Chapter 38

THE winter of 1854-55 I spent in Rome. Here I made theacquaintance of Leighton, then six-and-twenty. I saw a gooddeal of him, as I lived almost entirely amongst the artists,taking lessons myself in water colours of Leitch. Music alsobrought us into contact. He had a beautiful voice, and usedto sing a good deal with Mrs. Sartoris - Adelaide Kemble -whom he greatly admired, and whose portrait is painted undera monk's cowl, in the Cimabue procession.

　　Calling on him one morning, I found him on his kneesbuttering and rolling up this great picture, preparatory tosending it to the Academy. I made some remark about itsunusual size, saying with a sceptical smile, 'It will take upa lot of room.'

　　'If they ever hang it,' he replied; 'but there's not muchchance of that.'

　　Seeing that his reputation was yet to win, it certainlyseemed a bold venture to make so large a demand for space tobegin with. He did not appear the least sanguine. But itwas accepted; and Prince Albert bought it before theExhibition opened.

　　Gibson also I saw much of. He had executed a large alto-rilievo monument of my mother, which is now in my parishchurch, and the model of which is on the landing of one ofthe staircases of the National Gallery. His studio wasalways an interesting lounge, for he was ever ready tolecture upon antique marbles. To listen to him was likereading the 'Laocoon,' which he evidently had at his fingers'

　　ends. My companion through the winter was Mr. ReginaldCholmondeley, a Cambridge ally, who was studying painting.

　　He was the uncle of Miss Cholmondeley the well-knownauthoress, whose mother, by the way, was a first cousin ofGeorge Cayley's, and also a great friend of mine.

　　On my return to England I took up my abode in Dean's Yard,and shared a house there with Mr. Cayley, the Yorkshiremember, and his two sons, the eldest a barrister, and myfriend George. Here for several years we had exceedinglypleasant gatherings of men more or less distinguished inliterature and art. Tennyson was a frequent visitor - cominglate, after dinner hours, to smoke his pipe. He varied agood deal, sometimes not saying a word, but quietly listeningto our chatter. Thackeray also used to drop in occasionally.

　　George Cayley and I, with the assistance of his father andothers, had started a weekly paper called 'The Realm.' Itwas professedly a currency paper, and also supported a fiscalpolicy advocated by Mr. Cayley and some of his parliamentaryclique. Coming in one day, and finding us hard at work,Thackeray asked for information. We handed him a copy of thepaper. 'Ah,' he exclaimed, with mock solemnity, '"TheRellum," should be printed on vellum.' He too, likeTennyson, was variable. But this depended on whom he found.

　　In the presence of a stranger he was grave and silent. Hewould never venture on puerile jokes like this of his'Rellum' - a frequent playfulness, when at his ease, whichcontrasted so unexpectedly with his impenetrable exterior.

　　He was either gauging the unknown person, or feeling that hewas being gauged. Monckton Milnes was another. Seeing mecorrecting some proof sheets, he said, 'Let me give you apiece of advice, my young friend. Write as much as youplease, but the less you print the better.'

　　'For me, or for others?'

　　'For both.'

　　George Cayley had a natural gift for, and had acquiredconsiderable skill, in the embossing and working of silverware. Millais so admired his art that he commissioned him tomake a large tea-tray; Millais provided the silver. Roundthe border of the tray were beautifully modelled sea-shells,cray-fish, crabs, and fish of quaint forms, in high relief.

　　Millais was so pleased with the work that he afterwardspainted, and presented to Cayley, a fine portrait in his beststyle of Cayley's son, a boy of six or seven years old.

　　Laurence Oliphant was one of George Cayley's friends.

　　Attractive as he was in many ways, I had little sympathy withhis religious opinions, nor did I comprehend Oliphant'sexalted inspirations; I failed to see their practicalbearing, and, at that time I am sorry to say, looked upon himas an amiable faddist. A special favourite with both of uswas William Stirling of Keir. His great work on the Spanishpainters, and his 'Cloister Life of Charles the Fifth,'

　　excited our unbounded admiration, while his BONHOMIE andradiant humour were a delight we were always eager towelcome.

　　George Cayley and I now entered at Lincoln's Inn. At the endof three years he was duly called to the Bar. I was not; foralas, as usual, something 'turned up,' which drew me inanother direction. For a couple of years, however, I 'ate'

　　my terms - not unfrequently with William Harcourt, with whomCayley had a Yorkshire intimacy even before our Cambridgedays.

　　Old Mr. Cayley, though not the least strait-laced, was areligious man. A Unitarian by birth and conviction, he beganand ended the day with family prayers. On Sundays he wouldalways read to us, or make us read to him, a sermon ofChanning's, or of Theodore Parker's, or what we all likedbetter, one of Frederick Robertson's. He was essentially agood man. He had been in Parliament all his life, and was abroad-minded, tolerant, philosophical man-of-the-world. Hehad a keen sense of humour, and was rather sarcastical; but,for all that, he was sensitively earnest, and conscientious.

　　I had the warmest affection and respect for him. Such acharacter exercised no small influence upon our conduct andour opinions, especially as his approval or disapproval ofthese visibly affected his own happiness.

　　He was never easy unless he was actively engaged in somebenevolent scheme, the promotion of some charity, or in whathe considered his parliamentary duties, which he contrived tomake very burdensome to his conscience. As his health wasbad, these self-imposed obligations were all the moreonerous; but he never spared himself, or his somewhat scantymeans. Amongst other minor tasks, he used to teach at theSunday-school of St. John's, Westminster; in this hepersuaded me to join him. The only other volunteer, not aclergyman, was Page Wood - a great friend of Mr. Cayley's -afterwards Lord Chancellor Hatherley. In spite of Mr.

　　Cayley's Unitarianism, like Frederick the Great, he was allfor letting people 'go to Heaven in their own way,' and wasmoreover quite ready to help them in their own way. So thathe had no difficulty in hearing the boys repeat the day'scollect, or the Creed, even if Athanasian, in accordance withthe prescribed routine of the clerical teachers.

　　This was right, at all events for him, if he thought itright. My spirit of nonconformity did not permit me tofollow his example. Instead thereof, my teaching was purelysecular. I used to take a volume of Mrs. Marcet's'Conversations' in my pocket; and with the aid of thediagrams, explain the application of the mechanical forces, -the inclined plane, the screw, the pulley, the wedge, and thelever. After two or three Sundays my class was largelyincreased, for the children keenly enjoyed their competitiveexaminations. I would also give them bits of poetry to getby heart for the following Sunday - lines from Gray's'Elegy,' from Wordsworth, from Pope's 'Essay on Man' - suchin short as had a moral rather than a religious tendency.

　　After some weeks of this, the boys becoming clamorous intheir zeal to correct one another, one of the curates lefthis class to hear what was going on in mine. We happened atthe moment to be dealing with geography. The curate,evidently shocked, went away and brought another curate.

　　Then the two together departed, and brought back the rector -Dr. Jennings, one of the Westminster Canons - a most kind andexcellent man. I went on as if unconscious of thecensorship, the boys exerting themselves all the more eagerlyfor the sake of the 'gallery.' When the hour was up, CanonJennings took me aside, and in the most polite manner thankedme for my 'valuable assistance,' but did not think that the'Essay on Man,' or especially geography, was suited for theteaching in a Sunday-school. I told him I knew it wasuseless to contend with so high a canonical authority;personally I did not see the impiety of geography, but then,as he already knew, I was a confirmed latitudinarian. Heclearly did not see the joke, but intimated that my serviceswould henceforth be dispensed with.

　　Of course I was wrong, though I did not know it then, for itmust be borne in mind that there were no Board Schools inthose days, and general education, amongst the poor, wasdeplorably deficient. At first, my idea was to give thechildren (they were all boys) a taste for the 'humanities,'

　　which might afterwards lead to their further pursuit. Iassumed that on the Sunday they would be thinking of thebaked meats awaiting them when church was over, or of theirweek-day tops and tipcats; but I was equally sure that a timewould come when these would be forgotten, and the otherthings remembered. The success was greater from thebeginning than could be looked for; and some years afterwardsI had reason to hope that the forecast was not altogether toosanguine.

　　While the Victoria Tower was being built, I stopped one dayto watch the masons chiselling the blocks of stone.

　　Presently one of them, in a flannel jacket and a paper cap,came and held out his hand to me. He was a handsome youngfellow with a big black beard and moustache, both powderedwith his chippings.

　　'You don't remember me, sir, do you?'

　　'Did I ever see you before?'

　　'My name is Richards; don't you remember, sir? I was one ofthe boys you used to teach at the Sunday-school. It gave mea turn for mechanics, which I followed up; and that's how Itook to this trade. I'm a master mason now, sir; and thewhole of this lot is under me.'

　　'I wonder what you would have been,' said I, 'if we'd stuckto the collects?'

　　'I don't think I should have had a hand in this little job,'

　　he answered, looking up with pride at the mighty tower, asthough he had a creative share in its construction.

　　All this while I was working hard at my own education, andtrying to make up for the years I had wasted (so I thought ofthem), by knocking about the world. I spent laborious daysand nights in reading, dabbling in geology, chemistry,physiology, metaphysics, and what not. On the score ofdogmatic religion I was as restless as ever. I had aninsatiable thirst for knowledge; but was without guidance. Iwanted to learn everything; and, not knowing in whatdirection to concentrate my efforts, learnt next to nothing.

　　All knowledge seemed to me equally important, for all borealike upon the great problems of belief and of existence.

　　But what to pursue, what to relinquish, appeared to me anunanswerable riddle. Difficult as this puzzle was, I did notknow then that a long life's experience would hardly make itsimpler. The man who has to earn his bread must fain resolveto adapt his studies to that end. His choice not often restswith him. But the unfortunate being cursed in youth with themeans of idleness, yet without genius, without talents even,is terribly handicapped and perplexed.

　　And now, with life behind me, how should I advise another insuch a plight? When a young lady, thus embarrassed, wrote toCarlyle for counsel, he sympathetically bade her 'put herdrawers in order.'

　　Here is the truth to be faced at the outset: 'Man has butthe choice to go a little way in many paths, or a great wayin only one.' 'Tis thus John Mill puts it. Which will he,which should he, choose? Both courses lead alike toincompleteness. The universal man is no specialist, and hasto generalise without his details. The specialist sees onlythrough his microscope, and knows about as much of cosmologyas does his microbe. Goethe, the most comprehensive ofSeers, must needs expose his incompleteness by futileattempts to disprove Newton's theory of colour. Newton mustneeds expose his, by a still more lamentable attempt to provethe Apocalypse as true as his own discovery of the laws ofgravitation. All science nowadays is necessarily confined toexperts. Without illustrating the fact by invidious hints, Iinvite anyone to consider the intellectual cost to the worldwhich such limitation entails; nor is the loss merelynegative; the specialist is unfortunately too often a bigot,when beyond his contracted sphere.

　　This, you will say, is arguing in a circle. The universalmust be given up for the detail, the detail for theuniversal; we leave off where we began. Yes, that is thedilemma. Still, the gain to science through a devotion of awhole life to a mere group of facts, in a single branch of asingle science, may be an incalculable acquisition to humanknowledge, to the intellectual capital of the race - a gainthat sometimes far outweighs the loss. Even if we narrow thequestion to the destiny of the individual, the sacrifice ofeach one for the good of the whole is doubtless the highestaim the one can have.

　　But this conclusion scarcely helps us; for remember, theoption is not given to all. Genius, or talent, or specialaptitude, is a necessary equipment for such an undertaking.

　　Great discoverers must be great observers, dexterousmanipulators, ingenious contrivers, and patient thinkers.

　　The difficulty we started with was, what you and I, myfriend, who perhaps have to row in the same boat, and perhaps'with the same sculls,' without any of these provisions, whatwe should do? What point of the compass should we steer for?

　　'Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.'

　　Truly there could be no better advice. But the 'finding' isthe puzzle; and like the search for truth it must, I fear, beleft to each one's power to do it. And then - and then thecountless thousands who have the leisure without the means -who have hands at least, and yet no work to put them to -what is to be done for these? Not in your time or mine, dearfriend, will that question be answered. For this, I fear wemust wait till by the 'universal law of adaptation' we reach'the ultimate development of the ideal man.' 'Colossaloptimism,' exclaims the critic.