Sydney Smith Part 7

"Instead of being unamused by trifles, I am, as I well knew I should be, amused by them a great deal too much. I feel an ungovernable interest about my horses, my pigs, and my plants. I am forced, and always was forced, to task myself up into an interest for any higher objects."

Six days later he wrote to Lady Holland:--

"I hear you laugh at me for being happy in the country, and upon this I have a few words to say. In the first place, whether one lives or dies I hold, and have always held, to be of infinitely less moment than is generally supposed. But, if life is to be, then it is common sense to amuse yourself with the best you can find where you happen to be placed. I am not leading precisely the life I should choose, but that which (all things considered, as well as I could consider them) appeared to me to be the most eligible. I am resolved, therefore, to like it, and to reconcile myself to it; which is more manly than to feign myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post, of being thrown away, and being desolate, and such-like trash. I am prepared, therefore, either way. If the chances of life ever enable me to emerge, I will show you that I have not been wholly occupied by small and sordid pursuits. If (as the greater probability) I am come to the end of my career, I give myself quietly up to horticulture, etc. In short, if it be my lot to crawl, I will crawl contentedly; if to fly, I will fly with alacrity; but, as long as I can possibly avoid it, I will never be unhappy. If, with a pleasant wife, three children, and many friends who wish me well, I cannot be happy, I am a very silly, foolish fellow, and what becomes of me is of very little consequence."

If ample occupation be, as some strenuous moralists a.s.sert, the true secret of happiness, Sydney Smith had plenty to make him happy during the early years of his life in Yorkshire. Here is his own account of his translation:--

"A diner-out, a wit, and a popular preacher, I was suddenly caught up by the Archbishop of York, and transported to my living in Yorkshire, where there had not been a resident clergyman for a hundred and fifty years. Fresh from London, and not knowing a turnip from a carrot, I was compelled to farm three hundred acres, and without capital to build a Parsonage House."

He was his own architect, his own builder, and his own clerk of the works.

The cost of building a house, with borrowed money, made him a very poor man for several years.

"I turned schoolmaster, to educate my son, as I could not afford to send him to school. Mrs. Sydney turned schoolmistress, to educate my girls, as I could not afford a governess. I turned farmer, as I could not let my land.... Added to all these domestic cares, I was village parson, village doctor, village comforter, village magistrate, and Edinburgh Reviewer; so you see I had not much time on my hands to regret London."

Every one has heard of "Bunch," the "little garden-girl, shaped like a milestone," who "became the best butler in the county"; of the gaunt riding-horse "Calamity," which "flung me over his head into a neighbouring parish, as if I had been a shuttlec.o.c.k, and I felt grateful that it was not into a neighbouring planet"; and of the ancient carriage called "the Immortal," which was so well known on the road that "the village-boys cheered it and the village-dogs barked at it"--and surely remembrance should be made, amid this goodly caravan, of the four draught-oxen, Tug and Lug, Haul and Crawl, even though "Tug and Lug took to fainting, and required buckets of salvolatile, and Haul and Crawl to lie down in the mud."

When Sydney Smith says that he was "village doctor," he reminds us of his lifelong fancy for dabbling in medicine. When his daughter, not six months old, was attacked by croup, he gave her in twenty-four hours "32 grains of calomel, besides bleeding, blistering, and emetics." When he was called to baptize a sick baby, he seized the opportunity of giving it a dose of castor oil. One day he writes--

"I am performing miracles in my parish with garlic for whooping-cough."

Another:--

"We conquered the whooping-cough here with a pennyworth of salt of tartar, after having filled them with the expensive poisons of Halford.[63] What an odd thing that such a specific should not be more known!"

"I attended two of my children through a good stout fever of the typhus kind without ever calling in an apothecary, but for one day. I depended upon blessed antimony, and watched anxiously for the time of giving bark."

"Douglas[64] alarmed us the other night with the Croup. I darted into him all the mineral and vegetable resources of my shop, cravatted his throat with blisters and fringed it with leeches, and set him in five or six hours to playing marbles, breathing gently and inaudibly."

After an unhealthy winter he writes:--

"Our evils have been want of water, and scarlet-fever in our village; where, in three quarters of a year, we have buried fifteen, instead of one per annum. You will naturally suppose I have killed all these people by doctoring them; but scarlet-fever awes me, and is above my aim. I leave it to the professional and graduated homicides."[65]

In this connexion it is natural to cite the lines on "The Poetical Medicine Chest,"[66] which Mr. Stuart Reid has printed. They contain some excellent advice about the drugs which a mother should provide for the use of a young family, and end, majestically, thus:--

"Spare not in Eastern blasts, when babies die, The wholesome rigour of the Spanish Fly.

From timely torture seek thy infant's rest, And spread the poison on his labouring breast.

And so, fair lady, when in evil hour Less prudent mothers mourn some faded flower, Six Howards valiant, and six Howards fair Shall live, and love thee, and reward thy care."

But parochial and domestic concerns could not altogether divert Sydney Smith's mind from the strife of politics. He watched the turmoil from afar.

On the 1st of January 1813, he wrote to his friend John Allen, who was more sanguine than himself about the prospects of the Whigs:--

"Everything is fast setting in for arbitrary power. The Court will grow bolder and bolder, a struggle will commence, and, if it ends as I wish, there will be Whigs again.... But when these things come to pa.s.s, you will no longer be a Warden,[67] but a brown and impalpable powder in the tombs of Dulwich. In the meantime, enough of liberty will remain to make our old-age tolerably comfortable; and to your last gasp you will remain in the perennial and pleasing delusion that the Whigs are coming in, and will expire mistaking the officiating clergyman for a King's Messenger."

While the new Rectory House at Foston was building, the Rector was wholly engrossed in the work. "I live," he wrote, "trowel in hand. My whole soul is filled up by lath and plaster." He laid the foundation-stone in June 1813, and took possession of the completed edifice in March 1814. "My house was considered the ugliest in the county, but all admitted that it was one of the most comfortable."[68] It remains to the present day pretty much as Sydney Smith left it. A room on the ground-floor, next to the drawing-room, served the threefold purposes of study, dispensary, and justice-room. As a rule, he wrote his sermons and his articles for the _Edinburgh_ in the drawing-room, not heeding the conversation of family and visitors; but in the "study" he dosed his parishioners; and here, having been made a Justice of the Peace, he administered mercy to poachers. He hated the Game-Laws as they stood, and it stirred his honest wrath to reflect that "for every ten pheasants which fluttered in the wood, one English peasant was rotting in gaol." So strong was his belief in the contaminating effects of a prisoner's life that he never, if he could help it, would commit a boy or girl to gaol. He sought permission to accompany Mrs. Fry on one of her visits to Newgate, and spoke of her ministry there as "the most solemn, the most Christian, the most affecting, which any human eye ever witnessed."[69] A pleasing trait of his inc.u.mbency at Foston was the creation of allotment-gardens for the poor. He divided several acres of the glebe into sixteenths, and let them, at a low rent, to the villagers. Each allotment was just big enough to supply a cottage with potatoes, and to support a pig. Cheap food for the poor was another of his excellent hobbies. His Common-Place Book contains receipts for nourishing soups made of rice and peas and flavoured with ox-cheek. He notes that more than thirty people were comfortably fed with these concoctions at a penny a head. After a bad harvest he and his family lived, like the labourers round them, on unleavened cakes made from the damaged flour of the sprouted wheat. His daughter writes--"The luxury of returning to bread again can hardly be imagined by those who have never been deprived of it."

But, in spite of occasional difficulties of this description, which were always faced and overcome with invincible good-humour, Sydney Smith's fifteen years at Foston were happily and profitably spent. He was in the fulness of his physical and intellectual vigour. He said of himself, "I am a rough writer of Sermons," but his energy in delivering them awoke the admiration of his st.u.r.dy flock.--

"When I began to thump the cushion of my pulpit, on first coming to Foston, as is my wont when I preach, the acc.u.mulated dust of a hundred and fifty years made such a cloud, that for some minutes I lost sight of my congregation."[70]

His Bible-cla.s.s for boys was affectionately remembered sixty years afterwards.[71] By his constant contributions to the _Edinburgh_, he was both helping forward the great causes in which he most earnestly believed, and establishing his own fame. Good health, cheerfulness, and contentment reigned in the Rectory, which might well have been called "A Temple of Industrious Peace."[72]

In spite of some small irregularities and oddities in the furniture of the house and the arrangements of the establishment--all of which the Rector habitually and humorously exaggerated--the Rectory was an extremely comfortable home. It was so constructed as to be full of air, light, and warmth. The Rector said of it:--

"We are about equal to a second-rate inn, as Mrs. Sydney says; but I think myself we are equal to any inn on the North Road, except Ferrybridge."

The larder of this "second-rate inn" was pleasantly supplied by the kindness of faithful friends.

"I am very much obliged to you for sending me the pheasants. One of my numerous infirmities is a love of eating pheasants."--"Many thanks for two fine Gallicia hams; but, as for boiling them in _wine_, I am not as yet high enough in the Church for that; so they must do the best they can in water."--"Lord Tankerville has sent me a whole buck; this necessarily takes up a good deal of my time. Venison is an interesting subject, which is deemed among the clergy a professional one."--"Your grouse are not come by this day's mail, but I suppose they will come to-morrow. Even the rumour of grouse is agreeable."--"Lord Lauderdale has sent me two hundred and thirty pounds of salt fish."--"You have no idea what a number of handsome things were said of you when your six partridges were consumed to-day.

Wit, literature, and polished manners were ascribed to you--some good quality for each bird."--"What is real piety? What is true attachment to the Church? How are these fine feelings best evinced? The answer is plain--by sending strawberries to a clergyman. Many thanks."

To the hostelry, thus well victualled, and called by its owner "The Rector's Head," many interesting visitors found their way. Lord and Lady Holland, Miss Fox, Miss Vernon, Sir James Mackintosh, Sir Humphry Davy, Samuel Rogers, Dr. and Mrs. Marcet, and Francis Jeffrey were among the earliest guests. "Mrs. Sydney was dreadfully alarmed about her side-dishes the first time Luttrell[73] paid us a visit, and grew pale as the covers were lifted; but they stood the test. Luttrell tasted and praised."

The neighbours of whom the Smiths saw most were Lord and Lady Carlisle,[74]

who drove over from Castle Howard[75] in a coach-and-four with outriders, and were upset in a ploughed field; their son and daughter-in-law, Lord and Lady Georgiana Morpeth, who with their children made "no mean part of the population of Yorkshire"; and the Archbishop of York, who became one of the Smiths' kindest and most faithful friends. Every year Sydney paid a visit to London, receiving the warmest of welcomes from all his old a.s.sociates.

In 1821 he revisited his friends at Edinburgh, and going or coming he visited Lord Grey at Howick, Lord Tankerville at Chillingham, Lord Lauderdale at Dunbar, and Mr. Lambton, afterwards Lord Durham, at Lambton.

At Chillingham he duly admired the beef supplied by the famous herd of wild cattle, but he admired still more the magnificent novelty of gas at Lambton.--

"What use of wealth so luxurious and delightful as to light your house with gas? What folly to have a diamond necklace or a Correggio, and not to light your house with gas! The splendour and glory of Lambton Hall make all other houses mean. How pitiful to submit to a farthing-candle existence, when science puts such intense gratification within your reach! Dear lady, spend all your fortune in a gas-apparatus. Better to eat dry bread by the splendour of gas, than to dine on wild beef with wax candles!"

Another friend whom the Smiths visited regularly was Mr., afterwards Sir George, Philips, an opulent cotton-spinner of Manchester. Once, when staying with Philips, Sydney undertook to preach a Charity Sermon in Prestwich Church, and with reference to this he wrote in the previous week; "I desire to make three or four hundred weavers cry, which it is impossible to do since the late rise in cottons."

Writing from Philips's house in 1820 he says:--

"Philips doubles his capital twice a week. We talk much of cotton, more of the fine arts, as he has lately returned from Italy, and purchased some pictures which were sent out from Piccadilly on purpose to intercept him."

His daughter tells us that, during these years of small income and large expenses, her father never bought any books. He had brought a small but serviceable library with him from London, and his friends made additions to it from time to time. He wrote to a friend in 1810:--

"I have read, since I saw you, Burke's works, some books of Homer, Suetonius, a great deal of agricultural reading, G.o.dwin's _Enquirer_, and a great deal of Adam Smith. As I have scarcely looked at a book for five years, I am rather hungry."

Here are some of the plans which, year by year, he laid down for the regulation of his studies:--

"Translate every day ten lines of the _De Officiis_, and re-translate into Latin. Five chapters of Greek Testament. Theological studies. Plato's _Apology for Socrates_; Horace's _Epodes, Epistles, Satires_, and _Ars Poetica_."

"Write sermons and reviews, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Read, Tuesday, Thursday, Sat.u.r.day. Write ten lines of Latin on writing days.

Read five chapters of Greek Testament on reading days. For morning reading, either Polybius, or Diodorus Siculus, or some tracts of Xenophon or Plato; and for Latin, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius.

"Monday: write, morning; read Ta.s.so, evening. Tuesday: Latin or Greek, morning; evening, theology. Wednesday, same as Monday. Friday, ditto.

Thursday and Sat.u.r.day, same as Tuesday. Read every day a chapter in Greek Testament, and translate ten lines of Latin. Good books to read:--Terra.s.son's _History of Roman Jurisprudence_; Bishop of Chester's _Records of the Creation_."

His daughter says that he read with great rapidity. "He galloped through the pages so rapidly that we often laughed at him when he shut up a thick quarto as his morning's work. 'Cross-examine me, then,' he said; and we generally found that he knew all that was worth knowing in it." Here, obviously, is the stuff out of which reviewers are made, and this was the very zenith of Sydney Smith's power and usefulness in the _Edinburgh Review_.

He wrote as quickly as he read. When once he had ama.s.sed the necessary facts, he sate down amid all the distracting sights and sounds of a drawing-room crowded with femininity, and wrote at full speed, without deliberations, embellishments, or erasures; only betraying by the movements of his expressive face his amus.e.m.e.nt and interest "as fresh images came cl.u.s.tering round his pen." As soon as the essay was finished, he would throw it on the table, saying to his wife, "There, Kate, just look it over--dot the _i_'s and cross the _t_'s;" and went out for his walk. It should be added that his writing was singularly difficult to read, that he was very infirm about spelling proper names, and that he was exceptionally careless in correcting his proofs.

Of those essays which he subsequently reprinted, as judging them most worthy of preservation, I see that by 1821 he had written fifty. Among these were such masterpieces of humour and argument as "Edgeworth on Bulls," "Methodism," "Indian Missions," "Hannah More," "Public Schools,"

"America," "Game-Laws" and "Botany Bay." On the 19th of May 1820, he wrote, "I found in London both my articles very popular--upon the Poor-Laws and America. The pa.s.sage on Taxation had great success."[76] Some of these papers will be considered separately, when we come to discuss his style and his opinions; but s.p.a.ce must here be found for an unrivalled specimen of his controversial method, which belongs to the year 1822. It is called "Persecuting Bishops." "Is _Bishops_ in that t.i.tle a nominative or an accusative?" grimly inquired a living prelate, when the present writer was extolling the essay so named. It is a nominative; and perhaps the exacter t.i.tle would have been "A Persecuting Bishop."

Herbert Marsh[77] was Second Wrangler in 1779, Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, Margaret Professor of Divinity, Bishop of Llandaff from 1816 to 1819, and of Peterborough from 1819 till his death. He was a "High Churchman of the old school"--perhaps the most unpleasant type of theologian in Christendom. We know, from the Life of Father "Ignatius"

Spencer,[78] that Bishop Marsh played whist with his candidates for Orders on the eve of the ordination, and all that we read about him beautifully ill.u.s.trates that tone of "quiet worldliness" which Dean Church described as the characteristic of the English clergy in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. But what he lacked in personal devotion he made up (as some have done since his day) by furious hostility to spiritual and religious enthusiasm in others. He opposed the civil claims alike of Roman Catholics and of Dissenters. He attacked the Bible Society. He denounced Charles Simeon. He insulted Isaac Milner; and he determined to purge his diocese of Evangelicalism (which, oddly enough, he seems to have identified with Calvinism). His manly resolve to stifle religious earnestness culminated in the year 1820, when he drew up a set of eighty-seven questions, which he proposed to every candidate for Orders, and to every clergyman who sought his license to officiate. Failure to answer these questions to the Bishop's satisfaction was to be punished by exclusion from the diocese of Peterborough. Happily, the Evangelical clergy of that period was very little disposed to sit down under Episcopal tyranny. The Bishop's set of questions was met by a hailstorm of pamphlets. Pet.i.tions for redress were poured into the House of Lords. The Bishop was forced into the open, and constrained to make the best defence he could in a published speech. In November 1822, Sydney Smith, in the _Edinburgh Review_, came to the a.s.sistance of his brother-clergy against the high-handed tyranny of the Persecuting Bishop.