the book concerning the Johnson Club to which Brother Hill was so devoted. She had asked me for letters, but I felt that all in my possession were unsuited for publication, dealing rather freely with living persons. Brother Hill was impatient of the mere bookmaker—the literary charlatan who wrote without reading sufficiently. There are two pleasant glimpses of our Club in the volume; I quote one. It was of the night that we discussed Dr. Johnson as a Radical:—
I wish that you and Lucy could have been present last night and witnessed my scene of triumph. I was indeed most nobly welcomed. The scribe told me with sympathetic pride that the correspondent of the New York Herald had asked leave to attend, as he wished to telegraph my paper out to America!!! as well as the discussion. There were some very good speeches made in the discussion that followed, especially by a Mr. Whale, a solicitor, who spoke remarkably well and with great knowledge of his Boswell. He said that he preferred to call it, not Johnson’s radical side, but his humanitarian side. Mr. Birrell, the Obiter Dicta man, also spoke very well. He is a clever fellow. He was equally complimentary. He maintained in opposition to Mr. Whale that radical was the right term, and in fact that radicalism and humanitarianism were the same. Many of them said what a light the paper had thrown on Johnson’s character. One gentleman came up and congratulated me on the very delicate way in which I had handled so difficult a subject, and had not given offence to the Liberal Unionists and Tories present. Edmund Gosse, by whom I sat, was most friendly, and called the paper a wonderful tour de force, referring to the way in which I had linked Johnson’s sayings. He asked me to visit him some day at Trinity College, Cambridge, and assured me of a hearty welcome. It is no wonder that what with the supper and the smoke I did not get to sleep till after two. Among the guests was the great Bonner, the Australian cricketer, whose health had been drunk with that of the other visitors, and his praise sounded at having hit some balls over the pavilion at Lord’s. With great simplicity he said that after seeing the way in which Johnson’s memory was revered, he would much rather have been such a man than have gained his own greatest triumphs at cricket. He did not say it jocularly at all.
Another letter from Dr. Hill describes how he found himself at Ashbourne in Derbyshire with the Club, or rather with a fragment of it. He wrote from the Green Man there concerning his adventures.
I have far exceeded my time, but I would like in conclusion to say how admirably his daughter has written this book on our Brother Birkbeck
Hill. What a pleasant picture it presents of a genuine lover of literature. His was not an analytical mind nor was he a great critic. His views on Dante and Newman will not be shared by any of us. But, what is far more important than analysis or criticism, he had an entirely lovable personality and was a most clubbable man. He was moreover the ideal editor of Boswell. What more could be said in praise of a beloved Brother of the Johnson Club!
VII. THE PRIVATE LIFE OF FERDINAND LASSALLE [185]
Ich habe die Inventur meines Lebens gemacht.
Es war gross, brav, wacker, tapfer und glänzend genug.
Eine künftige Zeit wird mir gerecht zu warden wissen.—Ferdinand Lassalle, August 9, 1864.
I. The Countess Sophie von Hatzfeldt.
Ferdinand Lassalle was born at Breslau on April 11, 1825. His parents were of Jewish race, his father a successful silk merchant. From boyhood he was now the tyrant, now the slave of a mother whom he loved and by whom he was adored. Heymann Lassal—his son changed the
spelling during his Paris sojourn—appears to have been irritable and tyrannical; and there are some graphic instances in the recently published “Diary” [186] of the differences between them, ending on one occasion in the boy rushing to the river, where his terrified father finds him hesitating on the brink, and becomes reconciled. A more attractive picture of the old man is that told of his visit to his son-in-law, Friedland, who had married Lassalle’s sister. Friedland was ashamed of his Jewish origin, and old Lassalle startled the guests at dinner by rising and frankly stating that he was a Jew, that his daughter was a Jewess, and that her husband was of the same race. The guests cheered, but the host never forgave his too frank father-in-law.