Home Life of Great Authors

by Hattie Tyng Griswold

"It must be acknowledged that where he loved, he loved more entirely and more exclusively than was well for himself. It was improvident in him to consecrate such intensity of feeling upon relations who, however deeply they were attached to him, could not always be in a position to requite him with the whole of their time and the whole of their heart. He suffered much for that improvidence, but he was too just and kind to permit others to suffer with him; and it is not for one who obtained by inheritance a share of his inestimable affection to regret a weakness such as this."

This refers to his grief at the marriage of his sisters, which was really great and enduring. He had planned to have them in his home, and not to be in theirs; and when it turned out otherwise he could not at first be reconciled to it. His sister Nancy went out with him to India after his appointment there, and soon fell in with young Trevelyan,—to whom she became engaged, with her brother's approval but to his great grief. He calls it "a tragical denouement to an absurd plot." After the marriage they formed one household during his stay in India, and her home was to all intents and purposes his own during life. His youngest sister died during his stay abroad, and of her he thus writes:—

"The last month has been the most painful I ever went through. Indeed, I never knew before what it was to be miserable. Early in January letters from England brought me news of the death of my sister. What she was to me no words can express. I will not say that she was dearer to me than anything in the world, for my sister who was with me was equally dear; but she was as dear to me as one human being can be to another. Even now, when time has begun to do its healing work, I cannot write about her without being altogether unmanned."

His only solace was found in books. He could at any time bury himself in these and forget all the world. Probably there never was such a reader before. He devoured books like a gourmand. He read everything—Greek, Latin, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese; and books of all kinds in these languages,—history, belles-lettres, poetry, novels, old chronicles. He seemed to have a passion for all. He would read a book in an hour which it would take any one else half a day to get through in the poorest shape. And he would know what was in it, too. He read enormous quantities of novels always, and was very fond of poor ones,—none too poor for him were written at that time. It is a question whether if he had lived till this day the same thing could have been said of him. It is not recorded whether he ever encountered any of Anthony Trollope's works during his life.

If Macaulay had not been known as a great man of letters he would probably have been known as a great orator. He was, indeed, one of the best speakers of his day, and the House of Commons, that listens to so few speakers, always gave its attention to him. It seems a great pity that he should have given so many years of his life to Parliament, and to official work, when his true career undoubtedly was literature pure and simple, for which no man of his time was so splendidly equipped, both by nature and by preparation. We ought to have had from him more enduring historical works, and more of his masterly estimates of the works of other men. After his retirement into private life, in 1847, he enjoyed his freedom intensely, and much regretted that he had not obtained it sooner. He enjoyed the pleasures of society greatly at this time. He was the centre of a gifted circle of men—the most brilliant of their time—all of whom were his close friends and admirers. How brilliantly these men talked is already a matter of tradition. Macaulay was the most wonderful conversationalist, probably, since Dr. Johnson, not even excepting Carlyle, or Sydney Smith, or Coleridge. Very laughable stories are told, of course, of a man who would talk three hours without pause, and undoubtedly there were many people sadly bored by him in his day; but to those who could appreciate the remarkable stores of information he possessed, and the lucidity with which he could deal them forth,—to say nothing of his rhetorical splendors,—those discourses of his were never tedious, but full of supreme interest. To be sure, Sydney Smith sneered at his "wonderful stores of very accurate—misinformation," but he was one who did not like a rival near the throne; and in Macaulay's absence he was himself the sun around which the social universe revolved. Thackeray wrote after Macaulay's death:—

"Now that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, will not many a man grieve that he no longer can listen? To remember the talk is to wonder, to think not only of the treasures he had stored, but of the trifles which he could produce with equal readiness. What a vast, brilliant, wonderful store of learning he had; what strange lore would he not fetch at your bidding."

No report of these conversations exists, except such as is found scattered in private diaries. In these there are records of many an Attic night, and still more agreeable morning. Lord Carlisle's journal contains as many of these records, perhaps, as any one's. He makes glowing mention of Macaulay and his eloquence, after nearly every meeting of the famous circle. The only criticism he made, and it is one that was frequently made on Macaulay, was that it was remarkable what quantities of trash he remembered. He could repeat pages of the very dreariest stuff that ever was written, and was in danger of doing so on small provocation,—an infliction it must have been hard for his friends to have endured sometimes. Great stories are told of his remarkable memory,—one seldom equalled by any man. He was always willing to accept a friendly challenge to a feat of memory. One day in the board-room of the British Museum he handed to Lord Aberdeen a sheet of foolscap covered with writing arranged in parallel columns down each of the four pages. This document, on which the ink was still wet, proved to be a full list of the Senior Wranglers at Cambridge, with their dates and colleges for the hundred years during which the names of Senior Wranglers had been recorded in the University Calendar. On another occasion Sir David Dundas asked:—

"'Macaulay, do you know your Popes?' 'No,' was the answer; 'I always get wrong among the Innocents.' 'But you can say your Archbishops of Canterbury?' 'Any fool,' said Macaulay, 'could say his Archbishops of Canterbury backwards;' and he went off at a score, drawing breath only once in order to remark on some oddity."