Life of Frances Power Cobbe, as told by herself / with additions by the author, and introduction by Blanche Atkinson

by Frances Power Cobbe

There never was a more unassuming philosopher than Mr. Mill, just as there never was a more unassuming poet than Mr. Browning. All the world knows how Mr. Mill strove to give to his wife the chief credit of his works; and, after her death, his attitude towards her daughter, who was indeed a daughter also to him, was beautiful to witness, and a fine exemplification of his own theories of the rightful position of women. He was, however, equally unpretentious as regarded men. Talking one day about the difficulty of doing mental work when disturbed by street music, and of poor Mr. Babbage’s frenzy on the subject, Mr. Mill said it did not much interfere with him. I told him how intensely Mr. Spencer objected to disturbance. “Ah yes; of course! writing Spencer’s works one must want quiet!” As if nothing of the kind were needed for such trivial books as his own System of Logic, or Political Economy! He really was quite unconscious of the irony of his remark. I have been told that he would allow his cat to interfere sadly with his literary occupation when she preferred to lie on his table, or sometimes on his neck,—a trait like that of Newton and his “Diamond.” This extreme gentleness is ever, surely a note of the highest order of men.

Here are extracts from letters concerning Mr. Mill, which I wrote to Miss Elliot in August, 1869. I believe I had been to Brighton and met Mr. Mill there.

“We talked of many grave things, and in everything his love of right and his immense underlying faith impressed me more than I can describe. I asked him what he thought of coming changes, and he entirely agreed with me about their danger, but thought that the mischief they will entail must be but temporary. He thought the loss of Reverence unspeakably deplorable, but an inevitable feature of an age of such rapid transition that the son does actually outrun the father. He added that he thought even the most sceptical of men generally had an inner altar to the Unseen Perfection while waiting for the true one to be revealed to them. In a word the ‘dry old philosopher’ showed himself to me as an enthusiast in faith and love. The way in which he seemed to have thought out every great question and to express his own so modestly and simply, and yet in such clear-cut outlines, was most impressive. I felt (what one so seldom does!) the delightful sense of being in communication with a mind deeper than one would reach the end of, even after a lifetime of intercourse. I never felt the same, so strongly, except towards Mr. Martineau; and though the forms of his creed and philosophy are, I think, infinitely truer than those of Mill (not to speak of the feelings one has for the man whose prayers one follows), I think it is more in form than in spirit that the two men are distinguished. The one has only an ‘inner,’ the other has an outward ‘altar;’ but both kneel at them.”

A month or two earlier in the same year I wrote to the same friend:—

“Last night I sat beside Mr. Mill at dinner and enjoyed myself exceedingly. He is looking old and worn, and the nervous twitchings of his face are painful to see, but he is so thoroughly genial and gentlemanly, and laughs so heartily at one’s little jokes, and keeps up an argument with so much play and good humour, that I never enjoyed my dinner-neighbourhood more. Mr. Fawcett was objurgating some M.P. for taking office, and said: ‘When I see Tories rejoice, I know it must be an injury to the Liberal Cause.’ ‘Do you never, then, feel a qualm,’ I said, ‘all you Liberal gentlemen, when you see the priests rejoice at what you have just done in Ireland? Do you reflect whether that is likely to be an injury to the Liberal Cause?’ The observation somehow fell like a bomb; (the entire company, as I remember, were Radicals, our host being Mr. P. A. Taylor). For two minutes there was a dead silence. Then Mrs. Taylor said: ‘Ah, Miss Cobbe is a bitter Conservative!’ ‘Not a bitter one,’ said Mr. Mill. ‘Miss Cobbe is a Conservative. I am sorry for it; but Miss Cobbe is never bitter.’”

It has been a constant subject of regret to me that Mr. Mill’s intention (communicated to me by Miss Taylor) of spending the ensuing summer holiday in Wales, on purpose to be near us, was frustrated by his illness and death. How much pleasure and instruction I should have derived from his near neighbourhood there is no need to say.

A friend of Mr. Mill for whom I had great regard was Prof. Cairnes. He underwent treatment at Aix-les-Bains at the same time as I; and we used to while away our long hours by interminable discussions, principally concerning ethics, a subject on which Mr. Cairnes took the Utilitarian side, and I, of course, that of the school of Independent Morality (i.e., of Morality based on other grounds than Utility). He was an ardent disciple of Mill, but his extreme candour caused him to admit frankly that the “mystic extension” of the idea of Usefulness into Right, was unaccountable, or at least unaccounted for; and that when we had proved an act to be pre-eminently useful and likely to promote “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” there yet remained the question for each of us, “Why should I perform that useful action, if it cost me a moment’s pain?” To find the answer (he admitted) we must fall back on an inward “Categoric imperative,” “ought;” and having done so, (I argued,) we must thenceforth admit that the basis of Morality rests on something beside Utility. All these controversies are rather bygone now, since we have been confronted with “hereditary sets of the brain.” I think it was in these discussions with Prof. Cairnes that I struck out what several friends (among others Lord Arthur Russell) considered an “unanswerable” argument against the Utilitarian philosophy; it ran thus:

“Mr. Mill has nobly said, that,—if an Almighty Tyrant were to order him to worship him and threaten to send him to hell if he refused, then, sooner than worship that unjust God, ‘to Hell would I go!’ Mr. Mill, of course, desired every man to do what he himself thought right; therefore it is conceivable that, in the given contingency, we might behold the apostle of the Utilitarian philosophy conducting the whole human race to eternal perdition, for the sake of,—shall we say the ‘Greatest Happiness of the Greatest number?’”

Prof. Cairnes did great public service both to England and America at the time of the war of Secession by his wise and able writing on the subject. In a small way I tried to help the same cause by joining Mrs. P. A. Taylor’s Committee formed to promote and express English sympathy with the North; and wrote several little pamphlets, “The Red Flag in John Bull’s Eyes”; “Rejoinder to Mrs. Stowe,” &c. This common interest increased, of course, my regard for Mr. Cairnes, and it was with real sorrow I saw him slowly sink under the terrible disease, (a sort of general ossification of the joints) of which he died. I have said he sank under it, but assuredly it was only his piteously stiffened body which did so, for I never saw a grander triumph of mind over matter than was shown by the courage and cheerfulness wherewith he bore as dreadful a fate as that of any old martyr. I shall never forget the impression of the nobility of the human Soul rising over its tenement of clay, which he made upon me, on the occasion of my last visit to him at Blackheath.

Another man, much of the character and calibre of Prof. Cairnes, whom I likewise had the privilege to know well, was Prof. Sheldon Amos. He also, alas! died in the prime of life; to the loss and grief of the friends of every generous movement.