Part 11
LEGACION DE NOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EN ESPANA. _18th Jan. 1880._
I read with great satisfaction what you wrote about _jade_.[12] One is tempted to cry out, with Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, “How now, ye pampered jades of Asia!” One thing in the discussion has struck me a good deal, and that is, the crude notion which intelligent men have of the migration of tribes. I think most men’s conception of distance is very much a creature of maps—which make Crim Tartary and England not more than a foot apart, so that the feat of the old rhyme—“to dance out of Ireland into France,” looks easy. They seem to think that the shifting of habitation was accomplished like a modern journey by rail, and that the emigrants wouldn’t need tools by the way or would buy them at the nearest shop after their arrival. There is nothing the ignorant and the poor cling to so tenaciously as their familiar household utensils. Incredible things are brought every day to America in the luggage of emigrants—things often most cumbrous to carry and utterly useless in the new home. Families that went from our seaboard to the West a century ago, through an almost impenetrable wilderness, carried with them all their domestic pots and pans—even those, I should be willing to wager, that needed the tinker. I remember very well the starting of an expedition from my native town of Cambridge in 1831, for Oregon, under the lead of a captain of great energy and resource. They started in waggons ingeniously contrived so as to be taken to pieces, the body forming a boat for crossing rivers. They carried everything they could think of with them, and got safely to the other side of the continent, as hard a job, I fancy, as our Aryan ancestors had to do. There is hardly a family of English descent in New England that doesn’t cherish, as an heirloom, something brought over by the first ancestors two hundred and fifty years ago. And besides the motive of utility there is that also of sentiment—particularly strong in the case of an old tool.
Faithfully yours, J. R. LOWELL.
Lowell’s conversation was inexhaustible, his information astonishing. Pleasant as he was, even as an antagonist, he would occasionally lose his temper and use very emphatic language. I was once sitting next to him when I heard him stagger his neighbour, a young lady, by bursting out with: “But, madam, I do not accept your major premiss!”
Poor thing, she evidently was not accustomed to such language, and not acquainted with that terrible term. She collapsed, evidently quite at a loss as to what gift on her part Mr. Lowell declined to accept.
Sometimes even the most harmless remark about America would call forth very sharp replies from him. Everybody knows that the salaries paid by America to her diplomatic staff are insufficient, and no one knew it better than he himself. But when the remark was made in his presence that the United States treated their diplomatic representatives stingily, he fired up, and discoursed most eloquently on the advantages of high thoughts and humble living. His cleverness and readiness in writing occasional verses have become proverbial, and I am glad to be able to add two more to the many _jeux d’esprit_ of this brilliant and amiable guest.
Had I all tongues Max Müller knows, I could not with them altogether Tell half the debt a stranger owes Who Oxford sees in pleasant weather.
The halls, the gardens, and the quads, There’s nought can match them on this planet, Smiled on by all the partial gods Since Alfred (if ’twas he) began it;
But more than all the welcomes warm, Thrown thick as lavish hands could toss ’em, Why, they’d have wooed in winter-storm One’s very umbrella-stick to blossom!
Bring me a cup of All Souls’ ale, Better than e’er was bought with siller, To drink (Oh, may the vow prevail) The health of Max[13] and Mrs. Müller!
Abundant as was his wit in the true sense of that word, his kindness was equally so. After he had written the above verses for my wife, my young daughter Beatrice (now Mrs. Colyer Fergusson) asked him, as young ladies are wont to do, for a few lines for herself. He at once resumed his pen and wrote:—
O’er the wet sands an insect crept Ages ere man on earth was known— And patient Time, while Nature slept, The slender tracing turned to stone.
’Twas the first autograph: and ours? Prithee, how much of prose or song, In league with the Creative powers, Shall ’scape Oblivion’s broom so long?
In great haste, Faithfully yours, J. R. LOWELL.
_24th June, 1886._
I lost the pleasure of shaking hands with Longfellow during his stay in England. Though I have been more of a fixture at Oxford than most professors, I was away during the vacation when he paid his visit to our University, and thus lost seeing a poet to whom I felt strongly attracted, not only by the general spirit of his poetry, which was steeped in German thought, but as the translator of several of my father’s poems.
I was more fortunate with Dr. Wendell Holmes. His arrival in England had been proclaimed beforehand, and one naturally remained at home in order to be allowed to receive him. His hundred days in England were one uninterrupted triumphal progress. When he arrived at Liverpool he found about three hundred invitations waiting for him. Though he was accompanied by a most active and efficient daughter, he had at once to engage a secretary to answer this deluge of letters. And though he was past eighty, he never spared himself, and was always ready to see and to be seen. He was not only an old, but a ripe and mellow man.
There was no subject on which one could touch which was not familiar to the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. His thoughts and his words were ready, and one felt that it was not for the first time that the subject had been carefully thought out and talked out by him. That he should have been able to stand all the fatigue of his journey and the constant claims on his ready wit seemed to me marvellous. I had the pleasure of showing him the old buildings of Oxford. He seemed to know them all, and had something to ask and to say about every one.
When we came to Magdalen College, he wanted to see and to measure the elms. He was very proud of some elms in America, and he had actually brought some string with which he had measured the largest tree he knew in his own country. He proceeded to measure one of our finest elms in Magdalen College, and when he found that it was larger than his American giant, he stood before it admiring it, without a single word of envy or disappointment.
I had, however, a great fright while he was staying at our house. He had evidently done too much, and after our first dinner party he had feverish shivering fits, and the doctor whom I sent for declared at once that he must keep perfectly quiet in bed, and attend no more parties of any kind. This was a great disappointment to myself and to many of my friends. But at his time of life the doctor’s warning could not be disregarded, and I had, at all events, the satisfaction of sending him off to Cambridge safe and sound. I had him several days quite to myself, and there were few subjects which we did not discuss. We mostly agreed, but even where we did not, it was a real pleasure to differ from him. We discussed the greatest and the smallest questions, and on every one he had some wise and telling remarks to pour out. I remember one long conversation while we were sitting in an old wainscoted room at All Souls’, ornamented with the arms of former fellows. It had been at first the library of the college, then one of the fellows’ rooms, and lastly a lecture-room. We were deep in the old question of the true relation between the Divine and the Human in man, and here again, as on all other questions, everything seemed to be clear and evident to his mind. Perhaps I ought not to repeat what he said to me when we parted: “I have had much talk with people in England; with you I have had a real conversation.” We understood each other, and wondered how it was that men so often misunderstood one another. I told him that it was the badness of our language, he thought it was the badness of our tempers. Perhaps we were both right. With him again good-bye was good-bye for life, and at such moments one wonders indeed how kindred souls became separated, and one feels startled and repelled at the thought that, such as they were on earth, they can never meet again. And yet there is continuity in the world, there is no flaw, no break anywhere, and what has been will surely be again, though how it will be we cannot know, and if only we trust in the Wisdom that pervades and overshadows the whole Universe, we need not know.
Were I to write down my more or less casual meetings with men of literary eminence, I should have much more to say, much that was of deep interest and value to myself, but would hardly be of interest to others. I felt greatly flattered, for instance, when years ago Macaulay invited me to see him at the Albany, and to discuss with him the new regulations for the Indian Civil Service. This must have been in about 1854. I was quite a young and unknown man at the time, but I had already made his acquaintance at Bunsen’s house, where he had been asked to meet Herr von Radowitz, for a short time Prime Minister in Prussia, and the most famous talker in Germany. It was indeed a tournament to watch, but as it was in English, which Radowitz spoke well, yet not well enough for such a contest, Macaulay carried the day, though Radowitz excelled in repartee, in anecdotes, and in a certain elegance more telling in French than in English.
I went to call on Macaulay in London, well provided as I thought with facts and arguments in support of the necessity of Oriental studies, which I knew he had always discouraged, in the preparation and examination of candidates for the Indian Civil Service. He began by telling me that he knew nothing of Indian languages and literature, and that he wanted to know all I had to say on the real advantages to be derived by young civilians from a study of Sanskrit. I had already published several letters in _The Times_ on the subject, and had carried on a long controversy with Sir Charles Trevelyan, afterwards published in a pamphlet, entitled “Correspondence relating to the Establishment of an Oriental College in London.”
Macaulay, after sitting down, asked me a number of questions, but before I had time to answer any one of them, he began to relate his own experiences in India, dilating on the difference between a scholar and a man of business, giving a full account of his controversy, while in India, with men like Professor Wilson and others, who maintained that English would never become the language of India, expressing his own strong conviction to the contrary, and relating a number of anecdotes, showing that the natives learnt English far more easily than the English could ever learn Hindustani or Sanskrit. Then he branched off into some disparaging remarks about Sanskrit literature, particularly about their legal literature, entering minutely into the question of what authority could be assigned to the Laws of Manu, and of what possible use they could be in determining lawsuits between natives, ending up with the usual diatribes about the untruthfulness of the natives of India, and their untrustworthiness as witnesses in a court of law.
This went on for nearly an hour and was very pleasant to listen to, but most disappointing to a young man who had come well primed with facts to meet all these arguments, and who tried in vain to find a chance to put in a single word. At the end of this so-called conversation Macaulay thanked me for the useful information I had given him, and I went back to Oxford a sadder and I hope a wiser man. What I had chiefly wished to impress on him was that Haileybury should not be suppressed, but should be improved, should not be ended, but mended. But it was easier and more popular to suppress it, and suppressed it was, so that in England, which has the largest Oriental Empire in the world, there is now not a single school or seminary for the teaching of Oriental languages, whereas France, Italy, Prussia, Austria and Russia have all found it expedient to have such establishments and to support them by liberal grants. Everybody now begins to see that these governments are reaping their rewards, but in England the old argument remains the same: “We can always find interpreters if we pay them well, and if we only speak loud enough the natives never fail to understand what we mean.”
This is no doubt much the same as what Mr. Layard meant when he explained to me how he managed to keep his diggers in order: “I speak English to them; if they do not understand I shout at them,” he said; “if they won’t obey, I knock them down; and if they show fight, I shoot them down.” No doubt this was an exaggeration, but it certainly does not prove the uselessness of a thorough knowledge of Oriental languages for those who are sent to the East to govern millions, and not to shout at them, or to knock them down.
Another true friend of mine was Arthur Helps, the author of “Friends in Council,” and for a long time clerk to the Privy Council. He often paid us a visit on his way to or from Blenheim, where he used to stay with the then Duke of Marlborough. He had a very high opinion of the Duke’s ability as President of the Council, and considered his personal influence most important. “At the time of a change of Ministry, you should see the members of the Cabinet,” he said. “People imagine they are miserable and disheartened. The fact is they are like a pack of schoolboys going home for their holidays, and scrambling out of the Council Chamber as fast as ever they can.”
Once when he came to stay with us on his return from Blenheim, he told me how the Duke had left the day before for London, and that on that very day the emu had laid an egg. The Duke had taken the greatest interest in his emus and had long looked forward to this event. A telegram was sent to the Duke, which, when shown to Mr. Helps, ran as follows: “The emu has laid an egg, and, in the absence of your Grace, we have taken the largest goose we could find to hatch it.”
Helps was a most sensible and thoroughly honest man; yet the last years of his life were dreadfully embittered by some ill-advised speculations of his which brought severe losses not only on himself, but, what he felt far more keenly, on several of his friends whom he had induced to share in his undertaking.
I missed the pleasure of knowing Lord Lytton. But this illustrious writer, Lord Lytton, or in earlier days, Sir Lytton Bulwer Lytton, whose “Last Days of Pompeii” had been the delight of my youth, paid me a great and quite undeserved compliment by dedicating to me one of his last, if not his very last work, “The Coming Race,” 1871. The book was published anonymously, and as it was dedicated to me, I tried very hard to discover the author of it, but in vain. It was only after his death that Lord Lytton’s authorship became known. The book itself could hardly be called a novel, nor was there anything very striking or sensational in it. Yet, to the honour of the English public be it said, it was discovered at once that it could not be the work of an ordinary writer. It went through edition after edition, and, to the great delight of the anonymous author, was received with universal applause. _Vril_ was the name given by the author to the fluid which in the hands of a _Vrilya_ was raised into the mightiest agency over all forms of matter, animate or inanimate. It destroyed like the flash of lightning, yet, differently applied, it replenished or invigorated life. With it a way could be rent through the most solid substances, and from it a light was extracted, steadier, softer, and healthier than from all other inflammable materials. The fire lodged in the hollow of a reed, and directed by the hand of a child, could shatter the strongest fortress, or cleave its burning way from the van to the rear of an embattled host. All this reads almost like a prophecy of the electric fluid in its application to engines of war and engines of peace, but its name now survives chiefly in the powerful and invigorating fluid extracted from beef, and advertised on every wall as _Bo-vril_—unless I am quite mistaken in my etymology.
There are many more of the most eminent men in England from whom I have received kindness, and with whom, even as a young man, I had some interesting intercourse. But I become more and more doubtful whether I can trust my memory, and whether, in writing down my recollections, I am doing my friends full justice. When I gave my first lectures at the Royal Institution (in 1861), I came into frequent contact with Faraday. He was then what I thought an old man, and though it was quite beyond my power to estimate his greatness, he was one of those men who at once gave one the impression that they are really great. There was dignity and composure in his conversation, and at the same time a kindly welcome in his dark bright eyes which made one feel at home with him from the very first meeting. Though the subject I had to lecture on was quite new to him, he took the liveliest interest in my lectures. I told him how disappointed his assistant had been—I believe his name was Anderson or Robertson—when he offered me his services for my lectures, and I had to tell him that I wanted nothing, no gas, no light, no magnets, that there would be no experiments, not even diagrams to pull up and down. “O yes,” said Faraday, “I know how he tells his friends that he does all the hard work at my lectures, all the experiments, but that he lets me do the talking.” He seemed much amused when I told him that I had had just the same experience, and that one of my compositors was fully convinced that he was really responsible for my books, and told his fellow-compositors that I could not have brought out a single book without him.
Faraday sat patiently through most, if not all of my lectures, and it was a pleasure to look at his face beaming with intelligence. When I lectured for the first time on the Science of Language, I had in the beginning to clear the ground of many prejudices, and amongst the rest, to dispose of what was then almost an article of faith—namely, that all the languages of the world were derived from Hebrew. I gave a whole lecture to this question, and when it was over, an imposing old lady came up to shake hands with me and to thank me for the beautiful lecture I had delivered. “How delightful it is to know,” she continued, “that Adam and Eve spoke Hebrew in Paradise, and that all the other languages of the world, English not excepted, have come out of Hebrew and out of Paradise.” I really felt very much humiliated, and when Faraday came up I told him what had happened. “Oh, you must not be discouraged,” he said, “I hardly ever lecture on chemistry without an old dowager coming up to me with an incredulous smile and saying: ‘Now, Mr. Faraday, you don’t really mean to say that the water I drink is nothing but what you call oxygen and hydrogen?’ Go on,” he said, “something will always stick.”
I certainly had splendid audiences; all the best men of the town were there. But brilliant as my audiences were—they included A. P. Stanley, Fredk. Maurice, Dean Milman, Bishop Thirlwall, Mill, Lady Stanley, even royalty honoured me several times—the old _habitués_ of the Royal Institution were not easy to please. The front row was generally occupied by old men with hearing-trumpets, old Indians, old generals, old clergymen, etc. A number of ladies came in with their newspaper and unfolded it before the lecture began, and seemed to read it with their eyes while their ears were supposed to follow my arguments. One’s self-conceit is sometimes very much tried. After one of my lectures I saw one of the old East Indians led out by his son or nephew, who shouted in a loud voice into his father’s ear, “That was a splendid lecture, was it not?” “Yes,” said the old man in a still louder voice, “very interesting—very; didn’t understand a single word of it.” Such is reputation. On another occasion the same deaf and loud-voiced gentleman was heard to tell his neighbour who I was and what I had done. “Yes,” he shouted, “I know him; he is a clever young man. And we have appointed him to do some work for us, to publish the old Bible of India. We have also made him our examiner for the Civil Service of India. A clever young man, I assure you.”
That is how I rose in the estimation of the London world, and how Albemarle Street became crowded with fashionable carriages, and people could hardly find places in order to hear all about Aryan roots and our Aryan ancestors, and our common Aryan home somewhere in Asia.
It was in the same Royal Institution that I first raised my voice against the thoughtless extravagances of the so-called Darwinian School, and this at a time when it required more courage to express a doubt on any Darwinian theories than to doubt the descent of all languages from Hebrew. As to Darwin himself, I had expressed my admiration of him in my very first course of lectures, and I had more particularly tried to show how the idea of evolution, or development, or growth, or whatever name we like to use instead of the name of history, had at all times been the guiding principle in the researches of the students of the “Science of Languages.” Our object had always been to discover how languages came to be what they are, to study the origin and growth, or more truly the history of language. If we spoke of the development or evolution of language (_Entwickelung_) it was simply in order to avoid the constant use of the same word. We comparative philologists had, in fact, been talking evolution for more than forty years, as M. Jourdain had been talking prose all his life, without being aware of it (_sans que j’en susse rien_). But we never went into raptures about that blessed word “evolution,” or about the passage from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.
What I, from my own point of view, valued particularly in Darwin’s philosophy was the technical term of Natural Selection. Logically it was not quite correct, for, say what you like, selection presupposes a selector. Without a selector there is no selection, and unless we speak mythologically, we cannot speak of Nature as a selector. I should have preferred, therefore, _Rational Elimination_, looking upon Reason, or the Good of Plato, as the power that works for good or for fitness in all that survives or is not crowded out. But with this restriction Natural Selection was the very term we wanted to signify that process which is constantly going on in language—“excluding caprice as well as necessity, including individual exertion as well as general co-operation, applicable neither to the unconscious building of bees nor to the conscious architecture of human beings, yet combining within itself both these operations, and raising them to a higher conception.”[14] Natural selection was the very term we wanted for a true insight into the so-called growth of language, and it was Darwin who gave it us, even though for our own purposes we had to define it more strictly.