CHAPTER XXI VISITS TO ENGLAND 1896
In 1896 I found myself again utterly broken down in health and strength. I had, the November before, a slight paralysis in the face, which affected the muscles of the lower lid of one of my eyes, causing a constant irritation in the organ itself. After a time this caused a distortion of the lips, which I concealed somewhat by a moustache. But it operated, for a little while, as an effective disguise. When I came home during the winter, an old conductor on the Boston & Albany Railroad, whom I had known quite well, when he took my ticket looked at me with some earnestness and said, "Are you not related to Senator Hoar?" To which I answered, "I am a connection of his wife, by marriage."
I found I must get rid of the work at home, if I were to get back my capacity for work at all. So I sailed for Southampton before the session of Congress ended. It was the only time I had absented myself from my duties in Congress, except for an urgent public reason, for twenty-seven years and more.
I saw a good many interesting English people. It is not worth while to give the details of dinners and lunches and social life, unless something of peculiar and general interest occur. Almost every American who can afford it goes abroad now. Our English kinsmen are full of hospitality. They have got over their old coldness with which they were apt to receive their American cousins, although they were always the most delightfully hospitable race on earth when you had once got within the shield of their reserve.
I remember especially, however, a very pleasant Sunday spent on the Thames, at the delightful home of William Grenfell, Esq., which I mention because, by a fortunate accident, the visit had some very interesting consequences. There I met Sir John Lubbock, now Baron Avebury, famous for his writings on financial questions and on Natural History, especially for his observations of the habits of ants. He told me, if I am not mistaken, that he had personally watched the conduct and behavior of more than fifteen thousand individual ants. There was a company of agreeable English ladies and gentlemen. They played games in the evening after dinner, as you might expect of a company of American boys and girls of sixteen or eighteen years old.
Mr. Grenfell was a famous sportsman. His house was filled with the trophies of his skill in hunting. I was told that he had crossed the Channel in a row-boat.
Sir John Lubbock invited me to breakfast with him a few days afterward in St. James Square. There I met a large number of scientific men, among them the President of the Geographical Society, and the Presidents or Heads of several other of the important British Societies. I was presented to all these gentlemen. But I found I could not easily understand the names, when they were presented. Englishmen usually, even when they speak the language exactly as we do, have a peculiar pronunciation of names, which makes it very hard for an American ear to catch them. I could not very well say, "What name did you say?" or ask the host to repeat himself. So I was obliged to spend the hour in ignorance of the special dignity of most of the illustrious persons whom I met.
Just behind my chair hung a full-length portrait of Admiral Boscawen, a famous naval officer connected with our early history. For him was named the town of Boscawen in New Hampshire, where Daniel Webster practised law. The house where we were had been his. I think he was in some way akin to the host.
I sailed for home on Wednesday. The Friday night before, I dined with Moreton Frewen, Esq., an accomplished English gentleman, well known on this side of the Atlantic. Mr. Frewen had been very kind and hospitable to me, as he had been to many Americans. He deserves the gratitude of both nations for what he has done to promote good feeling between the two countries by his courtesy to Americans of all parties and ways of thinking. He has helped make the leading men of both countries know each other. From that knowledge has commonly followed a hearty liking for each other.
I mention this dinner, as I did the visit to Mr. Grenfell, because of its connection with a very interesting transaction. The guests at the dinner were Sir Julian Pauncefote, afterward Lord Pauncefote, the British Ambassador to the United States, who was then at home on a brief visit; Sir Seymour Blaine, an old military officer who had won, as I was told, great distinction in the East, and two Spanish noblemen.
The soldier told several very interesting stories of his military life, and of what happened to him in his early days.
Of these I remember two. He said that when he was a young officer, scarcely more than a boy, he was invited by the Duke of Wellington, with other officers, to a great ball at Apsley House. Late in the evening, after the guests had left the supper room, and it was pretty well deserted, he felt a desire for another glass of wine. There was nobody in the supper room. He was just pouring out a glass of champagne for himself, when he heard a voice behind him. "Youngster, what are you doing?" He turned round. It was the Duke. He said, "I am getting a glass of wine." To this the Duke replied, "You ought to be up-stairs dancing. There are but two things, Sir, for a boy like you to be doing. One is fighting; the other dancing with the girls. As for me I'm going to bed." Thereupon the Duke passed round the table; touched a spring which opened a secret door, in what was apparently a set of book-shelves, and disappeared.
Sir Seymour Blaine told another story which, I dare say, is well known. But I have never seen it in print. He said that just before the Battle of Talavera when the Duke, then Sir Arthur Wellesley, was in command in Spain, the English and French armies had been marching for many days on parallel lines, neither quite liking to attack the other, and neither having got the advantage in position which they were seeking. At last, one day, when everybody was pretty weary with the fatigues of the march, the Duke summoned some of his leading officers together and said to them: "You see that clump of trees (pointing to one a good distance away, but in sight from where they stood)—when the head of the French column reaches that clump of trees, attack. As for me I'm going to sleep under this bush." Thereupon the great soldier lay down, all his arrangements being made, and everything being in readiness, and took his nap while the great battle of Talavera— on which the fate of Spain and perhaps the fate of Europe depended—was begun. This adds another instance to the list of the occasions to which Mr. Everett refers when he speaks of Webster's sleeping soundly the night before his great reply to Hayne.
"So the great Conde' slept on the eve of the battle of Rocroi; so Alexander slept on the eve of the battle of Arbela; and so they awoke to deeds of immortal fame!"
But this dinner of Mr. Frewen's had a very interesting consequence. As I took leave of him at his door about eleven o'clock, he asked me if there were anything more he could do for me. I said, "No, unless you happen to know the Lord Bishop of London. I have a great longing to see the Bradford Manuscript before I go home. It is in the Bishop's Library. I went to Fulham the other day, but found the Bishop was gone. I had supposed the Library was a half-public one. I asked the servant who came to the door for the librarian. He told me there was no such officer, and that it was treated in all respects as a private library. But I should be very glad if I could get an opportunity to see it." Mr. Frewen answered, "I do not myself know the Bishop. But Mr. Grenfell, at whose house you spent Sunday, a little while ago, is his nephew by marriage. He is in Scotland. But if I can reach him, I will procure for you a letter to his uncle." That was Friday. Sunday morning there came a note from Mr. Grenfell to the Bishop. I enclosed it to his Lordship in one from myself, in which I said that if it were agreeable to him, I would call at Fulham the next Tuesday, at an hour which I fixed. I got a courteous reply from the Bishop, in which he said that he would be glad to show me the "log of the Mayflower," as he called it. I kept the appointment, and found the Bishop with the book in his hand. He received me very courteously, and showed me a little of the palace. He said that there had been a Bishop's palace on that spot for more than a thousand years.
I took the precious manuscript in my hands, and examined it with an almost religious reverence. I had delivered the address at Plymouth, the twenty-first of December, 1895, on the occasion of the two hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims upon the rock. In preparing for that duty I read carefully, with renewed enthusiasm and delight, the noble and touching story as told by Governor Bradford. I declared then that this precious history ought to be in no other custody than that of their children.
There have been several attempts to procure the return of the manuscript to this country. Mr. Winthrop, in 1860, through the venerable John Sinclair, Archdeacon, urged the Bishop of London to give it up, and proposed that the Prince of Wales, then just coming to this country, should take it across the Atlantic and present it to the people of Massachusetts. The Attorney-General, Sir Fitzroy Kelley, approved the plan, and said it would be an exceptional act of grace, a most interesting action, and that he heartily wished the success of the application. But the Bishop refused. Again, in 1869, John Lothrop Motley, the Minister to England, who had a great and deserved influence there, repeated the proposition, at the suggestion of that most accomplished scholar, Justin Winsor. But his appeal had the same fate. The Bishop gave no encouragement, and said, as had been said nine years before, that the property could not be alienated without an Act of Parliament. Mr. Winsor planned to repeat the attempt on his visit to England in 1887. When he was at Fulham the Bishop was absent, and he was obliged to go home without seeing him in person.
In 1881, at the time of the death of President Garfield, Benjamin Scott, Chamberlain of London, proposed again in the newspapers that the restitution should be made. But nothing came of it.
When I went abroad I determined to visit the locality on the borders of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, from which Bradford and Brewster and Robinson, the three leaders of the Pilgrims, came, and where their first church was formed, and the places in Amsterdam and Leyden where the emigrants spent thirteen years. But I longed especially to see the manuscript of Bradford at Fulham, which then seemed to me, as it now seems to me, the most precious manuscript on earth, unless we could recover one of the four gospels as it came in the beginning from the pen of the Evangelist.
The desire to get it back grew and grew during the voyage across the Atlantic. I did not know how such a proposition would be received in England. A few days after I landed I made a call on John Morley. I asked him whether he thought the thing could be done. He inquired carefully into the story, took down from his shelf the excellent though brief life of Bradford in Leslie Stephen's "Biographical Dictionary," and told me he thought the book ought to come back to us, and that he should be glad to do anything in his power to help. It was my fortune, a week or two after, to sit next to Mr. Bayard at a dinner given to Mr. Collins, by the American consuls in Great Britain. I took occasion to tell him the story, and he gave me the assurance, which he afterward so abundantly and successfully fulfilled, of his powerful aid. I was compelled, by the health of one of the party with whom I was travelling, to go to the Continent almost immediately, and was disappointed in the hope of an early return to England.
After looking at the volume and reading the records on the flyleaf, I said: "My Lord, I am going to say something which you may think rather audacious. I think this book ought to go back to Massachusetts. Nobody knows how it got over here. Some people think it was carried off by Governor Hutchinson, the Tory Governor; other people think it was carried off by British soldiers when Boston was evacuated; but in either case the property would not have changed. Or, if you treat it as booty, in which last case, I suppose, by the law of nations ordinary property does change, no civilized nation in modern times applies that principle to the property of libraries and institutions of learning."
The Bishop said: "I did not know you cared anything about it."
"Why," said I, "if there were in existence in England a history of King Alfred's reign for thirty years, written by his own hand, it would not be more precious in the eyes of Englishmen than this manuscript is to us."
"Well," said he, "I think myself that it ought to go back, and if it depended on me it would have gone back before this. But many of the Americans who have been here have been commercial people, and did not seem to care much about it except as a curiosity. I suppose I ought not to give it up on my own authority. It belongs to me in my official capacity, and not as private or personal property. I think I ought to consult the Archbishop of Canterbury. And, indeed," he added, "I think I ought to speak to the Queen about it. We should not do such a thing behind Her Majesty's back."
I said: "Very well, when I go home I will have a proper application made from some of our literary societies, and ask you to give it consideration."
I saw Mr. Bayard again and told him the story. He was at the train when I left London for the steamer at Southampton. He entered with great interest into the matter, and told me again he would do anything in his power to forward it.
When I got home I communicated with Secretary Olney about it, who took a kindly interest in the matter, and wrote to Mr. Bayard that the Administration desired he should do everything in his power to promote the application. The matter was then brought to the attention of the Council of the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth and the New England Society of New York. These bodies appointed committees to unite in the application. Governor Wolcott was also consulted, who gave his hearty approbation to the movement, and a letter was despatched through Mr. Bayard.
Meantime, Bishop Temple, with whom I had my conversation, had himself become Archbishop of Canterbury, and in that capacity Primate of all England. His successor, Rev. Dr. Creighton, had been the delegate of Emanuel, John Harvard's College, to the great celebration at Harvard University in 1886, on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its foundation. He had received the degree of Doctor of Laws from the University, had been a guest of President Eliot, and had received President Eliot as his guest in England.
The full story of the recovery of the manuscript, in which the influence of Ambassador Bayard and the kindness of Bishop Temple, afterward Archbishop of Canterbury, had so large a part, is too long to tell here. Before the question was decided Archbishop Temple consulted Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, who took a deep interest in the matter, and gave the plan her cordial approval. I think, as I had occasion to say to the British Ambassador afterward, that the restoration of this priceless manuscript did more to cement the bonds of friendship between the people of the two countries than forty Canal Treaties. In settling Imperial questions both nations are thinking, properly and naturally, of great interests. But his restoration was an act of purest kindness. The American people, in the midst of all their material activities, their desire for wealth and empire, are a sentimental people, easily and deeply stirred by anything that touches their finer feelings, especially anything that relates to their history.
The Bishop was authorized to return the manuscript by a decree rendered in his own Court, by his Chancellor. The Chancellor is regarded as the servant of the Bishop, and holds office, I believe, at his will. But so does the King's Chancellor at the King's will. I suppose the arrangement by which the Chancellor determines suits in which his superior is affected may be explained on the same ground as the authority of the Lord Chancellor to determine suits in which the Crown is a party.
I was quite curious to know on what ground, legal or equitable, the decree for the restoration of the manuscript was made. I wrote, after the thing was over, to the gentleman who had acted as Mr. Bayard's counsel in the case, asking him to enlighten me on this subject. I got a very courteous letter from him in reply, in which he said he was then absent from home, but would answer my inquiry on his return. After he got back, however, I got a formal and ceremonious letter, in which he said that, having been employed by Mr. Bayard as a public officer, he did not think he was at liberty to answer questions asked by private persons. As the petition and decree had gone on the express ground that the application for the return of the manuscript was made by Mr. Bayard, not in his official, but only in his private capacity, as he had employed counsel at my request, and I had been responsible for their fees, I was, at first, inclined to be a little vexed at the answer. On a little reflection, however, I saw that it was not best to be too curious on the subject; that where there was a will there was a way, and probably there was no thought, in getting the decree, on the part of anybody concerned, to be too strict as to legalities. I was reminded, however, of Silas Wegg's answer to Mr. Boffin, when he read aloud to him and his wife evening after evening "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," which Silas had spoken of at first, as "The Decline and Fall of the Russian Empire." Mr. Boffin noticed the inconsistency, and asked Mr. Wegg why it was that he had called it "The Decline and Fall of the Russian Empire" in the beginning. To which Mr. Wegg replied that Mrs. Boffin was present, and that it would not be proper to answer that question in the presence of a lady.
The manuscript was brought to Massachusetts by Mr. Bayard, on his return to the United States at the end of his official term. It was received by the Legislature in the presence of a large concourse of citizens, to whom I told the story of the recovery. Mr. Bayard delivered the book to the Governor and the Legislature with an admirable speech, and Governor Wolcott expressed the thanks of the State in an eloquent reply. He said that "the story of the departure of this precious work from our shores may never in every detail be revealed; but the story of its return will be read of all men, and will become a part of the history of the Commonwealth. There are places and objects so intimately associated with the world's greatest men or with mighty deeds that the soul of him who gazes upon them is lost in a sense of reverent awe, as it listens to the voice that speaks from the past, in words like those which came from the burning bush, 'Put off thy shoes from off they feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.'
"The story here told is one of triumphant achievement, and not of defeat. As the official representative of the Commonwealth, I receive it, sir, at your hands. I pledge the faith of the Commonwealth that for all time it shall be guarded in accordance with the terms of the decree under which it is delivered into her possession as one of her chiefest treasures. I express the thanks of the Commonwealth for the priceless gift, and I venture the prophecy that for countless years to come and to untold thousands these mute pages shall eloquently speak of high resolve, great suffering and heroic endurance made possible by an absolute faith in the over-ruling providence of Almighty God."
The Bishop gave the Governor of Massachusetts the right to deposit the manuscript either in his office at the State House or with the Massachusetts Historical Society, of which Archbishop Temple and Bishop Creighton, who succeeded Bishop Temple in the See of London, were both Honorary members. The Governor, under my advice, deposited the manuscript in the State House. It seemed to him and to me that the Commonwealth, which is made up of the Colony which Bradford founded, and of which he was Governor, blended with that founded by the Puritans under Winthrop, was the fitting custodian of the life in Leyden of the founders of Plymouth, of the voyage across the sea, and of the first thirty years of the Colony here. It is kept in the State Library, open at the spot which contains the Compact made on board the Mayflower—the first written Constitution in history. Many visitors gaze upon it every year. Few of them look upon it without a trembling of the lip and a gathering of mist in the eye. I am told that it is not uncommon that strong men weep when they behold it.