For myself, I was neither priest nor confessor. Had I been, I should have felt it presumption to attempt to confirm one better able to teach me than I was to teach her. All I said was: "It is certainly a moral relief not to hold the cardinal Christian tenets of faith, as so many preachers speaking, as they assume to do, in the name of God, explain them. To act according to conscience and speak according to knowledge, never ceasing to consider what we can do for the service of others, is the one duty which a future life, if it comes, will not contradict."
Though no one was so well able as herself to write her biography, it was not in her mind to do it, and she wrote to me to give her the names of persons I thought might undertake it. I named three: Charles Knight, who knew more of her life than any one else, eligible to write it; next Francis William Newman, who, being a many-sided thinker, and largely coinciding with her views, could justly estimate her earlier and later convictions. The third was Mr. H. G. Atkinson, who was entirely conversant with her convictions and career, but who declined with expressions of diffidence, though I urged him to undertake the work. At length she did it herself, in a way which showed no one else could have done it so well. She left instructions in her will that I should receive a copy of her Autobiography, which appeared in three volumes, and came to me (February 28, 1877) from Mr. Thomas Martineau, one of her executors.
No autobiography produced in its day a greater impression. The treatment Miss Martineau had received from eminent adversaries astonished a generation in which greater controversial fairness had come to prevail. The friends of those who had assailed her felt some consternation at the imperishable descriptions of their conduct, which would never cease to be associated with their names, and they made public attempts to explain the facts away.
Her mind was photographic in other respects. She saw social facts and their influences, their nature and sequences, with a vividness no other writer of her day did. Her charming romance, the "Feats of the Fiord" impressed Norwegians with the belief that she was personally familiar with the country, where she had never been. There was "caller" air in the pages which made the reader hungry.
The autobiography contains a small gallery of statues of contemporaries, of note in their time, sculptured from life, as perfect in their way as Grecian statues. Their excellencies are generously portrayed for admiration, and their defects described for the guidance of survivors. Not like the false eulogies of the dead, which, by pretending perfection, lie to the living, where silence on errors or deficiencies are of the nature of deceit, and sure to be resented when the truth comes to be known. Only that admiration is lasting which is fully informed.
No character of Lord Brougham so striking and true as hers, has ever been drawn. Eminent biographers and critics, including Carlyle, have delineated him, but her portrait—drawn twenty years before theirs appeared—Professor Masson assured me her character of Brougham was the most perfect of all.
Her two-sided estimate gave discomfort to those content with obliqueness in knowledge, but those who have the impartial instinct seek reality, by which no one is deceived. The light and shade of character, like the light and shade of a painting, alone give distinctiveness and truth. But whoever delineates so must suffer no distorting tints of pique, or spite, or prejudice on his palate.
Miss Martineau entered into a correspondence on "Man's Nature and Development," with Mr. Henry G. Atkinson, which, when published, was reviewed by her brother, Dr. James Martineau, in the Prospective Review No. xxvi., Art 4, for which he selected the offensive and ignorant title of "Mesmeric Atheism." It was misleading, because mesmerism has no theology. It was ignorant, because neither Mr. Atkinson nor Dr. Martineau's sister were Atheists. Their disavowal of Atheism was in the book before him.
If the reader is curious to know what really were the opinions of these two distinguished offenders (H. Martineau and H. G. Atkinson), I recite them. In the book Dr. Martineau reviewed, Mr. Atkinson said:—
"I am far from being an Atheist I do not say there is no God, but that it is extravagant and irreverent to imagine that cause a Person."
Miss Martineau herself writes in the same series of letters:—
"There is no theory of a God, of an author of Nature, of an origin of the universe, which is not utterly repugnant to my faculties; which is not (to my feelings) so irreverent as to make me blush; so misleading as to make me mourn."
Yet Dr. Martineau wrote of his sister and her friend in terms which seemed, to the public, of studied insult and disparagement, which, in educated society, would be called brutal. It was merely spiritual malignity, of which I had in former years sufficient experience to render me a connoisseur in it.
All the while Dr. Martineau had heresies of his own to answer for, yet he wrote words of his sister which no woman of self-respect could condone, unless withdrawn. During her long illness of twenty years Dr. Martineau, her brother, never wrote to her nor addressed one word of sympathy to one who had loved him so well. He had told the world that the "subtle, all-penetrating spirit of Christ has an inspiring nobleness philosophy cannot reach, nor science, nor nature impart." Then how came Dr. Martineau to miss it? The nobleness of mind of his illustrious sister all the world knew—before the world knew him—and Mr. Atkinson was a gentleman of as pure a life and of as good a position in society as Dr. Martineau himself. O Theology, into what crookedness dost thou twist the straightest minds! I have seen in a "Life of Dr. Martineau" that Professor Newman assented to what Dr. Martineau wrote of his sister. This fact I ought not to withhold from the reader.
But Mr. Newman only knew what Dr. Martineau told him.
Mr. Atkinson was the son of a London architect who left him an income which enabled him to devote himself to philosophy, which was his taste. He was personally conversant, as visitor or guest, with a wide range of distinguished thinkers and writers of his time. He was full of curious knowledge and notable sayings gathered in that opportune intercourse. With a mind devoid of prejudice, he looked on scientific discoveries as a veteran and seasoned spectator. No new idea surprised him, no expression of thoughtful opinion awakened in him resentment. He cared only for truth, in whatever form or quarter it appeared. He had none of the indifference of the arm-chair philosopher, but aided struggling opinion to assert itself. Once I was his guest in Boulogne. To my surprise I was the only passenger in the packet boat The quay of Boulogne was deserted. At Hughes's Hotel I was the only guest in the dining-room. On inquiring the reason, I learned that Gilbert a'Beckett had died a few days before of diphtheria, and that Douglas Jerrold had left for England since. Mr. Atkinson, not expecting me, had gone for a day's sea trip to Calais. On his return we spent pleasant hours at a cafe. He had no idea of leaving the hotel where he had rooms. Some years later Mr. Atkinson died in Boulogne, where he had resided many years. Personally he was tall, of good presence and refined manners. He was clean shaven, and might be taken for an Evangelical Bishop. Save a mobile expression, his face was as shadowless as one of Holbein's portraits. The object of his letters to Miss Martineau was to ascertain if there could be found a real basis of a science of mind. The common idea in those days was that mind was a "vital spark" which shone at will—originating without conditions—acting of its own caprice and obeying no law. Only the theological spirit could see harm in this investigation.
Not only fidelity, but chivalry towards her friends was a characteristic of Miss Martineau. When W. J. Linton, for whom I had great regard, as appears in what I have written of him in the "Warpath of Opinion," had become vindictive—because I had obtained 9,000 shillings for European Freedom from readers of the Reasoner at the request of Mazzini, Mr. Linton—equally desirous and equally devoted, had not succeeded—wrote to the Liberator of New York, edited by Lloyd Garrison, assailing me politically and personally, whereupon Miss Martineau sent to the Liberator the following generous letter—which, though it be counted egotism in me to cite, I accept the risk, since such friendship was without parallel in my experience:—
"Dear Sir,—I see with much surprise and more concern an attack in your paper upon the character of Mr. G. J. Holyoake, signed by Mr. W. J. Linton. I could have wished, with others of your readers, that you had waited for some evidence, or other testimony, before committing your most respected paper to an attack on such a man from such a quarter. Of Mr. Linton it is not necessary for me to say anything, because what I say of Mr. Holyoake will sufficiently show what I think of his testimony.
"I wish I could give you an idea of the absurdity that it appears to us in this country to charge Mr. Holyoake with sneaking, with desiring to conceal his opinions, and get rid of the word 'Atheism.' His whole life, since he grew up, has been one of public advocacy of the principles he holds, of weekly publication of them under his own signature, and of constant lecturing in public places. One would think that a man who has been tried and imprisoned for Atheism, and has ever since continued to publish the opinions which brought him into that position, might be secure, if any man might, from the charge of sneaking. The adoption of the term Secularism is justified by its including a large number of persons who are not Atheists, and uniting them for action which has Secularism for its object, and not Atheism. On this ground, and because by the adoption of a new term a vast amount of impediment from prejudice is got rid of, the use of the name Secularism is found advantageous; but it in no way interferes with Mr. Holyoake's profession of his own unaltered views on the subject of a First Cause. As I am writing this letter, I may just say for myself that I constantly and eagerly read Mr. Holyoake's writings, though many of them are on subjects—or occupied with stages of subjects—that would not otherwise detain me, because I find myself always morally the better for the influence of the noble spirit of the man, for the calm courage, the composed temper, the genuine liberality, and unintermitting justice with which he treats all manner of persons, incidents, and topics. I certainly consider the conspicuous example of Mr. Holyoake's kind of heroism to be one of our popular educational advantages at this time.
"You have printed Mr. Linton's account of Mr. Holyoake. I request you to print mine. I send it simply as an act of justice. My own acquaintance with Mr. Holyoake is on the ground of his public usefulness, based on his private virtues; and I can have no other reason for vindicating him than a desire that a cruel wrong should be as far as possible undone. And I do it myself because I am known to your readers as an Abolitionist of sufficiently long standing not to be likely to be deceived in regard to the conduct and character of any one who speaks on the subject,
"I am, yours very respectfully,
"Harriet Martineau.
"London, November 1, 1855."
Born June 12, 1802, at Norwich, she died June 27, 1876, at Ambleside. In 1832, when she was twenty-eight, Lucy Atkin wrote to tell Dr. Channing that "a great light had arisen among women," which shone for forty-four years. When she was a young woman, Lord Melbourne offered her a pension, which she declined on the ground that a Government which did not represent the people had no right to give away their money—an act of integrity so infrequent as to be always fresh. In her case it explains a career.
Two of the greatest women in Europe, George Sand and Harriet Martineau, of nearly equal age, died within a few weeks of each other. "Passed away" is the phrase now employed, as though the writer knew that a journey was intended, and was in progress, whereas as Barry Cornwall wrote:—
Mrs. Fenwick Miller relates that Miss Martineau began writing for the Press, like the famous novelist mentioned, under a man's name, "Deciphalus." Once when at Mr. W. E. Forster's, at Burley, it fell to me to take Mrs. Forster down to dinner. Being in doubt as to what was etiquette in such cases, preferring to be thought uncouth than familiar, I did not offer my hostess my arm. Afterwards I asked Miss Martineau what I might have done. She answered that "a guest was an equal, and any act of courtesy permissible in him was permissible in me," but in better terms than I can invent. Recurring to the subject at another time, she said, "I was well pleased at your consulting me as you did. It would save a world of trouble and doubt and energy, if we all asked one another what the other is qualified to tell. I, who have to be economical of energy and time, always do it. I ask, point blank, what it is important for me to know, from any one who can best tell me, and I like to be inquired of in the same way. I hope no guest will feel puzzled in my house, but ask, and what I can answer I will." The readiness with which she placed her wisdom at the service of her friends might have given Matthew Arnold (as she was a frequent visitor at Fox Howe) his idea of "Sweetness and Light."
Greater than the difficulty of deafness was the fact that Miss Martineau wrote on the side of Liberalism. Tory writers dipped their pens in the best preparation of venom sold by Conservative chemists. The Church and King party, which burnt down Dr. Priestley's house, soon discovered that Miss Martineau was guilty of the further crime of being a Unitarian. Nevertheless, she abandoned no principle, nor apologised for maintaining what she believed to be true. Spinoza, as Renan has told us, gave great offence to his adversaries by the integrity of his life, as it did not give them a fair opportunity of attacking him, for the enormity of his conduct in believing less than they believed. This was the case with Harriet Martineau, who had said in one of her books, "A parent has a considerable influence over the subsistence fund of his family, and an absolute control over the numbers to be supported by that fund." The Quarterly Review, "written by gentlemen for gentlemen," added, "We venture to ask this maiden sage the meaning of this passage." Why not ask the Rev. Thomas Maithus, whose words Miss Martineau merely repeated? All that was meant was "deferred marriages." The reviewer put an obscene construction upon it, and imputed to her his own malignant inference. This was a common rascality of logic alike in theology and politics in those days.
The intrepid authoress happened to believe there was some truth in mesmerism. Dr. Elliotson, who thought so too, told me that his temerity that way cost him £7,000 a year in fees. This mesmeric episode brought the doctors upon the poor lady, who never forgave her being alive when they said she ought to be dead. Eminent physicians predicted that she would sink down in six months. When, instead of sinking down, she rode on a camel to Mount Sinai and Petra, and on horseback to Damascus, they said "she had never been ill!"
She had the unusual capacity which the gods only are said to give—that of seeing herself as others saw her. She saw her own life and intellectual power in its strength and in its limitation, as though she stood away from them and looked at them; she saw them, as it were, palpable and apart from herself. Of imagination, which sheds sunshine over style, she had little. Her pictures were etchings rather than paintings. Her strength lay in directness of expression and practical thought She saw social facts and their influences, their nature and sequences, with a vividness no other writer of her day did. When she had completed the translation of Comte's "Positive Philosophy," she placed at my disposal twenty-five copies to give to persons unable to buy them, but able to profit by them; and to extend the knowledge of its principles. She offered me the publication of an edition of "Household Education." No book like it had been written before, and none since. Four hundred copies were sold by my arrangement. The book was mainly intended for women. The review of it for the Reasoner* was written by my wife, as I advocated that women should take their own affairs in the press into their own hands, and give their own opinion on what concerned them. Miss Martineau's object in writing "Household Education" was, she told me, "to indicate that, in her opinion, education should be on a philosophical basis," adding: "I should see the great point of it is ignoring rank in so important a matter as the development of human beings. It was written for Buckingham Palace and the humblest cottage where life is decently conducted." Miss Martineau lived twenty-two years after receiving prognostications of early decease. Had she not been a woman of courage she would have died, as was suggested to her. She understood that she must accept new conditions of life. She had a bed made in a railway carriage, and went down with her maids to Ambleside, and never left her house except to take air and get the relief which the smoking of a cigarette gave her, as she sat on summer evenings just outside the open windows of her sitting-room. She might have given herself greater liberty, for she did not die of heart ailment after all.
As I have seen in women of thought, Harriet Martineau, like George Eliot, grew handsomer as she grew older, and acquired that queenly dignity, such as is seen in George Richmond's painting of Miss Martineau in mature years.
She devoted all her diversified genius to inspire public affairs with loftier aims and persistent purpose. She was one of those Christians mentioned by Shakespeare who "mean to be saved by believing rightly."* Harriet Martineau did, and these words of Flavius might be her epitaph.
In one of the last conversations I had the pleasure to hold with Mr. Gladstone, I referred to the "three Newmans" and their divergent careers. He said he never knew there were "three." He knew John Henry, the Cardinal (as he afterwards became), at Oxford. He knew Francis William there, who had repute for great attainments, retirement of manner, and high character; but had never heard there was a third brother, and was much interested in what I had to tell him. The articles of Charles Newman I published in the Reasoner, and their republication by the late J. W. Wheeler, were little known to the general public, who will probably hear of them now for the first time.
Though I name "three Newmans," this chapter relates chiefly to the one I best knew, Francis William, known as Professor Newman. The eldest of the three was John Henry, the famous Cardinal. The third brother, Charles, was a propagandist of insurgent opinion. Francis was a pure Theist, John was a Roman Catholic, and Charles a Naturist, and nothing besides; he would be classed as an Agnostic now. Francis William was the handsomest He had classical features, a placid, clear, and confident voice, and an impressive smile which lighted up all his face. John Henry manifested in his youth the dominancy of the ecclesiastic, and lived in a priestly world of his own creation, in which this life was overshadowed by the terrors of another unknown. Francis believed in one sole God—not the head of a firm. His Theism was of such intense, unquestioning devotion, of such passionate confidence, as was seen in Mazzini and Theodore Parker, of America. Voltaire and Thomas Paine were not more determined Theists. In all else, Francis was human. Charles believed in Nature and nothing more. In sending me papers to print in the Reasoner on "Causation in the Universe," he would at times say, "My mind is leaving me, and when it returns a few months hence, I will send you a further paper." Like Charles Lamb's poor sister, Mary, who used to put her strait waistcoat in her basket and go herself to the asylum, when she knew the days of her aberration were approaching, Charles Newman had premonition of a like kind. He had the thoroughness of thought of his family. The two brothers—the Cardinal and the Professor—united to supply Charles with an income sufficient for his needs. The Cardinal, though he knew Charles' opinions, readily joined.
When some questioning remark on Professor Newman was made incidentally in the House of Commons, in consequence of his uncompromising views, the Cardinal wrote saying that "for his brother's purity he would die," which, considering their extreme divergence of opinion, was very noble in the Cardinal.
Professor Newman, I believe, wrote more books, having regard to their variety and quality, than any other scholar of his time. Science, history, poetry, theology, political economy, mathematics, travel, translations—the Iliad of Homer—among them a Sanscrit dictionary. He wrote many pamphlets and spoke for the humblest societies, regardless of the amazement of his eminent contemporaries and associates. On questions relating to marital morality, he did not hesitate to publish leaflets. I published a series of letters for him in the Reasoner—now some fifty years ago, so we were long acquainted. These earlier communications came to me at a time when the authorities of University College in London, where he was Professor of Latin, were being called upon to consider whether his intellectual Liberalism might deter parents from sending their sons there. But it was bravely held that the University had no cognisance of the personal opinions of any professor. Like Professor Key, Mr. Newman took an open interest in public affairs. Though variedly learned, Professor Newman's style of speech, to whomever addressed by tongue or pen, was fresh, direct, precise, and lucid.
Mr. Newman's quarto volume on Theism, written in metre, is the greatest compendium of Theistical argument published in my time, and until Darwin wrote, no entirely conclusive answer was possible.
Francis Newman had a travelling mind. From the time when I published his "Personal Narrative" of his early missionary experience at Aleppo, he grew, year by year, more rationalistic in his religious judgment. In one of his papers, written in the year of his death, he said: "It may be asked, 'Is Mr. Newman a disciple of Jesus?' I answer, 'Of all nations that I know, that have a religion established by law, I have never seen the equal to what is attributed to Jesus himself. But much is attributed to Him—I disapprove of.' On the whole, if I am asked, 'Do you call yourself a Christian?' I say, in contrast to other religions, 'Yes! I do,' and so far I must call myself a Christian. But if you put upon me the words Disciple of Jesus, meaning the believing all Jesus teaches to be light and truth I cannot say it, and I think His words variously unprovable. Now all disciples, when they come to full age, ought to seek to surpass their masters. Therefore, if Jesus had faults, we, after more than two thousand years' experience, ought to expect to surpass Him, especially when an immense routine of science has been elaborately built up, with a thousand confirmations all beyond the thought of Jesus."
What a progressive order of thought would exist now in the Christian world had Mr. Newman's conception of discipleship prevailed in the Churches!
Mr. Newman's words about myself, occurring in his work on "The Soul," I remember with pride. They were written at a time when I had an ominous reputation among theologians. When residing at Clifton as a professor, Mr. Newman came down to Broadmead Rooms at Bristol, and took the chair at one of my lectures, and spoke words on my behalf which only he could frame. But he was as fearless in his friendship as he was intrepid in his faith. He wrote to me, April 30, 1897, saying: "I appeal to your compassion when I say, that the mere change of opinion on a doubtful fact has perhaps cost me the regard of all who do not know me intimately." The "fact" related to the probability of annihilation at death. He regretted the loss of friendship, but never varied in his lofty fidelity to conscience. Whatever might be his interest in a future life, if it were the will of God not to concede it, he held it to be the duty of one who placed his trust in Him to acquiesce. The spirit of piety never seemed to me nobler, than in this unusual expression of unmurmuring, unpresuming resignation.
His first wife, who was of the persuasion of the Plymouth Brethren, had little sympathy with his boldness and fecundity of thought. Once, when he lived at Park Village, Regent's Park, his friend, Dr. James Martineau, came into the room; she opened the window and stepped out on to the lawn, rather than meet him. Mr. Newman was very tender as to her scruples, but stood by his own. When I visited him, he asked me, from regard to her, to give the name of "Mr. Jacobs"—the name I used when a teacher in Worcester in 1840, where I lectured under my own name and taught under another.
On February 12, 1897, Mr. Newman wrote:—"Mv dear Holyoake,—I am not coming round to you, though many will think I am. On the contrary, I hope you are half coming round to me, but I have no time to talk on these matters." He then asked my advice as to his rights over his own publications, then in the hands of Mr. Frowde, printer, of Oxford; but with such care for the rights of others, such faultless circumspection as to the consequences to others in all he wished done, as to cause me agreeable surprise at the unfailing perspicacity of his mind, his unchanging, scrupulous, and instinctive sense of justice.
He regarded death with the calmness of a philosopher. He wrote to me April 30, 1897: "Only those near me know how I daily realise the near approach of my own death (he was then ninety-three). I grudge every day wasted by things unfinished which remain for me to do." No apprehension, no fear, and he wished I could "appear before him, with a document drawn up," by which he could consign to me the custody of all the works under his control. At the time, as he said, he might "easily be in his grave" before I could accomplish his wishes. He says in another letter that his "wife, like himself, abhorred indebtedness." He provided for the probable cost of everything he wished done. His sense of honour remained as keen as his sense of faith. He was a gentleman first and a Christian afterwards.
Mr. Gladstone told me he was under the impression that he had, in some way unknown to himself, lost the friendship of Mr. Newman, from whom he had not heard for several years; and Mr. Newman was under an impression that Mr. Gladstone's silence was occasioned by disapproval of his published views of the "Errors of Jesus"—an error of assumption respecting Mr. Gladstone into which Mr. Newman might naturally, but not excusably, fall; for Mr. Newman should have known that Mr. Gladstone had a noble tolerance equal to his own, or should personally have tested it, by letter or otherwise, before nurturing an adverse conjecture. I mentioned the matter to Mr. Gladstone, and found Mr. Newman's surmise groundless. At the same time I gave him a copy of Mr. Francis Newman's "Secret Songs" (as one copy given to me was called) which revealed to Mr. Gladstone a devotional spirit he did not, as he said, imagine could co-exist in one whose faith was so divergent to his own.
The following letter, which has autobiographical value, may interest the reader:—
"Norwood Villa, 15, Arundel Crescent,
"Weston-super-Mare.
"March 22, 1893.
"Dear Mr. George Jacob Holyoake,—I had no idea of writing to Mr. Gladstone, yet am glad to hear that you gave him my 'Secret Hymns.' Probably my contrast to my brother, the late Cardinal, always puzzled him. That we were in painful opposition ever since 1820 had never entered his mind, much less that this opposition made it impossible to me to endure living in Oxford, which also would have been my obvious course.
"I did send my 'Paul of Tarsus' to Mr. Gladstone, which partially opened his eyes. For my brother's first pretentious religious book was against the Arians, which I think I read at latest in 1832. Mr. Gladstone has written that my brother's secession to Rome was the greatest loss that the English Church ever suffered. Of what kind was the loss my little book on 'Paul' indirectly states, in pointing out that, as our English New Testament shows, Paul in his own episode plainly originated the doctrine, three centuries later called Arianism, and held by all the Western Church until young Athanasius introduced his new and therefore 'false' doctrine.
My brother, with Paul's epistle open before him, condemned the doctrine of Arian, and did not know that it was the invention of Paul, and thereby prevailed in the whole Western Church. Moreover, I read what I cannot imagine met Mr. Gladstone's eyes, that 'It is not safe to quote any Pre-Athanasian doctrines concerning the Trinity, since the Church had not yet taught them how to express themselves.' After this, could Mr. Gladstone, as a decent scholar, mourn over my brother's loss to the Church? I hope Mr. Gladstone can now afford time to read something of the really early Christianity. He will find the Jerusalem Christianity perishing after the Roman revolt, and supplanted by Pauline fancies (not Christian at all) and by Pauline morality, often better than Christian. To me our modern problem is to eschew Pauline fancies and further to improve on Pauline wisdom.
"But since I have reached the point of being unable to take Human Immortality as a Church axiom, I cannot believe that the problem is above fully stated, or that Christianity deserves to become coetaneous with man's body.
"Perhaps I ought to thank you more, yet I may have said too much.—Yours truly,
"F. W. Newman."
One day as Mr. Newman was leaving my room in Woburn Buildings, he looked round and said: "I did not think there were rooms so large in this place"; and then descending the stairs, as though the familiarity of the remark was more than an impulse, he said: "Do you think you could join with me in teaching the great truth of Theism?" Alas! I had to express my regret that my belief did not lie that way. Highly as I should think, and much as I should value public association with Mr. Newman, I had to decline the opportunity. If the will could create conviction, I should also have accepted Mazzini's invitation—elsewhere referred to—for Theism never seemed so enchanting in my eyes as it appeared in the lives of those two distinguished thinkers who were inspired by it.
Giuseppe Mazzini, whom Englishmen know as Joseph Mazzini, was born in Genoa, June 22, 1805, and died in Pisa, March 10, 1872. He spent the greater part of forty years of his marvellous life in London. * Some incidents of his English career, known to me, may increase or confirm the public impression of him.
Never strong from youth, abstemious, oft from privation, and always from principle, he was as thin as Dumas describes Richelieu. Arbitrary imprisonment, which twice befel him, and many years of voluntary confinement, imposed upon himself by necessity of concealment—living and working in a small room, whence it was dangerous for him to emerge by day or by night—were inevitably enervating. When he first came to London in 1837, he brought with him three exiles, who depended upon his earnings for subsistence. The slender income supplied him by his mother might have sufficed for his few wants,* but aid for others and the ceaseless cost of the propaganda of Italian independence, to which he devoted himself, had to be provided by writing for reviews. At times cherished souvenirs had to be pledged, and visits to money-lenders had to be made.
It was the knowledge all his countrymen had that he sought nothing for himself, never spared himself in toil or peril, that was the source of his influence. He wrote: "We follow a path strewn with sacrifices and with sorrows." But all the tragedies of his experience we never knew until years after his death, when his incomparable "Love Letters" were published in the Nineteenth Century, No. 219, May, 1895.
He appeared to others to have "the complexion of a student," the air of one who waited and listened. As Meredith said, it was not "until you meet his large, penetrating, dark eyes, that you were drawn suddenly among a thousand whirring wheels of a capacious, keen, and vigorous intellect."
Mr. Bolton King has published a notable book on the great Italian, containing more incidents in his career than any other English writer has collected. I confine myself mainly to those within my knowledge.
When anything had to be done, in my power to do, I was at his command. I had numerous letters from him. His errorless manuscript had the appearance of Greek writing. Two letters "t" and "s," such as no other man formed, were the signs of his hand and interpreters of his words. Of all the communications I ever received from him or saw, none had date or address, save one letter which had both. Many sought for conversation, if by chance they were near him, or by letter, or interview—for ends of their own. But no one elicited any information he did not intend to give. His mind was a fortress into which no man could enter, unless he opened the door.
Kossuth astonished us by his knowledge of English, but he knew little of the English people. Louis Blanc knew much; but Mazzini knew more than any foreigner I have conversed with. Mazzini made no mistake about us. He understood the English better than they understood themselves—their frankness, truth, courage, impulse, pride, passions, prejudice, inconsistency, and limitation of view. Mazzini knew them all.
His address to the Republicans of the United States (November, 1855) is an example of his knowledge of nations, whose characteristics were as familiar to him as those of individuals are to their associates, or as parties are known to politicians in their own country. There may be seen his wise way of looking all round an argument in stating it. No man of a nature so intense had so vigilant an outside mind.
He knew theories as he knew men, and he saw the theories as they would be in action. There was no analysis so masterly of the popular schools—political and socialist—as that which Mazzini contributed to the People's Journal, His criticisms of the writings of Carlyle, published in the Westminster Review, explained the excellencies and the pernicious tendencies—political and moral—of Carlyle's writing, which no other critic ever did. But Mazzini wrote upon art, music, literature, poetry, and the drama. To this day the public think of him merely as a political writer—a sort of Italian Cobbett with a genius for conspiracy.
The list of his works fills nearly ten pages of the catalogue of the British Museum.
Under other circumstances his pen would have brought him ample subsistence, if not affluence. Much was written without payment, as a means of obtaining attention to Italy. It was thus he won his first friends in England.
No one could say of Mazzini that he was a foreigner and did not understand us, or that the case he put was defective through not understanding our language. The Saturday Review, which agreed with nobody, said, on reading Mazzini's "Letter to Louis Napoleon," which was written in English, "The man can write." The finest State papers seen in Europe for generations were those which Mazzini, when a Triumvir in Rome, wrote—notably those to De Tocqueville. De Tocqueville had a great name for political literature, but his icy mystifications melted away under Mazzini's fiery pen of principle, passion, and truth. This wandering, homeless, penniless, obscure refugee was a match for kings.
Some day a publisher of insight will bring out a cheap edition of the five volumes of his works, issued by S. King and Co., 1867, and "dedicated to the working classes" by P. A. Taylor, which cost him £500, few then caring for them. Mrs. Emilie Ashurst Venturi was the translator of the five volumes, which were all revised by Mazzini. The reader therefore can trust the text.
Mazzini did me the honour of presenting to me his volume on the "Duties of Man," with this inscription of reserve: "To my friend, G. J. Holyoake, with a very faint hope." Words delicate, self-respecting and suggestive. It was hard for me, with my convictions, to accept his great formula, "God and the People." It was a great regret to me that I could not use the words. They were honest on the lips of Mazzini. But I had seen that in human danger Providence procrastinates. No peril stirs it, no prayer quickens its action. Men perish as they supplicate. In danger the people must trust in themselves.
Thinking as I did, I could not say or pretend otherwise.
Mazzini one day said to me, "A public man is often bound by his past. His repute for opinions he has maintained act as a restraint upon avowing others of a converse nature." This feeling never had influence over me. Any one who has convictions ought to maintain a consistency between what he believes, and what he says and does. But to maintain to-day the opinions of former years, when you have ceased to feel them true, is a false, foolish, even a criminal consistency. To conceal the change, if it concerns others to know it, is dishonest if it is misleading any persons you may have influenced. The test, to me, of the truth of any view I hold, is that, I can state it and dare the judgment of others to confute it. Had I new views—theistical or otherwise—that I could avow with this confidence, I should have the same pleasure in stating them as I ever had in stating my former ones. When I look back upon opinions I published long years ago, I am surprised at the continuity of conviction which, without care or thought on my part, has remained with me. In stating my opinions I have made many changes. Schiller truly says that "Toleration is only possible to men of large information." As I came to know more I have been more considerate towards the views, or errors, or mistakes of others, and have striven to be more accurate in my own statement of them, and more fair towards adversaries. That is all. Mazzini understood this, and did not regard as perversity the prohibition of conscience.
In his letter to Daniel Manin, which I published in 1856, Mazzini described as a "quibble" the use of the word "unification" instead of "unity." "Unification" is not a bad thing in itself, though very different from unity. To put forth unification as a substitute for unity was forsaking unity. It was a change of front, but not "quibbling." The Government of Italy were advised to contrive local amelioration, as a means of impeding, if not undermining, claims for national freedom. Mazzini condemned Manin for concurring in this. All English insurgent parties have shown similar animosity against amelioration of evil, lest it diverted attention from absolute redress. Yet it is a great responsibility to continue the full evil in all its sharpness and obstructiveness, on the grounds that its abatement is an impediment to larger relief. Every argument for amelioration is a confession that those who object to injustice are right What is to prevent reformers continuing their demand for all that is necessary, when some of the evil is admitted and abated? Paramount among agitators as I think Mazzini, it is a duty to admit that he was not errorless. High example renders an error serious.
The press being free in England, there needed no conspiracy here. An engraved card, still hanging in a little frame in many a weaver's and miner's house in the North of England, was issued at a shilling each on behalf of funds for European freedom, signed by Mazzini for Italy, Kossuth for Hungary, and Worcell for Poland. When editing the Reasoner I received one morning a letter from Mazzini, dated 15, Radnor Street, King's Road, Chelsea, June 12, 1852. This was the only one of Mazzini's letters bearing an address and date I ever saw, as I have said. It began:—
"My dear Sir,—You have once, for the Taxes on Knowledge question, collected a very large sum by dint of sixpences. Could you not do the same, if your conscience approved the scheme, for the Shilling Subscription [then proposed for European freedom]? I have never made any appeal for material help to the English public, but once the scheme is started, I cannot conceal that I feel a great interest in its success. A supreme struggle will take place between Right and Might, and any additional strength imparted to militant Democracy at this time is not to be despised. Still, the moral motive is even more powerful with me. The scheme is known in Italy, and will be known in Hungary, and it would be extremely important for me to be able to tell my countrymen that it has not proved a failure.
"Ever faithfully yours,
"Joseph Mazzini."
I explained to the readers of the Reasoner the great service they might render to European freedom at that time by a shilling subscription from each. Very soon we received 4,000 shillings. Later (August 3, 1852) Mazzini, writing from Chelsea, said:—
"My dear Sir,—I have still to thank you for the noble appeal you have inserted in the Reasoner in favour of the Shilling Subscription in aid of European freedom. My friend Giovanni Peggotti, fearing that physical and moral torture might weaken his determination and extort from him some revelations, has hung himself in his dungeon at Milan, with his own cravat. State trials are about being initiated by military commissions, and General Benedek, the man who directed the wholesale Gallician butcheries, is to preside over them. At Forli, under Popish rule, enforced by Austrian bayonets, four working men have been shot as guilty of having defended themselves against the aggression of some Government agents. The town was fined in a heavy sum, because on that mournful day many of the inhabitants left it, and the theatres were empty in the evening.
"Faithfully yours,
"Joseph Mazzini."
People of England have mostly forgotten now what Italians had to suffer when their necks were under the ferocious heel of Austria.
In a short time I collected a further 5,000 shillings, making 9,000 in all, and I had the pleasure of sending to Mazzini a cheque for £450.*