Chapter 48

FOR eight or nine years, while my sons were at school, Ilived at Rickmansworth. Unfortunately the Leweses had justleft it. Moor Park belonged to Lord Ebury, my wife's uncle,and the beauties of its magnificent park and the amenities ofits charming house were at all times open to us, and freelytaken advantage of. During those nine years I lived the lifeof a student, and wrote and published the book I haveelsewhere spoken of, the 'Creeds of the Day.'

　　Of the visitors of note whose acquaintance I made while I wasstaying at Moor Park, by far the most illustrious was Froude.

　　He was too reserved a man to lavish his intimacy when takenunawares; and if he suspected, as he might have done by myprobing, that one wanted to draw him out, he was much tooshrewd to commit himself to definite expressions of any kinduntil he knew something of his interviewer. Reticence ofthis kind, on the part of such a man, is both prudent andcommendable. But is not this habit of cautiousness sometimescarried to the extent of ambiguity in his 'Short Studies onGreat Subjects'? The careful reader is left in no sort ofdoubt as to Froude's own views upon Biblical criticism, as tohis theological dogmas, or his speculative opinions. But theconviction is only reached by comparing him with himself indifferent moods, by collating essay with essay, and one partof an essay with another part of the same essay. Sometimeswe have an astute defence of doctrines worthy at least of atemperate apologist, and a few pages further on we wonderwhether the writer was not masking his disdain for thecredulity which he now exposes and laughs at. Neitherexcessive caution nor timidity are implied by his editing ofthe Carlyle papers; and he may have failed - who that hasdone so much has not? - in keeping his balance on the swayingslack-rope between the judicious and the injudicious. In hisown line, however, he is, to my taste, the most scholarly,the most refined, and the most suggestive, of our recentessayists. The man himself in manner and in appearance wasin perfect keeping with these attractive qualities.

　　While speaking of Moor Park and its kind owner I may availmyself of this opportunity to mention an early reminiscenceof Lord Ebury's concerning the Grosvenor estate in London.

　　Mr. Gladstone was wont to amuse himself with speculations asto the future dimensions of London; what had been its growthwithin his memory; what causes might arise to cheek itsincrease. After listening to his remarks on the subject oneday at dinner, I observed that I had heard Lord Ebury talk ofshooting over ground which is now Eaton Square. Mr.

　　Gladstone of course did not doubt it; but some of the youngmen smiled incredulously. I afterwards wrote to Lord Eburyto make sure that I had not erred. Here is his reply:

　　'Moor Park, Rickmansworth: January 9, 1883.

　　'MY dear Henry, - What you said I had told you about snipe-shooting is quite true, though I think I ought to havementioned a space rather nearer the river than Eaton Square.

　　In the year 1815, when the battle of Waterloo was fought,there was nothing behind Grosvenor Place but the (-?) fields- so called, a place something like the Scrubbs, where thehousehold troops drilled. That part of Grosvenor Place wherethe Grosvenor Place houses now stand was occupied by the LockHospital and Chapel, and it ended where the small houses arenow to be found. A little farther, a somewhat tortuous lanecalled the King's Road led to Chelsea, and, I think, wherenow St. Peter's, Pimlico, was afterwards built. I remembergoing to a breakfast at a villa belonging to LadyBuckinghamshire. The Chelsea Waterworks Company had a sortof marshy place with canals and osier beds, now, I suppose,Ebury Street, and here it was that I was permitted to go andtry my hand at snipe-shooting, a special privilege given tothe son of the freeholder.

　　'The successful fox-hunt terminating in either Bedford orRussell Square is very strange, but quite appropriate,commemorated, I suppose, by the statue there erected.

　　Yours affectionately,'E.'

　　The successful 'fox-hunt ' was an event of which I told LordEbury as even more remarkable than his snipe-shooting inBelgravia. As it is still more indicative of the growth ofLondon in recent times it may be here recorded.

　　In connection with Mr. Gladstone's forecasts, I had writtento the last Lord Digby, who was a grandson of my father's,stating that I had heard - whether from my father or not Icould not say - that he had killed a fox where now is BedfordSquare, with his own hounds.

　　Lord Digby replied:

　　'Minterne, Dorset: January 7, 1883.

　　'My dear Henry, - My grandfather killed a fox with his houndseither in Bedford or Russell Square. Old Jones, thehuntsman, who died at Holkham when you were a child, was myinformant. I asked my grandfather if it was correct. Hesaid "Yes" - he had kennels at Epping Place, and hunted theroodings of Essex, which, he said, was the best scenting-ground in England.

　　'Yours affectionately,'DIGBY.'

　　(My father was born in 1754.)Mr. W. S. Gilbert had been a much valued friend of oursbefore we lived at Rickmansworth. We had been his guests forthe 'first night' of almost every one of his plays - playsthat may have a thousand imitators, but the speciality ofwhose excellence will remain unrivalled and inimitable. Hisvisits to us introduced him, I think, to the picturesquecountry which he has now made his home. When Mr. Gilbertbuilt his house in Harrington Gardens he easily persuaded usto build next door to him. This led to my acquaintance withhis neighbour on the other side, Mr. Walter Cassels, now wellknown as the author of 'Supernatural Religion.'

　　When first published in 1874, this learned work, summarisingand elaborately examining the higher criticism of the fourGospels up to date, created a sensation throughout thetheological world, which was not a little intensified by theanonymity of its author. The virulence with which it wasattacked by Dr. Lightfoot, the most erudite bishop on thebench, at once demonstrated its weighty significance and itsdestructive force; while Mr. Morley's high commendation ofits literary merits and the scrupulous equity of its tone,placed it far above the level of controversial diatribes.

　　In my 'Creeds of the Day' I had made frequent references tothe anonymous book; and soon after my introduction to Mr.

　　Cassels spoke to him of its importance, and asked him whetherhe had read it. He hesitated for a moment, then said:

　　'We are very much of the same way of thinking on thesesubjects. I will tell you a secret which I kept for sometime even from my publishers - I am the author of"Supernatural Religion."'

　　From that time forth, we became the closest of allies. Iknow no man whose tastes and opinions and interests are morecompletely in accord with my own than those of Mr. WalterCassels. It is one of my greatest pleasures to meet himevery summer at the beautiful place of our mutual andsympathetic friend, Mrs. Robertson, on the skirts of theAshtead forest, in Surrey.

　　The winter of 1888 I spent at Cairo under the roof of GeneralSir Frederick Stephenson, then commanding the English forcesin Egypt. I had known Sir Frederick as an ensign in theGuards. He was adjutant of his regiment at the Alma, and atInkerman. He is now Colonel of the Coldstreams and Governorof the Tower. He has often been given a still higher title,that of 'the most popular man in the army.'

　　Everybody in these days has seen the Pyramids, and has beenup the Nile. There is only one name I have to mention here,and that is one of the best-known in the world. Mr. ThomasCook was the son of the original inventor of the 'Globe-trotter.' But it was the extraordinary energy and powers oforganisation of the son that enabled him to develop to itspresent efficiency the initial scheme of the father.

　　Shortly before the General's term expired, he invited Mr.

　　Cook to dinner. The Nile share of the Gordon ReliefExpedition had been handed over to Cook. The boats, theprovisioning of them, and the river transport service up toWady Halfa, were contracted for and undertaken by Cook.

　　A most entertaining account he gave of the whole affair. Hetold us how the Mudir of Dongola, who was by way of renderingevery possible assistance, had offered him an enormous bribeto wreck the most valuable cargoes on their passage throughthe Cataracts.

　　Before Mr. Cook took leave of the General, he expressed theregret felt by the British residents in Cairo at thetermination of Sir Frederick's command; and wound up a prettylittle speech by a sincere request that he might be allowedto furnish Sir Frederick GRATIS with all the means at hisdisposal for a tour through the Holy Land. The liberal andhighly complimentary offer was gratefully acknowledged, butat once emphatically declined. The old soldier, (at least,this was my guess,) brave in all else, had not the courage toface the tourists' profanation of such sacred scenes.

　　Dr. Bird told me a nice story, a pendant to this, of Mr.

　　Thomas Cook's liberality. One day, before the GordonExpedition, which was then in the air, Dr. Bird was smokinghis cigarette on the terrace in front of Shepherd's Hotel, incompany with four or five other men, strangers to him and toone another. A discussion arose as to the best means ofrelieving Gordon. Each had his own favourite general.

　　Presently the doctor exclaimed: 'Why don't they put thething into the hands of Cook? I'll be bound to say he wouldundertake it, and do the job better than anyone else.'

　　'Do you know Cook, sir?' asked one of the smokers who hadhitherto been silent.

　　'No, I never saw him, but everybody knows he has a genius fororganisation; and I don't believe there is a general in theBritish Army to match him.'

　　When the company broke up, the silent stranger asked thedoctor his name and address, and introduced himself as ThomasCook. The following winter Dr. Bird received a letterenclosing tickets for himself and Miss Bird for a trip toEgypt and back, free of expense, 'in return for his goodopinion and good wishes.'

　　After my General's departure, and a month up the Nile, I -already disillusioned, alas! - rode through Syria, followingthe beaten track from Jerusalem to Damascus. On my way fromAlexandria to Jaffa I had the good fortune to make theacquaintance of an agreeable fellow-traveller, Mr. HenryLopes, afterwards member for Northampton, also bound forPalestine. We went to Constantinople and to the Crimeatogether, then through Greece, and only parted at CharingCross.

　　It was easy to understand Sir Frederick Stephenson's(supposed) unwillingness to visit Jerusalem. It was probablyfar from being what it is now, or even what it was whenPierre Loti saw it, for there was no railway from Jaffa inour time. Still, what Loti pathetically describes as 'unebanalite de banlieue parisienne,' was even then too painfullycasting its vulgar shadows before it. And it was rather withthe forlorn eyes of the sentimental Frenchman than with theveneration of Dean Stanley, that we wandered about the ever-sacred Aceldama of mortally wounded and dying Christianity.

　　One dares not, one could never, speak irreverently ofJerusalem. One cannot think heartlessly of a disappointedlove. One cannot tear out creeds interwoven with thetenderest fibres of one's heart. It is better to be silent.

　　Yet is it a place for unwept tears, for the deep sadness andhard resignation borne in upon us by the eternal loss ofsomething dearer once than life. All we who are weary andheavy laden, in whom now shall we seek the rest which is notnothingness?

　　My story is told, but I fain would take my leave with wordsless sorrowful. If a man has no better legacy to bequeaththan bid his fellow-beings despair, he had better take itwith him to his grave.

　　We know all this, we know!

　　But it is in what we do not know that our hope and ourreligion lies. Thrice blessed are we in the certainty thathere our range is infinite. This infinite that makes ourbrains reel, that begets the feeling that makes us 'shrink,'

　　is perhaps the most portentous argument in the logic of thesceptic. Since the days of Laplace, we have been haunted insome form or other with the ghost of the MECANIQUE CELESTE.

　　Take one or two commonplaces from the text-books ofastronomy:

　　Every half-hour we are about ten thousand miles nearer to theconstellation of Lyra. 'The sun and his system must travelat his present rate for far more than a million years (dividethis into half-hours) before we have crossed the abyssbetween our present position and the frontiers of Lyra'

　　(Ball's 'Story of the Heavens').

　　'Sirius is about one million times as far from us as the sun.

　　If we take the distance of Sirius from the earth andsubdivide it into one million equal parts, each of theseparts would be long enough to span the great distance of92,700,000 miles from the earth to the sun,' yet Sirius isone of the NEAREST of the stars to us.

　　The velocity with which light traverses space is 186,300miles a second, at which rate it has taken the rays fromSirius which we may see to-night, nine years to reach us.

　　The proper motion of Sirius through space is about onethousand miles a minute. Yet 'careful alignment of the eyewould hardly detect that Sirius was moving, in . . . eventhree or four centuries.'

　　'There may be, and probably are, stars from which Noah mightbe seen stepping into the Ark, Eve listening to thetemptation of the serpent, or that older race, eating theoysters and leaving the shell-heaps behind them, when theBaltic was an open sea' (Froude's 'Science of History').

　　Facts and figures such as these simply stupefy us. Theyvaguely convey the idea of something immeasurably great, butnothing further. They have no more effect upon us than wordsaddressed to some poor 'bewildered creature, stunned andparalysed by awe; no more than the sentence of death to theterror-stricken wretch at the bar. Indeed, it is in thissense that the sceptic uses them for our warning.

　　'Seit Kopernikus,' says Schopenhauer, 'kommen die Theologenmit dem lieben Gott in Verlegenheit.' 'No one,' he adds,'has so damaged Theism as Copernicus.' As if limitation andimperfection in the celestial mechanism would make for thebelief in God; or, as if immortality were incompatible withdependence. Des Cartes, for one, (and he counts for many,)held just the opposite opinion.

　　Our sun and all the millions upon millions of suns whoselight will never reach us are but the aggregation of atomsdrawn together by the same force that governs their orbit,and which makes the apple fall. When their heat, howevergenerated, is expended, they die to frozen cinders; possiblyto be again diffused as nebulae, to begin again the eternalround of change.

　　What is life amidst this change? 'When I consider the workof Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hastordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him?'

　　But is He mindful of us? That is what the sceptic asks. IsHe mindful of life here or anywhere in all this boundlessspace? We have no ground for supposing (so we are told) thatlife, if it exists at all elsewhere, in the solar system atleast, is any better than it is here? 'Analogy compels us tothink,' says M. France, one of the most thoughtful of livingwriters, 'that our entire solar system is a gehenna where theanimal is born for suffering. . . . This alone would sufficeto disgust me with the universe.' But M. France is too deepa thinker to abide by such a verdict. There must besomething 'behind the veil.' 'Je sens que ces immensites nesont rien, et qu'enfin, s'il y a quelque chose, ce quelquechose n'est pas ce que nous voyons.' That is it. All theseimmensities are not 'rien,' but they are assuredly not whatwe take them to be. They are the veil of the Infinite,behind which we are not permitted to see.

　　It were the seeing Him, no flesh shall dare.

　　The very greatness proves our impotence to grasp it, provesthe futility of our speculations, and should help us best ofall though outwardly so appalling, to stand calm while thesnake of unbelief writhes beneath our feet. The unutterableinsignificance of man and his little world connotes theinfinity which leaves his possibilities as limitless asitself.

　　Spectrology informs us that the chemical elements of matterare everywhere the same; and in a boundless universe wheresuch unity is manifested there must be conditions similar tothose which support life here. It is impossible to doubt, onthese grounds alone, that life does exist elsewhere. Were werashly to assume from scientific data that no form of animallife could obtain except under conditions similar to our own,would not reason rebel at such an inference, on the mereground that to assume that there is no conscious being in theuniverse save man, is incomparably more unwarrantable, and initself incredible?

　　Admitting, then, the hypothesis of the universal distributionof life, has anyone the hardihood to believe that this iseither the best or worst of worlds? Must we not suppose thatlife exists in every stage of progress, in every state ofimperfection, and, conversely, of advancement? Have we stillthe audacity to believe with the ancient Israelites, or asthe Church of Rome believed only three centuries ago, thatthe universe was made for us, and we its centre? Or must wenot believe that - infinity given - the stages and degrees oflife are infinite as their conditions? And where is this tostop? There is no halting place for imagination till wereach the ANIMA MUNDI, the infinite and eternal Spirit fromwhich all Being emanates.

　　The materialist and the sceptic have forcible arguments ontheir side. They appeal to experience and to common sense,and ask pathetically, yet triumphantly, whether aspiration,however fervid, is a pledge for its validity, 'or does beingweary prove that he hath where to rest?' They smile at theflights of poetry and imagination, and love to repeat:

　　Fools! that so often hereHappiness mocked our prayer,I think might make us fearA like event elsewhere;Make us not fly to dreams, but moderate desire.

　　But then, if the other view is true, the Elsewhere is not theHere, nor is there any conceivable likeness between the two.

　　It is not mere repugnance to truths, or speculations rather,which we dread, that makes us shrink from a creed so shallow,so palpably inept, as atheism. There are many sides to ournature, and I see not that reason, doubtless our trustiestguide, has one syllable to utter against our loftiest hopes.

　　Our higher instincts are just as much a part of us as anythat we listen to; and reason, to the end, can neverdogmatise with what it is not conversant.

The End