It cannot with certainty be said whence Gibbon derived his singular appearance. Not (one would say) from either his father or his mother, who were both, to judge from their portraits, very comely persons. But if neither his face nor his figure would have served to make Gibbon’s fortune, certainly his agreeable manners stood him in good stead; and although Boswell describes him, in ferociously unfriendly terms, as “an ugly, affected, disgusting fellow,” of the race of “infidel wasps and venomous insects,” he seems to have been in good favour with polite society. But then Bozzy’s mind had room for only one hero.
He was not (curiously enough) at all eager in the early part of his career to be recognized for his literary abilities, for, when a young man, he was solicitous to be known as a good figure in polite society. Thus when, in 1762, we find the French Ambassador, the Duc de Nivernais, giving him introductions to the foremost French writers of the time, we hear him complaining that the Duke treated him “more as a man of letters than as a man of fashion.” He was, indeed, very human! This quality (or defect?) is seen again in a letter, still extant, in which he says, years later, upon his determination not to stand again for Parliament:—“A seat in Parliament I can only value as it is connected with some official situation of emolument.” Does that not endear him to you at once, who live in these Pharisaical times, when men seek election to the House on the score of philanthropy, of patriotism, of service to mankind; on any ground, in fact, but the fundamental consideration of self-interest?
Gibbon lived and wrote in the days when the literary patron still existed, and although the historian was a man of some pretensions in his own county, and on his ancestral acres at Buriton, yet he found the powerful friendship of Holroyd, afterwards first Earl of Sheffield, most useful, not only in literature, but in his career as a Member of Parliament. The almost lifelong friendship between the two was manifested even in death, for Gibbon sleeps, not in the Abbey, nor among his fathers at Buriton, but in the Sheffield vault at Fletching, in Sussex.
AN AMATEUR SOLDIER
The mind of this singular man was, indeed, not apt to run in the direction of ancestor-worship, and old acres represented only so much money to him when, a year after the publication of his History, he sold the estate. Years before, in his father’s time, he held the captaincy of a battalion of Hampshire Militia (a sort of bachelor Sir Dilberry Diddle), and thus he says of himself in the “Memoirs,” in a manner unconsciously humorous:—“I for two and a half years endured a wandering life of military servitude.” Thus seriously did he look upon the perfunctory drilling of yeomen; the pleasant field-days between Portsmouth and Petersfield, and the Sunday church-parades, in which the militia, gorgeous in sky-blue coats with red facings; in white breeches with black gaiters; with astonishing hats and careful perukes finished off daintily with pigtails and black silk ribbons, bore a gallant part, exciting the admiration of the ladies, and the scornful animosity of those sober bachelors who belonged neither to the Militia, the Fencibles, nor to that doughty body of men, the Petersfield Cavalry; all good men and true, ready to shed their last drop of blood for their country, in the unlikely event of an invasion; but, meanwhile, none the less averse from a little parade of pomp and circumstance and the showing off of fine feathers. They were gaudy and most remarkable figures, these old militia-men, and the modern “Saturday afternoon soldier” is to them as a London sparrow is to a peacock for comparison. Neither is there any adequate compare between the work done by these old fellows and the modern amateur soldier. Gibbon and his contemporaries may have boasted of their “military servitude,” and the historian may have profoundly believed the statement, that hints more than it really expresses—“The captain of Hampshire grenadiers was not useless to the historian of the Roman Empire;” but their services were more to the eye than to practical efficiency, and they would have resented, even to the laying down of their firelocks, the hard work which a battalion of Cockney rifle volunteers endures with cheerfulness.
But Gibbon grew tired of his military exploits; and presently, when the militia were disbanded, his father sent him travelling on the Continent. It was at Rome, amid the ruins of the Capitol, that, in 1764, he conceived the first idea of his great work, but it was not until 1788 that the final volume was issued, after years of incredible toil and research.
Whatever the popularity of Gibbon may be now, a hundred years after his death, certainly his “Decline and Fall” had an extraordinary run when it first appeared. The entire impression was exhausted in a few days; a second and third edition were scarce adequate to the demand, and it was said at the time that “the book was on every table and on almost every toilet.” From that day to this there have been well-nigh twenty editions, some of them consisting of as many as fourteen volumes, and, as a sign of Gibbon’s sometime popularity, it may be mentioned that the entries under his name in the British Museum catalogue number about a hundred and twenty.
Not many pilgrims make their way to Buriton for Gibbon’s sake, yet were you to turn aside from the high-road, you would find the place interesting beyond expectation. Lying perdu among the hills, although so near the traffic of the outer world, it is, and has ever been, but rarely visited by the stranger, and has thus come to retain a distinct and individual character.
Push open the old wrought-iron gates of the churchyard and look around. The church itself is just a typical building, with some few special features. It has, of course, been restored, but the fury of the restorer has been wreaked with greater effect elsewhere, and he has come to Buriton in a manner comparatively mild and harmless. He has left even the fine Decorated window of the south chapel, and has not cast out all the memorials of the dead and used their shattered fragments for mending the village street—as he has been known to do elsewhere. You can, in fact, discover the names of some of Gibbon’s ancestors upon the walls, and not all the original encaustic tiles have been thrown away. Prodigious!
RESTORERS’ INIQUITIES