Part 4

After breakfast my mind kept running to this question of the Roman Persecution, and (I know not how) certain phrases kept repeating themselves literally “_ad nauseam_” in my imagination. They kept pace with the throb of the steamer, an altogether new sensation, and my mind seemed (as my old tutor, Mr. Blurt, would put it) to “work in a circle.” The pilot will take this. He is coming over the side. He is not in the least like a sailor, but small and white. He wears a bowler hat, and looks more like a city clerk than anything else. When I asked the First Mate why this was, he answered “It’s the Brains that tell.” A very remarkable statement, and one full of menace and warning for our mercantile marine.

* * * * *

_Thursday, Oct. 1, 1873._

I cannot properly describe the freshness and beauty of the sea after a gale. I have not the style of the great masters of English prose, and I lack the faculty of expression which so often accompanies the poetic soul.

The white curling tips (white horses) come at one if one looks to windward, or if one looks to leeward seem to flee. There is a kind of balminess in the air born of the warm south; and there is jollity in the whole ship’s company, as Mrs. Burton and her daughters remarked to me this morning. I feel capable of anything. When the First Mate came up to me this morning and tried to bait me with his vulgar chaff I answered roundly, “Now, sir, listen to me. I am not seasick, I am not a landlubber, I am on my sea legs again, and I would have you know that I have not a little power to make those who attack me feel the weight of my arm.”

He turned from me thoroughly ashamed, and told a man to swab the decks. The passengers appeared absorbed in their various occupations, but I felt I had “scored a point” and I retired to my cabin.

My steward told me of a group of rocks off the Spanish coast which we are approaching. He said they were called “The Graveyard.” If a man can turn his mind to the Universal Consciousness and to a Final Purpose all foolish fears will fall into a secondary plane. I will not do myself the injustice of saying that I was affected by the accident, but a lady or child might have been, and surely the ship’s servants should be warned not to talk nonsense to passengers who need all their strength for the sea.

_Friday, Oct. 2, 1873._

To-day I met the Captain. I went up on the bridge to speak to him. I find his name is Arnssen. He has risen from the ranks, his father having been a large haberdasher in Copenhagen and a town councillor. I wish I could say the same of the First Mate, who is the scapegrace son of a great English family, though he seems to feel no shame. Arnssen and I would soon become fast friends were it not that his time is occupied in managing the ship. He is just such an one as makes the strength of our British Mercantile marine. He will often come and walk with me on the deck, on which occasions I give him a cigar, or even sometimes ask him to drink wine with me. He tells me it is against the rules for the Captain to offer similar courtesies to his guests, but that if ever I am in Ernskjöldj, near Copenhagen, and if he is not absent on one of his many voyages, he will gratefully remember and repay my kindness.

I said to the Captain to-day, putting my hand upon his shoulder, “Sir, may one speak from one’s heart?” “Yes,” said he, “certainly, and God bless you for your kind thought.” “Sir,” said I, “you are a strong, silent, God-fearing man and my heart goes out to you--no more.” He was silent, and went up on the bridge, but when I attempted to follow him, he assured me it was not allowed.

Later in the day I asked him what he thought of the Roman trouble. He answered, “Oh! knock their heads together and have done with it.” It was a bluff seaman’s answer, but is it not what England would have said in her greatest days? Is it not the very feeling of a Chatham?

I no longer speak to the First Mate. But in a few days I shall be able to dismiss the fellow entirely from my memory, so I will not dwell on his insolence.

_Leghorn, Oct. 5, 1873._

Here is the end of it. I have nothing more to say. I find that the public has no need of my services, and that England has suffered a disastrous rebuff. The fleet has retreated from Apulia. England--let posterity note this--has not an inch of ground in all the Italian Peninsula. Well, we are worsted, and we must bide our time; but this I will say: if that insolent young fool the First Mate thinks that his family shall protect him he is mistaken. The press is a great power and never greater than where (as in England) a professor of a university or the upper classes write for the papers, and where a rule of anonymity gives talent and position its full weight.[53]

IX.

Lambkin’s Address to the League of Progress

Everybody will remember the famous meeting of the Higher Spinsters in 1868; a body hitherto purely voluntary in its organisation, it had undertaken to add to the houses of the poor and wretched the element which reigns in the residential suburbs of our great towns. If Whitechapel is more degraded now than it was thirty years ago we must not altogether disregard the earlier efforts of the Higher Spinsters, they laboured well each in her own sphere and in death they were not divided.

The moment however which gave their embryonic conceptions an organic form did not sound till this year of 1868. It was in the Conference held at Burford during that summer that, to quote their eloquent circular, “the ideas were mooted and the feeling was voiced which made us what we are.” In other words the Higher Spinsters were merged in the new and greater society of the League of Progress. How much the League of Progress has done, its final recognition by the County Council, the sums paid to its organisers and servants I need not here describe; suffice it to say that, like all our great movements, it was a spontaneous effort of the upper middle class, that it concerned itself chiefly with the artisans, whom it desired to raise to its own level, and that it has so far succeeded as to now possess forty-three Cloisters in our great towns, each with its Grand Master, Chatelaine, Corporation of the Burghers of Progress and Lay Brothers, the whole supported upon salaries suitable to their social rank and proceeding entirely from voluntary contributions with the exception of that part of the revenue which is drawn from public funds.

The subject of the Conference, out of which so much was destined to grow, was “The Tertiary Symptoms of Secondary Education among the Poor.”

Views upon this matter were heard from every possible standpoint; men of varying religious persuasions from the Scientific Agnostic to the distant Parsee lent breadth and elasticity to the fascinating subject. Its chemical aspect was admirably described (with experiments) by Sir Julius Wobble, the Astronomer Royal, and its theological results by the Reader in Burmesan.

Lambkin was best known for the simple eloquence in which he could clothe the most difficult and confused conceptions. It was on this account that he was asked to give the Closing Address with which the Proceedings terminated.

Before reciting it I must detain the reader with one fine anecdote concerning this occasion, a passage worthy of the event and of the man. Lambkin (as I need hardly say) was full of his subject, enthusiastic and absorbed. No thought of gain entered his head, nor was he the kind of man to have applied for payment unless he believed money to be owing to him. Nevertheless it would have been impossible to leave unremunerated such work as that which follows. It was decided by the authorities to pay him a sum drawn from the fees which the visitors had paid to visit the College Fish-Ponds, whose mediæval use in monkish times was explained in a popular style by one who shall be nameless, but who gave his services gratuitously.

After their departure Mr. Large entered Lambkin’s room with an envelope, wishing to add a personal courtesy to a pleasant duty, and said:

“I have great pleasure, my dear Lambkin, in presenting you with this Bank Note as a small acknowledgment of your services at the Conference.”

Lambkin answered at once with:

“My dear Large, I shall be really displeased if you estimate that slight performance of a pleasurable task at so high a rate as ten pounds.”

Nor indeed was this the case. For when Lambkin opened the enclosure (having waited with delicate courtesy for his visitor to leave the room) he discovered but five pounds therein. But note what follows--Lambkin neither mentioned the matter to a soul, nor passed the least stricture upon Large’s future actions, save in those matters where he found his colleague justly to blame: and in the course of the several years during which they continually met, the restraint and self-respect of his character saved him from the use of ignoble weapons whether of pen or tongue. It was a lesson in gentlemanly irony to see my friend take his place above Large at high table in the uneasy days that followed.

THE ADDRESS

MY DEAR FRIENDS,

I shall attempt to put before you in a few simple, but I hope well-chosen words, the views of a plain man upon the great subject before us to-day. I shall attempt with the greatest care to avoid any personal offence, but I shall not hesitate to use the knife with an unsparing hand, as is indeed the duty of the Pastor whosoever he may be. I remember a late dear friend of mine [who would not wish me to make his name public but whom you will perhaps recognise in the founder and builder of the new Cathedral at Isaacsville in Canada[54]]. I remember his saying to me with a merry twinkle of the eye that looms only from the free manhood of the west: “Lambkin,” said he, “would you know how I made my large fortune in the space of but three months, and how I have attained to such dignity and honour? It was by following this simple maxim which my dear mother[55] taught me in the rough log-cabin[56] of my birth: ‘Be courteous to all strangers, but familiar with none.’”[57]

My friends, you are not strangers, nay, on the present solemn occasion I think I may call you friends--even brethren!--dear brothers and sisters! But a little bird has told me.... (_Here a genial smile passed over his face and he drank a draught of pure cold water from a tumbler at his side._) A little bird has told me, I say, that some of you feared a trifle of just harshness, a reprimand perhaps, or a warning note of danger, at the best a doubtful and academic temper as to the future. Fear nothing. I shall pursue a far different course, and however courteous I may be I shall indulge in no familiarities.

“The Tertiary symptoms of Secondary Education among the Poor” is a noble phrase and expresses a noble idea. Why the very words are drawn from our Anglo-Saxon mother-tongue deftly mingled with a few expressions borrowed from the old dead language of long-past Greece and Rome.

What is Education? The derivation of the word answers this question. It is from “e” that is “out of,” “duc-o” “I lead,” from the root Duc--to lead, to govern (whence we get so many of our most important words such as “Duke”; “Duck” = a drake; etc.) and finally the termination “-tio” which corresponds to the English “-ishness.” We may then put the whole phrase in simple language thus, “The threefold Showings of twofold Led-out-of-ishness among the Needy.”

The Needy! The Poor! Terrible words! It has been truly said that we have them always with us. It is one of our peculiar glories in nineteenth century England, that we of the upper classes have fully recognised our heavy responsibility towards our weaker fellow-citizens. Not by Revolution, which is dangerous and vain, not by heroic legislation or hair-brained schemes of universal panaceas, not by frothy Utopias. No!--by solid hard work, by quiet and persistent effort, with the slow invisible tenacity that won the day at Badajoz, we have won this great social victory. And if any one should ask me for the result I should answer him--go to Bolton, go to Manchester, go to Liverpool; go to Hull or Halifax--the answer is there.

There are many ways in which this good work is proceeding. Life is a gem of many facets. Some of my friends take refuge in Prayer, others have joined the Charity Organisation Society, others again have laboured in a less brilliant but fully as useful a fashion by writing books upon social statistics which command an enormous circulation. You have turned to education, and you have done well. Show me a miner or a stevedore who attends his lectures upon Rossetti, and I will show you a man. Show me his wife or daughter at a cookery school or engaged in fretwork, and I will shew you a woman. A man and a woman--solemn thought!

A noble subject indeed and one to occupy the whole life of a man! This “Education,” this “Leading-out-of,” is the matter of all our lives here in Oxford except in the vacation.[58] And what an effect it has! Let me prove it in a short example.

At a poor lodging-house in Lafayette, Pa., U.S.A., three well-educated men from New England who had fallen upon evil times were seated at a table surrounded by a couple of ignorant and superstitious Irishmen; these poor untaught creatures, presuming upon their numbers, did not hesitate to call the silent and gentlemanly unfortunates “Dommed High-faluthing Fules”; but mark the sequel. A fire broke out in the night. The house was full of these Irishmen and of yet more repulsive Italians. Some were consumed by the devouring element, others perished in the flames, others again saved their lives by a cowardly flight.[59] But what of those three from Massachusetts whom better principles had guided in youth and with whom philosophy had replaced the bitter craft of the Priest? They were found--my dear friends--they were found still seated calmly at the table; they had not moved; no passion had blinded them, no panic disturbed: in their charred and blackened features no trace of terror was apparent. Such is the effect, such the glory of what my late master and guide, the Professor of Tautology, used to call the “Principle of the Survival of the Fittest.”

(_Applause, which was only checked by a consideration for the respect due to the Sacred edifice._)

Go forth then! Again I say go forth! Go forth! Go forth! The time is coming when England will see that your claims to reverence, recognition and emolument are as great as our own. I repeat it, go forth, and when you have brought the great bulk of families to change their mental standpoint, then indeed you will have transformed the world! For without the mind the human intellect is nothing.

X.

Lambkin’s Leader

Mr. Solomon was ever determined to keep the _Sunday Englishman_ at a high level. “We owe it” (he would say) “first to the public who are thereby sacrificed--I mean satisfied--and to ourselves, who secure thereby a large and increasing circulation.” [“Ourselves” alluded to the shareholders, for the _Sunday Englishman_ was a limited Company, in which the shares (of which Mr. Solomon held the greater number) were distributed in the family; the tiniest toddler of two years old was remembered, and had been presented with a share by his laughing and generous parent.]

In this laudable effort to keep “abreast of the times” (as he phrased it), the Editor and part Proprietor determined to have leaders written by University men, who from their position of vantage enjoy a unique experience in practical matters. He had formed a very high opinion of Lambkin’s journalistic capacity from his unpublished letters as a special correspondent. Indeed, he was often heard to say that “a man like him was lost at Oxford, and was born for Fleet Street.” He wrote, therefore, to Mr. Lambkin and gave him “Carte Blanche,” as one French scholar to another, sending him only the general directions that his leader must be “smart, up-to-date, and with plenty of push,” it was to be “neither too long nor too short,” and while it should be written in an easy familiar tone, there should be little or no seriously offensive matter included.

Mr. Lambkin was delighted, and when at his request the article had been paid for, he sent in the following:

* * * * *

THE LEADER.

“The English-Speaking Race has--if we except the Dutch, Negro, and Irish elements--a marvellous talent for self-government. From the earliest origins of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers to the latest Parish Council, guided but not controlled by the modern ‘Mass Thegen’ or local ‘Gesithcund man,’ this talent, or rather genius, is apparent. We cannot tell why, in the inscrutable designs of Providence, our chosen race should have been so specially gifted, but certain it is that wherever plain ordinary men _such as I who write this and you who read it_,[60] may be planted, there they cause the desert to blossom, and the waters to gush from the living rock. Who has not known, whether among his personal acquaintance or from having read of him in books, the type of man who forms the strength of this mighty national organism? And who has not felt that he is himself something of that kidney? We stand aghast at our own extraordinary power, and it has been finely said that Nelson was greater than he knew. From one end of the earth to the other the British language is spoken and understood. The very words that I am writing will be read to-morrow in London, the day after in Oxford--and from this it is but a step to the uttermost parts of the earth.

“Under these conditions of power, splendour, and domination it is intolerable that the vast metropolis of this gigantic empire should be pestered with crawling cabs. There are indeed many things which in the Divine plan have it in their nature to crawl. We of all the races of men are the readiest to admit the reign of universal law. Meaner races know not the law, but we are the children of the law, and where crawling is part of the Cosmos we submit and quit ourselves like men, being armed with the armour of righteousness. Thus no Englishman (whatever foreigners may feel) is offended at a crawling insect or worm. A wounded hare will crawl, and we Read that ‘the serpent was cursed and crawled upon his belly’; again, Aristotle in his Ethics talks of those whose nature (φύσις) it is ‘ἕρπειν,’ which is usually translated ‘to crawl,’ and Kipling speaks of fifes ‘crawling.’ With all this we have no quarrel, but the crawling cab is a shocking and abominable thing; and if the titled owners of hansoms do not heed the warning in time they will find that the spirit of Cromwell is not yet dead, and mayhap the quiet determined people of this realm will rise and sweep them and their gaudy gew-gaws and their finnicky high-stepping horses, and their perched-up minions, from the fair face of England.”

XI.

Lambkin’s Remarks on the End of Term

_Delivered in Hall on Saturday, Dec. 6th, 1887, the morning upon which the College went down._

MY DEAR FRIENDS; MY DEAR UNDERGRADUATE MEMBERS OF THIS COLLEGE,

The end of Term is approaching--nay, is here. A little more, and we shall meet each other no longer for six weeks. It is a solemn and a sacred thought. It is not the sadness, and even the regret, that takes us at the beginning of the Long Vacation. This is no definitive close. We lose (I hope) no friends; none leave us for ever, unless I may allude to the young man whom few of you knew, but through whose criminal folly the head of this foundation has lost the use of one eye.

This is not a time of exaltation, so should it not be a time for too absolute a mourning. This is not the end of the Easter Term, nor of the Summer Term. It is the end of Michaelmas Term. That is the fact, and facts must be looked in the face. What are we to do with the approaching vacation? What have we done with the past term?

In the past term (I think I can answer for some of you) a much deeper meaning has entered into your lives. Especially you, the young freshmen (happily I have had the control of many, the teaching of some), I know that life has become fuller for you. That half-hour a week to which you pay so little heed will mean much in later years. You have come to me in batches for half-an-hour a week, and each of you has thus enjoyed collectively the beginning of that private control and moulding of the character which is the object of all our efforts here in Oxford. And can you not, as you look back, see what a great change has passed over you in the short few months? I do not mean the corporeal change involved by our climate or our prandial habits; neither do I allude to the change in your dress and outward appearance. I refer to the mental transformation.

You arrived sure of a number of things which you had learnt at school or at your mother’s knee. Of what are you certain now? Of nothing! It is necessary in the mysterious scheme of education that this blind faith or certitude should be laid as a foundation in early youth. But it is imperative that a man--if he is to be a man and not a monster--should lose it at the outset of his career. My young friends, I have given you the pearl of great price. You have begun to doubt.

Half-an-hour a week--four hours in all the term ... could any positive, empirical, or dogmatic teaching have been conveyed in that time, or with so much fullness as the great scheme of negation can be? I trow not.

So much for knowledge and tutorship. What of morals? It is a delicate subject, but I will treat of it boldly. You all remember how, shortly after the month of October, the College celebrated Guy Fawkes’ day: the elders, by a dinner in honour of their founder, the juniors by lighting a bonfire in the quadrangle. You all know what followed. I do not wish to refer again--certainly not with bitterness--to the excesses of that evening; but the loss of eyesight is a serious thing, and one that the victim may forgive, but hardly can forget. I hope the lesson will suffice, and that in future no fellow of this College will have to regret so serious a disfigurement at the hands of a student.

To pass to lighter things. The Smoking Concert on All Souls’ Day was a great success. I had hoped to organise some similar jollity on Good Friday, but I find that it falls in the Easter vacation. It is, however, an excellent precedent, and we will not fail to have one on some other festal occasion. To the action of one of our least responsible members I will not refer. But surely there is neither good breeding nor decency in dressing up as an old lady, in assuming the name of one of our Greatest Families, and in so taking advantage of the chivalry, and perhaps the devotion, of one’s superiors. The offence is one that can not lightly be passed over, and the culprit will surely be discovered.

Of the success of the College at hockey and in the inter-University draughts competition, I am as proud as yourselves. [_Loud cheers, lasting for several minutes._] They were games of which in my youth I was myself proud. On the river I see no reason to be ashamed; next term we have the Torpids, and after that the Eights. We have no cause to despair. It is my experience (an experience based on ten years of close observation), that no college can permanently remain at the bottom of the river. There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, let us therefore taking heart of grace and screw our courage to the sticking point. We have the lightest cox. in the ’Varsity and an excellent coach. Much may be done with these things.