His conduct at the contested election for a University Representative in 1856 affords a good illustration of what we have here advanced. The candidates were Mr Walpole and Mr Denman; and it was decided, after conference with their rival committees, that the poll should extend over five days, on four of which votes were to be taken in the Public Schools from half-past seven to half-past eight in the evening, in addition to the usual hours in the Senate House, namely, from ten to four. The proceedings excited an unusual interest among the undergraduates, who on the first morning occupied the galleries of the Senate House in force, and made such a noise that the University officers could not hear each others’ voices, and the business was transacted in dumb show. In consequence they represented to the Vice-Chancellor that they could not do their work unless he ‘took effectual means for the prevention of this inconvenience.’ Whewell hated nothing so much as insubordination, and had on former occasions addressed himself to the repression of this particular form of it. It is therefore probable that he was not indisposed to take the only step that, under the circumstances, seemed likely to be effectual, namely, to exclude the undergraduates from the Senate House for the rest of the days of polling. On the second and third days peace reigned within the building, but, when the Vice-Chancellor appeared outside, he was confronted by a howling mob, through which he had to make his way as best he could. He was advised to go by the back way; but, with characteristic pluck, he rejected this counsel, and went out and came in by the front gate of his College. A few Masters of Arts acted as a body-guard; but further protection was thought necessary, and on the third afternoon the University beheld the extraordinary spectacle of the Vice-Chancellor proceeding along Trinity Street with a prize-fighter on each side of him. On the evening of that day Mr Denman withdrew from the contest, a step which probably averted a serious riot. When the excitement had subsided a little Whewell drew up a printed statement, which, though marked Private, is in fact an address to the undergraduate members of the University. He points out the necessity for acting as he had done, both as regards the business in hand and because it was his duty to enforce proper behaviour in a public place as a part of education. He concludes with the following passage:
‘I the more confidently believe that the majority of the Undergraduates have a due self-respect, and a due respect for just authority temperately exercised, because I have ever found it so, both as Master of a College, and as Vice-Chancellor. One of the happiest recollections of my life is that of a great occasion in my former Vice-Chancellorship[[7]], when I had need to ask for great orderliness and considerable self-denial on the part of the Undergraduates. This demand they responded to with a dignified and sweet-tempered obedience which endeared them to me then, as many good qualities which I have seen in successive generations of students have endeared them to me since. And I will not easily give up my trust that now, as then, the better natures will control and refine the baser, and that it will be no longer necessary to put any constraint upon the admission of Undergraduates to the Galleries of the Senate-house.’
After the poll had been declared the Proctors brought him a list of the rioters. He said, ‘The election is over, they will not do it again,’ and threw the record into the fire. Not long afterwards he went, as was his frequent custom, to a concert of the University Musical Society. The undergraduates present rose and cheered him. Whewell was so much affected, that he burst into tears, and sat for some time with his face hidden in the folds of his gown.
Those who recollect Whewell, or even those who know him only by his portraits, will smile incredulously at an assertion we are about to make. But it is true, no matter how severely it may be criticised. Whewell was, in reality, an extremely humble-minded man, diffident of himself, and sure of his position only when he had the approval of his conscience for what he was doing. Then he went forward, regardless of what might bar his passage, and too often regardless also of those who chanced to differ from him. The few who were admitted to the inner circle of his friendship alone knew that he really was what his enemies called him in sarcastic mockery, modest and retiring. If he appeared to be, as one virulent pamphlet said he was, an ‘imperious bully[[8]],’ the manner which justified such a designation was manner only, and due not to arrogance but to nervousness. He disliked praise, even from his best friends, if he thought that it was not exactly merited. For instance, when Archdeacon Hare spoke enthusiastically of his condemnation of ‘Utilitarian Ethics’ in the Sermons on the Foundation of Morals, and exclaimed: ‘May the mind which has compast the whole circle of physical science find a lasting home, and erect a still nobler edifice, in this higher region! May he be enabled to let his light shine before the students of our University, that they may see the truth he utters[[9]],’ Whewell requested that the passage might be altered in a new edition. He wrote (26 February, 1841):
‘You have mentioned me in a manner which I am obliged to say is so extremely erroneous that it distresses me. The character which you have given of me is as far as possible from that which I deserve. You know, I think, that I am very ignorant in all the matters with which you are best acquainted, and the case is much the same in all others. I was always very ignorant, and am now more and more oppressed by the consciousness of being so. To know much about many things is what I never aspired at, and certainly have not succeeded in. If you had called me a persevering framer of systems, or had said that in architecture, as in some other matters, by trying to catch the principle of the system, I had sometimes been able to judge right of details, I should have recognised some likeness to myself; but what you have said only makes me ashamed. You will perhaps laugh at my earnestness about this matter, for I am in earnest; but consider how you would like praise which you felt to be the opposite of what you were, and not even like what you had tried to be[[10]].’
It would be unbecoming to intrude domestic matters into an essay like the present, in which we have proposed to ourselves a different object; but we cannot wholly omit to draw attention to the painful, but deeply interesting, chapters in which Mrs Stair Douglas describes her uncle’s grief at the loss of his first wife in 1855, and of his second wife in 1865. His strong nature had recovered after a time from the first of these terrible shocks, under which he had wisely distracted his mind by the composition of his essay on The Plurality of Worlds, and by again accepting the Vice-Chancellorship. The second, however, fell upon him with even greater severity. He was ten years older, and therefore less able to bear up against it. Lady Affleck died a little before midnight on Saturday, April 1, 1865; and her heart-broken husband, true to his theory that the chapel service ought to be regarded as family prayers, appeared in his place at the early service on Sunday morning, not fearing to commit to the sympathies of his College ‘the saddest of all sights, an old man’s bereavement, and a strong man’s tears[[11]].’ We can still recall the look of intense sorrow on his face; a look which, though he tried to rouse himself, and pursue his usual avocations, never completely wore off. He survived her for rather less than a year, dying on March 6, 1866, from injuries received from a fall from his horse on February 24 previous. It was at first hoped that these, like those he had received on many similar occasions, for he used to say that he had measured the depth of every ditch in Cambridgeshire by falling into it, were not serious; but the brain had sustained an injury, and he gradually sank. His last thoughts were for the College. On the very last morning he signified his wish that the windows of his bedroom might be opened wide, that he might see the sun shine on the Great Court, and he smiled as he was reminded that he used to say that the sky never looked so blue as when framed by its walls and turrets. Among the numerous tributes to his memory which then appeared, none we think are more appropriate than the following lines, the authorship of which we believe we are right in ascribing to the late Mr Tom Taylor[[12]]:
‘Gone from the rule that was questioned so rarely,
Gone from the seat where he laid down the law;
Gaunt, stern, and stalwart, with broad brow set squarely
O’er the fierce eye, and the granite-hewn jaw.