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

by Leslie Stephen

IV. THE VENNS

My brother was of opinion that he inherited a greater share of the Venn than of the Stephen characteristics. I certainly seem to trace in him a marked infusion of the sturdy common sense of the Venns, which tempered the irritable and nervous temperament common to many of the Stephens. The Venns were of the very blue blood of the party. They traced their descent through a long line of clergymen to the time of Elizabeth.[27] The troubles of two loyalist Venns in the great rebellion are briefly commemorated in Walker's 'Sufferings of the Clergy.' The first Venn who is more than a name was a Richard Venn, who died in 1739. His name occasionally turns up in the obscurer records of eighteenth-century theology. He was rector of St. Antholin's, in the city of London, and incurred the wrath of the pugnacious Warburton and of Warburton's friend (in early days) Conyers Middleton. He ventured to call Middleton an 'apostate priest'; and Middleton retorted that if he alluded to a priest as the 'accuser,' everyone would understand that he meant to refer to Mr. Venn. In fact, Venn had the credit of having denounced Thomas Bundle, who, according to Pope, 'had a heart,' and according to Venn was a deist in disguise. Bundle's reputation was so far damaged that his theology was thought too bad for Gloucester, and, like other pieces of damaged goods, he was quartered upon the Irish Church.

Richard Venn married the daughter of the Jacobite conspirator John Ashton, executed for high treason in 1691. His son Henry, born March 2, 1724, made a more enduring mark and became the chief light of the movement which was contemporaneous with that led by Wesley and Whitefield, though, as its adherents maintained, of independent origin. He was a sturdy, energetic man. As a boy he had shown his principles by steadily thrashing the son of a dissenting minister till he became the terror of the young schismatic. He played (his biographer says) in 1747 for Surrey against all England, and at the end of the match gave his bat to the first comer, saying, 'I will never have it said of me, Well struck, Parson!' He was ordained a few days later, and was 'converted by Law's "Serious Call."' While holding a curacy at Clapham he became a friend of John Thornton, father of the better known Henry Thornton. John was a friend of John Newton and of the poet Cowper, to whom he allowed money for charitable purposes, and both he and his son were great lights at Clapham. From 1759 to 1771 Venn was vicar of Huddersfield, and there became famous for eloquence and energy. His 'Complete Duty of Man'—the title is adopted in contrast to the more famous 'Whole Duty of Man'—was as the sound of a trumpet to the new party. For three generations it was the accepted manual of the sect and a trusted exposition of their characteristic theology. Venn's health suffered from his pastoral labours at Huddersfield; and from 1771 till near his death (June 24, 1797) he was rector of Yelling, in Huntingdonshire. There his influence extended to the neighbouring University of Cambridge. The most eminent Cambridge men of the day, Paley, and Watson, and Hey, were tending to a theology barely distinguishable from the Unitarianism which some of them openly adopted. But a chosen few, denounced by their enemies as methodistical, sought the spiritual guidance of Henry Venn. The most conspicuous was Charles Simeon (1759-1836), who for many years was the object of veneration and of ridicule for his uncouth eloquence in the pulpit of Trinity Church. Even to my own day, his disciples and disciples' disciples were known to their opponents as 'Sims.'[28]

John Venn, son of this Henry Venn, born at Clapham in 1759, was brought up in the true faith. He was a pupil of Joseph Milner, elder brother of the more famous Isaac Milner, and was afterwards, like his father, at Sidney Sussex College. Simeon was one of his intimate friends. In 1792 Venn became rector of Clapham; and there provided the spiritual food congenial to the Thorntons, the Shores, the Macaulays, the Wilberforces, and the Stephens. The value of his teaching may be estimated by any one who will read three volumes of sermons published posthumously in 1814. He died July 1, 1813; but his chief claim to remembrance is that he was the projector and one of the original founders of the Church Missionary Society, in 1799, which was, as it has continued to be, the most characteristic product of the evangelical party.'[29]

John Venn's children were of course intimate with the Stephens. In later life the sons, Henry and John, had a great influence upon my father; Henry in particular was a man of very remarkable character. He was educated by his father till 1813, when he was sent to live with Farish, then Lucasian professor and resident at Chesterton, close to Cambridge. He was at Queen's College, then flourishing under the patronage of evangelical parents attracted by Milner's fame; was nineteenth wrangler in 1818, and for a time was fellow and tutor of his college. In 1827 Wilberforce gave him the living of Drypool, a suburb of Hull, and there in 1829 he married Martha, fourth daughter of Nicholas Sykes, of Swanland, Yorkshire. In 1834 he became vicar of St. John's, Holloway, in the parish of Islington. About 1838 he became subject to an affection of the heart caused mainly by his efforts in carrying his wife upstairs during her serious illness. The physician told him that the heart might possibly adapt itself to a new condition, but that the chances were greatly in favour of a fatal end to the illness. He was forced to retire for two years from work, while his wife's illness developed into a consumption. She died March 21, 1840. Venn's closest relations used to speak with a kind of awe of the extraordinary strength of his conjugal devotion. He was entreated to absent himself from some of the painful ceremonials at her funeral, but declined. 'As if anything,' he said, 'could make any difference to me now.' His own health, however, recovered contrary to expectation; and he resolutely took up his duties in life. On October 5, 1841 he was appointed honorary secretary to the Church Missionary Society, having been on the Committee since 1819, and he devoted the rest of his life to its service with unflagging zeal. He gave up his living of 700l. a year and refused to take any remuneration for his work. He was appointed by Bishop Blomfield to a prebend at St. Paul's, but received and desired no other preferment. He gradually became infirm, and a few months before his death, January 12, 1873, was compelled to resign his post. Henry Venn laboured through life in the interests of a cause which seemed to him among the highest, and which even those who hold entirely different opinions must admit to be a worthy one, the elevation that is, moral and spiritual, of the lower races of mankind. He received no rewards except the approval of his conscience and the sympathy of his fellows; and he worked with an energy rarely paralleled by the most energetic public servant. His labours are described in a rather shapeless book[30] to which I may refer for full details. But I must add a few words upon his character. Venn was not an eloquent man either in the pulpit or on paper; nor can I ascribe him any power of speculative thought. He had been from youth steeped in the evangelical doctrine, and was absolutely satisfied with it to the last. 'I knew,' he once said, 'as a young man all that could be said against Christianity, and I put the thoughts aside as temptations of the devil. They have never troubled me since.' Nor was he more troubled by the speculative tendencies of other parties in the Church. His most obvious mental characteristic was a shrewd common sense, which one of his admirers suggests may have been caught by contagion in his Yorkshire living. In truth it was an innate endowment shared by others of his family. In him it was combined with a strong sense of humour which is carefully kept out of his writing, and which, as I used to fancy, must have been at times a rather awkward endowment. The evangelical party has certain weaknesses to which, so far as I know, my uncle contrived to shut his eyes. The humour, however, was always bubbling up in his talk, and combined as it was with invariable cheeriness of spirit, with a steady flow of the strongest domestic affection, and with a vigorous and confident judgment, made him a delightful as well as an impressive companion. Although outside of the paths which lead to preferment or to general reputation, he carried a great weight in all the counsels of his party. His judgment, no doubt, entitled him to their respect. Though a most devoted clergyman, he had some of the qualities which go to make a thoroughly trustworthy lawyer. He was a marked exception to the famous observation of Clarendon that 'the clergymen understand the least, and take the worst measure of human affairs of all mankind that can write and read.' Henry Venn's example showed that the clergyman's gown need not necessarily imply disqualification for a thorough man of business. He was a man to do thoroughly whatever he undertook. 'What a mercy it is,' said his sister Emelia, 'that Henry is a good man, for good or bad he could never repent.'

His younger brother, John, was a man of much less intellectual force but of singular charm of character. In 1833 he became incumbent of a church at Hereford in the gift of the Simeon trustees, and lived there till his death in 1890, having resigned his living about 1870. He had the simplicity of character of a Dr. Primrose, and was always overflowing with the kindliest feelings towards his relatives and mankind in general. His enthusiasm was, directed not only to religious ends but to various devices for the physical advantage of mankind. He set up a steam corn mill in Hereford, which I believe worked very successfully for the supply of pure flour to his parishioners, and he had theories about the production of pigs and poultry upon which he could dilate with amusing fervour. He showed his principles in a public disputation with a Roman Catholic priest at Hereford. I do not know that either of them converted anybody; but John Venn's loveableness was not dependent upon dialectical ability. He was accepted, I may say, as the saint of our family; and Aylstone Hill, Hereford, where he lived with his unmarried sister Emelia, (a lady who in common sense and humour strongly resembled her brother Henry), was a place of pilgrimage to which my father frequently resorted, and where we all found a model of domestic happiness.

The youngest sister, Caroline, married the Rev. Ellis Batten, a master at Harrow School. He died young in 1830, and she was left with two daughters, the elder of whom, now Mrs. Russell Gurney, survives, and was in early years one of the most familiar members of our inner home circle.

I must now speak of my mother. 'In one's whole life,' says Gray, 'one can never have any more than a single mother'—a trite observation, he adds, which yet he never discovered till it was too late. Those who have made the same discovery must feel also how impossible it is to communicate to others their own experience, and indeed how painful it is even to make the attempt. Almost every man's mother, one is happy to observe, is the best of mothers. I will only assert what I could prove by evidence other than my own impressions. My mother, then, must have been a very handsome young woman. A portrait—not a very good one—shows that she had regular features and a fine complexion, which she preserved till old age. Her beauty was such as implies a thoroughly good constitution and unbroken health. She was too a rather romantic young lady. She knew by heart all such poetry as was not excluded from the sacred common; she could repeat Cowper and Wordsworth and Campbell and Scott, and her children learnt the 'Mariners of England' and the 'Death of Marmion' from her lips almost before they could read for themselves. She accepted, of course, the religious opinions of her family, but in what I may call a comparatively mild form. If she had not the humour of her brother Henry and her sister Emelia, she possessed an equal amount of common sense. Her most obvious characteristic as I knew her was a singular serenity, which indicated a union of strong affection and sound judgment with an entire absence of any morbid tendencies. Her devotion to her husband and children may possibly have influenced her estimate of their virtues and talents. But however strong her belief in them, it never betrayed her to partiality of conduct. We were as sure of her justice as of her affection. Her servants invariably became attached to her. Our old nurse, Elizabeth Francis, lived with us for forty-three years, and her death in 1865 was felt as a deep family sorrow. The quaint Yorkshire cook, whose eccentricities had given trouble and whose final parting had therefore been received with equanimity on the eve of a journey abroad, was found calmly sitting in our kitchen when we returned, and announcing, truly as it turned out, that she proposed to stay during the rest of my mother's life. But this domestic loyalty was won without the slightest concession of unusual privileges. Her characteristic calmness appeared in another way. She suffered the heaviest of blows in the death of her husband, after forty-five years of unbroken married happiness, and of her eldest son. On both occasions she recovered her serenity and even cheerfulness with marked rapidity, not certainly from any want of feeling, but from her constitutional incapacity for dwelling uselessly upon painful emotions. She had indeed practised cheerfulness as a duty in order to soothe her husband's anxieties, and it had become part of her character. The moral equilibrium of her nature recovered itself spontaneously as wounds cure by themselves quickly in thoroughly sound constitutions. She devoted her spare time in earlier years and almost her whole time in later life to labours among the poor, but was never tempted to mere philanthropic sentimentalism. A sound common sense, in short, was her predominant faculty; and, though her religious sentiments were very strong and deep, she was so far from fanatical that she accepted with perfect calmness the deviations of her children from the old orthodox faith. My brother held, rightly as I think, that he inherited a large share of these qualities. To my father himself, the influence of such a wife was of inestimable value. He, the most nervous, sensitive of men, could always retire to the serene atmosphere of a home governed by placid common sense and be soothed by the gentlest affection. How necessary was such a solace will soon be perceived.