CHAPTER XXVIII

AT HOME AND AT COURT

Appreciating Opponents—Hackney Address—Proportional Representation—Justice for Women—A State Concert—Humble Friendships—Pigs—Salisbury again.

[Sidenote: Appreciating Opponents.]

The same respect for the individuality of others which made Fawcett unwilling to punish a subordinate if he could honourably avoid it, which made him often detect good qualities in the offender to compensate for the offence, made him also quick to respect and admire an adversary, even when strongly repudiating his principles. Fawcett never forgot that his opponent was a human being, however different their political creeds. In his later years his sympathy may not have been any deeper than in his vigorous youth, but it expressed itself more gently and more skilfully. When his fine wrath was roused, he still had at his command barbed arrows of sarcasm and thunders of denunciation, but his speech was more apt to be kindly. He trusted more than in his less experienced days to force of example and to irrefutable logic. His fairness and justice stood out in fine contrast to the hectic verbal warfare raging between rival factions. When, on 13th October 1884, he spoke in public for the last time, he administered a grave rebuke to ‘the spirit of mutual intolerance,’ saying:

[Sidenote: ‘Prudence and Patriotism.’]

‘If we take a calm review of the situation ... we refuse to enter into useless recriminations and taunts about the past. I still have not relinquished the hope ... that the counsels of common sense, prudence, and patriotism will prevail.... Can we come to any other conclusion than that the present is a time when the dictates of prudence and patriotism demand that everything should be done to lessen, rather than to intensify, the bitterness of party strife.’

He went on to speak on a subject which had been much in his mind from the beginning of his political career. Proportional representation meant to him the method, and the only method, by which the different elements of the body politic could be fairly represented in Parliament. So earnestly did he hold to this view that he made up his mind, with his friend Lord Courtney, to resign his office should the Government proceed with legislation incompatible with these principles. In this last word on a subject on which it has been necessary in this book to omit so many other words, Fawcett emphasised the main principle in these phrases: ‘While we regard it as of the first moment that no important section of opinion should be effaced from representation, yet at the same time we are most anxious to secure to the majority the preponderance of power to which it is justly entitled. Let the voice of the weak be heard as well as the voice of the strong by your Government, give fair play to all, and make justice possible.’ And he added this vital remark: ‘The enfranchisement of women, already dictated by justice, would soon become a necessity.’

[Sidenote: Fawcett’s unfailing Chivalry.]

His unfailing chivalry was always a radiant characteristic of his courteous nature, and he felt it his high privilege to serve women; he had the faculty of encouraging them, and filling them with confidence in their own ability; his voice, though not melodious, had a peculiar brightness that raised drooping spirits, and impressed itself upon the memory. Besides the encouragement which he gave by the employment of women in the Post Office, his efforts for compulsory education, now accepted as a matter of course, his labours to protect young children at work in factory or field, as well as his fight for free playgrounds and commons, were all helpful to the mothers of the race.

On the day after his death, a poor woman, who came to the employment office to make inquiries on behalf of her daughter, who wished to enter the Civil Service, must have expressed the feelings of hundreds of struggling women, when she said: ‘We do not know who will help us now that so good a friend has gone.’

[Sidenote: Fair-play Expedient.]

Believing that justice must infallibly become the most expedient policy, he felt it was not only repugnant, but bad diplomacy, that any class should be excluded by force or prejudice from having a voice in the Government, and he realised to the full that government could only be fair when it existed with the consent of the governed.

The constant society of his wife and other brilliant women of her family and her friends, impressed him with the great benefit that it would be to the community to have the assistance of their votes, as expressing their fair and able minds. He said concerning women’s voting: ‘The Parliamentary suffrage should be applied to those women who fulfil the qualifications of property and residence demanded from the elector. That is to say, if a widow or a spinster is in possession of a house, and pays rates and taxes, she should have the borough vote, and if she possesses freehold or leasehold property, she should have a county vote, as if it were held by a man.’

[Sidenote: The Uses of Adversity.]

We have dwelt on the great part that Fawcett’s blindness played in forming his character. It intensified his bravery and determination, broadened his sympathies, sharpened his observation, made his memory keener, quickened his intellect, and gave him a greater power to conquer himself and others. Affliction had given him strength as of steel well tempered, to withstand and pierce all muddled thought and murky sentiment, and so make the clear under-light of his soul a shining beacon to all who knew him. But there were, inevitably, quiet moments, when, all efforts unavailing, his blindness must have weighed heavily upon him. Seated by his fireside, feeling the glow which he might never see, he would listen to the crackling of the coal and the ticking of the clock as it marked a minute less of his darkness. Such hours had to be fought through single-handed, by his own courage and strength of will.

[Sidenote: Hearth and Home.]

No small part of his triumph over circumstance was due to the great affections and friendships which were at the heart of his life. Chiefest and most constant of these were his flawless devotion to his wife and daughter, and the singularly beautiful sympathy and companionship which he found at home. It is not for the biographer to intrude into this holy of holies—enough to know that Fawcett had with his wife that perfect understanding and fellowship, that entire sympathy and intellectual inspiration, which, when he was most sorely tried, gave him a sure haven of rest and happiness from which to start forth again, better armed and braver, to battle anew.

When Mrs. Fawcett was absent, her husband would postpone a decision of great moment until he was able to get her opinion. She often acted as his secretary, and in all matters was his trusted counsellor. In later years, his daughter Philippa, whose great talent was a source of deep interest to him, completed with her brilliant intellect and happy wit this perfectly attuned trio. There is a poetic justice that Fawcett having fought so for the admission of women students at Cambridge, it was left for his daughter to achieve the highest mathematical honours bestowed on any woman in Great Britain, when as a student at Newnham she won four hundred marks above the Senior Wrangler.

[Sidenote: A blithe Spirit.]

He still greatly enjoyed society, and threw himself so thoroughly into the spirit of sociability and gaiety, that he seemed to leave his critical Parliamentary self. Mrs. Fawcett, as a comment on his whole-souled capacity for finding all things and everybody lovely, jestingly composed this epitaph for him: ‘Here lies the man who found every soup delicious and every woman charming.’ He did, and what is more, he tried to make every one else find life lovely and to have as glorious a time as he did.

He would never overlook any quiet mousy individuals lost in the general gaiety, but would take pains to draw them out, to throw himself so thoroughly into their interests that he put them at their ease, and made them take part in the conversation and shine unwontedly.

A contemporary gives a gay glimpse of him chatting and joking merrily among the smart crowd at Lady Granville’s. His tall figure towered over the little knot of friends invariably gathered round him.

[Sidenote: A State Concert.]

Fawcett duly attended the levees and occasional official dinners held by the Prince of Wales, and on one occasion, when in the neighbourhood of Balmoral, he dined with the Queen. With his wife he went to the concerts given by her at Buckingham Palace. These were very stately events. Arrayed in his court uniform, Fawcett would drive with his wife betimes to the palace; as they approached, the music of the band in the courtyard was in full swing, and they liked to hear it as they waited in line until the preceding carriages had deposited their burdens. The guests moved through the glass doors to the entrance-hall, which echoed the rumbling of wheels and the closing of the carriage doors, the clanging of the spurs and swords of the men. They mounted the main staircase between the stationed Yeomen of the Guard, Fawcett’s cheery voice and laughter resounding as he greeted friends above and below him. A moment’s pause on the threshold of the great concert-room, and here the parquet floor gave back the tapping of little slippered feet and the heavy tread of the men, as the groups of guests flocked together or dispersed to find places before the music began.

On both sides of the room were raised tiers of seats for the company. At one end was the low platform with chairs arranged for Royalty. At the opposite end, a balcony with the organ provided places for the singers and musicians. Crystal chandeliers with hanging stalactites lighted the brilliant scene. Fawcett’s fine ear caught the tiny tinkle of the crystals, as they answered to the draughts from the movement of the crowd, or trembled when the waves of music shook them on their little metal moorings. The good acoustics of the room, and the consequent clearness of all the sounds, brought the scene with unusual vividness before the blind man.

[Sidenote: Enter Victoria Regina et Imperatrix.]

A sudden expectant murmur rose from the crowd, a pause, a flutter of silks and a tapping of scabbards, the organ played ‘God save the Queen,’ and the mighty little Empress entered and greeted her guests. Returning her courtesy, the brilliant throng bowed as a field of wheat swayed by the wind, until the Queen had seated herself in the centre of the dais, surrounded in due order by members of the Royal Family.

Then the guests resumed their places and the music began.

[Sidenote: Voices of Youth and Art.]

Here Fawcett, as much if not more than any other guests, enjoyed the fresh young voices of the chorus of young girls from the Royal School of Music, and choir-boys from the Chapel Royal. This youthfulness contrasted charmingly with the more formal and perfect singing of the great artists of whose skill Queen Victoria was so appreciative.

When the programme was finished, the Queen rose and, preceded by gentlemen of the court walking backwards, went to the supper-room, through an aisle formed by her guests, stopping as she passed the balcony, to speak to the chief artists. The princesses who followed her often darted a smile or stole a fleeting word with one of the throng, and the more decorous ladies-in-waiting brought up the rear of the procession. The guests followed, with them Fawcett guided by his wife.

As Royalty was well separated by an encircling wall of court gentlemen, the assault by the guests on the sandwiches, cakes and bonbons began without restraint. A horseshoe buffet surrounded the room. The throng stood about chatting together, waited upon by gorgeous footmen resplendent in scarlet and white. The clinking of glass and china was drowned in the general conversation, all the more lively after the long silent listening to the music. Then the guests drifted in friendly groups down to the great hall, where the names of departing guests called from footman to footman echoed among the pillars.

A frequent and happy conversation this, as they sat on the long benches, muffled up and waiting for their carriages, and doubtless more than one of Fawcett’s good stories was cut short by the call ‘The Postmaster-General’s carriage stops the way.’

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[Sidenote: A Big Friend of all the World.]

Though he could find amusement in any form of social intercourse, it was the opportunities of close companionship that he most valued. He rarely lapsed into silence, and with his family, when there were no guests at table, he would talk with the same animation as if he had been at a brilliant dinner. Talk was an essential of life to him; wherever he went, reserve vanished.

If any unsuccessful schoolmate, who had no other claim on him, wrote for help, he was always sure to get it. In his interviews he was marvellously patient, would never let a person leave him in anger or displeasure; few people left him without being his friends. If he said a sharp thing to any one, he confessed at once, and was not happy until he had made full amends; any irritable action towards another on his part caused him much more suffering than he inflicted.

His real democratic feeling and disregard of rank put him at his ease with all classes, his abounding geniality and accessibility often placed him in difficult predicaments from which it required a lively ingenuity successfully to extricate himself.

Once while he was walking, a well-known bore buttonholed the Postmaster-General, and explained at length how the Post Office might be regenerated. Fawcett listened patiently for five minutes; then when it was clear that the man had no idea or facts to offer, but only words, Fawcett held out his hand, saying, ‘Good day, Mr. J——, I am much obliged to you for your kind wish to help me,’ and walked on, leaving the bore, who felt himself just warming to his work, helplessly stranded.

[Sidenote: His Dog.]

His servants and his friends loved him; he was wonderfully considerate to all dependants, and indeed to every one whom he met. Certainly he was over-attentive to his dog Oddo, who had emerged from a refuge of lost dogs to assume the high office of watch-dog in the garden of the London house. Fawcett was deeply interested in the higher education of this humble friend, and their common affection was very warm.

[Sidenote: Sudden Friendships.]

His friendships were so sudden, at times so instantaneous, that their strength and duration was surprising. He had an incredible number of people whom he called in all sincerity his intimate friends, and, as one of them says, ‘all the overgrowth of new friendship seemed rather to strengthen than to stifle the earlier ties.’ As we have recorded, even the voice of an acquaintance once made, was to him unforgettable. When walking in London with his sister, Fawcett met the Primate of New Zealand, who had been at Cambridge with him. They had not met for many years, and the Primate did not wish to trouble Fawcett by recalling a long-ago acquaintanceship. But Miss Fawcett, recognising him, stopped, and as soon as the Primate spoke, Fawcett exclaimed with delight, ‘Why, it’s Nevill!’

[Sidenote: Postmaster and Pigs.]

At Salisbury he invariably called on his father’s old farm servant, Rumbold. Rumbold was one day giving to Fawcett’s mother the last news from his sties, and he added ‘Mind you tell Master Harry when you write to him, for if there’s one thing he cares about, ‘tis pigs.’ Truly it was one thing, though it is generally suspected that the Postmaster had other interests.

His increased income as Postmaster-General made no change in his simple mode of life, though he may have spent a little more on riding; he had, however, the satisfaction of being able to buy his family more presents, and he took an intense delight in tactfully giving many little things; he heard his sister say that she very much liked a lamp by which she had read to him in London. To her surprise and delight, on her return to Salisbury its twin appeared, found and sent to her by her brother.

Nothing gave him greater pleasure than to have his parents and sister under his roof, and to give them a good time. One of the most touching things in his life was his intense affection for his father. When the father grew old and was forced to breakfast in bed, the big son, after saying good-bye to him in the morning, would often quickly run upstairs again just to kiss the old gentleman a second time.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Presents and Parents.]

When his sister told him that his letters gave his parents the greatest pleasure of their lives, he never let a week elapse without sending off two newsy documents to Salisbury. These letters abound in affection and in many little proofs of his eagerness to make them happy. He sends a birthday present, a comfortable pair of ‘Norwegian slippers,’ or encloses letters containing bits of political news which he is at liberty to show them; he tells them of his triumphs, even of compliments which he thinks that they would like to hear, and boasts of the admiration expressed for his father’s remarkable vigour and youthfulness for his years; he also compliments the admirable packing evinced by the excellent condition in which sundry gifts in various interesting hampers have arrived.

He ran down to Salisbury whenever he could make time, and was there for the ovation given by the Liberals to his father on his ninety-first birthday. The old gentleman had been a fighter in the Liberal ranks since the days of the great Reform Bill.

Six months later, in spite of the urgent claims Cambridge lectures and Post Office work made upon him, he again went to speak at Salisbury. Parliament was in session too, an unusual thing in November, so that he was particularly hard worked. Still November 17th found him at Salisbury speaking to an enthusiastic audience, of which his father was one. After the meeting he seemed exhausted, but he returned to London on the 20th, lectured at Cambridge on the 22nd, and on the 23rd discharged his business at the House of Commons.