I remember an amusing case that occurred in our own family. One of my kith and kin, who had been married in the year of the battle of Waterloo, died at the ripe old age of a hundred and three.
There was a faithful old fellow on the estate who was much attached to her, and this was his view, just before her end:—
'I am sorry to hear the old mistress is dying, very sorry indeed, for she's been a good mistress to us all. Maybe if she had taken snuff she'd have lived to a good old age,' which suggests wonder as to what his conception of longevity really was. Probably the famous Countess of Desmond, who died from the effects of a fall from a cherry-tree in her one hundred and fortieth year, would have satisfied him.
I have already observed that much of my later years has been spent, much against my will, in London, and no portion of this period was so satisfactory to me as my friendship with Mr. J.A. Froude, which I regard as one of the privileges of my life.
My first acquaintance with him was in consequence of reading his English in Ireland, which I found so accurate and informative that I wrote to ask him for an interview. I came to like him very much, not only because he was the most gifted writer I have met, but also because he understood Ireland better than any other Englishman.
My first conversation with him was in his house in Onslow Gardens, and there I very frequently sat for hours with him, and he also presented me with copies of all his books, with an autograph letter on the fly-leaf of each. I think the recent Land Purchase Act, having been followed by increased agitation for Home Rule in Ireland, bears out what he said about the folly of trying to reconcile the irreconcilables, and also bears out what Lord Morris called the 'criminal idiotcy' of attempting to satisfy eighty Irish members, forty of whom would have to starve directly they were satisfied.
So far as I am aware, Mr. Froude never contemplated standing for Parliament, which would not have been a congenial atmosphere for him, though I am convinced he would have made more mark at Westminster than his friend Mr. Lecky, whom I never had the pleasure of meeting.
People to-day seem to regard Mr. Froude simply as the Boswell of Carlyle, and, forgetting his own great services to historical literature, degrade him to the mere chronicler of the bilious sage of Chelsea. This is absolutely a distortion of fact, and one calculated to do injury to the memory of both these famous men. Therefore it may be of real utility to state that during my long and very intimate acquaintance with Mr. Froude, he never mentioned the name of Carlyle to me but once, and that was to describe a conversation between Lord Wolseley and Carlyle, which dealt with the contemporary situation in Ireland. There was, therefore, nothing to show me that my friend 'was utterly absorbed in the Carlyles, and had no thought for any one else.' On the contrary, he was a man full of keen interests, of which they were only one, and, as far as I saw, an entirely subordinate one. He was a broad-minded man, who hated petty misconception or a narrow view of anything, and he would have been horrified at the prurient indecency with which the most private affairs of the Carlyles have been exposed and distorted to please a public which really has a higher moral tone than is possessed by those who have gibbeted the defenceless dead.
Mr. Froude was not addicted to talking much about his own works, but I remember his telling me that Oceana had paid him best of them all, and I think his view therein that the colonies will recede from England when they are strong enough, following the example of the United States, is accurate. Just tax Canada as Ireland has been taxed, and see how long the Canadians will be contented. The ministers of George III. tried that policy on the United States with the result that, before many years, George had to receive the Plenipotentiary Minister of dominions over which he himself had once reigned. It is absurd to compare Ireland with Yorkshire, as has been done, for Ireland once had a separate Parliament, and the Union was a matter of agreement, the outcome of which was that Mr. Childers's Commission found she was taxed three millions more than she should have been. The colonies are on the alert, with all the rather irritable uppishness of youth on the verge of manhood, and their younger generations are sure to take full advantage of any tactless conduct of the British Government. Such was Froude's view, and nothing has happened since his death to shake its inherent probability. The waves of Imperial patriotism in war time go for very little, for Ireland is admittedly disloyal, and yet Irish soldiers and Irish regiments were absolutely the most successful in South Africa.
When the Government was introducing some quack measure into Ireland, Froude wrote to me:—