CHAPTER XIII.
Men I Have Known.
It is the penalty of old age to lose all our friends and acquaintances, but fortunately our hold on earth weakens as the end of life draws near. In an active life, we see much of the world and the men who help to make it better. Many ministers and missionaries came to my father’s house with wonderful accounts of the spread of the Gospel in foreign parts. At a later time I saw a knot of popular lecturers and agitators—such as George Thompson, the great anti-slavery lecturer, who, born in humble life, managed to get into Parliament, where he collapsed altogether. As an outdoor orator he was unsurpassed, and carried all before him. After a speech of his I heard Lord Brougham declare it was one of the most eloquent he had ever heard. He started a newspaper, which, however, did not make much way. Then there was Henry Vincent, another natural orator, whom the common people heard gladly, and who at one time was very near getting into Parliament as M.P. for Ipswich, then, as now, a go-ahead town, full of Dissenters
and Radicals. He began life as a Chartist and printer, and, I believe, was concerned in the outbreak near Newport. Of the same class was a man of real genius and immense learning, considering the disadvantages of his lowly birth, Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, and author of that magnificent poem, “The Purgatory of Suicides,” written when he was in gaol for being connected with a Chartist outbreak. He had been a Methodist, he became a Freethinker, and, when I knew him, was under the influence of Strauss’s Life of Jesus, a book which George Eliot had translated, and which made a great sensation at the time of its appearance, though it is utterly forgotten now. Cooper and I were members of an obscure club, in one of the Fleet Street courts, where he used to declaim with great eloquence on the evil doings of the Tories and the wrongs of the poor, while at the same time he had a true appreciation of the utter worthlessness of some of the Chartist leaders. As he advanced in years he gave up his infidel opinions and became an earnest advocate of the faith he once laboured to destroy. The last time I saw him was at his house in Lincoln shortly before he died. He seemed sound in body, considering his years, but his mind was gone and he remembered no one. At the same time I saw a good deal of Richard Lovett—a noble character—who worked all his life for the mental and
moral improvement of the working man, of whom he was such an illustrious example. Cooper and Vincent and Lovett did much between them to make the working man respected as he had never been before.
One of the grandest old men I ever knew was George Cruikshank, the artist, in his later years an ardent advocate of Temperance, but a real Bohemian nevertheless, enjoying life and all its blessings to the last. At a dinner-party or at a social gathering of any kind he was at his best, full of anecdote, overflowing with wit and mimicry; as an orator also he had great power, and generally managed to keep his audience in a roar of laughter. While perfectly sober himself, he was very happy in taking off the drunkard’s eccentricities, and would sing “We are not fou,” or “Willie brewed a peck o’ malt,” as if he deemed a toper the prince of good fellows. In his old age he had persuaded himself that to him Dickens owed many of his happiest inspirations, a remark which the author of “The Pickwick Papers” strongly resented. At his home I met on one occasion Mrs. Dickens, a very pleasant, motherly lady, with whom one would have thought any husband could have happily lived, although the great novelist himself seemed to be of another way of thinking. Cruikshank’s wife seems to have been devoted to him. She was proud of him, as well she might be. He had a good
head of hair, and to the last cherished a tremendous lock which adorned his forehead. He was rather square-built, with an eye that at one time must have rivalled that of the far-famed hawk. He lived comfortably in a good house just outside Mornington Crescent, in the Hampstead Road; but he was never a wealthy man, and was always publishing little pamphlets, which, whatever the fame they brought him, certainly yielded little cash. He had seen a good deal of life, or what a Cockney takes to be such, and when he was buried in Kensal Green, the attendance at the funeral showed how large was the circle of his friends and admirers. To the last he was proud of his whiskers.
Another friend of mine buried in the same place was Dr. Charles Mackay, the original editor of The Illustrated London News, and who differed so much with the proprietor, Mr. Ingram, M.P., on the character of the late French Emperor, for whom Dr. Mackay had a profound contempt, that he had to resign, and commenced The London Review, which did not last long. At one time his songs, “There’s a good time coming, boys,” and “Cheer boys, cheer,” were played on every barrel-organ, and were to be heard in every street. Another of the workers on The Illustrated News was John Timbs, the unwearying publisher of popular books of anecdotes, by which, I fear, he did not make
much money, as he had to end his days in the Charter House. His department was to look after the engravings, a duty which compelled him to sit up all night on Thursdays. Before he had joined Mr. Ingram’s staff, he had edited a small periodical called The Mirror, devoted to useful and amusing literature. I fancy his happiest hours were passed chatting with the literary men who were always hovering round the office of the paper—like Mr. Micawber, in the hope of something turning up. You could not be long there without seeing Mark Lemon—a mountain of a man connected with Punch, who could act Falstaff without stuffing—who was Mr. Ingram’s private secretary. A wonderful contrast to Mark Lemon was Douglas Jerrold, a little grey-haired, keen-eyed man, who seemed to me to walk the streets hurriedly, as if he expected a bailiff to touch him on the back. Later, I knew his son, Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, very well, and always found him a very courteous and pleasant gentleman. With Hain Friswell, with the ever-sparkling, black-eyed George Augustus Sala, with that life-long agitator Jesse Jacob Holyoake, for whom I had a warm esteem, I was also on very friendly terms. Once, and once only, I had an interview with Mr. Charles Bradlaugh who, when he recognised me as “Christopher Crayon” of The Christian World, gave me a hearty shake of the hands. Had he
lived, I believe he would have become a Christian. At any rate, of later years, his hostility to Christianity seemed to have considerably toned down. Be that as it may, I always held him to be one of the most honest of our public men. I had also the pleasure once of sitting next Mr. Labouchere at a dinner at a friend’s. He talked much, smoked more, and was as witty as Waller, and like him on cold water. Another teetotaler with whom I came much into contact was the late Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, a shortish, stout man to look at, a good public speaker, and warmly devoted alike to literature and science. Another distinguished man whom I knew well was Mr. James Hinton, the celebrated aurist and a writer on religious matters which at one time had great effect. He was the son of the celebrated Baptist preacher, the Rev. John Howard Hinton, and I was grieved to learn that he had given up his practice as an aurist in Saville Row, and had bought an orange estate far away in the Azores, where he went to die of typhoid fever.
On the whole I am inclined to think I never had a pleasanter man to do with than Mr. Cobden. “Why don’t you commence a movement in favour of Free Trade in land?” I one day said to him. “Ah,” was his reply, “I am too old for that. I have done my share of work. I must leave that to be taken up by