ought to be part of every code of health.
The conduciveness of my habits to longevity may be seen in this. More than forty of my colleagues, all far more likely to live than myself, have long been dead. Had I been as strong as they, I also should have died as they did. Lacking their power of hastening to the end, I have lingered behind.
For the rest—
The principles and aims of earlier years are confirmed by experience at 88. Principles are like plants and flowers. They suit only those whom they nourish. Nothing is adapted to everybody.
Goethe said: "When I was a youth I planted a cherry-tree, and watched its growth with delight. Spring frost killed the blossoms, and I had to wait another year before the cherries were ripe—then the birds ate them—another year the caterpillars ate them—another year a greedy neighbour stole them—another year the blight withered them. Nevertheless, when I have a garden again, I shall plant another cherry-tree." My years now are "dwindling to their shortest span "; if I should have my days over again, I shall plant my trees again—certain that if they do grow they will yield verdure and fruit in some of the barren places of this world.
My first public discussion in London was with Mr. Passmore Edwards—personally, the handsomest adversary I ever met. A mass of wavy black hair and pleasant expression made him picturesque. He was slim, alert, and fervid. The subject of debate was the famous delineation of the Bottle, by George Cruikshank, which I regarded as a libel on the wholesome virtue of Temperance. Exaggerations which inform and do not deceive, as American humour, or Swift's Lilliputians, Aztecs, and giants of Brobdingnag, have instruction and amusement. The exaggeration intended to deride and intimidate those who observe moderation is a hurtful and misleading extreme. Mr. Edwards took the opposite view. Cruikshank could not be moderate, and he did right to adopt the rule of absolute abstinence. It was his only salvation. To every man or woman of the Cruikshank tendency I would preach the same doctrine. To all others I, as fervently, commend the habit of use without abuse. Without that power no man would live a month. Had Mr. Edwards been of this way of thinking, there had been no debate between us.
Mr. Edwards had much reason on his side. Mankind are historically regarded as possessing insufficiency of brains, and it is bad economics to put an incorrigible thief into their mouths to steal away what brains they have.
I had respect for Mr. Edwards' side of the argument. For when a man makes a fool of himself, or fails to keep an engagement, or departs, in his behaviour from his best manner—through drink—he should take the next train to the safe and serene land of Abstinence.
The first person who mentioned to me the idea of a halfpenny newspaper was Mr. Passmore Edwards. One night as we were walking down Fleet Street from Temple Bar, when the Bar stood where the Griffin now stands, Mr. Edwards asked me, as I had had experience in the publishing trade whether I thought a halfpenny newspaper would pay, which evidently had for some time occupied his mind. The chief difficulty I foresaw was, would newsagents give it a chance? It afterwards cost the house of Cassells'—the first to make the experiment—many thousands. The Workman, in which I had a department, was intended, I was told, to be a forerunner of the halfpenny paper. But that title would never do, as I ventured to predict. Workmen, as a rule with no partnership in profits, had enough of work without buying a paper about it. Tradesmen, middle-class and others, did not want to be taken for workmen, and the Workman was discontinued. But, strange to say, the same paper issued under the title of Work became successful Everybody was interested in work but not in being workmen. Such are the subtleties of titles! Their right choice—is it art or instinct? The Echo was the name fixed upon for the first halfpenny paper. Echo of what? was not indicated. It excluded expectations of originality. Probably curiosity was the charm. It committed no one to any side. There were always more noises about than any one could listen to, and many were glad to hear the most articulate. I wrote articles in the earliest numbers under the editorship of Sir Arthur Arnold.
The House of Allsop, as known to the world of progress in the last century, is ended. The first who gave it public interest was Thomas AIlsop, who assisted Robert Owen in 1832 in the Gray's Inn Lane Labour Exchanges. He was a watchful assistant of those who contributed to the public service without expecting or receiving requital. His admiration of genius always took the form of a gift—a rare but encouraging form of applause. Serjeant Talfourd somewhere bears testimony to the generous assistance Mr. AIlsop rendered to Hazlitt, Lamb, and Coleridge. To Lamb, he continually sent gifts, and Coleridge dined at his table every Sunday for nineteen years. Landor, who had always nobility of character, and was an impulsive writer—represented Mr. Allsop's interest in European freedom as proceeding from "vanity," forgetful of his own letter to Jessie Meriton White, offering £100 to any assassin of Napoleon III.; and John Forster preserves Landor's remark upon Mr. Allsop, but does not, so far as I remember, give Landor's Assassin Letter. The fact was, no man less sought publicity or disliked it more than Mr. Allsop. When Feargus O'Connor was elected member for Nottingham, Mr. Allsop qualified him by conferring upon him lands bringing an income of £300. He divided his Lincoln estate into allotments for working men, but he never mentioned these things himself. His son Robert held his father's intellectual views. His eldest son Thomas, who was class-mate with Mr. Dixon Galpin at Queenwood, a considerable landowner in British Columbia, was the philosopher of the family, and like Archbishop Whately, had a power of stating them with ever apt and ready illustrations.
They were like Mr. Owen, Conservative in politics; but in social and mental matters they were intrepid in welcoming new truth. It was at Thomas's suggestion that I omitted his father's name altogether in my chapter, "Mr. Secretary Walpole and the Jacobin's Friend."* Landor was quite wrong, there was no "vanity" in the Allsop family. Were Thomas Allsop the younger now living I should not write these paragraphs. As it is, I may say that I owed to his generosity an annuity of £100. He commenced it by a subscription of £200, and by Mr. Robert Applegarth's friendly secretaryship, which had devotion and inspiration in it, a committee to which the Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker, with his intrepid tolerance, gave his name, was formed, and an annuity of £100 was purchased for me.
When the Taxes on Knowledge were repealed, Mr. Collet and I attempted to procure the repeal of the Passenger Tax on Railways. For forty years after the imposition of the tax of Lord Halford, 1832, the workman was taxed who went in search of an employer. When a poor sailor, arriving in London after a long voyage, desired to visit his poor mother in Glasgow, the Government added to his fare a tax of three shillings, to encourage him in filial affection. In the interests of locomotion and trade, two or three associations had attempted to get this pernicious tax repealed, without success. It was remarked in Parliament in 1877 that no committee representing the working class asked for the repeal of this discreditable impost, which most concerned them. This was the reason of the formation of the Travelling Tax Abolition Committee, of which Mr. Collet became secretary and I the chairman. We were assisted by an influential committee of civic and industrial leaders. After six years' agitation we were mainly instrumental (that was in Mr. Gladstone's days) in obtaining the repeal of the penny a mile tax on all third-class fares, effected by Mr. Childers in 1883, which ever since has put into the pocket of working-class travellers £400,000 a year, besides the improved carriages and improved service the repeal has enabled railway companies to give. We continued the committee many years longer in the hope of freeing the railways wholly from taxation, which still hampers the directors and is obstructive of commerce. I was chairman for twenty-four years, during which time twenty-two of the committee died. Our memorials, interviews with ministers, correspondence with officials, petitions to Parliament, public meetings and various publications, involved a large and incessant amount of work without payment of any kind. Subsequently a committee of publicists, journalists and members of Parliament, for whom Mr. Applegarth was the secretary, caused £80 to be given to me, in recognition of my services. Though it represented less than £4 a year as the salary of the chairman, it was valuable in my eyes from the persons who gave it, as they were not the persons much benefited by the work done, and who really taxed themselves on behalf of others. A subscription of a halfpenny each from the working-class travellers who had profited by the repeal would have amounted to a handsome acknowledgment. But from them it was impossible to collect it. Testimonials, I believe, are often given by persons who generously subscribe for others upon whom the obligation of making it more properly rests.
It would seem insensibility or ingratitude not to record, that on my eightieth birthday—now eight years ago—I was entertained at a numerously attended dinner party in the National Liberal Club, at which to my gratification, Mr. Walter Morrison presided. The speakers, and distinction of many in the assembly, were a surprise, transcending all I had foreseen. The words of Mr. Morrison's speech, to use Tennyson's words, were like
in my memory.
On my eighty-sixth birthday a reception was given me by the Ethical Society of South Place Chapel, Finsbury—the oldest Free Thought temple in London, where the duty of free inquiry was first proclaimed by W. J. Fox. The place was filled with faces familiar and unfamiliar, from near and far, of artists, poets, publicists, journalists, philosophers, as at the National Liberal Club, but in greater numbers. Lady Florence Dixie purchased a large and costly oil painting,* and sent it for me to present to the Library of the Rationalist Press Association. Among the letters sent was one, the last sent to a public meeting, by Herbert Spencer. The reader will pardon the pride I have in quoting it.
Writing from 5, Percival Terrace, Brighton, March 28, 1903, Mr. Spencer said: "I have not been out of doors since last August, and as Mr. Holyoake knows, it is impossible for me to join in the Reception to be given to him on the occasion of his eighty-sixth birthday. I can do nothing more than express my warm feeling of concurrence. Not dwelling upon his intellectual capacity, which is high, I would emphasise my appreciation of his courage, sincerity, truthfulness, philanthropy, and unwearied perseverance. Such a combination of these qualities, it will, I think, be difficult to find."
For a period I had the opportunity accorded me of editing a daily newspaper—The Sun. The Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker had been my predecessor. I was left at liberty to say whatever I pleased, and I did. In one week I wrote twenty-nine articles.
But opulent opportunity of working was afforded me. As I was paid ten times as much as I had received before, I thought myself in a paradise of journalism.
In the correspondence of Robert Owen, now in possession of the Co-operative Union Memorial Committee, Manchester, is the following letter from his customary legal adviser, who then resided at Hornsey.
After breakfast Mr. Owen walked briskly with me into town. He was then eighty-two. On his way he explained to me that, when walking as often had done from Birmingham to Worcester, or from Huddersfield to Sheffield—to lecture, I should find it an advantage to use the horse road, as on the footpath there is more unevenness and necessity of deviation to allow persons to pass, which increases the fatigue of a day on foot. So thoughtful and practical was the reputed visionary.
Of letters on public affairs I confine myself to three instances. When the South Kensington Exhibitions were in force, more than twenty thousand visitors a day thronged the Exhibition Road. Mothers with their children had to cross the wide Museum Road, where policemen, stationed to protect the passengers, had enough to do to keep their own toes on their feet, in the undivided traffic of cabs. I wrote to the Times suggesting that a lamp should be erected in the middle of the wide road serving as a light, a retreat, and a division of traffic. All the cabmen who could write protested against the danger, or the necessity, and possibility of the proposal. But it was done, to the great joy of mothers and advantage to the public.
After the fall of the French Assassin at Sedan when Marshal Bazaine was hanging about Europe in obscurity and ignominy, Mr. Arthur Arnold proposed that he should be invited to a banquet in London. Seeing that the citizens of Paris went out at night in bands of twenty or thirty heroically to help to raise the siege—on what ground could we offer to honour Bazaine, who with 192,000 soldiers under his command, was afraid to attempt it? I asked the question in the Press, and the proposal, which had a sentiment of chivalry in it to a fallen general, and was commanding some concurrence—went out—like the Marshal—into outer darkness. *****
When public opinion was in the balance respecting the South American War, Mr. Reverdy Johnson and a Copperhead colleague arrived in London and began to do a respectable business in public mystification. From information supplied to me I wrote letters explaining the real nature of that sinister mission, in consequence of which the two emissaries of slavery made tracks for New York.
But of instances, as of other things, there must be an end.
Surely environment is the sister of heredity? Mr. Gladstone once said to me that "The longer he lived the more he thought of heredity." Next to heredity is environment—the moulder of mankind. My first passion was to be a prize-fighter. Nature, however, had not made me that way. I had no animosity of mind, and that form of contest was not to my taste. But prize-fighting was part of the miasma the Napoleonic war had diffused in England. It was in the air; it was the talk of the street "Hammer" Lane, so called from the iron blow he could deliver, was the local hero of the Ring in the Midlands in my youth. He was a courtier of my eldest sister, and created in me a craving for fistic prowess. I fought one small battle, but found that a lame wrist, which has remained permanent, cut me off from any prospect of renown in that pursuit Next, to be a circus jester seemed to me the very king of careers. My idea was to leap into the arena exclaiming:—
"Well, I never! Did you ever? I never did."
"Never did what?" the clown was to ask me, when my reply was to be:—
"I could only disclose that before a Royal Commission"—alluding to a political artifice then coming into vogue in Parliament When a Minister did not know what to say to a popular demand, or found it inconvenient to say it if he did know, he would suggest a Commission to inquire into it, as is done to this day.
Then the clown would demand, "What is the good of a Royal Commission?" when the answer would be: "Every good in the world to a Ministry, for before the Commission agreed as to the answer to be given, the public would forget what the question was." Under this diversion of the audience, no one noticed that no answer was given to the original question put to the jester. Whether I could have succeeded in this walk was never decided. It was found that I lacked the loud, radiant, explosive voice necessary for circus effects, and I ceased to dream of distinction there.
I suppose, like many others who could not well write anything, I thought poetry might be my latent—very latent—faculty. So I began. For all I knew, my genius, if I had any, might lie that way. To "body forth things unknown," which I was told poets did, must be delightful. To "build castles in the air"—as my means did not enable me to pay ground rent—was at least an economical project. So I began with a question, as new Members of Parliament do, until they discover something to say. My first production, which I hoped would be mistaken for a poem, was in the form of a "Question to a Pedestrian":—
The critics said to me, as they said to Keats, to whom I bore no other resemblance, "This sort of thing will never do. It is an imitation of Shenstone, or of one of the Shepherd and Shepherdess School of the Elizabethan era"—of whom I knew nothing. So I was lost to the Muses, who, however, never missed me.
But my career was not ended. I was told there might be an opening for me in criticism, especially of poetry, as there were many persons great in the critical line, who could not write a verse themselves—and yet lived to become a terror to all who could. My first effort in this direction was upon the book of a young poet whom I knew personally. Not venturing upon longer pieces at first, I selected two sonnets—as the author, Emslie Duncan, called them. The opening was very striking, and was thus expressed:—
How natural is the exclamation, I began. The poet invokes the Deity on the threshold of a great surprise. Luther did the same in his famous hymn beginning—
Our sonneteer may be said to have borrowed the exclamation from Luther.* But we have no doubt the exclamation of our poet is purely original. He next demands an interpretation of his vision. It is early morning, though the poet does not mention it (great poets are suggestive, and stoop not to detail). An evasive grey mist spreads everywhere, like the new fiscal policy of the Bentinckian type (then in the air), obscuring the landmarks of long-time safety. Still there is one object visible. The poet's eye in "fine frenzy rolling" sees something. He is not sure of the personality that confronts him, and with agnostic precaution worthy of Huxley, he declines to say what it is—until he knows—and so contents himself with telling the reader it is a "figure" out shrimping. The scene is most impressive. As amateurs say, when they do not understand a picture they are praising, "It grows upon you." So this marvellous sonnet grows upon the
reader. If there be not imagination and profundity here, we do not know where to look for it.
Next our poet returns to town, and in White-chapel meets with the statue of a lady attired only in a blouse. Notwithstanding his astonishment he varies his abjuration, and exclaims—
This is unquestionably very fine. True, there is some contradiction in nudity and attire; but splendid contradiction is an eternal element of poetry. What would Milton's "Paradise Lost" be without it? The reader cannot tell whether the surprise of the poet is at the lady or her drapery. There is no use in asking a great poet what he meant in writing his brilliant lines. If as candid as Browning, he would answer as Browning did, that "he had not the slightest idea what he meant." Nothing remains for us but to congratulate the public on the advent of a new poet who is equally great on subjects of land or sea.
There is a good deal of reviewing done on this principle, and reputations made by this sort of writing as fully without foundation, and I looked forward to further employment.
The editor to whom I sent these primal specimens of my new vocation seemed undecided what to do with them—throw them into his waste-paper basket or submit them to his readers. I assured him I had seen a number of criticisms less restrained than mine, on performances quite as slender as the sonnets I had described. With kindly consideration, lest he might be repressing a rising genius in me, he asked me to give my opinion upon a charming little poem by Longfellow—to commend, as he hoped I could, as a new edition in which he was interested was about to be published.
The object of the poet, I found, was to awaken certain young ladies, whose only fault consisted in getting up late in the morning. The lines addressed to them, if I rightly remember, began thus:—
This verse reminds the readers of Omar Khayyam. Two ideas in it are his, and the terms used are his; but I resisted this temptation to imitate those popular critics, whose aim is not to discover the graces of a new poet, but his plagiarisms, and to show that everybody reproduces the ideas of everybody else, and prove that—
and of old, antediluvian dreams. Disdaining this royal road to critical renown, I commenced by praising the enchanting invocation of the poet, who when the ladies heard it would leap out of bed and dress. I observed that to the reader who did not look below the surface—did not "read between the lines," is the favourite phrase—the poem presented some mysteries of diction. Instead of appearing as the angel in Leigh Hunt's "Abou Ben Adhem" did, who diffused himself in the room like a vision, these peripatetic visitants presented themselves like celestial postmen "knocking at the door." Then why were they out so early themselves? Had they more calls to make than they could well accomplish in the time allowed them? Why were they "in haste"? No wonder mankind lack repose if angels are in a hurry. The Kingdom of the Blest is supposed to be the land of rest Manifestly these morning angels had to be back by a stipulated time, and like a tax-collector could make no second call. Apparently Longfellow's angels are like Mr. Stead's favourite spirit Julia. They are harassed with appointments, commissions, and cares. It is of no use being a spirit if you cannot move about with regal leisureliness, such as was displayed by the first Shah of Persia who visited us. The writer has seen nothing like it in any European monarch. While in the lines now in question supernatural misgivings of angelic perturbation are awakened. But as an example of poetry, irrespective of its meaning and suggestions, every reader will covet a new edition of the American poet, and no library could be complete without a copy upon its shelves.
I had visited the poet at his Cambridge home, and was proud of the opportunity of adding ever so small an addition to the pyramid of regard raised to his memory.
The editor looked dubious on reading this review, and said the higher criticism might be entertaining in theology, but the higher criticism of poetry, which dealt with its meaning, was a different thing and might not be well taken. In vain I suggested that a poet ought to mean something, as Byron did, whose fascination is still real, and there was pathos and beauty, tragedy, tenderness and courtesy enough in the world to employ more poets than we have on hand. I received no more commissions in the way of criticisms, and had to think of some other vocation.
Some of the happiest evenings of younger days were spent in the rooms of university students. It was pleasant to be near persons who dwelt in the kingdom of knowledge, who could wander at will on the mountain tops of science and literature, and have glimpses of unknown lands of light which I might never see. Who has seen London under the reign of the sun, after a sullen, fitful season, knows how wondrous is the transformation. Like the sheen of the gods the glittering rays descend, dispelling and absorbing the sombre clouds. A radiance rests on turret and roof. Then hidden creatures that crawl or fly come forth and put on golden tints. The cheerless poor emerge from their fireless chambers with the grateful emotions of sun worshippers.
How like is all this to the change which comes over the realm of ignorance! Light does not change vegetation more than the light of knowledge changes the realm of the mind. The thirsty crevices of thought drink in, as it were, the refreshing beams. Once conscious of the liberty and power which comes of knowing—ignorance itself becomes eager, impatient—covetous of information. Faculties unsuspected disclose themselves. Qualities undreamed-of appear. So it came to be my choice to enter the field of instruction. It seemed to me a great thing to endow any, however few, in any way, however humble, with the cheeriness and strength of ideas. True, I began to teach what I did not know—or knew but partially—yet not without personal advantage, since no one knows anything well until he has tried to teach it to another. The dullest pupil will make his master sensible of defects in his own explanation. Formerly, the dulness of a learner was supposed to discover the necessity of a cane, whereas all it proved was incapacity or unwillingness to take trouble—on the part of the teacher. The result was that I wrote several elementary books of instruction. All owed their existence, or whatever success attended them, to the experience of the class-room.
All things have an end, as many observant people know, and before long I turned my attention to journalism. I had read somewhere a saying of Aristotle—"Now I mean to speak conformably to the truth." That seems every man's duty—if he speaks at all. Anyhow, Aristotle's words appeared to constitute a good rule for a journalist I had never heard or never heeded the injunction of Byron:—
The Aristotelian rule I had adopted soon brought me into difficulties, probably from want of skill in applying it. It was in propagandist journalism that I had ventured, which I mention for the purpose of saying that it is not, as many suppose, a profitable profession. It is excellent discipline, but it is not thought much of by your banker. Its securities are never saleable on the Stock Exchange. Nevertheless, the Press has its undying attraction. It is the fame-maker. Without it noble words, as well as noble deeds, would die. Day by day there descend from the Press ideas in fertilising showers, falling on the parched and arid plains of life, which in due season become verdant and variegated. Difficulties try men's souls, but true ideas expand them. And they have done so. Literature is a much brighter thing than it was when I first began to meddle or "muddle" in it, as Lord Salisbury would say.
Nothing was thought classical then that was not dull No definition of importance was found to be utterly unintelligible until a University man had explained it. All is different now—let us hope.
Instances of the progress of literary opinion are perhaps more instructive and better worth remembering. In 1850, when George Henry Lewes and Thornton Hunt included my name in their published list of contributors to the Leader, it cost the proprietors, I had reason to know, £2,000. It set the Rev. Dr. Jelf, of King's College, on fire, and caused an orthodox spasm of a serious kind in Charles Kingsley and Professor Maurice, as witness their letters of that day.
One journal projected by me in 1850 is still v issued—Public Opinion. Mr. W. H. Ashurst asked me to devise a paper I thought the most needed. As Peel had said, "England was governed by opinion," I suggested that this opinion should be collected. I wrote the prospectus of the new journal, specifying that each article quoted should be prefixed by a few words, within brackets, setting forth what principles, party, or interest it represented—whether English or foreign. Mr. Ashurst put the prospectus into the hands of Robert Buchanan, father of the late Robert Buchanan, and the earlier issues followed the plan I had defined. The object was to collect intelligent and responsible opinion.
In 1866 the Contemporary Review announced that it would "represent the best minds of the time on all contemporary questions, free from narrowness, bigotry, and sectarianism." It professed "to represent those who are not afraid of modern thought, in its varied aspects and demands, and scorn to defend their faith by mere reticence, or by the artifices commonly acquiesced in." This manifesto of 1866 far surpassed in liberality any profession then known in the evangelical world. It was at the time a bold pronouncement. When it is considered that Samuel Morley was the most influential of the supporters of the Contemporary, it shows that intellectual Nonconformity was abreast of the age—as Nonconformity never was before.
In 1877 I was taken by Thomas Woolner, the sculptor, to dine at Mr. Alfred Tennyson's (Lord Tennyson later). I believe my invitation was owing to Mrs. Tennyson's desire to make inquiries of me concerning the advantages of Co-operation in rural districts, in which, like the Countess of Warwick, she was interested. The Poet Laureate gave me a glass of sack, the royal beverage of poets, of more exquisite flavour than I had tasted before. I did not wonder that it was conducive to noble verse—where the faculty of it was present Mr. Knowles, now Sir James, founder of the Nineteenth Century and After, was of the party, and the new review—then projected—being mentioned, it came to pass that my name was put down among possible contributors. The Nineteenth Century proposed to go further, and include a still wider range of subjects, with free discussion on personal responsibility. Its prospectus said "it would go on lines absolutely impartial and unsectarian." The Prefatory Poem, written by Tennyson twenty-seven years ago, which may not be in the memory of many now, was this:—
Tennyson, with all his genius, never quite emerged from the theologic caves of the conventicle. The sea of pure reason he took to be "the sea of Death." Doubt was a "sunless gulf." He did not know that "Doubt" is a translucent valley, where the light of Truth first reveals the deformities of error—hidden by theological mists. The line containing the words "wilder comrades" was understood to include me. Out of the "One Hundred Contributors," whose names were published in the Athenæum (February 10, 1877), there were only-six:—Professor Huxley, Professor Tyndall, Professor Clifford, George Henry Lewes, myself, and possibly Frederic Harrison, to whom the phrase could apply. If the remaining ninety-four had any insurgency of opinion in them, it was not then apparent to the public, who are prone to prefer a vacuum to an insurgent idea. New ideas of moment have always been on hand in the Nineteenth if not of the "wilder" kind.
After issuing fifty volumes of the Nineteenth Century Review, the editor published a list of all his contributors, with the titles of the articles written by them, introduced by these brief but memorable words:—
"More than a quarter of a century's experience has sufficiently tested the practical efficacy of the principle upon which the Nineteenth Century was founded, of free public discussion by writers invariably signing their own names.
"The success which has attended and continues to attend the faithful adherence to this principle, proves that it is not only right but acceptable, and warrants the hope that it may extend its influence over periodical literature, until unsigned contributions become quite exceptional.
"No man can make an anonymous speech with his tongue, and no brave man should desire to make one with his pen, but, having the courage of his opinions, should be ready to face personally all the consequences of all his utterances. Anonymous letters are everywhere justly discredited in private life, and the tone of public life would be raised in proportion to the disappearance of their equivalent—anonymous articles—from public controversy."
Than the foregoing, I know of no more admirable argument against anonymity in literature. There is nothing more unfair in controversy than permitting writers, wearing a mask, to attack or make replies to those who give their names—being thereby enabled to be accusative or imputative without responsibility. There is, of course another side to this question. Persons of superior and relevant information, unwilling to appear personally, are thereby excluded from a hearing—which is so far a public loss.
But this evil is small compared with the vividness and care which would be exercised if every writer felt that his reputation went with the work which bore his name. Besides, how much slovenly thinking, which is slovenly expressed—vexing the public ear and depraving the taste and understanding of the reader—would never appear if the writer had to append his signature to his production? Of course, there is good writing done anonymously, but power and originality, if present, are never rewarded by fame, and no one knows who to thank for the light and pleasure nameless writers have given. The example of the Nineteenth Century and After is a public advantage.
More than acquaintanceship, I had affectionate regard for George Henry Lewes and George Eliot. Lewes included me in the public list of writers and contributors to the Leader—the first recognition of the kind I received, and being accorded when I had only an outcast name, both in law and literature, I have never ceased to prize it.
George Eliot's friendship, on other grounds I have had reason to value, and when I found a vacant place at the head of their graves which lie side by side, I bought it, that my ashes should repose there, should I die in England.
On occasions which arose, I had vindicated both, as I knew well the personal circumstances of their lives. When in America I found statements made concerning them which no editor of honour should have published without knowledge of the facts upon which they purported to be founded, nor should he have given publicity to dishonouring statements without the signature of a known and responsible person. On the first opportunity I spoke with Lewes's eldest son, and asked authority to contradict them. He thought the calumnies beneath contempt, that they sprang up in theological soil and that they would wither of themselves, if not fertilised by disturbance. I know of no instance of purity and generosity greater than that displayed by George Eliot in her relation with Mr. Lewes. Edgar Allan Poe was subject to graver defamation, widely believed for years, which was afterwards shown to be entirely devoid of truth. George Eliot's personal reputation will hereafter be seen to be just and luminous.
For myself, I never could see what conventional opinion had to do with a personal union founded in affection, by which nobody was wronged, nobody distressed, and in which protection was accorded and generous provision made for the present and future interest of every one concerned. Conventional opinion, not even in its ethical aspects, could establish higher relations than existed in their case. There are thousands of marriages tolerated conventionally and ecclesiastically approved, in every way less estimable and less honourable than the distinguished union, upon which society without justification affected to frown.
Interest in social and political liberty was an abiding feature in George Eliot's mind. When Garibaldi was at the Crystal Palace, she asked me to sit by her and elucidate incidents which arose.
On the publication of my first volume of the History of Co-operation, I received the following letter from Mr. Lewes:—
The second volume of the work mentioned supplied to her the details she wished.
In 1877 I visited New Lanark and saw the stately rooms built by Robert Owen, of which I sent an account to the Times. The most complete appliances of instruction known in Europe down to 1820 are all there, as in Mr. Owen's days. A description of them may be read in the second volume of the "History of Co-operation" referred to. When George Eliot saw the letter she said, "the thought of the Ruins of Education there described filled her with sadness." I made an offer to buy the neglected and decaying relics, which was declined. I wrote to Lord Playfair, whose influence might procure the purchase. I endeavoured to induce the South Kensington Museum authorities to secure them for the benefit of educationists, but they had no funds to use for that purpose.
Some women, not distinguished for personal beauty when young, become handsome and queenly later in life. This was so with Harriet Martineau. George Eliot did not come up to Herbert Spencer's conception of personal charm. One day when she was living at Godstone, she drove to the station to meet Mr. Lewes. He and I were travelling together at the time, and he caused the train to be delayed a few minutes that I might go down into the valley to meet his wife. I had not seen George Eliot for some years, and was astonished at the stately grace she had acquired.
One who knew how to state a principle describes the characteristic conviction of George Eliot, from which she never departed, and which had abiding interest for me.
"She held as a solemn conviction—the result of a lifetime of observation—that in proportion as the thoughts of men and women are removed from the earth on which they live, are diverted from their own mutual relations and responsibilities, of which they alone know anything, to an invisible world, which can alone be apprehended by belief, they are led to neglect their duty to each other, to squander their strength in vain speculations, which can result in no profit to themselves or their fellow-creatures, which diminish their capacity for strenuous and worthy action during a span of life, brief, indeed, but whose consequences will extend to remote posterity."*