“In haste, believe me,
“Yours very truly,
“B. Jowett.”
“I read a book of Theodore Parker’s the other day—‘Discourses on Religion.’ He was a friend of yours, I believe? I admire his character—a sort of religious Titan. But I thought his philosophy seemed to rest too much on instincts.”
How much Mr. Jowett had to bear from the animosity of his orthodox contemporaries in the Sixties at Oxford was illustrated by the following incident. I was, one day about this time, showing his photograph to a lady, when her son, late from Oxford, came into the room with a dog at his heels. Seeing the photograph, he remarked, “Ah, yes! very like. This dog pinned him in quod one day, and was made so much of afterwards! The Dean of —— especially invited him” (the dog) “to lunch. Jowett complained of me, and I had to send all my dogs out of Oxford!”
The following is a Note which I made of two of his visits to me on Durdham Down:
“Two visits from Mr. Jowett, who each time drank tea with me. He said he felt writing to be a great labour; but regularly wrote one page every day. The liberal, benevolent way he spoke of all creeds was delightful. In particular he spoke of the temptation to Pantheism and praised Hegel, whom, he said, he had studied deeply. Advising me kindly to go on writing books, he maintained against me the vast power of books in the world.”
Mr. Jowett was, of course, at all times a most interesting personality, and one whose intercourse was delightful and highly exciting to the intellect. But his excessive shyness, combined with his faculty for saying exceedingly sharp things, must have precluded, I should think, much ease of conversation between him and the majority of his friends. As usually happens in the case of shy people, he exhibited rather less of the characteristic with an acquaintance like myself who was never shy (my mother’s training saved me from that affliction!) and who was not at all afraid of him.
In later years Mr. Jowett obtained for me (in 1876) the signatures of the Heads of every College in Oxford to a Petition which I had myself written, to the House of Lords in favour of Lord Carnarvon’s original Bill for the restriction of Vivisection. At a later date the Master of Balliol declined to support me further in the agitation for the prohibition of the practice; referring me to the assurances of a certain eminent Boanerges of Science as guarantee for the necessity of the practice and the humanity of vivisectors. It is very surprising to me how good and strong men, who would disdain to accept a religious principle or dogma from pope or Council, will take a moral one without hesitation from any doctor or professor of science who may lay down the law for them, and present the facts so as to make the scale turn his way. Where would Protestant divines be, if they squared their theologies with all the historical statements and legends of Romanism? If we construct our ethical judgments upon the statements and representations of persons interested in maintaining a practice, what chance is there that they should be sound?
I find, in a letter to a friend (dated May, 1868) the following souvenir of a sermon by Mr. Jowett, delivered in a church near Soho:—