Part 17

This was Henry B. Cotterill—a schoolfellow of mine at the Brighton College—where indeed his father was headmaster. About the time (1875 or so) when I was lecturing Astronomy at Leeds, Livingstone’s book came out exposing the horrors of the black slave traffic around Lakes Tanganyika and Nyassa—a region at that time entirely, except by Livingstone himself, unexplored by white men. The book bit deeply into Cotterill’s heart and soul. It said that the only cure for the Mahomedan or Arabian trade in slaves would be the introduction of a trade by white men in the legitimate articles of commerce; and from that moment Cotterill could not rest, goaded on by the thought that _he_ must undertake this work. At the time he was acting as an assistant master at Harrow School. He started lecturing there and at other places round the country on the subject. He collected a fund; the Harrow boys and masters gave him a steel launch or cutter which could be taken up country in sections and screwed together; he came to Leeds and spoke there, as well as at places like Edinburgh, Manchester, Liverpool; the fund grew; and I remember going with him to some African warehouse in London City, where he bought bales of cotton cloth, and hundredweights of beads, and quantities of scarlet shell-jackets (especially coveted by African chieftains as their sole garment) for purposes of barter up country. Thus off his own bat, as it were, he got up this strange mission, and leaving Harrow and pedagogy behind, embarked on a career of considerable adventure and danger. The mission succeeded, ordinary traders followed in his footsteps, and within a few years the slave-trade engineered by Moors and Arabs died out in the land. It was followed, it is true, by the almost equal horrors of that commercial civilization which has since been introduced by Europeans; but I suppose one must be thankful in the slow and age-long evolution of human affairs for even one small step towards better things.

At a later time Cotterill returned to England, but unable, like many another traveler and lover of the wild, to endure the smug Philistinism of British life, he ultimately settled on the Continent—or rather led a somewhat roving life there, chiefly in France, Germany and Italy—supporting himself and a small family by the not too lucrative pursuits of literature and the teaching of languages. He has written and edited many books, to which his encyclopædic knowledge and command of six or seven languages have contributed; but undoubtedly his great and monumental work has been the translation of the Odyssey of Homer complete into English hexameters.[26] Daring is the man who ventures on that exceedingly boggy ground of the English hexameter, and many are those who have gone under and been gulfed in the attempt. By lightness and speed of movement only can one keep going; but in those qualities—so characteristic of the Greek—this translation is supremely successful; its verbal fidelity is amazing; its presentation of the old warrior and tribal life (made possible as he himself says by his intimate knowledge of African customs) is such as no armchair scholar could attain to; and the result is a gift to the whole English-speaking world—a rendering of the immortal classic that one may read with unflagging joy and zest from cover to cover.

XIII PERSONALITIES—II

The part that Olive Schreiner played in trying to avert the Boer War, and to expose the scoundrelly commercial machinations which led to it, is well known. Curiously enough, while England was being worked up by a lying Press into a fury of indignation against President Krüger I knew already early in 1899 about the real state of affairs and the plot of the financiers to force on a reckless and selfish war—not only from Olive Schreiner herself but from a man who came at that time to Millthorpe from Johannesburg.

This was Lisle March-Phillipps—who afterwards wrote _With Rimington_ and other books about the war. He was a young man of about thirty, who after an upper-class education on the usual lines had had the good sense to go abroad and see a little of the world for himself; had drifted out to South Africa, and had actually worked in the mines and shared the life of the miners. Disgusted with what he saw of the Beit and Joel and Rhodes and Barney Barnato gang—their meanness to their employees, their slanders against Krüger, their nonsense lies about British “women and children,” and foreseeing the inevitable conflict, he hurried home—thinking doubtless also that he might do something to make the actual truth known in England. For some reason, not very clear to me as we had had no previous communication, he came straight to Millthorpe, and walking in one afternoon sat a long time telling me all about the affair. I saw at once that his errand was authentic and that he knew what he was talking about, and from that time did my best in my small way, at public meetings and lectures, to get the matter seen in its true light, and to check the rising war-tide. All of no use of course. The gulled sentimental sloppy British public poured itself out in a torrent of rubbish—as a broken reservoir might pour through the slums and alleys of a manufacturing town; and it was hopeless even to protest. It is one of the saddest things to find how easily the great majority of a nation may be caught and swept away by some trumped-up catchword, often of the most flimsy character. I wrote a warning leaflet entitled _Boer and Briton_ and circulated some twenty thousand copies of it. I spoke with L. H. Courtney (now Lord Courtney) and others at a public meeting at Bradford, and at various other meetings. Mr. W. T. Stead did his best to warn the nation as to what was happening; Cronwright-Schreiner came over from the Cape, and later H. W. Nevinson also, in a crusade through England and Scotland. To no purpose: they only got mobbed and insulted for their pains. Finally March-Phillipps, anxious to see at close quarters all that was going on and unable to get a billet as war-correspondent, went out again and joined Rimington’s Scouts; and after the war was over—returning to Millthorpe and taking a cottage there—remained near us a good part of the summer and wrote his very graphic and interesting account of the campaign as witnessed and taken part in by him.[27]

It was at an early period of the Socialist movement—in 1884 I think—that I first came across Henry Salt and his gifted life-companion and wife, and it is to their initiative that I owe the gain of a close and long-enduring friendship. Salt and his brother-in-law, J. L. Joynes, were two young Eton masters who had in their time been collegers and scholars of Eton and afterwards graduates of King’s College, Cambridge. Carried along on the rising tide of Socialism they both (much to their credit) broke away from the highly respectable traditions of these foundations. Henry George of Land Tax fame was in the country, and Joynes actually associated himself with George, and went with him in 1881 or ’82 on a propagandist campaign to Ireland. This might well have passed unobserved at Eton, had it not happened that at some obscure place he and George were both temporarily arrested and had to spend the night under lock and key. The notoriety this gave to Joynes was fatal to his career, and he had to resign his mastership. Henry Salt and his wife about the same time gave almost worse offence. They adopted vegetarianism—a thing almost unheard of at Eton except in the dubious connection of Shelley; they revolted in their personal habits from the luxury and indulgence of the life there; and they protested against the coursing of hares, and other inhumanities favored by both boys and masters. It soon became clear to them that they could not remain in surroundings so uncongenial, and that they too would have to sacrifice a professional career and comparative affluence for the greater blessings of liberty and a simple living; and it was at the time when they were revolving their schemes of liberation and of migration into other spheres of life that I came—through Jim Joynes—to know them.

Joynes and his sister were singularly unlike externally, yet singularly alike in the depths of their hearts and in their devotion to each other. Both were tall and long-limbed: she dark, raven-haired, with large eyes and sensitive, somewhat sad, Dante-like profile; he red-haired, with high complexion, small bluish eyes, heavy features. She was intensely emotional, too emotional, but—as such people often are—highly musical; and her literary gift was certainly one of the most remarkable I have known—though unfortunately, except in her letters, rarely utilized. He was intensely logical, concentrated, determined—though underneath ran a strong current of poetic feeling—as witness his little book of excellent verses _On Lonely Shores_ (1892). Both of them did good work in connection with the Socialist and Labour movement, he more especially by lecturing and writing for the Social Democratic Federation and other such organizations; and she rather more by personal sympathy and helpful friendship towards the rank and file of the workers; both of them were devoted lovers of Nature, and of a natural plain way of life; and their devotion to each other only ended with his too early death in 1893.

These two and Henry Salt were among the pioneers in the early eighties of the great Socialist and Humanitarian and Nature movements which are destined to play such an important part in the new Democracy. Henry Salt’s work in founding the Humanitarian League (in 1891) and presiding over its very various activities has been so really extensive and far-reaching that it is difficult to estimate—the more so because unlike so many leaders of movements he has always kept his own name consistently in the background. As a matter of fact he has not only been the main originator of the important work done, but has been the guiding hand and inspirer of the many committees which have had to be formed in order to deal with the various subjects—with Vivisection, Blood Sports, ‘Murderous Millinery,’ Reform of the Prisons, the Game Laws, Slaughter-house Reform, Corporal Punishment, Diet Reform, Rights of Native Races, and so forth. Besides this the long list of his publications—on Shelley, on James Thomson (B.V.), on H. D. Thoreau, Richard Jefferies, Lucretius, etc., shows the trend of his mind and his liberating influence in the matters of religion and social freedom and a large-minded Nature-study.

At one time he and I composed jointly “A Church Service for the use of the Respectable Classes”—which I am afraid however has never yet been properly published. It consisted of a Preface, in the manner of our Prayer-book Preface of 1661, of a sort of Athanasian Creed (on the Trinity of Land, Capital and Interest) called the creed of St. Avaritius, of a Litany (on the lines of salvation through dividends and social advancement), and a final Processional Hymn. Of this last, as it has already been printed among some of Salt’s verses, the two first stanzas may here be given:—

Respectables are we And you presently will see Why we confidently claim to be respected: In well-ordered homes we dwell And discharge our duties well— Well dressed, well fed, well mannered, well connected.

We have heard the common cant About poverty and want And all that is distressing and unhealthy; Some cases may be sad, But the system can’t be bad Which affords such satisfaction to the Wealthy.

And so on.

On one occasion a boy brought to Mrs. Salt a young rook which had been hurt (so he said) by falling out of its nest, and as she and her husband had been staying with us, the bird became for some time an inmate of our establishment. But though it became familiar, as was natural, with us, and would fly in and out of the door or window, and perch on hand or head quite freely, its devotion to Mrs. Salt was something almost uncanny. Indoors or outdoors it _would_ be with her; and if she went into town for a few hours, or anywhere that she could not take the bird, she had to escape by ruse, or by simply caging the creature first. When she sat on the lawn it would delight to play and dance around, and to pick daisies with its beak and place them in her lap, or bright and shining pebbles from the gravel walk. Anything more like an engaging human child it would be hard to imagine. And it certainly seemed to know by some intuition of her return after absence along the road, and if caged would become very restless, or if free would fly to meet her. Once after a long absence, when she appeared once more—in the midst, as it happened, of a small crowd of people—the bird with a loud cry suddenly flew down from a tall tree and alighted forthwith upon her shoulder—much to the astonishment of the onlookers. Later, and after some months of this kind of life, the bird one day disappeared; nor could we ever find out what had happened to it—whether an accident or the mere “call of the wild” back to rook-land. It was seen no more, alive or dead; and one human heart at any rate felt the loss very deeply.

I have mentioned 1881 as the year in which _Towards Democracy_ ‘came to me,’ and insisted on being given form and expression. It is curious that the same year (or 1882) saw the inception of a number of new movements or enterprises tending towards the establishment of mystical ideas and a new social order. Mother Shipton’s prophecy with its strange prognostication of mechanically propelled cars and flying machines ended up with the words:—

And the world to an end shall come In eighteen hundred and eighty-one.

The world did not come to an end, but in a certain sense a new one began; and just in those two years quite a number of societies were started with objects of the kind indicated. Hyndman’s Democratic Federation, Edmund Gurney’s Society for Psychical Research, Mme. Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society, the Vegetarian Society, the Anti-vivisection movement, and many other associations of the same kind marked the coming of a great reaction from the smug commercialism and materialism of the mid-Victorian epoch, and a preparation for the new universe of the twentieth century. Amongst these was one which especially claimed to fulfil the prophecies of Mother Shipton and to be the herald of a New Age. This was the Hermetic Society. It consisted practically of two people—Edward Maitland and Anna Kingsford; for though there was a nominal membership I think it may be said that the other members had little or no voice in it. And its idea was to read into the stories of Jesus, and of Moses and Abraham and so forth, their inner significations, to interpret in fact much of the New and Old Testaments not as historical matter but rather as eternal truths, allegories and emblems of the drama of each human soul. Thus the miraculous birth of Jesus, his exile in Egypt, his temptation in the wilderness, his toils and sufferings, his Betrayal, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension were not external histories of a certain man, but inner histories of you and me and all mankind.

This method of interpreting the myths of past days, which we now in the twentieth century so well understand, and which explains for us the origin of a vast number of legends and at the same time accounts for their popularity, was in 1881—except for some few previous hints by Swedenborg and others—quite unrecognized. And we owe much to Edward Maitland and Anna Kingsford that they gave it, as well as some valuable collateral matter, to the world. Of course they did not fully recognize—though they did in part—how much of the story of Jesus, for instance, _is_ purely legendary and mythical. But even if they had known it to be entirely legendary, that would not probably have greatly altered their views—though it would certainly have deprived their gospel of the supernatural halo with which they delighted to invest it.

It was this affectation, if I may use the term, of a supernatural mission which rather spoilt the work of these two well-meaning people—as it has spoiled alas! the work of so many ‘prophets’ and teachers in the past. To the egotism of the human being there is no end; and if such an one can only persuade others that he has some supernatural source of knowledge and power, or persuade himself (or herself) of the same, there is no limit to the devilry or folly into which he will plunge—as witness the history of the priesthood all down the centuries. In the case of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland it was not devilry which was the trouble, but the other thing! Having reached a certain insight or intuition, or whatever you may call it, into the inner meanings of life, they both became so inflated with heavenly conceit over their discovery that they really grew quite foolish and intolerable. As it happened I had known Maitland since I was a boy. When I was eighteen or twenty years of age he a grown man, and known in the literary world as the author of _The Pilgrim and the Shrine_, used sometimes to come to my father’s house at Brighton. He was an interesting talker, well up in literature and science, and always keen on some new idea or discovery; but even then somewhat egotistically absorbed in his own thoughts and conversation. When he met the lady, however, who became his great life-inspiration, it must be said that he submerged all his own claims to prophetic gifts in a whole-hearted recognition of hers. He laid his soul at her feet.

Anna Kingsford was certainly a remarkable woman. As a young girl she had had strange visions. When Maitland met her (she being twenty-seven) she must from all descriptions have been singularly beautiful. He describes her as “tall, slender and graceful in form; fair and exquisite in complexion; bright and sunny in expression. The hair long and golden, but the brows and lashes dark, and the eyes deep-set and hazel, and by turns dreamy and penetrating. The mouth rich, full, and exquisitely formed.” While Mrs. Fenwick Miller says: “I thought her the most faultlessly beautiful woman I ever beheld; her hair is like the sunlight, her features are exquisite, and her complexion—I can use no other term than faultless—not a spot, not a flaw, not a shade.”

Add to these natural gifts a good medical training in the Schools of Paris, a fair knowledge of Greek and Latin, considerable literary ability and a generous and undisguised use of cosmetics, and you have a strange but powerful combination. Edward Maitland met her in 1874 (he was then fifty and she twenty-eight), and practically thenceforward dedicated his life to her. (It must however be remembered that the intimacy caused no estrangement from Mr. Kingsford, the husband, who remained a close friend to them both.) The reinforcement of Anna Kingsford’s intuitive and prophetic gift by Maitland’s incisive and logical mentality certainly had a valuable result, and their combined work left a notable mark on the time. Jointly from 1881 (to 1888 when Anna Kingsford died) they carried on a strong Crusade against Vivisection—one of the earliest protests made; and they published besides a series of works—_The Perfect Way_, _Clothed with the Sun_, _The Virgin of the World_, etc.—bearing the esoteric and theosophic message to which I have already alluded. Of these _The Perfect Way_, which shows both the systematic clearness of the one mind and the inspiration of the other, is perhaps the most important. It embodies in fairly clear outline those ideas of Indian and Gnostic origin which were at that time curiously descending upon the Western world, and which no doubt quite independently began about the same time to be spread abroad by Mme. Blavatsky and the Theosophic Society. Portions of this book, and large portions of _Clothed with the Sun_ were apparently spoken by Mrs. Kingsford under trance conditions, and have a certain fine quality and atmosphere about them. They seem to indicate things actually seen in the inner world of being; but they suffer, as such communications must do, from the medium through which they come. Large portions of _The Perfect Way_ degenerate into mere drivel, and large portions of _Clothed with the Sun_ are offensive (as their authoress herself often personally was) with a kind of spiritual arrogance. It is curious that those two prophetesses Anna Kingsford and Sophie Blavatsky—though so very different in personal exterior—should have been so like each other in many respects. Both undoubtedly had access to trance-conditions and to some region of astral intelligence or earth memory; both (as happens in such cases) dug out for us some shining jewels of truth, but mixed at the same time with a huge mass of rubbish. (No words can describe the general rot and confusion of Blavatsky’s _Secret Doctrine_.) Both were emotional in their different ways to an abnormal degree; and both were, fortunately for themselves, associated with coadjutors of cool and intellectual temperament—Mrs. Kingsford with Maitland, and Blavatsky with Mrs. Besant. Both had really great and remarkable gifts; and both, notwithstanding their high calling, descended to strange and unworthy subterfuges—Blavatsky to common juggleries and Anna Kingsford to a most deliberate and disagreeable ‘pose.’ At the Hermetic Society’s meetings the latter would take the chair in state—after the style of the Great Panjandrum—and if any humble member of the audience asked a simple question like “Do you think, Mrs. Kingsford, that the soul survives after death?”—she would draw herself up, close her eyes, and say “_I know_,” and sit down again! On one celebrated occasion I remember that at the close of the meeting, Edward Maitland rose and referring to the epoch-making speech of the Lady-president on “The finding of the Christ,” pointed out that that very meeting was indeed a world-event. For just as the _Kings_ of the East came across the _ford_ of the Jordan to lay their treasures at the feet of the infant Saviour, so now the treasures of Eastern thought were being brought across the world for the birth of a new Redeemer in the West, and by one whose name was most appropriately and prophetically none other than _Kingsford_!! After that we could naturally do nothing but dissolve along our different lines—in tears, or laughter, or through the doorways and passages, as the case might be. We poor little mortals must be grateful for what illuminations we can get, however quaint or queer the mediating personalities may be.