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Title: Memories (volume 1 of 2)
Author: Baron Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford Redesdale
Release date: May 29, 2025 [eBook #76182]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Hutchinson & Co, 1915
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/Canadian Libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMORIES (VOLUME 1 OF 2) ***
_MEMORIES_
[Illustration: _The Author._
_Photographed by Furley Lewis Esq._]
_Memories. :: By
Lord Redesdale, G.C.V.O., K.C.B._
_With two photogravure plates and 16 other illustrations_
VOL. I
_LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW ... 1915_
TO MY WIFE AND CHILDREN, FOR WHOM THESE MEMORIES OF MANY YEARS HAVE BEEN
RECORDED, I DEDICATE MY BOOK
PREFACE
Now that the midnight of life is at hand, before the last chime of the
curfew must ring out, I have been busying myself in writing down memories
of the people who brightened its morning, its noon and its evening. It
was my fate long ago to be associated with men older, sometimes much
older, than myself, and so it happens that few indeed of the friends of
my early manhood are now left. Except where it is absolutely necessary
in order to tell the rest of my tale, I have not dealt with the living.
To praise them might seem sycophantic, to blame them an impertinence. It
would be overbold in me to write a chronicle of my own days were I not
able to say with Horace:
“At me cum magnis vixisse fatebitur usque
Invidia.”
My life, indeed, has been largely spent amongst men who in many
lands have made the history of their time. The story of their public
achievements is, or will be, written in the annals of their countries.
The story of their private lives is often unknown to, and therefore put
on one side by, their biographers. To rescue from oblivion here and there
some intimate feature, some petty detail which may help to make known the
real personalities of such men—perhaps to remove a wrong impression—is
the humble object of this book, and it is to the shades of those who did
so much for me that I offer it as a grateful tribute.
* * * * *
I have to thank Sir Ernest Satow for allowing me to check by his own
journals and records what I have written about the adventurous years
which we spent together in Japan. I must also express my gratitude to
Mr. Edmund Gosse for much encouragement and patient advice—without his
sympathy these pages would hardly have seen the light. To the Editor
of the _National Review_ I am indebted for permission to reproduce an
article which has appeared in his pages. Similar thanks for the use of
an article on Lord Lyons in the _Candid Review_ are due to Mr. Gibson
Bowles.
CONTENTS
VOL. I
CHAP. PAGE
I.—THE CRADLE AND THE RACE 1
II.—FRANKFORT—PARIS—TROUVILLE 30
III.—ETON 50
IV.—SUMMER HOLIDAYS 78
V.—WALES AND OXFORD 90
VI.—THE F. O. 108
VII.—LORD LYONS 131
VIII.—THE WEDDING OF THE PRINCE OF WALES 161
IX.—MY BROTHER. MUSIC AND THE DRAMA 189
X.—RUSSIA 204
XI.—THE WINTER OF 1863-1864 232
XII.—THROUGH THE WINTER 246
XIII.—MOSCOW 287
XIV.—THE FIRST CALL OF THE EAST 307
XV.—CHINA IN 1865-1866 328
XVI.—PEKING 343
XVII.—PEKING 356
XVIII.—JAPAN 373
XIX.—THE SHŌGUN OR TYCOON 386
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOL. I
THE AUTHOR (_photogravure_) _Frontispiece_
_Photograph by Furley Lewis, Esq._
PORTRAIT IN MEMORY OF BERTRAM ASHBURNHAM _Facing page_ 2
_From Gwillim’s Heraldry._
THE RUINS OF MITFORD CASTLE ” 4
_From a drawing, dated August, 1769, by J. Mitford
(Lord Redesdale)._
WILLIAM MITFORD ” 14
_From an oil painting by John Jackson, R.A._
THE ASHBURNHAM FAMILY ” 26
EDWARD CRAVEN HAWTREY, D.D., ETON COLLEGE ” 52
_A sketch by a sixth form boy._
FIRE-PLACE IN EVANS’ HOUSE ” 64
_From a water-colour sketch by W. Evans._
MARIO ” 192
_By Lord Leighton, P.R.A._
EMBASSY HOUSE, ST. PETERSBURG ” 206
_From a water-colour drawing by Charlemagne, 1864._
THE DEAD EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. ” 252
THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER II. ” 264
_From a sketch by Zichy._
THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER II. ” 272
_From a sketch by Zichy._
MEMORIES
CHAPTER I
THE CRADLE AND THE RACE
Nam genus et proavos et quæ non fecimus ipsi,
Vix ea nostra voco.
Of course it was not good taste in Ajax to brag so loudly of being the
great-grandson of Jupiter, but then Ulysses need not have snubbed him so
fiercely, and then gone on to show how he, too, was god-born, but on the
mother’s side as well as on the father’s. Nor was it quite consistent
in Ovid, who struggled so proudly for his privileges as _eques_ in the
theatre, to clothe these Socialist sentiments in a pair of hexameter
lines; but then, in spite of that little flirtation with a naughty
Princess, which caused his banishment, Ovid was a Radical and a poet,
which gave him a double claim to inconsistency.
The sentiment is, as it seems to me, utterly false and untrue to the
very nature of man. From the earliest times, and even in the most savage
races, men have been proud of such ancestry as they could lay claim
to, and many a poor peasant loves to tell you that he is living in the
cottage that his forebears have held for generations. Pride of Race and
Pride of Country go hand-in-hand as two forms of Patriotism.
In 1862 poor Laurence Oliphant and I—he, the most charming of companions,
just beginning to be bitten by mysticism—were travelling together on the
Continent. He was still suffering from the cruel wounds which he received
in the night attack by Rônins on the Legation at Yedo in 1861. He had
been ordered to drink the iron waters of Spa, and I agreed to go with him
for my summer holiday. The first evening at the table d’hôte dinner, I
sat next to a very agreeable gentleman with whom I speedily made friends.
After about half an hour’s talk he asked my name. I told him who I was.
“Dear me,” he said, “if you are the son of Mr. Mitford of Exbury and Lady
Georgina Ashburnham, you are descended from perhaps the two oldest Saxon
families in England. Sir, you are a very remarkable person.” I felt as
Whistler, in his quaint way, told me that he did when Carlyle used the
same words to him, “That that was about what was the matter with me!” and
when I asked who was my genealogical acquaintance, he turned out to be no
less an authority than Sir Bernard Burke.
But in matter of genealogy, as in all others, there are iconoclasts, and
now come people of much learning, who declare that the Saxon Mitfords are
really Norman Bertrams, and that the famous Ashburnhams, “of stupendous
antiquity,” are the descendants of a Norman family who were Counts of
Eu—in Domesday Book variously called Estriels, Escriol, Criol, Crieul, or
Anglicized as Kiriell, and even Cruel. That after all these centuries,
and after such countless marriages as must have taken place in them, so
curious an animal as a man of pure Saxon blood, or, indeed, of any pure
blood, should still be in existence is, of course, an impossibility.
It may be rank nonsense to talk of the Mitfords and the Ashburnhams as
two of the oldest Saxon families in England, when there can be no such
families, but there can be no doubt that they are both of very great
antiquity.
Of the Ashburnhams old Fuller says, “My poor and plaine pen is willing
though unable to add any lustre to this family of stupendous antiquitie.”
According to Francis Thynne, a herald of Queen Elizabeth’s time, “Bertram
Ashburnham, a Baron of Kent, was Constable of Dover Castle in 1066; which
Bertram was beheaded by William the Conqueror because he did so valiantly
defend the same against the Duke of Normandy.” This is quoted by the
Duchess of Cleveland in her “Battle Abbey Roll,” and she then labours
with all her might to demolish the whole story. Gwillim’s “Heraldry,”
however, takes the other view, and makes out that the second holder of
the office of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was this same Bertram
Ashburnham, and that it was he who, on behalf of the King, raised the
troops to resist the invasion, Harold himself being away engaged in
quelling a rebellion in the North. “Since which time until now, by the
grace of God, there hath not been wanting an Ashburnham of Ashburnham in
Sussex.”
[Illustration: PORTRAIT IN MEMORY OF BERTRAM ASHBURNHAM, LORD WARDEN OF
THE CINQUE PORTS IN KING HAROLD’S TIME.
_From Gwillim’s Heraldry._]
Gwillim has a curious engraving of a portrait “in memory of” this hero
in seventeenth-century armour, and the tradition in the family is that
it was John Ashburnham, King Charles the First’s gentleman, who sat for
this very grim effigy. Then there is another story, for which I know
not the authority, if, indeed, there be any, to the effect that Bertram
Ashburnham defended the Castle so stoutly that William made terms with
him and raised the siege, allowing the Saxon to name his own conditions,
which were that he and his men should leave with all the honours of war,
and that the law of gavelkind should obtain in Kent for all time. This
brave tale, I am afraid, must be dismissed as moonshine.
So there is much complication, but on one point all the authorities are
agreed, and that is the marriage of the Norman knight, Bertram, with
the Saxon heiress of Mitford; so far as that goes, if we may not call
ourselves a Saxon family, our Saxon descent is not denied to us.
About two miles to the west of Morpeth, on a spot romantic enough to
inspire a poet’s dream, fair enough for a painter to linger over with
a lover’s delight, stand the ruins of the old Saxon castle of Mitford.
That is the Cradle of our Race. The keep, battered by storms of war and
weather, rises on a rocky eminence to the south of the river Wansbeck,[1]
close to the point where the two fords of the Wansbeck and the Font meet.
It was from this meeting that the Castle and village took their name,[2]
just as Coblenz did from the _confluentiæ_ of Rhine and Moselle. The
rivers of Northumberland, tearing their way through the rocks, between
banks fringed with the most picturesque vegetation, overhanging trees,
shrubs, ferns, docks, and all the fairy-like greenery which they wear
with such grace, are the glory of that part of the country. Such streams
as the Wansbeck and the Coquet are a haunting memory.
Not even the most audaciously inventive of antiquaries has, so far as I
know, been brave enough to fix the date of the Castle’s building; all
that can be said is that it is very old. Burke, on the authority of the
“Durham Booke,” tells the story how a certain “Robert Mitford, Esq.,
carried an old writeing to produce at Durham upon some occasion, by wch
one of ye ancestors of Mitfords, of Mitford, in ye time of K. Edwd. ye
Confessor, did assure his wife’s joynture out of Lands in Mitford, wch
writeing Sir Joseph Craddock saw and attests it under the hand, but is
since embezzled and lost.” That, since the document is lost, is but a
weak foundation upon which to base a belief. The tale, however, must be
true, for William the Conqueror’s advent followed almost immediately upon
the death of King Edward, and that the Castle was at the time of the
Conquest in the possession of Sir John de Mitford is a fact. Beyond that
time we must be content to leave the family history lost in the clouds.
Even so, the story is old enough, and we may well be proud of our old
cousin Edward Mitford, the head of the family, who fulfilled more than
his century of life in 1911, and died on the property and in sight of the
ruined Castle which belonged to our ancestors some nine hundred years ago.
Among the knights who fought at Hastings in the train of William the
Conqueror were two brothers, Sir Robert[3] and Sir William Bertram.
“Robert Bertram ki estoit tort” (crooked) was Lord of Briquebec, near
Valognes, a barony consisting of forty knights’ fees, which is said to
have taken its name from Brico, a Norwegian Viking, who was the ancestor
of the Bertram family.[4] It was the well-known policy of the Conqueror
to pacify England and consolidate his power by promoting or even
making up marriages between his followers and the Saxons whom they had
conquered—especially did this judicious match-making seem to be desirable
where there was an heiress to be won. At the time of the Conquest, Sir
John de Mitford, who owned the Castle and Barony of Mitford, had no son.
His only daughter, Sibella, was his heiress, and between her and Sir
Robert Bertram a marriage was arranged and carried into effect.
[Illustration: THE RUINS OF MITFORD CASTLE, NEAR MORPETH, NORTHUMBERLAND.
_From a drawing, dated August, 1769, by J. Mitford (Lord Redesdale), d.
August, 1769._]
I wonder what sort of a home it made, this union between the Saxon girl,
of whom I like to believe that she was as beautiful as the Lady Rowena,
and the Norman warrior? Was it altogether a _mariage de convenance_? Was
Sibella forced into it, or might he have lighted just the least little
spark of love in her breast?—and when once they were married, did she
live happily with her crooked knight? These crook-backed men are apt to
have very insinuating ways; we all know how Richard the Third, when he
made love to Lady Anne, so flattered and coaxed that her
woman’s heart
Grossly grew captive to his honey words,
and in my early diplomatic days, I had a colleague at a certain Embassy,
who, though crooked as Pope himself, was declared by all women to be
irresistible. How grateful, by the bye, we ought to be for that one and
only record “qui estoit tort,” just three words which give to the old
story of Sibella a touch perfectly human and real, such as a hundred
blazing tales of deeds of derring-do, sung by minstrels or recorded by
chroniclers, could never have conveyed. The crook must have been true, it
could hardly have been invented. Since walls have ears, what a pity it
is that stones have not tongues: these old ruins could teach us so much
about the lives that they harboured, lessons which one does so long to
learn.
These Bertrams must have been men of no little importance in their
generations. The two heroes of Hastings evidently made their mark, and
later on there is some reason to suppose that one, at any rate, of the
family, perhaps more, joined in one or other of the Crusades. For in some
excavations which were made among the ruins of the Castle in the middle
of the nineteenth century, the workmen came upon a tiny piece of that
serpentine marble which the Crusaders were wont to bring home from the
Holy Land to be set in the altars of their chapels; the relic was found
on the spot where the chapel is supposed to have stood. As should beseem
Crusaders, the Bertrams were good and loyal servants of the Church: a
pious Bertram it was that founded or endowed the Augustine Priory of
Brinkbourne in the reign of Henry the First.
Sir Roger de Bertram joined the insurrection of the Barons against King
John, and it cost him dear, for in retaliation his castle was seized and
his town of Mitford destroyed with fire and sword by the savage Flemish
hordes who then devastated Northumberland as the auxiliaries of the
King.[5] In the year 1215, then, Mitford Castle was in the hands of the
Crown, and two years later Alexander of Scotland, who had invaded England
at the instigation of France, laid siege to it with his whole army, but
he was beaten off, and went back to Scotland none the richer for his
venture. King John granted the Castle to Philip de Ulcoves, but in the
following reign it was restored to the Bertrams by Henry the Third.
The next notable Bertram was that Sir Roger who, with other northern
Barons, marched into Scotland in 1258 to rescue the young King of the
Scots, Henry the Third’s son-in-law; but he got into trouble, for six
years later he was one of the insurgents in the Barons’ War, was taken
prisoner at Northampton, and the Castle and Barony were once more
forfeited and alienated from his descendants for four hundred years. He
seems, indeed, to have speedily made his peace with the King, for in
1264 he was summoned to Parliament as Baron Bertram—but Mitford knew him
no more.[6] This Sir Roger was succeeded by his son, who had only one
daughter, and the Barony fell into abeyance between the Fitzwilliams,
Darcys and Penulburys, the representatives of his three sisters.
The learned labours of antiquaries and pedigree-mongers have so confused
the story of the younger branch of the Bertrams, the Lords of Bothal,
that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make head or tail
of their several statements. It is the more provoking in that it is from
them that we, the Mitfords of the present day, are descended. From them
also the Dukes of Portland, through a maternal ancestress, have inherited
Bothal Castle.
In the “Battle Abbey Roll” of the Duchess of Cleveland, it is stated that
William de Bertram, who founded Brinkbourne Priory, married a daughter
of Guy de Baliol by whom he had two sons, Roger, Baron of Mitford, and
Richard, the ancestor of the Lords of Bothal, who held that Barony
by the service of three knights’ fees. This is, I believe, the more
probably correct story, and it comes into line with the evidence of the
“Newminster Abbey Register Booke,” which makes the inheritance descend
to the Dukes of Portland from the Lady Sibella, wife of the first Lord
Bertram.
That Bothal should have been held by Sir William (sometimes called Sir
Richard) Bertram, the brother of the first Lord Bertram, as some have
maintained, is worthy of no credence. Why should an important portion of
Sibella de Mitford’s property have gone to her husband’s younger brother?
Burke, in his “Landed Gentry,” anxious, probably, to prove a Saxon
descent from father to son, appears to wipe out all the Bertrams in
the middle of the fourteenth century, and makes Mitford (the town or
village, not the Castle and Barony, which were forfeited) descend to Sir
John de Mitford, tenth in succession to Matthew, the younger brother of
the Sir John who was the father of Sibella. That we shall see is quite
apocryphal, for when the elder branch of the Bertrams came to an end
in 1311, the younger branch continued to flourish at Bothal, and soon
adopted the name of Mitford, taking their patronymic from the property
which the family had then held for two and a half centuries.
It was to that branch that the famous Hermit of Warkworth belonged, whose
tragic story was woven into a poem by Dr. Johnson’s friend, Bishop Percy
of Dromore, who collected the “Reliques of Ancient Poetry.” The poem,
very poor stuff, was published separately some years after the “Reliques.”
This Bertram was in love with a neighbouring Lady Isabel de Widdrington,
and she returned his love, but like a true daughter of
‘These northern counties here
Whose word is snaffle, spur and spear.’
she chose to put his mettle to the test before giving him her hand. She
sent him a helmet as her love-token, desiring him to try its temper
‘wherever blows fell sharpest;’ and Bertram, obedient to her behest, rode
with his brother-in-arms, Lord Percy, on a raid into Scotland, where he
was wounded nearly to the death in a desperate fray. The tidings were
brought to Isabel, who, struck with terror and remorse, at once set out
to go to him, but on her way was seized by some prowling moss-troopers,
and carried off to one of their secret fastnesses beyond the border.
Thus when at the downfall of the night her rescued Knight was carried
home on the shields of his followers, he found his lady gone, and all
traces of her lost. He made a vow never to rest till he had found her,
and his brother promised to help him in the quest. As soon as his health
permitted, they went forth together in a humble disguise, and the better
to conduct their search, agreed to separate, the brother going northwards
and Bertram himself to the west. For many weary days and weeks he
wandered over moss and moor in vain; till at length when he had almost
lost heart, a compassionate pilgrim directed him to a distant peel-tower
in which a lady’s voice had been heard lamenting.
Bertram found the place, and recognized the voice; but watched the tower
for two successive nights without obtaining a glimpse of his Isabel. On
the third night, however, that he lay crouched in his hiding-place, he
saw her descend a ladder of ropes thrown from an upper window, assisted
by a man muffled up in a cloak, who bore her across the little stream
and led her away, clinging fondly to his arm. Bertram, maddened at the
sight, rushed after them with his naked sword, and attacked his rival,
who defended himself manfully; but after a stubborn conflict, Bertram
succeeded in bringing him to the ground, and stabbed him to the heart,
with the words, ‘Die, traitor!’ Then, when she heard his voice the
wretched Isabel for the first time knew who he was, and sprang forward to
arrest the blow, shrieking, ‘It is thy brother!’ She was too late, for
the deed was done, and in the struggle to throw herself between them, she
slipped against Bertram’s sword, and fell pierced, by his brother’s side.
For that night’s bloody tragedy the unhappy Bertram did penance to the
end of his days. He renounced every tie that bound him to the world.
His sword and spear were hung up in his hall, his inheritance passed on
to others and his goods were given to the poor, while he himself, clad
in monastic garb, took refuge in the rocky recesses of Coquetdale, near
Warkworth Castle. No more ideal retreat could be devised for an anchorite
than this lovely, sequestered glen, where the hurrying Coquet stays its
troubled current beneath precipitous cliffs, clothed with trees that
spring from every chink and crevice of the stone; and from an overhanging
grove of stately oaks above, a runlet of the purest water comes rippling
down.
Here his dwelling-place, scooped out of the living rock, remains almost
as perfect as when he left it. It can only be reached from the river by a
long flight of steps. Over the entrance linger the traces of the original
inscription, ‘_Sunt mihi lachrymæ meæ cibo interdiu et noctu_.’ The first
cell is a miniature chapel, complete in all its details, with a raised
altar at the east end; and on a recessed altar tomb beside it is the
effigy of a woman, very delicately designed, but now broken and timeworn,
lying with her head towards the east, and her arms slightly raised,
showing that her hands have been folded in prayer. At her feet in a niche
cut in the stone, the figure of the Hermit kneels in eternal penitence,
his head resting on his hand. Beyond this, reached through a doorway,
bearing on a shield the Crucifixion and the emblems of the Passion, is
a still smaller oratory, used by the Hermit as a sleeping-place; with a
similar altar at the farther end, and near it a narrow ledge hewn out of
the rock for his couch.
Neither by night nor by day did he ever lose sight of the beloved effigy
in the adjoining chapel; for at the altar a window is contrived through
which he could see it as he knelt at his devotions; and when lying on his
bed, a niche cut slantwise through the partition wall still enabled him
to rest his faithful eyes upon it. No one knows for how many sorrowful
years he lived here in penance and contrition, nor when death came to his
release.
Such is the touching story of the Hermit of Warkworth, who was of our
blood, as it is related in the “Battle Abbey Roll” which I have so often
quoted.
Bertram’s friend, Lord Percy, kept his memory green by paying for Masses
to be sung in the Chapel, and the allowance for the purpose was continued
until the Suppression of the Monasteries, and according to Hutchinson,
“the patent is extant which was granted to the last hermit in 1532 by the
Sixth Earl of Northumberland.”
* * * * *
So the elder branch of the Bertrams disappeared in 1311, and with them
the name, for the Lords of Bothal speedily called themselves de Mitford,
which from that time forth became the family patronymic. “Happy the
minister who does not make history” is an old saying which may well be
applied to families, for if in the centuries during which our people have
been Lords of Mitford, though they produced no great soldier, no great
statesman, no Raleigh, no Drake, no Frobisher, no Sir Thomas More, no
King’s favourite, at any rate they kept their heads upon their shoulders.
Political ambition was apt to be a very deadly disease, and they had it
not. They were contented to live held in respect by their neighbours,
to act as high sheriffs when called upon to do so, and sometimes to
represent their county in Parliament.
Perhaps the most distinguished of these ancestors of ours was Sir John
de Mitford, who was Knight of the Shire for Northumberland in various
Parliaments during the reigns of King Edward the Third, King Richard the
Second and King Henry the Fourth. He was High Sheriff for two years, and
acted as Commissioner with John Widdrington and Gerald Heron to tender
the Oath of Allegiance to the King of Scotland. On the 20th of May, 1369,
at Newton Hall, he received by deed of feoffment from David Strathbolgi,
Second Earl of Athol, a grant of all his lands and tenements in the
Ville of Molesden, to be holden of the grantor and his descendants by
the annual payment of sixpence. It has been said that this transfer led
to the adoption of the three moles as the family arms, but our family
tradition, which I believe to be well founded, is that they were of much
older date and taken from the Want’s Beck, the mole’s stream, as was
the name of Molesden itself. Sir John was in 1386 Keeper of the Seal to
Edward Duke of York for the Liberty of Tyndale.
On his death he was succeeded by his elder son William, who was, like
his father, Knight of the Shire and High Sheriff in Henry the Fifth’s
reign. Then followed his son John, a pious benefactor of the Church,
living, no doubt, in the sweetest odour of sanctity, who granted
tenements in Newcastle to the Church of St. Nicholas, and gave lands in
Echewicke to the Abbot and Convent of Newminster, to pray for his soul
and the souls of his ancestors. He died in the sixteenth year of the
reign of King Henry the Sixth. The following three Lords of the Manor,
Thomas, Bertram and Cawen, were inconspicuous persons, and there is
nothing to be said of our forebears until we come to Cuthbert, who in the
sixth year of Edward the Sixth was with Anthony Mitford of Ponteland,
Commissioner for the inclosure of the Middle Marches. This said Anthony
was a rogue. Cuthbert Mitford by his first wife, Ann, daughter of one
Wallis of Akeild, had one son, Robert, and three daughters: failing
that son Robert, Anthony of Ponteland would become Lord of the Manor of
Mitford and heir to all Cuthbert’s estate. To achieve this end he hatched
a plot, seeking to prove that there had been no marriage between Cuthbert
and Ann Wallis, and that in consequence Robert was illegitimate.
He contrived to have his contention entered in the Harleian MSS., and to
have Robert described as _nothus natus_—base-born, but when he presented
the document at the Heralds’ College, it proved to be signed only by
himself. On investigation, the lie was nailed to the counter, Robert’s
legitimacy was fully proved, and his arms were certified without a
difference. He was what would be looked upon in these days as a person of
rather lax opinions and was “presented” at the Archdeacon’s Visitations
“for sufferinge divers persons to eate, drinke and play atte cardes in
time of eveninge praier.” In spite of the Archidiaconal thunders, he
lived through the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James, and died in
the first year of King Charles the First’s reign at the good old age of
eighty-eight.
He was succeeded by his grandson Robert, both of whose parents had died
in his infancy on the same day. This Robert is an ancestor of special
interest for us. In the first place it was to him that King Charles the
Second restored by grant the Castle and royalties of Mitford, which had
been forfeit in punishment of Roger Bertram’s treason by King Henry
the Third in 1264, and secondly it is from his third son, John, who
left the old home to seek his fortune as a merchant in London, that we,
the Mitfords, formerly of Exbury, now of Batsford, are descended. The
Mitfords of Pitshill are descended from William, who was a great-grandson
of the Robert of Charles the Second’s time.
The portraits of Robert Mitford and Philadelphia Wharton, his wife, are
at Batsford. The contemporary frame of her picture is surrounded by
carved oak leaves and acorns in memory of the famous escape of the King,
and to denote her loyalty to his cause.
Let us linger for a few more moments among the ruins of the old
Cradle of our Race. In the dark centuries, when even if there was no
actual war between England and Scotland, there was almost continuous
fighting between the fierce clans on both sides, feuds and raids and
cattle-lifting were the salt of northern life; hatred was a profession,
revenge the accomplishment of a gentleman. The border castles were seldom
at rest, and Mitford fared no better than its neighbours.
Dreaming on a summer’s day within the, to us, sacred precincts, one can
almost hear the grey walls ringing with the music of sword, spear and
battle-axe clashing upon hauberk and breast-plate—the shouts of the
fighting men mad with the lust of blood—clouds of arrows rattling like
hail against the battlements should a head show itself. The borderers
were gay men at fighting, and the Scots ever met with a hot welcome.
After the treason of Sir Roger Bertram in 1264, wild men succeeded one
another in the ownership of the Castle. In the year 1316 it was the home
of a freebooter of the pattern of the Rhenish robber knights, named Sir
Gilbert de Middleton. He was an old soldier of fortune, who had fought
against Lewelin in the Welsh war and probably for that service was
rewarded with the Castle and Manor of Mitford. But he was infuriated
against King Edward, on account of the appointment to the See of Durham
of Lewis de Beaumont, a cousin of the Queen’s. It was said that Queen
Isabella, “the French she-wolf,” as she was called, had knelt upon her
bare knees before the King, praying him to confer this fat Bishopric
upon her kinsman. Sir Gilbert rebelled, proclaimed himself Duke of
Northumberland, and took the occasion of a mission which the King had
sent to Scotland, headed by two Cardinals and the Bishop of Durham, to
swoop down upon the Embassy and pillage it on its return South.
It was a mistake to attack the scarlet hat; the Church ever had a long
arm. Sir Gilbert was taken prisoner by Ralph de Greystoke (or, according
to Hollinshed, by Thomas Heton and William de Fulton), fettered in
irons and carried to Newcastle, whence he was shipped to Grimsby. From
Grimsby he rode to London with his feet tied under his horse’s belly,
was imprisoned in the Tower, and dragged by horses to the gallows on the
26th of June, 1318. His property and goods and those of his brother were
confiscated. (See Hodgson’s “Northumberland.”)
In 1318 Mitford was the property of Adomar de Valence, Earl of Pembroke,
and then it was that the last and fatal attack upon the Castle by the
King of Scotland took place, and the grand old stronghold that had
withstood the buffets of so many sieges was finally laid in ruins.
When one looks at the humble little village of Mitford to-day it is hard
to realize that it was once a borough! I know not how it may be now, but
when I was a boy the old folk held firmly to their traditions and to the
legends of the ancient greatness of the place; there was an old rhyme
which they loved to quote:
“Mitford was Mitford ere Morpeth was ane
And still shall be Mitford when Morpeth is gane.”
The feeling of clanship was strongly rooted in the people. In the fifties
of last century there was still living a delightful old woman, one Bella
Harbottle, who with her brother inhabited two, or three rooms, which were
all that remained of the seventeenth-century Manor House—just a tower
in an old-fashioned garden, which the brother tended, in the beauty of
which Bacon himself would have taken delight. The brother and sister were
specimens of a grand old type of northern peasantry not yet passed away,
thank Heaven! Their beautifully chiselled features, no less than their
proud bearing and dignified manners, might have befitted the descendants
of crusaders. She was always clad in an old-fashioned lilac print gown,
with a square of shepherd’s plaid crossed over the bosom. Her delicate,
high-bred face, with blue eyes, still bright and beautiful, was framed
in the frills of an immaculate mutch covering her ears and almost hiding
the snow-white hair; her small feet were always daintily cased in grey
worsted stockings and scrupulously blacked shoes. She must have been
nearly eighty years old when I used to sit with her in her kitchen—the
aged dame on one side of the hearth, the little boy on the other,
listening to her old-world tales of the past glories of Mitford. There
were always a few old-fashioned flowers in the kitchen-parlour, and she
herself sweetly reminded one of lavender. The good soul was always stout
for the rights and honour of the family.
A gentleman who had bought a small adjoining estate built himself a
house just on the boundary. Every day, almost, old Bella would walk out,
leaning on her crutched stick, to see that there was no encroachment. The
neighbour, aware of this, and greatly amused, said to her one day, “You
see, Bella, it is all right. I am not removing my neighbour’s landmark.”
“Ah!” grumbled she, with her sweet Northumbrian burr, “I’m thinking that
you’re building your house verra high.” Even the air was sacred to the
family of her worship.
To the east of the Manor House Tower is the old Norman church. When
I first went to Mitford it was a mere wreck, just sufficiently
weather-tight for service to be held; but it was beautifully restored
some fifty years since by the piety of the last owner but one, Colonel
John Philip Mitford.
And now it is time for us to leave the north and travel southward with
those who are more immediately responsible for us.
Merchant John, then, came to London, where he seems to have prospered in
his business, so much so as to make us wish that he had been furnished
in his baptism with some other Christian name, for he became possessed
of original shares in the Royal Exchange, the building of which King
Charles the Second laid the foundation stone in 1667 to take the place
of its predecessor of Queen Elizabeth’s time, which had been destroyed
in the great fire of 1666. Unfortunately there was no mention of these
shares in his will. There is no doubt that they were the property of this
particular John, our immediate ancestor, and when my father and the late
Lord Redesdale tried to prove their claim to them nobody doubted its
justice, but they were defeated by the fact that they could not prove
that there was no other John Mitford to whom they might have belonged; so
there they lie in some mouldy old chest, more useless than dead leaves in
autumn. Be this a lesson to those who call their sons John, or Thomas, or
William, to give them some second and less usual name to make what, in
armorial bearings, the heralds call a difference.
[Illustration: WILLIAM MITFORD (HISTORIAN OF GREECE)
_From an oil painting by John Jackson, R.A._]
Of this John and his son William there is nothing to be said, but the son
of the latter was another John, whose marriage on the 13th of September,
1740, with Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of Willey Reveley, of
Newton Underwood and Throphill in Northumberland and Newby-super-Wiske in
Yorkshire, played an important part in the history of our family, for to
them were born two remarkable sons, William, the historian of Greece, and
John, the first Lord Redesdale. Indirectly, too, this marriage was the
cause of a goodly inheritance coming to Lord Redesdale in 1808.
William Mitford,[7] who was born on the 10th of February, 1744, was my
great-grandfather, and a man of many and various accomplishments, in
his youth famous as one of the handsomest men of his day. Not only was
he a profound scholar, but he had a great knowledge of art; he drew
beautifully, and I have many of his water-colour paintings, which are
of rare merit; his sketch-books recording his journeys in many parts of
England are even now a joy to look through. The Royal Academy of his day
recognized his worth by making him their historian, an office now filled
by Lord Morley of Blackburn. In music, also, he was an expert, having a
practical knowledge of several instruments, and so keen was he that when
he was an old man, past seventy, he made a journey into Wales, a matter
of several days in those posting times, in order to learn the principles
of the triple Welsh harp.
He was Member of Parliament successively for Newport in Cornwall,
Beeralston and Romney, and commanded the Hampshire Militia. It was as a
Militia-man that he made friends with Gibbon, who was a brother officer
in the same regiment, and who persuaded him to undertake the history
of Greece, so that the Hampshire Militia had the honour of producing
two classical historians—the one of the “Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire,” the other of Greece.
Mitford’s history naturally took the Tory side in Greek politics: Grote
and Thirlwall followed on the Radical side. One day Thomas Carlyle began
talking to me about my great-grandfather; Carlyle was certainly no Tory,
but he praised the so-called Tory book far above the other two. He said
“that Mitford had the talent of clothing the dry bones of history with
living flesh and blood: he made the old Greeks speak and behave like
human beings, breathing a living spirit into his work.” The other two
were so dreary and dull that they provoked no sympathy in him.
Beyond all this the old Colonel, as he was called, was a very skilful
forester and gardener. I possess an old, much-worn pruning knife with
a horn handle which he always carried about when he was engaged in his
favourite pursuit of landscape gardening. When a boy, he and his brother
had been at school at Mr. Gilpin’s academy. Later in life he was able
to present Gilpin to the living of Boldre in Hampshire. This led to the
writing of the famous “Forest Scenery,” which Gilpin dedicated to his
former pupil and subsequent patron. Gilpin’s brother was Sawrey Gilpin,
R.A., the animal painter.
It happened that in the spring of 1862 my father, having some business to
transact with his agent and being unable to attend to it himself, sent
me down to Exbury to act on his behalf. Mr. Lewis Ricardo, who was the
tenant at the time, hearing that I was going there, very kindly offered
me bed and board, saying that, though he was detained in London, his
housekeeper would look after me. She made me very comfortable, and after
a light dinner and a pint of claret I went to bed. In the dead of the
night I was awakened—as it seemed to me—by a most uncanny noise in the
room over my head. Someone was dragging a very heavy weight up and down
the floor; then I heard the door open, and the footsteps came down the
stairs pulling the weight, bump, bump, bump, until whoever it was reached
my door. Then there was silence for a minute or two, and presently the
weight was dragged up again, bumping as before, the door of the upstairs
room was opened, the weight was dragged across it, and all was still.
I must have been dreaming all the time, for, though I was in deadly fear
of I knew not what, it never occurred to me to get up and see what awful
being it was that was standing so mysteriously outside my room. But the
whole thing was so vivid that the next morning I asked the housekeeper
who had occupied the room above me that night. Her answer was that the
room had been empty and locked and the key in her possession.
When I got back to London I told my father what I had heard. He was
a good deal startled, and replied that one of his grandfather’s
eccentricities had been, after a long day’s literary work, to go up into
an empty upstairs room and pull a heavy trunk about for exercise. I had
never, so far as I knew, heard this before; but it is possible, if it be
true that in our sleep we sometimes remember things long since forgotten,
that I might in years gone by have been told of the old man’s whim, and
that the fact of sleeping in that house struck some chord of a vanished
memory; as my father spoke, it almost seemed as if my presence had roused
the spirit of the forefather to come and see what manner of creature
his great-grandson might be. I insert the story for the benefit of the
professors of oneiromancy. To me it seems a curious specimen of dream
mystification.
The historian’s eldest son, Henry, was a captain in the Royal Navy. He
was twice married. By his first wife, the daughter of Anthony Wyke,
Attorney-General of Montserrat, he had a son and two daughters, of whom
only one, Frances, was alive in my time. She married her cousin, Bertram
Mitford, the head of the family and Squire of Mitford, which she occupied
after his death as a dower house; and so it happened that as a boy I
passed many happy holidays in the old home. My grandfather’s second wife
was Mary Leslie-Anstruther, whom he married in 1803. In the same year he
was appointed to the command of H.M.S. _York_, and before commissioning
her he went down with his navigating officer—master was the title in
those days—to survey her. They reported her unseaworthy. To that, the
answer was, in effect, “Sail, or resign your commission.”
Of course they sailed, and on Christmas Eve, 1803, in a fog in the North
Sea, the _York_ went down with all hands. Her guns of distress were
heard, but no help was forthcoming. I have been told that one spar with
“York” upon it was washed ashore on the coast of Yorkshire. There were
not then the means that there are now, thanks to Lloyd’s and modern
inventions, of obtaining information as to wrecks, and that single spar
was, I believe, the solitary evidence of the fate of the _York_. It was
something very like an official murder.
My father was born on the following twenty-first of June, a posthumous
child, and lived with his grandfather and his two sisters. His mother
soon married again, her second husband being Mr. Farrer, of Brayfield
in Buckinghamshire, who had been an officer in the Blues. I am afraid
that my father had not a very happy childhood, for the historian seems
to have been rather crabbed in his old age. Besides, he was fully taken
up with his studies and his work, and cared not to busy himself with the
yearnings of a child. However, his two half-sisters, Frances and Louisa,
were devoted to their brother, and the little boy had a good friend
in his grandfather’s younger brother, John, who, in the meantime, had
come to great distinction. Having been called to the Bar in 1777, he,
three years later, published the famous book commonly called “Mitford on
Pleadings,” which speedily became a classic. Lord Eldon said that it was
“a wonderful effort to collect what is to be deduced from authorities
speaking so little what is clear”; while Sir Thomas Plumer declared
that it “reduced the whole subject to a system with such universally
acknowledged learning, accuracy and discrimination, as to have been ever
since received by the whole profession as an authoritative standard and
guide.”
It was equally well accepted in America, and when I was in the United
States in 1873 more than one well-known judge and lawyer came up to me
wanting to know what relation I was to the “Pleadings.” The success of
the book brought prosperity and a seat in Parliament, by the favour
of his cousin, the Duke of Northumberland. In 1793 he succeeded his
lifelong friend Sir John Scott (Lord Eldon) as Solicitor-General; the
Attorneyship followed as a matter of course, and in 1801 he became
Speaker of the House of Commons. This latter office he did not hold
long, for in 1802 Lord Clare, who was Lord Chancellor of Ireland, died,
and Sir John Mitford was appointed to succeed him, being raised to the
peerage as Baron Redesdale of Redesdale in Northumberland, a title which
he took from the beautiful moorland property on the southern slope of
the Cheviots which he had purchased with the idea of linking himself as
closely as might be with the border home of the ancient clan.
It was a great wrench to resign the Speakership of the House of Commons,
a post of high honour for which he was admirably fitted. He left an
assembly over which he presided with a dignity and impartial tact which
confirmed the esteem and regard in which he was held by its members,
and justified their choice. At the call of duty he parted from his
friends and severed many ties of affection, to take up a task which,
however congenial it might be professionally, carried him into a country
where he was a stranger with a surrounding of men who were to him a new
experience—men possessed of great talents and a charm peculiarly their
own, but which did not appeal to his serious and rather matter-of-fact
nature. On the bench his success was immediate and triumphant.
Sheil, who was called to the Bar in 1811, and must have known many
of the counsel who practised before Lord Redesdale, said of him that
he introduced a reformation in Irish practice “by substituting great
learning, unwearied diligence, and a spirit of scientific discussion, for
the flippant apophthegms and irritable self-sufficiency of Lord Clare,”
and Story pronounced him to be “one of the ablest judges that ever sat in
equity.”
The Irish Bar speedily recognized in him a scientific lawyer of the
first quality, but the witty barristers, bubbling over with fun and
rollicking spirits, were socially quite out of touch with him. He did not
understand them, nor they him. O’Flanagan, in his “Lives of the Lords
Chancellors of Ireland,” tells several amusing stories of the way in
which the lawyers—none too respectfully, considering the dignity of his
office—cracked jokes in his solemn presence. “I never saw Lord Redesdale
more puzzled,” says Sir Jonah Barrington, “than at one of Plunket’s
_bons mots_. A cause was argued in Chancery, wherein the plaintiff prayed
that the defendant should be restrained from suing him on certain bills
of exchange, as they were nothing but kites. ‘Kites!’ exclaimed Lord
Redesdale, ‘Kites, Mr. Plunket? Kites could never amount to the value of
these securities. I don’t understand the statement at all, Mr. Plunket.’
‘It is not to be expected that you should, my lord,’ answered Plunket.
‘In England and Ireland kites are quite different things. In England the
wind raises the kite, but in Ireland the kite raises the wind.’ ‘I do
not feel any better informed yet, Mr. Plunket,’ said the matter-of-fact
Chancellor. ‘Well, my lord, I’ll explain the thing without mentioning
those birds of prey’—and thereon he explained that in Ireland bills and
notes which are not what is termed good security are commonly called
kites, because they are used to raise money, which is termed ‘raising the
wind.’”
Great as was Lord Redesdale as a judge, there were other duties of
his office which militated against his being a success in Ireland. He
was a devoted Church of England man and a bitter opponent of Catholic
emancipation, and it was abhorrent to him that any office, even that
of justice of the peace, should be held by a Roman Catholic. A letter
addressed by him to the Earl of Fingal on appointing him to the
Commission of the Peace provoked a correspondence which inflamed the
Roman Catholics against him, and was fiercely blamed in the House of
Commons by Fox and Canning.
The final crisis was brought about by his treatment of Lord Cloncurry,
who had twice been arrested for high treason, imprisoned under the Habeas
Corpus Suspension Act in 1799, and very harshly treated in the Tower of
London. When the Habeas Corpus Act was restored, he regained his liberty
after two years all but a few days, and went abroad for four years. On
his return, a Mr. Burne, a King’s Counsel, applied on Lord Cloncurry’s
behalf for his admission to the Commission of the Peace. Lord Redesdale
resented this interference of a third person, and wrote Mr. Burne an
angry and not very judicious answer, in which Lord Cloncurry’s past
history was raked up as a ground of refusal. This drew a furious letter
from Lord Cloncurry himself, in which he recited the illegality and
cruelty under which he had suffered, and made a violent attack upon the
bigotry and prejudice of the Chancellor. The Lord Lieutenant, the Earl
of Hardwicke, at once ordered the Chancellor to insert Lord Cloncurry’s
name in the magistracy of the two Counties of Kildare and Dublin, and
further offered to recommend that nobleman for promotion in the Peerage.
The Viscount’s coronet was refused, but the indignity placed upon the
Chancellor was complete. Mr. Ponsonby was appointed to hold the Great
Seal of Ireland, and pending his arrival, the Great Seal was put in
Commission and Lord Redesdale was not even allowed to sit in the Court
of Chancery—his own court. This, in his farewell speech to the Bar, he
described as “a personal insult.”
His final letter to Lord Cloncurry was characteristic. “My Lord, I have
desired instructions with respect to the insertion of your lordship’s
name in the Commission of the Peace for the Counties of Dublin and
Kildare, and I have to request that your lordship will be pleased to
apply to Mr. Ponsonby, whom His Majesty has appointed Chancellor of
Ireland, and to whom the Great Seal will be delivered as soon as he shall
arrive in the country. I have, etc. (sgd.) Redesdale.” So the stout old
Lord stuck to his colours, and without bending left Ireland in 1806,
having held his office for four years.
It is a singular instance of the fickleness of fate that he should have
been hounded out of Ireland by the Roman Catholics of that country, when
their co-religionists in England had a few years before got up a national
subscription to present him with a magnificent piece of gold plate, in
gratitude for the determined action in the House of Commons, by which
they were relieved from those penal laws to which they had been subject
for more than two hundred years. That golden vase is a treasured heirloom
at Batsford.
There was nothing inconsistent in his conduct. His nature, essentially
humane and merciful, recoiled from anything which savoured of
persecution: at the same time, in the political government of his
country, his Protestant principles and his attachment to the existing
Constitution found no place for the professors of a form of religion
which, in his view, constituted a danger to the State.
Meanwhile, in 1803, Lord Redesdale had contracted a marriage with Lady
Frances Perceval, daughter of Lord Egmont, and sister of the Prime
Minister, Spencer Perceval, who was murdered by Bellingham in 1812.
This happy union brought him three children, two of whom, his son
who afterwards became first and only Earl of Redesdale, and Frances
Elizabeth, survived him.
Lord Redesdale’s father, John Mitford of Exbury, was married, as I have
said above, to a Miss Reveley, whose sister[8] was the wife of Thomas
Edwards Freeman,[9] a wealthy and highly respected squire in the County
of Gloucester. This Mr. Freeman had only one son,[10] who predeceased
him, as did also the son’s wife, Mary Curtis[11] that was, leaving a
daughter[12][13] who married Mr. Heathcote of Dursley in Hampshire. But
this daughter had apparently inherited the bad health of her parents;
she had no child, and it became evident to Mr. Freeman that she was not
likely to live: so in his will he made provision that failing her and
any children that she might have, since he had apparently no relations
of his own, his property should go to his wife’s nephew, Lord Redesdale.
Mrs. Heathcote did not survive her grandfather by many days, and almost
immediately after his death in 1808, the property of Batsford passed to
the ex-Chancellor of Ireland.
One fine day the old lord took his little son, aged three, to see
Mr. Freeman, who went and fetched a crazy old barrel organ, which he
proceeded wheezily to grind for the child’s pleasure: when he had
finished playing, the boy turned to his father and said with much
dignity, “Give the old man a shilling!” to the great amusement of the
benefactor whose property the child was one day to inherit.
Lord Redesdale never again held any office, though Mr. Perceval wished
him to return to the Chancellorship of Ireland. He knew how unpopular he
was in that country, and wisely declined. He preferred his independence,
and became a very useful and much consulted member of the House of Lords.
Lady Redesdale died in 1817, and Lord Redesdale thirteen years later at
the age of eighty-one.
The second Lord Redesdale, who was educated at Eton and at New College,
Oxford, speedily made his mark in the House of Lords by his diligence
and capacity for business. The Duke of Wellington appointed him to be
his Whip, and encouraged him to master all the details of the procedure
and private business of the House with a view to his becoming Chairman
of Committees, an office for which on the death of Lord Shaftesbury in
February, 1851, he was chosen unanimously and which he held until his
death in 1886.
He was a keen sportsman, master and owner of the Heythrop hounds, which
post he resigned when he found public business increasingly making
inroads upon his time, but though he ceased to be master, the hounds
remained his property until Mr. Albert Brassey, who had recently become
master, made overtures to him to buy them. At first Lord Redesdale
refused, but eventually yielded, and gave the purchase money, £2,000, to
the hunt as an endowment. He was a good shot, though he very rarely went
out with a gun; gave great attention to local affairs, never missing the
sittings of the Board of Guardians. “Give old Pensioner (his hack) his
head,” said his studgroom, “and he’ll go straight to Shipston.[14]” He
continued to hunt so long as he was able and always hacked to covert, no
matter what the distance might be.
No man was more looked up to, and I don’t believe that he had an enemy
in the world, unless it might be among certain Parliamentary agents and
promoters over whose proceedings he kept so strict a watch that he earned
the name of the Lord Dictator. It was mainly owing to his determined
action that the attempt to abolish the appellate jurisdiction of the
House of Lords fell through. His literary controversy with Cardinal
Manning on the Infallible Church and the Holy Communion is still
remembered by ecclesiastics. He wrote several pamphlets, chiefly on
doctrinal or genealogical subjects, in which his arguments were always
ingenious and well expressed. In 1877 he was created an Earl by Queen
Victoria on the recommendation of Lord Beaconsfield.
Lord Redesdale never married. He and his sister kept house together at
Batsford until her death in 1866. She was a woman of great ability, full
of sympathy with all her brother’s pursuits: her loss was a cruel blow
to him, and during the twenty years which followed between her death and
his, he never put off mourning. I was in the Far East when she died, and
after all these years I could repeat by heart much of the touching letter
which he wrote to me as being the one man to whom he could open out the
grief that was in his soul.
Batsford stands on a lovely spur of the Cotswold Hills, crowned with a
glory of oaks and elms, beeches, ashes and chestnuts, a most fascinating
spot, and here it was that, under the genial influence of the kind old
lord, whose portrait by Lawrence is the very embodiment of goodwill
towards men, the happiest days of my father’s childhood were spent.
The three little cousins were devoted to one another. It was a beautiful
friendship which strengthened as they grew up, and only ended with their
lives. No two men could have been greater contrasts than my father and
the late Lord Redesdale: perhaps their affection was all the stronger for
that; it had begun in childhood and lasted into extreme old age; they
were always happy together, and when they were parted it was rarely that
a day passed without their writing to one another. They went to the same
schools, Iver first, then Eton, but not in the same house. At Oxford Lord
Redesdale was at New College, my father at Magdalen.
My father did not stay long at college. He soon left the University
to take up an attachéship at the Legation at Florence, where Lord
Burghersh[15] was minister, in whom he had the luck to find a most
sympathetic chief, devoted to art, and especially to music, which with my
father was a passion. The musical society of Florence at that time was
brilliant, and the young attaché was speedily welcomed into its intimacy.
Of those days he had many stories, none, I think, more curious than this.
One evening after the opera there was a supper party at the house of
the Grisis, the parents of the famous prima donna. Giudetta, the elder
daughter, had been singing and the unhappy tenor had been hissed off
the stage with all the viciousness of which an Italian audience has the
secret. My father was sitting next to Giulia Grisi, then a little girl
of twelve—it was in 1827—and he happened to say to her: “Ebben Giulia, I
suppose some day you will be singing in grand opera?” “I sing in opera,”
answered the beautiful child, “and run the risk of being hissed like that
wretched man to-night!” In two years’ time, 1829, she made a precocious
début at Bologna, and was not exactly hissed! Seldom can there have been
a more triumphant career than hers from the day when, as a mere chit of
fourteen, she dazzled the world with her beauty and that lovely velvety
voice.
There was also at that time at Florence a very charming English coterie,
which gathered round Lord and Lady Burghersh. Lord and Lady Dillon were
there with their daughters, and I have often heard my wife’s grandmother,
old Lady Stanley of Alderley, who was one of them, say how agreeable
the society of the Legation then was. Among others who occupied villas
were my grandparents, Lord and Lady Ashburnham, and it was there that my
father and mother made acquaintance. They were married in February, 1828.
There is much talk nowadays about links with the past. I take it that
there are not many men who can say, as I can, that they had an uncle
whose portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds who died in 1792. My
grandfather’s first wife was Lady Sophia Thynne, and there is a beautiful
portrait of her at Ashburnham by Sir Joshua, playing with her baby boy
who lies in her lap: that boy, my uncle, was born in 1785, just one
hundred and thirty years ago. The picture was privately engraved, and I
have one of the only twenty-five copies that were struck off.
His second wife, my grandmother, was Lady Charlotte Percy, sister of the
Duke of Northumberland. She was a noted beauty, and there is a charming
portrait of her by Hoppner, which has also been engraved.
Among the treasures which are at Ashburnham is one of the two shirts worn
by King Charles the First at his execution. Everybody remembers how the
King insisted on wearing two shirts lest on that cold January morning he
should shiver, and men should think that it was from fear. The shirt was
kept as a sacred relic by our ancestor, John Ashburnham, who attended
His Majesty on the scaffold: it was deeply stained with the blood of the
Martyr, and people used to beg to be allowed to touch it as a remedy
for the King’s Evil. When my grandmother came back from Florence, she
asked the housekeeper where the shirt was. “Quite safe, Mylady,” was the
answer, “but it was so stained that I have had it washed.” The pity of
it! The second shirt is at Windsor.
My grandfather’s Garter was a great honour, if something of a
disappointment. He had been a great friend of George the Fourth when he
was Prince of Wales, and the Prince had promised him that when he should
come to the throne, he would show him some mark of his favour. Lord
Ashburnham attended his first levée. In those days, and indeed down to
the end of King William the Fourth’s reign, a levée was not what it is
now; it was a reception attended by very few people, and the King entered
into conversation with everyone present in turn. The King greeted my
grandfather most cordially, saying, “Ah! George, I see you have come to
remind me of my promise. Well, there is a Garter vacant, and you shall
have it.” (The Garter, like all other honours, was then still in the gift
of the sovereign without any reference to ministers). My grandfather was
deeply grateful, but he had a large family, and he had hoped that he
might have obtained for his second son some one of those snug offices to
which the only duty attached was the reception of the salary—sinecures
now all vanished!—and instead of that, at a moment when he was feeling
rather poor, he had to find one thousand pounds for fees.
[Illustration: THE ASHBURNHAM FAMILY.]
Of my mother’s brothers and sisters, those that I knew best were
my uncles Charles, who was in the Diplomatic Service, and Thomas,
who was first in the Coldstream Guards and, after exchanging into
the line, served in many Indian battles; his last post was that of
Commander-in-Chief at Hong Kong; he was one of the wittiest of men,
endowed with the power of giving a fantastic turn to the most commonplace
topics, and his subtle humour was enhanced by being rendered in a musical
speaking voice which was a special attraction in all his family. He was
the darling of society, and might easily have been a spoilt darling, but
that was impossible.
His last years—he died in 1872—were spent in the very able administration
of various charities. The widow of my Uncle Charles, a brilliantly clever
woman, married Sir Godfrey Webster, and became the châtelaine of Battle
Abbey, which was afterwards bought by the Duchess of Cleveland, the
authoress of the “Roll of Battle Abbey,” and the mother of Lord Rosebery.
My aunt, Lady Jane Swinburne, was the mother of the poet. She was a very
cultivated woman, to whose bringing up he owed the finest side of his
character.
I hardly knew my eldest uncle, Lord Ashburnham, the famous scholar and
bibliophile, a man of recognized learning and taste. He was a great Pasha
of whom men stood in terror. Old Mr. Quaritch, the bookseller, used to
tell a good story of him.
Like the rest of mankind, he quailed before the great man. The running
account between the two used to run into very high figures. One day Mr.
Quaritch called at Ashburnham House, and the Earl, glaring at him through
his awe-compelling spectacles, asked what he wanted. “Well, my lord, I
have come to ask your lordship if you could let me have a little money
on account.” “Money, sir!” answered my uncle, “what on earth can you
want with money?” “My lord, there is a great sale coming off at Paris
next week, and as your lordship knows these Paris sales are a question
of ready money.” “Go away, sir! Go away! You want to go to Paris and
speculate with _MY MONEY!_” A just indignation beamed through the awful
spectacles. The argument was irresistible. Mr. Quaritch was glad to make
his escape, crossed over to Paris the next day and did not “speculate
with my uncle’s money.”
And now as a last word let me brag a little after the manner of Ajax and
Ulysses as recorded in the quotation from Ovid, with which I started this
record. It is true that, unlike those heroes, I cannot claim a descent
from Jupiter, who, after all, was rather a disreputable Père Prodigue;
yet I am inclined, for my children’s sake, and as an encouragement to
them to incite their own children to prove themselves worthy “citizens
of no mean city,” to show them that they come of a goodly stock on both
sides. I have in my possession a short family tree in the handwriting of
the second Lord Redesdale, who, as I have said above, took great delight
in genealogy. That tree shows that the Lords Ogle of Northumberland, who
were our forbears, were descended both on the father’s side and on the
mother’s from Charlemagne. My cousin traced it as follows:
Charlemagne, A.D. 800.
Pepin, King of Italy.
Bernard, 818.
Pepin, Lord of Peroune and St. Quentin.
Herbert I., 902.
Herbert II., Count de Vermandois, 943.
Robert, Count de Troyes.
Adelair = Geoffrey, Earl of Anjou, 957.
Fulco II., the Black Earl of Anjou.
Ermangarde = Geoffrey, Count de Gastinois.
|
+---------------------+----------------------+
| |
Fulco IV., Earl of Anjou Judith =| Iro Tailbois,
and King of Jerusalem niece of William the | Baron of
Geoffrey Plantagenet Conqueror and widow | Kendal, 1114
Henry II., King of England of Waltheof, Earl of |
John Northumberland and |
Henry III. Lord of Hepple Barony |
Edward I. William Tailbois de Hepple, 1150.
Edward II.
Edward III. Richard.
John of Gaunt. Robert.
Joan = Neville, Earl of Westmorland Robert.
Robert, 1300
Catherine = Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk Joan Annabella = Sir Robert Ogle.
heiress of Hepple
Catherine = Sir Robert Grey Barony.
Robert = Helen, daughter of
Sir Robert Bertram.
Robert = Joan de Heton
Maud who married Sir Robert Ogle.
Constance, the daughter of Sir Robert Ogle (the first Lord Ogle), married
John de Mitford in 1437, and from them descended:
Bertram.
Gawen, 1550.
Cuthbert
Robert.
Cuthbert
Robert, b. 1612.
John.
William.
John.
William (the historian, my great-grandfather).
Captain Henry Mitford, R.N.
Henry Reveley Mitford.
Myself.
My wife’s father, David, seventh Earl of Airlie, was the lineal
descendant of the Mormaers, hereditary royal deputies of Angus. Scotland
was in ancient days divided into seven parts, each ruled by a Mormaer or
Maormor, a title which as long ago as the eleventh century was converted
into that of Earl. The story of the Ogilvys in more modern days, how
they fought for their King and were attainted as Jacobites, is too well
known to need retelling, nor need I speak of the burning by the Campbells
of the Bonnie House of Airlie. Historians have recorded it; poets and
musicians have sung it.
Lord Airlie married Henrietta Blanche, the daughter of Lord Stanley of
Alderley, a cadet branch of a family so proud that it used to be said of
them “The Stanleys do not marry: they contract alliances.” Here again are
two pedigrees tracing back to the remotest times of which there is any
record. There is no need to search out the family tree of the Stanleys to
prove their descent from Charlemagne. It is a matter of common knowledge.
It is only in the case of inconspicuous families like our own that it is
well to set down for those who come after us that which is so easily lost
sight of. When in this year, 1915, the shells are flying in the trenches,
it should be a stimulant to a man to think that he has in his veins some
of the blood of Charlemagne and of that glorious old Charles Martel, the
hammer that at the battle of Poitiers saved Europe from being overrun by
hordes of Saracens nearly twelve hundred years ago.
CHAPTER II
FRANKFORT—PARIS—TROUVILLE
I was born on the 24th of February, 1837, in South Audley Street, in
a house long since pulled down, which stood at the southern corner of
Hill Street. My father had left the Diplomatic Service on his marriage
and for some years my parents lived at Exbury, the old family place
overlooking the Solent through vistas in the trees, where, sitting in the
drawing-room, you could see the great battleships with their bellying
sails—men-of-war of the pattern of Nelson’s days—the stately wooden
walls of old England, the huge West Indiamen travelling to and from
Southampton, “sailing between worlds and worlds with steady wing”—and the
dainty little Cowes yachts pertly flitting among them like graceful white
gulls.
Ships were indeed a thing of beauty in those days, and Exbury was an
earthly paradise; but like diamond tiaras and ropes of pearls, it was
a costly luxury, unremunerative. My people had to retrench, the lovely
home was let, and they went abroad to economize. In this way it happened
that I first awoke to life at Frankfort in 1840—that at any rate is my
earliest dim recollection. Two years later my father left Germany and
took us to live in France.
* * * * *
1842-1846.—I can hardly believe that it is only seventy-three years since
we first went to live in France. When I think of the immense changes
that have taken place in that beloved country since then, it seems more
like seven hundred. The upheavals of wars and revolutions, two Dynasties
gone, toppled over like houses of cards, sovereigns lauded up to the
skies one year, hounded out of existence the next, followed by the howls
and execration of infuriated mobs; 1848 and the barricades—the _coup
d’état_ of 1851—the Second Empire—the Crimean War—Mexico and the murder
of Maximilian—the war of 1870 followed by the Commune—France shorn of
two great provinces—Paris improved out of all its picturesqueness by
the commonplace uniformity of Hausmannism—only here a nook and there a
corner left—all these seem to be transformation scenes which would need
centuries to carry out, and yet they have all taken place in my lifetime.
But not in France alone; in Europe, Asia, America, Africa and Australia,
the seventy-eight years of my life have witnessed more changes than any
similar period in the world’s history.
For four years we passed the winter and spring—the season in those
days—in Paris—never twice in the same apartments, though we always
remained in the neighbourhood of the Madeleine—a convenient quarter for
our elders and for ourselves, for it was no great distance from the
gardens of the Tuileries, where we used to play with a number of little
French friends—I have forgotten the names of all of them save only one
called Jules—I suppose he had a surname, but if he did I never knew it—he
was always “le petit Jules.” He was of about my own age, very small, but
of a quite demonic cleverness, and at marbles he was a hero. He broke us
all, and many a time we went home with empty bags—not a bulge in ours—his
bursting with wealth, and yet we loved him.
I remember one tragic episode of a beautiful white alley with rosy pink
veins, the pride of my soul. The little villain challenged me to play
him, offering to stake a superb agate against it. In less time than it
takes to write the tale the alley was his. My beautiful white alley! I
was but seven years old and I wept bitterly. I wonder whether “le petit
Jules,” if he is yet alive, remembers how he avenged Waterloo that day
in his victory over the English boy. I don’t suppose that he often plays
marbles now, but if he is yet alive, I feel sure that his many talents
have led him to great successes in all his endeavours, whatever they may
have been.
Many merry days we spent among the trees and statues of those gardens,
and often on a sunny morning we could see the old King, Louis Philippe,
pacing the terrace fronting the river. He used generally to wear
a long grey great-coat with a huge steeple hat covering the famous
_Poire_[16]—an astute, none-too-reliable old man. He never had but one
companion on his walks—probably General Baudrand, his most familiar
friend—perhaps Guizot or some minister—talking earnestly, stopping
every now and then to enforce a point with appropriate gesticulations.
Hatching plots, Spanish marriage for Montpensier, or some other villainy?
Probably. But that old grey coat covered a King, and we looked at it with
awe.
As might be expected in the case of a King whose own people admitted that
the one thing he lacked was dignity, his Court seems to have been the
shoddiest affair that could be imagined; we used to hear many stories
of its vulgarities. Old Lady Sandwich, grandmother of the present earl,
spent much Irish wit upon it. Her descriptions of the bourgeois courtiers
were inimitable. She happened to go to an audience just about the time
that there was so much fuss about poor Queen Pomaré—the ex-Queen of
Tahiti. The equerry who was to announce her asked the English lady’s name.
“La Comtesse de Sandwich.”
“Pardon, Madame, je n’ai pas bien compris.”
“La Comtesse de Sandwich.”
“Mille pardons, Madame—mais ces noms anglais sont si difficiles.”
The man was evidently determined to be insolent, but Lady Sandwich turned
the tables on him by saying with a laugh:
“Mon Dieu! Monsieur, dites donc la Reine Pomaré!”
That smothered him—everybody laughed, and she stalked into the presence
majestic and triumphant.
Another time at a court ball, she had struggled through the shabby crowd
to the buffet and got herself an ice, when a big hand snatched it from
her and from the mouth that belonged to the hand there issued, “Enfoncée
la petite mère!” She turned round, furious—it was her bootmaker in the
garb of the Garde Nationale. He had only seen her back, so had not
recognized her. When he did see——!
Of the Royal Family in the Tuileries there were two members at whom
nobody sneered, of whom nobody spoke an evil word—Queen Amélie and
the Duc d’Aumale. Her goodness and dignity won universal respect and
admiration. Of the Duc d’Aumale I shall have a word to say elsewhere. As
for the rest, there was no great halo of majesty about them. The wily
old fox himself was distrusted where he was not hated. The Legitimists
spoke of him as the very incarnation of the Revolution, like his father
Égalité, a traitor to his King and to his caste. How dared he call
himself “King of the French” when his cousin was the lawful “King of
France?” The sons, Nemours, Joinville, Montpensier, I used to hear spoken
of with scant respect—no great harm about them; but poor creatures,
commanding neither regard nor affection; nobody seemed to associate with
them or to wish their friendship. When I came to know them later in life
in this country I understood the talk to which I had listened as a child.
The death of the Duc d’Orléans excited sympathy from its tragic
character, besides which he like the Duc d’Aumale, but in a lesser
degree, had earned some credit in the Algerian campaign. I can just
remember the horror with which the news of the fatal accident when he was
thrown from his carriage, between Paris and Neuilly, was received. It was
in 1842, just seventy-three years ago!
My father’s many accomplishments—music, painting, languages—made him
welcome beyond the usual run of foreigners in French society. He was,
moreover, wonderfully well-read in the old memoirs of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, and quite an authority on historic French
portraits. So much so that when I once said to him that I felt sure that
if he were to find himself transported back to one of the famous salons
of those times he would know almost all the people by sight, his answer
was, “Upon my word, I believe I should.”
The society of the Faubourg in the early forties must have been very
interesting; there were so many people still living who could talk as
eye-witnesses of the horrors of the great Revolution: at the time of
our sojourning in France there was less interval separating us from the
Terreur than there is between to-day and the Crimean War.
A man of seventy years in 1842 was twenty years of age when the King was
murdered; yet it seems difficult to believe now that, as a child, I often
listened, my hair almost on end, to men and women telling how they had
seen their nearest and dearest led off in the tumbrils to the shambles of
Monsieur de Paris, and recounting the miracles by which they themselves
had escaped. There were many such. Indeed, the Duchesse d’Angoulème
herself—the woman of so many tears that to her dying day in 1851 her poor
eyes suffered from the chronic weeping known as _gutta lachrymans_—who as
a child had, with her unhappy mother, gone through the miseries of the
Conciergerie, and seen the King and Queen, both her parents led away to
the scaffold, was living, though not in France, and my father knew her
well—in all respects a wonderful woman, of whom Napoleon said that she
was “the only man in the family.”
It is now the fashion to laugh at the story that Robespierre, minded
to marry her, sought an interview with her in prison. She, warned
beforehand, maintained a dead silence, refusing to utter a word, and he
left the room, banging the door and exclaiming, “Bégueule comme toute sa
famille.” My father, who had exceptional relations with the old French
Legitimists, firmly believed that this really happened, and he had good
reason for his faith. Of people whom I actually knew and who had survived
the Revolution, several were in various ways notable.
At Trouville we became very intimate with the family of the Marquis de
Chaumont Quitry. The two sons, Félix and Odon, were splendid young men
who, among others, made the place gay, and on a fine evening they would
carry out their _trompes de chasse_ and make the rocks ring with the
“Hallali,” the “Rendezvous des Chasseurs,” and other fanfares, to the
great joy of us children.
The old Marquis had been a great figure among the _émigrés_. When still
little more than a boy he had contrived to make his escape from the
Terreur with his young wife, and landed in England with a few pounds in
his pocket. Many friends were eager to help him, but he was as proud as
his ancestor, Robert de Chaumont, the knight of the First Crusade, and
he would accept nothing. With the little money that he had he bought
cloth, thread, scissors, needles, and whalebone, and set up with the
Marquise as a stay-maker somewhere in Soho—a hero, if ever there was
one—and it became the fashion for fine ladies to have their stays made by
the noble descendant of Crusaders whose pedigree could be traced back to
Charlemagne.
There was another wizened little old gentleman, whose name I have
forgotten, who used to tell us anecdotes of the straits to which he was
put during his life in London; but after all, it might have been worse,
and he was able to feed himself for very little money. In the cheap slum
in which he lived there used to appear every morning a man with little
pieces of meat on skewers; for two or three pence you could obtain “des
petites portions,” quite enough for a meal, “et ma foi! ça n’était pas
trop mauvais; ça s’appelle Kami.” He was dealing with the cat’s-meat man!
I used often to be taken to see the venerable Marquise du Mesnil, who
had been lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette. The old lady lived in a
wonderful apartment full of glorious old furniture, Gobelins tapestry,
Sèvres china, vernis Martin, fans and pictures, memorials of the old
Court which would fetch a king’s ransom to-day. I sometimes wondered
whether the windows of those rooms had ever been opened since the house
was built, for the air was thick with a peculiar musty, stuffy, mousey
smell, over which neither musk nor verveine could prevail. Here she sat
bolt upright with a priceless snuffbox in her wizened hand, telling tales
which made me gasp with terror, until I could almost see Judith carrying
the bleeding head out of the tapestry in the boudoir to the music of the
_carmagnole_ in the street below.
At the Musée Carnavalet, or looking at the Princess de Lamballe’s
little pink slipper at the Cluny, I am reminded of that house of fear
from which I used to escape trembling, but to which, such was its weird
fascination, I always used to beg to be taken every time my people went
to visit there. The old lady was always very kind to the little boy who
never quite knew whether he feared or loved her, but who had a lurking
suspicion that she must be some relation of that fairy who was not asked
to the christening.
A great pleasure on our homeward walk from the Rive Gauche was to
be allowed, after recrossing the river, to go through the Place
du Carrousel, between the Louvre and the Tuileries, not then the
magnificent, dull and highly respectable space that it now is, but a
regular fair, with all sorts of cheap booths, where dogs and cats and
monkeys, many strange beasts, birds from over-sea islands, parrots
and fowls with gaudy plumage, snakes, tortoises, cheap and entrancing
sham jewellery and rubbish were for sale. It was very picturesque,
very smelly and very dirty, the screams of the macaws, the barking
of the dogs, and the cries of the vendors made the day noisome and
hideous, but we youngsters loved it with all its filth, and the present
spick-and-spanness is no compensation for the magnets of attraction that
have been swept away.
I wonder where these sweepings agglomerate into life again. There must
be some place where the humble _piou-piou_ buys a cheap ring for his
lady-love, some place where the _marchand de coco_ tinkles his bell among
the crowd, where the distressful person who earns his living by picking
up cigar-ends, now partially ruined by the cigarette craze and the end
of snuff-taking, can ply his trade, and the cries of the old-clothes man
and the dealer in stale fruit may be heard, some place from which modern
ideas will drive them once more into the wilderness; for after all, it
must be admitted that the picturesque charms of Petticoat Lane are hardly
in harmony with the sedateness of an improving neighbourhood, let alone
a great architectural quadrangle separating two palaces, one, alas! now
gone for ever.
There were other walks—the Jardins des Plantes, the Bois de Boulogne,
and so many pleasant expeditions. But what I grew to love most, as the
years rolled on, were the quaint old nooks and corners that we used to
come upon in remote and unexpected places, remnants of the old Paris of
the Trois Mousquetaires—delightful people!—curiously gabled streets where
the oil lanterns still swung from wires fastened to the houses on either
side, places just fit for rufflers like d’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos,
Aramis, swaggering hand on hilt; dark, mysterious, labyrinthine quarters,
very primitive and no doubt very unhygienic; but then you cannot have
everything.
One not very judicious outing I remember when I was seven years old, and
a sentimental tutor from Demler’s school, to which we were sent, took
several of his pupils, myself among them, to the Morgue to see the corpse
of a girl who had been murdered—stabbed to death—by her sweetheart. It
was a horrid place, that old Morgue, where the dead bodies were laid out
naked on marble slabs with a tiny trickle of water playing upon them,
like salmon in a fishmonger’s shop, and their poor rags of clothing hung
damp, empty and melancholy from the ceiling. The sight almost made me
sick and fed me with nightmares for weeks.
One of my father’s best friends in Paris was the old Duchesse de Rauzan.
She had recently built herself a house at Trouville, on the sands near
the mouth of the river. Trouville was then a tiny fishing village. The
only other house besides that of the Duchesse was one built close to hers
by Doctor, afterwards Sir Joseph, Olliffe, the physician to the English
Embassy. The Duchesse was anxious to get a few of her friends to camp for
the summer in the fishermen’s cottages and make up a pleasant _coterie_.
Amongst others, she persuaded my father to join the party. One day my
father had taken me with him to call on the Duchesse, to inquire further
before deciding, and as we were sitting there, a footman announced
“Monsieur le Docteur Billard.”
“What a piece of luck!” said the Duchesse. “Monsieur Billard is the
Trouville doctor, so you will be able to ask him all about it.”
Questioned, Billard answered, “Monsieur, Trouville est un trou!” and went
into fits of laughter at the fullness of his own wit.
The answer, however, did not suit the Duchesse’s book, so the poor doctor
was promptly snubbed and told not to talk nonsense. I was destined to
see a good deal of that learned man of pills and noxious draughts in
the next four years, and he became one of my most intimate enemies. He
was a primitive, and so far as I was concerned he had but one remedy,
a horrible decoction of gum arabic and sugar, called _sirop de gomme_,
which presumably was intended to glue together any little portions of the
human organization which might have got out of joint, and was his panacea
for all ailments except the toothache; for that he had a dreadful
instrument of torture called a German key—upon me he experimented with
both.
He was a humorist: “N’ayez pas peur, mon petit ami; nous allons guérir ça
avec un peu de baume d’acier.” In went the “baume d’acier” into my mouth,
and with a great wrench out came the tooth. Howling with pain, rage and
indignation at having been tricked, I wreaked an inadequate revenge upon
M. Billard’s shins. But this is forestalling events. In spite of the
doctor’s wit, the Duchesse easily talked over my father, and the result
was five most happy summers in the brightest of surroundings.
And so it came to pass that one fine day in 1842 we all embarked on the
railway, then a very new institution, which went no further than Rouen,
where we slept, and on the following morning two huge yellow diligences,
which my father had chartered to carry us and our fortunes to the
Norman coast, were standing outside the old-fashioned inn. My father,
my grandmother, two aunts, my two brothers and myself, besides a German
tutor and a white poodle, made up the crew.
Greatly hindered was the packing of the crazy old coaches by that
nondescript, motley crowd that used to fill an inn-yard on those
occasions, a crowd quite unknown to the traveller of to-day, long since
as extinct as the great auk, all shouting, swearing and spitting, all
giving different opinions, with much gesticulation, as to what trunk
should be placed where, in unison only when the question of _pourboires_
turned up, in unison then—not in harmony.
Off at last! The great lumbering diligences rattling over the cobble
stones of the glorious old cathedral city, stopping now and then for
pack-thread repairs to the harness, the coachman cracking a long
whip, the stick made of twisted willow and garnished with red cotton
tassels to match those on his horn, which he from time to time tootled
distractingly, shouting at his horses, the near leader, a favourite,
being addressed lovingly as “Coco,” the off leader held up to contempt as
a “sacred canary-bird,” and the wheelers being left to jog on in peace as
the spirit moved them, nibbling with fond kisses at one another’s ears,
and all four merrily jingling their bells.
It was a weary journey, and we were all very tired, hungry, cross and
scratchy (for the straw in the bottom of the diligence harboured a colony
of greedy fleas), when we rolled along the quay in state and finally drew
up at the chemist’s shop, kept by one Madame Gamard, the upper floors of
which we were to occupy.
It was a mean old house, at the entrance to a curly street, the back
windows of which overlooked a butcher’s shambles, where every morning
at daybreak bovine sacrifices took place, a gruesome sight, which the
German tutor used to wake us up to witness. He would not have missed a
death-blow or a groan for anything. He revelled in blood like Ivan the
Terrible. If only, as in the case of the cruel Tsar, it had been human
blood, one felt that his treat would have been complete. At the back
of the house slaughter; in the front drugs and potions in wonderfully
inscribed gallipots, interspersed with fly-blown caramels and sugared
almonds almost as nauseous as the salts and senna.
Only a maid and a cook, with my nurse and my father’s manservant, came
with us from Paris, so as we were a largish party, my grandmother had
to engage two additional women selected from the local talent. Her star
was in the ascendant when for one of them her choice fell upon Marie
Letac—and here I am at once met by a difficulty. How to spell the name?
As no member of the Letac family had ever been taught to read or write,
such superfluous accomplishments not being the fashion at Trouville,
the spelling was a matter of debate. Should the name end with a _c_,
or _que_, or _cque_, or _ques_, or _cques_? I take the line of least
resistance and adopt the final _c_.
Marie was a dear, rosy-faced, good-humoured, very plump person of some
forty years—snuff her one dissipation, her one extravagance. How she
managed to stow away so much was a mystery; a large, flat nose and the
stains on her apron would account for some of it, but surely not for
all. Her union with a thin, red-haired, weasel-faced carpenter had been
blessed by a numerous family, obviously hardy annuals. She was a great
character, but when she came back the following year from Paris, whither
she had insisted on accompanying us, she became a notable authority
touching the glories of the capital, upon which she would descant to
Weasel-face and a select circle of _commères_, listening open-mouthed,
with their hands folded under their aprons upon their ample stomachs.
What struck her most in Paris was the beauty of the potatoes. “Parlez-moi
des pommes de terre de Paris! C’est si-z-aimable à cuir.” Of the
servants’ quarters in a Paris house she did not approve so highly,
and no wonder, for they were wretched dens under the roof, often not
weathertight. She sometimes acted as my nurse, and I can hear her now,
after bidding me good night, saying, “Où’s’qu’il est le parapluie?—allons
nous coucher!”
One fine day there came to Trouville a travelling dentist and quack, a
sort of Dr. Dulcamara, who established his cart on the quai near the fish
market. He announced himself as “La Gloire de la Science,” the favourite
medicine-man and confidant of the Emperor of Russia and the other Crowned
Heads of Europe. He was dressed in an old ragged blue military coatee
with scarlet worsted epaulettes, dirty white breeches and top-boots. On
his head rested the dignity of a huge cocked hat with a tall tricolor
plume. He carried a gigantic sword, and his warlike appearance was
enhanced by a pair of phenomenal black moustachios. In attendance upon
him were a performer on the key-bugle and a _pitre_, or jack-pudding,
whose business it was at the psychological moment to bang a big drum and
crash a pair of cymbals in order to drown the howls of the victims of
dentistry.
Marie Letac, who had been suffering from toothache, was wild to go and
consult the “Glory of Science.” My aunt promised to pay the fee, so off
she went and mounted the learned doctor’s cart. A little while later we
went out and met Marie Letac with a duster before her mouth, bleeding
profusely, crying with pain, yet half laughing at her own plight—one
might almost say weeping merrily.
“Well,” said my aunt, “so you have had it out?”
“Seven of them,” blurted out Marie.
“Seven! Impossible!”
“Oh! du moment que c’est mademoiselle qui régale!” and with that she went
off bleeding but content.
The man of pills, potions, and forceps did a roaring trade that day; the
drum and cymbals were never idle, and there was a great crowd of sailors
and fishwives, standing unwearied for many hours, happy in the enjoyment
of an exhibition which was free, and in the contemplation of the pain of
their friends and neighbours.
I think, though it is anticipating by a good many years, that I must
finish the story of our relations with Marie Letac. She remained with us
all the time we were in France, and was heart-broken when we left—that
was in 1846. We spent the summer holidays of that year at Tunbridge
Wells, and one day, as we were all sitting at luncheon, there came a ring
at the bell, and we were told that there was a French beggar-woman who
wanted to see my aunt. She ran out of the room and presently came back
with Marie, travel-stained, tired, footsore, and almost worn out, but
crying for very happiness. She said that she could bear the separation no
longer, so she had gone to Havre, taken boat for Southampton, and walked
all the way to Tunbridge Wells. How she managed to find the road, not
knowing a word of English and almost penniless, was a puzzle. She had an
addressed envelope and that was all, but here and there she met with a
kind person who knew a little French and helped her, and so at last the
faithful creature reached us. She did not stay very long, for she had her
husband and the hardy annuals to look after, and she was sent back to
Normandy, this time travelling decently and in comfort.
The following summer we went back to Trouville, and of course she came
to be with us. After that we never saw her again. But every Yuletide
there came a letter to my aunt, written by the village scribe in
pompous language, beginning, “Je croirais manquer à mon devoir si je ne
m’empressais pas,” etc., etc., with many good wishes and felicitations.
At last, after many years, there was a sad Christmas which brought no
letter. Poor Marie “avait manqué à son devoir.” She was dead.
* * * * *
Of Trouville Alexandre Dumas père was the Columbus, la Mère Oseraie
the George Washington. What the one discovered, the other made. The
“Bras d’Or,” the solitary little inn over which Madame Oseraie shed
the very sunshine of kindness, became famous as a summer resort for
the long-haired denizens of the Quartier Latin of Paris. It was quite
humble and very cheap, but it was specklessly clean, and the cooking was
undeniable, for the hostess was a born _cordon bleu_. The elder Dumas
was no mean judge, and when he gave her his blessing, her omelettes were
said to be a dream, her _soupe aux choux_ a revelation. The great man
had spoken, and the “Bras d’Or” became a sort of suffragan headquarters
for some of the painters of the Barbizon school, and a small gang of
imitative _rapins_ who followed in their wake. It suited their meagre
purses; for three or four francs a day they were lodged and fed upon the
fat of the land, with bread and cider _à discrétion_.
As for Madame Oseraie herself, round, fat, and fubsy, with a most genial
smile and welcome, she looked as if she had been made to suckle the
world on the milk of human kindness. The good inn was never empty, and
the guests went back to Paris all the better for the rest, with a dip
in the sea, fresh, strong air and good food, carrying a satchel full of
sketches to work upon in their cock-loft _ateliers_ till the time should
come round for another happy summer holiday. But after 1842 no more “Bras
d’Or” for the poor _rapins_! The grandees from Paris had taken possession
of Trouville; Madame Oseraie not unreasonably raised her prices, and the
poor, long-haired, imperfectly-washed, but very merry ne’er-do-weels must
move on to some other and, let us hope, equally happy hunting ground.
When the great people came they had perforce to accept the simple
life. The fisher folk furbished up their cottages according to their
humble ideas of æsthetic extravagance, and their lodgers, who had left
behind them rooms rich with Gobelins and Beauvais tapestry, furnished
with masterpieces by Riesener, Caffieri and Gouthières, had to content
themselves with hideous cheap wall-papers the colour of which came
off in dust upon their coats and gowns, and with such poor sticks and
stocks as the modest homes could afford. What became of the owners, in
what troglodytes’ dwellings they lay hidden, counting over their little
harvest, is more than any man can say.
One or two artists, a little less hairy and a little better off than
the old patrons of the inn, came with the mighty. There were the two
brothers Mozin, Charles and Théodore, the one a clever painter, the other
a musician, and Vogel, beloved of the none-too-critical Paris ladies
for his sugary ballads all about love and cottages and despair—songs as
sweet and smooth as the almond-paste in a wedding-cake. They brought a
sort of mild æsthetic leaven into the general hotch-potch; the dandies
copied their scarlet flannel blouses and their _bérets_; the smart ladies
accepted their sketches and the dedications of their songs, feeling that
in so doing they were laying a claim to a reputation for culture.
A vision of the _plage_ at Trouville was Madame de Contades, who came
down from Paris one year to breathe a little health after some serious
illness. She used to be carried on to the sands on a canvas litter by two
sturdy fishermen in their blue jerseys and knitted caps, and when she
was comfortably established with her book, her fan, her parasol, and her
bottle of smelling-salts or some cunning essence, she would be surrounded
by a bevy of children, pages and tiny maids of honour, all eager to
render her homage and do her some small service—a lilliputian court quite
as much in love with her as the dandy moths that singed their wings in
her flame.
How beauty appeals to children! That sweet, pale face, framed in soft
brown curls like the Cenci of Guido Reni, is a fascination to me to-day
as it was seventy years ago and more. She should have remained a tender
invalid; but the rough Norman breezes brought back the roses to her
cheeks and strength to her shapely limbs, and the next I heard of our
beautiful queen was swimming a race against another lady in the Seine at
Paris. To her lilliputian court this seemed an outrage of _lèse-poésie_.
Indeed, it was deemed a little unusual at that rather stiff period.
The Lubersacs, Barbantanes, Blacas, followed the lead of the Duchesse de
Rauzan, as should beseem daughters and sons-in-law. Notable also was the
Duchesse de Gramont Caderousse, with her two boys, daily playfellows of
ours, the second of whom became the famous _viveur_, dandy, duellist, and
eccentric of the Second Empire—I shall, perhaps, speak of him later. The
elder brother died as a boy.
Sunday was a great day, when the little street and the _plage_ were quite
alive with holiday folk who flocked in from the neighbouring farms and
villages to see the fine people from Paris. It was a very picturesque
crowd. Of course the sailor-men were all dressed in their best blue
cloth, with their red knitted woollen caps throwing a tassel jauntily on
one side. The well-to-do farmers’ wives and daughters were very smart.
Striped petticoats coming down a little above the ankle, showing a neat
little pair of wooden sabots, or even leather shoes; black-silk aprons;
white fichus folded over their breasts; upon their heads the old, high
twelfth-century caps, trimmed with lace, which our ladies said was
beautiful, handed down from mother to daughter for generations.
A few years ago I was at Trouville once more upon a Sunday. Alas! the old
costumes were no longer there. The present generation of farmers’ wives
were all garbed and hatted in imitation of Paris fashions. It was too
sad! They were a fine, strapping, healthy race of women, with beautiful
skins and cheeks as rosy as the apples of their own orchards. Some of the
girls were very handsome, sweet and modest-looking; rather shy of the
foreigners. It may be said that I was not of an age to judge, but I was a
long-eared little pitcher, and I heard what my elders said. The men were
not so picturesquely attired, but there was a touch of local character
about their get-up also.
A great ally of ours was a certain old Monsieur Pommier (I don’t suppose
he was more than forty, but to us he seemed a Methuselah), who always
came to see us dressed in his Sunday best. A brown coat as stiff as iron,
and as uncomfortable as a strait waistcoat, with a ridiculous little pair
of tails about six inches long sticking out behind almost at right angles
to his waist; a phenomenally high collar reaching to his ears, a tall
stock above a flowered white waistcoat; on his reddish, close-cropped
head a black beaver hat, brushed the wrong way; in his hand a stick with
the thick end downwards, held by a leathern thong at the small end; tiny
side-whiskers, and a face and nose shining from recent soapsuds. He was
the type of the prosperous Normandy farmers and cider-makers of his
day. If they were proverbially a close-fisted race, they knew how to be
hospitable, and there was an old-world courtesy which pierced through
their roughness and was most attractive. To us they were very kindly, and
the memory of them is still pleasant.
It was a motley crowd that came to mix with the grand ladies, the
dandies, the _nounous_, the little bare-legged children making
sand-castles, watching an itinerant Polichinelle or scrambling about
the mussel-clad Roches Noires under the careful eyes of governesses and
tutors.
But gay and bright and happy as the Sunday was out of doors, inside our
house it was dreary and penitential. My grandmother, a Leslie-Anstruther
by birth, had inherited all the bigotry of the old Covenanters, and under
her rule, kind and loving as it was on week-days, the Sabbath was a day
on which no expression of joy was permitted. Many hours were consumed by
her in various forms of deadly dull worship. Even we, mere children, had
to sit through a service which was made as forbidding as it could be. She
began with the morning service read from beginning to end, including the
priestly absolution, which she delivered with peculiar unction; then came
the Litany, which the professional cleric omits when the morning prayer
has been given in its entirety; then the Communion service. By that
time most performers would have been exhausted—not so my grandmother;
she proceeded to deliver one of Blair’s sermons, and woe be to us if we
yawned, or fidgeted, or were guilty of inattention!
I remember one special Sunday. I must have been about six years old when
I was promoted to a pair of trousers; they were made by the village
tailor out of a hideous black-and-white check horse-cloth, very coarse
and prickly, like the hair-shirt of a medieval saint. Every time I
moved the sharp points entered into my tender flesh; to kneel was a
penance, to get up again and sit down a torture. My fidgets and groans
could not be restrained; they were a criminal interruption, and I was
punished accordingly, but at any rate, in order that the punishment
should be effective, the cruel trousers had to be taken down, and
that was a consolation, though only temporary, and not unmixed with a
counter-irritation of pain. In these circumstances religion was what the
great Lord Halifax called “a _vertu_ stuck with bristles, too rough for
this Age.”
* * * * *
In 1845 we stayed on at Trouville long after all the other summer
visitors had fled, like the swallows. No one left but the fisherfolk and
ourselves.
In the late autumn the sea became leaden, ugly, cruel-looking. One
stormy day when I fought my way as usual against the wind down to the
deserted sands, close to where the bathing-machines were drawn up in
idleness, I came upon a group of fishermen carrying something blue and
limp, a belated bather whom they had risked their own lives to rescue
from the waves growling savagely upon the beach, lashing themselves,
as it seemed to me, into a fury at being robbed of their prey. It was
difficult to believe that it was the same sea that a few short weeks
before had rippled so gently, kissing the pretty feet of the paddling
children! On such days as those I felt very much alone and longed to get
back to the Gardens of the Tuileries and the merry games with our little
_camarades_.
But there were bright days in the waning year, when we made expeditions
to neighbouring farm-houses, or tramped along the frosty riverside road
to the little town of Touques, with its black-and-white timbered houses
and the picturesque ruins of the old Norman castle.
What a joy it was when I was about eight years old to let my imagination
run riot, peopling the old keep with visions of knights and dames and
beautiful Jewesses! I was in the middle of reading “Ivanhoe” and here
was indeed a setting for the book. I could fancy myself at Torquilstone
and conjure up living pictures of the Black Knight, Front de Bœuf, the
Templar, Athelstane, and Cedric the Saxon. There was a beautiful peasant
girl in her high Norman cap, wandering down below among the now leafless
apple orchards; could she be the Lady Rowena? And that sturdy, rather
ruffianly vagabond standing in the ancient archway. Surely no other than
Gurth the swineherd! Phantoms conjured up by the Wizard of the North.
* * * * *
In August, 1847, we were once more at Trouville, and it was for the last
time. In former years we had been wont to see more of that romantic
Norman coast than most people did; for we were not fashionable: we used
to arrive in early spring, long before the orchards were brilliant with
the bravery of the apple blossoms, and more than once we stayed on long
after the last glorious red fruits had been gathered for the cider-vats,
when the first frosts had coloured the falling leaves, and the hedges
yielded no more blackberries with which to smear our small faces. This
year our stay was bounded by the Eton holidays.
It was a fateful month—fateful for France—for it was the month in which
the Praslin tragedy took place, a tragedy which might perhaps by now have
been mercifully forgotten had it not played so important a part in the
political history of that time.
One beautiful summer day, when all the little world of Trouville was
gathered together upon the velvety sands, the terrible news arrived. Two
young Irish ladies came running up to my aunts weeping bitterly—almost
in hysterics. They were great friends of the Praslin family and had just
heard that the poor Duchess had been murdered and the Duke arrested. I
remember the thrill of horror with which the news was received on the
_plage_, and that thrill throbbed through all France. The Duc de Praslin
had driven the first nail in the coffin of the Orleans monarchy.
For some five or six years the Duke and Duchess, who had a large family,
had had in their service as governess a certain Mademoiselle de Luzy. Of
this lady the Duchess, with or without reason, but most probably with
very good reason, at any rate so far as the transfer of her husband’s
affections was concerned, had become furiously jealous: so much so that
her father, Marshal Sebastiani, insisted upon Mademoiselle de Luzy’s
dismissal. This, however, did not put an end to the intimacy, of whatever
nature it may have been, between her and the Duke, for it was shown that
on the arrival of the family in Paris from the country, he drove at once
to her house. That night the murder was committed. When the servants
entered the bedroom, they had to face a sight so appalling that M.
Delessert, the Prefect of Police, whose business made him familiar with
the horrors of crime, told Mr. Henry Greville that in all his experience
he had not come across so ghastly a spectacle. There were signs of a
desperate struggle, for the unhappy Duchess, a short but stout woman, had
evidently fought fiercely for her life.
Suffice it to say here that the evidence against the Duke was damning.
A pistol known to belong to him had been used as a bludgeon, and was
clotted with blood and hair—some of the hair was his own, pulled out in
the cruel fight! He had opened the window in order to excite the belief
that the crime was the work of burglars; but it was pointed out to him
that nothing had been stolen, and that a figure resembling his had been
seen from the outside opening the casement—upon which he observed that
the matter assumed a grave aspect. He was arrested and carried to prison,
but managed to take a dose of poison which proved insufficient; a second
dose was smuggled, as it was averred, into his cell, and of this he died;
but there were many people who believed that the poison was a farce, and
that he was spirited away to England, where he is supposed to have lived
for many years in hiding somewhere in the Lake district. The possibility
of this escape was strenuously denied both by M. Delessert and the
Procureur-Général; but it is significant that the former did not himself
see the Duke’s body, although it was his duty to do so. He was prevented
by other business.
Mademoiselle de Luzy was arrested and kept in solitary confinement. But
when she was examined she gave her evidence clearly and simply. Nothing
was elicited to show that she was _particeps criminis_, or even that her
relations with the Duke had gone beyond the bounds of propriety. She was
of course released, and afterwards married very respectably.
All France was moved to the core by the horror of the crime; but what
aroused even more indignation than the murder itself was, as I well
recollect, the widespread idea that for political reasons there had been
a miscarriage of justice and that the murderer, owing to his exalted
position, had been allowed to disappear scot-free.
There were whisperings and mutterings, and grave doubts expressed even in
high places; but in the lower strata of society, among the _bourgeoisie_
and the proletariat, there were sullen, ominous thunder-growls boding ill
for a government which had long since forfeited all claim to popularity;
the whole affair was shrouded in a mystery which was more than enough
to excite the minds of a highly inflammable people. Republicans and
Socialists had for some years been on the war-path: now they were goaded
by laws gagging the press and proscribing public meetings. These laws,
initiated by Guizot and furiously opposed by Thiers, brought about the
final crash; the revolution broke out, and on the 22nd of February,
1848, the King and his Queen were hounded out by the mob of Paris. A few
days later a slippery old gentleman with a curious pear-shaped head and
profuse expressions of geniality—a commodity which he always kept in
stock—landed at Newhaven. He said he was Mr. Smith.
Whether the Duc de Praslin died in prison, a suicide as well as a
murderer, or whether his flight was connived at by the mighty, is one of
those secrets which will remain hidden till the Day of Judgment. It used
to be said that members of his family were in the habit of paying annual
visits to him in England. The French authorities always scouted this
idea; but many years later facts came to my knowledge which proved that
one of his very near relations did make a practice of coming to England
periodically, and that during those expeditions he was for the most part
lost to the sight of his friends. Whither he went no one knew.
It is a strange coincidence that the fall of the last two monarchies
in France—that of Louis Philippe and that of Louis Napoléon—should in
each case have been heralded by a single murder. These were crimes
which stirred the wildest passions, the fiercest and most unthinking
resentments of the mob, and however unjustly, the penalty for them was
paid by those who had no hand in them.
CHAPTER III
ETON
There are days in a man’s life which he never forgets; his first day
at school is one of them. My maiden appearance at Eton was in 1846,
sixty-nine years ago at this time of writing, but that lovely day in May
is as fresh in my memory as if it had been last week. I was only nine
years old, but I suppose that I was rather impressionable for my time of
life, and my young imagination had been fired by the enthusiasm of my
father and many of his friends, whose chief pride always had seemed to
lie in the fact that they were old “Eton fellows.”
Their stories of school days—chiefly blood-curdling tales of scrapes and
punishments borne with Spartan fortitude or avoided by hair’s-breadth
escapes, the chief joys of scholastic memory—had sunk deeply into my
mind, so that Eton seemed very familiar; and yet when I faced its
reality, the _religio loci_ was a revelation. I remember the mixed
feeling—a great joy, a shrinking fear—before the plunge into the great
unknown; the sorrow of leaving home, the freedom of new wings, the
exultation of life. I remember the terror lest I should be guilty of
some solecism upon which the wrath of the gods of the sixth form should
fall; I remember a heart throbbing, as men’s hearts might throb before
a battle, when my father rang at Mr. John Hawtrey’s[17] door (for I was
to start in lower school) and my relief at the sight of his and Mrs.
Hawtrey’s kind faces, and of the comfortable matron, Mrs. Paramour, ample
of bosom and sympathy, to whose care I was commended!
Then the awe of being led through the gate into the school-yard with
the statue of the King-Founder and the entrance to the cloisters under
Lupton’s tower, from the ground-floor room on the right of which there
issued the weird and muffled noises of a not unmelodious flute—sounds
that were to become very familiar to me later on, for the room was
occupied as a schoolroom by dear old Herr Schönerstedt, professor of
Hebrew and German, who, like Tityrus and Frederic the Great, used to
solace his leisure hours, which were many, with a flute.
Thence into the playing fields, in which the elms planted in Charles the
First’s time, then at the zenith of their pride, now all dead and gone,
were just putting forth their summer plumage; Fellows’ Pond, with a lazy
pike or two basking on the surface; Poet’s Walk, Sixth Form Bench, and
above all, the glory of Windsor Castle, most regal of palaces, towering
above the Thames. How beautiful it all was, and how romantic! The fairies
must have been tripping in rings on the turf, the dryads tempted out of
their barken hiding-places, the water-nymphs making high festival on the
silver flood, so radiantly joyous was the day!
* * * * *
We lingered under the one oak tree standing in lonely majesty on the
river bank, trying in vain to dip its boughs into the ripples on which
the sunbeams were dancing; we looked at Lord Wellesley’s weeping willows
(I wonder whether the planting of them by the great Duke’s brother
might have had some dim connection with St. Helena). It was delightful
wandering through those Elysian fields in which every tree, every corner
was a peg upon which our elders could hang a story of thirty years
ago—the fields that the Duke of Wellington loved to the end of his days.
We were to go to luncheon with the Head Master, my father’s old tutor and
lifelong friend. He used often to come and see us in the holidays, and so
was perhaps not quite such a figure of awe to me as he was to most new
boys.
But before penetrating into Weston’s Yard, where the new College
buildings had recently been erected, we must cast one glance at the
corner of the playing fields known as “Sixpenny”—just below what was then
Miss Edgar, the dame’s, tumbledown old labyrinth of a house—the classic
place for battles in the past, where I was to see many a famous fight in
the next few years. From “Sixpenny” it was that in 1825 the great Lord
Shaftesbury’s younger brother, Francis Ashley, was carried home to die
from exhaustion after fighting with a boy of the name of Wood for the
best part of two hours. I witnessed three fierce fights that were nearly
as bad, and many lesser battles, but the subject is only worth alluding
to because it is dead. There is no fighting now, I believe; perhaps,
savage as it may seem to say so, that is not altogether an advantage. Dr.
Hawtrey once said to me, “If two boys have a quarrel I would rather see
them fight it out. They shake hands afterwards, and become firm friends;
but this grudge-bearing is dreadful and has no end.”
Boys form great friendships at school; they also form great antipathies.
There was a boy at Eton, a few years older than myself, who was an
arch-bully. For some reason he bore me a special spite; his methods of
torture were curious and ingenious. If I saw him in the distance I fled.
I have heard that he is a good, gentle, harmless old gentleman, a kind
landlord, a Chairman of a Board of Guardians, greatly respected—but I
should still dread to meet him.
Venerable and imposing, very dear to us who loved him well, was the
figure of Edward Craven Hawtrey, the Head Master of Eton. He was not a
handsome man, indeed so far as features were concerned, he was distinctly
the reverse; but he was tall and upright, with the dignity of a commander
of boys or men. When he called Absence on the Chapel steps, dressed in
his cassock and doctor’s gown, his presence was imposing. When he went
out walking his attire was scrupulously neat, with as much smartness
as might become a cleric of high degree. He always wore a frock-coat
with a deep velvet collar, with which the high white cravat of those
days and his silver hair, worn slightly, but not unduly long, made a
fine contrast. Skilled “in the nice conduct of a clouded cane,” he
looked essentially a gentleman, a clergyman of the best old school.
He was a traveller, a man of the world, and a linguist, proficient in
French, German and Italian, able to hold his own, and always welcome,
in the political and learned society of many continental cities and
universities. His personality was as well known in Paris, Rome, and the
great German towns as in London or at Windsor.
[Illustration: EDWARD CRAVEN HAWTREY, D.D., ETON COLLEGE.
(_A sketch by a sixth form boy._)]
To be a good head master of Eton demands many qualifications. Dr. Hawtrey
had them all; he seemed born for the post, so admirably did he fit it.
His hospitality was unbounded, and when on a great gala day like the
Fourth of June he welcomed as guests many of the greatest people of the
kingdom, it was a lesson to see the lofty yet kindly courtesy with which
he maintained the dignity of what he justly conceived to be his great
office. His tall, stately figure stalking amongst the smartly millinered
ladies in his little slip of a garden was indeed princely.
Later in life I met him in Paris, surrounded by some of the most notable
men of the day, leaders of thought, who rejoiced in the society of
the great head master, and in listening to his cultured, many-sided,
cosmopolitan talk. He was equally at home in more frivolous surroundings.
He was welcome everywhere; at a gathering at Stafford House he would
wander through the famous galleries, a pet guest of the great Duchess
Harriet, stopped every here and there by some reigning beauty, eager to
greet and make much of the genial old man of whom she had heard so many
kindly tales from husband or brothers, the old boys whom he loved and who
loved him. Queen Victoria had the greatest regard for him, and it was his
inspiration which induced Prince Albert to found the Prince Consort’s
prizes for modern languages at Eton—a princely boon as wise as it was
generous.
I was often invited to his breakfast parties, which were interesting
feasts, for he frequently had some man of note staying with him. More
than once I met Guizot there after the collapse of the monarchy in 1848—a
quiet, grey-haired old gentleman whom it was difficult to imagine facing
the stormy Chamber with his famous “Criez, messieurs! hurlez! vos cris
n’atteindront jamais le niveau de mon dédain!”
Monsieur de Circourt was another friend of Hawtrey’s. One morning at
breakfast—it must have been about the year ’50 or ’51—the Irish famine
was being discussed. M. de Circourt, who prided himself on his knowledge
of England, and more especially of our language, startled the table
by saying: “But why did you not feed zem wiz mice?” (maize). The host
without a smile answered: “Oh! but we did send them quantities of Indian
corn,” and so cleverly turning the difficulty, saved his guest’s face.
His wit was very ready—and would sometimes manifest itself in very
unexpected moments. On one occasion, a boy of the name of Bosanquet was
sent up to the Head Master for execution. The paraphernalia of doom
were all in order; the block was drawn out from the wall, and two small
collegers stood beside it—the holders-down. The sixth form Præpositor
handed the rod to the Doctor with the “bill” upon which were written the
names of the victims. Hawtrey read out: “Bŏsānquet!” The boy corrected
him rather pertly: “Please, sir, my name is Bōsănquĕt not Bŏsānquet.”
“Sive tu mavis Bōsănquĕt vocari
Sive Bŏsānquĕt,”[18]
answered Hawtrey, pointing majestically to the block with his long rod.
He was so pleased with his neat paraphrase of Horace that the metrically
injured boy got off very cheap.
One night three boys, Gerry Goodlake, who afterwards won the V.C. at the
battle of the Alma, Suttie and another whose name I have forgotten, got
out of their tutor’s (Elliot’s) house, disguised as navvies, went up town
and procured a liberal supply of the materials necessary for the brewing
of a bowl of rum punch, with which they managed, as they hoped unseen,
to get back into their rooms. Unfortunately for them old Bott, the good
old Waterloo man who was the College policeman, had marked them down,
and at the moment when the brew was steaming fragrance in walked the
tutor. The result was, of course, an execution, the anticipation of which
aroused such a fever in the school that many boys committed small crimes
in the hope of having a fine view of the tragedy at the expense of the
traditional four cuts of the birch.
Hawtrey was bewildered by the number of “bills” that kept coming in; but
he knew his boys and he smelt a rat, so he decided to hold the great
execution _à huis clos_, divided the remaining “complaints” into two
halves—kept one half himself to be dealt with at future “after schools,”
and sent the other half down to Dickie Okes[19] to be attended to in
lower school. Great was the disappointment of the bloodthirsty little
villains at the Doctor’s cleverness.
In Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte’s otherwise admirable “History of Eton
College” there is one great blemish in the very niggardly praise, or
perhaps it would be more truthful to say the very liberal dispraise,
which is attached to Hawtrey’s scholarship. We are continually being
told that it was inaccurate. In one very unjust passage it is contended
in addition “that he was not thoroughly well-informed, though he spent
thirty thousand pounds on books;” that “he could not estimate correctly
the intellectual development of younger men, though he corresponded with
the leaders of England and France;” that “he was not qualified to train
schoolboys, like Vaughan and Kennedy,” etc., etc., etc.
Not for one moment would I detract from the teaching of those great
masters. All that I care to insist upon is the immense value of
Hawtrey’s teaching, equally as good as theirs, though different; the
boys felt that his object was not so much to make the divine poetry
of the Greeks nothing but a peg upon which to hang a discussion on
grammatical problems, but in addition to reveal the soul which animated
the work, and so to arouse a love of philology, lighting in the young
minds of his scholars the same spark of enthusiasm which had been the
beacon illuminating and making beautiful his own life. Surely if this
be dilettantism, it is also that which draws the highest value out of
what is called a classical education. Profoundly versed in the European
classics, he was able to illustrate his lectures by quotations from
French, German, and Italian sources, and so by his observations in
comparative criticism he would galvanize into new life the beauties of
the ancient writers, redeeming them from that deterrent dullness which
attaches to what are looked upon as lessons. The result of his teaching
can be seen by the great position attained by his pupils in their after
life in the great world.
As an older boy, and later as a young man, I often had the chance of
listening to his talk upon classical subjects, which was in the highest
degree interesting and stimulating. I only wish that Sir Henry Maxwell
Lyte had had the same opportunity; I think that his estimate of Dr.
Hawtrey would have been very different. There was something bright and
sunny and joyous in his scholarship, which was absolutely free from all
pedantry, and was totally different from that of the two men who preceded
and followed him in his office.
Dr. Keate was a stern, severe disciplinarian; indeed, in the remembrance
of his severity people are apt to forget that he was famous for sound and
accurate scholarship. Dr. Goodford, too, was a great scholar, but his
learning was rather of a dull, dry-as-dust type. In his classes the Greek
particles reigned supreme—imagination, the winged child of the muses,
flew away into space, scared by the digamma. It used to be said that his
children, aged five and six, were translating Plato, while the poodle dog
looked out the words in Liddell and Scott’s dictionary—then, by the bye,
a new apparition.
Hawtrey, on the contrary, was full of fun—witness some of his
translations in the “Arundines Cami.” He could turn an epigram in French,
Italian or German such as would deceive the very elect into the belief
that it was the work of a native; some of his Italian poems, privately
printed, won special praise from those best capable of judging. His
appreciation of wit was alive to the last. When he was already a very
old man, and I a clerk in the Foreign Office, I remember the enthusiasm
with which he welcomed the arrival of Mrs. Poyser to enrich the gaiety of
the world. It was this spirit of fun which enabled him to enter into the
wildest pranks of his boys—so long as they were harmless.
Windsor Fair, held in Bachelor’s Acre, was a forbidden playground for
the younger boys. The sixth form, on the other hand, went there to act
as police. Once I had been sent for to dine with the Head Master, with
whom my father was staying during the Fair time. He came in rather late,
dressed in cap and gown, laughing merrily, and carrying half a dozen
penny dolls, monkey-sticks, and toys which had been laid upon his desk.
“What in the name of wonder have you got there?” asked my father. “I
always get my fairings,” he said. He made the life of a pedagogue a life
of sympathy and good comradeship, and so a life of joy for all who came
under his kindly rule. What wonder that he was adored?
After all, the worth of the work for good or for evil which has been done
by an administrator must be judged by the fruit which it has borne. How
did Hawtrey find Eton? how did he leave it? Happily we are able to call
upon a great and unimpeachable witness. It was Hawtrey who first sent
up for good Mr. Gladstone. “It was,” he writes, “an event in my life.
He and it together then for the first time inspired me with a desire to
learn and to do.” Again—“The popular supposition is” (Mr. Gladstone,
January 3, 1890), “that Eton from 1830 onwards was swept along by a tide
of renovation due to the fame and contagious example of Dr. Arnold. But
this, in my opinion, is an error. Eton was in a singularly small degree
open to influence from other public schools. There were three persons to
whom Eton was more indebted than any others for the new life poured into
her arteries: Dr. Hawtrey, the contemporary Duke of Newcastle, and Bishop
Selwyn.”[20]
In 1846, the year of which I am writing, mathematics were no part of
the school curriculum, which remained untouched as it had been from
all time. Hawtrey in 1851 made mathematics compulsory, to the intense
disgust of all us, little conservatives to the core, who considered that
the knowledge that two and two make four might be an accomplishment,
but formed no part of the education of a gentleman. He substituted
competition for nomination to scholarships on the foundation. He fostered
the study of modern languages, promoted examinations, and did all that
was in his power to bring Eton up to the standard required by modern
advancement and culture.
His greatest feat, achieved in the face of cruel unpopularity, was the
abolition of Montem. He was wise enough to see that a custom, kindly and
picturesque in old days, must, with the arrival of the railway, which did
away with all the privacy of Eton, degenerate into an ugly saturnalia.
So long as the festival was confined to the friends and relations of the
boys, it was all very well to collect from parents, old boys and their
friends “Salt,” a sum destined to help the senior colleger in his first
year at Cambridge. But now, with the influx of a mob from London, it
must become a degradation. Many influences were against him, not in Eton
alone, but in the greater world outside; wisely he stuck to his guns, and
Montem ceased to exist. Generous as always, when the triennial feast came
round in 1847, he gave, out of his own purse, to the parents of the boy
who would have profited by the “Salt” a present of three hundred pounds.
How strong the feeling was is shown by the fact that on that day some of
the masters were stoned on their way to school. It is only fair to say
that Provost Hodgson, who succeeded Goodall, backed up the Head Master in
this crisis.
I may record another instance of his large-hearted love of giving. An old
friend and colleague of his had got himself into financial difficulties.
Hawtrey could not see the home of a brilliant man broken up and himself
brought to a pecuniary misery. He paid up all debts and set his friend
free. He was rewarded by the blackest and most treacherous ingratitude.
He never uttered a reproach, but I have reason to know that he was cut to
the quick. He suffered in silence.
Such was the dear old man who bent down to welcome me, the little boy
whom he had known in petticoats, on my first entry into his kingdom.
Smiling and laughing, brimming over with kindness, he regaled me with
all sorts of delightful old-time tales of his own school days, little
experiences all chosen because in them there was just a taste of
schoolboy wisdom: some useful hint conveyed with fun and merriment;
advice not flung like a cricket ball at the youngster’s head, but just
brought out in such a way as to be reassuring and encouraging. That
luncheon was a memorable episode in a memorable day, and it was the first
link in a long chain of kindnesses which lasted during the eight years
that I was at Eton, and did not abate until the good man’s death in 1862.
The consulate of Dr. Hawtrey was a time of transition at Eton as
elsewhere. The Eton to which I was sent in 1846 differed in little
from that which my father had known some thirty years earlier. With
the exception of the new College buildings, only just finished, in
Weston’s Yard, the outer aspect of the place had undergone no change.
There were the same old tumbledown, crazy tenements with weather-stained
walls and patched roofs, occupied by tutors and dames. All the sanitary
arrangements—save the word!—were primitively disgusting. Baths were
unknown. During the summer months, by the grace of Father Thames, there
was bathing in Cuckoo Weir, at Upper Hope, and at Athens, but from
September till about May foot-tubs of hot water carried to the various
rooms on a Saturday night represented all the cleanliness that was deemed
necessary.
The Reform Act and new forces, born of railways and machinery, and what
were by many derided as new-fangled fads of hygiene were compelling and
irresistible. During the last two years of my schoolboyhood the cold tub
had become an institution of every morning. Many other improvements were
in progress and have long since been carried out.
The head master’s house, if an anachronism, was eminently fitted to
its venerable and book-loving tenant. It still stands, a picturesque
building of which the red bricks and tiles have grown hoary with age,
long, low and rambling, flush with the Slough Road on one side, separated
on the other from Weston’s Yard by a narrow strip of garden. It was so
shallow that, like Hampton Court, Berkeley Castle, and many old-fashioned
buildings, it consisted only of a succession of rooms leading into one
another. On the first floor a very meagre passage had been negotiated,
so as to give some privacy to bedrooms, but on the ground floor there
was nothing but a chain of rooms. From floor to ceiling every room was
lined with bookcases criss-crossed with thick brass wires, in which the
treasures which were the accumulation of a lifetime were amassed. Even
the bedrooms were fitted in the same way. It was one huge library.
I do not remember any works of art or ornaments with the exception of
one of Wedgwood’s copies of the Portland Vase. When Provost Hodgson died
on the 29th of December, 1852, Dr. Hawtrey succeeded him. The drop in
income was considerable, and he had been too large a giver to have saved
anything. A great portion of the library had to be sold, and it went for
what even at that time was a song. What would it have been worth now?
Before changing over into the Provost’s lodge, Dr. Hawtrey sent for me
and gave me, as a keepsake in memory of many happy days spent with him
among his books, a beautiful little Elzevir Livy. To my father, his old
pupil, he gave a grand copy of Tasso.
The house is very old, having been occupied by Sir Henry Savile, the
handsome lay Provost whose appointment by Queen Elizabeth in May, 1596,
“any statute, act or canon to the contrary notwithstanding,” raised a
small storm. Here he set up his printing-press, and in 1613 published his
great edition of S. Chrysostom in eight folio volumes. He also printed
Xenophon’s “Cyropædia” and Thomas Bradwardine’s “De Causâ Dei contra
Pelagium.” With the Provostship of Eton he combined the office of Warden
of Merton College at Oxford.
Probably no private house can claim such a connection with books and
letters. For many years now it has been occupied by the Precentor, Dr.
Law—and it seems likely to remain the official home of music.
Hawtrey’s reforms would probably have been carried out much
sooner—perhaps even Keate might have fathered some of them—but Provost
Goodall, a grand and courtly gentleman of the old school, had the faults
of his qualities; he was the deadly enemy of change; he was one of those
men to whom progress means disaster, and having the might to spoke
the wheels of the coach, he used it with such effect that Hawtrey was
practically powerless. But in 1840 Provost Goodall died, and after some
trouble between the Court and the Fellows, the candidate favoured by
Queen Victoria was appointed, and Archdeacon Hodgson, the intimate friend
of Lord Byron, became Provost.
Lyte’s history shows how keenly the new Provost set to work to improve
the position of the collegers, and how ably he was seconded by Hawtrey.
The new buildings in Weston’s Yard were the result, and they, with
the two red-brick houses by Keate’s Lane opposite upper school, were
the only substantial additions made to the College since the early
days of the nineteenth century. The two doughty champions worked well
together—Hodgson for the much-wronged collegers; Hawtrey determined that
Eton should no longer be a mere school of ornamental classical culture
for the small minority who could or would take advantage of it, but
should march with the times, and give a boy such an education as would
fit him to play a practical part in a world which was beginning to be
very much on the move.
It is almost incredible in these days that, as I have said above, until
the year 1851 mathematics were no part of the school work. French, German
and Italian were, needless to say, in the same boat. That Frenchmen
should exist and have a language of their own was, however deplorable, an
admitted fact, but only on condition that one Englishman should be equal
to four Frenchmen, or, according to Boswell in his adulation of Johnson,
forty. Such were the archaic doctrines in which we were brought up, until
wise Dr. Hawtrey swept all the old cobwebs away.
When at last mathematics were introduced, Mr. Stephen Hawtrey, a cousin
of the Doctor’s, who had been a high wrangler at Cambridge, was appointed
master. In order to parcel out the boys into divisions under his several
assistants he had to hold an examination. Naturally the object of every
one of us was to make as bad a show as possible in order to be put into
an easy place. When my form came up for _vivâ voce_, question after
question did the unhappy man put. No answer. At last in despair he cried:
“Is there no boy here who can tell me what twice two makes?” After a
pause, “Yes, sir! Please, sir, I can!” said a very cunning little chap
called K——. “Well, what is it?” “Five, sir, please, sir!” There were many
applauding grins, but for that day Stephanos, as he was called, gave up
our form in despair. What troublous days the poor assistant mathematical
masters suffered! How they were teased and worried! Very foolishly,
the authorities would not give them the same status that the classical
masters enjoyed; they were not allowed to wear cap and gown, and might
not complain to the Head Master direct. Of course this encouraged the
boys to be as rebellious and wicked as they pleased; and being boys, they
took royal advantage of it.
Talking of extras, I do not think that many boys in my time learned
French; still fewer German. Old Mr. Tarver, of dictionary fame, the
French master, was a very charming person, liked by all of us who knew
him. His story was curious. He was an Englishman born at Dieppe in 1790.
His parents were imprisoned in France in 1793, while he was staying at
the house of a friend, M. Féval, who was chief engineer in the Ponts et
Chaussées of the Seine Inférieure. When his parents escaped to England
he was left behind, and it was not until 1814, after holding various
appointments, amongst others that of Secretary to the Admiral of the
French fleet at Toulon and in other places, that he was able to seek them
out. His father was dead, but his mother was still alive.
After holding different educational posts, amongst others that of tutor
to the Duke of Cambridge, he became French master, and held the place for
twenty-five years. He died in 1851, and was succeeded by his sons, Henry
and Frank. He had a pupil-room in the Christopher Inn Yard, and I used
often to go and pay him a little visit, quite apart from lessons, and
listen to the stories of his old adventures. One of his sons, Charles,
was classical tutor to King Edward when Prince of Wales.
To Herr Schönerstedt and his beloved flute I have already alluded. He was
a tall, handsome, very courtly gentleman. If a boy met him in the street
he would treat him as ceremoniously as if he were a Russian Grand Duke,
never forgetting, even if he were meditating revenge for some crime,
to make a sweeping bow and take leave with a grandiloquent “gehorsamer
Diener.” With Signor Sinibaldi I had little more than a forefinger-to-hat
acquaintance.
Such were the materials out of which the new Eton was evolved. All
the principal changes took place in my time. I was born under the old
dispensation and I lived through the transition stage into the new.
Revolutions, even in a school system, are not brought to maturity in a
day, and those who read Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte will see that time was
needed to make the new machinery work smoothly.
Provost Hodgson, as I recollect him, was a short, fat, sturdy little man,
almost as broad as he was long, waddling not without a certain web-footed
dignity out of the Provost’s Lodge into Weston’s Yard, but how difficult
it was to think of him as the cherished friend of the romantic,
devil-may-care poet, rebel against all law and convention. Later in life
I got to know Lord Broughton. Here again was a contrast with Byron—the
reverend, calm, wise and judicious statesman, and the wild, defiant
child of genius. Those who cry out so loudly against the unhappy poet
might pause and ask themselves whether, since he could inspire undying
affection in two such men, he himself could be all bad.
* * * * *
As I have said, we were in a period of transition. There were here
and there a few old gentlemen who, clinging desperately to ancient
traditions, refused to exchange their knee-breeches with bunches
of ribbons at the knee for the vulgar but comfortable trousers.
Knee-breeches were the outward and visible sign of obstruction. Among
the Fellows of Eton two of these faithful veterans still lived and
hindered—Mr. Bethell and Mr. Plumptre. Mr. Bethell was a fine old
dignitary of the Church, handsome and well-nourished, with a glowing face
and noble paunch, suggestive of a good cook, an excellent digestion,
and a well-stored cellar. He was the hero of the crusty old story of
the days when he was a master: “‘Ærati postes’—‘brazen gates’—very good
translation; probably so called because they were made of Brass.” He
had been a friend of some of my people, so I was sometimes invited to
breakfast with him. The rolls were memorable. Mr. Plumptre was famous for
sermons of appalling length, preached upon texts that were absolutely
grotesque.
Lyte quotes several of these, but this I think is better than any that he
gives. Being asked once to preach a sermon to the Blue-coat boys, he took
for his text: “Moreover his mother made him a little coat and brought it
to him from year to year.” As the poor old gentleman had not a tooth left
in his head, his sermons, bellowed out at the top of a powerful but very
indistinct voice, were exquisitely comic.
Plumptre’s defence of Montem is historic; he believed it to have been
substituted for a triennial procession in honour of the Virgin Mary, and
that therefore it ought to be preserved as a sort of protest against
Popery.[21] It is only fair to say that in this case and some others Mr.
Bethell sided with the Provost and Head Master. The Fellows, however
powerful Hodgson and Hawtrey might be, had still a toothless voice in the
government of the College. There was a long and tough fight over every
innovation, but in the end common sense prevailed over the knee-breeches.
It was not long before the last of these disappeared in the waters of
Lethe.
After all, they could claim a goodly record for the old dispensation.
Even in their own narrow scholastic circle they could point to great
teachers like Keate[22] and Hawtrey; among the assistant masters were
Edward Coleridge, a famous tutor, son-in-law of Keate, who certainly
came up to the Greek definition of a gentleman: “handsome and good;”
Cookesley, a crank, but a brilliant scholar, delighting in Pindar and
Greek metrical problems; Carter, clever, but perhaps a little too eager
to exact heavy payment for the pleasures of idleness; my own excellent
tutor, best and kindest of men, Francis Edward Durnford; Edward Balston,
afterwards Head Master, another καλὸς κ’ ἀγαθός; William Johnson, who
afterwards changed his name to Cory, a sound scholar, and no mean poet.
These were all men of a very high standard, the children of the old Eton
herself, children of whom the kind mother might well be proud.
But the old school had to take note of a new sharpness in the struggle
for life. Not the schoolmaster only, but the examiner, was abroad, and
the time had come when every position, no matter how humble, must be won
by hard fighting. So the last three years of the eight which I spent at
Eton were lived in altered circumstances. Many changes, and doubtless
great improvements, have been effected since then, but the first great
upheaval took place in 1851 and was due to the genius and foresight of
Dr. Hawtrey. Far too much credit for all this has been given to Dr.
Goodford. It is true that many alterations took place during his tenure
of office, but they had almost all been proposed by Dr. Hawtrey and were
only delayed by the obstruction of some of the old men, with Provost
Goodall at their head. When Hawtrey became Provost, Goodford’s path was
smoothed by the very man who had laid its foundation. I, who though a boy
or a very young man was much behind the scenes, know to whom the palm was
due.
[Illustration: FIRE-PLACE IN EVANS’ HOUSE.
_From a water-colour sketch by W. Evans._]
I was still but a small creature, and not very strong, when I went to
Evans’s, so I was put into the private part of the house, and Miss Jennie
Evans, then a tall young lady of about twenty, took me under her wing.
About fifty years afterwards, when she had succeeded to her good old
father’s damery, and I took my boy to be in her house, she said to him,
pointing to the staircase: “Many and many a time I have carried your
father pick-a-back up those stairs.” When she died in January, 1906, the
last of the dames, her loss meant the close of a long chapter in the
history of Eton. She was a beloved lady.
By degrees I sprouted and grew, and so I was moved into the main body
of the house, where I had a snug little room with young Charles Dickens
for my next-door neighbour. We soon became allies, and with half a dozen
other boys started a little newspaper club which developed into a big
success. In the “Dictionary of National Biography” his name is given as
“Charles” only. He was christened, as he told me, Charles Boz Dickens.
When he was taken to the font on his baptism, and the parson told the
godfather to “name this child,” the sponsor said “Charles,” but the
old grandfather, the prototype of Mr. Micawber, as proud as Punch of
his already famous son, cried out “Boz,” and “Charles Boz” he became
accordingly. My friendship with him led to my first acquaintance with
his great father, who came down to Eton one fine summer’s day, with Mark
Lemon and, I think, Shirley Brooks, and took several of us up the river
to Maidenhead.
What a day that was! The great man was full of life, bubbling over with
fun, the youngest boy of the party. I often met him in after life, but
then, wonderful as he was upon occasions, his face when at rest already
showed signs of fatigue; the strenuous work had told upon him; he looked
careworn and older than his years. I like to think of him as he was on
that day at Maidenhead, brilliant, young and gay, the spirit of joy
incarnate. It was at the time when he was writing “Bleak House.” I never
saw his son after our Eton days. He was a clever boy, but he did not
achieve as much in life as he might have done; perhaps he never quite
found his legs. In letters, no doubt, he felt crushed by his own great
name; he went into business, for which it seems he had no aptitude, and
he died when still in the prime of life.
Eton has been the Alma Mater of many of the eminent men who have played
a foremost part in the history of England. In my day there were many
brilliant boys, some of whom distinguished themselves in after life. Of
my own immediate contemporaries none could be held to come up to Sir
Michael Hicks Beach, now Lord St. Aldwyn. There was no W. E. Gladstone;
Lord Salisbury, then Lord Robert Cecil, and Lord Roberts had just left;
Arthur Balfour, Lord Rosebery and Lord Randolph Churchill were not yet.
Our fellows did well enough, though we did not produce a Phœnix. Alfred
Thesiger died as a Lord Justice of Appeal at an age when many men are
wondering whether they will ever get a brief.
Montague Williams was famous as a police magistrate; in the Civil Service
we could count as permanent heads of departments, Lord Welby at the
Treasury, Lord Tenterden, Lord Currie and Lord Sanderson at the Foreign
Office, Sir Robert Herbert at the Colonial Office, Sir Charles Rivers
Wilson at the National Debt Office, Sir Algernon West at the Inland
Revenue, Sir Stevenson Blackwood at the Post Office, followed by Sir
Spencer Walpole, who also achieved fame as an historian, Sir Charles
Fremantle at the Mint, myself at the Office of Works.
I have heard it objected that Eton’s successes are due to the fact that
its boys belong to “the governing classes.” They forget that for the
last fifty years and more the entry into the Civil Service has been by
public examination. I myself entered the Foreign Office by competition
just fifty-seven years ago. Even in old days, it was only the first
appointments that were given by patronage. The higher posts, what one
might call the Staff appointments, were given by selection for merit.
Ministers were far too dependent upon the ability and industry of the
permanent heads of departments to hamper themselves with incompetent men.
Judged at the bar of public opinion, the men whom I have mentioned will
not be found wanting.
In politics and diplomacy we could claim our fair share of Cabinet
Ministers, Ambassadors and Envoys Extraordinary. Our great president of
Pop, Edmond Wodehouse, and his inseparable friend Reginald Yorke were as
great in the cricket and football fields as they were in Library, born
leaders of boys. Even when he was a lad Wodehouse’s speeches, models of
the purest English, delivered with a gentle musical voice, were very
attractive; he was afterwards, as member for Bath, a prominent Liberal
Unionist—prominent rather in spite of himself, for he sought no office;
and it was a matter of universal opinion that his platform oratory at
the time of the split in the Liberal party was second only to that of
Mr. Chamberlain. A breakdown in health robbed the State of a great
servant—Eton of the fame of an illustrious son. Yorke, after a brilliant
outset, gave up public life much too early; he lacked ambition, which,
had he possessed it, must have driven him into very high places. He,
alas! is no more. When he died I lost a friend of more than sixty years.
But when I first went to Eton the idol before whom all we small imps
prostrated ourselves was the great Chitty, afterwards Lord Justice of
Appeal. He was indeed an Admirable Crichton. Wicket-keeper in the eleven
at Eton, he twice played at Lords in the University eleven, the second
time as captain. Then he took to the river, and stroked the University
eight for three years; took a first class and the Vinerian Scholarship,
and was for many years umpire to the boat-race of the Blues. Long after
he had left we spoke of him with bated breath as fitted to be one of
the chosen guests at the banquets of high Olympus. Should we not in the
same category, as another Admirable Crichton, place Dr. Warre, scholar,
athlete, Head Master—Provost? He was in the same division as myself.
Of all the boys of my time who made a name for themselves in the world
by far the most remarkable was my cousin Algernon Charles Swinburne,
that wayward child of the Muses. I am glad to know that his life is
being written by a brother poet, a foremost man of letters, who knew him
intimately in his most brilliant days, a man who is possessed of all
those qualities which Dr. Johnson deemed to be indispensable in a good
biographer. Mr. Gosse, knowing my relationship to Swinburne, asked me to
furnish him with some particulars as to the poet’s schoolboy life; this
I did in a letter written partly in answer to some foolish misstatements
which appeared in a letter from another schoolfellow written to the
_Times_.
I was in hopes that Mr. Gosse, who printed the letter in a short
biographical sketch which he issued privately in 1912, would have done
me the honour of including my notice in the larger book upon which he is
engaged. He, however, very generously insists that I must take back my
humble gift, and make it part of my sketch of Eton. It would be churlish
to refuse to obey the behest of so good a friend, and so I append from
my letter to him such extracts as seem to be to the point. But how proud
should I have been had they appeared for the first time under his ægis!
Swinburne entered Eton at the beginning of the summer half of 1849. His
father the Admiral, a scion of the grand old Northumbrian family, and my
aunt, Lady Jane, brought him, and at once sent for me to put him under my
care. I was “to look after him.” It is true that I was only a few weeks
older than himself, and so, physically, not much of a protector; but I
had been three years at school, to which I was sent when I was nine years
old, so I knew my Eton thoroughly, and was well versed in all its dear,
delightful ways—mysteries bewildering to the uninitiated. I was already a
little man of the world, at any rate of that microcosm which is a public
school, and so I was able to steer my small cousin through some shoals.
What a fragile little creature he seemed as he stood there between his
father and mother with his wondering eyes fixed upon me! Under his arm he
hugged his Bowdler’s Shakespeare, a very precious treasure bound in brown
leather with, for a marker, a narrow slip of ribbon—blue I think—with a
button of that most heathenish marqueterie called Tunbridge ware dangling
from the end of it. He was strangely tiny. His limbs were small and
delicate, and his sloping shoulders looked far too weak to carry his
great head, the size of which was exaggerated by the tousled mass of red
hair standing almost at right angles to it. Hero-worshippers talk of his
hair as having been a “golden aureole.” At that time there was nothing
golden about it. Red, violent, aggressive red it was, unmistakable red,
burnished copper. His features were small and beautiful, chiselled as
daintily as those of some Greek sculptor’s masterpiece.
His skin was very white—not unhealthy, but a transparent tinted white
such as one sees in the petals of some roses. His face was the very
replica of that of his dear mother, and she was one of the most refined
and lovely of women. What the colour of his eyes was I never knew—grey,
green or brown, they reflected his mood and must have been of the same
colour that his soul was at that moment; they could be soft and tender,
blaze with rage, or sparkle with fire. His red hair must have come from
the Admiral’s side, for I never heard of a red-haired Ashburnham. The
Admiral himself, whom I rarely saw, was, so well as my memory serves me,
already grizzled, but his hair must have been originally very fair or
even red.
Another characteristic which Algernon inherited from his mother was the
voice. All who knew him must remember that exquisitely soft voice with a
rather sing-song intonation, like that of the Russians when they put the
music of their own Slav voices into the French language. All his mother’s
brothers and sisters had it. He alone, so far as I know, among my cousins
reproduced it. Listening to him sometimes I could almost fancy that I
could hear my aunt herself speaking, so startling was the likeness. His
language, even at that age, was beautiful, fanciful, and richly varied.
Altogether my recollection of him in those school-days is that of a
fascinating, most lovable little fellow. It is but a child’s impression
of another child, but I believe it to be just.
That morning, after the manner of little dogs and little boys, we
stood and looked at one another shyly, suspiciously; but by the time
his parents left we had become fast friends and so we remained. We had
something in common to make us sib besides the sisterhood of his mother
and mine. On our fathers’ side we both came from old Northumbrian stocks,
and there is something in the Borderland which makes for a feeling of
kinship, even if in ancient times there should have been blood feuds.
Under the spell of the Border feeling Swinburne was bewitched; it never
lost its power over him. The wind blowing over those wild moors, which
are still the home of legends and ballads of raids and fights and deeds
of derring-do, had pierced his soul. He was a true son of Northumbria,
and was eager to become a soldier and bear arms; little creature as he
was, had he lived in the old days, he would have carried a stout heart
into any fray where there might be the clash of steel against morion and
breastplate, leading a troop of his own people like Barry of the Comb, or
Corbit Jock, in an expedition over the Border against Eliots and Kers,
and Scots and Maxwells. He was born three centuries too late.
Of course, being in different houses, we could not be so constantly
together as if we had both been in the same house. I was at Evans’s and
Durnford was my tutor. He was at Joynes’s and of course Joynes was his
tutor. Still we often met, and pretty frequently breakfasted together,
he with me, or I with him. Chocolate in his room, tea in mine. The guest
brought his own “order” of rolls and butter, and the feast was made
rich by the addition of sixpennyworth of scraped beef or ham from Joe
Groves’s, a small sock-shop which was almost immediately under Joynes’s
house. Little gifts such as our humble purses could afford cemented
our friendship; I still possess and treasure an abbreviated edition of
Froissart’s Chronicles which Algernon gave me now, alas! sixty-six years
ago. We ourselves were abbreviated editions in those days, or rather
duodecimos!
It was at Eton that he began to feel his wings. His bringing up at home
had been scrupulously strict—his literary diet the veriest pap. His
precocious brain had been nourished upon food for babes. Not a novel
had he been allowed to open, not even Walter Scott’s. Shakespeare he
only knew through the medium of his precious brown Bowdler. Now he could
travel over all the wide range of the boys’ library, which was then
alongside of the entrance to the Provost’s Lodge in Weston’s Yard.
I can see him now, sitting perched up Turk-or-tailor-wise in one of the
windows looking out on the Yard, with some huge old-world tome almost
as big as himself on his lap, the afternoon sun setting on fire the
great mop of red hair. There it was that he emancipated himself, making
acquaintance with Shakespeare (minus Bowdler), Marlowe, Spenser, Ben
Jonson, Ford, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, and the other poets and
playwrights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His tendency was
greatly towards the drama, especially the Tragic Drama. He had a great
sense of humour in others; he worshipped Dickens and would quote him
(especially Mrs. Gamp) unwearyingly; but his own genius leaned to Tragedy.
It is absurd to pretend, as was said in a letter to the _Times_, that as
a boy “he had an extraordinarily wide knowledge of the Greek poets, which
he read with ease in the original.” His study of the Greek tragedians,
upon whose work he so largely modelled his own, came much later in life.
At Eton these were lessons, and lessons are odious; besides no one can
assimilate Æschylus in homœopathic doses of thirty lines, and he knew no
more Greek than any intelligent boy of his age would do, nor did he take
any prominent part in the regular school work, though he was a Prince
Consort’s prizeman for modern languages. His first love in literature
was given to the English poets, and after or together with these he
devoured the great classics of France and Italy. The foundations of his
searching knowledge of the French and Italian languages were laid by his
accomplished mother. Of German he was ignorant, so Goethe, Schiller,
Herder, Wieland were sealed books to him. We may doubt whether they would
have appealed to him, for he was essentially a classicist; he might have
been better in touch with Schlegel and Novalis, as more nearly akin to
the romanticists whom he loved, among whom Victor Hugo was the object
of his special reverence; but that which I should call the Gothic in
literature might never have existed for aught that he cared.
How much he owed to his mother! Lady Jane was an attractive and most
distinguished woman. Her conversation was delightful, for her mind was a
rich storehouse of all that was good and beautiful, and her rare gift of
imparting what she knew was reflected in the bright light of the genius
of her son and pupil.
His memory was wonderful, his power of quotation almost unlimited. We
used to take long walks together in Windsor Forest and in the Home Park,
where the famous oak of Herne the Hunter was still standing, a white,
lightning-blasted skeleton of a tree, a fitting haunt for “fairies black,
grey, green and white,” and a very favourite goal of our expeditions.
As he walked with his peculiar dancing gait, tripping along like a
young faun, his eyes gleaming with enthusiasm, his whole body quivering
with excitement, and his hair, like the _zazzera_ of his own beloved
old Florentines, tossed about by the wind, he would pour out with that
unforgettable voice of his the treasures which he had gathered at his
last sitting in his favourite window-nook.
Other boys would watch him with amazement, looking upon him as a sort
of inspired elfin—a changeling from another sphere. None dreamt of
interfering with him, and as for bullying, there was none of it. He
carried with him one magic charm—he was absolutely brave. He did not know
what fear meant. It is generally the coward, the weakling in character,
far more than the weakling in thews and sinews, that is bullied.
Swinburne’s pluck as a boy always reminds me of Kinglake’s description
in “Eothen” of Dr. Keate, the famous Head Master of Eton: “He was
little more (if more at all) than five feet in height, and was not very
great in girth, but within this space was concentrated the pluck of ten
battalions.” That might have been written of Swinburne, and tiny as he
was, I verily believe that had any boy, however big, attempted to bully
him, that boy would have caught a Tartar.
Of games he took no heed—they were not for his frail build; football
and cricket were nothing to him. I do not think that he ever possessed
a cricket bat; but he could swim like any frog and of walking he never
tired. And so he led a sort of charmed life, dreaming and reading, and
chewing the cud of his gleanings from the world-harvest of poetry, a
fairy child in the midst of a commonplace, workaday world—as Horace said
of himself, “non sine Dîs animosus infans.”
I have spoken of his courage. He was no horseman, and had but little
opportunity at home for riding, but in the matter of horses he was
absolutely without terror. Unskilled as he was, he would back anything,
as fearless as a centaur. As a boy, rides with his cousin, Lady Katherine
Ashburnham, were among his great delights in that glorious, forest-like
country about Ashburnham Place. My uncle, the great book-lover, had an
instinctive appreciation of his genius long before he was famous, and
always had a welcome for him.
There is no truth in the story, coined I know not how, that Swinburne
disliked Eton. The poet was not made of the stuff which moulds the
enthusiastic schoolboy, and I much doubt whether any school would, as
such, have appealed to him. But Eton stands by itself. Its old traditions
and its chivalrous memories, its glorious surroundings, meant for him
something more than mere school: his mind dwelt upon the old grey towers,
Windsor, the Forest, the Brocas, the Thames, Cuckoo Weir, with an
affection which inspired his “Commemoration Ode,” and which, I believe,
never left him. The place touched his poet’s soul as no other school
could have done, and so it fitted him.
Across all these decades I look back to the time when he and I were
very small boys. There came a moment when fate drove us apart. We never
had a quarrel, and no cross word ever passed between us, but I became
a colleger, and between collegers and oppidans there was a great gulf
fixed. By the time that I once more went back to be an oppidan, Swinburne
had left Eton and our paths in life drifted further and further apart.
Only once in after life did we meet. It was one evening at dinner at
Whistler’s. We went on one side together after dinner, and had one of
those long talks over old days that are dear to schoolfellows’ hearts. We
arranged to meet again a few days later, but he was ailing, and could not
keep the appointment—alas! _Sunt lachrymæ rerum!_
I never saw him again. He lies in the lovely churchyard at Bonchurch with
his father and the mother whom he tenderly loved, within sound of the
roaring of the sea which during all his life was to him the sweetest of
God’s music.
* * * * *
I have only noticed the most prominent of my schoolmates, but there is
one more whom I must mention, Sir Francis Burnand, who for so many years
led the merriment of the nation. Did I talk of memories? Here at least is
no memory, but a “happy thought,” for he still lives, as gay, as bright,
as laughter-loving and laughter-compelling as when he was a fourth-form
boy. He remains the real Peter Pan, the boy who will not grow old.
* * * * *
If it be true that the mountains in labour produce a ridiculous mouse,
it is equally true that out of the smallest of molehills there are
sometimes born colossal elephants. Some time in 1848 there appeared one
day as a new boy a tall, handsome slip of a lad, very good-natured,
very raw, fresh caught from Australia, as green as young wheat—George
Salting. He was a good deal chaffed, never teased or bullied, he was
too good for that. The spirit of the collector was born in him, and the
foundation of the treasures which he amassed was laid in the purchase
of half a walnut-shell. It happened in this wise. We lower boys used to
delight at the proper season of the year in fighting one shell against
another. The conquering shell had the right to lay to its account not
only the beaten enemy but also all the other shells which that particular
enemy had defeated. One day there appeared at “the wall” in Long Walk a
famous “cad” of those days, who produced a half-shell which had gained a
thousand victories. Salting, always plentifully provided with money, gave
five shillings for it.
Alas! the champion was shortly afterwards dethroned by a vulgar novice
which had come into its owner’s possession in the ordinary course of
eating. Goliath was not a greater disappointment to the Philistine army.
But, never mind! out of that wonderful walnut-shell came in due course
all the gems with which the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert
Museum have been enriched. Stand before Holbein’s miniature of Anne of
Cleves, Henry the Eighth’s “great Flanders mare,” and think of that.
From the walnut-shell, to borrow the famous word of Maréchal Macmahon,
he continued,[23] and if in his early days as a collector he was often a
prey to unscrupulous dealers, he ended by gaining experience and became a
good judge. Many were the practical jokes of which, as a boy, he was the
good-humoured victim.
One fine September evening—it must have been in 1850 or 1851; we had just
come back from the summer holidays—a knot of younger boys were gathered
together at the end of Keate’s Lane, and there was a grand recital of
all the great events that had happened in the halcyon days. One boy had
killed a salmon, another had been out cub-hunting, a third had been out
partridge-shooting with his father on the 1st. Salting announced that he
too had been out shooting on the 1st. He was asked what he had shot.
“I shot a yellowhammer,” was the answer.
“What!” cried a small mosquito, “you don’t mean to say that! Don’t you
know what you have done?” (Salting turned a little pale.) “Don’t you know
that after the battle of Waterloo King George the Third gave the Duke of
Wellington the exclusive privilege of shooting yellowhammers on the first
of September? You had better write an apology at once, or there’s no
saying what may happen.” All the boys put on very serious faces, and poor
Salting was fairly terrified. A letter was drafted in which Mr. Salting
presented his compliments to Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington, K.G.,
and in stilted terms implored forgiveness for an offence unwittingly
given. Two or three days later the answer came in which Field-Marshal
the Duke of Wellington presented _his_ compliments to Mr. Salting, with
the assurance that in the circumstances, etc., etc. The offence was
solemnly forgiven. Two Sundays later I was invited by old Sir Charles
Mills, grandfather of the present Lord Hillingdon, to dine and sleep at
Hillingdon. Mr. Algernon Greville, the Duke’s private secretary, was
there. I asked him whether the Duke of Wellington had really received
and answered the letter. Mr. Greville said that the Duke had not only
received the letter, but, suspecting the joke, and greatly amused by it,
insisted on answering it himself. Here would have been a beginning for a
collection of autographs! But Salting’s tutor got hold of the letter and
kept it!
To the end of his life I kept up a sort of fitful friendship with that
amiable man. Slim, tall, and handsome in appearance, he altered very
little. The last time that I saw him was not very long before his death.
I met him in King Street, just outside Christie and Manson’s, where some
sale was going on. We stopped and talked, and I could not help noticing
that, barring the long beard, it was still the old Salting of the
yellowhammer days.
There was one project which lay very near to Dr. Hawtrey’s heart. Between
the oppidans and the collegers there was a great gulf fixed. To bridge
this over was his ambition. I have shown how Provost Hodgson and he had
done much to improve the lives of the boys on the foundation. It had
cost them infinite pains, and in his case great pecuniary sacrifices; of
that he took little heed, for he was always open-handed, and to give was
for him a necessity. By curtailing the Long Chamber and the erection of
the new buildings in Weston’s Yard, and by other corollary reforms, they
had given the collegers a measure of decency and comfort which they had
never enjoyed before. Hawtrey thought that the time had come when, with
the help of these altered conditions, he could amalgamate Eton into one
uniform whole, collegers and oppidans, one body with one soul and one
spirit, all invidious distinctions swept away, all jealousies stifled
and done with. His plan was to get a number of boys who had already been
some years in the school and had therefore made their friends among the
oppidans to compete for college. He thought that in this way he would
be introducing a leaven of intimacy between the two camps. In my time,
at any rate, it was a complete failure. The only result was that the
newcomers lost their oppidan friends, while from the old college hands
they received but a cold welcome. I was one of the vile bodies upon
which the experiment was tried, and that is how I lost my intimacy with
Swinburne.
Dr. Hawtrey’s influence with my father was immense, and for some two
years I became a colleger. I can honestly say that during that time I
never was inside any oppidan’s room, nor do I remember ever having an
oppidan to visit me, or any other colleger. During the last year and a
half of my Eton days, when I was already in sixth form, I went back to
be an oppidan, and Evans’s house being full, was sent to Mrs. Voysey’s,
who was a new dame. In the meantime Provost Hodgson had died in 1852, and
was succeeded by Dr. Hawtrey, to my deep regret, for he was followed as
Head Master by Dr. Goodford, and in a schoolroom over which that dull and
drowsy man presided there was little joy.
Once, I remember, he woke up from one of his naps (vigilant naps they
were, for if one of us blundered he was wide-awake in a moment), and was
minded to be grotesquely humorous. Someone was construing, I forget what,
when all of a sudden he suggested as a translation, “Oh, dear! what can
the matter be?” and asked whether any of us could quote the next line.
One suggested a repetition of the same line; another “Johnnie’s so long
at the fair.” “Wrong! Quite wrong,” he said, “the second line is ‘_Dear!
Dear!_ What can the matter be?’” Dismally he grinned at his own fun,
which did not raise even a sycophantic smile, and then composed himself
once more to “yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of
the hands to sleep.” And so the dreary pedagogic round droned on. What
would I not give now to have had the privilege of passing that year and
a half under the illuminating tuition of Dr. Hawtrey! What a gift to be
able to teach and in teaching please—practically to strike out from the
dictionary the hateful word “lessons!”
CHAPTER IV
SUMMER HOLIDAYS
“Cretâ an carbone notandi?” The summer holidays of 1851 shall be “noted”
with the whitest of chalk. The first three or four days were spent in
London exploring the treasures and wonders of the Fairy Palace which the
imagination of the Prince Consort and the talent of Paxton called up
in Hyde Park—of which Sydenham gives no conception. It was but a baby
compared with the great exhibitions—labyrinthine cities in themselves—by
which it was followed—but it was so graceful, so delicate, so airy, that
its translucent beauty remains graven on my memory as something which
must defy all rivalry. When first I saw it glittering in the morning sun,
I felt as if Aladdin and the Jin who was the slave of the lamp must have
been at work upon it—no mere human hands and hammers and builders’ tools
could have wrought such a miracle. A single relic marks the site: one of
the two great elms which were enclosed in it, now a feeble old truncated
pollard, piously fenced in by the care of those who rule the Park, still
stands in the great stretch of grass opposite the Knightsbridge Barracks;
its mate sickened and died.
There were two exhibits which struck my boyish imagination: one the
great crystal fountain in the centre of the building—the sun was shining
gloriously, charming all the jewels of the world into the plashing
water—it seemed to me a dream of beauty. The other was Koh-i-Nur, in the
cutting of which the great Duke of Wellington took so much interest; its
fire has now been eclipsed by the mightier light of that wonder-stone,
the Cullinane diamond, but the poetry of its story remains now, as it was
then, one of the great traditions of the gorgeous East, reaching back
into legendary times, when there were still Afrits to do the bidding of
King Solomon. No stone newly found in the blue earth of Africa can dim
the magic halo of Eastern romance, or blur the succession of pictures
which the crystal-gazer should see in the mystic depths of the Mountain
of Light—all the glamour of “the thousand nights and one.”
But it is idle to talk of this or of that exhibit, or even of many. There
were things beautiful, and things hideous, for art at that moment had
sunk very low; but the general effect of beauty and airy grace, together
with the delicate framework and brilliancy of the whole structure, was
indelible—unlike its more modern successors its size was not so great as
to prevent one from gaining a general impression of the whole, and that
was a joyous, sensuous revelling in a palace of light. Even those whom I
remember scoffing at the idea when it was first mooted were compelled to
admit that it was a great conception nobly carried out; it was a triumph
of which the present Crystal Palace gives no conception. The transfer to
Sydenham and the increase in size seemed at once to vulgarize it.
Great were the joys of the Exhibition! but there were greater yet in
store for me in the first sight of the richly fabled Rhineland, where,
after a few happy days in London, I was to join my father. Those were
times when the “Pilgrims of the Rhine” wandered through a realm of
romance and poetry untouched by the vulgar hand of utilitarianism. The
air that we breathed was as pure, as nipping, and as eager as that which
many centuries ago floated round the Dragon’s rock and the eyrie from
which the brave Roland looked down upon the island convent—the prison of
all that he held dearest upon earth.
Now tall chimneys cut up the lovely views, belching out sulphurous
vapours upon the castles and fastnesses of the old Robber Knights.
Factories and huge industries darken the blue of the sky. The siren song
of the Lorelei is no longer heard from the rock where she used to sit
“combing her golden locks with a golden comb,” and luring the benighted
fisherman to his doom; she has fled, Heaven knows whither, scared by the
prose of a cruel century; the clang of the Nibelungen’s hammer and anvil
has ceased to beat in the dark caverns of the earth. Giants and dwarfs
have disappeared, and the Rheingold is now won by methods in which there
is neither beauty nor romance, nor fairy lore. What was the _Wacht am
Rhein_ about, that it did not strike a blow to hinder the defiling of the
sacred river? It has been fierce enough against the Frenchman; could it
do nothing to stay the hand of the sacrilegious German money-spinner?
Last year (May, 1914) I took a novice to view the scenes which had cast
a spell over my young enthusiasm. He was disappointed, and I could not
wonder at it. No crucible of the imagination can weld together Manchester
and the Sieben Gebirge.
In 1851 life on the Rhine sped like a happy dream. My father made Coblenz
our headquarters, and we made many delightful expeditions; among others,
a trip by steamer up to Bingen and thence across the river into the
lovely Schweitzer Thal, which, lying as it does just out of the beaten
track, is so seldom seen.
It was no mere chance that made my father choose Coblenz for our
temporary abode. Mrs. Bradshaw was living there with her son-in-law and
daughter, and she had been a great friend of my father and mother. When
I knew her, she was an old lady and quite blind, bearing her affliction
with that gentle patience which is so usual with those who are thus
punished. She still had the delicately cut features and charm of manner
which had made her famous in her youth; for she was no less a person than
Miss Maria Tree, the singer and actress who took all London by storm when
on the 8th of May, 1823, she “created,” as the phrase now goes, “Home,
Sweet Home,” in the opera of _Clari_ by Sir Henry Bishop. The words were
by John Howard Payne, an American author, paraphrased from lines by T.
Haynes Bayly, the author of “I’d be a Butterfly,” a song now probably
forgotten, but in my childhood almost as popular as “Home, Sweet Home,”
itself—especially in seminaries such as that of the Misses Pinkerton on
Chiswick Mall. It is said that the motive of the air was taken from a
Sicilian melody: be that as it may, it has been so long naturalized that
it lives as something purely English. It will always be associated with
Patti, but Maria Tree, who first made it live, should not be forgotten.
The libretto of _Clari_ was based upon the old, old tragedy. It was the
story of a beautiful girl, who after some months of luxurious misery
in a city, comes back to seek peace in her village home. I have often
heard my father and Mr. Henry Greville say what a dream of fascination
she was when with her wide-brimmed straw hat, slung by a ribbon to her
arm—looking like a dainty picture by Morland—she came forward and in her
sweet voice—a voice which in speaking retained its charm to the end—sadly
warbled the pathetic song. The town was conquered and there was not a dry
eye in the house.
In circumstances so romantic that even at this distance of time it would
be indiscreet to mention them, she won the heart of Mr. Bradshaw—the
Jemmy Bradshaw of contemporary memoirs—one of the great dandies of the
early days of the nineteenth century, a friend of the Prince Regent. It
was a happy marriage, and there was one beautiful daughter, who became
the wife of Captain Langley, an officer in the 2nd Life Guards. They were
as handsome a couple as could be seen—and they were made very welcome
in the society of Coblenz. The sympathy of the sword and great personal
charm were a passport to the friendship of the very smart garrison.
I can see Mrs. Bradshaw coming into the room tapping her way with her
stick. Gracious and kind she always was, and her poor dim eyes, that used
to laugh so merrily, had not forgotten how to smile a welcome. Many happy
hours I spent as a boy and afterwards as a young man in her house in the
Schloss-Strasse.
During the fifties, the old Emperor William, his brother being still
alive, was military governor or viceroy of Rhenan Prussia and Westphalia,
and held his Court at Coblenz. Both he and his Princess, afterwards the
Empress Augusta, were most graciously kind to foreigners. My father
was a frequent guest at the Palace, and even I, though a mere boy,
was more than once invited to the afternoon coffee parties. Naturally
enough the Court was a centre for the best society of the town and
neighbourhood—mostly military and official.
The Prince was a handsome, soldier-like figure, bluff and hearty, royal
to his fingers’ tips, most gracious and friendly in the reception of his
guests. He was all his life the sworn foe of anarchism and socialism,
and at one time was so clearly marked as a probable object of attack,
that in March, 1848, he was compelled by his brother and the government
to leave Germany for a while. He remained in London only until June,
when he returned to Berlin as a member of the National Assembly, and
declared himself a conscientious supporter of the Constitutional
Monarchy. He assumed his high office at Coblenz in 1849, shortly after
the attempt upon his life by a ruffianly anarchist named Adam Schneider
at Niederingelheim.
The certainty that he must succeed his brother in the kingship, as well
as his own commanding character made his Court very regal and very
important. He was admirably seconded by his Princess, a daughter of the
House of Saxe-Weimar. The Empress Augusta, to give her the title by which
she is best known, was in 1851 a graceful, still very attractive lady,
in spite of her forty years. She was a woman of refined accomplishments,
a scientific musician, a great lover of art. She was very well read,
especially in French literature, and kept a French reader, M. Guillard,
attached to her household. She preferred Victor Hugo, Balzac, Lamartine,
Alexandre Dumas and the English writers to the dull dogmatics of the
German schoolmen of that day. Bismarck complained not a little of her
foreign predilections, and considered that she was far too much inclined
to belittle what was German in favour of exotic literature.
The truth was that the two natures were not sympathetic: she was highly
strung and æsthetic—in him not even Paris and St. Petersburg (now
Petrograd) had been able to polish the roughness of the diamond. When
the fateful episode at Ems occurred, the plain-spoken statesman did not
conceal his fear lest the King should come under the influence of the
Queen, who was hard by at her beloved Coblenz. At any rate, she made the
Princely Court gay and very agreeable, and Bismarck was able to console
himself with the reflection that his policy—I am now speaking of nineteen
years before the great war—had a strenuous supporter in the Prince’s
right-hand man, Count Karl Von der Goltz.
Prince Frederick, the future hero of so many pitched battles, the father
of the present Kaiser, was a tall, fair, handsome stripling, beardless
and very young looking, who a year or two later confided to my father
that he was “almost engaged” to our Princess Royal. His sister, Princess
Louise, still alive as Grand Duchess of Baden, was a lovely maiden, such
as Perrault might have imagined, or Madame d’Aulnoy portrayed.
The ladies- and gentlemen-in-waiting were well qualified to turn what
might have been a very dull Court into an intimate little coterie,
enlivened by private theatricals in French, music, readings and other
amusements; it was very dignified in that there was nothing frivolous
about it, but it was never stiff and never dull.
The two ladies were Countess Haack—elderly, and if the truth must be
told, rather plain—and Countess Oriolla, a beauty who preferred maiden
meditation to matrimony, and would not be won.
Count Karl Von der Goltz was, owing to his confidential position with the
Prince, a real influence in Germany—an influence recognized by Bismarck
himself, and of him I should like to say a few words. In his “_Gedanken
und Erinnerungen_” the great man describes him as “an elegant and smart
officer of the Guards, a Prussian to the core (_Stock-Preusse_), and
courtier, who took no more heed of the rest of Germany outside of Prussia
than his position about the Court involved. He was a man of the world,
rode well to hounds, handsome, a favourite with women, a past master in
courtly etiquette; politics were not the first consideration with him,
but were only a means to his ends at Court. Nobody knew better than he
did that the recollection of Olmütz was the right incentive to win over
the Prince and induce him to take a hand in the fight against Manteuffel,
and he had plenty of opportunities both when travelling and at home of
making the best use of this spur to the feelings of the Prince.”
Count Von der Goltz’s brother Robert was the first instigator of the
Bethmann-Hollweg coalition against Manteuffel. He was a man of unusual
talent and energy “with whose active capacity Manteuffel had the
tactlessness to deal imprudently.” (Bismarck _ut supra_.)
To Bismarck, Olmütz was the bitterest of thoughts. Two years after the
Emperor Ferdinand had there abdicated in favour of his nephew, Francis
Joseph, Prince Schwarzenberg, on behalf of Austria, and Manteuffel, as
plenipotentiary for Prussia, met there and came to the agreement known as
the “_Olmützer Punktation_”—which at a moment when war seemed inevitable,
settled the differences between the two Powers, but entirely in favour of
Austria.
It was the life’s aim and ambition of Bismarck to undo Manteuffel’s work,
and to assert Prussia as the leading Power among the Teuton peoples
by uniting all the German States, to the exclusion of Austria, under
her hegemony. In May, 1851, he was appointed secretary to the Prussian
representative at the Diet, and three months later was promoted to be
himself representative.
His first move against Austria was characteristic. It had been the custom
at the social gatherings of the Diet for the Austrian delegate to give
the signal for smoking. Bismarck took an early opportunity of lighting
his own cigar first, politely offering a match to Count Thun, his
Austrian colleague. It was the bursting of a bombshell, and the incident,
apparently so trivial, was electric. Everyone present knew what was
meant. That match lit a flame which was only extinguished fifteen years
later at Sadowa.
The hatred of Manteuffel and his policy was the secret of Bismarck’s
admiration for the brothers Von der Goltz; for in the handsome courtier,
Count Karl, he recognized an ally almost, if not quite, as powerful
as the statesman and diplomatist Count Robert. It would be difficult
to imagine two men more different than the polished guardsman and the
rough, unkempt man-of-affairs, but they were both, to use Bismarck’s own
expression “_Stock-Preussen_.” Olmütz was to both a haunting memory, and,
the wiping out of that stain a sacred duty which united the two.
By the side of Count Von der Goltz the two other gentlemen-in-waiting
were less conspicuous figures. He was always in the foreground, and
remained the faithful friend and servant of his old master all through
the glorious campaigns of 1866 and 1870, in both of which he earned
great honour as a cavalry general, and having resigned his high military
commands in 1888, remained attached as General aide-de-camp to the
Emperor William until the old warrior’s death in the same year. He
himself died thirteen years later at Nice, at the age of eighty-six.
His colleagues at the Court of Coblenz as I knew it were Major
Schimmelmann, a handsome giant, who was very good to me, and another
officer, Herr Von Steinäcker, a rather melancholy man who worshipped
the ground upon which Countess Oriolla’s pretty foot trod; it used to
be said that he proposed to her once a month, and on being once a month
refused, would take to his bed love-sick, disconsolate, emerging at the
end of twenty-four hours to resume his duties. But his story belongs to
the small-beer chronicles of the Court, whereas that of Count Von der
Goltz, like that of the glorious Prince, King, Emperor, whom he loved and
served, belongs to the old October ale of German politics and history, a
heady brew if ever there was one.
We paid several visits to Coblenz during my Eton days—and in 1857, when I
was already twenty years old, I went back there with a reading-party from
Oxford. We stayed there for some five or six weeks and then went on to
that wicked Paradise, Baden Baden. It was in the old days of the gaming
tables—needless to say, we, like the other moths, had our wings singed,
and when we had little more than enough to pay for third-class tickets,
fled, and landed in Paris with just about a hundred francs between us. I
managed to get three rooms in some obscure back street in the Quartier
Latin for thirty francs the week—we breakfasted in a _crèmerie_ for a few
sous—dined at the two-francs dinner in the Palais Royal—lived the _vie
de Bohème_ with the students and _rapins_, who gave a warm welcome to
Oxford, and when replenishment of our purses came from England, left our
church-mouse poverty and wild cheery life with the greatest regret.
In the month of April, 1914, I was in Germany, with two days to spare.
I had long been haunted by the wish once more to see Coblenz, the
happy hunting-ground of sixty years ago. How could a veteran better
wind up a holiday than by fulfilling that desire? We put up at the old
hotel, “Zum Riesen”—the Giant—a _caravanserai_ that I knew well as long
ago as my first visit in 1851. Not that we ever lodged there, for my
father preferred the “Bellevue,” out of affection for old M. Hoche, the
proprietor, who had been a famous cook in Paris.
Those were the days when the table d’hôte acted up to its name, and
the host in person sat at the head of the table as Lord of the Feast;
every now and then, as some special dish was being handed round, M.
Hoche would get up from his seat and come to my father, saying, “Mangez
de ça, Monsieur, j’y ai mis la main”—and what a cunning hand it was!
and how cheap was the excellent dinner served at one o’clock—fifteen
groschen (1s. 6d.) if you came at haphazard, ten groschen if you were
_abonné_—supper was _à la carte_. These were the prices of the best
hotels on the Rhine, and they must have been just, for dear old M.
Hoche and his wife waxed fat upon them, and having lived in great
content, died leaving a fortune. The table d’hôte at which the good old
grey, snuffy generals and colonels and _Herren Geheimräte_ dined in
state is a thing of the past. The old “Bellevue” has been pulled down
and has been replaced by a gigantic new “Bellevue”—whose Pharaoh knew
not Joseph—Coblenz has grown out of all recollection, and prices have
followed suit.
Here and there I found some old parts of the town almost untouched, and
the view from the bridge over the Moselle is a relic of the past, with
its church spires and old-fashioned, rickety houses, roofed with brown
tiles, weather-stained like the grey walls and shutters, as picturesque
as age and just a modicum of dirt and shabbiness can make them. Here the
character of the old German town reveals itself, and when we take our
stand in front of the Giant Hotel and look out upon the Rhine, the bridge
of boats opening to make way for some passing timber-raft—itself its own
cargo from the depths of the far-away Black Forest—when we look at the
grim Ehrenbreitstein with its batteries frowning threats from its rocky
heights—then we forget all modern improvements and artistic misfortunes,
and are once more in the old Rhineland.
On the evening of our arrival, after dark the riverside was gaily
thronged with people drinking in the cool evening air after the heat of
a day as hot as summer. The stream was brilliant with the reflection
of electric lights, but across the water on the awe-striking fortress
there was just one lamp to be seen peering out of the gloom of the black
battlements like a watchful eye—a strange and weird effect, befitting the
castle of an ogre—a silent BEWARE!
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON’S FUNERAL
On the eighteenth of November, 1852, the great Duke of Wellington was
buried. Of course many boys, myself among the number, had leave to go up
to London to see the funeral procession. It had been a very rainy autumn
and the Thames was swollen to an inordinate degree. Eton was flooded and
we were taken up part of the High Street in punts. I believe that no such
flood has been seen since, though the year 1894, when the boys were sent
home on the seventeenth of November, fell not far short of it.
I witnessed the funeral from the first floor of the Bath Hotel,
which stood at the corner of Arlington Street and Piccadilly, at the
north-eastern corner of the modern Ritz Hotel. I have since seen many
great ceremonies, many magnificent and moving spectacles in many lands,
but none that could be named in the same day with the funeral of the Iron
Duke. As a military display it was, of course, superb. All arms were
represented, and a brave show they made; uniforms were far more gorgeous
in those days than they are now that the spirit of economy has cut off
epaulettes and gold lace from officers, shabracks and other ornaments
from their horses. The bands of the various regiments, the muffled roll
of the kettle-drums, mysterious in the distance, heralding the dirge of
the “Dead March in Saul,” followed by the wailing of the bagpipes of the
Highland regiments; the solemnity of the reversed arms, the charger with
empty boots—always a pathetic sight at a soldier’s funeral—led behind the
great bronze car, hung with wreaths of cypress and bay, drawn by twelve
black horses, three abreast, housed with black velvet and a blaze of
heraldry; the deputations of splendidly clad foreign officers, following
the car. All this appealed to the imagination of the huge crowd, often
moving them to tears, for they knew full well that “a Prince and a great
man was dead in Israel.” Few there were, even among the poorest, who
had not managed to don some slight sign of mourning, the slighter the
more touching, for it meant the more: a scrap of crape, a bit of black
cloth worn as an armlet were but the tokens of the real mourning which
was in men’s hearts. He was such a familiar sight to Londoners, this
wonderful old hero whom they used to watch riding along Constitution Hill
to and from the Horse Guards—to and from duty—to the last a spare, lithe,
active figure, smart as a young boy, dressed with scrupulous neatness,
and even a tinge of dandyism, in a tight-fitting, single breasted blue
frock coat, with spotless white trousers. When he passed all men doffed
their hats as if he had been a king, and the answering salute of the
forefinger raised to the brim of his hat, never omitted, never varying,
became almost historic. Often I saw him: he was a very old man, and the
neck was a little bent, but the chiselled face was still commanding, and
the fire had not ceased to glow in those eagle eyes, the _finestra dell’
anima_—altogether an unforgettable figure.
London loved him. Much water, as the saying goes, had flowed under the
bridges since April, 1831, when the mob broke the windows of Apsley
House, while the body of the Duchess, just dead, was lying there waiting
burial. The iron shutters were the only signs left of the fleeting
unpopularity of the Reform days. The life that was in the Duke, his
activity, his unwearying interest and the share which he took in
affairs and events great and small, from the quelling of the Chartist
insurrection, only five years before his death, to the opening of the
Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in 1851 and the cutting of the Koh-i-Nur,
stirred the imagination and roused the admiration of all men, rich
and poor. People used to tell how, when he and Lord John Russell were
discussing the steps to be taken for the safety of London in 1848, and
Lord John suggested one measure after another, the invariable answer
from the grim old soldier was, “Done already.” Nothing had escaped that
wonderful eye. And so he became, as it were, a superman, and when he died
men looked around them and there was none found to fill the gap.
As the great funeral car passed opposite the window where I was, one
of the wreaths of cypress and bay leaves fell off. So soon as the last
soldier closing the procession had disappeared, a poor old woman dashed
forward and picked up the wreath. I ran down and tried to buy it of her,
but she would not part with her precious relic. At last I persuaded her
to sell me one cypress cone for a shilling. The cone was full of seed
which I sent down to Exbury in Hampshire, at that time belonging to my
father; and there are now, in the wood near the house, a number of quite
important cypress trees, the beautiful sixty-year-old children of that
wreath.
After the funeral, “The death of the Duke of Wellington” was set as
the subject for a copy of Alcaics for fifth-form boys at Eton. It was
an unfortunate subject, for it was sure to lead to some regrettable
absurdity: that did not fail: one boy began his copy of verses with the
two lines:
Ut dixit olim magnus Horatius,
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
Apart from the bathos of the drivel, it was so inappropriate, seeing
that the glorious old warrior fell asleep at Walmer full of years
(eighty-three) and honour, on the fourteenth of September, 1852. His body
was brought to London, and lay in state at Chelsea for a week before the
funeral.
CHAPTER V
WALES AND OXFORD
I left Eton at Christmas, 1854, after nearly nine years’ experience of
its good and its evil. The last half spent there was not a happy one,
though I was high up (second, in fact) in sixth form, in the boats, a
member of Pop, captain of my house, and invested therefore with dignities
such as I could never hope to possess again. I had been for two years
in Dr. Goodford’s division, and during all that time I cannot call to
mind ever having received from him a friendly word, a kindly look or
a smile: and when I left and deposited his fee[24] with him, he said,
“Well! I hope you may do better elsewhere than you have done here. But I
doubt it.” Not very gracious or encouraging words with which to send a
boy forth into the battle of life. And yet I cannot have been altogether
so bad as he thought, for my leave-taking with my tutor, and with other
masters who knew me better than Goodford did, was very different.
But apart from such personal matters, the memory of that last half is a
sad one. We were at the beginning of the Crimean War, and never shall I
forget the black gloom of the day when the list of killed and wounded
at the battle of the Alma was posted up at Pote Williams’ bookshop.
We older boys came out of the shop blinded with tears ill repressed
for poor young fellows who had been in the same division with us a few
months before, and others a year or two our seniors, who had been the
demi-gods of our fourth-form days. Then came Inkerman—and how the blood
raced boiling through our veins when we read the soul-stirring story of
Balaclava—outdoing Thermopylæ. Just heaven! Why were we not there? Think
of us boys, almost men, reading of the gallant deeds of Bob Lindsay,
Gerald Goodlake, George Wombwell, and many others, men almost boys! Then
came the trenches, but of those hours the worst was yet to come.
From Eton I went to Batsford, which I saw for the first time, little
thinking of the future which it held for me; and there I spent four happy
weeks, being introduced to shooting and hunting, the latter under the
tutelage of old Jem Hills, the famous huntsman of the Heythrop, of which
Lord Redesdale, though no longer master, was still the uncrowned king.
At the end of the holidays I was to go to Mr. W. E. Jelf, near Barmouth,
to be coached for a few months before going to Oxford. At that time the
railway went no further than Shrewsbury, where I lodged at the sign
of the “Raven,” an old-fashioned country inn of great repute—such an
inn as Charles Dickens would have loved, and as he alone could have
described. As I sat at dinner I saw that there was one other guest in the
coffee-room. While the waiter was out of the room this gentleman came up
to me and said, “Sir, I beg your pardon for interrupting you, but you
can render me a great service.” I thought of Buckstone in “Lend me Five
Shillings,” and instinctively froze, but I thawed again when he went on
to say, “I am Professor Anderson, the Wizard of the North; I am going to
give an exhibition of conjuring to-night, and for two of my most telling
tricks I need an accomplice. Will you help me? I need hardly say that you
will have a free admission.”
I suppose that he thought that I was a “youth of an ingenuous countenance
and ingenuous modesty,” and should not arouse suspicion. I consented,
and he entrusted me with a marked coin and some other trifle, giving me
full instructions as to what I was to do. We adjourned after dinner; the
room was crowded and the Professor made a great success of his show. And
so it came about that my first appearance in public was as “bonnet” to
the Wizard of the North. I saw no more of my friend, for the next day I
was coaching in Pickwickian fashion on the box seat through Wales to
Dolgelly, where my tutor’s carriage met me and finally landed me at his
pretty place, Caerdeon, where he had bought himself a small estate and
built a charming house.
The Rev. William Edward Jelf was a man of no little renown in the Oxford
world. He had been senior Censor of Christ Church, a great disciplinarian
both in college as tutor, and outside as proctor. He was a very sound
scholar, and the translator of Raphael Kühner’s Greek Grammar, a
monumental work. One of his greatest friends was Scott, the master of
Balliol, to whom he was wont to assign quite the lion’s share of the
credit for the great dictionary—Liddell and Scott. As a Don, Jelf was
anything but popular—he was too uncompromising, too “stiff in opinions.”
At the same time he was justice itself, and if you obeyed the law—his
law—to the right or to the left of which there was no salvation, there
was no limit to what he would do for you. I had been warned of his
“stiffness,” and made up my mind to observe discipline, with the result
that we got on famously, and the months spent with him were, if rather
lonely, on the whole happy and very profitable, for he certainly was a
most inspiring teacher.
All my work was done in my own room; with Mr. Jelf I had but one hour
a day, but then it was such an hour! Sixty minutes not one of which
was without its value. During the months that I spent with him, from
the end of January to October, I read through the whole of Herodotus,
the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Agamemnon of Æschylus, and, above all,
as an exercise, the Medea of Euripides, looking out every reference in
my master’s great grammar. In Latin I read Pliny’s delightful letters,
was supposed to be sufficiently well up in Horace and Virgil, and was
spared the arch-bore Cicero, in regard to whom I by no means shared
the enthusiasm of Mrs. Blimber; as a matter of archæology I might
sympathize with her as to the Tusculan villa, but its owner and his
self-glorification I should have avoided.
The curriculum was chosen as the best preparation for trying to gain the
Slade Exhibition at Christ Church. When I had been a few days with Jelf
and he had taken my measure, he made up his mind that he would make me
carry that off, and of course no one knew better than he did what would
be the most profitable training.
I should like, if it be not deemed an impertinence, to say one word here
upon the much-vexed question of a classical education, and of Greek in
particular. It is very easy, very cheap, to say that Greek and Latin are
of no use in learning modern languages. I have had some experience in the
study of both, and I am distinctly of opinion that nothing has helped
me so much in the acquisition of even the most out-of-the-way modern
languages as the work which I did under Jelf, dissecting every sentence
and every particle in the Medea with the help of his Greek grammar.
No language has been so thoroughly analysed—perhaps because none has been
so philosophically constructed—as Greek. The man who starts upon the
study of modern languages, after having dissected, conscientiously and
searchingly, the work of one of the Greek giants with the help of Jelf’s
great book, has insensibly converted his mind into a sort of comparative
grammar, he has acquired the knowledge of points of difference and points
of similarity, that is to say of comparison, of which Buffon said, “nous
ne pouvons acquérir de connaissance que par la voie de la comparaison,”
and although the aid given to him is, of course, indirect, it is none the
less real. He is in the position of a man who goes to a new gymnastic
exercise with trained muscles, and therefore with marvellous ease, as
compared with the man whose muscles and sinews are flabby and slack. That
it is a discipline of the highest significance few will be found to deny.
When Darwin spent seven years in dissecting barnacles it was not simply a
knowledge of barnacle nature at which he was aiming; he was training his
mind for other purposes. Apart from the beauties which they reveal to us,
and so without any reference to the important question of culture, I am
in favour of the study of the classics, as a gymnastic exercise of the
brain, as a dissection of barnacles which yields far higher results than
could be gained by merely learning French and German without any other
preparation. In that way a man would attain what must simply be a more or
less glorified couriers’ knowledge, practical no doubt, up to a certain
degree, but unscientific and failing him at crucial points.
The best Oriental scholars whom I have known have all been men who
attacked their Eastern studies armed with the weapons furnished by a
classical education. In China Sir Harry Parkes was an admirable oral
interpreter. But he, himself, as I have said elsewhere, always regretted
his want of classical training—nor would it be possible to compare him
with that great scholar Sir Thomas Wade. In Japan Von Siebold was as
fluent a talker as could be found. He was the son of the famous physician
and naturalist, who was attached to the Dutch Mission at Deshima, and
had learnt Japanese “ambulando.” But it would be childish to name him
with such learned men as Satow, Aston and Chamberlain, men who brought
the training and literature of the West to their studies in the East.
It is not without significance to note the great respect which such men
were able to command, whereas the mere parrot, however clever, was held
in little more esteem than a head waiter. Think of Basil Chamberlain
appointed to the Chair of ancient Japanese literature in the University
of Tokio.
And our own beautiful English, the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Milton: will that not suffer if a false utilitarianism should succeed
in banishing the classics from our schools? Even now it is surrounded
by enemies, but I shudder to think of what it might become after
two centuries of nothing but trans-oceanic influences unchecked by
scholarship.
It was a bitterly cold winter, long spoken of as the Crimean winter,
which was ushered in by January, 1855. In Wales as elsewhere it was so
cold that many birds and beasts were frozen to death, and one day in my
tutor’s garden I caught a live woodcock in my hand. The poor creature
was at the last gasp, dying of starvation. For many scores of miles
round there was no moist cranny into which it could insert its long beak
for food. The earth was like iron. Death and misery everywhere in these
islands, and it was terrible to get the news from the Crimea, where
hundreds of our poor, starving, shivering soldiers were in little better
plight than the wild creatures at home. How they suffered! and how nobly
patient they were!
During the dark months there was not much to be done beyond taking long,
solitary walks in the midst of that glorious scenery; Diphwys behind
us, the Barmouth river and Cader Idris in all its majesty in front of
us. Barmouth itself a little tiny fishing village. It would have been
a dull time if Jelf had not clapped spurs into me and filled me with a
new-born ambition, and a certain measure of that belief in myself without
which there is no hope. And I did work! When the spring came it brought
with it an invitation to Jelf to act as examiner in the final schools at
Oxford. He was very anxious to accept this, for he loved keeping up the
connection with his old university, so he proposed to me that I should
finish up the last two or three weeks with him at Christ Church, where
his brother, the principal of King’s College, who was a Canon, had lent
him his house. My father raised no objection, and I, of course, was
delighted, for I knew that among the undergraduates I should find many
old friends. I am grateful for the memory of those days, for never again
in after years did Oxford exercise upon me the same fascination that it
possessed at that time; I was very young, and very impressionable. Indeed
in a way it seemed as if I then was under an influence which, when I came
back some months later, had died away.
At my first visit there was still an old-world atmosphere about the
place, something which had preserved a sort of elusive aroma of the
cloister and the monk. It was the Oxford of the great men who from days
immemorial had made it famous; in modern times of “that devout spirit,”
Pusey, Newman, and “the movement.” It was instinct with the music of
Keble. But to me at that particular moment it was the Oxford of Gaisford.
The great Dean died a few weeks later, Liddell became Dean, and Oxford
came under the gentle sceptre of a bevy of ladies, two of them very
beautiful, very smart, and not a bit monachal. Moreover, it soon ceased
to be a place of learning for English gentlemen of the reformed Christian
faith. In 1855 the Parthian, the Mede, the Elamite, the dweller in
Mesopotamia, had no place in the sacred cloisters. We were all called
upon to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles (“forty, if you wish it,
sir,” was the pert answer of a famous wit), and as for the various
fellowships and scholarships, they remained as they had been instituted
by the pious founders. All Souls was a link between the university and
the great world. The qualifications for a fellowship there were that
the candidate should be “bene natus, bene vestitus et modice doctus _in
arte canendi_.” It was irreverently said that those last three words
had long since been omitted. The legend ran that before the election the
candidates, duly qualified as founder’s kin, were invited to dine in
Hall: a cherry tart was served, and the supreme test upon which election
depended was the way in which the aspirant disposed of the stones.
In those happy days a fellowship of All Souls possessed the same quality
which Lord Melbourne admired so much in the Order of the Garter, “There
was no damned nonsense of merit about it.” Now, alas! all is changed. The
fellows of colleges, even of All Souls, are married and meritorious. The
Don’s wife is the ruling power and his daughters are the nymphs of Isis,
floating luxuriously in punts under the willows of the backwaters—punts
that the ruthless proctors of my day, suspiciously tolerant of sisters,
would have employed mine-sweepers to disperse. Oxford has suffered a
sea-change. All the tongues of the diaspora of Babel raise a cacophony
in the groves of the Academeia. The Mohammedan in pious prayer turns
his face to the Kibleh and curses the infidel. The Buddhist reverently
seeks Nirvana in the contemplation of his own navel. The mild Hindoo
profitably studies anarchy. The Negro becomes a Christian and takes holy
orders that he may go back to his own country, receive a revelation, and
organize a massacre of whites by Divine command. Such are the uses to
which the grand old universities of England and America are now put, and
this is what is called reform. The Oxford of Gaisford, the Cambridge of
Whewell are phantoms of the past; what were once the strong places of
Christianity are now held by the heathen, and England is no longer for
the English—no—not even the House of Commons.
Dean Gaisford was a great potentate: not only was his scholarship superb,
but he was also a ruler of men. When he nodded, Olympus trembled. When
he stood up at the altar in Christ Church and thundered out the first
Commandment, with a long pause after the “I” and a strong insistence on
the “Me,” he would look round the cathedral sternly, as much as to say,
“I should like to see the undergraduate, or the graduate either, for that
matter, who will dare to dispute that proposition.” His famous utterance
in a sermon, “St. Paul says, and I partly agree with him,” has become
a classic. But he was like the Nasmyth Hammer: he could crush a rock or
flatten out a rose-leaf. Jelf had a good story of the way in which he
once petrified a very young Don who at one of his dinners ate an apple in
a way which he did not consider to be quite orthodox.
Not unnaturally I felt no little trepidation when on presenting myself
for the _vivâ voce_ examination for the Slade Exhibition, I saw the
dreaded Dean in the Chair. To my relief the Iliad was the book chosen,
and I was put on to construe. Then came a few questions on Homeric
matters, in which Jelf, during long months, had primed me well; and as
I left the room, great was my joy to hear the terrible Dean growl out,
“That young man knows his Homer well.” Never shall I forget the welcome
which Jelf gave me when it was announced that I had won. Perhaps not a
little both of his pleasure and mine consisted in thinking how annoyed
Goodford would be, for Jelf always held that Goodford had been unfair to
me. It was something of a _schaden-freude_.
So I was matriculated by Dean Gaisford, went to Switzerland with my
father for a month, and then back to Caerdeon for a final polish at the
hands of Mr. Jelf before Oxford.
When I entered Christ Church in the following October (1855) there were
at any rate three memorable personages amongst the Dons. Dr. Pusey was
a venerable figure—venerable not on account of his age, for he was but
fifty-five, and had nearly thirty more years ahead of him, but as the
hero of many fights, the victim of fierce persecutions, the man who, had
he lived two or three centuries earlier, would have been burnt alive;
some of his opponents must have regretted the disabilities imposed by
the nineteenth century, but he himself would have faced the stake with
all the courage of an inspired martyr. As he shuffled along the great
quadrangle, by no means a stately figure, looking older, far older, than
his years, there would be few men, whatever their opinions might be as
to the religious controversy of which he was the figurehead, who would
not take off their caps out of respect for his goodness, his piety, his
heroism and his great learning. He was not only profoundly versed in
all the subtleties of the old Fathers, but at Göttingen, whither the
necessities of theological study had driven him, he plunged with heart
and soul into the dark depths of German priestcraft and anti-priestcraft,
and into the mysteries of Syriac, Hebrew and Arabic scholarship.
To me there was always a magic halo about the learning of the East, and
so, although I never had speech of the great Divine, never even had the
very real honour of being introduced to him, I looked upon him with
no little awe as one removed far above the level of ordinary men. The
other canons and professors were no doubt worthy men and learned—perhaps
even an honour to their cloth; but the famous professor of Hebrew was
Somebody. I felt, as Napoleon said of Goethe, “there is a Man.”
The senior Censor of Christ Church was Osborne Gordon, a brilliant
character whom to have known was indeed a privilege, and as I had the
good fortune to be his pupil and he was very kind to me, he has remained
one of the pleasantest memories of my university days. He was a finished
scholar, very witty, with a great appreciation of character. He would
say the drollest things with the most imperturbable gravity, being in
his way a man of the world, in spite of the cramping tendencies of the
Oxford common room. When Lord Lisburne took his son, my contemporary, to
Christ Church, he consulted Mr. Gordon as to what allowance he should
give him as a Tuft. “Well, Lord Lisburne,” answered the witty Don,
cocking his trencher cap on one side as was his wont when he was going to
say something very funny, “you can give your son any allowance you like,
but please remember that his debts will always be in proportion to his
allowance”—a most sagacious remark! On another occasion, a certain young
gentleman went to him and asked him whether he had any chance of passing
his little-go. “Well! you have one great advantage,” was the answer. “You
will go into the examination absolutely unhampered by facts.”
During the time that I was at Oxford, Charles Spurgeon was making a new
sensation as a preacher. One Sunday Osborne Gordon and two or three
Oxford Dons went up to London to hear him. The next evening my tutor
came, as he often did, to smoke a pipe in my rooms. I asked him what had
been the impression made by Spurgeon on him and his friends. They had
been struck by Spurgeon’s power, but had been greatly shocked when the
preacher, after laying down a rule of life, went on to say: “If you do
as I have told you to do, and if after that Jesus Christ should at your
death refuse you admittance to heaven, you tell Him that Charles Spurgeon
says He is a very shabby fellow!” Surely, contempt of all convention
and the familiar degradation of the most sacred Name could hardly go
further. Throw propriety to the winds, and it is an easy matter to make
a startling speech or preach an arresting sermon. To Gordon’s cultivated
and fastidious mind such levity and vulgarizing of the sublime could only
be repellent.
Osborne Gordon was afterwards, in 1860, appointed Vicar of East
Hampstead, where he was as much beloved by Lord and Lady Downshire and
his other parishioners as he had been at Oxford. Who that really knew him
could help loving him? He died in 1883. Ruskin wrote his epitaph—rather a
stilted Johnsonian attempt.
The third great treasure, unsuspected by us, that we possessed at Christ
Church, was our mathematical lecturer, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Who
could have guessed that the dry little man from whom we learnt the
sublime truth that things which are equal to one another are equal to
themselves, was hatching in that fertile brain of his such a miracle of
fancy and fun as “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”? The book came out
whilst I was in the Far East, out of the way of all literary gossip, and
I was stricken with amazement when I came home and the identity of Lewis
Carrol was revealed to me.
A good story was told about him which I have not seen in print. Queen
Victoria, it seems, was so much struck by “Alice” that she commanded Sir
Henry Ponsonby to write and compliment the author, adding that she would
be pleased to receive any other book of his. He was greatly flattered and
sent her his “Syllabus of Plane Algebraical Geometry.”
All the tutors were good and amiable men. But there was one in memory
of whom I would fain burn my candle, though it be but a tallow-dip, and
that was St. John Tyrwhitt, a most dear and charming man, a person of
great culture, an artist in his leisure hours, the friend and disciple
of Ruskin. He would often invite me to his rooms and talk with fervent
admiration of his illustrious friend, infecting me with the first germs
of enthusiasm for his works. Always kind, always sympathetic, ready
at all times to give good advice, a trusty friend in need, without a
half-penny’s worth of donnishness about him, St. John Tyrwhitt, whatever
his scholarship may have been, as to which I know nothing, was a valuable
asset in a flock of young men. Dean Liddell, who succeeded Dean Gaisford,
was a singularly handsome man, and a great figurehead. But he was not
popular. The undergraduates resented his treatment of them as schoolboys;
he could not quite shake off the schoolmaster attitude of his Westminster
days, and this led to some deplorable follies, and worse than follies.
Rebellion was rife, the lecture room was gutted, and the furniture
destroyed; a kettle of gunpowder with a fuse attached to it was hung
upon the door of the deanery, but was fortunately discovered in time. A
subscription was got up to pay for the damage that had been done, and the
malefactors were rusticated. For the first year the condition of things
was deplorable—after that they mended. But the Dean, in spite of his
wife’s judicious help, never in my time commanded the sympathy of “the
House.”
The drawing together of the threads of memories much more than half a
century old is but dismal work. It is like walking through a cemetery
filled with tombstones all inscribed with names that in spite of time are
still familiar, and some of them very dear. This has probably been said
before—it is so evident. Of the Dons of 1855 not one remains. Baynes,
who died a few years ago, was the last. Even of my own contemporaries
few, only here and there one, are left. The bright curly heads, fair
or dark, with whose owners we lived, and laughed, and hoped and
quarrelled, have all been laid low, and if one remains above ground, it
is as bald as a billiard ball, or perhaps nourishes a few straggling
lifeless hairs, white as old age can bleach them. Few became eminent:
among them were Lord St. Aldwyn (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), _facile
princeps_—Alfred Thesiger, raised to be a Lord Justice of Appeal, but who
did not live long to enjoy his fame—Roland Williams, also Lord Justice,
himself the son of a judge (if I only knew how to apply “matre pulchrâ
filia pulchrior” to a legal reputation!) one of the most delightful
room-neighbours—were men who made their mark in the world—outside of
Christ Church were Swinburne, and, a little older, Lord Justice Bowen,
prince of lawyers and wits—Tom Brassey at University, and above all, John
Morley at Exeter. The latter I did not know until a dozen or so years
later, when he was already a power in Letters, a man for whom, differing
with him as I always have done _toto cœlo_ in politics, I entertain the
greatest respect mingled with an affectionate gratitude for giving me my
first encouragement as a writer in 1871.
The rest of us were just mediocrities: tolerable specimens of healthy
young Englishmen ready to do our duty as landowners, soldiers, lawyers,
clergymen, civil servants; in general, fairly respectable, in some
cases woeful scamps. On one point we were most of us agreed, at any
rate in practice, and that was that it was expedient that we should go
through the University doing as little work and spending as much money
as possible. That was the way in which we interpreted our duty to our
parents. And so I spent the first two years of my life at Oxford in
forgetting with the utmost facility the small modicum of scholarship that
with the utmost difficulty I had acquired under Jelf. A piteous and a
shameful record.
We had the usual number of Tufts—some of whom achieved notoriety in
after life: Lord Coventry early made a name for himself as a great
agriculturist and model landlord, a mighty hunter before the Lord, M.F.H.
and Master of the Buckhounds, a most conscientious and hardworking Lord
Lieutenant of his county, and I suppose one of the best living judges of
horses and racing; a man who has always been idolized by his friends.
Then there was Skelmersdale, a really resplendent youth in all the first
glory of a beard which was to become the joy of Courts and the title
to an Earldom. He was as handsome as he was good and generous, the
highest type of honest Anglo-Saxon beauty, after whom the Donnesses ran,
worshipping, “en tout bien tout honneur,” as if he had been in deed, and
not in appearance only, the archangel Gabriel.
Of the undergraduates at Christ Church who were a little older than
me, none was more brilliant, socially, than John Arkwright of Hampton
Court, near Hereford; he was so gay, so full of fun, and so “good all
round,” that he was always the central figure wherever he might be. The
other day I was reading over again the copy of verses which he wrote
as a “Vale” when he left Eton; the satire, always good-natured, of the
different masters of that day was really a masterpiece of wit. Of course,
all the delicate humour of it would be unintelligible to the present
generation—its value depended on knowing the now long-forgotten shades
that then were men—but as the work of a boy of seventeen or eighteen it
was wonderful.
One fifth of November, when there was a town and gown row, about forty
of us went out from Christ Church to see the fun. Hardly had we all got
into St. Aldate’s Street when we met the senior Proctor, with Brown
the marshal carrying the mace, the bull dogs and all the myrmidons of
collegiate authority. Of course, he stopped us—“Your name and College,
gentlemen!” We were promptly sent back into Tom Gate, and as promptly
marched across the quadrangle and were out again at Canterbury Gate,
Arkwright and myself still leading. This time we got as far as the High
Street unmolested, but no sooner had we turned the corner by Spiers’ shop
than we ran into the arms of another Proctor. “Your names, gentlemen;
go back to College at once!” and forming up behind us with his lictors,
the great guardian of morals drove us in front of him along the High
Street and by St. Aldate’s to Tom Gate. We had not gone many yards when
we met Proctor No. 1, who mercifully did not recognize us. “Your names
and Colleges, gentlemen.” “Thank you, sir,” said John Arkwright with
inimitable coolness, pointing to the police force behind, “We have our
Escort!” There was a great laugh from the crowd that had collected, and
I expected consequences, but the Proctor must have been a good-natured
fellow who saw the joke of the thing, for he took off his cap and
disappeared, and we heard no more of the matter—but all chance of fun or
a fight was over for that night, and this time we stayed within gates.
John Arkwright, among other accomplishments, was a capital boxer—and we
used to have great bouts at Maclaren’s gymnasium and fencing-rooms.
Indeed there was quite a little fashion-wave of sparring which came over
Oxford about the years 1856 and 1857, and so we got Aaron Jones to come
down and give us lessons. He arrived the week after his second fight
with Tom Sayers, and at that time, though by no means an ill-looking
man, he was not a pretty sight. All shape, all humanity seemed to have
been beaten out of his face; he must have suffered horribly, but that
he did not mind. His courage was extraordinary and he was an undeniably
fine boxer; but he had one great defect which was fatal to a first-class
fighter in those days; his hands used to swell and get puffy, and the
striking value of his blows was largely discounted. Now that gloves
are used in all fights he would have been a most formidable adversary,
for his power of inflicting punishment would have been as great as his
endurance in taking it. He was a good specimen of his class, and he had a
certain rough and ready wit which made him very amusing.
One day several of us had been sparring in my rooms, and we left off
just when it was too late to go for a walk and a little too early to
get ready for dinner; so we walked across to Tom Gate and stood there
smoking and watching the passers-by. As we were talking, there came along
a very pretty girl, very smartly dressed, under full sail (and it was
full sail in those crinoline days, of which John Leech was the recorder).
Somebody said, “Oh! look—what a pretty girl!” “Ah!” said Aaron, “I don’t
think much of her. Why just look at her feet! She’d frighten a worm in a
half-acre field into fits if he saw her coming in at the further end of
it.”
Talking of boxing, it appears to me that the difference between the
fighting of the days of which I am writing and the fighting of to-day
is more than a question of gloves or no gloves. The gloves may save
a certain amount of disfigurement which was caused by the cutting of
knuckles; but as a guarantee against risk to life they are useless. On
the other hand, the theory of the modern school of boxing points to far
more real danger than was run by the prize-fighters of my day, such men
as Ben Caunt, Bendigo, Nat Langham, Tom Sayers, Bob Travers and a host of
other famous pugilists.
They continued the traditions of Tom Spring, Cribb, Jackson, Molyneux,
the men of the Georgian days. Hitting was straight from the shoulder;
“hooks” were practically unknown, and the sickening body blows rare
indeed; the face was the target, and the infliction of black eyes and a
bloody nose represented the punishment which it was sought to inflict; in
the great fight between Tom Sayers and Heenan, of which I shall hope to
write later on, I cannot call to mind the delivery of a single body blow,
certainly there was not one that had any significance; in teaching, the
first-rate masters of the art, Nat Langham, Hoiles (the Spider), young
Reed, used to make their pupils defend the body by the position in which
the right arm was carried, but the attack was always directed at the
head—mainly at the eyes.
In the old straight fights, therefore, there was unquestionably much ugly
mauling, but probably less danger than exists in these days of gloves,
and hooks on the jaw, and deadly punches over the heart and vital organs.
In the Christmas and Easter vacations, the haunts of “the Fancy,” as
they were called (a name more fitting to beautiful ladies than to
prize-fighters), in the neighbourhood of St. Martin’s Lane, were very
attractive to a young undergraduate who felt himself big and proud
when he was greeted by and had shaken hands with such celebrities as I
have mentioned above. There, too, he would meet many of the well-known
patrons of the ring—Napier Sturt, Billy and Folly Duff and others. Billy
was a great character of whom many a queer story was told. Rat-killing,
badger-drawing and other kindred sports brought him into contact with
all the dog-dealers or dog-stealers, for I fancy that in London the two
trades were often interchanged in those days; perhaps they are still.
A lady whom he knew lost a pet dog and was miserable, so she wrote and
complained piteously to Billy Duff, who said he would try and get it back
for her. Off he went to the house of a famous dog-dealer, and was told
that he was not at home. Billy asked to see the wife—oh! yes, the wife
was at home, but she had had a baby a few days since and was in bed.
Billy said that did not signify; he would just go upstairs and see her
for a moment as he had something important to tell her. So up he went
and found Mrs. L—, who on hearing the case, swore by all her gods that
her husband knew nothing about it. Something in the good woman’s too
positive manner aroused Billy’s suspicion, so he took the baby out of its
cradle and told her that he was going to carry it off and (he stammered
badly), “as soon as his friend got her d-d-d-dog back he would return
the b-b-b-aby.” Downstairs he went with the baby, and in two hours the
bereaved lady was shedding tears of joy over her dog.
An escapade of Billy Duff’s at Baden might have ended in a tragedy. It
was in the old days of the gaming tables when the most heterogeneous
polyglot crowd, not altogether composed of angels, used to be gathered
together in that earthly paradise. Dining at the table d’hôte, Billy
found himself sitting next to a portentous personage wearing upon his
thumb a huge red Cornelian ring graven with a coronet and a coat of
arms of many quarterings. It was summer, and there were green peas,
which the personage proceeded to shovel into his mouth with his knife.
This offended Billy, who, with sublime impertinence, desired him not
to repeat the offence. The Baron or Count, or whatever he was, stared
furiously and went on pea-shovelling as before. “I have spoken to you
once,” stammered Billy. “D-d-d-don’t let me have to speak again.” This,
of course, only made the heraldic personage more angry. So Billy watched
his opportunity and nudged his neighbour’s elbow, nearly driving the
knife through his cheek. Of course there was a hideous row and a duel
the next day, when Billy broke his adversary’s arm. “I did not want to
hurt the poor d-d-d-devil much,” said Billy when he told the story. Long
years afterwards I was talking to the head of his clan about him. To my
amazement he had never even heard of him. Such is fame!
It would have been better for me if I had devoted a little less attention
to the Fancy and their Corinthian friends, the Toms and Jerrys of
the fifties, and had shown a little more respect for the purposes of
the University. There was a moment when Moderations, then a modern
innovation, came in sight, and I had to cram into something like six
weeks work which would have been mastered easily enough with a very
small amount of work spread over two years. Osborne Gordon was kindness
itself—he took me in hand and made me read Pindar with him, thinking that
if he could but cram that into me, it would cover a multitude of sins.
The fatal day arrived. I did well enough until I came to Demosthenes;
I had only read six orations out of eight, and as ill-luck would have
it, two out of the three pieces set happened to be taken out of the
unread speeches. Then came the _vivâ voce_—I was taken on in Pindar, and
Osborne Gordon, who had come to listen, was delighted when at the end
the examiners stood up and took off their caps, usually a sign that the
victim who has been upon the rack has got a first-class. My dear tutor
met me outside and said all sorts of pretty things. But when the lists
came out there was I, a dismal second-class, beaten by two or three
rivals whom I had floored over and over again in other examinations. When
Osborne Gordon, furious, asked the reason why, the Examiners said that it
was impossible to give a first to a young man who had evidently not read
his books. Demosthenes had done me! How I cursed him and his pebble and
the roaring sea-waves, and Æschines and the ἄνδρες δικασταί[25] and all
the rabble of them!
Not long afterwards I received a nomination for the Foreign Office and
was delighted to say farewell to the University. I was disgusted with
Oxford, when I ought to have been disgusted with myself. But it was
better that I should go. Amidst the old surroundings it would have been
difficult, perhaps impossible for me to break with the old habits, the
old loafing, and for an undergraduate there is nothing so dangerous,
nothing so demoralizing as loafing. In that respect I believe that the
University can claim a change for the better.
In my day, unless a youngster played cricket or rowed in the summer,
unless he hunted or went out riding in the winter, there was little
for him to do except dawdle about the High Street, or play billiards,
or rackets, or tennis, and for these latter games there was but small
provision. There was no hockey, and practically no football: I believe
that there were a few young men who kicked about a ball in remote
pastures, but the game was looked upon as a degradation and the players
as eccentricities. There were no “blues” except for the eleven, and the
eight.
I quite sympathize with those who think that too much attention is now
given to games; still, when I go to Oxford and see the hundreds of lads
flocking out, half naked, to football, hockey, running and jumping, I
cannot help admitting that they are leading cleaner, wholesomer lives
than we did, when we sauntered between Carfax and Magdalen Bridge,
parading the last unpaid masterpiece of some London tailor.
I am reminded of one of Gavarni’s old caricatures. A poor, shabby student
in the Quartier Latin is watching another trying on a very glorious new
coat. “Combien ça te coûte-t-il un habit comme cela?” “Je ne sais pas.”
“Dieu veuille, mon cher, que tu ne le saches jamais!” Sooner or later the
bill has to be paid, whether for loafing or for coats, and the bill for
loafing is the heavier of the two.
CHAPTER VI
THE F. O.
Je suis copiste,
Affreux métier!
Joyeux ou triste,
Toujours copier!
No one knew who was the unhappy clerk who, in a pessimistic mood, wrote
those Dantesque lines with a diamond on a pane of glass in the old
Foreign Office in Downing Street. If I had been in England when the old
house was broken up, I should have tried to buy that window-pane, with
its inscription—a note of despair recalling the “Lasciate ogni speranza,
voi ch’ intrate.”
The old Foreign Office in Downing Street was a dingy building enough,
with a sort of crusted, charwomanly look about it, suggestive of anything
but Secretaries of State, ambassadors, and such-like sublimities. The
_Dii majores_ occupied tapestried[26] chambers facing the Park, but
the great mass of the rooms in which the clerks worked looked out upon
nothing but Downing Street on one side, and on the other a rookery so
richly caked with soot and dirt that the very windows must long since
have ceased to let in a ray of light—a nest of squalid slums that have
long since been improved off the face of London. One house there was
among those crazy old tenements occupied by some professional man in
a small way of business, with two pretty daughters, maidens who from
the security of their father’s abode would make all sorts of loving
demonstrations to the young scribes opposite. Meet them outside, and
their eyes would be cast demurely upon the ground, chaste and virginal.
Half an hour later they would be at their old tricks, casting the most
appealing glances across the shabby street. They were like the veiled
beauties of Constantinople, who, knowing themselves to be quite safe,
will do all they can to allure the passing foreigner.
Poor Lionel Moore, one of our dragomans, who had lived in the Levant
from childhood, used to tell such amusing stories about those elusive
sirens. One day he was walking the streets of Pera when he saw a young
Turkish lady riding upon a very smart mule, with an escort of three or
four eunuchs, gloriously apparelled, evidently a lady of quality. As she
passed Moore she partially put aside her yashmak and gave him a most
bewitching glance—such a look as St. Anthony himself could not have
resisted. He, always ready for an adventure, followed the temptress,
though the sun was scorching. When she had made a fool of him long
enough, the lady called up her chief eunuch and said, “You see that
infidel?—go and fetch him a glass of water to cool him; he must be hot.”
As Moore spoke Turkish like a native the arrow hit the mark, and he slunk
away, discomfited, down a side street.
Naturally it was with no little trepidation and a rather fluttering
heart that on a bright morning in the month of February, 1858, I for the
first time set foot inside the gloomy portals of the sacrosanct F. O.
But my alarm was soon relieved, for in the hall were two gorgeous young
clerks, sartorially superb, both acquaintances of mine, who gave me the
kindliest of welcomes, and saved me from the ordeal of making myself
known to good old Weller, the porter. The real moment of terror came
when a few minutes later, having sent in my name, I was ushered into
the room of Mr. Hammond, the Under-Secretary of State. But even in that
Holy of Holies—the temple of the Norns that governed the destinies of
nations—fear was dispelled by the great kindness of the High Priest.
Mr. Hammond was, I suppose, at that time a man of between fifty and sixty
years of age—an imposing figure, big and burly, with rather a quick,
jerky, incisive manner, which was apt to make men shy until they got
to know him well, when the goodness and sweetness of his nature seldom
failed to inspire affection. He was one of the best public servants that
I ever came across. He was an indefatigable worker, and indeed his chief
fault was that he took too much upon his own shoulders; at the same time
he was more than generous in meting out praise to others.
There are not many men left who served under him; the few that are yet
alive must, like myself, have been pained by the way in which he has
been alluded to in certain recent biographical works. Private letters,
which were meant only for the eyes of those to whom they were addressed,
and were certainly never intended to be published, should be carefully
edited before they are put into print, otherwise words set down purely
in jest, and inspired by the humour of the moment, wear a serious look
which is all the more mischievous when the writer is a great personage.
Again, Mr. Hammond has been blamed because of his famous declaration to
Lord Granville as to the peaceful outlook in June, 1870. Was he to blame
for this false view of the state of Europe? His opinion was based upon
the despatches and—what is still more important—upon the private and
confidential letters received from Her Majesty’s Ambassadors at Paris and
Berlin, and from those who in similar positions were watching the course
of affairs in other capitals.
It was the various _chancelleries_, and not Lord Hammond, which were
responsible for his statement; and the wrong forecast only shows that the
blow fell suddenly and unsuspectedly, with the swiftness of a meteorite.
Until the “editing” of the famous Ems telegram, to which I shall allude
elsewhere, took place, Bismarck himself did not know how soon the gates
of the temple of Janus were to be thrown open. The secret was well kept
because it did not exist. War was the birth of a moment. There had been
no hidden warlike preparations either in France or in Germany; indeed, so
little was this the case that Bismarck tells us that it was not until he
had consulted Moltke as to the relative states of the French and German
armies, and which of the two would be likely to gain an advantage from an
immediate declaration of war, that he lighted the torch. (“Gedanken und
Erinnerungen,” Vol. II., 99-113.) So much for the ungenerous blame which
has been cast upon Mr. Hammond for his want of political foresight—an
altogether unjust accusation, founded upon ignorance of the condition of
affairs at the time.
Mr. Hammond was the Foreign Office; he kept all the strings in his own
hands. Probably such a method would be impossible in these days; but
at the time of which I am writing his colossal industry and retentive
memory enabled him to direct, single-handed, the whole current work of
the department. He was indispensable. Of course those matters in which
the policy of the Cabinet were at stake were dealt with then, as now,
by the Secretary of State. But it is no small tribute to the value set
upon Mr. Hammond’s work by successive Foreign Ministers that no change of
Government affected his position or lowered his authority.
Mr. Hammond kept me with him for a few minutes, warning me that my work
at first would be very dull, and then he sent me off, saying, “Remember
that there are no secrets here; everybody is trusted, and you will find
that nothing is hidden from you. But you must hold your tongue.” I
cannot remember any violation of that rule until many years afterwards,
when I had left the diplomatic service, and when a new system had been
introduced—as I think, very unwisely; but I do remember once, when some
twenty years later there had been a scandal in the _chancellerie_ of an
embassy of another country, that one of the greatest European financiers
said to me: “Well, there is one thing of which England may be proud: the
English Foreign Office is the only one at which we have never been able
to buy information.”
That says something for the old system of nomination, though I quite
admit that there ought to be a stiffish examination of the nominees of
the Secretary of State; but subject to that condition, I think that
Lord Clarendon was quite right when he told a Committee of the House of
Commons that he would rather resign the seals of the Foreign Office than
surrender the right of nomination to a vacant clerkship.
I was told off for the Slave Trade or African department—the only one in
which there was a vacancy, and there I remained for the first two years
of my service. The presiding genius was one Dolly Oom, a great character.
I do not suppose that he was more than fifty years of age, but he looked
as old as a grasshopper. He was a great authority on dinners, and used
to give very choice little parties in a tiny house in Duchess Street.
In matters theatrical, especially in all that related to pantomimes,
he was an expert, and he was a faithful member of the Old Stagers at
Canterbury—not as an actor, but as the official apologist, and all sorts
of excuses used to be invented for bringing him on to the stage in
that capacity, when, he being a favourite of many years’ standing, his
appearance, his faultless attire, his courtly bow, which it was whispered
was a piece of royal heredity from Hanover, were received with thunderous
applause. His bosom friend and the hero of his adoration was Charles
Mathews the actor.
Work in any shape he detested; if we took him a despatch he would look
at it with a sigh, and say, “Put it on the _monceau immonde_.” What he
dubbed the _monceau immonde_ was a pile of papers “to be dealt with,”
carried backwards and forwards daily between the press and the middle
table, which used to grow and grow until Wylde, the second in command,
could stand it no longer, and would set to work to clear it all off,
while Dolly Oom, sipping weak soda-water and brandy and uttering
incapable sighs, would look on and shake his head with a look of outraged
dyspepsia. There was one point upon which dear old Dolly Oom would stand
no nonsense. All words ending in _ic_ must have a final _k_—publick,
eccentrick, etc. Soft and gentle as cotton-wool in all other matters,
in this he was as hard and inexorable as the rock of Gibraltar! Upon
that _k_ depended the validity of treaties, the whole authority of the
Secretary of State.
Wylde was a splendid worker and knew the African business well. If his
minutes of between fifty and sixty years ago had been acted upon, much
trouble and many tragedies would have been avoided. He was convinced of
the part that South Africa must at some future time play on the world’s
chessboard. Unfortunately the value of his opinion was largely discounted
by the fact that he had not the gift of writing; moreover, in those days
none but European politics were thought worthy of the brains of statesmen.
Even American affairs, until the war broke out between North and South,
aroused little interest, and as for Africa, there was only one man who
took any heed of it, and his was a cry in the wilderness.
There was none to hear, and poor Wylde’s minutes were buried without hope
of resurrection in the _campo santo_ of the Record Office.
It was rather a blow for young Oxford, full of the zeal deprecated
by Talleyrand, and eager to distinguish itself in the most secret
negotiations, to be set down to copy charter-parties and cargo-lists
of the filthy ships that were engaged in the Slave Trade, and which
sailed from New York bound for St. Thomas—nominally the St. Thomas of
the West Indies, but in reality for that ill-omened island off the
Guinea Coast where the “cargo of ebony” was to be picked up. If only
the poor slaves could have been consulted, how they would have prayed
against the measures that were taken for their protection! A slave was a
chattel worth money, and would repay care and good food on the voyage.
But with Her Majesty’s cruisers always on the alert, the poor wretches
were battened down under hatches in conditions so appalling that the
accounts of their sufferings were absolutely sickening. Only the fittest
and strongest could by any possibility survive. How many were thrown
overboard for the benefit of the sharks no man could tell.
We were furnished by Mr. Archibald, our Consul at New York, with the most
accurate information as to all the men and ships engaged in the traffic;
we knew them all, and we kept a sort of album and register, which I
started, from which we sent out slips to the Admiralty to be forwarded
to the West Coast of Africa. We got at last to find the sort of interest
in our work that the detectives of Scotland Yard have in theirs, and to
feel a certain professional pride in every conviction. It was interesting
years afterwards to hear from my old friend Billy Hewitt, when he was
commanding the _Basilisk_ in the China seas, of the prize money which
those slips had been the means of putting into his pocket when he
skippered a small vessel in the West African squadron.
There was always plenty of work, though our hours were very late. We
did not begin until twelve, or even after that, but then we did not
strike the balance as Charles Lamb did, by going away early. We were
often copying for the mails till after seven o’clock, and in stress of
political weather we had to wait till almost any hour. But the free
mornings were a great boon—I always had time for a drawing lesson at
South Kensington, or an hour’s fencing and gymnastics at Harrison’s in
Panton Street, where there was a daily gathering of the same men—amongst
them Lord Stanley, then Colonial Minister, a very regular attendant.
He would come in laden with a sheaf of blue books and despatches, speak
to no one, and between his exercises bury himself in political work. He
would leave as he came, silent and self-contained, carrying his papers
under his arm. He was immensely strong, but clumsy; he could have felled
an ox, but he would not have done it gracefully.
When the late Lord Redesdale was staying at Knowsley, shortly after Lord
Stanley had published his Iliad, he said to his host: “What does Stanley
think of your Homer?” “He knows nothing about it,” answered Lord Derby,
laughing, “he’s never read it. You see it isn’t a Blue Book!” Probably
no statesman of Lord Stanley’s value has ever been so little understood;
presumably it was his own choice, for certainly he did not wear his
heart upon his sleeve, nor could anyone accuse him of affability, or of
overmuch sympathy with his kind. Perhaps Lord Sanderson, who was not only
his private secretary, but his intimate and trusted friend to boot, is
the only man who could throw some light upon that strange character.
Lord Newton in his life of Lord Lyons has one or two ironically biting
remarks about him: “This prosaic nobleman who is credited with having
himself refused the throne of Greece.” “It must have been a congenial
task for a man of Lord Stanley’s temperament to throw cold water upon
the vague and slipshod proposals of the unlucky Emperor” (of the
French); while “Lord Stanley’s comment upon the Empress’ frank and
sensible conversation with Lord Lyons, upon the Roman question, urging
that England should take a hand in it, was that it furnished the best
reason he had received yet for keeping out of the affair altogether. The
Emperor’s reason for proposing a conference was that he disliked bearing
the responsibility which he had assumed. Why should he be asked to bear
it for him?”
Lord Stanley, afterwards Lord Derby, was certainly a remarkable man;
his speeches were dull and prosaic, but they were full of wise common
sense and they carried just weight. It always seemed to me that he
showed in his public life those same qualities which he used to bring
into Harrison’s gymnasium—the strength of a bull and the determination
of a gladiator, without one spark of enthusiasm, without one care or
thought beyond doing to the best of his great power what lay to his hand.
A well-balanced, well-informed study of Lord Stanley would be a human
document of great interest.
At the end of two years I was moved out of the Slave Trade into the
French department, which, of course, was the most important and
hardest-worked of the many divisions, for the Paris Embassy was looked
upon as a sort of branch Foreign Office; there could be no diplomatic
subject in which France was not interested equally with England,
whether in agreement or in rivalry. So every despatch of any slightest
importance—not to speak of many which had none—was marked to be copied
for Paris. I used to wonder whether Lord Cowley, insatiable worker as he
was, could find time to read all that we so painfully copied.
Such questions as those of the Danish duchies and the Danubian
principalities (still alive under the title of “the Balkans”) were the
favourite pabulum of all the Ministers at the small German courts, worthy
men whose capacity for spoiling paper was in exact proportion to the
greatness of their unimportance. I remember at Stuttgart an industrious
creature who had all the spinning powers of a hen-spider.
There were no typewriters in those days; it was all honest, strenuous
copying from mid-day sometimes till night. Still much of the work was
of absorbing interest, and the labour was lightened by delightful
companionship. Staveley was the head of the department, a right
good fellow, and a fine skater of the days when the members of the
Skating Club used to disport themselves in the Regent’s Park, or on
the Serpentine, in tail coats and top hats; Croker Pennell, a great
character, was second; Scott Gifford, a dear memory (great friend of
Goldsmid and Jenny Lind, whom I heard sing at his house); Henry Eliot,
the late Lord St. Germans, Bobsy Meade—both of them most justly popular.
Later my old friend, W. A. Cockerell, happily still alive. It would have
been difficult to find a more sympathetic crew.
Among the other colleagues we had John Bidwell, clever, agreeable,
and much loved by all who knew him well; Johnnie Woodford, a handsome
tenorino, an intimate friend, like myself, of Mario and Grisi, and much
behind the scenes of Covent Garden; Beauty Stephens a strange compound
of wit and muddleheadedness, with a wonderful gift of hitting off a
character in a couple of words; Anderson, rather solid and solemn, very
popular on the steps of the Rag, to which it always seemed as if he ought
to have belonged—indeed that wicked Stephens said of him that he “would
have been a heavy dragoon, only there was no regiment heavy enough for
him;” cranky little Cavendish, whose memoirs have been published, and to
whom, when he came back to work after a short illness, and complained
that he was not quite himself yet, John Bidwell said rather cruelly:
“Well, Dish! don’t you think that might perhaps be an improvement!”
There were a score or more of others, now alas! gone, all of whom have
left pleasant memories behind them. Of course, in so large a zoological
collection there were some who did not belong to the Phœnix tribe; we had
our apes and we had our bears; but in looking back upon those happy old
days I claim the privilege of the sun-dial, and among the hours record
only the serene.
Several of those who were in the Foreign Office at the same time with me
reached great distinction. Lord Vivian became Ambassador at Rome, Philip
Currie, so long private secretary to the great Lord Salisbury, and one
of the staunchest of my friends, was raised to the peerage, having been
Ambassador successively at Constantinople and Rome. Lord Sanderson,
after being for a long time Under-Secretary of State, was also raised to
the peerage. Sir Francis Bertie, some years junior to me, ought to be
leaving the Embassy at Paris, after a most brilliant career, under the
age limit, but such a man cannot be spared at a critical moment, and so
he is staying on with the due reward of a peerage. Robert Meade went to
the Colonial Office, earned the highest distinction under many chiefs,
including Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who knew the value of a good man.
Drummond Wolf also went to the Colonial Office as private secretary to
Lord Lytton in 1858; then was sent as Colonial Secretary to the Ionian
Islands, and when they were given up (_proh pudor!_) was offered his
choice between a C.B. and a K.C.M.G. Not without an eye to its financial
value he chose the latter; but he was afterwards promoted into far
higher regions, as G.C.B., Minister to Persia, where it is said his
rather risky stories delighted the Shah, and finally as Ambassador to
Spain. All these and others whom I have not mentioned have played their
part in the world, contributing their quota to its advancement. And after
all, that is what makes life worth the living—that is what distinguishes
man from a possible ancestral jelly-fish.
1860.—Those were days of freedom, when men might sit up and feast and
amuse themselves as late as they pleased. Grandmotherly legislation
had not yet set its canon by which, when the clock strikes the curfew
the lights in all hostelries must be extinguished, the grandchildren
must fly from bar and refreshment room, and be sent virtuously, even if
supperless, to bed.
On the night of the 16th-17th of April, 1860, the inns and public houses
in London remained open all night; some twelve thousand persons did not
go to bed at all, for on the morning of the 17th the great fight for the
championship of the world was to take place—somewhere—between Tom Sayers
and Heenan, the great American fighter known as the Benicia Boy. The
whereabouts was kept so dark that it was not until the last moment that
we who had taken tickets were even allowed to know from what station we
were to go. The whole affair was shrouded in mystery. The two principals
were being closely watched by the police, and Tom Sayers only made good
his escape from Newmarket in a horse-box in the disguise of a stableman
in charge of one of the horses belonging to Sam Rogers, the trainer. As
for us, we had to hang about Ben Caunt and Nat Langham’s public-houses
waiting, until we received our sailing orders and rushed off to London
Bridge, the start having been fixed for four in the morning.
No fight had ever created so much excitement; it was the first contest
of an international character, so that the fever was as high in the New
World as in the Old. In the hurrying crowd there were great numbers of
Americans, while peers, members of Parliament and men of high degree
jostled the bullet-headed, broken-nosed members of the prize ring,
pickpockets, bookmakers, publicans and sinners. The Sunday papers went so
far as to say—but that was absolutely untrue—that such big-wigs as Lord
Palmerston and a sporting Bishop were present. So great was the interest
that even the _Times_ devoted three of its sacrosanct columns to a
masterly description of the battle. I believe it was the first time that
such an honour was conferred upon the prize ring, and it is said that the
secret of the authorship is now unknown even to the _Times_ chief.
My companion that night was Henry Coke, Lord Leicester’s brother, who
has himself chronicled the event in his clever book “Moss from a Rolling
Stone.”
The train stopped near Farnborough. It was an ideal spring dawn, as
sweet and fresh as the perfume of the pinewoods could make it, and the
birds were singing as if they would burst their throats. It seemed a
shame and a desecration to use such a morning as we were about to do;
but we were too much excited, too eager, stirred by the cruel lust of
fighting, to take heed of that. The ropes and stakes were soon set up and
there was an immense amount of pushing and scrambling for places near
Tom Sayers’ corner, so we had to stand among the Americans near Heenan.
That, however, was a good place to see from, for Heenan, having won the
toss, naturally chose the corner in which he would have the sun at his
back, and those opposite to us had the disadvantage, like Tom himself, of
having the sun in their eyes.
When Sayers first threw his cap into the ring, he was dressed in a most
appalling suit of dark green tartan. His taste in dress was always
grotesque, for during his last years, when he had retired from the
ring, he must needs wear hessian boots with tassels, gartered with the
inscription “Tom Sayers, Champion” round the knee. But when he stripped
he was the picture of an athlete. He was a short, good-humoured looking
man, with a tremendous development of the neck and shoulders, which
gave the driving power to his blows; his dark skin, brown and tanned,
looking as though he had been carved out of old oak, shone in the morning
sun. There was no question about it: he was trained to perfection; the
muscles in the back especially were so sharply defined that they might
have been mapped round with a pencil. Heenan, on the contrary, seemed to
me—and many good judges shared my opinion—to have been trained a little
too fine, and perhaps rather too rapidly; the skin upon his face seemed
loose, and that would account for the way in which it swelled and puffed
up under the terrible punishment of Tom’s iron knuckles.
But one thing struck everybody present: how was Tom Sayers, superb
fighter as he was, to stand up against that giant? Yet he did, and what
is more, in my opinion if ever a man won a fight he did. There was a
foul claimed in the hurly-burly confusion at the end, but upon that I
do not rely. I go by the condition to which his dauntless courage and
generalship ended by reducing his enemy.
A great deal was said about the number of times that Sayers was knocked
down. What happened was this. Quite early in the fight Sayers had drawn
first blood from Heenan, when there arose such a shout of triumph as had
hardly been heard since the myrmidons cheered at the death of Hector.
Heenan then scored by twice knocking Tom down. Those were fair knock-down
blows, and great was the exultation of the American party. Shortly
afterwards in guarding a tremendous blow with his right arm, Tom received
an injury which rendered it useless. It was said that the small bone was
broken, but that was afterwards denied. In any case, he was evidently in
cruel pain, and the limb began to swell up and was practically paralysed.
This was all the more hard upon him, as in fighting he was wont to rely
so greatly on his right—his “Doctor” as he used to call it, because “it
would finish off his man.” Most men would have given in at once. Not so
Tom Sayers. He had lost his best weapon, and he was suffering torture;
the great giant was towering in front of him, threatening and terrible;
but never for one moment did Tom flinch or falter; his gallant soul
forced him to hold on, and having only one arm, he must now fight with
his brains.
From that time forth, whenever Heenan delivered one of his slashing
blows, there was no guardian right with which to parry it, so Tom caught
it as a man catches a cricket ball, yielding to it, and thus went down
with the blow, smiling and unhurt. It was the only way—I watched it over
and over again, and when at each knock-down the Americans wildly shouted
victory for Heenan, I felt that they were counting unhatched chickens.
All of a sudden there was a crash which rang almost like metal over the
field. Tom Sayers, ducking before a deadly blow from his assailant, had
dashed in with his left and cut open Heenan’s cheek with an ugly gash
which presently swelled and almost closed one eye at once. The American,
big man as he was, staggered under it. From that moment I felt that,
given fair play, the battle was won, and that, as I can affirm from what
I heard around me, was the fear in the American corner.
Round after round Tom came up, with dogged determination written in his
unscarred face, relying upon the same tactics, attacking first one eye
and then the other until Heenan was rapidly getting blind. Then came a
dastardly act. The American, having got Sayers’ head in chancery under
his left arm, twisted his right round the rope of the ring and with the
purchase so gained tried to strangle Tom, who struck out at him gamely,
but was unable to break loose. He was getting black in the face when the
umpires cut the rope. It was a mean and a cruel trick and was practically
the last act of a fight in which Sayers had all the honours.
The end was at hand. For some time past a blue cloud of policemen had
been hovering in the distance without attempting to interfere. Heenan’s
backers saw their chance, the ring was broken into by the Americans, the
police, seeing that matters were taking a nasty turn, rushed in, and the
ring became a seething mass of surging, pushing, scrambling men, the
principals trying in vain to continue a fight in the midst of what was
now a mere angry, howling mob.
As for Heenan, so blind was he that he struck his own second, and it was
also said that he hit Sayers when the latter was sitting on his second’s
knee. A foul was claimed, but it was not possible for the referee to act
in such a tumult, or, indeed, to see. There was a general stampede for
the train.
Heenan could no longer see and had to be led by two men. There was a
little quick-set hedge over which Tom Sayers flew as gaily as a bird.
Heenan was in some fashion pushed or dragged through it, a helpless
“man-mountain,” so mauled that he was scarcely human. Barring his
disabled arm, Tom seemed none the worse; his face hardly showed a
scratch. There can be no reasonable doubt that if Heenan’s friends,
seeing his plight, had not forced their way inside the ropes and broken
up the ring, five more minutes must inevitably have given Tom Sayers
a glorious victory. As it was, the mere fact that he, one-armed and
inferior in height, weight and reach to an adversary who looked fit to
crush him, should only have lost his chance owing to a dirty trick, was
simply marvellous. It was an exhibition of bulldog courage which in its
way will probably never be beaten.
One thing should in justice be recorded. Heenan’s backers behaved badly,
but they were a very low class, and I am bound to say that I did not see
a single American gentleman among them. The men whom I knew afterwards in
New York would have been as disgusted as I was.
It was a great event. Heenan was certainly a magnificent specimen of
humanity and a great athlete. In build and figure he reminded me of the
statue of the dying gladiator. He stood six feet one and a half inches,
while Tom Sayers only measured five feet eight and a half inches. But
Tom was a wonder. There have been greater boxers—Jem Mace to wit; but
as a fighter he was incomparable. Apart from his courage, his tact and
judgment were phenomenal—not once did he let an opportunity slip. Relying
upon these qualities, his great soul never hesitated when there was a
question of pitting himself against such giants as the Tipton Slasher,
Aaron Jones and others. He was ready to face any odds. Nat Langham was
the only man who ever beat him. The fight with Heenan, which lasted two
hours and six minutes, was his last appearance in the ring.
When we think of the sums earned by Carpentier, Jack Johnson and the
glove fighters of to-day, it seems almost incredible that fifty-five
years ago a fight for the international championship should have taken
place for no more than £200 a side, and that the subscription got up for
Sayers should have amounted only to a sum of £3,000, settled upon him
with remainder to his children, on condition that he should never fight
again.
Heenan fought once more in England, with Tom King, who beat him.
Curiously enough, on this occasion Sayers was his old adversary’s second.
Tom King was a splendidly handsome man. I saw him make his first
appearance in London at a benefit at the Canterbury Hall, a tall slip of
a lad, six feet two inches, looking like a young Apollo. He had been a
sailor and his long arms were phenomenally developed by hauling at the
ropes, in days when there were still ropes. He was matched, with the
gloves of course, against a huge negro. The two smote at one another,
rushing round the ring with as little science as schoolboys; it was a
mere “rough and tumble.” Harrison, the famous fencing master, who was
standing by me, turned round to me and said, “That youngster, properly
trained and taught, ought to make a champion.” It was a sound prophecy,
for Tom King worked hard, made himself into a famous fighter, defeated
Jem Mace, the prince of boxers, and finally won his battle with Heenan
for £2,000. Prices were beginning to go up. Neither man ever fought
again. Tom King, who was a steady, clever fellow, became a bookmaker and
gathered together a comfortable fortune.
Heenan was the husband of the beautiful poetess, Ada Isaac Menken,
whose talent Swinburne admired so much, and who dedicated her poems to
Charles Dickens. When she was on the stage her wonderful beauty created a
_furore_ in _Mazeppa_. I took a special interest in Heenan because he was
a pupil of Aaron Jones, to whom I have alluded in my account of Oxford
days, and who went out to America in 1858. In the words of the Chinese
sage, we were _T’ung yen_ (“same ink”), that is to say, we had dipped
our pens in the same ink, which, being further interpreted, means that
we were pupils of the same master. So much can a Confucius say in two
syllables.
Let me go back a year. In the autumn of 1859 came the volunteer
movement—a clarion cry in answer to the memorial of the French colonels
who were spurring on their Emperor to make war upon this country. All
England was bristling with martial ardour. The Duke of Westminster, then
Lord Grosvenor, started the Queen’s Westminsters; Lord Elcho the London
Scottish; Lord Ranelagh, the “Brompton Garibaldi”[27] as he was called,
the South Middlesex. Most of us clerks joined the movement. Wylde,
who had seen service in Spain with Sir de Lacy Evans, became second in
command to Lord Ranelagh, and, when his colonel died, succeeded him; I
was one of the early recruits of the Queen’s Westminsters. We had great
fun, but it needed no little courage to appear in uniform, for the grey
tunics were irresistible as matter for chaff by the many-headed.
The Foreign Office had always been active in volunteering, for when the
Queen reviewed the Volunteers in Hyde Park in 1860, one of the privates
in the Queen’s Westminsters was old Mr. Byng—“Poodle” Byng—about whose
identity Sir Herbert Maxwell has got into such a muddle in his “Life of
Lord Clarendon.” He had been a clerk in the Foreign Office and had been
a private in the Volunteers when they were reviewed by King George the
Third. He was called “Poodle” on account of his crisp, curly hair—made a
_mésalliance_—and continued to be a pet in Society as a bachelor until
his death.
I remember how, in one of the extravaganzas by Planché brought out by
Charles Mathews and Madame Vestris at the Lyceum, a huge poodle was
brought upon the stage. There was a large gathering of well known people
in the audience, and Poodle Byng was in a box with some great ladies.
When the great curly dog came to the front there was loud applause, and
the stalls turned their glasses upon Mr. Byng, who stood up in his box
and bowed his acknowledgments of the compliment. Sir Herbert Maxwell
confounds him with Mr. Byng, a Privy Councillor, another well-known man
of political importance, whereas the Poodle could not lay claim to being
anything—unless, indeed, it was something to have been reviewed by George
the Third and half a century later by Queen Victoria.
A clerk in the Foreign Office at that time carried with him a passport
to all that was best in political, diplomatic, literary and artistic
society. The best clubs, from the Travellers’ downwards, opened their
doors to him, unless there was something personally objectionable in him.
And if the Devil found no idle hands among us for mischief during the
daytime, our evenings were bright and well filled, for even during the
dullest months there was always something to be done; not that by my
allusion to Dr. Watts I wish it to be inferred that that something was
always mischievous—indeed, I think we were fairly good boys, as boys go,
with not much more than just so much of wickedness in us as suffices to
give a spice to life.
Week-ends were at that time unknown. Saturdays and Sundays were the great
days for dinners, and anybody who had attempted to decoy a youth into
the country for a Saturday-to-Monday party would have been looked upon
as kind, perhaps, but a lunatic certainly. Lady Palmerston’s Saturday
night parties at Cambridge House, now the Naval and Military Club, were
gatherings at which everybody that was distinguished above his fellows
in any branch of life was to be seen. Lady Palmerston, gracious, and
still showing great traces of beauty, presided over a tea-table in
a little inner room to which special favourites were admitted. Lord
Palmerston, gay, smiling and full of geniality—still “Cupid” not only to
his contemporaries but also to the youngest and most attractive of the
matrons, for to the end he retained a great eye for beauty—had a kind
word for everybody, young and old. It was not only the Megatherium that
was made welcome.
Once I got into disgrace. It was in 1862. Lady Palmerston gave a ball,
and I was told off to lead the cotillon. There had been some late nights
in the House of Commons, and Lord Palmerston was looking fagged and worn
though he was smiling as ever—at three in the morning I thought the
hostess would be glad if the ball came to an end and she, who must also
have been very tired, for she always sat up for him, might go to bed,
so I stopped the cotillon, expecting great praise; but Lady Palmerston,
on the contrary, was furious, and for three whole weeks I received no
Saturday invitation; but when the fourth Saturday came round I was
forgiven, taken into favour again, and bidden to listen to the friendly
song of the tea-kettle in the inner sanctum.
The guests at those parties would have furnished the sitters for a whole
National Portrait Gallery. The great Lord Shaftesbury, his gigantic
stature towering above all others, the solemn gravity of his rather
melancholy countenance relieved by its goodness and loving kindness. His
wife, Lady Palmerston’s eldest daughter, still beautiful in spite of her
handsome family of grown-up sons and daughters; her sister, Lady Jocelyn,
irresistibly fascinating; Lord John Russell’s diminutive figure, with
pinched, eager features, reminding one of Holbein’s portrait of Erasmus,
the divine begging-letter writer; Lord Clarendon, sunny and handsome, as
radiant and eager as if he had not all his life been a martyr to gout and
the affairs of State—both poison; Delane, the Jupiter of the _Times_,
burly and genial, compeller of men; Borthwick, of the _Morning Post_,
who achieved the feat of writing for the _Owl_ a letter signed by the
French Emperor of such apparent authenticity that the Emperor actually
contradicted it. Laurence Oliphant, a mystic in lavender kid gloves, full
of spiritualism, strange creeds, and skits upon Society; Macaulay, a
whirlwind of talk and knowledge; Lord Sherbrooke, that wonderful Albino
blinking out of his pink, almost blind eyes, delighting everybody with
his conversation and himself with the belief that his chief joy was
in the contemplation of beautiful scenery which, alas! he never saw.
The Duke of Newcastle, red and bearded; Mr. Gladstone; Disraeli—for
the drawing-room at Cambridge House was a neutral territory, on which
foes might meet in pseudo amity. Quin, the great homœopath, dealing in
allopathic doses only where wit and fun and good, kindly humour were
concerned. Bernal Osborne, always brilliant; Alfred Montgomery, one of
the very few remaining bright satellites of the firmament in which Lady
Blessington and D’Orsay shone as the chief stars; Charles Villiers, a
host in himself; Charles Greville, the writer of the famous memoirs; and
how many others!
But why go on making a sort of _Morning Post_ list of the famous men
of those days! Of some of them I shall speak later. What a dream of
Fair Women! The Duchess of Manchester—like the lovely Gunning, twice
a Duchess—then in the heyday of her beautiful youth; Lady Constance
Grosvenor, with the majesty of a Juno and the smile of a Hebe; Mrs. Dick
Bulkeley, who looked as if she had sat for Millais’ “Cinderella” and
had come straight out of fairy-land; Lady Mary Craven, the very type of
lovely English womanhood bursting from bud into bloom; Baroness Alphonse
de Rothschild, with liquid almond-shaped eyes, and the sweet complexion
of a tea-rose, and how many more!
How well I remember another beauty walking up that staircase; Greuze’s
Crûche Cassée in person, a frightened child of seventeen, with great,
wondering eyes new to the world which one day she was to command! Among
the elder women notable were the three glorious Sheridan sisters, Mrs.
Norton, to look upon whom was a joy, to talk with her an education. Lady
Dufferin, who seemed to be an incarnation of one of her own poems:
“Oh! Bay of Dublin, my heart your troublin’,
Your beauty haunts me like a fever dream,”
and the Duchess of Somerset, the lovely Queen of the Eglinton Tournament,
whose witty sayings ran round the town like a veritable _feu follet_.
Of course the very pick of the diplomatic body was represented. Count
Apponyi, the Austrian ambassador, a grand representative of the proud
Hungarian noblesse—his wife, a Russian by birth, great amongst great
ladies; the Persignys, he the close and well-beloved friend of Louis
Napoléon, and his wife—a delightful madcap—a grand-daughter of Marshal
Ney—the _brave des braves_—were the most popular of the Ambassadors.
D’Azeglio, tall, handsome and rather pompous, the intimate friend of
the Shaftesburys, was always a marked figure. Count Nicholas Pahlen,
brother of the hero of the conspiracy against the Emperor Paul in 1801—a
man of great stature, though bowed by age, pale, stony-eyed and rather
grim-looking, with a most surprising knowledge of the family histories
of all Europe, must be famous for having, though a foreigner, by his
influence forbidden smoking in the morning-room of the St. James’s Club
for something like a quarter of a century—indeed, so long as he lived.
Another great character was old Count Sztreletzki—a great traveller,
diner-out and raconteur. He had a capital story which he used to tell,
interlarded, as all his talk was, with little jerky “H’m! H’m’s!” given
in what the Chinese call the “rising tone,” about the Duc de Malakoff who
preceded the Duc de Persigny’s second appointment as French Ambassador.
The grumpy, coarse old warrior had been invited to Strathfieldsaye in
September for partridge shooting. In a field bordering a wood a number
of cock pheasants were strutting about in all the confidence of a close
month. This was too much for the Marshal, who was immediately seized with
an uncontrollable desire to slay one. The Duke of Wellington consulted
Smith the keeper, who opined that “We might put it down in the book as
a partridge.” So the Marshal stalked an old cock on the ground, blazed
and missed him—fired a second time and wounded the bird, who tried to
run away, but the ambassador rushed after him, caught him and dashed his
brains out against a tree, crying out, “Enfin, brigand! je te tiens!”
“That,” said the Duke to Smith, as they were watching the achievement,
“is the great Field-Marshal Duke of Malakoff, who smoked out four hundred
Arabs in a cavern in Algeria.” “Well, your grace,” answered the keeper
contemptuously, “a man who would treat a cock-pheasant like that, and in
September too, there is no saying what he might not do to a Arab.”
As I write, the ghosts of bygone days rise up before me. The ghosts
of men who were wise and great and noble; the ghosts of women who
fulfilled their mission in life by being supremely beautiful, gracious,
and attractive. That was the secret of their power—of their influence;
invested with those regalia they ruled their world.
Of literary or artistic society at Lady Palmerston’s Saturdays there were
scarcely any representatives; indeed, Dicky Doyle, and Monckton Milnes,
afterwards Lord Houghton, were almost alone. Lord Lytton was there, but
rather like Macaulay, because he was a statesman, than on account of his
success in Letters. And yet there were great men at that time—Carlyle,
Thackeray, and Dickens, Tennyson and Browning, were the kings of
book-land, but they had to be sought elsewhere. Little Holland House,
where the Prinseps and Watts ruled the roast, was a better covert to draw
for the priests of Apollo and the Muses than Cambridge House.
Another lady whose salon in Carlton Gardens was famous, was Frances,
Lady Waldegrave. Her theatricals and her gatherings attracted the best
of London. She was a capital actress, and always managed to collect a
good company in support of her own talent. Her brother, Mr. Braham, was
stage manager. I was the _jeune premier_. At Strawberry Hill she gave
delightful, almost historic dinners, which often ended in being moonlit
garden parties, where the guests would wander in a midsummer night’s
dream, until the first glimmer of dawn reminded them that they were some
miles from home and that even fairies must be flitting back from the
poetry of flirtation under the stars to the prose of daylight.
There can be few matters in which custom, or fashion, has veered round
more completely than it has done in the matter of tobacco during my
life-time. The Foreign Office was when I entered it the only public
department in which smoking was allowed. That was a legacy from Lord
Clarendon, who, an inveterate smoker himself, was far too kindly to
inflict upon his subordinates what would have been a cruel privation to
himself, so we smoked at our work, but the other departments, and the
public in general, looked rather askance upon us for the privilege, for
smoking was considered to be the outward and visible sign of idleness and
incompetence. Smoking in the streets or in the Park was a thing not to be
dreamt of. To carry a cigar in Pall Mall or St. James’s Street would have
caused a man to be classed as “an unredeemed cad.”
Bulwer’s “My Novel” is not much read now, I fancy, and more’s the pity,
for it gives a rare picture of what it calls in its sub-title the
“varieties in English life” during the early fifties. It was published in
1852. Harley L’Estrange, coming back from abroad, goes for a stroll with
his dog in Hyde Park in the evening. He throws himself upon a bench under
a tree. “‘Half-past eight,’ said he, looking at his watch, ‘one may smoke
one’s cigar without shocking the world. It is the most barefaced lie in
the world, my Nero,’ said he, addressing his dog, ‘this boasted liberty
of man! Now here am I, a freeborn Englishman, a citizen of the world,
caring—I often say to myself—caring not a jot for Kaiser or mob; and yet
I no more dare smoke this cigar in the Park at half-past six, when all
the world is abroad, than I dare pick my Lord Chancellor’s pocket, or hit
the Archbishop of Canterbury a thump on the nose.’” So much for smoking
in London. In country houses we were badly off indeed. When the ladies
left the drawing-room, the men who wished to smoke were sent down to the
kitchen or the servants’ hall, to fight the rival perfumes of beer, tepid
beef, cheese and onions.
The banishment of cigars from the statelier rooms once led to my turning
a chance acquaintance into something like a friendship. Sir William
Middleton, a grand gentleman of the old school, gave a party at his
beautiful place, Shrubland, in Suffolk, in honour of the Duke and Duchess
d’Aumale. The gardens were exquisitely beautiful, the house comfort
itself, the cook an artist of high repute, but there was no smoking-room.
The Duke was a confirmed smoker, and, strange to say, I alone in all that
large party was able to keep him company. We were sent off—not to the
kitchen, for in his case that would never have done—but to some remote
turret, whence it was hoped that no noxious fumes might penetrate the
rest of the house, and there we sat and smoked till the small hours.
The Duke was the best of company, telling stories of his old campaigns
against Abd el Kader in Algeria and humming snatches of the songs with
which the piou-pious were wont to enliven the night round the camp-fire.
He had all the verve and dash of the French soldier, combined with vast
stores of learning and a fund of ready wit. How the French army loved
him! How they delighted in his _esprit Gaulois_! How they revelled in
the story of his marching through Burgundy, and coming to a vineclad
slope, asking what vineyard it was. “The Clos de Vougeot” was the answer.
Out rang the word of command: “Halt! Front! Present arms!” Had the Duc
d’Aumale been the eldest son of Louis Philippe, it might have made a
difference in the history of France.
Sir William Middleton was a great character, famous for his gardens, in
days when gardening was less the fashion than it is now, and for his
wigs, innocent frauds which deceived no one, except, perhaps, himself. He
had a wig for every day of the month graduated in length. On the 31st of
the month he went into Ipswich wearing the longest wig and came out again
wearing the shortest—he had been to have his hair cut. One night there
was a great dinner at Sir Anthony de Rothschild’s “to have the honour
of meeting” a royal personage. It was a man’s dinner, and Sir William
Middleton was sitting next to Mr. Bernal Osborne, who was as bald as a
billiard-ball. In handing round some dish one of the gorgeously-liveried
footmen caught Sir William’s wig in his aiguillette or a button: off came
the wig. The unhappy footman lost his wits, and seeing two bald heads,
crammed down the wig on the wrong one. B. O., as he was affectionately
called, was delighted, and roared with laughter. To Sir William it was a
tragedy.
CHAPTER VII
1861
LORD LYONS
Towards the end of November, 1861, there was a moment when it seemed
as if a war between England and the United States was inevitable. By
the prudence and tact of one man that dire calamity was averted. It
may be doubted whether any diplomatist ever rendered greater service
to his country than Lord Lyons did at that time. The part which he had
to play would have been delicate in any circumstances, but in his case
the difficulties were accentuated by the fact that on one side of the
Atlantic he was instructed by Lord John Russell, a minister who seemed
to delight in giving offence, while on the other side he had to deal
with Mr. Seward, a Secretary of State who was never conciliatory and who
introduced into diplomatic argument something of the bullying manner of a
_nisi prius_ lawyer.
Lord Lyons was blessed with a gift of inexhaustible patience and perfect
temper, which throughout the negotiations on the famous “Trent” affair
won for him the gratitude of all Englishmen and the respect of his
formidable adversary. Personally I had the greatest admiration for Lord
Lyons, and welcomed the story of his life so admirably told by Lord
Newton. In private life Lord Lyons was charming. His quiet and subtle
humour gave a zest to his conversation: “When shall you be taking a
holiday and coming over to England?” I asked him once at Paris. “I’m
sure I don’t know,” he answered, in his dry way, with a little familiar
twinkle in his eye, “but I’ve told Salisbury that I really can’t wait for
the settlement of the Oriental question.” At the age of ninety-eight he
would have been still waiting to-day! His old-fashioned courtesy had a
charm which was quite characteristic; Lord Chesterfield himself could not
have been more of a grand seigneur.
When Lord Newton’s life came out, I, full of respect for one of our great
chiefs in the diplomatic service, wrote a notice of the book for the
_Candid Review_. My excuse for reproducing it here is that it recounts
some of the most memorable events which took place during my diplomatic
days—it also incidentally alludes to some of the chiefs whom I knew well.
Could I do better in honour of Lord Lyons, I would.
* * * * *
The old diplomacy is as dead as Queen Anne, but unlike Queen Anne,
without any hope of resurrection. Like many other old institutions,
it has been killed by the nineteenth century and its inventions. The
position of an Ambassador is still one of great dignity, and he can help
largely to keep up the prestige and authority of the nation which he
represents. He is consulted, and, if the Government are wise, listened
to, but in the determination of policy his initiative has been strangled.
He is so far as that is concerned little more than a clerk at one end
of a telegraph-wire, whose duty it is to carry out the instructions of
Downing Street with as much exercise of power of conciliation as may be.
It is hardly possible to conceive a situation so sudden, so unforeseen,
that it would not be the duty of the Ambassador to abstain from any
move without having first consulted the Secretary of State and the Home
Government. Whether this is altogether an advantage is open to grave
doubt. In the warp and woof of complicated and delicate negotiations,
there are often intricacies and slight shades of which it is difficult,
if not impossible, to communicate the full importance in writing, still
more by telegraphy, but which the “man on the spot,” if he be worth
his salt, can turn to account. In the interchange of views between
negotiators, “c’est le ton qui fait la musique,” and it is precisely the
fine subtleties of the gamut the reality of which it is so difficult to
convey by correspondence.
It not seldom happens that the man at the other end of the wire, though
he may be thoroughly acquainted with the brutal facts under discussion,
may, for lack of knowledge of the temper of a minister and of the
peculiar pressure which at a given moment is being brought to bear upon
him by the internal politics of the country which he represents, be
inclined to some move which the astute agent, wary and watchful, would
easily avoid, by smoothing difficulties and counterchecking dangerous
arguments.
It is difficult in these days to realize the initiative power exercised
by some of the older diplomatists. A Russianized Pozzo di Borgo forces
on an alliance between Austria and the country which employs him for the
annihilation of a brother Corsican. A Stratford de Redcliffe, in the
execution of a policy of which his own government hardly conceals its
hatred, plunges five great nations in war. Such masterful agents as these
are unthinkable to-day. Not much more astonished would the world be by
the dispatches of ministers accredited to the long since defunct small
German and Italian Grand Ducal Courts—proud records of august handshakes
prolonged beyond those accorded to rival plenipotentiaries, chronicles
of snarlings and bickerings over some vital question of precedence at a
Court supper or dinner.
These were subjects upon which the lesser men expatiated in deadly
earnest, deeply penetrated with a sense of their importance—and yet they
were not altogether without their value, for we owe them some measure
of grateful respect, since the judicious handling of such twaddle
occasionally brought to light the talents of a man fitted for the nice
conduct of real affairs. Indeed it was such a case that first gave the
Foreign Office an inkling of the worth of a man who in the story of later
years was destined to play a dominant part, the importance of which not
even his excessive modesty and self-effacement could keep altogether in
the background.
There is little need to call Dr. Johnson into court to prove that “nobody
can write the life of a man, but those who have eat (sic) and drunk and
lived in social intercourse with him.” Lord Lyons has been lucky in
having such a biographer as Lord Newton, who not only had daily social
intercourse with him, “eating and drinking with him” for some years, but
being moreover a man of his own profession and his intimate subordinate,
though at the time when they were together only a brilliant youngster,
had something more than the ordinary opportunities of estimating his
chief’s public worth. Lord Newton is, as the House of Lords well knows,
a master of subtle humour and delicate irony; he writes excellent
English—terse, bright and to the point; and with these qualifications it
is no wonder that he has produced a book, which, seeing the momentously
important events in which Lord Lyons took a leading part, must be largely
consulted in all attempts to write the history of the latter half of the
nineteenth century.
I use the words “leading part” advisedly; for Lord Lyons was essentially
a leader, guide, and instructor, upon whose wisdom those who had the
ultimate decision of affairs were able to lean with confidence. For
the relation of intricate negotiations, Lord Newton has been happily
documented with material that is entirely new and unpublished. The word
“intricate” need scare no reader, for he has marshalled his facts so
skilfully that much which might have been obscure is crystal-clear.
The great Lord Lyons—for he was great—was born in 1817, the son of that
famous old sea-dog and diplomatist, Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons, afterwards
the first Lord Lyons. Like his younger brother, he was sent to sea when
he was little more than a child—only ten years old. But he was quite
unfitted for a sailor’s life; he was a martyr to sea-sickness, which he
never got over, and so, as Lord Newton says, “it was probably with no
slight satisfaction that the navy was exchanged for Winchester.” But it
is a coincidence worthy of note that the two diplomatic achievements
which chiefly made him famous were, as we shall presently see, both of
them connected with the sea and shipping and maritime law.
One would have liked to have had some knowledge of his early days, for
the childhood that was to father a man of so marked a personality could
not have been without interest, but upon this point his biographer
is silent; indeed, a bare page and a half is all that is devoted to
transferring him from Winchester to Christchurch, where he took his
degree in 1838, and to the thirteen years during which he was eating out
his heart as an attaché at Athens (where his father, the Admiral, was
minister), despairing of promotion and half-minded to leave a profession
in which he was destined to be so distinguished a figure.
In 1853 we find him at Rome, a post of some importance, though, as
England had no diplomatic relations with the Vatican, it was always
filled by an official of no higher rank than one of the Secretaries of
Legation at Florence, and afterwards at the Italian Court when it was at
Turin, and later transferred to Florence. It was a post which needed no
little skill and tact, and was later occupied with conspicuous ability by
Lord Odo Russell (Lord Ampthill).
Lord Lyons’ experience showed, as he himself wrote, that “in spite of my
peculiar position, notwithstanding a very strong opinion to the contrary,
at Rome, as at most other places, one succeeds best by transacting one’s
business in the most plain and straightforward manner, and through the
most direct channels. By acting on this principle and by being very quiet
and unobtrusive, I think I have in part allayed the suspicions which are
felt towards us always more or less at Rome, and I am certainly on a
better footing with Cardinal Antonelli than I had at all expected to be.”
This saying of his—uttered at the very beginning of his first experience
of an independent post—is worth quoting, for it gives us the keynote of
his whole diplomatic career, and reveals the secret of the success which
he achieved when he was afterwards placed in positions as difficult and
as delicate as any that a diplomatist was ever called upon to face.
Four years later Lord Lyons was called upon to settle “one of those
trivial questions which so deeply exercised the diplomacy of a former
generation”—a question, indeed, which it is nowadays difficult to imagine
occurring outside of the Court of the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein. Lord
Normanby, K.G., Ex-Viceroy of Ireland, was British Minister at Florence,
and had gone on leave, furious, in circumstances which were grave indeed.
The Pope having visited Florence, a banquet in his honour had been
given by the Grand Duke, and the diplomatic body were invited; but to
their great indignation they were not seated at the _Tavola di Stato_,
the sovereign table. Lord Normanby demanded an apology, and the _chers
collègues_ having agreed to support him, backed out at the last moment;
so Lord Normanby went off fuming and fussing, and “uttering dark threats
that he would not return unless the apology was forthcoming.” Mr. Lyons
was summoned from Rome to act as _chargé d’affaires_, and upon him fell
the task of making the Tuscan Government apologize. For three weary
months a correspondence at which so essentially practical a man as Lyons,
with his subtle sense of humour, must have laughed in his sleeve, used
up reams of paper, until at last, after “a severe rebuke” from Lord
Clarendon, the Tuscan Government ate some infinitesimal particle of dirt,
“the injured Lord Normanby returned to his post, and Lyons resumed his
duties at Rome.” For the full enjoyment of Lord Newton’s account of the
episode it is almost necessary to have known the two men as I did—the
Turveydrop-like pomposity of the one, and the simple sober dignity of the
other, gifted with the most delicate feeling for proportion.
It was in March, 1858, that Lord Lyons had his first great opportunity.
Diplomatic relations with Naples having been broken off for some years,
Mr. Lyons received orders from Lord Malmesbury to proceed to Naples to
inquire into the case of the _Cagliari_. It was a difficult matter and
created a great excitement at the time.
The _Cagliari_ was a mail steamer plying between Genoa, Sardinia and
Turin, and on 25th June, 1857, “a number of Mazzinians who had taken
passage in her, seized the master and crew, altered the course of the
vessel, landed at the Island of Ponza in Neapolitan territory, where they
liberated three hundred political prisoners, and subsequently proceeded
to Sapri, in the neighbourhood of Salerno. Here they again disembarked,
expecting the inhabitants to rise in their favour, but encountered a
superior force of Neapolitan troops, who killed or captured the whole
party, while the _Cagliari_ was seized by Neapolitan warships as she was
making her way ostensibly to Naples. Some weeks later it was ascertained
that among the prisoners in Naples were two English engineers, Watt and
Park by name, and it was stated that these two men were entirely ignorant
of the conspiracy, and had been forced by the conspirators to work the
engines under threats of being summarily shot if they refused.”
Naturally the British Government demanded that these two men should
at least have fair trial, and Lord Clarendon, then Foreign Minister,
there being no Legation at Naples, wrote personally to Signor Carafa,
the Neapolitan Foreign Minister, on their behalf; but the Neapolitan
Government shuffled and delayed, and in March, 1858, the two men were
still in prison, where owing to cruel treatment after the manner of the
Naples of those days, “the health of both was completely broken down, and
Watt had become partially insane.” It was in these circumstances that,
Lord Malmesbury having succeeded Lord Clarendon at the Foreign Office,
Mr. Lyons was ordered to proceed to Naples to investigate the case. He
was successful. The two Englishmen were released, and after further
negotiations an indemnity of £3,000 was paid to Watt and Park, and
finally the _Cagliari_ was placed at Mr. Lyons’ disposal.
The question had been complicated by our relations with Sardinia, and
Lyons had been ordered to use threats of our making common cause with
that Power against Naples should his demands be refused; but as Lord
Newton points out, it was an additional satisfaction for Lyons to be
able to say, “Far from threatening, I did not even go so far as my
instructions warranted, for I did not say that His Majesty’s Government
proposed that the mediator should retire at the end of three months, nor
did I tell Signor Carafa that I was myself ordered to go back to Rome if
the mediation should be refused at the expiration of ten days.”
The same methods of suave and gentle persuasion which answered so well
in this case were to be the secret of his success a few years later in
another hemisphere and in far more critical circumstances. The conduct of
the _Cagliari_ case resulted in his being appointed Minister at Florence,
and in the following November (1858) “came the offer of the Washington
Legation, an offer which, with characteristic modesty, he accepted with
considerable misgivings as to his competence.” It was a good thing for
England that any such scruples as he may have entertained were overcome.
His mission to Washington was big with fate. In the same month his father
died and he succeeded to the peerage.
In February, 1859, Lord Lyons sailed for Washington in H.M.S. _Curaçao_.
In these times of huge liners and rapid passages, with the possibility
already in view of still swifter crossings of the Atlantic in airships,
it is startling to read of a voyage which occupied forty-two days, “a
period which must have been singularly disagreeable to a man who, in
spite of some years’ naval service, always suffered from sea-sickness.”
It was no doubt something of a relief to Lord Lyons to meet with a
most courteous reception when he presented his credentials to Mr.
Buchanan, the then President of the United States, for he might well
have anticipated that, at any rate at first, the Legation at Washington
would not be a bed of roses. He had to take up the succession of Sir
John Crampton, a diplomatist who, though, first as secretary of Legation
and afterwards as minister, he had served for a good many years at
Washington, had never succeeded in making himself popular with the United
States authorities.
There had been much ill-feeling between the two countries on account of
enlistments for foreign legions at the time of the Crimean War; Crampton,
who did not realize the susceptibilities of the Americans, had been very
active in this recruiting scheme, and matters had reached a point of such
tension that in May, 1856, President Pierce broke off relations with
Crampton, who had to return home.
Things had more or less quieted down in the meantime, but in December,
1858, a Presidential message containing “some rather ominous passages
with regard to the relations between England and the United States”
was delivered. There were at the time not a few signs of underground
forces at work which might at any moment break out into open eruption.
Lord Lyons would have been superhuman if he had not felt some emotion
at entering upon duties which must manifestly be fraught with unusual
difficulties; still, “the sentiments now expressed were friendly in
character and showed a disposition to settle pending difficulties in an
amicable spirit.” Statesmen so minded, and animated by this conciliatory
feeling, might reckon upon being wholeheartedly seconded by the new
minister.
For a year or two Lord Lyons had no very crucial question to face. The
San Juan “difficulty,” in which the United States Government showed the
most conciliatory temper, and the question of the possible absorption
of Mexico by the United States, in which Great Britain had no more than
a philanthropic concern inspired by the feeling that it would have
threatened the extension of slavery, could hardly be reckoned as coming
under such a category.
In the meantime, in such negotiations as he had to conduct, his
conciliatory and unobtrusive policy, his great discretion, had won for
him golden opinions and much respect among all classes of American
politicians; that, together with the popularity which the Prince of Wales
never failed to gain and which was a conspicuous result of His Royal
Highness’s visit to Canada and the United States in 1860, happily placed
the relations between the two countries on such a footing as had probably
never existed since the separation. The value of this was felt when the
great strain came. In 1861, Mr. Buchanan had faded into that Stygian
darkness in which ex-presidents of the United States flit as phantoms of
a past dignity.
Abraham Lincoln ruled in his stead—Abraham Lincoln, tree-feller,
rail-splitter, village postman, and one of the greatest men that ever
made history.
This tall, gaunt, raw-boned, lantern-jawed man, fresh caught from
Illinois, with none of the graces which the gods have given, save
that supreme grace of truth and pellucid honesty which sweetens all
intercourse, would have been an easy man for a minister like Lord Lyons,
himself the very incarnation of transparent sincerity, to deal with.
His Secretary of State, Mr. H. Seward, was a man of another kidney. Mr.
Seward was a New York lawyer, a rough, coarse, unconciliatory nature,
one of those impossible people who mistake bluster for courage, and
braggadocio for strength—so unmannerly was he that on one occasion
when he was a guest at a dinner-party at the British Legation, he
talked so offensively to certain of the diplomatists present that Lord
Lyons, a past-master in the art of turning a sharp corner, broke up
the conversation by saying that as host it was now his duty to go and
talk to the ladies. It needed all the tact, patience and self-control
of Lord Lyons to treat with such a man. That he succeeded in taming him
into something approaching to the amenities—I had almost written the
decencies—of diplomatic intercourse, was one of Lord Lyons’ most notable
achievements.
In 1860 the United States were on the brink of a volcano. The secession
of the Southern States was imminent, and on the 10th of December Lord
Lyons wrote to the Duke of Newcastle: “It is difficult to believe that I
am in the same country which appeared so prosperous, so contented, and
one may say so calm when we travelled through it.... Our friends are
apparently going ahead on the road to ruin with their characteristic
speed and energy. The President [Buchanan] is harassed beyond measure.”
Lincoln was inaugurated as President in March, 1861, and in the following
April the dogs of war were let loose with a vengeance, “and the capture
of Fort Sumter [by the Confederates] signalized the fact that a
population of little over five millions of white men had had the audacity
to challenge over twenty-two millions of their fellow-countrymen.” The
blockade of the southern ports became all important for England. Lord
Lyons, writing to Lord John Russell, said: “If the United States are
to be permitted to seize any ship of ours wherever they can find her
under their jurisdiction on the plea that by going to a southern port
she has violated the U. S. Customs Laws, our commerce will be exposed to
vexations beyond bearing, and all kinds of new and doubtful questions
will be raised. In fact, this, it seems to me, would be a paper blockade
of the worst kind. It would certainly justify Great Britain and France in
recognizing the Southern Confederacy, and sending their fleets to force
the U. S. to treat British and French vessels as neutrals in conformity
with the law of nations.” Mr. Seward was apparently convinced of the
reality of this danger, but when he saw how violent the President and
his colleagues were, veered round and became “the fiercest of the lot.”
Lord Lyons went on to say, “I am in constant apprehension of some foolish
and violent proceeding of the Government with regard to Foreign Powers.
Neither the President nor any man in the Cabinet has a knowledge of
foreign affairs; they have consequently all the overwhelming confidence
in their own strength which popular oratory has made common in this
country.”
The position of the British Minister at Washington was one of supreme
difficulty. The Government had wisely made common cause with France, but
no clear instructions as to procedure had been issued to Lord Lyons,—Lord
John Russell contenting himself with saying that he relied upon “the
wisdom, patience and prudence of the British Minister to steer safely
through the danger of the crisis.” The Law Officers of the Crown gave
it as their opinion “that we must consider the civil war in America as
regular war—_justum bellum_—and must apply to it all the rules respecting
blockade and letters of marque, which belong to neutrals during a war.”
They went on to express a pious wish that both parties should agree to
the Declaration of Paris regarding the flag covering the goods and the
prohibition of privateers.
Pious wishes do not always bear fruit, and seeing the vital importance to
England, and especially to Lancashire, of trade with the Southern States,
it was evident that blockade running would soon become a common practice,
and, seeing how ineffectual that blockade was, would be resorted to with
the result that considerable fortunes would be amassed by it.
Matters were not made easier by the negotiations which were taking place
at home between Lord John and Mr. Adams, the new American Minister, who
had succeeded Mr. Dallas. Mr. Adams said that the language held by Lord
John to his predecessor had given umbrage in the United States, and might
even lead to the termination of his own mission unless the unfavourable
impression should be corrected. He complained, moreover, of the
recognition of the South as a belligerent. Lord Newton very justly points
out that Lord John Russell was honest in his endeavours to show that
England, as a whole, was in sympathy with the North—popular feeling was
naturally all on the side of the abolition of slavery. The ovation which
Mrs. Beecher Stow received in London was not yet forgotten, and “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin,” now a forgotten book, was still selling by thousands. But
Lord John Russell as a negotiator was neither conciliatory nor tactful,
and it was certainly remarkable that while on the other side of the
Atlantic Lord Lyons was using all his tact, all his discretion, both
natural and trained, to soften the asperities of Mr. Seward, Mr. Adams,
on this side, was confronted with the querulous acrimony of the English
Foreign Minister.
There was, moreover, another British statesman whose clumsy activities
and hardly concealed partiality were peculiarly exasperating to the men
of the North. Mr. Gladstone never quite shared the indignation and horror
with which slavery was regarded by the bulk of his fellow-countrymen,
and when, later in the conflict, the cotton famine and the attacks of
the American Press had alienated many Englishmen from the North, there
were “demonstrations of pleasure” in the House of Commons at McClellan’s
defeat, and Mr. Gladstone declared that “Jefferson Davis and the leaders
of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy, and
they have made what is more than either, they have made a nation.”
Language such as this, held at the moment when the fortunes of the
Federals were at their blackest, could not but arouse the bitterest
feeling. Mr. Gladstone was apt to be anything but happy when he dealt
with the susceptibilities of foreign nations. A passage in a speech of
his, delivered on the 17th of March, 1880, during the famous Midlothian
campaign, is unforgettable. I shall allude to it at length elsewhere. His
utterances in regard to the War of Secession in America were even more
dangerous than this. Austria might be offended by his insults, but they
would not, could not, lead to open hostilities. But there were moments
during the great contest across the Atlantic which were crucial, and
no responsible statesman should have hampered friendly negotiations,
the object of which was to avoid a fratricidal war between two peoples
of the Anglo-Saxon race. It is necessary, in order to understand the
difficulties with which Lord Lyons had to deal, to show what were the
elements of conflict working on both sides of the Atlantic which he had
to meet and overcome. That he succeeded, that when he went home on leave
to consult with the Cabinet he was able to write to Lord Russell, “I had
quite an affectionate parting with the President this morning,” was one
of those triumphs of peace of which the laurels are greener and more
fragrant than any that ever hid the baldness of a Cæsar.
The course of the great War of Secession is followed with conspicuous
ability in Lord Newton’s life. It is impossible to say more about it here
than that throughout those terrible years in which gifts of the most
consummate tact and judgment were put to the test, Lord Lyons continued
to work with patriotic patience and with such great restraint that one
is almost tempted to say silently; indeed, in one letter to Lord Russell
he himself talks of “my language, or rather silence.” One only goal was
ever before his eyes, and that goal the prevention of any cause or excuse
that might lead to an outbreak of hostilities between the two countries.
I can go into no details here, but there were two episodes in which his
moderating influence curbed the hot heads of both nations.
The first was the famous case of the _Trent_. On the 8th of November,
1861, “the English mail steamer _Trent_, one day out from Havana, was
met by the American warship _San Jacinto_, and stopped by a shell fired
across her bows. She was then boarded by a party of marines, and the
officer in command of the party demanded a list of the passengers. The
production of the list having been refused, the officer stated that he
knew the Confederate delegates to Europe, Messrs. Mason and Slidell, to
be on board, and insisted upon their surrender. While the discussion was
in progress, Mr. Slidell made his appearance and disclosed his identity.
Thereupon, in defiance of the protests of the captain of the _Trent_
and of the Government mail agent, Mr. Slidell and Mr. Mason, together
with their secretaries, were seized and carried off by force to the _San
Jacinto_, and taken as prisoners to New York.”
When the news arrived in England the excitement and indignation were such
that no one who witnessed them will ever forget that fever of wrathful
resentment. On the other side the less thoughtful portion of the American
public worked itself up into a perfect delirium of patriotic enthusiasm.
Captain Wilkes, the commander of the _San Jacinto_, was raised to the
dignity of a national hero; banquets were held in his honour and the
Governor of Boston made a speech in which he said “That there may be
nothing left to crown this exultation, Commodore Wilkes fired his shot
across the bows of the ship that bore the British lion at its head.”
Promotion to the rank of Admiral was the heroic captain’s reward.
Peaceful and conciliatory as Lord Lyons was, and deeply concerned as
he had shown himself in the avoidance of giving or of unnecessarily
accepting any cause of offence, he was as convinced as the Home
Government that in this procedure of Captain Wilkes the limit at which
patience was possible had been reached, and it must have been a relief
to him to receive the despatch in which “The United States Government
were informed that International Law and the rights of Great Britain had
been violated, that Her Majesty’s Government trusted that the act would
be disavowed, the prisoners set free and restored to British protection.
Should this demand be refused, Lord Lyons was instructed to leave
Washington.”
Before the despatch was sent off, on the 30th of November, it was sent
for approval to the Queen. Her Majesty was constantly in the habit of
amending Lord Russell’s despatches, always rather slipshod affairs, and
often couched in offensive language. She never did so with greater effect
than upon this occasion when, acting upon the suggestions of that most
sagacious adviser, the Prince Consort, written at a moment when, as he
himself said, he was so ill that “he could hardly hold the pen,” she so
toned down such expressions as might have wounded the sensitive feelings
of the United States that the despatch, when it was received by Mr.
Seward, raised no dissatisfaction, and that he “handsomely acknowledged
the great consideration which had been shown by Lord Lyons in his conduct
of the negotiations.”
In their deep sorrow it must have been a happy memory for the Queen,
the Prince of Wales, and his brothers and sisters to feel that the
last official act of the husband and father whom they loved and
venerated, on the eve of his entering into that peace which passeth all
understanding,[28] should have been largely the means of preventing what
would have been a tragedy indeed. It was a peace which was “a victory no
less renowned than war.”
Mr. Seward’s answer to the British despatch was a note “of the most
portentous length, abounding in exuberant dialectics, but the gist of
which was contained in the two following short paragraphs:
“‘The four persons in question are now held in military custody at Fort
Warren, in the State of Massachusetts. They will be cheerfully liberated.
“‘Your lordship will please indicate a time and place for receiving
them.’”
The rest of the note might as well have been left unwritten.
Messrs. Mason and Slidell were accordingly conveyed in an American ship
from Fort Warren to Province Town, and there embarked on a British
warship for Halifax, it having been expressly stipulated that the
transfer should not take place at night. From Halifax they proceeded to
Europe.
The affair ended even better than Lord Lyons had hoped. On the 19th of
December he wrote: “I don’t think it likely they will give in, but I do
not think it impossible that they may do so;” and to the very end he was
preparing for the worst. All the greater must have been the relief when,
on the 27th, Mr. Seward’s answer came. “The Americans,” he writes on the
31st of December, “are putting the best face they can upon the surrender
of Slidell and Mason, and as far as depended upon me I have done
everything to make the pill as easy to swallow as possible. But I cannot
disguise from myself that the real cause of the yielding was nothing more
or less than the military preparations made in England.” Coming from him,
these words sound like a warning, profitable, if we would but listen,
even in these days.
There are very few great events in history the credit for which it would
be just to ascribe to any one man, and so perhaps Lord Newton is right
when he says that “It would be an exaggeration to attribute solely to
Lord Lyons the credit of having successfully prevented the calamity of
a war between England and the United States.” Energetic action of the
Home Government, the wise moderation of the Queen and the Prince Consort,
the loyal moral support of the French Government, and the good sense of
the Americans, each and all of them played a restraining part. But when
all is said and done, it was to the extraordinary patience and delicacy
of touch of Lord Lyons, who never once made a mistake—never under the
most goading provocation lost his head—that the ultimate success of the
negotiations was due.
“In after years,” Lord Newton writes, “Lord Lyons frequently expressed
the opinion that if there had then been telegraphic communication across
the Atlantic it would have been impossible to avert war, and it is more
than likely that he was correct, although it is improbable that many
people realized it at the time.” It was a notable case of a victory
gained by the man on the spot.
If a difficulty of the most threatening character had been conjured away
there were soon others to which a war such as that which was raging was
bound to give birth. Enlistment, desertion and other pretexts drove
scores of men to seek protection of the consuls both in the North and in
the South, on the ground of being British subjects.
An article from a Southern newspaper is worth quoting: “We can conceive
nothing more disgraceful than the conduct of Irishmen, for example, who
have been cursing the British Government ever since they could talk, who
have emigrated from their country to escape the British yoke, but who
now run to an English Consul and profess themselves subjects of Queen
Victoria in order to evade their duties in the land of their adoption.”
That, of course, alludes to the South, but Lord Lyons himself on 11th
May, 1863, writes no less bitterly: “I have been unwell for more than a
month, and am beset by a quantity of small vexatious business concerning
the wrongs of the British subjects who have suddenly proclaimed their
unswerving loyalty to the British Crown and demand my protection.”
Also there was the Alabama case—a very real stone of offence—and the
bitter Anglophobia of Admiral Wilkes; all matters in which the United
States Government behaved generously and even magnanimously. The work,
however, which devolved upon Lord Lyons was stupendous; in November,
1863, he recorded that he had already received nine hundred notes from
Mr. Seward in that year. But there was one episode so comic that it is
difficult to repress a smile in alluding to it. Is there not a comedy in
every tragedy? Is there not a gravedigger in _Hamlet_?
A great change had, during the last year or two, come over the terrible
Mr. Seward. Tamed by the British Minister, he was now roaring as
gently as any sucking dove, and would come to feed out of the hands of
Lord Lyons or M. Mercier, the French Minister, with all the caressing
softness of a pet lamb. In August, 1863, in a confidential conversation
with Lord Lyons, he expatiated upon the necessity of reviving a better
feeling between Great Britain and the United States, and of making some
demonstration in return for the visit of the Prince of Wales before the
war, which had been productive of the happiest results.
Now it was the turn of the United States to make a corresponding display
of good will, but it was difficult to devise the means of doing so, as
the President could not travel and America possessed no princes. Would
Lord Lyons think the matter over? Lord Lyons could not see the necessity
for such a step; but Mr. Seward returned to the charge, and Lord Lyons,
who was not slow in seeing his object, wrote: “The only conjecture I can
make is that he thinks of going to England himself. He may possibly want
to be absent for some reasons connected with the Presidential contest. If
he thinks that he has himself any chance of being taken as a candidate
by either party he is the only man who thinks so at this moment. It is,
however, generally considered to be an advantage to a candidate to be
out of the country during the canvass.” (In view of recent Presidential
elections these last words are amazing. Times have changed since 1863.)
To think of a visit by Mr. Seward, of all men, as an adequate compliment
in exchange for the Prince of Wales’ visit! Needless to say, that
demonstration did not take place.
However conciliatory Mr. Seward might have become, mainly owing to the
correct attitude of the British Government in detaining Confederate
ironclads in England, public feeling in America, and even in certain
members of the Government, was bitterly hostile. Mr. Wells, who was
Naval Minister, and Mr. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, were
cases in point. The latter knew well that he was harping upon a popular
string when on an electioneering tour he talked of “taking old Mother
England by the hair and giving her a good shaking.” Mr. Sumner, another
distinguished politician, outdid him in rancour.
Lord Lyons’ difficulties and trials were never destined to cease so long
as he remained at Washington. For the details of these I must refer the
reader to Lord Newton’s masterly narrative. In a mere appreciation such
as this it is impossible to do more than hint, even where the subject
tempts the writer to expatiate. To add to his troubles, the long years of
grinding work and harassing anxieties had begun to tell upon the health
of the Minister. A trip to Canada to escape for a while from the great
heat of Washington could not restore a man who was evidently suffering
from nervous prostration. Lord Lyons felt at the end of 1864 that he
could hold out no longer. It was not surprising. During the year 1864
no less than 8,326 despatches and letters were sent out by him—mostly
drafted by himself, but in any case, revised and corrected by him. His
attachés and secretaries were at work from nine in the morning until
seven, without an interval for luncheon—and often they had to return
after dinner and write into the small hours. That is the sort of life
that is led in times of stress by those members of the diplomatic service
whom the public is apt to look upon as mere dancing dogs! As I shall show
later on, the Legation at Washington during the war was not the only
theatre of such work.
Lord Lyons went home and took up his abode with his sister, the Duchess
of Norfolk, and on 16th March, 1865, he wrote to Mr. Stuart, the _chargé
d’affaires_ at Washington: “You will have seen that I have gone out of
the service altogether and have become a gentleman at large, without
pay or pension. My health did not admit of my fixing a time for going
back, and the Cabinet became nervous about leaving Washington without a
Minister in these critical times.”
Lack of space forbids me to reproduce the very handsome expressions of
regret at Lord Lyons’ departure which he received both from Mr. Seward
and from Lord Russell. He had, indeed, served both countries well,
and as Lord Newton says in regard to the letter of the former: “It
is satisfactory to realize that these two men, between whom so many
encounters had taken place, parted on terms of friendship and mutual
esteem.” They appreciated one another’s good qualities, and that Lord
Lyons retained in his heart a soft corner for the rugged New York lawyer
is shown by the fact that “in subsequent communications with his own
Government Lord Lyons frequently expressed the hope that Mr. Seward
would continue to be responsible for the foreign policy of the American
Government.”
* * * * *
Rest and the society of his relations—the best of all restoratives to
a man of Lord Lyons’ affectionate nature—in contrast to the strenuous
labours of those four exhausting years, soon effected a cure. He was
out of the service, but such a man could hardly be spared, and in the
month of July, 1865, he was appointed to the Embassy at Constantinople,
in succession to Sir Henry Bulwer (Lord Dalling). It would have been
difficult to find two men more different than Bulwer and Lord Lyons.
Bulwer was a clever curiosity, and a born intriguer. On leaving
Cambridge, he had been successively a Greek patriot, a cornet in the
Life Guards, an ensign in the 58th Foot, had retired upon half-pay, had
achieved success as a gambler and dandy (not quite of the first water),
and finally entered the diplomatic service. In appearance, in his old
days, he was a small shadow of a man, as wizened as Tithonus, with an
insane desire to show the frame of an athlete. To this end he used to
encase himself in numberless great-coats, from which, when he came to
the Foreign Office and the heat became intolerable, he would pray some
kindly clerk to set him free, and the poor old mummy was unrolled.
As Ambassador at Constantinople he had ample opportunities for the
exercise of his peculiar talents; he was often in hot water, but, like
a famous bishop, always contrived to come out with his hands clean.[29]
His methods were not those of Lord Lyons, they were far more nearly in
accord with those of the Russian Ambassador, General Ignatieff, whom the
Turks called “the father of lies.” Lord Lyons’ transparent honesty must
have been an astonishment to Constantinople, which was used to being a
hotbed of underhand machinations, plots and counterplots, and where no
diplomatist trusted anybody else, least of all the colleagues with whom
he was supposed to live in brotherly love. However, it was a time of
comparative calm, and Lord Lyons, accompanied by his two trusty henchmen,
Malet and Sheffield, whom, with his usual affection for his friends, he
had insisted upon taking with him, was able to enjoy all the charm of
that most captivating city in a peace of mind to which he had long been a
stranger.
The Danubian principalities were a worry, as they always had been, and
as, now that they have been exalted into Kingdoms with a rich importation
of ready-made monarchs from abroad, they continue to be. Crete was
another difficulty, as it has been ever since the days of the three evil
Kappas. Still there were troubles which, after the years of perpetual
pin-pricks and imminent international dangers on the other side of the
Atlantic, must have been looked upon by Lord Lyons as no more than enough
to keep his armour from growing rusty.
In 1867 Lord Cowley resigned the Embassy at Paris, and the post
was offered by Lord Stanley to Lord Lyons. Lord Cowley was a model
diplomatist of the old school, self-restrained, undemonstrative,
absolutely ignorant of those arts of advertisement which form too large a
portion of the equipment of the statesmen of to-day. He had been brought
up in the strictest sect of diplomacy, and only six years, during which
the Embassy at Paris had been held by Lord Normanby, separated him from
the time when his father held the same post. The first Lord Cowley was
one of those three famous brothers, the other two being the great Duke
of Wellington and the Marquess of Wellesley, of whom it would be idle
and out of place to say aught here. The second Lord Cowley, afterwards
created an earl, had gained an influence at the Court of the Tuileries
which on more than one occasion saved a difficult situation. Never was
this more conspicuously shown than when, in 1860, Mr. Cobden was sent to
Paris on his famous mission in connection with the treaty of commerce.
The negotiations, so long as Mr. Cobden insisted on conducting them by
himself, were none too prosperous. Indeed, there came a day when after a
protracted conference, Mr. Cobden came back to the British Embassy ready
to throw up the sponge. Lord Cowley comforted him and said: “Let me see
what I can do.” He skilfully turned the corner and the treaty was signed.
But Cobden claimed and received all the glory.
It was in the footsteps of this great diplomatist and statesman, whose
quiet dignity, no less than his political sagacity, had made him a very
real factor in all international affairs, that Lord Lyons was to follow.
He felt that it was a difficult succession; he wrote to him: “When I
first heard that you were likely to give up Paris, I felt, as I think
I said in my letter to you, alarmed at the prospect of the Embassy’s
falling into other hands. I should have been indeed alarmed had I then
known into whose hands it was likely to fall.” This was characteristic
modesty, but Lord Lyons need have been under no alarm. Lord Cowley might
well feel that his successor would be worthy of him, and it is hardly too
much to surmise that his advice was sought by Lord Stanley before the
appointment was made. Lord Cowley was acquainted as no other man could be
with all the forces at work in France from the Emperor downwards; he knew
the whole intricate network of French politics, and he was in a position
to take the measure of all the men who might be “in the running” for the
Embassy. It is hardly thinkable that so judicious a statesman as Lord
Stanley should not have consulted him. Be that as it may, the wisdom of
the choice was fully justified.
Lord Lyons had now reached the highest reward which his profession had
to offer. The Embassy at Paris must always be, in importance as in
dignity, superior to any other diplomatic post. In the days of which
we are writing it was, and probably still is, more or less an annexe
of the Foreign Office in Downing Street. There are few international
questions in which the interests of England and France are not almost
equally concerned, whether they be acting in opposition to one another or
in concert. Every despatch which reached the Foreign Office, no matter
whence it came, was copied for Paris. The labour which it entailed
upon the Ambassador was Herculean; indeed, since the day after all
consists of only twenty-four hours, it may be doubted whether even such
indefatigable workers as Lord Cowley and Lord Lyons could have found time
to read and digest all the matter which was sent to them. There were
certain excellent and worthy ministers whose verbosity experience must
have taught them to put on one side. Still, even the absolutely necessary
work of reading was exhausting.
It really seemed as if, in some sense, Lord Lyons was destined to be the
stormy petrel of diplomacy. He was sent to Florence, and the Grand Ducal
reign collapsed. He went to America, and the War of Secession broke out.
He was promoted to Paris, and there came the great catastrophe. So shrewd
an observer as Lord Lyons could not fail to see that the throne of Louis
Napoléon was tottering. The poor Emperor was surrounded by difficulties
with which he seemed quite unable to cope. Abroad there were many
troubles, not the least of which was the question of the occupation of
Rome, which meant the bolstering up of the Papal Government. Then there
was the growing power of Russia and such matters as the annexation of the
Grand Duchy of Baden to the North German Confederation. Greek affairs,
the perennial question of ceding Crete and other portions of the Ottoman
dominions to Greece, was another source of disquietude.
In France there was a great feeling of discontent, owing, as Lord Lyons
said, “mainly, I imagine, to the inconstancy of men, and Frenchmen in
particular. In fact he has reigned eighteen years, and they are getting
tired of so much of the same thing and want novelty.” The glitter of the
Empire had ceased to dazzle, and even the brilliant Cent Gardes no longer
captivated the women and aroused the enthusiasm, tempered by jealousy, of
the men.
In his own family the Emperor had, as everybody knew, to deal with a wife
who was taking more and more part in public business, in spite of her
declaration that she meant to abandon politics for works of charity. Lord
Lyons’ account of an interview with Her Majesty is very instructive on
that point.
Then there was Prince Napoleon to be reckoned with—a very astute
politician, with something of the prophet’s eye and, like many another
prophet of old, but little of a comfort to the ruling power. With him
also, for he was a frequent visitor to the Embassy, Lord Lyons had much
talk, during which—notably upon the subject of the Roman question—it is
strange to be told that the Prince expressed his views in the hope that
they would thus be brought before the Emperor—the English Ambassador to
be the intermediary between Prince Napoleon and his cousin! This Prince,
who in many ways was a deplorable person, was able to impress Lord Lyons
by his ability and shrewd common sense. “He spoke with great animation
and remarkably well.”
In the spring of 1868, Prince Napoleon made a tour in Germany. He
returned fully impressed with the danger of a war with Prussia, with the
folly of attempting to annex the Rhenish provinces, and with the vanity
of talking of disarmament (how history repeats itself!), seeing that
Prussia alone had two hundred thousand men under arms. Though opposed to
war, if war there must be, it should be made at once; the consolidation
of Northern Germany was proceeding surely and rapidly; the adhesion of
Southern Germany would soon follow, and “hereafter war would have to
be waged with Germany thoroughly united and perfectly organized.... He
considered that an unsuccessful war would overthrow the Emperor and
his dynasty and send the whole Bonaparte family to the right-about; a
war only partially successful would rather weaken than strengthen the
Emperor at home; while a thoroughly successful war would simply give His
Majesty a fresh lease of Cæsarism, and adjourn indefinitely the liberal
institutions which he [Prince Napoleon] considered essential to the
durability of the dynasty. The Prince is not without apprehension as to
war being made this season [1868]. He fears weak men, and he looks upon
the Emperor as a weak man. He fears the people who surround His Majesty,
the generals, the chamberlains, the ladies of the Palace.”
These views of Prince Napoleon, which are among the many new
contributions to history contained in Lord Newton’s book, seemed well
worth giving _in extenso_. The Prince was not the only man who looked
upon the relations with Germany in a spirit of grave anxiety. What the
intimate views of the Emperor may have been upon this subject it would be
hard to say. When, in 1863, he sulked in his tent, his abstention from
interference in the invasion of Denmark contributed not a little to the
aggrandizement of Prussia; it was his fate to be continually hatching
broods of homing chickens.
In the meantime the Emperor was trying to bring about a conference of
the Powers to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for him in regard to
the Roman question. A conference was his panacea for all diplomatic
ailments. In this he was warmly seconded by the Empress, who, in a long
conversation with Lord Lyons, in which “she spoke with much grace both of
manner, and, I think, with very great ability,” urged the importance and
propriety of non-Catholic, as well as Catholic, Powers taking part in it.
Lord Stanley’s comment upon this letter was characteristic. He said
that the Empress’s “frank and sensible conversation” furnished the best
reason he had received yet for keeping out of the affair altogether.
Why should we be asked to bear for the Emperor the responsibility which
he had assumed? Prince Napoleon shared Lord Stanley’s views. He thought
that the best service England could render the Emperor would be to advise
him to give up the idea of a conference and settle the matter with Italy
by satisfying, at least in a certain measure, Italian aspirations. “He
declares,” writes Lord Lyons, “that Italy will never be quiet, and that
the unity of Italy will never be assured until she gets Rome for her
capital. He believes that the Emperor’s support of the Pope is very
unpopular with the great majority of the French people, and that it will,
if persevered in, be a serious danger to the dynasty.” ... He wishes
England to advise the Emperor that “He will not be able to hold his own
unless he abandons the system of personal government and gives a large
increase of liberty.”
Grumbling and growling everywhere! The Emperor at his wits’ ends and
talking of “moral influence,” that last poor refuge of a desperate
statesman!
In spite of political troubles, and the manifest lack of sympathy on the
part of England, Louis Napoleon was not slow in discovering the charm and
sterling merits of Lord Lyons, whose tact could not fail to ingratiate
him wherever he went. “The Emperor talked to me a long time and related
to me interesting anecdotes, some very amusing, of the conduct of various
persons towards him in past times.” But unfortunately Lord Lyons was no
gossip, and so these “very amusing” stories have been lost.
How entertaining it would have been to be carried, like Cleofas by
Asmodeus, _le diable boiteux_, through the roof, and allowed to listen
unseen to the talk between the two. To the world at large Louis Napoléon
in the Tuileries was a mystery as silent as the Sphinx in the desert,
for so the newspapers described him. Few men suspected that in the grey
volutes of the brain which lay behind that wooden mask there was a sense
of rather sardonic humour, which, when he chose to give it play, made
him the best of company. We may be sure that the Ambassador, no less
gifted in that respect, would not be slow to throw back the ball in these
encounters of wits.
Like the Emperor, Lord Lyons had a quite irresistible trick of giving a
whimsical expression to a commonplace subject. He, too, was in his quiet
way a humorist. The personal relations between him and the Emperor were
always pleasant and sometimes, perhaps, cordial. Lord Lyons liked His
Majesty, though, in one of those rare outbursts of confidence in which he
revealed his thoughts, he confessed to Lord Newton that he had formed no
very high opinion of his abilities.
The attempt to arouse in England interest in the Roman question was
fruitless, but he never quite gave up the hope of inducing the English
Government to act as pacificators between France and Germany. But he had
lost confidence, he was out of spirits, and when Lord Cowley, in August,
1868, paid him a visit at Fontainebleau, he told Lord Lyons on his return
that he found him much depressed and aged—a disappointed man, who would
willingly, had it been possible, have retired into private life. The
glamour of the early glories of his reign had faded into mist, and he was
weary.
A little later in the same year Lord Clarendon, whose influence with him
and with the Empress, whom he had known from her childhood when he was
Minister at Madrid, was a matter of common knowledge, dined with His
Majesty at St. Cloud, and having just returned from Berlin, was able
to repeat to him the pacific language which he had heard from the King
and Queen of Prussia and General Moltke. This was good hearing, but
the Emperor was at no pains to conceal his anxiety lest anything should
occur that might arouse the feeling of the army and the nation, and he
expressed his earnest wish that “England should step in to enable France
and Prussia to withdraw with honour from their present antagonistic
attitude.”
Lord Clarendon, with that nobility which characterized all his dealings,
communicated to Lord Lyons all that he had learned both at Berlin and
at St. Cloud, although he knew that it would be for the benefit of his
political opponents. But by the end of the year there was a change of
Government in England, and to the Emperor’s great joy Lord Clarendon, the
friend whom he loved, was once more at the Foreign Office.
A visit of the Crown Prince of Prussia to England enabled Lord Clarendon
to tell Lord Lyons that His Royal Highness was to the full as peacefully
inclined as his father, and indeed he went a step further, for while he
personally was willing to see the army placed upon a peace footing, the
King would not hear of it. But how strange it seemed at a moment when we
in England have been proposing naval holidays to read talk of the same
nature earnestly exercising the minds of men nearly half a century ago.
In spite of all pacific assurances the thunder-clouds, black and ominous,
were gathering. War was imminent; Prince Napoleon went so far as to
express the opinion that it would break out in the spring; he was wrong
by some eighteen months. Much was to happen before what was an anxiety
should be crystallized into a storm ending in a tragedy such as the world
had seldom or never seen.
There was a Cretan conference; a whole web of intrigue about the
Luxemburg railway, and the Belgian question threatening the peace of
Europe; a proposal for a conference on international postage, until
Lavalette told Lord Lyons that the country was sick of the very name of
the thing; and in spite of conferences and pacific talk, trouble was
brewing in every direction.
Meanwhile Lord Lyons was subjected to an annoyance personal to himself,
but none the less real. In the month of June, 1869, Lord Lyons was
requested by Lord Clarendon to return to England to vote on the Irish
Church Bill. He strongly objected to doing so on the very proper
ground that an Ambassador ought to abstain from taking a hand in party
politics. Lord Clarendon, however, urged by Mr. Gladstone, returned to
the charge, and in such pointed terms that he could not refuse. How
sorely it went against the grain with him is plain from a letter which
two years later he addressed to Lord Granville, when the latter begged
him to come once more and vote on the Army Purchase Bill. That Lord
Lyons was right in maintaining that it was inexpedient for an ambassador
to vote on party questions must be manifest. Diplomatists, like other
permanent civil servants, are bound to serve ministers of whatever party
may be in office. If they assume the attitude of party men it is not in
human nature that they should command that intimate confidence which is
essential to their relations with the members of the Government which
they have helped to oppose.
It is a wise and cardinal rule of the English public service that its
members are neutral. The higher the position the greater the obligation
in this sense. Lord Lyons was deeply penetrated with the importance of a
principle which it is a matter of surprise to find two such large-minded
statesmen as Lord Clarendon and Lord Granville eager to set aside for
party purposes. It seems worth while to call attention to these two
incidents, because they show what was the opinion of one of the most
sagacious and prudent of men. Mr. Gladstone’s idea that the Government
had a right to call upon an ambassador for his vote needs no refuting.
In the course of the correspondence that took place at the end of 1869
it was clear that Lord Clarendon had lost all faith, if he ever had any,
in his friend Louis Napoléon. In one letter he went so far as to say,
“If the Emperor attaches value to the English alliance, he ought not to
sacrifice it by a sneaking attempt to incorporate Belgium, by means of a
railway company and its employés. If he wants war it is a bad pretext for
doing that which all mankind will blame him for.” Later, on the 31st of
August, he writes with prophetic instinct: “The prospect of affairs in
France gives cause sufficient for anxiety, and I have an instinct that
they will drift into a republic before another year is over.” Indeed, the
Fates were busy with the thread of the Empire’s life.
Abroad the attempts to induce Prussia to disarm pursued their gentle
but ineffectual course as before. Lord Clarendon did more than even
his best to try and persuade Bismarck. The man of iron and blood was
polite, but unmoved. The Duc de Gramont, known in his salad days as
“_le bel Agénor_,” had become Minister of Foreign Affairs, and when the
thunderbolt of the Hohenzollern candidature for the throne of Spain fell
in the early days of July, the ex-dandy Duke lost no time in intimating
to the British Ambassador that France would go to war with both Spain
and Prussia rather than allow a Hohenzollern to reign at Madrid.... “The
election of Montpensier might be looked upon as a _mauvais procédé_
towards the Emperor and the dynasty, but the putting forward a Prussian
was an insult and an injury to all France.” At the same time the warlike
Duke gave Lord Lyons to understand that he would be grateful to England
if she would use her influence with Prussia in order to bring about a
solution of the difficulty.
To the unspeakable sorrow of all England, and we might say of Europe,
Lord Clarendon had died on the 27th of June. It now fell to the lot of
Lord Granville to deal with foreign affairs. On the 6th of July, he paid
a generous tribute to his predecessor when he wrote: “It is very sad that
I should be writing to you in the place of one who would have had so much
personal power in such a matter as this.”
What I have to say of the war of 1870 and the causes which led to it
must be told elsewhere; here I am dealing really with the years of the
American rebellion, and have only skimmed the first volume of Lord
Newton’s great book.
In surveying the twenty years during which Lord Lyons was Ambassador in
Paris, the reader is fairly bewildered by the mass and the magnitude of
the questions with which he had to deal. The Presidency of Thiers—his
fall; the election of Maréchal Macmahon; Franco-German relations, always
a threatening subject; the purchase of the Suez Canal shares; the Treaty
of San Stefano; the proposal that Lord Lyons should go as English
plenipotentiary to the Congress of Berlin, which to his great relief
was settled by Lord Beaconsfield going himself with Lord Salisbury;
the election of President Grévy; the Eastern Question; the concert of
Europe, always playing out of tune; Tunis and Tripoli; the rebellion of
Arabi; England abandoned by France in Egypt; the pranks of the mountebank
General Boulanger—the Napoléon de Café Concert, an Agamemnon with Paulus,
the comic singer, as _vates sacer_, and “_en r’venant de la revue_” as
his anthem; changes of Government without end—these are but stray items
in the work with which that silent, self-contained, prudent man, gifted
with the true wisdom of statesmanship, had to wrestle. That he did so
without ever making a mistake accounts for the esteem in which he was
held by so many successive secretaries of state. Their confidence was
shown by the numberless cases in which he was left to act upon his own
discretion.
He never gave greater proof of wisdom than when he declined Lord
Salisbury’s offer to him in July, 1886, that he should take over the
seals of the Foreign Office. He was then sixty-nine years of age. He was
in failing health, worn out by the long exercise of almost superhuman
industry; indeed, he was nearer to his end than he himself imagined.
In a singularly graceful letter Lord Rosebery praised his decision. He
continued his work at Paris for another year, but on the 1st of November
he resigned and was created an Earl. On the 28th of the same month he had
a stroke of paralysis, and in a week he was dead.
It would be difficult to improve upon the portrait which Lord Newton
draws of his former chief. The impression left upon the mind of the
reader must be recognized as true by all those who had the good fortune
to know him. As a public man he was absolutely devoid of all petty
ambition; he never thought of advertising himself, on the contrary he
pushed modesty almost to a fault; himself a most indefatigable worker,
he expected something of the same quality in his subordinates, who loved
him for his just, honest and generous nature. In his private life he
was simple and unostentatious, yet always dignified. For the amusements
in which men of his caste are wont to find relief from the cares of
business, he had no liking. In no form did sport attract him. He was
content to go dowagering for an afternoon drive with Sheffield, the
“Hare,” so called from his large, almost flapping ears, and Dog Toby. The
party were a familiar sight to Parisians, who would watch the strange
trio with some amazement.
We are told that women had so little attraction for him that there never
was even the suspicion of a flirtation in his life. For his family,
on the other hand, for his father, his brother and his sisters and
their children he entertained the most devoted love, and his friends,
especially Sir Edward Malet and Mr. Sheffield, were held by him in an
affection which they on their side returned with interest. They became
inseparable.
“It was Lord Lyons’s fate,” writes Lord Newton, “to represent this
country at most critical periods during wars in the course of which
England, while desiring to observe the strictest neutrality, aroused the
bitterest hostility on the part of the belligerents.”[30] These words
contain no exaggeration.
His prudence, patience, and self-restraint steered the ship through many
hidden dangers. There is an old saw which runs: “Blessed is the minister
who does not make history.” It is given to few men to make history; it
is given to still fewer to prevent others from making it. These are the
greatest of all, and it is among them that Lord Lyons takes an honoured
place.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WEDDING OF THE PRINCE OF WALES
On the 10th of March, 1863, I had the honour to be present at the wedding
of the Prince of Wales in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor. A number of
extra gentlemen-ushers were appointed for the occasion, and by the
kindness of Sir Spencer Ponsonby Fane, always a good friend to me, I was
one of them. It was a magnificent sight, something to remember for a
life-time. The streets of Windsor and all the approaches to St. George’s
inside the glorious old Castle were thronged with people radiating the
happiness of the day—the Eton boys of course in full strength, ready
to cheer till their loyal throats should burst. All that was greatest
and noblest in the land was present in the Chapel; there cannot be many
people still alive who were there, for of course the guests were all of
them men who had already made their mark in the world; and even of those
who were on duty, I was probably the youngest. Happy the bride upon whom
the sun shines! It was a bitterly cold day, but bright, and a life-giving
sun, blazing through the stained-glass windows, shone upon a gorgeous
display of glittering uniforms; the banners hanging from the Garter
Knights’ stalls, the tabards of the heralds, the gold coats of the state
trumpeters combining with the brilliant gowns and flashing diamonds of
the ladies, made such a riotous feast of colour as the world could hardly
match.
The procession of the Knights of the Garter ought to have been an
imposing spectacle, but the good Knights, arrayed in their blue velvet
robes, resplendent with their golden collars and stars, instead of
marching decorously two and two with a suitably solemn space between
the pairs, had contrived to club themselves into a clumsy knot made up
of figures of various sizes and shapes in which they looked anything but
dignified, the tall and stately Lord Shaftesbury towering over the puny
form of Lord Russell. They badly needed a stage-manager.
The trumpets bray out triumphantly announcing the procession of the
Bridegroom, stately, solemn, full of dignity.
Once more the trumpets. Amidst all the glory of that wonderful day
nothing could equal the procession of the Bride. The touching tenderness
of her girlish, rosebud beauty and graceful figure, as she passed
up the nave, her eyes shyly downcast, looked like the vision of the
Princess of a Fairy Tale. Her entry into London had been the triumph of
a conqueress—her entry into St. George’s Chapel was the assumption of a
Queendom over the hearts of England from which nothing can ever dethrone
her.
It was a sad sight to see the great Queen, then only entering into middle
age, looking down from her gallery to bless her son’s happiness! When
the trumpets heralded the Wedding March amid the clatter of arms of the
saluting Guards, the pealing of the organ, the roll of the kettledrums,
and the roaring salvoes of artillery, it was impossible not to feel that
her thoughts must be travelling back to the death-chamber hard by, where,
some fifteen months earlier, she entered upon the long, lonely years of
her widowhood. Half hidden, her pathetic figure struck the one sad note,
the _memento mori_, in all that frenzy of rejoicing, all that radiance
of pomp and splendour, the celebration of a nation’s sympathy with a
well-beloved Prince.
Perhaps I ought rather to say a Prince whom the people were ready to take
to their hearts; for he was still a lad, and had not yet had the chance
of showing what he really was worth.
At the risk of forestalling such story as I have to tell I would fain
insert here a slight attempt at an appreciation of that young bridegroom
as he appeared in later life and during his too short reign as King. A
comparison of the power exercised by him and that of the great Mother
whom he succeeded almost inevitably comes within the scope of such an
endeavour.
It is one of the penalties of a high position that whereas the failings
of those who occupy it are apt to be viewed through a magnifying glass,
their good qualities are too often examined through the wrong end of a
telescope. Even those whose nature and knowledge would prompt them to
deal out praise in full measure, speak under the restraint of a reticence
the motives of which are not difficult to understand; and the more
exalted the subject of this post-mortem examination of character, the
more severe is that restraint almost bound to be.
Obituary notices of King Edward the Seventh have been plentiful enough.
The two most important appreciations of him have been Sir Sidney
Lee’s, in the “Dictionary of National Biography,” and the two essays
in Lord Esher’s recently published book, entitled, “The Influence of
King Edward.” It is hardly necessary to say that the two views of King
Edward’s character differ _toto cœlo_. But then, whereas Sir Sidney Lee
had no intimate knowledge of the King, Lord Esher describes a man with
whom he lived for many years in that confidential intimacy which Dr.
Johnson held to be the necessary condition for writing a good biography.
The worst of it is that though Lord Esher’s book will be widely read
now, it is bound to share the fate of all books, which like men, have
their day and then die. _Habent sua fata libelli._ With the “Dictionary
of National Biography” the case is different: that will remain on the
shelves of every library, public and private, for many generations, and
will be consulted as an authority long after the writers, like their
subjects, shall have faded into the misty land of ghosts. That is why
articles in such an important book of reference should be subjected
before publication to the strictest and most impartial examination.
Afterwards it is no use. “The written word stands.” Even should Sir
Sidney Lee himself, in the fuller life of King Edward upon which he is
said to be engaged, endeavour to modify, soften, or even contradict some
of the statements in his article, it will not be possible for him to
correct the false impression which those pages will create in the minds
of men of a future generation. Historians will turn to them and will say
that since this was written immediately after the tragedy of 1910 by so
eminent a man of letters, it must represent the contemporary judgment of
the King’s personality. Great is the responsibility.
The picture which Lord Esher gives of the childhood and boyhood of
the Prince of Wales under the somewhat austere and strict tutelage of
Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort cannot but fill his readers with
sympathy. Here was a child, a boy, a young lad, hedged round by rules and
regulations which must have pressed upon him like a strait-waistcoat.
Ardent and full of the highest spirits, he was cramped by such a
discipline as mercifully none of us have known. What would the boy not
have given for a game of football? How he would have loved to drive a
cricket ball over the boundary! He, whom I have seen as a man of fifty,
booted and skated, keenly playing a game of hockey on the ice? No games
were there for him, no free association with playmates of his own age.
A boy or two, carefully selected, sent up to Windsor from Eton to stand
about in hopeless shyness in the presence of tutors, or even under THE
Eye.
He was sent to Oxford, but strict care was taken that he should have no
part in the life of the university. He might hear lectures—he might see
nothing. It was as if you were to send a lad to the theatre and set him
down in a stall with his back to the stage.
The first time that I saw the Prince of Wales was when his father
brought him to Eton as a little boy of twelve to hear the “speeches”
on the Fourth of June. What a diversion for a child of his age, to
listen to us sixth form boys spouting Demosthenes, Æschylus, Cicero! I
can see his poor bored little face now. It was pitiful. He is accused
of never having been bookish. How could he be when, like Swinburne,
he was never allowed to read even Walter Scott’s novels? Swinburne,
however, when he came to Eton quickly emancipated himself. The Prince
of Wales never had a chance of reading as a boy, and later in life he
had no more time than was needed for studying the newspapers, which he
did most conscientiously. Not upon him alone was the grip of the iron
hand clenched. The instructions to his Governor, to his tutors, to the
gentlemen-in-waiting—authentic documents cited by Lord Esher—make one
feel the choking atmosphere of boredom through which the Prince struggled
into manhood.
How the kindly, genial Prince, who was to develop into what Dr. Johnson
called a “clubable” man, must have chafed under this prison treatment!
How he must have longed for emancipation! He had a temporary foretaste
of it when in 1861 he joined the Grenadier Guards[31] at the Curragh. He
always looked back with pleasure upon that short soldierly experience.
When we think of the very strict severity of the Prince Consort, and when
we remember the great part which he played as the Queen’s confidential
political adviser, notably in the Trent affair, where his wisdom helped
to soften the asperities which Lord Russell had aroused in the United
States, we are apt to forget how young he was when on the 14th of
December, 1861, he died—barely forty-two years of age.
He had not always been popular, and the world had been jealous of his
interference in public affairs; but all those jealousies were soon
forgotten and the Prince’s worth was realized after his death. That
cruel sorrow gave the Queen an opportunity of using the Prince of Wales
in his father’s place, making him her confidant and private secretary,
and guiding him through the labyrinths of that constitutional lore of
which she was such a mistress. Needless to say, the opportunity was not
made use of. On the contrary, in spite of the advice of more than one
minister—notably of Mr. Gladstone—the Queen politically held her eldest
son at arm’s length.
It was not until a few years before her death that he, already a
middle-aged man of fifty, was allowed access to State papers. Shut out
as he was from any participation in public affairs, his great activities
were turned into two channels—social and ceremonial, and most admirably
he fulfilled those very wearisome duties of royalty of which he relieved
the Queen, who from that time forth worked diligently, devotedly, but
unseen. Indeed her life was wrecked. She had accustomed herself to lean
upon her husband, who had been her lover, her guide, and her adviser for
twenty-one years of a marriage which had been blessed with a happiness
rarely found in a station of life where love matches are the exception.
To the outside world he might seem stiff and formal. The prescriptions
of a small German Court would account for that; but to her he was always
gentle, kind, sympathetic. He was an exceptional man; tall and of a
commanding figure, strikingly handsome, highly educated, accomplished,
judicious; he lacked but one quality—that of geniality—to make him
universally popular, and even that was no misfortune, for it may have
saved him from stumbling into those pitfalls with which the path of men
so gifted, especially when they are in a commanding station, is beset.
One side of his nature was curious. He was essentially a shy man. He
would enter a room to meet some visitor whom he had summoned, sidling up,
as it were, along two walls of it before stepping forward to hold out his
hand. That same shyness accounts for a good deal in his character; for
its aloofness and, above all, for an apparent dislike, strange in so able
a man, to surround himself with all that was best and most distinguished
in science and art. Such men as Darwin, Huxley, Hooker, Tyndall were
practically unknown to him. He preferred the second rate. So in Art,
as portrait painter, he was satisfied with Landseer and Winterhalter.
Landseer no doubt was an excellent delineator of dogs and deer, but it
did not seem to occur to the Prince that a man might be a first-rate
painter of animal life and yet fail signally with Kings and Queens. As
regards Winterhalter, it is the world’s misfortune that the portraits of
the principal personages who made the history of the fifties and sixties
of the last century should have been practically his monopoly.
With music, especially sacred music and the Opera, there was great
sympathy at Court. The Prince was an accomplished and scientific musician
and the Queen had a lovely voice which was well-trained by that wonderful
old singer Lablache. But for Literature there appeared to be no place. I
have a sort of recollection that Dickens was once sent for to Buckingham
Palace, but that was not until 1870, the year of his death. The Prince
was greatly pleased with Thackeray’s “May-day Ode” on the opening of the
Exhibition of 1851, and he loved Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King,”—they
aroused in him the ideal of the chivalry which he worshipped. But there
the matter ended, there was no literary society, no love of books. The
Prince and the Queen were absorbed in politics, and their relaxation was
taken in other directions, such as the theatre and the Opera.
I dwell upon all this because I am anxious to show how King Edward’s
up-bringing accounted for that indifference to books with which his
biographers have taxed him. It is the fashion to talk with contempt of
what is called the Early Victorian Era. In Letters, at any rate, the
reproach is undeserved. There was no lack of considerable men. Putting on
one side the three great names that I have already cited, we had Carlyle,
Browning, Froude, George Eliot, the Brontës, Ruskin and others. In the
memorandum for the guidance of the gentlemen appointed to attend on the
Prince of Wales they are told to encourage the Prince “to devote some of
his leisure time to music, to the fine arts, either drawing or looking
over drawings, engravings, etc., to hearing poetry, amusing books or good
books read aloud!” But of that delightful solitary communing with books
which are the living souls of great men—such books as those written by
the contemporaries of whom I have spoken, there is not a word.
Fancy an ardent boy of seventeen spending his leisure time in turning
over books of drawings and prints! Would it not be mental starvation?
How much more human would it be for a boy to read “Pickwick,” “Martin
Chuzzlewit,” “Vanity Fair,” “Scenes from Clerical Life,” “The Princess,”
“Jane Eyre”!
For my part I would far rather see a son of mine frown over the
savagery of Mr. Rochester, or laugh at Mrs. Gamp and Mr. Pecksniff,
than waste smiles of young-lady-like admiration upon Retsch’s outlines
or the “Keepsake.” But the whole memorandum is one of the strangest of
documents, reading as if it had been composed for the use and guidance of
a seminary for young ladies.
There can hardly ever have been so self-contained a Court as that of
the Queen and Prince Consort in the early days of their married life.
Outside of the Ladies- and Gentlemen-in-Waiting there were very few
intimates. Of these the chief was Baron Stockmar, the retired physician,
who had been Court Doctor to King Leopold and the Princess Charlotte of
Wales, and who afterwards became mentor and political tutor to Prince
Albert. At Windsor or Buckingham Palace he came and went as he pleased;
his room was always ready and he was always welcome. As to that, there
was not a little jealousy, and that jealousy was accentuated by his
privileges, notably in that whereas the English grandees had to wear
knee-breeches and silk stockings, the Baron was allowed to encase his
lean and shrivelled limbs in the warmth of trousers! A terrible outrage,
intolerable to the said grandees; the intimacy was bad enough, but the
trousers were galling!
Another welcome guest was the Prussian Minister, Baron de Bunsen, a
really remarkable man. But perhaps the friend who came next to old Baron
Stockmar in the estimation, or perhaps I might say affection, of the
Prince Consort, was M. Sylvain Van de Weyer, the Belgian Minister, who
was not only a diplomatist of conspicuous ability, but also a bibliophile
and an accomplished man of letters. He was one of the most agreeable men
that I ever knew, and the power of his personal charm upon the Court was
enhanced by the fact that he was the representative of the dearly-loved
and venerated uncle both of the Queen and Prince.
The English statesmen were invited for short visits to Windsor or to
dinner at Buckingham Palace, and, as was necessary, there was a Minister
in attendance at Balmoral or Osborne, but after Lord Melbourne and until
Lord Beaconsfield’s time, long after the death of the Prince Consort,
who had no liking for him, there was no familiar intercourse with any
Cabinet, Whig or Tory. Both the Queen and the Prince Consort worked
indefatigably, but it was chiefly desk work—work in the dark.
The long, silent night of sorrow in which the Queen spent the forty years
which remained to her after the death of the husband who had been the
dayspring and the bright glory of her life, more than ever estranged her
from taking any delight in that personal intercourse which is the chief
lure of society.
I remember as a boy seeing a drawing which impressed me greatly. On a
mountain-top sat a solitary female figure, draped in black—was she a
Sibyl, a Witch, a Norn? I know not. Her face rested on her right hand and
her weary, yearning eyes looked out upon the world beneath her, a figure
of mystery mounting guard. Queen Victoria in her loneliness, watching
from on high over the welfare of her people, reminded me of that tragic
figure. She was one of those “Princes” who, as Bacon said, “do keep due
sentinel.”
When the Prince of Wales assumed the _toga virilis_, his emancipation
heralded a new epoch in the social life of England; but it was not until
two or three years after his marriage that its full effect was felt.
Under the new dispensation the hospitalities at Marlborough House and
Sandringham were lavishly magnificent, while the small and very intimate
society at Abergeldie was delightful. The Prince of Wales and the
Princess shone as host and hostess: both delighted in being surrounded
by their friends, and naturally in their position it was easy for them
to gather together all the most brilliant and most distinguished people,
some of whom would even travel from across the Channel to be present at
entertainments the splendour of which became famous.
These may seem at first sight to be trivial matters, yet they had their
significance. We must remember that when the Prince of Wales married he
was very young—only just twenty-one. He was full of high spirits and
endowed with a vitality such as I have rarely seen equalled. He was
debarred, as I have said above, from helping his mother in her public
work, and he could only find an outlet for his marvellous energies in
what might have been barren pleasures, had he not used them as means
of becoming intimate with some of the older and more prominent of the
ministers and statesmen of both parties.
The invitations to Marlborough House and Sandringham were by no means
confined to the butterflies of society. As often as not the Prince
might be seen standing apart in earnest talk with some such man as
Lord Granville, Lord Clarendon, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Disraeli, Bishop
Wilberforce, one of the great diplomatists, Delane, Billy Russell the
famous War Correspondent, Generals, Admirals, men of science. But why
dwell upon this? It is well known that it was through conversation and
the Press that the Prince acquired that marvellous fund of information
which enabled him to hold his own in any company.
His memory was phenomenal: he seemed unable to forget. The business of
Kingcraft is not one that it is easy to learn. It is impossible for a
King to specialize in any one subject; but he must be sufficiently posted
in the trades of all sorts and conditions of men to be able to discuss
intelligently the subjects upon which they have to address him. This King
Edward did to perfection, and we must remember that this power was not
acquired all of a sudden, like a miracle conferred upon him by anointment
at his coronation; it was the result of long years of patient listening
and inquiry—of those same long years which his detractors would have us
believe were spent to exhaustion in the pursuit of frivolous occupations,
and in the selfish sacrifice of duty to pleasure. No more false charge
was ever brought against a man in his exalted position.
That he was the acknowledged leader in the society of which he was the
darling is perfectly true. It is also true that he spared no pains to
promote the pleasure of others. But however late he might stay at some
entertainment or at the Marlborough Club, he was up again at earliest
dawn to attend a review at Aldershot or Spithead, or take part in a
ceremonial in some distant part of the country, where he would appear as
gay and as pleased as if he was fulfilling the one ambition of his life.
His strength was wonderful; he knew not fatigue. That was an immense help
to him. Later in life he allowed himself more rest; but as a young man he
seemed to be almost independent of sleep.
It has been said, cynically enough, that a King has no friends. That
might be the case with a Roi Soleil who divided mankind into three
categories—Royal personages, white men, and black men. Our King, on the
contrary, was so full of human sympathy and loving-kindness for others,
that he won for himself an affection such as is given to few men in any
position.
I remember in the quite early days of the Marlborough Club, in 1870,
I was standing talking with a friend who died not long since, an old
admiral. Close by was a knot of men in the heyday of youth, with the
Prince in the centre, a happy, joyous band, he the choragus of the fun
and merriment. My friend turned to me and said: “See! Is there one of
those men who would not lay down his life for him?” That was true of him
in those youthful days, and it remained true to the end.
And now I must skip many years, because I am anxious to show how wrong it
is to suppose that King Edward shirked work.
One night I was dining at the Club, after King Edward had come to the
throne, but before he had moved from Marlborough House into Buckingham
Palace. He knew that I was in London for two or three days alone, so
he sent over to ask whether I was at the Club, and if so to bid me go
across to him. I found him in his private sitting-room, all alone, and
we sat smoking and talking over old times for a couple of hours. Towards
midnight he got up and said: “Now I must bid you good-night, for I must
set to work”—pointing to a huge pile of the familiar red boxes. “Surely.”
I said, “your Majesty is not going to tackle all that work to-night!” His
answer was: “Yes, I must! Besides, it is all so interesting;” and then he
gave me one of his happy smiles and I left him. “So interesting!”—that
was the frame of mind in which he faced his work—he, the man who we are
expected to believe could not be brought to attend to business!
I have no desire to speak unfairly of the article in the “National
Biography.” In many passages it lavishly praises some of the great
qualities of the King, and yet the general impression conveyed is
unfortunate. The reader of the future—and it is for the future far more
than for the present that such an estimate has importance—will rise from
the study of this biography with an altogether false appreciation of
its subject. He will see in it the portrait of a man with many lovable
characteristics, indeed, but with little conception of the high functions
to which he was called; he will see a Prince self-indulgent, impatient
of duty, with little political acumen even in those matters of foreign
policy in which he took the highest interest; giving little concern to
home affairs, “unremitting in his devotion to social pleasures”; showing
“aloofness from the working of politics and a certain disinclination
hastily to adopt his private plans to political emergencies.” I hope to
show that it is in his more favourable comments that Sir Sidney Lee is
right, though unfortunately in his hands the beam inclines too much on
the wrong side.
The King’s tact, his magically conciliatory charm, a power of fascination
which can rarely have been equalled, his judgment of men, have been
universally acknowledged. He carried into public affairs a sympathy
and kindliness which bore rich fruit. He could feel with a Gambetta as
he could feel with the proud chieftain of the Hapsburgs. To a Scottish
manse, to a Norfolk parsonage, he could carry the sympathy of a friend,
the true message of love. He could enter into the troubles of a humble
cottager on his estate with as much interest as he could listen to the
family difficulties of a Duke. Above all, he could forgive, and that is
perhaps the rarest of human powers. Those who know could cite more than
one instance of its exercise. Nor was all this confined to mere words. He
would spend himself on behalf of a friend, he would labour to see righted
some poor wretch who he thought was being treated unjustly. His courage
was beyond proof.
Such was the King as I knew him, and I am not alone in my estimate of
him: Sir William Harcourt, a good judge and surely no sycophant, said of
him that he was the greatest King of England since William the Conqueror.
A burning Radical came away from his first interview with him, saying:
“That is the greatest man that ever I had speech of.” That man knew him
better later, but he never altered his opinion.
To one feature in the King’s character I must reverently allude. He was
a convinced Christian, devoutly observing all the ordinances of the
Church. In Scotland he regularly attended the Parish Kirk at Crathie. I
can call to mind one Sunday at Abergeldie in 1870 when so fierce a storm
was blustering outside that it was impossible to leave the Castle. The
Prince, then a very young man, read the Church of England’s service at
home. Never did I hear that beautiful liturgy more impressively read.
The music of his voice, the perfect diction—so conspicuous in his public
utterances—gave value to every word of those inspired prayers. They
struck home. The devotional sense, obviously genuine and true, would have
been contagious in a crowded cathedral. It was no less so in the little
room in the old grey castle; he made us feel with him.
There is a charge brought against him in the “National Biography” (after
he had mounted the throne, mark you!) that “at times he enjoyed practical
joking at the expense of his friends.” Nothing could be more misleading.
When he was a very young man—a mere boy—he would laugh at the wild
pranks of some of the youngsters by whom he was surrounded. What could
be more natural? They might play tricks upon one another, but never
either as Prince or King did I, during nearly half a century, see him
take active part in any such games himself. He was always mindful of his
dignity, and for many years before he came to the throne I can affirm
with certainty that no such tricks would have been permitted in his
presence.
My recollection of the King which I wish to place on record is that of a
character made up of various qualities—a monarch deeply impressed with
the duties and obligations of his exalted station; a man intensely human,
and, let his critics say what they will, altogether lovable.
The death of Queen Victoria on the 21st of January, 1901, was not
unexpected, and yet she had been so long the figure-head of the
Constitution that when the blow came it was felt as a shock. It was not
only the death of a great monarch, it was the death of an epoch, the
Finis and Colophon of a long and very important chapter in our history.
The Queen had out-lived the long list of politicians who, during the
sixty-four years of her reign, had helped to shape the destinies of
Great Britain. Lord Melbourne, who won the confidence and trained the
mind of the young girl who was so early summoned to her high office;
Lord Grey, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Russell, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston,
Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Gladstone, were all gone. Of her other two
Prime Ministers, the great Lord Salisbury was yet three years short of
reaching the dignity of an Eton jacket when she came to the throne; Lord
Rosebery’s mother had been one of her bridesmaids.
The early death of the Prince Consort had deprived her of her one
intimate adviser, her one trusty friend, and for forty years she remained
a lonely figure, widowed, and more than widowed, for her exalted station
deprived her of the companionship which humbler people can enjoy. She had
few friends, mostly ladies who had been with her in the happier days of
her life. Among these, perhaps the chief were the Duchess of Sutherland,
Lady Ely, Lady Churchill and Lady Augusta Stanley. These all died before
her—her last confidante was Lady Churchill, who predeceased her only by
a few days. Her trusty friends, Sir Charles Phipps, Sir Thomas Biddulph
and Sir Charles Grey, were long since dead. Sir Henry Ponsonby, her
devoted and brilliant private secretary, who for so many years had served
her most faithfully, died in 1895. Two excellent servants she had in Lord
Stamfordham and Sir Fleetwood Edwardes, but she would not have been human
had she not felt her solitude. Outliving is the curse of old age. Nor was
it only among her own personal attendants that the Queen paid the tribute
of sorrow which is the penalty of a long life. Two of her sons and one of
her daughters predeceased her. The gallant Emperor Frederick, her much
loved son-in-law, had died in 1888, her grandson, the Duke of Clarence,
in 1892. The Ashanti War led to the death of another son-in-law, Prince
Henry of Battenberg, in 1896. These are what may be called unnatural
sorrows, though, unfortunately, they are common enough. That we should
bury our fathers, though the grief be bitter and the loss irreparable, is
in the ordinary course of nature; to bury our sons seems a cruel reversal
of all fitness.
Through those long, solitary years the Queen performed the duties of
her Queenship with unflagging zeal and devotion, though she remained a
mystery, felt but invisible. The people, though they would fain have had
more opportunities of seeing her, respected her seclusion, knowing the
value of their Sovereign, and proud of the successes of her reign. She
came to the throne at a moment when the Crown was anything but popular.
George the Fourth had greatly estranged his subjects, and William the
Fourth was not the man to raise enthusiasm from the dead. That was
reserved for a young Princess who was literally called out of her sleep
to enter upon her high position when she was only eighteen years of age—a
mere child. She made the people feel the value of a monarchy, and so, in
the earthquake of 1848, when other thrones were tottering and falling,
hers was as firm as a rock. Such slight disturbances as there were hardly
excited alarm, and the Chartist rising, though important, was not an
actual danger to the throne.
It was memorable as giving occasion for a curious episode in history,
when Prince Louis Napoléon enlisted as special constable and was on
duty with my father in the churchyard in Mount Street. Queen Victoria
was indeed the embodiment of the monarchical principle, an inheritance
which she bequeathed to her son and grandson, both of whom have raised a
glorious edifice upon the foundation which she laid.
When the Queen died the mourning was honest and sincere.
* * * * *
The crown which Queen Victoria had brightened by long constancy to duty
was now firmly rooted in the instincts of the people. In so far as that
was concerned, the new King might be said to have an easier part to play
at his accession than she had. In spite of that he had to face an arduous
task. In the two successions the positions were reversed. In her case
there was no trouble or danger abroad. Her difficulties lay at home. In
King Edward’s case the difficulties were over the sea. The power of the
South African Republic was broken, and that grand, patriotic soldier,
Lord Roberts, who laid aside the greatest private sorrow that can break
a man’s heart in order to do his public duty, had come home to receive
at the hands of the Queen the highest reward which it was in her power
to bestow. The earldom and the Garter were never more gloriously earned.
But it was not until the 31st of May of the following year that peace was
signed.
On the Continent of Europe the jealousy of England was virulent, and
the Boer War, purposely misrepresented and misunderstood, was used to
aggravate the poison of a disease which needed the most patient and
delicate treatment. It was with this that King Edward markedly busied
himself. It was no easy task—especially in Germany. The Kaiser had been
not only a great admirer of his grandmother, but he, as I verily believe,
honestly loved her. He came over to England to attend her death-bed. He
lost no opportunity afterwards of bearing witness to his respect for her.
Towards his uncle, King Edward, he entertained no such feeling. That is a
matter of common knowledge. There had been, no doubt, differences—never
amounting to quarrels—between them. They were not in sympathy, and it
says much for King Edward’s power of conciliation that by his endeavour
“the rough ways were made smooth.” Unfortunately the great rent was only
a question of time.
The King’s visits to the Continent are treated in no friendly spirit by
the “Dictionary of National Biography,” which even goes out of its way
to belittle the part which he played in public work abroad as at home.
Speaking of his visits to Paris, the writer says: “Political principles
counted for little in his social intercourse ... a modest estimate was
set on his political acumen when in informal talk he travelled beyond
safe generalities.” But perhaps no word of a serious writer on history,
or biography, which is, or should be, history, by whomsoever that word
may have been inspired, ever more swiftly received material contradiction
than the following: “An irresponsible suggestion at a private party in
Paris that the _entente_ ought to be converted into a military alliance
met with no response.” The response is loud enough to-day in the dunes of
Flanders, on the Vistula, in the Carpathians, and in the Dardanelles.
When King Edward travelled he was carrying out the practice of the great
foreign statesmen who were wont to take their holidays, or at any rate
part of it, at some foreign watering-place like Gastein, Marienbad,
Carlsbad or Homburg, where the Prime Ministers of the various countries
met and exchanged views. That was the habit of the mighty Bismarck
himself. Our own statesmen neglected this until the late Lord Salisbury
undertook his famous journey through Europe in order to become acquainted
and confer with the ministers of foreign Powers. This abstinence on the
part of the English leaders undoubtedly placed them at a disadvantage
when the great international questions were discussed. Men like Bismarck
and Andrassy had travelled over one another’s minds, and each knew
exactly how best to tackle the other. Our men went to a conference primed
with technicalities which are apt to become ineptitudes when the personal
factor is excluded.
King Edward relied greatly on that personal factor, and he obtained a
more intimate knowledge of the ruling men in France, Germany, Austria and
Italy, not to speak of lesser Powers, than was possessed by any other
English statesman.
In connection with the charge of want of political acumen and
indifference to books upon which so much stress has been laid, a
very eminent French statesman, who knew the King well and had many
opportunities of judging him, writes to me as follows:
“Pour juger le feu Roi il faut l’avoir vu de près et l’avoir
fréquenté dans les moments difficiles. Alors on pouvait se
rendre compte de la force de son caractère et de la justesse
de son esprit. J’ai été le témoin le plus attentif de tout
ce qu’il a fait pour amener le rapprochement de la France et
de l’Angleterre, et de la ténacité qu’il a apportée dans la
poursuite d’une politique que certaines personnes trouvaient
un peu précipitée. Mais il connaissait mieux la France que
personne en Angleterre et il savait ce qu’il pouvait oser.
Je lui étais très attaché parceque je savais tout ce qu’il
valait—c’était un homme d’état—on n’apprend pas dans les livres
à être un homme d’état; on l’est naturellement et rien ne donne
à ceux qui ne les possèdent pas les qualités de décision et de
perspicacité nécessaires pour entreprendre de grandes choses.”
This spontaneous tribute of one great statesman to the merits of another
is a sufficient refutation of much that has in ignorance been imputed to
King Edward.
That he was immensely popular in France is certain. Frenchmen looked
upon him as a true friend, and in society he was said to be “le plus
Parisien des Parisiens”; a leading Royalist once said to me, “Tell your
King that if ever he is tired of his job in England, we will take him by
acclamation.” The fact that he was beloved by the more frivolous sets did
not prevent his being respected by the serious politicians. It is idle to
suppose that men like Gambetta, Clémenceau, Hanotaux, Pichon, Delcassé
and others who were wrapt in affairs, sought his society as that of a
mere man of pleasure, a mere Royal _boulevardier_ such as the Prince of
Orange. Like Sir William Harcourt and others of our own leaders on both
sides in politics, they formed a higher estimate of his worth than that
which unfortunately will be handed down in the “Dictionary.”
The German Press, as Sir Sidney Lee himself points out, took a very
different view from his of the King’s visits to foreign potentates. They
were far from thinking him to be the negligible quantity in politics
that Sir Sidney Lee describes. Believing him to be an enemy, they
looked upon him as a dangerous one. If he paid a visit to the King of
Italy it was a deadly machination to disunite the Triple Alliance. If
he met his near relation, the Emperor of Russia, at Reval or Cowes, it
was with the view of soldering an _entente_ between England, France and
Russia, and converting it into an alliance, offensive and defensive,
aimed at Germany. In all that the King did there was a sinister motive, a
continuous Machiavellian intrigue with one solid object.
The imputation of malevolence was based on fallacy, as Sir Sidney Lee
shows, but the attitude of the German Press ought to have taught a great
writer that if highly instructed publicists attached such importance
to the King’s participation in affairs, however false might be the
motives ascribed, his own appreciation of it might possibly be open to
correction, and could not fail to create a wrong impression upon future
students of history.
The relations between the King and the Emperor of Austria were in the
highest degree cordial—and no wonder. For the old Emperor, the venerable
man whose life had been so cruelly pursued by the Fates, the King, like
everybody who had a heart, felt the most profound sympathy, which in his
case amounted to affection. The betrayal of 1908, when Baron Ærenthal
annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, making the Treaty of Berlin into “a scrap
of paper,” and, borrowing a phrase from Kant, justified his action as a
“categorical imperative,” was a violent shock to King Edward.
It was on the 8th of October that the King received the news at Balmoral,
and no one who was there can forget how terribly he was upset. Never
did I see him so moved. He had paid the Emperor of Austria a visit at
Ischl less than two months before. The meeting had been friendly and
affectionate, ending with a hearty “auf baldiges Wiedersehen.” Baron
Ærenthal had been with the Emperor, Sir Charles Hardinge with King
Edward. The two Sovereigns and the two statesmen had discussed the
Eastern Question—especially the Balkan difficulties—with the utmost
apparent intimacy, and the King left Ischl in the full assurance that
there was no cloud on the horizon. Now, without a word of warning, all
was changed. The King was indignant, for nobody knew better than he did
the danger of tampering with the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin, and
he saw that to make any change in the Turkish provinces was to light
a fuse which, sooner or later, was bound to fire a powder magazine.
Personally, the King felt that he had been treacherously deceived. His
forecast of the danger, which he communicated at the time to me, showed
him to be possessed of that prevision which marks the statesman. Every
word that he uttered that day has come true.
At the outset of King Edward’s reign we heard a good deal of our
“splendid isolation.” It was a clever catchword of defiance, invented
by a supremely brilliant statesman, but it did not help to make matters
pleasanter or safer. Germany hated and envied us; France suspected us;
Russia looked upon us as the hidden enemy, lurking by night. When the
King died all was changed. I am far from saying that the more friendly
feelings which prevailed were entirely due to his initiation; but I do
say that without the wonderful influence and personal charm which he
exerted they would not have existed. He fully recognized his limitations
as a Constitutional monarch; it was not for him to start alliances;
but he made them possible. There were Ministers before his time; could
they have removed obstacles and softened asperities as he did? He knew,
moreover, that no Sovereign, no Government, could utter a command like
that of the first day of creation: “Let there be peace.” He knew that he
must work for it, and he did—incessantly. To the world’s sorrow another
monarch in another country has said, “Let there be war!” and there was
war.
The signing of the peace in South Africa on the 31st of May, 1902, came
as a fitting Coronation present to the King. The ceremony had been fixed
for the 26th of June; but a day or two before that date ugly rumours
began to be whispered through the town as to the King’s health. He was
so anxious that nothing should occur to prevent the Coronation from
taking place, which, he felt, must create the greatest disappointment
and inconvenience to thousands of people, that he enjoined upon those
about him the strictest secrecy as to his condition, and it was not until
Sir Francis Laking told him that if he attempted to face the fatigue he
might even die in the Abbey, pointing out what a tragedy that would
be, that he was at last persuaded to postpone the Coronation. Even so,
mindful, as always, of others, he commanded that the honours which were
to be conferred should not be delayed by his illness. The secret of the
operation was well kept, for the public and even the King’s friends knew
nothing of it until the 24th, the day upon which the operation took place.
There was a great flower show of the Horticultural Society at Holland
Park that afternoon. The band of the Blues had been engaged. Mr. Godfrey,
the bandmaster, came up to me and said that he had not half his men. The
troops were confined to barracks—and he had with him only the married men
who lived out; and then he told me what had happened. I rushed off and
called a hansom (there were no taxis till four or five years later) and
drove to Buckingham Palace for news. The account was good so far as it
went, but the danger was still acute. It would be difficult to exaggerate
the anxiety which was felt all over England, but mercifully the bulletins
improved from day to day: the King recovered and the Coronation took
place on the 9th of August. It was a great anxiety for all those who
loved the King—and who was there in all that vast assembly, or indeed
throughout England, that did not love him?—but he bore the strain
splendidly and all was well.
The glories of the Coronation have been described by abler pens than
mine; with them I dare not compete. Great as Westminster Abbey is, full
of immemorial traditions, it can never have looked more splendid than
it did on that day when Princes, Peers and Commoners, subjects from
lands lying far away across the seas, were all gathered together to
acclaim their King. Never before in the history of man had such a world’s
gathering been brought under one roof. And when we listened to the
salvoes of artillery, and remembered that eight thousand miles beneath
our feet the booming of the cannon was thundering out the joy of men in
the Antipodes who were fellow-subjects with us, we felt the power of
which that royal figure on the throne was the symbol.
One touching episode will never be forgotten. When the venerable
Archbishop of Canterbury did homage, he was weak and tired and failed by
himself to rise. The King leant forward and, grasping the old man’s hand,
which had anointed him, bore it to his lips, and helped him to stand
upright. It was a kingly act performed with all the grace and dignity of
which our Lord the King had the secret. Not even the kiss when he greeted
the Prince of Wales with all the tenderness to which the present King
testified when he said: “I have lost not only a Father’s love but the
affectionate and intimate relations of a dear friend and adviser,” could
create greater emotion than this spontaneous tribute of respect to the
brave old prelate, who a few weeks later, a slave to duty, made his last
heroic effort in the House of Lords—broke down—and was taken home never
to come forth again.
* * * * *
We are wont to talk of the even tenour of life, when no such thing
exists. No two days are alike, still less are any two years. The
“Ships that pass in the night” are variously freighted. Some—these the
rarest—are laden with the bright, precious jewels of happiness; some with
a cargo of neutral interest; others are carrying the seeds of sorrow to
be sowed broadcast over the world. The death of King Edward was felt far
beyond the boundaries of this country or even of this Empire. He had
earned for himself an affection and influence such as no British monarch
had ever before achieved, and when he died the sorrow was literally the
people’s sorrow. For some years before his death his health—though this
was not generally known—had caused no little anxiety to his doctors. He
was subject to violent fits of spasmodic coughing from which it sometimes
seemed as if he could scarcely recover. The exertion was terrifying to
those who witnessed it, and occasionally he appeared to be choking.
This was the reason of his annual trips to Biarritz or some other place
blessed with an atmosphere purer than that of the London which he loved.
These journeys, which have been ungenerously attributed to the love of
pleasure, were really a matter of necessity; they furnished in a mild
degree that oxygen which in its pure state is administered to the dying
in order to relieve the pain of breathing—the pain from which he so often
suffered.
In the early days of 1910 the King seemed to outsiders to be much in
his usual health; but the doctors were nervous and anxious; they were
eager to get him away from London. On the 6th of March he gave a great
dinner-party—only men—he was in excellent spirits and after dinner went
the round of his guests, as was his wont, and chatted gaily with each of
them. As he was leaving the room he stopped for a moment, to talk to me,
and spoke with all his natural cheerfulness, like a boy before a holiday,
of his journey which was to take place on the morrow.
It was not long before the anxiety felt by his doctors was justified.
“Only we,” said one of them to me, “know how serious his condition is.
If he had been a private individual we should have had him away long
ago.” He caught cold in Paris and was very unwell when he arrived at
Biarritz. The world at large was not told how ill he was, and the secret
was well kept from all those who were not behind the scenes, but for a
week he seemed to be wrestling with death; that time he conquered, but
the victory was ephemeral. On the 27th of April he came home. He was well
enough, or imprudent enough, to go to the Opera, which he never willingly
missed, for he was devoted to music.
One night I happened to be sitting in a stall near his omnibus box. The
King came in and sat down in his usual corner place. I noticed that he
was looking very tired and worn. He sat through one act, all alone in the
box. Then he got up, and I heard him give a great sigh. He opened the
door of the box, lingered for a little in the doorway, with a very sad
expression in his face—so unlike himself—took a last look at the house,
and then went out. I never saw him again. At the end of the week, on the
30th of April, he went down to Sandringham to superintend some work, and
I had been bidden to hold myself in readiness to go with him, as I so
often did on those occasions. But when the time came he was feeling ill
and out of sorts, and so he only took with him Sir Dighton Probyn and the
Equerry-in-Waiting. The cold wind gave the _coup de grâce_ and he only
came back to London to die.
Ill as he was when he reached Buckingham Palace, he worked with all
his accustomed energy, and on the Wednesday, when one of the permanent
heads of the Civil Service was with him, he was seized with one of
those terrible choking fits of coughing. When he got better his visitor
ventured to remonstrate with him, and begged him to rest, and even go
to bed, but he ridiculed the idea and said, “No, I shall not give in—I
shall work to the end. Of what use is it to be alive if one cannot work.”
That was how he fulfilled his declaration to the Privy Council on his
accession, that “so long as there was breath in his body he would work
for the good and amelioration of his people.”
The King loved England. He was a patriot in the highest, I had almost
said the divinest sense of the word. Queen Mary Tudor said that when she
died the word CALAIS would be found written upon her heart. When King
Edward died the word would have been ENGLAND.
This leads me once more to the King’s untiring power of work. His method
differed entirely from that of Queen Victoria, and this last interview
of his with a permanent civil servant well shows how his industry took
another shape from hers. As I have already said, the Queen worked
entirely at her desk; she was an indefatigable writer and would alter and
revise the drafts of her ministers freely—often with great effect—as for
instance in the case of Lord Russell’s Foreign Office despatches. But I
suppose that few sovereigns have been less in personal contact with her
ministers, with the single exception of Lord Beaconsfield, than Queen
Victoria was after the defeat of Lord Melbourne, who up to that time had
been always at her side as a confidential adviser as well as responsible
minister. But of the permanent officials she personally made no use. She
never sent for them or consulted them, and I much doubt whether she knew
the heads even of the Foreign Office or Treasury by sight. The chapter of
accidents alone made me an exception to the rule.
King Edward was very different in that respect. His work with his
ministers was almost entirely done by discussion in personal interviews;
moreover, he knew all the men of mark in the Civil Service as he did
those in the Army and Navy, and made good use of their knowledge and
experience in affairs. I believe that his was the better way; at any
rate, in these days of bewildering rapidity, when telegraphs and
telephones are at work all day and all night, the Oriental aloofness
of Queen Victoria’s method could not fail to be a hindrance. But apart
from that, I am convinced that the King would have been the first to
admit that he derived great advantage from the help he received from
direct intercourse with the heads of the various departments, while their
sovereign’s generous recognition could not fail to be a great stimulus to
them. His Civil Service dinners were a great compliment.
It is quite false to suppose that King Edward took no interest in home
politics. But let us take a concrete case; it is worth while for more
than one reason. In Sir Sidney Lee’s article there is an allusion to the
King’s attitude towards Lord Haldane’s scheme for a Territorial Army.
Now this is what took place. When Lord Haldane—then War Minister—had
formulated his proposals, he took them to the King, who studied them
diligently with Lord Haldane’s explanations, and having with his usual
quickness seen the point, came to the conclusion that the scheme should
have a fair trial and determined to give it his support. With this view
he did what no other man—not even the Prime Minister—could have done:
he summoned the Lords Lieutenant of Counties to a meeting at Buckingham
Palace to confer with him and Lord Haldane—the Duke of Connaught, himself
a distinguished general, being present.
The King made a speech impressing upon his Lieutenants the duty of
energetically co-operating with the Secretary of State in launching the
new county associations. To use an expression of one who was present,
“The King played up magnificently.” The Duke of Norfolk replied on behalf
of his colleagues, and assured the King in a few admirable words that
he might rely upon his Lords Lieutenant to perform their new duties. We
see the result to-day. Right nobly have the Territorials justified their
existence and the confidence of the King in the great War Minister who
was responsible for them. I have been privileged to see a letter from
one of the greatest of our Generals at the front. It would be difficult
to imagine a finer tribute to Lord Haldane’s administration of the War
Office. It is now generally acknowledged that but for him and for the
measures which he initiated, our position at the beginning of the war
would have been very different from what it was. He enabled us to send
out a force, which if still insufficient to break the German legions, was
yet worthy of England. The rest will follow. I hold no brief for Lord
Haldane, nor should I be guilty of the impertinence of attempting any
estimate of his work. He is too great a man and can afford to be judged
by results. What I seek to show is the patient industry and vigilant care
with which the King mastered a complicated scheme at a moment when there
was no stimulus such as the existence, or even the near probability, of a
state of war to excite the imagination.
In the same way he supported his trusted friend, Lord Fisher, in regard
to the Navy; and here again we see to-day what has come of his wise
adoption of a new departure. Would that great Lord of the Sea any more
than Lord Haldane accuse the King of lending a languid or half-hearted
attention to his proposals?
It is a difficult matter for anyone who knew King Edward to write
an appreciation of him. The danger of lapsing into indiscretion is
obvious. At the same time it is equally clear that only those who did
know him intimately can give a just estimate of his character, and that
to leave his portrait to be painted by those who did not know him,
however gifted they may be, must inevitably lead to misconceptions and
misrepresentations, and that is still more dangerous. The fact is that
King Edward had as many sides to his character as a brilliant has facets.
The man who knew him not, sees one or more of those facets and rushes off
at a tangent, drawing the whole character from such an imperfect view of
him. Nothing could be more unfair, nothing more unlucky in the case of a
sovereign who must live in history.
It is to be hoped that some day a life of the King may be written in
which more stress may be laid upon the noble features of his nature, and
not such exaggerated weight given to those transient foibles which mark
the first escape of an ardent youth from pedagogic thraldom. He had one
characteristic for which we may go back to the simile of the brilliant.
No diamond could be more purely clear and honest than King Edward, and
it was that pellucid truthfulness which made him so powerful in his
relations with foreign sovereigns and statesmen: they knew that when they
were dealing with him they had to do with a King as honest as Nathanael,
a man in whom was no guile.
There is a sentence in the notice of the King in the “Dictionary of
National Biography” which calls for some observation. In connection
with Mr. Asquith’s famous visit to Biarritz to kiss hands on becoming
Prime Minister, we are told that “the King’s health was held to
justify the breach of etiquette. But the episode brought into strong
relief the King’s aloofness from the working of politics, and a
certain disinclination hastily to adapt his private plans to political
emergencies.” That, I affirm, gives a most unfair idea of the King’s
attitude to his duties. I have given the reasons, not generally
understood, which occasioned his visits to Biarritz. People saw a
strongly built, burly man and they were slow to recognize in him an
invalid whose days were numbered. As regards the last part of my
quotation, I dare assert that it is entirely unjust. For forty years—from
1861 to 1901—as Prince of Wales, he, then a very young man, constantly
had to sacrifice his own inclinations for the performance of duties the
dullness of which was often of the most wearisome character. Those duties
were carried out with a geniality which made men believe that he was
really enjoying himself, and for that they loved him.
He was keen on sport, was gay and happy in amusement, delighted in the
theatre and the Opera, and in society, but never was this side of his
character allowed to hinder duty. “It is all so interesting,” was a
speech of his which I have quoted once before, in regard to the political
work that became his portion as King, and which we are asked to believe
that he neglected.
King Edward’s wonderful courage and coolness were notorious. It never
seemed to occur to him that there could be such a thing as danger, or,
if it did exist, that it was worthy of his notice. When Blondin offered
to carry him across Niagara on his tight-rope the Prince of Wales, as he
then was, would have accepted the venture at once, and was keen to go.
But happily, though he could not be afraid for himself, there were others
who could be afraid for him, and he was prevented. When a great chemist
told him that he might safely put his hand into a caldron containing I
know not what seething metal, he did so at once without hesitation or
flinching. So it was when he was face to face with the murderer and his
pistol at Brussels. His nerve was perfect. We all remember the quiet
courage with which he cleared decks for action, and made ready for the
operation which in 1902 might easily have cost him his life. He was not
afraid of the chance of death then, nor did he show any sign of fear when
the certainty came eight years later. On the morning of that fatal 6th of
May, 1910, he was calm and collected. He knew that he was dying, but he
could face death as cheerfully as he always had faced life.
The end was lightning-swift, but so great was his energy that he had
arranged to see a private friend that morning. He had desired Sir Ernest
Cassel to go and visit him at eleven o’clock. Sir Ernest found the King
dressed and sitting in his chair, from which he rose to greet and shake
hands with his friend. “I knew that you would not fail me,” he said. They
remained talking for a while, but soon it was evident that the sufferer’s
strength was waning. Sadly Sir Ernest took his leave, feeling that it was
for the last time. I was at Stratford-on-Avon, and received a telegram
saying that he could hardly live through the night. The few sacred hours
that followed were watched over by the tender care of those nearest and
dearest to him—the loving wife and children who never left him till the
end. In the afternoon he was undressed and laid in his bed; the light
faded and he became unconscious. The Archbishop of Canterbury came and
joined in the prayers by the bedside. A little before midnight the brave
heart had ceased to beat.
When the black news came a deadly pall fell over the country, and there
were many men—some great, some small—who felt that life could never again
be quite the same for them. It seemed impossible. To the last his energy
was so vivid, the lamp of life’s joy burned so brightly in him, that
men could not believe that the grey mystery had extinguished that sunny
nature. But it was all too true: the ringing voice was silenced for ever:
the King was dead.
* * * * *
Within the space of ten years Great Britain had lost two sovereigns.
Both were sincerely mourned by their subjects. But there are in grief
qualities which differ. The sorrow which followed Queen Victoria to
the grave was a tribute to a great and noble personality; it was the
recognition of the value of long years of assiduous labour, of a lonely
life consecrated to the good of her country; personally to the vast
majority of her people she was unknown. For forty years she had lived,
as the saying is in the East, “behind the curtain,” and though her
influence was felt, she herself was shrouded in something of awe—she was
as invisible as Providence. King Edward, on the contrary, had been for
half a century a most familiar figure in every part of the kingdom. Not
hundreds, but thousands of men could claim that they had shaken hands
with him, and could repeat some kindly word to which his genial manner
had given emphasis and value. Every one of those myriads felt as though
he had lost a personal friend—as if he in his humble self was the poorer.
For the monarchy the Queen had won respect and admiration, and a feeling
that
God’s in his heaven,
All’s right with the world.
Then came King Edward, and he, without by one jot lessening the devotion
which the great Queen had called up, added to her diadem the priceless
pearls of personal love and affection. That was the crown of his work,
and since that was won who shall say that his life was lived in vain?
King George has not been long upon the Throne; but he too has played a
part in which we older folk see an assurance that he will hand down to
his successors untarnished and undimmed the lustre of the glory of which
he is the heir.
CHAPTER IX
MY BROTHER. MUSIC AND THE DRAMA
My vagabond pen has strayed far from the year 1863; I must retrace my
steps. In the month of April of that year my eldest brother, Percy,
was married to the brilliant daughter of Lord Egerton of Tatton. It
was the happiest of marriages, which was without a cloud until his too
early death in 1883. He was a very clever man, but terribly hampered
by bad health. He was originally in the Army, having entered the 43rd
Regiment, from which he exchanged into the 52nd and afterwards into the
Scots Guards. But he was so crippled with rheumatic gout that he had to
leave the Army, and after a while entered the Diplomatic Service, in
which he served at Berlin, Brussels, Frankfort and Copenhagen. He was
one of the few, the very few men who really mastered the intricacies
of the Schleswig-Holstein question. Some people say that there were
only two—Bismarck and his intimate enemy, the late Sir Robert Morier.
He remained for several years an attaché, and then read for the Bar,
got called, and entered with zeal into politics. He was not successful
in gaining a seat in Parliament, which was a great pity, for he was an
exceptionally effective speaker. However, he was able to render good
service to the Conservative party in other ways.
He had no pretensions to scholarship, but he had the instinct of good
nervous English, which, combined with a sound knowledge of law and of
affairs, made him an excellent writer of pamphlets, leading articles,
and political skits. To be a regular contributor to the _Owl_, which
Laurence Oliphant edited, was a feather in any man’s cap, and he was one
of the seven original signatories of the Primrose League. It is pretty
certain that had he lived he would have made his mark in the political
world. _Dîs aliter visum est_—he died at the moment when life seemed to
be dangling its choicest prizes before him.
* * * * *
In 1858, immediately after leaving Oxford, I was pressed into the Amateur
Musical Society by Henry Leslie, who was then its conductor, and made
to play first cornet. In that year was held the first rehearsal for
the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace. The “Dictionary of National
Biography” (Article Costa) gives the date as 1857, which is wrong. The
object was to test the capabilities of the place for a vast orchestra
and chorus. Our Society was invited to join the band, and so it came to
pass that I played at the first cornet’s desk at the rehearsal in 1858,
and afterwards at the Festivals of 1859, 1862, and at the opening of the
great Exhibition in London in the latter year. Costa, afterwards Sir
Michael, conducted.
The people who witnessed the failure of the young Neapolitan baritone at
Birmingham in 1829 could have had no suspicion that they were rejecting a
man who was destined to become a dominant influence in the music of this
country. Costa’s voice was weak and unattractive, but he had already been
deeply schooled in the science of his art by Zingarelli, and had made
some mark as a composer. It was Clementi who recognized his true vocation
as conductor: if the story be true that after his first appearance as
leader, the members of the band, who were not inclined to receive him
with favour, presented him with a box of razors as a way of twitting him
with his youth, there were good judges who at once formed the highest
opinion of his power.
The great Duke of Wellington,[32] who was devoted to music, and never,
if he could help it, missed the “Ancient Concerts” or the opera, was
in a box with my father the first time that he saw Costa conduct. He
was immensely struck by the young conductor’s dominant personality, and
turning round to my father said, “That young man could have commanded an
army.” He recognized a magnetic influence which no one who ever played
under him failed to feel. His sway over his orchestra was phenomenal. He
was the incarnation of masterful will-power. When I first knew him in
about the year 1850 he was forty years of age. A sturdy, powerfully-built
man of about the middle height—curly, rather fair hair—whiskers meeting
under his chin; slightly pitted with the smallpox; a pale complexion.
But what always struck me most about him was the massive lower jaw, that
meant so much. I knew him well till his death in 1884, or rather till
his terrible illness in 1883—paralysis, which deprived him of the power
of speech. The last time I saw him in Pall Mall he could only point with
his finger to his tongue; he shook his head sadly, his eyes filled with
tears, he pressed my hand warmly in a parting which we both knew must be
the last.
I remember the occasion when after we had rehearsed Meyerbeer’s opening
music for the Exhibition of 1862, the composer bowed, thanked the band,
and hailed Costa as the greatest conductor of the world. Richter is
the only conductor that I have seen who could be compared with him.
Leaving on one side the many faults that have been found with Costa as a
musician—chiefly for tampering with scores—I believe no one could excel
him in the art of conveying his intentions to a great army of performers.
When he stepped into the orchestra, firmly grasped his bâton—not holding
it with ladylike daintiness between two fingers as do so many emasculate
conductors of to-day—he would give two curious side to side movements
with his head, a little trick which never failed, and then the beating
of the first bar, firm and decided, made itself felt throughout band and
audience, and one realized the appreciation of the great Duke.
It would hardly be thought likely that the rehearsals of a Handel
Festival would lead to comic incidents—but they did to not a few. One
was at the rehearsal for the miscellaneous day. We were ready for “See
the Conquering Hero Comes.” The chorus was to be heralded by brass
instruments alone. Costa lifted his bâton and called out, “Now, Brass!
One bar for nothing!” Down came the stick and in the dead silence of
“one bar for nothing,” a solitary little tenor voice piped out “See
the Conquering——” He got no further, Costa tapped his desk, folded the
bâton under his arm and roared out, “ARE YOU BRASS?” There was a roar of
laughter. Poor little tenor! He must have wished that the Palace might
collapse and he sink unnoticed in the ruins.
Talking of that day, who that heard it could ever forget the tragic
pathos of Sims Reeves’s singing of “Waft her, Angels”? That and his
thrilling declamation of the recitative at the beginning of the Messiah,
“Comfort ye my people,” are among the most haunting memories of my
musical days.
It was a time of great singers. Amongst our own folk Clara Novello,
Miss Dolby, and Santley with Sims Reeves made a great quartet; for the
rendering of oratorios there could hardly be a finer. Amongst the foreign
artists, Grisi and Mario, Lablache, Ronconi, Graziani, Titiens, Alboni,
Giuglini, Patti, Trebelli, are names that will live.
With Mario and Grisi I was very intimate, they had been old friends of
my father’s; indeed Mario and he had sung together when Mario was an
amateur and came to London as Conte di Candia, a handsome young Sardinian
officer. There were concerts at Bridgewater House at which Lady Sandwich
was the soprano, Miss Gent, a beautiful Irish lady, the contralto, Mario
tenor, and my father the baritone. When Mario made his _début_ in Paris,
my father travelled all the way from Frankfort, posting, to applaud him.
For many years, till I went out to China, I used to go almost every
Sunday during the summer to Mario’s villa to spend the afternoon in
the garden, often remaining to dinner. They kept open house on Sunday,
and I fancy never knew beforehand how many guests they would have—ten?
twelve? twenty? All were made welcome. Madame Grisi at the head of the
table, smiling and beautiful, though no longer young, with her eyes
beaming sweetness, was the picture of happy content. She did not talk
much, but she had just one little kind word for everybody, and a motherly
tenderness which seemed to enfold the whole world upon which those
glorious eyes were looking.
[Illustration: MARIO.
_By Lord Leighton, P.R.A._]
Mario was an altogether delightful companion. He was an artist to his
finger-tips. He was no mean sculptor, a learned collector of books and
manuscripts, a scholar full of appreciation of all that was beautiful and
refined. Many years after the time of which I am writing, when he came
to England for the last time, a little before his death, he telegraphed
to me to say he was in London. I was in the country and came up at once.
He came to my house and we had a long talk over old times. I showed him
some first states of engravings by William Faithorne, the elder. To my
amazement he knew all about them. “Ah! mon cher,” said he in explanation,
“J’ai eu toutes les folies.”
In the days of his opulence his charity and generosity knew no bounds.
Many of his compatriots lived upon him. One day I was walking with him
in his garden at Fulham, when up came a caricature of a man, as tall and
lean as a church tower, with a hat that reached the skies, dressed in a
long snuff-coloured coat falling to his heels, a grizzled beard, and a
cascade of grey hair over his shoulders; a figure out of Struwel Peter.
He made a low sweeping bow as if he meant to cut the turf with his hat.
“Signor Mario!” another obeisance, hand on heart, and once more the
steeple hat shaved the grass. “Ah! Dottor Beggé, what have you there?”
“Signor Mario, I hold here a manuscript”—producing a roll from under
his arm—“but a manuscript! such a manuscript!” and he blew a kiss into
the air. “Well! What do you want for it?” asked Mario. “For you, Signor
Mario, a mere nothing, only twenty pounds sterling.” Mario looked at it,
bought it, and the long Doctor, bowing even lower than before, stalked
off happy. Mario turned round to me and said, “Ca ne vaut pas vingt sous!
Mais, ce pauvre Beggé, il faut bien qu’il vive.”
Another Sunday an obviously very impecunious Italian came up and told a
piteous story of misery at home. Mario did not hesitate a moment; he told
the man to go to his room, open a drawer in his writing-table where he
would find some notes and gold, and take what he wanted. He was a grand,
large-hearted, generous creature; one of the most lovable of men.
In his later days Mario used to be subject to sudden flushing and slight
giddiness—out of this the jealousy and ill-nature of rivals got up the
myth that he drank. He was well aware of this and made fun of it. At
dinner one evening there was some Château Lafitte of ’48 on the table;
Mario poured out a quarter of a tumbler of this and filled it up with
water. I told him that it was an act of vandalism to drown so rare a
wine. He held up the glass laughing and said, “Mon cher, c’est avec cela
que je me suis fait une réputation d’ivrogne.” Sometimes after dinner a
valse would be played and Mario would call out, “Chi vuol ballare con
Papa?” and he would dance with his children, then little girls, like a
boy in his teens. They adored him and their mother, who looked on radiant.
One met many famous people in that villa. There it was that I last saw
the Countess Castiglione—still beautiful, though, dreading as it was
said that her beauty might fade, she had already retired from the world
before her charms should begin to wane. The first time I met her was at
an afternoon party at Holland House, a dream of loveliness acknowledged
by everybody; not a fault to be found from the crown of her head to the
tips of her feet, and what arms and hands! Then she was in her pride of
queendom, radiant, attracting all eyes. Now she was dressed in black,
thickly veiled, and speaking only to Mario and Grisi. But disguise
herself as she might, she could not altogether hide her transcendent
charms.
Whether speaking or singing, I have never heard such a voice as Mario’s.
It was pure music. The best testimony to its quality came to me
secondhand from Richard Wagner. I was talking with Siegfried Wagner about
voices, and I said that without a doubt the finest tenor that I had ever
known was Mario. “Yes,” said Siegfried, “my father always said the same
thing.” This witness is the more valuable as no one could accuse Wagner
of any predilection for the Italian school of song.
Giuglini, the tenor of the rival house where Titiens reigned supreme,
used to be compared with Mario; but in my judgment this was absurd.
Giuglini’s voice, lovely as it was, had a slight defect of “throatiness,”
whereas Mario’s voice came pure and clear from the chest. On the stage
there was absolutely no comparison between the two men. Mario’s great
beauty and his marvellous power of acting, combined with an irresistible
personal charm, made him unique. It would be difficult to imagine
anything more thrilling than the tragedy of the two great duets with
Grisi in the _Huguenots_ and the _Favorita_.
Older people were wont to say that when he first appeared on the stage
he was a “stick,” and that it was Grisi who taught him and inspired him
with the fire of her own genius. If that was so, she found an apt pupil.
She was certainly an incomparable actress, but the talent must have been
latent in him too, even though the credit of having called it forth may
belong to her.
In his last years, when he had retired from the stage, had lost his
fortune, and was custode of a museum, Queen Margherita was extremely
anxious to hear him sing, and commissioned Edoardo Vera, her music
master, to try and get him to do so. After some difficulty Vera, who
told me the story, succeeded, and transposed one or two of his old songs
for him so that he was really singing as a baritone. So managed, Vera
told me that the voice was as velvety and beautiful as ever. The Queen
was delighted, and the dear old Mario, white-haired and white-bearded,
charmed with his reception. I can well believe in the unimpaired beauty
of so much of the singing voice as remained, for when last I saw him in
1879, his speaking voice was still instinct with the same music that I
remembered when in the opening of the _Barbiere_ he used to call out to
Figaro behind the scenes. He died on the 11th of December, 1883.
During the last few years of her life, Grisi’s voice began to show signs
of wear and tear. It was generally as full and sonorous as ever, and the
“bel canto” was glorious. But now and then the notes would fail her, and
sometimes it made one nervous to listen to her. Vera, always witty and
not seldom ill-natured, once answered when someone said, “La Grisi a
toujours de bien beaux moments.” “Oui, mais en revanche elle a des fichus
quarts d’heure.” That was exaggeration born of jealousy, for Vera had a
sister Sophie, whom he adored, and who always had to sing Adalgisa when
he would fain have had her take Grisi’s place as Norma.
Of one musical recollection I am very proud. Grisi, in 1859, chose me to
play the cornet obbligato for her in a Romance by Vera, “Cari fior ch’io
stessa colsi,” and it ended with a double cadence for the voice and the
obbligato instrument. The second time that I accompanied her was at a
concert at Dudley House given for the benefit of a poor Italian baritone,
Ciabatta, who was dying of consumption. He, poor fellow, had little
voice for the opera, but was an excellent singing master. His misfortune
was that he was one of the handsomest men that could be seen, a perfect
Apollo, and so when he took the best recommendations, he was rejected as
dangerous. “Toujours la même histoire,” he said piteously once, after a
barren morning’s lesson-hunting, “les mamans ne veulent pas de moi! Elles
disent toutes que je suis trop beau.”
Of course, because Mario had a villa at Fulham, Giuglini, as representing
the rival house, must have one also. His villa had a long strip of garden
with a sundial at the bottom of it. Here on Sundays he would invite his
friends, and when they were gathered together he would cover the sundial
with breadcrumbs, attracting sparrows, tits, blackbirds and thrushes. As
soon as there was a sufficient congregation of these poor innocents, he,
standing in the verandah, would send for a gun and blaze away at them,
exclaiming to his admiring guests, “Voyez-vous, j’adore la chasse!” What
a sportsman! Of his success and charm as a singer there can be no doubt;
that he did not please me better was probably my own fault. His end was a
sad one. He lost his reason and died miserably in an asylum, singing, as
I have been told, to the last, spending his lovely voice in the solitude
of a madman’s cell.
Jenny Lind I only heard after she had left the stage. Her operatic career
was a short one: so far as London was concerned it only lasted two years.
Her first appearance was in 1847, her last in 1849, when she was only
twenty-nine years old. She continued to sing in concerts and oratorios
and made a very successful tour in America, but the theatre knew her no
more.
I can well remember how all London went mad over her in the _Figlia del
Reggimento_, when she reached the zenith of her fame. In later years,
when she was a woman of about forty, I used to meet her and her husband
at the house of a friend. She was a tallish, stately, typical Swedish
woman, with a wealth of fair hair, no special beauty of feature, but
an expression and above all a smile that were of angelic goodness. The
voice was still crystal-clear, true and sweet; even the highest notes—and
heaven knows what altitudes she reached!—were as soft and caressing as
those of the middle register.
In my friend’s little drawing-room, with perhaps half a dozen people
present, all sympathetic, Goldsmid would sit down at the piano, and she
would pour out her soul, like the “Swedish Nightingale” that she was, in
liquid music, shedding around her a happiness which she herself surely
felt. Those little modest dinners were feasts indeed.
Later on in these sketches I hope to have a good deal to say about Thomas
Carlyle, but one conversation that I had with him seems to fit in so well
here that I feel inclined to take it out of its turn. It is strange that
he, who could so cruelly scourge the opera as he did in the “Keepsake”
for 1852,[33] should have spoken, with all the rugged enthusiasm that was
in him, both of Jenny Lind and Grisi.
I forget how the subject cropped up, but he went off at score,
contrasting the two: “The burning, passionate nature of the fiery
Southern woman with the calm, cold temperament of the Northern
singer”—those were his very words. Of the two I think that, Scot though
he was, the fire of the South appealed to him more than the snows of the
North. He preached on for several minutes, giving due meed of praise to
both the great singers, but always with a tilt of the scale in favour of
Grisi.
Then from the opera he passed on to the stage, and there he recognized
one figure above all others. He told me how he had seen Talma act in
Paris—how great he was—how far ahead of all other actors. What appealed
to him strongly was the statuesque side of the famous player’s genius,
how completely he looked the part he was acting, especially in the old
classical tragedies. “That man could so drape himself in a toga that
you just felt that you had one of the ancient Romans before you.” When
Carlyle spoke it was with the fire that he admired in “the Southern
woman.” Ecclefechan could vie with Palermo. The lava of his volcanic
talk swept all before it. I should have liked to have got him to speak
of former lights of the English stage—the Kembles, the elder Kean and
others. But it was of no use trying to stop him when once he had started.
As easily might you hold the waters of Lodore with a butterfly-net. It
was Jenny Lind, Grisi, Talma—nothing else.
There were some great actors in my young days. The infectious high
spirits of the younger Charles Mathews, the solemn fun of Buckstone,
Keeley, Toole and Paul Bedford at the Adelphi (the Paul-y-Tooly-technic,
as some wag called it), Wigan and Leigh Murray, Benjamin Webster and many
others were grand assets in the gaiety of the nation. It is something to
have seen Charles Mathews in _London Assurance_, Wigan with his perfect
French, in _The First Night_ (_Le Père de la Débutante_), Keeley and
Leigh Murray in _The Camp at Chobham_. What perfection of acting! In
light comedy and farce the English stage has always been richly endowed.
Of tragedy perhaps the less said the better.
In the early fifties Macready, Phelps and Charles Kean were supposed
to be the shining lights among the tragedians—Macready, indeed, soon
about to pass into a tradition.[34] To me they gave no pleasure.
They seemed to rant and roar and mouth, tearing to tatters Othello,
Shylock, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear. Their methods were purely academic,
mechanical and utterly unnatural. There was plenty of elocution, plenty
of declamation—nothing spontaneous, nothing humanly possible; everything
taught, nothing felt; of true emotion, begetting emotion in others, not a
trace.
I once, in 1856, saw _Othello_ played in a barn at Killarney; the Moor
was rather drunk, but he was as academic as the great professors; between
him and them there was small difference. It was a question of degree. But
here am I daring to criticize when I do not even know the jargon of the
trade. What is this that is come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul also among
the critics?
Be it my right to speak or not, I shall maintain that Robson, the
meteoric man who for so short a time was a blazing light in the
theatrical firmament, was the greatest actor that I ever saw on any stage
at home or abroad. Upon him the mantle of Garrick had fallen, for there
was no branch of his art that came amiss to him. He made his reputation
in grotesque farces such as _The Wandering Minstrel_ and _Boots at the
“Swan,”_ in which he showed the town masterpieces of eccentric character
study; in burlesque he had no rival; and now and then, as in _The Yellow
Dwarf_, he would burst into a fury of passionate acting without any
suspicion of rant, that sent cold thrills through the house, making men
feel what he would have been capable of achieving in tragedy.
But he was small, puny and weak, and probably his frame would hardly have
carried him through one of the grand heroic parts. Where he was at his
best and greatest was in such tender, appealing plays as _The Porter’s
Knot_. Here was the real spirit of tragedy, and here he differed from the
schoolmen of whom I have spoken, just as the pathos of a story of misery
and woe, told simply and plainly from heart to heart by the sufferer
himself, differs from the artificial emotion cooked up for a jury by a
lawyer. He could draw tears from the stoniest. Unhappily the feeble body
was soon worn out; his arduous work exhausted him; stimulants kept him up
to the mark for a time, but they, too, exacted their penalty. His London
successes lasted but some eight years, for he retired from the stage in
1862, and two years later he died, being not much more than forty years
old.
When Dion Boucicault brought out _The Colleen Bawn_ with his beautiful
wife as the Colleen, his Miles na Coppaleen fairly took the town by
storm. The devil-may-care Irish joyousness which he threw into the part
was irresistible, and carried actors and audience with it from his
first entrance to the end. But there was one part of his which was even
more striking. When he played _The Vampire_, the performance was so
horrifying, so ghastly in its realism, that, if I remember right, it was
soon withdrawn on that account. The public could not stand it, and it was
not brought out again. It was a haunting performance.
First nights in the Victorian days were not the fashionable gatherings
that they now are. People took no more notice of them than they did of
ordinary performances. That accounted for my being present, quite by
accident, at the first night of _The Bells_ on the 25th of November,
1871. The sensation which Irving created in it was sudden and startling.
It was a magnificent success, and Irving’s fame was made. But what I
thought even better was his performance of Jingle in _Pickwick_, by which
the famous play was preceded. He was Jingle to the life. The impudent,
lean, hungry, out-at-elbows stroller and swindler was a very picture of
bohemian destitution. Irving’s many successes, his shortcomings and his
mannerisms are of too recent date to need dwelling upon. Whether he was
a great tragedian or not has been much debated; but I never heard two
opinions as to his powers in comedy; his Jingle, his Jeremy Diddler and
his Doricourt in _The Belle’s Stratagem_ were probably as perfect comedy
as could be seen. Personally he was one of the most charming of men, and
he made many fast friends.
I was present at a small party of men which he once gave after the
play at the Lyceum. King Edward, then Prince of Wales, and many of the
foremost men of the day had accepted his invitation. Toole was there,
full of fun, and Irving recited the scene with the waiter in “David
Copperfield.” He just stood leaning against the chimney-piece and told
the story. But how he told it! That was an inimitable performance.
The party did not break up until long after cock-crow. I drove away
with Russell Lowell, the American Minister, in a belated, or rather
be-earlied, hansom cab; it was summer time and broad daylight, and we
two elderly gentlemen felt very dissipated and rather ashamed of being
seen, but we both agreed that it would have been difficult to have a more
agreeable gathering or a more genial host. The verdict of Lowell, wit,
poet, diplomatist, man of letters and man of charm, was conclusive.
Of great actors England has always been prolific. I have left out many of
those who were stars in the fifties and sixties. I have, for instance,
said nothing of my friend Sir Squire Bancroft, whose memory must live if
only for the noble use to which, for many years, he has devoted his great
talents.
In great actresses, for some mysterious reason, we have not been so rich.
When men talk of women who have been distinguished in tragedy, they still
go back to the fame of Mrs. Siddons. Miss O’Neill is now forgotten.
As Lady Becher I used constantly to meet her at the house of old Lady
Essex (the famous Miss Stevens), who used to gather round her, together
with all that was smartest in society, the fine flower of the world of
art—almost all the great musicians whom I have mentioned above, Leighton,
Landseer, Marochetti, Chorley, Planché and a host of celebrities. Lady
Becher as an old lady, cold, stiff and alarming, certainly did not give
one the idea of an actress who could so picture sorrow and agony as to
create emotion. But of English tragic actresses whom I myself have seen
I can recall but two—Adelaide Neilson and Ellen Terry. I wish we could
claim the beautiful Mary Anderson, who _vera incessu patuit Dea_—but
she, alas! is an American, though for the joy of Gloucestershire and
Worcestershire she has made her home at Broadway. Adelaide Neilson worked
her way to fame from beginnings of the poorest and the most squalid;
she was an exemplification of the Japanese proverb “The lotus flower
springs from the mud.” Here again was a meteor, for she died in Paris
when only thirty-two years old; but she had lived long enough to win
admiration by her beauty and great talent. Her lovable qualities appealed
to her friends, and her kindness of heart endeared her to her brother
and sister players. She was a born actress, and was endowed with that
greatest of all gifts for a tragedian—the gift so conspicuous in Sarah
Bernhardt—a speaking voice soft and tender, full of musical pathos and
emotion, a voice which would of itself have aroused sympathy had she been
less winsome in other ways than she was. But in truth she was a most
attractive woman, beautiful to look at and a joy to listen to. Her early
death left a void in the English stage.
Of Ellen Terry I need not speak. All men know what she is, and none deny
her sovereignty. Besides, I am dealing only with the past. Will the
future bring anything quite so charming?
Fifty or sixty years ago the palm went to the elder actresses. Mrs.
Sterling as Peg Woffington in Tom Taylor and Charles Reade’s _Masks and
Faces_, playing up to Benjamin Webster’s Triplet, was one of the most
extraordinary pieces of acting that I ever saw; and when she appeared as
the Nurse in _Romeo and Juliet_ one could only mourn over the cruelty of
time, feeling of how delightful a Juliet the years had robbed us. Mrs.
Wigan, acting with her husband as Mrs. Sternhold in _Still Waters run
Deep_, was memorably good, and when in _The Bengal Tiger_, in order to
win the heart of the old Nabob (again Alfred Wigan as the tiger), she
tried to smoke a hookah, her agonies were excruciatingly funny. Mrs.
Keeley, too, was a tower of strength to any company. Her Jack Sheppard
lives in my memory, as indeed do many of her parts, as a most finished
dramatic picture—the prison scene absolutely harrowing. Like Robson and
Garrick, she could be tragic or comic at will. In our young actresses,
_ingénues_, we were not so fortunate as the play-goers of the present day.
But we did possess one star, at any rate, of the first magnitude.
In 1862, when Miss Kate Terry appeared in _The Duke’s Motto_ with
Fechter,[35] whose triumphs at Paris with Madame Doche in the creation
of the _Dame aux Camélias_ were world-famous, all London, from Charles
Dickens downwards, vowed that such romantic acting had never been seen
and could never be beaten. The fascination of the love scenes was
bewildering. There was nothing theatrical about them. They were the
very poetry of emotion. When she left the stage after a very short and
brilliant career to become the gracious châtelaine of Moray Lodge, that
small portion of the world which calls itself Society was the gainer, but
to the world at large it was a heavy loss.
Miss Madge Robertson, now Mrs. Kendal, was both a lovely girl and a most
fascinating actress. She it was, unless my memory fails me, who with her
husband created Gilbert’s _Pygmalion and Galatea_, which was also one of
Miss Mary Anderson’s great parts. Gilbert was lucky in getting two such
ladies to interpret him.
A list is mostly only interesting to those who appear in it, and this is
mere list-making; no more than an attempt to register for the present
generation the names of those who delighted their grandfathers—and most
of those who are in it have _dis_appeared. But even from a list it is
impossible to omit the name of Lady Bancroft. To all who saw her she
will always remain a charming memory of the days when all the youth of
London was in love with Miss Marie Wilton—across the footlights. Her
sparkling gaiety, her delicious little impertinencies, her irresistible
spirits, her entirely fascinating personality, were so full of life
that the doctors might have prescribed a stall at the Strand Theatre
for their rundown patients, when she was playing Pippo in _The Maid
and the Magpie_, or one of her other burlesque parts. Then came the
days of the Prince of Wales’s Theatre and Tom Robertson’s famous plays,
_Society_, _Caste_, _Ours_, _School_—and here again Miss Marie Wilton
proved her great powers in a new line. Acting more subtle and more
refined has perhaps never been seen. Her troupe, moreover, was famous
for the all-round excellence with which the pieces were given; it used
to be a reproach to the English stage that if there were a first-rate
star in the company, the rest of the characters were more or less left
to chance, and people used to compare the slovenliness of our theatres
with the exquisitely finished detail of Paris. At the Prince of Wales’s
Theatre, under the Bancroft management, the finish given to the smallest
parts was as careful and fastidious as that which marked the play of
the chief actors. The result was a harmonious whole, setting an example
which has wrought the best influence on our stage. The old slip-shod
performances which I can remember would now no longer be tolerated, and
for their disappearance much gratitude is owing to the Bancrofts. _Caste_
was, perhaps, their masterpiece. Lady Bancroft’s Polly Eccles, with her
husband as Captain Hawtree, and Sir John Hare as Eccles, made the piece a
landmark in the history of the English drama.
Of the gynæceum of the English stage I have no more to say. It would be
pleasing for a veteran play-goer like myself to pay his tribute to the
charm of such delightful actresses as Miss Irene Vanbrugh, Miss Marie
Tempest, Miss Gladys Cooper and others. Their praises must be left to be
sung by their own contemporaries, of whom I only wish that I were one.
CHAPTER X
RUSSIA
One day in the month of November, 1863, I agreed to make an exchange
for six months with Mr. Locock, the second secretary of Embassy at St.
Petersburg—it would be an anachronism to speak of “Petrograd”—and by the
end of the month I was off.
* * * * *
November 30th.—St. Petersburg at last! To anyone who loves beautiful
scenery there could hardly be a duller, gloomier journey than that
across the eternal stretches of moor and marsh, broken up by forests
of sad-looking, stunted birch and fir trees. No human habitation to be
seen, no mankind, save at the railway stations a few peasants, their
limbs swathed in bandages of sackcloth, with bags of the same all over;
dirty, unkempt, poverty-stricken, and hungry as their fellow-subjects
the wolves. Soldiers everywhere, for the Polish insurrection was at
its height, and even our train had a military guard. Most of my fellow
passengers carried revolvers, picturesque but unprofitable furniture,
giving a slight flavour of adventurousness to the journey, though there
was really no cause for alarm, no reason to expect the least little
excitement in the way of danger. There were too many soldiers about for
that. Thirteen trains full of them passed into Lithuania the day before I
was there, adding to our impatience by delaying us for an hour and a half
when we were longing with our whole souls to reach our goal.
And yet, socially, it was a pleasant journey enough. I travelled with
William Harbord, Lord Suffield’s brother, whose first appearance it was
as a Queen’s Messenger. On board the Calais boat was the Crown Prince
of Denmark, going home from work at Oxford, who was most kind to us, and
invited us to travel in his carriage and to dine with him at Cologne.
We parted from him at Hanover when he branched off for Denmark. We were
very sorry to say good-bye, for he was most gracious and friendly. At
Berlin I had a few hours between trains, which I spent with that grand
old diplomatist Sir Andrew Buchanan, who was our Ambassador, a great
gentleman of the old school, and in the evening I dined with him before
starting for Russia. Here again I was in luck, for in the train I found
Prince Alexis Dolgorouky and at Kowno there were added to us General
Bechelemicheff and his wife. He was returning from a command in Poland,
and the first intimation that we had of his presence at the station was
an awful serenade of songs and brass instruments executed by the band of
one of his regiments. So we had quite a merry party and the time passed
cheerfully enough inside the carriage. Outside the prospect was dismal
to a degree, and we shut our eyes to it. The winter’s snow had not yet
arrived, and there was nothing but slosh and mud and misery. However:
“Be the day weary or be the day long,
At length it ringeth to evensong.”
What a crowd it was at the station! Railway officials, Custom House
officers, police, hotel touts, droschky drivers, indescribables of all
sorts; swearing, chaffing, abusing, howling; each one straining his own
lungs and the hearers’ ears as nearly to bursting point as possible,
until, official patience being exhausted, a police officer wielding a
stout cudgel, with a few blows indiscriminately administered about the
heads of the rabble, sent them all flying in various directions, and at
last the Embassy servant who had been sent to meet me was able to pilot
me to a carriage and I once more tasted freedom.
It was a lovely moonlit night, close upon ten o’clock, and the town
looked perfectly beautiful. The canals and palaces and streets ablaze
with light, the river reflecting a thousand lamps. The domes and spires
of the churches, gilt and silvered, all sparkling with frost as if
they had been sprinkled with diamonds and precious stones. Everything
different to anything that I had ever seen before, all new, fresh
and delightful—the delicious keen air driving away the last memory
of the train with its stuffiness and heat and dirty, oily smells—a
never-to-be-forgotten drive breathing new life into me and just putting
me into that frame of mind which fits one to receive the sharpest
enjoyment.
Before doing anything else, travel-stained, untidy and uncomfortable as
I was, I had to go to the Embassy to deliver the despatches which I was
carrying. For a wonder, Lord and Lady Napier were neither dining out nor
entertaining at home, and the Ambassador had given orders that I was to
be shown up at once. Rather an ordeal to have to face the great man, upon
whom a first impression may mean so much, without even casting off the
slough of four days and nights of travel! However, Lord and Lady Napier
put me at my ease at once. The diplomatist abroad is always hungry for
the last news, the latest piece of gossip, social or political, and my
chief kept me talking in the friendliest way. When at last it was time to
say good night, he called me back and said:
“By the by, tell your people at home to send you all letters in the
Foreign Office bag—none by the Post Office, where all our letters are
opened.”
“Surely,” I said, “they would not dream of opening the correspondence of
so humble a person as myself.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” broke in Lady Napier. “The other day my
children’s governess received two letters by the same post from different
parts of England. Each contained a photograph. The two letters came in
one envelope, the two photographs in the other!”
As I drove away from the Embassy I could think of nothing but the
great charm of my Chief and Chiefess. She was certainly one of the
most fascinating women I ever had the good fortune to meet. Handsome,
clever, agreeable, well read, very dignified, beautifully dressed, she
was delightful to look at, delightful to listen to; the type of what an
ambassadress should be, doing the honours of the Queen’s house on the
Neva like the great lady that she was. She had at that time not very good
health and the climate of Russia did not suit her; but she was none
the less a noble helpmeet to His Excellency; to all of us she was so
gracious and kind, so thoughtful and considerate, that we worshipped her.
I reverence her memory. As for Lord Napier, I don’t think that anybody
who ever served under him would say that it would be possible to have a
kinder or a better chief. He was undeniably a most astute diplomatist,
full of resource, a master of the art of ingratiating himself with those
who came into contact with him.
[Illustration: EMBASSY HOUSE, ST. PETERSBURG.
_From a water-colour drawing by Charlemagne, 1864._]
The Russians, from the Emperor downward, all liked him, and he was able
to put through, by the stern force of pleasing, many a tangled piece
of business which would have been perhaps an impossibility to others.
I shall cite one notable instance later on. In society he was popular
wherever he went. He was an admirable _raconteur_ and always a kindly
listener, possessing the art of drawing out men so as to make them show
at their best, and they were duly grateful. His ready wit and power of
repartee were enhanced by the most infectious twinkle of his eye; he was
one of those rare men who laugh with their eyes, and to me that quality
is irresistible. He was young for an ambassador (only forty-two years old
when he reached that rank in 1861), but looked older than his years, and
even in his earliest days could never have been anything but a _grand
seigneur_. Quite apart from the joy of living in intimacy with such a
man, any young diplomatist who might be attached to his Embassy had a
rare chance to learn his business under so able a chief.
It was a piece of good fortune to find my old friend John Lumley,
afterwards Ambassador at Rome, and created Lord Savile, established here
as First Secretary. He was very popular in Russian society, as he was
everywhere else, and it was a great advantage to have him as sponsor.
He was most kind and introduced me to many of the pleasantest people in
St. Petersburg. The day after my arrival he drove me about, and took me
to see several of his friends. Among others a lovely young widow—only
twenty-four years of age—Countess Koucheleff-Bezbarodko, who lived in a
palace the magnificence of which I have never seen surpassed. It would
have been difficult to determine which was the more beautiful, the
lady or her home. The casket was worthy of the jewel, and that is the
best that can be said. She afterwards married the eldest son of Prince
Suvoroff, the Governor-General of St. Petersburg. But it is idle to
expatiate upon the grandeur and luxury of these great palaces; they are a
matter of common knowledge, and I shall write no more about them, though
of the kindness and friendliness with which we were greeted in them one
would hardly weary of talking. The Russian noble has in perfection the
greatest of all the qualities which go to make up the character of a
_grand seigneur_, that of making his guests, however humble they may be,
feel at their ease. That is what makes society in this brilliant city so
pleasant.
To English people the familiarity of the Russians with English literature
has always made a great bond of sympathy. A new novel by Dickens or
Thackeray was looked forward to with almost as much excitement as it was
in London, and the English classics have become the common property of
all. I was not a little astonished when on my being presented to Count
Orloff Davidoff, one of the great nobles, he asked me what relation I was
to the historian of Greece. He had studied at Edinburgh University. When
poor Thackeray died at the end of the year the consternation and sorrow
were most touching. He was one of the last men with whom I spoke before
leaving home.
On the evening before I left London for St. Petersburg I was up in a
box at the Promenade Concert. Down below I saw Thackeray’s gigantic
figure, his white head towering above the crowd, and I ran down to bid
him farewell. He had always been very kind to me as he was to all young
people, and I was naturally greatly flattered and fascinated by his
charm—for he could be very charming when he chose, though, like his great
rival Dickens, and even Addison as Pope tells us, he resented anything
like being drawn out in the company of strangers. I several times met him
at dinner at Millais’, when he and I would be the only guests, making up
a quartette with the genial, handsome host and his no less handsome wife.
After dinner Mrs. Millais used to leave us, and we three men adjourned to
the great studio where we might smoke in armchair comfort.
Thackeray would have been very handsome but for the broken nose which he
himself so often caricatured, but which with his round face gave him a
sort of cherubic look, like one of Raphael’s winged heads, rather robbing
it of its masculine vigour and seeming almost absurdly in contrast with
his great size and strong nature. It was delightful to see him beaming
behind his spectacles with his long legs stretched out in front of him,
the picture of placid content, and to listen to his words, kindly, witty,
full of old-world anecdote, told in the English of Addison—the fruit
of his studies for Esmond and his lectures on the eighteenth century
Essayists—with just a little delightful spice of good-natured cynicism
which was as cayenne pepper animating the _olla podrida_ of his talk.
Sometimes he was so gay and so young that he seemed just what he must
have been when he called out “adsum” at the Charter House. Thackeray
was very fond of Millais. He admired his art, and the great painter’s
large, honest, bluff and rough nature, his innocence of all humbug or
affectation, which Thackeray loathed above all things, appealed to him.
The two were perfectly happy together, so in that studio Thackeray was at
his best. And what a best it was!
Less than a month after I reached St. Petersburg the news that Thackeray
was dead was flashed along the wires to a capital where he was almost as
well known by those who had never seen him as he was in his own familiar
Kensington. I had been greatly struck by his popularity in Russia, and
had looked forward to some day telling him how great was his greatness in
that land of cold snow and warm hearts. The fatal 24th of December robbed
me of that pleasure. It created a sad gap among his friends, who loved
him as dearly for himself as others did for his work.
The last time I saw Millais was in February, 1896, a few days after
Leighton’s funeral. He stopped me in St. James’s Street, and we had a
little talk, chiefly about the friend whom we had so recently lost. He
was looking well and hearty, but was closely muffled up. The terrible
disease in his throat made him almost inaudible. He spoke in a hoarse
whisper, and at the end of the summer one more President of the Royal
Academy was carried to St. Paul’s Cathedral. The careers of the two men
were a curious sequel to the prophecy which Thackeray wrote to Millais
from Rome in 1852: “I have seen in Rome a versatile young dog who will
run you hard for the Presidentship some day!”
* * * * *
A few days after my arrival I received a summons to the Winter Palace to
be presented to the Emperor. The ceremony was very different from the
march past of many hundred men, which constitutes a levée at home. It
was rather an ordeal, for I had to go by myself with no tutelary deity
in the shape of an ambassador to present me and show me the ropes, as is
done at most other courts. I found a batch of eleven other victims of all
nations, who had been summoned for the same purpose, and we were shown
into a rather shabbily-furnished room decorated with a few bad pictures
of reviews—altogether a violent contrast to the magnificence of the
staircase and corridors through which we were led by servants in gorgeous
apparel, with soldiers in splendid uniforms mounting guard. Presently the
Tsar came in, a tall, imposing figure with a very kindly face and genial
manner.
He called up each of us in turn, and when we had been presented by a
chamberlain he had something amiable and pleasant to greet us with.
Certainly the Emperor was a born king of men. His was a royalty about
which there could be no doubt. His smile was charming, but when he was
displeased he knew how to show it. I saw both smile and frown that
morning.
When it came to my turn to be named he asked me where I had been
educated. I told him at Eton and Oxford.
“Ah,” said His Majesty, “j’ai été à Oxford. L’orateur public a même
prononcé un discours en Latin en mon honneur.”
“Dont je suis sûr,” I answered, “que votre Majesté n’a pas compris un
traître mot——”
The clouds gathered on Jupiter’s brow and there was thunder in the air.
“Who,” they said as plainly as speech itself, “is this whipper-snapper
who dares to say that I, the Emperor of all the Russias, am an ignoramus
that does not understand Latin?”
—“A cause de notre prononciation barbare,” I continued. The clouds
were dispersed, the sun shone again—all was well with the world. The
Emperor laughed heartily at the expense of the public orator, and his
“prononciation barbare,” and kept me talking for some few minutes. He was
always very gracious afterwards when I met him at any entertainment, and
never failed to give me a friendly little nod or word of recognition.
The surroundings at the presentation to the Empress were far more
imposing. It took place at night in the great gilt drawing-room inside
the White ball-room where we assembled, about fifteen of us. The rooms
were lighted by innumerable candles, and no light gives such a look of
magnificence. The liveries and uniforms were, of course, brilliant,
and the Empress’ negroes in blue and gold jackets with wide oriental
trousers looked as if they might have been the personal attendants of
the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid himself. We had to wait some time before
we were wanted, for the wives of the Italian and Prussian Ministers had
to be received in audience before us. The Empress was a tall, graceful
lady with a sweet expression and most charming manners. She looked very
delicate and, indeed, had bad health, suffering, I fear, a great deal;
it is not everybody who can make a stand against the climate of St.
Petersburg; to her I was told that it was poisonous.
It must be rather a trial, even for an Empress who has gained experience
after years of such functions, to walk round a circle of men, seen for
the first time, and be so ready-witted as to say something pleasant to
each. But how well she did it! Every man present was under the charm. She
had heard of the letter which I brought from Countess Apponyi to Princess
Kotchoubey (it seemed as if everything was known to everybody in this
wonderful capital). She knew Countess Apponyi well and asked a great deal
after her; she also talked a good deal about the Prince and Princess of
Wales. Her grace made conversation quite easy, and after a few minutes
she made a pretty little bow and passed on to the next man.
The Empress Marie was a Princess of Hesse, daughter of Duke Louis II.,
and her marriage with the Emperor was a pure love-match. Indeed it was
an open secret that the Emperor Nicholas was not best pleased when he
heard of the engagement; he had looked for a more brilliant marriage for
his son and heir. My father, who was at Frankfort at the time, saw the
great, handsome Tsar arrive, and drive out to make acquaintance with his
future daughter-in-law; he was looking as stern and as dark as Erebus.
He came back from the visit, his face wreathed in smiles. The sweet
Princess, then in the heyday of her youth and beauty, had conquered. She
had caught the dreaded potentate in the network of a charm which was
irresistible, and which remained a precious possession to the end of
time, for it was something that the cruel climate which tarnished the
freshness of her beauty could not impair, much less destroy.
* * * * *
In writing these sketches I have no pretension to dabble in history;
for that I am neither fitted nor documented. All I desire is to place
on record some memories at first hand of certain remarkable people with
whom I have been brought in contact. In order, however, to understand
the state of feeling in Russia at the time with which I am dealing, it
is impossible not to allude, however briefly, to the Polish insurrection
of which the influence seemed to pervade everything. Poland was in the
mouths of all men—Poland and the attitude of England.
The year 1863 had opened grimly enough for Poland. The Tsar’s brother,
the Grand Duke Constantine Nicolaievitch, was Viceroy at Warsaw, and the
Government had intelligence to the effect that the city was a hotbed of
conspiracies and intrigues, and that an insurrection might be expected to
take place at any moment. To prevent this calamity drastic measures were
adopted. A good many years earlier the Emperor Nicholas had abolished
military conscription in Poland; it was now determined to revive it,
but under conditions which would enable the Government to throttle the
revolutionary movement by ridding the country of all dangerous men. The
old practice of drawing the conscripts by lot was abandoned, and the
authorities were invested with the power of arbitrarily choosing the men
who should be taken for service.
Nor was this the only hardship, for the conscription being limited to
the towns, Poland was to be robbed of its most capable men, trade and
business must be paralysed, and only the most ignorant and valueless
dregs of the population left behind. Who was responsible for this wicked
and cruel policy I never heard. It was universally condemned abroad,
and not a few Russians recognized the folly of it. Among the Poles, the
Marquis Wielopolski, a former governor-general, was the only man who
supported it. No man condemned the proceedings of the Government more
strongly than Lord Napier. In a despatch to the Foreign Office of January
the 26th he described them as in fact “a design to make a clean sweep
of the revolutionary youth of Poland; to shut up the most energetic and
dangerous spirits in the restraints of the Russian army; it was simply a
plan,” he said, “to kidnap the opposition and carry it off to Siberia or
the Caucasus.”
On the evening of the 14th of January the Grand Duke signed the decree,
and during that night houses were broken into and 2,500 men were carried
off by press-gangs of police and soldiers. Where the young men who had
been marked down were not forthcoming their parents were taken and held
as pledges.
Lord Napier’s appreciation of the decree exactly represented the feeling
with which it was received at Warsaw. The Poles were lashed to fury, and
the torch of revolution was lighted. A so-called Central Committee was
formed, which was neither more nor less than a secret society issuing
its orders for murder and arson, orders faithfully obeyed, with every
aggravation that the ingenuity of cruelty could suggest.
The mystery of this modern Vehmgericht was well kept. All the cunning
and vigilance of the Russian police was at fault. No man knew who were
its members, where they met, or what was the machinery with which they
worked. Death, swift and secret, followed upon their decisions. Their
blows fell in darkness, their vengeance was assured, and none could tell
who would be the next victim. Only the murderer was safe, and he only so
long as he continued to murder without question. To the peasants a big
bribe was held out—such a bribe as is not unknown in history elsewhere.
Here is the proclamation of the Central Committee:
Art. 1. Land held under any title whatsoever, corvée, rent
or otherwise, by small farmers, together with all buildings
thereon, becomes from this date the freehold property of the
holder, without any obligation of rent or otherwise, except the
duty of paying taxes and serving the country.
Art. 2. The former proprietors will receive compensation from
the national funds by means of Government stock.
Art. 3. The amount of compensation and the nature of the stock
will be settled by separate decrees.
Art. 4. All ukases, laws, etc., published by the usurping
Government on the subject of peasant leases are declared null
and void.
Art. 5. The present decree applies not only to private estates,
but also to Crown lands, lands bestowed by the Crown, Church
property, etc.[36]
Such an edict as this, taken in conjunction with the crimes and horrors
for which the Central Committee was responsible, led to reprisals which
were hardly less terrible than the deeds which they avenged. I do
not propose to go into any detail in regard to the insurrection. The
appointment of Langiewicz as dictator, his abandonment of the cause in
a way which suggested something very like cowardice, his submission to
the Austrians at Cracow, the rebel bands hiding in the forests, the
destruction of railways, the attempt to poison Wielopolski and his
family, all the incidents and tragedies of a great rebellion, make
picturesque reading, but it must be sought elsewhere.
It was a reign of terror in Poland, and above all in Lithuania, where
General Muravieff in his headquarters at Vilna ruled with a rod of
redhot iron. The indignation of Europe was aroused; but it was largely
an ignorant indignation, for whereas the English and French newspapers
were generally fed with stories against the Russians, there was complete
silence as to the provocation on the other side. Mr. Sutherland Edwards,
the _Times_ correspondent at Warsaw, a most competent and above all a
most just witness, told me that there was much exaggeration and much
invention about the information which was sold to the foreign press by
certain travelling Jews of the lower sort. News to be marketable must be
such as would tell against the Government. Edwards had no reason to take
sides with the Russians, for he had just been turned out of Warsaw, bag
and baggage, at twenty-four hours’ notice, but he was far too honest a
politician to allow any personal treatment of himself to influence him in
discussing a great question of national importance; it was a mistake to
deal with him in so ungenerous a fashion, but it was only one among many
mistakes.
There were many Russians, loyal subjects to the Tsar and enthusiastically
devoted to their own country, who recognized and deplored those mistakes.
Above all, these just men viewed with indignation the barbarous methods
of General Muravieff, the man who, above all others, was responsible
for the feeling aroused in the rest of Europe. Prince Suvoroff, the
Governor-General of St. Petersburg, a great friend and favourite of the
Emperor, spoke out bravely about this. A subscription had been set on
foot to present Muravieff with a statue of the Virgin Mary in silver, for
which the Metropolitan found the inscription, “Thy name is Victory.” The
subject was being discussed at Tsarskoe Selo at the Imperial table, when
Prince Suvoroff declared aloud that “he could not understand men giving
a blessed image to a hangman.” These bold words, uttered unrebuked in
the presence of the Tsar, created a great sensation, and induced many
men to speak their minds more openly than they had up to then dared to
do. It showed also that the Emperor—essentially a good and humane ruler,
as he proved to be over and over again—while determined to put down
the rebellion, abhorred the methods that were being adopted, otherwise
Prince Suvoroff’s speech would not have been passed over. The downfall of
Muravieff was considered to be imminent. He was not recalled, however,
until April, 1865, being raised to the rank of Count, and he died the
following year at his country place, Surez, near Luga. A bronze statue of
him was erected in Vilna in 1898.
Meanwhile Edwards, whose banishment from Warsaw had removed a man who was
truly desirous of sending home a fair and honest account of affairs,
thus giving a free hand to more unscrupulous writers, was being shadowed
by spies who took note of all his visitors. My Russian master, who also
gave him lessons—a mild, harmless little man, who had taught the great
Bismarck—was followed home one day as a very suspicious character. It
would have been laughable if it had not been so sad. All this trouble
taken to hinder and annoy a man whose sole object was to check the
prosperity of lies! These flourished accordingly.
Political crises are always fruitful in exaggeration and falsehood.
Never, perhaps, were they so rife as during the Polish insurrection;
the country was wild and inaccessible, information vague and uncertain,
chaffered as an article of trade by news-pedlars, carried from great
distances and losing nothing by the way; horrors were invented for hungry
listeners—and there was no one to contradict. Truth remained hiding at
the very lowest depths of her well. Take, for instance, the trial of
Count Zamoyski, about which the English newspapers were greatly excited,
one paper going as far as to say that he had been condemned to death on
the strength of confessions extracted from him by torture whilst he was
in prison. As a matter of fact no man could have had a fairer trial. He
was found guilty of rebellion—as to that there could be no denial. It was
abundantly proved that he had been a member of the Central Committee and
privy to all its so-called decrees and ordinances. He was sentenced to
banishment from Poland, took up his residence in France, and finally went
to Cracow, where he died in his bed at the good old age of seventy-four.
No milder sentence could well have been passed upon him.
As for the stories of torture which were freely put about, most searching
investigations on the spot proved that there was no shadow of foundation
for them. Great severities were practised, especially in Lithuania
under General Muravieff; floggings as judicial punishments in execution
of sentences officially pronounced were frequent; but no evidence was
ever produced to show that flogging had been used for the purpose of
extracting evidence, and as for instruments of torture they simply did
not exist.
The Poles were past-masters in the art of exciting dramatic emotion and
surrounding base crimes with a political halo. Some scoundrel would be
condemned to death for murder, rapine, arson or some other abomination.
Immediately he was glorified into a political hero and martyr. Such
canonizations are not unknown elsewhere. All Warsaw turned out in deep
mourning to do him honour, and witness the sacrifice. Ladies of the
highest rank, robed and veiled in crape, weeping bitterly, knelt on the
public place to offer up prayers for the soul of the victim. Impartial
men with strong nerves told me that they had been so affected by such a
scene that they forgot for the moment that they were witnessing the just
expiation of a hideous crime; half stupefied as in a dream, they saw the
death of a Christian martyr. The excellence of the stage management had
its effect. Popular resentment against the Government was stimulated,
and, what was still more important to the agitators, the kind hearts of
foreign correspondents were touched, so that the most harrowing stories
were launched out east and west, north and south, stirring animosities
and calling up political hatred in all its bitterness.
The excitement aroused in England and France amounted to intoxication;
but it was an uninformed excitement, for it is no exaggeration to say
that there was not one man in ten thousand who had taken the pains
to read up the causes that had led up to the insurrection and its
repression, and still fewer who had any knowledge of the complicated
history of the deadly feud between the two races, a feud which had lasted
for centuries.
The late Lord Salisbury was one of those few. In April, 1863, he
published an article on Poland, which he followed up in the same month
of the following year by another paper on Foreign Policy. Both were
republished in book form by Mr. Murray in 1905. The first article gives a
short and clear history of the whole question; the second is a scathing
condemnation of Lord Russell’s treatment of international affairs,
especially in the two cases of Poland and the Danish duchies. Considering
what has taken place since that time, the outcome of Lord Russell’s
policy, every student of foreign politics should make himself acquainted
with those two articles written by a great master.
I have shown how numbers of generously-minded Russians disavowed and
repudiated the methods of repression which had been adopted, especially
in Lithuania. None the less was all Russia of one mind as to the
imperative necessity of putting down the insurrection. Every thinking man
knew that it was a matter of life and death to his country; in a despatch
from which I shall quote presently Prince Gortchakoff showed that very
clearly. If the Poles were to become dominant there would be a repetition
in provinces largely inhabited by Russians of the horrors which took
place two centuries earlier when they were in possession of Moscow, and
of which a foretaste had already been given in the murders and attempts
to murder of the last few months. Austrian Poland and Prussian Poland
must be drawn into the furnace and a general conflagration ensue.
But Lord Russell “cared for none of these things.” Here was a rare
opportunity for him to give effect to his favourite policy of “meddle and
muddle” (I do not know who invented the phrase in his honour, but how
good it was!) and he availed himself of it freely.
The state of public feeling in England and France fully justified a
friendly intercession by the Governments of both countries, praying the
Tsar to exercise his clemency on behalf of the rebellious Poles. But it
did not justify Lord Russell in adopting the hectoring language which
he used, language not only reading Russia a lesson as to how she should
govern in her own dominions, but even conveying threats as to what might
happen if his advice were not followed. His conduct of the affair not
only infuriated the Russians, but also alienated the French Government,
who were greatly displeased at having been brought into a ridiculous
position.
On the 2nd of March, 1863, Lord Russell wrote a despatch to Lord Napier,
of course for presentation to Prince Gortchakoff, in which, on the
strength of the fact that “the Kingdom of Poland was constituted and
placed in connexion with the Russian Empire by the Treaty of 1815, to
which Great Britain was a contracting party,” he claimed the right of
Great Britain “to express its opinion upon the events now taking place,”
and in rather slipshod language, such as might be adopted by a schoolboy
mediating in a football squabble, went on to offer his amiable advice
to the Emperor: “Why should not His Imperial Majesty, whose benevolence
is generally and cheerfully acknowledged, put an end to this bloody
conflict,” etc., etc.
On the 10th of April he returned to the charge, in a despatch the
phraseology of which Lord Salisbury described as being “as menacing
as will often be found in despatches even of a professedly hostile
character,” once more insisting that the Emperor’s position as regards
the Poles was due to the grace and favour of the Treaty of Vienna, and
quite different to what it would have been had His Majesty held Poland as
part of the original dominions of the Crown, or if he had acquired it by
the unassisted success of his army and unsanctioned by the consent of any
other Power, etc., etc. The formal declaration that Russia had broken her
treaty engagements, the intimation that she had not fulfilled her duties
of comity as a member of the community of nations, the distinct statement
that the course she was pursuing was dangerous to the general peace of
Europe, “and might under possible circumstances produce complications of
the most serious nature—all these expressions, interpreted by diplomatic
usage, were simple threats of war.”[37]
These threats were accentuated by a conversation which Lord Russell
reported as having taken place between himself and Baron Brunnow, the
Russian Ambassador. Baron Brunnow said there was one question which
he felt entitled to ask, and that was whether the communication Her
Majesty’s Government were about to make at St. Petersburg was of a
pacific nature. I replied that it was, but that as I did not wish to
mislead him I must say something more. Her Majesty’s Government had no
intentions that were otherwise than pacific, still less any concert with
other Powers for any but pacific purposes.
“But the state of things might change. The present overture of Her
Majesty’s Government might be rejected as the representation of March 2nd
had been rejected by the Imperial Government. The insurrection in Poland
might continue and might assume larger proportions; the atrocities on
both sides might be aggravated, and extended to a wider range of country.
If in such a state of affairs the Emperor of Russia were to take no steps
of a conciliatory nature, dangers and complications might arise not at
present in contemplation.”
“If this was not a threat of war,” says Lord Salisbury, “language has no
meaning.” Every one of these _mights_ and _might be’s_ did occur, but the
threats remained mere gas. Prince Gortchakoff, cool, calm, and courteous,
refused with firmness to acknowledge any of Lord Russell’s pretensions.
In the meantime, in the month of April the Emperor made the offer of an
amnesty to Poland, granting “a free pardon to all those of our subjects
in the Kingdom implicated in the late troubles who have not incurred the
responsibility of other crimes or misdemeanours committed on service
in the ranks of our army, and who may before the 1st (13th) of May lay
down their arms and return to their allegiance.” This offer the Central
Committee, who now called themselves the Provisional Government, in
insulting terms contemptuously refused. They published a proclamation
which said:
“Poland is well aware what confidence she can place in this pretended
amnesty, and in the promises of the Russian Government. But to avoid
any mistake, we formally declare that we reject all these false
concessions. It was not with the intention of obtaining more or less
liberal concessions that we took up arms, but to get rid of the detested
yoke of a foreign government, and to reconquer our ancient and complete
independence.”
The treatment by the Poles of the Emperor’s magnanimous offer furnished
the answer to the officious advice given by Lord Russell.
There was one class of unfortunates who suffered by the Polish
insurrection of whom little or nothing has been said or written, and
whose troubles have therefore excited no commiseration out of Russia.
The landed proprietors of Poland, wishing to introduce into the country
improved agricultural methods, imported from Germany a number of
Protestant labourers. These men during the rebellion were persecuted with
all the animosity of bigoted Catholicism and conscious inferiority by the
Schliachta, or petty nobility, seconded by the jealousy of the peasants,
who naturally looked upon them as interlopers—“blacklegs” as men say
nowadays—and as having no right to cumber the country. Their dwellings
were destroyed, their families murdered, and the survivors dared not go
back to their homes.
The Imperial Government, having been compelled to take the case in
hand, resolved to send 1,800 of these poor fellows to the government of
Samatra, a rich province to which many of the exiled Poles had already
been sent. There is no doubt that if the Russians acted with severity,
the Poles outdid them in cruelty. The two were well matched, and between
them it is fearful to think what must have been the general average of
misery!
I have alluded above to what Prince Suvoroff said of General Muravieff.
A little later in the year another scheme was set on foot by certain
ultra-Russians to build a church at Vilna and dedicate it to St. Michael,
Muravieff’s patron saint, in honour of the glory of the General and to
celebrate his quelling of the insurrection in Lithuania. The plan met
with much opposition, and the Maréchal de la Noblesse of the district
of Tsarskoe Selo, on being invited to support the project, wrote an
indignant letter in reply, asking what conduct on his part could have led
the originators to suppose that he approved the actions of the General.
General Muravieff stood in a peculiar position for an officer holding a
high command under a despotic government. The authorities accepted his
services and so gave their moral support and countenance to his policy;
but they took no steps to defend him from the animadversions of his
enemies, nor did any Russian feel that he was committing an indiscretion
in openly canvassing the conduct of the tyrant of Vilna.
All this showed that the Russians were enjoying far greater liberty of
both press and speech than was believed abroad. In this respect there
was a marked change since the last reign. Speech was free enough,
sometimes startlingly so. There was a certain amount of censorship of
the journalistic press; but as regards literature in general, books were
openly sold which under Nicholas no bookseller would have dared to stock
upon his shelves.
* * * * *
With this arrow in his quiver Prince Gortchakoff wrote: “If Lord Russell
followed attentively the productions of the Press devoted to the
Polish rebellion, he must be aware that the insurgents demand neither
an amnesty, nor an autonomy, nor a representation either more or less
complete. The absolute independence of the Kingdom even would be for
them only a means for arriving at the final object of their aspirations.
This object is dominion over provinces where the immense majority are
Russians by race or by religion; in a word, it is Poland extended to
the two seas, which would inevitably bring about a claim to the Polish
provinces belonging to other neighbouring Powers.
“We desire to pronounce no judgment upon these aspirations. It suffices
for us to prove that they exist, and that the Polish insurgents do not
conceal them. The final result in which they would arrive cannot be
doubtful. It would be a general conflagration which the elements of
disorder scattered through all countries would be brought to complicate,
and which seek for an opportunity to subvert Europe.”
One would have imagined that the dignified and lofty tone adopted by the
Prince, combined with the avowed pretensions of the rebels, would have
convinced Lord Russell that his interference would not be accepted, and
could only end in the humiliation of England. Nothing could stop Lord
Russell.
On the 17th of June he again wrote a despatch to Lord Napier with
instructions to read it to Prince Gortchakoff, and leave a copy with him.
That despatch was perhaps one of the most insolent communications ever
addressed to a friendly Power; no government could admit the interference
of another country in dictating the measures which it should take for the
maintenance of law and order among its own people, which is the exclusive
right and duty of every independent Power, nor is it intelligible that
any such advice should be offered unless the candid friend should be
prepared to enforce it at the cannon’s mouth. The despatch in question
was the one which formulated the famous “six points.” This is what it
said:
“In present circumstances it appears to Her Majesty’s
Government that nothing less than the following outline of
measures should be adopted as the bases of pacification:
“1. Complete and general amnesty.
“2. National representation, with powers similar to
those which are fixed by the Charter of the 15th
(27th) of November, 1815.
“3. Poles to be named to public offices in such a
manner as to form a distinct national administration,
having the confidence of the country.
“4. Full and entire liberty of conscience; repeal of
the restrictions imposed on Catholic worship.
“5. The Polish language recognized in the kingdom
as the official language, and used as such in the
administration of the law and in education.
“6. The establishment of a regular and legal system
of recruiting.
“These six points might serve as the indications of measures to
be adopted, after calm and full deliberation.
“What Her Majesty’s Government propose, therefore, consists in
these three propositions:
“1st. The adoption of the six points enumerated as
bases of negotiation.
“2nd. A provisional suspension of arms to be
proclaimed by the Emperor of Russia.
“3rd. A conference of the eight Powers who signed the
Treaty of Vienna.”
Prince Gortchakoff’s answer was crushing, the more so as it was couched
in the most courteous language of diplomacy, and was based upon an
unanswerable chain of logical arguments. Lord Russell was very quietly
shown that he was dealing with matters which he did not understand and
with which he had no concern. Similar communications were addressed to
Baron Budberg, the Russian Ambassador at Paris, for the benefit of M.
Drouyn de Lhuys, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had the
mortification of finding himself compelled to share in a humiliation
which was odious to him.
A despatch to Baron Budberg contained the following words: “As regards
the responsibility which His Majesty may assume in his international
relations, those relations are regulated by international law. The
violation of those principles may alone lead to a responsibility. Our
august Master has always respected and observed these principles towards
other States. His Majesty has the right to expect and to demand the same
respect on the part of the other Powers.” M. Drouyn de Lhuys was furious,
and it was not long, as we shall see, before he had the opportunity to
make Lord Russell feel it.
Lord Russell climbed down not handsomely. In a despatch to Lord Napier of
the 11th of August he said: “If Russia does not perform all that depends
upon her to further the moderate and conciliatory views of the three
Powers” [Great Britain, Austria and France] “if she does not enter upon
the path which is opened to her by friendly counsels, she makes herself
responsible for the serious consequences which the prolongation of the
troubles of Poland may produce.”
And that was the lame and impotent conclusion of a game of brag and
insolent bluster which had been carried on for many months. The fizzling
out of a damp squib!
But there is one story which Mr. Hennessy, Conservative member for King’s
County, told in the House of Commons, _and was never contradicted_, which
is too good and too characteristic to be omitted—I take it verbatim from
Lord Salisbury’s essay on Foreign Politics, p. 202.
“When Prince Gortchakoff’s last defiance had arrived, and the
Government had made up their minds to practise the better part
of valour, Lord Russell made a speech at Blairgowrie, and being
somewhat encouraged and cheered by the various circumstances of
consolation which are administered by an entertainment of that
kind, he recovered after dinner somewhat of his wonted courage,
and under the influence of the valour so acquired he proclaimed
that, in his opinion, Russia had sacrificed her treaty right
to Poland. Having made the statement thus publicly, he felt
that he could not do less than insert it into the despatch to
Prince Gortchakoff, with whom it was proposed to terminate
the inglorious correspondence. He flattered himself, indeed,
that so hostile an announcement, while not leading actually
to a war, might enable him to ride off with something like a
flourish, which his friends might construe into a triumph.
“And so the despatch was sent off, formally bringing the
correspondence to a close, and concluding with the grandiose
announcement that, in the opinion of the British Government,
Russia had forfeited the title to Poland which she had acquired
by the Treaty of Vienna. But even this modest attempt to escape
from disgrace was not destined to succeed. When the despatch
reached St. Petersburg, it was shown to Prince Gortchakoff
before being formally presented. ‘You had better not present
this concluding sentence to me,’ is reported to have been the
Prince’s brief but significant observation. The hint was taken,
the despatch was sent back to England and submitted anew to the
Foreign Secretary. Doubtless with disgust, but bowing to his
inexorable destiny, he executed this new act of self-abasement.
The offending sentence was erased by its author with the
resolution of a Christian martyr. In this form it was sent back
to Russia; and it still bears, as published to the world, in
the bald mutilation of the paragraph with which it concludes
and in the confusion of its dates, the marks of its enforced
and reluctant revision.”
The confusion of the dates is very significant. The despatch was
originally dated in September and refers to the despatch of August 11th,
as _of the 11th ultimo_. As accepted by the Prince it was dated _in
October_, but still refers to the August despatch as _of the 11th ultimo_.
The humiliation of England was complete. We had threatened and we had not
performed. We had encouraged the Poles to believe that they might count
upon our protection, and when we found that something more than brave
words would be needed, we deserted them. That was the view taken abroad
of Lord Russell’s policy. It was treated with derision and contempt.
In Russia there was at that time a very strong feeling of friendliness
towards the English. But it was a social friendship, not a political
appreciation, and I believe that was largely, perhaps one might say
entirely, due to the great personal charm and popularity of Lord and Lady
Napier. As a power to be reckoned with we had ceased to exist.
I remember upon one occasion my old friend, the Marquis de Montebello,
who was afterwards French Ambassador at St. Petersburg (as his father had
been before him) saying, “Autrefois lorsqu’il s’agissait d’une guerre en
Europe on vous consultait. Aujourd’hui on vous dit—zut!” My answer to him
was, “Don’t be too sure—Lord Russell is not England.”
* * * * *
General Cassius Clay was United States Minister in Russia at the time of
which I am writing. He was rather a notorious person whose name _Punch_
had, owing to his virulent abuse of England, translated into Brutus Mud.
One day General Clay came up to me and began speaking in the friendliest
way about England. After some generalities he turned the conversation on
to the Polish question, belauding Lord Russell’s despatches, which he
said had made “his old Anglo-Saxon blood boil in his veins when he saw
the magnanimous attitude of an English statesman.” I don’t think that
clinical thermometers had been invented in those days, but it would have
been interesting to have taken the temperature of the good General’s
“Anglo-Saxon blood” when he came to read the final collapse of all the
bluster.
The insurrection died a not altogether natural death in 1864. It had been
a hopeless affair from the first, and the moral influence of a secret
Treaty concluded between Prussia and Russia[38] extinguished the last
embers of the fire. Bands of peasants, undrilled, armed with scythes and
with such primitive weapons as might come to hand, lurking houseless,
half starved and miserably clothed in the frozen mazes of pathless
forests, could not for long resist the trained battalions of the Tsar and
the curse of the climate. Langiewicz saw that the last trick in the game
had been trumped, and the dictator left the poor wretches to their fate.
I have one more tale to tell of the Polish revolution. The race of
Bobadils is not extinct. For them proclamations of neutrality are things
of no account, at which they snap their fingers; so long as matters go
well with them they are as truculent as their own swords; but once let
them fall into difficulties and be taken prisoners, their cries are
piteous, and the Foreign Offices of their various countries are besieged
with prayers that their Ambassadors may be instructed to interfere on
their behalf.
One day, when the Polish insurrection was still ablaze, there came a
batch of telegrams to the Embassy directing Lord Napier to plead on
behalf of a certain English gentleman who, having been taken red-handed
in some murderous attack, would be tried by court martial and shot unless
some pressure could be brought to bear on his behalf. Lord Napier knew
that it would be useless to enter into a diplomatic correspondence on
the subject, so he at once asked for an audience of the Tsar, which was
immediately granted. It was not a pleasant duty.
On his return from the palace he told me that when he acquainted the
Emperor with the object of his visit, His Majesty looked very black and
deeply displeased; he said that he could have great sympathy with his own
misguided subjects who were persuaded by agitators into the belief that
they were suffering from grievous wrongs at his hands; but what excuse
could be made for the subject of a friendly Power who came to add fuel to
the flame? Lord Napier pointed out that there was just this excuse for
the gentleman, that his mother was a Pole, and he prayed earnestly for
mercy. In the end the Tsar, as a special favour to Lord Napier, granted
him a free pardon—of course on parole to leave Poland and not again to
take part in the rebellion. It was a generous and kingly act, a gracious
favour to Lord Napier, and a proof of the esteem in which my much-loved
chief was held.[39]
The Emperor Alexander was a most magnanimous ruler. Many and signal were
the proofs of the love which he bore his people. His liberation of the
serfs, a measure of humanity which has perhaps never been exceeded, and
which in 1864 he extended to Poland, in spite of all that had occurred,
bore eloquent testimony to his generosity. And at the time when I was in
Russia the people returned his love with interest. He was to them like a
divinity.
Many and many a time have I seen the _mujiks_ in the dead of winter
standing bareheaded, facing a cruel blast coming down the river from the
Ladoga Lake, until the Emperor’s sledge should be out of sight—a little,
simple one-horse sledge, without any guard, nor even an aide-de-camp. He
was better protected by the love of his people than he could have been by
all the myrmidons of his police. There were no Nihilists in those days;
the word had been coined by Dostoievski, the novelist, but in another
sense. Years afterwards, when the news came of the hideous murder of the
great Tsar, looking back upon those loyal times, I could not believe my
ears. It was incomprehensible. So barbarous did it seem—so barbarous and
withal so foolish.
Surely no man was ever more truly a prophet in his own country than
was Prince Gortchakoff at St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1863. His
popularity was something phenomenal, and for a great deal of it he had to
thank Lord Russell. Praise of the Russian answers was in all mouths, and
Prince Gortchakoff was the idol of the moment, so much so, indeed, that
there were some ill-natured persons who hinted rather loudly that the
Emperor was growing a little jealous of his Minister’s popularity, and
that there had been one or two evil quarters of hours. I am not sure that
I was not the witness of one myself. It was at a great party where the
Emperor was playing cards. The Prince went up to His Majesty with a very
low bow; the Emperor turned sharp round upon him, showing all his teeth,
literally, with the growl of an angry lion, and the poor old gentleman’s
discomfiture was not pleasant to behold. Many people, of course, saw the
affair, and it was much discussed in _salons_ and _chancelleries_.
The first time that I saw Prince Gortchakoff come into a drawing-room I
looked round for Mr. Winkle, Mr. Tracy Tupman and the poet Snodgrass, for
here was Mr. Pickwick in person. Barring the white kerseymere smalls and
the black gaiters, the likeness was complete. The round, good-humoured
face, very pink and white, thin grey hair, eyes beaming rays of human
kindness out of a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, a most genial smile,
the perfection of good manners, pleasant to everybody—altogether a most
engaging personality. Small wonder that St. Petersburg loved him not only
for his great qualities, but also for his small foibles, for did not
these give endless opportunities to Tutcheff, the Sydney Smith of Russia?
Vanity was always said to be the Prince’s strongest weakness. One night,
at a dinner at which I was present, the talk turned upon the three famous
despatches. Somebody said:
“Lorsque le Prince Gortchakoff veut se procurer un vrai plaisir il fait
venir un de ses secrétaires pour lui lire ses trois dépêches. Alors il
se jette dans un fauteuil, ferme les yeux, et a tout l’air d’un homme
qui——”
“Effectivement,” interrupted Tutcheff. “C’est le Narcisse qui se mire
dans son encrier.”
The fun of the thing was that everybody knew that, although of course the
despatches represented his policy, he had not written a word of them.
They were drafted by a certain M. Katakazy, a very clever writer, who was
afterwards Minister at Washington, whence, for some reason or other, he
was recalled, and so far as I know, disappeared. At all events we heard
no more of him.
On one occasion, before the Washington mission, the Prince, who, moved by
some caprice, had wished to get rid of Katakazy, sent for him and told
him that he thought the time had come when he should send him abroad.
Katakazy, who did not wish to go, and who could play upon his chief as
Paganini could upon a Stradivarius, thanked him warmly, and expressed his
joy at being given the opportunity of telling the world how great was the
man whom he had had the honour to serve so long as secretary. The Prince
chortled and said, in his purring way: “Well, perhaps I should miss your
cleverness, so you had better stay.”
There was another claim to renown which M. Katakazy possessed—one of
which he was perhaps even more proud than he was of that of being the
champion despatch writer and protocolist of the Russian Foreign Office.
All of us who knew our Paris in the late fifties and early sixties
(alas!) remember the famous waiter in the Café de la Rotonde whose
“_Boum!_” in answer to the cry of “_Garçon!_” rolled out in a deep bass
voice that made all the cups and saucers and spoons and glasses rattle on
the marble tables, made the fortune of the “patron” of the establishment.
His fame lives, for our beloved Du Maurier has celebrated him in his
masterpiece “Trilby.” M. Katakazy’s mimicry of this hero was the delight
of St. Petersburg. He had, moreover, a very handsome wife, and that is
always an asset for a diplomatist and private secretary.
Here is another of the Prince’s harmless little vainglorious speeches.
One day he called at the British Embassy with his son Michel, whom he
presented to Lady Napier in the following words:
“Permettez, Madame, que je vous présente le brûlot que je viens de lancer
dans le monde.”
Poor little _brûlot_! destined neither to set the Thames nor the Neva on
fire!
As the Prince was a widower, a lady who was a relation of his, used to do
the honours for him at his parties, and she had her private apartments
in his official residence. This lady had a great friend, an officer in
one of the Guards’ regiments. One evening, when Prince Gortchakoff had
a great official banquet, Tutcheff, who was one of the guests, as he
drove up to the grand entrance saw this officer being admitted at the
private door. As he reached the drawing-room, he heard the Prince making
the lady’s excuses for not being present. “Figurez-vous son désespoir!
Elle est retenue chez elle par une affreuse migraine.” “Ah, oui!” said
Tutcheff the cruel, “je l’ai vue, sa migraine, qui montait chez elle au
moment où je descendais de mon traineau.” Of course the story was all
over the town the next morning.
The pleasantest _salon_ of St. Petersburg in my day was that of Princess
Kotchoubey. Her palace, the Dom Belaselski, had what I should think
must be the finest staircase of any private house in the world. The
guest-rooms were furnished with a magnificence which made one open one’s
eyes very wide indeed. In one of the smaller and more intimate rooms the
Princess used to sit every evening, dispensing tea to a small _coterie_
of friends, essentially a political assemblage, hardly ever more than
a dozen. Prince Gortchakoff was almost always there; Lord Napier and
one or two of the ambassadors very often. Admission to this very choice
gathering was a privilege much coveted and rarely attained; I gained it
by the grace and favour of Countess Apponyi, the Austrian Ambassadress in
London, who was Princess Kotchoubey’s sister, and gave me a letter for
her, to which I have already alluded, and which stood me in good stead,
for it turned out to be a passport to all that was most distinguished in
Russian society.
One evening Prince Gortchakoff brought Khalil Bey (afterwards Khalil
Pasha), the Turkish Ambassador, to present him to the Princess. A great
lady present, who could be very haughty and, indeed, insolent when she
chose, put on her most Lady Disdain air, and said in her pretty sing-song
French:
“Je suppose, Monsieur l’Ambassadeur, que vous avez été bien frappé de
tout ce que vous avez vu ici.”
“Mais de quoi donc, Madame?”
“De notre belle ville, de nos quais, de nos palais, de toute notre
civilisation, enfin.”
“Mais non, Madame,” answered the witty Turk, who was Tutcheff’s rival
in repartee. “Vous savez qu’en Turquie nous sommes aussi excessivement
arriérés,” with the sweetest smile he sat down and drank a triumphant cup
of tea. But the lady was not so happy; she had attacked the wrong man.
Khalil Bey was always amusing, but sometimes his wit was apt to be
a little cruel. There was a certain Madame R. K., known as La Vénus
Tartare, an extraordinarily beautiful woman of the Kalmuck type, with the
figure of a Juno. She had brought out a book called “Un Hiver à Paris,”
which she had persuaded Théophile Gautier, Madame Georges Sand and one
other French man of letters (I think my old friend Octave Feuillet) to
write for her in collaboration, she publishing it as her own, though she
had not penned a word of it. Everybody knew this, but that did not raise
a blush in her, and it came out with, as a frontispiece, a photograph
of Madame R. K.’s back, _décolleté_ almost down to the waist. She was
good enough to send me a copy of it, and I went to thank her. As we were
sitting discussing the book, who should be announced but the Turkish
Ambassador.
“Ah,” said Madame R. K., “nous parlions justement de mon livre.
L’avez-vous lu?”
“Non, Madame!—et vous?” was Khalil Bey’s biting answer, uttered with the
demurest face of innocence; but the so-called Bulgarian atrocities of his
countrymen in later years were not more barbarously searching. I felt so
sorry for the poor beautiful Vénus Tartare.
CHAPTER XI
THE WINTER OF 1863-4
There is an old saying and a true one, that in Russia you see the winter
and in Italy you feel it. In the one case the houses are so beautifully
warmed and so many precautions are taken, that men can laugh at the
climate; in Italy, on the other hand, the equipment is all for summer,
and winter may torture as it pleases.
In St. Petersburg the year 1863 died a glorious death. The month of
December was brilliant and we “saw the winter” in all its beauty. Two or
three blizzards had brought the roads into ideal condition. Smoothly and
noiselessly the sledges flew over the white velvet of the yet undefiled
virgin snow; the crisp air was full of energy generously dispensed; the
cheery cries of the fat coachmen, made still fatter by the padding under
their heavy furs, their beards frozen stiff and stark; the tinkling
bell-music of the Orloff trotters; the monotonous chants of the _mujiks_
sitting in their sleigh-carts; the sparkling city hung with festoons of
ice-opals flashing back the glory of the short-lived winter sun; great
ladies dashing past in their _troikas_, nothing to be seen of any one of
them but just a little pink nose peeping out of the muffling sea-otter
furs and sables; the glittering shops full of customers choosing
_étrennes_—everybody busy and eager, making ready to speed the parting,
welcome the coming year.
Far away in the ice-bound morasses of Lithuania, in the gloomy forests
of Poland, there might still be here and there the crack of a rifle,
some desultory fighting, some hunting of rebels and murderers instead of
wolves and bears; but the capital of Peter the Great was deaf and blind
to all tragedy. There could be no gayer city in the world; certainly none
where the foreign diplomatists were so hospitably treated; our lives were
a round of festivities in the very home of joyous revelry.
In the daytime, on those rare occasions when we were not busy at the
Embassy, there were skating parties, picnics to the Islands, and the
chance of breaking our necks on the Montagnes Russes. The gardens of
the Tauride, which were reserved for the Imperial Family and a few—very
few—grandees, were open to us. In the evening we dined and danced and
supped and danced again. The opera and the French Théâtre Michel were
a perfect blaze of jewels, smart dresses, the masterpieces of Paris,
brilliant uniforms and decorations; the black coats of Ambassadors and
civilian Ministers sprinkled here and there the only sad notes.
On the 12th of January I was invited by Princess Kotchoubey to “await the
new year,” which, of course, is, according to the old style, our 13th.
Curiously enough, the old style was observed even in the English Church,
so that the Christmas Day services were held on the 7th of January,
according to our reckoning. I have told elsewhere of the magnificence
of the Princess’ palace, but this entertainment quite exceeded anything
that I had ever seen or heard of. There were only about fifty guests, but
these were all the chief personages of St. Petersburg, including Prince
Gortchakoff, who, as was his wont, appropriated to himself the youngest
and prettiest lady present, for the old Vice-Chancellor was a great
flirt. He was not yet Chancellor, for at the death of Count Nesselrode in
March, 1862, the Tsar would not fill the office. His Majesty was reported
to have said that “Nesselrode was one thing, Gortchakoff another.” This
was a great mortification to the Prince, and gave occasion to some wit
for the saying, that Prince Gortchakoff was the man of the most virtuous
inclinations in the whole Empire, “parcequ’il cherche toujours à se
débarrasser de son Vice.” Another great celebrity who was present was
Count Schuvaloff, the grand marshal of the Court, a noble old man, the
father of Count Peter Schuvaloff who was afterwards Ambassador in London
and with Prince Gortchakoff represented Russia at the Congress of Berlin.
On the stroke of midnight came a procession of gorgeous footmen, bearing
trays with glasses filled with champagne, and we all clinked our goblets
together, drinking prosperity to the New Year. Then followed a pretty
old Russian custom. Every guest went up to the hostess and kissed her
hand, and she went through the form of pretending to kiss each of her
friends on the forehead in return. It seemed a pity not to carry out so
graceful and picturesque a tradition in its entirety. But though Princess
Kotchoubey did no more than bow over her guests’ foreheads as they
stooped to kiss her hand, her reception of them was grace itself. She was
a Queen in her palace, and we, her subjects for the nonce, did willing
homage to her.
It seemed little short of a miracle to step out of the iron grip of a
Russian New Year’s Eve into a fairyland in which all the treasures of the
world were sampled—the diamonds of Golconda, the rubies of Burmah, the
turquoises of Persia, pearls from the Eastern Seas, tapestries of the
Gobelins, gold and silver masterpieces of famous Florentine and French
artists, flowers and fruit of June and July, the warmth of summer with
not a fire to be seen, lighted up by myriads of candles disposed in a
way of which Russia alone seemed to have the secret. And in all this
magnificence there was only one tiny omission, one little blot to remind
us that we were human, and that humanity is imperfect: there were no
salt-spoons!
After supper I had some talk with Prince Gortchakoff, who was always very
kind to me, and often used to come up and have a little chat when we met
in society. We naturally talked about the New Year’s Day festivities, and
he went on to expatiate on the religiosity of the Russian mind, and how
to every man in the country Russia was _Holy_ Russia.
He said that few people knew how deeply this feeling was ingrained in the
minds of the _mujiks_, to whom it was a horror to think that they might
be buried anywhere but in their own country. He gave as an instance of
this the case of a Russian who, when the Prince was Secretary of Legation
in London, was coachman in the service of the Duke of Devonshire. The
man asked for him one day at the Legation. On the Prince inquiring what
he wanted, he said that he wanted to go back home. “What!” said the
Prince, “leave so good a place and so good a master. Of what have you
to complain?” The man said, “Of nothing—but I am afraid lest I should
die here and be buried out of Holy Russia.” So close was his attachment
to the sacred soil that though there was no other cause for nostalgia,
and he was perfectly happy where he was, he must go home for fear of
this terrible thing happening. It reminded one of the Chinese travelling
to California with their coffins for the return journey to the Middle
Kingdom. These things make a man think.
Three days afterwards, to my great surprise, I was invited by the Prince
to a great diplomatic dinner at which all the Ambassadors and Ministers
were present, with certain members of the Government. There were no
ladies invited.
Of course the conversation turned chiefly upon the Danish question, which
was reaching a very acute stage. When the time to leave arrived, Prince
Gortchakoff detained Lord Napier with the Prussian, Austrian, Swedish and
French representatives for a private conference.
I am not a resurrectionist and find little relish in digging among the
graves of dead questions. The disputes over the Danish duchies are long
since dead and buried, though the ambitions of the men who lit the torch
of war still live, and the torch is still blazing. Those disputes were
the opportunity of one master mind, the puzzle of others, and the joy of
many dullard diplomatists who loved to flounder choking among the shoals
and whirlpools of a sea of troubles; at that time, they were the despair
of those slaves of the pen, of whom I, so long as I was at the Foreign
Office, was one, whose task it was to cover reams upon reams of foolscap
with reports of endless conversations with Princekins and Ministers at
small German courts, retailed by minor diplomatic lights with all the
ineptitude of pompous verbosity.
The Governments which really played a part in the wrangles were those of
France, Russia, Prussia and in a lesser degree Austria, which, though
very half-hearted, was not for the last time being towed by Prussia _im
schlepptau_, as a German publicist put it. She was dragged in by the fear
of losing in the Diet an influence which had already been seriously
undermined, if not exploded, by Bismarck.
The real arbiter in the case was England. Upon the conduct of England
depended the issues of peace or war. Unfortunately her course was being
steered by a pilot unskilled, fickle, timid and obstinately vain; a man
who, as the conduct of the Polish question had shown, undeterred by more
than one sordid repulse, was full of brag and bluster, till the critical
moment should come—then collapsing like a soap-bubble. It was their
appreciation of Lord Russell that made foreign statesmen tremble for the
fate of Denmark, nor was it long before this want of faith in him was
fully justified.
In the case of the Danish duchies question, as in the case of the Polish
insurrection, in order rightly to understand what was taking place at St.
Petersburg, it is well to consider for a moment what was the condition
of international affairs. We may leave to those who are curious in such
political puzzles the complicated intrigues which now have only an
academic or historic interest.
The question of the incorporation of Schleswig, its unity with Holstein,
the position of the infinitesimally small Duchy of Lauenburg, the great
language dispute and the so-called “wrongs” of the Schleswigers and the
Holsteiners, together with the claims of the Duke of Augustenburg—all
these are ghosts long since laid; they were never anything more than
pretexts, nor can anything else be said of Prussia’s plea that her
hand was being forced by the small German States; it is enough for the
politician of to-day to know what was the true objective of the war;
that question still lives with us, growing in importance every day. Had
the duchies lain inland, far away from the coast, the right to their
possession would never have disturbed Europe. Kiel was the Naboth’s
vineyard—Kiel with the seaboard of the Baltic, and the North Sea—Kiel
with the possibility of a German military and commercial Navy. That,
as we shall see presently, is an incontrovertible fact; we have it out
of the mouths of German statesmen themselves—out of the mouth of Lord
Palmerston.
The glorious dream of the nationalist party in Prussia was a United
Fatherland, strong by sea as by land, taking its place at the council
board of Europe as a Power of the first magnitude. Until she should have
a navy fitted to cope with that of any other nation, this was a position
which Germany could not hope to hold. This planet of ours is so built
that in many cases the sea determines the possession of the land and
the power of states. By land Prussia was already strong indeed, as she
was soon to prove in 1866 and 1870. At sea she did not exist. She had
practically no seaboard, for what is a seaboard lacking harbours? So
long as this want remained there must be many international questions in
which the voice of Germany would be of no account. Kiel would solve the
difficulty—it was foredoomed, and indeed the project of a new Suez Canal,
since realized, was already in the air.
There is a curious letter of the old Kaiser William when he was Prince of
Prussia, written to his cousin, Prince Adalbert of Prussia, on the 16th
of August, 1853—curious when we compare what was with what is:
“How sorry I was to miss you yesterday in order to give you a
few pieces of information which Steinäcker (his aide-de-camp)
told me you wished for, and to tell you something of the
grand naval review. You will have heard all details by now.
What a pity that you could not hit it off! _I cannot tell you
how great was my emotion, especially when for the first time
I passed by our ship, saw our battle-flag, our uniform and
Pickelhaube (helmet) and heard our drums on board a man of
war_” (the italics are mine), “and that too in the middle of an
English Fleet! The visit of the Queen on board the _Gefion_ was
too friendly and gracious. I was delighted with the ships, and
found our soldiers making a goodly show.”[40]
The occasion was the great naval review held by Queen Victoria on the
11th of August, 1853, off Spithead, at which the Prince of Prussia was
present. The words which I have underlined are significant. The sight of
_a_ German man-of-war would now hardly be a novelty creating so great
emotion!
The position of the three Powers, England, France and Russia, which
might have combined to save Denmark and defeat the ambitious efforts of
Germany, was peculiar. Louis Napoléon had proposed a congress to consider
the affairs of Europe, and having been snubbed by Lord Russell, was
sulking in his tent. In Russia there was certainly no desire for war; the
memory of the Crimea was still fresh in men’s minds, the Polish business
was not yet settled, and the country was longing for quiet—according
to Prince Gortchakoff’s famous _mot_, “La Russie ne boude pas, elle
se recueille,” but a marriage had recently been arranged between the
Tsarevitch[41] and the Princess Dagmar, the second daughter of the King
of Denmark, so the Court (which at that time was still Russia), with
Prince Gortchakoff, eager for an English alliance, and a great number of
ministers and nobles, were strong partisans of the Danes; and the whole
chivalry of the country would have donned its armour to do battle for the
father of their future Empress.
They only waited for England. As to the attitude of England there should
have been no doubt. The declaration of her statesmen had been explicit,
showing not only their sense of an injustice which was to be perpetrated,
but beyond that a right knowledge of the real objects which Bismarck
had at heart. The national party in Germany made no secret of them. Two
quotations taken from Lord Salisbury’s article in the _Quarterly Review_
of January, 1864, are clear in their testimony. There was a debate on the
Danish Question in the Prussian Chamber on the 1st of December, 1864.
Herr von Twesten, Chairman of the Committee appointed to consider the
Augustenburg claims, made the following candid remark:
“The Duchies are for Germany and Prussia a strong bulwark under
all circumstances against any attack coming from the North.
This, as well as their maritime position, are advantages which
Prussia can never relinquish.”
Dr. Loewe, a conspicuous man in the National Verein, speaks with even
less affectation of concealment:
“What interest has Prussia in the maintenance of the London
Protocol? (The Treaty of 1852 by which the Powers, including
Prussia, settled the succession to the Danish throne.) Since
the time of the Great Elector, Prussian policy has always been
rightly directed towards gaining the North German Peninsula for
Germany.”
The North German Peninsula! Look at the map and then say whether any more
arrogant pretension was ever brought forward in a national Parliament.
Lord Salisbury was not the only Englishman who knew what were the motives
urging on Germany. Lord Palmerston, at the end of the session of 1863,
spoke plainly on the subject. Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald, who had been
Conservative Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, had asked
a question in the House of Commons as to what was the policy of Her
Majesty’s Government in regard to the Danish Question—Lord Palmerston’s
answer was as follows:
“There is no use in disguising the fact that what is at the
bottom of the German design, and the desire of connecting
Schleswig with Holstein, is the dream of a German fleet and
the wish to get Kiel as a German seaport. That may be a good
reason why they should wish it; but it is no reason why they
should violate the rights and independence of Denmark for an
object which, even if it were accomplished, would not realize
the expectation of those who aim at it. The hon. gentleman asks
what is the policy and course of Her Majesty’s Government with
regard to that dispute.
“As I have already said, we concur entirely with him, and I am
satisfied, with all reasonable men in Europe, including those
in France and Russia, in desiring that the independence and
integrity and the rights of Denmark may be maintained. We are
convinced, I am convinced at least, that if any violent attempt
were made to overthrow those rights and interfere with that
independence, those who made the attempt would find in the
result that it would not be Denmark alone with which they would
have to contend.”
Could language be clearer than this pronouncement _urbi et orbi_ of the
Prime Minister of England? But that was not all. Lord Russell in despatch
after despatch, many of which are quoted by Lord Salisbury in his famous
article, gave it to be understood at Paris, Berlin, Vienna and St.
Petersburg that an attack on Denmark would lead to a rupture of relations
between England and Germany. “Her Majesty could not see with indifference
a military occupation of Holstein,” etc. “Should it appear that Federal
troops had entered the Duchy on international grounds, Her Majesty’s
Government may be obliged to interfere.”
To Count Bernstorff, the Prussian Ambassador in London, Lord Russell
said, “that Her Majesty’s Government could not wonder that the King
of Denmark was ready to defend Schleswig and to consider its hostile
occupation as a fatal blow to the integrity of his dominions. But I could
not doubt that he would be assisted by Powers friendly to Denmark in
that defence ... I said that since the month of May, Great Britain had
warned Austria of these dangers, that Russia and Germany had likewise
been warned, but that the voice of England was unheeded,” etc., etc.
Acting on instructions from the Foreign Secretary, Lord Napier told
Prince Gortchakoff that “the pressing necessity for arresting warlike
preparations, and combining the Powers less directly interested in the
controversy for a mediation, was proved by the fact that an attack upon
Schleswig seemed imminent, and that if that attempt was made it seemed
not improbable that the Germans might find themselves confronted by the
armed intervention of Great Britain.”
It was not “the voice of England” that was unheeded, as Lord Russell put
it, but his own. He was like Bottom the weaver, “Let me play the lion
too; I will roar that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me; I will
roar that I will make the Duke say, ‘Let him roar again, let him roar
again.’” Then lest he should frighten the Duchess and the ladies—“I will
aggravate my voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking
dove; I will roar you an ’twere any nightingale.”
The publication by the French Foreign Office of the report by M. Reinack
of the Commission charged to inquire into “Les Origines Diplomatiques
de la Guerre de 1870” has thrown a flood of light upon the negotiations
which took place in regard to the Danish Question of 1863-4; it is not
pleasant reading for Englishmen; a review of the first two volumes of
these revelations in the _Figaro_ of the 6th of September, 1910, by the
Comte d’Haussonville shows the position to which England had fallen in
the Councils of Europe. “L’Angleterre s’agite” (this is, of course, the
historic present), “mais ce n’est pas un Dieu qui la mène. Ce n’est
personne. On ne sent point, comme à certains moments de son histoire, la
main ferme d’un véritable homme d’état: au début du dix-neuvième siècle
un Pitt; à la fin un Disraeli qui sait ce qu’il se propose et où il veut
conduire son pays.”
Nobody was frightened by Lord Russell’s roaring, least of all Bismarck—he
knew how soon the voice would be “aggravated.” “L’Angleterre ne fera
pas la guerre,” he said to M. de Talleyrand, the French Ambassador at
Berlin. Foreign statesmen knew that Lord Palmerston was now grown old.
He was no longer the doughty champion of the Don Pacifico days, when he
electrified the House of Commons and the world with the famous _Civis
Romanus sum_ speech; moreover, he was hampered by the shufflings of
his Foreign Secretary, and in the background was the Queen, never a
negligible quantity in foreign affairs, whom all men knew to be a strong
ally of Germany, and who, still animated by the spirit of the dead Prince
Consort, naturally felt with Germany. Read what the Prince Consort wrote
to the King of Prussia on the 12th March, 1861: “My hope, like that of
most German patriots, rests upon Prussia, rests upon you” (“Life of the
Prince Consort,” Vol. V., p. 314). Those words in the mouth of the Prince
were intelligible enough, but why should Lord Russell be a German patriot?
And so we drifted, whither we knew not, though others did. M. de
Massignac, a clever diplomatist, a man whom I knew well, who was French
Chargé d’Affaires at St. Petersburg, on the 9th of February, 1864, sent a
despatch to M. Drouyn de Lhuys in which he recorded certain confidential
talks which he had had with some of his German colleagues upon the
situation. He urged that if the Duchies were to unite themselves with
Prussia, it would be unwise for France to interfere, because such a
territorial extension would enable Germany to create a navy, which in
given circumstances might unite with the fleets of the other Continental
Powers to destroy England’s preponderant power at sea! (“Origines
Diplomatiques,” etc.).
Meanwhile, England and Prussia were both courting Louis Napoléon.
Palmerston expressed to the Prince de la Tour d’Auvergne, the French
Ambassador in London, his regret that Great Britain and France could
not come to a complete understanding, but Lord Russell kept the same
Ambassador in a state of mystification. Bismarck, on the other hand, was
maintaining such intimate relations with M. de Talleyrand as to draw from
Drouyn de Lhuys the warmest congratulations. The Emperor stroked his
_barbiche_ and held the balance. Poor Emperor! It was for him that the
witches’ cauldron was bubbling.
And Denmark? In the Spring of 1863, King Frederic the Seventh had
died, and King Christian, the father of our Queen Alexandra, ruled
in his stead. Seldom has a monarch been called to the throne in more
untoward circumstances. Only eleven years had passed since all the
great Powers—Prussia and Austria, of course, included—gathered together
in conclave in London, had solemnly bound themselves to guarantee the
integrity of his dominions.
Such engagements we are now told by the German Chancellor are “scraps of
paper!” Only eleven years! It was no archaic instrument which the decay
of many decades had rendered obsolete. What had occurred in the meantime
to make it invalid? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Yet in spite of the most
sacred obligations of the Powers which had pledged themselves to maintain
his succession and the rights of his kingdom, two of those very Powers
were invading his country to despoil him of his territory, and the rest
treacherously and cowardly deserted him. It was a cruel betrayal, and
as if to accentuate it by a stroke of bitter irony, France sent General
Fleury, the Emperor’s confidential friend, England Lord Wodehouse, on
special missions to congratulate the new King on his accession. Fleury,
the dandy courtier, passing through Berlin, was handsomely flattered and
fooled by Bismarck; Lord Wodehouse carried pouches full of excellent
advice from Lord Russell—advice the neglect of which King Christian was
assured might lead to dire consequences. The King acted according to Lord
Russell’s advice, but none the less, when the great catastrophe came, he
was left to his fate.
Such, briefly sketched, was the position of the Danish negotiations at
the end of 1863 and the beginning of 1864. The details can easily be
filled in from our own Blue Books, from Lord Salisbury’s masterly essays,
and from the “Origines Diplomatiques de la Guerre de 1870.” I have only
tried to say so much as should serve to make intelligible what follows.
It must have been about the 9th or 10th of February: I did not note the
exact date in my papers: a cruel blizzard, cruel even for St. Petersburg,
lasting many hours, had swept the streets clear of all passenger traffic.
Only the direst necessity would goad men to face it. As good luck would
have it, there was for a wonder no function or entertainment that night,
so I hugged my comfort in my rooms and went to bed early, thinking with
a sense of superiority tempered by pity of the poor wretches who must
be outside wrestling with the bitterness of the weather. Hardly had I
laid myself down when there came a violent knocking at my outer door. My
servant had long since gone home, so there was nothing for it but to get
up and see what was the matter. It was the Chancery messenger, shivering
and smothered from head to foot with snow, bringing me a note from my
chief, Lord Napier: “Please come at once.”
I went back into my bedroom and dressed again, looking regretfully at
my warm bed, in which only a few minutes earlier I had been pitying
the victims of whom now I was to be one. When I got outside I was
almost blinded by the snow, driven by a wind which it was hard to stand
against. It seemed more than doubtful whether I should be able to reach
the Embassy, which was about half a mile off. All at once, out of the
unwholesome, yellow, almost lurid darkness my good angel sent a belated
Isvoshtchik crawling along, visible only a few yards off. I hailed him,
hardly hoping that he would come to my call; however, the promise of a
good _pourboire_ tempted him, and we crept miserably through the storm to
the Embassy. I never was out in so weird a night. As I left the little
sleigh I shook off many pounds’ weight of snow from fur cap and coat.
I found Lord Napier walking about his room in his dressing-gown,
evidently rather uneasy; he seemed to have a sort of forewarning of
something out of the common and disagreeable. A telegraphic despatch in
cypher had come in, and he wished to have it deciphered immediately. It
was truly a momentous document—nothing less than an instruction to call
upon Prince Gortchakoff at once and to let him know that England would
not interfere on behalf of Denmark. Lord Napier was eagerly watching over
my shoulder as one by one the fateful words revealed themselves, and when
the telegram was fully before us we looked at one another in dismay.
“But,” said my chief, “only yesterday when I saw the Prince I told him
that I believed that there was no change in the policy of Her Majesty’s
Government, and now I have to give him this message. It is very
embarrassing! Where is the Prince? Do you know?”
“He is at Tsarskoe Selo,” I answered.
“Well, I shall have to go out by the first train to-morrow morning.”
It was a very awkward moment for Lord Napier and he felt the falseness
of the position acutely, but he was so truly attached to Lord Russell
personally that he never would say a word against him.
The next day I was in the Chancery when Lord Napier came back from
Tsarskoe Selo. He beckoned me into his private room.
“Well,” I asked, “what did the Prince say?”
“It was not a pleasant interview,” answered my chief. “When the Prince
had read the telegram he folded it up and handed it back to me, saying,
‘Alors, milord, je mets de côté la supposition que l’Angleterre fasse
jamais la guerre pour une question d’honneur.’ Pretty words for an
English Ambassador to listen to!”
Lord Napier was deeply moved, as well he might be. They were indeed
“pretty words,” and in them, I think, we may see what lay at the bottom
of Prince Gortchakoff’s subsequent foreign policy—especially in Central
Asia—until he was finally checkmated by Lord Beaconsfield, at the Berlin
Congress in 1878. On that morning of February, 1864, the Prince’s
well-known keenness for an alliance with England died the death; in his
estimation England need no longer be taken into account.
Bismarck had now a free hand. His carefully laid schemes, of which the
war in the Duchies was only an instalment, were all to bear their fruit.
Austria was to be crippled, France to be humbled and dismembered, Germany
to be a naval Power of the first magnitude. And England?
That is how the keel of the first Dreadnought was laid at St. Petersburg
in the month of February, 1864. The Baltic and the North Sea are
united as Siamese twins. Germany, possessed of ports and a huge navy,
is straining every nerve to wrest the trident from the hands of Great
Britain, and the tragedy of 1914, which sooner or later was bound to
come, is even now upon us. Black is the ingratitude of mankind! There is
no statue of Lord Russell, the great benefactor, the true founder of the
German navy, standing unter den Linden in Berlin.
CHAPTER XII
THROUGH THE WINTER
Happily our life at the Embassy was not all made up of political
miscarriages and diplomatic rebuffs. On the 6th (18th) of January we all
received a summons to attend the ceremony of the blessing of the waters.
For some days past a little shrine of green wood had been in process
of construction on the side of the Neva opposite the Winter Palace;
a picture of a saint surmounted it on each side, the place of honour
being assigned to the image of St. John the Baptist. As soon as daylight
broke on the 6th vast crowds of people of both sexes, soldiers in many
uniforms, and, of course, as at all public ceremonies, dogs, were
flocking to catch as near a sight as possible of the shrine.
We, the Corps Diplomatique, were bidden to the Winter Palace at noon.
The drive through the streets was fascinating. The weather was glorious
and the glistening city was at its brightest, the soldiers in all their
bravery giving a kaleidoscopic glamour to the surging mob, mostly clad in
sad-coloured sheepskins with the wool inside. The wild-looking Georgians
in their native dress, Cossacks of the Don, fierce, swarthy horsemen
from the Caucasus in their shirts of mail and shining armour, striking a
medieval note in the concert of men. The Kurnos regiment of the Emperor
Paul, every man with a snub nose, and wearing the old peaked brazen
shako of our Guards in Queen Anne’s reign, each shako showing a bullet
hole in it, a memorial of a bullet which, aimed at the Tsar, found its
billet in the tall cap of one of his faithful, snub-nosed guardsmen, who
dashed forward just in time to save the Tsar’s life at the expense of
his own; in contrast to these were the grenadiers, with heavy bearskin
caps and plumes. The _chevalier-gardes_ in white tunics, their helmets
and cuirasses dazzling in the winter sun—all the panoply of war set in
the flaming glory of ecclesiastical and imperial splendour. Could this be
Europe in the nineteenth century?
From the room in the Palace in which we had assembled we were ushered
off to a side entrance to see the priestly procession form to meet the
Tsar. It was an imposing ceremony. The air was heavy with the penetrating
fumes of incense, and in the distance we could hear the mysterious effect
of the deep bass voices of the priests and deacons—those wonderful bass
voices for which they are chosen—chanting the impressive litanies of the
Greek Church. Nearer and nearer they came, the music becoming clearer
and more distinct, but intensely reverential, until at last the great
procession of Church dignitaries passed before us; it was stirringly
solemn.
Priests in red, priests in purple, priests in white, and priests in
violet, all as resplendent as a profusion of gold embroidery and jewels
could make them—very imposing with their long white beards and hair. One
deacon, a giant in stature, with hair and beard reaching half-way down to
his waist, had a deep voice which, pealing through the corridors like the
rolling[42] notes of a bass trombone, made the windows rattle again. Last
of all came the Bishops and the Metropolitan, like the King’s daughter
“all glorious within,” clad in raiment that made them seem like a vision
out of the Apocalypse. Altogether a sight not to be forgotten.
We followed the procession through the great State apartments of the
Palace, each room with a guard of honour from a different regiment,
until the priests and bishops branched off to one of the principal
staircases to go round the Palace; and when next we saw them they were
accompanied by the Tsar, looking magnificent on a grey charger, followed
by his brothers and sons, and a brilliantly mounted staff of the chief
officials. Of the ceremony itself we could see nothing. It consists in
the dipping of a cross by the Tsar into the water, through a hole made in
the ice, and during the liturgy which follows, and lasts for a quarter
of an hour, all the people, including the soldiers, remain uncovered.
Even the Tsar must bare his head, so the late Emperor, who was bald,
used to wear a wig for the occasion. It was luckily not very cold, but
there was a keen wind blowing, and I am bound to say that the thermometer
is a bad judge of temperature at St. Petersburg, for the wind is man’s
worst enemy, and the days when the mercury is at its lowest are far more
tolerable than those on which there are a few degrees of frost and biting
blasts that race down the river. Happily we diplomatists had two stout
glass windows between us and the weather, so we had no cause to complain.
As soon as the waters had been duly blessed, and the service was over,
out burst a cannonade from the fortress and from guns placed at regular
intervals on the opposite bank of the Neva; then the Emperor and his
staff mounted their horses and wended their way back, the priests
carrying the blessed water and sprinkling the troops with it as they
passed in front of them. The Empress being ill and unable to attend the
ceremony, a golden goblet was filled with the water and carried to her
for her use.
We were all invited to luncheon, and after that there was a review of
the Imperial Guards, thirty-four thousand men and eighty-four pieces of
cannon; a quite magnificent display.
As soon as the blessing of the waters and the review were finished, the
mujiks were all allowed access to the consecrated hole in the ice. Into
this they dipped themselves, fully clothed, to the end that they might
purify themselves from the excesses of their holidays—more particularly
from the sin of wearing masks, which, being forbidden by their religion,
is one in which the orthodox take a special delight. Dripping icicles,
but pure, and of a contented conscience, the mujik rushes from his
freezing bath to his poor home, there to work, and, as soon as Lent
comes, starve, till Easter shall set him free once more.
If all that one hears be true, the Russia of to-day is very different
from what it was at the time of which I am writing. The great hospitable
houses are, so I am told, many of them shut up. The Winter Palace itself
is no longer the setting of pageants and festivities of which the
slaves of the ring and the lamp might have been the stage-managers and
chamberlains. Misfortune, sorrow and cruel anxieties have racked the
Imperial Family, and the gaiety of a nation has been eclipsed. One can
but hope that it may be only a passing eclipse, only a temporary cloud,
through which in years to come the sun may shine more brightly than
before.[43] It was radiant in my day.
It would be difficult to imagine anything more sumptuous than a great
Court ball. There were one thousand eight hundred guests, themselves all
as brilliant as the glory of diamonds and rubies and pearls and the most
magnificent uniforms could make them. The great white and gold ball-room,
with an orchestra at each end, flanked by arches leading into a winter
garden rich in palms and tree-ferns and flowers and all the wonders
of tropical vegetation, was lighted by twenty-seven thousand candles
arranged spirally round the pillars and in crystal chandeliers.
The Corps Diplomatique were ushered into the adjoining drawing-rooms,
where they were received by old Count Ribeaupierre, the _grand maître de
la Cour_, himself a notable link with the past, for he had been page of
honour to the Empress Catherine. Presently the doors were thrown open
and the Imperial family trooped in; the Emperor as usual very regal,
half a head taller than any man in the room, wearing a white hussar
uniform trimmed with gold and black sables; the Empress covered with
the spoils of Ophir and Golconda. They went round our circle, stopping
to speak to the chiefs of missions and their wives. It was a lesson to
watch that gracious Lady and the winning way in which she made her guests
welcome with a charm that could only come from the sweetest nature.
When the little reception was over we followed Their Majesties into the
ball-room. It really was a dazzling sight. At a given moment all the one
thousand eight hundred guests sat down to supper at the same time; only
the Emperor remained standing, himself looking after the comfort of his
guests.
An entertainment even more wonderful, on account of its exquisite
daintiness, was a smaller ball of only about three hundred and fifty
guests; it led, moreover, to some amusing incidents. The order from
the Court was that civilians were not to wear uniform, so with two
brilliant exceptions, the diplomatic body arrived as black as rooks.
The brilliant two were General Cassius Clay and the Duc d’Osuna, the
Spanish Ambassador, who, conceiving themselves to be soldiers, took it
for granted that the order did not apply to them; the General especially
was full of military ardour as regarded his clothes, so he came in a
nondescript blue coat, a yellow nankeen waistcoat, white trousers and
something in his hand which he said was a forage-cap. The Duc d’Osuna,
on the other hand, appeared in a gorgeous uniform, his breast plastered
all over with stars and decorations (the only wonder being that he did
not wear some on his back as well), his little legs incased in white
leather breeches and jack-boots. He was a great character and really a
very charming personality; fabulously rich, an ambassador without pay, he
hospitably kept open house for his staff, even when he was on leave. His
many châteaux were maintained in the same sumptuous way, whether he were
in Spain or abroad, ready to receive him at any moment, and so, while
his agents accumulated good fortunes, when his death came he was reputed
to have well-nigh run through everything. The ship had too many leaks.
He was several times over grandee of Spain, and so had the right to wear
any number of hats in the presence of his sovereign. He is alluded to
in Lord Beaconsfield’s letter to his sister, giving an account of Queen
Victoria’s coronation. “He is a great dandy, and looks like Philip the
Second, but though the only living descendant of the Borgias, he has the
reputation of being very amiable. When he was last at Paris he attended a
representation of Victor Hugo’s _Lucrezia Borgia_. She says in one of the
scenes: ‘_Great crimes are in our blood_.’ All his friends looked at him
with an expression of fear. ‘_But the blood has degenerated_,’ he said,
‘_for I have committed only weaknesses_.’”
The dear little man’s great foible was vanity, concentrated in the
admiration of his own tiny Spanish feet. “Oh! moi,” said a little French
actress one evening. “Quand j’ai besoin de deux ou trois cents roubles,
je m’en vais trouver le Duc d’Osuna; je lui fais un doigt de cour et je
lui dis, en regardant ses pieds: ‘Ah! comme ils sont jolis! Il n’y a que
Monsieur le Duc d’Osuna pour avoir ces pieds-là—sont-ils assez mignons!’
Cela ne rate jamais.”
Another order that evening was, that there was to be no ceremony as
to going in to supper. We were to go as we pleased and with whom we
pleased. Precedence was abolished for the night. We danced in the white
drawing-room; towards midnight the heavy folding doors were thrown
open, and in what had been the great ball-room of a few nights before
was laid out quite the most artistically perfect banquet that could be
imagined—once more the Jins of the “Arabian Nights” had been at work. In
the great hall and the _jardin d’hiver_ were thirty-five supper-tables,
each to hold ten guests, each dressed round an orange tree in full
fruit. The illumination, with the usual fabulous number of candles, was
resplendent. It was an entrancing sight. As we went in everybody uttered
a little exclamation of surprise! “Mon Dieu! que c’est joli!” “Mais c’est
ravissant!” “Oui,” said Georges Du Luart, “c’est positivement féerique!”
“Ah!” said the Duc d’Osuna, in his Spanish French, “n’est-ce pas que
c’est zoli! C’est l’uniforme du réziment que zé commande.” The good Duke,
who was rather deaf, had taken all the enthusiasm as a well-merited
tribute to his own personal appearance.
Du Luart, now (1915) the Marquis du Luart, one of the greatest
authorities in France on sport and _vénerie_, and I had arranged to sit
together; but somehow we got separated and had to take our chance of
places. After wandering about I found myself at a table where I knew no
one, but as usual, the other guests were most kind and amiable in their
welcome to the stranger.
The gentleman next me began asking me all manner of questions about
England and English people; it turned out that he had known my father,
Charles Greville (of the memoirs), and his brother Henry, Lord Granville,
and many other people whom I knew well. He was Monsieur Jean Tolstoy,
Postmaster-General, a member of the Cabinet, and a personal friend
of the Emperor. Our acquaintance did not end there; for he took many
opportunities of showing me civilities during the remainder of my stay in
Russia. It was a curious accident, for I do not suppose that there was
another Russian in the crowd who knew my father.
During the whole time that the supper lasted the Emperor kept walking
round the different tables, with a kindly word of welcome for many of
his guests, and anxious to see that all were well served. There was not
a speck of condescension about him; just the anxiety and care of a most
courteous host. The Emperor Alexander was certainly one of the greatest
gentlemen that I ever saw in any rank of life.
A figure of mark at these Court functions was the Prussian Ambassador,
Count Redern, who, with the help of his Countess and a very charming
daughter, himself kept one of the pleasantest and best mounted houses in
the town. His appointment to St. Petersburg was said to have been made
for a unique reason. He had been named to one of the smallest European
Courts. Now he possessed a service of silver plate of which he was
passing proud, and it seemed to him to be utterly incongruous that its
glory should be thrown away upon a very tiny Scandinavian capital. “Ich!
Mit meiner Vaisselle!” he is said to have exclaimed with indignation
when the appointment was notified to him. The objection was held to be
unanswerable, so he and his service of plate were sent to cast lustre
upon the capital of the Tsar. If, following upon Bismarck, he did not
seem to be diplomatically an eagle, he was, at any rate, a great social
success, and everybody liked him.
It seems as if I had no story to write but what relates to feasts and
splendour and the glory of the Emperor. I may have been monotonous. But
all this magnificence cannot forbid the door to sorrow. Even yet my
readers are like the Queen of Sheba, “the half was not told them.” But
in this great stately home of the Tsars there is a chamber of grief, a
corner which no man can penetrate without emotion; it is the reverse of a
brilliant medal.
One day I was taken by one of my friends about the Court to see the
apartment which was occupied by the Emperor Nicholas. It was the
eve of the anniversary of his death, just nine years ago. There was
no magnificence, no luxury here; nothing but Spartan simplicity—the
heroic simplicity of the man whom he took as his ideal, the Duke of
Wellington—just two shabby little rooms on the ground floor of the
Winter Palace, which elsewhere glittered with all the treasures of
fairyland; the outer room was furnished with a wardrobe and decorated
with a few drawings of fortifications. Here the mightiest ministers and
generals waited for their audiences, which were granted in the Emperor’s
sanctum—a room no bigger than the quarters of a subaltern in Chatham
Barracks, which served as bedroom, dressing-room and study all in one.
The furniture was to match; on the walls hung a few French prints, a
portrait or two, and some bad sketches of reviews and sham fights; at
the head of his bed the likeness of his beautiful and favourite daughter
Olga, in the uniform of the regiment which he gave her. Books were
represented by a collection of caricatures; a narrow camp bedstead, the
mattress as hard as stone; spread upon the bed the military cloak which
had served him—so it was said—for fifty years, a simple grey cloak with
a red collar, no better than that of a common soldier; his tunic was
out ready to put on, his casque and sword handy. His solitary brush and
comb, his toothbrush and shaving tackle, were ready for use—it was as
if the man who had died nine years ago had only left that morning and
was expected back in the evening. At one side of the room stood the
writing-table, with drawers on each side. Here he used to sit with his
ministers facing him, and I fancy that some of our acquaintances could
tell of awkward moments passed at that table. On it lay his notepaper,
inkstand, pens, and the almanack for 1855!
[Illustration: THE DEAD EMPEROR NICHOLAS I
_February 18th, 1855._]
Everything just as he left it—every single thing save one only—a small
and beautiful pencil drawing of his head as it lay in death upon the
pillow. Altogether a pathetic sight! and it all seemed so intimate, as if
the handsome, dead giant might at any moment come stalking into the room,
and resent the intrusion.
It was the fashion among Russians in 1864 to talk of Nicholas as a
tyrant before whom in his lifetime they crouched in terror, and of
Alexander’s accession to power as a release from bondage. No doubt in a
measure that was true. At the same time it is no less true that those
who knew him best loved him dearly. The fierceness of his will, no less
than his personal beauty and his charm, appealed. Where he chose he was
irresistible. He was one of those magnetic men whose power over the
hearts and affections of others is almost superhuman—there are men, one
or two in a century, who walk upon the earth as Gods to be worshipped.
One night there was a small dinner at Lord Napier’s, just the members of
the Embassy and one Russian guest, Admiral Greig, the descendant of one
of the many Scots who came over to Russia and took service there in the
eighteenth century. His old Scottish connection put him on terms of very
friendly intercourse with Lord Napier. That evening he told us the story
of how he had carried the news of the battle of the Alma to the Emperor
Nicholas.
Being soldier as well as sailor, General as well as Admiral, he had been
aide-de-camp to Prince Gortchakoff (the brother of the Vice-Chancellor),
who was commander-in-chief of the army in the Crimea. At the end of the
day of the 20th of September, after the battle of the Alma, the Prince
sent him to convey the intelligence of the disaster to the Tsar, with
orders to tell no one what had happened till his Majesty should have
received him. It was not a pleasant mission. He posted night and day
till he reached the railroad, and at every halt for change of horses the
people crowded round him, eager for news from the front; but he uttered
not a word. At last, after a long, weary journey he reached the Palace,
and was ushered into the Tsar’s presence. The Tsar, anticipating glorious
news from the war, sprang forward smiling to embrace him. The Admiral
started aside and put out both hands with the palms outward as though to
push back the Emperor, saying: “No, your Majesty! no! I bring bad news.”
The Emperor’s whole face changed. Nicholas gave him one of those steady
looks with which he knew how to petrify the man who displeased him;
deeply angered, he demanded to know the worst.
At this moment the Empress came in. That the heights of the Alma should
have been stormed in the face of the Russian army was something that the
Tsar would not, could not, believe. He strode about the room, furious;
but the Empress pacified him and gave him comfort. At last, when he
had collected himself, he dismissed the Admiral, telling him to keep
strict silence, and to tell no human being what had happened. Admiral
Greig very humbly pointed out that the aide-de-camp in waiting and other
gentlemen were outside the door and would at once ply him with questions.
“Tell them nothing,” said the Emperor. Here the Empress very quietly
interposed: “On the contrary, tell them everything. There is no use in
concealing the truth. I will be responsible.”
It was an evil moment for a soldier. He was sent back posthaste to the
Crimea in disgrace; but when he was badly wounded afterwards, the Tsar
was appeased and sent him a message to say that he “kissed his wound.” He
was forgiven.
The reign of the Emperor Nicholas had not been a happy one. Indeed,
during all his life he had been brought face to face with the dangers
and troubles by which the kingly office is surrounded. He was but five
years old when his father, the Emperor Paul, was murdered; on the rather
mysterious death at Taganrog of his brother, Alexander the First—who had
been ailing and had gone to the Crimea for a rest, but whose condition
had not given rise to alarm—his next brother, Constantine, having
previously renounced his claims, he was called to the throne in the last
month of 1825.
As his very first act he was forced to put down the revolution of the
Dekabrists, the Men of December, officers of the guards regiments and
others, the chief of whom was one Pestel, who, under the pretence of
putting Constantine on the throne, were plotting for the annihilation of
the Imperial autocracy and the granting of a constitution—perhaps they
had even wider views. The rising was quelled after feeding the gallows
and Siberia. The moment was critical, and Nicholas was not the man to
treat rebellion with rose-water. The reign ended, as it began, with a
tragedy. Men said that the Emperor died of a broken heart; when the army
which he loved was beaten, the ambition of a lifetime faded into thin
air, and the proud spirit was humbled in despair.
In the country where no historian was at that time allowed to write that
the Emperor Paul was murdered, but only that he died suddenly, it was
obvious that the death of Nicholas could not openly be discussed. But
there were whispers. It was said in secret by many men that the Emperor
did not die a natural death. There was a story of a certain German
physician who was ordered by the Tsar to give him a sure and painless
poison. The physician of course refused and left St. Petersburg. On
the following day it was given out that his Majesty was ailing; he had
contracted a chill. Worse bulletins followed. After a few days, it was
announced that he was dangerously ill; in a few more days that the end
had come. Heart failure. The last ukase had been issued.
A Russian gentleman whom I knew well told me that as a youngster he was
one of the pages of honour in waiting on the day when the death of the
Emperor was made known to the public. It was his duty that night to watch
with others over the dead Tsar. “Figurez-vous,” he said, “que quoique
nous fussions en Février[44] le corps sentait déjà mauvais.” Taken in
connection with the whisper to which I have alluded, this seemed to me
not without significance. The mystery will in all probability never be
cleared up; but at this distance of time there can be no indiscretion in
alluding to a story which was widely believed, though it was only uttered
in hushed tones and with bated breath.
In any case, for the death of the great Tsar England was largely
responsible. When he paid his famous visit to Queen Victoria in the
year 1844—a visit still commemorated at Newmarket by the Cesarewitch
handicap—English statesmen were made thoroughly aware of what was his
policy in the Eastern Question. He made no secret of it. His ambition was
to drive the Turk, the “Sick Man” of Sir Hamilton’s Seymour’s despatches,
out of Europe and to _occupy_ Constantinople, not, as he asserted, to
_take_ it. In that, no doubt, he was speaking honestly as regarded his
intentions at that time, for he was essentially a truthful man and, as he
liked to say, using the English word which he loved, “a gentleman.”
He had another and, to him, a still higher and more cherished object—the
freeing of the sacred places of Palestine from the hated presence of the
Moslem. That, with him, was the pious dream of a devotee who carried
religion almost to fanaticism. No Crusader was ever fired by a holier
ardour. That shrines of such awe-inspiring sanctity as the Holy Sepulchre
and Bethlehem should be under the domination of Islam; that disputes
among the priests of the Christian creeds in the Holy Land should be
subjected to the arbitration of some petty Turkish official, were to
this chivalrous son of his Church—to this Christian gentleman—horrors
too hideous for contemplation. To Lord Aberdeen, in these matters, he
fully opened his heart, and though Lord Aberdeen was careful to avoid
definitely committing himself to any “hypothetical engagement,” the
Tsar believed firmly that he was receiving nothing but encouragement.
So convinced was he on the subject that when Lord Aberdeen became Prime
Minister he thought in his happiness that the tocsin of the Turk had
sounded. But when the crucial time came, England failed him, and cast in
her lot with Louis Napoléon, to whom an alliance with Great Britain gave
a much-needed addition of prestige.
The “Sick Man” was once more bolstered up, and Nicholas, deceived as
he believed himself to be—at any rate foiled in his hopes and crushed
in his darling ambition—prostrated by the failure of the army whose
invincibility was with him a creed, saw nothing in front of him but what,
to his proud heart, seemed ruin and despair. Broken in spirit, the great
Tsar laid himself down to die. That was the tragedy of the little camp
bed.
* * * * *
Here is a wrinkle for the Criminal Investigation Department. Towards the
end of December, 1863 (Old Style) St. Petersburg was stirred by a crime
which touched all Russians to the quick. Murder and sacrilege. On the
opposite bank of the Neva stands the little wooden house of Peter the
Great, together with a boat built by his hands. To this is attached a
small church of great sanctity; indeed, even to me, a stranger belonging
to another school of faith, this humble shrine, for some mysterious
reason felt but not explained, even to myself, seemed more an object of
reverence than many a gorgeous place of worship decked out in all the
lavish trappings furnished by the orthodox, who never grudge the spending
of their treasure for the adornment of their temples. To this sacred
place the pious have been in the habit of bringing votive offerings,
reliquaries and jewels of great price.
When on the twenty-first of the month (Old Style) the church was broken
into and robbed, and the two guardians murdered, their skulls being
battered in, as it was thought, with iron or leaden weights, great indeed
was the consternation amongst the faithful from the highest to the
lowest. The Tsar himself went to visit the scene of the tragedy. To the
_mujik_, intensely religious, not to say superstitious, the effect was
stupefying. An ordinary murder leaves him calm and cold, and the death
of the watchers was an affair of small account. What mattered a _mujik_
or two more or less? The violation of the holy shrine was quite another
matter.
After long and painstaking inquiries, circumstantial evidence showed that
one Gudzevitch, a soldier, was the murderer. As to that there could be
no doubt. But the man’s confession was necessary, and this could not be
obtained. Not all the cunning of judge and lawyers, not all the pious
exhortations of the arch-priest, Polissador, of the Church of St. Peter
and St. Paul, who visited him several times a day, were able to extract
a word from him. He remained as hard as a flint, stiffly protesting his
innocence in the face of every proof. Of repentance not a hint. As the
_Journal de St. Pétersbourg_ put it, “There was nothing for it but to
proceed to extreme measures.” There was at that time in prison another
soldier named Baouschkin, belonging to the Kharkov regiment. It was
determined to shut this man up in the same cell with Gudzevitch in the
hope that he might be able to worm something out of him.
On the seventh (nineteenth) of January, Baouschkin made his report. He
declared that Gudzevitch asked him for what crime he was in prison, and
that, on hearing that it was for murder, theft and arson Gudzevitch tried
to induce him to confess that he was the murderer of the two watchmen at
Peter the Great’s house; he argued that, as he must suffer, it would put
him in no worse position, and what a kindness he would be doing!
By degrees, playing upon the wretched man’s hopes and fears, Baouschkin
obtained all the details—the instrument with which the murder was
committed (an axe, with the hammer end of which the men had been brained,
and not a heavy weight, as had been supposed) was found, together with a
box in which the stolen offertory had been contained, and the prisoner
was condemned to death. Penitent he was at the last, moved thereto by
the contemplation of the photograph of one of the murdered men which had
been placed in his cell, that the sight might haunt him into confession
and repentance. For civilians the death penalty was abolished, except
for high treason; for them flogging with rods and Siberia were the
punishment; but Gudzevitch, being a soldier, must die. The night of his
execution I met the officer who commanded the parade. He was shot, twelve
conical bullets riddling his body, and even so he was not dead; it was a
gruesome sight when the poor wretch fell and lifted himself slowly up—six
more bullets and he was dead.
The criminal procedure, if successful, struck me as peculiar. It had
something of the flavour of the Herodotean stories of the methods of
ancient kings.
I do not believe that there was more crime in St. Petersburg fifty years
ago than in any other city. The _mujik_ is good-natured, easy-going,
rather dull and childish, and his tastes are distinctly bacchanalian.
But one could not fancy so simple a creature vicious or criminal. In old
days there were frequently, if reports be true, murders of a peculiarly
ugly kind. In the dark winter nights robbers used to infest the frozen
river, waylaying the unwary footpad who ventured across alone. A stunning
blow on the head was quickly given, and a hole in the ice was ready to
receive a victim, stripped of his clothes and valuables; the body would
be carried down the river under the ice, past Kronstadt, into the Baltic,
and all trace of the crime would be lost for ever.
In my time the river was well policed, and the brilliant lighting not
only shed over the city the joy of beauty, but gave safety in place
of danger. But stories used still to be told of a certain wicked old
watchman (_Budotchnik_) who, posted near the Blue Bridge, was supposed
to have sent out to sea in this way upwards of thirty of the very people
over whose lives and property it was his duty to keep guard. _Quis
custodiet custodes!_
Since man has fallen, wickedness there must be in all nations. Satan is
ubiquitous. But in Russia the doctrines of the Faith are so infused into
the blood of the people that even the criminals are religious—at any rate
so far as the outer observances are concerned. It is said that a Russian
thief will cross himself with one hand while he picks your pocket with
the other, and I have no doubt that even that murderous old Budotchnik
would have sacrificed his own life rather than take down the _ikon_, the
sacred image of his patron saint, from its place of honour in the corner
of his room.
The piety of the people is very real, very sincere. Of that there can be
no doubt; the greatest proof lies in the spirit of self-sacrifice and in
the submission to privations which are serious and often injurious to
health. Take the great festivals of their Church. Christmas Day, Easter
and the feast of the Trinity are observed in all Christian lands, but
the fourth holy day, the day of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin,
is, so far as I know, mostly passed over with inattention. Here it is
different. So sacred is the occasion that no man who can possibly help it
will do a turn of work, indeed, there is a popular saying that “even the
birds rest from building their nests on that day.” The very _isvostchik_
(cabman) deserts the streets, unless it be for bread’s sake—the children
must be fed, coin is scarce and food dear.
Lent, above all, is a sore trial to these poor people, but they bear it
cheerfully. During those six cruel weeks they taste nothing but the poor
and sordid food which is all that the Church allows them—an ugly soup
made up of dried toad-stools, collected in summer and sold by the string,
onions, pickled cucumbers, coarse cabbage, dry radishes, horse-radish and
black bread; these ingredients are mixed up with an evil-smelling black
oil made from hemp. The untempting mess of pottage is washed down by
draughts of cheap _kvass_, a poor sort of beer brewed of rye and a little
malt—a drink scarcely less nasty then the food. Upon this scanty diet the
_mujik_ grows thin, but he tightens his belt and goes about his work,
kept in heart by visions of drunken happiness as soon as the last stroke
of twelve on Easter Eve shall have rung the knell of his misery.
During one whole week of Lent every man gives himself up entirely to his
devotions. At four in the morning he goes fasting to his church. There
he stays without bite or sup until noon, when he leaves, and breaks his
long fast with a dish of the revolting food which I have described. At
four, if he can manage it, he returns to his prayers, which last till
six, and yet not satisfied, he must again go to church in the evening.
Whatever may be the motive power of all this devotion and abnegation—be
it superstition or be it religion—it is quite impossible not to respect
it, for it is as honest as truth itself.
His religion, his country, and the Tsar. Those, fifty years ago, were the
three sacred objects of the Russian’s worship, and their influence was
so interwoven that it would be difficult to say which should be placed
first. In no people could the feeling of nationality be more strongly
developed; it was fed by a feeling of proprietorship absolutely unique.
Every man, however humble his position in the world might be, conceived
himself as having a share in the soil equal to that of the richest: it
was a relic of the old nomad habits of the Aryan people, who wandered
over Europe from the Pamirs: where they pitched their tent, there they
were free to dwell, and from the ground which they tilled theirs was the
harvest.
With the march of time the custom had long since faded away, but the
idea, handed down by the remote ancestors, was still dimly alive in their
posterity, and it was, moreover, a flicker which the recent emancipation
of the serfs had in a measure rekindled. The Russian loves his country
as something peculiarly his own, and he loves it, moreover, believing it
to be the home of God and of the true religion. There is a country adage
which says, “Our kingdom is invincible for God is in the midst of it.”
It must not be supposed that this high and patriotic feeling is confined
to the peasants. The mighty in the land are just as ardent in this
passionate devotion to the fatherland as their humbler fellow-countrymen,
nor are they less strict in their religious observances.
A very false impression is created abroad by a certain class of Russians
who haunt the boulevards and any places where dissipation and gambling
are fast and furious—only going home from time to time to collect more
roubles to throw into the swine-yards of Europe. These are the men who
cast a cloud upon their country and tarnish the good name of their
fellows. So strong is the inborn love of home among the Slavonic races
that it is a hard matter to persuade the _mujik_ to emigrate: and this is
no misfortune, for in Russia the population has never been adequate to
the vast area of its territory or to the wants of the country.
Emigration, as we understand it—this is to say, forming an establishment
and founding a family in some new land for prosperity’s sake—must be an
idea utterly foreign to the Russian character, which has been moulded
for centuries in the idea that only one home is possible.
There is one form of superstition which the Russians share with the
ancient Greeks. They delight in euphemisms and altogether object to the
use of unlucky words. Brutally to announce the death even of a dog, a
horse, a cow, or some favourite animal would be intolerable. The awkward
corner is turned by a pretty phrase: “Sir, your dog bids you live a long
life”—that is the orthodox announcement.
The strangest of all was told me by Prince Vassiltchikoff, an
aide-de-camp attached to the War Office. He had been sent to Siberia on
a special mission to report upon the prisons in that land of woe. Among
other criminals he came upon a handsome woman, evidently of a superior
class. Struck by her appearance, he asked her why she was there. Without
hesitation the woman answered: “I made the sign of the cross upon my
father.” She had murdered him! It appeared that her father had illtreated
her child; mad with rage, she stabbed him in the back. She expressed
neither sorrow nor repentance for what she had done, and to all further
questions her only answer was: “I have done wrong and I suffer for it—the
rest is with myself.” Could Æschylus himself have put more poignantly
tragic words into that unhappy daughter’s mouth? What a saying to express
parricide! “I made the sign of the cross upon him.”
Duels in Russia were very rare; all the more did they create a sensation
when they did occur. There was a double duel which took place while I
was there and which was much talked about. A young Polish officer of the
Grodno Hussar regiment insulted two Russian officers. I never heard the
rights of the story or what was the occasion of the quarrel. At any rate,
the Pole had to fight both the men whom he had affronted. In the first
duel, possibly from nervous excitement, he fired before the seconds gave
the signal and broke his adversary’s leg. The second duel took place the
next day, and this time it was _à la barrière_. The Pole immediately
on the signal to advance being given fired in the air. His adversary
let him come forward to the extreme limit allowed by the agreement—five
paces—took deliberate aim and shot him in the head; he died a few hours
afterwards. The officer who killed him was a rich man of good family, but
none the less we were told that he would be broken, reduced to the ranks,
and have to serve as a common soldier.
Duelling was strictly forbidden both by military and civil law. I
suppose it is a crime, but none the less it does seem to me that there
are certain cases in which it is a safeguard to society and more than
permissible. The absurd journalistic duels of which we hear so much on
the Continent are quite another matter.
The most famous duel in the history of Russian society was that in which
the great poet Puschkin lost his life in the winter of 1837. The story is
a curious one.
The poet had a very beautiful wife, whom he married at Moscow in 1831. He
was very much in love with her, and proportionately jealous, especially
of the attentions paid to her by an _attaché_ of the Dutch Legation, a
certain Monsieur Dantès-Heckeren. Puschkin, who suspected his wife of
being too much inclined to listen to this gentleman’s blandishments,
was infuriated. Coming home one evening, he found the Dutchman as usual
sitting at tea with his wife; as it was the fashion to pay visits after
dinner, there was nothing to take umbrage at in that. Puschkin made no
remark, but presently he turned out the lamp, throwing the room into
darkness, and going to the fireplace, smeared some soot on his mouth,
kissed his wife and went out of the room to get a fresh light. When he
came back he found, as he expected, not only his wife’s lips but the
Dutchman’s black with soot. Denial and excuses were out of the question,
and Puschkin kicked the man out of the house. The next day they fought,
and the poet received a mortal wound. He only lived three days and died
in torture; he was but thirty-eight years old. The man who killed him
married his widow. So much for the inexorable justice of the ordeal by
battle.
Puschkin was the glory of Russian poetry. His was a chequered career, for
he lived in a chronic state of being banished for treason and forgiven;
he was the chartered libertine of politics, and a very signal example of
the generosity of the Emperor Nicholas. Over and over again his violent
principles, or no principles, brought him into disgrace; over and over
again the Tsar forgave. The Tsar, meeting him one foggy day in the
street, recognized him, and bade him, since he was a poet, to improvise
something. With consummate audacity, pointing to a street lamp, he at
once spouted this quatrain:
In the place of that lamp
Which shines in the gloomy weather,
I’d hang the head of the Tsar
And shout out Freedom![45]
In spite of his many escapades he died in high favour with the generous
Tsar, who made him _Gentilhomme de la Chambre_ and gave him twenty
thousand roubles towards publishing his last poem. And yet there were
people who spoke of Nicholas as a cruel, unforgiving tyrant! I think that
if I were a Russian, I should be at least as proud of the memory of the
Emperor Nicholas as of that of the poet Puschkin. He was indeed a great
“gentleman.”
The emancipation of the serfs in the month of March, 1861, was the
greatest act of Alexander the Second’s life. Whether looked at from
the point of view of its intrinsic difficulties, or from that of its
consequences, it was one of the broadest social reforms ever undertaken
by any monarch. There are perhaps few people in this country who
understand what serfdom really meant; it is usually thought that the
serfs were all of them poor, ignorant peasants, leading squalid and
hungry lives in the tillage of the lands of their owners. In the vast
majority of cases this, no doubt, was so, but there were many exceptions.
There were not a few of these men who possessed better natural gifts
than the rest, had more or less contrived to educate themselves, and had
been allowed to push their fortunes in various capacities as tradesmen,
domestic servants, etc., in the great towns. One man of whom I was told
on undoubted authority throve in his trade and became the fashionable
hatter of Moscow. None the less, he was a slave—the property, the
chattel, of a certain landlord, to whom a portion of his profits was
yearly due.
[Illustration: THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER II., 1864.
_From a sketch by Zichy._]
That such a state of things should endure through more than the half
of the nineteenth century is at this time unthinkable, yet it was
so; and perhaps it would be necessary to have lived in Russia in the
pre-liberation days in order to realize how little public opinion was
shocked thereby. It is only fair to say that, in spite of the strong
opposition which inevitably meets a great social upheaval, the Tsar
was loyally helped by the more enlightened members of the aristocracy,
men who were ready to do what they knew to be right, even though their
properties were seriously affected. He was, moreover, ably seconded by
his Minister of the Interior, Monsieur Valouieff, to whom must be given
the credit of initiating all those measures of reform which were rendered
necessary by the great change—especially the creation of the Semstvos,
elective bodies something like our county councils, to which was
delegated the management of local affairs. The nobles who so generously
accepted what was a great sacrifice were rewarded by the Tsar with a
special commemorative decoration.
On the anniversary of his accession to the throne, February 18 (March
2), 1864, the Emperor published an ukase extending the liberation of
the serfs to Poland. The measure provided for the handing over to
the peasants in fee simple the land which up to that time they had
cultivated on behalf of their lords. The scheme was in all respects
save one the same as that which had been propounded by the so-called
National Government; but whereas the latter had proposed to indemnify
the proprietor from the general revenues of the country, the Russian
Government undertook to buy the land at sixteen and two-thirds years’
purchase, and to recoup themselves by special taxation. The landlord
was to retain his own domain, always the most fertile part of the
property—corresponding to a sort of home farm on a gigantic scale, with
its houses, farm buildings, etc. The Polish landlords were, of course,
furious and declared that they would all be ruined. There were in rough
numbers some five thousand principal owners, and there were in addition
thirty Russian _majorats_ (properties entailed upon the eldest son)
which were equally concerned in the change. One of the representatives
of the latter properties said to me cynically: “Nous sommes tous ruinés.
Eh bien! tant mieux, puisqu’il y aura plus de cinq mille de ces sacrés
Polonais qui le seront bien plus que nous.” These Russian _majorats_ were
the rewards of services rendered against the Poles.
One main principle which the Government had in view was to reward those
peasants who did not join in the insurrection, at the expense of the
landlords and the middle-class who were its heart and soul. The Polish
peasant looked upon the landlord as his natural enemy—a tyrant of whom to
be rid would be Paradise. He therefore was entirely pro-Russian, though
he might not dare to declare himself. Keeping in mind this spirit, there
were not lacking pessimists who declared that so soon as the ex-serf
should find himself his own master, with nothing over him but the Russian
Government, his views would be altered. With rebellion born in his blood,
he would join the other camp, and be as bitter in enmity as he had been
warm in a friendship which for him spelt hope. In time the benefactor
would degenerate into the tax-gatherer, and the metamorphosis would be
hateful and of ill omen.
The measure was framed upon a report by General Miliutin, who was sent
on a special mission to gather information upon the spot; and the
pamphleteering defence of the plan was entrusted to that very able penman
and special pleader, M. Katakazy, to whom I have already alluded as the
writer of Prince Gortchakoff’s three answers to Lord Russell. His work on
this occasion was a masterpiece both in what it said and in what it held
back.
However people might carp and cavil at a piece of legislation which was
distasteful to them, there can be no doubt that there was joy in the poor
hovels of Poland. Still there were many shoals ahead needing a skilful
pilot. It was easy enough to decree the broad principle of the ukase,
but the working out of the details was quite another matter. Neither
the Emperor nor his ministers had the power of creating light out of
darkness. There were many difficulties to be mastered, many riddles to be
solved, taxing the acutest ingenuity of the Russian statesmen. Three of
the chief of the puzzles were the right of succession, the power of the
peasant to sell his land, and the eternal labour question.
As regarded the right of succession, the Government professed to attach
great importance to the principle of large peasant holdings, but inasmuch
as Poland was under the law of the Code Napoléon, it was obvious that at
the death of a man with a family his property must be divided, and by
degrees the holdings must become infinitesimally small. Crux No. 2.—If
the peasant were allowed to sell or mortgage his land, the Jew usurer
would soon be the owner of half Poland. Crux No. 3.—Where was labour to
be found for the land left in the hands of the proprietors—as I have said
before, the richest portion of the cultivated area? The freed peasant
would have his hands full with the management of his own holding, and the
class who formerly cultivated no land on their own account, and therefore
did not come under the scope of the new law, would not suffice to till
the domains of the nobles. Each of these three puzzles itself bristled
with minor perplexities and embarrassments enough to break the heads of
General Miliutin and his crew of experts.
A compensation at the rate of sixteen and two-thirds years’ purchase may
seem to us very inadequate. But the conditions of land in Poland were not
what they are in France or in England. It is needful to remember the vast
tracts of land lying far away from all communication, the scarcity of
labour, the difficulty of transport, the expense of exporting produce and
importing agricultural implements and other necessaries, and then it will
be plain that the value of land in Russia and in Poland did not stand in
the same relation to money as it did in England, France or Belgium. I
feel sure that, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, the
ukase was an honest attempt to benefit the peasant on the one hand, and
fairly to recoup the landed proprietor on the other.
On the 17th of April a deputation of seventy-three Polish peasants from
the government of Warsaw and Radom arrived in St. Petersburg to convey to
the Emperor the thanks of the agricultural labourers in Poland for the
benefits conferred upon them by the decree. The authorities made a great
fuss with them; they were lionized over the town in great cross-seated
brakes, and it was good to see their happiness and their unconcealed
wonder at all the great sights of St. Petersburg. Most of them had
probably never been outside the circuit of their own lonely villages.
They created a great sensation, some dressed in Polish costume, but
all wearing the square national cap—wild-looking fellows enough, but
obviously quite tame and trustworthy, for only ten policemen were told
off to look after them. The crowning point of their joy was reached when
the Tsar received them in person, and gave them a dinner at the Winter
Palace. What fairy tales they would have to tell when they should arrive
at their farms and cottages hidden among the desolate swamps and forests
of Poland!
The outing lasted for several days, and on the 23rd I went with Lord
Napier to the banquet given to the deputation and to an equal number of
specially selected Russian peasants from the district round the capital,
who were told off to entertain the strangers and do the honours of the
city. As they did not understand one word of one another’s language,
their comradeship must have lacked gaiety. But the meeting symbolized the
union of the two nations, and in spite of the dearth of conversation, it
made a good appearance of fraternization, and that was held to be much.
The banquet took place in the Gorodskaia Duma, a sort of extraordinarily
shabby town hall, something like a second-class waiting-room at a railway
station. However, the frame was a secondary consideration so long as the
picture was all right.
Presently there was a great stir outside and we were told that the
Emperor was arriving. On hearing this joyful news, an enthusiastic Pole
near me spat freely into his hands and proceeded to plaster down his hair
and wash his face like a cat. _Un petit bout de toilette!_ as Wigan, the
great actor, used to say in _The First Night_.
The loyal joy with which the Emperor was received was very touching. As
usual, he played his part most nobly, was very gracious and kingly, and
as he walked round the hall had a smile and a kind word for almost every
one of the men. When he had finished his round one of the men shouted in
a stentorian voice: “Let us drink to the Tsar.” This raised a thunder of
applause and cheering, after which the Emperor, standing in the midst
of the hall, was served with a glass of wine and said: “I drink to the
indissoluble union of the two nations!” This, of course, was received
with yells of joy, the men cheering like Eton boys on the Fourth of June.
The Grand Duke Constantine was with the Tsar, and as he had recently
returned from governing Poland, he was recognized and received a special
ovation, upon which the Emperor drank to him and kissed him—he was his
favourite brother, to whom he was deeply attached; the Grand Duke kissed
him in return on the left breast—a pretty token of love and duty.
The Poles looked very picturesque and quaint in their national costume,
but it was impossible not to be struck by the far finer appearance of
their Russian compeers (of course both parties were made up more or less
of picked men). Then the Russians wore beards, which so well befit the
kaftan and northern dress, besides covering a multitude of sins against
beauty, while the Poles were shaven, showing all their imperfections
of feature. I was well pleased to have the opportunity of seeing this
historic banquet. Lord Napier was the only foreigner invited, and I went
in attendance upon him.
The Emperor’s staff were always worthy of his own imposing appearance.
The Imperial family who surrounded him were all men of great stature
and good carriage, while old Prince Suvoroff, Monsieur Valouieff,
the Minister of the Interior, and many of the general officers and
aides-de-camp were fine, strikingly tall men. It was a goodly company of
Anakim. Monsieur Valouieff, although in civilian dress, was so handsome a
figure as to be always conspicuous, even among the brilliantly accoutred
warriors; perhaps, like Lord Castlereagh at Vienna, he was only the more
distinguished!
It seemed a pity that in so beautiful a city, where there is a wealth
of magnificent buildings, there should have been no worthier place for
a really memorable feast than this mean semblance of a town hall, which
certainly did not beseem the occasion.
* * * * *
Well may the Russians call the sennight that goes before Lent “the mad
week.” Another name for it is _maslianitza_, or “butter week,” but I
prefer the first, for indeed Bedlam is let loose and plays the wildest
pranks, and no one can say that the _mujik_ takes his pleasures sadly.
At the beginning of the week my coachman came to me and, according to
treaty, asked leave to go and get drunk. These coachmen are really great
characters. They are out in all weather, and never grumble at being
kept waiting for hours when the mercury in the thermometer has almost
fallen out of sight. They show no signs of boredom or weariness. My man,
Mikhail, for want of better company would conjure away the tedium by
talking out loud to himself. I sometimes watched him out of my window
enjoying his own conversation, shaking his head, cracking jokes and
laughing his heart out at them, or telling himself some tear-compelling
tale of woe. He was the ugliest man in the town and as true as steel—on
one condition: every now and then he must get drunk; so we entered into a
solemn compact which he never broke.
He would come to me from time to time, perhaps twice in a month, and say
that it was long since he had been happy—would my Excellency be pleased
to name a day when it would be convenient for him to be absent—_anglice_,
“get drunk.” I would look at my engagement book and see what I had to do.
Monday, the French Embassy—Tuesday, a big ball—Wednesday, a ceremony at
Court—should we say Thursday? “Slava Bogu” (“Glory be to God”), he would
answer, “it shall be Thursday with your Excellency’s forgiveness.” On the
Friday he would reappear with clockwork punctuality—a little pale and
rather heavy-lidded, but perfectly cheerful. Without such an arrangement
one was never safe. I had to dismiss four coachmen before I found this
one, who was a treasure, and never played me false. The bargain was part
of a system before which all foreigners, at any rate, had to bow lest
worse befall them.
To see the saturnalia of the week at their maddest one had to go to the
great Admiralty Place, the huge area of which was entirely taken up
by booths, circuses, giants and dwarfs, cheap pantomimes and ballets,
boneless contortionists and the inevitable Hercules of the Fair, with
his weights and clubs. There was one very droll and quite national
exhibition consisting of a representation of the creation of the world
from chaos to the fall of man, in which the marionettes, worked by
springs into all sorts of comicalities, were the actors. Of course
there were ice-mountains for tobogganing, but by far the most popular
entertainments were the merry-go-rounds, which swarmed, filling every
vacant place and making the days and nights hideous with the braying of
discordant brass bands. But the noise and the riot were a pure delight
to man, woman and child, whose shrieks of joy added pepper and salt to
the great charivari. All the riff-raff of the town was gathered together,
those happy ones who had a few kopecks rushing eagerly to spend them; the
unfortunates who could not muster a copper quite as keen, some standing
for hours knee-deep in the melting snow—for it was a dirty thaw—peering
into the chinks between the boards of the theatres to try and get a
peep at the glories within; others encouraging the patrons of the
ice-mountains and wooden horses with approving shouts and wild applause.
Making their way slowly, tortuously and with much splashing of icy slush
through the seething crowd, were carriages full of middle-class folk who
had come to see “all the fun of the fair,” while numbers of policemen,
mounted and on foot, bawling and swearing at nothing, and for nothing,
added to the din of the inferno.
Here was indeed King Carnival supreme in state. But all this was but the
prelude; the crowning glory of the festival was yet to come. For what is
joy without _vodka_, and what is _vodka_ unless it be drunk in sufficient
quantities to drown memory and consciousness? The _mujik_ would probably
endorse the five classical reasons for drinking—1. The advent of a
friend. 2. You are thirsty. 3. You may be thirsty some time hence. 4. The
good quality of the liquor. 5. Any other reason!
I am reminded as I write these lines that in a few days the mad week of
1915 will take place, and there will be no _vodka_! What will happen?
What will my poor Mikhail do if he be yet alive?
And we! How were we spending the mad week, while the proletariat were
playing high jinks on the Admiralty Place? The great folk were in what
Shakespeare calls “holiday humour,” no less than the small, and they too
were bent on making the most of the last merriment that the Church would
allow till the long spell of Lenten sadness should be past; and this they
achieved by turning day into night. By one o’clock in the afternoon we
had to array ourselves in evening dress to go and eat _blinni_ at one or
another of our kind friends’ hospitable houses. _Blinni_ are a sort of
scone, a cross between a pancake and a crumpet, eaten with fresh butter
and caviare, a very tempting form of food. After feasting upon _blinni_
comes dancing, generally a regular ball, with cotillon and mazurka
complete. Then dressing for dinner, two or three parties and at least one
ball. All business at a standstill, nothing but pleasure, more pleasure
and yet again pleasure. By the end of the week the world seemed a little
limp, and I think we all realized that “surfeit is the father of much
fast.”[46]
It was not very often that the men of letters made an appearance in the
society of St. Petersburg. I was all the more interested when one evening
Lord Napier invited a few of them to dinner at the Embassy; amongst them
was Turgenieff, the famous author—a tall, strikingly handsome man with
grey hair—altogether a commanding figure. I was much disappointed at not
being able to hear him talk, but I was placed a long way from him, and as
he left immediately after dinner, I had no opportunity of speaking with
him. I sat next to M. Novikoff, an official of high position, who was
very communicative.
The conversation round us turned upon the colonizing policy of the old
Romans, with whom M. Novikoff found great fault, saying how foolish it
was of them to punish as a crime any attempt on the part of the conquered
tribes to regain their liberty. Such attempts, according to him, might
be treated as acts of war, but not visited with the severity merited by
treason. I could not help hinting to M. Novikoff that the policy which
he so strongly condemned in the Romans was something uncommonly like, or
even identical with, that of Russia in Poland. M. Novikoff became very
much confused and changed the subject to that of the liberation of the
serfs. In this connection he talked of M. Valouieff, the responsible
minister, in terms of contempt, which quite took me by surprise. I
ventured to ask whether M. Valouieff was not held to be a man of great
talent. His answer was characteristic: “Mon Dieu, oui! puisque l’Empereur
l’a voulu.”
The chronicling of the small beer of parties is but poor stuff; and yet
there was one party which to me meant very strong ale indeed, and so
I am fain to write of it even after fifty years. One evening M. Jean
Tolstoy sent out about thirty invitations for a very small gathering,
myself among the number, to meet the Tsar, and listen to music. As the
Emperor was expected, I of course retired into the background, deeming
that he would only wish to speak to the _gros bonnets_; however, when M.
Tolstoy led him into the room he gave a look round, and seeing me, to the
amazement, not to say petrifaction, of the mighty, he came striding up to
me, shook hands and began talking in Russian, saying that he heard that I
was learning his language. I bowed—and he went on speaking.
[Illustration: THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER II. AT CLOSE QUARTERS WITH A BEAR
(_February, 1864_).
_From a sketch by Zichy._]
For a few minutes we conversed in Russian, and then, after paying me
many compliments, to my relief he changed to French. He asked me a great
many questions in connection with my new study—did I not find it very
difficult? What language did I think it most resembled? I told him that
I thought there was similarity with none so far as I knew, except as
regarded Aryan roots, but that there were more grammatical analogies
with Greek than with any other language of which I had any knowledge.
He agreed, and that led him to speak of Latin, reminding me of what I
had said to him at my presentation about the public orator’s speech at
Oxford, at whose expense he once more laughed heartily. He spoke for some
little time about life at the University and the beauty of Oxford, which
seemed to have interested him greatly, and after a very pleasant talk,
went on to speak to some of the other guests. Any mark of the Emperor’s
condescension was sure to make a great sensation at St. Petersburg, and
for twenty-four hours I was quite a hero. “On dit que l’Empereur a causé
avec vous en Russe—vous devez en être joliment fier!” That was the gist
of what everyone whom I met the next day said to me. I should have been
even less or more than human if I had not felt flattered and proud.
One evening Lady Napier, who had rather broken down after the trials of
the winter and was soon going to Germany for a rest and change, invited a
few of the diplomats and other friends to a small farewell rout. Belloli,
the painter, had just sent home a portrait of her which was much praised.
General Cassius Clay, after looking at it thoughtfully for a few moments
and then at her, said: “I guess, Ma’am, you was ruddier when that was
done.” Our much-loved ambassadress certainly was looking a little pale,
and tired; but the good General probably never heard the old saying,
“Toute vérité n’est pas bonne à dire.” The Duc d’Osuna was even more
droll. His criticism of the portrait was: “Oui, c’est zoli—c’est même
très bien; mais le portrait qu’il a fait de moi est bien plus zoli!” He
was such a dear little man, and so kindly, that one loved him just as he
was with his weaknesses and small vanities, which hurt nobody; everyone
laughed, and nobody would have wished him otherwise.
At Prince Gortchakoff’s on the 18th we heard the news of the storming
and capture of Düppel. The Prince’s remark to the Prussian _chargé
d’affaires_ on getting the telegram was, “J’espère enfin que c’est la
paix!” He did not seem to think that the united forces of Austria and
Prussia combined had much to boast of in having beaten unassisted Denmark.
Baron Plessen, the Danish Minister at St. Petersburg, was a man of great
ability, calm, just and moderate in his views. One day he talked to me
for a long time about the war and the causes which led to it. The pith of
his remarks is worth transcribing. “If France and England had been able
to agree upon this affair the war might have been prevented. Russia would
not have remained idle, and it is known to which side her sympathies
lean. But France and England could not agree. Meanwhile England has been
perpetually making apparent advances towards action which have encouraged
the Danes to prolong their obstinate resistance. The Danes at Copenhagen
see matters far differently from us, who, calmly and at a distance, can
weigh the truth of reports and judge of the exact bearing of protests and
propositions. At Copenhagen the public mind is so inflamed that a mere
piece of newspaper tittle-tattle is enough to convince men that England
and France will actually send a fleet to the Baltic, and this it is which
caused the Danes so stubbornly to refuse an armistice which would have
saved Düppel and spared thousands of lives. But with the best intentions,
England has been a bad friend to Denmark, for she has raised expectations
which she could not realize. Even if she had determined upon helping
Denmark, she could not have spared an adequate land force.
“As for Sweden, she promised her twenty thousand men and did not send
them; but if she had performed her promises, the Germans would have
called in forty thousand troops, and she would have been of no use.
Besides, it must be admitted that the dismemberment of Denmark would
never be really displeasing to Sweden, who has always had an eye upon
the islands.... England has throughout treated Germany with too little
respect—she thought that she had only to speak to be obeyed. But the
Germans are strong, and too proud to bear dictation.”
Obviously Baron Plessen disapproved of the action of his Government in
“prolonging their obstinate resistance” at the bidding of the Copenhagen
mob, whom they feared; and much as I admired the gallant defence of
Düppel, I could not help sharing his view. But the important point for
us in what he said lay in his remarks about the fast-and-loose policy
for which Lord Russell was responsible, and the wavering encouragement
without which the Danes might “have saved Düppel and spared thousands
of lives.” That unstable swinging of the pendulum was a blame which no
special pleading could remove. And what it cost! And what it is costing
now, fifty-one years later!
April 22nd (10th).—Until this morning there was no sign of the breaking
up of the Neva. The weather for some days had been beautiful, the nights
lovely, and nowhere can the entrancing splendour of moonlight and
starlight be seen to greater advantage than in this city of gold and
silver spires. How poor Whistler would have revelled in it! One night, in
addition to the usual glories of the darkness, there was a perfect lunar
rainbow bent by the fairies over the Isaac’s Cathedral. But of spring no
faintest message. All at once my servant came running in with the news
that the river was moving. I hurried out to the embankment, and found all
the world and his wife there, watching the welcome wonder. It seemed as
if no one could stay at home and miss the great sight of the year.
For many days the ice of the solid river had been quite black, but
now it had turned white again, and was slowly, almost imperceptibly,
drifting seaward. Gradually yawning clefts showed themselves and the
huge mass was split into great blocks. Then the rush of the river began
in earnest; deserted hayboats, looking picturesquely gloomy against the
dazzling ice and sky, came floating down the stream, to be dashed into
a thousand splinters against the permanent bridges. A few unhappy dogs
which had been unwarily disporting themselves upon the river while it
was yet unbroken were unable to make their escape, and were carried away
to the Baltic on the iceblocks, howling piteously. It was impossible to
leave the crowded quay while the sight lasted, and at night the effect
was even more fascinating; the moonlit steeples and towers, reflected a
myriad-fold on the facets of the ice, made the strange beauty of a scene
which, even upon the Russians, does not pall.
The following morning at a little before ten o’clock the thunder peals
from the guns of the fortress announced that the ceremony of crossing the
water had begun. Every year, as soon as the river is free of the danger
of the larger masses of what are miniature icebergs, the Commandant of
the Fortress is rowed over in state to the Winter Palace to carry to the
Emperor a goblet of Neva water. His Majesty in return fills the cup with
gold pieces—a perquisite of the Commandant. These cunning officers used
to take care to procure the largest vessel that could be found, until at
last the abuse was stopped and a fixed measure adopted for the ceremony.
No boat may cross the river before the Commandant, but he is followed
by quite a little fleet of river craft manned by _mujiks_ in their
different-coloured shirts, on a bright morning a picturesquely quaint
sight. Salvos of artillery; curiously-shaped and many-coloured boats;
guards presenting arms; the rays of the sun turning the ice-blocks into
gigantic opals; the crowds watching on the quays; the golden steeples all
ablaze with light; drums rattling and trumpets blaring; flags flying from
every window! After this fashion Russia celebrates the funeral rites of
the winter, the baptism of the spring.
* * * * *
When the Almighty first set his bow in the cloud it was not more welcome
than the arrival of Palm Sunday to the starving Russian. It does not
make an end of the sorrows of Lent, but it comes laden with hope: the
austere and hungry days are numbered, and the beginning of a series of
sublime ceremonials brings with it the buds of a new joy which will burst
into life with the dawn of the paschal feast.
Very solemn are the observances of the Holy Week in the Greek Church. The
liturgies are grand, imposing, soul-stirring; their music so compelling
and emotional that they bring home to one the strength of Tolstoy’s great
saying, “Le sentiment religieux est après tout indispensable.”
As a race, judging by the way in which we face our religion, we Britons
are, I suppose, an unemotional people. With us ritual is a question of
the individual; to one man a stimulus, to his neighbour a horror. In
Russia, on the contrary, it seems to be a national necessity, satisfying
an endemic craving; to the lower orders, indeed, the be-all and end-all
of religion: not, as I think I have already shown, a religion necessarily
acting as a high moral force or even as a deterrent, but in some mystic
way a spiritual comfort in the present, as it is in the future the
promise of the wiping out of all crime and salvation by virtue of the
great Sacrifice. For the Slav the call to the soul must be through the
imagination, and that is where the imagery of the Greek Church triumphs.
A highly symbolical ritual is of the very essence of the orthodox faith,
and since ritual there must be, where could you find it more reverent,
more devotional, more suggestive of the Divine Mystery, than in the
services of these last days of Lent? The music breathes tragedy; the
swelling voices of the choristers rise from the lowest depth of sorrow to
the sublimest heights of ecstatic adoration; the canticles and antiphons
are so entirely one with the rites of the Passion that I imagined that
this heaven-born music must be as old as the liturgies themselves,
foreshadowing Wagner’s theory of the twin-birth of music and poetry. But
that is not so. I was informed that it is no older than the eighteenth
century. Could it, I wonder, have been based upon some much more ancient
model? It is difficult to conceive these services without the solemn
chanting of the priests which is of their very essence.
Palm Sunday Eve is one of the holiest of the anniversaries observed
by the Greek Church; none is more pregnant with symbolism. Prince
Gortchakoff, always kind, invited me to attend the evening service in his
chapel. It was a singularly impressive ceremonial, not, of course, so
steeped in tragic emotion as those which would follow later in the week,
for symbolically we were celebrating a joy, not a death—the triumphant
procession when the people shouted, Hosanna to the Son of David,
welcoming with loud acclaim the entry of their King into His capital,
“coming in the name of the Lord.”
The first striking feature of the holy rite was the bringing in of a
small table upon which were set out vessels containing oil, wine, grain
and five loaves typifying the five barley loaves with which the Saviour
fed the five thousand in the desert place near Bethsaida. Very reverently
these were blessed by the priest, who at the same time offered up a
prayer to God that oil and wine and grain might not fail His people
during the ensuing year.
The great moment was when the palm branches were produced, carried in a
huge pot to be blessed, sprinkled with holy water, and incensed with the
fumes of consecrated spices and gums. To each of the congregation a taper
was given by an attendant, and one of the newly-blessed palm branches was
handed by the officiating priest to each of us. The priest then entered
the Holy of Holies, _Sviataia Sviatuich_, by the Doors of the Lord, and
we symbolically followed the Son of David on his royal progress. The
Gospel was read, the blessing delivered, and the service, which had
lasted two hours, during which we remained standing, was at an end.
None but a consecrated priest may cross the threshold of the Doors of
the Lord or enter the _Sviataia Sviatuich_. The crazy Emperor Paul once
received a just rebuke from the Metropolitan for wishing to break this
law. The Emperor stands much in the same relation to the Orthodox Church
in Russia as the King of England does to our Church. He is the Head,
that is, the eldest son, of the Church, but he cannot officiate or even
vote in the Synod. The Emperor Paul, however, wished, as Head of the
Church, himself to conduct the service. Full of religious ardour, he
arrived one day by the side door of the altar, and was received by the
Metropolitan. The Tsar called for priest’s robes, announced his intention
of celebrating the Mass, and prepared to enter the Holy of Holies, when,
just as he was about to pass the threshold of the Doors of the Lord, the
prelate stood before him, barring the way, and said,“Kneel, sire! This
is your place. You may go no further.” The Emperor, to do him justice,
took the reprimand well, and the Metropolitan did not suffer for his bold
speech. This story is not recorded in history—it is not likely to be; but
it was told me by a Russian gentleman of high position, and is a matter
of common knowledge.
On the Thursday in Passion Week there is a very interesting ceremony: the
washing of the feet of twelve priests in the Isaac’s Cathedral. I had
been misinformed as to the time, and so unfortunately missed it.
In a Church in whose offices emotion plays so intense—if it did not
savour of impiety one would be tempted to say so dramatic—a part, Good
Friday must inevitably be celebrated by ceremonies imaging the blackest
woe. Nowhere is the tragedy of the Cross represented with so much
realism—a realism that might easily have degenerated into something
shocking, were it not so hallowed by a veneration born of the Divine
Love which said, “This do in remembrance of Me.” It is hardly too much
to say that on this day the orthodox Christian lives through the whole
awful tragedy now nearly two thousand years old. No other man sees it so
vividly before his eyes.
In the morning, torn by sorrow, he takes down the Body of the Saviour
from the Cross, and with as much reverence as if it were a real corpse,
lays it in a lighted funeral chapel to await the burial service of the
evening. This I was allowed to witness in the Imperial Chapel of the
Winter Palace. The service began with a Mass. The priests, of whom there
were four besides the arch-priest, the deacons, readers and choir, were
all in deep mourning; the latter in a sort of Court dress, with swords,
the clergy in vestments of black velvet and silver. The Mass was, as I
was told, performed after the traditions of the worship of the early
Christians in the catacombs. In the centre of the church was the bier,
covered with a cloth representing an effigy of the dead Saviour, with the
Gospel on the breast as at a funeral.
Indeed, the whole ceremony is a solemn funeral service. During the Mass
every person present was presented with a lighted wax taper, and the bier
was surrounded by magnificent candelabra carrying wax lights. As soon
as the Mass was over, the choir drew themselves up in triple row behind
the priests, who stood on each side of the bier, the arch-priest in the
centre, with two deacons supporting him, facing the altar. Then arose
the funeral dirge, sung by about fifty fine voices, very soft and still,
the basses especially making a fine effect—all the music unaccompanied.
At the end of the funeral chant the key changed, and there followed a
louder canticle. The priests, one at each corner, and the chief priest
in the middle, raised the bier upon their heads and carried it round the
church, the whole congregation kneeling and touching the ground with
their foreheads while they devoutly crossed themselves. The bier having
been replaced and the choir having taken up their former position, the
deacon thundered out the _Ektenia_, a litany in which the choir made the
responses “Gospodi pomilui” (“Lord, have mercy!”).
After this the deacon read a short passage from one of the epistles, and
went into the Holy of Holies to fetch the Gospel, which he presented with
a reverence to the chief priest, who read a portion of the Scripture and
delivered a blessing.
The Gospel having been taken back into the _Sviataia Sviatuich_, the
chief priest fell upon his knees and made two low obeisances, each time
touching the floor with his forehead; drawing near to the bier, he kissed
the head and feet of the image and the book of the Gospels which lay
upon the breast, and retired with a third obeisance. Two by two, the
other priests followed his example, each, as he retired, bowing to the
chief priest and to his colleague. Next the deacons, and after them the
congregation, beginning with the ladies present, went through the same
reverent formalities, and the ceremony was at an end.
No description, at least none of which I am the master, can convey an
adequate idea of the solemnity and impressive grandeur of this rite. I
can but set down what I saw. Let each man fill in the colouring for
himself; the trappings of woe; the hushed voices of the dirge; the
thunder-peals of the deacon in the _Ektenia_; the choking emotion of the
celebrants; the burial of the dead Christ!
More precious than all the gold and jewels and ornaments with which the
piety of potentates has enriched the Imperial chapels are two relics
which are held in great veneration: the hand of St. John the Baptist,
and the portrait of the Blessed Virgin painted by St. Luke. The hand of
the Baptist was a present given by the Head of the Order of the Knights
of Malta to the Emperor Paul. Of the picture by St. Luke I had but a
very hazy sight. I should have liked to have held it in my hand, or at
any rate, to have been allowed a close inspection of it. No doubt I
might have obtained that favour for the asking, but I did not like to
risk being considered indiscreet. As it was, I could see nothing but a
gorgeous frame with a golden crown and precious stones such as adorn all
the sacred pictures of the Church. Dim with age, the picture itself at
the distance at which I saw it was a cloud.
I wonder how much money was spent in St. Petersburg on Saturday, April
18th (30th), being Easter Eve. It is a great day for buying and selling,
and the market is so beset by crowds of eager customers, keenly bent on
buying the wherewithal to break the long fast which ends at midnight,
that the mounted police have to muster in force in order to preserve some
semblance of order. Shortly before midnight on Easter Eve the town was
illuminated by candles placed at intervals along the pavement, the guns
of the fortress began to crash out their joy-signals, and the pious folk
flocked to the churches to hear the priest give out the glorious news of
the resurrection of the Saviour.
The celebration of Easter at the Isaac’s Cathedral is said to be quite
magnificent; but I did not see it, for I was bidden to keep the feast at
Princess Kotchoubey’s and I could not refuse, as she had always been so
kind to me. The service of a chapel in a private house, however grand it
may be, can never come up to the gorgeous spectacle such as that of the
great procession which thrice marches round the colossal building. Still
the ceremony was very imposing, and the entertainment afterwards, as
always where the Princess is hostess, sumptuous in the extreme.
In the streets the night which heralds Easter is a mad jubilee. Everybody
salutes everybody else with the joyful cry, first uttered by the priest
in church, “Christos Voskres” (“Christ has arisen”), and everybody
answers “Dieistvelno on Voskres” (“Of a truth He has arisen”). By four
o’clock in the morning the proletariat is very drunk and very happy. The
noise and the shouting and the merriment might be in honour of a great
victory, as indeed it is—the Divine victory over death!
By dawn the booths and merry-go-rounds of the Butter Week have sprung
up like mushrooms in an August night, and all through Easter Sunday
the cry of “Christos Voskres” will be dinning in our ears. As for the
poor Emperor, the twenty-four hours were enough to tire him out. Think
of having to kiss from seven to eight hundred people directly after
midnight; and then to begin again with deputations from each of the
regiments of the Guards after breakfast! The Empress had to plead her
poor health in order to escape from the fatigue of these receptions. I
sometimes thought that it must need the strength of a Samson to bear the
weight of duty that is laid upon a Russian Emperor. Alexander the Second
carried himself nobly and equably through the weary rites and ceremonies
that are the heritage of Tsardom’s woe; but what a strain it must often
have been!
* * * * *
After the long weeks of fasting and the ten wild days of feast and
revelry, St. Petersburg began to calm down and the world, high and low,
was at peace.
* * * * *
May 4.—A storm of indignation was raised by the arrival of the
_Indépendance Belge_ with the report of a speech delivered by Pope Pius
IX. in the Consistory upon the occasion of a canonization. His Holiness,
while in the same breath disclaiming any intention of fomenting revolt
or of encouraging treason, made a furious attack upon the Tsar for his
policy in Poland. He accused him of endeavouring to uproot the Roman
Catholic religion, of exciting rebellion under the pretence of quelling
it, of transporting whole populations to frozen and desolate regions, and
of removing bishops from the functions to which the Church had called
them. There is nothing so dangerous, nothing so misleading as falsehood
with a thin veneer of truth. No one can deny that great numbers of Poles
had been deported; but many, if not most, of them had been sent to
Samara, a province in the south-east of European Russia, rich in that
famous black earth which makes a farmers’ paradise, in which numbers
of prosperous German colonists were doing a thriving trade in wheat,
tobacco, cattle and horses, while even those who were sent to Siberia
were described to me by an Englishman who had just come from there as
quite happy and comfortably established with their families. Siberia is
by no means the cruel country about which such terrible tales have been
served up for European consumption, dressed with all the condiments of
fanatic hatred.
Even Dostoievski—no friend to the Russian Government—when writing against
the prison system of Siberia, to which he was sent for political reasons,
speaks almost with affection of the country itself. It was the life of
the criminal convict in Siberia which was such a nightmare, and with
that the transported Poles had nothing to do. But Siberia was always a
good name of terror, and as such the Pope made rhetorical capital of
it. As regards the question of uprooting the Roman Catholic Church in
Poland, there can be no doubt that the Greek Church has always been
very intolerant. There was indeed a time—in the Middle Ages—when the
followers of other creeds were not looked upon as Christians; the Russian
chroniclers called the Roman Catholics “unbaptized Latins,” holding that
there could be no baptism without total immersion; and when the Tsar
received ambassadors it was customary for him to give them his hand, but
in the audience hall there was kept a golden vessel in which the autocrat
might wash off the contamination.
Though these prejudices were dead and matters of history, the hatred
which inspired them was very much alive, and the fighting in Poland was
in a great measure a war of religion. Still it was simply an invention
of the priests, wishful to keep up the spirit of rebellion, to say that
there was any desire on the part of the Government to extirpate their
faith.
The Polish peasants, who were as ignorant as their own cattle, were told
by the priests that the worship of God according to the Catholic creed
was forbidden in Russia, and that persons who died in that communion were
refused Christian burial, and thrown out into the forests and wastes
to rot or be devoured by the wolves. In order to disabuse the Poles of
these ideas, the deputation of peasants of whom I have already spoken
were taken to Mass in the great Romish church and also to visit the Roman
Catholic burial ground. Seeing, it was hoped, would be believing.
In official life both Roman Catholics and Lutherans have held high
places. Curiously enough Count Nesselrode, the famous Chancellor, was a
member of the Church of England, having been baptized on board a British
man-of-war, and till his death he remained a faithful son of our creed.
Count Creptovitch, who was formerly Minister in England, and whom I
knew well, was a Roman Catholic, and held a great position. Many others
could be named. But would Count Creptovitch, a devout Roman Catholic,
have given the support of his great name to a Government pledged to the
extirpation of his communion from any part of the Empire? The thing was
absurd and incredible on the face of it.
Of the third accusation brought by Pope Pius—that of the removal of the
bishops—it was not difficult to dispose. The Archbishop of Warsaw and
the Bishop of Vilna had been politically very troublesome—not a matter
of infrequent occurrence among the soldiers of a very militant Church.
They were requested to leave their sees until matters should have settled
down, and they had not much to complain of. They were extricated without
any loss of dignity from a very difficult position and were allowed to
retain all their honours, titles and emoluments, a slight deduction being
made from the latter to cover certain expenses which were a liability
of their offices; and there seemed no reason to preclude their return
in happier and more peaceful times once more to take possession of the
charge of their flocks.
The Pope’s speech was certainly injudicious and ill-timed. His Holiness
had evidently been misinformed; zeal had, not for the first time in the
world’s history, outrun truth.
* * * * *
May the 9th.—I suppose that there could hardly be a more magnificent
military spectacle than that of the Spring Parade held on the Champ
de Mars. The Empress and all the great people of St. Petersburg were
present in a grand stand, by which a little ragged cur had taken up his
position and, sitting upright on his tail, watched the proceedings as a
rather captious critic from beginning to end, moving his head from side
to side with unflagging interest. When the Emperor rode on to the ground
surrounded by his brilliant staff of generals and aides-de-camp, he
passed in front of each corps and to each he addressed the question, “Are
you well, my children?” and the men thundered out, “We wish you health!”
When the march past began, the Tsar signified his approbation of each
squadron or battalion, and the men roared with one voice, “Glad to do our
best.” There were thirty-two thousand men in all, under the orders of the
Grand Duke Nicholas[47]—a noble-looking host, as gorgeous as glittering
uniforms could make them. At the head of the other troops, the mail-clad
Circassian body-guard, dashing past at a gallop, some of them throwing
down their scimitars in front of them and heeling over to pick them up
again at the saluting-point, made a gallant and fantastic show, with just
a touch of Asian mystery to add a glamour of the East to the picture.
The cavalry of the Guard, splendidly mounted, with their cuirasses
and helmets flaming in the sunshine; the pennons of the lancers; the
infantry; the artillery; all spick and span, showed off the panoply of
war in its most attractive shape—altogether a dazzling pageant. Whether
it was anything more than that one witness seemed to doubt, for when the
last man had marched past and the Emperor turned to leave the ground, the
little dog got up, stretched himself, yawned and proceeded to mark his
contempt of the whole proceedings in the most accentuated fashion. One
Russian gentleman, a statesman in a very high position, told me that it
had been his custom for years to attend this annual review, wondering at
its stateliness, and that his pride used to rise in hero-worship when he
thought of the invincibility of these glorious warriors.
The Alma and Inkermann shook him in his faith, and since then he had left
off his yearly visit to the Champ de Mars; there was “trop de clinquant
et trop peu de réalité.” He agreed with the little dog.
One thing struck even my unskilled civilian eye: as the artillery came
rattling under a window in the British Embassy, which looked on to the
parade ground, I noticed that no two batteries were armed with the same
pattern of gun. I could not help wondering what would be the effect of
this in action; whether there was not great risk of mistakes in the
serving out of ammunition, and other conceivable causes of confusion.
That evening at dinner at the Club Anglais[48] I chanced to sit next to a
general officer with whom I was acquainted, and I asked him what was the
reason of this difference in the equipment of the various batteries. His
answer was that the great authorities on artillery had not yet come to a
conclusion as to what was the best service gun, so Russia was biding her
time and allowing the other armies to make experiments for her benefit.
It so happened, however, that I knew of six or more agents for different
gun factories in England, France, and Germany, who were staying in St.
Petersburg with well-filled pouches touting for their several firms; and
this had been going on for months; so the Russian gunners had to deal
with weapons of many patterns, the efficiency of the army being made of
no account so long as those pouches continued to empty themselves and
bulge once more. This was a point upon which the Embassies were better
informed than the ministers of the Emperor.
CHAPTER XIII
1864
MOSCOW
May 18.
“Is there anybody here who can speak English? Oh! IS there anybody here
who can speak English?” A piteous cry from a brother Briton in distress
must be attended to. It came from a first-class carriage in the train
for Moscow standing in the station at St. Petersburg. I found a young
man trying in vain to come to some understanding with the guard; he knew
neither French nor German nor Russian; indeed, his English was none of
the best, his aspirates being indiscriminately used or omitted.
When I had solved his difficulties for him he told me that he was
travelling for pleasure to see the world. He had been staying at
the boarding house chiefly used by “drummers”—travellers of English
commercial houses. Of the country, its institutions and customs he knew
absolutely nothing; but the drummers had stored his mind with all manner
of gruesome tales of the dangers and terrors threatening the unwary
traveller. Murray’s guide to him was all-sufficient, unless he found
himself in some position of alarming difficulty, when he would dismally
howl his “cuckoo-cry”—“Is there anybody,” etc. One night he had nearly
collapsed with fear. He had been to some place of entertainment and was
being driven home when, finding himself in a rather narrow, dark street,
he took into his head that his coachman was decoying him to some thieves’
den (Oh! those drummers!) where he would be robbed and murdered. He
stopped the astonished coachman, who must have thought him mad, and
began yelling for help. His shouts soon brought a good-natured polyglot
Russian, who assured him that all was well, and that he was simply being
taken to his destination by the nearest way. Two or three days later I
met him in Moscow in one of the churches, listening with rapt attention
to a very dirty monk extolling in Russian the miraculous powers of
certain relics. His journal, if he kept one, would have been interesting.
Prince Boris Galitzin, a very smart young officer in the
Chevalier-Gardes, a famous leader of cotillons in the great houses of St.
Petersburg, was going to Moscow with his wife at the same time as myself,
and so we had agreed to meet and lionize the famous old city together. It
was of course a great advantage to me, for not only had I very pleasant
friends, whose company was a joy, but I also benefited by certain special
permits with which they were armed. What treasures we saw!—gold, silver,
precious stones and pearls. What holy relics did Boris have to kiss!—not
that he, as an advanced Greek, had much faith in them or in their
miracles; his reverence for them was something like that of Naaman the
Syrian, when he prayed that if he should enter the house of Rimmon with
his master leaning upon his hand, he might be forgiven for bowing himself
down because it was a question of duty.
The French in 1812 looted as much as they could, but on their approach
the treasures and relics were sent off to Novgorod. They must, in spite
of all precautions, have found a great deal, for the wealth of the
churches is prodigious. One holy Saint stopped their robberies by a
miracle. The ruffians were about to rifle his tomb when the corpse slowly
lifted its hand in warning. They fled, terror-stricken at the sign, but
the dead hand remained raised, a threat for ever against sacrilege.
It is really no matter of surprise that there should be so few buildings
of great antiquity, so few ancient historical monuments in Russia. It is
true that at Kief, the old capital of the Grand Princes, Jaroslav built
the stone church of St. Sophia in the middle of the eleventh century,
about the same time as the Conqueror built the Tower of London, but it
was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that houses of stone
began to be the fashion. Till then the dwellings of rich and poor alike
were built of wood upon piles, much like the homes of their Scythian
forbears, described by Herodotus. As a consequence fire had freedom of
destruction, as it has in many great Oriental cities, where I have seen
whole quarters burned to ashes in a single night; and so it was that when
Ivan, the son of Daniel, established his capital at Moscow in 1330, it
was no more than a great aggregation of wooden houses, the only stone
building being the Church of Spas na Bory (the Saviour on the Cross),
which was said to be of immense antiquity.
It was not until the end of the fourteenth century that Dmitri Donski,
the conqueror of the Tartars on the Don, began building the famous
Kremlin.[49] By degrees came trade, and merchants from all parts of the
world, bartering their goods against Muscovite furs, cloth, linen and
leather, for which Russia had already become famous.
In the middle of the sixteenth century, during the reign of Ivan the
Terrible, two great fires almost annihilated the city. The first broke
out in the merchants’ quarter and the second burned the Tsar’s palace to
cinders. The infuriated populace laid both these fires to the account
of the witchcraft of Princess Glinski, the widow of a man who had died
in prison, after his eyes had been put out as a punishment for having
rebuked Ivan’s mother, Helen, for her conduct with her lover, Ortchina.
One of the supposed witch’s sons was murdered with his followers at an
altar on which they had taken refuge for sanctuary, and the wretched
woman herself fled for her life with her other son. What an easy matter
revenge was in the days when men believed in witchcraft?
But in spite of fires and Poles and other misfortunes, Moscow continued
to flourish in ever-increasing beauty, until at the beginning of the
eighteenth century Peter the Great, in love with the sea and with ships,
must needs transfer the seat of government to his newly-founded seaport,
and so gave the death-blow to the political, or perhaps it would be more
true to say the official, importance of the old capital. But there was
more than the intoxication of the sea in his move. So long as Moscow
should remain unrivalled on a pinnacle of glory, so long would the old
faith and the glamour of old traditions remain as an obstacle to the
Germanizing reforms which he had at heart. These old feelings—which he
knew how to turn to profit at his need, while he affected to despise
them—must be swept away. As a stronghold of the Church the Sacred
City—Moscow and the Patriarchate—had even in the most savage days stood
between the Tsar and his will. Let them perish! So the Court and the
Government were gone, and the Patriarchate with them. But all these
changes—the plucking of beards literally and figuratively from men’s
chins, the wholesale attack upon all those customs which were dearest
to the Russian soul—were in one respect a failure. The dignity, the
sanctity of Moscow remained untouched. No spark of its sacred light
was extinguished. To every true child of Russia Moscow remained the
Holy Mother. Witness 1812. Napoleon would have met with a less fierce
opposition had he attacked St. Petersburg. That would have been warfare.
What Peter did was sacrilege. It was a pious Russian, Rostopchin, who
once more set fire to Moscow lest the sacred city with its stores of
provisions and necessaries should fall into the hands of the impious
invader. What a difference that fire made to the horrors of the terrible
retreat!
No Russian sees the towers of the holy city in the distance without
reverently baring his head and crossing himself, and even the guards
in the railway trains keep a sharp look-out lest they should fail to
make the prescribed obeisance at the first coming into sight of the
venerated towers and steeples. The Russian is sensitive, impressionable
and romantic above any people with which I have come in contact. The
religion, the poetry, the music and the traditions of his country are the
very essence of his nature, fibres interwoven round one centre, which is
to him as his own heart, and that centre is Moscow.
There was one man living in Moscow whom I was most anxious to see: M.
Gerebzoff, the author of “La Civilisation en Russie.” He was famous as
a man of letters, known, moreover, as a typical gentleman of the old
school, who had never bowed before the altars of St. Petersburg, but
had remained absolutely faithful to the traditions of what he conceived
to be the glorious past of his country. Prince Galitzin, who knew him,
very good-naturedly asked him to tea one evening to meet me. He came
with two or three others—men of the same kidney as himself—and we had a
most interesting talk. He had the appearance of a very old man, though
in truth he was hardly past middle-age; but his infirmities added long
years to his reckoning, and he was nearly stone blind; physically he was
weak, but mentally full of activity, enthusiasm and prejudices—just as
I had imagined him. What added to the interest of his conversation was
the fact that he had been writing a book on England, full of admiration
for our institutions and methods. But Boris Galitzin knew that I should
be eager to hear him talk about his own country, so he deftly turned the
conversation to the question of the capital.
“St. Petersburg!” exclaimed M. Gerebzoff, “a mere marsh, just fit to
harbour frogs and wolves and Finns. You must not imagine”—turning to
me—“that in St. Petersburg you can come to any true opinion about
Russia,” and then he went off at score. Even Moscow he would not admit to
be the true capital for his country. Kief would be the most advantageous
metropolis. His argument was this. The theory of a capital is that every
native of the country should look upon it as _his_. Moscow is to Vladimir
and Kief what St. Petersburg is to Moscow—a modern imposition. Moscow
might be the official capital, but the native of Little Russia would
still look upon the ancient Kief as _his_ capital. But if Kief were the
seat of government, Petersburger, Muscovite, Volhynian, Podolian, White
Russian, and perhaps even at last Pole, would loyally rally round the old
mother-city. The spirit of separation would be exorcized, and there would
be one Russia with one language and one mind. This was no new idea of
which M. Gerebzoff held the patent. Many Russians had professed the same
faith, especially the violent nationalists.
At the same time it must be remembered that to an enormous majority of
their countrymen Moscow is so intimately bound up with the great crises
of their fatherland, such as the occupation by the Poles and their
expulsion, and the episode of 1812, and so venerated as the high altar
of their faith, that Kief as a capital, in spite of all its sanctity and
its remote antiquity, can never in their opinion be more than an academic
problem. I have given here a very brief _précis_ of M. Gerebzoff’s talk.
But I could wish that some of our statesmen who seem to advocate a return
to the Heptarchy could have heard his eloquent advocacy of a united
empire. As to that when I was in Russia there were no two schools, no two
opinions.
Of all the strangely quaint buildings in Moscow—perhaps of the world—the
most arresting is the Church of Vassili Blagennii, standing at the
entrance to the Kremlin; it was erected by Ivan the Terrible in honour
of Basil, the crazy monk of Moscow—the only man who ever dared to rebuke
him—and of the victory which wrested Kazan from the Tartars in 1554.
Designed by one madman at the command of a second and to the glory of
a third, it looks as if it had been planned in an ecstatic mood by the
capricious fantasy of King Oberon’s court architect. One can picture to
oneself his craftsmen, gnomes, trolls and Nibelungen, busily at work
sawing, planing, hammering; shaping stones, beating out iron and gold and
silver and copper; fashioning pinnacles and cupolas and towers into weird
forms and grotesque combinations; making up a structure unlike anything
in Heaven or upon earth, baffling description—something to make a man
rub his eyes in wonder and ask himself whether it can be reality or a
dream of ghost-land. Clearly the work of a man gay, happy, unrestrained,
laughing at all prescribed rule and convention. Strange to say, this
weird Saracenic conception was born in an Italian brain in the days of
the Rinascimento!
When it was finished, and men lifted their hands in wonder, the artist
in his folly bragged that this was not to be taken as the measure of
his powers, or as having dried up the wellspring of his imagination;
he could do better yet. An unwise boast which cost him dear; for lest
the eccentricities and beauties that he had fathered should ever, as
he threatened, be beaten, the Terrible Tsar promptly caused the poor
Italian’s eyes to be put out. Who can account for the wild whims of
fancy? Why should the thought of the savage beauty and fateful sadness of
this sacred building bring back to my mind without rhyme or reason the
memory of a beautiful mad girl who used to wander singing and dancing
in the craziest gyrations through the streets of a little country town
in France which I knew as a youngster? The thing would be impossible in
these days. She was very lovely, but in her loveliness, which had been
so cruel to her, there was something weird, something remote and mystic
and tragic, that seemed to belong to another sphere.
The fascination of this wonder-church must be of the same order.
Brilliant beauty, the sad gaiety of madness, the cloud of a cruel
tragedy—these make up its story. Memory is like a lute strung with all
manner of strange chords. The Church of St. Vassili touched one of them.
The Kremlin is the diadem of the river Moskva as Windsor Castle is
the diadem of the Thames. It has its psychological moment, like “fair
Melrose.” For the one it is the “pale moonlight,” for the other if you
would “see it aright,” crossing the river, you must go to the Sparrows’
Hill at sunset, and stand where Napoleon stood, waiting in vain for the
keys of the gates of the citadel to be brought to him; and if you have
the luck that I had, to hit upon a glorious setting sun, you will have a
sight that will remain with you till your dying day.
No skill of painter could convey the faintest idea of its strange beauty,
varying as it does from minute to minute; bathed in a flood of golden
sunshine, the flame-coloured walls and towers and grotesquely-shaped
steeples and belfries of the Kremlin are a blaze of burnished metal,
like the crown of some huge Gargantuan hero; then, as the sun lowers on
the horizon, they begin, like the dying dolphins of fable, to flash out
chameleon tints of all the colours of the rainbow; gradually the rosy
pink steals over them, just as it does over the snowy points of the high
Alps, fading into the cold violet—not the darkness—of a night almost as
luminous as day, against which the sharp lines stand out with a severity
altogether foreign to their fantastic beauty. The chill serenity of a
nightless night gives a new aspect to the barbaric splendour of the
mighty citadel. For the moment the stilly peace casts a holy spell even
over the memory of Ivan the Terrible.
Only for the moment; for the devilish spirit of the Tsar seems to haunt
all Moscow. Wherever you may go, you are reminded of him and of his
horrors. You are taken to see the Romanoff House, the home of Mikhail
Feodorovitch, the founder of the present dynasty, a perfect specimen of
a great Boyarin’s house at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
instinct with the spirit of the Orient; low, vaulted rooms, the ceilings
and walls covered with frescoes and arabesques of curious designs. The
doors are very low, for cunning old Nikita Romanoff, grandfather of the
first Tsar of his race, was determined that those who entered his house
or his presence should do proper obeisance; even the lady of the party,
not a tall woman, had to bend nearly double as she crept in. Everything
is kept in religious order: all the furniture, down to the very toys
with which the future Tsar used to play. One hardly expected to see a
relic of Ivan here. Yet even in this Romanoff family shrine is preserved
his staff, an ingeniously cruel weapon, the top fashioned as a huge
bird, with which in playful moods he would fell an unfortunate courtier
or two, and the ferrule a sharpened point of iron, with which, leaning
upon it with all his weight, he would pierce the foot of some wretch
whom he called up for a close and familiar conversation, pinning him to
the floor. Strange caresses! The barbarities to which great nobles and
courtiers were submitted pass all belief. There is a little tower in
the Kremlin from which Ivan would look down upon the great square below
and feast his eyes upon the tortures of his victims, tortures ordered
by himself and in which he would sometimes lend a hand. The treacheries
of some of his towns—Novgorod, Volkof, Pleskof, Tver and Moscow itself,
accused of intriguing with the Poles—gave him a fine opportunity for
indulging in his favourite pastimes.
As for the guilty traitors of Novgorod, they were driven into a huge
inclosed pen, and Ivan, with his eldest son, rode in and speared them
like wild boars till they were tired of the sport! And yet, in spite
of all that is true in these stories, and perhaps of much more that is
legendary, he does not seem to have left an unpopular memory behind
him—indeed, I have heard Russians speak kindly and almost affectionately
of this fiend as a sort of jovial _viveur_ rather than as a tyrant to be
execrated. As for Peter the Great, he frankly admired him and, making
allowance for the difference in centuries, imitated him; no doubt he
would have gone further had he dared, but times had changed, and there
was a limit even to his audacity.
There is a new dynasty and a new capital, but the memory of Ivan the
Fourth is yet green and, strange to say, it is not hideous. There was,
no doubt, a certain picturesqueness about him, as there was about our
own Henry the Eighth, who dealt out death with no niggard hand, and who
still, in story and legend, lives as a sort of hero. A strong man of arms
always awakens a certain admiration, and no doubt it was a fine sight
for the citizens of Moscow to see the fierce Tsar ride out bare-headed
through the Saviour’s Gates at the head of his splendidly caparisoned
_strelzi_ and _spritchniki_ (archers and bodyguard). Tailors and saddlers
and armourers are rare makers of fame.
With what wise judgment and loving care the Russians preserve their old
monuments! Where any restoration is needed it is carried out with such
discreet skill that it is almost impossible to detect the new from the
old, and so the approach to the Kremlin through the Spasskia Vorotui
(the Saviour’s Gates), with their beautiful tower, leads to a succession
of pictures which are not fragments of the old world clumsily pieced
together, but the sixteenth century itself, whole, sound and without a
blemish. Bare your head as you go through these mystic gates, for even
the Emperor of all the Russias dare not pass them covered. Inside the
court of the Palace of the Tsars stands the ancient Church of the Saviour
on the Cross, and here were gathered quite a little crowd of pilgrims—for
this is a very holy place—listening with intense devoutness to the words
of one of their number, who, with all the fervour of an ancient Hebrew
prophet, was telling, in language so picturesque that it seemed almost
inspired, the story of a miracle which had befallen him on his travels.
As he was tramping, weary and footsore, from some distant province to
worship at the shrines of Moscow, the Blessed Virgin appeared to him on
the road, and bidding him to be of good cheer, encouraged him to march
on to the end of his pious journey. What was hunger, what was fatigue in
comparison with the holy joy which awaited him? One envies the simple,
unreasoning faith of these humble folk; it would be still more enviable
if it possessed a stronger moral influence upon character; but, alas!
I have already shown how much too often it comes to a dead halt in the
realm of superstition. A little while later in the afternoon I saw a
pious pilgrim—pious he must have been, or he would not have faced the
hardships and cost of the journey—staggering dead drunk on his return
from the shrines; but even so he did not forget to remove his cap as he
passed through the sacred Gates of the Saviour. Explain it who will, the
_mujik_ honestly and reverently offers himself body and soul to his God,
and yet it never occurs to him that he is defiling and degrading the
gift. Fancy a man dragging through the mud a rose which he is to lay at
the feet of his beloved!
“Tchto vam ugodno? Tchto vam ugodno?” (“What d’ye lack? What d’ye
lack?”). The very cry of the madcap city ’prentices in the “Fortunes
of Nigel.” What a picture Sir Walter Scott would have painted of the
Gastinnii Dvor (the Strangers’ Bazaar)! Such a collection of wares of all
sorts, from a worn-out hearth-brush of which the last bristle has long
since departed, to a diamond brooch which, perhaps, a few nights before
was glittering on some fair lady’s breast; from the dirty, worn-out
kaftan of a _mujik_ to a ball-dress of silk and satin. Such bargainings,
such fights for the last odd kopeck. And then the cajoleries of these
Muscovite hucksters! There is something truly touching in being appealed
to as “_Golubtchik_” (“My little dove”) in the hope of softening the
hardness of one’s heart.
Altogether a wonderful place, in which were to be found all manner of
commodities, some good, some bad, some mere trash, with here and there
a really valuable thing, probably stolen, of the worth of which the
dealer is profoundly ignorant, and which he will sell for a song. In one
tray you may see a whole jumble of odds and ends—keys without locks,
locks without keys, brass-headed nails, knife handles, glass beads—and
with them, perhaps, an old enamel, a rare coin, a costly jewel, rather
astonished to find themselves in such out-at-elbows company. As a rule
the meaner the rubbish, the shabbier the article, the longer the battle
over the pence.
If the “little dove” is firm he may often fly away with some really
precious bargain. That, of course, is a rare chance, but at any rate
he will have had a good deal of fun for his money, and a sight of
trade in one of its most picturesque shapes. Petticoat Lane is clean
by comparison, but an artist would find more to draw here. There are
plentiful opportunities for the etching-needle of a Rembrandt, for the
brush of a Hogarth.
However fascinating may be the street scenes in this kaleidoscope of a
city, there comes a moment when one must eat. Prince Galitzin had ordered
luncheon at the Loskutnii Traktir (the Rubbish-shop Restaurant), in spite
of its name a very famous eating-house (the name, by the bye, was well in
tune with the market which I have just described) and the perfection of
luxury.
The waiters were models; they were dressed from head to foot in spotless
white linen, changed twice a day. The shirt was worn Russian fashion,
outside the trousers and bound in at the waist by a girdle. They
themselves were as clean as soap and hot water and steam baths could
make them; so spick and span and so welcoming that it was a pleasure to
be served by them. They most persuasively pressed each dish upon us, and
seemed quite hurt if our appetites could not be of a size with our eyes
and their wishes.
The fare was excellent. A _zakuska_ of raw salted salmon and the greyest
of caviare—such caviare as you cannot procure even at St. Petersburg,
for it loses quality with every hour’s journey from the Volga—a baby
radish or two and a glass of liqueur—that much for an _apéritif_; then
the serious business of luncheon. First little patties of fish, jelly
and eggs, chopped very fine, served with water in which the fish had
been boiled for a sauce; then a stew of sturgeon, crayfish, olives,
cucumbers and red toadstools, quite delicious; and for the last a very
fine sterlet _à la Russe_, as dainty a dish as could be laid before a
king. Our drink was _lompopo_, a cup made of beer, lemon, spices and a
huge toast of black bread, burned almost to charcoal, lying at the bottom
of the tankard. A glass of Château Yquem and a cup of the finest yellow
tea (caravan tea) to top up with. That was an excellent luncheon, and
moreover, honestly Muscovite, quite in the picture.
Rested and refreshed, we betook ourselves once more to the Kremlin, to
feast our eyes upon all those marvels which have been so well catalogued
by Murray and by Baedeker that the mere wanderer may look without feeling
compelled to undergo the torments of description. One thing struck me.
Of Napoleon there are many memories, none more significant, none more
poignant, here or elsewhere than the placing by the Emperor Nicholas
of the statue of the beaten Emperor opposite to that of his conqueror,
Alexander the First.
Gladly would I have spent many days in the old city—days, aye, and
weeks—for it has a singular fascination; moreover, I would have given
much to have had some dealings with its society, a society, by all
accounts, quite different from that of Peter’s capital, which, charming,
kindly and hospitable as it is, must always be, from its official
position, more or less cosmopolitan. Moscow, on the other hand, is, or
was at that time, an atmosphere—absolutely itself, untinged by any modern
desecration of conventional foreign manners and customs.
I know not whether it be so still, but in the days of which I am writing
one felt that one was seeing the Russian _boyarin_ in his own home,
just as in Scotland sixty years ago, before the invasion of Americans
and stockbrokers, it was a joy to visit a Highland chieftain in his
unimproved ancestral castle. There, again, was an atmosphere. But my
stay in Moscow—indeed, in Russia—was drawing to a close; the hours of
one of the holidays of my life were numbered; but before going back to
the workaday world I, too, must make a pilgrimage. Should I take scrip
and staff and bottle, sew cockle-shells on my coat—which would be very
un-Russian—and start off on my sandalled feet? The train leaving Moscow
at 6.30 a.m. would be better; commonplace and modern, but convenient.
* * * * *
One of the greatest of Russia’s saints, held in repute higher than most,
is St. Sergius. Many are the wonders and miracles that are recorded of
him. Before he was born, when his mother received the sacrament his
shouts of joy could be heard all over the church. At his birth he could
recite the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer by heart. As wise as
he was pious, in the early part of the fourteenth century, he drew to
himself a great following, and was even an adviser of the famous Dmitri
of the Don, whose victory over the Tartars in the expedition undertaken
by his advice he announced to his monks on the day and at the hour of its
occurrence. It was in the year 1330 that he founded his great monastery,
the Troitzkaia Lavra (the Monastery of the Trinity), about forty miles
from Moscow, and when, to the sorrow of all men, he died and was
canonized, his own name was added to that of his foundation, it became
known as the Troitzkaia Sergiefskaia Lavra, and the fame of St. Sergius
was established for all time.
The Monks of the Trinity played a great and a noble part in the history
of their country, especially during the Polish war at the beginning of
the seventeenth century. Frocked heroes they were, against whom all the
craft, the valour and the money of their enemies were of no avail. The
siege had to be raised; and when after three years the Russians rose
against the Poles, who were in possession of Moscow, after a time of
tribulation and misery untold, the monks joined the forces of Minin and
Pojarski, and even sold their treasures to help in driving the hated Pole
from Russian soil. Once more they were in vain besieged in 1615, and it
was under the impregnable walls of the convent which had done such loyal
service to Russia that the treaty of peace with Poland was signed. The
designs of the Poles had been religious as well as political; had they
prevailed, Russia would have fallen under the spiritual dominion of the
Pope. So the monks were warring for very existence, and they fought
stubbornly.
Even Peter the Great, a scoffer by profession, expressed, and no doubt
felt, a sincere veneration for St. Sergius. It was a picture of the Saint
which was carried with him as his standard in all his battles, and sooth
to say, Peter owed no small debt of gratitude to the brave monks. His
early years were not very rosy. He was but ten years old when his eldest
brother, Feodor, died childless, leaving the succession to Peter, to the
prejudice of a witling elder brother, Ivan. Their sister Sophia made this
the pretext for a revolution to which she excited the strelzi (literally
“archers”), a sort of irregular soldiery, and with their help assumed the
regency. In 1789 he felt himself strong enough to call upon her to resign.
The whole story forms an interesting episode in the history of the
country, but there is no space to tell it here; I only allude to it
because it was in this monastery that Peter and his poor weak brother
Ivan found a refuge until, the strelzi turning round upon Sophia, Peter
assumed the government and she was sent into a convent, where she might
again weave plots to her heart’s content. So it was gratitude that
prompted his reverence for the Saint and his monks, and as I imagine
they gained no small amount of prestige from his support. However that
may be, great is the fame of the place. It was a festival of the church,
and though the train was pretty full at starting, we picked up many
worshippers at intermediate stations, till we were quite a crowd.
The Lavra stands upon a hill, and with its picturesque towers and
spires rising above its venerable battlemented walls, looks like an
ancient feudal city, of which the suburbs are formed by the tea-houses,
grog-shops and booths for the sale of toys and sacred images clustered
round its base. Here the faithful congregate after worshipping at the
shrines, and a thriving trade is done in refreshments, chiefly liquid
and strong above proof, and it must be a poor pilgrim indeed who does
not carry back with him a toy or two as fairings for the children, or an
_ikona_ for the good wife.
There were several hundreds of men and women toiling wearily up the hill
at the same time as ourselves. The women were in travelling outfit, their
faces bound round with kerchiefs, only the nose and eyes showing, their
short skirts reaching just below the knee, and both men and women had
their legs thickly swathed round with linen bands, tied together with
pieces of string, and their feet encased in shapeless shoes contrived
out of coarse matting. The better-to-do pilgrims carried knapsacks,
while their less fortunate fellows had but their staves, with, at most,
a small wallet, trusting to chance and charity for a meal or a night’s
lodging. It was a mixed crowd, for besides these humbler folk there were
prosperous farmers and tradesmen, whose _telegas_ and carts were standing
outside the gates, making the space look like the halting-place of a vast
caravan. Plutocrats and grandees were not wanting, and the numberless
beggars and cripples of whom we had to run the gauntlet gathered a rich
harvest of coppers and small silver coins.
We entered the gates at the same moment as an old grey-beard, tottering
on his staff, wan and weary, worn out with the long journey on foot from
a distant part of Russia, so feeble that nothing but the intoxication of
fanaticism could have carried him on to its end. Inside the gates were
more beggars, but these were apparently collectors for the monastery,
for I noticed that a reverend brother was going his rounds among them,
peering into the contents of the little tin plates to see that there
should be no alienation of alms for private purposes. I felt rather
indignant at this, but it occurred to me afterwards that the idea might
be simply to pool all the receipts, that the fraternity of beggars might
all share and share alike.
Swiftly a serving brother laid hold of us; he was half, if not wholly,
an idiot, and having an impediment in his speech, promised to be very
troublesome; but a jolly little monk coming up delivered us from our
tormentor and sent him about his business. He invited us into his cell
and offered to act as our cicerone. His humble home was tiny and neat
and scrupulously clean—one might have eaten off the floor. In one corner
before the ikona (sacred image), a little lamp was burning. His furniture
consisted of a white sofa-bed, two chairs and a cupboard. The little
window, on the sill of which he had the luxury of a sweet-scented verbena
and a pot of mignonette—one of those touches of poetry which make the
whole world akin—looked out upon a very pretty view of the monastery
garden fringed by the woods beyond.
The dear little man made us very welcome, and gave us each a rude print
of St. Sergius as a remembrance of the monk Vaccian and of the Troitzkaia
Lavra. He made me write down his name in my pocket-book, and then I must
write mine for him. To my amazement, for I had written it in the Russian
character, he had to spell it painfully, letter by letter. Print he could
read fairly well, and of course the old Slavonic script of the liturgies.
But writing, and the reading of the written character, were beyond his
capabilities. Indeed, during the seven hours that I spent with him and
his brethren, I was continually being struck by the proofs of the most
crass and darkest ignorance. Beyond the four walls of their convent they
knew nothing, absolutely nothing. One of them asked me whether England
was not supplied with gold by Russia. When I alluded to California and
Australia, they had never heard of either. They knew that there was
a place called America, and another quite unimportant place called
India, but what they were, to whom they belonged, or by whom they were
peopled—that was a blank.
One’s ideas of the monasteries of the olden time were of sacred
institutions where in an age of ignorance the holy fire of learning was
kept alight; here, and apparently in similar places, were castles of
indolence, refuges to which men might fly from the cares and duties of
mankind, contented to be supplied with the barest necessaries of life at
the public expense, adding thereto a few scanty comforts by the kindness
of some passing stranger.
Every monk received at the refectory one meal a day, consisting of
vegetable soup, fish, bread, vegetables and kvass. If they ate anything
else in the day it must be at their own expense. They were allowed
twenty roubles (£3 at that time) a year out of which they must clothe
themselves. Some had a little something of their own wherewith to eke out
this pittance; others managed to pick up a trifle now and again as guides
to visitors; others had nothing. There were in all three hundred and
fifty brethren. The admission to the order was simple enough; any man was
eligible if only he could show that he had a vocation. The monks had free
egress and ingress, and might even obtain a week’s leave of absence from
the Archimandrite. A curious, unproductive life. Such talents as there
might be were hidden in napkins!
Of course we visited all the churches and shrines; but what interested
me most were the pilgrims. It was impossible not to be touched by the
very real fervour of their piety. To see the tears streaming down the
cheeks of great bearded men when they kissed the face of Saint Sergius,
covered only by a cloth of red velvet and gold, made me feel ashamed of
my stiff-necked apathy. The worshippers moved me, the worshipped did not.
Had the French only known what was immediately under their hand in 1812,
what prizes they might have carried off! The reliquaries and vestments,
the bushels upon bushels of precious stones and pearls. The treasury
of the monastery must represent a fabulous wealth in the offerings of
Emperors and Empresses, Princes and Princesses, and rich folk of lesser
degree.
One jewel was, if not a miracle, as it is reputed to be, at any rate
a world’s wonder. Picture to yourself an agate medallion mounted in
huge diamonds, the staining of the agate representing the figure of a
monk kneeling in worship before the crucifix. Even the eyes of the monk
visible, two little white specks in the blackness of the stone. I held
this wonder in my hand and examined it as closely as I could; but in vain
did I try to discover any trace of possible fraud. I have seen and read
of many freaks of nature; none of its kind, I think, so strange as this.
There was much to be seen in the Lavra—the refectory of the monks,
their carefully-tended garden, and above all the grand old battlements,
twenty-one feet broad, from which we could look down on the surrounding
country and see the advancing hordes of Poles, hear the war cries
of assailants and besieged, listen to the din of battle and to the
triumphant hymns of the cowled warriors giving glory to God for the
victory.
But we had more ground to cover, so after a visit to a neighbouring
_traktir_, where brother Vaccian made himself exceedingly comfortable,
we drove off with him to a most curious hermitage, or perhaps I should
rather say monastery, about four versts off—religion in its most
repellent shape. The church and cells are underground, so we bought
tapers to light us down the dark, slimy steps. How can men inhabit such
dens? How can men think that in so doing they are pleasing the God who
has given them the pure air and the canopy of heaven. To me it seemed
a sacrilege. I went into one of the empty cells and measured it—nine
feet by six; only in the centre was the vaulted roof high enough for
me to stand with my hat on. All the furniture a stove, a pallet and an
ikona; the only ornament a black cross painted on the roof. The water was
literally streaming down the walls.
In such a den as this fanatics will live for years without the light
of day and without air; their only communication with the outer world
is by means of the serving brother who brings their food and cleans
(save the mark!) their cells. Their days are passed in contemplation,
and in reading the lives of the saints by the dim light of a taper. The
liturgies of the Church they only hear through a tiny window, like the
lepers’ squints in our own country, which during Mass is thrown open to
the church that the cells surround. I asked if these holy men received
visitors, as I should have liked to have had some talk with them, but
I was told that they only received the Emperor, the Empress and the
Metropolitan. If they must have company, apparently it has to be of the
very best.
How sweet the pine woods smelt in the soft, delicious air of spring after
these noisome holes at which a well-conditioned toad would turn up his
nose! There was more to be done yet, for the place seemed to be a perfect
colony of Holiness. At a little distance there dwelt an old monk, who
after ten years spent in one of those hideous cells (ten years! it makes
one shudder to think of it!) had reached such a pinnacle of piety that he
was now accredited by the wondering mujiks with the power of performing
miracles. He was not a very old man, as we were told, but so broken down
with infirmity, bred rather of privations than of years, that he could
hardly raise himself on his couch to receive us. Strikingly handsome, and
of rare distinction, with long grizzly hair and beard, he was the ideal
of St. Jerome. He was not unwilling to talk; but his mind was wandering,
his speech incoherent, and he seemed relieved when I bade him farewell.
I was afraid that if I offered any little gift to so saintly a personage
he would be affronted, so on leaving I put a trifle in the hand of the
attendant who kept the pretty little cottage. He begged me to go back and
lay it on the hermit’s table. He was lying back apparently exhausted, but
at the sight of the silver he revived, and gave every sign of pleasure
and gratitude.
Close by is one of those austere monasteries into which no female may
enter; but we had seen enough, so we drove back to the Lavra, there to
await the train which should carry us back to Moscow. By this time a
good many of the pilgrims who were merrymaking among the booths outside
the walls were very drunk indeed. They had washed down their piety with
vodka, and when the effects of that should have passed off, would be
ready once more to face the world, the flesh, and the devil, with that
added reputation for holiness which is the privilege of the Hadji in
every land.
It had been a full and an interesting day, to the pleasure of which our
good little monk Vaccian had contributed not a little; but I could have
wished that when I said good-bye, leaving with him the wherewithal to
buy a few little comforts, he had not in the profusion of his gratitude
insisted on kissing as well as blessing me, for indeed his person was not
kept with the same scrupulous cleanliness as his cell. The blessing was
good; the kissing less so; but it had to be endured, so I tried not to
make a wry face over it.
The next day was the last of my delightful stay at Moscow. Dreamily I
wandered alone through the streets, a purposeless vagabond, and rather
mournful, for I would fain have remained much longer. I carefully
eschewed sightseeing, for I was anxious to fix on my mind what I had
already seen, and that could best be achieved by gathering a general
impression of the peculiar features of the city.
On the 24th of May I reached St. Petersburg and almost immediately left
for London. I brought away with me a store of happy memories, especially
the cherished remembrance of Lord and Lady Napier. Of Russia I felt as
if I must take my leave, full of gratitude for boundless hospitality and
kindness, in her own pretty formula “Forgive!”
Many years after the betrayal of Denmark, when I was Secretary of the
Office of Works, I was once more, to my great delight, associated
officially with my old chief. Mr. Nelson, the famous Edinburgh publisher,
had very generously offered to pay the cost of certain improvements
and restorations at Edinburgh Castle. Lord Napier and I were appointed
members of a committee to consider the plans and proposals. One fine
afternoon, after the meeting of the committee, we were walking down the
hill together, when we began talking of the old St. Petersburg days. He
was full of fun and merriment, laughing over the old memories. At last I
said:
“Do you remember that dismal night in February, 1864, when you sent for
me to decipher the telegram that decided the fate of Denmark?”
“Yes, indeed,” was the answer.
“And do you remember your journey to Tsarskoe Selo the next morning and
what Prince Gortchakoff said to you.”
“No,” said Lord Napier, “I don’t remember _that_,” with a strong emphasis
on the _that_—but there came into his eyes the old merry twinkle that I
loved to see. He would not give away Lord Russell, whom he loved, even to
me who knew the whole story, but the laughter in his tell-tale eyes spoke
volumes. Nobody suffered more than Lord Napier occasionally did from the
diplomatic vagaries of his old chief. But I think that he looked upon
him as a sort of superlunary political saint, not to be measured by the
standards applicable to the ordinary commonplace Secretary of State.
On my way home I stopped at Berlin, which was in a fever of excitement
and self-glorification. Two of the most formidable military Powers of
Europe, having joined forces, had succeeded in crushing little Denmark.
Prussia was triumphant, the Mark beside itself with martial elation.
Trophies of war were stacked in public places, poor little old-fashioned
smooth-bore cannons, not much better than toys, which had been all
that the brave Danes had had for the defence of their Dannewerke. The
officers, “unscarred braggarts,” who had fought (save the word!) in this
noble warfare each wore a white silk band round the sleeve of his tunic,
rattling his sabre with all the conscious pride of heroism, while the
fair-haired maidens fell down in worship before the majesty of the War
God. Surely since the world began there never was so much cry over such a
paltry ploc of wool. But your Prussian Junker can outboast creation!
Two more days, and then back to the Foreign Office.
CHAPTER XIV
1864
THE FIRST CALL OF THE EAST
The year 1864 is sacred to me in that, although it called me away from
St. Petersburg, where I was so happy, it also called me to my first
taste—a mere glimpse—of that East which, old man as I am, still casts
its spell over me. When the time came for my holiday—not till October—I
had six weeks before me which I could call my own. It happened that at
that moment a messenger was wanted for Constantinople; I saw my chance
and volunteered. Vienna first, then down the Danube to the Black Sea.
Mr. (afterwards Sir Arthur) Cowell Stepney was my companion. A wonderful
journey, where language and costume carry the traveller back to the days
of Trajan, and the very names of the places are full of romance. “Unde
es, amice?” asks a Wallach, recognizing a friend—and invites him to sit
at the same “mensa” (not “tavola” or “table”) with him, and rates the
waiter because the cloth is not as “albo” (not “blanc” or “bianco”) as
it should be. The peasants, shaggy, bearded and untrimmed, were dressed
in tunics, fur caps, leggings and sandals, exactly like the prisoners on
Trajan’s arch. Fifty years ago the Latinity had been preserved in far
greater purity in Wallachia than in the true Latin countries, and poverty
of communication had prevented the demon of fashion from destroying the
old picturesque national costume.
A troglodyte colony of Circassians at Czernavoda, burrowing in the
earth like rabbits, a colony of Tartars herded in a loathsome mud town,
the gift of the Sultan to the Crim Tartars, seemed like creatures from
another hemisphere. Here we had some trouble with certain tatterdemalion
nondescripts who represented the Turkish authorities. They wanted to open
my Foreign Office bags. I rebelled; but knowing no Turkish, and they
being equally ignorant of any other language, the case seemed hopeless,
when all of a sudden I remembered Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. Kinglake
furnished me with the word of salvation. “Eltchi, Eltchi!” I shouted,
“touch my bags if you dare, you infernal scoundrels!” The last words,
except as ornaments, were pleonastic as abuse generally is. “Sesame”
itself had not more magic than the first. My canvas bags became an object
of veneration—the great seal as sacred as that of King Solomon in the
days of his glory.
At Kustendji we took ship, and after a stormy passage in that cruel sea
the name of which had to be changed in order to propitiate its evil
demons, made our way, like Jason and his Argonauts, through the Kuaneai
Symplegades, the dark, floating rocks between which the very dove that
they sent out as pioneer lost her tail, and found ourselves in the
Bosphorus, the identical bull’s ferry across which that wicked old god
Zeus carried the lovely Europa. We were now in the midst of the scenes
made famous by Homer and Hesiod; the home of gods and heroes, the land in
which all the poetry and all the romance of the Western world was born.
Beautiful is Constantinople, the great city of palaces, mosques, minarets
and cypresses; but how much more beautiful must that paradise have been
under the dispensation of Olympus, before the unspeakable Turk, and the
hardly more speakable Christian of those parts, had made it the centre of
their ignoble tussles, intrigues, cruelties, robberies and murders!
The day had not long broken when on a dismal morning—October 4th—we
escaped from a polychrome and polyglot crowd which besieged our ship, and
following our luggage borne by sturdy Hamals, made our way through mud
and slosh up the Grande Rue de Pera to Misseri’s Hotel. There was a magic
in the name, for had not old Misseri been made famous by Kinglake? Was he
not, _longo intervallo_, the second hero of that immortal book “Eothen?”
And was he not himself grown rich and fat and well-liking, a Pasha of
many tales, and all of them in honour of his old master, whom he loved,
and whom I was only to know many years later?
When I had ridden to Therapia and deposited my bags at the British
Embassy, where Mr. William Stuart was then the Ambassador’s vicegerent, I
went back to Constantinople. Stuart was an excellent official, famous for
having penetrated all those arcana of cookery in which Brillat Savarin
himself was not a greater adept. It is a study well worth the attention
of diplomatists, for who can say what difficulties an excellent dinner
has not smoothed over? And here let me, in passing, pay a tribute to my
greatest living friend among British Ambassadors, the prince of modern
diplomatists and experts in dining as a fine art. But I will say no more,
lest I should be suspected of fishing for an invitation—if only a sea
which I am never likely again to cross did not lie between him and me
that might be possible; as it is, I can meet accusation with firmness.
Of course we went to see all the sights of Stamboul—_non ragionam
di lor_. What delighted me far more than the mosques, the dancing
and howling dervishes, the tombs of magnificent Sultans, and all the
stock-in-trade of the dragoman, was wandering through by-ways in the
city, happening upon out-of-the-way, unsuspected, picturesque nooks and
corners—above all, certain old graveyards, with their quaint turbaned
memorial stones, over which the tall, solemn cypresses mount reverent
guard—warders watching over the peace of the dead Moslem. There was one
such cemetery hard by a tiny mosque, on one side of which the jealously
latticed window of a harem looked out, and I could picture to myself
Amina the ghoul, stealing out of her prison in the dark hours of the
night to practise her unholy rites among the mouldering dead. There were
still places in Constantinople where, far from the madding crowd of
frock-coated modernity, the glamour of the East retained its power.
One sight I am glad to have seen, and that was on Friday, the 7th of
October, the Sultan Abdul Aziz going to the mosque. There was a great
crowd of carriages full of ladies, and all the principal ministers
and officers of State. The Sultan looked tired and intensely bored,
as well he might, for already his extravagances had brought upon him
ceaseless remonstrances from the other Powers. He began his reign well,
industriously paving the road to Hell, but his paving-stones, excellent
as they seemed to be, soon crumbled into dust. He became inoculated
with the barbarous lust of military splendour and all those whims
and appetites to which Sultans have fallen victims to the undoing of
themselves and their people.
The sorry end came twelve years later (in 1876). How it came about
remains a mystery of the women’s quarters. It was said at the time that a
nip from a pair of sharp scissors opened a vein and the wretched man bled
to death in the privacy of his own harem. Who did the deed none knew. Was
it suicide? Was it a bribed eunuch? Was it one of the ladies? That is
immaterial; his death was needed, and he died.
Three notable men were among the high officials in waiting: Aali Pasha,
who was said to be greatly under the influence of M. de Moustiers, the
French Ambassador; Omar Pasha, the commander-in-chief of the Turkish
army in the Crimea in 1855; and Fuad Pasha, who had been Lord Dufferin’s
colleague on the commission which investigated the anti-Christian
uprising in the Lebanon in 1860. I was glad to see him, for I had heard
so much of him from Meade, who accompanied Lord Dufferin as secretary.
That was Lord Dufferin’s first important mission; and very well he
managed it.
When he first took his seat with the colleagues, his extremely youthful
appearance made them think that they would be able to do what they
pleased with him; they were mistaken; by the third sitting his cleverness
and tact, combined with the most exquisite manners and firmness, had made
him master of the situation, and his fame as a diplomatist was secured.
Fuad Pasha, like my old friend Khalil Pasha at St. Petersburg, was noted
as a wit. A short time before I saw him he gave a ball to which the
members of the Corps Diplomatique and their wives were invited. At a
certain moment it was arranged that the ladies should go and pay a visit
to Madame Fuad in the harem. A pert French _chargé d’affaires_ said that
he should manage to smuggle himself inside the mystic doors. Fired with
this ambition, at the given time he offered his arm to one of the ladies
and tried to slip in with her. Fuad Pasha, who was standing by, stopped
him, saying very quietly, “Pardon, mon cher, vous savez que vous n’êtes
accrédité qu’auprès de la Porte.”
But after all, Constantinople, with its vaunted charms—charms so much
vaunted that they have become almost familiar—was not the goal of our
ambition. Our aim was to see something of Asia Minor and, above all,
to explore the Trojan Plain. The difficulty was, how to get there? At
last we heard of a Russian steamer, the _Grand Duke Constantine_, plying
between Odessa and Alexandria—a craft as capricious as a fine lady. First
she would, and then she wouldn’t, take us, and finally, “saying ‘no,’
consented.” But not for two days would she make up her mind to start.
At last, on the 12th of October, we steamed away from the Golden Horn,
leaving behind us the domes and minarets of Stamboul bathed in all the
glory of a sunset that would have made Turner wild with delight, and
which sent a whole shipload of Russian pilgrims bound for the Holy Land
to their knees, piously crossing themselves at the last sight of St.
Sophia, always a sacred shrine to the orthodox, in spite of having been
for centuries defiled by the rites of Islam.
On the following morning we landed at the Dardanelles. The Consul was
most kind, and helped us in every way. The trouble was that there were
no horses to be had, so we spent a wet, stormy day in visiting the civil
and military governors. The former was a delightful, fat old gentleman,
brother-in-law to Fuad Pasha, with a very merry twinkle in his eye,
almost as entertaining as Kinglake’s immortal Pasha, whose conversation
is recorded in “Eothen.” He spoke much about the Prince of Wales, and
declared that the Princess was “a gift of cream and honey specially sent
by Allah for the good of the English people.” Those were the sentiments
of the man of peace.
The man of war was not less emphatic over the pipes and coffee. He
professed great admiration for Lord Palmerston, Lord Stratford de
Redcliffe, and the bagpipes. If ever England should be in trouble
Turkey would come to the rescue, with four hundred thousand men, and he
would be the man to lead them. But alas! that was fifty-one years ago,
in pre-Enver days! What was perhaps more to the purpose, by the help
of the two governors we procured horses and a kavass named Hussein,
a picturesque warrior bristling with arms, who was made personally
responsible for our safety. The good Misseri had found us an excellent
dragoman at Constantinople. I recommended him afterwards to Leighton—not
yet President of the Royal Academy—who was delighted with him.
Full of enthusiasm, the old poem stirring us to the very core, we
wandered, Homer in hand, among the scenes made sacred for ever by the
tale of the ten years’ siege. We looked out—as the homesick Greeks
did—upon Imbros, Tenedos, Lemnos, Samothrace, and dimly saw far-away
Athos; ahead of us was the glorious Ida range. Hardly a step could we
take without treading upon broken marble and sherds of pottery, dumb
witnesses of the vanished existence of a once teeming population, or
probably three tiers of population—the men of King Priam’s time, the
Romans, the Genoese. All have left their traces, all are now forgotten by
the few poverty-stricken Turkish villagers who have ignorantly succeeded
to their heritage.
The Scamander, long since diverted from its old course, was peaceful
enough when we first crossed it; but there came a great storm, the God
descended into the river, and in a couple of hours the sluggish stream
had become a wild, tearing flood; to get back was out of the question,
and we had to take refuge for the night in a Turkish farm-house, a very
filthy haven of rest, or rather no-rest, where we were the prey of
creeping and hopping creatures innumerable. In the dead of the night the
wind howled, the crazy house shook, and a portion of the ceiling plaster
fell upon me, and began, as it seemed, to take unto itself legs and crawl
all over me. Furious as the weather was, I jumped up and fled into an
outside shed, where, after a bath by moonlight in Scamander, I waited for
the dawn, which came at last, breaking into a glorious day, its beauty
enhanced a hundredfold by the memory of the horrors of the night.
As we sauntered over the hallowed plain, it needed no great play of the
imagination to see the Grecian ships drawn up in line by the seashore; to
picture to ourselves the hosts of Europe and Asia facing one another in
battle array; to listen to the proud challenges of the leaders acclaimed
by the shouts of their men; Ajax, “like the dread Ares in person,
striding mightily, in his harness of flashing brass, shaking his long
shafted spear;” to see the body of Hector being dragged in cruel revenge
round yonder barrow, which is the tomb of Patroclus; to feel with the
aged King Priam, praying for the ransom of his son’s remains; to mourn
over the widowhood of Andromache! These are the very springs near which
Hector was killed, still pouring their runlets of water into the natural
basin at which the deep-bosomed Trojan women were wont to wash their
linen.
It is good to remember those days spent amid traditions which three
thousand years have not sufficed to strip of their glamour. If the plain
still seemed to ring with the clash of arms, the slopes and wooded dells
of “many fountained” Ida were so lovely, so full of poetry, that I half
expected to see them peopled by lovely goddesses and shy dryads, hiding
among the oaks and chestnuts and pines. But alas! Aphrodite, the Queen
of Smiles (was she not born in the foam of the countless smiles of the
sea?), has long since forsaken the haunts that she loved when the world
was young—maybe the men of to-day are not so attractive as Anchises
and Adonis, or as the lovely boy who drew down the chaste Artemis from
her crescent in high heaven to steal a kiss on earth. The goddesses
remain sedate and unkissing among the clouds of Olympus, and no longer
condescend to entrance the solitudes of shepherds, nor plead for the
palm of beauty before a mortal judge. But if the goddesses have fled for
ever, the sacred groves which they loved still remain full of the magic
of their beauty and of the olden time. It is only we who are unworthy to
receive the divine afflatus—we degenerate—of the earth, earthy.
That Homer was himself and not a limited liability company of
ballad-mongers—that he, too, wandered where we did—is proved by his
accurate picture of the landscape of the Troad. Kinglake brings forward
the relative positions of Imbros and Samothrace. Poseidon viewed the war
from Samothrace, but on the map Imbros stands between it and the Asiatic
shore. How was the god’s vision not masked? Then Kinglake looked, and
saw that Samothrace towered high above Imbros, so that Poseidon had well
chosen his watch-tower. Ida gives what I think is a still better proof
that Homer saw—and described what he saw. He could not have been born
blind.
Climbing Mount Ida, at first we rode through an enchanted forest, broken
up by glades and pastures of rarest beauty, watered by crystal rills
springing from the living rock, and babbling their way down to the plain,
to join Scamander, through scenes befitting the divine mysteries sung
by the poets. Higher up the vegetation becomes less luxuriant and more
stern, until it dwindles into mere scrub and finally ceases altogether.
Then comes a stiff ascent over loose shingle, up which we had to drag our
horses, slipping back a yard for every two yards gained. The stones are
bare and almost polished, scarcely so much as a lichen to be seen, but
when at last we painfully reached the top of Gargarus, there burst upon
our view a carpet of brilliant wild flowers, marking the spot where Here
lulled to sleep the mighty Zeus as he sat brooding over the help to be
given to Hector and to Troy. It was a war in which the gods themselves
took sides, and fought and schemed on behalf of those whom they took
under their wings.
Does not Homer tell us how, when Poseidon was helping the Greeks, the
Queen of Heaven, the Lady Here, who was also on their side, saw her
lord Zeus grimly watching from the heights of Ida over the Trojan host?
How to close his eyes and gain time? The God of Sleep she suborns by
promising to give him as his bride the beloved of his heart, the youngest
of the Graces, fair Pasithae. The Goddess is Queen of all Majesty, yet
she has but too good reason to know that Majesty by itself has lost its
power over the Cloud-compeller; so she begs of Aphrodite the loan of her
cestus, the magic girdle which holds the secret of all those alluring
charms which make love irresistible. Armed with this and having Sleep as
her ally, she seeks her lord, and with sweet dalliance beguiles him into
oblivion on the mountain-top.
“Then the divine earth sent up a carpet thick and soft of newly-budding
grass, dew-sprinkled lotos, crocus and hyacinth” (Iliad, XIV.). Homer
must have seen this wonder and invented the pretty fable of Here’s wiles
to account for this unexpected garden of wildings.
To deny Homer or Shakespeare is a crime of high treason against the
Majesty of Genius. For my part, in these days of acute criticism, when
all faith is shattered and torn to shreds, I am not ashamed to confess
that I am yet old-fashioned enough to believe in Homer, and to love the
old fables of the gods and goddesses, call them sun-myths or moon-myths,
or what you will. To me Agamemnon, Achilles and Ajax; Priam, Hector,
Andromache, Paris and dear, beautiful, naughty Helen, _teterrima belli
causa_, are still real actors on the world’s stage, who among these
glades and forests and sweetly watered dells and plains played their
parts in a great drama which has been the joy of countless generations
and will be the joy of generations that are yet to come. Of how much
pleasure and beauty does not too much learning rob us! Is it not enough
that a thing is beautiful? Why turn diamonds into charcoal? If we might
reverse the process there would be some sense in it.
At a pass on the top of a spur of the mountain range we came upon an
excellent illustration of the eight-hours’ system. At a point where
caravans cross the mountain there was a little hut with a tiny vegetable
garden. It was occupied by three Zebecs, guardians of the peace, and in
some fashion customs officers. They divided the twenty-four hours between
them. While one slept, another mounted guard, and the third robbed any
unarmed travellers who might pass that way. We had luncheon in their
hut; the coffee and cigarettes were of the best—manifestly the spoils of
the Egyptian. Refreshed and enriched with a store of happy memories, we
came down upon the Bay of Adramyttium. The richly wooded gorges of the
southern slope of the mountain were, if possible, even more beautiful
than the Trojan side. We slept at Ardjelar, and next day took boat to
Assos.
We had now left the enchanted haunts of gods and goddesses, the
battlefields of heroes, to linger for a while in the footsteps of the
Holy Apostles. The Military Pasha at the Dardanelles had given us a
letter for the Bimbashi in command, who was very civil and showed us over
the ruins of the old Greek town, then said to be the most perfect in
existence, but even fifty-one years ago fast disappearing under the hand
of the destroyer, who must needs carry off the grand old masonry to build
fortifications. The Bimbashi was wrecking the old town with ardour, for
our friend the Pasha had written him an indignant despatch complaining
that the hidden treasures which were supposed to exist had not been
found, and he begged us to write to the Pasha, assuring him that all
search had proved barren and there was no treasure trove.
We were now eager to get on, so, in spite of dismal forebodings from our
crew, we insisted on setting sail in an open caique, meaning to reach
Aivali as soon as possible; but wind and weather were too much for our
poor little craft: we were promptly driven over to Lesbos, and it was
forty-eight hours before we managed to reach our destination, after
beating about the bay half starved and sleepless.
There was a British Vice-Consul in the place—a Greek—who treated us most
kindly, though it was rather a disappointment to two starvelings, after
having doubled St. Paul’s experience of “a night and day in the deep,” to
be offered, Turkish fashion, a teaspoonful of jam and a glass of water.
However, a bountiful meal followed as soon as it could be cooked. We
had a great disappointment about horses; there were none to be had, and
it was all the more provoking as we knew that we must be causing much
trouble to our good host; but we did not find out till afterwards, and
then to our great confusion, that he actually turned his wife and his
mother-in-law out of doors in order to lodge us.
The next day at extortionate prices we procured horses and set out for
Pergamos, riding through cotton-fields and olive-groves, past a cemetery
devoted to the remains of victims murdered by a band of brigands who,
until twelve months earlier, had infested that part of the country. But
now they themselves had been caught and entered upon the inheritance of
their final six feet of earth, so we had no fear. We reached Pergamos
that night, a quaint and beautiful old town full of ruins and relics
of the past, and lodged in a _khan_ which Rembrandt would have etched
with delight. What effects he would have produced with the variously
and picturesquely dressed men, the camels and the horses, all dimly
visible, scarcely more than guessed at, under the half light shed by an
old-fashioned horn lantern. In two more days, on the 28th of October,
we arrived at Smyrna, where we spent a most delightful week under the
auspices of Mr. Cumberbatch, the British Consul.
Before finally parting with our _kavass_, Hussein, we wished to have a
photograph of him. To this he strongly objected. Photography was not in
those days so common in Turkey, at any rate in the out-of-the-way parts
to which he belonged, as it is at present, and he considered that its
practice must be in no very remote way connected with black magic; when,
on looking into the camera he saw the figures upside down, then he was
persuaded that it could not be other than the work of Shaitan. However,
at length he was persuaded. He was a merry, picturesque creature,
beguiling his time on the march by singing. George, the dragoman, gave
me a translation of one of his songs. “The falcon looks to the water,
but I cannot see my Lady. She wounds me, but I know not how to cure the
wound. The falcon loves to descend upon the peacock, and I long to kiss
the white throat of my Lady. She has a knife in her hand; she is about to
murder me. Yah! Hah! White are your legs, oh! my Lady!”
October 29th.—I was very anxious to see the monument of Sesostris, a
memorial of his victories, described by that beloved old traveller
Herodotus, which is at Nif, within reach of Smyrna. A longish excursion.
Herodotus mentions two such monuments, but so far as I know only this one
has been discovered. We started at five o’clock in the morning with Mr.
Cumberbatch, escorted by his _kavass_ and a mounted policeman. Even had
there been no object of profound historic and artistic interest to be
seen, the beauty of the excursion would have amply repaid our trouble. As
the day broke we were met by successions of gorgeously lovely landscapes.
The valley along which our road lay was hemmed in by mountains richly
clothed with fruit trees, pines, cypresses and oaks, enfolded in the
graceful drapery of vines and curtained with the festoons of climbing
plants; wild flowers carpeted the “floor of the forest,” and fragrant
shrubs perfumed the fresh morning air.
In spring, when the cherries and other fruit trees are in blossom, this
must be a happy valley indeed, but we saw it at its second moment of
supreme beauty, when the woodland was aflame with what the Japanese call
the brocade of the autumn tints. Nestled in the midst of these feasts
for the eye lies the picturesque little town of Nif, or Nymphi. As we
saw it, the market-place, with its stalls surrounding a noble group of
Oriental plane trees, and filled with a busy, kaleidoscopic crowd still,
at that time, clothed in Eastern garb, was like a scene devised by some
cunning stage artist. We ate the food which we had brought with us in
an ancient _khan_, itself a picture of the East, and then went to visit
the Governor, whom the Consul knew. For a while we lingered in the inner
court of the great man’s palace, a study such as Alma Tadema would have
loved to paint, with its marble floor, its plashing fountain, fringed
with oleanders, and the arches of its cloister decked with orange and
lemon trees.
Two milk-white goats, his Excellency’s special pets, came up
confidentially to be stroked and coaxed. Presently the great man received
us in an inner sanctum. Pipes, coffee, and phrases followed as usual,
and then we went our way. Living the life of ease dear to the Turk in
such surroundings—his home a gem in the loveliest setting—I felt that
the Pasha must have realized the Italian dream of the sweetness of doing
nothing.
A ride of about two hours from the town brought us to our goal. It would
not be an easy matter for a traveller to find the effigy without a guide,
so well is it hidden among the brushwood some three hundred yards above
a pretty little mountain burn which comes tumbling down to the road.
Would that it had been still better screened, for though there seemed
to be people in Smyrna who had never heard of it, others there were who
had found their way thither and thought it no sin to deface this hoary
monument by graving their names in large letters all over the rock. One
ruffian, a schoolmaster as I was told, had immortalized his vulgarity by
chiselling his name deeply on the arm which lies across the arm of the
old king. Had I been an autocrat I would have caused him to be soundly
flogged by his own pupils. They would have enjoyed a rich, topsy-turvy
treat and he would have met with a punishment befitting the crime.
The rock was originally sloping, but was cut into the perpendicular from
the bottom upwards, leaving at the base a ledge which served as a seat
where a pilgrim might rest in comfort. The figure is carved in deep
relief and is seven feet and seven inches high, measuring four feet
from the right elbow to the left hand. The features are much worn and
the letters which were on the breast have disappeared. The left hand
holds the spear and the right the bow. Here the description of Herodotus,
otherwise correct, goes astray, for he reverses these positions. A very
intelligible mistake if he wrote from memory on his return home from the
expedition; or possibly his account may have been taken from the other
figure which he mentions. The conical cap, with a badge in front and a
sort of brim to it, the spear and bow, the greaves on the thigh and a
projection which must once have been the handle of a sword, are quite
distinct.
We stayed for some time in contemplation of this record, between forty
and fifty centuries old, of the pride of the old Egyptian king, and then,
mounting our horses, turned their heads westward, sad that this day of
beauty had come to an end. It remains on my memory as a rare experience,
a flawless holiday, fitly crowned by a sunset that seemed to wreathe
Smyrna in flames and turn its beauteous bay into a great lake of liquid
fire.
October 30th, Sunday.—A day of rest much needed, for since we landed at
the Dardanelles we had been a good deal knocked about, far more than
appears in these pages, so after church we lounged lazily about Smyrna
and drank in the glory of the view from the citadel, where the old
Genoese towers stand among the ruins that were once a stronghold built by
some Cyclopean Vauban. Here, too, is a small mosque on a site where the
Christian Church of the Revelation is said to have stood; hard by must
have been “the synagogue of Satan.”[50] Very impressive, moreover, is the
Turkish cemetery with its old and stately cypresses, finer even, as it
seemed to us, than those of Constantinople.
As we wandered homeward we came down upon the track of the Smyrna and
Aidin Railway. Wonderful are the caprices of fashion! What the Sweet
Waters of Europe are to the ladies of Constantinople, that to the fair
dames of Smyrna were the less romantic rails of the new road. They were
the fashionable promenade of the Sabbath-keeping _bourgeoisie_—the line
was thronged by numbers of Turkish ladies in many-coloured dresses; far
more closely veiled in their ghostly white yashmaks than their more
emancipated sisters in Stamboul. Greek, Armenian and Frankish beauties,
in bright French or pseudo-French raiment—many of them radiant with the
beauty for which Ismir is famous—made a motley crowd; while sedate old
Turks sat sipping their coffee and smoking their narghilehs in silent
dignity under the orange and citron trees which fringe the cafés,
watching from under their sleepy lids the brilliant colouring and glowing
eyes of the Ionian dames and damsels.
Waiting for a ship, or indeed for anything, is but dreary work, but there
was no feeling dull at Smyrna, for there was much to be seen and done,
and we lingered luxuriously over the little that was left of a joyous
holiday.
Of course we went to Ephesus, where Mr. Wood, acting for the British
Museum, had not yet made his great discoveries, though in his first
year’s work he had unearthed much that was of interest. The modern
village of Ayazaluk is almost entirely built up of the stones of the
old city all huddled together higgledy-piggledy. Rarely carved capitals
of pillars turned topsy-turvy form incongruous bases for fir posts,
supporting the verandahs of mud-built shops in which fruiterers, pastry
cooks and tobacconists ply their trade. A ruined mosque is a beautiful
relic of old Moorish architecture, inside of which ancient Greek pillars
have been adapted. The very stones in the graveyard are fragments of
old columns and Turkish marbles of the middle ages. But what a noble
position! And how glorious must Ephesus have been in the days of St.
Paul, when it was a seaport and its imposing citadel overlooked the sea,
now (in 1864) owing to alluvial deposits some four miles away!
Barring Damascus, no place is more full of associations and memories
connected with St. Paul than Ephesus. It is strange indeed that so little
should be known of the life of a saint whose ministry wrought more for
the world than that of any other man before or since. Yet here are the
remains of the very buildings among which he lived for years. It cannot
be said of Ephesus as Lucan said of Troy “etiam periere ruinæ.” Neither
Goths nor Turks have entirely wiped them out.
Here is the great amphitheatre where the apostle “fought with beasts,”
where some twenty-five thousand spectators would assemble for such a
sight, and where Demetrius the silversmith raised the riot against him
and “the whole city was filled with confusion.” Here, too, is a little
square building of stupendous antiquity, which tradition says was his
prison; and why should it not have been? I am old-fashioned and simple
enough to have faith in tradition, which is often as trustworthy as the
written word, just as I humbly accept the letter written by St. Paul “to
the saints which are at Ephesus,” when he was “an ambassador in bonds,”
at Rome, and pay no heed to the learned hair-splittings of scholastic
commentators, to whom I would say, in the famous words of Lord Melbourne,
“Why can’t you leave it alone?”
Seven years later I was again at Ephesus with Lord Stafford and George
Crawley, and this time we found Mr. Wood triumphant. He had just reaped
the fruit of eight years of assiduous labour—labour hindered by many
difficulties, lack of funds, discouragement, and, last not least, the
pestilent atmosphere of the fever swamps among which he had to work.
This second visit was deeply interesting, nor was it devoid of a
certain element of fun. That time we arrived at Smyrna from Beirut
in a small Russian coasting steamer which was carrying pilgrims from
the Holy Land back to Odessa—always a curious and interesting lot of
passengers, as I often found. We had to face a succession of gales, to
the great discomfiture of the poor zealots. One fat old pilgrimess told
me pathetically that she would have died had she not thought of the
inconvenience that her death would cause on board, and so in the spirit
of self-sacrifice she resisted and consented to live.
In the saloon, such as it was, we had as shipmate a certain elderly
American general, who told us that he was an attorney, own correspondent
to seven transatlantic newspapers, and that his journals were looked
forward to by some of the leading families in various cities, unknown
to me. As a man of letters he greatly admired Shakespeare. “Yes, sir!”
he said, “Shakespeare is quite an institution. Emerson can write some
poetry, but I guess he can’t come up to that. With the Bible, Shakespeare
and Webster’s Dictionary, a man can get along. They are as good documents
as a man need have for a library.” A dear, innocent, unsophisticated
man was the Attorney-General, very good-natured, and a source of great
amusement during all the time that he remained sticking to us with the
affection of a burr.
Our lucky star was in the ascendant, for almost the first person whom
we met in Smyrna was Mr. Wood, who most kindly agreed to go with us to
Ephesus the next morning. When we reached the ruins, he showed us all
his plans and explained his discoveries, setting forth the work of his
eight years in an hour’s pregnant talk. When he had made all clear, the
good General said, “Then, sir, I gather from your conversation that the
Temple of Diana was a round building.” “Round, sir, round!” said Mr.
Wood, “haven’t I been telling you all the time that it was square?”
Nothing abashed, the General looked round him and said: “Waal! if this
was the site of the City of Ephesus, I’m glad to know it. It was quite
considerable of a city, and the men that built it had some snap in ’em.”
Steered by our learned pilot, we visited all the wonders that his
patience and science had revealed—the Odeion, a beautiful little building
with white marble steps decorated with carved lions’ feet—the Wool
Exchange, a most ingenious discovery—the marble tomb of Androclus. I have
already spoken of the theatre, the stadium and other great witnesses
of the past. Did we pass by the tomb of Mary Magdalene, that sweet
woman whom the great Pope Gregory, for no earthly reason and without
one scintilla of evidence, came to identify with the woman “which was a
sinner”? Did we see the tomb of St. Luke, who told that unnamed sinner’s
touching story? Again I say, why not? These are secrets which will not be
revealed until the Last Day, when the graves shall give up their dead.
But even an Evangelist must die somewhere, and what is more probable than
that the early Christians, knowing where his remains lay in some place
outside the city, should have brought them hither with pious pomp and
reburied them in yonder round building, faced with marble and bearing as
its device the bull, or buffalo, surmounted with a cross?
Mr. Wood’s great find, then (in 1871) a discovery not very many days old,
was the undoubted site of the great Temple of Diana. Careful study and
reasoning led Mr. Wood to begin excavating at a spot where he discovered
the angle of the peribolus which was thrown by Augustus ὑιός θεοῦ, the
Son of God. (How like the Chinese imperial title, Tien Tzě, the son of
Heaven!) Here were inscriptions bearing the name of the architect, the
one partially the other wholly erased. This tallies with an edict which
has been found ordering that the name of this man, who had fallen into
disgrace, should be obliterated.
Having found the angle, Mr. Wood went to work with new enthusiasm and
energy, and was rewarded some two months before our arrival by the
unearthing of a huge white marble column of exquisite workmanship _in
situ_. Thus was the vexed question of the site of the mighty temple set
at rest and Mr. Wood’s work crowned with success. Much has been done
since his time; but he showed the way, a successful pioneer. When we
considered the vastness of the inclosure and the magnificent proportions
of the column we understood the cry, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!”
While Mr. Wood was giving us a lecture of surpassing interest, I began to
think that even the General was touched by the sacred fire of enthusiasm,
but I was reckoning without my General. He was destined once more to
put his foot in it. Like Sydney Smith’s silent man, he rudely broke the
spell. When Mr. Wood had finished speaking, he looked for a moment or
two pensively at the column, and then picking up a great stone, said:
“Waal now! Do think! If that piece of marble was part of the Temple of
Diana, I guess I’m bound to have a chunk of it,” and was just about to
chip off as large a piece as he could, when Mr. Wood, who was nothing if
not peppery, flew at him viciously; the tiger that lies sleeping in every
man was aroused, and I verily believe that had Mr. Wood held a deadly
weapon in his hand our poor Attorney-General would have had but a faint
chance of surviving. As it was he collapsed under the great discoverer’s
architectonic fury and remained sadly silent for the rest of the day.
What manner of report, I wonder, did the seven newspapers receive of our
Ephesian expedition!
The next morning at breakfast we took leave of our General. We were bound
for Constantinople and our ship was to sail at noon. He was bound heaven
knows whither in search of paragraphs. After breakfast he announced his
intention of going up to the citadel of Smyrna. “I am informed,” he told
us, “that there air up there some Cyclopean walls. Now Cyclops lived
quite a long while ago, and I’m not going to miss seeing what he built.”
It was rather a shame to disillusion the poor gentleman, but I thought of
the seven across the Atlantic and was stony-hearted. When I explained to
him the meaning of Cyclopean building the General was disenchanted, but
he went up to the citadel nevertheless, and I have no doubt made a very
pretty story out of the great one-eyed builder.
* * * * *
And now let me go back seven years and start again on Gunpowder Plot Day,
1864, when we left the radiantly beautiful bay of Smyrna for England
on board the Austrian Lloyd’s ship _Messina_. Twenty-six hours’ steam
brought us to the Island of Syra, where, after being roasted for a day
and a night on that sun-scorched rock, where no trace of vegetation is to
be seen—to all appearance an island of bumboat-men and evil smells—on the
7th we shipped on board the _Calcutta_, also an Austrian Lloyd’s ship,
bound for Trieste.
It is something to have seen Navarino and to have passed Ithaca, even
in the night; but what gave especial interest to our cruise was meeting
Count Ungern Sternberg (or was he a Baron? I forget), a Russian who was a
relation of many people whom I had known well in St. Petersburg. Though
a general in the army, he was one of those travelling agents who in
those days used to wander over Europe apparently charged with no special
mission, but keeping their ears and eyes open everywhere, and doubtless
finding many an opportunity of rendering some underground service to
the rather tortuous policy in which the Russian Foreign Office in those
days delighted. Now that the Gortchakoffs and Ignatieffs have carried
their diplomacy into another and let us hope a better world, there is
perhaps no room for the political knight errant of whom Ungern Sternberg
was at that time a rather famous representative. I knew him well by
name, though we had never met, and he was a most agreeable companion.
We talked a great deal about our common friends in London, Paris, St.
Petersburg (I cannot yet bring myself to talk of Petrograd). On politics,
for some reason best known to himself, he was, as he would have put it,
_très boutonné_; but when we reached Corfu and he saw the remains of
the blown-up forts his excitement got the better of his diplomacy, and
he could not conceal his joy at the loss which England had sustained,
or his wonder at the short-sightedness which prompted it. “What was
your Lord Russell about?” he said. “See how many combinations may make
England regret this step. For instance, suppose that France and Italy—no
impossible contingency—were united against her; what a stronghold they
would have at Corfu!”
This was much the opinion that Lord Palmerston professed in 1850, but in
1863 he yielded to Lord Russell, and, apparently without a misgiving,
gave up what he once considered too important a naval and military post
ever to be abandoned by us. Lord Russell, as usual, was outwitted; he
believed in a plebiscite and that a people should belong to masters of
their own choosing; he could not see that, in this case, the plebiscite
was an engine worked largely by ecclesiastical means at the disposal of
Russia—in fact, a political and clerical intrigue.
A very intelligent Roman Catholic priest told me that the islanders,
having been led by Mr. Gladstone, in 1858, to believe that England would
never give up the protectorate, thought that they were quite safe in
declaring for annexation to Greece, as they were urged to do by their
priests. They would in that way save their face with the Orthodox Church,
while they would still enjoy the material prosperity for which they had
to thank England. They thought that their true interest was to run with
the hare and hunt with the hounds. The Greek Archbishop used all his
power to further the plans of Russia, and during the time of voting was
nightly closeted in secret conference with the Russian Consul. When the
end came, His Grace received a high decoration from the Tsar, from whom
it was even said that he was actually in receipt of pay.
Curiously enough, the party that had been hottest for annexation with
Greece under King Otho would not vote for it under King George. The
reason alleged was that the revolution against Otho had been the work of
England, and that King George being the nominee of England, annexation
with Greece would put the islands more than ever under the thumb of Great
Britain. My priest went on to deplore the ruin which their mistaken
nationalism had brought upon the unhappy people. Many of the principal
business houses in Corfu were practically bankrupt and new failures daily
expected. The poorer people found no sale for their fish and the produce
of the farms, gardens and orchards. The market, which did a roaring trade
daily, sometimes as much as two or three hundred pounds changing hands in
a morning, was a thing of the past. Now there was no English Government
House, no prosperous officials, no garrison, and with the departure of
the last redcoat the happy days of plenty had gone. “Oh!” he cried, “if
you would only come back again!”
We went to the principal hotel in the great square. The landlord received
us with many expressions of joy. We ordered luncheon and a carriage.
“I will go and cook at once,” said he. “Eh! Gentlemen! Six months ago
I had a cook and waiters and maids, two coachmen and plenty of horses.
Now I must go and dress the luncheon. I must serve it; and when you have
finished I shall harness the carriage and drive you out! and I shall make
your beds if you sleep here to-night.” Perfectly good-humoured the poor
man was, and that made his story all the more pathetic.
When we got home, after a drive through the lovely garden scenery, he
made the beds, for we were not to sail till the next day. More talk in
the evening. The distress was beyond belief, and it was no mere temporary
distress—bad times with the hope of better things in the future. The
olive harvest, for instance, was in deadly straits, for the proprietors
could not pay a wage of five shillings a day for the gathering, and
the labourers were the masters of the situation and could demand what
they chose. In this way did the small landowners who helped in working
the plebiscite reap the reward of their folly. Humble civil servants
who used to be paid to the hour had to wait a week or a fortnight for
the salary upon which their daily food depended. Cultivation looked
as though it must die out, for the four or five hundred wretched Greek
soldiery who had replaced the English garrison spent their scanty pay on
tobacco alone; no one knew how they lived. Corfu was desolate and England
had lost a stronghold that never can be replaced. No wonder the Ungern
Sternbergs rejoiced!
It is perhaps one of the signs of England’s greatness that she has been
able so far to survive the foreign policy of Lord Russell. Yet even
to-day, in 1915, she is paying the penalty and at what a price! I wonder
whether if he were still alive he would tell us, as he did at Blairgowrie
more than fifty years ago, to “Rest and be thankful.”
Nov. 11.—Our last day’s cruise was delightful. The calendar told us that
we were in November. The weather said June. Our skipper being a native
of Dalmatia intimately knowing the coast and all its snares dared to
take his big ship inside the islands, so we had a view of lovely scenery
usually only possible for the smallest of craft. At a point on the shore
stood a little house and in front of it a group consisting of his wife
and children, on the watch to wave him Godspeed; possibly the chance of a
glimpse of those dear ones weighed more with him than the desire to show
us the beauties of the Dalmatian coast—at any rate, we were the gainers.
At Trieste we said good-bye to our good friend the Russian, whom we left
still chuckling over Lord Russell and the Ionian Islands.
CHAPTER XV
CHINA IN 1865-1866
In “Un Pèlerin d’Angkor,” which for the sake of its wonderful
descriptions of tropical scenery is to me one of Pierre Loti’s most
charming books, he tells us how when he was a little child he was held
in chains by the idea of the mysterious temples hidden away, forgotten,
buried in the teeming jungles of Cambodia, and how at last his dream was
realized in that long pilgrimage up the Mekong river of which his poetic
descriptions, carrying us with a magician’s wand into the mysterious
silences of tropical forests, are tinged with that melancholy which
seems inseparable from his genius, even when he calls up the happiness
of reaching the long-wished for goal of a cherished ambition. I once
asked him why he was so pessimistic—why that persistent note of sadness?
He answered very simply, “La vie est triste,” and his eyes had that far
away, yearning look, a characteristic of his, which seems so strange in a
man whose life has been one long chain of brilliant successes.
Well! I too, as a child, had dreams which carried me far away. A kind
aunt had given me a set of so-called rice-paper pictures of lovely
imperial ladies with architectural structures of hair on their heads,
gentlemen clad in purple silk robes with ephods embroidered with
five-clawed golden dragons, drawings of vividly-coloured flowers and
fruit, of horror-striking tortures, unheard of out of Tartarus, being
inflicted upon bleeding criminals. But beyond all was the story of
Aladdin falling in love with the Princess Badroulbadour on her way to the
bath at Peking. My young brain was aflame with the longing to go to China
and see all these things. How to manage it? Should I ever get nearer to
that land of wonders than a certain fascinating curiosity shop in Hanway
Yard—now Hanway Street—a beloved and much-haunted place full of bowls
and jars, eggshell china, rosebacked plates and lange Elizen, which now
would fetch several pounds for every shilling that they cost then. That
dream never left me. It haunted my boyhood and my young manhood and, like
Pierre Loti’s cherished dream, it came into life at last.
One day in the month of February, 1865, Mr. Hammond came into the French
Department of the Foreign Office evidently rather uneasy. He told us
that he was very much put out by not being able to get a man to go out
to Peking, to take the place of St. John who was coming home at once
across Siberia. He had tried in vain to find someone and was in great
difficulties. A sudden thought struck me. “Will you send me out?” I
asked. He hesitated for a moment and said, “Well, if you are really
willing to go, we might arrange a transfer. How soon could you be ready?”
“As soon as you please,” I answered. “Can you be ready in a fortnight?”
I jumped at the offer and went out then and there to start on getting
together my outfit. It was rather a sudden surprise to my people when I
reached home that afternoon laden with a sun-helmet and various small
purchases of which the purpose did not at first sight seem quite clear to
them.
The last few days before my departure were spent a great deal with Sir
Frederic Bruce, our minister at Peking, who was at home on leave, and
who gave me all the advice that would be of value to a novice going out
to the Far East. He was one of those men whom it is good to have known,
singularly handsome, with a smile and laughing brown eyes which seemed to
carry sunshine into every room that he went into; he was a diplomatist of
rare ability. Lord Elgin, indeed, with whom he first went out to China,
used to say of him that he was by far the ablest of the four brothers,
all of whom were certainly men of mark.
At Peking he was an unqualified success. The Chinese, impressed like
all Asiatics by a fine reverence for lineage and blue blood, saw in him
a great gentleman whose transparent honesty they could trust. There
were not very many legations in China in his time, but the ministers
who were his colleagues, men like M. de Bourboulon, the Frenchman, and
General Vlangaly, the Russian, were devoted to him. They listened to him
with the most profound respect and affection, and General Vlangaly told
me that whenever any knotty problem cropped up the first question was
“Qu’en dira Sir Frederic?” His own staff from Wade downwards worshipped
him. “Wade is a great mimic,” he said to me once, “mind you ask him
whether he has added me to his Gallery of Illustration.”[51] He had done
so, for when I asked Wade the question at Peking, he went off at score
and told me how on one occasion he was interpreting for Sir Frederic at
the Tsung Li Ya-mên (the Foreign Office) when he, Wade, who was pepper
itself, got extremely angry, while Sir Frederic was quietly puffing away
at his cheroot. “But,” said the Prince Regent, “I see that you are very
angry—yet I believe that you are interpreting for Pu Ta Jên (Sir F.
Bruce); he, on the contrary, appears to be quite calm—not a bit angry.”
“There, Sir Frederic,” said Wade, furious, “the Prince says that you
are not angry—that it is only I who am excited.” “Oh! Damme,” drawled
Sir Frederic in his large, good-humoured way, taking the cheroot out of
his mouth, “tell him I’m deyvlish angry,” and with that, beaming upon
Prince Kung and the assembled mandarins, he smoked away as contentedly as
before. Wade was telling the story against himself, and as he told it I
could almost fancy that Sir Frederic was in the room.
The day before I left I went to say good-bye to Sir Frederic. When we
shook hands he said, “Remember that when you come back from China you
must come to me wherever my post may be! That is to say,” he added with a
sigh, “if I survive the age of fifty, which seems to be fatal to all of
my family.” The sad “if” was justified! He went out as Minister to the
United States, won all hearts there as he did everywhere else, and died
of heart failure at some small railway station. I was told afterwards
that a tablespoonful of brandy might have saved his precious life! His
death in 1867, at the age of fifty-three, was mourned in the East and in
the West.
1865
I reached Paris on the 8th of March; I was obliged to spend forty-eight
hours there, as there were certain matters to which I was compelled to
attend, also I was anxious to see Mr. John Dent, the head of the famous
China house, and Baron Overbeck, the Austrian Consul General in Hong
Kong, who was going East by the same mail. It was no great penance having
to pass two evenings in Paris with them, for there was much going on, and
Offenbach’s “Belle Hélène” a delight, with Schneider and Dupuis, was in
full swing. Was there ever a piece half so gay, half so witty, or half
so impudent! The face of Paris when Helen showed him “mes portraits de
famille,” Jupiter and Leda, Jupiter and Europa, Jupiter and Danae, etc.,
was something to remember!
The 10th of March, 1865, was a fateful day for the Napoleonic Dynasty,
for on that day the Duc de Morny, Louis Napoléon’s half brother and
most devoted friend, died. He was attended by Sir Joseph Olliffe, the
physician of the English Embassy, arousing great jealousy among the
French doctors, who of course swore that his life might have been saved.
Morny was the son of the Comte de Flahault, an old friend of my father’s
whom I knew when he was ambassador in London, and Queen Hortense. When
Louis Napoléon became President of the Republic the two brothers met
for the first time, and the deepest affection immediately sprang up
between the two. Under the Empire, Morny who with Maupas, Persigny, and
St. Arnaud, had been one of the chief actors in the _coup d’état_ of
1851, became President of the Corps Législatif, and held that office
until 1856, when he went as ambassador to St. Petersburg, and in great
splendour represented Louis Napoléon at the coronation of the Emperor
Alexander the Second. On his return to Paris in 1857 he again took up the
post of President.
He was a dandy and _viveur_, a man of many accomplishments, and a
capable if rather erratic statesman, but he was one of those members
of the Imperial group who were fiercely accused of gambling on the
Bourse. However that might be, he was immensely popular. Paris loved
him, fascinated by his reputation of irresistibility, and even by the
contemptuous, haughty look with which he strode through the world;
when he died, the grief was general and unfeigned; and poor Sir Joseph
Olliffe was very cruelly attacked by the Faculty who were sure of the
applause of the mob. The story of Morny’s life and death furnished the
“motif” of Alphonse Daudet’s book “Le Nabab,” which was certainly not
written in the Napoleonic interest, for indeed Daudet was a partisan of
the old régime. When Morny offered him a post in his private office he
felt bound in common honesty to say that he was a legitimist. “Ma foi!
L’Impératrice l’est aussi,” answered Morny, with his quiet, impertinent
smile.[52] The frivolous side of Morny, the “Richelieu-Brummell,” as
Daudet called him, was always very much in evidence, and it was said,
not without truth, that he showed far more interest in the rehearsals of
_M. Choufleuri restera chez lui_—a rather poor operatic farce of his for
which Offenbach wrote the music—than ever he did in the discussions of
the Corps Législatif. Indeed, while _M. Choufleuri_ was in preparation he
was neither to have nor to hold, he would attend to nothing else.
Louis Napoléon went to take leave of his brother on his death-bed.
When the moment for leaving came, the dying man, holding the Emperor’s
hand in his, summoned up strength enough to say: “Sire, méfiez-vous de
l’Allemagne!” Those were his last pregnant words to the Sovereign and
brother whom he loved so well. This was told me by one who was present
at what he described as a most touching death-bed scene, for the love
between the two men was very real. That dying speech was prophetic.
Had Morny lived things might have been very different; but his death
left a blank which could not be filled; Louis Napoléon was fast growing
old, martyrized by the disease which ultimately killed him; he needed a
strong man at his elbow—a man with political prescience; failing that
he fell into the hands of a gang, Ollivier, Gramont, Lebœuf and others,
with female influences at work behind them, who led him to his ruin.
Morny in spite of his gay, devil-may-care dandyism, could see clearly
ahead; he and he alone among the Emperor’s surroundings might have saved
the dynasty. But that was not to be; it was doomed. The passing bell for
Morny rang the knell of the Empire.
The intimacy between Morny and Sir Joseph Olliffe, an old friend of ours
whom we all loved, was something more, if possible, than that between
physician and patient. There was a very firm attachment between the two,
and they were engaged in an affair in which they both took the greatest
interest. It was they who built Deauville upon a site which I remember a
flat wilderness of sand, with a few scanty bristles of rushes cropping up
here and there, opposite Trouville, on the other side of the outlet of
the river Toucques. It is only fair to say that if Mora in the “Nabab”
was a more or less faithful portrait of Morny, Jenkins, the quack Doctor,
was certainly not drawn from Sir Joseph Olliffe, who was as upright and
transparent an English gentleman as ever entered the medical profession.
He was respected and loved by all who knew him.
On the night of the Duc de Morny’s death I left Paris for Marseilles. A
terrible voyage on board the P. & O. s.s. _Massilia_. The Gulf of Lyons
was in a perfect fury, and the passengers sea-sick and mostly sulky at
having to go out to “meet” the hot weather on the other side. This made
ladies out of season, but my cabin-companion—one of those grumblers who
are such a misfortune in the East—told me that even if it had been to
“meet” the cool weather he should have left his wife and children behind;
according to him India was not a fit place for an English sow, let alone
an English gentlewoman. The sea was so high that even the live stock on
board suffered. Bets were going as to whether one bullock would survive
the night of the 17th of March—odds against were laid freely. I do not
remember which won—the sea or the bullock.
When the railway deposited us at Suez (there was no Canal in those days)
we were shipped on board the _Simla_, a crack ship. I had the luck to be
separated from my grumbling ship-mate of the _Massilia_, and was doubled
up with Colonel Gloster, who was going out to command the —— Regiment in
India. He and I and Overbeck with one or two others made a very pleasant
little coterie. How much more delightful were the ships of those days,
with their beautiful, free, white decks and a view of the sea all round,
than the modern floating castles, with all their extravagances and
luxurious discomforts. Everything was spick and span, the metal fittings
and binnacle shone like the gold in a Regent Street jeweller’s shop. The
decks were so clean that you might have eaten your dinner off them, and
the quartermasters, as smart as blue-jackets in the Navy, were always on
the alert to put the crooked straight or render some small service. It
was like yachting in its highest perfection.
A few days of lovely weather in the balmy air of the Indian Ocean,
lounging, dozing, dreaming, watching the wild leaps of the flying-fish
escaping from the dolphins, speculating upon the unknown that lay
ahead—those were days of which every hour was precious. The four or
five of us older men who had made friends sat together in a well-chosen
corner. The griffins and youngsters bound for the far East left us
severely to ourselves; we were told that they called our corner the
lions’ den. Well, we were very happy and did not growl too much. At
Pointe de Galle Overbeck and I bade Gloster good-bye.
At Hong Kong, after three or four delightful days, thanks to the
hospitality of Messrs. Dent, I parted from Overbeck, and the last link
with the “lions’ den” of the _Simla_ was finally broken. He, Gloster
and I corresponded fitfully, but we did not meet again for nine years,
and then in rather a curious way—indeed, if it were not for the wish to
record the meeting later on, and to explain its significance, I should
not have ventured to write about the voyage.
All the “old China hands” of the sixties will remember with affection
Captain “Ikey” Bernard, who commanded the _Ganges_ which carried me from
Hong Kong to Shanghai. Captain Bernard was a great character in the China
Sea. He was the son of a former professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, from
whom he had inherited literary tastes of which the choice little library
in his cabin gave proof, and he kept glowing more than a small spark of
that sacred fire which burns upon the University altar. He made me free
of his cabin, and I spent many hours there in great comfort, and with
some profit.
He was, moreover, something of an epicure, and he and I and two other
passengers dined and had luncheon in his cabin, where we had the best
that the ship could afford: it was a coasting voyage through narrow
island passages, where one could almost hear the fury of the sea dashing
itself against the black rocks frowning on either side, we passed many
fishing junks with their busy crews, and the skipper, who never could
resist the temptation of fresh fish, would stop and buy quantities of
pomfret, all alive, paying for them in ship’s biscuit. Those were the
halcyon days of monopoly. Fancy stopping a mail steamer to buy fish in
these times of ocean-racing and competition! Fifty years ago, “Ikey”
Bernard did not hesitate. His father must have been a very cultivated and
remarkable man. I remember a book of essays upon various subjects by him,
full of wise and clever thoughts, amongst others one on Inspiration which
fascinated me. I often met my friend “Ikey” during the years that I spent
in the Far East, for, welcome whenever his ship touched the shore, he was
one of those much-invited men, whom everybody is glad to secure, and we
had many pleasant talks about all things and some others.
Often I wondered what took him to sea; with his literary tastes, which
must have developed very young, he would have been so perfectly suited
to a student’s career, so entirely at home installed in the comfortable
arm-chair of some common room, sipping his port after a good dinner in
hall at the end of a day congenially spent in the thumbing of folios and
quartos. He would have been an ideal Don—he _was_ a splendid seaman.
My old shipmate has probably long since gone to his rest. If he be yet
alive, my duty to him! If not, may that rest be peace! He was a genial,
honest, cultivated gentleman, and there are many less worthy names whose
memory has been celebrated by far defter pens than mine.
When I left Shanghai for Tientsing on the 11th of May I was at last
alone in the world. Up to that time I had had a succession of pleasant
companions on board; now, besides the very offensive native families
huddled in the steerage, who, when the sun shone, spent their time in the
hunting of fleas—and worse—there was but one other passenger—one of the
curious waifs and strays of Europe who at that time used to float about
the China Sea, hoping to get a job, if not out of the Peking Government,
at any rate out of some provincial Governor or local mandarin. I suppose
that they sometimes succeeded; at any rate they were always ready to
stake their small capital upon the venture; if they failed, when the
hundred or two of dollars were spent they went under and joined the
seething mass of undesirables who used to loaf about the open ports,
picking up a meal and a drink—oftenest a drink—wherever the fates would
be kind.
It was a dull voyage through a leaden sea into which we steamed after a
thick fog had sent us hard and fast aground on one of the treacherous
shoals of the Yang Tsě Chiang. Then came a spell of dirty weather, till
we reached the fine broad headland of the Shantung promontory with the
outlying rocky islands, which are the danger of this part of the China
sea. There was a strong colony of rats on board, and in the great river
we had shipped a host of the most ravenous mosquitoes, whose singing was
almost as bad as their biting. Altogether a trip that is best forgotten.
There was plenty of time to think over all the wonders that I had seen
since leaving Suez—Mount Sinai—the yellow desert of Eastern Africa; the
fiery rocks of Aden; the palm groves of Ceylon, lapped by the waves of
the Indian Ocean; the nutmeg orchards of Penang scenting the air; the
pineapple hedges of Singapore; brown huts teeming with even browner
life, lifted above the fever-swamps like the old lake-dwellings of the
men who lived before history was; Canton, with its narrow streets and
many-coloured, gilded perpendicular signs, as if a pantomime procession
had been suddenly arrested and turned to stone by the head of a Medusa.
But above all, the boundless hospitality and kindness of the merchant
princes of Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Those were the last of the days when the China trade was in the hands
of a few great houses; when the wonderful yearly ocean race took place
to land the first cargo of tea in London; when the opium-clippers from
Bombay would lie under Pok-Fa-Lum, land the supercargo and wait till he
and the house to which his ship was consigned had made the price and
then sail gallantly round the corner into Hong Kong. Vast fortunes were
made in opium, silk and tea, and right royally were they spent. The men
who used up their lives in unhealthy climates, far away from home and
family, sacrificing much and often suffering much, felt that they had
a right to find what compensation they could in making their banishment
tolerable; but what they seemed to delight in more than aught else was in
welcoming those fellow countrymen whom duty or pleasure carried within
possible range of their kindness.
There were no hotels in the old days, but any man who had a letter for
one of the great houses would be sure of as hearty a welcome as if he had
been an old and a dear friend.
Our one port of call was Chifu, a quaint little seaside town with rather
a pretty background of hills, used as a sea-bathing place by some of the
Europeans in North China. Here it was that a few months before a not very
large packing-case was delivered, which, on being opened, was found to
contain human fragments which were the remains of the traitor Burgevine,
an adventurer who, having been first in the service of the Imperial
Government, went over to the Taiping rebels, and finally falling into the
hands of the Imperial army, was sentenced to death by Ling Chi—hacking to
pieces in small morsels, the punishment of high treason.
Here I made the acquaintance of a notable man, one of those heroes who
disappear, unknown and unrecorded, swallowed up by some cataclysm of
fate before the world has had a chance of knowing what it has lost. Mr.
Thomas was a missionary sent out by the London Missionary Society to
China; he had a real genius for acquiring languages—speaking French,
German, Russian, without having had any facility save his own talents
and industry. It was not long before he attained quite a considerable
proficiency in the spoken language of northern China, but when he had
been eighteen months in the country he was called upon by the Society
to preach in Chinese. This he refused to do, for he was too clever
a linguist not to be aware of the pitfalls created by a modicum of
knowledge, and he declined to make Christianity ridiculous. So he and
the Society parted, and he continued to work, living upon a miserable
pittance as best he might.
In the meantime he had become bitten with the desire to learn Corean—a
language of which practically nothing was known. He made friends with the
skipper of a Corean junk trading with Chifu, on board of which he lived
for some weeks. He urged his friend to let him sail with him for Seoul,
but the Hermit Kingdom, as it was called, resolutely shut its gates
to all foreigners, and to approach it was death. Nothing daunted, Mr.
Thomas ended by gaining his point, and the skipper consented to take him,
on condition that he should wear the native dress, in mourning, which
meant that a veil should hang from the brim of the tall hat, completely
concealing the face. The voyage was successful, the venturesome
Englishman was not discovered, and it was not long after his return that
I met him. He was a singularly attractive personality, handsome, clever
and, in spite of a certain modest reticence, very interesting.
There is an old French saying, _Qui a bu boira_. Mr. Thomas was not
contented with his unique achievement; he must needs go back again. He
could not rest. At last, after many vain trials, by holding out prospects
of great gain, he persuaded the captain of a small American ship to sail
for Corea with himself as interpreter. It is known that they reached
Chemulpho and anchored in the Seoul River. In the night the Coreans came
down in force and set fire to the ship. “The rest is silence!”—not a soul
escaped. It was at Peking that I heard the news some months later; and it
was there that I realized how wise he had been when he refused to degrade
our Faith by attempting to expound it to a people singularly alive to the
dignity of letters.
There was in Peking in my time one of the best men that I ever knew. He
was a Scot, possessed of some means of his own, besides a salary from the
Society which sent him out as missionary. He worked like a slave at the
language, and translated the “Pilgrim’s Progress” into Chinese, which he
published with pictures of Christian and all the great characters dressed
in the Chinese costume with pig-tails. Alas! in many removals my copy,
which he gave me, has been lost. He also wore the native dress, lived on
a _tiao_, something like sixpence of our money, a day, and gave the rest
of his ample means to the poor. He had no particle of linguistic talent,
and yet he would preach! I have heard him address a crowd of Chinese
outside the Chien Mên, the great gate of the Tartar city, from the top of
a cart, preaching in Chinese pronounced with a strong Aberdonian accent,
and when he had finished call out “_Ni mên tung tê pu tung tê_” (“Do you
understand?”), and with one accord the crowd cried back, shaking their
hands from side to side: “_Pu tung tê!_” (“We don’t understand”).
And now try to realize what this means. Fancy a Chinese missionary
standing on the top of a taxi-cab at Charing Cross, preaching Buddhism
in pidgin English to a cockney mob, and you have the analogy. Here was a
good man, a very good man, whose whole life was an example of the purest
Christianity, turning that Christianity into a farce, for the “heathen”
to mock at.
How well I remember a few days after my arrival at Peking, as I was
riding out of the Legation gates, being greeted by a gentleman in Chinese
dress, who was sitting on the bench by the escort’s guard-room, in
the broadest Scotch. It was my friend the missionary. He had a little
church of his own at which his few converts attended, and there was one
little boy, by whom he set great store, who was by way of acting in
some sort as attendant. When the good man was engrossed in his sermon,
John (for he had been baptized) would quietly run out and indulge in
foot-shuttlecock—a very pretty game, by the bye—or some other sport dear
to the Pekingese street arabs, until the voice of the preacher ceased,
when he would be sternly called back to his duties.
Mr. Thomas knew better than to risk the ridicule of preaching. When the
Society insisted, they lost the services of a saint, a devoted apostle
who was, above all other men whom I came across in the Far East, fitted
by genius, by learning, and by courage, to have done the work which they
and he had at heart. Few personalities that I have met in the long days
of my life have impressed me more. He was a young man, about eight and
twenty. Had he lived he must have made his mark; he fell a sacrifice to
ignorance and stupidity, the two demons which have wrought so much evil
in the world.
We left Chifu in the afternoon of Monday, the fifteenth of May, and on
the Tuesday morning took in the pilot who was to steer us up the tortuous
course of the Pei Ho river. The first sight of the Taku Forts filled me
with pity for the two garrisons—the one British, the other French—which
had occupied them since 1860 lest the disaster of 1859, when Sir Frederic
Bruce tried in vain to reach Peking for the ratification of the Treaty
and two of our gun-boats were sunk, should be repeated. The desolation
of the place was chilling. On the side of the fort occupied by our troops
were a few mud huts and a sort of wretched inn, the rendezvous of pilots.
On the French side it was even worse—nothing but an endless bleak tract
of mud, flush with the filthy water, all of one colour with the land, so
that it was hard to say where the mud ended and the sea began, and even
the wild fowl seemed sad and desolate, and I wondered why, having wings,
they did not fly to some more cheerful home. No more filthy little stream
than the Pei Ho ever defiled a sea. As I wrote at the time: “Mud forts,
mud houses, mud fields, and a muddy river discharging its daily burthen
of mud into a muddy sea—everything is mud.” It is difficult for water,
especially running water, to be ugly and uninteresting, but the Pei Ho
accomplished that feat. Higher up the stream there were some stunted
trees and green fields, but the country was utterly dull and featureless.
The navigation of the river was difficult enough; perpetually shifting
mud-banks in mid-stream made the channel as crooked and uncertain as
Chinese diplomacy.
Several times we collided with junks, and on more than one occasion our
pilot had to send men ashore with a hawser which they fastened round a
willow tree to let the ship swing. She was a queer little tramp, stout
enough and fast enough, as times went, for she could do her eight knots,
and perhaps a half, in the open sea, but the strangest thing about her
was that, although nominally belonging to a German firm, she was really
owned by a Chinese merchant in Tientsing, to whom the whole of her cargo
was consigned. That fifty years ago the Chinese, so stiff-backed against
all that was European, should have owned a foreign-built steam tramp
seems almost incredible. But the little _Yün tsě fei_, “Walkee all same
fly,” as a Chinaman translated her name, did her little commercial patrol
of the Gulf of Pei-chi-li with great regularity.
I found Tientsing holiday-making. Saurin, my old friend and colleague,
had come down from Peking for the races with M. Glinka, an attaché
of the Russian Legation, and they were staying with M. Buitzow, the
Russian Consul, who very kindly put me up also; I met him again eight
years later, on the occasion of my second visit to Japan in 1873—a very
agreeable man.
It was a stroke of luck falling in with Saurin, for we left Tientsing
together the next day and so I had a friend under whose auspices I was
able to reach Peking in far greater comfort than I could have expected.
We wriggled up the ugly corkscrew stream in three boats; up one reach
we had the wind with us, in the next it would be dead against us, and
we could only get along by towing and punting. The shoals were as
innumerable as ever and so we were constantly crossing the river along
a course mapped out by twigs of willow stuck in the mud. However, at
last, at two in the afternoon of Sunday the twenty-first, we reached
Tungchou—famous for the tragedy of the capture of the English prisoners
in 1860—and outside the walls of the city, under the pleasant shade of a
great tree by a wayside inn, we found our horses and an escort which had
been sent to meet us. My horse was a grey Arab that had been the charger
of my gallant friend Colonel Fane of Fane’s Horse who, like my friend now
of more than half a century, Sir Dighton Probyn, had played a conspicuous
part in the war of 1860.
The country between Tungchou and Peking is absolutely flat, very
populous, with many villages and endless graveyards, the most sacred
of all objects to the Chinaman. There are plenty of fine trees and a
wealth of greenery in the richly cultivated fields, so that I was rather
agreeably surprised, for I had expected nothing so refreshing to the eye:
to be sure, it was the early summer, before the scorching heats and long
droughts had come to tan the crops to one uniform brown. All of a sudden,
at a turn of the road close in front of us, quite unsuspected, invisible
until we were immediately under it, I saw before me the city of Peking,
the city of my dreams.
There at last were the grim, dark grey walls just as I had fancied them,
formidable, frowning; behind them the mystery of centuries. At intervals
rose the great towers, rearing their fantastic roofs with curved eaves
above huge gates in and out of which the yellow crowds were hurrying,
jostling, eagerly busy. Coolies carrying their burdens at each end
of a bamboo pole slung across one shoulder, merchants, small gentry,
carts tenanted, some by mandarins surrounded by retainers with their
red-tasselled caps, others by much-painted ladies with gaudy ornaments in
the edifices of their quaintly-dressed, shining black hair; old women in
charge of babies; a prisoner guarded by two jailers, his head protruding
out of the heavy wooden _cangue_; the beggars, quite worthy of their fame
for filth and repulsiveness—just such a crowd as existed in Kång Hsi’s
time two hundred years ago, nothing changed, save that the city has grown
a little more shabby, with more ruined spaces caused by fire and neglect
in a country where nothing is ever repaired; above all, a whole series of
seemingly familiar pictures—the rice-paper drawings of my childhood in
the flesh!
But the dust! I have seen dust in many lands—one of the meannesses of
Providence, poor Alfred Montgomery used to call it—notably in South
Africa which, in that respect and some others, is bad to beat; but Peking
outdoes them all. Fancy riding up to your horse’s hocks in a fine black
powder, which, when the wind blows over the desert of Gobi, pervades
everything; insidious, ineluctable, streaming in thin rays like the motes
in a sunbeam through unsuspected chinks and crevices until you may trace
your name with your finger on any single thing in your most cunningly
protected room.
In one of those dust-storms, thick as a London fog, I have known a boat
leaving a ship outside the Taku forts, forced to pull round and round
in blind circles until the black veil should lift, or rather fall, and
daylight once more break through the gloom. And when the rainy season
comes, then the streets of Peking are like canals in which what once was
dust is now a noisome Acherontian slime.
Peking stands in need of forgiveness for much. Smells that must be smelt
to be believed; sights such as the Beggars’ Bridge, which are sickening
horrors; squalid houses, suggesting indescribable interiors, for the
manners and customs of the Po Hsing[53] are not attractive; streets
ill-paved and never cleaned; much to offend the senses at every step,
and yet, abuse it as we might, Peking as I knew it fifty years ago had
about it a certain mysterious charm which I think most people felt, and
which has never been so well described as by Baroness von Heyking in
“Briefe die ihn nicht erreichten.” How cleverly, without any attempt at
description, by a few magic words scattered here and there, she makes us
feel the magic of the old, sad-coloured, grey, ruinous city!
CHAPTER XVI
PEKING
We rode into Peking at the Hata Gate and threading our way through the
throng, soon found ourselves outside the Liang Kung Fu, the palace of the
Dukes of Liang, which was the English Legation, separated by a road from
an almost dry canal. The great gates were thrown open by the escort man
on duty and we rode in to receive the warmest welcome from Mr. Wade, the
_chargé d’affaires_, who later became Sir Thomas Wade, K.C.B., G.C.M.G.,
and British Minister.
I soon found that Sir Frederic Bruce had in no wise exaggerated the
delight that was to be had in Mr. Wade’s society. He was at that time a
man of forty-seven, but he looked older, for climate and a strenuous life
during a quarter of a century into which he had packed more adventures
and experiences than fall to the lot of most men in twice the time, had
told upon him; but in character he was as gay as a boy, full of fun, with
a keen sense of humour, and an excellent story-teller, a talent to which
his powers as a mimic, of which I have already spoken, contributed not a
little.
He had been a soldier for a time, like his father, holding a commission
in the 42nd Highlanders and afterwards in the 98th, of which Colin
Campbell, Lord Clyde, was Colonel, and which was to take part in the
first China war in 1841. On the way out round the Cape, being already an
expert in European languages, he set to work to learn Chinese. It was a
colossal task which few men would have attempted; indeed, remembering the
very scanty books which then existed, I can hardly conceive how he took
the first plunge. During the war he was of the greatest use and so, when
peace came, he was appointed interpreter to the garrison at Hong Kong.
The part which he played in all subsequent events in China till the
end of the war in 1860 is well known, though it was not sufficiently
recognized until long afterwards. He was always building nests for other
birds to lay in. Take, for instance, the case of the Maritime Customs of
China. Out of ten thousand well-informed men there is perhaps not one who
does not believe that the Imperial Customs Service of China was formed
and organized by Sir Robert Hart. Yet that is not the case. The service
was started and organized in 1854, when Hart was an unknown quantity and
just leaving Belfast as a boy of nineteen, by an international committee,
English, French and American, Wade being the English representative, and
the working man of the three; so much so that the other two, feeling that
they were not necessary, retired, leaving the Englishman to finish the
job, and carrying into practice Lord John Russell’s dictum that the best
committee is a committee of three, of whom two are silent.
As soon as the new department was well on its feet Wade, who had no mind
to become a Chinese official, resigned, and became Chinese Secretary
under Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong. He was succeeded as
Inspector-General by Mr. H. N. Lay, a very able man, the originator
of the Lay-Osborn fleet which was commanded by Captain, afterwards
Admiral, Sherard Osborn in 1863, a scheme which broke down owing to
the faithlessness of the Chinese Government. Lay, clever as he was,
had the misfortune to be what the French call a _mauvais coucheur_ in
affairs, and his demands upon the Chinese were rather more peremptory
and dictatorial than they were prepared to admit; the result was a
quarrel and Hart was appointed in his place. There were, therefore, two
Inspectors-General before Hart. Nobody denies the powers of the latter
as an organizer—least of all did Sir Thomas Wade question them; on the
contrary he was, perhaps, Sir Robert Hart’s greatest admirer, and far too
generous even to hint at the fact that the service was his own child. I
did not share his admiration of his successor and we had many arguments
upon the subject. Had Wade, who was loyalty itself, lived to see the
Boxer riots and read the two articles in an English magazine in which,
when the trouble was over, Hart professed that the Boxer rising was a
patriotic endeavour, and practically advised the Boxers to begin over
again with the proviso that they should have a care to be better equipped
and prepared, I think that he would have come round to my opinion.
Sir Robert Hart knew that his articles would fly under the seas by cable;
he also knew, none better, the effect that they would produce; how sweet
his words would be to the Empress Tsŭ Hsi, to her eunuchs and the whole
Court over which they ruled and before whom he bowed the knee! In the
meantime honours were showered upon him. He was made a baronet, and at
one time Lord Salisbury who, great as he was, never quite seemed to
recognize the importance and needs of China, actually appointed him to be
British Minister at Peking, a post which, happily, he did not take up.
What Lord Salisbury failed to see was that, great as Hart’s influence
with the Chinese undoubtedly was, that influence would die the death the
day he left their service to enter ours. They would have looked upon him
as a turncoat who had wormed himself into their secrets in order to use
them on our behalf, and he would have had far less influence than any
average Englishman promoted in the ordinary course. Nay more; it might
conceivably, indeed it probably would, have wrecked the Customs service.
There were not lacking mandarins who would gladly have returned to the
old system of bribery and squeeze, and would have been ready to do all
in their power under the guise of patriotic objections to get rid of an
organization which was death to their methods and of all the foreigners
who controlled it. The cry would be: “See the danger of admitting the
foreign devils to our councils.” Nobody knew this better than Hart
himself; moreover, had he accepted the post he would have been making a
great monetary sacrifice and would have given up what was practically an
autocracy for a position which, however honourable, would have placed him
under an oversight to which he had long been a stranger.
Sir Robert Hart’s attitude after the Boxer affair showed how he clung to
the goodwill of the Tartar Government, and how little he cared what his
countrymen must think of him so long as he might retain the favour of
the Empress Tsŭ Hsi—the “old Buddha”—and her creatures.
No sketch of Peking, however slight, is possible without some mention of
that remarkable man. He was a maker of history, and may have been a good
friend to China. To Europe he certainly was not; but he was an excellent
friend to Sir Robert Hart, and to those whose careers, in the interest of
his own, he chose to push.
The British Legation, as I first saw it before it was pulled about and
vulgarized, was certainly a very striking place, with huge courtyards
shaded by trees, among them the famous lace-bark pine[54] which is such
a feature in Northern China; immediately inside the courtyard, mounting
guard over a picturesquely roofed stately hall or pavilion open to the
winds of heaven, were two great stone _shi-dzŭ_ (lions), grinning vain
defiance at the foreign devils who had invaded the sanctuary over which
they watched, then a space, beyond that a second open hall, and after
that the minister’s quarters decorated in the most classical Chinese
fashion—the last word of Pekingese art.
In one of Lord Elgin’s picturesque despatches—to Lord Malmesbury if my
memory serves me—but that is immaterial—he wrote that he could not better
describe the desolation of Nanking, the ancient Southern Capital, than by
saying that while riding through the city he flushed a cock-pheasant. Had
he been as well acquainted with China then as he was afterwards, he would
have known that this was but evidence of the great luxury of space which
the Chinese nobles allowed themselves—their palaces were surrounded by
grounds as broad as, or broader than, the gardens of suburban villas at
Putney or Richmond. That of the old Dukes of Liang was exceptionally rich
in elbow room. One night—to follow Lord Elgin’s lead—one of our escort
men, who kept fowls and had been sorely tried by depredations, shot two
foxes close to his quarters. There was no hunt and no poultry committee
at Peking, so he had to take the law into his own hands. There was a
legend that even wolves had been seen in Peking in severe winters. I at
once fell in love with the old Liang Kung Fu and I was savage when the
great open halls—such a picture of the past—were bricked up and turned
into chanceries and offices, which might well have been placed elsewhere.
No wonder the very stone lions tried to growl! The beautiful Liang Kung
Fu! I wonder what it looks like now after fifty years of vandal ministers
and the Boxer siege!
Saurin and I dined with Wade that night—an excellent dinner; the Chinese
are first rate cooks—for cooking is a fine art in which they excel,
probably because it does not involve a knowledge of perspective. What
a host he was! so light in hand, so delicate in his wit, so full of
conversation, the edge of which was sharpened by reading in many tongues.
For Wade was no dried up sinologue—skilled as he was in the learning
of the Chinese, he had kept himself well on a level with the times by
reading all that was best in the literature of the West; but the memories
of his long and varied experiences gave to his talk a flavour rich,
varied, and outside of the common.
In poetry he was eclectic—devoted to the great classic singers of all
countries. For Tennyson he had no great admiration—said he was the sort
of boy who would be sent up for good once a week—and yet I have known the
tears come into his eyes when he was quoting a stanza from the poems of
some far lesser light. If he read aloud a favourite passage, something
that touched his heart, his voice would break, compelling his listener
to feel with him. What a lovable man he was! He was so sympathetic, so
modest in talking of his own work, so generous in his estimate of that
of others; deeply though unostentatiously religious, brave as a Bayard,
devoted to duty, Sir Thomas Wade was one of those men in whom our public
service is happily rich, men who for a mere pittance as compared with
what they might have earned in other walks of life, and with very little
prospect of high honours, are content to pass their lives in exile,
making light of health, risking death as he often did, and sacrificing
to the interests of the Empire all the attractions of social, literary
and artistic life, happy only in the thought that they are spending
themselves for their country.
Wade was very much pleased when I told him of my ambition to learn
Chinese and promised to help me as much as he could, and most kindly
was that promise fulfilled, for in about a fortnight he brought me
the first two or three sheets of a series of conversational exercises
which afterwards developed into the “Yü-yen Tsŭ-êrh chi,” a book of the
greatest value.
It was the irony of fate that, essentially a scholar by nature, the line
which his scholarship had taken forced him into an official groove,
which was outside the scope of his wishes but from which there was no
escape. He would have been so happy working at philology. He often used
to express to me his longing to be at rest in some congenial seat of
learning, there to pursue his studies and literary labours. His wish was
gratified at last; but not before sticking manfully at his post he had
become minister and K.C.B.; for when he retired in 1883, he settled at
Cambridge, where he became professor of Chinese, with no pupils, as he
lamented to me, and where twelve years later he died. One of my greatest
treasures, which never leaves me, is a little old shabby Bible which he
gave me at Peking fifty years ago. Dear Wade!
Not long after my arrival in Peking the great heat set in, and the
thermometer rose to 108° in the shade; the smells became intolerable—it
was as if the city were one vast shrine in honour of Venus Cloacina—it
was time to fly to the hills. Saurin and I had engaged a lovely Buddhist
temple called Pi Yün Ssŭ, the Temple of the Azure Clouds, and thither we
rode out one fine day in July, passing over a beautiful plain studded
with farmsteads picturesquely shaded by tall trees, prosperous villages,
and burial places, the romantic charm of which apparently compensates
the Chinese peasant in death for the dreariness in which he contentedly
passes his life—a mechanical process of eating, drinking and sleeping
without hope, without ambition, without more thought for the morrow than
is involved in ploughing and sowing, reaping and threshing.
The trees which bear witness to the loving care with which the graveyards
are tended, and make the villages look so snug and homelike, were a
delight. Groves of poplars, ailanthus, the aromatic cedrela and willows,
cast refreshing lights and shades, good to look upon. Not far from
Pa Pao Shan stands a noble group of the maidenhair tree, Salisburia
adiantifolia, while the cemeteries are darkly shaded by tall Chinese
junipers, and the weird lace-bark pine, Pinus Bungeana, whose stems and
branches, richly embroidered with silver patches, gleam ghostlike among
the more brilliant foliage.
Nestled among the picturesquely wooded recesses of the western mountains,
some twelve to fifteen miles from Peking, are a number of temples, each
more enchanting than the last, marvels of architecture, decorated with
all the skill in which Chinese art excels. Here at least there is no
decay—no ruin. Worm and weather are kept at bay by the offerings of
the faithful who come to _Kwang Miao_, to pay homage to the temple,
and by the few dollars for which the priests are willing to hire out
their guest-chambers to the foreign devils seeking a refuge from the
pestilential terrors of the urban summer.
Quite one of the most beautiful of these was the Temple of the Azure
Clouds. As picturesque as its name, it was built in tiers on the mountain
side, and on each terrace was a shrine—statues of black marble and white,
alti-rilievi and bassi-rilievi portrayed kings and warriors, gods and
goddesses and fabled monsters, all of rare workmanship, legends writ
in stone that the study of a lifetime would hardly suffice to master,
and all set in a surrounding of rock work, fountains, woods and gardens
before which an European landscape gardener might commit suicide in sheer
despair. From the highest of these terraces, in front of a marvellous
Indian idol with ten heads in tiers of three surmounted by one, there is
a grand panoramic view, with the sad-coloured walls and quaint towers of
Peking in the dim distance.
Our quarters were ideal. Our dining-room was an open pavilion, surrounded
by a pond and a rockery which looked as if, like poetry, it had been born
not made, feathered with ferns and clothed with a profusion of mosses;
high trees sheltered us from the scorching sun and a pond fed by an icy
fountain cooled our drinks to perfection.
Here we led the simple life—rose and bathed in the pond soon after
daybreak—a frugal breakfast at eight—work till three—then dinner—after
that a ride or a scramble over the beauty-haunted mountains, peering into
the homes of fairies and wood-nymphs and heavenly beings; back for tea
at eight or nine—a smoke—and then bed, to be awakened long before the
sun by the silvery tinkling of the bell for matins. Sometimes in the dead
hours of the night, dreaming, I hear the music of a little bell and know
that I am being wafted across fifty years of memory, over twelve thousand
miles of sea and land, to the Temple of the Azure Clouds, where the
sacristan is as of old calling the good monks to morning prayer.
I had my teacher with me and was hard at work. There is a pretty fable
which tells how Confucius and his disciples in surroundings not more
romantic than these used to work on into the night, studying by the
light of the fire-flies. Here, too, the pretty creatures swarm, tiny
wandering electric lights, winging their bright way among the shrubs and
trees of the sacred gardens; but we, more prosaic than the sages, are
content to work by day, letting our evenings treasure idleness. What more
fascinating study can there be than that of a strange language opening
out a whole vista of new thoughts and ideas? But if that language be
of the East, the expression of all the poetic imagery, of the original
conceptions, of the unexpected twists and turns of the volutes of the
Oriental brain, then the charm is complete. There is, moreover, as an
incentive the difficulty: at each step gained the sense of achievement,
of victory. In the absence of books the task is well-nigh hopeless.
When I reached Peking there was one much thumbed and tattered copy of
Medhurst’s dictionary for the use of the whole Legation. Naturally it
was wanted for the student interpreters: Morrison’s dictionary was out
of print, and Giles, whose great work is now the authority, had himself,
so far as China was concerned, not yet been invented. My teacher, a
quaint little man, so transparently thin that I felt almost able to see
the garlic which otherwise so richly asserted itself, knew no syllable
of any tongue save his own, so it was a hard matter to come to terms.
Substantives—a table, a chair, a cupboard—it was easy enough to acquire;
some verbs are capable of being denoted by signs. But adjectives! How
explain that you wish to know the difference between a good table and a
bad? Great was my joy when, one fine day, Wade produced the first page of
his book in MS. Then matters began to go swimmingly, and by the end of
the summer I began to babble—very childishly—but we must totter before we
can walk.
Students have an easier time of it now, Wade, Giles, Hillier and others
have beaten a golden road for them and there are plenty of books. Soon,
moreover, we hope to see a properly equipped school of Oriental languages
established in London, so that a young man may start his work abroad with
some previous equipment, however slight, to help him in overcoming the
first difficulties, saving him much vexation and disheartening delay.
We passed the days of our cloistered life in calm and peaceful
contemplation as beseemed sojourners sheltered by a Buddhist monastery.
The studious mornings were relieved by afternoon excursions as varied
as they were delightful. There were many interesting temples to be
visited—among others a fane of great sanctity called Wo Fo Ssŭ, the
temple of the Sleeping Buddha, a gigantic figure lying down with a pair
of soft velvet boots by the couch ready to be put on when it should
please the Wise One to awaken from the slumber of centuries. Some shrines
were perched up like eagles’ nests upon almost inaccessible crags, others
were easily reached. The monks and the poor peasants who lived around us
were always kind, civil, and ever welcoming to the red-haired devils.
All had some element of attraction; a favourite wandering was through
the romantic gardens and grounds of what had been the Summer Palace—and
yet it was sad to see the charred ruins of what must once have been a
succession of scenes each one more beautiful than the last, the final
masterpiece of gorgeous Oriental luxury and splendour. The Summer Palace
really consisted of three parks, of which Yuen Ming Yuen, “the round,
bright garden,” was one, and the name became among foreigners the generic
name for all three. The park that we used to visit was called Wan Shao
Shan, “the Hill of Ten Thousand Longevities.” It was strictly forbidden
ground, but the soldiers in charge were a poor tatterdemalion crew, and
a silver key opened the gates. The third park had an even more poetic
name that might fit an extravaganza in a Western theatre, Yü Chuan Shan,
the “Hill of the Fountain of Jewels.” In the gardens of the Hill of the
Ten Thousand Longevities we passed from court to court, from terrace
to terrace, where the wicked fire had hardly spared a stone—carvings,
the loving handiwork of consummate artists, had all fallen in scales,
gradually being ground to powder, lurking places for scorpions and
lizards and centipedes. Crazy and crank were the steps that led from one
level to another, steps that had once been trodden by the eunuch-guarded
beauties of the Court of a magnificent Ch’ien Lung.
All was one tangle of climbing plants, brambles, wild vines; such stones
as remained were overgrown with mosses and lichens, silver-backed ferns,
wild asparagus; strange, sweet-scented herbs peered from out of the
crannies and chinks. Here and there a tiny pavilion, and just one little
bronze shrine, a miracle of art, which had defied the devouring flames,
only served to accentuate the devastation. At our feet lay the great
lake, the surface almost smothered with the pink blush of the lotus
flowers, now at their best, and on it were a few humble fishermen casting
their nets for such poor, muddy fish as the waters of North China can
produce. To think of the gaudy court that once housed here an Emperor
like Solomon in all his pomp, surrounded by ladies “all glorious within,”
gorgeously-clad eunuchs, officers, ministers, and then to look upon the
squalor and filth of its present guardians!—wretched, half-starved,
hardly clothed creatures, with such small pay as should have been theirs
probably no more than an arrear never to be realized. No wonder they fell
and betrayed their trust before the seduction of a Mexican dollar, even
though it was offered by a foreign devil.
By the beginning of August the great heat was due to pass away. There
came a mighty thunderstorm, like the bursting of giant shells. Hailstones
as big as pigeons’ eggs, made up of a nodule of ice, a layer of snow
and then an outer coat of ice, came rattling down in volleys, driving
scorpions and centipedes and other horrors to take shelter in our rooms.
In three hours the thermometer fell thirty degrees, and would not rise
again till the following summer. It was time to fly back citywards.
In the two or three days that it took to pack up our various belongings
the torrents of rain had wrought a transformation scene. The dry fields
and banks were all bright with a young green growth, and in the meantime
the giant millet had sprung to a height of some twelve or thirteen feet,
so that we rode along the dense paths like Gulliver in the fields of
Brobdingnag, guessing at our way.
Now came a season during which the weather was such a joy that life was
worth the living just for its own sake. Those of us who could claim an
immunity from official work for two or three weeks made ready for a
trip to Mongolia or some other happy hunting ground. Saurin, after two
years, had well earned a holiday, and was bound with another man for an
expedition beyond the Great Wall, and I, having a few days at my disposal
before the next mail, agreed to go with him as far as Ku Pei K’ou, the
great pass between China and Mongolia.
Among the great monuments of the world there can be few more striking
than those of the North of China. Peking itself, that grim and grey city
with all its mysteries and tragic secrets, is difficult to beat. The
Great Wall of China at Ku Pei K’ou, a most lovely spot, where it is still
in good repair, overtopping the glorious peaks of the mountains, climbing
for miles and miles up and down precipices where there would seem to be
hardly foothold for a goat, let alone for a bricklayer and his hod, is a
marvel. In places which I saw once when I followed its course for some
two hundred miles, it has now fallen under stress of weather and neglect
into mere heaps of rubble. But at Ku Pei K’ou it is as imposing as it was
when the Emperor Shih built it, some two hundred and thirty years B.C.,
to hold the Mongol hordes at bay.
It is perhaps an impertinence to speak of the Tombs of the Ming Emperors
in the same breath with the great relics of Egyptian magnificence. Here
we can count at most five centuries—there as many millenniums. The great
Pyramid of Cheops and the Sphinx are in a category by themselves; and
yet in “The Thirteen Tombs” there is something of the same largeness of
thought, the same fight for immortality. About five miles away from the
little town of Chang Ping Chou—famous, or rather infamous, as the scene
of the torture of the British and Sikh prisoners of war in 1860—is a wide
plain surrounded by hill scenery of great beauty.
In the midst of this plain, standing out in solemn isolation, rises a
magnificent stone gateway, designed by some rarely skilled artist,
by far the finest specimen of Chinese architecture that I ever saw;
altogether a most imposing work. Some way beyond this wonder is a second
gateway of brick, roofed with imperial tiles, leading to a large, square
granite building, cruciform inside, in which is a colossal marble
tortoise, bearing a high, upright tablet, graven on both sides with
inscriptions, the one telling how the tombs were built for the Ming
Emperors, and the other how they were restored by the Emperor Ch’ien
Lung in the eighteenth century. At each corner of this building is a
triumphal column. Then comes the famous avenue of colossal figures in
double pairs—the one pair sitting, the other standing. Lions, Chih Ling
(Kylins), camels, elephants, scaled and winged dragons wreathed in
flames, horses, warriors in full armour, with breastplates reminding one
of Medusa’s head, carrying in their hands swords and maces; warriors in
repose, with their swords sheathed and their hands gravely folded on
their breasts; councillors; chamberlains. Beyond this dumb and motionless
procession, which looked as if it had been congealed and turned into
marble by some magician’s wand, a broken and ruinous stone road, with
decayed granite and marble bridges, leads the pilgrim in melancholy
fashion to the Chief Temple, or Funeral Palace, where the great Emperor
Yung Lo lies canonized under the name of Wên. The spot is one of rare
beauty, for in a country where even the humblest peasant must needs sleep
his long sleep in some choice place, the Emperors of the glorious Ming
Dynasty would naturally choose for their graves a sanctuary worthy of
their race.
Behind the great shrine, decorated with all the sumptuous splendour of
which Chinese art is the mistress, is a hillock, an artificial mound
covered with trees and shrubs; in the speaking silence of that fair
retreat, far from the madding crowd, lie the remains of the Son of
Heaven. There is a Chinese proverb which says, “Better a living beggar
covered with sores than a dead Emperor.” I wonder!
We rode back to Chang Ping Chou, our horses terrified at the great
images, in which heaven knows what horrors they saw. It was a lovely
night, and the harvest moon rose in full glory. After supper I was
impelled to go back, at any rate as far as the mysterious Avenue of
Statues. I felt that, like Melrose, it should be visited “by the pale
moonlight.” I am glad that I had that inspiration. When I reached the
avenue the moonbeams were casting their spell upon the great, silent,
motionless procession. Grim and gruesome flickers were playing upon the
marble features, showing a sort of life in death; near the further end a
vagabond crew—in England we should have said of gipsies—had encamped for
the night, and were crouching round their fire, smoking. The flames cast
dancing and uncertain lights and shadows upon the giant figures till I
half felt as if they were moving. Far away in the gloom were the thirteen
shrines, half hidden, nestling among the dark, pine-clad hills—altogether
a weird and ghostly scene which I can never describe, but which lives
with me to-day, after all these years.
* * * * *
The event of our lives in the autumn of 1865 was the arrival of the new
British minister, Sir Rutherford Alcock, with his family, in succession
to Sir Frederic Bruce. Sir Rutherford was an able man who would probably
have made his mark in any profession and in any position. But he had so
fitted his life to the peculiar exigencies of China and of the public
service in that country, where he had been for many years a Consul, that
his name as the follower of Sir Frederic was indicated.
CHAPTER XVII
1865
PEKING
Mr. Alcock’s first great promotion to be Consul-General in Japan, newly
opened to foreigners by Lord Elgin’s treaty of 1858, though it answered
well enough, was based upon a mistake of the English Government, which
was under the delusion that China and Japan were one and the same thing,
and that experience in the one country must of necessity specially fit a
man to take up work in the other. It was like what Victor Hugo said when
he was asked whether he had ever read Goethe. “Non, mais j’ai lu quelques
traductions de Schiller; et après tout, Goethe-Schiller, Schiller-Goethe,
c’est toujours la même chose.” Well, China and Japan were anything but
“la même chose,” and perhaps Mr. Alcock’s life and experiences in China
were rather a hindrance to him than otherwise, as they undoubtedly were
in the case of some of the first merchants who established themselves
there.
However, Mr. Alcock came well through the ordeal, showing great courage
and determination, and never allowing any affront to England to pass
unnoticed. Never perhaps did he show more moral courage than he did
when one fine day in writing to the Japanese Government he signed
himself Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary instead of
Consul-General, with the intimation to the British Foreign Office that
they might accept or reject what he had done, but that it was necessary
in the event of his rejection that whoever should be appointed should,
in order to hold his own both with the Japanese Government and with the
foreign colleagues, hold that rank. It was a most audacious stroke and it
succeeded, because he was quite right, but it probably is the one and
only case of a man accrediting himself as minister to a foreign Power.
Whether he also named himself K.C.B. history records not. But at any rate
the honour was most deservedly bestowed upon him.
Sir Rutherford Alcock was a man of great ability and high courage. During
his official life in the Far East he had plenty of opportunities to give
proof of both. In early life he had been a surgeon, and had been attached
to the British Legion in Spain, where he earned no little reputation for
a skill which stood him in good stead when the temple occupied by the
British Legation at Yedo (Tokio) was attacked by Rônins in July, 1861,
and poor Laurence Oliphant and others were so badly wounded. Oliphant,
who had nothing but a hunting-crop to ward off the cruel sword-cuts, must
have been killed had it not been for the merciful beam of the low, narrow
passage in which he was fighting, which caught the worst blows. For long
years afterwards the deep cuts on the woodwork were still visible, but
the last time I was in Japan, in 1906, I went to see the place, and found
that the temple authorities had removed the tell-tale beam.
When he returned from the Peninsula he went back to his profession as a
lecturer; but rheumatism, due to exposure, had crippled his hands and
hindered him as an operator; moreover, he was bitten with the spirit
of adventure, and in 1844 he accepted an appointment as Consul at the
newly-opened port of Fu Chou. But it was at Shanghai a year or two
later that he made his mark, and there it was that he achieved what
was the most successful work of his life in the establishment of the
municipality, a new and original venture, needing great tact and judgment
in order to avoid international and other jealousies, besides involving
a distinct talent for organization. It was altogether a formidable
undertaking, but it succeeded, and laid the foundation of similar
institutions throughout the Treaty Ports of the Far East.
When Sir Rutherford returned to China as Minister he was far more in his
element as a diplomatic agent than he had ever been in Japan. He had an
intimate knowledge of Chinese affairs, which it is in no way derogatory
to say that he had not of Japanese politics. In Japan he, like everybody
else, was under the influence of the old Dutch fallacies, and he did
not fully realize the relations between the Mikado and the Tycoon. The
great scholars, such as Satow and Aston and others, had not yet pricked
the bubble and babble about spiritual and temporal Emperors, and all the
other nonsense of those days. Sir Harry Parkes had the luck to profit
by the new-born knowledge. Sir Rutherford was the victim of the old
tradition. But when he arrived in China he was master of the situation.
He was thoroughly at home and up to every move on the board.
He was a kind and considerate chief, and we all liked him except in the
neighbourhood of mail-day. Sir Rutherford’s weakness was the idea that
he was essentially a writer—he would have been a greater man if he had
never written a book about a country which he did not understand, or a
grammar of a language which he could neither speak nor read nor write.
But we all have our weaknesses; his was authorship. The despatches which
he used to write contained excellent stuff, but they were spoilt by being
spun out to interminable lengths of impossible verbiage. To copy those
effusions with the thermometer at 108° in the shade, with a double sheet
of blotting-paper between my hand and the foolscap, and a basin of water
to dip my fingers in from time to time, was like being private secretary
to Satan in the nethermost regions.
At the Tsung Li Ya-mên, the ministry of foreign affairs, Sir Rutherford
was perfect. However knotty might be the point which he had to argue,
however patent the trickery which he had to resent, he was always calm,
always courteous, and so the Chinese liked him as much as we did. He
certainly was _persona grata_ with the Regent, Prince Rung, who was the
very real head of the Tsung Li Ya-mên.[55]
The Prince Regent was at this time a tall, well-favoured man,
shortsighted and pitted with smallpox, which in Chinese eyes would be
no hindrance to his good looks, for indeed a Chinaman hardly thinks
of himself as complete until he has “put forth the heavenly flowers.”
Messrs. Bland and Backhouse quote a decree of the wretched Emperor Tung
Chih in which he announces “we have had the good fortune this month
to contract smallpox”—in the next month he ascended the Dragon and was
wafted on high.[56] The Emperor’s edict might serve as a text for the
anti-vaccinationists, nor would his death in the following month have
injured their cause, for he was such a mass of disease that he was
already foredoomed, so the “heavenly flowers” were not by themselves
accountable for his end.
The first time that I saw Prince Rung was in the month of May, a few days
after my arrival at Peking. He came to the Legation to discuss business
with Wade, accompanied by two other ministers of the Tsung Li Ya-mên. The
Prince was in high spirits, laughing and joking merrily; he was always
good-humoured and genial, but that day there was a special reason for
his cheerfulness; he had just gone through one of those alternate storms
and calms, often incident to Oriental life, but specially frequent where
the government is conducted with “the suspended curtain”—that is to say
by an Empress who may not be seen. To me he was very courteous and kind,
and whenever we met afterwards he had always a little friendly greeting
for me, never failing to chaff me about my single eyeglass which used to
furnish him with an excuse for interrupting an awkward discussion and so
give him time for an answer. He was very clever in availing himself of
it; perhaps that was the reason why I found grace in his sight.
Hardly more than a stone’s throw from the British Legation are the
walls of the Forbidden City. Of what might be taking place inside that
sacrosanct enclosure we knew no more than what that most venerable of
all publications, the _Peking Gazette_, was allowed to tell us. People
used to talk with well-informed superiority of _coups-d’état_ and Palace
intrigues, but it was not until the appearance of Messrs. Bland and
Backhouse’s book, “China under the Dowager Empress,” that the outside
world was made aware of the intimate history of that masterful woman’s
reign; for a reign it was throughout. Her co-Empress was a cipher and the
Emperors whom for show’s sake she enthroned were mere puppets. The pages
of that _roman vécu_ are so fascinating that it is difficult for any
reader to put the book down, but to those who have lived under the black
pall of ignorance in which the foreign community of Peking was shrouded
it is a revelation.
We can now appreciate the heroic courage with which Tsŭ Hsi, then a mere
girl of twenty-two, defeated the conspiracies of the princes who, on the
death of her husband, the Emperor Hsien Fêng in 1861, took her child,
the baby Emperor, from her and tried to usurp the Regency. It was a
master-stroke of craft in so young a woman to paralyse the conspirators
by purloining the seal without the impression of which no nomination to
the throne was legitimate. We know how Prince Kung, the intimate personal
enemy of the plotters, and the handsome young guardsman, Jung Lu, her
kinsman, her playmate, and through life her more than trusty friend, came
to the rescue, and we can understand how it was that the former, her
brother-in-law, though he had to go through alternations of favour and
disgrace, was always summoned back in moments of storm and stress when
she needed his help and advice.
When I was at Peking Tsŭ Hsi was a mystery; no foreigner even knew what
was her origin—some went so far as to say that she was a mere slave
girl; as a matter of fact her birth is now known[57] to have been of the
highest. She was a lady of the Yeho-nala clan, a family descended from
Yangkunu, the great Manchu Prince whose daughter married the founder of
the Manchu Dynasty in China. She was therefore of right royal descent,
and her pedigree was without a stain, though her father had held no
higher rank than that of an officer in one of the eight banner corps.
The first wife of the Emperor Hsien Fêng died before he ascended the
Dragon throne. When the period of mourning for his father, Tao Kwang,
came to an end in 1852, a number of maidens from the chief Manchu
families were sent for, out of whom the widow of the dead monarch was
to choose a certain number suitable for the harem of the Son of Heaven;
among them were the two ladies who as Tsŭ An and Tsŭ Hsi, Dowager Empress
and Empress Mother, were to play such conspicuous parts in Chinese
history.
Those who are interested in studying the last phase of the great Ching
Dynasty must seek its story in Messrs. Bland and Backhouse’s pages.
It will repay them. Few princes have left this world in more dramatic
fashion than the Empress Tsŭ Hsi—the Old Buddha, as she loved to be
called—whose last bequest to her people was the advice never again
to allow a woman to exercise the Supreme Power, and not to allow the
eunuchs of the Palace to interfere in affairs of State; she who had been
ruled by such scoundrels as the two favourite eunuchs, Li Lien Ying and
An Tê Hai!—a mass of contradictions to the last. That she was a woman
of amazing ability is certain; competent authorities have praised her
scholarship and held up her edicts as models of style; she was witty,
though her wit sometimes was cruel, as when she told the murderous
Governor of Tai Yuan Fu that “the price of coffins was going up”—a hint
to commit suicide without delay, lest worse befall him; as, in spite of
her protection, it ultimately did.
She was tyrannical and vindictive, yet she contrived to inspire affection
and to persuade the people that she was kind-hearted; she was false
and treacherous, but her power of attraction was supreme and the love
between Jung Lu and herself, dating from boy-and-girl days, long before
she entered the Palace, never waned. Unless she has been much maligned
she had much the worst side of the character of Catherine the Great;
like our own Elizabeth she was terrible in her rage, irresistible in her
gentler moments. Altogether a woman of infinite variety, a scholar, a
stateswoman, and an artist.
The edict in which she published to the world her degradation of Prince
Kung in April, 1865, is like an Æschylean chorus. Success followed by
insolence; insolence by Nemesis. I have no doubt that his somewhat abrupt
manner might have been very offensive to august ears; but if it be true
that he told the two Empresses that if they sat upon their thrones behind
the curtain it was because he had so willed it, there is no wonder that
an Empress imbued with the spirit of a Tudor queen should have refused to
brook such language as that. In a month, however, the necessary man was
once more called into favour, and then it was that I first saw him.
I had a great admiration for Prince Kung. It was impossible not to be
attracted by his _bonhomie_ and his pleasant manner. To me, as I have
said, he was always specially courteous. I do not suppose that he had any
greater love of the foreign devils than the rest of his countrymen; but
if he hated us he had the wisdom to mask his dislike. The documents which
successive crises have brought to light have taught us many a lesson.
Your Chinese gentleman is a great scribe, and rather than suffer his pen
to be idle he will console himself in difficult moments by writing down
voluminous indiscretions; and so it has become pretty evident that even
those among the Chinese statesmen who professed the greatest friendship
for us in their hearts hated us. The Empress Tsŭ Hsi herself, when she
coaxed and talked soft nonsense to the wives of the Foreign Ministers,
told Jung Lu that she knew how to win them to her side with rich gifts
and honeyed words. How she fooled the dear ladies to their hearts’
content is well told by Messrs. Bland and Backhouse. Nor is this feeling
to be wondered at. We were self-invited guests in her country; we needed
the trade, export and import, of the Chinese who, until we came, were
self-sufficing; opium and grey shirtings notwithstanding, in their view
we brought nothing but trouble upon them.
Apart from his undoubted charm of manner, however much or however little
it might mean, the Prince was a man of undoubted talent and strength of
character. He was a very young man in 1860, not more than twenty-three
or twenty-four years old, and utterly inexperienced in affairs, when his
brother, the Emperor Hsien Fêng, who was dying by inches, bowed to the
storm of foreign invasion and fled to Jêhol, leaving him in Peking as
his representative, with full powers to carry on the Government. It was
a fateful moment. The Allies were victorious. Yuen Ming Yuen, the summer
palace, was in flames; the foreign barbarians were in possession of the
Anting Mên, the northern gate of Peking; a number of prisoners, among
them Parkes and Loch, were in the hands of the Chinese, by whom they had
been shamefully treated; Prince Kung realized the position, and at the
risk of his own life handed over the prisoners to their chiefs. He acted
in the nick of time. Hardly had he done so than a messenger arrived post
haste from Jêhol, ordering the instant execution of the prisoners. Had
Prince Kung carried out the Emperor’s edict it is difficult to say what
the consequences would have been. Certainly Peking would have been razed
to the ground, and the Tartar dynasty would have been exterminated half a
century before its knell was finally rung.
Prince Kung died in 1898. Had he lived a few years longer I believe that
his sage advice and statesmanship, joined to the persistent warnings of
Jung Lu, would have saved the Empress from the fatal step which she took
of fostering the Boxer outrages, and the further disgrace of disavowing
and executing the very men with whom she had conspired, and whom she had
egged on to a doom from which she did not feel herself powerful enough
to save them. But she listened to the dupes and ruffians who believed in
the magic rites of the Boxers, and in spite of all her blandishments to
the easily-gulled Legation ladies before and after, did all in her power
to urge on the destruction of the besieged ministers, even when she was
sending them presents of fruit and sweetmeats!
In vain did Jung Lu try to impress upon her that the bombardment “was
worse than an outrage, it was a piece of stupidity;”[58] had the Prince
been alive he no doubt, with forty more years’ experience of affairs to
his credit, would have grasped the situation in 1900 as he did in 1860,
and her two most trusted advisers would have saved the old Buddha’s face.
No woman, empress or peasant, ever had a more devoted friend than she had
in Jung Lu—but single-handed he was no match for the army of scoundrels
and eunuchs by whom she was gulled.
Prince Kung’s signature was peculiar. I believe that it honestly
represented his character. He did not sign his name or his title, but “Wu
ssŭ hsin,” “no private heart,” _i.e._ “disinterested.”
Prince Kung’s right-hand man was Wên Hsiang, a Tartar statesman of great
ability, whom it was a pleasure to meet. Like his chief, he was always
conciliatory and prepossessing; had he had the Prince’s strength and
moral courage he might have achieved great things—but there he broke
down. The two other ministers whom we met the oftenest were Tung and
Hêng Chi—the former a portly, good-humoured gentleman with a great
reputation as a man of letters, who had turned into Chinese verse a
prose translation by Wade of Longfellow’s Psalm of Life; the latter an
old beau, his tail dyed and eked out with false hair as sedulously as
the head-dress of an aged Court dame in Europe. He was very carefully
attired, generally in a robe of pearl-grey silk turned up with blue. Sir
Plume himself was not more justly vain of his amber snuffbox than Hêng
Chi was of his tiny snuff bottle with its emerald green jade stopper,
and the priceless bead of the same from which his peacock feather hung;
his red button was of “baby-face” coral, and as for the pipe, chopsticks
all studded with seed pearls, and other small treasures which were
hidden in the recesses of his velvet boot and the delicate sugar-plums
and restorative drugs which he produced from the same receptacle, they
baffled description. A dear little old man withal, merry and well
preserved, whom we all treated with great respect in gratitude for his
kindness to Parkes and Loch when in their hideous captivity they stood
sorely in need of a friend. Was he so very fond of the barbarian? Listen!
M. de Mas was Spanish Minister at Peking. He had negotiated a Treaty
which for many months, even two or three years, could not be ratified
on account of the many changes of ministry at Madrid. At last the
ratification came, and M. de Mas, before going home, went to pay a
farewell visit to His Excellency Hêng Chi. Now the said Excellency, being
past seventy years of age, had a little boy, some four or five years
old, of whom he was inordinately proud—he was the apple of his eye. The
polite Spaniard, knowing this, asked to see the wonderful product. Highly
flattered, Hêng Chi sent for the child, who arrived with his thumb in his
mouth, after the manner of all children, Asiatic as well as European.
“Make your bow to His Excellency!” said the proud father. Not a sign.
The order was repeated, not once but twice. At last the little creature,
taking its thumb out of its mouth, solemnly uttered the street cry, “Kwei
tzŭ!” (“Devil!”) The intimate education of the harem was revealed, and
poor old Hêng Chi was smothered in confusion. There is a general idea
that all high mandarins are great scholars. That is not always the case.
Our old dandy friend, for instance, was as little of a grammarian as Mrs.
Squeers. Nevertheless he had all the Chinese gentleman’s reverence for
letters, and kept a learned secretary to read to him and keep him up to
the mark.
* * * * *
The terrible part of winter at Peking is the drought; month after month
the Emperor goes to the Temple of Heaven to pray for rain or snow;
month after month the god, whoever he may be, shuts his ears as fast as
Ulysses’ ship’s crew. The cold is intense, witness the frozen river and
sea; the fierce wind, tearing over the desert of Gobi, dries men up till
their skins become parched, tight and powdery; their lips are chapped and
the black dust, that scourge of Northern China, seems to penetrate the
very marrow of their bones. Russia was not colder; but in Russia we had
the brightness and the kindly snow, and the tinkling of the sleigh bells
gave the winter life and gaiety. In Peking the winter was as gloomy as
remorse. All communication with the outer world was cut off. Twice in the
course of rather more than three months we received mails brought across
Siberia and the frozen Baikal lake. We could not help feeling that we
were caught like rats in a trap. Had the people chosen they could have
made short work of us, and every now and then, by way of cheering us, our
Chinese writers would bring in reports that on such and such a day there
would be a rising against us. To these uncomfortable rumours we paid no
heed. Indeed, in spite of some discomfort and the absence of “fireside
enjoyments, home-born happiness,” I passed the time cheerily enough. I
had plenty to do, and was getting on with the language, which I used to
practise in fair weather upon the curio dealers of the Chinese city.
There was in especial a delightful little man, a bookseller in the Liu
Li Chang—the Paternoster Row of Peking—who was a perfect cyclopædia of
knowledge in all that concerned Chinese art; besides his rare books
he always had a very small but very choice collection of beautiful
objects—pottery, jade, crystal, cloisonné enamel, pietra dura; and at the
feet of that Gamaliel, I used to listen to much antiquarian lore from a
teacher who loved his subject and revered it. Over a cup of tea, or in
summer of an iced decoction of date-plum juice, he would spin stories
by the hour. He would tell how the last potter of the Lang family died
two hundred and fifty years before, and how his secrets and recipes,
inimitable treasures, were buried with him; how the Ming Emperor Ching
T’ai (A.D. 1450) would with his own sacred hands work at cloisonné
enamel, called after him Ching T’ai Lan—the blue of Ching T’ai; how in
the days of Ch’ien Lung (1736-1796), the magnificent, a great patron of
art, if a fine piece of crystal or jade were brought in as tribute from
the western mountains, a committee of taste would sit to appraise its
merits, deciding what shape should be given to it and to what artist it
should be entrusted. A wonderful little man with a huge belly, which, as
all men know, is the seat of learning, and in his case was choke full of
it.
How pleased my small dilettante friend would have been if he could have
foreseen that two or three specimens that came from him would find a home
in the British Museum![59] Not that he ever heard of such a place, but
his ideas were out of all proportion to his stature, and the thought of a
national collection of works of art would have appealed to his large and
æsthetic soul.
“Que la vie d’un diplomate serait agréable sans les chers collègues!”
once exclaimed an eminent ambassador. Peking in 1865-6 would have
fitted his Excellency to a nicety. We were a very small body, and other
foreigners, save a few missionaries, were there none. General Vlangaly,
the Russian Minister, was always very friendly. We used to go prowling
in all sorts of out-of-the-way corners of the Chinese city searching
out works of art. Were we always quite honest with one another on those
excursions? Perhaps we were more so when we were taking a constitutional
on the broad tops of the mighty walls which separate the two cities, when
the General would expatiate by the hour on the great qualities of the
object of his admiration, Sir Frederic Bruce. There I could cry, Amen.
Had there been any of what is called “rank, beauty and fashion” at
Peking, its favourite promenade would have been the wall. There we found
peace and quiet,—for the public invaded it not,—and comparative immunity
from the demon dust. It was wonderful to look over the great city—the two
great cities—to gaze upon the roofs of the inviolable Palace Grounds,
and wonder what mysteries they were hiding. At the southern corner of
the wall were the beautiful astronomical instruments, masterpieces in
the interest of which European science entered into a happy alliance
with Chinese art—the great Emperor K’ang Hsi with the Jesuit Father
Verbiest—in order to furnish after two hundred and fifty years a prey
for Prussian burglary. At intervals rose the great fantastic towers,
threatening, cruel—suggesting unspeakable horrors; for in one of them, as
we were told, dwelt the chief executioner, like Mauger the headsman in
George Cruikshank’s etching, watching over the Five Lords—broad choppers
like butchers’ instruments, on the handle of each of which is carved a
grotesque human head.
Those who have wandered on the walls in the witching hours of night are
said to have heard the sound of weird and unearthly strains, songs in
which the Five Lords are wont to celebrate the bloody deeds in which for
centuries and more they have played their part. Pray that you be not
dealt with by the Benjamin of the Five Lords, for he is still young and
skittish, not more than two hundred years old, loving to dally and toy
with the heads of his victims, unlike his more reverend elders who will
strike off your head at one blow, impressed with the serious nature of
their duties.
No two countries had during the sixties so living an interest in China
as England and Russia; with England it was a question of commerce;
with Russia of commerce and frontier combined. Ever since Peter the
Great’s time there had been Russian missions, political and religious,
in Peking—partly in the interests of the Albazines, a small Russian
colony on the Amur transplanted to Peking, who long since adopted the
Chinese language, dress and customs, but retained their religion. The
northern mission was under the Archimandrite Palladius, the southern
under the Minister. That is how it happened that when the Allied Armies
were before Peking in 1860 the then Minister, General Ignatieff,
admiringly celebrated by the Turks afterwards when he was Ambassador at
Constantinople for his talent in concealing the truth, tried to persuade
Prince Kung that if only the Prince would yield to Russia’s requests,
he would be able to ward off all danger by interceding with Lord Elgin.
Prince Kung, young and new to affairs as he was, saw through the trick;
“Codlin’s the friend, not Short,” was no use, the fly had no mind to
enter the spider’s parlour.
Years after I met General Ignatieff at Contrexéville. How clever he was,
and how well he gauged the Chinese! It was at the moment when the great
Li Hung Chang was in Europe. Lord Salisbury flirted with him, and in the
interest of Krupp and other firms the Kaiser made his children play about
the great mandarin’s knee and call him “Uncle Li.” But it was all no use;
Li went back to China and not a sixpenny order was given. How General
Ignatieff and I laughed over the daily reports of all that sordid,
commercial and absolutely barren love-making!
The Archimandrite Palladius, who had been in Peking ever since 1840, told
me that he had never had any difficulty in holding intercourse with the
people. The intermarriage of the Albazines with the Chinese had led to
many conversions, and he, with the help of his three subaltern priests,
was always able to keep up his services and schools.
There was no French Minister; M. De Bellonet was _chargé d’affaires_, a
clever, very agreeable man who hated China and the Chinese, and cursed
the day on which his fate sent him out of Europe. His chief delight was
in plaguing the ministers of the Tsung Li Ya-mên. Rarely he left his own
house; when he did it was either to “flanquer une pile” at the ministers,
or to pay some inevitable visit of ceremony which he loathed. I asked him
once why he never went to see any of the beautiful and curious sights in
and around Peking. “À quoi bon?” he answered. “Lorsque je rentrerai à
Paris je dirai à mes amis que j’ai vu tout cela; ça revient au même.”
One day I went to call upon him and found him with a small gang of
coolies making some improvements. I asked him how he managed to give his
orders without knowing a word of Chinese. He answered: “Mon cher ami,
j’ai ici le meilleur interprète du monde—le Professeur Bambou”—and with
that the little man viciously twirled a huge walking-stick. The coolies
trembled.
He was very amusing and I liked him much, and was sorry when he made the
great mistake of his life through not realizing the farness of the cry
to Loch Awe. There was missionary trouble in Corea. De Bellonet felt
certain that if he started a punitive expedition he would be supported
by the Church and the Empress Eugénie. Promotion a certainty. But Corea
is a long way off; it was further off in those days than it is now. My
poor friend was disavowed, and after having been _chargé d’affaires_ in
China, was sent as second secretary to one of the Scandinavian courts.
Humpty Dumpty’s fall was not more terrible. As _attaché_ he had a curious
little Flibbertygibbet of a man, very clever but always in hot water, a
never-failing source of amusement and study to Wade. The interpreter was
M. Fontanier, who was murdered at Tientsing in the massacre of 1870. I
shall allude to that story later on.
The Prussian Minister soon went on leave, and the Don had gone home to
Spain hugging his precious treaty. At the American Legation we had as
_chargé d’affaires_ Dr. Wells Williams. He and his wife were a charming
couple; no longer young, but both very handsome, like delightful old
family portraits. They might have been members of the pilgrimage of the
_Mayflower_. Dr. Wells Williams went out to China originally in some
technical capacity in connection with the American missionary press at
Canton; soon he drifted into sinological studies and wrote a dictionary
and other works; but his _magnum opus_ was “The Middle Kingdom,” a book
of great authority upon all Chinese matters up to the date which it
reaches—a perfect cyclopædia of antiquarian, historical and political
lore, a book of reference without which no man who cares for the Far East
is completely furnished.
One evening when I was dining with him the talk turned upon paper
currency. I made a note at the time of what he said, and reproduce it now
as interesting at a time when we are going back to bank-notes of £1 and
10s. During the reign of the Emperor Shao Hsing of the Sung Dynasty (A.D.
1170) copper was scarce, so the Government issued two classes of Chao
(notes), great notes (Ta Chao) of the value of from one thousand to five
thousand copper cash, and small notes (Hsiao Chao) worth from one hundred
to seven hundred cash. Officers were appointed everywhere to issue and
receive these notes. They were renewable within seven years, and fifteen
cash in every thousand were deducted for the expense of making them. They
were said to be Kung ssŭ pien—convenient for both public and private
use—and Marco Polo mentions them with praise. Dr. Wells Williams was
always interesting, and his wife had all the charm of beauty, motherly
kindness and soft gentleness, illuminated by an intellect of no common
order.
Besides General Vlangaly there were at the Russian Legation M. Glinka,
second secretary, a great gentleman, and Dr. Pogojeff, a very clever
doctor and a good friend of mine, hailing from Odessa. That, in addition
to the Russian Archimandrite, was all the foreign community of Peking in
1865. Glancing back over this short sketch of our life in Peking, I am
struck by one very sad thought. Of all the men that I have mentioned so
far as I know not one is still alive. I alone am left, the last of the
Mohicans.
So the year 1865 died, and 1866 reigned in its stead.
It does not often happen to a man to keep three new years’ feasts in one
year. This is what befell me at Peking. On the 1st of January at early
dawn our Chinese servants came to bend the knee and wish us all happiness
and prosperity; twelve days later good manners demanded that I should
go and salute General Vlangaly and the good Archimandrite Palladius;
and finally on Feb. 14th crackers and squibs announced the approaching
birth of the Chinese new year—characters of good omen were pasted on
the doorposts of the houses, from which streamers of pierced red paper
fluttered like lace.
On this day it is essential that there should be much noise and popping
of fireworks, for there are many demons to be exorcized, evil spirits of
the past year—especially the spirit of poverty—to be driven away; on the
morrow Peking must be in gala trim, and in the din and clatter of drums
and tambourines and cymbals and clappers and gongs and other instruments
of percussion and aural torture, there will be much joy. Outside the huge
main gate there will be a great gathering in front of a small temple
roofed with yellow imperial tiles, the shrine of Kwan Ti, the God of
War, where the faithful with many genuflexions and reverent bows will
receive from the priest, for cash, a slip of bamboo drawn at haphazard
to be exchanged for a piece of paper upon which will be inscribed the
fate of the votary for the coming year. In the street of bookshops there
will be a huge gathering with “all the fun of the fair,” toys, quack
doctors, jugglers, beggars, mountebanks, a dentist with a great store
of extracted teeth, mostly sound, above all—noise! and there will be a
peepshow in which all the famous places of the world will be represented,
and St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Bay of Naples will do duty as special
features of the Liu Kiu Islands! Not so very different from the Windsor
Fair of old Eton days after all! “Homo est animal bipes, implume, et
cachinnans”—the same the world over.
By way of varying our amusements we managed with some difficulty to flood
a small courtyard for skating. The ice never held good for long, for
the dust made it impossible, and then we had to begin all over again.
Once we rode out to the Summer Palace to picnic and skate upon the great
lake. That was delightful. We were none of us great performers, but such
as they were, our twists and turns excited the wonder of the Chinese
soldiers. What amazed them above all was going backwards; that they could
not understand, for although skating was part of the drill of the braves
of the Tartar Banners, it was of a very elementary character: just a bone
skate tied on to one foot, the other foot being used to push. I wonder
what they would have said if they could have seen Mr. Grenander, or one
of the great artists in patinology.
Happy as I was at Peking, and delightful as are my memories of the grim
old place, I must admit that the winter was long and dreary enough. But
at last one day, as M. Vlangaly and I were wandering up and down on the
city wall, we spied a small, half-starved weed trying to poke its nose
out of a chink between two stones. The dove was not more welcome to
the Ark. It meant spring. Soon the view from the wall would undergo a
transformation. First all the courtyards and gardens of the temples and
dwellings of the great people would be bright and gay with the blossoms
of peaches and apricots and all manner of flowering shrubs, and later
on—in summer—the huge city would be like one vast park, with here and
there a patch of shabby red wall and a glimmer of yellow tiles—the
Imperial colours—peeping through the wealth of greenery.
The coming of spring was all the more looked forward to by me as I had
in prospect a trip to Mongolia; as a matter of fact, I made two such
journeys, and very delightful they were; but of these I have written an
account elsewhere.[60]
I passed the weeks of great heat in a temple even more delightful than
that of the Azure Clouds—a monastery some twenty-three miles from Peking,
very secluded, hidden among the mountains, in the midst of enchanting
scenery. Ta chio ssŭ, the Temple of Great Repose, stands in a perfect
nest of trees, junipers, pines, firs and poplars. Out of the living rock
behind the Pavilion of the Resting Clouds a delicious fountain plays into
a fern-clad pool, from which it finds its way through a succession of
courtyards past the “Hall of the Four Proprieties” in which there is an
Imperial throne. Could a man wish for a happier spot in which to work and
dream?
Meanwhile I was under orders from the Foreign Office to leave Peking and
go to Japan. At the end of September I started.
How well—let me say it again—Baroness von Heyking understood the magic
of Peking and its power of fascination amid so much that is sordidly
repellent! As I sadly rode out of the gate at which I had entered so full
of enthusiasm some eighteen months before, I met a miserable beggar, a
poor creature so filthy and degraded as to be scarcely human. Ragged and
bare almost of everything save sores and clotted dirt as he was, I almost
envied that unhappy wretch. He was going in, I was going out—and well I
knew that never should I return.
CHAPTER XVIII
1866
JAPAN
Although in one shape or another I have written a good deal about the
Land of the Gods, I have hitherto refrained from saying much about my
own personal experience in that country, or about the part which was
played by Europeans, and more especially by the English Legation, during
the great upheaval which resulted in the uniting as a solid nation of
that Japan which for centuries had been an agglomeration of more or less
independent principalities. I felt that there was much that could hardly
be written without indiscretion until a considerable time should have
elapsed. Now practically half a century has gone by since the curtain
was rung down upon a unique and most interesting drama, and the Japanese
themselves speak of the times of which I am writing as “Mukashi”—“in
the days of old.” One after another the actors, Japanese and Europeans
alike, have disappeared, and I think that the day has come when so much
as we know about what took place in a revolution which has had such
far-reaching consequences ought to be recorded, if only as _matière pour
servir à l’histoire_.
Moreover, lest those who travel in Japan of to-day should set me down as
a second Baron von Münchhausen, I am anxious to say my say while there
is yet at least one man alive who can corroborate it, or scourge me if I
depart from the truth. That man is Sir Ernest Satow, my old friend and
colleague, to whom it was largely due that the sun shone so brightly on
my days in Japan, and that the adventurous episodes through which we
lived together—troublous as they often were at the time—have remained
with us only as joyous and picturesque memories for a garrulous old age.
Those who have the patience to struggle through these stories of a dead
past will understand what the great Field-Marshal Prince Oyama meant
when, in 1906 at an exhibition of Jujutsu at Tokio by a Japanese young
lady, he turned round to me and said: “Some of that girl’s tricks would
have been pretty useful to you in the old days that you and I remember!”
The voyage from Shanghai to Yokohama in October, 1866, was a true
harbinger of the stormy times through which I was to live for the next
three or four years. We left Shanghai in the early days of October with
a falling barometer, and when we got out to sea we found a typhoon in
full blast. There was a fierce sea running, but the force of the wind was
so great that it blew the foam like a carpet spread over the waves, so
that had it not been for the tossing of the ship, we might have fancied
ourselves travelling over a smooth surface. It was a wild experience, and
right thankful we were, passengers and ship’s crew alike, when we finally
came to an anchor outside Yokohama.
My first landing in Japan was a gloomy disappointment. Could this be the
fairy land of whose beauties we had heard from Sherard Osborn, Oliphant,
and the earlier travellers? The sky was grey, sad, and unfriendly; gusts
of wind turned umbrellas inside out and defied waterproofs. Where was
Mount Fuji the peerless, the mountain of the Gods? Veiled, curtained
and invisible, like the charms of an odalisque at the Sweet Waters of
Europe. The low eaves of what seemed to be a custom house were mere
runlets of water. Drip, drip, drip! In front of the building a number
of _yakunin_, small government employés, bristling with sword and dirk,
clad in sad-coloured robes with quaint lacquer hats, a mob of coolies
with rain-coats made of straw, looking like animated haycocks sodden in
an unpropitious season; a woman or two clattering and splashing in high
wooden pattens, carrying babies sorely afflicted with skin diseases slung
behind their backs—a melancholy arrival, in all truth, and sufficiently
depressing. All but half a century ago!
But of such a crowd as this—bowmen, spearmen and swordsmen, for they were
little more—was made up the brotherhood which in some four hundred and
eighty months was to win its place in the sun, tearing to tatters China’s
boasted supremacy in the Far East, sweeping a great European navy off
the face of the seas, taking, not once but twice, by sheer dogged valour
and patriotism, scorn of life and scorn of death, the famous citadel
which men said could set at nought the science and heroism of the
civilized world.
For the first two or three days, until a lair of my own could be made
ready for me, Sir Harry Parkes took me in and lodged me at the Legation,
a rather rickety but comfortable bungalow on the bund. The first night at
dinner, perhaps owing to the dismal weather, the conversation turned upon
lugubrious subjects—the anti-foreign feeling in the country; the murders
of Richardson, and more recently of Baldwin and Bird; the bloodthirsty
attacks upon the Legation by Rônins in the time of Sir Rutherford Alcock
and Colonel Neale. After all this raw-head and bloody-bones sort of
talk we went off a little dolefully to bed. In the dead of the night
I was awakened by the clatter of wooden sliding doors, the rattling
of glass, and the shaking of the whole bungalow—it was the din of the
infernal regions. I jumped up and seizing my revolver, rushed out into
the passage, quite expecting to see it full of Rônins with blades reeking
gore. Full indeed the passages were—but not of Rônins; for every soul
was on the alert, revolver in hand, ready for deeds of derring-do. But
it was no mortal foe that was attacking us. It was an earthquake. The
devils that stoke the fires of the infernal regions were at work, and we
could hardly fight them with revolvers! For a few minutes it seemed as if
the building must collapse like a house of cards; but it managed to hold
together, and all was quiet; so we went to bed again, and when we awoke
next morning the sun was shining, the mist had all faded away, the air
was crisp and sharp, and the day was full of glory.
Walking out that afternoon and suddenly coming in full view of
Mount Fuji, snow-capped, rearing its matchless cone heavenward in
one gracefully curving slope from the sea level, I too was caught
by the fever of intoxication which the day before had seemed quite
inexplicable—a fever which burns to this day, and will continue to burn
in my veins to the end of my life.
It so happened that during the next few days there was little work to do,
and so, under the kindly guidance of my old friend Satow, I was able to
wander about the neighbourhood of Yokohama, making short excursions in
the country, now in all the bravery of its autumn beauty; and what can
be more lovely than those valleys with the rich cultivation below, and
the hillsides covered with “the scarlet and golden tissue of the maples”
fringed by graceful bamboos, standing out against the dark green pines
and sombre cryptomerias? Very picturesque and attractive are the Shintō
shrines, and the eaves of the little Buddhist temples peeping from among
the rocks, half hidden by the varied foliage which embowers the choicest
spots. It is a farmers’ country, and Inari Sama, their patron god, with
his attendant foxes, has his full meed of worship.
When I arrived in Japan the country was politically in a state of fever;
it was on the eve of an earthquake which has upset the whole balance of
the world and of which the full effects have perhaps not yet been felt.
In that upheaval the European influence was a factor of which hitherto
little notice has been taken, for obvious reasons; but it nevertheless
played a very real and important part. In 1866 that influence resolved
itself into the struggle for dominance between two men—Sir Harry Parkes
and M. Léon Roches, the French Minister.
Sir Harry Parkes was certainly a very remarkable person. He was a small,
wiry, fair-haired man with a great head and broad brow, almost out of
proportion to his body; his energy was stupendous, he was absolutely
fearless and tireless, very excitable and quick to anger. Having been
sent out to China as a boy of thirteen in 1841, he learnt the language
with almost superhuman industry, and was doing important work as
interpreter, often in most dangerous expeditions, at an age when other
boys are yet wondering whether they will ever get into the school eleven.
His career in China is too well known for me to refer to it here. When he
was only thirty-eight years old he was appointed Minister to Japan, and
there later in the year I joined him.
He often expressed to me his regret that his education had been so early
broken off. The loss weighed heavily upon him. Yet no man would have
suspected him of want of literary culture. He must have created time,
for busy as his life was, he had read greedily, and he often took me by
surprise in unexpected ways; his great shortcoming as a diplomatist was
want of knowledge of French.
M. Léon Roches, the French Minister, was a handsome swashbuckler, who
had been an interpreter in the French army in Algeria. He was far more a
picturesque Spahi than a diplomatist.
The ministers of the other Treaty Powers were mere cyphers. Herr von
Brandt, the Prussian Minister, a man of great ability, was away at home,
taking advantage of his leave to render signal service to his country
during the war of 1866, for which he received the thanks of the great
Bismarck. When he returned to Japan later in the revolution he too played
a conspicuous part.
It is not too much to say that Parkes and Roches hated one another and
were as jealous as a couple of women. In the struggle between the Daimios
and the Shōgun the _beau sabreur_ backed the wrong horse. Parkes had at
his elbow a man of extraordinary ability in the person of Mr. Satow. He
it was who swept away all the cobwebs of the old Dutch diplomacy, and
by an accurate study of Japanese history and of Japanese customs and
traditions, realized and gave true value to the position of the Shōgun,
showing that the Mikado alone was the sovereign of Japan. Nor was this
all. His really intimate knowledge of the language, combined with great
tact and transparent honesty, had enabled him to establish friendly
relations with most of the leading men in the country; thus, young as
he was, achieving a position which was of incalculable advantage to his
chief.
There was another man, Mr. Thomas Glover, a merchant at Nagasaki, who
also rendered good, though hitherto unacknowledged, service in the same
sense. Parkes had the wit to see the wisdom of Satow’s policy and the
value of his advice, and, having recognized it, he had the courage and
determination to carry it into effect, giving the whole of his moral
support to the Daimios, while Roches persisted in the vain endeavour to
bolster up the Shōgun, whose power had dwindled away to vanishing-point.
One day Parkes came into my room like a whirlwind, his fair, reddish hair
almost standing on end, as was its way when he was excited. “What is
the matter, Sir Harry?” I asked. “Matter!” was the answer. “What do you
think that fellow Roches has just told me? He is going to have a _mission
militaire_ out from France to drill the Shōgun’s army! Never mind! I’ll
be even with him. I’ll have a _mission navale_!”—and he did. Three
months later out came the _mission militaire_, with Captain Chanoine at
its head—Chanoine who afterwards became famous when, as general, he was
for three days War Minister, and resigned owing to the Dreyfus affair. My
old friend, General Descharmes, then a captain, was the cavalry officer,
and arrived with a grand piano and a whole repertoire of Beethoven,
Mozart, Chopin, etc. He was a really great musician, which did not hinder
him from being a first-rate soldier.[61] Brunet was the artilleryman; he
afterwards got into a scrape by taking command in the Shōgun’s army, when
it made its last stand at Wakamatsu in the northern province of Aidzu.
Du Bousquet represented the infantry, and became a competent Japanese
scholar; Caseneuve was the fifth officer.
Not very long afterwards Captain Tracy and the _mission navale_ appeared
upon the scene as Parkes’ counterblast.
Who could have foretold that the foundation of the marvellously
successful Japanese army and navy should have had its origin in the
jealousy of the English and French Ministers? It was indeed a pregnant
episode, of which, so far as I know, no notice has been taken. No doubt
the effect of the two missions only hurried on and brought to a head what
must ultimately have taken place, although the change would have been
slower, retarded perhaps for many years; for anyone who is acquainted
with the Japanese character must see that once the seclusion of centuries
was broken into, and the country entered into the comity of nations, the
ambitious aspirations of a people so deeply moved by national sentiment
would never have been satisfied with an inferior position.
Monsieur Roches had a whole network of schemes for the establishment of
French monopolies—docks, harbours, arsenals and what not. But all these
depended upon the permanence of the Shōgun’s power. And even if that had
been effected by his support, there would have been diplomatic wigs upon
the green before he would have been able even to initiate his ambitious
designs. Our chief was far too wide awake for him.
Political changes or upheavals are probably seldom or never due to one
cause only. They are rather brought about by combinations in which
several, or perhaps many, factors play a part. In any case, in Japan
the psychological moment had arrived. The usurped rule of the Tokugawa
Shōguns had wrought no little good in the country; two hundred years of
peace—after centuries of internecine civil wars—were something to their
credit, something for which men might well be thankful. The natural
evanescence of gratitude, however, was hurried on by the despotic laws
laid down by Iyémitsu, the third Shōgun of the dynasty—the grandson of
its founder, Iyéyasu. Iyémitsu had been dead for a hundred and sixty
years and more, and his successors, far from inheriting his masterful
spirit, had lapsed into sloth and political impotence. It took some time
even in those circumstances for the end to come—but it came.
It was not to be supposed that proud nobles like Satsuma, Chōshiu, Tosa,
and the fabulously wealthy Kaga should remain for ever in almost servile
subjection to an effete despotism under conditions which it is difficult
now to realize. Why should they do homage to a ruler—at most the
self-appointed vicar of their real sovereign? Why should they submit to
enforced residence in his capital, leaving behind them, if they went home
to their own provinces, wives and children as hostages for their return?
Why should they be deprived of all voice in the affairs of their country?
The thing was unthinkable.
One main cause of the fall of the Tokugawra power came from within. When
Iyéyasu established his dynasty he made provision for its continuance in
case the direct line of his son Hidétada should fail. He directed that
in that case the Shōgun should be chosen from the descendants of his
sons, the Lords of Ki, Owari, and Mito. The second of the Lords of Mito,
Tokugawa Mitsukuni, who has been called the Mæcenas of Japan on account
of his own scholarship and his encouragement of learning in others,[62]
employed a number of the best scholars of the Empire to produce the Dai
Nihon Shi, the history of Japan from the days of the fabulous Jimmu Tennō
down to the abdication in A.D. 1413 of the Emperor Go Komatsu. (Mr.
Longford reckons him as the 99th Mikado; but the Ō Dai Ichi Ran makes him
to have been the 101st.)
The book was not printed until 1857, but it was largely circulated in
MSS. and so it came about that the grandson of Iyéyasu was largely
responsible for the scattering broadcast of a book which, as it was
written to prove the sole supremacy of the Mikado, was one of the
earliest blows struck at the Shōgun’s power. Nay more. By one of those
coincidences in which the irony of fate reveals itself, it was upon his
own descendant, Tokugawa Kéiki, the third son of a later Lord of Mito,
that the final blow fell. In 1827 appeared the Nihon Gwai Shi,[63] “the
foreign history of Japan,” which is a history of the Shōgunate from its
first foundation by Yoritomo in the 12th century. These books had created
a ferment in the country—at least among the lettered classes—which
nothing could allay, and the great nobles were ready and eager for a
revolt.
Kingdoms and governments and systems wear out like old clothes, and the
once glorious, trefoil-crested Jim-Baori (war surcoat) of the Tokugawa
Shōgun was beginning to show many signs of wear and tear, when the
arrival of Commodore Perry with four little American ships caused the
beginning of the last fatal rent in its silken tissue. The Bakufu, the
Government of the Shōgun, were paralysed with fear; they were at their
wits’ end, and when the United States commander proposed a treaty—a very
modest agreement, asking nothing more than access to three harbours of
refuge—they referred to Kiōto for instructions—they who were supposed to
rule Kiōto—and they appealed for advice to the Daimios whom they claimed
as feudal subjects. In the meantime, as a protective measure against the
foreigner they called out the fire brigade of Yedo—some fifty miles away
from where the western ships were lying! The ringing of those fire-bells
tolled the knell of the Shōgun’s power. Commodore Perry quickly sailed
away, saying that he would come back in a year for an answer; when he
returned his modest little treaty was at his command. In 1858 Lord Elgin
and Baron Gros concluded the first substantial treaties opening the
country to foreign trade.
These few lines seem indispensable for an understanding of what was to
take place in 1867 and 1868. Those who wish for details must be referred
to the histories of Sir F. O. Adams and Professor Longford.
To return to my own story. A week had hardly passed away from my first
landing in Yokohama when I was installed in what seemed to me the
daintiest little cottage in the world. It was built of fair white wood
and paper, not much bigger than a doll’s house, and quite as flimsy; it
had a tiny verandah, decked out with half a dozen dwarf trees, looking
on to a miniature garden about the size of an Arab’s prayer carpet, and
was one of a group of three such dwellings, the other two being occupied
by Mr. Satow and Dr. Willis—so we formed a small Legation colony on the
outskirts of the native town. It was all on so miniature a scale that
it seemed as if one must have shrunken and shrivelled up in order to
fit oneself to it. As for Willis who, dear man, was a giant, how he got
into his house and how, once in, he ever got out again remained as big a
mystery as that of the apple in the dumpling.
Of course we had a house-warming—also on a miniature scale—with an
officer or two of the 9th Regiment as guests, and three or four winsome
geishas to sing and dance for us. So with _Wein, Weib und Gesang_, and a
supper of rice and mysterious dishes of fish and bean curd, sent in by a
Japanese cook-shop, we spent a very merry evening. It was midnight when
the little maids, with great reverence and many knockings of their pretty
heads upon the mats, took their leave, and my first Japanese party came
to an end. The whole cost, including music and dancing, came to a little
over a dollar a head. I don’t suppose that in these improved days you
could do it for four or five times the money.
Our little colony was fated to have but a short span of life. On the
26th of November I was aroused by a violent gale which blew in one of
the shutters of my home. I got up, but unfortunately did not dress at
once, as I wanted to arrange my furniture, part of which had only been
sent in the evening before. As I was shaving my Chinese servant came and
told me that there was a fire two-thirds of a mile off. “All right,” I
said. “When I am dressed I will go and see it.” Little did I know of
the rapidity of flames in a native town. By the time I had shaved I
saw that there would be just time to huddle on a pair of trousers and
a pea-jacket. The fire, driven by the raging wind, seemed to be all
round me. I rushed from the house followed by my dog, who, poor beast!
bewildered by the noise and the crowd, bolted back again into the
furnace, where I found his charred bones the next day under the ashes of
a clothes cupboard, to which he had evidently fled for shelter. In an
hour or a little more nothing was left of the Japanese quarter in which
we lived. The wind howled and whistled. The flames leapt from roof to
roof, the burning wooden shingles, driven, as it seemed, for a couple of
hundred yards finding fresh food for their insatiable greed. There was no
crashing noise of falling timbers such as one hears in a London fire. The
flames passed over the houses and simply devoured them like gun-cotton
passed through a burning candle—a wonderful and appalling sight. In a few
minutes of what had been teeming human homes nothing remained but a heap
of ashes and a few red-hot tiles.
Nothing could cope with the fierceness of the attack. The European
quarter was soon under the curse. Stone houses—warehouses supposed to be
fireproof—were of no avail. Had not the wind abated towards the afternoon
nothing would have remained. As it was, about one third of the foreign
buildings was destroyed. It was the swiftness of the blow that was so
terrifying; it showed how in a great town like Yedo whole quarters, a
mile or two square of houses that are just tinder, may be eaten up by
fire in a few hours.
There was much loss of life. The next day close to where my house had
stood I saw a piteous row of corpses charred so that their humanity was
hardly to be recognized, and was told that this was but one of many such
rows. The victims were chiefly women from the Gankiro where the fire
broke out. One partially burned body was found in a well into which in
her agony a poor girl had leaped.
My possessions consisted of the pea-jacket, singlet, trousers, shoes and
socks in which I stood; but those who had been spared were very kind to
us. The good English Admiral, Sir George King, sent me six shirts with a
letter which I treasure.
In the meantime Sir Harry Parkes had made up his mind that he would
once more insist upon taking up his residence in Yedo, which had been
abandoned on account of the attacks upon the Legation in Alcock’s time
and when Neale was _chargé d’affaires_—attacks culminating in the
destruction by Rônin of the buildings which were in course of erection
at Goten Yama, a hill above the ill-famed borough of Shinagawa, a very
pretty spot, which the Shōgun had assigned as a site for the foreign
Legations. It was a matter of common talk that Prince Ito in his salad
days was one of that body of Rônin; we often used to chaff him about it
in old times before he became such a great man, but when he was already a
good friend of ours, and he never denied it—but only laughed.
One morning Parkes sent for me to talk the matter over. He argued, and
I quite agreed with him, that it was a most undignified and anomalous
position for an English Minister accredited to a so-called friendly
country practically to waive the right of residence in what, if not the
true capital of that country, was, at any rate, at the moment the seat of
Government. And so to Yedo we went, remaining only a few days at first in
order to make ready for our permanent abode there. This was in the early
part of November, a few days before the great fire at Yokohama.
The buildings which we were to occupy were two long, low, ramshackle
bungalows, the one for the Minister, the other for the rest of us, in
a court below the famous temple of Sengakuji—where the forty-seven
Rônin[64] are buried. At the gate was an out-building occupied by a guard
of the 9th Regiment, now the Norfolks, from Yokohama. It must seem almost
incredible to the Japanese of the present day to think of Yokohama being
guarded by a British infantry regiment, quartered in barracks on the
bluff above the town! And this a little less than fifty years ago!
In addition to the English soldiers we had a large guard of Bettégumi,
a corps of Samurai of a rather humble class specially raised for the
protection of foreign officials, but who were far more concerned with
spying upon us than fighting for us. Never was espionage carried out in
such perfection as it was in Japan, where in the days of the Bakufu it
attained the dignity of a fine art. No native official, whatever his rank
might be, went forth on his business alone. An _ométsuké_, the “eye in
attendance,” stuck to him like his shadow. No man was trusted, and it is
not to be wondered at that we also should have been unable to move a step
without our “eyes in attendance.”
The bungalow barracks under Sengakuji furnished a miserable
lodging—neither doors, windows nor shutters fitted; there were a few
stoves, which either got red-hot and smelt of burning iron, or gave no
heat at all. The wind whistled unhindered through long passages and
chilly rooms, so that it almost seemed as if we should be better off in
the open, where, at any rate, there would be no draughts.
On that first evening there was no temptation to sit up late; shivering
and shaking, we went to bed very early, but it was long before even a
pile of blankets could bring enough warmth to enable me to sleep. While
it was yet quite dark, and as it seemed to me the middle of the night,
I was awakened by a bugle-call. I jumped up and ran, pistol in hand,
formidable, breathing bloody vengeance, as I did at Yokohama when the
earth quaked, to the verandah to see what was the terrible danger—hailed
the sentry outside. “What is the matter?” “Please, sir, it’s only the
rewelly.” Relieved, I crept back into the warmth of my nest.
What with the discomfort of the buildings, the sensation of being closely
guarded, and the inquisitive watchfulness of the Bettégumi, we felt as
if we were in prison, and so Satow and myself begged Sir Harry to allow
us to hire a little temple outside. Our chief jumped at the idea, for
he was naturally anxious to do everything that would tend to break the
spell of lack of freedom which he rightly felt to be most detrimental to
any real intercourse with Japan. So Mr. Satow and I rented Monriuin, a
delicious little shrine a few hundred yards from the Legation, on a tiny
hill commanding a lovely view over the bay of Yedo; we were the first
foreigners to live out of bounds in that great city. From the Bettégumi
there was no escape—not even for an afternoon’s walk, or to go across
to the Legation. Otherwise we were free, we could hold intercourse with
natives, and if we heard the “rewelly” it was softened by distance. Forty
years afterwards I went back to Japan, and of course wished to visit
the old place. Alas! Evil times had fallen upon the monks: the dainty
little dwelling was all rack and ruin, the trim garden a wilderness of
unwholesome weeds. It was a piteous sight.
We mounted our little _ménage_ very frugally. In order to save the
expense of a cook, a _batterie de cuisine_, knives and forks, etc., we
got our dinner sent in from a Japanese cookshop; with rice and fish we
did well enough—adding now and then a little dish of chicken or duck. But
there came a day when the weather, having been too bad for the fishermen
to go out, our restaurateur with many apologies sent us a dinner of
bamboo shoots and sea-weed. That was a _jour maigre_ with a vengeance.
From that time forth it will be seen that Satow and I hunted very much in
couples. I was nominally the senior and had to draw up the reports of our
proceedings, but I may say once for all that his was the brain which was
responsible for the work which I recorded. It is difficult to exaggerate
the services which he rendered in very critical times, and it is right
that this should not be forgotten.
It was well that we had made arrangements for settling the Legation at
Yedo, for in the last days of December the Legation house at Yokohama was
burnt down. As the Japanese in their letter of condolence to Sir Harry
expressed it, “the calamity of the dancing horse” had once more made
itself felt.[65]
CHAPTER XIX
THE SHŌGUN OR TYCOON
In the beginning of 1867 there was a great stir in Japanese politics, and
it was evident to those who, like ourselves, were more or less behind
the scenes that we were on the eve of what might prove to be a critical
state of affairs whichever party gained the upper hand. Meanwhile the
Shōgun Iyémochi had died on the 19th of September, 1866, and Tokugawa
Kéiki, who, as I have already said, was the third son of the Lord of
Mito and whose rise was due to the intrigues of his father, succeeded
to the office; he soon announced his intention of receiving the foreign
ministers at Ōsaka, an ugly city of rivers and canals, a great and
important trade centre, but with no claim other than its waterways to be
called, as it sometimes was, the Venice of the Far East. In the first
week of February Mr. Satow and myself were sent in a man-of-war to make
the necessary arrangements and settle all the questions of etiquette and
procedure which might crop up. We had with us as guests Captain Cardew of
the 9th Regiment and Lieutenant Thalbitzer of the Danish Navy.
We landed at Hiōgo and rode to Ōsaka. Besides a mounted escort of
officers soldiers were posted at intervals all along the road, and as
we passed each post the men fell in and followed behind us, so that by
the time we reached our destination we had a tail of between two and
three thousand men. This was pretty good evidence of the anxiety of the
Government for our safety.
On landing we heard that the Mikado Komei had died of smallpox on the
3rd of February—as a matter of fact he had died on the 30th of January,
but for some mysterious reason the date was given as four days later.
His successor, the famous Emperor Mutsu Hito, was then a boy of fifteen.
Those who knew him had great faith in his ability and predicted great
things for him if he should be properly trained. Their forecast was well
justified. Had the Emperor Komei, who was a deadly foe to all foreign
intercourse, lived the events of the next few months must have been very
different.
When we reached Ōsaka we found that a pretty little shrine in a street
more or less devoted to temples had been prepared for our reception. We
were feasted and treated right royally, and everything was done to make
our duties easy and our stay agreeable. It will astonish the tourist of
to-day to hear that we were looked upon as such curiosities that the
street in which we lived was so crowded with sightseers as to be almost
impassable and the hucksters and costers of Ōsaka set up a fair outside
our temple, where they did a roaring trade in fruit, sweetmeats, cheap
toys and the like.
Although our mission to Ōsaka was nominally intended to arrange the
ceremonial to be observed at the approaching reception by the Tycoon
of the Foreign Representatives, and especially of Sir Harry Parkes,
it gave an excellent opportunity for obtaining information as to the
political situation in Kiōto. It was during this visit that I first
made acquaintance with some of the leading men of the clans—men who
were destined to play a great part in the days that were to follow. We
were visited by representatives of both the rival parties, that of the
discontented Daimios and that of the Tycoon. Foremost among the latter
were some of the northerners of Aidzu, men who were ready to lay down
their lives, and did actually die, for the honour of the Tokugawa; others
from the Satsuma, Chōshiu, Tosa and Uwajima clans were moving heaven and
earth for the deposition of the Shōgun.
We learned much about the intrigues that were going on at Kiōto, plots
and counterplots of which the interest has long since faded away owing
to the very greatness of the results which have issued from them. The
men themselves who kept us so well informed have almost all, one by one,
been gathered to their fathers. Komatsu of the Satsuma clan, whom we saw
almost daily during our stay in Ōsaka, Prince Ito of the Chōshiu clan,
Kido of the same clan, the most brilliant of all—Gotō of Tosa whose
statue stands in Tokio, Nakai, and others all gone! The last of our
special friends, Marquis Inouyé, one of the elder statesmen, died a month
since. I doubt whether there can be six men alive who played a leading
part in those stirring events. And during the last twelve months the
great Mikado, whose reign will always be so famous, and the Shōgun whom
he magnanimously forgave, have themselves gone to the realm of shadows,
living only in history.
We had to be very careful in arranging our interviews, for naturally we
were pretty closely watched by the blessed spies who were attached to us
“for our protection.” Still we did manage once or twice to escape from
the Argus-eyed and to have at least two interviews from which even the
less important men of the Daimio party were shut out.
One message which I was desired to give to Sir Harry Parkes was, read
by the light of subsequent events, supremely interesting. It was to the
effect that the object of the Prince of Satsuma and of the coalition of
Daimios was not to upset the government of the Shōgun, but to prevent
it from making a bad use of its powers. That Satsuma hoped to see the
Mikado restored to the ancient honours of his race, because that would
contribute to the weal of the country; that their plans and hopes all
tended not to revolution against the Shōgun but to the benefit of the
country at large—that if Sir Harry, on reaching Ōsaka, would moot the
question of a new treaty with the Mikado direct, the Daimios would at
once give their adherence to the proposal and flock to Kiōto to carry out
this great work. Let Sir Harry help them to this very small degree and
they would answer for the rest.
Truly a modest programme; but _l’appétit vient en mangeant_; a few short
months later it would have excited ridicule.
We did a great deal of shopping during our stay in Ōsaka, for, of course,
we wished to carry away some of the _mei-butsu_, special wares, for which
the great city was famous. Lacquer, quaint pipes of many patterns, fans,
and brocade were temptations not to be resisted. Wherever we went we were
pursued by huge crowds through which a way was cleared for us by petty
officials, armed only with the _Wakizashi_ or dirk, who kept shouting
a sort of crow-like cry of _Kan! Kan!_ But the mob, friendly but very
persistent, was not to be shouted away. The attraction was too great.
When, after having fulfilled our mission at Ōsaka, we reached Yedo we
found that a tragedy had taken place in the Legation during our absence.
There were a good many men who were unable to get over the constant dread
of murder at the hands of the armed swashbucklers who used to ruffle
along the streets of Yedo, scowling at the hated foreigners and sometimes
making as though they would draw their keen heavy swords, to deliver that
first deadly blow which would cut a man almost from shoulder to waist—a
blow so well known that we were advised if we saw an inch of steel bared
to shoot the ruffian at sight. One of our young student interpreters
was so possessed by the terror which haunted him by day and by night
that he never went outside the gates of the Legation and even petitioned
the Chief to send home for a couple of Armstrong guns for our better
protection, though we already had a company of the 9th and our mounted
escort.
One night the poor fellow could stand it no longer. He dined quietly
with the others and then went off to his room. Two shots were heard.
His hand must have trembled, for he missed himself with the first, the
bullet of which was found in the wall; the second shot was fatal. They
say that suicide is infectious; within a week there were two more cases
in Yokohama. It is hard to realize nowadays the conditions of life in the
early times of our intercourse with Japan. For nearly four years I never
wrote a note without having a revolver on the table, and never went to
bed without a Spencer rifle and bayonet at my hand. Think of that, you
who walk through the streets of Yedo and Kiōto, swinging a dandy cane
with as great safety as you would in Regent Street or Piccadilly, and
thank your stars that the carrying of sword and dirk has been abolished
by law.
In the month of May, 1867, Sir Harry Parkes and the rest of us went to
Ōsaka for the first reception by the Shōgun.
The Castle of Ōsaka was, and still is, so far as its outer fortress is
concerned, a most stupendous monument of feudalism, the crowning glory
of Hidéyoshi, commonly spoken of as Taiko Sama, the son of a woodcutter
in the province of Owari, who, towards the end of the sixteenth century,
became the supreme _de facto_ ruler of Japan and the conquerer of
Corea. Its walls, “seven fathoms thick,” as old Kämpfer puts it, were
built of great blocks of granite piled irregularly one above the other
without mortar in cyclopean pattern or rather no pattern, massive,
wonder-raising. Walls moated by two rivers, the Yodo and the Kashiwari.
Some of the stones are more than thirty feet long and nearly twenty
feet high, sent, as it is said, by way of tribute by the lords of many
provinces. It is a noble structure, moated, very plain and simple,
featureless with the exception of the curved roofs of the great towers,
its very simplicity adding to its grandeur; against a host armed with
bows and spears, with perhaps a few matchlocks, an impregnable fortress.
Here Hidéyori, the son of Hidéyoshi, was born, and here he lived with his
mother, a woman of great character, in full security, and for a while in
friendship with Iyéyasu. The end of that friendship and the fall of the
castle of Ōsaka rank among the romances of history.
Over and over again the great stronghold was attacked by the Tokugawa;
twice it was nearly lost by treachery—but the garrison always beat off
their assailants, until at last a fire broke out within the castle and
there was a panic. Hidéyori and his gloriously brave mother were never
seen again: they must have perished in the flames; and Iyéyasu triumphed
only to die some months afterwards from the effects of a wound received
during the siege. After his death he was deified, or perhaps I should
rather say canonized, as an incarnation of Buddha under the title of
Gongen Sama.
It was in this great historic castle that our reception by the Shōgun
took place. Never can anything of the kind be seen again. The Shōgunate
has disappeared and is now only spoken of in Japan as something
prehistoric; the last of the Shōguns died a few months ago; the castle
itself no longer exists as it then was. The outer shell still stands but
the magnificent palace which it contained was gutted and burnt by the
Shōgun’s own people when, after the battle of Fushimi they came back in
bitter despair, aching with the pain of defeat, and many of them stung
to the quick by the flight of their lord.
How cruelly this sorrow ate into the hearts of the faithful retainers
and adherents of the great House of Tokugawa may be felt from the
following true story. I am anticipating by a year, but I am not writing a
consecutive history; only jotting down stray notes of a sort of “voyage
en zigzag” across my memory. When the defeated Shōgun reached Yedo and
was safely lodged (for a short while!) in his ancestral castle, a member
of his second Council, one Hori Kura no Kami, went to him and urged him
to perform _hara-kiri_ as the only way to wipe out the stain which had
smirched the august Family. To prove his sincerity he declared himself
ready to do the same. The Shōgun is reported to have laughed at him,
saying that such barbarous customs were out of date. Upon this Hori Kura
no Kami prostrated himself, making due obeisances and retiring to an
adjoining chamber, stripped to the waist, drew his dirk, and plunging it
into himself died the death of a noble samurai.
Tokugawa Kéiki was wrong when he said that _hara-kiri_ was out of date as
a barbarous custom. It is to this day the end of constancy and honour;
witness the death of the great Satsuma General Saigo, whom I knew well,
in the rebellion of 1877; witness the self-immolation of my gallant old
friend, General Nogi, the hero of Port Arthur, two years ago (in 1913);
broken by grief at the death of the Mikado Mutsu Hito he would not
outlive the master whom he loved, and so he died, and that faithful lady
his wife died with him.
During our stay at Ōsaka we had three interviews with the Shōgun; of
these the first was naturally the most interesting, although it was
only semi-official, for not only had it the taste of novelty, but it
also afforded the opportunity for a more intimate interchange of ideas
than would be possible on a state occasion. Accompanied by a number of
dignitaries of the Shōgun’s government and escorted not only by our own
men, seventeen splendid Lancers picked from the Metropolitan Police,
and a company of the 9th Regiment, but also by a small army of Japanese
soldiers, we rode to the castle in solemn procession. We were privileged
to remain on horseback beyond the place where all Japanese, high and
low, were required to dismount, and only left our horses at an inner
gate, immediately opposite the enormous hall of the palace, which was,
indeed, an inner castle surrounded, as was the outer one, by a moat.
Here we were received by a number of officials of high rank, who led us
to a waiting-room where tea and various dainties were served. I take the
account of our reception from a letter which I wrote at the time, on May
the 6th, 1867.
The interior of the palace was far more magnificent than anything that
I had seen in Japan. The walls were covered with gold leaf, decorated
with those glorious paintings of trees, flowers, birds and beasts, for
which the Kano school of artists is famous. The hangings were the finest
rush mats, suspended by gilt hooks from which hung huge silken tassels
in tricolour—orange, red and black—the colours of the Zingari ribbon.
The upper panels formed a frieze, deeply carved by some native Grinling
Gibbons in the highest style of Japanese art, lavishly gilt and painted;
every panel was different, no two alike. Peacocks and cranes strutting
in all the pride of beauty, delicate groups of tender-coloured azaleas,
bamboos bending their graceful feathers to the wind, pine trees with
foliage almost black with age, were the subjects chosen. The uprights
and cross-beams were of plain unpolished keaki wood, fastened with metal
bolts, capped with niello work. The ceiling was coffered in squares,
carved, gilt and painted, and the divisions were richly lacquered in
black and gold. Sumptuous as it all was there was nothing tawdry or
glaring in this fever of splendour, for it was all two hundred years old,
softened and subdued by the patina of time.
If old Kämpfer’s account, or rather, the story told by his informant, was
correct, there once stood inside the palace precincts a tower “several
stories high, whose innermost roof is covered and adorned with two
monstrous large fish, which, instead of scales, are covered with golden
obang, finely polished, which, on a clear, sunshiny day reflect the rays
so strongly that they may be seen as far as Hiōgo. This tower was burned
down about thirty years ago, to compute from 1691.” These monstrous
fishes were examples of the mystic Shachihoko, which are seen on so many
roofs, and the obang was the great oval gold coin, some five or six
inches long, flat like a scale, which must have made a rare jacket for a
fish.
We were kept some little time in the first room talking with the various
dignitaries, as is natural in every land, about the weather, and then we
were led into the reception hall, where, in deference to European habits,
a table was set out with eight seats, and at one end a richly lacquered
chair for the Shōgun. Here we were met by the Gorôjiu (the Council of
State, literally “Elders”), and the members of the Second Council, and
were told that the great Prince would immediately make his appearance.
A few seconds afterwards two of the tall sliding screens which wall
a Japanese room were slowly and noiselessly drawn aside, and that
long-drawn “hush” caused by the drawing-in of breath which announces the
coming of a great personage thrilled all through the whole palace like
the most delicate _pianissimo_ of a huge orchestra; for a second or two
the Tycoon, motionless as a statue, stood framed in the opening between
the screens, an august and imposing figure. All the Japanese prostrated
themselves, with the exception of the Gorôjiu and the members of the
Second Council, who, presumably, only were excused this reverence in
order that there might be no difference between them and us. The great
man stepped into the room, bowed, shook hands with Sir Harry Parkes “in
barbarum,” as Tacitus puts it, and we all sat down—four Japanese on one
side of the table, Sir Harry, Mr. Locock, Mr. Satow and myself on the
other. Then the Shōgun rose very gracefully and asked after the health of
Queen Victoria. This was responded to by Sir Harry standing and inquiring
after the Mikado. He then led the conversation into business questions.
The great man, in the course of this unofficial and more or less
confidential talk, showed that he was well posted as to all that had
taken place during the early days after the signing of the Elgin Treaty
and up to the then present time. He spoke frankly and without reserve
of the troublous years that we had gone through. He deplored the
difficulties which had stood in the way of any satisfactory intercourse
between his countrymen and ours, and announced his determination to
inaugurate a better order of things. His manner was quite charming. He
was at first, not unnaturally, a little shy and nervous, for he had some
awkward admissions to make, but his great natural distinction and kindly
courtesy soon shook off all restraint, and he talked freely and easily.
Certainly Prince Tokugawa Kéiki, the last of the Shōguns, was a very
striking personality. He was of average Japanese height, small as
compared with Europeans, but the old Japanese robes made the difference
less apparent. I think he was the handsomest man, according to our ideas,
that I saw during all the years that I was in Japan. His features were
regular, his eye brilliantly lighted and keen, his complexion a clear,
healthy olive colour. The mouth was very firm, but his expression when
he smiled was gentle and singularly winning. His frame was well-knit and
strong, the figure of a man of great activity; an indefatigable horseman,
as inured to weather as an English master of hounds. When I saw him again
forty years later age had altered him but little. He had retained all his
charm of manner, and though the face was lined his features had undergone
hardly any change, and the distinction of race was as evident as ever. He
was a great noble if ever there was one. The pity of it was that he was
an anachronism.
After about an hour spent in very friendly conversation the Shōgun asked
to see our escort, who were waiting in an inner court of the palace.
They showed him lance and sword exercise, with which he seemed highly
delighted, but what interested him the most was the size of our horses,
Gulf Arabs, rather a good-looking lot which we had imported from India,
and he, as a horse-lover, commented a good deal upon their superiority to
the Japanese native ponies, which certainly are about as mean a breed of
the genus horse as exists anywhere.
The Shōgun had invited us to stay for dinner. In these days (1915) a
banquet served in the French fashion in the palace of a Japanese grandee
is an everyday affair, but at the time of which I am writing for four
Englishmen to find themselves hobnobbing with the Tycoon and his Gorôjiu
was an unprecedented occurrence, impossible anywhere out of dreamland.
The great man presided, and we were waited upon by the Ministers of
Foreign Affairs and the pages of honour. In the middle of dinner the
Shōgun rose and proposed the Queen’s health, a compliment till then
absolutely unknown in the Land of Sunrise, and therefore all the more
indicative of the desire to please. Sir Harry responded with a toast in
honour of our host. After dinner we adjourned into an inner room where
the Shōgun gave each of us a present of two pieces of crape, and a pipe
and tobacco-pouch of silk embroidered by the ladies of the palace.
But the prettiest compliment, so gracefully offered, was yet to come. The
room in which we were was hung round with a number of portraits of poets
and poetesses which had been presented to one of the Tokugawa Shōguns by
some Daimio about two hundred years before. We were looking at these with
no little curiosity when the Tycoon insisted on having one of them taken
down and presenting it to Sir Harry in memory of his visit. Sir Harry
naturally demurred to accepting it, pointing out what a pity it would be
to break the set; but the Prince would take no denial, saying that “when
he looked on the vacant space it would give him pleasure to think that
the picture that had once filled it was in the possession of the British
Minister.” Could courtesy find a higher expression?
We remained at the palace till past nine o’clock and it was a
satisfaction to hear next day that the occasion of his first introduction
to Englishmen had afforded our princely host as much pleasure as it had
given us.
The State ceremony was, of course, far more stiff and formal, but it
was also infinitely more quaint, for there was no taste of Europe about
it. We were living through a chapter, or perhaps I should rather say
a paragraph of a chapter, taken out of the old-world romance of the
furthest East. The Shōgun and his nobles were clad in the immemorial
Court dress; flowing trousers as long as the train of a Buckingham Palace
great lady, loose hempen jackets, and the curious little black lacquer
caps like boxes (_yéboshi_) on their heads. You may see them portrayed on
golden screens and old paintings. In no country that I have seen is Court
dress triumphant in beauty, but here it was absolutely grotesque, forcing
the wearers into the most ungraceful shuffling movements. I have no doubt
that we seemed equally absurd to our hosts, for the cocked hat, now the
coveted privilege of every Japanese official, was then a mystery unknown
as the future which has given birth to it.
On the following day the Shōgun returned to Kiōto for a meeting of
Daimios whom he had summoned to confer upon the affairs of the Empire.
Meanwhile our negotiations had gone smoothly; the great man had shown
himself to be most friendly, and we were in high hopes that the opening
of Ōsaka in the following January would be the harbinger of new and
happier relations between Japan and the Western world.
There was a talk of my being removed from Japan at this time. I was very
unwilling to leave the country at so interesting a moment. In a letter
written home I find the reason of my reluctance. “If I go I shall miss
the opening of Ōsaka and Hiōgo to foreign trade which will be the _last
event of political importance in Japan_ in our time.” What a blind
prophet! I stayed on, but I was fated to see a good many events of
greater “political importance” than the opening of the two ports.
END OF VOLUME I
_Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey._
FOOTNOTES
[1] The name Wansbeck is derived from “want,” the old English word for a
mole: the beck or stream of the mole. The word, by the by, is still alive
in Gloucestershire, where a molehill is an “unt-yeave.”
[2] Midford = between the fords.
[3] Sir Robert Bertram’s name is given as Richard in Burke’s “Landed
Gentry,” where it is further said that he was a son of the Lord of Dignam
in Normandy.
[4] The Duchess of Cleveland’s “Battle Abbey Roll.”
[5] The Duchess of Cleveland’s “Battle Abbey Roll.”
[6] “Battle Abbey Roll” _ut supra_.
[7] Painted by Jackson.
[8] Painted by Romney.
[9] Painted as a young man by a French artist in the manner of Nattier.
Also as an old man by ——?
[10] Painted by Prince Hoare of Bath—foreign corresponding secretary of
the Royal Academy.
[11] Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
[12] Portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Heathcote by Owen.
[13] A pastel of her as a little girl with a pet goldfinch in a cage, by
Russell—generally regarded as Russell’s best work.
[14] Shipston on Stour, where the guardians meet.
[15] Afterwards Earl of Westmorland, grandfather of the present earl.
[16] The caricaturists used to make famous fun of Louis Philippe’s head,
with its hair brushed up in a sort of cone that made the stem of the pear.
[17] Mr. John Hawtrey (cousin of the Head Master) kept a house at
the corner of Keate’s Lane reserved for boys of the lower school.
There was no fagging in his house—but his boys were liable to outside
fagging. He afterwards kept preparatory schools at Slough and later at
Westgate-on-Sea. He was the father of Mr. Charles Hawtrey, the famous
actor.
[18]
“Sive tu Lucina probas vocari,
Seu Genitalis.”—Horace, “Carmen Seculare,” 15.
[19] The lower master; afterwards Provost of King’s College, Cambridge.
[20] “Dictionary of National Biography.”
[21] See Maxwell Lyte’s “History of Eton College,” p. 526, Ed. 1899.
[22] There can be very few people now living who have seen and talked
with the famous Dr. Keate, who was nailed in his desk during the great
rebellion and flogged eighty boys in one day. My father, on one of his
visits to Eton, took me up to see him in the cloisters at Windsor, where
he was canon. In appearance he was exactly like the many caricatures
that one used to see of him, but the truculent hero of the birch and
block, so faithfully painted by Kinglake in “Eothen,” had grown into a
gentle, mild, little old man, of whom it was difficult to believe that
he had ever flogged a boy or uttered a harsh word. He had abandoned “the
fancy dress, partly resembling the costume of Napoleon and partly that
of a widow woman” (“Eothen,” p. 276, Ed. 1896), and was now garbed as a
commonplace Early Victorian parson.
[23] At a distribution of prizes at one of the public schools at Paris,
as boy after boy was brought up, he said, “Continuez, jeune homme!
Premier prix de mathématiques, très bien. Continuez, jeune homme.” At
last a Haytian boy was brought up to him. “Ah, c’est vous le nègre.
Continuez, jeune homme, continuez!”
[24] “Leaving money” has now been done away with. In my day a sixth form
boy on taking leave of the Head Master, laid on his desk an envelope
containing £15. For other boys the fee was £10. It was an ignoble custom,
rightly abolished.
[25] ἄνδρες δικασταί = jurymen.
[26] Those tapestries are now one of the chief ornaments of the British
Embassy at Paris.
[27] Lord Ranelagh’s long hair and beard gave him a certain look of
Garibaldi. He was one of the best of good fellows, and had been a gallant
soldier in Spain, though in the opposite camp to Wylde. He did much to
make the volunteer movement popular.
[28] The Prince Consort died on the 14th December.
[29] Bishop Wilberforce’s answer to a friend who asked him why he was
nicknamed “Soapy Sam.”
[30] “The Life of Lord Lyons,” by Lord Newton. 2 vols. Edward Arnold,
1913.
[31] Not the 10th Hussars, as Sir Sidney Lee has it. Of the 10th he was
titular Colonel-in-Chief.
[32] In his youth he worked hard at the violin, and it is said with
success.
[33] “Miscellaneous Writings,” Vol. VII. p. 123.
[34] He appeared on the stage for the last time in _Macbeth_ at Drury
Lane in February, 1851. But I heard him read long after that.
[35] A most picturesque and splendid actor. A Frenchman to all intents
and purposes, speaking English with a strong French accent. There was
a story that he was born in England, but that is doubtful. He died in
America in 1879. (See “Dictionary of National Biography.”)
[36] “Annual Register,” 1863.
[37] Lord Salisbury—“Foreign Policy,” p. 198.
[38] Brockhaus—“Conversations Lexicon,” Art. Polen.
[39] Curiously enough, by one of those ineptitudes for which private
secretaries are famous, the brother of this very gentleman, the son of a
Polish mother, had been shortly before attached to the British Embassy at
St. Petersburg.
[40] “Briefe Kaiser Wilhelm’s des Ersten,” Insel Verlag, Leipzig, 1911,
p. 106.
[41] The Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovitch, the eldest son of the Tsar.
He was in wretched health and died in April, 1865, and the Princess
became betrothed to his next brother, who after his father’s murder
reigned as Alexander the Third.
[42] Winterbottom, the great trombone player, once said to me, “The notes
of a G trombone ought to go _rolling_ through Exeter Hall like footballs.”
[43] Written some years ago (1915).
[44] 18th February, old style; 2nd March, new style.
[45]
“Ia bui v’ miesto phonaria
Katorii svietiet v’ niepagodu
Vieshal bui golovu Tsaria
I provosglocil svobodu.”
[46] _Measure for Measure._
[47] The father of the present (1915) Commander-in-Chief of the Russian
army in Poland and Galicia.
[48] An excellent and hospitable club, “Anglais” only in name, of which
the _corps diplomatique_ were made honorary members.
[49] A Tartar word signifying “Citadel.”
[50] Revelation ii. 8.
[51] The “Gallery of Illustration” was a place of entertainment famous
in those days under the direction of Mr. and Mrs. German Reed (Miss
Priscilla Horton), with whom were joined Arthur Cecil and Corney Grain.
They produced, among other famous pieces, Sullivan and Burnand’s _Cox and
Box_.
[52] See the preface to “Le Nabab.”
[53] Po Hsing—“the hundred names” = the οἱ πολλοί.
[54] Pinus Bungeana.
[55] Sir Rutherford retired in 1871. But he lived for many years
afterwards in London, devoting himself to all manner of work for the
benefit of the poor, but especially in connection with hospitals, for
which his early training and technical knowledge specially fitted him. He
died, greatly respected, in 1897 at the age of eighty-eight.
[56] “China under the Empress Dowager,” I.O.P. Bland and E. Backhouse.
[57] See Messrs. Bland and Backhouse.
[58] Bland and Backhouse; cf. “C’est pis qu’une faute, c’est une erreur”
(Talleyrand on the murder of the Duc d’Enghien).
[59] Bought at my sale by my old friend Sir Augustus Franks, and now in
the collection bequeathed by him to the British Museum.
[60] “The Attaché at Peking.” Macmillan, 1900.
[61] Years afterwards, when Descharmes was military attaché in London, he
came to dine with us. Joachim was of the party and had brought his violin
quite unexpectedly. He asked for an accompanist. I had asked no one for
the purpose, little thinking that it would be required. Descharmes sat
down and played the accompaniments at sight, to Joachim’s amazement and
great satisfaction. Both violinist and pianist are now alas! dead.
[62] See Professor Longford’s admirable “Story of Old Japan,” p. 312.
[63] See Mr. Longford _ut supra_.
[64] See my “Tales of Old Japan.”
[65] This is borrowed from the Chinese classics; it seems that in the
days of the Sung dynasty in China a tower called “the Tower of the
Dancing Horse” was burnt down, since which time a great fire is called
after it.
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