Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 67, No. 411, January 1850

The Howard that poets and orators had taught us to admire loses none of its greatness on a near approach. But it undergoes a remarkable transformation. The real Howard, who devoted his life to the jail and the lazaretto, was a very different person from that ideal of benevolence which the verse of Darwin, or the eloquence of Burke, had called up into our minds. Instead of this faint and classic ideal, we have the intensely and somewhat sternly religious man, guided and sustained, every step of his way, not alone, nor principally, by the amiable but vacillating sentiment which passes under the name of philanthropy, but by an exalted, severe, imperative sense of duty. It is Howard the Christian, Howard the Puritan, that stands revealed before us. The form changes, but only to grow more distinct and intelligible. The features have no longer that classic outline we had attributed to them; but they bear henceforth the stamp of reality – of a man who, without doubt, had lived and moved amongst us.

Those who have rested content (and we think there are many such) with that impression of Howard which is derived from the panegyrics scattered through our polite literature, and who accordingly attribute to him, as the master-motive of his conduct, simply a wide benevolence – a sentiment of humanity exalted to a passion – must be conscious of a certain uneasy sense of doubt, an involuntary scepticism; must feel that there is something here unexplained, or singularly exaggerated. Their Howard, if they should scrutinise their impression, is a quite anomalous person. No philanthropist they have ever heard of – no mere lover of his kind, sustained only by the bland sentiment of humanity, not even supported by any new enthusiastic faith in the perfectibility of the species – ever lived the life of this man, or passed through a tithe of his voluntary toils and sufferings. Philanthropists are generally distinguished for their love of speculation; they prefer to think rather than to act; and their labours are chiefly bestowed on the composition of their books. Philanthropists have occasionally ruined themselves; but their rash schemes are more notorious for leading to the ruin of others. As a race, they are not distinguished for self-sacrifice, or for practical and strenuous effort. There must, therefore, to the persons we are describing, be a certain doubt and obscurity hanging over the name of Howard the philanthropist. It must sound like a myth or fable; they must half suspect that, if some Niebuhr should look into the matter, their heroic figure would vanish into thin air.

Let them, however, proceed to the study of the veritable Howard, and all the mystery clears up. The philanthropist of the orator gives place to one who, in the essential elements of his character, may be ranked with Christian missionaries and Christian martyrs. Instead of the half-pagan ideal, or personification of benevolence, there rises before them a character which a rigorous analysis might justly class with those of St Francis or Loyola, or whatever the Christian church has at any time exhibited of exalted piety and complete self-devotion. The same spirit which, in past times, has driven men into the desert, or shut them up in cells with the scourge and the crucifix; the same spirit which has impelled them to brave all the dangers of noxious climates and of savage passions, to extend the knowledge of religion amongst barbarous nations – was animating Howard when he journeyed incessantly from prison to prison, tracking human misery into all its hidden and most loathsome recesses. He who, in another century, would have been the founder of a new order of barefooted monks, became, in Protestant England, the great exemplar of philanthropic heroism. Perhaps he too, in one sense, may be said to have founded a new religious order, though it is not bound together by common rules, and each member of it follows, as he best may, the career of charitable enterprise that lies open before him. The mystery, we say, clears up. Benevolent our Howard was, undoubtedly, by nature, as by nature also he was somewhat imperious; but that which converted his benevolence into a ceaseless motive of strenuous action, of toil, and of sacrifice; that which utilised his natural love of authority, transforming it into that requisite firmness and predominance over others without which no man, at least no reformer, can be rigidly just, and, face to face, admonish, threaten, and reprove; that which constituted the mainspring and vital force of his character, was intense piety, and the all-prevailing sense of duty to his God. The craving of his soul was some great task-work, to be done in the eye of Heaven. Not the love of man, nor the praise of man, but conscience, and to be a servant of the Most High, were his constant motive and desire.

Men of ardent piety generally apply themselves immediately to the reproduction in others of that piety which they feel to be of such incomparable importance. This becomes the predominant, often the sole object of their lives. It is natural it should be so. In such minds all the concerns of the present world sink into insignificance; and their fellow-men are nothing, except as they are, or are not, fellow-Christians. Howard was an exception to this rule. Owing to certain circumstances in his own life; to the manner of his education; to his deficiency in some intellectual qualifications, and his pre-eminence in others, he was led to take the domain of physical suffering – of earthly wretchedness – for the province in which to exert his zeal. For the preacher, or the writer, he was not formed, either by education or by natural endowment; but he was a man of shrewd observation, of great administrative talent, of untiring perseverance, and of an insatiable energy. The St Francis of Protestant England did not, therefore, go forth as a missionary; nor did he become the founder of a new sect, distinguished by any doctrinal peculiarity; but he girded himself up to visit, round the world, the cell of the prisoner – to examine the food he ate, the air he breathed, to rid him of the jail-fever, to drive famine out of its secret haunts, and from its neglected prey. It was this peculiarity which led men to segregate Howard from the class to which, by the great elements of his character, he belongs. To relieve the common wants of our humanity was his object – to war against hunger and disease, and unjust cruelties inflicted by man on man, was his chosen task-work; therefore was it vaguely supposed that the sentiment of humanity was his great predominant motive, and that he was driven about the world by compassion and benevolence.

His remains lie buried in Russia. Dr Clarke, in his travels through that country, relates that "Count Vincent Potoçki, a Polish nobleman of the highest taste and talents, whose magnificent library and museum would do honour to any country, through a mistaken design of testifying his respect for the memory of Howard, has signified his intention of taking up the body that it might be conveyed to his country seat, where a sumptuous monument has been prepared for its reception, upon a small island in the midst of a lake. His countess, being a romantic lady, wishes to have an annual fête consecrated to benevolence; at this the nymphs of the country are to attend, and strew the place with flowers." There are many, we suspect, of his own countrymen and countrywomen, who would be disposed to honour the memory of Howard in a similar manner. They would hang, or carve, their wreaths of flowers upon a tomb where the emblems of Christian martyrdom would be more appropriate. We need hardly add that the design of the romantic countess was not put into execution.

The vague impression prevalent of this remarkable man has been perpetuated by another circumstance. Howard has been unfortunate in his biographers. Dr Aikin, the earliest of these, writes like a gentleman and a scholar; manifests throughout much good sense, a keen intelligence, and a high moral feeling; but his account is brief, and is both defective and deceptive from his incapacity, or unwillingness, to portray the religious aspect of the character he had undertaken to develop. Dr Aikin's little book may still be read with advantage for the general remarks it contains, but it is no biography. Neither was Dr Aikin calculated for a biographer. He wanted both the highest and the lowest qualifications. Details, such as of dates and places, he had not the patience to examine; and he wanted that rarer quality of mind by which the writer is enabled to throw himself into the character of a quite different man from himself, and almost feel by force of sympathy the motives which have actuated him. This the cultivated, tasteful, but, in spite of his verse, the quite didactic mind of Aikin, was incapable of doing.

The Rev. Samuel Palmer, who had known Howard for thirty years, appended to a sermon, preached on the occasion of his death, some account of his life and career. But this, as well as several anonymous contributions to magazines, and a brief anonymous life which appeared at the same time, can be considered only in the light of materials for the future biographer.

The task lay still open, and Mr Baldwin Brown, barrister-at-law, undertook to accomplish it. He appears to have had all the advantages a biographer could desire. He had conversed with the contemporaries and friends of Howard, and with his surviving domestics – an advantage which no subsequent writer could hope to profit by; he was put in possession of the materials which the Rev. Mr Smith and his family, intimate friends of Howard, had collected for the very purpose of such a work as he was engaged on; Dr Brown, professor of theology at Aberdeen, another intimate friend of Howard, transcribed for him, from his commonplace book, the memoranda of conversations held with Howard, and committed to writing at the time; and, above all, he was furnished with extracts and memoranda from diaries kept by Howard himself, and which fortunately had escaped the general conflagration to which the philanthropist, anticipating and disliking the curiosity of the biographer, had devoted his papers. Several influential men amongst the Dissenters interested themselves in obtaining information for him; and the list of those to whom he expresses obligations of this kind, occupies two or three pages of his preface. Mr Brown was himself a man of religious zeal – we presume, from his work, a Dissenter: he could not fail to appreciate the religious aspect of Howard's character. As a lawyer, he was prepared to take an interest in the subject of his labours – the reformation of our prisons and our penal laws. Thus he brought to his task many peculiar advantages; and the work he produced was laborious, conscientious, and very valuable. Unfortunately, Mr Baldwin Brown was a dull writer, by which we here imply that he was also a dull thinker, and his book will be pronounced by the generality of readers to be as dull as it is useful. Notwithstanding the attractive title it bears, and the many interesting particulars contained in it, his biography never attained any popularity. It was probably read extensively amongst the Dissenters, to whose sympathies it more directly appeals than to those of any other class of readers; but we think we are right in saying that it never had much circulation in the world at large.

More parsonic than the parsons, our lawyer-divine can resist no opportunity for sermonising. The eloquence of a Dissenting pulpit, and that when it is but indifferently supplied– the tedious repetition, and the monotonous unmodulated periods of his legal text-books – these combine, or alternate, through the pages of Mr Brown. Yet those who persevere in the perusal of his book will be rewarded. He is judicious in the selection of his materials. He presents us with the means of forming an accurate conception of Howard; though, in so doing, he seems to reveal to an attentive reader more than he had well understood himself.

Tedious or not, this is still the only biography of Howard. A Mr Thomas Taylor has written what appears to be an abridgment of the work. His book is more brief, but it is still more insipid. What notion Mr T. Taylor has of biography may be judged of from this, that he thinks it necessary, in quoting Howard's own original letters, to amend and improve the style– preserving, as he says, the sense, but correcting the composition. He is apparently shocked at the idea that the philanthropist should express himself in indifferent English, even though in a hasty letter to a friend.

Very lately Mr Hepworth Dixon, whose work has recalled us to this subject, has presented us with a life of Howard. It cannot be said of Mr Dixon's book that it is either dull or insipid; it has some of the elements of popularity; but we cannot better describe it in a few words than by saying that it is a caricature of a popular biography. Its flippancy, its conceit, its egregious pretensions, its tawdry novelistic style, are past all sufferance. It is too bad to criticise. But as, in the dearth of any popular biography of Howard, it has assumed for a time a position it by no means merits, we cannot pass it by entirely without notice. For, besides that Mr Dixon writes throughout with execrable taste, he has not dealt conscientiously with the materials before him. His notion of the duty of a biographer is this – that he is to collect every incident of the least piquancy, no matter by whom related, or on what authority, and colour it himself as highly as he can. Evidently the most serious preparation he has made, for writing the life of Howard, has been a course of reading in French romances. It is with the spirit and manner of a Eugene Sue that he sits down to describe the grand and simple career of Howard.

Mr Dixon has not added a single new fact to the biography of Howard, nor any novelty whatever, except such as he has drawn from his own imagination. Nor does he assist in sifting the narrative; on the contrary, whatever dust has the least sparkle in it, though it has been thrice thrown away, he assiduously collects. That he should have nothing new to relate is no matter of blame; it is probable that no future biographer will be able to do more than recast and reanimate the materials to be found in Brown and Aikin. But why this pretence of having written a life of Howard from "original documents?" We beg pardon: he does not absolutely say that he has written the Life of Howard from original documents – the original document, for there is but one, may apply to the "prison-world of Europe," of which also he professes to write. This "earliest document of any value connected with the penology of England," which, with much parade, he prints for the first time, relates to the state of prisons before the labours of Howard. Impossible to suppose, therefore, that Mr Hepworth Dixon meant his readers to infer that, by the aid of this document, he was about to give them an original Life of Howard.

Let us look at Mr Dixon's preface – it is worth while. It thus commences: —

"Several reasons combined to induce the writer to undertake the work of making out for the reading world a new biography of Howard; the chief of them fell under two heads: —

"It lay in his path. Years ago now, circumstances, which do not require to be explained in this place, called his attention to the vast subject of the prison-world."

We must stop a moment to admire this favourite magniloquence of our author. Howard wrote a report on the state of prisons; Mr Dixon writes on nothing less than the prison-world of Europe! He heads his chapters – "The Prison-world of the Continent," "The Prison-world of England." If Mr Dixon, in his patriotic labours, should turn his attention to the nuisance of Smithfield market, he would certainly give us a treatise on "The Butcher-world of Europe," with chapters headed, with due logical gradation, "The Butcher-world of England," and "The Butcher-world of London."

"It lay in his path," was one reason why he wrote his biography. "It needed to be done," was the other. We agree in the last of these reasons, whatever demur we make to the first. A more popular biography than Mr Brown's would certainly be a useful book. But what can Mr Dixon mean by saying, that, "although Howard was the father of prison-science, the story of his life has hitherto been made out without reference to that fact?" Messrs Brown and Aikin were not, then, aware that the excitement of the public attention to the great subject of prison-discipline was the chief result, and the direct and ostensible aim of the labours of Howard!

But now we arrive at Mr Dixon's statement of his own peculiar resources for writing the Life of Howard, and the valuable contributions he has made to our better knowledge of the man; in short, his claims upon our gratitude and confidence: —

"It has been the writer's study to render this biographical history of Howard as worthy of its subject, and of the confidence of the reader, as the nature of the materials at his disposal would allow. He has carefully collated every document already printed – made, and caused to be made, numerous researches – conversed with persons who have preserved traditions and other memorials of this subject – travelled in his traces over a great number of prisons – examined parliamentary and other records for such new facts as they might afford – and, in conclusion, has consulted these several sources of information, and interpreted their answers by such light as his personal experience of the prison-world suggested to be needful. The result of this labour is, that some new matter of curious interest has turned up —amongst other things, a manuscript throwing light on the early history of prison reforms in this country, found in the archives of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and for which he is indebted to the courtesy of the secretary, the Rev. T. B. Murray; and the writer is assured that no other papers exist in any known quarter. The material for Howard's life is therefore now fully collected; whether it is herein finally used, will entirely depend upon the verdict of the reader."

From all this mystification, the reader is at least to conclude that something very important has been done, and contributions very valuable have been made, for a final biography of Howard. Documents collated – researches made, and caused to be made – then a discovered manuscript, which now is, and now is not, appertaining to the subject – assurance "that no other papers exist in any known quarter!" – "materials now fully collected!" Oh, Admirable Crichton! Our author has done all this for us! Our author has read the memoirs of Baldwin Brown – and that not very attentively: if he has done more it is a pity, because there is not the least trace of it in his book. Our author has read the memoirs of Baldwin Brown, and travestied his narrative, and then writes this preface, as a travesty, we presume, of erudite prefaces in general. The book altogether does not belong to literature, but is a sort of parody upon literature.

We may as well give our readers the benefit of the rest of the preface: —

"The mental and moral portraiture of Howard attempted in this volume is new." [Fortunately, and to the recommendation of the volume, it is not new, but a transcript of that which his predecessor had drawn.] "As the writer's method of inquiry and of treatment was different to that ordinarily adopted, so his result is different. His study of the character was earnest, and, he believes, faithful. After making himself master of all the facts of the case which have come down to us, biographically and traditionally, his plan was to saturate himself with Howardian ideas, and then strive to reproduce them living, acting, and suffering in the real world."

How the Howardian ideas suffered from this process, we can somewhat guess. The rest of the sentence is not so plain: —

"The writer lays down his pen, not without regret. Long accustomed to contemplate one of the most noble and beautiful characters in history, he has learnt to regard it with a human affection; and at parting with his theme – the mental companion of many hours, and the object of his constant thoughts —he feels somewhat like a father who gives away his favourite daughter in marriage. He does not lose his interest in his child; but she can be to him no longer what she has been. A touch of melancholy mingles with his joy. He still regards his offspring with a tender solicitude —but his monopoly of love is ended."

Oh, surely no!

We propose, as far as our limits will permit, to retrace the chief incidents in the biography of Howard. A brief sketch of his life and character may not be unacceptable to our readers. Such strictures as we have passed upon his latest biographer, Mr Dixon, we shall have abundant opportunities to justify as we proceed.

The well-known monument in St Paul's Cathedral, which, from the circumstance of the key held in the hand of the statue, has been sometimes taken by foreigners for the representation of the apostle St Peter, bears inscribed on the pedestal that Howard "was born in Hackney, in the county of Middlesex, September 2, 1726." But both the place and the year of his birth have been differently stated by his biographers. The Rev. S. Palmer, who had known him long, writes that he was born at Clapton; Dr Aikin, that he was born at Enfield. To the authority of the Doctor, on such a point as this, we attach no weight; it is plain to us that he gave himself little trouble to determine whether he was born at Clapton or Enfield. It was probably at Clapton; but Clapton is in the parish of Hackney, so that there is really no discrepancy between Mr Palmer's statement and that on the monument. The year 1726 seems also to be generally received as the most probable date of his birth. After all the discussion, we may as well adhere to the inscription on the pedestal of the statue.

The father of Howard had acquired a considerable fortune in business as an upholsterer and carpet warehouseman in Long Lane, Smithfield. He was a dissenter, of Calvinistic principles; and, it is presumed, an Independent. The question has been raised, whether our Howard was descended from any branch of the noble family of that name; but his biographers generally agree in rejecting for him the honours of such a pedigree. Nor can any one be in the least degree solicitous to advance such a claim. The military achievements of a Norman ancestry would diffuse a very incongruous lustre over the name of our Christian philanthropist. Thus much, however, is evident, that at one time there existed some tradition, or belief, or pretence, in the family of the citizen Howard, that they were remotely connected with the noble family whose name they share. "The arms of the Duke of Norfolk, and of the Earls of Suffolk, Effingham, and Carlisle, are placed at the head of the tombstone which Howard erected to the memory of his first wife, on the south side of Whitechapel churchyard." Such is the assertion of the anonymous biographer in the Universal Magazine, (vol. lxxxvi.) who stands alone, we believe, in maintaining the validity of this claim. And Mr Brown, after quoting these words, adds – "From actual inspection of the mouldering monument, I can assure those of my readers who may feel any curiosity on the subject, that this description of its armorial bearings is correct; and am further enabled to add, on the authority of his relative, Mr Barnardiston, that the distinguished individual by whom that monument was erected, occasionally spoke of Lord Carlisle as his relative; thus claiming at least a traditional descent from the Howards, Earls of Suffolk." That such a man as Howard should have used these arms once is significant; that he should have used them only once, is equally so. He was one of the last men, if we have read his character correctly, who would have assumed what he did not, at the time, think himself entitled to; and one of the last who would shrink from claiming a right where his title was clear.

Mr Dixon not only rejects the claim, but is highly indignant that it should ever have been suggested. "Howard sprang from a virgin and undistinguished soil;" – why the upholsterer's should be peculiarly a virgin soil we do not see. "Attempts, however, have not been wanting to vulgarise his origin – to rob its greatness of its most natural charm – by circling his brows with the distant glitter of a ducal crown; by finding in his simple lineaments the trace of noble lines, and in his veins the consecrated currents of patrician blood." Strange waste of eloquent indignation! But he does not keep quite steady in his passion. "No," he exclaims, "let Howard stand alone. His reputation rests upon a basis already broad enough. Why should we pile up Pelion on Olympus?" There was, then, a Pelion to pile upon Olympus? We had thought not. Our author should have kept these red and purple patches at a greater distance: they do not harmonise.