Christopher Crayon's Recollections Part 4

He must write letters to newspapers; he must say odd things that make men talk about him; he must manage to be the subject of newspaper gossip; he must cling to the skirts of some public agitation-in fact, his light must be seen and his voice heard everywhere.

It was not so in the times when, half a century ago, I had more to do with the London pulpit than I have now. Some of the men in it were giants. One was Melville, who preached somewhere over the water-Camberwell way. He was a High Churchman; he had a grand scorn of the conventicle. I should say he was a Tory of the Tories-a man who would be impossible in a London suburban church now; but what a crowd he drew to hear him, as he, like a mighty, rus.h.i.+ng wind, swept over the heads of an audience who seemed to hang upon his lips! He was tall, dark, with a magnificent ba.s.s voice that caused every sentence he read-for he read, and rapidly-to vibrate from the pulpit to the furthest corner of the church. His style was that of the late Dr. Chalmers, always sweeping to a climax, which, when reached and mastered, was a relief to all. I think he was made Canon of St. Paul's. He also was the Golden Lecturer somewhere near the Bank-an appropriate locality. His sermons were highly finished-I am told he laboured at them all the week.

He was a preacher-nothing less, nothing more.

Next there rises before me the vision of Howard Hinton-a big, cadaverous, grey-haired man, preaching in a small chapel on the site in Sh.o.r.editch now occupied by the Great Eastern Railway. The congregation was not large, but it was very select; I fancy it represented the _elite_ of the London Baptists. He was a very fascinating preacher by reason of his great subtlety of thought, and at times he was terribly impressive, as his big, burly frame trembled with emotion, and his choked-up utterance intimated with what agony he had sought to deliver his soul from blood-guiltiness, as, wailing and weeping, he antic.i.p.ated the awful doom of the impenitent. I must own I got wearied of his metaphysical subtleties, which seemed to promise so much, and whose conclusions were so lame and impotent, ever disappointing; and it often seemed to me that his celebrated son-the late James Hinton-too soon removed, as it seemed to many of us-inherited not a little of his father's ingenuity in this respect. But he was a grand man; you felt it in his presence, and still more as you walked home thinking of what he said.

Amongst the Independents-as they were termed-the leading men were the Brothers Clayton: one preaching at the Poultry, the other in Walworth, to large congregations-fine portly men, and able in their way, though it was an old-fas.h.i.+oned one. Nor must Dr. Bengo Collyer be forgotten-a fat, oily man of G.o.d, as Robert Hall called him, who had at one time great popularity, and whom the Duke of Kent had been to hear preach.

It is a curious sign of the times-the contrast between what exists now and what existed then-as regards theological speculation. We are now sublimely indifferent whether a preacher is orthodox or the reverse, whatever that may mean, so long as we feel his utterances are helpful in the way of Christian work and life. It was not so fifty years ago.

Ministers scanned their brethren in the ministry severely, and the deacon, with his Matthew Henry and Doddridge, sat grimly in his pew, eager to note the deflection of the preacher in the pulpit from the strait and narrow line of orthodoxy, and to glow with unholy zeal as he found him missing his footing on the tight-rope. In London there was such a man in the shape of Thomas Binney, who had come from the Isle of Wight to the King's Weigh House Chapel, now swept away by the underground railway just opposite the Monument. Binney was a king among men, standing head and shoulders above his fellows. All that was intelligent in Dissenting London, among the young men especially, heard him gladly.

Yet all over the land there were soulless deacons and crabbed old parsons, whose testimony no man regarded, who said Binney was not orthodox. He lived long enough to trample that charge down. He lived to see the new era when men, sick of orthodoxy, hailed any utterance from whatever quarter, so that it were G.o.d-fearing and sincere. As you listened to Binney struggling to evolve his message out of his inner consciousness, you felt that you stood in the presence of a man who dwelt in the Divine presence, to whom G.o.d had revealed Himself, whose eye could detect the sham, and whose hot indignation was terrible to listen to.

Let me chronicle a few more names. Dr. Andrew Reed, whose occasional sermons at other places-I never heard him at Wycliffe Chapel-were most effective; Morris of Fetter Lane, who preached to a crowded audience with what seemed to me at the time a slight touch of German mysticism; Stratten, far away in Paddington, whom rich people loved to listen to, as he was supposed to be a man of means himself; and old Leifchild at Craven Chapel, filled to overflowing with a crowd who knew, however the dear old man might prose in the opening of his sermon, he would go off with a bang at the end. But I may not omit two Churchmen who, if they had not Melville's power, had an equal popularity. One was the Hon. and Rev.

Baptist Noel, who preached in a church, long since pulled down, in Bedford-row. He was tall, gentlemanly, silver-tongued, and perfectly orthodox. His people wors.h.i.+pped him, for was he not the son of a lord?

His influence in London was immense, but he left the Church for conscientious reasons, and became a Baptist minister. That was a blow to his popularity which he never got over, though he lived to a grand old age. Another popular Evangelical preacher was Dale, who preached at St.

Bride's, Fleet Street. He was a poet and more or less of a literary man; but he had more worldly wisdom than Baptist Noel. Dale was a Professor of Literature at University College; but it was understood that University College, with its liberal inst.i.tutions, with its Dissenters and Jews, was no place for a Churchman who wished to rise. Dale saw this, gave up his professors.h.i.+p in Gower Street, and reaped a rich reward.

London was badly off for _illuminati_ fifty years ago. The only pulpit effectually filled was that of South Place, Finsbury, where W. Johnson Fox, the celebrated orator and critic, lectured. He had been trained to be an orthodox divine at Homerton. One day he said to me, "The students always get very orthodox as they get to the end of their collegiate career, and are preparing to settle, as the phrase is." Fox, it seems, was the exception that proves the rule. He was eloquent and attractive as preacher and lecturer. d.i.c.kens and Macready and Foster were, I believe, among his hearers. At any rate, he had a large following, and died an M.P. Lectures on all things sacred and profane were unknown in London fifty years ago. I once heard Robert Dale Owen somewhere at the back of Tottenham Court Road Chapel, but he was a weariness of the flesh, and I never went near him again. The provinces occasionally sent us popular orators; one was Raffles, of Liverpool, a man who looked as if the world had used him well. I well remember how he dealt in such alliteration as "the dewdrop glittering in the glen." Then there was Parsons of York, with his amazing rhetoric, all whispered with a thrill that went to every heart, as he preached in Surrey Chapel, where also I heard Jay of Bath, who, however, left on me no impression other than he was a wonderful old man for his years. Sherman, the regular preacher there, was a great favourite with the ladies-almost as much as Dr.

c.u.mming, a dark, scholarly-looking man, who held forth in a court just opposite Drury Lane Theatre, and whose prophetic utterances obtained for him a popularity he would otherwise have sought in vain. It makes one feel old to write of these good men who have long since pa.s.sed away, not, however, unregretted, or without failing to leave behind them

Footprints on the sands of Time.

When I first became familiar with the Dissenting world of London the most bustling man in it was the Rev. Dr. John Campbell, who preached in what was then a most melancholy pile of buildings known as the Tottenham Court Road Chapel, the pulpit of which had been at one time occupied by the celebrated George Whitfield. In or about 1831 Dr. Campbell became the minister, and at the same time found leisure to write in _The Patriot_ newspaper; to fight and beat the trustees of the Tottenham Court Road, who had allowed the affairs of the chapel to get into a most disorderly state; to make speeches at public meetings; to write in a monthly that has long ceased to exist-_The Eclectic Review_-a review to which I had occasionally the honour of contributing when it was edited by Dr.

Price;-and to publish a good many books which had a fair sale in his day.

Dr. Campbell had also much to do with the abolition of the Bible printing monopoly-a movement originated by Dr. Adam Thomson, of Coldstream, powerfully supported by one of my earliest friends, Mr. John Childs, a spirited and successful printer at Bungay, whose one-volume editions of standard authors, such as Bacon's works, Milton's, and Gibbon's "Decline and Pall of the Roman Empire," are still to be seen on the shelves of second-hand booksellers. The Queen's Printer affected to believe that the Bible could not be supplied to the public with equal efficiency or cheapness on any other system than that which gave him the monopoly of printing, but as it was proved before a Committee of the House of Commons that the Book could be printed at much less cost and in every way equal to the copies then in existence, the monopoly was destroyed.

In 1830 there came into existence the Congregational Union of England and Wales, of which Dr. Campbell became one of the leading men. He was at the same time editor of _The Christian Witness_ and _The Christian's Penny Magazine_-the organs of the Union-both of which at that time secured what was then considered a very enormous sale. When in 1835 Mr.

Nasmith came to London to establish his City Mission Dr. Campbell was one of his earliest supporters and friends. The next great work which he took in hand was the establishment of _The British Banner_, a religious paper for the ma.s.ses, in answer to an appeal made to him by the committee of _The Patriot_ newspaper. The first number of the new journal appeared in 1848, and gained a circulation hitherto unknown in a weekly paper, and this in time was succeeded by _The British Standard_. As time pa.s.sed on Dr. Campbell became less popular. He had rather too keen a scent for what was termed neology. In one case his zeal involved him in a libel suit and the verdict was for the plaintiff, who was awarded by the jury forty s.h.i.+llings damages instead of the 5,000 he had claimed. In the Rivulet Controversy, as it was termed, Dr. Campbell was not quite so successful. Mr. Lynch was a poet, and preached, as his health was bad, to a small but select congregation in the Hampstead Road. He published a volume of refined and thoughtful poetry which has many admirers to this day. The late Mr. James Grant-a Scotch baker who had taken to literature and written several remarkably trashy books, the most popular of which was "Random Recollections of the House of Commons,"-at that time editor of the publican's paper, _The Morning Advertiser_, in his paper described the work of Mr. Lynch as calculated to inspire pain and sadness in the minds of all who knew what real religion was. Against this view a powerful protest was made by many leading men of the body to which Mr.

Lynch belonged. At this stage of the controversy Dr. Campbell struck in by publis.h.i.+ng letters addressed to the princ.i.p.al professors of the Independent and Baptist colleges of England, showing that the hymns of Mr. Lynch were very defective as regards Evangelical truth-containing less of it than the hymns ordinarily sung by the Unitarians. The excitement in Dissenting circles was intense. The celebrated Thomas Binney, of the King's Weigh House Chapel, took part with Mr. Lynch and complained of Dr. Campbell in the ensuing meetings of the Congregational Union, and so strong was the feeling on the subject that a large party was formed to request the Congregational Union formally to sever their official connexion with Dr. Campbell-a matter not quite so easy as had been antic.i.p.ated. One result, however, was that Dr. Campbell gave up the editing of _The British Banner_ and established _The British Standard_ to take its place, in which the warfare against what is called Neology was carried on with accelerated zeal. In 1867 the Doctor's laborious career came to an end happily in comfort and at peace with all. His biographers a.s.sure the reader that Dr. Campbell's works will last till the final conflagration of the world. Alas! no one reads them now.

To come to later times, of course my most vivid recollections are those connected with the late Mr. Spurgeon. In that region of the metropolis known as "over the water" the Baptists flourish as they do nowhere else, and some of their chapels have an interesting history. Amongst many of them rather what is called high doctrine is tolerated-not to say admired.

They are the elect of G.o.d, preordained before the world was formed to enjoy an existence of beatific rapture, that shall continue when the world has pa.s.sed away. Of one of the most popular preachers in that locality, the late Jemmy Wells, it is said that when told that one of his hearers had fallen out of a cart and broken his leg his reply was, "Oh, what a blessed thing it is he can't fall out of the Covenant." When one of the chapels in that locality was at low-water mark, there came to it the Rev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon-then little more than a boy, but already famous in East Anglia as a boy preacher-and never had a preacher a more successful career. There was no place in London that was large enough to contain the audiences that flocked to hear him. I first heard him at the Surrey Music Hall, and it was wonderful to see what hordes came there of saints and sinners, lords and ladies, City magnates and county squires, Anonymas from St. John's Wood, Lady Clara Vere de Veres from Belgravia.

It was the fas.h.i.+on to go there on a Sunday morning, just as it was the fas.h.i.+on a generation previously to rush to Hatton Garden to hear Edward Irving. The hall was handsome and light and airy, free from the somewhat oppressive air of Cave Adullam and Little Bethel, and there upon the platform which did duty for a pulpit stood a young man short of stature, broadly built, of a genial though not handsome countenance, with a big head and a voice it was a treat to listen to and audible in every part of that enormous building. What was the secret of his success? He was bold, he was original, he was humorous, and he was in earnest. He said things to make his hearers laugh, and what he said or did was magnified by rumour. Old stories of Billy Dawson and Rowland Hill were placed to Mr. Spurgeon's credit. The caricaturists made him their b.u.t.t. There was no picture more commonly displayed at that time than one ent.i.tled "Brimstone and Treacle"-the former representing Mr. Spurgeon, the latter Mr. Bellew, then a star of the first order in many an Episcopalian pulpit. Bellew soon ran through his ephemeral popularity-that of Mr.

Spurgeon grew and strengthened day by day. Do you, like the late Sir James Graham, want to know the reason why? The answer is soon given. "I am going into the ministry," said a youthful student to an old divine.

"Ah, but, my dear friend, is the ministry in you?" Well, the ministry was in Mr. Spurgeon as it rarely is in any man; hence his unparalleled success.

One little anecdote will ill.u.s.trate this. I have a friend whose father had a large business in the ancient city of Colchester. Mr. Spurgeon's father was at one time in his employ. Naturally, he said a good deal of the preaching talent of his gifted son, and of the intention beginning to be entertained in the family circle of making a minister of him. The employer in question was a Churchman, but he himself offered to help Mr.

Spurgeon in securing for his son the benefits of a collegiate education.

The son's reply was characteristic. He declined the offered aid, adding the remark that "ministers were made not in colleges but in heaven."

In connection with Mr. Spurgeon's scholastic career let me knock a little fiction on the head. There is a house in Aldeburgh, in Suffolk, famous now as the birthplace of Mrs. Garrett Anderson and her gifted sisters, which at one time was a school kept by a Mr. Swindell, and they told me at Aldeburgh this last summer that Mr. Spurgeon was a pupil there. This is not so. It is true Mr. Spurgeon was a pupil at Mr. Swindell's, but it was at Newmarket, to which the latter had moved from Aldeburgh.

One or two Spurgeon anecdotes which have not yet appeared in print may be acceptable. At Hastings there are, or were, many High Church curates. A few years ago one of them did a very sensible thing. He had a holiday; he was in town and he went to the Tabernacle, getting a seat exactly under Mr. Spurgeon's nose, as it were. It seems that during the week Mr.

Spurgeon had been attending a High Church service, of which he gave in the pulpit a somewhat ludicrous account, suddenly finis.h.i.+ng by giving a sort of snort, and exclaiming, "Methinks I smell 'em now," much to the delight of the curate sitting underneath. Referring to Mr. Spurgeon's nose, I am told he had a great admiration of that of his brother, a much more aristocratic-looking article that his own. "Jem," he is reported to have said on one occasion, "I wish I had got your nose." "Do you?" was the reply; "I wish I had got your cheek." Let me give another story. On one occasion an artist wanted to make a sketch of Mr. Spurgeon for publis.h.i.+ng. "What are you going to charge?" asked the preacher, as the artist appeared before him. "You must not make the price more than twopence; the public will give that for me-not a penny more. A photographer published a portrait of me at eighteenpence, and no one bought it." This conversation took place on the occasion of a week-night service. At the close of the service the artist came up into the vestry to show his sketch. "Yes," said Mr. Spurgeon, "it is all very well, but I should like to hear what others say about it. They say women and fools are the best judges of this kind of thing," and accordingly the likeness was referred to a friend who happened to come into the room in the nick of time.

It always seemed to me the great characteristic of Mr. Spurgeon was good-natured jollity. He was as full of fun as a boy. I saw him once before getting into a wagonette pitch all the rugs on his brother's head, who naturally returned the compliment-much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the spectators. On one occasion I happened to be in the Tabernacle when the Baptist Union dined there, as it always did at the time of the Baptist anniversaries. I suppose there would be many hundreds present who enjoyed the ample repast and the accompanying claret and sherry. After the dinner was over Mr. Spurgeon came up to where I was sitting and, laying his hand on my shoulder and pointing to the long rows of empty bottles left standing on the table, with a twinkle in his eye, said, "Teetotalism does not seem to flourish among the brethren, does it?" And he was as kind as he was cheerful. Once and once only I had to write to him. He returned me a reply addressed to me in my proper name, and then-as I was writing weekly articles under a _nom de plume_ in a highly popular journal-added, in a postscript, "Kind regards to -" (mentioning my _nom de plume_). The anecdote is trivial, but it shows how genial and kind-hearted he was.

And to the last what crowds attended his ministry at the Tabernacle! One Sat.u.r.day I went to dine with a friend living on Clapham Common. Going back to town early in the morning I got into an omnibus, and was amused by hearing the conductor exclaim, "Any more for the Tabernacle!" "Now, then, for the Tabernacle!" "This way for the Tabernacle!" and, sure enough, I found all my fellow-pa.s.sengers got out when we arrived at the Tabernacle; nor was the 'bus in which I was riding the only one thus utilised. There was no end of omnibuses from all quarters drawing up at the entrance. According to the latest utterance of Mr. Herbert Beerbohm Tree, in this age of ours faith is tinged with philosophic doubt, love is regarded as but a spasm of the nervous system, life itself as the refrain of a music-hall song. At the Tabernacle the pastor and people were of a very different way of thinking.

And Mr. Spurgeon was no windbag-_vox et praeterea nihil_; no darling pet of old women whose Christianity was flabby as an oyster. He was an incessant worker, and taught his people to work as well in his enormous church. Such was the orderly arrangement that, as he said, if one of his people were to get tipsy, he should know it before the week was out. He never seemed to lose a moment. "Whenever I have been permitted," he wrote on one occasion, "sufficient respite from my ministerial duties to enjoy a lengthened tour or even a short excursion, I have been in the habit of carrying with me a small note-book, in which I have jotted down any ill.u.s.trations that occurred to me on the way. The note-book has been useful in my travels as a mental purse." Yet the note-book was not intrusive. A friend of mine took Mr. Spurgeon in his steam yacht up the Highlands. Mr. Spurgeon was like a boy out of school-all the while naming the mountains after his friends.

It is also to be noted how the public opinion altered with regard to Mr.

Spurgeon. When he came first to London aged ministers and grey-haired deacons shook their heads. What could they think of a young minister who could stop in the middle of his sermon, and say, "Please shut that window down, there is a draught. I like a draught of porter, but not that kind of draught"? It was terrible! What next? was asked in fear and trepidation. These things were, I believe, often said on purpose, and they answered their purpose. "Fire low," said a general to his men on one occasion. "Fire low," said old Jay, of Bath, as he was preaching to a cla.s.s of students. Mr. Spurgeon fired low. It is astonis.h.i.+ng how that kind of preaching tells. I was travelling in Ess.e.x last summer, and in the train were two old men, one of whom lived in Kelvedon, where Mr.

Spurgeon was born, who had sent the Baptist preacher some fruit from Kelvedon, which was, as he expected, thankfully received. "Did you see what Mr. Spurgeon says in this week's sermon?" said he to the other.

"No." "Why, he said the devil said to him the other day, 'Mr. Spurgeon, you have got a good many faults,' and I said to the devil, 'So have you,'" and then the old saints burst out laughing as if the repartee was as brilliant as it seemed to me the reverse; but I leave censure to the censorious. In his early youth, Sadi, the great Persian cla.s.sic, tells us, he was over much religious, and found fault with the company sleeping while he sat in attendance on his father with the Koran in his lap, never closing his eyes all night. "Oh, emanation of your father," replied the old man, "you had better also have slept than that you should thus calumniate the failings of mankind."

CHAPTER XII.

MEMORIES OF EXETER HALL.

As the season of the May Meetings draws near, one naturally thinks of Exeter Hall and its interesting a.s.sociations. When I first came to London it had not long been open, and it was a wonder to the young man from the country to see its capacious interior and its immense platform crowded in every part. It had a much less gorgeous interior than now, but its capacities for stowing away a large audience still remains the same; and then, as now, it was available alike for Churchmen and Dissenters to plead the claims of the great religious societies, but it seems to me that the audiences were larger and more enthusiastic at that early date, though I know not that the oratory was better. Bishops on the platform were rare, and the princ.i.p.al performer in that line was Bishop Stanley, of Norwich, a grotesque-looking little man, but not so famous as his distinguished son, the Dean of Westminster. Leading Evangelical ministers from the country-such as James, of Birmingham, who had a very pathetic voice, and Hugh McNeile, of Liverpool, an Irishman, with all an Irishman's exuberance of gesture and of language-were a great feature. At times the crowds were so great that a meeting had to be improvised in the Lower Hall, then a much darker hall than it is now, but which, at any rate, answered its end for the time being. The missionary meetings were the chief attraction. Proceedings commenced early, and were protracted far into the afternoon; but the audience remained to the last, the ladies knitting a.s.siduously all the while the report was being read, and only leaving off to listen when the speaking began. Perhaps the most crowded meeting ever held there-at any rate, in my time-was when Prince Albert took the chair to inaugurate Sir Fowell Buxton's grand, but unfortunate, scheme for the opening up of the Congo. He spoke in a low tone, and with a somewhat foreign accent. Bishop Wilberforce's oratory on that occasion was overpowering; the Prince's eyes were rivetted on him all the while. Sir Robert Peel spoke in a calm, dignified, statesmanlike manner, but the expression of his face was too supercilious to be pleasing. And there was Daniel O'Connell-big, burly, rollicking-who seemed to enjoy the triumph of his own presence, though not permitted to speak. The other time when I remember an awful crush at Exeter Hall was at an anti-slavery meeting, when Lord Brougham took the chair; an M.P.

dared to attack his lords.h.i.+p, and his reply was crus.h.i.+ng, his long nose twitching all the while with a pa.s.sion he was unable to repress. He looked as angry as he felt. Amongst the missionaries, the most popular speakers were John Williams, the martyr of Erromanga, and William Knibb, the famous Baptist missionary from Jamaica, and Livingstone's father-in-law, the venerable Dr. Moffat, who, once upon his legs, seemed as if he could never sit down again. Williams was a heavy man in appearance, but of such evident goodness and earnestness that you were interested in what he said nevertheless. William Knibb was, as far as appearance went, quite the reverse; a fiery speaker, the very picture of a demagogue, the champion of the slave, and a terrible thorn in the sides of the slave-owners. Of women orators we had none in those primitive times, and some of the American women who had come to speak at one or other of the Anti-Slavery Conventions-at that time of constant occurrence-were deeply disappointed that, after coming all the way from America on purpose to deliver their testimony, they were not allowed to open their mouths. It was at Exeter Hall that I first heard Mr. Gough, the Temperance advocate-an actor more than an orator, but of wonderful power.

It was at Crosby Hall that I first heard George Dawson. I think it was at one of the meetings held there in connection with what I may call the anti-Graham, demonstration. On the introduction, in 1843, by Sir James Graham of his Factories Education Bill, the Dissenters a.s.sailed it with unexpected vehemence. They denounced it as a scheme for destroying the educational machinery they had, at great expense, provided, and for throwing the care of the young into the hands of the clergy of the Church of England. It was in the East of London that the opposition to this measure originated, and a committee was formed, of which Dr. Andrew Reed was chairman, and his son, afterwards Sir Charles, who lived to become Chairman of the London School Board, was secretary. The agitation spread all over the country, and delegates to a considerable number on one occasion found their way to Crosby Hall. In the course of the proceedings a young man in the gallery got up to say that he came from Birmingham to show how the popular feeling had changed there from the time when Church-and-State mobs had sacked the Dissenting chapels, and driven Dr. Priestley into exile. "Your name, sir?" asked the chairman.

"George Dawson," was the reply, and there he stood in the midst of the grave and reverend seigneurs, calm, youthful, self-possessed, with his dark hair parted in the middle, a voice somewhat husky yet clear. He was a Baptist minister, he said, yet he looked as little like one as it was possible to imagine.

It was a little later, that is, in 1857, Mr. Samuel Morley made his _debut_ in political life, at a meeting in the London Tavern, of which he was chairman, to secure responsible administration in every department of the State, to shut all the back doors which lead to public employment, to throw the public service open to all England, to obtain recognition of merit everywhere, and to put an end to all kinds of promotion by favour or purchase. Mr. Morley's speech was clear and convincing-more business-like than oratorical-and he never got beyond that. The tide was in his favour-all England was roused by the tale _The Times_ told of neglect and cruel mismanagement in the Crimea. Since then Government has done less and the people more. Has the change been one for the better?

One of the most extraordinary meetings in which I ever took a part was an Orange demonstration in Freemasons' Hall, the Earl of Roden in the chair.

I was a student at the time, and one of my fellow-students was Sir Colman O'Loghlen, the son of the Irish Master of the Rolls. He was a friend of Dan O'Connell's, and he conceived the idea of getting all or as many of his fellow-students as possible to go to the meeting and break it up. We walked accordingly, each one of us with a good-sized stick in his hand, to the Free-Mason's Tavern, the mob exclaiming, as we pa.s.sed along, "There go the Chartists," and perhaps we did look like them, for none of us were overdressed. In the hall we took up a conspicuous position, and waited patiently, but we had not long to wait. As soon as the clergy and leading Orangemen on the platform had taken their seats, we were ready for the fray. Apart from us, the audience was not large, and we had the hall almost entirely to ourselves. Not a word of the chairman's address was audible. There was a madman of the name of Captain Acherley who was in the habit, at that time, of attending public meetings solely for the sake of disturbing them, who urged us on-and we were too ready to be urged on. With our voices and our sticks we managed to create a hideous row. The meeting had to come to a premature close, and we marched off, feeling that we had driven back the enemy, and achieved a triumph.

Whether we had done any good, however, I more than doubt. There were other and fairer memories, however, in connection with Freemasons' Hall.

It was there I beheld the ill.u.s.trious Clarkson, who had come in the evening of his life, when his whole frame was bowed with age, and the gra.s.shopper had become a burden, to preside at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention. All I can remember of him was that he had a red face, grey hair, and was dressed in black. There, and at Exeter Hall, Joseph Sturge, the Apostle of Peace, was often to be seen. He was a well-made man, with a singularly pleasant cast of countenance and attractive voice, and, as was to be expected, as cool as a Quaker. Another great man, now forgotten, was Joseph Buckingham, lecturer, traveller, author, and orator, M.P. for Sheffield.

In the City the places for demonstrations are fewer now than they were.

The London Tavern I have already mentioned. Then there was the King's Arms, I think it was called, in the Poultry, chiefly occupied by Dissenting societies. At the London Coffee House, at the Ludgate Hill corner of the Old Bailey, now utilised by Hope Brothers, but interesting to us as the scene of the birth and childhood of our great artist, Leech, meetings were occasionally held; and then there was the Crown and Anchor, in the Strand, on your left, just before you get to Arundel Street, where Liberals, or, rather, Whigs, delighted to appeal to the people-the only source of legitimate power. It was there that I heard that grand American orator, Beecher, as he pleaded, amidst resounding cheers, the cause of the North during the American Civil War, and the great Temperance orator, Gough, who took Exeter Hall by storm. But it was to Exeter Hall that the tribes repaired-as they do now. When I first knew Exeter Hall, no one ever dreamt of any other way of regenerating society.

Agnosticism, Secularism, Spiritualism, and Altruism had not come into existence. Their professors were weeping and wailing in long clothes.

Now we have, indeed, swept into a younger day, and society makes lions of men of whom our fathers would have taken no heed. We have become more tolerant-even Exeter Hall has moved with the times. Perhaps one of the boldest things connected with it was the attempt to utilise it for public religious wors.h.i.+p on the Sunday. Originally some of the Evangelical clergy had agreed to take part in these services, but the rector of the parish in which Exeter Hall was situated disapproved, and consequently they were unable to appear. The result was the services were conducted by the leading ministers of other denominations, nor were they less successful on that account.

CHAPTER XIII.

MEN I HAVE KNOWN.

It is the penalty of old age to lose all our friends and acquaintances, but fortunately our hold on earth weakens as the end of life draws near.

In an active life, we see much of the world and the men who help to make it better. Many ministers and missionaries came to my father's house with wonderful accounts of the spread of the Gospel in foreign parts. At a later time I saw a knot of popular lecturers and agitators-such as George Thompson, the great anti-slavery lecturer, who, born in humble life, managed to get into Parliament, where he collapsed altogether. As an outdoor orator he was unsurpa.s.sed, and carried all before him. After a speech of his I heard Lord Brougham declare it was one of the most eloquent he had ever heard. He started a newspaper, which, however, did not make much way. Then there was Henry Vincent, another natural orator, whom the common people heard gladly, and who at one time was very near getting into Parliament as M.P. for Ipswich, then, as now, a go-ahead town, full of Dissenters and Radicals. He began life as a Chartist and printer, and, I believe, was concerned in the outbreak near Newport. Of the same cla.s.s was a man of real genius and immense learning, considering the disadvantages of his lowly birth, Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, and author of that magnificent poem, "The Purgatory of Suicides," written when he was in gaol for being connected with a Chartist outbreak. He had been a Methodist, he became a Freethinker, and, when I knew him, was under the influence of Strauss's Life of Jesus, a book which George Eliot had translated, and which made a great sensation at the time of its appearance, though it is utterly forgotten now. Cooper and I were members of an obscure club, in one of the Fleet Street courts, where he used to declaim with great eloquence on the evil doings of the Tories and the wrongs of the poor, while at the same time he had a true appreciation of the utter worthlessness of some of the Chartist leaders. As he advanced in years he gave up his infidel opinions and became an earnest advocate of the faith he once laboured to destroy. The last time I saw him was at his house in Lincoln shortly before he died. He seemed sound in body, considering his years, but his mind was gone and he remembered no one. At the same time I saw a good deal of Richard Lovett-a n.o.ble character-who worked all his life for the mental and moral improvement of the working man, of whom he was such an ill.u.s.trious example. Cooper and Vincent and Lovett did much between them to make the working man respected as he had never been before.

One of the grandest old men I ever knew was George Cruikshank, the artist, in his later years an ardent advocate of Temperance, but a real Bohemian nevertheless, enjoying life and all its blessings to the last.

At a dinner-party or at a social gathering of any kind he was at his best, full of anecdote, overflowing with wit and mimicry; as an orator also he had great power, and generally managed to keep his audience in a roar of laughter. While perfectly sober himself, he was very happy in taking off the drunkard's eccentricities, and would sing "We are not fou," or "Willie brewed a peck o' malt," as if he deemed a toper the prince of good fellows. In his old age he had persuaded himself that to him d.i.c.kens owed many of his happiest inspirations, a remark which the author of "The Pickwick Papers" strongly resented. At his home I met on one occasion Mrs. d.i.c.kens, a very pleasant, motherly lady, with whom one would have thought any husband could have happily lived, although the great novelist himself seemed to be of another way of thinking.

Cruikshank's wife seems to have been devoted to him. She was proud of him, as well she might be. He had a good head of hair, and to the last cherished a tremendous lock which adorned his forehead. He was rather square-built, with an eye that at one time must have rivalled that of the far-famed hawk. He lived comfortably in a good house just outside Mornington Crescent, in the Hampstead Road; but he was never a wealthy man, and was always publis.h.i.+ng little pamphlets, which, whatever the fame they brought him, certainly yielded little cash. He had seen a good deal of life, or what a c.o.c.kney takes to be such, and when he was buried in Kensal Green, the attendance at the funeral showed how large was the circle of his friends and admirers. To the last he was proud of his whiskers.

Another friend of mine buried in the same place was Dr. Charles Mackay, the original editor of _The Ill.u.s.trated London News_, and who differed so much with the proprietor, Mr. Ingram, M.P., on the character of the late French Emperor, for whom Dr. Mackay had a profound contempt, that he had to resign, and commenced _The London Review_, which did not last long.

At one time his songs, "There's a good time coming, boys," and "Cheer boys, cheer," were played on every barrel-organ, and were to be heard in every street. Another of the workers on _The Ill.u.s.trated News_ was John Timbs, the unwearying publisher of popular books of anecdotes, by which, I fear, he did not make much money, as he had to end his days in the Charter House. His department was to look after the engravings, a duty which compelled him to sit up all night on Thursdays. Before he had joined Mr. Ingram's staff, he had edited a small periodical called _The Mirror_, devoted to useful and amusing literature. I fancy his happiest hours were pa.s.sed chatting with the literary men who were always hovering round the office of the paper-like Mr. Micawber, in the hope of something turning up. You could not be long there without seeing Mark Lemon-a mountain of a man connected with _Punch_, who could act Falstaff without stuffing-who was Mr. Ingram's private secretary. A wonderful contrast to Mark Lemon was Douglas Jerrold, a little grey-haired, keen-eyed man, who seemed to me to walk the streets hurriedly, as if he expected a bailiff to touch him on the back. Later, I knew his son, Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, very well, and always found him a very courteous and pleasant gentleman.

With Hain Friswell, with the ever-sparkling, black-eyed George Augustus Sala, with that life-long agitator Jesse Jacob Holyoake, for whom I had a warm esteem, I was also on very friendly terms. Once, and once only, I had an interview with Mr. Charles Bradlaugh who, when he recognised me as "Christopher Crayon" of _The Christian World_, gave me a hearty shake of the hands. Had he lived, I believe he would have become a Christian. At any rate, of later years, his hostility to Christianity seemed to have considerably toned down. Be that as it may, I always held him to be one of the most honest of our public men. I had also the pleasure once of sitting next Mr. Labouchere at a dinner at a friend's. He talked much, smoked more, and was as witty as Waller, and like him on cold water.

Another teetotaler with whom I came much into contact was the late Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, a shortish, stout man to look at, a good public speaker, and warmly devoted alike to literature and science. Another distinguished man whom I knew well was Mr. James Hinton, the celebrated aurist and a writer on religious matters which at one time had great effect. He was the son of the celebrated Baptist preacher, the Rev. John Howard Hinton, and I was grieved to learn that he had given up his practice as an aurist in Saville Row, and had bought an orange estate far away in the Azores, where he went to die of typhoid fever.