In a twofold way Green may claim to be a child of Oxford. Not only was he a member of the University, but he was a native of the town, being born in the centre of that ancient city in the year of Queen Victoria's accession. His family had been engaged in trade there for two generations without making more than a competence; and even before his father died in 1852 they were verging on poverty. Of his parents, who were kind and affectionate, but not gifted with special talents, there is little to be told; the boy was inclined, in after life, to attribute any literary taste that he may have inherited to his mother. From his earliest days reading was his passion, and he was rarely to be seen without a book. Old church architecture and the sound of church bells also kindled his childish enthusiasms, and he would hoard his pence to purchase the joy of being admitted into a locked-up church. So he was fortunate in being sent at the age of eight to Magdalen College School, where he had daily access to the old buildings of the College and the beautiful walks which had been trodden by the feet of Addison a century and a half before. An amusing contrast could be drawn between the decorous scholar of the seventeenth century, handsome, grave of mien, calmly pacing the gravel walk, while he tasted the delights of classic literature, and little 'Johnny Green', a mere shrimp of a boy with bright eyes and restless ways, darting here and there, eagerly searching for anything new or exciting which he might find, whether in the bushes or in the pages of some romance which he was carrying.

But, for all his lively curiosity, Green seems to have got little out of his lessons at school. The classic languages formed the staple of his education, and he never had that power of verbal memory which could enable him to retain the rules of the Greek grammar or to handle the Latin language with the accuracy of a scholar. He soon gave up trying to do so. Instead of aspiring to the mastery of accidence and syntax, he aimed rather at securing immunity from the rod. At Magdalen School it was still actively in use; but there were certain rules about the number of offences which must be committed in a given time to call for its application. Green was clever enough to notice this, and to shape his course accordingly; and thus his lessons became, from a sporting point of view, an unqualified success.

But his real progress in learning was due to his use of the old library in his leisure hours. Here he made acquaintance with Marco Polo and other books of travel; here he read works on history of various kinds, and became prematurely learned in the heresies of the early Church. The views which he developed, and perhaps stated too crudely, did not win approval. He was snubbed by examiners for his interest in heresiarchs, and gravely reproved by Canon Mozley[56] for justifying the execution of Charles I. The latter subject had been set for a prize essay; and the Canon was fair-minded enough to give the award to the boy whose views he disliked, but whose merit he recognized. Partial and imperfect though this education was, the years spent under the shadow of Magdalen must have had a deep influence on Green; but he tells us little of his impressions, and was only half conscious of them at the time. The incident which perhaps struck him most was his receiving a prize from the hands of the aged Dr. Routh, President of the College, who had seen Dr. Johnson in his youth, and lived to be a centenarian and the pride of Oxford in early Victorian days.

[Note 56: Rev. J. B. Mozley, 1813-78. Canon of Worcester and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford: a Tractarian; author of essays on Strafford, Laud, &c.]

Green's school life ended in 1852, the year in which his father died. He was already at the top of the school; and to win a scholarship at the University was now doubly important for him. This he achieved at Jesus College, Oxford, in December 1854, after eighteen months spent with a private tutor; and, as he was too young to go into residence at once, he continued for another year to read by himself. Though he gave closer attention to his classics he did not drop his general reading; and it was a landmark in his career when at the age of sixteen he made acquaintance with Gibbon.

His life as an undergraduate was not very happy and was even less successful than his days at school, though the fault did not lie with him. Shy and sensitive as he was, he had a sociable disposition and was naturally fitted to make friends. But he had come from a solitary life at a tutor's to a college where the men were clannish, most of them Welshmen, and few of them disposed to look outside their own circle for friends. Had Green been as fortunate as William Morris, his life at Oxford might have been different; but there was no Welshman at Jesus of the calibre of Burne-Jones; and Green lived in almost complete isolation till the arrival of Boyd Dawkins in 1857. The latter, who became in after years a well-known professor of anthropology, was Green's first real friend, and the letters which he wrote to him show how necessary it was for Green to have one with whom he could share his interests and exchange views freely. Dawkins had the scientific, Green the literary, nature and gifts; but they had plenty of common ground and were always ready to explore the records of the past, whether they were to be found in barrows, in buildings, or in books. If Dawkins was the first friend, the first teacher who influenced him was Arthur Stanley, then Canon of Christ Church and Professor of Ecclesiastical History. An accident led Green into his lecture-room one day; but he was so much delighted with the spirit of Stanley's teaching, and the life which he imparted to history, that he became a constant member of the class. And when Stanley made overtures of friendship, Green welcomed them warmly.

A new influence had come into his life. Not only was his industry, which had been feeble and irregular, stimulated at last to real effort; but his attitude to religious questions and to the position of the English Church was at this time sensibly modified. He had come up to the University a High Churchman; like many others at the time of the Oxford Movement, he had been led half-way towards Roman Catholicism, stirred by the historical claims and the mystic spell of Rome. But from now onwards, under the guidance of Stanley and Maurice, he adopted the views of what is called the 'Broad Church Party', which suited his moral fervour and the liberal character of his social and political opinions.

Despite, however, the stimulus given to him (perhaps too late) by Dawkins and Stanley, Green won no distinctions at the University, and few men of his day could have guessed that he would ever win distinction elsewhere. He took a dislike to the system of history-teaching then in vogue, which consisted in demanding of all candidates for the schools a knowledge of selected fragments of certain authors, giving them no choice or scope in the handling of wider subjects. He refused to enter for a class in the one subject in which he could shine, and managed to scrape through his examination by combining a variety of uncongenial subjects. This was perverse, and he himself recognized it to be so afterwards. All the while there was latent in him the talent, and the ambition, which might have enabled him to surpass all his contemporaries. His one literary achievement of the time was unknown to the men of his college, but it is of singular interest in view of what he came to achieve later. He was asked by the editor of the Oxford Chronicle, an old-established local paper, to write two articles on the history of the city of Oxford. To most undergraduates the town seemed a mere parasite of the University; to Green it was an elder sister. Many years later he complained in one of his letters that the city had been stifled by the University, which in its turn had suffered similar treatment from the Church. To this task, accordingly, he brought a ready enthusiasm and a full mind; and his articles are alive with the essence of what, since the days of his childhood, he had observed, learnt, and imagined, in the town of his birth. We see the same spirit in a letter which he wrote to Dawkins in 1860, telling him how he had given up a day to following the Mayor of Oxford when he observed the time-honoured custom of beating the bounds of the city. He describes with gusto how he trudged along roads, clambered over hedges, and even waded through marshes in order to perform the rite with scrupulous thoroughness. But it was years before he could find an audience who would appreciate his power of handling such a subject, and his University career must, on his own evidence, be written down a failure.

When it was over he was confronted with the need for choosing a profession. It had strained the resources of his family to give him a good education, and now he must fend for himself. To a man of his nature and upbringing the choice was not wide. His age and his limited means put the Services out of the question; nor was he fitted to embark in trade. Medicine would revolt his sensibility, law would chill his imagination, and journalism did not yet exist as a profession for men of his stamp. In the teaching profession, for which he had such rare gifts, he would start handicapped by his low degree. In any case, he had for some time cherished the idea of taking Holy Orders. The ministry of the Church would give him a congenial field of work and, so he hoped, some leisure to continue his favourite studies. Perhaps he had not the same strong conviction of a 'call' as many men of his day in the High Church or Evangelical parties; but he was, at the time, strongly drawn by the example and teaching of Stanley and Maurice, and he soon showed that it was not merely for negative reasons or from half-hearted zeal that he had made the choice. When urged by Stanley to seek a curacy in West London, he deliberately chose the East End of the town because the need there was greater and the training in self-sacrifice was sterner; and there is no doubt that the popular sympathies, which the reading of history had already implanted in him, were nourished and strengthened by nine years of work among the poor. The exertion of parish work taxed his physical resources, and he was often incapacitated for short periods by the lavish way in which he spent himself. Indeed, but for this constant drain upon his strength, he might have lived a longer life and left more work behind him.

Of the parishes which he served, the last and the most interesting was St. Philip's, Stepney, to which he went from Hoxton in 1864. It was a parish of 16,000 souls, lying between Whitechapel and Poplar, not far from the London Docks. Dreary though the district seems to us to-day—and at times Green was fully conscious of this—he could re-people it in imagination with the men of the past, and find pleasure in the noble views on the river and the crowded shipping that passed so near its streets. But above all he found a source of interest in the living individuals whom he met in his daily round and who needed his help; and though he achieved signal success in the pulpit by his power of extempore preaching, he himself cared more for the effect of his visiting and other social work. Sermons might make an impression for the moment; personal sympathy, shown in the moment when it was needed, might change the whole current of a life.

For children his affection was unfailing; and for the humours of older people he had a wide tolerance and charity. His letters abound with references to this side of his work. He tells us of his 'polished' pork butcher and his learned parish clerk, and boasts how he won the regard of the clerk's Welsh wife by correctly pronouncing the magic name of Machynlleth. He gave a great deal of time to his parishioners, to consulting his churchwardens, to starting choirs, to managing classes and parish expeditions. He could find time to attend a morning police court when one of his boys got into difficulties, or to hold a midnight service for the outcasts of the pavement.

When cholera broke out in Stepney in 1866, Green visited the sick and dying in rooms that others did not dare to enter, and was not afraid to help actively in burying those who had died of the disease. At holiday gatherings he was the life and soul of the body, 'shocking two prim maiden teachers by starting kiss-in-the-ring', and surprising his most vigorous helpers by his energy and decision. On such occasions he exhausted himself in the task of leadership, and he was no less generous in giving financial help to every parish institution that was in need.

What hours he could snatch from these tasks he would spend in the Reading Room of the British Museum; but these were all too few. His position, within a few miles of the treasure houses of London, and of friends who might have shared his studies, must have been tantalizing to a degree. To parish claims also was sacrificed many a chance of a precious holiday. We have one letter in which he regretfully abandons the project of a tour with Freeman in his beloved Anjou because he finds that the only dates open to his companion clash with the festival of the patron saint of his church. In another he resists the appeal of Dawkins to visit him in Somerset on similar grounds. His friend may become abusive, but Green assures him emphatically that it cannot be helped. 'I am not a pig,' he writes; 'I am a missionary curate.... I could not come to you, because I was hastily summoned to the cure of 5,000 costermongers and dock labourers.' We are far from the easy standard of work too often accepted by 'incumbents' in the opening years of the nineteenth century.

Early in his clerical career he had begun to form plans for writing on historical subjects, most of which had to be abandoned for one reason or another. At one time he was planning with Dawkins a history of Somerset, which would have been a forerunner of the County Histories of the twentieth century. Dawkins was to do the geology and anthropology; Green would contribute the archaeology and history. In many ways they were well equipped for the task; but the materials had not been sifted and the demands on their time would have been excessive, even if they abstained from all other work. Another scheme was for a series of Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury. Green was much attracted by the subject. Already he had made a special study of Dunstan and other great holders of the See; and he believed that the series would illustrate, better than the lives of kings, the growth of certain principles in English history. But with other archbishops he found himself out of sympathy; and in the end he was not sorry to abandon the idea, when he found that Dean Hook was already engaged upon it.

A project still nearer to his heart, which he cherished till near the end of his life, was to write a history of our Angevin kings. For this he collected a vast quantity of materials, and it was a task for which he was peculiarly fitted. It would be difficult to say whether Fulc Nerra, the founder of the dynasty, or Black Angers, the home of the race, was more vividly present to him. Grim piles of masonry, stark force of character, alike compelled his admiration and he could make them live again in print. As it proved, his life was too short to realize this ambition and he has only left fragments of what he had to tell, though we are fortunate in having other books on parts of the subject from his wife and from Miss Norgate, which owed their origin to his inspiration.

During his time as a London clergyman Green used to pay occasional visits to Dawkins in Somerset; and in 1862, when he went to read a paper on Dunstan to a society at Taunton, he renewed acquaintance with his old schoolfellow, E. A. Freeman, a notable figure in the county as squire, politician, and antiquarian, and already becoming known outside it as a historian. The following year, as Freeman's guest, he met Professor Stubbs; and about this time he also made friends with James Bryce, 'the Holy Roman', as he calls him in later letters.[57] The friendship of these three men was treasured by Green throughout his life, and it gave rise to much interesting correspondence on historical subjects. They were the central group of the Oxford School; they reverenced the same ideals and were in general sympathy with one another. But this sympathy never descended to mere mutual admiration, as with some literary coteries. Between Freeman and Green in particular there was kept up a running fire of friendly but outspoken criticism, which would have strained the tie between men less generous and less devoted to historical truth. Freeman was the more arbitrary and dogmatic, Green the more sensitive and discriminating. Green bows to Freeman's superior knowledge of Norman times, acknowledges him his master, and apologizes for hasty criticisms when they give offence; but he boldly rebukes his friend for his indifference to the popular movements in Italian cities and for his pedantry about Italian names.

[Note 57: The first edition of Bryce's Holy Roman Empire was published in 1862.]

And he treads on even more delicate ground when he taxes him with indulging too frequently in polemics, urging him to 'come out of the arena' and to cease girding at Froude and Kingsley, whose writings Freeman loved to abuse. Freeman, on the other hand, grumbles at Green for going outside the province of history to write on more frivolous subjects, and scolds him for introducing fanciful ideas into his narrative of events. The classic instance of this was when Green, after describing the capture by the French of the famous Chateau Gaillard in Normandy, had the audacity to say, 'from its broken walls we see not merely the pleasant vale of Seine, but also the sedgy flats of our own Runnymede'. Thereby he meant his readers to learn that John would never have granted the Great Charter to the Barons, had he not already weakened the royal authority by the loss of Coeur-de-Lion's great fortress beyond the sea, and that to a historian the germs of English freedom, won beside the Thames, were to be seen in the wreckage of Norman power above the Seine. But Freeman was too matter of fact to allow such flights of fancy; and a lively correspondence passed between the two friends, each maintaining his own view of what might or might not be permitted to the votaries of Clio.

But before this episode Green had been introduced by Freeman to John Douglas Cook, founder and editor of the Saturday Review, and had begun to contribute to its columns. Naturally it was on historical subjects that his pen was most active; but apart from the serious 'leading articles', the Saturday found place for what the staff called 'Middles', light essays written after the manner of Addison or Steele on matters of every-day life. Here Green was often at his best. Freeman growled, in his dictatorial fashion, when he found his friend turning away from the strait path of historical research to describe the humours of his parish, the foibles of district visitors and deaconesses, the charms of the school-girl before she expands her wings in the drawing-room—above all (and this last was quoted by the author as his best literary achievement) the joys of 'Children by the sea'. But any one who turns over the pages of the volume called Stray Studies from England and Italy, where some of these articles are reprinted, will probably agree with the verdict of the author on their merits. The subjects are drawn from all ages and all countries. Historical scenes are peopled with the figures of the past, treated in the magical style which Green made his own. Dante is seen against the background of mediaeval Florence; Tintoret represents the life of Venice at its richest, most glorious time. The old buildings of Lambeth make a noble setting for the portraits of archbishops, the gentle Warham, the hapless Cranmer, the tyrannical Laud. Many of these studies are given to the pleasant border-land between history and geography, and to the impressions of travel gathered in England or abroad. In one sketch he puts into a single sentence all the features of an old English town which his quick eye could note, and from which he could 'work out the history of the men who lived and died there. In quiet quaintly-named streets, in the town mead and the market-place, in the lord's mill beside the stream, in the ruffed and furred brasses of its burghers in the church, lies the real life of England and Englishmen, the life of their home and their trade, their ceaseless, sober struggle with oppression, their steady, unwearied battle for self-government.'

In another he follows the funeral procession of his Angevin hero Henry II from the stately buildings of Chinon 'by the broad bright Vienne coming down in great gleaming curves, under the grey escarpments of rock pierced here and there with the peculiar cellars or cave-dwellings of the country', to his last resting-place in the vaults of Fontevraud. Standing beside the monuments on their tombs he notes the striking contrast of type and character which Henry offers to his son Richard Coeur-de-Lion. 'Nothing', he says, 'could be less ideal than the narrow brow, the large prosaic eyes, the coarse full cheeks, the sensual dogged jaw, that combine somehow into a face far higher than its separate details, and which is marked by a certain sense of power and command. No countenance could be in stronger contrast with his son's, and yet in both there is the same look of repulsive isolation from men. Richard's is a face of cultivation and refinement, but there is a strange severity in the small delicate mouth and in the compact brow of the lion-hearted, which realizes the verdict of his day. To an historical student one glance at these faces, as they lie here beneath the vault raised by their ancestor, the fifth Count Fulc, tells more than pages of history.' Our reviews and magazines may abound to-day in such vivid pen-pictures of places and men; but it was Green and others of his day who watered the dry roots of archaeology and restored it to life.

But from his earliest days as a student Green had looked beyond the figures of kings, ministers, and prelates, who had so long filled the stage in the volumes of our historians. However clearly they stood out in their greatness and in their faults, they were not, and could not be, the nation. And when he came to write on a larger scale, the title which he chose for his book showed that he was aiming at new ideals.

The Short History of the English People is the book by which Green's fame will stand or fall, and it occupied him for the best years of his life. The true heroes of it are the labourer and the artisan, the friar, the printer, and the industrial mechanic—'not many mighty, not many noble'. The true growth of the English nation is seen broad-based on the life of the commonalty, and we can study it better in the rude verse of Longland, or the parables of Bunyan, than in the formal records of battles and dynastic schemes.

The periods into which the book is divided are chosen on other grounds than those of the old handbooks, where the accession of a new king or a new dynasty is made a landmark; and a different proportion is observed in the space given to events or to prominent men. The Wars of the Roses are viewed as less important than the Peasants' Revolt; the scholars of the New Learning leave scant space for Lambert Simnels and Perkin Warbecks. Henry Pelham, one of the last prime ministers to owe his position to the king's favour, receives four lines, while forty are given to John Howard, a pioneer in the new path of philanthropy. Besides social subjects, literature receives generous measure, but even here no rigid system is observed. Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare take a prominent place in their epochs; Byron, Wordsworth, and Tennyson are ignored. This is not because Green had no interest in them or undervalued their influence. Far from it. But, as the history of the nation became more complex, he found it impossible, within the limits prescribed by a Short History, to do justice to everything. He believed that the industrialism, which grew up in the Georgian era, exercised a wider influence in changing the character of the people than the literature of that period; and so he turned his attention to Watt and Brindley, and deliberately omitted the poets and painters of that day. With his wide sympathies he must have found this rigorous compression the hardest of his tasks, and only in part could he compensate it later. He never lived long enough to treat, as he wished to do, in the fullness of his knowledge, the later periods of English history.

In writing this book Green had many discouragements to contend against, apart from his continual ill-health. Even his friends spoke doubtfully of its method and style, with the exception of his publisher, George Macmillan, and of Stopford Brooke, whose own writings breathe the same spirit as Green's, and who did equally good work in spreading a real love of history and literature among the classes who were beginning to read. It was true that Green's book failed to conform to the usual type of manual; it was not orderly in arrangement, it was often allusive in style, it seemed to select what it pleased and to leave out what students were accustomed to learn. But Green's faith in its power to reach the audience to whom he appealed was justified by the enthusiasm with which the general public received it. This success was largely due to the literary style and artistic handling of the subject. Green claims himself that on most literary questions he is French in his point of view. 'It seems to me', he says, 'that on all points of literary art we have to sit at the feet of French Gamaliels'; and in his best work he has more in common with Michelet than with our own classic historians. But while Michelet had many large volumes in which to expand his treatment of picturesque episodes, Green was painfully limited by space.

What he can give us of clear and lively portraiture in a few lines is seen in his presentation of the gallant men who laid the foundation of our Empire overseas. By a few lines of narrative, and a happy quotation from their own words, Green brings out the heroism of their sacrifice or their success, the faith which inspired Humphry Gilbert to meet his death at sea, the patience which enabled John Smith to achieve the tillage of Virginian soil.

Side by side with these masterly vignettes are full-length portraits of great rulers such as Alfred, Elizabeth, and Cromwell, and vivid descriptions of religious leaders such as Cranmer, Laud, and Wesley. Strong though Green's own views on Church and State were, we do not feel that he is deserting the province of the historian to lecture us on religion or politics. The book is real narrative written in a fair spirit, the author rendering justice to the good points of men like Laud, whom he detested, and aiming above all at conveying clearly to his readers the picture of what he believed to have happened in the past. As a narrative it was not without faults. The reviewers at once seized on many small mistakes, into which Green had fallen through the uncertainty of his memory for names and words. To these Green cheerfully confessed, and was thankful that they proved to be so slight. But when other critics accused him of superficiality they were in error. On this point we have the verdict of Bishop Stubbs, the most learned and conscientious historian of the day. 'All Green's work', he says, 'was real and original work. Few people beside those who knew him well could see, under the charming ease and vivacity of his style, the deep research and sustained industry of the laborious student. But it was so; there was no department of our national records that he had not studied, and, I think I may say, mastered. Hence, I think, the unity of his dramatic scenes and the cogency of his historical arguments.'

Green himself was as severe a critic of the book as any one. Writing in 1877 to his future wife, he says, 'I see the indelible mark of the essayist, the "want of long breath", as the French say, the jerkiness, the slurring over of the uninteresting parts, above all, the want of grasp of the subject as a whole'. On the advice of some of his best friends, confirmed by his own judgement, in 1874 he gave up contributing to the Saturday Review, in order to free his style from the character imparted to it by writing detached weekly articles. The composing of these articles had been a pleasure; the writing of English history was to be his life-work, and no divided allegiance was conceivable to him. But we may indeed be thankful that he resisted the views of other friends who wished to drive him into copying German models. This class Green called 'Pragmatic Historians';[58] and, while acknowledging their solid contributions to history, he maintains his conviction that there is another method and another school worthy of imitation, and that he must 'hold to what he thinks true and work it out as he can'.

Green was a rapid reader and a rapid writer. In a letter to Freeman, written when he was wintering in Florence in 1872, he admits covering the period from the Peasant Revolt to the end of the New Learning (1381-1520) in ten days. But he was writing from notes which represented years of previous study. In another letter, written in 1876, he confesses a tendency to 'wild hitting', and perhaps he was too rapid at times in drawing his inferences. 'With me', he says, 'the impulse to try to connect things, to find the "why" of things, is irresistible; and even if I overdo my political guesses, you or some German will punch my head and put things rightly and intelligibly again.' It is this power of connecting events and explaining how one movement leads to another which makes the stimulating quality of Green's work; and to a nation like the English, too little apt to indulge in general ideas, this quality may be of more value than the German erudition which tends to overburden the intelligence with too great a load of 'facts'. And, after all the labours of Carlyle and Froude, of Stubbs and Freeman, and all the delving into records and chronicles, who shall say what are facts, and what is inference, legitimate or illegitimate, from them?

[Note 58: Pragmatic: 'treating facts of history with reference to their practical lessons.' Concise Oxford Dictionary.]

Whatever were the shortcomings of the book, which Green in his letters to Freeman called by the affectionate names of 'Shorts' and 'Little Book', it inaugurated a new method, and won a hearing among readers who had hitherto professed no taste for history; and, financially, it proved so far a success that Green was relieved from the necessity of continuing work that was uncongenial. He had already given up his parish in 1869. Ill-health and the advice of his doctor were the deciding factors; but there is no doubt that Green was also finding it difficult to subscribe to all the doctrines of the Church. He took up the same liberal comprehensive attitude to Church questions as he did to politics, and opposed any attempt to stifle honest inquiry or to punish honest doubt. He was much disturbed by some of the attempts made at this time by the more extreme parties in the Church to enforce uniformity. Also he felt that the Church was not exercising its proper influence on the nation, owing to the prejudice or apathy of the clergy in meeting the social movements of the day. If he had found more support, inside the diocese, for his social and educational work, the breach might have been healed, or at any rate postponed, in the hope of his health mending.

Relieved of parish work, he found plentiful occupation in revising his old books and in planning new; he showed wonderful zest for travelling abroad, and, by choosing carefully the places for his winter sojourn, he fought heroically to combat increasing ill-health and to achieve his literary ambitions. Thus it was that he made intimate acquaintance with San Remo, Mentone, and Capri; and one winter he went as far as Luxor in the hope that the Egyptian climate might help him; but in vain. Under the guidance of his friend Stopford Brooke he visited for shorter periods Venice, Florence, and other Italian towns. He was catholic in his sympathies but not over-conscientious in sight-seeing. When Brooke left him at Florence, Green was openly glad to relapse into vagrant pilgrimage, to put aside his guide-book and to omit the daily visit to the Uffizi Gallery. But, on the other hand, he reproached Freeman for confining his interests entirely to architecture and emperors while ignoring pictures and sculpture, mediaeval guilds, and the relics of old civic life. It was at Troyes that Bryce observed him 'darting hither and thither through the streets like a dog following a scent'—and to such purpose that after a few hours of research he could write a brilliant paper sketching the history of the town as illustrated in its monuments—but in Italy, as in France, he had a wonderful gift for discovering all that was most worth knowing about a town, which other men passed by and ignored.

Capri, which he first visited at Christmas 1872, was the most successful of his winter haunts. The climate, the beauty of the scenery, the simplicity of the life, all suited him admirably. On this occasion he stayed four months in the island, and he has sung its praises in one of the 'Stray Studies'. Within a small compass there is a wonderful variety of scene. Green delights in it all, 'in the boldly scarped cliffs, in the dense scrub of myrtle and arbutus, in the blue strips of sea that seem to have been cunningly let in among the rocks, in the olive yards creeping thriftily up the hill sides, in the remains of Roman sculptures and mosaics, in the homesteads of grey stone and low domes and Oriental roofs'. And he found it an ideal place for literary work, restful and remote, 'where one can live unscourged by Kingsley's "wind of God".' 'The island', he writes, 'is a paradise of silence for those to whom silence is a delight. One wanders about in the vineyards without a sound save the call of the vinedressers: one lies on the cliff and hears, a thousand feet below, the dreary wash of the sea. There is hardly the cry of a bird to break the spell; even the girls who meet one with a smile on the hillside smile quietly and gravely in the Southern fashion as they pass by.' No greater contrast could be found to the conditions under which he began his books; and it is not surprising that in this haven of peace, with no parish business to break in upon his study, he worked more rapidly and confidently—when his health allowed.

From such retreats he would return refreshed in body and mind to continue studying and writing in London and to sketch out new plans for the future. One that bore rich fruit was that of a series of Primers, dealing shortly with great subjects and commending them to the general reader by attractive literary style. They were produced by Macmillan, Green acting as editor; and notable volumes were contributed by Gladstone on Homer, by Creighton on Rome, and by Stopford Brooke on English Literature. Here, again, Green was a pioneer in a path where he has had many followers since; and he would have been the first to edit an English Historical Review if more support had been forthcoming from the public. But for financial reasons he was obliged to abandon the scheme, and it did not see the light of day till Creighton launched it in 1886.

In 1877 he married and found in his wife just the helper that he needed. She too had the historical imagination, the love of research, and the power of writing. Husband and wife produced in co-operation a small geography of the British Isles, well planned, clear, and pleasant to read. But, apart from this, she was content, during the too brief period of their married life, to subordinate her activities to helping her husband, and her aid was invaluable at the time when he was writing his later books. There is no doubt that his marriage prolonged his life. The care which his wife took of him, whether in their home in foggy London, or in primitive lodgings in beautiful Capri, helped him over his worst days; and the new value which he now set on life and its happiness gave him redoubled force of will. There were others who helped him in these days of perpetual struggle with ill-health. His doctors, Sir Andrew Clark and Sir Lauder Brunton, rendered him the devotion of personal friends. The historians gathered round him in Kensington Square, the home of his later years, and cheered him with good talk. Those who were lucky enough to be admitted might hear him at his best, discussing historical questions in a circle which included Sir Henry Maine and Bishop Stubbs, as well as Lecky, Freeman, and Bryce. He had many other interests. Such a man could not be indifferent to contemporary politics. His heroes—and he was an ardent worshipper of heroes—were Gladstone and Garibaldi, and, like many Liberals of the day, he was violent in his opposition to Beaconsfield's policy in Eastern Europe. Hatred of Napoleonic tyranny killed for a while his sympathy with France, and in 1870 he sympathized with the German cause—at least till the rape of the two provinces and the sorrows of disillusioned France revived his old feeling for the French nation. Over everything he felt keenly and expressed himself warmly. As Tennyson said to him at the close of a visit to Aldworth, 'You're a jolly, vivid man; you're as vivid as lightning'.

Particularly dear to him was the close sympathy of Stopford Brooke and that of Humphry Ward, to whose father he had been curate in 1860 and who had himself for years learnt to cherish the friendship of Green and to seek his counsel. Mrs. Ward has told us how she (then Miss Arnold) brought her earliest literary efforts to Green, how kindly was his encouragement but how formidable was the standard of excellence which he set up. She has also pictured for us 'the thin wasted form seated in the corner of the sofa... the eloquent lips... the life flashing from his eyes beneath the very shadow of death'. His latter years, lived perpetually under this grim shadow, were yet full of cheerfulness and of hope. However the body might fail, the active brain was planning and the high courage was bracing him to further effort. Between 1877 and 1880 he published in four volumes a History of the English People, which follows the same plan and covers much the same ground as the Short History. He was able to revise his views on points where recent study threw fresh light and to include subjects which had been crowded out for want of space. But the book failed to attract readers to the same extent as the Short History. The freshness and buoyancy of the earlier sketch could not be recaptured after so long an interval. In the last year of his life he began again on the early history of England, working at a pace which would have been astonishing even in a man of robust health, and he completed in the short period of eleven months the brilliant volume called The Making of England. He had thought out the subject during many a day and night of pain and had the plan clear in his head; but he was indefatigable in revising his work, and would make as many as eight or ten drafts of a chapter before it satisfied his judgement. His last autumn and winter were occupied with the succeeding volume, The Conquest of England, and he left it sufficiently complete for his wife to edit and publish a few months after his death.

The end came at Mentone early in 1883. Two years of life had been won, as his doctor said, by sheer force of will; but the frail body could no longer obey the soul, and nature could bear no more.

If in the twentieth century history is losing its hold on the thought and feeling of the rising generation, Green is the last man whom we can blame. He gave all his faculties unsparingly to his task—patience, enthusiasm, single-hearted love of truth; and he encouraged others to do the same. No man was more free from the pontifical airs of those historians who proclaimed history as an academic science to be confined within the chilly walls of libraries and colleges. We may apply to his work what Mr. G. M. Trevelyan has said of the English historians from Clarendon down to recent times; it was 'the means of spreading far and wide, throughout all the reading classes, a love and knowledge of history, an elevated and critical patriotism, and certain qualities of mind and heart'.[59] Against the danger which he mentions in his next sentence, that we are now being drilled into submission to German models, Mr. Trevelyan is himself one of our surest protectors.

[Note 59: Clio and other Essays, by G. M. Trevelyan, p. 4 (Longmans, Green & Co., 1913).]



CECIL RHODES

1853-1902

1853. Born at Bishop's Stortford, July 5. 1870. Goes out to Natal. 1871. Moves to Kimberley. 1873-81. Intermittent visits to Oxford. 1880. First De Beers Company started. 1880. Member for Barkly West. 1883. Commissioner in Bechuanaland. 1885. Warren expedition: Bechuanaland annexed by British Government. 1887. Acute rivalry between Rhodes and Barnato. 1888. Barnato gives way: De Beers Consolidated founded. 1888. Lobengula grants concession for mining. 1889. British South Africa Chartered Company formed. 1890. Prime Minister of Cape Colony. 1890. Occupation of Mashonaland. 1893. Second Rhodes ministry. 1893. War with Lobengula. Matabeleland occupied. 1895. 'Drifts' question between Cape and Transvaal Government. 1895. Jameson Raid, December 28. 1896. January, Rhodes's resignation. Visit to England. 1896. Rebellion in Rhodesia. 1897. Inquiry into the Raid by Committee of the House of Commons. 1899. D.C.L., Oxford. 1899. Outbreak of Great Boer War. 1902. Dies at Muizenberg, March 26.

CECIL RHODES

COLONIST

The Rhodes family can be traced back to sturdy English yeoman stock. In the eighteenth century they had held land in North London. Cecil's father was vicar of Bishop's Stortford, a quiet country town in Hertfordshire on the Essex border; he was a man of mark, wealthy, liberal, and unconventional, with the rare gift of preaching ten-minute sermons which were well worth hearing. Of his eldest sons, Herbert went to Winchester, Frank to Eton; Cecil, the fifth son, born on July 5, 1853, was kept at home. He had part of his education at the local Grammar School, but perhaps the better part at the Vicarage from his father himself. The shrewd Vicar soon saw that his fifth son was not fitted for the ordinary routine of professional life at home, and at the age of seventeen he was sent out to visit his brother Herbert, who had emigrated to Natal. Cecil said good-bye to his native land for the first time in 1870, and thus early elected to be a citizen of the Greater Britain beyond the seas.



The brothers had certain points of resemblance, being both original and adventurous; but they had marked differences. The elder was a wanderer pure and simple, a lover of sport and of novelty. He could follow a new track with all the ardour of a pioneer; he could not sit down and develop the wealth which he had opened up. The management of the Natal cotton farm soon fell into the hands of Cecil, now eighteen years old, who noted every detail, and studied his crops, his workmen, and his markets, while Herbert was absent in quest of game and adventure. It was this spirit which led Herbert westward in 1871, among the earliest of the immigrants into the diamond fields: before the end of the year Cecil followed and soon took over and developed his brother's claim. It was no case of Esau and Jacob; the brothers had great affection for one another and fitted in together without jealousy. Each lived his own life and followed his own bent. As Kimberley was the first field in which Cecil showed his abilities, it is worth while to try to picture the scene. It remained a centre of interest to him for thirty years, the scene of many troubles and of many triumphs.

'The New Rush', as Kimberley was called in 1872, was a chaos of tents and rubbish heaps seen through a haze of dust—a heterogeneous collection of tents, wagons, native kraals and debris heaps, each set down with cheerful irresponsibility and indifference to order. The funnel of blue clay so productive of diamonds had been found on a bit of the bare Griqualand Veld, marked out by no geographical advantages, with no charm of woodland or river scenery. Here in the years to come the great pits, familiar in modern photographs, were to grow deeper and deeper, as the partitions fell in between the small claims, or as the more enterprising miners bought up their neighbours' plots. Here the debris heaps were to grow higher and higher, as more hundreds of Kaffirs were brought in to dig, or new machinery arrived, as the buckets plied more rapidly on the network of ropes overhead. In the early 'seventies there were few signs of these marvels to be seen by the outward eye—everything was in the rough—but they were no doubt already existing in the brain of 'a tall fair boy, blue eyed and with somewhat aquiline features, wearing flannels of the school playing-field, somewhat shrunken with strenuous rather than effectual washings, that still left the colour of the red veld dust'.

Here Cecil Rhodes lived for the greater part of ten years, finding time amid his work for dreams: living, in general, aloof from the men with whom he did his daily business, but laying here and there the foundations of a friendship which was to bear fruit hereafter. Rudd,[60] of the Matabeleland concessions, came out in 1873; Beit,[61] the partner in diamond fields and gold fields, the co-founder of the Chartered Company, in 1875; and in 1878 there came out from Edinburgh one whose name was to be linked still more closely with that of Rhodes. Leander Starr Jameson, a skilful doctor, a cheerful companion, gifted with a great capacity for self-devotion, and with unshakeable firmness of will, was now twenty-five years old. Rhodes and he soon drew closely together and for years they were living under one roof. While his casual and rather overbearing manners repelled many of his acquaintances, Rhodes had a genius for friendship with the few; and it was such men as these who shared his work, his pastimes, and his thoughts, and reconciled him to spending many years in the unattractive surroundings of the mines.

[Note 60: C. D. Rudd (1844-96), educated at Harrow and Cambridge.]

[Note 61: Alfred Beit, born at Hamburg, 1853; died in London, 1906.]

But his life at this time had other phases. Not the least wonderful chapter in it was the series of visits which he paid to Oxford between 1873 and 1881. The atmosphere of a mining camp does not seem likely to draw a man towards academic studies and a University life. But Rhodes, who had a great power of absorbing himself in work, had also the power of projecting himself beyond the interests of the moment. Seven times he found opportunity to tear himself away from the busy work of mining and to keep terms at Oxford; and they made a lasting impression upon him. It was not the love of book-learning, still less the love of games, which drew him there. To many he may have seemed to be spending his time unprofitably. He indulged in some rowing and polo, he was master of the drag-hounds, he worried his neighbours by nocturnal practising of the horn. The examinations in the schools, and the more popular athletic contests, knew little of him. But his sojourn in Oxford was a tribute paid by the higher side of his mind to education and to the value of high thinking as compared with material progress; and no one who knew him well in later life could doubt that the traditions of Oxford had deeply influenced his mind. On these things he was by nature reticent, and was often misjudged.

Between the years 1878 and 1888 must be placed the struggle between him and his rivals for predominance in Kimberley. It had begun with small enterprises, the purchasing of adjoining claims, the undertaking of drainage work, the introduction of better machinery. It attracted more attention in 1880 with the founding of the first De Beers Company, named after a Boer who had owned the land on which the mine lay. It culminated in 1887 in the battle with Barnato,[62] his most dangerous competitor, when by dexterous purchasing of shares in his rival's company Rhodes forced him into a final scheme of amalgamation. In 1888 was founded the great corporation of De Beers Consolidated mines. The masterful will of Rhodes dictated the terms of the Trust deed, giving very extensive power to the Directorate for the using of their funds. He was already laying his foundations, though few could then have guessed what imperial work was to be done with the money thus obtained. The process of amalgamation was not popular in Kimberley. It resulted in closing down many of the less profitable claims and in reducing the amount of labour employed. But it brought in better machinery and it saved expenses of management. Above all, it curtailed the output of diamonds and so kept up the market price in Europe and elsewhere. Many people refused to believe that Rhodes could have outmanoeuvred a man of exceptional financial ability without using dishonourable means. But there is no doubt that it was masterful character which won the day, that strength of will which decides the issue at the critical moment. Many others have been prejudiced against him merely from the fact that he spent so much time and energy in the pursuit of 'filthy lucre'. We must remember that Rhodes himself said: 'What's the earthly use of having ideas if you haven't the money to carry them out?' We must also remember that all witnesses of his life agree that the ideas were always foremost, the money a mere instrument to realize them. The story was told to Edmund Garrett by one of Rhodes's old Kimberley associates 'how one day in those scheming years, deep in the sordid details of amalgamation, Rhodes ("always a bit of a crank") suddenly put his hand over a great piece of No Man's Africa on the map and said, "Look here: all that British—that is my dream".'[63]

[Note 62: Barney Barnato, born in Houndsditch, 1852; died at sea, 1897.]

[Note 63: Perhaps the best character sketch of Rhodes is that printed as an appendix to Sir E. T. Cook's Life of Edmund Garrett (Edward Arnold, 1909). Garrett's career as journalist and politician in South Africa was terminated by illness in 1899.]

But long before this struggle was over, Rhodes had embarked on new courses which were to carry him still farther. His dreams of political work began to take shape when Griqualand was created a British province in 1880. Two electoral divisions were formed, Kimberley and Barkly West; and it was for the latter that Rhodes first took his seat in the Cape Parliament in 1880, a seat which he retained till his death. The Prime Minister was Sir Gordon Sprigg, a politician with experience but few ideas, more skilled in retaining office than in formulating a policy. Rhodes was at first reticent about his own projects, and spent his time quietly studying commercial questions, examining the problem of the native races and making friends among the Boers. If these friendships were obscured later by political quarrels, there is no reason to suspect their genuineness. His sympathy with the Dutch farmers had begun in 1872, when he made a long, lonely trek through the Northern Transvaal, and it lasted through life. He was interested in farming, he liked natural men, and was at home in unconventional surroundings. One of the closest observers of his character said that to see the true Rhodes you must see him on the veld. So long as the supremacy of the British flag was assured, there was nothing that he so ardently desired as friendly relations between British and Dutch, a real union of the races, a South African nation. It was for this that he worked so long with Jan Hofmeyr, leader of the Cape Dutch, and earned so many unfair suspicions from the short-sighted politicians of Cape Town.

Hofmeyr was a curious man. He had a great understanding of the Dutch character and a great power of influencing men; but this was not done by parliamentary eloquence. By one satirist he was called 'the captain who never appeared on the bridge'; by another he was nicknamed 'the Mole', because his activity could only be conjectured from the tracks which he left behind him. A third name current in Cape Town, 'the Blind Man,' was an ironical tribute to his exceptional astuteness in politics. His organ was 'the Afrikander Bond', a society formed partly for agricultural, partly for political purposes, a creature which like a chameleon has often changed its colour, sometimes working peacefully beside British politicians, at other times openly conducting an anti-British agitation. He certainly had no enthusiasm for the British flag, but he probably realized the freedom which the Colony enjoyed under it, and was clear of all disloyalty to the Crown. The policy dearest to the farmers of the Afrikander Bond was the protective system for their agricultural produce. If Rhodes would support this, he might induce the Dutch to give him a free hand in his plans for expansion towards the North; and this was needed, because the problem of the North was becoming urgent, and Sprigg and his party were blind to its importance.

A glance at the nineteenth-century map will show that the territories of the Dutch Republic, lying on the less barren side of the continent, tended to block the extension of Cape Colony and Natal towards the north, the more so as the Boers from time to time sent out fresh swarms westward and encroached on native territory in Bechuanaland. The Germans did not annex Namaqualand till 1885, but already their interest in this district was becoming evident to close observers. Rhodes's most cherished dream had been the development of the high-lying healthy inland regions to the north by the British race under the British flag. But in those days, when Whitehall was asleep and officials in Cape Town were indifferent, Rhodes saw that his best chance was to convert the Dutch in the Colony. He hoped to make them realize that, if they supported him, the development of the interior might bring trade through Cape Town, which otherwise would go eastward through Portuguese channels. The building of railways, the settlement of new lands in which Dutch and English would share alike, were practical questions which might interest them, and Rhodes was quite genuine in his desire to see both races going forward together. 'Equal rights for every civilized man south of the Zambezi' was his motto, and to this he steadfastly clung.

To describe all the means by which Rhodes worked towards this end would be impossible. He worked hard at Kimberley to furnish the sinews of war; he used his personal influence and power of persuasion at Cape Town to win support from Hofmeyr and others; and he was ready to go to the frontier at any moment when there was work to be done. His first commission of this sort had been in Basutoland in 1882, when he helped the famous General Gordon to pacify native discontent; but the following year saw him at work on another frontier more directly affecting his programme. The Boers had again been raiding westwards and had started two new republics, called Goshen and Stellaland, on the route from Kimberley to the north. Rhodes travelled to the scene of action, interviewed Mankoroane, the Bechuana chief, and Van Niekerk, the head of the new settlement, and by sheer personal magnetism persuaded them both to accept British control. When the Cape Parliament refused the responsibility, he referred to the Colonial Office in London, and by the help of Sir Hercules Robinson, the High Commissioner, he carried his point. When the new Governor, who was appointed by the Colonial Office, quarrelled with the Boers, it was Rhodes who made up the quarrel, and when in 1885 the Transvaal Dutch interfered and provoked our home Government into sending out an overpowering force under Sir Charles Warren, it was Rhodes once more who acted as the reconciler, and effected a settlement between Dutch and British. When the indignant Delarey,[64] provoked by English blundering, said ominously that 'blood must flow', Rhodes replied, 'No, give me my breakfast, and then we can talk about blood'. He stayed with Delarey a week, came to terms on the points at issue, and even became godfather to Delarey's grandchild. He was never the man to resort to force when persuasion could be employed, and he usually won his end by his own means.

[Note 64: General Jacobus Delarey, one of the most successful commanders in the Great Boer War of 1899-1902.]

While his great work in 1883-5 was on the northern frontier he was growing to be a familiar figure among politicians at Cape Town. We have an impression of him as he appeared on his entrance into politics. 'He was tall, broad-shouldered, with face and figure of somewhat loose formation. His hair was auburn, carelessly flung over his forehead, his eyes of bluish grey, dreamy but kindly. But the mouth—aye, that was the unruly member of his face—with deep lines following the curve of the moustache, it had a determined, masterful, and sometimes scornful expression.... His style of speaking was straight and to the point. He was not a hard hitter in debate—rather a persuader, reasoning and pleading in a conversational way as one more anxious to convince an opponent than to expose his weakness. He used little gesture: what there was, was most expressive, his hands held behind him, or thrust out, sometimes passed over his brow.'[65] Such success as he had in Parliament he owed less to art than to nature, less to oratorical gifts than to force of character; but this brought him rapidly to the front. As early as 1884 he was in the Ministry, and despite his long absences over his northern work he was judged to be the only man who could become Prime Minister in the parliamentary crisis of 1890. There was, by that year, little question that he was the most influential man in South Africa. He had a large holding in the Transvaal goldfields, discovered in 1886; he was head of the great De Beers Corporation of Kimberley; and he was chairman of the newly-created Chartered Company. To many it seemed impossible that one man could combine these great financial interests with the position of First Minister of the Colony; but at least it was clear that the interests of the companies were subordinated to national aims, that the money which he obtained from mines was spent on imperial ends, and that his political position was never used for the promoting of financial objects.

[Note 65: Cecil Rhodes: a Monograph and a Reminiscence, by Sir Thomas Fuller (Longmans & Co., 1910)]

But it is time to return to the development of the north, the greatest of his schemes and the one dearest to his heart. The year 1885 had secured Bechuanaland to the river Molopo as British territory, while a large stretch farther north was under a British protectorate. One danger had been avoided. The neck of the bottle was not corked up: a way to the interior was now open. The next factor to reckon with was the Matabele nation and its chief, Lobengula. They were a Bantu tribe, fond of fighting and hunting, an offshoot of the Zulus who fought us in 1881. They had a very large country surrounding the Matoppo hills, and Lobengula ruled the various districts through 'indunas' or chiefs, who had 'impis' or armies of fighting men at their disposal. To the north-east of them lay the weaker tribe of the Mashona, who paid tribute to Lobengula and whose country was a common hunting-ground for the Matabele braves. Over the latter, so long as he did not check too much their love of fighting, Lobengula exercised a fairly effective control. He himself was a remarkable man, strong in body and mind. Sir Lewis Michell describes him as he appeared to English visitors: 'A somewhat grotesque costume of four yards of blue calico over his shoulders and a string of tigers' tails round his waist could not make his imposing figure ridiculous. In early days he was an athlete and a fine shot; and though, as years went on, his voracious appetite rendered him conspicuously obese, he was every inch a ruler.... Visitors were much struck by his capacity for government: very little went on in his wide dominions of which he was not instantly and accurately informed.' He was an arbitrary ruler, but not cruel to Europeans, of whom a few, like the famous hunter Selous, visited his capital from time to time. He clearly held the keys to the north, and it was with him that Rhodes had now to deal.

The first step was the mission sent out by Rhodes and Beit early in 1888, headed by their old associate Rudd. He and his two fellow-envoys stayed some months with Lobengula watching for favourable moments and trying to win his favour. They shifted their quarters when the king did so, touring from village to village, plied the king and his indunas with offers and arguments, and finally in October they obtained his signature to a treaty giving full and unqualified rights to the envoys for working minerals in his country. In return they covenanted to give him money, rifles, ammunition, and an armed steamboat.

The next step was to get the support of the British authorities in London for that political extension which was dearer to Rhodes than the richest mines and the biggest dividends. In this he was greatly helped by his consistent supporter, Sir Hercules Robinson, who held office in Africa for many years, studied men and matters at first hand, and had a juster estimate of Rhodes and his value to the Empire than the officials in Whitehall. The method of proceeding was by chartered company, the old Elizabethan method, which still has its value to-day, as it relieves the home Government of the expense of developing new countries, yet reserves to it the right to control policy and to enter into the harvest. The Company was to build railways and telegraphs, encourage colonization and spread trade; the Government was to escape from the diplomatic difficulties which might arise with neighbours if it were acting under its own name.

The third step was to make a way into the country and to start actual work. Lobengula's consent was given conditionally: the first expedition was to avoid his capital, Bulawayo, and to go by the south-east to Mashonaland. The chief knew how difficult it might prove to hold in his impis when, instead of a solitary Selous, some hundreds of Europeans began to cross their hunting-grounds. And so it proved. Lobengula had to pretend later that he had not consented to their passage, and the expedition had to slip through the dangerous zone before they could be recalled authoritatively. By May 1890 a column of nearly one thousand men was ready to start from Khama's country; and in June their equipment was approved by a British officer. On September 11, after a march of four hundred miles through trackless country (some of it unknown even to Selous, their guide), the British flag was hoisted on the site of the modern town of Salisbury. It is a chapter of history well worth reading in detail, but Rhodes himself could not be there: the heroes of the march were Jameson and Selous. The other half of Rhodesia, Matabeleland, was not added till a few years later; but British enterprise had now found the way and overcome the worst difficulties. 'Occupation Day' is still kept as the chief festival of the Colony.

Further extension was inevitable. The Matabele impis would not forgo their old habit of raiding amongst the Mashonas. Jameson's complaints received only partial satisfaction from Lobengula. He himself did not want war, but he failed to control his men, and in September 1893 the Chartered Company was driven to fight. They had on the spot about nine hundred men and some machine-guns. Against these the Matabele with all their bravery could effect little. In two engagements they threw away their lives with reckless gallantry, and then they broke and fled. Lobengula himself was never heard of again. His rearguard cut up a small party of British who were too impetuous in pursuit, but by the end of the year the country was at peace. In 1894 Matabeleland was added to the territory of the Chartered Company, in 1895 the term 'Rhodesia' came into use for postal purposes, and in 1897 it was officially adopted for administrative purposes.

The jealousy of the Portuguese, who claimed the 'Hinterland' behind their East African colony, though they had never occupied it, caused a good deal of ill feeling, and very nearly led to hostilities both in Africa and Europe. The Boers formed schemes for raiding the new lands before they could be effectively occupied, and had to be headed off. The Matabele impis continued for months in a state of excitement; and their forays made it far too dangerous for Rhodes or for others to go up there for some time. But Rhodes himself said that he had less trouble with natives, with Dutch, and with Portuguese, than he had with compatriots of his own, who claimed to have received concessions from native chiefs and intrigued against him in London. But here his peculiar gifts came out, his patience, his persuasive power, his readiness to pour out money like water for a worthy end. Some he beat, others he bought; and in all cases he maintained his position against his rivals. Robinson, Rudd, Jameson, Selous, had all done their parts well, and Rhodes gave them full credit and generous praise; but the mind and the will that planned and carried out the whole movement, and added a province to the British Empire, was unquestionably his own.

Rhodes was Prime Minister of Cape Colony from 1890 to 1895; and during this time he was obliged to be more often at Cape Town. It was in 1891 that he first leased the property lying on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain where he built 'Groote Schuur', the famous house which he bequeathed to the service of the State. Here he gradually acquired 1,500 acres of land, laying them out with a sure eye to the beauty of the surroundings, and to the pleasure of his fellow-citizens. Here he lived from time to time, and received all kinds of men with boundless hospitality. No one can fully understand him who does not read the varying impressions of the friends and guests who sat with him on the 'stoep', under the trees in his garden, or high up on the mountain side, where he had his favourite nooks. The visitors saw what they had eyes to see. One would note his foibles, his blunt manner, his slovenly dress, his want of skill at billiards, his fondness for special dishes or drinks. Another would be impressed by his library with its teak panelling, by the books which he read and the questions which he asked, by his love for Gibbon and Plutarch, by his interest in Marcus Aurelius and other writers on high themes. Others again tell us of his relations to his fellow-men, how recklessly generous he was to young and old, to British and Dutch, and how his generosity was abused: how his acquaintances preyed upon him; how, for all that, he kept his true friendships few in number and he held them sacred. In fact, loyalty to friends meant more to Rhodes than loyalty to principles. His temper was impatient, especially in the last years of physical pain; he often tried to take short cuts to his ends, believing that his ends were worthy and knowing that life was short. He made many mistakes, but he retrieved them nobly. He was in some ways rough-hewn and unpolished, but he was a great man.

It is impossible to put in a short compass the many important questions with which he dealt. His policy towards the natives was moderate and wise. He wished to educate them and then to trust them; to restrict the sale of liquor among them and to open to them the nobler lessons of civilization; to give them the vote when they were educated enough to use it well, but not before; to apply to them too his motto of 'Equal rights for every civilized man south of the Zambezi'. His policy towards the Dutch was to establish identity of interest between the two nations and so to secure friendly relations with them; to draw them into co-operation in agriculture, in railways, in colonization, in export trade, in imperial politics. He did his best to win over the Orange Free State by a policy of common railways, and even to break down the sullen opposition of the Transvaal. But the latter proved impossible. President Kruger leant more and more upon Dutch counsellors from Holland; he looked more and more to Delagoa Bay and turned his back upon Cape Town: and the antagonism became more acute. In 1895 Mr. Chamberlain initiated a new era at the Colonial Office. He was actively awake to British interests in all parts of the globe; and President Kruger, who had tried to check trade with Cape Town by stopping the Cape railway at his frontier, and then by closing the 'Drifts' or fords over the Vaal, was compelled to give way and to keep to the agreements made with the Suzerain State.

A still more serious question was the treatment of the 'Uitlanders' or alien European settlers in the Transvaal. Though the Boer rulers took an increasingly large share of their earnings, they restricted more and more the grant of the franchise. In taxation, in commerce, in education, there was no prospect between the Vaal and the Limpopo of 'Equal rights for all civilized men' or anything like it. In June 1894 the High Commissioner frankly told Kruger that the Uitlanders had 'very real and substantial grievances'; in 1895 they were no less substantial, and agitation was rife in Johannesburg. On December 28, Jameson at the head of an armed column left Pitsani on the borders and rode into the Transvaal to support a rising against the Boer Government. The Uitlanders were not expecting him; no rising took place, and Jameson's small column was surrounded some miles west of Johannesburg, outnumbered, and forced to surrender. The Jameson Raid, for which Rhodes was generally held responsible, attracted all eyes in Europe as in Africa. How President Kruger used his advantage against the Uitlanders, among whom Col. Frank Rhodes was a leader, can be read in many books: here we need only relate how the event affected the Premier of Cape Colony. He resigned office at once and put himself at the disposal of the Government. Despite his past record he was judged by the Dutch, alike in the Cape and in the Transvaal, to have been the author of the Raid, and all chance of his doing further service in reconciling the two races was at an end. The beginning of 1895 saw him at the height of his ambition. The end of it saw his power shattered beyond repair.

His behaviour in this crisis enables us to know the real man. For a few days he kept aloof, unapproachable, overcome by the ruin of his work. He made no attempt to conciliate opinion: in moments of bitterness he scoffed at the 'unctuous rectitude' of certain politicians who were improving the occasion. But he spoke frankly to those who had the right to question him. He went to London in February and saw Mr. Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, and his Directors. He admitted that he was at fault. Believing that Kruger would always yield to a show of force, he had been responsible for putting troops near the border to exercise moral pressure. But neither then nor at any time had he given Jameson orders to invade the Transvaal, or to precipitate an armed conflict, which he believed to be unnecessary. Such was his consistent statement, and he was ready to face, when the time should come, the Parliamentary committees appointed by the British and South African Houses to report on the Raid. Meanwhile he put all brooding away and looked round for some practical work. Fortunately he found it in the most congenial sphere. His colony of Rhodesia, to which he had gone straight from London, was threatened with disaster from a great native outbreak. The causes were various. Rinderpest had spoiled one of the chief native industries, and superstition had invented foolish reasons for it; also the rumours, which were spreading about the Raid, made the natives believe that the British power was shaken. The Mashonas, as well as the Matabele, took part in the revolt which began early in April 1896. To meet it the colonists mustered their full strength, while General Carrington was sent out from home with some regular troops. Several engagements in difficult country followed: the enemies' forces were quickly broken up, and by the end of July the time for negotiation was come.

But the chiefs of the Matabele had retired into their fortresses in the Matoppo hills and could not be reached. To send small columns to track them down might mean needless loss of life: to keep the forces in the field right through the winter was ruinous to the Company's finances. Rhodes offered his own services as negotiator, and they were accepted. The man who could carry his point with Jewish financiers and Dutch politicians might hope to achieve his ends with the simpler native chiefs. But it was a sore trial of patience. He moved his own tent two miles away from the British troops to the foot of the hills, sent native messengers to the chiefs, and waited. During this time he was not idle: he put in a lot of riding and of miscellaneous reading: his mind was actively employed in planning roads and dams for irrigation, in scheming for the future greatness of the country. It was six weeks before a chief responded. Gradually they began to drop in and to hold informal meetings round the tent, putting questions, replying to Rhodes's jokes, relapsing into fits of silence, oblivious as all savages are of the value of time. He would spend hours day after day in this apparently futile way; accustoming them to his presence, coaxing them into the right humour. At last he persuaded them to meet him in a formal 'indaba', which must have been a dramatic scene. Alone he stood facing them, boldly reproaching them with their bad faith and cruel acts. They stated their grievances: some were admitted: satisfaction was promised. In the end peace was proclaimed and the delighted natives greeted him uproariously with the title of Lamula 'm Kunzi (Separator of the Fighting Bulls). The discussions were not over till the end of October, and it was a month later ere Rhodes was able to leave the country and face the Committee in London—a very different gathering in very different surroundings. His work during these two months was perhaps the greatest of his life; and that he should have been able to concentrate all his powers upon it so soon after the shattering blow of the Raid is a great tribute to his essential manliness and patriotism.

The two Committees, sitting in London and Cape Town, agreed to censure, though in modified terms, Rhodes's conduct over the Raid; but he still retained the respect of the bulk of his countrymen, and on his return the citizens of Cape Town gave him an enthusiastic welcome. They and he were looking ahead as well as behind: they felt that his services were still needed for the establishing of a United South Africa under the British flag. But in this respect his work was done. The Cape Dutch were more and more influenced by their sentiment for the Transvaal, and racial feeling ran high. Rhodes severed himself from all his old Dutch colleagues and became more of a party leader. Meanwhile Kruger watched the breach, assured himself of Dutch support, made no concessions to the Uitlanders, repelled all overtures from Mr. Chamberlain, and steered straight for war. Rhodes, despite his knowledge of the Dutch, made the mistake of believing up to the last moment that Kruger would give way and not fight; but, when the war broke out in 1899, he went up to Kimberley to take his share of the work and the danger. The siege lasted about four months, and Rhodes, though he failed to work harmoniously with the military commandant, rendered many services to the town, thanks to his wealth, influence, and knowledge of the place. When the town was relieved in February 1900, he went to Rhodesia and spent many months there. Though he was urged by his followers to return to politics, Cape Town saw little of him; when he was not in the north, he was mostly at his seaside cottage at Muizenberg, half-way between the capital and the Cape of Good Hope. The heart complaint, from which he had suffered intermittently all his life, had rapidly grown worse; his last year was one of great suffering, and in March 1902 he breathed his last at Muizenberg with Jameson and a few of his dearest friends around him. He was buried in the place which he had himself chosen amid the Matoppo hills. On a bare hill-top seven gigantic boulders keep guard round the simple tombstone on which his name is engraved. After the English service was over, the natives celebrated in their own fashion the passing of the great chief who had already been enshrined in their imagination.

At Kimberley, at Cape Town, in the Matoppos, his work was done before the nineteenth century was finished, and he had earned his rest. The complete union of the European races for which he laboured in Parliament is yet to come. The vast wealth which he won in Kimberley is fulfilling a noble purpose. By his will he founded scholarships at Oxford for scholars from the Dominions and Colonies, from the United States and from Germany—his faith in the Anglo-Saxon race being extended to our Teutonic kinsmen. He regarded a common education and common ideals as the surest cement of Empire. But above all else his name will be preserved among his countrymen by the provinces which he added to the British dominions. Kimberley and Cape Town have their monuments, their memories of his many successes and his few failures: the Matoppos have his grave. To us the peace and solitude of the hills where he lies may seem to contrast strangely with the stirring activity of his life. But solitude will not reign there always, if Rhodes's ideal is fulfilled. It was here that he had stood with a friend, looking towards the vast horizon northwards, and, in an often-quoted sentence, expressed his dream for the future: 'Homes, more homes, that's what I work for!' So long as our race produces such bold dreamers, such strenuous workers, its future, in Africa and elsewhere, need occasion no doubts or fears.



INDEX

A

Aberdeen, 4th Earl of, 32, 51

Acton, Lord, 5, 272, 325

Adams, Professor J. C., 277

Addison, Joseph, 137, 326, 336

Afghanistan, 62, 103, 107

Afrikander Bond, 354

Agram, 251

Agricultural labourers, 79, 117

Aldworth, 171, 176, 345

Alexander III, Tsar, 266, 268, 271

Alexander, Prince of Bulgaria, 265-6

Alexandria, 127

Alfonso XII, King of Spain, 262-4

Alsace, 256, 345

Althorp, Lord (3rd Earl Spencer), 42, 43, 83

American Civil War, 121, 123-4

Ampthill, Lord, v. Odo Russell, 248, 264, 272, 273, 275

Angevin kings, 334, 337

Anglesey, Lord, 39

Annandale, 10-13, 16, 29

Appomattox, 124

Argyll, 8th Duke of, 86

Arnold, Matthew, 6, 8, 194, 321

Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 8, 24

Ashburton, 2nd Lord, 23

Atkin, Joseph, 235, 242-3

Auckland, N. Z., 226-7, 237-8, 242

B

Baden, 249, 256

Bagehot, Walter, 33

Baird-Smith, 104

Baluchs, 62-6

Bamford, Samuel, 175

Baring, Lady Harriet, 23

Barnack, 178

Barnato, Barney, 352

Barry, Sir Charles, 200

Basutoland, 355

Batum, 268

Bazaine, Marshal, 257

Bechuanaland, 357

de Beers Company, 352, 357

Behnes, Charles and Wm., 199

Beit, Alfred, 350, 358

Bentham, Jeremy, 2

Bergmann, Professor von, 298

Berlin, 248, 252-3, 263, 293; Treaty of, 268

Bermuda, 58

Besant, Sir Walter, 89

Biarritz, 191

Bideford, 183

Bird, Robert, 98

Birmingham, 6, 126, 304, 311

Bishop's Stortford, 348

Bismarck, 252-9, 264, 273

Blackburn, 32

Blackie, Professor, 294

Blomfield, Bishop, 190

Bloomsbury, 313

Boehm, Sir J. E., 21

Bolivar, Simon, 60

Borrow, George, 6

Bright, Jacob, 111-13

Bright, John: America, 123; Anti-Corn-Law League, 114-19; education, 111-12; family, 111-14, 126; foreign policy, 122, 127; Ireland, 121, 127; oratorical style, 117, 119-20; Parliament, 85, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125; public meetings, 116, 117, 125; Quakers, 111, 113, 115, 117, 122; Reform, 113, 124-5; other references, 25-6, 85, 278

Brindley, James, 120, 338

Bronte, Charlotte, 7

Brooke, Stopford, 162, 187, 310, 339, 342-5

Brookfield, Rev. W., 157

Brougham, Lord, 7, 40, 42

Brown, Ford Madox, 197, 307

Browning, E. B., 81

Browning, Robert, 5, 9, 140, 158, 165, 169, 170, 175, 250

Brunton, Sir Lauder, 345

Bryce, Viscount, 334, 343, 345

Bulgaria, 264-8

Burlington House (Royal Academy), 198, 200, 206, 217

Burne-Jones, Sir E., 197, 205, 209, 212, 217, 219, 304-8, 311, 319, 328

Burton, Richard, 4

Byron, Lord, 33, 60, 153

C

Cambridge, 153-4, 179, 190, 221

Cameron, Sir Hector, 288

Cameron, Julia, 172, 205

Campbell, Sir Colin (Lord Clyde), 69, 70, 105

Canning, Charles, Lord, 105, 122

Canning, George, 32, 35, 37, 38

Capri, 343

Carlisle, 10, 290

Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 14-19, 22, 25, 27

Carlyle, John, 14

Carlyle, Thomas: appearance, 19, 212; books, chief, 11, 20, 22, 23, 25-7; character, 16, 17, 29; education, 12, 13; family, 11, 15, 29; friends, 4, 13, 18, 23, 30, 140, 163; German literature, 16, 17; homes, 6, 11, 13, 15, 18, 21; lectures, 22; literary style, 20, 29, 321, 324-5; quoted opinions, 71, 164, 189, 302

Carnot, President, 300

Carrington, General, 364

Cashel, 34

Castelar, Emilio, 261

Castlereagh, Lord, 38

Cauteretz, 173

Celbridge, 55, 56

Cephalonia, 59

Chamberlain, Joseph, 6, 53, 362, 364, 366

Chartered Company, 359, 360, 364-5

Chartists, 61, 187-9

Chatham, 130, 144

Chelsea, 21, 163, 179

Chester, 191

Cheyne, Sir Watson, 297

Chiliānwāla, 69, 101

Christison, Sir Robert, 294

Clare election, 39, 49

Clarendon, Edw. Hyde, Earl of, 324

Clarendon, Geo. Villiers, Earl of, 7, 250

Clark, Sir Andrew, 345

Clovelly, 178

Cobden, Richard, 2; and Bright, 114-19, 124, 127; and Peel, 48, 49, 51; and Shaftesbury, 84, 87

Coburg, Duchy of, 249, 253

Codrington, Rev. R., 235

Coleridge, Rev. Derwent, 178

Coleridge, Rev. Edward, 223

Coleridge, John, 222

Coleridge, S. T., 13, 29

Cook, Captain James, 220

Cook, John Douglas, 335

Cooper, Thomas, 189

Corn Laws, 47, 115-20

Coruna, 57

Craigenputtock, 18

Creighton, Bishop, 344

Crimean War, 121-3, 167, 251

Cromer, Earl of, 123, 272

Crotch, W. W., 136, 146

Crown Prince of Germany (Frederick III), 252, 258

Currency, Reform of, 36-7

D

Dabo, Battle of, 65

Dalhousie, Marquis of, 69, 70, 100, 101, 103

Dalīp Singh, 271

Dalling, Lord, 45

Darmstadt, Court of, 255-7

Darwin, Charles, 2, 4, 5, 6, 152, 183, 277, 279, 291

Dawkins, Boyd, 328-30, 333-4

Delagoa Bay, 260, 362

Delane, John Thaddeus, 8, 123, 253

Delarey, General, 356

Delhi, 95, 99, 103-4

Derby, Edw. Stanley, 14th Earl of, 32, 42-4

Dickens, Charles: appearance, 132-3; character, 131-3, 141, 146; friends, 140; influence, 130, 135, 147; journalism, 132, 138; novels, 132-9; Poor Law, 146-7; 'purpose', 130, 135, 144-8, 185; readings, 142-3; satire, 137, 145, 239; sensation, 141-2; sentiment, 136; travels, 136-8; other references, 4, 82, 89