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 Another Random Document on
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 At the time his father and brother were still alive, residing at
Quiddenham Hall.
What one missed in these great houses was the company of one’s
own class, men in the pursuit of literature or science; but such
things are of no use in the patrician circles, they would only be in
the way. These lords of the soil love horses, carriages, plate, all of
which one can see in great perfection in the parks, and at the
silversmiths’, as well as in private houses, and the pleasure in any
case is but momentary. In justice, however, it must be said that
high-class people are often capable of conversing with those who
have little to show besides their brains; and are not slow in eliciting
information from them. Lord Sandwich was a good example of such;
but Lord Albemarle had a naïveté and an intelligence so delightful as
to need nothing at another’s hands. Then, a rich aristocracy has
opportunities which do not belong to the men who have their money
to make. The one class has not to consider in his dealings with
others how he can make the most out of them, but is able to be
generous; this alone has an ennobling influence. An American made
the remark that, many as are the faults of the English nobility, they
always kept their promise.
The reason why authors, deserving of encouragement from the
intrinsic value of their work, are no longer patronized and brought
into notice by the great, is that the influence of the nobility has
wholly died out. The literary leaders, great editors, and the like, play
but a minor part; they are not enough looked up to by the people at
large, who do not understand them. They can confer fame on men
among their own select class, but that fame cannot over-leap its
boundary, and reach even the intelligent vulgar.
Even the Royal Society, begun by a king, was long afraid to
venture in its career with anything less than a royal or noble
president, and this within the memory of man; but happily it now
runs alone, as do all the other learned bodies in its track.
The truth may lie here—though scientific men are not growing
rich, rich men are growing scientific.
 I must not leave Riddlesworth without a tribute to Mrs. Thornhill,
a lady so conscientious; and that means gentle, kind and full of
charity. She was the daughter of Mr. Waddington, of Cavenham Hall,
the county member; a devoted mother, a constant friend.
I suppose, like everybody else, except myself, she is dead; that
class of people live too luxuriously to last very long.
Mrs. Thornhill’s mother, Mrs. Waddington, was a lady of
extraordinary beauty. She was of the Milnes family of which Moncton
Milnes was the recent head, a wit and writer who tried to legitimize
bad grammar on the liberal principle that every one had a right to do
what he liked with his own language. He, too, like the brewers,
could not do without being a lord, though already a patrician, which
is greater, and which a king cannot create. He was called the “Cool
of the Evening,” which must imply that he was a very pleasant guest
on a hot summer’s night.
Our country parishes, with their resident squires, are really little
republics with the squire himself at their head as president, and the
clergyman acting as his prime minister. It is a form of paternal
government without the despotism. The parish clerk, humble as he
is, fills the office of a secretary of state, the rest are the people.
Where the squire lives on his estate, how many of these happy
republics may be seen! All the parishes, pretty much, that I have
described are of this category, and I hold it beyond human wit to
improve them. All are free!
Mrs. Newton of Elvedon was the sister of Mrs. Waddington. The
place of that name has since become the property of Duleep Singh.
In the time of the Newtons it was no exception to the happily-
governed squirearchies of East Anglia.
Two or three places of mark remain to be mentioned, and as many
to be omitted, before quitting the subject. One is the seat of the
Duke of Grafton, Euston Hall, inherited by the family from Lord
Arlington, in the time of Charles II. The duke, who was Earl of
Euston when I first knew him, lived much on his Northamptonshire
property, but was a good deal in Norfolk too, where his interests
were large. He showed me the principal rooms in his fine mansion,
which, though large, bespoke great comfort. The drawing-room,
which was very long, had bay-windows, with a daïs under each for
seats. There is a grand staircase; on one wall of this was hung a
portrait of the duchess, mother of the first duke, then seven or eight
generations ago, a lapse of time when the bar-sinister had ceased to
cross the shield; nevertheless, it was retained in the armorial
bearings of the house, and this may be regarded as a proper pride.
I was shown a picture of the hall as it was originally, with gilded
pinnacles, but these had disappeared.
The usual entrance was at the back of the building, flanked by the
stables; the front entrance was approached through the park gates,
which, as was an old custom, were never opened except to royalty.
The duke, regardless of the example set by his ancestors in
contenting themselves with a life interest in so fine a property, for
the good of those to come, was quite willing to sell Euston if he
could have got his price, but it did not change hands.
I was not acquainted with the duke in fashionable life, so I know
little of his character there; but I believe he was thought to be
eccentric. All I know is that he was a benevolent and kind-hearted
president of his village republic. He was married to the daughter of
the last Earl of Berkeley—a sister of the famed colonel of that name
—a lady of great worth. My acquaintance with the family was
professional only; in this way. I had to advise several members of
the house, and this sufficed to confirm me in the opinion that the
higher you go the greater is the amiability you encounter. It may be
good breeding only, but whatever its source may be, it is deserving
of admiration.
One more place I will mention in Norfolk to which I was
summoned, the seat of Mr. Angerstein. In point of decoration, it was
a gilded palace, the most superb in its interior that I had ever seen.
I remained there for the night, and had a most agreeable
conversation with the head of the house and his two sons, the
general and the member for Greenwich.
Some very fine pictures remain in the mansion. The one I was
most gratified in seeing was a Rembrandt, the finest almost of that
artist’s work; it was a Charles I., on horseback, under an archway. I
never met with the equal of this fine painting, except in the
equestrian figure of the Duke of Galiere,—Brignole Sale,—by the
same hand, in the palazzo Rosso at Genoa.
I remember being told by General Angerstein that his father had
always regretted the sale of the pictures to the nation, which was,
however, made compulsory by the terms of his predecessor’s will.
 XLVII.
As the Lady Abbess of St. Albans might have said, there was an
abomination of parsons in the county town; some schoolmasters
who were not in clerical practice, but cleric; some in actual service.
They did not in those days wear livery as servants, not necessarily
apostles, of I.H.S. Two of them I still see talking automatically, faster
than they could think; one of these with the nose and mouth of
Punch. I still see another, a pale-faced pulpiteer and a screamer; the
confidence-reservoir of single ladies turned forty odd; a man who
met you with a twirl of his glove by its finger, and a sort of whistling
smile that seemed to say to itself, “I have done him before I have
begun.” The men did not care for him because what gossip is to
some was censoriousness in him; still the women liked him, and
thought five of his ten toes were already in heaven.
The parsonics are the only professionals who do not seem able to
get their own living by going into practice—they like to be endowed.
Some are glad to get a hundred pounds per annum for life; some,
doing the same work as they do, bid for two, four, six, eight, and ten
hundred; others, with yet less work, accept much more than this;
but they have uncles. Why don’t these guaranteed rats set up for
themselves in practice like the nonconformists? They would be found
churches. Doctors do so, and lawyers. They should obtain the
licence like these, then preach what they liked within limits,
prescribed by the Royal Church. Doctors do all this within the rules
of their royal colleges.
Imagine the great profession of physic endowed, and its baronets,
arch-doctors of Canterbury and York, giving away livings to their
nephews and nieces: the doctor of St. James’s £1000 per annum,
the doctor of St. Giles’s £150. It is a little so with the law—the
chancellors, attorney-generals, and judges are endowed, but not so
the barristers, except with wit; and what poor creatures would these
be compared to what they are, if they had to begin on curacies, and,
perhaps, end on them, say of £100 per annum, unless they had
influence enough to get themselves made vicars of law, rectors of
law, as well as deans of arches?
But no Church has ever reformed itself: non possumus is the
motto of them all.
But the Church has got its large fortune safely invested, and in the
best order, as if to make confiscation easy. Its proprietary consists of
human beings not differing from others, and rich in worldly wisdom.
If they really wished to save the Church, they would do their utmost
to throw off the State and take their money with them, and reform
themselves on the model of the civil service and the army, dividing
the revenues into livings of equal amount, to be gained by
competitive examinations. But human nature must have its way; it
will last their time, and after them the deluge. In two or three more
new parliaments they will be too late.
In the present condition of clericism, many do not know what to
be at. An intimate of mine who would have liked to steal a spiritual
march on me, which no man ever did yet, was a curate of twenty
years’ standing, and so far a perpetual one in the sense of being the
hireling of vicars and subject to a month’s warning, like the moon.
He had subscribed his mite of belief to the doctrine of eternal
punishment.
This good personification of humanity had a vivid notion, together
with an unwholesome fear, of our modern Hades, formed originally
out of a few metaphors of Scripture, and improved by Dantesque
and Miltonic talent, though its latitude and longitude is still
undiscovered among the heavenly bodies.
This well-meaning teacher, some two or three years after my
accident (a leg divided against itself so that it could not stand, and
made into two unequal halves at the socket), suggested persuasively
that I must have felt very grateful to the Almighty at not being killed
outright. But he was so much at fault that I avoided the discussion,
and answered, “I am my own chaplain, and transact all my spiritual
business myself, under my own frontal bone (os frontis); but should
I be in want of spiritual assistance, my inclination would be to apply
to the Archbishop of Canterbury or to the Bishop of London as the
best authorities in Divine practice. However, not to be over reticent, I
may tell you that no sense of future favours as regards gratitude
arose in my mind; for we cannot entertain two ideas at once, and
mine was to ask myself, as a scientific physician would do, whether
my leg was as I last left it, or whether the head of the femur and the
shaft had parted company. As to thankfulness at not having lost my
life, that would have involved an emotion functionally incompatible
with the faintness and pain that got hold of me. The pain has
continued; I am taken prisoner by it, and condemned to an armchair
for life. Not unfrequently, therefore, I think how much better it would
have been for me had I been killed off at once. So you must
perceive that your forecast is made without any knowledge of the
facts.”
A doctor never gives his opinion of another without being called
in; why, then, should a parson? But it was well meant, though
deficient in the greatest of delicacies, called tact.
 XLVIII.
Among the clergy of Bury was a curate, I think of St. Mary’s, who
was named Cookesley. His mother was a school-fellow of my mother
at Exeter, now about a hundred years ago! He became intimate with
me, and was often my guest. He was a son of Dr. Cookesley, D.D.,
and a brother of a well-known man who was long an assistant-
master at Eton, and was as such spoken of with great favour by
Beaconsfield in his novel of “Coningsby.” Afterwards he had a church
at Hammersmith, St. Peter’s, and lived in that place, where I knew
him, and attached much interest to his acquaintance. He used to
dine with me at Alton Lodge, Roehampton, which was within a walk
of his house. Cookesley was, above all things, a good fellow, besides
being a good scholar and a most amusing companion. He was a
sturdy Churchman, and much mixed up with the writers of “Essays
and Reviews”—Dr. Temple (now Bishop of London), Dr. Williams, and
their set.
I introduce the name here on account of Cookesley having
attacked Donaldson’s work, by pamphlet, on the subject of “Jashar,”
the name of a Latin book of great pretensions and no authority.
Donaldson, previously mentioned by me, was in many things a
good fellow too, but owing to his overweening vanity, which had no
repose, he was incapable of the higher virtues. That vanity which
stands in the way of friendship, even of truth itself, was his to a
degree that may be pronounced abnormal. He wanted to be thought
the greatest of Bentleys, the cleverest of Christian Voltaires, the
choicest of wits; but a man who is now two-thirds a scholar and
one-third a wit may, if very vain, conceive himself to be a Dr. Parr.
I liked Donaldson much, not very much, and as character is of no
use after a man is dead, it no longer subserving his human interests,
I wish to do him justice, for better as well as for worse, since he was
a man to be biographized for the common good. For some years I
associated with him almost daily, walked and talked with him, dined
with him in many houses, in his as well as my own, knew his
thoughts, his opinions, and was conversant with whatever he was
about.
His disposition was candid, genial, good-natured. He was a child in
his love of fun, and had laughter enough in him to respond to all the
humour ever uttered by word of mouth, from Rabelais to Molière. I
was going to say he had not a bad heart; I will go further, and say
that I am sure he had a good one for an occasion, but not one of a
serious and responsible order.
But these excellent qualities were marred in him, not unfrequently,
by a vanity which was incommensurable.
I would not undertake to pronounce him blamable in anything he
did, said, or wrote; I am a physiologist in judging of good deeds, a
pathologist in judging of bad. When I call up Donaldson’s head and
face, and see a large, wide, overhanging forehead, big enough to be
hydrocephalic, a forehead such as one meets with in cases of
epilepsy and in cases of genius alike, I pause before criticising its
function; and such was Donaldson’s forehead, while his mouth was
the mouth of Punch. Its laugh, almost always silent, seemed loud,
and suppressed only to make it last the longer. There was more
going on always under that forehead of his than in any half-dozen
brains of the common type. Fortunate for him was it that the mental
workings are inaudible, or he would have been stunned by his own
thoughts; so busy were they at all times, and so noisy.
He was a work of Nature, a thinking and sensitive machine, which
set going must work on like the rapidest wheel moved by steam; so
rapid sometimes as to acquire invisibility as it revolved before your
eyes.
The fly-wheel—that wonderful invention of machinery that carries
the largest wheel over the dead point—in him was vanity, and it
never allowed its machinery to pause; it was, therefore, quite
impossible for it to ask itself if it went wrong when it never stopped.
All Donaldson knew about right and wrong was that what he
achieved was perfect—that, even if a little wrong, the reason was
not quite within reach of vulgar scrutiny.
Cookesley was the first to take unfavourable notice of his “Jashar;”
Perowne was the next. Neither wrote of it dispassionately, but this
was in no very unkind spirit. Their criticism was as they felt to be
just. The origin of “Jashar” was partly told by Donaldson in his reply,
but he was not over-candid in his details. From his account he was
only going to pursue a course that others had taken: Welcker, in
collecting the fragments of Æschylus; Meinche, in doing the same
for the Comœdians; and so on for Alcæus and the Lyric Poets,
without a thought, he said, on their part of also doing what he had
done for Jashar—an omission at which he expressed his great
surprise.
Now, the surprise he here expresses is not a real transcript from
his memory; the labours of which he speaks he had been long
acquainted with. He had himself edited the works of Pindar, with the
fragments of his lost compositions; which circumstance would have
included him among those at whose shortcomings his astonishment
was expressed. But I may say he only imagined himself so
astonished, on writing his Præfatio; for I know perfectly well that
one evening, when dining with Sir Thomas Cullum, the worthy
baronet showed him Knights’s volume, with plates, “On the Worship
of Priapus,” and that it so attracted his fancy that he borrowed it and
took it home. He showed it to me soon after—it might have been the
next day—and told me that he had caught from it an interpretation
of a certain text of Scripture, viz. Genesis iii. 8-15.
Out of this, and a certain plate, came “Jashar,” which, whether
true or false, scholarly or unscholarly, is a wonderful intellectual feat;
and if the subject is susceptible of treatment under new accretions
of knowledge, justice must be accorded it as a first and bold
attempt. The part relating to the worship of Priapus, which
immediately follows the Prolegomena, is a marvellous evolution of
the verses cited.
The details would be in place if printed in an anatomical work;
perhaps next to that they are best buried in Latin.
 XLIX.
It was an easy task for a scholar like Perowne to penetrate
Donaldson’s plot, but the marvel is that it should have deceived its
author, who had so acute a mind. The pointing out of its obvious
fallacies was a vexation, but the replying was a pleasure, and was
intended for a fresh literary feat. The worst of it for Donaldson was
that the day of invective had gone by; the finest satire that could be
written would have remained unread. It was therefore a poor
substitute in the case for a sound refutation, which alone could have
extricated the offending scholar from his dilemma.
Perowne almost justly accused Donaldson of maliciousness; but I
believe that it was boast, an attempt of the criticised to establish his
superiority to criticism itself, unaware of the weakness of his
weapon, the use of which a century before might have led to his
being called the greatest controversionalist of his day; and, though
his invective was powerless, he believed that he should be so
esteemed in a century to come.
Donaldson had immense merit. While an articled clerk he attended
lectures at University College, and, so disclosing a facility in
acquiring Greek, went to Cambridge instead of pursuing law any
further; and, in the short period of his terms, not only did the work
necessary for the examinations, but came out the second classic,
beaten only by Kennedy.
Such men should reap all their fame in their lifetime, like men of
science. Their names are soon lost in the history of the knowledge
wherein alone they survive, unless they are Scotts and Liddells, to
be hourly referred to. Donaldson was a lifelong student, impelled by
vanity, the motor-power of all noble work, but which, as in his case,
often breaks up the brain prematurely. By his “Jasher” and his
“Varronianus,” he was accused of striking a blow at the Church. He
may have done so against its dogmatists and bigots, but he broke
his knuckles even in that slight aim. They would have liked to have
received him as Professor of Greek at Cambridge; they told him so,
but they did not dare elect him.
Donaldson, as the world goes, was a good citizen, and
unexceptionable as a husband and parent. He was not sympathetic;
the advancement of friends delighted him as gossip, but did not
touch him much within.
He was too active in his movements, mental as well as bodily, to
be profound; he had not sufficient pause. Expediency with him did
not go against the grain. In matters of religion he was fully aware
that, though the thumb-screw, rack, and faggot had fallen into
disuse, their office was exercised by public feeling as their successor,
through which men stood in terror, not of their lives, but of their
living. On these grounds only Donaldson quoted Scripture against
Perowne in his controversy with him. This served his purpose, as he
had no other moral philosophy to quote. But he did not give the
slightest adhesion, really, to any kind of dogma. Science alone will
reveal to great and modest minds the truth that the best of men
cannot credit themselves with their own goodness They might as
well assume that they made themselves; but religion has to teach
this to common understandings.
I can assert of Donaldson that what he says in his “Reply” is most
strictly true of himself—
“Doubtless it is the duty of Christians to be patient under injuries.
But our Saviour has expressly said (Luke xvii. 3), ‘If thy brother
trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.’ On
this rule I shall always endeavour to act. I bear no malice against
any man in this world. And those who are acquainted with my life,
know that, when I have been wronged, I have always been willing to
welcome the first advances towards reconciliation.”
I said to Donaldson once, “Why in your laborious efforts do you
refute the fallacies of our Church by learned quotation, when they
are so obvious to the simplest reason?” His reply was, “You forget
that I am a Doctor of Divinity.”
Verily the divines are the most potent of metaphysicians. What
beautiful systems have come down to them from the ages that
produced a Pythagoras and an Epicurus! They now anticipate all
things, interpolating Nature at every point with dogma, to satisfy the
desires of the millions in every new generation!
One cannot but admit that metaphysicians are clever, but they
have not the active industry of the experimental classes, who realize
that there is nothing for them beyond the actual phenomena,
although it demands the most effective operation of their intellects
to arrange these in the order of their succession.
The why and the wherefore of the universe, and of Nature as its
conductor, is, for a very simple reason, quite impenetrable; so
completely so that the uneducated peasant will always know as
much about it as the president of any learned society.
For the benefit of those who do not quite see this, and who think
that things may be one day cleared up, on this one spot, it cannot
be too definitively stated what a human intellect is at the utmost,
and within what limits its activity lies.
This intellect is a mere organic tool. It can only operate on
efficient causes, which here mean the moving functions of a
universal machine in full activity already. It can see, hear, taste,
smell, and touch; it can set the results of sensation in order, and
observe them as a whole, and choose a line of action coincident with
them. It is a mere instrument for effecting these ends.
This is the whole story of Nature. She reveals herself as a
function, acting continuously before senses which are mirrors; and
here lies the absolute limit. She reveals her Efficient Causes without
affording the remotest glimpse of her Predisposing Causes.
 L.
All know how tired the patrician gets of perpetual country life; and
in that one respect I was a patrician. I had seen the things most
worth seeing in the leading towns of Europe in my early days; and
had a longing to witness how forty or fifty millions of people got on
in the new country of Canada and the United States. I had a fancy
to see Quebec. I had a grandfather who was on the staff of General
Wolfe, and who saw him die. I had a great-grandfather, also a British
officer, father of the above, one David Gordon, of Park, who was on
duty at Halifax and there met his death and burial. Not that I would
cross the waves on these accounts; I simply wanted change, so
sought it in New-idea-land, U.S. I went to Philadelphia, thence to
Columbus and Galena; from Galena round about, crossing the
Mississippi on foot over its admirable winter pavement when boats
change places with sledges. Then I went to Boston, thence to
Quebec; from Quebec to New York, not to mention all the stoppages
at intervening places; from New York, after not a few
circumgyrations, I found my way back to London again.
I saw a large portion of the New World; it proved to be exactly
what a hundred people had described already, and I do not care to
add my account, only to make up a hundred and one American
nights entertainments.
My ghost of travel not being yet laid, I took to the waves again
and sojourned for a while at Jersey, where I had relatives and
friends. At length I settled down in Grosvenor Street, Park Lane;
when I was invited to take charge of the Earl of Ripon’s health at his
villa on Putney Heath. After a lapse of time, I took a small house in
Spring Gardens; later on, I built myself a villa on three acres of park
land at Roehampton; then, still later on, I lived for some years at
Parson’s Green, Fulham; and after some more movements, in
separate years, now to Florence, now to German-Saxony, now to
Venice and Rome, which last visit was eighteen years ago, I am
settled, perhaps for good, in St. John’s Wood, where I am within an
easy distance of Highgate Cemetery; so I hope a one-horse coach
will end my journeys.
On looking for the moss I have gathered I find its quantity very
small.
At my leisure I hope to fill up the gaps left between the skeleton
outlines of my map of life—what remains to be said, extending over
the nett balance of my years, of which I seem to have more to say
than can reasonably be expected of a man past his eighty-third
birthday. But I have been asked to write a memoir, first by one, then
by another; by one who has long been, and who continues to be,
the greatest master of heart-finding fiction in our time. One comes
to me and asks how I get on with it. One reads a portion and calls it
interesting; so, in a way, I am urged on with my task.
At Boston I dined with Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence; he formerly filled
the United States Embassy at our Court. He was gentleman enough
to have been an English duke. He had nothing to say about the old
country that was not good and admiring, and told me many
anecdotes of his own country people while in London.
Remarking on the strict etiquette observed by us, in never
addressing a man you are not introduced to, he observed that he sat
opposite to another every morning at breakfast in the Athenæum
Club, for two years, without their exchanging a word, when, one day
a carriage called to take him to a country house, and he found his
silent companion already seated in it. In this way they became
known to each other and entered into conversation. To give effect to
his own story, a countryman of his own, he said, came to England
and travelled all over it without introductions, and calling on him he
said that he had not been able to speak to any one for months, and
being one day on the chain pier at Brighton, he could bear it no
longer, and observed to a gentleman there: “It’s a fine day, sir!”
 But Mr. Lawrence, instead of condoling with him in his trials,
replied: “I wonder at your impudence!”
Mrs. Lawrence did not appear to have been at all Anglicized; she
rather looked for perfection in the English undergoing the process of
Americanization. Sir Charles Lyell had been a good republican when
in the new country, she said, and had greatly improved through his
visits, but not so fully as she should have liked; and this she
emphasized in good Yankee brogue. I was acquainted with Sir
Charles; it was on his introduction that I came to know the Lawrence
family; and I never saw a sign in him of such improvement. I was
among his friends in Boston; on his introductions I saw Mr. Prescott,
but he did not impress me.
My experience of Americans is that they are less advanced in the
art of humbug, and therefore more earnest and sincere than the
British. They, therefore, perform the duties of friendship with great
thoroughness.
An interesting feature of immorality has often struck me: it
consists in the never-failing breach of promise made in all the
apparent sincerity felt by men who do not fail to keep their word.
Such men—I could give the names of many for recognition—are very
peculiarly framed. They are contented with the thanks one feels on a
kindly proposition being made by them while they are with you; not
caring to gather the gratitude attendant on the completion of a
promise. I know men who play this skeleton part every day of their
lives, and I class them with swindlers.
As one advances in life one gets to know the sowers of this
harvest of tares, and to separate them from those of the wheat
crops, without fouling one’s barn with the results of their labour; the
effect of it being merely amusing at last. What cruelty it can inflict is
practised on children and young people. They are born with implicit
confidence: to them it acts educationally. It affords them a most
thorough teaching of mistrust, which, more than any other branch of
education, makes a bad citizen.
 Some evils in life are unavoidable, but the training that comes
from behind the falsehood habitually worn by an amateur friend is
not one of these.
These moral ornaments of the social system have a game of their
own to play; they know no other, and they play it with all the finesse
exercised over a game of whist.
This recalls Mr. Stillman to my mind, almost the only one of
Rossetti’s set whom in this sense I can refer to with unmixed
pleasure—Stillman, an American gentleman of high culture, and his
faultless lady, a Greek by birth! He is now the Times correspondent
in Rome. I have met him and lost sight of him often, and when I
meet him after an interval of years, he is always the same kind,
attentive friend, though we have no interests in common beyond
each other.
It having been made known at Boston that I had certain scientific
tendencies, I was invited to deliver a lecture there. It was not the
season for such a purpose, but the influence of the Lawrences
sufficed to get an audience together of about fifteen hundred. I gave
a choice of some subjects, as “The Correlation of Forces, Physical
and Vital,” “The Cyclical Phenomena of the Universe,” and “Sleep,
Dreams, Somnambulism, Sleep-talking, and the Mesmeric State.”
The last subject was selected, and the lecture was received with
great politeness by an attentive audience.
I had intercourse with several leading medical gentlemen at
Boston, and was treated by them with much hospitality. They have a
method of maintaining hospitals peculiarly their own, much of the
money being subscribed out of their own pockets—all for the good
of their science.
Dr. Warren was at that time the most noted physician in Boston.
He gave me some brochures of his writing, one alluding to the reflex
actions of the great sympathetic nerve. I found it very suggestive.
He had taken the trouble to collect all that had been written on the
sea-serpent, and to sift the statements of travellers by sea, with a
resulting belief in its individuality.
It was at New York that I made the valued and intimate
acquaintance of Mr. Bancroft, the historian, and his lady, a truly
noble pair. Mr. Bancroft was a man of universal knowledge. This he
showed conspicuously in a lecture, the title of which I have
forgotten, but not the contents. Its purpose was to show the rapid
and far-reaching advance that science had made up to that day.
I met again at New York that gifted artist, Mr. Lawrence, whom I
had known in England. He preceded Richmond, and was his equal in
drawing likenesses in chalks—works which are much prized—among
them those of Thackeray, Tennyson, and other celebrities.
I visited Quebec, and at Lord Elgin’s, the governor-general’s, had
the pleasure of meeting the present Lord Albemarle, then a youth.
At the same party I became acquainted with Mr. Lawrence Oliphant,
who, later, becoming a writer, I may as well depict the impression he
made on me. He was a little man, his manner very gentle and
sympathetic, with such amiability of countenance as to leave little
room for intellectual expression, though no doubt his abilities fell
little short of his good intentions.
I must mention the kindness shown me at New York by the
eminent house of Middleton and Co., whose friendship in financial
matters I have availed myself of to this day. The family belong to the
West Indian islands and are British.
I pass over my explorations in the south and west; they were the
same as other people’s, now well known to book-life; but I do not
forget that I once walked across the Mississippi, a mile wide, on the
ice, from Wisconsin into Minnesota. There is another thing ever to
be remembered: while at Philadelphia I was treated with a dish of
terrapine, a small sort of turtle, surpassing the gigantic species in
flavour to such a degree as to wholly eclipse its merits. Why is it not
imported? The very taste of it would raise the feeblest palate from
the dead!
 It is nearly forty years since I saw the United States: I have had
plenty of time to think over what I thought of them then. The
enthusiastic admirers of America are men who, being a little eminent
before going, receive an ovation on their arrival. These men adore
the worthy republicans, write about them, mention their names in
print in the order in which they bestowed their attentions on them.
If these men who, being a little eminent, went to ever-glorious
France and received an ovation, which they don’t, their enthusiasm
would alike tingle at the roots of their hair.
The Americans are nearly as good as older states, perhaps better
than some. As three hundred years of civilization is, say, to six
hundred, in that proportion they are as good as Europeans.
But the greatness of America has to come. Time will be when
America, perhaps with Australian lands, will be arbiter of the civilized
world—if it likes.
With some exceptions, if we take any one of the United States, it
will be found to be monotonous; there is as much variety in an
English county as in any one of these.
I compare the United States to a book: it is a new and cheap
edition of England in one volume; price, one almighty dollar.
Altogether, there is no difference of moment between the best
English and the best Americans, or the worst English and worst
Americans.
Lawrence and Bancroft would have made good dukes!
I remember dining with a great merchant at Philadelphia, who told
me that after receiving a classical education at the University of
Dublin, he emigrated and became a clerk in an American house, and
that after a time he saw his way to establish a business for himself,
and had realized a large fortune. He told me this that he might add
the singular assurance that he never once, in his almost lifelong
residence in America, had an opportunity of showing how good his
education had been, or of using a single Latin word.
 LI.
It was after the good Lord Ripon’s death, which happened only
too soon, that I went to Spring Gardens to live, purposing to resume
my medical connection with the public, and to continue my duties as
physician at the West London Hospital, to which I was attached. It
then had not long been instituted, but it is now an extensive and
flourishing establishment in a populous suburb, where it is much
needed.
Mr. Cowell, a good and chivalrous benefactor of the sick poor, now
senior surgeon of the Westminster Hospital, was resident surgeon of
the West London at that time; and Mr. Bird, who, in conjunction with
his father, was its founder, was one of the surgical staff.
The Countess Dowager of Ripon spent the season at Carlton
Gardens, in the family mansion; and, continuing my professional
engagement, after the earl’s death, to her, I had the pleasure of
visiting her daily.
Lady Ripon was a woman who deserved to be remembered as
long as the lives of the good and great have an interest for mankind,
and let us hope that may be as long as the human race endures. Her
belief was as implicit in a happy future, as it was in the morrow of
every day; and she regulated her actions accordingly, as inseparable
from the duties devolving on her responsible position.
There are many such women in every class who, if they changed
places, would remain the same; but they have not an equal
opportunity of making it manifest how true they are. The countess
felt her position as the daughter and the wife of an earl; it made her
feel the more for those whom circumstances made dependent on
her. She had been a great heiress, born to the inheritance of Nocton
and other estates, in Lincolnshire; and she firmly regarded herself as
appointed by Heaven, or rather entrusted, to administer the large
means that belonged to her for the good of those who had a claim
on her for support.
When at Stutgard in 1833, during a wide continental tour, not so
commonly made in those days as now, I became acquainted with Sir
Edward Disbrowe, the British minister, and the other members of the
embassy. These were Mr. Wellesley, the eldest son of Lord Cowley,
and Mr. Gordon, the eldest son of Gordon, of Ellon Castle. At that
house I met Count Pozzo di Borgo, and a young Buonaparte, who
was a guest of the King of Wurtemburg.
Mr. Wellesley was quite a young man and very sociable; Mr.
Gordon was yet younger, and of very engaging ways. Count Pozzo di
Borgo was getting on in life, but very upright, and, with his orders
on, made a brilliant show. He was perfectly free in his conversation,
and spoke on political matters without any reserve. He remarked
pretty plainly, but with a playful naïveté, to the young Prince
Buonaparte, who was present, that if his advice had been followed
in the days of Elba, the battle of Waterloo would not have been
fought.
Some say how small the world is: certainly, in its fortuitous
concourse of live atoms. There is not so much room but that many
meet after long intervals again. So, after a lapse of some thirty
years, the youthful Gordon, whom I knew so well as Sir Edward
Disbrowe’s attaché, then as much boy as man, turns up again on a
visit to Lady Ripon, with a grisly beard, and a face that showed no
marks of having once been young. But this is not all: on a similar
visit appeared two young ladies of fashion as daughters of Sir
Edward Disbrowe. They were either babes or not born at the time
when I knew their father so well.
The Gordons were cousins of Lady Ripon. A Colonel Gordon, the
brother of Gordon who was soon to be Gordon of Ellon, was my
particular friend as long as he lived. He had retired from active
service on returning finally from India, but his desire was to die in
the army, though, by not selling out, he was the loser by several
thousand pounds.
I would mention one lady in particular, who consulted me while I
was in Spring Gardens, because she was the Queen of Beauty at
Lord Eglinton’s tournament, besides being the grand-daughter of
Sheridan, and the wife of the Duke of Somerset. A beautiful youth,
Lord Edward St. Maur, one afternoon drove up to my house and
asked me if I would go with him to the Admiralty and see his
mother, the duchess. It was on a slight matter affecting her
daughter, and she afterwards asked me to see her son, Lord St.
Maur. All this was easy work, but I was pleased at seeing another
grandchild of Sheridan, for I had known Mrs. Norton over a quarter
of a century before.
But the young man, Lord Edward, for him a sad fate was in
waiting; more sad than that which later befel his elder brother.
The sons of great houses have few means of distinction, however
ambitious, except in politics, which many of them abhor. They are
shut out from the nobler professions. Lord Edward, a young man of
courage, sought excitement in the jungles of India, and this ended in
his being torn to pieces by a tiger.
Having an acute mind, which at all times lay parallel with truth, I
was a good diagnostic of disease (agnostics were then in their
infancy), and I was able to weigh a good many experiences under
one in the same balance. I made this remarkably evident during the
last illness of Lord Ripon, which was a very costly one, for all the
celebrities in Physic were in attendance at Putney. Perhaps I took an
unfair advantage, for I was so absolutely independent in my position
that I could give an unbiassed opinion, while the physicians and
surgeons, under the influence of expediency, agreed on a still
favourable view of the case. That such could happen is the fault of
the patient’s friends. If the physicians abandon hope while there is
life, others are uselessly called in. After they left, with the assurance
that the patient was all right, Lord Goderich and Sir Charles Douglas,
who was a friend of the family, asked me to take a turn with them in
the grounds, wishing to hear my opinion, which I frankly gave, to
the effect that in a fortnight the earl would no longer be living.
But I was wrong, too, in my way, for he lived just seventeen days
from that time.
 LII.
While in Spring Gardens—this was in 1860—I got together my
researches on “The Bones in Scrofula,” which Dr. Baly presented to
the Medico-Chirurgical Society, before which it was read, and a very
full abstract of it was published in their “Proceedings,” and in all the
medical journals of the day.
Lord Goderich, a young man of great promise, then member for
one of the Yorkshire Ridings, succeeded his father in the House of
Lords, very unwillingly, as he liked the Commons better, and he
humorously declared himself disfranchised. Three months later his
uncle, Earl de Grey, died, whose title he took, and he then became
sole owner of Studley Royal, which before him belonged to the two
brothers.
Lord Goderich was married to a young lady who, to save time, I
may say was possessed of every charm—animation, beauty,
simplicity, humour, a hearty ringing laugh—and these shaped
themselves into countless groups, all equally pleasing.
Now that I am unable to visit her, I have her promise of seeing
her yet again, from time to time, and this alone is enough to keep
me alive.
The present earl, now Marquis of Ripon, soon became a useful
public servant under Lord Palmerston, as an under-secretary, first of
the Local Government Board, then of the India Office, and rose
ultimately to be Viceroy of India, by the Queen’s express wish, her
Majesty having known him when he was a child, and the playmate of
the Prince of Wales. He has always been in sympathy with the
classes beneath him, and his strictly conscientious character affords
the clue to every action of his life.
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