Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge Part 9

"Of animal suffering, unconscious tortures, it is harder to speak-of the innocent, for so they are, victims of l.u.s.t and brutality in Babylon here, whose sense of suffering is almost gone, and is succeeded by nothing but the desire for rest; all this seems so meaningless, so futile....

"It is one of the problems I take up and let drop-take up and let drop a thousand times; but all sacrifice seems essentially good, and I do not throw the enigma aside in anger; I will wait for it to be explained to me.

"Ah, death, death, if we are enlightened enough by that time, what a storehouse of secrets, dear secrets you will have to tell us! I thrill all through, in moments like these, to think of it."

"Of course," he said to me once, "there are times when we can only wait and hope; changing our posture, like a sick man, from time to time, to win a little ease; but when we reach a fresh standpoint, a fresh basis-which, thank G.o.d, one does from month to month-we are inclined to say with Albert Durer, 'It could not be better done.'"

He was very fond of the doctrine of Special Providences.

"Every now and then I have-I suppose it is common-what may be called a run of luck in ordinary things; I get out of sc.r.a.pes in a way I don't deserve; I find letters I have mislaid; annoyances are mysteriously shunted aside; money flows in; days of extraordinary happiness succeed one another; little events save vast complications of trouble, so that I long to turn round and grasp by the hand or kiss the cheek of the sweet friend who stands at my elbow, suggesting, ordering, providing day and night, smiling on me as I sleep, hovering around me as I work, without a word of praise.

Guardian angels! no fable. G.o.d gives you a sudden and particular thought, and while you are independent of circ.u.mstances you master them as well."

But such portraiture as the above is apt to get very vague and insipid unless one is able to convey a vivid picture of the man as he walked, and spoke, and lived. The _sic sedebat_ in Trinity College (Cambridge) chapel has given more people a thrill at the thought of Bacon than ever gained one from his books. Personality, personal characteristics, how one craves for them! To take a late instance, how far more impressive General Gordon's little cane is, which he twirled in his hand as he stormed redoubts and directed an action, than a thousand pages of rhetoric about his philosophy or his views of life.

He was now, as ever, for strangers meeting him for the first time, an impressive but rather disappointing man. He had shaved his beard, keeping only his usual moustache; his face was very spare, with a pallor that was not unhealthy. His hair, which was dark and lay in ma.s.ses, he wore generally rather long. He had got into the way, when without his gla.s.ses, of half closing his eyes, because, as he said, it did him so little good to keep them open, as it only served to remind him of people's presence without giving him any more definite idea of them. He could not, for instance, una.s.sisted, see the play of features on a face, and, for this reason, in all important interviews he wore his gla.s.ses, giving three reasons.

1. Utilitarian-that he could see by his opponent's face what he was driving at, and what effect his own remarks had on him.

2. Impressional-it gave a man an "advent.i.tious consequence."

3. Precautional-"I show emotion quickest by the eye, and so, generally speaking, do most people; some change colour very quick; some reveal it in the mouth; but the sudden dilatation and contraction of the eye, the expression it is capable of, make it on the whole the safest guide.

"I trust the eye on the whole," he said; "guilelessness and an unstained conscience are not really manifested either in feature or deportment, but the eye will almost always tell you true."

His conversation, when he was in form, was, without exactly being very brilliant, very inspiring. He had great freshness of expression, and told very few stories, and those only in ill.u.s.tration, never on their own merits. He was very ????????, or retentive-the first requisite, says Plato, of a philosopher-and was consequently well supplied with quotations and allusions, not slavishly repeated, but worked naturally in. I do not mean that he pa.s.sed for a good talker by skilful plagiarizing, but I found that the wider my range of reading became the more I appreciated his talk-drawn, as it was, from all kinds of sources, and bringing with it that aroma of a far-reaching mind, the _fascination_ that culture can bestow, the feeling that, after all, everything is interesting, and that no knowledge is unworthy of the attention of the philosopher.

He hardly ever discussed current politics, though he would argue on political principles with the greatest keenness: neither had he accurate historical knowledge, or antiquarian; but he enjoyed listening to such talk. For the principles, the poetic aspect, of science he had a devoted interest. In literary matters I seldom heard his equal. Many and many is the book which I have been induced to read solely by hearing him sketch the purport in little sentences of extraordinary felicity. "The birth and fatal effects of Impulse in a prosaic soul," was a sketch he gave of a celebrated novel. On one subject he was always dumb-Economics. "It is the one subject on which I have never hazarded a remark successfully," he said to me once. "I can never appreciate the value of an economic statement; I hardly know whether it is interesting."

As he never talked for talking's sake, he was always ready to give his whole attention to the person he was talking to, or none at all; and consequently he never had a middle reputation-some praising his courtesy, as an old lady with whose querulous complaints about ingrat.i.tude and rheumatism he had borne and sympathized; others, his abrupt atrocious manner-"Turned his back on me with a scowl, and didn't say another word," as a sporting fast married lady said to me, who had attempted to tell him an improper story. "I didn't mean to offend him; young men generally like it. I hate a young man to be a prude and a Puritan. Why, he isn't even going into the church, I understand!"

One of his colleagues in the school where he was a master, told me that Arthur had once given him a most delicate and pointed rebuke on the practice into which he had fallen, of appealing to a boy's home feelings before the cla.s.s.

"Some things ought to be said to people when they are alone; besides, we must not _seethe the kid in his mother's milk_."

The same man told me that he heard him give a little address to the boys in his cla.s.s, on the two main virtues of a schoolboy-purity and honesty-on the words, "And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords; and he said unto them, It is enough."

Those are the only two anecdotes I have heard of his professional life, both ill.u.s.trating that extraordinary gift of apt quotation and seeing unexpected connections, which, to my mind, is as adequate an external symbol of genius as can be found, though sometimes illusory.

He took the greatest delight in the society of children. He writes-

"What wonderful lines those are of Tennyson's"-they had just come out,-"'Who pleased her with a babbling heedlessness Which often lured her from herself!' There is nothing more absolutely refres.h.i.+ng when one is overdone or anxious, or oppressed by the vague anxieties of the world, than the conversation and the society of children, the unconscious ignoring of all grave possibilities, yet often accompanied by that curious tact which divines that all is not well with their older friend, and prompts them to employ all their resources to beguile it. I have been thanked by worldly mothers, in country houses, with something like a touch of nature, for being so good to their boys-'I am so afraid they must have been troublesome to you,'-when they have not only saved me from vapid hard gabble and slanderous gossip, but let in a little breath of paradise as well.

I often accept an invitation with reference to the children I shall see. 'To meet Lord and Lady D--, and Mrs. G--, such an amusing woman-tells _such_ stories, they make you _scream!_' the invitation runs; and I accept it, to see Johnny and Charlie, to play at Red Indians in the wilderness, and to dig up the tin box of date-stones and cartridge-cases that we buried in the bed of the stream."

If I seem to have given rather a priggish picture of Arthur, it is a totally erroneous one. He was far too casual and too retiring to be that; he had no appearance of self-importance, though an invincible reserve of self-respect. The prig wears chain armor outside, and runs at you with his lance when he catches a glimpse of you. Arthur wore his chain armor under his s.h.i.+rt, and it was not till you closed with him that you felt how sharp his dagger was.

I give a perfectly disinterested sketch of him, which a lady, who met him several times, wrote out at my request. It is hard for me to help speaking from inside knowledge.

"Dear Mr. Carr,

"You ask me to give you my impression of Mr. Hamilton, in writing.

What your motive is I can't conceive, as he was not a person I took much interest in, though I know that some people do. Unless, perhaps, you mean to put him into a book.

"I met him at a country house in Shrops.h.i.+re. He came down rather late for breakfast, and when he was asked how he was, he quoted something about 'being apt to be rather fatigued with his night's rest.' I remember it very clearly, because it struck me as being so pointless at the time. He went out shooting most of the day, and I think, as far as I can remember, he was a good shot. He smoked a fearful amount, 'all the time,' in fact; they were always attacking him for that. When he came in he used to have some tea in the nursery. We found that out the last day-the children were sent for, and Mr.

Hamilton came down with them, looking rather sheepish, and saying that he had tried sitting on at one side of the table, with the nursery maid at the other, after the children had gone, but that it didn't do. I remember we were very much amused at the idea; the picture was such a ridiculous one.

"The children certainly seemed to like him extraordinarily-they would talk to no one else: and I can't think why, because children are so impressionable, and he had quite the gravest face I ever saw-almost forbidding. However, so it was.

"He used to disappear to his room, to read and write, before dinner.

At dinner he was often very good fun. I have heard him tell some very funny stories, not very racy perhaps, but amusing; and these, coming from that grave face, were very ridiculous. He always made friends with the younger ladies. He never seemed to flirt, and yet he used to say things to them in public that even I felt inclined to pull him up for. And then he used to ask them to go out walks with him, and, what's more, he went out with certainly two, alone; and you know that is rather a marked thing.

"He looked about forty, but he always gravitated toward the young people; made great friends with boys, and in a curious way, too.

Generally, if men make friends with schoolboys in a country house it is at the loss of their dignity-they run the risk of having to swallow all sorts of practical jokes, such as getting water thrown on their head and salt put into their tea; but he never compromised himself, and they always behaved to him with respect, but were quite impatient if he wouldn't come with them everywhere. I overheard him talking to a boy once, and I didn't so much wonder; he spoke in such an affectionate way, and boys like to feel that grown-up people take the trouble to like them.

"He was very friendly with the governess, and would try to include her in the conversation. I can't say he succeeded, for we were down on that. I don't myself consider it good form to encourage your governess to have opinions.

"Everybody was always very deferential to him. He always made a sensation if he came into the room. No one could help looking at him.

He wasn't one of those tame sneaking creatures that are to be met in country houses, of whom no one takes the least notice; he was much more inclined to take no notice of any one else; but it was impossible to forget he was in the room. And the servants were invariably respectful to him, quite as if he was a real swell; and yet he didn't dress well and hadn't a servant of his own. He was just the sort of man you would have thought flunkeys would have despised.

"But I have let my pen run on to an unconscionable length. It reminds me of the remark with which he dismissed the subject of poor old Sir Charles W-- who was staying there. We had been discussing him, and asked Mr. Hamilton what he thought of him. 'A talking jacka.s.s,' was his only reply, in his most chilling tones.

"I fear I am open to the same imputation.

"Very truly yours, "Laura F--.

"I should like to know what you want this for; however, happily, I have put it in a form you can't make much use of."

I was much amused at the way in which he treated gossip about himself.

I told him some stories about him that I had picked up. They related to a certain absent-mindedness which he was supposed to possess.

"I am afraid they are not true," he said first. "I should welcome any hint of absence of mind in myself as a sign that the abstract could exclude the concrete, which is unfortunately not the case with me."

Then, in a moment, he said, "People have no business to tell such stories. I should not mind their not being true, if they were only characteristic."

"By which you mean," said a gentleman who was sitting next him, "that you don't care about veracity, only you can't stand dullness."

"Not at all," said Arthur, quickly. "Veracity is not the question in gossip at all. It is all hearsay. You have not to judge of the actual truth of a scandalous story, but you have to judge of the probable truth of it, and if it is obviously uncharacteristic it is wrong to repeat it. It becomes scandal then, and not till then."

When he was living in London, which was, for the time being, his home, he lived a regular life, combining more reading with a sociable life than many people would have thought possible. He had two rooms in a house in Russell Square. He breakfasted at half-past nine and read till four, when he went down to his club and talked, or strolled in the park. He made hardly any engagements, except for the evening; and admitted hardly anyone, except two or three friends, to see him at his rooms, and then only after one o'clock, before which hour he was absolutely invisible. He was so dreadfully angry with his landlady for showing a gentleman in once in the middle of the morning, that she literally refused ever to do it again. "He's a good regular lodger, sir, and doesn't think of money, but he said to me, 'Mrs. Laing, I _don't choose to be disturbed_ before one. If I find my orders disregarded again, I shall leave the house _that day_.'

I daren't do it, sir. You wouldn't like to deprive me of my lodger, I know, sir." The last pathetic plea could not be gainsaid, so Arthur had his way.

Four evenings he devoted to going out, and the other three dining quietly at home and reading. By the time he left London his reading, always wide, had become prodigious. His own library was good, and he had a ticket for the British Museum Reading-room and belonged to two circulating libraries. He made a point of reading new books (1) if he was strongly recommended them by specialists; (2) if they reached a second edition within a month; (3) if they were republished after a period of neglect-this he held to be the best test of a book.

It was characteristic of his natural indolence that he chose the very easiest method of reading-that is to say, he always read, if he could, _in_ a translation, or if the style of the original was the object, _with_ one. This, like his posture, nearly rec.u.mbent, was deliberately adopted. "I find," he said, "that the _reflective_ part of my brain works best when I have as little either bodily or _purely_ intellectual to distract me as possible. And it is the reflective part," he says, "that I always preferred to cultivate, and that latterly I have devoted my whole attention to. It is through the reflective part that one gets the highest influence over people.

Training the reflective function is the training of character, while the training of the purely physical side often, and the training of the intellectual side not uncommonly, have a distinctly deteriorative effect.

"By the reflective part, I mean all that deals with the _connection_ of things, the discovery of principles, the laws that regulate emotion and influence, the motives of human nature, the basis of existence, the solution of the problem of life and being-that vast cla.s.s of subjects which lie just below, and animate concrete facts, and which are the only things worthy of the devotion of a philosopher, though no knowledge is unworthy of his _attention_.