Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography

by George William Erskine Russell

All this time I was writing—in a very humble and obscure way, certainly, but still writing. I wrote in local newspapers and Parish Magazines. I published anonymous comments on current topics. I contributed secretly to ephemeral journals. I gave lectures and printed them as pamphlets. It was all very good exercise; but the odd part of it seems to me, in looking back, that I never expected pay, but rather spent my own money in printing what I wrote. That last infirmity of literary minds I laid aside soon after I left Oxford. I rather think that the first money which I made with my pen was payment for a character-study of my uncle, Lord Russell, which I wrote for The World; thereby eliciting from Matthew Arnold the urbane remark, "Ah, my dear George, I hear you have become one of Yates's hired stabbers."

After I entered Parliament, opportunities of writing, and of writing for profit, became more frequent. I contributed to the Quarterly, the New Quarterly, the Nineteenth Century, the Fortnightly, the Contemporary, the Spectator, and the Pall Mall. Yet another magazine recurs pleasantly to my mind, because of the warning which was inscribed on one's proof-sheet—"The cost of corrigenda will be deducted from honoraria." What fine language! and what a base economy!

It did not take me long to find that the society in which I habitually lived, and which I have described in a former chapter, was profoundly ignorant. A most amusing law-suit between a Duchess and her maid took place about the time of which I am writing, and the Duchess's incriminated letter, beginning in the third person, wandering off into the first, and returning with an effort to the third, was indeed an object-lesson in English composition. A young sprig of fashion once said to me, in the tone of a man who utters an accepted truth, "It is so much more interesting to talk about people than things"—even though those "things" were the literary triumphs of humour or tragedy. In one great house, Books were a prohibited subject, and the word "Books" was construed with such liberal latitude that it seemed to include everything except Bradshaw. Even where people did not thus truculently declare war against literature, they gave it an uncommonly wide berth, and shrank with ill-concealed aversion from such names as Meredith and Browning. "Meredith," said Oscar Wilde, "is a prose-Browning—and so is Browning." And both those forms of prose were equally eschewed by society.

Of course, when one is surveying a whole class, one sees some conspicuous exceptions to the prevailing colour; and here and there one had the pleasure of meeting in society persons admirably accomplished. I have already mentioned Lord Houghton, poet, essayist, pamphleteer, book-lover, and book-collector, who was equally at home in the world of society and the world of literature. Nothing that was good in books, whether ancient or modern, escaped his curious scrutiny, and at his hospitable table, which might truly be called a "Festive Board," authors great and small rubbed shoulders with dandies and diplomats and statesmen. On the 16th of June, 1863, Matthew Arnold wrote—"On Sunday I dined with Monckton Milnes,[51] and met all the advanced Liberals in religion and politics, and a Cingalese in full costume.... The philosophers were fearful! George Lewes, Herbert Spencer, a sort of pseudo-Shelley called Swinburne, and so on. Froude, however, was there, and Browning, and Ruskin."

The mention of Matthew Arnold reminds me that, though I had admired and liked him in a reverent sort of way, when I was a Harrow boy and he was a man, I found him even more fascinating when I met him on the more even terms of social life in London. He was indeed the most delightful of companions; a man of the world entirely free from worldliness, and a man of letters without the faintest trace of pedantry. He walked through the world enjoying it and loving it; and yet all the time one felt that his "eyes were on the higher loadstars" of the intellect and the spirit. In those days I used to say that, if one could fashion oneself, I should wish to be like Matthew Arnold; and the lapse of years has not altered my desire.

Of Robert Browning, as he appeared in society, I have already spoken; but here let me add an instance which well illustrates his tact and readiness. He once did me the honour of dining with me, and I had collected a group of eager disciples to meet him. As soon as dinner was over, one of these enthusiasts led the great man into a corner, and began cross-examining him about the identity of The Lost Leader and the meaning of Sordello. For a space Browning bore the catechism with admirable patience; and then, laying his hand on the questioner's shoulder, he exclaimed, "But, my dear fellow, this is too bad. I am monopolizing you," and skipped out of the corner.

Lord Tennyson was scarcely ever to be encountered in society; but I was presented to him at a garden-party by Mr. James Knowles, of the Nineteenth Century. He was, is, and always will be, one of the chief divinities of my poetical heaven; but he was more worshipful at a distance than at close quarters, and I was determined not to dispel illusion by a too near approach to the shrine. J. A. Froude was a man of letters whom from time to time one encountered in society. No one could doubt his cleverness; but it was a cleverness which rather repelled than attracted. With his thin lips, his cold smile, and his remorseless, deliberate, way of speaking, he always seemed to be secretly gloating over the hideous scene in the hall of Fotheringay, or the last agonies of a disembowelled Papist. Lord Acton was, or seemed to be, a man of the world first and foremost; a politician and a lover of society; a gossip, and, as his "Letters" show, not always a friendly gossip.[52] His demeanour was profoundly sphinx-like, and he seemed to enjoy the sense that his hearers were anxious to learn what he was able but unwilling to impart. His knowledge and accomplishments it would, at this time of day, be ridiculous to question; and on the main concerns of human life—Religion and Freedom—I was entirely at one with him. All the more do I regret that in society he so effectually concealed his higher enthusiasms, and that, having lived on the vague fame of his "History of Liberty," he died leaving it unwritten.

I am writing of the years when I first knew London socially, and I may extend them from 1876 to 1886. All through those years, as through many before and since, the best representative of culture in society was Mr., now Sir, George Trevelyan—a poet, a scholar to his finger-tips, an enthusiast for all that is best in literature, ancient or modern, and author of one of the six great Biographies in the English language. There is no need to recapitulate Sir George's services to the State, or to criticize his performances in literature. It is enough to record my lively and lasting gratitude for the unbroken kindness which began when I was a boy at Harrow, and continues to the present hour.

I have spoken, so far, of literary men who played a more or less conspicuous part in society; but, as this chapter is dedicated to Literature, I ought to say a word about one or two men of Letters who always avoided society, but who, when one sought them out in their own surroundings, were delightful company. Foremost among these I should place James Payn.

Payn was a man who lived in, for, and by Literature. He detested exercise. He never travelled. He scarcely ever left London. He took no holidays. If he was forced into the country for a day or two, he used the exile as material for a story or an essay. His life was one incessant round of literary activity. He had published his first book while he was an Undergraduate at Trinity, and from first to last he wrote more than a hundred volumes. By Proxy has been justly admired for the wonderful accuracy of its local colour, and for a masterly knowledge of Chinese character; but the writer drew exclusively from encyclopædias and books of travel. In my judgment, he was at his best in the Short Story. He practised that difficult art long before it became popular, and a book called originally People, Places, and Things, but now Humorous Stories, is a masterpiece of fun, invention, and observation. In 1874, he became "Reader" to Messrs. Smith and Elder, and in that capacity had the happiness of discovering Vice Versa, and the less felicitous experience of rejecting John Inglesant as unreadable.