Letters of Lord Acton to Mary, Daughter of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone

Mozley's book, and all others published in England since January, I have not seen. He interests me more than almost any other of our divines, and I look forward to a good time with his reminiscences, if, as I understand, it is the divine, and not the manifold writer.[187]

*****

Tegernsee August 4, 1882

With all my heart I adopt your scheme, Reform, Dissolution, and then, let Politics make way for a still higher and worthier cause.

*****

Paris, August 12, 1882

Salisbury's collapse[188] is less decisive than mine, and although there is a pleasant corner in the House of Lords, my journey ends in nothing better than disappointment and in having set you to write notes all day. My accounts show that they are not comfortable at home, so that I have no right to be basking in the ethereal sunshine of Downing Street.

It was a monstrous thing to do, suggestive of Mrs. Todgers, but I left the Dante in his[189] room at the H. of Commons. It was too late to ring at No. 10,[190] for I kept him talking till near eleven. But there was some symbolic propriety about the title[191] of the unbound volume – unbound because they did not remember the binding of the rest. Of course the impression of my one well-filled day in town – even with the part of Cordelia left out – is the very opposite of that under which I lately wrote. The session ends with a great blaze of his mastery and power. But the best of it all is, that I found him so wonderfully vigorous and well and even content. It did indeed impress me most deeply.

It is remarkable how little he chooses to realise the tremendous loss of authority and power which the party will incur by his retirement, and he has no idea how little he would soon be in harmony with them. However, Ireland is not all right yet; and there are obvious complications impending in Egypt which he cannot leave unsolved. With that, there will still be time for the Reform Bill.

Late at night I found slipped under my door your rejected letter, which will be cherished with the rest. If writing made up for sight!

This letter is written by scraps, in various places and countries. I crossed with Forster, on his way to Russia, and got him to tell me his inner history. I shall be at St. Martin the day after to-morrow…

Shorthouse's[192] letter could not go with Dante, and I will enclose it in my next. I have got Democracy. The Mays, considered an authority on the subject, do not think much of it. Forster does, and says it is not by Mrs. Adams. He says that Bright has no idea that he left either too early or too late. Will you – very earnestly – put my excuses before Mrs. Gladstone for my way of dealing with her boundless hospitality?

La Madeleine Cannes Feb. 2, 1883

I wonder whether you would come to lunch to-morrow, Saturday? Perhaps I could inscribe in your most private book the list of the hundred works that have most influenced human history.

*****

Feb. 13, 1883

… These books are enclosed to show Mr. Gladstone what good German prose is, in expounding difficult, very difficult, questions. Also, a little book, by a very famous Dane who has grown more and more to be a power since his death…

La Madeleine March 3, 1883

After seeking a moment's distraction at a chateau near Marseilles I came home to find your letter, so kindly written in the intervals of Parisian dissipations.

The failure of Challemel was truly sad, but I hope that Fedora,[193] following the little dinner on the Boulevard, made up for it. The tranquillity and sameness of Cannes will soon be thrust far out of sight by the centre of European life. We do our best, in your absence, to be a little worldly. Bright, Houghton, and the Mallets lunch to-day. I am to meet Colonel Hay at tea, and the little bishop[194] at dinner this evening.

… It is pleasant to think that Lyons made you enjoy Paris, and divined the one thing you all have a passion for, and he seems to have done the political part of his work very well by bringing you into contact both with the ruling men and with the Left Centre. That was just what was wanting to redress the Wolvertonian balance.

I am a little sorry that the visit at the Elysée was not more interesting. Grévy's speeches in 1848 were very sensible indeed, but he seems to be pushing the theory of the roi fainéant much beyond the American, or even the Merovingian, limit, if he avoids politics with such a visitor. Then I rejoice much at the visit to Jules Simon, though you don't say whether it was spontaneous or a return, and a curious question is, where was the limit drawn? Did he and Broglie, Decazes, Harcourt, avoid each other? If these former ambassadors did not call, it is matter for speculation. At Marseilles, I found myself in a nest of Legitimists, and learnt that the chief of them, Coriolis, lately asked the Count of Chambord for leave to raise the white flag. If there was more of this kind, it is odd that the advocates of expulsion made so little of it. If it had been possible to stay longer at Paris, it would have been a very desirable thing, for they do not really know or understand him,[195] and the conflict of forces there would be worth observing otherwise than in Blowitz' or Lyons's despatches.

It is a pity to have missed Mrs. Craven, who would take to you intensely if you saw more of each other – a woman of great talent and elevation of mind, but who has just written on the Salvation Army a paper that seems to portend the approach of mental decay. Lady Blennerhassett is very far her superior. Tell her all about Cannes if you see her… Mrs. Green writes me a touching letter to say that she has no hope left…

*****

La Madeleine, March 7, 1883

This is only a hasty line of thanks and congratulation on your prosperous journey. I have not yet seen either the Wolvertons or the Anson family, and to-day there are a couple of inches of snow over Cannes. Incorrigible Potter circulates the Financial Reform Almanack in the name of the Cobden Club, for which Reay, A. Russell, and others have denounced him. He asked me to read it through, which has been the melancholy occupation of a whole day, ending in agreement with the critics.

I am losing Mallet, who is less well and goes to Mentone. Also, Colonel Hay,[196] Lincoln's secretary and biographer, who proved a most agreeable acquaintance. Yesterday, there was an expedition to Pégomas (Houghton, Dempsters, &c.) and I find that the old lady[197] is the original of St. Monica in Ary Scheffer's picture. Myers, translator of Homer, is here, with a nice, newly-married wife, and Cross is in great force, writing the biography[198] and wanting me to read the papers.

Thanks for the MS., with the answer for which pray express my acknowledgments.

*****

You have heard that the Ashburnham MSS. are offered to the Museum, and that some of them were stolen from public libraries in France. We propose, if we buy at all, to resell to France as many of these as can be proved to be stolen, and Delisle, the French Panizzi, comes this week to produce his evidence, amicably, before the Museum experts.

I say nothing about the purchase, and have only insisted that – was a thief, and that we must, as we did before, make terms with Paris. But I want you to know that Léopold Delisle is one of the most eminent scholars in France, that he is a most estimable and high-minded man, tho' not a conspicuous bookmaker or littérateur, that he stands as high in Germany as any Frenchman living, and that I have long enjoyed the privilege of his friendly acquaintance. So that, if it should be otherwise feasible, any civility shown him by the P.M.[199] on this his very peculiar international mission, would be taken in France as a marked sign of courtesy and goodwill, just after the visit to France.

This is quite independent of the decision the Treasury may come to about the grant. I may add that Delisle is perfectly trustworthy, and that we are safe in the hands of the Museum people, to come to right judgments as to the MSS…

Cross has shown me, with some secrecy, a very curious letter of Dickens, declaring that only a woman could have written the "Scenes from Clerical Life." But he gives no good reason, and I am persuaded that he had heard the secret from Herbert Spencer, who at once detected it. I dare not express my doubt. John Morley writes pleasantly, but says he still feels like a fish out of water on the benches.

This is written at your table in considerable solitude and vacancy.

*****

I have just heard that Green is dead, and I must go to Mentone…

La Madeleine March 21, 1883

I hope to see them at the station, and then we can make plans for next week. The hotel is very full, but Cross tells me that there is just room for them. Ill-timed is really all I say against that passage of the lecture;[200] and, if other people had gone straight, it would not even have been ill-timed. My censure has never gone farther than that.

Nobody can well be more strongly persuaded than I am of the necessity, the practical and moral necessity, of governing nations by consent, national consent being proved both by the vapour of opinion, and by the definite mechanism of representation. I am not even surprised that many Irishmen should be suspicious of the goodwill of a country which turns as readily to a Tory government as to a Liberal, which is seldom awake to its sins and the consequences of its sins, unless roused by terror, and which has made amends only under compulsion, or under the intense, but not permanent, influence of one resolute mind. Even that is not all that I concede to them. Therefore, in substance, Herbert has all my sympathy; only, if anything awkward arises, it is his father who has to find the remedy or bear the burden. The danger now is that the great wave, of his own raising, that has sustained his policy of generosity, and even of eventual confidence, will fall. People will lose, not only sympathy, which is not to the point, but hopefulness. I cannot even say that they will be wrong to lose hope. But if men cease to look forward to success, they cannot be made to go straight by looking back to their own evil deeds. Nobody, then, would stand by the P.M. except pure Democrats, like Chamberlain and Morley. If I was a Minister, I would say, not that we shall devise new schemes to disarm this new evidence, not that we shall relax our efforts in just indignation and despair, but that we shall go on with our appeal from the ill-disposed to the well-disposed, pursuing a policy which is not dictated by momentary hope or momentary fear, but proceeds from the heart and spirit of the principles which are our raison d'être as a party and as a government. But I don't say that I should succeed.

If flurry and apprehension penetrate Downing Street, nothing can sustain Mr. Gladstone better than your own serenity. Be true to him and to his cause even if these odious crimes continue, even when you feel that the harvest will not be reaped in his time. The mills of God grind slowly.

It is very easy to speak words of wisdom from a comfortable distance, when one sees no reality, no details, none of the effect on men's minds. What is glorious is the way in which Mr. Gladstone rides on the whirlwind. You need not wonder much what I am thinking of it all.

As long ago as 1870 I ceased to be sanguine that we could govern Ireland successfully. The best influence over the Irish people is the influence of the clergy, and an ultramontane clergy is not proof against the sophistry by which men justify murder or excuse murderers. The assassin is only a little more resolutely logical or a little bolder than the priest.

I hope you will read and like Montégut's articles on George Eliot, especially the second, in the Revue of March 15. See pp. 307 and 329 for some very excellent criticism.

Miss B. met Cross here at lunch, was intensely excited, and explained it by saying that he is Ladislaw. But I cannot believe it. They say that Dorothea is here too. H – has been in great force. He is unwell now, but looks forward to M – 's arrival to-day, declaring, with accurate self-knowledge, that he likes nothing so much as an impostor.

He has given me Bradley's Recollections to read, from which I learned very little, and Stephen's very curious history of our criminal law.

Oscar Browning is here, divided between the French Revolution and the Gracchi – the most interesting of all purely secular topics.

La Madeleine March 31, 1883

The Wickhams are most inaccessible people, only to be seen on the road to Gourdon or St. Cézaire. I have had only a glimpse of them; but we hope to overtake them between Château Scott and S. Paul's on Sunday. They have some wild scheme of visiting Languedoc.

Cross told me that he had asked for some criticisms of mine which you told him of. I answered that I did not believe you would send them, and he said that if you did, he would forward them unread. But I am sure there is nothing of any possible use to him. He is very communicative, and I am to see her letters and to advise as to publication. What I have seen is of such a kind that merely strung together with a few short notes, it would make a very interesting book: "Memorials of George Eliot."

The real answer to your remark[201] about that list[202] is that which Johnson gave about fetlock.[203] I have nothing to say about physical science that is not a reminiscence of conversations with Owen or Hooker, Paget or Tyndall; and it would be important to put down all the decisive works in those branches. I have tried to know the books on the history and method of discovery, the laws of scientific progress, and the tests of truth and error; and I find that this is a matter which very few scientific men take any interest in.

If I must defend my list, this is the sort of sophism I would employ: —

We all know some twenty or thirty predominant currents of thought or attitudes of mind, or system-bearing principles, which jointly or severally weave the web of human history and constitute the civilised opinion of the age. All these, I imagine, a serious man ought to understand, in whatever strength or weakness they possess, in their causes and effects, and in their relations to each other. The majority of them are either religious or substitutes for religion. For instance, Lutheran, Puritan, Anglican, Ultramontane, Socinian, Congregational, Mystic, Rationalist, Utilitarian, Pantheist, Positivist, Pessimist, Materialist, and so on. All understanding of history depends on one's understanding the forces that make it, of which religious forces are the most active, and the most definite. We cannot follow all the variations of a human mind, but when we know the religious motive, that the man was an Anabaptist, an Arminian, a Deist or a Jansenist, we have the master key, we stand on known ground, we are working a sum that has been, at least partially, worked out for us, we follow a computed course, and get rid of guesses and accidents. Thirdly (I am thinking, let us say, of my own son), we are not considering what will suit an untutored savage or an illiterate peasant woman who would never come to an end of the Imitation or the Serious Call. Her religion may be enough for heaven, without other study. Not so with a man living in the world, in constant friction with adversaries, in constant contemplation of religious changes, sensible of the power which is exerted by strange doctrines over minds more perfect, characters that are stronger, lives that are purer than his own. He is bound to know the reason why. First, because, if he does not, his faith runs a risk of sudden ruin. Secondly, for a reason which I cannot explain without saying what you may think bad psychology or bad dogma – I think that faith implies sincerity, that it is a gift that does not dwell in dishonest minds. To be sincere a man must battle with the causes of error that beset every mind. He must pour constant streams of electric light into the deep recesses where prejudice dwells, and passion, hasty judgments and wilful blindness deem themselves unseen. He must continually grub up the stumps planted by all manner of unrevised influence. The subtlest of all such influences is not family, or college, or country, or class, or party, but religious antagonism. There is much more danger for a high-principled man of doing injustice to the adherent of false doctrine, of judging with undeserved sympathy the conspicuous adherent of true doctrine, than of hating a Frenchman or loving a member of Brooks's. Many a man who thinks the one disgraceful is ready to think the other more than blameless. To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history, the chief business of every life, and the first agent therein is religion or what resembles religion. That is my sophism, beyond Dr. Johnson. But I think I represent Anglicanism by only one book, or two at most. Others, such as books on Church and State, cover much secular ground. Luckily, the paper limit stops me in the middle of a long prose.

*****

Hotel Klinger Marienbad Sept. 1, 1883

… Here, at last, I am resting from hard times at Marienbad, where the waters get into one's head, as my letter will probably show. You insist on my recording everything on which you will disagree, so I must say that I should have voted more in royal than episcopal company.[204] In our Church and in the countries I have lived in much, one is so accustomed to those marriages that one does not think of a law to prevent them. Then as to Egypt, I was not orthodox as to the policy of the argument in favour of Lesseps, but vehemently comforted by the line taken, to make no sordid profit out of our military position, and to resist every entanglement that would indefinitely prolong the occupation. When I consider that our presence there should be the pivot for the settlement of the Eastern question, and the means of civilising Africa, I can see so much to dazzle ambitious politicians that I fear no Minister but one will ever be strong enough – in ascendency as well as in moral power – to evacuate, and I complacently take note of that additional steam to my propeller, whenever the question of retirement stirs again; and my third heresy is about the Pope. His declaration was concerted, I suppose, to hit some of the clergy between wind and water, and so had a political, not a moral aim. We may get embarrassed if we prompt and promote the political influence of the Pope, whose principles are necessarily, whose interests are generally, opposed to our own. It is as dangerous for us that his political authority should be obeyed in Irish confessionals as that, in this instance, it should be defied. Having morally supported the movement which upset his sovereignty, being prepared to oppose any movement to restore it, we come with a bad grace to ask him to prop and protect our authority in our dominions. Long ago I remember writing to headquarters that it would become impossible – impossible for Liberals – to govern Ireland after the Council; and although I am avowedly the worst of prophets, this prophecy has had a good deal of confirmation. It was an interesting question whether the Pope would definitely and unconditionally condemn murder, whether from religious or political motives. It would have borne untold consequences, as a direct revocation of the Vatican system, which stands or falls with the doctrine that one may murder a Protestant. But I don't believe that so audacious a change of front would have moved a single priest in Ireland.

Of George,[205] in the sixpenny edition, I had a glimpse at Cannes. The better part of him, with more moderation and philosophy, and a wider induction, may be found in the writings of the academic Socialists, who, in the last ten years, have occupied almost all the Chairs of Germany, and who have been the warmest admirers of the Irish policy.

One can hardly congratulate you … about St. Peter's.[206] At Montreux I met a newly-married young clergyman whose ugliness almost made me take him for – , and who assured me that it was offered to Holland. The dean of St. Paul's[207] was at Munich the other day, and delighted Döllinger, who believes, in consequence, that a more mischievous fellow than Chamberlain does not eat bread. He also sent him, and enabled me to read, Mozley's washy "Recollections." Liddon, I see, is busy with Rosmini, in the intervals of Pusey.[208] Rosmini will interest you if the book ripens. He had much of Newman, and nearly reformed the papacy. But I am troubled with a doubt. His book was answered, by Passaglia, Thenier, Curci, and others, and it was condemned by the Index. Rosmini wrote a long and curious defence of it, which he printed, but did not publish, so as not to defy his censors. Liddon ought to have this defence before him, to strengthen his text withal. Perhaps Lockhart, and the other English Rosminians, may scruple to give it to him, lest they break the measured silence of their chief. It may be worth while to ask the eloquent and impulsive Canon, whenever you see him, whether he knows of it. Do let me thank you warmly for speaking of me to Mrs. Craven. She was almost my earliest friend, and I am shocked to think that I seemed unfaithful to memories forty years old. She was intimate with my mother before I was born. What does it matter that she also bores me a good deal by her restlessness, her curiosity and indiscretion, her want of serenity, &c.? I always liked her in spite of it, and she was always a great, but uncomfortable, admirer of Mr. Gladstone. Not so Waddington. You must have seen at once that he is a very estimable, solid, deeply religious man. There is hardly so great a scholar in France, and I think he is the only Frenchman before whom Mommsen has retracted a statement. That indeed is his proper line. Like George Lewis, he is really happiest among his coins and inscriptions, and was never made for the active life in which his high character, his knowledge, and now his willingness to serve a party not his own, have carried him so far. He has more caution than go, and has neither eloquence, nor influence over men. Above all things, he is cautious to do nothing that would enable adversaries to accuse his patriotism. His language about Egypt, and the future of France in the East, would seem exaggerated, but I dare say you have read "Memories of Old Friends," a book meant for invalids at Bohemian wells, and curiously displaying English minds as they were about 1840. In the second edition Mill's letters are appended, in one of which he describes Tocqueville's opinion that one must not lower national pride, "almost the only elevated sentiment that remains in considerable strength." Waddington might adopt those words with even greater justice now. He once befriended me, so that I am bound to speak up for him. We had met but once, at the Embassy, when he asked me to dinner, and arranged that I should meet, besides Lyons, Wimpfen and Hohenlohe, whom he knew to be old friends of mine, Louis Arco, and the three most learned men in Paris, and then he gave me his box at the Français. But whilst I testify what a good fellow he is, it is necessary, highly necessary, to add that he is not a friend of Mr. Gladstone. That class of scholars to which he belongs, men busy with inscriptions, ruins, medals, vases, contriving thereby to amend a text or fix a date, inevitably resent the spirit in which Mr. Gladstone studies antiquity, carrying with him emotions and ideals derived from elsewhere, and considerably disturbing accepted habits and conclusions. Then it is very hard for an extra patriotic Frenchman to see with patience a powerful government that does not always use its strength, that accepts rebuke and repulse, and is ready to draw in the outposts of the empire. Whatever the true cause, I am pretty sure of the fact that he will come to Hawarden, like Ruskin, curious to probe the great Gladstonian mystery, not favourably prepossessed. I hope you will have him soon, and deal justly with him.

When you sit down to Macaulay, remember that the Essays are really flashy and superficial. He was not above par in literary criticism; his Indian articles will not hold water; and his two most famous reviews, on Bacon and Ranke, show his incompetence. The essays are only pleasant reading, and a key to half the prejudices of our age. It is the History (with one or two speeches) that is wonderful. He knew nothing respectably before the seventeenth century, he knew nothing of foreign history, of religion, philosophy, science, or art. His account of debates has been thrown into the shade by Ranke, his account of diplomatic affairs, by Klopp. He is, I am persuaded, grossly, basely unfair. Read him therefore to find out how it comes that the most unsympathetic of critics can think him very nearly the greatest of English writers.