Part 9

The ‘Quarterly’ was at Milton Lockhart, and I had some conversation with him; he spoke of the prevalence of infidelity, even among the country folk of Scotland, saying that all the small farmers in that neighbourhood were avowed unbelievers. He ascribed it greatly to Burns. Chalmers, he said, was once in a factory at Glasgow, and began to talk to some of the work-people in his way, when he was interrupted by an old woman, who told him that he ‘needna go on; there are nae Christians in this ward, Doctor.’

In Monday’s ‘Times’ appeared a letter written by Ward to the ‘Oxford Herald,’ announcing his intention of leaving the English Church at last; and implying the like on Newman’s part, that indeed being his own ground for changing his opinion. His defence of his position in the English Church had rested, he said, on the facts--1st. That the said Church allowed Romanist teaching.--2nd. That Romanisers (like Newman) found themselves feel continually better satisfied with the resolution of remaining in the English communion. The late decision of the Ecclesiastical Courts had, he said, destroyed the former ground, and Newman’s change the latter.

_To the same._

Calder Park: September 11, 1845.

We went to Edinburgh on Tuesday; saw the Castle and Holyrood, including Queen Mary’s apartments and Rizzio’s blood, the Calton Hill, and Flaxman’s statue of Burns, which I admired much.

We went to dine and sleep at Houston, the house of Shairp, and lionised the grounds of Hopetoun next day, which lie on the Forth, over against Dunfermline gray, &c. &c. I liked the place very much; it is a tall, perpendicular house, four storeys and attics; such peep-hole windows in thick stone walls; all manner of useless little rooms on all manner of unequally disposed levels; a stone staircase from bottom to top. Wainscotted partition walls, and old folks by the dozen looking down on you therefrom; among the rest, Archbishop Sharpe, who seems to have been of the family, but is hardly acknowledged, as they are now Presbyterians. And the second flower of Yarrow, really a beautiful face, though in the picture rather faded, who lived at Houston with her sister, who had married its owner. The garden, moreover, of flowers and kitchenry without distinction, with high hedges of beech and yew, &c., running hither and thither about it, was very pleasant.

_To Rev. J. P. Gell._

Liverpool: September 21, 1845.

Is it news to you that Ward has at last gone over to Rome, wife and all; is at this present moment at St. Mary’s College, Oscott, having just received confirmation? Newman, it is said, will not go over finally till Christmas, but his intention to do so is definitely announced. It is thought that his immediate followers will not be many; ten or twelve subordinates and Oakeley is large allowance. But a great many will be rendered uneasy by his departure, and one may look out for changes in one way or other: it will be ‘dropping weather’ in the Romanising line for some time to come, I dare say. Newman’s Apologia, entitled ‘Notes of the Church,’ is expected to appear soon. So also the volumes of the reprint of Arnold’s Lives, in the ‘Encyclopædia Metropolitana.’ The miscellaneous volume, including the Church Reform and Catholic Emancipation pamphlets the Sheffield and Hertford letters and other minora, has been out for a month. The Catholic Emancipation I had never read till to-day; to-day I did so with great delight. My last reading before that was (strong meat) the ‘Life of Blanco White’: almost wholly from his own papers; a very striking production, which has called out a review from Gladstone in the ‘Quarterly,’ and a more powerful one by Mozley in the ‘Christian Remembrancer’ (Puseyitic extreme). For me, almost it persuaded me to turn Unitarian, that is, for the moment; and even now I feel no common attraction towards the book and the party who have brought it out, viz. the high Unitarians, such as Miss Martineau’s brother, a preacher here; Mr. Thom, his colleague, the editor of book, &c., and others. They have a review, the ‘Prospective,’ ‘Aspice, Respice, PROSPICE’ (sic) being the motto, in each of the eight numbers of which Arnold’s volume, the Life, the Fragment on the Church, and the last miscellaneous volume have received an article; and in their particular section of the people they are, I should think, doing a great deal of good.

I renewed my acquaintance at the Lakes this year with Hartley Coleridge. The only thing worth recording from his lips is a saying which he repeated as his father’s, that etymology is in danger of death from a plethora of probabilities.

_To Rev. T. Burbidge._

Liverpool: September 23, 1845.

I have been reading ‘The Improvisatore,’ a Danish novel translated by Mary Howitt. You know I hate Corinne. This is in the Corinne high beauty-beatification style, Italy, art, and love à l’æsthétique; but the thing is rendered truthful and sober in Dano-Gothic colouring. But this kind of book makes me long for genuine live-and-act story, such as the ‘Rose of Tistelön,’ which I recommend you.

Item.--I have bought a Cowley, rather a scrubby 18mo, but the first edition after his death. I think Cowley has been Wordsworth’s model in many of his rhythms, and some of his curious felicities.

I told you, perhaps, that I had some thoughts of laying down my toga tutoria and going abroad for a year with a pupil; nor has the plan evaporated wholly as yet.

Oxford: September 28.

I went to Rugby on my way. The school is in number 490. They have built a new schoolroom at the back of the fives court, between the chapel and the stables.

Jowett comes hither, having been Stanley’s companion in Germany. They saw Schelling, who spoke to them of Coleridge with high praise, saying that it was an utter shame to talk of his having plagiarised from him, Schelling.

_To his Sister._

Oriel: October 1845.

What shall be done in the summer? Shall we go to Switzerland together, see the Italian lakes and Milan, taking the Seine and Paris one way, and the Rhine and Belgium the other? Alas! I fear there will be no money to spare. Potatoes and all ‘bread-stuffs’ are like to be terribly dear; and we shall have to live on butcher’s meat for lack of cheaper food. Or have you laid in a stock of rice? Government, it seems, will not open the ports for foreign corn: the free-traders are outvoted in Privy Council, and for the present, at any rate, we must let our neighbours buy for themselves without any interference of ours.

Moreover, I think it very likely I may give up this tutorship (quod tamen tu tacere debes), and as private tutor I could not, without more work than I should like, make the same sum per annum which I now receive from the College.

_To Rev. T. Burbidge._

Oxford: October 19, 1845.

There is a good article (a portent) in the ‘Quarterly,’ pronounced to be Milman’s, on the ‘Relation of Clergy to People,’ against priestcraft and authority, and extolling marriage; it is really very well done.

There is also (a portentous portent) another article not at all to be despised, on the ‘Moral Discipline of the Army,’ specially in regard of Chaplains; in a postscript to which announcement is made that certain improvements have just been ordered by Government, as for instance the building of chapels for barracks.

The poet Faber, men say, will go, but the ultra-Puseyites in general seem inclined not to take headers à la Ward, but to sneak in and duck their heads till they are out of their depth.

Liddell, it appears, is standing for the Moral Philosophy chair. I hope he will get it; he is a man who will work, and who will be listened to.

October 28.

I have, however, in the last three days found time to read ‘Jeanne, par George Sand,’ the most cleanly French novel I ever read, and not cleanly only, but pure. If I knew French well enough, and was not a college tutor, I would translate it, and I believe it would take; for one thing, the hero is an Englishman, and by no means a common, but a very veritable hero.

31st.

Liddell, thank Heaven, is elected Professor of Moral Philosophy. The election brought Vaughan up, and we had the pleasure of seeing him. He is very agreeable, converses very well, and I wish sincerely he was up here always.

November 1.

Potato-disease, and abolition of corn-laws--at any rate, immediate opening of ports for foreign corn, which ports it may be found somewhat hard to close again; panic in the railway market gradually dispelled again, not unlikely howbeit to reappear; such is the news of the week. Cobden sounds a note of triumph at Manchester, and dubs Hudson with the title of ‘King of Spades,’ in joint allusion to his innumerable army of navigators and his gifts at shuffling and card-tricks. O’Connell, called upon by the Saxon press to do something more for his starving countrymen than vapouring at the Conciliation Hall, comes out with a 10 per cent. tax on all landowners, and 50 per cent. on absentees. London, meantime, fearless of lack of funds, proposes to adorn itself with a grand verandah system--at least for all shopping streets. A very desirable plan, I think. I have often wondered that the hint of Chester rows had not been taken long ago.

_To his Sister._

Oriel: November 23, 1845.

Another convert is gone over to Rome--Faber, the poet, who used to excite admiration when preaching some seven years ago at Ambleside; and at Cambridge a flitting from the Camden is expected.

The Irish Colleges are to be, I believe, at Belfast, and certainly at Cork and Galway. This last would be wholly Roman Catholic, I suppose, otherwise I should like it, for the country near it is very beautiful. There is a great lake, some forty miles long, Lough Corrib, the upper part of which they say is like Wastwater.

Belfast would be chiefly Presbyterian; at any rate, Protestant. Cork is to be under a Dr. Kane, a chemist and I fancy a very able and sensible man. I think it possible I may some day find myself at one of these places. I don’t much mind which. But they won’t be ready for two years, I should think.

_To the same._

Rugby: December 23, 1845.

I hope you will forgive me. I am not coming home before Monday. It appears that F. Newman (Newman’s brother) is coming here on Friday; and I am very desirous to see him, and my hosts urge me to stay.

F. Newman, by-the-by, is the author of the paper in the ‘Prospective Review,’ on Arnold’s Miscellaneous Works. I really think I ought not to miss this opportunity of seeing him; so I trust you and mother will forgive my truancy for once, though I fear that you will have but a meagre Christmas party.

_To Rev. T. Burbidge._

Liverpool: January 19, 1846.

Price has been writing a letter or two in the ‘Balance,’ a newspaper set up on principles which may be described as Arnoldite out of Evangelical, a somewhat mongrel progeny, perhaps, with more of profession than fervour; and the paper is certainly weak, though certainly at the same time well meaning. It wishes to become a sort of Sunday newspaper for all sorts of people, gentle and simple, nobleman, and serving man, and working man. Gurney, I believe, is editor; Lord Robert Grosvenor and some others have promised to pay the piper for a while. Gurney puts poems into it. I wrote a letter myself which is to appear in its columns next week. Another newspaper, ‘The Daily News,’ is placarding itself for issue on the 21st, the literary department under the direction of Charles Dickens. Is ‘Boz’ proposing to reform the press? to combat, a printer’s ink St. Michael, the Dragon immorality of the ‘Times’? It is open to conjecture. But perhaps it is only a quiet little job in the money-making way. Half a dozen new newspapers are commencing their career; it is almost like a railway mania.

An evening or two after I wrote I met Martineau accidentally. I liked him greatly. He talked simply, courteously, and ably, and has a forehead with a good deal of that rough-hewn mountainous strength which one used to look at when at lesson in the library at Rugby not without trembling.

_To his Sister._

Oxford: February 1846.

I have only just time to sign my name. My lectures go on from ten till two these days. Just at this time, too, there are numerous parties--breakfasts, namely, and dinners--which cut me out of the usual odds and ends that do for letter-writing. I have been very gay this week; there is always a sort of carnival at Oxford, and this year it happens to coincide with the end of the Rugby holidays. We had several Rugby masters up--Tait, Arnold, Congreve, and Bradley, &c.; and on Tuesday there was a Rugby dinner, which was very successful and pleasant.

Concerning marriage, what you say is true enough, but to fall in love without knowledge is foolery; to obtain knowledge without time and opportunity and something like intimate acquaintance is, for the most part, impossible; and to obtain time and opportunity is just the thing. Then, again, there comes the question of reconciling marriage with one’s work, which for me is a problem of considerable difficulty. It is not every one who would like to be a helpmate in the business I am likely to have.

_To the same._

Castleton Braemar:[6] August 9, 1846.

Our house is very comfortable, and affords us two sitting-rooms, one of which is conceded to my special use. The other has a nice look out up the Glen of Clunie, a little stream which dashes through the granite just beside us, and gives us a pool to bathe in. But the country in general is not what I require for full delight. The hills are round, and somewhat tame, though beautifully clad with heather. The Dee, which is the great river of the district, into which the Clunie runs, is very pretty, and indeed beautiful, three miles higher up. And the mountain excursions still farther off, in the region of Benmacdhui and Cairngorm, will I dare say prove satisfactory. The kirk to which we went this morning is fairly administered, but not very much attended. I fancy more go to the Free Kirk; and there is also a Roman Catholic Chapel in the village, and a good many of the poorer folks are Papists. I have given up the idea of the school at Birmingham, having settled to stay out my time at Oxford.

You must remember what a great advantage for intercourse with the poor is given by _any_ sort of cultivation, music, drawing, dancing, German, French, &c. &c. They feel this distinction very sensibly, and carry their liking of a lady almost to the vice of liking a _fine_ lady.

_To the same._

Castleton Braemar: September 10, 1846.

Our neighbours continue to send us grouse and venison, which reduces our butcher’s bills. To-morrow three weeks I expect to have done. I mean, however, to get a little rambling to make up for the somewhat poor scenery of this Valley of Dee, and I fear shall only pay you but a brief visit before I go up to Oxford, about the 15th of October. We are enjoying fine weather, sunshine and moonshine both, but perhaps a little cold, though bathing continues as usual. To-night we all go to a party at General Duff’s to see Highland dancing.

September 26.

On Wednesday we had a regular flood, and it has been raining more or less ever since, with intervals, however, yesterday, of very respectable sunshine. Our two sportsmen (did I tell you two pupils were gone up the hills?) have returned, bringing a few grouse and a haunch of venison (not their own killing this last) from our neighbour the Duke of Leeds.

The spring of 1847, as will be remembered, was the time of the Irish famine. The distress caused by it, not only in Ireland, moved Clough greatly, and stirred him to write an appeal to the undergraduates at Oxford, of which the substance is given in the next chapter.

_To ----_

March 28, 1847.

Perhaps what you say is true about the Unitarians in general, but in this particular case I think they were not very far wrong in declining to have any service. I think it presumptuous to set down the famine to Divine displeasure, and not particularly wise to have a holiday (for such it was in general) at the very time when people ought to be working hardest to produce all they can to make up for the loss. Let people save and curtail their enjoyments as much as they please; that’s a very different thing, and a thing which I hope the good self-humiliating fast-observers will not forget, now the fast is over.

The object of the new education measures is merely to assist schools, by pensioning masters and mistresses in their old age, and assisting clever boys in getting instructed for the business of teaching, and all that the Government require in return is the right of inspection; and any school which declines to receive assistance may refuse to be inspected. The Dissenters are bigoted fools, in my judgment. It is the very least which Government could do.

My Scotch plans are still somewhat uncertain, as the accommodation at Drumnadrochet is dearer and also less comfortable than we had expected.

_To J. C. Shairp, Esq._

March 1847.

Thanks for your letter. I can only say that I have made up my mind against leaving this till my sixth year ends and turns me out.

_To his Sister._

Oriel: May 1847.

You will see that the adorable Swede, Jenny Lind, has enchanted all the world. I greatly rejoice at it, and think I _must_ go and see her. I have promised to go and see Tom at Whitsuntide, and so I dare say I shall do the thing then. Have you seen the lady’s picture? Look and see if you can find a not very beautiful but very pleasant and true-looking face, lithographed.

I have not read ‘Emilia Wyndham,’ but I did read a long time ago ‘Two Old Men’s Tales,’ by the same author, and they certainly were, as I am told ‘Emilia Wyndham’ is, too pathetic a great deal. I don’t want to cry except for some good reason; it is ‘pleasant, but wrong,’ in my mind. A novel ought to make you think, and if it does that, the more vivid it is the better, and of course it follows that now and then it will make you cry; but I am not aware that Mrs. Marsh does make you think.

Schiller made the same impression on me, when I used to read him in St. James’s Terrace, which he does now on you. Coleridge has been to me the antidotive power; he was a philosopher and a firm believer (so far as one can make out) in Christianity, not only as a doctrine, but as a narrative of events. My own feeling certainly does not go along with Coleridge in attributing any special virtue to the facts of the Gospel History. They have happened, and have produced what we know, have transformed the civilisation of Greece and Rome and the barbarism of Gaul and Germany into Christendom. But I cannot feel sure that a man may not have all that is important in Christianity even if he does not so much as know that Jesus of Nazareth existed. And I do not think that doubts respecting the facts related in the Gospels need give us much trouble. Believing that in one way or other the thing is of God, we shall in the end know, perhaps, in what way and how far it was so. Trust in God’s justice and love, and belief in His commands as written in our conscience, stand unshaken, though Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or even St. Paul, were to fall.

The thing which men must work at will not be critical questions about the Scriptures, but philosophical problems of Grace, and Free Will, and of Redemption as an idea, not as a historical event. What is the meaning of ‘Atonement by a crucified Saviour’? _How_ many of the Evangelicals can answer that?

That there may be a meaning in it, which shall not only be consistent with God’s justice, that is, with the voice of our conscience, but shall be the very perfection of that justice, the one true expression of our relations to God, I don’t deny; but I do deny that Mr. M’Neile, or Mr. Close, or Dr. Hook, or Pusey, or Newman himself, quite know what to make of it. The Evangelicals gabble at it, as the Papists do their Ave Marys, and yet say they know; while Newman falls down and worships _because_ he does not know, and knows he does not know.

I think others are more right who say boldly, we don’t understand it, and therefore we won’t fall down and worship it. Though there is no occasion for adding, ‘there is nothing in it,’ I should say, until I know, I will wait, and if I am not born with the power to discover, I will do what I can with what knowledge I have--trust to God’s justice, and neither pretend to know, nor, without knowing, pretend to embrace; nor yet oppose those who, by whatever means, are increasing or trying to increase knowledge. This is not very clear, perhaps, but one can’t correct in letter-writing.

_To the same._

[On hearing of a case of stealing among school-children.]

Oriel: May 31, 1847.

Sad indeed it is to hear of the evil doings of the children; and what you are to do with them, I really can’t say. However I wouldn’t exaggerate either the sin or the evil. With the education (so to call it) that these children get at home, what is to be expected from them? And really in some children pilfering is a matter of mere fancy or habit--a sort of trick, like biting their nails or shaking their legs. Of course, it is necessary they should know that the thing _is_ wrong, and also _why_ it is wrong; the former is not much use without the latter. I am convinced it is very bad for children to be frightened into believing themselves to have done wrong and to be very wicked. But you might easily show them that people can never live with each other in the world without respecting the rules of property; that it would come otherwise to the strongest or the cunningest taking away what other people had earned by their own hard work, and _that_ they would see to be really wicked, whereas they can’t exactly see at present that what they do is so _very_ wrong; you can easily spare the things, and don’t much mind the loss; you are very rich (compared to them) and very kind and liberal; what can it matter?

You must know that a friend of mine (not naturally scrupulous) stole a book from a shop when he was at school, was never found out, has never paid for it in any way, has it on his bookshelf still, and makes no difficulty about his friends knowing how he came by it (not that he did it by way of bravado at all, which is another kind of thing). Well, I don’t think worse of him on the whole for this; I respect him for his present frankness; and though I think he ought to have gone afterwards and told the bookseller, and paid him, yet I don’t think it’s very much matter.

Well, you know better about the way the children and their parents would take it; but, for my own part, I should speak out to them all, tell them what has happened, say that the thing must not go on, you must give up the class if it continues, but that you don’t mean to disgrace any of them for it at present. Explain why stealing cannot be allowed, and why people are wrong in stealing. If you choose, tell them that Elizabeth ---- has confessed, and let her say that she is sorry for it, and sees that it is wrong; and ask those who have done the same to confess, and promise to take care in like manner. Or, if you think this would be too public a disgrace, can’t it be done privately without publishing the names? or you may give the general exhortation without noticing either E---- or the other thefts.