Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography Part 15

But the very quality of aloofness from other men and their ways of thinking, which made it impossible for him to be the exponent of a system or the founder of a school, made him a peculiarly interesting friend. In homely phrase, you never knew where to have him; he was always breaking out in a fresh place. Whatever subject he handled, from impaled Bulgarians to the credibility of miracles, was certain to be presented in a new and unlooked-for aspect. He was as full of splendid gleams as a landscape by Turner, and as free from all formal rules of art and method. He was an independent thinker, if ever there was one, and as honest as he was independent. In his belief, truth was the most precious of treasures, to be sought at all hazards, and, when acquired, to be safeguarded at all costs. His zeal for truth was closely allied with his sense of justice. His mind came as near absolute fairness as is possible for a man who takes any part in live controversies. He never used an unfair argument to establish his point, nor pressed a fair argument unduly. He was scrupulously careful in stating his adversary's case, and did all in his power to secure a judicial and patient hearing even for the causes with which he had least sympathy. His own convictions, which he had reached through stern and self-sacrificing struggles, were absolutely solid. By the incessant writing of some forty years, he enforced the fundamental truth of human redemption through G.o.d made Man on the attention of people to whom professional preachers speak in vain, and he steadily impressed on his fellow-Christians those ethical duties of justice and mercy which should be, but sometimes are not, the characteristic fruits of their creed. It was a high function, excellently fulfilled.

The transition is abrupt, but no catalogue of the literary men with whom I was brought in contact could be complete without a mention of Mr.

George Augustus Sala. He was the very embodiment of Bohemia; and, alike in his views and in his style, the fine flower of such journalism as is a.s.sociated with the name of the _Daily Telegraph_. His portrait, sketched with rare felicity, may be found in Letter XII. of that incomparable book, _Friends.h.i.+p's Garland_. "Adolescens Leo" thus describes him--"Sala, like us his disciples, has studied in the book of the world even more than in the world of books. But his career and genius have given him somehow the secret of a literary mixture novel and fascinating in the last degree: he blends the airy epicureanism of the _salons_ of Augustus with the full-bodied gaiety of our English cider-cellar. With our people and country, _mon cher_, this mixture is now the very thing to go down; there arises every day a larger public for it; and we, Sala's disciples, may be trusted not willingly to let it die."

That was written in 1871; and, when sixteen years had elapsed, I thought it would be safe, and I knew it would be amusing, to bring Sala and Matthew Arnold face to face at dinner. For the credit of human nature let it be recorded that the experiment was entirely successful; for, as Lord Beaconsfield said, "Turtle makes all men equal," and vindictiveness is exorcised by champagne.

The Journalist of Society in those days was Mr. T. H. S. Escott, who was also Editor of the _Fortnightly_ and leader-writer of the _Standard_. I should be inclined to think that no writer in London worked so hard; and he paid the penalty in shattered health. It is a pleasure to me, who in those days owed much to his kindness, to witness the renewal of his early activities, and to welcome volume after volume from his prolific pen. Mr. Kegan Paul, essayist, critic, editor, and ex-clergyman, was always an interesting figure; and his successive transitions from Tractarianism to Lat.i.tudinarianism, and from Agnosticism to Ultramontanism, gave a peculiar piquancy to his utterances on religion.

He deserves remembrance on two quite different scores--one, that he was the first publisher to study prettiness in the production of even cheap books; and the other, that he was an early and enthusiastic worker in the cause of National Temperance. It was my privilege to be often with him in the suffering and blindness of his last years, and I have never seen a trying discipline more bravely borne.

More than once in these chapters I have referred to "Billy Johnson," as his pupils and friends called William Cory in remembrance of old times.

He was from 1845 to 1872 the most brilliant tutor at Eton: an astonis.h.i.+ng number of eminent men pa.s.sed through his hands, and retained through life the influence of his teaching. After leaving Eton, he changed his name from Johnson to Cory, and established himself on the top of the hill at Hampstead, where he freely imparted the treasures of his exquisite scholars.h.i.+p to all who cared to seek them, and not least willingly to young ladies. He was a man of absolutely original mind; paradoxical, prejudiced, and intellectually independent to the point of eccentricity. His range was wide, his taste infallible, and his love of the beautiful a pa.s.sion. He lived, from boyhood to old age, the life of the Intellect; and yet posterity will know him only as having written one thin book of delightful verse;[53] a fragmentary History of England; and some of the most fascinating letters in the language.

A friend and brother-Scholar of mine at Oxford was "w.i.l.l.y" Arnold, son of Mr. Thomas Arnold, and nephew of Matthew. After taking his degree, he joined the staff of the _Manchester Guardian_, and before long became one of the first journalists of his time. He was not merely a journalist, but also a publicist, and could have made his mark in public life by his exceptional knowledge of European politics. We had not seen one another for a good many years, when we met casually at dinner in the summer of 1887. To that chance meeting I owed my introduction to the _Manchester Guardian_. My first contribution to it was a description of the Jubilee Garden-Party at Buckingham Palace on the 29th of June, 1887; so I can reckon almost a quarter of a century of a.s.sociation with what I am bold to call (defying all allusion to the fabled Tanner) the best newspaper in Great Britain.

But journalism, though now practised on a more dignified level, was only a continuation and development of a life-long habit; whereas, though I had been scribbling ever since I was a boy, I had never written a book.

In 1890 Messrs. Sampson Low started a series of _The Queen's Prime Ministers_. Froude led off, brilliantly, with Lord Beaconsfield; and the editor[54] asked me to follow with Mr. Gladstone. Before acceding to this proposal, I thought it right to ask whether Gladstone had any objection; and, supposing that he had not, whether he would give me any help. His reply was eminently characteristic,--

"When someone proposed to write a book about Harry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, the Bishop procured an Injunction in Chancery to stop him. I shall not seek an Injunction against you--but that is all the help I can give you."

Thus encouraged, or rather, I should say, not discouraged, I addressed myself to the task, and the book came out in July, 1891. I was told that Gladstone did not read it, and this a.s.surance was in many respects a relief. But someone told him that I had stated, on the authority of one of his school-fellows, that he played no games at Eton. The next time I met him, he referred to this point; declared that I had been misinformed; and affirmed that he played both cricket and football, and "was in the Second Eleven at Cricket." In obedience to his request, I made the necessary correction in the Second Edition; but _a priori_ I should not have been inclined to suspect my venerated leader of having been a cricketer.

It is no part of my plan to narrate my own extremely humble performances in the way of authors.h.i.+p. The heading of the chapter speaks not of Book-making, but of Literature; and for a man to say that he has contributed to Literature would indeed be to invite rebuff. I am thinking now, not of what I have done, but of what I have received; and my debt to Literature is great indeed. I do not know the sensation of dulness, but, like most human beings, I know the sensation of sorrow; and with a grateful heart I record the fact that the darkest hours of my life have been made endurable by the Companions.h.i.+p of Books.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] To Mr. Watson I owed my introduction to Matthew Arnold's _Essays in Criticism_--a real event in one's mental life.

[50] By Sir Walter Strickland; whose poem on William Tyndale was justly admired.

[51] Richard Monckton Milnes was created Lord Houghton, August 20, 1863.

[52] It is only fair to observe that those "Letters" were written in the strictest confidence.

[53] Ionica.

[54] Mr. Stuart J. Reid.

XIV

SERVICE

May He "in knowledge of Whom standeth our eternal life, Whose service is perfect freedom"--_Quem nosse vivere, Cui servire regnare est_--teach us the rules and laws of that eternal service, which is now beginning on the scene of time.

R. W. CHURCH, _Human Life and its Conditions_.

It was my happiness to be born and brought up in a home where Religion habitually expressed itself in Social Service. I cannot remember a time when those nearest to me were not actively engaged in ministering to the poor, the sick, the underfed, and the miserable. The motive of all this incessant ministration was the Christian Faith, and its motto was _Charitas Christi urget nos_. The religion in which the children of an Evangelical home were reared was an intensely vivid and energetic principle, pa.s.sionate on its emotional side, definite in its theory, imperious in its demands, practical, visible, and tangible in its effects. If a boy's heart--

"Were less insensible than sodden clay In a sea-river's bed at ebb of tide,"

it could scarcely fail to carry with it into the world outside the impressions stamped by such a training. I can remember quite clearly that, even in my Harrow days, the idea of Life as Service was always present to my mind: and it was constantly enforced by the preaching of such men as Butler, Westcott, and Farrar.

"Here you are being educated either for life or for fas.h.i.+on. Which is it? What is your ambition? Is it to continue, with fewer restrictions, the amus.e.m.e.nts which have engrossed you here? Is it to be favourite or brilliant members of a society which keeps want and misery at a distance? Would this content you? Is this your idea of life? Or may we not hope that you will have a n.o.bler conception of what a Christian manhood may be made in a country so rich in opportunities as our own now presents?"[55]

In Dr. Butler's sermons our thoughts were directed to such subjects as the Housing of the Working Cla.s.ses, Popular Education, and the contrast between the lot of the rich and the lot of the poor. "May G.o.d never allow us to grow proud, or to grow indolent, or to be deaf to the cry of human suffering." "Pray that G.o.d may count you worthy to be foremost in the truly holy and heroic work of bringing purity to the homes of the labouring cla.s.ses, and so hastening the coming of the day when the longing of our common Lord shall be accomplished." "Forget not the complaints, and the yet more fatal silence, of the poor, and pray that the enn.o.bling of your own life, and the gratification of your own happiness, may be linked hereafter with some public Christian labour."

Thus the influences of school co-operated with the influences of home to give one, at the most impressionable age, a lively interest in Social Service; and that interest found a practical outlet at Oxford. When young men first attempt good works, they always begin with teaching; and a Sunday School at Cowley and a Night School at St. Frideswide's were the scenes of my (very unsuccessful) attempts in that direction. Through my devotion to St. Barnabas', I became acquainted with the homes and lives of the poor in the then squalid district of "Jericho"; and the experience thus acquired was a valuable complement to the knowledge of the agricultural poor which I had gained at home. It was at this time that I first read _Yeast_ and _Alton Locke_. The living voice of Ruskin taught us the sanct.i.ty of work for others. A fascinating but awful book called _Modern Christianity a Civilized Heathenism_ laid compelling hands on some young hearts; and in 1875 Dr. Pusey made that book the subject of a sermon before the University, in which he pleaded the cause of the poor with an unforgettable solemnity.[56]

For two or three years, illness and decrepitude interfered with my active service, but the ideal was still enthroned in my heart; and, as health returned, the shame of doing nothing for others became intolerable. Return to activity was a very gradual process, and, if one had ever "despised the day of small things," one now learned to value it. When I came up to London, two or three of us, who had been undergraduate friends at Oxford, formed a little party for workhouse-visiting. One of the party has since been a Conservative Minister, one a Liberal Minister, and one a high official of the Central Conservative a.s.sociation. Sisters joined their brothers, and we used to jog off together on Sat.u.r.day afternoons to the Holborn Workhouse, which, if I remember right, stood in a poetically-named but prosaic-looking street called "Shepherdess Walk." The girls visited the women, and we the men. We used to take oranges and flowers to the wards, give short readings from amusing books, and gossip with the bedridden about the outside world. We always had the kindest of welcomes from our old friends; and great was their enthusiasm when they learned that two of their visitors had been returned to Parliament at the General Election of 1880. As one of the two was a Conservative and one a Liberal, the political susceptibilities of the ward were not offended, and we both received congratulations from all alike. One quaint incident is connected with these memories. Just outside the Workhouse was a sort of booth, or "lean-to," where a very respectable woman sold daffodils and wall-flowers, which we used to buy for our friends inside. One day, when one of the girls of our party was making her purchase, the flower-seller said, "Would your Ladys.h.i.+p like to go to the Lady Mayoress's Fancy Dress Ball? If so, I can send you and your brother tickets. You have been good customers to me, and I should be very glad if you would accept them." The explanation was that the flower-seller was sister to the Lady Mayoress, whom the Lord Mayor had married when he was in a humbler station. The tickets were gratefully accepted; and, when we asked the giver if she was going to the Ball, she replied, with excellent sense and taste, "Oh, no. My sister, in her position, is obliged to give these grand parties, but I should be quite out of place there. You must tell me all about it next time you come to the Workhouse."

Meanwhile, during this "day of small things" a quiet but momentous revolution had been going on all round us, in the spheres of thought and conscience; and the earlier idea of individual service had been, not swamped by, but expanded into, the n.o.bler conception of corporate endeavour.

It had been a work of time. The Christian Socialism of 1848--one of the finest episodes in our moral history--had been trampled underfoot by the wickedness of the Crimean War. To all appearance, it fell into the ground and died. After two years of aimless bloodshed, peace was restored in 1856, and a spell of national prosperity succeeded. The Repeal of the Corn Laws had done its work; food was cheaper; times were better; the revenue advanced "by leaps and bounds." But commercialism was rampant. It was the heyday of the Ten Pound Householder and the Middle Cla.s.s Franchise. Mr. Podsnap and Mr. Gradgrind enounced the social law. Bright and Cobden dominated political thinking. The Universities were fast bound in the misery and iron of Mill and Bain.

Everywhere the same grim idols were wors.h.i.+pped--unrestricted compet.i.tion, the survival of the fittest, and universal selfishness enthroned in the place which belonged to universal love. "The Devil take the hindermost" was the motto of industrial life. "In the huge and hideous cities, the awful problem of Industry lay like a bad dream; but Political Economy warned us off that ground. We were a.s.sured that the free play of compet.i.tive forces was bound to discover the true equipoise. No intervention could really affect the inevitable outcome.

It could only hinder and disturb."[57] The Church, whose pride it had been in remoter ages to be the Handmaid of the Poor, was bidden to leave the Social Problem severely alone; and so ten years rolled by, while the social pressure on labour became daily more grievous to be borne. But meanwhile the change was proceeding underground, or at least out of sight. Forces were working side by side which knew nothing of each other, but which were all tending to the same result. The Church, boldly casting aside the trammels which had bound her to wealth and culture, went down into the slums; brought the beauty and romance of Wors.h.i.+p to the poorest and the most depraved, and compelled them to come in.

Whenever such a Church as St. Alban's, Holborn, or St. Barnabas, Oxford, was established in the slums of a populous city, it became a centre not only of religious influence, but of social, physical, and educational reform. Ruskin's many-coloured wisdom, long recognized in the domain of Art, began to win its way through economic darkness, and charged cheerfully against the dismal strongholds of Supply and Demand. _Unto this Last_ became a handbook for Social Reformers. The teaching of Maurice filtered, through all sorts of unsuspected channels, into literature and politics and churchmans.h.i.+p. In the intellectual world, Huxley transformed "the Survival of the Fittest," by bidding us devote ourselves to the task of fitting as many as possible to survive. At Oxford, the "home" not of "lost" but of victorious "causes," T. H.

Green, wielding a spiritual influence which reached farther than that of many bishops, taught that Freedom of Contract, if it is to be anything but a callous fraud, implies conditions in which men are really free to contract or to refuse; and insisted that all wholesome compet.i.tion implies "adequate equipment for the compet.i.tors."

It is impossible to say exactly how all these influences intertwined and co-operated. One man was swayed by one force; another by another; and, after long years of subterranean working, a moment came, as it comes to the germinating seed deep-hidden in the furrow, when it must pierce the superinc.u.mbent ma.s.s, and show its tiny point of life above ground.[58]

The General Election of 1880, by dethroning Lord Beaconsfield and putting Gladstone in power, had fulfilled the strictly political objects which during the preceding three years my friends and I had been trying to attain. So we, who entered Parliament at that Election, were set free, at the very outset of our public career, to work for the Social Reform which we had at heart. We earnestly desired to make the lives of our fellow-men healthier, sweeter, brighter, and more humane; and it was an enn.o.bling and invigorating ambition, lifting the pursuit of politics, out of the vulgar dust of office-seeking and wire-pulling, into the purer air of unselfish endeavour. To some of us it was much more; for it meant the application of the Gospel of Christ to the practical business of modern life. But the difficulties were enormous. The Liberal party still clung to its miserable old mumpsimus of _Laissez-faire_, and steadily refused to learn the new and n.o.bler language of Social Service.

Alone among our leading men, Mr. Chamberlain seemed to apprehend the truth that political reform is related to social reform as the means to the end, and that Politics, in its widest sense, is the science of human happiness.

But, in spite of all discouragements, we clung to "a Social Philosophy which, however materialistic some of its tendencies might have become, had been allied with the spiritual Hegelianism with which we had been touched. It took its scientific shape in the hands of Karl Marx, but it also floated to us, in dreams and visions, using our own Christian language, and invoking the unity of the Social Body, as the Law of Love, and the Solidarity of Humanity."[59]

At the sound of these voices the old idols fell--_Laissez-faire_ and _Laissez-aller_, Individualism and Self-content, Unrestricted Compet.i.tion and the Survival of the Fittest. They all went down with a crash, like so many dishonoured Dagons; and, before their startled wors.h.i.+ppers had time to reinstate them, yet another voice of warning broke upon our ears. _The Bitter Cry of Outcast London_, describing the enormous amount of preventable misery caused by over-crowding, startled men into recognizing the duty of the State to cope with the evil. Then came Henry George with his _Progress and Poverty_, and, as Dr. Holland says, he "forced us on to new thinking." That "new thinking" took something of this form--"Here are the urgent and grinding facts of human misery. The Political Economy of such blind guides as Ricardo and Bastiat and Fawcett has signally failed to cure or even mitigate them.

Now comes a new prophet with his gospel of the Single Tax. He may, or may not, have found the remedy, but at any rate he has shown us more clearly than ever the immensity of the evil, and our responsibility for suffering it to continue. We profess and call ourselves Christians. Is it not about time that, casting aside all human teachings, whether Economic or Socialistic, we tried to see what the Gospel says about the subject, and about our duty in regard to it?"

Out of this stress of mind and heart arose "The Christian Social Union."

It was founded in Lent, 1889, and it set forth its objects in the following statement--

"This Union consists of Churchmen who have the following objects at heart:--

(i) To claim for the Christian Law the ultimate authority to rule social practice.

(ii) To study in common how to apply the moral truths and principles of Christianity to the social and economic difficulties of the present time.

(iii) To present CHRIST in practical life as the Living Master and King, the enemy of wrong and selfishness, the power of righteousness and love."

The Christian Social Union, originating with some Oxford men in London, was soon reinforced from Cambridge, which had fallen under the inspiring though impalpable influence of Westcott's teaching. Westcott was, in some sense, the continuator of Mauricianism; and so, when Westcott joined the Union, the two streams, of Mauricianism and of the Oxford Movement, fused. Let Dr. Holland, with whom the work began, tell the rest of the story--"We founded the C. S. U. under Westcott's presidents.h.i.+p, leaving to the Guild of St. Matthew their old work of justifying G.o.d to the People, while we devoted ourselves to converting and impregnating the solid, stolid, flock of our own church folk within the fold.... We had our work cut out for us in dislodging the horrible cast-iron formulae, which were indeed wholly obsolete, but which seemed for that very reason to take tighter possession of their last refuge in the bulk of the Church's laity."