ESSAYS AND RECOLLECTIONS.'
Me. G. W. E. RUSSELL'S new book of essays. is exceedingly good reading. Whether he writes of politics or persons, he is never dull: and whether he provokes us to argument, agreement, or only to a smile, he is excellent company. That is what a book of light essays should be. It is well to begin by being amused, and we would suggest to the reader to turn to the last quarter of the volume first and read " Miss Jenkins and the Duke." In the year 1889 an American firm published the Letters of the Duke of Wellington to Miss J. They were found in a trunk in an attic of a country house within thirty miles of New York. Their authenticity has been questioned, but Mr. Russell agrees with Sir Herbert Maxwell in regarding them as genuine. A certain Miss Jenkins, young, beautiful, and Evangelical, made a great effort to involve the Iron Duke in a religious flirtation. It is difficult to read Mr. Russell's account of the matter as betrayed in the correspondence without laughing aloud. The lady opened the campaign by the gift of a Bible, which she left at Apsley House " with a suitable note." The Duke replied by a call. During this first visit the lady read the Bible aloud, and the Duke exclaimed " I love you." The flir- tation grew and prospered.. In the end the Duke extricated himself, but not before many delightful letters were penned. The lady was always goody, the Duke usually repressive. Sometimes they squabbled mildly, the Duke always getting the better of it :- " Once Miss Jenkins was annoyed by a fellow-traveller in a stage-coach who indulged in blasphemy. When this occurrence was reported to the Duke he took no notice and was sharply rebuked for his indifference to her outraged feelings ; but he was quite equal to the occasion. ' I don't consider with you that it is necee- wiry to enter into controversy with every wandering blasphemer,' he wrote. ' Much must depend upon circumstances.' " To turn to more serious matters. A great deal of the book is concerned, of course, with war, or with considerations arising therefrom. Fundamentally Mr. Russell is in agreement with the Spectator. He thinks that no sacrifice is too great to ensure victory, and be means by victory the military disablement of Germany. On the other hand, he inclines to doubt the necessity for some of the sacrifices for which we have already been asked, and he would, at any rate, put us on our guard against the argument that such sacrifices of liberty are only, temporary, and against ignoring the fact that there ie a section of the community which does not wish them to be so. It is open to us to say that in present circumstances itis better to disregard contingencieswhich imply lesser dangers than would be created by their avoidance. We stand, perhaps, between the Devil and the deep sea, and the one element may be, so to speak, outwitted, but not the other. We may swim into safety. A reviewer, however, is not primarily concerned with convictions. Hem are comb thought-provoking words about Dictatorship and Thrift and Conscription. Mr. Russell takes the old-fashioned Liberal standpoint that " it should be the object of all reasonable people to be governed as little as possible. There are those who would set up a tyrant to fight tyranny," he complains ; and though aa a condition of victory he would consent to this expedient, " I should feel an absolute conviction that when the war was over— even when Berlin was turned into a dung-heap—the Dictator would still be with us. Dictators, either civil or military, have a won- derful power of sticking to their posts." He instances Louie Napoleon. Again, he laments the expedient of conscription. An English lad taken away from his home and chosen avocation and " put through the mangle of a barrack and a regiment " will come out having learned the lesson of obedience, " of submission to an authority which he has not helped to create ; of willingness to surrender his private judgment to commands whioh ho does not • (I) Pehlke and Parrowilitiet. By tbe BightRussell. Loudon: T. Faber Unwin. 17e. ed. net 1-12) Recollections of 72 Yews By the lion. Mara Marren Vernon. Imam; John Marray 112s. meal understand." With this lesson will go many others. Ho will have been taught also—in Mr. Russell's opinion—to relinquish the virtues of self-governing citizenship, and his instructors will have laid " the foundation of an insolvent despotism." In so doing they will have acted upon calculation, for " this I believe is the ideal of Empire as it presents itself to the minds of our literary and episcopal conscriptionists." But, as we before pointed out, Mr. Russell is far from denying that general principles must at times give way to the exigencies of the moment. In his chapter on " Casuistry " he upholds a science which has always been rather suspect among Englishmen, declaring it to be simply " the science of duty," which we must study if we would know the right "appli- cation of general laws to particular cases." He is of course a Churchman, but he defends from foolish ridicule the Nonconformist conscience ; he is a whole-hearted upholder of the war, but he defends the conscientious objector. " The mere mention of the word conscience—still more the resolve to act on it when It rune counter to popular prejudice—always excites an insolent fury in those whose sole guide is convention."
As to economy, our essayist plainly says that it has an ill sound in the mouth of the rich, yet " the most strenuous preachers of thrift are those whom Providence has placed beyond the reach of poverty." They speak, however, to little purpose. " Bo thrifty," "Economise," " Abandon your luxuries," " Live on half your income "—who can foil to be impressed by such commands as these proceeding from monitors who pay Super Tax I Robert Lowe said s " It is the business of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to distribute a certain amount of human misery, and the man who distributes it most equally is the best Chancellor." Succeeding Chancellors of the Exchequer, including the present one, Mr. Russell credits with being of the same mind. But it is easier to declare equality than to enforce it "In spite of the Super Tax the man with £50,000 is year still seems appreciably more comfortable than the man with £1100 a year. To the last-named sufferer it is quite needless for Cabinet Ministers and Bishops and Judges to preach Thrift. It is preached by the still more persuasive voices of the tax-gatherer and the rate-collector. He reduces his expenditure because he has lees to spend."
" Haven't you got any old clothes f " exclaims the energetic lady who runs the Red Cross hospital. " Have I got any others t " he replies. " If you take my old clothes I must lie in bed till the war is over."
Among the " Personal Sketches " appearing in this volume, that of the Prince Consort is perhaps the meet interesting. To the present generation he is but the dim figure of a prig 'standing behind the throne. Mr. Russell shows us a very different picture. " The Prince was brilliantly good-looking, though with a type of beauty neither English nor German. His unpopularity was duo in largo part to hie virtues." In an ago which had accustomed itself to see in Royalty qualities such as those possessed by George IV. and William IV., he set an example of " manly rectitude." He neither drank nor gamed ; he set his face against duelling and he worked hard ; but in the England of his day it took a great deal of righteous. ness to cover the fact that he played the piano and etched. Perhaps, however, a more excusable cause for the dislike felt to him may be found in the fact that he showed " a perpetual endeavour to turn every man's conversation, every man's particular gift and know- ledge to account, for his own mental improvement." Certainly that is an exceedingly unlovable trick—and meet in-English into the bargain.
From Mr. Russell's " Political and Personal " talk we turn to Mr. William Warren Vemon's Recollections of 72 Years.' It is a book of reminiscences which will be enjoyed more by those familiar, personally or by tradition, with the circle among whom the writer exclusively moved than by the general public. We find in it a realistic, if superficial, picture of leisured and travelled society in the early and mid-Victorian period. Mr. Vernon was a well-known Dante scholar, his devotion to all things Italian dating from his early boyhood, which he spent in Italy. Travelling between sixty and seventy years ago was a more formidable thing than now; also, perhaps, so far us nearer Europe is concerned, it was better worth doing. The world was less all alike than nowadays. Mr. Vernon's accounts of past Continental tours are worth reading ; so am his stories of Italy at the time of her unification and of the Franco. Prussian War. He was a great friend of the whole Guizot family, to whom he carried money in October, 1870. In none of Mr. Ver- non's recollections does he attempt to go below the surface of life in a somewhat superficial milieu. All the same, the reader's attention is maintained throughout his many chapters, and by some pages the reader may be very well entertained.
Previous page
