One of the cleverest women I ever knew, Mrs. Sarah Austin, the magnificent mother of Lady Duff Gordon, and the author of a capital and safe book on Germany, which seems to be little known here, though greatly esteemed there, once wrote me as follows. She was a great favorite of Mr. Bentham, a pet indeed; and her husband, the elder Austin, John, was a disciple of the philosopher, a briefless barrister, though one of the clearest reasoners and profoundest thinkers of the age, as a paper on Jurisprudence, in the "Encyclopædia Britannica," will show. He wrote very little, but his pages were worth volumes; and he gave Benthamism unadulterated and undiluted, though made intelligible to the "meanest capacity," in or out of the "Edinburgh" and the "Quarterly,"—grasping every subject he handled with fingers of steel.
"God bless you," she says, after we had been talking about the philosopher and his vagaries and whimsicalities,—"God bless you for exalting me in my beloved grandpa's good graces. You can't think how dearly I do love him, legislation and all that apart; and yet, if there ever was a woman peculiarly prone to love and admire a man for his public affections and public usefulness, I do say I am that she, and that I could not love a paragon of beauty, wit, and private kindness, if he looked on the good or ill being of mankind with indifference or scorn, or with anti-social feelings. Think of the divine old man growing a sort of vetch in his garden to cram his pockets with for the deer in Kensington Garden. I remember his pointing it out to me, and telling me the 'virtuous deer' were fond of it, and ate it out of his hand. I could have kissed his feet; it was the feeling of a kind, tender-hearted, loving child."
He had another pet, almost a rival on some special occasions for Mrs. Austin. It was a large sleepy-looking tomcat, very black, and of a most uncommon seriousness of deportment. The philosopher treated him with great consideration, I might almost say reverence, and called him Doctor,—but whether an LL. D., a D. D., or only an M. D., I never clearly understood, though I have a faint recollection, that, on the happening of some event in which Tom bore a part, he accounted for the deference he showed, by calling him the Reverend Doctor somebody. Like Byron, too, he once had a pet bear; but he was in Russia at the time, and the wolves got into the poor creature's box, on a terrible winter's night, and carried off a part of his face, a depredation which the philosopher never forgot nor forgave to his dying day. He always kept a supply of stale bread in the drawer of his dining-table for the "mousies."
When he introduced me to Mr. Joseph Hume, the great penny-wise and pound-foolish reformer, he begged me to bear in mind that he was only a Scotchman, or "no better than a Scotchman"; and he once gave me an open letter to the celebrated philanthropist, Dr. Southwood Smith, which he asked me to read before it was delivered. I did so, and found that he wished the Doctor to know that I had been at Queen-Square Place a long while, and that, so far as he knew I had neither told lies nor stolen spoons. Of course I delivered the letter, leaving Dr. Smith to take the consequences, if any silver should be missed after I left him.
And, by the way, this reminds me that this very Dr. Smith was the individual to whom he bequeathed his body, with certain directions, which appear to have been carried out to the very letter, according to Miss Margaret Fuller, who describes what she herself saw with her own eyes not long after Mr. Bentham's death.
"I became acquainted with Dr. Southwood Smith," she says. "On visiting him, we saw an object which I have often heard celebrated, and had thought would be revolting, but found, on the contrary, an agreeable sight; this is the skeleton of Jeremy Bentham. It was at Bentham's request, that the skeleton, dressed in the same dress he habitually wore, stuffed out to an exact resemblance of life, and with a portrait-mask in wax,—the best I ever saw,—sits there as assistant to Dr. Smith in the entertainment of his guests, and companion of his studies. The figure leans a little forward, resting the hands on a stout stick which Bentham always carried, and had named 'Dapple'; the attitude is quite easy, the expression on the whole mild, winning, yet highly individual."—In Westminster Abbey there was at this time, and probably is now, a wax figure of Lord Nelson in the very dress he wore at Trafalgar. It is set up in a show-case, just as Barnum would do it.
One other incident, showing his imperturbable good temper, and I have done. A Frenchman had somehow got access to him,—through Dr. Bowring, I believe. No sooner was he seated than he pulled out Mr. Bentham's pamphlet, already mentioned, and entitled, "Emancipate your Colonies," which opens in this way:—
"You have made me a Frenchman. Hear me speak like one."
This the poor Frenchman read, in an ecstasy of admiration, as if written, "You have make me a Frainchman. Hear me speak like own." Yet Mr. Bentham kept his countenance, gave the poor fellow a good dinner, and gossiped with him till the time had run out.
But Mr. Bentham could be "terribly in earnest," when the proper occasion arose. Aaron Burr had been a guest of his for a long while, after being driven abroad by the outburst of indignation here,—and, while with him, made such revelations of character, that Mr. Bentham, who acknowledged his talents, actually shuddered when he mentioned his name. Burr declared, in so many words, that he meant to kill Hamilton, because he had threatened to do so long before. He told Mr. Bentham, while boasting of his great success with our finest women, that Mrs. Madison herself was his mistress before marriage; and seriously proposed—in accordance with what may be found in his Life by Matthew L. Davis, about educating daughters and sons alike, and exposing them in the same way—that he would send for his daughter Theodosia, and Mr. Bentham should take her for his mistress; and in a marginal note, now before me, by the Reverend John Pierpont, I find abundant confirmation of what Mr. Bentham told me, though Mr. Davis undertook to say that the stories of Aaron Burr's bonnes fortunes were true, and that he had a trunkful of letters from the leading women of his day to prove it, and that Mr. Bentham was untrustworthy. Upon this point I challenged him to the proof; but he shrunk from the issue.