II
HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND[*]
[Footnote *: Written in 1907.]
The Hollands spring from Mobberley, in Cheshire, and more recently from the town of Knutsford, familiar to all lovers of English fiction as "Cranford." They have made their mark in several fields of intellectual effort. Lord Knutsford, Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1887 to 1892, was a son of Sir Henry Holland, M.D. (1788-1873), who doctored half the celebrities of Europe; and one of Sir Henry's first cousins was the incomparable Mrs. Gaskell. Another first-cousin was George Henry Holland (1818-1891), of Dumbleton Hall, Evesham, who married in 1844 the Hon. Charlotte Dorothy Gifford, daughter of the first Lord Gifford.
George Holland was an enthusiastic fox-hunter, and frequently changed his abode for the better enjoyment of his favourite sport. In 1847 he was living at a place called Underdown, near Ledbury; and there, on the 27th of January in that year, his eldest son was born.
The first Lord Gifford (1779-1826), who was successively Lord Chief Justice and Master of the Rolls, had owed much in early life to the goodwill of Lord Eldon, and, in honour of his patron, he named one of his sons' Scott. This Scott Gifford was Mrs. George Holland's brother, and his name was bestowed on her eldest son, who was christened "Henry Scott," but has always been known by his second name. This link with George III.'s Tory Chancellor is pleasingly appropriate.
Let it be remarked in passing that the hyphen so often introduced into the name is solely a creation of the newspapers, which, always rejoicing in double-barrelled surnames, gratify a natural impulse by writing about "Canon Scott-Holland."
I regret that the most exhaustive research has failed to discover any recorded traits of "Scotty" Holland in the nursery, but his career in the schoolroom is less obscure. His governess was a Swiss lady, who pronounced her young pupil "the most delightful of boys; not clever or studious, but full of fun and charm." This governess must have been a remarkable woman, for she is, I believe, the only human being who ever pronounced Scott Holland "not clever." It is something to be the sole upholder of an opinion, even a wrong one, against a unanimous world. By this time George Holland had established himself at Wellesbourne Hall, near Warwick, and there his son Scott was brought up in the usual habits of a country home where hunting and shooting are predominant interests. From the Swiss lady's control he passed to a private school at Allesley, near Coventry, and in January, 1860, he went to Eton. There he boarded at the house of Mrs. Gulliver,[*] and was a pupil of William Johnson (afterwards Cory), a brilliant and eccentric scholar, whose power of eliciting and stimulating a boy's intellect has never been surpassed.
[Footnote *: Of Mrs. Gulliver and her sister, H. S. H. writes: "They allowed football in top passage twice a week, which still seems to be the zenith of all joy.">[
From this point onwards, Scott Holland's history—the formation of his character, the development of his intellect, the place which he attained in the regard of his friends—can be easily and exactly traced; for the impression which he made upon his contemporaries has not been effaced, or even dimmed, by the lapse of seven-and-forty years.
"My recollection of him at Eton," writes one of his friends, "is that of a boy most popular and high-spirited, strong, and full of life; but not eminent at games." Another writes: "He was very popular with a certain set, but not exactly eminent." He was not a member of "Pop," the famous Debating Society of Eton, but his genius found its outlet in other spheres. "He once astonished us all by an excellent performance in some private theatricals in his house." For the rest, he rowed, steered the Victory twice, played cricket for his House, and fives and football, and was a first-rate swimmer.
With regard to more important matters, it must suffice to say that then, as always, his moral standard was the highest, and that no evil thing dared manifest itself in his presence. He had been trained, by an admirable mother, in the best traditions of the Tractarian school, and he was worthy of his training. Among his intimate friends were Dalmeny, afterwards Lord Rosebery; Henry Northcote, now Lord Northcote; Freddy Wood, afterwards Meynell; Alberic Bertie; and Francis Pelham, afterwards Lord Chichester. He left Eton in July, 1864, and his tutor, in a letter to a friend, thus commented on his departure: "There was nothing to comfort me in parting with Holland; and he was the picture of tenderness. He and others stayed a good while, talking in the ordinary easy way. M. L. came, and his shyness did not prevent my saying what I wished to say to him. But to Holland I could say nothing; and now that I am writing about it I cannot bear to think that he is lost."
On leaving Eton, Holland went abroad to learn French, with an ultimate view to making his career in diplomacy. Truly the Canon of St. Paul's is an "inheritor of unfulfilled renown." What an Ambassador he would have made! There is something that warms the heart in the thought of His Excellency Sir Henry Scott Holland, G.C.B., writing despatches to Sir Edward Grey in the style of The Commonwealth, and negotiating with the Czar or the Sultan on the lines of the Christian Social Union.
Returning from his French pilgrimage, he wept to a private tutor in Northamptonshire, who reported that "Holland was quite unique in charm and goodness, but would never be a scholar." In January, 1866, this charming but unscholarly youth went up to Balliol, and a new and momentous chapter in his life began.
What was he like at this period of his life? A graphic letter just received enables me to answer this question. "When I first met him, I looked on him with the deepest interest, and realized the charm that everyone felt. He had just gone up to Oxford, and was intensely keen on Ruskin and Browning, and devoted to music. He would listen with rapt attention when we played Chopin and Schumann to him. I used to meet him at dinner-parties when I first came out, by which time he was very enthusiastic on the Catholic side, and very fond of St. Barnabas, Pimlico, and was also deeply moved by social questions, East End poor, etc.; always unconventional, and always passionately interested in whatever he talked of. Burne-Jones once told me: 'It was perfectly delicious to see Holland come into a room, laughing before he had even said a word, and always bubbling over with life and joy.' Canon Mason said to me many years ago that he had hoped I kept every scrap Scotty ever wrote to me, as he was quite sure he was the most remarkable man of his generation. But there was a grave background to all this merriment. I remember that, as we were coming out of a London party, and looked on the hungry faces in the crowd outside the door, I rather foolishly said: 'One couldn't bear to look at them unless one felt that there was another world for them.' He replied: 'Are we to have both, then?' I know how his tone and the look in his face haunted me more than I can say."
A contemporary at Oxford writes, with reference to the same period: "When we went up, Liddon was preaching his Bamptons, and we went to them together, and were much moved by them. There were three of us who always met for Friday teas in one another's rooms, and during Lent we used to go to the Special Sermons at St. Mary's. We always went to Liddon's sermons, and sometimes to his Sunday evening lectures in the Hall of Queen's College. We used to go to the Choral Eucharist in Merton Chapel, and, later, to the iron church at Cowley, and to St. Barnabas, and enjoyed shouting the Gregorians."
On the intellectual side, we are told that Holland's love of literature was already marked. "I can remember reading Wordsworth with him, and Carlyle, and Clough; and, after Sunday breakfasts, Boswell's Life of Johnson." Then, as always, he found a great part of his pleasure in music.
No record, however brief, of an undergraduate life can afford to disregard athletics; so let it be here recorded that Holland played racquets and fives, and skated, and "jumped high," and steered the Torpid, and three times rowed in his College Eight. He had innumerable friends, among whom three should be specially recalled: Stephen Fremantle and R. L. Nettleship, both of Balliol, and W. H. Ady, of Exeter. In short, he lived the life of the model undergraduate, tasting all the joys of Oxford, and finding time to spare for his prescribed studies. His first encounter with the examiners, in "Classical Moderations," was only partially successful. "He did not appreciate the niceties of scholarship, and could not write verses or do Greek or Latin prose at all well;" and he was accordingly placed in the Third Class. But as soon as the tyranny of Virgil and Homer and Sophocles was overpast, he betook himself to more congenial studies. Of the two tutors who then made Balliol famous, he owed nothing to Jowett and everything to T. H. Green. That truly great man "simply fell in love" with his brilliant pupil, and gave him of his best.
"Philosophy's the chap for me," said an eminent man on a momentous occasion. "If a parent asks a question in the classical, commercial, or mathematical-line, says I gravely, 'Why, sir, in the first place, are you a philosopher?' 'No, Mr. Squeers,' he says, 'I ain't.' 'Then, sir,' says I, 'I am sorry for you, for I shan't be able to explain it.' Naturally, the parent goes away and wishes he was a philosopher, and, equally naturally, thinks I'm one."
That is the Balliol manner all over; and the ardent Holland, instructed by Green, soon discovered, to his delight, that he was a philosopher, and was henceforward qualified to apply Mr. Squeer's searching test to all questions in Heaven and earth. "It was the custom at Balliol for everyone to write an essay once a week, and I remember that Holland made a name for his essay-writing and originality. It was known that he had a good chance of a 'First in Greats,' if only his translations from Greek and Latin books did not pull him down. He admired the ancient authors, especially Plato, and his quick grasp of the meaning of what he read, good memory, and very remarkable powers of expression, all helped him much. He was good at History and he had a great turn for Philosophy" (cf. Mr. Squeers, supra), "Plato, Hegel; etc., and he understood, as few could, Green's expositions, and counter-attack on John Stuart Mill and the Positivist School, which was the dominant party at that time."
In the summer Term of 1870 Holland went in for his final examination at Oxford. A friend writes: "I remember his coming out from his paper on, Moral Philosophy in great exaltation; and his viva voce was spoken of as a most brilliant performance. One of the examiners, T. Fowler (afterwards President of Corpus), said he had never heard anything like it." In fine, a new and vivid light had appeared in the intellectual sky—a new planet had swum into the ken of Oxford Common Rooms; and it followed naturally that Holland, having obtained his brilliant First, was immediately elected to a Studentship at Christ Church, which, of course, is the same as a Fellowship anywhere else. He went into residence at his new home in January, 1871, and remained there for thirteen years, a "don," indeed, by office, but so undonnish in character, ways, and words, that he became the subject of a eulogistic riddle: "When is a don not a don? When he is Scott Holland."
Meanwhile, all dreams of a diplomatic career had fled before the onrush of Aristotle and Plato, Hegel and Green. The considerations which determined Holland's choice of a profession I have not sought to enquire. Probably he was moved by the thought that in Holy Orders he would have the best chance of using the powers, of which by this time he must have become conscious, for the glory of God and the service of man. I have been told that the choice was in some measure affected by a sermon of Liddon's on the unpromising subject of Noah;[*] and beyond doubt the habitual enjoyment of Liddon's society, to which, as a brother-Student, Holland was now admitted, must have tended in the same direction.
[Footnote *: Preached at St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, on the 11th of March, 1870.]
Perhaps an even stronger influence was that of Edward King, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, and then Principal of Cuddesdon, in whom the most persuasive aspects of the priestly character were beautifully displayed, and who made Cuddesdon a sort of shrine to which all that was spiritual and ardent in young Oxford was irresistibly attracted. Preaching, years afterwards, at a Cuddesdon Festival, Holland uttered this moving panegyric of the place to which he owed so much: "Ah! which of us does not know by what sweet entanglement Cuddesdon threw its net about our willing feet? Some summer Sunday, perhaps, we wandered here, in undergraduate days, to see a friend; and from that hour the charm was at work. How joyous, how
enticing, the welcome, the glad brotherhood! So warm and loving it all seemed, as we thought of the sharp skirmishing of our talk in College; so buoyant and rich, as we recalled the thinness of our Oxford interests. The little rooms, like college rooms just shrinking into cells; the long talk on the summer lawn; the old church with its quiet country look of patient peace; the glow of the evening chapel; the run down the hill under the stars, with the sound of Compline Psalms still ringing in our hearts—ah! happy, happy day! It was enough. The resolve that lay half slumbering in our souls took shape; it leapt out. We would come to Cuddesdon when the time of preparation should draw on!" Readers of this glowing passage have naturally imagined that the writer of it must himself have been a Cuddesdon man, but this is a delusion; and, so far as I know, Holland's special preparation for Ordination consisted of a visit to Peterborough, where he essayed the desperate task of studying theology under Dr. Westcott.
In September, 1872, he was ordained deacon by Bishop Mackarness, in Cuddesdon Church, being chosen to read the Gospel at the Ordination; and he was ordained priest there just two years later. It was during his diaconate that I, then a freshman, made his acquaintance. We often came across one another, in friends' rooms and at religious meetings, and I used to listen with delight to the sermons which he preached in the parish churches of Oxford. They were absolutely original; they always exhilarated and uplifted one; and the style was entirely his own, full of lightness and brightness, movement and colour. Scattered phrases from a sermon at SS. Philip and James, on the 3rd of May, 1874, and from another at St. Barnabas, on the 28th of June in the same year, still haunt my memory.[*]
[Footnote *: An Oxford Professor, who had some difficulty with his aspirates, censured a theological essay as "Too 'ollandy by 'alf.">[
Holland lived at this time a wonderfully busy and varied life. He lectured on Philosophy in Christ Church; he took his full share in the business of University and College; he worked and pleaded for all righteous causes both among the undergraduates and among the citizens. An Oxford tutor said not long ago: "A new and strong effort for moral purity in Oxford can be dated from Holland's Proctorship."
This seems to be a suitable moment for mentioning his attitude towards social and political questions. He was "suckled in a creed outworn" of Eldonian Toryism, but soon exchanged it for Gladstonian Liberalism, and this, again, he suffused with an energetic spirit of State Socialism on which Mr. Gladstone would have poured his sternest wrath. A friend writes: "I don't remember that H. S. H., when he was an undergraduate, took much interest in politics more than chaffing others for being so Tory." (He never spoke at the Union, and had probably not realized his powers as a speaker.) "But when, in 1872, I went to be curate to Oakley (afterwards Dean of Manchester) at St. Saviour's, Hoxton, Holland used to come and see me there, and I found him greatly attracted to social life in the East End of London. In 1875 he came, with Edward Talbot and Robert Moberly, and lodged in Hoxton, and went about among the people, and preached in the church. I have sometimes thought that this may have been the beginning of the Oxford House."
All through these Oxford years Holland's fame as an original and independent thinker, a fascinating preacher, an enthusiast for Liberalism as the natural friend and ally of Christianity, was widening to a general recognition. And when, in April, 1884, Mr. Gladstone nominated him to a Residentiary Canonry at St. Paul's, everyone felt that the Prime Minister had matched a great man with a great opportunity.
From that day to this, Henry Scott Holland has lived in the public eye, so there is no need for a detailed narrative of his more recent career. All London has known him as a great and inspiring preacher; a literary critic of singular skill and grace; an accomplished teacher in regions quite outside theology; a sympathetic counsellor in difficulty and comforter in distress; and one of the most vivid and joyous figures in our social life. It is possible to trace some change in his ways of thinking, though none in his ways of feeling and acting. His politics have swayed from side to side under the pressure of conflicting currents. Some of his friends rejoice—and others lament—that he is much less of a partisan than he was; that he is apt to see two and even three sides of a question; and that he is sometimes kind to frauds and humbugs, if only they will utter the shibboleths in which he himself so passionately believes. But, through all changes and chances, he has stood as firm as a rock for the social doctrine of the Cross, and has made the cause of the poor, the outcast, and the overworked his own. He has shown the glory of the Faith in its human bearings, and has steeped Dogma and, Creed and Sacrament and Ritual in his own passionate love of God and man.
Stupid people misunderstand him. Wicked people instinctively hate him. Worldly people, sordid people, self-seekers, and promotion-hunters, contemn him as an amiable lunatic. But his friends forget all measure and restraint when they try to say what they feel about him. One whom I have already quoted writes again: "I feel Holland is little changed from what he was as a schoolboy and an undergraduate—the same joyous spirit, unbroken good temper, quick perception and insight, warm sympathy, love of friends, kind interest in lives of all sorts, delight in young people—these never fail. He never seems to let the burden of life and the sadness of things depress his cheery, hopeful spirit. I hope that what I send may be of some use. I cannot express what I feel. I love him too well."
This is the tribute of one friend; let me add my own. I do not presume to say what I think about him as a spiritual guide and example; I confine myself to humbler topics. Whatever else he is, Henry Scott Holland is, beyond doubt, one of the most delightful people in the world. In fun and geniality and warm-hearted, hospitality, he is a worthy successor of Sydney Smith, whose official house he inhabits; and to those elements of agreeableness he adds certain others which his famous predecessor could scarcely have claimed. He has all the sensitiveness of genius, with its sympathy, its versatility, its unexpected turns, its rapid transitions from grave to gay, its vivid appreciation of all that is beautiful in art and nature, literature and life. No man in London, I should think, has so many and such devoted friends in every class and station; and those friends acknowledge in him not only the most vivacious and exhilarating of social companions, but one of the moral forces which have done most to quicken their consciences and lift their lives.
By the death of Henry Scott Holland a great light is quenched,[*] or, to use more Christian language, is merged in "the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."
[Footnote *: Written in 1918.]
Light is the idea with which my beloved friend is inseparably associated in my mind. His nature had all the attributes of light—its revealing power, its cheerfulness, its salubrity, its beauty, its inconceivable rapidity. He had the quickest intellect that I have ever known. He saw with a flash into the heart of an argument or a situation. He diffused joy by his own joy in living; he vanquished morbidity by his essential wholesomeness; whatever he touched became beautiful under his handling. "He was not the Light, but he came to bear witness of that Light," and bore it for seventy years by the mere force of being what he was. My friendship with Dr. Holland began in my second term at Oxford, and has lasted without a cloud or a break from that day to this. He was then twenty-five years old, and was already a conspicuous figure in the life of the University. In 1866 he had come up from Eton to Balliol with a high reputation for goodness and charm, but with no report of special cleverness. He soon became extremely popular in his own College and outside it. He rowed and played games and sang, and was recognized as a delightful companion wherever he went. But all the time a process of mental development was going on, of which none but his intimate friends were aware. "I owed nothing to Jowett," he was accustomed to say; "everything to Green." From that great teacher he caught his Hegelian habit of thought, his strong sense of ethical and spiritual values, and that practical habit of mind which seeks to apply moral principles to the problems of actual life. In 1870 came the great surprise, and Holland, who had no pretensions to scholarship, and whose mental development had only been noticed by a few, got a First Class of unusual brilliancy in the searching school of Literœ Humaniores. Green had triumphed; he had made a philosopher without spoiling a Christian. Christ Church welcomed a born Platonist, and made him Senior Student, Tutor, and Lecturer.
Holland had what Tertullian calls the anima naturaliter Christiana, and it had been trained on the lines of the Tractarian Movement. When he went up to Oxford he destined himself for a diplomatic career, but he now realized his vocation to the priesthood, and was ordained deacon in 1872 and priest two years later. He instantly made his mark as a preacher. Some of the sermons preached in the parish churches of Oxford in the earliest years of his ministry stand out in my memory among his very best. He had all the preacher's gifts—a tall, active, and slender frame, graceful in movement, vigorous in action, abundant in gesture, a strong and melodious voice, and a breathless fluency of speech. Above all, he spoke with an energy of passionate conviction which drove every word straight home. He seemed a young apostle on fire with zeal for God and humanity. His fame as an exponent of metaphysic attracted many hearers who did not usually go much to church, and they were accustomed—then as later—to say that here was a Christian who knew enough about the problems of thought to make his testimony worth hearing. Others, who cared not a rap for Personality or Causation, Realism or Nominalism, were attracted by his grace, his eloquence, his literary charm. His style was entirely his own. He played strange tricks with the English language, heaped words upon words, strung adjective to adjective; mingled passages of Ruskinesque description with jerky fragments of modern slang. These mannerisms grew with his growth, but in the seventies they were not sufficiently marked to detract from the pure pleasure which we enjoyed when we listened to his preaching as to "a very lovely song."
Judged by the canons of strict art, Holland was perhaps greater as a speaker than as a preacher. He differed from most people in this—that whereas most of us can restrain ourselves better on paper than when we are speaking, his pen ran away with him when he, was writing a sermon, but on a platform he could keep his natural fluency in bounds. Even then he was fluent enough in all conscience; but he did not so overdo the ornaments, and the absence of a manuscript and a pulpit-desk gave ampler scope for oratorical movement.
I have mentioned Holland's intellectual and moral debt to T. H. Green. I fancy that, theologically and politically, he owed as much to Mr. Gladstone. The older and the younger man had a great deal in common. They both were "patriot citizens of the kingdom of God"; proud and thankful to be members of the Holy Church Universal, and absolutely satisfied with that portion of the Church in which their lot was cast; passionate adherents of the Sacramental theology; and yet, in their innermost devotion to the doctrine of the Cross, essentially Evangelical. In politics they both worshipped freedom; they both were content to appeal to the popular judgment; and they both were heart and soul for the Christian cause in the East of Europe. Holland had been brought up by Tories, but in all the great controversies of 1886 to 1894 he followed the Gladstonian flag with the loyalty of a good soldier and the faith of a loving son.
When in 1884 Gladstone appointed Holland to a Canonry at St. Paul's, the announcement was received with an amount of interest which is not often bestowed upon ecclesiastical promotions. Everyone felt that it was a daring experiment to place this exuberant prophet of the good time coming at what Bishop Lightfoot called "the centre of the world's concourse." Would his preaching attract or repel? Would the "philosophy of religion," which is the perennial interest of Oxford, appeal to the fashionable or business-like crowd which sits under the Dome? Would his personal influence reach beyond the precincts of the Cathedral into the civil and social and domestic life of London? Would the Mauritian gospel of human brotherhood and social service—in short, the programme of the Christian Social Union—win the workers to the side of orthodoxy? These questions were answered according to the idiosyncrasy or bias of those to whom they were addressed, and they were not settled when, twenty-seven years later, Holland returned from St. Paul's to Oxford. Indeed, several answers were possible. On one point only there was an absolute agreement among those who knew, and this was that the Church in London had been incalculably enriched by the presence of a genius and a saint.
In one respect, perhaps, Holland's saintliness interfered with the free action of his genius. His insight, unerring in a moral or intellectual problem, seemed to fail him when he came to estimate a human character. His own life had always been lived on the highest plane, and he was in an extraordinary degree "unspotted from the world." His tendency was to think—or at any rate to speak and act—as if everyone were as simply good as himself, as transparent, as conscientious, as free from all taint of self-seeking. This habit, it has been truly said, "disqualifies a man in some degree for the business of life, which requires for its conduct a certain degree of prejudice"; but it is pre-eminently characteristic of those elect and lovely souls
"Who, through the world's long day of strife,
Still chant their morning song."