In 1843 his attention had already been drawn to the question of educating the neglected children, and he was making acquaintance at first hand with the work of the Ragged Schools, at that time few in number and poorly supported. He visited repeatedly the Field Lane School, in a district near Holborn notoriously frequented by the criminal classes, and soon the cause, at which he was to work unsparingly for forty years, began to move forward. He went among the poor with no thought of condescension. Simple as he was by nature, he possessed in perfection the art of speaking to children, and he was soon full of practical schemes for helping them. Sanitary reform was not neglected in his zeal for religion, and emigration was to be promoted as well as better housing at home; for, till the material conditions of life were improved, he knew that it was idle to hope for much moral reform. 'Plain living and high thinking' is an excellent ideal for those whose circumstances put them out of reach of anxiety over daily bread; it is a difficult gospel to preach to those who are living in destitution and misery.

The character of his work soon won confidence even in the most unlikely quarters. In June 1848 he received a round-robin signed by forty of the most notorious thieves in London, asking him to come and meet them in person at a place appointed; and on his going there he found a mob of nearly four hundred men, all living by dishonesty and crime, who listened readily and even eagerly to his brotherly words.

Several of them came forward in turn and made candid avowal of their respective difficulties and vices, and of the conditions of their lives. He found that they were tired of their own way of life, and were ready to make a fresh start; and in the course of the next few months he was able, thanks to the generosity of a rich friend, to arrange for the majority of them to emigrate to another country or to find new openings away from their old haunts.

But, apart from such special occasions, the work of the schools went steadily forward. In seven years, more than a hundred such schools were opened, and Lord Shaftesbury was unfailing in his attendance whenever he could help forward the cause. His advice to the managers to 'keep the schools in the mire and the gutter' sounds curious; but he was afraid that, as they throve, boys of more prosperous classes would come in and drive out those for whom they were specially founded. 'So long', he said, 'as the mire and gutter exist, so long as this class exists, you must keep the school adapted to their wants, their feelings, their tastes and their level.' And any of us familiar with the novels of Charles Dickens and Walter Besant will know that such boys still existed unprovided for in large numbers in 1850 and for many years after.

Thus the years went by. He succeeded to the earldom on his father's death in 1851. His heart was wrung by the early deaths of two of his children and by the loss of his wife in 1872. In his home he had his full share of the joys and sorrows of life, but his interest in his work never failed. If new tasks were taken up, it was not at the expense of the old; the fresh demand on his unwearied energies was met with the same spirit. At an advanced age he opened a new and attractive chapter in his life by his friendly meetings with the London costermongers. He gave prizes for the best-kept donkey, he attended the judging in person, he received in return a present of a donkey which was long cherished at Wimborne St. Giles. It is impossible to deal fully with his life in each decade; one page from his journal for 1882 shows what he could still do at the age of eighty-one, and will be the best proof of his persistence in well-doing. He began the day with a visit to Greenhithe to inspect the training ships for poor boys, at midday he came back to Grosvenor Square to attend a committee meeting of the Bible Society at his home, he then went to a public banquet in honour of his godson, and he finished with a concert at Buckingham Palace, thus keeping up his friendly relations with all classes in the realm. To the very last, in his eighty-fifth year, he continued to attend a few meetings and to visit the scenes of his former labours; and on October 1, 1885, full of years and full of honours, he died quietly at Folkestone, where he had gone for the sake of his health.

In this sketch attention has been drawn to his labours rather than to his honours. He might have had plenty of the latter if he had wished. He received the Freedom of the City of London and of other great towns. Twice he was offered the Garter, and he only accepted the second offer on Lord Palmerston's urgent request that he should treat it as a tribute to the importance of social work. Three times he was offered a seat in the Cabinet, but he refused each time, because official position would fetter his special work. He kept aloof from party politics, and was only roused when great principles were at stake. Few of the leading politicians satisfied him. Peel seemed too cautious, Gladstone too subtle, Disraeli too insincere. It was the simplicity and kindliness of his relative Palmerston that won his heart, rather than confidence in his policy at home or abroad. The House of Commons suited him better than the colder atmosphere of the House of Lords; but in neither did he rise to speak without diffidence and fear. It is a great testimony to the force of his conviction that he won as many successes in Parliament as he did. But the means through which he effected his chief work were committees, platform meetings, and above all personal visits to scenes of distress.

The nation would gladly have given him the last tribute of burial in Westminster Abbey, but he had expressed a clear wish to be laid among his own people at Wimborne St. Giles, and the funeral was as simple as he had wished it to be. His name in London is rather incongruously associated with a fountain in Piccadilly Circus, and with a street full of theatres, made by the clearing of the slums where he had worked: the intention was good, the result is unfortunate. More truly than in any sculpture or buildings his memorial is to be found in the altered lives of thousands of his fellow citizens, in the happy looks of the children, and in the pleasant homes and healthy workshops which have transformed the face of industrial England.



JOHN LAWRENCE

1811-79

1811. Born at Richmond, Yorkshire, March 4. 1823. School at Londonderry. 1827. Haileybury I.C.S. College. 1829. Goes out to India as a member of Civil Service. 1831. Delhi. 1834. Pānīpat. 1836. Etāwa. 1840-2. Furlough and marriage to Harriette Hamilton. 1844. Collector and Magistrate of Delhi and Pānīpat. 1845. First Sikh War. 1846. Governor of Jālandhar Doāb. 1848. Second Sikh War. 1849. Lord Dalhousie annexes Punjab. Henry and John Lawrence members of Punjab Board. 1852-3. New Constitution. John Lawrence, Chief Commissioner of Punjab. 1856. Oudh annexed. Henry Lawrence first Governor. 1857. Indian Mutiny. Death of Henry Lawrence at Lucknow (July). Punjab secured. Delhi retaken (September). 1858-9. Baronetcy; G.C.B. Return to England. 1864. Governor-General of India. Irrigation. Famine relief. 1869. Return to England. Peerage. 1870. Chairman of London School Board. 1876. Failure of eyesight. 1879. Death in London, June 27.

JOHN LAWRENCE

INDIAN ADMINISTRATOR

The north of Ireland and its Scoto-Irish stock has given birth to some of the toughest human material that our British Isles have produced. Of this stock was John Wesley, who at the age of eighty-five attributed his good health to rising every day at four and preaching every day at five. Of this was Arthur Wellesley, who never knew defeat and 'never lost a British gun'. Of this was Alexander Lawrence, sole survivor among the officers of the storming party at Seringapatam, who lived to rear seven stout sons, five of whom went out to service in India, two at least to win imperishable fame. His wife, a Miss Knox, came also from across the sea; and, if the evidence fails to prove Mr. Bosworth Smith's statement that she was akin to the great Reformer, she herself was a woman of strong character and great administrative talent. When we remember John Lawrence's parentage, we need not be surprised at the character which he bore, nor at the evidence of it to be seen in the grand rugged features portrayed by Watts in the picture in the National Portrait Gallery.



Of these parents John Laird Mair Lawrence was the fourth surviving son, one boy, the eldest, having died in infancy. He owed the accident of his birth in an English town to his father's regiment being quartered at the time in Yorkshire, his first schooling at Bristol to his father's residence at Clifton; but when he was twelve years old, he followed his elder brothers to Londonderry, where his maternal uncle, the Rev. James Knox, was Headmaster of the Free Grammar School, situated within the walls of that famous Protestant fortress. It was a rough school, of which the Lawrence brothers cherished few kindly recollections. It is difficult to ascertain what they learnt there: perhaps the grim survivals of the past, town-walls, bastions, and guns, made the deepest impression upon them. John's chief friend at school was Robert Montgomery, whom, many years later, he welcomed as a sympathetic fellow-worker in India; and the two boys continued their education together at Wraxall in Wiltshire, to which they were transferred in 1825. Here John spent two years, working at his books by fits and starts, and finding an outlet for his energy in climbing, kite-flying, and other unconventional amusements, and then his turn came to profit by the goodwill of a family friend, who was an influential man and a director of the East India Company. To this man, John Huddlestone by name, his brothers Alexander and George owed their commissions in the Indian cavalry, while Henry had elected for the artillery. John hoped for a similar favour, but was offered, in its place, a post in the Indian Civil Service. This was a cruel disappointment to him as he had set his heart on the army. In fact he was only reconciled to the prospect by the influence of his eldest sister Letitia, who held a unique place as the family counsellor now and throughout her life.

When he sailed first for India at the age of eighteen, John Lawrence had done little to give promise of future distinction. He had strong attachments to his mother and sister; outside the family circle he was not eager to make new friends. In his work and in his escapades he showed an independent spirit, and seemed to care little what others thought of him; even at Haileybury, at that time a training-school for the service of the East India Company, he was most irregular in his studies, though he carried off several prizes; and he seems to have impressed his fellows rather as an uncouth person who preferred mooning about the college, or rambling alone through the country-side, to spending his days in the pursuits which they esteemed.

When the time came for John Lawrence to take up his work, his brother Henry, his senior by five years, was also going out to India to rejoin his company of artillery, and the brothers sailed together. John had to spend ten weary months in Calcutta learning languages, and was very unhappy there. Ill-health was one cause; another was his distaste for strangers' society and his longing for home; it was only the definite prospect of work which rescued him from despondency. He applied for a post at Delhi; and, as soon as this was granted, he was all eagerness to leave Calcutta. But he had used the time well in one respect: he had acquired the power of speaking Persian with ease and fluency, and this stood him in good stead in his dealings with the princes and the peasants of the northern races, whose history he was to influence in the coming years.

Delhi has been to many Englishmen besides John Lawrence a city of absorbing interest. It had even then a long history behind it, and its history, as we in the twentieth century know, is by no means finished yet. It stands on the Jumna, the greatest tributary of the Ganges, at a point where the roads from the north-west reach the vast fertile basin of these rivers, full in the path of an invader. Many races had swept down on it from the mountain passes before the English soldiery appeared from the south-east; its mosques, its palaces, its gates, recall the memory of many princes and conquerors. At the time of Lawrence's arrival it was still the home of the heir of Akbar and Aurangzeb, the last of the great Mughals. The dynasty had been left in 1804, after the wars of Lord Wellesley, shorn of its power, but not robbed of its dignity or riches. As a result it had degenerated into an abuse of the first order, since all the scoundrels of the district infested the palace and preyed upon its owner, who had no work to occupy him, no call of duty to rouse him from sloth and sensuality. The town was filled with a turbulent population of many different tribes, and the work of the European officials was exacting and difficult. But at the same time it gave unique opportunities for an able man to learn the complexity of the Indian problem; and the knowledge which John Lawrence acquired there proved of incalculable value to him when he was called to higher posts.

At Delhi he was working as an assistant to the Resident, one of a staff of four or five, with no independent authority. But in 1834 he was given temporary charge of the district of Pānīpat, fifty miles to the north, and it is here that we begin to get some measure of the man and his abilities. The place was the scene of more than one famous battle in the past; armies of Mughals and Persians and Marāthīs had swept across its plains. Its present inhabitants were Jāts, a race widely extended through the eastern Punjab and the western part of the province of Agra. Originally invaders from the north, they espoused the religions of those around them, some Brahman, some Muhammadan, some Sikh, and settled down as thrifty industrious peasants; though inclined to peaceful pursuits, they still preserved some strength of character and were the kind of people among whom Lawrence might hope to enjoy his work. The duties of the magistrate are generally divided into judicial and financial. But, as an old Indian official more exhaustively stated it: 'Everything which is done by the executive government is done by the Collector in one or another of his capacities—publican, auctioneer, sheriff, road-maker, timber-dealer, recruiting sergeant, slayer of wild beasts, bookseller, cattle-breeder, postmaster, vaccinator, discounter of bills, and registrar.' It is difficult to see how one can bring all these departments under two headings; it is still more difficult to see how such diverse demands can possibly be met by a single official, especially by one little over twenty years of age coming from a distant country. No stay-at-home fitting himself snugly into a niche in the well-manned offices of Whitehall can expect to see his powers develop so rapidly or so rapidly collapse (whichever be his fate) as these solitary outposts of our empire, bearing, Atlas-like, a whole world on their shoulders.

With John Lawrence, fortunately, there was no question of collapse till many years of overwork broke down his physical strength. He grappled with the task like a giant, passing long days in his office or in the saddle, looking into everything for himself, laying up stores of knowledge about land tenure and agriculture, training his judgement to deal with the still more difficult problem of the workings of the Oriental mind. He had no friends or colleagues of his own at hand; and when the day's work was done he would spend his evenings holding an informal durbar outside his tent, chatting with all and sundry of the natives who happened to be there. The peoples of India are familiar with pomp and outward show such as we do not see in the more prosaic west; but they also know a man when they see one. And this young man with the strongly-marked features, curt speech, and masterful manner, sitting there alone in shirt-sleeves and old trousers as he listened to their tales, was an embodiment of the British rule which they learnt to respect—if not to love—for the solid benefits which it conferred upon them. He had an element of hardness in him; by many he was thought to be unduly harsh at different periods of his life; but he spared no trouble to learn the truth, he was inflexibly just in his decisions, and his reputation spread rapidly throughout the district. In cases of genuine need he could be extremely kind and generous; but he did not lavish these qualities on the first comer, nor did he wear his heart upon his sleeve. His informal ways and unconventional dress were a bugbear to some critics; his old waywardness and love of adventure was still alive in him, and he thoroughly enjoyed the more irregular sides of his work. Mr. Bosworth Smith has preserved some capital stories of the crimes with which he had to deal, and how the young collector took an active part in arresting the criminals—stories which some years later the future Viceroy dictated to his wife.

But, after two years thus spent in constant activity and ever-growing mastery of his work, he had to come down in rank; the post was filled by a permanent official, and John Lawrence returned to the Delhi staff as an assistant.

He soon received other 'acting appointments' in the neighbourhood of Delhi, one of which at Etāwa gave him valuable experience in dealing with the difficult revenue question. The Government was in the habit of collecting the land tax from the 'ryot' or peasant through a class of middle-men called 'talukdārs',[17] who had existed under the native princes for a long time. Borrowing perhaps from western ideas, the English had regarded the latter as landowners and the peasants as mere tenants; this had often caused grave injustice to the latter, and the officials now desired to revise the settlement in order to put all classes on a fair footing. In this department Robert Bird was supreme, and under his direction John Lawrence and others set themselves to measure out areas, to record the nature of the various soils, and to assess rents at a moderate rate. Still this was dull work compared to the planning of practical improvements and the conviction of dangerous criminals; and as, towards the end of 1839, Lawrence was struck down by a bad attack of fever, he was not sorry to be ordered home on long leave and to revisit his native land. He had been strenuously at work for ten years on end and he had well earned a holiday.

[Note 17: 'Talukdār' in the north-west, 'zamīndār' in Bengal.]

His father was now dead, and his favourite sister married, but of his mother he was for many years the chief support, contributing liberally of his own funds and giving his time and judgement to managing what the brothers put together for that purpose. In 1840 he was travelling both in Scotland and Ireland; and it was near Londonderry that he met his future wife, daughter of the Rev. Richard Hamilton, who, besides being rector of his parish, was an active justice of the peace. He met her again in the following summer, and they were married on August 26, 1841. Their life together was a tale of unbroken happiness, which was only ended by his death. A long tour on the Continent was followed by a severe illness, which threatened to forbid all prospect of work in India. However, by the end of that summer he had recovered his health enough to contemplate returning, and in October, 1842, he set sail to spend another sixteen years in labouring in India.

In 1843 he resumed work at Delhi, holding temporary posts till the end of 1844, when he became in his own right Collector and Magistrate of Delhi and Pānīpat. This time his position, besides involving much familiar work, threw him in the way of events of wider interest. Lord Hardinge, the Governor-General, on his way to the first Sikh war, came to Delhi, and was much impressed with Lawrence's ability; and when he annexed the Doāb[18] of Jālandhar and wanted a governor for it, he could find no one more suitable than the young magistrate, who had so swiftly collected 4,000 carts and sent them up laden with supplies on the eve of the battle of Sobraon.

[Note 18: 'Doāb' = land between two rivers.]

This was a great step in advance and carried John Lawrence ahead of many of his seniors; but it was promotion that was fully justified by events. He was not wanting in self-confidence, and the tone of some of his letters to the Secretary at head-quarters might seem boastful, had not his whole career shown that he could more than make good his promise. 'So far as I am concerned as supervisor,' he says, 'I could easily manage double the extent of country'; and then, comparing his district with another, he continues: 'I only ask you to wait six months, and then contrast the civil management of the two charges.' As a fact, during the three years that he held this post, he was often acting as deputy for his brother Henry at Lahore, during his illness or absence, and this alone clears him of the charge of idle boasting. Jālandhar was comparatively a simple job for him, whatever it might be for others; he was able to apply his knowledge of assessment and taxation gained at Etāwa, and need only satisfy himself. At Lahore, on the other hand, he had to consider the very strong views held by his brother about the respect due to the vested rights of the chiefs; and he studiously set himself to deal with matters in the way in which his brother would have done. The Sirdars or Sikh chieftains had inherited traditions of corrupt and oppressive rule; but the chivalrous Henry Lawrence always looked at the noble side of native character; and, as by his personal gifts he was able to inspire devotion, so he could draw out what was good in those who came under his influence. The cooler and more practical John looked at both sides, at the traditions, good and evil, which came to them from their forefathers, and he considered carefully how these chiefs would act when not under his immediate influence. Above all, he looked to the prosperity and happiness of the millions of peasants out of sight, who toiled laboriously to get a living from the land.

The second Sikh war, which broke out in 1848, can only be treated here so far as it affected the fortunes of the Lawrences. Lord Gough's strategical blunders, redeemed by splendid courage, give it great military interest; but it was the new Viceroy, Lord Dalhousie, who decided the fate of the Punjab. He was a very able, hard-working Scotch nobleman, who devoted himself to his work in India for eight years with such self-sacrifice that he returned home in 1856 already doomed to an early death. But he was masterful and self-confident to a degree; and against his imperious will the impulsive forces of Charles Napier and Henry Lawrence broke like waves on a granite coast. He was not blind to their exceptional gifts, but to him the wide knowledge, coolness, and judgement of John Lawrence made a greater appeal; and when, after the victory of Chiliānwāla and the submission of the Sikh army in 1849, he annexed the Punjab, he decided to rule it by a Board and not by a single governor, and to direct the diverse talents of the brothers to a common end. He could not dispense with Henry's influence among the Sikh chieftains, and John's knowledge of civil government was of equal value.

Each would to a certain extent have his department, but a vast number of questions would have to be decided jointly by the Board, of which the third member, from 1850, was their old schoolfellow and friend Robert Montgomery. The friction which resulted was often intolerable. Without the least personal animosity, the brothers were forced into frequent conflicts of opinion; each was convinced of the justice of his attitude and most unwilling to sacrifice the interests of those in whom he was especially interested. After three years of the strain, Lord Dalhousie decided that it was time to put the country under a single ruler. For the honour of being first Chief Commissioner of the Punjab he chose the younger brother; and Sir Henry was given the post of Agent in Rājputāna, from which he was promoted in 1857 to be the first Governor of Oudh.

It was a tragic parting. The ablest men in the Punjab, like John Nicholson and Herbert Edwardes, regarded Sir Henry as a father, and many felt that it would be impossible to continue their work without him. No Englishman in India made such an impression by personal influence on both Europeans and Asiatics. As a well-known English statesman said: 'His character was far above his career, distinguished as that career was.' But there is little doubt, now, that for the development of the new province Lord Dalhousie made the right choice. And there is no higher proof of the magnanimity of John Lawrence than the way in which he won the respect, and retained the services, of the most ardent supporters of his brother. His dealings with Nicholson alone would fill a chapter; few lessons are more instructive than the way in which he controlled the waywardness of this heroic but self-willed officer, while giving full scope to his singular abilities.

The tale of John Lawrence's government of the Punjab is in some measure a repetition of his work at Pānīpat and Delhi. It had the same variety, it was carried out with the same thoroughness; but on this vast field it was impossible for him to see everything for himself. While directing the policy, he had to work largely through others and to leave many important decisions to his subordinates. The quality of the Punjab officials—of men who owed their inspiration to Henry Lawrence, or to John, or to both of them—was proved in many fields of government during the next thirty years. Soldiers on the frontier passes, judges and revenue officers on the plains, all worked with a will and contributed of their best. The Punjab is from many points of view the most interesting province in India. Its motley population, chiefly Musalmāns, but including Sikhs and other Hindus; its extremes of heat and cold, of rich alluvial soil and barren deserts; its vast water-supplies, largely running to waste; its great frontier ramparts with the historic passes—each of these gave rise to its own special problems. It is impossible to deal with so complex a subject here; all that we can do is to indicate a few sides of the work by which John Lawrence had so developed the provinces within the short period of eight years that it was able to bear the strain of the Mutiny, and to prove a source of strength and not of weakness. He put the right men in the right places and supported them with all his power. He broke up the old Sikh army, and reorganized the forces in such a way as to weaken tribal feeling and make it less easy for them to combine against us. He so administered justice that the natives came to know that an English official's word was as good as his bond. And, with the aid of Robert Napier and others, he so helped forward irrigation as to redeem the waste places and develop the latent wealth of the country. In all these years he had little recognition or reward. His chief, Lord Dalhousie, valued his work and induced the Government to make him K.C.B. in 1856; but to the general public at home he was still unknown.

In 1857 the crisis came. The greased cartridges were an immediate cause; there were others in the background. The sepoy regiments were too largely recruited from one race, the Poorbeas of the North-west Province, and they were too numerous in proportion to the Europeans; vanity, greed, superstition, fear, all influenced their minds. Fortunately, they produced no leader of ability; and, where the British officials were prompt and firm, the sparks of rebellion were swiftly stamped out; Montgomery at Lahore, Edwardes at Peshāwar, and many others, did their part nobly and disarmed whole regiments without bloodshed. But at Meerut and Cawnpore there was hesitation; rebellion raised its head, encouragement was given to a hundred local discontents, little rills flowed together from all directions, and finally two great streams of rebellion surged round Delhi and Lucknow. The latter, where Henry Lawrence met a hero's death in July, does not here concern us; but the reduction of Delhi was chiefly the work of John Lawrence, and its effect on the history of the Mutiny was profound.

He might well have been afraid for the Punjab, won by conquest from the most military race in India only eight years before, lying on the borders of our old enemy Afghānistān, garrisoned by 11,000 Europeans and about 50,000 native troops. It might seem a sufficient achievement to preserve his province to British rule, with rebellion raging all around and making inroads far within its borders. But as soon as he had secured the vital points in his own province (Multān, Peshāwar, Lahore), John Lawrence devoted himself to a single task, to recover Delhi, directing against it every man and gun, and all the stores that the Punjab could spare. Many of his subordinates, brave men though they were, were alarmed to see the Punjab so denuded and exposed to risks; but we now see the strength of character and determination of the man who swayed the fortunes of the north. He knew the importance of Delhi, of its geographical position and its imperial traditions; and he felt sure that no more vital blow could be struck at the Mutiny than to win back the city. The effort might seem hopeless; the military commanders might hesitate; the small force encamped on the historic ridge to the west of the town might seem to be besieged rather than besiegers. But continuous waves of energy from the Punjab reinforced them. One day it was 'the Guides', marching 580 miles in twenty-two days, or some other European regiment hastening from some hotbed of fanaticism where it could ill be spared; another day it was a train of siege artillery, skilfully piloted across rivers and past ambushes; lastly, it was the famous moving column led by John Nicholson in person which restored the fortunes of the day. Through June, July, August, and half of September, the operations dragged wearily on; but thanks to the exertions of Baird Smith and Alexander Taylor, the chief engineers, an assault was at last judged to be feasible. After days of street fighting, the British secured control of the whole city on September 20th, and Nicholson, who was fatally wounded in the assault, lived long enough to hear the tale of victory. Without aid from England this great triumph had been won by the resources of the Punjab; and great was the moral effect of the news, as it spread through the bazaars.

This success did not exhaust Lawrence's energy. For months after, he continued to help Sir Colin Campbell in his operations against Lucknow, and to correspond with the Viceroy, Lord Canning, and others about the needs of the time. More perhaps than any one else, he laboured to check savage reprisals and needless brutality, and thereby incurred much odium with the more reckless and ignorant officers, who, coming out after the most critical hour, talked loudly about punishment and revenge. He was as cool in victory as he had been firm in the hour of disaster, and never ceased to look ahead to rebuilding the shaken edifice on sounder foundations when the danger should be past. It was only in the autumn of 1858, when the ship of State was again in smooth water, that he began to think of a holiday for himself. He had worked continuously for sixteen years; his health was not so strong as of old, and he could not safely continue at his post. He received a Baronetcy and the Grand Cross of the Bath from the Crown, while the Company recognized his great services by conferring on him a pension of L2,000 a year.

From these heroic scenes it is difficult to pass to the humdrum life in England, the receptions at Windsor, the parties in London, and the discussions on the Indian Council. He himself (though not indifferent to honourable recognition of his work) found far more pleasure in the quiet days passed in the home circle, the games of croquet on his lawn, and the occasional travels in Scotland and Ireland. Four years of repose were none too long, for other demands were soon to be made upon him. When Lord Elgin died suddenly in 1863, John Lawrence received the offer of the highest post under the Crown, and, before the end of the year, he was sailing for Calcutta as Governor-General of India.

In some ways he was able to fill the place without great effort. He had never been a respecter of persons; he had been quite indifferent whether his decisions were approved by those about him, and had always learnt to walk alone with a single eye to the public good. Also, he had such vast store of knowledge of the land and its inhabitants as no Viceroy before him for many decades. But the ceremonial fatigued him; and the tradition of working 'in Council', as the Viceroy must, was embarrassing to one who could always form a decision alone and had learnt to trust his own judgement.

Many of Lawrence's best friends and most trusted colleagues had left India, and he had, seated at his Council board, others who did not share his views, and who opposed the measures that he advocated. Especially was this true of the distinguished soldier Sir Hugh Rose; and Lawrence had to endure the same strain as in 1850, in the days of the Punjab board. But he was able to do great service to the country in many ways, and especially to the agricultural classes by pushing forward large schemes of irrigation. Finance was one of his strong points, and any expenditure which would be reproductive was sure of his support owing to his care for the peasants and his love of a sound budget. The period of his Viceroyalty was what is generally called uneventful—that is, it was chiefly given up to such schemes as promoted peace and prosperity, and did not witness any extension of our dominions. Even when Robert Napier's[19] expedition went to Abyssinia, few people in England realized that it was organized in India and paid for by India; and the credit for its success was given elsewhere.

[Note 19: Created Lord Napier of Magdala after storming King Theodore's fortress in 1868.]

But it is necessary to refer to one great subject of controversy, which was prominent all through Lawrence's career and with which his name is associated. This is the 'Frontier Policy' and the treatment of Afghānistān, on which two distinct schools of thought emerged. One school, ever jealous of the Russian advance, maintained that our Indian Government should establish agencies in Afghānistān with or without the consent of the Amīr; that it should interfere, if need be, to secure the throne for a prince who was attached to us; that British troops should be stationed beyond the Indus, where they could make their influence felt beyond our borders. The other maintained that our best policy was to keep within our natural boundaries, and in this respect the Indus with its fringe of desert was second only to the high mountain chains; that we should recognize the wild love of independence which the Afghāns felt, that we should undertake no obligations towards the Amīr except to observe the boundaries between him and us. If the Russians threatened our territories through Afghānistān, the natives would help us from hatred of the invaders; but if we began to establish agents and troops in their towns, we should ourselves become to them the hated enemy.

One school said that the Afghāns respected strength and would support us, if we seemed capable of a vigorous policy. The other replied that they resented foreign intrusion and would oppose Great Britain or Russia, if either attempted it. One said that we ought to have a resident in Kābul and Kandahār, the other said that it was a pity that we had ever occupied Peshāwar, in its exposed valley at the foot of the Khyber Pass, and that Attock, where the Indus was bridged, was the ideal frontier post.

No one doubted that Lawrence would be found on the side of the less showy and less costly policy; and he kept unswervingly true to his ideal. The verdict of history must not be claimed too confidently in a land which has seen so many races come and go. At least it may be said that the men who advocated advance were unable to make it good. Few chapters in our history are more tragic than the Afghān Wars of 1838-42 and 1878-80, though the last was redeemed by General Roberts's great achievements. Our present policy is in accord with this verdict. There is to-day no British agency at Kābul or Kandahār; and the loyalty of the Amīrs, during some forty years of faithful adherence on our part to this policy, have been sufficiently firm to justify Lawrence's opposition to the Forward Policy. To-day it seems easy to vindicate his wisdom; but in 1878, when the Conservative Government kindled the war fever and allowed Lord Lytton to initiate a new adventure, it was not easy to stem the tide, and Lawrence came in for much abuse and unpopularity in maintaining the other view.

But long before this happened he had returned to England. His term of office was over early in 1869, and his work in India was finished. His last years at home were quiet, but not inactive. In 1870 he was invited to become the first chairman of the new School Board for London, and he held this office three years. Board work was always uncongenial to him, and the subject was, of course, unfamiliar; but he gave his best efforts to the cause and did other voluntary work in London. This came to an end in 1876, when his eyesight failed, and for nearly two years he had much suffering and was in danger of total blindness for a time. A second operation saved him from this, and in 1878 he put forth his strength in writing and speaking vigorously, but without success, against Lord Lytton's Afghān War. In June, 1879, he was stricken with sudden illness, and died a week later in his seventieth year. It was hardly to be expected that one who had spent himself so freely, amid such stirring events, should live beyond the Psalmist's span of life.

He had started at the bottom of the official ladder; by his own efforts he had won his way to the top; and his career will always be a notable example to those young Englishmen who cross the sea to serve the Empire in our great Dependency with its 300 million inhabitants. How the relations between India and Great Britain will develop—how long the connexion will last may be debated by politicians and authors; it is in careers like that of John Lawrence (and there were many such in the nineteenth century) that the noblest fruit of the connexion may be seen.



JOHN BRIGHT

1811-89

1811. Born at Greenbank, Rochdale, November 16. 1827. Leaves school. Enters his father's mill. 1839. Marries Elizabeth Priestman (died 1841). 1841. Joins Cobden in constitutional agitation for Repeal of Corn Laws. 1843. Enters Parliament as Member for Durham. 1846. Corn Laws repealed. 1847. Marries Margaret Leatham (died 1878). 1847. Member for Manchester. 1854-5. Opposes Crimean War. 1856-7. Long illness. 1857. Unseated for Manchester. Member for Birmingham. 1861. Supports the North in American Civil War. 1868. President of Board of Trade in Gladstone's first Government. 1870. Second long illness. 1880. Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster in Gladstone's second Government. 1882. Resigns office over bombardment of Alexandria. 1886. Opposes Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill. 1889. Dies at Rochdale, March 29.

JOHN BRIGHT

TRIBUNE

The word 'tribune' comes to us from the early days of the Roman Republic; and even in Rome the tribunate was unlike all other magistracies. The holder had no outward signs of office, no satellites to execute his commands, no definite department to administer like the consul or the praetor. It was his first function to protest on behalf of the poorer citizens against the violent exercise of authority, and, on certain occasions, to thwart the action of other magistrates. He was to be the champion of the weak and helpless against the privileged orders; and his power depended on his courage, his eloquence, and the prestige of his office. England has no office of the sort in her constitutional armoury; but the word 'tribune' expresses, better than any other title, the position occupied in our political life by many of the men who have been the conspicuous champions of liberty, and few would contest the claim of John Bright to a foremost place among them. He, too, stood forth to vindicate the rights of the plebs; he, too, resisted the will of governments; and in no common measure did he give evidence, through forty years of public life, of the possession of the highest eloquence and the highest courage.



His early life gave little promise of a great career. He was born in 1811, the son of Jacob Bright, of Rochdale, who had risen by his own efforts to the ownership of a small cotton-mill in Lancashire, a man of simple benevolence and genuine piety, and a member of the Society of Friends—a society more familiar to us under the name of Quakers, though this name is not employed by them in speaking of themselves.

The boy left home early, and between the ages of eight and fifteen he was successively a pupil at five Quaker schools in the north of England. Here he enjoyed little comfort, and none of the aristocratic seclusion in which most statesmen have been reared at Eton and Harrow. He rubbed shoulders with boys of various degrees of rank and wealth, and learnt to be simple, true, and serious-minded; but he was in no way remarkable at this age. We hear little of his recreations, and still less of his reading; the school which pleased him most and did him most good was the one which he attended last, lying among the moors on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire. In the river Hodder he learnt to swim; still more he learnt to fish, and it was fishing which remained his favourite outdoor pastime throughout his life.

When school-days were over—at the age of fifteen—there was no question of the University: a rigorous life awaited him and he began at once to work in his father's business. The mill stood close beside his father's house at Greenbank near Rochdale, some ten miles northward from Manchester, and had been built in 1809 by Jacob Bright, out of a capital lent to him by two members of the Society of Friends. Here he received bales of new cotton by canal or from carriers, span it in his mill, and gave out the warp and weft thus manufactured to handloom weavers, whom he paid by the piece to weave it in the weaving chamber at the top of their own houses. He then sold the fully manufactured article in Manchester or elsewhere. In such surroundings, many a clever boy has developed into a hard-headed prosperous business man; material interests have cased in his soul, and he has been content to limit his thoughts to buying and selling, to the affairs of his factory and his town, and he has heard no call to other fields of work. But John Bright's education in books and in life was only just beginning, and though it may be regrettable that he missed the leisured freedom of university life, we must own that he really made good the loss by his own effort (and that without neglecting the work of the mill), and thereby did much to strengthen the independence of his character.

In the mill he was the earliest riser, and often spent hours before breakfast at his books. History and poetry were his favourite reading, and periodicals dealing with social and political questions; his taste was severe and had the happiest effect in chastening his oratorical style. To him, as to the earnest Puritans of the seventeenth century, the Bible and Milton were a peculiar joy; no other stories were so moving, no other music so thrilling to the ear. In his family there was no want of good talk. His mother, who died in 1830, was a woman of great gifts, who helped largely in developing the minds of her children. After her death John continued to live with his sisters, who were clever and original in mind, becoming the leader in the home circle, where views were freely exchanged on the questions of the day.

The Society of Friends was adverse to political discussion, as interfering with the religious life. But the Brights could not be kept from such a field of interest; and during these years theirs, like many other quiet homes, was stirred by the excitement roused by the fortunes of the Reform Bill.

The mill, too, did much to educate him. In the Rochdale factory there was no marked separation as at Manchester between rich and poor. Master and men lived side by side, knew one another's family history and fortunes, and fraternized over their joys and sorrows. Even in those days of backward education 'Old Jacob' made himself responsible for the schooling of his workmen's children; his son, too, made personal friends among those working under him and kept them throughout his life. Outside the mill Rochdale offered opportunities which he readily took. In 1833 he became one of the founders and first president of a debating society, and he began early to address Bible meetings and to lecture on temperance in his native town, moved by no conscious idea of learning to speak in public, but by the simple desire to be useful in good work. In such holidays as he took he was eager to travel abroad and to learn more of the outside world, and before he started at the age of twenty-four on his longest travels (a nine months' journey to Palestine and the eastern Mediterranean) he had, by individual effort, fitted himself to hold his own with the best students of the universities in width of outlook and capacity for mastering a subject. Like them, he had his limitations and his prejudices; but however we may admire wide toleration in itself, depth and intensity of feeling are often of more value to a man in enabling him to influence his fellows.

The year of Queen Victoria's accession may be counted a landmark in the life of this great Victorian. Then for the first time he met Richard Cobden, who was destined to extend his labours and to share his glory; and in the following year he began to co-operate actively in the Free Trade cause, attending meetings in the Rochdale district and gradually developing his power of speaking. It was about this time that he came to know his first wife, Elizabeth Priestman, of the Society of Friends, in Newcastle-on-Tyne, a woman of refined nature and rare gifts, whom he was to marry in 1839 and to lose in 1841. Then it was that he built the house 'One Ash', facing the same common as the house in which he was born. Here he lived many years, and here he died in the fullness of time, a Lancashire man, content to dwell among his own people, in his native town, and to forgo the grandeur of a country house. It was from here that he was called in the decisive hour of his life to take part in a national work with which his name will ever be associated. At the moment when Bright was prostrated with grief at his wife's death Cobden appeared on the scene and made his historic appeal. He urged his friend to put aside his private grief, to remember the miseries of so many other homes, miseries due directly to the Corn Laws, to put his shoulder to the wheel, and never to rest till they were repealed.

Cobden had been less happy than Bright in his schooling. His father's misfortune led to his spending five years at a Yorkshire school of the worst type, and seven more as clerk in the warehouse of an unsympathetic uncle. Like Bright, he had early to take the lead in his own family; also, like Bright, he had to educate himself; but he had a far harder struggle, and the enterprise which he showed in commerce in early manhood would have left him the possessor of a vast fortune, had he not preferred to devote his energies to public causes. The two men were by nature well suited to complement one another. If Cobden was the more ingenious in explaining an argument, Bright was more forcible in asserting a principle. If Cobden could, above all other men, convince the intellects of his hearers, Bright could, as few other speakers, kindle their spirits for a fray. His figure on a platform was striking. His manly expressive face, with broad brow, straight nose, and square chin, was essentially English in type. Though in the course of his political career he discarded the distinctive Quaker dress, he never discarded the Quaker simplicity. His costume was plain, his style of speaking severe, his bearing dignified and restrained. Only when his indignation was kindled at injustice was he swept far away from the calmness of Quaker tradition.

The Corn Laws were a sequel to the Napoleonic wars and to the insecurity of foreign trade which these caused. While war lasted it had inflated prices, and brought to English growers of corn a period of extraordinary prosperity. When peace came, to escape from a sudden fall in prices, the landed proprietors, who formed a majority of the House of Commons, had fixed by Act of Parliament the conditions under which corn might be imported from abroad. This measure was to perpetuate by law, in time of peace, the artificial conditions from which the people had unavoidably suffered by the accident of war. The legislators paid no heed to the growth of population, which was enormous, or to the distress of the working classes, who needed time to adjust themselves to the rapid changes in industry. Even the middle classes suffered, and the poor could only meet such trouble by 'clemming' or self-starvation. A noble duke, speaking in all good faith, advised them to 'try a pinch of curry powder in hot water', as making the pangs of hunger less intolerable. He met with little thanks for his advice from the sufferers, who demanded a radical cure. Parliament as a whole showed few signs of wishing to probe the question more deeply, and shut its eyes to the evidence of distress, whether shown in peaceful petitions or in disorderly riots. Many of the members were personally humane men and good landlords; but there were no powerful newspapers to enlighten them, and they knew little of the state of the manufacturing districts.

The cause had now found its appropriate champions. We in this day are familiar with appeals to the great mass of the people: we know the story of Midlothian campaigns and Belfast reviews; we hear the distant thunder from Liverpool, Manchester, or Birmingham, when the great men of Parliament go down from London to thrill vast audiences in the provincial towns. But the agitation of the Anti-Corn-Law League was a new thing. It was initiated by men unknown outside the Manchester district; few of the thousands to whom it was directed possessed the vote; and yet it wrought one of the greatest changes of the nineteenth century, a change of which the influence is perhaps not yet spent. In this campaign, Cobden and Bright were, without doubt, the leading spirits.

The movement filled five years of Bright's life. His hopes and fears might alternate—at one moment he was stirred to exultation over success, at another to regrets at the break-up of his home life, at another to bitter complaints and hatred of the landed interest—but his exertions never relaxed. As he was so often absent, the business at Rochdale had to be entrusted to his brother. Whenever he could be there, Bright was at his home with his little motherless daughter; but his efforts on the platform were more and more appreciated each year, and the campaign made heavy demands upon him.

At the opening of the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, on the site of the 'Peterloo' riots, he won a signal triumph. The vast audience was enthusiastic: several of them also were discriminating in their praise. One lady said that the chief charm of Mr. Bright was in the simplicity of his manner, the total absence of anything like showing off; another that she should never attend another meeting if he were announced to speak, as she could not bear the excitement. Simplicity and profound emotion were the secrets of his influence. The London Opera House saw similar scenes once a month, from 1843 till the end of the struggle. Villages and towns, and all classes of society, were instructed in the principles of the League and induced to help forward the cause. Not only did the wealthy factory owner, conscious as he was of the loss which the high price of food inflicted on the manufacturing interest, contribute his thousands; the factory hand too contributed his mite to further the welfare of his class. Even farmers were led to take a new view of the needs of agriculture, and the country labourer was made to see that his advantage lay in the success of the League. It was a farm-hand who put the matter in a nutshell at one of the meetings: 'I be protected,' he said, 'and I be starving.'

In 1843 Bright joined his leader in Parliament as member for Durham city, though his Quaker relatives disapproved of the idea that one of their society should so far enter the world and take part in its conflicts. In the House of Commons he met with scant popularity but with general respect. He was no mob orator of the conventional type. The simplicity and good taste of his speeches satisfied the best judges. He expressed sentiments hateful to his hearers in such a way that they might dislike the speech, but could not despise the speaker. Even when he boldly attacked the Game Laws in an assembly of landowners, the House listened to him respectfully, and the spokesman of the Government thanked him for the tone and temper of his speech, admitting that he had made out a strong case. But it was in the country and on the platform that the chief efforts of Cobden and Bright were made, and their chief successes won.

In 1845 they had an unexpected but most influential ally. Nature herself took a hand in the game. From 1842 to 1844 the bad effects of the Corn Laws were mitigated by good harvests and by the wise measures of Peel in freeing trade from various restrictions. But in 1845 first the corn, and then the potato crop, failed calamitously. Peel's conscience had been uneasy for years: he had been studying economics, and his conclusions did not square with the orthodox Tory creed. So when the Whig leader, Lord John Russell, ventured to express himself openly for Free Trade in his famous Edinburgh letter of November 28, Peel at last saw some chance of converting his party. It has already been told in this book how at length he succeeded in his aims, how he broke up his party but saved the country, and how in the hour of mingled triumph and defeat he generously gave to Cobden the chief credit for success. Whigs and Tories might taunt one another with desertion of principles, or might claim that their respective leaders collaborated at the end; certainly the question would never have been put before the Cabinet or the House of Commons as a Government measure but for the untiring efforts of the two Tribunes. History can show few greater triumphs of Government by moral suasion and the art of speech. Throughout, violence had been eschewed, even though men were starving, and appeals had been made solely to the justice and expediency of their case. Nothing illustrates better the sincerity and disinterestedness of John Bright than his conduct in these last decisive months. The tide was flowing with him; the opposition was reduced to a shadow. He might have enjoyed the luxury of applause from Radicals, Whigs, and the more advanced Tories, and won easy victories over a hostile minority. But the cause was now in the safe hands of Peel, whose honesty they respected and whose generalship they trusted; so Cobden and Bright were content to stand aside and watch. Instead of carping at his tardy conversion, Bright wrote in generous praise of Peel's speech: 'I never listened', he said, 'to any human being speaking in public with so much delight.' His heart was in the cause and not in his own advancement. When he did rise to speak, it was to vindicate Peel's honour and his statesmanship.

A few months later this honourable alliance came to an abrupt end. Bright was forced, by the same incorruptible sense of right and by the absence of all respect of persons, to oppose Peel in the crisis of his fate. The Government brought in an Irish Coercion Bill, which was naturally opposed by the Whigs. The Protectionist Tories saw their chance of taking revenge on Peel for repealing the Corn Laws and made common cause with their enemies; and from very different motives, Bright went into the same lobby. His conscience forbade him to support any coercive measure. No Prime Minister could please him as much as Peel; but no surrender, no mere evasion of responsibilities was possible in the case of a measure of which he disapproved. So firm was the bed-rock of principle on which Bright's political conduct was based; and it was to this uncompromising sincerity above all that he owed the triumphs of his oratory.

His method as an orator is full of interest.[20] In his youth he had begun by writing out and learning his speeches in full; but, before he quitted Rochdale for a wider theatre, he had discarded this rather mechanical method, and trusted more freely to his growing powers. He still made careful preparation for his speeches. He tells us how he often composed them in bed, as Carlyle's 'rugged Brindley' wrestled in bed with the difficulties of his canal-schemes, the silence and the dim light favouring the birth of ideas. He prepared words as well as ideas; but he only committed to memory enough to be a guide to him in marking the order and development of his thoughts, and filled up the original outline according to the inspiration of the moment. A few sentences, where the balance of words was carefully studied; a few figures of speech, where his imagination had taken flight into the realm of poetry; a few notable illustrations from history or contemporary politics, with details of names and figures,—these would be found among the notes which he wrote on detached slips of paper and dropped successively into his hat as each milestone was attained. As compared with his illustrious rival Gladstone, he was very sparing of gesture, depending partly on facial expression, still more on the modulations of his voice, to give life to the words which he uttered. His reading had formed his diction, his constant speaking had taught him readiness, and his study of great questions at close quarters and his meditation on them supplied him with the facts and the conclusions which he wished to put forward; but the fire which kindled this material to white heat was the passion for great principles which glowed in his heart. He himself in 1868, in returning thanks for the gift of the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh, quoted with obvious sincerity a sentence from his favourite Milton: 'True eloquence I find to be none but the serious and hearty love of Truth.'

[Note 20: See G. M. Trevelyan, Life of John Bright, pp. 384-5.]

Bright's public life was in the main a tale of devotion to two great causes, the Repeal of the Corn Laws, consummated in 1846, and the extension of the Franchise, which was not realized till twenty years later. But he found time to examine other questions and to utter shrewd opinions on the government of India and of Ireland, and to influence English sentiment on the Crimean War and the War of Secession in the United States. In advance of his time, he wished to develop cotton-growing in India and so to prevent the great industry of his own district being dependent on America alone. He attacked the existing board of directors and preferred immediate control by the Crown; and, while wishing to preserve the Viceroy's supremacy over the whole, he spoke in favour of admitting Indians to a larger share in the government of the various provinces. Many of the best judges of to-day are now working towards the same end, but at the time he met with little support. It is interesting to find that both on India and on Ireland similar views were put forward by men so different as John Bright and Benjamin Disraeli. Mr. Trevelyan has preserved the memory of several episodes in which they were connected with one another and of attempts which Disraeli made to win Bright's support and co-operation. Bright could cultivate friendships with politicians of very different schools without being induced to deviate by a hair's breadth from the cause which his principles dictated, and he could treat his friends, at times, with refreshing frankness. When Disraeli warmly admired one of his greatest speeches and expressed the wish that he himself could emulate it, the outspoken Quaker replied: 'Well, you might have made it, if you had been honest.'

It was the young Disraeli who, as early as 1846, had attributed the Irish troubles to 'a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien church'. It was Bright who never hesitated, when opportunity arose, to work for the Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland and for the security of Irish tenants in their holdings. A succession of measures, carried by Liberals and Conservatives from Gladstone to George Wyndham, have made us familiar with the idea of land purchase in Ireland; but Bright had been there as early as 1849 and had learnt for himself. Though at the end of his life he was a stubborn opponent of Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, he had long ago won the gratitude of Ireland as no other Englishman of his day, and his name has been preserved there in affectionate remembrance.

In 1854, the year of the Crimean War, Bright reached the zenith of his oratorical power, and at the same time touched the nadir of his popularity. Public opinion was setting strongly against Russia. In stemming the tide of war the so-called 'Manchester school' had a difficult task, and was severely criticized. The idea of the 'balance of power' made little appeal to Bright; and as a Quaker he was reluctant to see England interfering in a quarrel which did not seem to concern her. The satirists indeed scoffed unfairly at the doctrine of 'Peace at any price'; for Bright was content to put aside the principle and to argue the case on pure political expediency. But his attacks on the wars of the last century were too often couched in an offensive tone with personal references to the peerages won in them, and he spoke at times too bitterly of the diplomatic profession and especially of our ambassador at Constantinople. Nothing shows so clearly the danger of the imperfect education which was forced on Bright by necessity, and which he had done so much to remedy, as his attitude to foreign and imperial politics. In his home he had too readily imbibed the crude notion that our Empire existed to provide careers for the needy cadets of aristocratic families, and that our foreign policy was inspired by self-seeking officials who cared little for moral principles or for the lives of their fellow countrymen. A few months spent with Lord Canning at Calcutta, or with the Lawrences at Lahore, frequent intercourse with men of the calibre of Lord Lyons or Lord Cromer, would have enlightened him on the subject and prevented him from uttering the unwarranted imputations which he did. Yet in his great parliamentary speeches of 1854 he rose high above all pettiness and made a deep impression on a hostile house. Damaging though his speech of December 22 was to the Government, no minister attempted to reply. Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone, with all their power, were unequal to the task. Disraeli told Bright that a few more such speeches 'would break up the Government'; and Delane, the famous editor of The Times, wrote that 'Cobden and Bright would be our ministers but for their principle of peace at any price'.

But Bright was not thinking of office or of breaking up Governments: he was thinking of the practical end in view. His next great speech was on February 23, 1855, when a faint hope of peace appeared. It was most conciliatory in tone, and was a solemn appeal to Palmerston to use his influence in ending the war. This was known as 'the Angel of Death' speech, from a famous passage which occurs in it. At the end he was 'overloaded with compliments', but the minister, who was hampered by Russian intrigues with Napoleon, seemed deaf to all appeals, and Bright again returned to the attack. Till the last days of the war, he continued to raise his voice on behalf of peace; but his exertions had told on his strength, and for the greater part of two years he had to abandon public life and devote himself to recovering his health.

Six years later he was to prove that 'peace at any price' was no fair description of his attitude. The Southern States of America seceded on the question of State rights and the institution of slavery, and the Federal Government declared war on them as rebels. This time it was not a war for the balance of power, but one fought to vindicate a moral principle, and Bright was strongly in favour of fighting it to a finish. For different reasons most of our countrymen favoured the South, but he appealed for British sympathy for the other side, on the ground that no true Briton could abet slavery. He was the most prominent supporter of the North, for long the only prominent one, but he gradually made converts and did much to wipe away the reproach which attached to the name of Englishmen in America, when the North triumphed in the end. The war ended in 1865 with the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox, and Bright wrote in his journal, 'This great triumph of the Republic is the event of our age'.

But long before 1865 the question of Reform and of the extension of the franchise had been revived. Gladstone might speak in favour of the principle in 1864; Russell might introduce a Reform Bill in 1866; a year later Disraeli might 'dish the Whigs'; and Whig and Tory might wrangle over the question who were the friends of the 'working man', but Bright had made his position clear to his friends in 1846. He began a popular movement in 1849 and for the next fifteen years of his life it was the object dearest to his heart. He was not afraid to walk alone. When his old fellow worker, Cobden, refused his aid, on the ground that he was not convinced of the need for extending the franchise, Bright himself assumed the lead and bore the brunt of the battle. Till 1865 his main obstacle was Palmerston, who since he took the helm in the worst days of the Crimean War and conducted the ship of State into harbour, occupied an impregnable position. Palmerston was dear to 'the man in the street', shared his prejudices and understood his humours; and nothing could make him into a serious Democrat or reformer. Even after Palmerston's death, Bright's chief opponent was to be found in the Whig ranks, in Robert Lowe, who was a master of parliamentary eloquence and who managed, in 1866, to wreck Lord John Russell's Reform Bill in the House. But Bright had his revenge in the country. Such meetings as ensued in the great provincial towns had not been seen for twenty years: the middle class and the artisans were fused as in the great Repeal struggle of 1846. At Glasgow as many as 150,000 men paraded outside the town, and no hall could contain the thousands who wished to hear the great Tribune. He claimed that eighty-four per cent. of his countrymen were still excluded from the vote, and he bluntly asserted that the existing House of Commons did not represent 'the intelligence and the justice of the nation, but the prejudices, the privileges, and the selfishness, of a class'.

But however blind many of this class might still be to the signs of the times, they found an astute leader in Disraeli, who had few principles and could trim his sails to any wind. The Tory Reform Bill, which he put forward in February 1867, came out a very different Bill in July, after discussion in the Cabinet, which led to the resignation of three ministers, and after debates in the House of Commons, where it was roughly handled. The principle of household suffrage was conceded, and another million voters were added to the electorate. Disraeli had made a greater change of front than any which he could attribute to Peel, and that without conviction, for reasons of party expediency. The real triumph belonged to Bright. 'The Bill adopted', he writes, 'is the precise franchise I recommended in 1858.' He had not only roused the country by his platform speeches, he had carefully watched the Bill in all its stages through the House, and gradually transformed it till it satisfied the aspirations of the people. He had been content to work with Disraeli so long as he could further the cause of Reform; and he only quarrelled with that statesman finally when, in 1878, he revived the anti-Russian policy of Palmerston.

During this strenuous time his domestic life was happy and tranquil. After the death of his first wife he had remained a widower for six years, and in 1847 he had married Margaret Leatham, who bore him seven children and shared his joys and sorrows in no ordinary measure for thirty years. Whenever politics took him away from his Rochdale home, he wrote constantly to her, and his letters throw most valuable light on his inmost feelings. She died in 1878, and after this his life was pitched in a different key. The outer world might suppose that high political office was crowning his career, but his enthusiasm and his power were ebbing and his physical health failed him more than once. He was as affectionate to his children, as friendly to his neighbours, as true to his principles; but the old fire was gone.

The outward events of his life from 1867 to 1889 must be passed over lightly. Against his own wishes he was persuaded by Gladstone to join the Cabinet in 1868 and again in 1880. His name was a tower of strength to the Government with the newly-enfranchised electors, but he himself had little taste for the routine of office. At Birmingham, for which he had sat since 1857, he compared himself to the Shunammite woman who refused the offer of advancement at court, and replied to the prophet, 'I dwell among mine own people'. But events were too strong for him: he was drawn first to Westminster to share in the government of the country, and then to Osborne to visit the Queen. Both the Queen and he were nervous at the prospect, but the interview passed off happily.[21] Family affections and sorrows were a bond between them, and he talked to her with his usual frankness and simplicity. Even the difficult question of costume was settled by a compromise, and the usual gold-braided livery was replaced by a sober suit of black. Ministerial work in London might have proved irksome to him; but his colleagues in the Cabinet were indulgent, and no excessive demands were made upon his strength. It was recognized that Bright was no longer in the fighting line. In 1870 he was incapacitated by a second long illness, and he had little share in the measures carried through Parliament for Irish land purchase and national education.

[Note 21: See Fitzmaurice, Life of Lord Granville, vol. i, p. 540.]

His official career was finally closed in 1882, when the bombardment of Alexandria seemed to open a new and aggressive chapter in our Eastern policy. Bright was true to his old principles and resigned office.

He severed himself still more from the official Liberals in 1886, when he refused to follow Gladstone into the Home Rule camp. He disliked the methods of Parnell, the obstruction in Parliament, and the campaign of lawlessness in Ireland. His own victories had not been won so, and he had a great respect for the traditions of the House. He also believed that the Home Rule Bill would vitally weaken the unity of the realm. But no personal bitterness entered into his relations with his old colleagues: he did not attack Gladstone, as he had attacked Palmerston in 1855. From his death-bed he sent a cordial message to his old chief, and received an answer full of high courtesy and affection.

His illness lasted several months. From the autumn of 1888 he lay at One Ash, weak but not suffering acutely; and on March 27, 1889, he quietly passed away. His old friend Cobden had preceded him more than twenty years, having died in 1865, and had been buried at his birthplace in Sussex, where he had made himself a peaceful home in later life. Bright proved himself equally faithful to the home of his earliest years. He was laid to rest in the small burying-ground in front of the Friends' meeting-house where he had worshipped as a child. In his long career he had served noble causes, and scaled the heights of fame, and the crowds at his funeral testified to the love which his neighbours bore him. He had never willingly been absent for long from his native town. His life, compared with that of Disraeli or Gladstone, seems almost bleak in its simplicity, varied as it was by so few excursions into other fields. But two strong passions enriched it with warmth and glow, his family affections and his zeal for the common good. These filled his heart, and he was content that it should be so.

Type of the wise who soar but never roam, True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home.



CHARLES DICKENS

1812-1870

1812. Born at Landport, Portsmouth, February 7. 1816. Parents move to Chatham; 1821, to London. 1822. Father bankrupt and in prison. Charles in blacking warehouse. 1827. Charles enters lawyer's office. 1831. Reporters' Gallery in Parliament. 1836. Marries Catherine Hogarth. Publishes Sketches by Boz. 1837. Pickwick Papers. 1838. Nicholas Nickleby. 1842. First American journey. 1843. Martin Chuzzlewit. 1844-5. Eleven months' residence in Italy, chiefly at Genoa. 1846. Editor of Daily News for a few weeks. 1846-7. Six months at Lausanne; three months at Paris. Dombey and Son. 1849-50. David Copperfield. 1850. Editor of weekly periodical, Household Words. 1851-2. Manager of theatrical performances. 1852. Bleak House. 1853. Italian tour: Rome, Naples, and Venice. 1856. Purchase of Gadshill House, near Rochester. 1858. Beginning of public readings. 1859. Tale of Two Cities appears in All the Year Round. 1860. Gadshill becomes his home instead of London. 1867. Second American journey. Public readings in America. 1869. April, collapse at Chester. Readings stopped. 1870. Dies at Gadshill, June 9.

CHARLES DICKENS

NOVELIST AND SOCIAL REFORMER

In these days when critics so often repeat the cry of 'art for art's sake' and denounce Ruskin for bringing moral canons into his judgements of pictures or buildings, it is dangerous to couple these two titles together, and to label Dickens as anything but a novelist pure and simple. And indeed, all would admit that the creator of Sam Weller and Sarah Gamp will live when the crusade against 'Bumbledom' and its abuses is forgotten and the need for such a crusade seems incredible. But when so many recent critics have done justice to his gifts as a creative artist, this aspect of his work runs no danger of being forgotten. Moreover, when we are considering Dickens as a Victorian worthy and as a representative man of his age, it is desirable to bring out those qualities which he shared with so many of his great contemporaries. Above all, we must remember that Dickens himself would be the last man to be ashamed of having written 'with a purpose', or to think that the fact should be concealed as a blemish in his art. There was nothing in which he felt more genuine pride than in the thought that his talents thus employed had brought public opinion to realize the need for many practical reforms in our social condition. If these old abuses have mostly passed away, we may be thankful indeed; but we cannot feel sure that in the future fresh abuses will not arise with which the example of Dickens may inspire others to wage war. His was a strenuous life; he never spared himself nor stinted his efforts in any cause for which he was fighting; and if he did not win complete victory in his lifetime, he created the spirit in which victory was to be won.

Charles Dickens was born in 1812, the second child of a large family, his father being at the time a Navy clerk employed at Portsmouth. Of his birthplace in Commercial Road Portsmouth is justifiably proud; but we must think of him rather as a Kentishman and a Londoner, since he never lived in Hampshire after his fourth year. The earliest years which left a distinct impress on his mind were those passed at Chatham, to which his father moved in 1816. This town and its neighbouring cathedral city of Rochester, with their narrow old streets, their riverside and dockyard, took firm hold of his memory and imagination. To-day no places speak more intimately of him to the readers of his books. Here he passed five years of happy childhood till his father's work took the family to London and his father's improvidence plunged them into misfortune.

For those who know Wilkins Micawber it is needless to describe the failings of Mr. Dickens; for others we may be content to say that he was kindhearted, sanguine and improvident, quite incapable of the steady industry needed to support a growing family. When his debts overwhelmed him and he was carried off to the Marshalsea prison, Charles was only ten years old, but already he took the lead in the house. On him fell the duty of pacifying creditors at the door, and of making visits to the pawn-broker to meet the daily needs of the household. His initiation into life was a hard one and it began cruelly soon. If he was active and enterprising beyond his years, with his nervous high-strung temperament he was capable of suffering acutely; and this capacity was now to be sorely tried. For a year or more of his life this proud sensitive child had to spend long hours in the cellars of a warehouse, with rough uneducated companions, occupied in pasting labels on pots of boot-blacking. This situation was all that the influence of his family could procure for him; and into this he was thrust at the age of ten with no ray of hope, no expectation of release. His shiftless parents seemed to acquiesce in this drudgery as an opening for their cleverest son; and instead of their helping and comforting him in his sorrow, it was he who gave his Sundays to visiting them in prison and to offering them such consolation as he could. The iron burnt deep into his soul. Long after, in fact till the day when the district was rebuilt and changed out of knowledge, he owned that he could not bear to revisit the scene; so painful were his recollections, so vivid his sense of degradation. Twenty-five years later he narrated the facts to his friend and biographer John Forster in a private conversation; and he only recurred to the subject once more when under the disguise of a novel he told the story of the childhood of David Copperfield. By shifting the horror from the realm of fact to that of fiction, perhaps he lifted the weight of it from the secret recesses of his heart.

When his father's debts were relieved, the child regained his freedom from servitude, but even then his schooling was desultory and ineffective. Well might the elder Dickens, in a burst of candour, say to a stranger who asked him about his son's education, 'Why indeed, sir, ha! ha! he may be said to have educated himself.'

At the age of fifteen Charles embarked again on his career as a wage-earner. At first he was taken into a lawyer's office, where he filled a position somewhat between that of office-boy and clerk, and two years later he was qualifying himself by the study of shorthand for the profession of a parliamentary reporter, which his father was then following. He entered 'the Gallery' in 1831, first representing the True Sun and later the well-known Morning Chronicle; and at intervals he enlarged his experiences by journeys into the provinces to report political meetings. Thus it was that he familiarized himself with the mail coaches, the wayside hostelries, and the rich variety of types that were to be found there; with London in most of its phases he was already at home. So, when in 1834 he made his first attempts at writing in periodical literature, although he was only twenty-two years old, he had a wealth of first-hand experiences quite outside the range of the man who is just finishing his leisurely passage through a public school and university: of schools and offices, of parliaments and prisons, of the street and of the high road, he had been a diligent and observant critic; for many years he had practised the maxim of Pope: 'The proper study of mankind is Man.'

Friends sprang up wherever he went. His open face, his sparkling eye, his humorous tongue, his ready sympathy, were a passport to the goodwill of those whom he met; few could resist the appeal. Many readers will be familiar with the early portrait by Maclise; but his friends tell us how little that did justice to the lively play of feature, 'the spirited air and carriage' which were indescribable. On the top of a mail coach, on a fresh morning, they must have won the favour of his fellow travellers more easily than Alfred Jingle won the hearts of the Pickwickians. And beneath the radiant cheerfulness of his manner, the quick flash of observation and of speech, there was in him an element of hard persistence and determination which would carry him far. If the years of poverty and neglect had failed to chill his hopes and break his spirit, there was no fear that he would tire in the pursuit of his ambition when fortune began to smile upon him. He had touched life on many sides. He had kept his warmth of sympathy, his buoyancy, his capacity for rising superior to ill-fortune; and the years of adversity had only deepened his feeling for all that were oppressed. He had much to learn about the craft of letters; but he already had the first essential of an author—he had something to say.

The year 1836 is a definite landmark in the life of Dickens. In this year he married; in this year he gave up the practice of parliamentary reporting, published the Sketches by Boz, and began the writing of The Pickwick Papers. This immortal work achieved wide popularity at once. Criticism cannot hope to do justice to the greatness of Sam Weller, to the humours of Dingley Dell and Eatanswill, to the adventures of the hero in back gardens or in prison, on coaches or in wheelbarrows. Every one must read them in the original for himself. In this book Dickens reached at once the height of his success in making his fellow countrymen laugh with him at their own foibles. If in the art of constructing a story, in the depiction of character, in deepening the interest by the alternation of happiness and misfortune, he was to go far beyond his initial triumph,—still with many Dickensians, who love him chiefly for his liveliness of observation and broad humour, Pickwick remains the prime favourite.

The effect of this success on the fortunes of the author was immediate and lasting. Henceforth he could live in a comfortable house and look forward to a family life in which his children should be free from all risk of repeating his own experience. He could afford himself the pleasures and the society which he needed, and he became the centre of a circle of friends who appreciated his talents and encouraged him in his career. His relations with his publishers, though not without incident, were generally of the most cordial kind. If Dickens had the self-confidence to estimate his own powers highly, and the shrewd instinct to know when he was getting less than his fair share in a bargain, yet in a difference of opinion he was capable of seeing the other side, and he was loyal in the observance of all agreements.

The five years which followed were so crowded with various activities that it is difficult to date the events exactly, especially when he was producing novels in monthly or weekly numbers. Generally he had more than one story on the stocks. Thus in 1837, before Pickwick was finished, Oliver Twist was begun, and it was not itself complete before the earlier numbers of Nicholas Nickleby were appearing. In the same way The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge, which may be dated 1840 and 1841, overlapped one another in the planning of the stories, if not in the execution of the weekly parts. There is no period of Dickens's life which enables us better to observe his intense mental activity, and at the same time the variety of his creations. Here we have the luxuriant humour of Mrs. Nickleby and the Crummles family side by side with the tragedy of Bill Sikes and the pathos of Little Nell. Here also we can see the gradual development of constructive power in the handling of the story. But for our purpose it is more significant to notice that we here find Dickens's pen enlisted in the service of the noblest cause for which he fought, the redemption from misery and slavery of the children of his native land. Lord Shaftesbury's life has told us what their sufferings were and how the machinery of Government was slowly forced to do its part; and Dickens would be the last to detract from the fame of that great philanthropist, whose efforts on many occasions he supported and praised. But there were wide circles which no philanthropist could reach, hearts which no arguments or statistics could rouse; men and women who attended no meetings and read no pamphlets but who eagerly devoured anything that was written by the author of The Pickwick Papers. To them Smike and Little Nell made a personal and irresistible appeal; they could not remain insensible to the cruelty of Dotheboys Hall and to the depravity of Fagin's school; and if these books did not themselves recruit active workers to improve the conditions of child life, at least society became permeated with a temper which was favourable to the efforts of the reformers.

As far back as the days of his childhood at Rochester Dickens had been indignant at what he had casually heard of the Yorkshire schools; and his year of drudgery in London had made him realize, in other cases beside his own, the degradation that followed from the neglect of children. On undertaking to handle this subject in Nicholas Nickleby, he journeyed to Yorkshire to gather evidence at first hand for his picture of Dotheboys Hall. And for many years afterwards he continued to correspond with active workers on the subject of Ragged Schools and on the means of uplifting children out of the conditions which were so fruitful a source of crime. He discovered for himself how easily miscreants like Fagin could find recruits in the slums of London, and how impossible it was to bring up aright boys who were bred in these neglected homes. Even where efforts had been begun, the machinery was quite inadequate, the teachers few, the schoolrooms cheerless and ill-equipped. Mr. Crotch[22] has preserved a letter of 1843 in which Dickens makes the practical offer of providing funds for a washing-place in one school where the children seemed to be suffering from inattention to the elementary needs. His heart warmed towards individual cases and he faced them in practical fashion; he was not one of those reformers who utter benevolent sentiments on the platform and go no further.

[Note 22: Charles Dickens, Social Reformer, by W. W. Crotch (Chapman & Hall, 1913), p. 53.]

Critics have had much to say about Dickens's treatment of child characters in his novels; the words 'sentimental' and 'mawkish' have been hurled at scenes like the death of Paul Dombey and Little Nell and at the more lurid episodes in Oliver Twist. But Dickens was a pioneer in his treatment of children in fiction; and if he did smite resounding blows which jar upon critical ears, at least he opened a rich vein of literature where many have followed him. He wrote not for the critics but for the great popular audience whom he had created, comprising all ages and classes, and world-wide in extent. The best answer to such criticism is to be found in the poem which Bret Harte dedicated to his memory in 1870, which beautifully describes how the pathos of his child-heroine could move the hearts of rough working men far away in the Sierras of the West. Nor did this same character of Little Nell fail to win special praise from literary critics so fastidious as Landor and Francis Jeffrey.

In 1842 he embarked on his first voyage to America. Till then he had travelled little outside his native land, and this expedition was definitely intended to bear fruit. Before starting he made a bargain with his publishers to produce a book on his return. The American Notes thus published, dealing largely with institutions and with the notable 'sights' of the country, have not retained a prominent place among his works; with Martin Chuzzlewit and its picture of American manners it is different. This stands alone among his writings in having left a permanent heritage of ill-will. Reasons in abundance can be found for the bitterness caused. He portrayed the conceit, the self-interest, the disregard for the feelings of others which the less-educated American showed to foreigners in a visible and often offensive guise; and the portraits were so life-like that no arrow fails to hit the mark. The American people were young; they had made great strides in material prosperity, they had not been taught to submit to the lash by satirists like Swift or more kindly mentors like Addison. Their own Oliver Wendell Holmes had not yet begun to chastise them with gentle irony. So they were aghast at Dickens's audacity, and indignant at what seemed an outrage on their hospitality, and few stopped to ask what elements of truth were to be found in the offending book. No doubt it was one-sided and unfair; Dickens, like most tourists, had been confronted by the louder and more aggressive members of the community and had not time to judge the whole. In large measure he recanted in subsequent writings; and on his second visit the more generous Americans showed how little rancour they bore. But the portraits of Jefferson Brick and Elijah Pogram will live; with Pecksniff, 'Sairey' Gamp, and other immortals they bear the hall-mark of Dickens's creative genius.

To America he did not go again for twenty-five years; but, as he grew older, he seemed to feel increasing need for change and variety in his mode of life. In 1844 he went for nearly twelve months to Italy, making his head-quarters at Genoa; and in 1846 he repeated the experiment at Lausanne on the lake of Geneva. Later, between 1853 and 1856, he spent a large part of three summers in a villa near Boulogne. Though he desired the change for reasons connected with his work, and though in each case he formed friendly connexions with his neighbours, it cannot be said that his books show the influence of either country. His genius was British to the core and he remained an Englishman wherever he went. He complained when abroad that he missed the stimulus of London, where the lighted streets, through which he walked at night, caused his imagination to work with intensified force. But even in Genoa he proved capable of writing The Chimes, which is as markedly English in temper as anything which he wrote.

The same spirit of restlessness comes out in his ventures into other fields of activity at home. At one time he assumed the editorship of a London newspaper; but a few weeks showed that he was incapable of editorial drudgery and he resigned. His taste for acting played a larger part in his life; and in 1851 and other years he put an enormous amount of energy into organizing public theatrical performances with his friends in London. He always loved the theatre. Macready was one of his innermost circle, and he had other friends on the stage. Indeed there were moments in his life when it seemed that the genius of the novelist might be lost to the world, which would have found but a sorry equivalent in one more actor of talent on the stage, however brilliant that talent was. But the main current of his life went on in London with diligent application to the book or books in hand; or at Broadstairs, where Dickens made holiday in true English fashion with his children by the sea.

In the years following the American voyage the chief landmarks were the production of Dombey and Son (begun in 1846) and David Copperfield (begun in 1849). From many points of view they may be regarded as his masterpieces, where his art is best seen in depicting character and constructing a story, though the infectious gaiety of the earlier novels may at times be missed. Dickens's insight into human nature had ripened, and he had learnt to group his lesser figures and episodes more skilfully round the central plot. And David Copperfield has the peculiar interest which attaches to those works where we seem to read the story of the author's own life. Evidently we have memories here of his childhood, of his school-days and his apprenticeship to work, and of the first gleams of success which met him in life. It is generally assumed that the book throws light on his own family relations; but it would be rash to argue confidently about this, as the inventive impulse was so strong in him. At least we may say that it is the book most necessary for a student who wishes to understand Dickens himself and his outlook on the world.

Also David Copperfield may be regarded as the central point and the culmination of Dickens's career as a novelist. Before it, and again after it, he had a spell of about fifteen years' steady work at novel writing, and no one would question that the first spell was productive of the better work. Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend all show evidence of greater effort and are less happy in their effect. No man could live the life that Dickens had lived for fifteen years and not show some signs of exhaustion; the wonder is that his creative power continued at all. He was capable of brilliant successes yet. The Tale of Two Cities is among the most thrilling of his stories, while Edwin Drood and parts of Great Expectations show as fine imagination and character drawing as anything which he wrote before 1850; but there is no injustice in drawing a broad distinction between the two parts of his career.

His home during the most fertile period of his activity was in Devonshire Terrace, near Regent's Park, a house with a garden of considerable size. Here he was within reach of his best friends, who were drawn from all the liberal professions represented in London. First among them stands John Forster, lawyer, journalist, and author, his adviser and subsequently his biographer, the friend of Robert Browning, a man with a genius for friendship, unselfish, loyal, discreet and wise in counsel. Next came the artists Maclise and Clarkson Stanfield, the actor Macready, Talfourd, lawyer and poet, Douglas Jerrold and Mark Lemon, the two famous contributors to Punch, and some fellow novelists, of whom Harrison Ainsworth was conspicuous in the earlier group and Wilkie Collins in later years. Less frequent visitors were Carlyle, Thackeray, and Bulwer Lytton, but they too were proud to welcome Dickens among their friends. With some of these he would walk, ride, or dine, go to the theatre or travel in the provinces and in foreign countries. His biographer loves to recall the Dickens Dinners, organized to celebrate the issue of a new book, when songs and speeches were added to good cheer and when 'we all in the greatest good-humour glorified each other'. Dickens always retained the English taste for a good dinner and was frankly fond of applause, and there was no element of exclusive priggishness about the cordial admiration which these friends felt for one another and their peculiar enthusiasm for Dickens and his books. Around him the enthusiasm gathered, and few men have better deserved it.

When he was writing he needed quiet and worked with complete concentration; and when he had earned some leisure he loved to spend it in violent physical exercise. He would suddenly call on Forster to come out for a long ride on horseback to occupy the middle of the day; and his diligent friend, unable to resist the lure of such company, would throw his own work to the winds and come. Till near the end of his life Dickens clung to these habits, thinking nothing of a walk of from twenty to thirty miles; and there seems reason to believe that by constant over-exertion he sapped his strength and shortened his life. But lameness in one foot, the result of an illness early in 1865, handicapped him severely at times; and in the same year he sustained a rude shock in a railway accident where his nerves were upset by what he witnessed in helping the injured. He ought to have acquired the wisdom of the middle-aged man, and to have taken things more easily, but with him it was impossible to be doing nothing; physical and mental activity succeeded one another and often went together with a high state of nervous tension.