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LIFE

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HENRY FAWCETT

BY

LESLIE STEPHEN

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LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE

1885

[All rights reserveil}

PEEFACE.

Not long after Fawcett's death, his widow requested me to write a memoir of her husband. She added that the remaining members of his family concurred in the request. I, of course, could not hesitate to accept the task, though fully sensible of the responsibility as well as of the honour. I was qualified for the duty in this respect, that Fawcett had been for thirty years one of my most intimate and valued friends. It would be strange if, during that period, I had not learnt to understand one of the siiQplest and most transparent of men. Our mutual regard never cooled ; it rather grew warmer ; but after the first ten years our intercourse had ceased to be so frequent as before. I had not followed with any minute attention the details of his political career, and I could therefore not have hoped to put together a satis- factory narrative, had I not counted upon the help of better informed persons. Any shortcomings in the fol- lowing pages must, however, be due to faults of my own ; for I have had most generous assistance, which it is now a pleasure and a duty to acknowledge in detail.

Mrs. Fawcett has done everything in her power. She has placed at my disposal all the letters and other documents in her possession which can throw any light

VI PREFACE

upon the facts. She has also been kind enough to read each portion of the work as it was written ; and she has made numerous suggestions of the greatest value. I will add that, although she has helped me at every point, and has often modified my opinions and cleared up difficulties, she has not in any way placed me under restraint. I have said nothing which does not appear to me to be strictly true, and I have concealed nothing which, in my judgment, can be revealed without breach of confidence.

I must, in the next place, offer my grateful thanks to my friend's sister. Miss Fawcett. Miss Fawcett has communicated to me many recollections of her own and of her parents. She had made a practice, from the beginning of her brother's career, of preserving reports of his speeches, and newspaper articles referring to him. She kindly entrusted these collections to me, and I have found them exceedingly serviceable.

I have also to thank Mr. Dryhurst, who was Fawcett's private secretary from 1 87 1 , and was treated by him as a confidential friend. Mr. Dryhurst has been most zealous in helping me, both b}^ communicating his own recollections and by collecting and arranging statements of fact. My readers have also to thank him for the index, which he has been good enough to prepare.

Another old friend of Fawcett's, Mr. K. Hunter, now Solicitor to the Post-Office, has placed me under an obligation, the full extent of which I find a difficulty to acknowledge adequately. I cannot quite say that the chap- ter upon Commons Preservation is his instead of mine, for the actual words are my own, and I am entirely

PEEFACE vii

and solely responsible for every opinion expressed. But he provided, if I may say so, the whole stamina of the chapter, and he in conjunction with Mr. Dryhurst helped me equally in my account of the Post-Office. But for his assistance I should not only have had much addi- tional labour, but should have been forced to be content with a far more incomplete account of the facts.

Two old college friends of Fawcett's have been es- pecially helpful. Mr. C. B.Clarke, now of the Education Department in India, was the most intimate of all Fawcett's friends in college days ; and his recollections of Fawcett down to the end of 1865, when they were separated by Clarke's departure for India, have been very useful. Mr. W. A. Porter, formerly a fellow of Peterhouse and since of the Indian Education Depart- ment, has given me some recollections and made some valuable suggestions in regard to the chapter upon India.

I must also thank the following, who have helped me in regard to various details : Mr. Willmore, now President of Queenwood College, and Messrs. J. Mansergh, William Milne, and H. P. Blackmore, schoolfellows of Fawcett at the same college ; Sir John Lambert, Mr. A. T. Squarey of Liverpool, Mrs. Hodding and Dr. Roberts of Salisbury, old family friends; Mr. Wright of Salisbury and Mr. Wheaton, now of St. Bartholomew's Hospital ; Mr. W. H. Hall, of Six Mile Bottom ; Sir John Pope Hennessy ; Mr. Hawke, of Liskeard; the Rev. F. L. Hopkins and Mr. Dale, Fellows of Trinity Hall ; Mr. Sedley Taylor, Fellow of Trinity College ; Dr. Besant, formerly Fellow of St. John's ; Prof. Wolsteuholme, of Cooper's Hill

VU PEEFACE

College ; Mr. Alexander Macmillan, the publisher ; Mr. Halpm, of the Hospital Saturday Fund, formerly resident in Southwark ; Messrs. Willett, Merrifield, and Botting, of Brighton ; Mr. Fitch, of the Education Department, who has helped me very kindly in regard to Fawcett's part in school legislation ; Sir Charles W. Dilke, Mr. Mundella, Mr. Leonard Courtney, Mr. Shaw Lefevre, and Mr. John Morley ; Mr. G. A. Critchett and Dr. Latham, of Cambridge. Finally, I must thank the Eev. J. C. Egerton, vicar of Burwash, Sussex; Mrs. Hodding, of Salisbury; Mrs. Hertz, Mr. F. Darwin, and Mrs. Cairnes, widow of the late Professor Cairnes, for communicating or allowing me to use various letters. No approval could be so welcome as the opinion of these and others of Fawcett's friends that I have not been an inadequate representative of the sentiments common to us all.

The portraits in this volume are from photogi*aphs, one taken a year or so before his accident, the other, by Messrs. Bassano, in the last year of his life. I may mention that M. Kicheton has prepared, and is, I understand, about to publish an etching which repre- sents with remarkable fidelity Fawcett's expression in later years. The only portraits taken during life were one by Mr. Ford Madox Browne, now in possession of Sir Charles Dilke (this picture includes a portrait of Mrs. Fawcett) ; and a chalk-drawing and two oil-paint- ings by Mr. Harold Bathbone, executed in 1884. A bust was taken during life by Mr. Pinker, who exhibited a later bust at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1885.

Leslie Stephen.

London: November 1885.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTEE PAGE I. EARLY LIFE 1

II. BLINDNESS 43

III. CAMBRIDGE 73

IV. POLITICAL ECONOMY 134

V. EARLY POLITICAL LIFE 182

VI. MEMBER FOR BRIGHTON 218

VII. COMMONS PRESERVATION 291

VUI. INDIA 341

THE POST-OFFICE 402

X. CONCLUSION 449

/:x.

APPENDIX 469

INDEX 473

LIFE

OP

HENEY FAWCETT.

CHAPTEK I.

EARLY LIFE.

Henry Fawcett was born at Salisbury on August 26, 1833. His father, William Fawcett, born at Kirkby Lonsdale, Westmoreland, on March 31, 1793, had left his native place for London about 18 12. He was in one of the crowds which welcomed the allied sovereigns in 1 8 14, and there achieved the honour of shaking hands with Bliicher. In April 181 5 he moved to Salisbury, and soon afterwards turned to account the remarkable clearness and power of his voice by springing upon a coach to read out the news of the battle of Waterloo. At Salisbury, which he has never quitted, he was first employed in the shop of Mr. Pinckney, a leading draper, who treated him with great kindness. Upon Mr. Pinckney 's retirement in 1825, Mr. Fawcett set up in business for himself, opening a draper's shop in the market-place. On April 25, 1827, lie married Mary

2 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

Cooper (born 1804), daughter of a solicitor who was agent for the Liberal party in the town. His other chil- dren, William, Sarah Maria, and Thomas Cooper, were born in 1828, 1830, and 1839. Mr. Fawcett prospered in business, and in the year of the Eeform Bill (1832) was Mayor of Salisbury. His election by a close corpor- ation, the majority of which belonged to the opposite political party, was a remarkable proof of a popularity acquired by various qualities,

Mr. Fawcett was a man of great athletic vigour, though throughout a long life he has never enjoyed very robust health. In the North he had practised jumping, then a popular amusement in the schools, and had in particular a surprising power of leaping from great heights. The place is still shown where he astonished his southern companions by leaping from the second ring at Old Sarum — a height of thirty feet. He was a keen sportsman, a good shot, and a first-rate fisherman in a district where the clearness of the chalk streams raises the sport to the level of a fine art. He was thoroughly sociable : he laid in a good cellar of wine and played a good rubber of whist. These tastes were trans- mitted to his son, who inherited other and higher qualities. The son strikingly resembled the father (as Sir John Lambert, an old friend of both, has remarked to me) in perseverance, manly straightforwardness, and in a warmth of friendship specially shown to those who, from sickness or distress, were most in need of it. ]Ienry was strongly influenced by the pohtical views of both his parents. For Mrs. Fawcett, like her husband, was an ardent reformer. She took a keen interest in

EARLY LII^'E 3

politics, and her son not only inherited her strong common sense but, doubtless, received an early intel- lectual bent from the combination of paternal and maternal influence. Mr. W. Fawcett was active in all electioneering matters. He was a remarkably good speaker — a better orator, as I have been told, than his son ; more skilful in modulating his voice, and more felicitous in finding apt expressions on the spur of the moment. He was generally put forward as proposer or seconder of the Liberal candidate. Until quite recently he attended political meetings, especially some held in support of his son, and showed that age had not de- stroyed oratorical powers manifested long before. He presided at a great dinner held in the market-place at Salisbury on June 27, 1832, to celebrate the passing of the Keform Bill. Processions with banners, decorations of houses, illuminations representing Minerva, Mercury, Victory, and Britannia trampling on the hydra of cor- ruption, whilst Sir Eobert Peel and the Duke of Wellington uttered appropriate maledictions in the background, had testified on the previous day to the exultation of Salisbury ; sheep were roasted whole in the streets, and meat and beer distributed to the poor. An old inhabitant (Mr. T. H. Hay ward) wrote to Henry Fawcett fifty years later to give his recollections of the day, which was wound up by a ball, in which the mayor ' led off the merry dance with an elderly lady in the Green Croft cricket-ground.' Liberalism, when not quenched by the shadow of a cathedral, burns there perhaps with an intonser flame. In spite of the burst of enthusiasm evoked by the advent of the millennium hi 1832, years were to come in which

B 2

4 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

Mr. Fawcett's zeal was to encounter plenty of opposition. The upper ranks of society in and round Salisbury, the clergy and country gentlemen, were nearly to a man staunch Tories and Protectionists. An almost solitary exception was the Earl of Radnor, of Longford Castle, close to Salisbury. Lord Eadnor's political activity brought him into connection with Mr. Fawcett, to whom, in 1841, he gave a lease of the home farm of Longford. The comfortable farmhouse lies about three miles to the south of Salisbury, where the valley of the Avon is entered by the smaller valley of the Chalke, coming down from the west. Mr. Fawcett was on the pleasantest terms with his landlord. His eldest son, William, and a bailiff generally occupied the farmhouse, until 185 1, when Mr. Fawcett settled there himself for seme years. Mr. Fawcett thus became that rare pheno- menon— an anti-Protectionist farmer. In the year 1843, Messrs. Cobden, Bright, and Moore visited Salisbury to carry the agitation for free trade into the heart of the enemy's country. After their meetings, they used to sup alternately with Mr. Fawcett and with Mr, Squarey, another leading Liberal, and some knowledge of what was going on doubtless reached the little Harry (the name by which he always went in his family), whose ears were already open to the talk of his elders.

The influences which surrounded Fawcett's infancy have been thus sufficiently indicated. A boy brought up at Salisbury might well have been impressed by some of the many historical traditions of the district. An anti(inarian, a High-Churchman, or a Tory might derive iniiple nourishment for his cbaracteristic prepossessions

EAELY LIFE 5

in the neighbourhood. Fawcett's family associations impressed upon him from the first a different set of convictions. To trace the influences of his ' environ- ment ' we must not turn to the m^^sterious antiquity of Stonehenge, or the aristocratic splendour of Wilton, or the almost unrivalled symmetry of the most perfect of English cathedrals. It will he more to the purpose to open Cobbett's * Kural Fades,' a book in which Fawcett took great pleasure in later days. In August 1826 that sturdy demagogue, who was not only a master of ver- nacular English, but, in spite of all errors, had a keen eye for rustic beauty and a genuine interest in the rustic population, came riding down the valley of the Avon from Milston (xYddison's birthplace) to Salisbury, moral- ising after his fashion.

He was in ecstasies at the beauty of the scenery — the steep chalk downs standing out into the valley like piers into the sea ; the sheltered bottoms below ; each farm with its portion of down, arable, and water meadow; its orchards and clumps of noble elms; and the rich harvests which had been gathered into the great farmyards. ' This is certainly,' he exclaims, * the most delightful farming on earth.' But then he asks, what of the people who produce the food ? Each family, he calculates, raises enough to support five families, and yet those who do the work are half- starved. They get at the outside about gn. a week. Whence is help to come ? He rages as he goes ; he curses ' the monster Malthus;' he declares, after computing the number of churches and manor-houses, that the inhabitants arc fewer than of old— spite of the twaddle of * beastly

6 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

Scotch feelosophers,' and the fellows that call themselves country gentlemen, who prate of over-population. It is ' the worst-used labouring people upon the face of the earth ; ' and somehow or other the mischief is caused, he thinks, by the taxes and paper-money, w4iich drain the population away to the *Wen' (London, to wit). A cure, however, may be hoped. As he rides he comes to the ' accursed Hill ' of Old Sarum. He meets a man going home from work, who says that the times are bad. ' " What times?'' said I; ''was there ever a finer summer, a finer harvest ; and is there not an old wheat-rick in every farmyard ? " " Ah," said he, " they make it bad for poor people for all that." " They 7 " said I, " who is they ? " He was silent. " Oh, no, no ! my friend," said I, " it is not they : it is that accursed Hill that has robbed you of the supper that you ought to find smoking on the table when you get home." I gave him the price of a pot of beer and on I went, leaving the poor dejected assemblage of skin and bones to wonder at my word.'

The 'accursed Hill' was stormed in 1832; but Cobbett's question, * Who is tJiey ? ' might still be asked ; and Fawcett, who in his childhood saw the same scenes as Cobbett, and may have talked to the same dejected peasant, learnt very early to take a keen interest in a problem still unsolved. For the j^^'C'sent it hardly weighed upon his mind. As a child he was not preco- cious, at any rate at his lessons. His first teacher, Mrs. Harris, mistress of a dame-school in Salisbury, said that she had never had so troublesome a pupil. His bead was like a cullender. ' Mrs. Harris says tliat if we go on we shall kill her,' was Master Harry's version of the

EARLY LIFE 7

case to bis mother ; 'and we do go on,' he added wist- fully, ' and yet she does not die ! ' The boy, it seems, preferred the streets to the schoolroom for a study. His bouse opened upon the market-place and was just opposite the hustings. There he found matters more attractive than the ABC. His father's patience was often tried by the ceaseless string of questions prompted by his early curiosity. What is the price of cheese or of bacon ? What was it yesterday and what will it be to- morrow, and why ? This eager curiosity was doubtless a proof, though at the moment not the most acceptable proof, of intellectual activity, and took a form oddly characteristic of the future economist. About 1841 Fawcett was sent to his next schoolmaster, Mr. Sopp (at Alderbury, five miles from Salisbury, on the line to Eomse}^). Family traditions seem to imply that he had been petted at home, and resented a little his first entrance into a larger circle. He used to tell how he once demanded at dinner ' more meat, well done, no fat, and plenty of gravy.' The schoolmaster seems to have responded more generously than might have been ex- pected, and made his pupil comfortable enough. Frag- ments of letters of somewhat doubtful authenticity (they depend upon oral and not quite consistent tra- dition) are recalled to show a certain recalcitrance. * I have begun Ovid : I hate it,' is one such passage ; and another, * This is a beastly school — milk and water, no milk ; bread and butter, no butter. Please give a quarter's notice.' But this apparently represents the first plunge into school life ; his family agree that he was really well treated, and evidence to the same effect

8 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

appears a short time later in a quaint contemporary document.

Before lie left Mr. Sopp's school, Fawcett had been seized by the normal attack of diary-writing. A little pocket-book contains the records of his childish expe- riences during September and October 1846, and from March to October 1847. The handwriting is excellent, the contents fragmentary. Frequently the young author is forced to condescend to bare meteorology : ' It was a very fine day,' is often the sole entry. We gather, how- ever, that he often goes home for a half-holiday, and has a full share of the true delights of a country-bred lad. Fishing, his life-long recreation, comes in for frequent mention : on June 21, 1847, he has the pleasure of recording the capture of the first fish he ever took with a fly, ' an Humber ' {i.e. grayling) ' of about | lb.' He receives a present of a hedgehog with four young ones ; he sees a party rabbit-shooting ; he pays a visit to the Isle of Wight and goes on board H.M.S. Howe of 120 guns. He goes once to the theatre and once or twice gets into court at sessions and hears ' Mr. New's girl tried.' He begins Greek on September 1 6, 1 846 ; which day had also its compensations, for ' Trollope had a cake come.' On July 3, 1847, he notes the state of the poll at the Salis- bury election, but refrains from any comment indicative of his own views. On October 3 following we read with a sympathetic twinge that he had a new tooth extracted with * the corkscrew instrument — it hurt very much indeed ! ' The later part of the journal records an important change in his Hfe. On August 3, 1847, he enters Queenwood College. The house at Queenwood had been built in

EARLY LIFE 9

1 84 1 by the famous Eobert Owen for his last sociaKstic experiment, and was then called ' Harmony Hall.' In 1 847 it had been opened as a school and agricultural college by Mr. Edmonson, Fawcett being the first pupil to arrive on the opening day. Mr. Edmonson was an enthusiastic educationalist. He had previously kept a school in Lancashire, and upon starting at Queenwood he engaged several of the assistants of Fellenberg, whose establish- ment at Hofwyl had just been broken up. Mr. Edmon- son tried to carry into practice some ideas not familiar in England. The course included a good scientific training, and much attention was paid to English litera- ture. At Mr. Sopp's, as we have seen, Fawcett had begun Greek; he had also practised writing letters to his sister in French ; and he had acquired some know- ledge of shorthand (on Pitman's system). He had not gone far in the usual line of an English classical educa- tion, for w^hich he never showed any aptitude. But his intellectual powers were rapidly developing. On Saturday, August 14, the diarist tells us, ' we fixed the election for various officers on the following Wednesday.' On the 1 8th he says, * We elected the various college officers : J. Mansergh and I were elected without opposi- tion editors of the " Queenwood Chronicle." ' This choice, within a fortnight of his arrival, seems to prove that he must have speedily impressed his fellows with his literary propensities. His father promises (August 29) to take him to Stonehenge upon hearing that he had been elected to this office, and also that he had been ' studying most determinedly.' One of Mr. Edmonson's educational schemes was the issue of a juvenile paper. I have seen

10 LIFE OF HEXRY FAWCETT

some copies of the ' Queenwood Eeporter ' (apparently a continuation of the ' Chronicle,' but edited by the school authorities). It contains some articles signed * H. F.' One or two are solutions of elementary mathematical problems. Another, upon * The End of the Half- Year,' at Christmas 1848, contains a reference to the death of a schoolfellow creditable to the writer's feelings. Another (without signature) is a description of a visit to London, and is continued through two numbers — August and October 1848. The original manuscript is still pre- served.

The diary gives us sufficient proofs of Fawcett's interest in his lessons. On August 21, we are told, * Mr. ^ Tindal, the surveyor, came.' Afterwards we find that Mr. Tyndall (whose name is now spelt in the fashion known to all the world as that adopted by the person indicated, now Professor Tyndall) takes the boys out survejdng and lectures them ' on the skin.' Fawcett renewed his ac- quaintance with Professor Tyndall in after years. One of his colleagues was Dr. Frankland, now professor at the School of Mines, who lectured upon botany and chemistry. Fawcett was interested in the scientific lectures. Mr. Edmonson, he tells us, lectured on fire, and the learner notes that * there is fire in almost everything, even in ice.' He works in the laboratory, and on October 5 ' finishes his first substance in the laboratory ; it was some bi- chromate of lead or chrome yellow.' His English composi- tions are also noticed. On September 8 he notes, * I began writing my lecture on phonography, on the uses of steam ' (some slip of the pen seems to have run two lectures into one), 'without copying any of it.' A fragment

EAKLY LIFE 11

of the lecture on phonography is still extant, which, after stating that out of 50,000 words in the language only fifty are written as they are pronounced, goes off into a eulogy of Mr. Pitman's system of shorthand, and is followed by several pages written apparently in that character. The lecture on the uses of steam had more important results. On September 16 he acknowledges the receipt from his sister of some mining journals, a paragraph of which is required for his lecture. The lecture fully written out is described as ' delivered by H. Fawcett at Queenw^ood College, September 27, 1847.' On October 2 he goes home and reads the lecture to the family party. They were ' all much pleased with it,' and 'papa promised to give me a sovereign for it.' It was, as Miss Fawcett tells me, the first thing which convinced the father that there was really ' something in the boy.' The lecture is, in fact, a very promising performance for a boy of fourteen. There are abundant traces of the future economist. The lecturer gives a great many statistics as to the cost of construction of railways, the number of passengers and so forth ; for some part of which he was doubtless in- debted to the mining journals. He explains with perfect clearness the advantages to the Wiltshu^e farmer and the London consumer of a cheap transport of cheese. It is evident that his mind was already running upon the same topics which interested him in later life, and had the same tendency to reason upon the facts of daily observa- tion. In another direction the essay shows a tendency which afterwards diminished. It is highly rhetorical. He begins with an edifying passage upon final causes and

12 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

the great Power which amongst other things has pro- vided steam for human use ; he becomes florid in dwelling upon the wonders of modern civilisation and the glories of the nation which has produced Watt and Shakespeare ; and he winds up with some * striking verses,' called the ' Song of Steam,' extracted from an American paper.

An exuberance of high-flown language, if not a merit, is at least a very venial fault at fourteen. Fawcett's flow of language at this time indicates very considerable intellectual energy. Other more or less fragmentary essays survive. There is a long one upon 'Keflection,' dated May 19, 1848, enlarging upon the difference between man and brute ; another (title and beginning lost) which points out that statesmen depend upon their brains, and then passes into a long eulogy upon phrenology ; there is a short paper called ' A Visit to Netley Abbey ; ' and another described as * Eeflections upon a First Visit to London,' published, as we have seen, in the ' Keporter ' ; and some fragments upon * Satire,' * Angling and Izaak Walton,' and one upon Ireland.

A sufficient specimen of this boyish rhetoric may be taken from the essay called * Eeflection.' Inventions of all kinds, as the essayist remarks, are the fruit of reflection ; and he illustrates their value by an imaginary traveller. This person, after experiencing the benefits of bells, newspapers, and a ' buss ' (which knocks down two or three people, but has wheels so formed that ' they get up again quite uninjured ' — an invention of the future, apparently), gets into a railway, where the heating of a few gallons of water takes him at a rate of

EARLY LIFE 13

sixty miles an hour, now elevated at a fearful height, *and now in a dungeon far below the earth.' ' Unfortu- nately, as he is getting from the carriage he slips and his leg is very seriously injured, in two minutes after the accident is heard of in the town some hundreds of miles distant from where he had just come, it gets no better, soon he has to have it amputated, it is done, and under the most pleasant feelings possible he lays in an hotel, more like a palace, in fact, than anything else ; ' he goes in a steamship past Spain, where Fawcett moralises on the phenomena often noticed in his later studies of a people ' made poor by gold ; ' and so to Egypt, the ancient glories of which are enumerated, whilst we are told parenthetically to depend upon it that Mahomet was ' in many respects a worthy man ' (had Professor Tyndall been lecturing on Carlyle's ' Hero-worship ' ?) ; and finally reaches India, where a small body of men, ' occupying a house of no very considerable size in London, have, entirely from their enterprise and powers of mind, got possession of many thousand acres of land.' He winds up by quotations from Shakespeare (his ' Ode to Mercy ' — i.e. the passage in Portia's speech) and Cicero's Oration on Yerres, both of which, as he justly observes, show powers of reflection.

The quaint boyish declamation is already directed to subjects which occupied much of his later thought; the general line of remark being of course a version of many contemporary eulogies on progress, familar enough to the Piadicals of that day. Fawcett used to tell us how he had once ventured into poetry, the subject being a 'Prairie on Fire,' and the sole surviving fragment

/

14 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

describing the 'bisons in desjiair,' and stating that they ' tore their grizzly hair.' A letter to his father dated November 17, 1848, throws some light upon the in- fluences which presided over his early eloquence. He has been taking lessons in elocution ; he has * pro- nounced a very impassioned speech in presence of the whole school ' as composedly as if he had been repeating it to himself. Such composure, as he observes, is a desirable acqukement for one who wishes to speak well. He has learnt various famous passages from Shakespeare and Addison's ' Cato.' The elocution master certainly seems to have been consulted in the composition of the letter, which is full of moral reflections after the manner of Mr. Barlow. ' What talents will not do,' says the lad, after professing his own resolutions to be indus- trious, ' industry wdll. This was a maxim ever in the mind of Napoleon.' He observes in the same letter that Cambridge students are henceforth to know some- thing of political economy, history, and science, as well as classics and mathematics, and states that in a recent examination he has been first both in history and geography.

Fawcett, as his schoolfellows remember, was at this time tall for his age, loosely made, and rather ungainly. He preferred study to boyish sports, and, in spite of prohibitions, would desert the playground to steal into a copse with his books. He was best at mathematics, caring little for Latin and French. He learnt long passages by heart, and would wander in the fields repeating them aloud. In an old chalk-pit, which was a favourite greenroom, ho would gesticulate as he recited,

EARLY LIFE 15

till passing labourers had doubts as to his sanity. Even at this time, when the boys talked of their future lives, he always declared that he meant to be a member of Parliament — an avowal then received by ' roars of laughter.' The rather peculiar course of study cer- tainly seems to have been favourable to his development. On December 15, 1880, he presided at a dinner of old Queenwood scholars, and spoke cordially of the value of the training. He insisted especially upon the absence of injudicious forcing, and upon the charms of the free country life in a retired situation.

His Queenwood experience only lasted some eighteen months. He was sent to King's College School after the Christmas holidays, 1848-9. He was now shooting up rapidly to his great height, and had for the time outgrown his strength. It was thought desirable that he should Kve as near as might be to the school ; and after a short residence with Dr. Major, the head-master, he was therefore transferred to the house of a Mr. Fearon. Mr. Fearon, who was in some way connected with Fawcett's family, was for many years a chief office keeper in the Stamps and Taxes Department in Somerset House, and consequently had apartments there, in convenient proxi- mity to King's College. Fawcett's delicacy at this time was probably some hindrance to his studies. Mr. C. B. Clarke, who had been at school in Salisbury and knew his parents by sight, was also at King's College School at this time. He remembers Fawcett as ' a very tall boy, with pale whitey-brown hair, who always stood at the bottom of the lower sixth class.' The master of this class was Thomas Markby, a good scholar, who was

16 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

afterwards lecturer at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. A boy's position in the school was determined exclusively by his classical attainments. Fawcett's knowledge in that direction was scanty enough. Fawcett (as Mr. Clarke belieyes) distinctly refused to have anything to do with Beatson's * Iambics,' and was serenely indifferent to the petty distinctions between aorists, perfects, and so forth, which are not beneath the notice of Greek gram- marians. Markby had the good sense to excuse him from the hated verses, being satisfied that he was at work in other directions. Mr. Cunningham, secretary to King's College, kindly informs me that Fawcett gained the arithmetic prize in the Easter Term 1849; the * class w^ork ' prize in the Michaelmas Term 1 849 ; the first prize for German and the second for French in the same term (a fact which implies, I fear, that the contem- porary standard of foreign languages was not exalted) ; a prize for mathematics in the Lent Term, 1850; and the first prize for mathematics in the Michaelmas Term 1850. The mathematical master at that time (as Mr. Clarke tells me) was Mr. James Hann, a self-taught man who had begun life in a coal-mine, and retained the appearance of a miner. When once detected in a perusal of Horace, he apologised on the ground that, although Horace could not teach you to make a steam- engine, there was pretty reading in him when you were not in working humour. Hann was a shrewd observer. He recognised Fawcett's mathematical power and took him on from EucHd to the Integral Calcuhis — a range of reading then very unusual before entering the Uni- versity. I may add that in July 1849 his master,

EARLY LIFE 17

the Eev. J. Edwards, reports that Fawcett showed 'great power in writing English prose.' At Easter 185 1 Fawcett left the school and attended the mathematical and classical classes at the college until the summer of 1852. Here, for the first time, he became intimate with Mr. C. B. Clarke, who was attending the same mathe- matical lectures under Professors Hall and Goodeve. The friendship was destined to be lifelong. At this time Fawcett was the best mathematician of the two. It does not seem, how^ever, that he made any special mark at the college. He always attributed much influ- ence to his conversations with Mr. Fearon. I am told that he played cribbage unweariedly with Mrs. Fearon in order to have greater opportunities of hearing her husband talk. Mr. Fearon, as I learn from Sir John Lambert, was a keen politician, though not a highly educated man. He was a Unitarian in religion, a staunch Liberal in politics and creed, and especially a strong free-trader. Fawcett preserved a high respect for Fearon' s common sense, and in later days often recalled his ' quaint and forcible ' phrases in conversation with Sir J. Lambert. I have a faint recollection that Fawcett told me that he had even at this time found his way to the gallery of the House of Commons. He occasionally played cricket, though King's College had not the athletic advantages of some other schools, and he acquired some skill at billiards.

The then Dean of Salisbury, Dr. Hamilton, was con- sulted by Mr. Fawcett senior, who showed him some of the l)oy's mathematical papers. The dean said empha- tically that the lad ought to go to Cambridge. This

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18 LIFE OF HENEY FAWCETT

opinion fortunately decided the question. The expense was a matter of some importance, as Mr. Fawcett was not a rich man, and University education was not usual for a man of Fawcett's social position. The choice of a college was characteristic. Parents generally seem to consider that the choice of the place at which a young man is to be under the most decisive influences of his whole life is of so little importance that it may be decided by the most trivial circumstance. Boys themselves are more likely to think of the position of the college boat than of more serious merits. Fawcett, however, was already thoughtful enough to choose his college for more weighty reasons. He chose Peterhouse^ deliberately, on the ground that its Fellowships were supposed to be of more than the average value and were tenable by lay- men. He had already to some extent chalked out his future career ; though I am unable to say precisely at what period his mind had been made up.

I saw Fawcett for the first time a few months after his entrance (in October 1852). The circumstances imply that his appearance was then sufficiently striking. My memory is very irretentive of such matters in general ; but I could point to the precise spot on the bank of the Cam where I noticed a very tall, gaunt figm-e swinging along with huge strides upon the towing-path. He was over 6 feet 3 inches in height. His chest, I should say, was not very broad in proportion to his height, but he was remarkably large of bone and massive of limb. The face was impressive, though not hand-

' I cannot bring myself to the barbarism of ' St Peter's College,' under which the oldest college in the University has apparently tried to conceal its identity.

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EAELY LIFE 19

some. The skull was very large ; my own head vanished as into a cavern if I accidentally put on his hat. The forehead was lofty, though rather retreating, and the brow finely arched. The complexion was rather dull, but more than one of his early acquaintance speaks of the brightness of his eye and the keenness of his glance. The eyes were full and capable of vivid expression, though not, I think, brilliant in colour.^ The features were strong, and, though not delicately carved, were far from heavy, and gave a general impression of remarkable energy. The mouth, long, thin-lipped, and very flexible, had a characteristic nervous tremor as of one eager to speak and voluble of discourse. In after years, the expression rather suggested that his inability to see stimulated the desire to gain information through his other senses. A certain wistfulness was a frequent shade of expression. But a singularly hearty and cordial laugh constantly lighted up the whole face with an expression of most genial and infectious good-humour.

On my first glimpse of Fawcett, however, I was troubled by a question of classification. I vaguely specu- lated as to whether he was an undergraduate, or a young farmer, or possibly somebody connected with horses at Newmarket come over to see the sights. He had a cer- tain rustic air, in strong contrast to that of the young Pendennises who might stroll along the bank to make a book upon the next boat-race. He rather resembled some of the athletic figures who may be seen at tlic side

' In the portrait from an early photograph engraved in this vohime, the rather peculiar expression of the eyes results, I think, from the weak- ^ z' ness of sight presently to be noticed, which made him shrink from any strong light.

c2

20 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

of a North-country ^Yrestling ring. Indeed, I fancy that Fawcett may have inherited from his father some of the characteristics of the true long-legged, long-limbed, Dandie-Dinmont type of North-countryman. The im- L pression was, no doubt, fixed in my mental camera because I was soon afterwards surprised by seeing my supposed rustic dining in our college hall.

I insist upon this because it may indicate Fawcett's superficial characteristics on his first appearance at Cambridge. Many qualities, which all his friends came to recognise sooner or later, were for the present either latent or, it may be, undeveloped. The first glance revealed the stalwart, bucolic figure, with features stamped by intelligence, but that kind of intelligence which we should rather call shrewdness than b}^ any higher name. The earliest anecdote of his college days is significant of the impressions which he made. There was at Peterhouse a youth nicknamed the ' Captain ' — apparently by way of tribute to his sporting tendencies. The Captain saw first in Fawcett only the country bump- kin, and challenged him to a game at quoits. Fawcett could beat most Salisbury lads at this, which was a Salisbury game, and made short work of his antagonist. The Captain then proposed the more refined game of billiards. They i^layed a single game of loo. After a time the Captain had scored ninety-six to Fawcett's seventy-five. Fawcett was to play, and the spectators taunted him with oft'crs of ten to one on his opponent. Fawcett accepted all bets offered at this, and then at lower rates. He then played, and made the necessary twenty-five in a single break. ' The bets,' he said to

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EARLY LIFE 21

Clarke, ' were forced on me ; but the odds were really more than ten to one agamst my makmg twenty-five in any position of the balls, though I saw a stroke which I knew that I could make and which would leave me with a fine game.' Clarke thinks that Fawcett was in his first week of residence. He won what seemed a large sum to undergraduates and obtained a reputation for shrewd- ness which earned for him for a short time the nickname of the ' Old Serpent.' One of Fawcett's intimates tried to repeat his success, and challenged the Captain to a game of chess. The Captain, however, was no fool, and won his game triumphantly.

Fawcett's remarkable nerve and powers of rapid cal- culation would have made him a formidable antagonist in such games of skill. But he never condescended to gambling. He was a good whist-player, but he gave up billiards, and when some of his college acquaintance fell into a foolish practice of playing for more than they could afford, he did what he could to discourage them, and spoke of their folly with hearty contempt. He had, in truth, too much sense and self-command — to say nothing of higher motives — to fall into errors of this kind. I may add here — and the testimony of a college contemporary before whom no reserve was necessary may Ije taken as sufficient — that as a young man he was free from errors too common in the undergraduate world of those days. The moral standard of Cambridge was, in certain respects, far from elevated ; but Fawcett, though no ascetic or strait-laced Puritan, was in all senses perfectly l^lamelcss in his hfe.

Fawcett's friends soon came to vahic liiiii fur

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22 LIFE OF KEXRY FAWCETT

intellectual qualities displayed in a higher sphere than that of games. The strong, shrewd common sense of the man was the first quality to he recognised ; and upon that head there could he no mistake. The circle of friends to which he helonged was propitious to its early development and recognition. The years spent at the University, when the huoyancy of the schoolhoy hlends with the exulting sense of manly independence and the growing consciousness of power, are amongst the most delightful in the lives of most men, especially w^hen they have the good fortune to find congenial spirits. We can still form friendships with hoyish faci- lity, which are yet more than the mere comrade-ship of hoyish days. Of all men whom I have ever known, Fawcett most fully retained the power of forming new friendships till later years. Yet even he prohahly made more friendships at this than at a later period, and, what is more remarkahle, he never lost a friend once attracted. An undergraduate's ' set ' generally repre- sents the most important influences of his academical career. Half-a-dozen promising lads can do more to educate each other than all the tutors and professors can do for them. Fawcett's set included several men of distinguished ahility. Peterhouse was a small college, in which everyone could soon hecome known to everyone else. There he hecame acquainted with his seniors, Tait, Steele, Bouth, and W. I). Gardiner. His King's College connection hrought him into friendly relations, through his special intimate C. 13. Clarke, with Messrs. E. Wilson, lUghy (now Q.C.), Daniel Jones, and M. M. U.Wilkinson (now vicar of Beepham, Norfolk).

EARLY LIFE 23

These last formed a kind of inner circle. Clarke and Eigby were at Trinity and in Fawcett's own year. All the set were mathematicians and reading men. Some of them were musical, though Fawcett at this time took the unappreciative view of the difference between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. He was also pre-eminent for classical ignorance, and was often rallied by his friends for his literary deficiencies. Literature, indeed, was not the strong point of the set. They were typical Cambridge men : believers in hard facts and figures, admirers of strenuous common sense, and hearty despisers of sentimentalism. They seem to have carried on the tradition of the earlier set, described in Mill's ' Autobiography,' of which Charles Austin was the leader, who swore by Bentham and used the dyslogistic words, * sentimentalism,' * declamation,' and 'vague generalities,' as a kind of Shibboleth. The phrase current in Fawcett's set, by which a man was placed beyond the pale of serious notice, was ' gush.' ' Is he not a gusher ? ' meant ' Is he not a consummate imbecile ? ' The whole set, it must be remembered, were still in the semi-schoolboy stage, looking upon their studies as a clever schoolboy regards his lessons — chiefly as a providential machinery for prize-winning. They played whist and billiards and had constant social meetings, * wines,' and ' tea-fights,' nnd did not condescend (' muscular Christianity ' was hardly on foot) to take much part in athletic games. They had, however, genuine intellectual interests. At that period the more * sentimental ' youth learnt Tenny- son by heart, wept over ' Jane Eyre,' and was l)eginning to appreciate Browning. If more seriously disposed, he

V

24 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

read ' Sartor Eesartus ' and the ' French Revolution ' ; he followed the teachings of Maurice and had some leaning to ' Christian Socialism.' But the sterner utili- tarians looked to Mill as their great pro^Dhet. They repudiated Carlyle as reactionary, and set down Maurice as muddle-headed. The chief of Fawxett's set in these matters was Edward Wilson, three years his senior, who was eighth Wrangler in 1853, and whose place m the Tripos very inadequately rej^resented his real abilities. Wilson specially delighted in discussing political economy, and vindicating Mill. When an outsider joined the parties of the set, he was liable to be entrapped into an argument upon the theory of population or the wage- fund ; and Wilson, after tearing to pieces the fallacies of some ignoramus, would always add sententiousl}^, ' Read Mill ! read Mill ! ' Fawcett took the advice to heart.

Meanwhile he applied himself resolutely to mathe- matics. In his first year he read with Steele, and after- wards with W. Hopkins.^ Peterhouse had then a re- markable mathematical reputation. Mr. Fuller, now Professor of Mathematics at King's College, Aberdeen, had been fourth Wrangler in 1842; (the present Sir William) Thomson was second in 1 844 ; W. A. Porter, one of Fawxett's closest friends, was third in 1 849 ; James Porter, another close friend, now Master of Peter-

' There is an odd conflict of testimony on this point ; but I have little doubt that I am correct. The question is whether Fawcett was over a pupil of Mr. Ilouth's. Mr. Routh thinks that Fawcett did some papers for him ; and others have told me that Fawcett himself said the same thing. Rut I cannot reconcile the statement with undeniable dates.

EAELY LIFE 25

house, was eighth Wrangler in 185 1. In 1852 Tait, now the eminent professor at Edinburgh, was senior Wrangler, and Steele, Fawcett's hrst tutor, who died young, was second. In 1854 Mr. Eouth, the most eminent mathematical tutor at Cambridge for a great number of years, was again senior, and J. Clerk Max- well, the great physicist, who was second, had also been entered originally at Peterhouse. All these except the two first, who had left Cambridge, became friends of Fawcett. One of Fawcett's qualifications for making friendships was his utter incapacity for being awed by differences of position. He was as sensitive as anyone to the claims of intellectual excellence, but his freedom from affectation or false pretensions saved him from any awkward shyness. He was equally at his ease with an agricultural labourer, or a prime minister, or (what to me seemed more surprising) a senior Wrangler. To this day I do not realise — though on purely intellectual grounds I accept — the fact that even a senior W^r angler is made of flesh and blood. I cannot forget the surprise with which I once found Fawcett chatting on terms of perfect equality with the great Tait and Steele, then in all the glory of recent pre-eminence in the Tripos. Fawcett always took other people for what they were, and expected to be taken in the same way himself. He was capable, I think — and he was, I may say, the only man I have ever known capable — of joining cordially in a laugh at a false quantity made by himself ; not that he often ventured into the regions environed by such perils. He was no more ashamed of his deficiencies as a scholar than of the shape of his nose.

26 LIFE OF HEXRY FAWCETT

He thus became intimate with men apparelled in all the terrors of seniority and academic reputation. With none did he become more friendly than with Hopkins, an old Peterhouse man (B.A. 1827) then Esquire-Bedell, and for many years the leading mathematical ' coach ' at Cambridge. He always spoke of Hopkins with en- thusiasm. In 1880 Fawcett had some correspondence with the family about an intention of writing some account of his old tutor's work in the University (Hopkins had died in 1867). The intention fell through, probably on account of the pressure of official work, w^hich fully occupied Fawcett's energies. I can, however, say with certainty that he would have rejoiced to do justice to his teacher. Hopkins used to form a class of select pupils, admitting only those w4io in their first year had shown themselves to be qualified for a good place amongst the Wranglers. A w^eak point of the Cambridge system was the tendency of students to think too exclusively of winning marks in the Senate-house. Hopkins was con- spicuous for inculcating a more liberal view of the studies of the place. He endeavoured to stimulate a philoso- phical interest in the mathematical sciences instead of simply rousing an ardour for competition. Fawcett had no desire nor the necessary aptitude to be a mathe- matical specialist. He meant to win a Fellowship by examination ; and his success was to bo a stepping-stone to his future career. He used to say that he would rather be senior Wrangler in the worst year than second to a Sir Isaac Newton. No man was more fully awake to the tangi])le commercial utility of a good degree. But it was very characteristic that his robust common sense

EARLY LIFE 27

led him to aims which lay beyond the range of mere temporary expediency. He did not despise the pecuniary rewards of intellectual prowess, but he saw distinctly that it would be the reverse of sensible to win such rewards at the expense of his intellectual development. He read for honours and with a view to a Fellowship, but he worked in the spirit of the official Cambridge theor}', expounded in its best sense by Hopkins — that the true value of the mathematical training was its excellence as a branch of intellectual gymnastics. He formed what was (in my own opinion) an even excessive estimate of its merit, in this respect ; and in later life took more than one opportunity of saying that, although he had been forced by circumstances to drop his mathematics entii-ely, he did not regret a single hour spent in the study. Fawcett's keen appreciation of this advantage was doubt- less due in part to Hopkins's mode of treatment and the direct personal influence of his singalarty lofty character. In any case, he always regarded Hopkins as one of the best representatives of all that he most admired in his well-loved University. Another occupation was charac- teristic in the same sense. One day at the beginning of his third year (October 1854) Fawcett looked in at the Union, and was prompted to speak in the debate which was proceeding. He became from that time a regular debater. Many young men of ability have first tried their powers in that arena. Charles Austin, Macaulay, Monckton Milnes, and others had been famous orators in the early years of the century. Just before Fawcett's time Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Justice Stei^hen had been protagonists in many keenly contested debates.

28 LIFE OF HENEY FAWCETT

Since Fawcett's time many conspicuous orators from the Union have distinguished themselves in various pubHc careers ; yet there was a kind of tacit agreement amongst the undergraduates, who specially affect a stern contempt for all kinds of ostentatious display, to treat debates at the Union as legitimate matter for ridicule. The shame- / facedness of British youth is unfavourable to oratory. Perhaps success at the Union is a promising symptom just because it indicates superiority to this prevalent weakness. Fawcett, at any rate, the least shamefaced of men, perceived that common sense might recommend a practice ridiculed by sensible men. His friends mocked at his efforts and held aloof from the Union. He went steadily to work, and after some comparative failures became one of the most prominent orators. He not only spoke but sometimes carefully prepared his speeches. I find amongst his papers two rough drafts of speeches upon National Education and University Keform, upon both of which subjects he opened debates. He thus at any rate acquired the power which, as we have seen, he desiderated at Queenwood, of addressing an audience with perfect composure. Between November 1854 and the summer of 1856 (when he was a young B.A.) he made many speeches recorded in the Annals of the Union. The most conspicuous of his rivals were H. M. Butler (subsequently Head-master of Harrow, and now Dean of Gloucester), to whose remarkable j)owers as a youthful orator I can still bear witness, Mr. Vernon Lushington, Mr. W. C. Gully, Mr. A. G. Marten (all of them now Queen's Counsel), Mr. (now Sir) J. E. Gorst (now Solicitor-General), Mr. E. E. Bowen (now Master

EARLY LIFE 29

at Harrow), and Mr. W. T. Marriott (now Judge Advocate- General).

The main topic of the debates was provided by the Crimean War. Had the sovereigns of Austria and Prussia listened to Fawcett, Butler, and a great majority of the Union, they would have formed an alliance with England in November 1854. Fawcett, again in a majority, held that the character of the late Emperor Nicholas was not worthy of respect. In May 1855 he held with a small minority that the independence of Poland must be secured as a condition of a satisfactory peace. In October 1855 he objects to a Prussian alliance. In November he argues with Mr. Marriott and against Mr. Bowen that the time has not yet come for negotiating a peace. In the same month he defends the ' Times ' against Mr. Gorst, who maintains that its conduct has been un- patriotic. In February 1856 he objects to the Eussian proposals, which are approved by Messrs. Marriott, Bowen, and Butler. In March he holds that Lord John Eussell deserves the gratitude of his country, and in May 1856 that the annexation of Oude was justifiable.

Fawcett was clearly not at this time in sympathy with the party opposed to the war. His other speeches, however, show that he was already avowing the prin- ciples to which he adhered throughout his life. On December i, 1854, he brings forward a resolution in favour of an unsectarian system of National Education. In March 1855 he supports a motion for the abolition of purchase in the army; in May 1855 he holds (in a minority of four to twenty-two) that the ' party called the Cobdenites have done the country good service ; '

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30 LIFE OF HENKY FAWCETT

and in December 1855 he approves of a ^considerable extension of the franchise.' One motion brought forward by him on February 5, 1856, is worth giving, as it ex- presses an opinion upon which he w^as soon to take decided action. He moves, ' That it is highly desirable that the term of tenure of Fellowships should be limited ; that the restriction of celibacy should be abolished ; that all who have ever been Fellows should have equal claim with present Fellows to college livings, and should have a voice in the presentation to Church patronage.' His notes show that he elaborately argued for this resolution, of which he was the only supporter in the debate, and which was rejected by thirty-seven to sixteen. His chief ground of argument was the evil effect of celibacy and clerical restriction in lowering the character of Fellows. He said that many men of high power waited for college livings until they were fit for nothing better than making brilliant puns in combination rooms. His practice at the Union seems to have led Fawcett to overcome that boyish tendency to stilted rhetoric which appears so quaintly in his early essay. Perhaps the last trace of it was in a college essay (in 1854 or 1855) upon the merits of Pope's poetry, of which he has left a fair and a rough copy. It is not more and perhaps not less likely than more pretentious essays upon English men of letters to tln-ow new light upon. that venerable topic.

Fawxett when he joined the Union had been for more than a year a member of Trinity Hall. He was admitted as a pensioner at that college October 18, 1853, and won a Scholarship in the college examination of the following

EAKLY LIFE 31

May. He had found that his chances of a Fellowship at Peterhouse were diminished by the presence of several strong competitors. He therefore ' migrated ' (in the college phrase) to Trinity Hall, which had recently been at its very nadir. The story ran that Mr. Latham (who w^as appointed tutor from Trinity College at Christmas 1847) asked his colleague a short time afterwards when the freshmen were coming up ? The reply was, that they had all come up ; the numbers were too small to be visible to the naked eye. Trinity Hall has steadily risen under Mr. Latham's judicious government to a leading place amongst the small colleges. Its depression had been partly due to the fact that its Fellowships had been regularly confined to law students, and very little interest was then taken in law studies at Cambridge. It had now been decided that Fellowships should be given to men distinguished in the ordinary Triposes. Several migrations took place of men who, like Fawcett, desired lay Fellowships and anticipated vacancies at Trinity Hall. The change of college made little imme- diate difference to Fawcett except by the addition of some new friends to his circle. I may boast that I was of the number, and so gained one of the greatest privileges of my life.

Fawcett's set had read to the last term of their undergraduate course with a- vague belief that the honours of the Tripos would fall to St. John's College. It then began to dawn upon them that they, too, were mathematicians. Fawcett was thought to show most promise ; and though it was generally held tbat Iladlcy of St. John's was the best man of his year, it began to

32 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

be whispered that Fawcett had some chance of even the senior Wranglership. The contest for that honour is always most exciting. In the Tripos, for, as I imagine, the first and last time of his life, Fawcett' s nerve failed him. He could not sleep, though he got out of bed and ran round the college quadrangle to exhaust himself. He failed to gain the success upon which he had counted in the concluding papers.^ Not only was Hadley senior Wrangler and far ahead of the second, but Fawcett sank to be seventh. His intimates, Rigby and Clarke, were second and third. In spite of his comparative failure he had shown marked ability. Dr. Besant, one of the Moderators for 1856, tells me that he was much impressed by Fawcett's work. Fawcett was wanting in technical skill and the manipulation of mathematical analysis. He overcame his deficiency by sheer mental force and his power of directly applying mechanical principles. He used plain English where most can- didates would apply mathematical machinery. Fawcett had in any case done more than enough to win a Fellow- ship at his college, where he was far ahead of all rivals. He was elected to a Fellowship at Christmas 1856.

Fawcett had clearly decided upon his plan of life.

1 Dr. Wolstenholme, junior examiner for the Tripos in 1856, has kindly shown me the marks. Fawcett was seventh at the end of the first three days (which then formed a sei)arate section of the exami- nation). He rose to be sixth, passing C. B. Clarke, on the first of the five days, and at the end of each succeeding day was seventh on the total marks, neither passing nor being passed. On the separate days' marks he was sixth on the first day, second on the fourth, and only thirteenth, twelfth, and tenth on the second, third, and fifth days respectively. He was distanced by Eigby and Clarke on the last day especially, when he had probably hoped to gain places.

EAELY LIFE 33

I cannot fix the precise date at which his mind was made up : even at Queenwood his mind, as we have seen, had been fixed upon poHtical success, and his desire of acquiring the art of public speaking was probably significant of the same boyish ambition. It was known to all his friends whilst he was yet an undergraduate. He was, however, a poor man. He had no income beyond his Fellowship (worth about 250L a year), and such allowance as could be made by his father, who was not a rich man, and had three other children. He resolved therefore to approach Parliament through a successful career at the bar. He was justified in count- ing upon such success as almost a certainty. His indo- mitable energy, his strong practical intellect and aptitude for business, combined with his remarkable power of fall- ing into friendly relations with men in all classes, were admirable qualifications for a young barrister. He had also reason to be certain that an opening would not be wanting to him. Mr. A. T. Squarey, whose family was long connected with Salisbury, had known him from childhood and had formed a high opinion of his abilities. Mr. Squarey was now at the head of one of the principal firms of solicitors in Liverpool, with a very large mer- cantile practice. He encouraged Fawcett to go to the bar, and promised that he should have opportunities of showing his powers in the conduct of important business.

Fawcett had entered Lincoln's Inn on October 26, 1854. After his degree, he considered that he had a right to a short holiday. He was at Cambridge in the summer of 1856, and for a time he took lodgings ou

D

34 LIFE OF HENEY FAWCETT

Putney Heath, to be near an old family friend, Mrs. Hodding. In November he settled in London to begin his legal studies. He attended some of the reader's lec- tures, upon which he made careful notes, still preserved amongst his papers. I remember the warm admiration which he expressed for the lectures of Mr. (now Sir Henry) Maine ; and, indeed, he never came in contact with a man of marked ability without being moved to enthusiasm. He continued to practise himself in public speaking. He was a member, as Sir John Poj)e Hen- nessy (now Governor of Mauritius) kindly informs me, of the Westminster Debating Society, which met in an old- fashioned room in the Westminster Tavern, near West- minster Bridge. Several young barristers and journal- ists belonged to this society, which imitated the forms of the House of Commons. The tradition ran that Sir E. B. Lytton had once paid it a visit, and said afterwards that he had entered in a fit of abstraction, mistaking it for the House of Commons. He only discovered his error upon finding that th^re were no dull speeches and no one asleep — which seems to prove that it must have been a very remarkable society indeed. Fawcett became leader of the Radical party in tliis mimic Legislature, and Sir J. Hennessy remembers his 'resonant voice,' * wild hair,' and ' expressive eyes.' No contemporary of Fawcett's, I should imagine, can have. entered the strug- gle of life better qualified to take his own part, or with greater confidence of success. None of his friends had the slightest doubt that in some way or other he would force his way to the front. We recognised as fully as at a later period his energy and his keen intelligence.

EABLY LIFE 35

If we were still a little blind to some of his nobler quali- ties, we at least recognised in him the thoroughly ' good fellow,' whose success would be as gratifying to his friends as it was confidently anticipated. But soon after he had taken his degree the shadow of a great calamity fell across his path. In the winter of 1856-7 he wrote to his friend Clarke to say that something was wrong with his eyesight. In the early part of 1857 he consulted Critchett, one of the first oculists of the day. Critchett (as his son, Mr. G. Anderson Critchett, kindly informs me) found that Fawcett was suffering ' from a sprained condition of the ciliary or adjusting muscles, consequent upon over-use of the eyes. The retina had also become very sensitive to light, but no organic change had taken place to threaten any serious or permanent loss of sight.' Critchett ordered perfect rest, forbidding him to try his eyes by reading or by exposure to strong light. This warning certainly caused some anxiety. I do not myself, nor do the surviving members of his family, remember that his spirits were visibly depressed. Clarke, however, to whom he paid a visit shortly after this time, says that at no point of his career was Faw- cett so unhappy. I think that on this, as upon other occasions, he was careful to conceal his anxieties unless circumstances prompted some special confidence, and especially to conceal them from the parents and the sister who would have been so deeply pained by a full knowledge of his misgivings.

His temporary incapacitation and the possibility of permanent disqualification for his chosen career must in any case have been a severe trial for the young man,

u 2

36 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

then in the first flush of his ambition. In 1857 he found some employment by taking a pupil, Charles Cooke, nephew of the Master of Trinity Hall, who was reading for a military examination. With Cooke and Miss Fawcett, Fawcett went to Paris towards the end of 1857, where the pupil might learn French whilst he read mathema- tics with his tutor. Fawcett hoped for some advantage from change of scene, and consulted some of the French oculists. In a letter dated November 9, he wrote to an old friend, Mr. Egerton, then curate of Nunton, close to Longford, and now rector of Burwash, Sussex. He has spent six weeks in Paris. and his sister is about to leave him. He has been under the care of Sichel, who says ' that it is one of the most extraordinary cases he has ever had,' but hopes to be of some service. Should his eyes not improve by Christmas, Fawcett says that he shall go to Ddsseldorf. Miss Fawcett tells me that her brother consulted two oculists at Paris, one of whom ordered high and the other low living. Fawcett followed the latter prescription, but derived from it no distinct advantage.

Fawcett's letter to Egerton, as I may remark in passing, contains some remarks upon French charac- teristics which are I fear of the conventional British type. No man, to say the truth, could well be more out of his element. The weakness of his eyes now made him specially dependent upon his favourite resource of con- versation ; but in spite of liis linguistic successes at school, Fawcett was through life even oddly incapable of acquiring now languages. His tongue, fluent enough in the vernacular, was a siul)l)orn member, and adhered

EARLY LIFE 37

rigidly to the tricks of early days. Some Wiltshire forms of speech hung about him, I think, to the last. I doubt whether he ever perceived the difference between

* February ' and ' Febuwerry ' ; and I remember how hard we found it to convince him that although Pro- fessor Tyndall might be right in saying that glacier ice was a 'viscous fluid,' he had never asserted it to be

* vicious.'

Fawcett came back from Paris by Christmas as true a Briton as he had set out. The state of his eyes had not improved. Idleness was still enforced upon him ; and for a few months he spent his time chiefly, I believe, at his father's house, occasionally writing a few letters to the papers upon topics of the day. The accident was soon to happen which brought this period of suspense to a strange and unexpected close. For reasons which I have tried to explain, Fawcett's charac- ter had not hitherto been fully revealed to his friends, even so far as it had hitherto been fully developed. The kind of stoical severity which was our pet virtue at Cambridge, the intense dislike to any needless revela- tions of feeling, had certainly its good side. It was at worst an exaggeration of a creditable and masculine instinct. We preferred to mask our impulses under a guise of cynicism rather than to affect more sensibility than we really possessed. I for one should be sorry to see the opposite practice come into fashion. But it must be admitted that the habit of systematically acting the cynic may generate a real cynicism. Fawcett was a man of cordial and generous nature, and of exceedingly strong domestic affections. But he rarely trusted him-

38 LIFE OF HENEY FAWCETT

self at this time to utter his emotions, especially to the friends who were inclined to an excessive severity. Staunch utilitarians and political economists, we were always on our guard against sentimentalism and keenly alive to the absurdity of excesses in that direction. Fawcett sympathised fully with our prejudices ; and it was only as he grew older and his character became mellowed that the juvenile affectation finally passed away, and that he came not only to appreciate but to act openly, without false shame, upon the great truth tha.t warmth of heart is not incompatible with, but essential V to, a thoroughly masculine nature. Though no one could think him brutal or cynical, early acquaintance might still think him hard. It is fortunate, however, that his friend Mrs. Hodding has preserved some letters of this period which prove that he had higher motives than he cared to lay bare to the ordinary circle, and could relax his severity under the influence of feminine sympathy. I will quote some passages from them (by her kind permission). Perhaps they show some touches of his youthful magniloquence ; but the genuineness of the sentiment is proved by his later fulfilment of the early aspirations. Fawcett, as I have said, had been lodging near her on Putney Heath, in the summer of 1856. She left England for Australia shortly afterwards. He writes to her on September 21, 1856: *I regard you with such true affection that I have long wished to impart my mind on many subjects. . . . You know somewhat of my character ; you shall now hear my views as to my future. I started life as a boy with the ambition some day to enter the House of Commons. Every effort, every

>'

EAELY LIFE 39

endeavour, which I have ever put forth has had this object in view. I have continually tried and shall, I trust, still try not only honourably to gratify my desire, but to fit myself for such an important trust. And now the realisation of these hopes has become something- even more than the gratification of ambition. I feel that I ought to make any sacrifice, to endure any amount of labour, to obtain this position, because every day I become more deeply impressed with the powerful con- viction that this is the position in which I could be of the greatest use to my fellow-men, and that I could in the House of Commons exert an influence in removing the social evils of our country, and especially the para- mount one — the mental degradation of millions.

' I have tried m}- self severely, but in vain, to discover whether this desire has not some worldly source. I could therefore never be happy unless I was to do everything to secure and fit myself for this position. For I should be racked with remorse through life if any selfishness checked such efforts. For I must regard it as a high privilege from God if I have such aspirations, and if He has endowed me with powers which will enable me to assist in such a work of philanthropy.

' This is the career which perhaps the too bright hopes of youth have induced me to hope for. Speaking of myself, I trust that I bear little malice to anyone. Still I know and am well aware that I am impetuous.'

On November 3 he says that he has an invitation to the * great manufacturing centres,' where he is * particu- larly anxious to observe certain things with respect to the social condition of the people in those parts.'

40 LIFE OF HENKY FAWCETT

On November 20 he reports that his trip has been dehghtful. He has met many friends and seen many interesting objects. Especially he met the 'great philan- s/ thropist, ' Mr. Wright, of Manchester — a ' second Howard,' who showed him gaols and ragged schools, and received him hospitably in his family. ' I have never met,' says Fawcett, ' so fine and perfect an example of a venerable Christian.'

On February 22, 1857, he has heard the Budget debate. He had gone at one o'clock and spent twelve hours in the House. ' No one,' he says, ' need fear ob- taining a position in the House of Commons now ; for I should say never was good speaking more required. There is not a man in the Ministry can speak but Lord Palmerston ; Disraeli is the support of the Opposition ; but although he was considered to have achieved a suc- cess that night, it was done by uttering a multitude of words and indulging in a great deal of claptrap. Glad- stone made the speech of the evening, and he is a fine speaker. He never hesitates, and his elocution and manner are admirable ; in fact, in this he resembles Bright, but is, in my opinion, inferior to Bright in not ^y condensing his matter. Wilson's speech showed by far the most sound sense, but he is no orator and therefore was hardly listened to. You who know so well my deep ambition to be one day in Parliament will believe that I shall use every endeavour to fit myself for the duties of such a life, and I now see no reason to despair of having my desire gratified and of obtaining what to nie would be by far the greatest of worldly triumphs — namely, the assurance of my own conscience that

EAELY LIFE 41

my days had been usefully passed in behalf of my country.

* Long before you went to Australia, I had eagerly desired to visit that country, for to my mind it must within a few years exercise a most important influence on the future of England. India, too, is the land I much desire to see and know ; and it ought to be by anyone who takes part in public life.'

On March 9, 1857, we have an account of his eye troubles, which shows him, perhaps for reasons similar to those already suggested, in a more cheerful mood than Clarke's recollections would imply.

' I must tell you that my eyes have not been well lately. 1 therefore went with my father to one of the first oculists of the day, as I was naturally becoming somewhat alarmed. However, his opinion was very consoling; he tells me that for a twelvemonth I must relinquish all reading ; but, as there is no disease what- ever, he feels no doubt at all that I shall then find them as strong as ever they were, and I myself have every confidence in their becoming so. I cannot be suffi- ciently thankful that it has occurred just now, when perhaps I can spare the time with so little incon- venience. I go home to-morrow. Maria will resign her needle with great composure to devote herself to reading to me. I shall thus get quite as much reading as I desire, and I can well foresee that, far from being a misfortune, it may become an advantage, since it will perhaps for the next year induce me to tJmik more than young men are apt to do; it will give me an opportunity to solidify and arrange my knowledge,

V

42 LIFE OF HEXRY FAWCETT

and you will know how happy Maria and I shall be together.

' Not being able to read, in the evening I have been a constant visitor to the House of Commons. I heard the whole debate on China, which certainly elicited the" best of our parliamentary talent and which resulted (most sadly to the people of India) in the defeat of the Ministry.' He goes on to criticise the chief speakers. Lord Derby's intellect * is by no means of a high order,' but he has every qualification for oratory except a good voice. Gladstone's ' mind is too subtle,' but he has V made the most effective speech to which the hearer ever listened. * It caused a great excitement, . . . and I could not help feeling it was a triumph which you may well devote a lifetime to obtain. He discussed the question on high moral grounds ; his speech was said to have obtained many votes, for Lord Palmerston lost his temper and seemed entirely to fail in replying to it.'

I will only call attention to the interest already mani- fest in the great social questions of the day and in the condition of India. I may add that the events of 1857 were calculated to strengthen any impressions already formed upon Indian matters. His thoughts upon these subjects were to have a predominant influence upon his future career. At this time, however, the accident happened which appeared to everyone but himself to put a conclusive end to any political ambition. The hopes so deeply rooted in his nature were to be ap- parently blasted at once and for ever.

43

CHAPTEE II.

BLINDNESS.

On September 17, 1858, Fawcett went out shooting with \/ his father upon Harnham Hill. Harnham Hill commands a view of the rich valley where the Avon glides between the great bluffs of the chalk downs and beneath the un- rivalled spire of Salisbury. It is one of the loveliest views, as Fawcett used to say, in the south of England. He now saw it for the last time. The party was crossing a turnip field and put up some partridges, which flew across a fence into land where Mr. Fawcett had not the right of shooting. In order to prevent this from happen- ing again, Fawcett advanced some thirty yards in front of his party. Shortly afterwards another covey rose and flew towards him. His father was suffering from in- cipient cataract of one eye. He therefore could not see his son distinctly, and had for the moment forgotten their relative change of position. He thus fired at a bird when it was nearly in a line with his son. The bird was hit by the greatest part of the charge, for it was * completely shattered.' A few pellets, however, diverged and struck Henry Fawcett. Most of these entered his chest, but, passing through a thick coat, only inflicted a trivial wound. Two of them went higher.

44 LIFE OF HENIiY FAWCETT

He was wearing tinted spectacles to protect his eyes from the glare of the sun. One shot passed through each glass of the spectacles, making in each a clean round hole.^ Their force was partly spent, and was further diminished by the resistance of the spectacles. They might otherwise have reached the brain and inflicted a fatal injury. As it was, they passed right through the eyes, remaining permanently embedded behind them. Fawcett was instantaneously blinded for life.

Fawcett's first thought, as he told his sister, was that he should never again see the view which he had just been admiring in the light of a lovely autumn afternoon. He was put into a cart and taken to the Longford farmhouse — about two miles and a half distant — whilst doctors were summoned from Salisbury. His sister received him as he got down at his home, and his first words were, ' Maria, will you read the newspaper to me ? ' They were prompted by the wish to encourage his family by showing his own calmness. He was, how- ever, persuaded to go to bed and keep himself as quiet as possible. There was very little hope from the first. The doctors, indeed, declined to pronounce an absolute sentence. At the outside, they could scarcely have ex- pected more than some faint percejDtion of the difference between light and darkness. The general condition of the patient was happily as favourable as possible. He was in thorough health, and he suffered no actual pain. About six weeks after the accident he regained for a short time some power of perceiving light ; but after

' The spectacles thus injured arc still in possession of the family.

BLINDNESS 45

about three days this last glimmer vam'shed, and he passed the rest of his life in complete darkness. In the following June his left eye began to waste : and he then (and only then) suffered a good deal. About the end of the following October, Critchett performed an opera- tion for making an artificial pupil in the remaining eye, in the faint hope that he might yet regain some useful perception of the difference, at least, between light and darkness. The retina, as it turned out, had been too ex- tensively injured. Fawcett took lodgings with his sister and his attendant near Critchett's house, and the opera- tion was performed under chloroform. For two or three days his eyes were bandaged. His friend W. Porter was with him constantly, and remembers the ' terrible anxiety ' with which he tried the first experiments upon his power of vision, and asked whether the sun was shining. Yet he bore himself calmly and cheerfully, and y submitted without apparent emotion to the final discovery that there was no longer room for any hope whatever.

The calamity was crushing. The father deserved | pity almost as much as the son, for the son had been the very pride of his heart. A year or two before I had been to Longford, where I had been struck by the eager delight with which the father had Spoken of the son's University honours, and the superabundant cor- diality of the welcome which he had bestowed upon me as one of his son's friends. Clearly, nothing could be too good for anyone whom Harry honoured by his friend- ship. The relations between the two men were sugges- tive rather of affectionate comrade-ship than of the more ordinary relation, where affection is coloured by deference

46 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

and partial reserve. The father shared the son's honour- able ambition, or rather made it his own ; and the son's hopes of success included the liveliest anticipation of the delight which it w^ould cause at home. The close union was the more remarkable because neither father nor son could be accused of sentimentalism, and both of them were rather apt to condemn the excessive sacrifices sometimes made by parents to children as implying a kind of vicarious selfishness, injurious to both parties in the long run. Fawcett's family affections (for his love of his mother and sister was as marked as his love of his father) were through life unusually strong. Perhaps the severest letter which he ever wrote to a real friend was prompted by the belief that the friend had spoken to his father in a way calculated to produce uneasiness. And now it seemed that the father's hand had ruined the son's brilliant prospects. When I visited Longford a few weeks after the accident, I found Fawcett calm and even cheerful, though still an invalid. But the father told me that his own heart was broken, and his appearance con- firmed his words. He could not foresee that the son's indomitable spirit would extract advantages even from this cruel catastrophe. One of Fawcett's favourite quotations ever afterwards (he had not a large stock of such phrases, for his verbal memory w^as as weak as his memory for facts and figures was retentive) was the phrase from Henry V. : —

There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out.

The danger in which Henry Y. stood before Agineourt

BLINDNESS 47

was not a more efficient stimulus to his heroism than the shot through his eyes to Fawcett's resolute temjDer.

Meanwhile, though Fawcett was surrounded by the tenderest cares of his family, he had a sore trial to go through. He said a few years later ^ that he had made up his mind ' in ten minutes ' after the accident to stick to his pursuits as much as possible. But that last clause admitted a wide margin of uncertainty. How far was it possible for a blind man, a man without fortune and without any great family connection, even to approach a parliamentary career ? Success at the bar, by which alone he had hoped to achieve an independent position, was apparently out of the question. As he lay in his darkened room he meditated upon this problem. Letters of condolence poured in upon him. He found, as he told a friend soon afterwards, that they gave him ' more pain than comfort.' The impression seems to have been deep. ' Nothing,' he said in the speech just quoted, ' pained him so much as the letters he received after the accident.' The reason, as I gather, was that the letters fell into the ordinary form, and consisted of well-meant exhortations to resignation, assuming that his life was ruined, though, somehow or other, the ruin was to be a blessing. Only be resigned ! But though resignation to the inevitable is a clear dictate of pru- dence, the question remains. What is inevitable ? How distinguish between cheerful acceptance of the dictates of fate or Providence and the cowardly abnegation of duty under apparent difficulty ? Fawcett insisted upon

' Speech in St. James's Hall, May 17, 1866.

48 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

having the letters read to him by his sister ; and he put them aside with a sigh. They depressed him, and he appeared for a time to be at best in a fixed state of stoical calm. The blow had apparent^ stunned him.

At last, however, a letter came pitched in a differ- ent key. It was from his old and revered friend Hopkins. He said to his sister, 'Keep that letter for me ; ' and from that time his mood changed and he took a more cheerful and resolute tone. I am happy to be able to give the timely word of good cheer, spoken so much in season : —

Cambridge : Oct. lo, 1858.

* I have rarely been more grieved, my dear Fawcett, than I was by your father's letter, which informed me of the very sad accident you have met with. Your father writes almost broken-hearted and requires comfort, I doubt not, almost as much as yourself.

' That you will receive from him every comfort which the thoughtful affection of a parent can suggest, I well know ; and I feel equally certain that you will give to him the best consolation he can receive b}^ cultivating as cheerful a tone of mind as your sad deprivation will admit of. It would indeed be not only useless, but false, to endeavour to console you by pretending that loss of sight, the having wisdom at one entrance quite shut out, is not one of the greatest afflictions that can happen to us. It is so ; and though especially so to those who delight in all the varied aspects and beauties of external nature, it cannot but be deemed, alike to all, one of the severest bodily calamities that can befall us. But

BLINDNESS 49

depend upon it, my dear fellow, it must be our own fault if such things are without their alleviation. It has always seemed to me a beautiful and touching form of the expression of this sentiment, that ^' God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb ; " and so, I doubt not, you will find it, even should the injury you have received realise your worst fears.

* Yesterday I saw the letter you have sent to the college porter for the perusal of your friends. Mr. Critchett's statements afford evidently some ground of hope, but of the expectations which they justify I am, of course, unable to judge. I have no hesitation, however, in recommending you not to build your hopes upon them. Give up your mind at once to meet the evil in the worst form it can hereafter assume.

* The course of life and objects of study which you may heretofore have proposed to yourself must of necessity be much modified, and you will be obliged by circumstances to depend on intellectual pursuits almost entirely for your future happiness, so far as it may de- pend on efforts of your own. Now it seems to me that your mind is eminently adapted to many of those studies which may be followed with least disadvantage without loss (the help ?) of sight.

* You must almost necessarily exclude, more or less, those subjects which involve practical details and facts ; and I would suggest your directing your attention to subjects of a philosophical and speculative character, such as any branch of mental science and the history of its progress ; the Philosophy of Physical Science, as Herschel's work in " Lardner's Encyclopedia," WliewcH's

E

50 LIFE OF HENPvY FAWCETT

"Inductive Philosophy," &c., or any work treating on the general principles, views, and results of physical science. Political economy, statistics, and social science in general are assuming interesting forms in the present day.

'What a wide range of speculative study, full of interest, do these subjects present to us ! for any part of which, if I mistake not, your mind is well qualified. How often have I wished I had more time to devote to them myself! I know that I should find in them a great compensation (as I trust you will yourself) for any circumstances which might restrict me to the pursuit of them. But still I can throw out all this as affording suggestions to you, and possibly an mducement and encouragement to look forward with determination and courage to the future, and to the formation of some systematic plan for your intellectual pursuits.

*The evil that has fallen upon you, like all other evils, will lose half its terrors if regarded steadfastly in the face with the determination to subdue it as far as it may be possible to do so.

'But I seem, my dear fellow, to be writing you a hard-hearted letter, something hke a hard-hearted doctor prescribing for a suffering patient ; and yet I could weep while I write, to think of the bright hopes and aspi- rations, so naturally entertained on the threshold of life, which must be crushed under this sad calamity. But again I say, ''Courage." Cultivate your intellectual resources (how thankful you may be for them!), and cultivate them systematically ; they will avail you much in your many hours of trial. Under any circumstances

BLIXDXESS 51

I hope you will visit Cambridge from time to time ! I'll lend my aid to amuse you by talking philosophy or reading an act of Shakespeare, or a canto from Byron.

' I shall certainly avail myself of the first opportu- nity I have of paying you a visit at Longford, and shall engage you for my guide across the chalk hills. I may then perhaps find the means of indoctrinating you with a few healthy geological principles. Mrs. Hopkins desires to unite with me in kindest regards to your father and sister, whom we do know, and also to your mother, to whom, though we do not know her personally, we equally extend our sympathy. I have not yet seen your brother, but I suppose we shall hear of you soon through him. A great many men will not be up before the end of next week.

* Believe me, dear Fawcett,

* Yours very truly,

* W. Hopkins.'

This affectionate and judicious letter showed how clearly Hopkins had divined the mental condition of his old pupil. The right key was struck, and Fawcett, roused from his temporary prostration, responded gallantly to the inspiring summons. Though crippled, he would not fall out of the ranks; rather he would keep step with the stoutest. I do not doubt that in any case the reaction would have come, and that Hopkins's letter was rather the occasion than the cause of his speedy and victorious reaction. In truth, it would be unworthy of Fawcett were I to exaggerate the force of the blow ; and he would have been the last to sanction

E 2

A/

52 LIFE OF HENEY FAWCETT

any phrases which might exalt his own courage at the price of appearing to justify discouragement in men of less stalwart mould. The calamity was severe enough. But it was not so severe as to mean permanent disable- ment for a man in the full flush of youth, health, and mental energy. Blind men have done much and are often said to lead happier, at least more placid, lives than others. And I do not think that it would have been more than might have been expected if Fawcett had gradually roused himself and worked out some tolerable solution of the great problem before him. What was wonderful, however, and beyond the powers of any but the bravest, was the indomitable resolution with which he immediately encountered his misfortune. He determined not that he would in some way evade, but that he would conquer his fate ; not that he would find a new path by which the new difficulty might be turned, but that he would persevere in the old ; not only this, indeed, but that he would go all the straighter to his mark and take by storm the position which he was to have assailed by the usual approaches.

For a time, he had even some thoughts of being called to the bar. The benchers of Lincoln's Inn con- sented in 1859 to his dispensing with the usual certificate from the Council of Legal Education. In June i860, however, he finally abandoned this plan, from which he probably anticipated little at any time, and took his name off the books. Very soon, though I cannot fix the precise date, his friends knew that ho had resolved to stick to his old ambition. Bhnd, poor, unknown, he would force his way into the House of Commons. And

BLINDNESS 53

within a year or so from the accident he was taking the first steps in his difficult career. It will be my task to describe his success in the following chapters. Here I propose to bring together some of the facts which illus- trate the spirit with which he bore himself in the daily conduct of life. I must ask my readers hereafter to bear in mind what his courageous cheerfulness often tended to make us forget — the fact that everything I have to say of him is said of a blind man. Fawcett had resolved within ten minutes to do as far as possible whatever he had done before. This from first to last was the principle upon which he acted through life. He deter- mined for one thing that he would still be as happy as he could, and I will not quote moral philosophers to prove that this resolution was not only wise but virtuous. Fawcett was no ascetic. He heartily enjoyed all the good things of life — a good glass of wine, a good cigar, or a bit of downright gossip, not less than more in- tellectual recreations. ' One of the first things I re- member about him,' says his wife, * was his saying how keenly he enjoyed life.' He expressed, she adds, some impatience with people who avowed or affected weariness of life. ' There is only one thing that I ever regret,' he would say, 'and that is to have missed a chance of enjoyment.' He would, for instance, seriously ponder at the end of a frost whether he could not have contrived another hour's skating. He intended, he would tell me, to live to be ninety and to relish every day of his life. Should anyone be offended at a doctrine which seems to me more sound than easy to put in j)rac- tice, he must remember that all Fawcett's enjoyments

54 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

were wholesome and innocent, that they emphatically included a strenuous exertion of all his faculties, and excluded with equal emphasis every tinge of ill-nature. No man was more persistently cheery and genial. He never enjoyed anything which could give pain to others. He never fully enjoyed anything unless his pleasure were shared by others. Nothing, for instance, would have induced him to keep a horse for his own riding unless he could have his wife or daughter to ride with him. When towards the end of his life — to mention a trivial but characteristic incident — he was ordered to drink champagne, he resolutely refused to touch it until he was promised that his family should have a share of it.

At first cheerfulness required some effort. We who watched him as friends immediately after his accident de- tected occasional fits of depression. They vanished even then under the influence of society, and disappeared alto- gether with the trying period of suspense. Eyes guided by stronger affection than ours detected no permanent de- pression. A phrase or two in his letters suggests that he had occasional trials in the way of low spirits, and at times a slight shade of weariness would seem to come over Lis features in repose. He was careful to conceal any such feeling, if he was ever conscious of it, and especially to conceal it from those dearest to him. But it may, I think, be safely said that to very few men is granted so large a share of happiness or an enjo^^ment of life qualified by so few drawbacks. There was only one thing, he told his sister, which he dreaded — namely, a

BLINDNESS 55

loss of energy. Life might become a burden if life no longer meant action. He was spared that trial.

With his usual good sense Fawcett set to work to provide himself with means of enjoyment. He deliber- ately learnt to smoke, for example. He never worshipped tobacco with the zeal of some devotees ; but he thought that it would help to smooth some weary hours. He resolutely set himself to improve his taste for music, the recreation most open to a blind man. It is also one of the few recreations, as he used to observe, which a blind man may enjoy without immediate dependence upon others. Fawcett was unable to exemplify this in his own case, as he could not learn to perform upon any instrument. He did, however, acquire so much musical taste as to enjoy an evening at a concert or the opera, and his enjoyment increased observably in the last two years of his life, when, after his illness, he had more enforced leisure. At the same period he also tried successfully to play cribbage and ecarte with packs marked for the purpose. He, with his secretary, Mr. Dryhurst, devised a system of pricking them, and learnt to play correctly with remarkable quickness. Three days after he had begun the experiment he could play and win a game, without making mistakes and without hesitating over the cards longer than his antagonist. He had tried the same experiment immediately after his accident, but had then given it up.

He tried for some time to continue writing with his own hand, and I have seen an autograph letter of his dated in i860. He found the practice irksome, however, as is, I believe, the general experience of men who lor.e

V

56 LIFE OF HEXEY FAWCETT

their sight, and soon confined himself to dictation. He thought that the habit was useful to him as a speaker, because it accustomed him to produce a regular flow of grammatical sentences. In some little things Fawcett never acquired the dexterity of the blind from bii'th. He had lost his sight too late.

He kept up more successfully the various athletic sports to which he was already devoted. I have, indeed, noticed that during his undergraduate days he could scarcely be called an athlete, as judged by a more modern standard. He would have thought it foolish to sacrifice * / his reading to mere sj)ort. He never went into regular training or belonged to a racing crew, except of humble pretensions. The Peterhouse boat of those days was low^ on the river, and he did not belong to the first crew at Trinity Hall. That he occasionally performed m the second boat I remember by this circumstance, that I can still hear him proclaiming in stentorian tones and in good vernacular from an attic window to a captain 'of the boat on the opposite side of the quadrangle, and consequently to all bystanders below, that he had a pain in his inside and must decline to row. I have some reason to think that he had felt bad effects from some previous exertions, and had been warned by a doctor against straining himself. I have an impression that there was some weakness in the heart's action. Fawcctt, like many men who enjoy unbroken health, was a little nervous about any trifling symptoms. One day we found him lying in bed, complaining lustily of his suffer- ings, and stating that he had despatched a messenger to bring him at once the first doctor attamable. A

BLIXDXESS 57

doctor arrived, and his first question as to the nature of Fawcett's last dinner resolved the consultation into a general explosion of laughter, in which the patient joined most heartily. A steady pull down the Cam was one of his favourite amusements in later years. He used to row stroke to a club of graduates founded by Augustus Yanssittart, and christened the ' Ancient Mariners ' by the well-known scholar. Dr. Donaldson. Fawcett took pains to get up a crew three times a week during his later residences at Cambridge. It was a good healthy exer- cise, and the age of his comrades was a security that they would not over-exert themselves. He had played cricket fairly, and I once saw him felled to the earth by an over- excited fieldsman, who had forgotten to allow for his last six inches of height. I remember, too, his racket- playing, because my own temper broke down under 'the irrepressible amusement with which he wit- nessed some of my vagaries as a learner.

These games, of course, became impossible. He adhered to other exercises resolutely. He had always been a regular and vigorous walker, and I am ^much inclined to measure a man's moral excellence by his love '/ of this pursuit. All Cambridge men believed (I hope they still believe) in a daily ' constitutional ' as one of the necessities of life. Very soon after his accident, he went out for a walk with his elder brother and a friend. He went between them and chose a path through the water-meadows, w^here some guidance was necessary. Yet, even on the first experiment, he was rather the guide than the guided. In later years he was constantly to be encountered upon the roads round Cambridge. He

58 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

rather despised the familiar round by Granchester and Trumpington as ' an old gentleman's walk.' He pre- ferred to all other walks the ascent of what, by an abuse of speech pardonable at Cambridge, are called the * hills,' or, more familiarly, the * Gogmagogs,' or, by an affec- \ tionate diminutive, the * Gogs.' The air, he used to declare, was fresher there, because there was nothing higher than a molehill between him and the Ural Moun- tains. He would pause on what passes for the summit to point out to his friends the distant view over King's College Chapel to the towers of Ely. He often strode down the towing-path to ^ see ' (in his own phrase) a boat race or the practice of the crews. He was as keenly interested as anyone in the success of the college eight, and as ready to give a shrewd opinion as to its right constitution. He was a regular attendant at the Oxford and Cambridge contests at Putney till almost the end of his life. He walked with a friend through the streets, but dropped a guiding arm as soon as he was fau'ly on the road, and it was no slight effort for the short of wind or limb to keep up with his vigorous strides. The best plan was to equalise the strain on the lungs by engaging him in a steady flow of talk — no difficult task — when, especially if a steady gale were blowing in his teeth, his pace might be kept within reasonable limits.

Fawcett retained a very accurate recollection of all the places he had known before his accident. \Mien, after his marriage, he went to Alderbury, where he had been at school as a child, he could direct his wife through all the intricacies of the surrounding lanes. Within the college, of course, he could ramble about

BLINDNESS 59

alone, and the sound of his stick tapping on the walls for guidance was a familiar sound, sometimes a little disturbing the light sleepers when he would indulge in a meditative stroll at dead of night. When walking in London, he could tell by the difference in the echo and by the current of air when he was opposite to the opening of a cross street. In all these walks he took a special pleasure in listening to his companion's descrip- tions of the scenery — whether to retain his hold on the vanishing pictures of old days or to endeavour to con- struct some image of the now invisible world. He still loved the works of Nature, he said, and had associations with the light of sun and moon unknown to him before he was blind. I do not imagine that Fawcett would at any time have cared to indulge in the rhapsodies about the beauties of scenery which have become fashionable of late. But he certainly loved most heartily the country sounds, as the rustle of leaves, the song of birds, and the leap of a fish, which he had learned to appreciate in early days. The picture of a glorious moonlight night with a long trail of silvery cloud on the hills above Longford, in a stroll which we took together before his accident, remains with me ; and though I believe that our talk was of supply and demand, and though we certainly made a burglarious assault on the larder when we returned, I am equally sure that Fawcett was fully sensitive to its beauties. In after days he delighted in driving about the country with his sister and friends, and would always stop the carriage at certain favourite points and go with them to places where he could enjoy the view through their eyes. His friend, Mr. Botting, of

60 LIFE OF HENRY EAWCETT

Brighton, tells me that Fawcett often telegraphed to him beforehand to take him for a walk along the cliffs to Eottingdean. The delightful air, the smooth turf of the chalk-down, and the murmur of the waves below never failed to throw him into a reverie, and he would say that it was for him the most charming walk in England. Another friend, Mrs. Koberts, saw him in the last autumn of his life waiting in Salisbury Close, and on being asked where he was going, he said that he wanted to see the Clarendon Woods, as he understood that the autumn tints were especially fine this year. One summer (1872) he went to Switzerland, and there made the ascent of the Cima di Jazzi, a well-known point of easy access for the enjoyment of the keen mountain air and a vast panorama of snowy peaks. The blind, I believe, usually employ the language of sight, but it was certainly startling at times to hear Fawcett's remarks.

* How old so-and-so is looking ! ' he said to me once ;

* but when men with hair of that colour turn grey, they do look prematurely old.' Such language was, one may say, part of his system of behaving in his blindness as much as possible as he behaved when he could see. Once, as a friend tells me, Fawcett was speaking to him of another friend, known to him only after his blindness, who had an odd trick of moving his limbs. Fawcett re- marked upon this, and, to explain his nieaning, gave a lively mimicry of the gesture in question.

Though not specially dexterous, his nerve was sur- prising. He walked from the first with absolutely un- faltering steps, and he kept up his skating with equal courage. Before his accident, his weight and length of

BLINDNESS 61

limb made him a very powerful skater, though he had not acquired more than the rudiments of the art of figure- skating. He told me that he once accompanied a race in the Fens, keeping up on the rough ice outside with the competitors, who had the advantage of the smooth swept course within the bounds. I accompanied him on his first attempt after the accident. After a few strokes the only difficulty was to keep his pace down to mine. We each held one end of a stick, and, as we were on the crowded Serpentine, we came into a good many collisions. As, however, we were a couple, and one of us a heavy man, we had decidedly the best of these encounters, especially as the conscience of our antagonists was on our side when they saw that they had tripped up a blind man. Some severe winters followed, and I shall not forget the delights of an occasional run beyond Ely on the frozen Cam. I remember how we flew back one evening, at some fifteen miles an hour, leaning on a steady north- easter, with the glow of a characteristic Fen sunset crimsoning the west and reflected on the snowy banks ; whilst between us and the light a row of Fenmen, follow- ing each other like a flight of wild fowl, sent back the ringing music of their skates. As we got under shelter of the willows above Clayhithe, the ice became trea- cherous and we began to remonstrate after a threatened immersion. ' Go on ! ' said Fawcett ; ' I only got my legs ' / through.' That, however, seemed a sufficient quantity of the human body for sub-glacial immersion, and the rest of us insisted upon putting the final edge upon our appetites by a tramp homewards to a Christmas dinner along the towing-path. He kept up the practice,

V

62 LIFE OF HENKY FAWCETT

and declared in 1880 that no one had enjoyed more than he a skate of fifty or sixty miles in the previous frost.

In later years, Fawcett used to insist that everyone in the house, except an old cook, should partake of his amusement. His wife and daughter, his secretary, and two maids would all turn out for an expedition to the frozen Fens. On the wide open spaces he would skate quite alone, guided only by the sound of his companions' voices and skates. When his daughter was about nine, she guided him in this fashion, whistling to give him notice of her whereabouts.

A pursuit in some ways more difficult was riding. In the early days, Fawcett rode rarely, partty because it was an expensive amusement, and also, I think, because one or two narrow escapes (he was nearly crushed against a cart at Salisbury) made the prudence doubtful. Later, however, and especially after his illness of 1882, when his walking powers rather declined, he rode regularly and with great enjoyment. He speaks of the delights of a gallop over the turf which borders the roads round Cambridge. He generally had with him a riding- master whom he could trust. He constantly went out with large parties of friends. Miss McLeod Smith, of Cambridge, was a ver}^ frequent and alwaj^s most welcome companion. One of his especial friends in later life, Mr. W. H. Hall, of Six Mile Bottom, near Newmarket, tells me that Fawcett often rode over to see him, some- times staying over the Sunday, when he would walk his friends off their legs, as he would try his horse's legs on the other days. He had a * perfect passion ' for a

BLINDNESS 63

gallop over Newmarket Heath, where there was abun- dant space and the best of au\ He would ride over from Cambridge at Christmas time wdth a box of sand- wiches, to provide luncheon on the sunny side of the * Devil's Ditch.' He loved the chalk-down, and often stopped at a cottage to ask for a draught of the sparkhng water from the deep w^ells. He always enjoyed, too, a gossip with the shepherds about the flocks ; for his early interest in agricultural matters was through life a marked characteristic. Occasionally he came across the harriers, which often meet in the neighbourhood, and would then, as Mr. Hall says, 'join in our gallops, trusting implicitly to the sagacity of his horse to select the most favourable gaps in our stunted hedgerows.'

Of all his recreations there was none which he enjoyed so heartily as his fishing. He had, as we have seen from his early diary, been educated as a fisherman from his childhood. His father was a keen fisherman, and caught a trout so late as his ninetieth year. Fawcett's great height and strength of arm enabled him to throw a fly with remarkable power and precision. Clarke tells me how, in early days, Fawcett would combine two favourite amusements. He would wade in the river, fishing slowly up stream, whilst Clarke was instructed to walk along the bank at such a distance from the river as not to throw his shadow upon the water, and then to talk to his heart's content. Trout, as Fawcett said, hear very badly (and, it may be added, care nothing for the soundest political economy), but see remarkably well. A letter from his first secretary, Edward Brown, tells how he used to go with Fawcett

V

V

64 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

to the river, where, in the intervals of sport, they could retire to an outhouse, drink tea, and read Mill's ' Political Economy.' Fawcett had resumed the sport very soon after his accident. In April 1868 I find him saying that he and a friend had caught twelve pike ; the friend had caught the largest, weighing 15 Ih., hut Fawcett had caught ten of the twelve, one of them an eleven- pounder. He remembered his native stream with minute accuracy. The letters written to his father during the last four or five years of his life are full of references to past and future expeditions. Whenever he can spare a few hours, he delights to run down to Salisbury. He gives directions about his fishing- boots ; makes appoint- ments with Wright, a famous performer, who generally accompanied him ; asks to have the weeds cut at a particular point, or suggests the most promising scheme for inveigling some wily monster, whose fame has spread in the neighbourhood, and who lies ensconced under some hardly approachable bank.

Many friends in the neighbourhood of Salisbury and elsewhere were glad to give him opportunities of fishing, and Fawcett was always delighted to accept their kind- ness. Lord Normanton was especially kind in offering salmon fishing at Ibbesley on the Avon, between Eing- wood and Christchurch. Lord Nelson, with equal kind- ness, gave him trout and jack fishing in the Avon below, and Lord Pembroke at Wilton above, Salisbury. Lord Mount-Temple made him welcome to the Itchen at Broadlands. In the summer he often visited Scotland, where his old friend Mr. Bass received him at Glen Tulchan on the Spey. The late Duke of Poxburgh often

BLINDNESS 65

gave liiin fishing on the Tweed, where he used to stay in the house of an old fisherman at Kelso. Fawcett enjoyed the surroundings of the sport as well as the sport itself. He often combined an excursion to the New Forest with his salmon fishing at Ibbesley. At Ibbesley he often stayed at the house of the fisherman, Samuel Tizard, and his wife, where he liked to enjoy a friendly supper and a good chat with his hosts. Their place is full of birds, whose singing gave him particular pleasure.^ Here he caught a large salmon, part of which he contributed to the feast upon the golden w^edding of his father and mother.

On his expeditions round Salisbury he was generally accompanied by Mr. Wright, already mentioned, and by Mr. Wheaton, of Salisbury, now student of medicine, both of whom have been kind enough to give me their recollections. They agree that Fawcett was a remark- ably good fisherman. He performed, if anything, better than the seeing, whether because he waited more patiently to strike until he felt his fish, or because he was more docile in following the directions of his skilled companions. He had great success in catching salmon and trout, and in trolling for pike in the winter. He showed his usual nerve in crossing narrow planks across streams, though he once had an immersion with Mr. Wright, whose comparative shortness of stature made it total in his case. He would wade in the streams where necessary,

* I remember, however, that Fawcett told me how he had once been tried beyond bearing by the song of a nightingale close to his bedroom window, and how he had at last risen and endeavoured to drive away the intruder by pelting at it with the only available missile — a piece of soap.

66 LIFE OF HENRY EAWCETT

and Mr. Wheaton remembers his hearty enjoyment of a rough drive in a donkey- cart full of fish, along a road in Wales, where they made a month's expedition in October 1879. As memorials of his sport, I have found ^ / among his papers an envelope containing the hook 'that caught the 20 lb. salmon,' and another huge envelope turns out to be the canvas on which is drawn (by Mr. Wheaton) the pencil outline of ' a trout caught by me at Mr. Hoare's (in Hertfordshire) with an Alexandra fly.' . The date is July 9, 1881. The trout was 2i|in. in Y length and weighed 10 lb. Fawcett, as Mr. Wheaton tells me, was a remarkably good judge of the weight and condition of a fish. A local journal, which makes the same remark, adds that at Eingwood ' he was seen smoking a pipe in our streets ; ' it is a more character- istic statement that he made there the acquaintance of a local postman, and obtained for him an annual holiday, and an appointment entitling him to a superannuation allowance. It was, in fact, one of the collateral charms of fishing to Fawcett, that it brought him to easy and V friendly intercourse with men in a humble position of life.

A friend once made some remark to Fawcett upon the cruelty to animals involved in fishing. Without discussing that point (though upon other occasions he would adduce some of the familiar arguments against the existence of any keen sensibility in fish), Fawcett apologised for his own delight by a very important consideration. He could not, he said, relieve himself by some of the distractions which help others to unbend. Every strenuous worker knows the worrying persistency with which the swarm of thoughts which occupy his

BLINDNESS 67

business hours returns to tease and distract his hours of relaxation. No small part of the art of living consists in learning to command the spells which lay these vexa- tious spectres and conjure them into temporary quiescence. But Fawcett's blindness made many modes of relief impossible or difficult. He could not, for example, glance through the pages of a magazine or a novel, or join in the games of the young, or could only do so with difficulty, and in constant dependence upon others. Blindness increased concentration by shutting out dis- tractions. We close our eyes to think, and his were \/ always closed. His mental strength and weakness, the power with which he grasped certain principles, and the comparative want of versatility and consequent indif- ference to many of the literary amusements which re- lieve the strain of some men's minds, made every avail- able relaxation more important, and fishing served admirably to give enough exercise to muscle and mind to keep his faculties from walking the regular treadmill of thought from which it is often so hard to escape. His delight in conversation was unfailing ; and if possible — for it is hardly possible — he became more sociable as life went on. Yet our conversation is apt to return to the well-worn grooves of thought ; and nothing served so well to vary his life as throwing a fly on the Scotch rivers or his beloved Salisbury Avon.

What I have said will show how Fawcett adhered to his great maxim, to let blindness interfere as little as possible with his course of life, whether in his serious pursuits or his amusements ; and he was never tired of enforcing this maxim for the benefit of his fellow-sufferers, i^

F 2

68 LIFE OF HENEY FAWCETT

In conversation he very rarely referred expressly to his blindness. In reading his speeches, I noticed one oc- casion upon which another debater spoke of Fawcett's having something read to him. Fawcett took up the phrase and said in his reply, not that he had read the passage in question, but that it had been read to him. This recognition of his disqualification struck me as something quite exceptional, and implied, I think, a shade of annoyance at any notice being taken of his blindness as an excuse for a supposed inaccuracy. He claimed tacitly to have no allowance made for him ; and the feeling, as we shall see, comes out on one or two occasions of his political life. He naturally felt it to be a duty to speak of himself when he delivered addresses on behalf of various institutions for the benefit of his fellow- sufferers. But he shrank from such efforts. He observes in one of the first I have seen (May i6, 1866) that he had never felt so nervous in speaking ; and I believe that this feeling was always present to him. Of course it did not prevent him from speaking, and from speaking very effectively. But he no doubt felt the difficulty of citing his own case without appearing in the attitude, most painful to him, of one putting forward a plea for compassion ; or in the attitude, only less disagreeable, of one who is making a boast of his own courage. In fact, however, no one can read the speeches without being stirred to sympathy by the unobtrusive gallantry of his spirit. Briefly, his advice to his fellows was always, *Do what you can to act as though you were not blind ; be of good courage and help yourselves ; ' and his advice to the seeing was, * Do not patronise ; treat us without reference

BLINDNESS 69

to our misfortune ; and, above all, help us to be inde- pendent.' The principle applied in this case blended, as I may briefly observe, with his general political sentiments.

He spoke on behalf of various benevolent institutions, and always very much to the same purpose. In one meet- ing, an eminent philanthropist who was to precede Fawcett accidentally came late and had to follow. Fawcett insisted upon his usual topics, and wound up by saying that on previous occasions he had heard remarks which unintentionally gave the utmost pain to some of the hearers. Nothing was so hard to bear as to hear people assume a ' patronising tone towards the blind, as if they were suffering from something for which in some mysterious way they should be thankful. The kindest thing that could be done or said to a blind person was, not to use patronising language, but to tell him as far as possible to be of good cheer, to give him confidence that help would be afforded him whenever it was required ; that there was still good work for him to do, and the more active his career, the more useful his life to others, the more happy his days to himself.'

The unlucky philanthropist came just in time to hear these observations, primed with a speech in the exact spirit condemned — recalling the usual ' pity the poor blind ' of the professional beggar. He could not strike out a new path, and was forced to go through his regular appeal, after an apology to the eminent professor, ' but still,' and so forth. No one, I am told by a hearer, more heartily enjoyed the awkward performance than the eminent professor himself. I may add here that when Fawcett in his walks met one of the blind bepjcars in

70 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

question, he always spoke to him kindly, without ad- ministering needless didactic remarks, and gave him a trifle in spite of political economy.^

Amongst the various institutions which he helped to support, he w^as specially interested in the Royal Normal College founded at Norwood, in March 1872, by the efforts of the energetic Dr. Campbell. Its great merit, in his opinion, was that it enabled a large propor- tion of the blind to earn their own living. In an ap»peal made for it in 1875, he observes that the greatest of all services to the blind was to give them this power, and that it was the special object of the institution to render that service. Five years later, June 30, 1880, he insists upon the same point. He found that eighty per cent, of the pupils were earning their own living. He urged that the Gardner bequest (of 300,000/.) would be applied most efficiently if a considerable portion of it were devoted to the development of existing institu- tions such as the Normal College ; and he ended by a characteristic remark. He protested against ' walling up ' the aged blind in institutions. For training tlie young they are of course necessary ; to the old they are actually prisons. ' Home associations,' he said, ' are to us as pre- cious as to you. I know from my own experience that the happiest moments that I spend in my life are when I am in companionship with some friend who will forget that I have lost my eyesight, who will talk to me as if I could see, who will describe to me the persons I meet,

' I mention this on unquestionable authority, that of his constant companion, Mr. Dryhurst, because an anecdote implying a contrary practice appears in one of the obituary notices. It must have been in some way mistaken.

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a beautiful sunset, or scenes of great beauty through which we may be passing. For so wonderful is the adaptability of the human mind that when, for instance, some scene of great beauty has been described to me, I recall that scene in after years and I speak about it in such a manner that sometimes I have to check myself and consider for a moment whether the impression was produced when I had my sight or was conveyed by the description of another. Depend upon it, you have the power of rendering invaluable services to the blind. Eead to them, talk to them, walk with them, and treat them in your conversation just in the same way as if you were in the companionship of one who was seeing.' He made some remarks to the same effect in the last year of his life (March i8, 1884), enlarged upon the services rendered by Dr. Campbell, who possessed, he said, a genius for organising the best methods of educating the blind, and begged his hearers to help to ' replace the depressing misery of dependence by the buoyant activity which comes from self-reliance and from the conscious- ness of the power to earn one's own living.' In the same speech he approvingly notices a plan which was soon afterwards decided upon, but which, though let drop for a time in consequence of his death, has been recently revived, for the appointment of a Koyal Commission to examine into the best means of educating the blind.

Another remark may be made, and not the least characteristic. Speaking on February 18, 1880, he says : * The chief compensation, the silver lining to the dark cloud, is the wonderful and inexhaustible fund of human kindness to be found in this world, and the

72 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

appreciation which bhnd people must have at every moment of their Hfe of the cordial and ready willingness with which the services which they needed were gener- ously offered to them.' I am glad to think that these simple and pathetic words represented Fawcett's own experience, and prove that his trouble was alleviated, not only by his own energy, but by the sympathy of his innumerable friends. They, indeed, could claim little credit for showing kindness to one so ready to help himself and so grateful for all the help given by others. But in this eager recognition of the kindness upon which he had so paramount a claim, we may notice, as in many other ways, how misfortune affected Fawcett as it only affects a large-hearted man. It not merely brought out his buoyant vigour of character, but mel- lowed and sweetened his nature, and strengthened the tenderness which at all times underlay his masculine courage, by making every little service, given or received, a new bond in the great web of kindly attachments W'hich connected him with his family and the wider circle of his friends. Fawcett's friendship always seemed to be tacitly blended with gratitude; and he rendered any little service, not as one who is conferring a favour, or even as one who is simply fulfilling the duty of a friend, but as one who is unobtrusively recognising an obligation for previous kindness. No one ever took more obvious pleasure in helping those whose claims were only that they had not been neglectful of a friend's duty. Sometimes his eagerness on such occasions was felt by them (though certainly not by him) as almost a tacit reproach for not having been more zealous in their own duty to him.

73

CHAPTEE III.

CAMBEIDGE.

Soon after his accident Fawcett returned to Cambridge, which continued to be his headquarters for some 3^ears, and was his home for part of every subsequent year. He took rooms in Trinity Hall. Although the Univer- sities should be natural homes of tradition, the gene- rations of students succeed each other so rapidly that minor details are soon forgotten. I will therefore specify that Fawcett's rooms were on the first floor between the two staircases on the north side of the main quadrangle. They were entered from the eastern staircase, whilst he could reach the other through a lecture-room into which his sitting-room or, in the Cambridge phrase, ' keeping- room ' oj)ened. His bedroom also opened out of the keeping-room, and above were some garrets occupied by the lad whom he now engaged to act as guide and amanuensis. This was Edward Brown, son of a college servant at Corpus Christi College, an intelligent boy whom Fawcett treated with great kindness and familiarity, and \X who was warmly attached to his employer.^ From my

' Soon after Fawcett's marriage in 1867 Brown entered Trinity College with a view to taking orders, but in 1869 or 1870 emigrated to Natal. Bishop Colenso was very kind to him, and had agreed to ordain

■/

74 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

own rooms I could pass through the lecture-room into Fawcett's; and until the end of 1864, when I ceased to reside in Cambridge, I considered his rooms to be almost part of my own. C. B. Clarke, who had become a Fellow of Queens' College, was on the old terms of friendly intimacy. Fawcett's other undergraduate friends (with the sole exception of Mr. M. M. U. Wilkinson) had left the University ; but he speedily acquired a large circle of new acquaintance, and within a very short time be- came one of the most familiar figures in the society of Cambridge.

That society had some characteristics which are already modified and which, under the influence of recent changes, are likely to undergo still greater modi- fications. I do not doubt that the changes have been in the main for the better. The old state of things had, however, its merits, and merits which were singularly congenial to Fawcett's temper. He loved Cambridge so well as to pardon or even to approve what others held to be its faults . A quaint phrase often occurs in biographies, according to which schools and colleges receive credit for having ' produced ' all the remarkable men whom they have not suppressed. Cambridge might claim with more than the usual plausibility to have * produced ' Fawcett, were it not that the afiinity between his University and himself may be better explained as a case of pre-estab- lished harmony. He was a typical Cambridge man,

him after a year's probationary work. Before the year was completed Brown died of dysentery, in 1870 or 1871. Brown was succeeded by Mr. Albert Haynes, and Haynes in 1871 by Mr, F. J. Dryhurst, who remained with Fawcett till the end, and is now in the Post Office.

CAMBRIDGE 75

whether as moulded by Cambridge or as one of the class by which Cambridge has been itself moulded.

Fawcett's residence coincided with the culminating period of the old college system. An undergraduate belonged to his college exclusively. He knew of ' out college ' men only through school friendships or meetings in the rooms of his private tutor. The University was for him a mere abstraction, except when it revealed itself as the board of examination for ' little go ' and degree. His chief ambition, if of a studious turn, was to wiii first a Scholarship and then the more permanent dignity of a Fellowship in his own college. To the Fellow the college became a substitute, sometimes a permanent substitute, for a family. To a certain number, indeed, a Fellowship represented merely a stepping-stone towards professional success. The resident Fellows were more closely bound to the colleges. Had their celibacy been permanent they might, like monks, have lost their identity in the corporate body. But celibacy during the tenure of a Fellowship implied the possibility and generally the desirability of a divorce. As the normal desire of a young man is to acquire a wife, the college bond soon became irksome to most of us. The clerical Fellows, a large majority amongst the residents, began to long for a retir- ing pension in the shape of a college living. University society thus consisted mainly of young men who at about the age of thirty departed, or were eager to depart. A few belated seniors remained behind as bachelors by predilection or compulsion. Some were waiting for a good college living whose incumbent survived with incon- V siderate vitality ; some had found a life amongst libraries

76 LIFE OF HENRY FAWCETT

and in a circle of scholarlike tastes too congenial to be hastily quitted ; and some had come to think that the vicinity of the college cellar and kitchen would be ill exchanged for the comparatively crude arrangements by which a country parsonage endeavours to supply the needs of a large circle of hungry mouths. A drawback to the society of the place was the extraordinary rapidity with which the more permanent residents became super- annuated in the eyes of their colleagues. A don of thirty was ten years older than a rising young barrister of forty.

The youthfulness of the majority, however, had its charms for the youthful. We were young men, sanguine, buoyant, and sociable. We might boast of such superi- ority to the average intellectual standard as was indi- cated by the fact that we had won our places in an open contest; and we were naturally not inclined to under- estimate the value of that test of excellence. A youth just fresh from his first classmanship often impresses his seniors as a little too condescending. We gave too frequent ground for the famous admonition of the pre- sent Master of Trinity: *We are none of us infallible, not even the youngest of us.' Yet a certain innocence tem- pered our youthful arrogance. The young don's socia- bility among his fellows was unbounded. His appetite for many intellectual pursuits was keen and genuine. Though he was not rich, his income more than supplied the wants of a bachelor at college, and he found it easy to be hospitable and to freshen his wits during the bountiful vacations by a run across the Continent or an indulgence in London society. Amongst a number of

CAMBEIDGE 77

bright, sociable young men, full of many interests, Fawcett, the most heartily sociable of all, soon gained a wide popularity, and was welcome in most of the college halls. If grave seniors, dwelling in the empyrean atmo- sphere of Master's lodges, thought the young Eadical ' dangerous,' they were speedily disarmed by his unmis- takable good humour in personal converse.

Our own college. Trinity Hall, was founded in 1350 by Bishop Bateman. That far sighted 23r elate had been alarmed by the terrible Black Death. He founded the college to guard against the sad possibility of a scarcity of lawyers. His statutes were still nominally in force ; though, in process of time, the Fellows, instead of devoting themselves, as he intended, to the canon and civil law, had become for the most part barristers of the ordinary type. Three clerical Fellows resided to act as tutors ; the remaining ten were practising or courting practice in London, and visited Cambridge with a view to auditing accounts and granting leases at Christmas. A later benefactor had provided that we should relieve ourselves during that dry employment by a modest conviviality ; first raising our minds to a due elevation by a service in chapel, where a Latin oration was delivered in praise of the Civil Law. The Christmas * exceedings,' as they were called in our official language, had a certain re- putation. A dinner is, of course, strictly speaking, a dinner ; but the college feast, though resembling from the materialist point of view the ordinary meal, might also be regarded poetically as possessed of a certain historic dignity. It was almost a religious ceremony. If we could not rival the luxury of a civic banquet, there

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was an impressive solemnity about the series of festivi- ties which lasted some ten days at Christmas time. The college butler swelled with patriotic pride as he arranged the pyramid of plate — the quaint little enamelled cup bequeathed by our founder, which had, I think, a shadowy reputation for detecting poison ; the statelier goblet given by Archbishop Parker, which made its rounds with due ceremonial that we might drink 'in piam memoriam fundatoris ; ' and the huge silver punchbowl, which re- presented Lord Chesterfield's view of the kind of con- viviality likely to be appreciated by the Fellows of his own period.

The Master, Dr. Geldart, a most kindly, old-fashioned gentleman, beamed hospitality from every feature as he presided at the table, prolonging the after-dinner sitting till the port and madeira had accomplished the orthodox number of rounds. At an earlier period dinner had begun about the middle of the day, and the fine old race which was laying in our supplies of gout had felt itself in need of supper as a crown to the proceedings. Civi- lisation, postponing the hour of dinner, had not yet dared to abolish so solemn an institution on the prosaic ground of its superfluity. From the hall, therefore, we adjourned in due time to the combination room, lighted from silver sconces on the dark oak panels whence Lord Chesterfield, with other more rosy-faced dignitaries of the last century, gazed approvingly on boar's head, and game pie, and oysters, and certain tins of baked apples ripening before a generous fire, and credited with a medicinal virtue for preventing any evil consequences of the accompanying milk-punch. Legends told how many

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glasses of that seductive fluid, the great boast of our butler, Miller, had thus been rendered innocuous to Judge Talfourd and other distinguished guests of a pre- vious generation. The younger withdrew for a time to enjoy an interlude of tobacco ; whilst the steady old dons settled comfortably to their orthodox rubbers of whist.

No one entered more cordially into the spirit of such convivialities than Fawcett. In later days the strain upon the digestive faculties of the guests has, I under- stand, been lightened. But Fawcett was a steady con- servative as to the essentials. He kept up the hospitality, and delighted in bringing down old friends to revisit the scenes of youthful pleasure and chat over the old days and knit closer the bonds of college friendship. The talk was always most animated and the laughter loudest in the neighbourhood of his chair. Amidst the clatter of forty pairs of knives and forks and the talk of forty guests, his ringing volleys of laughter would assert their supremacy. We used to argue whether Fawcett or one of his friends, whose lungs could emit a crow of super- lative vigour, was capable of the most effective laughter ; but if the single explosion of his rival was most startling, no one could deny that Fawcett was superior in point of continuous and infectious hilarity.

These Christmas performances showed the convivial Fawcett in all his glory. But there was also a con- tinuous current of pleasant sociable gatherings. Other colleges held their grand days in term-time. There were dining-clubs of one or two of which Fawcett was a mem- ber. One of these brought together periodically the dons

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of Oxford and Cambridge ; and in it Professor Henry- Smith and Fawcett might be taken as typical represen- tatives of the two Universities. Curiously contrasted as they were in many ways, they w^ere rivals in diffusing a thoroughly social spirit, and each heartily appreciated the other's good qualities. There was no lack of less formal meetings — down to the simple tete-a-tete with an old friend, when the talk, if less noisy, was more intimate and serious. Visions come before me of quiet talks in quaint old college rooms, to which we retired as the curfew was sounding to hold a tobacco-parliament till St. Mary's had long given notice of midnight. And summer brought pleasant hours in the charmmg college gardens and bowling greens ; above all in the Fellows' garden at Trinity Hall, which Mr. Henry James — a most capable judge — pronounces to be unsurpassed in Europe. There we would take our wine in the shade of the noble chest- nut trees, whose boughs make a cascade of flowers and foliage down to the dry smooth-shaven green, or enjoy a meditative stroll when the nightingales at the ' backs ' were singing their loudest in the pleasant May Term. I remember a friend who came to see Cambridge for the first time, and, strolling into the garden after breakfast, found it so strongly impregnated with the genius loci that he decided to cut short his round of sight-seeing at its first stage. Sitting there all day, he felt that he had imbibed the very essence of Cambridge life. In logical phrase, the intensity of his experience more than atoned for its want of extension.

Fawcett was never tired of praising Cambridge society. He exalted it far above the frigid formality of

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what passes for society in London. In Cambridge there could still be real talk such as Johnson enjoyed at the Mitre or the Turk's Head. London has become a chaos ; society means intercourse for a couple of hours with a fortuitous concurrence of human atoms ; little circles are swept away in the great current ; you make a small journey to a friend's house ; you are set down by a stranger and have to beat the bush for an hour before you discover what little segment of the vast circle of human interests is common to both ; you must be on your guard in view of possible collisions, and keep to the superficial topics which hurt no sensibilities because they excite no real interest. Fawcett specially detested the early break-up of the guests at a London dinner-party enforced by the dismal ceremonial of ' at homes,' gather- ings which he absolutely declined to attend. In Cam- bridge it was otherwise ; friends could meet daily by crossing a court or a couple of streets. There was no formality where all were equal, and no tentative dally- ing with topics where each man's tastes and prejudices were known to all his fellows ; the parts in the dialogue were assigned beforehand and could be taken up at once ; and we were young and eager enough really to discuss important questions and to fancy that our discussions were enlightening. In our gatherings, we could realise Johnson's familiar requirements : there a man could ' fold his legs and have his talk out ; ' there he could find plenty of men ready fairly ' to put their minds to his ; ' and there, too, though the circle was small, there was enough come and go from the outside world to

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prevent any danger of stagnation or of the painful discovery that we had exhausted each other's topics.

Some distinguished men came to us at Christmas or at other times; and Fawcett's constantly widening circle of friends offered abundant variety. Once, in the early time, we walked over to Babraham, and, with some audacity, called on Mr. Jonas JWebb, the famous breeder of Southdown sheep, whose statue now stands in the Cambridge Corn Exchange. Though we interrupted his Christmas dinner, he politely sent a shepherd to exhibit his flocks ; and he returned our visit to talk agriculture with Fawcett and his father in our college hall. A nearly contemporary guest was an Oxford don who proclaimed his favourite study to be * dogmatic theology,' but who had struck up a friendship with Fawcett, certainly not from any common interest in the study. Fawcett was not the less hospitable or less hearty in his laughter, when our theologian had a sharp encounter with a friend from the opposite pole of the circle who boasted that he was a ' hard-headed Scotchman,' and scoffed at all the wiles of Jesuits in disguise. Other and more famous friends were glad of a day or two at Cambridge. Fellow disciples of Mill's, Professor Cairnes, Mr. Hare, and W. T. Thornton were amongst the most welcome. Fawcett, as I find by an early letter, had the courage to invite Mill himself at Christmas 1859 to meet Hare, who was already a guest. The philosophic recluse did not come to try our milk-punch. Thackeray , had promised to come to stay with Fawcett at the N^^ Christmas of 1863; and only put us off at the last moment, just before we heard of his death. Cobdcn

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came to see Fawcett in the summer of 1864 ; and I do not know whether the dons were more impressed by the charming urbanity of the great agitator, or Cobden himself by the discovery that dons could be as free from political and sectarian prejudices as any class of the community. Lawyers, politicians, and men of science (I especially remember Professor Huxley) were glad occasion- ally to breathe the academic atmosphere, and Fawcett was always anxious to welcome them. Our home resources, however, were not despicable. It may be that I am under an illusion ; but it certainly seems to me that I have never heard such excellent talk as I heard in Cam- bridge in those days. My appetite for talk was doubtless keener and my faculty for admiration less blunted ; and yet I think that the conditions already described were really favourable, whilst we were free from that j^measy desire to justify a reputation which is so injurious to the talk of more famous conversationalists. There were several men of real talent in the art. There was W. G. Clark, the graceful scholar and wit, who brought more than usual knowledge of the outside world to our academic retirement ; and J. L. Hammond, who in those days was the brightest of companions. With a singularly penetra- tive voice, a very retentive memory stocked with many anecdotes, a keen interest in politics as well as in more academic topics, and a wit always tempered by good- nature, he often became the centre of conversational attraction to all guests in the Trinity combination room. •Once, indeed, as he was declaiming with more than usual freedom, Fawcett's secretary came hastily into the room and announced the fact that a group of Hammond's

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pupils were seated outside the open window drinking in the overflow of their tutor's remarks. Fawcett was rather more dehghted than Hammond. Then, too, there was Gunson, of Christ's, a big North-countryman with a Cumbrian burr, whose figure was not unHke Fawcett's, but who, unhke Fawcett, prided himself es- pecially on his Greek, and had done more than any college tutor of his time to raise his pupils in the Tripos. It was Fawcett's special delight to indulge in some outrageous confession of classical ignorance by way of oblique flattery to Gunson ; and he would chuckle with intense appreciation of the simple-minded utterances of harmless vanity which he succeeded in provoking. I have not mentioned those who are still with us. This, alas ! does not now prevent me from mentioning H. A. J. Munro, the pride of all Cambridge scholars, whose extraordinary classical attainments were combined with a charming simplicity, unaffected kindliness, and a refreshing bluntness of speech, and who used to delight Fawcett by his talk, especially by his enthusiastic cele- brations of Miss Byron and Clarissa Harlowe. Three of the Fellows of Trinity — Blore, Hotham, and Munro, whose names are most associated with the Trinity of those days — have died since Fawcett ; and onl}^ a dwindling minority is left of those who some twenty years ago joined in our friendly meetings.

These names remind me of one very marked feature of Fawcett's character. I first discovered it one day, when I heard to my shame that a common friend had been for some time in bad health, and that Fawcett had been visiting him regularly. Nothing gave him greater

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pleasure than to render such services. Hammond suf- fered cruelly under a protracted and painful disorder, of which he ultimately died. It was depressing to the spirits, and he fell into a rather morbid state of feeling, creating the imaginary grievances natural to the sick. Fawcett was the friend who adhered most closely to him. When refusing other invitations, Hammond would always go to Fawcett's house ; and I remember the good-natured triumph which Fawcett expressed to me upon inducing his old friend to pay him a visit at Cambridge and cheering him into forgetfulness of his sufferings. Once, when an old gentleman who shared some of Fawcett' s tastes was on his deathbed, Fawcett was admitted to a talk, and with such cheering results that the old man became his former self, sent for his fishing tackle, and even proposed, I think, a bottle of his famous port. The family were so scandalised by the introduction of such topics at a period when meditation on death seemed to them to be the only proper occupa- tion, that they objected to any fresh administration of a similar cordial. He was equally ready to visit humbler friends who had fallen into any variety of distress. I may safely say that Fawcett never forgot a friend and never missed an opportunity of this kind of service, which is too frequently omitted even by the good-natured. When- ever I met him in later years, I was sure to hear from him the last news of friends, some of whom had drifted away from the rest of their circle, but who never lost their hold, whether depressed in mind or body or fortune, u2:)on his cordial goodwill.

There was another maxim upon which he would

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sometimes insist, which coincides with a remark of Johnson's. The doctor spoke of the importance of

, )- keeping friendships in repair and of filHng up gaps by new acquisitions. Fawcett would often tell me that he made it a principle to make friendships with younger

^ men ; and this, he said, was the great secret of his continued enjoyment of Cambridge society. He did not, like some of us, age prematurely. He never drifted away from the sympathies of the young or became a * don ' in the offensive sense of the word. Many of the most distinguished of the younger men found him a warm friend. Amongst them, I may especially mention Mr. J.

\/^ F. Moulton, and the late Professor Clifford, in whose exuberant and almost boyish spirits and good-humour there was something especially congenial to Fawcett'a taste. After Clifford's premature death, Fawcett was foremost in pressing upon Mr. Gladstone the claims of his widow to a proper recognition of her husband's in- tellectual achievements. He had been, he said, * one of Clifford's most intimate friends,' and it was ' only pos- sible for those who enjoj^ed his intimate friendship fully to understand the beauty and worth of his character.' Good judges, he said, agreed that if Clifford had lived \ he might have ranked with Laplace or Lagrange. The metaphysical writings to which Clifford had latterly de- voted his attention had drawn public attention from his merits as a mathematician. Fawcett's judicious advocacy was rewarded with success ; though, of course, he was one of many influential applicants.

What, I have sometimes asked myself with a certain wonder, did we talk about in those pleasant days, when

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sleep seemed an impertinent interruption to a perpetual flow of conversation? I have gone to breakfast with Fawcett at Christmas time, read and discussed the newspapers till lunch, taken a good constitutional, re- turning just in time to dress for dinner, and then dined, talked, and smoked till past midnight, having enjoyed, and most heartily enjoyed, some fifteen hours of uninter- rupted talk. "What supplied the matter of this abundant flow ? I must reply, in the first place, that Fawcett was not above the trivial. Of course we talked of the events of our little circle : who was to be the next senior Wrangler, or stroke to the University boat, or to succeed to the vacant Fellowship or Mastership ? On all such matters his interest was unfailing, and I have heard him discuss the last boating news from the Thames with a member of the London Eowing Club as eagerly as he would discuss proportional representation with Mr. Hare. Nor did he despise downright personal gossip. Once his friends observed him deeply engaged in what was supposed to be a profound political discussion with a member of Parliament ; when Fawcett was suddenly heard to inquire y^r eagerly, * Was it his fault or hers ? ' He would often tell a story, showing how he had been one link in a chain by which an outrageous and entirely fictitious bit of scandal had been circulated all round Cambridge between breakfast and dinner time, so as to reach the person affected and give — if custom had sanctioned the practice — occasion for a duel. He was not puritanical in such matters ; he used to say that other people loved gossip as well as he did, and only differed from him in dissembling their love. I fancy that he also differed by retaining in full measure the eager

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curiosity of his childhood. But it must be at once added that I never heard Fawcett say an ill-natured thing or intentionally spread a possibly mischievous rumour. He despised certain classes of mankind heartily enough ; but his social influence was invariably on the side of kindly feeling and judicious reticence. Still he delighted im- measurably in any little anecdote bringing out the harmless foibles of his acquaintance. I shall not forget his intense enjoyment of an anecdote which used to be spun out through several courses at dinner by the simple narrator— a well-known Cambridge don. It told of the series of ingenious manoeuvres by which a turtle had been transported from Bristol to a remote part of the Highlands in time for conversion into soup, and of the anxiety which supervened when it was discovered that there was not a lemon within thirty miles ; and there was a final tableau picturing the assembled guests looking out, like sister Anne, for the approach of the horseman who had been despatched on the chance of bringing back the necessary condiment. Another narra- tive of equal length told of the sad consequences of the inconsiderate death of an elderly connection in the same gentleman's house. But for an almost providential coin- cidence, which brought the son of the deceased to remove the body to a distant burial-place, the unhappy man would have lost a day's fishing. Fawcett, instead of being bored, enjoyed the repetition of these famous nar- ratives as if he had been assisting at a comedy. Few people, indeed, were less easily bored. He would beg with a kind of childlike eagerness for the repetition of some story familiar to him for a quarter of a century.

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One of his friends had a marvellous power of reviving both the voice and the characteristic language of old Cambridge dons of the port-wine period, now for the most part vanished from an uncongenial world. Fawcett never to the last day of his life lost his power of relishing these admirable anecdotes — which I would fain hope may be embalmed in some future volume of remini- scences. He would begin to listen with anticipatory delight, and as the well-known anecdote proceeded, every muscle of his body would quiver with enjoyment, and he would end by laughter -choked petitions for more.

If our conversation did not exclude such topics, its main staple was serious enough. It included constant and eager discussions of political and economical problems. In those days the most exciting topic was the Civil War in America. Fawcett, as a staunch advocate of the Federal cause, was, as he was so often destined to be in later life, the champion of a small minority. We had long arguments as to the merits of Mr. Hare's scheme ; the prospects of an extension of the franchise; or the principles represented by Cobden and Palmerston, Glad- stone and Disraeli. In Clarke's rooms the conversation often ran upon points of political economy ; for Clarke was not only a keen economist and a most ingenious dis- putant, but had a singular faculty for producing (from memory or imagination) the most crushing statistical statements, with which Fawcett especially delighted to wrestle. We used to say that no event in history could be mentioned which Clarke could not instantaneously match by a parallel from his native town of Andover — such is the power of acute observation.

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Perhaps a listener would have been more inclined to complain of the dryness than of the frivolity of our talk. The dominant influences of Cambridge in those days were indeed favourable to a masculine but limited type of understanding. The intellectual atmosphere, bracing as it might be to congenial minds, was not so propitious to the development of the less robust varieties. The average student scarcely contemplated the existence of any kind of culture except that represented by the two old-fashioned Triposes. Classical or mathematical train- ing was the only alternative suggested, and in either case the study was confined within the limits of a rather narrow definition. The attempt made under the influence of Whewell to introduce the study of moral and physical sciences, was still in its infancy. The new Triposes flagged and showed no signs of really taking root. The University, as was often pointed out, was little but a continuation of the public school. Cambridge men could, of course, defend this characteristic narrowness by a good a lyriori theory ; although, in truth, it was less the product of any conscious theory than the natural outcome of the indigenous system of competitive exami- nation. When challenged for a defence, they would lay down the very sound principle that education should be directed rather to train the faculties than to store the memory. The best education was that which afforded the best course of mental gymnastics ; not that which imparted the greatest quantity of practically useful knowledge. They would add, and with equal truth, that the Cambridge course provided in fact a most strenuous and masculine training ; success was impossible for the

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most skilfully crammed ; it was oi3en to hard-headed, thoroughly practised intellectual athletes, and to them alone. Fawcett was heartily convinced of the truth of these assertions. He felt, I have no doubt rightly, that his own mental fibre had been invigorated by the mathe- matical course, though he had derived from it no know- ledge useful in the ordinary sense. His gratitude to the University for this service was unfailing. He held that it had turned him out, and, of course, had turned out others, thoroughly well equipped for the battle of life. He triumphantly confuted the narrow utilitarianism of the cram theory. A senior Wrangler, as he would urge, might be absolutely ignorant of law; but three years after his degree he would be a far better lawyer than the man who had been crammed with legal knowledge in place of being trained in the use of his logical faculties. Having confuted the vulgar objection, Fawcett took for granted too easily that he had won his case. Grant- ing that the true function of a University is to supply a good course of mental gymnastics, and granting that Cambridge supplied such a course, there was still a gap in his logic. Studies which found no favour at Cam- bridge have also this pre-eminent virtue. The mind may be trained as well as stored by philosophical, and scien- tific, and historical, and literary studies. For some minds such studies may even be more stimulating than the regular classical and mathematical round. Gym- nastics are good for the body, though they do not train a man for the specific trade by which he is to gain his living. But it does not follow that they should be limited to lifting weights and pulling an oar. The Cambridge

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s^^stem might be criticised as resembling a j^hysical system which should thus train only one set of muscles or one mode of applying them. This peculiarity was connected with the excessive value attached to the competitive system. Having got a test, excellent in its way for fairness and severity, Cambridge did not care to look further. In all competitions there is a tendency to regard the test too much as an ultimate end. Cam- bridge looked askance at all studies which did not lend themselves to examination. It disliked studies in which cramming was possible or probable : historical studies, for example, because in them it is easier to test the quantity of knowledge than the power of investigation ; and studies which by their nature are not so suscep- tible of a definite numerical test of excellence, such as philosophical studies, where it is impossible to say, as in arithmetic, that a result is clearly right or clearly wrong, and where, in consequence, it is harder to dis- tinguish the pretence from the reality of originality. For such reasons Cambridge was content with the sound masculine training which it actually provided, and which had merits now, perhaps, in some danger of being overlooked. Any new-fangled scheme had great difficulty in establishing itself alongside of the old course, in which there was an accepted and thoroughly well-under- stood test of relative merit. Fawcett's high estimate of the value of a fair and open competition increased his respect for a system vigorous, if narrow, which at least gave plain, tangible, definable results.

His complete satisfaction with the Cambridge system limited any inclination which he may have had to extend

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the area of his studies. He worked hard after his degree ; but he did not make many excursions into new fields. His own education had been Hmited; his ten- dency fell in with the general disposition of the society to which he belonged. Cambridge men were rather proud of their limitations. The limitations represented contempt for mere intellectual frippery and empty pre- tence. It was exceptional for a don of that day to extend his inquiries into new fields of speculation. He was content to make his knowledge more thorough within the accepted sphere, without annexing new regions of thought. Whether from this or from other causes, Cam- bridge was curiously indifferent to certain controversies. It is strange to turn from the Cambridge of this period to the Oxford so vividly described by the historians of the Newman generation. It is like passing to the history of a remote century or a different civilisation. Theo- logical discussion had doubtless (as Pattison's memoir has lately told us) ceased to excite the old interest at Oxford itself. At Cambridge it was difficult to reahse that such controversies could ever have occupied any reasonable mind. Arguments upon the merits of alchemy would hardly have been a greater anachronism at Cam- bridge than argument about the Via Media, or the rival claims of Reason and Authority. We had, of course, our High-Churchmen and our Evangelicals, and I have no reason to doubt that the great majority did more than simply acquiesce in the creed to which they were pledged. But there was no active. spirit of theological investigation. The cardinal virtue in such matters, according to us, was a common sense wliich might be taken to imply a liberal

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and tolerant spirit or simple indifference. Indifference was certainly the characteristic of Fawcett's inner circle V and of Fawcett himself. There were, in fact, wide spheres of thought which he scarcely cared to enter. Once, when directly asked for his opinion upon a ques- tion which to most philosophers seems to be of primary importance, he replied with his usual simplicity, ' I never could bring my mind to take any interest in the subject.'

Within a certain limit Fawcett's mind was surprisingly active and powerful. I have never known a man to whose judgment I should have more readily deferred in all matters in which he was really at home. But his mental activity was strictly confined within certain limits. His want of interest in the questions generally called philosophical was no doubt due in part to his perception of the familiar fact that such questions are never finally answered and have no immediate bearing on the questions which must be answered. That con- sideration, however, would have failed to deter any man who had the natural aptitude from an inquiry which to men so qualified is delightful in itself, even where they are convinced beforehand that the inquiry must be fruitless of any definite result. Fawcett's intellect was not of the type which would prefer the search after truth to the truth itself. On the literary side, Fawcett's tastes were at this period equally undeveloped. His classical train- ing had been of the scantiest, and his Cambridge friends had few purely literary interests. Nor did Fawcett ever make the slightest pretension to be a literary connois- seur. His enjoyment of good literature when it came in

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his way was probably not the less keen, and certainly was all the freer from affectation. At leisure hours he took pleasure in listening to some of the masterpieces of our literature. He heartily enjoyed a sonorous passage from Milton or Burke. He was fond of Shelley and Wordsworth and of Lamb's andDe Quincey's essays ; he read all George Eliot's novels ; he read and re-read 'Esmond ' and ' Vanity Fair,' and he was very fond of Miss Austen and the Brontes. He enjoyed, too, a conversation with men of more literary pretensions upon their special subjects, as with Mr. Aldis Wright upon Shakespeare or Bacon. Whenever, indeed, he was convinced that any man was a genuine worker in any department he re- spected him accordingly. Even if his friends ventured into the barren fields of metaphysics he was generous to excess in crediting them with real accomplishments.

Believers in ' Culture ' naturally set him down as a Philistine, a name which — as I have elsewhere ven- tured to suggest — is best definable as that which a prig bestows on the rest of the species. Between Fawcett and a prig there was a natural antipathy. The only human beings more objectionable to him were those whom Cambridge men used to describe as 'impostors' — a phrase equivalent to Carlyle's 'quacks.' Thoroughness was our pet virtue. An impostor is one who substitutes fine phrases for thoughts. He flourishes pre-eminently in the region of metaphysics. If we too summarily identified metaphysicians with impostors we perhaps went a little too far. But the opinion is tenable.

I have dwelt upon these considerations because they help to explain Fawcett's characteristic qualities and his

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enthusiastic love of the Cambridge system. He deHghted above all things in its absolute fairness. He would say that Cambridge was almost the only place where a man won his position exclusively on his merits. There was no real taint nor even suspicion of unfairness in the distribution of the prizes. When a man had won a position the respect paid to him was proportioned to his intrinsic merits. No one inquired into his social position or the length of his purse. There was no sordid interest in money making. If success in University competitions might be valued too highly, it was at least a genuine test of real ability. No point about the University more endeared it to Fawcett than the homage thus paid to the moral or intellectual excellence. The little world of Cambridge had the republican spirit in the best sense of the w^ord. It despised all adventitious claims to respect. Fawcett' s chief desire as a University reformer was to bring all classes and sects within the influence of its generous encouragement. The intellectual vigour fostered by the open competitions, and the masculine common sense encouraged by the positive nature of the studies, were thoroughly congenial to him. Wlmt he learnt he learnt well. Political economy, to which he had already paid attention in undergraduate days, became his main pursuit. He always studied it in connection with actual experience. In his infancy he had preferred the market- place to the dame-school. He treated the theories of Mill and Eicardo by applying them to the facts, so familiar to him, of agricultural life in Wiltshii-e. He widened his knowledge by following with the keenest interest the course of contemporary politics. He read

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the parliamentary debates from end to end. He would complain pathetically of one friend who used to shorten his own labour and Fawcett's enjoyment by skipping the peroration or, as he contemptuously called it, the ' blow off.' Through life his appetite for newspapers was w' omnivorous. One of his favourite enjoyments was to collect all accessible newspapers and spend a quiet Sunday in reading them steadily through. He enriched his mind less by indulgence in abstract theory than by persistently immersing it in the discussion of affairs in . actual course of transaction.

Fawcett was sufficiently familiar with the English literature of his favourite study. I used to maintain that he had read no book except Mill's ' Political Economy.' This was, of course, untrue ; but it was true that he had then read no book so thoroughly and elaborately. In some of his later addresses he recommended his hearers to study some good book until they were prepared to give the substance and fully to analyse the argument of every chapter. He would suggest Mill's ' Political Economy ' as desirable for the purpose, and his advice was founded upon his own experience. Besides Mill, he had read such authors as Adam Smith, Malthus, and, above all, Eicardo, y^ in whose terse logic he especially delighted. I remember, too, the frequency with which he would clench an argu- ment by a reference to that entertaining work, Tooke's \/ ' History of Prices.' His admiration for Mill led him to study the ' Logic ' and the later works in which his favourite teacher deals with questions of political philo- sophy, and to read them with almost unconditional accept- ance. The affliction of his eyesight and his subsequent

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blindness had naturally limited his studies in the years following his degree. Ee was, however, greatly impressed by two books which stirred the minds of all young men of his generation.

The first volume of Buckle's ' History of Civilisation ' appeared in 1857. Some letters from his friend Mr. Egerton show that he was eagerly discussing it soon afterwards. Buclde impressed many men (Mark Pat- tison amongst others) of intellectual temperament very different from Fawcett's by his daring and (in a literary sense at least) brilliant generalisation. Fawcett's enthu- siasm was roused by this bold attempt to apply scientific methods to historical inquiry. He was not, indeed, blind to the weak side of Buckle. He thought that Buckle's language betrayed a superficial knowledge of political economy. He used, too, to tell with some amusement an anecdote of a (probably fictitious) feminine disciple of the new prophet who went about proclaiming that she was ' panting for a wider generalisation.' His admiration for Buckle, however, was not quenched by these suspicious symptoms of that writer's affinity with the great class * Impostor.' In February i860 he lectured at Bradford on ' The New School of History.' Adopting a view taken by Mill, he maintains that history which had previously belonged to mere partisans like Hume and Voltaire, and afterwards to the graphic or imaginative writers, like Macaulay and Carlyle, was in the hands of Buckle to become a genuine science. Fawcett was venturing with the courage of youth beyond his proper province, and the lecture is only valuable as indicating his sympathies.

A greater impression was made upon him by Darwin's

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* Origin of Species.' Though Fawcett's scientific studies had hardly gone beyond the mathematical theories in- cluded in the Tripos, he took a general interest in scientific methods. In 1859 the publication of Darwin's great book initiated the most fruitful controversy of the day. Fawcett became an enthusiastic Darwinian. He ■/' was disgusted at the bitterness of the theological on- slaught upon the new teaching, and at the tone of un- generous hostility exhibited by some of the old-fashioned V men of science. He had been present at the smart passage of arms (in i860) between Professor Huxley v*^ and Bishop Wilberforce at the British Association meet- ing in Oxford ; and in the December of the same year published an article in ' Macmillan's Magazine ' in which he came to the rescue. He states with his usual firm- ness the true logical position of Darwin's theory; dis- tinguishing carefully between a fruitful hypothesis and a scientific demonstration ; exhibiting the general nature of the argument and the geological difficulty with great clearness, and taking some pains to prove that religion is \/ in no danger from Darwinism. In any case, he says, life must have been originally introduced by an * act of creative will.' His old friend Hopkins criticises him in a very kind letter. Hopkins was of the old school in this respect, and thinks that Darwinism * utterly fails ' by confusing the difference between hypothesis and proof. Fawcett did not bow to his teacher's authority ; V^ and at the British Association meeting at Manchester (September 1 86 1 ) he read a paper which was substantially a reassertion of the arguments in his article. This con- troversy, which went no further, led to a correspondence

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with Darwin himself. I quote a passage or two from ' Darwin's letters, as anything that can throw additional light upon their writer is of interest.

'You could not possibty have told me anything,' writes Mr. Darwin, July 20, 1861, 'which would have given me more satisfaction than what you say about Mr., Mill's opinion. Until your review appeared I began to think that perhaps I did not understand at all how to reason scientifically.' Fawcett has told me that Mill had said to him that the ' Origin of Species ' was admir- able as a piece of thorough logical argument (I forget the precise phrase), and I presume that Fawcett had repeated this to Mr. Darwin. The later letter, dated \ / September 18 (1861), refers to Fawcett's paper at the British Association : —

' My dear Mr. Fawcett, — I wondered who had so kindly sent me the newsj)apers, which I was very glad to see ; and now I have to thank you sincerely for allowing me to see your MS. It seems to me very good and sound ; though I am certainly not an impartial judge. You will have done good service in calling the attention of scientific men to means and laws of philosophising. As far as I could judge by the papers, your opponents were unworthy of you. How miserably A. talked of my reputation, as if that had anything to do with it. . . . How profoundly ignorant B. [who had said that Darwin should have published facts alone] must be of the very soul of observation ! About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise ; and I well remember some one saying that at

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this rate a man might as well go into a gravel -pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service !

* I have returned only lately from a two months' visit to Torquay, which did my health at the time good ; but

I am one of those miserable creatures who are never \/ comfortable for twenty-four hours ; and it is clear to me that I ought to be exterminated. I have been rather idle of late, or, speaking more strictly, working at some miscellaneous papers, which, however, have some direct bearing on the subject of species ; yet I feel guilty at having neglected my larger book. But, to me, observing V is much better sport than writing. I fear that I shall have wearied you with this long note.

' Pray believe that I feel sincerely grateful that you have taken up the cudgels in defence of the line of argument in the " Origin ; " you will have benefited the subject.

* Many are so fearful of speaking out. A German naturalist came here the other day, and he tells me that there are many in Germany on our side ; but that all seem fearful of speaking out, and waiting for some one to speak, and then many will follow. The naturalists seem as timid as young ladies should be, about their scientific reputation. There is much discussion on the subject on the Continent, even in quiet Holland, and I had a pamphlet from Moscow the other day by a man who sticks up famously for the imperfection of the " Geological Kecord," but complains that I have sadly understated

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the variability of the old fossilised animals ! But I must not run on. With sincere thanks and respects, ' Pray believe me,

' Yours very sincerely,

' Charles Darwin.'

The influence of evolutionist doctrines has been hardly less marked in philosophy than in the scientific movement. Fawcett, however, did not follow such dis- cussions far ; nor did he, I think, care for any applications of the same ideas to questions of political theory. He was becoming more and more absorbed in the political questions of the day. And here he still preserved his early zeal for Mill's teaching. The influence upon his opinions will be shown in my next chapter. Here I may note one or two proofs of his feeling towards Mill, before the growth of a personal intimacy. In the letter already noticed (December 23, 1859) Fawcett calls himself 'per- sonally a stranger to you,' but mentions ' the very kind sympathy you have expressed to me.' He tells Mill that his books are producing a deep impression on many young men in Cambridge. ' For the last three years,' he says, 'your books have been the chief education of my mind. I consequently entertain towards you such a sense of gratitude as I can only hope at all adequately to repay by doing what lies in my power to propagate the in- valuable truths contained in every page of your writings.'

There is another undated fragment, clearly intended for Mill, and possibly referring to the expression of sympathy noticed in the last. ' My dear Sir,' he says, 'pray accept my most sincere thanks for your letter. I

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cannot tell you how much I value your words of kind encouragement. Often, when I reflect on my affliction, I feel that it is rash on my part to attempt anything like a career of public usefulness ; and again and again, I am sure, my heart would fail me if I was not stimulated by your thoughts and teaching. I can, therefore, assure you that your kind words will remove many an obstacle to my course.'

No teacher could ever boast of a more ardent and attached disciple. He never lost an opportunity of re- ferring to Mill and the value of his teaching. In dis- tributing prizes at Manchester on October i, 1866, he remarks on the value of converse with great minds. * As I was reading Mill's "Liberty," ' he says, 'perhaps / the greatest work of our greatest living writer, as I read his noble, I might, almost say his holy, ideas, I thought to myself, If everyone in my country could and would read this work, how infinitely happier would the nation be ! How much less desirous should we be to wrangle about petty religious differences ! How much less of the energy of the nation would be wasted in contemptible quarrels about creeds and formularies ; and how much more powerful should we be as a nation to achieve works of good, when, as this work would teach us to be, we were firmly bound together by the bonds of a wise toleration ! '

We used sometimes to rally Fawcett upon his enviable — and really honourable — absence of the modest awkward- ness so common with over-sensitive youth. He would reply, * If you could ever see me meeting Mill, you would see me awkward enough ! ' The introduction came about through Mr. Hare, I believe, who had himself made the

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acquaintance of Fawcett as an energetic advocate of his own scheme. Whether Fawcett was awkward at the first meeting I know not ; he met our inquiries with a resolute refusal to confess ; but, in any case, the two men soon became familiar, and Fawcett could talk to Mill as easily as to anyone. He soon perceived the peculiar charm of a feminine tenderness underlying a character which superficial readers of his books had taken to be stern and chilling. In a speech upon unveiling Mill's statue (January 26, 1878) Fawcett said that Mill possessed qualities supposed to be the peculiar privileges of women — a gentleness and tenderness such as no woman could exceed. His adherence as a discij^le was blended with strong personal affection; something of the chivalrous desire to stand up for a friend blended with the spirit in which he defended their common beliefs, and, as some people thought, made him less impartial than usual in giving a hearing to their common opponents.

From the date of his return to residence in Cambridge, Fawcett had a double set of interests. His main energies were soon diverted into the political direction. But through life, in spite of all distractions, he clung fondly to Cambridge and his college. I shall here bring together the main incidents of his purely academical career, before taking up the thread of political affairs. Fawcett was elected to a Fellowship at Christmas 1S56. He found the college on the eve of a revolution. Our five- hundredth anniversary had been celebrated in 1850, and during our whole previous existence we had jogged along quietly, without any nominal alteration in the

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old statutes. It was, however, beginning to be under- stood that the University was to be overhauled. New studies were beginning to be introduced; and it was coming to be understood that the constitution of the colleges would requke a corresj)onding change. A com- mission of inquiry had reported, and in the session of 1856 an Act had been passed, appointing an executive Commission to carry out suggested improvements. The colleges were permitted to frame new statutes before January i, 1858. If no settlement had been effected by that time, the Commission might itself propose new statutes, which could only be rejected by a majority of two-thh'ds of the governing body. It was farther pro- vided that no religious test should be imposed for the ordinary degrees or for Scholarships ; but no one was to acquire a vote in the senate or to hold a Fellowship until he had declared himself to be that rather indefinite entity — ' a bond fide member of the Church of England.' This last provision marks the point in removal of religious tests which had then been reached by re- formers. It afterwards became the cause of a prolonged agitation in which Fawcett took a very prominent part as a politician. For the present, however, our hands were tied, and we could do nothing to affect the connec- tion between the Church and the Universities.

The main deshe of the reformers, both at Oxford and Cambridge, was simple. Their primary object was to do away with all restrictions which hampered the full efficiency of the prizes offered to intellectual excellence. The function of the University was education ; the mainspring of the educational system was the rewards

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obtainable by success in examination ; the more attrac- tive the prizes, and the more open the field, the greater ^vould be the success of the system. Another school of reformers has since arisen, which holds that Universities should be also institutes of learning, and which took for its watchword the 'endowment of research.' This view was partly represented under the Commission of 1856, in so far as it was proposed to do something towards strengthening the professorial system. The Commissioners proposed to levy a tax of five per cent, upon the college incomes for University purposes.

At Cambridge generally there were few of the close Fellowships which were a main gxievance with the Oxford reformers. At Trinity Hall there were none. Cambridge Fellowships, however, unlike those at Oxford, were by custom confined to members of the college. The small colleges invariably accepted success in the University examinations as the test of merit. The Commissioners suggested the advantage of imitating Oxford in this respect, and electing to Fellowships by examinations open to the University. Cambridge men generally clung to their own system ; and a meeting (held October 24, 1857) protested so unanimously against the proposed change that the Commissioners withdrew their proposal. Fawcett, I find, was almost alone in advocating the Oxford system. He argued, in a letter to the ' Times,' that under that system there would be less uncertainty ; the standard of merit would not vary from one college to another, and the supply of vacancies would be more regular ; colleges would be compelled to attract students by improving thcii' educational staff, instead of

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keeping up their numbers by confining the offer of prizes to members of their own body. His own case was in point ; for he had * migrated ' to Trinity Hall to improve his chances of a Fellowship, not for any superiority in the college itself. His arguments, though certainly deserving attention, failed to affect the existing prejudice.

Another point gave us far more trouble at Trinity Hall. The Fellowships were tenable for life, subject only to the condition of celibacy. Of our thirteen Fellows ten were barristers. A barrister who does not marry is, as a rule, of the class called ' briefless.' The result was that the prize for youthful excellence became too often a pension for adult incompetence. The number of vacancies was diminished by a system which clogged the college revenues by creating small sinecures for men who had failed in the open field of professional enterprise.

This w^as clearly an abuse of the prize system. The obvious remedy w^as to limit the tenure to a term of years. The value of the reward would hardly be diminished, for no clever young man cares much for the prospect of securing his retreat when he is setting out on his adventures. What was lost by this change would be more than made up by allowing marriage, and by the increased number of vacancies resulting from the limita- tion. Fawcett's great object, therefore, was to limit the Fellowships, and remove the restriction of celibacy. A battle raged over this question for many months ; and Fawcett's part in it was too characteristic to be passed over. The changes affected only one small college, and subsequent legislation has made our discussions obsolete.

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Yet the struggle in our combination room resembled in its conduct and in the principles at issue more important battles waged in the House of Commons, and curiously illustrates some of Fawcett's permanent principles.

Fawcett was the leader of the opposition. His followers were K. Campbell, F. Fitzroy, and myself (his seniors in the University by a year or two), and Lumley Smith (now Q.C.), his junior by a year (elected Fellow, June 1857). Our opponents, the Master and the older Fellows, were in a majority of eight or nine to five. I remember vividly Fawcett's first appearance in the field. At the college meeting at which he was elected Fellow (Christmas 1856) the statutes came up for discussion. The new Fellow proceeded at once to expound his theories in a speech of some length. A dignified senior then began a few observations, destined to an abrupt close. At an early pause, Fawcett interrupted and told him in the plainest English that he had said quite enough. Dumb surprise ensued, and the startled senior collapsed on the spot. This was the only occasion I can remember upon which Fawcett w^as not only brusque but distinctly rude. Whether from the essential good-humour beneath his occasionally rough manner, or from a similar quality in his opponents, or from the harmonising influ- ences of the evening's milk-punch, the sun never went down upon any serious irritation. We wrangled up and down ; we wrangled long and sore ; we got into tangled skeins of logic, till we hardly knew what were the issues before us ; but the spirit of good fellowship was never extinct, and before long Fawcett was on the best of terms with everyone. At this first meeting we were out-

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voted. The statutes, framed by the majority, adopted the essential points of the old system. Life Fellowships, subject to the restriction of celibacy, were still to be the rule. The Commissioners, however, for some reason did not act upon our proposals. It was not till February 1859 that they sent us a scheme of their own, making an essential alteration in our draft. The Fellowships were to be tenable for ten years from the M.A. degree, whilst the restriction of celibacy was to be preserved. This suited neither party. The war broke out afresh. We met and wrangled and broke up into several sections, each of which drew up its own platform for the con- sideration of the Commission. We printed and circu- lated professions of our various faiths. In one which (I do not remember why) Fawcett signed alone, the youth- ful Eadical roundly informs the Commissioners that he can ' neither understand nor imagine the reasons ' which have induced them to preserve the restriction of celibacy along with a limited tenure. Nor, to say the truth, can I. At last, however, this tangled controversy came to an end. The minority triumphed by a diplomacy of which Fawcett often spoke with complacency. The essential point was this. The statutes proposed by the Commis- sion could only be rejected by a majority of two- thirds of the governing body. The majority objected both to the limitation of tenure and to the abolition of celibacy. The minority were in favour of both. Either part}^ being more than a third of the whole, could secure the adoption of a proposal of the Commission by abstaining from voting against it. If, therefore, the Commission adhered to their proposal, it was possible that it might

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be rejected by our united votes. But the majority might, if they pleased, retain ceHbacy, though only on the dis- agreeable terms of also accepting limitation of tenure ; whilst the minority could obtain all they required if the Commission would withdraw the restriction of celibacy. The great point with the Commission was to secure a limited tenure ; and we of the minority took care that they should understand that they could secure this by withdrawing the condition of celibacy, whilst, if they proposed both, it was possible that they might unite the whole college against them.

This consideration apparently was conclusive. The Commissioners were probably glad to have the thing settled ; at any rate they accepted our view. They sent down statutes in the corresponding form desired, and, as the requisite two-thirds majority could not be obtained against them, we were one of the first colleges in the University to carry out the now accepted system of Fellowships of limited tenure without any restriction upon marriage. Great was our triumph !

On certain collateral issues we were less successful. A distinction was made in the statutes between the ten lay Fellowships to be held by lawyers, and the three clerical Fellowships intended for the educational staff of the college. The last were still to be celibate, though under certain conditions. A life Fellowship free from restriction might be voted to them as a reward for services of a certain length. We protested — reasonably, I think — that celibacy was specially injurious in the case of the clerical Fellows, because it hindered the adoption of teaching as a permanent career. We held that no professional

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condition should be imposed, for every such condition depreciated the vakie of the Fellowship, and that the only difference should be a permission to retain Fellow- ships during service in a college office. Our seniors were greatly scandalised by our audacious proposal, which would, they held, destroy the connection of the college with the bar, besides rendering unnecessary its connection with the Church. We failed, at the time, in this, and in another protest (specially insisted on in Fawcett's letter) against a provision that ' open secession from the Church of England ' should vacate a Fellowship.

One other controversy bore upon a different point. The proposed levy of five per cent, on the colleges for University purposes broke down. Seniors and juniors agreed in rejecting it, and we juniors stated in explana- tion of our part in the protest that we were very willing to contribute to strengthen the professoriate ; but that we preferred a different scheme. We objected to taxing Fellowships, but we were quite ready to sacrifice our Master. Let his office be annexed to a professorship, a contribution which would be more than the proposed five per cent. I remember Fawcett's delight in securing the adhesion of one of the senior Fellows to this (as it was thought) audacious proposal. The poor man weakly admitted that he could not answer Fawcett's arguments, and was then fairly terrorised by appeals to his con- science into the logical consequence of signing a proposal, which thus received the adhesion of half the Fellows. But the interference with so delightful a sinecure was too much even for reforming zeal at the time.

I owe gratitude to one of our opponents who collected

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and deposited in our college library the documents bearing upon this dispute. He has prefixed to it a pious aspira- tion that the evils which he foresees may not fall upon the college. It may perhaps be now admitted that, in some respects, our opponents saw farther than we did. Undoubtedly we were striking a blow at the old autonomy of the colleges. The holder of a prize Fellowship is no longer connected by such close ties as of old with his college. We were virtually acting upon the princij)le that the college is not an end in itself, but merely a part of a larger body, to whose needs its own interests must be subordinated. The changes made by the Commis- sion appointed under the Act of 1877 brought out the tendency of the reform. Our statutes, instead of obtain- ing the venerable antiquity of their predecessors, barely reached their majority. Their provisions became obsolete whilst the ink was fresh. Under the new statutes (finally approved on March 16, 1881) there is no longer any question of a religious test ; there is no restriction to professions, legal or clerical ; there is no mention of celibacy in any case ; and the tenure is restricted within still narrower limits. A Fellow holds for only six years from the date of appointment, but Fellowships are tenable during the tenure of college offices, and twenty years of such tenure may be rewarded by a life Fellowship.

The effect of these changes is that part of the college revenue is to be devoted to prize Fellowships, implying a very transitory connection with the college ; whilst the remainder goes chiefly to the support of a permanent educational staff. Fawcctt considered that the tenure was too short, for he continued to attach great value to

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the prize Fellowship system. For the same reason he looked with doubtful approval upon another change of great importance. It was now decided that a large con- tribution should be levied upon the colleges for University purposes. The old system of a lax federation of seven- teen independent bodies, each teaching the same subjects, involved great waste of power and implied a most defective organisation. Professors' lectures were mainly of the ornamental kind ; college lectures, given by men anxious to go off to a living, and confined to the students who entered a college for any other reason than its educational advantages, were almost equally ineffective. The real work was done by private tutors, and the college endow- ments, mainly devoted to rewarding competitors, increased instead of diminishing the expense of education. To remedy these evils, it has seemed desirable to most reformers to re-organise the whole University system ; to make each college co-operate instead of competing with its neighbours ; to subordinate it to the University ; and to put fresh life into the central body, which should thus be not only capable of teaching more efficiently, but become an institute for ' original research ' and a leading organ of national education.

Fawcett looked with a certain suspicion upon these proposals. His view was indicated very frankly in a speech in June 1876, when the new Commission was in prospect. It is true that as the speech was made after dinner, on the occasion of the presentation to the college of a portrait of Chief Justice Cockburn, it should not be taken too seriously. He spoke, as usual, of his grati- tude to the old college. * There was,' he added, * a

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certain school, not a great school, which, having gained great advantages from the emoluments and rewards of the Universities, turned round and said poor men were not to be helped ; examinations were not to be rewarded ; young men w^ere not to be encouraged ; but everything was to be thrown into an undefined hodge-podge of what they called " original research." ' He claimed to have as much sympathy with the ostensible end as its pro- fessed advocates ; but he earnestly hoped that the number of Fellowships might not be diminished. He proposed an amendment to this effect (June 4, 1877), during the passage of the University Bill of 1877.

Fawcett was in fact a Conservative, as viewed by the younger school of reformers. What he really valued in the University system, as he said again and again, was that it provided, however imperfectly, a ladder by which a young man might climb to success by the exercise of his own talents, in a fair contest, however poor or socially depressed. To reform the University meant with him chiefly to remove all obstructions which limited the beneficial influence of this open competition to any particular class. He held, too, that the new system was in danger, if not of encouraging jobbery, at least of favouring ' impostors.' The ' endowment of research ' is a pretty phrase ; but it may cover much that was condemned by the old narrow but masculine school. It might mean the foundation of comfortable posts for gentlemen who prefer regions of inquiry which do not always atone by loftier merits for their want of immediate practical utility. Instead of the old strenuous compefi- tion, the students would be encouraged to listen to pro-

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fessors spinning fine phrases and creating sham sciences to justify the existence of their chairs, rather than to extend the borders of genuine science. He held that the obhgation to take part in the actual work of educa- tion would serve as a beneficial restraint upon such waste of energy, and was really compatible with original research. A prize openly offered and fairly won has certain definite and intelligible merits. A post created to enable a gentleman to air his last new philosophical crotchets may contribute to the multiplication of empty verbiage and sham illumination. And possibly a little body of gentlemen connected by family ties may not show that aversion to jobbery which Fawcett regarded as the most honourable characteristic of the old order.

I will not argue the question. I only wish to show the natural tendency of Fawcett's strong common sense and love of the definite and tangible. I may add that he did not object to the principle of raising some con- tribution to the University, though he was doubtful as to the special method proposed. Change became the natural state of the Universities when once the old system was broken up, which had seemed to be almost a part of the necessary order of nature. Fawcett confined himself to criticising some of the proposed measures in detail. He was anxious that the contribution should not be so levied as to be a first charge upon the college revenues. He feared that bodies dependent in great part upon landed property, and therefore likely to suffer from agricultural depression, were liable to be seriously crippled by such a charge. And he held that whatever materially lowered their power of rewarding success in

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examinations would be a very heavy fine to pay for the endowment of readers and professors.

I have anticipated events in order to bring together Fawcett's views upon this group of questions. It will, I think, appear hereafter that his attitude in regard to them throws some light upon his later divergence from one school of Radicals. I now return to an earlier period.

During his first years of residence Fawcett was rapidly making himself known both within and without the University. He was becoming conspicuous as a speaker at the British and the Social Science Associa- tions, and as a candidate for a seat in Parliament. He was becoming known as an expounder of economic principles. Amongst our friends of those days was Mr. Alexander Macmillan, already rising as a publisher, though his business was still limited to Cambridge. Fawcett contributed to the early numbers of the maga- zine. Macmillan was often in our rooms, trying rather fruitlessly to stimulate Fawcett's interest in the writings of Carlyle, Maurice, and Kingsley. At Macmillan's we occasionally met men of some literary eminence, whom we respected with juvenile simplicity. Macmillan, I believe, was the first to suggest an undertaking which was of great importance in Fawcett's career. He pro- posed that Fawcett should Vv'rite a popular manual of political economy. The result was profitable to both parties ; and I will add that Macmillan always con- tinued to be both friend and publisher — a combination happily more common than the complaints of some querulous authors would suggest. Fawcett was at work

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upon his book in the autumn of 1861, and it appeared in the beginning of 1863. It was favourably received from the first ; and the reputation gained was of great service. Professor Pryme had received the title of Professor of Political Economy in May 1828. He was now breSiking in health and announced his intended resignation. It was generally understood that a more substantial professorship would be created when a vacancy should occur. Fawcett naturally desired such an appointment, and Macmillan had pointed out to him the advantage of having some public proof of his capacities as one reason for writing the book. Pryme resigned in the summer of 1863 (he died in December 1868), and the professorship, with a salary of 300/. a year, was founded by grace of the senate, October 29, 1863. The choice lay with the electoral roll — a body con- sisting chiefly of resident M.A.'s, with a few examiners and others as ex-officio members. Ultimately, four candi- dates declared themselves. Besides Fawcett, they were Mr. Joseph Bickersteth Mayor, of St. John's ; Mr. Leonard H. Courtney, also of St. John's, who has now made a wider reputation ; and Mr. Henry Dunning Macleod, of Trinity. The electoral poll was tolerably certain to prefer a resident, personal friendship counting for a good deal in a body too large to have a keen sense of re- sponsibility. Mr. Macleod, though a learned writer upon the subject, was not only a non-resident, but generally regarded as an economical heretic. Courtney's abilities were already generally recognised ; but he, too, was non- resident, and the contest came to be between Fawcett and Mayor. Mayor had lectured on political economy

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in his college, but had given no pubHc proofs of his capacity. Fawcett's book stood him in good stead, and he produced a strong body of testimonials from Sir Stafford Northcote, Eobert Lowe, Thorold Eogers, pro- fessor at Oxford ; E. H. Mills, professor at Cork ; J. Waley, professor at University College, London; Cliffe Leslie, professor at Belfast ; E. H. Hutton, G. W. Nor- man, W. Newmarch, W. T. Thornton, J. S. Mill, and Herman Merivale, formerly professor at Oxford. Most of them refer to his book, and some to his discussions at the London Political Economy Club, of which he had become a member in 1861. I will not quote from a kind of literature proverbially untrustworthy and abounding in platitude, even in the hands of eminent men beyond all suspicion of insincerity. The names, however, show that Fawcett was already widely known amongst the official representatives of the science. He could certainly pro- duce far stronger evidence of fitness for the post than his most dangerous rival. But much was to be set against him. There were some real doubts as to the power of a blind man to preserve order in his classes. One at least of his most intimate friends withheld his support upon this ground. Yet I think that no one who knows the average undergraduate will doubt that he has too much good feeling to take advantage of an infirmity in a man at least who knows how to make himself respected. Other considerations told against him. . Fawcett's Eadi- calism had scandalised the older members of the Uni- versity. He had contested Southwark, and in the pre- ceding summer Cambridge itself under the very eyes of the dignitaries. He was an active and pugnacious

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antagonist of Conservatism in and out of college. He had encountered the great Whewell, too, on an economic question : he read a paper at the British Association meeting at Oxford in i860, in. which he assaulted Whewell's preface to the works of Eichard Jones. A large meeting had gathered to witness the encounter. Fawcett had learnt by heart a sentence from Whewell's preface. Whewell replied and repudiated the phrases quoted. Fawcett slowly and accurately repeated the words, which Whewell again disavowed. Then Fawcett called to his secretary, E. Brown, to produce the volume in which the unlucky sentence had been marked. The chairman, Nassau Senior, read it out, when Fawcett's quotation appeared to be perfectly correct. He thus gained an apparently conclusive triumph. * There were not half a dozen people in the room,' he observed, ' who would have understood if I had got the best of the argu- ment as to the inductive method ;