Victorian Worthies Part 4

He did not forget his own countrymen, least of all that valued friend 'Thomas Atkins' and his comrade the sepoy. By the erection of s.p.a.cious barracks he made the soldier's life more pleasant and his health more secure; and in a hundred other ways he showed his care and affection for them. In return few British generals have been so loved by the rank and file. He also gave much thought to material progress, to strengthening the fortress of Hyder[=a]b[=a]d, to developing the harbour at Kar[=a]chi, and, above all, to enriching the peasants by irrigation schemes. It was the story of Cephalonia on a bigger scale; but Napier was now twenty years older, overwhelmed with work, and he could give less attention to details. He did his best to find subordinates after his own heart, men who would 'scorn delights and live laborious days'.

'Does he wear varnished boots?' was a typical question that he put to a friend in Bombay, when a new engineer was commended to him. His own rewards were meagre. The Grand Cross of the Bath and the colonelcy of his favourite regiment, the 22nd, were all the recognition given for a campaign whose difficulties were minimized at home because he had mastered them so triumphantly.

Two other achievements belong to the period of his government of Sind.

The campaign against the tribes of the Kachhi Hills, to the north-west of his province, rendered necessary by continued marauding, shows all his old mastery of organization. Any one who has glanced into Indian history knows the danger of these raids and the bitter experience which our Indian army has gained in them. In less than two months (January-March 1845) Napier had led five thousand men safely over burning deserts and through most difficult mountain country, had by careful strategy driven the marauders into a corner, forcing them to surrender with trifling loss, and had made an impression on the hill chieftains which lasted for many a year. This work, though slighted by the directors of the Company, received enthusiastic praise from such good judges of war as Lord Hardinge and the Duke of Wellington. The second emergency arose when the first Sikh war broke out in the Punjab.

Napier felt so confident in the loyalty of his newly-pacified province that within six weeks he drew together an army of 15,000 men, and took post at Rohri, ready to co-operate against the Sikhs from the south, while Lord Hardinge advanced from the east. Before he could arrive, the decisive battle had been fought, and all he was asked to do was to a.s.sist in a council of war at Lah.o.r.e. The mistakes made in the campaign had been numerous. No one saw them more clearly than Napier, and no one foretold more accurately the troubles which were to follow. For all that, he wrote in generous admiration of Lord Hardinge the Viceroy and Lord Gough the Commander-in-Chief at a time when criticism and personal bitterness were prevalent in many quarters.

After this he returned to Sind with health shattered and a longing for rest. He continued to work with vigour, but his mind was set on resignation; and the bad relations which had for years existed between him and the directors embittered his last months. No doubt he was impatient and self-willed, inclined to take short cuts through the system of dual control[14] and to justify them by his own single-hearted zeal for the good of the country. But the directors had eyes for all the slight irregularities, which are inevitable in the work of an original man, and failed entirely to estimate the priceless services that he rendered to British rule. In July 1847 he resigned and returned to Europe; but even now the end was not come. 'The tragedy must be re-acted a year or two hence,' he had written in March 1846, seeing clearly that the Sikhs had not been reconciled to British rule. In February 1849 the directors were forced by the national voice to send him out to take supreme military command and to retrieve the disasters with which the second Sikh war began. They were very reluctant to do so, and Napier himself had little wish for further exertions in so thankless a service.

But the Duke of Wellington himself appealed to him, the nation spoke through all its organs, and he could not put his own wishes in the scale against the demands of public service.

[Note 14: The dual control of British India by the Crown and the East India Company lasted from 1778 to 1858.]

He made all speed and reached Calcutta early in May, but he found no enemy to fight. The issue had been decided by Lord Gough and the hard fighting of Chili[=a]nw[=a]la. He had been cheated by fortune, as in 1815, and he never knew the joy of battle again. He was accustomed to settle everything as a dictator; he found it difficult to act as part of an administrative machine. He was unfamiliar with the routine of Indian official life, and he was now growing old; he was impatient of forms, impetuous in his likes and dislikes, outspoken in praise and condemnation. His relations with the masterful Viceroy, Lord Dalhousie, were soon clouded; and though he delighted in the friends.h.i.+p of Colin Campbell and many other able soldiers, he was too old to adapt himself to new men and new measures. In 1850 the rumblings of the storm, which was to break seven years later, could already be heard, and Napier had much anxiety over the mutinous spirit rising in the sepoy regiments. He did his best to go to the bottom of the trouble and to establish confidence and friendly relations between British and natives, but he had not time enough to achieve permanent results, and he was often fettered by the regulations of the political service. His predictions were as striking now as in the first Sikh war; but he was not content to predict and to sit idle. He was unwearied in working for the reform of barracks, though his plans were often spoiled by the careless execution of others. He was urgent for a better tone among regimental officers and for more consideration on their part towards their soldiers. If more men in high position had similarly exerted themselves, the mutiny would have been less widespread and less fatal. His resignation was due to a dispute with Lord Dalhousie about the sepoys' pay. Napier acted _ultra vires_ in suspending on his own responsibility an order of the Government, because he believed the situation to be critical, while the Viceroy refused to regard this as justified. His departure, in December 1850, was the signal for an outburst of feeling among officers, soldiers, and all who knew him. His return by way of Sind was a triumphal progress.

He had two years to live when he set foot again in England, and most of this was spent at Oaklands near Portsmouth. His health had been ruined in the public service; but he continued to take a keen interest in pa.s.sing events and to write on military subjects to Colin Campbell and other friends. At the same time he devoted much of his time to his neighbours and his farm. In 1852 he attended as pall-bearer at the Duke of Wellington's funeral; his own was not far distant. His brother, Sir William, describes the last scene thus: 'On the morning of August 29th 1853, at 5 o'clock, he expired like a soldier on a naked camp bedstead, the windows of the room open and the fresh air of Heaven blowing on his manly face--as the last breath escaped, Montagu McMurdo (his son-in-law), with a sudden inspiration, s.n.a.t.c.hed the old colours of the 22nd Regiment, the colour that had been borne at Mi[=a]ni and Hyder[=a]b[=a]d, and waved them over the dying hero. Thus Charles Napier pa.s.sed from the world.'

He was a man who roused enthusiastic devotion and provoked strong resentment. Like Gordon, he was a man who could rule others, but could not be ruled; and his official career left many heart-burnings behind.

His equally pa.s.sionate brother, Sir William, who wrote his life, took up the feud as a legacy and pursued it in print for many years. It is regrettable that such men cannot work without friction; but in all things it was devotion to the public service, and not personal ambition, that carried Charles Napier to such extremes. From his youth he had trained himself to such a pitch of self-denial and ascetic rigour that he could not make allowance for the frailties of the average man. His keen eye and swift brain made him too impatient of the shortcomings of conscientious officials. He was ready to work fifteen hours a day when the need came; he was able to pierce into the heart of a matter while others would be puzzling round the fringes of it. Rarely in his long and laborious career did an emergency arise capable of bringing out all his gifts; and his greatest exploits were performed on scenes unfamiliar to the ma.s.s of his fellow countrymen. But a few opinions can be given to show that he was rated at his full value by the foremost men of the day.

Perhaps the most striking testimony comes from one who never saw him; it was written three years after his death, when his brother's biography appeared. It was Carlyle, the biographer of Cromwell and Frederick the Great, the most famous man of letters of the day, who wrote in 1856: 'The fine and n.o.ble qualities of the man are very recognizable to me; his piercing, subtle intellect turned all to the practical, giving him just insight into men and into things; his inexhaustible, adroit contrivances; his fiery valour; sharp prompt.i.tude to seize the good moment that will not return. A lynx-eyed, fiery man, with the spirit of an old knight in him; more of a hero than any modern I have seen for a long time.' A second tribute comes from one who had known him as an officer and was a supreme judge of military genius. Wellington was not given to extravagant words, but on many occasions he expressed himself in the warmest terms about Napier's talents and services. In 1844, speaking of the Sind campaign in the House of Lords, he said: 'My Lords, I must say that, after giving the fullest consideration to these operations, I have never known any instance of an officer who has shown in a higher degree that he possesses all the qualities and qualifications necessary to enable him to conduct great operations.' In the House of Commons at the same time Sir Robert Peel--the ablest administrative statesman of that generation, who had read for himself some of Napier's masterly dispatches--said: 'No one ever doubted Sir Charles Napier's military powers; but in his other character he does surprise me--he is possessed of extraordinary talent for civil administration.' Again, he speaks of him as 'one of three brothers who have engrafted on the stem of an ancient and honourable lineage that personal n.o.bility which is derived from unblemished private character, from the highest sense of personal honour, and from repeated proofs of valour in the field, which have made their name conspicuous in the records of their country'.

Indifferent as Charles Napier was to ordinary praise or blame, he would have appreciated the words of such men, especially when they a.s.sociated him with his brothers; but perhaps he would have been more pleased to know how many thousands of his humble fellow countrymen walked to his informal funeral at Portsmouth, and to know that the majority of those who subscribed to his statue in Trafalgar Square were private soldiers in the army that he had served and loved.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LORD SHAFTESBURY

From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]

ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER

SEVENTH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY

1801-85

1801. Born in Grosvenor Square, London, April 28.

1811. His father succeeds to the earldom. He himself becomes Lord Ashley.

1813-17. Harrow.

1819-22. Christ Church, Oxford.

1826. M.P. for Woodstock.

1828. Commissioner of India Board of Control.

1829. Chairman of Commission for Lunatic Asylums.

1830. Marries Emily, daughter of fifth Earl Cowper.

1832. Takes up the cause of the Ten Hours Bill or Factory Act.

1833. M.P. for Dorset.

1836. Founds Church Pastoral Aid Society.

1839. Founds Indigent Blind Visiting Society.

1840. Takes up cause of Boy Chimney-sweepers.

1842. Mines and Collieries Bill carried.

1843. Joins the Ragged School movement.

1847. Ten Hours Bill finally carried.

1847. M.P. for Bath.

1848. Public Health Act. Chairman of Board of Health.

1851. President of British and Foreign Bible Society.

1851. Succeeds to the earldom.

1855. Lord Palmerston twice offers him a seat in the Cabinet.

1872. Death of Lady Shaftesbury.

1884. Receives the Freedom of the City of London.

1885. Dies at Folkestone, October 1.

LORD SHAFTESBURY

PHILANTHROPIST

The word 'Philanthropist' has suffered the same fate as many other words in our language. It has become hackneyed and corrupted; it has taken a professional taint; it has almost become a byword. We are apt to think of the philanthropist as an excitable, contentious creature, at the mercy of every fad, an ultra-radical in politics, craving for notoriety, filled with self-confidence, and meddling with other people's business.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, the greatest philanthropist of the nineteenth century, was of a different type. By temper he was strongly conservative. He always loved best to be among his own family; he was fond of his home, fond of the old a.s.sociations of his house. To come out into public life, to take his place in Parliament or on the platform, to be mixed up in the wrangling of politics was naturally distasteful to him. It continually needed a strong effort for him to overcome this distaste and to act up to his sense of duty. It is only when we remember this that we can do justice to his lifelong activity, and to the high principles which bore him up through so many efforts and so many disappointments. For himself he would submit to injustice and be still: for his fellow countrymen and for his religion he would renew the battle to the last day of his life.

His childhood was not happy. His parents had little sympathy with children, his father being absorbed in the cares of public life, his mother given up to society pleasures. He had three sisters older than himself, but no brother or companion, and he was left largely to himself. At the age of seven he went to a preparatory school, where he was made miserable by the many abuses which flourished there; and it was not till he went to Harrow at the age of twelve that he began to enjoy life. He had few of the indulgences which we a.s.sociate with the early days of those who are born heirs to high position. But, thus thrown back on himself, the boy nurtured strong attachments, for the old housekeeper who first showed him tenderness at home, for the school where he had learnt to be happy, and for the Dorset home, which was to be throughout his life the pole-star of his affections. The village of Wimborne St.

Giles lies some eight miles north of Wimborne, in Dorset, on the edge of Cranborne Forest, one of the most beautiful and unspoiled regions in the south of England, which 'as late as 1818 contained twelve thousand deer and as many as six lodges, each of which had its walk and its ranger'.

Here he wandered freely in his holidays for many years, giving as yet little promise of an exceptional career; here you may find in outlying cottages those who still treasure his memory and keep his biography among the few books that adorn their shelves.

From Harrow, Lord Ashley went at the age of sixteen to read for two years with a clergyman in Derbys.h.i.+re; in 1819 he went to Christ Church, Oxford, and three years later succeeded in taking a first cla.s.s in cla.s.sics. He had good abilities and a great power of concentration.

These were to bear fruit one day in the gathering of statistics, in the marshalling of evidence, and in the presentation of a case which needed the most lucid and most laborious advocacy.

He came down from Oxford in 1822, but did not go into Parliament till 1826, and for the intervening years there is little to chronicle. In those days it was usual enough for a young n.o.bleman to take up politics when he was barely of age, but Lord Ashley needed some other motive than the custom of the day. It is characteristic of his whole life that he responded to a call when there was a need, but was never in a hurry to put himself forward or to aim at high position. We have a few of his own notes from this time which show the extent of his reading, and still more, the depth of his reflections. As with Milton, who spent over five years at Cambridge and then five more in study and retirement at Horton, the long years of self-education were profitable and left their mark on his life. His first strong religious impulse he himself dates back to his school-days at Harrow, when (as is now recorded in a mural tablet on the spot) in walking up the street one day he was shocked by the indignities of a pauper funeral. The drunken bearers, staggering up the hill and swearing over the coffin, so appalled him that the sight remained branded on his memory and he determined to devote his life to the service of the poor. But one such shock would have achieved little, if the decision had not been strengthened by years of thought and resolution. His tendency to self-criticism is seen in the entry in his diary for April, 1826 (his twenty-fifth birthday). He blames himself for indulging in dreams and for having performed so little; but he himself admits that the visions were all of a n.o.ble character, and we know what abundant fruit they produced in the sixty years of active effort which were to follow. The man who a year later could write sincerely in his diary, 'Immortality has ceased to be a longing with me. I desire to be useful in my generation,' had been little harmed by a few years of dreaming dreams, and had little need to be afraid of having made a false start in life.

When he entered the House of Commons as member for Woodstock in 1826, Lord Ashley had strong Conservative instincts, a fervid belief in the British const.i.tution, and an unbounded admiration for the Duke of Wellington, whose Peninsula victories had fired his enthusiasm at Harrow. It was to his wing of the Conservative party that Ashley attached himself; and it was the duke who, succeeding to the premiers.h.i.+p on the premature death of Canning, gave him his first office, a post on the India Board of Control. The East India Company with its board of directors (abolished in 1858) still ruled India, but was since 1778 subject in many ways to the control of the British Parliament, and the board to which Lord Ashley now belonged exercised some of the functions since committed to the Secretary of State for India. He set himself conscientiously to study the interests of India, but over the work of his department he had little chance of winning distinction. In fact his first prominent speech was on the Reform of Lunatic Asylums, not an easy subject for a new member to handle. He was diffident in manner and almost inaudible. Without the kindly encouragement of friends he might have despaired of future success; but his sincerity in the cause was worth more than many a brilliant speech. The Bill was carried, a new board was const.i.tuted, and of this Lord Ashley became chairman in 1829, and continued to hold the office till his death fifty-six years later.

This was the first of the burdens that he took upon himself without thought of reward, and so is worthy of special mention, though it never won the fame of his factory legislation. But it shows the character of the man, how ready he was to step into a post which meant work without remuneration, drudgery without fame, prejudice and opposition from all whose interests were concerned in maintaining the abuses of the past.

It was this spirit which led him in 1836 to take up the Church Pastoral Aid Society,[15] in 1839 to found the Indigent Blind Visiting Society, in 1840 to champion the cause of chimney-sweeps, and in all these cases to continue his support for fifty years or more. We are accustomed to-day to 'presidents' and 'patrons' and a whole broadsheet of complimentary t.i.tles, to which n.o.blemen give their names and often give little else. Lord Ashley understood such an office differently. He was regular in attendance at meetings, generous in giving money, unflinching in his advocacy of the cause. We shall see this more fully in dealing with the two most famous crusades a.s.sociated with his name.

[Note 15: To help church work by adding to the number of clergy.]

Though these growing labours began early to occupy his time, we find the record of his life diversified by other claims and other interests. In 1830 he married Emily, daughter of Lord Cowper, who bore him several children, and who shared all his interests with the fullest sympathy; and henceforth his greatest joys and his deepest sorrows were always a.s.sociated with his family life. At home his first hobby was astronomy.

At the age of twenty-eight he was ardently devoted to it and would spend all his leisure on it for weeks together, till graver duties absorbed his time. But he was no recluse, and all through his life he found pleasure in the society of his friends and in paying them visits in their homes. Many of his early visits were paid to the Iron Duke at Strathfieldsaye; in later life no one entertained him more often than Lord Palmerston, with whom he was connected by marriage. He was the friend and often the guest of Queen Victoria, and in his twenty-eighth year he is even found as a guest at the festive board of George IV.

'Such a round of laughing and pleasure I never enjoyed: if there be a hospitable gentleman on earth it is His Majesty.' And at all times he was ready to mix freely and on terms of social equality with all who shared his sympathies, dukes and dustmen, Cabinet ministers and costermongers.

In the holiday season he delighted to travel. In his journals he sets down the impressions which he felt among the pictures and churches of Italy, and in the mountains of Germany and Switzerland; he loves to record the friendliness of the greetings which he met among the peasantry of various lands. When he talked to them no one could fail to see that he was genuinely interested in them, that he wanted to know their joys and their sorrows, and to enrich his own knowledge by anything that the humblest could tell him. Still more did he delight in Scotland, where he had many friends. He was of the generation immediately under the spell of the 'Wizard of the North', and the whole country was seen through a veil of romantic and historical a.s.sociation.

There he went nearly every year, to Edinburgh, to Roslin, to Inveraray, to the Trossachs, and to a hundred other places--and if his heart was stirred with the glories of the past, his eye was quick to 'catch the manners living as they rise'. As he commented caustically at Rome on 'the church lighted up and decorated like a ball-room--the bishop with a stout train of canons, listening to the music precisely like an opera', so at Newbattle he criticizes the coldness of the kirk, 'all is silent save the minister, who discharges the whole ceremony and labours under the weight of his own tautologies'. His bringing up had been in the Anglican church; he was devoted to her liturgy, her congregational wors.h.i.+p, her moderation and simplicity combined with reverence and warmth. Although these travels were but interludes in his busy life, they show that it was not for want of other tastes and interests of his own that his life was dedicated to laborious service. He was very human himself, and there were few aspects of humanity which did not attract him.

With his father relations were very difficult. As his interest in social questions grew, his attention was naturally turned on the poor nearest to his own doors, the agricultural labourers of Dorset. Even in those days of low wages Dorset was a notorious example quoted on many a Radical platform: the wages of the farm labourers were frequently as low as seven s.h.i.+llings a week, and the conditions in which they had often to bring up a large family of children were deplorable. If Lord Ashley had not himself felt the shame of their poverty, their bad housing and their other hards.h.i.+ps, there were plenty of opponents ready to force them on his notice in revenge for his having exposed their own sores. He was made responsible for abuses which he could not remedy. While his father, a resolute Tory of the old type, still lived, the son was unable to stir. He sedulously tried to avoid all bitterness; but he could not, when publicly challenged, avoid stating his own views about fair wages and fair conditions of living, and his father took offence. For years it was impossible for the son to come under his father's roof. When the old earl died in 1851, his son lost no time in proving his sincerity as a reformer; but meanwhile he had to go into the fray against the manufacturers with his arms tied behind his back and submit to taunts which he little deserved. That he could carry on this struggle for so many years, without embittering the issues, and without open exposure of the family quarrel, shows the strength of character which he had gained by years of religious discipline and self-control.

Politics proper played but a small part in his career. The politicians found early that he was not of the 'available' type--that he would not lend himself to party policy or compromise on any matter which seemed to him of national interest. Such political posts as were offered to him were largely held out as a bait to silence him, and to prevent his bringing forward embarra.s.sing measures which might split the party.

Ashley himself found how much easier it was for him to follow a single course when he was an independent member. Reluctantly in 1834 he accepted a post at the Board of Admiralty and worked earnestly in his department; but this ministry only lasted for one year, and he never held office again, though he was often pressed to do so. He was attached to Wellington; but for Peel, now become the Tory leader, he had little love. The two men were very dissimilar in character; and though at times Ashley had friendly communications with Peel, yet in his diary Ashley often complains bitterly of his want of enthusiasm, of what he regarded as Peel's opportunism and subservience to party policy. The one had an instinct for what was practical and knew exactly how far he could combine interests to carry a measure; the other was all on fire for the cause and ready to push it forward against all obstacles, at all costs.

Ashley, it is true, had to work through Parliament to attain his chief ends, and many a bitter moment he had to endure in striving towards the goal. But if he was not an adroit or successful politician, he gradually, as the struggle went on, by earnestness and force of character, made for himself in the House a place apart, a place of rare dignity and influence; and with the force of public opinion behind him he was able to triumph over ministers and parties.