Immortal Memories Part 5

I have not time to go through the record of all Dr. Johnson's uncles on the maternal side, and do full justice to Mr. Reade's industry and mastery of detail. I may, however, mention incidentally that the uncle who was hanged, if one was, must have been one of his father's brothers, for to the Fords that distinction does not seem to have belonged. Much that is entertaining is related of the cousin Parson Ford, who, after sharing with the famous Earl of Chesterfield in many of his profligacies, received from his lords.h.i.+p the Rectory of South Luffenham. There is no evidence, however, that Chesterfield ever knew that his at one time chaplain and boon companion was cousin of the man who wrote him the most famous of letters.

The mother of Cornelius Ford was a Crowley, and this brings Johnson into relations.h.i.+p with London city worthies, for Mrs. Ford's brother was Sir Ambrose Crowley, Kt., Alderman, of London, the original of Addison's Jack Anvil. One of Sir Ambrose Crowley's daughters married Humphrey Parsons, sometime M.P. for London and twice Lord Mayor. Thus we see that during the very years of Johnson's most painful struggle in London one of his distant cousins or connexions was Chief Magistrate of this City. Another connexion, Elizabeth Crowley, was married in 1724 at Westminster Abbey to John, tenth Lord St. John of Bletsoe. "Here are ancestors for you, Mistress," Dr. Johnson might have said to Mrs. Thrale if he had only known--if he had had a genealogist at his elbow as well as a pushful biographer.

Mr. Reade prints the whole of the marriage settlement upon the union of Johnson's mother and father. It is a very elaborate doc.u.ment, and suggests the undoubted prosperity of the parties at the time. The husband was fifty, the bride thirty-seven. Samuel was not born until three years and three months after the marriage. The pair frequently in early married life received a.s.sistance by convenient deaths as the following extracts from wills indicate:--

_Cornelius Ford of Packwood in the Co. of Warwick_.

I give and bequeath unto my son-in-law Michaell Johnson the sum of five pounds, and to his wife my daughter five and twenty pounds.

Proved May 1, 1709.

_Jane Ford of Old Turnford_, _widow of Joseph Ford_.

I do will and appoint that my son Cornelius Ford do and shall pay to my brother-in-law, Mr. Michael Johnson and his wife and their trustees, the sum of 200 pounds which is directed by his late father's Will to be paid to me and in lieu of so much moneys which my said late husband received in trust for my said brother Johnson and his wife.

Proved at Worcester, October 2, 1722.

Then "good cousin Harriotts" does not forget them:--

I give and bequeath to my cousin Sarah the wife of Michael Johnson the like sum of 40 pounds for her own separate use, and one pair of my best flaxen sheets and pillow coats, a large pewter dish and a dozen of pewter plates, provided that her husband doth at the same time give the like bond to my executor to permit his wife to dispose of the same at her will and pleasure.

Elizabeth Harriotts of Trysall in Staff., October 23, 1726.

But I must leave this fascinating volume. I cannot find time to tell you all it has to say about the Porter family. Mr. Reade is as informative when treating of the Porters, of Mrs. Johnson and her daughter Lucy, as he is with the family trees of which I have spoken.

I hasten on to Dr. Hill's _Life_, with which I am only concerned here at the point where it is affected by Mr. Reade's book. The reflection inevitably arises that it is well-nigh impossible efficiently to do work involving research unless one has an income derived from other sources.

Your historian in proportion to the value of his work must be a rich man, and so must the biographer. Good as Brother Birkbeck Hill's work was, it would have been better if he had had more money. He might have had many of these wills and other doc.u.ments copied, upon the securing of which Mr.

Reade must have expended such very large sums. Dr. Hill was fully alive to this. "If I had not some private means," he wrote to a friend in 1897, "I could never edit Johnson and Boswell; but I do not get so well paid as a carpenter." As a matter of fact, I find that he lost exactly 3 pounds by publis.h.i.+ng _Dr. Johnson_: _his Friends and his Critics_. He made 320 pounds by the first four years' sale of the "Boswell." This 320 pounds, including American rights, made the bulk of his payments for his many years' work, and the book has not yet gone into a second edition. I think 2,000 were printed. There were between 40,000 and 50,000 copies of Croker's editions sold, so that we must not be too boastful as to the improved taste of the present age. 320 pounds is a mere bagatelle to numbers of our present writers of utterly foolish fiction. Several of them have been known to spend double that sum on a single motor-car. In connexion with this matter I cannot refrain from giving one pa.s.sage from a letter of Brother Hill's:--

My old friend D--- lamented that the two new volumes (of my _Johnson Miscellanies_) are so dear as to be above his reach. The net price is a guinea. On Sunday he had eight gla.s.ses of hollands and seltzer--a s.h.i.+lling each, a pint of stout and some cider, besides half a dozen cigars or so. Two days' abstinence from cigars and liquor would have paid for my book.

Mrs. Crump, who writes her father's life, has expressed regret to me that there is so little in the book concerning the Johnson Club to which Brother Hill was so devoted. She had asked me for letters, but I felt that all in my possession were unsuited for publication, dealing rather freely with living persons. Brother Hill was impatient of the mere bookmaker--the literary charlatan who wrote without reading sufficiently.

There are two pleasant glimpses of our Club in the volume; I quote one.

It was of the night that we discussed _Dr. Johnson as a Radical_:--

I wish that you and Lucy could have been present last night and witnessed my scene of triumph. I was indeed most n.o.bly welcomed. The scribe told me with sympathetic pride that the correspondent of the _New York Herald_ had asked leave to attend, as he wished to telegraph my paper out to America!!! as well as the discussion. There were some very good speeches made in the discussion that followed, especially by a Mr. Whale, a solicitor, who spoke remarkably well and with great knowledge of his _Boswell_. He said that he preferred to call it, not Johnson's radical side, but his humanitarian side. Mr. Birrell, the _Obiter Dicta_ man, also spoke very well. He is a clever fellow. He was equally complimentary. He maintained in opposition to Mr. Whale that radical was the right term, and in fact that radicalism and humanitarianism were the same. Many of them said what a light the paper had thrown on Johnson's character. One gentleman came up and congratulated me on the very delicate way in which I had handled so difficult a subject, and had not given offence to the Liberal Unionists and Tories present. Edmund Gosse, by whom I sat, was most friendly, and called the paper a wonderful _tour de force_, referring to the way in which I had linked Johnson's sayings. He asked me to visit him some day at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a.s.sured me of a hearty welcome. It is no wonder that what with the supper and the smoke I did not get to sleep till after two. Among the guests was the great Bonner, the Australian cricketer, whose health had been drunk with that of the other visitors, and his praise sounded at having hit some b.a.l.l.s over the pavilion at Lord's. With great simplicity he said that after seeing the way in which Johnson's memory was revered, he would much rather have been such a man than have gained his own greatest triumphs at cricket. He did not say it jocularly at all.

Another letter from Dr. Hill describes how he found himself at Ashbourne in Derbys.h.i.+re with the Club, or rather with a fragment of it. He wrote from the _Green Man_ there concerning his adventures.

I have far exceeded my time, but I would like in conclusion to say how admirably his daughter has written this book on our Brother Birkbeck Hill. What a pleasant picture it presents of a genuine lover of literature. His was not an a.n.a.lytical mind nor was he a great critic.

His views on Dante and Newman will not be shared by any of us. But, what is far more important than a.n.a.lysis or criticism, he had an entirely lovable personality and was a most clubbable man. He was moreover the ideal editor of Boswell. What more could be said in praise of a beloved Brother of the Johnson Club!

VII. THE PRIVATE LIFE OF FERDINAND La.s.sALLE {185}

Ich habe die Inventur meines Lebens gemacht.

Es war gross, brav, wacker, tapfer und glanzend genug.

Eine kunftige Zeit wird mir gerecht zu warden wissen.

--FERDINAND La.s.sALLE, _August_ 9, 1864.

I. The Countess Sophie von Hatzfeldt.

Ferdinand La.s.salle was born at Breslau on April 11, 1825. His parents were of Jewish race, his father a successful silk merchant. From boyhood he was now the tyrant, now the slave of a mother whom he loved and by whom he was adored. Heymann La.s.sal--his son changed the spelling during his Paris sojourn--appears to have been irritable and tyrannical; and there are some graphic instances in the recently published "Diary" {186} of the differences between them, ending on one occasion in the boy rus.h.i.+ng to the river, where his terrified father finds him hesitating on the brink, and becomes reconciled. A more attractive picture of the old man is that told of his visit to his son-in-law, Friedland, who had married La.s.salle's sister. Friedland was ashamed of his Jewish origin, and old La.s.salle startled the guests at dinner by rising and frankly stating that he was a Jew, that his daughter was a Jewess, and that her husband was of the same race. The guests cheered, but the host never forgave his too frank father-in-law.

La.s.salle was a student at Breslau University, and later at Berlin, where he laid the foundation of those Hegelian studies to which he owed his political philosophy. In 1845 he went to Paris, and there secured the friends.h.i.+p of Heine, being included with George Sand in the interesting circle around the "mattress grave" of the sick poet.

Among Heine's letters {187} there are four addressed to La.s.salle, now as "Dear and best beloved friend," now as "Dearest brother-in-arms." "Be a.s.sured," he says, "that I love you beyond measure. I have never before felt so much confidence in any one." "I have found in no one," he says again, "so much pa.s.sion and clearness of intellect united in action. You have good right to be audacious--we others only usurp this Divine right, this heavenly privilege." And to Varnhagen von Ense he writes:--

My friend, Herr La.s.salle, who brings you this letter, is a young man of the most remarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough erudition, with the widest learning, with the greatest penetration that I have ever known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he combines an energy of will and a capacity for action which astonish me. . . . In no one have I found united so much enthusiasm and practical intelligence.

"In every line," says Brandes, "this letter shows the far-seeing student of life, indeed, the prophet!"

La.s.salle is not backward in reciprocating the enthusiasm.

"I love Heine," he declares; "he is my second self. What audacity!

what crus.h.i.+ng eloquence! He knows how to whisper like a zephyr when it kisses rose-blooms, how to breathe like fire when it rages and destroys; he calls forth all that is tenderest and softest, and then all that is fiercest and most daring. He has the command of all the range of feeling."

La.s.salle's sympathy with Heine never lessened. It was Heine who lost grasp of the intrinsically higher nature of his countryman and co-religionist, and an acute difference occurred, as we shall see, when La.s.salle interfered in the affairs of the Countess von Hatzfeldt.

Introduced to the Countess by his friend Dr. Mendelssohn, in 1846, La.s.salle felt that here in concrete form was scope for all his enthusiasm of humanity, and he determined to devote his life to championing the cause of the oppressed lady. {188} The Countess was the wife of a wealthy and powerful n.o.bleman, who ill-treated her shamefully. He imprisoned her in his castles, refused her doctors and medicine in sickness, and carried off her children. Her own family, as powerful as the Count, had often intervened, and the Count's repentances were many but short-lived. In 1846 matters reached a crisis. The Count wrote to his second son, Paul, asking him to leave his mother. The boy carried this letter to the Countess; and La.s.salle relates that, finding the lady in tears, he persuaded her to a full disclosure of the facts. He pledged himself to save her, and for nine years carried on the struggle, with ultimate victory, but with considerable loss of reputation. He first told the story to Mendelssohn and Oppenheim, two friends of great wealth, the latter a Judge of one of the superior courts in Prussia. They agreed to help him; for then, as always, La.s.salle's persuasive powers were irresistible. They went with him from Berlin to Dusseldorf, the Count being in that neighbourhood. Von Hatzfeldt was at Aix-la-Chapelle, caught in the toils of a new mistress, the Baroness Meyendorff. La.s.salle discovered that she had obtained from the Count a deed a.s.signing to her some property which should in the ordinary course have come to the boy Paul. The Countess, hearing of the disaster which seemed likely to befall her favourite son, made her way into her husband's presence, and in the scene which followed secured a promise that the doc.u.ment should be revoked--destroyed. But no sooner had she left him than the Count returned to the Meyendorff influence, and refused to see his wife again.

Soon afterwards it was discovered that the woman had set out for Cologne.

La.s.salle begged his friends Oppenheim and Mendelssohn, to follow her and, if possible, to ascertain whether the momentous doc.u.ment had actually been destroyed. They obeyed, and reached the hotel at Cologne about the same time as the Baroness. Here they were guilty of an indiscretion, if of nothing worse, for which La.s.salle can surely in no way be blamed, but which was used for many a year to tarnish his name. Oppenheim, on his way upstairs, observed a servant with the luggage of the Baroness; among other things a desk or casket of a kind commonly used to carry valuable papers. Thinking only of the fact that it was desirable to obtain a certain doc.u.ment from the brutal Count, he pounced upon the casket when the servant's back was turned. But he had no luggage with him in which to conceal it, and so handed it to Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn, although fully sensible of the blunder that had been committed, could not desert his friend, and placed the casket in his trunk.

The whole hotel was in an uproar when the Baroness discovered her loss.

The friends fled panic-stricken in opposite directions. Suspicion immediately fell upon Dr. Mendelssohn, because his room was seen to have been left in confusion. He was pursued, but succeeded in escaping from a railway carriage and fleeing to Paris, leaving his luggage in the hands of the police. In his box some papers were found which incriminated Oppenheim; and Oppenheim, a Judge of one of the superior courts, and the son of a millionaire, was arrested and imprisoned for theft!

La.s.salle visited Oppenheim in prison, and extracted from him a promise of silence as to the motive for his conduct. He then threw himself vigorously into the struggle, both in the press and in the law courts.

Here he seems to have parted company with Heine, because, as he tells us, "the Baroness Meyendorff was a friend of the Princess de Lieven, and the Princess de Lieven was the mistress of Guizot, and Heine received a pension from Guizot."

Oppenheim was acquitted in 1846, and Mendelssohn, who was really innocent of the actual robbery, naturally thought it safe to return to Germany. He was, however, tried before the a.s.size court of Cologne, and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. Alexander von Humboldt obtained a reduction of the sentence to one year, but on condition that Mendelssohn should leave Europe. He went, after his release from prison, to Constantinople, and when the Crimean war broke out joined the Turkish army, dying on the march in 1854.

Meanwhile Germany rang for many years with the story of the so-called robbery, and La.s.salle's name was even more a.s.sociated therewith than were those of his more culpable friends. And this was not unnatural, because he was engaged year after year in continuous warfare with Count Hatzfeldt. At length, in 1854, about the time that the unfortunate Dr.

Mendelssohn died in the East, he secured for the Countess complete separation and an ample provision.

La.s.salle's friends.h.i.+p with this lady inevitably gave rise to scandal. But never surely was scandal so little justified. She was twenty years his senior, and the relation was clearly that of mother and son. In her letters he is always "my dear child," and in his she is the confidante of the innumerable troubles of mind and of heart of which so impressionable a man as Ferdinand La.s.salle had more than his share.

"You are without reason and judgment where women are concerned," she tells him, when he confides to her his pa.s.sion for Helene von Donniges; and the remark opens out a vista of confidences of which the world happily knows but little. From the a.s.size court of Dusseldorf, of all places, we have a very definite glimpse of a good-looking man, likely to be a favourite in the society of the opposite s.e.x:--

"Ferdinand La.s.salle," runs the official doc.u.ment, "aged twenty-three, a civilian, born at Breslau, and dwelling recently at Berlin. Stands five feet six inches in height, has brown curly hair, open forehead, brown eyebrows, dark blue eyes, well proportioned nose and mouth, and rounded chin."

He was indeed a favourite in Berlin drawing-rooms, p.r.o.nounced a "Wunderkind" by Humboldt, and enthusiastically admired on all sides. But, a.s.suming the story of Sophie Solutzeff to be mythical, there is no evidence that La.s.salle had ever had any very serious romance in his life until he met Helene von Donniges.