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Collections and Recollections, by G.W.E. Russell
Collections and Recollections, by G.W.E. Russell
THE MOST GENIAL OF COMPANIONS JAMES PAYN AT WHOSE SUGGESTION THESE PAPERS WERE WRITTEN AND TO WHOM THEY WERE INSCRIBED DIED MARCH 25, 1898 Is he gone to a land of no laughter— This man that made mirth for us all? Proves Death but a silence hereafter, Where the echoes of earth cannot fall? Once closed, have the lips no more duty? No more pleasure the exquisite ears? Has the heart done o'erflowing with beauty, As the eyes have with tears? Nay, if aught be sure, what can be surer Than tha
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PREFACE.
PREFACE.
It has been suggested by Mr. Reginald Smith, to whose friendliness and skill the fortunes of this book have been so greatly indebted, that a rather fuller preface might be suitably prefixed to this Edition. When the book first appeared, it was stated on the title-page to be written "by One who has kept a Diary." My claim to that modest title will scarcely be challenged by even the most carping critic who is conversant with the facts. On August 13, 1865, being then twelve years old, I began my Di
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I. LINKS WITH THE PAST.
I. LINKS WITH THE PAST.
Of the celebrated Mrs. Disraeli her husband is reported to have said, "She is an excellent creature, but she never can remember which came first, the Greeks or the Romans." In my walk through life I have constantly found myself among excellent creatures of this sort. The world is full of vague people, and in the average man, and still more in the average woman, the chronological sense seems to be entirely wanting. Thus, when I have occasionally stated in a mixed company that my first distinct re
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II. LORD RUSSELL
II. LORD RUSSELL
These chapters are founded on Links with the Past. Let me now describe in rather fuller detail three or four remarkable people with whom I had more than a cursory acquaintance, and who allowed me for many years the privilege of drawing without restriction on the rich stores of their political and social recollections. First among these in point of date, if of nothing else, I must place John Earl Russell, the only person I have ever known who knew Napoleon the Great. Lord Russell—or, to give him
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III. LORD SHAFTESBURY.
III. LORD SHAFTESBURY.
If the Christian Socialists ever frame a Kalendar of Worthies (after the manner of Auguste Comte), it is to be hoped that they will mark among the most sacred of their anniversaries the day—April 28, 1801—which gave birth to Anthony Ashley, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury. His life of eighty-four years was consecrated, from boyhood till death, to the social service of humanity; and, for my own part, I must always regard the privilege of his friendship as among the highest honours of my life. Let me
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IV. CARDINAL MANNING.
IV. CARDINAL MANNING.
I have described a great philanthropist and a great statesman. My present subject is a man who combined in singular harmony the qualities of philanthropy and of statesmanship—Henry Edward, Cardinal Manning, and titular Archbishop of Westminster. My acquaintance with Cardinal Manning began in 1833. Early in the Parliamentary session of that year he intimated, through a common friend, a desire to make my acquaintance. He wished to get an independent Member of Parliament, and especially, if possibl
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V. LORD HOUGHTON.
V. LORD HOUGHTON.
It is narrated of an ancient Fellow of All Souls' that, lamenting the changes which had transformed his College from the nest of aristocratic idlers into a society of accomplished scholars, he exclaimed: "Hang it all, sir, we were sui generis ." What the unreformed Fellows of All Souls' were among the common run of Oxford dons, that, it may truly (and with better syntax) be said, the late Lord Houghton was among his fellow-citizens. Of all the men I have ever known he was, I think, the most comp
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VI. RELIGION AND MORALITY.
VI. RELIGION AND MORALITY.
In these chapters I have been trying to recall some notable people through whom I have been brought into contact with the social life of the past. I now propose to give the impressions which they conveyed to me of the moral, material, and political condition of England just at the moment when the old order was yielding place to new, and modern Society was emerging from the birth-throes of the French Revolution. All testimony seems to me to point to the fact that towards the close of the eighteen
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VII. SOCIAL EQUALIZATION.
VII. SOCIAL EQUALIZATION.
It was a characteristic saying of Talleyrand that no one could conceive how pleasant life was capable of being who had not belonged to the French aristocracy before the Revolution. There were, no doubt, in the case of that great man's congeners some legal and constitutional prerogatives which rendered their condition supremely enviable; but so far as splendour, stateliness, and exclusive privilege are elements of a pleasant life, he might have extended his remark to England. Similar conditions o
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VIII. SOCIAL AMELIORATION.
VIII. SOCIAL AMELIORATION.
At this point it is necessary to look back a little, and to clear our minds of the delusion that an age of splendour is necessarily an age of refinement. We have seen something of the regal state and prodigal luxury which surrounded the English aristocracy in the middle of the eighteenth century. Yet at no period of our national history—unless, perhaps, during the orgies of the Restoration were aristocratic morals at so low an ebb. Edmund Burke, in a passage which is as ethically questionable as
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IX. THE EVANGELICAL INFLUENCE.
IX. THE EVANGELICAL INFLUENCE.
Mr. Lecky justly remarks that "it is difficult to measure the change which must have passed over the public mind since the days when the lunatics in Bedlam were constantly spoken of as one of the sights of London; when the maintenance of the African slave-trade was a foremost object of English commercial policy; when men and even women were publicly whipped through the streets when skulls lined the top of Temple Bar and rotting corpses hung on gibbets along the Edgware Road; when persons exposed
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X. POLITICS.
X. POLITICS.
I now approach the political condition at the turn of the century, and that was to a great extent the product of the French Revolution. Some historians, indeed, when dealing with that inexhaustible theme, have wrought cause and effect into a circular chain, and have reckoned among the circumstances which prepared the way for the French Revolution the fact that Voltaire in his youth spent three years in England, and mastered the philosophy of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, the Deism of the English Fre
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XI. PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY.
XI. PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY.
Closely connected with the subject of Politics, of which we were speaking in the last chapter, is that of Parliamentary Oratory, and for a right estimate of oratory personal impressions (such as those on which I have relied) are peculiarly valuable. They serve both to correct and to confirm. It is impossible to form from the perusal of a printed speech anything but the vaguest and often the most erroneous notion of the effect which it produced upon its hearers. But from the testimony of contempo
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XII. PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY—continued.
XII. PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY—continued.
I concluded my last chapter with a quotation from Lord Beaconsfield, describing parliamentary speaking as it was when he entered the House of Commons in 1837. Of that particular form of speaking perhaps the greatest master was Sir Robert Peel. He was deficient in those gifts of imagination and romance which are essential to the highest oratory. He utterly lacked—possibly he would have despised—that almost prophetic rapture which we recognize in Burke and Chatham and Erskine. His manner was frigi
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XIII. CONVERSATION.
XIII. CONVERSATION.
We have agreed that Parliamentary Oratory, as our fathers understood that phrase, is a lost art. Must Conversation be included in the same category? To answer with positiveness is difficult; but this much may be readily conceded—that a belief in the decadence of conversation is natural to those who have specially cultivated Links with the Past; who grew up in the traditions of Luttrell and Mackintosh, and Lord Alvanley and Samuel Rogers; who have felt Sydney Smith's irresistible fun, and known t
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XIV. CONVERSATION—continued.
XIV. CONVERSATION—continued.
Brave men have lived since as well as before Agamemnon, and those who know the present society of London may not unreasonably ask whether, even granting the heavy losses which I enumerated in my last chapter, the Art of Conversation is really extinct. Are the talkers of to-day in truth so immeasurably inferior to the great men who preceded them? Before we can answer these questions, even tentatively, we must try to define our idea of good conversation, and this can best be done by rigidly ruling
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XV. CONVERSATION—continued.
XV. CONVERSATION—continued.
More than thirty years have passed since the festive evening described by Sir George Trevelyan in The Ladies in Parliament :— "When, over the port of the innermost bin, The circle of diners was laughing with Phinn; When Brookfield had hit on his happiest vein. And Harcourt was capping the jokes of Delane." The sole survivor of that brilliant group now [19] leads the Opposition; but at the time when the lines were written he had not yet entered the House of Commons. As a youth of twenty-five he h
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XVI. CONVERSATION—continued.
XVI. CONVERSATION—continued.
The writer of these chapters has always felt some inward affinity to the character of Lord St. Jerome in Lothair , of whom it is recorded that he loved conversation, though he never conversed. "There must be an audience," he would say, "and I am the audience." In my capacity of audience I assign a high place to the agreeableness of Lord Rosebery's conversation. To begin with, he has a delightful voice. It is low, but perfectly distinct, rich and sympathetic in quality, and singularly refined in
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XVII. CLERGYMEN.
XVII. CLERGYMEN.
Clerus Anglicanus stupor mundi . I believe that this complimentary proverb originally referred to the learning of the English clergy, but it would apply with equal truth to their social agreeableness. When I was writing about the Art of Conversation and the men who excelled in it, I was surprised to find how many of the best sayings that recurred spontaneously to my memory had a clerical origin; and it struck me that a not uninteresting chapter might be written about the social agreeableness of
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XVIII. CLERGYMEN—continued.
XVIII. CLERGYMEN—continued.
OF the "Merriment of Parsons" one of the most conspicuous instances was to be found in the Rev. W.H. Brookfield, the "little Frank Whitestock" of Thackeray's Curate's Walk , and the subject of Lord Tennyson's characteristic elegy:— "Brooks, for they called you so that knew you best— Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth my rhymes, How oft we two have heard St. Mary's chimes! How oft the Cantab supper host, and guest, Would echo helpless laughter to your jest! You man of humorous-melancholy mark
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XIX. REPARTEE.
XIX. REPARTEE.
Lord Beaconsfield, describing Monsignore Berwick in Lothair , says that he "could always, when necessary, sparkle with anecdote or blaze with repartee." The former performance is considerably easier than the latter. Indeed, when a man has a varied experience, a retentive memory, and a sufficient copiousness of speech, the facility of story-telling may attain the character of a disease. The "sparkle" evaporates while the "anecdote" is left. But, though what Mr. Pinto called "Anecdotage" is deplor
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XX. TITLES.
XX. TITLES.
The List of Honours, usually published on Her Majesty's Birthday, is this year [23] reserved till the Jubilee Day, and to sanguine aspirants I would say, in Mrs. Gamp's immortal words, "Seek not to proticipate." Such a list always contains food for the reflective mind, and some of the thoughts which it suggests may even lie too deep for tears. Why is my namesake picked out for knighthood, while I remain hidden in my native obscurity? Why is my rival made a C.B., while I "go forth Companionless"
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XXI. THE QUEEN'S ACCESSION.
XXI. THE QUEEN'S ACCESSION.
The writer of these chapters would not willingly fall behind his countrymen in the loyal sentiments and picturesque memories proper to the "high mid-summer pomps" which begin to-morrow. [25] But there is an almost insuperable difficulty in finding anything to write which shall be at once new and true; and this chapter must therefore consist mainly of extracts. As the sun of August brings out wasps, so the genial influence of the Jubilee has produced an incredible abundance of fibs, myths, and fa
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XXII. "PRINCEDOMS, VIRTUES, POWERS."
XXII. "PRINCEDOMS, VIRTUES, POWERS."
The celebrations of the past week [26] have set us all upon a royal tack. Diary-keepers have turned back to their earliest volumes for stories of the girl-queen; there has been an unprecedented run on the Annual Register for 1837; and every rusty print of Princess Victoria in the costume of Kate Nickleby has been paraded as a pearl of price. As I always pride myself on following what Mr. Matthew Arnold used to call "the great mundane movement," I have been careful to obey the impulse of the hour
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XXIII. LORD BEACONSFIELD.
XXIII. LORD BEACONSFIELD.
Archbishop Tait wrote on the 11th of February 1877: "Attended this week the opening of Parliament, the Queen being present, and wearing for the first time, some one says, her crown as Empress of India. Lord Beaconsfield was on her left side, holding aloft the Sword of State. At five the House again was crammed to see him take his seat; and Slingsby Bethell, equal to the occasion, read aloud the writ in very distinct tones. All seemed to be founded on the model, 'What shall be done to the man who
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XXIV. FLATTERERS AND BORES.
XXIV. FLATTERERS AND BORES.
Can a flatterer be flattered? Does he instinctively recognize the commodity in which he deals? And if he does so recognize it, does he enjoy or dislike the application of it to his own case? These questions are suggested to my mind by the ungrudging tributes paid in my last chapter to Lord Beaconsfield's pre-eminence in the art of flattery. "Supreme of heroes, bravest, noblest, best!" No one else ever flattered so long and so much, so boldly and so persistently, so skilfully and with such succes
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XXV. ADVERTISEMENTS.
XXV. ADVERTISEMENTS.
Lately, when hunting for some notes which I had mislaid, I came upon a collection of Advertisements. No branch of literature is more suggestive of philosophical reflections. I take my specimens quite at random, just as they turn up in my diary, and the first which meets my eye is printed on the sad sea-green of the Westminster Gazette: — I have always longed to know the fate of this lucky youth. Few of us can boast of even "a moderate fortune," and fewer still of such an additional combination o
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XXVI. PARODIES IN PROSE.
XXVI. PARODIES IN PROSE.
"Parody," wrote Mr. Matthew Arnold in 1882, "is a vile art, but I must say I read Poor Matthias in the World with an amused pleasure." It was a generous appreciation, for the original Poor Matthias —an elegy on a canary— is an exquisite poem, and the World's parody of it is a rather dull imitation. On the whole, I agree with Mr. Arnold that parody is a vile art; but the dictum is a little too sweeping. A parody of anything really good, whether in prose or verse, is as odious as a burlesque of Ha
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XXVII. PARODIES IN VERSE.
XXVII. PARODIES IN VERSE.
Here I embark on the shoreless sea of metrical parody, and I begin my cruise by reaffirming that in this department Rejected Addresses , though distinctly good for their time, have been left far behind by modern achievements. The sense of style seems to have grown acuter, and the art of reproducing it has been brought to absolute perfection. The theory of development is instructively illustrated in the history of metrical parody. Of the same date as Rejected Addresses , and of about equal merit,
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XXVIII. PARODIES IN VERSE—continued.
XXVIII. PARODIES IN VERSE—continued.
When I embarked upon the subject of metrical parody I said that it was a shoreless sea. For my own part, I enjoy sailing over these rippling waters, and cannot be induced to hurry. Let us put in for a moment at Belfast. There in 1874 the British Association held its annual meeting; and Professor Tyndall delivered an inaugural address in which he revived and glorified the Atomic Theory of the Universe. His glowing peroration ran as follows: "Here I must quit a theme too great for me to handle, bu
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XXIX. VERBAL INFELICITIES.
XXIX. VERBAL INFELICITIES.
" Se non è vero ," said a very great Lord Mayor, " è ben traviata ." His lordship's linguistic slip served him right. Latin is fair play, though some of us are in the condition of the auctioneer in The Mill on the Floss , who had brought away with him from the Great Mudport Free School "a sense of understanding Latin generally, though his comprehension of any particular Latin was not ready." But to quote from any other language is to commit an outrage on your guests. The late Sir Robert Fowler w
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XXX. THE ART OF PUTTING THINGS.
XXX. THE ART OF PUTTING THINGS.
It was "A.K.H.B.," if I recollect aright, who wrote a popular essay on "The Art of Putting Things." As I know nothing of the essay beyond its title, and am not quite certain about that, I shall not be guilty of intentional plagiarism if I attempt to discuss the same subject. It is not identical with the theme which I have just handled, for "Things one would rather have expressed differently" are essentially things which one might have expressed better. If one is not conscious of this at the mome
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XXXI. CHILDREN.
XXXI. CHILDREN.
The humours of childhood include in rich abundance both Things which would have been better left unsaid, and Things which might have been expressed differently. But just now they lack their sacred bard. There is no one to observe and chronicle them. It is a pity, for the "heart that watches and receives" will often find in the pleasantries of childhood a good deal that deserves perpetuation. The children of fiction are a mixed company, some lifelike and some eminently the reverse. In Joan Miss R
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XXXII. LETTER-WRITING.
XXXII. LETTER-WRITING.
"Odd men write odd letters." This rather platitudinous sentence, from an otherwise excellent essay of the late Bishop Thorold's, is abundantly illustrated alike by my Collections and by my Recollections. I plunge at random into my subject, and immediately encounter the following letter from a Protestant clergyman in the north of Ireland, written in response to a suggestion that he might with advantage study Mr. Gladstone's magnificent speech on the Second Reading of the Affirmation Bill in 1883:
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XXXIII. OFFICIALDOM.
XXXIII. OFFICIALDOM.
The announcements relating to the first Cabinet of the winter set me thinking whether my readers might be interested in seeing what I have "collected" as to the daily life and labours of her Majesty's Ministers. I decided that I would try the experiment, and, acting on the principle which I have professed before—that when once one has deliberately chosen certain words to express one's meaning one cannot, as a rule, alter them with advantage—I shall borrow from some former writings of my own. The
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XXXIV. AN OLD PHOTOGRAPH-BOOK.
XXXIV. AN OLD PHOTOGRAPH-BOOK.
The diary from which these Recollections have been mainly gathered dates from my thirteenth year, and it has lately received some unexpected illustrations. In turning out the contents of a neglected cupboard, I stumbled on a photograph-book which I filled while I was a boy at a Public School. The school has lately been described under the name of Lyonness, [38] and that name will serve as well as another. The book had been mislaid years ago, and when it accidentally came to light a strange aroma
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JEAN LA FRETTE.
JEAN LA FRETTE.
De ce côté de la Manche nous avons une spécialité de souvenirs militaires, et le public paraît prendre goût à ce genre de lectures. De l'autre côté, les souvenirs sont plutôt d'ordre politique ou littéraire. Ils n'en sont pas moins intéressants. Après tout, les récits de massacres et de saccages se ressemblent beaucoup, qu'ils soient d'Hérodote ou de Canrobert: et même il ne semble pas que le genre soit en progrès, si l'on compare les termes extrêmes de la série. Car Hérodote vit autre chose que
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