Part 12

This pamphlet made a great sensation. In England it was received, for the most part, with dislike and apprehension. Carlyle was almost alone in praising it. ‘Tell him,’ he said, ‘it is the greatest thing he has yet done; earnest and grave, written in a large, tolerant, kind-hearted spirit, and, as far as I can see, saying all that is to be said on _that_ matter.’ But the strongest proof of the power of the pamphlet is the fact that the Austrians stopped the writer on the Hungarian frontier when travelling with his wife in 1851, as a person who could not breathe that revolutionary atmosphere without danger to the empire. In his later years foreign travel became almost a necessity to Lord Houghton; and as he had then fewer ties to bind him to England, his absences were more frequent and more prolonged. He travelled in France, no longer as an envoy without credentials, but for his private information, or to be the guest of Guizot and De Tocqueville; he became the friend of the accomplished Queen of Holland; he represented the Geographical Society at the opening of the Suez Canal; he made a triumphal progress through the United States; and only three years before his death he went again to Egypt and Greece.

Throughout his life Milnes approached public events with a singular sobriety of judgment. He was never led away by popular clamour, but formed his opinions, on principle, after mature deliberation. It is almost needless to add that he generally found himself on the unpopular side. When England went mad over the Crimean war, Milnes wrote calmly: ‘For my own part I like neither of the combatants, though I prefer a feeble and superannuated despotism as less noxious to mankind than one young and vigorous, and assisted by the appliances of modern intelligence.’ During the American civil war, he ‘broke away from his own class, and ranged himself on the side of the friends of the North, with an earnestness not inferior to that of Mr Bright and Mr Forster.’ Mr Reid tell us that this conduct won for Milnes that popularity with the masses, especially in Yorkshire and Lancashire, which all his previous efforts had failed to obtain, and that he found himself, to his great surprise, one of the popular idols. In 1870, again, he was on the unpopular side: ‘I am Prussian to the backbone,’ he wrote, ‘which is a pure homage to principle, as they are the least agreeable people in the world.’

We have been at pains to set forth Milnes’s political acts and convictions in some detail, because he has been frequently represented as a gay _farceur_, who took up politics as a pastime. It is not, however, as a politician that he will be remembered, but as a man of letters. In his younger days he achieved distinction as a writer of verse, and Landor hailed him as ‘the greatest poet now living in England.’ This judgment may nowadays provoke a smile; but, though it is not to be expected that his poems will recover their former popularity, they hardly deserve to have fallen into complete neglect. As Mr Reid says:

‘A great singer he may not have been; a sweet singer with a charm of his own he undoubtedly was; nor did his charm consist alone in the melody of which he was a master. In many of his poems real poetic thought is linked with musical words; whilst in everything that he wrote, whether in verse or in prose, one may discern the brightest characteristics of the man himself: the catholicity of his spirit; the tenderness of his sympathy with weakness, suffering, mortal frailty in all its forms; the ardour of his faith in something that should break down the artificial barriers by which classes are divided, and bring into the lives of all a measure of that light and happiness which he relished so highly for himself’ (vol. ii. p. 438).

For his prose works, or at least for some of them, we predict a very different fate. We do not like even to think of an age that will refuse to admire the charming style, the real dramatic power, the exquisite tact, and the fine taste which distinguish his _Life of Keats_, and his _Monographs_, to which we have already alluded. Other essays, probably of equal merit, lie scattered in Reviews and Magazines. We hope that before long we may see the best of these collected together. Such a series, which would cover a period of nearly sixty years, would form a most important chapter in the history of English literature.

Besides his reputation as a writer, Milnes occupied an unique position towards the world of letters, which it is not quite easy to define. It is not enough to say that he was a Mæcenas, though he knew and entertained the whole literary community both in London and at Fryston—a house which, as Thackeray said, ‘combined all the graces of the château and the tavern’; or that he was always ready to lend a helping hand to those in distress, though he spent a fortune in generously and delicately assisting others. His peculiar characteristics were a rare gift in detecting merit, and an untiring energy in bringing it out, and setting it in a position where it could bloom and flourish and be recognized by other people. In effecting this he spared no pains, and shrank from no annoyance. Often, indeed, he must have risked his own popularity by his importunity for favours to be conferred on others. Mr Reid describes at length the amusing scene between him and Sir Robert Peel, when he solicited and obtained pensions for Tennyson and Sheridan Knowles, of neither of whom the Minister had ever heard; and to Milnes must also be allowed the credit of having been the first, or nearly the first, to bring into prominent recognition the merits of Mr John Forster. He possessed, too, in a very high degree, the gift of sympathy, and, as a consequence, of influence. ‘Ever since I knew you,’ said his friend Macarthy, ‘you have been the chief person in my life; a friend and brother and confessor—the end and aim of all my actions and hopes’; and Robert Browning, in a long and most interesting letter, written to ask Milnes to use his interest to get him appointed secretary to the minister whom England, as he then believed, ‘must send before the year ends to this fine fellow, Pio Nono[87],’ admits that his own interest in Italy was due in the first instance to Milnes’s influence. ‘One gets excited,’ he says, ‘at least here on the spot, by this tiptoe strained expectation of poor dear Italy, and yet, if I had not known you, I believe I should have looked on with other bystanders.’ We have said that he was charitable; but to say this is to give an imperfect idea of the efforts he would make for literary men in difficulties. When Hood was in distress he found that he ‘preferred to receive assistance in the shape of gratuitous literary work for his magazine rather than in money.’ Milnes not only contributed himself, but ‘canvassed right and left among his friends for contributions.’ Nor was his help confined to the person whose work he valued. ‘The interest and friendship which the genius had aroused,’ says Mr Reid, ‘was extended to his or her friends and connexions. Many a widow and many an orphan had occasion to be thankful that the husband or father had during his lifetime excited the admiration of Milnes. Years after the death of Charlotte Brontë we find him trying to smooth the path of her father, and to secure preferment in the Church for her husband.’ This is only one instance out of many that might be adduced. Again, he seemed to regard his critical faculty as a trust for the benefit of others, and was never more congenially employed than in drawing attention to some young poet who had no influential friends. In proof of this we will only refer our readers to the touching story of poor David Gray, whom he nursed with almost feminine tenderness, and whose poem, _The Luggie_, he edited; and to his early recognition of the genius of Mr Swinburne, to whose merits he drew attention by an article in the _Edinburgh Review_. In close connexion with this kind help to men of whom he knew little or nothing may be mentioned his interest in the Newspaper Press Fund. The formation of such a fund was strenuously resisted, we are told, by the most influential members of the Press; but Milnes, from the first, brought the whole weight of his social influence to its support, and contributed, more than any other man, to its permanent and successful establishment.

Nor should his kindness to young men be forgotten. He may have sought their society in the first instance from the pleasure he took in all that was bright, and entertaining, and unaffected; but, as we have already tried to point out, his motives were commonly underlaid by some serious purpose which it was not always easy to discover. We do not maintain that he was specially successful in drawing young men out, for his own talk was often scrappy, anecdotical, and difficult to follow; still less do we mean that he tried to influence them in any particular direction by improving conversation, or the enunciation of any special opinions in politics or literature. But he certainly made his juniors feel sure of his sympathy and his good-will.

Of Milnes’s religious opinions it is difficult to give any positive account. His family had been Unitarian; at college he became an Evangelical; soon afterwards he fell under the influence of Irving, whom he proclaimed to be ‘the apostle of the age.’ Then, during his residence in Italy, as we have already mentioned, he chose Dr Wiseman for his intimate friend, and the higher Roman Catholic clergy had hopes of his conversion. ‘Mezzofanti,’ wrote one of his friends in 1832, ‘is full of hopes that you will return to the bosom of her whom Carlyle calls “the slain mother”.’ But, during this same period, while passing through what he calls ‘the twilight of his mind,’ he was the friend of Sterling and Maurice and Thirlwall, under whose influence he was hardly likely to submit to an infallible Church. He himself said that he was prevented from joining the Church of Rome by the uprising of a Catholic school in the Church of England. To this movement, as we have seen, he was deeply attached, and both spoke and wrote in its defence. In one of his commonplace books he called himself a Puseyite sceptic; sometimes he said he was a crypto-Catholic, and to the last he never entirely shook off the impressions of his youth. But Mr Reid is probably right in describing him as ‘a tolerant, liberal-minded man, apt to look at religion from many different points of view.’ We are not aware that he ever took part in any directly religious movement, or ever declared his allegiance to the Church of England except as a political organization. Partly from a love of paradox, partly from a habit of looking round a question rather than directly at it, he would have had something to say in defence of almost any system of religion, while his unfeigned charity would induce him to adopt that which recognized most fully the claims of suffering humanity.

Lord Houghton died at Vichy, August 11, 1885. He had been in failing health for some time, but the end was sudden and unexpected. Only a few hours before it came he had been entertaining a mixed company at the _table d’hôte_ by the brilliancy and variety of his conversation. It might almost be said that he died, as he had lived, in society.

We have tried to eliminate what we believe to have been the real Milnes from a cloud of misrepresentations and erroneous judgments—for both of which, it must be remembered, he was himself directly responsible. We leave to our readers the task of passing sentence on a singularly amiable, if eccentric, personality. Some opinions expressed by those who understood him and valued him will appropriately close this article. When he was young his friends recognized in him what Dr Johnson would have called the potentiality of greatness, though they doubted whether he would have sufficient steadiness of purpose to achieve it. ‘Your gay and airy mind,’ wrote Tennyson in 1833, ‘must have caught as many colours from the landscape you moved through as a flying soap-bubble—a comparison truly somewhat irreverent, yet I meant it not as such.’ ‘I think you are near something very glorious,’ said Stafford O’Brien, ‘but you will never reach it.’ Mr Aubrey de Vere decided that ‘he had not much solid ambition. The highlands of life were not what interested him much; its mountains cast their shadows too far and drew down too many clouds.’ But, if Milnes’s well-wishers were compelled to abandon their hopes of any great distinction for their friend, they recognized, with one accord, his charity and his sincerity. If they did not admire him, they loved him. ‘You are on the whole a good man,’ said Carlyle, ‘though with terrible perversities.’ Forster declared that he himself had ‘many friends who would be kind to him in distress, but only one who would be equally kind to him in disgrace.’ A distinguished German said of him, ‘Is it possible that an Englishman can be so loveable?’ and Mr Sumner described him as ‘a member of Parliament, a poet and a man of fashion, a Tory who does not forget the people, and a man of fashion with sensibilities, love of virtue and merit among the simple, the poor, and the lowly.’ Lastly, let us cite his own whimsical character of himself, which, though expressed in the language of paradox, is probably, in the main, nearer to the truth than one drawn by any critic could be:

‘He was a man of no common imaginative perceptions, who never gave his full conviction to anything but the closest reasoning; of acute sensibilities, who always distrusted the affections; of ideal aspirations and sensual habits; of the most cheerful manners and of the gloomiest philosophy. He hoped little and believed little, but he rarely despaired, and never valued unbelief, except as leading to some larger truth and purer conviction’ (vol. ii. p. 491).

EDWARD HENRY PALMER[88].

A dramatist who undertakes to write a play which is to be almost devoid of incident, and to depend for interest on the development of an eccentric character, with only a single strong situation, even though that situation be one of surpassing power, is considered by those learned in such matters to be almost courting failure. Such a work is therefore rarely attempted, and is still more rarely successful. Yet this is what Mr Besant has had to do in writing the Life of Edward Henry Palmer; and we are glad to be able to say at once that he has discharged a delicate and difficult task in a most admirable fashion. For in truth he had a very unpromising subject to deal with. It is always difficult to interest the general public in the sayings and doings of a man of letters, even when he has occupied a prominent position, and thrown himself with ardour into some burning question of the day, political or social. Palmer, however, was not such a man at all. He did ‘break his birth’s invidious bar,’ but alas! it was never given to him, until the end was close at hand, ‘to grasp the skirts of happy chance,’ or to rise into a position where he could be seen by the world. It is melancholy now to speculate on what might have been had he returned in safety from the perilous enterprise in which he met his death, for it is hardly likely that the Government would have failed to secure, by some permanent appointment, the services of a man who had proved, in so signal a manner, his capacity for dealing with Orientals. As it was, however, with the exception of the journeys to the Sinaitic Peninsula and the Holy Land, he lived a quiet student-life; not wholly retired, for he was no book-worm, and enjoyed, after a peculiar fashion of his own, the society of his fellow-men; but still a life which did not really bring him beyond the narrow circle of the few intimate friends who knew him thoroughly, and were proportionately devoted to him. He took no part in any movement; he was not ‘earnest’ or ‘intense.’ He did not read new books, or any of the ‘thoughtful’ magazines; nor had he any particular desire to alter the framework of society. The world was a good world so far as he was concerned; and men were strange and interesting creatures whom it was a pleasure to study, as a naturalist studies a new species; why alter it or them? The interest which attaches to such a life depends wholly on the way in which the central character is presented to the public. That Mr Besant should have succeeded where others would have failed need not surprise us. The qualities which have made him a delightful novelist are brought to bear upon this prose _In Memoriam_, with the additional incentives of warm friendship and passionate regret. It is clear that he realized all the difficulties of his task from the outset; and he has treated his materials accordingly, leading the reader forward with consummate art, chapter by chapter, to the final catastrophe, which is described with the picturesqueness of a romance, and the solemn earnestness of a tragedy. Such a book is almost above criticism. A mourner by an open grave, pronouncing the funeral oration of his murdered friend, has a prescriptive right to apportion praise and blame in what measure he thinks fit; and we should be the last to intrude upon his sacred sorrow with harsh and inconsiderate criticism. But we should be failing in our duty if we did not draw attention to one point. It has been Mr Besant’s object to show the difficulties of all kinds against which his hero had to contend—ill-health, heavy sorrows, debt—and how he came triumphant through them all, thanks to his indomitable pluck and energy; and further, as though no element of interest should be wanting, he has represented him as smarting under a sense of unmerited wrong done to him by his University, which ‘went out of the way to insult and neglect’ him. This is no mere fancy of Mr Besant’s; we know from other sources that Palmer himself thought he had not been treated at Cambridge as he ought to have been, and that he was glad to get away from it. We shall do our best to show that this was a misconception on his part, and we regret that his biographer should have given such prominence to it. But, though Mr Besant may have been zealous overmuch on this particular point, his book is none the less fascinating, and we venture to predict that it will live, as a permanent record of a very remarkable man. We are sensible that much of its charm will disappear in the short sketch which we are about to give, but if our remarks have the effect of sending our readers to the original, we shall not have written in vain.

Edward Henry Palmer was born in Green Street, Cambridge, 7 August, 1840. His father died when he was an infant, and his mother did not long survive her husband. Her place was supplied to some extent by an aunt, then unmarried, who took the orphan child to her own home and educated him. She was evidently a person who combined great kindness with great good sense. Palmer, we read, ‘owed everything to her,’ and ‘never spoke of her in after years without the greatest tenderness and emotion.’ Of his real mother we do not find any record; but the father, who kept a small private school, was ‘a man of considerable acquirements, with a strong taste for art.’ We do not know whether any of Palmer’s peculiar talents had ever been observed in the father, or whether he can be said to have inherited anything from his family except a tendency to asthma and bronchial disease. From this, of which the father died before he was thirty, the son suffered all his life. He grew out of it to a certain extent, but it was always there, a watchful enemy, ready to start forth and fasten upon its victim.

The beginning of Palmer’s education was of the most ordinary description, and little need be said about it. He was sent in the first instance to a private school, and afterwards to the Perse Grammar School. There he made rapid progress, arriving at the sixth form before he was fifteen; but all we hear about his studies is that he distinguished himself in Greek and Latin, and disliked mathematics. By the time he was sixteen he had learnt all that he was likely to learn at school, and was sent to London to earn his living. He became a junior clerk in a house of business in East-cheap, where he remained for three years, and might have remained for the term of his natural life, had he not been obliged to resign his situation on account of ill-health. Symptoms of pulmonary disease manifested themselves, and he got worse so rapidly that he was told that he had little hope of recovery. He returned to Cambridge, with the conviction that he had but a few weeks to live, and that he had better die comfortably among his relations, than miserably among strangers. But after a few weeks of severe illness he recovered, suddenly and strangely. Mr Besant tells a curious story, which Palmer is reported to have believed, that the cure had been effected by a dose of _lobelia_, administered by a herbalist. That Palmer swallowed the drug—of which, by the way, he nearly died—is certain, and that he recovered is equally certain; but that the dose and the recovery can be correlated as cause and effect is more than we are prepared to admit. We are rather disposed to accept a less sensational theory, expressed by a gentleman who at that period was one of his intimate friends:

‘Careful watchfulness on the part of his aunt, open air, exercise, and freedom from restraint, were the principal means of patching him up. He had frequent attacks of blood-spitting afterwards, and was altogether one of those wonderful creatures that defy doctors and quacks alike, and won’t die of the disease which is theirs by inheritance. How little any of us thought that he would die a hero!’

Palmer’s peculiar gift of acquiring languages had manifested itself even before he went to London. Throughout his whole career his strength as a linguist lay in his extraordinary aptitude for learning a spoken language. The literature came afterwards. We are not aware that he was ever what is called a good scholar in Latin or in Greek, simply for the reason, according to our view, that those languages are no longer spoken anywhere. He did not repudiate the literature of a language; far from it. Probably few Orientalists have known the literatures of Arabia and Persia better than he knew them; but he learnt to speak Arabic and Persian before he learnt to read them. In this he resembled Cardinal Mezzofanti, who had the same power of picking up a language for speaking purposes from a few conversations—learning some words, and constructing for himself first a vocabulary and then a grammar. When Palmer was still a boy at school he learnt Romany. He learnt it, says Mr Besant, ‘by paying travelling tinkers sixpence for a lesson, by haunting the tents, talking to the men, and crossing the women’s palms with his pocket-money in exchange for a few more words to add to his vocabulary. In this way he gradually made for himself a Gipsy dictionary.’ In time he became a proficient in Gipsy lore, and Mr Besant tells several curious stories about his adventures with that remarkable people. We will quote the narrative supplied to him by Mr Charles Leland—better known as Hans Breitmann—Palmer’s intimate friend and brother in Romany lore.