IV. CAMBRIDGE
In October 1847 my brother went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge. 'My Cambridge career,' he says, 'was not to me so memorable or important a period of life as it appears to some people.' He seems to have extended the qualification to all his early years. 'Few men,' he says, 'have worked harder than I have for the last thirty-five years, but I was a very lazy, unsystematic lad up to the age of twenty-two.' He would sometimes speak of himself as 'one of a slowly ripening race,' and set little value upon the intellectual acquirements attained during the immature period. Yet I have sufficiently shown that in some respects he was even exceptionally developed. From his childhood he had shared the thoughts of his elders; he had ceased to be a boy when he had left Eton at sixteen; and he came up to Cambridge far more of a grown man than nine in ten of his contemporaries. So far, indeed, as his character was concerned, he had scarcely ever been a child: at Cambridge, as at Eton, he regarded many of the ambitions of his contemporaries as puerile. Even the most brilliant undergraduates are sometimes tempted to set an excessive value upon academical distinction. A senior wranglership appears to them to be the culminating point of human glory, instead of the first term in the real battle of life. Fitzjames, far from sharing this delusion, regarded it, perhaps, with rather too much contempt. His thoughts were already upon his future career, and he cared for University distinctions only as they might provide him with a good start in the subsequent competition. But this marked maturity of character did not imply the possession of corresponding intellectual gifts, or, as I should rather say, of such gifts as led to success in the Senate House. Fitzjames had done respectably at Eton, and had been among the first lads at King's College. He probably came up to Cambridge with confidence that he would make a mark in examinations. But his mind, however powerful, was far from flexible. He had not the intellectual docility which often enables a clever youth to surpass rivals of much greater originality—as originality not unfrequently tempts a man outside the strait and narrow path which leads to the maximum of marks. 'I have always found myself,' says Fitzjames, in reference to his academical career, 'one of the most unteachable of human beings. I cannot, to this day, take in anything at second hand. I have in all cases to learn whatever I want to learn in a way of my own. It has been so with law, with languages, with Indian administration, with the machinery I have had to study in patent cases, with English composition—in a word, with everything whatever.' For other reasons, however, he was at a disadvantage. He not only had not yet developed, but he never at any time possessed, the intellectual qualities most valued at Cambridge.
The Cambridge of those days had merits, now more likely to be overlooked than overvalued. The course was fitted to encourage strenuous masculine industry, love of fair play, and contempt for mere showy displays of cleverness. But it must be granted that it was strangely narrow. The University was not to be despised which could turn out for successive senior wranglers from 1840 to 1843 such men as Leslie Ellis, Sir George Stokes, Professor Cayley, and Adams, the discoverer of Neptune, while the present Lord Kelvin was second wrangler and first Smith's prizeman in 1845. During the same period the great Latin scholar, Munro (1842), and H. S. Maine (1844), were among the lights of the Classical Tripos. But, outside of the two Triposes, there was no career for a man of any ability. To parody a famous phrase of Hume's, Cambridge virtually said to its pupils, 'Is this a treatise upon geometry or algebra? No. Is it, then, a treatise upon Greek or Latin grammar, or on the grammatical construction of classical authors? No. Then commit it to the flames, for it contains nothing worth your study.' Now, in both these arenas Fitzjames was comparatively feeble. He read classical books, not only at Cambridge but in later life, when he was pleased to find his scholarship equal to the task of translating. But he read them for their contents, not from any interest in the forms of language. He was without that subtlety and accuracy of mind which makes the born scholar. He was capable of blunders surprising in a man of his general ability; and every blunder takes away marks. He was still less of a mathematician. 'I disliked,' as he says himself, 'and foolishly despised the studies of the place, and did not care about accurate classical scholarship, in which I was utterly wrong. I was clumsy at calculation, though I think I have, and always have had, a good head for mathematical principles; and I utterly loathed examinations, which seem to me to make learning all but impossible.'
A letter from his friend, the Rev. H. W. Watson, second wrangler in 1850, who was a year his senior, has given me a very interesting account of impressions made at this time. The two had been together at King's College. Fitzjames's appearance at Trinity was, writes Mr. Watson, 'an epoch in my college life. A close intimacy sprung up between us, and made residence at Cambridge a totally different thing from what it had been in my first year. Your brother's wide culture, his singular force of character, his powerful but, at that time, rather unwieldy intellect, his Johnsonian brusqueness of speech and manner, mingled with a corresponding Johnsonian warmth of sympathy with and loyalty to friends in trouble or anxiety, his sturdiness in the assertion of his opinions, and the maintenance of his principles, disdaining the smallest concession for popularity's sake ... all these traits combined in the formation of an individuality which no one could know intimately and fail to be convinced that only time was wanting for the achievement of no ordinary distinction.' 'Yet,' says Mr. Watson, 'he was distanced by men immeasurably his inferiors.' Nor can this, as Mr. Watson rightly adds, be regarded as a condemnation of the system rather than of my brother. 'I attempted to prepare him in mathematics, and the well-known Dr. Scott, afterwards headmaster of Westminster, was his private tutor in classics; and we agreed in marvelling at and deploring the hopelessness of our tasks. For your brother's mind, acute and able as it was in dealing with matters of concrete human interest, seemed to lose grasp of things viewed purely in the abstract, and positively refused to work upon questions of grammatical rules and algebraical formulæ.' When they were afterwards fellow-students for a short time in law, Mr. Watson remarked in Fitzjames a similar impatience of legal technicalities. He thinks that the less formal system at Oxford might have suited my brother better. At that time, however, Cambridge was only beginning to stir in its slumbers. The election of the Prince Consort to the Chancellorship in 1847 (my brother's first year of residence) had roused certain grumblings as to the probable 'Germanising' of our ancient system; and a beginning was made, under Whewell's influence, by the institution of the 'Moral Sciences' and 'Natural Sciences' Triposes in 1851. The theory was, apparently, that, if you ask questions often enough, people will learn in time to answer them. But for the present they were regarded as mere 'fancy' examinations. No rewards were attainable by success; and the ambitious undergraduates kept to the ancient paths.
I may as well dispose here of one other topic which seems appropriate to University days. Fitzjames cared nothing for the athletic sports which were so effectually popularised soon afterwards in the time of 'Tom Brown's School Days.' Athletes, indeed, cast longing eyes at his stalwart figure. One eminent oarsman persuaded my brother to take a seat in a pair-oared boat, and found that he could hardly hold his own against the strength of the neophyte. He tried to entice so promising a recruit by offers of a place in the 'Third Trinity' crew and ultimate hopes of a 'University Blue.' Fitzjames scorned the dazzling offer. I remember how Ritson, the landlord at Wastdale Head, who had wrestled with Christopher North, lamented in after years that Fitzjames had never entered the ring. He spoke in the spirit of the prize-fighter who said to Whewell, 'What a man was lost when they made you a parson!' His only taste of the kind was his hereditary love of walking. His mother incidentally observes in January 1846, that he has accomplished a walk of thirty-three miles; and in later days that was a frequent allowance. Though not a fast walker, he had immense endurance. He made several Alpine tours, and once (in 1860) he accompanied me in an ascent of the Jungfrau with a couple of guides. He was fresh from London; we had passed a night in a comfortless cave; the day was hot, and his weight made a plod through deep snow necessarily fatiguing. We reached the summit with considerable difficulty. On the descent he slipped above a certain famous bergschrund; the fall of so ponderous a body jerked me out of the icy steps, and our combined weight dragged down the guides. Happily the bergschrund was choked with snow, and we escaped with an involuntary slide. As we plodded slowly homewards, we expected that his exhaustion would cause a difficulty in reaching the inn. But by the time we got there he was, I believe, the freshest of the party. I remember another characteristic incident of the walk. He began in the most toilsome part of the climb to expound to me a project for an article in the 'Saturday Review.' I consigned that journal to a fate which I believe it has hitherto escaped. But his walks were always enjoyed as opportunities for reflection. Occasionally he took a gun or a rod, and I am told was not a bad shot. He was, however, rather inclined to complain of the appearance of a grouse as interrupting his thoughts. In sport of the gambling variety he never took the slightest interest; and when he became a judge, he shocked a Liverpool audience by asking in all simplicity, 'What is the "Grand National"?' That, I understand, is like asking a lawyer, What is a Habeas Corpus? He was never seized with the athletic or sporting mania, much as he enjoyed a long pound through pleasant scenery. In this as in some other things he came to think that his early contempt for what appeared to be childish amusements had been pushed rather to excess.
I return to Cambridge. My brother knew slightly some of the leading men of the place. The omniscient Whewell, who concealed a warm heart and genuine magnanimity under rather rough and overbearing manners, had welcomed my father very cordially to Cambridge and condescended to be polite to his son. But the gulf which divided him from an undergraduate was too wide to allow the transmission of real personal influence. Thompson, Whewell's successor in the mastership, was my brother's tutor. He is now chiefly remembered for certain shrewd epigrams; but then enjoyed a great reputation for his lectures upon Plato. My brother attended them; but from want of natural Platonism or for other reasons failed to profit by them, and thought the study was sheer waste of time. Another great Cambridge man of those days, the poetical mathematician, Leslie Ellis, was kind to my brother, who had an introduction to him probably from Spedding. Ellis was already suffering from the illness which confined him to his room at Trumpington, and prevented him from ever giving full proofs of intellectual powers, rated by all who knew him as astonishing. I may quote what Fitzjames says of one other contemporary, the senior classic of his own year: 'Lightfoot's reputation for accuracy and industry was unrivalled; but it was not generally known what a depth of humour he had or what general force of character.' Lightfoot's promotion to the Bishopric of Durham removed him, as my brother thought, from his proper position as a teacher; and he suffered 'under the general decay of all that belongs to theology.' I do not find, however, that Lightfoot had any marked influence upon Fitzjames.
The best thing that the ablest man learns at college, as somebody has said, is that there are abler men than himself. My brother became intimate with several very able men of his own age, and formed friendships which lasted for life. He met them especially in two societies, which influenced him as they have influenced many men destined to achieve eminence. The first was the 'Union.' There his oratory became famous. The 'Gruffian' and 'Giant Grim' was now known as the 'British Lion'; and became, says Mr. Watson, 'a terror to the shallow and wordy, and a merciless exposer of platitudes and shams.' Mr. Watson describes a famous scene in the October term of 1849 which may sufficiently illustrate his position. 'There was at that time at Trinity a cleverish, excitable, worthy fellow whose mind was a marvellous mixture of inconsistent opinions which he expounded with a kind of oratory as grotesque as his views.' Tradition supplies me with one of his flowers of speech. He alluded to the clergy as 'priests sitting upon their golden middens and crunching the bones of the people.' These oddities gave my brother irresistible opportunities for making fun of his opponent. 'One night his victim's powers of endurance gave way. The scene resembled the celebrated outburst of Canning when goaded by the invectives of Brougham. The man darted across the room with the obvious intention of making a physical onslaught, and then, under what impulse and with what purpose I do not know, the whole meeting suddenly flashed into a crowd of excited, wrangling boys. They leapt upon the seats, climbed upon the benches, vociferated and gesticulated against each other, heedless of the fines and threats of the bewildered President, and altogether reproduced a scene of the French revolutionary Assembly.' Mr. Llewelyn Davies was the unfortunate President on this occasion, and mentions that my brother commemorated the scene in a 'heroic ballad' which has disappeared.
From the minutes of the Society[54] 'I learn further details of this historic scene. The debate (November 27, 1849) arose upon a motion in favour of Cobden. His panegyrist made 'such violent interruptions' that a motion was made for his expulsion, but carried by an insufficient majority. Another orator then 'became unruly' and was expelled by a superabundant majority, while the original mover was fined 2l. The motion was then unanimously negatived, 'the opener not being present to reply.' From the records of other debates I learn that Fitzjames was in favour of the existing Church Establishment as against advocates of change, whether high churchmen or liberationists. He also opposed motions for extension of the suffrage, without regard to education or property, moved by Sir W. Harcourt. He agrees, however, with Harcourt in condemning the game laws. His most characteristic utterance was when the admirer of Cobden had moved that 'to all human appearance we are warranted in tracing for our own country through the dim perspective of coming time an exalted and glorious destiny.' Fitzjames moved as an amendment 'that the House, while it acknowledges the many dangers to which the country is exposed, trusts that through the help of God we may survive them.' This amendment was carried by 60 to 0.
The other society was one which has included a very remarkable number of eminent men. In my undergraduate days we used to speak with bated breath of the 'Apostles'—the accepted nickname for what was officially called the Cambridge Conversazione Society. It was founded about 1820, and had included such men as Tennyson (who, as my brother reports, had to leave the Society because he was too lazy to write an essay), the two younger Hallams, Maurice, Sterling, Charles Buller, Arthur Helps, James Spedding, Monckton Milnes, Tom Taylor, Charles Merivale, Canon Blakesley, and others whom I shall have to mention. The existence of a society intended to cultivate the freest discussion of all the great topics excited some suspicion when, about 1834, there was a talk of abolishing tests. It was then warmly defended by Thirlwall, the historian, who said that many of its members had become ornaments of the Church.[55]
But the very existence of this body was scarcely known to the University at large; and its members held reticence to be a point of honour. You might be aware that your most intimate friend belonged to it: you had dimly inferred the fact from his familiarity with certain celebrities, and from discovering that upon Saturday evenings he was always mysteriously engaged. But he never mentioned his dignity; any more than at the same period a Warrington would confess that he was a contributor to the leading journals of the day. The members were on the look-out for any indications of intellectual originality, academical or otherwise, and specially contemptuous of humbug, cant, and the qualities of the 'windbag' in general. To be elected, therefore, was virtually to receive a certificate from some of your cleverest contemporaries that they regarded you as likely to be in future an eminent man. The judgment so passed was perhaps as significant as that implied by University honours, and a very large proportion of the apostles have justified the anticipations of their fellows.
My brother owed his election at an unusually early period of his career to one of the most important friendships of his life. In the summer vacation of 1845 F. W. Gibbs was staying at Filey, reading for the Trinity Fellowship, which he obtained in the following October. Fitzjames joined him, and there met Henry Sumner Maine, who had recently (1844) taken his degree at Cambridge, when he was not only 'senior classic' but a senior classic of exceptional brilliancy. Both Maine and Gibbs were apostles and, of course, friends. My brother's first achievement was to come near blowing out his new friend's brains by the accidental discharge of a gun. Maine happily escaped, and must have taken a liking to the lad. In 1847 Maine was appointed to the Regius Professorship of Civil Law in Cambridge. The study which he was to teach had fallen into utter decay. Maine himself cannot at that time have had any profound knowledge of the Civil Law—if, indeed, he ever acquired such knowledge. But his genius enabled him to revive the study in England—although no genius could galvanise the corpse of legal studies at the Cambridge of those days into activity. Maine, as Fitzjames says, 'made in the most beautiful manner applications of history and philosophy to Roman law, and transfigured one of the driest of subjects into all sorts of beautiful things without knowing or caring much about details.' He was also able to 'sniff at Bentham' for his ignorance in this direction. 'I rebelled against Maine for many years,' says Fitzjames, 'till at last I came to recognise, not only his wonderful gifts, but the fact that at bottom he and I agreed fundamentally, though it cost us both a good deal of trouble to find it out.' I quote this because it bears upon my brother's later development of opinion. For the present, the personal remark is more relevant. Maine, says Fitzjames, 'was perfectly charming to me at college, as he is now. He was most kind, friendly, and unassuming; and, though I was a freshman and he a young don,[56] and he was twenty-six when I was twenty—one of the greatest differences of age and rank which can exist between two people having so much in common—we were always really and effectually equal. We have been the closest of friends all through life.' I think, indeed, that Maine's influence upon my brother was only second to that of my father.
Maine brought Fitzjames into the apostles in his first term.[57] Maine, says my brother, 'was a specially shining apostle, and in all discussions not only took by far the first and best part, but did it so well and unpretentiously, and in a strain so much above what the rest of us could reach, that it was a great piece of education to hear him.' Other members of the little society, which generally included only five or six—the name 'apostles' referring to the limit of possible numbers—were E. H. Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), who left in March 1848, Vernon Harcourt (now Sir William), H. W. Watson, Julian Fane,[58] and the present Canon Holland. Old members—Monckton Milnes, James Spedding, Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam, and W. H. Thompson (the tutor)—occasionally attended meetings. The late Professor Hort and the great physicist, Clerk Maxwell, joined about the time of my brother's departure. He records one statement of Maxwell's which has, I suspect, been modified in transmission. The old logicians, said Maxwell, recognised four forms of syllogism. Hamilton had raised the number to 7, but he had himself discovered 135. This, however, mattered little, as the great majority could not be expressed in human language, and even if expressed were not susceptible of any meaning.
This specimen would give a very inaccurate notion of the general line of discussion. By the kindness of Professor Sidgwick, I am enabled to give some specimens of the themes supported by my brother, which may be of interest, not merely in regard to him, but as showing what topics occupied the minds of intelligent youths at the time. The young gentlemen met every Saturday night in term time and read essays. They discussed all manner of topics. Sometimes they descended to mere commonplaces—Is a little knowledge a dangerous thing? Is it possible ridentem dicere verum? (which Fitzjames is solitary in denying)—but more frequently they expatiate upon the literary, poetical, ethical, and philosophical problems which can be answered so conclusively in our undergraduate days. Fitzjames self-denyingly approves of the position assigned to mathematics at Cambridge. In literary matters I notice that he does not think the poetry of Byron of a 'high order'; that he reads some essays of Shelley, which are unanimously voted 'unsatisfactory'; that he denies that Tennyson's 'Princess' shows higher powers than the early poems (a rather ambiguous phrase); that he considers Adam, not Satan, to be the hero of 'Paradise Lost'; and, more characteristically, that he regards the novels of the present day as 'degenerate,' and, on his last appearance, maintains the superiority of Miss Austen's 'Emma' to Miss Brontë's 'Jane Eyre.' 'Jane Eyre' had then, I remember, some especially passionate admirers at Cambridge. His philosophical theories are not very clear. He thinks, like some other people, that Locke's chapter on 'Substance' is 'unsatisfactory'; and agrees with some 'strictures' on the early chapters of Mill's 'Political Economy.' He writes an essay to explode the poor old social contract. He holds that the study of metaphysics is desirable, but adds the note, 'not including ontological inquiries under the head of metaphysics.' He denies, however, the proposition that 'all general truths are founded on experience.' He thinks that a meaning can be attached to the term 'freewill'; but considers it impossible 'to frame a satisfactory hypothesis as to the origin of evil.' Even the intellect of the apostles had its limits. His ethical doctrines seem to have inclined to utilitarianism. The whole society (four members present) agrees that the system of expediency, 'so far from being a derogation from the moral dignity of man, is the only method consistent with the conditions of his action.' He is neutral upon the question whether 'self-love is the immediate motive of all our actions,' and considers that question unmeaning, 'as not believing it possible that a man should be at once subject and object.' He writes an essay to show that there is no foundation 'for a philosophy of history in the analogy between the progressive improvement of mankind and that of which individuals are capable,' and he holds (in opposition to Maine) that Carlyle is a 'philosophic historian.' The only direct reference to contemporary politics is characteristic. Fane had argued that 'some elements of socialism' should be 'employed in that reconstruction of society which the spirit of the age demands.' Maine agrees, but Fitzjames denies that any reconstruction of society is needed.
Theological discussions abound. Fitzjames thinks that there are grounds independent of revelation for believing in the goodness and unity of an intelligent First Cause. He reads an essay to prove that we can form a notion of inspiration which does not involve dictation. He thinks it 'more agreeable to right reason' to explain the Biblical account of the creation by literal interpretation than 'on scientific principles,' but adds the rider, 'so far as it can be reconciled with geological facts.' He denies that the Pentateuch shows 'traces of Egyptian origin.' He thinks that Paley's views of the 'essential doctrines of Christianity' are insufficient. He approves the 'strict observance of the Sabbath in England,' but notes that he does not wish to 'confound the Christian Sunday with the Jewish Sabbath.'
The instinct which leads a young man to provide himself with a good set of dogmatic first principles is very natural; and the free and full discussion of them with his fellows, however crude their opinions may be, is among the very best means of education. I need only remark that the apostles appear to have refrained from discussion of immediate politics, and to have been little concerned in some questions which were agitating the sister University. They have nothing to say about Apostolical Succession and the like; nor are there any symptoms of interest in German philosophy, which Hamilton and Mansel were beginning to introduce. At Cambridge the young gentlemen are content with Locke and Mill; and at most know something of Coleridge and Maurice. Mr. Watson compares these meetings to those at Newman's rooms in Oxford as described by Mark Pattison. There a luckless advocate of ill-judged theories might be crushed for the evening by the polite sentence, Very likely. At the Cambridge meetings, the trial to the nerves, as Mr. Watson thinks, was even more severe. There was not the spell of common reverence for a great man, in whose presence a modest reticence was excusable. You were expected to speak out, and failure was the more appalling. The contests between Stephen and Harcourt were especially famous. Though, says Mr. Watson, your brother was 'not a match in adroitness and chaff' for his great 'rival,' he showed himself at his best in these struggles. 'The encounters were veritable battles of the gods, and I recall them after forty years with the most vivid recollection of the pleasure they caused.' When Sir William Harcourt entered Parliament, my brother remarked to Mr. Llewelyn Davies, 'It does not seem to be in the natural order of things that Harcourt should be in the House and I not there to criticise him.'
Fitzjames's position in regard both to theology and politics requires a little further notice. At this time my brother was not only a stern moralist, but a 'zealous and reverential witness on behalf of dogma, and that in the straitest school of the Evangelicals.' Mr. Watson mentions the death at college of a fellow-student during the last term of my brother's residence. In his last hours the poor fellow confided to his family his gratitude to Fitzjames for having led him to think seriously on religious matters. I find a very minute account of this written by my brother at the time to a common friend. He expresses very strong feeling, and had been most deeply moved by his first experience of a deathbed; but he makes no explicit reflections. Though decidedly of the evangelical persuasion at this period, and delighting in controversy upon all subjects, great and small, his intense aversion to sentimentalism was not only as marked as it ever became, but even led to a kind of affectation of prosaic matter of fact stoicism, a rejection of every concession to sentiment, which he afterwards regarded as excessive.
The impression made upon him by contemporary politics was remarkable. The events of 1848 stirred all young men in one way or the other; and although the apostles were discussing the abstract problems of freewill and utilitarianism, they were no doubt keenly interested in concrete history. No one was more moved than Fitzjames. He speaks of the optimistic views which were popular with the Liberals after 1832, expounded by Cobden and Bright and supposed to be sanctioned by the Exhibition of 1851. It was the favourite cant that Captain Pen 'had got the best of Captain Sword, and that henceforth the kindly earth would slumber, lapt in universal law. I cannot say how I personally loathed this way of thinking, and how radically false, hollow and disgusting it seemed to me then, and seems to me now.' The crash of 1848 came like a thunderbolt, and 'history seemed to have come to life again with all its wild elemental forces.' For the first time he was aware of actual war within a small distance, and the settlement of great questions by sheer force. 'How well I remember my own feelings, which were, I think, the feelings of the great majority of my age and class, and which have ever since remained in me as strong and as unmixed as they were in 1848. I feel them now (1887) as keenly as ever, though the world has changed and thinks and feels, as it seems, quite differently. They were feelings of fierce, unqualified hatred for the revolution and revolutionists; feelings of the most bitter contempt and indignation against those who feared them, truckled to them, or failed to fight them whensoever they could and as long as they could: feelings of zeal against all popular aspirations and in favour of all established institutions whatever their various defects or harshnesses (which, however, I wished to alter slowly and moderately): in a word, the feelings of a scandalised policeman towards a mob breaking windows in the cause of humanity. I should have liked first to fire grapeshot down every street in Paris, till the place ran with blood, and next to try Louis Philippe and those who advised him not to fight by court martial, and to have hanged them all as traitors and cowards. The only event in 1848 which gave me real pleasure was the days of June, when Cavaignac did what, if he had been a man or not got into a fright about his soul, or if he had had a real sense of duty instead of a wretched consciousness of weakness and a false position, Louis Philippe would have done months before.' He cannot, he admits, write with calmness to this day of the king's cowardice; and he never passed the Tuileries in later life without feeling the sentiment about Louis XVI. and his 'heritage splendid' expressed by Thackeray's drummer, 'Ah, shame on him, craven and coward, that had not the heart to defend it!'
'I have often wondered,' adds Fitzjames, 'at my own vehement feelings on these subjects, and I am not altogether prepared to say that they are not more or less foolish. I have never seen war. I have never heard a shot fired in anger, and I have never had my courage put to any proof worth speaking of. Have I any right to talk of streets running with blood? Is it not more likely that, at a pinch, I might myself run in quite a different direction? It is one of the questions which will probably remain unanswered for ever, whether I am a coward or not. But that has nothing really to do with the question. If I am a coward, I am contemptible: but Louis Philippe was a coward and contemptible whether I am a coward or not; and my feelings on the whole of this subject are, at all events, perfectly sincere, and are the very deepest and most genuine feelings I have.' Fitzjames's only personal experience of revolutionary proceedings was on the famous 10th of April, when he was in London, but saw only special constables. The events of the day confirmed him in the doctrine that every disorganised mob is more likely to behave in the spirit of the lowest and most contemptible units than in the spirit of what is highest in them.
I can only add one little anecdote of those days. A friend of my brother's rushed into his rooms obviously to announce some very exciting piece of news. Is the mob triumphant in Paris? 'I don't know,' was the reply, 'but a point has been decided in the Gorham case.' Good evangelical as Fitzjames then was, he felt that there were more important controversies going on than squabbles over baptismal regeneration. A curious set of letters written in his first vacation to his friend Dr. Kitchin show, however, that he then took an eager interest in this doctrine. He discusses it at great length in the evangelical sense, with abundant quotations of texts.
While interested in these matters, winning fame at the Union and enjoying the good opinion of the apostles, Fitzjames was failing in a purely academical sense. He tried twice for a scholarship at Trinity, and both times unsuccessfully, though he was not very far from success. The failure excluded him, as things then were, from the possibility of a fellowship, and a degree became valueless for its main purpose. He resolved, therefore, to go abroad with my father, who had to travel in search of health. He passed the winter of 1850-1 in Paris, where he learnt French, and attended sittings of the Legislative Assembly, and was especially interested by proceedings in the French law-courts. He kept the May term of 1851 at Cambridge, and went out in the 'Poll.' Judging from the performances of his rivals, he would probably have been in the lower half of the first class in the Classical Tripos. Although his last months at Cambridge were not cheering, he retained a feeling for the place very unlike his feeling towards Eton. He had now at least found himself firmly on his own legs, measured his strength against other competitors, and made lasting friendships with some of the strongest. It had been, he says, 'my greatest ambition to get a fellowship at Trinity, but I got it at last, however, for I was elected an honorary Fellow in the autumn of 1885. I have had my share of compliments, but I never received one which gave me half so much pleasure.' He visited Cambridge in later years and was my guest, and long afterwards the guest of his friend Maine, at certain Christmas festivities in Trinity Hall. He speaks in the warmest terms of his appreciation of the place, 'old and dignified, yet fresh and vigorous.' Nearly his last visit was in the autumn of 1885, when he gave a dinner to the apostles, of whom his son James was then a member.
Fitzjames's friends were naturally surprised at his throwing up the game. Most of them set, as I have intimated, a higher value upon academical honours, considered by themselves, than he ever admitted to be just. Possibly they exaggerated a little the disgust which was implied by his absolute abandonment of the course. And yet, I find the impression among those who saw most of him at the time, that the disappointment was felt with great keenness. The explanation is given, I think, in some remarks made by my father to Mr Watson. My father held that the University system of distributing honours was very faulty. Men, he said, wanted all the confidence they could acquire in their own powers for the struggle of life. Whatever braced and stimulated self-reliance was good. The honour system encouraged the few who succeeded and inflicted upon the rest a 'demoralising sense of failure.' I have no doubt that my father was, in fact, generalising from the case of Fitzjames. What really stung the young man was a more or less dim foreboding of the difficulties which were to meet him in the world at large. He was not one of the men fitted for easy success. The successful man is, I take it, the man with an eye for the line of least resistance. He has an instinct, that is, for the applying his strength in the direction in which it will tell most. And he has the faculty of so falling in with other men's modes of thinking and feeling that they may spontaneously, if unconsciously, form a band of supporters. Obstacles become stepping-stones to such men. It was Fitzjames's fate through life to take the bull by the horns; to hew a path through jungles and up steep places along the steepest and most entangled routes; and to shoulder his way by main strength and weight through a crowd, instead of contriving to combine external pressures into an agency for propulsion. At this time, the contrast between his acceptance with the ablest of his contemporaries in private and his inability to obtain the public stamp of merit perplexed and troubled him. Maine and Thompson could recognise his abilities. Why could not the examiners? Might not his ambition have to struggle with similar obstacles at the bar or in the pulpit?
I quote from a letter written by my father during Fitzjames's academical career to show what was the relation at this time between the two men. My father dictates to my mother a letter to Fitzjames, dated January 19, 1849.[59] 'You well know,' he says, 'that I have long since surmounted that paternal ambition which might have led me to thirst for your eminence as a scholar. It has not pleased God to give you that kind of bodily constitution and mental temperament which is essential to such success.' He proceeds to say that, although success in examinations is 'not essential to the great ends of Fitzjames's existence, it is yet very desirable that he should become a good scholar from higher motives—such,' he adds, 'as are expounded in Bacon's "De Augmentis."' He solemnly recommends regular prayer for guidance in studies for which the lower motives may be insufficient. It then occurs to my mother that the advice may be a little discouraging. 'I am reminded by my amanuensis that I have left you in the dark as to my opinion of your probable success in the literary labours to which I have exhorted you. You must be a very mole if the darkness be real. From your childhood to this day I have ever shown you by more than words how high an estimate I entertain both of the depth and the breadth of your capacity. I have ever conversed with you as with a man, not as with a child; and though parental partiality has never concealed from me the fact of your deficiency in certain powers of mind which are essential to early excellence in learning, yet I have never been for a moment distrustful of your possessing an intellect which, if well disciplined and well cultured, will continue to expand, improve, and yield excellent fruit long after the mental faculties of many of your more fortunate rivals will have passed from their full maturity into premature decay. Faith in yourself (which is but one of the many forms of faith in God) is the one thing needful to your intellectual progress; and if your faith in yourself may but survive the disappointment of your academical ambition, that disappointment will be converted into a blessing.'
The letter shows, I think, under the rather elaborate phraseology, both the perspicuity with which the father had estimated his son's talents and the strong sympathy which bound them together. The reference to Fitzjames's 'want of faith in himself' is significant. If want of faith is to be measured by want of courage in tackling the difficulties of life, no man could be really less open to the charge than Fitzjames. But my father, himself disposed to anticipate ill fortune, had certain reasons for attributing to his son a tendency in the same direction. Fitzjames's hatred of all exaggeration, his resolute refusal to be either sentimental or optimistic, led him to insist upon the gloomy side of things. Moreover, he was still indolent; given to be slovenly in his work, and rather unsocial in his ways, though warmly attached to a few friends. My father, impressed by these symptoms, came to the conclusion that Fitzjames was probably unsuited for the more active professions for which a sanguine temper and a power of quickly attaching others are obvious qualifications. He therefore looked forward to his son's adoption of the clerical career, which his own deep piety as well as his painful experience of official vexations had long made him regard as the happiest of all careers. Circumstances strengthened this feeling. My father's income had been diminished by his resignation, while the education of his two sons became more expensive, and he had to contribute to the support of his brother George. No human being could have made us feel more clearly that he would willingly give us his last penny or his last drop of blood. But he was for a time more than usually vexed and anxious; and the fact could not be quite concealed.
Fitzjames's comparative failure at Cambridge suggests to him a significant remark. After speaking of his 'unteachableness,' he observes that his mind was over-full of thoughts about religion, about politics, about morals, about metaphysics, about all sorts of subjects, except art, literature, or physical science. For art of any kind I have never cared, and do not care in the very least. For literature, as such, I care hardly at all. I like to be amused and instructed on the particular things I want to know; but works of genius, as such, give me very little pleasure, and as to the physical sciences, they interest me only so far as they illustrate the true method of inquiry. They, or rather some of them, have the advantage of being particularly true, and so a guide in the pursuit of moral and distinctively human truth. For their own sake, I care very little about them.'