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Title: Further memories
Author: Baron Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford Redesdale
Author of introduction, etc.: Edmund Gosse
Release date: May 29, 2025 [eBook #76184]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Hutchinson & Co, 1917
Credits: MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FURTHER MEMORIES ***
_FURTHER MEMORIES_
11th LARGE EDITION.
MEMORIES
By the Right Hon. LORD REDESDALE G.C.V.O., K.C.B.
_In two handsome volumes, 32s. net._
_With numerous illustrations._
“A very charming book, written by a man who was born some months before
Queen Victoria came to the throne, yet it contains not a word of
‘twaddle’; its genuine modesty leaves no room for mock modesty, and it
is never for a moment dull. He has been everywhere and seen everything.
He has travelled far and wide, East and West: he has known many Courts
and Princes. It is useless to attempt analogies of this vast and varied
treasury, social, historical, political, personal.”—_Times._
“At length this much-talked-of book is in our possession and it will
cause no disappointment. It is a work of genuine and serious interest,
curiously varied in its point of view, and supremely graceful in tone and
form. It will be permanently studied as a contribution to literature and
history.”—Mr. Edmund Gosse in the _Fortnightly Review_.
“One of the best books of the last five years. Lord Redesdale’s
‘Memories’ are not merely interesting, they are indispensable.”—_Daily
Telegraph._
London: HUTCHINSON & CO.
[Illustration: _The Author._
_Photographed by Furley Lewis Esq._]
_Further Memories. By
Lord Redesdale, G.C.V.O., K.C.B._
_With an Introduction by Edmund Gosse, C.B._
_Illustrated with a portrait of the Author in photogravure and_
:: :: :: _16 other plates_ :: :: ::
_LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW ... 1917_
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION. BY EDMUND GOSSE, C.B. ix
VELUVANA 1
BUDDHA AND ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND CASTE—THE ARYANS 46
THE COMMUNE 78
TREES AND THEIR LEGENDS 96
QUEEN VICTORIA AND MARIE THERESIA 129
THE WALLACE COLLECTION 155
A NOTE ON RUSSIAN STUDIES 203
VERBA COMPOSITA 209
RUSSIA 246
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE AUTHOR (_photogravure_) _Frontispiece_
_Photographed by Furley Lewis, Esq._
SCENE IN THE AUTHOR’S GARDEN _Facing p._ 6
REST-HOUSE IN THE AUTHOR’S GARDEN ” 10
FIGURE OF THE BUDDHA ” 24
PROFESSOR MAX MÜLLER ” 52
_From a photograph by Elliott & Fry, Ltd._
ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI PREACHING TO THE BIRDS ” 58
_From a picture by Giotto_
GUSTAVE COURBET ” 82
_From a picture by himself in the Louvre_
THE EMPRESS MARIE THERESIA ” 130
_From an engraving after a painting by Mytens_
THE MARQUIS OF HERTFORD ” 158
_From a bust in the Wallace Collection_
SIR RICHARD WALLACE ” 192
_From a bust in the Wallace Collection_
IVAN TURGENIEV ” 204
_From an etching by E. Hedouin_
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE ” 212
RICHARD WAGNER ” 218
THE EMPEROR PAUL ” 248
THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER I. ” 260
_From an engraving after a portrait by Wolkoff_
THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS II. ” 284
_From a lithograph_
PRINCE GORTCHAKOFF ” 296
INTRODUCTION
BY EDMUND GOSSE, C.B.
The publication of Lord Redesdale’s “Memories”—which was one of the
most successful autobiographies of recent times—familiarized thousands
of readers with the principal adventures of a very remarkable man, but,
when all was said and done, left an incomplete impression of his tastes
and occupations on the minds of those who were not familiar with his
earlier writings. His literary career had been a very irregular one.
He took up literature rather late, and produced a book that has become
a classic—“Tales of Old Japan.” He did not immediately pursue this
success, but became involved in public activities of many kinds, which
distracted his attention. In his sixtieth year he brought out “The Bamboo
Garden,” and from that time—until, in his eightieth year, he died in full
intellectual energy—he constantly devoted himself to the art of writing.
His zeal, his ambition, were wonderful; but it was impossible to overlook
the disadvantage from which that ambition and that zeal suffered in the
fact that for the first sixty years of his life the writer had cultivated
the art but casually and sporadically. He retained, in spite of all the
labour which he expended, a certain stiffness, an air of the amateur, of
which he himself was always acutely conscious.
This did not interfere with the direct and sincere appeal made to
general attention by the 1915 “Memories,” a book so full of geniality
and variety, so independent in its judgments and so winning in its
ingenuousness, that its wider popularity could be the object of no
surprise. But, to those who knew Lord Redesdale intimately, it must
always appear that his autobiography fails to explain him from what we
may call the subjective point of view. It tells us of his adventures and
his friendships, of the strange lands he visited and of the unexpected
confidences he received, but it does not reveal very distinctly
the character of the writer. There is far more of his intellectual
constitution, of his personal tastes and mental habits, in the volume of
essays of 1912, called “A Tragedy in Stone,” but even here much is left
unsaid and even unsuggested.
Perhaps the most remarkable fact about Lord Redesdale was the redundant
vitality of his character. His nature swarmed with life, like a drop
of pond-water under a microscope. There cannot be found room in any
one nature for all the qualities, and what he lacked in some degree
was concentration. But very few men who have lived in our complicated
age have done well in so many directions as he, or, aiming widely,
have failed in so few. He shrank from no labour and hesitated before
no difficulty, but pushed on with an extraordinary energy along many
various lines of activity. But the two lines in which he most desired
and most determined to excel, gardening and authorship, are scarcely
to be discerned, except below the surface, in his “Memories.” Next to
his books, what he regarded with most satisfaction was his wonderful
garden at Batsford, and of this there is scarcely a word of record in
the autobiography. He had always intended to celebrate this garden, and
when he was preparing to return to Batsford in 1915 he wrote to me that
he was going to write an “Apologia pro Horto meo,” as long before he
had composed one “pro Bambusis meis.” A book which should combine with
the freest fancies of his intellect a picture of the exotic groves of
Batsford was what was required to round off Lord Redesdale’s literary
adventures. It will be seen that he very nearly succeeded in thus setting
the top-stone on his literary edifice.
One reason, perhaps, why Batsford, which was ever present to his
thoughts, is so very slightly and vaguely mentioned in Lord Redesdale’s
“Memories,” may be the fact that from 1910 onwards he was not living
in it himself, and that it was irksome to him to magnify in print
horticultural beauties which were for the time being in the possession
of others. The outbreak of the war, in which all his five sons were
instantly engaged, was the earliest of a series of changes which
completely altered the surface of Lord Redesdale’s life. Batsford came
once more into his personal occupation, and at the same time it became
convenient to give up his London house in Kensington Court. Many things
combined to transform his life in the early summer of 1915. His eldest
son, Major the Hon. Clement Mitford, after brilliantly distinguishing
himself in battle, was received by the King and decorated, to the
rapturous exultation of his father. Major Mitford returned to the French
front, only to fall on the 13th of May, 1915.
At this time I was seeing Lord Redesdale very frequently, and I could
not but be struck by the effect of this blow upon his temperament. After
the first shock of sorrow, I observed in him the determination not to
allow himself to be crushed. His dominant vitality asserted itself almost
with violence, and he seemed to clench his teeth in defiance of the
blow to his individuality. It required on the part of so old a man no
little fortitude, for it is easier to bear a great and heroic bereavement
than to resist the wearing vexation of seeing one’s system of daily
occupation crumbling away. Lord Redesdale was pleased to be going again
to Batsford, which had supplied him in years past with so much sumptuous
and varied entertainment, but it was a matter of alarm with him to give
up all, or almost all, the various ties with London which had meant so
much to his vividly social nature.
Meanwhile, during the early months of 1915 in London, he had plenty of
employment in finishing and revising his “Memories,” which it had taken
him two years to write. This was an occupation which bridged over the
horrid chasm between his old active life in London, with its thousand
interests, and the uncertain and partly dreaded prospect of an exile
in the bamboo-gardens of a remote corner of Gloucestershire, where his
deafness must needs exclude him from the old activities of local life.
He finished revising the manuscript of his “Memories” in July, and then
went down, while the actual transference of his home took place, to the
Royal Yacht Squadron Castle, Cowes, where he had been accustomed to spend
some of the most enjoyable hours of his life. But this scene, habitually
thronged with people, and palpitating with gaiety, in the midst of which
Lord Redesdale found himself so singularly at home, was now, more than
perhaps any other haunt of the English sportsman, in complete eclipse.
The weather was lovely, but there were no yachts, no old chums, no
charming ladies. “It is very dull,” he wrote; “the sole inhabitant of
the Club besides myself was Lord Falkland, and now he is gone.” In these
conditions Lord Redesdale became suddenly conscious that the activity
of the last two or three years was over, that the aspect of his world
had changed, and that he was in danger of losing that hold upon life to
which he so resolutely clung. In conditions of this kind he always turned
to seek for something mentally “craggy,” as Byron said, and at Cowes he
wonderfully found the writings of Nietzsche. The result is described in
a remarkable letter to myself (July 28th, 1915), which I quote because it
marks the earliest stage in the composition of his last unfinished book:
“I have been trying to occupy myself with Nietzsche, on the
theory that there must be something great about a man who
exercised the immense influence that he did. But I confess I
am no convert to any of his various moods. Here and there I
find gems of thought, but one has to wade through a morass of
blue mud to get at them. Here is a capital saying of his which
may be new to you—in a letter to his friend Rohde he writes:
‘Eternally we need midwives in order to be delivered of our
thoughts.’ We cannot work in solitude. ‘Woe to us who lack the
sunlight of a friend’s presence.’
“How true that is! When I come down here, I think that with
so much time on my hands I shall be able to get through a
pile of work. Not a bit of it! I find it difficult even to
write a note. To me it is an imperative necessity to have the
sympathetic counsel of a friend.”
The letter continued with an impassioned appeal to his correspondent to
find some definite intellectual work for him to undertake. “You make me
dare, and that is much towards winning a game. You must sharpen my wits,
which are blunt enough just now.” In short, it was a cry from the island
of boredom to come over the water and administer first-aid.
Accordingly, I started for Cowes, and was welcomed at the pier with all
my host’s habitual and vivacious hospitality. Scarcely were we seated in
our wicker-chairs in face of the Solent, not twinkling as usual with
pleasure-sails, but sinister with strange instruments of warfare, than
he began the attack. “What am I to do with myself?” was the instant
question; “what means can I find of occupying this dreadful void of
leisure?” To which the obvious reply was: “First of all, you must exhibit
to me the famous attractions of Cowes!” “There are none,” he replied
in comic despair, but we presently invented some, and my visit, which
extended over several radiant days of a perfect August, was diversified
with walks and excursions by land and water, in which my companion
was as active and as ardent as though he had been nineteen instead of
seventy-nine. In a suit picturesquely marine, with his beautiful silver
hair escaping from a jaunty yachting cap, he was the last expression of
vivacity and gaiety.
The question of his intellectual occupation in the future came, however,
incessantly to the front; and our long talks in the strange and uncanny
solitude of the Royal Yacht Squadron Castle always came back to this:
What task was he to take up next? His large autobiography was now coming
back to him from the printers in packets of proof, with which he was
closeted night and morning; and I suggested that while this was going on
there was no need for him to think about future enterprises. To tell the
truth, I had regarded the “Memories” as likely to be the final labour
of Lord Redesdale’s busy life. It seemed to me that at his advanced
age he might now well withdraw into dignified repose. I even hinted so
much in terms as delicate as I could make them, but the suggestion was
not well received. I became conscious that there was nothing he was so
little prepared to welcome as “repose”; that, in fact, the terror which
possessed him was precisely the dread of having to withdraw from the
stage of life. His deafness, which now began to be excessive, closed to
his eager spirit so many of the avenues of experience, that he was more
than ever anxious to keep clear those that remained to him, and of these,
literary expression came to be almost the only one left. In the absence
of a definite task his path in this direction led through darkness.
But it was not until after several suggestions and many conversations
that light was found. The friend so pressingly appealed to returned to
London, where he was stern in rejecting several projects, hotly flung
at his head and then coldly abandoned. A study of the Empress Maria
Theresa, suggested by a feverish perusal of Pechler, was the latest and
least attractive of these. Lord Redesdale then frankly demanded that a
subject should be found for him. “You have brought this upon yourself,”
he said, “by encouraging me to write.” What might prove the scheme of a
very pleasant book then occurred to us, and it was suggested to the fiery
and impatient author, who had by this time retired for good to Batsford,
that he should compose a volume of essays dealing with things in general,
but bound together by a constantly repeated reference to his wild garden
of bamboos and the Buddha in his secret grove. The author was to suppose
himself seated with a friend on the terrace at the top of the garden, and
to let the idea of the bamboo run through the whole tissue of reflections
and reminiscences like an emerald thread. Lord Redesdale was enchanted,
and the idea took fire at once. He replied:
“You are Orpheus, with his lute moving the rocks and stones!
I shall work all my conceits into your plan, and am now
proceeding to my garden shrine to meditate on it. I will try
to make a picture of the VELUVANA, the bamboo garden which was
the first Vikara or monastery of Buddha and his disciples.
There I will sit, and, looking on the great statue of Buddha
in meditation, I shall begin to arrange all sorts of wild
imaginings which may come into my crazy brain.”
In this way was started the book, of which, alas! only such fragments
were composed as form the earlier part of the present volume. It is,
however, right to point out that for the too-brief remainder of his life
Lord Redesdale was eagerly set on the scheme of which a hint has just
been given. The _Veluvana_ was to be the crowning production of his
literary life, and to sum up the wisdom of the East and the gaiety of the
West. He spoke of it incessantly, in letters and conversation. “That will
do to go into _Veluvana_,” was his cry when he met with anything rare or
strange. For instance, on the 15th of September, 1915, he wrote to me:
“To-day, all of a sudden I was struck by the idea that plants,
having many human qualities, may also in some degree have
human motives—that they are not altogether mere automata—and
as I thought, I began to imagine that I could detect something
resembling purpose in the movements of certain plants. I have
jotted down a few notes, and you will see when I expand them
that at any rate the idea calls attention to the movements
themselves, some of which seem never to have been noticed at
all, or certainly at best very inadequately. You will see that
this brings in the bamboo garden and Buddha, and so keeps to
the scheme of _Veluvana_.”
The monasteries of twelfth-century Japanese Buddhism, which he had
visited long before in the neighbourhood of Kiōto, now recurred to his
memory, and he proposed to describe in what a monk of Hiyeisan differed
from an Indian Buddhist monk. This was a theme of extraordinary
interest, and wholly germane to his purpose. It drove him back to his
Japanese books, and to his friend Sir Ernest Satow’s famous dictionary.
He wrote to me:
“No praise can be too high for the work which Satow did in the
early days of our intercourse with Japan. He was a valuable
asset to England, and to Sir Harry Parkes, who, with all his
energy and force of character, would never have succeeded as he
did without Satow. Aston was another very strong man.”
These reveries were strictly in accordance with the spirit of _Veluvana_,
but unfortunately what Lord Redesdale wrote in this direction proves
to be too slight for publication. He met with some expressions of
extremely modern Japanese opinion which annoyed him, and to which he
was tempted to give more attention than they deserve. It began to be
obvious that the enterprise was one for which great concentration of
effort, and a certain serenity of purpose which was not to be secured at
will, were imperatively needed. In leaving London, he was not content,
and no one could have wished him to be willing, to break abruptly all
the cords of his past life. He was still a Trustee of the National
Gallery, still chairman of the Marlborough Club, still occupied with
the administration of the Wallace Collection, and he did not abate his
interest in these directions. They made it necessary that he should
come up to town every other week. This made up in some measure for the
inevitable disappointment of finding that in Gloucestershire his deafness
now completely cut him off from all the neighbourly duties which had in
earlier years diversified and entertained his country life. He had been
a great figure among the squires and farmers of the Cotswolds, but all
this was now at an end, paralysed by the hopeless decay of his hearing.
It grieved him, too, that he was unable to do any useful war-work in the
county, and he was forced to depend upon his pen and his flying visits
to London for refreshment. He was a remarkably good letter-writer,
and he now demanded almost pathetically to be fed with the apples of
correspondence. He wrote (November 26th, 1915):
“Your letters are a consolation for being deprived of taking a
part any longer in the doings of the great world. The Country
Mouse—even if the creature were able to scuttle back into the
cellars of the great—would still be out of all communion with
the mighty, owing to physical infirmity. And now comes the kind
Town Mouse and tells him all that he most cares to know.”
He had books and his garden to enjoy, and he made the most of both. “I
hate the autumn,” he said, “for it means the death of the year, but I
try to make the death of the garden as beautiful as possible.” Among
his plants, and up and down the high places of his bamboo-feathered
rockeries, where little cascades fell with a music which he could no
longer hear into small dark pools full of many-coloured water-lilies, his
activity was like that of a boy. He had the appearance, the tastes, the
instincts of vigorous manhood prolonged far beyond the usual limit of
such gifts, and yet all were marred and rendered bankrupt for him by the
one intolerable defect, the deafness which had by this time become almost
impenetrable to sound.
Yet it seemed as though this disability actually quickened his mental
force. With the arrival of his eightieth year, his activity and curiosity
of intellect were certainly rather increased than abated. He wrote to me
from Batsford (December 28th, 1915):
“I have been busy for the last two months making a close
study of Dante. I have read all the _Inferno_ and half of
the _Purgatorio_. It is hard work, but the ‘readings’ of my
old schoolfellow, W. W. Vernon, are an incalculable help,
and now within the last week or two has appeared Hoare’s
Italian Dictionary, published by the Cambridge University
Press. A much-needed book, for the previous dictionaries were
practically useless except for courier’s work. How splendid
Dante is! But how sickening are the Commentators, Benvenuto
da Imola, Schartazzini and the rest of them? They won’t let
the poet say that the sun shone or the night was dark without
seeing some hidden and mystic meaning in it. They always
seem to _chercher midi à quatorze heures_, and irritate me
beyond measure. There is invention enough in Dante without all
their embroidery. But this grubbing and grouting seems to be
infectious among Dante scholars—they all catch the disease.”
He flung himself into these Italian studies with all his accustomed
ardour. He corresponded with the eminent veteran of Dante scholarship,
the Honourable W. W. Vernon, whom he mentions in the passage just quoted,
and Mr. Vernon’s letters gave him great delight. He wrote to me again:
“This new object in life gives me huge pleasure. Of course,
I knew the catch quotations in Dante, but I never before
attempted to read him. The difficulty scared me.”
Now, on the contrary, the difficulty was an attraction. He worked away
for hours at a time, braving the monotonies of the _Purgatorio_ without
flagging, but he broke down early in the _Paradiso_. He had no sympathy
whatever with what is mystic and spiritual, and he was extremely bored
by the Beatific Vision and the Rose of the Empyrean. I confess I took
advantage of this to recall his attention to _Veluvana_, for which it was
no longer possible to hope that the author would collect any material out
of Dante.
An invitation from Cambridge to lecture there on Russian history during
the Long Vacation of 1916 was a compliment to the value of the Russian
chapters of his “Memories,” but it was another distraction. It took his
thoughts away from _Veluvana_, although he protested to me that he could
prepare his Cambridge address, and yet continue to marshal his fancies
for the book. Perhaps I doubted it, and dared to disapprove, for he wrote
(March 17th, 1916):
“You scold me for writing too much. That is the least of my
troubles! You must remember that debarred as I am from taking
part in society, the Three R’s alone remain to me, and, indeed,
of those only two—for owing to my having enjoyed an Eton
education in days when arithmetic was deemed to be no part of
the intellectual panoply of a gentleman, I can neither add,
subtract, nor divide! I am a gluttonous reader, and only write
from time to time.”
He was really composing more actively than he himself realized. About
this time he wrote:
“Just now I am busy trying to whitewash Lord Hertford—not the
Marquess of Steyne, that would be impossible—but the unhappy
hypochondriac recluse of the Rue Lafitte, who I believe has
been most malignantly traduced by the third-rate English Colony
in Paris—all his faults exaggerated, none of his good qualities
even hinted at. The good British public has so long been used
to look upon him as a minotaur that it will perhaps startle and
amuse it to be told that he had many admirable points.”
At the beginning of last year the aspect of Lord Redesdale was very
remarkable. He had settled down into his life at Batsford, diversified
by the frequent dashes to London. His years seemed to sit upon him more
lightly than ever. His azure eyes, his curled white head thrown back, the
almost jaunty carriage of his well-kept figure, were the external symbols
of an inner man perpetually fresh, ready for adventure and delighted
with the pageant of existence. He found no fault at all with life, save
that it must leave him, and he had squared his shoulders not to give way
to weakness. Perhaps the only sign of weakness was just that visible
determination to be strong. But the features of his character had none
of those mental wrinkles, those “rides de l’esprit,” which Montaigne
describes as proper to old age. Lord Redesdale was guiltless of the old
man’s self-absorption or exclusive interest in the past. His curiosity
and sympathy were vividly exhibited to his friends, and so, in spite of
his amusing violence in denouncing his own forgetfulness, was his memory
of passing events. In the petulance of his optimism he was like a lad.
There was no change in the early part of last year, although it was
manifest that the incessant journeying between Batsford and London was
exhausting. The garden occupied him more and more, and he was distracted
by the great storm of the end of March, which blew down and destroyed
at the head of the bridge the wonderful group of cypresses, which he
called “the pride of my old age.” But, after a gesture of despair, he set
himself energetically to repair the damage. He was in his usual buoyant
health when the very hot spell in May tempted him out on the 18th of May,
with his agent, Mr. Kennedy, to fish at Swinbrook, a beautiful village
on his Oxfordshire property, of which he was particularly fond. He was
not successful, and in a splenetic mood he flung himself at full length
upon a bank of wet grass. He was not allowed to remain there long, but
the mischief was done, and in a few hours he was suffering from a bad
cold. Even now, the result might not have been serious had it not been
that in a few days’ time he was due to fulfil certain engagements in
town. Nothing vexed Lord Redesdale more than not to keep a pledge. In all
such matters he prided himself on being punctual and trustworthy, and he
refused to change his plans by staying at home.
Accordingly, on the 23rd of May he came to London to transact some
business, and to take the chair next day at a meeting of the Royal
Society of Literature, of which he was a vice-president. This meeting
took place in the afternoon, and he addressed a crowded assembly, which
greeted him with great warmth. Those who were present, and saw his bright
eyes and heard his ringing voice, could have no suspicion that they would
see him again no more. His intimate friends alone perceived that he was
making a superlative effort. There followed a very bad night, and he
went down to Batsford next day, going straight to his bed, from which he
never rose again. His condition, at first, gave rise to little alarm. The
disease, which proved to be catarrhal jaundice, took its course; but for
a long time his spirit and his unconsciousness of danger sustained him
and filled those around him with hope. There was no disturbance of mind
to the very last. In a shaky hand, with his stylograph, he continued
to correspond with certain friends, about politics, and books, and even
about _Veluvana_. In the beginning of August there seemed to be symptoms
of improvement, but these were soon followed by a sudden and final
relapse. Even after this, Lord Redesdale’s interest and curiosity were
sustained. In his very last letter to myself, painfully scrawled only one
week before his death, he wrote:
“Have you seen Ernest Daudet’s book just published, ‘Les
auteurs de la guerre de 1914’? Bismarck is the subject of
the first volume; the second will deal with the Kaiser and
the Emperor Joseph; and the third with ‘leurs complices.’ I
know E. D.; he is a brother of Alphonse, and is a competent
historian. His book is most illuminating. Of course there are
exaggerations, but he is always well _documenté_, and there is
much in his work that is new. I don’t admire his style. The
abuse of the historic present is bad enough, but what can be
said in favour of the historic future with which we meet at
every step? It sets my teeth on edge.”
But he grew physically weaker, and seven days later he passed into an
unconscious state, dying peacefully at noon of the 17th of August,
1916. He was saved, as he had wished to be, from all consciousness of
decrepitude.
EDMUND GOSSE.
_August, 1917._
FURTHER MEMORIES
VELUVANA
These chapters are simply an attempt to record the gist of some
conversations and noonday thoughts, which have arisen from time to time
in idle moments spent in a garden on the Cotswold Hills, where there are
gathered together certain features unusual in Western pleasances. Our
thoughts are largely the creations of our surroundings, and when at every
step I am met by some work of art or a plant which has travelled perhaps
twelve thousand miles to bring me a greeting from afar, then I, too,
begin to travel and am carried away beyond the seas. If here and there
I think and talk of things nearer home, my thoughts are still those of
a wanderer—still those which are suggested by the mysterious thrilling
of one of those chords for which there is nothing to account, but which
never vibrate as they do in my Veluvana, the bamboo grove of Buddha,
which thus becomes a temple dedicated to Mnemosyne.
One thing I wish to disclaim. I am often told that people believe that
I have a Japanese garden. I have nothing of the kind. A Japanese garden
is a mystery hard to be understood; it is a work of art depending upon
certain fixed laws and canons prescribed, many centuries ago, by a school
of Aesthetes, whose lives were spent in the punctilious observance of the
rules prescribed for tea-drinking and incense-burning and the writing
of sonnets, in grounds laid out upon principles, of which the slightest
violation would be an outrage upon the decencies of culture. In such
gardens flowers play but a small part, but the shapes, the position and
the orientation of quaint rocks, the introduction of miniature lakes,
and even of the similitude of rivers carried out in sand or gravel, with
stepping stones by which they may be crossed without disturbing the
smooth surface, these and many other whims are the important but sober
and yet fantastic features upon which the Japanese landscape gardener
insists.
Trees and flowering shrubs—such as cherries and plums—lianes like the
Wistaria and the ornamental vines, are used with the utmost discretion,
as they are with us. But the introduction of alien plants, the exhibition
of bronze ornaments and lanterns, or the naturalistic arrangement of
rockwork with a streamlet crossed by lacquered bridges, no more give a
garden the claim to be called Japanese than the possession of a piece of
old Greek sculpture would liken a house to the Acropolis of Athens, or
than skill in the pretty and very difficult game of kicking shuttlecocks
with the heel would entitle a Pekingese boy to claim kinship with a Rugby
football player.
A Japanese garden has a certain poetry and secret charm of its own. To
those who are adepts in its mysteries it is full of suggestion, but it is
highly artificial; everything that you see in it is a contradiction of
Nature, who, poor dear! is forced into obeying every craze and vagary of
the artist, not being allowed to see a twig or a bud take the direction
which she destined for it. In that it lacks the sweet simplicity and
countrified untutored grace of our English Edens. It is not a place in
which a young maiden would gather a posy bejewelled with May dew, or
stoop to consult the ray-florets of a daisy as to the beating of her
lover’s heart.
There are many crafts in which we English folk have much to learn from
abroad; in gardening that is not so—there we are not unskilled, indeed
rather copied than copiers. We have our own gardens and we may rest
content with them, since they give us without stint the full joys of
form and colour, beauty and fragrance. What more do we want? The gardens
of the Japanese may suit the fairies of their own legends, but the
great god Pan would surely rather see his Dryads and Wood-nymphs tread
a measure on the velvet of a trim English lawn, than picking their way
among cruel stones to the torture of their rosy feet.
But though we may not be minded to imitate in our own homes the
eccentricities and fancies of Japanese garden experts—whims and fancies
handicapped by the severities of austere tradition—there is no law to
hinder us from taking a hint from some of the effects which they achieve,
nor from introducing into our gardens some great masterpiece of one of
those exquisitely imaginative artists whose smaller and daintier works
are gems welcomed with such warmth elsewhere.
Some months after the above lines were written there appeared in the
_Times_ of May 6th, 1916, one of those charming articles on gardening
with which we are from time to time favoured, in which the writer
expresses much the same view of the Japanese gardener’s art that I hold.
Only in one point I differ from him. It is not “a close study of nature”
which guides the Japanese landscape maker; on the contrary, he follows
whims and symbols hard to be understood. Every distorted stone which he
brings at great expense from a huge distance must be so placed as to be
in harmony with some cryptic principle of æstheticism. Nature is not what
he aims at.
The Japanese, who have an exquisite system of their own of natural
gardening, though of gardening in which all is designed and nothing
left to chance, are very sparing of flowers. They would rather have one
blossom where it will tell as a delightful surprise than a thousand where
they merely make a mass of colour. Placing is everything to them, but
their principles of placing and grouping are got from the close study of
nature, like an artist’s principles of composition. We must not imitate
them, for if we do, we shall merely parody them. Bamboos and stones and
lanterns will not make a Japanese garden.
But we can grasp the principles on which they express their love of
nature in a garden; we can see clearly what is the difference between
formal and natural gardening, and avoid the mistake of trying to combine
the beauties of both. One is always uncomfortable in a garden when there
are a thousand flowers where a hundred would be better. One may not be
aware of the waste, but it wearies one all the same.
The fascination of the East never dies. But there comes a fatal time
when, to the voice of the Siren, sing she never so tenderly, there is
no response. Age and new duties have forged fetters, sweet and soft as
rose-leaves, but so binding that not even the loadstone mountain of
Sindbad the Sailor would avail to tear them away from us, and so we are
fain to satisfy our travel-hunger as best we may, feeding upon memory.
Then it is that the relics gathered together during the adventures of
many years acquire a new and almost sacred value. They speed the flight
of our thoughts like the wings of Pegasus. The man who has chaffered with
the Jew merchants in the picturesque gloom of the bazaars of Stamboul;
who has bathed in Jordan and Scamander, and slept in the black tents
of the Bedouin; who has wandered through the mysterious portals of the
Chĭen Mĕn, the frowning gate of the Tartar city, to sip tea with some art
expert in the Liu Li Chăng, the Paternoster Row of Peking, listening to
stories of the dilettanti in the reign of Chĭen Lung the magnificent—such
a man, if now he can do no more than trim the silken sails of his
imagination, bound for the lands of enchantment, must have about him
many a treasure which, if he but shut his eyes and give himself up to
the luxury of dreaming day-dreams, will bring back to the old wanderer
a whiff from the birthplace of the Sun, a whiff sweeter in his nostrils
than those cloying perfumes to which the æsthetes, according to their
affected euphuist jargon, “listened” centuries ago in the lovely gardens
of Ginkakuji, the Silver Pavilion of the sacred city of Kiōto.[1]
As for me, I have been all my life bitten by the collector’s mania,
and so the wings of my Pegasus have many feathers; for my house, and
even my gardens, are full of curious odds and ends, the spoil of many
lands. On the terrace standing sentry at the entrance to the house are
two huge bronze Kylins (in Pekingese, Chih Ling), representations of the
mystic beast which was seen last at the birth of Confucius, and will not
reappear until ten thousand years shall have elapsed from that date.
[Illustration: SCENE IN THE AUTHOR’S GARDEN.
[_To face p. 6._]
The male has a single horn and is very fierce, but not more so than
his hornless mate, which, with her cruel tusks, grins defiance at the
world. Just such another pair in the Imperial Park of the Ten Thousand
Longevities at Yuen Ming Yuen used to raise my wonder fifty years ago.
Built into the wall of one of the two little gazebos which are at the
east and west ends of my terrace are two bricks—the one rough and rugged,
sun-dried and splashed with the mortar of more than two thousand years
since, from the Great Wall of China at Ku Pei Kŏu; the other white,
smooth and richly glazed from the famous Porcelain Tower of Nanking,
which was destroyed by the Tai Ping rebels some sixty years ago, before
they were overtaken by the Vengeance of Gordon and “the Ever-Victorious
Army.”
Shall I ever forget the tramp of a couple of miles under an August sun
in 1865 with that huge brick from the Great Wall seeming to bite into
my aching shoulder? Over against the little summer-house, guarding the
entrance to the garden from the attacks of evil spirits, are small
statues of the Ni-ō, the two kings whose ugliness is enough to scare away
any inauspicious demons who might be about. They must miss the ritual of
their own country where the pious pilgrim, having written his prayer on
to a scrap of paper, chews it into a pellet, and spits it at the sacred
figure. If it sticks, all is well, and the prayer will be heard; if it
falls to earth, the fates will be unkind—so outside a fashionable temple
the two gods are bespattered all over with an eruption of moist pellets.
Here from that holy rite they are immune.
High up in the wildest part of the wild garden, under the shade of a
spreading oak, there stands, or rather sits, turned towards the East,
as is fitting, a bronze statue of Buddha of heroic size. His hand is
raised in the attitude of preaching; his features are expressive of the
holy calm and noble abstraction which are traditional in the effigies
of the great reformer; the centre of the skull is slightly raised, and
between the brows is a curl, representing the wind, the mystic white
lock. These two are among the many secret birth-signs by which the
soothsayers and diviners recognize in a newly-born babe the advent of
Bodhisatva, or future Buddha. Surrounding the figure are planted chusan
palms from China and bamboos from the Himalaya mountains, among which a
stag and a hind, life-sized bronze representations of the small Japanese
deer, watch over the loneliness of the thinker. Facing the statue is a
rest-house, flanked by two huge bronze lanterns bearing the chrysanthemum
and the Pawlonia flower, the two crests of the Mikado, and on either
side of the door are two small white granite elephants, brought from
Ceylon, Buddhistic symbols, full of significance. A little higher up the
hill a pergola leads to a tiny spring, with a dolphin spout, from which
fitfully, for it is often dry, a runlet of pure water trickles into a
stone basin.
Immediately opposite is an ishi-dori, one of those granite lanterns
which you will see in every Japanese temple. Lower down the hill is
a grand bronze lion, with his paws resting upon a ball of cloisonné
enamel, symbolical of the strength of Buddha, and in the middle of the
walled garden is a dragon fountain, spouting water into a tiny pond full
of pink water-lilies and gold-fish. We Westerns are wont to talk of
fiery dragons; not so the Orientals. With them the dragon is a creature
of the water, and so is used in art for fountains just as we use the
lion’s head, taking the idea from the Egyptian, who imagined that the
rising of the Nile took place when the Sun was in Leo. In China the
dragon represents the principle of good, the tiger that of evil; the
thunderstorm is a fight between the two.
All these things have their meaning, and here, as you sit in the broad
verandah of the rest-house, represent two scenes in the life of the
Buddha; firstly, the preaching of the first sermon in the Mrighadeva, the
deer forest near Benares, where the stags and hinds come to listen to
the Holy One, and, secondly, the Veluvana, or Bamboo grove, which King
Bimbisara presented to the Buddha and which became the first Vihara,
monastery or meeting-place, of the new sect’s adherents and monks. The
story of the Veluvana is that of Ahab and Naboth the Jezreelite over
again. Some six hundred years more or less before our era—how much more
or how much less is a matter of small moment, though the learned must
needs break their heads in the vain attempt to fix the exact dates of
these events—there reigned in Maghada King Bimbisara, a monarch not a
little feared.
Before he mounted the throne he greatly had set his heart upon a certain
grove, or garden belonging to a householder who would not part with it.
So he determined to bide his time until he should become king, and then
to kill the man and take his land. This he did, and the lawful owner,
who after death was born again in the shape of a poisonous snake, sought
an occasion to fix his deadly fangs in the king. One day the king had
gone into the garden with his wives, and fell asleep while only one of
the women was by him. Then the snake, crawling close to him, was about
to strike, when some Kalantaka birds seized it and began to scream. This
woke the woman, who jumped up and killed the snake.
[Illustration: REST HOUSE IN THE AUTHORS GARDEN.
[_To face p. 10._]
In gratitude to the birds who had saved his life, the king caused the
garden to be planted with bamboos, which they love, and the place
became known as the Kalantakanivasa Veluvana, or the Bamboo grove of
the Kalantaka birds. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, following the story of the
Chinese pilgrim Hsüan Chwang (of whom I hope to speak later), gives a
less romantic derivation to the name Kalantakanivasa. Kalanta, as he
tells the tale, was a rich merchant, who had originally given his garden
to the Brahmans, but having received the sublime Law, he took it away
from them and transferred it to the Buddha. I hope that this may not be
the true story, for in that case the name would simply mean the Bamboo
grove, or garden of Kalanta, and so the birds and the snake must fade
into the clouds of fancy.
According to the more legendary version of the story, it is written that
when the Blessed One, having attained the supreme wisdom, entered upon
his ministry, after six years of meditation, and an asceticism which had
almost starved his very life, he came with his disciples to Rajagriha,
where he was visited by Bimbisara, King of Maghada. This king had had
five wishes: (1) That a Buddha might appear during his reign; (2) that he
might himself see him; (3) that he might learn the truth from him; (4)
that he might understand it; (5) that he might follow his commandments.
When the king saw the Buddha and listened to his preaching, he was
converted with many of his people, and invited the Blessed One to come to
his city, where he set a great feast before him. When the feast was over,
the king solemnly poured water over the hands of the Blessed One, saying,
“I give the Kalantakanivasa Veluvana to the Blessed One to dispose of as
may please him.” And that is how it came to pass that a grove of bamboos
was the first Vihara, or meeting-place of Buddha and his saints.
Full of poetry and Indian mysticism are the legends and fairy tales
which monkish superstition has woven round the life of the Buddha, doing
him and his memory no good service thereby; for when truth is overgrown
with fables, like some fair flower choked by weeds, it becomes lost to
sight and strangled, and men begin to doubt whether, indeed, it had any
existence. In this way some doctors have been led to deny that such a
man as the Buddha ever lived upon earth; men of learning have spent much
profound scholarship on proving that he was merely a sun-myth; others
have explained him away as being in some sort an astronomical allegory.
It would be as easy to explain away Napoleon Buonaparte—indeed, did not
that cunning logician, Archbishop Whately, making fun out of his own
science, prove irrefutably by rule of syllogism that no such man as
Napoleon ever did or ever could have existed?
That Buddha was a very real man, inspired by the highest ideals, is a
fact which all advance in knowledge proves more and more conclusively.
Facts cannot be swept away like cobwebs; indeed, cobwebs are facts, as
every housewife knows, and though a besom may annihilate them, their
rebirth remains a demonstrable truth. So it is with the Buddha. The
travels of Fa Hsien and Hsüan Chwang, Chinese pilgrims, who in the fifth
and seventh centuries of our era went to India to collect Buddhist books
and study the dogmas and history of the religion, have been recorded with
all the scrupulous care and minuteness peculiar to their nation, and show
the veneration in which the sites and monuments sacred to the Buddhist
story were still held in their day. Nor is that all.
Within the last twenty years, under the authority of the Indian
Government, researches have been carried on by a learned Babu named
Chandra Mukherji, under the direction of Mr. Vincent A. Smith, and
those researches, which are of the highest interest, corroborate the
statements of the two Chinese monks, in whose accounts the differences
are no more than what would be expected in the work of men separated by
an interval of two hundred years.
If we must remember that Prince Siddartha claimed no divinity—nor even
divine inspiration or revelation—then stripped of the husk of fable
and vain tales with which monkish folly has overlaid and obscured it,
there is no more touching story in man’s record than that of the great
renunciation with which Buddha entered upon the work to which he felt
himself called. Brought up in the soul-stealing languor of an Oriental
court, he left everything in order to face the hardships of a solitude
and asceticism in which he was to find that peace which the world could
not give to him, but which, if only he could attain the supreme wisdom,
he might give to the world.
Prince Siddartha, the Buddha that was to be, was the son of Suddhōdana,
King of Kapilavastu in the Tarai of Nepal, under the shadow of the giant
Himalaya mountains. Suddhōdana was the chief of the Shakya, a proud clan,
descended from the solar race of the Gautama. It puzzles the uninstructed
reader to find the Buddha often referred to as Shakya Muni, or Gautama
Buddha. The first of these titles means the hermit or recluse of the
Shakya clan, and Barthélemy St. Hilaire connects the word _muni_ with
the Greek μόνος, the French _moine_, etc. Gautama Buddha simply means
the Buddha of the Gautama race, in contradistinction to the many Buddhas
that preceded him during the countless æons in which the Indians believe,
and to those Buddhas that are yet to be, the next of whom is the Maitriya
Buddha, the Buddha of brotherly love, for whom we have to wait many
thousand years, and who is often represented as lying down and laughing—a
favourite subject with Chinese sculptors and artists. The Queen of King
Suddhōdana was the daughter of King Suprabuddha, a neighbouring monarch,
a princess of such surpassing loveliness, wisdom and virtue, that she was
called Maya the Illusion, for men could not believe that so wondrous a
being could be aught but a dream, a vision, an unreal phantasy.
One night Queen Maya dreamt a dream: in her sleep it seemed to her that
a white elephant with six golden tusks entered her side. She dreamt,
moreover, that she was moving in heavenly space, that she ascended a
great rocky mountain, and that a vast multitude bowed down before her.
When the soothsayers came to interpret her dream, they declared that
they meant that she would bring forth a son who should be marked with
the thirty-two signs which indicate a great man. Either he would remain
in his kingdom and become conqueror and monarch of the universe, or he
would forsake home and the world and receive the full light of wisdom
as a perfect Buddha. Now, when the time of her delivery came near to
being fulfilled, Maya betook herself to her father’s city, and went to
the garden which he had dedicated to his Queen Lumbini, and as she stood
leaning against a certain tree the pains of travail came upon her—for the
mother of a Buddha must bring forth her child standing. Then the great
god Indra raised a mighty tempest, and scaring away all Maya’s women,
took upon himself the disguise of an old midwife, and prepared to receive
the babe in his arms; but the child, pushing the god aside, would have
none of him, but by himself took seven steps towards each of the four
cardinal points of heaven.
To the East he said: “I will reach the highest Nirvana.”
To the South: “I will be the first of all creatures.”
To the West: “This will be my last birth.”
To the North: “I will cross the ocean of Existence.”
Many signs and wonders followed. A heavenly choir of gods and Yakshas
appeared in the sky, hovering over the birthplace and singing hymns of
gladness to celebrate the birth of a Bodhisatva, who after years of
devotion should one day become Buddha and attain supreme wisdom. Two
dragons came out of the clouds, the one spouting warm water, the other
cold, and so the god-like babe was washed. Moreover, it came to pass that
when the appointed time for the child to be taken, as was the custom
among Shakyas, to do homage at the shrine of Shakya Vardana, the statue,
instead of receiving obeisance, bowed down in worship at the babe’s feet.
Then the king knew what manner of son this was, and he perceived that
the soothsayers had spoken truth. Of the two alternative futures which
they had foretold for him, the king would have preferred that he should
become the monarch of the whole world. But the gods knew better. They
knew that he was to be not the monarch of the world, but its freer: the
sacrifice and renunciation of his life were to strike off from millions
the shackles of sin and misery. They knew, moreover, that all the king’s
endeavours to turn the Blessed One from his purpose would be vain; yet
must the king needs try, and so throughout the prince’s youth every
temptation that riches and luxury and pleasure could offer was put in his
way. In the life of the Buddha it is easy to separate the wheat from the
chaff, the facts from the fairy-tales. The great central truth remains
untarnished in spite of all, and so in telling the story we, seeking to
show the inspiration of Oriental mysticism, need hardly rob it of the
mystic glamour of that poetical embroidery in which the rich imagination
of Indian priests has enwrapped it.
Seven days after the birth of her son the beautiful Queen Maya died, and
the babe was given over to the care of her younger sister, Prajapati
Gautami, who was also one of King Suddhōdana’s wives.
It is strange that in his picturesque Buddhist poem, “The Light of Asia,”
Sir Edwin Arnold should have omitted many of the legends with which he
must have been familiar, and which would well have fitted the rather
sensuous character of his verse. Moreover, he mixes up the stories of the
two wives of Prince Siddartha, Yasōdhara and Gopā, and altogether omits
any mention of the birth in the Lumbini Garden. Now the Lumbini Garden
is one of those places connected with the Buddhist records which have
been identified with the utmost certainty. The early Chinese pilgrims
were shown the spot, and were careful with accuracy to describe the
monuments which now, after all these centuries, the Babu Chandra Mukherji
has been able to verify. On the spot where stood the sacred tree under
which, grasping one of its boughs, Maya the Queen gave birth to her son,
contemporary piety, or perhaps at latest that of King Asōka, who lived
two hundred years afterwards, erected a chapel in which stood a sculpture
portraying the nativity.
The ruins of the sacred building may yet be seen, and, much damaged, the
stone image which it enshrined—a barbaric but expressive group. Hard by
there still runs the little stream which Hsüan Chwang tells us was called
the “river of oil,” a name which it still bears. Twenty or twenty-five
paces from the sacred tree is the tank in which Maya bathed, still full
of pure water.
In the days of the Chinese pilgrims there was a great stone pillar which
had been erected by King Asōka; but it had been struck by lightning,
and lay on the ground when they saw it, split in the middle. The pillar
with a perfectly preserved inscription by King Asōka stands close to the
temple. But the most striking proof of all is in the name Lumbini, or
Lummini, which is preserved to this day as Rummin Dei, the initial R of
Sanscrit being changed into L in the Magadhi language of the inscription.
So he who visits the Rummin Dei to-day knows of a certainty that he is
standing on the very spot where some twenty-five centuries ago Prince
Siddartha was born—he who was to found a religion which, above all
others, has, so far as numbers go, dominated mankind. For his disciples
have, indeed, been “as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is upon
the seashore.”
The years went on and the child grew in grace and beauty of mind and
body. His teachers were amazed at the precocity of his knowledge and
wisdom. Learning seemed to come to him by instinct, until at last one
of his masters said to him: “It is thou that art the Guru, not I.” His
stature and strength were phenomenal, qualities upon which tradition was
not slack in embroidering. Was he not sixteen, some say eighteen, feet
tall, and did he not toss a dead elephant over a moat with as great ease
as an ordinary strong man would fling a cat across a ditch?
But with all this he was a child of moods. At an age when other children
are careless of aught save their toys and their games, he would lose
himself in the solitude of the forests and remain wrapped in thought,
deep in meditation. The king, his father, who watched him narrowly,
perceived this, and felt that it boded no good for his own dynastic
ambition. He thought of the prophecy of the soothsayers, and had a
premonition that his son’s greatness would be spiritual rather than
temporal. He foresaw that, however much he might try to turn the boy’s
thoughts towards the world, his labour would be but vain.
Still, he would leave no stone unturned to win him over by the perfumed
softness of Oriental luxury to the pomp and pride of his rank. Three
palaces did he build for him, one for each of the three seasons of the
year—spring, summer and winter—and the plenishing of these was such as
would appeal to every æsthetic sense. The sweetest singers, the daintiest
dancers, were enlisted to brighten the life of the palaces. But against
all the spells of the enchantresses the young prince, already almost a
recluse, was as hard as adamant.
Soon the time came when it was fitting that he should take a wife, and
upon this the king and his councillors based their last hope of turning
his mind to earthly things. We are told that the prince thought long and
anxiously before he could assure himself that marriage would not engross
him to such an extent as to rob him of the calm which was needful for
the contemplation and the search for wisdom, to which he was minded to
dedicate his life.
In the end he consented, but he stipulated that the wife chosen for him
should be no ordinary woman, but such a one as might be a spiritual
helpmate to him. Caste was not to weigh in the scale. She might be a
Kshatriya, a Vaisiya (householder), or even a Sudra (serf). That was of
no account. The mind alone, or perhaps rather what we should call the
soul, must be the test. It is difficult to imagine the consternation
which, if it be true, as it probably is, such a declaration on the part
of a royal prince would arouse among the bigoted Brahmans of his father’s
court.
There was, however, no need to fear a degrading marriage, for when the
maidens of the noble Shakya clan were brought together, Yasōdhara was
chosen for her beauty and her sweet nature. And greatly blessed the
prince was in his choice, for she believed in him as Kadijah did in
Mohammed during the humble days of his life as camel driver, and when
after his long self-banishment in the wilderness, he at last entered
upon his ministration as Buddha, she with her young son Rahula, followed
him as a disciple. But many years were to pass—years fraught with great
happenings—before that should take place.
It is my misfortune that I have no first-hand knowledge derived from
the study in the originals of those books in which the Buddhist legend
is enchased. I am ignorant of Sanscrit, ignorant of Pali—as ignorant,
indeed, as those holy monks and priests who drone out their texts without
any spark of light as to the meaning of the words which they recite by
rote. But, after all, I am not attempting to write any learned treatise
on the religion of Buddha, but simply to give some account as best I may
of the legends which satisfy the spiritual cravings of millions of those
people among whom I have spent several years of my life—legends which
have inspired the art of the Far East just as our own beautiful religion
has inspired that of the West, and which for old sake’s sake, I have
tried to represent in my own Veluvana.
And so I have to cull from a whole garden of books written by French and
English scholars what flowers I can, trying to weld together into some
harmony of story their many dissonances. The chief difficulty begins
with the tales of the marriage or marriages of Prince Siddartha. Not Sir
Edwin Arnold alone is responsible for the tangled skein which we have to
unravel. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, Rhys Davids, Rockhill, Beal, and many
others, have each of them their own version of the traditional events.
With fairy-tales that is inevitable, but the salient facts of truth
remain, and these are the same in all the books.
On the day of Prince Siddartha’s birth there had appeared a mystic tree,
which was called “The Essence of Virtue.” When the prince was twenty
years old this tree was blown down and dammed the water which supplied
Devadeha, which was the city of King Suprabuddha. In vain did the people
try to remove it; but Chandana, the prince’s charioteer, drove him out to
a certain garden whence he could hear the cries of the people, and he was
about to go to their help when a wounded wild goose, the Hansa of Indian
myth, fell at his feet.
The prince took it up and tended it and bound up the wound. Now the goose
had been shot by his kinsman Devadatta, and this was the beginning of a
great enmity between them. For Devadatta sent a messenger to the prince
to demand the bird of him, claiming it as the prize of his bow; but the
prince would not yield it up, saying that the bird belonged to him who
had saved its life rather than to him who would fain have taken it. From
that time forth Devadatta hated him, and appears throughout the whole
story of the Buddha’s life, and even in what are known as the “Birth
Stories” of previous existences, as his bitter enemy.
Then the prince left the garden, and seizing the tree which had defied
all the strength of the people, threw it into the air so that it broke
in two, the halves falling on the two different sides of the stream.
As, after having performed this feat, he was returning home, he saw a
beautiful maiden who was looking out from the terrace in front of her
father’s house. The prince stopped his chariot and a great love sprang up
between the two. The damsel was Gopā, the daughter of Dandapani, a noble
of the Shakya clan.
When King Suddhōdana heard what had happened, he was overjoyed, and asked
the father for the maid as a bride for his son. But Dandapani scorned
Siddartha as a dreamer of dreams. The Kshatriya was like the Samurai of
Japan, whose sword is his soul, and full of this spirit he declared that
it would bring shame upon a warrior were he to give his daughter in
marriage to one who cared not a jot for those manly sports and contests
which beseemed a Kshatriya, but spent his time in idle thought and vain
imaginings. If he wanted Gopā, let him prove his mettle; let him fight
for her and win her against all comers. So a great tourney was held, of
which Gopā was to be the prize.
[Illustration: FIGURE OF THE BUDDHA IN THE AUTHOR’S GARDEN.
_See p. 8._
[_To face p. 24._]
The prince and his two kinsmen, Ananda, who loved him and afterwards
became his disciple, and Devadatta, the betrayer, with all the young
braves of the clan, entered the lists. But it mattered little who opposed
him; none could hold his own against Prince Siddartha. Disputing with
the most learned Gurus, he was always the conqueror. In manly exercises,
horsemanship, wrestling, archery, and many other sports, he defeated all
rivals. He alone could bend the mystic bow of the ancient Shakyas, and
when he shot an arrow into the air and it fell to earth, from that spot
there sprang a jet of healing water, which to this day is shown as the
Arrow Fountain. And so Gopā fell a willing prize to the bow and spear of
the king’s son whom she loved. But Devadatta, beaten at all points, went
his way more than ever bearing hatred and jealousy in his heart.
In spite of all the charms and gentle goodness of his wives, in spite
of the arts and graces of the singing and dancing girls of his palaces,
Prince Siddartha was haunted by pity for the world’s sin and sorrow,
which he divined but which he had not yet seen face to face. The king had
been very careful that all ugly and disquieting sights should be kept out
of his way. But it was all in vain; sooner or later the revelation must
needs come. The four famous drives furnished the certainty. It happened
that once, when he was in his chariot with Chandana, his charioteer, on
their way to the Lumbini Garden, before coming to the city gate, they met
a man bowed, decrepit, toothless, white-haired, tottering feebly with
the help of a stick, stumbling at every step. The prince asked Chandana
what this meant, and Chandana explained to him the misery of old age.
Sadly he turned back, unwilling to go further. Another time they met a
leper stricken with foul disease; a third time they were met by wailings
and lamentation, men carrying a bier, women weeping and beating their
breasts. This was death. Yet once again they drove out, and this time
they met a bikshu—a pious mendicant—with his alms-bowl. Poor, indeed, he
was and ragged, but in his face was written the calm of holy happiness.
Then Prince Siddartha knew that he had found his calling. “Vanity of
vanities,” said the Jewish preacher some four hundred years before
Buddha’s time, “all is vanity.” It was in the spirit of King Solomon that
the prince went to his father and prayed to be relieved of all the pomp
and burthen of royal state and to be allowed to fly the world in quest
of wisdom. But the king would not listen to him, and, on the contrary,
caused the gates of Kapilavastu to be closely guarded lest by any chance
his son should try to escape.
Let me insert here a wonderful coincidence. At the end of the seventh
and beginning of the eighth centuries of our era there lived in the
monastery of Marsaba, that wonderful laura in the wilderness of Judæa,
a monk of great piety and learning, St. John of Damascus, the greatest
ecclesiastical writer of his age, and so eloquent a preacher that, like
another John, the famous Patriarch of Constantinople, he was known as
Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed, or Chrysorrhoas, gold-flowing. What, it
will be asked, has this Syrian monk to do with Prince Siddartha and the
four drives? Listen!
Amongst the many books which St. John of Damascus wrote, or is supposed
to have written, is the story of Barlaam and Josaphat. St. John said that
he received it from travellers coming from India, and so firmly did he
believe in its truth, that at the end of the story he appealed to the two
saints for their intercession on his behalf.
Max Müller sums up the tale as follows: “A king in India, an enemy and
persecutor of the Christians, has an only son. The astrologers have
predicted that he will embrace the new doctrine. His father, therefore,
tries by all means to keep him ignorant of the miseries of the world, and
to create in him a taste for pleasure and enjoyment. A Christian hermit,
however, gains access to this prince, and instructs him in the doctrines
of the Christian religion. The young prince is not only baptized, but
resolves to give up all his earthly riches; and, after having converted
his own father and many of his subjects, he follows his teacher into the
desert.”[2]
But that is not all. In the story of Josaphat, as told by St. John, we
have also the tale of the drives—with this distinction: Whereas the
Buddhist canon, the Lalita Vistara, represents Buddha as seeing on three
successive drives, first an old, then a sick, and at last a dying man,
St. John makes Josaphat meet two men on his first drive, one maimed,
the other blind, and an old man who is nearly dying on the second
drive. That is but a slight difference which would be accounted for by
oral tradition. The coincidence is striking, and has been pointed out
independently by English, French and German scholars; and, as Max Müller
says, it is “as clear as daylight” that “Joannes Damascenus took the
principal character of his religious novel from the Lalita Vistara.” The
first European scholar to notice this was M. Laboulaye.
And now comes the strangest part of the story. So popular did St. John’s
tale become, that it was translated into every European language. Barlaam
and Josaphat were canonized both in the Eastern and Western Churches. In
the Greek Church the 26th of August is their saints’ day, in the Western
Church the 27th of November. “If all that is human and personal in the
life of St. Josaphat is taken from the Lalita Vistara, what follows? It
follows ... that Josaphat is the Buddha of the Buddhist canon. It follows
that Buddha has become a saint in the Roman Church; it follows that,
though under a different name, the sage of Kapilavastu, the founder of
a religion which, whatever we may think of its dogma, is in the purity
of its morals nearer to Christianity than any other religion, and which
counts even now, after an existence of 2,400 years, 455,000,000 of
believers, has received the highest honours that the Christian Church
can bestow. And whatever we may think of the sanctity of saints, let
those who doubt the right of Buddha to a place among them read the story
of his life in the Buddhist canon. If he lived the life that is there
described, few saints have a better claim to the title than Buddha; and
no one, either in the Greek or Roman Church, need be ashamed of having
paid to Buddha’s memory the honour that was intended for St. Josaphat,
the prince, the hermit, and the saint.”[3]
One night, when the palace was hushed in sleep, the prince roused his
faithful charioteer Chandana, and bade him to saddle his horse Kantaka
and prepare to follow him. He passed through the many halls where the
women, beautiful and graceful by day, were lying asleep in careless and
ugly attitudes. It was the reverse of the medal, the repulsive side of
luxury, and the sight filled him with loathing. Accompanied by Chandana,
he left the palace and entered the slumbering streets of the city. By a
miracle they cheated the watchfulness of the guard at the gate and rode
out into the open country. When they had gone some way the prince took
off all his jewels and sent Chandana back with injunctions to give them
to Prajapati Gautami, who had been a mother to him when her sister Maya
died. Then he went on alone into the wilderness. By the way he met a
hunter, with whom he exchanged his stately attire for rough countryman’s
clothes, and in this fashion entered upon the six years of an asceticism
such as the world has perhaps never seen. In his loneliness five men
came and joined him as his disciples, sharing the hardships of his
self-imposed penance.
At the end of those six long years of starvation and wretchedness and
mortification of the flesh, when the Blessed One, resisting all the
temptations of Mara, the evil spirit, and his three beautiful daughters,
had reduced his body to a mere shadow, there came a moment when it was
revealed to him that not by asceticism alone could he hope to attain his
goal. Not in that way could he destroy the power and misery of sin. He
determined to go back to the world, not, indeed, as a warrior-prince, a
mighty conqueror, but as a poor and humble teacher, striving to bring
help and virtue to his fellow-men. A young village maiden, whose name
was Sujata, took pity upon his abject state, and brought him bowls of
sweet milk to comfort him and restore his wasted strength. Naturally
enough, legend worked upon this pretty idyll, telling how Sujata milked
a thousand cows, and “with their milk fed five hundred cows, with theirs
two hundred and fifty, and so on down to eight. Thus aspiring after
quality and sweetness, she did what is called working the milk in.” Then
she boiled the milk of the eight cows, and, to the accompaniment of many
miracles, fed the Buddha with this restoring essence of milk. (Rhys
Davids, “Birth Stories,” Vol. I., page 91, etc.) But his five friends,
angry with him for leaving the ascetic life, turned away from him as a
renegade and left him.
So the Blessed One departed out of the wilderness and came to Rajagriha
and entered the Mrighadeva, the deer forest, hard by the city. There for
seven days and nights he sat in meditation under the Bo tree (_Ficus
religiosa_), until at the end of that time he became conscious that he
had attained the supreme wisdom and was now Buddha. Under that tree he
preached the first sermon, and the five friends who had deserted him were
converted and came back. Countless numbers of people from the king of
that country, Bimbisara, downwards, flocked to listen to his teaching.
Among others came his own wife Yasōdhara, bearing him no grudge for
having left her, and bringing her young son Rahula. By that name there
hangs a tale. When it was told to the Blessed One that a son had been
born to him, he answered: “There has been born to me an impediment.” This
answer was repeated to King Suddhōdana, and he said, “Let the boy be
called Rahula, The Impediment.”
When the king heard that his grandson and his mother had gone to follow
in the wake of the Buddha, he was sorely grieved. His son had left him.
Eight messengers whom he had sent begging him to return had failed in
their mission, and themselves remained as disciples with the Blessed One;
and now he had but this child to look to for the perpetuation of his name
and of his dynasty. Blind—and no wonder, for who can read the future?—he
could not see that this son of his would win for himself and for his
father a name beside which all the glory and pride of their Heaven-born
ancestors would be but a cloud dispelled by the first ray of morning sun.
Three influences have ruled the spirits of men since the dawn of the
world—Buddha, Mohammed and One other, the greatest of the three. But that
other was God.
What would have been the winning of one or more provinces, what the
slaughter of a few hundreds or even thousands of bowmen and spearmen,
compared with the conquest of the souls of billions of fellow-creatures
through the length and breadth of Asia? The old king’s name lives, but it
lives as that of the father of no warrior, but of a great teacher whose
doctrine has given peace and happiness to the souls of men instead of
shedding the blood which clogs the footsteps of the earthly conqueror.
We, holding fast the Christian creed, may say with confidence that of all
mere _men_ who have lived since the creation of the world Buddha was the
greatest. Next to him, I should count Confucius, and after Confucius,
Mohammed.
Nothing in Buddha’s life seems to me greater than the victory which he
achieved over himself when he became convinced of the aimlessness of the
ascetic life. He had left his palaces, his wife, and all the pomp of
his father’s court, in order to fly from the world and its temptations
and lead a life of privation and meditation. After six years he saw the
futility of such a life. His aim was to do something that should redeem
the world from sin and its miseries. How could solitude, starvation and
mere meditation achieve that?
So, in spite of the indignation of the five men who had followed him into
the ascetic life, he determined to go back into the world and live for
the good of others instead of sitting wrapped in his own thoughts. He
believed that he had achieved the great good, and he realized the fact
that his attitude was one of utter selfishness, barren of all result,
and leading to nothing. The disappointment and the desertion of his
five followers must have been bitter. But comfort came to him in time,
for they grew to know that he was right and were converted as trusty
disciples to his new creed. From the time that he left the shade of the
Bodhi tree his ministration began. He knew that he had received the
sublime gift of wisdom, and that the gift was not for himself alone, but
for the purification and happiness of all mankind. It was no doubt a
great struggle to give up the illusion of six long years and the dream of
many more. But it was also a great triumph, the turning-point of a life
that was so full of destiny.
I have already told how the first Vihara was established in the Veluvana,
the pious gift of King Bimbisara, but the chief home of the Buddha was
another garden or grove called the Jétavana, which a certain minister
named Anatha Pindaka had bought at a great price from Jéta, the son
of the King of Sravasti. Here the Buddha dwelt for more than twenty
years, and there he uttered the Jātakas, or Birth Stories, which have
been preserved mainly thanks to his kinsman Ananda. For it is a strange
coincidence that, as in Christianity so in Buddhism, there is no written
word by the Master. These Jātakas are of the nature of parables by which
the Buddha was wont to illustrate the events of the present by stories of
what had taken place in a former state of existence; and as the Buddha’s
life was one long struggle against the treacherous designs of his enemy
Devadatta, so in the Jātakas we find a constant reference to the feud as
having existed in previous incarnations.
When first the Buddha began to preach, women were not admitted into the
Holy Order; but there soon came a moment when they, too, yearned to
listen to the teaching of the Master. A certain noble of the Shakya clan
took his wife and a number of Shakya ladies to sit at the feet of the
Blessed One. Among them it is to be inferred were Gopā and others of the
Buddha’s wives. But Yasōdhara was not among the very first, for she still
longed for her lost husband, and hoped against hope that he might yet
come back to her. But when she saw that this could not be, she, too, was
converted and became a saint, earning the praise of the Blessed One for
her modesty and virtue.
Now Devadatta, seeing the great power of the Tathāgata (Buddha), had,
against his will, for it would deprive him of all chance of sovereignty,
become a Bhikshu, and carrying the beggar’s bowl, had set up a Vihara in
rivalry to that of the Buddha. He, too, must needs convert disciples,
both men and women. It chanced that among the latter there was a young
married woman, who, though she knew it not, was with child when she
joined the sisterhood. When she discovered how matters stood with her,
she made no attempt at concealment, but told her superiors of her case.
Upon report being made of this to Devadatta, he was wroth, and declared
that as she had broken her vows she must be disgraced and banished from
the community. In shame and sorrow she came to the Blessed One and laid
her case before him.
He was moved with pity, but saw that it would do harm to the Holy Order
and give offence to the weaker brethren and sisters if he were to admit
a nun who had been rejected as unchaste by Devadatta, unless she could
prove her innocence. So he ordered that an inquiry should be made, and
upon the assurance of a wise woman, named Visakha, that the girl’s
condition was not due to any violation of the rules of the order, but
was only the natural result of her marriage before she entered the
sisterhood, he accepted her, and when the nun’s child was born, he was
known as Kassapa the Prince, and was brought up in royal state. The
Master justified his action by the story told in the following Jātaka,
which is given at great length by Rhys Davids.
Long ages ago the Bodhisatva came to life as a deer. When he was born
he was of a golden colour, his eyes were like round jewels, his horns
were white as silver, his mouth was red as a cluster of Kamala flowers,
his hoofs were bright and hard as lacquer-work, his tail as fine as the
tail of a Tibetan ox, and his body as large as a foal’s. He was known as
the Banyan deer, and lived in a forest with an attendant herd of five
hundred deer, over which he was king. Near him dwelt another deer, also
gold-coloured, with a like herd of deer under him. He was known as the
Monkey deer.
Now the King of Benares at that time was a mighty hunter, and made his
people neglect their work in order to go and beat for him. So the people
took counsel together, and resolved to make an enclosure, driving all the
deer into it and giving them over to the king, so that their work should
be no longer hindered. So the two herds were driven into the enclosure,
and when the king went there, he saw the two gold-coloured deer and
granted them their lives. But he, loving venison, would go sometimes to
shoot a deer and at other times sent his cook to kill one. At last, when
the deer, terrified and often wounded, were in despair, they went to the
Bodhisatva and told him of their piteous case. So he made a bargain with
the king of the other herd—the Monkey deer—that the two herds should in
turn each day by lot send a deer to the place of execution, so that at
the least there should be no more wounding.
One day it happened the lot fell upon a hind in the herd of the Monkey
deer. But she being great with young, went to the Monkey deer and said:
“Lord! I am with young. When I have brought forth my son, we will both
take our turn. Order that the turn shall pass me by.” But the Monkey deer
refused, saying that he could not make her lot fall upon others, and sent
her away.
Seeing that there was no help in him, she appealed to the Bodhisatva, and
he took pity upon her, and went himself and put his neck upon the block
of execution and lay down. When the cook came and saw that the king of
the deer whose life had been promised him was there, he went and told
the king, who, seeing the Bodhisatva, said: “My friend, the king of the
deer! Did I not grant you your life? Why are you here?” The Bodhisatva
answered: “O great king! A hind with young came and told me that the lot
had fallen upon her. How could I transfer her miserable lot to another?
So I, giving my life for hers, am lying here. Have no suspicion, O
mighty king!” Then was the king moved to great compassion, and saying
that never, even among men, had he seen so great pity, gave their lives
both to him and to the hind. But more than that, after listening to the
Bodhisatva, he decreed that no beasts or birds or fish should thenceforth
be killed.
After that, the deer, sure of their lives, began to lay waste and eat
the crops of the people, so they complained to the king, who bade them
begone, for he might give up his kingdom, but not his oath. Then the
Banyan deer called together the herds and forbade them to eat the crops;
and he sent a message to the husbandmen, telling them that they need put
up no fences, but that it would be enough if they tied leaves round the
edge of the fields as a sign. But he continued to instruct the deer thus
throughout his life, and passed away with his herd according to their
deeds. The king also hearkened to the words of the Bodhisatva, and then
in due time passed away according to his deeds.
When the Master had finished this story of the Banyan deer he explained
its meaning to the assembled disciples.
“He who was then the Monkey deer was Devadatta, his herd was Devadatta’s
following, the hind was the Nun, her son was Kassapa the Prince, the King
was Ananda, but the royal Banyan deer was myself.” (Rhys Davids, “Birth
Stories,” Vol. I., pages 201-210.)
Purged of its wild extravagances, the Lalita Vistara, the story told by
Ananda, gives much insight into the purity and sweet reasonableness of
the Blessed One’s teaching. Shortly before descending upon earth to be
born of Queen Maya, he is seated in the Tsushita (Heaven) surrounded
by gods and saints, to whom he delivers this last parting message (I
am translating from the version of Foucaux, quoted by Barthélemy St.
Hilaire):
“Be careful to avoid all immodesty. All the divine and pure pleasures are
the fruit of good work. Take heed, then, of your deeds. If you have not
laid up for yourselves these previous virtues, you are hurrying to that
goal where, far from happiness, we experience misery and suffer every
ill. Desire is neither lasting nor consistent; it is even as a dream, a
mirage, the lightning, the foam of the sea. Observe the practice of the
Law; the man who faithfully observes these holy practices meets with no
evil. Loving tradition, morality and charity, be constant in patience
and purity. Act in a spirit of mutual loving-kindness, in a spirit of
helpfulness. Remember the Buddha, the Law and the congregation of the
faithful. All that you see in me of supernatural power, of science, and
of strength is produced by the agency of virtue, which is its cause,
and comes from tradition, from morality and from modesty. Do you, too,
practise this perfect restraint. It is not by phrases, nor by words, nor
by crying that we can attain the doctrine of virtue. Acquire it by deeds;
act according to your professions; never cease in making efforts. Not
every one who acts is rewarded, but whoso does not act obtains nothing.
Beware of pride, of haughtiness, and of arrogance; always gentle, and
never straying from the straight path, be diligent in following the road
which leads to Nirvana. Bestir yourselves in the search after the Road
of Salvation, and with the lamp of wisdom dispel utterly the darkness
of ignorance. Rid yourselves of the net of sin which is accompanied by
repentance. But what skills it to say more? The Law is full of reason and
of purity. When I shall have obtained the supreme intelligence, when the
rain of the Law which leads to immortality shall fall, then come back to
listen anew to the Law which I shall teach you.”
Then were the Gods consumed by sorrow at the loss of the Blessed One; but
he comforted them by leaving in his place the Bodhisatva Maitriya, whom
he consecrated by giving him his tiara and his diadem. Maitriya, then,
will become Buddha (_vide supra_), when the corrupted world shall have
lost all memory of the teaching of Shakya Muni.
* * * * *
The Buddha’s life upon earth was prolonged far beyond the span which is
allotted to most men. He was some thirty years old when he first began to
preach, and his ministration lasted fifty-three years. Surely it is not
irreverent to apply to him the words of the Hebrew Psalmist: “Mark the
perfect man and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.”
Render “Peace” by “Nirvana,” no bad translation, indeed, and you have
the Buddha. When at the last he felt that the dark mystery of death
was overshadowing him, and that the end was at hand, he bade Ananda go
and tell the Mallas of Kusinārā that their master would pass away at
midnight, and invited them to come to him. There was at that time in
Kusinārā an old and decrepit man a hundred and twenty years of age, upon
whom the people looked as a saint. His name was Subhadra. This venerable
man, believing in the greatness of the Blessed One, begged of him the
boon of passing away before him; and, this being granted, Subhadra gave
up the ghost. But when the assembled Bhikshus, being astonished at this
favour, inquired the reason, the Blessed One told two last Birth Stories.
“Bhikshus, in days gone by there lived in a valley a deer, the master of
a thousand deer; he was prudent, wide-awake and of quick perception. One
day a hunter espied him and told the king. So the king assembled his army
and surrounded all the deer and their leader. Then the leader thought:
‘If I do not protect these deer they will all be destroyed.’ So looking
about the place in which they were penned, he perceived a torrent flowing
through the valley; but the stream was so swift that the deer feared lest
it should carry them away. But the leader jumped into the water, and
finding foothold in the middle, cried to the herd: ‘Come, jump from the
bank on to my back and thence to the other bank; it is the only means of
saving your lives; if you do not do this you will surely die!’ The herd
of deer obeyed, and though their hoofs striking his back cut the skin
and tore the flesh, he never flinched. When as it seemed all the deer
had crossed the water, he looked back, and saw a calf that had been left
behind and could not cross over. Then, torn and bruised and racked with
pain, he took the calf on his back, and crossed the stream with it. All
the herd had now passed over, but the great stag knew that death was
near, and he cried: ‘May what I have done to preserve the joy of life to
these deer and this calf make me cast off sin, and obtain boundless and
perfect light; may I become a Buddha, cross over the sea of regeneration
to perfection and salvation, and pass beyond all sorrow.’ ...
“What think ye, Bhikshus? I am he who was then the leader of the herd.
The deer are now the five hundred Mallas and the fawn is Subhadra.”
(Adapted from Rockhill’s “Life of Buddha,” page 137 _et seq._)
One more Jātaka he uttered, and that was the last. He warned his weeping
disciples not to mourn for him, or to look upon him as lost, for inasmuch
as they had his law and his doctrine, he would still be with them. He
spoke to them of the four places where pious men would rear monuments
in his honour: (1) The Lumbini Garden, where he was born; (2) the place
under the Sacred Fig-tree, where he became Buddha; (3) the Mrighadeva,
the deer forest, from where the first sermon was preached; (4) the place
where he died at Kusinārā.
At the last the Blessed One, uncovering his body, said to the Bhikshus:
“Brethren, look well at the Tathāgata’s body, for it is as hard to find
a Tathāgata as to see a flower on a fig-tree. Bhikshus! never forget
it: decay is inherent to all things!” These were the last words of the
Tathāgata. And so in the fullness of time, calm and holy, he entered
Nirvana, that state in which all the desires, all the cares and all
the sorrows of life have ceased to be. Is not that the ideal of “Peace,
perfect peace?”
* * * * *
There is a Japanese proverb which says: “Meeting is the beginning of
parting.” Pregnant, indeed, are those six words, for in them are summed
up all the sorrows and the one inevitable certainty of life. When the
parting with those who are dear to us takes place, how we treasure some
trifle which brings to life recollections of the sweet communion of the
past! And so it is with those relics of which I spoke at the beginning of
this chapter. When Assheton Smith, the famous sportsman, was told that
he must take his ailing wife to the South of France, he, being a wealthy
man, answered: “That I cannot do, but I can and will bring the South of
France to her.” And so there arose that marvellous conservatory, a glass
palace, which I remember well, when nearly sixty years ago I used to go
and stay with Lord Broughton, Byron’s friend, who rented the place. In
our humble way we bring home to ourselves the lands endeared to us by the
careless gaiety of former days, scenes which are peopled by the ghosts of
old friends whom we conjure up, living once more in the sunshine of happy
youth. Is not that the chief sanity of the collector’s madness?
BUDDHA AND ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND CASTE—THE ARYANS
There are few days in the year, even in mid-winter, or, what is worse
still, in March, when I cannot sit out in my Veluvana, a sun-trap snugly
sheltered from the north and the biting east. It is my thinking-place,
and on this 28th of January, for some mysterious reason, with his image
before me, my thoughts have been held entirely by the Buddha himself.
Not that I am a Buddhist, or in the remotest degree likely to become
one, though we hear of convinced followers of that religion even among
Englishmen; but, as those who condescend to read me will have guessed,
the story of his life has a great attraction for me, and that none the
less because it is the record of one of the greatest rebellions that ever
took place. Indeed, there is something weirdly fascinating in the history
of all revolution even where we most hate it. What show-place can possess
greater interest than the tragic collections of the Musée Carnavalet in
what was once Madame de Sévigné’s home in Paris? Yet it is made up of
relics which make men shudder, especially those few still left who, like
myself, long ago knew not a few people who had lived through the days of
the Terreur.
I have stood in that house of gruesome memories spellbound by a
fascination such as that by which a snake paralyses its victim. In
quite another way I am entranced by the upheaval which was the work
of the Buddha. There was not the faintest likeness between the two
revolutions—indeed, they were diametrically opposites. The one all fury,
flame and murder—hatred, the guillotine, and the _noyades_ of the Loire.
The other, the calm extinction of all passion, all human desire, all
ambition; a life spent in holy contemplation and in the wooing of that
supreme wisdom which is virtue.
And yet Martin Luther himself, when he passionately scourged the Pope
and his Bishop for the sale of indulgences, was not a more zealous rebel
than this calm and contemplative Buddha, who, renouncing all honours and
titles and worldly possessions for himself, contented, like St. Francis,
to don the monk’s robe and to carry the beggar’s bowl, entered his
peaceful protest against the usurpations and pretensions of the crafty
Brahmans, who had long since drifted away from the simple and poetically
beautiful teaching of the Rig Veda, albeit they acknowledged its
authority as Sruti—inspiration, looking upon it as their one inspired
sacred Book.[4] In that wonderful collection of hymns and prayers about
which I wish to say a few words later there is no allusion to suttee—the
awful institution under which widows are burnt with their dead husbands;
none to child-marriages, another cruelty; none to caste. All of these
were inventions of the Brahmans, and it was upon the doctrine of caste
that they founded their claim to superiority over the kings and princes
whom they had gradually supplanted.
So long as the king and priest were one—so long, that is to say, as the
king conducted the ceremonies and sacrifices of religion—the authority
of the king was unchallenged.[5] But there came a moment when the
kings grew weary of a tedious ritual and delegated their religious
duties to substitutes. That was the opportunity of the priestcraft,
who, as the intercessors between the people and their gods—a powerful
position indeed—were able to claim a rank higher than that of the king
himself. Here was the beginning of Caste. When Buddha entered upon his
ministry there were four castes: (1) The Brahmans, or priests; (2) the
Kshatriya, the warrior and governing class, to which the kings and
princes belonged—a class analogous to the Samurai or Bushi of Japan;
(3) the Vaisiyas—farmers, traders, etc. These three classes, all of
Aryan descent, were, and are, “the twice-born,” whose second birth is
symbolized by their being invested with the sacred cord at an age which
more or less corresponds to that of confirmation with us. (4) The Sudras
were the fourth class; they were the lowest of all—despised as the
descendants of the Dasyu, the enemies of the bright gods, the aborigines
who were defeated by the migration of the white Aryan herdsmen descending
upon India from the lofty plains of the Pamirs.
We talk glibly enough of Caste, yet there are not many of us who have any
glimmering of light as to its real meaning or origin. The majority of
Europeans speak of the word as if it were of Hindu origin, whereas it is
simply a Portuguese word signifying race or family. In its present sense,
indeed, it is of quite modern birth, for the old Portuguese Barbosa,
writing in the sixteenth century, only uses the word _casta_ in the sense
of family, speaking of men and women _de boa casta_, of good family. When
he wished to indicate the mysterious divisions of Indian society, he used
the word _leis_, laws, _leis de gentios_, laws of the heathen. (Sir Henry
Yule’s glossary.) Apart from the word, we are apt to speak of Caste as if
it were an institution, respectable at any rate on account of its hoary
antiquity. Old it certainly is, yet it was not known to the sacred poets
of the Rig Veda.
The word which comes nearest to caste in Sanskrit is “Varna” (colour),
and in the early days of the Aryan invasion of India there were only
two classes: the white conquerors and the “Dasyu,” or enemies, who were
black, and, as the conquered people, looked down upon. What we call
caste, then, which was originally a question of skin, had already in the
Buddha’s time, five centuries before our era, become far more complicated
than that. Ethnologically, the division between the white man and the
black, the Arya and the Dasyu, the conqueror and the conquered, was as
sharp as ever. But whereas the dark man remained as he was—the lowest
of the castes—political reasons and the lust of power had subdivided
the conquering race into three distinct classes, and, as I have said
above, it was upon that subdivision that the Brahmans laid the “precious
corner-stone” of their priestly tyranny.
When the glorious young prince, a Kshatriya and the heir to the throne,
the incomparable scholar and athlete, the man whom men envied and women
loved, cast aside his royal rank and went forth into the wilderness,
taking upon himself all the burthens and privations of the poorest and
meanest, in order that for them he might work, striving for the good
of all mankind without distinction of colour or race, the Brahmans
were forced to see in him a hostile champion, armed to attack their
stronghold. He went further than this: he denied the divine authority of
the Veda, without which the whole structure of Brahmanism crumbles to
dust, and so he finally was branded as a heretic.
What cannot fail to excite surprise is the fact that although Buddhism
“became the state religion of India under Asōka, the Constantine of
India, in the middle of the third century B.C.” (Max Müller), and was
only declining in the seventh century A.D., caste should not utterly
have disappeared. But that was not the case—on the contrary, it has
become more and more involved, for there are now not only the three
divisions of the twice-born Aryas, and the outcast Sudras, but there are,
moreover, the subdivisions to which professions and occupations have
given rise; the goldsmith, for example, looking down upon the bootmaker
and leather worker, and he, in his turn, refusing to hold communion with
some craftsman whose superior he deems himself to be. No wonder caste
has been described as “a standing puzzle to governors and the despair of
all employers of labour.” Life is, indeed, complicated when the shadow
of a man of meaner birth falling upon a boiling pot defiles the food
which it contains by an impurity which is almost worse than poison. As
in an Oriental household, perhaps even in a European household, it
has been said that no matter how low a menial may be, there is always
someone a step lower to whom by payment he may assign some of his duties;
so below the Sudras there is the Pariah, the outcast, who, as the word
implies, should carry a bell to give timely warning of the approaching
contamination of his shadow.
Max Müller, in his “Chips from a German Workshop,” quotes a table by
Berghaus showing the relative numbers of the people professing the chief
religions into which the world is divided. Nothing can better show the
extent of the influence which Buddhism, with an advantage of 500 years
and more over Christianity, 1,100, and more, over Mohammedanism, has
exercised upon mankind.
Buddhists 31.2
Christians 30.7
Mohammedans 15.7
Brahmanists 13.4
Various heathens 8.7
Jews 0.3
In a note, Max Müller adds that: “As Berghaus does not distinguish the
Buddhists in China from the following of Confucius and Lao Tze, the first
place on the scale belongs really to Christianity. It is difficult in
China to say to what religion a man belongs, as the same person may
profess two or three. The Emperor himself, after sacrificing to the
ritual of Confucius, visits a Tao-ssŭ Temple, and afterwards bows before
an image of Fo in a Buddhist chapel.”
[Illustration: PROFESSOR F. MAX-MÜLLER.
_After a copyright photograph by Elliott & Fry, London._
[_To face p. 52._]
_Ex Oriente lux._ We see from this table that all the chief religions of
the world have their rise, like the sun, in the East.
I have observed with no little astonishment that certain pundits of
to-day speak in somewhat offensively patronizing tones of Max Müller, as
if he were a thing of the past, all very well in his day, but not up to
date, and already superseded. As to that, whether his theories upon the
subject of mythology and comparative religion were sound or not, I am not
competent to judge; but I feel that if others have pushed his work a step
further than the point at which he left it, we may fairly ask whether,
without his great labours, these sages would have attained their own
success. There is no finality in science, and a Newton or a Faraday is in
no way dethroned if others have built on the foundations which he laid.
The world does not stand still, and it is the common fate of the pioneer
that some new man should go beyond what he has reached. However that may
be, the collating, translating and editing of the sacred books of India,
and the editing of the thirty volumes of the sacred books of the East,
including Chinese and Arabic works, were a colossal labour—the work of a
lifetime, which has been of national and international value. All honour
to the workman!
I first met Max Müller sixty years ago at the Deanery at Christ
Church, where the evening parties were gatherings of all that was
most distinguished in university life. He was then a most attractive
personality, brilliant, of course, still young, not very tall, but
extremely good-looking, an accomplished musician, the friend of
Mendelssohn. His conversation was delightfully illuminating, and he
was generous enough not to grudge the enjoyment of it to a humble
undergraduate who was only too ready to sit at his feet. It was a regret
to me that I left Oxford to enter the Foreign Office without having had
the chance of attending his lectures; but his works on the Science of
Language, and especially his “Chips from a German Workshop,” written at
the behest of the great Bunsen, who persuaded the directors of the old
East India Company on public grounds to defray the expense of his edition
of the Vedas, have been to me the joy of many years, and still continue
to fill many an idle moment, robbing it of its idleness, for who could be
idle with Max Müller?
* * * * *
A very charming book is Sabatier’s “Life of St. Francis of Assisi.” To
me one of its chief attractions lies in the strong parallel between
the life of the mediæval saint and the Eastern reformer. The points of
divergence are no more than would be accounted for by the differences of
time, place and surroundings. St. Francis was not a prince of the blood
royal like the Buddha, but he was the son of a rich man, one of those
merchants and men of mark who travelled through the world, visiting all
the important fairs of those days, and received as welcome guests by
the great nobles. Indeed, they, too, had a sort of patent of nobility
of their own, belonging to a guild of popularity—for in those days
when newspapers were not, the rare visits of a man who could bring the
latest court gossip from Paris or London, and whose waggons were often
laden with golden tribute sent from beyond the sea to the Pope, were
looked forward to with no little pleasure. So Francis, in his gilded
youth, became one of the leading youngsters of the town, foremost in all
mischief and riotous living, a fighter and a daredevil, ruffling it in
all the fantastic coxcombry of weapons and dress which the ingenuity of
mediæval tailors and armourers could devise.
Fighting there was in plenty in the Italian cities of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, and who so ready to fight as the extravagant
young scapegrace, who was as keen to throw away his life as his money?
After one of the local raids came imprisonment for a year—then more
fighting, followed by illness, fever and repentance; after that solitude,
meditation, and the final renunciation of the world, the flesh and the
devil, when the manifest likeness to the Buddha first asserted itself.
The long, lonely silences in the _carceri_, the little natural caves
on the side of Mount Subasio, when the saint, plunged in profoundest
thought, was dreaming dreams of founding an order which was to save
mankind, cannot but remind us of the royal prince starving in the
wilderness, he, too, dreaming of the rescue of the world from sin. Both
founded their orders on principles which involved the giving up of
everything to which men hold most firmly. There was to be no property,
no house, no home, no family. Rags and beggary were no disgrace—rather
the hall-mark of a spiritual nobility. Homeless, their disciples were
to wander forth, trusting in Providence and charity, which should do
something towards filling the beggar’s bowl. Neither saw at first that
these were conditions which sooner or later must break down. Religion
needs its luxuries and will have them: a school of absolute effacement
of the world was impossible in the West as it had been in the East. To
venture any minute sketch of the aims of the two reformers is beyond
what I can do here. Both were animated by the most perfect spirit of
self-sacrifice with which they vainly endeavoured to inspire their
orders, but no founder of religion has yet succeeded in establishing
principles from which their so-called disciples have not sooner or later
found self-justified means of breaking away.
One prominent feature in the characters of these two saintly men has in
it a touch of poetry which it were ill to miss. Both loved animals with
a love that was almost holy. The Buddha held the taking of all life to
be a sin, and it is impossible to read the Birth Stories, to which I
have alluded elsewhere, without feeling that they were inspired by the
tenderest sympathy. St. Francis preached to the birds, and when Buddha
taught in the Deer Forest near Benares, stags and hinds stood still and
listened.
“Birds, my brethren,” said St. Francis to the birds that fluttered round
him, “it is your duty greatly to praise and love your Creator. He has
given you feathers for raiment, wings to fly, and filled all your needs.
He has made you the noblest of His creatures; He allows you to live in
the pure air: you have no need to sow or to reap, but He cares for you,
protects you and directs you.” And the birds stretched their necks,
spread their wings, opened their beaks and looked at him as if thanking
him, while he walked about amongst them, caressing them with the hem of
his robe. Then he gave them his blessing and took leave of them.
When he was preaching at Alviano the swallows made such a noise with
their twittering that he could not make himself heard. The gentle saint
rebuked them: “It is my turn to speak,” he said. “Swallows, little
sisters, listen to the Word of God, be silent and hold your peace, until
I shall have said my say!” But for all this and much more, how St.
Francis praised God for all His creatures and specially for “My Lord
the Sun, for of Thee, oh! Most High, he is the symbol,”[6] we must turn
to the pages of Sabatier. To St. Francis, as to the Buddha, all God’s
creatures and the life which He gave them were sacred.
If there was much that was alike in the two men, there was one point in
which they essentially differed. St. Francis was no scholar. He knew a
little Latin, which he had learnt from the monks of St. George; that was
a necessity for a man in his position, for Latin was a sort of lingua
franca in his day, and was the language of sermons and of political
discussions. Writing was a difficulty to him; he rarely took a pen in
his hand and could do little more than sign his name. The autograph
of the Sacro Convento, which is held to be genuine, gives evidence of
great awkwardness. For the most part, he dictated, and would sign his
letters with a simple T, the symbol of the Holy Cross. The Buddha, on
the contrary, like St. Paul among the Pharisees, was a man of learning,
deeply versed in the classics of the Brahmans, and well able to hold
his own in discussions with the priests upon religion and upon the
interpretation of the poems of the Rig Veda.
[Illustration: ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI PREACHING TO THE BIRDS.
_By Giotto._
[_To face p. 58._]
There is no ancient historical problem of so great interest as that of
the Aryas, that mysterious people of whom we talk so much and know so
little, as has been pointed out. The movements of the planets, the orbits
of comets, have been accurately calculated; Nature is continually being
compelled to yield many of her secrets to the patient investigations of
science. But of this masterful white race, some of whom, from the high
tablelands of Central Asia, swarmed down upon India as conquerors, while
others, wandering by the shores of the Caspian Sea, overran Europe to
become the progenitors of all that is noblest in mankind, there is no
record, no history, and in regard to them even fable is silent. Where
there is no writing, not so much as a graven stone, there can be no
Champollion, no Rawlinson. The migrations of the Aryas, which meant so
much for the children of men, were long unsuspected, and only in recent
times realized. Even so, the few men of learning who gave thought to this
crucial human enigma were travellers in a dense and dark forest, until
in the Cimmerian gloom comparative philology opened out vistas—none too
broad—through which they were enabled to gain glimpses of a civilization
and people of whom all trace had been lost in the mist of many decades of
centuries. Narrow as they were, they afforded the ποῦ στῶ, from which the
investigation of the lost history was set in motion.
Of this modern learning we must acknowledge Max Müller as the foremost
prophet. Bopp, Schlegel, Humboldt, Grimm and Burnouf were great men,
but Max Müller, like Saul among the Benjamites, “from his shoulders and
upward was higher” than any of them, and he it was who introduced the
science of language into this country. To one who, like myself, has been
a faithful believer in his teaching, it is a matter of unceasing wonder
that there should be men of undoubted scientific and literary merit who
hold in opposition to him that the Aryas were originally a European
race, who in remote times found their way into Central Asia. This bold
theory was started about the year 1839 by a famous Belgian geologist
and ethnologist, Omalius d’Halloy, and it was taken up by no less a man
than Robert Gordon Latham, by Benfey, Spiegel, Poesche, Penka, Schrader
and others. Max Müller appears to attribute the idea to Benfey, a Jew,
who was a learned Orientalist and professor of comparative philology at
Göttingen. In Vol. IV., page 223, of Max Müller’s “Chips from a German
Workshop,” we read: “We have all accustomed ourselves to look for the
cradle of the Aryan languages in Asia, and to imagine these dialects
flowing like streams from the centre of Asia to the south, the west
and the north. I must confess that Professor Benfey’s protest against
this theory seems to me very opportune, and his arguments in favour of
a more Northern, if not European, origin of the whole Aryan family of
speech deserve, at all events, far more attention than they have hitherto
received.”
In spite of this, Max Müller does not seem to have bestowed that
attention upon them, for I can find nothing either in confirmation or
contradiction of the theory. He at once goes off at a tangent on the
comparative inter-relations of the various Aryan _languages_ among
themselves, but on the supposed European origin of the Aryan _race_ he
is silent. I think it just possible that Max Müller may have wished to
pay Benfey a compliment without committing himself to an endorsement of
his views. Benfey had been strongly recommended to him by Bunsen, his
own great friend and patron, for whom he cherished the most grateful
affection.
In a letter, dated from Heidelberg, February 26th, 1855, Bunsen writes:
“I wish you would take advantage of my communication to put yourself
into correspondence with Benfey. He is well disposed towards you, and
has openly spoken of you as the ‘apostle of German science in England.’
And then he stands infinitely higher than the present learned men of his
department.” The desire to please Bunsen would account for Max Müller’s
faint praise of Benfey’s theory, but its adoption would have seemed
nothing less than the negation of all that he had so long striven to
teach. (Cf. “Chips from a German Workshop,” Vol. III., page 469.) Of
Omalius d’Halloy, Latham and the rest, Max Müller seems to take no heed.
At any rate, I do not find them mentioned either in the “Chips” or in the
lectures on the Science of Language.
I, for my part, should as soon accept the doctrine, in which I saw the
other day that there is still here and there a believer, that the world
is a flat surface, justifying the terrors of the sailors of Columbus
lest, when they reached the extreme west, they should topple over, ship
and all, into space or Hades, by whatever name you choose to call it.
To some men disputation and contradiction are an intellectual
necessity—witness the beliefs that Bacon wrote _Romeo and Juliet_,
and that Homer was an unlimited liability company of prehistoric
ballad-mongers. According to the ethnological faith in which I have lived
for the last sixty years, there existed in times so remote that they
go back beyond the birth of chronology a white folk of shepherds and
husbandmen who fed their flocks and tilled the soil in the valleys of
the Highlands of Central Asia. There they increased and multiplied until
the land of their birth could no longer hold them, and their pastures
became insufficient for their flocks and herds. Then began their many
wanderings. Toughened by a climate in which they had to live under most
trying conditions of burning heat and extreme cold, they were a hardy
race, having little to fear from the opposition of the weaker tribes who
might seek to bar their way.
There is one point in regard to the theory that the Aryas were originally
a European race, which, so far as I know, has not been taken into
consideration. The Aryas were obviously a superior people. That they
proved wherever they went. In every migration they came, conquered and
remained. Has there ever been known a case where a superior race—not a
handful of men, like the crew of the _Mayflower_, but a whole nation—has
migrated, taking all the risks and uncertainties incident to travel and
climate, and leaving the inferior race to enjoy the old well-proved home
undisturbed?
Yet that is what the Aryas must have done if they left Europe for the
terrors and privations of the Highlands of Asia, remaining to face the
hardships of that inhospitable region for long centuries, until its
insufficiencies drove them to seek the kindlier soil and climate which
their forbears had deserted. But whether the Aryas left Europe for Asia
and thence again descended upon Europe, or whether they were originally
an Asiatic race of dominant nobility, that is a question over which we
may leave the doctors to break their learned heads, in the confident
assurance that never can they arrive at any certainty. Theory without a
backing of facts, without documentary evidence, must remain valueless.
Only one thing in regard to the European migration or migrations is
certain, and that is the fact that all the European languages, barring
those of the Huns, their cousins the Finns, the Basques and the Turks (if
we may call them Europeans, which let us hope will soon no longer be the
case), can be traced back to the speech of the old tribe which perhaps
three or four thousand years ago flitted south, east and west from the
storm-vexed valleys of the Pamirs, conquering and civilizing, driving the
aborigines before it like chaff before the wind.
When I was a lad we used to be taught by such pedagogues as were
sufficiently advanced to have heard of Sanskrit, that this and that Greek
or Latin or other European word was “derived from the Sanskrit.” That is
all changed, and no teacher would nowadays dare to preach such nonsense.
We know now that Sanskrit, which must have been more or less a dead
language in Buddha’s time, only known at any rate by the more learned
among the priests, was the descendant, like Greek, Latin, Russian,
English, the Celtic tongues and others, from a much older language which
was spoken by our forefathers in the Highlands of Central Asia. But
Sanskrit, albeit not our parent speech, but rather a distant cousin of
our own European tongues, dead and buried though it has been for some two
thousand years, has been the key by which the learned have unlocked the
door of the most secret muniment-room of ethnological lore.
It is not possible to realize all that the Buddha achieved in the world
unless we have some conception of the religious and social condition
of Asia at the time of his great renunciation. That condition was the
result of the two great inroads of the Aryas, the one of the south into
Persia, the other to the south and east overrunning India. The one
was that of the fire-worshippers and Zarathustra (Zoroaster), whose
sacred canon was the Zend Avesta; the other that of the Brahmans, whose
inspired message was the Rig Veda. From the former are descended the
modern Parsees and Guebres, and there is some justification for believing
that the separation of these two streams of invasion may have been due
to religious dissent; for to the Parsee—the believer in Ahura Mazda
(Ormuzd), the one God, Creator of the Universe—the gods of the Brahmans
are an abomination, and no book is to a pious Parsee so much to be
abhorred as the Rig Veda. In the Veda the Gods are called Deva. This
word in Sanskrit means bright, brightness or light being one of the most
general attributes shared by the various manifestations of the Deity,
invoked in the Veda as Sun, or Sky, or Fire, or Dawn, or Storm.... In
the Zend Avesta the same word Deva means evil spirit. Like the Buddha,
Zarathustra was a heretic and a dissenter, and his sacred book, the Zend
Avesta, was an attempt to replace the worship of the forces of nature
by a religion—purer and more spiritual—under one Divine Creator, Ahura
Mazda, the wise spirit.
It is much to be regretted that, like our Lord, the Buddha should have
left no written word of his own. It would have been interesting to
know whether he held the Brahmanic gods in the same contempt as did
Zarathustra and his followers. Inasmuch as he denied the inspiration of
the Veda, he obviously must have repudiated them, and in his teaching,
as it has been recorded, they play no part. But Max Müller certainly
underestimates the respect assigned to them in the later Buddhism of the
monks when he says: “In Buddhism we find these ancient Devas, Indra and
the rest, as merely legendary beings carried about at shows, as servants
of Buddha, as goblins or fabulous heroes; but no longer worshipped or
even feared by those with whom the name of Deva had lost every trace of
its original meaning.”
Now it is impossible to deny that all over the East, wherever there is a
Buddhist temple, there the images of the old Devas, grim and repellent,
are devoutly worshipped and propitiated by prayer, even by people who
have no inkling of their significance. Moreover, it has been for many
centuries the policy of Buddhist missionaries to claim the native saints
in countries which they seek to convert as reincarnations of the Buddha,
and therefore to be worshipped. For instance, in Japan, Hachiman, the
indigenous God of War, is adored in Buddhist temples, and there are many
such cases, where there is no question of “goblins or fabulous heroes.”
In modern times the Jesuits adopted the same policy in China, in regard
to so-called Worship of Ancestors and of Tien—Heaven; thereby bringing
down upon themselves the wrath of the meddling and muddling Dominicans
and Franciscans and the interference of the Pope, between whom and the
Emperor-King Hsi there arose a controversy, in which the former was
worsted and the cause of Christianity in China was set back for centuries.
I have spoken of the Aryas as of “a people of whom we know so little,”
and yet, in truth, the wonder is that we should know so much with the
almost mathematical certainty afforded by the study of language and
of the Rig Veda, those beautiful hymns for which the Brahmans claim
Sruti—divine inspiration—and which are by far the oldest document of the
whole Aryan race. That there should exist any writing of the age to which
they belong is a physical impossibility; the heat and damp of the Indian
climate are swift and ruthless in their work of destruction. Even in the
Buddha’s time the very language of the Vedas was dead and understood only
by the priests. But we know from the journals of the Chinese pilgrim,
Hsüan Chwang—as Max Müller points out—with what painful care the hymns
were preserved orally by the Brahmans in the seventh century A.D. We
have also, as he further points out, the analogy of Hebrew, the MSS. of
the Old Testament, none of which is older than the tenth century, but
of which the truth is tested by comparison with the Septuagint. We know
that “every hymn, every verse, every word and syllable in the Veda were
accurately counted by native scholars about five or six hundred years
before Christ.” It is supposed that the collection of hymns was finished
some eleven or twelve hundred years B.C. But some of the hymns were then
ancient, some modern, “so that we cannot well assign a date more recent
than 1200 to 1500 before our era for the original composition of those
simple hymns which up to the present day are regarded by the Brahmans
with the same feelings with which a Mohammedan regards the Koran, a Jew
the Old Testament, a Christian his Gospel.”[7]
Some of the hymns appear to me to contain passages of almost sublime
beauty, though Max Müller says: “The historical importance of the Veda
can hardly be exaggerated, but its intrinsic merit, and particularly
the beauty or elevation of its sentiments, have by many been rated far
too high. Large numbers of the Vedic hymns are childish in the extreme:
tedious, low, commonplace.” And then he goes on to show how the Gods are
invoked to grant long life, food, large flocks, large families, for which
they are to be rewarded with sacrifices, etc. Here I cannot but think
that the great professor, for whom I entertain such sincere respect, is
a little unfair. Is not the idea of looking to their God as the Giver of
all good things common to all primeval peoples?
The Jews, for instance, though they were full of wise words about the
vanity of riches, still looked to Jehovah to enable them to “eat the
riches of the Gentiles,” and to lead them to “a land of wheat and barley
and fig trees and pomegranates: a land of oil olive, and honey,” and of
mineral wealth. Again Solomon says: “My son, forget not my law, but let
thine heart keep my commandments; for length of days, and long life, and
peace shall they add to thee.” Prayers for material prosperity to God,
under whatsoever name He may be worshipped, are common to all religions,
and it is hardly just to brand the hymns of the Veda as “tedious, low,
commonplace,” because the ancient herdsmen of the Pamirs were no more
disinterested in their prayers than the rest of mankind, but addressed
their material petitions to God just as King David and King Solomon did.
It was natural enough that these men, abiding in the fields, keeping
watch over their flocks and herds by day and by night, under the eternal
ice and snow of the heaven-reaching mountains, should worship the
light—all that was Deva (light) was to them sacred and symbolical of the
Godhead—and so the Deus of the Latins was originally Light, and when we
talk of “divine,” “divinity,” we are looking back to the worship of our
ancestors when they prayed to the Sun, the Fire, the Sky, the Dawn, which
were the givers of all good things. Sometimes they are invoked under the
names of Varuna, Mitra, Indra. “In one hymn Agni (fire) is called the
ruler of the universe, the lord of men, the wise king, the father, the
brother, the son, the friend of men.... In another hymn, Indra is said
to be greater than all; the Gods, it is said, do not reach Thee, Indra,
nor men; Thou overcomest all creatures in strength. Another God, Soma,
is called the King of the World, the King of Heaven and Earth, the
Conqueror of all. And what more could human language achieve in trying to
express the idea of a divine and supreme power, than what another poet
says of another God, Varuna: ‘Thou art Lord of all, of Heaven and earth;
thou art the King of all, of those who are Gods and of those who are
men?’”
How beautiful is the following litany:
“In the beginning there arose the golden child. He was the one born Lord
of all that is. He established the earth and this sky; who is the God to
Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He who gives life, He who gives strength, Whose command all the bright
Gods revere; Whose shadow is immortality; Whose shadow is death; Who is
the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He who through His power is the one King of the breathing and awakening
world; He who governs all, man and beast; who is the God to Whom we shall
offer our sacrifice?
“He Whose greatness these snowy mountains, Whose greatness the seas
proclaim with the distant river; He Whose regions are, as it were, His
two arms; who is the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He through Whom the sky is bright and the earth firm—He through Whom the
heaven was ’stablished, nay, the highest heaven—He who measured out the
light in the air; who is the God to Whom we shall offer sacrifice?
“He to Whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will, look up
trembling inwardly—He over Whom the rising sun shines forth; who is the
God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“Wherever the mighty waterclouds went, where they placed the seed and lit
the fire, thence arose He who is the sole life of the bright Gods; who is
the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He who by His might looked even over the waterclouds, the clouds which
gave strength and lit the sacrifice, He who alone is God above all Gods;
who is the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“May He not destroy us—He, the creator of the earth; or He, the
righteous, who created the Heaven—He also created the bright and mighty
waters; who is the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?”
Well might Max Müller, who has unearthed them, redeem his dispraise of
the hymns by saying: “Hidden in this rubbish there are precious stones!”
Right well do the hymns, or, at any rate, those which he admits to be
“precious stones,” deserve their title Rig Veda, the knowledge of Praise.
Nothing can be finer, more masculine, than a propitiatory hymn to the
Maruts, the Storm Gods, of which he gives us a translation: “They make
the rocks to tremble, they tear asunder the kings of the forest. Come
on, Maruts, like madmen, ye Gods, with your whole tribe.” No wonder
men, whose lives had to face the terrors of the icy wilderness, sought
the favour of the unruly forces whose rage meant death to them and to
their herds and flocks. A hymn to Agni (fire), “the son of strength, the
conqueror of horses, the highborn,” is less striking, but the zenith of
the Vedic poetry is reached, as it seems to me, in a prayer addressed to
Ushas, the Dawn. What a picture it suggests of the old herdsman in those
frozen solitudes, falling on his knees when the stars grow pale before
the first glimmer of light that stretches along the eastern horizon,
thankfully to worship the radiant Goddess who puts to flight the dark
shadows of the night and its unseen dangers. Listen to his song of praise:
“She shines upon us, like a young wife, rousing every living being to go
to his work. When the fire had to be kindled by men, she made the light
by striking down darkness.”
“She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving everywhere. She grew in
brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. The mother of the cows (the
mornings), the leader of the days, she shone gold-coloured, lovely to
behold.”
“She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the Gods, who leads the white
and lovely steed (of the sun), the Dawn, was seen revealed by her rays,
with brilliant treasures, following every one.
“Thou who art a blessing where thou art near, drive far away the
unfriendly; make the pasture wide, give us safety! Scatter the enemy,
bring riches! Raise up wealth to the worshipper, thou mighty Dawn.”
“Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou who lengthenest
our life, thou the love of all, who givest us food, who givest us wealth
in cows, horses and chariots.”
“Thou daughter of the sky, thou highborn Dawn, whom the Vasishthas
magnify with songs, give us riches high and wide; all ye Gods protect us
always with your blessings.”[8]
So the old shepherd prays, and the Goddess, answering to his call,
spreads her rosy mantle over the sky, and tinges the snowy peaks and
ridges of the ice-bound mountains: the sun rises in his glory, and the
peace of a new day is born to the world.
The piety of the old Aryans admits of no doubt. We are told that the
consciousness of sin is a prominent feature in their religion. The poet
of the Veda searches eagerly for his sin, and finds it not in his will
but in his condition, which even in his dreams holds up evil before his
eyes, and at last he turns to his God, the God of Grace who enlightens
the simple. He believes in the power of the gods to take away from
man the heavy burden of his sins. “Varuna is merciful to him who has
committed.”
One more point should be noticed in any attempt, however slight, to give
a sketch of the religion of the Veda. Max Müller tells us that it knows
of no idols. This is the more remarkable when we think of the innumerable
idols of savage and revengeful Gods by which Indian, Chinese and Japanese
temples are degraded; all the nightmares of later monks who knew nothing
of the pure and clean-minded Aryans, whose Gods, as Oldenberg tells us,
in contrast to others, were bright and friendly beings without malice,
cruelty and deceit.
It has been well said that the highest value of the sacred poems of the
Aryans is historic, and that value has been revealed by the comparatively
recent study of Sanskrit. That is in the school in which we learn who
the Aryans were, what was the manner of their lives, their religion and
their thoughts; and we can, in a measure, trace much of what, after many
centuries, led to the development of a Hindu school of metaphysics, in
comparison with which the much vaunted Pythagoreans and Greek thinkers
were as babes and sucklings. The very name Arya tells us that this
ancient people was a race of husbandmen and tillers of the soil, the
root _ar_ from which the word is derived being found again in the Latin
_arare_, to plough, _aratrum_, a plough, and in the Greek ἄροτρον; and
when we talk of our “daughters,” it is well that we should remember
that our ancestors on the Steppes, many thousand years ago, themselves
invented the word “duhitar,” the milk-maid, the very word with which we
Europeans, in one shape or another, caress our women-children. The hymns
and prayers of the Vedas abound in allusions to the herds and flocks of
these old farmers, whose best friends—and therefore the objects of their
adoration—were the sun, the stars, the rains of heaven; just as their
enemies—therefore to be propitiated—were the storms, the snow and the
cruel winds: these were—the life-givers and death-givers. The life of the
lonely watcher of the Steppes was of its essence one of contemplation,
reflection and introspection.
Let me give one pregnant quotation from Max Müller’s “History of Ancient
Sanskrit Literature”: “At the first dawn of traditional history we see
these Aryan tribes migrating across the snow of the Himalaya southward
toward the Seven Rivers (the Indus, the five rivers of the Punjab and the
Sarasvati), and ever since India has been called their home. That before
that time they had been living in more northern regions, within the same
precincts, with the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians,
Germans, the Celts, is a fact as firmly established as that the Normans
of William the Conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia. The evidence
of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence worth listening
to with regard to ante-historical periods. It would have been impossible
to discover any traces of relationship between the swarthy natives of
India and their conquerors, whether Alexander or Clive, but for the
testimony borne by language.” (“Sanskrit Literature,” pp. 12, 13.)
To the learned Jew—a Semite, to the Hungarian, the Finn, or the Basque,
who are Turanian settlers in Europe, the history of the Aryans is an
interesting study, linguistic or racial. To us true Europeans, to us
true Aryans, it has a far greater significance. It has all the charm of
an inquiry into a piece of remote family history—all the glamour of a
pedigree, not to be measured by a few puny centuries, but reaching far
away into the clouds of incalculable æons.
Talking idly in a garden, we can do no more than touch the mere fringe
of a mighty problem, even though it should be suggested by the great
silent Buddha. For instance, we have summoned as witness the one word
“daughter,” when there are so many others that we use a dozen times a day
which are equally strong links in the long chain of evidence by which we
prove our descent. But no matter—we have started the clue: let who will
pick it up. It will reward him.
THE COMMUNE
My Pegasus is not always inclined to take long flights. Sometimes when
a lazy fit is upon him he will venture no more than a trip across the
Channel, carrying me to Germany, Italy, Switzerland—perhaps landing me no
further off than some place in France. But of that beloved country I have
so many recollections, some gay, some sad, that I crave to go no further.
One such trip is very short but very tragic. Forty-six years have passed
since the episode of which I write, but the scenes of those few days
are graven so deeply in my mind that no lapse of time can ever efface
them. They haunt me like the pathetic thoughts which are aroused by the
solitary little pink slipper of the Princesse de Lamballe in the Musée
Cluny. Thoughts are such obstinate vagabonds that they must needs choose
their own road, and not even the Buddha, in his Veluvana, can drive them
eastward unless such be their will.
The final tragedy of 1871 (from a repetition of the horror of which,
may Heaven preserve France and ourselves!) is no doubt in these days
eclipsed by the brutal outrages upon which _Kultur_ is ever improving.
What will forty-five more years do? That mechanical invention and
chemical discoveries should come into play is, I suppose, inevitable.
The strange thing is that the whole coarse-fibred soul of the German
seems to be infected by the very potentialities of all these ghastly
new discoveries, which seem to urge him on to new cruelties and new
crimes. In 1870 he knew how to spare. Witness Paris. Now it is otherwise.
Still, to us who lived in those days what will always be known as the
Franco-German war remains as a poignantly painful memory; though the
ravages of war and the carnage were terrible, it was the parricidal fury
of anarchy and its monads which made men’s blood run cold.
The Commune, that hideous catastrophe which reversed the unnatural, crime
of Saturn—the children murdering and devouring their own parent—ended
tragically with the month of May, 1871. One morning I got a note from
the Duke of Sutherland, saying that he had received information that the
first train would be allowed into Paris the next day, and suggesting that
we should go over and see whether we could be of any use. We started the
following morning—the Duke, George Crawley, Wright, the Duke’s secretary,
and myself; but the train was stopped at Creil that afternoon, and we had
to stay there rather miserably for the night. The place was swarming
with Prussian soldiery, scowling and truculent-looking, clanking their
spurs defiantly all about the station and town. The people returned their
evil looks with interest, but it was of no use—they were the masters. _Væ
victis!_ It is a terrible sight to see a great people trampled on and
tortured by the savagery of a victorious army; but when that army is a
Prussian army—ask the Belgians.
There was no difficulty the next day; the train started early, and we
were in Paris betimes. There were not many cabs at the station, but there
was no great competition, so we were soon suited. I got on the box by the
driver, as I was curious to hear what he had to say of the siege and the
Commune. Strange to say, he, like every Parisian with whom I talked, was
far more bitter against the Commune than against the Prussians. After
all, men said, the Prussians spared our monuments; the Commune destroyed
them. When we arrived arrests were taking place all over the town, and
there was still some shooting of men in the streets, though we did not
see it. Full of pathetic suggestion were the little heaps of clothes
piled up in the squares and at the corners of streets.
There were some uniforms, but mostly they were made up of humble blouses
and the civilian caps of what we should call street arabs—the _titis_ of
old Paris. The owners, as the cabman said, were all rotting in the Fosse
Commune; he himself was full of belated valour. “If there had only been
ten men like me,” he protested, “ten determined stalwarts, a horror like
the Commune would have been impossible.” I asked him what he did. “Mon
Dieu! Monsieur! Que pouvais-je faire contre tous ces brigands? J’étais
tout seul. Je me suis refugié dans la cave.”
The next day a worthy shopkeeper held just the same language. Ten
men such as himself could have held the Rue de la Paix and kept the
Communards at bay. He tried to persuade his neighbours, but they would
not join with him, so, regretfully, he, too, hid in the cellar. It was
strange to listen to these bourgeois who had shown such courage and
determination and endurance during the siege, when the Prussians were
battering them out of existence. They could face the Prussians gallantly;
before the Commune they quailed.
The Rue de Rivoli was a piteous sight. The Ministère des Finances was
burnt and gutted; the roof had fallen in, the windows were all gaping,
and out of one of them there was a bit of charred blind fluttering
dismally in the light summer air like the ghost of a flag. The Tuileries
were nothing but a pile of charred stones, hardly the skeleton of a
palace left; but the Louvre was luckily to all intents and purposes
unharmed. It was enough to make a man weep to see the havoc, the ruins,
and everywhere the signs of murder and violence. The Communards and
pétroleuses had done their work thoroughly.
We dropped the luggage at the hotel, dismissed the cabman, still fully
convinced of the potentiality of his own valour, and started forth for a
morning stroll on foot.
When we came to the Place Vendôme, the great column, the bronze record
of the past glories of the French army, was lying prone on a bed of
straw, torn down by the sacrilege of Gustave Courbet, the Ministre des
Beaux-Arts under the Commune. It had been badly smashed, and some small
fragments had been carried away as souvenirs, but many of these were,
I was told, recovered. As we drew near to look at the cruel misdeed, a
_peloton_ of soldiers came along with a civilian in their midst, whom
they were carrying off to a guard-room hard by. It was Courbet himself,
whom I knew well by sight. I was not the only man to recognize him. An
elderly gentleman with a little boy of about fourteen years was passing
by. When he saw the prisoner he dashed forward, and before the guards
could stop him, knocked off Courbet’s hat, shouting out: “Au moins,
scélérat, tu te découvriras devant la colonne que tu as fait tomber.”
Courbet, dazed by this fury of explosive patriotism, picked up his hat
and said nothing, while the gentleman, well pleased with himself, walked
on with his little son, and the guard grinned satisfaction, but took no
further notice.
[Illustration: GUSTAVE COURBET.
_From a painting by himself in the Louvre._
[_To face p. 82._]
I had often seen Courbet in former days at the Café Royal, where he
used to go for his midday meal. As he was something of a _sommité_, a
celebrity in art as elsewhere for all his rebellious proclivities, the
maître d’hôtel used to receive him with the greatest ceremony, bowing
to the ground and rubbing his hands: “Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet. Que
pourrai-je offrir à Monsieur ce matin. J’ai un Chateaubriand qui est de
toute confiance,” etc., etc., etc. Courbet would sit down with majestic
condescension, like a true anarchist, deigning to be waited upon with all
the adulation which was due to him.
Well, it so happened that after the little scene which I have described
in the Place Vendôme, we went on to the Café Royal, where we were
received with effusive welcome by the maître d’hôtel. Like everybody
else, he began talking about the recent tragedies and inveighing against
the Commune. I told him of the arrest of Courbet, his old patron, and he
at once launched out into the most violent abuse of him. “Oh! Monsieur,
ne me parlez pas de ce sale communeux! Si jamais il ose remettre les
pieds ici c’est à moi qu’il aura affaire!” I asked him why he used the
word “communeux,” I thought the word was communard. “Oui, Monsieur,” he
replied sententiously, “mais on dit _crapule_, _crapuleux_, _commune_,
_communeux_, c’est plus méritant.” Courbet was sentenced to six months’
imprisonment, and was condemned, moreover, to pay a very heavy fine
for the fall of the column—none too severe a punishment in all the
circumstances of the case.
Some time after the expiration of the six months I was again in Paris,
and went to the Café Royal for luncheon. Who should come in a few minutes
later but the great Courbet. Up rushed the maître d’hôtel to meet him,
and I anticipated a first-rate row. Not a bit of it! To my amazement
I heard the old welcome: “Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet! Qu’est-ce-qu’on
peut vous offrir ce matin?” etc. The old story, the old refrain, the
obsequious bows, the festive rubbing of hands. I could not resist
reminding my friend of what he had said a few months before. Ah! he said,
that was all so long ago! “D’ailleurs,” he added, “il ne faut pas oublier
qu’il a été ministre, et on ne sais jamais ce qui peut arriver!”
Old Lady Edward Thynne used to tell a capital story of Courbet, whom she
met a few years before 1870 at some artistic gathering in Paris. He had
been airing his political views for some minutes, when to draw him out
she said: “But then it seems that all this while I have been talking
with a real red republican.” “Rouge, Madame,” was the answer, “dites,
plutôt, violet,” and then he went off again at score. “But why,” she
asked, “do you say that you want to pull down the Tuileries?” “Madame,
parce que tant que cette sacrée maison durera il y aura toujours des
coquins qui voudront venir y demeurer.”
Another notable arrest was that of Paschal Grousset, the so-called
Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was caught disguised as a woman in the
Rue Condorcet, which created a great sensation. Sir Edward Malet, who as
second secretary of the British Embassy, had been obliged to have some
dealings with him, told me that he was really a very pleasant little
man, who was always civil and obliging to foreigners. “Not a bad little
fellow,” Malet used to say. I saw him some years later in London, when
he was correspondent of I forget which of the French newspapers, and he
came to me at the Office of Works to ask for an admission to a volunteer
review which the Queen was to hold in Hyde Park. He was so agreeable that
I quite understood Malet’s verdict on him.
In the evening we went to dine at Voisin’s, where I had heard that the
members of the Government of the Commune had been dining and breakfasting
every day during their short lease of power. Good old Bellanger, the
famous _sommelier_, was delighted to see us. I asked after a certain
old chambertin—had he any left? “Pour Monsieur il y en aura toujours,”
was the answer. But I said, “I wonder that your late patrons did not
drink it all up!” “Ah! Monsieur, si vous croyez que j’allais donner de ce
vin là à ces charapans! Monsieur, lorsque j’ai su qu’ils allaient venir
ici je suis descendu dans la cave et j’ai changé toutes les étiquettes.
Ils croyaient boire les meilleurs crus—s’ils avaient su ce que je leur
servais! Mais j’étais sûr de mon affaire! Est-ce qu’ils s’y connaissaient
ces animaux-là?” And then he went on grumbling: “Ah! mais non, non! Du
chambertin—jamais de la vie!” Truly there is a comic element in every
tragedy, and a grave-digger in every Hamlet.
* * * * *
Of all the crimes and cruelties which disgraced the Commune, none excited
greater horror than the murder of Monseigneur Darboy, the Archbishop
of Paris, and the priests who with him and many others were seized as
hostages. The flames of the Tuileries and other monuments, the hell-fire
orgies of the mob and the pétroleuses drunken with the lust of blood
and incendiarism—when the very firemen pumped petrol instead of water
on to the burning buildings—were almost forgotten in the execration
of that sacrilege. Upwards of sixty hostages, all innocent peaceable
men, against no one of whom could any misdeed be alleged, were put to
death. They were imprisoned in La Roquette, and on the 24th of May the
Archbishop and the Abbé de Guerry, the Curé of the Madeleine, with
Monsieur Bonjean, the president of the Cour de Cassation, and three
Jesuit priests (Fathers Ducondray, Allard and Clair), after a sham trial,
were led into the courtyard of the prison and shot. The Archbishop, who
was the second of the victims to suffer, met his death like the hero and
Christian martyr that he was. He stepped to the front, and praying to God
for the forgiveness of his murderers, gave them his pastoral blessing.
Two of the firing party, less hardened than the others, knelt down and
asked his pardon. When the butchery was over the ruffians stripped the
Archbishop’s honoured body, and that no degradation might be wanting,
carted it off to be thrown like the carrion of a malefactor into the
Fosse Commune. Even decent burial was to be denied to him.
After the last desperate fight at the cemetery of Père la Chaise, in
which men and women fought like tigers and tigresses, neither giving
nor asking for quarter, all mad to kill, and kill, and kill, the body
was recovered and carried to the archiepiscopal palace, where it lay in
state, with those of the other priests. All Paris flocked to do homage
to one of God’s saints, and take a last look at the beloved old man.
Those who could afford it were in deep mourning, but all were weeping
from the richest down to the poorest and humblest, as I saw them march
past the body. The Archbishop, lying mitred and robed, looked like a
waxen image. There was no sign of pain in his face, no trace of the cruel
sorrow and long suspense by which his last days must have been racked; on
it was written only that divine peace which passeth all understanding.
The hour-glass had been turned and the sands of the Commune had run out.
The prison of La Roquette, the scene of so many horrors, was now in
the hands of the Versaillais, and the cells of the hostages were more
fitly tenanted by the murderers who but a few days before, when to be
respectable was a deadly crime, had ruled Paris with a rod of terror.
Passing by the prison, after leaving the Archbishop’s palace, we saw
that the great gates were open, and a crowd was gathered outside eagerly
watching and craning necks to see what was going on within. I asked what
the people were waiting for? A batch of prisoners was to be led out to
the fortifications to be shot. Next to me was standing a rather pretty
young girl of about fifteen or sixteen years, nicely but very simply
dressed, evidently the daughter of well-to-do bourgeois parents. In
charge of her was a bonne, an elderly woman wearing a linen cap, and the
typical tartan fichu pinned across her breast.
Presently the excitement began. First came three omnibuses, their usual
function, as their placards showed, being to take pleasure-seekers to
the Jardin des Plantes; they were driven by soldiers, other soldiers
or gendarmes sitting on the top and acting as conductors. Inside an
evil-looking crew of scowling ruffians, some of them wounded, all dirty,
unshaven and truculent-looking—villains who knew that for them even hope
was dead. The omnibuses were followed by litters, in which other soldiers
were carrying men who had been seriously wounded, some of them terribly
mangled.
In one of the litters lay a dark, fierce-looking man, with a shock mass
of black hair. His head and face, pale and haggard, with a beard of three
or four days’ growth, were tied up with blood-stained linen bandages. His
eyes were closed, and he seemed hardly conscious, too feeble to move, too
tired to care. He was respectably, even well dressed in a frock coat.
Evidently a man in a superior position to that of those who had gone
before. As he came, and owing to some obstruction, his bearers paused for
a minute, the girl near me gave a piercing shriek, and crying out: “Papa!
Ah, Papa, c’est Papa!” fell sobbing into the arms of her nurse. She had
come on the chance of one last look, and had, as the bystanders said,
been waiting for hours.
The wounded man, hearing the cry and recognizing the dear young voice,
opened his eyes, and pulling himself together for a supreme effort,
tried limply to wave his hand. His lips moved, and during the short halt
tried to utter a few words, but voice would not come to his bidding; he
uttered no sound, his eyes closed again, and quickly his bearers turned
the corner and he was out of sight. That dumb farewell was the last of
him. The final act can have been but a small matter to him, for he was,
indeed, little more than a corpse already. The poor child stood there
shaking from head to foot and weeping on the bosom of her bonne, and the
crowd dispersed. It was a harrowing scene, it was a pathetic scene, the
pathos of which could hardly be forgotten by any who witnessed it. After
nearly half a century I can still see that grim procession of death, and
the young girl’s shriek of agony rings in my ears.
Those were days of horror. Retribution had come with no halting foot;
shrifts were short, and justice wasted no time over inquiries; it was
even said that a good many innocents perished with the guilty. Whether
that is true or not is hard to say, but it was an accusation which in the
circumstances was sure to be made. An outcry was raised against the four
generals of the Republican armies, Vinoy, Ladmisault, Cissey and Donay,
to whom the guardianship of Paris, divided into four parts, was entrusted.
But far more virulent than any of the attacks upon them were the charges
that were brought—most unfairly, since they only obeyed orders—against
the Marquis de Gallifet and his dragoons. Those charges came from the
white-livered party, set on by such Communists as had managed by hook
or by crook to escape observation and save their skins. These did not
hesitate to accuse Gallifet of wholesale murders of innocent men and
women when the executions took place outside the Arc de l’Etoile. From
inquiries which I made on the spot and at the time, I believe that he did
no more than his duty.
Gallifet was a most determined man, to whom duty was something sacred,
bound to be carried out to the letter at any cost. He was, moreover, a
born soldier, loving his men as they loved him, and cut to the quick by
the deaths of so many comrades. As a cavalry leader, all men recognized
his great worth. Brave as the steel of his own sword, utterly reckless
of his life, as he had shown in the disastrous Mexican campaign and in
the Great War, his courage was so infectious that his troopers would have
followed him had he ordered the charge to be sounded against all the
hosts of Satan. War was for him something very real, not to be treated
with half measures or milksop compromises. He was a fighter, and he
fought in deadly earnest.
We hear much in these days from peacefully-minded lawyers of the iniquity
of reprisals. It would be a good thing if some of these learned gentlemen
would remember the old adage, “Inter arma silent leges;” adding to it the
words, “et juris consulti.” It is good to see on this 3rd of February,
1916, that there is at least one great leader of thought left in this
country who takes a saner and more masculine view of reprisals than that
which is held by some bishops and semi-parsonic lawyers. Lord Rosebery’s
letter to the _Times_ of this day is inexorable in its logic and in its
justice.
We must protect our women and children. This is an age of cruel
inventions, and if our enemies take advantage of them, so must we, unless
we would wish to be as the archers of Edward the Third and the Black
Prince would be if we sent them into the trenches to-day, forbidden for
chivalrous reasons to use aught but their bows against modern artillery
and high explosives. If Germany uses poison gas and liquid fire, so must
we. If she drops bombs from airships upon innocent civilians, women, and
children, we must follow suit. God forbid that it should be in the spirit
of revenge; but what other deterrent is possible? “Vous l’avez voulu,
Georges Dandin.” It is much that Lord Rosebery has lifted his voice in
this sense.
Gallifet did not hesitate to adopt reprisals, and nobody can say that
his methods failed. He knew that the crimes with which he had to deal
could not be prevented in the future by the sprinklings of rose-water and
soft-sawder. Reprisals in the sense of cruelty to prisoners and murders
such as that of Nurse Cavell and Captain Fryatt, are, of course, quite
another matter.
I could not help taking a great interest in Gallifet’s proceedings,
because, although I had only had the very slightest acquaintance with him
some ten years before, he was the intimate friend of many friends of my
own, both English and French. The Prince of Wales, as he then was, had
great regard for him, and never failed to send for him when he went to
Paris.
It must have been about the year 1859 or 1860 that he, with Madame de
Gallifet, the Sagans and the Pourtalès’s, came over to London for a
week or ten days in the height of the summer season, and I was asked by
Madame de Persigny, the French ambassadress, to do what I could to make
their stay pleasant. The three ladies, with Madame de Metternich as a
fourth, were at that time the recognized queens of Paris society, or, at
any rate, of that part of it which bowed the knee at the Imperial Court.
Madame de Gallifet was very good-looking, and the Princesse de Sagan
handsome and distinguished, but neither of them could compare with the
Comtesse de Pourtalès, who had all the subtle charm and teasing beauty of
which the eighteenth century portrait painters are the celebrants.
Madame de Metternich, who did not come to London with them, was not a
pretty woman; indeed, she spoke of herself as “le singe à la mode;” but
she was witty and very attractive, and so became the high priestess
of that religion of which Worth, the famous man-milliner, a former
apprentice of Swan and Edgar’s, who had raised his temple in the Rue
de la Paix, was the Pope, on the hierarchy of fashion. She was perhaps
one degree greater than the other three ladies, but above them all was
enthroned the Empress Eugénie, a divinity at whose altar all men and
women were fain to fall down and worship.
These are strangely frivolous recollections of pretty women and smart
dresses and coxcombry of men-milliners that came thrusting themselves
into the midst of one of the great tragedies of history. But these are
the tricks which memory plays us: the most grotesque ideas surging up in
the midst of acute sorrow, the dance of death serving to accentuate the
follies of a farce—so unstable are our minds. All this is conjured up by
the recollection of Gallifet, before he became a famous cavalry general,
when he was a brilliant young officer, the spoilt child of a court, the
favourite officer of an emperor, popular with men and women, idolized by
his soldiers, long before the cruel wounds of the Mexican campaign—when
he showed what the man about town was worth when brought face to face
with grim war—the last man in Europe of whom I should have thought that
one day he would have to experience those emotions which cause the most
callous judge’s voice to falter when he puts on the black cap.
Later in life, with his closely-cropped white hair and moustache dyed
black, he was a picturesque figure in Paris—still a beau sabreur, still
a soldier at every point—a name to conjure with had the opportunity
presented itself.
TREES AND THEIR LEGENDS
Solitude, surrounded by memories of which I have spoken, and by the
fanciful brood of thoughts to which they give birth, has a mystic power
of banishing all trammels of time and of place. The plants in the garden
begin to take strange forms: the bamboos are drawn up out of their puny
Western stature into gracefully-waving plumes of Brobdingnagian growth,
such as we see in the Peradeniya Gardens of Ceylon; the oak under which
the great Buddha sits, solemnly holding up a warning hand, changes into
a holy Bō-tree, its long-stalked, pointed leaves quivering in a gentle
breeze, laden with the heavy perfume of the sacred Champak flower; the
fleece of clouds sails away into space and the soft English sky hardens
into the metallic blue of the glaring East.
All of a sudden a slight chilly gust chases away the whole illusion.
Kapilavastu, Rajagriha, the deer forest, the Veluvana, with its crowd of
yellow-robed monks carrying their begging bowls, fade away, and we are
sobered into the commonplace realities of life on a spur of the Cotswold
Hills. It is like the awakening after the intoxication of Hashish, or
after the short death dealt by laughing gas.
The dream may have been fascinating, but there are glorious compensations
in the awakening, for though our peaceful gardens are not so wildly
fantastic, not such an orgy of colour, as those of the gorgeous tropics,
our woodlands in their grave dignity are matchless: they touch the heart;
the others stir the senses.
It was a lovely day in early summer, and the show of the Royal
Horticultural Society was in full swing in the gardens of Chelsea
Hospital. All the world was there—all the world, and everybody else’s
wife. A few of us were standing looking at a grand display of orchids,
when a charming lady turned round to me and said: “Oh! how delicate, how
beautiful and how distinguished they are! Surely the very aristocracy of
plant life!” “No,” I answered, “they are only the nouveaux riches. It is
the old oaks of our parks and forests that are the aristocracy of plants.”
Surely there is nothing more proud, nothing more wonderful in nature,
than the noble old age of those patriarchs which centuries ago chequered
with their quivering shade the glades in which Robin Hood and Little
John drew the bow, and holy Friar Tuck made his quarter-staff spin round
his head like the sails of a windmill. Indeed, all our indigenous trees
are glorious. The beech, the ash, the wych-elm, and even the so-called
British elm, which, sooth to say, is only a naturalized alien that came
to us from Italy and has been so long among us, living in trusty alliance
with our natives, that we have come to treat him as our own—all these, in
company with the oak, truly make up what Wordsworth called “a brotherhood
of venerable trees.”
In Britain, and probably all over Europe, there is no tree which commands
so much veneration as the oak. We talk of hearts of oak, and of the
wooden walls of old England, and we endow our hoary, gnarled giants with
all the attributes of stateliness and royal honour. One squire of high
degree I once knew who, shortly before his death, thanking God for a long
life, boasted, not that his eighty years had been spent in the practice
of piety and virtue, as doubtless was the case, but that he had never
cut down an oak. With the oaks we connect the stories of old British
kings and the mysterious liturgies of the golden-sickled Druids, those
Brahmans of the Cassiterides—the Tin Islands—who, if we may believe Cæsar
and Pliny, who are our only authorities—for the priesthood, even if they
could do so, might write down nothing—exercised power greater than those
of popes. Woe to him who denied their authority or questioned their law!
For their excommunication was more terrible than that of Rome, making a
man an outcast, a pariah, a social leper, with whom no man might deal or
hold intercourse; for if he did, he, too, would fall under the awful ban.
After a lapse of two thousand years we have heard of something of the
same kind in our sister island.
And our beloved Scotch fir! What of that true Briton? Happily there are
still here and there in remote Highland glens a few of the old primeval
forests of that great tree left. Probably the most picturesque of these
is the King’s forest of Ballochbine, where you may see it in all the
fullness of its nature—veterans borne down with age, stalwarts in full
vigour, youngsters in their nonage, babies just born from the seed. Their
red stems, glowing in the evening sun, spring out of a carpet of heather,
blaeberries and ferns, among mossy rocks and lichen-starred stones. Close
to them are their graceful consorts, the birches, which Lowell called
“the most shy and ladylike of trees,” drooping their delicate plumes
over the pools and musical rills of brown peat-stained burns. What a
succession of pictures, hard to beat, does this old forest of Ballochbine
give! And that is as it should be, for is it not the King’s own?
The happy union between the pine and the birch has been sung by some
Scottish poet in a simple but touching Epithalamium:
“The Pine’s the King of Scottish glens:
The Queen, ah! who is she?
The fairest tree the forest kens.
The bonnie birken tree!”
We may be asked, since we have so grand a pine of our own, why import
from abroad so many aliens, many of which are certainly not its superiors
in beauty? I suppose that the answer must be that of the daily partridge
which the domestically faithless French king brought in argument against
the remonstrances of his father-confessor. Besides, it can hardly be
denied that many of them are exquisitely beautiful. One of the lovely
blue spruces from Pike’s Peak in Colorado, looking as if it had been
dyed in the mystic waters of the Grotto Azzurra of Capri,[9] strikes an
altogether new note in our garden landscape; the steeple of a tapering
cypress will give that perpendicular line which is so valuable to the
painter, as we may see in Italian gardens, in the picturesque cemeteries
of Constantinople, and all over the Levant. A blue cedar from the Atlas
range in North Africa, its branches feathering down to the ground in
graceful profusion, catches the slanting rays of the sun and sends them
back to you as if its leaves were sprinkled with hoar-frost or wrought
in some luminous metal. But it is idle to compile lists and catalogues.
They make dull writing and duller reading. Suffice it to say that the
intrinsic beauties of the many trees, shrubs, lianes and vines, which
have been added to our own lovely flora, furnish an ample justification
for their admission into our homes.
But apart from this there is the collector’s mania to be reckoned with.
Most men take a pride in showing their friends some gem, some treasured
rarity, and the gardener is as proud of his collection of unique
plants as the Hertfords, the Rothschilds and the Pierpont Morgans have
been of their pictures and miniatures, their Sèvres porcelain, or the
masterpieces of Riesener, Gouthière and Caffieri. The plant collector
has this advantage over those famous lovers of the living works of dead
artists that he can gratify his whims and vanity so much more cheaply.
“What brought Sir Visto’s ill-got wealth to waste?
Some Demon whispered—Visto, have a taste.”
Even orchids are cheap in comparison with Rembrandts, Vandycks, Sir
Joshuas and Gainsboroughs. It stands to reason that the gathering
together of such treasures as may be seen at Westonbirt, at Aldenham, at
Frensham, and in one or two other collectors’ gardens, cannot be achieved
without a considerable expenditure of money, guided by consummate
knowledge; but, even so, the cost is relatively small. And the owners of
lesser pleasaunces with small outlay can profit by the experience and
public spirit of those gardening magnates, both professional and amateur,
who combine to send out costly expeditions to new fields of adventure
and discovery in order to add to the treasure stores of horticulture.
If there be any who are so jealous of the honour of our British forests
and woods that they resent any competition with their beauty, and look
upon all new-comers from over the sea as undesirable aliens, they should,
at any rate, allow that, though they would be out of tune in a wild
forest, they bring lovely harmonies of colour and form into the more
artificial scenes with which we adorn the immediate surroundings of our
country houses. They are no more foreign than the numberless flowers with
which our predecessors used to furnish their beds and borders, and they
have two great advantages over these, as I hope to show presently.
As to the question of fitness or unfitness, that is a matter of
conditions and arrangement. I know a vast park in which the old oaks and
beeches used to make up a sylvan scene of incomparable grandeur. Some
years ago the owner, fired with a new and wholly uneducated enthusiasm,
studded the stately forest with lovely little Japanese maples, but
without any intervening masses of cultivation to make the garden blend
with the primeval trees. The effect was deplorably ludicrous—nay, it was
worse than ludicrous: it was an act of desecration. Had my friend been
more judicious, what charming effects he might have conjured up in a
suitable place with those same little crimson bushes which he condemned
to play so silly a part in among his glorious secular oaks! What magical
scenes have been called up with their help at Westonbirt! But those
pictures were produced by knowledge.
There was a time when in spring and summer I used to look forward to the
autumn, hailing its advent as the season of sport, when every day brought
some new joy. Now that I have left the autumn of life far behind me and
am deep in its winter, I have no love left for the shortening days, the
rustle of falling leaves, and the cold patter of the rain on the dimmed
panes of glass. And yet when the sun shines, how beautiful is the Indian
summer! How lovely the dismissal of the haze floating away across the
valley! Yes! Autumn has its consolations.
Foreigners who have never been in this country generally think that we
live like newts and frogs in a land of marshes and dismal morasses,
curtained by fogs through which the sun’s rays never pierce, a land
sadly breeding a mysterious disease which they call “Le spleen.” In the
fifties, as Disraeli once put it, they looked upon us as “an insular
people subject to fogs, and possessing a powerful middle class,” both,
in their eyes, equally objectionable. All the greater was their surprise
and admiration when they came to realize the soft loveliness of our
landscapes. Sixty years ago and more I was sent home from Eton for a few
days’ change after some trifling ailment, and my father took me, and a
French friend of his who was staying with him, to Richmond. Never shall I
forget that man’s astonished enthusiasm when the view from Richmond Hill
burst upon his sight.
It was, as good luck would have it, a rarely beautiful afternoon in
October. The trees in the park were clothed in the golden russets
of autumn. The sunlight was dancing upon the river running like a
broad silver ribbon through the valley—a delicate blue mist threw an
exquisitely diaphanous veil over the distance. Our friend, brought up in
the fallacies of the French novelists of those days, lifted his hands in
amazement and stood silent.
It was my first sight of Richmond. I have travelled far and wide since
then, and have seen many more startling scenes, but the haunting beauty
of that autumn evening remains one of my happiest dreams. There is a
mysterious charm in that landscape, with the oaks which were veterans
when Henry the Eighth hunted the deer under their boughs, the lush grass,
and the Thames, that sacred river, for an Eton boy without its peer in
the world. It is a scene which neither Alps nor Rockies, neither the
Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, nor the Great Wall of China, nor the
wonders of the tropical jungle, can efface. And—it is home.
Some thirty years ago when, as I have said, autumn was still the welcome
herald of sport, I, happily inspired, laid the foundation of what to-day
robs it of some of its sadness. Now that the stalls in my stable are
empty and the guns lie idle in the racks of the gun-room, I reap the
reward. I sent to America for acorns, I bought seed of the giant Japanese
vine (_Vini coignettia_) in Tokio. From Veitch (alas! for the death of
a noble firm!) I procured specimens of all the species and varieties of
Japanese maples: Thunberg’s berberis, the Persian parrottia—these, with
the various forms of rhus and other choice plants, make up a palette of
colours to cheer the dool of the dying year. In October one after another
the maples begin to send up tongues of fire, setting the hill-side in
flames.
It is a rare treat to see the sun shining through the leaves of some
trees red as the pigeon’s-blood ruby; rare to see the fretted lace-work
of others clothing them in a gorgeous panoply of old gold. Their
neighbours are gleaming like the jewels in Oriental fable. The hollies
and thorns and taller trees are draped with flamboyant curtains sent
down by the huge vines—red, yellow, tawny orange, festoons falling in a
riotous feast of colour.
Among all these proud foreigners the more modest yet no less beautiful
native spindle-tree suffers no eclipse. A little later the American
oaks begin to assert themselves. These, a little while before they turn
crimson, assume all the quality of an old Chinese bronze which the patina
of time has painted with the many hues of Joseph’s coat mysteriously
blended together in an exquisite harmony. When we watch all these, we
understand the poetry of the Japanese when they talk of their mountains
and forests clothed in the brocade of the maples.
It must be obvious that gardening, the object of which is the production
of a succession of varied pictures which, being inspired by the
observation of Nature in her many moods, might appeal to the artistic
taste of a painter or stir the emotion of a poet, presents difficulties
undreamt of by the flower-bed manufacturers of fifty or sixty years ago.
Their gardening was all done with compasses and straight-edge, and the
geometrical result, the eccentric “knottes” worked out in alternantheras,
ecneverias, golden feather and the like, savoured of nothing nearer to
nature than the Tottenham Court Road.
Those were the days in which the garden, like the kitchen, was the
special province of the mistress of the house. Of the latter she might
know something, of the former generally nothing; and the consequence was
that it was handed over to men, who, though they might be most admirable
cultivators, had had no artistic training, had not had the opportunity of
learning by travel, and were content to carry on certain rule-of-thumb
traditions, which turned out every man’s garden in the likeness of that
of every other man. In the uniformly unrelieved brilliancy of geraniums,
verbenas and calceolarias, of imagination or poetry there was not a
trace—not even the merit of invention.
In his brilliant book, “Form and Colour,” Mr. March Phillips divides the
human mind into two great categories—the intellectual and the emotional.
The intellectual faculty is characteristic of the West, the emotional
faculty prevails in the East. Next comes the question of Form and Colour
in Art. “Form,” he says, “has dominated Art whenever and wherever the
intellectual faculty was dominant in life; colour has dominated Art
whenever and wherever the emotional faculty has dominated life.” Later in
the book, when speaking of the contrast between the Art of the West and
the Art of the East, he proceeds: “Form, as we were saying, is chiefly
a matter of the intellect. The arts which deal with form convey ideas.
Their appeal is to the mind. _Colour, on the other hand, conveys no
ideas._ [My italics.] It is emotional and appeals to the senses rather
than to the intellect. And this being so, it seems natural that the
Western temperament, intellectual rather than sensuous, should excel
in form rather than in colour; while the Eastern, sensuous rather than
intellectual, should excel in colour rather than in form.”
This theory of colour and form gives us much food for thought, and it
is impossible not to be struck by the aptness with which it may be
applied to the gardener’s craft. The gorgeous colour of the one school of
gardening appeals directly to the senses, and, like other similar appeals
where there is no relief from monotony, it soon satiates and wearies.
The kaleidoscopic beds which remind us of Pallas Athene springing fully
armed from the brain of Zeus, are at the outset the same as they will be
four months later, when their glory will be ignominiously wheeled away to
the rubbish heap. Day after day you look out from your window and there
is no change—nothing but an eternal Oriental glare of scarlet and yellow.
How can such a garden create ideas? Compare with this the garden of form.
Here there is plenty to excite ideas and fire the imagination, for here
you have life with all its changes and accidents, from the tender birth
of the bud to the vigour of the mature plant, the loves of the flowers,
and the happy ripening of the fruit, which is the mystery of maternity.
No two days are alike; as they follow one another, each brings with
it something new, some fresh beauty, some intimate revelation of
Nature’s secrets. And when the year has nearly run its course, when
the autumn leaves fall to the ground in a shower of gold such as that
which broke through Danaë’s prison, there is no death or decay of the
plant, no carting off to the _fosse commune_, but just a long, happy
winter’s sleep, enviable as that of a dormouse resting in the sure hope
of a glorious new birth when the first kiss of spring shall awaken the
sleeping beauty in the wood.
Colour, then, is of the East sensuous; form is of the West intellectual.
It is, of course, a mere coincidence, and not a rule capable of being
laid down; but as I was walking to-day in a garden of form with Mr.
Phillips’ theory seething in my brain, I could not but be struck by
noting that, besides our own native trees, by far the greater number of
those that have been naturalized here for the sake of their shape are of
Western origin; while, with the exception of the American oaks, those
that we value for their gorgeous colouring—such, for instance, as the
Japanese maples and vines—come to us from the East.
It is hardly worth noticing, but it was certainly curious that, wherever
I looked, there I saw form transported from the West. The caravans which
crossed the Rocky Mountains in search of gold, not without leaving
many skeletons by the way; the orchid hunters of the Amazon, braving
sickness, fevers and poisoned arrows, have enriched our pleasaunces with
treasures, not to speak of the brilliantly-coloured gems of which they
were primarily in search, which, could our grandfathers, and even our
fathers, come to life again, would make them open their eyes wide with
astonishment, wondering whether some magician could have waved his wand
over their cherished grounds, changing them into fairyland.
The diplomatists, who opened up Japan in 1858, the pioneers of trade,
who have penetrated into the secret places of Western China, carrying
their lives in their hands, have all added to our wealth of plants, both
in form and colour, but chiefly in colour. When we see the glorious
velvety shafts of Lawson’s Cypress, or _Libocedrous decurrens_, shooting
up heavenward like church spires, when we look upon the great American
conifers, so rich and so various, or among the lowlier plants, are
startled by the huge leaves of the Chilian Gunneras, we cannot but admit
that for form we have to thank the West.
In a later chapter, in the course of a fascinating disquisition on
Byzantine architecture, Mr. Phillips goes on to say: “We must recognize
that between these ideas of colour and softness there is something more
than an accidental connection ... softness and colour go together as
naturally as hardness and form.”
These are words which might be applied with special fitness to the
garden. But although form is of its very essence hard, so far as outlines
are concerned, we are not without one corrective which softens and
subdues it. That corrective is atmosphere.
I hold, and I think that most fellow-craftsmen, if I may dare to reckon
myself among gardeners, will agree with me, that background is absolutely
essential to success; yet if you place a statue, or plant a specimen
tree, immediately against the finest background that imagination could
desire, it will remain hard and shorn of much of its charm, because it
will lack the softening influence of atmosphere.
I know no better illustration of this than the way in which the Venus
of Milo is shown at the Louvre. It is so skilfully placed that the air
plays all round it, and the outlines of the marble melt, as it were, into
the surrounding atmosphere. Were it pressed, as statues so often are,
close against a curtain or a dead wall, the supreme beauty of the goddess
would be cruelly sacrificed. The form, the inspiration of the sculptor,
would be there, but the hardness of the material would be unredeemed; it
would represent death instead of life. That is why so many photographic
portraits fail to render beauty. The model is placed immediately in
front of a screen—all sense of aerial perspective is lost—and the
result is, from an artistic point of view, a deadly failure, even should
the photograph be technically perfect, so far as optics and chemistry
are concerned. No composition is good, or even tolerable, where aerial
perspective is neglected, and that is as true in gardening as it is in
the plastic arts.
It is the lack of aerial perspective—in other words, of atmosphere—which
so fatally mars the very real beauty of Oriental art. In the paintings of
the Chinese artists, and the extravagantly-admired coloured prints of the
famous wood engravers of Japan, there is often a rare skill of colour and
a firmness of hand worthy of Giotto, especially in the matchless drawing
of flowing lines such as drapery. The birds and trees and grasses of the
Kano school, the lovely outlines of the landscape painters, the monkeys
and deer of Chōsen, are in many respects wonderful. But there is almost
always something wanting. For want of aerial perspective the lines remain
rigid; there is no soft atmospheric roundness, and on that account the
pictures fail to satisfy. The result is like the fascinating work of very
clever children.
Compare with the vaunted eighteenth-century art of Japan the contemporary
work of the French painters, Watteau, Lancret, Fragonard, who, to my
mind, have never been excelled in their rendering of the mystery of
atmosphere. See how their woodland scenes melt into unfathomable
distances like those of the great Dutchmen, such as Cuyp and others.
There you have the poetry of nature and of gardens, and when you are
laying out your domain and combining your succession of pictures and
surprises, ask yourself this question: Would Watteau have found here
anything worthy of his brush? To be sure you cannot have his pretty
powdered dames, and his musical courtiers, with their viols and tabors
and flutes. But they were mere accessories. That which so obviously gave
him the greatest joy—that upon which he bestowed his supreme skill—was
the scenery in which he placed them to give it life, even though that
life should have something of a meretricious and theatrical character.
If it be true, according to Phillips, that softness and colour, hardness
and form, go together, we can account for the prevalence of the garden of
mere colour in the days when the lady of the house ruled the gardener.
The garden of colour is feminine and emotional; the garden of form
masculine and intellectual—it is the garden of the master.
And here we come to something akin to the Chinese doctrine of Yang and
Yin, the male and female principles ruling creation. The garden of form
belongs to Yang, the garden of colour to Yin. This is not intended in
any way to undervalue the woman’s influence. It is only natural that
a woman who is all softness and emotion should surround herself with
effects which mirror her own sweet nature. The man, on the other hand,
strong and hard, will be inclined to try and imitate the sterner pictures
of creation. He will work in what Addison called the Pindaric style,
“without affecting the nicer elegancies of Art.”
Take the books which have been written upon the subject; their name is
legion. The women’s books, full of delicate charm, busy themselves for
the most part with the marriage of colours, the blending of hues, the
reconciliation of hostile shades. They are very clever, very ingenious,
very attractive; but, setting on one side a few of the great lady
writers, among whom Miss Willmott and Miss Jekyll are queens, they
represent no more than the millinery of plants—the stockings to match the
frock.
Set against these the rugged masculine vigour of a writer like William
Robinson, the man to whom, above all others, is due the notable
improvement which has grown in horticultural taste during the last forty
years. From him you will learn much, for he knows much, and he can teach
it. If you have his book, “The English Flower Garden,” you will need no
other, for it will give you all the knowledge which you require. Among
the women’s books, as I have said, there are, of course, delightful
exceptions; but of the bulk of them the best that can be said is that
they are gentle and morally innocuous. For all that is delicate and
charming and alluring, joined to many of the highest and robust qualities
which adorn mankind, I have been all my life a worshipper of the Yin
principle; but when it comes to gardening and the writing of books on
gardening, give me the Yang, give me William Robinson.
All men love trees, and it is small wonder that the sight of objects so
beautiful should have led men to think of them with awe as under the
special care, or even as the dwelling-places, of gods and goddesses;
indeed, the connection of trees with religion is as old as the conception
of the deity itself. North and south, east and west, we find the same
idea.
In the Scandinavian Sagas the mystic Ash Ygdrasil is the tree of life,
of time, and of space. Its branches spread over the whole world and its
top reaches above the heavens. Its roots strike in three directions: the
one down to Hvergelmer, the well of the dragon Nidhug; the second to the
fountain of Mimer, the source of wisdom and wit, for a drink of which
Odin pawned his eye with Mimer; the third is in Asgard, close to the
fountain of Urd the Norn of the Past, where the gods, riding over the
Bifrodh Bridge—the rainbow—assemble to sit in judgment. Here dwell the
three Norns: Urd the Norn of the Past, Verdande the Norn of the Present,
and Skuld the Norn of the Future; and here they weave the web of fate
for you and me and all mankind.
It is strange how men have been fascinated by the rough and rugged
Icelandic mythology born of ice and snow and rocks lashed by glacial
winds; and nights that are light as day, days that are black as night;
an existence which was one long fight against the elements, and struggle
for life with bears and wolves. The Roman poets, on the other hand, born
in the soft, voluptuous creed of the Greeks, a religion in which the gods
and goddesses, much too human, were worshipped in temples built amid the
enchanting fragrance of roseleaf islands, shuddered at the very idea of
the North. For them there would have been nothing but terror in those
strong Sagas, which in other countries gave birth to noble poetry and
stately music.
As told by Ovid, the story of the punishment of Erisichthon, who mocked
the gods and would not sacrifice at their altars, illustrates the worship
of trees and also the dread of the inhospitable North, and yet a North
that was no Arctic region; nothing, indeed, more terrible than the
Caucasus.
In ancient Thessaly, in the midst of a wood sacred to Ceres, there
stood an oak, a sturdy veteran, a grove in itself, covered with votive
offerings, the tokens of the honour which was paid to it. Round it
the Dryads, hand in hand, were wont to hold their choirs and dance in
festive revelry. It was a holy tree, but in spite of all its sanctity,
against it Erisichthon raised his sacrilegious axe and bade his men
strike home, swearing, when they hesitated, that were the tree not merely
dear to the goddess, but if it were the goddess herself, it should lie
low and kiss the earth with its topmost boughs. Under the stroke of the
axe the sacred tree groaned; its leaves and acorns, and even the branches
turned pale. But when the impious hand inflicted the first cruel wound,
blood flowed as from a bull at a sacrifice before the altars. Horrified,
the men were stricken dumb, and one, bolder than the others, would fain
have put a stop to the crime and stayed the falling axe.
“Be this the guerdon of thy piety?” cried the Thessalian, turning the
weapon against the man; severed his head from his body, and repeated
his attack upon the tree. From the heart of the oak there came a voice,
saying, “Under this tree am I, a nymph beloved by Ceres, and my dying
prophecy is that thy deeds shall be punished as the consolation for my
death.” Nothing stops him from his crime; at last, under the many blows,
and dragged by ropes, the tree collapses, and with its weight breaks down
much of the grove.
The mourning Dryads, stricken by their loss, don black robes and pray to
Ceres for the punishment of Erisichthon. The goddess nods assent; she
shakes the fields heavy with crops, and contrives for him a punishment
which would be pitiable had he not forfeited pity by his deeds, dooming
him to be destroyed by pestilential hunger. But since this may not be
attempted by the goddess herself, for the fates will not that Ceres and
famine should co-exist, she charges one of the mountain nymphs to summon
Famine from the cold and bleak shores of Scythia, that barren land where
there is neither corn nor tree—the abode of dull frost, pallor, shivering
and hunger. Thus does the goddess punish the impious sinner, and so she
tortures him until he is driven to gnaw at his own limbs. (Ovid, Met.
740.) Ovid’s description of hunger as a distinct being called to wreak
vengeance is as gruesome as anything that I know of in poetry.
The idea that trees are inhabited by supernatural beings, spirits or
lesser gods, is common enough in the folk-lore of all countries, and
that is what has given rise to the fables of trees which bleed and utter
cries if they are cruelly treated. In Japan there are endless pretty
and fanciful stories, in which the spirits of beautiful trees—often
their matchless cherry trees—fall in love with and bewitch the sons or
daughters of men. Nothing is prettier in that country, so rich in beauty,
than the Shinto shrines nestling in choice spots among the forest-clad
mountains. Around each temple are planted trees which are sacred to,
and under the special protection of, the tutelary deity of the place.
And in connection with them there is a custom called “Ushi no Toki
Mairi” (“Going to worship at the hour of the ox”).[10] It is practised
by jealous women who wish to be revenged on their faithless lovers or
husbands, and reminds us of those waxen dolls with which the witches
and adepts in black magic of the Middle Ages, and in ancient Greece,
according to Theocritus, were wont to pretend that they could rid their
patron of their enemies.
When the world is at rest, at two in the morning, the hour of which
the ox is the symbol, the woman rises; she dons a white robe and high
sandals or clogs; her coif is a metal tripod in which are thrust three
lighted candles; round her neck she hangs a mirror, which falls upon her
bosom; in her left hand she carries a small straw figure, the effigy of
the lover who has deserted her, and in her right she grasps a hammer
and nails, with which she fastens the figure to one of the sacred trees
which surround the shrine. There she prays for the death of the traitor,
vowing that if her petition be heard she will herself pull out the nails
which now offend the god by wounding the mystic tree. Night after night
she comes to the shrine, and each night she drives in two or more nails,
believing that every nail will shorten her lover’s life, for the god, to
save his beloved tree, will surely strike him dead.[11]
Whether this custom still prevails, I know not. Fifty years ago I was
assured that it was “very much alive.” Habits have undergone a mighty
change since then, but superstition dies hard, and there are many
out-of-the-way places even in Japan into which the newness of things has
hardly penetrated. It must have been a ghostly sight to meet a maiden
thus harnessed in the grove of the god on a dark night.
Lafcadio Hearn, that wayward child of the muses, a prose poet if ever
there was such an one, who, after wandering for many years through untold
misery and suffering, at last found rest and his soul in Japan, has left
to us as precious legacies many a rare conceit which would fit in well
here. It would have been strange if he, a mystic himself, had not been
willingly haunted by the folk-lore of the country which he loved, a
country “fabulosa et externis miraculis adsimilata.” Sometimes, indeed,
he was more Catholic than the Pope, living in a Japan that was almost a
dreamland of his own wild fancy. And yet he was a creature of curious
contradictions, for he seems to be half in earnest, half mocking, when he
holds us spellbound with weird tales of goblin trees, luring men to love
or to death; of a camellia tree which listens to the prayers of lovers;
of other camellias which, like spectres, walk about at night, the terror
of mankind. “There was one in the garden of a Matsné Samurai which did
this so much that it had to be cut down. Then it writhed its arms and
groaned, and blood spurted at every stroke of the axe.”
Like every other writer, native and foreign, Lafcadio Hearn is entranced
by the loveliness of the cherry blossom, the emblem of all that is bodily
delicate and spiritually beautiful. He quotes an old stanza, which says:
“If one should ask you concerning the heart of a true Samurai, point to
the mountain cherry flower gleaming in the morning sun.” Again: “As the
cherry flower is first among flowers, so should the warrior be first
among men.” By this nature-loving people, the highest form of female
beauty and excellence is symbolized by the willow for grace, the cherry
flower for youthful charm, the plum blossom for virtue and sweetness. I
should add that the oval outline of the melon seed represents in the
shape of the face the type of high breeding and aristocratic distinction.
The poets are never weary of drawing upon the cherry flower for their
metaphors. A Japanese gentleman, looking out upon a snow-storm, will say:
“See how the petals of the cherries are drifting before the wind.”
The Yanagi—the weeping willow—is a much haunted tree. Here is a story
told by Lafcadio Hearn which is worth quoting:
“There is a rather pretty legend—recalling the old Greek dream of
Dryads—about a willow tree which grew in the garden of a Samurai of
Kyōto. Owing to its weird reputation, the tenant of the homestead desired
to cut it down; but another Samurai dissuaded him, saying: ‘Rather sell
it to me, that I may plant it in my garden. That tree has a soul; it were
cruel to destroy its life.’ Thus purchased and transplanted, the Yanagi
flourished well in its new home, and its spirit, out of gratitude, took
the form of a beautiful woman, and became the wife of the Samurai who
had befriended it. A charming boy was the result of this union. A few
years later the Daimio to whom the ground belonged gave orders that the
tree should be cut down. Then the wife wept bitterly, and for the first
time revealed to her husband the whole story. ‘And now,’ she added, ‘I
know that I must die, but our child will live and you will always love
him. This thought is my only solace.’ Vainly the astonished husband
sought to retain her. Bidding him farewell for ever, she vanished into
the tree. Needless to say, that the Samurai did everything in his power
to persuade the Daimio to forgo his purpose. The prince wanted the tree
for the reparation of a great Buddhist temple, the Sanjiusangendo.” (The
Temple of the 33,333 images of Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy.) “The tree
was felled, but, having fallen, it suddenly became so heavy that three
hundred men could not move it. Then the child, taking a branch in his
little hand, said ‘Come,’ and the tree followed him, gliding along the
ground to the court of the temple.”
You may bless the Yanagi for offering you a sure cure for the toothache.
Haunted it is bound to be, and if you suffer, drive nails into it until
the spirit of the tree, to save its home, relieves you of the pain. Are
you a dreamer of dreams? Then if your climate be mild, without fail, see
that you are not without a Nanten among your shrubs. Hide it away in some
sheltered spot, both for its own sake and for yours, and let it be your
trusted confidant. If the gods should send you evil and racking dreams,
rise early and whisper the terror to your Nanten, and it shall come to
naught. Science has corrupted the Japanese name Nanten into _Nandina_,
and, for some reason best known to themselves, botanists have added the
altogether ridiculous and senseless suffix _domestica_. Perhaps such an
outrage may have robbed the plant of its virtues; we can but try it.
To go back to our cherries. In the grounds of an old Scottish castle,
rich in ghostly stories and blood-curdling legends, there stands an old
gean tree (wild cherry). It is the belief of the countryside that this
old tree is haunted by the spirit of a former mistress of the castle,
a lady who, as tradition has it, suffered much in her life-time and
cannot rest in death. One day, some forty years ago, I started off from
a neighbouring place to pay a visit at the castle with “Hang-theology”
Rogers, the famous rector of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, than whom no
brighter companion ever cheered a long, cold drive in a rather rickety
dog-cart. We arrived just as the large party in the house were gathering
together in the drawing-room after luncheon. We were met by long and
rather pale faces. Obviously something had happened—nobody seemed at
ease. At last an old lady, who was among the guests, took me on one side
and told me what all this meant.
That morning, a visitor who was driving up to the house, when he came to
the gean tree, saw the figure of a woman come out of it, glide for some
distance beside him, and then vanish. Many of the people in the castle,
who happened to be looking out of the drawing-room window at the time,
saw the wonder, and the old lady added that she herself, having gone up
to her bedroom to put on her bonnet, distinctly saw the apparition from
her window, which was immediately over the drawing-room. All these people
were absolutely convinced that, like the visitor in his dog-cart, they
had seen the ghost which haunted the gean tree. I have told the story
without addition or ornament, exactly as I heard it an hour or two after
its occurrence and while the witnesses were still under the spell. It
could not fail to remind me of the tales of Bakémono-zakura, the haunted
cherry trees of Japanese legend, and it seemed worthy to be set down
beside them.
The ancient Egyptians, though they worshipped onions and garlic, for
which they were handsomely ridiculed by Juvenal, seem to have paid little
respect to trees, probably because, besides the palm, so few were known
to them. There is, however, according to that wonderful book, Sir James
Fraser’s “Golden Bough,” some evidence to show that they believed that
spirits haunted trees; at any rate, the tamarisk was sacred to Osiris—the
god and ruler who represented the principle of good, as his brother
Typho did that of evil. The story of the death of Osiris is curious as
a contradiction of the idea of immortality with which deity is usually
endowed. The god, having become King of Egypt, devoted himself to the
civilization of his people, and to further that end, set out to travel
over the world, leaving his wife Isis to reign in his place. When he
came back, Typho, with other conspirators, among whom was an Ethiopian
queen, named Aso, plotted to kill his brother. So, having procured the
exact measurement of Osiris, he caused a box to be made to fit him, and
having invited Osiris to a feast, he caused the box, which was of rare
workmanship, to be brought in, saying he would give it to any one present
whom it would fit. All the guests tried it in vain; at last Osiris laid
himself down in it, and the conspirators, rushing forward, fastened down
the lid with nails and molten lead. Then the box was carried to the
riverside. It floated down the stream and was carried by the waves of
the sea to the coast of Byblos, and lodged in the branches of a tamarisk
bush. There is much more of this fable in Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s great
book—not all of it very edifying reading; but that is how the tamarisk
became a sacred tree.
While treating of the superstitions and legends belonging to trees, it
has been impossible to avoid touching upon the belief in ghosts. That
faith exists in every part of the world. The fetichists of the African
priests, the totemists of North America, the wildest savages of the
South Seas with their uncouth idols, the aborigines of Australia and
New Zealand—all stand in terror of ghosts. I long years ago translated
a collection of Pekingese stories of haunted houses; but in many moves
and journeys the manuscript has been lost—no great matter of regret,
for these tales are always the same, the two leading causes for
apparitions being remorse or revenge. The story of the ghost of Sakura
Sōgorō, perhaps the most famous ghost story of the Far East, which I
have translated in my “Tales of Old Japan,” has, apart from its local
colouring, no feature differing from many such traditions which have been
handed down in Europe. But the true interest of these superstitions, call
them fables, myths—what you will—lies in the proof that all over the
world there is implanted in man the instinctive conviction that death is
not the end of all things—the mere return of dust to dust, of ashes to
ashes; if that were so, there could be no thought of ghosts. The belief
depends upon the existence of that mysterious intuitive feeling that when
the thread of fate has been severed, there still remains another life
which death itself cannot kill, and that other life is the soul.
* * * * *
But the fairies—where are they? Can it be that the Bakémono-zakura—the
haunted cherry trees of Japan—when they were ruthlessly torn out of the
soil of the country of the gods ten years ago, indignantly burst their
barken bonds, and taking wing for refuge to the sacred groves of Mount
Fugi, from some wild bird’s eyrie watched their beloved old homes being
wafted away to new and uncertain climes across the terrors of the Pacific
Ocean? And yet often, even here, I see a merry band of flaxen-haired
dwarfs playing about the enchanted trees. Fairy-land is rich in surprises
and mystifications. Who knows? Perhaps these little sprites are
themselves fairies who have chosen for their abode the forsaken dwellings
of the dark eastern Bakémono—“good folk” sent by a kindly Providence to
shed a fleeting ray of the sunshine of poetry over the wintry prose of an
octogenarian’s life.
QUEEN VICTORIA AND MARIE THERESIA
Rarely, indeed, does the student in history come across two personalities
so entirely in unison at almost all points as those of the Austrian
Empress Marie Theresia and our own Queen Victoria. Both were essentially
great Sovereigns, both essentially good women. Our own Queen exercised
an authority which was in one sense even more remarkable than that of
the Empress; for whereas the latter was a commanding figure in an age
when the glamour of autocracy had not yet faded away, Queen Victoria,
by sheer force of character, maintained the prestige of royalty against
the flowing tide of a democracy which was becoming daily more and more
self-asserting. Indeed, she did more than maintain it—she summoned it
from the dead; for in the two reigns which preceded hers it had perished,
as men then thought, without hope of resurrection.
In all save their outward appearance the likeness between the two august
ladies was such that it almost seemed as if the one was the reincarnation
of the other; as if the soul of the mighty Austrian had passed into the
Queen. An earnest and deep piety was the foundation of both characters,
though they would have been utterly opposed in the form of its exercise.
Marie Theresia was the faithful daughter of the Church of Rome, Queen
Victoria the no less faithful and loving child of the Reformation. In
both religion was a passion.
There has been a recent republication of the “Memoirs of Frau Pichler,”
the Viennese poetess and authoress, whose _salon_ at the end of the
eighteenth and during the early part of the nineteenth century was so
famous that people said that there were two things which no stranger
coming to Vienna could afford to miss seeing—St. Stephen’s Cathedral and
Frau Pichler. Those memoirs, admirably edited and furnished with copious
notes by one Emil Blümml, throw an interesting light upon the private and
intimate life of Marie Theresia, and as we follow these reminiscences,
we cannot but be struck by the many links in the chain of similarity of
which I have spoken above.
Both Queen Victoria and the Empress were deeply penetrated with that
sense of the Royal Caste which is too apt to raise an insurmountable
boundary against social intercourse. But if Royalty itself stands apart,
there is also an instinctive aloofness from it in those who are of
high position but yet subjects; so that the intimacies of Sovereigns
and royal personages are found rather among their personal attendants
than among the nobles and powerful officials who form their courts.
Especially is this bound to be the case where princesses are concerned.
Their tirewomen and dressers are far more capable than chamberlains and
secretaries of state of judging their private idiosyncrasies; so, in
order to know what manner of woman this or that queen may have been, we
are fain to climb the backstairs—where such a way is open to us, as it is
in the case of Marie Theresia.
[Illustration: THE EMPRESS MARIE THERESIA.
_From an engraving after a painting by Mytens._
[_To face p. 130._]
The adoption of Frau Pichler’s mother by the great Empress is just such a
pathetic story, not without a pinch of the salt of romance, as would have
touched the kind heart of Queen Victoria, and, indeed, we can well fancy
her in like circumstances behaving exactly as Marie Theresia did.
In the month of May, 1744, the Wolfenbüttel Regiment of Infantry was
moved from Hungary to Vienna. A poor old lieutenant, fifty years of age,
named Friedrich Hieronymus, a widower, had contrived—with what pains and
anxiety who can tell?—to take with him on the march his only child, a
little daughter aged four. Hardly had he reached Vienna when he caught
a chill, inflammation of the lungs set in and he died, full of terror
for the future of his little Charlotte, whom he was to leave penniless
and destitute in what was to him a foreign country, among strangers
professing a religion which was abhorrent to him—for he was a Protestant.
His last tender words were for her. “Poor child! what will become of
thee?” Throughout her long life those painfully uttered words, torn from
the dying man’s soul, remained graven in her heart, unforgettable. His
brother officers, good charitable souls, probably themselves none too
well furnished with this world’s goods, took charge of the babe, who
became from thenceforth the “fille du Régiment.” The pathetic story came
to the ears of Marie Theresia, who had a soft place in her heart for the
Wolfenbüttel Regiment, which was named after the family of her mother,
the Empress Elizabeth. She sent for the child, but the officers of the
regiment, deeply imbued with a sense of loyalty to their dead comrade,
did all that was in their power to hinder the babe from falling into the
hands of an aggressively religious Catholic.
They hid her in a suburb of Vienna, but the Empress’s agents were
too clever for them, and the child was brought to Court, where, as
the Wolfenbüttlers had foreseen, she was brought up in the strictest
doctrines of the Roman Church, under the charge of a Spanish lady,
Isabella Duplessis, and was specially educated with a view to entering
the Empress’s service as tirewoman. Her life was now very different from
what might have been expected for the baby that followed the drum. She
became the playmate of the Imperial children, amongst them of the unhappy
Queen Marie Antoinette, and so the years went by in all the luxury of a
sumptuous court.
Little Charlotte proved herself worthy of her good fortune; indeed,
so quick and nimble-witted was she, that when she had reached the age
of thirteen she was already deemed fit to enter upon her duties about
her great mistress, not only as tirewoman, but also as reader. To this
end she had been early handed over to the care of Gräfin Fuchs, the
tenderly-loved nurse and governess of the Empress, who had such an
affection for her that when she died she was buried in the vault of the
Capucins, the last home of the Imperial Family.
In spite of the advice given by Hippolochus to Glaucus, it is not always
an unmixed advantage so to excel as to make oneself indispensable. This
little Charlotte soon found out, for her skill in hairdressing was such
that the Empress, who was so particular about her hair that she would
sometimes have it done and undone four or five times before she was
satisfied, could not do without her. Marie Theresia, who was without a
spark of coquetry and had neither eyes nor thought for any man but her
husband, had all a woman’s instinctive love of display, and took a great
delight in her beauty for its own sake.
None of the other tirewomen had Charlotte’s cunning fingers, and the
same thing applied to her reading. German, French, Italian and Latin
came to the child with equal facility, and all these were found in the
dispatches which she had to read aloud to the Empress. French and Italian
were the languages of the Opera and of the elegances of the Court. On one
occasion when the Empress was expecting a baby, she had a bet with Count
Dietrichstein as to the sex of the infant. She wagered for a girl, he for
a boy—the Empress won. The Count sent her a piece of porcelain with a
portrait of himself kneeling, and these words written by Metastasio, the
Poet Laureate of the Court:
“Perdo, è ver, l’ augusta figlia
A pagar m’ ha condannato,
Ma s’ è ver che a te somiglia
Tutto il mondo ha guadagnato.”
A pretty compliment! The babe, Marie Antoinette, born to be Queen of
Beauty and of Sorrow, was worthy of it.
Talking of languages, it is strange to read of how small account German
was at the Court of Vienna. The Emperor Francis I., as a Lorrainer,
hardly understood it and never spoke it, and the people of his service
were mostly Lorrainers or Netherlanders. The Empress herself did not
speak correct German; she used the vulgarest Viennese patois, and Frau
Pichler tells an amusing story of how a young Saxon lady, who had been
appointed as one of her mother’s colleagues, came to her in despair one
morning to beg her help. The Empress had ordered her to go and fetch “das
blabe Buich.” What could her Majesty mean? Charlotte laughed, and told
her to go and get “das blaue Buch.” The Saxon girl, Karoline Mercier,
would not believe her—but the blue book it was. If she could not master
German, the Empress, like Queen Victoria, was familiar with French and
Italian. Our Queen was very fond of showing her fluency in German and
French, and on her drives would often stop her carriage for the joy of a
chat with some poor Italian organ-grinder in his own soft tongue. Latin,
which the Empress knew intimately, was the means of communication with
her Hungarian magnates. She loved the language and them, for so she was
reminded of the day—the 11th of September, 1741—when she, threatened
by half Europe with the loss of the states which the hostile Powers
had once guaranteed, went to Pressburg, met the nobles of Hungary in
their parliament, and appealed to them for protection for herself and
her child, the future Emperor Joseph. Her cry for help was not in vain.
Touched to the quick by the sight of the lovely weeping Empress, the
proud Magyars, old and young, the flower of a noble chivalry, drew their
swords and swore to die for the beautiful woman, who was their _King_. A
universal conscription was decreed. It was a triple triumph, upon which
she loved to look back—the triumph of Virtue, of Right, and last, but not
least, of Beauty.
The service of Marie Theresia’s handmaidens was no sinecure. In summer
she rose at five o’clock—in winter a little later—and rang for her
girls, who had to appear fully dressed in hoop-petticoats, and with
the marvellous edifices of hair which the fashion of the day exacted.
To achieve this, the young ladies had to get up in the middle of the
night, and this was especially hard upon Charlotte, who had night after
night to read aloud for long hours after the Empress had gone to bed.
But Charlotte was so quick, and knew the Empress’s taste so well that,
whatever happened, she must be present at the morning toilette, and ready
to attend upon her mistress during and after supper—a light meal, of
which Her Majesty always partook in her private room. Busy worker as the
Empress was, she seems to have depended entirely upon having her State
papers read aloud to her, and so Charlotte became acquainted very early
in life with many important State secrets. But she was a discreet little
soul and knew how to hold her tongue, and so retained the confidence of
her Imperial mistress so long as that wonderful woman lived.
The portrait which Frau Pichler has left behind her of the great lady,
partly drawn from her mother’s stories of her, partly from her own
memories of the days when as a little girl she used to be taken by
special command to Schönbrunn or the Burg in Vienna, is fascinating.
In her youth the Empress had been extremely beautiful, and though in
middle life she grew large and unwieldy, and had to be taken up to her
rooms in a lift—wafted through the air by fairies, as it seemed to the
child whom she took with her—she retained to the end that wonderful
gift of grace and of what is called “presence,” which is so keenly felt
and so impossible to describe. Kindly she was, too, and of a motherly
sweetness with children. Frau Pichler tells us how on one occasion, when
the Empress had sent her to an adjoining room on some small errand,
she slipped and fell, breaking her fan, and burst into tears. The kind
Empress hurried after her, comforted her, and gave her a new fan—a
precious relic, to be treasured as we may well believe for a lifetime.
Marie Theresia was the daughter of the Emperor Charles the Sixth, who,
being without a male heir, named her as his successor by “pragmatic
sanction”—a Byzantine term for an ordinance issued arbitrarily by the
head of an empire or kingdom. She succeeded to the various thrones of
her father on his death in 1740, and associated with herself as Emperor
her husband, Duke Francis of Lorraine, who had been her play-fellow and
whom she had married in 1736. In spite of his numerous infidelities, she
adored him. Albeit, so far as politics were concerned, he was no great
help to her; so though he bore the title of Emperor, she remained unaided
at the helm. Hers was no easy task. In spite of scraps of paper and
guarantees, a coalition between Prussia, France, Bavaria, the Palatinate,
Saxony, Sardinia, Naples and Spain—a pack of hungry war-dogs, all tearing
at her on every side, each howling for his pound of flesh—threatened to
devour her. She had only England and Hungary on her side; but, like Abdul
Hamid in our own times, she could count upon the quarrels between her
foes. Prussia was the arch-enemy. Prussia, which we are now told, was the
original subject of the “Hymn of Hate,” written, _teste_ the _Morning
Post_, by the revolutionary Herweg in 1841, for which Herr Lissauer,
who substituted England for Prussia, has been decorated by a grateful
Kaiser.[12] Prussia, of which Heine wrote: “I utterly loathe this
Prussia, this stiff, hypocritical, sanctimonious Prussia, this Tartuffe
among the nations.”[13]
Like our own Queen, Marie Theresia was essentially a woman of business.
She personally directed the affairs of her Empire, issuing her commands
to her ministers, and the little orphan Charlotte, as we have seen,
for many years acted as her secretary and reader. The duties were no
sinecure, and although no doubt the position of a young lady of the Court
was one of great luxury in some respects and greatly coveted, there were
also some hardships with which those chosen maids had to put up. The
Empress was large and corpulent; she could not bear warmth, and so her
ladies had to perform their duties in a thorough draught, even when snow
was being driven in at the windows, falling on to the State papers which
Charlotte was reading aloud to her.
In spite of her dread of heat, so long as her limbs would carry her,
the Empress, devout and exact in all religious observances, would on
Corpus Christi day, in the height of summer, piously accompany the
sacred procession on foot. One broiling June day she came back from this
ceremony violently heated and tired, having walked half across the town
under the sun, had to be undressed, and have her hair taken down, and sat
in a thorough draught, eating strawberries and drinking lemonade, while
Charlotte brushed and combed out her hair, which was so wet that the poor
girl had to keep wiping her hands. How Marie Theresia would have enjoyed
one of Queen Victoria’s picnics on Lochnagar in a November blizzard!
One of the difficulties with which those responsible for the management
of the public ceremonials in which our Queen took part had to deal,
was the regulation of the temperature. The enduring of heat was to her
as to Marie Theresia, a misery and an impossibility. She could put up
with any other discomfort and fatigue; but heat was unbearable. The
Emperor Joseph, who did not inherit his mother’s imperviousness to cold,
had to visit her in furs. Kaunitz, a privileged minister, was the only
person who dared to shut the window. “How do you manage when you go to
Balmoral?” I once asked Lord Beaconsfield, who was a chilly mortal. “The
Queen is very gracious,” was the answer, “she excuses me from going
there.”
In dealing with the affairs of State both rulers showed themselves to
be women of strong character and indefatigable industry. Their methods,
of necessity, differed widely. The one, as I have said above, was an
autocrat; the other, a constitutional Sovereign, deeply imbued with the
sense of her own limitations, and yet such a mistress of public business,
of constitutional law and of precedent, that she often dominated the
councils of her ministers, many of whom recognized in her their guide and
instructress in cases of difficulty. Nowhere was this more evident than
in her treatment of foreign affairs. There she was no more a negligible
quantity than Marie Theresia had been; no matter who might be Secretary
of State, there was always a very real power in the background, and that
power was the Queen. It would be easy to multiply instances, but we need
only point to two cases: the Danish Duchies’ question in 1864, where, in
obedience to what she believed to be the wishes of her dead husband, she
took what is now shown to have been an unfortunate line; and, secondly,
the dispute with the United States on the Trent question in 1861, where
she, with the assistance of the Prince Consort, used all her influence to
hinder what would have been a disastrous war, an unthinkable calamity.
The mention of the Prince Consort brings into strong relief two pictures,
in which it is difficult to say whether we are more startled by the
likeness or puzzled by the violence of the contrasts. In both cases
we see a marriage of true love, in each of which a prince of a small
reigning family was raised, not for reasons of State, but by pure
affection, to share the glories of a vast empire and a throne before
which countless peoples bowed. There the likeness between the two
husbands comes to an end.
In Prince Albert Queen Victoria found not only a faithful and devoted
lover, but a helpmate, who was ever at her side, and, young as he was,
shared the heavy burthens which she had to bear, and brought to her
councils all the store of wisdom and statesmanship with which he had
been endowed by that astute mentor, Baron Stockmar. Not the least part
of his merit was his self-effacement; yet in spite of it he aroused
unreasoning jealousies, for which his intimacy and the Queen’s with
the same old German physician was in no small measure accountable. The
Emperor Francis, on the contrary, was of no assistance to Marie Theresia.
Strikingly handsome, physically as grand a man perhaps as Prince Albert,
he had none of the Prince’s serious qualities. He was essentially and
fatally charming, but of politics and the affairs of State he took no
heed; all that he cared for were his flirtations, his bric-à-brac, and
his collection of coins and medals.
He was what is called “a dangerous man,” and when “a dangerous man”
is an Emperor to boot—Well! But such as he was, his Empress loved him
with all her soul, content to take upon her own shoulders the drudgery
of sovereignty, and leaving to him its gewgaws and the enjoyment of
a brilliant idleness. If she ever knew of them she forgave him his
infidelities, and, like our Queen, worshipping the ground upon which
her husband trod, she never looked at another man, nor cared for any
admiration but his. As Frau Pichler rather quaintly observes, had she
done so her maidens must have known of it. We are told that no man is a
hero to his valet. For a woman to be virtuous to her Abigail, she must
be as chaste as Diana before those compromising visits to Endymion, of
which we may be sure that her nymphs were well aware.
No breath of scandal ever dimmed the mirror of the Empress’s fair fame.
Queen Victoria herself was not more stern in the repression of anything
approaching loose or unseemly talk. She considered it to be the duty
of persons in high places to repress any lack of decorum, and their
privilege to set an example to be followed by others. To her daughter,
the Queen of Naples, she wrote: “It is our duty to remember that a word
in season or a grave look will silence those who indulge in unlicensed
speech, and have an excellent general effect.” Nothing better nails
to the counter the lies of Frederic the Great, so characteristically
Prussian, than the fact that the capital, which up to her time had been
notorious for the laxity of its morals, was described by Sir John Moore
towards the end of her reign in very laudatory language. “I can imagine,”
he says, “no city in Europe where a young gentleman would see fewer
examples, or have fewer opportunities of deep gaming, open profligacy, or
gross debauchery than in Vienna.” This, as her biographer, Mary Maxwell
Moffat, says, is a great testimony to the uplifting influence of the
Empress-Queen. That the influence was personal is proved by the relapse
of Vienna during the nineteenth century. By precept and example, she
cast out the swine, but when she was gone they came back again.
It was the irony of fate that neither the Empress’s virtues, her great
beauty, her sweet disposition, nor the prestige of her glorious position
were able to clip the wings of her flighty and too attractive husband.
That she had some inkling of her failure is clear from the advice that
she once gave to her favourite maiden Charlotte: “Be warned and do not
marry a man who has nothing to do.” Queen Victoria was more fortunate.
Her marriage remained a union of hearts, of which time itself had no
power to relax the bonds.
In all that concerns art Queen Victoria was essentially a woman of her
own time, and it is in no sense derogatory to her to say that it was
certainly not a happy time. In the plastic arts she had not the talent of
her two brilliant daughters, the Empress Frederic and Princess Louise.
It is true that her sketch-book was the constant companion of her
holidays, and illustrated the diary of her travels; but her execution
did not go much beyond the boundaries of the school-girl’s album. The
painters whom she chose to employ as portraitists—Winterhalter, Landseer,
Von Angeli—were unluckily chosen. She admired and patronized Leighton,
but she would not hear of being painted by Millais or Watts. Music was
her delight, and so it was with Marie Theresia; both ladies loved the
Italian school, both were themselves gifted with lovely voices and
had been well trained. Indeed, in the Hapsburg family the talent was
hereditary; all the older members of it were capable musicians, and
Charles the Sixth would himself accompany their chamber music on the
harpsichord.
Mrs. Moffat quotes a letter of Marie Theresia, in which she writes: “As
for dramatic music, I confess that I would rather have the slightest
Italian thing than all the works of our composers, Gaisman, Gluck and
others. For instrumental music we have a certain Haydn, who has good
ideas, but he is just beginning to be known.” Strange words, coming from
the Sovereign of the capital which was to be the home, above all others,
of the greatest composers of the world. Mozart she knew as a child of
six, when he sat upon her lap to play, and, tumbling down, was picked up
by the little Archduchess Marie Antoinette, to whom in gratitude he at
once proposed marriage!
The tender care and loving kindness with which Queen Victoria treated all
those, from the highest to the humblest, who were in any sense dependent
upon her, is a matter of common knowledge. She shared in their joys, she
sympathized with their sorrows, interesting herself in all the everyday
changes and chances of their lives. The unclouded happiness of her own
all too brief married life had penetrated her soul with the belief
that nothing could compare with the bliss of a loving union. This she
showed even in a case where a young man in whom she took a deep interest,
and for whom she had destined what would have been a very advantageous
marriage, disappointed her by making an unsuitable match. Her answer to
one who spoke unkindly of this was characteristic and touching. “After
all,” she said, sweetly excusing him, “perhaps they loved one another.”
That in her mind was obviously the essential.
The account of the marriage of the Austrian Empress’s favourite tirewoman
is worth recording, not only as showing a parallel to this sweetly
indulgent nature of our Queen, but also as giving us a curious picture of
the formalities of the old Court of Vienna.
Upon her maidens the Empress spent an almost motherly care. When not
on duty they might go out, but must tell Her Majesty whither they were
bound, and then an Imperial carriage was placed at their disposal; when
not on duty, they were always allowed to receive visitors—even men, but
their names must be submitted to their mistress, and the privileged
swains must be of unblemished repute. It was in that way, during the
Seven Years’ War, when the detested Prussian Drill-Sergeant Frederic was
pushing forward and yet further forward in Moravia and was besieging
Olmütz, that Charlotte made the acquaintance of Herr von Greiner, at that
time a secretary in the Bohemian-Austrian Chancellerie. He was accepted
as a suitor, but must wait till he could offer his wife a better position.
In spite of what her daughter says, Charlotte, unless her portraits
wickedly malign her, was no beauty, and she was tocherless to boot; but
she was clever and the favourite protégée of the Empress. What could
not a capable man of business in the public service hope from such an
alliance? We are told that, doubtless in view of this advantage, there
had been many suitors for her hand, but the Empress had always stood
in the way. Charlotte was in terror lest in this case also she should
interfere. She was too useful to her mistress to be lightly spared. There
was nothing for it but patience.
Meanwhile, in the year 1765 the Court moved to Innsbruck for the marriage
of the second prince, afterwards the Emperor Leopold II., and there
suddenly the Emperor Francis fell a victim to an apoplectic stroke. The
Empress was stricken dumb with grief. She could not weep, but passed the
night in spasmodic sobbing, till at last in the morning the doctors, who
were alarmed at her condition, bled her, and then the merciful tears came
and brought relief. Charlotte was ordered to cut off all her mistress’s
hair, and in her dress, as well as in the furniture of her apartments,
the widow put on the trappings of woe. Of the beauty that largely
remained to her, since her husband was no longer there to see, she took
no account. On every 18th of August, the day of his death, she remained
shut up in her room, confessed, fasted, and passed the day in sad
remembrances, in prayer and in pious exercises. If the stones of Windsor
Castle could prate, they might tell just such a story.
Now that the lovely fair hair, that crown of glory, had been shorn off,
and the Empress no longer cared for her old elaborate toilette, there was
less for the favourite tirewoman to do, and the wedding with Herr von
Greiner was allowed. The future bridegroom was presented to the great
lady, who was surprised to find in him a rather commonplace man, and
said afterwards to Charlotte: “I thought that you would have chosen some
gallant gentleman—a Chevalier.” However, the commonplace man was one in
whom she later recognized a thoroughly honest and capable official, whom
she respected and promoted for his worth.
The year of mourning for the dead Emperor was not yet at an end, and the
Court had laid aside none of the trappings and the suits of woe. But
Charlotte, as bride that was to be, was allowed to dress in colours.
The wedding was celebrated with all the ceremonies which were at that
time prescribed by Court etiquette. It was still the fashion to make
a special function of the betrothal, which in Charlotte’s case was
celebrated eight days before the marriage. On the wedding day she had
to go and show herself in her bridal attire to the Empress, who added
several presents of jewellery to what she was wearing, and lent her a
priceless rope of pearls from the Imperial Treasury, to be returned after
the ceremony, an ornament which was commonly used on such occasions.
The service was held in the private chapel, and the Mistress of the Robes
led the bride to the altar. When the priest came to the place where
the bride is told to answer “Yes,” she was compelled by etiquette to
curtsey to the Mistress of the Robes and ask her permission to do so.
Then the Mistress of the Robes stood up, turned herself round to face the
chapel in which the Empress was, and in her turn curtsied, and in dumb
show asked Her Majesty’s consent. This was also given by signs, and the
Mistress of the Robes, in the same silent way, transmitted the pleasure
of the Empress, who had taken upon herself the duties of mother, upon
which the bride gratefully curtsied, turned to the priest and uttered the
fateful “Yes.”
There is something touching in the way in which the Empress mothered the
orphan whom she had almost kidnapped from the Wolfenbüttel officers.
She surely did not perform her duty by halves! When I read the account
of the wedding ceremony, my mind went back fifty-two years to another
wedding, when in St. George’s Chapel another Queen, recently widowed,
sat in a little gallery and acknowledged the curtsey of her new
daughter-in-law, one of the loveliest brides that ever sun shone upon. At
every step in this sketch of the Austrian Empress we are met by something
that speaks of our own great Queen.
In this wise was the wedding of one of the Imperial handmaidens
celebrated in the days of Marie Theresia. Charlotte, now Frau von
Greiner, entered happily upon her new life. The change from the
excitement and publicity of the brilliant Austrian Court, to the quiet
and narrower society of the upper middle-class, for whom the Imperial
surroundings were a thing of awe and mystery, must have been very
striking. But the bride found her account in it, and, as we shall see,
Herr von Greiner, being a man of quite exceptional talent and artistic
gifts, was able to attract to his house all that was most brilliant among
the literary and musical celebrities of that time.
In the year 1769 Caroline—afterwards Frau Pichler—was born. In the
meantime the Empress had by no means relaxed her friendship for her
mother. The von Greiners were not “hoffähig,” they could not go to court
officially, but Frau von Greiner constantly visited her old mistress
privately, and Von Greiner himself had, as I have said, won the great
lady’s favour, and she not only kept him in her eye for advancement, but
frequently sent for him and sought his advice. With a salary of four
thousand gulden—two hundred pounds, I suppose—and a spacious official
residence, the family was well able to maintain a good appearance,
and Herr von Greiner’s exceptional attainments and artistic gifts as
pastelist and poet made the house a trysting-place for all that was
most notable in literature and music—especially music; for at Frau
von Greiner’s weekly assemblies were frequently seen and heard Haydn,
Beethoven, Mozart, Paesiello and Cimarosa. Painters and sculptors,
poets and authors less known to fame than those great musicians, were
welcome visitors, and the _salon_ became so popular that even a sprig of
nobility—the condescension duly acknowledged—might now and then be found
there. It is curious to see what a hard and fast line Vienna drew (and,
to a certain extent, still draws) between the upper middle-class and the
aristocracy—a line as deferentially recognized on the one side as it was
haughtily imposed on the other. We know how to this day, in an Austrian
ballroom, “die kleinen Komtessen” look with supercilious eyes upon any
would-be partner who may be introduced to them unless his quarterings are
fully satisfactory. The favour in which Frau von Greiner was held in high
quarters had no doubt some effect in bridging over the gulf which was
fixed between the noblesse and the bourgeoisie.
But I have been straying far away from the goal which I set before me.
It would be fascinating to follow Frau Pichler’s story, for it is the
story of a woman who lived through stirring times, who was present during
the three attacks upon Vienna, who tells us the one story of courteous
chivalry of the young Napoleon; who heard Haydn, Weber, Mozart, Beethoven
play their own compositions, and, living on till near the middle of
the last century, could compare their execution with that of Liszt and
Thalberg. She knew and rather disliked Madame de Staël, despising her
for tricking out the charms of a woman “fair, fat and forty” in a too
youthful attire; but was charmed by the music of a speaking voice, her
description of which reminds us of Sarah Bernhardt. She corresponded at
least once with Goethe, and was snubbed by the Humboldts, which rankled
not a little. But all this is beside the mark. I am only concerned to
show how to the end the lives of the two great Queen-Empresses followed
similar lines.
Life is like a drawing in black and white, in which, of necessity,
the black predominates. The stronger the drawing, the darker are the
shadows; as in an etching by Rembrandt—the more powerful the life, the
more violent the contrasts. The high lights were high indeed in the
early days of the two august ladies; the deep gloom of the long night of
widowhood, which in each case followed some twenty years of ideal home
sunshine, must have weighed all the more heavily for the glory of the
mornings which had ushered in their young days; for true it is that “the
sorrow’s crown of sorrow is the remembering happier things!” In facing
the inevitable, women sometimes show higher courage than men. Nothing
could be more brave than the way in which these two Queens bowed to the
decrees of fate. The world’s work must be done, though hearts be broken
and the joy of life extinguished. They felt that they had duties to their
people, and they braced themselves to harness. The death of the Prince
Consort was really a far heavier blow to the Queen than that of the
Emperor Francis was to Marie Theresia—or, rather, perhaps I should say a
more searching blow, with much further-reaching consequences. The Queen
lost not only a tenderly worshipped husband and lover, but a mainstay
upon which she leant, an adviser in all matters of State, a guiding hand
in trouble. Marie Theresia lost a husband whom, little as he deserved
it, she loved with all her soul; a man who was all in all to her in her
home life, but who in her public life was a mere cypher, playing no part
in her queendom. It was, therefore, a braver act of devotion for our
great lady in that loneliest of all solitudes, the solitude of a widowed
queen, immediately to take up the threads of her complicated statecraft
without the assistance of her loving helper, than it was for the Empress
to remain as pilot, bereaved indeed, but no more unaided than she had
always been. Both laid aside their personal and poignant grief to devote
themselves to their work. What remained to them of life—a cruel length
of years: in the one case fifteen, in the other forty—was given without
reserve to the promotion of the welfare of the fatherland. Duty was to
them the supreme call, a voice that only became silent in death. Both are
held in grateful and undying memory, for surely no women ever went to
their rest with cleaner consciences or with better claim to be hailed as
good and faithful servants.
THE WALLACE COLLECTION
One day, as I was talking to a friend in my garden of memory, he, looking
round at the fine bronzes by which we were surrounded, remarked what a
pity it was that Oriental art should be so poorly represented in the
Wallace Collection; and how much it was to be regretted that no specimens
of the work of the great Eastern metal-workers and famous potters were
to be found at Hertford House. As a matter of fact, cheek by jowl with
the glories of the English, French, Spanish and Dutch art, there are
only some half-dozen very poor specimens of Chinese cloisonné enamel,
practically no pottery, none of the grand old Chinese bronzes, and not
a single example of the work of such masters as the Japanese Miyochin,
Seimin, To-un, and others, men as famous in their way as Benvenuto
Cellini. It is curious that three men so catholic in their tastes as the
two Lords Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace should have paid no attention
to the art of the Far East.
From the collections we naturally passed to discussing the men, and
my friend began asking me many questions about the great legacy, of
which I am a trustee, eager to gather something of the truth out of the
network of fable and falsehood by which it is surrounded. Here is what
I told him. There is, of necessity, some guesswork, but guesswork not
unsupported by a reasonable foundation of fact and probability. The
strange jumble of truth and lies is but one more proof of the danger of
throwing over all those conventionalities which are but so much ballast
to keep straight the family ship. There are plenty of wreckers in the
world, and they are never slack in their dirty work; but, above all, they
love breaking up the big ships.
When the ’seventies were still young, I, being at the time still in
the Diplomatic Service, but “En disponibilité,” became a director of a
foreign railway company, the business of which often took me to Paris,
where our head offices were. One day, on the return journey to London—in
1872—I first met Sir Richard Wallace on board the steamer from Calais.
The Duke of Sutherland, with whom I was travelling, knew him, and so we
became acquainted—I little thinking that one day I should be brought into
very intimate connection with the art treasures which he had inherited
eighteen months earlier. Mr. Scott—afterwards Sir John—then a tall, slim,
very pleasing youth, was with him as his secretary and confidential
friend. Sir Richard was at that time a strikingly handsome man, about
fifty-four years of age, with a very attractive expression, greyish hair,
shaved, like his patron, Lord Hertford, more or less in the fashion set
by the Emperor of the French. We had a good deal of talk, and, later,
I got to know him pretty well. When he was Member for Lisburn, he was
appointed to the Committee of the House of Commons which sat under Mr.
Baillie Cochrane, afterwards Lord Lamington, to consider the question
of new buildings to be erected for the accommodation of the various
Government departments. He used often to come and see me at the Office of
Works, in order to study the different plans, and very warmly took up a
scheme which I put forward, and which, if it had been adopted, would have
saved the country a huge sum of money.
Unfortunately, Sir Stafford Northcote, who was Chancellor of the
Exchequer, was afraid of submitting the first expense to the House
of Commons. He never realized how complete was the trust which the
House placed in him, and so my proposals fell through, to the great
disappointment of Sir Richard Wallace, and to the vastly increased cost
which the country has ultimately had to pay. There has seldom been a more
flagrant case of penny wisdom and pound folly. The value of the land went
up by leaps and bounds, and the patient tax-payer has suffered, as usual,
without a murmur.
My proposal, briefly stated, was to build a chain of Public Offices
between Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square, purchasing such land as
did not already belong to the State. Drummond’s Bank was then pulled
down, and Messrs. George and Edgar Drummond, as a favour to myself, very
patriotically delayed rebuilding for six months, in order to give the
Government time to consider the question. The Public Offices were at that
time housed in a very haphazard manner, and it was evident that some
comprehensive scheme must be initiated. My plan was generally approved,
but it was not adopted owing to the costly timidity of Ministers.
Who and what was Sir Richard Wallace? That is a question which excited
great interest forty-five years ago, an interest which has not altogether
died out even now. That he was the private secretary and _âme damnée_ of
Lord Hertford everybody knew.
How he came to occupy that position, and what led his patron to alienate
from his family in Sir Richard’s favour so much of his great fortune as
was in his power, together with the whole of the art treasures which he
and his father and grandfather had collected during three-quarters of a
century, at a time when beautiful things were to be had for what would
now be considered an old song—that was a mystery to which no one had a
clue, and which only now can be solved with absolute accuracy. Much that
has been suggested is undoubtedly false, based upon conjecture without
any knowledge of such facts as have been brought to light.
[Illustration: RICHARD, MARQUIS OF HERTFORD, K.G.
_From a bust in the Wallace Collection._
[_To face p. 158._]
Having been a trustee of the so-called Wallace Collections since the
death of Lady Wallace in 1897, and having lived in great intimacy with
Sir John Scott, who was her heir and had been so long the fidus Achates
of Sir Richard, I have come to the conclusion that such evidence as
exists and was known to Sir John, to Lord Esher and others, entirely
disposes of the scandalous story that he was the illegitimate son of Lady
Hertford, and therefore half-brother to Lord Hertford.
The true story, vouched for by people who were intimately acquainted
with the scandals of the first half of the last century, is that Richard
Lord Hertford, when a mere boy, had an intrigue with a Scotch girl of
low birth—Agnes Wallace, afterwards Jackson. The result was Sir Richard
Wallace. As the girl was older than himself, Lord Yarmouth, as he then
was, had been rather the seduced than the seducer, and soon tired of the
whole connection. He was quite willing to pay, but he had no mind to
start in life saddled with the dead weight of an uneducated mistress and
a natural son. Lady Hertford, however, got wind of the affair through
Colonel Gurwood, a brother officer and intimate friend of Lord Yarmouth.
She took a fancy to the child, who responded with an affection that was
almost filial. Lord Hertford, to whom his mother’s slightest wish was
law, took up the boy at her bidding, and educated him until he grew up
and became entirely indispensable. The lad was well known in Paris as
“Monsieur Richard,” Lord Hertford’s shadow and agent, his representative
at auctions and sales of works of art.
The name Richard seems to me to have some significance in confirmation of
the above story. Is it likely that if the child had been Lady Hertford’s,
she should have chosen the name of her eldest legitimate and deeply-loved
son, to bestow it upon an inconvenient accident? To me it seems utterly
incredible. Moreover, would it not have been far more likely that she
should have tried to smuggle away an unnecessary infant of her own than
that she should have dragged the child into all the publicity of the home
about which there had already been too much slanderous gossip? Again,
Lady Hertford was a woman possessed of great wealth in her own right.
Why, if Sir Richard was her son, did she leave the whole of her fortune
to her second son, Lord Henry Seymour, and a mere trifle to the favourite
to whom she was so kind a patroness? Obviously she relied upon Lord
Hertford, as his father, to do everything for him. Not only the facts,
but even the whole probabilities, are against the preposterous and
malicious story that he was her son.
That the old lady was devotedly attached to Sir Richard and made a great
pet of him, and that he returned her affection with interest, was a
matter of common knowledge. I have seen many letters of hers which attest
the fact. When she travelled, he made all the arrangements for her, and
took entire charge of her comfort, his bed being made outside her door
when they slept at inns in the old posting days. He was her devoted
slave, her most faithful watch-dog.
Upon his services as secretary, Lord Hertford, as I have said, placed
entire reliance, but his office was not altogether a bed of roses. The
great man, as a patron, was strict and sometimes severe. Sir Richard,
with a taste for speculation on the Bourse, was sometimes in rather
strait circumstances, out of which his patron helped him, not without
reproof, to the tune of a good many thousand pounds. I have seen a
document showing that Lord Hertford in 1854 paid twenty thousand pounds
on this account through Messrs. Rothschild. There is in the Wallace
Collection a certain engraved crystal tazza of Italian workmanship, a
very lovely little gem. Sir Richard, in his poor days, picked it up for
a few francs in an old sort of rag-and-bone shop in a street in the
neighbourhood of the Temple. Some time afterwards, being rather hard
up, he took it to Lord Hertford and asked him to buy it. “No,” was the
answer, “I won’t have it. I will not encourage your extravagance; you
must learn to be more economical.”
Sir Richard sold the tazza to a dealer for two hundred and fifty francs,
and a year or two later had the luck to buy it back, but he had to pay
ten times the price and more. Often he had hard times enough, as he
himself said when he told the story, but when Lord Hertford died in
1870 his day had come. The fortune which he inherited was in those days
considered colossal. It would look less now compared with the huge riches
of American plutocrats, but in 1870 these were yet in the making. Two
very rich marriages, the second and third marquesses having both married
heiresses, had, in addition to great landed estates, placed the Hertfords
in an altogether exceptional position.
The way in which the third and fourth lords elected to spend their wealth
had woven round them a whole tissue of legends, chiefly founded upon
mere vulgar gossip. Virtuous and highly-respectable London delighted
in crowning them with a halo of ill-fame, and when Lord Yarmouth,
afterwards fourth Marquess, bought Bagatelle, it was declared to be the
scene of orgies compared with which the mysteries of the Bona Dea were
as innocent as nursery teas. Many of the stories were started by the
rather second-class, or even demirep, English Society which was gathered
together at Paris, jealous at being kept out from the intimacy of a very
exclusive man.
These stories when repeated, we may be sure, lost nothing in the telling,
and so Bagatelle came to be looked upon as a sort of Parc aux Cerfs,
while Bishop Luscombe’s congregation stalked with virtuously uplifted
noses along the Rue d’Aguesseau, thanking Heaven that they were not as
Lord Hertford. Such a reputation, even if it were a mere scandalous
libel, was hardly such as would commend itself to General Sir Francis
Seymour, the proud patrician who was to succeed to the title as fifth
Marquess. Indeed, it must have been gall and wormwood to a man trained as
he had been for many years in the solemn dignity of the staid Victorian
Court. There could be no sympathy, still less affection, between the
cousins. But there was more than all this to influence Lord Hertford when
he made his will, which left his successor practically nothing but the
broad acres of Warwickshire, with a great costly palace to keep up, at
a moment when land was falling in value every day and agriculture was
drifting no man could tell whither.
Whatever shape Richard Lord Hertford’s eccentricities may have taken,
he had one redeeming virtue. He was a model son, and his love for his
mother was the great passion of his life. To attack her, to be in any
way wanting in respect for her, was in his eyes the one crime for which
there was no forgiveness, and that was precisely the crime of which Sir
Francis Seymour was guilty. It was a pity, to say the least of it, that
the unkind things, sure to be repeated, of which he was so prodigal in
speaking of Lady Hertford, should ever have been uttered. However much
he might disapprove of Lord Hertford’s way of life, it would have been
wise to remember that a man is not responsible for his grandmother’s
indiscretions, and the shady parentage of Maria Fagnani might well have
been allowed the benefit of silence. At any rate, it was not the business
of Sir Francis to trumpet that or any other scandal about her.
Her story was curious. All the actors in the play have long been dead,
but it is so intimately connected with the history of the Wallace
Collection that, while there is no one left to whom its relation could
give pain, it still retains a special interest. Anything that can throw
light upon the passing of all those treasures into the possession of
the nation is worth recording; and it is, moreover, an act of justice
to clear the memory of a lady who has been somewhat roughly—and, as
I believe, without foundation—handled in the “Dictionary of National
Biography.”
Under the blessing of the law, Maria was the daughter of the Marchese
and Marchesa Fagnani, and the adopted child of George Selwyn. But the
Marchesa, who was said to have been a ballet-dancer, must have been
none too faithful to her husband; for, as a matter of fact, George
Selwyn was said to dispute with the Duke of Queensberry, the wicked
“Old Q,” the honour of being her father. As to that there seems to be
no certain evidence, but one would have thought that such a rivalry, or
partnership—whichever it might be—would have bred a jealousy between the
two men. Not a bit of it! They remained fast friends, were constantly
together, and, when apart, wrote to one another in the most affectionate
terms.
At George Selwyn’s death in 1791 he left thirty-three thousand pounds
to Maria and the rest of his fortune to “Old Q.” When the Duke, in his
turn, came to an end of his stormy life, dying in the odour of iniquity
in 1810, he bequeathed to Maria, who had married Lord Yarmouth in 1798, a
fortune of between three and four hundred thousand pounds, together with
the famous house opposite the Green Park in Piccadilly, in the window
of which, when he was too old to walk, he used to sit ogling the pretty
women as they passed below him. That window, with its leering old tenant,
was one of the sights of London.
The Marchese Fagnani (Fagniani is a misspelling in all the English books)
belonged to an old Milanese family. In the sixteenth century there was a
poet of the name who gained some literary fame; others of the family were
well-known lawyers, archæologists, mathematicians and churchmen in the
seventeenth century—all men of good repute; and as Maria was undoubtedly
born in holy wedlock, the _mésalliance_ was not so very great.
In spite of this there must have been some doubt as to the desirability
of alliance with the Fagnanis, for the marriage with Lord Yarmouth was
a hole-and-corner affair, hustled through at Southampton on the 18th
of May, 1798. Southampton was then quite a small country town, very
different from what it is now, just the sort of place where a marriage
could be celebrated without fuss and in some secrecy. Indeed, when I
remember it fifty years later it was still in its infancy and very
primitive, with at least one delightful old house standing in its own
grounds in the High Street above Bar. Altogether it was not the sort of
wedding that certainly would have been arranged for the heir of the proud
and royal Seymours had the magnates of the family not disapproved of the
match. The French writers in newspapers, who made great capital out of
the whole romance at the time of Lord Hertford’s death in 1870, went out
of their way to associate the Prince Regent with the Fagnani mystery.
They hinted that the prince also claimed the paternity of Maria, and that
he even attended the marriage. But that is an utter absurdity, for which
there was no foundation. Immediately after the marriage Lord and Lady
Yarmouth made their home in Piccadilly, next door to “Old Q,” who did not
die till twelve years later.
It is pretty clear that the marriage with Maria did not lower Lord
Yarmouth’s social position, otherwise Lord Castlereagh would hardly
have chosen him as his second in his famous duel with Mr. Canning, for
whom Mr. Charles Ellis, afterwards Lord Seaford, acted. Both men missed
their first shots; in the second shot Mr. Canning was grazed in the
leg. A duel between the Minister of War and the Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs was a matter of too great importance to be entrusted
to a gentleman who was under a cloud. After Lord Yarmouth succeeded to
the Marquisate in 1822, he received the Garter himself, and was sent by
George the Fourth as special ambassador to carry the same order to the
Emperor Nicholas in 1827.
At the time of her marriage the bride was no longer in her first youth;
she was at least twenty-seven years old. For the correspondence between
George Selwyn and the Duke of Queensberry shows that in 1772 she was
already teething, and under the care of the former at Paris as his
adopted child; and he was fretting himself into bad health lest the
mother should take the little creature—Mie Mie, as she was called—away
from him. The Duke, then Lord March, while abounding in good advice
to his friend, promised his good offices, saying at the time that the
Marchesa was sure to act in opposition to his (the Duke’s) wishes and
advice. The child was taken away by her mother for a time, but ultimately
and permanently given back to her adoring guardian or father. From that
time forth the noble Italian lady seems to have troubled herself about
her baby no more.
As I have already said, there is no certainty as to Maria’s parentage;
indeed, the published letters leave the whole story in a state of
confusion which is perfect. Robinson, in his Life of “Old Q” (page 143),
says:
“Jesse, who was privileged to go over Selwyn’s correspondence, though
refusing as a false affectation of delicacy to pass over in complete
silence the mysterious reports respecting the true parentage of Selwyn’s
infantine charge, asserts that although references occur in the most
private papers of Selwyn which unquestionably lead to the supposition
that either Lord March (Old Q) or Selwyn was, or, rather, that each
severally believed himself to be, the father of the child, yet no certain
proofs exist. Further, a letter addressed by Madame Fagnani to Selwyn,
July 31st, 1772 (of which Jesse gives a translation), does not express
any but the most polite feelings of friendship for the guardian of
her child. Lest I may be misrepresented in alluding to a matter that a
faithful record of established facts incident to my subject warrants,
Madame Fagnani’s letter is inserted in justice to all concerned:
“‘MY VERY DEAR AND RESPECTABLE FRIEND,
“‘I cannot find terms sufficiently expressive to thank you for
all your kindness, and more particularly for the pains you
take in regard to my daughter. I can assure you that nothing
is more sensibly felt by me than the proofs of friendship
which I have received from you on this occasion. The more I
know the world, the more I perceive the difficulty of finding
a person who resembles you, and I consider myself the happiest
of mortals solely from the happiness I have had in forming your
acquaintance and obtaining your friendship.
“‘I am enchanted in learning that my daughter is in good
health, though I fear she will suffer much in cutting her
teeth. I venture to beg of you to continue to give me tidings
of her, as without your kindness in writing to me from time to
time, I should have been ignorant for the last three months
of the fate of _ma petite_. My lord,[14] on his part, is a
little indolent, but I forgive him this little fault on account
of the many good qualities of his heart which he has to
counterbalance it.
“‘I hope that your health is good. Pray present my compliments
to Lord March, and tell him that I expect to hear from him.
Preserve your friendship for me, and do not forget the most
grateful and affectionate of all your friends, who makes it her
duty and pleasure to be,
“‘Your very sincere servant and friend,
“‘COSTANZA FAGNANI.’”
Surely that is a letter which must have been written without any idea
that it would ever be published, and it certainly gives no sunlight to
clear away the clouds of the story. To add to the mystery of Maria’s
parentage, Roscoe, in his book on Selwyn, publishes two letters, one from
Dr. Warner, the witty Chaplain to the British Embassy in Paris in 1780,
when she was nine years old, in which, writing to Selwyn, he makes no
disguise of his belief in the paternity of the Duke. The letter is also
interesting as giving some slight idea of the impression which the child
created:
“That freshness of complexion I should have great pleasure
in beholding. It must add to her charms, and cannot diminish
the character, sense and shrewdness which distinguish her
physiognomy, and which she possesses in a great degree, with a
happy engrafting of a high-bred foreign air upon an English
stock. But how very pleasant to me was your honest and naïve
confession of the joy your heart felt at hearing her admired.
It is, indeed, most extraordinary that a certain person who has
great taste (would he had as much nature)[15] should not see
her with very different eyes from what he does. I can never
forget that naïve expression of Madame de Sévigné: ‘Je ne sais
comment l’on fait de ne pas aimer sa fille.’”
The other letter to which I allude is one from George Selwyn to Lord
Carlisle, written at a time when complaining that he was “le jouet des
autres,” and was being annoyed beyond all bearing by the way in which
Madame Fagnani behaved to him about Maria, threatening to take her away
from him altogether. In that letter he writes: “Hélas! rende mi figlia
mis!” That may have meant no more than that the child was very dear to
him, and need not necessarily imply that he believed himself to be her
father. That he did so believe, however, is pretty certain. He educated
her, placed her at school with Mrs. Terry at Campden House in Kensington,
then a beautiful old house almost in the country, and having finally
succeeded in getting rid of the mother’s importunities, kept her with
him until his death in 1791, introducing her into the best society.
Gainsborough painted her portrait, as did Sir Joshua Reynolds, but the
pictures no longer exist, or, at any rate, are lost.
Of the legal father, the Marquis Fagnani, we hear very little. The only
notice I have found of him is in a letter from Selwyn to Lord Carlisle
dated June 19th, 1781:
“Belgiojoso told me last night that he had had letters from
Milan, by which he was informed that the M. [Marquis] Fagnani
was gone quite mad. He has been stone blind for a considerable
time, and I take it for granted that both these misfortunes are
come from the same cause—that is, mercury. His experiments to
ease the one probably occasioned the other. I never hear one
syllable from any of the family. I hope in God that I never
shall, nor poor Mie Mie either. It grows every day less likely,
and yet when I am out of spirits, that dragon, among others,
comes across me and distresses me, and the thought of what must
happen to that child if I am not alive to protect her.”
George Selwyn was no further molested in the possession of the child.
He lived for ten years after that letter was written, and by that time
Maria had grown to woman’s estate. She was twenty years of age, and had,
under George Selwyn’s will, a snug little fortune of her own, besides
expectations, amply to be realized, of further benefits from the Duke of
Queensberry. He doubtless took paternal care of the young lady who was to
inherit all that he could alienate from the Douglas family. She became
one of the greatest heiresses, if not the greatest, of her day.
In her youth Maria Fagnani must have been a very fascinating girl.
To George Selwyn, as we have seen, she was as the apple of his eye.
He simply adored her. If she had a cold in the head, or an infantile
ailment, however trivial, it was torture to him, provoking sympathy from
his correspondents, who themselves seemed to be quite under the spell of
the delightful child; and as he apparently never destroyed a note, there
are plenty of these condolences in the budget of letters published by
Jesse. To have won the heart of Thackeray’s Marquess of Steyne, if that
fastidious personage ever possessed such an organ, was another feather
in her cap, and in her old age we know how tenderly her son and Richard
Wallace both loved her.
In 1803 Lord and Lady Yarmouth were detained in France—he interned at
Verdun—when war was again declared after the rupture of the Peace of
Amiens, and their second son, Lord Henry Seymour, was born in Paris in
1805. Scandal declared that he was the son of Junot, Duc d’Abrantès, with
whom Lady Yarmouth was very intimate. There is a note in Roscoe, page 8,
which says: “She led a life of pleasure (1802-1807), travelling on the
Continent with the Marshal Andoche.” That was Junot’s Christian name—but
that he never was a marshal was his great grievance against Napoleon.
This Lord Henry is not to be confounded, as is commonly done, with the
Lord Henry Seymour, son of the first Marquess, who lived at Norris
Castle, near Cowes, and spent a fortune in building the famous sea-wall.
The Lord Henry with whom we have to deal was a very eccentric personage.
Unlike his brother, Richard Lord Hertford, who was a handsome man, and in
his youth a dandy of the 10th Hussars, Lord Henry was singularly ugly,
even grotesque. There was in the Rue Lafitte a sketch or caricature of
him, which I have seen, in which he was represented as a sort of Quilp,
stunted, misshapen, and of prodigious strength. He was a hero of the
various Salles d’Armes, a famous fencer and athlete, and the founder, or,
at any rate, one of the founders, of the French Jockey Club. A kindly man
withal, for by his will, in which his horses appeared as legatees—never
to be crossed again—he left the bulk of his fortune to the hospitals of
Paris. He died in 1859, three years after the loss of his mother. It
used to be said that he never even set foot in England, but that was
probably only one of the many fables set afloat about the two brothers.
So curious a quartet as the mother, the two sons, and the enigma that
was M. Richard, afterwards Sir Richard Wallace, furnished fine food for
eavesdroppers and gossip-mongers.
For twenty-eight years after the death of his father in 1842, Richard
Lord Hertford lived practically altogether in Paris, passing his time
between the Rue Lafitte and Bagatelle, the little toy house on the
outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne, which in 1780 was built by Bellanger
in a few weeks at the order of the Comte d’Artois (Charles the Tenth),
for a bet, in order to entertain Queen Marie Antoinette on a fixed day.
The repetition in one of the rooms of the decoration of peacocks with
spread tails in the boudoir of the Queen at Versailles was probably a
delicate compliment—a little surprise—addressed to her on her visit. When
I first saw it some fifteen years ago, although the house was empty and
the famous statues had been removed and sold, it was still instinct with
a certain eighteenth-century charm. The daintily laid-out grounds were
still beautifully kept, and I should hardly have been surprised had I
suddenly come upon one of Fragonard’s idylls, with shepherdesses powdered
and hooped, and gentle shepherds to match, appropriately dressed in
spotless pink and blue silk.
In that house, as in those idylls, there are tears when we remember how
soon so many of those pretty, frivolous, powdered heads were to fall
into the basket of Monsieur de Paris. Although the famous “Nelly O’Brien”
of Sir Joshua, and perhaps Romney’s “Perdita,” were bought by the second
Marquess, the foundation of the collection of art treasures which, since
the militant ladies three or four years ago took to fighting pictures in
the National Gallery, have been stored away in the cellars of Hertford
House, was laid by Francis, third Lord Hertford, who bought the glorious
“Perseus and Andromeda” by Titian, which the keen eyes of Sir Claude
Phillips rescued from a bath-room, where it had been stored away and
forgotten, a number of the Dutch pictures and two of the Vandycks. But by
far the greater part of it was acquired by his son Richard, the fourth
Marquess.
Very important additions, especially in the armoury, were made by Sir
Richard Wallace, who was himself a born collector, and had acquired
no little experience, both on his own account, and as Lord Hertford’s
representative at the great auction sales of Paris. His taste in Oriental
art was distinctly bad. He bought a few very inferior specimens of
Chinese cloisonné enamel, and two porcelain bowls of the Chia Ching
reign, 1796-1821, a period when the art of China reached almost its
lowest level, with very inferior mounts by some English bungler. Of these
he was inordinately proud. There are two or three very fine céladon
vases, with exquisitely chiselled French mounts, in one of the glass
cases, but there is no evidence as to who bought them.
The reason of the fourth Lord Hertford’s self-condemned exile in Paris,
when he owned five palatial houses in London, besides Ragley, Sudbourne
and other places, is not easy to ascertain. There was a story, firmly
believed in my youth, and confirmed by Sir Richard Wallace to Sir John
Scott, that his father tried to force him into a cruel marriage with
the daughter of one of his mistresses, with whom he conspired to make
it appear that Lord Yarmouth, as he then was, had compromised the girl.
The young man deeply resented this outrage, and took refuge in Paris,
where his mother was living. Certainly he had established himself there
during his father’s lifetime, for it was as Lord Yarmouth that he bought
Bagatelle in 1830, and he did not succeed to the marquisate until twelve
years later.
Yriarte’s story that he left London on account of a quarrel with the
parish over the rates of his house in Piccadilly, is hardly to be
accepted. It is far more likely that he left England in order to free
himself from his father, for whom he had no love or respect, and made
Paris his home that he might be with his mother, whom he adored. She,
with Lord Henry Seymour and Monsieur Richard, lived at No. 1, Rue
Taitbout, Lord Hertford’s head-quarters being hard by at No. 2, Rue
Lafitte. There he lived the life of an invalid and sybarite, hardly to be
called happy in spite of his great possessions—a recluse, the darkness
of whose hypochondria was only cheered by his correspondence with Mr. S.
Mawson, who was his agent in London for the purchase, restoration and
care of pictures, or by some brilliant triumph at Christie’s or in the
Paris auction-rooms.
Few people saw him, and still fewer knew him. And yet he had all the
qualifications which would have enabled him to shine among his fellows.
Yriarte said of him: “Causeur célèbre, très spirituel, très lettré,
d’une politesse accomplie, d’un raffinement rare, ses goûts personnels
l’éloignaient cependant de la société, et il a vécu toute sa vie dans un
milieu inférieur. Il y apportait même avec ses intimes une manière d’être
dissimulée, peu conforme avec le cant anglais, et il affichait une sorte
de cynisme que les deux ou trois amis intimes qu’il a conservés jusqu’à
sa mort regardaient comme son masque d’emprunt.” His wit, if sometimes
a little cynical, or even a little risky, was undeniable, and what are
called “good stories” of him were the joy of clubs.
That he suffered acutely there can be no doubt, for Sir Richard Wallace
once told me that he went with him to Contrexéville—we know what that
means—which fifty years ago was a very different place from what it is
now, and where all the sordid details of life at that time must have been
torture to a man of his exquisite refinement. With public life he had no
concern. As a young man he was for a few years in the House of Commons,
and on succeeding to the title, he delivered a maiden speech in the House
of Lords, and that was all. His one and only participation in affairs was
in 1855, when he consented to act as one of the jury at the Exhibition of
Paris.
Upon this subject he wrote a characteristic letter to Mawson:
“Only think of my being at the Champs-Elysées every morning
at nine o’clock. Hard work for an old fellow who has very
different habits. I am obliged to get up every morning between
six and seven o’clock to be at the exhibition in proper time to
preside over a group composed of four classes. I remain there
almost all day doing my work, and as I am not accustomed to
this sudden activity, I am very tired, and, in consequence,
neglect my own affairs.”
It was, of course, his intimacy with Louis Napoléon which caused him
to accept such a violent break in his habits, but he owed the Emperor
some gratitude, for it was by his friendly help that he was enabled to
add to the grounds of Bagatelle, and again to employ Dasson to copy
the famous bureau in the Louvre. Apropos to Bagatelle, Mr. MacColl, in
his introduction to the catalogue of pictures at Hertford House, to
which I owe great obligation, has a good story. It is said “that two
acquaintances asked leave to fight a duel in the grounds. The Marquess
politely replied that he had not the slightest objection to their
shooting one another, but could not trust their skill so far as to risk
his statues.” Perhaps most people would have endorsed his view of the
comparative value of masterpieces by Pigalle, Lemoyne and Houdon, and
the lives or limbs of the would-be Bobadils. Hardly could they be worth
Houdon’s famous “Baigneuse.”
Lord Hertford’s letters to Mawson, which were sold to the trustees by Mr.
Mawson’s daughter, show how keenly he watched the great sales both in
London and Paris. The English sales he, of course, very rarely attended,
and when he did so, it was Mawson who did the bidding, guided by a code
of signals given by motions of Lord Hertford’s hat. Nor was he personally
more active if he was present at a French sale; he seems to have carried
his dislike of all publicity into every phase of life, and to have
conducted all his business by agents.
The correspondence with Mawson, of which many extracts are given by Mr.
MacColl in his catalogue of the pictures, is interesting, not only
as showing Lord Hertford’s great personal interest in art and the
extraordinary difference in prices between now and then, but also as
revealing at least one charming side in a character which, owing to its
eccentricity, was, I honestly believe, cruelly maligned. No mere selfish
voluptuary, such as Lord Hertford was described by the evil tongues of
those who did not know him, could have inspired the affection which was
felt for him by those who did. Sir Richard Wallace more than once spoke
to me of him in terms of the strongest respect and affection, and, on
the other hand, his gratitude to Sir Richard is expressed with pathetic
feeling in the codicil to his will of June 7th, 1850: “To reward as
much as I can Richard Wallace for all his care and attention to my dear
mother, and likewise for his devotedness to me during a long and painful
illness I had in Paris in 1840, and on all other occasions, I give
such residue to the said Richard Wallace now living at the Hôtel des
Bains, Boulogne-sur-Mer, in France, and whose domicile previous to the
Revolution of 1848 was in my mother’s house, Rue Taitbout No. 3, formerly
No. 1, absolutely.”
The man who wrote those words had a heart. The letters to Mawson are
often worded as if he—Mawson—were conferring the most signal favours upon
his employer. The most formal commissions of the earlier days of their
connection soon grew to be letters of absolute affectionate gratitude.
Lord Hertford had the most complete confidence in the judgment, taste
and good faith of his agent. Well might he trust him, for Aladdin was
not more faithfully served by the slaves of the ring and the lamp. But
it is only a kindly nature and sweet disposition which is capable of
dealing with a subordinate without the slightest tinge of patronizing
condescension. Two or three examples will suffice to show the nature of
the intimacy between the employer and the employed.
The Duke of Buckingham’s sale at Stowe, in 1848, created an immense
sensation. I remember it well, for although I was only eleven years old,
I used to hear much art talk even in those days between my father and his
friends. It is the subject of a characteristic letter from Lord Hertford
to Mawson, quoted by Mr. MacColl, dated September 10th, 1848; it was
written from Boulogne:
“I intended being at Stowe on the fifteenth, but I find that
it is not certain whether I shall be able to attend the sale
on that day. I think we must have the ‘Unmerciful Servant,’ by
Rembrandt, and hope the price will not be as unmerciful as the
subject; but you know that I place all confidence in you, and
depend upon your kindness on this occasion.
“The Rembrandt and the Domenichino are my favourites, and I
depend upon you for doing the best. Pray have the kindness
not to mention to anybody that you buy on my account. I am
very anxious my name should not appear. In the event of my
being in time for the sale, you would see me there, and my
hat would play the same part it has already acted in similar
circumstances.”
On September 24th, Lord Hertford wrote to thank Mr. Mawson for the
transaction, adding: “I hope and trust we have not paid our pictures much
too dear. I am very glad you like them, as I have a very high opinion of
your judgment.”
The great Rembrandt was bought for two thousand three hundred pounds.
What would it fetch to-day?
In July, 1855, the contents of St. Dunstan’s, in the Regent’s Park, were
sold, and were the subject of the enclosed letters:
“Rue Lafitte, Paris.
“July 5th, 1855.
“There are a few things I should like to have at the sale of my
father’s villa in the Regent’s Park on the 9th inst.”
* * * * *
“Paris, July 6th, 1855.
“In anticipation that you will have the kindness to attend the
sale at the Regent’s Park for me, and having no time to spare,
I send you the list of things I wish to have, and that I hope
you will have the kindness to buy for me:
“PICTURES.
“118. P. Veronese—Not more than £40 or £50.
“120. Ruysdael—What you think it is worth and a little more.
“122. Northcote—‘Portrait of George IV. when Prince of Wales.’
I am anxious to have it.”
* * * * *
“Paris, July 20th, 1855.
“I am extremely obliged to you for having had the kindness to
buy my ‘caprices’ at the Regent’s Park sale. You did it all
beautifully and just what I wished. I depend on your usual
kindness for having the ‘Prince of Wales’’ portrait repaired
for me. I rather regret the landscape (_i.e._, the Ruysdael),
though an indifferent picture, because it was in my room when I
was a boy a few years ago. What prices people give now for all
these old affairs! It is ridiculous!”
Only once does Lord Hertford sound a note of disquiet at the price paid
by his commissioner, and that was for the famous portrait by Velasquez
of “Don Baltasar Carlos in Infancy,” which fetched £1,680 at the Louis
Philippe sale at Christie’s in May, 1853. He writes:
“As for the Velasquez, I do not remember it at all, _ainsi je
ne puis rien dire_. What frightens me is that it appears never
to have struck me at the Louvre, as I do not remember it at
all. You gave a _prodigious_ price for it, but as I have great
confidence in your taste and judgment, as well as in everything
else, I dare say I shall like it, and I long to have a look at
it, which I hope soon to be able to do.”
It was certainly not a bad investment at the _prodigious_ price.
Other letters are full of the most flattering expressions:
“April 11th, 1856.
“I have only a moment to thank you a thousand times for your
great kindness in giving me some details of the Sibthorpe sale.”
* * * * *
“April 23rd, 1856.
“A thousand thanks for your kindness.”
But these expressions are too numerous to quote; still, I will give one
more because it really testifies to something like friendship.
Writing from Paris, December 11th, 1863, Lord Hertford says:
“I was in hopes that I should have had the pleasure of seeing
you in Brussels something like a couple of months ago. There
was a goodish portrait by Rubens that I bought. I shall be
delighted to show it you some day, and I hope you will like it.”
Certainly Lord Hertford was a great gentleman, one whom it must have been
a pleasure to serve.
It is easy to imagine the _sava indignatio_ of Lord Hertford if he could
come to life again and see “the prices which people give now for these
old affairs.” Money could hardly have been better invested than it was
by himself, his father and his grandfather, when they paid what were
deemed wild sums for their works of art. Fancy Sir Joshua’s “Nellie
O’Brien” being bought by the second Marquess for £64 1s. at the Caleb
Whitefoord sale. Think of the third Marquess buying Vandyck’s “Young
Italian Nobleman,” a glorious portrait of the Genoese period, for £409
10s. In the second half of the nineteenth century prices went up madly,
but, even so, Lord Hertford, when he gave £1,795 10s. for “Mrs. Carnac,”
was purchasing gold for silver. Why, the first state of the mezzotint
engraving of that picture by J. R. Smith was sold a few years ago, if I
remember aright, for eleven hundred guineas. For the “Strawberry Girl”
the price paid at the Rogers sale was £2,205. “No man,” said Sir Joshua,
“could ever produce more than half a dozen original works, and that is
one of mine.”
Lord Hertford was delighted with the acquisition. He wrote to Mawson:
“You have done admirably, and I return you most sincere thanks
for your kindness. The ‘Strawberry,’ is dear. I should be sorry
to have a large basket at _that_ price; but it seems it is
beautiful, and in this affair, as in others, I have completely
followed your good advice, and you have added to my collection
pictures I have never seen, which shows, more than words can
express, the great and friendly confidence I have in you. I am
sure I shall be delighted with what you have acquired. I am
very sorry your honourable name was not coupled with our ‘Girl’
when she was knocked down. It is not fair that you should not
enjoy the little glory of having secured in a gallant manner
the gem of this interesting sale, so you are at full liberty to
use my name with yours respecting this painting. Was it not an
immense price? I don’t regret it at all; on the contrary, I am
delighted to have so fine a Sir Joshua, as I am extremely fond
of them, and they cannot always be had when wanted.”
Another notable picture bought at the Rogers sale was the “Don Baltasar
Carlos in the Riding School,” by Velasquez, for which Mawson paid £1,210
1s. A wonderful bargain at the Stowe sale was Murillo’s “Assumption of
the Virgin,” knocked down for £58 16s.
I have no space to go into details, but we can form some idea of the
value of these purchases when we see that Lord Hertford bought five of
the very finest Sir Joshuas for £7,974 5s. The six finest Rembrandts
cost him £5,453 15s.; five of the best Watteaus, £2,037. What superb
investments—to speak of no others!
It is something of an anti-climax to find Lord Hertford giving £4,000,
and Sir Richard Wallace £2,400, for works by Ary Scheffer. Well might
Lord Hertford write to Mawson in 1853: “You know, fancy has a great deal
to do with pictures as with anything else.” £1,680—a “_prodigious_ price”
for a Velasquez! £4,000—given without hesitation for a picture by that
most namby-pamby of artists, Ary Scheffer!
The desire to surround himself with beautiful works of art was one of
the crimes laid to the charge of Lord Hertford. He was extravagant, he
was selfish. As to the first of these accusations, the prices which he
paid were surely no more than what was permissible to a man with an
income of nearly a quarter of a million sterling; and, as I have shown,
from the mere investor’s point of view the money was well laid out. As
for the cry of selfishness, what could be more natural than that a man
endowed with the most refined taste and judgment, debarred by health no
less than by inclination, from the more active relaxations in which rich
men find pleasure—the turf, sport of all kinds, hunting, and, of late
years certainly, shooting, should be captivated by the excitement of the
auction-rooms. It was in them that he found the pleasures of the chase.
He was deprived of much, and it were scurvy treatment to reproach him for
what harmed no living being at the time, but has ended by giving joy to
millions of his countrymen. The amusement with which he solaced long days
and years of physical pain, aching under a complaint which notoriously
affects the spirits perhaps more than any other, has borne fruit for
which we should be grateful, even though it be only indirectly that we
owe it to him. He might fairly have written in his will like Bacon:
“For my name and memory, I leave it to men’s charitable speeches and to
foreign nations, and to the next age.” We are “the next age”; it behoves
us to be not only just but generous. To our shame we have been neither.
There can be very few men now alive who knew Richard Lord Hertford
personally. From Lord Esher, who as a youth did know him, I have a
letter, which he very kindly allows me to quote, giving more than one of
those little intimate touches which lend a spice to narration. But it
does more than that. It furnishes direct evidence of the truth of what I
have written about the calumnies by which Lord Hertford’s character was
poisoned by people for whom his chief crime was that he did not choose to
know them. Is it likely, is it even possible, that two ladies in a high
position like Lord Esher’s grandmother and mother should have visited
him in the Rue Lafitte and in the much-talked-of Bagatelle had those
vile slanders been true? The story of Sir Richard Wallace’s birth and
upbringing is conclusive.
Let the letter speak for itself.
“Roman Camp, Callander.
“March 17th, 1916.
“MY DEAR REDESDALE,
“I remember being taken, by my grandmother, to tea with Richard
Marquis of Hertford. He lived at the corner of the Rue Lafitte,
and his fine rooms were crowded with objets d’art—although not
smothered in _clocks_, as they afterwards became when Wallace
and Scott occupied them. Everything was most sumptuous, but I
recollect perfectly that when the tea was brought in by a very
solemn major-domo, whose long grey whiskers I can see to this
day, Lord Hertford went to a beautiful Louis XVI. secrétaire,
which he unlocked, and brought out the sugar-basin, which he
carefully put away again after tea. (Lord Hertford was a very
handsome man, but frail and delicate.) Not long afterwards my
mother and I were invited to spend an afternoon at Bagatelle,
where Richard Wallace entertained us, as Lord Hertford was
engaged—so he sent word—in Paris. The gardens were beautiful—as
they still are—but the house was not so full as the Rue Lafitte.
“My grandfather, Colonel Gurwood, who had served through the
Peninsular War in the Light Division, was given a captaincy
in the 10th Hussars in 1814, and Richard Seymour joined the
regiment when he was seventeen years old and ten years’ junior
to my grandfather, who became much attached to him. This
friendship lasted through life.
“I possess three volumes of bound letters to Colonel Gurwood
from Lord Yarmouth, by which name Lord Hertford was know from
1822 to 1842, when he succeeded his father, Francis, the third
Marquess of Steyne of ‘Vanity Fair.’
“These letters are interesting, as they contain many references
to the collection of bric-à-brac which Lord Yarmouth and
Wallace, his secretary, had already commenced to form. Many
fine things which belonged to my grandfather, and are now the
property of my sister, were purchased by Lord Yarmouth and
Wallace or by their advice. In return, my grandfather always
bought for Lord Yarmouth his riding and driving horses. He used
to send them to Paris, where Lord Yarmouth lived with his
mother, Lady Hertford, Maria Fagnani.
“Many times have I heard my grandmother and my mother tell
the story of Sir Richard Wallace’s adoption by Lord Hertford.
Wallace was the son of Lord Yarmouth by a girl, Agnes Jackson
by name, who was a kind of _fille du régiment_ of the 10th
Hussars, and young Seymour made a home for her in Paris while
the liaison lasted. There Wallace was born, and when Seymour
parted from his mistress, the child was placed with a concierge
in the Rue de Clichy, where he ran wild under a _porte cochère_
until he was about six years old.
“My grandfather, who had known Agnes Jackson and all about her
short-lived liaison with Lord Yarmouth, hunted up the boy, and
finding he was a smart child, showed him to Lady Hertford,
Maria Fagnani, and induced her to bring him up, much against
the inclination of her son.
“There is, and never was, the slightest foundation for the
absurd legend that Maria Fagnani was Sir Richard Wallace’s
mother, although the writer in the ‘Dictionary of National
Biography,’ who cannot possibly know anything of the facts,
adopts it.
“One of the reasons sometimes given for assuming that Lord
Hertford could not be Wallace’s father was that there was not
more than eighteen or nineteen years between their ages. On
the other hand, it was overlooked that Maria Fagnani was very
nearly, if not quite, fifty years of age when Wallace was born.
Anyway, I have no doubt whatever that the facts are as I have
stated them.
“They were corroborated, as far as I am concerned, by the
evidence of Madame O—— de B——, a lady who for forty years lived
on the _deuxième étage_ of the Rue Lafitte and in a beautiful
villa, called St. James, close to Bagatelle.
“She was a lady of irreproachable life, and virtue as stern as
that of Madame de Maintenon, whom she resembled in many ways.
I inherited some of the gifts which she had received from Lord
Hertford; among them a fine ‘Garter George,’ which belonged
to Prince Charles Edward, and was acquired by Francis, third
Marquis, from the collection of Cardinal York.
“It was destined for my grandfather and his children, and
Madame O—— fulfilled her obligation.
“I perfectly remember Sir Richard Wallace’s son, whose liaison
with a French girl bitterly offended Sir Richard, although, as
he was told by the young man when the quarrel was irremediable,
he had only followed his father’s example.
“Young Wallace came once or twice to London after 1870. He died
of typhoid fever when still a young man. But Wallace would
never recognize his son’s children or their mother; the former
were amply provided for by Lady Wallace. Madame O—— de B——
had no children of her own, but she showed great kindness to
her connections _de la main gauche_. I perfectly remember the
advent of Sir John Scott into the Wallace household, and the
subsequent course of a lifelong devotion to the interests of
his employers that deserved and obtained its reward.
“There is no need to enter into the story of Lady Wallace, a
very refined, shy and excellent lady, although the facts were
well known to my family.”
“My French relations were intimate with Lord Hertford, Sir
Richard Wallace and Sir John Scott, over a period extending
from 1817 to Scott’s death.”
“Yours ever,
“ESHER.”
[Illustration: SIR RICHARD WALLACE, BART., K.C.B.
_From a bust in the Wallace Collection._
[_To face p. 192._]
In a further letter to me Lord Esher very justly calls attention to the
remarkable likeness between Lord Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace. The
busts at Hertford House demonstrate this.
Richard, fourth Marquess of Hertford, who never married, died at Paris on
the 25th of August, 1870. His successor in the title, Sir Francis (or,
as his familiars called him, “Franco”) Seymour, as was natural, hurried
over to Paris, not yet beleaguered by the Prussians, to look after his
interests. He was accompanied by his eldest son and his solicitor. The
fortune at stake in lands and money was great, but, if the value of
the works of art be taken into account, enormous even in these days of
plutocratic dominion. The real estate and the personalty, taken together,
would have reached a sum “beyond the dreams of avarice;” indeed, by
comparison, the boilers and vats of Mr. Thrale would have represented no
more than a modest competence.[16]
It must have been a rude shock for the new Lord Hertford when the will
was read at Bagatelle after the funeral, and he found that, barring
the settled estates, which without the money were almost a white
elephant, there was nothing for him. The wealth which had given his two
predecessors such power that, in spite of manifest drawbacks, they were
propitiated with the Garter, had vanished like Alnaschar’s dream, and he
was left with the unredeemed anxieties and responsibilities of a country
squire. Equally, it must have been a startling shock for Sir Richard to
find that he was the heir to all that wealth.
With the exception of a handsome property which Lord Hertford bequeathed
to his cousin, Sir Hamilton Seymour, the famous ex-Ambassador, or rather
Minister, to Russia, practically everything was left to the future Sir
Richard Wallace.
Sir Richard (I call him “Sir” for convenience’ sake, though he was not
created a baronet until the following year) lost no time in turning
his newly-acquired wealth to good account. He was one of the most
generous men that ever lived. Bravely he stood by Paris and the French
in their troubles, started ambulances, founded the Hertford Hospital
for poor Englishmen, and set money flowing like water in aid of all
sufferers by the war. His charities in France were boundless, and
continued throughout his life, and indeed beyond it. But he felt it his
duty to come to England, and for thirteen years represented Lisburn in
Parliament—Lisburn, which he made the headquarters of his vast Irish
domain.
In recognition of the great services which he had rendered to the English
in Paris during the siege he was created a baronet in 1871, when he
married a French lady, Mademoiselle Castelnau, with whom he had lived
for many years, and by whom he had one son who was an officer in the
French Army. That son, now long since dead, was the great sorrow of Sir
Richard’s life. The breach between them was irreparable, and it made
the father miserable. He told a friend of mine, an Italian gentleman,
who was breakfasting with him one day and found him in a state of utter
dejection, how it irked him that people should look upon him as one
of the happiest of men, when in truth he was the most wretched. The
sympathy of a good son was the solitary thing wanting, and that he never
had.
One friend he had in Mr. Scott, afterwards Sir John, who became his
private secretary, and whose affection stood to him almost in lieu of
that of a son. Sir John’s father was a distinguished physician, a great
personal friend of Sir Richard’s. One day this gentleman’s father-in-law,
Mr. Murray, was calling upon him, shortly after his inheritance of Lord
Hertford’s possessions, and he happened to say that he was badly in need
of a private secretary, and did not know whom to choose. The post would
require some unusual qualifications—amongst others, a perfect knowledge
of French. Mr. Murray said that perhaps his grandson, a very young
barrister just called, might fulfil the conditions. Sir Richard jumped
at the offer, and the young man was sent to be looked at. The result was
that he found favour in Sir Richard’s eyes, and, after probation, was
appointed. No happier choice could have been made, no more devoted and
faithful friend could have been found; he remained with Sir Richard until
his death at Paris in 1890, and continued to keep watch over Lady Wallace
until her end came seven years later.
The nation hardly knows how much it owes to the chivalrous
self-effacement of Sir John Scott. When Lady Wallace, to whom Sir Richard
had left everything, was about to make her will, she was anxious to
bequeath her whole property to Sir John in gratitude for the devotion
with which he had managed her affairs and cared for her interests.
Sir John persuaded her that it would be a good thing if she were, at
any rate, to leave the contents of Hertford House to the nation, and,
moreover, that if he were to inherit the entire fortune, there might be
some suspicion of undue influence. If, on the other hand, she gave her
chief art treasures to England, her memory would be venerated as perhaps
the country’s greatest benefactress, while he could gratefully and
honourably accept whatever else she might be pleased to bequeath to him.
The lady followed his advice. He was a large-minded and generous man, and
though, as it turned out, he became the heir to a great fortune, it must
never be forgotten that he might have inherited property worth at that
time, according to the late Mr. Charles Davis’s computation, at least
seven millions sterling, and now, in view of the amazing rise in the
value of all works of art, perhaps as much more. It was a most courageous
and loyal piece of self-sacrifice. One day, when I said this to a man
who was inclined to scoff, his answer was: “Yes, but look at the Death
Duties that he would have had to pay.” He could have met those by the
sale of half a dozen pictures. Nothing, to my mind, can detract from the
patriotic wisdom and generosity of Sir John’s conduct.
When the greatest collection of art treasures that ever was in any
private hands became the property of the nation, the next question was
how and where to house it. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was Chancellor of the
Exchequer at the time, and he appointed a Committee, of which he asked me
to be a member, to consider the matter. Lord Lansdowne was our chairman,
and, after careful discussion, we came to the conclusion that the best
plan to adopt would be, if possible, to purchase the freehold of Hertford
House from the Portman Estate, and house the collection in its old home,
turning the bedrooms on the first floor and the stables into galleries.
There was an idea favoured by Sir Edward Poynter that it would be wise
to separate some of the pictures—the Spanish paintings, for example—and
place them in the National Gallery; but that scheme would have been
against the provisions of the will, which insisted upon nothing being
taken from, and nothing added to, the collection as it stood, so the
proposal could not be entertained. Sir Edward would have wished the whole
collection placed in a building to be erected adjoining the National
Gallery; this was also overruled.
Upon this subject Lord Esher writes:
“The Committee to which you allude was appointed under a
Treasury Minute of the 3rd of May, 1897.
“The opponents of the Hertford House scheme, headed by Sir
Edward Poynter, made a very determined resistance. Lord
Chilston was First Commissioner of Works, and I, as you know,
occupied the post which you had filled with so much distinction
and permanent advantage to the nation.
“We, who were fighting for the retention of Hertford House,
owe a heavy debt of gratitude to King Edward, then Prince of
Wales, who, with unerring instinct in such matters, grasped
at once the historical and æsthetic advantages of keeping the
collections intact and _in situ_.
“We were also largely indebted to Sir Francis Mowatt, then
Secretary to the Treasury, who afforded us unfailing and
generous support.
“The purchase of the leasehold and freehold interest in the
house cost £74,620.
“The structural alterations about £28,000, and electric light,
heating and painting, £259 16s.
“In August, 1898, at your instance, I took the decorative
work, to a very great extent, out of the hands of the Office
of Works’ contractor. I remember that the paper used in the
large picture gallery, the selection of which had given us a
great deal of trouble, was copied from a piece of Italian silk
which we borrowed from Bertram, who lived in Dean Street, Soho.
Alfred Rothschild then, as always, took a deep interest in
Hertford House, and his advice was invaluable to us all.”
A Board of Trustees was then appointed, consisting of Lord Rosebery, as
chairman, who gave way to Sir John Scott, Sir Edward Malet, Sir John
Stirling Maxwell, Sir Arthur Ellis, Mr. Alfred de Rothschild and myself.
Mr.—now Sir—Claude Phillips, that distinguished connoisseur and critic,
was appointed keeper. The Office of Works constructed the new Galleries
according to our plan, and a Committee of the Trustees undertook the
arrangement of the collection. Sir John Scott, Mr. Alfred de Rothschild
and myself, with Sir Claude Phillips, worked day after day for many
months, evolving kosmos out of a chaos of packing-cases. It was a huge
task, but when the Galleries were finally thrown open, we were rewarded
by a chorus of approbation, and the praise of foreign critics was no
less loud than that of our own friends. Our leading idea was, as far as
possible, to avoid the museum aspect, and to show the pictures, clocks,
furniture, porcelain, etc., as the collection of a great connoisseur
set out as if he were still living in the house. The trustees were
fortunate in securing the generous co-operation of Sir Guy Laking in the
arrangement and cataloguing of the armour. It may readily be believed
that it was no small sorrow to us when, owing to the war, all our work
had to be undone in order to stow away our treasures in safety. I, for
one, can hardly expect to live to see the reawakening of the old glory. I
can only hope that when that time comes something of the former order may
be restored.
One morning—it was the 17th of January, 1912—I received an urgent message
by telephone, begging me to go to Hertford House at once. Sir John Scott
had died there suddenly. When I reached Manchester Square, I found him
lying in the Trustees’ room. He had been discussing business with Mr.
MacColl, who had succeeded Sir Claude Phillips as keeper, when all of
a sudden he began to have a difficulty in breathing. He said it was
nothing, but he grew worse. Doctors were sent for, but there was nothing
to be done. That large-hearted man died in the house where he had lived
so long, and surrounded by all the beautiful things which he loved and
which he had been the means of securing for the nation when he might
have had them for himself. The Government had made him a baronet. Lord
Rosebery, with a keen appreciation of what he had done, said to me in
righteous jest: “They have made him a baronet when they ought to have
made him a duke.”
A NOTE ON RUSSIAN STUDIES
A few days ago—I am writing on the 7th of August, 1916—I read in the
_Times_ a long speech by one of our preter-pluperfect rulers, announcing
the determination of the Government to encourage the study of Russian, on
account of its glorious literature. I think the adjective was “glorious,”
but, at any rate, it was some such word. Was there ever a better example
of the danger of giving reasons? Had this illustrious gentleman deigned
to glance at some such easily accessible book as Mr. Maurice Baring’s
delightful little “Outline of Russian Literature,” he would have been
saved from talking such nonsense.
We are told that upon one occasion Dr. Johnson declared that he could
quote by heart a whole chapter of the Natural History of Iceland from the
Danish of Horreboro, and immediately proceeded to show that it was no
vain boast.
Chapter LXXII, Concerning Snakes.
There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century literature in Russia was like
the snakes in Iceland. Nor can it be said that the new development which
took place early in that century was a _rinascimento_ such as sprang into
being in Italy, in France and in England. A new birth implies a previous
state of existence, and it cannot be said that the old chronicles which
the dryasdusts of Kiev—the old head-quarters of such monkish learning as
existed—still less a few embryonic attempts at versification and dramatic
writing, could be dignified by the inspiring title of literature. “The
Russian language”—to quote Mr. Baring—“was, as has been said, like an
instrument waiting for a great player to play on it, and to make use of
all its possibilities.” The fables of Kryloff—a playwright whose dramas
have long since been forgotten—were published in 1806, and these remain
a classic. Out of the two hundred fables which he left at his death in
1844, forty were translations, or, rather, “recreations,” as Mr. Baring
puts it, of La Fontaine; seven were suggested by Aesop; the remainder
were original. As in all fables, these contain an element of satire;
that here and there the satire should be tinged with even a spice of
political acidity did not hinder their popularity. I should like to say,
in passing, that the few pages which Mr. Baring devotes to his account of
Krylov contain passages of great beauty—passages which could only have
been written by a man gifted with the keenest appreciation of the poetry
which is part of himself.
[Illustration: IVAN TURGENIEV.
_From an etching by E. Hedouin._
[_To face p. 204._]
It was in 1816, that with Karamzin’s monumental work, “The Chronicles of
Russia,” the literature of that country burst into existence, like Pallas
Athene fully armed from the head of Zeus. “Not only were the undreamed-of
riches of the Russian language revealed to the Russians in the style, but
the subject matter came as a surprise.” Pushkin, the greatest Russian
poet that ever lived, or probably ever will live, was the next great
star that appeared upon the firmament, and he declared that Karamzin had
revealed Russia to the Russians, just as Columbus discovered America.
To Karamzin’s glorious prose and to Pushkin’s immortal verse belong the
first honours in the _belles-lettres_ of Russia.
Fifty years and more have passed since I read Gogol’s “Dead Souls” in the
original. The strivings and hard work of a somewhat strenuous life have
swept away the little that I knew of Russian authors and literature. I
am now obliged to walk upon the crutches of translations, though now and
then a faint memory is in some mysterious way awakened, and the interest,
at any rate, has not faded.
Such names as Turgeniev, whom I once met, Dostoieffski, and the two
Tolstoys, have still a magic charm for me. Besides, all the world can
prate of them. Of the host of lesser novelists, mostly translated by
ladies, in my judgment the less said the better. The work of obviously
coarse, uninstructed men, they often, both in their narration and in
their imagery, deal with subjects which are unwholesome and which common
consent rejects as unsuitable. Literature does not scramble about in
midden heaps.
And the great ones—what is their place in the history of the world’s
achievements? I very much doubt whether there be any among the most
patriotic enthusiasts who would claim even for his beloved Pushkin a seat
on Parnassus beside Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe,
Voltaire. That Karamzin’s prose was of the very first order is proved
by Pushkin’s appreciation of him. Unfortunately it can only appeal to a
very small public. Twelve volumes of chronicles, essential to the Russian
student of his own country’s story, will hardly be faced by the average
foreigner.
Pushkin’s activities were phenomenal. That in the thirty-seven years of
his tragically short life he should have wrought what he did, and that
he should have been so uniformly good, invests him with a glamour which
is all his own. He was a meteor, and, like a meteor, he appeared as it
were for a moment in the sky, and then vanished into space. And yet
half a century ago, among the men who were the leaders of thought in
Petersburg, there was far less talk of Pushkin than there was of Dante,
Shakespeare, or Voltaire—not to speak of many other foreign authors.
It has taken many years to create the revival of the interest of Russians
in Russian work. It has come at last, and now the only danger is lest,
under much flattery and patting on the back from abroad, the true advance
of public taste should not be rather hindered than furthered. Pushkin,
be it remembered, was highly cultivated, a man of wide reading. He
recognized the fact that in order to write well a man must read well,
and study the best models. Some of his criticisms of Shakespeare and of
Byron, under whose influence he was until Shakespeare dethroned his idol,
are masterpieces.
It seems to me that the State encouragement of Russian studies will be of
high value as promoting facility of intercourse—especially in the case of
the Services, naval, military and civil. A far higher, even world-wide
importance attaches to the establishment of schools of modern languages
all over Russia. It is of less moment that the literature of Russia, in
its present condition, should travel westward than that the literature
of the West should gradually influence the mind of the Slav. Just as
in music the wild barbaric outbursts of his gayer moods, the tender
sadness of his dirges, have been enshrined in the harmonies of his own
classic masters without losing one spark of their fire, one sob of their
pathos, so the untutored writer of to-day, chastened by study, will be
able to give us the freshness and zest of a life which is not ours,
shorn of all its crudities, not to give them a worse name. Let me not
be misunderstood. What I think is of consequence is that the startling
audacity, the rough ore of the Slav mind, should be passed through the
purifying furnace of the higher education it was in Pushkin’s case—all
honour to him—and then you will have something worthy of the praise which
is being rained upon the shameless translations by ladies, themselves
ill-equipped by classic culture, of the cubism of literary art.
VERBA COMPOSITA
In the first volume of my “Memories” there is a print of a drawing
by William Evans, of the inglenook in the picturesque dining-hall of
his house at Eton. Above the stone screen in which it was held was a
legend in Gothic letters: “Favus mellis verba composita.” The words
had disappeared for many years when I went to place my son with Miss
Evans—so long that she had even forgotten their existence when I asked
the reason why. To us old boys it seemed a pity, for the inscription
had derived a certain sanctity from the scholastic storm which raged
round it. The learned would not accept the legend. No one could say
whence the quotation or proverb came. Dr. Hawtrey, to whom the pure
well of Latin undefiled was almost a religion with which to tamper was
little short of sacrilege, declared that it was a barbarism, a piece of
dog, or, what was perhaps to him as bad, monkish Latin. He maintained
that it was untranslatable; but we, audacious monkeys, rushing in where
scholars feared to tread, declared that if the words were obscure, the
meaning was clear as crystal: “Sweet as the honeycomb is the talk of
friends in council.” Here I would fain break off for a moment to pay
a slight tribute to the memory of that most generous of men, William
Evans, drawing-master and, though one of the most masculine of mortals,
technically a “dame.” He was a big, burly man, of a jovial and rubicund
aspect, a combination which earned for him the nickname of Beeves. He was
a vigorous painter in water-colours, a member of the old water-colour
society, and one of the best of good fellows.
A sportsman, too, for he was the friend of the late Duke of Atholl,
spending most of his summer holiday at Blair, where he was always welcome
as an enthusiastic stalker. Indeed, “Scrope’s Deerstalking” was the only
book that I remember ever to have seen him read. I went to see him once
as he lay in bed, very feeble, at the beginning of his last long illness.
On the wall, at his right hand, was hanging his dearly-loved rifle, his
powder-flask, and the other paraphernalia of those pre-breechloader days.
In his youth he had been a great oarsman, and, indeed, the river was his
joy till quite late in life.
He took the greatest interest in all that concerned boating and swimming,
and it was owing to his influence, in conjunction with that of the noble
Bishop Selwyn, of whom Eton is still so proud, that the law was passed by
the authorities forbidding boys to enter a boat until they should have
“passed” in swimming. Of the good bishop a story is told of the time when
he was a private tutor at Eton which is worth preserving. He was sculling
in a wherry amid a crowd of boats, when he was run into by some unskilled
oarsman. Seeing that shipwreck was inevitable, he stood up, and, quoting
Ovid’s description of the discreet death of Lucretia, exclaimed:
“Tunc quoque, jam moriens, ne non procumbat honeste
Respicit, hoc etiam cura cadenti erat.”
Fasti II., 831.
And so, with a header as graceful as the quotation was apt, the
amphibious bishop that was to be, dived into the Thames amid the plaudits
of the multitude, who already recognized in him the heroism of which he
was to give proof in New Zealand and elsewhere.
Evans’ was a very happy house, and the good old man spared nothing for
the comfort of his boys. The table which he kept was excellent, the
Sunday dinner quite a little feast, with a glass of sherry for each
boy at plum-pudding time—not altogether wise we should perhaps think
nowadays, but so kind and so hospitable. Rarely, too, would be fail to
invite one or two boys to stay for dessert. The traditions of the house
were nobly carried on by Miss Jennie Evans after her father’s death in
1877. And now she, too, has disappeared, the last of the dames, the last
of one of those dear old institutions which were part of the mystery of
Eton.
To remember is to wander, and when I begin to think of Eton—the Eton of
seventy years ago—it is easier to ramble on than prudently to stop. But
to-day I have only to deal with “Verba Composita.” It is of them that I
was thinking this morning as I sat in my Veluvana, and, indeed, there
could hardly be a more pregnant thought than that of the talk of friends
in council.
How perfect is the feeling with which, in the company of a familiar
friend of our own choice—we wander through the shaded paths and sweet
groves of our sanctuary. Nor is it necessary that the chosen comrade
should be himself a botanist or a gardener. Sympathy is all that is
asked of him, and that he will not deny. Indeed, there is something in
the worship of the great god Pan, and in the living, growing temples
which are raised in his honour, which makes for all that is best in the
intercourse between man and man.
A beautiful view, a discreet arrangement of flowers and graceful foliage,
will rouse congenial memories of books, of poetry, of pictures, and
sometimes even of melody. The sight of a plant recognized even by the
unskilled as an old friend of some distant clime, seen again after many
years, will excite a whole train of recollections fragrant with the
perfume of half-forgotten travels and adventures. So may two greybeards
sit happily in some remote nook, the home of fairies and dryads, where
the trees whisper old thoughts and call up sympathetic talk, broken and
yet stimulated afresh by “brilliant flashes of silence.”
[Illustration: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
_From a photograph._
[_To face p. 212._]
All the better is this _solitude à deux_ if there should be the tinkling
music of a tiny stream, with the electric gleam of a kingfisher darting
across some idle sunlit pool. All these wield that magic power which,
for the nonce charming away the wrinkles of time, transports us across
the long years back to the days when the world and we were young and
life meant hope. Rare, indeed, and very precious are such dreamy talks
and silences. We can hardly rate their value too highly. The crazy
poet-philosopher Nietzsche was not far wrong when, in a letter to Erwin
Rohde, he wrote: “Eternally we need midwives in order to be delivered of
our thoughts. Most people go to a public-house, or to a colleague whose
mind is solely occupied with the interests of their calling, and there,
like so many small cats, they tumble about all their thoughts and tiny
schemes. But woe to us who lack the sunlight of a friend’s presence!”
It was a fine thought of his to elevate friendship to the rank of
a goddess. But, alas for the inconsistencies of genius! Few of
Nietzsche’s hot friendships had any lasting power. Rohde himself, Rée
and others faded out of his life. But no change was so violent as
that which occurred in the relations between the philosopher and the
tone-poet Wagner. The historic friendship—born of an admiration for
Schopenhauer shared by both, and of an adoration by Nietzsche of Wagner’s
music—ripened so quickly and was so beautiful, that it ought to have
lived with their lives; but this alliance between a budding youth and an
older, already famous man came to the saddest end.
Suddenly the fruit grew mouldy and fell from the tree, and the love,
which had seemed to be built upon a rock, the worship which was so
full of pious conviction, were changed into a hatred which was nothing
short of venomous, and which not even the death of Wagner could compel
to silence. They had first met at Leipsic, at the house of Professor
Brockhaus, and Wagner, touched by the boy’s enthusiasm, took to him at
once, petted him, and encouraged him to go and visit him, which he did a
few years later at Triebschen, Wagner’s retreat under the shadow of Mount
Pilatus.
Wonderful gatherings, indeed, have been held throughout the ages in
groves and gardens. Imagine the Baghavat, the Blessed One, surrounded by
his Bikshus, as poor as the first followers of St. Francis, preaching
the doctrines of truth and humility in those parables that are dear to
the Eastern, seated in one or other of his beloved gardens. Think of the
sages of ancient Athens gathered together in the groves of the Akademia
discussing the deep problems of existence. How much more instinct with
the poetry of life must such grave and reverend companies have been than
the boisterous though delightful tavern symposia in which Christopher
North, Tickler, the Ettrick Shepherd and their friends slung Doric
wit and wisdom over the toddy glasses! We can easily conceive how the
interchange of thought between the great trio, Wagner, Frau Cosima and
Nietzsche, in a lovely Swiss garden, surrounded by the majesty of the
Alps, must have been enshrined in such memories as those over which the
philosopher mourned so long as the lamp of life burned in him.
When the other day I was reading Dr. Mügge’s account of the trio at
Triebschen, Wagner, Frau Cosima and Nietzsche, and of their deep interest
in one another’s ideals, the old motto, “Sweet as the honeycomb is the
talk of friends in council,” of which I had not thought for many a
decade, came back to me, and I understood how Nietzsche, long years after
he had quarrelled with Wagner—indeed, shortly before his death—declared
that “he would resign all human intercourse, but at no price would he
give up the pleasant memories of those days spent in Triebschen.” The
honey of those Verba Composita was still sweet in the comb.
For the quarrel between the two men there may be explanations and
excuses; such changes are not without precedent. The first link between
them was, as I have said, devotion to Schopenhauer. “Nietzsche called
his connection with Wagner his practical course in Schopenhauer’s
philosophy.” When Nietzsche began to dream of a philosophy of his own,
the tie between him and the poet-composer was weakened; there was also
perhaps some feeling that he was being made use of, that he was being
patronized and made to play second fiddle to a man whom he was beginning
to look down upon as a mere play-actor—a mummer—a child of the theatre.
Mügge throws out a hint that in breaking with Wagner, Nietzsche was
possibly fleeing from himself, and he quotes a note from him to Frau
Cosima: “Ariadne, I love you! Dionysus.” Whatever may have been the
cause, or the many causes, of the rupture, its violence was, at any
rate on Nietzsche’s side, maniacal. His venom was not less poisonous
than that which Devadatta poured out upon the Buddha. Not content with
having hurled his Jupiter, as he called him, from his throne on high
Olympus, he must needs pursue him into the depths, trampling on him,
and covering with mud the man whom he had once beslavered with the most
fulsome adulation. Strange litanies for the high priest of the goddess of
Friendship to intone!
Far less intelligible is the change of front in regard to Wagner’s
music. That the man who, for the apotheosis of Wagner’s art, wrote “The
Birth of Tragedy in Music,” should so completely eat his words as to the
worth of the music because he had ceased to love the musician is almost
unthinkable.
In the first period he tells us that: “From a novice trying his strength,
Wagner became a thorough master of music and of the theatre.... No
one will any longer deny him the glory of having given us the supreme
model for lofty artistic execution. The renewer of the simple drama,
the discoverer of the position due to art in true German society, the
poetic interpreter of old views of life, the philosopher, the historian,
the æsthete and critic, the master of languages, the mythologist and
the myth poet, who for the first time included all these wonderful and
beautiful products of a primitive imagination in a single Ring, upon
which he engraved the runic characters of his thoughts—what an abundance
of knowledge Wagner must have had in order to have become all that!”
Again: “Over the coming of Wagner there hovers a necessity which both
justifies it and makes it glorious.” “Wagner, in his capacity as supreme
master of form, points out the way, like Aeschylus, to a future art.”
“In the life of this great man, the period over which as a golden
reflection there is stretched the splendour of a supreme perfection....
He produces _Tristan and Isolde_, this _opus metaphysicum_ of all art;
the _Meistersinger of Nürnberg_; the _Ring of the Nibelungs_; his work of
Bayreuth.”[17]
There is much more in the same strain, but when we come to the second
period it is another Nietzsche who speaks. He now attacks his former idol
with the most ferocious rancour, for which only insanity could account;
and yet that he was not then mad is proved by other utterances of his
in regard to that same art of music. For instance: “Mendelssohn was the
beautiful interlude of German music, quickly admired and then quickly
forgotten. Schumann was the last who founded a school. Though incessantly
glowing with happiness or throbbing with impersonal suffering, he was
a purely German event, and not, as Beethoven and Mozart had been, a
European phenomenon.”
That—although I should not agree as to Mendelssohn being
forgotten—appears to me to be, as regards Schumann, a fine piece of
criticism. Apparently it was only when thinking of Wagner that he was up
to that time insane. Then he could lash himself into a fury! Witness:
“I call the Wagnerian orchestration the Sirocco; Bizet’s” (of whose
success Wagner was supremely jealous) “orchestral music is almost the
sole orchestration that I can still endure.... Schopenhauer was the
philosopher of decadence. His art is morbid.... Wagner has been ruinous
to music. Was Wagner a musician at all? He was at least something else
in a higher degree—that is to say, an unsurpassable _actor_. Wagner was,
above all, a stage-player, and he excels in ubiquity and nullibiety....
Parsifal is a candidate for divinity with a public-school education.
We are so far pure fools already ... a typical telegram from Bayreuth:
_Bereits bereut_ (rued already)! Ah! this old _thief_! This old
_magician_! This _Cagliostro_ of modernity!... Wagner is a Romanist, and
he made the poor devil, the country lad Parsifal, a Roman Catholic. I
despise every one who does not regard Parsifal as an outrage on morals.”
[Illustration: RICHARD WAGNER.
_From a photograph._
[_To face p. 218._]
Perhaps Wagner’s faithful disciples were right when they ascribed all
outpouring of the vials of wrath to _jalousie de métier_; for Nietzsche,
too, was not only poet and philosopher, but composer, and when he
submitted an opera of his own to Wagner, the great man, as the Eastern
saying is, made sour noses at it.
It is dangerous to carry a book with you into a garden; it will make
your mind wander much further than your feet. Here have I been rambling
on, carried away not so much by any feeling for Nietzsche, who is, after
all, not much more than a name to me, as by the interest which attaches
to all that concerns Wagner. For, let his enemies say what they will, he
was a man of genius, of most compelling genius, and who that ever had
speech of Frau Cosima could avoid being bewitched. To me it has only been
given to know her in her old age, but I fell at once under the spell of
that most sweet and dainty personality. Very feeble in health, and unable
to speak for long, she had retained all the serene charm which, in the
heyday of her youth and beauty, earned for her the name of “the unique
woman.” I felt how bright a part she must have played in the brilliant
trio at Triebschen, and how sad it is that there should be no record of
the symposia of the sunny days of that happy friendship before it was
disturbed by mad envy and malice.
Of Nietzsche and his tragic end, of the influence which his restless
brain exercised upon men and upon letters, this is not the place to
speak. Is it he, as his disciples maintain, who has taught Germany
and, through Germany, the world to think? The great anti-moralist, as
he has been called, is dead. Let him rest in peace. We can leave this
Batrachomyomachia, this battle of the frogs and mice, the squabbles of
German professors and philosophers, coming back with some relief to the
sweeter fragrance of our flowers. It was the thought of Triebschen and
its Verba Composita which led us to Nietzsche, and his clever saying that
seemed to give value to the thought of friendship in a garden.
Days of happy talk are delightful—never more so than in a garden; and
yet it is when we are alone, when our plants are the companions of
our solitude, that we really enter into sympathy with them. Then it
is that we hold true communion with them, and, giving the reins to
our imagination, try to read the hidden secrets of their being—hidden
secrets, not those scientific arcana which your professor loves to clothe
in slipshod Latin and shabby Greek, but those inmost idiosyncrasies in
which our fancy, wildly playful, seems to detect vestiges of the same
characteristics and emotions which rule as tyrants in our own nature. Nor
when we note the movements of plants, so strangely purposeful, does it
involve any inordinate strain upon our conceptive power to see in them
something more than chance, something which resembles the exercise of a
dominant will. These may be thoughts at which science laughs, and which
the inexorable demon Commonsense hounds out of court—thoughts that are no
more than poor little waifs and strays, coming to us from Fancyland, and
yet not without their humble value if they do but make us watch and seek
for things undreamt of in our philosophy.
That certain flowers and plants are, as it were, types of various
qualities is an idea as old as the hills upon which they grow. The
strength of the oak, the grace of the willow, the flaunting pride of
poppies, the virginal purity of lilies, the stateliness of hollyhocks
like courtiers drawn up in a row at the levée of a mighty king, the
modesty of the violet—all these and a hundred others are images from the
wallets of poets of all lands and of all time. It is not of these that
I speak, but rather of the behaviour of plants, often very various and
capricious, according to circumstances, yet in which we seem to see a
kinship with reasonable motive, a suggestion that in similar conditions
we might have done the same.
See yonder crimson water-lily queening it in all the majesty of her
amazing beauty among the humbler reeds and rushes and sedges and the
rest of her water-loving subjects. To-day she is in the zenith of her
state, like the king’s daughter all glorious within. Does she rejoice in
the stateliness of her queenship? It would almost seem so, for to-morrow
she will feel that her reign is over. She will bow her lovely neck,
and, coyly folding her petals together round the golden aureole of her
stamens, will disappear under the flood, too proud to let herself be seen
when her regal beauty is on the wane. Is not that something like the
pride of which we read in the life of the peerless Countess Castiglione,
who hid herself from the gaze of men before her charms had faded, as she
knew they soon must? Having reigned supreme among the fair women of the
world, she would not consent to be degraded into a has-been—a thing of
the past. I have told in my “Memories” of the first time that I saw her
on the terrace at Holland House, a miracle of loveliness, when all London
was crowding on tiptoe to catch a sight of the haughty queen of beauty
and do homage to her majesty. My nymphæa tempts me to repeat myself.
The last time was a few years later. I was sitting with Mario and Grisi
in their garden at Fulham when she was announced. She came in robed
in deepest black, her face hidden by a thick veil of sable crêpe. She
remained a little while and talked gaily enough, but her face remained
hidden all the time; not for one moment did she lift that funereal veil.
She had forsaken the world—abdicated—like my coy crimson water-lily, and
in the waters of Lethe she hid her beauteous head.
Have plants their friendships, their affinities? Certain it is that there
are some plants which seem to thrive best when familiarly associated
with certain others. I have heard some gardeners say, for instance, that
lilies of the valley and Solomon’s seal are never so happy as when they
are planted together. That may be true, but it probably means no more
than that both need the same soil and surroundings, and so make the
bravest show when they are side by side. I much doubt whether a weak
clump of lilies of the valley would be strengthened by adding to it a
cluster of plants of its friend, or vice versa.
On the other hand, it is a scientific fact capable of demonstration,
that there are trees which press into their service certain humbler
non-flowering plants, compelling them to furnish their roots with water
and such mineral salts and foods as are needful for their well-being.
These become slaves, like the hewers of wood and drawers of water working
for the lords of creation.
Many years ago I received a consignment of _Pinus cembra_, the Arolla
pine, which is the common growth of the Alps. The trees arrived late in
the afternoon, and we unpacked them at once, for the days were at their
shortest, and I was eager to get them all planted—there were a dozen
or more—before nightfall. To my dismay I found that the roots were all
covered with a network of grey film, the mycelium, as the learned would
call it, of some fungus. My gardener and I were not a little indignant
with the nurseryman who sent out the plants in so filthy a condition. We
sent for a bucket of water and washed clean as many of the trees as we
could; mercifully there was not daylight enough left to purge them all
of their dirt. To our amazement, the trees which we washed soon began
to show signs of sickness; they dwindled for three or four years and
looked as if they must die; slowly, very slowly, the invalids recovered.
Their unwashed mates never flinched for a moment, made roots gaily, and
took quite rapidly to their new home. The puzzle was great, until a
few years later I received Kerner’s great book, “The Natural History of
Plants,” and then the mystery was cleared up. The sorrows of the washed
trees were those of the planters of the West Indian Islands. Like Mr.
Wilberforce, we had deprived them of their slaves. Luckily, the humus of
the plantation in which they were placed must have contained the spores
necessary to the formation of the fungoid growth, otherwise they would
doubtless have died.
Kerner’s chapter on the _Symbiosis_, or social union of plants, is
curiously interesting. He gives a list of flowering trees and plants
which are absolutely dependent upon what he called the mycelial mantle
with which fungi cover their roots for the absorption of their daily
food. Limes, roses, ivy, pinks may be propagated by cuttings which will
root in pure sand. No such method is possible in the case of the oak, the
beech, firs, broom, rhododendron, and a host of others, which demand an
admixture of soil containing a proportion of mycelia, without which they
are unable to feed themselves; and so, like babies, with neither breast
nor bottle they perish.
Kerner’s opening words on this _symbiosis_ are worth quoting: “In
describing the vegetation of a limited area, botanical writers are apt
to designate the various species of plants as ‘denizens’ of the country
in question. The conditions under which the plants live are likened to
political institutions, and the relations existing amongst the plants
themselves are compared to the life and strife of human society.” He
goes on to speak of the interdependence upon one another of these
plants living in the same community; he shows how necessary they are
to one another; how they sometimes fight for food, light and air; how
some are preyed upon and oppressed by others, “and how not infrequently
quite different species join together in order to attain some mutual
advantage.” And so he comes to the curious history of the lichens.
Some forty or fifty years ago there arose a furious battle around the
lichens, humble little creatures enough, plastered on almost every rock
and stone and tree in creation. During the ’sixties of the last century
Schwendener, a Swiss botanist—professor successively at Basle, Tübingen
and Berlin—wrote a number of papers in scientific publications, in
which he proved to his own satisfaction that lichens are not individual
plants, but compound existences consisting of an alga and a fungus. His
investigations were followed up by one Bornet, and he had a numerous
following largely attracted by the charm of novelty and the ingenuity
of invention. Kerner went so far as to say that “the continued study of
lichens has tended only to secure for the Schwendenerian theory a more
wide and universal recognition.” Dr. Cook, however, the great authority
on cryptogamic botany, laughs at this mystic union as a “fairy tale.” He
treats it with the same contempt that St. Paul, in his letter to Titus,
expressed for “Jewish fables.” He says: “The high priest Schwendener
thus expressed his dream: ‘As the result of my researches, all these
growths (lichens) are not simple plants, not individuals in the ordinary
sense of the word; they are rather colonies, which consist of hundreds
and thousands of individuals, of which, however, one alone plays the
master, whilst the rest, in perpetual captivity, prepare the nutriment
for themselves and their master. This master is a fungus of the class
ascomyceter, a parasite which is accustomed to live upon others’ work;
its slaves are green algæ, which it has sought out, or, indeed, caught
hold of, and compelled into its service. It surrounds them, as a spider
its prey, with a fibrous net of narrow meshes, which is gradually
converted into an impenetrable covering; but whilst the spider sucks its
prey and leaves it dead, the fungus incites the algæ found in its net to
more rapid activity—nay, to more vigorous increase.’”
Dr. Cook goes on to say: “This may be all very poetical, but it is not
very explicit, and needs a commentary;” and then he proceeds to demolish
the whole theory based upon the supposition that the gonidia, green
spherical cells, which are found in the thallus of lichens are algæ.
Lichens, Dr. Cook tells us, consist normally of a thallus, or vegetative
system, which is in many species a tough, bark-like expansion, horizontal
or vertical, attached to rocks, stones, wood and other substances,
but not deriving nourishment from the object to which it is attached.
Inside this thallus are the minute green gonidia, and, in addition,
there is the reproductive system, consisting of discs borne upon the
thallus, containing the reproductive organs (asci and sporidia). The
Schwendenerians contend that the thallus and reproductive system are not
only fungoid, but actual fungi, while the green gonidia are algæ upon
which those fungi are parasitic.
One of the proofs which Dr. Cook brings forward in support of his
contradiction of the theorists is the permanence of lichens, whereas the
fungi are, as we all know, very short-lived, many of them little more
than ephemeral—here to-day and gone to-morrow. To the lichens we must pay
the respect due to the most venerable antiquity. Dr. Cook, speaking with
all the authority with which he is endowed, tells us that “some species,
growing on primitive rocks of the highest mountains of the world, are
estimated to have attained an age of at least a thousand years. Is it not
marvellous to think of these mean little vegetable scabs feeding upon
air, outliving the monarch oaks and almost all the trees of Creation?”
But I am in danger of rushing in where the angels of science hardly dare
tread. Let me go back to my beloved nonsense. Beloved? Yes, for, after
all, what is more lovable than nonsense? What a joy their nonsense must
have been to Dean Swift, to Lear, or to the little dry chip of a man
who was our Cocker, our mathematical tutor, at Christ Church. I wonder
whether, when Dodgson, that double personality, always associated in my
memory with a blackboard, a piece of chalk and _x y z_, was writing up
his mystic algebraical puzzles, his mind did not sometimes wander, and he
himself become transformed for a minute into Lewis Carroll seeing visions
of Alice, the Carpenter, the Mad Hatter, the Walrus, and all the crazy
_dramatis personæ_ of his delicious phantasy. He is dead now, and many
years ago the lovely child, for whose delectation the wonder book was
invented, was laid in an early grave in the Christ Church cloisters. Only
Alice lives, and will live as long as the English language remains.
If your garden be upon the slope of a hill, there is one human instinct
which you will surely, if you watch them carefully, recognize in your
plants. They are so ambitious. Those among them which have creeping roots
or rhizomes will almost invariably travel uphill. They are as fain to
climb as Sir Walter Raleigh himself. Take the rhizomatous bamboos, such
species among the arundonarias as Somoni, Japonica Layœkerd, Spathiflora
and others, Phyllostachys fastuosa, Bambusa Palmata. Rarely, indeed,
will you find a new culm below the parent plant; all the growth is
upwards. And so it is with many other genera. I think the reason of it
is pretty plain. You need but to mark the trees above a railway cutting
or on the high banks of a deep lane, to see how shallow in proportion
to their height are the roots even of the greatest of them. There are
exceptions—the vine and the laburnum, to wit—but the oak itself loses
its so-called tap-root, which withers and rots away as soon as it has
fulfilled its duty of tying the tree in its place. The roots seem to
remain as near as possible to the plane of the bottom of the main stem.
The same rule applies to plants of lesser stature. Now if the roots of a
hillside plant were to move down-hill in the same plane as the axis of
the stem, it is manifest that they must very soon peer out into the open
and be deprived of all those foods which are necessary to plant life. So
they choose the wise course of journeying upwards, where they are sure,
on the contrary, of an increasingly richer diet. If on its travels the
growing point of a bamboo rhizome encounters a stone or other obstacle,
it will not dive down to avoid it, but will take a direction upwards
and then down again into the earth, forming one of those hoops, like
croquet hoops, which are such a snare to trip up wayfarers in bamboo
forests. Sometimes the ambitions of plants, like those of men, are fatal.
The root-stock, originally set in the best conditions, must needs climb
higher and higher, until it may perhaps reach some uncongenial place in
which it is starved or choked. Then farewell, a long farewell, to all its
greatness! By degrees the parent plant becomes exhausted and dwindles
away, while the scions which should have carried on the dynasty are hoped
for in vain, and so some precious treasure is lost for ever.
If plants have ambition, there is one vice closely allied to it which
they do not possess. Jealousy is confined to animals. Men, dogs, cats
and horses are jealous. There is no evidence to lead us to suppose that
plants are afflicted with that horror of horrors. They may have their
loves and their hatreds; they will, as we have seen, help one another,
and they will strangle and murder one another. They will even rob one
another; but the torture of jealousy seems to be unknown to them. They
will attack their neighbours with the pitiless savagery of the old
Rhineland robber knights. No vampire could with more ruthless cruelty
suck the blood of a fair maiden than certain malignant fungi, which
fasten upon great trees and shrubs, and draw out the sap of their noble
lives in order to nourish their own ignominious bodies. Then there are
the saprophytes, plants as unlovely as their name, vegetable horrors,
which, like the ghouls of the “Arabian Nights,” are found feasting upon
death and decay. _Non ragionam di lor! Ma guarda e passa._
In the part of the world where I live the old thorn trees are, with the
oaks, the glory of the countryside. One year, to my dismay, I saw that
all my thorns in which I took so much pride were apparently dying. In the
middle of summer their leaves withered and wilted, and they presented a
piteous sight. I wrote to Kew for advice. Kew is a never-failing help in
trouble. The answer came back: Have you any savin juniper bushes? If so,
examine them. You will probably find them covered with a yellow slimy
sort of jelly, which is the first stage of a fungus which, in its second
stage, fastens upon the thorn. The letter went on to advise a merciless
destruction and holocaust of the savin bushes, and prophesied that the
fungus on the thorns would die and not renew itself, so that no permanent
harm would ensue. Sure enough, in my ignorance, I had planted a number
of bushes of savin, which I found, as Kew prophesied, to be covered with
an ugly yellow mucilaginous substance. My inquisition was followed by an
_auto da fé_ of the junipers; when their enemies were burnt, the thorns
recovered and I had no more trouble.
How most other plants hate the beech and the ash! How resolutely they
refuse to grow under their shade! And yet even the best hated men have
their friends, who will smile to them and seek their company. Lords of
beech woods wanting covert for their game should try planting Laurus
Colchica and Laurus rotundifolia. The pheasants love their shelter, and
they are quite happy even under old-established beeches.
There are plants of prey just as there are beasts of prey and birds of
prey. These are plants which live upon animal food just as we do, setting
traps and snares for them with all the cunning shown by one of Richard
Jefferies’ phenomenal gamekeepers or poachers. What, by the by, is the
exact dividing line which separates the poacher from the keeper? Does
the one develop into the other as does the chrysalis into the butterfly?
I remember a little old Highland stalker, a veteran of the “hull,” as
brown and rugged as a russet apple; we had been watching deer a long way
off all the morning—the wind wrong for a stalk—and he confided to me
all those secrets of deer life which seemed as familiar to him as if,
like the Buddha, he had been himself a stag in some previous stage of
existence. “How long have you been a stalker, Hughie?” I asked. “Maybe
twenty years,” he answered; but then, looking up, his eyes twinkling with
a craft worthy of Autolycus, he added, “but I was a shepherd for many
years before that.”
There was a whole folio volume of predatory but illicit sport in the
words. Some plants, like the various pitchers of Nepenthe and others,
remain still and are content to rely upon the beauty of their colours
to tempt the game to its doom. Caught in the trap, the victims are held
tight by some glue like birdlime, or kept from finding their way out by
fingers of sharp teeth like the knives of the Iron Virgin of Nürnberg.
Others, innocent, humble little creatures, look “as if they would not
hurt a fly.” But let the fly beware, and keep out of their grip—“foxes
in stealth, wolves in greediness,” they are armed like the butterwort
(_pinguicula_) with glands which become active at the touch, and secure
the prisoner, or as the sundew (_drosera_), equipped with tentacles which
close in upon him like a horror in one of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. How
these creatures feed and how they digest their meat is told in Darwin’s
“Insectivorous Plants” and elsewhere. These are facts, not fancies. But
what gastronome could take offence if he were accused of being as greedy
as sundew!
There is one human quality, the power of enjoyment, which, above all
others, we seem to recognize in our plants. It is impossible to look
upon the daffodils in a field dancing in the sunlight of an early April
day, without feeling that here is the very embodiment of gladness—of
the _joie de vivre_; and as the months speed on and flower after flower
bursts into life, meeting the renewed glories of the sun, we have
before us a roundelay of gaiety and happiness which only quite ceases
when the first grip of winter comes to choke and kill the melancholy
glory of autumn. Then, when the dahlias hang their stricken heads, and
the blue clouds of the Michaelmas daisies fade and shed their seed, we
are conscious of the fact that they, too, have their sorrows, though
the tragedy of so many has passed unnoticed when rivals, each one more
beautiful than the last, have been springing up to take their place. A
greater than I am has noticed the pleasure that plants take in the act of
living. A friend sends me these lines of Wordsworth’s:
“The budding twigs spread out their fan
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.”
And so we linger on in our Veluvana until the sun is setting in the west.
There is an end of light and heat for this day, and the plants, like
the birds, must sleep and even dream, if Keats be right.[18] Theirs is
perhaps not the sleep which we know, but nothing is more certain than
the change which they undergo in darkness. In some plants the leaflets
curl downwards, in others upwards; in many the flowers close altogether,
and are folded almost as they were when buds. But all green plants show
one phenomenon. Whereas under light the leaves take up the air in the
little mouths on the underside of their leaves, and after working up
the carbonic-acid gas into carbon for the building of their stems and
branches, return the rest in the shape of pure oxygen, purifying and
sweetening the air; when night comes the process is reversed. Then they
retain the oxygen and exhale carbonic-acid gas only, and that is why
careful nurses, though they may not know the reason, turn plants out
of a sick-room when the night comes on. It has been calculated that of
those little stomates on the underside of a beech leaf, little kitchens
or laboratories in which the tree prepares its food, there are no fewer
than a million. Yes, the plants must sleep—all save certain disreputable
night-blooms, which, like owls and bats and witches, hate the light and
haunt the darkness. In a few hours the first glimmer of dawn will break;
the rosy-fingered goddess will rouse her choir of birds, and they, with
their morning hymn, will awaken the trees and the flowers; the blessed
dew will fall, distilling the sweet scents of woodland and gardenland,
and the joy of the world and of the plants will spring into the birth of
a day.
If I were able to accept, as do the pious Buddhists, the doctrine of
rebirth and the transmigration of souls, I, noting what I have called
the purposeful movements of plant-life, should be inclined to go a step
further than they do. If a man may have been in a previous state of
existence a stag, a monkey, or a snake, why should he not equally have
been a tree, a shrub, or a poisonous creeper? The stately dignity of the
oak, the sweet virtues of the rose, the venomous juice of the deadly
nightshade, are qualities which might be traced in many a reincarnation.
The image, at any rate, is found in Ezekiel: “Behold, the Assyrian was a
cedar in Lebanon with fair branches and with a shadowing shroud and of an
high stature, and his top was among the thick boughs” (Ezekiel xxxi. 3).
When all is said and done, is it so very foolish, as we sit
wool-gathering and drinking in the sweetness of a summer’s evening
amid the fragrance of our Veluvana, to let our thoughts run riot among
the many-coloured clouds of fancy, tracing some faint signs of kinship
between the moods of men and the moods of plants? And if, in the
indulgence of these whimsies, treating the search for knowledge, not
as we English are supposed to take our pleasures—_moult tristement_—we
should chance to strike some tiny spark of truth hitherto hidden from us,
may we not call in Horace as counsel for the defence and ask:
“——ridentem dicere verum
Quid vetat?”
Enshrined, as it were, in a temple of secular oaks, and other grave and
reverend trees, there stands a small mulberry tree, very humble and
inconspicuous, having hardly as yet reached the dignity of a shrub. In
the late spring and early summer it is surrounded by flaming azaleas,
white and deep purple lilacs, and other flowering Japanese maples, with
their coral buds bursting into crimson leaves—all the “embroidery” of
the Japanese forests, which look as if they had been planted to do
honour to the little waif, the radiance of whose pedigree, indeed,
outshines all their glory. It is like the beggar-maid at the African King
Cophetua’s court, but, like that humble maiden, worthy of royal favour
above all the flaunting beauties who surrounded that “magnanimous and
illustrate” monarch’s throne; for that little tree, or tree that, by the
grace of Pomona, shall yet be, is an undoubted scion of the tree which
Shakespeare planted in the garden of the new home which he built for his
prosperous retirement at Stratford-on-Avon. The story is complete in
all its details. It has been told by Malone in his life, and recently
by Sir Sidney Lee in the admirable new edition of his life of the poet,
and is confirmed by what Dr. Johnson told Boswell when they visited Mrs.
Gastrell.
In the year 1597 Shakespeare, minded to end his days in his native town,
as should become an Armiger of good means, bought New Place, which had
been the most considerable house in Stratford; but the buildings were
in ruins, and the poet built himself a new house with three gables, the
centre of which carried a shield with the spear, which he adopted as his
coat-of-arms. “Shakespeare paid for it,” writes Sir Sidney Lee, “with two
gardens, the then substantial sum of sixty pounds. A curious incident
postponed legal possession. The vendor of the Stratford Manor House,
William Underhill, died suddenly of poison at another residence in the
county—Fillongley, near Coventry—and the legal transfer to the dramatist
was left at the time incomplete. Underhill’s eldest son Fulk died a minor
at Warwick next year, and after his death he was proved to have murdered
his father. The family estates were thus in danger of forfeiture, but
they were suffered to pass to the felon’s next brother Hercules, who, on
coming of age in 1602, completed in a new deed the transfer of New Place
to Shakespeare.” Sir Sidney goes on to say that the poet does not appear
to have permanently settled at New Place until 1611. In the meantime, he
had been busy rebuilding the house and planning his garden. And now for
the history of the famous mulberry tree.
Soon after his accession to the throne King James the First appears to
have been fascinated by the idea of establishing the cultivation of
silk in this country. There was a Frenchman, a native of Picardy, of
the name of Forest, who, in the year 1608, “kept greate store of English
silk-worms at Greenwich, the which the King, with great pleasure, came
often to see them worke; and of their silke he caused a piece of taffeta
to be made” (Malone’s “Life of Shakespeare”). This led to the King’s
planting many hundred thousand mulberry trees in this country, those
destined for the Midland Counties being distributed by a Frenchman named
Véron. But the King also planted a number of trees south of Hyde Park, at
the western end of what now are Buckingham Palace Gardens. These trees
gave the name to the famous “Mulberry Gardens,” of which I shall say a
word later.
It seems that on his return from one of his annual excursions to London,
Shakespeare brought back with him a young mulberry tree, and with his own
hands planted it in his garden, in which tradition says that he loved
to work. What more natural than that the courtier-actor, who was as
much petted by King James as he had been in the previous reign, should
wish to enrich his Eden with a specimen of the latest botanical craze?
After passing through various hands, the house passed back to Sir Hugh
Clopton, whose family had formerly possessed it. Sir Hugh pulled down
Shakespeare’s three-gabled and ugly house, and built one more suitable
to his position, where, in May, 1742, Malone tells us that he hospitably
entertained Garrick, Macklin and Delane under the poet’s own mulberry
tree. In 1790 the father of Mr. Davenport’s clerk, then ninety-five years
old, told Malone that as a boy he lived in the next house to New Place,
and that he had often eaten of the fruit of the tree, some branches of
which overhung his father’s garden; that it was planted by the poet, and
the first mulberry tree to be seen in the neighbourhood.
In 1752 Henry Talbot, son-in-law and executor of Sir Hugh Clopton, sold
New Place to a clergyman of the name of Gastrell, a man of fortune and
Vicar of Frodsham in Cheshire, apparently an ill-conditioned, quarrelsome
man, who was soon in hot water with his neighbours. He had a dispute
with the town over assessments, in which, by the by, he was utterly in
the wrong, and he so resented the desire of sightseers to be admitted
to view the famous mulberry tree, that to spite them and the townsfolk
he, in 1758, cut down the tree, his wife urging him to the impious act,
as Dr. Johnson told Boswell. She, the Lady Macbeth of this “withered
murder,” was a daughter of Sir Thomas Aston and sister to Mrs. Walmesley,
the wife of Johnson’s first patron, and to the lovely Molly Aston, whose
beauty so stirred the inflammable Dr. Johnson that the groves and woods
of Staffordshire and Derbyshire rang with its praises sung by an elderly
Tityrus in a bush-wig. The grand old amorist never wearied of celebrating
the charms of his lovely ladies. Even the Island of Skye was forced to
resound with the perfections of his Thralia Dulcis in one of the worst
Sapphic odes that ever brought wrath upon a fifth-form boy.
At last the vandal parson, irritated beyond measure by his own bilious
spite, declared that the house should pay no more assessments, so he
pulled it down and broke it up for sale of the building materials.
As Shakespeare’s own house had been long since destroyed by Sir Hugh
Clopton, that did not signify so much, but the murder of the sacred tree
was another matter. We may be sure that when Macbeth and Lady Macbeth
finally turned their backs upon Stratford, their departure was not
bemoaned by their neighbours.
Blessed are the enthusiasts. It is true that they are sometimes egregious
bores, but they are never so bad as the iconoclasts, and they do much
good in the world. Before the murder of the famous mulberry tree Edward
Capell, the Shakespearian commentator, whose work rather fell under the
cruel lash of Dr. Johnson, had managed to secure a cutting of it, which
he carried to Troston Hall, his place in Suffolk, and planted in his
garden. There is no easier tree to propagate than the mulberry; in that
respect, it is like the willow. Cut a branch of it and stick it in the
ground, and when the spring comes it will begin to show signs of life.
Lurking in mysterious hiding-places in the bark are myriads of tiny
unsuspected buds, full of life and vigour, which in due season will send
down little slender fibres till they reach the soil, whence they derive
nourishment; in time the buds will burst their prison of bark, and before
many years are past a new tree will bear fruit. So Mr. Capell’s cutting
throve amazingly and gave birth to a little colony of offshoots. How or
when I know not, Troston passed into the possession of Mr. Lofft, and
he, when about to let the place and disperse his collection of plants,
wrote to Sir William Thiselton Dyer, October 6th, 1896, offering “some
scions of Shakespeare’s tree” to Kew. I at once wrote, begging for one of
these scions, that it might be planted in Buckingham Palace Gardens—the
site of the old mulberry plantation of King James. What more appropriate
home could be found for it? There still stands, by the by, in the Palace
grounds a venerable mulberry tree which must be the one last relic of
King James’s attempt at silk-worm cultivation.
The mulberry gardens were soon converted into a pleasure resort after
the manner of the Vauxhall and Cremorne of my youth. Both Evelyn and
Pepys mention them and give them the worst of characters. Evelyn calls
them (May 10th, 1654) “the only place of refreshment about the town
for persons of the best quality to be exceedingly cheated at, Cromwell
and his partisans having shut up and seized on Spring Gardens, which
till now had been the usual rendezvous for ladies and gallants at this
season.” Pepys, in his outspoken way, went further in his condemnation
some years later. His spades were always spades—yet the sly old dog
confessed to having amused himself greatly there. There is in especial a
very characteristic account of a dinner there, given by Mr. Sheres, at
which Pepys was introduced to a Spanish Olio, “a very noble dish, such
as I never saw better or any more of. This and the discourse he did give
us of Spain, and description of the Escuriall, was a fine treat.” The
entertainment seems to have been managed with an eye to economy, for
after dinner they all went off to Brentford, ordering the waiter to set
on one side what had not been eaten, and they would come back and have
it for supper. What would the head waiter at the “Ritz” or the “Carlton”
say to such an order as that? But the evening was spoilt by the sudden
indisposition of poor Mr. Sheres, the amphitryon of the Olio, probably
the cause of the trouble—to which Pepys appears to have returned to the
“noble dish” with appetite, issuing unscathed from the temptation.
Sir Charles Sedley, the profligate wit and brilliant writer, of whom
Charles the Second said that “Nature had given him a patent as Apollo’s
viceroy,” and that “his style, whether in writing or discourse, would be
the standard of the English tongue,” wrote a play called the _Mulberry
Garden_, which Pepys, a great playgoer and probably a good judge, damned
with faint praise. The “Tribullus of his age,” as Dryden dubbed him in
his dedication to “The Assignation,” for once had failed to score.
The story of Shakespeare’s mulberry has led me far astray, and when we
get to Evelyn and Pepys it is difficult not to wander on. But I must curb
my prolixity. I think I have said enough to show that the Troston plants
have a pedigree which it would defy all the sagacity and learning of
the College of Heralds to demolish. Kew, always generous, has continued
to propagate from them, and as Sir David Prain, the present director,
writes to Sir Sidney Lee: “We have sent plants to places where there are
memorials of Shakespeare, and to people interested in matters relating to
him.” It is to the kindness of Sir William Thiselton Dyer that I owe my
special treasure.
I do not know upon what authority is based the statement that the tree
now growing in New Place is a scion of the old tree—probably it is. But,
in any case, there are offshoots enough propagated by the pious care of
Kew from the Troston stock to do away with any fear lest the dynasty
should die out.
RUSSIA
The time which I spent in Russia in 1863-64 was a transition period.
Transition periods in history are always difficult to describe, and still
more difficult to explain. It is comparatively easy to tell the story of
some great concrete fact, a world-encompassing war, a revolution, the
upheaval of a dynasty; but to set out the causes which, working during a
period of externally unruffled calm, are brewing the hell-broth; to show
the hidden powers which are silently operating under the surface to bring
about a mighty change—that is a task before which even those who have the
best information may well hesitate.
Every skilled newspaper correspondent will, without much difficulty,
write a brilliant description of an earthquake with all the harrowing
and soul-stirring horrors of the upheaval; but even the most experienced
seismologist hardly dares to set on paper his estimate of the mysterious
hidden forces, which, battling in the bowels of the earth, unseen and
unsuspected, burst out in their wrath to wreak the tragedies of Lisbon
or of Catania. So it is with transition periods in history. They are
generally marked by peace and prosperity. There are often no outward
signs to sound the alarm that there is trouble ahead.
The political catastrophe, like the earthquake, comes without warning;
like the wrecking typhoon, it may be preceded by a dead calm. It will
be said with justice that these violent similes do not fit the case
of Russia. There has been no great epidemic of violence, no fierce
upheaval like that of the French Revolution. Individual murders there
have been. The pages of Russian history are stained by cruelty and
murder, culminating in the barbarous tragedy of the death of the Emperor
Alexander the Second; but the changes which have taken place have been
wrought without disturbing the atmosphere of the world at large. None the
less, the revolution here has been far-reaching.
The Russia of to-day differs _toto coelo_ from the Russia of a hundred
years ago. Absolutism died with the Emperor Nicholas, and no Russian Tsar
will ever again be able to rule, or even try to rule, without taking
into account the will of his people. The relations between the sovereign
and his subjects are for that very reason happier than they ever were,
and the events of the last two years have shown that loyalty has not
perished because autocracy has given up the ghost. The strength of Holy
Russia to-day, in the face of the German war of aggression, lies in the
determined attitude of the people—in their pious love for their country,
in their almost fanatical belief in their Church, and in their veneration
for the great White Tsar who is the head of that Church.
The nineteenth century opened darkly enough for Russia. The Emperor
Paul had been on the throne for four years—a gloomy, unhappy man, not
without ability, not without the wish to do what was right, until his
mind was unhinged by madness. The first acts of his reign were worthy
of all praise. He showed kindly feeling, clemency, and even generosity
to the Poles, setting free those that had been imprisoned, and making
ample provision for their heroic leader, Kosciusko. His edict enacting
that the succession to the throne should be determined, not by the will
or caprice of the reigning sovereign, but by a fixed and certain law of
primogeniture, was a wise measure, calculated to save his country from
the intrigues and bloodshed under which she had suffered so long.
But the early days of his reign were embittered by the knowledge conveyed
to him by his Vice-Chancellor, Count Bezbarooks, that it had been the
intention of his mother, Catherine the Great, to exclude him from the
succession in favour of his own son, Alexander. Apart from that, he was
a haunted man. Haunted by the murder of his father, Peter the Third,
knowing full well that if the hand was the hand of Orloff, the dictating
voice was the voice of his mother, Catherine.
[Illustration: THE EMPEROR PAUL I.
_From a contemporary Print._
[_To face p. 248._]
Haunted by suspicion, unable to trust any living soul—if a curtain
rustled, stirred by the wind, a murderer stood hidden behind it; if two
courtiers spoke in a whisper, it was a conspiracy; a cough was the signal
to a confederate; once when the Empress was talking in a low voice to a
foreign ambassador, he bade her speak up, saying: “You may be prepared to
play the part of Catherine, but I would have you remember that in me you
will not find a Peter the Third.” A terrible speech, showing what he knew
of the past, what he dreaded in the future!
His wife, his ministers, his officers, were all under suspicion. He
looked upon his Court as a hotbed of treason, conspiracy and murder.
It was not to be wondered at that in a brain so tortured, the seeds of
hereditary madness should have been swift to germinate. Then came all
those grotesquely savage edicts which could only be accounted for by
insanity. The wearing of trousers, or of a round hat, were crimes to be
punished by the knut; short hair without pigtails constituted a criminal
offence; ladies must stop their carriages and step out into the snow
and mud to salute him when his sleigh or carriage came in sight. Three
ladies who disobeyed the order—one of whom was hurrying to fetch a
doctor to her dying husband—were seized by the police, carried off to the
guard-house, stripped, shaved and whipped. It was clear that the man was
as mad as Bedlam, but there were no Anticyræ for Tsars.
Russia took the law into her own hands. A conspiracy was formed,
with Count Peter Pahlen, Minister President and Military Governor of
Petersburg, at its head, to put an end to despotism—a cruel weapon in
the hands of a lunatic. The conspirators were men of the highest rank
by birth and by virtue of office—Pahlen himself, prime minister and
the trusted friend of his Sovereign, who delighted in loading him with
honours. In the night of the 24th of March they forced their way into
the Michailow Palace, surprised the unhappy Emperor in his bedroom and
strangled him with his own military sash. He fought with the demoniac
fury of a madman, for he was of strong and muscular build, and it was
no easy matter to overpower him. He tried to burst into the Empress’s
apartments, which adjoined his, but here his distrust of her proved his
undoing—he had caused the door which led to her rooms to be hermetically
fastened. His suspicions closed to him the one possibility of escape, the
one refuge with the wife who would not have failed him in his sore need.
Paul’s foreign policy was feeble. He detested the French Revolution,
and yet threw himself into the arms of Napoleon; at other times he was
prepared to flirt with England. The most noteworthy of his acts was the
edict in regard to the succession to which I have alluded above. Its
importance lay especially in the fact that it drove the first nail into
the coffin of absolutism. It is evident that an “absolute” monarch, who
has been deprived of his omnipotence in any one particular, ceases _ipso
facto_ to be flawlessly absolute. Certainly, absolutism did not finally
die till fifty-five years later. But a rift in the panoply of the Tsars
had been made by the Emperor Paul.
I heard much about the reign of the mad Tsar when I was at St. Petersburg
in 1863. There were still some old people who could talk about those
days. Count Peter Pahlen had been long dead; after the murder he betook
himself to his country place and disappeared from public life. But I had
to represent my chief at the funeral of his brother, who commanded the
cavalry against Napoleon in 1812, and with a still younger brother, Count
Nicholas Pahlen, I was intimate in London for several years. Another
link with that time was old Countess Rasumowski, who had been divorced
and banished from the Court, but forgiven and taken into favour again
by Paul. It was one of his acts of clemency. She was sister-in-law of
Beethoven’s friend to whom he dedicated the famous quartets. How old she
was I know not, but she was a great figurehead in Russian society, and on
her name-day all St. Petersburg, from the Emperor downwards, flocked to
her house. I had to go, as my chief had a cold, and I represented him.
The dear naughty old lady was sitting in state, dressed all in white like
a bride, with a wreath of pink roses round her head. That and the rouge
with which she had plastered her poor withered cheeks made her look quite
antediluvian. She must certainly have been near a hundred. The memory
of Count Ribeaupierre, who was Grand Maitre de la Cour, and with whom I
was also acquainted, went even further back. He had been page of honour
to the Empress Catherine, who died in 1796. These are names only worth
mentioning, in order to show that some of my impressions of the unhappy
Tsar’s reign were drawn at first-hand.
Judging from the accounts given by the few old people who themselves
remembered those times, and from the talk of younger men who had heard
from their own fathers—perhaps actors in the crime—the whole history
of that midnight murder, the outrage did not arouse any excitement
commensurate with the horror of the deed. Men had become callous; they
had grown used to seeing the rulers of the reigning dynasty disappear
by violent or mysterious deaths. What really would have startled them
would have been to hear that a Tsar had died a peaceful death in his bed,
for murder had come to be looked upon as the natural end of a Romanoff.
On the morning of the 24th of March St. Petersburg, awakening to the
gruesome news of the night, heaved a sigh of relief, and went about its
business. That business was the accession of a new Tsar.
Alexander has been accused of being privy to his father’s murder, but
from all the evidence which I was able to gather, this was a calumny.
There is no doubt that he was in touch with the conspirators, and that he
was a consenting party to his father’s removal from the throne. Paul’s
state was such that not even a son could wish to see his father remain
vested with the terrible power of the autocrat of all the Russias. But
murder, let alone parricide, was not in his nature. All the acts of his
reign gave the lie to so hideous a charge. The man who set free the
political exiles in Siberia, who abolished torture from the criminal code
of his country, who made it illegal to hold sales of serfs, who helped
to extend the blessings of education by founding universities, was a
wise and humane ruler. Even the policy which made him countenance the
conspiracy against his father was in the interests of humanity. Had he
known the extremity to which that plot was to be pushed, we may be sure
that he would have fought rather than not interpose his authority.
At the outset of his reign the young Emperor was hypnotized by the
glamour of the fame of Napoleon, who was then First Consul and seemed to
be destined for the dictatorship of the world. But that crime, and worse
than crime, that mistake, as Talleyrand put it—the murder of the Duc
d’Enghien at Vincennes in March, 1804—aroused the greatest indignation
in the mind of Alexander, and the Russian chargé d’affaires at Paris
was instructed to express that feeling in no measured terms. The First
Consul’s reply was, in effect, a request that the Emperor would mind his
own business. A further note was sent, recapitulating the claims and
remonstrances of Russia, and M. d’Oubril asked for his passports.
The tragedy of Vincennes had provoked the anger of Alexander; the
coronation of Napoleon as Emperor by the Pope summoned from Rome to
do his bidding, on the 19th of November in the same year, called up a
totally different but no less hostile feeling. That a Corsican adventurer
should robe himself in the Imperial purple and pretend to equal rank with
himself, was something which the proud Romanoff could not brook. The
disgust and indignation engendered by Napoleon’s cruelty and pretensions
were enhanced by his territorial encroachments. Alexander threw himself
heart and soul into the combination against the French, and Europe was
once more ablaze with war until the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, when on
board a raft anchored in the river Niemen, the two Emperors fell into one
another’s arms, kissed, and swore eternal friendship.
It would be outside of the purview of my task to dwell upon this event
were it not for the interest attaching to the secret treaty entered
into upon that occasion, an instrument the conditions of which were not
made public until the year 1834, but which so clearly illustrated the
ambitions of both nations. Napoleon undertook that Russia should become
possessed of European Turkey, with Constantinople and the outlet into
the Mediterranean, and pursue her conquests in Asia as far as she chose,
India being, of course, understood as the objective. France was to have
Egypt, Malta, the assistance of the Russian fleet in the capture of
Gibraltar—the navigation of the Mediterranean being confined to French,
Russian, Spanish and Italian ships. There were other provisions and much
detail, but the above were the chief points. The amusing feature of this
still-born treaty was that neither party honestly meant business. Each
thought that he was jockeying the other, with the firm intention of
carrying out no more of it than was for his own advantage. Tomini, who
was aide-de-camp to Napoleon,[19] wrote and told Paris that Alexander
had been made to swallow a strong dose of opium, which would keep him
quiet for some time, while Boutourlin told St. Petersburg that the terms
of the treaty imposed such liabilities upon Russia that it must only be
looked upon as a means of gaining time.
Alexander was present at the meeting of the German princes called
together by Napoleon at Erfurt in the following year. Napoleon had
provided for the entertainment of what it would be irony to call his
guests, by summoning from Paris the famous Talma with his troupe of
actors. One of the plays chosen was Voltaire’s _Œdipe_, and when the
player came to the line:—
“L’amitié d’un grand homme est un bienfait des Dieux,”
the gigantic Russian Emperor leant over and theatrically seizing
Napoleon’s hand, said “Je n’ai jamais mieux senti!” The stage effect
missed fire, for the great little friend was quietly dozing, and had
to be aroused to consciousness of what was happening. The “parterre de
Rois,” the “pit of Kings,” smiled and applauded, but the demonstration
was a fiasco.
The “bienfait des Dieux” was not long lived. In four short years after
the meeting at Erfurt Napoleon made the greatest mistake of his life. He
was at Moscow, and there we may leave him, standing on the Sparrow Hill
in his favourite attitude, his arms folded, his brows bent, looking upon
the barbaric splendour of the fantastic pink towers and battlements of
the Kremlin, waiting for the delivery of the keys of the citadel—the keys
which never came.
The mystery of the burning of Moscow will never be cleared up. Was the
city fired by Rostopchin? Did he even connive at the deed? He himself
denied it in a pamphlet published at Paris in 1823, but in my day nobody
with whom I spoke on the subject believed him. The general opinion was
that this great act of patriotism, which was the beginning of Napoleon’s
downfall, was indeed his work. He burnt his own country house and
destroyed his property, so that nothing should fall into the hands of
the enemy—what more consistent than that he should deprive them of all
supplies and all communication by burning the sacred capital after
removing as many of its inhabitants as was possible. I have called the
fire an act of patriotism. I ought to have said Russian patriotism. The
attachment of the Russian to the soil is something sacred. The Mujik
has two religions—the religion of God and the religion of the soil.
Holy Russia is to him not a mere jingle of words, and Rostopchin, when
he punished the sacrilege of the invader, knew that he could count upon
having with him the most sacred feelings of his fellow-countrymen. He
was, indeed, the typical Russian of his time. The placard which he put
on the village church, the only building on the property which he left
standing, is characteristic:
“For eight years I have been embellishing this place, and I
have lived here happily in the bosom of my family. At your
approach the seventeen hundred and twenty inhabitants of this
property are leaving it, and I set fire to my house that it may
not be polluted by your presence. Frenchmen! I have left you my
two houses in Moscow, with their contents worth half a million
roubles; here you will find nothing but ashes.”
This, of a surety, was a brave, a determined and patriotic man—a true
Russian. He had been a great favourite of the Emperor Paul, and by
his sage advice saved that unhappy man from many follies. It was said
that had he been at St. Petersburg on the fatal 24th of March, 1801,
the murder might not have been committed. During the early years of
Alexander’s reign Rostopchin was out of favour. But there came a time
when the Emperor became aware of his worth and courage, and made him Lord
Chamberlain and Governor of Moscow. He was a descendant of the Great
Mongol warrior of the twelfth century, Genghis Khan, and so he described
himself in the following lines:
“Je suis né Tatare,
Je voulais être Romain.
Les Français m’ont fait barbare,
Et les Russes Georges Dandin.”
There is an excellent article on Rostopchin in the “Biographie Générale,”
the book that Carlyle used to prize so highly.
The Emperor Alexander the First died in 1825 in circumstances which
gave rise to some suspicion. He had left St. Petersburg in the month of
December, with the Empress, who was ailing, his object being to take
her to a warmer climate. He seems to have been for some time depressed
and haunted by the sinister idea that his death was not far off. He was
always more or less dominated by the spell of mysticism, and, indeed, it
was under the influence of a mystic, a certain Madame de Krüdener, that
he was induced to found the Holy Alliance. Before leaving St. Petersburg
it is said that he went to the Church of the Convent of St. Alexander
Nevski and caused a funeral service to be read. As he left the town he
stopped his carriage to cast a last yearning look upon the city where he
had been born and which he loved so well. He left the Empress at Taganrog
on the Sea of Azov, and went to the Crimea, where he caught a fever,
hurried back to Taganrog and died, not before he was made aware of the
discovery of a plot to murder him and the whole Imperial Family.
It is difficult to understand why any Russian should have wished his
death. Educated as he had been by his Swiss tutor, the famous La Harpe,
in the most liberal principles, in his domestic policy he devoted
himself heart and soul to the good of his people. Early in his reign
he abolished serfdom in Esthonia, Livonia and Kurland. He introduced
reforms into the older universities and created new ones. He promoted the
study of science, and gave his active patronage to all the educational
institutions in the Empire. He did away with the so-called Secret
Tribunal, a sort of Star Chamber, for the arbitrary trial of political
offences. Commerce and industry were special objects of his care. He
built new harbours and made roads, and in 1818 extended to the peasants
the right of establishing manufactories and commercial undertakings, a
privilege which up to his time had been confined to the upper classes.
If, later in his reign, he seemed rather inclined to go back upon these
liberal principles, it must be ascribed to the poor and unsympathetic
return with which his endeavours were met. The country was hardly ripe
for his audacious programme—certainly not for parliamentary government,
which at one time he had in view. His own wish was to substitute a
constitution for the absolutism which had existed up to his day. He was
before his time. Napoleon might sneer at his duplicity and call him “un
Grec du bas Empire,” but he recognized his talent and his capacity for
governing. The vast majority of his people adored the handsome giant, but
treachery and treason were plotting underground, and rebellion broke out,
as we shall see, as soon as his soul had left his body. That sorrow he
was mercifully spared, though the knowledge that it was coming arrived to
embitter his last days.
[Illustration: THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER I.
_From an engraving after a portrait by Wolkoff._
[_To face p. 260._]
The Emperor Nicholas came to the throne at a moment when a political
storm of the greatest violence was ready to burst. More than one division
of the army was known to have been tampered with and to be disaffected,
and many of the chief nobles were conspiring for a constitutional
government. The warning—or was it more than a warning?—received by the
dead Emperor was sufficient to prove this, and there were at that moment
special circumstances in the succession to the throne which were markedly
favourable to revolution.
Alexander, deeply imbued, as I have said, with mysticism, had a
foreboding that he would not be long-lived. He deposited with the Council
of the Empire a packet, the seals of which were not to be broken without
his command except in the event of his death, in which case it was to
be opened at once and acted upon forthwith. As he died without issue,
the Imperial Crown would, in accordance with the law of succession
fixed by his father Paul, devolve upon his next brother, Constantine.
He, however, was unwilling to reign. He preferred to remain as he was,
governor and practically sovereign of Poland. Tsar of all the Russias he
would not be. The mysterious packet was found to contain a letter from
him, renouncing his claim to the throne in favour of his younger brother
Nicholas. As soon as this was known, Nicholas most scrupulously did all
in his power to induce his brother to alter his determination. He even
went so far as to proclaim Constantine Emperor. The latter, however, in
spite of repeated appeals from his brother, held to his fixed purpose,
and Nicholas became Emperor against his own will and endeavours.
The conspirators found in these difficulties a rare opportunity for the
attempt to carry out their plans. The interregnum had lasted fifteen
days, and it was not till the 24th of December that Nicholas took
possession of the Imperial Palace. On the 25th of December he read to the
council the final renunciation of the Crown by Constantine, and on the
following day he was proclaimed Emperor. That day the conspirators and
the rebels assembled in the huge square—the Isaac Place—and shouted for
Constantine and “his bride, the Constitution,” the soldiers believing
in their innocence that “Constitution” was the name of the Grand Duke’s
real wife. Nicholas, unarmed, but attended by General Milarodowitch,
the Governor of St. Petersburg, and a battalion of faithful grenadiers,
and accompanied by M. de la Ferronays, the French Ambassador, left the
Palace and faced the rebels. The general, who was greatly beloved by the
whole army, went forward and tried to speak with them, but he was at once
bayoneted and shot.
The new Emperor showed the greatest courage and patience, and it was
not until near nightfall that, the rebels having fired the first shot,
he ordered his artillery to put an end to the trouble. Some two hundred
men were killed by grape and canister. The five ringleaders were taken
prisoners, tried and hanged some months later. One of the Princes
Troubetzkoi, who had been foremost in his threats against the Emperor’s
life, being sent for by the Tsar, threw himself at his feet and implored
his pardon. “Sit down,” said Nicholas, “and write to your wife at my
dictation.” The Prince sat down and the Tsar dictated: “My life is
spared.” The Prince was so overcome that he could write no more. “Now
seal your letter and go,” said the Tsar; “take your life, and spend it in
remorse and repentance.”
The remainder of the conspirators, men of noble family, were sent to
Siberia—so many of them as were still alive were pardoned and set free
by that generous and noble sovereign, Alexander the Second, on his
accession to the throne thirty years later. With the Dekabrists, the
“men of December,” as they were called, the cry for Constantine was a
mere pretext—the seizing of a possible chance. The real object was the
abolition of Royalty and the proclaiming of a constitution. Nicholas
has sometimes been accused of taking too stern measures against the
Dekabrists. With that judgment I cannot agree. He was attacked with armed
force, his murder and that of his whole family being the object; he did
not strike the first blow. He could not expect to quell a formidable
revolution in the army with rose-water. It was no sudden, passionate
outburst of a people aching under the sense of wrong. The murderous
plot, long meditated and carefully prepared, had been executed in cold
blood. His brother lay dead at Taganrog. He and his dearly-loved boy,
whom he had left entrusted to sure hands in the palace, were to have
been the next victims. The whole conspiracy lay revealed as in an open
book. It was all the more dangerous in that it was not a mob riot, but a
conspiracy of men of high birth, education and position, corrupting the
army itself. Put yourselves in his place. That he was horror-stricken at
the massacre was proved by the pathetic cry which he uttered to M. de la
Ferronays, the French Ambassador, who never left his side throughout that
cruel day: “Ah! quel commencement de règne.” It was to him the skeleton
at the feast throughout his life.
Shortly after his accession to the throne the Duke of Wellington was
sent to Russia as special ambassador, nominally to congratulate him, but
also with the object of inducing the new Tsar to adopt a conciliatory
attitude towards the Sultan, between whom and the Greeks there was much
trouble. The irony of Fate made the Duke take with him as Secretary of
Embassy, Lord Fitzroy Somerset (Lord Raglan), the general whose victories
twenty-nine years later in the defence of Turkey were to break the proud
heart of that same Tsar. It was during these negotiations that Nicholas
formed his estimate of the Duke’s character, and caused him to cherish
in his heart the memory of the great soldier as of a model to be copied.
It was then, too, that he first declared that he had no higher ambition
than to be a “gentleman,” using the English word; and whatever may have
been his faults, whatever his ambition, a truthful, honest gentleman he
remained to his life’s end. To the Duke of Wellington he made no secret
of his determination to allow no foreign Power, or Powers, to interfere
between himself and the Porte. That was his lifelong consistent policy.
If Nicholas was reactionary, if he hated education and opposed the spread
of science, if he strained the powers of absolutism almost to the
breaking point, he did so openly, and it was the tragedy of his accession
which poisoned his many fine qualities.
During his reign the ship of State was seldom in smooth waters. He sent
Prince Mentschikoff to Persia to announce his accession to the throne,
with instructions to enter into negotiations for the settlement of the
frontier questions which were in dispute. If the maintenance of peace
be the proper aim of diplomacy, Mentschikoff was not a successful
ambassador. His mission to Persia ended in war, as did his embassy to
Turkey more than a quarter of a century later. The Russians, under Prince
Paskiewitch, were victorious, and the province of Erivan was added to
Russia.
Poland was the chief thorn in his side in 1828; two years after his
coronation at Moscow he caused himself to be crowned King of Poland at
Warsaw. The ceremonial was gorgeous, and the King-Emperor, invoking the
Supreme Majesty of Heaven, prayed that he might govern for the happiness
of his people. He also wrote to the Pope, thanking His Holiness for the
reception given to the Tsarevitch, promising to “protect the well-being
of his Catholic subjects respecting their convictions,” etc. That he was
sincere in these undertakings admits of little doubt. Unfortunately he
was represented at Warsaw by his brother Constantine, who, as his elder,
and as having renounced the throne in his favour, had more influence than
an ordinary governor would have had. The revolution in Poland broke out
in 1830, and Prince Sanguszko, the head of one of the noblest families in
the country, people whom I afterwards knew, was one of the leaders. He
was taken prisoner and degraded, and his estates were forfeited. It was
said that when he was sent to Siberia, the Emperor, with his own hand,
wrote that the journey was to be made on foot. When I was in Russia many
years later, I had reason to believe that this was not true. The troubles
in Poland lasted for many years—indeed, were never extinguished—and they
led to gross exaggerations.
I was in Paris as a small boy in 1845, and I well remember hearing all
the horrors that were hawked about there, and all the stories of cruelty.
Especially I recollect one day how when certain news came to one of the
Prince de la Moskowa’s concerts—he was the son of Marshal Ney and an
accomplished musician and conductor—the pious Roman Catholics present
lashed themselves into a fury of emotion over the sufferings of the nuns
of St. Basil. It was affirmed that they had been stripped naked, flogged
and tortured, and that when they were starving and begged for food their
mouths were filled with earthworms. Those were the lies by which the
indignation of their co-religionists was aroused by Polish agents. The
best informed people did not believe them. That the Poles were cruelly
treated, and harshly misgoverned, was certainly to be laid to the charge
of the Grand Duke Constantine. He had inherited the still-living hatreds
and the memory of Moscow in the beginning of the seventeenth century.
There were old scores to be settled, and his doctrine was an eye for an
eye, the _lex talionis_ in its greatest rigidity. It would have been a
hard matter in any case for the Tsar to bring Russia and Poland into
harmony. With Constantine at Warsaw it was impossible—yet the Grand Duke
had married a Polish lady.
The affairs of Poland were an apple of discord between France and Russia.
The military successes of Nicholas were really confined to the Persian
campaign, for although in his subsequent operations on the Danube in
1828 (poor Wallachia and Moldavia), his troops had some success, and
even took Varna, the expedition served no great purpose, while it
effectually showed the Tsar’s incapacity as a leader, for having taken
the field in person, he had to return to St. Petersburg a pronounced
failure—recognized as such by his own generals.
A civil triumph was the codification of the Russian law, begun in
1827 and finished in 1846, by which the peasants greatly benefited;
was the chief feat in internal administration by which his reign was
distinguished.
In 1844 the Emperor Nicholas came to England and visited Queen Victoria
at Windsor. The object of his visit was twofold. The Queen had received
Louis Philippe, whom he hated and despised, and he was determined to see
whether he could not counteract the wily old King’s influence. Secondly,
the Convention of London of 1841 placed the Ottoman dominions under the
protection of the Powers, and this manifestly did not suit the Tsar’s
book. He had his own views as to the Sublime Porte, and would brook no
interference between himself and the Sultan, whose Christian subjects he
wished to place under his own shield. That was for him a principle of
religion. It was a momentous visit, destined to bear bitter fruit ten
years later.
Sir Robert Peel was at this time Prime Minister, and Lord Aberdeen
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. It was only natural that the
Foreign Secretary should have much conversation with his Sovereign’s
illustrious guest, and Lord Aberdeen was, by his gentle and conciliatory
manners, the man, above all others, fitted to charm the Tsar, who to the
last retained an affectionate admiration for him. Perhaps Lord Aberdeen’s
deportment towards the Emperor was a little too deferential; at any rate,
he left Nicholas convinced that the Russian views as to Turkey were
shared by the British Government, and it was with unfeigned joy that in
1852 the Emperor learnt of the accession to power as Prime Minister of
a man whom he flattered himself that he had talked over to his way of
thinking, and whose peace-loving disposition would never allow him to go
to war on behalf of the autonomy of Turkey. That he honestly believed
that he had had such an assurance from Lord Aberdeen cannot be doubted.
In its main features the story of the Crimean War will never be
forgotten. The storming of the heights of the Alma, which Nicholas
believed to be impregnable, the beating back of the tidal wave of Russian
infantry at Inkermann, when my old friend, Billy Hewitt, ordered to spike
his guns and retire, answered, “Spike be damned!” and went on firing till
they were red hot and the enemy were in retreat—just one gallant deed
among many of that bloody battle; above all, the heroic charge of the six
hundred at Balaclava, are feats of arms which must set men on fire as
long as they have pulses to quicken. But how many men are there nowadays
who could give any account of the causes which led to the war?
The quarrels between the monks of the Greek and Latin churches in
Palestine seem trivial enough reason to have started so great a
catastrophe. The custody of the key of the Church of the Nativity at
Bethlehem, the right to worship in the Church of the Virgin near the
Garden of Gethsemane, and the custody of the Sanctuaries of Jerusalem,
were the first pretexts of hostilities. That there was in the mind of the
Emperor Nicholas a far wider-reaching motive, hardly suspected perhaps
even by himself, will be seen presently.
In the year 1740 a treaty concluded between Louis XV. and the Porte,
practically gave the care of the Sacred Places to the Latin Church. To
the Greeks certain similar concessions had been made later on by firmans,
or edicts of the Sultan, which, however, could not technically be held to
over-ride the solemn treaty with France. Louis Napoleon took up the cause
of the Latins, and his ambassador, M. de Lavalette, insisted with some
violence on the exclusive rights of the Latin monks. The French people
at large probably cared little for these squabbles between the rival
creeds. But to Louis Napoleon they furnished an opportunity for securing
to himself, as Defender of the Faith, a powerful friend in the Church. He
wished to arrogate to himself those sacred rights of primogeniture which
had been the pride of the Kings of France. It was, moreover, an outlet
for that feverish activity which his home policy had made a necessity for
him. In the month of December, 1852, a silver star, graven with the arms
of France, was deposited in the church at Bethlehem with much pompous
ceremonial, attended by the Turkish officials, and the Latin Patriarch
with triumphant joy received the coveted keys of the church and Holy
Manger.
The fury of the Tsar was terrible. The insult to his Church, which he
loved, and the affront to himself, were enhanced by the source from
which they came. He had a special horror of all revolutions, pursued to
his dying day by the nightmare of the conspiracy of December, 1825, the
tragedy which had inaugurated his reign. The revolutions of France were
odious to him. Never would he, in the fullest sense, accept either Louis
Philippe or Louis Napoleon as sovereigns equal with himself. Neither of
them would he address as “Monsieur mon frère.”
And now behold an upstart who was buffeting and opposing him in what he
looked upon as the most sacred of his Imperial duties as head of the
Church! The spiritual ambitions of the Tsars were hereditary. His father,
the Emperor Paul, had been anxious even to don the priestly robes and
celebrate the mass; but his wise and brave friend Rostopchin stopped him
with a clever conceit. “Sire,” said he, “you have no rights as priest. A
priest must only marry once; you have been twice married—you cannot be a
priest.” The mad Emperor was convinced and refrained.
On another occasion the Metropolitan boldly stopped him when he tried to
enter the Holy of Holies. Although not a priest, the Russian Tsar is head
of his Church, much as the English King is the head of ours, and Nicholas
took the position very seriously. It was, moreover, intolerable to him
that the firmans which had been wrung from the Porte in favour of the
Orthodox monks should be set aside as mere scraps of paper, on account
of the more binding powers of a treaty, musty with age, extorted more
than a century previously by French chicane from an unwilling or callous
Sultan. He was determined to resist, and Prince Mentschikoff was sent on
a special embassy to Constantinople to demand compliance with the Russian
claims on behalf of the Greek Church.
Deeply religious and full of zeal for his Church, Nicholas was animated
by the same spirit which spurred on the old Crusaders to face dangers and
hardships of which we in these days of easy transport can have no idea,
in order to wrest from the Moslem those very shrines for the guardianship
of which he was striving. No one can doubt that he was honest and sincere
in his pious aims. But there was something more. How could he divest
himself of the hereditary ambition of Russia? It is true that in his
conversations with Sir Hamilton Seymour he spoke only of the occupation,
as distinct from the seizure, of Constantinople; but if he once succeeded
in establishing himself there in the guise of Protector of the Greek
Church throughout the Sultan’s dominions, would his people ever allow
him to give up the city upon which the covetous eyes of all the Russians
had so long been fixed? Would he even be willing to do so himself? Only
think what it meant: the Black Sea changed from the position of an inland
lake; access to the Mediterranean through the Straits of the Bosphorus
and the Dardanelles; the potentiality of a huge navy ready to dart out
upon the world from hidden and unapproachable harbours; a strategic base
from which to attack all the maritime Powers of Europe. The temptation
would be great indeed. Kinglake summed up the position in a striking and
eloquent passage:
“The strife of the Church was no fable, but, after all, though near and
distinct, it was only the lesser truth. A crowd of monks, with bare
foreheads, stood quarrelling for a key at the sunny gates of a church in
Palestine; but beyond and above, towering high in the misty North, men
saw the ambition of the Tsars.”
It is not the first time in history that religion has been made to
subserve the needs of politics. Martin Luther was spiritually sincere in
his attack upon the clerical abuses of the Roman Catholic Church; but the
success of the movement was due to the adhesion of the semi-barbarous
German princes, who cared little for religion, but caught eagerly at the
chance of shaking off the temporal yoke of Rome in their states. So it
was in this case. Nicholas was no doubt honestly eager to establish among
the Sacred Places of Palestine the supremacy of the Church that he loved;
but he knew full well that even the most agnostic of his Boyarin would be
ready to draw the sword if Constantinople was the prize dangled before
his eyes.
One man, the most considerable personage in the Empire after the Tsar
himself, cared but little for the religious side of the contention. That
man was Count Nesselrode, the Chancellor. The squabbles between the Greek
and Latin monks interested him in no way, for he belonged to neither
faith. Curiously enough, he was a member of the Church of England,
having, in December, 1780, been baptized in the Bay of Biscay on board
an English man-of-war which had given hospitality to his parents, his
father being at the time Russian Minister at Lisbon; and in our communion
he gratefully remained till his death, continuing from time to time, as
occasion served, never less than once a year, as I have been assured, to
attend the services of the English Church. However indifferent he might
be to the claims of Orthodoxy, he had, nevertheless, to obey the dictates
of his Imperial—and imperious—master; and, of course, to him, as to every
Russian, Constantinople was an irresistible lure; still, there is no
doubt that his attitude in regard to the war was but lukewarm. He would
have avoided it had it been possible.
The historic embassy of Prince Mentschikoff showed the Tsar’s hand. The
matter at issue was no longer one confined to the custody of a key,
however sacred, or to the position of the feet on a crucifix. In the
Greek crucifix the feet are nailed separately; in the Latin crucifix the
feet are crossed. The Greek crucifix in the church at Gethsemane was one
of the matters in dispute. The Latin monks claimed that the crucifix of
the Greeks should give place to one with the feet crossed; but these
became minor questions when, in the most arbitrary fashion, the prince
demanded that the whole of the Christian subjects of the Sultan should
be placed under the protectorate of the Tsar. What this meant will be
understood when we remember that it was computed that there were some
thirteen millions of these out of a total of thirty-six millions of
people, and thus over something approaching a third of the Sultan’s
subjects the Tsar was to be King. The Porte, well advised by Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe, peremptorily refused. The Turk was ready to make
some concession as regarded the Holy Places, but he would not renounce
his sovereignty over any portion of his people. Foiled at every step,
Prince Mentschikoff left Constantinople, and the Tsar had once more to
see himself outwitted and bested by his old enemy, Lord Stratford.
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe has often been accused of having been the
cause of the Crimean War, that great calamity in which, as Lord Salisbury
said many years afterwards, “we backed the wrong horse.” Nothing could be
more false than this charge laid against Lord Stratford, and yet probably
nineteen out of every twenty Englishmen, imperfectly instructed as usual
in foreign affairs, believe it to this day. The man really responsible
for the war was the French Emperor, who, as so often happened during the
nineteen years of his reign, was in sore need of the counter-irritant of
a foreign war to calm the fever of his own subjects at home. Never was it
more needful to him than at the moment when the affairs of Turkey and the
religious demands of the Emperor Nicholas began to be discussed in the
chanceries of Europe.
Frenchmen, and, above all, Parisians (do not forget the old saying,
“Paris c’est la France”), were still under the terrible impression of
the massacres of the _coup d’état_ of the 2nd to the 4th of December,
1851. Nothing could better serve the purpose of allaying the smouldering
indignation than such a war as that which he saw he could foment,
especially if it were carried on in concert with England. Such an
alliance would immeasurably increase his prestige both at home and
abroad, and, if he could arrange a visit to Queen Victoria, for which he
was intriguing, would almost make it appear as if she approved or, at
any rate, condoned the wholesale murders of 1851.
As a matter of fact, at the very moment when Lord Stratford was
striving with all his might to save England from war, he received
instructions from home directing him to order the English fleet to go
to Constantinople in company with the French. This was in obedience to
the French Emperor, who seemed to have dominated the British Government.
Peace did not suit his plans; war did. From that moment Lord Stratford’s
endeavours were frustrated; war was inevitable.
In the meantime the angry Tsar had sent his army to occupy for the second
time Moldavia and Wallachia, those unhappy provinces, the Danubian
Principalities, as they were then called, upon which the curse of Cain
seemed to have settled for all time.
Those who have watched the landing of a crowd of Russian pilgrims at
Jaffa will realize the power which Nicholas had at his back in the
execution of his policy of fighting for the Holy Shrines. I have seen
the old people, men and women, the tears streaming from their poor tired
eyes, fall down upon their knees, to kiss the soil, the treading of which
was the reward of long lives of grinding labour, privation and parsimony.
I have seen an old peasant, with matted hair and beard, meanly wrapped
in a sheepskin robe, sobbing out his patient heart in an ecstasy of grief
at the Holy Sepulchre. In order to save up the money for this pious
errand they must stint themselves, they must almost starve themselves,
laying up kopeck by kopeck, looking with surety for their reward in
another, a better and a less grinding life. The Church has promised it,
and God will fulfil the promises of His Church.
Half a century and more has slipped away since I left Russia, and I
should have great hesitation in writing down my impressions of the
intensely religious character of the Russian people were it not that
recent writings by well qualified observers show that those long years
have wrought little change. Mr. Stephen Graham’s book, “The Way of Martha
and the Way of Mary,” is a most charming and sympathetic study of the
complex psychological question of the religion of the Russian. Indeed,
the only fault with which it can be charged is that the writer is almost
too enthusiastic—more Orthodox than the Patriarch. I call it a complex
question because it is so difficult to say how far it is pure religion
and how far it is only mysticism, but, be it religion or be it mysticism,
it is deeply ingrained in the soul of the Russian mujik; it is part
of himself, and is revealed in a veneration for which I have found no
parallel elsewhere. But the strange part about it is its powerlessness
for restraint from sin. The greatest criminal will obey the harassing
prescriptions of his Church as though his very life depended upon it.
In Lent he will submit to a fast which is nothing short of cruel even
the Mohammedans’ fast in the month of Ramadan is nothing to it, for
when sunset comes the pious Moslem is free to feast as he pleases. With
streaming eyes, in a frenzy of religious rapture, the Orthodox peasant
will adore the sacred shrines and cross himself before the ikon, the
blessed picture of his patron saint. But that is all. Piety and virtue
are two things. The old Budotchnik (night-watchman), who had his hut
upon the frozen Neva, would cut a hole in the ice, into which he might
throw the body of the wayfarer whom he had murdered, to be carried down
to the Baltic; but in the Budotchka (his wooden hovel) a lamp always
burned before the blessed ikon, in the presence of which he would count
his unholy spoil. The toper, reeling with the fumes of vodka, before the
days of that brave abstinence law of the present Tsar, would never be so
drunk as to forget the marks of obeisance due to the sacred image, whose
presence he would not hesitate to pollute by any crime. When Nicholas
raised the fiery cross of a holy war, he could count upon the fierce
valour of an army of fanatics. Death for his religion and for the soil of
Holy Russia opens to the Russian the gates of Paradise.
If the religious fanaticism of the people and the ambition of the
governing classes was great in Russia, here in England the political
frenzy was no less violent. For reasons which they would probably have
found it difficult to explain, the people took up the cause of the Turk
with the wildest enthusiasm, and the shibboleth, “Balance of Power,”
was continually in the mouths of men who were quite ignorant of its
meaning. In France the desire for war was, as I have hinted, confined
to the Emperor and his surroundings; but it was a sad disillusion for
the Tsar when he saw the temper of England and of the Government of his
friend Lord Aberdeen, a temper which that lover of peace was powerless to
resist, the man whom, when he was at Windsor in 1844, he believed himself
to have talked over to his views. Trusting to his conversations with
the then Foreign Secretary, the Tsar was firmly convinced that England
would not go to war, in spite of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, whom he
hated more than ever for his defeat of Mentschikoff, in spite of Lord
Clarendon, and in spite of the fact that at the Colonial Office there was
a Minister called Palmerston, who, more than any other man, reflected
the spirit of his countrymen, and who, by no great stretch of the
imagination, might be supposed to have some little influence in foreign
affairs.
During his whole life the chief hobby of the Tsar had been his army.
To increase its numbers, its smartness, and its imposing glitter was
the object of his most watchful care. But his military aptitudes were
confined to those of the drill-sergeant. Company drill, battalion drill,
a grand review were his chief joy—a shabby uniform, a button awry, a
mistake in some detail of kit were crimes to be suitably punished; no
stricter martinet ever existed.[20] But of strategy, tactics and the
science of war, he knew no more than the youngest drummer in one of his
pet regiments. Whenever he interfered in any of the wars in which he
engaged, he only hindered and hampered his generals.
When it became evident that his occupation of the Balkans was a strategic
mistake, he had to call in old Prince Paskiewitch, the hero of his
Persian War, to get him out of the scrape. Commissariat, equipment,
munitions, transport, and the various subordinate necessaries for his
army, were matters into which he did not deign to inquire. I do not
propose to treat of the Crimean War; I will only say this much: that when
I was discussing it one day, in 1863, with a Russian general, he told
me that the losses suffered by the Tsar’s army in the terrible marches
to the Crimea cost them more men than all the fighting put together.
Want of food, clothes, boots, medicine for the sick, the robberies of
commissariat and contractors, killed the soldiers by tens of thousands. I
was bound to confess that our men were not much better off, until my old
friend Billy Russell roused the indignation of the people.
In the autumn of 1854 the Tsar declared that he looked to “le Général
Février” to finish the war. It did, but not as he hoped. In the month
of February, 1855, he died suddenly and mysteriously. The stories which
have been published of a lingering death lasting several days, and of
touching farewell interviews with the Empress and the Tsarevitch, may be
dismissed as fables; I have dwelt upon this in my “Memories.” However
that may be, whether he died a natural death from influenza, or whether,
as many people believed, he took poison, it was a broken heart that
killed him. The army that he had loved, the army that he had made and
drilled, clothed and cherished, had failed him. Paskiewitch, whom he
thought invincible, had been compelled to raise the siege of Silistria;
the battle of Giurgevo had been lost; his troops, the bugbear of Europe,
had been driven across the Danube by the Turks. The heights of the Alma,
the night of Inkermann told the same tale. Sevastopol was doomed. The
proud man was beaten; there was nothing left to him in this life; he
laid him down and died—a man of many mistakes, but to the last the great
“gentleman” that he claimed to be.
Once again the angel of death was merciful. He was spared the misery
of the final and supreme defeat. His impregnable fortress fallen, his
button-perfect army on which he pinned his faith shattered, the whole
edifice of his hereditary ambition and his pious strivings crumbled to
dust!
That Nicholas was greatly feared by his people must be admitted; at the
same time, he was admired as something more than a man; and by those who
surrounded him, though none came so often under the stinging lash of his
displeasure, he was venerated and loved. His domestic life was perfect.
He adored his wife—as he once said: “The first time I saw her I knew that
I had met the guardian angel of my life.” She was the sister of that poor
King of Prussia who was chiefly famous for his dullness and his love of
champagne—le Roi Cliquot, as his Imperial brother-in-law was wont to call
him.
Russia had every right to look forward to a happy time under the milder
rule of Alexander the Second, who, as Tsarevitch, had greatly endeared
himself to the people by travelling through the country, taking pains
personally to ascertain what were the wants and aspirations of the
millions whom he was one day to rule, and interesting himself on behalf
of the political prisoners in Siberia, and endeavouring, so far as in him
lay, to soften their hard lot. One of his first acts on coming to the
throne was to release so many of the Dekabrists—the men of December—who
were still living.
[Illustration: THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS II.
_From a lithograph._
[_To face p. 284._]
It has been the fashion among writers upon Russia to depreciate Alexander
as a weak ruler. They are kind enough to accredit him with a heart
full of good intentions, but they taunt him with a lack of vigour of
character. It is a hard matter for a Tsar to satisfy the requirements of
historical critics. A Nicholas, with a stern hand, puts down a poisonous
rebellion which aimed at nothing less than by corrupting the army to
perpetrate the murder of the whole Imperial family. He is written down
and held up to execration as a bloody-minded, revengeful tyrant. Then
comes his son, who at once sets about a vast number of reforms for the
benefit of his people, such as the emancipation of the Law Courts from
the supreme power of the politicians, the publication of an annual
Budget, the establishment of provincial and district councils, and, above
all, the emancipation of the serfs, of which I shall speak later. All
these liberal benefits are ascribed to the feebleness of the Emperor,
who, as they say, had not the force to resist the persistent demands
of ministers. Such is the injustice of men and historians. Nothing
astonished me more when I was in Russia than the freedom of speech. I
had been brought up in the faith that to criticize the Emperor meant the
knut and Siberia. On the contrary, I found at the clubs and in Society
men talking, praising and blaming with all the confidence of truly free
citizens, little heeding who should hear them, and I soon became aware
that all the fables which I had heard of spies and reporters were just
moonshine. Even officials and officers in the army unsparingly criticized
the measures which they had to carry out and the men whom they must obey.
One of the shrewdest critics of international politics that I ever knew
was old Count Nicholas Pablen, whom I mentioned at the beginning of this
paper. A great traveller, and an excellent speaker of modern languages,
he had been for half a century intimately associated with all the chief
makers of the nineteenth century. He had, moreover, a marvellous memory,
of which I may give an example. One day I found him in a great state
of mind, fussing and fuming over some annoyance. I asked what was the
matter. He said: “I am losing my memory! I wanted to write down the
Knights of the Garter—I remembered twenty-four, but for the life of
me I could not recollect the twenty-fifth!” All of a sudden his face
brightened. “I have it,” he said, “the Duke of Westminster.” The honour
of his memory was saved. His memory for political facts never failed him,
and his judgment was not to be denied. His view of the state of affairs
at the end of the Crimean War is given in one of those delightful letters
with which Lord Granville used to keep Lord Canning posted in European
matters whilst the latter was Governor-General in India. Lord Granville
wrote, on the 3rd of August, 1856 (see “Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice’s Life,”
vol. I., page 185):
“Old Pahlen was the most irritable of all on this subject
(the Crimean War). He says it has done no one good; not to
the English, certainly not to the Russians—and has only been
of use to one man in France,[21] whom he is not, as you know,
fond of. He says that in England they considered him as merely
speaking like a Russian parrot when he said that the Emperor
Nicholas did not wish for war, and that he was considered in
Russia almost a treacherous Anglomane when he declared that
our Government did not wish it. He had been right in both
cases, and yet by extraordinary bad management the war had
come. He thinks it will take a whole generation to efface
the recollection of it. He attributes the hatred of us, and
comparative forgiveness of the French, not so much to the
destruction in the Baltic, not so much to our Press and our
public speaking, as to our having been old friends, and their
always having thought of the French as enemies. He does not
believe in any great changes in Russia. The Emperor has good
intentions, but there have always been good intentions at
the beginning of each reign. He has one great advantage over
his father. Alexander during his life told Nicholas nothing.
Nicholas, since his son has been of age, told him everything,
and the latter, being of a very amiable disposition, heard
everything that others did not dare tell his father. He is
supposed not to have military tastes, but he issued new
regulations about uniforms almost before his father was buried;
and he and Constantine appeared in new hussar jackets a day or
two afterwards, which were supposed to be foreign, instead of a
new dress which he had been in such a hurry to exhibit himself
in. He dismissed Klein Michel and another (two great robbers);
and when his mother remonstrated on the ground of their having
been his father’s friends, he made a good answer, which he had
probably previously prepared. He said: ‘I am not a great man
like my father. He could use such men as his tools—I am not
strong enough.’ He (Pahlen) lays much stress on the absolute
poverty of Russia in able men. He thinks Gortchakoff clever,
but indiscreet, vain, and not successful in things which he
undertakes. (This is confirmed by everybody.)
“Tolstoi, a great friend of the Emperor, by whom he is called
‘milord Tolstoi,’ has no ability.
“Kisseleff, who is named Ambassador to Paris, is clever,
but has never been a diplomat and is seventy years old.
Meyendorf, really clever, is done up. Chreptowitch is nobody.
Orloff himself clever, but perfectly ignorant. He says that
Gortchakoff laments to everyone this dearth of men to appoint.
So Bloomfield told me. Pahlen says that in England it does not
signify if we want a man, we can always pick up an intelligent
man in some rank of life or other who will soon master the
specialities of his business. In Russia those who are not
diplomatists by profession are profoundly ignorant of all that
relates to it.”
A long quotation—but the appreciation of the state of affairs in his own
country by so competent an observer as Count Pahlen, recorded, moreover,
by no less a man than Lord Granville, seems to me to justify and even
invite its insertion here. I myself knew almost all the men whom the
Count mentioned, and I can appreciate the accuracy of his estimate. In
two cases, that of the new Tsar and that of M. Tolstoi, I think he was
hardly fair. As it turned out, the reign of Alexander the Second, if by
no other measure than that of the liberation of the serfs, marked an
important step in Russian history; while M. Jean Tolstoi—the “milord”—who
was Postmaster-General in my time, proved to be a capable minister, none
the worse for having travelled and being an accomplished man of the
world. As Ambassador to England, Count Chreptowitch, a delightful old
gentleman, was not an eagle; and it was not long before the astute old
Baron Brunnow—with the
“Baroness Brunnow who looked like Juno”
of the “Ingoldsby Legends”—appeared once more as pilot of the diplomatic
ship among the rather difficult shoals of British waters.
Nor at the outset of the new reign was English diplomacy any too strong.
England, as Count Pablen pointed out, was in bad odour at St. Petersburg,
and it needed all the exquisite tact of Lord Granville, when he went
as special ambassador for the coronation, to conciliate the Emperor,
while at the same time firmly giving His Majesty to understand that he
must insist upon being received with the courtesy and consideration due
to the Queen’s personal representative. Lord Granville’s letters to
Lord Canning, quoted by Lord Fitzmaurice, tell the story in the most
interesting way.
The glove was of velvet, but the hand was of steel. It was no easy task,
for Count Pahlen was quite right when he warned Lord Granville that
the Emperor was deeply prejudiced against England, and had quite thrown
himself into the arms of France—a strange infatuation, considering that
it was Louis Napoleon’s personal ambition and aggressive policy which
raised the question of the Holy Places, and was the cause of the war,
whereas England did her best—a bad best, it must be admitted—to preserve
the peace. Yet France was in high favour, while for us there was as yet
no forgiveness. At any rate, Lord Granville’s special embassy was a great
success, and for years afterwards the Russians spoke with enthusiasm of
the English _grand seigneur_ who had conquered _à force de plaire_ and
upheld the dignity of his country. If in some future decade, century, or
æon, I, on the eve of a new incarnation, should be consulted by the gods
as to the quality with which I should prefer to be endowed, I should have
little hesitation in asking to be blessed with the tact of Lord Granville.
Lord Wodehouse, afterwards Earl of Kimberley, who was our Minister at
St. Petersburg, was a man of great ability, singularly well read and
thoroughly posted in diplomatic lore. He knew his trade, but he had not
the secret of treating business with charm. His talents were better
fitted to the fuliginous atmosphere of Downing Street than to the bright
sparkling air of the Russian capital. It was single-stick, very doughty
single-stick, against the light play of the foils. The contrast with
that skilful fencer, Lord Granville, was great. But the victories gained
by the latter could only be temporary. He had to go, and Lord Wodehouse
remained, a brilliantly dull man—or would it be better to say a dully
brilliant man?—quite out of his element in the glittering gaiety of a
Russian _salon_. Those who knew his solid worth appreciated his wisdom
and scrupulous honesty. But he was rather a great parliamentarian than a
courtly diplomatist. When he opened the flood-gates of his talk, it was
a Niagara that issued forth, carrying all before it, not to be stopped
or stayed, and this deluge was made even more overwhelming by a doctoral
or donnish manner, which absolutely staggered the delightfully smart and
rather cynical Prince Gortchakoff. As for the Emperor, the voluble envoy
frankly bored him. Lord Wodehouse could earn respect for England, but not
affection.
Nor was England much better served when his place was taken in 1858
by Sir John Crampton, a most delightful personality, but, in spite of
his long experience, little fitted for such a post as St. Petersburg.
The truth is that he was a Bohemian of the Bohemians, a man who loved
his ease and to whom the donning of a fine coat and a star was little
short of torture. I knew him well, for he was a contemporary of my
father’s in the service, and there were few days—when he was on leave
in London—on which he did not knock at our door. He had all the gifts
of the Irish raconteur, and his stories were enhanced by the charm of
a musical speaking voice—a great, handsome, leonine figure, with his
silver hair and beard, whose advent we always hailed with joy. Probably
he was at his best in his beautiful Irish home near Powerscourt, where,
with a congenial friend or two—notably old Sharpe, the eccentric Dublin
artist—he could sit and smoke after dinner in the same frieze coat that
he had worn all day. With us and very few other friends he would sit
by the fire, a great tame cat, purring the livelong winter afternoon.
However great his personal attractiveness might be, he was certainly not
successful as a diplomatist.
When he was at Washington, President Peirce broke off relations with
him on account of his recruiting activities—when there were men wanted
for the Foreign Legion in the Crimean War. It was the one case in which
he overcame his constitutional indolence, and it was not lucky. He had
to leave the United States, but Lord Palmerston, always the generous
defender of his subordinates, stood up for him, and sent him as Minister
to Hanover, at the same time decorating him with the K.C.B., and thence
he was transferred to St. Petersburg, a post where the members of the
diplomatic body, unless they were prepared to face all the requirements
of a delightful but rather exacting society, were bound to become mere
cyphers.
That is what happened to Sir John Crampton, and that, too, at a moment
when it was very important to bury the hatchet and establish relations of
cordial friendship and sympathy with the Tsar and his ministers. It was
at last the tame cat nature to which I have alluded above brought about
his retirement from Russia in 1860, and his transfer to Spain, where at
that moment there was little urgency for activity. In an unlucky moment
for all concerned, Balfe came to St. Petersburg, with his beautiful
young daughter Victoire, who had been engaged at the Opera. Naturally
the Irish Minister and the Irish composer forgathered, and Balfe’s rooms
were a delightfully congenial place, where, when the young lady was not
singing at the theatre, Crampton could pass the lazy evenings, free from
the cramping fetters of a tailcoat and from all the irksome restraint
and exigencies of a diplomatist’s life. Balfe, whom I knew well for
many years, was himself endowed with all the fascination of Irish wit
and bonhomie, while his daughter was as attractive as youth, beauty
and talent could make her. They must have been a delightful trio—but
the lotus-eating was not to last. There came a day when Balfe, in the
character of the _père noble_, told Sir John that his visits must
cease—the old story, his daughter’s happiness was at stake—and so the
veteran diplomatist hoisted the white flag, surrendered unconditionally,
and January and May were united for a very brief time, at the end of
which the marriage was annulled, and the lady married the Duc de Friar, a
grandee of Spain.
When I reached St. Petersburg in 1863, and went through the archives of
the Embassy, which were in my charge, I found that there was a dispatch
missing. No trace could be found of it and no one had ever seen it. I
wrote to London, asking the Foreign Office to send out a copy. When it
came, it turned out to be a severe wigging from Lord Russell, scolding
Crampton for not keeping him better informed on Russian affairs. Crampton
had burned the dispatch! It was easy for him to do this, for the
messenger arrived about ten o’clock at night, and he was in the habit
of opening the bag himself, and only sending down its contents to the
Chancery on the following morning. This particular document he kept to
himself. In 1869 he left the service, and from that time lived chiefly
at his Irish home in County Wicklow, where he died, full of years and
comfort, in 1886, greatly regretted by all of us who knew him as a dear,
kind, affectionate old friend.
Never was there a happier appointment than that of Lord Napier, who
succeeded him in Russia in 1860, with the more exalted rank of
Ambassador, seconded by an ambassadress who seemed to have been born
for the position. The British Embassy soon became the most popular
centre of society in Russia. John Lumley—afterwards Lord Savile—was
First Secretary (what would now be called Councillor), and he was a most
valuable aide-de-camp socially to his chief. In these happy circumstances
the prestige and influence increased every day, until at the end, when
Lord Napier, in 1864, was transferred to Berlin, the Emperor Alexander
wished to give him the Order of St. Andrew, the Garter of Russia, but
unfortunately in those days the acceptance of foreign Orders was strictly
forbidden. Queen Victoria was like Queen Elizabeth, who said that she
would not allow her dogs to wear any collar but her own.
Few men ever had a much more difficult task than that with which Lord
Napier was confronted when he took possession of the Embassy. Not only
did he conjure into life a new popularity out of the ashes of the dead
indifference, and worse, in which England was held, but he succeeded
in winning the personal love and affection of all with whom he came in
contact; and this he did in spite of the emasculate meddlings in Polish
affairs which were the favourite pastime of Lord Russell and the cynical
amusement of Prince Gortchakoff.
[Illustration: PRINCE GORTCHAKOFF.
_From a photograph._
[_To face p. 296._]
It must not be supposed that Lord Napier did not himself openly condemn
much that was going on in Poland; but he did so with tact, as an
onlooker, and not like Lord Russell, with the appearance of impertinent
interference in the internal government of a friendly country. There
were, as I have shown in my “Memories,” many Russians in high positions
who were outspoken in their detestation of General Muraieff, whom Prince
Suvoroff did not hesitate to call a “hangman” in the Tsar’s presence
at a banquet at Tsarskoe Selo. Lord Napier would have cried “Amen” to
that. But though he was an uncompromising critic, he never forfeited the
goodwill of the court to which he was accredited.
The honour and reputation of England were safe in his hands, and
he enjoyed an influence which had been vouchsafed to none of his
predecessors. What Prince Gortchakoff and all other Russians resented in
Lord Russell was the schoolmaster tone of his dispatches. That Prince
Suvoroff’s condemnation of the cruelties of Warsaw did not meet with an
Imperial reproof was significant enough, and an English ambassador would
find plenty of men who would applaud a similar reproof from him. But none
of them, even of those who were loudest in their blame, would accept
Lord Russell’s sermons and prescriptions. The Polish Revolution was a
terrible first act in the drama upon which the curtain was to fall in so
tragic a fashion.
The liberation of the serfs in 1861 was manifestly the greatest
achievement of Alexander’s reign—indeed, it was one of the greatest and
noblest achievements in the whole history of Society. It was a great
upheaval, far more wide-reaching and searching than the abolition of
negro slavery which rewarded the humane labours of Clarkson, Sharp
and Wilberforce. That only affected the planters of the West Indies.
There were no negro slaves in London, Edinburgh, or Dublin. In Russia,
on the contrary, serfdom was universal. There were serfs even among
the tradesmen of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Warsaw, and all the great
towns—men who had raised themselves by industry and knowledge into a
higher status than that of the drudge or labourer, the hewer of wood and
drawer of water, but who yet remained serfs, and had to pay a share of
their gains to their lords. The fortunes of rich Boyarin were calculated
in the souls of men. There had been more than once talk of putting an
end to this horror, but it was left to the generous and good Tsar to
carry the reform into execution. He was ably seconded by M. Valouieff,
Minister of the Interior, who worked out all the details of the scheme.
It was no easy task to carry out so mighty a change, for, of course,
the vested interests were powerful and the mighty ego was on guard, as
ever; but the Tsar was in deadly earnest, and in spite of all opposition,
twenty-three millions of dead souls were born again into life.
It was an audaciously bold piece of statesmanship. Even an autocrat is
dependent upon the will of others for his power. He cannot stand up in
the Agora, and, like a god, proclaim himself “I am that I am!” He needs
support, and in Russia at that time, when the proletariat had not yet
even the semblance of political existence, the only prop upon which the
Tsar could rely was the _noblesse_, and it was precisely their privileges
that he was attacking. It needed moral courage, it needed physical
courage, to set such a machinery in motion. Remember who and what were
the men who murdered the Emperor Paul. Not a gang of revolutionary
_carbonari_—Turgénieff was not yet born and the word “Nihilist” had not
yet been coined[22]—but a band of powerful nobles, headed by his own
prime minister. Remember who were the leading Dekabrists, men bearing
historic names, proud of their descent from the sacred stock of Rurik. It
was men of that importance who would be the most affected by the change,
and whose opposition was to be feared. No weak man would have braved
them. It is true that emancipation had long been in the air, and that a
great number—perhaps even a large majority—of the landed aristocracy had
pledged themselves to it. But there was a dangerous leaven of discontent,
and none could say how far the taint might have penetrated.
M. Valouieff, the minister who was the Tsar’s right-hand man in this
difficult business, was a remarkable personality. Strikingly handsome,
tall and dignified, with all the characteristics of blue blood, he was
not dwarfed even by the mighty stature of his Imperial master. When,
two years after the liberation of the serfs in Russia, the measure was
extended to Poland, I was present, as I have related in my “Memories,”
at the reception of the Tsar of the peasants’ deputation who came to St.
Petersburg to thank the Tsar. It was impossible not to be struck by the
commanding aspect of the Emperor and his minister, both sons of Anak,
towering above the rest of the crowd.
The emancipation of the serfs was, of course, Valouieff’s masterpiece
in statesmanship, but he had several other measures of first-class
importance to his credit. It was he who in 1864 established the
Zemstvo—elected bodies for the local conduct of provincial business—and
another of his achievements was the regulation of the laws relating to
the Press. He, moreover, had something of a literary reputation as the
author of two or three novels. But these were rather amateurish, and it
is upon his statesmanship that his fame must rest.
Like the Chancellor, Prince Gortchakoff, he was very kind to me, and
whenever we met in Society, he always had a friendly word for me. When
I got back to London, he was next to Prince Gortchakoff, the Russian
statesman in whom I found Lord Palmerston and Lord Clarendon the most
interested. They fully appreciated the greatness of his work in the
emancipation business, and were glad to have some first-hand impressions
of his very remarkable personality.
The emancipation was a colossal task. It is not possible by a mere stroke
of the pen to revolutionize the lives of twenty-three millions of men.
The serfs were to be freed—that is easily said; but the interests of the
landed aristocracy must also be taken into consideration, and it says
much for Valouieff’s statesmanship and wisdom that the measure should
have been carried into effect practically without any friction.
It was impossible suddenly to deprive of its labour the whole of the
agricultural land of that vast empire. There had to be a transition
period during which the peasants, though no longer serfs, still remained
under certain obligations to their former masters; but within the
space of two years the landlords were bound to make over to them their
houses with suitable allotments of land against a fair rent, with the
further privilege of purchase, with the consent of the proprietor. The
obligations of the peasant and his rent were capitalized on a basis of
six per cent. Of this capital, twenty per cent. was to be paid at once
to the landlord, while the Government gave him the remaining eighty per
cent. in Government bonds bearing five per cent. interest, the Government
recouping itself for this advance in forty-nine years by a payment of six
per cent. from the peasant. The purchases might be effected by single
individuals or by partnerships. This would be facilitated by the Russian
communal system, by which the members of each commune were able to
combine for the redemption money and other expenses.
It was calculated that about one-third of the property of the landed
aristocracy, equal to 390,886 square kilometres, was made over to the
peasants. This is Brockhaus’ calculation. He goes on to point out
that for various reasons, chiefly the ignorance and intemperance of
the peasants, there were not a few troubles arising out of the great
economic change. Although in some instances land soon rose in value
fifty per cent. above the estimate of 1861, in others it suffered great
deterioration.
There is one feature in this great economic change which is worthy of
note. If we read the lives, memoirs and correspondence of the ministers
who have ruled England in modern times, it is impossible not to recognize
an underlying element of personal ambition in all their contentions.
That, I take it, is inseparable from a constitutional Government where
the “Outs” are always struggling to become “Ins.” Here there was no such
motive possible. A Tsar of Russia could become no greater than he already
was, and even the minister who did his behest had nothing to fear or to
gain from the _arbitrium popularis aurae_. The Emperor had, and could
have, nothing in view but the good of his people, and for that those
who saw him at work knew that his efforts were untiring. It is strange
that it should have been precisely in the reign of so good a monarch, a
real benefactor of the world over which he ruled, that the seeds of the
poisonous plant of Nihilism should have germinated, spreading like the
virus of cancer, which, cut out of one place by the surgeon’s knife,
still travels through the system and reappears in some new spot.
Nihilism was not confined, as has been popularly supposed, to the
students of the universities and a few clever but discontented literary
men and artists. As a matter of fact, it had invaded all classes. The
civil service, the army, the police—even the secret police—were infected.
* * * * *
The diplomatic negotiations which took place at St. Petersburg in the
winter of 1863-64 were big with the fate of Europe and of the world.
It was the result of the grievous blunders made by Lord Russell that
Prussia was enabled to take the first step in that career of plunder and
aggrandisement which has wrought such terrible tragedies. I have dealt
with that story fully in my “Memories.” I was at St. Petersburg at the
time, and owing to my confidential relations with Lord Napier, and to the
kindness of Prince Gortchakoff and other Russian ministers, I had the
opportunity of being well posted, not only in what took place publicly,
but also in the feeling which was prevalent in Russia in regard to the
Danish war.
In his brilliantly fascinating fourth volume of the “Life of Lord
Beaconsfield,” Mr. Buckle[23] revives the time-honoured fallacy that
Russia was not ready to join hands with us in defence of Denmark.
That fallacy can only owe its existence to the careful handling of
persons whose aim it was to whitewash Lord Russell. It is true that his
blustering and bullying in the Polish Revolution—followed by the eating
of the leek with appetite—had made England very unpopular in Russia;
but in regard to Denmark there was another motive at work, and a very
powerful one, in the prospective marriage of the Princess Dagmar to the
Tsarevitch.
In principle, Russia did not want to go to war, but she was ready to
sacrifice her wish for peace if only England would join in with her
and cry “Hands off!” to Prussia and Austria. England did not want war
in July, 1914, but on the 4th of August war was declared. The cases
are exactly similar. In both cases a “scrap of paper” was torn up by
Prussia, who only a few months earlier had guaranteed the integrity of
King Christian’s dominions. In 1914 mercifully Lord Russell had been long
“resting and being thanked” over the mischief he had wrought. Sterner and
more chivalrous doctrines prevailed, and this time England was ready to
draw the sword for a principle of honour.
It is, I know, an absolute mistake to suppose that if we had carried out
the policy indicated by Lord Palmerston in Parliament at the end of the
Session of 1863 we should have stood alone. Russia would have been with
us. Our position, supposing we had gone to war, would have been all to
our advantage—as Lord John Manners pointed out, it would have been “the
most popular, the easiest and the cheapest war (for it can be managed by
our navy alone) of the century.”[24] Lord John Manners was quite right.
We should have sent our navy to Danish waters, and we need not have sent
out a single soldier.
To march upon Berlin would have been a mere holiday task for the Russian
army, a sort of picnic, like our march upon Magdala. But I can assert
that it was the firm conviction of the best informed diplomatists of
Europe that the mere knowledge that England and Russia were determined
to uphold the rights of Denmark would of itself have sufficed to avert
war. I have written elsewhere how, when Lord Napier had to tell Prince
Gortchakoff that England would not join with him, the Prince answered:
“Alors, milord, je mets de côté la supposition que l’Angleterre fasse
jamais la guerre pour une question d’honneur.” That was the conviction
which guided him in all his subsequent dealings with England, the
advances in Central Asia, in defiance of all treaties, until the gates
of Afghanistan were reached, and in 1870, when France was crippled, the
tearing up of the Black Sea Treaty obligations of 1856.
Mr. Buckle is so clear-minded a critic of foreign politics that I should
hesitate to differ from him were I not possessed of absolute knowledge
not from hearsay. A study of the “Origines diplomatiques de la guerre de
1870” can only confirm what I have said; and that exhaustive publication
proves up to the hilt my contention that since the origin of the war of
1870 was due to the betrayal of Denmark in 1863-64, it is to the grave
political blunders then made that we must ascribe the outrage of 1914.
Free of England and Russia, Bismarck was able to carry out his full
programme: (1) Kiel and a navy. (2) The crippling of Austria. (3) The
humiliation of France. (4) Who can doubt what that was? The destruction
of England’s sea power, and the world under the heel of Prussia.
Lord Russell’s meddling and muddling in the affairs of Poland had,
it is true, estranged Russia and France. But the former Power was,
nevertheless, keenly in favour of Denmark; as regards France, there was
perhaps another consideration which was not without its influence. It is
a matter of common knowledge that Louis Napoleon was very ambitious to
build up a navy which should be able to hold its own with ours. In the
“Origines diplomatiques” there is published a dispatch from the French
chargé d’affaires at St. Petersburg, M. de Massignac, a very clever man,
with whom I was intimate, urging upon M. Drouyn de Lhuys the expediency
of furthering the views of Prussia. He pointed out that the success of
Prussia would give her Kiel, and enable her to build a navy which might,
in given circumstances, help the other Continental Powers to destroy
England’s preponderant supremacy at sea! I am inclined to think that
this view may have had more restraining influence with Louis Napoleon
even than the snubbing with which Lord Russell met his proposals for a
conference or congress at Brussels. We know, moreover, that the Emperor
had a distinct leaning towards Prussia, which he looked upon as making
for progress in contradistinction to Austria, which in his eyes was
antiquated and retrograde.
It was, then, at St. Petersburg that the fate of Denmark was sealed and
the first triumph of Bismarck’s policy secured. The Danish Duchies were
stolen by Prussia, and, as my old friend M. de Massignac had foreseen,
the foundations were laid of a navy which up to that time had been a
dream in Cloudcuckooland. For the shameful abandonment of Denmark we are
now, fifty years later, paying the just penalty.
THE END
_Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey._
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES
[1] See my “Garter Mission to Japan,” pp. 193-203.
[2] Max Müller, “Chips from a German Workshop,” IX., 178.
[3] Max Müller, _ut supra_.
[4] Even the famous Laws of Manu were only held to be Smriti—tradition.
[5] See Max Müller’s “Ancient Sanskrit Literature,” pp. 57 and 80.
[6] How like a passage in one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s prayers written
at Vailima: “We thank Thee, Lord, for the glory of the late days and the
excellent face of Thy Sun.”
[7] “Chips from a German Workshop,” Vol. I., p. 13.
[8] Max Müller’s “Chips,” Vol. I., pp. 36-37.
[9] _Picea pungens glauca._
[10] The Japanese, following the horology of the Chinese, used to
divide the day of 24 hours into 12 periods, each of which had its sign,
something like the sign of the Zodiac.
Midnight until 2 a.m. was the hour of the Rat
2 a.m. ” 4 a.m. ” ” Ox
4 a.m. ” 6 a.m. ” ” Tiger
6 a.m. ” 8 a.m. ” ” Hare
8 a.m. ” 10 a.m. ” ” Dragon
10 a.m. ” 12 noon ” ” Snake
12 noon ” 2 p.m. ” ” Horse
2 p.m. ” 4 p.m. ” ” Ram
4 p.m. ” 6 p.m. ” ” Ape
6 p.m. ” 8 p.m. ” ” Cock
8 p.m. ” 10 p.m. ” ” Hog
10 p.m. ” midnight ” ” Fox
[11] See my “Tales of Old Japan: the Loves of Gompachi and Komurasaki.”
[12] _Morning Post_, May 8th, 1915.
[13] Quoted in the _Spectator_, May 8th, 1915.
[14] Lord March, afterwards “Old Q.”
[15] The Duke of Queensberry.
[16] Mr. Thrale’s profits from the brewery were estimated at £30,000 a
year.
[17] Mügge, pp. 131, 134.
[18]
“As when upon a trancèd summer night
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-chainèd by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir.”
HYPERION, I., 72.
[19] Tomini later quarrelled with Napoleon and entered the service of
Alexander.
[20] The craze for absolute uniformity was exemplified in the Kurros
(snub-nosed) Grenadier Regiment of the Emperor Paul. Not only was every
nose in the regiment tip-tilted, but the meter-like brass shakos of
the old pattern seen in Hogarth’s pictures—“The March to Finchley,”
for example—each has a bullet-hole exactly in the same place. This
was to commemorate an attempt on the Tsar’s life. The bullet missed
him, but found its billet in the shako of one of his guards. Whether
the snub-noses and the shakos still exist I know not. They were very
conspicuous in my time.
[21] The Emperor Louis Napoleon.
[22] The word, “Nihilist” first appeared in Turgénieff’s story, “Fathers
and Sons,” in 1861.
[23] “The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield,” Vol. IV., p.
342.
[24] Buckle’s “Life of Disraeli,” _ut supra_, Vol. IV., p. 343.
INDEX
INDEX
Abdul Hamid, Sultan of Turkey, 138, 274.
Aberdeen, George H. Gordon, 4th Earl of, 269, 270.
Abrantès, Junot, Duc d’, 173-4.
Addison, Joseph, 114.
Albert, Prince Consort, 141-2.
Alexander I., Emperor of Russia, 247-8, 253 _et sq._, 258 _et sq._
Alexander II., Emperor of Russia, 264, 284 _et sq._, 296.
Allard, Father, 87.
Ananda, 25, 35, 40, 42.
Anatha Pindaka, 35.
Angeli, Von, 144.
Arnold, Sir Edwin, 18, 23.
Aryans, The, 49 _et sq._, 59 _et sq._
Asōka, King, 18, 51.
Aston, Molly, 241.
Aston, Sir Thomas, 241.
Bacon, Francis (Lord Verulam), 62, 189.
Bagatelle, 162-3, 175, 190-1, 193, 195.
Balfe, Michael William, 294.
Balfe, Victoire, 294-5.
“Bamboo Garden, The,” Lord Redesdale’s, ix.
Barbosa, 49.
Baring, Maurice, 203-4.
Barlaam and Josaphat, The Story of, 27 _et sq._
Batsford, x. _et sq._, xviii., xix., xxi.
Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of, 304.
Beal, Samuel, 23.
Beethoven, 151-2, 218, 251.
Benares, King of, 37.
Benfey, Theodor, 60 _et sq._
Berghaus, Heinrich, 52.
Bernhardt, Sarah, 152.
Bezbarooks, Count, 248.
Bhikshus, The, 42 _et sq._, 214.
Bimbisara, King of Maghada, 12, 32, 35.
Bismarck, Prince, 307-8.
Bizet, Georges, 218.
Blümml, Emil, 130.
Bodhisatva Maitriya, 37 _et sq._
Bonjean, M., 87.
Bopp, Franz, 60.
Boutourlin, 256.
Brahmans, The, 48 _et sq._, 65, 68-9
Brockhaus, Professor, 214.
Broughton, John Cam Hobhouse, Lord, 45.
Buckingham, Richard Grenville, 2nd Duke of, 186.
Buckle, George Earle, 304, 306.
Buddha, The, 8 _et sq._, 46 _et sq._, 65 _et sq._, 96, 233.
Bunsen, Baron, 54 _et sq._
Burnouf, Jean Louis, 60.
Byron, Lord, 45, 207.
Cambridge, xx.
Canning, Lord, 287, 290.
Canning, George, 167.
Capell, Edward, 242-3.
Carlisle, Lord, 171-2.
Carlyle, Thomas, 259.
Caste, 48 _et sq._
Castiglione, Countess, 222-31.
Castlereagh, Lord, 167.
Catherine the Great, 248-9, 252.
Cavell, Nurse, 93.
Cellini, Benvenuto, 155.
Chandana, 26.
Charles VI., Emperor, 137, 145.
Charles X. of France, 175.
Chandra Mukherji, 13-14, 18, 30.
Chelsea Hospital, 97.
Chreptowitch, Count, 289, 290.
Christian, King of Denmark, 305.
Cimarosa, Domenico, 151.
Cissey, General, 91.
Clair, Father, 87.
Clarendon, George Villiers, Earl of, 301.
Clarkson, Thomas, 298.
Clopton, Sir Hugh, 240 _et sq._
Commune, The, 78 _et sq._
Confucius, 33, 52-3.
Constantine, Grand Duke, 262, 267-8, 288.
Cook, Dr., 227-8.
Courbet, Gustave, 83 _et sq._
Cowes, Royal Yacht Squadron Castle, xii. _et sq._
Crampton, Sir John, 292 _et sq._
Crawley, George, 79.
Crimean War, 270 _et sq._
Dagmar, Empress of Russia, 304.
Dandapani, 24.
Dante, xix. _et sq._, 206.
Darboy, Monseigneur, Archbishop of Paris, 87 _et sq._
Dasson, M., 180.
Daudet, Alphonse, xxiii.
Daudet, Ernest, xxiii.
Davids Rhys, 23, 31, 37.
Davis, Mr. Charles, 198.
Devadatta, 24-5, 35-6, 40.
Dietrichstein, Count, 134.
Dodgson, Rev. Charles, 229.
Domenichino, 183.
Donay, General, 91.
Dostoieffski, Feodor, 205.
Drummond, Messrs. G. & E., 158.
Ducondray, Father, 87.
Duplessis, Isabella, 132.
Dyer, Sir William, 243.
Edward VII., 93, 200.
Elizabeth, Empress, 132.
Ellis, Sir Arthur, 201.
Enghien, Duc d’, 254.
Esher, Reginald Brett, 2nd Viscount, 189 _et sq._, 199.
Eton College, 209 _et sq._
Eugénie, 94.
Evans, Jennie, 209, 211.
Evans, William, 209 _et sq._
Evelyn, John, 243.
Fagnani, Marchese, 165 _et sq._, 172.
Fagnani, Marchesa, 165 _et sq._
Fagnani, Maria. _See_ LADY HERTFORD.
Fa Hsien, 13.
Faraday, Michael, 53.
Ferronays, M. de la, 263-4.
Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond, 287, 290.
Fragonard, Jean, 112, 175.
Francis of Assisi, St., 47, 54 _et sq._, 214.
Francis I., Emperor, 134, 137-8, 142, 147.
Fraser, Sir James, 125.
Frederick the Great, 143, 146.
Friar, Duc de, 295.
Fryatt, Captain, 93.
Fuchs, Gräfin, 133.
Gainsborough, Sir Thomas, 101, 172.
Gaisman, 145.
Gallifet, Marquis de, 91 _et sq._
Gallifet, Madame de, 93.
Garrick, David, 241.
Gastrell, Rev. Mr., 241-2.
Genghis Khan, 258.
George IV., 167, 184.
Gluck, Christoph, 145.
Goethe, 152, 206.
Gogol, Nicolai, 205.
Gopā (wife of the Buddha), 18, 24-5, 35.
Gortchakoff, Prince Alexander, 289, 292, 296-7, 301, 306-7.
Graham, Stephen, 279.
Granville, Lord, 287 _et sq._
Greiner, Herr von, 147 _et sq._
Grimm, Jakob, 60.
Grisi, 223.
Grousset, Paschal, 85.
Guerry, Abbé de, 87.
Gurwood, Colonel, 159, 191.
Halloy, Omalius d’, 60, 62.
Hawtrey, Dr., 207.
Haydn, 145, 151-2.
Hearn, Lafcadio, 120 _et sq._
Heine, Heinrich, 138.
Hertford, Francis Seymour, 2nd Marquis of, 186.
Hertford, Francis Charles Seymour, 3rd Marquis of (Thackeray’s “Lord
Steyne”), xx., xxi., 155, 166 _et sq._, 173, 176, 186, 191, 193.
Hertford, Francis Seymour, 5th Marquis of, 163, 194-5.
Hertford, Richard Seymour, 4th Marquis of, xx., xxi., 155, 157 _et
sq._, 173 _et sq._
Hertford, Lady Maria, 159 _et sq._, 192 _et sq._
Hicks-Beach. _See_ ST. ALDWYN.
Hieronymus, Lieutenant Friedrich, 131-2.
Hieronymus, Charlotte, 131 _et sq._, 138 _et sq._, 144, 147 _et sq._
Hogg, James, 215.
Homer, 62, 206.
Houdon, Jean, 180.
Hsi, Emperor-King, 67.
Hsüan Chwang, 11, 13, 68.
Humboldt, Baron von, 60.
James I., 239, 240, 243.
Japanese Gardens, 2 _et sq._, 102, 106;
customs, 118 _et sq._;
legends, 121 _et sq._
Jefferies, Richard, 233.
Jéta, Prince, 35.
Jétavana, 35.
John of Damascus, St., 27 _et sq._
Johnson, Dr., 203, 238, 241 _et sq._
Joseph II., Emperor of Austria, xxiii., 135, 140.
Kalanta, 11.
Karamzin, Nicholas, 205-6.
Kassapa the Prince, 37, 40.
Keats, John, 235.
Kennedy, Mr., xxii.
Kerner, Andreas, 225.
Kew Gardens, 243 _et sq._
Kimberley, John Wodehouse, Earl of, 291-2.
Kisseleff, Sergius, 289.
Kosciusko, 249.
Krüdener, Madame de, 259.
Krylov, Ivan, 204-5.
Kshatriya, The, 48.
Kusinārā, 42, 44.
Laboulaye, M., 29.
Ladmisault, General, 91.
La Harpe, Jean, 260.
Laking, Sir Guy, 201.
Lamington, Baillie Cochrane, Lord, 157.
Lancret, Nicolas, 112.
Lansdowne, Henry Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquis of, 201.
Lao Tze, 52.
Lamballe, Princesse de, 78.
Landseer, Sir Edwin, 144.
Latham, Robert Gordon, 60, 62.
Lavalette, M. de, 271.
Lee, Sir Sidney, 238-9, 245.
Leighton, Sir Frederick, 144.
Lemoyne, 180.
Leopold II., 147.
Lhuys, M. Drouyn de, 307.
Lissauer, Herr, 138.
Liszt, Abbé, 152.
Lofft, Mr., 243.
Louis XV., 271.
Louis-Philippe, Emperor of the French, 184, 269, 272.
Louise, Princess (Duchess of Argyll), 144.
Lowell, John Russell, 99.
Lumbini Garden, 16, 18 _et sq._, 26, 44.
Luther, Martin, 47, 274.
MacColl, Mr., 180 _et sq._, 202.
Macklin, Charles, 241.
Maintenon, Madame de, 193.
Malet, Sir Edward, 85, 201.
Malone, Edmund, 240-1.
Manners, Lord John, 305.
Maria Theresia, Empress of Germany, xv., 129.
Mario, Signor, 223.
Marie Antoinette, Queen, 133-4, 145, 175.
Marlborough Club, xvii.
Massignac, M. de, 307-8.
Mawson, S., 178 _et sq._, 187-8.
Maxwell, Sir John Stirling, 201.
Maya, Queen of Kapilavastu (mother of the Buddha), 15 _et sq._, 30,
40.
“Memories,” Lord Redesdale’s, ix. _et sq._, 283, 297, 304.
Mendelssohn, 54, 218.
Mentschikoff, Prince, 266, 273, 276.
Mercier, Karoline, 135.
Metastasio, 134.
Metternich, Madame de, 93-4.
Meyendorf, 289.
Milarodowitch, General, 263.
Millais, Sir John, 144.
Milton, John, 206.
Mitford, Major the Hon. Clement, xi.
Moffat, Mary Maxwell, 143, 145.
Mohammed, 33.
Montaigne, xxi.
Moore, Sir John, 143.
Moskowa, Prince de la, 267.
Mowatt, Sir Francis, 200.
Mozart, 145, 151-2, 218.
Mrighadeva, The, 32, 44.
Mügge, Dr., 215-16.
Muraieff, General, 297.
Murillo, 188.
Müller, Max, 27-8, 48, 51 _et sq._, 60 _et sq._, 66, 68-9, 72, 75-6.
Murray, Mr., 197.
Napier, Francis, Lord, 296-7, 304, 306.
Napoleon, 13, 152, 251, 254 _et sq._
Napoleon III., 179, 271-2, 287, 291, 307-8.
National Gallery, xvii.
Nesselrode, Count, 275.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 53.
Ney, Marshal, 267.
Nicholas, Emperor of Russia, 167, 247, 262 _et sq._
Nietzsche, xiii., 213 _et sq._
North, Christopher, 215.
Northcote, James, 184.
Northcote, Sir Stafford, 157.
Norns, The, 115-16.
Orloff, Alexis, 289.
Oubrie, M. d’, 254.
Ovid, 116 _et sq._
Paesiello, 151.
Pahlen, Count Nicholas, 251, 286 _et sq._
Pahlen, Count Peter, 250-1.
Palmerston, Henry Temple, Viscount, 293-4, 301, 305.
Paris, the Commune, 78 _et sq._
Parkes, Sir Harry, xvii.
Parsees, The, 65-6.
Paskiewitch, Prince, 267, 282-3.
Paul I., Emperor of Russia, 248 _et sq._, 258, 262, 272, 299.
Pechler, xv.
Peel, Right Hon. Sir Robert, 269.
Peirce, President, 293.
Penka, 60.
Pepys, Samuel, 243 _et sq._
Persigny, Madame de, 93.
Peter III., Emperor of Russia, 249, 250.
Phillips, Sir Claude, 176, 201-2.
Phillips, March, 107, 109, 110, 113.
Pichler, Frau, 130-1, 134, 136-7, 142, 150, 152.
Pigalle, 180.
Plant life, 221 _et sq._
Poesche, 60.
Poe, Edgar Allan, 234.
Pourtalès, Comtesse de, 93-4.
Poynter, Sir Edward, 199, 200.
Prain, Sir David, 245.
Prajapati Gautama, 18, 30.
Pushkin, Alexandre, 205 _et sq._
Queensberry, William Douglas, Duke of, 164, 167-8, 173.
Raglan, Fitzroy Somerset, Lord, 265.
Rahula (son of the Buddha), 22, 32.
Rasumowski, Countess, 251-2.
Redcliffe, Lord Stratford de, 276 _et sq._
Rembrandt, 152, 182-3, 188.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 101, 172, 176, 186 _et sq._
Rhode, Erwin, xiii., 213.
Ribeaupierre, Count, 252.
Richmond, 104-5.
Robinson, William, 114-15.
Rockhill, William Woodville, 23, 44.
Rogers, Rev. William, 124.
Roscoe, Edward Stanley, 170, 173-4.
Rosebery, Lord, 93-4, 201-2.
Royal Society of Literature, xxii.
Royal Horticultural Society, 97.
Romney, George, 176.
Rostopchin, Fedor, 257 _et sq._, 272.
Rothschild, Alfred de, 200-1.
Rubens, 186.
Russell, Lord John, 295 _et sq._, 304, 307.
Ruysdael, 184.
Russia, 246 _et sq._
Sabatier, Louis, 54, 58.
Sagan, Princesse de, 93-4.
St. Aldwyn, Rt. Hon. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, 1st Viscount, 201.
St. Hilaire Barthélemy, 11, 23, 40.
Sanguszko, Prince, 267.
Satow, Sir Ernest, xvii.
Savile, John Lumley, Lord, 296.
Scheffer, Ary, 188.
Schlegel, August von, 60.
Schopenhauer, 214, 216.
Schrader, Eberhard, 60.
Schumann, 218.
Schwendener, 226 _et sq._
Scott, Sir John, 156, 159, 177, 190, 194, 197-8, 201-2.
Seaford, Charles Ellis, Lord, 167.
Sedley, Sir Charles, 244-5.
Selwyn, George, 164-5, 167 _et sq._
Selwyn, Bishop John, 210.
Sévigné, Madame de, 46, 171.
Seymour, Sir Hamilton, 195, 273.
Seymour, Lord Henry, 160, 173-4, 177.
Seymour, Lord Henry (son of 1st Marquis of Hertford), 174.
Shakespeare, 206-7, 238 _et sq._
Sharp, Granville, 298.
Siddartha, Prince. _See_ THE BUDDHA.
Smith, Assheton, 45.
Smith, J. R., 186.
Spiegel, 60.
Staël, Madame de, 152.
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 58.
Stockmar, Baron, 142.
Stowe, 182, 188.
Subasio, Mount, 56.
Subhadra, 42, 44.
Suddhōdana, King of Kapilavastu (father of the Buddha), 14 _et sq._,
24 _et sq._, 32 _et sq._
Sudras, The, 49, 51-2.
Sujata, 31.
Suprabuddha, King, 15, 23.
Sutherland, George Leveson-Gower, 3rd Duke of, 79, 156.
Suvoroff, Prince, 297.
Swift, Dean, 229.
Swinbrook, Glos., xxii.
Talbot, Henry, 241.
“Tales of Old Japan,” Lord Redesdale’s, iv., 127.
Talleyrand, Prince, 254.
Terry, Mrs., 171.
Thackeray, W. M., 173.
Thalberg, Sigismund, 152.
Thynne, Lady Edward, 84.
_Times_, 4, 203.
Titian, 176.
Tolstoy, Count, 205, 289 _et sq._
Tomini, 255-6.
Tragedy in Stone, A, x.
Troubetzkoi, Prince, 263.
Turgeniev, Ivan, 205-6, 299.
Underhill, William, 239.
Vaisiyas, The, 49.
Valouieff, M., 299 _et sq._
Vandyck, 176.
Veda, Religion of the, 59, 66 _et sq._
Velasquez, 184-5, 187-8.
Vernon, Hon. W. W., xix.
Veronese, Paul, 184.
Victoria, German Empress (Princess Royal), 144, 150.
Victoria, Queen, 129 _et sq._, 135, 138 _et sq._, 150, 153-4, 269, 277.
Vihara, 12, 34, 36.
Vinoy, General, 91.
Virgil, 206.
Visakha, 36.
Voltaire, 206.
Wagner, Richard, 214 _et sq._
Wagner, Frau Cosima, 215-16, 220.
Wallace, Agnes (Jackson), 159, 192.
Wallace, Sir Richard, 155 _et sq._, 173, 175 _et sq._, 181-2, 188,
190 _et sq._
Wallace, Lady, 194 _et sq._
Wallace Collection, xvii., 155 _et sq._
Walmesley, Mrs., 241.
Warner, Dr., 170.
Watteau, Antoine, 112-113, 188.
Watts, George Frederick, 144.
Weber, Carl von, 152.
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 265.
Whately, Archbishop, 13.
Wilberforce, William, 298.
Wilhelm II., Kaiser, xxiii.
Wilkinson, Sir Gardner, 126.
Winterhalter, Friedrich, 144.
Worth, M., 94.
Yasōdhara (wife of the Buddha), 18, 22, 32, 35-6.
Yule, Sir Henry, 49.
York, Cardinal, 193.
Yriarte, 177-8.
Zarathustra, 66-7.
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