The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I Part 17

He liked the life at Dromquina so much that in 1873, after his return from India, he took the Bishop of Limerick's house, Parknasilla, in Sneem Harbour, just opposite Derreen. That year, if I remember right, he took some shooting, to which we had to drive a considerable distance. In one year or the other I went out shooting with him two or three times. I do not think he ever had any shooting later: though, considering how little practice he can have had, he was a decidedly good shot. The country was rough, and the bags, though not heavy in quant.i.ty--we were lucky if we saw ten brace of grouse--presented a rather extensive variety of kind.

During these two summers my father indulged himself freely in his favourite amus.e.m.e.nt of taking long walks, but also did a good deal of rowing and sailing. He had had my brothers and me taught to swim in a previous summer at the sea-side, and at Dromquina decided that we ought to be able to swim confidently in our clothes. In order to test our possession of this accomplishment, he one day took us out himself in a boat, and told me to sit on the gunwale, after which he artfully engaged me in conversation until he saw that I was not expecting my plunge, when he suddenly shoved me overboard. We all pa.s.sed the ordeal with credit.

In 1873 he meditated building a house on the Kenmare River, but in the course of that summer he went to visit Sir John Strachey, who was then living at Anaverna House, at Ravensdale in County Louth.

The Stracheys left it not long after, and we went there for the first time in 1875. Some years later my father took a lease of it, and there he spent every long vacation till 1891 inclusive, and the greater part of 1892.

For this place my father in particular, as well as his family generally, had from the first a strong affection. The house stands rather high, on the extreme southern slope of the Mourne Mountains, just within the border of the county of Louth and the province of Leinster. Behind and above the house to the north, the 'mountains'

(moors varying in height from 1,000 to 2,700 feet) stretch for many miles, enclosing the natural harbour known as Carlingford Lough.

Southwards there is a view across a comparatively level plain as far as the Wicklow Mountains, just beyond Dublin, and about sixty miles away. The sea is visible at no great distance on the east, and on fine days we could always see the Isle of Man, about eighty miles to the north-east, from any of several hill-tops within an hour's walk of the house. My father was therefore able to take to his heart's content the long walks that had always been his favourite amus.e.m.e.nt. He also devoted himself with the greatest enthusiasm to the improvement of the house and grounds. For many years before the Stracheys' short tenancy it had been unoccupied, and the grounds--of which there were about seventy acres--were at first very much overgrown, especially with laurels, which, when neglected, grow in that country in almost disgusting luxuriance. My father therefore occupied himself a good deal with amateur forestry, and became, considering that he first turned his attention to the subject at the age of forty-six, a rather expert woodsman. A good deal of tree-felling was necessary, both in the interest of the trees and for the improvement of the views from the house and its immediate neighbourhood. My father had a Canadian axe, given to him by Frederick Gibbs, of which he was extremely fond, and with which he did a great deal of work. He was never reduced to cutting down a tree merely for exercise, but always first satisfied himself with much care that its removal would be an improvement. Another point in his wood-cutting that I always admired was that, when the more amusing part of the operation--which is cutting the tree down--was over, he invariably took personally his full share of the comparatively uninteresting work of sawing up the trunk, and disposing in an orderly manner of the branches. He also took great pains to cut his trees as close to the ground as possible, so as not to sacrifice the good timber at the b.u.t.t, or leave a tall or ragged stump to disfigure the ground afterwards.

Another labour in which he took much interest was the making of paths through a little wood running up the hill-side behind the house, and the engineering of a stream which descended through it, and, being flooded two or three times every year, required a good deal of management, the more so as the house was supplied by it with water through an artificial streamlet made for the purpose. In these pursuits my father was always a.s.sisted by the village post-master, an old man named Morton, of picturesque appearance and conversation, and the consultations between the two used to be full of interest. Morton spoke with a strong brogue, and combined several other pursuits with that of post-master, the universality of his apt.i.tudes making him an interesting companion, and my father had a great regard for him. He died a few months ago, being then, I believe, over eighty years of age.

Another out-door amus.e.m.e.nt that my father enjoyed was shooting at a mark with a Snider rifle. The nature of the grounds made it easy to get a safe hundred yards' range within three minutes' walk of the front door, and three or four hundred yards by going a little farther. We practised in this way pretty often, and I think the judge was, on the whole, a better shot than any of his sons. In the year 1883 the household was increased, a good deal to my father's annoyance, by two policemen. At the Liverpool summer a.s.sizes he had tried a gang of dynamiters, I think for treason-felony. They, or most of them, were convicted and sentenced to long terms of penal servitude. Some of my father's friends, not understanding that if anybody wanted to murder him it was quite as likely to be done, and quite as easy to do, in England as in Ireland, and perhaps entertaining the fantastic idea that the population of Louth had more regard for dynamiters than the population of London, suggested to the Irish Government that he was in some danger. The only thing that could be done was to order police protection, and this Sir George Trevelyan did. Accordingly two constables took up their abode in a room which happened to be available in the stable-yard, and mounted guard all day over the hall-door, following my father wherever he went during the day. Though their continued escort troubled him a good deal, there was no escape from it, and he got used to it to some extent. He made great friends with the men personally--like other people, he had the highest admiration for the force to which they belonged--and sometimes challenged them to a shooting match, either with their own rifles or with his, and was much gratified when he got the better of them.

With the people generally he became after a time extremely popular.

I say after a time, because the inhabitants of that country do not, any more than country people in most parts of England, take strongly to strangers before they know anything about them. They never showed the least disposition to incivility, but for the first year or two my father had not many acquaintances among them. Later he came to be well known, and when he was taking his walks in the fields or on the mountains, there was hardly a man for a good many miles round who did not hail him by name. I have known them shout across two fields, 'It's a fine evening, Sir James'; and when they did so he invariably stopped and entered into conversation about the crops and the weather, or other topics of universal interest.

With some of them whom he had frequently met while walking, or whom he had helped with advice or small loans (about the repayment of which they were, to his great delight, singularly honest), he was on particularly friendly terms, and made a point of visiting them in their houses at least once every year. They have remarkably good manners, and attracted him particularly by their freedom from awkwardness, and their combination of perfect politeness with complete self-respect. I have reason to know that they have not forgotten him.

He once made a short expedition with one of my sisters to Achill, Clifden, and Galway. They stayed two nights at Achill, which sufficed for him to make friends with Mr. Sheridan, the landlord of the inn there. They never met again, but there were communications between them afterwards which showed that my father retained as long as he lived a kindly recollection of the people he had met in that particular holiday.

It was naturally during the summer holidays, and when one of us used to go circuit as his marshal, that my brothers and I saw most of him. I think that during the years of his judges.h.i.+p I came to know all his opinions, and share most of them. One result of his strong memory, and the immense quant.i.ty of talking and reading that he had done in his life, was that he was never at a loss for conversation. But to attempt to give an idea of what his intimate talk was like when he conversed at his ease about all manner of men and things is not my business. It was, of course, impossible to live in the house with him without being impressed by his extraordinary industry. The mere bulk of the literary work he did at Anaverna would make it a surprising product of fifteen long vacations, and there was not a page of it which had not involved an amount of arduous labour which most men would regard as the ant.i.thesis of holiday-making. This, however, as the present biography will have shown, was his normal habit, and these notes are designed to indicate that it did not prevent him from enjoying, when away from books and pens and ink, a happy and vigorous life.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 119: The first volume of his _Civilization in Europe_ appeared in 1857.]

[Footnote 120: Mill elaborately argues that the social sciences are possible precisely because the properties of the society are simply the sum of the properties of the individuals of which it is composed. His view of the importance of this theory is given in his _Autobiography_ (first edition), p. 260. And see especially his _Logic_, Bk. vi. chap.

vii.]

[Footnote 121: _Liberty, Equality, Fraternity_, p. 212. (My references are to the second edition.)]

[Footnote 122: P. 17.]

[Footnote 123: P. 10. This is almost literally from Bentham, who gives several similar cla.s.sifications of 'sanctions.']

[Footnote 124: P. 19.]

[Footnote 125: P. 183.]

[Footnote 126: P. 184.]

[Footnote 127: Pp. 32, 112.]

[Footnote 128: P. 244.]

[Footnote 129: Pp. 193, 195.]

[Footnote 130: P. 30.]

[Footnote 131: P. 239.]

[Footnote 132: P. 184.]

[Footnote 133: P. 96.]

[Footnote 134: P. 140.]

[Footnote 135: P. 139.]

[Footnote 136: P. 162.]

[Footnote 137: P. 177.]

[Footnote 138: P. 169.]

[Footnote 139: P. 58.]

[Footnote 140: P. 82.]

[Footnote 141: P. 84. The quotation is not quite accurate.]

[Footnote 142: Pp. 105-107.]

[Footnote 143: P. 109.]

[Footnote 144: P. 92. In the first edition the 'ignorant preacher' was a 'wretched little curate.' A rougher but more graphic phrase.]

[Footnote 145: There is here a discussion as to the relations between 'justice' and 'utility' upon which Fitzjames agreed with Mill. I dissent from both, and think that Fitzjames would have been more consistent had he agreed with me. I cannot, however, here try to unravel a rather knotty point.]

[Footnote 146: P. 232.]

[Footnote 147: P. 334.]

[Footnote 148: P. 125.]

[Footnote 149: P. 69.]

[Footnote 150: P. 370.]

[Footnote 151: P. 294.]

[Footnote 152: P. 300.]

[Footnote 153: P. 288.]

[Footnote 154: P. 300.]

[Footnote 155: I repeat that I do not ask whether his interpretation be correct.]