POSTSCRIPT, 1898.
So many recollections of Mr. Gladstone have been published since his death that it seems hardly worth while to record mine. I saw him only at intervals and never had the honour of any intimate acquaintance with him; but one or two glimpses of him may perhaps amuse my readers as exhibiting his astonishing versatility.
I first met him, some time in the Sixties, in North Wales when he came from Hawarden to visit at a house where I was spending a few days, and joined me in walking to the summit of Penmaen-bach. He talked, I need not say, delightfully all the way as we sauntered up, but I remember only his sympathetic rejoinder to my dislike of mules for such mountain expeditions,—that he had felt quite remorseful on concluding some tour (I think in the Pyrenees), for hating so much a beast to which he had often owed his life!
Some years after this pleasant climb, I was surprised and, of course, much flattered to receive from him the following note. I know not who was the friend who sent him my pamphlet. It had not occurred to me to do so.
“4, Carlton Gardens,
“March 1st, 1876.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I do not know whom I have to thank for sending me your” (word illegible) “article on Vivisection, but the obligation is great, for I seldom read a paper possessed with such a spirit of nobleness from first to last.
“It is long since we met on the slopes of Penmaen-bach. Do you ever go out to breakfast, and could we persuade you to be so kind as to come to us on Thursday, March 9, at ten?
“Believe me, faithfully yours,
“W. E. Gladstone.”
The breakfast in Carlton Gardens was a very interesting one. Before it began Mr. Gladstone took me into his library, and we talked for a considerable time on the subject of Vivisection. At the close of our conversation, finding him apparently agreeing very cordially with me, I asked, if he would not join the Victoria Street Society which I had then recently founded? He replied that he would rather not do so; but that if ever he returned to office, he would help me to the best of his power. This promise, I may here say, was given very seriously after making the observation that he was no longer (at that time) in the position of influence he had occupied in previous years; but he obviously anticipated his return to power,—which actually followed not long afterwards. He repeated this promise of help to me four times in conversation and once on one of his famous post-cards; and again in writing to Lord Shaftesbury in reply to a Memorial which the latter presented to him, signed by 100 of the foremost names, as regarded intellect and character, in England. Always Mr. Gladstone repeated the same assurance: “All his sympathies were” with us. Here is the letter on the card, dated April 1st, 1877, in reply to my request that he would write a few words to be read by Lord Shaftesbury at one of our Meetings. It ran as follows:—
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“You are already aware that my sympathies and prepossessions are greatly with you, nor do I wish this to be a secret, but I am overwhelmed with occupations, and I cannot overtake my arrears, and my letters have been so constantly put before the world (often, of course, without warrant) that I cannot, I am afraid, appear in the form of an epistle ad hoc, more than I can in person.
“Faithfully yours,
“W. E. Gladstone.
“April 1, 1877.”
(Half the words in his apology for not writing would of course have more than sufficed for the letter desired.)
Naturally, after all this, I looked to Mr. Gladstone as a most powerful friend of the Anti-vivisection cause; and though I had no sympathy with his religious views, and thought his policy very dangerous, I counted on him as a man who, since his suffrage had been obtained in a great moral question, was sure to give it his support in fitting time and place. The sequel showed how delusive was my trust.
To return to the breakfast in Carlton Gardens. There sat down with us, to my amusement, a gentleman with whom I had already made acquaintance, an ex-priest of some distinction, Rev. Rudolph Suffield, who had recently quitted the Church of Rome but retained enough of priestly looks and manners to be rather antipathetic to me. Mr. Gladstone ingeniously picked Mr. Suffield’s brains for half-an-hour, eliciting all manner of information on Romish doctrines and practice, till the conversation drifted to Pascal’s Provinciales, I expressed my admiration for the book, and recalled Gibbon’s droll confession that he, whom Byron styled “The Lord of irony, that master spell,” had learned the sanglant sarcasm of his XV. and XVI. chapters from the pious author of the Pensées. Mr. Gladstone eagerly interposed with some fine criticisms, and ended with the amazing remark: “I have read all the Jesuit answers to Pascal (!) to ascertain whether he had misquoted Suarez and Escobar and the rest, and I found that he had not done so. You may take my word for it.”
From this theological discussion there was a diversion when a gentleman on the other side of the breakfast table handed across to Mr. Gladstone certain drawings of the legs of horses. They proved to be sketches of several pairs in the Panathenaic frieze and were produced to settle the highly interesting question (to Mr. Gladstone) whether Greek horses ever trotted, or only walked, cantered, and ambled. I forget how the drawings were supposed finally to settle the controversy, but I made him laugh by telling him that a party of the servants of one of my Irish friends having paid a visit to the Elgin Gallery, the lady’s maid told her mistress next morning that they had been puzzled to understand why all those men without legs or arms had been stuck up on the wall? At last the butler had suggested that they were “intended to commemorate the railway accidents.”
From that time I met Mr. Gladstone occasionally at the houses of friends, and was, of course, like all the world, charmed with his winning manners and brilliant talk, though never, that I can recall, struck by any thought expressed by him which could be called a “great” one, or which lifted up one’s spirit. It seemed more as if half a dozen splendidly cultivated and brilliant intellects—but all of medium height—had been incarnated in one vivacious body, than a single Mind of colossal altitude. The religious element in him was in almost feverish activity, but it always appeared to me that it was not on the greatest things of Religion that his attention fastened. It was on its fringe, rather than on its robe.
That Mr. Gladstone was a sincerely pious man I do not question. But his piety was of the Sacerdotal rather than of the Puritan type. The “single eye” was never his. If it had been, he would not have employed the tortuous and ambiguous oratory which so often left his friends and foes to interpret his utterances in opposite senses. Neither did he appear—at all events to his more distant observers—to feel adequately the tremendous responsibility to God and man which rested on the well-nigh omnipotent Prime Minister of England, during the years when it was rare to open a newspaper without reading of some military disaster like the death of Gordon, or of some Agrarian murder like the assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish and of a score of hapless Irish landlords—calamities which his policy had failed to prevent if it had not directly occasioned. The gaiety of spirits and the animation of interest respecting a hundred trivial topics which Mr. Gladstone exhibited unfailingly through that fearfully anxious period, approached perhaps sometimes too nearly to levity to accord with our older ideal of a devout mind loaded with the weight “almost not to be borne” of world-wide cares.
The differences between Church and dissent occupied Mr. Gladstone, I fancy, very much at all times. One day he remarked to me—as if it were a valuable new light on the subject—that an eminent Nonconformist had just told him that the Dissenters generally “did not object either to the Doctrine or the Discipline of the Church of England, but that they found no warrant in Scripture for the existence of a State Church.” Mr. Gladstone looked as if he were seeking an answer to this objection to conformity. I replied that I wondered they did not see that the whole Old Testament might be taken as the history of a Divinely appointed State Church. Mr. Gladstone lifted his marvellous, eagle-like eyes with a quick glance which might be held to signify “That’s an idea!” When the little incident was told soon after to Dean Stanley he rubbed his hands and laughingly said, “This may put off disestablishment yet awhile!”
As a member of society Mr. Gladstone, as everybody knows, was inexhaustibly interesting. I once heard him after a small dinner party criticise and describe with astonishing vividness and minuteness the sermons of at least twenty popular preachers. At last I ventured to interpose with some impatience and say: “But, Mr. Gladstone, you have not mentioned the greatest of them all, my pastor, Dr. Martineau?” He paused, and then said, weighing his words, carefully: “Dr. Martineau is unquestionably the greatest of living thinkers.”
Speaking of the Jews, he once afforded the company at a dinner table a lively and interesting sketch of the ubiquity of the race all over the globe, except in Scotland. The Scotch, he said, knew as well as they the value of bawbees! There was a general laugh, and some one remarked: “Why, then, are there so few in Ireland?” Mr. Gladstone answered that he supposed the Irish were too poor to afford them fair pasture. I said: “Perhaps so, now, but when you, Mr. Gladstone, have given the Irish farmers fixity of tenure, so that they can give security for loans, we shall see the Jews flocking over to Ireland.” This observation was made in 1879; and in the intervening twenty years I am informed that the Jews have settled down in Ireland like sea-gulls on the land after a storm. The old “Gombeen man” has been ousted all over the country, and a whole Jew quarter, (near the Circular Road) and a new synagogue in Dublin, have verified my prophecy.
At last the day came when the sympathy of which Mr. Gladstone had so often assured Lord Shaftesbury and myself, was to be put to the simplest test. Mr. Reid (now Sir Robert Reid) was to introduce our Bill for the Prohibition of Vivisection into Parliament (April 4th, 1883). I wrote to Mr. Gladstone a short note imploring him to lift his hand to help us; and if it were impossible for him to speak in the House in our favour, at least to let his friends know that he wished well to our Bill. I do not remember the words of that note. I know that it was a cry from my very heart to the man who held it in his power to save the poor brutes from their tortures for ever; to do what I was spending my life’s last years in vainly trying to accomplish.
He received the note; I had a formal acknowledgment of it. But Mr. Gladstone did nothing. He left us to the tender mercies of Sir William Harcourt, whose audacious (and mendacious) contradiction of Mr. George Russell, our seconder, I have detailed elsewhere.[[23]] From that day I never met, nor ever desired to meet, Mr. Gladstone again.
A friend whom I greatly admired and valued, and whose intercourse I enjoyed during all my residence in London, from first to last, was Mr. Froude. He died just after the first edition of this book (of which I had of course sent him a copy) was published; and I was told it supplied welcome amusement to him in his last days.
The world, I think, has never done quite justice to Mr. Froude; albeit, when he was gone the newspapers spoke of him as “the last of the giants.” He always seemed to me to belong to the loftier race, of whom there were then not a few living; and though his unhappy Nemesis of Faith (for which I make no defence whatever) and his Carlyle drew on him endless blame, and his splendid History equally endless cavil and criticism, his greatness was to my apprehension something apart from his books. His Essays,—especially the magnificent one on Job—give, I think, a better idea of the man than was derivable from any other source, except personal intimacy. “He touched nothing which he did not” enlarge, if not “adorn.” Subjects expanded when talked of easily, and even lightly, with him. There was a background of space always above and behind him. Though he had no little cause for it, he was not bitter. I never saw him angry or heard him express resentment, except once when his benevolent efforts had failed to obtain from Mr. Gladstone’s Government a pension for a poverty-stricken, meritorious woman of letters, while far less deserving persons received the bounty. But when he let the Marah waters of Mr. Carlyle’s private reflexions loose on the world their bitterness seemed to communicate itself to all the readers of the book. Even the silver pen of Mrs. Oliphant for once was dipped in gall; and it was she, if I mistake not, who in her wrath devised the ferocious adjective “Froudacious” to convey her rage and scorn. As for myself, when that book appeared I frankly told Mr. Froude that I rejoiced, because I had always deprecated Mr. Carlyle’s influence, and I thought this revelation of him would do much to destroy it. Mr. Froude laughed good-humouredly, but naturally showed a little consternation. His sentiment about the Saturday Reviewers, who at that time buzzed round his writings and stung him every week, was much that of a St. Bernard or a Newfoundland towards a pack of snarling terriers. One day a clergyman very well known in London, wrote to me after one of our little parties to beg that I would do him the favour, when next Mr. Froude was coming to me, to invite him also, and permit him to bring his particular friend Mr. X, who greatly desired to meet his brother historian. I was very willing to oblige the clergyman in question, and before long we had a gathering at our house of forty or fifty people, among whom were Mr. Froude and Mr. X. I knew that the moment for the introduction had arrived, but of course I was not going to take the liberty of presenting any stranger to Mr. Froude without asking his consent. That consent was not so readily granted as I had anticipated. “Who? Mr. X? Let me look at him first.” “There he is,” I said, pointing to a small figure half hidden in a group of ladies and gentlemen. “That is he, is it?” said Mr. Froude. “Oh, No! No! Don’t introduce him to me. He has the Saturday Review written all over his face!” There was nothing to do but to laugh, and presently, when my clerical friend came up and urged me to fulfil my promise and make the introduction, to hurry down on some excuse into the tea room and never reappear till the disappointed Mr. X had departed.
I have kept 34 letters received from Mr. Froude during the years in which I had the good fortune to contribute to Fraser’s Magazine when he was the Editor, and later, when, as friends and neighbours in South Kensington, we had the usual little interchange of message and invitations. Among these, to me precious, letters there are some passages which I shall venture to copy, assured that his representatives cannot possibly object to my doing so. I may first as an introduction of myself, quote one in a letter to my eldest brother, who had invited him to stay at Newbridge during one of his visits to Ireland. Mr. Froude wrote to him:—
“I knew your brother Henry intimately 30 years ago, and your sister is one of the most valued friends of my later life.”
His affection for Carlyle spoke in this eager refutation of some idle story in the newspapers:
“February 16th.
“There is hardly a single word in it which is not untrue. Ruskin is as much attached to Mr. Carlyle as ever. There is not one of his friends to whom he is not growing dearer as he approaches the end of his time, nor has the wonderful beauty and noble tenderness of his character been ever more conspicuous. The only difference visible in him from what he was in past years is that his wife’s death has broken his heart. He is gentler and more forbearing to human weakness. He feels that his own work is finished, and he is waiting hopefully till it please God to take him away.”
Here is evidence of his deep enjoyment of Nature. He writes, October 31st, from Dereen, Kenmare:—
“I return to London most reluctantly at the end of the week. The summer refuses to leave us, and while you are shivering in the North wind we retain here the still blue cloudlessness of August. This morning is the loveliest I ever saw here. The woods swarm with blackbirds and thrushes, the ‘autumn note not all unlike to that of spring.’ I am so bewitched with the place that (having finished my History) I mean to spend the winter here and try to throw the story of the last Desmond into a novel.”
In reply to a request that he would attend an Anti-vivisection meeting at Lord Shaftesbury’s house, he wrote:—
“Vivisection is a hateful illustration of the consequences of the silent supersession of Morality by Utilitarianism. Until men can be brought back to the old lines, neither this nor any other evil tendency can be really stemmed. Till the world learns again to hate what is in itself evil, in spite of alleged advantages to be derived from it, it will never consent to violent legal restrictions.”
His last letter from Oxford is pleasant to recall:—
“I am strangely placed here. The Dons were shy of me when I first came, but all is well now, and the undergraduates seem really interested in what I have to tell them. I am quite free, and tell them precisely what I think.”
I do not think that Mr. Froude was otherwise than a happy man. He was particularly so as regarded his feminine surroundings, and a most genial and indulgent husband and father. He had also intense enjoyment both of Nature and of the great field of Literature into which he delved so zealously. He once told me that he had visited every spot, except the Tower of London (!) where the great scenes of his History took place, and had ransacked every library in Europe likely to contain materials for his work; not omitting the record chambers of the Inquisition at Simancas, where he spent many shuddering days which he vividly described to me. He also greatly enjoyed his long voyages and visits to the West Indies and to New Zealand; and especially the one he made to America. He admired almost everything, I think, in America; and more than once remarked to me (in reference particularly to the subject of mixed education in which I was interested): “The young men are so nice! What might be difficult here, is easy there. You have no idea what nice fellows they are.” There was, however, certainly something in Mr. Froude’s handsome and noble physiognomy which conveyed the idea of mournfulness. His eyes were wells of darkness on which, by some singularity, the light never seemed to fall either in life or when represented in a photograph; and his laugh, which was not infrequent, was mirthless. I never heard a laugh which it was so hard to echo, so little contagious.
The last time I ever saw Mr. Froude was at the house of our common friend, Miss Elliot, where he was always to be found at his best. Her other visitors had departed and we three old friends sat on in the late and quiet Sunday afternoon, talking of serious things, and at last of our hopes and beliefs respecting a future life. Mr. Froude startled us somewhat by saying he did not wish to live again. He felt that his life had been enough, and would be well content not to awake when it was over. “But,” said he, in conclusion, with sudden vigour, “I believe there is another life, you know! I am quite sure there is.” The clearness and emphasis of this conviction were parallel to those he had used before to me in talking of the probable extension of Atheism in coming years. “But, as there IS a God,” said Mr. Froude, “Religion can never die.”
CHAPTER
XVIII.
MY LIFE IN LONDON IN THE SEVENTIES AND EIGHTIES.
SOCIAL
I must not write here any personal sketch however slight of my revered friend Dr. Martineau, since he is still,—God be thanked for it!—living, and writing as profoundly and vigorously as ever, in his venerable age of 89. But the weekly sermons which I had the privilege of hearing from his lips for many years, down to 1872, beside several courses of his Lectures on the Gospels and on Ethical Philosophy which I attended, formed so very important, I might say, vital a part of my “Life” in London, that I cannot omit some account of them in my story.
Little Portland Street Chapel is a building of very moderate dimensions, with no pretensions whatever to ecclesiastical finery; whether of architecture, or upholstery, or art of any kind. But it was, I always thought, a fitting, simple place for serious people to meet to think in; not to gaze round them in curiosity or admiration, or to be intoxicated with colours, lights, incense and music; as would seem to be the intention of the administrators of a neighbouring fane! Our services, I suppose, would have been pronounced cold, bare and dull by an habitué of a Ritualistic or Romanist church; but for my own part I should prefer even to be “cold,” (which we were not) rather than allow my religious feelings to be excited through the gratification of my æsthetic sense.
On this matter, however, each one must speak and choose for himself. For me I was perfectly satisfied with my seat in the gallery in that simple chapel, where I could well hear the noblest sermons and see the preacher of whom they always seemed a part; his “Word” in the old sense; not (like many other men’s sermons) things quite apart from the speaker, as we know him in his home and in the street. Of all the men with whom I have ever been acquainted the one who most impressed me with the sense,—shall I call it of congruity? or homogeneity?—of being, in short, the same all through, was he to whom I listened on those happy Sundays.
They were very varied Sermons which Dr. Martineau preached. The general effect, I used to think, was not that of receiving Lessons from a Teacher, but of being invited to accompany a Guide on a mountain-walk. From the upper regions of thought where he led us, we were able,—nay, compelled,—to look down on our daily cares and duties from a loftier point of view; and thence to return to them with fresh feelings and resolutions. Sometimes these ascents were very steep and difficult; and I have ventured to tell him that the richness of his metaphors and similes, beautiful and original as they always were, made it harder to climb after him, and that we sometimes wanted him to hold out to us a shepherd’s crook, rather than a jewelled crozier! But the exercise, if laborious, was to the last degree mentally healthful, and morally strengthening. There was a great variety also, in these wonderful sermons. To hear one of them only, a listener would come away deeming the preacher par éminence a profound and most discriminating Critic. To hear another, he would consider him a Philosopher, occupied entirely with the vastest problems of Science and Theology. Again another would leave the impression of a Poet, as great in his prose as the author of In Memoriam in verse. And lastly and above all, there was always the man filled with devout feeling, who, by his very presence and voice communicated reverence and the sense of the nearness of an all-seeing God.
I could write many pages concerning these Sunday experiences; but I shall do better, I think, if I give my readers, who have never heard them, some small samples of what I carried away from time to time of them, as noted down in letters to my friend. Here are a few of them:
“Mr. Martineau preached of aiming at perfection. At the end he drew a picture of a soul which has made such struggles but has failed. Then he supposed what must be the feeling of such a soul entering on the future life, its regrets; and then inquired what influence being lifted above the things of sense, the nearness to God and holiness would have on it? Would it then arise? Yes! and the Father would say, ‘This my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found for evermore.’ I cannot tell you how beautiful it was, how true in the sense of those deepest intuitions which I hold to be certainly true because they bear with them the sense of being absolutely highest, the echo of a higher harmony than belongs to our poor minds. He seemed, for a moment, to be talking in the old conventional way about repentance when too late; and then burst out in faith and hope, so far transcending all such ideas that one felt it came from another source.”
“Mr. Martineau gave us a magnificent sermon on Sunday. I was in great luck not to miss it. One point was this. Our moral judgments are always founded on what we suppose to be the inward motive of the actor, not on the mere external act itself, which may be mischievous or beneficent in the highest degree, without, properly-speaking, affecting our purely ethical judgment—e.g., an unintentional homicide. Now, if, (as our opponents affirm) our Moral Sense came to us ab extra, merely as the current opinion which society has attached to injurious or beneficial actions, then we should not thus decide our judgment by the internal, but by the external and visible part of the act, by which alone society is hurt or benefitted. The fact that our moral judgment regards internal things exclusively, is evidence that it springs from an internal source; and that we judge another, because we are compelled to judge ourselves in the same way.”
Here is a Note I took after hearing another Sermon:—
“Sunday, June 23rd.
“‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’
“There are two ways of looking at Sin common in our time. One is to proclaim it so infinitely black that God cannot forgive it except by a method of Atonement itself the height of injustice. The other is to treat it as so venial that God may be counted on as certain to pass it over at the first moment of regret; and all the threats of conscience may be looked on as those of a nurse to a refractory child, threats which are never to be executed. The first of these views seems to honour God most, but really dishonours Him, by representing Him as governing the world on a principle abhorrent to reason and justice. The second can never commend itself save to the most shallow minds who make religion a thing of words, and treat sin and repentance as trivial things, instead of the most awful. How shall we solve the mystery? It is equally unjust for God to treat the guilty as if they were innocent, and the penitent as if they were impenitent. Each fact has to be taken into account, and the most important practical consequences follow from the view we take of the matter. First we must never lose hold of the truth, that, as Cause and Effect are never severed in the natural world, and the whole order of nature would fall to ruin were God ever to interfere with them, so likewise Guilt and Pain are, in His Providence, indissolubly linked; and the order of the moral world would be destroyed were they to be divided. But beside the realm of Law, in which the Divine penalties are unalterable, there is the free world of Spirit wherein our repentance avails. When we can say to God, ‘Put me to grief—I have deserved it. Only restore me Thy love,’ the great woe is gone. We shall be the weaker evermore for our fall, but we shall be restored.”
The following remarks were in a letter to Miss Elliot:—
“January, 1867.
“I wish I could write a résumé of a Sermon which Mr. Martineau preached last Sunday. Just think how many sermons some people would make of this one sentence of his text (speaking of the longing for Rest):—‘If Duty become laborious, do it more fervently. If Love become a source of care and pain, love more nobly and more tenderly. If Doubts disturb and torture, face them with more earnest thought and deeper study!’
“This was not a peroration, but just one phrase of a discourse full of other such things.
“It seems to me that the spontaneous response of our inner souls to such ideas is just the same proof of their truth as the shock we feel in our nerves when a lecturer has delivered a current of electricity proves his lesson to be true.”
“January, 1867.
“While you were enjoying your Cathedral, I was enjoying Little Portland Street Chapel, having bravely tramped through miles of snow on the way, and been rewarded. Mr. Martineau said we were always taunted with only having a negative creed, and were often foolish enough to deny it. But all Reformation is a negation of error and return to the three pure articles of faith—God, Duty, Immortality.... The distinction was admirably drawn between extent of creed and intensity of faith.”
On February 5th, 1871, Mr. Martineau preached:—
“Philosophers might and do say that all Religion is only a projection of Man himself on Nature, lending to Nature his own feelings, brightened by a supreme Love or shadowed by infinite displeasure. Does this disprove Religion? Is there no reliance to be placed on the faculties which connect us with the Infinite? We have two sets of faculties: our Senses, which reveal the outer world; and a deeper series, giving us Poetry, Love, Religion. Should we say that these last are more false than the others? They are true all round. In fact, these are truest. Imagination is true. Affection is true. Do men say that Affection is blind? No! It is the only thing which truly sees. Love alone really perceives. The cynic draws over the world a roof of dark and narrow thoughts and suspicions, and then complains of the close, unhealthy air. Memory again is more than mere Recollection. It has the true artist-power of seizing the points which determine the character and reconstructing the image without details. Suppose there be a God. By what faculties could we know Him save by those which now tell us of Him. And why should they deceive us?”
Alas! the exercise of preaching every Sunday became too great for Dr. Martineau to encounter after 1872, and, by his physician’s orders, those noble sermons came to an end.
Beside Dr. Martineau, I had the privilege of friendship with three eminent Unitarian Ministers, now alas! all departed—Rev. Charles Beard, of Liverpool, for a long time editor of the Theological Review; the venerable and beloved John James Tayler; and Rev. William Henry Channing, to whom I was gratefully attached, both on account of religious sympathies, and of his ardent adoption of our Anti-vivisection cause, which he told me he had at first regarded as somewhat of a “fad” of mine, but came to recognise as a moral crusade of deep significance. Among living friends of the same body, I am happy to number Rev. Philip Wicksteed, the successor of Dr. Martineau in Portland Street and the exceedingly able President of University Hall, Gordon Square,—an institution, in the foundation of which I gladly took part on the invitation of Mrs. Humphry Ward.
A man in whose books I had felt great interest in my old studies at Newbridge, and whose intercourse was a real pleasure to me in London, was Mr. W. R. Greg. I intensely respected the courage which moved him, in those early days of the Fifties, to publish such a book as the Creed of Christendom. He was then a young man, entering public life with the natural ambitions which his great abilities justified, and the avowal of such exorbitant heresies (nothing short of pure Theism) as the book contained, was enough at that date to spoil any man’s career. He was a layman, too, and man of the world, “Que Diable allait il faire, writing on theology at all?” That book remains to this day a most valuable manual of arguments and evidences against the Creed of Christendom; set forth in a grave and reverent spirit and in a clear and manly style. His Enigmas of Life had, I believe, a larger literary success. The world had moved much nearer to his standpoint; and the Enigmas concern the most interesting subjects. We had a little friendly controversy over one passage in the essay, Elsewhere. Mr. Greg had laid it down that, hereafter, Love must retreat from the discovery of the sinfulness of the beloved; and that both saint and sinner will accept as inevitable an eternal separation (Enigmas, 1st Edit., p. 263). To this I demurred strenuously in my Hopes of the Human Race (p. 132–6). I said, “The poor self-condemned soul whom Mr. Greg images as turning away in an agony of shame and hopelessness from the virtuous friend he loved on earth, and loves still at an immeasurable distance,—such a soul is not outside the pale of love, divine or human. Nay, is he not,—even assuming his guilt to be black as night,—only in a similar relation to the purest of created souls, which that purest soul holds to the All-holy One above? If God can love us, is it not the acme of moral presumption to think of a human soul being too pure to love any sinner, so long as in him there remains any vestige of affection? The whole problem is unreal and impossible. In the first place, there is a potential moral equality between all souls capable of equal love, and the one can never reach a height whence it may justly despise the other. And, in the second place, the higher the virtuous soul may have risen in the spiritual world, the more it must have acquired the god-like Insight which beholds the good under the evil, and not less the god-like Love which embraces the repentant Prodigal.
In the next edition of his Enigmas (the 7th), after the issue of my book, Mr. Greg wrote a most generous recantation of his former view. He said:—
“The force of these objections to my delineation cannot be gainsaid, and ought not to have been overlooked. No doubt a soul that can so love and so feel its separation from the objects of its love, cannot be wholly lost. It must still retain elements of recovery and redemption, and qualities to win and to merit answering affection. The lovingness of a nature—its capacity for strong and deep attachment—must constitute, there as here, the most hopeful characteristic out of which to elicit and foster all other good. No doubt, again, if the sinful continue to love in spite of their sinfulness, the blessed will not cease to love in consequence of their blessedness.”
Later on he asks:—
“How can the blessed enjoy anything to be called Happiness if the bad are writhing in hopeless anguish?” “Obviously only in one way. By ceasing to love, that is, by renouncing the best and purest part of their nature.... Or, to put it in still bolder language, ‘How,—given a hell of torment and despair for millions of his friends and fellow men—can the good enjoy Heaven except by becoming bad, and without being miraculously changed for the worse?’”
The following flattering letters are unluckily all which I have kept of Mr. Greg’s writing:—
“Park Lodge, Wimbledon Common, S.W.,
“February 19th.
“My Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I have been solacing myself this morning, after a month of harrowing toil, with your paper in the last Theological, and I want to tell you how much it has gratified me.
“I don’t mean your appreciative cordiality towards myself, nor your criticisms on a portion of my speculations, which, however (though I fancy you have rather misread me), I will refer to again and try to profit by. I daresay you are mainly right, the more so as I see Mr. Thom in the same number remonstrates in an identical tone.
“That your paper is, I think, not only beautiful in thought and much of it original, but singularly full of rich suggestions, and one of the most real contributions to a further conception of a possible future that I have met with for long. It is real thought—not like most of mine, mere sentiment and imagination.
“I don’t know if you are still in town, or have began the villegiatura you spoke of when I last saw you, but I daresay this note will be forwarded.
“When did No. 1 appear?
“I particularly like your remark about self-reprobation, p. 456, and from 463 onward. By the way, do you know Isaac Taylor’s ‘Physical Theory of Another Life?’ It is very curious and interesting.
“Yours faithfully,
“W. R. Greg.
“I have just finished an Introduction (about 100 pp.) to a new edition of “The Creed of Christendom,” which will be published in the autumn, and it contains some thoughts very analogous to yours.”
“Park Lodge, Wimbledon Common, S.W.,
“August 6th.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“I have read your Town and Country Mouse with much pleasure. I should have enjoyed your Paper still more if I had not felt that it was suggested by your intention to cut London, and the desire to put as good a face upon that regrettable design as you could. However you have stated the case with remarkable fairness. I, who am a passionate lover of nature, who have never lived in Town, and should pine away if I attempted it, still feel in the decline of years the increasing necessity of creeping towards the world rather than retiring from it. I feel, as one grows old, the want of external stimulus to stave off stagnation. The vividness of youthful thought is needed, I think, to support solitude.
“I retired to Westmoreland for 15 years in the middle of life when I was much worn, and it did me good: but I was glad to come back to active life, and I think my present location—Wimbledon Common for a cottage, within 5 miles of London, and coming in five days a week—is perfection.
“I daresay you may be right; but all your friends will miss you much—I not the least.
“Yours faithfully,
“W. R. Greg.”
Mr. Greg’s allusion to my Town and Country Mouse reminds me of a letter which was sent me by some unknown reader on the publication of that article. It repeats a famous story worth recording as told thus by an ear-witness who, though anonymous is obviously worthy of credit.
“Athenæum Club,
“Pall Mall, S.W.
“Will Miss Cobbe kindly pardon the liberty taken by a reader of her delightful ‘Town and Country Mouse’ in venturing to substitute the true version of Sir George Lewis’ too famous dictum?
“In the hearing of the writer he was asked (by one of his subordinates in the Government) as they were getting into the train, returning to town,
“‘Well! How do you like life in Herefordshire?’
“‘Ah! It would be very tolerable, if it were not for the Amusements’—was his reply.
“Miss Cobbe has high Authority for the mis-quotation: for the Times invariably commits it; and the present writer has again and again intended to correct it, and failed to execute the intention.
“If they are pleasures, they are pleasures; and the paradox is absurd, instead of amusing; but the oppressive stupidity of many of the ‘Amusements’ (to the Author of ‘Influence of Authority,’ &c.!) may well call up in the mind the sort of amiable cynicism, which was a feature of his own character.
“On arriving late and unexpectedly at home for a fortnight’s Rest, he found his own study occupied by two young ladies (sisters) as a Bedroom—it being the night of Lady Theresa’s Ball! With his exquisite good nature he simply set about finding some other roost; and all the complaint he ever made was that, which has become perhaps not too famous!”
At the time of the Franco-Prussian war, as will be remembered by everyone living at the time in London, the cleavage between the sympathisers with the two contending countries was almost as sharp as it had previously been during the American War between the partizans of the North and of the South. Dean Stanley was one of our friends who took warmly the side of the Germans, and I naturally sent him a letter I had received from a Frenchman whom we both respected, remonstrating rather bitterly against the attitude of England. The Dean, in returning M. P.’s letter wrote as follows[[24]]:—
“Deanery, March 25th, 1871.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“Although you kindly excuse me from doing so, I cannot but express, and almost, wish that you could convey to M. P. the melancholy interest with which we have read his letter. Interesting of course it is but to us—I know not whether to you—it is deeply sad to see a man like M. P. so thoroughly blind to the true situation of his country. Not a word of repentance for the aggressive and unjust war! not a word of acknowledgment that, had the French, as they wished, invaded Germany, they would have entered Berlin and seized the Rhenish provinces without remorse or compunction!—not a spark of appreciation of the moral superiority by which the Germans achieved their successes! I do not doubt that excesses may have been committed by the German troops; but I feel sure that they have been exceeded by those of the French, and would have been yet more had the French entered Germany.
“And how very superfluous to attack us for having done just the same as in 1848! Our sad crime was not to have prevented the war by remonstrating with the French Emperor and people in July, 1870, and of that poor P. takes no account! Alas! for France!
“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. Stanley.”
The following is a rather important note as recording the Dean’s sentiments as regarded Cardinal Newman. I cannot recall what was the paper which I had sent him to which he alludes. I think I had spoken to him of my friendship with Francis Newman, and of the information given me by the latter that he could never remember his brother putting his hand to a single cause of benevolence or moral reform. I had asked him to solicit his support with that of Cardinal Manning (already obtained) to the cause for which I was then beginning to work,—on behalf of animals.
“Jan. 15th, 1875.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“I return this with many thanks. I think you must have sent it to me, partly as a rebuke for having so nearly sailed in the same boat of ignorance and inhumanity with Dr. Newman.
“I have just finished, with a mixture of weariness and nausea, his letter to the Duke of Norfolk. Even the fierce innuendoes and deadly thrusts at Manning cannot reconcile me to such a mass of cobwebs and evasions. When the sum of the theological teaching of the two brothers is weighed, will not ‘the Soul’ of Francis be found to counterbalance, as a contribution to true, solid, catholic (even in any sense of the word) Christianity, all the writings of John Henry?
“I have sent my paper on Vestments to the Contemporary.
“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. Stanley.
“Read it in the light of his old letter to B. Ullathorne, published in (illegible).”
The papers on “Vestments,” to which Dean Stanley alludes, had interested and amused me much when he read it at Sion College, and I had urged him to send it to one of the Reviews. Here is a report of that evening’s proceedings which I sent next day to my friend Miss Elliot.
“January 14th, 1875.
“I do so much wish you had been with us last night at Sion College. Dean Stanley was more delightful than ever. He read a splendid paper, full of learning, wit, and sense on Ecclesiastical Vestments. In the course of it, he said, referring to the position of the altar, &c., that on this subject he had nothing to add to the remarks of his friend, the Dean of Bristol, ‘whose authority on all matters connected with English ecclesiastical history was universally admitted to be the best.’ After the reading of his paper, which lasted an hour and a quarter, that odious Dr. L—— got up, and in his mincing brogue attacked Dean Stanley very rudely. Then they called on Martineau, and he made a charming speech, beginning by saying he had nothing to do with vestments, having received no ordination, and might for his part repeat the poem “Nothing to Wear!” Then he went on to say that if the Church were ever to regain the Nonconformists, it would certainly not be by proceeding in the sacerdotal direction. He was much cheered. Rev. H. White made, I thought, one of the best speeches of the evening. Altogether, it was exceedingly amusing.”
On the occasion of the interment of Sir Charles Lyell in Westminster Abbey, I sent the Dean, by his request, some hints respecting Sir Charles’ views and character, and received the following reply:
“February 25th, 1875.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“Your letter is invaluable to me. Long as was my acquaintance with Sir Charles Lyell, and kind as he was to me, I never knew him intimately, and therefore most of what you tell me was new. The last time he spoke to me was in urging me with the greatest earnestness to ask Colenso to preach. Can you tell me one small point? Had he a turn for music? I must refer back to the last funeral (when I could not preach) of Sir Sterndale Bennett, and it would be a convenience for me to know this, Yes or No.
“You will come (if you come to the sermon) and any friends,—thro’ the Deanery at 2.45 on Sunday.
“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. Stanley.”
Some time after this I sent him one of my theological articles on the Life after Death. He acknowledged it thus kindly:—
“Deanery, November 2nd.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“Many thanks. Your writing on this subject is to me more nearly to the truth—at least more nearly to my hopes and desires—than almost any others which are now floating around us.
“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. Stanley.”
This next letter again referred to one of my books—and to Cardinal Newman:—
“October 12th, 1876.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“Many thanks for your book. You will see by my letter last night that I had already made good progress in it; as borrowed from the Library. I shall much value it.
Do not trouble yourself about Newman’s letter. I am much more anxious that the public should see it than that I should. I am amazed at the impression made upon me by the “Characteristics” of Newman. Most of the selections I had read before; but the net result is of a farrago of fanciful, disingenuous nonentities; all except the personal reminiscences.
“Yours truly,
“A. P. Stanley.”
One day I had been calling on him at the Deanery, and said to him, after describing my office in Victoria Street and our frequent Committee meetings there: “Now Mr. Dean, do you think it right and as it ought to be, that I should sit at that table as Hon. Sec. with Lord Shaftesbury on my right, and Cardinal Manning on my left,—and that you should not sit opposite to complete the “Reunion of Christendom?” He laughed heartily, agreed he certainly ought to be there, and promised to come. But time failed, and only his honoured name graced our lists.
The following is the last letter I have preserved of Dean Stanley’s writing. It is needless to say how much pleasure it gave me:—
“October 16th, 1876.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I have just finished re-reading with real admiration and consolation your “Hopes of the Human Race.” May I ask these questions: 1. Is it in, or coming into, a second edition? If the latter, is it too much to suggest that the note on p. 3 could, if not omitted, be modified? I appreciate the motive for its insertion, but it makes the lending and recommending of the book difficult. 2. Who is ‘one of the greatest men of Science’—p. 20? 3. Where is there an authentic appearance of the Pope’s reply to Odo Russell—p. 107?
“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. Stanley.”
I afterwards learned from Dean Stanley, one day when I was visiting him at the Deanery after his wife’s death, that he had read these Essays to Lady Augusta in the last weeks of her life, finding them, as he told me, the most satisfactory treatment of the subject he had met; and that after her death he read them over again. He gave me with much feeling a sad photograph of her as a dying woman, after telling me this. Mr. Motley the historian of the Netherlands, having also lost his wife not long afterwards, spoke to Dean Stanley of his desire for some book on the subject which would meet his doubts, and Dean Stanley gave him this one of mine.
Dean Stanley, it is needless to say, was the most welcome of guests in every house which he entered. There was something in his high-mindedness, I can use no other term, his sense of the glory of England, his love of his church (on extremely Erastian principles!) as the National Religion, his unfailing courtesy, his unaffected enjoyment of drollery and gossip, and his almost youthful excitement about each important subject which cropped up, which made him delightful to everyone in turn. There was no man in London I think whom it gave me such pleasure to meet “in the sixties and seventies” as the “Great Dean”; and he was uniformly most kind to me. The last occasion, I think, on which I saw him in full spirits was at a house where the pleasantest people were constantly to be found,—that of Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, in Cornwall Gardens. Renan and his wife were there, and I was so favoured as to be seated next to Renan; Dean Stanley being on the other side of our tactful hostess. The Dean had been showing Renan over the Abbey in the morning, and they were both in the gayest mood, but I remember Dean Stanley speaking to Renan with indescribable and concentrated indignation of the avowal Mr. Gladstone had recently made that the Clerkenwell explosion had caused him to determine on the disestablishment of the Irish Church.
I have found an old letter to my friend describing this dinner:—
“I had a most amusing evening yesterday. Kind Mrs. Simpson made me sit beside Renan; and Dean Stanley was across the corner, so we made, with nice Mrs. W. R. G. and Mr. M., a very jolly little party at our end of the table. The Dean began with grace, rather sotto voce, with a blink at Renan, who kept on never minding. His (Renan’s) looks are even worse than his picture leads one to expect. His face is exactly like a hog, so stupendously broad across the ears and jowl! But he is very gentlemanly in manner, very winning and full of fun and finesse. We had to talk French with him, but the Dean’s French was so much worse than mine that I felt quite at ease, and rattled away about the Triduos at Florence (to appease the wrath of Heaven on account of his Vie de Jésus), and had some private jokes with him about his malice in calling the Publicans of the Gospels ‘douaniers,’ and the ass a ‘baudet!’ He said he did it on purpose; and that when he was last in Italy numbers of poor people came to him, and asked him for the lucky number for the lotteries, because they thought he was so near the Devil he must know! I gave him your message about the Hengwrt MSS., and he apologised for having written about the ‘mesquines’ considerations which had caused them to be locked up, [to wit, that several leaves of the Red Book of Hergest had been stolen by too enthusiastic Welsh scholars!] and solemnly vowed to alter the passage in the next edition, and thanked you for the promise of obtaining leave for him to see them.
“I also talked to M. Renan of his Essay on the Poésie de la Race Celtique, and made him laugh at his own assertion that Irishmen had such a longing for ‘the Infinite’ that when they could not attain to it otherwise they sought it through a strong liquor ‘qui s’appelle le Whiskey.’”
Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff’s delightful volume on Renan has opened to my mind many fresh reasons for admiring the great French scholar, whose works I had falsely imagined I had known pretty well before reading it. But when all is said, the impression he has left on me (and I should think on most other people) is one of disappointment and short-falling.
M. Renan has written of himself the well-known and often laughed-at boast: “Seul dans mon siècle j’ai pu comprendre Jésus Christ et St. François d’Assise!” I do not know about his comprehension of St. Francis, though I should think it a very great tour de force for the brilliant French academician and critic to throw himself into that typical mediæval mind! But as regarded the former Person I should say that of all the tens of thousands who have studied and written about him during these last nineteen centuries, Renan was in some respects the least able to “comprehend” him. The man who could describe the story of the Prodigal as a “délicieuse parabole,” is as far out of Christ’s latitude as the pole from the equator. One abhors æsthetics when things too sacred to be measured by their standard are commended in their name. Renan seems to me to have been for practical purposes a Pantheist without a glimmer of that sense of moral and personal relation to God which was the supreme characteristic of Christ. When he translates Christ’s pity for the Magdalenes as jealousy “pour la gloire de son Père dans ces belles créatures;” and introduces the term “femmes d’une vie équivoque” as a rendering for “sinners,” he strikes a note so false that no praise lavished afterwards can restore harmony.
The late Lord Houghton was one of the men of note who I met occasionally at the houses of friends. I had known him in Italy and he was always kind to me and invited me to his Christmas parties at Frystone, which were said to be delightful, but to which I did not go. For a poet he had an extraordinarily rough exterior and blunt manner. One day we had a regular set-to argument lasting a long time. He attacked the order of things with the usual pessimist observations on all the evil in the world, and implied that I had no reasonable right to my faith. I answered as best I could, with some earnestness, and he finally concluded the discussion by remarking with concentrated contempt: “You might almost as well be a Christian!” Next day I went to Westminster Abbey and was sitting in the Dean’s pew, when, to my amusement Lord Houghton came in just below, with a party of ladies and took a seat exactly opposite me. He behaved of course with edifying propriety, but I could not help reflecting with a smile on our argument of the night before, and wondering how many members of that and similar congregations who were naturally counted by outsiders as faithful supporters of the orthodox creed, were as little so, au fond, as either Lord Houghton or I.
With Carlyle, though I saw him very frequently, I never interchanged more than a few banal words of civility. When his biography appeared, I was, (as I frankly told the illustrious biographer) exceedingly glad that I had never given him the chance of attaching one of his pungent epigrams to my poor person. I had been introduced to him by a lady at whose house he happened to call one afternoon when I was sitting with her, and where he showed himself (as it seems to me the roughest men invariably do in the society of amiable Countesses),—extremely apprivoisé. Also I continually met him out walking with one or other of his great historian friends, who were also mine, but I avoided trespassing on their good nature; or addressing him when he walked up and down alone daily before our door in Cheyne Walk,—till one day when he had been very ill, I ventured to express my satisfaction in seeing him out of doors again. He then answered me kindly. I never shared the admiration felt for him by so many able men who knew him personally, and therefore had means which I did not possess, of estimating him aright. To me his books and himself represented an anomalous sort of human Fruit. The original stock was a hard and thorny Scotch peasant-character, with a splendid intellect superadded. The graft was not wholly successful. A flavour of the old acrid sloe was always perceptible in the plum.
The following letter was received by Dr. Hoggan in reply to a letter to Mr. Carlyle concerning Vivisection:
“Keston Lodge, Beckenham,
“28th August, 1875.
“Dear Sir,
“Mr. Carlyle has received your letter, and has read it carefully. He bids me say, that ever since he was a boy when he read the account of Majendie’s atrocities, he has never thought of the practice of vivisecting animals but with horror. I may mention that I have heard him speak of it in the strongest terms of disgust long before there was any speech about public agitation on the subject. He believes that the reports about the good results said to be obtained from the practice of vivisection to be immensely exaggerated; with the exception of certain experiments by Harvey and certain others by Sir Charles Bell, he is not aware of any conspicuous good that has resulted from it. But even supposing the good results to be much greater than Mr. Carlyle believes they are, and apart too from the shocking pain inflicted on the helpless animals operated upon, he would still think the practice so brutalising to the operators that he would earnestly wish the law on the subject to be altered, so as to make Vivisection even in Institutions like that with which you are connected a most rare occurrence, and when practised by private individuals an indictable offence.
“You are not sure that the operators on living animals ‘can be counted on your fingers.’ Mr. Carlyle with an equal share of certainty believes Vivisection and other kindred experiments on living animals to be much more largely practised, and that they are by no means uncommonly undertaken by doctors’ apprentices and ‘other miserable persons.’
“You are mistaken if you look upon the Times as a mirror of virtue; on this very subject when it at first began to be publicly discussed last winter, it printed a letter from ... which your letter itself would prove to be altogether composed of falsehoods.
“With Mr. Carlyle’s compliments and good wishes,
“I remain, dear Sir,
“Yours truly,
“Mary Carlyle Aitken.”
Mr. Carlyle supported our Anti-vivisection Society from the outset, for which I was very grateful to him; but having promised to join our first important deputation to the Home Office, to urge the Government to bring in a Bill in accordance with the recommendations of the Royal Commission, he failed at the last moment to put in an appearance, having learned that Cardinal Manning was to be also present. I was told that he said he would not appear in public with the Cardinal, who was, he thought, “the chief emissary of Beelzebub in England!” When this was repeated to me, my remark was:—“Infidels is riz! Time was, when Cardinals would not appear in public with infidels!”
Nothing has surprised me more in reading the memoirs and letters of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle than the small interest either of them seems to have felt in the great subjects which formed the life-work of their many illustrious visitors. While humbler folk who touched the same circles were vehemently attracted, or else repelled, by the political, philosophical and theological theories and labours of such men as Mazzini, Mill, Colenso, Jowett, Martineau and Darwin, and every conversation and almost every letter contained new facts, or animated discussions regarding them, the Carlyles received visits from these great men continually, with (it would seem) little or no interest in their aims or views one way or the other, in approval or disapproval; and wrote and talked much more seriously about the delinquencies of their own maidservants, and the great and never-to-be-sufficiently-appealed-against cock and hen nuisance.
I had known Cardinal Manning in Rome about 1861 or 1863 when he was “Monsignor Manning,” and went a little into English society, resplendent in a beautiful violet robe. He was very busy in those days making converts among English young ladies, and one with whom we were acquainted, the daughter of a celebrated authoress, fell into his net. He had, at all times, a gentle way of ridiculing English doings and prejudices which was no doubt telling. One of the stories he told me was of an Italian sacristan asking him “what was the Red Prayer Book which all the English tourists carried about and read so devoutly in the churches?” (of course Murray’s Hand-books).[[25]]
A few years afterwards when he had returned to England as Archbishop of Westminster, I met him pretty frequently at Miss Stanley’s house in Grosvenor Crescent. He there attacked me cheerfully one evening: “Miss Cobbe I have found out something against you. I have discovered that Voltaire was part-owner of a Slave-ship!”
“I beg you to believe,” said I, “that I have no responsibility whatever respecting Voltaire! But I would ask your Grace, whether it be not true that Las Casas, the saintly Dominican, founded Negro Slavery in America?” A Church of England friend coming up and laughing, I discharged a second barrel: “And was not the Protestant Saint, Newton of Olney,—much worse than all,—the Captain of a Slave-ship?”[[26]]
One evening at this pleasant house I was standing on the rug in one of the rooms talking to Mr. Matthew Arnold and two or three other acquaintances of the same set. The Archbishop, on entering shook hands with each of us, and we were all talking in the usual easy, sub-humorous, London way when a tall military-looking man, a Major G., came in, and seeing Manning, walked straight up to him, went down on one knee and kissed his ring! A bomb falling amongst us would scarcely have been more startling; and Manning, Englishman as he was to the backbone under his fine Roman feathers, was obviously disconcerted, though dignified as ever.
In a letter to a friend dated Feb. 19th, 1867, I find I said:
“I had an amusing conversation with Archbishop Manning the other night at Miss Stanley’s. He was most good-humoured, coming up to me as I was talking to Sir C. Trevelyan, about Rome, and saying ‘I am glad you think of going to Rome next winter, Miss Cobbe. It proves you expect the Pope to be firmly established there still.’ We had rather a long talk about Passaglia who he says has recanted,— In later years, I received at least half-a-dozen notes from time to time from his Eminence asking for details of our Anti-vivisection work, and exhibiting his anxiety to master the facts on which he proposed to speak at our Meetings. Here are some of these notes:— “Archbishop’s House, Westminster, S.W., “June 12th, 1882. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “I should be much obliged if you would send me some recent facts or utterances of the Mantegazza kind, for the meeting at Lord Shaftesbury’s. I have for a long time lost all reckoning from overwork, and need to be posted up. “Believe me, always faithfully yours, “Henry E., Card. Archbp.” “Cardinal Manning to Miss F. P. C. “Eastern Road, Brighton. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “I can assure you that my slowness in answering your letter has not arisen from any diminution of care on Vivisection. I was never better able to understand it, for I have been for nearly three weeks in pain day and night from neuralgia in the right arm, which makes writing difficult. “I have not seen Mr. Holt’s Bill, and I do not know what it aims at. “Before I can say anything, I wish to be fully informed. The Bill of last year does not content me. “But we must take care not to weaken what we have gained. I hope to stay here over Sunday, and should be much obliged if you could desire someone to send me a copy of Mr. Holt’s Bill. “Has sufficient organised effort been made to enforce Mr. Cross’s Act? “Believe me, always yours very truly, “Henry E., Card. Archbp.” “Archbishop’s House, Westminster, S.W., “June 22nd, 1884. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “I will attend the meeting of the 26th unless hindered by some unforeseen necessity, but I must ask you to send me a brief. I am so driven by work that for some time I have fallen behind your proceedings. Send me one or two points marked and I will read them up. “My mind is more than ever fixed on this subject. “Believe me, yours faithfully, “Henry E., Card. Archbp.” “Archbishop’s House, Westminster, S.W., “January 27th, 1887. “My dear Miss Cobbe, “For the last three weeks I have been kept to the house by one of my yearly colds; but if possible I will be present at the Meeting of the Society. If I should be unable to be there I will write a letter. “I clearly see that the proposed Physiological and Pathological Institute would be centre and sanction of ever advancing Vivisection. “I hope you are recovering health and strength by your rest in the country? “Believe me, always faithfully yours, “Henry E., Card. Archbp.” “Archbishop’s House, Westminster, S.W., “July 31st, 1889. “My dear Miss Cobbe, “My last days have been so full that I have not been able to write. I thank you for your letter, and for the contents of it. The highest counsel is always the safest and best, cost us what it may. We may take the cost as the test of its rectitude. “I hope you will go on writing against this inflation of vain glory calling itself Science. “Believe me, always, very truly yours, “Henry E., Card. Archbishop.” At no less than seven of our annual Meetings (at one of which he presided) did Cardinal Manning make speeches. All these I have myself reprinted in an ornamental pamphlet to be obtained at 20, Victoria Street. The reasons for his adoption of our Anti-vivisection cause, were, I am sure, mainly moral and humane; but I think an incident which occurred in Rome not long before our campaign began may have impressed on his mind a regret that the Catholic Church had hitherto done nothing on behalf of the lower animals, and a desire to take part himself in a humane crusade and so rectify its position before the Protestant world. Pope Pio IX. had been addressed by the English in Rome through Lord Ampthill, (then Mr. Odo Russell, our representative there)—with a request for permission to found a Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Rome; where, (as all the world knows) it was almost as deplorably needed as at Naples. After a considerable delay, the formal reply through the proper Office, was sent to Mr. Russell refusing the (indispensable) permission. The document conveying this refusal expressly stated that “a Society for such a purpose could not be sanctioned in Rome. Man owed duties to his fellow men; but he owed no duties to the lower animals therefore, though such societies might exist in Protestant countries they could not be allowed to be established in Rome.” The late Lord Arthur Russell, coming back from Italy to England just after this event, told me of it with great detail, and assured me that he had seen the Papal document in his brother’s possession; and that if I chose to publish the matter in England, he would guarantee the truth of the story at any time. I did very much choose to publish it, thinking it was a thing which ought to be proclaimed on the housetops; and I repeated it in seven or eight different publications, ranging from the Quarterly Review to the Echo. Soon after this, if I remember rightly, began the Anti-vivisection movement, and almost immediately when the Society for Protection of Animals from Vivisection (afterwards called the Victoria Street Society) was founded, by Dr. Hoggan and myself, Cardinal Manning gave us his name and active support. He took part in our first Deputation to the Home Office, and spoke at our first meeting, which was held on the 10th June, 1876, at the Westminster Palace Hotel. On that occasion, when it came to the Cardinal’s turn to speak, he began at once to say that “Much misapprehension existed as to the attitude of his Church on the subject of duty to animals.” [As he said this, with his usual clear, calm, deliberate enunciation, he looked me straight in the face and I looked at him!] He proceeded to say: “It was true that man owed no duty directly to the brutes, but he owed it to God, whose creatures they are, to treat them mercifully.” This was, I considered a very good way of reconciling adhesion to the Pope’s doctrine, with humane principles; and I greatly rejoiced that such a mezzo-termine could be put forward on authority. Of course in my private opinion the Cardinal’s ethics were theoretically untenable, seeing that if it were possible to conceive of such a thing as a creature made by a man, (as people in the thirteenth century believed that Arnaldus de Villa-Nova had made a living man), or even such a thing as a creature made by the Devil,—that most wretched being would still have a right to be spared pain if he were sensitive to pain; and would assuredly be a proper object of measureless compassion. That a dog or horse is a creature of God; that its love and service to us come of God’s gracious provisions for us; that the animal is unoffending to its Creator, while we are suppliants for forgiveness for our offences; all these are true and tender reasons for additional kindness and care for these our dumb fellow-creatures. But they are not (as the Cardinal’s argument would seem to imply) the only reasons for showing mercy towards them. Nevertheless it was a great step,—I may say an historical event,—that a principle practically including universal humanity to the lower animals, should have been enunciated publicly and formally by a “Prince of the Church” of Rome. That Cardinal Manning was not only the first great Roman prelate to lay down any such principle, but that he far outran many of his contemporaries and co-religionists in so doing, has become painfully manifest this year (1894) from the numerous letters from priests which have appeared in the Tablet and Catholic Times, bearing a very different complexion. Cardinal Manning repeated almost verbatim the same explanation of his own standpoint in his speech on March 9th, 1887, when he occupied the chair at our Annual Meeting. He said: “It is perfectly true that obligations and duties are between moral persons, and therefore the lower animals are not susceptible of those moral obligations which we owe to one another; but we owe a seven-fold obligation to the Creator of those animals. Our obligation and moral duty is to Him who made them, and, if we wish to know the limit and the broad outline of our obligation, I say at once it is His Nature and His perfections; and, among those perfections, one is most profoundly that of eternal mercy. (Hear, hear.) And, therefore, although a poor mule or a poor horse is not indeed a moral person, yet the Lord and Maker of that mule and that horse is the highest law-giver, and His Nature is a law to Himself. And, in giving a dominion over His creatures to man, He gave them subject to the condition that they should be used in conformity to His own perfections, which is His own law, and, therefore, our law.” On the first occasion a generous Roman Catholic nobleman present gave me £20 to have the Cardinal’s speech translated into Italian and widely circulated in Italy. I have good reason to believe that when Cardinal Manning went to Rome after the election of Leo XIII., he spoke earnestly to his Holiness on the subject of cruelty to animals generally in Italy, and especially concerning Vivisection, and that he understood the Pope to agree with him and sanction his attitude. I learned this from a private source, but his Eminence referred to it quite unmistakeably in his speech at Lord Shaftesbury’s house on the 21st June, 1882, as follows:— “I am somewhat concerned to say it, but I know that an impression has been made that those whom I represent look, if not with approbation, at least with great indulgence, at the practice of Vivisection. I grieve to say that abroad there are a great many (whom I beg to say I do not represent) who do favour the practice; but this I do protest, that there is not a religious instinct in nature, nor a religion of nature, nor is there a word in revelation, either in the Old Testament or the New Testament, nor is there to be found in the great theology which I do represent, no, nor in any Act of the Church of which I am a member; no, nor in the lives and utterances of any one of those great servants of that Church who stand as examples, nor is there an authoritative utterance anywhere to be found in favour of Vivisection. There may be the chatter, the prating, and the talk of those who know nothing about it. And I know what I have stated to be the fact, for some years ago I took a step known to our excellent secretary, and brought the subject under the notice and authority where alone I could bring it. And those before whom it was laid soon proved to have been profoundly ignorant of the outlines of the alphabet even of Vivisection. They believed entirely that the practice of surgery and the science of anatomy owed everything to the discoveries of vivisectors. They were filled to the full with every false impression, but when the facts were made known to them, they experienced a revulsion of feeling.” Cardinal Manning also, (as I happen likewise to know) made a great effort about 1878 or 1879, to induce the then General of the Franciscans, to support the Anti-vivisection movement for love of St. Francis, and his tenderness to animals. In this attempt, however, Cardinal Manning must have been entirely unsuccessful, as no modern Franciscan that ever I have heard of, has stirred a finger on behalf of animals anywhere, or given his name to any Society for protecting them, either from vulgar or from scientific cruelty. Knowing this, I confess to feeling some impatience when the name of St. Francis and his amiable fondness for birds and beasts is perpetually flaunted whenever the lack of common humanity to animals visible in Catholic countries happens to be mentioned. It is a very small matter that a Saint, six hundred years ago, sang with nightingales and fed wolves, if the monks of his own Order and the priests of the Church which has canonised him, never warn their flocks that to torment God’s creatures is even a venial sin, and when forced to notice barbarous cruelties to a brute, invariably reply, “Non è Cristiano,” as if all claims to compassion were dismissed by that consideration! The answer of the General of the Franciscans to Cardinal Manning’s touching appeal was,—“that he had consulted his doctor and that his doctor assured him that no such thing as Vivisection was ever practised in Italy!” I was kindly permitted to call at Archbishop’s House and see Cardinal Manning several times; and I find the following little record of one of my first visits in a letter to my friend, written the same, or next day:— “I had a very interesting interview with the Cardinal. I was shown into a vast, dreary dining-room quite monastic in its whitey-brown walls, poverty-stricken furniture, crucifix, and pictures of half-a-dozen Bishops who did not exhibit the ‘Beauty of Holiness.’ The Cardinal received me most kindly, and said he was so glad to see me, and that he was much better in health after a long illness. He is not much changed. It was droll to sit talking tête-à-tête with a man with a pink octagon on his venerable head, and various little scraps of scarlet showing here and there to remind one that ‘Grattez’ the English gentleman and you will find the Roman Cardinal! He told me, really with effusion, that his heart was in our work; and he promised to go to the Meeting to-morrow.... I told him we all wished him to take the chair. He said it would be much better for a layman like Lord Coleridge to do so. I said, ‘I don’t think you know the place you hold in English, (I paused and added avec intention,) Protestant estimation’! He laughed very good-humouredly and said: ‘I think I do, very well.’” At the Meeting on the following day when he did take the chair, I had opportunities as Hon. Sec., of which I did not fail to avail myself, of a little quiet conversation with his Eminence before the proceedings. I spoke of the moral results of Darwinism on the character and remarked how paralyzing was the idea that Conscience was merely an hereditary instinct fixed in the brain by the interests of the tribe, and in no sense the voice of God in the heart or His law graven on the “fleshly tablets.” He abounded in my sense, and augured immeasurable evils from the general adoption of such a philosophy. I asked him what was the Catholic doctrine of the origin of Souls? He answered, promptly and emphatically: “O, that each one is a distinct creation of God.” The last day on which His Eminence attended a Committee Meeting in Victoria Street I had a little conversation with him as usual, after business was over; and reminded him that on every occasion when he had previously attended, we had had our beloved President, Lord Shaftesbury present. “Shall I tell your Eminence,” I asked, “what Mrs. F.” (now Lady B.) “told me Lord Shaftesbury said to her shortly before he died, about our Committees here? He said that ‘if our Society had done nothing else but bring you and him together, and make you sit and work at the same table for the same object, it would have been well worth while to have founded it!’” “Did Lord Shaftesbury say that?” said the Cardinal, with a moisture in his eyes, “Did he say that? I loved Lord Shaftesbury!” And these, I reflected, were the men whom narrow bigots of both creeds, looked on as the very chiefs of opposing camps and bitter enemies! The one rejoiced at an excuse for meeting the other in friendly co-operation! The other said as his last word: “I loved him!” I was greatly touched by this little scene, and going straight from it to the house of the friend who had told me of Lord Shaftesbury’s remark, I naturally described it to her and to Mr. Lowell, who was taking tea with us. “Ah, yes!” Lady B. said,—“I remember it well, and I could show you the very tree in the park where we were sitting when Lord Shaftesbury made that remark. But” (she added) “why did you not tell the Cardinal that he included you? What Lord Shaftesbury said was, that ‘the Society had brought the Cardinal and you and himself to work together.’” Mr. Lowell was interested in all this, and the evidence it afforded of the width of mind of the great philanthropist, so often supposed to be “a narrow Evangelical.” Alas! he also has “gone over to the majority.” I met him often and liked him (as every one did) extremely. Though in so many ways different, he had some of Mr. Gladstone’s peculiar power of making every conversation wherein he took part interesting; of turning it off dusty roads into pleasant paths. He had not in the smallest degree that tiresome habit of giving information instead of conveying impressions, which makes some worthy people so unspeakably fatiguing as companions. I had once the privilege of sitting between him and Lord Tennyson when they carried on an animated conversation, and I could see how much the great Poet was delighted with the lesser one; who was also a large-hearted Statesman; a silver link between two great nations. I shall account it one of the chief honours which have fallen to my lot that Tennyson asked leave, through his son, to pay me a visit. Needless to say I accepted the offer with gratitude and, fortunately, I was at home, in our little house in Cheyne Walk, when he called on me. He sat for a long time over my fire, and talked of poetry; of the share melodious words ought to have in it; of the hatefulness of scientific cruelty, against which he was going to write again; and of the new and dangerous phases of thought then apparent. Much that he said on the latter subject was, I think, crystallised in his Locksley Hall Sixty Years Later. After he had risen to go and I had followed him to the stairs, I returned to my room and said from my heart, “Thank God!” The great poem which had been so much to me for half a lifetime, was not spoiled; the Man and the Poet were one. Nothing that I had now seen and heard of him in the flesh jarred with what I had known of him in the spirit. After this first visit I had the pleasure of meeting Lord Tennyson several times and of making Lady Tennyson’s charming acquaintance; the present Lord Tennyson being exceedingly kind and friendly to me in welcoming me to their house. On one occasion when I met Lord Tennyson at the house of a mutual friend, he told me, (with an innocent surprise which I could not but find diverting,) that a certain great Professor had been positively angry and rude to him about his lines in the Children’s Hospital concerning those who “carve the living hound”! I tried to explain to him the fury of the whole clique at the discovery that the consciences of the rest of mankind has considerably outstepped theirs in the matter of humanity and that while they fancied themselves, (in his words,) “the heirs of all the ages, in the foremost files of Time,” it was really in the Dark Ages, as regarded humane sentiment,—or at least one or two centuries past,—in which they lingered; practising the Art of Torture on beasts, as men did on men in the sixteenth century. I also tried to explain to him that his ideal of a Vivisector with red face and coarse hands was quite wrong, and as false as the representation of Lady Macbeth as a tall and masculine woman. Lady Macbeth must have been small, thin and concentrated, not a big, bony, conscientious Scotch woman; and Vivisectors (some of them at all events) are polished and handsome gentlemen, with peculiarly delicate fingers (for drawing out nerves, &c., as Cyon describes). Lord Tennyson from the very first beginning of our Anti-vivisection movement, in 1874, to the hour of his death, never once failed to append his name to every successive Memorial and Petition,—and they were many,—which I, and my successors, sent to him; and he accepted and held our Hon. Membership and afterwards the Vice-Presidency of our Society from first to last. The last time I saw Lord Tennyson was one day in London after I had taken luncheon at his house. When I rose to leave the table, and he shook hands with me at the door as we were parting, as we supposed, for that season; he said to me: “Good-Bye, Miss Cobbe—Fight the good Fight. Go on! Fight the good Fight.” I saw him no more; but I shall do his bidding, please God, to the end. I shall insert here two letters which I received from Lord Tennyson which, though trifling in themselves, I prize as testimonies of his sympathy and goodwill. I am fortunately able to add to them two papers of some real interest,—the contemporary estimate of Tennyson’s first poems by his friends, the Kembles; and the announcement of the death of Arthur Hallam by his friend John Mitchell Kemble to Fanny Kemble. They have come into my possession with a vast mass of family and other papers given me by Mrs. Kemble several years ago, and belong to a series of letters, marvellously long and closely written, by John Kemble, during and after his romantic expedition to Spain along with the future Archbishop Trench and the other young enthusiasts of 1830. The way in which John Mitchell Kemble speaks of his friend Alfred Tennyson’s Poems is satisfactory, but much more so is the beautiful testimony he renders to the character of Hallam. It is touching, and uplifting too, to read the rather singular words “of a holier heart,” applied to the subject of “In Memoriam,” by his young companion. “Farringford, Freshwater, “Isle of Wight, “June 4th, 1880. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “I have subscribed my name, and I hope that it may be of some use to your cause. “My wife is grateful to you for remembrance of her, and “I am, ever yours, “A. Tennyson.” “Aldworth, Haslemere, “Surrey, January 9th, 1882. “My dear Miss Cobbe, “I thank you for your essay, which I found very interesting, though perhaps somewhat too vehement to serve your purpose. Have you seen that terrible book by a Swiss (reviewed in the Spectator) Ayez Pitié? Pray pardon my not answering you before. I am so harried with letters and poems from all parts of the world, that my friends often have to wait for an answer. “Yours ever, “A. Tennyson.” “Farringford, Freshwater, “Isle of Wight, June 12th, 1882. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “I am sorry to say that I shall not be in London the 21st, so that I cannot be present at your meeting. Many thanks for asking me. My father has been suffering from a bad attack of gout, and does not feel inclined to write more about Vivisection. You have, as you know, his warmest good wishes in all your great struggle. When are we to see you again? Can you not pay us a visit at Haslemere this summer? “With our kindest regards, “Yours very sincerely, “Hallam Tennyson.” Extract from letter from John M. Kemble to Fanny Kemble. No date. In packet of 1830–1833:— “I am very glad that you like Tennyson’s Poems; if you had any poetry in you, you could not help it; for the general system of criticism, and the notion that a poet is to be appreciated by everybody, if he be a poet, are mighty fallacies. It was only the High Priest who was privileged to enter the Holy of Holies; and so it is with that other Holy of Holies, no less sacred and replete with divinity, a great poet’s mind: therein no vulgar foot may tread. To meet this objection, it is often said that all men appreciate, &c., &c., Shakespeare and Milton, &c. To this I answer by a direct denial. Not one man in a hundred thousand cares three straws for Milton; and though from being a dramatic Poet Shakespeare must be better understood, I believe I may say that not one in a hundred thousand feels all that is to be felt in him. There is no man who has done so much as Tennyson to express poetical feeling by sound; Titian has done as much with colours. Indeed, I believe no poet to have lived since Milton, so perfect in his form, except Göthe. In this matter, Shelley and Keats and Byron, even Wordsworth, have been found wanting. Coleridge expresses the greatest admiration for Charles Tennyson’s sonnets; we have sent him Alfred’s poems, which, I am sure, will delight him.” Extract from letter from John Mitchell Kemble to Fanny Kemble:— “It is with feelings of inexpressible pain that I announce to you the death of poor Arthur Hallam, who expired suddenly from an attack of apoplexy at Vienna, on the 15th of last month. Though this was always feared by us as likely to occur, the shock has been a bitter one to bear: and most of all so to the Tennysons, whose sister Emily he was to have married. I have not yet had the courage to write to Alfred. This is a loss which will most assuredly be felt by this age, for if ever man was born for great things he was. Never was a more powerful intellect joined to a purer and holier heart; and the whole illuminated with the richest imagination, the most sparkling yet the kindest wit. One cannot lament for him that he is gone to a far better life, but we weep over his coffin and wonder that we cannot be consoled. The Roman epitaph on two young children: Sibi met ipsis dolorem abstulerunt, suis reliquere (from themselves they took away pain, to their friends they left it!) is always present to my mind, and somehow the miserable feeling of loneliness comes over one even though one knows that the dead are happier than the living. His poor father was with him only. They had been travelling together in Hungary and were on their return to England; but there had been nothing whatever to announce the fatal termination of their journey; indeed, bating fatigue, Arthur had been unusually well. Our other friends, though all mourning for him as if he had been our brother, are well.” In my chapter on Italy I have written some pages concerning Mr. and Mrs. Browning, and printed two or three kind letters from him to me. It is a great privilege, I now feel, to have known, even in such slight measure these two great poets. But what an unspeakable blessing and honour it has been for England all through the Victorian Age to have for her representatives and teachers in the high realm of poetry, two such men as Tennyson and Browning; men of immaculate honour, blameless and beautiful lives, and lofty and pure inspiration! Not one word which either has ever published need be blotted out by any recording angel, and, widely different as they were, their high doctrine was the same. The one tells us that “good” will be “the final goal of ill”; the other that— “God’s in His Heaven! All’s right with the world!” I have had also the good fortune to find other English poets ready to sympathise with me on the subject of Vivisection. Sir Henry Taylor wrote many letters to me upon it and called my attention to his own lines which go so deep into the philosophy of the question, and which I have since quoted so often; “Pain in Man Bears the high mission of the flail and fan, In brutes ’tis purely piteous.” Here is one of his notes to me:— “The Roost, Bournemouth, “November 25th, 1875. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “I return your papers that they may not be wasted. I wish you all the success you deserve, which is all you can desire. But I can do nothing. My hands are full here, and my pockets are empty. “Two months ago I succeeded in forming a local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty in this place. “We have ordered prosecutions every week since, and have obtained convictions in every case. And these local operations are all that I can undertake or assist. “Believe me, yours sincerely, “Henry Taylor.” He was also actively interested in an effort to improve the method of slaughtering cattle by using a mask with a fixed hole in the centre, through which a long nail may be easily driven, straight through the exact suture of the skull to the brain, causing instant death. Sir Henry specially approved the masks for this purpose, made, I believe, under his own direction at Bournemouth, by Mr. Mendon, a saddler at Lansdowne. Mr. Lewis Morris has also written some beautiful and striking poems touching on the subject of scientific cruelty, and I have reason to hope that a younger man, who many of us look upon as the poet of the future in England, Mr. William Watson, is entirely on the same side. In short, if the Priests of Science are against us, the Prophets of Humanity, the Poets, are with us in this controversy, almost to a man. It will be seen that we had Politicians, Historians, and thinkers of various parties among our friends in London; but there were no Novelists except that very agreeable woman Miss Jewsbury and the two Misses Betham Edwards. Mr. Anthony Trollope I knew but slightly. I had also some acquaintance with a very popular novelist, then a young man, who was introduced in the full flush of his success to Mr. Carlyle, whereon the “Sage of Chelsea” greeted him with the encouraging question, “Well, Mr. —— when do you intend to begin to do something sairious?” With Mr. Wilkie Collins I exchanged several friendly letters concerning some information he wanted for one of his books. The following letter from him exhibits the “Sairius” spirit, at all events (as Mr. Carlyle might admit), in which he set about spinning the elaborate web of his exciting tales. “90, Gloucester Place, Portman Square, W., “23rd June, 1882. “Dear Madam, “I most sincerely thank you for your kind letter and for the pamphlets which preceded it. The ‘Address’ seems to me to possess the very rare merit of forcible statement combined with a moderation of judgment which sets a valuable example, not only to our enemies, but to some of our friends. As to the ‘Portrait,’ I feel such a strong universal interest in it that I must not venture on criticism. You have given me exactly what I most wanted for the purpose that I have in view—and you have spared me time and trouble in the best and kindest of ways. If I require further help, you shall see that I am gratefully sensible of the help that has been already given. “I am writing to a very large public both at home and abroad; and it is quite needless (when I am writing to you) to dwell on the importance of producing the right impression by means which keep clear of terrifying and revolting the ordinary reader. I shall leave the detestable cruelties of the laboratory to be merely inferred, and, in tracing the moral influence of those cruelties on the nature of the man who practices them, and the result as to his social relations with the persons about him, I shall be careful to present him to the reader as a man not infinitely wicked and cruel, and to show the efforts made by his better instincts to resist the inevitable hardening of the heart, the fatal stupefying of all the finer sensibilities, produced by the deliberately merciless occupations of his life. If I can succeed in making him, in some degree, an object of compassion as well as of horror, my experience of readers of fiction tells me that the right effect will be produced by the right means. “Believe me, very truly yours, “Wilkie Collins.” Of another order of acquaintances was that excellent man Mr. James Spedding; also Mr. Babbage, (in whose horror of street music I devoutly sympathised); and Mr. James Fergusson the architect, in whose books and ideas generally I found great interest. He avowed to me his opinion that the ancient Jews were never builders of stone edifices, and that all the relics of stone buildings in Palestine were the work either of Tyrians or of the Idumean Herod, or of other non-Jewish rulers. His conversation was always most instructive to me, and I rejoiced when I had the opportunity of writing a long review (for Fraser I think) of his Tree and Serpent Worship; with which he was so well pleased that he made me a present of the magnificent volume, of which I believe only a hundred copies were printed. Mr. Fergusson taught me to see that the whole civilization of a country has depended historically on the stones with which it happens naturally to be furnished. If these stones be large and hard and durable like those of Egypt, we find grand, everlasting monuments and statues made of them. If they be delicate and beautiful like Pentelic marble, we have the Parthenon. If they be plain limestone or freestone as in our northern climes, richness of form and detail take the place of greater simplicity, and we have the great cathedrals of England, France and Germany. Where there is no good stone, only brick, we may have fine mansions, but not great temples, and where there is neither clay for bricks, nor good stone for building, the natives can erect no durable edifices, and consequently have no places to be adorned with statues and paintings and all the arts which go with them. I do not know whether I do justice to Mr. Fergusson in giving this résumé of his lesson, but it is my recollection of it, and to my thinking worth recording. One of the friends of whom we saw most in London was Sir William Boxall, whose exquisite artistic taste was specially congenial to my friend, and his varied conversation and love of his poor, dear, old dog “Garry,” to me. After Lord Coleridge’s charming obituary of him nothing need be added in the way of tribute to his character and gifts, or to the refined feeling which inspired him always. I may add, however (what the Lord Chief Justice naturally would not say on his own account), namely, that Boxall, in his latter years of weakness and almost constant confinement to the house, frequently told us when we went to visit him how Lord Coleridge had found time from all his labours to come frequently to sit with him and cheer him; and after a whole day spent in the hot Law Courts would dine on his old friend’s chops, and spend the evening in his dingy rooms in Welbeck Street. Here is a letter from Sir William which I happen to have preserved. It refers to an article I had written in the Echo on the death of Landseer:— “My dear Miss Cobbe, “Your sympathetic notice of my old friend Landseer and his friends has delighted me—a grain of such feeling is worth a newspaper load of worn-out criticism. I thank you very sincerely for it. “I should have called upon you, but I have been shut up with the cold which threatened me when I last saw you. “Yours very sincerely, “W. Boxall. “October 6th, 1879. “There is no hope of my getting to Dolgelly. It will be a great escape for Miss Lloyd, for I am utterly worn out.” I find that the most common opinion about Lord Shaftesbury is, that he was an excellent and most disinterested man, who did a vast amount of good in his time among the poor, and in the factories and on behalf of the climbing-boy sweeps, but that he was somewhat narrowminded; and dry, if not stern in character. Perhaps some would add that his extreme Evangelicalism had in it a tinge of Calvinistic bigotry. I shared very much such ideas about him till one day in 1875, when I had gone to Stanhope Street to consult Lord and Lady Mount-Temple, my unfailing helpers and advisers, about some matter connected with Lord Henniker’s Bill then before Parliament,—for the restriction of Vivisection. After explaining my difficulty, Lady Mount-Temple said, “We must consult Lord Shaftesbury about this matter. Come with me now to his house.” I yielded to my kind friend, but not without hesitation, fearing that Lord Shaftesbury would, in the first place, be too much absorbed in his great philanthropic undertakings to spare attention to the wrongs of the brutes; and, in the second, that his religious views were too strict to allow him to co-operate with such a heretic as I, even if (as I was assured) he would tolerate my intrusion. How widely astray from the truth I was as regarded his sentiments in both ways, the sequel proved. He had already, it appeared, taken great interest in the Anti-vivisection controversy then beginning, and entered into it with all the warmth of his heart; not as something taking him off from service to mankind, but as apart of his philanthropy. He always emphatically endorsed my view; that, if we could save Vivisectors from persisting in the sin of Cruelty, we should be doing them a moral service greater than to save them from becoming pickpockets or drunkards. He also felt what I may call passionate pity for the tortured brutes. He loved dogs, and always had a large beautiful Collie lying under his writing-table; and was full of tenderness to his daughters’ Siamese cat, and spoke of all animals with intimate knowledge and sympathy. As to my heresies, though he knew of them from the first, they never interfered with his kindness and consideration for me, which were such as I can never remember without emotion. I shall speak in its place in another chapter of the share he took as leader and champion of our party in all the subsequent events connected with the Anti-vivisection agitation. I wish here only to give, (if it may be possible for me), some small idea to the reader of what that good man really was, and to remove some of the absurd misconceptions current concerning him. For example. He was no bigot as to Sabbatarian observances. I told him once that I belonged to the Society for opening Museums on Sundays. He said: “I think you are mistaken—the working men do not wish it. See! I have here the result of a large enquiry among their Trades Unions and clubs. Nearly all of them deprecate the change. But I am on this point not at all of the same opinion as most of my friends. I have told them (and they have often been a little shocked at it), that I think if a lawyer has a brief for a case on Monday and has had no time to study it on Saturday, he is quite justified in reading it up on Sunday after church.” Neither did he share the very common bigotry of teetotalism. He said to me, “The teetotallers have added an Eleventh Commandment, and think more of it than of all the rest.” Again, when (as is well known) Lord Palmerston left the choice of Bishops for many years practically in his hands (I believe that seven owed their sees to him), and he, of course, selected Evangelical clergymen who would uphold what he considered to be vital religious truth, he was yet able to concur heartily in the appointment of Arthur Stanley to the Deanery of Westminster. He told me that Lord Palmerston had written to him before inviting Dr. Stanley, and said that he would not do it if he, (Lord Shaftesbury) disapproved; and that he had answered that he was well aware that Dr. Stanley’s theological views differed widely from his own, but that he was an admirable man and a gentleman, with special suitability for this post and a claim to some such high office; and that he cordially approved Lord Palmerston’s choice. I do not suppose that Dean Stanley ever knew of this possible veto in Lord Shaftesbury’s hands, but he entertained the profoundest respect for him, and expressed it in the little poem which he wrote about him (of which Lord Shaftesbury gave me an MS. copy), which appears in Dean Stanley’s biography. He compares the aged philanthropist to “a great rock’s shadow in a weary land.” It was a charge against Howard and some other great philanthropists that, while exhibiting the enthusiasm of humanity on the largest scale they failed to show it on a small one, and were scantily kind to those immediately around them. Nothing could be less true of Lord Shaftesbury. While the direction of a score of great charitable undertakings rested on him, and his study was flooded with reports, Bills before Parliament and letters by the hundred,—he would remember to perform all sorts of little kindnesses to individuals having no special claim on him; and never by any chance did he omit an act of courtesy. No more perfectly high-bred gentleman ever graced the old school; and no young man, I may add, ever had a fresher or warmer heart. Indeed, I know not where I should look among old or young for such ready and full response of feeling to each call for pity, for sympathy, for indignation, and, I may add, for the enjoyment of humour, the least gleam of which caught his eye a moment. He was always particularly tickled with the absurdities involved in the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, and whenever a clergyman or a bishop did anything he much disapproved, he was sure to stigmatize it from that point of view. One day he was giving me a rather long account of some Deputation which had waited on him and endeavoured to bully him. As he described the scene: “There they stood in a crowd in the room, and I said to them; Gentlemen! I’ll see you.”... (Good Heavens! I thought: Where did he say he would see them?)—“I’ll see you at the bottom of the Red Sea before I’ll do it!” The revulsion was so ludicrous and the allusion to the “Red Sea” instead of “another place,” so characteristic, that I broke into a peal of laughter which, when explained, made him also laugh heartily. Another day I remember his great amusement at a story not reported, I believe, in the Times, but told me by an M.P. who was present in the House when Sir P. O. had outdone Sir Boyle Roche. He spoke of “the ingratitude of the Irish to Mr. Gladstone who had broken down the bridges which divided them from England!” A lady whose reputation was less unblemished than might have been wished, and of whom I fought very shy in consequence, went to call on him about some business. When I saw him next he told me of her visit, and said, “When she left my study, I said to myself; ‘there goes a dashing Cyprian!’” One needed to go back a century to recall this droll old phrase. More than once he repeated, chuckling with amusement, the speech of an old beggar woman to whom he had refused alms, and who called after him, “You withered specimen of bygone philanthropy!” On another occasion when he was in the Chair at a small meeting, one of the speakers persisted in expressing over and over again his conviction that the venerable Chairman could not be expected to live long. Lord Shaftesbury turned aside to me and said sotto voce, “I declare he’s telling me I’m going to die immediately!” “There he is saying it again! Was there ever such a man?” Nobody was more awake than he to the “dodges” of interested people trying to make capital out of his religious party. A most ridiculous instance of this he described to me with great glee. At the time of the excitement (now long forgotten) about the Madiai family, Barnum actually called upon him (Lord Shaftesbury) and entreated him to allow of the Madiai being taken over to be exhibited in New York! “It would be such an affecting sight,” said Barnum, “to see real Christian Martyrs!” As an instance of his thoughtfulness, I may mention that having one day just received a ticket for the Private View of the Academy, he offered it to me and I accepted it gladly, observing that since the recent death of Boxall I feared we should not have one given to us, and that my friend would be pleased to use it. “O, I am so glad!” said Lord Shaftesbury; and from that day every year till he died he never once failed to send her, addressed by himself, his tickets for each of the two annual exhibitions. When one thinks of how men who do not do in a year as much as he did in a week, would have scoffed at the idea of taking such trouble, one may estimate the good nature which prompted this over-worked man to remember such a trifle, unfailingly. The most touching interview I ever had with him, was one of the last, in his study in Grosvenor Square, not long before his death. Our conversation had fallen on the woes and wrongs of seduced girls and ruined women; and he told me many facts which he had learned by personal investigation and visits to dreadful haunts in London. He described all he saw and heard with a compassion for the victims and yet a horror of vice and impurity, which somehow made me think of Christ and the Woman taken in adultery. After a few moments’ silence, during which we were both rather overcome, he said, “When I feel age creeping on me, and know I must soon die, I hope it is not wrong to say it, but I cannot bear to leave the world with all the misery in it.” No words can describe how this simple expression revealed to me the man, in his inmost spirit. He had long passed the stage of moral effort which does good as a duty, and had ascended to that wherein even the enjoyment of Heaven itself, (which of course, his creed taught him to expect immediately after death) had less attractions for him than the labour of mitigating the sorrows of earth. I possess 280 letters and notes from Lord Shaftesbury written to me during the ten years which elapsed from 1875, when I first saw him, till his last illness in 1885. Many of them are merely brief notes, giving me information or advice about my work as Hon. Sec. of the Victoria Street Society, of which he was President. But many are long and interesting letters. The editor of his excellent Biography probably did not know I possessed these letters, nor did I know he was preparing Lord Shaftesbury’s Life or I should have placed them at his disposal. I can only here quote a few as characteristic, or otherwise specially interesting to me. “Castle Wemyss, Wemyss Bay, N.B., “September 3rd, 1878. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “Your letter is very cheering. We were right to make the experiment. We were right to test the man and the law: Cross, and his administration of it. Both have failed us, and we are bound in duty, I think, to leap over all limitations, and go in for the total abolition of this vile and cruel form of Idolatry; for idolatry it is, and, like all idolatry, brutal, degrading, and deceptive.... “May God prosper us! These ill-used and tortured animals are as much His Creatures as we are, and to say the truth, I had, in some instances, rather be the animal tortured than the man who tortured it. I should believe myself to have higher hopes, and a happier future. “Yours truly, “Shaftesbury.” “July 10th, 1879. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “I have sent your letter to Judas of X——. I find no fault in it, but that of too much courtesy to one so lost to every consideration of feeling and truth. “Did you know him, as I know him, you would find it difficult to restrain your pen and your tongue.”... “Some good will come out of the discussion. “I have unmistakable evidence that many were deeply impressed, but adhesion to political leaders is a higher law with most Politicians than obedience to the law of truth. “What do you think now of the Doctrine of ‘Apostolic Succession’? “Would St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John have made such a speech as that of my Lord of P——? “Yours truly, “Shaftesbury.” “Castle Wemyss, Wemyss Bay, N.B., “September 16th, 1879. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “You do that Bishop too much honour. He is not worth notice. “It is frightful to see that the open champions of Vivisection are not Bradlaugh and Mrs. B. but Bishops, ‘Fathers in God,’ and ‘Pastors’ of the People! “We shall soon have Bradlaugh and his company claiming the Apostolical Succession; and if that succession be founded on truth, mercy, and love, with as good a right as Dr. G., Dr. M. or D.D. anything else. “Your letter has crushed (if such a hard substance can be crushed) his Lordship of C.... “Yours truly, “Shaftesbury.” The next letter is in acknowledgment of the following verses which I had sent to him on his Eightieth Birthday. They were repeated by the late Chamberlain of the City of London, Sir Benjamin Scott, in his oration on the presentation of the Freedom of the City to Lord Shaftesbury. I print the letter, (though all too kind in its expression about my poor verses,) on account of the deeply interesting review of his own life which it contains:— A BIRTHDAY ADDRESS To Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. April 28th, 1881. For eighty years! Many will count them over, But none save He who knoweth all may guess What those long years have held of high endeavour, Of world-wide blessing and of blessedness. For eighty years the champion of the right Of hapless child neglected and forlorn; Of maniac dungeon’d in his double night; Of woman overtasked and labour-worn; Of homeless boy in streets with peril rife; Of workman sickening in his airless den; Of Indian parching for the streams of life, Of Negro slave in bonds of cruel men; O! Friend of all the friendless ‘neath the sun, Whose hand hath wiped away a thousand tears, Whose fervent lips and clear strong brain have done God’s holy service, lo! these eighty years,— How meet it seems thy grand and vigorous age Should find beyond man’s race fresh pangs to spare And for the wrong’d and tortured brutes engage In yet fresh labours and ungrudging care! O tarry long amongst us! Live, we pray, Hasten not yet to hear thy Lord’s “Well done!” Let this world still seem better while it may Contain one soul like thine amid its throng. Whilst thou art here our inmost hearts confess, Truth spake the kingly Seer of old who said— “Found in the way of God and righteousness, A crown of glory is the hoary head.” “Lord Shaftesbury to Miss F. P. C. “24, Grosvenor Square, W., “April 30th, 1881. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “Had I not known your handwriting, I should never have guessed, either that you were the writer of the verses, or that I was the subject of them. “Had I judged them simply by their ability and force, I might have ascribed them to the true Author; but it required the envelope, and the ominous word ‘eighty,’ to justify me in applying them to myself. “They both touched and gratified me, but I will tell you the origin of my public career, which you have been so kind as to commend. It arose while I was a boy at Harrow School, about, I should think, fourteen years of age—an event occurred (the details of which I may give you some other day), which brought painfully before me the scorn and neglect manifested towards the Poor and helpless. I was deeply affected; but, for many years afterwards, I acted only on feeling and sentiment. As I advanced in life, all this grew up to a sense of duty; and I was convinced that God had called me to devote whatever advantages He might have bestowed upon me, to the cause of the weak, the helpless, both man and beast, and those who had none to help them. “I entered Parliament in 1826, and I commenced operations in 1828, with an effort to ameliorate the conditions of lunatics, and then I passed on in a succession of attempts to grapple with other evils, and such has been my trade for more than half a century. “Do not think for a moment that I claim any merit. If there be any doctrine that I dislike and fear more than another, it is the ‘Doctrine of Works.’ Whatever I have done has been given to me; what I have done I was enabled to do; and all happy results (if any there be) must be credited, not to the servant, but to the great Master, who led and sustained him. “My course, however, has raised up for me many enemies, and very few friends, but among those friends I hope that you may be numbered. “Yours truly, “Shaftesbury.” I sent him another little souvenir two years later:— TO LORD SHAFTESBURY ON HIS 82ND BIRTHDAY. With a China Tablet. The Lord of Rome, historians say, Lamented he had “lost a day,” When no good deed was done. Scarce one such day, methinks, appears In the long record of the years Of England’s worthier son. If on this tablet’s surface light His hourly toils should Shaftesbury write All may be soon effaced: But in our grateful memories graven And in the registers of Heaven They will not be erased. London, April 28th, 1883. The next letter refers to my Lectures on the Duties of Women which I had just delivered. “24, Grosvenor Square, W., “May 14th, 1880. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “... I admire your Lectures. But do you not try to make, ‘the sex’ a little too pugnacious? And why do you give ‘truth’ to the men, and deny it to the women? “If you mean by ‘truth’ abstinence from fibs, I think that the females are as good as the males. But if you mean steadiness of friendship, adherence to principles, conscientiously not superficially entertained, and sincerity in a good cause, why, the women are far superior. “Yours truly, “Shaftesbury.” “24, Grosvenor Square, W., “May 21st, 1880. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “... Your lecture on Vivisection was admirable—we must be ‘mealy mouthed’ no longer. “Shall you and I have a conversation on your lectures and the ‘Duties of Women’? We shall not, I believe, have much difference of opinion; perhaps none. I approve them heartily, but there are one or two expressions which, though intelligible to myself, would be greatly misconstrued by a certain portion of Englishmen. “I could give you instances by the hundred of the wonderful success that, by a merciful Providence, has followed with our Ragged children, male and female.[[27]] In fact, though after long intervals we have lost sight of a good many, we have very few cases, indeed, of the failure of our hopes and efforts. “In thirty years we took off the streets of London, and sent to service, or provided with means of honest livelihood more than two hundred and twenty thousand ‘waifs and strays.’ “Yours truly, “Shaftesbury.” “July 23rd, 1880. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “I have had a very friendly letter from Gladstone; but on reference to him for permission to publish it, he seems unwilling to assent. “Our testimony, thank God, is cumulative for good. We may hope, and we must pray, for better things. “I send you Gladstone’s letter. Pray return it to me, and take care that it does not appear in print.[[28]] “I am glad that you liked the ‘Dinner.’ It was, I think, a success in showing civility to foreign friends. “Yours truly, “Shaftesbury.” Lord Shaftesbury made the following remarks about the Future State of Animals, in a very sympathizing reply to a letter I had written to him in which I mentioned to him that my dog had died:— “September 29th, 1883. “I have ever believed in a happy future for animals; I cannot say or conjecture how or where; but sure I am that the love, so manifested, by dogs especially, is an emanation from the Divine essence, and, as such, it can, or rather it will never be extinguished.”[[29]] “24, Grosvenor Square, W., “May 14th, 1885. “My dear Miss Cobbe, “You must not suppose that because I did not answer your letter, at the moment, I am indifferent to you or your correspondence. “Far from it, but when I have little to do, being almost confined to the house, I have much to write, and to get through my work, I must frequently be relieved by a recumbent posture. “Nevertheless, by God’s mercy, I am certainly better; and I think that were we blessed with some warm, genial, weather, I should recover more rapidly. “Bryan[[30]] is a good man, he is able, diligent, zealous and has an excellent judgment. I have not been able to attend his Committee, but his reports to me show attention and good sense. “I have left, as perhaps you have seen, the Lunacy Commission. It was at the close of 56 years of service that I did so. I dare say that you have had time to read my letter of resignation in the Times of the 8th. “I am very glad that Miss Lloyd is determined to print those lines. They are very beautiful; and you must be sure to send a copy to Miss Marsh. She admires them as much as I do. “The thought of Calvary[[31]] is the strength that has governed all the sentiments and actions of my manhood and later life; and you can well believe that I greatly rejoice to find that one, whom I prize so highly, has kindred sympathies.... “May God prosper you. “Yours truly, “Shaftesbury.” The most remarkable woman I have known, not excepting Mrs. Somerville (described in my chapter on Italy), Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mrs. Beecher Stowe, was, beyond any doubt or question, my dear friend, Fanny Kemble. I have told of the droll circumstances of our first meeting at Newbridge in the early Fifties. From that time till her death in 1892, her brilliant, iridescent genius, her wit, her spirit, her tenderness, the immense “go” and momentum of her whole nature, were sources of endless pleasure to me. When I was lame, I used to feel that for days after talking with her I could almost dispense with my crutches, so much did she, literally, lift me up! Mrs. Kemble paid us several visits here in Wales, and was perhaps even more delightful in our quiet country quarters than in London. She would sit out for many hours at a time in our beautiful old garden, which she said was to her “an idyll;” and talk of all things in heaven and earth; touching in turn every note in the gamut of emotion from sorrowful to joyous. One summer she came to us early, and thus sat daily under a great cherry tree “in the midst of the garden,” which was at the time a mass of odorous and snowy blossoms. Alas! the blossoms have returned and are blooming as I write;—but the friend sleeps under the sod in Kensal Green. Mr. Henry James’ obituary article and Mr. Bentley’s generous-hearted letter concerning her in the Times—in rebuke of the mean and grudging notice of her which that paper had published,—seem to me to have been by far the most truthful sketches which appeared of the “grand old lioness;” as Thackeray called her. Everybody could admire, and most people a little feared her; but it needed to come very close to her and brush past her formidable thorns of irony and sarcasm, to know and love her, as she most truly deserved to be loved. There is always something startling and perhaps the reverse of attractive to those of us who have been brought up in the usual English way to repress our emotions, in women who have been trained reversely by histrionic life, to give all possible outwardness and vividness of expression to those same emotions. It is only when we get below both the extreme demonstrativeness on one hand, and the conventional reserve and self-restraint on the other, and meet on common ground of deep sympathies, that real friendship is established; a friendship which in my case was at once an honour and a delight. Mrs. Kemble in her generous affection made a present to me of the MSS. of her Memoirs, which subsequently I induced her to take back, and publish herself, as her “Old Woman’s Gossip,” her Records of a Girlhood and Records of Later Life. Beside these, which, as I have said, I returned to her one after another, she gave me, and I still possess, an immense packet of her own old letters to her beloved H. S. (Harriet St. Leger) and others; and the materials of five large and thick volumes of autograph letters addressed to her, extending over more than 50 years. They include whole correspondences with W. Donne, Edward Fitzgerald, Henry Greville, Mrs. Jameson, John Mitchell Kemble, George Combe, and several others; and besides these there are either one or half-a-dozen letters from almost every man and woman of eminence in England in her time. Mr. Bentley has very liberally purchased from me for publication about 100 letters from Edward Fitzgerald to Mrs. Kemble. The rest of the Mrs. Kemble’s correspondence I have, as I have mentioned, bound together in five volumes, and I do not intend to publish them. Had any of Mrs. Kemble’s “Records” remained inedited at the time of her death I should have undertaken, (as she no doubt intended me to do) the task of writing her biography. The work was, however, so fully done by herself in her long series of volumes that there was neither need nor room for more. I am happy to add, in conclusion, that in the arrangements I have made regarding my dear old friend’s literary remains, I have the consent and approval of her daughters. I knew Mrs. Gaskell a little, but not enough to harmonize in my mind the woman I saw in the flesh with the books I liked so well as Mary Barton and Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras. Of Mrs. Stowe’s delightful conversation on the terrace of our villa on Bellosguardo, I have written my recollections, and recorded the glimpses I had of Mrs. Browning. I have also described Harriet Hosmer and Rosa Bonheur; our sculptor and painter friends, from the latter of whom I have just (1898) received the kindest letters and her impressive photograph; and Mary Carpenter, my leader and fellow-worker at Bristol. I must not speak here of the affection and admiration I entertain for my dear, living friend Anna Swanwick, the translator of Æschylus and Faust; and for Louisa Lee Schuyler, one of the leaders in the organization of relief in the great Civil War of America and who founded and carried to its present marvellous extent of power and usefulness the State Charities Aid Association of New York. Again, I have known in England Mdme. Bodichon (who furnished Girton with its first thousand pounds); Mrs. Josephine Butler; Mrs. Webster the classic poetess; and Mrs. Emily Pfeiffer, another poetess and very beautiful woman at whose house I once witnessed an interesting scene,—a large party of ladies and gentlemen dressed in the attire of Athenians of the Periclean age. Miss Swanwick and I, who were alone permitted to attend in English costume, were immensely impressed by the ennobling effect of the classic dress, not only on young and graceful people, but on those who were quite the reverse. I never saw Harriet Martineau; but was so desirous of doing it that I intended to make a journey to Ambleside for the purpose, and with that view begged our mutual friend, the late Mrs. Hensleigh Wedgwood, to ask leave to introduce me to her. It was an unfortunate moment, and I only received the following kind message:— “I need not say how happy I should have been to become acquainted with Miss Cobbe; but the time is past and I am only fit for old friends who can excuse my shortcomings. I have lost ground so much of late that the case is clear. I must give up all hopes of so great a pleasure. Will you say this to her and ask her to receive my kind and thankful regards, I venture to send on the grounds of our common friendships?” Of my living, beloved and honoured friends, Mrs. William Grey, Lady Mount-Temple, Miss Shirreff, Mrs. Fawcett, Miss Caroline Stephen, Miss Julia Wedgwood, Lady Battersea, and Miss Florence Davenport Hill, I must not here speak. I have had the pleasure also of meeting that very fine woman-worker Miss Octavia Hill. George Eliot I did not know, nor, as I have just said, did I ever meet Harriet Martineau. But with those two great exceptions I think I may boast of having come into contact with nearly all the more gifted Englishwomen of the Victorian era; and thus when I speak, as I shall do in the next chapter, of my efforts to put the claims of my sex fairly before the world, I may boast of writing with practical personal knowledge of what women are and can be, both as to character and ability. The decade which began in 1880 brought me many sorrows. The first was the death of my second brother, Thomas Cobbe, of Easton Lyss. I loved him much for his own sweet and affectionate nature; and much, too, for the love of our mother which he shared especially with me. I was also warmly attached to his beautiful and good Scotch wife, who survived him only a few years; and to his dear children, who were my pets in infancy and have been almost like my own daughters ever since. My brother ought to have been a very successful and brilliant barrister, but his life was broken by the faults of others, and when in advanced years he wrote, with immense patience and research, a really valuable History of the Norman Kings (thought to be so by such competent judges as Mr. William Longman, and the Historical Society of Normandy, which asked leave to translate it), the book was practically killed by a cruel and most unfair review which attributed to him mistakes which he had not made, and refused to publish his refutation of the charge. If this review were written (as we could not but surmise) by an eminent historian, now dead, whose own book my brother had, very unwisely, ignored, I can only say it was a malicious and spiteful deed. My brother’s ambition was not strong enough to carry him over such a disappointment, and he never attempted to write again for the press, but spent his later years in the solitary study of his favourite old chronicles and his Shakespeare. A little later my eldest brother also died, leaving no children. I must be thankful at my age that the youngest, the Rector of Maulden, though five years older than I, still survives in health and vigour, rejoicing in his happy home and family of affectionate daughters. I trust yet to welcome him into the brotherhood of the pen when his great monograph on Luton Church, Historical and Descriptive, sees the light this year. I lost also in this same decade, my earliest friend Harriet St. Leger; and a younger, very dear one, Emily Shaen. Mrs. Shaen and her admirable husband had been much drawn to me by religious sympathies; and I regarded her with more heartfelt respect, I might say reverence, than I can well express. She endured twenty years of seclusion and suffering, with the spirit at once of a saint and of a philosopher. Had her health enabled her to take her natural place in the world, I have always felt assured she would have been recognised as one of the ablest as well as one of the best women of the day, and more than the equal of her two gifted sisters; Catharine and Susanna Winkworth. The friendship between us was of the closest kind. I often said that I went to church to her sick-room. In her last days, when utterly crushed by incessant suffering and by the death of her beloved husband and her favourite son, she bore in whispers, to me, (she could scarcely speak for mortal weakness,) this testimony to our common faith: “I sent for you,—to tell you,—I am more sure than ever that God is Good.” All these deaths and the heart-wearing Anti-vivisection work combined with my own increasing years to make my life in London less and less a source of enjoyment and more of strain than I could bear. In 1884 Miss Lloyd, with my entire concurrence, let our dear little house in Hereford Square to our friend, Mrs. Kemble, and we left London altogether and came to live in Wales. It was not till I was actively engaged in the work of Mary Carpenter at Bristol, and had begun to desire earnestly various changes of law relating to young criminals and paupers, that I became an advocate of “Women’s Rights.” It was good old Rev. Samuel J. May, of Syracuse, New York, who, when paying us a visit, pressed on my attention the question: “Why should you not have a vote? Why should not women be enabled to influence the making of the laws in which they have as great an interest as men?” My experience probably explains largely the indifference of thousands of women, not deficient in intelligence, in England and America to the possession of political rights. They have much anxiety to fulfil their home duties, and the notion of undertaking others, requiring (as they fully understand) conscientious enquiry and reflection, rather alarms than attracts them. But the time comes to every woman worth her salt to take ardent interest in some question which touches legislation. Then she begins to ask herself, as Mr. May asked me; “Why should the fact of being a woman, close to me the use of the plain, direct means, of helping to achieve some large public good or stopping some evil?” The timid, the indolent, the conventional will here retreat, and try to believe that it concerns men only to right the wrongs of the world in some more effectual way than by single-handed personal efforts in special cases. Others again,—and of their number was I—become deeply impressed with the need of woman’s voice in public affairs, and thenceforth attach themselves to the “Woman’s Cause” more or less earnestly. For my own part I confess I have been chiefly moved by reflection on the sufferings and wrongs borne by women, in great measure owing to the deconsideration they endure consequent on their political and civil disabilities. Whilst I and other happily circumstanced women, have had no immediate wrongs of our own to gall us, we should still have been very poor creatures had we not felt bitterly those of our less fortunate sisters, the robbed and trampled wives, the mothers whose children were torn from them at the bidding of a dead or living father, the daughters kept in ignorance and poverty while their brothers were educated in costly schools and fitted for honourable professions. Such wrongs as these have inspired me with the persistent resolution to do everything in my power to protect the property, the persons and the parental rights of women. I do not think that this resolve has any necessary connection with theories concerning the equality of the sexes; and I am sure that a great deal of our force has been wasted on fruitless discussions such as: “Why has there never been a female Shakespeare?” A Celt claiming equal representation with a Saxon, or any representation at all, might just as fairly be challenged to explain why there has never been a Celtic Shakespeare, or a Celtic Tennyson? My own opinion is, that women en masse are by no means the intellectual equals of men en masse;—and whether this inequality arise from irremediable causes or from alterable circumstances of education and heredity, is not worth debating. If the nation had established an intellectual test for political equality, and admission to the franchise were confined to persons passing a given Standard; well and good. Then, no doubt, there would be (as things now stand) fifty per cent. of men who would win votes, and perhaps only thirty per cent. of women. So much may be freely admitted. But then that thirty per cent. of females would obtain political rights; and those who failed, would be debarred by a natural and real, not an arbitrary inferiority. Such a state of things would not present such ludicrous injustice as that which obtains,—for example,—in a parish not a hundred miles from my present abode. There is in the village in question a man universally known therein as “The Idiot;” a poor slouching, squinting fellow, who yet rents a house and can do rough field work, though he can scarcely speak intelligibly. He has a vote, of course. The owner of his house and of half the parish, who holds also the advowson of the living, is a lady who has travelled widely, understands three or four languages, and studies the political news of Europe daily in the columns of the Times. That lady, equally of course, has no vote, no power whatever to keep the representation of her county out of the hands of the demagogues naturally admired by the Idiot and his compeers. Under the regulations which create inequalities of this kind is it not rather absurd to insist perpetually, (as is the practise of our opponents,) on the intellectual inferiority of women,—as if it were really in question? I hold, however, that whatever be our real mental rank,—to be tested thoroughly only in future generations, under changed conditions of training and heredity,—we women are the equivalents, though not the equals, of men. And to refuse a share in the law-making of a nation to the most law-abiding half of it; to exclude on all largest questions the votes of the most conscientious, temperate, religious and (above all) most merciful and tender-hearted moiety, is a mistake which cannot fail, and has not failed, to entail great evil and loss. I wrote, as I have mentioned in Chapter XV., a great many articles, (chiefly in Fraser and Macmillan,) on women’s concerns about the years 1861–2–3: “What shall we do with our Old Maids?”; “Female Charity, Lay and Monastic;” “Women in Italy in 1862;” “The Education of Women;” “Social Science Congress and Women’s Part in them;” and, later, “The Fitness of Women for the Ministry of Religion.” These made me known to many women who were fighting in the woman’s cause; Miss Bessie Parkes (now Madame Belloc), Madame Bodichon, Mrs. Grey, Miss Shirreff, Mrs. Peter Taylor, Miss Becker, and others; and when Committees were formed for promoting Woman Suffrage, I was invited to join them. I did so; and frequently attended the meetings, though not regularly. We had several Members of Parliament and other gentlemen (notably Mr. Frederick Hill, brother of my old friend Recorder Hill and of Sir Rowland), who generally helped our deliberations; and many able women, among others Mrs. Augusta Webster, the poetess; and Lady Anna Gore Langton, an exceedingly sensible woman, who also held Drawing-Room Suffrage Meetings (at which I spoke) in her house. We had for secretary Miss Lydia Becker; a woman of singular political ability, for whom I had a sincere respect. Her premature death has been an incalculable loss to the women of England. She gave me the impression of one of those ill-fated people whose outward persons do not represent their inward selves. I am sure she had a large element of softness and sensitiveness in her nature, unsuspected by most of those with whom she laboured. She was a most courageous and straightforward woman, with a single eye to the great political work which she had undertaken, and which I think no one has understood so well as she. After Miss Becker’s lamented death the great schism between Unionists and Home Rulers extended far enough to split even our Committee, (which was avowedly of no party,) into two bodies. I naturally followed my fellow-Unionist, Mrs. Fawcett when she re-organized the moiety of the Society and established an office for it in College Street, Westminster. Believing her to be quite the ablest woman-economist and politician in England, I entertain the hope that she may at last carry a Woman Suffrage Bill and live to see qualified single women recording their votes at Parliamentary elections. When that time arrives every one will scoff at the objections which have so long closed the “right of way,” to us of the “weaker sex.” Beside the Committee of the Society for Woman Suffrage, I also joined for a time the Committee which,—long afterwards,—effected the splendid achievement of procuring the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act; the greatest step gained up to the present time for women in England. I can claim no part of that real honour, which is due in greatest measure to Mrs. Jacob Bright. The question of granting University Degrees to women, was opened as far back as 1862. In that year I read, in the Guildhall in London at the Social Science Congress, a paper, pleading for the privilege. Dean Milman, who occupied the Chair, was very kind in praising my crude address, and enjoyed the little jokes wherewith it was sprinkled; but next morning every daily paper in London laughed at my demand, and for a week or two I was the butt of universal ridicule. Nevertheless, just 17 years afterwards, I was invited to join a Deputation headed by Lady Stanley of Alderley, to thank Lord Granville for having (as President of London University) conceded those degrees to women, precisely as I had demanded! I took occasion at the close of the pleasant interview, to present him with one of the very few remaining copies of my original and much ridiculed appeal. From this time I wrote and spoke not unfrequently on behalf of women’s political and civil claims. One article of mine in Fraser, 1868, was reprinted more than once. It was headed “Criminals, Idiots, Women and Minors;” and enquired “Whether the classification should be counted sound?” I hope that the discussion it involved on the laws relating to the property of married women was of some service in helping on the great measure of justice afterwards granted. Another paper of mine, circulated by the London National Society for Women’s Suffrage, for whom I wrote it, was entitled “Our Policy.” It was, in effect, an address to women concerning the best way to secure the suffrage. I began this pamphlet by the following remarks:— “There is an instructive story, told by Herodotus, of an African nation which went to war with the South Wind. The wind had greatly annoyed these Psyllians by drying up their cisterns, so they organised a campaign and set off to attack the enemy at head-quarters—somewhere, I presume, about the Sahara. The army was admirably equipped with all the military engines of those days; swords and spears, darts and javelins, battering rams and catapults. It happened that the South Wind did not, however, suffer much from these weapons, but got up one fine morning and blew!—The sands of the desert have lain for a great many ages over those unfortunate Psyllians; and, as Herodotus placidly concludes the story, ‘The Nasamones possess the territory of those who thus perished.’ “It seems to me that we, women, who have been fighting for the Suffrage with logical arguments—syllogisms, analogies, demonstrations, and reductions-to-the-absurd of our antagonists’ position, in short, all the weapons of ratiocinative warfare—have been behaving very much like those poor Psyllians, who imagined that darts, and swords, and catapults would avail against the Simoom. The obvious fact is, that it is Sentiment we have to contend against, not Reason; Feeling and Prepossession, not intellectual Conviction. Had Logic been the only obstacle in our way, we should long ago have been polling our votes for Parliamentary as well as for Municipal and School Board elections. To those who hold that Property is the thing intended to be represented by the Constitution of England, we have shown that we possess such property. To those who say that Tax-paying and Representation should go together, we have pointed to the tax-gatherers’ papers, which, alas! lie on our hall-tables wholly irrespective of the touching fact that we belong to the ‘protected sex.’ Where Intelligence, Education, and freedom from crime are considered enough to confer rights of citizenship, we have remarked that we are quite ready to challenge rivalry in such particulars with those Illiterates for whose exercise of political functions our Senate has taken such exemplary care. Finally, to the ever-recurring charge that we cannot fight, and therefore ought not to vote, we have replied that the logic of the exclusion will be manifest when all the men too weak, too short, or too old for the military standard be likewise disfranchised, and when the actual soldiers of our army are accorded the suffrage. “But it is Sentiment, not Logic, against which we have to struggle; and we shall best do so, I think, by endeavouring to understand and make full allowance for it; and then by steady working, shoulder to shoulder so as to conquer, or rather win it over to our side.” In 1876, May 13th, I made a rather long and elaborate speech on the subject of women’s suffrage in a meeting in St. George’s Hall, at which Mr. Russell Gurney, the Recorder of London, took the chair. John Bright had spoken against our Bill in the House, and though I had not intended to speak at our meeting, I was spurred by indignation to reply to him. In this address I spoke chiefly of the wrongs of mothers whose children are taken from them at the will of a living or dead father. I ended by saying:— “I advocate Woman Suffrage as the natural and needful constitutional means of protection for the rights of the weaker half of the nation. I do this as a woman pleading for women. But I do it also, and none the less confidently, as a citizen, and for the sake of the whole community, because it is my conviction that such a measure is no less expedient for men than just for women; and that it will redound in coming years ever more and more to the happiness, the virtue and the honour of our country.” Several years after this, I wrote a letter which was printed in the (American) Woman’s Tribune, May 1st, 1884. It expresses so exactly what I feel still on the subject that I shall redeem it if possible from oblivion. The following are the passages for which I should like to ask the reader’s attention: “If I may presume to offer an old woman’s counsel to the younger workers in our cause, it would be that they should adopt the point of view—that it is before all things our Duty to obtain the franchise. If we undertake the work in this spirit, and with the object of using the power it confers, whenever we gain it, for the promotion of justice and mercy and the kingdom of God upon earth, we shall carry on all our agitation in a corresponding manner, firmly and bravely, and also calmly and with generous good temper. And when our opponents come to understand that this is the motive underlying our efforts, they, on their part, will cease to feel bitterly and scornfully toward us, even when they think we are altogether mistaken. “That people MAY conscientiously consider that we are mistaken in asking for woman suffrage, is another point which it surely behoves us to carry in mind. “We naturally think almost exclusively of many advantages which would follow to our sex and to both sexes from the entrance of woman into political life. But that there are some ‘lions in the way,’ and rather formidable lions, too, ought not to be forgotten. “For myself, I would far rather that women should remain without political rights to the end of time than that they should lose those qualities which we comprise in the word ‘womanliness;’ and I think nearly every one of the leaders of our party in America and in England agrees with me in this feeling. “The idea that the possession of political rights will destroy ‘womanliness,’ absurd as it may seem to us, is very deeply rooted in the minds of men; and when they oppose our demands, it is only just to give them credit for doing so on grounds which we should recognize as valid, if their premises were true. It is not so much that our opponents (at least the better part of them) despise women, as that they really prize what women now are in the home and in society so highly that they cannot bear to risk losing it by any serious change in their condition. These fears are futile and faithless, but there is nothing in them to affront us. To remove them, we must not use violent words, for every such violent word confirms their fears; but, on the contrary, show the world that while the revolutions wrought by men have been full of bitterness and rancour, and stormy passions, if not of bloodshed, we women will at least strive to accomplish our great emancipation calmly and by persuasion and reason.” I was honoured about this time by several friendly advances from American ladies and gentlemen interested like myself in woman’s advancement. The astronomer, Prof. Maria Mitchell, wrote me a charming letter, which I exceedingly regret should have been lost, as I felt particular interest in her great achievements. I had the pleasure of receiving Mrs. Julia Ward Howe in Hereford Square, and also Mrs. Livermore, whose speech at one of our Suffrage Meetings realised my highest ideal of a woman’s public address. Her noble face and figure like that of a Roman Matron, her sweet manners and playful humour without a scintilla of bitterness in it,—as if she were a mother remonstrating with a foolish, school-boy son,—were all delightful to me. Col. J. W. Higginson, who has been so good a friend and adviser to women, also came to see me, and gave me some bright hours of conversation on his wonderful experiences in the war, during which he commanded a coloured regiment, which fought valiantly under his leadership. Finally I had the privilege of being elected a member of the famous Sorosis Club of New York, and of receiving the following very pleasant letter conveying the gift of a pretty gold and enamel brooch, the badge of the Sisterhood. “Dear Madam, “The ladies of Sorosis—The Woman’s Club of New York—beg your acceptance of the accompanying Pin, the insignia of their organization, which they send by the hand of their foreign correspondent, Mrs. Laura Curtis Ballard. “Trifling as is this testimonial in itself, they feel that if you knew the genuine appreciation of you and your work that goes with it—the gratitude with which each one regards you as a faithful worker for women—you would not consider it unworthy your acceptance. With best wishes for your continued health, which in your case means continued usefulness, “I am, dear Madam, “With great respect and esteem, “Your obedient Servant, “Celia Burleigh, “Cor. Sec. Sorosis. “37, Huntingdon Street, Brooklyn, New York, “June 21st, 1869.” The part of my work for women, however, to which I look back with most satisfaction was that in which I laboured to obtain protection for unhappy wives, beaten, mangled, mutilated or trampled on by brutal husbands. One day in 1878 I was by chance reading a newspaper in which a whole series of frightful cases of this kind were recorded, here and there, among the ordinary news of the time. I got up out of my armchair, half dazed, and said to myself: “I will never rest till I have tried what I can do to stop this.” I thought anxiously what was the sort of remedy I ought to endeavour to put forward. A Parliamentary Blue Book had been printed in 1875 entitled: “Reports on the State of the law relating to Brutal Assaults,” and the following is a summary of the results. There was a large consensus of opinion that the law as it now stands is insufficient for its purpose. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Mr. Justice Lush, Mr. Justice Mellor, Chief Baron Kelly, Barons Bramwell, Pigott and Pollock, all expressed the same judgment (pp. 7–19). The following gave their opinion in favour of flogging offenders in cases of brutal assaults. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Mr. Justices Blackburn, Mellor, Lush, Quain, Archibald, Brett, Grove, Chief Baron Kelly, Barons Bramwell, Pigott, Pollock, Charles, and Amphlett. Only Lord Coleridge and Lord Denman hesitated, and Mr. Justice Keating opposed flogging. Of Chairmen of Quarter Sessions 64 (out of 68, whose answers were sent to the Home Office,) and the Recorders of 41 towns, were in favour of flogging. After all this testimony of the opinions of experts (collected of course at the public expense), three years elapsed during which absolutely nothing was done to make any practical use of it! During the interval, scores of Bills, interesting to the represented sex, passed through Parliament; but this question on which the lives of women literally hung, was never mooted! Something like 5,000 women, judging by the published judicial statistics, were in those years “brutally assaulted;” i.e., not merely struck, but maimed, blinded, burned, trampled on by strong men in heavy shoes, and, in many cases, murdered outright; and thousands of children were brought up to witness scenes which (as Colonel Leigh said) “infernalise a whole generation.” Where lay the fault? Scarcely with the Government, or even with Parliament, but with the simple fact that, under our present constitution, Women, having no votes, can only exceptionally and through favour, bring pressure to bear to force attention even to the most crying of injustices under which they suffer. The Home Office must attend first to the claims of those who can bring pressure to bear on it; and Members of Parliament must bring in the measures pressed by their constituents; and thus the unrepresented must go to the wall. The cases of cruelty of which I obtained statistics, furnished to me mainly by the kindness of Miss A. Shore, almost surpassed belief. It appeared that about 1,500 cases of aggravated (over and above ordinary) assaults on wives took place every year in England; on an average about four a day. Many of them were of truly incredible savagery; and the victims were, in the vast majority of cases, not drunken viragos (who usually escape violence or give as good as they receive), but poor, pale, shrinking creatures, who strove to earn bread for their children and to keep together their miserable homes; and whose very tears and pallor were reproaches which provoked the heteropathy and cruelty of their tyrants. After much reflection I came to the conclusion that in spite of all the authority in favour of flogging the delinquents, it was not expedient on the women’s behalf that they should be so punished, since after they had undergone such chastisement, however well merited, the ruffians would inevitably return more brutalised and infuriated than ever; and again have their wives at their mercy. The only thing really effective, I considered, was to give the wife the power of separating herself and her children from her tyrant. Of course in the upper ranks, where people could afford to pay for a suit in the Divorce Court, the law had for some years opened to the assaulted wife this door of escape. But among the working classes, where the assaults were ten-fold as numerous and twenty times more cruel, no legal means whatever existed of escaping from the husband returning after punishment to beat and torture his wife again. I thought the thing to be desired was the extension of the privilege of rich women to their poorer sisters, to be effected by an Act of Parliament which should give a wife whose husband had been convicted of an aggravated assault on her, the power to obtain a Separation Order under Summary Jurisdiction. Mr. Alfred Hill, J.P., of Birmingham, son of my old friend Recorder Hill, most kindly interested himself in my project, and drafted a Bill to be presented to Parliament embodying my wishes. Meanwhile; I set about writing an article setting forth the extent of the evil, the failure of the measures hitherto taken in various Acts of Parliament, and, finally, the remedy I proposed. This article my friend Mr. Percy Bunting was good enough to publish in the Contemporary Review in the spring of 1878. I also wrote an article in Truth on Wife Torture, afterwards reprinted. Meanwhile, I had obtained the most cordial assistance from Mr. Frederick Pennington and Mr. Hopwood, both of whom were then in Parliament, and it was agreed that I should beg Mr. Russell Gurney to take charge of the Bill which these gentlemen would support. I went accordingly, armed with the draft Bill, to the Recorder’s house in Kensington Palace Gardens, and, as I anxiously desired to find him at home, I ventured to call as early as 10.30. Mr. Gurney read the draft Bill carefully, and entirely approved it. “Then,” I said, “you will take charge of it, I earnestly hope?” “No,” said Mr. Gurney, “I cannot do that; I am too old and over-worked to undertake all the watching and labour which may be necessary; but I will put my name on the back of it, with pleasure.” I knew, of course, that his name would give the measure great importance and also help me to find some other M.P. to take charge of it, so I could not but thank him gratefully. At that moment of our interview, his charming wife entered the room leading a little boy; I believe his nephew. Naturally I apologized to Mrs. Gurney for my presence at that unholy hour of the morning; and said, “I came to Mr. Gurney in my anxiety, as the Friend of Women.” Mr. Gurney, hearing me, put his hands on the little lad’s shoulder and said to him, “Do you hear that, my boy? I hope that when you are an old man, as I am, some lady like Miss Cobbe may call you the Friend of Women!” At last, the Bill embodying precisely the purport of that drawn up for me by Mr. Hill, and subsequently published in the Contemporary Review, was read a first time, the names of Mr. Herschell (now Lord Herschell) and Sir Henry Holland (afterwards Lord Knutsford) being on the back of it. Every arrangement was made for the second Reading; and for avoiding the opposition which we expected to meet from a party which seems always to think that by calling certain unions “Holy” a Church can sanctify that which has become a bond of savage cruelty on one side, and soul-degrading slavery on the other. Just at this crisis, Lord Penzance, who was bringing a Bill into the House of Lords to remedy some defects concerning the costs of the intervention of the Queen’s Proctor in Matrimonial causes, introduced into it a clause dealing with the case of the assaulted wives, and giving them precisely the benefit contemplated in our Bill and in my article; namely, that of Separation Orders to be granted by the same magistrates who have convicted the husband of aggravated assaults upon them. That Lord Penzance had seen our Bill, then before the Lower House, (it was ordered to be printed February 14th) and had had his attention called to the subject, either by it, or by my article in the Contemporary Review, I have taken as probable, but have no exact knowledge. I went at once to call on him and thank him from my heart for undertaking to do this great service of mercy to women; and also to pray him to consider certain points about the custody of the children of such assaulted wives. Lord Penzance received me with the utmost kindness and likewise gave favourable consideration to a letter or two which I ventured to address to him. It is needless to say that his advocacy of the measure carried it through the House of Lords without opposition. I believe that in speaking for it he said that if any noble Lord needed proof of the grievous want of such protection for wives they would find it in my article, which he held in his hand. There was still, we feared, an ordeal to go through in the House of Commons; but the fates and hours were propitious, and the Bill, coming in late one night as already passed by the House of Lords and with Lord Penzance’s great name on it,—escaped opposition and was accepted without debate. By the 27th May, 1878, it had become the law of the land, and has since taken its place as Chapter 19 of the 41st Vict. An Act to amend the Matrimonial Causes Acts. The following are the clauses which concern the assaulted Wives:— 4. If a husband shall be convicted summarily or otherwise of an aggravated assault within the meaning of the statute twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth Victoria, chapter one hundred, section forty-three, upon his wife, the Court or magistrate before whom he shall be so convicted may, if satisfied that the future safety of the wife is in peril, order that the wife shall be no longer bound to cohabit with her husband; and such order shall have the force and effect in all respects of a decree of judicial separation on the ground of cruelty; and such order may further provide, 1. That the husband shall pay to his wife such weekly sum as the Court or magistrate may consider to be in accordance with his means, and with any means which the wife may have for her support, and the payment of any sum of money so ordered shall be enforceable and enforced against the husband in the same manner as the payment of money is enforced under an order of affiliation; and the Court or magistrate by whom any such order for payment of money shall be made shall have power from time to time to vary the same on the application of either the husband or the wife, upon proof that the means of the husband or wife have been altered in amount since the original order or any subsequent order varying it shall have been made. 2. That the legal custody of any children of the marriage under the age of ten years shall, in the discretion of the Court or magistrate, be given to the wife. At first the magistrates were very chary of granting the Separation Orders. One London Police Magistrate had said that the House of Commons would never put such power in the hands of one of the body, and he was, I suppose, proportionately startled when just six weeks later, it actually lay in his own. By degrees, however, the practice of granting the Orders on proper occasions became common, and appears now to be almost a matter of course. I hope that at least a hundred poor souls each year thus obtain release from their tormentors, and probably the deterrent effect of witnessing such manumission of ill-treated slaves may have still more largely served to protect women from the violence of brutal husbands. Six years after the Act had passed in 1884, I received a letter from a very energetic and prominent woman-worker with whom I had a slight acquaintance, in which the following passages occur. I quote them here (though with some hesitation on the score of vanity) for they have comforted me much and deeply, and will do so to my life’s end. “On Wednesday last I was two hours with a widow,—of O——, near W——; one of those persons who make a country so good, brave, loving and hardworking! For 33 long years she lived with a fiend of a husband, and suffered furious blows, kicks, and attacks with ropes, hot water, and crockery; was hurled down cellar-steps, &c., starved and insulted. All the time, up early and at work managing a large shop and superintending 35 girls.... “I wish you could have been there to hear her tell me that ‘the law was altered now,’ and how her niece had got a separation for brutal treatment; and (best of all) ‘her two bairns’ (children). As for the 8s. a week ordered,—the wife never ‘bothers after that.’ ‘The Lord has stopped that villain’s ways, and she wants no more.’ I could not help crying, as I looked at the exquisitely clean person and home,—the determined face, and thought of the diabolical horrors this good, clever woman had gone through. I told her how you had got the law altered—and she kept saying ‘She’s a lady—she’s a lady. Bring her to O——, Missis! and we’ll percession her down t’ street!’... “You have love and gratitude from our hearts, I assure you; we live wider lives and better for your presence. I have ventured to write freely on a subject some would find wearisome, but your heart is big and will sympathise; and I am always longing for you to know the active result of your achieved work. This! that poor battered, bruised women are relieved—are safer—and bless you, and so do I, from a full heart. “I am, dear Miss Cobbe, “Yours faithfully, “A. S.” If I could hear before I die that I had been able to do as much for tortured brutes, I should say “Nunc Dimittis,” and wish no more. Some time after this (I have kept no copy or record of date) I delivered a Lecture, which was a good deal noticed at the time, on the Little Health of Ladies. It was an exposure of the evils resulting to families from the state of semi-invalidism in which so many women live, usually gently lapped therein by interested advisers. I exhorted women to do, as a duty to God and man, everything possible to avoid falling into this wretched condition, with the self-indulgence and neglect of home and social duties leading to it or consequent on it. I did not then know as much as I subsequently learned of the inner history of a great deal of this misery, or I might have added to my warning some remarkable denunciations by honourable doctors of the practices of their colleagues.[[32]] A singular incident followed the publication of this address in one of the Magazines. There was a lady, whose husband was a wealthy manufacturer in the North of England, who came to London once or twice a year, and for several years called on me; having much sympathy with my various interests. She appeared to be a confirmed invalid, crawling with great difficulty out of her carriage into our dining-room, and lying on a sofa during her visits. One day I was told she had come, and I was hastening to receive her downstairs, when a tall, elegant woman, whom I scarcely recognized, walked firmly and lightly, into my drawing-room, and greeted me cordially with laughter in her eyes at my astonishment. “So glad to see you so well!” I exclaimed, “but what has happened to you?” “It is you who have effected the cure!” she answered. “Good gracious! How?” “Why, I read your Little Health of Ladies, and I resolved to set my doctor at naught and go about like other people. And you see how well I am! There was really nothing the matter with me but want of exercise!” I saw her several times afterwards in good health; and once she brought me a beautiful gold bracelet with clasp of diamonds set in black enamel, which she had had made for me, and which she forced me to accept as a token of her gratitude. I am fond of wearing it still. Another incident strongly confirmed my belief in the source of much of the evil and misery arising from the Little Health of Ladies. Travelling one day from Brighton I fell into conversation with a nice-looking, well-bred woman the only other occupant of the railway carriage. Speaking of the salubrity of Brighton, she said, “I am sure I have reason enough to bless it. I was for fourteen years a miserable invalid on my sofa in London; my doctor telling me I must never go out or move. At last I said to my husband, ‘It is better to die than to go on thus;’ and, in defiance of our Doctor, he brought me away to Brighton, and there I soon grew, as you see, quite strong; and—and,—I must tell you, I have a little baby, and my husband is so happy!” That clever Gynæcologist lost, I daresay, a hundred, or perhaps two hundred, a year by the escape of his patient from his assiduous visitations; but the lady gained health and happiness; her husband his wife’s companionship; and both of them a child! How much of the miseries and ill-health, and, in many cases, death of women (of the poorer classes especially) lies at the door of medical practitioners and operators, too fond by half of the knife, is known to those who have read the recent articles and correspondence respecting the Women’s Hospitals and “Human Vivisection” therein in the Daily Chronicle (May, 1894) and in the Homœopathic World for June. Quite apart from the doctors, however, a great deal of the sickliness of women is undoubtedly due to wretched fashions of tight-lacing, and wearing long and heavy skirts, and tight, thin boots, which render free exercise of their limbs impossible. Nothing makes me really despair of my sex, except looking at fashion-plates; or seeing (what is much worse still, being wicked, as well as foolish) the adornments so many women use of dead birds, stuck on their empty heads and heartless breasts. These things are a disgrace to women for which I have often felt they deserve to be despised and swept aside by men as soulless creatures unworthy of freedom. But alas! it is precisely the women who adopt these idiotic fashions in dress, and wear (abominable cruelty!) Egrets as ornaments, who are not despised but admired by men, who reserve their indifference and contempt for their homely and sensible sisters. Men in these respects are as silly as the fish in the river caught by a gaudy artificial fly on a hook, or enticed into a net by a scrap of scarlet cloth, and a glittering morsel of brass. I often wonder whether women are generally, as little capable of forming a discriminating judgment of men? Lastly, there is a cause of female ill-health which always impresses me with profoundest pity, and which has never, I think, been fairly brought to the front as the origin of a large part of feminine feebleness. I mean the common want, among women who earn their livelihood, of sufficiently brain-nourishing and stimulating food. Let any man, the strongest in the land in body and mind, subsist for one week on tea without milk, and bread and butter, and at the end of that time, he will, I venture to predict, have lost half his superiority. His nervous excitability and cheerfulness may remain, or even be enhanced, but the faculty of largely grasping and strongly dealing with the subjects presented to him, and of doing thorough and complete work, nay even the desire of such perfection and finish, will have abated; and the fatal slovenliness of women’s work will probably have begun to show itself. The physical conditions under which the human spirit can alone (in this life) carry out its purpose and attain its maximum of vigour, are more or less lacking to half the women even in our country; and almost completely wanting to the poor prisoners of the Zenanas of India and the cripples of China. Exercise in the open air, wholesome and sufficient food, plenty of sleep at night,—every one of these sine qua non elements of real Health of Mind, as well as of Body, are out of reach of one woman out of every two; yet we remark, curiously, on the inferiority of their work! It is a vicious circle in which they are caught. They take lower wages because they can live more cheaply than men; and they necessarily live on those low wages too poorly to do anything but poor work;—and again their wages are paltry because their work is so poor! I confess, however, that—on the other hand—the spectacle of feminine feebleness and futility when (as continually happens) it is exhibited without the smallest excuse from inadequate food supply, is indescribably irritating, nay, to me, humiliating and exasperating. Watch (for example of what I mean by “feminine futility”) a woman asked to open a just-arrived box, or a bottle of champagne or of soda-water. She has been given a cold-chisel for opening the box, and a hammer; but they are invariably “astray” when required, or she does not think it worth while to fetch them from up or downstairs, so she kneels down before the box and begins by fumbling with her fingers at the knots in the cord. After five minutes’ efforts and broken nails, she gives this up in despair, and “thinks she must cut it.” But how? She never by any chance has a knife in her pocket; so she first tries her scissors, which she does keep there, but which, being always quite blunt, fail to sever the rope; and then she fetches a dinner-knife, and gives one cut,—when the feminine passion for economy suggests to her that she can save the rest of the cord by pushing it (with immense effort) an inch or two along the box, first at one side and then at the other. Then she hopes by breaking open the top of the box at one end only, to get out the contents without dealing further with the recalcitrant rope; and she endeavours to pull it open where the nails seem least firm. Alas! those nails will never yield to her weak hands; so her scissors are in requisition again, and being inserted and used as a wedge, immediately break off at the points, and are hastily withdrawn with an exclamation of agonising regret for the blunt, but precious, instrument. Something must be thrust in, however, to prize open the box. The cold-chisel and hammer having been at last sought, but sought in vain, the kitchen cleaver, covered with the fat of the last joint it has cut, is brought into play; or, happy thought! she knows where her master keeps a fine sharp chisel, and this is pushed in,—of course against a nail which breaks the edge and makes it useless for ever. The poker serves sufficiently well as a hammer to knock in the chisel, or the cleaver, and to bang up the protruding lid of the box; and at last one plank of the top is loosened, and she tears it off triumphantly, with a cry of rejoicing: “There! Now, we shall get at everything in the box!” The goods, however, stubbornly refuse to be extricated through the hole on any terms; and eventually all the planks have to be successively broken up, and the long-cared-for cord (for the preservation of which so much trouble has been undergone) is cut into little pieces of a foot or two in length, each attached to a hopelessly entangled knot, while the box itself is entirely wrecked. The case of the soda-water, or champagne bottle is worse again; so much so that experience warns the wise to forbear from calling for effervescent drinks where parlour-maids prevail. The preliminary ineffectual attempt to loosen the wires with the fingers (the proper pliers being, of course, missing); the resort to a steel carving-fork to open them, and, in default of the steel fork, to a silver one, which is, of course, bent immediately; the endeavour to cut the hempen cord with the bread knife with the result of blunting that tool against the wire; the struggle to cause the cork to fly by wobbling it with the right hand, while clasping the neck of the bottle till it and the contents are hot in the left; then (on the failure of this bold attempt) the cutting off the head of the cork with a carving knife, and at the same time a small slice of the operator’s hand, which, of course, bleeds profusely; the consequent hasty transference of the bottle and the job to a second attendant; the hurried search of the same in the side-table drawer for the corkscrew; her rush to the kitchen to fetch that instrument where it has been nefariously borrowed and where the point of the screw has been broken off; the difficult (and crooked) insertion of the broken screw into the cork; the repeated frantic tugs at the bottle, held tight between the knees, finally the climax, when the cork bursts out and the champagne along with it, up in the reddening face and over the white muslin apron of the poor anxious woman, who hurries nervously to wipe it off, and then pours the small quantity of liquor which remains bubbling over the glasses, till the table-cloth is swamped;—such in brief is Feminine Futility, as exhibited in the drawing of corks! Luckily it is possible to find parlour-maids who know how to use, and will keep at hand, both cold-chisels and corkscrews. But they are exceptions. The normal woman, in the presence of a nailed-down box or a champagne bottle, behaves as I have depicted from careful study; and the irritation she produces in me is past words, especially if a man be waiting for his beverage and observing the spectacle of the helplessness of my sex. If “Man” be “a tool-making animal,” I am afraid that “Woman” is a “tool-breaking” one. I think every girl, as well as every boy, ought to be given a month’s training in a carpenter’s shop to teach her how to strike a nail straight; what is the difference between the proper insertion and extraction of nails and of screws; why chisels should not be employed as screw-drivers; how far preferable for making holes are gimlets to hairpins or the points of scissors; and, finally, the general superiority of glue over paste or gum for sticking wooden furniture when broken by her besom of destruction! My dear friend Emily Shaen wrote an excellent tract which I should like to see republished, urging that it is absurd to go on talking of the House being the proper sphere of a woman, while we neglect to teach her the very rudiments of a Hausfrau’s duties, and leave her to find them all out, at her husband’s expense, when she marries. The nature of gas and of gasometers, and how not to cause explosions nor be cheated in the bill; the arrangements of water-works in houses, pipes, drains, cisterns, ball-cocks and all the rest, for hot and cold water; the choice of properly morticed, not merely glued, furniture; what constitutes a good kitchen range, and how coal should be economised in it; how to choose fresh meat, &c., such should be her lessons. To this might be usefully added an inkling of the laws relating to masters and servants, debts, bills, &c., &c., and of the elementary arrangements of banking and investing money. It was once discovered at my school that a very clever young lady, who could speak four languages and play two instruments well, could not read the clock! I think there are many grown up women, well-educated according to the ordinary standard of their class, whose ignorance concerning the simplest matters of household duty is not a whit less absurd. In 1881—I prepared and delivered to an audience of about 150 ladies, in the Westminster Palace Hotel, a course of six Lectures on the Duties of Women. My dear friend, Miss Anna Swanwick took the chair for me on these occasions, and performed her part with such tact and geniality as to give me every advantage. My auditors were very attentive and sympathetic, and altogether the task was made very pleasant to me. I repeated the course again at Clifton the same year, Mrs. Beddoe, the wife of Dr. John Beddoe the anthropologist who was then living at that place, most obligingly lending me her large drawing-rooms. These Lectures when printed, went through three editions in England and, I think, eight in America, the last being brought out by Miss Willard, who adopted the little book as the first of a series on women’s concerns, published by her vast and wonderful organisation, the W.C.T.U. My object in giving these Lectures was to impress women as strongly as might be in my power, with the unspeakable importance of adding to our claims for just Rights of all kinds, the adoption of the highest standard of Duty; and the strict preservation amongst us of all womanly virtues, while adding to them those others to the growth of which our conditions have hitherto been unfavourable,—namely, Truth and Courage. I desired also to discuss the new views current amongst us respecting filial and conjugal “obedience;” the proper attitude to be held towards (unrepentant) vice, and many other topics. Finally I wished to place the efforts to obtain political freedom on what I deem to be their proper ground. I ask: “What ought we to do at present, as concerns all public work wherein it is possible for us to obtain a share? “The question seems to answer itself in its mere statement. We are bound to do all we can to promote the virtue and happiness of our fellow-men and women, and therefore we must accept and seize every instrument of power, every vote, every influence which we can obtain, to enable us to promote virtue and happiness. “... Why are we not to wish and strive to be allowed to place our hands on that vast machinery whereby, in a constitutional realm, the great work of the world is carried on, and which achieves by its enormous power, ten-fold either the good or the harm which any individual can reach; which may be turned to good or turned to harm according to the hands which touch it? In almost every case it is only by legislation that the roots of great evils can be reached at all, and that the social diseases of pauperism, vice and crime can be brought within hope of cure. “You will judge from these remarks the ground on which, as a matter of duty, I place the demand for woman’s political emancipation. I think we are bound to seek it, in the first place, as a means,—a very great means,—of fulfilling our Social Duty, of contributing to the virtue and happiness of mankind, and advancing the Kingdom of God. There are many other reasons, viewed from the point of Expediency; but this is the view from that of Duty. We know too well that men who possess political rights do not always, or often, regard them in this fashion; but this is no reason why we should not do so. We also know that the individual power of one vote at any election seems rarely to effect any appreciable difference; but this also need not trouble us, for, little or great, if we can obtain any influence at all, we ought to seek for it, and the multiplication of the votes of women bent on securing conscientious candidates, would soon make it not only appreciable, but weighty. Nay, further, the direct influence of a vote is but a small part of the power which the possession of the political franchise confers. Its indirect influence is far more important. In a government like ours, where the basis of representation is so immensely extensive the whole business of legislation is carried on by pressure—the pressure of each represented class and party to get its grievances redressed, to make its interests prevail.... It is one of the sore grievances of women that, not possessing representation, the measures which concern them are for ever postponed to the bills promoted by the represented classes (e.g., the Married Woman’s Property Bill, was, if I mistake not, six times set down for reading in one Session in vain, the House being counted out on every occasion). “Thus, in asking for the Parliamentary Franchise, we are asking, as I understand it, for the power to influence legislation generally; and in every other kind of franchise, municipal, parochial, or otherwise, for similar power to bring our sense of justice and righteousness to bear on public affairs.... “What is this, after all, my friends, but Public Spirit; in one shape called Patriotism, in another Philanthropy; the extension of our sympathies beyond the narrow bounds of our homes, and disinterested enthusiasm for every good and sacred cause? As I said at first, all the world has recognised from the earliest times how good and noble and wholesome a thing it is for men to have their breasts filled with such public spirit; and we look upon them when they exhibit it as glorified thereby. Do you think it is not equally an ennobling thing for a woman’s soul to be likewise filled with these large and generous and unselfish emotions?” I draw the Lectures to a conclusion thus:— “None of us, I am sure, realise how blessed a thing we might make of our lives if we would but give ourselves, heart and soul, to fulfil all the obligations, personal, social and religious which rest upon us; to gain the strength— ‘To think, to feel, to do, only the holy Right, To yield no step in the awful race, no blow in the fearful fight,’ to live, in purity and truth and courage, a life of love to God and to man; striving to make every spot where we dwell, every region to which our influence can extend God’s Kingdom, where His Will shall be done on earth as it is done in heaven.” Some time after the delivery of these addresses when the Primrose League was in full activity I wrote at the request of the Committee of the Women’s Suffrage Association a circular-letter to the “Dames” (of whom I am one) begging them to endeavour to make the granting of votes to women a “plank” in their platform. I received many friendly letters in reply—but the men who influenced the League, apparently finding that they could make the Dames do their political work for them without votes, discouraged all movement in the desired direction, and I do not suppose that anything was gained by my attempt. My last effort on behalf of women was to read a paper on Women’s Duty to Women at the Conference of Women workers held at Birmingham in Nov., 1890. This address was received with such exceeding kindness and sympathy by my audience that the little event has left very tender recollections which I am glad to carry with me. I will record here two paragraphs which I should like to leave as my last appeal on behalf of my sex. “It may be an open question whether any individual woman suffers more severely in body or mind than any individual man. There are some who say that all our passions matched with theirs ‘Are as moonlight is to sunlight, and as water is to wine.’ A sentiment, which I am happy to tell you, Lord Tennyson has angrily disclaimed as his own, declaring that he only ‘put it into the mouth of an impatient fool.’ But that our whole sex together suffers more physical pain, more want, more grief, than the other, is not, I think, open to doubt. Even if we put aside the poor Chinese women maimed from infancy, the Hindoo women against whose cruel wrongs their noble countryman, Malabari, has just been pleading so eloquently in London,—if we put these and all the other prisoners of Eastern Harems, and miserable wives of African and Australian savages out of question, and think only of the comparatively free and happy women of Christendom, how much more liable to suffering, if not always actually condemned to suffer, is the life of women! ‘To be weak is to be miserable,’ and we are weak; always comparatively to our companions, and weak often, absolutely, and in reference to the wants we must supply, the duties we must perform. Now, it seems to me that just in proportion as any one is possessed of strength of mind or of body, or of wealth or influence, so far it behoves him, or her, to turn with sympathy and tender helpfulness to the weakest and most forlorn of God’s creatures, whether it be man or woman or child, or even brute. The weight of the claim is in exact ratio of the feebleness and helplessness and misery of the claimant. “Thus, then, I would sum up the counsels which I am presuming to offer to you. You will all remember the famous line of Terence, at which the old Roman audience rose in a tumult of applause: ‘I am a Man—nothing human is alien to me.’ I would have each of you add to this in an emphatic way. ‘Mulier sum. Nihil muliebre a me alienum puto.’ ‘I am a woman. Nothing concerning the interests of women is alien to me.’ Take the sorrows, the wants, the dangers (above all the dangers) of our sisters closely to heart, and, without ceasing to interest yourself in charities having men and boys for their objects, recognise that your earlier care should be for the weakest, the poorest, those whose dangers are worst of all—for, (after all) ruin can only drive a Man to the workhouse; it may drive a woman to perdition! Think of all the weak, the helpless, the wronged women and little children, and the harmless brutes; and save and shield them as best you can; even as the mother-bird will shelter and fight for her little helpless fledgelings. This is the natural field of feminine courage. Then, when you have found your work, whatever it be, give yourself to it with all your heart, and make the resolution in God’s sight never to go to your rest leaving a stone unturned which may help your aims. Half-and-half charity does very little good to the objects; and is a miserable, slovenly affair for the workers. And when the end comes and the night closes in, the long, last night of earth, when no man can work any more in this world, your milk-and-water, half-hearted charities will bring no memories of comfort to you. They are not so many ‘good works’ which you can place on the credit side of your account, in the mean, commercial spirit taught by some of the churches. Nay, rather they are only solemn evidences that you knew your duty, knew you might do good, and did it not, or did it half-heartedly! What a thought for those last days when we know ourselves to be going home to God, God—whom at bottom after all, we have loved and shall love for ever;—that we might have served Him here, might have blessed his creatures, might have done His will on earth as it is done in Heaven, but we have let the glorious chance slip by us for ever.” Readers who have reached this twentieth Chapter of my Life will smile (as I have often done of late years) at the ascription to me in sundry not very friendly publications, of exclusive sympathy for animals and total indifference to human interests. I have seen myself frequently described as a woman “who would sacrifice any number of men, women and children, sooner than that a few rabbits should be inconvenienced.” Many good people apparently suppose me to represent a personal survival of Totemism in England; and to worship Dogs and Cats, while ready to consign the human race generally to destruction. The foregoing pages, describing my life in old days in Ireland and the years which I spent afterwards working in the slums in Bristol, ought, I think, to suffice to dissipate this fancy picture. As a matter of fact, it has only been of late years and since their wrongs have appealed alike to my feelings of pity and to my moral sense, that I have come to bestow any peculiar attention on animals; or have been concerned with them more than is common with the daughters of country squires to whom dogs, horses and cattle are familiar subjects of interest from childhood. I have indeed always felt much affection for dogs: that is to say, for those who exhibit the true Dog-character,—which is far from being the case of every canine creature! Their eagerness, their joyousness, their transparent little wiles, their caressing and devoted affection, are to me more winning, even I may say, more really and intensely human (in the sense in which a child is human), than the artificial, cold and selfish characters one meets too often in the guise of ladies and gentlemen. It is not the four legs, nor the silky or shaggy coat of the dog which should prevent us from discerning his inner nature of Thought and Love; limited Thought, it is true; but quite unlimited Love. That he is dumb, is, to me, only another claim (as it would be in a human child) on my consideration. But because I love good dogs, and, in their measure also, good horses and cats and birds, (I had once a dear and lovely white pea-hen), I am not therefore a morbid Zoophilist. I should be very sorry indeed to say or think like Byron when my dog dies, that I “had but one true friend, and here he lies!” I have,—thank God!—known many men and women, who have all a dog’s merits of honesty and single-hearted devotion plus the virtues which can only flourish on the high level of humanity; and to them I give a friendship which the best of dogs cannot share. That there are some Timons in the world whose hearts, embittered by human ingratitude, have turned with relief to the faithful love of a dog, I am very well aware. Surely the fact makes one appeal the more on behalf of the creatures who thus by their humble devotion heal the wounds of disappointed or betrayed affection; and who come to cheer the lonely, the unloved, the dull-witted, the blind, the poverty-stricken whom the world forsakes? I think Lamartine was right to treat this love of the Dog for Man as a special provision of Divine mercy, and to marvel,— “Par quelle pitié pour nos cœurs Il vous donne Pour aimer celui que n’aime plus personne!” Not a few deep thanksgivings, I believe, have gone up to the Maker of man and brute for the silent sympathy,—expressed perhaps in no nobler way than by the gentle licking of a passive hand,—which has yet saved a human heart from the sense of utter abandonment. But I have no such sorrowful or embittering experience of human affection. I do not say, “The more I know of men the more I love dogs”; but, “The more I know of dogs the more I love them,” without any invidious comparisons with men, women, or children. As regards the children, indeed, I have been always fond of those which came in my way; and if the Tenth Commandment had gone on to forbid coveting one’s neighbour’s “child,” I am not sure that I should not have had to plead guilty to breaking it many times. In my old home I possessed a dear Pomeranian dog of whom I was very fond, who, being lame, used constantly to ensconce herself (though forbidden by my father) in my mother’s carriage under the seat, and never showed her little pointed nose till the britzska had got so far from home that she knew no one would put her down on the road. Then she would peer out and lie against my mother’s dress and be fondled. Later on I had the companionship of another beautiful, mouse-coloured Pomeranian, brought as a puppy from Switzerland. In my hardworking life in Bristol in the schools and workhouse she followed me and ingratiated herself everywhere, and my solitary evenings were much the happier for dear Hajjin’s company. Many years afterwards she was laid under the sod of our garden in Hereford Square. Another dog of the same breed whom I sent away at one year old to live in the country, was returned to me eight years afterwards, old and diseased. The poor beast recognized me after a few moments’ eager examination, and uttered an actual scream of joy when I called her by name; exhibiting every token of tender affection for me ever afterwards. When one reflects what eight years signify in the life of a dog,—almost equivalent to the distance between sixteen and sixty in a human being,—some measure is afforded by this incident of the durability of a dog’s attachment. Happily, kind Dr. Hoggan cured poor Dee of her malady, and she and I enjoyed five happy years of companionship ere she died here in Hengwrt. I have dedicated my Friend of Man to her memory. Among my smaller literary tasks in London I wrote an article for which Mr. Leslie Stephen (then editing the Cornhill Magazine in which it appeared) was kind enough to express particular liking. It was called “Dogs whom I have met;” and gave an account of many canine individualities of my acquaintance. I also wrote an article in the Quarterly Review on the Consciousness of Dogs of which I have given above (p. 127) Mr. Darwin’s favourable opinion. Both of these papers are reprinted in my False Beasts and True. Such has been the sum total, I may say, of my personal concern with animals before and apart from my endeavours to deliver them from their scientific tormentors. It was, as I have stated, the abominable wrongs endured by animals which first aroused, and has permanently maintained, my special interest in them. My great-grandfather had an office in the yard at Newbridge for his magisterial work, and over his own seat he caused to be inscribed the text: “Deliver him that is oppressed from the hand of the adversary.” I know not whether it were a juvenile impression, but I have felt all my life an irresistible impulse to rush in wherever anyone is “oppressed” and try to “deliver” him, her, or it, as the case may be, from the “adversary!” In the case of beasts, their helplessness and speechlessness appeal, I think, to every spark of generosity in one’s heart; and the command, “Open thy mouth for the dumb,” seems the very echo of our consciences. Everything in us, manly or womanly, (and the best in us all is both) answers it back. When I was a little child, living in a house where hunting, coursing, shooting, and fishing, were carried on by all the men and boys, I took such field sports as part of the order of things, and learned with delight from my father to fish in our ponds on my own account. Somehow it came to pass that when, at sixteen, my mind went through that strange process which Evangelicals call “Conversion,” among the first things which my freshly-awakened moral sense pointed out was,—that I must give up fishing! I reflected that the poor fishes were happy in their way in their proper element; that we did not in the least need, or indeed often use them for food; and that I must no longer take pleasure in giving pain to any creature of God. It was a little effort to me to relinquish this amusement in my very quiet, uneventful life; but, as the good Quaker’s say, it was “borne in on me,” that I had to do it, and from that time I have never held a rod or line (though I have been out in boats where large quantities of fish were caught on the Atlantic coast), and I freely admit that angling scarcely comes under the head of cruelty at all, and is perfectly right and justifiable when the fish are wanted for food and are killed quickly. I used to stand sometimes after I had ceased to fish, over one of the ponds in our park and watch the bright creatures dart hither and thither, and say in my heart a little thanksgiving on their behalf instead of trying to catch them. Fifty years after this incident, I read in John Woolman’s, (the Quaker Saint’s,) Journal, Chap. XI., this remark:— “I believe, where the love of God is verily perfected and the true spirit of government watchfully attended, a tenderness towards all creatures made subject to us will be experienced, and a care felt in us that we do not lessen that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the great Creator intends for them under our government.” To me as I have said it was almost the first, and not an advanced, much less “perfected,” religious impulse, which led me to begin to recognise the claims of the lower animals on our compassion. Of course, I disliked then, and always, hunting, coursing and shooting; but as a woman I was not expected to join in such pursuits, and I did not take on myself to blame those who followed them. I do not now allow of any comparison between the cruelty of such Field Sports and the deliberate Chamber-Sport of Vivisection. I shall now relate as succinctly as possible the history of the Anti-vivisection Movement, so far as I have had to do with it. Of course an immense amount of work for the same end has been carried on all these twenty years by other Zoophilists with whom I have had no immediate connection, or perhaps cognizance of their labours, but without whose assistance the Society which I helped to found certainly could not have made as much way as it has done. I only presume here to tell the story of the Victoria Street Society, and the occurrences which led to its formation. In the year 1863, there appeared in several English newspapers complaints of the cruelties practised in the Veterinary Schools at Alfort near Paris. The students were taught there, as in most other continental veterinary schools, to perform operations on living animals, and so to acquire, (at the cost, of course, of untold suffering to the victims,) the same manipulative skill which English students gain equally well by practising on dead carcases. Living horses were supplied to the Alfort students on which, at the time I speak of, they performed sixty operations apiece, including every one in common use, and many which were purely academic, being never employed in actual practice because the horse, after enduring them, becomes necessarily useless. These operations lasted eight hours, and the aspect of the mangled creatures, hoofless, eyeless, burned, gashed, eviscerated, skinned, mutilated in every conceivable way, appalled the visitors, who reported the facts, while it afforded, they said, a subject of merriment to the horde of students. The English Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals laudably exerted itself to stop these atrocities, and appealed to the Emperor to interfere; not, perhaps, very hopefully, since, as I have heard, Napoleon III. was in the habit of attending these hideous spectacles in his own imperial person on the Thursdays on which they took place. This circumstance, taken in connection with the Empress’ patronage of Bull-Fights, has made Sedan seem to me an event on which the animal world, at all events, has to be congratulated. Some years later Mr. James Cowie took over to France an Appeal, signed by 500 English Veterinarians entreating their French colleagues to adopt the English practice of using only dead carcases for the exercises of students. Through this and other good offices it is understood that the number and severity of the operations performed at Alfort, and elsewhere in France, were then greatly reduced. Unhappily the humane regulations made in 1878 are now evaded, and the dreadful cruelties above described have been actually witnessed by Mr. Peabody and Dr. Baudry, in 1895. On reading of these cruelties I wrote an article, The Rights of Man and the Claims of Brutes, which I hoped might help to direct public attention to them. In this paper I endeavoured to work out as best I could the ethical problem (which I at once perceived to be beset with difficulties) of a definition of the limits of human rights over animals. My article was published by Mr. Froude in Fraser’s Magazine for Nov., 1863, and was subsequently reprinted in my Studies Ethical and Social. It was, so far as I know the first effort made to deal with the moral questions involved in the torture of animals either for sake of scientific and therapeutic research, or for the acquirement of manipulative skill. In the 30 years which have elapsed since I wrote it I have seen reason to raise considerably the “claims” which I then urged on behalf of the brutes, but I observe that new recruits to our Anti-vivisection party usually begin exactly where I stood at that time, and announce their ideas to me as their mature conclusions. The same month of November, 1863, in which my article, (written some weeks before, while I was ill and lame at Aix-les-Bains), appeared in Fraser, I was living near Florence, and was startled by hearing of similar cruelties practised at the Specola, where Prof. Schiff had his laboratory. My friend Miss Blagden and I were holding our usual weekly reception in Villa Brichieri on Bellosguardo, and we learned that many of our guests had been shocked by the rumours which had reached them. In particular the American physician who had accompanied Theodore Parker to Florence and attended him in his last days,—Dr. Appleton, of Harvard University,—told us that he himself had gone over Prof. Schiff’s laboratory, and had seen dogs, pigeons and other animals in a frightfully mangled and suffering state. A Tuscan officer had seen a cat so tortured that he forced Schiff to kill it. Some 50 or 60 letters had been (or were afterwards) lodged at the Mairie from neighbours complaining of the disturbance caused by the cries and moans of the victims in the Specola. After much conversation I asked, What could be done to check these systematic cruelties, which no Tuscan law could then touch in any way? It was suggested that a Memorial should be addressed to Prof. Schiff himself, urging him to spare his victims as much as possible. This Memorial I drafted at once, and it was translated into Italian and sent round Florence for signatures. Mrs. Somerville placed her name at the head of it; and through her earnest exertions and those of her daughters and of several other friends, the list of supporters soon became very weighty. Among the English signatures was those of Walter Savage Landor (who added some words so violent that I was obliged to suppress them!); and among the Italians almost the whole historic aristocracy of old Florence,—Corsi’s and Corsini’s, and Aldobrandini’s and Strozzi’s, and a hundred more, the reading of whose names recalled Medicean times. In all, there were 783 signatories. Very few of them were of the mezzo-ceto class, and none belonged to the (Red) Republican party. Schiff was himself a “Red,” and, as such, he might, apparently, commit any cruelty he thought fit, inasmuch as he and the other vivisectors (we were told by a lady prominent in that party) were seeking “the religion of the future”—in the brains and entrails of the tortured beasts! The same lady expressed to me her wish that “every animal in creation should be immolated, if only to discover a single fact of science.” Another Englishwoman (also married to a foreigner) wrote to the Daily News to praise Schiff for “actively pursuing Vivisection.” The Memorial, as often happens, did no direct good; Professor Schiff tossing it aside, and politely qualifying the signatories, (in the Nazione newspaper,) as “un tas de Marquis.” But it certainly caused the subject to be much discussed, and doubtless prepared the way for the complaints and lawsuits concerning the “nuisances” of the moaning dogs, which eventually made Florence an unpleasant abode for Professor Schiff. He retreated thence to Geneva in 1877. The Florentine Società Protettrice degli Animali was founded by Countess Baldelli in 1873, and has led the agitation there against Vivisection ever since. Meanwhile on the presentation of the Memorial, Professor Schiff wrote a letter in the Nazione (the chief newspaper of Florence) denying the facts mentioned in the letter of the official Correspondent of the Daily News, and challenging the said correspondent to come forward and make good the statement. I instantly wrote a letter saying that I was the Daily News’ Correspondent in Florence; that the letter complained of was mine; and that for verification of my assertions therein I appended a full and signed statement by Dr. Appleton of what he had himself witnessed in the Specola. It was rather difficult for me then to believe that this letter of mine (in Italian of course) duly signed and authenticated with name, date and place, was refused publication in the paper wherein I had been challenged to come forward! On learning this amazing fact, I requested Dr. Appleton to go down again to Florence and ask the editor of the Nazione to publish my letter if in no other way, at least as a paid advertisement. The answer made by the editor to Dr. Appleton was, that it might be inserted, but only among the advertisements in certain columns of the paper where no decent reader would look for it. N.B.—the Nazione replenished its exchequer by the help of that class of notices which are declined by every reputable English newspaper. After this Dr. Appleton went in despair to Professor Schiff himself, and told him he was bound in honour, (seeing he had made the challenge to us,) to compel the editor to print our answer. The learned and scientific gentleman shrugged his shoulders and laughed in the face of the American who could imagine him to be so simple! I left Florence soon after this first brush with the demon of Vivisection, but retained (as will easily be understood) very strong feelings on the subject. At a meeting of the British Association in Liverpool in 1870 a Committee was appointed to consider the subject of “Physiological Experimentation,” and their Report was published in the Medical Times and Gazette, Feb. 25th, 1871; and in British Assoc. Reports, 1871, p. 144. It consists of the following four Rules or Recommendations on the subject of Vivisection:— “(I.) No experiment which can be performed under the influence of an anæsthetic ought to be done without it. (II.) No painful experiment is justifiable for the mere purpose of illustrating a law or fact already demonstrated; in other words, experimentation without the employment of anæsthetics is not a fitting exhibition for teaching purposes. (III.) Whenever, for the investigation of new truth, it is necessary to make a painful experiment, every effort should be made to ensure success, in order that the sufferings inflicted may not be wasted. For this reason, no painful experiment ought to be performed by an unskilled person, with insufficient instruments and assistants, or in places not suitable to the purpose; that is to say, anywhere except in physiological and pathological laboratories, under proper regulations. (IV.) In the scientific preparation for veterinary practice, operations ought not to be performed upon living animals for the mere purpose of obtaining greater operative dexterity.” These four Rules were countersigned by M. A. Lawson, G. M. Humphry (now Sir George Humphry), J. H. Balfour, Arthur Gamgee, William Flower, J. Burdon-Sanderson, and George Rolleston. Of course we, who attended that celebrated Liverpool Meeting of the British Association and had heard the President laud Dr. Brown-Séquard enthusiastically, greatly rejoiced at this humane Ukase of autocratic Science. But as time passed we were surprised to find that nothing was done to enforce these rules in any way or at any place; and that the particular practice which they most distinctly condemn, namely, the use of vivisections as Illustrations of recognised facts,—was flourishing more than ever without let or hindrance. The prospectuses of University College for 1874–5, of Guy’s Hospital Medical School 1874–5, of St. Thomas’s Hospital, of Westminster Hospital Medical School, etc., all mentioned among their attractions: “Demonstrations on living animals;” “Gentlemen will themselves perform the experiments;” &c., and quite as if nothing whatever had been said against them. But worse remained. One of the signatories of the above Rules (or as perhaps we may more properly call them, these “Pious Opinions”?),—the most eminent of English physiologists, Prof. Burdon-Sanderson himself, edited and brought out in 1873, the Handbook of the Physiological Laboratory, to which he, Dr. Lauder-Brunton, Dr. Klein, and Dr. Foster were joint contributors. This celebrated work is a Manual of Exercises in Vivisection, intended (as the Preface says) “for beginners in Physiological work.” The following are observations on this book furnished to the Royal Commission by Mr. Colam, and printed in Appendix iv., p. 379, of their Report and Minutes of Evidence:— “That the object of the editor and his coadjutors was to induce young persons to perform experiments on their own account and without adequate surveillance is manifest throughout the work, by the supply of elementary knowledge and elaborate data. Not only are the names and quantities of necessary chemicals given, but the most careful description is provided in letter-press and plates of implements for holding animals during their struggles, so that a novice may learn at home without a teacher. Besides, the editor’s preface states, that the book is ‘intended for beginners,’ and that ‘difficult and complicated’ experiments consequently have been omitted; and that of Dr. Foster allures the student by assurances of inexpensive as well as easy manipulation.... Very seldom indeed is the student told to anæsthetise, and then only during an operation. It cannot be alleged that ‘beginners’ know when to narcotise, and when not; but if they do then the few directions to use chloral, &c., are unnecessary. No doubt should have been left on this point in a Handbook designed ‘for beginners.’ Besides, where will students find cautions against the infliction of unnecessary pain, and wanton experimentation? On the contrary, the student is encouraged to repeat the torture ‘any number of times.’ These facts are significant.” In the Minutes of Evidence of the Royal Commission we find that the late Prof. Rolleston, of Oxford, being under examination, was asked by Mr. Hutton: “Then I understand that your opinion about the Handbook is, that it is a dangerous book to society, and that it has warranted to some extent the feeling of anxiety in the public which its publication has created?” Prof. Rolleston: “I am sorry to have to say that I do think it is so” (1351). In his own examination Prof. Burdon-Sanderson admitted that the use of anæsthetics whenever possible “ought to have been stated much more distinctly at the beginning of his book” (2265), and agreed to Lord Cardwell’s suggestion, “Then I may assume that in any future communication with ‘beginners’ greater pains will be taken to make them distinctly understand how animals may be saved from suffering than has been taken in this book?” “Yes,” said Dr. B.-S., “I am quite willing to say that” (2266). Esoteric Vivisection it will be observed, as revealed in Handbooks for “Beginners,” is a very different thing from Exoteric Vivisection, described for the benefit of the outside public as if regulated by the Four Rules above quoted! The following year, 1874, certain experiments were performed before a Medical Congress at Norwich. They consisted in the injection of alcohol and of absinthe into the veins of dogs; and were done by M. Magnan, an eminent French physiologist, who has in recent years described sympathy for animals as a special form of insanity. Mr. Colam, on behalf of the R.S.P.C.A., very properly instituted a prosecution against M. Magnan, under the Act 12 and 13 Vict., c. 92; and brought Sir William Fergusson, and Dr. Tufnell (the President of the Irish College of Surgeons) to swear that his experiments were useless. M. Magnan withdrew speedily to his own country or a conviction would certainly have been obtained against him. But it was not merely on proof of the infliction of torture that Mr. Colam’s Society relied to obtain such conviction, but on the high scientific authority which they were able to bring to prove that the torture was scientifically useless. Failing such testimony, which would generally be unattainable, it was recognised that the application of the Act in question (Martin’s Act amended) to scientific cruelties, which it had not been framed to meet, would always be beset with difficulties. It became thenceforth apparent to the friends of animals that some new legislation, calculated to reach offenders pleading scientific purpose for barbarous experiments was urgently needed; and the existence of the Handbook, with minute directions for performing hundreds of operations,—many of them of extreme severity,—proved that the danger was not remote or theoretical; but already present and at our doors. A few weeks after this trial at Norwich had taken place, and had justly gained great applause for Mr. Colam and the R.S.P.C.A., Mrs. Luther Holden, wife of the eminent surgeon, then Senior Surgeon of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, called on me in Hereford Square to talk over the matter and take counsel as to what could be done to strengthen the law in the desired direction. The great and wealthy R.S.P.C.A. was obviously the body with which it properly lay to promote the needed legislation; and it only seemed necessary to give the Committee of that Society proof that public opinion would strongly support them in calling for it, to induce them to bring a suitable Bill, into Parliament backed by their abundant influence. I agreed to draft a Memorial to the Committee of the R.S.P.C.A. praying it to undertake this task; after learning from Mr. Colam that such an appeal would be altogether welcome; and I may add that I received cordial assistance from him in arranging for its presentation. It was a difficult task for me to draw up that Memorial, but, such as it was, it acted as a spark to tinder, showing how much latent feeling existed on the subject. Many ladies and gentlemen: notably the Countess of Camperdown, the Countess of Portsmouth (now the Dowager Countess), General Colin Mackenzie, Col. Wood (now Sir Evelyn) and others, exerted themselves most earnestly to obtain influential signatures in their circles, and distributed in all directions copies of the Memorial and of two pamphlets I wrote to accompany it—“Reasons for Interference” and “Need of a Bill.” With their help in the course of about six weeks, (without advertisements or paid agency of any kind), we obtained 600 signatures; every one of which represented a man or woman of some social importance. The first to sign it was my neighbour and friend, Rev. Gerald Blunt, rector of Chelsea. After him came Mr. Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning, Mr. Lecky, Sir Arthur Helps, Sir W. Fergusson, John Bright, Mr. Jowett, the Archbishop of York (Dr. Thomson), Sir Edwin Arnold, the Primate of Ireland (Marcus Beresford), Cardinal Manning (then Archbishop of Westminster), the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, John Ruskin, James Martineau, the Duke of Rutland, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Coleridge, Lord Selborne, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, the Bishops of Winchester, Exeter, Salisbury, Manchester, Bath and Wells, Hereford, St. Asaph, and Derry, Lord Russell, and many other peers and M.P.’s, and no less than 78 medical men, several of whom were eminent in the profession. I shall insert here a few of the replies, favourable and otherwise, which I received to my invitations to sign the Memorial. “Bishopthorpe, York, “Dec. 28th, 1874. “The Archbishop of York presents his compliments to Miss Cobbe and begs to enclose the Memorial signed by him. “‘Exception to suggestion 3rd,’ on the prohibition of publishing, which he thinks unworkable, and therefore (illegible) to the Memorial. If however it is too late to alter it, he will not stand out even on that point. “He thinks the practices in question detestable. The Norwich case was a disgrace to the country. “The Archbishop thanks Miss Cobbe for inviting him to sign.” “A. B. Beresford-Hope to Miss F. P. C. “Bedgebury Park, Cranbrook, “Jan. 26th, 1875. “Dear Madam, “Lady Mildred and myself trust that it is not too late to enclose to you the accompanying signatures to the Memorial against Vivisection, although the day fixed for its return has unfortunately been allowed to elapse. We can assure you of our very hearty sympathy in the cause; the delay has wholly come of oversight. “In regard to the details of the suggestions, I must be allowed to express my doubt as to the feasibility of the 3rd suggestion. Its stringency would I fear defeat its own object. I sympathise too much with the question in itself to decline signing on account of this proposal, but I must request to be considered as a dissentient on that head. “Believe me, dear Madam, yours very faithfully, “A. B. Beresford-Hope.” “B. Jowett to Miss F. P. C. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “I have much pleasure in signing the paper which you kindly sent me. “Yours very sincerely, “B. Jowett. “Jan. 15th, Oxford.” “5, Gordon Street, London, W.C., “January 5th, 1875. “My dear Miss Cobbe, “I should have been very sorry not to join in the Protest against this hideous offence, and am truly obliged to you for furnishing me with the opportunity. The simultaneous loss, from the Morals of our ‘advanced’ scientific men, of all reverent sentiment towards beings above them and towards beings below, is a curious and instructive phenomenon, highly significant of the process which their nature is undergoing at both ends. “With truest wishes for many a happy and beneficent year “Ever faithfully yours, “James Martineau.” “Manchester, “December 26th, 1874. “The Bishop of Manchester” [Dr. Fraser] “presents his compliments to Miss Cobbe, and thanks her for giving him the opportunity of appending his name to this Memorial, which has his most hearty concurrence.” “Palace, Salisbury, “11th January, 1875. “The Bishop of Salisbury’s compliments to Miss Cobbe. He cannot withhold his signature to her Paper after reading the ‘reasons which she has kindly sent him.’” “Addington Park, Croydon, “January 2nd, 1875. “Madam, “I have received your letter of the 31st ult. on the subject of the Memorial to the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals with regard to Vivisection. “I hardly think I should be right, considering my imperfect acquaintance with the subject, in adding my name thereto at present. “Believe me to be, yours faithfully, “A. C. Cantuar.” (Archbishop Tait.) “Deanery, Carlisle, “January 20th, 1875. “Dear Madam, “If I had a hundred signatures you should have them all! “My heart has long burned with indignation against these murderers and torturers of innocent animals. “Was it for this that the great God made man the Lord of the creation? “It is incredible hypocrisy and folly to pretend that such wholesale torture is necessary to enlighten these stupid doctors! “It seems to me peculiarly ungrateful in man, to break forth in this wholesale Animal Inquisition when Providence has so recently revealed to us several new natural powers whereby human suffering is so much diminished. “But I must restrain my feelings, and you must pardon me. I did not know that this good work was begun. “Only get some thoroughgoing and able friend of the animal world to tell the tale to a British House of Parliament, and these philosophic torturers will be stayed in their detestable course. “Yours, “F. Close.” (Dean of Carlisle.) “27, Cornwall Gardens, S.W., “December 30th, 1874. “My dear Miss Cobbe, “I have an impression that the subject of Vivisection is to be brought before the Senate of the University of London, which consists mainly of great physicians and surgeons, but of which I am a member. Hence I think I hardly ought to sign the paper you have sent me. “This, you see is an official answer, but I am glad to be able to make it, for the truth is I have neither thought nor enquired sufficiently about Vivisection to be ready with a clear opinion. “Even if the utmost be proved against the vivisectors, I am inclined to think that they ought to be dealt with as guilty of a new offence, and not of an old one. I do not at all like the notion of bringing old laws such as Martin’s Act against cruelty to animals, to bear on a class of cases never contemplated at the time of their enactment. It has a certain resemblance to enforcing the old law of blasphemy against persons who discuss Christianity in the modern philosophical spirit. Perhaps I am the more sensitive on this point since a friend elaborately demonstrated to me that I was liable to prosecution for what seemed to me a very innocent passage in a book of mine! “Believe me, very truly yours, “H. S. Maine.” (Sir Henry Sumner Maine.) “16, George Street, Hanover Square, W., “19th December, 1874. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “I have affixed my name with much satisfaction to this Memorial, and I presume that you intend that men should be in largest number on the list. “Yours faithfully, “W. Fergusson.” (Sir William Fergusson, F.R.S., Serjeant-Surgeon to the Queen.) This Memorial having a certain importance in the history of our movement, I quote the principal paragraphs here: “The practice of Vivisection has received of recent years enormous extension. Instead of an occasional experiment, made by a man of high scientific attainment, to determine some important problem of physiology, or to test the feasibility of a new surgical operation, it has now become the everyday exercise of hundreds of physiologists and young students of physiology throughout Europe and America. In the latter country, lecturers in most of the schools employ living animals instead of dead for ordinary illustrations, and in Italy one physiologist alone has for some years past experimented on more than 800 dogs annually. A recent correspondence in the Spectator shows that many English physiologists contemplate the indefinite multiplication of such vivisections; some (as Dr. Pye-Smith) defending them as illustrations of lectures, and some (as Mr. Ray-Lankester) frankly avowing that one experiment must lead to another ad infinitum. Every real or supposed discovery of one physiologist immediately causes the repetition of his experiments by scores of students. The most numerous and important of these researches being connected with the nervous system, the use of complete anæsthetics is practically prohibited. Even when employed during an operation, the effect of the anæsthetic of course shortly ceases, and, for the completion of the experiment, the animal is left to suffer the pain of the laceration to which it has been subjected. Another class of experiments consists in superinducing some special disease; such as alcoholism (tried by M. Magnan on dogs at Norwich), and the peculiar malady arising from eating diseased pork (Trichiniasis), superinduced on a number of rabbits in Germany by Dr. Virchow. How far public opinion is becoming deadened to these practices is proved by the frequent recurrence in the newspapers of paragraphs simply alluding to them as matters of scientific interest involving no moral question whatever. One such recently appeared in a highly respectable Review, detailing a French physiologist’s efforts, first to drench the veins of dogs with alcohol, and then to produce spontaneous combustion. Such experiments as these, it is needless to remark, cannot be justified as endeavours to mitigate the sufferings of humanity, and are rather to be characterised as gratifications of the ‘dilettantism of discovery.’ “The recent trial at Norwich has established the fact that, in a public Medical Congress, and sanctioned by a majority of the members, an experiment was tried which has since been formally pronounced by two of the most eminent surgeons in the kingdom to have been ‘cruel and unnecessary.’ We have, therefore, too much reason to fear that in laboratories less exposed to public view, and among inconsiderate young students, very much greater abuses take place which call for repression. “It is earnestly urged by your Memorialists that the great and influential Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals may see fit to undertake the task (which appears strictly to fall within its province) of placing suitable restrictions on this rapidly increasing evil. The vast benefit to the cause of humanity which the Society has in the past half century effected, would, in our humble estimation, remain altogether one-sided and incomplete; if, while brutal carters and ignorant costermongers are brought to punishment for maltreating the animals under their charge, learned and refined gentlemen should be left unquestioned to inflict far more exquisite pain upon still more sensitive creatures; as if the mere allegation of a scientific purpose removed them above all legal or moral responsibility. “We therefore beg respectfully to urge on the Committee the immediate adoption of such measures as may approve themselves to their judgment as most suitable to promote the end in view, namely, the Restriction of Vivisection; and we trust that it may not be left to others, who possess neither the wealth or organization of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, to make such efforts in the same direction as might prove to be in their power.” It was arranged that the Memorial should be presented in Jermyn Street in a formal manner on the 25th January, 1875, by a deputation introduced by my cousin’s husband, Mr. John Locke, M.P., Q.C., and consisting of Sir Frederick Elliot, Lord Jocelyn Percy, General G. Lawrence, Mr. R. H. Hutton, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Dr. Walker, Col. Wood (now Sir Evelyn) and several ladies. Prince Lucian Bonaparte, who always warmly befriended the cause, took the chair at first, and was succeeded by Lord Harrowby, President of the R.S.P.C.A., supported by Lady Burdett Coutts, Lord Mount-Temple (then Mr. Cowper-Temple) and others. After some friendly discussion it was agreed that the Committee of the R.S.P.C.A. would give the subject their most zealous attention; and a sub-Committee to deal with the matter was accordingly appointed immediately afterwards. When I drove home to Hereford Square from Jermyn Street that day, I rejoiced to think that I had accomplished a step towards obtaining the protection of the law for the victims of science; and I fully believed that I was free to return to my own literary pursuits and to the journalism which then occupied most of my time. A few days later I was requested to attend (for the occasion only) the first Meeting of the sub-Committee for Vivisection of the R.S.P.C.A. On entering the room my spirits sank, for I saw round the table a number of worthy gentlemen, mostly elderly, but not one of the more distinguished members of their Committee or, (I think), a single Peer or Member of Parliament. In short, they were not the men to take the lead in such a movement and make a bold stand against the claims of science. After a few minutes the Chairman himself asked me: “Whether I could not undertake to get a Bill into Parliament for the object we desired?” As if all my labour with the Memorial had not been spent to make them do this very thing! It was obviously felt by others present that this suggestion was out of place, and I soon retired, leaving the sub-Committee to send Mr. Colam round to make enquiries among the physiologists—a mission which might, perhaps, be represented as a friendly request to be told frankly “whether they were really cruel?” I understood, later, that he was shown a painless vivisection on a cat and offered a glass of sherry; and there (so far as I know or ever heard) the labours of that sub-Committee ended. Mr. Colam afterwards took immense pains to collect evidence from the published works of Vivisectors of the extent and severity of their operations; and this very valuable mass of materials was presented by him some months later to the Royal Commission, and is published in the Blue Book as an Appendix to their Minutes. I was, of course, miserably disappointed at this stage of affairs, but on the 2nd February, 1875, there appeared in the Morning Post the celebrated letter from Dr. George Hoggan, in which (without naming Claude Bernard) he described what he had himself witnessed in his laboratory when recently working there for several months. This letter was absolutely invaluable to our cause, giving, as it did, reality and firsthand testimony to all we had asserted from books and reports. In the course of it Dr. Hoggan said:— “I venture to record a little of my own experience in the matter, part of which was gained as an assistant in the laboratory of one of the greatest living experimental physiologists. In that laboratory we sacrificed daily from one to three dogs, besides rabbits and other animals, and after four months’ experience I am of opinion that not one of those experiments on animals was justified or necessary. The idea of the good of humanity was simply out of the question, and would be laughed at, the great aim being to keep up with, or get ahead of, one’s contemporaries in science, even at the price of an incalculable amount of torture needlessly and iniquitously inflicted on the poor animals. During three campaigns I have witnessed many harsh sights, but I think the saddest sight I ever witnessed was when the dogs were brought up from the cellar to the laboratory for sacrifice. Instead of appearing pleased with the change from darkness to light, they seemed seized with horror as soon as they smelt the air of the place, divining, apparently, their approaching fate. They would make friendly advances to each of the three or four persons present, and as far as eyes, ears, and tail could make a mute appeal for mercy eloquent, they tried it in vain. “Were the feelings of the experimental physiologists not blunted, they could not long continue the practice of vivisection. They are always ready to repudiate any implied want of tender feeling, but I must say that they seldom show much pity; on the contrary, in practice they frequently show the reverse. Hundreds of times I have seen, when an animal writhed with pain and thereby deranged the tissues, during a delicate dissection, instead of being soothed, it would receive a slap and an angry order to be quiet and behave itself. At other times, when an animal had endured great pain for hours without struggling or giving more than an occasional low whine, instead of letting the poor mangled wretch loose to crawl painfully about the place in reserve for another day’s torture, it would receive pity so far that it would be said to have behaved well enough to merit death; and, as a reward, would be killed at once by breaking up the medulla with a needle, or ‘pithing,’ as this operation is called. I have often heard the professor say when one side of an animal had been so mangled and the tissues so obscured by clotted blood that it was difficult to find the part searched for, ‘Why don’t you begin on the other side?’ or ‘Why don’t you take another dog? What is the use of being so economical?’ One of the most revolting features in the laboratory was the custom of giving an animal, on which the professor had completed his experiment, and which had still some life left, to the assistants to practice the finding of arteries, nerves, &c., in the living animal, or for performing what are called fundamental experiments upon it—in other words, repeating those which are recommended in the laboratory hand-books. I am inclined to look upon anæsthetics as the greatest curse to vivisectible animals. They alter too much the normal conditions of life to give accurate results, and they are therefore little depended upon. They, indeed, prove far more efficacious in lulling public feeling towards the vivisectors than pain in the vivisected.” I had met Dr. Hoggan one day just before this occurrence at Mdme. Bodichon’s house, but I had no idea that he would, or could, bear such valuable testimony; and I have never ceased to feel that in thus nobly coming forward to offer it spontaneously, he struck the greatest blow on our side in the whole battle. Of course I expressed to him all the gratitude I felt, and we thenceforth took counsel frequently as to the policy to be pursued in opposing vivisection. It soon became evident that if a Bill were to be presented to Parliament that session it must be promoted by some parties other than the Committee of the R.S.P.C.A. Indeed in the following December The Animal World, in a leading article, avowed that “the Royal Society (P.C.A.) is not so entirely unanimous as to desire the passing of any special legislative enactment on this subject” (vivisection). Feeling convinced that some such obstacle was in the way I turned to my friends to see if it might be possible to push on a Bill independently, and with the most kind help of Sir William Hart Dyke (the Conservative whip), it was arranged that a Bill for “Regulating the Practice of Vivisection” should be introduced with the sanction of Government into the House of Lords by Lord Henniker (Lord Hartismere). It is impossible to describe all the anxiety I endured during the interval up to the 4th May, when this Bill was actually presented. Lord Henniker was exceedingly good about it and took much pains with the draft prepared at first by Sir Frederick Elliot, and afterwards completed for Lord Henniker by Mr. Fitzgerald. Lord Coleridge also took great interest in it, and gave most valuable advice, and Mr. Lowe (who afterwards bitterly opposed the almost identical measure of Lord Cross in the Commons), was willing to give this earlier Bill much consideration. I met him one day at luncheon at Airlie Lodge, where were also Lord Henniker, Lady Minto, Lord Airlie and others interested, and the Bill was gone over clause by clause till adjusted to Mr. Lowe’s counsels. Lord Henniker introduced the Bill thus drafted “for Regulating the Practice of Vivisection” into the House of Lords on the 4th May, 1875; but on the 12th May, to our great surprise another Bill to prevent Abuse in Experiments on Animals was introduced into the House of Commons by Dr. (now Lord) Playfair. On the appearance of this latter Bill, which was understood to be promoted by the physiologists themselves—notably by Dr. Burdon-Sanderson, and by Mr. Charles Darwin—the Government, which had sanctioned Lord Henniker’s Bill, thought it necessary to issue a Royal Commission of Enquiry into the subject before any legislation should be proceeded with. This was done accordingly on the 22nd June, and both Bills were then withdrawn. The student of this old chapter of the history of the Anti-vivisection Crusade will find both of the above-named Bills (and also the ineffective sketch of what might have been the Bill of the R.S.P.C.A.) in the Appendix to the Report of the Royal Commission, pp. 336–8. Mr. Charles Darwin, in a letter to the Times, April 18th, 1881, said that he “took an active part in trying to get a Bill passed such as would have removed all just cause of complaint, and at the same time have left the physiologists free to pursue their researches,”—a “Bill very different from that which has since been passed.” As Mr. Darwin’s biographer, while reprinting this letter, has not quoted my challenge to him in the Times of the 23rd to point out “in what respect the former Bill is very different from the Act of 1876,” I think it well to cite here the lucid definition of that difference as delineated in the Spectator of May 15th, doubtless by the editor, Mr. Hutton. “The Vivisection-Restriction Bills. “On Wednesday afternoon last, Dr. Lyon Playfair laid on the table of the House of Commons a Bill for the Restriction of Vivisection, which has been drawn up by physiologists, no doubt in part, in the interest of physiological science, but also in part, no doubt in the interest of humanity. The contents of this Bill are the best answer which it is possible to give to the ignorant attack made in a daily contemporary on Tuesday on Lord Henniker’s Bill, introduced into the House of Lords last week. The two Bills differ in principle only on one important point. Both of them clearly have been maturely considered by men of science as well as by humanitarians. Both of them assume the great and increasing character of the evil which has to be dealt with. Both of them approach that evil in the same manner, by insisting that scientific experiments which are painful to animals shall be tried only on the avowed responsibility of men of the highest education, whose right to try them may be withdrawn if it be abused. Both of them aim at compelling the physiologists who are permitted to try such experiments at all, to use anæsthetics throughout the experiment, whenever the use of anæsthetics is not fatal to the investigation itself.... The Bills differ, however, on a most important point. It is certain that all the contempt showered on Lord Henniker’s Bill by the ignorant assailants of the humanitarian party might equally have been showered on Dr. Lyon Playfair’s. But Lord Henniker’s Bill contemplates making physiological and pathological experiments on living animals, even under complete anæsthesia, illegal, except under the same responsibility and on the same conditions as those experiments which are not, and cannot be, conducted under complete anæsthesia,—while Dr. Lyon Playfair leaves all experiments conducted under anæsthetics,—and will practically, though not theoretically, leave, we fear, those which only PROFESS to be so conducted (a very different thing),—as utterly without restriction as they now are. Indeed, it attempts no sort of limitation upon them. If a whole hecatomb of guinea-pigs, or even dogs, were known to be imported, and their carcases exported daily from the private house of any man who declared that he always used anæsthetics, Dr. Playfair’s Bill provides, we believe, no sort of machinery by which the truth of his assertion could be even tested.... It is, however, no small matter to have obtained this clear admission on scientific authority that the victimisation of animals in the interest of science is an evil of a growing and serious kind which needs legislative interference, and calls for at least the threat of serious penalties....” In short, the Bill promoted by the physiologists and Mr. Darwin, was, like the Resolutions of the Liverpool British Association, a “Pious Opinion” or Brutum fulmen. Nothing more. The Royal Commission on Vivisection was issued, as I have said, on the 22nd June, 1875, and the Report was dated January 8th, 1876. The intervening months were filled with anxiety. I heard constantly all that went on at the Commission, and my hopes and fears rose and fell week by week. Of the constitution of the Commission much might be said. Writing of it in the British Friend, May, 1876, the late Mr. J. B. Firth, M.P., Q.C., remarked:— “If it were possible for a Royal Commission to be appointed to inquire into the practice of Thuggee, I should have very little confidence in their report if one-third of the Commissioners were prominent practisers of the art. On the same principle the constitution of this Commission is open to the observation that it included two notorious advocates of vivisection, Dr. Erichsen and Professor Huxley, both of whom had to ‘explain’ their writings and practices in connection with it, in the course of the inquiry.” Certain it is, as I heard at the time, and as anyone may verify by looking over the Minutes of Evidence, these two able gentlemen acted, not as Judges on the Bench examining evidence dispassionately, but as exceedingly vigorous and keen-eyed Counsel for the Physiologists. On the humanitarian side there was but a single pronounced opponent of Vivisection,—Mr. R. H. Hutton,—who nobly sacrificed his time for half a year to doing all that was in the power of a single Member of the Commission, and he a layman, to elicit the truth concerning the alleged cruelty of the practice. At the end, after receiving a mass of evidence in answer to 3,764 questions from 53 witnesses, the Commission reported distinctly in favour of legislative interference. They say:— “Even if the weight of authority on the side of legislative interference had been less considerable, we should have thought ourselves called upon to recommend it by the reason of the thing. It is manifest that the practice is, from its very nature, liable to great abuse, and that since it is impossible for society to entertain the idea of putting an end to it, it ought to be subjected to due regulation and control.... It is not to be doubted that inhumanity may be found in persons of very high position as physiologists.... Beside the cases in which inhumanity exists, we are satisfied that there are others in which carelessness and indifference prevail to an extent sufficient to form a ground for legislative interference.” Yet in the face of these and other weighty sentences to the same purpose, it has been persistently asserted that the Royal Commission exonerated English physiologists from all charge of cruelty! In Mr. Darwin’s celebrated letter to Professor Holmgren, of Upsala, published in the Times, April, 1881, he said: “The investigation of the matter by a Royal Commission proved that the accusations made against our English physiologists were false.” Commenting on this letter the Spectator, April 23rd, 1881 (doubtless Mr. Hutton himself) observed: “The Royal Commission did not report this. They came to no such conclusion, and though that may be Mr. Darwin’s own inference from what they did say, it is only his inference, not theirs. In our opinion it was proved that very great cruelty had been practised, with hardly any appreciable results, by more than one British physiologist.” Nor must it be left out of sight in estimating the disingenuousness of the advocates of vivisection, that the above quoted sentences from the Report of the Commission were countersigned by those representatives of Science, Prof. Huxley and Mr. Erichsen; as were, of course, also the subsequent paragraphs, formally recommending a measure almost identical with Lord Carnarvon’s Bill. In spite of this the Vivisecting clique has not ceased to assert that English physiologists were exculpated, and to protest against the measure which we introduced in strict accordance with that recommendation; a measure which was even still further mitigated, (as regarded freedom to the vivisectors,) under the pressure of their Deputation to the Home Office, till it became the present quasi ineffectual Act. While the Royal Commission was still sitting in the autumn, and when it had become obvious that much would remain to be done before any effectual check could be placed on Vivisection, Dr. Hoggan suggested to me that we should form a Society to carry on the work. I abhorred Societies, and knew only too well the huge additional labour of working the machinery of one, over and above any direct help to the object in view. I had hitherto worked independently and freely, taking always the advice of the eminent men who were so good as to counsel me at every step. But I felt that this plan could not suffice much longer, and that the authority of a formally constituted Society was needed to make headway against an evil which daily revealed itself as more formidable. Accordingly I agreed with Dr. Hoggan that we should do well to form such a Society, he and I being the Honorary Secretaries, provided we could obtain the countenance of some men of eminence to form the nucleus. “I will write,” I said, “to Lord Shaftesbury and to the Archbishop of York. If they will give me their names, we can conjure with them. If not, I will not undertake to form a Society.” I wrote that night to those two eminent persons. I received next day from Lord Shaftesbury a telegram (which he must have dispatched instantly on receiving my letter) which answered “Yes.” Next day the post brought from him the letter which I shall here print. The next post brought also the letter from Archbishop Thomson. Thus the Society consisted for two days of Lord Shaftesbury, the Archbishop, Dr. Hoggan and myself! “Lord Shaftesbury to Miss F. P. C. “St. Giles’s House, Cranbourne, Salisbury, “November 17th, 1875. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “It is needful I am sure, to found a Society, in order to have unity and persistency of action. “I judge, by the terms of the circular, that the object of the Society will be restriction and not prohibition. “Possibly, this end is as much as you will be able to attain. Prohibition, I doubt not, would be evaded; but restriction will, I am certain, be exceeded. “Not but that a little is better than nothing. “But you will find many who will think with much show of reason, that, by surrendering the principle, you have surrendered the great argument. “Faithfully yours, Shaftesbury.” “Bishopthorpe, York, “November 16th, 1875. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “I am quite ready to join the Society for restricting Vivisection. I agree with you; total prohibition would be impossible. “I am, yours very truly, “W. Ebor.” With these names to “conjure with,” as I have said, we found it easy to enrol a goodly company in the ranks of our new Society. Cardinal Manning was one of the first to join us. On the 2nd Dec., 1875, the first Committee meeting was held in the house of Dr. and Mrs. Hoggan, 13, Granville Place, Portman Square, Mr. Stansfeld taking the chair. Mrs. Wedgwood, wife of Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood and mother of my friend Miss Julia Wedgwood, was present at that first meeting, and (so long as her health permitted,) at those which followed,—a worthy example of “heredity,” since her father and mother, Sir James and Lady Mackintosh, had been among the principal supporters of Richard Martin, and founders of the R.S.P.C.A. At the third meeting of the Committee, on Feb. 18th, 1876, Lord Shaftesbury took the Chair, for the first time, and again he took it on the occasion of a memorable meeting on the 1st of March, but vacated it on the arrival of Archbishop Thomson, who proved to be an admirably efficient Chairman. We had a serious job, that day; that of discussing the “Statement” of our position and objects. I had drafted this Statement in preparation, as well as compiled from the Minutes of Evidence, a series of Extracts exhibiting the extension and abuses of Vivisection; and also evidence regarding Anæsthetics and regarding foreign physiologists. These appendices were all accepted and appear in the pamphlet; but my Statement was most minutely debated, clause for clause, and at last adopted, not without several modifications. After summarising the Report of the Royal Commission which “has been in some respects seriously misconstrued” (I might add, persistently misconstrued ever since) and also Mr. Hutton’s independent Report, in which he desired that the “Household Animals” should be exempted from Vivisection, the Committee carefully criticise this Report and express their confident hope that “a Bill may be introduced immediately by Government to carry out the recommendations of the Commission.” They observe, in conclusion, that they find “a just summary of their sentiments in Mr. Hutton’s expression of his view:— “‘The measure will not at all satisfy my own conceptions of the needs of the case, unless it result in putting an end to all experiments involving not merely torture but anything at all approaching thereto.’” Such was our attitude at that memorable date when we commenced the regular steady work which has now gone on for just 18 years. On the 2nd or 3rd of March I took possession of the offices where so large a part of my life was henceforth to be spent. When my kind colleagues had left me and I locked the outer door of the offices and knew myself to be alone, I resolved very seriously to devote myself, so long as might be needful, to this work of trying to save God’s poor creatures from their intolerable doom; and I resolved “never to go to bed at night leaving a stone unturned which might help to stop Vivisection.” I believe I have kept that resolution. I commend it to other workers. It may interest the reader to know who were the persons then actually aiding and supporting our movement. There was,—first and most important,—my colleague and friend Dr. George Hoggan, who laboured incessantly (and wholly gratuitously) for the cause. His wife, Dr. Frances Hoggan, who I am thankful to say, still survives, was also a most useful member of the Committee. The other Members of the Executive were: Sir Frederick Elliot, K.C.M.G. who had long been Permanent Secretary at the Colonial Office; Major-General Colin Mackenzie, a noble old hero of the Afghan wars and the Mutiny; Mr. Leslie Stephen; Mrs. Hensleigh Wedgwood; Dr. Vaughan (the late Master of the Temple); the Countess of Portsmouth; the Countess of Camperdown; my friend Miss Lloyd; my cousin, Mr. Locke, M.P., Q.C.; Mr. William Shaen; Col. (now Sir Evelyn) Wood; and Mr. Edward de Fonblanque. The latter gentleman was one of the most useful members of the Committee, whose retirement three years later after our adoption of a more advanced policy, I have never ceased to regret. Beside these Members of the Committee we had then as Vice-Presidents, the Archbishop of York, the Marquis of Bute, Cardinal Manning, Lord Portsmouth, Mr. Cowper-Temple (afterwards Lord Mount-Temple), Right Hon. James Stansfeld, Lord Shaftesbury, the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol (Dr. Ellicott), the Bishop of Manchester (Dr. Fraser), Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, and the Lord Chief Baron, Sir Fitzroy Kelly. Dr. Hoggan had invited Mr. Spurgeon to join our Society, but received from him the following reply:— “Rev. C. H. Spurgeon to Dr. Hoggan. “Nightingale Lane, Clapham, “Dec. 24th. “Dear Sir, “I do not like to become an officer of a Society for I have no time to attend to the duties of such an office, and it strikes me as a false system which is now so general, which allows names to appear on Committees and requires no service from the individuals. “In all efforts to spare animals from needless pain I wish you the utmost success. There are cases in which they must suffer, as we also must, but not one pang ought to be endured by them from which we can screen them. “Yours heartily, “C. H. Spurgeon. “I shall aid your effort in my own way.” Mr. Spurgeon wrote on one occasion a letter to Lord Shaftesbury to be read from the Chair at a Meeting; but, much as we wished to use it, the extreme strength of the expletives was considered to transgress the borders of expediency! We invited Prof. Rolleston to give us his support. The following was his reply:— “Oxford, Nov. 28th, 1875. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “I would have answered your letter before had I been able to make up my mind to do as you ask. This, however, I think I should not, in the interests of the line of legislation which I advocate, do well to do. I believe I speak with greater weight from keeping an independent position. And as I have a great desire to throw away none of the advantages which that position gives me, I am obliged to decline your invitation. Allow me to say that I am much gratified by your writing to ask me to do what I decline to do out of considerations of expediency. “It is also a great pleasure to me to think that what I said at Bristol has met with your approbation. The bearing of parts at the end or towards the end of that Address upon the future of Vivisection was, I hope, tolerably obvious. “I am, “Yours very truly, “George Rolleston.” The newly-formed Society had been clumsily named by Dr. Hoggan: “The Society for Protection of Animals liable to Vivisection,” and its aim was: “to obtain the greatest possible protection for animals liable to vivisection.” I was obliged to yield to my colleague as regarded this awkward title which exactly defined the position he desired to take up; but it was a constant source of worry and loss to us. As soon as possible, however, after we had taken our offices in Victoria Street, I called our Society, unofficially and for popular use, simply “The Victoria Street Society.” These offices are large and handsome, and so conveniently situated that the Society has retained them ever since. They are on the first floor of a house—formerly numbered “1,” now numbered “20,”—in Victoria Street, ten or eleven doors up the street from the Broad Sanctuary and the Westminster Palace Hotel; and with Westminster Abbey and the Towers of the Houses of Parliament in view from the street door. The offices contain an ante-room (now piled with our papers), a large airy room with two windows for the clerks, a Secretary’s private room, and a spacious and lightsome Committee-room with three windows. Out of this last another room was accessible, which at one time was taken for my especial use. I put up bookshelves, pictures, curtains, and various little feminine relaxations, and thus covered, as far as might be, the frightful character of our work, so that friends should find our office no painful place to visit. We did not let the grass grow under our feet after we had settled down in these offices. On the 20th March there went out from them to the neighbouring Home Office a Deputation to Mr. (now Lord) Cross to urge the Government to bring in a Bill in accordance with the recommendations of the Royal Commission. The Deputation was headed by Lord Shaftesbury, and included the Earl of Minto, Cardinal Manning, Mr. Froude, Mr. Mundella, Sir Frederick Elliot, Col. Evelyn Wood, and Mr. Cowper-Temple. Mr. Carlyle was to have joined the Deputation, but held back sooner than accompany the Cardinal. Chief Baron Kelly wrote us the following cordial expressions of regret for non-attendance:— “Western Circuit, Winchester, “4th March, 1876. “The Lord Chief Baron presents his compliments to Miss Cobbe, and very greatly regrets that, being engaged at the assize on the Western Circuit until nearly the middle of April, he will be unable to accompany the deputation to Mr. Cross on the subject of Vivisection, to which, however, he earnestly wishes success.” We had invited Canon Liddon, who was a subscriber to our funds from the first, to join this Deputation, but received from him the following reply: “Amen Court, 6th March, 1876. “My dear Miss Cobbe, “I should be sincerely glad to be able to obey your kind wishes in the matter of the proposed Deputation, if I could. But I am unable to be in London again between to-morrow and April 1st, and this, I fear will make it impossible. “I shall be sincerely glad to hear that the Deputation succeeds in persuading the Home Secretary to make legislation on the Report of the Vivisection Commission a Government question. Mr. Hutton appeared to me to resist the —— criticisms of the Times on the Report very admirably! “Thanking you for your note, “I am, my dear Miss Cobbe, “Yours very truly, “H. P. Liddon.” A few weeks afterwards when I invited him to attend a meeting he wrote again a letter, to the last sentence of which I desire to call attention as embodying the opinion of this eminent man on the human moral interest involved in our crusade. “Christ Church, Oxford, “May 22nd, 1876. “My dear Miss Cobbe, “I sincerely wish that I could obey your summons. But, as a professor here, I have public duties on Thursday, the 1st of June, which I cannot decline or transfer to other hands. “I think I told you I was a useless person for these good purposes; and so, you see, it is. “Still you are very well off in the way of speakers, and will not miss such a person as I. Heartily do I hope that the meeting may reward the trouble you have taken about it by strengthening Lord Carnarvon’s hands. The cause you have at heart is of even greater importance to human character than to the physical comfort of those of our ‘fellow creatures’ who are most immediately concerned. “I am, my dear Miss Cobbe, “Yours very truly, “H. P. Liddon.” The Deputation of March 20th to the Home Office was most favourably received, and our Society was invited to submit to Government suggestions respecting the provisions of the intended Bill. These suggestions were framed at a Committee held at our office on the 30th March, and they were adopted by Government after being approved by its official advisers, and presented by Lord Carnarvon in the House of Lords. The second reading took place on the 22nd May. On that occasion Lord Coleridge made a most judicious speech in defence of the Bill, and Lord Shaftesbury the long and beautiful one reprinted in our pamphlet, “In Memoriam.” The next morning all the newspapers came out with leading articles in praise of the Bill. It is hard now to realise that, previous to undergoing the medical pressure which has twisted the minds—(or at least the pens)—of three-fourths of the press, even the great paper which has been our relentless opponent for 17 years was then our cordial supporter. Everything at that time looked fair for us. The Bill, as we had drafted it, did, practically, fulfil Mr. Hutton’s aspiration. No experiment whatever under any circumstances was permitted on a dog, cat, horse, ass, or mule; nor any on any other animal except under conditions of complete anæsthesia from beginning to end. The Bill included Licenses, but no Certificates dispensing with the above provisions. Our hopes of carrying this bill seemed amply justified by the reception it received from the House of Lords and the Press; and from a great Conference of the R.S.P.C.A. and its branches, held on the 23rd May. We held our first General Meeting at Westminster Palace Hotel on the 1st June and resolutions in support of the Bill were passed enthusiastically; Lord Shaftesbury presiding, and the Marquis of Bute, Lord Glasgow, Cardinal Manning and others speaking with great spirit. It only needed, to all appearance, that the Bill should be pushed through its final stage in the Lords and sent down to the House of Commons, to secure its passage intact that same Session. At this most critical moment, and through the whole month of June, Lord Carnarvon, in whose hands the Bill lay, was drawn away from London and occupied by the illness and death of Lady Carnarvon. No words can tell the anxiety and alarm this occasioned us, when we learned that a large section of the medical profession, which had so far seemed quiescent if not approving, had been roused by their chief wire-puller into a state of exasperation at the supposed “insult” of proposing to submit them to legal control in experimenting on living animals, (as they were already subjected to it, by the Anatomy Act, in dissecting dead bodies). These doctors, to the number of 3,000, signed a Memorial to the Home Secretary, calling on him to modify the Bill so as practically to reverse its character, and make it a measure, no longer protecting vivisected animals from torture, but vivisectors from prosecution under Martin’s Act. This Memorial was presented on the 10th July by a Deputation, variously estimated at 300 and at 800 doctors, who, in either case, were sufficiently numerous to overflow the purlieus of the Home Office and to overawe Mr. Cross. On the 10th of August the Bill—essentially altered in submission to the medical memorialists—was brought by Mr. Cross into the House of Commons, and was read a second time. On the 15th August, 1876, it received the Royal Assent and became the Act 39–40 Vict., c. 77, commonly called the “Vivisection Act.” The world has never seemed to me quite the same since that dreadful time. My hopes had been raised so high to be dashed so low as even to make me fear that I had done harm instead of good, and brought fresh danger to the hapless brutes for whose sake, as I realised more and more their agonies, I would have gladly died. I was baffled in an aim nearer to my heart than any other had ever been, and for which I had strained every nerve for many months; and of all the hundreds of people who had seemed to sympathise and had signed our Memorials and petitions, there were none to say: “This shall not be!” Justice and Mercy seemed to have gone from the earth. We left London,—the Session and the summer being over, and came as usual to Wales; but our enjoyment of the beauty of this lovely land had in great measure vanished. Even after twenty years my friend and I look back to our joyous summers before that miserable one, and say, “Ah! that was when we knew very little of Vivisection.” In my despair I wrote several letters of bitter reproach to the friends in Parliament who had allowed our Bill to be so mutilated as that the British Medical Journal crowed over it, as affording full liberty to “science”; and I also wrote to several newspapers saying that after this failure to obtain a reasonable restrictive Bill, I, for one, should labour henceforth to obtain total prohibition. In reply to my letter (I fear a very petulant one) Lord Shaftesbury wrote me this full and important explanation which I commend to the careful reading of such of our friends as desire now to rescind the Act of 1876. “Castle Wemyss, Wemyss Bay, N.B., “Aug. 16th, 1876. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “Until we shall have seen the Act in print we cannot form a just estimate of the force of the amendments. Some few, so I see by the papers, were introduced in Committee, after my last interview with Mr. Cross; but of their character I know nothing. I am disposed, however, to believe that he would not have admitted anything of real importance. “Mr. Cross’s difficulties were very great at all times; but they increased much as the Session was drawing to a close. The want of time, the extreme pressure of business, the active malignity of the Scientific men, and the indifference of his Colleagues, left the Secretary of State in a very weak and embarrassing position. “Your letter, which I have just received, asks whether ‘the Bill cannot be turned out in the House of Lords?’ The reply is that, whether advisable or unadvisable, it cannot now be done, for the Parliament is prorogued. “In the Bill as submitted to me, just before the second reading at a final interview with Mr. Cross, Mr. Holt and Lord Cardwell being present, some changes were made which I by no means approved. But the question, then, was simply, ‘The Bill as propounded, or no Bill,’ for Mr. Cross stoutly maintained that, without the alterations suggested, he had no hope of carrying anything at all. I reverted, therefore, to my first opinion, stated at the very commencement of my co-operation with your Committee, that it was of great importance, nay indispensable, to obtain a Bill, however imperfect, which should condemn the practice, put a limit on the exercise of it, and give us a foundation on which to build amendments hereafter as evidence and opportunity shall be offered to us. “The Bill is of that character. I apprehended that if there were no Bill then, there would be none at any time. No private Member, I believe, and I still believe, could undertake such a measure with even a shadow of hope and there was more than doubt, whether a Secretary of State would, again, entangle himself with so bitter and so wearisome a question in the face of all Science, and the antipathies of most of his Colleagues. Public sympathy would have declined, and would not have easily been aroused a second time. The public sympathy at its best, was only noisy, and not effective; and this assertion is proved by the few signatures to petitions, compared with the professed feeling; and by the extreme difficulty to raise any funds in proportion to the exigency of the case. “The evidence, too, given to the Commission, which was, after all, our main reliance, would have grown stale; and, the Physiologists would have taken good care that, for some time at least, nothing should transpire to take its place. “We have gained an enactment that Experiments shall be performed by none but Licensed Persons, thereby excluding, should the Act be well enforced, the host of young students and their bed-chamber practices. “We have gained an enactment that all experiments shall be performed under the influence of Anæsthetics;[[33]] and, thirdly, the greatest enactment of all, that the Secretary of State is responsible for the due execution of all these provisions in Parliament, and in his Office, instead of the College of Physicians, or some such unreachable, and intangible Body, as many Secretaries of State, except Mr. Cross, would have evasively, appointed. “This provision under the Statutes, so unexpected, and valuable, could have been suggested to Parliament by a Secretary of State only, and I feel sure that no Secretary of State in any ‘Liberal’ Administration would listen to the proposal; and I very much doubt whether Mr. Cross himself, had his present Bill been rejected, would have, in the case of a new Bill, repeated his offer of making it a measure for which the Cabinet has to answer. “I have seen your letter to the Echo and the Daily News. You are quite justified in your determination to agitate the country on the subject of vivisection, and obtain, if it be possible, the total abolition of it. Such an issue may be within reach, and it is only by experience that we can ascertain how far such a blessed consummation is practicable. You will have a good deal of sympathy with your efforts, and from no one more than from myself. “Yours truly, “Shaftesbury.” When we all returned to town in October, the Committee placed on the Minutes a letter from me, saying that I could only retain the office of Honorary Secretary if the Society should adopt the principle of total prohibition. A circular was sent out calling for votes on the point, and by the 22nd November, 1876, the Resolution was carried, “That the Society would watch the existing Act with a view to the enforcement of its restrictions and its extension to the total prohibition of painful experiments on animals.” In February, 1877, the Committee, to my satisfaction, unanimously agreed to support Mr. Holt’s Bill for total prohibition; and in aid thereof exhibited on the hoardings of London 1,700 handbills and 300 posters, which were enlarged reproductions of the illustrations of vivisection from the Physiological Hand-books. These posters certainly were more effective than as many thousands of speeches and pamphlets; and the indignation of the scientific party sufficiently proved that such was the case. On the 27th April we held our second annual meeting in support of Mr. Holt’s Bill, and had for speakers Lord Shaftesbury, the good Bishop of Winchester Dr. Harold-Browne, (now, alas! dead), Lord Mount-Temple, Prof. Sheldon Amos, Cardinal Manning, and Prince Lucien Bonaparte. The last remarkable man and erudite scholar (who most closely resembled his uncle in person, if we could imagine Napoleon I. commanding only armies of books!), was, from first to last, a warm friend of our cause. After this meeting we elected him Vice-President and here is his letter of acknowledgment:— “Prince Lucien Bonaparte to Miss F. P. C. “6, Norfolk Terrace, Bayswater, “4th May, 1877. “My dear Miss Cobbe, “I feel highly honoured at being nominated one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society for Protection of Animals liable to vivisection, and ask you to return the Committee my best thanks. “I am a great admirer of a Society which, like yours, opposes so strongly the abominable practice of vivisection, because for my own part, I consider it, even in its mildest form, as a shame to Science, a dishonour to modern civilisation, and (what I think more important) a great offence against the law of God. “Believe me, my dear Miss Cobbe, “Yours very sincerely, “L. Bonaparte.” Here are some further letters concerned with that meeting or written to me soon afterwards:— “Christ Church, Oxford, “March 26th, 1877. “My dear Miss Cobbe, “I beg to thank you sincerely for your kind letter. “So far as I can see there is, I fear, little chance of my being at liberty to take part in the proceedings on the 27th of April. “However, with the names which you announce, you will be more than able to dispense with any assistance that I could lend to the common object. You will, I trust, be able to strengthen Mr. Holt’s hands. If what I have heard of his measure is at all accurate, it seems to be at once moderate and efficient. “I was much struck by an observation which you were, I think, said to have made the other day at Bristol, to the effect that as matters now stand everything depends upon the discretion, or rather, upon the moral sympathies of the Home Secretary. Mr. Cross, I believe, would always do well in all such matters. But it does not do to reckon with the Roman Empire as if it were always to be governed by a Marcus Aurelius. “I am, my dear Miss Cobbe, “Yours very truly, “H. P. Liddon.” “House of Commons, “26th March. “Dear Miss Cobbe, “I am sorry I cannot undertake to speak at your meeting on the 27th April. I am not sure that I shall be in London on that day, but request you to send me any notice of the meeting. “My time and strength are somewhat overtaxed owing to an inability, and I may add indisposition, to say No when I think I may be useful. I am, however, I can assure you, in sympathy with you in your attempt to put down torture in every form. “I am, yours very sincerely, “S. Morley.” (Samuel Morley, M.P.) “My dear Miss Cobbe, “I will come in at some stage of your proceedings. I am bound first to Convocation—and am engaged at Kingston before 5. “What I should like would be to thank Lord Shaftesbury; but this must depend on the time that I come, and that must depend on the exigencies of Convocation. “Yours truly, “A. P. Stanley. (The Dean of Westminster.) “April 25th, 1877.” “My dear Miss Cobbe, “I am very sorry that through absence from home my answer to your note has been delayed. I shall not be able to take part in your meeting on the 27th, for I am not in a state of health to take part in any public meeting; but if I am at all able I should like much to attend it and hear for myself the views of the speakers. I have not expressed publicly any opinion on the question of Vivisection, being anxious at first to await the determination of the Commission, and then to see how the restrictions were likely to work. “I confess that my own mind is leaning very strongly to the conclusion that there is no safe, right course other than entire prohibition. The more I think of it the more I dread the brutality which in spite of the influence of the best men will inevitably be developed in our young Experimenters, in these days of almost fanatical devotion to scientific research. It seems to me to more than counterbalance the physical advantages to our sick what may grow out of the practice of vivisection. “And I am very sceptical about these physical advantages. I doubt whether the secrets of nature can be successfully discovered by torture, any more than the secrets of hearts. We have abandoned the one endeavour, finding the results to be by no means worth the cost. I am persuaded that we shall soon, for the same reason, have to abandon the other. “I am not able, as I say, to take part in a meeting, but as soon as I am able I intend to preach on the subject, and if you can forward to me any information which will be useful I shall be much obliged to you. Believe me “Ever my dear Miss Cobbe, “Yours very faithfully, “J. Baldwin Brown.” (Rev. J. B. Brown.) By this time there were two other Anti-vivisection Societies in London, beside Mr. Jesse’s Society at Macclesfield, all working for total prohibition; and though of course we had various small difficulties and rivalries in the course of time, yet practically we all helped each other and the cause. Eventually the International Society, of which Mr. and Mrs. Adlam were the spirited leaders, coalesced with ours and added to our Committee several of its most valuable members including our present much respected Chairman, Mr. Ernest Bell. The London Anti-vivisection Society, though I expended all my blandishments on it, has never consented to amalgamation, but has done a great work of its own for which we have all reason to hold it in honour. The revolt against the cruelties of science spread also about this time to the continent. Baron Weber read his Torture Chamber of Science in Dresden, and created thereby a great sensation, followed by the formation of the German League, of which he is President, and the foundation of its organ, the Thier-und-Menschen-Freund, edited by Dr. Paul Förster, now a member of the Reichstag. Other Anti-vivisection Societies were founded then or in subsequent years in Hanover, in Berlin, and in Stockholm. In Copenhagen those devoted friends of animals, M. and Mdme. Lembcké, had long contended vigorously against the local vivisector, Panum. In Italy the Florence Società Protettrice, of which our Queen is Patroness and Countess Baldelli the indefatigable Hon. Sec., has steadily worked against vivisection from its foundation; and so has the Torinese Society of which Dr. Riboli is President and Countess Biandrate Morelli the leading member. In Riga there has also been a persevering movement against Vivisection by the excellent Society of which the Anwalt der Thiere is the (first-class) organ, and Madame V. Schilling the presiding spirit. In short, by the end of the decade, though we had been so cruelly defeated, we were conscious that our movement had extended and had become to all appearance one of those permanent agitations, which, once begun, go on till the abuses which aroused them are abolished. In America the movement only took definite shape in February, 1883, when, under the auspices of the indefatigable Mrs. White, the American Anti-vivisection Society was founded at Philadelphia; to be followed up by its most flourishing Illinois Branch, carried on with immense spirit by Mrs. Fairchild Allen. Mr. Peabody and Mr. Greene have since established at Boston the New England Anti-vivisection Society, which has already become one of our most powerful allies. On the 2nd May, Mr. Holt’s Bill for total prohibition was debated in the House of Commons, and on a division there were 83 votes in its favour and 222 against it. At last the Committee of the Victoria Street Society formally adopted the thoroughgoing policy; and at a Meeting, August 7th, 1878, resolved “to appeal henceforth to public opinion in favour of the total prohibition of Vivisection.” We then changed our title to that of the Society for Protection of Animals from Vivisection. Dr. Hoggan and his wife, Mrs. Hoggan, M.D., and also Mr. de Fonblanque retired from the Committee with cordial goodwill on both sides, and the Archbishop of York withdrew from the Vice-Presidency. But, beside these losses, I do not believe that we had any others, and there was soon a large batch of fresh recruits of new Members who had long resented our previous half-hearted policy,—as they considered it to have been. For my own part I had accepted from the outset the assurance I received on all hands that a Bill for the total prohibition of Vivisection had not the remotest chance of passing through Parliament in the present state of public opinion; but that a Bill might be framed, which, proceeding only on the grounds of Restriction, might effectually and thoroughly exclude “not only torture but anything at all approaching thereto”; and that such a Bill had every chance of becoming law. To promote such a Bill had been my single aim and hope, and when it had been prepared and presented and received so favourably, it really appeared as if we were on the right and reasonable tack; much as we hated any concession whatever to the demands of the vivisectors. But when we found that the compromise which we proposed had failed, and that our Bill providing the minimum of protection for animals at all acceptable by their friends, was twisted into a Bill protecting their tormentors, we were driven to raise our demands to the total prohibition of the practice, and to determine to work upon that basis for any number of years till public opinion be ripe for our measure. This was one aspect of our position; but there was another. We had in truth gone into this crusade almost as our forefathers had set off for the Holy Land, with scarcely any knowledge of the Power which we were invading. We knew that dreadful cruelties had been done; but we fondly imagined they were abuses which were separable from the practice of experimenting on living animals. We accepted blindly the representation of Vivisection by its advocates as a rare resource of baffled surgeons and physicians, intent on some discovery for the immediate benefit of humanity or the solution of some pressing and important physiological problem; and we thought that with due and well considered restrictions and safeguards on these occasional experiments, we might effectually shut out cruelty. By slow, very slow degrees, we learned that nothing was much further from the truth than these fancy pictures of ideal Vivisection, and that real Vivisection is not the occasional and regretfully-adopted resource of a few, but the daily employment (Carl Vogt called it his “daily bread”) of hundreds of men and students, devoted to it as completely and professionally as butchers to cutting up carcases. Finally we found that to extend protection by any conceivable Act of Parliament to animals once delivered to the physiologists in their laboratories, was chimerical. Vivisection, we recognized at last to be a Method of Research which may be either sanctioned or prohibited as a Method, but which cannot be restricted efficiently by rules founded on humane considerations wholly irrelevant to the scientific enquiry. On the moral side also, we became profoundly impressed with the truth of the principle to which Canon Liddon refers in the letter I have quoted, viz., that the Anti-Vivisection cause is “of even greater importance to human character than to the physical comfort of our fellow-creatures who are most immediately concerned.” As I wrote of it, about this time in Bernard’s Martyrs:— “We stand face to face with a New Vice, new, at least in its vast modern development and the passion wherewith it is pursued—the Vice of Scientific Cruelty. It is not the old vice of Cruelty for Cruelty’s sake. It is not the careless brutal cruelty of the half-savage drunken drover, the low ruffian who skins living cats for gain, or of the classic Roman or modern Spaniard, watching the sports of the arena with fierce delight in the sight of blood and death. The new vice is nothing of this kind.... It is not like most other human vices, hot and thoughtless. The man possessed by it is calm, cool, deliberate; perfectly cognisant of what he is doing; understanding, as indeed no other man understands, the full meaning and extent of the waves and spasms of agony he deliberately creates. It does not seize the ignorant or hunger-driven or brutalized classes; but the cultivated, the well-fed, the well-dressed, the civilized, and (it is said) the otherwise kindly disposed and genial men of science, forming part of the most intellectual circles in Europe. Sometimes it would appear as we read of these horrors,—the baking alive of dogs, the slow dissecting out of quivering nerves, and so on,—that it would be a relief to picture the doer of such deeds as some unhappy, half-witted wretch, hideous and filthy in mien or stupified by drink, so that the full responsibility of a rational and educated human being should not belong to him, and that we might say of him, ‘He scarcely understands what he does.’ But, alas! this New Vice has no such palliations; and is exhibited not by such unhappy outcasts, but by some of the very foremost men of our time; men who would think scornfully of being asked to share the butcher’s honest trade: men addicted to high speculation on all the mysteries of the universe; men who hope to found the Religion of the Future, and to leave the impress of their minds upon their age, and upon generations yet to be born.” Regarding the matter from this point of view,—as our leaders, the most eminent philanthropists of their generation, Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Mount-Temple, Samuel Morley, and Cardinal Manning, emphatically did,—the reasons for calling for the total Prohibition of Vivisection rather than for its Restriction became actually clearer in our eyes on the side of the human moral interests than on that of the physical interests of the poor brutes. We felt that so long as the practice should be sanctioned at all, so long the Vice of Scientific Cruelty would spring up in the fresh minds of students, and be kept alive everywhere. It was therefore absolutely needful to reach the germ of the disease, and not merely to endeavour to allay the worst symptoms and outbreaks. It is the passion itself which needs to be sternly suppressed; and this can only be done by stopping altogether the practice which is its outcome, and on which it feeds and grows. But (say our opponents), “Are you prepared to relinquish all the benefits which this practice brings to humanity at large?” Our answer to them, of course, is, that we question the reality of those benefits altogether, but that, placing them at their highest estimation, they are of no appreciable weight compared to the certain moral injury done to the community by the sanction of cruelty. The discovery of the Elixir Vitæ itself would be too dearly purchased if the hearts of men were to be rendered one degree more callous and selfish than they are now. And that the practice of vivisection by a body of men at the intellectual summit of our social system, whose influence must dribble down through every stratum of society, would infallibly tend to increase such callousness, there can exist no reasonable doubt. For my own part, though believing that little or nothing worth mentioning has been discovered for the Healing Art through Vivisection, and that Dr. Leffingwell is right in saying that “if agony could be measured in money, no Mining Company in the world would sanction prospecting in such barren regions,” I yet deprecate the emphasis which many of our friends have laid on this argument against vivisection. We have gone off our rightful ground of the simple moral issues of the question and have seemed to admit (what very few of us would deliberately do) that if some important discovery had been made by Vivisection, our case against it would be lost or weakened. I have been so anxious to warn our friends against this, as I think, very grave mistake in tactics, that I circulated some time ago a little Parable which I may as well summarize here:— “A party of Filibusters once proposed to ravage a neighbouring island, inhabited by poor and humble people who had always been faithful servants and friends of our country, and had in no way deserved ill-treatment. Some friends of justice protested that the Filibusters ought to be prohibited from carrying on their expedition, but unluckily they did not simply arraign the moral lawfulness of the project, but went on to discuss the inexpediency of the invasion, arguing that the island was very poor and barren, and would not repay the cost of conquest. Here the Filibusters saw their advantage and broke in: ‘No such thing! We are the only people who know anything about the island, and we assure you it is full of mines of gold and silver.’ ‘Bosh!’ replied the just men; ‘we defy you to show us a single nugget.’ On this there was a good deal of shuffling of feet among the Filibusters, and they exhibited some glittering fragments as gold, but being tested these proved to be worthless, and again other fragments which they produced were traced to quite another part of the district, far away from the island. Still it became evident that the Filibusters would go on interminably bringing up specimens, and some day might possibly produce one the value of which could not be well disputed. Moreover the Filibusters (who, like other pirates, were addicted to telling fearful yarns) had the great advantage of talking all along of things they had studied and seen, whereas the men of the party of justice were imperfectly informed about the resources of the island, having never gone thither, and thus they were easily placed at a disadvantage and made to appear foolish. It is true that the Filibusters had set them on the wrong track by clamouring for the invasion on the avowed ground of the spoil they should gather for the nation, and they had only tried to nullify the effect of such appeals to general selfishness by showing that there was really no spoil to be had; and that the invasion was a blunder as well as a crime. But in bandying such appeals to expediency they had put themselves in the wrong box; because to discuss the value of the spoil was, by implication to admit that, if it only were rich, it might possibly be justifiable to go and seize it!” I have made this long explanation of our policy, because I am painfully aware that among practical people and men of the world, accustomed to compromise on public questions, our adoption of the demand for total prohibition has placed us at a great disadvantage as “irreconcilables;” and our movement has appeared as the “fad” of enthusiasts and fanatics. For the reasons I have given above I think it will appear that while compromise offered any hope of protecting our poor clients from the very worst cruelties, we tried it frankly and in earnest; first in Lord Henniker’s and secondly in Lord Carnarvon’s Bill. When this last effort failed we were left no choice but either to abandon our dumb friends to their fate, or demand for them the removal of the source of their danger. It will not be necessary for me to recount further with as much detail the history of the Victoria Street Society, of which I continued to act as Hon. Secretary till I finally left London in 1884. Abundance of other friends of animals, active and energetic, were in the field, and our movement, in spite of a score of checks and defeats, continued to spread and deepen. Campbell’s familiar line often occurred to me (with a variation)— “The cause of Mercy once begun, Though often lost is always won!” On July 15th, 1879, Lord Truro brought into the House of Lords a Bill for the Prohibition of Vivisection. It was not promoted by us, and was in many respects unfortunately managed, but our Society, of course, supported it, Lord Shaftesbury made in defence of it one of his longest speeches. I was in the House of Lords at the time, and thought that there could never be a much more affecting sight than that of the noble old man, who had pleaded so often in that “gilded chamber” for men, women and children, standing there at last in his venerable age, urging with all his simple eloquence the claims of dumb animals to mercy. Against him rose and spoke Lord Aberdare, actually (as he took pains to explain) as President of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals! The Bishop of Peterborough, Dr. Magee, afterwards Archbishop of York, also made then his unhappy speech about the rabbits and the surgical operation; (with which the inventor of that operation, Dr. Clay, said they had “no more to do than the Pope of Rome”). Only 16 Peers voted for the Bill, 97 against it. On the 16th March, 1880, Mr. Holt’s Bill for total prohibition was down for second reading in the House of Commons, but was stopped by notice of dissolution. From that time our friend, Sir Eardley Wilmot, took charge of a similar Bill promoted by our Society. Notice of it was given by Mr. Firth on the 3rd February, 1881. The second reading was postponed, first to July 13th, next to July 27th, and then that day was taken by government. In October of that year (1881) Mr. R. T. Reid took charge of our Bill, on the resignation of Sir Eardley Wilmot. The second reading was postponed on June 28th, 1882, and not till the 4th of April, 1883, after all these heart-breaking postponements and failures, there was at last a Debate. Mr. Reid and Mr. George Russell spoke admirably in favour of the Bill, but they were talked out without a division by a whole series of advocates of vivisection, of whom Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Cartwright, and Lord Playfair, were most eminent. This was the last occasion on which we have been able to obtain a debate in either House. Mr. Reid brought in his Bill again in 1884, but could obtain no day for a second reading. One touching incident of these earlier years I must not omit. Our Hon. Correspondent at the Hague, Madame van Manen-Thesingh, had written me several letters exhibiting remarkable good sense as well as ardent feeling. One day I received a short note from her telling me that she was dying; and begging me to send over some trustworthy agent at once to the Hague, if, (as she feared) I could not go to her myself. I telegraphed that I would be with her next day, and accordingly sailed that night to Flushing. When I reached her house M. van Manen received me very kindly; but as a man half bewildered with grief. His wife’s disease was cancer of the tongue, and she could no longer speak. She was waiting for me in her drawing-room. It may be imagined how affecting was our half-speechless interview. After a time M. van Manen, at a sign from his wife, unlocked a bureau and took out a large packet of papers. These he placed before her on the table and then left the room. Of course I understood this proceeding was intended to satisfy me that it was with her husband’s entire consent that Madame van Manen gave these papers to me. There were a great many of them, Dutch, Russian, and American securities of one sort or another, and she marked them off one by one on a list which she had prepared. Then she wrote down that she gave me all these, and also some laces and jewellery, to further the Anti-vivisection cause in whatever way I thought best; reserving a donation for the London Anti-vivisection Society. A few efforts to convey my gratitude and sympathy were all I could make. The dear, noble woman stood calm and brave in the immediate prospect of death in its most painful form, and all her anxiety seemed to be that the poor brutes should be effectually aided by her gifts. I left her sorrowfully, and carried her parcel in my travelling bag, first to Amsterdam for a day or two, and then to London, where having summoned our Finance Committee, I placed it in their hands. The contents (duly estimated and sold through the Army and Navy Society) realised (over and above the legacy to the London Society) about £1,350. With this sum we started the Zoophilist. The Zoophilist thus founded (May 2nd, 1881) under the editorship of Mr. Adams, then our Secretary, has of course been of enormous value to our cause. A new series began on the 1st January, 1883, which I edited till my resignation of the Hon. Secretaryship June, 1884. I also started and edited a French journal of the same size and character, Le Zoophile, from November 1st, 1883, to April, 1884, when the undertaking was abandoned, French readers having obviously found the paper too dry for their taste. Some of them also remonstrated with me against the occasional references in it to religious considerations, and I was frankly counselled by a very influential French gentleman to cease altogether to mention God,—a piece of advice which I distinctly declined to take! The late celebrated Mdlle. Deraismes sent me a beautiful article for Le Zoophile, of which I should have gladly availed myself if she would have allowed me the editorial privilege of dropping about half a page of aggressive atheism; but this, after a pretty sharp correspondence, she refused peremptorily to do. Altogether I was evidently out of touch both with my French staff and French readers. Beside these two periodicals our Society from the first issued an almost incredible multitude of pamphlets and leaflets. I should be afraid to make any calculation of the number of them and of the thousands of copies sent into circulation. My own share must have exceeded four hundred. Beside these and those of our successive Secretaries (some extremely able) we printed valuable pamphlets, Sermons and Speeches by Lord Shaftesbury, Cardinal Manning, the Lord Chief Justice, the Dean of Llandaff, Professor Ruskin, Bishop Barry, Mr. R. T. Reid, Hon. B. Coleridge, Lady Paget, Canon Wilberforce, Mr. Mark Thornhill, Mr. Leslie Stephen, the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Mackarness), Rev. F. O. Morris, Dr. Arnold, George Macdonald, Mr. Ernest Bell, Baron Weber, and (above all for scientific importance) Mr. Lawson Tait, Dr. Bell Taylor, Dr. Berdoe, and Dr. Clarke. Some of my own Anti-vivisection pamphlets were collected a few years ago and published by Messrs. Sonnenschein in a volume (crown 8vo., pp. 272) entitled the Modern Rack. Several very useful books of reference were compiled by our Secretary, Mr. Bryan, and published by the Society; notably the Vivisectors’ Directory, the English Vivisectors’ Directory, and Anti-vivisection Evidences. Of the Nine Circles, compiled for me and printed (first edition) at my expense, I shall speak presently. I must here be allowed to say that the spirited letters, pamphlets and articles by our medical allies, Dr. Berdoe, Dr. Clarke, Dr. Bowie and Dr. Arnold,—above all Dr. Berdoe’s contributions to our scientific literature, have been an immeasurable value to our cause. The day of Dr. Berdoe’s accession to our party at one of our annual meetings must ever be remembered by me with gratitude. His ability, courage and disinterestedness have been far beyond any praise I can give them. Mr. Mark Thornhill also (a distinguished Indian Civil Servant, author of The Indian Mutiny, etc.), has done us invaluable service by his calm, lucid and most convincing writings, notably “The Case against Vivisection,” and “Experiments on Hospital Patients.” Mr. Pirkis, R.N., has been for many years not only by his steady attendance at the Committee but by his unwearied exertions in preparing and disseminating anti-Pasteur literature, one of the chief benefactors of the Society. Among our undertakings on behalf of the victims of science was the prosecution of Prof. Ferrier at Bow Street on the 17th November, 1881, on the strength of certain reports in the two leading Medical Journals. We had ascertained that he had no license for Vivisection and yet we read as follows in a report of the proceedings at the International Medical Congress of 1881:— “The members were shown two of the monkeys, a portion of whose cortex had been removed by Professor Ferrier.”—British Medical Journal, 20th August, 1881. “The interest attaching to the discussion was greatly enhanced by the fact that Professor Ferrier was willing to exhibit two monkeys which he had operated upon some months previously.... “In startling contrast to the dog were two monkeys exhibited by Professor Ferrier. One of them had been operated upon in the middle of January, the left motor area having been destroyed.”—Lancet, October 8th, 1881. When the reporters who had sent in their reports to the two journals were produced, the following ludicrous examination took place in court:— Dr. Charles Smart Roy (the Reporter for the British Medical Journal) was asked— “Q. Did Professor Ferrier offer to exhibit two of the monkeys upon which he had so operated? “A. At the Congress, no. “Q. Did he subsequently? “A. No; he showed certain of the members of the Congress two monkeys at King’s College. “Q. What two monkeys? “A. Two monkeys upon which an operation had been performed. “Q. By whom? “A. By Professor Yeo” (!!) The Editor of the Lancet, Dr. Wakeley, was next examined:— Dr. Wakeley, sworn, examined by Mr. Waddy:— “Q. Are you the Editor of the Lancet? “A. I am. “Q. Can you tell me who it was furnished his Report? “A. I have the permission of the gentleman to give his name, Professor Gamgee, of Owen’s College, Manchester. “Mr. Waddy: What I should ask is that one might have an opportunity of calling Professor Gamgee. “Mr. Gully (Counsel for the defendant): We have communicated with Professor Gamgee, and I know very well he will say precisely what was said by Dr. Roy.” —Report of Trial, November 17th, 1881. The position of the Anti-vivisectionists on the occasion was, it must be confessed, like that of the simple countryman in the fair. “You lay your money that Professor Ferrier is under that cup?” “Yes, certainly! I saw both Professor Roy and Professor Gamgee put him there about five minutes ago.” “Here then, see! Hay Presto! Hocus-pocus! There is only Professor Yeo!” The group of Vivisectors and their allies, Dr. Michael Foster, Dr. Burdon-Sanderson, Dr. Ernest Hart, Prof. Ferrier, Dr. Roy and many more who filled the court, all evinced the utmost hilarity at the success of the device whereby (as a matter of necessity) the Anti-vivisection case collapsed. At last, in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1884, the truth came to light. In the Prefatory Note to a record of Experiments by David Ferrier and Gerald F. Yeo, M.D., occurs the statement:— “The facts recorded in this paper are partly the results of a research made conjointly by Drs. Ferrier and Yeo, aided by a grant from the British Medical Association, and partly of a research made by Dr. Ferrier alone, aided by a grant from the Royal Society.” The conjoint experiences are distinguished by an asterisk; and among them we find those of the two monkeys which formed the subject of the trial. Thus it stands confessed,—actually in the Transactions of the Royal Society,—that Professor Ferrier had the leading share (his name always appears first) in the experiments; and that, conjointly with Professor Yeo, he received a grant from the British Medical Association for performing the same! If after this experience we have ceased to hope much from proceedings in Courts of Justice against our antagonists, it will not be thought surprising. The Society has been frequently twitted with the failure of this prosecution, “for which” our opponents say, we “had not a tittle of evidence.” Elaborate reports in the two leading Medical journals do not, it appears, afford even “a tittle of evidence!”[[34]] Among other modes in which we endeavoured to push forward our cause, have been special appeals to win over particular churches or other bodies to adopt our principles. Enormous numbers of circulars have been addressed in this manner by our Society to the Clergy of the Church of England, and it is believed that at least 4,000 are on our side in the controversy; more than 2,000 had signed our Memorial several years ago. Another appeal was addressed by me personally to the Society of Friends through the Clerks of the Monthly and Quarterly Meetings in England and Ireland. It has proved eminently successful, and has led to the formation of a powerful “Friends’ Anti-vivisection Society,” which lately issued an appeal to other members of their body signed by 2,000 friends, many of them being among the most eminent in England. This has again formed the ground of a fresh appeal on an immense scale in Pennsylvania. Another recent appeal to the Congregationalists has, I hear, been very well received. On one occasion a special Petition to the House of Lords was signed by every Unitarian Minister in London. It was presented by the Archbishop of York, who also presented a Memorial (for Restriction) in 1876 signed by all the heads of Colleges in Oxford. Another appeal which I ventured to make (printed as a large pamphlet) to “the Humane Jews of England,” entreating them to remonstrate with the 40 German Jews who are the worst vivisectors in Europe, was, unfortunately, a deplorable failure. Four of my own private friends, Jewesses, all expressed their sympathy warmly, and sent handsome contributions to our funds; but not one other Jew or Jewess, high or low, rallied to us, albeit I presented pamphlets to nearly 200 recommended to me as specially well disposed. I shall never be tempted to address the “Humane” Jews of England again! One other circular I may mention as more successful. I sent to seven hundred Head Schoolmasters the following Letter, with which were enclosed the pamphlets mentioned therein:— “Hengwrt, Dolgelly, “September, 1886. “Dear Sir, “Permit me respectfully to ask your perusal of the accompanying little paper on ‘Physiology as a Branch of Education.’ I have written it under a strong sense of the necessity which at present exists for some similar caution. “The leaflet describing a ‘Specimen of Modern Physiological Instruction,’ refers to a scene in Paris which could not be precisely paralleled in an English school, so far as concerns the actual torture of the animals used for exhibition, since the Vivisection Act of 1876 provided that anæsthetics must be used in all cases of Vivisection for Illustration of Lectures. “It is, however, to be seriously questioned whether even painless, (and therefore not shocking), operations on living animals, performed before boys and girls, by the enthusiastic English admirers of Claude Bernard and Paul Bert, may not excite in the minds of the young witnesses a curiosity unmingled with pity, such as may subsequently prompt them to become the most merciless experimenters; or, at least, advocates and apologists of scientific cruelty. “Trusting, Sir, that you will pardon the trespass of this letter, “I am, sincerely yours, “Frances Power Cobbe.” Twelve of these Head Masters, including some of the most eminent, e.g., Mr. Welldon, of Harrow; Dr. Haig, of the Charterhouse; and the lamented Mr. Thring, of Uppingham, wrote me most interesting letters in reply expressing approval of my views. I shall here insert that of Mr. Thring as in many respects noteworthy. “Rev. Edward Thring to Miss F. P. C. “Pitlochry, Perthshire, N.B., “September 6th, 1889. “My dear Madam, “I received your little pamphlet on physiology, but I hardly know what you expect me to do. My writings on Education sufficiently show how strongly I feel on the subject of a Literary Education; or rather how confident I am in the judgment that there can be no worthy education which is not based on the study of the highest thoughts of the highest men, in the best shape. “As for Science (most of it falsely so called) if a few leading minds are excepted, it simply amounts, to the average dull worker, to no more than a kind of upper shopwork, weighing out, and labelling, and learning alphabetical formulæ; a superior Grocery-assistant’s work; and has not a single element of higher mental training in it. Not to mention that it leaves out all knowledge of man and life, and therefore is eminently fitted to train men for life and its struggles! Physiology, in its worser sense adds to this a brutalising of the average practitioner, or rather a devilish combination of intellect-worship and cruelty at the expense of feeling and character. For my part, if it were true that vivisection had wonderfully relieved bodily disease for men, if it were at the cost of lost spirits, then I should say, Let the body perish! And it is at the cost of lost spirits! I do not say that under no circumstances should an experiment take place, but I do say that under no circumstance should an experiment take place for teaching purposes. You will see how decided my judgment is on this matter. I send you three Addresses on Education, which in smaller space than my books, will illustrate the positive side of my experience and beliefs. “Yours faithfully, “Edward Thring.” Our Committee was, in all the years in which I had to do with it, the most harmonious and friendly of which I have ever heard. Lord Shaftesbury, who presided 49 times, and never once failed us when he was expected, was, of course, as all the world knows, a first-rate Chairman, getting through an immense amount of business, while allowing every member his, or her, legitimate rights of speech and voting. He never showed himself, (I have been told,) anywhere more genial and zealous than with us. Lord Mount-Temple attended very frequently, and Lady Mount-Temple from first to last has been one of our warmest and wisest friends. General Colin Mackenzie, a devout and noble old soldier, spoke little, but what he did say was always straight to the mark, and the affectionate respect we all felt for him made his presence delightful. Lady Portsmouth (now the Dowager Countess) attended in those days very regularly and Lady Camperdown has given us her unwearied help from that time to this. I have spoken of the very valuable services of Mr. E. de Fonblanque. In later years my friend Rev. William Henry Channing was a great support to me. The Cardinal was, perhaps, a little reserved, but always carefully kind and courteous, and whatever he said bore great weight. Lord Bute’s advice was very valuable and full of good sense. Mr. Shaen’s legal knowledge served us often. In brief, each member was useful. There never were any parties or cabals in the Committee. It was my business as Hon. Sec. (especially after my colleague, Dr. Hoggan, retired) to lay proposals for action before the Committee. They were sometimes rejected and often completely modified; but we all felt that the one thing we desired was simply to find the best way of forwarding our cause, and we were thankful for the guidance of the wise and experienced men who were our leaders. In short, the feelings which inspired us round that long oak office-table were not ill befitting our work; and now that so many of those who sat there beside me in the earlier years have passed from earth, I find myself pondering whether they have met “Elsewhere;” where, ere long I may join them. They must form a blessed company in any world. May my place be with them, please God! rather than with the votaries of Science, in the “secular to be.” In later years the personnel of the Committee has of course been largely renewed. Lady Mount-Temple, Lady Camperdown and Mrs. Frank Morrison almost alone remain from the earlier body. Miss Marston also, who originally founded the London Anti-vivisection Society, has been for many years one of the firmest and wisest friends of the Victoria Street Society also. I have spoken above of all that we owe to Capt. Pirkis’ unfailing help at the Committee, even while residing far out of town; and of the zeal wherewith he and his gifted wife founded the first of our Branches, and have laboured in circulating our literature. Miss Monro, Miss Rees, Miss Bryant, and Mrs. Arthur Arnold have never wearied through many years in patiently and vigorously aiding our work. Of our excellent chairman, Mr. Ernest Bell’s services to the Anti-vivisection cause it is needless for me to speak as they must be recognised gratefully by the whole party throughout England. We have had several successive Secretaries who sometimes took the work much off my hands, sometimes left it to fall very heavily on me and Miss Lloyd. On one occasion, we two, having also lost the clerk, did the entire work of the office for many weeks, inclusive of writing, editing, folding, addressing, and actually posting an issue of the Zoophilist! But my toils and many of my anxieties ended when I was fortunate enough to obtain the services, as Secretary, of Mr. Benjamin Bryan, who had long shown his genuine interest in the cause as editor of a Northern newspaper; and, after a year or two of work in concert with him, I felt free to leave the whole burden on his shoulders and tendered my resignation. The constant presence on the Committee of my long-tried and most valued allies Mr. Ernest Bell, Capt. Pirkis, and Miss Marston left me entirely at rest respecting the course of our future policy in the straight direction of Prohibition. The last event which I need record is a disagreeable incident which occurred in the autumn of 1892. I had been seriously ill with acute sciatica, and had been only partially relieved by a large subcutaneous dose of morphia given me by my country doctor. In this state, with my head still swimming and scarcely able to sit at a table, I found myself involved in the most acrimonious newspaper controversy which I ever remember to have seen in any respectable journal. It will be best that another pen than mine should tell the story, so I will quote the calm and lucid statement of the author of the excellent pamphlet, “Vivisection at the Folkestone Church Congress” (page 6). After a résumé of the notorious debate at Folkestone the writer says:— “The main point of attack in Mr. Victor Horsley’s paper was a book called the Nine Circles which had been published some months before, and contained reports of different classes of cruel experiments on animals, both in England and on the Continent. To this book Miss Cobbe had given the sanction of her name, but she was not personally responsible for any of the quotations, having intrusted the compilation of the book to friends living in London, and who had access to the journals and papers in which the experiments were recorded. Mr. Horsley’s indignation was roused because in a certain number of cases—22 out of the 170 narratives of different classes of experiments, many of them involving a series, and the use of large numbers of animals in each—the mention of the use of morphia or chloroform was omitted. Miss Cobbe, in a letter to the Times of October 11th, while acknowledging that the compilers were bound to quote the fact if stated, expressed her conviction that such statements are misleading, because insensibility is not and cannot be complete during the whole period of the experiment. Dr. Berdoe also wrote in several papers defending Miss Cobbe against Mr. Horsley’s imputations of fraud and intent to deceive, &c., and explaining that the compilers of the book were alone responsible for the omissions. He added, however, a further explanation that, as it was often the painful results, and not the operations which caused them, that it was desired to illustrate, and as these results lasted sometimes for many days or weeks or months and to maintain insensibility during that period was impossible, the omissions were not so important after all.”... “... The assailant, however, returned to the charge and in a more violent style than before. His letter to the Times of October 17th, was a tirade against Miss Cobbe, worthy, as the Spectator remarked, only of the fifteenth century, in which the words ‘false’ and ‘lie’ were freely used. It was a letter of so libellous a character that it is a matter for wonder that it obtained publication. Miss Cobbe very naturally and properly at once retired from a controversy conducted, as she expressed it in a letter to the Times, ‘outside of all my experience of civilised journalism.’ She concluded with these words: ‘I need scarcely say that I maintain the veracity of every word of the letter which you did me the honour to publish of the 15th inst., as well as the bona fides of all I have spoken or written on this or other subjects during my three-score years and ten.’” After a week or two I went to Bath to recruit my health after the attack of sciatica; and the first newspaper I took up at the York Hotel, contained a still more violent attack on me than those which had preceded it. On reading it I walked into the telegraph office next door, wired for rooms at my favourite South Kensington Hotel and went up to town with my maid, presenting myself at once to our Committee, which happened to be sitting and arranging for the impending meeting in St. James’s Hall. “Shall I attend,” said I, “and speak, or not? I will do exactly what you wish.” The Committee were unanimously of opinion that I should go to the meeting and take part in the proceedings, and I have ever since rejoiced that I did so. It was on the evening of October 27th. My ever kind friend, Canon Basil Wilberforce took the chair, Col. Lockwood, Bishop Barry, Dr. Berdoe, Mr. Bell, and Captain Pirkis were on the platform supporting me, but above all Mr. George W. E. Russell (then Under Secretary of State for India) made a speech on my behalf for which I shall feel grateful to him so long as I live. We had but slight acquaintance previously, and I shall always feel that it was a most generous and chivalrous action on his part to stand forth in so public a manner as my champion on such an occasion. The audience was more than sympathetic. There was a storm of genuine feeling when I rose to make my explanation, and I found it, for once, hard to command my voice. This is what I said, as reported in the Zoophilist, November 1st, 1892: “Now to come to the story of the Nine Circles, which I will tell as quickly as possible. When I gave up the Honorary Secretaryship of the Victoria Street Society six years ago, I retired to live among the mountains in Wales; and the chief thing which remained for me to do was to publish as many pamphlets and papers as seemed likely to help the cause. I have just got here my printer’s list of the papers which I have printed in those six years. I have made up the totals, and I find that the number in the six years of books, pamphlets, and leaflets has been 320—that is about one a week—and that 271,350 copies of them were printed; 173 papers having been written by myself. (Cheers.) Some of these were adopted by the Society and honoured by coming out under its auspices; and others I issued quite independently. Amongst those which I issued ‘on my own hook,’ I am happy to say, was this book called the Nine Circles. Therefore our dear and honoured Society is not responsible for that book. I am alone responsible; it was printed at my expense, and Messrs. Sonnenschein published it for me. Therefore, I am the only person concerned with it, and the Society has nothing to do with it. I am thankful to hear that the revised edition will come out under the auspices of the Society. My only privilege will be to pay for it, and that I shall most thankfully do, in order to wipe out the wrong I have done as concerns the present edition. When the present book was got up, I sketched a plan of it, and asked a lady often employed by us who was living in London, and is a good German scholar, to make extracts for me. She knows a great deal about the subject; she also knows German (which I do not do sufficiently for the purpose), and she was living in London while I was 200 miles away. Therefore I asked her to make the extracts of which this book is compiled, and it was afterwards revised,—as Dr. Berdoe has told us,—by him. The book came out; and it appears now that there are some mistakes in it. My assistant had left out certain things which ought to have been stated. I took it for granted,—I was quite wrong to do so,—that all my directions had been carried out, and I made myself responsible for the book. Therefore, whatever error there is in the matter is mine, and I beg that that will be quite understood. (Cheers.) But what is all this tremendous storm which has been raised, and this pulling of the house down about these mistakes? Do they wish us to understand that there are no such things as painful experiments in England? Apparently that is what they are trying to make us think—that there never has been anything of the kind; that they are perfectly incapable of putting any animal to pain. Do they really mean that? Is that what they wish us to understand? If they do not mean that, I do not know what it is they mean. It seems to me that they are raising this tremendous storm very much as if the old slave-holders were to have danced a war-dance round Mrs. Stowe and scalped her for having said that Legree had flogged Uncle Tom with a thousand lashes, when really there were only nine hundred and ninety-nine. (Laughter.) That seems to me to be the case in a nutshell.”—Zoophilist, November 1st, 1892. I had the gratification to receive soon after the following most kind Address and expression of confidence from the leading Members of the Victoria Street Society:— ADDRESS. To Miss Frances Power Cobbe, We, the undersigned, being supporters of the Victoria Street Society, and others interested in the movement against Vivisection, wish to express the strong feeling of indignation with which we have seen your integrity called in question by men who seem unable to conceive of the pure unselfish devotion of high intellectual gifts to the service of God’s humbler creatures. It is impossible for those who know anything of the early history of this movement to forget the great personal sacrifice at which you undertook to make it the chief work of your life. It is equally impossible for us who have watched its progress, to say how highly we have esteemed the indomitable courage and forcible eloquence with which you have exposed the evils inseparable from experiments on living animals. Further, we wish to record our firm conviction that you have, throughout, recognised the wisdom and the duty of founding your attack on Vivisection upon the truth, and nothing but the truth, so far as you have been able to arrive at it. We wish, in conclusion, to assure you not only of our special sympathy with you at a time when you have been subjected to a personal attack of an unusually coarse and violent character, but also of our determination to give still more earnest support to the Cause to which you have, at so great a cost, devoted yourself: Strafford (Earl of Strafford) Coleridge (Lord Chief Justice) Worcester (Marquis of Worcester) Haddington (Earl of Haddington) Arthur, Bath and Wells (Bishop of Bath and Wells) J., Manchester (Bishop of Manchester) W. Walsham, Wakefield (Bishop of Wakefield) H. B., Coventry (Bishop of Coventry) John Mitchinson (Bishop) F. Cramer-Roberts (Bishop) Edward G. Bagshawe (R. C. Bishop of Nottingham) Sidmouth (Viscount Sidmouth) Pollington (Viscount Pollington) Colville of Culross (Lord Colville of Culross) Cardross (Lord Cardross) H. Abinger (Lady Abinger) Robartes (Lord Robartes) Leigh (Lord Leigh) C. Buchan (Dow. Countess of Buchan) Harriet de Clifford (Dow. Lady de Clifford) F. Camperdown (Countess of Camperdown) Kinnaird (Lord Kinnaird) Alma Kinnaird (Lady Kinnaird) Clementine Mitford (Lady Clementine Mitford) Eveline Portsmouth (Dowager Countess of Portsmouth) Georgina Mount-Temple (Lady Mount-Temple) H. Kemball (Lady Kemball) J. Brotherton (Lady Brotherton) Evelyn Ashley (Hon. Evelyn Ashley) Bernard Coleridge (Hon. B. Coleridge, M.P.) Geraldine Coleridge (Hon. Mrs. S. Coleridge) Stephen Coleridge (Hon. Stephen Coleridge) George Duckett (Sir George Duckett, Bt.) Henry A. Hoare (Sir Henry Hoare, Bt.) Geo. F. Shaw, LL.D. Samuel Smith, M.P. Theodore Fry, M.P. George W. E. Russell, M.P. Jacob Bright, M.P. Th. Burt, M.P. Julius Barras (Colonel) Richard H. Hutton R. Payne Smith H. Wilson White, D.D., LL.D. Edward Whately (Archdeacon Whately) George W. Cox (Revd. Sir George Cox, Bart.) R. M. Grier (Prebendary Grier) Eleanor Vere C. Boyle (Hon. Mrs. R. C. Boyle) E. G. Deane Morgan (Hon. Mrs. Deane Morgan) Charles Bell Taylor, M.D. Edward Berdoe, M.R.C.S. Alex. Bowie, M.D., C.M. John H. Clarke, M.D. Henry Downes, M.D. Henry M. Duncalfe William Adamson, D.D. William Adlam Amelia E. Arnold Ernest Bell Rhoda Broughton Olive S. Bryant W. K. Burford A. Gallenga and Mrs. Gallenga Maria G. Grey Emily A. E. Shirreff Frances Holden Eleanor Mary James Francis Griffith Jones E. J. Kennedy Edith Leycester W. S. Lilly Mary Charlotte Lloyd Ann Marston Mary J. Martin S. S. Munro Frank Morrison Harriet Morrison Josiah Oldfield Rose Pender Fred. Pennington Herbert Philips Fred. E. Pirkis and Mrs. Pirkis R. Ll. Price Evelyn Price R. M. Price Lester Reed Ellen Elcum Rees J. Herbert Satchell Mark Thornhill, J.P. Looking back on this long struggle of twenty years, in which so much of my happiness and the happiness of others dearer than myself, has been engulfed, I can see that, starting from the apparently small and subordinate question of Scientific Cruelty, the controversy has been growing and widening till the whole department of ethics dealing with man’s relation to the lower animals has gradually been included in it. That this department is an obscure one, and that neither the Christian Churches nor yet philosophic moralists have hitherto paid it sufficient attention, is now admitted. That it is time that it should be carefully studied and worked out, is also clear. Sometimes I have thought (as by a law of our being we seem driven to do whenever our hearts are deeply concerned) that a Divine guidance may have presided over all the heart-breaking delays and disappointments of this weary movement; and that it has not been allowed to terminate, as it would certainly have done, had we carried our Bill of 1876 in its original form through Parliament. Then our Society would have dissolved at once; and, after a time, perhaps, the Act, however well designed, would have become more or less a dead letter; and the hydra-heads of Vivisection would have reared themselves once more. But, as it has actually happened, the delay and failure of our earlier efforts and our consequent persistence in them, have fixed attention on this culminating sin against the lower animals, and through it on all other sins against them. A great revision of opinion on the subject is undoubtedly taking place; and while some (especially Roman Catholic) Zoophilists have diligently sought in decrees and manuals and treatises of casuistry for some authority defining Cruelty to animals to be a Sin, the poverty of the results of all such investigations, and of the anxious collation of Biblical texts by Protestants, is gradually revealing the fact that, in this whole department of human duty, we must look to the God-enlightened consciences of living men rather than to the dicta of departed saints, or casuists, whose attention was directed exclusively to the relations of human beings with each other and with God, and who obviously never contemplated those which we hold to the brutes with adequate seriousness,—if at all. Of course we are here met, just as the first anti-Slavery apostles were met, and as the advocates of every fresh development of morality will be met for many a day to come, by the fundamental fallacy of the Christian Churches (in that respect resembling Islam) that there is a finality in Divine teaching, and that they have been for two thousand years in possession of the last word of God to man. Protestants are certainly not bound in any way to occupy such a position, or to assume that a final revise has ever been issued, or ever will be issued by Divine authority, of a Whole Duty of Man. Rather are they called on piously and gratefully to look for fresh light to come down, age after age, from the Father of lights: or (if they please rather so to consider it) further development of the Christian Spirit to be manifested as men learn better to incarnate it in their minds and lives. As for Theists like myself, it is natural for us and in accordance with all our opinions, to believe that such a movement as is now taking place over the civilised world on behalf of dumb animals, is a fresh Divine impulse of Mercy, stirring in thousands of human hearts, and deserving of reverent cherishing and thankful acceptance. It is my supreme hope that when, with God’s help, our Anti-vivisection controversy ends in years to come, long after I have passed away, mankind will have attained through it a recognition of our duties towards the lower animals far in advance of that which we now commonly hold. If the beautiful dream of the later Isaiah can never be perfectly realised on this planet and none may ever find that thrice “Holy Mountain” whereon they “shall not hurt nor destroy”—yet at least the time will come when no man worthy of the name will take pleasure in killing; and he who would torture an animal will be looked upon as (in the truest sense) “inhuman”; unworthy of the friendship of man or love of woman. The long-oppressed and suffering brutes will then be spared many a pang and their innocent lives made far happier; while the hearts of men will grow more tender to their own kind by cultivating pity and tenderness to the beasts and birds. The earth will at last cease to be “full of violence and cruel habitations.” September, 1898. The too confident expectations which I entertained of my permanent connection till death with the Society which I had founded and which I designed to make my heir, have alas! been disappointed. It was perhaps natural that in my long exile from London and consequent absence from the Committee, my continual letters of enquiry, advice, and (as I fondly and foolishly imagined) assistance in the work were felt to be obtrusive,—especially by the newer members. One change after another in the Constitution and in the Name of the Society, left me more or less in opposition to the ruling spirits; and before long a much more serious difference arose. The very able and energetic Hon. Sec., Hon. Stephen Coleridge, (who had entered on his office in April, 1897), after making the changes to which I have referred, proposed that we should introduce a Bill into Parliament, no longer on the old lines, asking for the Total Prohibition of Vivisection, but on quite a different basis; demanding certain “Lesser Measures,” not yet distinctly formulated, but intended to supply checks to the practical lawlessness of licensed Vivisectors. Mr. Coleridge and his brother (now Lord Coleridge), had, twelve or fourteen years before, urged me to abandon the demand for Total Prohibition, and to adopt the policy of Restriction and bring in a bill accordingly. But to this proposal I had made the most strenuous resistance, writing a long pamphlet on the Fallacy of Restriction for the purpose; and it had been (as I thought), altogether given up and forgotten. It would appear, however, that the idea remained in Mr. Coleridge’s mind,—with the modification that he now regarded “Lesser Measures” not as final Restriction, but as steps to Prohibition; and for this policy he obtained the suffrage of the majority of the Council, though not of the oldest members. The reader who will kindly glance back over the preceding pages (300–306), will see the exceeding importance I attach to the maintenance of the strict principle of Abolition,—whereby our party renounces all compromise with the “abominable sin,” and refuses to be again cheated by the hocus-pocus of Vivisectors and their deceptive anæsthetics. But an over-estimate (as it seems to me) of the importance of Parliamentary action, and certainly an under-estimate of that of the great popular propaganda whereon our hopes must ultimately rest,—a propaganda which would be paralyzed by the advocacy of half measures,—caused Mr. Coleridge and his friends to take an opposite view. After a long and, to me, heart-breaking struggle, I was finally defeated by a vote of 29 to 23, at a Council Meeting on the 9th February, 1898. The policy of Lesser Measures was adopted by the newly-christened National Society; and I and all the oldest members and founders of the Victoria Street Society sorrowfully withdrew from what we had proudly, but very mistakenly, called “our” Society. Amongst us were Mr. Mark Thornhill, Miss Marston, Mr. and Mrs. Adlam, Lady Mount-Temple, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Morrison, Lady Paget, Madame Van Eys, and Countess Baldelli. To all workers in the cause these names will stand as representing the very nucleus of the whole party since it began its life 23 years ago. The oldest and most faithful worker of all, Lady Camperdown, who had aided me with the first memorial in 1874, and who had attended the Committee from first to last, had risen from her death-bed to write a letter imploring the Chairman not to support the demand for Lesser Measures. She died before the decision was reached, and her touching letter, in spite of my entreaties, was not read to the Congress. After leaving the old Society with unspeakable pain and mortification I felt it incumbent on me, while I yet had a little strength left for work and was not wholly “played out” (as I believe I was supposed to be by the new spirits at the office) to establish some centre where the only principle on which the cause can, in my opinion, be safely maintained should be permanently established, and to which I could transfer the legacy of £10,000 which then stood in my Will bequeathed unconditionally to the Committee of the National Society. My first effort was to request the Committee of the London Anti-vivisection Society to give me such pledge as it was competent to afford that it would not promote any measure in Parliament short of Abolition. This pledge being formally refused, there remained for me no resource but to attempt once more in my old age to create a new Anti-Vivisection Society; and I resolved to call it The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, and to make it a Federation of Branch Societies, having its centre in Bristol where my staunch old fellow-workers had had their office for many years established and in first-rate order. I invited as many friends as seemed desirous of joining in my undertaking, to a private Conference here at Hengwrt; and I had the pleasure of receiving and entertaining them for three days while we quietly arranged the constitution of the new Union with the invaluable help of our Chairman, Mr. Norris, K.C., late one of the Justices of the Supreme Court, Calcutta. The British Union was, in the following month, (June, 1898), formally constituted at a public conference in Bristol; and it is at present working vigorously in Bristol and in its various Branches in Wales, Liverpool, York, Macclesfield, Sheffield, Yarmouth and London. All information concerning it and its special constitution (whereby the Branches will all profit by bequests to the Union) may be obtained by enquiry from either our admirable Hon. Sec., Mrs. Roscoe (Crete Hill, Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol); our zealous Secretary, Miss Baker, 20, Triangle, Bristol; or our Hon. Treasurer, John Norris, Esq., K.C., Devonshire Club, London. To those of my readers who may desire to contribute to the Anti-Vivisection Cause, and who have shared my views on it as set forth in my numberless pamphlets and letters, and to those specially who, like myself, intend to bequeath money to carry on the war against Scientific Cruelty, I now earnestly say as my final Counsel: SUPPORT THE BRITISH UNION! Hengwrt. In April, 1884, my friend and I quitted London, having permanently let our house in South Kensington to Mrs. Kemble. The strain of London life had become too great for me, and advancing years and narrowed income together counselled retreat in good time. I continued then and ever since, of course, to work for the Anti-vivisection cause; but I resigned my Honorary Secretaryship, June 26th, 1884, and left the entire charge of the office and of editing the Zoophilist to Mr. Bryan.[[35]] A few months later I was disturbed to hear that the Hon. Stephen Coleridge (Lord Coleridge’s second son) who had always been particularly kind and considerate towards me, had started a fund to form a farewell testimonial to me from my fellow-workers. Mr. Coleridge addressed our leading members and friends in the following letter:— “12, Ovington Gardens, S.W., “August, 1884. “Sir or Madam, “At the general meeting of the Victoria Street and International Societies for the Total Abolition of Vivisection, on the 26th June, Miss Frances Power Cobbe, for reasons set forth in the annual report, gave in her resignation of the post of Honorary Secretary, and it was accepted with deep reluctance. “The executive committee, meeting shortly afterwards unanimously passed a resolution to the effect that the occasion ought not to be passed over by the Society unrecognised, and a list of subscribers to a testimonial for Miss Cobbe has been opened. The object of this letter is to acquaint you of these facts and to afford you the opportunity of adding your name to the list should you desire to do so. “Year after year from the foundation of the Societies and before, Miss Cobbe has fought against the practice of the torture of animals with constant earnestness, conspicuous power, and enthusiasm born of a noble cause. “That testimonials are too plentiful it may perhaps be urged with truth; but many of us who deprecate the practice of Vivisection feel that such a life as this, of honour and devotion, were it to stand unrecognised and unacknowledged, would mark us as entirely ungrateful. “I remain, “Your faithful servant, “Stephen Coleridge.” (Honorary Secretary and Treasurer to the fund.) In a short space of time, I was told, a thousand pounds was collected; and it was kindly and thoughtfully expended in buying me an annuity of £100 a year. The amount of labour and trouble which all these arrangements must have cost Mr. Stephen Coleridge must have been very great indeed, and only most genuine kindness of heart and regard for me could have induced him to undertake them. I was very much startled when I heard of this gift and very unwilling to accept it, as in some degree taking away the pleasurable sense I had had of working all along gratuitously for the poor beasts, and of having sacrificed for some years nearly all my literary earnings to devote myself to their cause. My objections were over-ruled by friendly insistence, and Lord Shaftesbury presented the Testimonial to me in the following letter:— “24, Grosvenor Square, W., “February 26th, 1885. “My dear Miss Cobbe, “The Committee of the Anti-vivisection Society, and other contributors, have assigned to me the agreeable duty of requesting you to do them the kindness and the honour, to accept the accompanying Testimonial. “It expresses, I can assure you, their deep and real sense of the vast services you have rendered to the world, by the devotion of your time, your talents and indefatigable zeal, to the assertion of principles which, though primarily brought into action for the benefit and protection of the inferior orders of the Creation, are of paramount importance to the honour and security of the whole Human Race. “We heartily pray that you may enjoy all health and happiness in your retirement, which, we trust, will be but temporary. We shall frequently ask the aid of your counsels and live in hope of your speedy return to active exertion, in the career in which you have laboured so vigorously, and which you so sincerely love. “Believe me to be, “Very truly yours, “Shaftesbury.” I acknowledged Lord Shaftesbury’s letter as follows:— “Hengwrt, Dolgelly, N. Wales, “February 27th. “Dear Lord Shaftesbury, “I find it very difficult to express to you the feelings with which I have just read your letter, and received the noble gift which accompanied it. You and all the good friends and fellow-workers who have thus done me honour and kindness will have added much to the material comfort and enjoyment of such years as may remain to me; but you have done still more for me, by filling my heart with the happy sense of being cared for. “That you should estimate such work as I have been able to do so highly as your letter expresses, while it far surpasses anything I can myself think I have accomplished, yet makes me very proud and very thankful to God. “Whatever has been done by me in the way of raising up opposition to scientific cruelty has been attained only because I had the inestimable advantage of being supported and guided by you from first to last, and aided step by step by the unwearied sympathy and co-operation of my dear and generous fellow-labourers. “These words are very inadequate to convey my thanks to you for this gift and all your past goodness towards me, and those which I would fain offer through you to the Committee and all the Subscribers to this splendid Testimonial; especially to the Hon. Secretary, who has undertaken the great trouble which the collection of it must have involved. I can but repeat, I thank you and them with my whole heart. “Most sincerely, dear Lord Shaftesbury, and “Gratefully yours, “Frances Power Cobbe.” This addition to my little income made up for certain losses which I had incurred, and raised it to about its original moderate level, enabling me to share the expenses of our Welsh cottage. I was, however, of course, a poor woman, and not in a position to help my friend to live (as we both earnestly desired to do) in her larger house in Hengwrt. We made an effort to arrange it so, loving the place and enjoying the beauty of the woods and gardens exceedingly. But we knew it could not be our permanent home; and a suitable tenant having come on the field, offering to take it for a term of years which would naturally reach beyond our lives, we felt that the end of our possession was drawing near. I was very sorrowful for my own sake, and still more for that of my friend who had always had peculiar attachment to the place. I reflected painfully that if I had been only a little better off, she might not have been obliged to relinquish her proper home. All this was occupying me much. It was a Thursday morning, and the gentleman who proposed to become the tenant of Hengwrt was to come on Monday to make a definite offer which,—once accepted,—would have been held to bind my friend. I went downstairs into the old oak hall in the morning and opened the post-bag. Among the large packet of letters which usually awaits me there was one from a solicitor in Liverpool. I knew that my kind old friend Mrs. Yates had died the week before, and I had been informed that she had left me her residuary legatee; but I imagined her to be in narrow circumstances, and that a few hundreds would be the uttermost of my possible inheritance; not sufficient, at all events, to affect appreciably my available income. I opened the Solicitor’s letter very coolly and found myself to be,—so far as all my wants and wishes extend,—a rich woman. The story of this legacy is a very touching one. I never saw or heard of Mrs. Yates till a few years before her death, and when she was already very aged. She began by sending large and generous donations of £50, and £80, at a time to our Society. Later, she came up from Liverpool to London when I was managing affairs without a Secretary, and, finding me at the office, she gave me a still larger donation, actually in bank-notes. She was an Unitarian, or rather a Theist, like myself; and having taken very warm interest in my books, she seemed to be drawn to me by a double sympathy, both on account of religious sympathies, and those we shared on behalf of the vivisected animals. Of course I explained to her the details of my work, and she took the warmest interest in it. After I resigned my office of Honorary Secretary, she seemed to prefer to give her principal contributions personally to me to expend for the cause according to my judgment, and twice she sent me large sums, with strictest injunction to keep her name, and even the locality of the donor, secret. I called these gifts my Trust Fund, and made grants from it to working allies all over the world. I also spent a great deal of it in printing large quantities of papers. Of course I began by sending her a balance sheet of my expenditure; but this she forbade me to repeat, so I could only from time to time write her long letters (copied for me by my friend as my writing taxed her sight), telling her all we were doing. At last she came to see us here in answer to our repeated invitations, but could not be persuaded to stop more than one night. Talking to me out walking, she asked me: “Would I take charge of some money she wished to leave for protection of animals in Liverpool?” I answered that I could not engage to do this, and begged her to entrust it (as she eventually did) to some friend resident in the place. Then she said shyly: “Well, you do not object to my leaving you something for yourself—to my making you my residuary legatee?” adding to the question some words of affection. Of course I could only press her hand and say I was grateful for her kind thought. She did it all so simply, that, being prepossessed with the idea that she was in rather narrow circumstances, and that she had already given me the savings of her lifetime in the Trust Fund, it never even occurred to me that this residuary legateeship could be an important matter, after she had provided (as she was sure to do) for all legitimate claims upon her. Nothing could exceed my astonishment when I found how large was the sum bequeathed in this unpretending way. My friend thought I must be ill from the difficulty I seem to have found in commanding my voice to tell her the strange news when she came into the hall, a quarter of an hour after I had read that epoch-making letter! Certainly never was a great gift made with such perfect delicacy. Mrs. Yates had taken care that I should have no reason, so long as she lived, to suppose myself under any personal obligation to her. Since then, it may be believed that my heart has never ceased to cherish her memory with tender gratitude, and to associate the thought of her with all the comforts of the home which her wealth has secured for me. Mrs. Yates, at the time I knew her, had been for thirty or forty years the widow of Mr. Richard Vaughan Yates, a Liverpool Merchant. The following obituary notice of her appeared in the Zoophilist, November 2nd, 1891. I may add that beside her personal legacy to me (given simply by her will to “her friend Miss Frances Power Cobbe,” without comment of any kind) Mrs. Yates gave £1,000 to the Victoria Street Society, as well as £1,000 to the Liverpool Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; both bequests being over and above legacies to her executors, relatives and dependents:— “OBITUARY. “The Late Mrs. Yates. “The Victoria Street Society and the cause of Anti-vivisection have lost their most generous supporter in Mrs. Richard Yates, of Liverpool; a good and noble woman if ever there were one. Born in humble circumstances, she was one of the truest gentlewomen who ever lived. Her wide cultivation of mind, broadly liberal but deeply religious spirit and sound, clear judgment, remained conspicuous even in extreme old age. The hearts of those whom she aided in their toil for the poor brutes, with a generosity only equalled by the delicacy of its manifestations, will ever keep her memory in tender and grateful respect.” A warmly-feeling article in the Inquirer, October 10th, 1891, known to be by her friend and pastor, Rev. Valentine Davies, gave the following sketch of her life. It is due to her whose generosity has so brightened my later years, that my autobiography should contain some such record of her goodness and usefulness. “Mrs. Richard Vaughan Yates. “On Thursday evening, October 1st, there passed peacefully away one who was the last of her generation; bearing a name honoured in Liverpool since the Rev. John Yates, in the latter part of last century and the early years of this, ministered in Paradise Street Chapel, and his sons took their places in the first rank of the merchants and philanthropic citizens of the town. Anne Simpson was born November 10th, 1805, and to the last retained happy recollections of her childhood’s home, a simple cottage in the pleasant Cheshire country. She married, in the midsummer of 1832, Mr. Richard Vaughan Yates, having first spent a year (for purposes of education) in the household of Dr. Lant Carpenter, at Bristol, of whom she always spoke with great veneration. Richly endowed with natural grace and delicacy of feeling, true nobility of heart, and great simplicity, sustained by earnest religious feeling and a strong sense of duty, there was never happier choice than this, which gave to Mrs. Yates the larger opportunities of wealth and freedom in society. She shared her husband’s interest in many philanthropic labours, his care for the Harrington Schools, founded by his father, and for the Liverpool Institute, his pleasure and his anxieties in the making of the Prince’s Park, opened in 1849, as his gift to the town. She shared also to the full his delight in works of art and in foreign travel. The late Rev. Charles Wicksteed published some charming reminiscences of one of their Italian journeys; and still more notable was that journey through Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine, recorded by Miss Harriet Martineau in her Eastern Travel. “Since her husband’s death, in 1856, Mrs. Yates has stood bravely alone, living very quietly, but keenly alive to all the interests of the world, with ardent sympathy for every righteous cause, and generous help ever ready for public needs as for private charity. No one will ever know the full measure of her acts of kindness, her care for the least defended, her many quiet ways of doing good. She was a great lover of dumb creatures, and felt a passionate indignation at every kind of cruelty. Four-footed waifs and strays often found a pleasant refuge in her house, and for many years she was an active worker for the local branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The cabmen and donkey-boys of Liverpool at their annual suppers have long been familiar with her kindly face and gracious word, and many a time has her intrepid protest checked an act of cruelty in the public streets. The friend of Frances Power Cobbe, she took a deep and painful interest in the work of the Victoria Street Society for the Suppression of Vivisection, and sustained its work through many years by generous gifts. Herself a solitary woman in these later years, it was to the solitary and defenceless that her sympathies most quickly went. She desired for women larger powers to defend their own helplessness, to share in government for the amelioration of society, and to share also in the world’s work. She had a surprising energy and persistence of will in attending to her own affairs and doing the unselfish work she had most at heart. With a plain tenacity to the duty that was clear, she went out to the last, whenever it was possible, to vote at every election where she had a vote to give, and to attend meetings of a political and useful social character. Hers was a life of great unselfishness and true humility. Suffering most of all through sympathy with others, she longed for more light to dissipate the darker shadows of the world. And she herself, wherever it was possible to her patient faithfulness and generous kindness, drove away the darkness, praying thus the best of prayers, and making light and gladness in innumerable hearts. “After only a few days of illness she fell asleep. A memorial service was held on Sunday last in the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth, where for many years she regularly worshipped. The Rev. V. D. Davis preached the sermon, and also on the following day, at the Birkenhead Flaybrick Hill Cemetery, spoke the words of faith at her grave.”—Inquirer, October 10th. I have erected over her last resting-place (as I learned that she disliked heavy horizontal tombstones), a large upright slab of polished red Aberdeen granite. After her name and the dates of her birth and death, Shakespeare’s singularly appropriate line is inscribed on the stone:— “Sweet Mercy is Nobility’s True Badge.” On receiving that eventful Thursday morning the news of the unlooked-for riches which had fallen to my lot, our first act was naturally to telegraph to the would-be tenant that “another offer” (to wit mine!) “had been accepted for Hengwrt.” The miseries of house-letting and home-leaving were over for us, we trust, so long as our lives may last. There is not much more to be told in this last chapter of my story. The expansion of life in many directions which wealth brings with it, is as easy and pleasant as the contraction of it by poverty is the reverse. Yet I have not altered the opinion I formed long ago when I became poor after my father’s death, that the importance we commonly attach to pecuniary conditions is somewhat exaggerated, (so long as a competence is left) and that other things,—for example, the possession of good walking powers, or of strong eyesight or of good hearing, not to speak of the still more precious things of the affections and spirit,—are larger elements, by far, in human happiness than that which riches contributes thereto. Of course I have been very glad of this unlooked-for wealth in my old age. I have felt, first and before all things else, the immense satisfaction of being able to help the Anti-vivisection cause in all parts of the world while I live, and to provide for some further continuance of such help after I die. And next to this I have rejoiced that the comfort and repose of our beautiful and beloved home is secured to my friend and myself. The friendly reader who has travelled with me through the journey of my three-score years and ten, from my singularly happy childhood in my old home at Newbridge to this far bourne on the road, will now, I hope, leave me with kindly wishes for a peaceful evening, and a not-too-distant curfew bell; in this dear old house, and with my beloved friend for companion. The photograph of Hengwrt, which will be inserted in these last pages, gives a good idea of the house itself, but can convey none of the beauty of the rivers, woods and mountains all round. No spot in the kingdom I think, not even in the lovely Lake country, unites so many elements of beauty as this part of Wales. The mountains are not very lofty,—even glorious Cader where the giant Idris, (so says the legend) sat in the rocky “chair” (Cader) on the summit and studied the stars,—is trifling compared to Alpine height, and a molehill to Andes and Himalayas; yet is its form, and that of all these Cambrian rocks, so majestic, and their tilt so great, that no one could treat them as merely hills, or liken them to Irish mountains which resemble banks of rainclouds on the horizon. The deep, true, purple heather and the emerald-green fern robe these Welsh mountains in summer in regal splendour of colouring; and in autumn wrap them in rich russet brown cloaks. Down between every chain and ridge rush brooks, always bright and clear, and in many places leaping into lovely waterfalls. The “broad and brawling Mawddach” runs through all the valley from heights far out of sight, till, just below Hengwrt, it meets the almost equally beautiful stream of the Wnion, and the two together wind their way through the tidal estuary out into the sea at “Aber-mawddach” or “Abermaw,”—in English “Barmouth,” eight miles to the west. On both north and south of the valley and on the sides of the mountains, are woods, endless woods, of oak and larch and Scotch fir, interspersed with sycamore, wild cherry, horse-chestnut, elm, holly, and an occasional beech. Never was there a country in which were to be found growing freely and almost wild, so many different kinds of trees, creating of course the loveliest wood-scenery and variety of colouring. The oaks and elms and sycamores which grow in Hengwrt itself, are the oldest and some of the finest in this part of Wales; and here also flourish the largest laurels and rhododendrons I have ever seen anywhere. The luxuriance of their growth, towering high on each side of the avenue and in the shrubberies is a constant subject of astonishment to our visitors. The blossoms of the rhodos are sometimes twenty or twenty-five feet from the ground; and the laurels almost resemble forest trees. It has been one of my chief pleasures here to prune and clip and clear the way for these beautiful shrubs. Through the midst of them all, from one end of the place to the other, rushes the dearest little brook in the world, singing away constantly in so human a tone that over and over again I have paused in my labours of saw and clippers, and said to myself: “There must be some one talking in that walk! It is a lady’s voice, too! It can’t be only the brook this time!” But the brook it has always proved to be on further investigation. Of the interior of this dear old home I shall not write now. It is interesting from its age,—one of the oak-panelled rooms contains a bed placed there at the dissolution of the neighbouring monastery of Cymmer Abbey,—but it is not in the least a gloomy house; altogether the reverse. The drawing-room commands a view to right and left of almost the whole valley of the Mawddach for nine or ten miles; and just opposite lies the pretty village of Llanelltyd, at the foot of the wooded hills which rise up behind it to the heights of Moel Ispry and Cefn Cam. It is a panorama of splendid scenery, not darkening the room, but making one side of it into a great picture full of exquisite details of old stone bridge and ruined abbey, rivers, woods, and rocks. Among the objects in that wide view, and also in the still more extensive one from my bedroom above, is the little ivy-covered church of Llanelltyd; and below it a bit of ground sloping to the westering sun, dotted over with grey and white stones where “the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,” together with a few others who have been our friends and neighbours. There, in that quiet enclosure, will, in all probability, be the bourne of my long journey of life, with a grey headstone for the “Finis” of the last chapter of the Book which I have first lived, and now have written. I hope that the reader, who perhaps may drive some day along the road below, in the enjoyment of an autumn holiday in this lovely land, will cast a glance upon that churchyard, and give a kindly thought to me when I have gone to rest. September, 1898. The grey granite stone is standing already in Llanelltyd burying ground, though my place beneath it still waits for me. The friend who made my life so happy when I wrote the last pages of this book, and who had then done so for thirty-four blessed years,—lies there, under the rose trees and the mignonette; alone, till I may be laid beside her. It would be some poor comfort to me in my loneliness to write here some little account of Mary Charlotte Lloyd, and to describe her keen, highly-cultivated intellect, her quick sense of humour, her gifts as sculptor and painter (the pupil and friend of John Gibson and of Rosa Bonheur); her practical ability and strict justice in the administration of her estate; above all to speak of her character, “cast”—as one who knew her from childhood said,—“in an heroic mould,” of fortitude and loftiness; her absolute unselfishness in all things large and small. But the reticence which belonged to the greatness of her nature made her always refuse to allow me to lead her into the more public life whereto my work necessarily brought me, and in her last sacred directions she forbids me to commemorate her by any written record. Only, then, in the hearts of the few who really knew her must her noble memory live. I wrote the following lines to her some twenty-five years ago when spending a few days away from her and our home in London. I found them again after her death among her papers. They have a doubled meaning for me now, when the time has come for me to need her most of all. TO MARY C. LLOYD. Written in Hartley Combe, Liss, about 1873. Friend of my life! Whene’er my eyes Beat with sudden, glad surprise On Nature’s scenes of earth and air Sublimely grand, or sweetly fair, I want you—Mary. When men and women, gifted, free, Speak their fresh thoughts ungrudgingly, And springing forth, each kindling mind Streams like a meteor in the wind, I want you—Mary. When soft the summer evenings close, And crimson in the sunset rose, Our Cader glows, majestic, grand, The crown of all your lovely land, I want you—Mary. And when the winter nights come round, To our “ain fireside,” cheerly bound, With our dear Rembrandt Girl, so brown, Smiling serenely on us down, I want you—Mary. Now,—while the vigorous pulses leap Still strong within my spirit’s deep, Now, while my yet unwearied brain Weaves its thick web of thoughts amain, I want you—Mary. Hereafter, when slow ebbs the tide, And age drains out my strength and pride, And dim-grown eyes and trembling hand No longer list my soul’s command, I’ll want you—Mary. In joy and grief, in good and ill, Friend of my heart! I need you still; My Playmate, Friend, Companion, Love, To dwell with here, to clasp above, I want you—Mary. For O! if past the gates of Death To me the Unseen openeth Immortal joys to angels given, Upon the holy heights of Heaven I’ll want you—Mary! God has given me two priceless benedictions in life;—in my youth a perfect Mother; in my later years, a perfect Friend. No other gifts, had I possessed them, Genius, or beauty, or fame, or the wealth of the Indies, would have been worthy to compare with the joy of those affections. To live in companionship, almost unbroken by separation and never marred by a doubt or a rough word, with a mind in whose workings my own found inexhaustible interest, and my heart its rest; a friend who knew me better than any one beside could ever know me, and yet,—strange to think!—could love me better than any other,—this was happiness for which, even now that it is over, I thank God from the depths of my soul. I thank Him that I have had such a Friend. And I thank Him that she died without prolonged suffering or distress, with her head resting on my breast and her hand pressing mine; calm and courageous to the last. Her old physician said when all was over: “I have seen many, a great many, men and women die; but I never saw one die so bravely.” It has been possible for me through the kindness of my friend’s sister, to whom Hengwrt now belongs, to obtain for my remaining months or years a lease of this dear old house and beautiful grounds; and my winters of entire solitude, and summers, when a few friends and relations gather round me, glide rapidly away. I am still struggling on, as my friend bade me (literally with her dying breath), working for the cause of the science-tortured brutes, and I have even spoken again in public, and written many pamphlets and letters for the press. I hope, as Tennyson told me to do, to “fight the good fight” quite to the end. But there is a price which every aged heart perforce must pay for the long enjoyment of one soul-satisfying affection. When that affection is lost, it must be evermore lonely.CHAPTER
XIX.
CLAIMS OF WOMEN.CHAPTER
XX.
CLAIMS OF BRUTES.CHAPTER
XXI.
MY HOME IN WALES.