ultimately on the authority of priests." To this I naturally answered that Scriptural authority was higher; but Mr. Uttley answered,--"The Roman Catholics themselves appeal to Scriptural authority as the Protestants do; but it is still the priests who have decided which books are sacred, and how they are to be interpreted." His conversation was not longer than my report of it, and it occurred when I met Mr. Uttley accidentally in the street; but though short, it was of some importance, as I happened at that time to be exercised in my mind about what Mr. Bardsley had told us concerning "German Neology." Subsequent observation has led me to believe that Mr.

Uttley attributed more originating authority to priests than really belongs to them. It seems to me now that they take up and consecrate popular beliefs that may be of use, and that they drop and discard, either tacitly or openly, those beliefs which are no longer popular.

Both processes have been going on, for some years very visibly in the Church of Rome, and the second of the two is plainly in operation in the Church of England.

CHAPTER XIV.

1851.

First visit to London in 1851.--My first impression of the place.-- Nostalgia of the country.--Westminster.--The Royal Academy.--Resolution never to go to London again.--Reason why this resolution was afterwards broken.

In the year 1851 I went to London for the first time, to see the Great Exhibition. Our little party consisted only of my guardian, my aunt, and myself.

My first impression of London was exactly what it has ever since remained. It seemed to me the most disagreeable place I had ever seen, and I wondered how anybody could live there who was not absolutely compelled to do so. At that time I did not understand the only valid reason for living in London, which is the satisfaction of meeting with intelligent people who know something about what interests you, and do not consider you eccentric because you take an interest in something that is not precisely and exclusively money-making.

My aunts knew n.o.body in London except one or two ladies of rank superior to their own, on whom we made formal calls, which was a sort of human intercourse that I heartily detested, as I detest it to this day.

Our lodgings were in Baker Street, which, after our pure air, open scenery, and complete liberty at Hollins, seemed to me like a prison.

The lodgings were not particularly clean--the carpets, especially, seemed as if they had never been taken up. The air was heavy, the water was bad (our water at Hollins was clearer than gla.s.s, and if you poured a goblet of it beady bubbles clung to the sides), there was no view except up street and down street, and the noise was perpetual. A Londoner would take these inconveniences as a matter of course and be insensible to them, but to me they were so unpleasant that I suffered from nostalgia of the country all the time.

The reader may advantageously be spared my boyish impressions of the Great Exhibition and the other sights of London. Of course we fatigued our brains, as country people always do, by seeing too many things in a limited time; and as we had no special purpose in view, we got, I fear, very little instruction from our wanderings amidst the bewildering products of human industry. I remember being profoundly impressed by Westminster Abbey, though I would gladly have seen all the modern monuments calcined in a lime-kiln; and Westminster Hall affected me even more, possibly because one of our ancestors, Sir Stephen Hamerton, had been condemned to death there for high treason in the time of Henry VIII. I was also deeply impressed by the grim, old Tower of London, and only regretted that I did not know which cell the unlucky Sir Stephen had occupied during his hopeless imprisonment there.

The rooms of the Royal Academy left a more durable recollection than the contents of the great building in Hyde Park. Those are quite old times for us now in the history of English art. Sir Frederick Leighton was a young student who had not yet begun to exhibit; I think he was working in Frankfort then. Millais was already known as the painter of strange and vivid pictures of small size, which attracted attention, and put the public into a state of much embarra.s.sment. There were three of these strange pictures that year,--an ill.u.s.tration of Tennyson, "She only said, 'My life is dreary,'" the "Return of the Dove to the Ark," and the "Woodman's Daughter." I distinctly remember the exact sensation with which my young eyes saw these works; so distinctly that I now positively feel those early sensations over again in thinking about them. All was so fresh, so new! This modern art was such a novelty to one who had not seen many modern pictures, and my own powers of enjoying art were so entirely unspoiled by the effect of habit that I was like a young bird in its first spring-time in the woods. I much preferred the beautiful bright pictures in the Academy, with their greens and blues like Nature, to the snuffy old canvases (as they seemed to me) in the National Gallery.

The oddest result for a boy's first visit to London was a quiet mental resolution of which I said nothing to anybody. What I thought and resolved inwardly may be accurately expressed in these words: "Every Englishman who can afford it ought to see London _once_, as a patriotic duty, and I am not sorry to have been there to have got the duty performed; but no power on earth shall ever induce me to go to that supremely disagreeable place again!"

Of course the intelligent reader considers this boyish resolution impossible and absurd, as it is entirely contrary to prevalent ideas; but a man may lead a very complete life in Lancashire, and even in counties less rich in various interest, without ever going to London at all. A man's own fields may afford him as good exercise as Hyde Park, and his well-chosen little library as good reading as the British Museum. It was the Fine Arts that brought me to London afterwards; the worst of the Fine Arts being that they concentrate themselves so much in great capitals.

CHAPTER XV.

1851-1852.

The love of reading a hindrance to cla.s.sical studies.--Dr. Butler becomes anxious about my success at Oxford.--An insuperable obstacle.--My indifference to degrees.--Irksome hypocrisy.--I am nearly sent to a tutor at Brighton.--I go to a tutor in Yorkshire.--His disagreeable disposition.--Incident about riding.--Disastrous effect of my tutor's intellectual influence upon me.--My private reading.--My tutor's ignorance of modern authors.--His ignorance of the fine arts.--His religious intolerance.--I declare my inability to sign the Thirty-nine Articles.

The various mental activities hinted at in the preceding chapters had naturally a r.e.t.a.r.ding effect upon my cla.s.sical studies, which I had never greatly taken to. It seemed then, and it seems to me still, that for one who does not intend to make a living by teaching them, the dead languages, like all other pursuits, are only worth a limited amount of labor. It may appear paradoxical at first, but it is true, that one reason why I did not like Latin and Greek was because I was extremely fond of reading. The case is this: If you are fond of reading and have an evening at your disposal, you will wish to read, will you not? But _construing_ is not reading; it is quite a different mental operation.

When you _read_ you think of the scenes and events the author narrates, or you follow his reasoning; but when you _construe_ you think of cases and tenses, and remember grammatical rules. I could read English and French, but Latin and Greek were only to be construed _a coups de dictionnaire_.

The case may be ill.u.s.trated by reference to an amus.e.m.e.nt. A man who is indifferent to rowing cares very little what sort of boat he is in, and toils contentedly as peasants do in their heavy boots, but a lover of rowing wants a craft that he can move. This desire is quite independent of the merits of the craft itself, considered without reference to the man. A sailing yacht may he a beautiful vessel, but an Oxford oarsman would not desire to pull one of her c.u.mbersome sweeps.

I was at that time a private pupil of Dr. Butler's, and was getting on at such a very moderate pace that he began to be anxious about his responsibility. My guardian and he had decided together that I was to be sent to Oxford, and it was even settled to which college, Balliol; and my dear guardian expected me to come out in honors, and be a Fellow of my college and a clergyman. That was her plan; and a very good scheme of life it was, but it had one defect, that of being entirely inapplicable to the human being for whom it was intended. I looked forward to Oxford with anything but pleasure, and, indeed, considered that there was an insuperable obstacle to my going there. In those days most of the good things in life were kept as much as possible for members of the Church of England, and it was necessary to sign the Thirty-nine Articles on entering the University. This I could not do conscientiously, and would not do against the grain of my conviction. I looked upon this obstacle as insuperable; but if I had been as indifferent on such questions as young men generally are, there would still have remained a difficulty in my own nature, which is a rooted dislike to everything which is done for social advancement. I might possibly have desired to be a scholar, but cannot imagine myself desiring a degree. However, I might have taken the trouble to get a degree, simply to please my guardian, if there had not been that obstacle about the Thirty-nine Articles.

From this time, during a year or two, there was a sort of game of cross-purposes between me and my guardian, as I had not yet ventured to declare openly my severance from the Church of England, and my consequent inability to go to one of her universities. The enormous weight of social and family pressure that is brought to bear on a youth with reference to these matters must be my excuse for a year or two of hypocrisy that was extremely irksome to me; but besides this I have a still better excuse in a sincere unwillingness to give pain to my dear guardian, and in the dread lest the declaration of heresy might even be dangerous to one whom I knew to be suffering from heart disease. I therefore lived on as a young member of the Church of England who was studying for Oxford, when in fact I considered myself no longer a member of that Church, and had inwardly renounced all intention of going to either of the Universities, which she still kept closed against the Dissenters.

The inward determination not to go to Oxford or Cambridge had a bad effect on my cla.s.sical studies, as I had no other object in view whilst pursuing them than the intellectual benefit to be derived from the studies themselves, and I had not any very great faith in that benefit.

The most intelligent men I knew did not happen to be cla.s.sical scholars, and some men of my acquaintance who _were_ cla.s.sical scholars seemed to me quite impervious to ideas concerning science and the fine arts. Even now, after a much larger experience, I do not perceive that cla.s.sical scholarship opens men's minds to scientific and artistic ideas, or even that scholarship gives much appreciation of literary art and excellence.

Still, it is better to have it than to be without it. There is such a thing as a scholarly temper,--a patient, careful, exact, and studious temper,--which is valuable in all the pursuits of life.

Mr. Butler had been for some time my private tutor--which means that I prepared my work at Hollins in the morning, and went to read with Mr.

Butler in the afternoon. The plan was pleasant enough for me, but it was not advantageous, because what I most wanted was guidance during my hours of study,--such guidance as I had at Doncaster. However, I read and wrote Latin and Greek every day, and learned French at the same time, as Mr. Butler had a taste for modern languages. This went on until he became rather alarmed about my success at Oxford (which for reasons known to the reader troubled me very little), and told my guardian that she ought to send me to some tutor who could bestow upon me more continuous attention. I was as near as possible to being sent to a tutor at Brighton,--a reverend gentleman with aristocratic connections,--but he missed having me by the very bait which he held out to attract my guardian. He boasted in a letter of the young lords he had educated, and said he had one or two still in the house with him. We had a near neighbor and old friend who was herself very nearly connected with two of the greatest families in the peerage, and as she happened to call upon us when my guardian received the letter, it was handed to her, and she said: "That bit about the young lords is not a recommendation; the chances are that P. G. would find them proud and disagreeable." As for me, the whole project presented nothing that was pleasant. I disliked the south of England, and had not the slightest desire to make the acquaintance of the young n.o.blemen. It was therefore rather a relief that the Brighton project was abandoned.

It happened then that my dear guardian did the only one foolish and wrong thing she ever did in her whole life. She sent me to a clergyman in Yorkshire, who had been a tutor at Oxford, and was considered to be a good "coach,"--so far he may seem to have been the right man,--but he was unfortunately exactly the man to inspire me with a complete disgust for my studies. He had no consideration whatever for the feelings of other people, least of all for those of a pupil. He treated me with open contempt, and was always trying to humiliate me, till at last I let him understand that I would endure it no longer. One day he ordered me to clean his harness, with a peremptoriness that he would scarcely have used to a groom, so I answered, "No, sir, I shall not clean your harness; that is not my work." He then asked whether I considered myself a gentleman. I said "yes," and he retorted that it would be a good thing to thrash the gentility out of me; on which I told him that if he ventured to attempt any such thing I should certainly defend myself. I was a well-grown youth, and could have beaten my tutor easily. One day he attempted to sc.r.a.pe my face with a piece of shark's skin, so I seized both his wrists and held them for some time, telling him that the jest, if it was a jest, was not acceptable.

As my tutor was very handsomely paid for the small amount of trouble he took with me, my guardian had inserted in the agreement a clause by which he was either to keep my horse in his stable, or else let me have the use of one of his own. He preferred, for economy's sake, to mount me; so in accordance with our agreement I innocently rode out a little in the early mornings, long before the hour fixed for our Greek reading together. As my tutor rose late, he was not aware of this for some time; but at length, by accident, he found it out, and then an incident occurred which exactly paints the charming amenity of the man.

His stable-boy had brought the horse to the gate, and I was just mounting when my tutor opened his bedroom window, and called out, "Take that horse back to the stable immediately!" I said to the servant, who hesitated, that it was his duty to obey his master's orders, and dismounted; then I went to my lodgings in the village, and wrote a note to the tutor, in which I said that I expected him to keep his agreement, and in accordance with it I should ride out that day. I then left the note at the house, saddled the animal myself, and rode a long distance.

From that time our relations were those of constrained formality, which on the whole I much preferred. My tutor a.s.sumed an air of injured innocence, and treated me with a clumsy imitation of politeness which was intended to wound me, but which I found extremely convenient, as the greater the distance between us the less intercourse there would be.

However, after that demonstration of my rights, I kept a horse of my own--a much finer animal--at a farmer's.

The intellectual influence of my present tutor was disastrous, by the reaction it produced. He was a fanatical admirer of the ancient authors who wrote in Latin and Greek, and was constantly expressing his contempt for modern literature, of which he was extremely ignorant. I was fond of reading, and had English books in my lodgings which were my refuge and solace after the pedantic lectures I had to undergo. My love for Scott was still very lively (as indeed it is to this day), but I had now extended my horizon and added Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, Tennyson, and other modern authors to my list. My tutor had all the hatred for Byron which distinguished the clergy in the poet's life-time, and he was constantly saying the most unjust things against him; as, for example, that the "Bride of Abydos" was not original, but was copied from the Greek of Moschus. This clerical hatred for Byron quite prevented my tutor from acquiring any knowledge of the poet; but he had seen a copy of his works at my lodgings, and this served as a text for the most violent diatribes. As for Sh.e.l.ley, he knew no more about him than that he had been accused of atheism. He had heard of Moore, whom he called "Tommy."

I believe he had never heard of Keats or Tennyson; certainly he was quite unacquainted with their poems. He had a feeble, incipient knowledge of French, and occasionally read a page of Moliere, with an unimaginable p.r.o.nunciation; but he knew nothing really of any modern literature. On the other hand, his knowledge of the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics was more intimate than that possessed by any other teacher I had ever known. He was a thorough, old-fashioned scholar, with all the pride of exact erudition, and a corresponding contempt for everybody who did not possess it. I do not at this moment remember that he ever referred to a dictionary. I only remember that he examined my Liddell and Scott to see whether those modern lexicographers had done their work in a way to merit his approval, and that he thought their book might be useful to me. He had some knowledge of astronomy, and was building a reflecting telescope which he never completed; but I remember that he was often occupied in polishing the reflectors whilst I was reading, and that his hand went on rubbing with a bit of soft leather, and a red powder, when he would deliver the clearest disquisitions on the employment of words by Greek authors, most of which I was not sufficiently advanced to profit by. His manner with me was impatient, and often rude and contemptuous. What irritated him especially in me was the strange inequality of my learning, for I was rather strong on some points, and equally weak on others; whilst he himself had an irresistible regularity of knowledge, at least in Latin and Greek.

We did absolutely nothing else but Latin and Greek during my stay with this tutor, and I suppose I must have made some progress, but there was no _feeling_ of progress. In comparison with the completeness of my master's terrible erudition it seemed that my small acquirements were nothing, and never could be more than nothing. On the other hand, the extreme narrowness of his literary tastes led me to place a higher value on my own increasing knowledge of modern literature, and conclusively proved to me, once for all, that a cla.s.sical education does not necessarily give a just or accurate judgment. "If a man," I said to myself, "can be a thorough cla.s.sical scholar as my tutor is, and at the same time so narrow and ignorant, it is clear that a cla.s.sical training does not possess the virtue of opening the mind which is ascribed to it."

Besides his narrowness with regard to modern literature of all kinds, my tutor had the usual characteristic of the cla.s.sical scholars of his generation, a complete ignorance and misunderstanding of the fine arts.

All that he knew on that subject was that a certain picture by t.i.tian was shameful because there was a naked woman in it; and I believe he had heard that Claude was a famous landscape-painter, but he had no conception whatever of the aims and purposes of art. One of his accusations against me was that, from vanity, I had painted a portrait of myself. As a matter of fact, the little picture was a portrait of Lord Byron, done from an engraving; but any artist may, without vanity, make use of his own face as a model.

In religion my tutor was most intolerant. He could not endure either Roman Catholics or Dissenters of any kind, and considered no terms harsh enough for infidels. He told with approbation the story of some bigot like himself, who, when an unbeliever came into his house, had loudly ordered the servant to lock up the silver spoons. He possessed and read with approbation one of those intolerant books of the eighteenth century ent.i.tled, "A Short Method with Deists," in which the poor Deists were crushed beneath the pitiless heel of the dominant State Church. It happened one day, by a strange chance, that an antiquary brought a Unitarian minister, who also took an interest in archaeology, to visit the church where my tutor officiated, in which, there were some old things, and as they stayed in the church till our early dinner-time, my tutor could hardly do otherwise than offer them a little hospitality.

When the guests had gone (I hope they enjoyed the conversation, which seemed to me artificial and constrained) my tutor said to me: "That man, that Unitarian, will go to h.e.l.l! All who do not believe in the Atonement will go to h.e.l.l!" I said nothing, but thought that the mild antiquary who sat with us at table might deserve a less terrible fate. My tutor troubled me less, perhaps, about theology than might have been expected.

He intended to inflict much more theology upon me than I really had to undergo, thanks to his indolence, and the craft and subtlety with which I managed to subst.i.tute other work for it. Still, it was a trial to me to have to look acquiescent, or at least submissive and respectful, whilst he said the most unjust and intolerant things about those who differed from him, and with whom I often secretly agreed. And of course I had to listen to his sermons every Sunday, and to go through the outward seemings of conformity that my master had power enough to exact from me. Beyond the weekly services in the church he fulfilled scarcely any of the duties of a parish clergyman. He rose about eleven in the morning, and spent his time either in mechanical pursuits or in desultory reading, often of the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics. In fact, my tutor's mind was so imbued with the dead languages that he was unable to write his own, but had constant recourse to Greek and Latin to make his meaning clear.

A year spent with this clergyman, with whom I had not two ideas in common, produced an effect upon me exactly opposite to that which had been intended. My feelings towards the ancient cla.s.sics had grown into positive repugnance when I saw the moderns so unjustly sacrificed to them, and my love for the moderns had increased to the point of partisanship. My tutor's injustice towards Dissenters and unbelievers had also, by a natural reaction, aroused in me a profound sympathy for these maligned and despised people, and I would willingly have joined some dissenting body myself if I could have found one that had exactly my own opinions; but it seemed useless to leave the Church of England for another community if I were no more in accordance with the new than with the old. The fact that my master had been a tutor at Oxford and was always boasting about his university career--he openly expressed his contempt for men who "had never seen the smoke of a university"--made me sick of the very name of the place, and to this day I have never visited it. In a word, my tutor made me dislike the very things that it was his business to make me like, and if I had ever felt the least desire for a degree he would have cured me of it, as it was impossible to desire honors that were accessible to so narrow a mind as his, a mind fit for nothing but pedagogy, and really unable to appreciate either literature or art.

At the end of a year, therefore, I said plainly to my guardian that I was doing no good, and that it was useless to prepare me any further for Oxford, as I could not conscientiously put my name to the Thirty-nine Articles.

If, in those days, any human being in our cla.s.s of society in England had been able to conceive of such a thing as education not in clerical hands, I might have gone on with my cla.s.sical studies under the direction of a layman; but education and the clergy were looked upon as inseparable; even by myself. My education, therefore, came momentarily to a stand-still, though it happened a little later that a sense of its imperfection made me take it up again with fresh energy on my own account, and I am still working at it, in various directions, at the mature age of fifty-two.

CHAPTER XVI.

1852.

Choice of a profession.--Love of literature and art.--Decision to make trial of both.--An equestrian tour.--Windermere.--Derwent.w.a.ter.--I take lessons from Mr. J. P. Pett.i.tt.--Ulleswater.--My horse Turf.--Greenock, a discovery.--My unsettled cousin.--Glasgow.--Loch Lomond.

--Inverary.--Loch Awe.--Inishail.--Innistrynich.--Oban.--A sailing excursion.--Mull and Ulva.--Solitary reading.

The question of a profession now required an immediate decision. My guardian's choice for me had formerly been the Church, but that was not exactly suited to my ways of thinking. The most natural profession for a young man in my position would have been the law, but my father had expressly desired that I should not adopt it, as he was sick of it for himself, and wished to spare me its anxieties. The cotton trade required a larger disposable capital than I possessed, to start with any chance of success.

My own desires were equally balanced between two pursuits for which I had a great liking, and hoped that there might be some natural apt.i.tude.

One of these was literature, and the other painting. A very moderate success in either of these pursuits would, it seemed to me, be more conducive to happiness than a greater success in some less congenial occupation. My fortune was enough for a bachelor, and I did not intend to marry, at least for a long time.