The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. / A Judge of the High Court of Justice

by Leslie Stephen

III. MASTER STEPHEN'S CHILDREN

I have now to speak of the generation which preceded my own, of persons who were well known to me, and who were the most important figures in the little world in which my brother and I passed our infancy. James Stephen, the Master, was survived by six children, of whom my father was the third. I will first say a few words of his brothers and sisters. The eldest son, William, became a quiet country clergyman. He was vicar of Bledlow, Bucks (for nearly sixty years), and of Great Stagsden, Beds, married a Miss Grace, but left no children, and died January 8, 1867. I remember him only as a mild old gentleman with a taste for punning, who came up to London to see the Great Exhibition of 1851, and then for the first time had also the pleasure of seeing a steamboat. Steamboats are rare in the Buckinghamshire hills, among which he had vegetated ever since their invention.

Henry John, the second son, born January 18, 1787, was at the Chancery bar. He married his cousin, Mary Morison, and from 1815 till 1832 he lived with his father at Kensington Gore. A nervous and retiring temper prevented him from achieving any great professional success, but he was one of the most distinguished writers of his time upon legal subjects. His first book, 'Treatise on the Principles of Pleading in Civil Actions,' originally published in 1824, has gone through many editions both in England and America. Chancellor Kent, as Allibone's dictionary informs me, calls it 'the best book that ever was written in explanation of the science,' and many competent authorities have assured me that it possesses the highest merits as a logical composition, although the law of which it treats has become obsolete. The reputation acquired by this book led to his appointment to a seat in the Common Law Commission formed in 1828; and in the same year he became serjeant-at-law. His brother commissioners became judges, but his only promotion was to a commissionership of bankruptcy at Bristol in 1842.[18] In 1834 he published a 'Summary of the Criminal Law,' which was translated into German. His edition of Blackstone's Commentaries first appeared in 1841. It contained from the first so much of his own work as to be almost an independent performance. In later editions he introduced further changes to adapt it to later legislation, and it is still a standard book.

He lived after the Bristol appointment at Cleevewood in the parish of Mangotsfield. He retired in February 1854, and lived afterwards in Clifton till his death on November 28, 1864. I remember him as a gentle and courteous old man, very shy, and, in his later years, never leaving his house, and amusing himself with speculating upon music and the prophecies. He inherited apparently the nervous temperament of his family with less than their usual dash of the choleric.[19] My uncle, Sir George, declares that the serjeant was appointed to a judgeship by Lord Lyndhurst, but immediately resigned, on the ground that he felt that he could never bear to pass a capital sentence.[20] I record the anecdote, not as true (I have reasons for thinking it erroneous), but as indicating the impression made by his character.

The fourth brother, George, born about 1794, was a man of very different type. In him appeared some of the characteristics of his irascible and impetuous grandfather. His nature was of coarser fibre than that of his sensitive and nervous brothers. He was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge; and was afterwards placed in the office of the Freshfields, the eminent firm of solicitors. He had, I have been told, an offer of a partnership in the firm, but preferred to set up for himself. He was employed in the rather unsavoury duty of procuring evidence as to the conduct of Queen Caroline upon the Continent. In 1826 he undertook an inquiry ordered by the House of Commons in consequence of complaints as to the existence of a slave trade in Mauritius. He became acquainted with gross abuses, and resolved thereupon to take up the cause with which his family was so closely connected. He introduced himself to O'Connell in order to learn some of the secrets of the great art of agitation. Fortified by O'Connell's instructions, he proceeded to organise the 'celebrated Agency Committee.' This committee, headed by Zachary Macaulay, got up meetings and petitions throughout the country, and supported Buxton in the final assault upon slavery. For his services in the cause, George Stephen was knighted in 1838. He showed a versatile ability by very miscellaneous excursions into literature. He wrote in 1837 'Adventures of a Gentleman in search of a Horse,' which became popular, and proved that, besides understanding the laws relating to the subject, he was the only one, as I believe, of his family who could clearly distinguish a horse from a cow. A very clever but less judicious work was the 'Adventures of an Attorney in search of Practice,' first published in 1839, which gave or was supposed to give indiscreet revelations as to some of his clients. Besides legal pamphlets, he proved his sound Evangelicalism by a novel called 'The Jesuit at Cambridge' (1847), intended to unveil the diabolical machinations of the Catholic Church. An unfortunate catastrophe ruined his prospects. He had founded a society for the purchase of reversions and acted as its solicitor. It flourished for some years, till misunderstandings arose, and Sir George had to retire, besides losing much more than he could afford. He then gave up the profession which he had always disliked, was called to the bar in 1849 and practised for some years at Liverpool, especially in bankruptcy business. At last he found it necessary to emigrate and settled at Melbourne in 1855. He found the colonists at least as perverse as the inhabitants of his native country. He wrote a 'Life of Christ' (not after the plan of Renan) intended to teach them a little Christianity, and a (so-called) life of his father, which is in the main an exposition of his own services and the ingratitude of mankind. The state of Australian society seemed to him to justify his worst forebodings; and he held that the world in general was in a very bad way. It had not treated him too kindly; but I fear that the complaints were not all on one side. He was, I suppose, one of those very able men who have the unfortunate quality of converting any combination into which they enter into an explosive compound. He died at Melbourne, June 20, 1879.[21]

The Master's two daughters were Sibella, born 1792, and Anne Mary, whose birth caused the death of her mother in December 1796. Sibella married W. A. Garratt, who was second wrangler and first Smith's prizeman in 1804. He was a successful barrister and a man of high character, though of diminutive stature. 'Mr. Garratt,' a judge is reported to have said to him, 'when you are addressing the court you should stand up.' 'I am standing up, my lord.' 'Then, Mr. Garratt, you should stand upon the bench.' 'I am standing upon the bench, my lord.' He had been disinherited by his father, I have heard, for preferring a liberal profession to trade, but upon his father's death his brothers made over to him the share which ought to have been left to him. He was for many years on the Committee of the Church Missionary Society, and wrote in defence of Evangelical principles.[22] His houses at Hampstead and afterwards at Brighton were among our youthful resorts; and my aunt remains in my memory as a gentle, kindly old lady, much afflicted by deafness. Mr. Garratt died in 1858, aged 77, and his wife at the same age on February 7, 1869.

Anne Mary, my other aunt, married Thomas Edward Dicey. He was a schoolfellow and college friend of my father. I may observe, for the sake of Cambridge readers, that, after passing his first year of university life at Oxford, he came to Cambridge ignorant of mathematics and in delicate health, which prevented him from reading hard. In spite of this, he was senior wrangler in 1811—a feat which would now be impossible for a Newton. He was the calmest and gentlest of human beings, and to his calmness was attributable the fact that he lived till 1858, although when he was twenty the offices refused to insure his life for a year on any terms. Those who knew him best regarded him as a man of singular wisdom and refinement. He lived, till he came to London for the later education of his boys, in a small country house at Claybrook, near Lutterworth, and was proprietor of the 'Northampton Mercury,' one of the oldest papers in England, founded, I believe, by his grandfather. This Claybrook house was the scene of some of our happiest childish days. My aunt was a most devoted mother of four sons, whose early education she conducted in great part herself. In later years she lived in London, and was the most delightful of hostesses. Her conversation proved her to possess a full share of the family talents, and although, like her sister, she suffered from deafness, a talk with her was, to my mind at least, as great a treat as a talk with the most famous performers in the social art. After her husband's death, she was watched by her youngest son, Frank, who had become an artist, with a tender affection such as is more frequently exhibited by a daughter to an infirm father. She died on October 28, 1878, and has been followed by two of her sons, Henry and Frank. The two surviving sons, Edward and Albert Venn Dicey, Vinerian professor of Law at Oxford, are both well known in the literary and political world.

I must now tell so much as I know, and is relevant to my purpose, of my father's life. James Stephen, fourth at least of the name, and third son of the Master, was born January 3, 1789, at Lambeth, during his father's visit to England. He had an attack of small-pox during his infancy, which left a permanent weakness of eyesight. The Master's experience had not taught him the evils of desultory education. James, the younger, was, I believe, under various schoolmasters, of whom I can only mention John Prior Estlin, of St. Michael's Hill, Bristol, a Unitarian, and the Rev. H. Jowett, of Little Dunham, Norfolk, who was one of the adherents to Evangelicalism. The change probably marks the development of his father's convictions. He entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1806. At that time the great Evangelical leader at Cambridge was Isaac Milner, the President of Queens' College. Milner's chief followers were William Farish, of Magdalene, and Joseph Jowett, of Trinity Hall, both of them professors. Farish, as I have said, married my grandfather's sister, and the colleges were probably selected for my father and his brother George with a view to the influence of these representatives of the true faith. The 'three or four years during which I lived on the banks of the Cam,' said my father afterwards,[23] 'were passed in a very pleasant, though not a very cheap, hotel. But had they been passed at the Clarendon, in Bond Street, I do not think that the exchange would have deprived me of any aids for intellectual discipline or for acquiring literary and scientific knowledge.' That he was not quite idle I infer from a copy of Brotier's 'Tacitus' in my possession with an inscription testifying that it was given to him as a college prize. He took no university honours, took the degree of LL.B. in 1812, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn November 11, 1811. His father had just become Master in Chancery, and was able to transfer some of his clients to the son. James the younger thus gained some experience in colonial matters, and 'employed himself in preparing a digest of the colonial laws in general.'[24] He obtained leave from the third Earl Bathurst, then and for many years afterwards the head of the Colonial Department, to examine the official records for this purpose. In 1813 Lord Bathurst, who was in general sympathy with the opinions of the Clapham sect, appointed James Stephen Counsel to the Colonial Department. His duties were to report upon all acts of colonial legislature. He received a fee of three guineas for each act, and the office at first produced about 300l. a year. After a time the post became more laborious. He was receiving 1,000l. a year some ten years after his appointment, with, of course, a corresponding increase of work.[25] The place was, however, compatible with the pursuit of the profession, and my father in a few years was making 3,000l. a year, and was in a position which gave him as fair a prospect of obtaining professional honours as was enjoyed by any man of his standing. The earliest notice which I have found of him from an outsider is a passage in Crabb Robinson's diaries.[26] Robinson met him on July 10, 1811, and describes him as a 'pious sentimentalist and moralist,' who spoke of his prospects 'with more indifference than was perhaps right in a layman.' The notice is oddly characteristic. From 1814 my father was for nine years a member of the committee of the Church Missionary Society, after which time his occupations made attendance impossible. I have already indicated the family connection with the Clapham sect, and my father's connection was now to be drawn still closer. On December 22, 1814, he married Jane Catherine Venn, second daughter of the Rev. John Venn, of Clapham.