INDEX

[1]. With respect to the Letters and Extracts from Letters to myself and to Miss Elliot, from the late Master of Balliol,—(to be found Vol. I., pp. 316, 317, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, and 354),—I beg to record that I have received the very kind permission of Mr. Jowett’s Executors for their publication.

[2]. It is always amusing to me to read the complacent arguments of despisers of women when they think to prove the inevitable mental inferiority of my sex by specifying the smaller circumference of our heads. On this line of logic an elephant should be twice as wise as a man. But in my case, as it happens, their argument leans the wrong way, for my head is larger than those of most of my countrymen,—Doctors included. As measured carefully with proper instruments by a skilled phrenologist (the late Major Noel) the dimensions are as follows:—Circumference, twenty-three and a quarter inches; greatest height from external orifice of ear to summit of crown, 6²⁄₈ inches. On the other hand dear Mrs. Somerville’s little head, which held three times as much as mine has ever done, was below the average of that of women. So much for that argument!

[3]. The aphorism so often applied to little girls, that “it is better to be good than pretty,” may, with greater hope of success, be applied to family names; but I fear mine is neither imposing nor sonorous. I may say of it (as I remarked to the charming Teresa Doria when she ridiculed the Swiss for their mesquin names, all ending in “in”), “Everybody cannot have the luck to be able to sign themselves Doria nata Durazzo!” Nevertheless “Cobbe” is a very old name (Leuricus Cobbe held lands in Suffolk, vide Domesday), and it is curiously wide-spread as a word in most Aryan languages, signifying either the head (literal or metaphorical), or a head-shaped object. I am no philologist, and I dare say my examples offend against some “law,” and therefore cannot be admitted; but it is at least odd that we should find Latin, “Caput;” Italian, Capo; Spanish, Cabo; Saxon, Cop; German, Kopf. Then we have, as derivates from the physical head, Cape, Capstan, Cap, Cope, Copse or Coppice, Coping Stone, Copped, Cup, Cupola, Cub, Cubicle, Kobbold, Gobbo; and from the metaphorical Head or Chief, Captain, Capital, Capitation, Capitulate, &c. And again, we have a multitude of names for objects obviously signifying head-shaped, e.g., Cob-horse, Cob-nut, Cob-gull, Cob-herring, Cob-swan, Cob-coal, Cob-iron, Cob-wall; a Cock (of hay), according to Johnson, properly a “Cop” of hay; the Cobb (or Headland) at Lyme Regis, &c., &c.; the Kobbé fiord in Norway, &c.

[4]. As such things as mythical pedigrees are not altogether unknown in the world, I beg to say that I have myself noted the above from Harleian MS. in British Museum 1473 and 1139. Also in the College of Arms, G. 16, p. 74, and C. 19, p. 104.

[5]. Wife of Thomas Cobbe’s half-brother.

[6]. Lady Huntingdon was doubly connected with Thomas Cobbe. She was his first cousin, daughter of his maternal aunt Selina Countess of Ferrers, and mother of his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Countess of Moira. The pictures of Dorothy Levinge, and of her father; of Lady Ferrers; and of Lord Moira and his wife, all of which hang in the halls at Newbridge, made me as a child, think of them as familiar people. Unfortunately the portrait of chief interest, that of Lady Huntingdon, is missing in the series.

[7]. Pronounced “Lock Nay.”

[8]. Part of the following description of my own and my mother’s school appeared some years ago in a periodical, now, I believe, extinct.

[9]. “It is a fact of Consciousness to which all experience bears witness and which it is the duty of the philosopher to admit and account for, instead of disguising or mutilating it to suit the demands of a system, that there are certain truths which when once acquired, no matter how, it is impossible by any effort of thought to conceive as reversed or reversible.”—Mansel’s Metaphysics, p. 248.

[10]. We should now say Altruism.

[11]. I am thankful to believe that he would be no longer accorded such a rank in 1890 as in 1850!

[12]. Mr. Hutton, whose exceedingly interesting and brilliant Life of the Marquess of Wellesley (in the “Rulers of India” series) includes an account of the whole campaign, has been so kind as to endeavour to identify this Frenchman for me, and tells me that in a note to Wellington’s Despatches, Vol. II., p. 323, it is given as Dupont; Wellington speaking of him as commanding a “brigade of infantry.” My father certainly spoke of him or some other Frenchman as commanding Scindias’ artillery. Mr. Hutton has also been good enough to refer me to Grant Duff’s History of the Mahrattas, Vol. III., p. 240, with regard to the number of British troops engaged at Assaye. He (Mr. Grant Duff) says the handful of British troops did not exceed 4,500 as my father also estimated them.

[13]. The mistake recorded in these little verses was made by a daughter of Louis Philippe when visiting her uncle, the Grand Duke of Lucca. The incident was narrated to me by the sculpturess, Mdlle. Felicie Fauveau, attendant on the Duchesse de Berri.

[14]. See General Sleeman’s India.

[15]. The Proteus Anguinus.

[16]. Miss Elliot and I had begun it a year sooner, as stated above.

[17]. Mr. Jowett referred to Dean Elliot’s purchases of some fine old pictures.

[18].

“Then, soul of my soul! I shall meet thee again,

And with God be the rest!”

[19]. This refers to an afternoon party we gave to witness poor Mr. Bishop’s interesting thought-reading performances. He was wonderfully successful throughout, and the company, which consisted of about 30 clever men and women, were unanimous in applauding his art, of whatever nature it may have been. I may add that after my guests were departed, when I took out my cheque-book and begged to know his fee, Mr. Bishop positively refused to accept any remuneration whatever for the charming entertainment he had given us. The tragic circumstances of the death of this unhappy young man will be remembered. He either died, or fell into a deathlike trance, at a supper party in New York, in 1889; and within four hours of his real (or apparent) decease, three medical men who had been supping with him, dissected his brain. One doctor who conducted this autopsy alleged that Bishop had been extremely anxious that his brain should be examined post mortem, but his mother asserted on the contrary, that he had a peculiar horror of dissection, and had left directions that no post mortem should be held on his remains. It was also stated that he had a card in his pocket warning those who might find him at any time in a trance, to beware of burying him before signs of dissolution should be visible. In a leading article on the subject in the Liverpool Daily Post, May 21st, 1889, it is stated that by the laws of the United States “it is distinctly enacted that no dissection shall take place without the fiat of the coroner, or at the request of the relatives of the deceased; so that some explanation of the anxiety which induced so manifest a breach of both laws and custom is eminently desirable. A second examination of the body at the instance of the coroner, has revealed the fact that all the organs were in a healthy state, and that it was impossible to ascribe death to any specific cause or to say whether Mr. Bishop were alive or dead at the time of the first autopsy.” Both wife and mother believed he was “murdered;” and ordered that word to be engraved on his coffin. His mother had herself experienced a cataleptic trance of six days’ duration, during the whole of which she was fully conscious. The three doctors were proceeded against by her and the widow, and were put under bonds of £500 each; but, as the experts alleged that it was impossible to decide the cause of death, the case eventually dropped. Whether it were one of “Human Vivisection” or not, can never now be known. If the three physicians who performed the autopsy on Mr. Bishop did not commit a murder of appalling barbarity on the helpless companion of their supper-table, they certainly risked incurring that guilt with unparalleled levity and callousness.

[20]. A statue of Miss Hosmer exhibited in London, purchased by an American gentleman for £1,000.

[21]. Not quite so good a story as that of another American child who, having been naughty and punished, was sent up to her room by her mother and told to ask for forgiveness. On returning downstairs the mother asked her whether she had done as she had directed? “Oh yes! Mama,” answered the child, “And God said to me, Pray don’t mention it, Miss Perkins!”

[22]. See Spenser—The “West” District of London was the one which elected Miss Garrett for the School Board.

[23]. Sir W. Harcourt interrupted Mr. Russell when speaking of Vivisections before students, by the assertion—

“Under the Act demonstrations were forbidden.”—Times, April 5th, 1883.

In the Act in question—39 & 40 Vict., c. 77, Clause 3, Sect. 1—are these words, “Experiments may be performed ... by a person giving illustrations of lectures,” &c., &c. By the Returns issued from Sir W. Harcourt’s own (Home) Office in the previous year, sixteen persons had been registered as holding certificates permitting experiments in illustration of lectures. It seems to me a shocking feature of modern politics that an outrageous falsehood—or must we call it mistake?—of this kind is allowed to serve its purpose at the moment but the author never apologizes for it afterwards.

[24]. Most of the following letters were lent by me to Mr. Walrond when he was preparing the biography of Dean Stanley, and in returning them he said that he had kept copies of them, and meant to include them in his book. The present Editor not having used them, I feel myself at liberty to print them here.

[25]. We had many good stories floating about in Rome at that time and he was always ready to enjoy them, but one, I think, told me by the painter Penry Williams, would not have tickled him as it did us heretics. The Pope, it seems, offered one of his Cardinals (whose reputation was far from immaculate) a pinch of snuff. The Cardinal replied more facetiously than respectfully “Non ho questo vizio, Santo Padre.” Pius IX. observed quietly, snapping his snuffbox, “Se vizio fosse, l’avreste” (If it had been a vice you would have had it)!

[26]. Curiously enough I have had occasion to repeat this remark this Spring (1894) in a controversy in the columns of the Catholic Times.

[27]. I had talked to him of our Ragged School at Bristol.

[28]. When our Bill was debated in Parliament in 1883, Mr. Gladstone left us, totally unaided, to the mercies (not tender) of Sir William Harcourt, who interrupted Mr. George Russell’s speech in support of our Bill by the remark that the demonstrations to students, to which he referred, were forbidden by the Vivisection Act. Sixteen certificates granting permission for the performance of such experiments in demonstration to students passed through his own office that year!

[29]. This opinion of the great Philanthropist deserves to be remembered with those of the many thinkers who have reached the same conclusion from other sides.

[30]. The General Secretary, then, and, I am happy to say, still,—of the Victoria Street Society.

[31]. The lines to which Lord Shaftesbury refers—“Best in the Lord” (since included in many collections) begin with the words:

“God draws a cloud over each gleaming morn.

Wouldst thou ask, why?

It is because all noblest things are born

In agony.

Only upon some Cross of pain or woe

God’s Son may lie.

Each soul redeemed from self and sin must know

Its Calvary.”

Lord Shaftesbury entirely understood the point of view from which I regarded that sacred spot.

[32]. Here is what Dr. Russell Reynolds, F.R.S., said in 1881 in an address to the Medical Society of University College:—“There is meddling and muddling of a most disreputable sort, and the patients” (he is speaking of women) “grow sick of it, and give it all up and get well; or they go from bad to worse.”... “Physicians have coined names for trifling maladies, if they have not invented them, and have set fashions of disease. They have treated or maltreated their patients by endless examinations, applications, and the like, and this sometimes for months, sometimes for years, and then, when by some accident the patient has been removed from their care, she has become quite well and there has been no more need for caustic,” &c., &c.

And here is what Dr. Clifford Allbut said in the Gulstonian Lecture for 1884 at the Royal College of Physicians. After admitting that women feel more pain than men, he mentioned the “morbid chains,” the “mental abasement,” into which fall “the flock of women who lie under the wand of the Gynæcologist” (specialist of women’s diseases); “the women who are caged up in London back drawing-rooms, and visited almost daily; their brave and active spirits broken under a false (!!) belief in the presence of a secret and over-mastering local malady; and the best years of their lives honoured only by a distressful victory over pain.” (Italics mine.)—Medical Press, March 19th, 1884.

[33]. The certificate (A) dispensing with Anæsthetics was doubtless inserted after Lord Shaftesbury saw the Bill.

[34]. Mr. Cartwright, speaking in the House of Commons, April 4th, 1883, in reply to Mr. R. T. Reid, said: “The hon. member should have said something about the prosecution of Dr. Ferrier for having evaded the Act. He does not do that. He has wisely given the go-by to it, for that prosecution lamentably failed, altogether broke down. The charge brought against Dr. Ferrier was that he operated without a licence and infringed the law by doing those things to which the hon. and learned member referred; but the charge was not supported by one tittle of evidence.”

[35]. Many persons have supposed that I am still concerned with the management of that journal; but, except as an occasional contributor, such is not the case. The credit of the editorship for the last ten years (which I consider to be great) rests entirely with Mr. Bryan.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

  1. P. [169], changed “but really achieved” to “but rarely achieved”.
  2. P. [277], changed “straight on end” to “straight on in”.
  3. P. [319], changed “bought forth fruit” to “brought forth fruit”.
  4. P. [354], changed “thoughts, I don’t” to “thoughts, I won’t”.
  5. Corrected the issues identified in the Errata.
  6. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
  7. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
  8. Re-indexed foot-notes using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter.