Tracks of a Rolling Stone Part 24

CHAPTER XL

THE lectures at the Royal Inst.i.tution were of some help to me. I attended courses by Owen, Tyndall, Huxley, and Bain. Of these, Huxley was _facile princeps_, though both Owen and Tyndall were second to no other. Bain was disappointing. I was a careful student of his books, and always admired the logical lucidity of his writing. But to the mixed audience he had to lecture to-fashionable young ladies in their teens, and drowsy matrons in charge of them, he discreetly kept clear of transcendentals. In ill.u.s.tration perhaps of some theory of the relation of the senses to the intellect, he would tell an amusing anecdote of a dog that had had an injured leg dressed at a certain house, after which the recovered dog brought a canine friend to the same house to have his leg-or tail-repaired. Out would come all the tablets and pretty pencil cases, and every young lady would be busy for the rest of the lecture in recording the marvellous history. If the dog's name had been 'Spot' or 'Bob,' the important psychological fact would have been faithfully registered. As to the theme of the discourse, that had nothing to do with-millinery. And Mr. Bain doubtless did not overlook the fact.

Owen was an accomplished lecturer; but one's attention to him depended on two things-a primary interest in the subject, and some elementary acquaintance with it. If, for example, his subject were the comparative anatomy of the cycloid and ganoid fishes, the difference in their scales was scarcely of vital importance to one's general culture. But if he were lecturing on fish, he would stick to fish; it would be essentially a _jour maigre_.

With Huxley, the suggestion was worth more than the thing said. One thought of it afterwards, and wondered whether his words implied all they seemed to imply. One knew that the scientist was also a philosopher; and one longed to get at him, at the man himself, and listen to the lessons which his work had taught him. At one of these lectures I had the honour of being introduced to him by a great friend of mine, John Marshall, then President of the College of Surgeons. In later years I used to meet him constantly at the Athenaeum.

Looking back to the days of one's plasticity, two men are pre-eminent among my Dii Majores. To John Stuart Mill and to Thomas Huxley I owe more, educationally, than to any other teachers. Mill's logic was simply a revelation to me. For what Kant calls 'discipline,' I still know no book, unless it be the 'Critique' itself, equal to it. But perhaps it is the men themselves, their earnestness, their splendid courage, their n.o.ble simplicity, that most inspired one with reverence. It was Huxley's aim to enlighten the many, and he enlightened them. It was Mill's lot to help thinkers, and he helped them. _Sapere aude_ was the motto of both.

How few there are who dare to adopt it! To love truth is valiantly professed by all; but to pursue it at all costs, to 'dare to be wise'

needs daring of the highest order.

Mill had the enormous advantage, to start with, of an education unbia.s.sed by any theological creed; and he brought exceptional powers of abstract reasoning to bear upon matters of permanent and supreme importance to all men. Yet, in spite of his ruthless impartiality, I should not hesitate to call him a religious man. This very tendency which no imaginative mind, no man or woman with any strain of poetical feeling, can be without, invests Mill's character with a clash of humanity which ent.i.tles him to a place in our affections. It is in this respect that he so widely differs from Mr. Herbert Spencer. Courageous Mr. Spencer was, but his courage seems to have been due almost as much to absence of sympathy or kinship with his fellow-creatures, and to his contempt of their opinions, as from his dispa.s.sionate love of truth, or his sometimes pa.s.sionate defence of his own tenets.

My friend Napier told me an amusing little story about John Mill when he was in the East India Company's administration. Mr. Macvey Napier, my friend's elder brother, was the senior clerk. On John Mill's retirement, his co-officials subscribed to present him with a silver standish. Such was the general sense of Mill's modest estimate of his own deserts, and of his aversion to all acknowledgment of them, that Mr. Napier, though it fell to his lot, begged others to join in the ceremony of presentation.

All declined; the inkstand was left upon Mill's table when he himself was out of the room.

Years after the time of which I am writing, when Mill stood for Westminster, I had the good fortune to be on the platform at St. James's Hall, next but one to him, when he made his first speech to the electors.

He was completely unknown to the public, and, though I worshipped the man, I had never seen him, nor had an idea what he looked like. To satisfy my curiosity I tried to get a portrait of him at the photographic shop in Regent Street.

'I want a photograph of Mr. Mill.'

'Mill? Mill?' repeated the shopman, 'Oh yes, sir, I know-a great sporting gent,' and he produced the portrait of a sportsman in top boots and a hunting cap.

Very different from this was the figure I then saw. The hall and the platform were crowded. Where was the princ.i.p.al personage? Presently, quite alone, up the side steps, and un.o.bserved, came a thin but tallish man in black, with a tail coat, and, almost unrecognised, took the vacant front seat. He might have been, so far as dress went, a clerk in a counting-house, or an undertaker. But the face was no ordinary one. The wide brow, the sharp nose of the Burke type, the compressed lips and strong chin, were suggestive of intellect and of suppressed emotion.

There was no applause, for nothing was known to the crowd, even of his opinions, beyond the fact that he was the Liberal candidate for Westminster. He spoke with perfect ease to himself, never faltering for the right word, which seemed to be always at his command. If interrupted by questions, as he constantly was, his answers could not have been amended had he written them. His voice was not strong, and there were frequent calls from the far end to 'speak up, speak up; we can't hear you.' He did not raise his pitch a note. They might as well have tried to bully an automaton. He was doing his best, and he could do no more.

Then, when, instead of the usual adulations, instead of declamatory appeals to the pa.s.sions of a large and a mixed a.s.sembly, he gave them to understand, in very plain language, that even socialists are not infallible,-that extreme and violent opinions, begotten of ignorance, do not const.i.tute the highest political wisdom; then there were murmurs of dissent and disapproval. But if the ignorant and the violent could have stoned him, his calm manner would still have said, 'Strike, but hear me.'

Mr. Robert Grosvenor-the present Lord Ebury-then the other Liberal member for Westminster, wrote to ask me to take the chair at Mill's first introduction to the Pimlico electors. Such, however, was my admiration of Mill, I did not feel sure that I might not say too much in his favour; and mindful of the standish incident, I knew, that if I did so, it would embarra.s.s and annoy him.

Under these circ.u.mstances I declined the honour.

When Owen was delivering a course of lectures at Norwich, my brother invited him to Holkham. I was there, and we took several long walks together. Nothing seemed to escape his observation. My brother had just completed the recovery of many hundred acres of tidal marsh by embankments. Owen, who was greatly interested, explained what would be the effect upon the sandiest portion of this, in years to come; what the chemical action of the rain would be, how the sand would eventually become soil, how vegetation would cover it, and how manure render it cultivable. The splendid crops now grown there bear testimony to his foresight. He had always something instructive to impart, stopping to contemplate trifles which only a Zadig would have noticed.

'I observe,' said he one day, 'that your prevailing wind here is north-west.'

'How do you know?' I asked.

'Look at the roots of all these trees; the large roots are invariably on the north-west side. This means that the strain comes on this side. The roots which have to bear it loosen the soil, and the loosened soil favours the extension and the growth of the roots. Nature is beautifully scientific.'

Some years after this, I published a book called 'Creeds of the Day.' My purpose was to show, in a popular form, the bearings of science and speculative thought upon the religious creeds of the time. I sent Owen a copy of the work. He wrote me one of the most interesting letters I ever received. He had bought the book, and had read it. But the important content of the letter was the confession of his own faith. I have purposely excluded all correspondence from these Memoirs, but had it not been that a forgotten collector of autographs had captured it, I should have been tempted to make an exception in its favour. The tone was agnostic; but timidly agnostic. He had never freed himself from the shackles of early prepossessions. He had not the necessary daring to clear up his doubts. Sometimes I fancy that it was this difference in the two men that lay at the bottom of the unfortunate antagonism between Owen and Huxley. There is in Owen's writing, where he is not purely scientific, a touch of the apologist. He cannot quite make up his mind to follow evolution to its logical conclusions. Where he is forced to do so, it is to him like signing the death warrant of his dearest friend.

It must not be forgotten that Owen was born more than twenty years before Huxley; and great as was the offence of free-thinking in Huxley's youth, it was nothing short of anathema in Owen's. When I met him at Holkham, the 'Origin of Species' had not been published; and Napier and I did all we could to get Owen to express some opinion on Lamarck's theory, for he and I used to talk confidentially on this fearful heresy even then. But Owen was ever on his guard. He evaded our questions and changed the subject.

Whenever I pa.s.s near the South Kensington Museum I step aside to look at the n.o.ble statues of the two ill.u.s.trious men. A mere glance at them, and we appreciate at once their respective characters. In the one we see pa.s.sive wisdom, in the other militant force.

CHAPTER XLI

BEFORE I went to America, I made the acquaintance of Dr. George Bird; he continued to be one of my most intimate friends till his death, fifty years afterwards. When I first knew him, Bird was the medical adviser and friend of Leigh Hunt, whose family I used often to meet at his house.

He had been dependent entirely upon his own exertions; had married young; and had had a pretty hard fight at starting to provide for his children and for himself. His energy, his abilities, his exceeding amiability, and remarkable social qualities, gradually procured him a large practice and hosts of devoted friends. He began looking for the season for sprats-the cheapest of fish-to come in; by middle life he was habitually and sumptuously entertaining the celebrities of art and literature. With his accomplished sister, Miss Alice Bird, to keep house for him, there were no pleasanter dinner parties or receptions in London. His _clientele_ was mainly amongst the artistic world. He was a great friend of Miss Ellen Terry's, Mr. Marcus Stone and his sisters were frequenters of his house, so were Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Woolner the sculptor-of whom I was not particularly fond-Horace Wigan the actor, and his father, the Burtons, who were much attached to him-Burton dedicated one volume of his 'Arabian Nights' to him-Sir William Crookes, Mr. Justin Macarthy and his talented son, and many others.

The good doctor was a Radical and Home Ruler, and attended professionally the members of one or two labouring men's clubs for fees which, as far as I could learn, were rigorously nominal. His great delight was to get an order for the House of Commons, especially on nights when Mr. Gladstone spoke; and, being to the last day of his life as simple-minded as a child, had a profound belief in the statemanship and integrity of that renowned orator.

As far as personality goes, the Burtons were, perhaps, the most notable of the above-named. There was a mystery about Burton which was in itself a fascination. No one knew what he had done; or consequently what he might not do. He never boasted, never hinted that he had done, or could do, anything different from other men; and, in spite of the mystery, one felt that he was transparently honest and sincere. He was always the same, always true to himself; but then, that 'self' was a something _per se_, which could not be categorically cla.s.sed-precedent for guidance was lacking. There is little doubt Burton had gipsy blood in his veins; there was something Oriental in his temperament, and even in his skin.

One summer's day I found him reading the paper in the Athenaeum. He was dressed in a complete suit of white-white trousers, a white linen coat, and a very shabby old white hat. People would have stared at him anywhere.

'Hullo, Burton!' I exclaimed, touching his linen coat, 'Do you find it so hot-_deja_?'

Said he: 'I don't want to be mistaken for other people.'

'There's not much fear of that, even without your clothes,' I replied.

Such an impromptu answer as his would, from any other, have implied vanity. Yet no man could have been less vain, or more free from affectation. It probably concealed regret at finding himself conspicuous.

After dinner at the Birds' one evening we fell to talking of garrotters.

About this time the police reports were full of cases of garrotting. The victim was seized from behind, one man gagged or burked him, while another picked his pocket.

'What should you do, Burton?' the Doctor asked, 'if they tried to garrotte you?'

'I'm quite ready for 'em,' was the answer; and turning up his sleeve he partially pulled out a dagger, and shoved it back again.

We tried to make him tell us what became of the Arab boy who accompanied him to Mecca, and whose suspicions threatened Burton's betrayal, and, of consequence, his life. I don't think anyone was present except us two, both of whom he well knew to be quite shock-proof, but he held his tongue.

'You would have been perfectly justified in saving your own life at any cost. You would hardly have broken the sixth commandment by doing so in this case,' I suggested.

'No,' said he gravely, 'and as I had broken all the ten before, it wouldn't have so much mattered.'

The Doctor roared. It should, however, be stated that Burton took no less delight in his host's boyish simplicity, than the other in what he deemed his guest's superb candour.

'Come, tell us,' said Bird, 'how many men have you killed?'

'How many have you, Doctor?' was the answer.

Richard Burton was probably the most extraordinary linguist of his day.

Lady Burton mentions, I think, in his Life, the number of languages and dialects her husband knew. That Mahometans should seek instruction from him in the Koran, speaks of itself for his astonishing mastery of the greatest linguistic difficulties. With Indian languages and their variations, he was as completely at home as Miss Youghal's Sais; and, one may suppose, could have played the _role_ of a fakir as perfectly as he did that of a Mecca pilgrim. I asked him what his method was in learning a fresh language. He said he wrote down as many new words as he could learn and remember each day; and learnt the construction of the language colloquially, before he looked at a grammar.

Lady Burton was hardly less abnormal in her way than Sir Richard. She had shared his wanderings, and was intimate, as no one else was, with the eccentricities of his thoughts and deeds. Whatever these might happen to be, she worshipped her husband notwithstanding. For her he was the standard of excellence; all other men were departures from it. And the singularity is, her religious faith was never for an instant shaken-she remained as strict a Roman Catholic as when he married her from a convent. Her enthusiasm and cosmopolitanism, her _navete_ and the sweetness of her disposition made her the best of company. She had lived so much the life of a Bedouin, that her dress and her habits had an Eastern glow. When staying with the Birds, she was attended by an Arab girl, one of whose duties it was to prepare her mistress' chibouk, which was regularly brought in with the coffee. On one occasion, when several other ladies were dining there, some of them yielded to Lady Burton's persuasion to satisfy their curiosity. The Arab girl soon provided the means; and it was not long before there were four or five faces as white as Mrs. Alfred Wigan's, under similar circ.u.mstances, in the 'Nabob.'

Alfred Wigan's father was an unforgettable man. To describe him in a word, he was Falstag _redivivus_. In bulk and stature, in age, in wit and humour, and morality, he was Falstaff. He knew it and gloried in it.

He would complain with zest of 'larding the lean earth' as he walked along. He was as partial to whisky as his prototype to sack. He would exhaust a Johnsonian vocabulary in describing his ailments; and would appeal pathetically to Miss Bird, as though at his last gasp, for 'just a tea-spoonful' of the grateful stimulant. She served him with a liberal hand, till he cried 'Stop!' But if she then stayed, he would softly insinuate 'I didn't mean it, my dear.' Yet he was no Costigan. His brain was stronger than casks of whisky. And his powers of digestion were in keeping. Indeed, to borrow the well-known words applied to a great man whom we all love, 'He tore his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling in his forehead, and the perspiration running down his cheeks.' The trend of his thoughts, though he was eminently a man of intellect, followed the dictates of his senses. Walk with him in the fields and, from the full stores of a prodigious memory, he would pour forth pages of the choicest poetry. But if you paused to watch the lambs play, or disturbed a young calf in your path, he would almost involuntarily exclaim: 'How deliciously you smell of mint, my pet!' or 'Bless your innocent face! What sweetbreads you will provide!'

James Wigan had kept a school once. The late Serjeant Ballantine, who was one of his pupils, mentions him in his autobiography. He was a good scholar, and when I first knew him, used to teach elocution. Many actors went to him, and not a few members of both Houses of Parliament. He could recite nearly the whole of several of Shakespeare's plays; and, with a dramatic art I have never known equalled by any public reader.