As time wore on, during the ten years which followed 1854 and my father's appointment as Secretary to the Post Office, he sometimes found that his earlier estimate of former opponents was a mistake. When on the eve of entering the Post Office in 1846, he was, for instance, especially advised to get rid of Mr Bokenham, the head of the Circulation Department.[220] The new-comer, however, soon learned to appreciate at their just value Mr Bokenham's sterling qualities both in official and private life. So far from “inviting him to resign,” my father, unasked, moved for and obtained that improvement in position and salary which his ex-adversary so thoroughly well deserved, and which any less disinterested man would probably have secured for himself long before. Nor was Mr Bokenham's the only instance of genuine worth rewarded by well-merited promotion in position or salary, or both.
Another former strong opponent had been Mr William Page, unto whose efforts the successful conclusion of that treaty, known as “The Postal Union,” which enables us to correspond with foreign nations for 2-½d. the half-ounce, was largely due. At the present day 2-½d. seems scarcely to deserve the term “cheap” postage, but in the middle of the nineteenth century it was a reduction to rejoice over. No visitor was more welcome to our house than Mr Page, who was one of the most genial and least self-seeking of men. He was a staunch “Maberlyite,” and, even when most friendly with us, never concealed his attachment to the man to whom he owed much kindness, as well as his own well-deserved advancement, and the appointment to the postal service of his two younger brothers. This unswerving loyalty to a former chief naturally made us hold Mr Page in still warmer esteem, since the worship of the risen sun is much more common and much less heroic than is that of the luminary which has definitely set. When my father died, Mr Page, at once and uninvited, cut short an interesting and much-needed holiday in Normandy because he knew we should all wish him to be present at the funeral.
But although the situation at the Post Office greatly improved after the chief opponent's translation to another sphere of usefulness, the old hostility to the reform and reformer did not die out, being in some directions scotched merely, and not killed.
One of the most prominent among the irreconcilables was the novelist, Anthony Trollope. But as he was a surveyor, which means a postal bird of passage or official comet of moderate orbit regularly moving on its prescribed course, with only periodic appearances at St Martin's-le-Grand, he did not frequently come into contact with the heads there. He was an indefatigable worker; and many of his novels were partly written in railway carriages while he was journeying from one post town to another, on official inspection bent. On one occasion he was brought to our house, and a most entertaining and lively talker we found him to be. But somehow our rooms seemed too small for his large, vigorous frame, and big, almost stentorian voice. Indeed, he reminded us of Dickens's Mr Boythorn, minus the canary, and gave us the impression that the one slightly-built chair on which he rashly seated himself during a great part of the interview, must infallibly end in collapse, and sooner rather than later. After about a couple of hours of our society, he apparently found us uncongenial company; and perhaps we did not take over kindly to him, however keen our enjoyment, then and afterwards, of his novels and his talk. He has left a record in print of the fact that he heartily detested the Hills, who have consoled themselves by remembering that when a man has spent many years in writing romance, the trying of his hand, late in life, at history, is an exceedingly hazardous undertaking. In fact, Trollope's old associates at the Post Office were in the habit of declaring that his “Autobiography” was one of the greatest, and certainly not the least amusing, of his many works of fiction.
But Anthony Trollope had quite another side to his character beside that of novelist and Hill-hater, a side which should not be lost sight of. In 1859 he was sent out to the West Indies on official business; and, although a landsman, he was able to propose a scheme of steamer routes more convenient and more economical than those in existence, “and, in the opinion of the hydrographer to the Admiralty, superior to them even in a nautical point of view.”[221] Nevertheless, the scheme had to wait long for adoption. Indeed, what scheme for betterment has not to wait long?
Whenever my father met with any foreign visitors of distinction, he was bound, sooner or later, to ask them about postal matters in their own country. The examined were of all ranks, from the King of the Belgians to Garibaldi, the Italian patriot, whom he met at a public banquet, and presently questioned as to the prospects of penny postage in Italy. Garibaldi's interest in the subject was but languid; the sword with him was evidently a more congenial weapon than the pen—or postage stamp. When, later, Rowland Hill told his eldest brother of the unsatisfactory interview, the latter was greatly amused, and said: “When you go to Heaven I foresee that you will stop at the gate to enquire of St Peter how many deliveries they have a day, and how the expense of postal communication between Heaven and the other place is defrayed.”
To the year 1862 belongs a veracious anecdote, which, although it has no relation to postal history, is worth preserving from oblivion because its heroine is a lady of exalted rank, who is held in universal respect. In connection with the Great Exhibition of that year, whose transplanted building has since been known as the Alexandra Palace of North London, my father came to know the Danish Professor Forchammer; and, when bound for the Post Office, often took his way through the Exhibition, then in Hyde Park, and the Danish Section in particular. One morning he found the Professor very busy superintending a rearrangement of the pictures there. A portrait had just been taken from the line in order that another, representing a very attractive-looking young lady, which had previously been “skied,” might be put into the more important place. The young lady's father had not yet become a king, and the family was by no means wealthy, which combination of circumstances perhaps accounted for the portrait's former inconspicuous position. On my father's asking the reason for the change, Professor Forchammer replied that a great number of people was expected to visit that Section to-day to look at the portrait, and it was imperative that it should be given the best place there, in consequence of the announcement just made public that the original was “engaged to marry your Prince of Wales.”
My father parted with great regret from Lord Clanricarde when the Russell Administration went out of office. His kindness and courtesy, his aptitude for work, his good sense and evident sincerity, had caused the “Secretary to the Postmaster-General,” after a service of nearly six years, to form a very high opinion of his chief.[222]
Lord Clanricarde's successor, Lord Hardwicke, belonged to the rough diamond species; yet he tried his hardest to fulfil intelligently and conscientiously the duties of his novel and far from congenial office. He had a cordial dislike to jobbery of any kind, though once at least he came near to acquiescing in a Parliamentary candidate's artfully-laid plot suggesting the perpetration of a piece of lavish and unnecessary expenditure in a certain town, the outlay to synchronise with the candidate's election, and the merit to be claimed by him. Happily, Lord Hardwicke's habitual lack of reticence gave wiser heads the weapon with which to prevent so flagrant a job from getting beyond the stage of mere suggestion. It was the man's kind heart and dislike to give offence which doubtless led him into indiscretions of the sort; but amiable as he was, he had at times a knack of making people feel extremely uncomfortable, as when, in conformity with his own ideas on the subject, he sought to regulate the mutual relations of the two chief Secretaries, when he called in all latchkeys—his own, however, included—and when, during his first inspection of his new kingdom, he audibly asked, on entering a large room full of employees, if he had “the power to dismiss all these men.” The old sailor aimed at ruling the Post Office as he had doubtless ruled his man-of-war, wasted time and elaborate minutes on trivial matters—such as a return of the number of housemaids employed—when important reforms needed attention, and had none of the ability or breadth of view of his predecessor.
Lord Canning was my father's next chief, and soon showed himself to be an earnest friend to postal reform. It was while he was Postmaster-General, and mainly owing to his exertions, that in 1854 fulfilment was at last made of the promise given by Lord John Russell's Government, to place the author of Penny Postage at the head of the great department which controlled the country's correspondence—a promise in consideration of which Rowland Hill, in 1846, had willingly sacrificed so much. When Lord Canning left the Post Office to become Governor-General of India, my father felt as if he had lost a lifelong friend; and he followed with deep interest his former chiefs career in the Far East. During the anxious time of struggle with the Mutiny, nothing pained my father more than the virulent abuse which was often levelled at the far-seeing statesman whose wise and temperate rule contributed so largely to preserve to his country possession of that “brightest jewel of the crown” at a season when most people in Britain lost their senses in a wild outburst of fury. Lord Canning's management of India won, from the first, his ex-lieutenant's warmest admiration. The judgment of posterity—often more discerning, because less heated, than contemporaneous opinion—has long since decided that “Clemency Canning” did rightly. The nickname was used as a reproach at the time, but the later title of “The Lord Durham of India” is meant as a genuine compliment, or, better still, appreciation.[223]