Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. Part 19

But without trying to judge such a delicate question, which will be a subject of controversy as long as the world is given up to the disputes of man, I have found a real pleasure in seeing this clear explanation of the principles which form the basis of a system whose adherents are so many and so distinguished....

_From Lord Clarendon_

_The Grove, August 2nd._--Lord Russell does not much like some parts of the article on the Irish Church, and wishes to write five or six pages on the subject for the November [Footnote: _Sic_ for October.] number; but not feeling sure whether you would accept them, he has asked me to inquire--which I hereby do. If you have not set out for Russia, [Footnote: _Sc._ or other out-of-the-way place. It has been seen that, at the time, Reeve was at Royal.] perhaps you will write him a line yourself, as I start for Wiesbaden on Tuesday.

As no note from Lord Russell appeared in the October number, it would seem probable that Reeve did not encourage the idea. His own relations to Lord Russell were not such as to prompt him to any undue complacence, and he was at all times extremely averse from anything like a controversy either in or about the 'Review.' It has happened to the present writer to have statements or opinions put forward in his contributions to the 'Review'

called in question in the daily or weekly papers, and to have been pointedly requested by the editor to take no notice of the hostile letters or criticisms. As the articles were strictly anonymous, the responsibility, of course, rested with the editor, who, probably for that very reason, was strongly opposed to an early revelation of a writer's personality.

The Journal notes visits to Farnborough and Denbigh, and some shooting at Torry Hill; but the gout was still troublesome, and in October Reeve and his wife went into Cornwall, where, after a week's visit to Lady Molesworth at Pencarrow, they went to Penzance, to the Land's End and the Logan Stone--on to which Mrs. Reeve clambered--and thence to Falmouth and Torquay, where they met the Queen of Holland and Prince Napoleon, with whom they spent two evenings. 'Her Majesty,' wrote Mrs. Reeve on November 4th, 'is a clever, original woman, speaking four tongues perfectly well, conversant with literature and politics, and finding in them consolation for an uncongenial family.' The sittings of the Judicial Committee, which began on November 10th, called Reeve back to town, where, on the 27th, he had the sad news of the death of his old friend Colonel Ferguson of Raith, and, for the last three years, of Novar.

_From Lord Clarendon_

Grosvenor Crescent, November 13th.

My dear Reeve,--The Queen of Holland has proposed to dine here in the unfurnished cupboard where we have our frugal repasts, on Monday next at eight. We have no servants, plate, or usual appurtenances, and only six can be crammed into the locale. Will you be one of them? and will Mrs. Reeve excuse us for asking you alone on account of our no room? Please let me have an answer as soon as you can.

Ever yours truly,

CLARENDON.

_Endorsed_--The dinner consisted of the Queen, c.o.c.kburn, Seymour, and self.

From the Bishop of Lincoln [Footnote: Christopher Wordsworth. Cf. _ante,_ vol. i. pp. 31, 68. VOL. II.]

November 21st.

My dear Reeve,--It is very good of you to write as you do concerning my promotion. I should indeed have been well content to remain in the peaceful harbour of Westminster for the remainder of my days, instead of putting out to sea in a rather weather-beaten bark in stormy weather. But such kind words as yours encourage me to hope that, if I am wrecked in the storm, I may be picked up by some friendly vessel and brought to land again. I have, my dear friend, your congratulations, and let me have also your prayers. I am, my dear Reeve,

Yours sincerely,

CHR. WORDSWORTH. [Footnote: He had not yet adopted the episcopal signature.]

I send you three pamphlets. Do not think me troublesome, but you ought really to take up (pardon me for saying so) the question of the approaching great Roman Council, which will probably affirm the personal infallibility of the Pope, and be fraught with the most important results to Europe, political as well as ecclesiastical.

_From Lord Cairns_

Windsor Castle, November 29th.

My dear Reeve,--I send you in a separate cover my notes of a judgement in Rugg _v._ Bishop of W. for printing and circulation; and I enclose in this a letter which I have had from Lord Westbury, which is in accordance with the judgement as it stands, but which it would perhaps be best to put in print and circulate along with the judgement. I hope in a week or ten days to have Mackonochie ready--that is, if I am not smothered in the meantime by the books and pamphlets which the Ritualists daily shower upon me.

Yours faithfully, CAIRNS.

As the general election had left his party in a minority of about 130, Disraeli resigned on December 4th, and Mr. Gladstone, who had put the disestablishment of the Irish Church prominently before the electors, formed a ministry which was from the beginning pledged to the measure. It was known that this would meet with no support from Lord Westbury, so that he was necessarily 'left out in the cold,' not without some misgivings as to what a man so cunning in fence might say or write when his opinions were sharpened by a sense of personal injury. To Lord Westbury, however, the slight was lost in his wrath at the barefaced avowal of a plan of spoliation; and, without taking the trouble to date his letter, he wrote:--

_From Lord Westbury_

[_December_].--These written judgements are a great bore. I imagine (no doubt from vanity) that, at the end of the argument, I could have p.r.o.nounced _viva voce_ a much more effective and convincing judgement than that which I have written. The _vis animi_ evaporates during the slow process of writing; the conception fades and the expression becomes feeble.

What we shall do with the other case of Mackonochie I dread to think. I wish we had knocked it off while the iron was hot, as we used to do the running down cases. There is no chance of a decision this side of Christmas.

I have come up to town on some private matters, and have not the least notion of mingling in any political matters. In fact, I gave my people to understand so clearly last session that I would reject with abhorrence any measure that embodied these two wicked things--l. Stripping the Irish Church of its property to convert it to secular uses, which is robbery; 2.

Destroying episcopacy in, and the Queen's supremacy over, the Established Church in Ireland, which is a wanton, unnecessary, and most mischievous act--that of course I could not expect any communication from them.

The weakness of the Government in its legal staff in the House of Commons will be very great, but the opposition will be weaker. It cannot be expected that Palmer [Footnote: Sir Roundell Palmer, afterwards Earl of Selborne, had been successively Solicitor--and Attorney-General during the whole of the Liberal Administration 1859-66; but on the formation of Mr.

Gladstone's Government declined the Great Seal with a peerage, on account of his disapproval of the proposed disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Church. Notwithstanding Lord Westbury's forecast, he did speak very strongly against the Bill on the second reading (March 22nd, 1869), voted with the minority against it, and took an active part against it in the Committee.] will take a very active part in opposition. Then what lawyer have they? But in the House of Lords I hope the principles of English law and of political expediency will be abundantly ill.u.s.trated and explained, and shown to be in direct opposition to the Government's destructive and revolutionary measure; and if this be done, as the people of England are a law-loving and law-abiding people, there may be a great reaction in public feeling. And what will Wood be able to do against those opposed to him?

What a Cabinet! 'Misery,' says Trinculo, 'makes one acquainted with strange bedfellows'--so, it seems, does unlooked-for prosperity. Only fancy Granville, Clarendon, and the rest, pigging heads and tails with John Bright in the same truckle bed! I am very thankful that I have an opportunity of conversing in quiet with philosophers and poets at Hinton.

The following, written in a feminine hand on a half-sheet of note-paper, belongs to this time. It is endorsed by Reeve--'Lord Derby's acrostic on Gladstone;' but it does not appear whether the attributing it to Lord Derby was on positive knowledge or on mere current gossip. The name of the author was certainly not generally known.

G was a Genius and mountain of mind; L a Logician expert and refined; A an Adept at rhetorical art; D was the Dark spot that lurked in his heart; S was the Subtlety that led him astray; T was the Truth that he bartered away; O was the Cypher his conscience became; N was the New-light that lit up the same; E was the Evil-One shouting for joy,-- 'Down with it! down with it! Gladstone, my boy!

[Footnote: Another, slightly different, edition of this acrostic, with the answer to it from the Radical point of view, is given in Sir M. E. Grant Duff's _Notes from a Diary,_ 1873-81, vol. i. p. 126.]

_From Lord Cairns_

_December 7th_--Putting aside the well-regulated party feeling which we ought all to endeavour to cultivate, the sensation of a period of repose after twenty-five years of hardish work is, to me, so novel and agreeable that I fear I do not look on my exit from office [Footnote: On the fall of Disraeli's ministry.] with the solicitude that I ought. But I do not the less appreciate the kind sentiments in your note, and I can safely say that upon the Judicial Committee, whether as Chancellor or as Lord Justice, it has been a very great pleasure to me to co-operate with anyone whose anxiety and efforts for the efficiency of the tribunal, and whose ability to contribute to that end, are as great as yours.

I am most desirous that the two ecclesiastical judgements should be given before Christmas, as I may be absent for some weeks after that day. I hope to send you my draft in Mackonochie on Wednesday, and I will beg you to print and circulate it as soon as possible. I wish I could have done it sooner; but it is _magnum opus et difficile_, and I have had judgements in chancery and other work on hand, and in this I felt obliged to trust to no amanuensis.

The following letter is from the widow of Sir James Smith, the botanist (_d_. 1828), and at this time in her ninety-sixth year. By her maiden name she was Pleasance Reeve, an old family friend, but not a relation of her namesake. Her letters are not less remarkable for the clearness and strength of the writing, than they are for the vigour of the thought and the lucidity of the expression. Five years later, just as she had completed her one hundredth year, Reeve and his daughter paid her a visit at Lowestoft, which is recorded on a later page. [Footnote: See _post_, p.

215.]

_Lowestoft, December 16th_--Surely, dear Mr. Reeve, this is not the first time you have inquired of me concerning Lowestoft china? Either you, or Dr.

Hooker it might be; whichever it was, I sent him all that I knew about it, and that all is very little, for I am one of the sceptics, and have been filled with doubt and surprise at the reports I have heard. But I am told I am quite mistaken, and that it surely had arrived at a great state of perfection; that foreign artists had been employed; and that, if what is shown is not Lowestoft china, what other is it? For there is a peculiarity in it which those acquainted with [it] know at first sight, and which is totally different from Chelsea, or Derby, or Worcesters.h.i.+re, or Staffords.h.i.+re. This I admit. One peculiarity Mr. S. Martin observed. The bottoms of the saucers have very slight undulations, looking, as he said, like a ribbon that requires ironing to be perfectly flat and smooth. This, when he showed me, I also noticed; and, I must add, I have seen the same in real Chinese china; but he told me he could distinguish better, and that it was not the same. Also, there is a uniformity in certain little flowers and roses which is seen in no others. The shapes are good, and as the manufacture advanced the painting was improved; armorial bearings were represented, and gilding.

S. Martin, who could send you a much more perfect account than I can, always calls on an old woman--the widow of Rose, a painter--who recollects their melting guineas for gold to gild with. She, perhaps, is dead now, for when he last called she was bedrid, and nearly insensible. I recommend you to ask of Mr. S. Martin, Liverpool, who, I am sure, would give you much information I cannot.

What I do know I will tell as well as I can--That in my early youth there was a manufactory; that I often went and _saw_ Mr. Allen dab a piece of white clay on a wheel, and, with his foot turning the wheel, with his right hand he formed a handsome basin or cup in a minute or two. The china basins, cups, saucers, pots, jugs--everything was made here, painted here, by poor sickly looking boys and girls, for it was a very unwholesome trade--baked here; and they had a shop in London, which, I suppose, took off the bulk of their manufactured articles. I remember the great water-wheel which ground the clay--a fearful monster, sublime, I must say, for it 'hid its limits in its greatness;' but the beautiful lake that supplied it with water, and was covered with water-lilies, was one of my favourite resorts.

Gillingwater [Footnote: _Historical Account of the Ancient Town of Lowestoft_ (1790).] tells us that Mr. Hewling Luson found the clay on his estate in 1756, made experiments, was defeated; other persons took it up, and were also hindered through jealousy; another trial proved unsuccessful, but repeated efforts succeeded, and the manufacture began, and went on till about the end of the century, or early in 1800, when my brother bought a few articles at the final sale by way of remembrance, but these, though pretty, are by no means the choicest specimens. A man in the town has a whole dinner service, with, I think, ducal bearings; and only last summer Mr. Bohn [Footnote: Henry George Bohn, the well-known publisher, and almost equally well-known collector of articles of vertu.] gave 5 to an old man for one little cup, which the poor fellow intended as a legacy to his daughter, and he unwillingly sold it; but 5 bribed him--or it might be more; the original price was probably 4_d_. or 6_d_. at most.

Pray, dear Mr. Reeve, take no trouble to correct the name in Mrs.

Palliser's book of pottery. I never was a patroness of the Lowestoft china, know but little about it, and do not wish my name to appear as being in any other way connected with it than as being an inhabitant of the same town.--I am, dear Mr. Reeve, yours faithfully,

P. SMITH.

And the Journal winds up the year with--

_December 31st_--To Hinton St. George, on a visit to Lord Westbury.

1869. The year opened at Hinton, shooting with Lord Westbury. Montague Smith was there. Nothing ever amused me more than Lord Westbury's society, and I became intimate with him. He was a strange mixture of intellectual power and moral weakness, and his peculiar mode of speaking was at once precise, pertinent, and comical. He had hired Hinton from Lord Paulet, and lived there with a host of children and grandchildren. On Sundays all dined together--I think, thirty-two of them.

_From the Duc d'Aumale_

_Woodnorton_, 16 _janvier_.--... Nous aurons une pa.s.sable cha.s.se a tir le jour sacramental du lr fevrier. Voulez-vous en etre? L'ennui est que c'est un lundi, et que le train du dimanche est d'une lenteur fabuleuse.

Voulez-vous venir diner et coucher ici samedi 30, ou dimanche 31?

H. D'O.