Historical Essays Part 9

SIR SPENCER WALPOLE

Sir Spencer Walpole was an excellent historian and industrious writer.

His first important work, ent.i.tled "The History of England from 1815,"

was published at intervals from 1878 to 1886; the first installment appeared when he was thirty-nine years old. This in six volumes carried the history to 1858 in an interesting, accurate, and impartial narrative. Four of the five chapters of the first volume are ent.i.tled "The Material Condition of England in 1815," "Society in England,"

"Opinion in 1815," "The Last of the Ebb Tide," and they are masterly in their description and relation. During the Napoleonic wars business was good. The development of English manufactures, due largely to the introduction of steam as a motive power, was marked. "Twenty years of war," he wrote, "had concentrated the trade of the world in the British Empire." Wheat was dear; in consequence the country gentlemen received high rents. The clergy, being largely dependent on t.i.thes,--the tenth of the produce,--found their incomes increased as the price of corn advanced. But the laboring cla.s.ses, both those engaged in manufactures and agriculture, did not share in the general prosperity. Either their wages did not rise at all or did not advance commensurately with the increase of the cost of living and the decline in the value of the currency. Walpole's detailed and thorough treatment of this subject is historic work of high value.

In the third volume I was much impressed with his account of the Reform Act of 1832. We all have read that wonderful story over and over again, but I doubt whether its salient points have been better combined and presented than in Walpole's chapter. I had not remembered the reason of the selection of Lord John Russell to present the bill in the House of Commons when he was only Paymaster of the Forces, without a seat in the Cabinet. It will, of course, be recalled that Lord Grey, the Prime Minister, was in the House of Lords, and, not so readily I think, that Althorp was Chancellor of the Exchequer and the leader of the House of Commons. On Althorp, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, it would have been inc.u.mbent to take charge of this highly important measure, which had been agreed upon by the Cabinet after counsel with the King. Russell was the youngest son of the Duke of Bedford; and the Duke was one of the large territorial magnates and a proprietor of rotten boroughs. "A bill recommended by his son's authority," wrote Walpole, "was likely to rea.s.sure timid or wavering politicians." "Russell," Walpole continued, "told his tale in the plainest language. But the tale which he had to tell required no extraordinary language to adorn it. The Radicals had not dared to expect, the Tories, in their wildest fears, had not apprehended, so complete a measure. Enthusiasm was visible on one side of the House; consternation and dismay on the other. At last, when Russell read the list of boroughs which were doomed to extinction, the Tories hoped that the completeness of the measure would insure its defeat. Forgetting their fears, they began to be amused and burst into peals of derisive laughter" (III, 208).

Walpole's next book was the "Life of Lord John Russell," two volumes published in 1889. This was undertaken at the request of Lady Russell, who placed at his disposal a ma.s.s of private and official papers and "diaries and letters of a much more private nature." She also acceded to his request that she was not to see the biography until it was ready for publication, so that the whole responsibility of it would be Walpole's alone. The Queen gave him access to three bound volumes of Russell's letters to herself, and sanctioned the publication of certain letters of King William IV. Walpole wrote the biography in about two years and a half; and this, considering that at the time he held an active office, displayed unusual industry. If I may judge the work by a careful study of the chapter on "The American Civil War," it is a valuable contribution to political history.

Pa.s.sing over three minor publications, we come to Walpole's "History of Twenty-five Years," two volumes of which were published in 1904. A brief extract from his preface is noteworthy, written as it is by a man of keen intelligence, with great power of investigation and continuous labor, and possessed of a sound judgment. After a reference to his "History of England from 1815," he said: "The time has consequently arrived when it ought to be as possible to write the History of England from 1857 to 1880, as it was twenty years ago to bring down the narrative of that History to 1856 or 1857.... So far as I am able to judge, most of the material which is likely to be available for British history in the period with which these two volumes are concerned [1856-1870] is already accessible. It is not probable that much which is wholly new remains unavailable." I read carefully these two volumes when they first appeared, and found them exceedingly fascinating. Palmerston and Russell, Gladstone and Disraeli, are made so real that we follow their contests as if we ourselves had a hand in them. A half dozen or more years ago an Englishman told me that Palmerston and Russell were no longer considered of account in England. But I do not believe one can rise from reading these volumes without being glad of a knowledge of these two men whose patriotism was of a high order. Walpole's several characterizations, in a summing up of Palmerston, display his knowledge of men. "Men p.r.o.nounced Lord Melbourne indifferent," he wrote, "Sir Robert Peel cold, Lord John Russell uncertain, Lord Aberdeen weak, Lord Derby haughty, Mr. Gladstone subtle, Lord Beaconsfield unscrupulous. But they had no such epithet for Lord Palmerston. He was as earnest as Lord Melbourne was indifferent, as strong as Lord Aberdeen was weak, as honest as Lord Beaconsfield was unscrupulous. Sir Robert Peel repelled men by his temper; Lord John Russell, by his coldness; Lord Derby offended them by his pride; Mr. Gladstone distracted them by his subtlety. But Lord Palmerston drew both friends and foes together by the warmth of his manners and the excellence of his heart" (I, 525).

Walpole's knowledge of continental politics was apparently thorough. At all events, any one who desires two entrancing tales, should read the chapter on "The Union of Italy," of which Cavour and Napoleon III are the heroes; and the two chapters ent.i.tled "The Growth of Prussia and the Decline of France" and "The Fall of the Second Empire." In these two chapters Napoleon III again appears, but Bismarck is the hero. Walpole's chapter on "The American Civil War" is the writing of a broad-minded, intelligent man, who could look on two sides.

Of Walpole's last book, "Studies in Biography," published in 1907, I have left myself no time to speak. Those who are interested in it should read the review of it in the _Nation_ early this year, which awards it high and unusual commendation.

The readers of Walpole's histories may easily detect in them a treatment not possible from a mere closet student of books and ma.n.u.scripts. A knowledge of the science of government and of practical politics is there. For Walpole was of a political family. He was of the same house as the great Whig Prime Minister, Sir Robert; and his father was Home Secretary in the Lord Derby ministry of 1858, and again in 1866, when he had to deal with the famous Hyde Park meeting of July 23. On his mother's side he was a grandson of Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister who in 1812 was a.s.sa.s.sinated in the lobby of the House of Commons.

Walpole's earliest publication was a biography of Perceval.

And Spencer Walpole himself was a man of affairs. A clerk in the War Office in 1858, private secretary to his father in 1866, next year Inspector of Fisheries, later Lieutenant-Governor of the Isle of Man, and from 1893 to 1899 Secretary to the Post-office. In spite of all this administrative work his books show that he was a wide, general reader, apart from his special historical studies. He wrote in an agreeable literary style, with Macaulay undoubtedly as his model, although he was by no means a slavish imitator. His "History of Twenty-five Years" seems to me to be written with a freer hand than the earlier history. He is here animated by the spirit rather than the letter of Macaulay. I no longer noticed certain tricks of expression which one catches so easily in a study of the great historian, and which seem so well to suit Macaulay's own work, but n.o.body else's.

An article by Walpole on my first four volumes, in the _Edinburgh Review_ of January, 1901, led to a correspondence which resulted in my receiving an invitation last May to pa.s.s Sunday with him at Hartfield Grove, his Suss.e.x country place. We were to meet at Victoria station and take an early morning train. Seeing Mr. Frederic Harrison the day previous, I asked for a personal description of his friend Walpole in order that I might easily recognize him. "Well," says Harrison, "perhaps I can guide you. A while ago I sat next to a lady during a dinner who took me for Walpole and never discovered her mistake until, when she addressed me as Sir Spencer, I undeceived her just as the ladies were retiring from the table. Now I am the elder by eight years and I don't think I look like Walpole, but that good lady had another opinion."

Walpole and Harrison met that Sat.u.r.day evening at the Academy dinner, and Walpole obtained a personal description of myself. This caution on both our parts was unnecessary. We were the only historians traveling down on the train and could not possibly have missed one another. I found him a thoroughly genial man, and after fifteen minutes in the railway carriage we were well acquainted. The preface to his "History of Twenty-five Years" told that the two volumes were the work of five years. I asked him how he was getting on with the succeeding volumes. He replied that he had done a good deal of work on them, and now that he was no longer in an administrative position he could concentrate his efforts, and he expected to have the work finished before long. I inquired if the prominence of his family in politics hampered him at all in writing so nearly contemporary history, and he said, "Not a bit." An hour of the railroad and a half-hour's drive brought us to his home. It was not an ancestral place, but a purchase not many years back. An old house had been remodeled with modern improvements, and comfort and ease were the predominant aspects. Sir Spencer proposed a "turn" before luncheon, which meant a short walk, and after luncheon we had a real walk. I am aware that the English mile and our own are alike 5280 feet, but I am always impressed with the fact that the English mile seems longer, and so I was on this Sunday. For after a good two hours'

exertion over hills and meadows my host told me that we had gone only five miles. Only by direct question did I elicit the fact that had he been alone he would have done seven miles in the same time.

There were no other guests, and Lady Walpole, Sir Spencer, and I had all of the conversation at luncheon and dinner and during the evening. We talked about history and literature, English and American politics, and public men. He was singularly well informed about our country, although he had only made one brief visit and then in an official capacity.

English expressions of friends.h.i.+p are now so common that I will not quote even one of the many scattered through his volumes, but he displayed everywhere a candid appreciation of our good traits and creditable doings. I was struck with his knowledge and love of lyric poetry. Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, Keats, Tennyson, Longfellow, and Lowell were thoroughly familiar to him. He would repeat some favorite pa.s.sage of Keats, and at once turn to a discussion of the administrative details of his work in the post-office. Of course the day and evening pa.s.sed very quickly,--it was one of the days to be marked with a white stone,--and when I bade Walpole good-by on the Monday morning I felt as if I were parting from a warm friend. I found him broad-minded, intelligent, sympathetic, affable, and he seemed as strong physically as he was sound intellectually. His death on Sunday, July 7, of cerebral hemorrhage was alike a shock and a grief.

JOHN RICHARD GREEN

Address at a gathering of historians on June 5, 1909, to mark the placing of a tablet in the inner quadrangle of Jesus College, Oxford, to the memory of John Richard Green.

JOHN RICHARD GREEN

I wish indeed that I had the tongues of men and of angels to express the admiration of the reading public of America for the History of John Richard Green. I suppose that he has had more readers in our country than any other historian except Macaulay, and he has shaped the opinions of men who read, more than any writers of history except those whom John Morley called the great born men of letters,--Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle.

I think it is the earlier volumes rather than the last volume of his more extended work which have taken hold of us. Of course we thrill at his tribute to Was.h.i.+ngton, where he has summed up our reverence, trust, and faith in him in one single sentence which shows true appreciation and deep feeling; and it flatters our national vanity, of which we have a goodly stock, to read in his fourth volume that the creation of the United States was one of the turning points in the history of the world.

No saying is more trite, at any rate to an educated American audience, than that the development of the English nation is one of the most wonderful things, if not the most wonderful thing, which history records. That history before James I is our own, and, to our general readers, it has never been so well presented as in Green's first two volumes. The victories of war are our own. It was our ancestors who preserved liberty, maintained order, set the train moving toward religious toleration, and wrought out that language and literature which we are proud of, as well as you.

For my own part, I should not have liked to miss reading and re-reading the five chapters on Elizabeth in the second volume. What eloquence in simply the t.i.tle of the last,--The England of Shakespeare! And in fact my conception of Elizabeth, derived from Shakespeare, is confirmed by Green. As I think how much was at stake in the last half of the sixteenth century, and how well the troubles were met by that great monarch and the wise statesman whom she called to her aid, I feel that we could not be what we are, had a weak, irresolute sovereign been at the head of the state.

With the power of a master Green manifests what was accomplished. At the accession of Elizabeth--"Never" so he wrote--"had the fortunes of England sunk to a lower ebb. The loss of Calais gave France the mastery of the Channel. The French King in fact 'bestrode the realm, having one foot in Calais, and the other in Scotland.'"

And at the death of Elizabeth, thus Green tells the story: "The danger which had hitherto threatened our national existence and our national unity had disappeared: France clung to the friends.h.i.+p of England, Spain trembled beneath its blows."

With the wide range of years of his subject, with a grasp of an extended period akin to Gibbon's, complete accuracy was, of course, not attainable, but Samuel R. Gardiner once told me that Green, although sometimes inaccurate in details, gave a general impression that was justifiable and correct; and that is in substance the published opinion of Stubbs.

Goethe said that in reading Moliere you perceive that he possessed the charm of an amiable nature in habitual contact with good society. So we, who had not the advantage of personal intercourse, divined was the case of Green; and when the volume of Letters appeared, we saw that we had guessed correctly. But not until then did we know of his devotion to his work, and his heroic struggle, which renders the story of his short and brilliant career a touching and fascinating biography of a historian who made his mark upon his time.

EDWARD L. PIERCE

A paper read before the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society at the October meeting of 1897.

EDWARD L. PIERCE

I shall first speak of Mr. Pierce as an author. His Life of Sumner it seems to me is an excellent biography, and the third and fourth volumes of it are an important contribution to the history of our country. Any one who has gone through the original material of the period he embraces must be struck not only with the picture of Sumner, but with the skill of the biographer in the use of his data to present a general historical view. The injunction of Cicero, "Choose with discretion out of the plenty that lies before you," Mr. Pierce observed. To those who know how extensive was his reading of books, letters, newspaper files, how much he had conversed with the actors in those stirring scenes--and who will take into account the ma.s.s of memories that crowd upon the mind of one who has lived through such an era--this biography will seem not too long but rather admirable in its relative brevity. In a talk that I had with Mr. Pierce I referred to the notice in an English literary weekly of his third and fourth volumes which maintained that the biography was twice too long, and I took occasion to say that in comparison with other American works of the kind the criticism seemed unjust. "Moreover," I went on, "I think you showed restraint in not making use of much of your valuable material,--of the interesting and even important unprinted letters of Cobden, the Duke of Argyll, and of John Bright." "Yes,"

replied Mr. Pierce, with a twinkle in his eye, "I can say with Lord Clive, 'Great Heavens, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.'"

Any one who has studied public sentiment in this country for any period knows how easy it is to generalize from a few facts, and yet, if the subject be more thoroughly investigated, it becomes apparent how unsatisfactory such generalizations are apt to be; not that they are essentially untrue, but rather because they express only a part of the truth. If a student should ask me in what one book he would find the best statement of popular opinion at the North during the Civil War, I should say, Read Sumner's letters as cited in Mr. Pierce's biography with the author's comments. The speeches of Sumner may smell too much of the lamp to be admirable, but the off-hand letters written to his English and to a few American friends during our great struggle are worthy of the highest esteem. From his conversations with the President, the Cabinet ministers, his fellow-senators and congressmen, his newspaper reading,--in short, from the many impressions that go to make up the daily life of an influential public man,--there has resulted an accurate statement of the popular feeling from day to day. In spite of his intense desire to have Englishmen of power and position espouse the right side, he would not misrepresent anything by the suppression of facts, any more than he would make a misleading statement. In the selection of these letters Mr. Pierce has shown a nice discrimination.

Sumner, whom I take to have been one of the most truthful of men, was fortunate in having one of the most honest of biographers. Mr. Pierce would not, I think, have wittingly suppressed anything that told against him. I love to think of one citation which would never have been made by an idolizing biographer, so sharply did it bring out the folly of the opinion expressed. Sumner wrote, May 3, 1863: "There is no doubt here about Hooker. He told Judge Bates ... that he 'did not mean to drive the enemy but to bag him.' It is thought he is now doing it." The biographer's comment is brief, "The letter was written on the day of Hooker's defeat at Chancellorsville."

It seems to me that Mr. Pierce was as impartial in his writing as is possible for a man who has taken an active part in political affairs, who is thoroughly in earnest, and who has a positive manner of expression. It is not so difficult as some imagine for a student of history whose work is done in the library to be impartial, provided he has inherited or acquired the desire to be fair and honest, and provided he has the diligence and patience to go through the ma.s.s of evidence.

His historical material will show him that to every question there are two sides. But what of the man who has been in the heat of the conflict, and who, when the fight was on, believed with Sumner that there was no other side? If such a man displays candor, how much greater his merit than the impartiality of the scholar who shuns political activity and has given himself up to a life of speculation!

I had the good fortune to have three long conversations with the Hon.

Robert C. Winthrop, the last of which occurred shortly after the publication of the third and fourth volumes of the Life of Sumner.

"What," said Mr. Winthrop to me, "do you think of the chapter on the Annexation of Texas and the Mexican War?" "I think," was my reply, "that Mr. Pierce has treated a delicate subject like a gentleman." "From what I have heard of it," responded Mr. Winthrop, earnestly, "and from so much as I have read of it, that is also my own opinion." Such a private conversation I could, of course, repeat, and, somewhat later the occasion presenting itself, I did so to Mr. Pierce. "That is more grateful to me," he said, almost with tears in his eyes, "than all the praise I have received for these volumes."

Mr. Pierce had, I think, the historic sense. I consulted him several times on the treatment of historical matters, taking care not to trench on questions where, so different was our point of view, we could not possibly agree, and I always received from him advice that was suggestive, even if I did not always follow it to the letter. I sent to him, while he was in London, my account of Secretary Cameron's report proposing to arm the slaves and of his removal from office by President Lincoln. Mr. Pierce thought my inferences were far-fetched, and wrote: "I prefer the natural explanation. Horace says we must not introduce a G.o.d into a play unless it is necessary."

As a friend, he was warm-hearted and true. He brought cheer and animation into your house. His talk was fresh; his zeal for whatever was uppermost in his mind was contagious, and he inspired you with enthusiasm. He was not good at conversation, in the French sense of the term, for he was given to monologue; but he was never dull. His artlessness was charming. He gave you confidences that you would have shrunk from hearing out of the mouth of any other man, in the fear that you intruded on a privacy where you had no right; but this openness of mind was so natural in Mr. Pierce that you listened with concern and sympathized warmly. He took interest in everything; he had infinite resources, and until his health began to fail, enjoyed life thoroughly.

He loved society, conversation, travel; and while he had no pa.s.sion for books, he listened to you attentively while you gave an abstract or criticism of some book that was attracting attention. In all intercourse with him you felt that you were in a healthy moral atmosphere. I never knew a man who went out of his way oftener to do good works in which there was absolutely no reward, and at a great sacrifice of his time--to him a most precious commodity. He was in the true sense of the word a philanthropist, and yet no one would have approved more heartily than he this remark of Emerson: "The professed philanthropists are an altogether odious set of people, whom one would shun as the worst of bores and canters."

His interest in this Society the published Proceedings will show in some measure, but they cannot reflect the tone of devotion in which he spoke of it in conversation, or exhibit his loyalty to it as set forth in the personal letter. It was a real privation that his legislative duties prevented his attending these meetings last winter.

Of Mr. Pierce as a citizen most of you, gentlemen, can speak better than I, but it does appear to me an instance of rare civic virtue that a man of his age, political experience, ability, and mental resources could take pride and pleasure in his service in the House of Representatives of his Commonwealth. He was sixty-eight years old, suffering from disease, yet in his service last winter he did not miss one legislative session nor a day meeting of his committee. His love for his town was a mark of local attachment both praiseworthy and useful. "I would rather be moderator of the Milton town-meeting," he said, "than hold any other office in the United States."