Part 3 (2/2)

CHAPTER IV

_ROBERT ELSMERE_ AND AFTER

1888-1889

Three volumes, printed as closely as were those of _Robert Elsmere_, penetrated somewhat slowly among the fraternity of reviewers. The _Scotsman_ and the _Morning Post_ were the first to notice it on March 5, nine days after its appearance; the _British Weekly_ wept over it on March 9; the _Academy_ compared it to _Adam Bede_ on the 17th; the _Manchester Guardian_ gave it two columns on the 21st; the _Sat.u.r.day_ ”slated” it on the 24th; while Walter Pater's article in the Church _Guardian_ on the 28th, calling it a ”_chef d'uvre_ of that kind of quiet evolution of character through circ.u.mstance, introduced into English literature by Miss Austen and carried to perfection in France by George Sand,” gave perhaps greater happiness to its author than any other review. _The Times_ waited till April 7, being in no hurry to show favour to one connected with its staff, but when it came the review duly spoke of _Robert_ as ”a clever attack upon revealed religion,” and all was well. By the end of March, however, the public interest in the book had begun in earnest; the first edition of 500 copies was exhausted and a second had appeared; this was sold out by the middle of April; a third appeared on April 19 and was gone within a week; a fourth followed in the same way. Matthew Arnold wrote from Wilton, the Pembrokes' house, a week before his death (which occurred on April 15), that he found all the guests there reading or intending to read it, and added, ”George Russell, who was staying at Aston Clinton with Gladstone, says it is all true about his interest in the book. He talked of it incessantly and said he thought he should review it for Knowles.”

As a matter of fact, Mr. Gladstone had already written the first draft of his article and was corresponding with Lord Acton on the various points which he wished to raise or to drive home. His biographer hints that Acton's replies were not too encouraging. But the old giant was not to be deterred. The book had moved him profoundly and he felt impelled to combat the all too dangerous conclusions to which it pointed. ”Mamma and I,” he wrote to his daughter in March, ”are each of us still separately engaged in a death-grapple with _Robert Elsmere_. I complained of some of the novels you gave me to read as too stiff, but they are nothing to this. It is wholly out of the common order. At present I regard with doubt and dread the idea of doing anything on it, but cannot yet be sure whether your observations will be verified or not. In any case it is a tremendous book.” And to Lord Acton he wrote: ”It is not far from twice the length of an ordinary novel; and the labour and effort of reading it all, I should say, sixfold; while one could no more stop in it than in reading Thucydides.” Early in April he came to Oxford to stay with the Edward Talbots at Keble College, and hearing that Mrs. Ward was also there, watching over her dying mother, he expressed a desire to see her, and, if possible, to talk the book over with her. She came on the day after her mother's death--April 8--towards evening, and waited for him alone in the Talbots'

drawing-room. That night she wrote down the following account of their conversation:

”I arrived at Keble at 7.10. Gladstone was not in the drawing-room.

I waited for about three minutes when I heard his slow step coming downstairs. He came in with a candle in his hand which he put out, then he came up most cordially and quickly. 'Mrs. Ward--this is most good of you to come and see me! If you had not come, I should myself have ventured to call and ask after yourself and Mr.

Arnold.'

”Then he sat down, he on a small uncomfortable chair, where he fidgeted greatly! He began to ask about Mamma. Had there been much suffering? Was death peaceful? I told him. He said that though he had seen many deaths, he had never seen any really peaceful. In all there had been much struggle. So much so that 'I myself have conceived what I will not call a terror of death, but a repugnance from the idea of death. It is the rending asunder of body and soul, the tearing apart of the two elements of our nature--for I hold the body to be an essential element as well as the soul, not a mere sheath or envelope.' He instanced the death of Sidney Herbert as an exception. _He_ had said 'can this indeed be dying?'--death had come so gently.

”Then after a pause he began to speak of the knowledge of Oxford shown by _Robert Elsmere_, and we went on to discuss the past and present state of Oxford. He mentioned it 'as one of the few points on which, outside Home Rule, I disagree with Hutton,'[11] that Hutton had given it as his opinion that Cardinal Newman and Matthew Arnold had had more influence than any other men on modern Oxford.

Newman's influence had been supreme up to 1845--nothing since, and he gathered from Oxford men that Professor Jowett and Mr. Green had counted for much more than Matthew Arnold. M.A.'s had been an influence on the general public, not on the Universities. How Oxford had been torn and rent, what a 'long agony of thought' she had gone through! How different from Cambridge!

”Then we talked again of Newman, how he had possessed the place, his influence comparable only to that of Abelard on Paris--the flatness after he left. I quoted Burne-Jones on the subject. Then I spoke of Pattison's autobiography as ill.u.s.trating Newman's hold. He agreed, but said that Pattison's religious phase was so disagreeable and unattractive that it did small credit to Newman.

He would much like to have seen more of the autobiography, but he understood that the personalities were too strong. I asked him if he had seen Pattison's last 'Confession of Faith,' which Mrs.

Pattison decided not to print, in MS. He said no. Then he asked me whether I had pleasant remembrances of Pattison. I warmly said yes, and described how kind he had been to me as a girl. 'Ah!' he said--'Church would never cast him off; and Church is almost the only person of whom he really speaks kindly in the Memoirs.'

”Then, from the state of Oxford, we pa.s.sed to the state of the country during the last half-century. 'It has been a _wonderful_ half-century! I often tell the young men who are coming on that we have had a better time than they can have, in the next half-century. Take one thing only--the abolition of slavery in the world (outside Africa I suppose he meant). You are too young to realize what that means. But I draw a distinction between the first twenty-five years of the period and the second; during the first, steady advance throughout all cla.s.ses, during the second, distinct recession, and retrogression, in the highest cla.s.s of all. That testing point, _marriage_, very disquieting. The scandals about marriage in the last twenty years unparallelled in the first half of the period. I don't trust my own opinion, but I asked two of the keenest social observers, and two of the coolest heads I ever knew--Lord Granville and the late Lord Clanwilliam--to tell me what they thought and they strongly confirmed my impression.' (Here one of the Talbot boys came in and stood by the fire, and Gladstone glanced at him once or twice, as though conversation on these points was difficult while he was there.) I suggested that more was made of scandals nowadays by the newspapers. But he would not have it--'When I was a boy--I left Eton in 1827--there were two papers, the _Age_ and the _Satirist_, worse than anything which exists now.

But they died out about 1830, and for about forty years there was _nothing of the kind_. Then sprang up this odious and deplorable crop of Society papers.' He thought the fact significant.

”He talked of the modern girl. 'They tell me she is not what she was--that she loves to be fast. I don't know. All I can bear testimony to is the girl of my youth. _She_ was excellent!'

”'But,' I asked him, 'in spite of all drawbacks, do you not see a gradual growth and diffusion of earnestness, of the social pa.s.sion during the whole period?' He a.s.sented, and added, 'With the decline of the Church and State spirit, with the slackening of State religion, there has unquestionably come about a quickening of the State conscience, of the _social_ conscience. I will not say what inference should be drawn.'

”Then we spoke of charity in London, and of the way in which the rich districts had elbowed out their poor. And thereupon--perhaps through talk of the _motives_ for charitable work--we came to religion. 'I don't believe in any new system,' he said, smiling, and with reference to _Robert Elsmere_; 'I cling to the old. The great traditions are what attract me. I believe in a degeneracy of man, in the Fall--in _sin_--in the intensity and virulence of sin.

No other religion but Christianity meets the sense of sin, and sin is the great fact in the world to me.'

”I suggested that though I did not wish for a moment to deny the existence of moral evil, the more one thought of it the more plain became its connection with physical and social and therefore _removable_ conditions. He disagreed, saying that the worst forms of evil seemed to him to belong to the highest and most favoured cla.s.s 'of _educated_ people'--with some emphasis.

”I asked him whether it did not give him any confidence in 'a new system'--i.e. a new construction of Christianity--to watch its effect on such a life as T. H. Green's. He replied individuals were no test; one must take the broad ma.s.s. Some men were born 'so that sin never came near them. Such men never felt the need of Christianity. They would be better if they were worse!'

”And as to difficulties, the great difficulties of all lay in the way of Theism. 'I am surprised at men who don't feel this--I am surprised at you!' he said, smiling. Newman had put these difficulties so powerfully in the _Apologia_. The Christian system satisfied all the demands of the conscience; and as to the intellectual difficulties--well there we came to the question of miracles.

”Here he restated the old argument against an _a priori_ impossibility of miracles. Granted a G.o.d, it is absurd to limit the scope and range of the _will_ of such a being. I agreed; then I asked him to let me tell him how I had approached the question--through a long immersion in doc.u.ments of the early Church, in critical and historical questions connected with miracles. I had come to see how miracles arise, and to feel it impossible to draw the line with any rigidity between one miraculous story and another.

”'The difficulty is'--he said slowly, 'if you sweep away miracles, you sweep away _the Resurrection_! With regard to the other miracles, I no longer feel as I once did that they are the most essential evidence for Christianity. The evidence which now comes _nearest_ to me is the evidence of Christian history, of the type of character Christianity has produced----'

”Here the Talbots' supper bell rang, and the clock struck eight. He said in the most cordial way it was impossible it could be so late, that he must not put the Warden's household out, but that our conversation could not end there, and would I come again? We settled 9.30 in the morning. He thanked me, came with me to the hall and bade me a most courteous and friendly good-bye.”[12]

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