Now this Memoir of a Brother may be said just to supply the want that we have here endeavored to indicate. It is the whole life—the child life, the school-boy life, the college life and the adult, responsible life in the world and as a family head—of a real flesh-and-blood, actualized Tom Brown; and it stands out depicted with an intense naturalness of coloring that charms one more than the laborious effects of imaginative biography.
George Hughes, the subject of the memoir before us, was the eldest son of a Berkshire squire, and little more than a year older than his brother and biographer. Very pleasant is the glimpse of child life in an English county forty years ago that is given in the story of his first years. From the first he showed the calm fearlessness, the practicality and the helpfulness which seem to have been among his most prominent characteristics. These qualities, and with them a rigorous conscientiousness, a sensitive unselfishness, and—no trifling advantage in these or any other days—a splendid physique, he took with him, and preserved alike unaltered, through Rugby, Oxford and after years. Little wonder that the possessor of such gifts became a Sixth-form boy and football captain at his public school, and achieved boating and cricketing successes, an honorable degree, and the repute of being the most popular man of his day at the university. Most people who take an interest in boat-racing, and many who do not, have heard of that famous race upon the Thames at Henley, in which a crew of seven Oxford oarsmen snatched victory from a (not the) Cambridge "eight;" but not everybody knows—for the feat was done now thirty years ago, and names are lost while the memory of a fact survives—that George Hughes pulled the stroke-oar of that plucky seven-oared boat.
Oxford days over, and after a three-years' spell of private tutoring—a not uncommon temporary resort of English graduates while they are making up their minds as to what profession or business to take up for life—we find George Hughes settled in London, reading law in Doctors' Commons. By this time his biographer, who has been close by his side, and following his lead in work and play, through all the years of school and college life, is at work in London too, and the two brothers are again together under one roof. The similarity, one may almost say identicality, of the circumstances of their bringing up might, but that such things, luckily, don't always go by rule, have led one to expect to find in them, now full-grown and thoughtful men, something like a coincidence of sympathies and opinions. Nothing of the sort. George is by temperament and conviction a Tory of the kindly, old-fashioned school: his younger brother has become an advanced Liberal, an enthusiastic promoter of workingmen's associations, and a leading spirit among the so-called Christian Socialists. Needless to add that, though never for one moment sundered one from the other in heart or affection by differences of opinion, the two could not work together in this field. Downright, practical George has his objections, and states them. Listen: "'You don't want to divide other people's property?' 'No.' 'Then why call yourselves Socialists?' 'But we couldn't help ourselves: other people called us so first.' 'Yes, but you needn't have accepted the name. Why acknowledge that the cap fitted?' 'Well, it would have been cowardly to back out. We borrow the ideas of these Frenchmen, of association as opposed to competition, as the true law of industry and of organizing labor—of securing the laborer's position by organizing production and consumption—and it would be cowardly to shirk the name. It is only fools who know nothing about the matter, or people interested in the competitive system of trade, who believe or say that a desire to divide other people's property is of the essence of Socialism.' 'That may be very true, but nine-tenths of mankind, or, at any rate, of Englishmen, come under one or the other of these categories. If you are called Socialists, you will never persuade the British public that this is not your object. There was no need to take the name. You have weight enough to carry already, without putting that on your shoulders.... The long and short of it is, I hate upsetting things, which seems to be your main object. You say that you like to see people discontented with society as it is, and are ready to help to make them so, because it is full of injustice and abuses of all kinds, and will never be better till men are thoroughly discontented. I don't see these evils so strongly as you do, don't believe in heroic remedies, and would sooner see people contented, and making the best of society as they find it. In fact, I was bred and born a Tory, and I can't help it.'" However, our biographer tells us, "he (George) continued to pay his subscription, and to get his clothes at our tailors' association till it failed, which was more than some of our number did, for the cut was so bad as to put the sternest principles to a severe test. But I could see that this was done out of kindness to me, and not from sympathy with what we were doing."
After a few years of law-work in the ecclesiastical courts, the call of a domestic duty took George Hughes—not, one may well imagine, without a severe struggle—from the active practice of his profession, and bade him be content thenceforward with home life. Idle or inactive of course a man of prime mental and bodily vigor could not be. The violoncello, farming, volunteering, magistrate's work, getting up laborers' reading-rooms and organizing Sunday evening classes for the big boys in his village, gave outlets enough for his superfluous energies. And meanwhile he was now become a pater-familias, and had boys of his own to send to Rugby, and to encourage and advise in their school-life by letters which—and it is paying them a high compliment to say so—are almost as good as those which his father had, thirty years before, addressed to him at the same place. It is impossible to overestimate the advantage to a school-boy of having a father who can appreciate and sympathize with boyish thoughts and aims, and knows how to use his natural mentorship wisely. We shall be much surprised if readers do not find the letters from George's father to him, and his to his own boys, among the most attractive parts of this book. Like most men who care heartily for anything, George Hughes always continued to feel a strong interest in public affairs, though circumstances had "counted him out of that crowd" who do the outside working of them. He had a considerable gift of rhyming, and that incident of the ex-prince imperial's "baptism of fire" with which the late Franco-Prussian war opened drew from him some vigorously indignant lines. Here are a few of them:
By! baby Bunting,
Daddy's gone a-hunting,
Bath of human blood to win,
To float his baby Bunting in,
By, baby Bunting,
What means this hunting?
Listen, baby Bunting—
Wounds—that you may sleep at ease,
Death—that you may reign in peace,
Sweet baby Bunting.
Yes, baby Bunting!
Jolly fun is hunting.
Jacques in front shall bleed and toil,
You in safety gorge the spoil,
Sweet baby Bunting.
Perpend, my small friend,
After all this hunting,
When the train at last moves on,
Daddy's gingerbread salon
May get a shunting.
It is not our place here to do more than record how that suddenly, in the early summer of last year, the true strong man was struck down by inflammation of the lungs and passed away. What the loss must be to all whom his influence touched the pages before us sufficiently attest. It is perhaps well, though, that no life can be faithfully lived in the world without leaving such sore legacies of loss behind it.