The Life of Froude

by Herbert W. Paul

That Catholic emancipation was useless and mischievous, Froude never ceased to declare. He would have dragooned the Irish into Protestantism and made the three Catholic provinces into a Crown colony. The Irish establishment he regretted as a badge of Protestant ascendency. But he was a dangerous ally for Unionists. That the government of Ireland by what he called a Protestant Parliament sitting at Westminister, meaning the Parliament of the United Kingdom, had failed, he not merely admitted, but loudly proclaimed. It had failed "more signally, and more disgracefully," than any other system, because Gladstone admitted that Fenian outrages precipitated legislative reforms. The alternative was to rule Ireland, or let her be free, and altogether separate from Great Britain. Neither branch of the supposed alternative was within the range of practical politics. But on one point Froude unconsciously anticipated the immediate future. "The remedy" for the agrarian troubles of Ireland was, he said, "the establishment of courts to which the tenant might appeal." The ink of this sentence was scarcely dry when the Irish Land Bill of 1881 appeared with that very provision. Froude was always ready and willing to promote the material benefit of Ireland. Irishmen, except the Protestant population of Ulster, were children to be treated with firmness and kindness, the truest kindness being never to let them have their own way.

CHAPTER VII

SOUTH AFRICA

Before Froude had written the last chapter of The English in Ireland he was visited by the greatest sorrow of his life. Mrs. Froude died suddenly in February, 1874. It had been a perfect marriage, and he never enjoyed the same happiness afterwards. Carlyle and his faithful friend Fitzjames Stephen were the only persons he could see at first, though he manfully completed the book on which he was engaged. It was long before he rallied from the shock, and he felt as if he could never write again. He dreaded "the length of years which might yet lie ahead of him before he could have his discharge from service." He took a melancholy pride in noting that none of the reviewers discovered any special defects in those final pages of his book which had been written under such terrible conditions. Mrs. Froude had thoroughly understood all her husband's moods, and her quiet humour always cheered him in those hours of gloom from which a man of his sensitive nature could not escape. She could use a gentle mockery which was always effective, along with her common sense, in bringing out the true proportions of things. Conscious as she was of his social brilliancy and success, she would often tell the children that they lost nothing by not going out with him, because their father talked better at home than he talked anywhere else. Her deep personal religion was the form of belief with which he had most sympathy, and which he best understood, regarding it as the foundation of virtue and conduct and honour and truth. He attended with her the services of the Church, which satisfied him whenever they were performed with the reverent simplicity familiar to his boyhood. Happily he was not left alone. He had two young children to love, and his eldest daughter was able to take her stepmother's place as mistress of his house. With the children he left London as soon as he could, and tried to occupy his mind by reading to them from Don Quixote, or, on a Sunday, from The Pilgrim's Progress. To the end of his life he felt his loss; and when he was offered, fifteen years later, the chance of going back to his beloved Derreen, he shrank from the associations it would have recalled.

He took a house for his family in Wales, which he described in the following letter to Lady Derby:

"CROGAN HOUSE, Corwen, June 3rd, 1874.

"I do not know if I told you upon what a curious and interesting old place we have fallen for our retirement. The walls of the room in which I am writing are five feet thick. The old part of the house must have been an Abbey Grange; the cellars run into a British tumulus, the oaks in the grounds must many of them be as old as the Conquest, and the site of the parish church was a place of pilgrimage probably before Christianity. Stone coffins are turned over on the hillsides in making modern improvements. Denfil Gadenis' (the mediaeval Welsh saint's) wooden horn still stands in the church porch, and the sense of strangeness and antiquity is the more palpable because hardly a creature in the valley, except the cows and the birds, speak in a language familiar to me. It was Owen Glendower's country. Owen himself doubtless has many times ridden down the avenue. We are in the very heart of Welsh nationality, which was always a respectable thing—far more so than the Celticism of the Gaels and Irish. We are apt to forget that the Tudors were Welsh." Fortunately a plan suggested itself which gave him variety of occupation and change of scene. Disraeli's Government had just come into office, and with the Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, Froude was on intimate terms. Froude had always been interested in the Colonies, and was an advocate of Federation long before it had become a popular scheme. As early as 1870 he wrote to Skelton:

"Gladstone and Co. deliberately intend to shake off the Colonies. They are privately using their command of the situation to make the separation inevitable."* I do not know what this means. Lord Dufferin has left it on record that after his appointment to Canada in 1872 Lowe came up to him at the club, and said, "Now, you ought to make it your business to get rid of the Dominion." But Lowe was in the habit of saying paradoxical things, and it was Disraeli, not Gladstone, who spoke of the Colonies as millstones round our necks. Cardwell, the Secretary for War, withdrew British troops from Canada and New Zealand, holding that the self-governing Colonies should be responsible for their own defence. That wise policy fostered union rather than separation, by providing that the working classes at home should not be taxed for the benefit of their colonial fellow- subjects. Lord Carnarvon himself had passed in 1867 the Bill which federated Canada and which his Liberal predecessor had drawn. He was now anxious to carry out a similar scheme in South Africa, and Froude offered to find out for him how the land lay. His visit was not to be in any sense official. He would be ostensibly travelling for his health, which was always set up by a voyage. He was interested in extending to South Africa Miss Rye's benevolent plans of emigration to Canada; in the treatment of a Kaffir chief called Langalibalele; and in the disputes which had arisen from the annexation of the Diamond Fields. Thus there were reasons for his trip enough and to spare. He would, it was thought, be more likely to obtain accurate information if the principal purpose of his visit were kept in the background.

— *Table Talk of Shirley, p. 142. —

There was one great and fundamental difference between the case of Canada and the case of South Africa. Canada had itself asked for federation, and Parliament simply gave effect to the wish of the Canadians. Opinion in South Africa was notoriously divided, and the centre of opposition was at Cape Town. Natal had not yet obtained a full measure of self-government, and the lieutenant-Governor, Sir Benjamin Pine, had excited indignation among all friends of the natives by arbitrary imprisonment, after a mock trial, of a Kaffir chief. Lord Carnarvon had carefully to consider this case, and also to decide whether the mixed Constitution of Natal, which would not work, should be reformed or annulled. A still more serious difficulty was connected with the Diamond Fields, officially known as Griqualand West. The ownership of this district had been disputed between the Orange Free State and a native chief called Nicholas Waterboer. In 1872 Lord Kimberley, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, had purchased it from Waterboer at a price ludicrously small in proportion to its value, and it had since been annexed to the British dominions by the Governor, Sir Henry Barkly. Waterboer, who knew nothing about the value of money, was satisfied. The Orange State vehemently protested, and President Brand denounced the annexation as a breach of faith. Not only, he said, were the Diamond Fields within the limits of his Republic; the agreement between Waterboer and the Secretary of State was itself a breach of the Orange River Convention, by which Great Britain undertook not to negotiate with any native chief north of the River Vaal. Lord Kimberley paid no heed to Brand's remonstrances. He denied altogether the validity of the Dutch claim, and he would not hear of arbitration. By the time that Lord Carnarvon came into office thousands of British settlers were digging for diamonds in Griqualand West, and its abandonment was impossible. Brand himself did not wish to take the responsibility of governing it. But he continued to press the case for compensation, and the British Government, which had forced independence upon the Boers, appeared in the invidious light of shirking responsibility while grasping at mineral wealth. If it had not been for this untoward incident, the Dutch Republics would have been more favourable to Lord Carnarvon's policy than Cape Colony was. The Transvaal was imperfectly protected against the formidable power of the Zulus, and a general rising of blacks against whites was the real danger which threatened South Africa.