[199] The Commissioners were Lord Elcho, Sir Stafford Northcote, Sir Charles Trevelyan, and Mr Hoffay.

[200] “Life,” ii. 245-249.

[201] These were, of course, the “Peelites”—the members who, together with their leader, had seceded from the Tory party on the Free Trade question.

[202] “Life,” ii. 225, 226.

[203] “Life,” ii. 267.

[204] “Life,” ii. 317.

[205] A medical man had now been added to the staff, the first so appointed being Dr Gavin, a much-esteemed official, who perished untimely, if I remember rightly, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, during the awful visitation there of the cholera epidemic of 1853.

[206] Afterwards diminished to eight.

[207] “Life,” ii. 298-301.

[208] “Life,” ii. 300. At this time the Post Office staff numbered over 24,000, of whom more than 3,000 served in the London district.

[209] A thirty or more years old example of this rejection returns to memory. A young man—a born soldier, and son to a distinguished officer in the Engineers—failed to pass the inevitable Army examination. The subject over which he broke down was some poem of Chaucer's, I think the immortal Prologue to The Canterbury Tales—that wonderful collection of masterly-drawn portraits of men and women who must have been living people over five hundred years ago. Even an ardent lover of him “whose sweet breath preluded those melodious bursts that fill the spacious times of great Elizabeth with sounds that echo still,” has never yet been able to perceive what connection the strains of “Dan Chaucer, the first warbler,” can have with the science of modern warfare. The born soldier, it was said, was fain to turn ranchman in the American Far West.

[210] As regards this oft-discussed matter, it seems that Herbert Spencer was of like mind with my father. Speaking in his “Autobiography of Edison,” the great philosopher says that “that remarkable, self-educated man” was of opinion that “college-bred men were of no use to him. It is astonishing,” continues Herbert Spencer, “how general, among distinguished engineers, has been the absence of education, or of high education. James Brindley and George Stephenson were without any early instruction at all: the one taught himself writing when an apprentice, and the other put himself to school when a grown man. Telford too, a shepherd boy, had no culture beyond that which a parish school afforded. Though Smeaton and Rennie and Watt had the discipline of grammar schools, and two of them that of High Schools, yet in no case did they pass through a curriculum appropriate to the profession they followed. Another piece of evidence, no less remarkable, is furnished by the case of Sir Benjamin Baker, who designed and executed the Forth Bridge—the greatest and most remarkable bridge in the world, I believe. He received no regular engineering instruction. Such men who, more than nearly all other men, exercise constructive imagination, and rise to distinction only when they are largely endowed with this faculty, seem thus to show by implication the repressive influence of an educational system which imposes ideas from without instead of evolving them from within.” (“Autobiography,” i. 337, 338.) The remarks are the outcome of Herbert Spencer's perusal of a biographical sketch of the celebrated engineer, John Ericsson. In this occurred a significant passage: “When a friend spoke to him with regret of his not having been graduated from some technical institute, he answered that the fact, on the other hand, was very fortunate. If he had taken a course at such an institution, he would have acquired such a belief in authority that he would never have been able to develop originality and make his own way in physics and mechanics.”

[211] In writing of the discontents which occasionally troubled the postal peace during the mid-nineteenth century, it must be clearly understood that no allusion is intended to those of later times. In this story of an old reform the latest year at the Post Office is 1864; therefore, since this is a chronicle of “ancient history” only, comments on the troubles of modern days, which the chronicler does not profess to understand, shall be scrupulously avoided.

[212] He never wasted his time in reading the attacks, even when some good-natured friend occasionally asked: “Have you seen what Blank has just written about you?”

[213] “Life,” ii. 328.

[214] Some of us enjoyed a capital view of the eclipse at Swindon in fine weather and pleasant company. Our friend, Mr W. H. Wills, who was also present, wrote an amusing account of the eclipse—appending to it, however, a pretty story which never happened—in Household Words. The eclipse was soon over, but the great astronomical treat of the year was, of course, Donati's unforgettable comet, “a thing of beauty,” though unfortunately not “a joy for ever,” which blazed magnificently in the northern hemisphere for some few weeks.

[215] “Life,” ii. 334.

[216] Here was another reformer from outside the Post Office. Yet one more was Sir Douglas Galton, who first proposed that the Post Office should take over the telegraphic system. His father-in-law, Mr Nicholson of Waverley Abbey, sent the then Captain Galton's paper on the subject to Rowland Hill in 1852. The communication being private, my father replied also privately, giving the project encouragement, and leaving Captain Galton to take the next step. He submitted his plan to the Board of Trade, whence it was referred to the Post Office. The Postmaster-General, Lord Hardwicke, did not view the scheme with favour, and it was dropped, to be resumed later within the Office itself. Had Captain Galton's proposals been resolutely taken up in 1852, the British taxpayers might have been spared the heavy burden laid upon them when, nearly twenty years later, the State purchase of the Telegraphs was effected “at a cost at once so superfluous and so enormous.” (“Life,” ii. 251, 252.)

[217] “Life,” ii. 335.

[218] “Report of the Select Committee on Postage (1843),” p. 41. Also “Life,” ii. 336.

[219] Professor de Morgan was one of the many literary and scientific men who took an interest in the book-post when first proposed. At the outset it was intended that no writing of any sort, not even the name of owner or donor, should be inscribed in a volume so sent, but the Professor descanted so ably and wittily on the hardship of thus ruling out of transit an innocent book, merely because, a century or more ago, some hand had written on its fly-leaf, “Anne Pryse, her boke; God give her grace therein to loke,” that not even the hardest-hearted official, and certainly not my father, could have said him nay; and by this time any writing, short of a letter, is allowed. The Professor had a wonderfully-shaped head, his forehead towards the top being abnormally prominent. He was devoted to mathematics, and gave much time to their study; thus it used to be said by those who could not otherwise account for his strange appearance, that the harder he worked at his favourite study the keener grew the contest between the restraining frontal bones and protruding brain, the latter perceptibly winning the day. A delightful talker was this great mathematician, also a pugilistic person, and on occasion not above using his fists with effect. One day he was summoned for an assault, and duly appeared in the police court. “I was walking quietly along the street,” began the victim, “when Professor de Morgan came straight up to me——” “That's a lie!” exclaimed the disgusted mathematician. “I came up to you at an angle of forty-five degrees.” This anecdote has been given to several eminent men, but Professor de Morgan was its real hero.

[220] By shear ability, industry, and steadiness, Mr Bokenham had worked himself up from a humble position to high rank in the Post Office. One day a rough but pleasant-looking man of the lower agricultural class came to London from his and Mr Bokenham's native East Anglia, and called at St Martin's-le-Grand. “What! Bill Bokenham live in a house of this size!” he exclaimed. He had taken the imposing, but far from beautiful edifice built in 1829 for his cousin's private residence.

[221] “Life,” ii. 288.

[222] In Edmund Yates's “Recollections” many pleasant stories are told of Lord Clanricarde, to whose kindness indeed the author owed his appointment to the Post Office.

[223] “The close of his career as Postmaster-General,” wrote my father many years later, “was highly characteristic. For some reason it was convenient to the Government that he should retain his office until the very day of his departure for the East. Doubtless it was expected that this retention would be little more than nominal, or that, at most, he would attend to none but the most pressing business, leaving to his successor all such affairs as admitted of delay. When I found that he continued to transact business just as usual, while I knew that he must be encumbered with every kind of preparation, official, personal, and domestic, I earnestly pressed that course upon him, but in vain; he would leave no arrears, and every question, great or small, which he had been accustomed to decide was submitted to him as usual to the last hour of his remaining in the country. Nor was decision even then made heedlessly or hurriedly, but, as before, after full understanding. ... In common with the whole world, I regarded his premature death as a severe national calamity. He was earnest and energetic in the moral reform of the Post Office, and had his life been longer spared, might perhaps have been the moral reformer of India.... That such a man, after acquiring a thorough knowledge of myself, should have selected me for the difficult and responsible post of Secretary to the Post Office, and have continued throughout my attached friend, is to me a source of the highest gratification.” (“Life,” ii. 353-355.)

[224] He had been still further crippled in 1860 by a paralytic seizure which necessitated entire abstention from work for many months, and from which he rallied, but with impaired health, although he lived some nineteen years longer.

[225] “Life,” ii. 353-363. Yates, in his “Recollections,” gives a vivid character sketch of this political head of the office. The portrait is not flattering. But then Yates, who, like other subordinates at St Martin's-le-Grand, had grievances of his own against the man who was probably the most unpopular Postmaster-General of his century, does not mince his words.