FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON. D. D. 
 
 BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 Section 'C^\<0 
 
HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
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 ^^/^^l*^ 
 
 [Elliott & Fry 
 
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 HENRY SCOTT HOLLA: 
 
 HON. D.D. ABERDEEN : HON. D.LiTT. OXFORD 
 
 REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN OXFORD 
 
 CANON OF ST. PAUL'S 
 
 MEMOIR AND LETTERS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 STEPHEN PAGET 
 
 "The central tact of Christianity is not the Divinity of a 
 man, but the Humanity of a God ; not life out of life, so much 
 as life out of death.'' (1870.) 
 
 " We are what our brothers are. We and they stand and 
 fall together. If they are contemptible, so arc we. If we are 
 struggling after higher things, so are they. If we see visions, so 
 do they. One fate ; one flesh and blood ; one story ; one 
 strife; one glory — this is the underlying secret of humanity." 
 (1897.) 
 
 " Very good it is to have been alive : very dear is the Earth 
 which has been so kind a home." (1915.) 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 
 
 1921 
 
TO 
 SPENCER AND ALICE HOLLAND 
 
PREFACE 
 
 So many of Scott Holland's friends have helped me, that it 
 is impossible for me to thank each of them here. Mrs. Ady, 
 whose friendship with him goes back to 1870, was to have 
 written this book : she and her daughter collected and 
 arranged some of the materials for it : a long illness inter- 
 rupted the work, and it was entrusted to me. 
 
 I have given a full account of his early life, especially 
 of the years between 1868 and 1874. I hope that I have 
 not done wrong to make free use of R. L. Nettleship's 
 letters. They do not represent all that was in him : they 
 belong to a time when differences of belief were taken 
 gravely, as a tragedy, which now are taken lightly, as a 
 comedy. Men who only knew him as a teacher of pure 
 philosophy in Oxford will wonder at them, and perhaps will 
 feel that they were too intimate for publication. But I 
 could not get away from them, nor could I give without 
 them a clear picture of Holland at Balliol. Besides, I 
 doubt whether the present statements of differences of 
 belief are so well worth studying as the interchange of 
 thoughts, half a century ago, between T. H. Green, Nettleship, 
 and Holland. 
 
 In his letters, Holland was rather prodigal of little 
 affectionate phrases, and of capitals — I find him, for instance, 
 writing " of Course " — and of words underlined. I have 
 not always copied these : and I have not always marked 
 the omission of sentences in letters from or to him. 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 He was fond of keeping letters ; and his friends treasured 
 his letters to them. It has been a fine experience, to trace 
 through a thousand or more letters the chief events of his life, 
 and to watch the development of his gifts. I was not in 
 the nearer circle of his friends and disciples. Many of them 
 have written of him, with admirable knowledge and insight : 
 it is open to everybody, to see what they say of him : and 
 this memoir is hardly more than a record of episodes and 
 a collection of letters. He lived in the lives of his friends, 
 and of his legions of hearers and readers, delighting and 
 inspiring them : he was like sunshine filling a room and 
 bringing out every spark of colour latent in it. I could 
 not describe the look of his face, the brightness of his wit, 
 and the magic that he exercised over non-productive talk, 
 as a conjurer gets flowers out of an empty hat. Nor could 
 I appraise his theological and political teaching. Least 
 of aU could I describe him in his prayers and retreats and 
 communions : yet in them — above all, in his communions, 
 from the day of his confirmation at Eton to the day of his 
 death in Oxford — is the key to him as he showed himself 
 to the men and women of his time. 
 
 Still, this memoir may be welcome to his friends now, 
 as a frame in which they can put their thoughts of him ; 
 and to some of his contemporaries who misjudged him, 
 and believed this or that against him. And it may serve 
 another purpose, many years hence. For I am inclined to 
 believe that he will then be studied with new attention. 
 The urgency of national and international anxieties makes 
 us forget him : but the time will come, perhaps, for him to 
 be discovered. When it comes, his philosophy and religion, 
 his interpretation of St. John, his defence of " the super- 
 natural setting of the Faith," his Christian Socialism, his 
 politics, his criticism of men and books, and the whole range 
 of his influences, will be diligently investigated. There 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 will be one or more Holland Societies. The members of 
 them, who were not yet born when he died, will read papers 
 on him : they will look him up in the catalogue of the 
 British Museum Library, and in that quiet atmosphere will 
 seek to reconstruct him as a historical figure. 
 
 A great body of literature is already waiting there for 
 them. His own books, to begin with, and his introductions 
 to the books of others : for he was godfather to a multitude 
 of children and a multitude of books. All the continuous 
 output of his journalism, from 1894 to 1918, in Goodwill 
 and Commonwealth. His letters to Mrs. Drew, in Some 
 Hawarden Letters (1917) and A Forty Years' Friendship 
 (1919) . The full and authoritative statement of his doctrine, 
 in Canon Richmond's book, The Philosophy of Faith and 
 the Fourth Gospel. The collections of his sermons and 
 articles, by Mr. Cheshire. Last but not least, the series of 
 articles, by friends who knew him well, published in Common- 
 wealth just after his death, and republished in book-form 
 under the title, Henry Scott Holland : Some Appreciations. 
 And many notices of him in the newspapers and magazines 
 of 1918. One of the best of these notices was written by 
 Mr. C. F. G. Masterman, in the Nation : — 
 
 . . . The attachment of titles and honours and positions 
 to this man creates in itself a sense of absurdity. He was 
 so conspicuously himself, alone ; so conspicuously not the 
 Oxford don and the popular preacher and the Doctor of 
 Divinity instructing the would-be ordinand in the narrow 
 ways he should go. All who knew him and loved him will 
 think of him quite otherwise. The remembrance is of a 
 flaming vitality, so alive as to give to most of those around 
 him an air of intellectual torpor. It was as a sword, a 
 flame, a challenge — always the simile of battle — that Scott 
 Holland appeared in his lifetime : whether in the humour 
 and brilliance of intellectual debate, in which he could hold 
 his own against all men ; or in his proclamation of faith 
 in the ideal, defiantly overwhelming with ridicule and 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 mystical appeal the little sordid aims of the generation in 
 which he lived. 
 
 ... In the days when the Christian Social Union was 
 almost alone in proclaiming the injustice of present society, 
 he would address vast audiences in the North — at St. 
 George's Hall at Bradford, or the Coliseum at Leeds, or 
 the great railway sheds at Derby. The common people 
 there heard him gladly, and were swept off their feet by 
 the fire of his eloquence : so that many who attended those 
 meetings are still certain that none of the later popular 
 orators — for this was a time before interest in poverty was 
 the easiest way to power — ever so moved an audience or 
 maintained an argument so convincing in the reasonableness 
 and conviction of its appeal. 
 
 ... It was as a prophet, that he preached : testifying, 
 in the heart of the capital of Empire, amidst its splendours 
 and squalors, against its amazing materialism. Many of 
 his published sermons strike the same passionate note as 
 those of the Hebrew prophets towards older civilizations, 
 equally self-satisfied, equally insecure. The " burden " of 
 Tyre or Nineveh was interpreted by him as the burden of 
 London. 
 
 . . . His greatest preaching was in the work of Christian 
 Apology. He was passionately of his age. He had no 
 use for those who turned their back upon its problems 
 or stood aloof from its difficulties. He faced life as he 
 found it, surging all around him. . . . Above all, he was 
 moved to anger by cruelty and oppressions. He would 
 have no toleration for a passive virtue. He set up the 
 standard of the poor and called men to their redemption 
 as to a crusade. 
 
 All the many books and articles about him, and this memoir 
 among them, will be useful to future students of him. But 
 no amount of reading will give them all that he was : and 
 they will obtain only a faint and wavering image of the 
 man whom we knew. 
 
 Memorials to him have been placed in St. Paul's, and in 
 Oxford Cathedral. That in Oxford says of him, Invisibilem 
 tanquam videns Deum, Regnum Ejus coeleste fide inconcuss^, 
 spe vivida, caritate hilari, nunquam non in ten-a prsestruebat. 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 [As beholding God Invisible, he was unceasingly founding 
 on earth His Heavenly Kingdom, in unshaken faith, vivid 
 hope, joyous love.] The Holland Memorial Fund, instituted 
 in 1918, has been well supported, and well applied ; but it 
 still needs contributions. It is for three purposes : (i) To 
 meet the initial expense of bringing-out his unpublished 
 writings; (2) To assist in the maintenance of the Maurice 
 Hostel at Hoxton ; (3) To found a Holland Lecture, on the 
 theology of the Incarnation in its bearing on the social and 
 economic life of man. * 
 
 Looking over the proofs of this memoir, I fear that some 
 of the dates and references may be wrong. He was not 
 methodical in the dating of his letters : and I have been 
 hindered by illness from verifying some of the references. 
 But I hope that I have, at least, kept myself out of the light 
 of his life and his work. Not long ago, I said to a man whom 
 I greatly honour, " My difficulty is, that I can't be sure 
 whether Holland, with his Christian Socialism, was really 
 bringing the Kingdom of God nearer to earth, or was only 
 sowing the wind and we are reaping the whirlwind." And 
 he said, " Perhaps, after all, there's not much difference 
 between the two things." Holland seemed to live again 
 in that answer, with his love of " paradoxes." 
 
 It was easy for men to distrust him in politics. With 
 his " flaming vitality," he could not always display the 
 patience of Job. He could not stop to weigh-out his mind, 
 word by word, across the political counter. Here and there 
 in Commonwealth, his invective writing is impaired by 
 extravagance or prejudice. Yet, for one over-statement, 
 there are many grave and prophetic judgments, carefully 
 thought-out and magnificently worded. Again, he was too 
 ready with his approval of certain exponents of the causes 
 
 • Contributions may be marked for any one of the purposes and may be 
 sent to S. L Holland, Crossways, Berkhamsted, 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 which he was upholding. Yet, behind this off-hand approval, 
 his resolute will to judge for himself was alert and waiting 
 for action. Again, it was easy for some of " the respectables " 
 to say that they found him elusive, or fantastical, or be- 
 wildering ; that he cared more for pleasant visions than for 
 hard facts. Yet, under the play of colours on the surface 
 of his life, there was a depth of reserve, hardness, and un- 
 failing recognition of things as they are. 
 
 The later years in Oxford are a sort of epilogue to his 
 life. He did not live to see the end of the War ; but his 
 death was not iU-timed for him : it prevented him from 
 seeing the disappointments and miseries of the past two 
 years. But he would have held his own against them, fide 
 inconcussd, spe vividd, caritate hilari ; and would have in- 
 spired many of us to be of one mind with him. 
 
 December, 1920. 
 
CONTENTS 
 PART I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. From 1847 to 1867 3 
 
 II. Balliol, 1 868- 1 870 23 
 
 III. Christ Church, 1871-1874 54 
 
 IV. Christ Church, 1875-1878 .80 
 
 V. Christ Church, 1879-1884 98 
 
 VI. Home Life. By Spencer L. Holland 115 
 
 VII. Other Memories 125 
 
 PART II 
 
 I. St. Paul's 139 
 
 II. From 1885 to 1889 160 
 
 III. "The Log of the Water-logged" 176 
 
 IV. 1890 to 1903 194 
 
 V. 1904 to 1910 224 
 
 VI. Holland and the Christian Social Union. By Bishop Gore 240 
 
 PART III 
 
 I. Letters of Fantasy, and Letters to Children . . 255 
 
 II. Letters to a Young Cousin 265 
 
 III. Letters of Criticism and of Portraiture . . . 275 
 
 IV. Letters of Encouragement and of Consolation . . 288 
 
 PART IV 
 
 I. From 1911 to August, 1914 ....... 299 
 
 II. From August, 1914 to March, 1918 312 
 
 Bibliography , 329 
 
 Index 331 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 H. S. Holland, 1910 Frontispiece 
 
 William Johnson ~) 
 
 \ 10 
 
 Thomas Hill Green J 
 
 H. S. Holland at Eton, 1863 14 
 
 The Balliol Eight, 1869 24 
 
 Hon. Charlotte Dorothea Holland 120 
 
 H. S. Holland, 1895 204 
 
 Holland in his Study at Amen Court 224 
 
 Holland in his Garden, Christ Church, Oxford . . . 238 
 
 xn 
 
PART I 
 
HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 I 
 
 FROM 1847 TO 1867 
 
 Henry Scott Holland was a son of George Henry Holland, 
 and a grandson of Swinton Colthurst Holland, of the firm of 
 Strickland and Holland, merchants and agents, Swinton 
 Holland, in 1806, was representing his firm in Trieste during 
 the French occupation ; and was detained there by order of 
 Massena. His elder son, Edward Colthurst Holland, was 
 born at that time : " born under a French Government," 
 Swinton Holland writes, "yet I could scarcely wish for his 
 existence, could I suppose he would adopt either their manners 
 or their principles." On his return to England, Swinton 
 Holland lived at the Priory, Roehampton. Later, he became 
 a partner in Baring's. In 1822, he bought Lord Somers's 
 estate, Dumbleton, near Evesham, and built the present 
 Hall. 
 
 His son Edward, who inherited Dumbleton, was a well- 
 known agriculturist, one of the founders of the Agricultural 
 College at Cirencester. He was Member for Evesham 
 Borough from 1855 to 1868. 
 
 The younger son, George Henry Holland, inherited 
 sufficient means to make him independent of any business 
 or profession. He was fond of traveUing : he visited Spain, 
 Greece, Turkey, not without risks and adventures. At home, 
 he was fond of hunting, and of driving a four in hand. He 
 married Charlotte Dorothea, eldest daughter of the first 
 
 3 B 2 
 
4 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Lord Gifford ; who, as Sir Robert Gifford, Attorney-General, 
 conducted two famous cases, the one against the Cato Street 
 conspirators, the other against Queen CaroHne ; was raised 
 to the Bench as Baron Gifford of St. Leonard, Devon ; was 
 Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Deputy Speaker of the 
 House of Lords, and Master of the Rolls. He and Swinton 
 Holland were neighbours at Roehampton. After Lord 
 Gifford 's death, Lady Gifford and her family lived near 
 Edinburgh for some years, and then at Woodchester, near 
 Stroud : and George Holland and Miss Gifford first met in 
 1842, when he was hunting with her brother in Gloucester- 
 shire. 
 
 They were married in 1844. Their first child, Anne 
 Harriet Lilhan, was born in 1845, at Gayton House, near 
 Ross. Henry Scott was born on January 27, 1847, at 
 Underdown, Ledbury ; he was baptised in Ledbury parish 
 church ; and was named Henry after his father, and Scott 
 after his uncle Scott Gifford, who was named after John Scott, 
 Lord Eldon, King George the Third's Chancellor. Arthur 
 Gambler was born in 1848 ; Lawrence Gifford in 1850 ; 
 Amy Charlotte in 1853 ; and Spencer Langton in 1855. 
 
 Episodes of Scott Holland's childhood are noted in his 
 mother's diaries : — 
 
 1847. He is the best baby possible, never cries at 
 washing, dressing, or anything but hunger, always smihng, 
 laughing, or sleeping ... an excellent travelhng baby, 
 never crying or fidgeting, but smiles or sleeps away his 
 happy Uttle life. 
 
 1848. Scotty is very merry and funny and most in- 
 dependent, walking by himself and delighted to escape out- 
 side and run down the row opening all the garden gates : 
 he is quite in extacies when he sees horses, and imitates the 
 soldiers marching, 
 
 1849. '; Scotty is very sociable with everyone, and a great 
 favourite with all from his bright and engaging ways : 
 full of spirits and fun, and the best, most obedient, and 
 
FROM 1847 TO 1867 5 
 
 sweetest child possible. I have begun his prayers regularly 
 now, and he always says his grace very solemnly. 
 
 In 1850, she records " a few battles of obstinacy with 
 Scotty " ; and a visit to the Zoological Gardens : "he was 
 greatly excited there : always, when any stranger spoke 
 to him, immediately inquired, Have you seen the hippo-ippo- 
 popamus ? " In 1 85 1, a little hymn that he wrote ; and a 
 little poem — 
 
 The Lion is a noble beast, 
 
 It roams about the land. 
 And eats up all the other beasts 
 
 That in its reach do stand. . 
 
 In 1 85 1 Mr. and Mrs. Holland went to Rome for the 
 winter ; and took with them — ^it is a good instance of the 
 tenacity of home life seventy years ago — Lilly, Scott, Arthur, 
 Lawrence, and two nurses. The children had need to be 
 " good traveUing babies " : for the family drove from Dijon 
 to Geneva, over the Jura ; into Italy over the Simplon ; 
 were in Rome till April, 1852 ; and came back by Florence, 
 Venice, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague. 
 
 From Mrs. Holland's diaries 
 
 {The Simplon.) The children aU enjoyed this journey 
 very much : they were very curious to " get into the clouds " 
 hanging over the mountains, and were delighted with the 
 torrents, and rather alarmed at the bad roads ; Scotty 
 exclaiming, " Oh what horrible roads that Napoleon did 
 make with his three thousand soldiers." ... It has 
 particularly struck me, in driving the journey, his readiness 
 to give up anything to please others, never thinking of him- 
 self, tho' with his merry spirits and perpetual movements 
 the confinement of the carriage might have been so trying 
 to him for so many hours together, but he was always 
 good-humoured. 
 
 {In Rome.) " What a very unkind Pope this is," said 
 Scotty, walking down the Via Babuino with me one day. 
 
6 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 " Why, Scotty ? " " Because he will not let the ladies 
 wear their pretty pink bonnets when they go to see him, 
 but makes them put on black gowns. If I was them, I 
 would not go and see such an unkind Pope, unless I might 
 wear what I like : and if I was the Pope, I should like the 
 ladies to look pretty." He likes trying to talk Italian, and 
 calls to our Donna, " Viene qui subito," and announces 
 " Pranzo e pronti," and I often hear him exclaiming, " O 
 molto bello," " Cosi cosi," and " Come si chiame cosi ? " 
 He would go and speak to the French soldiers on the Pincian 
 Hill, and talk to any one he fancied. Once, on the railroad, 
 we stopped to change trains, and he with his usual in- 
 dependence strolled away by himself, and when we were just 
 starting off we saw the little figure strutting composedly 
 back, with his cane, and hat on one side ; and we said, 
 " Scotty, you were nearly left behind. What should you 
 have done if the train had gone on without you ? " " Oh, 
 I should have gone to the guard and said Donnez-moi 
 place." 
 
 In 1852, at five years old, he was beginning to ask questions 
 about his religion. " If Jesus Christ died in obedience to 
 God's wish for our sake, why did he pray God not to let him 
 die ? " And again, " How could Jesus die to save us from 
 sin, when we are so often sinning ? I cannot understand 
 that." 
 
 From Mrs. Holland's diaries 
 
 1852. He feels so much if I read a pathetic story to him : 
 poor little fellow, with all his spirit, his tenderness will 
 I fear cause him many a sad hour in schoolboy life. I 
 often wish he was a girl, and had not to face the world's 
 hardness. 
 
 1853. He is very fond of young ladies, and one evening 
 at a party in Lowndes Street he looked very hard at Miss 
 Alderson, and said, " That's a nice girl, and she looks old 
 enough — why is she not married ? " He calls all the young 
 ladies he likes, his wives ; and he charmed Mrs. Marsh by 
 his fondness for Lilly and saying, " I have nine wives, 
 but this is the most precious of all," and flung his arms round 
 
FROM 1847 TO 1867 7 
 
 her. He is very fond of learning the piano, and at all 
 moments is practising " Jenny Jones " and his exercises. 
 He gets on very well with everything that he learns : is 
 very fond of his lessons and ready to go to them. . . . Scotty 
 is very fond of poetry, and likes me to read to him any 
 ballads or histrionic poem, " Chevy Chase," " Hohenlinden," 
 and " Battle of Blenheim," and he learns them very quickly 
 from my reading them, and his face glows with delight as 
 I read these ballads. ... I never saw such natural and real 
 feeUng for holy things in a child. . . . Arthur is very 
 methodical, and keeps his toys and things safely : a contrast 
 to Scotty, who has " no head," and leaves and loses his books 
 and things dreadfully, and cannot remember where he puts 
 anything. 
 
 Even his father's diaries, through the six years, find fault 
 with him on two occasions only, and no more. In 1851, 
 he was " very naughty and disobedient " for some days : 
 " It is the age when boys are apt to ' fly out ' : he is much 
 improved since he came to London, which I attribute to 
 his being again under parental control." In 1853, he was 
 in some disgrace : "I begged his mother not to let him go 
 to Church, as a punishment. He is a thoughtless boy : I 
 fear that the punishment and the admonition and all will 
 soon be forgotten : such is childhood, and forgetfulness 
 one of its enjoyments, in which fact I entirely agree." A 
 later note is more favourable : " Scotty is a dear little 
 thoughtless fellow, but manageable and affectionate, fuU of 
 life and a charming keen spirit." 
 
 In 1854, the Hollands moved to Wellesbourne Hall, 
 in Warwickshire : it was their home for six years. In 
 his earUest letters, 1854-55, Scott writes of learning to ride, 
 of cutting his name on a tree, and of playing at the Crimean 
 War : with a touch of chaff here : — 
 
 I have made a falUng pit by the trench, to prevent the 
 Russians getting in. The trenches are getting on very 
 weU. We found some coal yesterday : if we find a coal 
 
8 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 mine, it will save the carts coming from Warwick and 
 Stratford. We have made four cannon holes, and now have 
 only to send to Birmingham for the cannons. 
 
 In February, 1856, he went to Mr. Bedford's school, 
 AUesley, near Coventry. He writes home, after a fortnight 
 there, " I get on very well in school with my lessons, and 
 with the boys. I hke school still very much, and am very 
 happy," He had plenty of lessons, nearly eight hours a 
 day : but he seems to have enjoyed the hfe thoroughly, 
 both work and play. In the holidays, he used to visit 
 his cousins at Dumbleton, or his cousins at Boughton House, 
 near Worcester, the home of his aunt Mrs. Isaac. He writes 
 to his mother from Allesley, May 31, 1857, of Lady Gifford's 
 death, " I was very sorry to hear of dear Grandmama's 
 death, though it is sure to be for the best. I was glad to 
 hear that Uncle Scott was in time to see dear Grandmama, 
 who is now perhaps interceding with God for us, and much 
 happier than any one on earth, and even a better Christian 
 than my own sweet Mama." When he left Allesley, in 
 December, 1859, Mr. Bedford wrote to Mr. Holland, " I 
 parted with Scotty with many regrets, as I loved him very 
 much indeed for his own sake, and I can certainly never 
 expect to have so satisfactory a pupil again : for in aU 
 my experience and recollection of my own school days, 
 I never saw so quick and willing a little fellow. Great 
 talents and love of learning are so often clouded by some 
 moroseness, but he was always amiable and respectful. I 
 sincerely trust that I treated him wisely, as I was most 
 anxious not to spoil him or over-indulge him, tho' I could 
 scarcely disguise my real fondness for him." 
 
 He went to Eton in January, i860, when he was just 
 thirteen. His people were in Rome for the winter : he was 
 taken to Eton by his cousin, Thurstan Holland. He boarded 
 
FROM 1847 TO 1867 9 
 
 at Miss Gulliver's, one of the smaller houses. As a new 
 boy, he was put in the Lower Fourth Form : after a few weeks, 
 he was put in the Upper Fourth : " so I shall be in Fifth 
 Form and out of fagging in a httle more than a year." 
 
 To his Father 
 
 Jan. 25, i860.— I Hke Eton very much already, 
 though it is a great bother answering the usual questions, 
 " What's yoiu- name ? Where do you board ? Who is 
 your tutor ? " My room is rather small, though it is very 
 warm and comfortable : I shall get a bigger at Easter, but 
 the house is very full now. I hke Mr. Johnson very much, 
 though he is rather bearish : and I think I am getting on 
 pretty well with him in lessons. I have got a picture of a 
 Highland sporting poney, and a clock which I find very 
 useful, but I miss a watch rather. There is always a fellow 
 appointed to take care of a new fellow and to tell him what 
 to do, etc., and I have got a very nice fellow called Sutherland. 
 I am to be fag to the captain, so I shall get on very well. 
 
 His tutor, WiUiam Johnson,* the author of " lonica," 
 was " a man of genius, and has written poetry which one 
 can hardly think will ever cease to be reckoned among the 
 treasures of Enghsh Uterature. As a scholar he was quite 
 first-rate, but he was very far from being only a scholar. 
 He was deeply read in history ancient and modem. He 
 knew all that there was to know about pohtical economy. 
 
 * See " Extracts from the Letters and Journals of William Cory " : 
 selected and arranged by Francis Warre Cornish. Oxford. Printed for 
 the subscribers, 1897. He was bom Jan. 9, 1823 : son of WiUiam Charles 
 Johnson and Mary Theresa Johnson, daughter of Peter Wellington Furse, 
 and sister of Charles Furse, Archdeacon of Westminster. William Johnson 
 was King's Scholar at Eton, 1832 : Newcastle Scholar, 1841 : Scholar 
 of King's College, Cambridge, 1842 : Chancellor's Medallist for English 
 Poem, 1843: Craven Scholar, 1844: Fellow of King's College, 1845. 
 Appointed Assistant Master at Eton, Sept., 1845. Left Eton, Easter, 
 1872. Took the name of Cory, Oct., 1872. Married, 1878. Lived in 
 Madeira, 1878-1882. Returned to England and settled at Hampstead, 
 Sept., 1882. Died June 11, 1892. 
 
10 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 And in his views on education and the training of the mind 
 he was far in advance of those who were his colleagues at 
 Eton, He was a most inspiring teacher, and there are many 
 who look upon his intellectual influence as the most powerful 
 force in their Hves at school. Withal he had some of the 
 eccentricities which so often accompany genius, and he 
 probably found the task of drilling dunces a very tedious one. 
 He was full of wit and wisdom." (" Eton Sixty Years Ago," 
 by A. C. Ainger. 1917.) He deUghted in music, and in 
 criticism. He was impatient of all talking-down to boys : 
 as he writes to Holland in June, 1868, " We had a clerical 
 rough here yesterday, preaching to the boys about 
 ' coming forward,' ' carr5dng weight,' and similar athletic 
 slang." * 
 
 Among Holland's friends at Eton were W. H. Ady, 
 AlbericE. Bertie, C. E. Buckland, Dalmeny (Lord Rosebery), 
 S. J. Fremantle, G. W. Kennion (now Bishop of Bath and 
 Wells), A. G. Legard, Phihp E. Lee, (Lord) Northcote, 
 (Sir) Hubert Parry, Everard Primrose, and F. G. L, Wood, 
 son of the first Lord Hahfax. Some of them — Dalmeny, 
 Fremantle, Northcote, Primrose, and Wood — were in 
 Johnson's pupil-room with him. For nicknames, Ady was 
 Gruff : Fremantle was Bird : Holland was Monkey or 
 Link : Wood was Mouse. 
 
 * Thirty-three years after Eton, in July, 1897, Holland wrote of him, 
 " The old tutor who was our genius and our inspiration has been brought 
 back by the printing of his letters and journal, just out this week ; with 
 touching pathetic memories, and delicate flashes of insight, and lovely 
 allusions, all flocking back upon our hearts out of the records. He was a 
 poet, and a lover, and a man of genius, all three." Later still, in Common- 
 wealth, Oct., 1909, he wrote of him, " He was a Whig, a tough resolute Whig. 
 And his Whiggery, coupled with the deUcate and sensitive fastidiousness 
 of the scholar-poet, held him back from democracy. He shrank from its 
 crude colours. He could not tolerate the wild plunge of Mr. Gladstone 
 into the welter of popular forces. He recoiled from Home Rule. He 
 clung to high memories of the days when the wit and wisdom of the 
 elect won and held the leadership of the people by right of its excellent 
 quality." 
 
W M 
 t/J 
 
 o 
 
 H 
 
FROM 1847 TO 1867 II 
 
 To his Mother 
 
 Nov. 30, i860. — I have been thinking about my 
 confirmation a great deal lately. I have read the Bible 
 nearly every night this half, sometimes two or three chapters, 
 and I have got to know and Hke the Epistles much more ; 
 but still I have no strength of mind to keep my resolutions. 
 I am so wretchedly weak. I have not laughed, when fellows 
 have spoken about what we talked about, and have tried 
 not to say anything myself ; but I have no strength to speak 
 out or stop it all, though there is very little of it now in 
 my Dame's ; I do not think I have any influence for good, 
 and I sacrifice every day nearly to my old idol, popularity. 
 I am so careless, and keep saying things by accident which 
 I am very sorry for afterwards. I pray nearly every night 
 for strength and decision, but I do not think I improve at 
 all. One thing God and you, his agent on earth, have given 
 me, and that is, in all my little troubles I naturally begin 
 to pray to God in everything. I often think of my first 
 Communion, and how I shall be prepared for it, and whether 
 I shall mind laughter, etc., as I do now. Oh, how I wish I 
 could stop the thoughts that will come. I have much 
 fewer temptations in that way now. 
 
 It is bewildering, to find that his father, in June, 1861, 
 asked Baring's to take Scott into their office. Happily, there 
 was no immediate chance of a vacancy. This year, the 
 family moved to Gayton Lodge, Wimbledon. Next year, 
 he was in the Middle Fifth at Eton ; with Bertie, Buckland, 
 Dalmeny, Eldon, Edward Hamilton, Kennion, Mowbray 
 Morris, Northcote, and Wood. In the Christmas holidays, 
 his tutor writes to him : — 
 
 Dec. 15, 1862. — Two hours a day given to the history 
 would make you not merely fit for Trials but stored for fife 
 with valuable knowledge. A man who knows one important 
 period of history well has for fife an historical perception 
 which saves him from aU kinds of error and delusion. You 
 
12 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 should read this Reformation period in more than one 
 book. Do not look at Froude : he lies monstrously : no 
 one has falsified history more scandalously. Hume is good 
 in the Tudor period : it is the best part of his book : but 
 any history of England is better than Froude. I prefer 
 the Pictorial : but it is hard to get hold of, and very long. 
 Now, as you are not good at composition, you must try to 
 be first-rate in the history papers. You will know the 
 lessons well enough, and I suppose your mathematics 
 are sufficient for Trials, though probably a year behind where 
 they would be if you were at Rugby. (At Rugby you would 
 be thought a very good composer.) 
 
 In May, 1863, his father notes in his diary, " During 
 this month Scotty's tutor at Eton wrote to say that he 
 was not progressing favourably, and advising me to decide 
 on his future career. I am willing enough to do so, did 
 I know that the boy had any particular turn of mind for 
 any profession, but alas ! it is not so." But there was 
 no thought now of putting him into business : the talk 
 was of getting a junior appointment for him in the Foreign 
 Office, under his uncle Scott Gifford : and the choice 
 lay between the Foreign Office, and Cambridge or 
 Oxford. 
 
 To his Father 
 
 Eton, June, 1863. — Please do not put yourself to any 
 inconvenience in the way of income for the sake of sending 
 me to a University : I am sure you have done enough for 
 me at Eton in that way, and I do so hate the feehng that 
 you are stinting yourself at all for my sake. I wish I had 
 repaid half you have done for me at Eton ; I am such a 
 weak sort of fellow ; I always want some definite thing 
 to work for, like Trials, in order to work properly, some 
 stimulant, hke a donkey with a bunch of carrots before 
 its nose to make it go on ; I find it so hard to go on working 
 in a regular round of verses, themes, etc., every week : 
 and this perpetual plodding seems to be what I should 
 
FROM 1847 TO 1867 13 
 
 get in the law or the F.O., so I suppose this would be the 
 chief thing to work against, here and at college, if I go there. 
 My tutor has got in his head that I am a great swell at 
 mathematics because I take pretty high in Trials at this ; 
 but reaUy I get all the marks by EucUd, which I can do, 
 but very few by algebra, which I cannot do, and abominate. 
 This idea rather biasses him towards Cambridge, I think* 
 If Cambridge is my destination, I must set to work at once 
 at mathematics ; if Oxford, then continue classics, which 
 I myself greatly prefer, though my tutor must decide 
 whether I shall ever get a scholarship in them. Once at 
 College, and I am ready for any profession almost ; scarcity 
 of money would, I cannot help feeling, be a great stimulant, 
 from my desire-of-popularity feeling, to getting the ;^5o 
 scholarship, though I really feel the most intense happiness 
 at getting praise from you. I have never felt such delight 
 as writing to tell you I had taken second in Trials : and 
 there was no gain to me there. I am afraid the Church, 
 which my tutor advised, would never do for me, or rather 
 I should never do for it, with my Hghtheadedness. 
 
 He left Eton at the end of the summer term, 1864. It 
 is a great pity that he did not stay for one year more. He 
 was in the Upper Division of Fifth Form. On the river, 
 he had steered the Dreadnought in 1863, and the Victory 
 in 1864 : and had won a scuUing-race.* He had been fairly 
 good at cricket, and in football had been in the house- 
 eleven that won the challenge cup in 1863. 
 
 * In 187T, he writes from Oxford to his brother Spencer at Eton 
 who was steering one of the eights : " Such a jolly life, with the eight 
 swinging along bounding under you, and you feel it hft out of the water, 
 and the stream rushes by and the water curdles with that most deUcious 
 of all noises under the bending oars, and oh ! how the bank flies by you 
 as you tear along in the stream that catches you coming out of dear old 
 Boveney Locks, sneaking along close to the shore which dances with all 
 its daisies and dandehons as you whirl away to the Hopes. Then too 
 the long sweet hours at Monkey, twining the dog-roses in your hat : and 
 4th of June with all the glory of white ducks and gigantic bouquets, and 
 the wild spin in the dark night down the black-ghding waters through 
 the misty shadowy banks whirhng along, till you come with a rush into 
 the roar and blaze and yeUing crowd and phizzing fire and pealing bells 
 and flashing Ughts of the Brocas. Ah, how lovely it all is." 
 
14 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Two of his friends have written of him at this time of 
 his life : — 
 
 1. {From Mr. C. E. Buckland, CLE.) He had among us 
 the reputation of being more studious and better versed 
 in general literature than the ordinary boy. To the best 
 of my recollection, he was still in jackets when he left : 
 he had not developed sufficiently to attain the position and 
 distinction which he would surely have acquired in another 
 year. As a boy, he was always popular, without any 
 effort : a delightful companion, abounding in health and 
 spirits, genial and lively, good-tempered and amusing, 
 with a great sense of humour : he made wann friends, and 
 incurred no disUkes. It was evident that he was, also, 
 serious and devout, the result of home teaching and 
 injfluence. 
 
 2. {From the Rev. the Hon. Alheric Bertie.) He gave me 
 a friendship that I have dearly valued and he never 
 forgot. He had the art of taking the best out of the 
 thing he touched, whether it was a play or a sermon, 
 a concert or an anthem, a game or even a punish- 
 ment. His tutor, instead of giving him the usual Unes 
 for some trivial offence, ordered him to bring an 
 epigram : the epigram was a great success : Johnson 
 was much pleased with his pupil, and congratulated him 
 warmly : Scott was proud and happy. He was a lightly 
 built, friendly, good-humoured boy, and not devoid of 
 " cheek." There was a boy at my Dame's (Gulliver's), 
 a " fetish " several years older than us, and a swell in the 
 Boats. We ventured to chaff him about his cricket, and 
 were rather taken aback when he said " I could beat 
 you two brats together." We were bound to accept 
 the challenge. I remember well the energy with which 
 Scott played, racing after the ball on that hot summer 
 morning as if he really enjoyed H. P. Senhouse's hard 
 hits. 
 
 Sundays were great days for walks ; also for talks, in 
 which he passed swiftly from fun to seriousness. Only 
 a few have not vanished in the mist — conversations about 
 the services at St. Barnabas, Pimlico, by which he was much 
 attracted : the cumulative effects of Httle efforts : the 
 relative difficulties of no beginning and no end, in our con- 
 ception of eternity : the puzzle of destiny and free-will. 
 
llill^ & batiiittLr -• 
 
 ETON 
 1863 
 
FROM 1847 TO 1867 15 
 
 They were in our minds then. They are not out of my 
 mind yet. 
 
 Long after Eton, his friend Kennion wrote to him : 
 " Let me tell you, old fellow, what my beastly reserve 
 almost forbids my letting out, that I owe more of the happi- 
 ness which I have now, and I trust for ever, to your quiet 
 influence at Eton, than to anything else I know of upon 
 earth." * 
 
 In his tutor's journal, there is a description of the leave- 
 taking at the end of the term — 
 
 July 28, 1864. — This morning I gave a lecture on the 
 examination papers, and told the boys how they had done. 
 By 10 a.m., all school- work was over. At breakfast we had 
 Charles Wood's eager proposal that I should go at once 
 to Hickleton. It was a great help towards breaking the 
 faU. But there was nothing to comfort me in parting 
 with Holland ; and he was the picture of tenderness. He 
 and others stayed a good time, talking in the ordinary easy 
 way — no confessional — and one by one they shook hands ; 
 first N. Lyttelton, veiling his grief at leaving school in his 
 
 quaint hard Stoic manner, shaking hands with : they 
 
 used to hate each other, but have been great friends this 
 summer. Then R. Hussey spent some time with me, 
 copying out two of his honoured exercises into my book 
 while I did business. M. Lewis came, and his shjmess 
 did not prevent my saying what I wished to say to him. 
 
 * In Commonwealth, March, 1908, more than forty years after Eton, 
 there is a reference to his school life : it comes in a criticism of " unde- 
 nominational " teaching : " For myself, looking back to Eton days, I 
 am quite certain, out of the experiences of my hfe, that the only stable 
 religious result that I carried away with me from school came entirely 
 from what I should call the denominational side. The shadowy teaching 
 of the sermons ran off me, Uke water off a duck's back : but my con- 
 firmation, illuminated by the magic power of Samuel Wilberforce, left 
 a deep and hfe-long impression on my soul. From the beautiful music 
 sung by the St. George's choir, I learned to dehght in liturgical worship : 
 and this dehght has never failed me. And, then, I mercifully gained the 
 habit of constant Communion : and this habit was the one permanent 
 stronghold of my faith, when in after years at Oxford the violent storms 
 of intellectual trouble broke over my mind." 
 
i6 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 But to Holland I could say nothing : now that I am writing 
 about it I cannot bear to think that he is lost. 
 
 There are some verses by Holland, about this time, 
 full of regret for idleness, and of gratitude toward his 
 tutor : — 
 
 Urged by one 
 Loved then, loved since, and loved for aye, 
 I caught from him a glimpse of truth, 
 And cast frivolities away. . . . 
 
 I culled from his gigantic stores 
 Whate'er my little mind could hold. 
 
 Here and there are phrases too good to be lost : — 
 
 Where music waits with open arms. . . . 
 To guide the golden reins of life. . . . 
 
 TiU death shall fill 
 The measure of Life's golden cup. . . . 
 
 In the autumn of 1864, he was at Dieppe, boarding with 
 a French family, to learn the language. He must have 
 found the life dull, after Eton : " All the Protestants here 
 think that I am one of them, and a ' devoted Calvinist.' 
 They will ask me here how I liked the sermon ; thinking 
 that, like their mother, I go to church to hear the sermon. 
 The sons have a very curious religion : they hate the priests, 
 and hope the Pope will go to pot (translation of ' au diable ') 
 as soon as possible." 
 
 From his Tutor 
 
 I. Eton, Oct. 29, 1864. — Yesterday the Mouse came for 
 the first visit since he left : he came after lock-up, just in 
 time for Mr, Vidal's dinner. Mr. V. had killed the fatted 
 calf in the shape of champagne ordered on purpose, and 
 Dalmeny was invited to meet him. He was grown in the 
 
FROM 1847 TO 1867 17 
 
 two months that passed since I saw him at his home. He 
 was full of Cambridge and was very cheerful, and incom- 
 parably gentle and sweet. Fremantle and Knight came 
 to see him just before they went back to Oxford. The 
 Mouse came here and sat in the old chair an hour talking 
 to me quietly. I made him look at the Keats which he 
 read with you, which I keep as a sacred relic : he gave a 
 capital account of himself. But we missed the dear Link. 
 Joab never forgets you. Lewis K. S. remembers you with 
 great attachment, and read the other day some of your 
 blank verse done in Collections : I beheve you do other 
 verse, don't you ? If you were to let me see it, I would 
 not cut it up like a copy of Latin verse, but treat it rever- 
 entially, as I do the EngHsh verse of a very interesting boy 
 now in the School, the deaf Campbell. How soon do you 
 come home ? li you come here we shall be very much 
 happier and better for it. Life is short : let us love one 
 another : there is nothing else worth hving for. It makes 
 me weep to think that you and the Mouse are parted, and I 
 hope you will know each other as men in London without 
 any film of shyness between you, 
 
 2. King's Coll., Cambridge, Jan. 2, 1865. — I shall be here 
 on the loth, or else I should hesitate about declining your 
 tempting invitation to your plays, though the plunge into 
 crinolinesy would abash me : I am sadly afraid of strange 
 ladies, and I hate being asked, " What are the numbers 
 at Eton ? " which is the estabUshed opening for conversation. 
 I sat at dinner yesterday next to old Mathison, tutor of 
 Trinity, who looks like a withered boy : he is the Mouse's 
 tutor, so I inquired after him, and got, as I expected, a warm 
 eulogy. He went on to say that the Eton lads were the 
 best he had ; the most entirely free from conceit. " They 
 do not put themselves forward, but they are always pleasant 
 to deal with, pleasant to meet," etc., etc. This kind of 
 thing comforts me, after reading a wicked malignant attack 
 on the School (though not without plenty of true charges 
 in it) in the National Review. 
 
 I hope your plays will go off as well as what you did 
 with Fergusson at Tarver's. I am sorry France has broken 
 down with you after a fair start. I am reading the Hfe of 
 a thoroughly wise, good, patriotic Frenchman who lived 
 in the reign of Louis XV, when people would have you 
 believe that there was nothing in France but vice and 
 
 c 
 
i8 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 unbelief. He was called Turgot : and if you are to be 
 a diplomat, you ought some day to know something about 
 him : he was a perfect reformer : that muff Louis XVI 
 let him be turned out of ofhce. 
 
 r 
 In 1865, Holland was with a private tutor, Rev. Charles 
 
 Cookson, in Northamptonshire, reading for Oxford. In 
 
 October, he went up for the entrance examination at 
 
 BaUiol ; a very hard examination, and he failed, and the 
 
 Master strongly advised that he should not try again. In 
 
 Jan., t866, he did try again, and was successful ; he writes 
 
 to his father : — 
 
 The Mitre, Oxford, Jan. 25. — I am delighted to tell you 
 that I am a Balliolite. They called me up first, so I suppose 
 I took first ; and as there were only two fellows got through, 
 I cannot have been very far off it. Dr. Scott admitted 
 me by saying some Latin formula ; I am to have my rooms 
 to-morrow. I am afraid you must have been very anxious. 
 
 From Mr. Cookson to Mr. Holland 
 
 Jan. 31, 1866. — . . . He is now within reach (by all 
 accounts) of the very best that is to be had, I can say 
 nothing more specific about his examination than that 
 Palmer wrote to me saying that he " passed with flying 
 colours " ; and we know he must have been either first 
 or second. I take no credit at all to myself ; I rather 
 confess myself to have been floored. Nevertheless, I am 
 quite prepared for a succession of Balliol pupils. Anything 
 rather than teach fools. 
 
 From his Tutor 
 
 Eton, Feb. i, 1866. — Why did you not tell me you had 
 got into Balliol ? Dalmeny told me of it just now : and 
 said you were grown too. It does you great credit, to 
 persevere after a repulse. I am learning Spanish, and 
 going on steadily with Itahan. I hope to go to Paris at 
 
FROM 1847 TO 1867 19 
 
 Easter. Read Italian : it is well worth while to spend 
 £^ on it, when you are grounded in French, Don't get 
 into debt, whatever you do. Have at least an hour a day 
 alone, however sociable you may be. 
 
 He went into residence on his birthday, Jan. 27, 1866. 
 It is to be noted that he was not one of Jowett's pupils ; 
 and that Jowett was not Master of Balliol till Sept., 1870, 
 only three months before Holland left BalHol for Christ 
 Church. 
 
 Eton and home had not induced him to work steadily 
 at set subjects ; but they had given him everything else 
 for his University Ufe. His tutor at Eton, with almost 
 extravagant affection for him, had taught him to think for 
 himself, to take a wide outlook, to find his way up in history, 
 literature, and music, and to be fearless in the pursuit of 
 friendship and of happiness. Besides, he was a good 
 aU-round athlete. Having these gifts, and coming from 
 Eton, he found University life very like school hfe. The 
 freshmen who came from lesser schools, and from dull 
 homes, might find Oxford wonderful : he could not. His 
 first and second years at Balliol did not do much for him. 
 Eton friends and Eton ways were all round him : Oxford 
 was hardly more than Eton over again, on a different 
 stretch of the same river. He had for his tutors James 
 Riddell — of whom T. H. Green wrote, " one of the best 
 men I ever knew " — and, after Riddell's death in Sept., 
 1866, Edwin Palmer. He bought the usual things, attended 
 the usual lectures, went to hear Pusey and Liddon, and so 
 forth : but these two years were a time of uneventful 
 waiting ; Oxford waiting for him, and he waiting for Oxford, 
 but without any definite sense that he was waiting for 
 anything. 
 
 In the summer of 1866, he was with his people in Switzer- 
 land. There is a note in his father's diary : " On 17 June, 
 
20 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 my eldest son Henry Scott joined our party at Andermatt, 
 having walked up from Fluellen, and as usual he had lost 
 his luggage. ... All excursions were stopped later by 
 the illness of my son, who unfortunately was seized with 
 the fever of the district, and who suffered for six weeks 
 from this cause, typhoid : his Hfe was spared mercifully : 
 at one time of the fever I despaired." In the summer of 
 1867, he and Fremantle and Buckland were reading in 
 a cottage at Dalmally on Loch Awe. Mr. Buckland 
 remembers that they read independently : " there was no 
 tutoring. Our chief amusements were bathing, rowing 
 on the lake, taking long walks, and chmbing the hills. My 
 friends seemed to have, for their ages, a considerable know- 
 ledge of theology and of Church matters, so that in the 
 constant discussions on such subjects I found myself a 
 respectful Ustener and learner." A few weeks later, Fre- 
 mantle writes to Holland : 
 
 I have practically made up my mind to take orders, 
 and I trust that lesser obstacles will fade away. ... I can- 
 not help thinking of the possibility of your taking orders 
 — of course there is no hurry about the decision — but it 
 may be proposed to you to begin to " eat dinners " directly 
 after Mods., as many men do : and it is always a comfort, 
 where it is possible, to have determined one's course of 
 hfe beforehand. ... It seems to me that you would be 
 half lost in the ungracious work of a lawyer : there was 
 never a more crying want for clergymen (especially educated 
 ones) than now ; and (it is a grave fact, which you must 
 not shrink from) people with such a faith and love of God 
 as you have are hardly an3rvvhere to be found to do the 
 Church's work. I believe you would enter into the grand 
 work with all your soul — and you must not wonder at my 
 wanting you if possible to take orders. Forgive the long 
 rigmarole. God bless you. 
 
 Holland had said that an eldest son, if he were ordained, 
 would be less useful to his brothers and sisters, and less 
 
FROM 1847 TO 1867 21 
 
 apt for family affairs. Besides, his mother had wanted 
 him to go into the Foreign Office : and his father was 
 strongly opposed to his taking orders. But he never gave 
 much thought to any other calling. In his letters home, 
 during the first two years at Oxford, he is dogmatic and 
 intolerant over questions of rehgion : he has absolute 
 confidence, but he is repeating what he has read or heard : 
 he is holding his position on the authority of others, he has 
 not mastered it for himself. There is a letter, for instance, 
 in June, 1867, to his brother Lawrence at Radley, to pre- 
 pare him for his Confirmation and first Communion : — 
 
 It is the body and blood of your Saviour which are 
 given to you, the same which really hung on the cross, 
 given spiritually, you know not how, but still most certainly 
 given. It is given in the bread, as the fire in the coal : the 
 coal is not changed, but the flame is there which was not 
 there before ; the body which walked the earth and died 
 on Calvary is there, in the bread, mysteriously, ineffably, 
 but most certainly. No rehgion which doubted those words 
 has ever influenced mankind to purity and humiUty. 
 Believe, and all things are possible. You do not ask how 
 God came into the Virgin's womb ; you only believe and 
 know that He was there. . . . The Bishop stands before 
 you as Jesus Christ on earth ; he has received the full 
 stream of the Holy Spirit from Bethlehem ; St. Peter's 
 hand, our Lord's hand, have touched that head and con- 
 secrated those hands ; a real living power shines through 
 them and passes into you. 
 
 At the end of 1867, he was in for honours in Moderations : 
 a long and rather pedantic examination, mostly in Greek 
 and Latin, requiring strict accuracy of grammar and 
 famiharity with set books. He had read for it, but had 
 not cared for it : and he only got a third class. On Dec. 15, 
 T. H. Green writes to him, " I am extremely sorry and 
 surprised to hear of your break-down in Moderations. I 
 don't at all know how it happened, and don't write to 
 
22 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 commiserate you, but to express a hope that you will not 
 allow the present failure to discourage you in reading for 
 the final schools, in which I should expect you to do very 
 well. You will probably find it much more congenial 
 work than that for Mods., and I always look forward 
 with pleasure to the office of instructing you." 
 
II 
 
 BALLIOL, 1868-187O 
 
 He took his disappointment lightly : " You dear Gruff," 
 he writes to Ady, Dec. 16, 1867, " how awfully jolly of you 
 to write to me about those beastly schools. I would be 
 ploughed, to get a letter hke that. I ought never to have 
 been such an idiot as to think that I could succeed. It 
 serves me right." Anyhow, he had not been ploughed; 
 Moderations were done with : and Literae Humaniores 
 were calling to him to come and study them. 
 
 At Balliol, he twice steered the College Torpid, and three 
 times rowed in the College Eight. He won the high jump 
 at the College Sports : "to the astonishment of everybody," 
 Mr. A. G. C. Liddell writes, "as he had never shown any 
 jumping capacities. He jumped in a way quite his own, 
 not the orthodox style, but taking off at a long distance 
 from the bar, with a prodigious bound Uke that of a horse." 
 Mr. George Horner writes that " he jumped hke a deer, 
 and quite unscientifically." Lord Kilbracken, who went 
 to Balliol in the autumn of 1866, writes : — 
 
 I have a clear recollection of Holland's personal appear- 
 ance in those days ; he was tall and thin ; quick, active, 
 and springy in all his movements ; his arms and legs seemed 
 to hang rather loosely on him. I can see him now, hurrying 
 to lecture in his commoner's gown — my impression of him 
 is that he was generally in a hurry — or at the College barge 
 in his red blazer and white flannels. During the first year 
 
 23 
 
24 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 or so of my acquaintance with him, I hardly thought of 
 him as " a reading man " : and I recollect feeling some 
 little surprise at the great disappointment of his Eton 
 friends when his name appeared in the third class in 
 Moderations. The fact, of course, was that the refine- 
 ments of classical scholarship did not appeal to him, and he 
 probably never worked heartily so long as he was pinned 
 down to studies not very different from those at Eton. 
 But the moment he began to read for the Final Schools, 
 everything was changed. He was in his element, and it 
 soon became known that he was among the most promising 
 candidates for honours in Greats. Wordsworth tells us 
 that years " bring the philosophic mind " : but it is certain 
 that some men are born with the philosophic mind ready- 
 made, and equally certain that Holland was one of 
 them. . . . 
 
 His pen was very nearly as fluent and effective then as 
 it was in after-Hfe, and his gift of 'writing was already most 
 remarkable. Among his older friends in the University 
 was John Conington, Professor of Latin ; and I well re- 
 member the admiration wth which I hstened to a manu- 
 script essay of Holland's, which Conington had somehow 
 got hold of and read aloud to me. It was a revelation ; 
 and from that day forward I was certain that in some line 
 of life — I did not then know which — he must become a 
 marked man. And it was no surprise to me or to any of 
 his friends, when he not only got his first class, but was 
 reported to have done the most brilliant set of papers that 
 had been seen in the Schools for some time. 
 
 The philosophy then fashionable at Oxford was that 
 of the utihtarian school of Mill : while T. H. Green, who 
 was at that time our chief teacher of philosophy in Balliol, 
 was, as is well known, the exponent of a very different 
 system, of a more spiritual and less materialistic kind, 
 founded upon the writings of Kant and Hegel. To these 
 doctrines Holland was, no doubt, naturally predisposed ; 
 he absorbed them readily ; and it was thought remarkable 
 that, this being so, he should have been so successful in an 
 examination conducted mainly by adherents of the opposite 
 school of thought, who had distinguished themselves, the 
 year before, by placing Nettleship in the second class. 
 
 Holland's close friendship with Nettleship I have already 
 mentioned ; but it was hardly greater than that which 
 
\V. U. Benson. S. D, Darbishire. 
 
 W. Farrer. B. Entwistle. 
 
 R. L. Nettleship. 
 
 J. Y. Hay. H. S. Holland. 
 
 H. W. Primrose. 
 F. H. Peters. 
 
 THE BALLIOL EIGHT 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 25 
 
 he formed with Green, whose influence upon his intellect 
 and character was profound, and endured, unquestionably, 
 till the end of his hfe, 36 years after Green's death. 
 
 Also, he was fond of the Balliol Shakespeare Society ; 
 it used to meet on Sunday evenings and read the plays ; 
 he was in demand for the women's parts, for the pleasant- 
 ness of his voice : and he joined the choir which was started 
 in 1869 for the College chapel. In athletics, besides rowing, 
 he excelled in racquets, and in skating : and near the 
 end of the Michaelmas Term, 1869, he broke his leg at 
 football, and came back to BalUol on a shutter. Above 
 all, he enjoyed bathing ; especially the dangerous bathing 
 in Sandford Lasher. 
 
 During these three years of his life, 1868-1870, it is 
 impossible to isolate him from Green and Nettleship and 
 Fremantle.* All students of Holland's Hfe ought to read 
 the memoir of Green, by Nettleship, in the third volume 
 of Green's collected works : and the memoir of Nettleship, 
 by A. C. Bradley, in the first volume of Nettleship's 
 
 * Thomas Hill Green : bom April 7, 1836. Rugby 1 850-1 855. Balliol 
 1855 : second class in Moderations, 1857 : first class in Final Schools 
 (Literae Humaniores), 1859: lecturer and fellow of Balliol, i860. Chan- 
 cellor's Prize Essay, 1862. Assistant-commissioner of education in middle- 
 class schools, 1865-66. Married Miss Charlotte Symonds, sister of 
 J. A. Symonds, in 1871. Whyte Professor of Moral Philosophy, 1878. 
 Died March 26, 1882. His chief writings are his Introductions to Hume's 
 Treatise of Human Nature, 1874-75 : and his Prolegomena to Ethics, 
 published after his death. 
 
 Richard Lewis Nettleship: born Dec. 17, 1846: brother of Henry 
 Nettleship, Professor of Latin in Oxford ; of John Nettleship, artist ; 
 and of Edward Nettleship, ophthalmic surgeon. Uppingham School. 
 First Entrance Scholarship at BalUol, 1864. Hertford Scholar, 1866 : 
 Ireland Scholar, 1867 : fellow of BalHol, 1869 : Arnold Prize Essay, 1873 : 
 lecturer on philosophy : editor of Green's collected works. Died on 
 Mont Blanc, Aug. 25, 1892. 
 
 Stephen James Fremantle, youngest son of ist Lord Cottesloe. Eton : 
 Newcastle Scholar, 1863 : BalUol, Entrance Scholarship, 1865 : first 
 class in Final Schools, and senior studentship at Christ Church, 1867, 
 tutor 1870. Ordained deacon 1870, priest 1871. EUerton Prize Essay, 
 1870 : examining chaplain to Bishop of Ely, 1871. Died Sept. 16, 1874. 
 
26 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 philosophical lectures. These two memoirs, which are 
 both of them admirable, must not be quoted in scraps here. 
 It is to be remembered that Green was not only a teacher 
 of philosophy, he was also a reformer ; one of the very 
 few men who were zealous in Oxford, half a century ago, 
 for the improvement of popular education, for temperance, 
 and for purer politics. 
 
 But no man dictated to Holland what he should believe, 
 or what he should be. He was under conflicting influences, 
 which left their mark deep on him. But he held his own 
 way through them all : he let neither Green, nor Nettleship, 
 nor Fremantle, have the making of him. 
 
 1868 {cBt. 21) 
 
 At the end of the Summer Term, he and A. F. Walter 
 and others started to row down to London ; sleeping in 
 the fields by day, and rowing by night ; but they did not 
 get more than half-way. In August, he and Fremantle 
 were reading at Bettws y Coed ; in the cottage, Tyn-y-bryn, 
 belonging to "the beloved aunt," Miss Jane Gifford ; of 
 whom he wrote in 1874, " she has long been my ideal of 
 womanhood " ; and, many years later, " she and I have 
 been like brother and sister." 
 
 Nettleship writes to him, in July from a reading-party 
 in the Lakes, and in September from Kettering, his home : 
 
 I. Rosthwaite, July 29, 1868. — The whole thing is 
 perfectly lovely and breathes Wordsworth. The hills are 
 grander than I expected, but it is all very pure and calm, 
 with his sort of sublime homeliness about it. 
 
 I agree very much with what you say about Jowett. 
 I think you hit the vital point when you say that it won't 
 do against bodily passion. But then don't you think 
 the people to whom Jowett rather addresses himself are 
 just the people to whom bodily passion does not come in 
 a very serious way ? I mean that there appear to be a 
 
BALLIOL, 1868 -1870 27 
 
 great many people who have never really felt what it is to 
 have " a war in their members." They have perhaps had 
 to work hard and have lived in decent society and so married 
 and begotten children without ever having to think of 
 the body as anything but the medium of a certain amount 
 of pleasure which there is no harm in enjoying. I don't 
 envy them their immunity, but I think that they do require 
 some principle to make their decent commonplace money- 
 making life a little higher if possible ; and it is such a 
 principle that Jowett seems to me to preach, the principle 
 of recognising something divine in everything. And surely 
 this is one side of Christianity: of the other side, " Believe 
 and ye shall be saved," Jowett no doubt makes very Httle. 
 I hardly dare speak on a subject in which I know I have 
 got such a httle way, but are not the two sides really the 
 same ? I see, however, that this does not lessen the 
 difftculty, for you would say that they are both absorbed 
 in " Believe and ye shall be saved." To take the most 
 crucial case, what is the answer to the question " Who 
 shall dehver me from the body of this death " ? I don't 
 know whether the question ever forces itself on you, but if 
 it does you must have answered it somehow. I quite feel 
 that what is ordinarily called education absolutely fails 
 in such a case. I always think that the whole question 
 is put in the most terribl}^ intense way in the words " Shall 
 I take the members of Christ and make them the members 
 of an harlot ? " And if one could but realise even a little 
 of them, they could not help being like a refiner's fire to him. 
 
 But here again I am afraid you will realise them in a 
 different way from me, though perhaps the difference is 
 only external. What makes the thing so fearfully hard 
 is a good deal, I think, the artificiality of society : here 
 are people simpering and being polite, and all the time 
 perhaps a small heaven and hell going on inside them, 
 and no one to help them or sympathise with them or even 
 recognise the possibility of anything except uninterrupted 
 respectability. However — society when it is jolly is very 
 jolly ; only sometimes one gets gloomy about it, and 
 especially on this particular point of the body. 
 
 You don't mind talking about these things, do you ? 
 If you do, please tell me at once. Perhaps it doesn't do 
 much good, but it is a relief, though I'm afraid the fact of 
 its being a relief shows a want of self-rehance. 
 
28 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 2. Kettering, Sept. 4, 1868. — I must write once more : 
 if my letter interested you I am sure yours was like wine 
 to me. Nothing gives me more strength than to find 
 some one who has felt the same as I have and doesn't mind 
 talking about it. It isn't often that I do find any one. . . . 
 I am in a haze about the Eucharist — but I have this definite 
 feehng about it, that whereas now it is usually made the 
 stronghold of sectarianism, it ought to be the one thing 
 in which all Christians in the widest sense of the word can 
 meet on a common ground. Knowing so little as I do of 
 the dogmatical part of the question, it may be fooUsh 
 of me to say this, but I feel that it is true for me. But 
 I dare not say that I find it the single and sufficient power 
 able to kill the body of death. And yet theoretically 
 I do believe that the indwelling of Christ through his 
 Spirit in our bodies, the being bone of his bone, and the 
 hope of being made Uke him, are the powers which can 
 keep me pure ; and I also think that the Eucharist does 
 in the strongest way embody all these ideas. But then 
 there are times when this belief seems to be drowned in the 
 one pervading consciousness of animality. There is the 
 difference — you find in the beUef an external and palpable 
 reality face to face with the external and palpable reaUty 
 of the body — I do not, not at least when I ought most to 
 do so. It is this that sometimes makes me feel as if I 
 should Hke to rush out and work myself to death in a coal- 
 mine, or go in for St. Anthony's fine — anything that would 
 break through aU subtleties at one coarse blow. Intel- 
 lectually, Carlyle is my resort : I think he ought to be 
 pubhshed in volumes " for the waistcoat pocket," that 
 one might drink of him whenever one felt faint. 
 
 ... I hope for my own sake that you will go to the 
 Bar (though I certainly think you ought to take orders, 
 and even then perhaps you would be in town) but it would 
 be jolly if we could see one another stiU after leaving Oxford. 
 We had a most happy month at Rosthwaite, though I 
 can't say we did as much work as we intended. However, 
 I got through the text of Herodotus, which is something to 
 say one has done, as it doesn't appear to be the slightest 
 use for the schools — confound them — I can't make out 
 for the fife of me what is of use for them. I also attempted 
 a little Grote, but what a beast he is to write in that way, 
 putting poor old Herodotus into the stocks at every word 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 29 
 
 with his pedantry and woodenness : heaven forbid that 
 I should have to read much of him. It is after dinner 
 and I have been hearing some Mozart. He is pure, if you 
 Hke. Why has art so Httle moral effect ? It is always 
 a puzzle to me. 
 
 In December, Nettleship and Holland were with Green 
 for a week at ShankUn. "I am off to-morrow," Holland 
 writes to his sister, Dec. 14, " with Green the don, and 
 Nettleship my famiHar friend — one of my greatest possible 
 friends ; also he is the rising young man, and has gained 
 every honour the University can pour upon him : he com- 
 bines three Scholarships in his single person " : and in 
 future years, " when he is Lord High Chancellor, Prime 
 Minister, and Archbishop of Canterbury," Mrs. Holland 
 wiU be " proud to say she once had his legs under her own 
 mahogany " : for Nettleship and Holland were coming 
 back to Gayton Lodge together, that they might see a 
 BaUiol friend at Roehampton, who had been received into 
 the Roman Church and was preparing to enter the Order 
 of the Jesuits. 
 
 From T. H. Green 
 
 Dec. 29, 1868. — I am glad that you and Nettleship 
 saw Hopkins. A step such as he has taken, tho' I can't 
 quite admit it to be heroic, must needs be painful, and its 
 pain should not be aggravated — as it is pretty sure to be 
 — by separation from old friends. I never had his in- 
 timacy, but always hked him very much. I imagine 
 him — perhaps uncharitably — to be one of those, hke his 
 ideal J. H. Newman, who instead of simply opening them- 
 selves to the revelation of God in the reasonable world, 
 are fain to put themselves into an attitude — saintly, it is 
 true, but still an attitude. True citizenship " as unto the 
 Lord " (which includes all morahty) I reckon higher than 
 " saintliness " in the technical sense. The " superior 
 young man " of these days, however, does not seem to 
 understand it, but hugs his own " refined pleasures " or 
 
30 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 (which is but a higher form of the same) his personal sanctity. 
 Whence, and not from heterodoxy, ruin threatens Christian 
 society. 
 
 The above is not meant to edify you, but is merely a 
 vent for passing irritation. It vexes me to the heart to 
 think of a fine nature being victimised by a system which 
 in my " historic conscience " I hold to be subversive of 
 the Family and the State, and which puts the service of 
 an exceptional institution, or the saving of the individual 
 soul, in opposition to loyal service to society. 
 
 Holland wrote back, " I will try and digest your remarks 
 on Hopkins, as I have a lurking admiration for Jesuitry. 
 In cases of beneficent monkery, if loyalty to Society can 
 be kept as the ruling motive, are not some wants of Society 
 only to be supplied by institutions of ascetic co-operation ? " 
 This careless answer drew from Green a full statement of 
 his thoughts on aaKncng, training, discipline : — 
 
 Jan. 9, 1869. — I feel a certain restlessness till I have 
 set myself right with you on the matter of " Jesuitry." 
 Please don't suppose that I am against " ascetic co- 
 operation," as such, because I question the monastic form 
 of it and wholly demur to the purposes to which, as a 
 matter of history and as a consequence of the Catholic 
 theory, it has been applied by Jesuits. I am all for aaKr]aig. 
 The notion that we can do without it is a perversion by 
 philosophers, who don't understand their philosophy, 
 of the truth that " the real is the rational." So it is, only 
 for us it is being made rational, and this process for the 
 individual must involve an auK^aig. How far this, again, 
 need involve detachment from personal participation in 
 the common interests of life, must depend upon circum- 
 stances : but for many in these days, students no less than 
 " priests," it must be so. Such people must be content 
 with the converse lot of Wordsworth's poet, and " under- 
 stand the things which others enjoy." For co-operation 
 every one goes now-a-days : nor am I less for religious 
 co-operation ; and tho' dogma partially secludes some 
 of us from it for the present, I don't at aU acquiesce in 
 the seclusion, and believe that it may be overcome. A 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 31 
 
 morality that reflects on itself must needs refer itself to 
 God, i.e., be religious. If there seems now to be a reflective 
 morality, which yet is not religious, this is not really un- 
 religious, but its religion is for the time dumb ; and this 
 dumbness mainly results from the action of philosophy upon 
 the dogma of the revelation of God in Christ. When it is 
 found that this dogma (tho' in a wrong, because dogmatic, 
 form) embodies the true idea of the relation of the moral 
 Ufe to God, the morality of speculative men will find its 
 religious tongue again. 
 
 If, then, I question the monastic form of ascetic co- 
 operation, it is because (i) I doubt whether on the whole 
 (tho' it may have some special uses) it is the right form for 
 acting either on the luxury, or on the derangement of 
 family life, which seem to be the ultimate social evils of 
 this day. What the sick man of modern society wants is 
 regulated diet ; and monasticism at best only offers strong 
 physic. It does nothing to organise hfe. The real move- 
 ment of the world has passed it by. It lets the muddy 
 tide have its way, and merely picks up a few stones thrown 
 on the shore, which will take the saintly polish — not without 
 satisfaction that the tide should be as muddy as it is by 
 way of contrast.* Nor is this weakness accidental. It 
 results (2) from the wrong principle, on which, historically, 
 monasticism rests, of the antithesis between Church and 
 World, the religious and the secular, etc. This antithesis, 
 doubtless, had its work to do, but the rational movement 
 of mankind has got beyond it. Just so far as ordinary 
 reUgion, " CathoUc " or " Protestant," is governed by it, 
 it loses its interest for the fully-educated citizen of the 
 European commonwealth, to lapse into, it seems to me, 
 at best, a piece of spiritual invahdishness. Catholicism 
 embodies the antithesis in its most objectionable form, 
 inasmuch as it fixes the Divine, falsely opposed to the 
 human, in a definite institution claiming supremacy over 
 secular and civil interests, and represents the " objective 
 
 * Eight years later, March, 1877, Holland writes to W. H. Ady, " I 
 read an interesting letter of yours to Oakley about School Board elections, 
 etc. It made me rather wonder whether we are to retire from the big 
 public work which seems to bring-in so little, as you imply. Would it 
 not be a retirement ? a retreat ? I always recall a bitter saying of Green's 
 to me once, about our being content, we Xtian priests, to go into a corner 
 of the beach on the great sea-shore, and polish a pebble or two of our own." 
 
32 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 presence " of the incarnate God as a sensual presence 
 in the sacraments instead of a moral one in the Chris- 
 tian society, and makes Him speak authoritatively thro' 
 the priest instead of rationally thro' the educated con- 
 science. . . . 
 
 I can fancy that to speak of the antithesis between 
 " the secular and the rehgious " as a false one may seem 
 a tedious commonplace in presence of the hfe of a great 
 city, and within hearing of the strife of tongues talking 
 themselves into atheism. But don't let us put-to the 
 shutters because daylight is tedious, noisy, and full of ugly 
 sights. If one thinks the matter out, does it not appear 
 that mere religious agency does but touch the surface of 
 our modern rottenness ; that the people who cry " Lord, 
 Lord " do no wonderful works and never get nearer to any 
 organisation of Hfe ; that the only hope hes in such 
 " secular " agency and " human " philosophy as it requires 
 a religious zeal, not less self-denying and much more 
 laboriously thoughtful than that of the monk, to bring 
 into action ? I quite admit that Protestantism, as hitherto 
 organised, scarcely seems able to deal with modern life. 
 Where it has been fairly wrought into education (as it 
 never has in England), and where hfe has continued simple, 
 it does very well, as may be seen in Germany. So far, 
 however, it has not been able to moraUse masses. But 
 Catholicism can throw no stones at it in this respect. At 
 least it does not actually oppose the longer and sounder 
 methods of social improvement, as Catholicism, from the 
 exigencies of its position, has done and still does — witness 
 Dupanloup's denunciation of the improvement of the 
 education of women in France. . . . 
 
 Whether the outcome will be new forms of religious 
 society or a gradual absorption of all such forms in simple 
 rehgious citizenship, I do not predict : but I have faith 
 that the new Christianity, because not claiming to be 
 special or exceptional or miraculous, will do more for man- 
 kind than in its " Catholic " form, hampered by false 
 antagonisms, it has ever been able to do. 
 
 I am quite aware that this position of sitting apart and 
 whisthng for some new organisation in posse is open to 
 much chaff. For all that, what Cromwell used to call 
 " a waiting spirit " is the highest. It is more manly, 
 quietly making the best of the institutions among which 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 33 
 
 one finds oneself, to follow the lead of the foremost ideas 
 at work in the world, than out of terror or impatience or 
 even saintly aspiration to take sides with a Church, or 
 plunge into a society, resting on an untenable theory and 
 from the nature of the case unable to escape from the 
 past. , . . 
 
 I don't at all expect my particular theological nightcap 
 to fit you, any more than my boots, but I want you to 
 understand its cut. Pray stick to your books. 
 
 1869 (^^- 22) 
 Holland to Legard 
 
 I. Jan., 1869. — Your " place " [as private tutor to young 
 Lord de Grey] sounds beautiful ; think what an opportunity 
 for you, with a virgin mind to impress yours into. If he 
 had been at any other school, it would have been just 
 tainted by a savour of bad classics, useful for nothing, 
 and only just enough to spoil it for an able tutor's handling : 
 but since he has had the good fortune to be at the best of 
 schools, without being stuffed with conceited half-ignorance, 
 he knows how to act courteously, to be kind and sociable, 
 to feel what would be offensive to him in such a tickhsh 
 position ; how to receive and use what he hears, without 
 any priggishness : to be unconscious of his superiority 
 in rank, and, if he has any sense, to hate the snobbery and 
 the truckling which he will get at every other part of his life 
 except his Eton time : it is the only place in the world, 
 it seems to me, where tufts are unknown. If you find all 
 this true, don't abuse Eton education. 
 
 . . . Jowler [Jowett] preached yesterday in Chapel 
 amidst intense excitement, no people in Chapel. He 
 looked so fatherly and beautiful and brought out the best 
 bell-Uke silvern voice with quite rich tones that he had 
 hitherto hidden in the depth of his stomach, and preached 
 the most lovely little practical sermon in a quite perfect 
 style with the most wonderful grace. I have only said all 
 this laud in anticipation of having to confess that though I 
 felt how beautiful it was in its way, it was most unsatisf5dng 
 to me. It was just Platonism flavoured with a Uttle Christian 
 charity : Christianity is gutted by him : it becomes perfectly 
 
34 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 meaningless, if it is only an attempt to take some useful 
 moral hints from just what happens to strike you in a very 
 good, " perhaps I may be excused in saying " a Divine Ufe. 
 He is perfectly self-sufficient ; self-dependent, without 
 any consciousness of anything beyond a certain human 
 weakness in carr3dng out his ideal ; there is not an atom 
 of the feeling of prayer, of communication with God, of 
 reliance on any one but self. He even begs pardon for using 
 as vague an expression as " sharing in the Spirit of God." 
 I admire the Symposium with all my heart and soul ; but 
 I must have something more to have brought God down 
 to death to procure for me. 
 
 2. March, i86g. — I meant prayer morally in the case 
 of Jowler, meaning the consciousness of the want of prayer. 
 Prayer about material things is full of difficulties to me. 
 Whatever way you expect God to work, it will be by physical 
 causes producing physical effects : our question is, who 
 brought about the physical cause ? Science, far from 
 giving the real cause, seems to give nothing but a chain of 
 effects. However long a string it may make of them 
 following each other, there is no mention of any reason for 
 their doing what they do : except that it allows that some 
 one must originally have set it all going by rigid laws, 
 retiring himself into private life. Now this seems to me 
 perfectly monstrous. " My Father worketh hitherto, and 
 I work," every minute, not omitting the Sabbath. The 
 world is the ever-living garment of God : it is the expression 
 of his working thought, his energy : it is his language to 
 man : it is relative to man as to God. Laws of Nature are 
 the interchange of his mind and ours : he is ever expressing 
 in infinite variety his essential qualities, which are lasting, 
 permanent : our minds are of the same quality, and can 
 only grasp this variety of sensation by the permanent 
 character stamped upon it by his mind and acknowledged 
 by ours. By law we twain communicate in the highest 
 parts of our nature. 
 
 3. July, 1869. — I spent a beautiful racketing fortnight 
 in London : oceans of music, and heaps of pictures, and such 
 a lot of people and horses and carriages, which things are 
 tremendously exciting. Oh ! such an opera for our last 
 night, Don Giovanni, beating everything I had ever I 
 expected of blackguardism and loveliness : such melody 
 has never been written since, or ever will be. 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 35 
 
 Fremantle to Holland 
 
 Swanbourne, Easter Dciy, 1869. — How very wrong of 
 you not to write. Really it would be kinder if you wrote 
 sooner. You know it is hard not to think a Httle of it, 
 when you promised to write first and I have been expecting 
 a letter. I hope you are taking life easily : you had got 
 rather too much into the way of sitting up talking, I suspect, 
 and not getting good nights : perhaps there is self-denial 
 to be exercised in going to bed, when it seems jolher and 
 more improving to be up and talking or reading. Do 
 you remember that letter of my tutor's to you, advising 
 you to get an hour a day alone ? Isn't it rather a tear 
 and bustle at Oxford, that reading for Greats, and Torpids, 
 and racquets, and dinners, and then all the great things 
 that one begins to think about — theories of Church and 
 State, and difficulties of rehgion, and philosophical puzzles ? 
 intensely engrossing, and that is why one wants sometimes 
 to be able to be quiet and think of one thing at a time. 
 
 Always, there was in Fremantle this anxiety over 
 Holland, this nervous longing to put him on his guard 
 against himself and to make him perfect. It was Fre- 
 mantle's way with his friends : he must be as careful of 
 them as of himself. He was senior to HoUand ; he had 
 been Newcastle Scholar at Eton ; he preceded Holland 
 from Eton to Balliol, and through the Schools, and from 
 BalUol to Christ Church, and to ordination. He had not that 
 intellectual and imaginative power which was in Holland. 
 He was fairly strong and active ; but he was watchful of 
 his health, and had not Holland's everlasting deUght in 
 his own existence. He was gentle, sensitive, deUberate ; 
 quietly practical, dehcately scrupulous, vigilant over all 
 his motives and tendencies, though they hardly needed 
 so much vigilance ; strict in the observances of religion, 
 submissive to authority, and set, heart and soul, on the 
 attainment of spiritual gifts. Always, he was on the side 
 of self-examination, self-distrust, self-restraint. There is 
 
36 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 a story of the Newquay reading-party in 1874 — the mid- 
 day meal, and Holland uncovering an ill-looking dish of 
 mince, and sa5ring, " Bah, how filthy ! beg pardon, Fre : 
 Benedidus henedicat " — objurgating and blessing the mince 
 with impartial haste : Fremantle would have blessed it 
 before criticising it. His letters to Holland are wearisome 
 with their praise of rule and method, their insistence on 
 the fact that Holland is too " natural," * too ready to suit 
 himself to his company, and to take the world as he finds 
 it : and there are signs, now and again, of mere querulous- 
 ness, or of half -jealousy that Holland is leaving him out. 
 Little reproofs, hints, trivial bits of advice, httle affectionate 
 phrases, from which the life departed long ago, are in his 
 letters. But there was stronger stuff in him. The limita- 
 tions of his range are plain enough : he was unadventurous, 
 he was unwisely timid over Holland's paradoxes and 
 audacities, he was frightened lest Holland should come to 
 be too fond of metaphysics : but there are no such Hmits 
 to his dutifulness, humility, loyalty to his friends, and 
 incessant recognition of the presence of God in his daily 
 life. Their friendship had begun at Eton, and was increased 
 by every year at Oxford. And it must be measured, not 
 only by the years which they had together, but by the years 
 in which Fremantle, after his death, was still one of the 
 factors of Holland's life. 
 
 In the Summer Term, 1869, Nettleship and Holland 
 were in lodgings, 56 St. Giles' ; at the end of the term 
 
 * Holland to Fremantle, June 20, 1872. I cannot understand the mystery 
 these dear good people find in the ways of an evil world under a good God 
 — it is all natural to me ; a result of physical mechanism, of natural law ; 
 I see no need to suppose it might be otherwise. ... I have that sort of 
 disposition to which nothing comes amiss : I do not feel the slightest tinge 
 of desire or expectation that things should be otherwise than they are — • 
 and yet I see that faith in a good God may be defined as " faith in things 
 being otherwise somewhere," "faith in a goodness balancing this evil." 
 Life never strikes me as odd, out of order, disturbing : except in gross 
 cases which do not aiiect me, as it happens. 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 37 
 
 Nettleship was in for Greats, and the benighted examiners 
 gave him only a second class. One of his friends describes 
 how Jowett asked them for an explanation : they said 
 that he had not done well in philosophy : Jowett told them 
 that Nettleship knew more philosophy than all of them 
 together. 
 
 Nettleship to Holland 
 
 June 20, 1869. Kettering. — It seems as if one ought 
 to say something at the end of a term hke last, and in 
 London I could not say much. To say that it was very 
 very happy is not to say much. It was only my fault that 
 there was an5rthing at all to mar or cast a shadow on it. 
 I know you are much too good to think about these things, 
 and I know too that it is poor work talking and regretting 
 when it is too late. 
 
 But however much I hate myself for having let my 
 own wretched troubles come to the surface, in time to come, 
 when perhaps we shall never be together again as we have 
 been, I shall keep hold of memories of this time — memories 
 of walks together under the stars — memories of water and 
 green trees and gardens and sunny streets enjoyed together 
 — memories of music and poetry and nightingales drunk 
 in together — memories of everyday joys and sorrows 
 idealised together — memories of God approached together 
 — memories of hfe and death, sin and holiness, depths and 
 heights, talked about, dreamed about, wondered at, together, 
 in the communion of souls. 
 
 And so one part of Oxford hfe has ended in a second — 
 and all this. I can almost thank the second for making 
 a httle mark to measure the tide by — that tide of love which 
 has always seemed reaching its height but has never yet 
 reached it, and must now go on rising higher and higher, 
 deeper and deeper, till we die. Words are foolish things. 
 Monk, but you will understand them and make the fooHsh- 
 ness into something better. 
 
 In July, Holland was on a reading-party at Skelgill, 
 near Keswick, with Fremantle, Ady, Phihp Lee, and A. F. 
 Walter. After Skelgill, Nettleship and HoUand had a 
 
38 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 walking-tour in North Wales ; then the Wye valley, and 
 Tintern. 
 
 Holland to Legard 
 
 You may talk about Milan till you are black in the face : 
 but you will never know what a church can be till you have 
 been to that abbey on the Wye. It is ridiculous to call 
 it a ruin : it is in far better order than most cathedrals 
 I have been to : and even if it has no roof, or pavement, 
 or oak stalls, or choristers, the blue sky covers it, and the 
 green grass enamels it, the hanging ivy drapes it, and the 
 birds carol and chant in it : for the rest, the mouldings 
 are as clean as the day they were cut, the gables and 
 mullions are whole and upright as ever, framing woods 
 and clouds brighter than ever glass was coloured, the stones 
 are all smooth and unworn, stained with all the mellow 
 purple glow that time and weather can give them, without 
 any of the green, greasy darkness, and dirt of mouldering 
 whitewash that usually remind one that good Queen Anne, 
 tho' indeed dead now, certainly did hve once ; only the 
 four great gables seem to remember the glories they have 
 known, and stand up, reft of their roof, to protest against 
 the desecration they have been put to by a corpulent, 
 covetous wife-butcher. The whole stands among the 
 hills like a visible hymn, a prayer that has taken bodily 
 shape. The shock was to find, when we went out to bathe 
 our shining Umbs where " sylvan Wye " still, as we thought, 
 " to matins joined a mournful voice nor failed at evensong," 
 that it is a nasty, dirty, foul, mud-banked tide-river, 
 looking Hke the Thames at Barking, so filthy that we dared 
 not go in. 
 
 Nettleship to Holland 
 
 Sept. 4, 1869. Kettering. — Well, and so it is all over, 
 Monk. You know well enough what it has been to me, 
 more bright, more happy, even than 1 had hoped : and that 
 is saying very much. I shall think of it often and often — 
 so will you : of that quiet evening lake, set in the meadows, 
 and watched over by the mountains — of those brown and 
 amber rivers, gliding over the rocks, festooned with birches 
 and ferns^-of Snowdon, standing up like a king, with the 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 39 
 
 incense-clouds rising at his feet and veiling his face — of the 
 hills sloping purple in the sunset and quivering black in 
 the moonht river — of the valleys opening out their green 
 arms to the sea — of Tintern, standing grey and ghostly, 
 with ceiling and windows of sky and pavement of grass, 
 speaking amid the silent woods — of purple heather and golden 
 furze steeped in sunHght — of a great and awful moon, 
 brooding over dim woods and valleys — of these and much 
 more we shall think, when the "burden of the mystery" 
 weighs heavy, when " the mortal body presses down the 
 immortal soul," when the world looks all grey and weary 
 — then we shall think of them, and remember that we 
 looked at them together. 
 
 In September, Nettleship was reading for a Fellowship 
 at Balliol. He writes to Holland on the question, How 
 was it possible that Christ should be subject to temptation ? 
 Possibly, he says, Christ bore not isolated or individual 
 temptations, such as come to every man, but the " accumula- 
 tion and concentration " of all temptations, the " very 
 and undivided essence " of sinful nature : — 
 
 And so, out of that great face-to-face struggle came, 
 not isolated and personal precepts, but words hke stars, 
 centres of light and hfe — " Blessed are the pure in heart, 
 for they shall see God," — and " Whoso looketh after a 
 woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with 
 her akeady in his heart " — words going to the deeps of 
 every heart, and revealing in their great cahn strength 
 ghmpses of a struggle such as no mortal man could have 
 met and hved. Do you think this is any good ? . . . 
 
 I hope, old boy, you are not setting your heart too much 
 on the fellowship : from a common-sense point of view 
 I don't think I ought to have a better chance than several 
 other men. But don't be afraid, I will do my best : with 
 a view to which I am at present endeavouring to con- 
 centrate my wandering thoughts on a fine medley of subjects, 
 including Hegel's iEsthetik, Comte's Positive Philosophy, 
 Sismondi's Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon, Latin Prose, 
 Sappho ; also Voltaire's Charles XII, in order to secure the 
 latest French tip from the Revue des deux Mondes, There I 
 
40 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 About September, Holland writes to his mother of a 
 visit to Conington : and of his decision to take orders. 
 The visit was not long before Conington' s death, on Oct. 
 23, after a few days' illness.* " Conington overwhelmed 
 me with affection : he lives a lonely Ufe for the sake of his 
 poor old mother, and so longs for some one to be with him : 
 he is somehow very fond of me, and throws all his affection 
 on his younger friends. . . . Dear old Mother, I do not 
 the least repent my choice, but I do feel sometimes half 
 afraid of the questions that I shall have to answer as a 
 parson : it is such an eventful time, and I shall have to 
 break, I fear, with many of my friends here, when it comes 
 to taking an active part in these fights and struggles. Any- 
 how I shall be sure of home sympathy." 
 
 In October, there are two letters from Green, commenting 
 on essays which Holland had written for him. 
 
 I. I am heartily ashamed of myself for being so slow 
 in thanking you for your letter and the essay. The reason 
 of the delay, I believe, has been that in my anxiety for the 
 latter to prove good I felt a sort of unwillingness to look at 
 it — even as the northern farmer will not look at his weather- 
 glass in harvest-time, lest he should find it falling. How- 
 ever, a return to Oxford has brought me to a sense of 
 responsibihty. Your discourse pleases me very much. 
 I think you really have the "speculative" intelligence, 
 
 * There is a long letter to Holland, Oct. 6, 1869, from Conington : 
 it is concerned with the translation of the ^neid ; with the contrast 
 between BaUiol and Keble ; and with Nettleship's BalUol Fellowship. 
 And he says to Holland, " To have gained you is one of the chief reasons 
 for thankfulness which I note in reviewing, more meo, what the past twelve- 
 month has done for me : and as I think how ignorant I was, on yesterday 
 of last year, that we should ever be anything to each other, I feel a new 
 reason for looking on to the future trustfully, not, as I am apt to do, 
 despondingly. . . .. There is one topic on which you keep unaccountably 
 silent, Courthope's poem [Ludibria Lunae]. Is it that the Keswick book- 
 sellers were absolutely unable to get it for you ? or that you were afraid 
 to break ground on it while engaged in your mechanical course of mental 
 training ? There is no subject on which I hear you with more satisfaction 
 than on literature." 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 41 
 
 and if you care to attend to such subjects at all continuously, 
 you may get an unusual hold of them. My only fear is 
 lest you should not work your thoughts out with sufficient 
 clearness, and for lack of this should take refuge in tropes 
 (which you work exceedingly well) or in prostration before 
 a " PrincipaHty or Power " which is not the true Qebg 
 vorjTOQ. [God to be found in thought]. I trust you not 
 to take this last remark amiss. Of course you must follow 
 your own leading ; but it can scarcely be helped that 
 a special regard for any one should result in an involuntary 
 and unreasonable desire to bring him to one's own way 
 of looking at things. 
 
 I defer detailed criticism till we meet. For practical 
 purposes, i.e. with a view to a first class — which you really 
 must get — you ought to famiharise yourself with the sort 
 of logic and psychology which is famihar to examiners 
 and which perhaps, from the nature of the case, is alone 
 available in examination, since an examination means 
 that one cuts one's mind into scraps. In brief, you must get 
 up Mill. You will find it a very good disciphne. You should 
 also keep Schools questions constantly before you and be 
 always thinking how you would answer them. If this is a 
 humihation, it will only last 7 months. You must also 
 learn to shp the essay style, on occasion, for the " dodgy " 
 examination style. Finally, be diUgent in getting available 
 information about philosophy and history, and keep it 
 together by means of concise summaries and notes. Will 
 you write something more for me against the time when 
 you come up, or before ? 
 
 . . . When you get to work with the " suffering classes," 
 you wiU despise my easy Hfe. Somebody must Uve it, 
 however, nor will it be too late to abandon it and take 
 a turn with the suffering classes, when 7 years are past. 
 If only certain books will get themselves written in the 
 interval, this will make up for some loss of the unction 
 spiritual in the individual. Towards my refutation of 
 the empirical psychology in the person of Hume I have 
 as yet only laid the foundation in a close critical account 
 of Locke. His hash I seem to myself to have pretty weU 
 settled : whether J. S. Mill will think so is another 
 question. 
 
 I am in much contentment at Temple's Episcopacy, 
 mainly for the reason that it gives him a stump and that 
 
42 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 he strikes me as being better worth hearing either on poHtics 
 or the Christian Hfe than any one else before the pubHc. 
 When you are a " parson," I trust that you will possess your 
 soul in seclusion from Congresses. The proceedings at 
 Liverpool elicit all my dangerous nature against AngUcan 
 Churchmen. It will require a long pull at St. Paul to get 
 over the effects of it. 
 
 2. " Culture " and the " International " present them- 
 selves to me as due to the same disease of modern hfe as 
 the High-Church revival. I don't mean by this either to 
 put aU three on a level, or to imply their condemnation. 
 I regard the " Church " as having, in virtue of the ideas 
 which it retains from the New Testament, a much higher 
 and truer Gospel for the individual than either " Culture " 
 or the " International " : and when I speak of them as due 
 to a disease, I quite admit that in a sense all human Hfe is 
 a disease, and that any system which is to do good to man 
 must be adapted to the present stage of the disease. But 
 no recognition of the good present effect of any mode of 
 sentiment or discipline can reconcile one to it when one 
 finds it resting on doctrines that seem untrue. And what 
 strikes me as most conspicuously lacking in the best writing 
 of Churchmen that I come across is any attempt to meet 
 the objection that their distinctive doctrine is untrue. 
 They are very successful in adapting it to the spirit, and 
 showing that it will meet the wants, of the age ; but they 
 scarcely seem aware that all this makes no difference to 
 those whose first interest is in truth. 
 
 This remark, however, has no bearing on your essay, 
 which was written not for opponents but for friends. It 
 is a great blessing for you (you must forgive my speaking 
 from an outside point of view) to be able to sympathize 
 and work with a great religious society, and it is pure good, 
 in which every one not cynical must rejoice, that such a 
 society should have so much high thinking breathed into 
 it as is forthcoming from men hke you. I think you have 
 a noble mission before you and, in spite of my " Protestant 
 enthusiasm," I shall take silent delight in watching it. 
 When the bother of the opening of Term is over, we must 
 have a walk. Yr. affect. T. H. Green. 
 
 In December, Green invited him to come again to the 
 Isle of Wight : " Your company is always a deHght to me, 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 43 
 
 and I should like to try to give you some bond fide coaching 
 in the evenings, for which I have not time during Term. . . . 
 I have nothing so much at heart as that you should get a 
 Fellowship. It is a great gain to have leisure for study 
 and turning things over in one's mind before entering on 
 a profession, especially if it is to be clerical. It would 
 not seem indeed that Oxford just now is very favourable 
 to calmness of view — judging at least from some letters 
 about Tests that I have been reading — but that depends 
 on the way one uses it. According to my experience, 
 there is no place where one can keep so remote from irritation 
 whether by the enUghtened or by priests." 
 
 Nettleship to Holland 
 
 I, Dec. 13, 1869. — Every term we are together seems 
 somehow to crowd into itself more than the term before it, 
 and yet it is very hard to express what it is that makes 
 them seem so great : I mean the feehng is so strong and the 
 inner consciousness so intense and active all the time with 
 me, that words, especially in a letter, seem almost a mockery. 
 It isn't any want of sympathy : I know we always have 
 that, don't we ? I know we think of each other, and 
 live each other's lives. It is only the having got so far, 
 so very far beyond anything I ever dreamed of, that makes 
 me sometimes long to get further, long to find freer expression. 
 But it is a foolish longing ; one might as well long to be 
 a poet — for that is what it comes to. Not being a poet, 
 I know, and ought to be satisfied with knowing, that the 
 very deepest spiritual communion is only possible now and 
 then, when the great dividing stream of the world is bridged 
 over for the time, and souls can come close to each other. 
 And we have come very close this term, very close. Death 
 is a fearful thing, and there is a cloud of death over the 
 term ; but love is stronger than death, and can look into 
 it and through it, and see the Hght of Hfe beyond. I don't 
 Hke to talk much to you about John Conington, for I know 
 I cannot say anything that you have not said to yourself, 
 nor shew you the light so well as you can shew yourself. 
 But, O Monk, if ever it is jolly to you to talk about it, you 
 
44 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 will, won't you ? If you cannot let me be with you in all 
 things, I am sure you can in this. 
 
 " They that are dead are free from sin." Mustn't they 
 be happy ? 
 
 I wish you were here to say good night to : the room 
 looks Uke the swept-and-garnished soul without you — 
 but I dare say there is enough of you here still to keep out 
 the seven devils. 
 
 2. (A few days later). I am going to bore you again 
 with more effusiveness, but it doesn't come very often, 
 and you needn't answer it oftener than you like. Last 
 Tuesday night I could not get to sleep for thinking, and at 
 last at 3 o'clock I got up and wrote this : — 
 
 " I have thought a great deal latterly (and I suppose you 
 must have too) on what are called our religious differences. 
 Indeed after what we said together that night this term 
 there needs no more to be said, but it is a relief to me to 
 say it more fully. It would be a terrible thought, it has 
 sometimes been a terrible thought with me, that we who are 
 so knit together in all else should have that one link in the 
 chain missing on which all the others must really hang. 
 As I have said, I think our only choice lies between absolute 
 separation and absolute communion ; we cannot endure 
 anything between : and we have made our choice. All 
 I want to do is to look the worst in the face. I cannot 
 help seeing that my historical view of Christianity, as it 
 gets more formed (if it ever does get) v/ill almost necessarily 
 differ in some points from yours. I also cannot help seeing 
 that we may very hkely be forced into parties which look 
 upon each other as enemies, for this seems to be the way 
 with Christians nowadays. And so it may be that outsiders 
 will say our friendship is temporising and a compromise. 
 There — now I have put the worst, and all I want to say is 
 this, that I know and am sure and you know and are sure 
 that we shall always have a bond of communion, which 
 all this and more than this cannot weaken, but must rather 
 strengthen. We know, I say, that our love is its own 
 sufficient warrant for its truth. We know that in whatever 
 glances and ghtter it began, it has gone on steadily widening 
 and deepening, and is still going on. And we know above 
 all that it finds its highest satisfaction in the common 
 love of Christ and God. Other sympathies, many others, 
 we have : I hardly know any real interest of either which 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 45 
 
 we do not both sympathise in : but they meet and have 
 their focus in this — in the common love of Christ and God — 
 in the struggle side by side to hve a higher Hfe — to find the 
 Truth wherever it is — to overcome the flesh — to become 
 members of Christ and temples of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 "And if this is so, as we know it is, there is nothing, 
 neither life nor death nor any other creature, which can 
 separate us. There may be pain : I know there will be pain 
 for me : but it will only make us hold more closely together. 
 The currents of the world will carry us apart, but it will 
 only be to meet again in the great deep stream, the river of 
 the flood that makes glad the city of God. Outside all 
 will change, but love, the love of spirits for each other, 
 and in each other for Christ, will abide for ever. 
 
 " I have said this not because we had not thought it 
 before, but simply for the sake of saying it. Will you tell 
 me, Monk, if there is a word of it that is not true ? 3 a.m. 
 Dec. 15, 1869." 
 
 As I say, Monk, I say this for the sake of saying it. 
 Honestly, I beHeve it is all true : do you ? I am sure you 
 do : and if you do, it shall be a sort of covenant between 
 us. It is just a year since we were at Shanklin. Hasn't 
 it been a wonderful year ? To me almost like the beginning 
 of a new Ufe, bringing with it many sorrows, many pains, 
 but sorrows and pains which became joys. And now the 
 year that is coming will be more wonderful stiU. I know 
 it will — for there is no end to the wonder. O Monk. God 
 is very great. 
 
 1870 {cet. 23) 
 
 In January, with Green and Nettleship, he was at 
 Niton, Isle of Wight, " charging Mill, Mommsen, and other 
 posts-and-rails," and finding it hard to keep all his subjects 
 together : " It is like buckets at a weU ; if one comes up 
 without spilling every drop in its passage, all the others 
 have to go down again empty, to be refilled : and so on, 
 over again. Green is buried in poor dear Stuart M., but 
 seems happy." In March, he writes to Legard of a lecture 
 by Ruskin ; — 
 
46 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 He has raised audiences that would have made Mat 
 Arnold's head a foot higher : the whole theatre crammed : 
 it really is the most gorgeous eloquence it is possible to 
 hear ; it makes one perspire, it is so beautiful ; and Green 
 was fascinated by watching a man who became perfectly 
 hysterical, waving his head to the beat of the sentences, 
 and bursting into inarticulate roars as each came to an 
 end. I was disappointed in what he said, though ; he has, 
 I think, left his old ground a good deal, and he dehghted 
 in putting things in an almost spitefully revolutionary 
 way. He divorced religion and art altogether : and seemed 
 to think they could only do harm to each other : I was away 
 at the one on morals : but on the use of art, he was feeble : 
 he kept harping on what art had begun in, domestic use, 
 etc., and all the time we wanted to know what it ended in. 
 Art is not for use : a spire is developed out of a simple 
 roof, but when it is at SaUsbury, it is a spire, and not a 
 roof, nor anything like it ; and I don't see that it helps 
 one to tell one that it is for use. You begin with to Znv : 
 but you live for to su ^tjv : and what I want to under- 
 stand is the " tv." However, he is going to work at line : 
 colour : light : and has tremendous designs of educating 
 us young barbarians : so we are all going to attend ; 
 though he has sworn that if we do we shall have to grind 
 at the manual part. 
 
 At the end of the Summer Term came his examination 
 in the Final Schools ; the best examination in the world ; 
 exacting and fatiguing — a whole week of it — but vdde and 
 vdse and intimately personal ; the very thing for him. 
 He did more than get a first class ; he startled the examiners 
 on their thrones : he beat them at their own game : as if 
 he had gone up against them to avenge the v^rong which 
 they had done to Nettleship the year before. 
 
 Holland to Ms Mother 
 
 June 14. — Yesterday the awful viva voce came off : 
 of course directly you get once opposite the dread examiners, 
 you find it is all right ; but before, it is frightening. At 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 47 
 
 this moment, Gruff Ady is shuddering by my side, taking 
 a last look before the plunge ; he is in at 11. Dear old 
 Thing, I know you won't mind what I get ; nor do I for 
 myself : but I do not want to go through life disappointing 
 my teachers, and 1 feel it would give me intellectual confidence 
 to get a good class : a good second class would be the thing 
 for me. 
 
 To T. H. Green 
 
 The real anxiety of the Schools was the dread of dis- 
 appointing you : for I knew my relations had given up 
 expecting anything of me : and though, when it came, 
 the delight my mother would feel was perhaps the first 
 thing in my mind, the pleasure of satisfying you was close 
 on its heels. For you have taught me everything of im- 
 portance that I have learnt at Oxford : and, for the 
 Schools, you gave me a standpoint, by the fact of which 
 I felt at once in a better position towards the papers than 
 outsiders could be. And if I am grateful for the teaching, 
 I am far more grateful for the great kindness you have 
 shown me the last three years. 
 
 In July, he and Fremantle were in the Bavarian Tyrol, 
 and at the Ammergau Passion-play.* He writes to Legard, 
 from Innichen, Tyrol, July 31 : — 
 
 Nothing can be more dehghtful than the religion of 
 this town and country : and as I see the crowds of men and 
 
 * "Impressions of the Ammergau Passion-Play." By an Oxonian. 
 1870. London: J. T. Hayes. Small 8vo: pp. 31, This is the earUest 
 of Holland's pubUshed writings. He saw the Play under disadvantages : 
 " I got to the Play an hour late, had almost nothing to eat the whole day, 
 had to stand the greater part of the time close by a door where I was 
 disturbed by every spectator that came in or went out : and it poured 
 with rain during four hours of the performance." But the Play triumphed 
 over everything. Some of his judgments may be noted here, (i) Of 
 the triple arrangement of the Play as chorus, tableaux, and dialogue. 
 " This arrangement is based on the true dramatic ideal, in which the 
 character of representation is never stretched so as to border on deceit. 
 There is no miserable attempt to conceal the fact that everybody knows. 
 On the contrary, care and pains are taken to impress upon the audience 
 that this it witnesses is mere acting, done with a special moral purpose." 
 (2) Of the restraint of the acting. " The curb that was set on the imagina- 
 
48 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 women trooping in from the hills, to take an earnest, simple 
 part in a real act of living worship, it " pitieth me to think 
 of you in the dust " of proud Puritanism, with its jawing 
 service and its preachment-prayers and its stiff independence. 
 The purest form of Roman Catholicism is here to be seen : 
 and, for the first time in my hfe, have I seen a country where 
 one knew at once, this is a Christian land : where religion 
 was not made vulgar, or hid out of sight : and then the 
 people are so charming, so hearty and wilHng and gentle. 
 They have no idea of servility, no over-consciousness. 
 They are perfectly familiar, yet never offensive : they chaff 
 you, sit down by you, hold you by the hand, wish you all 
 sorts of jolly things when you eat, or sleep, or leave. 
 
 tion was worthy of Hellenic moderation, of Sophoclean tone. These 
 Bavarian peasants know how to avoid that extravagance which is the 
 life of the modem drama. For instance, when Mary Magdalene was on 
 the point of coming in to wash our Saviour's feet, I kept expecting how she 
 would rush across the proud Pharisee's hall, how with eager eyes and 
 streaming hair she would look wildly round and then hurl herself at our 
 Lord's feet and flood them with tears and kisses. But nothing of the 
 kind took place. A gentle figure stole across the room, almost unobserved ; 
 she sank down and quietly bowed her head as she let the oil fall carefully 
 drop by drop, and wiped it without hurry or excitement, with one lifted 
 lock of hair." (3) Of the unsparing representation of the bodily torture 
 of the Crucifixion. " Is it so wrong to dwell somewhat upon this side of 
 the Cross as we are apt to imagine ? Bodily suffering is so closely bound 
 up with spiritual anguish that it is hopeless to attempt a complete 
 severance. . . . The central fact of Christianity is not the Divinity of 
 a man, but the Humanity of a God ; not Ufe out of life, so much as life 
 out of death." (4) Of the good acting of the minor parts. " This 
 universality of good acting gave the play a spirit and a force which no 
 professional stage can ever hope to reproduce. The charm of it has 
 been attained by one London theatre in very light pieces : but if any 
 passionate acting is ever attempted, the setting of it ruins the finest jewel. 
 The beauty of the Ammergau Play is that there is an utter absence of 
 anything stilted. Every one is natural ; no one tries to overdo his part. 
 It was dehghtful to see old Simon ask our Lord to dine with him ; most 
 delightful to see the maids introduce S. Peter and S. John to the guard- 
 room : most delightful of all were the Council scenes in the Sanhedrim, 
 in which Annas shone pre-eminent." (5) Of the reverence of the acting. 
 " The actors were too impressed with the mystic and awful importance 
 of the scenes they represented to allow any uncomfortable feehng to 
 creep in. The profanity which startles the blood out of your face is not 
 to be looked for in this life of Jesus as interpreted by the old-world spirit 
 of Cathohcism, but in the Vie de Jesus as read in the Ught of the new-world 
 criticism. The only thing that jarred upon my sense of propriety was the 
 easy way in which the audience passed from awe to laughter." 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 49 
 
 In September, he was at home, reading, but vexed at 
 the want of a fixed object. He had some thought of an 
 essay on the Jesuits. He writes to Ady : — 
 
 I wallow in the mire of a dilettante laziness, and read 
 but httle. I have made various attempts on Butler's 
 Analogy, but always come out stifled and suffocated : and 
 have recourse to Jesuitical histories ; Ranke's Popes, 
 which are entertaining : I wish I could now mark out a 
 definite go at theology ; but I cannot settle down to it 
 before I have had a go or two at a casual Fellowship, I 
 suppose. It is very disturbing. 
 
 NettlesMp to Holland 
 
 Kettering, Aug. 27. — Of course you must do the Jesuits : 
 it is splendid to have a centre to work round. I am going 
 in for the Enghsh Essay, " The Universities in the Middle 
 Ages," a good interesting, unexciting subject. So we 
 shaU each have an essay going, which will be capital. I 
 am reading Hegel, or rather Hutcheson StirHng on the 
 secret : it is very quaint and very hard : but the man is 
 in earnest and full of Hfe, and I really begin to feel a httle 
 nearer to the great earth-centre, round which one has been 
 dabbhng for some time. I have vague dreams of a trans- 
 lation of Hegel's iEsthetik with historical illustrations 
 somewhere in the dim womb of the future. But — and here 
 you wiU fill up the gap with one of Green's deprecatory 
 waves of the hand. Besides the secret, I hover lightly 
 round a work on the Republic, dip occasionally into WiUielm 
 Meister and a German grammar, take cursory views of 
 Hallam's Middle Ages, and spell out the Italian of the 
 Vita Nuova. 
 
 On December 18, Holland was elected to a Senior Student- 
 ship at Christ Church : on the understanding that he would 
 be in residence for not less than five years, and would take 
 orders " within a reasonable time." In the examination, 
 there was an effundissem in his Latin prose, which came 
 near to threatening Christ Church with the loss of him. 
 
 B 
 
50 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Fortunately, it would not be his business to teach Latin 
 prose : he was to lecture to men who were reading for their 
 Final Schools. " The Greats work/' he writes to Ady, 
 " pass or otherwise, can never be such drudgery as the 
 Mods," He was thankful to be settled in Oxford ; but he 
 was not minded to prefer Christ Church to Balliol : "I 
 felt awfully trapped when the Dean muttered ' five years ' " : 
 and he calls Meadow Buildings, where he expected to have 
 rooms, " those swamps at the bottom of St, Aldate's," 
 
 To Legard 
 
 Oxford, Dec. 19, — You see it has come out somehow 
 all right. They seem to have been rather flabbergasted 
 at certain expressions I appear to have used : but they came 
 round, and then made it up by settling to take Stewart 
 too : and Merton is widowed, I walk about the old town 
 and think at last I have become a part of her, and hear my 
 voice in her bells and see myself in her beautiful stones and 
 feel part and parcel in all her loveliness. Yet I can hardly 
 help crying to think of the old Balliol days that are over ; 
 the dear old place that has been meat and bread to me all 
 these years ; no more to Unk her name with mine, no more 
 to be hand and glove in all her hfe ; this is dreadful. 
 
 To E. S. Talbot* 
 
 Gayion Lodge, Jan. 5, 1871. — I had not reasons enough 
 or pluck enough to refuse the studentship on the conditions 
 offered to me : so there I am, partly boxed, though I am 
 still determined to resist as far as possible the taking of 
 any regular tutorship. Thinking over it, I find it an immense 
 comfort to have one's work laid out before one for some years, 
 so that there is no doubt where to turn one's hand. My 
 
 * Edward Stuart Talbot : born Feb. 19, 1844. Charterhouse: Christ 
 Church. First class in Final Schools, Literae Humaniores, and Law and 
 Modern History, and Senior Studentship, 1866 : EUerton Theological 
 Essay, 1867; Warden of Keble, 1870-1888: Vicar of Leeds, 1889-1895 : 
 Bishop of Rochester, 1 895-1 905 : Bishop of Southwark, 1 905-1 911 ; 
 Bishop of Winchester since 191 1. 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 51 
 
 great object is, by hook or by crook, to find time for real 
 personal study : for, though it may be conceited to apply 
 it to oneself, study of high theology is as needful and as lacking 
 as anything else to the Church at the present day. 
 
 To T. H. Green 
 
 Oxford, Dec. 19, 1870. — It would make me perfectly happy 
 to know that you are content with the way things have 
 gone : but you seemed vexed with the examination, and 
 altogether I feel I have not gone in exactly for what you 
 would have wished. I am half in doubt myself. I honestly 
 thought, apart from all personal motives, that I should 
 be tied to the College more at Univ. than at Ch. Ch. : but 
 I do not find myself much better off, for the Dean stipulates 
 a certain amount of devotion to the place for a few years, 
 and, put there as it was before me, I could not see that it 
 was right to refuse. However, I have sworn I will never 
 be a tutor, if 1 can help it. I had my doubts too whether, 
 considering I had perfectly made up my mind to taking 
 orders, it was not simple conceit that prompted me to go 
 in for an open fellowship. 
 
 Anyhow, I did not attempt to cloak in any atom the 
 teaching I had got from you : I put, as strong as I was able 
 to do, what I thought. In this, the last day of my Balliol 
 life, I cannot help thinking of all I have done and learned 
 there, nor writing to you just for the relief of saying what 
 an opening out of life it has been to me, how I have loved 
 it with all my heart, how grateful I am for it all, and how 
 long I hope to remember it, I do hope you will not think 
 I am running away from you for ever. P.S. — At least 
 it was not a job : all the tutors and examiners were on 
 my side, I believe : this is not pride, but to satisfy you. 
 
 Nettleship to Holland 
 
 Dec.i8,i8yo. Oxford. — It is a bad look-out. O Monk, the 
 fates are too strong for us. It is no good : things cannot be 
 as they have been — though it is like burning one's tongue to 
 say so. It has been coming on Hke a great cloud, and now 
 it has come. We shall have to go different ways, and they 
 will get farther and farther apart, or seem to do, the farther 
 
52 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 we go. You will take orders and have to think me all 
 wrong : you won't be able to help it : the world will make 
 you. And there will be no more real communion on the 
 real things of hfe, " the length and breadth and depth 
 and height. ' ' When we meet we shall talk different languages 
 and there will be no time to interpret ourselves to each 
 other. In another world perhaps we may meet as once 
 we met. I don't think I shall ever make such another 
 friend : it seems as if God would not let me find what I 
 want — perhaps because I ought to try to find him more 
 than I have done. A year ago we wrote to each other and 
 said we were one at bottom, that we had one God, were 
 fighting one battle. It is aU true : so we are. But who 
 wiU beheve us if we say so ? Can you see a way out of it ? 
 I have looked and looked and thought and thought, and 
 I cannot find any. 
 
 T. H. Green to Holland 
 
 Dec. 21, 1870. — Pray get rid of the notion that I am 
 otherwise than thoroughly pleased at your getting the 
 Studentship. Nor am I so weak as to desire that you should 
 always sail in my boat. AU that I desire is that you should 
 not become a clerical partisan — that you should keep in 
 view the distinction between what is temporarily edifying 
 and what is true ; between the eternal ideas on which the 
 religious life rests, and theological dodges. That you 
 will do this essentially, tho' not exactly in my way, I don't 
 doubt : and if, while so doing, you can avoid those anta- 
 gonisms to " orthodoxy " which to me are inevitable, but 
 which greatly limit present usefulness, so much the better. 
 These antagonisms on my part, if ever I am to utter myself 
 to the pubhc, will have to be stated more explicitly : and 
 sometimes when I have imagined in the future myself 
 a professed heretic and you a working " priest," I have 
 feared what would be to me a terrible calamity — that our 
 friendship, instead of becoming more fuU and equal with 
 time, should tend to disappear. But I have only feared 
 this when we have been sometime apart. Whenever we 
 are together, I always feel that there is an essential harmony 
 which is good for both and will survive differences of opinion. 
 The more reason why we should be often together. 
 
 I shall not write in this strain again, but your letter 
 
BALLIOL, 1868-1870 53 
 
 and its occasion move me just now. In a life like mine 
 there can be no greater blessing than gratitude such as 
 yours. I cannot think it deserved, tho' indeed it would 
 have been a shame if I had not been able to do something 
 for you. Anyhow, let me tell you once for all that the debt 
 has not been all on one side. Your society has not only 
 been a great source of happiness to me but, in many un- 
 explainable ways, has done me real good. — P.S. A small 
 matter — but please drop the " Mr, " in your future com- 
 munications. 
 
Ill 
 
 CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 
 
 His rooms were in Tom Quad, number 3 on staircase 7 : 
 three rooms, one of them large enough for his lectures : 
 its walls closely covered with pictures : among them were 
 the Colleoni statue at Venice, Donatello's St. George, and 
 Michael Angelo's Jeremiah. The usual comfortable well- 
 worn furniture ; abundance of books, and a fine array of 
 prizes for athletics on one of the bookcases ; and a piano, 
 and a tall desk ; it was the fashion in those days to read 
 and write standing. Nothing " aesthetic " : he did once 
 try the effect of a blue ceiHng, but it was disastrous. The 
 room spoke of athletics, of holidays in Italy, and of 
 scholarship. 
 
 In July, 1 87 1, he and Fremantle were at Lenk, in 
 Switzerland : " We live quite in the heart of the people : 
 I never felt less of a tourist. The reading goes on very 
 fairly ; we read theology together in the morning and 
 philosophy together in the evening, Kuno Fischer on Kant's 
 Kritik ; you ought to hear our jaws over the transcendental 
 antinomies of the pure reason." In August they went up 
 the Oldenhorn : — 
 
 We strode on silently and solemnly, as the moon gradually 
 paled and the dawn grew greeny-grey and brindled, and the 
 lines of the crags began to get sharp and jagged against 
 the eastern sky : on and on we went, as if the sun never 
 
 54 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 55 
 
 would rise, till at last the little flying wisps of clouds blushed 
 and crimsoned, and then a tinge stole over the head of the 
 Matterhorn and the Mischabel, and then peak after peak 
 caught it and passed it on, and the grand snowfields of 
 Mt. Combin were diffused with warmth and colour, and the 
 rounded whiteness of our own glacier felt it on them, and 
 our peaks were touched with Ufe, and our shadows became 
 burning blue on the snow, and up he came, the great High 
 King of Nature, Hke a bridegroom out of his chamber, 
 rejoicing like a giant to run his course. 
 
 In September, Nettleship writes to him : " I am glad 
 you went to Miirren. I know so well that sight of the 
 mountains in a blaze of sunlight : for a whole week at 
 Chamouni we used to see the Mt. Blanc range stand hke 
 chiselled ivory in an atmosphere of gold : there is nothing 
 more perfectly beautiful, I think ; though perhaps one 
 would tire of it sooner than of the pageantries of clouds 
 and Hghts. ... Do you know the Prooemium and the 
 Weltseele of Goethe's Gott und Welt ? He says a good 
 deal of what can be said there, I should think. ' ' In December, 
 Holland writes to Ady : " I am off to Rome next Friday. 
 My people are there now, so I rush for 4 weeks : Nettlep. 
 is coming too. I lecture now on the Republic, which 
 will probably amuse you : I have very old men in beards, 
 and Dasent mocking at my feet : but I like it. I do not 
 know whether they do." 
 
 « 1872 {cBt. 25) 
 
 In January, he was in Rome. On April 30, came the 
 death of Manuel Dasent. In July, Holland was at Peter- 
 borough, studying with Westcott. In August, he was at 
 Festiniog on a reading-party. In September, he was 
 ordained by Bishop Mackarness at Cuddesdon. 
 
56 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 To Fremanfle 
 
 g, Piazza di Spagna, Rome, January. — What shall I 
 tell of ? I am seeing and doing many things, most of 
 infinite interest, and aU the rest marvellous. To feel at 
 home in Rome, to find myself in it and of it, to walk about 
 it without an unending amazement at the thought of being 
 there, is what I am going through. . . . We went to an 
 audience with the Pope ; we knelt and kissed the Infallible 
 hand, most astounding to look in the gentle old man's 
 face and think, " He believes that he alone knows truth 
 and is inspired from God " ; how can he sleep, or laugh, 
 or eat ? I can't imagine ; to see Europe breaking up into 
 wild chaos of storm and tempest, and to stand up, when all 
 have failed, and say, " I am alone in the world the possessor 
 of truth, which you can none of you find : God speaks to 
 me and to none else " : and to see no effect happen, to be 
 totally unable to solve the enigma of life, to see all un- 
 satisfied, and all falling, and yet to know what God thinks ; 
 to doubt, yet to be incapable of doubt ; to explain an 
 explanation which removes no stone out of the path, and 
 which no one accepts ; to watch the one great fact emerging 
 out of the ruck of centuries, the sole fact of all history, 
 as it must be, growing into soUtary magnificence out of 
 huddle and muddle and confusion and disorder, that I 
 and I only am infalhble — ^how a man fives under the weight 
 of this, I can't conceive — much less beUeve that I touched 
 and saw and handled him. However, there he was, good 
 and kind and very charming. 
 
 On Good Friday, he was for many hours at St. Peter's, 
 Eaton Square : — 
 
 Wilkinson sets me going at a real life independent of 
 nearly all questionings, based on pure spirituafity, and 
 hanging between the two poles of an immediate instinctive 
 refigious intuition of God and man, which seems to me to 
 be the actual end into which all things must only pour 
 their results, and in which I feel an absolute lacking. Love 
 of God — I hardly know what it is : but I struggled at it 
 under him and made out dim glimmerings of something. 
 He preached conversion very strongly, to me a despairing 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 57 
 
 doctrine. Still I recognise a breaking-up of the whole man, 
 a crushing of self into pure negation, which I miss very 
 much in my friends the curates of St. Barnabas, who appear 
 to me to be forcing forms down our throats before we have 
 got to the heart of reUgion. 
 
 On May i, he writes from Oxford, to his sister, of 
 Dasent's death : — 
 
 Dasent lunched with me, and then he and Fremantle 
 and I rowed down the river to bathe. It was the loveliest 
 day of the whole year — but the lasher of Sandford was 
 running very hard with a regular flood stream from these 
 late rains — I had had my swim and got back, before Dasent 
 went in ; he took his header and came up quick and began 
 swimming all right, but I saw that he made no way and could 
 not get out of the current, so I made signs to Fremantle to 
 keep near him — he did not notice at first : at last I saw 
 Dasent giving way to the stream and drifting down, so I 
 shouted to Fremantle, who turned and followed him ; he 
 had some way to go, and before he got up, Dasent had 
 gradually got lower and lower in the water till his head 
 had been twice under — and I almost feared he was gone, 
 but Fremantle caught hold of his hair at last and began 
 pulUng him in : all this time I was swimming out from 
 land to them, and when I came up I got my arm round 
 Dasent's waist, who just hung down over it under water 
 quite unconscious, and freed Fremantle, who was getting 
 beat and made for the shore to get help — I swam on easily 
 enough with the back-current, till I got within 10 or 12 yds. 
 of land, when the back-current began drawing me round 
 into the main lasher-stream again : and I found I had 
 not strength to keep out of it ; I called to Fremantle, 
 but he was now ahead, when I suppose the stream touched 
 us, for it seemed to swallow Dasent up from my arm, and 
 before I knew what had happened almost, he had been 
 sucked away from me — I turned and just saw him go down, 
 but he never came to the top again — I had only to go to 
 land — and there the whole thing was over — and I had 
 let him shp, lost hirti — it is a thing one can never forgive 
 oneself : if I had only held, only remembered to let us both 
 float down with the stream and get out below, — but he came 
 along so easily in the back-current that I had let my hold 
 
58 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 get slack, I think, and the stream was too strong for it — 
 I hardly know now, how he slipped away from me — but it 
 is terrible to know that a minute's more hold, and there 
 would be no mother sobbing her heart out in London, no 
 father and sister and brother feeling the light of their lives 
 gone from them. 
 
 I dragged on till 9 o'clock last night, hopelessly, a horrible 
 trade, so wearying, so dreary. To-day we got down there 
 about 9, and at 12.30 the body was drawn up out of the 
 very spot where it sank. It is a tremendous lasher. We 
 brought back the body up the river in a boat, the way we 
 went with him yesterday. The inquest is to-morrow. His 
 poor brother is here ; his people come to-morrow. He 
 was one of Fremantle's greatest friends. 
 
 On June 13, in Christ Church Hall, he gave the annual 
 Commemoration address : on Dean Aldrich. He began it 
 with a great contrast : he spoke of Wolsey — 
 
 We met together here in our Hall last year to do honour, 
 on this our high Feast-day, to one whose lot it was to stand 
 up before all time in the vigour and vividness of an historic 
 personality ; one endowed with an energy to mould the 
 policy of a State, a boldness to encounter Emperors, an 
 ambition that sought its home in the spiritual throne of 
 Catholic Christendom : one who gathered up into himself, 
 for the last time in England's history, the gorgeous pomp 
 and power and splendour which was possible only when 
 one man could wield at once the sword of the State and 
 the thunders of the Church could robe the bare human 
 mechanism of his authority from the king with the ghostly 
 grandeur of an embassy from the Emerald-bound Throne 
 set on the Crystal Sea. To-night I have to bring before the 
 memory of the House a character of a far different type ; 
 the character of a quiet, humble, home-hke scholar, of a 
 gentle, modest musician ; of a man, born indeed into 
 stormy times, but round whose peaceful life and temper 
 storms and tempests broke in vain ; of one who seems 
 ever to shrink from such publicity as his high qualities 
 compel him to assume ; who, whether Monmouth was 
 fighting, or James was flying, or William was delivering, 
 lived on his round of College duty, content if he could put 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 59 
 
 in a good word when Papist grew rampant or Dissenter 
 threatened, but never so happy as when dignity and glory 
 could be tossed aside, and he could sit and study Italian 
 scores, or edit a classic for his scholars, or sing a catch 
 with a friend, or smoke his everlasting pipe. 
 
 In July, he and a great friend were at Peterborough ; 
 he writes to Fremantle : — 
 
 July 7. — We have settled down, and are now as happy 
 as kings. We read hard, 10 hours on Friday, and gj 
 yesterday ; walk to the magnificent Cathedral, and sit 
 there for exercise, and get on capitally. Westcott is 
 stronger and is ready to do much more than I expected. 
 We go three times a week to him, and bring him things 
 written which he has set us to do. He is quite wonderful, 
 of a pure earnest hoHness of life, a humility, a gentleness, 
 a saintliness, such as I have hardly met with before. There 
 are touches of the Principal in his manner : and his humble 
 ways remind me of Jemmy Riddell, he almost sighs like 
 him. He is the sort of man before whose high-toned purity 
 and prayerfulness and intense religiousness I cower with 
 shame. He prays with us when we come to him ; so 
 slowly, gently, whisperingly. He speaks of St. John's 
 Gospel with a sort of hushed awe : it is Hke Fra Angelico, 
 he cannot venture to criticise a verse without a prayer. 
 
 July 13. — You are very different indeed from old days 
 — and I am not. I cannot help hoping that ordination 
 may do for me something of what it has done for you, made 
 Hfe a real effective spiritual discipline. For that I look 
 forward to it : for the rest, at present I do cower before it. 
 I feel some land unexplored within me. It will probably 
 fall into my map's plan ; but it is evidently not down there 
 yet. Must not one stop to see what there is hidden in these 
 far countries, before one gives them their outhnes for 
 life? 
 
 Yet I conclude, and your letter implies to me, that this 
 clear sight has to be balanced by the necessity of motes 
 and even beams. These things must be done in some 
 sense on a venture ; a probabiHty is not altogether out of 
 place in them — one cannot wait till the river runs all away. 
 Of course all this is plain, old truth — and I suppose, if I 
 rationally considered and counted up to this side and to 
 
6o HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 that, 1 should find all my lucid moments to be on the side 
 of faith ; whenever I get a clear view of anything religious, 
 it takes its place within the Church ; all the theory of life 
 I have, leads that way : the other side is more the dark 
 unknown then the actual. Practically my whole bias, 
 intellectual and moral, runs one way. If I have a tendency, 
 it is, and I can trace it, in one direction — and it is stronger 
 at this moment, under Westcott, than it has been before 
 for long. So am I not right ? Sometimes 1 long for another 
 year ; but it is weakness, I think, more than strength, 
 whenever I can track it home, that makes me wish for 
 delay. 
 
 His letters to Fremantle at this time are full of self- 
 analysis and self-description, wholly unHke him in later 
 years. There is a long argument over confession : Fremantle 
 urging it, Holland standing-out against it. In other letters, 
 he finds fault with himself, in restless and excessive phrases, 
 not for want of belief, but for want of feeling : "I can 
 see at times that the life that is would be incomprehensible 
 without one to come : but it is rather the feeHng that I 
 do not beheve either that I am immortal or mortal — that 
 I do not see the necessity of being either, that I find no 
 absoluteness, no importance, in either — that makes me 
 despair." And again, " Sorrow has impressed me 
 enormously lately : it does lift me into unknown worlds. 
 But there it stops : I make nothing of it. It leaves me 
 dumb with awe, but will not take any shape, or strike a 
 definite truth into my soul — it wiU not do more than shadow 
 out its message, then sweep by its dim vestures, without 
 turning upon me the clear eyes of God. It will not 
 mould itself into the Christian Faith and stamp its truth 
 home to me. A vague sense of spreading my arms out into 
 the night for a weeping Christ is all I can get out of it." 
 
 In September, there is the first mention of his longing 
 to bring Oxford into closer touch with London. It is not 
 undergraduates that he is thinking of ; it is the younger 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 61 
 
 dons. He is writing, on Sept. i, to Ady, congratulating 
 him on his curacy at St. Saviour's, Hoxton : — 
 
 I am so awfully glad to hear that you are going to London. 
 It would have been terrible to have been shut away with 
 dreamy old agricultural pastoral sleepiness, just when 
 life was longing to take it out of itself somewhere, but 
 did not know how, and so might He down and go to bed 
 without ever making its effort. There is something seething 
 in the London slums which it will tackle all our energies 
 to " grapple with," as Willert used to say. It is the one 
 thing set before us to do in this age, and it has all to be 
 done — a new temper hes hid there, a new rehgious want ; 
 and the Church has done nothing yet to fit itself on to the 
 new force. One feels so certain that if this generation of 
 ours cannot manage it, it will never be done. I long to 
 hear all about these things. Hid away at Oxford, the full- 
 ness of the new hfe is an unknown mystery to one. How- 
 ever, I daresay it seems just as hopeless to you, doing 
 anything that matters to anybody. Still, you must see 
 actual Hving, actual dying, actual sinning, real good hearty 
 vice, naked sin : drunkenness, murder, revelHng, and 
 such Uke — instead of subtle indistinct viciousness of 
 tendency. 
 
 A week later, he writes to Fremantle, of a scheme that 
 is " kicking about his head " : — 
 
 Resident tutors at Oxford ought to get woke up to a 
 sense of Hfe and death and the old " primal sympathies " : 
 also they ought above all to have touched the new spirit 
 of irregulated democracy and to know what it wants, what 
 it feels the need of, but is angry at finding no satisfaction 
 for. This is quite as important as the more inteUectual 
 infideHty, just when a democracy is rising into power, which 
 no reHgion, not even Christianity, much less the Church, 
 has the sHghtest hold upon. Why should not our associa- 
 tion * have some sort of organisation for this ? Could 
 it not make some arrangement with a London parish, so 
 as to keep a sort of mission home open for two months in 
 
 * A small society had just been formed in Oxford, for the study of 
 theology : it used to meet at Keble, under Talbot's presidency. 
 
62 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 the Long ? We could keep up a succession of 3 or 4 men 
 at least, I should think, for that time, ready to do clerical 
 and lay work. It would do us good to see what is really 
 happening in this world of slums from which all the new 
 spirit seems to issue : and it might also be useful to some 
 London parson. I long for something of the sort. 
 
 There is a letter at this time from Nettleship, full of 
 misery : he compels himself to put in very plain words the 
 literal meaning of certain statements in the Gospels and the 
 Creed — " O, think of my writing like this, Hke the charge 
 of a Dean of the Court of Arches, or an article in the 
 Spectator — ^And yet what am I to do? I cannot beHeve 
 these things. Monk, I cannot." On September 23, Holland 
 was ordained. As he had done best of the candidates for 
 deacons' orders, he read the Gospel at the ordination-service. 
 In October, he went to his first retreat, for two days, at 
 Keble. 
 
 To Fremantle 
 
 Sept. 18. — I suppose I have got some gush of naked 
 humanity that will always be with me, yet I cannot think 
 I have got too much to take me through the new life ; 
 one will want all one can get to bridge over gulfs. Discipline 
 is so evidently right, that one is compelled to call up the 
 opposed unutterable indescribable something which one 
 feels must qualify it. 
 
 Sept. 25. — ^To my joy I had to read the Gospel, a great 
 pleasure to rise and shout those magnificent words, " Let 
 your loins be girded about " — they seemed to express 
 the whole meaning and glory of the service. I have seldom 
 been happier than at the time of ordination. All hanker- 
 ings, all questionings vanished — even the thought of Nettle- 
 ship seemed one of hope — and 1 knew that I was right to 
 have done it now — I felt that I had reached the point 
 when the stamp that was to be, ought to be set on my life 
 — when the waiting ought to end, and I be ready to start 
 out with my loins girded and light burning — I do not think 
 anything broke into the peace of mind. ... I know that 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 63 
 
 I am bound to gird up every thought, wish, prayer, hope, 
 tendency, inclination, love into the expectancy of the 
 Lord I have sworn to serve — and this must have effort, 
 strain, etc. These I mean to give. What I should like 
 to know is whether 1 should be right in taking my own 
 method about this, which would be, strictness of rule in 
 the matter of prayer, meditation, aspiration, and then 
 letting this act freely in the work of Hfe. 
 
 I cannot conceive myself using confession without 
 putting myself in relation to sin in a way to confuse it, 
 colour it, taint it : I daresay it is very foohsh of me : but 
 still there it is. All sorts of motives would be creeping 
 about me, intricate tanglings, my wretched feminine passive- 
 ness, my taking my colour so much from what is around 
 me — I cannot help it ; it runs down all through me, I do 
 not know where it ends, where it begins. It is in and out 
 and under every word and almost every thought of mine 
 — I cannot distinguish what is it and what is not. Yet 
 at the bottom I have, for the very reason that all this in 
 me is so outward, a certain inwardness, an obstinacy of 
 reserve, with which I can come in contact with God, but 
 cannot let it suffuse itself through mediums, communications. 
 
 To T. H. Green 
 
 I was ordained last Sunday, and naturally at such a 
 time my thoughts turned much on that which had been 
 the chief influence of my lay hfe, and on how far I must 
 be putting something between myself and it. It may 
 be from a lack of logic, but I could not see that I was writing 
 or doing anything inconsistent with what I learned from 
 you. It seemed to me as if all the meaning I could put 
 into my theology and certainly my ethics was still the old 
 thing. Only, the religious form seemed to me to cap it 
 all, and the cap seemed to me to fit. StiU I felt that there 
 must be a split somehow or somewhere, and dim notions 
 of something you once said to me about a preference of 
 morality to sanctity floated about me as explanatory of 
 the difference — and the old difference seemed to resolve 
 itself into a taking of the same thing another way up. I 
 do not know whether it is so. Probably you will think 
 worse of it, I fear. But I must write to you, just to say 
 
64 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 that I still feel to myself at least to trace all the strongest 
 and clearest threads of hfe to you — and that, since this 
 is so, I trust in my own heart that you will not look black 
 at my new coat, or feel that 1, for my part, think myself 
 cut off from you. I owe as much as ever to you. 
 
 Nettles hip to Holland 
 
 Sept. 25. — I haven't answered your letter before, partly 
 because I thought I had better wait till it was all over 
 and you were ordained. . . . There is no good in saying 
 much about it : you know what has been said, and what 
 I should say ; it is all as old as the hills. You look back 
 to a figure in the past ; I look forward to a realisation in 
 the future. To you the reconcihation of that which is 
 the absolute and that which is not the absolute is possible : 
 I can understand their infinitely near approach to each 
 other, but not their fusion. All that you say comes home 
 to me, makes me echo it, makes me wish the words were 
 mine : yet the conditions under which you say it and 
 those under which I should say it are gulfs apart. 
 
 There — I will not darken counsel with words any more, 
 nor ever again if I can help it touch on the subject. 
 
 The question is. Can we be friends ? Of course the 
 words are a mockery : I suppose we each know that we 
 would share the last crust together, or go into battle together, 
 or speak up for each other against the world. Only 
 unfortunately in Oxford there is lots of bread, and the 
 only opportunity of a violent death is the 5th November, 
 and the only slanders common-room scandal. We are 
 shut out from communion in the very great and in the 
 very small aUke ; we cannot die together and we cannot 
 live together. One thing you won't doubt, that no long 
 coats or white ties will make any difference to me. How- 
 ever long and however white yours may get, however 
 short and however black mine, you shall be to me the 
 man whom I love, in whose voice I shall catch the familiar 
 ring from however far it comes, in whose triumphs I shall 
 share however strange to me the trumpets that blazon 
 them, to whom I shall try to be true however loudly the 
 babblings of theologies and philosophies may tell me that 
 I am false. God, whom we are both trying to serve, bless 
 you and keep you. 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 65 
 
 T. H. Green to Holland 
 
 Oct. 6. — I am seriously and substantially obliged to you 
 for writing to me as you did after your ordination. I 
 have often wished that, if we could not agree, we should at 
 least understand each other better about reHgious matters. 
 But they are difficult to speak of, and so long as you were 
 at all in a pupillary relation to me I was afraid of seeming 
 to wish to bring you to my own way of thinking of them. 
 
 First, you must not think that I have any animosity 
 to the clerical profession, as such. All the best influences 
 of my life have been due to those who belonged to it, my 
 own strongest interests have always drawn me towards it, 
 and I still regard it as an opening to a nobler hfe than, 
 except by very few, can be otherwise found. Perhaps 
 this sometimes causes a certain bitterness in the thought 
 that the entrance to it is guarded by the profession of 
 opinions which to me seem untenable ; and the bitterness 
 is sometimes aggravated when I find those who are able 
 to pursue the calling making by word or manner sacerdotal 
 pretensions which seem to me practically mischievous and 
 a parody on the true dignity of their vocation. This is 
 the worst of my ill feeling towards the clergy. There may 
 be a tinge of selfishness in it, but at the worst it would never 
 make me feel any alienation from one whom (if you will 
 let me say so) I love and respect so much as I do you. 
 
 There can be no greater satisfaction to me than to think 
 that I at all helped to lay the intellectual platform for 
 your religious Hfe ; and that, not merely out of personal 
 regard to you, but because if I were only a breeder of heretics 
 I should suspect my philosophy. If it is sound, it ought 
 to supply intellectual formulae for the religious Hfe whether 
 lived by an " orthodox " clergyman or (let us say) a 
 follower of Mazzini. As you know, I never dreamt of 
 philosophy doing instead of religion. My own interest 
 in it, I beheve, is whoUy religious ; in the sense that it 
 is to me (not exactly, in popular phrase, the " handmaid 
 of reHgion ") but the reasoned intellectual expression of 
 the effort to get to God. Nor have I ever meant to put 
 morahty and religion in competition, whatever I may 
 have hastily said (which I don't recollect) about " preferring 
 morality to sanctity." I hold that all true morahty must 
 be reUgious, in the sense of resting upon the consciousness 
 
 F 
 
66 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 of God : and that if in modern life it sometimes seems to 
 be otherwise, this is either because the consciousness of 
 God, from intellectual obstacles, cannot express itself, 
 or because the morality is not the highest — at any rate 
 has for the time become mechanical. There is indeed a 
 certain sort of " sanctity," which seems to me an eccle- 
 siastical pseudo-virtue, of which the best that can be said 
 is that it is a harmless sentiment ; tho' it is a sentiment 
 which in its social effects may become very mischievous. 
 It is the sanctity of men who, according to a pregnant 
 phrase that I lately met with, " make reUgion their God 
 instead of God their religion." 
 
 But tho' I reckon religion and morality properly identical, 
 and religion and philosophy to be in such different planes 
 that they cannot compete, I do recognise a competition 
 between philosophy and dogmatic theology each claiming 
 to be the true rationale of religion ; and for my own part 
 (tho' I am in no hurry to persuade others so) I have 
 definitely rejected dogmatic theology for a certain sort of 
 philosophy. This does not to my own consciousness 
 essentially separate me from orthodox Xtians, but I fear 
 it must (if known) do so to theirs. The position of dogmatic 
 theology is that true ideas about God and things spiritual 
 are derived from miraculous events. Now on the matter 
 of the truth of the ideas I don't essentially differ from it, 
 except that the way in which it derives them limits the scope 
 of the ideas. It is the derivation from miraculous events 
 that I reject, holding that the beUef in the events was 
 derived from the ideas (of which philosophy is the true 
 intellectual expression), not the ideas from the real happen- 
 ing of the events. The result is that from orthodox 
 Christianity, as expressed in prayer, and in the ordinances 
 of Protestant worship, I find no ahenation, while I could 
 not subscribe to one of the creeds. 
 
 I state these opinions with a brevity which might 
 seem egotistic, but you will believe, I hope, that there is 
 no egotism in the way I hold them. They present them- 
 selves to me as the inevitable result of thinking-together 
 God, the world, and the history of man ; but I have no 
 destructive interest in them. I had rather not state them 
 at all, if by stating them I weakened any one's hold on 
 Christian ideas. To the best Christians now, as at the 
 beginning of Xtendom, their behef in the miraculous events 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 67 
 
 of Christ's life flows out of their ideas about God — ^ideas 
 which I humbly share with them ; which I did not invent, 
 but which are the cause of whatever is good in me. To 
 such persons Christ is God conceived under certain attributes, 
 and so He is to me. It is only when they begin to argue 
 about " evidences," making the Christian life rest on a basis 
 which, as I conceive, cannot stand, that I feel called on to 
 resist them. Some day I hope to work out in a book what 
 I think on these matters. I shall not do so, till I can do 
 it constructively — till I feel able to exhibit the essential 
 truth of Christian ideas about God, the Spirit, Eternal life, 
 and prayer — but to do that I should have to maintain the 
 " a priori impossibihty of miracles," for to me the philo- 
 sophic condition of Theism is that there is nothing real 
 apart from thought, whereas the doctrine of miracles impUes 
 that there is something real apart from thought, viz. 
 " nature," but that thought has once or twice miraculously 
 interfered with it. 
 
 I do not at all wish to affect your own way of thinking 
 about Christianity. If I thought it possible that I might 
 do so, I should have thought twice before writing thus. 
 You are one of those, I believe, to whom the revelation of 
 God does not rest on miracles, tho' the miracles of our 
 Lord's Ufe seem to you naturally to arise from it. That 
 being so, there is an essential agreement between us, if only 
 your theology will let you think it. 
 
 The more I can know of what passes in your mind, 
 the better I shall be pleased ; but speculative differences 
 about supreme interests may, even to men who love each 
 other, weU make serious intercourse difficult. If that 
 should prove to be the case with us — as I trust it may not 
 — you may still be sure that there is no change in my feeling 
 towards you, and I shall not beUeve that there is any in 
 yours towards me. If ever to you, or in your hearing, or 
 in words that reach you I speak hotly about the clergy or the 
 " orthodox," you must understand that such passing heat 
 (which I hope to prevent) does not represent my inner mind. 
 
 One warning I should Uke to give you in conclusion, 
 tho' perhaps what I have previously told you about my 
 beliefs will make you think that I am not enough of a 
 Christian for the warning to have any value — a warning 
 against the tendency, to which sentiment or desire for 
 emotional effects or current clerical opinion might incline 
 
68 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 you, to substitute, for the moral presence of God in the 
 Church, a miraculous and mystical one ; in other words, 
 against " Sacerdotalism and SacramentaUsm." Opinions 
 about evidence don't affect the essence of Christianity ; 
 but these demoralise it. 
 
 With a general apology for all appearance of laying 
 down the law, and all good wishes for your future hfe, 
 Your very affectionate T. H. Green. 
 
 NettlesMp to Holland 
 
 Dec. 31. — While I feel the strength to do it I will answer 
 your letter. Every word of it is true — true for me as for 
 you — and being so, I see nothing else to do than to say 
 Goodbye. For me at least it is no use to go on gnawing 
 my heart out tr3dng to do what can only be done by a 
 vision of life more clear and a belief in God more death- 
 defjdng than the vision and belief which I have got 
 as yet. 
 
 So let us give up trying to see or trying not to see each 
 other — let us give up even Thursday evening. Let us try 
 and Uve worthily of each other. You will not forget me — 
 1 shall not forget you — there is no fear of that. Whatsoever 
 things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, if there be 
 any virtue, and if there be any praise — there for me is the 
 thought of you, 
 
 1873 [cat. 26) 
 
 His longing that young Oxford dons should " see what 
 was really happening " in London slums, and should 
 " touch the new spirit of irregulated democracy," brought 
 about a notable venture, in Passion Week and Holy Week, 
 at St. Saviour's, Hoxton. He and others gave a series of 
 addresses every evening at 8.45 : and on Good Friday 
 there was the Three Hours' service, and street-preaching. 
 The addresses, or lectures, as he calls them, were planned 
 to " take into account the current objections against 
 religion " : and questions were invited after them. It 
 was a venture indeed, nearly half a century ago : and it 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 69 
 
 was devised and led by him. The first suggestion may 
 have come from Copleston, who had visited Bradlaugh's 
 Hall, and had asked whether a hearing would be given to 
 speakers from Oxford : but it was Holland who put the 
 whole thing through. The addresses were a failure. 
 " Only a few outsiders ever turned up : we used to beg 
 them a httle, in the street, to come : but they won't go 
 to a church, I think." But the street-preaching was not 
 a failure : and Holland and Moberly repeated it, a year 
 later. 
 
 To Talbot 
 
 1. Oakley writes me a strong letter of warnings against 
 disappointment. We cannot gauge his parish's temper 
 beforehand one bit-^and if we see three old women steadily 
 listening while we are grappling with aU the difiiculties 
 that surround modem thought, why, we must grin and 
 bear it ! We shall be there in force on the day you preach : 
 Cop, you, myself, Moberly, Fremantle, Stanbridge and 
 perhaps Salwey. We ought to go with you in a body 
 into the pulpit — it is a good big one — and express by our 
 gestures our cordial assent with your words, as in Raphael's 
 cartoon of the Apostles at the death of Ananias. It might 
 have an effect. 
 
 2. There really seemed some hope, as we came back 
 from the street-preaching. It was intensely exciting, 
 and, we were inclined to say, very successful. The crowd 
 gathered in a moment, a real Hve dirty crowd of roughs 
 and streety women ; they followed us — they sang a bit ; 
 they Hstened with extraordinary intentness, and solemnity. 
 Only the little children attempted mockery, and Cop 
 administered such an overwhelming rebuke to them, wind- 
 ing up with the most awful warnings of the children and 
 the bears and the bald-headed prophet, that that was put 
 straight.* A jolly mason came swinging along by my 
 
 ♦ Bishop Copleston, recalling his fifty years' friendship with Holland, 
 says, " He and I preached in the streets together, and I well and vividly 
 remember a characteristic incident. Some children were disturbing and 
 rude, and in rebuking them I was absurd enough to warn them by the 
 fate of those who mocked EUsha ! Dear Holland's amusement at this 
 
70 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 side, catching up the " Rock of Ages," which he had sung 
 long ago, I fancied, and delighting in the remembrance 
 of tune and words — Cop's bhnd beggar dogged his steps— 
 and we hope even buns at the Church house may have been 
 forgotten for a bit. I wish you could have seen the final 
 march to the Church door — the swarm of people in the 
 dark and drizzle coming down the street with the cassocked 
 clergy at their head, shouting the old hymns, closing at 
 the very door of the Church which looked so bright and 
 warm, as Oakley turned and said, " Come in, all of you, 
 service just beginning, come in." 
 
 Do you think the association would lend itself to a 
 scheme for organising a connection between Oxford and 
 the socialistic spirit which springs out of the misery of 
 our great cities ? The purpose of the plan would be not 
 so much philanthropy, as contact with one of the greatest 
 questions of the day, a question more important in a 
 religious than in any other sense. The sort of idea I had 
 was of a mission-house in the East of London, kept up by 
 us for a couple of months in the Long Vac. The object 
 should be distinctly to get food for thought. 
 
 In April, he sent in an essay for the EUerton Theological 
 Prize, but failed to win it. He writes to Fremantle — 
 
 I wrote Ellerton hard yesterday morning — finished it 
 a httle more thoroughly than I expected, though as all 
 such things are, very loose and irregular and unsaid about 
 the end. It contains 56 full-sized foolscap pages, undoubled 
 up. I think it goes on pretty straight and clear, though 
 I did nothing but the first writing ; and I always write 
 without a definite scheme, letting it take its form as it goes. 
 I had time to look through some of it, and there did not 
 seem to be many words left out, and a good lot of the words 
 were spelt right : so let us hope. I feel I shall be rather 
 drawn at the grind of it, if I don't get it. 
 
 On May 4, he writes to his sister, just after the anniver- 
 sary of Dasent's death : — 
 
 want of tact was unbounded : he returned to it again and again, with sheer 
 delight. You would have thought he loved me the more for it, incon- 
 ceivably priggish as it now appears." 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 71 
 
 There Is something in anniversaries which impresses 
 one to a degree that seems irrational. The old things 
 revive and crawl about in the sun once more — and most 
 of what I felt last year came back to me, the shame, the 
 wonder, the shadow of I knew not what, the solemnity, 
 the exaltation into an atmosphere cut off from all the rest 
 of Hfe. Dear Houblon came in on the day, to see us. The 
 Dasents had all been down the day before (his birthday). 
 There are no blue-bells out this year : I remember gathering 
 such heaps last year, to fill Manuel's coffin. We had a 
 Hoxton gathering last night, and a terrific talk over what 
 we are to do. The great conclusion was, that the idea 
 of a centre outside Oxford was impossible ; but we would 
 form a centre here, to which Oakleys, etc., would apply. 
 A Mr. Coutts of Haverstoke has asked us to give lectures 
 under a railway arch to working men. Also we are medi- 
 tating arranging with Col. Chesney of Cooper's Hill College 
 to preach to his young Engineers. Altogether we are 
 lively. 
 
 In July, he was with a reading-party at Roscoff, in 
 Brittany. He writes to Fremantle, who was reading at 
 Tiibingen : — 
 
 Hotel des Bains, Roscoff. July 4. — We get on very well 
 as yet : read hard ; live in French ways, two meals a day. 
 I have begun Renan's Antichrist, which is exciting and 
 beautiful, and am struggUng at Strauss. Sunday it poured 
 with rain ; so I preached to half-a-dozen people, which 
 was rather a bore as I had written a sermon on congregational 
 worship. July 17. — Here we go on very happily — rather 
 chalhngly, but this is natural when we are reading very hard, 
 which we are : still, it makes me discontented now and then 
 with myself. I cannot ever " force a card " ; I never 
 could : nothing will enable me to " lead a conversation " 
 naturally in any fixed direction. It is a part of my character 
 to take up what comes and work it ; and if nobody is incHned 
 to " talk big," I cannot, however much I wish, bring it 
 on. Paris. July 31. — After all, I had three or four 
 impetuous and heated discussions with Paget * — but I 
 
 * Francis Paget: born March 20, 1851 : Shrewsbury, 1864-1869: 
 unior Studentship, Christ Church, 1869 : Hertford Scholarship and 
 
72 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 never feel as if I did myself justice in discussion (though 
 I know this is a wholesome humihation) — still I did speak 
 and that earnestly — but 1 fear without effect on Paget : 
 I do certainly feel an apostle when my philosophy is in 
 danger, and can really faU on my knees then and pray that 
 " the cause " may not suffer from my weak defence : I 
 can feel a " perisse notre memoire pourvu que la France 
 soit libre " sort of feeUng. 
 
 From Francis Paget 
 
 Aug. i8. — I have so very much to thank you for, that 
 it will be a rehef to say some of my thanks. I owe you so 
 much that all the great pleasure of our month at Roscoff 
 is the least item in my debt. All the time we were there, 
 and even before we went, I had been wanting to ask you 
 about things : and yet I never could make up my mind to 
 do it, until just at the last : and then, you know, you told 
 me what I wanted, and what your letter completes and 
 fixes. For a long time before that, I had been kept straight, 
 more or less, by a rather shaky family affection, and a 
 tottering dishke for the vulgarity of atheism and wrong : 
 but these, I felt, might go at any minute ; and I had nothing 
 trustworthy that I knew of to back them up or do instead of 
 them. You see, I could understand all the destructive and 
 grosser philosophy well enough : but though I had heard 
 a good deal of the other, I had never seen where it came 
 in or what it meant and did for one. 1 suppose I was what 
 people call unsettled : anyhow, it made me very wretched 
 now and then : and my future looked worse than my present. 
 You know what you have done for me, better than I can 
 tell you : and you know too how impossible it is that I 
 should thank you for it. Only there is not a single turn 
 at which it does not meet me, or a single relation of hfe 
 which is not altered by it : so that I want you to know that 
 you have done me some good : more, I think, than any one 
 has ever done me before, in any direct way. 
 
 Chancellor's Prize for Latin Verse, 1871. First class in Final Schools, 
 and Senior Studentship, Dec. 1873. Ordained deacon 1875, priest 1877. 
 Married Helen Beatrice, daughter of Dean Church, 1883. Vicar of Broms- 
 grove, 1883-85 : Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology in Oxford, 1885-91 : 
 Dean of Christ Church, 1 892-1901 : Bishop of Oxford, 1902-1911 ; 
 died Aug. 2, 191 1. 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 73 
 
 In August, Holland and his sister were at Remagen. 
 " The place is beautiful," he writes to Fremantle, Aug. 8, 
 "as far as Rhine beauty goes : and perched on a high rock 
 above the town is a lovely Httle church, St. Apollinaris, 
 gorgeously painted, with a Franciscan convent, into the 
 garden of which, hung by high walls over the river, we have 
 found means to penetrate ; and there we read the whole 
 afternoon, in perfect peace and joy, only broken-in upon 
 by quiet brown frati who water their flowers. I am horribly 
 disappointed in my German : I had got on so weU in my 
 reading it at Roscoff, having ground through the whole 
 of Strauss, 624 very big pages, and a lot of Zeller on Plato — 
 but I find that talking is hopeless." * On Aug. 16, he WTites 
 again : Fremantle had taken him to task for " frivoUty " 
 at Roscoff : " I quite agree with you about its being useless 
 to fret at outside frivolity without being serious within, 
 but I think you were a bit hard upon me. I was struggling 
 a good deal within, during the Roscoff time ; 1 had been 
 reading a great deal of Strauss and Renan, and they laid 
 a great stress on me to settle the Ufe-and-death questions — 
 so that I felt the weight of the word upon me in all serious- 
 ness — but I have a great ease in taking up any sort of mood 
 externally without its affecting the main current of my hfe : 
 it comes quite natural to me to enjoy the things about me 
 at the very time that I am striving about things to myself. 
 I am fairly astounded myself at the rapidity with which 
 I can pass from the seriousest to the slightest things without 
 any shock and effort — I could not beheve it in another." 
 
 On Dec. 28, by Liddon's invitation, he preached in 
 
 * Miss Murray, who met them at Remagen, remembers that they 
 had made friends with an elderly German lady, " who continued to warn 
 Lilly, though they had hardly a word in common, that the books her 
 brother was trying to read were most mischievous and dangerous : she 
 was sure they could not know this, and she could tell him oi dehghtful 
 books, in which to learn the language, that would do him no harm." 
 From Remagen, they went to the Schumann Festival at Bonn. 
 
74 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 St. Paul's, at the Sunday evening service ; though he was 
 not yet in priests' orders. It was perhaps the first time on 
 record that a deacon has preached in St. Paul's.* 
 
 To Talbot 
 
 I suppose that I got through the St. Paul's sermon fairly 
 happily : I enjoyed it very much myself — and managed to 
 be heard : and the place looks so splendid with that mass 
 of people. I felt that the sermon was pantheistic, and 
 feared rather for Liddon's feeUngs ; I do not think that 
 it was in a vein which he would Hke — but I could not help 
 it. I tried to alter and rewrite it, and found myself back 
 in the old groove rather deeper than before. I still think 
 that it was an opportunity beyond the deserts of a man of 
 my age : it makes me feel so much the start given one by 
 being fairly orthodox. Life is all smoothed down, and made 
 so easy ; there is none of the discipUne suppUed by the 
 need to struggle up to the light of public day : there is 
 no room for the rough improvement that natural selection 
 works on men's characters. It is only giants Hke Goethe 
 that can afford to have Ufe made comfortable, without 
 losing authority and without missing the training. It 
 is so difficult to recognise the bearings of the time, when 
 all flows along so easily : so hard to contradict it, when it 
 behaves so kindly to one. I cannot but see ' ' self-complacency 
 as the real clerical vice : the self-complacency of knowing 
 that you, at least, have explained hfe quite easily, and can 
 only pity those who find the answer to the riddle so hard 
 to find. We are very ready to explain our position to the 
 benighted souls who cannot make it out — very anxious 
 that they should stand where we do : but it is never forced 
 
 * Fremantle to Miss Holland. — ^My impression is that everybody 
 was all ears, and that everybody could hear. I said to myself, Yes, it 
 will do — he can and wiU be a great preacher — it is all there — and the 
 important thing is not to cultivate the arts of deUvery, etc., but to keep 
 up the study and thought whence the material for sermons is to be furnished. 
 It will not do for him to be simply a brilliant popular preacher, but he 
 must be (what his gifts point him out to be) a philosophical preacher. 
 I was rather concerned, and Liddon was as I expected rather displeased, 
 at certain theological statements — " paradoxes," Liddon called them — 
 about the nature of God, etc., and it is there that I see the danger against 
 which S. ought to guard carefully. All this I told him yesterday. 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 75 
 
 upon us as a matter of life or death, " Have you got hold 
 of the truth, or have you not ? " It is never said to us 
 by the necessities of society, " You shall say this, or starve," 
 and then we have chosen to starve rather than say it. 
 How are we to supply the sturdy discipUne that tries the 
 unorthodox so severely ? We have the plums ; and there 
 is no denying it. 
 
 1874 {cBt. 27) 
 
 This was the year of the Newquay reading-party : 
 of Fremantle's death : and of Holland's ordination as 
 priest. 
 
 To Fremantle 
 
 Easter Day, Gayton Lodge. [After the second visit to 
 Hoxton) . — I preached Monday, Tuesday, "Wednesday, Friday 
 evenings — and again here this morning — besides once 
 with the Sisters, and two things in the streets : and you 
 know the constant little churches, and the furiously late 
 hours. It is a great comfort to feel the pressure of that 
 Ufe about one, and to think one is just speaking a word 
 or two to help it. Sermons I hked as much as ever, especially 
 my Good Friday one. The street preaching was much as 
 last time. We went to some rougher parts. Moberly, 
 the subUme, spoke with a wonderful amount of go and fervour 
 — though stiU rather fuU of refinements and shadings. 
 
 To his Sister 
 
 I. April 8 [A belated birthday letter). — It must be 
 somebody's birthday to-day, it looked so loving and splendid 
 and good. Oxford is ideal in these early spring beauties. 
 The sunlight hes along these meadows with a softness 
 peculiar to them, I think : I looked from Shotover to-day, 
 and the thin white haze lay round Oxford Hke soft light wool 
 among her towers, just for her to rest in, and to make 
 her gentle and peaceful, like sheep's wool twisted in among 
 the sticks to make a nest cosy and downy and dear. We go 
 on very quietly : the boys are not noisy : and, I think, 
 I know more of them than before. 
 
76 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 2. Eothan House, New Quay. July. — We find lots to 
 do. We have played a cricket-match, Oxford against the 
 New Quay Cricket Club, and we are purposing a match 
 at hockey, which we play on the sands with great vigour. 
 The boys are charming : they do credit to Christ Church : 
 they are so good ; and full of life. But they do not think 
 much about deep things : and I find a lacking in that. 
 There is no discussion, no inroad of new thoughts about 
 things. They are outside the philosophical atmosphere — 
 and this is bad for one. The talk is so endlessly on the 
 little details of fife — they know such a mass of little detached 
 things — but it never gets beyond this. I do not know 
 quite what to do. I always find it difficult to press-in 
 subjects ; and, in the intervals of work, the rest of trifling 
 is sweet — but it is unsatisfactory. 
 
 Newquay, in 1874, was a rough, undrained Httle place : 
 Fremantle, Francis Paget, and Greenwood got typhoid 
 fever : others "were weak and sick for a bit, but escaped 
 the fever": Holland was one of those who escaped 
 altogether. Paget and Greenwood came near dying : 
 Fremantle died at home, at Swanbourne, Winslow; 
 September 16, 1874. Holland was at Cuddesdon that day, for 
 his examination ; was at Swanbourne on the 17th ; was 
 ordained priest on the 20th ; and celebrated for the first 
 time, at Swanbourne, on the 22nd, the day of the funeral. 
 
 To Ady 
 
 Sept. ly. — Have you heard it ? He is quite quietly, 
 quite gently, gone, and we shall see him no more. He went 
 away yesterday evening at 6.30, sinking, without a struggle. 
 I am going to Swanbourne this evening, just for the night. 
 I am in the middle of my papers, and do them as I can. 
 But the ordination is deepened and sanctified more than I 
 can say by all this. I cannot write more. We shall see 
 each other to bury his dear body : and at the retreat. 
 God be with us both through life. Sept. 21. — I cannot 
 tell you what yesterday was to me : to be admitted a priest 
 of that kingdom where he is : to stand inside the veil, 
 and feel stirring about one those very spiritual powers 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 77 
 
 which hold his soul in life : to feel on one's head the Hand 
 of Jesus fresh from taking him to Himself : how, through 
 one's tears, one could bless God for all this. 
 
 To Miss Julia Cartwright * 
 
 Oct. 7. — I longed to write to you. I felt it almost wrong 
 that I should have the immense joy and privilege of looking 
 on that beautiful face, as I did for one hurried night between 
 the papers of an ordination-examination — look on it lying 
 there, as it had lain so many weeks in sickness, more lovely, 
 more gentle, more calm, more perfectly holy than ever I had 
 seen it even in life, so quiet I could hardly beheve he did not 
 breathe — so Hke himself that I had to call out his dear name 
 to make sure that he did not hear ; so sweet and unfretting, 
 and pure, that I knew the sickness had been doing God's work 
 through all those long silent half-conscious hours, its wonder- 
 ful work of refining and purging and purifying. I wish 
 I could convey to you half the marvellous glory and charm 
 of that last look of his, so delicate and smiUng and winning, 
 that you might have for ever that pleasant memory, to 
 store away, and look at in dark days to come. I kissed 
 him, and could not help telling him in his ear to remember 
 me and all who loved him, as we should remember him — 
 and, from that hour, I have felt a sense of something strange, 
 exalted, glorified, divine, in all my thoughts of him : and 
 I cannot grieve for him ; it has seemed almost a mockery 
 to talk of the work he might yet have done, or of the hopes 
 we had of him — so small, and pitiful, and unmeaning, they 
 all seemed by the side of that splendid hope we have now 
 given us of him. 
 
 In October, he got the relief of a week in Wales, with 
 Copleston ; tramping, and taking everything as it came : — 
 
 It was sHpped in so quickly and quietly between Oxford 
 things. We cut ourselves off entirely from everything. 
 
 * Her writings in biography and in criticism are known far and wide. 
 She is a daughter of Mr. Aubrey Cartwright, and a grand-daughter of 
 the first Lord Cottesloe : thus, Fremantle was her uncle : but there was 
 no marked difference of age between them. She and W. H. Ady were 
 married in 1880. Their daughter. Miss Cecilia M. Ady, one of Holland's 
 many godchildren, is Vice- Principal of St. Hugh's College, Oxford. 
 
78 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 We said nothing about Stephen, hardly. The first days, 
 I felt quite drained of all thought and talk — and after that, 
 I never can bring in a subject — and Copleston probably 
 thought it best for us to Hve by the day — and the 
 days were charming. We reached our climax about 
 Abergavenny. The whole week towered up to this. It 
 was the loveliest day of all — the walk was ideal : and 
 we saw a face so splendidly beautiful in a certain village-inn 
 that it drew up the influences of the whole walk into itself 
 — I have never felt before so strongly the force of Wordsworth's 
 " Highland Girl " — and then at last a Welsh clergyman 
 and his wife, the ideal of all that was simple and could 
 ever be Welsh : people it was an everlasting pleasure to 
 watch and hear. 
 
 After the first Sunday in term, he writes to his mother : — 
 
 It was at the morning celebration, which he never 
 missed, that I felt most vividly the wretched sense of some- 
 thing lost — and yet it was just then when the whole force 
 of the Communion of Saints streamed into me, and I knew 
 that I belonged to one Body with him, that I on earth and 
 he in heaven felt at that moment the same impulse and were 
 being fed and sustained by the same life. It is marvellous 
 how inspiring and awful, and triumphant, the great chant 
 becomes, under the pressure of a love lost, as the mighty 
 words lead off so strongly and confidently — " Therefore with 
 angels and archangels and with all the Company of Heaven 
 we laud and magnify Thy glorious name." 
 
 On All Saints Day, he preached at Eton : * he writes 
 to Ady : — 
 
 * Nettleship to Spencer Holland. Nov. g. — Scott will have told you 
 that I went down to Eton yesterday week to hear him preach. He must 
 have been enormously astonished, and I could hardly keep from laughing 
 myself when I saw him up at the end of the chapel and wondered when 
 he would see me. It was very odd : I had meant to go there in old days 
 so often, and had never been. Of course the sermon was splendid. I leant 
 back in my seat and wondered whether I should have recognised the voice 
 shouting away up there to be the same voice that I was used to. I don't 
 know whether they took it all in^ — not all, I should think : but it is a good 
 thing even for Eton boys to have to think there is something they can't 
 quite understand. 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1871-1874 79 
 
 All Saints Day to me was filled to overflowing with 
 thoughts and memories of him. To stand up in that 
 splendid Chapel amid those crowded ranks of boys, and 
 speak of the Communion of Saints, gave me one of the 
 divinest joys that this earth has yet brought me. It spoke 
 all round me so marvellously of him — and it was just the 
 memory of him with which I associate you so completely : 
 and you and Evans, and all the happy fun were hving in 
 my heart that day. You know the wonderful sight of 
 the evening service : there is nothing like it in the world : 
 the flood of boys overflowing ; rows after rows shining 
 down right up to the far altar rails : and the rushing storming 
 organ, and the soaring ghostly windows, and the white 
 walls towering and shining : and the light and glow and 
 music, and bright faces set in the framework of lovely 
 woodcarving : and the old, old look of the boys, the very 
 same hair and eyes as of old, and the small boys laughing, 
 and the sixth form marching with the old swing, a Lyttelton 
 among them ; and the quaint, historic faces of the masters, 
 so strange and so famihar — and to think how well he knew 
 it all, and how every Une of it must Hve in him, and be 
 mixed up with him, and was loved by him, and knit him 
 up with you and me in a memory that nothing here or 
 hereafter could ever sever or undo. 
 
IV 
 
 CHRIST CHURCH, 1875-1878 
 
 He was at Christ Church during its Renaissance period, 
 under the magnificent rule of Dean Liddell, when its build- 
 ings were being made every year more beautiful. He 
 was happy in his surroundings, his work, and his friend- 
 ships : he could not complain that High Table and Common- 
 room were dull : he came to be heartily in love with Christ 
 Church. But he resented the touch of pride and ex- 
 travagance. Balliol, with Jowett and Green and Nettleship 
 and Arnold Toynbee, had been less observant of rank, 
 more keen over social problems, more insistent on learning, 
 more adventurous of teaching. But there was Keble, 
 with Talbot, Illingworth, Arthur Lyttelton, Lock, and 
 Aubrey Moore : and Copleston, till 1876, at St. John's : 
 and Gore just passing from Balliol to Trinity. Besides, 
 he had many other friends in Oxford society, and in the 
 Oxford musical and hterary societies : he fluttered the 
 Browning Society, in 1884, with a bewildering Httle paper, 
 half serious half mocking, on " The FHght of the Duchess " : 
 all Oxford was proud of him, thoagh some may have been 
 inclined to reckon him, in Lord Morley's phrase, among 
 the " purveyors of cloudy stuff." His Hfe in Oxford turned 
 on the poles of Christ Church and Keble : but he hid this 
 dark secret of his affection for Keble from the Christ Church 
 undergraduates. 
 
 80 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1875-1878 81 
 
 To an average one of them, in 1874-78, inclined toward 
 books and the problems of religion, he was a wonder, in 
 whom Greek philosophy and the Catholic faith were met 
 together : but a most human wonder, loving athletics and 
 music and poetry and friendship and laughter and chaff, 
 never for a moment off his stroke or not at his best, always 
 miles ahead of the crowd, as if nothing were difficult or 
 dull to him. He would have brought down the walls of 
 Jericho by racing round them in flannels, shouting and 
 singing and mocking at them for being so absurdly solid. 
 He could reduce the most intractable problems, and have 
 them under control, with the flick of a jest : as he said, 
 on a reading-party in 1876, to one of us who was fascinated 
 by the distinction between the primary and the secondary 
 quahties of matter — " Ah, the old green world buzzing away 
 by itself : no, I'm afraid we mustn't believe in that." 
 Or his estimate of " the dismal science," about that same 
 year, at a little dinner in Francis Paget's rooms — " Imagine 
 putting up a stained glass window to Faith, Hope, and 
 Political Economy." Or an offhand saying at an under- 
 graduates' tea-party — " Sanday has discovered the Catholic 
 Church in the New Testament. We all thought it was 
 there : but we are surer than ever, now that Sanday has 
 found it." But his wit and his irony went hand in hand 
 with courtesy and love of good form. He had constant 
 insight into little pecuharities of character ; but he was 
 so courteous, that men hardly reahsed that he was seeing 
 into them. He must judge for himself of all men : it was 
 not in him, to be obsequious or imitative : he could never 
 be a copy or an echo of somebody else. Only, in the later 
 years in London, his judgment of men was impaired by 
 his passionate longing to improve the social system : and 
 he put faith in some who did not deserve it. He would go 
 a very long way with anybody, over a good cause. 
 
 G 
 
82 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Of his lectures, no precise list can be made now. So 
 early as 1871, he was lecturing on the Republic : "I have 
 very old men in beards, and Dasent mocking at my feet." 
 In 1873, he was giving an introductory course on the 
 Gospels, with special reference to W. H. Mill's book on 
 their " mythical interpretation." In 1877, he was giving 
 two courses of lectures, one on the Republic, the other on 
 St. John's Gospel. There was at this time very httle 
 inter-collegiate teaching : he took part in it very early 
 in its history, but in 1877 there was next to none : the 
 old men in grey beards had vanished : there may be a 
 mythical interpretation of them : he was lecturing to a 
 small class, about a dozen undergraduates. We had no 
 desire to share him with other colleges : he belonged to 
 us, not to " out-college men," whom some of us called 
 Squills, i.e. dwellers on the Esquiline. 
 
 To hear him lecture on Plato, and on St. John was a 
 memorable experience. There was not only the sense of 
 escape from less inspiring lecturers into the presence of a 
 young man of genius ; not only the pleasure of listening 
 to him, feehng after his thoughts, enjo3dng his goodwill, 
 in his own room, with Jeremiah and St. George and Colleoni 
 to keep us company : there was above all the sense that he 
 passionately desired us to beUeve what he was saying. 
 He made us quite sure that we should be fools, and worse 
 than fools, if we did not care what we believed ; and that 
 Plato and St. John, between them, knew all that we should 
 ever know, and more, of God and man. As it was said of 
 lUingworth's lectures on St. John, " The Logos meant 
 something then, meant everything — even the freshman 
 felt that it did." But, after more than forty years, all 
 lectures, even Holland's, are forgotten. He used to stand 
 at his tall desk, as he lectured ; now and again moving 
 about the room. One of us remembers his delight over 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1875-1878 83 
 
 the sound of the word Sophrosune, and over the argument, 
 in the second book of the RepubHc, that the simple life 
 would not long remain simple ; men would demand sauce 
 with their bread. Another remembers his study of Cephalus, 
 in the first book ; the quiet old man who leaves Socrates 
 to deal with Polemarchus, and goes back to attend to the 
 sacrifices : and his study of the talk with the woman of 
 Samaria : it had really happened : nobody would have 
 invented the fact that she left her waterpot at the well. 
 
 But these things are nothing : he was everything. 
 We all wanted to get to Plato and St. John ; and here 
 was a man, not much older than ourselves, who had got 
 to them — pushing his way, with a laugh and a shove of 
 the shoulders, through all our difficulties. His philosophy 
 and his religion, as anybody could see, made him what he 
 was : we could thus be confident that Herbert Spencer 
 had not said the last word on these subjects. There is a 
 reference, in H. W. Nevinson's " Between the Acts," to 
 the look of Holland coming up Hall to High Table : "he 
 always sprang over the ground Uke the feet that bring 
 good tidings ; and the whole young High Church party, 
 in imitation of him, seemed to leap for joy as they walked." 
 
 1875 [cBt. 28) 
 
 To Talbot 
 
 I. Jan. 21. [With a design for the " Timothy window " 
 in Cathedral, in memory of Fremantle.) — I feel sure a window 
 ought to have a single design or subject throughout ; and 
 this ought to be one which the public would recognise, 
 as well as the private friends. Timothy seems to me to 
 represent the delight of an obedient and dutiful spirit in 
 accepting the magnificent heritage of a great system 
 embracing life in all its details. He is the type of the 
 highest order of secondary minds, men who carry on work, 
 
84 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 but do not create by genius a new era. Then there are 
 minor points so like Stephen : the youthful charge to teach, 
 and to ordain — then the " Hold fast the form of sound 
 words " — and the mingling of small practical hfe up with 
 the big things, from the " cloak at Troas " to the " little 
 wine for thy stomach's sake " — all this is just hke him. 
 I should Hke the top centre light to be higher than the 
 others, so that our Lord's figure should run up close into 
 the tracery at the top : where there would be angels with 
 much music. 
 
 2. Feh. 19. [After a meeting of the theological society.) — 
 I felt very anxious to send you a word about last night's 
 talk, because I came away feeling as if I had not kept in 
 harmony with the true unity of faith between us all. It 
 was difficult — but I thought you wanted us to be bold 
 in saying our most chaotic thoughts about the Old Testa- 
 ment : and, in doing so, we must seem to be to5dng with 
 the reaUty of Scripture, not in earnest about it, hardly con- 
 sistent with our position as faithful Christians. At least, 
 I am sure I seem like this — and indeed am, in my weaker 
 self — and it was the weaker intellectual self that came 
 forward last night. I am so conscious of the intense 
 superiority of a genuine faith over the half disingenuous 
 quibbles of the understanding : but then, I feel, from 
 that position, it is no good coming together to own to 
 difficulties and doubts. 
 
 But alas ! I am very sensitive to difficulties : and 
 though I can master them by a strong recognition of the 
 reaUty of the spiritual power wielded by our Lord for 
 instance, yet directly I have withdrawn that personality, 
 they must spring up again : and I cannot jump at all 
 miracles big and small, old and new, because I am able to 
 accept them in a particular case of pecuUar conditions. 
 And this is what we all owned to more or less — and 1, 
 especially. 
 
 In June, he was at' Peterborough, with Westcott, 
 Lightfoot, V. H. Stanton, Morse of Nottingham, and 
 J. B. Paton ; they talked over plans for a campaign of 
 lectures and essays. He writes to Talbot : — 
 
 Paton's scheme of lectures for the big towns is rather 
 a big one. It is to be run on the lines of the Cambridge 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1875-1878 85 
 
 Extension Lectures. There are to be terms of 8 or 12 
 lectures each, with classes attached, and papers done. 
 The subject, Christian Apologetics. All controversy dis- 
 tinctly avoided and abolished. The lectures to be for 
 instruction to the great mass of youngish people who would 
 be Christians if they thought there was any possibiUty 
 of their being so rationally, and of its being conceivable 
 that the Fortnightly was, after all, sometimes apt to be 
 wrong. The lecturers to be paid : the lectures open to 
 all who would come : questioners to come privately to the 
 lecturer after lecture, not to ask in public. The classes 
 would be freer, and would allow for more general question- 
 ing. . . . Paton spoke most confidently of the wilHngness 
 of the towns to have us, and to pay for it. Only he 
 stipulated that it should all be under the sanction of 
 Westcott and Lightfoot. He could not promise the co- 
 operation of Dissent, except to those two names. 
 
 Cambridge, which supplied many more names than 
 I did for possible lecturers, broke down rather over possible 
 writers : and here I came out, and suggested that I could 
 hold out more hope of \\Titers than lecturers. An essay 
 or so a year from three or four of us would surely be pro- 
 curable. Copleston must do one before he goes : and, I 
 think, you would be good and kind, and think about it, 
 will you ? This Long, for instance — a first vintage about 
 your dear friends the Stoics ? Could not this be managed ? 
 or an historical study ? or a bit of moral appUcation of 
 Christian principles to social problems ? Do think about 
 this. 
 
 In August, after a reading-party at Mortehoe, came 
 the first of the " holy parties," at Brighstone. This annual 
 meeting of friends in council was devised by Holland: 
 and he gave the name to it. The daily rule was, at 7 a.m., 
 Holy Communion, or meditation : silence and study all 
 the morning : an afternoon walk : and a discussion of 
 some selected book.* 
 
 * Late in life, on Francis Paget's death in 191 1, Holland wrote in 
 Commonwealth : — " After the ecstasy of the reading-party, Paget would 
 come on to the more sober felicities of what we ironically named ' the 
 holy party.' It was simply the habit of a gang of us young donlets to 
 
86 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 On Sept. 20, he writes to Miss Cartwright of an ordination- 
 service at Cuddeston ; how it had recalled to him Fre- 
 mantle's death : — 
 
 What it all meant, seemed to be more than ever the old 
 truth, that our spiritual life here is no sundered thing, 
 but simply an incoming, an in-flowing of the brimming 
 flood of God's own heavenly life into the dry and thirsty 
 nooks and corners of this world, like a great tide up river- 
 creeks. It is the mighty sea itself, and not a shadowy 
 image of it, which rolls in upon us — and therefore it is 
 well and right that it should make this world's death the 
 road of its incoming, the breach through which it flows — 
 just as the rivers are drunk up and disappear under the 
 flow of the floods, and, by disappearing, enjoy the mar- 
 vellous fullness of the deep sea-waters. Death reveals 
 this Hfe here to be no hfe in itself, but only a bed which 
 outer, strange streams may pour into and fill. 
 
 1876 
 
 The reading-party was at Bettws-y-Coed. After it, 
 came the first of his many visits to Hawarden. The holy 
 party was at Cross Hayes, Burton-on-Trent. 
 
 To Mrs. Talbot 
 
 Aug. 30, Cross Hayes. — Bettws got very hot at one time, 
 but not hotter than any place must be, when the weather 
 persists in being very hot : how is a place to help it ? We 
 all got ill, and rushed off to Llandudno, and put out our 
 tongues, and begged a good kind doctor to feel our pulses, 
 and he, good man, wrote out pages of strange advice, which, 
 on consulting the chemist's, turned out to consist of draughts, 
 pills, tonics, etc., to an alarming extent : on hearing which 
 we fled, and felt much better. My head was rather bad, 
 and I did but little work : I am better here. 
 
 occupy some small country parish for a month, do the duty, read, discuss, 
 say our offices and keep our hours together. Talbot, Gore, Ilhngworth, 
 Richmond, Arthur Lyttelton, J. H. Maude, Robert Moberly, would be 
 there — with Lock, or Cheyne, now and again. We would work, and 
 play, and talk over the possibilities of an Anglican Oratorian Community : 
 and be exceedingly happy." 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1875-1878 ^7 
 
 But dear Bettws ! it was lovely : I love that scenery 
 more than any other, full of rich colour, and mass of detail, 
 purple, red, green, blue — all shaken up together into mixed 
 wood, moorland, fern, bog, heather, mountain slopes, rocks, 
 green fields, ivy, streams, pools, lakes, flowers — every 
 foreground so brilliant, every distance so full of scudding 
 greys, and flying colours, and broken Hghts, and shimmering 
 mists, and sudden gleams of flashing sunHght under heavy 
 clouds — all fairly small, not astounding you by size, nor 
 overwhelming you by strangeness, but always within 
 compass, always deHghtful, always rich in pleasant surprises 
 and sudden changes — always friendly, and English, and 
 quiet. And the streams ! There are no such streams 
 anywhere ! That ruddy black-peat water rolling down 
 rich like wine — it is the most noble form of water. 
 
 I was so pleased to go to Hawarden : they were very 
 kind ; and we played tennis, and talked, incessantly. The 
 great man was deeply interesting to me ; it is quite awful, 
 feeling oneself near such a gathered store of force : it is so 
 wonderful, the compactness into which Nature can shut 
 up her strength : it is strange it can get itself into the same 
 narrow room of brain and nerve, that we can do with ; I 
 keep expecting it to go off pop — like dynamite in a box. 
 This sounds irreverent, but it is what I feel near great 
 men. There is no moment when you feel so acutely the 
 inadequacy of space. 
 
 To Ms Sister 
 
 Aug. 31. Cross Hayes, Burton on Trent. — I have done 
 my Opium article, and it has gone to press, for the Church 
 Quarterly — I am anxious for it to work, and rouse some one 
 to quicken the Church — but now, my passion goes out 
 for these wretched Bulgarians. Never, since Louis XIV 
 sacked the Palatinate, has anything hke it been heard of 
 in Europe — and our fleet still lies at Besika Bay, and Dizzy 
 is rewarded with a peerage, after apologising for these 
 wickednesses, and lightly scoffing at the indignation they 
 have aroused. I cannot understand where chivalry has 
 gone, in the Conservative party — or honour, in the Army. 
 They sit silent — or dare to defend. Thank Goodness, 
 Liddon spoke out. If only the Bishops would publicly 
 
88 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 speak, open subscriptions, denounce. To think that 
 wretched, unwarlike Christian peasants can be slaughtered 
 in the shambles by barbarous Turks — with Christian Powers 
 standing round, and doing nothing ! We shall feel the 
 vengeance of God upon us for this if we shut our eyes, and 
 let things go their way. 
 
 In September he writes from Folkestone, to one of the 
 Bettws reading-party, who was in Italy : — 
 
 I am in such a different place to you, with a grey sky, 
 a grey sea, grey ships, and grey faces : but now and then 
 there comes a breath of brine from the ocean which is worth 
 most things in the world besides. The people are an im- 
 mense improvement on Llandudno : certainly Southerners 
 can dress, and certainly, they are very pretty : the ladies 
 are full of graceful skirts and racy hats, and light tied-up 
 figures, which are airy and in motion, and in and out among 
 them sail dapper little officers from the camp, and stately 
 old gunboats with whiskers and big sticks, and all the 
 splendid dignity of men-of-war — and I feel glad to be a 
 parson and to enjoy the privilege of a right to be careless 
 about the shape of my boots, and the cut of my bags about 
 the knees. You must be very happy in beautiful Italy : 
 it is reassuring to see an Italian throw a cloak over his 
 shoulder : it reminds one, that civilisation and history have 
 not spent themselves in vain. 
 
 In October, he writes from Oxford, after some little 
 mission-service in London : — 
 
 I did enjoy my glimpse of rough London thoroughly — 
 that thrilling sight of the black and brutal streets reehng 
 with drunkards, and ringing with foul words, and filthy 
 with degradation — and the little sudden blaze of light and 
 colour and warmth in the crowded shed, with its music 
 and its flowers, and its intense, earnest faces — and its 
 sense of sturdy, stirring work, quick and eager, and un- 
 ceasing — God ahve in it all. It is most wonderful to me — 
 the contrast with our rich solemn days, our comfortable 
 Common Rooms, and steady ease, and Bayne, and the 
 respectables. It certainly does one good to get touched 
 up by a rough strong bit of reality, Hke that. 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1875-1878 89 
 
 1877 
 
 In the spring of this year, he had his first grave ex- 
 perience of the ill-health which plagued him, from time 
 to time, for many years. He had long been subject to 
 headaches, and had made the best of them : but in 1877 
 there was not only persistent headache, but complete 
 disability for any sort of continuous work ; and he found 
 himself compelled to be idle. He had to take this trouble 
 seriously : he could not fight it out ; and recovery was 
 slow. Happily, in the later years of his life, the trouble 
 came to an end of itself. In some of his letters, he jests 
 at it. None the less, he feared it, and was unable to fight 
 it. He was advised to get away, for a time, from Oxford : 
 and went to Italy, with his sister. 
 
 To Miss Cartwright 
 
 April 30. II, Lung Arno Guicciardini, Florence. — We 
 are seeing beautiful things every day : and live with four 
 maiden ladies, sisters, of ages between 40 and 60, who 
 are most delightful ; they talk, and play and sing, and 
 charm us ; with them is a widow cousin, of a more alarming 
 character : and, between them aU, I sit night and day, 
 and sometimes look out of window and wonder at my 
 own sex, and ponder when I shall ever speak to one of 
 them again. But it is a deHghtful home : and I am gradually 
 getting better, though it is slow. Lilly reads to me histories 
 of Florence : and daily we worship Savonarola more 
 enthusiastically than ever before. George Eliot has put 
 her uncomfortable slur upon him : he rises from actual 
 history with a purer and nobler presence, I think. 
 
 From Florence, also, he writes to his brother Spencer 
 at Christ Church, who was reading for Greats with his 
 tutor, Richard Shute : — 
 
 I. I was glad at your getting something out of Shute ; 
 he ought to be able to help you a good deal with his sharp 
 
90 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 analysis i he will put things into shape, I should hope. 
 But don't get captivated by the analysis into thinking 
 that the whole has been sifted away : sifting is a capital 
 thing — but the thing sifted is the real thing after all, the 
 thing in itself on which our wits work as they will, but 
 which is itself, all the time, just what it is. I have only 
 glanced through Shute's book yet — but it gives one a view 
 of life which simply paralyses me, I always find. It is so 
 useless, so unprofitable, so empty, so utterly and flatly 
 contradictory to all my experience, that all life power 
 would go out of me, if I believed it. I am not divided 
 up into compartments, with reason in one, and faith in 
 another, each tucked away by itself in a box, out of which 
 the moment it puts its head to look at the other, Shute 
 has knocked it back again with that ever watchful and 
 wary eye. That is analysis cutting me up, dividing me : 
 but I don't exist the least in a cut-up condition. I remain 
 and am a unity of person, appearing equally one and the 
 same in all my complex manifestations, one and the same, 
 whether I feel, or reason, or beUeve : and this unity is that 
 by which I live : and, if I am not it, but a series of boxes, 
 then I can only sit down and shrug my shoulders, for I 
 know not what I am. 
 
 But this is enough jaw — I only wanted to say that 
 every formula of Shute's philosophy paralyses my life, 
 every formula of Plato's quickens it, though often I know 
 not why, though often it seems illogical — and it is this which 
 is the final test of all philosophies. Do they, or do they not, 
 answer to our life ? 
 
 2. Ox^e line to you — I am most grateful for your last 
 letter : it frankly explained. Now, I don't want to bother 
 you, or to force you to discuss : but only just to say this — 
 that what you say in your letter is exactly the reason why 
 I wrote mine — instead of being a reason against it. 
 
 I suspected what you describe : I felt that you were 
 passing into the stage of criticism, of analysis — just as 
 you say. 
 
 But, then, this makes me urge you all the more strongly 
 to use the accepted mode of contact with God. For man 
 has no cave of absolute self-concentration into which he 
 can retire in order to take a view from outside of all that 
 is not himself. He is for ever dependent, he cannot sustain 
 his own] life, out of himself, by his own powers. He has 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1875-1878 91 
 
 to be sustained by forces larger than himself — as in the 
 body, so in the spirit. 
 
 He may turn round to examine the body — he may 
 doubt its very existence, he may criticise all its methods, 
 he may sift and analyse ; but, all the time, he may never 
 cease to depend on those methods, he may never free him- 
 self completely from the body he analyses, he may never 
 hold it off from him to look at, or refuse its action. He 
 must go on feeding it, he must go on depending on it, he 
 must accept it, or he will die. He may doubt whether it 
 really exists ; but still he must act as if it did exist, for his 
 very power of doubting is dependent on the existence of 
 that body whose existence he doubts. 
 
 So it is with the Spirit. 
 
 The Spirit, too, is dependent on that which has brought 
 it into being, and still sustains it. Therefore it can never 
 wholly free itself : it may turn round to criticise itself 
 and to analyse the workings of Spirit, it may doubt the 
 existence of those workings ; but still it is dependent on 
 those very workings of Spirit for its power to doubt their 
 existence ; it must go on feeding itself with the food pro- 
 vided : it must accept the methods which historically 
 have produced it, or it, too, will die. 
 
 Christianity has made you what you are, as much as 
 your mother has. Therefore you who ask what is 
 Christianity, and why should I hold it ? are compelled still 
 to Uve by it, to be formed by it, just as you are compelled 
 to acknowledge your mother, while you doubt the laws of 
 marriage, or just as you must eat, while you doubt the 
 real existence of the external world. 
 
 Religion must provide you with something that stands 
 to you Hke food, a supreme necessity, whatever you may 
 think about it. This is what I meant to say the Holy 
 Communion was. You derive from it the very power to 
 criticise God. If you do not, you are not in the position 
 of a questioner — ^but you have already answered the question. 
 For we say that you can never know God except by the 
 help of God. That is our position, as against the alternative 
 that there is no God. To reject the help of God, therefore, 
 is already to make our answer to your problem impossible. 
 
 As a questioner, therefore, I should say — the Communion, 
 i.e. the undoubted historical mode of seeking God, into 
 which you as a fact are born, whether you Uke it or not, 
 
92 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 is to be used by you, as the only possible way by which 
 one answer to the question can be obtained. The Holy 
 Communion, i.e. received and accepted by virtue of the 
 supreme necessity of having faith in the world you find 
 yourself in, faith in God's revelation of Himself in history 
 — just as you have faith enough to eat bread, though you 
 doubt the reality of external phenomena. Goodbye, dear. 
 God bless you. 
 
 To W. H. Ady 
 
 July 26. Pontresina. — So much of the opposition is 
 so hollow and unreal, one knows, as one gazes blankly 
 down Daily Telegraphs, Pall Malls, etc., with their rotten 
 and insincere appeals to " beloved principles of the Re- 
 formation," and all the time it is only Fyffe or Student 
 WiUiams or somebody who cares for the Reformation 
 about as much as for the Man in the Moon. I have been 
 rather struck by the intense popular hatred of the 
 " rituaUsts," " confession," etc., which must still be so 
 violent and general, for the press to be confident of applause 
 in using the language it does. Did you see Punch on the 
 " Holy Cross " ? I never read anything so rabid, and 
 ferocious ; it was an appeal to brutality, to mob-law, to 
 kicking and beating. I suppose Punch knows what sort 
 of temper it can count on in the mass. All this has made 
 unpopularity feel very real and vivid ; and it deepens the 
 sense of combat, and makes one feel as if there was yet 
 a great deal of suffering and rough discipline to be gone 
 through. There won't be any fair weather for some time, 
 I expect. So we must work away steadily and strictly — 
 and cut away all this reckless light-hearted insolence of 
 audacious youth, which still clings about us : there ought 
 to be so much less tall talk, so much less loud-mouthed 
 defiance, shrill cock-a-hoop sort of shouting. It is a case 
 for silent, patient, unshrinking endurance, it seems to me — 
 the leaven has yet got to work into the lump, and that is 
 done slowly : I do feel that it will require a good deal of 
 fortitude not to despair : and it is despair, to draw the 
 leaven out of the lump because the lump is so long in leaven- 
 ing. The cock-a-hoop stage has blinded us to the stern- 
 ness, and length, and grind of the business : it is not a 
 thing to be done at a rush, this leavening of a whole people 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1 875-1878 93 
 
 — this we are now learning. The danger is lest we should 
 think the failure of the rush to be the failure of the whole 
 hope — and creep back to our own trenches, content to 
 keep ourselves safe, and abandoning the larger victory — 
 while we ought to be just pressing forward with a long, 
 unwearied, patient push, until we have worn out the enemy 
 and the whole thing gives way. 
 
 Sept. 24. London. — Rome has been showing itself 
 differently to me lately from what you picture it. I have 
 been poking a Uttle about the Infallibility history : and 
 certainly there stands something in that long tale of con- 
 fusion and blunder and falsification, which qualifies that 
 freedom from our own peculiar griefs which makes Rome 
 so refreshing an attraction. I have felt quite lightened 
 and comforted by the thought that, at least, I have no 
 such heavy a claim to make good as this one of Papal 
 Supremacy. It would require the most resolute and defiant 
 treatment, such as the methods of the Archbishop of West- 
 minster for deahng with history could alone supply. In 
 the mean time, life is moving, working, growing aU about 
 us, with aU the fullness and richness that we can expect 
 here on earth : is it not ? 
 
 1878 {cet. 31) 
 
 In January, he writes of the meeting, at Hawarden, 
 of Gladstone and Ruskin — " For three days I had the 
 dehght and amusement of watching the two, the one in 
 despair of aU things here on earth, attributing this century 
 chiefly to the devil, the other profoundly convinced that 
 there never was such a good time, never was such a hopeful 
 age. It was very funny. Ruskin was most delightfully 
 fresh and unique ; he preached his faith to me night and 
 day ; he trembled on the edge of insanity : he was wonder- 
 fully touching and beautiful. I got quite intimate with 
 him, and hope to go on Ustening at Oxford to his view 
 of my duties as a clergyman. It is a great privilege to have 
 seen the two together." In February, of the popular 
 hatred against Russia — " the debate, with its angry, loud 
 
94 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Ministers, its bitter, unceasing personalities : cheer upon 
 cheer following every new insult to Russia, every most 
 flaming suspicion of her conduct, every palliation of 
 Turkey's misdoings, every taunt against the Christian 
 populations. Russia has lost her head, I gather : the 
 war-party are up : her diplomats are making their own 
 game, most suspiciously : all this is true, I daresay : but 
 our war-party repays them insult for insult, suspicion for 
 suspicion ; we have refused to accept their plighted word, 
 we have acted in spite of her assurances on our worst sus- 
 picions of her aims, we have exhibited jealousy and bitter 
 criticism at every turn to her — why should she play an open 
 game with us ? What inducement have we offered her 
 to trust us ? " In March, of the wreck of the Eurydice, 
 in which his cousin Edward Gifford was drowned — " the 
 only one who can be remembered to have gone to the 
 wheel, at the last moment when the water was rushing 
 over the ship, and every one was flying as he could. This 
 looks full of Gifford readiness, and Gifford pluck. We 
 ought not to be so surprised, so overcome by death : it 
 is not the worst thing that can happen to us." The letter 
 recalls what he said in 1872, " I always love the Gifford 
 side of my family." 
 
 In April, during a fortnight's reading-party at Porlock 
 Weir, he writes to his brother Spencer, on friendship : — 
 
 Certainly I have known the passionate strain that 
 friendships bring with them : I have tried, as so many 
 have tried before, to press into the delighted discovery of 
 sympathy with another aU the upspringing yearnings that 
 gather in the soul at the moment when it first knows itself 
 and searches for another into whom to pour this self know- 
 ledge, in whom to reahse it, out of whom to receive it back 
 again with the joy of enlargement and increase. The 
 spirit is brimming with good measure ; and it longs to give 
 itself in fullness, running over, that with the same measure 
 that it metes, it may receive it back into its bosom. 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1875-1878 95 
 
 And, therefore, I have known the inevitable melancholy : 
 each soul stands over against another — each yearns to 
 unite itself with each : but each has veils light as gauze, 
 yet rigid as steel, which close each round to itself : in vain 
 they reach out embracing arms to each other, in vain they 
 cUng to each other ; the unity cannot attain its fullness, 
 its satisfaction : the two stand apart, confused • delicious 
 sympathies may cross, and re-cross, from one to another, 
 touching, entwining, binding, but not dissolving the barriers, 
 not making the twain one, not rending the partition and 
 remaking the two souls into a single new creature, trans- 
 cending the hmits that sunder them. 
 
 We fall back exhausted : disappointed : barren : we 
 feel as if friendship broke down under us, and we had no 
 outlet but despair. But only because we are struggling 
 to get out of friendship what is not there — more than 
 can be there. There are two modes of unity which are 
 alive in us, prompting us in friendship — the human unity 
 of two souls in marriage, the Divine unity, symboUsed by 
 this, of two spirits made one in the sacramental union of 
 God and man. 
 
 We are throwing into our friendship all the passion 
 that is realised in these two forms. Is this not true ? We 
 are straining to make friendship do the work of these. It 
 is lovely, holy, pure — friendship — but it cannot do the 
 work. 
 
 It cannot but leave something undone that these passions 
 require to be done : it cannot but leave something of un- 
 satisfaction, of isolation, of imperfect famiharity. 
 
 The more we strive, the more intensely we drain its cup, 
 the more will be the fever, the fretfuLness, the angry irrita- 
 tion, the dreariness, of the inevitable failure. Something 
 of the awful barrenness of lust comes over it, in that it is 
 struggling to slake the thirst for the higher with the waters 
 of the lower. This is not hard, or cruel : there is nothing 
 so uplifting, so true, so endlessly refreshing as friendship — 
 nothing, except a perfect marriage, or a perfect union with 
 God. Everything, but these two, it will do. Have I 
 not myself hved by friendship all my hfe ? Have I not 
 fed on it as my daily bread ? Do I not now hve in it, 
 through it, by it ? But whenever I have attempted to 
 bring into it the vast and engrossing passions of the two 
 higher unions, it has failed me — it has turned sour — it has 
 
96 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 hovered near to darkness : it has felt the cold shadow of 
 death. 
 
 ... I do not want to force things — only I beg you 
 to drive yourself upward through all this uplifting emotion 
 of love, never resting, never content, aspiring all the higher 
 because of the failure of the lower, reaching onward to 
 the highest, learning diUgently through the discipline of 
 the lower the significance of the highest — learning to know 
 what it is that you demand of God, how real, how strong, 
 how Hving the need of Him is — that need which has impelled 
 you to enjoy His gifts, and yet has revealed to you, by 
 the inadequacy of the gifts to satisfy it, that it was the 
 Giver who alone can satiate — learning it — and reaching 
 out your hands to feel after it, by cHnging to prayer, how- 
 ever bUnd, by feeling after Him in that holy moment when 
 He offers to knit your soul and body into His own Creative 
 Person ; coming near to you, nearer than flesh and blood, 
 with the inner power of the Spirit, so that He may feed you, 
 nourish you, know you, interpenetrate you, absolve you, 
 strengthen, quicken, transform you — with that power 
 which has made your soul once, and now will recreate it, 
 pouring back into it His own vigour and force, and love, 
 so that, not by your efforts, but by His power, it may 
 grow, and expand, and increase. 
 
 This is the friend who sticketh closer than a brother ; 
 who can be more to us than father, or mother, or sister, 
 or friend. 
 
 This I have found — this everlasting consolation, before 
 the face of which all doubts dwindle and grow small. I 
 do not want to force it upon you dogmatically, or cruelly 
 — I do not want to compel. I will leave all to God, who 
 will lead you in His slow patience, when and as He choose. 
 
 Only I could not help leading these thoughts up to that 
 great crisis and crown — to it alone they all seem to me to lead. 
 
 They teach, what it fulfils. They drop their task, just 
 where it can take it up. 
 
 I do not mean to hurry you — nor to watch you : nor 
 to preach. Only I must be sincere : I must say how all 
 this gathers itself, for me, into that Eucharist of Love. 
 This is its meaning to me — this its interpretation. 
 
 During the holy party, at Peasemore, near Newbury, 
 he writes to his sister, " I have nearly finished Justin." 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1875-1878 97 
 
 This was his long article on Justin Martyr, in the Diction- 
 ary of Christian Biography, published in 1882.* There 
 is a passage in it which might have been written of Holland 
 himself. He is analysing the Dialogue, where Justin 
 describes how he went first to a Stoic teacher, then to a 
 Peripatetic, then to a Pythagorean, then to the Platonists ; 
 and finally met an old man who told him of the Jewish 
 prophets and of Christ : — 
 
 The aim with which he started on his studies does not 
 fail him ; it is it which he achieves in becoming a Christian. 
 Hence he is not thrown into an antagonism to that which 
 he leaves ; his new faith does not break with the old, so 
 much as fulfil it. He still, therefore, calls himself the 
 philosopher, still invites men to enter his school, still wears 
 the philosopher's cloak. From the first, philosophy has 
 been pursued with the reUgious aim of attaining the highest 
 spiritual happiness by communing with God ; the certified 
 knowledge of God, therefore, professed by the prophets, 
 and made manifest in Christ, comes to him as the crown 
 of his existing aspiration. 
 
 In the autumn of 1878, his book on the ApostoHc Fathers 
 was pubhshed, in the series entitled " The Fathers for 
 EngUsh Readers." A second edition was published in 1893. 
 
 On Dec. 17, in a letter to Miss JuUa Cartwright, he 
 says, " We are meditating an onslaught on the S.P.C.K, 
 for its one-sided Political Economy publications — con- 
 demning so strongly all Trades Unions, and giving nothing 
 but the masters' view." 
 
 * Late in his life, when the Balliol College Register, published in 1914, 
 was in the press, a proof was sent to him of the list of his appointments, 
 writings, etc. He added to it this article on Justin Martyr, with a note, 
 " I cannot resist mentioning it, as it is the only bit of ' learning ' that I 
 ever achieved." 
 
 H 
 
V 
 
 CHRIST CHURCH, 1879-1884 
 
 In the later years at Christ Church, he had more influence 
 in the affairs of the University, and of Christ Church. He 
 was Select Preacher at Oxford in 1879-80 : " the heart 
 of the day for me," wrote Francis Paget, Nov. 9, 1879, 
 " has been Holland's first sermon as Select Preacher. I 
 cannot tell you what it was, how it has even changed my 
 hopes and fears about Oxford, and deepened my love 
 for him. It seemed to me easier, because more planned 
 and built-up, than any I had ever heard him preach ; he 
 had brought aU his strength under control, without sacri- 
 ficing anything of its fulness and freedom ; and I think that 
 for depth of thought and sympathy and true philosophic 
 power, it went beyond aU words." 
 
 During Holy Week in 1879, and at the evening service 
 on Easter Sunday, he preached in St. Paul's : he writes 
 to Miss Cartwright, May 26 : — 
 
 It is a real help to get a word or two after a sermon : 
 1 have to preach so much in the air, in strange places, to 
 strange faces, that 1 often want a message from the hearers 
 or readers to make it all seem real : it helps me to gain 
 confidence that an actual work is proceeding, not a mere 
 display, but a heart-intercourse, something that has issues, 
 and meanings, below aU the bonnets and waistcoats. It 
 is so odd to speak to a multitude of unknown shapes, how 
 many ? 6000, perhaps, they went nearly down the whole 
 nave on that Easter night at St. Paul's — all of them to 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1879-1884 99 
 
 me ghosts, flitting shadows, a herd of bats, coming, going ; 
 I knew none of them, they did not know me ; what was my 
 Hfe, they knew not, nor I theirs. Perhaps we were never 
 to meet again ; perhaps they wanted something quite 
 different ; perhaps they were only staring up at aU this 
 shouting and noise, wondering what on earth it all meant, 
 or why anybody should seem to care so much about that 
 gibberish, which he was yelling out so loud. Perhaps 
 every soul was hungering for some meat that I knew not of : 
 and so we part ; and the thing is done — and no one that I 
 know of is the better — no one's Hfe has any change in it, 
 that I ever hear of. This is not a complaint : I don't 
 mean to be peevish or silly : only it cannot help being so : 
 and so I jump at a real message, which says, " Thank you ! 
 that is what I wanted, that it really helped me a Httle bit 
 to hear." Such a message helps me to believe : and preach- 
 ing only wants belief. 
 
 In September, after the anniversary of Fremantle's 
 death, he writes to Ady : — 
 
 My memories always fix on the morning of the 17th : 
 it was then I heard the news — and had to hurry in, in the 
 first rush of grief, into the matins at the Bishop's chapel — 
 where the Psalms caught my ear through my tears, first 
 with the pathetic touch, which you may smile at now but 
 which somehow always chngs to me, " Free among the 
 dead " — (my people always called him " Fre ") — and then, 
 " My lovers and friends hast Thou put away from me, 
 and hid mine acquaintance out of my sight." The 17th 
 morning can never go by me, in any one month, without 
 my remembering his dear face at the sound of those Psalms. 
 
 1880 
 
 In February, he wTites to Dr. Copleston : they had 
 planned to visit Palestine at Easter, but Dean LiddeU could 
 not let him be late for the summer term : — 
 
 He is so good, and sympathetic, that I thought it certain 
 he would agree, if the other officials did : and they were 
 aU right : I had talked to them. But, of course, the 
 hideous law of " Precedent " came in ! What was the Dean 
 
loo HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 to say to any one who proposed to be a fortnight late ? He 
 was most kind, but I saw how difficult he felt it to give leave : 
 and I could not loyally press him. More than that : he 
 had himself been refused by Dean Gaisford, when making 
 the same request ! So he has at least the right to his 
 revenge. 
 
 There are two notes (undated ; but written either in 
 1880 or in 1879) to J. W. Williams, now Bishop of Kaffraria, 
 whose rooms were on Holland's staircase, (i) " If you like 
 a little talk with a few friends, over the connection of social 
 poUtical affairs with Christianity, be at my room just before 
 7 o'clock tonight." (2) "Pesek today, at 7.15, at 65, St. 
 Giles." The Httle talks were on Politics, Economics, 
 Socialism, Ethics, and Christianity. He therefore called 
 them Pesech ; and spelt it Pesek. The meeting at 65, St. 
 Giles, was at Arthur Lyttelton's lodgings. Pesek helped 
 to prepare the way for the Christian Social Union. 
 
 In the summer of 1880, Ady and Miss Cartwright were 
 married. He writes to them, on their honeymoon abroad : — 
 
 You will drink-in aU wdsdom, and come back full to the 
 brim with lots of rich wine stored up in cask and bottle, 
 to drink from in the duller years ahead. Lay in a stock : 
 and, in dim, dragging days, when the heart flags, you will 
 go down to the cellar of your memory, and draw out some 
 pet liquor, crusty, and sealed, some remembrance of a gorgeous 
 view, or of a perfect picture, which you had seen together — 
 and you will sip of it, and swig of its joy, and cheer each 
 other with its gladness when there is little else to cheer. 
 
 Another letter, this year, is to one of the household 
 at Gayton Lodge, on her marriage : she had been Mrs, 
 Holland's maid for many years, and had devoted herself 
 to the children : — 
 
 It is impossible to say anything of what one feels at 
 moments of parting, so let me write you one word to say 
 how much you have been to me. AU the years that I 
 can well remember, you were part and parcel of my home : 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1879-1884 loi 
 
 you gave me just that which makes home-Ufe so refreshing, 
 the constant unfailing kindness always ready, always 
 gentle, always untired, always far beyond what I deserved, 
 or asked for : and you gave it, as home gives it, quietly, 
 without any loud ofers or professions, without waiting to 
 be asked, without a word, without notice. I felt as if there 
 was always somebody at hand who would watch what was 
 wanted, and tenderly care, and faithfully help, as naturally 
 as a mother or a sister. 
 
 It is this kind of service which makes a home so sweet 
 and kindly and pleasant and comforting : and you have 
 been associated with all this comfort and all this kindly 
 help. Above all, dear Ellen, I shall never forget your 
 incessant and quiet care when I was sick : you had that 
 wonderful peaceful way of going in and out of the room 
 which so soothes and reUeves. 
 
 It is a great wrench : it breaks up so much of our tenderest 
 memories : but you are right to risk it at the call of an 
 affection more full and satisfying and needful than any we 
 can bring you. May it bring you all you have the right to 
 expect, all happiness and joy and love, far, far more than 
 we have ever been able to give you. Goodbye, dear Ellen. 
 God bless your kind heart and willing faithfulness. 
 
 1881 
 
 The holy party this year was at Great Chest erf ord, Essex ; 
 but plans went astray : except for " several Uttle arrow- 
 flights of friends," he was alone in the vicarage : *' and as 
 happy as a grig : it is delightful ; so restful, so luxurious. 
 I suppose now that people marry wives, when they hve 
 alone, for fear of being too happy — for the sake of discipline 
 — lest they should have no unpleasant duties : otherwise, 
 with a dog and a piano, the bliss would be too overpowering." 
 And again, " You sent good wishes to the holy party. I 
 have bagged them aU for myself : for indeed the holy party 
 is proving how good it is for brethren to dwell together 
 in unity ; for I am one, and I dwell together with myself ; 
 and I am the brethren. Moberly is here casually for three 
 
102 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 days ; and I hope for Arthur [Lyttelton] and Paget. But 
 we are most desultory and fragmentary." He was in 
 charge, more or less, of two villages : he helped in the church 
 services, and in visiting the poor : there was an old lady, 
 bed-ridden ; " a sweet fragment," he calls her. He writes 
 to the vicar, Mr. Randolph : "My heart quite sinks, and I 
 am wandering about muttering farewells. How I shall 
 tear myself from Martha I can hardly say. To say she has 
 been a Mother to me is to say but little. It is such a moral 
 help to me to feel at all at home in the houses of the poor. 
 Dear Myrtle, sweetest of dogs, is anxious to tell you that 
 she had a rare run after a hare today, and lost it in a ditch." 
 Later, he was at the Church Congress in Newcastle : and at 
 Hawarden, 
 
 To his Sister 
 
 The Congress was a distinct success ; and Newcastle 
 filled me with admiration : so vigorous, and fine, and big, 
 and inspiring. I dashed down, through smoke and dirt, 
 on the last day, to Jarrow, to see, in the heart of the filth 
 and the furnaces, the little chapel in which the Venerable 
 Bede actually prayed : there it really is, his window-sUts, 
 and walls, and the old oak chair in which he may actually 
 have sat. It was most pathetic : and Durham ! Beyond 
 all imaginings, superb. I have felt a bigger man ever since, 
 so exalting is the mere sight of it. Whenever you see a 
 train going to Durham, take it at once. It is your bounden 
 duty. 
 
 To his Mother 
 
 Oct. 6. — Hawarden went very well : he was strong, well, 
 rich with good. talk. I never heard him talk better, or more 
 freely : and we had him all to ourselves. We cut down a 
 tree : I cHmbed up, and tied the rope ; we all lugged it 
 down together in triumph : he returned, proud and up- 
 lifted, with axe on shoulder — and I walked by his side. . . . 
 Mr. Gladstone very anxious over Transvaal, the first day 
 I got there — reUeved by later news : but I fear, I fear, 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1879-1884 103 
 
 things may yet delay. We must struggle after patience. 
 Hitherto, all the worst rumours have vanished as things 
 went on. 
 
 To Spencer Holland 
 
 What I have felt so horribly is the readiness of the world 
 to be driven by the sin it has sinned : it confesses that 
 it has wronged the Boers ; it regrets, it confesses, but it 
 accepts the position which that wrong has brought about ; 
 it dare not go back : it dare not break with the very 
 evil that it confesses. It pleads the dreadful difficulty 
 now that the thing is done : as if you ever could do a wrong 
 without finding it dreadfully difficult to undo it. It consents 
 to be driven on and on, by that which it deplores : as if 
 every new step it now takes did not confirm the evil of the 
 first beginning, and increase the problem of ever making 
 good the escape. And it appeals to the worst possible 
 arguments : never to direct duty, but always to what 
 others will think : the Dutch, the Natives, Europe — and 
 in comes sneaking the fatal blackguard formula of "prestige" : 
 when once I get there, then I know that all is up ; that 
 moral arguments are weak : you never appeal to prestige 
 until you have to pacify your conscience, or account for 
 a crime. 
 
 The public opinion of others is ground perilous as a 
 bog : it is the one thing that you never can estimate, or 
 calculate, or foretell. It is the shiftiest, and least respect- 
 able, of all motives. The Standard has been writing articles 
 that defile one even to read ; they have been grossly and 
 unblushingly spurring all that is vilest and basest in our 
 English blood. 
 
 I own, I tremble now and then at the menaces. I do 
 firmly believe that to bring about a strong Dutch prepon- 
 derance would be the ruin of South Africa : and I have no 
 means of knowing how far this is really a possibility. On the 
 whole, it seems an absurdly unUkely result : we are so 
 infinitely more ahve than the Dutch : aU the movement 
 is with us : and such movement is too strong not to survive 
 a troubled hour. Then, I recover : and once more cry 
 aloud, " Fiat Justitia," let the sky do what it will ! Nothing 
 pays like the right ; 1 am sure of it. 
 
 So be strong, Httle brother — and yet struggle to be 
 
104 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 gentle. It is very hard to keep from violent outcry — but 
 screams do little, while kindly persistence does much. 
 Beforehand, I always think that indignation will be a good 
 tool to work with : but it never does half I expect of it. 
 
 1882 
 
 This year, " Logic and Life " was pubUshed. It revealed 
 the strength of his philosophy and religion : it made every- 
 body feel that here was a man speaking ^vith authority : 
 they discovered, with surprise, what his Oxford friends 
 had long ago discovered, that Holland was far ahead of 
 the men of his time,* 
 
 Among other events of 1882, was his appointment, 
 early in the year, to be Senior Proctor ; with Mr. A. L. 
 Smith, now Master of BalUol, as Junior Proctor. 
 
 To Dr. Talbot 
 
 Might we walk ? I am nearly concluding that I need 
 not take the Proctorship : and I want to know if this 
 is right, or wrong. My point is (i) Another would take 
 it, who is infinitely better for it in every way : and would 
 be helped by it, and would be glad of it. (2) It is not my 
 line : and I am so terribly handicapped now, from doing 
 even decently what I could do and ought to do, by a state 
 of health which I can just keep balanced by never pressing 
 
 * There is a letter to him, in March 1881, from John Wordsworth, after- 
 ward Bishop of Sahsbury : the reference is to Wordsworth's Bampton 
 Lectures, The One Religion : the letter shows what Holland's Oxford friends 
 thought of him : " Perhaps I can popularise something of the more super- 
 ficial aspects of the matter, and make way for you to come in with the 
 real philosophy of it. I am quite serious over this. You have a gift 
 such as no one else here has, and particularly for touching a certain class 
 of minds : I want you to husband your powers and prune your luxuriance for 
 a great effort to win some of them. If that could be done, we might die 
 more happily. I know, for my own part, that I can do nothing for them, 
 except indirectly by shewing that I beheve what I am saying. Please 
 think calmly of this, and prepare the ground, if not for next year, yet 
 for the year after." 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1879-1884 105 
 
 myself, but which still makes all hard work impossible, 
 so that I can only just scrape through the most necessary 
 reading by a squeeze ; and this being so, I cannot afford 
 the loss of a whole year. 
 
 I really do not think that public grounds lequire me. 
 The only thing that calls me to it is a certain need of self- 
 discipUne — of training in management of men and " affairs " 
 — but I shall never make much of this anyhow : and I 
 wonder whether it is worth while ruining my better side 
 for the sake of slightly improving my worst. 
 
 On Whit-Sunday, he preached in Cathedral to the 
 members of the Co-operative Congress.* The sermon 
 
 * He took for his text, No man can serve two masters. " In all moral 
 action," he told the Congress, " man is wholly single. He cannot in that 
 single self, which is the root and base of all will and all affection, in that 
 unique and organic self, whence arises all the force that makes his intention, 
 and quickens his impulsive activities, and prompts his imagination, and 
 braces his desires — he cannot there suffer division. His hfe is no fixed 
 and dehberate arrangement which he can separate into distinct portions ; 
 no house with severed chambers each narrowed, and known, and apart, 
 in and out of which he can pass at definite moments, and can vary as he 
 goes his thoughts and his intentions according to the change in his position. 
 . . . He cannot divide himself in half. He acts wholly in each action of 
 body and of spirit, and so acting, his whole being is touched and affected 
 by the character of the motive which determines the action." This law, 
 he told them, that a man cannot cut himself in half, and be one thing 
 toward the affairs of earth and another toward the affairs of heaven, 
 was laid down from above by Christ, for the new citizenship of Christian 
 society. " This same law you, as I understand you, have discovered and 
 apprehended from below, by the hght of wide and careful observations, 
 through the pressure of a large and intricate experience. You have found 
 and known that man is single throughout — that he cannot wholly detach 
 any one part of himself from any other ; any one region of his activity 
 from any other." 
 
 Thus, he told them, they were up against the old hard economical 
 teaching, which " would deal only with the positive, the practical, the 
 partial, the limited. It would take man in his pursuit of wealth, and in 
 that only. It would limit itself to a study of but one motive — the motive 
 of personal advancement." He exposed the fallacies of this teaching : 
 the impossibility of isolating any part of a man : the impossibiUty of isolating 
 any individual man from his fellows : the impossibiUty of isolating any 
 one domain of human action. " You are here today to say, to declare, 
 that in his trade man finds himself a brother among brethren — no competing 
 foe, but one of a family ; knit up by closest ties of fellowship, into an 
 organic society of helpful co-operators. And I, surely, am here to say. 
 
io6 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 was published, and he sent a copy to Mr. Ruskin ; who 
 wrote back : — 
 
 Annecy, Savoie. 14th Nov. '82. — ^I am most grateful for 
 the sermon, and most glad it was spoken and printed : 
 but may I say that it touches me with some sorrowful 
 wonder that you refer to me as if my witness to its truth 
 were of any real import or value to you. Surely, a clergy- 
 man of your sincerity and feeling has the witness in himself ? 
 And as the matter actually stands, I am far more in need 
 of confirmation in the spiritual truths I have tried to feel 
 and teach, by the good churchmen of the Catholic church, 
 than the simplest of them can be, of any strengthening 
 of their hands by my weary ones. 
 
 Ahhey of Vallorbes. 22nd Nov. '82. — Indeed I am grate- 
 ful for your account of all that was felt, and done at Oxford, 
 for those delegates, and very heartily wish I had been 
 there to have some part and lot in this matter. It is one 
 of the most important signs, and facts, of this time, and 
 altogether lovely to me, which not many modern signs 
 are. I have never got a clear idea of the Rochdale principle 
 of co-operation — but at the core of it must be the under- 
 standing that the tradesmen and customers are not two 
 separate and hostile classes : and if indeed it ends, in that 
 perception, the sin which " sticks close between buying 
 and selling," the cathedrals of England may well be open 
 for its services of thanksgiving. Very thankful am I that 
 our own cathedral and hall have given the example. 
 
 Your kind words to myself come helpfully to me, at 
 a time when I do not know if I am right in thinking of 
 the completion of work interrupted by humiliating failure 
 of mind and body, yet which it seems to me my proper 
 task to complete, if I may. Ever affectionately yours. 
 
 In June, in the Christ Church controversy over certain 
 statements, by one of the Senior Students, concerning the 
 
 to declare, that revelation meets you with a like announcement. . . . 
 Christ the true son of God has taken to Himself our flesh for this very 
 purpose, that in His flesh, God-possessed, God-transfigured, God-fulfilled, 
 He should break down all walls of fleshly partition, all divisions of blood, 
 all severance of race or class or kind, and should raise the brotherhood of 
 man into solid and actual reality." 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1879-1884 107 
 
 doctrine of the Resurrection, he was opposed not only to 
 Liddon but, which was even more difficult for him, to 
 Pusey : — 
 
 To Dr. Talbot 
 
 It was indeed a strain unlooked-for, to see the old 
 Doctor there, drav/n from his gathering death to speak, 
 with his last activity, to open out his life-secrets, to appeal 
 to us by the name of his long service of God. It cost me 
 much. But I could not waver, in myself. I had spoken 
 before he did : so that I stood pledged already. Nor 
 can I bring myself at all to repent what I did. I have felt 
 much more sure since I did it, than ever I did before. I 
 am sure that I feel surer and truer, in meeting Liddon 
 since it, than I could ever have felt in meeting Nettleship 
 if I had voted the other way. 
 
 In August, he and Dr. Talbot were in Ireland, for Dr. 
 Copleston's wedding : " three days with a Roman resident 
 landlord on the wild edges of Galway Bay, two days in 
 Wicklow the beautiful with the Archbishop of Dubhn, 
 and two days ringed with soldiers, police, and detectives, 
 in the Vice-Regal Lodge." The murder of Lord Frederick 
 Cavendish and Mr. Burke was on May 6. 
 
 To his Mother 
 
 Aug. 18. Vice-Regal Lodge, Dublin. — Here we are ; 
 and for the first time I reahse the serious terror of the 
 situation. Before this, everything looked so bright, and 
 easy-going, and usual, that it was impossible to beheve 
 that the volcano was under our feet : but now sentries 
 haunt every corner : peelers start up out of every bush ; 
 detectives prowl and prowl around. The garden walks 
 are fuU of watchers : and, just this moment, even for 
 Talbot and myself to go two hundred yards outside the 
 gates, two detectives are told off to guard. Of course, there 
 is not the shghtest danger for us : it is merely formal : 
 but it shows what surrounds Ld. Spencer himself. That 
 walk of 200 yards carried us to the spot of the double murder. 
 
io8 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 It is directly in front of the garden lawn : the road of the 
 park crosses in face of the house. Such a lovely view it 
 is, over a charmingly broken park, full of woodland stretches 
 and thorns, and over all the splendid Wicklow mountains : 
 a quiet, delicious view, with that dark blot to stain it for 
 ever. One is caught in a sort of stupifying wonder at what 
 it all means — so fair and so deadly. 
 
 Toward the end of 1882, he was appointed to be one 
 of the Censors of Christ Church : and moved from Tom 
 Quad to Peckwater, number 3 on staircase 9. 
 
 1883 
 
 Early in 1883, Dr. "Wilkinson became Bishop of Truro : 
 and Holland was appointed to be his examining chaplain, 
 and an Honorary Canon of Truro Cathedral. 
 
 By April, he was free from his " proctorial horror." 
 The mere proctorising of stray undergraduates had been 
 a very small part of his duties. He had been ex officio 
 a member of innumerable committees : and the University 
 had required his presence at all its ceremonies, and his 
 attention to its financial and administrative affairs. In 
 his dealings with undergraduates, he had been tolerant 
 of small offences, unable to be solemn over them, but 
 heart and soul against grave offences : and it is said that 
 by the time when he and his colleague had been three 
 months in office, no women of bad character were to be 
 seen about the streets of Oxford. There is a letter to 
 him from his colleague, April 12, 1883 : — 
 
 You must be indifferent or, so to say, callous to praise 
 by this time. But it will be many a long year, and many a 
 pair of Proctors to rise and set, before any one will be so 
 fortunate in a colleague as I was. It was at once a support 
 and a dehght to me. This time last year, I had only just 
 ceased to be in terror that you would not take the office ; 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1879-1884 109 
 
 but I should be desperate with anxiety if (with what I know 
 now) I knew that you were hesitating. I feel that one has 
 learned much ; but I feel rather bitterly how much more 
 one might have done, but for being crushed with other 
 work ; how many things one had to do slovenly or by halves. 
 But one thing I had time to complete was my belief in you : 
 and some day when you are famous beyond your present 
 fame, I shall boast to perhaps incredulous liriyovoi of 
 our year's association. 
 
 In November, Dr. R. F. Horton, Fellow of New College, 
 was proposed for an examinership in divinity : and the 
 question arose, whether these examinerships were open to 
 Nonconformists. Holland found it difficult to make up 
 his mind. "It is so curiously perverse," he writes to 
 Dr. Talbot, " when so strangely little is gained to Non- 
 conformity by it. A common Christianity won by common 
 examining in the articles is the most unreal bond I have 
 yet heard of. I am wondering how far it is true that it 
 is an affair of principle. Obviously, it is an appointment 
 which Lock would rightly oppose with all powers of protest 
 as a nominator. But I should not like to press the principle 
 that the examiners were delegates of the Church, or her 
 representatives in any shape. They are the University 
 pure and simple, requiring knowledge of the articles of a 
 particular Church ; not that particular Church herself, 
 dealing with her own formulae. . . . That leaves me asking, 
 Is it a matter for Horton's conscience, or for mine ? 
 Apart from wounding us, he is in his rights : and so is the 
 University, I suppose. Does this affect the question of 
 our accepting his nomination ? I don't quite see yet, 
 how far it does." He was content that Congregation 
 should decide in favour of Dr. Horton. Then a meeting 
 of Convocation was demanded : it reversed the decision. 
 He writes again, half angry, half amused : " You certainly 
 were not wanted to swell the immense volume of clerical 
 
no HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 indignation. I could not vote. It seemed to me impossible, 
 after so eagerly dissuading and disapproving the fight. 
 So 1 took a walk in the country instead, and missed the 
 wonderful scene. Surely this terrific conquest justifies 
 us in what we wanted. It is a ridiculous force to have 
 turned on for so small an occasion. It gives the effect 
 of ' Anything to keep out a Nonconformist.' It has made 
 the whole affair a battle." And to another friend : " We 
 struggled to keep the matter down to the level of a protest 
 to the Board of Nomination. But the ferocity of the 
 fighters overbore our best efforts. So after all neither 
 the Warden nor I voted at all. I could not vote against 
 Horton after having so strongly resisted the policy of 
 universal scream." 
 
 1884 
 
 To Dr. Talbot 
 
 Jan. 20. — I feel a little guilty about what I said of 
 leaving or not leaving Oxford, I am, in reaUty, perfectly 
 happy with Oxford : and much desire to stop here. It 
 is only that I do sigh a bit at my Censor's work : simply 
 because I long to read and think. If I had a chance of 
 doing this, I should be absolutely content. I daresay 
 this is selfish. It is good for one to go through discipHne : 
 and, then, I cannot conceive what they could arrange here 
 at this moment, if I retired. So probably it is both 
 necessary and best, for a bit. And if I had more time, 
 I should perhaps do nothing. It is the bhnd and fooUsh 
 heart that longs for leisure : that is all. So please don't 
 think I want to be moved away. 
 
 Feb. 19. {A birthday letter.) — Forty ! It is wonderful ! 
 Forty thieves have stolen what they could from you : but 
 you have gained from somewhere unearthly forty times 
 more than ever they have stolen — yes, and forty times 
 forty. So may the great blessings grow in and about you ; 
 and all my heart's love be warm amid all the other affections 
 that swarm in and out of your soul today from many lovers. 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1879-1884 iii 
 
 Then — about Ld. Acton. I have a meeting at Worcester 
 at 7.30, that is the dreadful fact. I cannot well cut : it 
 is temperance. I am so sorry. Won't they come to tea ? 
 I wish I could have had a httle meal for them. P.S, — A httle 
 letter from Mr. W. E, G. came this morning, and with 
 proposals. Don't say anything. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone offered him the Canonry of St. Paul's 
 which had become vacant by the appointment of Dr. Stubbs 
 to be Bishop of Chester. 
 
 From Dr. Liddon 
 
 Feb. 19. — My very dear Holland, Thank you indeed for 
 all the confidence and love of your note. You must cer- 
 tainly say " Yes " to the Prime Minister. You have had 
 nothing whatever to do with his offer, and therefore you 
 must recognise in it the Providence and WiU of God. Unless 
 there was a decided reason for saying No, it is a duty to 
 say Yes. 
 
 We shall all of us receive you with open arms, especially 
 the Dean and I who know you best. And I shall feel 
 that by your presence we are greatly strengthened in our 
 work, and I thank God for this. He has given you, my 
 dear Holland, some very rare powers of serving Him ; and 
 you will, I feel sure, if He spares your Hfe, be able to do 
 much which few others can do. Especially glad am I 
 of this reinforcement to our preaching power, which we 
 much need. 
 
 In so small a body, every member counts for a great 
 deal ; and the anxiety of a vacancy is very great. It has 
 weighed on me Uke a nightmare during the last few weeks, 
 — ever since I knew that Stubbs would leave us. We have 
 projects in view of which I will talk to you, and I feel that 
 they will be perfectly safe, now that you are to be with 
 us, Deo gratias. 
 
 It will be sad for Christ Church : but a parting was sure 
 to come, sooner or later, and it is better sooner than later. 
 For you had drifted into entanglements which were full 
 of difficulty and in which it was possible that you might 
 be forced further than you would wish. . . . Now comes 
 a solution, as far as you are concerned : and it is a relief 
 
112 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 to me that you will not have to make a painful decision 
 again. 
 
 As to the wider question, I have feared sometimes 
 that the younger Churchmanship of Oxford was under- 
 going a silent but very serious change — through its eager- 
 ness to meet modern difficulties and its facile adoption 
 of new intellectual methods, without fully considering 
 all the uses to which they might be put by others. I do 
 not forget that as we grow older our minds stiffen, and 
 we get to dislike what is new, for no better reason than its 
 novelty. In this respect I am likely to be as bad as others : 
 but, allowing for this tendency in myself, and tr5dng to 
 look at the matter dispassionately, I still do think that 
 there is a difference between the new and the old Church- 
 manship. The new cares less for authority, and relies 
 more on subjective considerations, and expects more from 
 fallen humanity, and attaches less importance to the 
 Divine organisation and function of the Church, than did 
 the old. We live here, on terms of easy intercourse with 
 so many to whom Catholic Doctrine, and indeed the whole 
 Creed of Christianity go for nothing, that this new estimate 
 may well have grown up without being noticed. But 
 to yield to such influences means sooner or later some 
 essentially Pantheistic substitute for the Ancient Faith. 
 
 However, not to go into great questions, you will feel 
 this difficulty less in London, There the issues are much 
 simpler than in Oxford. May we have a talk after Hall, 
 or whenever you have said Yes to the Prime Minister, 
 and posted the letter ? Your always affect. 
 
 To Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Feb. 19. — Dear Mr. Gladstone, Let me thank you most 
 humbly and most seriously for the proposal made to me, 
 under Her Majesty's kindly sanction, to succeed Dr. Stubbs, 
 at St. Paul's. 
 
 I cannot but accept your judgment in this matter, as 
 one that is to me authoritative. I fear, lest I grievously 
 should disappoint your expectation of the services that 
 I can render. 
 
 But, of all human motives that will influence me in 
 after-life, not one will stand higher than my eager and 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, 1879-1884 113 
 
 industrious desire to fulfil what you may wish in proposing 
 this appointment, and to justify your trust in me. 
 
 I shall keep near me your kind and fortifying words, 
 and pray to God that I may, at least, do what in me lies, 
 to make them good. 
 
 With earnest thanks for all the help that an act of trust 
 from one like yourself brings with it, BeUeve me your's 
 faithfuUy. 
 
 To Mrs. T. H. Green 
 
 He would have been very glad of this, I think. It 
 will, I trust, take me nearer to work that he would hold 
 dear, among the working-men of that great city. I pray 
 to God that I may always carry to such work the hope and 
 the spirit that I learned from him. It was such a delight 
 to me, at our Fellowship examination last term, to see, 
 from the papers sent in, the profound effect of the Pro- 
 legomena of Ethics upon almost all the men. They had 
 got hold of it in a way that was vital, and enduring. It 
 was no chance influence, but a teaching which had possessed 
 them with a thoroughness which seemed ineradicable. 
 Materiahsm appeared to have been absolutely displaced 
 out of the field. I am sure you will rejoice to hear of this : 
 and, perhaps, I may add that the book seemed to those of 
 us who already loved your husband, to be deeper and 
 stronger, and more entirely satisfying than any work of 
 his had seemed before. It can never cease out of our 
 lives. 
 
 Among those who congratulated him, " It wiU give me 
 the greatest delight," Dean Church wrote, " to welcome 
 you to a stall which is a very illustrious one from the names 
 of its last holders, Stubbs and Lightfoot. You will bring 
 us a great accession of strength, and just, I think, in the 
 way in which we want it." And Bishop Wilkinson, " It 
 is the work which I desire for you — full of great tempta- 
 tions — to you perhaps of special temptations — but a work 
 prepared, I humbly believe, for you by God." And Lord 
 Reay, " I daresay j^ou have by this time exhausted the 
 
 I 
 
114 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 congratulations of Anglicans, so I venture to offer you the 
 very sincere ones of a Scotch Presbyterian, who will give 
 you frequent chances of converting him to a more apostolic 
 and imaginative creed by sitting at your feet in St. Paul's 
 Cathedral." 
 
 The members of his lecture, and other Christ Church 
 undergraduates, presented to him a congratulatory address, 
 and a gift of money to buy books. In July, he writes to 
 Dr. Copleston in India : — 
 
 It is a noble place to work in, and for : so strong and 
 rich : so close to the heart of England's Ufe : so large 
 and encompassing : so beautiful too, with its perfect music 
 and its flawless Dean. I have only been one month yet 
 in residence : but it was enough to make me feel it become 
 a house of worship, as a house of prayer for all sorts of 
 stray and wandering people, who find its doors open always, 
 and its spaces wide enough to hide them, and its invitation 
 to be without question or suspicion. I look forward greatly : 
 there is no place in which I would rather spend my days, 
 and do my work. 
 
 I hope to keep two whole terms in Oxford : there, there 
 are many threads, and King, and the Warden, to cling 
 to : and so much hope, and force, and good-cheer : and 
 then the " Puseum," and Gore : these must be backed 
 with all our powers. Year by year, the Church hold grows 
 firmer in Oxford, and its range is larger, and its action more 
 brave. Aubrey Moore is becoming a great help. 
 
VI 
 
 home life 
 By Spencer L. Holland 
 
 In his boyhood, the difference in age of eight years made 
 a gap too large for companionship. I do not recollect 
 that Scott devoted himself in any way to my contemporary 
 sister and myself as he did so fascinatingly in later years 
 to children. I can only recall seeing the smart little figure 
 going off to Eton after his holidays, generally late in the 
 evening, and very cheerful. Once we two younger ones 
 were taken to see him at Eton ; and were puzzled by his 
 abrupt disappearance into a shop in the High Street, due 
 to the vision of a master, and to the fiction that High 
 Street was out of bounds, though the river was in bounds. 
 He also pointed out to us the Prince Consort riding down 
 Windsor hill. 
 
 Though called " Scotty " by his mother, to us he was 
 generally Scott or " Scotus," till we adopted him as " the 
 Canon." Miss Gifford used to call him " my dear M. A.," 
 after he took that degree : and he used to call her " my 
 dear B. A. " (Beloved Aunt). He had the Gifford liking 
 for nicknames. 
 
 Gayton Lodge, Wimbledon Common, which was our 
 home from 1861 to igo8, was an Italianised Victorian 
 villa : Scott always laughed at its architectural appearance, 
 and imagined it transported to the shore of an Italian lake. 
 
 115 
 
ii6 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 It had a tower, with a dragon for a weather-vane, and a 
 good view over the Common. The drawing-room was a 
 pleasant big room, running the whole width of the house, 
 and opening into the conservatory, a constant summer 
 sitting-place. The garden-beds were planted out each 
 year with geraniums and calceolaria : and beyond the 
 garden was " the wilderness " — some good firs and beeches 
 and oaks — and a croquet-lawn, and a swing on which Scott 
 went prodigious heights. But the house as a whole was 
 not noteworthy ; and was bitterly cold in winter. " The 
 children " were in a wing to themselves : and, oddly enough, 
 there was no room specially associated with Scott. At 
 first, he shared a room with his two brothers : later, he had 
 a spare room, but his books and belongings were at Christ 
 Church, or at Amen Court. He always looked back to 
 Wellesbourne Hall as his boyhood's favourite home. Gayton 
 was merely his holiday home, or his " visiting home." Still, 
 he was very fond of the garden ; and dehghted in the 
 Common. 
 
 As a slim figure in a grey suit, with a straight-cut jacket 
 buttoned across, as in Balliol days, he comes more clearly 
 into my perspective. There would be family walks, 
 all together then, of brothers and sisters, over Wimbledon 
 Common and to Csesar's Camp and " Jacob's Well " ; 
 picnics with friends in Richmond Park ; great days on the 
 Surrey hills, tramping from Dorking to Guildford or there- 
 abouts ; with Scott prancing ahead, waving his stick 
 enthusiastically at each point of view ; and generally ending 
 with a wild rush to catch a train home. Once he and two 
 brothers, with some friends, rushed madly about at what 
 were supposed to be great Army manoeuvres in the Aldershot 
 neighbourhood : General Manteufiel and his staff were 
 there, fresh from the 1870-71 War : we saw him sitting 
 grimly on his horse, quite still, probably contemptuous 
 
HOME LIFE 117 
 
 of the whole show : I know that we dashed from one 
 army to the other at great risk under Scott's guidance. 
 He and his elder sister often rode together : his original 
 " hunting mount " at Wellesbourne, a strange yellow 
 pony, called Inky after the battle of Inkerman, was 
 still browsing in the Gayton field, and was occasionally 
 used. Cricket was improvised on Putney Heath, with 
 John Murray and others. He would play a rapid dash- 
 ing style of croquet : later, he played lawn-tennis with 
 much activity and shouting, but was inclined to hit too 
 hard : and it was the security of racquet courts that 
 made him so good at racquets at Oxford. Skating, above 
 all, delighted him : and his performances in hard 
 winters on Wimbledon Park lake, though not strictly 
 professional, were admirable. For indoor games he never 
 cared. 
 
 He had round him a notable group of friends : the 
 John Murrays at Newstead, the Bartle Freres at Wressil 
 Lodge, and the Goldschmidts at Oak Lea. He grew up 
 to enjoy the kindly friendship of the elder John Murray, 
 Sir Bartle Frere, and Mr. Otto Goldschmidt, and the genuine 
 affection of Madame Goldschmidt (Jenny Lind) and of her 
 daughter Jenny (Mrs. Raymond Maude). Madame Gold- 
 schmidt was at her best with her " dear Mr. Scott " : she 
 threw off all stiffness with him, and the two would shout 
 with laughter in their gay companionship at dinner or in 
 the drawing-room. He was profoundly grateful to her 
 for all that she did to revive Bach's music in England. 
 His admiration of her is shown in one of the letters in the 
 third part of this book ; and is writ large in the two volumes, 
 by him and Mr. W. S. Rockstro, " Memoir of Madame Jenny 
 Lind-Goldschmidt. ' ' 
 
 Among his many other friendships, Scott used to delight 
 in evenings at Newstead, when Mr. John Murray would 
 
ii8 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 prowl round his library, pulling out here and there some 
 interesting book or some beautifully illustrated edition 
 to show to his guests, telling reminiscences all the time of 
 the author or of the artist. The intimacy at Wressil Lodge 
 was chiefly with the daughters, especially with Miss May 
 Frere. Sir Bartle was often away on political missions ; 
 and when he did settle down at home, difference of political 
 views, and perhaps of Church views, kept them from being 
 intimate ; but Scott always admired Sir Bartle's high 
 character and sweetness of temper. He administered the 
 Communion to him on his death-bed ; and made the 
 arrangements for his burial in St. Paul's. Another Wimble- 
 don friend was Wentworth Hankey, son of Mr. Beaumont 
 Hankey, of Richmond House. The elder Gores, also, 
 were Scott's companions : but the distinguished Charles 
 was still a Harrow boy when Scott was an undergraduate ; 
 and was at one time an unwilling pupil in a dancing-class 
 with me. Herbert Pollock, son of Baron Pollock, was 
 another later friend : he became a Canon of Rochester, 
 and the Baron used to roll out his satisfaction, with the 
 Pollocky growling voice, that the neighbourhood had 
 supplied three Canons to the Church — " Scott, and Charles 
 Gore, and now my son Hurb-u-r-t." 
 
 Our theatricals were founded by Scott ; with the help 
 of an Eton friend, an admirable mimic, Ronald Ferguson. 
 They were planned for the Christmas holidays : and in the 
 later years they became notable performances. The earliest 
 I can remember was " A Shadow Pantomime," where 
 behind a large sheet, with a particular placing of lights, 
 Scott and Ferguson appeared in diverse feats, and leaped 
 into space : then, for some years, came farces : and at 
 last, under the guiding of my brother Lawrence, we attained 
 to high-class comedy. Scott's repertory was mainly that 
 of the " comic elderly gentleman," or that of the " confused 
 
HOME LIFE 119 
 
 fool." * In the old play-biUs, carefully preserved by his 
 mother, I find him as " the Fader of She " in I^i on parle 
 Franfais ; " Mr. Sowerby " in The Phenomenon in a Smock 
 Frock ; " John Duck " in The Jacobites ; " Schpoonenberg " 
 " in Your Life's in Danger (a memorable performance of his ); 
 and " John " in Meg's Diversion. I should say that his 
 line was limited, and that he could not take the .part of 
 " jeune premier." His last appearance must have been 
 in 1874, in a Scene from Henry VIII. ; he played the Earl 
 of Surrey, to Lawrence's Wolsey. But he did not care to 
 act after his ordination : and his welcome applause en- 
 couraged us in our later ambitious attempts. 
 
 The family holidays, in the earlier years, were now and 
 then in Switzerland or in Italy. In 1859, he and Arthur, 
 under the escort of a Swiss courier, came out to us at Champ- 
 le-Banc, above Vevey : in 1863 we were near Lucerne : he 
 took to sketching, on this holiday : his sketches are clean 
 and clear : and at intervals the grotesque heads come in 
 the sketch-book which later he used as a diversion to his 
 lecture notes, but never to his sermons. In 1866, Switzer- 
 land again, and his long illness : in 1869, he and Nettleship, 
 after their walking-tour in Wales, joined us at Dulverton, 
 and Nettleship won the affection of aU of us, and especially 
 of my sister Amy and myself. In Rome, Christmas-time 
 1871, Scott had an interview, under the auspices of 
 Monsignore Howard, a friend of my mother's, with Cardinal 
 Antonelli ; whom he disliked. In 1877, after his con- 
 valescence in Italy, he and my sister Lilly joined us at 
 Pontresina : here they met many friends — the Arthur 
 
 * To Legard. Jan. 19, 1871. — I have been sunk in the toils of the 
 world, entirely. We had two plays last week, followed by dancing, here 
 at home. Acting is such fun : especially as they went off capitally. My 
 Eton brother is the best actor I know. I did very broad comedy and lay 
 hid in chests and got up chimneys, which seemed to amuse the audience. 
 I go on Monday to cousins : dance at balls on Wednesday and Friday : 
 and Oxford on Saturday. 
 
120 HENRY SCOIT HOLLAND 
 
 Aclands, Canon Body, the Muirheads, Canon Awdry : we 
 did some glacier-expeditions and some climbs : and Scott 
 and Canon Body once beguiled Canon Awdry and me into 
 a roll down a snow-slope, with joyful shouting. That 
 autumn, Scott and I made our great ascent of the Blumlis- 
 Alp. This was not the last of his holidays abroad : but 
 he felt the boredom of Swiss hotels, and found his own 
 hills more beautiful than anything in Switzerland. " The 
 Swiss hills are rather too big," he writes to a friend in 
 1883, " I prefer the Welsh." And in 1885, " I cannot 
 stand foreign parts beyond a very limited time. I hunger 
 for sweet human beings." 
 
 What was Scott's actual position in the family circle 
 before, let us say, he became of public importance ? Between 
 his father and him, after he grew up, there was probably 
 only one thing in common, and that was Churchmanship : 
 though his father stopped short at the Cambridge High 
 Church standpoint as held by his old friend Mr. Webb ; 
 to whose church, St. Andrew's, Wells Street, he often 
 went when he was in town. Apart from this common 
 interest, Scott's character, habits, and political and social 
 views, differed toto coelo from those of his father : so that, 
 except for their sense of humour, their appreciation of the 
 horse, and old memories of Warwickshire and Gloucester- 
 shire, there could be little easy converse between them. 
 The father was justly proud of his son's varied achievements, 
 but was apt to be worried by Scott's unpunctual arrivals, 
 losses of luggage, quick changes of talk, ways of treating 
 some topics, and so on : yet never did I hear Scott speak 
 impatiently : and he would nearly always laugh aside 
 any outbreak of political wrath. My father lived a good 
 deal apart from family life, and was never at luncheons or 
 at five-o'clock teas. Though lively at times, a keen sight- 
 seer on travel, and with a chuckling sense of humour, he 
 
THE HON. CHARLOTTE DOROTHEA HOLLAND 
 
 (Mother of Canon H. S. Holland) 
 
HOME LIFE 121 
 
 lived a reserved life at home ; and, as one of my brothers 
 said, was a born bachelor by nature. 
 
 The family devotion — shared to the full by Scott — was 
 poured out to my mother : she was the unfailing bond of 
 union. She was quick to understand her children ; most 
 loving to all of them ; intensely proud of Scott's success ; 
 and, above all, overwhelmingly hospitable and sympathetic 
 with young people. Friends, callers, social gatherings, 
 stray young men for Sundays, these abounded at Gayton, 
 and on many occasions of hired houses in London : and 
 even when she settled down abroad, at Cannes, or in Rome, 
 or in Switzerland, her hospitality continued. The affection 
 of the family was openly shown in caresses. My wife 
 remembers seeing her in her armchair at Gayton, with the 
 four sons round her, all then grown up, one stroking her 
 hand, another smoothing her hair, Lawrence in his odd way 
 lying at her feet, and me holding her other hand : it was 
 no special occasion : we all " flung ourselves " at her. How 
 much she influenced Scott when he was grown-up, it is 
 difficult to say. She certainly planned for him to get into 
 the Foreign Office ; and was puzzled at his taking orders. 
 I doubt whether she was the recipient of his intellectual 
 or spiritual confidences. No letters remain, from her to 
 him, belonging to the critical period of his life : and the 
 few remaining letters from him to her are mostly outpourings 
 of affection on her birthdays, or descriptions of his visits. 
 More probably, his confidence was given to his elder sister. 
 But that he loved his mother with all the warmth of his 
 heart, and rejoiced to tell her of every advancement of his 
 life, no one can doubt : and for her, his choice of views 
 and all his doings were ever right, though she might not 
 always appreciate their meaning and force. She clung 
 to his spiritual help to the end. 
 
 It was reserved for his " Aunt Jane," Miss Gifford, to 
 
122 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 be his critic, as well as his devoted admirer. She did 
 not hesitate to combat his increasingly Liberal views, or 
 to tell him " not to be toolish " over the ritualistic excesses 
 of some of his friends. She had been fond of him from 
 his childhood. There was a wonderful charm about her ; 
 especially for men. In spite of many admirers, and at 
 least two romances, she had remained single, not from lack 
 of opportunity, but from her own unwillingness to make a 
 final choice. Her little Belgravian drawing-room was a 
 miniature salon of bright talk, with many interesting 
 people : old admirers came, not always successfully, to 
 introduce their wives : Mr. Otto Goldschmidt played to 
 her : Dr. Liddon was tempted to teas and dinners : and 
 through her brother and Lady Salisbury she had many 
 friends in the political and official world. Her visits to 
 Gayton are associated in my mind with the entrance into 
 the room of the rustle of soft raiment, the waft of scent, 
 and a melodious voice. She used to sing Claribel songs, 
 and snatches of Italian Opera, to her own accompaniment, 
 in a vibrato style with tremulous sentiment : I can hear 
 still the pathetic notes of "Oh ye voices gone," as she sat 
 at the piano, to be followed perhaps by Scott shouting 
 Schubert songs at her bidding : the Erl Konig was one of 
 his great achievements. Music, books, religious affairs, 
 they revelled in discussing, while my mother nodded on her 
 sofa and we listened in awe, trying to read our own books. 
 Then there were rapturous visits to her cottage at Bettws, 
 in which he delighted, coming on there in later years from 
 visits to Hawarden, for her to exercise her wit against 
 his growing devotion to Mr. Gladstone. She was an ardent 
 Tory, fed up on the Morning Post. As Scott developed 
 to be a leading light of the Church, he became her guide 
 and help, but she did not often go to hear him preach. In 
 early days, she introduced him to St. Barnabas, Pimlico ; 
 
HOME LIFE 123 
 
 but she resented the " high jinks " and " mumbUngs " of 
 later ritualism. 
 
 As old age crept on and old friends dropped out, and 
 especially after my mother's death, she clung more and 
 more to Scott's help in sickness and in sorrow ; and we 
 thought that her death in 1901 would have been felt by him 
 as deeply as that of his mother, and that the loss would be 
 irreparable. But his extraordinary vitality and high 
 spirits seemed at such times to give him a quick rebound. 
 While we others would be silent and perhaps too much 
 absorbed in our sorrow, he would break in with talk of 
 outside affairs, or of books, etc., and gain a speedy return 
 to ordinary life. He disliked graves, and seldom visited 
 them.* Except when the news came of the possibility of 
 Stephen Fremantle's dying, I never saw him actually break 
 down, though tears were in his eyes at times of grief. The 
 Giffords always cried both in grief and in laughter. It was 
 not until the War took its toll of young lives, with many of 
 whom he had been on terms of affection or friendship, 
 that he seemed to get weighed down by the sense of death. 
 
 That he had some spiritual guidance over the family 
 life, may be assumed : but except for his influence over his 
 elder sister he never pressed this. He would write special 
 letters to a brother or sister at some critical time : he would 
 give us touching little commemorative services beside a 
 death-bed, pouring out beautifully worded prayers ; some- 
 times, perhaps, with more emotion than we ordinary mortals 
 could bear. But his brothers, Arthur and Lawrence, re- 
 mained distinctly in a Protestant frame of mind on Church 
 
 * In 1915, he writes to the widow of a friend, " Graves are empty- 
 things : they do nothing for one, except just serve to symbolise tenderness 
 and affection. . . . Anyhow, do not trouble over your ' gravelessness.' 
 But there must be an effort to make it intelligible to the poor maids, re- 
 membering that their whole minds and hearts go out to the graves. If 
 you can do anything to set them at ease about this, by some sort of kindly- 
 attention to the poor spot, it would be happier for them." 
 
124 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 matters. His political views, unless he were urged to 
 argument, he never obtruded : and the politics of his father 
 and his two brothers remained of an unbending Tory type. 
 I followed him on the Liberal side ; but I cannot recollect 
 that he ever so much as hinted to me to take that line : 
 and it was only when he found, rather to his amusement, 
 that I was sympathetic, that he opened out freely to me. 
 It was the same with his " socialistic " views : and it came 
 with a pang to me that I had never visited, till after his 
 death, the Maurice Hostels which he so cared for : nor did 
 he ever press his family for donations toward their support. 
 Doubtless my having followed him to Eton and Christ 
 Church brought us into closer sympathy ; and his goodness 
 to me in troubles and trials at both places soon won my 
 affection : and at last I was the only brother left to him. 
 But his affection for each and all of us never failed. 
 
VII 
 
 OTHER MEMORIES 
 
 Three things have been said of Holland : one, by 
 Mr. G. W. E. Russell, that he was " anima naturaliter 
 Christiana " ; another, by Lord Kilbracken, that he was 
 " born with the philosophic mind ready-made " ; the 
 third, by himself, in 1872, " I suppose I have got some 
 gush of naked himianity that wiU always be with me." 
 He was not afraid of his own manhood : he did not let 
 it be too strong for him, but he deUghted in it every day 
 of his Ufe. Friendship, music, poetry, athletics, flashes 
 of ironical or fanciful talk, ventures of thought and action, 
 went to his head. Eton and Balhol had kept back from 
 him one gift. They had taught him nothing, or next to 
 nothing, of the natural sciences. He never acquired that 
 habit of mind which comes from steady practical grinding 
 at chemistry or biology with microscopes and test-tubes. 
 It was the way of his education, to neglect the natural 
 sciences. He had everything else, all that he cared for. 
 
 Men of less originaUty, seeing this young man whirled 
 away from them by his immediate enjoyment of each 
 pursuit, might well be puzzled, and caU him unbalanced 
 and excitable. At Eton, he had found fault with himself 
 for idleness and " lightheadedness " : and he did not, as 
 a freshman, take Oxford seriously. But in 1868 came the 
 change. His last two years at BaUiol were the making of 
 
 125 
 
126 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 him. They brought out in him not only the naturally 
 Christian soul, the philosophic mind, and the perfervid 
 sense that the world " means intensely, and means good," 
 but also his independence, decisiveness, and resolute will 
 to be of service to the community. 
 
 It would be pleasant, now, to have that essay which 
 he wrote for T. H. Green, in 1869, on Culture and the 
 International, suggesting that their reconciliation must 
 lie within the work of the Church. Oxford, he saw, was 
 not doing her share of that work. He detected self-com- 
 placency and narrowness in Oxford life ; they cut across 
 his happiness in his own life. " He could not keep — for 
 that a shadow lower 'd on the fields — here with the shepherds 
 and the silly sheep." Not that he told the sheep that he 
 thought them silly : but he had ways of leading them which 
 did not occur to other shepherds. 
 
 To one who was of the Christ Church flock in 1874-78, 
 it seems now that he was always devising plans to draw 
 us further afield, and to acquaint us with what was happen- 
 ing outside Oxford to unfortunate sheep which had neither 
 shepherds nor folds. Other young dons helped him in 
 these devices : but he invented and inspired them. Even 
 with that inspiration, they were not very effective : he 
 must be there, to keep us going : we strayed away, without 
 him. There was the little service in Cathedral, every 
 night at 10 o'clock : but very few of us went to it, and 
 it soon fell into disuse. There was the Uttle musical society, 
 which met in the Old Lecture-room, to sing glees and 
 choruses, Mendelssohn's (Edipus, and Integer Vitae, and 
 so forth : but we were half-hearted over it. There was the 
 Christ Church Missionary Association, instituted in 1876 : 
 he read a paper, at its first meeting, on " Oxford, a home 
 for the missionary spirit of the Church." Later, there 
 was a Httle vShakespeare society. In 1879, the Oxford 
 
OTHER MEMORIES 127 
 
 Mission to Calcutta : in 1879 or 1880, the first meeting 
 of " Pesek " : in 1881, the founding of the Christ Church 
 Mission in Poplar. And there was all that he did for the 
 White Cross League in Oxford : " What am I to tell you/' 
 he writes to Wilfrid Richmond, " of our purity work ? I 
 send you a paper of objects, which I drew up. You ought 
 to have seen New Coll. Hall crammed with 400 men to 
 hear Bp. of Truro speak on it. I hope it will do. Percival, 
 Butler, Talbot, King, Ottley, Livingstone, and myself 
 chiefly do it." 
 
 He set himself to make us active, not lookers-on, but 
 plajdng our education for all it was worth against injustice 
 and class-hatred outside Oxford. He found us, on the 
 whole, rather irresponsive : we felt his influence, but were 
 shy of confessing it. We were content with our surround- 
 ings : they may have been a Fool's Paradise, but they 
 certainly were a Paradise. It is strange to remember 
 that one of us, whose present record of social service is 
 known far and wide, was capable then of saying, " The 
 difference between the working-man and us is, that we 
 can explain him but he can't explain us." This Olympian 
 frame of mind satisfied some of us, once upon a time : and 
 no man did more than Holland to get us out of it, and to 
 make us revise our estimates. That is the meaning of the 
 Hoxton venture, so far back as 1873 : it was the beginning 
 of all that he did to turn the everlasting " Oxford move- 
 ment " into a democratic movement. 
 
 He would invent for us not only serious interests but 
 the most fugitive amusements. At Porlock Weir, in April 
 1878, when the snow was on the hills, it was a new game 
 for the reading-party — to run full tilt at a snow-drift, spin 
 round, and fly backward into it. At Oxford, one spring, 
 it was jumping-parties : he and half-a-dozen of us jumping 
 or attempting the streams in the meadows beyond the 
 
128 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 railway station : he cleared them in fine style. He had 
 such a way with him that leapfrog, in his company, would 
 have been worth playing. 
 
 His reading-parties, of course, came to an end when he 
 left Oxford for London : there was a plan for all who had 
 been on them to meet in London for a final dinner with him : 
 but he was ordered out of London for his health, and the 
 plan fell through. Now and again, in the later years, he 
 looked-up friends on a reading-party : he writes from 
 Crookham, in April 1893 : " I am sitting in this pleasant 
 cottage, with a little Oxford reading-party, under Strong — 
 talking old shop, telling stories of Bayne, and Bright, and 
 all the old lovely names. And the sun pours on : and the 
 birds all sing : and the woods brood over their buds, until 
 they break, and burst into tender tentative inquiring 
 green." 
 
 Reading-parties, when Oxford was shut against us 
 from mid- June to mid-October, were a wonderful relief 
 to the monotony of the Long Vacation. It was hard on 
 us to be exiles, for all the best of the year, from one of the 
 best of all places for us : and the length of the Long became 
 at last almost unbearable. Reading-parties were of two 
 kinds : those with a tutor, and those without. The Roscoff 
 party in 1873 was transitional : Holland was the only 
 graduate, but the other young men were much of his own 
 age. Later, came the parties which were indeed his. There 
 might be a second in command ; but it was Holland, who 
 led us, and fed us : and if any shortage of supplies had to 
 be faced, he called it a little ItaUan meal. At Bettws 
 (1876) he gravely took back to the butcher a leg of mutton 
 which was high : but the butcher asserted that it had 
 gone high in Holland's keeping. Of this party, he writes : — 
 
 Evening after evening, we watch steady sunsets of 
 perfectly pure skies, changing softly from blue to green, 
 
OTHER MEMORIES 129 
 
 from green to grey — and the slow stars suddenly are there, 
 hung in a perfectly liquid diamond clearness. The streams 
 are nearly vanished — but still we plunge into salmon-pools — 
 the only effort we can make : and the whole party runs 
 very smoothly. The boys are real boys, quite child-hke : 
 and we can exercise authority when we Uke without fear : 
 and they are quite gay and bright : and today there comes 
 dear Hardy for a week, which is delightful. 
 
 It is disconcerting, now, to find that he thought us 
 quite childlike. But we had not the heroic stature of the 
 young men in Clough's poem ; none of us fell in love with 
 a village maiden ; none of us was argumentative. Nor 
 did he — more's the pity — draw us out. As he says of the 
 Roscoff party, " If nobody is inclined to ' talk big,' I can- 
 not, however much I wish, bring it on." We waited in 
 vain to be drawn out by him. 
 
 In the later years, his parties became larger : any 
 number of men would have been glad of an invitation. 
 Of these later parties, the Bishop of South Tokyo, Dr. 
 Boutflower, writes : — 
 
 Will any one recall for your memoir that vision of wonder 
 and delight, Holland on a reading-party ? I will send you 
 a hint of those particular memories which I cannot afford 
 to lose. It was the habit of two or three younger members 
 of that circle of Churchmen who in the '80s made Christ 
 Church so wonderful a place of inspnation for any man 
 thinking of ordination, to make up a reading-party in the 
 summer vacation, not too exclusively brainy or pious, 
 in which undergraduates with gay waistcoats might trim 
 the boat on the lay side against tutors. I remember the 
 more than ordinary excitement that the seniors disclosed 
 when Holland's arrival was expected. As a member of 
 the House, one could not but know a good deal about 
 Scott Holland already — I wonder how many undergraduates 
 had more reason to bless him. One knew that he lived in 
 Tom Quad, and could always be counted on in time of 
 need : that as Senior Proctor he was an object of interest 
 to more than the House itself, and that one out-college 
 
 K 
 
130 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 man, who had once too often braved the darkness of Oxford 
 streets without cap and gown, had expressed his opinion 
 that it was worth being sent for and fined five shillings, 
 to see the Senior Proctor at home, sitting on the coal-scuttle, 
 nursing one leg, and genial even in the exercise of discipline. 
 One knew that in these rooms he sometimes lectured on 
 theology, pacing the floor with hands thrust in high trousers 
 pockets, or taking hold of the door into his inner sanctum, 
 and drawing on the edge of it with a pencil stump : and 
 that one who had the curiosity to make private inspection 
 alleged that it was little pigs with curly tails that the 
 lecturer delineated while he dealt with the ontological 
 proof. We knew that nothing could be dull that Holland 
 said or did. But why this special excitement of the reading- 
 party ? There was a story afloat that Liddon had refused 
 to go with Holland to the Alps, because Holland always 
 lost his head in mountain air, threatening himself with 
 destruction and his friends with nervous collapse. We 
 drank the wine of Bettws-y-coed air and sunlight, but we 
 understood that the champagne would come with Holland. 
 
 And so indeed it did. If you thought you were too 
 old for the hymn " AJl things bright and beautiful," you 
 might yet learn it again with Holland on holiday in Wales. 
 It was quite as exuberant as making bonfires in Peck. How 
 he tore down the grass hill to the little river, in the fresh 
 sunlight of Sunday morning, on the way to early service, 
 and took the stepping-stones two at a bound ! And then 
 to see him pull himself up for a moment in mid-stream, 
 legs apart and hands clasped, and exclaim with his rapid 
 and intense intonation, " Oh I say, just hark at the dear 
 little water saying its prayers " ! Or, in the fields, a half- 
 awake cow would gaze with dreamy eyes at so strange a 
 disturber of the early morning peace. " Hullo, old cow, 
 what are you thinking of ? Are you thinking what a funny 
 little man Ottles is ? " — the beloved Ottley walking leisurely 
 behind him. 
 
 And if this was Sunday morning, then what of other 
 days ? When he was there, it was not the youngest of us 
 who got first to the top of a climb, or who shouted most 
 for joy. There is a memory too of a strange scene when 
 at night some inspiration had suggested a moonlight bathe, 
 and there was a wild rush down to the river — pyjamas 
 and whoopings. It was all part of the champagne. But 
 
OTHER MEMORIES 131 
 
 usually we put away our reading at about nine o'clock 
 (cocoa and compline, I think it was) and so to bed decorously, 
 but possibly not without singing. Holland, after evening 
 cocoa or morning porridge, would sing sotto voce the first 
 line of " The joys of day are over." 
 
 Oh, those reading-parties ! I don't remember a thing 
 we talked of : but I know it wasn't all rubbish. Those 
 days did not, so far as I know, bring the beginning of any 
 new " movement " : but they confirmed to commonplace 
 young men the faith that our sources of spiritual help and 
 inspiration were one with the fountains of gladness. 
 
 He kept us from idleness, but he did not interfere with 
 us over our books : he let us find our way in them for 
 ourselves. There is a letter to Fremantle, after one of 
 the earliest reading-parties, Festiniog, 1872 : — 
 
 I am convinced from a study of that brains vary 
 
 in quantity not in quality. This explains my old difficulty 
 of the brilliancy of pass-men in the ordinary ways of life. 
 He is just as good as any of us for a certain distance ; but 
 the stoppage comes before ours, and there is a dead check, 
 and nothing to be done : he cannot see anything. I observe 
 too the real pass-men's method of reading : I have never 
 believed in its existence before. Half the time we are 
 working, he is dreaming, thinking of nothing, perfectly 
 vacant, gazing gently and pensively at the ceiUng. His 
 work has no spark of interest to him. There is no intensity, 
 no stretch of intellect, about it. It lies before him, and 
 his eyes wander over it half-consciously. I sometimes 
 thought I might offer to read the Aristotle with him next 
 term, and see if anything like enthusiasm and a sense of 
 its reality and truth could be inspired : but I am afraid 
 I cannot do this sort of thing for people who do not under- 
 stand a good deal already : I am too confused, and live 
 too much in shadowy glimmerings of truth. I hope some 
 day to get better — to be able to think out things more 
 thoroughly. 
 
 But this 1872 letter does not represent him as he was 
 in the later years, with more experience of teaching. There 
 
132 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 are letters, not long before 1884, to an undergraduate who 
 had failed in Moderations and had been sent down : — 
 
 1. This is miserable ! and not even to see you ! I am 
 bitterly disappointed not to be able to give you any com- 
 fort. A cold meagre letter is too hopelessly inadequate, 
 Juvenal is too hard : you can't do it. It has been a mistake ; 
 not even all Thomas' wonderful care could manage it : 
 it is a most difficult book. . . . You have worked ; you 
 have striven. What is it you have not done ? There 
 must be something at fault in your way of reading : some 
 failure to face things, to lay hold of things, to take posses- 
 sion of the books. Don't put it down to accidents, or 
 misfortunes, or to the venom of examiners. It is hard 
 lines : but that is not all it is. It is also a failure : and 
 the great thing is to learn why. Not a moral failure : you 
 were grinding well : but an intellectual failure, a failure 
 to learn somehow. Make sure of this : and then you will 
 gain by the experience. Otherwise, it will go without 
 profiting. Poor child, must you turn out to a miserable 
 tavern ? and still go through the old treadmill grind ? 
 Oh dear, Oh dear. I am so deeply sorry for you. It 
 will take you all your heart to keep up courage and hope. 
 You must still believe it can be done : and you must buckle 
 to, with a firmer faith : and it must be done at any cost : 
 so that you shall not feel a defeated man. 
 
 2. I have been greatly disturbed for some time by 
 rumours and confirmations of your resolution to throw up 
 Oxford. I know how plain and rational the reasons for 
 doing so look : yet against them all stands the unanswerable 
 argument that, to do so, means to give up the chance of 
 being really "educated." Does that make you angry? 
 I think the plough proves that you have not yet attained 
 the real gift of reading. It is a very hard power to win : 
 it is the real essence of education. It means the power 
 of fixing the attention, and of storing the results. Now, 
 no tutorising abroad wiU dream of teaching you this. It 
 will only encourage that general skimming of things, which 
 is so deadly in examinations, as in life. It will teach you 
 how to pick up smatterings : how to make a respectable 
 show with very little. It wiU never take your mind in 
 hand, and refashion it into a good and capable instrument. 
 It is the instrument, that is wrong. You worked all right ; 
 
OTHER MEMORIES I33 
 
 you read all you ought to have read ; but there was a 
 misuse of the mind with which you read. It seems to 
 me that for you, who have so many interests that you 
 easily and quickly take up and follow, a casual cram abroad 
 is the worst form of temptation. Dear child, I am sorry 
 to speak so roughly and brutally. But I am too fond of 
 you not to be frank. It is rather a critical decision : and 
 1 feel that if this occasion is passed, there will be no return 
 or recovery possible. I believe you think that we are 
 all going to cut you dead because you are not a member 
 of the House ! You just come up and try ! Oh dear, 
 I am^so sorry for you, and your trouble. Forgive my 
 hard words. 
 
 And in 1884 there are letters to Spencer J. Portal; 
 after the gift of money to buy books, and after the last of 
 the reading-parties : — 
 
 1. Jtme 6, 1884. — My heart feels full of blessing : and 
 all the more because (do you know ?) our Ufe here is un- 
 blessed by much gratitude. Shall I say it ? Under- 
 graduates do not ordinarily seem to their tutors very grate- 
 ful. The tutors grind on (the big Pass tutors, I mean) 
 spending all their strength and time : and it is all taken 
 by the men as the thing paid for : and if they have some- 
 thing a little unlucky in manner or look, no amount of 
 pains on their side is enough to save them from harsh 
 judgments, and they get but httle return of thanks. 
 
 I can say this of them, because I never had their fate : 
 you boys have always been kindly and affectionate to me ; 
 though I never did a quarter of the work that the others 
 are doing, nor took half the trouble for you that they did. 
 This is really true : and the more I feel your great kindness 
 to me, the more I feel how rarely at Oxford gratitude finds 
 its way forward. Yet it is such a marvellous, life-giving 
 boon, this of gratitude. How can I tell you how it cheers ? 
 
 2, Aug. 1884. — It was wonderfully happy and good, 
 wasn't it ? I never knew a party go more easily, and 
 brightly, and good-ly. I found in it the old joy that I love 
 so much, the joy of delicious ease, and of most pleasant 
 free intimacy ; and aU lying about the associations of 
 lovely scenery, and with the justifying atmosphere of 
 
134 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 virtuous work to purify and dignify and sweeten everything, 
 so that everything lives at once — eyes and heart and brain 
 and limbs : and I was so glad, again, too, to iind bathing 
 possess its fund of ancient bliss. Aug. 12. — I do desire 
 that the memory of a reading-party should be the memory 
 of a time when you were, at once, at your best and at your 
 happiest. It is such a blessed thing to know, and feel, 
 that it is very happy to be good. You have been so wonder- 
 fully loyal and grateful to me : and such loyalty is the 
 best cheer that is possible. It helps more than anything 
 else in the world. Do, please, use me whenever I can at 
 all help. Will you come to me in any trouble, or per- 
 plexity ? I should always be so grateful if you would. 
 Believe this, always. And, perhaps, if at any time you can 
 by a word help Ch. Ch. to go along quietly, and can save 
 the boys from doing anything cruel to Sampson, which 
 would bring on hideous distresses, you will try to say that 
 word, will you ? . . . I cannot bear, do you knov/, to 
 hear you call me " Mr." Do leave it out. It is too stiff. 
 Do you think you could ? 
 
 Mostly, we undergraduates did not see below the sur- 
 face of his life ; we were hardly conscious of the latent 
 severity in him. For many years, perhaps more than 
 twenty, he used a scourge : and, of course, he observed 
 a rule of fasting : but not beyond the bounds of common- 
 sense : as he advises a friend, " I would take enough food 
 to bring me into the normal condition which I am in before 
 food in the ordinary way. I would take enough to save 
 me from physical anxiety, or distress, or alarm over my 
 body. I should wish still to be in the mind in which, 
 normally, I find myself in the early morning." 
 
 The surface of his life was so delightful to watch, and 
 his mind at play so charmed us, that we did not set our- 
 selves to pry into him : and if he had caught us at it, he 
 would have withered us. But some of his friends, who 
 knew him in fuller confidence, were able to see below the 
 surface. As Philip Waggett said, in igi8 : — 
 
OTHER MEMORIES i35 
 
 There was a certain sternness. You remember, at 
 Christ Church, Holland's white face when some disturbance 
 was forward which we thought innocent enough. There 
 was a fire under that geniaUty, the geniality which some- 
 times led people to think that he was tolerant of real mischief. 
 
 No man could be more tender with those who failed 
 and stumbled ; no man was more conscious of infirmity 
 and fault in himself. No man could be gentler with the 
 largest possible transgressions in a multitude or in an 
 individual. But speak a word in the sense that the failure 
 did not matter, that failure might not be failure, that 
 transgression might do no harm, that we might in some 
 degree unclasp the armour of hoHness or put aside a demand 
 of the great law ; and there was a new note in Holland's 
 voice. 
 
 He was intolerant of every compromise of the abstract 
 claim of right. He was intolerant also of every compromise 
 of the abstract claim of reason. If there is a man who 
 never saw Holland angry — and I continually meet such 
 men — I wish it were not too late to say. Try him with some 
 stammering claim of obscurantism. Tell him that you 
 do not care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it is 
 charming ; say in an accent of religion or in the name of 
 the Church that you have parted with free choice, that you 
 are afraid of using your judgment ; that you suppose 
 all things will come right if, without the effort of intelligence 
 and the effort to know, you trust yourself to some stream 
 of tendency not yourself that makes for righteousness. 
 Then you shall see Holland angry. 
 
PART II 
 
ST. PAUL S 
 
 In Miss Church's Life of Dean Church, Holland has written 
 of the dreariness of St. Paul's in its unregenerate days. 
 " It was waiting for the discovery of its activities. Its 
 main bulk lay practically idle, except for special occasions 
 such as the festival of the charity children, or on great public 
 functions such as the burial of a hero. At all other times, 
 over the length and breadth of its large area — cold, naked, 
 and unoccupied — mooning sight-seers roamed at large. 
 Its daily services had always been hidden away in the 
 choir, behind the thick organ-screen against which Wren 
 had so vehemently protested. There, in seclusion, a tiny 
 body of cultivated musicians sang to a sprinkled remnant 
 of worshippers. Everything was done on the smallest 
 scale, and much was mean and slovenly to the last degree. 
 The attendance of the Chapter, and of the cathedral staff, 
 was reduced to a minimum. There was little attempt 
 at discipline or at dignity in the conduct of the daily 
 services." To an old Londoner, the present influences 
 of St. Paul's are one of the best things in England : for he 
 can recall the time of its desolation. The festival of the 
 charity children took a fortnight of preparing, with the 
 building-up of a vast amphitheatre of seats for them : 
 it was effective, as a bit of sentiment ; it pleased Blake 
 and Thackeray : but it was not much of a festival for the 
 
 139 
 
140 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 children : there was a sermon of portentous length, and 
 some of them fainted, and had to be removed. On rare 
 occasions, " Service under the Dome " would be announced, 
 and people would observe this event of the Christian year. 
 But St. Paul's was less attractive to the masses than its 
 neighbour Newgate : where the old Londoner can remember, 
 on a Sunday morning, seeing a crowd of men and women 
 already waiting for the pubHc hanging of the pirates of 
 the Flowery Land on the Monday morning. 
 
 Dean Church was appointed in 187 1. " It is clear," 
 he writes to Dr. Mozley, " that what I am to come in for 
 is very tough practical business, and that I am not to be 
 as other Deans have been. It is to set St. Paul's in order, 
 as the great English Cathedral, before the eyes of the 
 country. I mean that this is what Gladstone has in view, 
 and what Liddon, Gregory, and partially Lightfoot expect 
 of their Dean." And to Dr. Asa Gray, " Times are changed. 
 What is required now is that St. Paul's should waken up 
 from its long slumber, and show what use it is of, and how 
 it can justify its existence as the great cathedral church 
 of London." 
 
 He came, as Holland says, " at the most favourable 
 moment that could possibly be imagined. The conditions 
 vital to the impending change had all been prepared with 
 curious felicity. The whole of the Chapter who had grown 
 up under the older regime had died within three years, 
 and the new men were simply waiting for the opportunity 
 to begin. Gregory had been appointed by Lord Beaconsfield 
 in 1868 ; Liddon by Mr. Gladstone in 1869 ; Lightfoot 
 by the same judgment in 1870. Already the movement 
 of a new activity was astir. The crowds which came to 
 Liddon's sermons had carried the ordinary Sunday service 
 out of the choir into the dome ; and, once there, it never 
 went back. The re-arrangement of the whole choir was 
 
ST. PAUL'S 141 
 
 under consideration and experiment. Lectures and services 
 in the chapter-house for City men were being schemed. 
 The committee for the decoration of the cathedral, which 
 had stagnated, had been revived." 
 
 The organ-screen, of course, had made it impossible 
 for St. Paul's to be what it is now, the Londoner's parish- 
 church with all London for its parish : and that is a poor 
 phrase for it : Canon Alexander, in a sermon during the 
 War, found the right phrase — " the parish-church of the 
 British Empire." The removal of the screen had been 
 decided so far back as i860 : and for some years after 
 i860, the dethroned organ wandered about the Cathedral, 
 till in 1870 its present place was chosen. The whole scheme 
 for the redemption of St. Paul's came into being with the 
 abolition of that wall between the choir and the space 
 under the dome. It routed the choristers out of their slack- 
 ness : it flung open the whole Cathedral, from end to end, 
 as our very own. But would we care to have it, and would 
 we get to be fond of it ? If the genius of the reformers 
 had not inspired them, year in year out, we should still 
 be fighting shy of St. Paul's. 
 
 From end to end, the Cathedral must be in continuous 
 use, " as continuous as the life which it was needed to sanctify. 
 Morning, noon, and evening, there it must be, unfailing, 
 unflagging." The services must be full of dignity and of 
 honour : nothing mean or careless in them. The celebration 
 of the Holy Communion " must be brought out of the 
 comer in which it has hitherto lurked." The music must 
 appeal to great crowds. " At St. Paul's, with its Palladian 
 spaciousness, with its unbroken vistas ; at St. Paul's, 
 set upon the central platform in the midst of enormous 
 populations — it was essential that the appeal should be 
 wide-winged ; its music must be full- voiced, powerful, 
 abundant ; it should reach to all parts of the building ; 
 
142 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 it must be capable of drawing multitudes under its spell." 
 The very best of everything must be given freely, as belonging 
 to everybody : " there should be no challenging vergers, 
 no obstruction to free movement, no inquiries, no suspicions, 
 no exclusions, no shaking of the money-bag." Finally, 
 St. Paul's must be in touch with all the good works of the 
 London diocese, to draw them together : " missions, 
 committees, guilds, leagues, societies, associations — all these, 
 in their manifold varieties, should find opportunity for 
 union, in corporate acts of worship, before the one altar, 
 under the mothering dome." 
 
 About 1873, the Choir School in Dean's Court was insti- 
 tuted, and the whole choral foundation was reconstructed. 
 At the Choir School, forty boys receive board and lodging 
 and a liberal education, in return for their services to the 
 Cathedral. The choir-men are six Vicars Choral, who are 
 on the foundation, and twelve Assistant Vicars Choral. 
 
 The Cathedral staff includes four vergers ; and ten or 
 eleven guides, whose chief duty is to attend to the visitors 
 coming from all parts of the world. There are also in the 
 permanent employ of the Cathedral some forty or fifty 
 workmen ; and the expense, always heavy, of maintaining 
 the staff and the services has been greatly increased by 
 the War. In the time of the air-raids, a band of volunteer 
 workers, trained by the London Fire Brigade, and numbering 
 250 men, was on duty day and night. The Cathedral had 
 three very narrow escapes from bombs, and was twice hit 
 by our own shells : one of them went through the roof of 
 the south transept. Raid after raid, and always the crypt 
 for a shelter, and always the dome untouched, and the 
 services as beautiful as ever. In all London, there is only 
 one building symbolical of all London : and that is the dome 
 of St. Paul's. 
 
 Holland was a Canon of St. Paul's for twenty-six years. 
 
ST. PAUL'S 143 
 
 Long before he came, the work of the reformers had been 
 completed : but St, Paul's was still waiting for the reredos 
 and the mosaics. His months in residence were January, 
 May, and September. From 1886 to 1910, he was Precentor : 
 during the later years, he was also Treasurer to the Chapter. 
 The ofifice of Precentor is a foundation of the thirteenth 
 century ; there is a second in command, the Succentor : 
 but the Precentor has general supervision, and a good deal 
 of influence over the choice of the music. Holland threw 
 himself with great eagerness into everything connected 
 with these matters ; and his dealings with men and boys 
 are remembered for his wonderful, and not always dis- 
 criminating, generosity. The Treasurer to the Chapter 
 is a modern official, appointed annually by the Chapter : 
 and, as he is concerned with the Cathedral finance and 
 fabric and property and work-people, he has a large and 
 very responsible place in the general administration. In 
 this important post, Holland was Gregory's successor ; 
 with less aptitude for business, but not with less zeal for 
 the honour and glory of St. Paul's. (The Treasurer to 
 the Chapter must be distinguished from the Treasurer of 
 the Cathedral, Thesaurarius, whose office dates from the 
 twelfth century. The Treasurer of the Cathedral, with 
 a Sacrist under him, is in charge of the Cathedral's material 
 possessions ; its pictures, ornaments, vestments, and so 
 forth. He is the second in order of the four " ma j ores 
 personae," the other three being the Archdeacon of London, 
 the Precentor, and the Chancellor : these four officers 
 are appointed by the Bishop of London) . 
 
 Amen Court has shared in the general improvement 
 of everjrthing belonging to St. Paul's : the new houses 
 for the Minor Canons, and the cleared garden-space, make 
 it pleasant. Holland, all the twenty-six years, lived at 
 I, Amen Court. His brother writes of it : — 
 
144 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 The house had for its front a dull outlook on the blank 
 wall of Stationers' Hall. The drawing-room was of fine 
 length : but with this outlook it appeared to better advantage 
 when it was lit up at night. The white-painted hall and 
 staircase were an inviting entrance to the house. But the 
 real living-room was Scott's study, a long low room looking 
 out on the little garden-space. It had been Sydney Smith's 
 dining-room. Scott's writing-table, strewn with letters 
 and papers, was at one end of the room ; and his secretary's 
 at the other. The walls were lined with bookshelves. 
 As one entered on a winter's day, Scott would wheel round 
 his writing-chair to the grand fire which was then to be 
 had, and would invite one to sit over it for a talk. Beyond, 
 was the little prayer-room sanctum, where doubtless many 
 aching hearts found consolation, and where the household 
 would gather of an evening as Scott poured out his prayers, 
 with a Psalm and perhaps a verse of a hymn, throwing up 
 his hands sometimes in his fervour, and then rising to wave a 
 kindly goodnight. 
 
 From 1884 to 1897, his home was under the quiet capable 
 rule of his elder sister, who did everything to secure for him 
 domestic peace. She read to and wrote for him ; entertained 
 his many guests, in her reserved way ; made friends among 
 the Amen Court and Deanery coterie ; and regularly 
 attended the St. Paul's services. Sunday teas during his 
 " residences " were a large undertaking ; friends and 
 admirers flocked in : but he was so tired after preaching 
 that he was resolutely shut-away by her in his dining-room, 
 and only one or two intimates were allowed a sight of 
 him. " The Canon's Conscience " was an apt name given 
 to her by an epigrammatic friend. She kept his list of 
 engagements, looked out trains for his journeys, managed 
 his housekeeping with quiet but ceaseless regularity ; 
 and was his companion in Italy, and in Greece, on two 
 occasions when he was ordered away from work. 
 
 It was only for six years, that he, Dean Church, and 
 Dr. Liddon were together at St. Paul's. Dr. Liddon died 
 in September, and the Dean in December, 1890. There 
 are two letters from Dr. Liddon : one of advice as to the 
 choice of hjnnns : the other, a few weeks before death, 
 in a broken handwriting : — 
 
ST. PAUL'S 145 
 
 Hatfield House. Jan. 9, 1887. — There is, I believe, 
 no doubt that hymns do more to keep reUgion ahve among 
 the half-instructed or uninstructed mass of our people 
 than any other feature of our public worship. Certainly 
 they do much more than our sermons : and for one who 
 joins with earnest sincerity in the prayers, five or six join 
 or try to join in the hymn. In Protestant Germany, as 
 you know, the infidelity of the pulpit has been constantly 
 neutralized by the Gesangbuch. ... In choosing hymns, 
 there are two principles which ought apparently to be kept 
 in view. The first is that they should follow with unde- 
 viating accuracy the teaching of the Church in her sacred 
 seasons. It seems to me a grievous mistake to disturb 
 the sequence of this precious teaching in order to make a 
 hymn dance attendance on a sermon. The second principle 
 is to choose objective and not subjective hymns. The 
 objective hymn makes Christ our Lord its theme : the 
 subjective hymn is either an ode to self, or an assertion 
 of self disguised in religious language. Practically, in 
 the book we use at St. Paul's, it is as a rule better to choose 
 the Ancient (or hymns written in the ancient spirit) and to 
 leave out the Modern. Under this last head, the collection 
 contains — to speak frankly — much rubbish, which has 
 perhaps helped it to popularity in unpromising quarters, 
 but which might now be rooted out with great advantage. 
 
 Stonehouse, Gloucestershire. July 20, 1890. Thank you 
 again and again for your letter. By God's mercy I have 
 come here ; and although last night was a night of great 
 suffering, the air already seems to be doing me good. What 
 a world is the world of pain ! How little do we know of 
 it during the greater part of our lives ! What a revelation 
 of the awful Justice of God, and yet more of His marvellous 
 love ! Until now, I had no idea of what it might mean 
 to a human being. Pray our Lord, dear friend, that if 
 He is so good as to spare my life, I may not forfeit the 
 graces which He wishes me to gain by this visitation, and 
 that it may not be to me as nothing, or worse than nothing. 
 Your most affectionate. 
 
 The Canon in residence is responsible for the arrangement 
 of aU special services held during his months of residence. 
 Holland's quickness of mind, and his keen sense of the 
 
 L 
 
146 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 fitness of things, helped him well on such occasions, especially 
 when the time for preparation was short. There is a letter 
 to his sister, in April 1890, from Rome, about the annual 
 festival of the Sons of the Clergy : — 
 
 Would you write to Bowman, Sons of Clergy Secretary, 
 begging him from me to see whether the Psalms and First 
 Lesson of the Festival may be reconsidered. Tempers and 
 minds are changed : and it now seems to us a terrible 
 irony to sing " Happy is the man who has his quiver full 
 of them " — on an occasion like this. Such a psalm raises 
 all the problem of the families of the clergy. It is most 
 unfortunate, in its application to this instance. Everybody 
 in church must be conscious of the difficulty : and especially 
 the laity, whom we are inviting to give. And, then, could 
 we not read something less exalted in key than " The 
 wilderness and the solitary place " ? We are thinking of 
 giving some necessary and scanty aid to pinched children : 
 and we cannot attribute to our gifts the highest fulfilment 
 of Messianic joy. It is, really, a serious matter. Pray 
 put it strongly. Otherwise, we may find ourselves the 
 subjects of some caustic ridicule. 
 
 Another letter, to Lieut.-Col. H. Everitt, Sept. 1896, 
 is in answer to a request for a special service on Trafalgar 
 Day. It is just like him, thus to string together chaff, and 
 good advice, with a couple of lines of faultless beauty : — 
 
 Forgive my mutinous silence, unstirred by thoughts 
 of Nelson and the North. When would you old salts 
 wish to come to St. Paul's and hitch your trousers and dance 
 your historic hornpipe ? And what hour would you wish 
 the deck cleared for action ? And the Union Jack run 
 up the main-mast-jib-boom ? We should not have to 
 fling our fists in the face of the Frenchman, should we ? and 
 taunt him for his snails and frogs ? It is not well in Church 
 to blow up dying fires, or to wake dead feuds. We should 
 not brag over the " parlez-vous " — but soberly, wisely, 
 discreetly, and in the fear of God, lay the cause of England 
 before the Throne of God. Is that it ? An Army Guild 
 sort of service ? Thank you for loving St. Paul's. We 
 can pray to be allowed to keep the services where they are. 
 
ST. PAUL'S 147 
 
 Another letter, Dec. 1899, is about a memorial-service 
 during the South African War : — 
 
 I rather resent any attempt to utilise this awful moment 
 in order to squeeze forward a point in the Catholic movement. 
 Of course, I long for a full requiem. But, just now, we are 
 all drawn into one body by a deep anxiety : and that is 
 the great force, moral and spiritual, of the hour. And we 
 must not divide that unity up again. We must do what 
 we can do, together. A requiem would, at once, reduce 
 the act to a partial demonstration. It would no longer 
 be possible to make it national. In a Cathedral, it would 
 mean the loss of all that made the service national and 
 representative. It would have caused angry controversy 
 at a moment when controversy would be intolerable. It 
 is a great fact to have got so far as we did. It is a great 
 fact to accustom the whole body of people to remember 
 the dead before God. The service was not thin. It was 
 framed carefully by Newbolt on Catholic lines. It was not 
 a burial service mangled ; but a commemoration of the 
 dead before the Throne. This is a big step for a nation. 
 It is as far as they can get. And it is the nation of which 
 we must think now. Was it not most beautiful and 
 serious ? I thought it quite overwhelming. God bless 
 you all for your Xmas Peace. 
 
 In the spring of 1897, he planned and obtained for St. 
 Paul's the gift of Mr. Watts's " Time, Death, and Judgment." 
 
 To Mrs. Ady 
 
 I. March 12. — ^Two visits to the Watts collection have 
 made me burn with desire to see two great works of his 
 in St. Paul's. They are to go to the nation : and would 
 not the nation wish to see them there where they would 
 best tell ? They should hang in the two great panels at 
 the entrance of the nave, where they would comfort all 
 the weary tramps who doze and dream. Is it at all con- 
 ceivable ? It would be useless to have any but the largest 
 for such a position. But I think Time, Death, and Judg- 
 ment, for instance, would be large enough to speak there ; 
 or even the Charity : but this could all be considered if he 
 
148 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 was at all prepared to think of it. How could it be most 
 delicately suggested ? 
 
 2. I hardly know how to put before Mr. Watts my strong 
 desire, without seeming to be impudently and selfishly 
 bent on glorifying St. Paul's. But could you suggest it 
 to him, so that he should feel that my desire, that two of 
 his great pictures should hang in the Cathedral for the 
 nation's good, springs out of a sincere belief that this would 
 be the right way to honour his gifts ; that so alone would 
 they be worthily housed ; that in this way they would 
 best deliver their deepest message. They would reach the 
 poor and needy, who sit and dream all down our nave : 
 they would be a wonderful power in the middle of the 
 throngs. 
 
 3. Triumphant ! We voted to accept, with furore, on 
 Tuesday. Richmond has written a glowing letter, and 
 will advise how to hang. I have written our heartfelt 
 thanks, in the name of all the tramps in the nave, to the 
 dear old man. 
 
 4. It is hung. Richmond is enthusiastic. It is per- 
 fectly splendid, glowing, beautiful. It quite peoples the 
 church. I have been revelling all day in the glory of it. 
 If only the old man is pleased ! 
 
 He hoped for the gift of a companion picture * : he 
 writes in July to Heywood Sumner : — 
 
 I am pleading for another : and am suffering under the 
 rebuff of a prolonged silence. The dear old fellow came to 
 lunch and was so happy, and evidently meant to give 
 another if pressed. But I rather wanted to avoid " The 
 Spirit of Christianity," which he would like to give; so I 
 stepped out in a letter, and frankly hinted at " The Rider 
 on the White Horse." Silence has followed. My second 
 string is to suggest his finishing " The Triumph of Love " 
 for us. 
 
 Another gift was of a very different kind. A certain 
 man offered a set of altar-vessels in gold, very beautiful 
 
 * The companion picture, " Watchman, What of the Night ? " was 
 given by Mrs. Watts, after her husband's death. The third picture in 
 the Cathedral, Mr. Holman Hunt's " Light of the World," was given by 
 the Rt. Hon. Charles Booth. 
 
ST. PAUL'S 149 
 
 and costly : they were accepted by two members of the 
 Chapter, in the absence of other members. Later, he was 
 in pubHc disgrace. " We never knew his name even, 
 when we accepted his wretched gold. I learned his name 
 from the papers — and all his doings. It is very difficult 
 to return a gift." So Holland "redeemed" it, either 
 entirely at his own expense, or perhaps with the help of 
 friends. * 
 
 In Jan. 1892, there is a letter from Mr. Alfred Gilbert, 
 promising to design the great bronze candelabra which 
 now are at the west end of the nave : "I feel most deeply 
 grateful, and highly honoured, by the invitation given to 
 me today by yourself and the Dean. Such an opportunity 
 means more to me than you possibly can imagine. I have 
 yearned for it : it has come unbidden. Now, if I can 
 but deserve it, I shall have accomplished one of the most 
 important of all the tasks I have set myself, and have 
 dreamed of, ever since I was able to dream Ambition's 
 dream." 
 
 Two fugitive little stories are told by Minor Canon 
 Gilbertson. (i) At a Christmas gathering of Old Boys 
 at the Choir School, there was one who had recently been 
 ordained, and appeared looking unusually grave in his new 
 clothes and wearing spectacles with large round glasses. 
 Holland, when he met him, said quite solemnly, " My dear 
 
 , can anyone be as wise as you look ? " (2) Another 
 
 Christmas, at the Choir School, after a supper to the work- 
 
 * " The name has been erased from the golden chalices, which have 
 utterly ceased to be in any sense a gift of his. A member of the Chapter 
 has been enabled to return the original sum paid : and his trustee has 
 accepted it back. No legal claim was raised, or even suggested. The 
 transaction was entirely voluntary, and private. So the ignominy which 
 hung over the Cathedral is removed ; and the unhappy affair is completely 
 closed. The vessels can now be used for the service of the altar, from which 
 they have been barred ever since the discredit of their origin was discovered.'' 
 — Commonwealth, Jan. 1899. 
 
I50 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 men of the Cathedral, one of the Canons addressed them 
 on the necessity for punctuahty, industry, and so forth : 
 they soon became restless, and showed that they thought 
 themselves inveigled to the party under false pretences. 
 Then Holland spoke, on the extraordinary delusions pre- 
 vailing at St. Paul's. " We Canons imagine people come 
 to hear us preach. The Choir suppose the music to be the 
 great attraction. Whereas the real fact is, that we couldn't 
 carry-on at all, but for the constant preparation and readi- 
 ness secured by the workmen." He soon restored the 
 proper Christmas-party feeling. 
 
 Also it is remembered, that when the clergy of the 
 Cathedral first appeared in splendid vestments, he called 
 them " glorified armadilloes." When some part of the 
 building was found insecure, he declared that Canon Gregory 
 had put bits of stamp-paper over the cracks, and would 
 see it in a moment, if they got worse. In Goodwill, there 
 is a light-hearted article, "St. Paul's in September," on 
 the crowds of excursionists up from the country to see the 
 Cathedral, bringing the sound and the scent of the country 
 with them : he imagines the country parson's wife, at the 
 head of a party, telling them that the monument to Bishop 
 Middleton — the Bishop is blessing two Indians, a man and 
 a woman — represents the creation of Adam and Eve : 
 " But it is not true (and I seize this opportunity of denying 
 it) that in September a cow did, even by mistake, push 
 its way in at the west door, and take a seat in the arch- 
 deacon's stall, while the vergers looked on appalled, until 
 it rose and followed old Green, silver poker and all, to the 
 minor canons' vestry, under the dim impression that it was 
 milking-time." 
 
 Like other men who are much talked of, he was exposed 
 to calumny : he was not on his guard against it : and his 
 free and easy friendliness with the choir-boys, and their 
 
ST. PAUL'S 151 
 
 worship of him, led once to a vile insinuation : which was 
 completely withdrawn, and never repeated. 
 
 His love of St. Paul's resolves itself, again and again, 
 into his iove of the dome. That is the way with Londoners. 
 Any amount of spires may " point to Heaven," so long as 
 one stays outside the buildings which have them : but the 
 dome of St. Paul's is equally delightful from the outside 
 and from the inside. There is a song that he wrote, in 
 1892, for the Choir School Magazine : — 
 
 The Song of Paule's Children 
 
 I 
 
 Though far away we scatter 
 In years that are to come, 
 And tread the land of strangers. 
 Across the ocean foam ; 
 Yet still our hearts will travel 
 Back to their ancient home, 
 And sing the songs of childhood 
 Beneath the big blue Dome. 
 Home again ! Home again ! 
 Beneath the big blue Dome again ! 
 Ah, would we ne'er might roam again. 
 But sing the songs of home again. 
 Under the blessed Dome. 
 
 II 
 
 That is the egg that hatched us, 
 Hung up there in the sky ; 
 We were the happy White-birds 
 Baked in the big blue Pie. 
 We hummed away and buzzed there, 
 Like bees in a blue hive. 
 And honey we shall find there 
 As long as we shall live. 
 And oh, to be at Home again. 
 Beneath the blessed Dome again. 
 And suck the honeycomb again. 
 And buzz and hum at home again. 
 Under the big blue Dome, 
 
152 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 III 
 
 They sing their " Dulce Domum " 
 
 At a younger school than ours, 
 
 Where clear and white the chalk-streams 
 
 Run fast by Wykeham's towers ; 
 
 But we too in black London 
 
 Sing a chorus of our own, 
 
 Of Domum, Dulce Domum, 
 
 And Dome and Home in one. 
 
 So Dome again and Home again, 
 
 Our Dulce Dulce Dome again ! 
 
 The Dome that is our own again, 
 
 Our very very own again : 
 
 Oh, sweet to feel at home again. 
 
 And in and out to roam again, 
 
 About the dear old Dome. 
 
 IV 
 
 We sit on stuffy stools now. 
 
 And grind at office sums : 
 
 But still around the old Dome, 
 
 The noise of London hums : 
 
 And other chicks are hatched there, 
 
 And sing, so fair and fine. 
 
 The songs that once we sang there 
 
 In days of Auld Lang Syne. 
 
 And oh, that we were home again, 
 
 Beneath the blessed Dome again, 
 
 And never more might roam again, 
 
 But each might have his own again. 
 
 And find his happy home again. 
 
 Home again ! Home again ! 
 
 Under the big blue Dome. 
 
 " Just at Easter," he writes to Mr. George Russell — " I 
 feel the heart of St. Paul's beating — all the rush and flow 
 and glory of the choir : and the trumpet-stops : and the 
 shout we give on ' Now above the sky He's KING.' There's 
 nothing like it in all the world. And the great church is 
 
ST. PAUL'S 153 
 
 flooded with people all day long : and we never stop : 
 and there is all one splendour." 
 
 He had not much time away from St. Paul's. He 
 regularly attended the three daily services. Lord Kilbracken 
 tells of him coming back to Amen Court in full canonicals 
 after an interminable service on Ascension Day, throwing 
 off his surplice, dropping on the sofa, and exclaiming with 
 a deep sigh, "I've been in church ever since I can remember." 
 Days of national observance brought heavy work : "I 
 am too run to write ; these King's visits are appalling : 
 we are wrecks." Besides, he had to do with innumerable 
 affairs of administration, finance, preferment, and so forth. 
 
 Admirable studies were published, after his death, 
 in' Commonwealth : one by Miss Eleanor Gregory, "At St. 
 Paul's," the other by Mr. Walter de la Mare, " From the 
 Choir-boy's point of view." * But something more may be 
 said here of his preaching. The Canons preach at the 
 Sunday afternoon services. Clergy not attached to St. 
 Paul's preach at the Sunday evening services : in his 
 letters to them, Holland would sometimes make light of 
 the task set before them : a man might well be anxious 
 at the prospect of it. " Would you like," he writes to one, 
 " to preach in St. Paul's one evening in May at 7 o'clock ? 
 To a guileless mass of clerks and sweethearts holding each 
 others' hands and glad to use common hymn-books. The 
 people of St. Paul's are not purse-proud City gents who 
 sit on rich farms dealing largely in horseflesh : they are 
 all humble folk who would take the message from you." 
 And to another, " You know our congregation, faintly 
 endeavouring to apprehend what on earth the preachers 
 
 • Henry Scott Holland : Some Appreciations. Edited by Christopher 
 Cheshire. London, Wells Gardner, 1919. Pp. 88. A set of short articles, 
 in Commonwealth, by the Bishop of Winchester, Miss Gregory, Mr. Walter 
 de la Mare, the Dean of Christ Church, the Bishop of Oxford, Canon 
 Donaldson, Rev. E. K. Talbot, Canon Richmond, and Mr. George Russell. 
 
154 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 are talking about, and hoping to get hold of about one idea 
 and a half some day before they die." And again, " I 
 always think it is a nice quiet pulpit, rather home-like 
 when you are up there." 
 
 The recovery of the whole Cathedral from end to end 
 had brought the necessity for great preaching. The sermons 
 must be heard, as it were in the open air, across all the 
 space under the dome ; they must be well designed and 
 well proportioned. Like the drinking-vessels in Solomon's 
 Temple — " all were of gold, none were of silver ; it was not 
 anything accounted-of in the days of Solomon " — so it 
 was to be with the great sermons at St. Paul's. Hard work 
 for the great preachers : it left them played-out. Dr. Liddon 
 was accustomed to take a warm bath and go to bed after it : 
 Holland was younger and stronger, but he too felt the strain 
 of it : he used to come, at the end of the procession out of 
 the choir, with his head down, and a heavy set look in his 
 face, impatient of the slow movement in front of him, vexed 
 by the affectionate or inquisitive glances which pursued 
 him, and longing to get back to Amen Court and rest there. 
 Nature had never intended him to walk in a procession. 
 Miss Murray remembers him saying, " I did once dodge 
 a poker, when I was at Christ Church, going into Cathedral : 
 I suddenly remembered that I was entitled as Censor to 
 a stall at the West end : so I slipped in there, and the 
 verger walked on to the other end with no one behind 
 him." 
 
 From 1884 to 1890, Londoners could study, in the one 
 setting of St. Paul's, the preaching of Church, Liddon, 
 and Holland. The Dean did not preach often. Londoners 
 went not only to hear him, but to be able to say that they 
 had seen and heard him. To look at, he was so thin and 
 spiritual, that it seemed as if the sounding-board over the 
 big pulpit had been put there to hold him down to earth. 
 
ST. PAUL'S 155 
 
 His sermons were faultlessly worded, a perfect example 
 to all men how to honour the beauty of our language : and 
 he preached them with impenetrable quietness, restraining 
 himself almost to the point of effacing himself. Thus it 
 was not easy to realise, from his preaching, the strength and 
 authority of his life's work. In all London, he was the 
 man whom Holland most loved and reverenced ; the one 
 man whose displeasure would have been downright intoler- 
 able to him.* 
 
 Among those who had no personal knowledge either of 
 Liddon or of Holland, the majority preferred Liddon. 
 He was older, and quieter ; he was easier to follow ; he 
 was more captivating to look at. Of all who have ever 
 preached from that big pulpit, he was perhaps the most 
 skilful in the use of gesture : every inch of him was eloquent, 
 by natural, unaffected gracefulness. And the music of 
 his voice was delightful. Yet an old Londoner, who had 
 the honour of knowing Liddon and Holland personally, 
 sticks to it, that Holland was the better preacher. He 
 remembers the sound of Liddon's voice over two words : 
 
 * His book. " On Behalf of Belief," is dedicated to Dean Church— 
 " whose name has ever been a succour and a joy, and whom now it is my 
 high and happy privilege to know, to serve, and to love." Many years 
 later, in 191 2, he wrote of him : "In my time he was already a little bit 
 in retreat, and indeed had to take a good deal of care. . . . His judgment 
 was always there to be consulted, and anything like a veto from him would 
 have been quite decisive. He could be very firm indeed, as you probably 
 know, and there was a drawing up of the mouth, and a throw back of the 
 head, when he disapproved, which would have finished most men. He 
 was there as a permanent, acute, and venerated conscience, which every- 
 body had to face, and a word or two from him went very far, whether in 
 forwarding or damning a suggestion. The Cathedral staff were distinctly 
 alarmed at him, and they did not quite understand his dehcate Tractarian 
 reserve, while they were very much afraid indeed of his severity, when any- 
 thing had to be punished, I was a little surprised that they had not felt 
 more of the beauty of the character, but it is well in all records of Church 
 to remember how austere and alarming he could be, for all his gentleness." 
 This letter was to Canon Alexander, who was giving a course of lectures 
 in the Cathedral on the Deans of St. Paul's. 
 
156 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 the one of them was " sacerdotalism," and the other was 
 " Schopenhauer." And he remembers the sound of Holland's 
 voice, in 1873, when he was only a deacon, preaching his 
 very first sermon in St. Paul's : he was talking about 
 the Holy Innocents, and he called them " these poor babies." 
 There is more than chance, in the survival of the isolated 
 words : they stand for differences of temperament. 
 
 Holland used to go up quickly into the big pulpit, 
 set his Bible and his manuscript ready with a quick touch, 
 and vanish into the depths of the pulpit for his devotions : 
 then came the magical sound of his " Let us pray." Voice 
 for voice, he surpassed even Liddon. St. Paul's is a grand 
 place for echoes, and he was not afraid of them : his voice 
 had moments of slashing vehemence, undescribable and 
 inimitable : but he seldom over-strained it, and he never 
 seemed to be using-up the reserve of its force : neither 
 did he habitually shout, though he would now and again 
 give out some essential word or name with a cry that went 
 up into the dome and halfway down the nave. 
 
 In gesture, he was swift and impulsive, not clumsy or 
 purposeless : it was not for nothing that he had been a good • 
 athlete. Men preaching for the first time in St. Paul's 
 are likely to be warned to direct their voices toward the 
 statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds : but Holland, with admirable 
 effect, swinging now this way now that, brought all of us 
 together. His movements were as natural, as apt to his 
 preaching, as the swaying of a tree in a high wind : it would 
 have looked grotesque, if he had stood still, while the rush 
 and fire of his voice were tearing round all the space under 
 the dome. He kept us too busy with his thoughts to care 
 what he was doing with his hands : but it is certain that 
 he was not unmindful of the rule, " Do not saw the air 
 too much with your hand, but use all gently, for in the 
 very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of passion, you must 
 
ST. PAUL'S 157 
 
 acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smooth- 
 ness." 
 
 He found enjoyment in preaching : as he says of Hoxton, 
 in 1874, " Sermons I hked as much as ever, especially my 
 Good Friday one " ; and in 1898, nearly a quarter of a century 
 later, " I was a limp wreck until I got into a pulpit again : 
 and then I at once recovered." It goes without saying, 
 that he hated to be " run after." He was in demand 
 here, there, and everywhere : he might well forget an 
 engagement : he did, once, go off to a suburban station, 
 and forget the name of the church, and follow all the bells 
 that were ringing, and fail to discover where he was expected : 
 but that is the only instance on record. The earliest 
 reference to his preaching is in a letter from his cousin, 
 Thurstan Holland, Jan. 1873 : " I heard Scott preach, 
 for the first time yesterday. He gave us a very remarkable 
 sermon, full of thought and depth of feeling, and with an 
 originality about it that delighted me: his language and 
 power of expression left nothing to be desired : his dehvery 
 is at present too rapid, the more so because his sentences are 
 often full of a conception of ideas, which the hearer wishes 
 to work out, before he is led on to others." Mrs. Arthur 
 Acland remembers a talk, at Newquay, in 1874, on preaching : 
 she upheld simplicity of treatment, and said that the aspects 
 of a subject ought to be presented one at a time: "Scott 
 Holland flashed out with ' It is only by a nice adjustment of 
 epithets that any estimate of truth or any complete idea can 
 be obtained ' : on which ensued much laughter, and a defence 
 by him of his own method." 
 
 His sermons, of course, " read well " : but they who never 
 heard him cannot realise the magnificence of them. Take, 
 for example, his way of using and or but or only, at the 
 beginning of a new line of thought : the word, in print, 
 is nothing : but when he spoke it, he could make it as 
 
158 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 effective as the knocking at the door in Macbeth. Or 
 his power of visiiaHsing the workings-out of natural forces, 
 and the development of mankind ; his imaginative sense 
 of whole nations and populations labouring and shifting 
 and passing. Or his way of putting the case against him- 
 self, stating it better than it had ever been stated, making 
 it look more true and more attractive than it had ever 
 looked — as Philip Waggett said, " Holland's men of straw 
 are more formidable than other folk's men-at-arms " — 
 then would come But or Only, or Yes, but, or Just because 
 or And yet ; and all the cloud-capped towers and gorgeous 
 palaces would begin to dissolve. Or his way of describing 
 the unhappiness, injustice, and unrest in our national 
 life. There is a great collection of letters to him, thanking 
 him for this or that sermon in St. Paul's or elsewhere. 
 One instance especially pleased him : a man who had 
 gone under, and had made up his mind to jump off London 
 Bridge, turned into St. Paul's on his way to the river ; 
 listened to Holland, set himself once more to find work, 
 and found it and did well. 
 
 After he had left St. Paul's he was rather unwilling to 
 preach again there : but his love of the place and of its 
 services never failed him. There are letters to Canon 
 Alexander : one, in 1909, on his appointment to his Canonry : 
 " You know how warm and cordial a welcome you will 
 find here. It is a deep relief to me to have a friend who 
 comes into the little brotherhood. I do not think that 
 you will find anything in our tradition which will not 
 commend itself to you as a sincere effort to make St. Paul's 
 the central home of England's worship. May God help 
 us to hold together and to work for the one cause, the 
 honour of Jesus Christ." In 1913, from Oxford, he writes 
 of the re-gilding of the cross, " I hear that necks are positively 
 broken on omnibuses in efforts to keep gazing at it ; and 
 
ST. PAUL'S - 159 
 
 Burge told me how he saw it blazing away from Brockwell 
 Park." Another letter is concerned with something that 
 had been said in St. Paul's : " You must keep the Dome 
 still Christian with a living message to the people, in spite 
 of these disastrous utterances." Last of all, on Jan. 2, 
 1918 : " I was so glad to hear from you and of you. You 
 have had a deadly time to pass through. I cannot imagine 
 a worse strain. These ghastly raids touch the limits of 
 which cruelty is possible. Horrible : and so relentless, so 
 untiring. By God's great mercy, the Dome is still lifted 
 to bless London." 
 
II 
 
 FROM 1885 TO 1889 
 
 Early in 1885, he writes to Dr. Talbot, on the prospect 
 of Dr. Liddon's appointment to a Bishopric : — 
 
 What I feel so forcibly is, that the opposition to Liddon 
 comes not from questions as to his particular qualifications, 
 but from a deliberate determination that he is not a man 
 whom the Church of England can afford to promote. This 
 is what stings. It is a challenge of the whole High Church 
 position. It is a relapse into the condition of things when 
 we were all rebels. We were just learning to forget the 
 bitterness of that unhappy time. We thought that the 
 reconciliation meant that the High Churchmen had won 
 their right to be considered loyal members of the Church. 
 It was this thought that made the general reconciliation 
 so large, and hearty, and effectual. But then this must 
 cover Liddon's general position and attitude. He is an 
 Anglican of Anglicans : a very sample of the class. . . . 
 We feel the perils of Liddon. We cannot profess that we 
 do not think his line to be hard to foresee. We do not 
 expect to be able to justify all he will do. But we do hold 
 most emphatically that it would be a blunder, a wrong, 
 and a disaster, for the Church to treat Liddon as a doubtful 
 and excluded character, who is not at home in her body, 
 and whom it would be too risky to allow to come forward 
 into his natural place. 
 
 In the summer, he was with friends in Switzerland : 
 but he was not up to climbing, nor did he care for " the 
 weird, sad gletschers." He amused himself with the hotel- 
 life at Bel Alp — " no mountaineers, but excellent people 
 
 160 
 
FROM 1885 TO 1889 161 
 
 who go to daily matins at 8, and discover strange flowers, 
 and take out lunch with them, and do the pension at 10 
 frcs. : old Tyndall presides daily : and we all chatter, 
 and make great friends, and of course everybody finds that 
 he knows everybody else's grandmother " — and he delighted 
 in Vevey, " the loveliest view, by far, in the world : the Dent 
 du Midi just clearing from soft summer cloud, faint and 
 purple like a dream : the Lake a wide evening blue, with 
 sheets of sunset white and pink : all the hills one blue 
 haze, uniform from very satisfaction with the perfect day 
 that has gone. And ah ! I have bathed — twice bathed 
 — and the lines of the old hills all grow out upon me like 
 memories, like friends : I know them all, a thousand times 
 over. It is too beautiful : it demoralises." He writes 
 to Dr. Talbot, of a visit to the St. Bernard Hospice : — 
 
 A most noble High Mass that we came in for at the 
 Grand St. Bernard. It was a high day, a reunion of all 
 the brotherhood, and the Prior came in state : and it was 
 a stately and pure office : and one felt the force of the strong 
 life behind it, in the snows and the solitudes : and it was 
 most impressive to send up the great Christian song, robust 
 and dignified, there amid the wet mists and wild wastes ; 
 and my heart went out above aU for you, and for my brother 
 restored to us out of such peril — " Blessing and honour 
 and glory and power be unto Him." 
 
 In Jan. 1886, at Torquay, he made friends with Mr. 
 W. E. Forster and his adopted daughter. Miss Arnold- 
 Forster. She writes, " He became a most welcome visitor 
 in my father's sick-room, skilfully drawing him out to 
 talk of old days, of his early Yorkshire experiences in the 
 Chartist times, and of his friendship with Thomas Cooper, 
 the Chartist poet. His own health was at this time very 
 uncertain : he was suffering from constant and over- 
 mastering headaches that obliged him while they lasted 
 to remain a prisoner in darkness. I never at any time 
 
 M 
 
i62 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 heard him speak voluntarily of himself : but he never 
 rejected sympathy concerning what he would call ' my 
 silly old head ' : and at a later time he would say that he 
 thought he was learning to ' manage himself better.' " 
 
 In February, he and his elder sister went to Athens : 
 and from Athens he went with Mrs, Meynell and her brother 
 F. G. L. Wood on a yachting-cruise among the -^gean 
 Islands ; and was for three days at Patmos, and visited 
 Smyrna.* 
 
 To R. L. NeUleship^ 
 
 Bless you, dear old Nettle, bless you again and again 
 for the touch of old days and delicious memories, in your 
 letter from Snowdon. I can't say what a deep joy it was 
 to me. How we used to love to record mere sights and 
 sounds ! That is the time when friendships are making 
 that last deep as life. They never cease, though active 
 intercourse may drop. Always they hve on, and any 
 touch revives them. They are like walking, skating, 
 swimming. Once we have found the balance, the poise, 
 it is found for ever. It needs no use or practice to sustain 
 
 * See his letters to Mrs. Drew, in " A Forty Years' Friendship." Many- 
 years later; in Commonwealth, April, 1902, there is a most unexpected 
 reference to Patmos. He is writing of the Government inspection of 
 laundries under religious sisterhoods. He says that the Superiors will 
 be able to hold their own against the Government : " They have only 
 got to welcome-in the Inspector and the Home Secretary, and they will 
 capture them as their hopeless slaves : they will tie them to their apron- 
 strings. Let me recall, in hopes of this result, my delight at a certain 
 scene in Patmos which might have its prophetic lesson. The two great 
 Abbots of the Monastery, who hold all the island in fee, and whom the 
 people ardently venerated, came aboard our yacht to tea. In their train, 
 we detected an obscure little creature in a fez, who crept about in the rear, 
 and seemed only anxious to He low. We pohtely asked who he was. 
 ' Oh, you need not notice him,' impUed the Abbots by a grand wave of 
 the hand. ' He is only the Turkish Governor of the Island.' Why should 
 not the Superiors reduce the Home Secretary to the same wholesome 
 humility ? " 
 
 f This is the only letter from Holland to Nettleship which remains. 
 Holland's early letters were burned by Nettleship in 1872. Their letters 
 after 1872 were mostly on the ordinary affairs of the University ; the 
 class-lists, and so forth. 
 
FROM 1885 TO 1889 163 
 
 it. In a moment, as I read, I was with you, as of old. 
 I knew the old tingle ; I responded with the old delight. 
 Days and hours all came floating back — and your voice : 
 and the toss of your head. It will be ever so : do not 
 doubt it. 
 
 I shall be leaving Oxford, I dimly foresee. We may 
 see each other even less : though I trust not. But no 
 years will ever stiffen or deaden the turn of my heart to 
 you — and any word from you wiU " draw blood," as of 
 old. Goodbye. I sail tomorrow — ^my boat is on the shore : 
 meaning, by that, the Dover Packet. I make through 
 Italy to Athens. Perhaps, then, a yacht to Athos. 
 Certainly Athens, for a stay. Goodbye. God bless you, 
 dear friend, with heart, and courage, and hope. 
 
 To Dr. Talbot 
 
 Brindisi. Feb. — We ought to be at Corfu tomorrow, 
 and at Athens by Sunday evening. That sounds wonderful 
 — ^Athens — and ever since Rome I have been in pause, 
 waiting for some name that could evoke an interest, after 
 Rome. Human interests are all in aU. Beauty is only 
 intended to be around and about them, ennobling, making 
 memorable, hallowing. But ^vithout a core of human 
 interest to vivify it, beauty is a poor superficial affair. 
 So no Salerno Bay, or Sorrento hills, can compensate for 
 the loss of Rome : and I wait for Athens to recover me 
 from the collapse that has overtaken me ever since I saw, 
 amid crowded priests, outside the door of the Sistine Chapel, 
 the old man pass in, in gold and glory, carried on his throne, 
 bearing his tiara, on the day of his coronation. A beautiful 
 old man, skilful, cultured, clean, devout —worthy of the 
 centuries behind him, and of the surpassing burden laid 
 upon him. And, in the crowd, pressing through into the 
 Chapel, the quiet good face of Lyle — in the dress of a 
 Seminarist. Two or three times I caught sight of him — 
 the same look, repressive and noble, with a stiffness. Good 
 faces abounded, I think, among Cardinals, Canons, Priests. 
 A really fine band of men, old, intelligent, holy — I should 
 doubt whether we could do better in the way of heads. 
 
 Athens. Holy Thursday. — You ought just to see the 
 divine glory of light and sun that is pouring over the 
 
i64 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Parthenon, now as I see it, from my bed-room window, 
 with the most perfect air ever breathed curHng round its 
 yellow splendour. It is delicious. Yet it knows nothing 
 whatever of disturbances, and trouble, and sin : it has no 
 thought at all of Passion, Agony, Burial — of Redemption, 
 Deliverance, Resurrection : it looks singularly remote 
 from the Easter we are keeping at its feet. 
 
 ... I find it impossible to doubt but that the time has 
 come for me to leave Oxford. There ! I have said it. 
 If it was not for you, I could say it without a quiver of doubt, 
 though with most heart-wringing sorrow. It has grown 
 steadily in upon me for months. It seems to me obvious, 
 and undeniable. I am, practically, useless in London 
 unless I can be there in the autumn months — from Oct. 
 to Xmas. These once missed, the year is lost. Yet these 
 are my only real months in Oxford. 
 
 As a rest, I see Oxford is useless. Even with all positive 
 duties gone, it remains the same hurrying, incessant, wearing 
 place. Nothing can avoid this. I am arbitrarily, and 
 forcibly, inventing for myself a place in Oxford. I am not 
 placed there by anything except my own will. This makes 
 it all doubtful to me ; when I see how little I am making 
 of my London post, to which I have been externally called. 
 I dare not say, I am giving the Church her money's worth, 
 for what she allots me. I am establishing no footing in 
 London ; I am doing nothing positive : I am building no 
 house : I am nothing but a flying sort of voice. I feel 
 apologetic for myself : and this is demoralising. 
 
 I am sucking too much of the good things of life, if 
 I retain Oxford. I am not venturing enough. I am 
 clinging to the nest already built, where everything flatters, 
 is comfortable, is easy. I am nursing myself along on what 
 is already done. I am not putting my back into building 
 up a new work of any kind. It won't do. I am sure of 
 it. My conscience will not stand it. It ought to be done, 
 now in October. But oh, Warden, the wrench, the horrible 
 wrench ! 
 
 1887-1888 
 
 In these two years, three books of his sermons were 
 published : " Creed and Character," " Christ or Ecclesiastes," 
 
FROM 1885 TO 1889 165 
 
 and " On Behalf of Belief." In his preface to " Creed 
 and Character," he says that every Christian preacher, 
 of necessity, undertakes the responsibility of representing 
 "the mind of Christ." That is what ought to be felt, and 
 recognised, as the beginning and end of all sermons : " and 
 this, not as a vague commonplace, but as a Presence, that 
 growingly, with ever more masterful pressure, with ever 
 intenser force, pervades, utilises, covers, vitalises, absorbs 
 the entire and undivided attention. ... It is the expression 
 of a single personal Self, conveyed into us by a vital and 
 personal Spirit. It must exhibit itself as personal — that 
 is, as a living individual Being, self-consistent and self- 
 identical." The manifestation of this personal Will, in 
 action upon the affairs of earth, is in two forms : in mind, 
 and in character : in the two forms in which a will does, 
 as a matter of fact, show itself in action. " The Kingdom 
 of Christ is the manifestation of Christ's sole Will : and it 
 must embody these two forms. It is the display, on earth, 
 of a certain body of motives and intentions, peculiar to 
 Christ, co-ordinated into a certain characteristic combination, 
 peculiar to Christ. Where do we find the first of these 
 two forms ? In the Creed of the Church. Where the 
 second ? In the ethical ideal of the Church : in the Christian 
 character." And he says of this character, that it " com- 
 bines the uttermost of self-abnegation with the uttermost 
 assertion of vigour and vitality." 
 
 In the preface to " Christ or Ecclesiastes," he declares 
 his belief in " the supernatural setting of the Faith " ; 
 and says that " the supernatural, as it is in Christ Jesus, 
 is no intellectual encumbrance, but rather the very key 
 by which alone life is rationalized, and the spirit in us set 
 free to think, and work, and grow." 
 
 In July, 1887, he was at Ballaigues, Vallorbes ; with the 
 Talbots, Dr. Gore, the Drews, and a party of undergraduates : 
 
i66 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 "To be back in the old Oxford ways, to be talking the old 
 talk, to be caught up into the old bright easy ways of under- 
 grads, to feel the prick of familiar interest in Schools and 
 Classes — this was delicious ; and to bathe again : and to 
 catch cricket-balls, and to chaff, and to jaw — this is what 
 I never dreamed of recovering." 
 
 In October, he writes to a critic of his views on Ireland : — 
 
 I am very sorry if I have at all wounded a lover of St. 
 Paul's. Pray do not let anything I say or do lessen your 
 love. But I am only saying what I am forced to think 
 when I say that the Government have set themselves to 
 break and crush the two great popular powers which have 
 built and organised the National League : and those powers 
 are (i) the entire Parliamentary representation of Catholic 
 Ireland, who are always treated as a hostile body of hateful 
 conspirators ; (2) the Archbishops, Bishops, and priests 
 of the Church, in whose buildings the League meets, from 
 whose altars its notices are given, after whose services its 
 meetings are held, whose priests are its local chairmen 
 in every village. I could not imagine language more 
 calculated to madden and enrage an exasperated people 
 into acts of violent retaliation, than the cruel, bitter, 
 scornful, tyrannical language that has been poured out by 
 the Times, echoed by the main body of the Press, against 
 everything that the Irish peasantry hold dear as their lives. 
 I wonder daily at their self-control under such brutal and 
 harsh contempt. It fills me with sorrow and shame to 
 read it, above all in Church papers. Forgive me if I have 
 spoken strongly. 
 
 In March 1888, he writes to a friend, of his determina- 
 tion to remain unmarried. In Sept. 1882, on the news of 
 another friend's engagement, he had written, " The sudden 
 sense that I alone of all my friends am really going to be 
 wifeless, is borne in upon me with unwonted energy, and 
 makes me feel strange, and wondering ; and I clench my 
 teeth a little, and feel sterner (but not less resolute)." In 
 1888, he writes : — 
 
FROM 1885 TO 1889 167 
 
 I know, I know, the offer of renunciation which God 
 makes to me. But then, how Httle I have picked it up as 
 a single act to be hfted before the Throne. I have scraped 
 it up, in pitiful fragments — little wretched pieces, one at 
 a time, when I found it impossible to delay any longer, 
 or to avoid taking the bit that lay there in front of me. 
 And what I hunger after, is such a selfish, poor, small, 
 comfortable, caressing sort of affection, on which to spend 
 myself in pretty fondlings. This I weakly desire : and I 
 have to learn from others all the high and trumpet-tongued 
 honour which is the real soul of marriage : and which is 
 so real a loss, unless one can pitch one's devotion to Christ 
 in as high a key. God bless you for your blessed words. 
 At my best, and now and again, I strive to make the 
 renunciation a willing sacrifice : and I do see how God would 
 gain more from one, in some ways, through it. But I 
 am always minimising the sacrifice, by intense enjoyment 
 of all the multitude of little loves which are given me — 
 and I am apt to fritter away, in their enjoyment, the will 
 that should go to the greater deed. 
 
 In May, he was asked to let himself be nominated 
 for the Bishopric of Glasgow. In August, when it 
 was probable that the Balliol Theological Fellowship 
 would soon be vacant, he was asked whether he would 
 take it. 
 
 Toward the end of 1888, he published " On Behalf 
 of Belief." Dr. Gore writes to him, Nov. 21 : " Bless you 
 for the Belief volume. I cannot tell you how I thank you, 
 and how I wish the wicked would read. Ugh ! they are 
 stupid. I begin to feel my vocation wiU be to write notes 
 to your books in order to make them look dull. I some- 
 times think people measure the seriousness of an intellectual 
 effort by the dulness of its appearance. May I write long 
 notes to your books, and appendices, to induce the stupid 
 to read ■ and leave the present editions for those who have 
 a soul ? " 
 
 At the end of the year, he writes to Mrs. Talbot, on the 
 
i68 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 appointment of Dr. Talbot to be Vicar of Leeds, after 
 eighteen years at Keble as its first Warden : — 
 
 How the eyes and the heart go flying back over the 
 years ! back to the thrill and, the fun of the little cabin- 
 hole in the corner, with almost the glow of a picnic about it : 
 and the early twin-life with the dear Warden, brimming 
 with hopes and joys : and then the sudden blessed discovery 
 of children : and the great big house, and the crowded 
 drawing-room, and the social centre, and the friends from 
 London, and the firm-grown College, with 'a history, and 
 a past : and the merry renewals of Terms — and, then, 
 the awful shadow of the sickness, and the wonder of the 
 release from fears, and all the renewed heart, and the laughter, 
 and songs, and tears — All to go ! What a memory to carry 
 away. What a brimful treasure. What an endless joy. 
 No taint upon it. In the full hey-day of vigour and triumph. 
 
 Think if it had got to languish, before you left it, and to 
 decay, and tumble down, and to drag, so that you were 
 glad to escape from a downward fall. How miserable 
 it would have been. How different now. You walk out, 
 clothed about with the radiance of a most wonderful day, 
 your Oxford day. Nothing now can ever spoil that. You 
 may fail at Leeds : you may find difficulties, and anxieties ; 
 but you will always pluck up heart as you send your memory 
 back to the blessed days in Oxford. This will be your 
 stay, and your comfort. How lovely they have been. How 
 teeming with affection and warmth and friendship. God 
 bless the memory of them to you, and to the dearest Warden. 
 
 1889 (cBt. 42) 
 
 This year, " Lux Mundi " was published.* It had 
 been planned in 1887 by the holy party : and in September 
 1888 they had met at Amen Court, to consider the essays 
 
 * Lux Mundi : a series of studies on the religion of the Incarnation. 
 Edited by Charles Gore. London, John Murray, 1889. The writers were 
 Holland, Aubrey Moore, lUingworth, Talbot, Moberly, Arthur Lyttelton, 
 Gore, Lock, Francis Paget, Campion, Ottley. The first of the essays is 
 by Holland, on Faith. 
 
FROM 1885 TO 1889 169 
 
 written for it. In June 1889, they met at Malvern, and 
 finished the book for pubHcation. 
 
 This year, also, the Christian Social Union was founded. 
 A few months before it was founded, Holland had written 
 to Richmond, in 1888, " We live in economic blindness 
 down here, of the blackest kind. The world seems to have 
 reacted into the mind of 40 years ago. You would think 
 that it had never talked democratic language. We are in a 
 mad back-water, eddying furiously." * 
 
 Early in 1889, he called a meeting at his house : and it 
 was decided that some lectures should be given, at Sion 
 College, to clergy and others. The chances of success for 
 a new Society might be measured by the success or failure 
 of the lectures. They were given during Lent, 1889, by 
 Richmond, whose " Christian Economics " had been published 
 in 1888. The Chairmen at these four lectures were Bishop 
 Westcott, Canon Furse, the Bishop of Marlborough, and 
 Holland. Between April and June, two more meetings 
 were held at Holland's house ; and on June 14, he presided 
 at a meeting in the Chapter House of St. Paul's, at which 
 a Committee was appointed to form the new Society. 
 Westcott was its first President, and Holland was Chairman 
 of Committee. The Society's first office was at Canon 
 Mason's mission-house, 8 Trinity Square, Tower Hill. 
 Its first Secretaries were G. C. Fletcher and Cyril Bickersteth ; 
 after them, John Carter, now Bursar of Pusey House. 
 
 * Another phrase, in a letter to James Adderley : " For the first time 
 in all history, the poor old Church is trying to show the personal sin of 
 corporate and social sinning." An account of the beginnings of the Christian 
 Social Union, by Dr. Percy Dearmer, was published by the Commonwealth 
 Press, July, 1912. He notes some of the earlier episodes: in 1833 and 
 1847, the Factory Acts : in 1854, the founding of the Working Men's 
 College : in 1S71, the Act legalising Trade Unions : in 1877, the founding 
 of the Guild of St. Matthew : in 1888, the appeal of the Lambeth Conference 
 for more study of economic problems. The name of the Christian Social 
 Union was suggested at the founders' meeting, June 14, 18S9. Another 
 name thought-of was " the Brotherhood of Christ." 
 
170 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Its first work, during the Dock Strike in August, was to get 
 Dr. Temple up from Wales to London.* A leaflet was 
 issued, to announce the new Society :— 
 
 This Union consists of Churchmen who have the 
 following objects at heart : 
 
 (i) To claim for the Christian Law the ultimate 
 
 authority to iiile social practice, 
 (ii) To study in common how to apply the moral 
 truths and principles of Christianity to the 
 social and economic difiiculties of the present 
 time, 
 (iii) To present Christ in practical life as the Living 
 Master and King, the enemy of wrong and 
 selfishness, the power of righteousness and 
 love. 
 Members are expected to pray for the well-being of 
 the Union at Holy Communion, more particularly on or 
 about the following days — the Feast of the Epiphany, 
 the Feast of the Ascension, the Feast of St. Michael and 
 All Angels, t 
 
 * To Dr. Copleston. Aug. 1889. — I was up in the Engadine at the 
 Maloya Hotel, with poor Truro very ill, but at last, and genuinely, pro- 
 gressing. The hills were ugly : "but the people very pleasant ; and a lovely 
 band played to us ; and Huxley talked amicably to us ; and we danced 
 on Tuesdays and Fridays, and played lawn tennis : and so survived in 
 spite of the Alps. And certainly I got rather well, and wrote a good 
 deal of a memoir of Jenny Lind which is preparing ; and was generally 
 happy. Now, we are in the thick of the strike. On Monday night, 
 Cyril Bickersteth flew off, without a rag of luggage, to Dolgelly, to hunt 
 out the Bishop of London. London appeared two days later : came 
 straight to Mason's on Tower Hill : we collected some clergy, and talked 
 it all out with him. Next morning we got Champion and Burns to meet 
 him at Mason's. Since then, he has been enclosed with the Mayor, Manning, 
 and Sir John Lubbock. I am deUghted. The noble old Chief that he is — 
 he sticks rather hard at certain points : and is rather stiffly economical 
 in the older fashion of economy. But he is so great : and high : and square. 
 And he is working hard now, in the cause. The men are most patient : 
 and orderly : and reasonable. They will not look at a Socialist Programme. 
 We had a most happy meeting of the essayists at Malvern, in June, full 
 of delicious talks of the famihar type — most friendly, helpful, active. 
 We shall be out in November. You will scoff loudly at much that is in 
 the book. 
 
 t To Dr. Talbot. 1890. — We deUberately made this a part of our 
 Union, as essential to our compactness and definiteness of aim. We did 
 not want to grow indefinitely large : and the difficulty, of course, is not 
 
FROM 1885 TO 1889 171 
 
 A pamphlet, also, was issued ; it bears marks of Holland's 
 writing : — 
 
 We believe that political problems are rapidly giving 
 place to the industrial problem, which is proving itself 
 more and more to be the question of the hour. It is the 
 condition of industry which is absorbing all attention and 
 all anxieties. It is the needs and necessities of industry 
 which are the motive powers now at work to mould and 
 direct the fortunes of human society. It is the intolerable 
 situation in which our industrial population now finds 
 itself, that must force upon us a reconsideration of the 
 economic principles and methods which have such disastrous 
 and terrible results. . . . 
 
 We are of those who are convinced that the ultimate 
 solution of this social question is bound to be discovered 
 in the Person and life of Christ. He is " the Man " ; and 
 He must be the solution of all human problems. That 
 is our primal creed. ... He is Himself, in his risen and 
 ascended Royalty, the sum of all human endeavour, the 
 interpretation of aU human history, the goal of all human 
 growth, the bond of all human brotherhood. It is in this 
 character that He is kept so little in practical mind ; it 
 is this ofhce of His which is reserved to such an obscure 
 and ineffectual background. He has never failed to be 
 " placarded " before the suffering poor as Jesus Christ, 
 the Crucified. So far, the preaching of the Church has 
 been faithful to its message. But the significance of His 
 vital relation to the historical growth of man in the mass, 
 has not been so effectively understood, or so loyally 
 declared. . . . 
 
 But this application of the redemptive force of Christ 
 to actual society can be no very simple matter. The problems 
 raised by human society are manifold, intricate, and immense ; 
 and, however firm our conviction may be that Christ is 
 Himself their one and only solution, yet the solution of 
 a difficult problem must, of necessity, be itself difficult : 
 and, if the perplexities have been themselves of long and 
 
 your excellent Nonconformist, but your fervid Socialistic Nothingarian. 
 So we thought it right, without passing a positive exclusive rule, to say 
 that we were men who had a bond of union in the Sacrament of Christ's 
 Body. Some did not like it : but we passed and carried it It is right, 
 I think. So there ! You see how narrow we are ! 
 
172 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 gradual growth, then their undoing, also, will be slow 
 and gradual. It is a work that needs care, study, patience, 
 deliberation. 
 
 Richmond's lectures at Sion College attracted much 
 attention. They were published, in 1890, under the title 
 " Economic Morals " ; with a preface by Holland : but 
 only a part of it can find room here : — 
 
 ,The scraps of economic philosophy which most of us 
 have picked up belong to that political economy which, 
 in the days of our youth, was still in the condition of an 
 isolated science. At that stage of its career, it had set 
 itself to be as abstract as possible. It did not profess to 
 admit of direct application to human life. It only dealt 
 with isolated laws acting " in vacuo." It is the favourite 
 phrases of this stage of political economy which have passed 
 into popular language, and have become current coin in 
 the market-place. It is these which newspapers bandy 
 to and fro, and which we all are apt to bring to the surface 
 when we are trying to appear scientific to ourselves or to 
 others. 
 
 . . . The gap between the isolated laws which these 
 catch phrases signalise, and the actual living world with 
 which we are dealing, is immense. And we have no bridge 
 by which to pass over it. The laws are rigidly true, no 
 doubt, but, in their present isolated condition, they would 
 apply indifferently to Saturn or to the Earth. And yet 
 the Earth differs seriously from Saturn ; and how does the 
 difference affect and qualify the action of these laws ? 
 That is our burning question. 
 
 . . . We live as shuttlecocks, bandied about between 
 our political economy and our Christian morality. We 
 go a certain distance with the science, and then, when 
 things get ugly and squeeze, we suddenly introduce moral 
 considerations, and human kindness, and charity. And 
 then, again, this seems weak, and we puU up short and go 
 back to tough economic principle. So we live in miserable 
 double-mindedness. Each counter-motive intervenes at 
 purely arbitrary points. When our economy is caught in 
 a tangle, we fly off to our morality. When our morality 
 lands us in a social problem, we take refuge in some naked 
 
FROM 1885 TO 1889 -173 
 
 economic law. There is thus no consistency in our treat- 
 ment of facts ; no harmony in our inward convictions. 
 
 Now, in this work of Mr. Richmond's, this dualism seems 
 to me to cease. The fusion of the double elements which 
 enter into the facts is complete. The science succeeds 
 in being ethical, without ceasing to be scientific. The 
 ethical principle does not appear as outside the economic, 
 entering on the scene merely as a sentiment to check, 
 and to limit, and to correct it ; but it is itself the intelligent 
 and constructive force which builds up, from within, the 
 scientific principles. The economic laws are exhibited, 
 not as arbitrarily limited by moral considerations, but as 
 themselves the issue of moral relations. 
 
 The Christian Social Union grew rapidly, and found 
 plenty of opportunities both for the study of social problems 
 and for the improvement of conditions of industrial life. 
 It started " white lists," in this or that town, of tradespeople 
 who were deserving of custom because they were generous 
 to their employees. It investigated and published instances 
 of overwork and bullying and beggarly wages, in business 
 concerns or in domestic service. It went into facts of 
 dangerous trades : cases of phosphorus-poisoning, lead- 
 poisoning, accidents from unguarded machinery, and so 
 forth. It set itself to support proposals for public works, 
 such as afforestation, and reclamation of waste land. It 
 was determined, above all, to improve the conditions 
 of female labour, and the misery of sweated women. It 
 was in touch with many institutes and authorities : it 
 had a good share in the quickening of the national conscience 
 toward industrial evils. 
 
 (From 1889 to 1894, the Christian Social Union had no 
 representative journal : but it edited the "Economic Review." 
 In 1894, HoUand and Adderley started " Goodwill " : 
 but that, after all, was nothing more than a " parish 
 magazine." In Jan. 1896, came the first number of "The 
 Commonwealth . " ) 
 
174 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Among lesser events of 1889, he became Warden of the 
 Guild of the Epiphany, and held this office to the end of his 
 life. The Guild of the Epiphany, founded in 1884, is a 
 society of Churchwomen who are concerned with teaching 
 in secondary schools, and are agreed in their desire to be 
 drawn together for mutual encouragement, for theological 
 study, and for united prayer. The Guild magazine, " A 
 Flying Leaf," was first issued in Feb. 1886. The name of 
 the Guild, and its motto, " Vidimus Stellam Ejus," date 
 from 1885, when the first meeting was held, at Epiphany, 
 in St. Paul's. From 1887, the Guild met annually at St. 
 Paul's, for conference and worship. Miss Murray, who was 
 Superior for 20 years, writes that there are now about 700 
 members. The Guild has centres in Leeds, Manchester, 
 Brighton, and elsewhere. 
 
 At the end of 1889, he went to Egypt. Bishop Wilkinson 
 was nearly broken down, with miserable depression, and 
 had been ordered away : he and his daughters had been 
 in Italy, and had gone on to Cairo in October : he was in 
 need of such help and friendship as Holland, more than 
 any man in the world, could give him. Holland went out, 
 with a medical friend. Dr. Drewitt. He writes home, on 
 Dec. 31, " Drewitt has helped capitally ; strain and anxiety 
 are passed." On Jan. 20, " Things are very anxious, and 
 the outlook very bad : I cannot see how resignation can 
 possibly be avoided." On Jan. 30, " In general, he is 
 t'ired out, and cannot shake off the depression." Miss 
 Wilkinson, also, was not in good health. Against these 
 troubles, Holland set himself. But he had no great liking for 
 Egypt : and he must have longed, now and again, to be 
 in England. They were three months on the Nile : from 
 Cairo to Assouan and back. 
 
 For the general happiness, he wrote a journal : it was 
 not read aloud, but they all read it, bit by bit, as it was 
 
FROM 1885 TO 1889 175 
 
 written up. It was designed to amuse them ; and he kept 
 all anxieties out of it. Much of it—" The Log of the Water- 
 logged," he called it — is put here, in a chapter by itself. 
 Their dahabeah, the Pharaoh, belonged to Cook and Sons. 
 The dramatis per soncB are the Bishop, his daughters Constance 
 (Mrs. Davis) and Margaret, 12 years old (Mrs. Henley), 
 Holland, Dr. Drewitt, and others who must be arranged in 
 the order of their appearance on the scene : — 
 
 Dr. Porter, " Fez Pacha " ; an American cleric, of 
 Charleston : his great work was a school which he founded 
 after the American Civil War. 
 
 Miss Gooch : half-sister to John Maxwell-Lyte, the 
 Bishop's chaplain. 
 
 Tudros : the dragoman. 
 
 The Rais : the captain. 
 
 The Sirdar : not Lord Grenfell, but Mr. John Cook : a 
 person of great importance in Cairo : Holland gave him 
 the title. 
 
 Miss Amelia B. : Miss Amelia B. Edwards, whose book 
 on Egypt was read during the tour. 
 
 Dodson : Miss Wilkinson's maid. 
 
 The Old Lady : one of the crew, who was remarkable 
 for the ample drapery of his garments. 
 
Ill 
 
 "THE LOG OF THE WATER-LOGGED " 
 
 (Started Dec. i6, 1889, from Cairo.) 
 
 Tuesday, Dec. 17. — About 11, a whistle : and Cook was 
 on us, in his glory — a big steamer — 48 personally well- 
 conducted tourists : and Mohammed the Magnificent. 
 We landed : scene : screams : scrimmage : herds of donkey- 
 boys, all yelling at once : Mohammed too imperial to assist 
 in the fray : Bishop calmly mounted amid the hubbub : 
 the women like vast lumps of bulging shawls on the tiny 
 asses. The procession moved off : shouts : sticks : yells. 
 A mingling of Memphis and Margate, Pyramids and Primrose 
 Hill. Then long ride : Cook and chaos : Sakharah, lumpy 
 and stupid : Serapeum, vast and depressing : Tomb of 
 Tih, fascinating and lively : many things forgotten ; 
 exhausted faculties ; noisy boys ; repeated horrors of 
 scrimmage : felt as if we should never reach the dahabeah, 
 with its hearts waiting to greet us, and sweet Cookless quiet. 
 At last ! Only, we find that the ladies have been strangely 
 happy without us. 
 
 Thursday, 19. — Final flight of Margaret's red hat. 
 Taking advantage of a sudden gust, it took to its heels 
 and ran. The good little boat at the stern caught and held 
 if for a moment ; but it shook itself free, just as a sailor 
 snatched at it ; and far away it floated, like a dying scarlet 
 sunset, to be swallowed by some startled crocodile. Still 
 the S. wind blew : we crawled : we crept : we stuck. 
 
 Friday, 20. — S. wind persistent. We crawl a few 
 scamped miles : moor on desert-bank. Drewitt, with 
 Margaret, shoots hoopoe. Bishop, with Holland, retires 
 up desert, for contemplation. Startled by strange, remote 
 snorts : saunter with mild wonder : rain falls : they sit 
 under bank : see jackal. Snort, snort. Finally it breaks 
 
 176 
 
"THE LOG OF THE WATER-LOGGED" 177 
 
 upon them that the tug is calHng them home. As they 
 near the ship, Fez Pacha seen high on bank, menacing, 
 shouting. They tremble, tumble in : ship flies off, at the 
 rate of half-a-mile an hour. 
 
 Saturday, 21. — Porter Pacha can endure no longer : 
 starts on the war-trail, to secure letters, and scalp Cook : 
 disappears over side into tug : reaches Assiout : stands 
 amid wondering Arabs, ejaculating " Cook-man " : hoisted 
 on donkey, through the black night, beards the Cook- 
 man in his secret lair : Cook-man too terrified even to ask 
 him to dinner, but surrenders letter-bag, with which he 
 returns : is greeted with enthusiasm at Beni-Souef by grate- 
 ful dahabeah. The walks at Beni-Souef, dull rainy day, 
 reminded us forcibly of back parts of Hammersmith. 
 
 Sunday, 22. — (H.C. 8.30, M. 11, E. 6). Village on shore 
 all Copt Christian : very little work on Sunday : most 
 kindly Sheik, in afternoon, greeted us, with fine, clever 
 face : clean house. Cigarettes of peace passed round : 
 Drewitt did his duty unflinchingly at a critical moment : 
 Bishop and Holland ceased to regret that they did not smoke. 
 Kingfishers : geese in flight : ugly heavy sky. 
 
 Monday, 23. — Creepy-crawl : crawly-creep. Quiet morn- 
 ing : read Wallace together. Tug paused : Bishop, Miss 
 Gooch, and Holland enjoyed a walk abroad, and eagerly 
 conversed on Old Testament : time flew : a flying figure 
 recalled them to a sense of the situation : of course, 10 
 min. after they had started, the tug had felt an impulse 
 to start : as they neared, snorts warned them of their fate : 
 the fez waved, high and ominous, on the quarter-deck : 
 they crept in, amid universal abuse, and the gallant ship 
 bounded forward on its headlong career, making, at times, 
 as much as half-a-mile an hour. 
 
 Tuesday, 24. — The grand crisis with our dear little friend, . 
 the tug. The early morning light revealed another dahabeah 
 close behind, positively overtaking us and our tug, yet it 
 had but men, against steam. Council of war : no one had 
 a word to say on behalf of our young friend : with all its 
 child-like zeal, it was obviously beaten. After prayers, 
 the decision was taken. Back to Cook and Cairo, it flew oft". 
 And we set out tracking. No more bubble-and-shake 
 at our side, as it lovingly clung to us : no more blacks on 
 the nose from its chimney. General delight at being left 
 to the simple resources of primitive nature. Quiet movement, 
 
178 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 almost soundless, as the big river slid past. Rest mid- 
 day : Bishop, Miss Gooch, and Holland walked through 
 filthy village of Bibbeh, and discovered Coptic church. 
 Saints looked down at us roughly but kindly with a touch 
 of solemnity and peace. A great joy to kneel and pray. 
 If only the dear good Christians would be but a little tiny 
 bit cleaner than their neighbours. But perhaps that is 
 asking too much. Sunset unutterable. 
 
 Wednesday. Christmas Day. — (H.C. 8.30, M. 11, E. 6.) 
 The brightest and most beautiful morning of all : the air 
 brisk, and the sun brilliant, and the earth aglow. A most 
 refreshing bath of illuminated air. And Margaret was 
 a-bubble from morning to night : from the first moment 
 when she woke to find the stockings hung at her bedside, 
 charged with hidden mysteries and nuts, down to the last 
 hour when, with the splendours of snapdragon over, she 
 out-sat all other bed-goers, asleep, with happiness, crouched 
 amid the folds of her sister's wraps on deck in the dark. 
 The gentle Mahommedans decorated the ship with palms. 
 The Bishop played ball on the sandy shore ! ! Tudros 
 built up the most beautiful Xmas dinner, served on a table 
 made touchingly hideous with spikes of cut palm-leaves : 
 in the midst stood a pear-tree in a pot, with oranges tied 
 on it (or, as others assert, an orange-tree with pears tied 
 on). Toasts were drunk : glasses tinkled : a rich and 
 perilous cake, covered with sweets, made a vehement 
 protest against those heedless souls who, in the excitement 
 of the hour, were tempted to forget that Miss Gooch had 
 a birthday. Finally — while the American boat, at hand, 
 was crowned with lanterns, and after their felucca had 
 startled the poor blind Nile with red and blue lights, and 
 Arab howls — Margaret's dream was realised : snapdragon 
 appeared : the darkies crowded round with snatching black 
 fingers, and gleaming teeth. The last blue flame flickered 
 down : the last gleam died away from the black dish : 
 and Christmas Day was over : and the stars that were 
 shining over English fields shone down on the quiet deck, 
 where we all sat on, in the peaceful dark, talking until 
 happy bed-time came ; and even Margaret was ready to 
 sink asleep. 
 
 Thursday, 26. — At last we move ! It came as the men 
 were tracking through wide creeks, plunging into the water, 
 swimming with bare black backs, wildly shoving poles. 
 
"THE LOG OF THE WATER-LOGGED" 179 
 
 in passionate zeal to pass the American dahabeah ; singing 
 weird sailor-songs in double refrain ; rushing on deck in 
 the boat ; rushing off again to shore, with the immense 
 rope drawn after them, in chorus. — In the thick of it all, 
 the Bishop looked up from his book, and lo ! the other 
 dahabeah had its small sail hoisted. Why not we ? We 
 turned to protest ; when lo ! we find that ours is already 
 up, and we had never seen it happen. It is the north wind 
 so long desired. It is come. The men have to let the 
 tracking-rope be dragged from their hands : we pick them 
 up, with a rush, as we scud close to shore. Soon the great 
 mainsail is loosed : we are flying : 20 miles are cleared 
 before nightfall : we sit and listen to the novel sound of 
 the water gurgling away under our keel. The sunset 
 spreads its splendours ; and we fly on, into the very heart 
 of it. The moon rises, and gleams, and stiU we fly on. 
 It is delicious : everyone is uplifted : the crew are happy : 
 the Rais shows his white teeth : the sail curves high among 
 the stars. AU is well with us. So we scud ; and, at last, 
 sleep. 
 
 Friday, 27. — Through all the day, we keep it up, four 
 or five miles an hour. Porter Pacha in high delight : he 
 stands erect on deck, like Columbus in the act of discovering 
 America : at last, he feels, things are moving. The Bishop 
 is not even allowed his exercise. Most delightful, to scud 
 on in the face of a grand, windy sunset, full of wings, and 
 hair blown like Margaret's across her face — a wide, wild 
 sky aU aflame. All the hosts of the stars walked out, as 
 usual, to look at us, and to wonder why on earth we had 
 come just there, of all places. Bishop trudged, at night 
 on land, with a lantern, doing his duty and satisfying his 
 imperious conscience. 
 
 Saturday, 28. \_After a visit to the rock-tombs at Beni- 
 hassan.] — We swarm home : wild little cats of children 
 crowd like blue flies round Drewitt, who imprudently 
 bought three mummied cats. A brute of a donkey-man 
 hit one of the children a hard thud with his pole : the 
 Bishop had to spring from his donkey and make amends 
 to the tiny crouching cre3.ture. On they swarmed, and 
 shrieked, and laughed, with scraps of clothes, with engaging 
 grins, down to the very shore. Drewitt summoned, at 
 departrfre, to cure small fragment of a child, in the midst 
 of sympathising crowd. The poor little scrap had his 
 
i8o HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 lungs damaged ; and accepted meekly the situation. He 
 was sent off with half a mustard plaster, and the Bishop's 
 comforter. This last gift multiplied the symptoms of a 
 like disease in several bystanders. 
 
 Sunday, 29. — Right away we go, with our sails reefed 
 by marvellous feats of crew, crawling high aloft by help 
 of toes and eyelids, with skirts blown in voluminous folds 
 over their heads : swaying in the wind like tossing clothes 
 hung out to dry. One small rag rigged up against a jury- 
 mast is enough to carry our good barge along. 
 
 Monday, 30. — We and a crowd of boats had lain all 
 night within the perilous Bluff of Abulf ayda ; in the morning, 
 we all rushed the corner in a mass — a beautiful scene of 
 flying sails, like a covey of swallows, cross-winged — we, 
 two dahabeahs, big and portentous, like two omnibuses 
 that had taken wings and mingled with the flight of birds. 
 Round we sped : cliffs craggy, scrawled, beetling, brilliant 
 in white and yellow. Then the first grand bend for Assiout. 
 Wind grew tremendous : barge heels over, lower deck 
 under water : yells of screaming Arabs, hauling at big 
 sail, almost lugged into the river : Tudros loses his head, 
 rushes like a startled alligator into ladies' cabin : Miss 
 Wilkinson with dressing-gown : Tudros summons them to 
 the deck : compels them to fly up ladder ; anyhow ; in 
 anything : up all must come. General impression, that 
 all is lost. On deck, the row is terrific : yells, lugs, struggles : 
 the captain breaks from his statuesque calm, shouts, suddenly 
 rushes to stern, and roundly boxes on the ears a number of 
 his crew. This restores order. To our universal rapture, 
 the other dahabeah is seen to be driven ashore. We tear 
 along, and round the corner triumphantly. Margaret, 
 with magnificent nerve, stole down to the cabin to comfort 
 the children [her dolls]. Finally, in the howling blast, 
 the men climb out like cats along the yards, to secure the 
 flapping sail : a miracle of climbing : sails reefed : captain's 
 dark face is lit with inward laughter : he cannot hold-in 
 his pride : his white teeth gleam : he squats, and lights 
 a victorious cigarette. 
 
 Tuesday, 31. — A fair run, with a rising wind : we round 
 one big corner : the wind grows, but we are all now as 
 brave as lions ; even Margaret's children keep calm and 
 cool. The Bishop and Holland start for their normal 
 walk : ladies scoff heartlessly : Tudros taps his forehead 
 
"THE LOG OF THE WATER-LOGGED" i8i 
 
 significantly : but the two enthusiasts enjoy themselves 
 thoroughly : come back refreshed and pleased, conveying 
 silent reproaches to the " mugged " ones in the boat. It 
 is New Year's Eve : and we think much of many. Margaret 
 defiantly and desperately sits up alone, with all her children, 
 to see the New Year in : by this feat, she goes ahead of her 
 sister May : a distinct triumph. The year entered, in 
 Egypt, she found, in much the same way as it does in England: 
 as soon as the clock strikes twelve, there it is at the door, 
 and no one saw it come — not even Margaret ! Very 
 odd! 
 
 New Year's Day, 1890. — H.C. 8.30. Cards, and 
 presents, and joys, for Margaret. And the mail ! Great 
 gladness. Miss Gooch in high and fertile activity all day, 
 exuberant in response. Idle and heedless men go happy 
 slumming with Margaret in Assiout, on asses. Return 
 by American Mission : excellent buildings : good blind 
 old lady : thin, sick, dry Scotch Missioner : and ah ! the 
 chapel ! ! rigged up for examination : portrait of Her 
 Majesty, and Tewfik, in " sanctuary " : in front, arm-chairs, 
 and a globe ! Too much for the Bishop, who flung himself 
 into his donkey-saddle, and rode off fast and furiously 
 for home. After luncheon, Miss Gooch stiU at it. Men 
 and Margaret off again on excellent asses to mountain. 
 On return, we receive distinguished visitors : three gallant 
 heroes of English occupation : Baker Pacha, grey, kindly, 
 dignified, paternal : Johnson Pacha, spare, alert, lonesome, 
 with the luminous brown eyes of a prophetical idealist : 
 Harrington Bey, vigorous, hearty, and human, with jovial 
 intelhgence of men and things. Interview delightful, 
 but so prolonged that at its close we reel to our beds for 
 repose. Dinner : moon : sleep. 
 
 Thursday, 2. Dr. Drewitt departs : amid chorus of 
 regrets. We feel that our hold on Science is lost, and much 
 kind, quiet, friendly help withdrawn, together with a general 
 cheerful sense that all things are getting better and better 
 every day : this we lose : and a genial, smiling companion- 
 ship, that is always at hand yet never obtruded. General 
 grief : as we glide off at 3 oclock, dropping down seven quiet 
 miles in a sunny untroubled slithery, slipping sort of sliding 
 way. 
 
 Friday, 3rd. — We retired gracefully on to a sand-bank. 
 The Rais called upon all his intellectual resources, cast 
 
i82 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 anchors far out, and lugged the ship's nose round : great 
 sing-song : appeals to Mahomet. The men dragged the 
 ship off : they plunged into icy water : they skipped and 
 grinned : and away we went again for a nice evening run. 
 Began " the Bothie." Great tub-crisis was opened upon 
 us. Mysterious odours, tracked by diligent search under- 
 ground to the oozing bath ! Horror ! 
 
 Saturday, 4th. The big tub-boom continues. Pacha 
 descends into the black hold : is believed to have gone down 
 the pipe itself : emerges, dusty but convinced. It is the 
 tub. All the circumstantial evidence substantiates its 
 guilt. It stands publicly convicted : it leaks at all its 
 corners, poor dear. The Sirdar had worn it through. 
 
 Simday. Tudros rises to the occasion : deploys his 
 plumbing forces : digs up the boards : plunges, with all 
 his hosts, into the black depths : he putties, plugs, and 
 powders the whole place. Once again, the Pacha descends 
 the pipe : and pronounces the ultimate verdict. " There 
 is no smell left but the smell of the stuff that was put to 
 destroy the smell." But the bath must remain silent and 
 unused : there will come no more the happy splash of early 
 sponge : no frisky plunge will ever again awake the rosy 
 morn, nor any bump of head or elbow shake Miss Wilkinson 
 from her last hope of sleep. Silence reigns there : for indeed 
 the tub has yielded to the inroads of Time, and to the 
 weight of the Sirdar. No putty can cure its cracks, nor 
 any plug its corners. We can only reserve our gathered 
 wrath for the devoted head of " Jeune Cook " — when we 
 see him ! ! ! A delicious walk round the town, at sunset, 
 glowing, amber, mellow, solemn. A boy, who had care- 
 fully thought how best to please the Bishop, made up his 
 mind at last that it would best be done by lifting a ragged 
 donkey by its tail ; but he was disappointed. 
 
 Monday. — ^A momentary pang at passing Abydos ; 
 but Tudros and the wind together are irresistible. Away 
 we scud, with just a look of penitential reproach on the 
 Bishop's face : we cannot help it : we feebly fortify our 
 misdeed by the example of Miss Amelia B. We make 
 another 10 miles before we settle-in for the night. The 
 great golden moon suddenly pushed itself up above the 
 red crags, wide as a big dish, and yellow as corn in harvest, 
 round, full, strong, glorious, in the dusky-blue vault of 
 eastern sky. 
 
"THE LOG OF THE WATER-LOGGED" 183 
 
 Tuesday, Jan. 7. The wind dropped like a shot : a 
 dead calm, a pause for thought : and, then, for the first 
 time since the loss of the poor infant tug, we felt the puff 
 of the southern wind. Tracking, punting, faintly lifted 
 by side-puffs, we crawled into Farshut, at the nastiest, 
 dirtiest, ugliest, noisiest, smelliest, horridest spot that the 
 Rais could select. Sugar factory high above us. Roars 
 and jabberings far into the night, all round us. A 
 thick, damp mist rose. Dust : filth : shouts. This is 
 Farshut. 
 
 Friday. Dendereh. — For facts, see Murray : for sentiment, 
 see Miss Amelia B. : for rich and deep impression, see 
 inside any one of the party. It was the first sight that 
 was complete enough to produce its direct and original 
 effect, to be felt and apprehended even by the Cockiest 
 of souls. Margaret glowing, over the donkey. Back by 
 11.30, in a wild attempt to induce the crew to attend their 
 Friday mosque : but Time and Tudros were too many for 
 us. The crew relieved themselves with what we tried 
 to believe were hymns : Tudros, more suspicious, attributed 
 to them a totally different character. P.S. — It should 
 be mentioned that, during most of this period, Margaret had 
 been suffering from a curious local disorder, known scienti- 
 fically as " the bubbles." It is due to an unfortunate 
 excess of happiness, of which it is difficult to relieve the 
 poor child. Time alone can work a perfect cure.. 
 
 Sunday. — Luxor inspects us through its glasses. We do 
 not know what we looked to it : but to us it looked strangely 
 hideous : to Miss Gooch's profound disappointment, who 
 had expected a fairy sylvan bower. In the depths of the 
 dust-heap, we could detect, with the naked eye, good English 
 folk patiently passing, two and two, to church. The sight 
 kindled our imaginations : and four of us shot off in a 
 boat to church (accompanied by Gregorian chanting from 
 the crew). 
 
 Monday. — • 
 
 Tub ! in which our fathers plunged 
 
 Many years before us : 
 
 Where the happy Sirdar sponged. 
 
 And hummed a merry chorus : 
 
 Who could dream that you would prove 
 
 Ridiculously porous ? 
 
i84 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Some such impassioned lyric burst from the lips of 
 Porter Pacha, it is believed, as he entered Cook's office 
 on Monday morning. The result of his appeal was, that 
 the entire resources of civilisation were to be applied to 
 remedy the disaster. In the meantime, we all discovered 
 that everybody greatly preferred the small tub to the big : 
 and lastly, the armies of officials who pranced down to the 
 rescue found that everything had been done already. So they 
 scraped the putty off the tub and themselves : and thus 
 ended the great tub-problem, to everybody's satisfaction. 
 
 We had a big day over the water, at Rameseum and 
 Medinet Abu : until all faculties collapsed, with exhausted 
 admiration. We all came to a dead stop at the same 
 moment. Returned by poor foolish belated old Colossi, 
 who had sat down, in a corn-field, about 4000 years ago, 
 and have never since been able to remember where they 
 had intended to go to. We left them, still there, bewildered 
 and dumb. 
 
 Tuesday. — Post to be responded to : pressure, confusion, 
 upset. At last off to Karnac : luncheon there. Immense 
 and melancholy havoc of old Time. Dusty and thick 
 smells ; dreary musty sights : and, in the midst, broken 
 grandeur — self-assertive, proud, unyielding — strong in cruel 
 magnificence of self-display, but with a touch of haughty 
 patience, as if it would endure to fall. A tangled mass of 
 memories, jumbled, tumbled, mumbled. Exhausting, very : 
 but we come to a sharp check, just in time, through signal- 
 cry of Dr. Porter. Visitors begin to abound ; pleasant but 
 perilous. Byrons, Greenwood, Strange, Effendi : brains 
 reel a little : where will it end ? Bishop calm, but resolute. j 
 
 Margaret still suffering ; most violent attack of " Hubble- 
 bubbles." 
 
 Thursday, i6th. — Visit to the Kings' Tombs — the 
 culmination of the Egyptian ideal — the royal seclusion, 
 the deep secrecy, the mystery of the dead body, the fatigue 
 of re-iteration. The type, too, of the failure of the ideal — 
 the seclusion penetrated, the secrecy exposed, the tomb 
 rifled, the hiding-place emptied. Johnson Pacha at tea : 
 good eager talk. And then ! ! The charity of the Bishop 
 draws a veil over that hideous rout of Comus, the Oriental 
 feast ! The dreadful details are burnt into our memories 
 and need no record in the log. And the good, fat Effendi 
 had right intentions, we believe. So there ! we will say 
 
"THE LOG OF THE WATER-LOGGED" 185 
 
 no more about it. It shall remain a dumb and buried 
 nightmare. The Bishop took kindly to three Radical 
 Liberationists, and courteously entertained their expressions 
 of opinion on the clergy, etc. They were hearty, and 
 amicable ; and, moreover, neither they nor their excellent 
 ladies showed any signs of amazement or distress at the 
 horrors of the meal. Naturally, coming fresh from their 
 own barbarian dens, they would be less sensitive to the loss 
 of knives and forks with which they have, themselves, 
 become but recently familiar. No doubt this is the very 
 fashion with which they devour their food in their Radical 
 homes. We, in the meantime, fly headlong home, sick, 
 hungry, exhausted, to calm ourselves with claret and biscuits. 
 Night closes in, to comfort and soothe us. 
 
 Friday. — Johnson Pacha to dine : in excellent force : 
 the brown eyes all alive : the face alight with decision : 
 frank, clear, forceful, enheartening, delightful. 
 
 Saturday. — ^At last, off ! With the old delicious sense 
 of easy motion, wheel-less and smooth ; the old freedom 
 of air and light : breezy movements, happy gurglings, 
 sliding waters, rippling keel : and, high above us, into the 
 windy skies, the towering sail once more, curved like a 
 hawk's wing, swelling, with shadowy hollow, against the 
 glow of sunset, as the sun goes down in all his old habitual 
 splendour — all this is good ! We feel the freshness of 
 free mariners, who roam at large — released from mud- 
 banks, and stuffy conventional society, and the feathers 
 of plucked geese, and the ragged tatters of skinned 
 sheep. 
 
 Sunday, 19. — Dear Bubbles erected again her painting 
 apparatus, and started at the pink-yellow hills : a short, 
 sharp bout, and poor Bubbles fell back, beaten again : 
 the hills grinned at her victoriously. But she will conquer 
 them yet ! the silly old pink things. Just let them wait 
 a bit and see. Friday : Assouan. — We draw up to the 
 green island, by a green strip, past eight other dahabeahs. 
 Graceful town : brilliant desert : and, above us, the moving 
 waters, feeling their way down the islands, which are piled 
 like castles gone to sleep in a dream, and have a strong 
 touch in them of Cornish coasts. There we lie for a week, 
 pleased and freshened. Wednesday, Jan. 29. — Altogether, 
 the " Tropics " have behaved with admirable moderation. 
 We have perpetually searched for the Tropic of Cancer ; 
 
i86 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 peeped under Margaret's bed : looked in every hole and 
 corner : never could catch a sight of it. 
 
 Friday, Jan. 31. — ^Today we look our last on Assouan: 
 we go south no more : we organise a retreat. We find 
 ourselves sidling along, in a silly, weak-minded sort of 
 apologetic impotence, broadside to the stream, like a hen 
 in a gale of wind, or a crab gone out of its mind. In some 
 such side-long fashion, we made six miles. Saturday, 
 Feb. I. — That old Tropic turned up with a vengeance. 
 Stupid old thing. She was determined to make up for 
 being so late. We tried to appease her by shedding garment 
 after garment : but not a bit of it ! The worst of it is 
 that as the old dottering ship moves round and round 
 in her chassez, the sun seizes the opportunity to hunt us 
 round and round the deck, roaring with laughter at us, 
 the jolly old boy, as he drives us out of each tiny fragment 
 of shadow in which we struggle to escape his eye. We go 
 hot to bed : and Margaret, in the dead of night, turns 
 (it is believed) a complete somersault in the air, and is found 
 on the floor, with her head to the door, and a startled jug 
 of water staring at her in pale amazement : neither she nor 
 it could tell how she got there. 
 
 Monday. — A good long day of work — rowing, sliding, 
 waddling, careering in mooning circles, slipping along 
 somehow, the old ship turns her nose to every point of the 
 compass, with an aimless and brainless air of good-humoured 
 indifference, Tuesday. — Dear old Tudros had been a 
 wreck from sciatica : but had been hot-ironed out by 
 Dodson, and, after sleeping all one sultry day stuffed up 
 in tiny cabin crammed with tinned meats and preserved 
 lobsters and potted jams, felt much better ; and brightened : 
 and now, in the height of his revival, was seized with a 
 passionate desire that Miss Wilkinson should see the Temple 
 of Edfu. At the bank, to our horrified indignation, a 
 " scene " took place : a donkey-man had lost self-control : 
 he gave himself up to his passion, like a baby ; he screamed, 
 he tore, he yelled : three policemen appeared, and joined 
 in the hubbub. Everybody roared at once, except the 
 donkeys, who looked meekly dignified at the thought 
 that all this immense noise was about them : which at least 
 raised their importance in the world, even though morally 
 it was to be deplored. Such was their look, as far as I 
 could catch it. Rode through dusty streets, under dirty 
 
"THE LOG OF THE WATER-LOGGED" 187 
 
 sky, to dull-brown temple. Fine courts, but sunless day : 
 Milbank walls ; depressing weight of matter. At the very 
 crisis, on the roof of the innermost shrine, Mr. Byron, 
 who had joined us, broke into a cry straight from the heart : 
 " I do hate Egyptian temples." Bishop strove gallantly 
 to stem the tide of abuse ; but it remained that we were 
 impressed with the mighty failure of these vast, monotonous 
 secresies. Highly intelligent women visit us, by moon- 
 light. Great talk. Bishop secreted by a lady : gallant 
 rescue by Miss Gooch. Peace. Bed. P.S. — Dreadful 
 dusty cloud of locusts : drifted to and fro, innumerable, 
 and awful. 
 
 Wednesday, Feb. 5. — A day of dank despair. That postal 
 steamer, long expected, entirely refused for hours to turn 
 up. At last, far down the river, a black and snorting 
 speck. The postal boat at last. Out with the felucca. 
 Tudros to the helm. Eyes strain : hearts beat high. 
 What is it ? An uneasy interchange of shouts : a steamer 
 puffing defiance in our faces : a retreating felucca : a 
 blank Tudros : a mail-less company ! And all because 
 our bag was tied up inside the Assouan bag, and could not 
 be unsealed ! A really desperate moment : a collapse : 
 a veil drawn over our dismay. Oh, Mr. Cook ! Mr. Jeune 
 Cook ! Miss Annie Cook ! Oh, All the too many Cooks 
 who have spoilt our broth. Don't come too near us just 
 now : for we are desperate. 
 
 Thursday. — A boisterous north wind. We are reduced 
 to the helpless meandering gait of the waddling and in- 
 competent goose. The boat adopts the general air of a 
 portly and elderly gentleman, who, having gone off his head, 
 insisted on dreamily dancing a quadrille entirely alone, 
 with benign satisfaction beaming on his face, and with an 
 anxious solemnity in the performance of all the steps. So 
 we sidle, waddle, back, retire, advance, set to partners, 
 bow, turn, chassez to right, chassez to left, cross, down the 
 middle, back again, set, first position : repeat as before. 
 Finally, we accomplish a good four miles : and retire to 
 sleep, in a bank of lupins. Tempers very fairly preserved. 
 Saturday : Esneh. — ^Temple deep-sunk : grand portico, with 
 miserable detail. Regrets, that it cannot be utilised for 
 front of St. Peter's, Eaton Square. Bishop anticipates 
 floods of conversation between wide pillars after morning 
 prayer. Dr. Porter retains his general views on the subject 
 
i88 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 of Egyptian architecture. He does not recommend it for 
 universal use in Charleston. 
 
 Tuesday, Feb. lo. — Luxor persists in its moodiness. 
 Just as before, so now : a dull leaden English sky hangs 
 over the dust-bin. Rameses the Great is in, and disgorges 
 its multitudes, amid yells, on to the Thebes shore, where 
 70 patient asses insert themselves beneath their destined 
 burdens, and bear off lumps of heavy Cooky matter towards 
 the west. This settles us for Karnac. Surely, we will 
 kindle to its magnificence. Surely, we will, now at last, 
 be adequate to our opportunities. Still, Karnac looked 
 a huge desolate heap : a forlorn mound of tumbled rubbish. 
 Obelisks stuck through it, like fish-bones in a curry. They 
 seemed out of place : and difficult to swallow. The Great 
 Hall still looked choked, and loaded, and cumbered. We 
 snatched a rare and partial joy from the one fragment of 
 light clerestory. Round and about the temple, the mounds 
 and the humps of the villages still left a sense of dirty 
 melancholy. No, the great impression was not to be had. 
 We rode home a little disconsolate. 
 
 In the night, at about bed-time, a low moan crept 
 round. How the wind is rising ! Before we know how, 
 it is a hurricane, rushing, roaring, tearing : the waves 
 break over the lower deck : the feluccas toss wildly ; the 
 masts groan : the men are all out, struggling with 
 ropes and chains : the ladies are flitting to and fro, from 
 creaking cabin to groaning saloon : the old barge rises, 
 and bumps, with ominous thuds : above the stars shine 
 clear. A really tremendous storm : but the Rais sits like 
 a toad, without a sign of alarm ; and at last falls asleep 
 with the chain still in his hand. It roars away till 3 oclock. 
 Old Tudros looked out from his bed, with red rag tied round 
 his head, weird and awful. " Never, doctor ! Never : 
 never ! " He had never seen it like this. It was an event. 
 The men's beds were soaked, poor things. But they took 
 it with habitual good cheer. 
 
 Wednesday. — Pacha Johnson at tea : told of his capture, 
 with loss of men. His good eyes gleamed with distress. 
 Thursday. — A glorious day with the Kings in their tombs : 
 Sethi did his level best for us : the paintings stood the 
 second visit : beautiful gaiety about the tomb of Rameses 
 IX. A good ending to Luxor : only, alas ! the end, too, 
 of Dr. Porter. He was left for the postal boat, to take 
 
"THE LOG OF THE WATER-LOGGED" 189 
 
 hini to Sinai, Antioch, Athens. A deep grief : the dear 
 old man clung to the ship, full of parting benediction : 
 could not tear himself off : sat lonely on the bank as we 
 unmoored : and finally, stood upright and grey against 
 the sky, waving and waving till we could wave no longer. 
 A real wrench, this, so long we had lived together, so familiar 
 the companionship. Sadly we missed the commanding 
 figure ; we have no fez to shake at Tudros, now : the 
 fine grey head, with its dignified story, its pathetic past, 
 kindles no more over old moving tales. We shall miss 
 him much, we feel. But it cannot be helped. There he 
 stands, far away on the dusty Luxor bank, waving his 
 handkerchief, a white square in the wind. Good-bye, 
 Doctor ! Good-bye ! We are so sorry ! Good-bye ! 
 
 Friday. — We fly along : stopping for mosque at the 
 Bishop's request, who sees his flock to prayers. They wash ; 
 and run— with gaiety and vigour : but Margaret nourishes 
 unworthy suspicions, having caught sight of pipes and 
 talk at the mosque door. We all plead for Mohammedanism. 
 Saturday. — Just at tea, scudding along full sail, foaming 
 at the bows, came the Horus. Our felucca hardly could 
 catch hold for the pace. Yet in to our bank they gallantly 
 turned, and stayed. In and out of each other's dahabeahs 
 we popped, drawing odorous comparisons. They were 
 superb, and vast : we cuddled our snug old homestead. 
 But ah ! Their sketches ! ! crushing. All from their 
 having rose-madder ! Who can say what we and Margaret 
 would have done if only we had had rose-madder ? 
 
 Tuesday, Feb. 18. It relieves us to find that our old 
 Pink Ranges have not been crushed by Tawny Assouan : 
 but are still Pink : and take noble colours : and give the 
 old wonderful feeling of a silent motionless watcher who 
 lies, like a dumb wondering lion, gazing at the movement 
 of cultivated life on the green strip, unable to understand 
 what it means, and too astonished even to devour it up. 
 Sunsets, too, pull themselves together, and do the old 
 trick with immense success. Art revives : Margaret is 
 at work : brushes fly about : yellows and reds are all 
 aflame. Wednesday. — By gigantic exertions, we made 
 our three miles : and, then, the wind roared : and we 
 flew to embrace the ever-friendly mud. There we abode, 
 through the day. Thursday. — By yet more splendid efforts, 
 we succeed in getting three hundred yards on our way. 
 
igo HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Storm : hurricane. Impossible. Once more, the identical 
 bank of sociable mud. Bad, indeed ! Most interesting 
 walk through the same village as yesterday : only now, we 
 take it at a new angle : this lends a charming sense of 
 variety to the expedition. We all begin to count the 
 miles to Cairo : and to sum up the number of days left : 
 and to look thoughtful. But the wind roars remorselessly. 
 There is no choice. There we sit. Good-night. 
 
 Sunday, Feb. 23 : Ekmim. — The Copts bring back 
 cakes as a tribute of affection from Bishop to Bishop. 
 This lays obligations : we start off to fulfil them : the Bishop, 
 Miss Gooch, Holland, with Tudros glowing. We pass, 
 in triumphant procession, up the filthiest streets, with the 
 main body of a population of 25,000 souls, apparently, 
 at our heels. At last, in the heart of Copt quarter, we step 
 in, under a large red doorway, into a most still house ; 
 quiet courts in deep shadow : bits of Cairo carving ; all 
 picturesque, especially the terrific smell. We are led to 
 seats in a dignified little alcove — in a peace that reminded 
 us of Amen Court. Miss Gooch, who had remained humbly 
 secreted in passage, was ushered forward into pride of place. 
 (Our Mussulman sailor was let in, too : this is mentioned 
 for its historic interest, 7Vot to crush Miss Gooch.) The old 
 man is supported in from the church : 83 years old — 
 (" with knees worn by sitting," according to Tudros) — 
 a common homely type but very kindly, reverend, worthy. 
 Most courteous and gentle : the attendants stand off, 
 with a peculiar charm of dignified humility. Coffee : 
 cigarettes : we fail at this pinch : otherwise all goes well. 
 A good visit altogether : leaving a pleasant memory of 
 the serious and tough reality of this most ancient Church 
 which no force of Islam has had the power to erase. There 
 it abides, poor, ignorant, dirty, but unbroken. One of the 
 marked nights : with all the quiet glory of Egypt in it. 
 
 [During the next fortnight, from Monday Feb. 24 to 
 Monday March 10, they were often delayed by bad weather 
 and the north wind : it was a dull time : and the fear of 
 missing the Orient ship at Cairo worried them. The log 
 was written up till March 9. A year and half later, in 
 Scotland, Holland added a postscript.] 
 
"THE LOG OF THE WATER-LOGGED" 191 
 
 Culdees (Aug. 1891) 
 
 Here occurs a yawning abyss, into which disappear, 
 at one gulp, a whole year and a half — at the close of which 
 the poor old log, now balder than ever, with the wrinkles 
 of age on its withered brow, and with a last solitary hair 
 turning slowly grey, beat its unhappy brains to recall the 
 days and hours at which the final crisis made itself known, 
 A Highland mist hung over the limpid light of the Egyptian 
 desert : and only in vague glimpses could the log catch 
 sight of the dim past. It seemed to recollect a dullish 
 Monday, during the whole of which the stumpy impertinence 
 of Sakharah perversely protruded itself, at every conceivable 
 angle, upon our unwilling attention : and, then, on Tuesday 
 morning, the bomb fell ! A summons from the shore 
 revealed a Cook-man in ambush, with the awful news that 
 the Orient ship was three days ahead of her date : and might 
 be expected at Ismailia by Wednesday ! ! Horrors ! We 
 are still 25 miles from Cairo. 
 
 Never did a startled alligator, suddenly conscious of 
 having swallowed six tenpenny-nails, look more dismayed 
 than Tudros, as he broke in upon us with the disastrous 
 intelligence. His grey moustache hung damp and listless : 
 his old eyes filled with dim despair. But there we were. 
 There was nothing for it but to pack like mad. Two figures 
 stand out triumphant and supreme, at that grim hour. 
 First, the Rais : black, silent, mysterious : but resolute 
 on reaching the goal. Never yet had he failed : somehow, he 
 looked as if he meant it — and he did ! Far on into the 
 dark, he kept them at it : we slipped, and slid, and scraped, 
 and thudded along : somehow, by hook or by crook, the 
 long reaches vanished : and, far off in the night, we found 
 ourselves tied up amid the lights of Cairo. It was a 
 magnificent effort. 
 
 And then, Dodson ! Dodson the victorious ! Hot : 
 large : florid : tempestuous : she ranged over the trunks, 
 like a war-horse : things vanished into boxes at her crude 
 but masterful touch : it began to appear, that we should 
 really get packed. 
 
 Early Wednesday morning, we moved round to the 
 eastern bank, and lay under what we at first thought 
 was the main drain of Cairo : but this turned out to be 
 an illusion. Up and down Cairo we caracoled : Cook- 
 
192 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 comforted by the news that the ship would dally till Friday, 
 and that we might shop till Thursday evening, and then 
 start by a train that afterwards turned out to be intended 
 for cattle chiefly. So we trotted : and got gold : and spent 
 it. 
 
 And still Dodson packed ; with ribbons streaming in 
 the wind ; with loud cries : with immense resolution — 
 a tempestuous whirlwind in petticoats. And the ladies 
 were, throughout, indomitable. Alas ! the beloved coverings 
 of the saloon had to be torn down : we did not recognise 
 our home : all was ugliness and confusion. 
 
 The final moment was backsheesh : all backsheesh. 
 No coarse or casual tips, but a scientific process, delicately 
 and subtly graduated as the tints in Margaret's sunsets. 
 The Bishop sat in solemn dignity in the midst ; and shook 
 hands with each in turn. We think that a faint tear stood 
 in the Old Lady's eye : she had begged for a testimonial, 
 and we had with difficulty composed one for her in the 
 masculine gender : we refrained from mentioning the 
 inane smile with which she would take us into the bank. 
 The dear Rais glowed blacker and blacker with emotion. 
 The crew counted their coins carefully before grinning 
 thanks. There was a slight question as to whether the two 
 washermen were thoroughly pleased : but we tried to fancy 
 that it was a fear of breaking down that kept them silent. 
 Tudros looked haggard and anxious till all was over : and 
 murmured, " Doctor, the letter : the letter. Doctor." 
 We never knew what it was to convey — this letter : whether 
 it was a detailed account of the status and difficulties of 
 the Ancient Coptic Church, or a summary of the more 
 urgent wants of Tudros' youngest infant. The mystery 
 is still unsolved : for the letter has not yet arrived. 
 
 At last, on Thursday evening, we dragged ourselves 
 out of the beloved old ship. For three months, it had been 
 our home ; in fair weather, and in foul ; in the wind, and 
 on the mud ; flying south, and waddling north. Sun and 
 stars had walked round and round us as we floated ; and, 
 always, we had loved the kindly and comfortable barge. 
 For three months, it had been to us as a floating fairy- 
 house, cut off from all the harsh necessities of responsible 
 dry-land. It had been to us all like nothing else in the 
 world — a separated period — which we alone, who had 
 been in it, could ever know, or understand. 
 
"THE LOG OF THE WATER-LOGGED" 193 
 
 " How dull it must have been ! " So we hear ignorant 
 people say : and we smile to ourselves, but we cannot 
 tell them why. Only we recall the long endless reaches 
 of broad flowing waters : and the ring of jolly black grins : 
 and the grey haunted eyes of Tudros : and the Rais' 
 gleaming teeth, as " Good morning " broke from his black 
 face : and 
 
 In and out the dear old barge 
 The bubbles of our merry Marge — 
 
 and, behind Marge's sun-bonnet, there is the yellow desert, 
 with the pink glow, and the wide sky. And we know that 
 all this will never be again : and our hearts are very sad, 
 and very grateful, as we look back at the old boat, under 
 the bank at Cairo, and say, for the last time, 
 
 Good-night. Good-bye. Good-night. 
 
 So many cares, anxieties, prayers, have been shared in 
 common, within that floating homestead : and there 
 are memories too of quiet communions, while the river 
 slid past the cabin-windows almost without a sound. Yes, 
 there is much to remember : we have been sad, and glad, 
 together : and now, it is over. 
 
 Good-bye, old Boat. Good-bye. 
 
IV 
 
 1890 TO 1903 
 189O-189I 
 
 They came back by Naples, and were in Rome for Easter, 
 1890 : 
 
 All the streets and churches are just where they used 
 to be : and the Pincian has not moved an inch. I enjoy 
 sauntering about. It seems very Emropean : and close 
 home. I think we shall stop on over Holy Week, unless 
 the women besiege the Bishop too hotly : if so, we must 
 take up our baggage and iiy in the night. All the world 
 is gadding and gushing. I never saw the Pyramids again ! ! 
 so I can never face my relations. I never saw the Coptic 
 Cathedral at Cairo : so I never dare meet Liddon ! I 
 cannot be at Gayton — or at Amen Court. I shall take 
 rooms at the Salisbury Hotel : and hover about in disguise. 
 
 He writes to Dr. Creighton on his appointment to be 
 Bishop of Peterborough : they had been in Cambridge I 
 together, the day before the appointment was announced : — 
 
 So the dumb thing was sitting inside you all the time ! j 
 I am really very glad indeed. There will be a good deal, ^ 
 I fear, to curb and block you, against which you will kick : 
 but you will find much that draws out the warmest and 
 tenderest things in you. Something touching and pathetic 
 in simple folk struggling along, with immense efforts and 
 pains, to achieve tiny results — something doing in odd 
 corners, behind the door — something of children in nooky 
 churches — all will be brought near to you ; and you will 
 
 194 
 
1890 TO 1903 195 
 
 be to it as a jet of wonderful light : and you will be half 
 sad, half glad to think that a kind word from you can do 
 so much that becomes historical in these little out of the 
 way nests and can win eternal gratitude. A Bishop has 
 a delightful way of going about giving blessings, cheering 
 up, opening churches and porches and windows and organs ; 
 and flags fly, and everybody is in a bustle, and he has 
 only got to be decently sympathetic and gentle, and all is 
 done ! God be with you always. 
 
 In June of this year, 1890, the holy party had its first 
 meeting at Longworth, Berkshire, 12 miles from Oxford ; 
 where Illingworth was rector. Here they met each year, 
 till 1915, the year of Illingworth's death.* The name which 
 Holland had invented for them fell into disuse ; and they 
 called the party ' ' Lux, " or " Longworth. ' ' The daily life was 
 the same : except that the times of silence were remitted. 
 There is a full account of these meetings, in the Life of 
 Illingworth. Holland grudged the loss of one of them : 
 " I keep thinking of you all," he writes to Richmond, 
 " and of all the happy regularities of the perennial drama : 
 the slow saunters to church, trailing through the roses and 
 the hay : the chatter of the evenings, with Mrs. I. curled 
 up in a window-seat : the long-suffering plaintains on the 
 lawn, prodded by Roffen in the agonies of debate — delicious, 
 all ! If you want to feed my soul, would you be a brick, 
 and write me your thoughts on the talks : how they 
 went, and what was in the spirit. It would be good of 
 you." 
 
 * The East window in the church, Heywood Sumner's work, was given 
 by them in 1900 to commemorate their tenth meeting. " I was at Oxford," 
 Holland writes to him, " and ran over to Longworth and saw the window. 
 It was quite beautiful: so fresh and simple and green and quiet, yet 
 flooding the httle white rabbit of a church with rich solemnities. The 
 opalescent changes in the glass spaces are delicious ; and it lives and 
 speaks in varying tones, and down every side of the church. And you 
 feel the country through it, pouring in from outside and taking on a divine 
 touch as it enters," 
 
196 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 In the autumn of 1890, he founded the Junior Clergy 
 Missionary Association. Prebendary Isaacs writes : — 
 
 The first meeting, of just half-a-dozen of the younger 
 clergy, was held in his study in Amen Court. The Associa- 
 tion has now become a great federation of Associations, 
 and has proved itself one of the very greatest forces in 
 the rekindling and stimulating of missionary interest in 
 the Church of England. The whole movement owes its 
 origin, or certainly its first send-off, to his enthusiasm and 
 guidance. The venerable S.P.G. was felt by some of us 
 younger men to be too venerable in its methods. Its 
 Annual Meeting, for instance, was held in the old St. James's 
 HaU, at the eminently respectable hour of 2.30. There 
 was no attempt to kindle enthusiasm. And most of its 
 methods were, like its literature, deadly dull. We felt 
 that there was little to create a vision in the younger clergy. 
 We could not dictate to our elders, but we could set to 
 work to " enthuse " ourselves. 
 
 The Bishop of London (Dr. Temple) at first was cautious. 
 He was not sure that the movement was not in the nature 
 of an attack on the elder generation. He hesitated, for 
 the moment, to give it his support. Then Canon Holland 
 went and saw him. And ever after, the Bishop was our 
 truest and most generous supporter. He came to, and 
 spoke at, our inaugural meeting (1891). We began with a 
 great popular evening meeting, in the old Exeter Hall. 
 Archbishop Benson presided : and so great was the crowd 
 that he had to be escorted up the stairs by the police, 
 and an overflow meeting had to be arranged in the Hall 
 of King's College. Of course we had the one who had so 
 inspired the movement as one of our principal speakers. 
 And year after year he came and spoke at those Exeter 
 Hall meetings. I have a report of his address at our first 
 meeting before me as I write. And how true, in the light 
 of the events of today, are his words spoken then : "It 
 is the home people who decide what the impress of England 
 shall be on the story of the world." 
 
 Besides his work for the Junior Clergy Missionary Associa- 
 tion, there is his work for the Universities' Mission to Central 
 Africa. He was Chairman, for eighteen years, of its evening 
 
iSgo TO 1903 197 
 
 Annual Meeting : and he so won the love of his audiences 
 that they will never forget what he did for them. 
 
 At first, in the earlier years, when all speaking for missions 
 was expected to be solemn, he had not found it easy to be 
 fervent over them, or to impart fervour to a cold audience. 
 He needed for his appeal not a pulpit and a silent congre- 
 tion, but a public meeting, and the relief of light-hearted 
 talk. He writes to a friend, of this difficulty which he felt 
 early in his life : — 
 
 The coldness you speak of is really so deadly that one 
 is forced to seek out warmth, and to make the atmosphere 
 warm for oneself about missions, and this is apt to feel 
 artificial and unnatural — yet it must be done, I think : 
 for, unless one plunges one's head now and then into the 
 missionary water, and by forgetting all else and shutting 
 one's eyes, makes at intervals that which is only a basonful 
 appear like a great sea, one could never keep the real faith 
 which one's religion forces upon one, alive. It is really 
 only an intenser form of the difficulty of believing in God, 
 in an atmosphere of silent suspicion at His existence. 
 Faith compels, against sight ; and I can say, " If I believe 
 anything at all, I believe, with it, all that missionarism 
 involves " : and this is faith, to hold fast to God, in spite 
 of darkness and doubtfulness and coldness. 
 
 1891 
 
 This year, he and Mr. W. S. Rockstro published their 
 " Memoir of Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt : her early 
 art-life and dramatic career, 1820-1851." (Two volumes. 
 John Murray. 1891.) Three editions were brought out 
 in 1891 : and an abridged edition, in one volume, in 1893. 
 It was translated into Swedish (1891) by J. R. Spilhammer. 
 
 In the autumn of 1891, he was at Hawarden ; with 
 Lord Rosebery, Mr. Herbert Gladstone, Sir Algernon West, 
 and Miss Mary Crum : he gave an address to men, in the 
 
igS HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 gymnasium which Mr. and Mrs. Drew had instituted in 
 the village. " We had a very successful meeting in the 
 gymnasium, and it was a great joy to speak to the men. 
 Then we had a superb exhibition in the gym, eight Liverpool 
 heroes over, performing magnificent and most thrilling 
 feats. The old man came, charged with earnest attention. 
 He was wonderfully noble, and dignified, and simple : 
 very old, but full of splendid force, with his eye flashing 
 and thunders in his voice. He is absorbed in his new Library. 
 I had a good walk with him alone ; and talk in plenty." 
 
 To his Mother 
 
 Oct. 6, 1891. Hams, Birmingham. — ^This is not a birth- 
 day letter, but only one of love, such as might belong to 
 any day in the year : for all days are the same to our love 
 for you, dearest : our own mother, the one blessed name 
 which has in it a sound such as no other name can ever 
 have. And into the name, which is itself so blessed, you 
 have brought blessing, and made it sound to us so full of 
 beloved meaning, such as few children can know ; and we 
 thank you for all this, and thank God for you. And now 
 as the years grow heavy, we long so to encompass you about 
 with comfort and to ease the road with our affection : and 
 to assure you again and again of the fondness that watches 
 about you, and clings to you, and feels you still the centre 
 of the home-life, whom we could not bear to lose. 
 
 So dear it was to have you all that time in my house ! 
 It is a delightful privilege to have a place in which to make 
 you a home. Oh, if we could walk on together, you with 
 us, till the end. So long we have been allowed to keep 
 the ring unbroken. I dare think of nothing that will 
 shatter it. Only, the Love of God is stronger than Death. 
 He will hold us fast. God keep 370U, my own dearest. 
 
 In December, the ring was broken, by the sudden death 
 of his father. " He had had a nasty accident," Holland 
 writes to Richmond, " and we all came home : but that was 
 clearing — when his heart gave way, and in a moment he 
 
iSgo TO 1903 199 
 
 had passed away. He was 75, and was failing : but it 
 is the very first death in our family circle : and that gives 
 it such intense meaning to us all. And he was so full of 
 life, and character, and affection : a very marked person 
 in our lives." And to Adderley, " When do you expect 
 me ? I feel as if it were no earthly use to preach, or do 
 anything. Do you know how miserably rich I shall be ? 
 It is like a nightmare to me. I can't think what to do. 
 The whole problem begins. I had so hoped to die without 
 a penny at my bank : and earning all I had. But I shall 
 have to think, now, very seriously. It adds to my great 
 sorrow greatly : I do so loathe it." 
 
 1892-1894 
 
 In August, 1892, came the news of Nettleship's death 
 on Mont Blanc * : — 
 
 To Dr. Talbot 
 
 Gayton Lodge. Aug. 1892. I can think of nothing 
 but that white silent body waiting for its burial, under 
 
 * He and two guides started, on Aug. 24th, at the very end of his 
 hoHday, to make the ascent by way of the Aiguille and the Dome du 
 Goflter. In the afternoon, there was a heavy storm ; and they lost their 
 way. About 5 o'clock, they dug a shelter in the snow, to pass the night 
 in. Through the night, they tried to keep themselves awake by talking ; 
 he sang them an English song ; and urged them to eat. About 8 o'clock 
 in the morning, he opened-up the shelter with his ice-axe, saying, " II 
 faut faire quelquechose : mourir i^i, ce serait mourir en laches : il faut 
 essayer de sortir." Then, " AUons." They roped themselves, and moved 
 on for about an hour : then he cried and fell. They raised him, holding 
 him by his arms, and rubbing him. They asked him what was the matter, 
 but he did not answer them : he struck his forehead, and began speaking 
 EngUsh loud. They tried to give him wine, but he said loudly, " Oh no : " 
 and when they offered it again, he shook his head. He held out a hand 
 to each, and pressed their hands very hard. Gaspard Simond said to him, 
 " Au revoir ; dans un moment, c'est k nous." Alfred Comte said, " Au 
 revoir. Monsieur; tout k I'heure." He went on talking for some little 
 time; "pour se recommander k Dieu," Gaspard Simond thought, " j'ai 
 cm que c'etait une chose comme cela comme si il voulait prier " : Alfred 
 
200 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 the snows. It is such a strange end for him — he who never 
 made a mistake, or got into a wrong place, or did the wrong 
 thing, or slipped into any unsteadiness, or caused trouble. 
 He was so reliable : he was sure to come through everything 
 right. Then, he was so bent on never making himself 
 out heroic, or tragic. He would never startle anybody ; 
 or rouse interest ; or evoke sympathy. He would always 
 abhor doing anything that made demands on other people. 
 And now, there comes to him this striking, terrible, lonely 
 tragedy. It is horrible to me to think of that day and night : 
 it must have been ghastly. I long to know more. 
 
 Where the intimacy has been so close it cannot ever 
 grow under the cloud of difference. But the old sense of 
 it never failed on his side, or mine. And he was so loyal, 
 and so supremely noble, with such high delicacy. ... I 
 cannot tell what he finally thought of Christ. I am given 
 to accepting a fixed position, and not expecting it to alter. 
 The line of thought which sometimes disturbed me in him 
 was a sort of spiritual fatalism. But I know few whom 
 one could leave so quietly to the mercy of God. 
 
 Toward the end of 1892, he published a volume of 
 sermons, under the title " Pleas and Claims for Christ." 
 (Longmans, pp. x, 323.) 
 
 In August, 1893, Lawrence Holland died. In some 
 ways, the brothers were not unlike : but Lawrence was 
 hard to know : he was held back by a rather unsociable 
 and abrupt manner. The key to him was Shakespeare : 
 to know him, people must hear him recite, and watch him 
 act. The Holland Hall, in memory of him, at Oxford 
 House, Bethnal Green, was opened in 1894 : he had for 
 
 Comte thought the same : but they said they could not really tell at 
 all what he was talking about. He continued doing this till suddenly 
 his eyes closed, and he was dead. The guides at first thought of sitting 
 and dying beside him, then roused themselves, marked the place with his 
 ice-axe, and pushed on at haphazard. About 2 o'clock in the afternoon, 
 a gust of wind shifted the clouds, and showed them Mont Blanc : and they 
 made their way to the Cabane des Bosses. On the 26th, his body was 
 found ; it was buried at Chamonix. (These notes on his death were made, 
 from accounts given by the guides, by his friend Mr. Godfrey R. Benson.) 
 
1890 TO 1903 201 
 
 many years helped the Oxford House dramatic society. 
 He not only had by heart some ten or twelve of Shakespeare's 
 plays, so that he could give a two-hours' recital of any one 
 of them — his recital of Antony and Cleopatra was admirable 
 — he also was a critic and a student. Some of his published 
 essays on Shakespeare were reprinted in book-form, after 
 his death, with a preface by Scott Holland. Another 
 great interest of his life was in the volunteer service. He 
 died of heat-stroke during the Aldershot manoeuvres of 
 1893 ; and received the honour of a military funeral. 
 
 To Dr. Talbot 
 
 Gayton Lodge. Aug. 21, 1893. — Once again, as with my 
 father's sudden death, the sight, the neighbourhood, the 
 affectionate intimacy, have all served to diminish the fear, 
 to make it seem but a little thing. 
 
 That quick short sigh : that ending of all that was 
 painful, and sobbing, and strained : that slipping out, 
 with a look of relief and gentleness : that half-amused 
 content on the quiet face at the moment it is over — 
 all serve to give instinctive continuity to the life that has 
 gone. 
 
 It is just what it was. It has gone round the corner : 
 in our midst : while we kneel round, and touch it. So close 
 it must be ! Just in the other room ! Without surprise, 
 it is there. It is hid : that is all. This seems to me over- 
 whelming as a conviction. Only as you draw away from 
 closeness to the actual scene can you think of what it means 
 to doubt it. Only — the very force of this conviction does 
 make the silence more dreadful, more impossible. That 
 appalling silence of the poor body : it feels almost wilful, 
 ahnost wicked. 
 
 Yet the body has the most amazing air of security 
 about it. It carries peace with it : so smiling, so dignified, 
 so assured, it lies on there. You cannot look at it and not 
 recover some calm. It seems to pledge you everything : 
 so full of benediction : sealed into silence and peace. All 
 your trouble and wailing becomes like a childish matter, 
 which it is too tender to rebuke, but which it is waiting 
 
202 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 to laugh over on some future day ; like we do over the 
 passionate tears of a child. 
 
 He lay so like a soldier : all the soldier in him came 
 out. And then came this marvellous military funeral. 
 I have never seen anything so beautiful and noble : and 
 for him, with whom soldiering was an enthusiastic passion, 
 it was wonderful. He would have died any day, to win 
 that burial. . . . All was like a splendid triumph : and to 
 my mother, with her soldier heart, it was a triumph all the 
 way. Every nerve and fibre in the dear old boy's heart 
 would have tingled with the victory of it. After all, he 
 was a soldier ; and had died for his Queen. We can never 
 forget the lift of it : and the touching affection of his men, 
 and their reverence, and their loyalty. 
 
 Other letters, about this time, are concerned with 
 industrial affairs : the minimum wage, and the miners' 
 strike in 1894 : — 
 
 To Dr. Talbot. Sept. 1893. — Can you get Wakefield 
 or Ripon to understand that the crucial question for the 
 men is solely whether the wage is one on which it is possible 
 to live and save ? This is what we can demand for them : 
 or they for themselves. This lies outside arbitration. 
 There are no subtleties about it. Wages ought not to drop 
 below it. The market ought to recognise an adequate 
 minimum : and to adapt itself to that. What are the 
 dividends at ? What are the contracts with the railways ? 
 They must yield to the necessity of providing the adequate 
 wage. It is very vital that this should be seen to be the 
 question at issue. It is human, moral, " Christian," to 
 ask for this. A Bishop might speak out on it. 
 
 To Adderley. 1894. An industrial question ought 
 not to be determined by so fierce and terrible a weapon 
 as starvation of women and children. War itself would 
 strive to avoid winning by such means. The men lose heavily 
 enough if they are wrong : without this horror added. It 
 simply puts them outside competition : for no one can 
 compete without a possibility of refusing to agree. Starva- 
 tion onl}^ affects one side in the competition : and destroys 
 all power of choice. It will be a great thing if you can do 
 something, by taking the plain line of relief. Whatever the 
 
iSgo TO 1903 203 
 
 rights or wrongs of the struggle, you can claim that the 
 conflict should be kept within its proper industrial limits, 
 and should not spread over into the savagery of a barbarous 
 war that lays its hands on women and children. 
 
 This letter was to Adderley as editor of " Goodwill," the 
 magazine which Holland and he announced in 1894 — " a 
 parish magazine, which shall deliver the strong and simple 
 Gospel of the Incarnation in its Catholic fulness ; and which 
 shall, therefore, include within its scope the interests, 
 anxieties, and aspirations of the labouring, and the poor. 
 It will not attempt a political propaganda of any kind : 
 but it will assume that everything that has to do with the 
 fortunes of those who labour, is within the range of its 
 sympathies and its consideration." There was to be a serial 
 story : "I am rather alarmed about the story. We must 
 purge twaddle. It ought to be a strong honest story, real 
 and frank, with no moral, interesting for itself, and helpful 
 by being what it is. Sprinkle good mottoes about, and bits 
 of good poetry, just to break it up." Adderley was editor 
 of Goodwill for sixteen years. 
 
 Holland published, in 1894, " God's City : and the Coming 
 of the Kingdom." (Longmans, 1894, pp. 342.) The four 
 addresses on " God's City " were given at St. Asaph, to 
 the Bishop and clergy of the diocese. 
 
 In Sept. 1894, he writes to Dr. Talbot, on the difhculties 
 of the Christian Social Union : — 
 
 You were tolerant of much more than my " Socialism," 
 which, indeed, I am too fagged to rise to. The thing has 
 got too hard and big to face, when once spirits are low. 
 You were tolerant of this slackness in me, and of my sterility 
 and dulness. As to what you ask, I own that I have been 
 and am oppressively anxious over the Social Union, etc. 
 The problems are deepening fast : and we do not know 
 where we are. 
 
204 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Adderley is always good and helpful, and has never 
 made difficulties for me. I rely on him much : and every- 
 thing he takes up comes off in a mysterious way, with 
 brimming success. Dearmer is personally most loyal : 
 and nice in every way. Still, of course, he is extreme. 
 He has, on the whole, been wonderfully good. 
 
 But this is a set who are most annoying, partly cracky, 
 partly fervid. They always talk ; they lose their heads 
 nearly always. They shock the " Respectables," yet are 
 not bad enough for me, as Chairman, to sit upon. At 
 least, I have not exactly done this. 
 
 The Respectables lie so low : they never show what 
 they think : they will not speak. I do not know who 
 they are, or what they expect. I cannot get them on to 
 the Committee, because they are silent and unforward. 
 So we of the Committee find ourselves hopelessly out of 
 touch with our public. 
 
 I am far too ignorant and untrained for the work. 
 And there is a great deal to do : it tires me out. Yet I 
 have absolutely no one to hand it over to. In my mild 
 sort of way, I just serve to mediate : that is all. I suppose 
 light will come. 
 
 Still, in 1895, the Christian Social Union had twenty- 
 seven Branches, with a total membership of more than 
 2600. A General Council had been instituted, with an 
 Executive Committee : and the parent Society had become 
 " the London Branch," that there might be no jealousy 
 between London and Oxford. The Report for 1895 says 
 of the Oxford Branch, which was founded in Nov. 1889, 
 " It has published six pamphlets, seventeen leaflets, and four 
 volumes of the Economic Review. Considerable practical 
 results have followed from the action of the Branch in 
 regard to the conditions of work in various local trades." 
 The London Branch had published books, reports, and 
 pamphlets : and had arranged reading-circles, lectures, 
 and little relief -funds. Other Branches had " taken public 
 action either to influence local authorities or to educate 
 public opinion." The London Branch, also, in Lent 1894 
 
1895 
 
 [A. H. Fry, Brighton 
 
iSgo TO 1903 205 
 
 and 1895, had organised courses of sermons in London 
 churches. These sermons were pubHshed in book-form, 
 with introductions by Holland, under the titles " Lombard 
 Street in Lent " (1894 : new and revised edition, 1911) ; 
 and "A Lent in London" (1895). His introduction to 
 " Lombard Street in Lent " is of special importance to 
 students of his Christian Social teaching. 
 
 He writes to Adderley, after the General Election of 1895 : 
 
 1. Down goes the middle-class Radicalism : and the 
 Nonconformist conscience. They lie smashed in ruins. 
 How shall we do without them ? It will be an immense and 
 most perilous shifting of centres. The field is open for the 
 Church, as never before. But then, the road of gradual 
 and peaceful evolution has been made impossible. The 
 process, now, will be revolutionary and violent, unless some 
 kindlier human judgment comes to the rescue. And this 
 will make it far harder for the Church. I sit in dread. 
 Your " Merrie Englands " have no conception of the inherent 
 Conservatism of the English, or of the tremendous forces 
 of reaction that will be set in motion, if once a positive 
 move is made from the Socialist side. 
 
 2. I cannot write about the LL.P. without abusing 
 the Conservative Party in a way that Goodwill could not 
 stand. My bitter complaint is, that they [the Independent 
 Labour Party] have wiped out both themselves and all 
 the Labour Party : they have ceased to exist. They have 
 handed England over to the strongest Government of 
 property and capital and individualism which has been 
 seen for a century. They have annihilated aU the 
 sympathetic Radicalism that could mitigate the roaring 
 individualism of property. They have recklessly and 
 thanklessly and barbarously ignored the forward action 
 of the late Ministry, and have shut their eyes tight and 
 fast to the enormous resistance which any forward attempt 
 is bound to meet from the immense Conservatism of the 
 English people. They have made no allowances for others' 
 difficulties : and have been passionately bitter and angry 
 in their language. Labour, now, is without a vote in the 
 House that is worth a Whip's counting. Its voice will 
 be outside : and that spells violence. 
 
2o6 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Toward the end of 1895, he founded "The Commonwealth." 
 The first number was published in Jan. i8g6. He writes 
 to Hey wood Sumner, " It will have a core of matter common 
 with Goodwill, but it will soar to higher flights, besides 
 being twice as large. Goodwill will remain as the ' parish ' 
 organ. This will strive for the public attention, more 
 especially of the youth of England. A Church Social 
 organ. The name is good, I think : it is too noble in meaning 
 to be left to the mere use of old Noll : it holds in it every- 
 thing." 
 
 Commonwealth has outlived him, and is a memorial 
 to him. He put in it, month after month, himself : and he 
 had round him a very notable group of men and women. 
 Contributions were unpaid : but sometimes he sent a cheque 
 to console a would-be contributor whose work he refused. 
 He enforced good workmanship : but he would send back 
 contributions not with a curt " Declined with thanks," 
 but with a letter of encouragement and of advice. Now 
 and again he would suggest the toning-down of an article ; 
 but he was not averse from very plain speaking, and his 
 own articles could be as angry and as vehement as any. 
 When people were offended, and found fault with him, 
 he was careful to publish their complaints. He set himself 
 to play the game : but not without strong language and 
 hard hitting. 
 
 It was the very thing for him : it enabled him to say 
 what he liked : unless he could do that, he could not breathe. 
 He must keep his sermons above party-politics and the 
 events of the day : as Fremantle had prophesied in 1873, 
 "It will not do for him to be simply a brilliant popular 
 preacher : he must be a philosophical preacher." But 
 he had a thousand interests. Therefore he must have a 
 market for them. In Commonwealth, he could be, when he 
 was at his best, " genius in its shirtsleeves." 
 
iSgo TO 1903 207 
 
 By Jan. 1898, the success of the venture was becoming 
 clear : " The Commonwealth is now on the point of paying 
 its way. Our difficulties have been great, our perils many ; 
 at one time — but that is more than a year ago — we thought 
 we had issued our last number." By 1904, there was talk 
 of making it a weekly paper. It continues in prosperity, 
 with Mr. Cheshire as editor, and Mr. G. W. Wardman as 
 manager. It was designed to endure : it stands for affairs 
 that concern all of us. 
 
 He took out of it three of his books : two more books 
 have been taken out of it by Mr. Cheshire : and there is 
 plenty more, waiting to be taken. The two dozen volumes 
 would suffice for half-a-dozen anthologies. But there 
 are things in it which hurt : and in the later volumes there 
 is a touch of disappointment or disillusionment. Causes 
 that he upheld, and men whom he trusted, showed themselves 
 in a less favourable light. This, above all, hurts ; that he 
 did not foretell the coming of the War. To one who was 
 as sure that Germany was planning the War as that the 
 sun would rise tomorrow, it is horrible, now, to find him 
 raging against •' bloated armaments," mocking at " the 
 German scare," and so forth. That was his way, up to 
 the end. Commonwealth, in August 1914, says not one word 
 about the Serajevo murders, not one word about the crisis. 
 It announces an International Congress of Social Christianity, 
 to be held in Basel ; with papers to be read, Sept. 30, on 
 " Christianity and Universal Peace." 
 
 1896 
 
 On Aug. 19, he writes to Dr. Talbot — one of many letters 
 — about Father Dolling ; who had offended in matters 
 of ritual, and had been obliged, after ten years, to resign 
 his work for the Winchester College Mission (St. Agatha's, 
 Landport) : — 
 
2o8 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 I should like to say, that I got Adderley to re-write 
 from beginning to end the appeal to the Bishop : so that 
 it might simply be an assurance that, if there could be 
 work given him, we in our hearts believe him loyal enough 
 to be trusted. That is what I still think. And, in our 
 present stress, it is of vital importance to confess that, 
 in face of the awful task set the Church, we will risk some- 
 thing in order to utilise every scrap of spiritual force which 
 we can draw out of our treasury. We cannot hope to meet 
 our tremendous responsibilities without experiment, strain, 
 adventure, in the use of exceptional men for exceptional 
 needs. Boiling's spiritual depth, and his capacity to hold 
 together the confidence of Winchester masters, boys, old 
 boys, etc., coupled with the steadiness of his own flock, 
 justify a stretch of trust which it would still be right to 
 deny to a common or garden ritualist. 
 
 Of course, he must not dictate his own private terms : 
 and Reservation, for adoration, raises a matter of principle. 
 But, I think, he would yield to a theologian on that point. 
 It certainly has never come up in this fracas, Winchester 
 would surely have made use of it, if it had been a strong 
 point. And Dolling would, I believe, yield, with Irish 
 impulsiveness, to a distinct act of trust on a Bishop's part 
 toward him. He feels keenly the position of a rebel. And 
 the more he was trusted, the more he would, probably, 
 concede. 
 
 During 1894-1896, he was again Select Preacher at 
 Oxford : he writes to his sister, after one of the sermons : — 
 
 Bournemouth. Feb. 11, 1896. — I am through : better 
 than I expected. Quite well from half an hour at this 
 gorgeous sea : and feeling guiltily that I ought to come 
 back at once. I was dead on Saturday, but carried over 
 Sunday, gradually getting better. Sermon too long : 
 and few boys — too beautiful a day to imagine them there : 
 lots of dons : anyhow it was done. Gore, in evening, 
 quite splendid in wise instruction to the boys at St. Mary's, 
 Nothing could possibly be better : or nobler. I came 
 down with the old dear by train : he let me sleep. We have 
 totally failed to get Durham into action over Armenia : 
 he appalled Gore into speechlessness by approving of 
 Lord Salisbury's speech ! ! 
 
1890 TO 1903 209 
 
 Another letter to her, a few weeks later, describes a 
 sermon under very different conditions : — 
 
 The Rectory, Kettering. March 30, 1896. One line : 
 all well : only — what do you think ? I innocently went 
 to church in the morning : read lessons etc. : until at the 
 end of third hymn I discovered the whole church to be 
 glaring at me : curate nodding : I was expected to preach ! 
 I stepped up into the pulpit, perfectly dazed : I could 
 not imagine what to say ; or do. A dreadful pause : at 
 last I read out a text ; and, then, fled from my text on to 
 another sermon altogether, which came into my head to 
 save me. I got through : headlong : wild. I saw poor 
 old dears with their fingers on my text, wondering what 
 on earth it had to do with what I was saying. I never 
 was so staggered or taken back in my life. 
 
 In November, he writes to Dr. Creighton, on his appoint- 
 ment to be Bishop of London : — 
 
 All our arms are open to receive you, as you know well. 
 The old Dome is alive with delight. It knows you so well 
 already. We have a fixed tradition at St. Paul's that we and 
 the Bishop love one another, and that we hold the Cathedral 
 freely for his service. It is a deep joy to think that this 
 tradition wiU fortify itself now again by intimate personal 
 agreement. I recall so well the night at Cambridge with 
 Arthur Lyttelton, when you had just accepted the Bishopric 
 [of Peterborough]. And I think of dear old Cop out there 
 in Ceylon and of his pleasure in it. It is a frightful burden 
 to lay on you : I hope you will use up everybody except 
 yourself. We want our Bishop to have his head above 
 water — not to be loaded down by the tremendous grind. 
 It will help us all if he reserves himself a little, in order to 
 have time to take the measure of things and give us a lead. 
 This big place cries out not only for noble drudgery but 
 also for a Chief who is at least far enough out of the smoke 
 to see how the battle goes. God fortify and guard your 
 heart. 
 
210 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 1897 
 
 In 1897, he was fifty years old. He was beginning now 
 and again to feel his age, and to mock at himself for it ; 
 and to find more to admire in the past than in the present. 
 There is a letter to Miss May Talbot, June 4 : — 
 
 The two last years have been a revelation of where we 
 stand ; and I own, it has seemed to me sad. I could not 
 have believed that the response to right and to honour, and 
 to ideals, could have been so slack as it has shown itself. 
 The upper classes have ceased to know what such appeals 
 mean. And the papers that represent other classes have 
 been desperately low, and often wicked. Last year, the 
 Pall Mall wrote articles which I should have thought were 
 beyond the widest toleration. The deadness, the apathy, 
 the indifference, are astounding. And, for years, we have 
 felt bitterly the shrinking of the scale of men — in literature, 
 in art, in law, in Parliament. Watts is alive ; yes ! that 
 is just it. He is of the past. But, dear May, this is only 
 true of our own generation. You and Ted are of the younger. 
 You may see a different day. It is only a pause : and the 
 pause is sure to break suddenly. The dead bit will be over. 
 You and he must keep up heart of grace. Out of your 
 generation, the new voices will speak, the new spirit rise, 
 the new hope dawn. Do not let us who are in the drag of 
 the backwater sadden you who wiU see new and great 
 things. 
 
 This mood was on him at the time of the Second Jubilee. 
 He did not fail in his loyalty * : but he could not stand the 
 excess of national self-worship ; and in Commonwealth, in 
 
 * He writes to a friend, of the Jubilee Procession, " It was a most 
 splendid spectacle. I never before believed that one would not see through 
 anything spectacular ; but this was simply genuine. But the best of all 
 was, that after all the gorgeous glories of War had passed by, they were 
 wiped out by the simplicity of one dear old lady in a black gown, who 
 sat there for peace and kindliness and brotherhood and mercy, and who 
 would not kill a fly if she could help it. She entirely swept everything 
 else out of sight ; and she was human and motherly and 
 tender-hearted."' 
 
iSgo TO 1903 211 
 
 July, he hit out at it, with an article which he headed 
 " Sackcloth." The hope of peace was gone : " Never 
 was peace more remote, more impossible." The hope of 
 liberty was gone : look at our foreign policy, at Crete, at 
 Armenia : " Our educated classes, our governing classes, 
 what belief have they in the inspiration of liberty ? We 
 were often silly enough in old days ; and it is easy to scoff 
 at all we said and did for Greece in the old War of Inde- 
 pendence, or' at our ecstasies over Kossuth and Garibaldi. 
 It was something so to believe in freedom that we now and 
 again lost our heads over it. Would that we could be even 
 tempted to lose them to-day." And the old idealism was 
 gone : " No prophets speak, no great voices stir. It is a 
 day of small men everywhere, and of small things. We are 
 caught in a backwater," 
 
 He got no comfort, at this time, from the Liberal Party : 
 they were befriending neither the Church nor Labour, 
 He caUed a meeting at his house — Jan. 1897 — there is a 
 letter to Adderley — " Would you like to have a knot of us 
 to talk over our political future ? It is rather a moment 
 for telling the Liberals plainly that if they mean to have 
 our help (i) They must repudiate Sir William Harcourt 
 and all his works, and all the anti-Church sort of business : 
 and (2) that they must throw over the Nonconformist 
 capitaUst, and come into close touch with Labour. It is 
 the hour of reconstruction : and we might be heard. Would 
 you think it worth while ? " At this meeting at Holland's 
 house, he and other Liberal Churchmen sent a protest to 
 the Liberal Whip, then Mr. Thomas Ellis, against the 
 inertness of official Liberalism ; especially, its indifference 
 toward Labour : — 
 
 .... We are quite willing to accept Disestablishment 
 when it is the nation's will ; but the last election made it 
 obvious that the nation has at present no such intention • 
 
212 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 and, whatever good it may be thought by some to be Hkely 
 eventually to bring to the Church, we confess that we do 
 not see that it would in any way relieve the social pressure 
 on Labour, 
 
 We are convinced that without a definite policy to relieve 
 this pressure the Liberal party will die. The leader of the 
 party in the future must have the power of inspiring such a 
 policy, which must be broad enough to arouse enthusiasm. 
 Mere skill in Parliamentary tactics cannot replace the moral 
 force and religious spirit that have, before now, given life 
 to the Liberal creed. In a word, it is the social policy that 
 we want, and the leader who believes in it. 
 
 Yet it is with Labour that official Liberalism appears to 
 us to be out of touch ; the very growth of the LL.P. is a 
 symptom of it. The rich Liberal capitalist is not necessarily 
 more in sympathy with the workers than the rich Tory 
 capitalist. Parliament is still made up for the most part 
 of wealthy men ; nor does official Liberalism show much 
 readiness to concede a fair share of representation to Labour 
 men. This is suicidal and unjust. 
 
 Further, we are Churchmen ; and we feel strongly that 
 more room may yet be found in Liberal counsels for Liberal 
 Churchmen. There has been a great development of social 
 enthusiasm among our fellows ; and it is regrettable that by 
 any want of generosity, any refusal to see our reasonable 
 claims in education or in Church reform, so great an oppor- 
 tunity of attracting to the party of progress this new social 
 earnestness should be lost. 
 
 He writes to Richmond, about Disestablishment : the 
 letter is undated, but seems to belong here : — 
 
 The Radical case against it has never been said. There 
 is an excellent opportunity for saying it. We might pro- 
 nounce Disestablishment to belong to the epoch of the 
 Liberalism of the individual, troubled with an individual 
 conscience and its peevish rights. We might show how we 
 have left this excellent man behind, still explaining his 
 limited, petty woes ; and that we have moved on, unable 
 to wait for him, on the stronger movements of the mass 
 (not Popish) ; swept up with its recognition of the corporate 
 life, and its socialistic humanitarianism, and all that most 
 harmonises with a Church. It might be said largely, and 
 
1890 TO 1903 213 
 
 forcibly — in a little volume, popular and cheap, or in leaflets 
 to the people — by five or six of us. We must show that the 
 Liberal defence of the Church is other than that of the 
 " Church Reformers." 
 
 The autumn of 1897 was a time of grief to him. In 
 September, his sister's health broke down, and she had to 
 leave him : " She has always been so wonderfully good and 
 steady and unselfish ; and she has really lived to make 
 my life here run smooth." On Nov. 19, his mother died. 
 He writes to Richmond, " It came so suddenly and quietly 
 at last. We had been very alarmed one Friday : then, 
 this passed : and she had such strength to throw it off 
 that we got hopeful. But the doctors and nurses feared 
 more than we knew. Suddenly, she said, ' God have 
 mercy,' and ' I am so tired : I want a good long sleep : ' 
 and died, without a single touch of effort or of pain. The 
 face kept gentle and beautiful, right until the morning of 
 the burial : it was an immense comfort, to live with it. 
 It is the absolute and irreparable end of an earthly home. 
 She was our home. Nothing can change this : or soften 
 this loss. Her hopefulness, her gaiety, her courage, and 
 her tenderness were unfailing founts of gladness. And her 
 whole soul went out in motherhood." 
 
 1898-1900 
 
 His younger sister was often with him, after 1897, at 
 Amen Court. Her brother Spencer has written of her : — 
 
 " With her simplicity of character, and her dislike of 
 all pretence of ' intellectual interests,' she managed to be 
 to him what is called an ideal companion. She made 
 herself a place at Amen Court, with a ready sense of humour 
 and much perspicacity in measuring-up the guests she 
 met there. She delighted in the St. Paul's services and 
 music : and she enjoyed poking about City churches 
 
214 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 and quaint haunts with Scott. She was naturally religious, 
 but had no fads of religion : she dismissed all exaggerated 
 ritual as ' funny.' Her attempts to read theological or 
 philosophical literature to him were very amusing : she 
 treated all such as equally ' funny.' Essentially a brothers' 
 sister, she knew our several moods : and when we were 
 ' in a funny mood,' i.e., morose or depressed, she treated us 
 accordingly. She and Scott both of them loved the cottage 
 at Bettws, and delighted in meeting there to roam over 
 hills and up valleys together. Her last lingering illness 
 was borne with exemplary patience. Scott took a leading 
 part in the choice of the reredos in St. Paul's, Wimbledon 
 Park, to her memory. The dog at St. Ursula's feet repre- 
 sents her dog Buzzy : as Scott was sure that St. Ursula was 
 equally fond of the dog that appears in Carpaccio's picture." 
 
 In Feb. 1898, in Commonwealth, there is the first 
 notice of the Maurice Hostel. " Some money has been 
 promised to start a C.S.U. Settlement in Hoxton, which is, 
 perhaps, the most neglected part of London." The money 
 was found by Mr. Russell Wakefield, afterward Bishop of 
 Birmingham. On May 4, a great inaugural meeting was 
 held in the Chapter -house of St. Paul's. On Nov, 2, the 
 Hostel was declared open by the Bishop of Stepney, now 
 Bishop of London : a house for men, under the care of 
 Mr. George Haw, and a house for women, under the care 
 of Miss Eves. Holland was Chairman of Committee. 
 Nothing in all London was of more concern to him than the 
 welfare of this Hostel. He worked for it, begged for it, 
 gave to it, helped it in every imaginable way. It went 
 through difficulties : Hoxton is made of them : the work 
 was uphill : but it went ahead, with clubs and classes and 
 guilds and plans for holidays and amusements, too many 
 to be enumerated here. He was often disappointed that 
 his appeals for it were not more effective : he set his heart 
 on its success : and it has alleviated and sweetened the life 
 of Hoxton for more than twenty years. 
 
iSgo TO T903 215 
 
 In 1899, his chief writings in Commonwealth are on the 
 problems of South Africa, and on the impending South 
 African War. There was a time, he says, when it could 
 have been averted : it had at last become inevitable : the 
 ultimatum had indeed " closed every door with a slam " : 
 and he hates it all, and most of all he hates the twopenny 
 patriots of " the War-party " : — 
 
 This is what lays us low in the dust ; and round about 
 us the vile passion of the fight rises like a steam ; and the 
 air is hot with the lies of the roaring streets, and the savage 
 swagger of the music-halls. . . . We, at home, who risk 
 nothing ; who only tingle with the cheap fury of Fleet 
 Street ; we have but to glance down the pages of our 
 evening press to learn how terribly the war-spirit demoralises. 
 We could hardly have believed that we could fall so far 
 from the very memory of Jesus Christ. 
 
 In April, 1900, he published a series of his St. Paul's 
 sermons, under the rather ambiguous title, " Old and 
 New." (S. T. Freemantle, London, 1900.) 
 
 In June, in Commonwealth, he wrote on the Archbishops' 
 decision as to reservation of the Sacrament. He was 
 wholly opposed to " adoration of the Sacrament itself," 
 and to any use that could " confound the nature of a 
 Sacrament." * His chief reason for desiring reservation 
 
 * He writes, at this time, to a friend, " We are never to forget for a 
 moment that the Real Presence is ' mystical,' i e., that it is far more than 
 we know how to define, and does not correspond to other forms in which 
 things of earth are really present to us. We can be sure of its reality : 
 but not of the laws or methods which govern its presence. We dare not 
 describe this Presence, or regulate it, under any formulae that we know 
 of. Cardinal Newman said this superbly, in language quite startling 
 for its strength. Strong says it well in his little book on the Real Presence. 
 The Presence is an Act of Reality done into us, in and through the united 
 action of the Church's worship. We do not know much about it, as 
 separated from the actual context of that worship." Many years later, 
 in April, 191 7, he writes to Prebendary Isaacs, asking him to sign a 
 memorial supporting reservation. " I saw the memorial in various stages. 
 It is greatly improved from its first form, (i) I think that the Bishop 
 
2i6 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 was thoroughly practical. At some later time, it might be 
 justifiable to " press for a fuller liberty than the actual 
 rubric now allows." At present, the thing to be done was 
 to solve a practical difficulty : — 
 
 The hideous overcrowding of our big cities, which is 
 worsening every hour, and which now houses 900,000 
 people, in London alone, in one-room tenements, has made 
 it hopeless to find, what the rubric requires, a decent room 
 for a private celebration for multitudes of our sick. The 
 vast size of our populations has travelled far beyond any- 
 thing that the old Prayer-book ever imagined. Instead of 
 a stray sick person here and there, easily provided for, 
 there are, at the periods of the great Feasts, numbers of 
 sick folk to be communicated. Quite apart from the rule 
 of celebrating fasting, which, after all, has the immense 
 weight of universal authority and immemorial tradition 
 such as the English Church professes to respect, it is both 
 cruel and wrong to demand of a priest a continual readiness 
 to repeat a celebration. Nothing could be more deadening 
 or unspiritual. In Hospitals, it would be a merciless 
 requirement. Reservation of the Sacrament for the sick 
 has become more and more expedient, to meet the new 
 exigencies. 
 
 Toward the end of 1900, at All Saints, Tufnell Park, 
 he and others gave a series of addresses, which were pub- 
 lished under the title " The Church and New Century 
 Problems." (Wells Gardner, Darton, & Co., London, 
 1901.) One of the addresses, by Dr. Percy Dearmer, was 
 on the work of the Christian Social Union. It now had 
 thirty-five Branches, and more than 4000 members. 
 
 needs to know the sort of mind that it represents ; and to learn how 
 large it is. The other folk do pre-occupy the stage. (2) We want to 
 bar rigidity in excluding the Reserved Sacrament from the church. The 
 memorial wants the reservation to be frank and open and in the church. 
 It only bars exposition in all its forms. ... I hope you may see your 
 way to sign. I dread cleavage in the Catholic movement more than I 
 can say : but there is a necessity for saying and showing where we all 
 are. And this does it in good temper without irritating. How withering 
 it all is." 
 
iSgo TO 1903 217 
 
 1901-1903 
 
 There are few letters for these years : he was writing 
 himself out, month after month, in Commonwealth. The 
 death of the Queen : the dragging-on of the War : the 
 outcry against the concentration camps : the first elections 
 to the Borough Councils : the victory of the Progressives 
 in the L.C.C. election : the fight over the Penrhyn quarries : 
 — these were his chief themes in 1901 : and, when Christmas- 
 time came, he flung round, for relief, to one of his fantasies, 
 a criticism of the figure of John Bull : — 
 
 Is he not ludicrously obsolete, in face of the Imperial 
 problems that hold at this moment the key to the destinies 
 of England ? What on earth has he to do with the spirit 
 of the hour, with the genius of the national development ? 
 In the first place, he is fat : and the fat man's day is past 
 and gone. ... As soon as we pass from the grassy Midlands, 
 and cover the wider horizons of Empire, the fat men have 
 all disappeared. They have dropped into the abyss. 
 In their place, is the long lean Australian, so curiously 
 American in the type that he runs to. He is taU and 
 compact, bony and muscular. And your African colonist 
 follows suit. Our boys in the ranches or on the veldt 
 cannot afford to wear an ounce of flesh, beyond the decent 
 draping of their bones. Look at India. Did anyone 
 ever see a stout Indian official ? We know the cool, long- 
 headed, lizard-like men, who build up our Indian Civil 
 Service. 
 
 In the streets of London, where you pass aU the hurried 
 financiers, and officers, and travellers, who run to and fro 
 over the face of the earth on our liners, or who control, 
 from the Exchange, the vast fortunes of this Empire of ours 
 — it is strange how seldom your eye falls on the Georgian 
 face. It is the alert, concentrated, narrow, Elizabethan 
 type, with the neat cropped brown beard, or the clean- 
 shaven jaw, that greets you over and over again. 
 
 He has no brains. He embodies, in his fatuous good- 
 humour, in his farmer's suit, in his obvious provincialism, 
 the British horror of ideas. . . . And we actually go and 
 
2i8 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 crack him up, as the very type of what an EngUshman ought 
 to be, at a moment when we are concerned intimately and 
 seriously with every European race in all quarters of the 
 globe ; when we are touching them at all sorts of delicate 
 points, where things are complicated, and a tactless word 
 or a single blundering act may bring down a storm which 
 may shake the Empire. We revel in our own idealess 
 stupidity, at an hour when brains count for more and more 
 every day in the shaping of history : and when the sharpest 
 of American wits, and the enormous intellectual industry 
 of Germany, and the keen subtlety of France are pitted 
 against us, in the world's affairs and markets, with an ever- 
 increasing intensity. 
 
 He is without an ounce of imagination. He has no 
 horizons. He has stubbed Thornaby Waste as his highest 
 achievement ; and after that, he has but one cry that lasts 
 him into the very hour of death, ' Gie me my aale.' And 
 yet he holds the gorgeous East in fee. His Empire out- 
 heralds all fabled dreams. It is the highest imaginative 
 creation that human history has ever flung up. That 
 big fat man is the greatest Mahommedan ruler in the world. 
 And that is only a fraction of the wonder with which his 
 hand is laid upon all that fairy life, so rich and mystic and 
 immense, which passes before our astounded eyes in the 
 magic pages of Kim. And there are the millions of dusky 
 Africa ; and the swarms of Southern Islands. Their fate 
 lies with him. 
 
 So he goes on, chasing John Bull through all the 
 responsibilities of Church and State and Empire : — 
 
 Is it a slight matter, that we should flourish this ancient 
 and obsolete picture about at Christmas time ? Surely, 
 it is time to go back behind the Georges to the spacious days 
 of great Elizabeth. Down from the walls of our old 
 English homes and College Halls, those grave faces look 
 down at us of the men for whom the horizon of a world- 
 wide Empire first opened to the Island race. Serious they 
 are, and compact, and alert, possessed by deep thoughts, 
 aware of the mystery of hfe, and yet daring the high venture 
 with the courage of intelligent convictions. Their outlook 
 is wide : for they are Shakespeare's men. Their wills are 
 concentrated and deliberate, bent on the task set, conscious 
 
1890 TO 1903 219 
 
 of perilous demands, disciplined to walk warily, yet lifted 
 to the level of their destiny. 
 
 In June, 1902, he writes to Dr. Talbot, of the look of 
 the crowd on " Peace Night." It frightened him : he had 
 not expected that John Bull would behave like that : — 
 
 The evil revelry was no illusion of my Pro-Boer brain. 
 Hall, an ardent fighter, came back sick and furious, more 
 than I was. Macpherson, a fierce Scot, was as disgusted. 
 Inspector Palmer was dark as pitch. It was the utter 
 abandonment, which was so revolting. The faces lose 
 human expression. The girls are simply " loose." The 
 hideous look comes, which marks the end of human nature. 
 
 Surely, we might have just had the shadow of the past, 
 to restrain us. We might have realised what we had 
 come through. There are the dead. And, then, the old 
 English thing was to be too strong to let all barriers go. 
 And some faint touch of generosity might have been shown 
 for those who are beaten, and who are signing away their 
 lives. The ugliness of our joy is so appalling : the fat 
 City men gone mad. We must turn some corner, and get 
 away from this : we must recover some tone and control. 
 I know that our nerves are high strung : but our girls must 
 not lead us down-hill. 
 
 In Commonwealth, July, 1902, he published a hymn 
 which now is in the English Hymnal : — 
 
 Judge eternal, throned in splendour, 
 
 Lord of lords and King of kings, 
 With thy living fire of judgement 
 
 Purge this realm of bitter things : 
 Solace all its wide dominion 
 
 With the healing of thy wings. 
 
 Still the weary folk are pining 
 For the hour that brings release : 
 
 And the city's crowded clangoiir 
 CaUs aloud for sin to cease ; 
 
 And the homesteads and the woodlands 
 Plead in silence for their peace. 
 
220 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Crown, O God, thine own endeavour : 
 Cleave our darkness with thy sword : 
 
 Feed the faint and hungry heathen 
 With the richness of thy Word : 
 
 Cleanse the body of this empire 
 Through the glory of the Lord. 
 
 In the October number, there is his sermon in St. Paul's 
 (Aug. 31), at the time of the London meeting of the Trade 
 Union Congress. His text was, " Two are better than one : 
 because they have a good reward for their labour. For if 
 they fall, the one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him 
 that is alone when he falleth : for he hath not another 
 to help him up." 
 
 On Dec. 27, 1902, he writes to a friend, of Arthur 
 Lyttelton's dying : — 
 
 Yesterday I went down to Petersfield, to say good-bye 
 to dear Arthur Lyttelton. He was most noble : so quiet, 
 so steady, so dignified and true. He simply waits for the 
 end, and is afraid that it is all made too easy for him — 
 lying there in God's Hands, with no temptations, no troubles, 
 no regrets — only one sorrow, the parting from wife and 
 children. It is like being in Paradise, to be with him. 
 She is bearing bravely, in the support of his wonderful 
 calm. So we pass. The company is breaking. God 
 grant us to know his peace, as we depart. 
 
 In March, 1903, the University of Aberdeen gave him 
 the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity. The Moderator, 
 Dr. J. M. Lang, wrote to him, " We in Aberdeen felt that, 
 while your special habitation was the Church of England, 
 you belonged to the whole Christian ' Commonwealth.' 
 We felt, too, that you had laid us under a special debt 
 of gratitude on account of your services in our Chapel, 
 and especially your noble and most interesting lecture on 
 St. John." 
 
 In August, he left England, with Bishop Wilkinson 
 
1890 TO 1903 221 
 
 and Dr. Archibald Ean Campbell— then Provost of St. 
 Ninian's, Perth ; afterward Bishop of Glasgow — to make 
 arrangements for the Mission of Help to the Church in South 
 Africa. Something had already been done : " Six pioneers 
 went round in 1902, to come in touch with the situation, 
 to collect information, to measure possibilities, to learn 
 what was needed, and where, and how ; to bring us back 
 a definite idea of the work before us." By 1903, it was 
 time " to expound the plan that had been framed out of 
 the information gained : to interpret the spirit and the 
 method of the mission : to confer on the spot with those 
 who knew the varieties of locality and condition : to 
 secure harmony of intention : to collect precise details, by 
 which to guide those at home in the selection of the missioners 
 and in their allotment to their separate spheres." (In 
 April, 1904, seventeen missioners went out : and twenty- 
 three more were to follow in the summer of 1904.) 
 
 To Miss Winnie Talbot 
 
 Aug. 1903. Madeira. In the midst of the Sea. — The 
 sea grey, but never rising out of a manageable flatness. 
 It is miraculous. We dance, we play, we go to chiKch, 
 we do nothing at all for hours with qualified success : but 
 here we are. The Bishop is very sleepless, and wretched : 
 we trust for a break. People are nice. Tell May that 
 everybody on board loves matins : they come to it, young 
 and old, with tears of joy in their eyes : the band plays us 
 in, and plays us out : we prance out from Dearly Beloved 
 to the strain of the march in Scipio. It is wonderful. 
 How long this amazing calm wiU last, I cannot tell. The 
 sea is the most strangely foolish thing I have ever met : 
 such a lot of it, with nothing on earth to do. What is it 
 there for ? 
 
 To Miss May Talbot 
 
 Aug. 26. Rondebosch. — We are scuttling out of this 
 charming villa to-day, to go to Grahamstown, two days. 
 
222 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 two nights, in a glorious travelling coach, with a chef to 
 ourselves, Mr. Chamberlain's own — all placed at our dis- 
 posal by the Company. Is not that Apostolic ! We 
 are perfect wrecks : the Bishop hideously tired ; but 
 speaking with miraculous force. I have lost every scrap 
 of voice through sheer fatigue : rather a bore, in face of 
 1000 men in the Cathedral last Sunday afternoon : I 
 croaked like a raven. We have done well here, I think : 
 but it is nervous, anxious work, which might easily be up- 
 set. You will relieve Winny by telling her that the good 
 Anglicanism of our grandmothers is running strong out 
 here. Really, it is all very " moderate " indeed : with 
 lots of variety : no spikes : sober, English : not a church 
 that does anything extravagant. The Cowley Fathers are 
 the " extremes " : and they are quite beautiful. A 
 tremendous lunch at the Governor's yesterday : with 
 Goold-Adams, Dr. Jameson, Merriman, de Villiers, and all 
 the chiefs of both parties. To-day, a political crisis of the 
 direst : the situation is horribly serious. 
 
 To Spencer L. Holland 
 
 Aug. 30. Bishopsbourne, Grahamstown. — This is, I 
 firmly believe, South Africa. We have seen the illimitable 
 veldt. And it is illimitable. We had a wonderful journey 
 in a superb sleeping-coach : two days and two nights 
 over the amazing karoo and veldt. The colours and sights 
 and distances are glorious. Only the endless medley of 
 broken tins and bottles for hundreds and hundreds of miles 
 by the side of the line, with the blockhouses, pits, and 
 trenches, in infinite mess, betray the War. Not a frag- 
 ment of life for mile after mile. But the colour is thrilling 
 and bright. The little towns, when they arrive, are hideous 
 tin-roofed scamped affairs. But there is a builder and 
 architect, who is working a revolution in the great centres, 
 and raising and designing fine buildings on the old Dutch 
 type, full of dignity. This place is rambling, and pretty : 
 very English. All the problems are horrible : I cannot 
 imagine how we are to combine political freedom with 
 British supremacy. The entire colony is so absorbingly 
 Dutch : except just in the fringes. Yet how fling aside 
 constitutionalism ? A very anxious crisis is just arrived. 
 I had a good talk with Merriman, at the Governor's lunch : 
 
1890 TO 1903 223 
 
 a very cultivated and interesting man, of a pessimistic 
 colour : with strong convictions as to equity and righteous- 
 ness, and great hatred of capitalism and Johannesburg. 
 Educational questions burn. We shall pull through 
 somehow. 
 
 To Dr. Richmond 
 
 Port Elizabeth. Sept. 4. — We are skirting along. Very 
 anxious sometimes : very difficult often : Bishop has been 
 very low, between-whiles : but has risen splendidly to all 
 the occasions, and has carried things triumphantly along. 
 There is enormous interest in the educational problem here. 
 We are never off it. And St. Peter's Home at Grahams- 
 town is an inspiring instance of what can be done in concert 
 with an undenominational Government that has been 
 sweetly cajoled : and Rondebosch School is a noble example 
 of what can be done, practically, without Government 
 aid. It has a real tone, and tradition : its site and sur- 
 roundings are full of beauty. It is thoroughly well done. 
 But the College part is being steadily killed by the com- 
 petition with the Government CoUege in Capetown : I do 
 not see how it can go on. We had a great interview with 
 Dr. Muir, the heart of the Educational Administration : 
 a well-equipped hard-headed Scotchman. 
 
 Politics are terrific : I cannot see my way. Merriman 
 is a fine fellow : Jameson looks quite inadequate. But 
 the tension between Dutch and English is very sharp. 
 
 To Mrs. Spencer Holland 
 
 Sept. 30. Bloemfontein. — They are building-up an 
 administration, a society : and, for the moment, this thrills. 
 When representative government begins, what then ? 
 We don't know. We must all hope, and pray. The 
 Governor excellent : and working like a horse. We lived 
 with him, and with Goold-Adams, Governor of Orange 
 River Colony, in Milner's house at Johannesburg. So we 
 were pretty well rolled-up inside the administration. We 
 defend ourselves by the example of St. Paul and Sergius 
 Paulus : not to mention the Governor at Melita : so it is 
 Apostolic. We slide down to Kimberley and Capetown : 
 and then — Saxon, Oct. 14 : Ludgate Hill, Nov. i. 
 
V 
 
 1904 TO I9IO 
 
 In the later years at Amen Court, he had the help ol a 
 secretary : first Mr. E. Bramwell, then Mr. J. C. Hall, 
 then (1903-1910) Mr. Laurence Stratford. His brother 
 writes : — 
 
 Of Laurence Stratford's devotion, it is difficult to speak 
 adequately. In 1903, he came to Amen Court from St. 
 John's, Oxford. Of a bright, lively disposition, keen and 
 full of humour, and soon an admirable mimic of characters 
 that were in Scott's surroundings, he became a real and 
 close friend as well as an admirable secretary. " My beloved 
 boy," Scott writes, " has gone off for three weeks' holiday. 
 He has won everybody's heart, wherever I have taken him." 
 But he maintained his independence of view : nor was he 
 led, by admiration of Scott, to take orders. His line was 
 history — he published in 1910 a Life of Edward IV. — 
 and education : and he filled his spare time by teaching 
 at the Choir School, and later in a County Council School 
 in the East-end. He read to Scott, and entered with zest 
 into all his literary, social, and political interests. The 
 parting with him, when he entered service under the Board 
 of Education, was a bitter grief to Scott, and could not be 
 talked of at the first break : but the friendship was kept 
 up. In the War, he began by serving in the Ministry of 
 Munitions : then he obtained leave, though he was over 
 the military age, to apply for a commission, and joined 
 up in Oct. 1 915 ; was invalided home in 1916, and re- 
 joined ; and was killed on March 28, 1918, only eleven days 
 after the death of his " beloved Canon " (as he so often wrote 
 
 224 
 
IN HIS STUDY AT AMEN COURT 
 1907 
 
 [Barratt's Photo. Press 
 
1904 TO 1910 225 
 
 to him). We of Scott's family had all adopted him as our 
 friend, to whom we had entrusted the care of Scott : and 
 none of us will ever forget the debt of gratitude we owe 
 him. 
 
 Others at Amen Court were Mr. Mead, butler and door- 
 keeper — " whose watchfulness over admitting unacceptable 
 visitors was an art, and to hear him say ' The Canon is 
 engaged ' was a study in diplomacy " — and Miss Alice 
 Hancock. She was for nearly thirty years in Dr. Holland's 
 service, first in London, then in Oxford : he wrote of her, 
 a few months before his death, " Alice is too wonderful : 
 steady as a host of angels : and always right," She be- 
 came responsible, in the later years in London, for the 
 management of his house, his supphes, and his expenses : 
 she learned nursing, and " she knew exactly," says his 
 brother, " when to be careful of him and when to be severe 
 with him." In September, 1905, she helped to nurse 
 him after an operation. " What a strange memory an 
 operation leaves behind it ! The immense preparation : 
 the ' butcher ' look of the stripped man in white : the 
 horrible gasping of the ether : the weird far-away waking. 
 I have never been through it before. God is very good. 
 I have been kept quite happy." 
 
 There are two letters, at the time of this operation, 
 from Mr. G. W. E. Russell :— 
 
 Sept. II. — You cannot realize, and would not believe 
 if I told you, how large a place you have filled in my 
 thoughts as well as my heart, ever since we first met in 
 Chat's rooms in the Spring Term of 1873. You have been 
 an ideal and an inspiration to me, all these years. As a 
 rule, people only say these things when the subject of them 
 is dead. My candour takes the form of saying them to the 
 living ear and heart. Sept. 13. — It was not really strange, 
 that you should fill a great place in my thoughts, as distinct 
 from my heart. I saw in you, for the first time, a combina- 
 tion of all the things which I most admired — Religion, 
 
 Q 
 
226 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Catholicity, Liberalism, eloquence, style, fun, grace, enthu- 
 siasm, social ease — only to name a few. After I got to 
 know you, thoughts like these were continually coming up — 
 " I wonder what Holland would do, I can picture Holland, 
 I should like to be like Holland "■ — perhaps even, " I envy 
 Holland." You were, in some form or another, always 
 present to my thinking. Lapse of years has made no 
 difference. All my old enthusiasms are quite fresh. I 
 have often differed from you wholly about S. Africa, 
 partly about Armenia, education, and other controversies ; 
 but the love which has grown up in these thirty-two years 
 is quite invincible. 
 
 One of the events of 1905 which deeply touched him was 
 the march of the 500 unemployed, in June, from Leicester 
 to London. He writes to F. L. Donaldson, vicar of St. 
 Mark's, Leicester, who inspired it : — 
 
 I keep thinking of your gallant fellows plodding through 
 that awful rain. It is heroic : even though I doubt whether 
 it is quite war. Leicester is the guilty spot : and Leicester 
 must produce the remedy. Their citizenship is there. 
 But they have done it so bravely, that I must send some 
 small tribute. How do you manage food and shelter ? 
 Will this £10 help ? * 
 
 In September, 1905, he published " Personal Studies." 
 It was reprinted in October, and in November. He writes 
 to Mrs. Talbot :— 
 
 It is years since I allowed myself the joy of adding to 
 the stock of little nurslings which you are willing to take 
 to your kindly arms from me. So let me have the little 
 pleasure once again. You can simply put it away with the 
 others — if you will, first, give it one passing look of welcome. 
 
 It is all old things — " a mouldy one," Edward will call 
 it : but the poor little babe is trying to look gay in its red 
 capote : and it will roll its head about, like Arthur Edward, 
 and pretend to be very wise, if you coax it a bit. And 
 
 * Later, he allowed that he had been wrong in regarding it as a local 
 problem : that it was a national problem, and a national responsibihty. 
 
1904 TO 1910 227 
 
 perhaps some old memories will stir and wake, as you read 
 — and old faces will look in : and old voices will cry ; and 
 the dead days will rustle their dry leaves : and you will be 
 glad to remember. 
 
 On Nov. 17, there was a procession of the unemployed 
 to St. Paul's. " Of course," he writes in Commonwealth, 
 " if the men will come on a Sunday, they are bound to find 
 themselves in face of the normal Cathedral service, which is 
 very elaborate and remote. On Sundays, there is no 
 spare interval for anything else. And it was the dhect 
 purpose of the procession to show up at the ordinary service, 
 and to demonstrate their sore need in the presence of the 
 regular Cathedral congregation. This was the heart of the 
 plan. So the elaboration of the service could not be helped. 
 Anyhow, the sweet music rose and fell, and the lights shone, 
 and the lessons from Isaiah and Revelation shot out, and 
 the hymns rolled, and the organ thundered ; and the men 
 sat, and looked, and thought, and were warm, and rested 
 tired limbs, and felt not wholly un-at-home in God's house." 
 
 1906 
 
 He published, this year, a collection of sermons, under 
 the title " Vital Values." (Wells Gardner, Darton, & Co., 
 London, 1906.) 
 
 On Feb. 6, at a conference held at his house on the 
 Education Bill, a resolution was passed, as follows, and was 
 laid before Mr. Birrell : — 
 
 We accept the following principles : — 
 
 1. Public control over the whole system of secular 
 education. 
 
 2. No religious test to be imposed by the State for 
 appointment or promotion in the teaching pro- 
 fession. 
 
228 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 We ask 
 
 1. That parents shall be invited to notify what kind of 
 
 religious teaching they desire their children to 
 receive. 
 
 2. That this religious teaching be given within the 
 
 school hours. 
 
 3. That the rehgious body indicated by the parents 
 
 shall be given the opportunity of providing the 
 teaching desired. 
 
 4. That all such religious instruction shall be given and 
 
 paid for by the religious bodies concerned. 
 
 5. That no State teacher shall be prohibited from 
 
 giving such instruction. 
 
 In fact, we ask for simple equality of treatment for all 
 forms of religious teaching, denominational and undenomi- 
 national. 
 
 On April 10, he writes to Dr. Talbot : — 
 
 I sat with Richmond last night and howled at the Bill. 
 It is a biting disappointment. It concedes the absolute 
 minimum to the voluntary schools and nothing to the 
 others. We thought it meant a desperate policy last night : 
 but are calmer this morning. One strong point to make 
 for, is that the policy should at least be uniform for both 
 kinds of schools. Birr ell prides himself on having brought 
 both into line with one another ; and then at once sets 
 to work to establish difference of treatment on a vital 
 point. We ought at least to claim for parents an equal 
 right whether in one set of schools or the other. I gather 
 that the transference of the trust schools will give us lever 
 enough to press our claims. We stiU have a valuable 
 asset : is it possible so to use it as to enforce equitable 
 conditions in the provided schools ? I feel all the talk about 
 the Protestant religion to be a mere sham. The great 
 Protestant religion is full of spiritual issues — life and death, 
 remission of sins, cross and passion, redemption — none of 
 this will appear in the ordinary Biblical instruction. I 
 cannot help feehng there is a great deal in Macdonald's 
 statement that this instruction establishes no religion at 
 all and leaves nothing behind it but a dead memory of 
 tiresome facts. 
 
1904 TO 1910 229 
 
 I just met Bob Cecil, who thinks Birrell will have great 
 difficulties, both with Romans ^and Nonconformists, but 
 is not very hopeful of pressing better terms. I suppose 
 the financial terms are good. 
 
 Birrell apparently did not explain what degree of demand 
 from parents will ensure the ordinary facilities in the non- 
 provided schools. I will write again as soon as anything 
 happens. 
 
 In Commonwealth, in June, he puts the case against the 
 Bill :— 
 
 A speech like Mr. Bryce's is enough to make one sit down 
 and cry. He actually believes we can still sUp along 
 with the old makeshift compromises of the Cowper-Temple 
 clause, and expect to find Christianity as robust and vital 
 as it was in the first three centuries, when according to 
 him it won its victories without a creed or symbol. Has he 
 ever read any one of St. Paul's Epistles ? Can he have 
 ever formed an estimate of the vehement and concentrated 
 form of articulated belief which throbs in every syllable of 
 those passionate pages — a belief to which the Apostle can 
 appeal as to an indisputable and established energy of the 
 entire Body ? As an historical fact, Christianity, as soon 
 as we come across it at all in its earliest known form, is 
 already a Body compacted together by a formulated and 
 coherent Creed. . . . 
 
 What have we been about, all these years, that we 
 should have so utterly failed to create an impression, a 
 tradition, an ideal, of a Church of the living God ; of a 
 believing Society, organised to declare the truth that its 
 own spiritual experience can justify it in pronouncing 
 authoritative ? Only the believing Body can declare 
 what it is that it believes. Only it can teach it ; for it alone 
 knows what it has got to teach. It alone can say what 
 its own Book means to it. And this interpretation of its 
 own life is the Creed which it claims, not in the least to 
 impose on outsiders by authority, but to transmit to its 
 own believing children, as their normal and sanctioned 
 heritage through belonging to the Body. 
 
 But what is the good of talking of this ? We have 
 not succeeded in getting anybody to remember that we 
 exist, as a Church of God. They are simply bothered to 
 
230 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 death, when they hear of it ; and bHnk and gape, as if 
 some novel beast had broken out of the Zoo. 
 
 Only the Labour men appear to understand us. They, 
 at least, talk in a language that we can accept. They 
 know what a religion ought to look like, if it is a religion 
 at all. They know that it cannot be made up by a pre- 
 scription from the chemist. They know that it must have 
 a seat and a source somehow outside and beyond civic and 
 secular officials. They know that to do its work in a tough 
 world of facts and flesh and blood, it must have grit and 
 grip. It must be sure of its own conviction. It must 
 have a background, and must realise itself in fellowship. 
 It must be plain to all that it is a spiritual affair and works 
 on spiritual lines. It cannot be taught by those who do 
 not profess to believe it. All this they see and know : and 
 we and they can perfectly understand one another, even 
 when we differ in the conclusions that we draw. With 
 them, we are out of the fog. 
 
 Other events of 1906 were the Sweated Industries 
 Exhibition at Queen's Hall, and the formation of the 
 Anti-Sweating League : the publication of the Report of 
 the Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline, " a momentous 
 and honourable land-mark in the long, strange history of 
 the Church established in these Realms " : the attention 
 given to Christian Socialist speakers at the Church Congress : 
 and the publication of the English Hymnal. He was one 
 of its editors. By October, more than 126,000 copies had 
 been printed. An edition with music was published by 
 Dr. Vaughan Williams. Some objection was raised against 
 one or two of the hymns : and this or that change was 
 made. 
 
 1907-1910 
 
 In June, 1907, his sister Amy died, after a long illness. 
 In February, he had written of her, to Mrs. Spencer 
 Holland :— 
 
1904 TO 1910 231 
 
 She is quite wonderful : so well, so bright, so good, so 
 thoughtful, so natural. I could not have believed that 
 she would have had such force. She has those unknown 
 founts on which to draw, which have so often surprised us. 
 Nothing could be sweeter. Only, it intensifies the horrible 
 sense that she is being murdered. But that is mere 
 illusion. She will come through. She will be given her 
 time. I shall count on that, in all my prayers. All else 
 is dark. But the Sacrament this morning had somehow 
 its old strength of assurance : it seemed to make all things 
 clean, body and spirit alike. And it bade us at all times, 
 however blind, at all places in our lives, however clouded, 
 to give thanks, and to sing out our " Holy, Holy, Holy." 
 We aU creep up at the time. God keep us all in Peace. 
 
 He wi'ites to Miss Evelyn Holland, on June 17 : — 
 
 You know. It means the passing-out of the inner 
 secret of our home joy. She was its spring. Always 
 dear, cheerful, fresh, sweet, tender, quick. Every thought 
 of her is blessed : every memory good. Fifty perfect 
 years. Thank God. 
 
 This year, the University of Oxford gave him the 
 honorary degree of Doctor of Letters. Lord Curzon writes 
 to him, May 2 : — 
 
 Though we have not met for years, I retain many 
 friendly and agreeable recollections of old days : and I 
 should esteem it the highest honour if you would accept 
 the Hon. D. Litt. at my hands at my Installation Ceremony 
 in the Encoenia at Oxford on June 26. The honour, which 
 is the best that Oxford can give, would be our tribute to 
 literary achievements in the pulpit and at the desk of 
 the highest order, which have conferred distinction on 
 Oxford and great benefit upon your fellow-countrymen. 
 
 In April, he writes in Commonwealth of the L.C.C. 
 elections : he is furious over the defeat of the Progressives, 
 and the tactics of the Moderates : — 
 
 One last complaint remains. We have never seen an 
 election fought, in the press and in the placards, with such 
 
232 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 shameless disregard for all that is square, fair, and true. 
 Some newspapers on the Moderate side, to the infinite 
 disgust of all good Moderates, appeared to suppose that 
 any lie that lived a day would do. The attempt to bribe 
 the unemployed to demonstrate — to exploit human misery 
 for an electioneering trick — at the very moment when the 
 L.C.C. was being accused of pampering the pauper, and of 
 spending the hard-earned gains of the heavily-rated on 
 hare-brained schemes for the comfort of the loafer and 
 the wastrel, was a piece of cynical buffoonery which met 
 with the disaster that it richly deserved. The odious 
 picture, on which thousands of pounds must have been 
 spent to plaster it over every wall and board in London, 
 of the brutal, wicked, hard, sensual face, with its motto, 
 " It's your money we want," was no fair weapon at all. 
 It was not caricature : for it had no relation to the facts. 
 The Progressive majority had its faults : it made its 
 blunders : it was pedantic, sometimes : it tied itself up in 
 its own red tape : it might show itself arrogant : or wrong- 
 headed. But never from first to last had it touched the 
 base and cruel world which was embodied in the beastly 
 face. 
 
 In September, in a review of Mr. Reginald Bray's 
 " The Town Child," he declares his belief that the town 
 may inspire children as much as the country, and more : — 
 
 After all, that revelation through Nature comes to its 
 crown through Nature's finest instrument, Man. And we 
 have a religion, which finds in humanity the special expres- 
 sion of God's life. And it is in the town, as Mr. Bray 
 continually says, that the human prevails, and that man is 
 in fullest possession of himself. Therefore, there should 
 be, through the town, through humanity upgathered into 
 towns, a finer and richer and deeper and more pregnant 
 manifestation of what God actually is, than in Nature alone. 
 Something ought to emerge, through the city and its throngs, 
 which carries us nearer to God's heart than woods and water, 
 hills or sun and moon. God looks through human eyes : 
 God is to be heard through human talk : God is to be felt 
 in the movement of human multitudes : in a more tingling 
 intimacy than can ever be won out of running rivers and 
 silent stars. That is our Gospel in Christ Jesus : and 
 
1904 TO 1910 233 
 
 that is why His Gospel flung itself, from the first, into the 
 tumult of the town, and found its true home in the crowded 
 courts of cities, while it so slowly gained a hearing from the 
 pagans in the country-side. . . . 
 
 Ah ! The town has its religious secret : its revelation 
 of God to make ! We must guide the town child into its 
 mystery, so that, whatever he may learn of God's stability 
 and awe through " the silence that is in the starry sky, 
 the sleep that is among the lonely hills," he can enter into 
 the Sanctuary of God's heart, with yet more intensity and 
 passion, through the energetic vitality of moving multi- 
 tudes, and the throbbing intimacy of civic brotherhood. 
 For, indeed, the " far-off Divine event," towards which 
 he moves, is no Garden of dumb woodland glades, but a 
 City, with full streets, where the girls and boys are playing, 
 and where multitudes that no man can number fill the air 
 with the thunder of their massed voices. 
 
 In the spring of 1908, Gayton Lodge was finally given 
 up : he writes to Mr. G. W. E. Russell : — 
 
 I was away, saying goodbye to Gayton Lodge. It 
 goes on May ist. It will be my last sight of the poor old 
 place. 47 years of life flung away behind ! It is a big 
 up-rooting. All the memories of father, mother, brother, 
 sister — all dead. I went round the rooms : and prayed. 
 So ugly, the Victorian house. Yet so charged with tender- 
 ness. And I have loved the Common — with its windy 
 breadths of brown colour. The poor brother [Arthur] is 
 very sad ; packing, burning, clearing. So I could not have 
 seen you. God bless you. 
 
 On June 13, 1908, in the Sheldonian Theatre, he gave 
 the Romanes Lecture, on "The Optimism of Butler's 
 Analogy." In 1897, at Hawarden, he had read some proofs 
 of Mr. Gladstone's edition ; and had written to Mrs. Drew, 
 " The only wonder is that your father, of all men, should 
 impose on himself such immense and intricate labour. 
 I could only have elaborately praised him, if I had spoken : 
 and this would have been impudent. So I was silent, in 
 
234 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 handing back the proofs. I am sorry, if I seemed by that 
 uninterested. As to Butler himself, who is of profound 
 interest to me, I wanted to talk. I would gladly have 
 leaped at flies. I am so very anxious that the constructive 
 side of the Analogy should be brought out into prominence 
 over the negative arguments, which are apt to stick in men's 
 minds." He hesitated between the title which he finally 
 chose for his Romanes Lecture, and an alternative title, 
 " The Constructive Value of Bishop Butler." 
 
 Even one who has never got further than Holland 
 when he was 23 — " I have made various attempts on 
 Butler's Analogy, but always come out stifled and suffo- 
 cated " — can put himself under the sway of this Romanes 
 Lecture. It is the highest achievement of all Holland's 
 literary work. But if he intended it to revive the study 
 of Butler's Analogy, he ought to have written it differently. 
 There cannot be anything in the Analogy so delightful, or 
 so well worth reading. 
 
 One phrase in a letter of 1909 must have a place here : 
 it was written of a bride on her wedding-day — " God bless 
 the delicious little sunny head of that beautiful dream of 
 a girl " — and one passage from his writings in 1909 in 
 Commonwealth. It comes in a long article on the Poor 
 Law Report. He describes the failure of the old deterrent 
 system : then he says — 
 
 Deterrence ! That was the key-word : and, no doubt, 
 there is a poverty which is criminal, and needs the penalty 
 of deterrence. But is all poverty of this type ? What of 
 the invalids ? the weak-minded ? of the infirm, the anaemic, 
 the inadequate ? What of the imbecile, the epileptic ? 
 What, again, of the children of these invalids, these imbe- 
 ciles ? And what of the aged, the broken, the unfortunate ? 
 And yet again, what of the able-bodied out of work ? Are 
 all these to fall under the blight of deterrence ? Are all 
 these to be tarred with one brush ? Are all these to be 
 
1904 TO 1910 235 
 
 thrust down under the tainting curse, under the ignominy 
 of pauperism ? That is, somehow, what happened. We 
 herded them pell-mell and aimlessly together in common 
 mixed workliouses. We could not relieve the workers except 
 through the disgrace of the casual ward : we convicted them 
 of being unworthy of honourable citizenship by the very 
 act of giving them relief. We allowed armies of children 
 to grow up under the cloud of their parents' shame. . . . 
 
 They are no longer, for us, a bUnd mass of grey ghosts, 
 condemned to wander, in shiftless hordes, through some 
 dim and pitiable Hades, cast out of life and the light of the 
 sun, sustained in niggardly existence, contemptible and 
 ashamed. Rather, we go down into the thick of it ourselves, 
 in order to discover for how many we are ourselves nationally 
 responsible. Every one is of individual worth : and has 
 made a separate arrival. Each must be considered for 
 itself : each must be understood, and treated, and placed. 
 Some there are, no doubt, who may rightly come under 
 the discipline of deterrence. But these others ? These 
 weaklings ?' These defectives ? These invalids ? It is not 
 deterrence that they need : but a welcome : a hospital : 
 a home. The life that we have built up, with its awful 
 pressure, with its relentless haste, with its clanging me- 
 chanism, has been too much for them. They cannot live 
 at its level. It is no fault of theirs. It is much more 
 likely to be ours : who have housed them in slums, and 
 taken their mothers from them to toil in our factories : 
 and have given them no chance of sweet air, and clean 
 habits, and leisure, and refreshment, and joy. We are 
 under obligations to them : in reparation for our misdoings, 
 we must ease their days : for Christ's sake, we must cherish 
 their ills. We owe them honour, because they are poor, 
 and weak, and helpless. 
 
 On March 23, 1910, to a friend, on Dr. King's death * : — 
 
 There are days that are quite alive with him, all through 
 Oxford. And it is horrible to be asked to let them go, and 
 
 * There is a letter to him, March 3, from Prebendary Wilgress, who 
 for sixteen years was the Bishop's chaplain. " The Bishop of Lincoln 
 sends you ' his love and blessing ; and thanks for all your love ' — and to 
 say ' All works out most wonderfully. It is all true. God is perfect 
 Love and perfect Wisdom.' He is, I grieve to say, irrecoverably ill, but 
 he lives-on a little yet. He is wonderfully peaceful, and happy." 
 
236 HENRY SCOTI HOLLAND 
 
 to have no talk again that belongs to the loved past, and 
 laugh the old dear laughs. We shall never again see 
 anything so beautiful as he was. He told of the wonders 
 of Grace, by every look and word. Yet all was natural, 
 and utterly himself. Oh dear ! We must all cling together, 
 who remain : and tell each other how we knew and how 
 we loved him. 
 
 With the end of 1910, came the end of his twenty-six 
 years in London. The Prime Minister proposed that 
 Dr. Strong, Dean of Christ Church, now Bishop of Ripon, 
 should become Dean of Westminster ; and that Dr. Holland 
 should become either Dean of Christ Church or Regius 
 Professor of Divinity in Oxford.* 
 
 To Dr. Talbot 
 
 Oldham. Nov. 30, 1910. — Dearest man, Asquith proposes 
 to move T. B, S. to Westminster : and writes offering me 
 the choice between the Regius Professorship ! ! ! and the 
 Deanery. In spite of my one and only disciple, Neville, 
 I have written to him explaining the absurdity of the first 
 proposal. For thirty years I have ceased to have the power 
 to read or study. We must have a scientific theologian 
 honourably representing learning. I could not do it. I 
 should feel myself a scandal. 
 
 But the Deanery — a curious post for me. I have told 
 him that it ought to have a scholar : and I have abso- 
 lutely no scholarship whatever about me. I could only 
 manage the scholastic side by deputy. Then — am I not 
 too old to begin ? I am " nervy " of late, under strain. 
 I quake. On the other hand, I know the thing from inside : 
 and could, perhaps, manage. Have I physical force ? 
 The Dean is to be the next Vice-Chancellor, f I don't 
 
 • It appears that there was some confusion over the procedure of 
 proposing these appointments. 
 
 t He was mistaken here. The Vice-Chancellorship goes to the Colleges 
 not in any order of Colleges, but to the Heads in the order of their appoint- 
 ment as Heads. 
 
1904 TO 1910 237 
 
 think I could get through the interminable business of long 
 sittings. Could I pass it ? Altogether what would you 
 say ? I have sent Asquith's very kind letter to Gore. I 
 suggested to Asquith that he might talk it over with you. 
 But how will he get time ? Tommy would be ideal at 
 Westminster. I had not ever thought of leaving St. 
 Paul's. 
 
 Dec. I, 1910. St. James's Vicarage, Preston. — ^Dearest 
 of Friends, You are too good to me. Your faith in me 
 touches my very soul. I can hardly understand it. For 
 (apart perhaps from St. John) I reaUy know nothing as it 
 ought to be known. There is no subject mastered. I 
 have not material : nor store. Nothing in order. And 
 whole realms of theology of which I am blankly ignorant. I 
 could not help being found out, in the Chair. And at 
 emergencies, I should be impotent. I cannot make up for 
 it, by reading now : for I have not the physical power. 
 Really, this is not false modesty. It is sheer fact. Asquith, 
 as you see, accepts this much. 
 
 Gore is greatly against the Deanery. He would rather 
 the other : but accepts my verdict on myself. He does 
 not at all see me in a post of academic administration — 
 would rather leave me at St. Paul's. 
 
 I, Amen Court. Dec. 9, 1910. — ^Dearest Man, Gore 
 was so excited by the sight of your letter and Strong's to 
 me that he wrote off to the Central Authority, asking him 
 to re-open the thing, and to-day he has done it, so I suppose 
 it will have to be accepted. You are all too good about it — 
 I do not know what will happen and how I shall manage. 
 
 To W. H. Ady 
 
 Dec. 1910. — I have no time to write about it. You 
 know how I bless you for believing that I really can do it. 
 It seems to me too absurd and incredible. But " the 
 Learned " have been wonderful in their welcome. We must 
 try. As it is, there is St. Paul's to leave. That will take 
 me all my time. They are too overpoweringly affectionate 
 towards me. Some day, we must talk. Tell Julia, I count 
 on her for one thing, i.e. to assure me that the Post- 
 Impressionists are sheer rot, and that Roger Fry is pulling 
 our legs. Please say that is true, or I am lost. 
 
238 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Many had hoped that he would stay on at St. Paul's 
 till he should be Dean Gregory's successor.* He writes 
 from Christ Church, in March 1911, "The dear old man 
 hung on so long out of affection for me. It seemed to him 
 all right, as long as I was there to whom he was used. He 
 has always wished me to succeed him. He has said so 
 over and over again. But this got blurred through 
 illness. As it is, it is better for me to make a new 
 start in the old House. There is a great lift in making a 
 beginning. And they are so warm and affectionate to me 
 here." 
 
 Parting gifts came, and so many letters of congratu- 
 lation that he had to use a printed acknowledgment. The 
 newspapers bore witness to his eloquence, and to his zeal 
 for social redemption : it disappointed him, that none of 
 them said anything about his philosophical teaching. 
 
 We in London grudged him to Oxford : and we were 
 not far wrong. We could not afford to lose one of our 
 major prophets. What was the good of Oxford to Scott 
 Holland, after twenty-six years in London ? That is how 
 we felt : and perhaps he was touched with the same feeling. 
 But he refused to be solemn over his departure. At the 
 moment of leaving Amen Court, he smote on the knocker, 
 said " Goodbye, old door," and went off. In April, 1911, 
 he writes from Christ Church, to Laurence Stratford, " It 
 is wonderful to be here. Alice and her crew are all inside 
 the new home. She misses her London. The ' tweenies ' 
 are all frisky and gay. The van has disgorged everything, 
 with amazing rapidity. And now — to get it all in ! ! 
 Dreadful ! They gave us glorious furniture on leaving. 
 I do not know how to live up to it. And the boys gave me 
 
 * Dean Gregory placed his resignation in the Prime Minister's hands 
 in February, 191 1, to take effect on May i. It was arranged that he should 
 not have to leave the Deanery. He died on Aug. 2, igii. 
 
1904 TO 1910 239 
 
 a new hat, so I had to promise to offer up my old one for 
 kickabout on the roof." 
 
 He pubHshed, in 1910, a short memoir of Bishop 
 Westcott, and a series of Commonwealth articles, under the 
 title " Fibres of Faith " : a bad title : for, as his Introduc- 
 tion says, he was thinking not in terms of structure, but 
 in terms of development : " Our present faith is the product 
 of a process which has in it centuries of gradual or growing 
 experience : and each individual believer re-enacts, in a 
 sense and in his degree, the entire process ; even as the 
 physical embryo gathers up the story of the race. When 
 once the individual faith, therefore, is under challenge, it 
 can only recover justification by going back on the history 
 secreted within it. That is why I have desired to show how 
 the various formulae of our historic creed emerge, not as 
 separate headings, but as moments in our organic growth, 
 out of the sequence of necessary experience through which 
 our own individual effort in belief has to pass." 
 
VI 
 
 holland and the christian social union 
 By Bishop Gore 
 
 The reader of this memoir will look elsewhere for an account 
 of the origins of the Christian Social Union, and the various 
 persons engaged in it. But there is no doubt that Holland 
 was the centre of the movement, and that the movement 
 expressed a central element of his mind. Thus a memoir 
 of Holland, which seeks to describe the whole man, must 
 contain some adequate account of that in him of which the 
 movement was the expression, and of the way in which he 
 gave expression to it through the movement. And I was 
 so close to this part of his life that I was invited, and could 
 not decline, to undertake this particular chapter. 
 
 From time to time a new " movement " arises in our 
 society. That means that a certain group of people, 
 sufficiently akin to one another in their general mind, 
 become conscious together of an urgent need in the world 
 in which they are living to emphasize some idea or group 
 of ideas ; and they associate themselves first of all to clarify 
 and give precision to their own thought, and thereafter by 
 means of literature, discussion, public meetings or whatever 
 instrumentality suggests itself, to impress their idea on the 
 public or on the church, with a view to its being sufficiently 
 
 widely accepted to become a force to be reckoned with in 
 
 240 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOCIAL UNION 241 
 
 contemporary society. In this sense the Christian Social 
 Union was a movement. Its motive was the sense that 
 Christianity, and especially the Church of England, had 
 lamentably failed to bear its social witness — its witness to 
 the principles of divine justice and human brotherhood 
 which lie at its heart. It had left the economic and 
 industrial world to build itself up on quite fundamentally 
 unchristian premisses, as if Christianity had got nothing to 
 do with the matter. And now that a widespread rebellion 
 of Labour was organizing itself against the economic slavery 
 of the workers, and against a condition of the law which 
 seemed to regard property as more sacrosanct than persons, 
 it was essential that at least by a tardy act of repentance 
 the Christian Church should bestir itself to reconsider and 
 assert its own principles and let the contending parties and 
 the apathetic church-goers see that it was nothing less than 
 essential Christianity that was at stake. 
 
 The makers of the movement were people of very 
 different experiences, though they were at one in being 
 Churchmen. There were students of theology, of the New 
 Testament, and of the Christian Fathers, and students of 
 economics who were conscious of the trend of economic 
 doctrine away from the old " orthodox " standpoint repre- 
 sented by Ricardo. There were readers, who would hardly 
 have accounted themselves as professed students, who had 
 been fired or inspired by the works of Maurice or Kingsley 
 or by Ecce Homo. There were those, both men and women, 
 who had plunged into the Settlement movement, then at 
 its height, under the passionate impulse of sympathy for 
 the masses of men and women and children in the slums 
 of great cities who were being exploited in the interests 
 of the possessors and accumulators of wealth. There were 
 workers like Miss Gertrude Tuckwell and Miss Constance 
 Smith for the uplift of women. There were clergy or church 
 
 R 
 
242 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 workers who found their whole spiritual work blocked by 
 the gross injustice of social conditions. But they were 
 all at one in feeling that the principles and life and spirit 
 of Jesus Christ had very much to do with the social question, 
 and would be found on serious investigation to have both 
 an illuminating power to be brought to bear on the relations 
 of man to man, and an explosive force in the struggle against 
 injustice and the exploiting of the weak, which could not 
 be equalled anywhere else. 
 
 So the movement arose and took shape. It was not 
 new. There had been the Christian SociaUsts of the 
 generation before, with Frederick Denison Maurice for their 
 prophet : but they had left no organ of their spirit for our 
 use. There was the Guild of St. Matthew : but, while we 
 felt very grateful to it, it did not in some ways suit our 
 purposes. So the movement agreed to find its organ in a 
 new Society, and the Christian Social Union was the result. 
 It was to be a non-political body in the sense that it did 
 not identify itself with any particular scheme or platform 
 of economic or political reconstruction. No doubt, in the 
 general sense of the term "socialist," in which socialism 
 expresses the antithesis to the individualism of the laissez- 
 faire policy, it could not escape the charge of socialism : 
 but so far as socialism was a name for a particular theory 
 or group of theories involving the necessity for state owner- 
 ship of the materials and instruments of industry, it refused 
 to be socialist or to tie its members to any particular plat- 
 form of reconstructive politics. 
 
 Again, while not at all inclined to disparage religious 
 bodies other than the Church of England, it felt its primary 
 function was to awaken the Church, which was called the 
 national church, and was thereby specially bound to think 
 for the whole nation, to the social duties which, if it wished 
 to claim the names of Christian or Catholic, it could not 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOCIAL UNION 243 
 
 ignore. So it limited its membership to Church people. 
 Only Church people, it felt, could awaken the Church. 
 Only Church people, sharing the same sacramental system, 
 could awaken their fellows to the real social meaning of 
 their baptism, their confirmation and their holy communion. 
 Thus it decided that the Christian Social Union should be 
 a union of Church people, without any preference given to 
 High or Low or Broad, who were agreed upon the necessity 
 of awakening the Church to the social implications of its 
 Creed and Bible and Sacraments, and were agreed further 
 upon the need of fundamental social reconstruction, if their 
 principles were to find real expression in the common life 
 of England to-day, whether they called themselves Con- 
 servatives or Liberals or Radicals, whether they accepted 
 or refused the name of Socialist. 
 
 For all this work Holland had very special qualifications, 
 over and above those which came from his brilliant power 
 as a thinker and speaker, his expansive sympathy, and his 
 contagious enthusiasm. 
 
 For he was a great theologian, and the theology to which 
 his whole soul responded was the theology of St. Paul 
 and St. John, and of the great Greeks like Origen and 
 Athanasius. In them he found a theology which, while 
 it insisted with all its force on the doctrine of the Person of 
 Jesus Christ, very God in very manhood, insisted also on 
 giving to that person an interpretation which was nothing 
 less than cosmic and humanitarian in the widest range of 
 the terms. The first occasion on which I really got to know 
 Holland's mind I remember very well. I had known him 
 from my childhood, for we had been brought up together 
 at Wimbledon, and he had fascinated me as a remarkable 
 actor on the domestic stage, and as excelling in all the 
 physical exercises of riding and swimming and skating in 
 which I felt painfully my own defects. But I had no idea 
 
244 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 what he was really thinking about till, just about 1875, 
 when he was a young tutor at Christ Church and I was taking 
 my degree, I found him one day tortured over having to 
 lecture on W. H. Mill's then famous work on The Mythical 
 Interpretations of the Gospels. Holland was quite at one 
 with Mill in repudiating the mythical or symbolical inter- 
 pretation of the miraculous facts of the Christian Creed 
 such as the Virgin Birth of our Lord or His Resurrection. 
 Neither critically nor philosophically nor religiously did 
 such an interpretation appeal to him. He was throughout 
 life rationally orthodox. He knew the supreme value of 
 facts : " Im Anfang war die That " would always have 
 served as his motto. But he resented profoundly Mill's 
 blindness, as it seemed to him, to the large element of truth 
 in the Hegelian interpretation of the Incarnation as a 
 universal fact — as the incarnation of the Universal Spirit 
 or Reason in humanity as a whole, in all its movements 
 and aspects. For it was the Word who was made flesh 
 in Jesus Christ — the Word who, prior to the incarnation, 
 was the being " in whom all things consist," the spirit of 
 the universal order, the reason of the universe, whose dis- 
 closure of Himself is to be found centrally in the man 
 Christ Jesus, but to be found also in all the development of 
 the world and in aU the upward movement of mankind. 
 And Holland hailed with delight an orthodoxy, coupled with 
 this sort of universalism, which he found in St. Paul and 
 St. John and the Greeks, and did not find in the stalwart 
 modern apologist. 
 
 All this " universalism " disposed Holland to demand, 
 as a peremptory intellectual necessity, that Christian 
 doctrine, as an exposition of the particular life and person 
 of Jesus of Nazareth, should be found in congruity with the 
 whole world movement towards truth and justice, which 
 was the movement of the same eternal Word as is incarnate 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOCIAL UNION 245 
 
 in Jesus. From another point of view, the PauHne concep- 
 tion of the risen and glorified Christ as the Head of the 
 Body, the Church, arrested and held his mind. This 
 essentially Catholic Church was to be for action in the world. 
 Its function was gradually to gather into the redeemed 
 humanity, and to consecrate in the one body, all that truly 
 belongs to humanity, till " the glory and honour " of all 
 nations had been brought within the hght of the Holy 
 City. The Church is to express humanity at its fullest 
 and best, as a social organism or universal brotherhood. 
 It must therefore always, in the social arrangements which 
 it originates or accepts, be thinking of its fundamental 
 principles of spiritual equality and brotherly fellowship, 
 and repudiating every arrangement which would treat any 
 men as mere instruments for the enrichment or convenience 
 of others. He saw how the Church in certain periods of 
 its life and in certain directions had striven with a large 
 measure of success for the realization of these great humani- 
 tarian principles. But he saw also with what almost in- 
 credible apathy, under the system of modern industrialism, 
 the Church of recent generations had allowed them, almost 
 without protest, to be violated or ignored, and how, in the 
 struggle on the part of labour for better conditions, the 
 Church had been continually on the wrong side : and he 
 yearned to see it once again fulfilling its true mission. 
 
 He had great positive qualifications, then, as a theo- 
 logical teacher, for the leadership of the new movement ; 
 and he was quite without some of the disqualifications 
 which have sometimes hindered the acceptance by Church- 
 men of this sort of message. There have been and there 
 are men who have been enthusiastic preachers of the social 
 gospel, who have sat very loosely to orthodoxy of belief, 
 and have caused people to identify the social message with 
 lax theology. But no one could have accused Holland of 
 lax theology. His whole soul beat in tune with the great 
 
246 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 theology of the creeds. It suppUed him with all the motives 
 and principles which the new crusade needed — not only 
 the doctrine of the incarnation, as interpreted by the 
 Greek Fathers, to which allusion has already been made : 
 but the doctrine of the Holy Trinity also, which is implied 
 in it, and which bids us see in God's eternal being a fellow- 
 ship of persons, a fellowship of love, which must be repro- 
 duced in every society of men, made in the divine image, 
 if they would be true to their origin and purpose : and 
 also the doctrine of the Church and the sacraments, as the 
 continuous expression of the incarnation, which at every 
 point teaches us that our union with God is no otherwise 
 to be realized than in the fellowship of men with one another. 
 - The doctrine of the incarnation, the doctrine of the 
 Holy Trinity, the doctrine of redemption through sacrifice, 
 the doctrine of the church and the sacraments, all alike, 
 as Holland profoundly understood them, spoke to him of 
 social duty and supplied him with the motives and forces 
 for social redemption. The roots of Holland's being, as a 
 thinker and a religious man, ran deep into Catholic theology, 
 and though in certain directions he would have widened the 
 Tractarian outlook, he never showed any signs of deserting 
 it. Social enthusiasm, for him, flowed inevitably from 
 that fountain and that fountain alone. 
 
 And another point is worth noticing. There are social 
 reformers who are fond of girding at the Church for having 
 concentrated people's attention on the saving of their own 
 souls. Holland would have been in sympathy with them 
 so far as to insist always that " the elect " must never be 
 suffered to forget that they exist in order to make manifest 
 in the world the purpose of God in all its breadth, and 
 that the love of God and the joy in absoltition can in no 
 other way be shown than by the practical love of our brother 
 man. A selfish soul-saving he would have held to be a 
 contradiction in terms. But he had a tremendous 'sense 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOCIAL UNION 247 
 
 of the need of personal self-discipline, if we are to be efficient 
 instruments for God or co-operators in His purpose. Thus 
 he appreciated profoundly all that rigid self-suppression, 
 and painful penitence, by which the old Tractarians had 
 purged their souls of vanity and jealousy and ambition and 
 worldliness. And no one ever heard him breathe a word of 
 depreciation for the ancient methods of spiritual discipline. 
 
 Nor was he ever a man of one enthusiasm, harping 
 always on one string. He was as keen in the cause of the 
 White Cross League for sexual purity, and in the missionary 
 cause, as in the cause which found expression in the Christian 
 Social Union. 
 
 But perhaps on no platform was he quite so much 
 himself as on the platform of the C.S.U. Year after year 
 the annual meeting of the Union was held in some city — 
 Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham, Cheltenham, and many 
 others — to which we were invited by the local branch of the 
 Union. And on the evening preceding the gathering of the 
 Council, there was a great open meeting in the largest avail- 
 able hall, at which our great President Dr. Westcott, so long 
 as he lived, was in the chair and Holland was one of the 
 speakers. I heard him under these conditions again and 
 again, and I never heard him speak more brilliantly. Dr. 
 Westcott 's addresses have many of them been printed, 
 and stand as memorials of the fact that great pubUc meetings, 
 and meetings of the " workers," do not need to be " talked 
 down to," but will listen with sustained interest to the 
 exposition of profound principles. Holland also enunci- 
 ated profound principles at these meetings : but nothing 
 could have been less Uke Westcott 's meditations uttered 
 aloud than Holland's speeches. They were indeed speeches : 
 intensely personal addresses of a man to men — rhetorical 
 in the truest sense of the term, in that they conveyed real 
 thought, inspired of vivid purpose, through all the media 
 of appeal. 
 
248 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 He was brilliantly witty. For instance — ^he was arguing 
 for giving a suitable basis and sanction to the principle that 
 the living wage for the worker should be first charge upon 
 every industry. He was confronted with all the talk — the 
 outcome of the old laissez-faire doctrine — against " grand- 
 motherly legislation." He had a real social philosophy 
 deep in his thought, on which to draw in reply. It lay in 
 the principle that the tyranny of laws lies in their expressing 
 some domination which the ordinary good citizen recog- 
 nizes as alien ; but that law is no tyranny or burden if the 
 whole sane and well-intentioned body of citizens recognizes 
 it as the expression of what they agree in needing for the 
 greater happiness or welfare of the greater number or of 
 all. He even carried this indisputably true principle so 
 far as to declare that the higher the spirit of citizenship, 
 or the feeling for the commonwealth, in any community, 
 the more and the more elaborate were the laws in which 
 it would rejoice — spirit and law corresponding as soul to 
 body. Thus, in a healthy community, men rejoice in 
 the laws which they recognize as their own. Many philoso- 
 phers and politicians could think and express this sort of 
 principle. But who except Holland could have delighted 
 the audience which he had already enthralled, by the 
 formula which became a maxim amongst us, " Every man 
 his own grandmother " ? I sometimes was tempted to 
 wonder whether his brilliant oratory and sparkling wit did 
 not so delight his audience with a sort of physical joy as to 
 conceal from them what severe doctrine and what unpalat- 
 able conclusions were really being pressed upon them. 
 But certainly the body of delegates, who made up the 
 Council and who sat on the platform, and who may have 
 been supposed to know what was really at stake, rocked 
 with delight. 
 
 There is another consideration awakened in one's mind 
 by the recollection of Holland's brilliant oratory — that 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOCIAL UNION 249 
 
 whereas what he had to say, the substance of his speaking 
 and preaching, was of a kind specially to commend itself 
 to the intellectual world, always critical of theology and 
 largely external to the Church, yet in fact, with some few 
 notable exceptions, Holland never received what I am 
 persuaded is his due estimate among the intellectuals. 
 Judging with all respect, I still cannot but think that it was 
 stupidity on their part to fail to see, behind what they 
 called " fireworks," the depths of philosophical and historical 
 perception which were the real characteristics of Holland's 
 mind. He was a much greater man than most of those 
 whom the intellectual world agreed to admire because they 
 talked its own language in its own academic way. The 
 intellectuals were led astray by their distrust of his brilliancy. 
 He had the things to say, and that not only on the social 
 question, but especially in the region of Biblical criticism, 
 which they had most need to listen to, but could never take 
 seriously from him because of what they called his rhetoric 
 or his journalism. But no one could say that it was mere 
 rhetoric, or journaHsm which only played for effect. So 
 that their failure to take him seriously was to some of us 
 most pathetic. 
 
 But I am diverging from the special purpose of this 
 chapter to the topic of Holland's style or method in conveying 
 ideas. I must return to seek some answer to the question, 
 How far was the movement represented by the C.S.U. a 
 success ? In one sense I should claim that it was. Its 
 output in the way of writings of various kinds, and its 
 preaching and speaking — especially through the weight of 
 Westcott's and Holland's names — did contribute very 
 largely to the change in the whole attitude of society and 
 the Church towards the social question. In particular, 
 within the Church, I think the quite new tone in its more 
 or less official utterances — in the " Reports " of its Lambeth 
 Conference Committees, in its Convocation and Church 
 
250 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Congress debates, in the Reports of the Archbishops' 
 Committees on industrial questions — has been very largely 
 due to the efforts of the C.S.U. That is perhaps the main 
 thing. But two things it has not done. It has not suc- 
 ceeded in stirring-up what it believes to be the right spirit 
 in the mass of those who preach in the pulpits or sit in 
 the pews of the Anglican churches. Whatever may be 
 said of the central or official church, the Church as repre- 
 sented locally, whether in town or country, whether clerical 
 or lay, remains, I fear, a body which as a whole the social 
 reformer or the Labour man regards as something which 
 is alien to his ends and aims, and which he finds irresponsive 
 and dull. Also, the C.S.U. entirely failed to raise up in 
 the ranks of the church a sufficient body of Trade Unionists 
 who were also Churchmen to make any effective impression 
 on the Labour movement as a whole. 
 
 Now the C.S.U. has passed into a new phase. Since 
 Holland's death, it has been united with the Industrial 
 Christian Fellowship, which is the well-known " Navvy 
 Mission " converted to wider uses. The fellowship is now 
 an organization which seeks the evangelization of the 
 workers by associating the Gospel, as it rightly ought to 
 be associated, with a whole-hearted acceptance of the 
 principles, really spiritual principles, for which the Labour 
 movement stands, at its best. And in union with the 
 Fellowship, the Christian Social Union will pursue its old 
 purpose of stirring up the Church to the realization of what 
 the teaching of its Master about human brotherhood, and 
 the equal spiritual value of every human soul, really means. 
 
 In another direction, also, a fresh departure has been 
 made. Some of us, with Holland's entire assent, had long 
 been feeling that while " denominational " societies must 
 do the work of converting their own bodies, there was needed 
 a fellowship of all the religious bodies which name the name 
 of Christ, if anything like an effective witness to the social 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOCIAL UNION 251 
 
 meaning of Christianity was to be borne in the country as 
 a whole. And in pursuance of this aim the Christian 
 Social Crusade seeks to form, and affiliate to one another, 
 inter-denominational unions in every town or city, and in 
 country districts, whereby the sundered portions of the 
 Christian Church may learn to act as one body in the task 
 of public social and moral witness, and in the task of 
 co-operating with all other local agencies in the making of 
 a better England. But these new departures fall outside 
 Holland's own activities. Only we feel sure that where he 
 is in the nearer light of God, we have still the sympathy of 
 his great heart and the help of his passionate prayers. 
 
 There is one further point which ought to have been 
 made clear in the above sketch. Holland was theoretical, 
 because he was intellectual. He could never undervalue the 
 importance of right theory intellectually held : but he was 
 none the less practical. And he was determined that the 
 C.S.U. should be practical, and himself took the lead in 
 practical works. Thus the C.S.U., aided by the expert 
 knowledge of Miss Gertrude TuckweU and Miss Constance 
 Smith, did a good deal to combat the evils of phosphorus- 
 poisoning, lead-poisoning, and unfenced machinery, especially 
 in the potteries, and to popularise the use of pottery made 
 with leadless glaze, and Holland was foremost in all this. 
 He was keen also in stirring us up to support all sorts of public 
 works — re-afforestation and the hke. He was constantly 
 besieging the Home Office and other Government Depart- 
 ments to do what ought to be done. The Investigation 
 Committee of the C.S.U. was started to serve such practical 
 purposes. Again, Holland was the founder and maintainer 
 of Maurice Hostel in a desolate region of Hoxton. There was 
 hardly a day of his life which was not in part occupied in 
 such practical activities. He was a Hving embodiment of 
 the union of theory and practice, 
 
PART III 
 
LETTERS OF FANTASY, AND LETTERS TO CHILDREN 
 
 He preferred talking to writing — " We must talk ; let us 
 talk ; some day we shall talk " — these were his habitual 
 phrases : but no man ever put more of himself in his letters. 
 He had many styles : and he was expert in the use of a style 
 of pure fantasy. It amused him to pursue small facts up 
 and down the labyrinth of his imagination, as if he could 
 not bear to see them standing idle. For instance, bad 
 weather in Oxford — " Down here," he writes to Heywood 
 Sumner, "it is one slush, one mush, one muddy slush : 
 and everybody seems seedy and poor : and the poor land 
 is drowned out of all shape : and the floods lie in sad ponds 
 of watery discomfort : and nothing will ever be crisp and 
 dry again — not even Common Room sherry." At times, 
 when he could, he would mock at his ill-health : "I have 
 the flu," he writes to Heywood Sumner. " Oh, how stupid 
 a boiled owl must feel." And again, " How wretched it is 
 not seeing you, or saying a word to you. My fault : my 
 grievous fault. Yet it is, believe me, very difficult for my 
 old silly head to arrange itself to write letters. It is always 
 asking me to be let off. It bolts to bed and I can't wake it 
 up. It turns round and round inside and I can't stop it. 
 It gets topsy-turvy and begins to sob and weep if I stick 
 it straight. Poor little knob ! I suppose it does its level 
 best, but that is not saying much." And to Canon Dorritz, 
 
 235 
 
256 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 *' I am in bed, and have got my circulation wrong, which 
 is what the Pilot suffers from : and the doctors declare I 
 must rest from now till Easter. By that time the Pilot 
 will be dead, and my circulation gone up." 
 
 Writing to young people, he mocks at his age : " It is 
 such a joy to me," he says in 1891 to his ward. Miss Evelyn 
 Holland, " to feel that you do not find me a hopelessly dry 
 old skull, miles and miles away from you." To another 
 young friend, in 1896, " It is so absurd to be an aged, flop- 
 ping, crop-winged, moulting, feathedess crow — and yet 
 to be given the boon of this endless affection." In 1899, 
 he is " a limp, sick, scraggy, shadowy ghost of a cat " : 
 and in 1904, " an old dotty alms-house crock, shaking in 
 the legs, and maundering in the head." Other flamboyant 
 letters allude to things left behind, or carried off by mistake. 
 " Of course," he writes in 1912 to Mrs. Talbot, " the over- 
 coat was somebody else's. Overcoats always are. I am 
 sending it back in disgrace and tears." To Prebendary 
 Isaacs, of a surplice left behind : " Blessed man : how 
 comforting : please bring it : I am unfrocked." To Miss 
 Marjorie Speir, in 1897, of another surplice : " My dearest 
 child, you must own up. Had you not better confess at 
 once ? That surplice of mine. It was too tempting. It 
 would make up so beautifully as a dear little white frock for 
 a ball. Just a bit cut down at the neck. Just a tucker 
 taken in at the waist. Just a pucker in the flounce. One 
 red rose in front : and a fringe let in round the skirt. And 
 the thing was done. Can it be undone ? That is the 
 question." To Miss Evelyn Holland, of a razor-strop : 
 " I left my razor-strop to weep alone, forgotten : if it will 
 return to its sorrowing friends at i Amen Court, all will be 
 forgiven. But it is all very well for the strop. What 
 about half of my heart which I have ^tft behind, lingering 
 in the dear affection of your delight. U home? If you 
 
LETTERS OF FANTASY, AND TO CHILDREN 257 
 
 discover it knocking about, will you send it after me ? " 
 To Mrs. Illingworth, in 1914 : "It hangs, like a black 
 ghost, on the silent peg in the dark corner, glum, morose, 
 despairing. It is the mere shadow of the form that filled 
 it. It is the blind and stupid deposit which casts its evil 
 shadow on vanished life. It has hung itself, in a fit of 
 morbid depression, and refuses to live any more. Enough 
 that it should droop in lonely misery, and sigh in the moaning 
 wind, remembering what has been, and is no more. By 
 this you will see at once that I have left my cassock behind 
 in your cupboard, and should be glad to recapture it. It 
 was delicious, Longworth, after all, in spite of Zanzibar and 
 Kikuyus. I was so glad." 
 
 His letters to children are full of interest. Three 
 things in the world, he said to a friend, are absolutely per- 
 fect : children, flowers, and stars. " Children are our 
 daylight," he wrote in 1890 : " we do not get wiser, but 
 stupider. Do not let us for a moment suppose that the 
 dimness of our later visions is sure to be more real and 
 true because they are later. Children are nearer what 
 we are made to be, than we are : and their eyes are more 
 open. Our Lord said so." His love of them began at the 
 beginning, with the mystery of their birth. " Such a gift," 
 he writes to a friend in 1881, " exceeding all that seems 
 possible : so remote, in its actual entirety, from anything 
 we can account for. Out of the blind darkness, out of the 
 deep abyss, it comes, the strange new thing, so miraculous 
 a result of what seems so inadequate : the blind powers 
 are turned into such surprising instruments which work 
 out a wonder utterly beyond expectation." To another 
 friend, in 1882, " A living being, quite new, quite itself, 
 quite different from any other being. It seems to me 
 altogether incredible : and if I were not compelled to 
 acknowledge that there is a baby that was not there before, 
 
 s 
 
258 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 nothing would induce me to believe it. It seems to me at 
 least as hard to believe as a life after death : a good deal 
 harder, I really think." 
 
 He was godfather to a legion of boys and girls : and, 
 even when they were grown up, he still poured out his love 
 to many young ladies, in letters as irresponsible and elusive 
 as the Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 
 To Miss Margaret Wilkinson 
 
 There was a dear old red pillar-box I saw a fortnight 
 ago. And I want so very much to-day to drop in at its 
 mouth a quiet and fond message to a little white soul that 
 lives inside it — such a queer, dear little soul in a blue 
 smock and a sun-bonnet, and a look of the Nile in its eyes, 
 and the glow of an early Umbrian sunset on its cheeks, and 
 two stout little black pins on which it runs about. It has 
 crept inside this big red pillar-box : but I still believe that 
 if only I can slip this letter in at the top, it will rattle down 
 and down within, until it reaches that quaint white soul in 
 its hiding-place below : and there it will be sitting, blue 
 smock, sun-bonnet and all : and it will be just as nice and 
 dear as ever. So off it shall go on the chance. Dear old 
 red pillar-box : do please see if you can't find this funny 
 soul ; and give her my love ; and bid her be good and sweet 
 and happy, and tell her I shall remember her on Easter 
 morning and all the good days, and shall pray for aU good 
 things to come to her. From her fond and foolish old U.D, 
 My love to everybody. 
 
 To Miss May Talbot 
 
 I. I feel as if " Canon Holland " was hideously stiff. 
 What can be done ? If we are going to be real live loving 
 friends, we must find some way out of " Canon Holland." 
 The only name I can think of at this minute is " Bruncle " 
 — that seems to me halfway between a brother and an 
 uncle : would not that be about what I might be called ? 
 It combines dignity with affection : mystery with simplicity : 
 age with youth. Anyhow, not " Canon Holland." It 
 seems to put me miles off in the moon, with a wig and a 
 
LETTERS OF FANTASY, AND TO CHILDREN 259 
 
 cotton umbrella. But we want to be quite close down to 
 each other, so that we can hear each other whisper. You 
 must think it over. 
 
 2. Such slush ! such wind ! All brown, wet, mud in 
 the sky. I don't know which is dirty-browniest, the sky 
 or the streets. Only warm hearts can live through such 
 ugly days : and we must be very fond indeed of one another, 
 the worse the weather is. I am so glad you are learning 
 Chopin. Nobody has the soul of a piano in him like 
 Chopin. He feels, and thinks, and talks, just as a piano 
 would if it were alive. And then the playing of him must 
 be so delicious. He is plaintive, is he not ? Something 
 tender, and half crying, and pitiful, as if his heart-strings 
 were very delicate and high-strung. It is the sort of sadness 
 which you hear in some birds' notes, and in winds blowing 
 round crannied corners, when they pipe like lost children. 
 
 3. My heart was perpetually taking up its pen inside 
 me, and dipping it in a little red blood of affection, and 
 scribbling away over sheets and sheets ot thin, silky papers 
 of memory. Only it never could get out, when it had done, 
 and run to a pillar post, and stick it in, and bolt back again 
 to its place. Poor old heart ! it wept in its prison, and 
 washed out all the writing with its tears. And now that it 
 can get to the post, it begs to say that it cannot write half 
 it wanted to say. So you will never know. 
 
 To Miss Winnie Talbot 
 
 I. To her, aged five. — I passed Oxford yesterday, and 
 all the towers and spires came rushing down to the station, 
 with all their bells jostling about and crying " How's Winny ? 
 Here is a man v/ho has seen Winny ! Oh Winny, Winny," 
 And old Tom came puffing along rather late, and growled 
 out, very deep, " How's Winny ? " and the little Keble 
 dinner-beU ran up and whispered in my ear, " Does she 
 get enough jam ? " and then they all went on singing 
 nothing but " Winny, Winny, Winny " — 
 
 " We miss little Win, 
 As she ran out and in, 
 On each black little pin ! 
 We never, now, grin, 
 And to smile is a sin, 
 Since we lost little Win ! 
 
26o HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 We are sick, we are thin, 
 
 We are shrunk to the skin. 
 
 We scarcely can tin — 
 
 — kle our clappers : we sin — 
 
 — k down, and sit in a rin — 
 
 — g, with our heads on our chin, 
 
 And we sigh, as we sin — 
 
 — g, ' Oh, when will they brin — 
 
 — g our Win 
 
 Back agin ? ' " 
 
 I can't think how I should have got away from them, 
 as they all clung about my neck, crying " Winny, Winny, 
 Winny," and poor old St. Mary's spire quite broke down, 
 and Magdalen tower sobbed aloud — but the train rushed on, 
 and tore me away, poor St. Philip's holding on to me to the 
 last minute : and still the little voices kept following me, 
 saying " Winny, Winny." You must go round to each of 
 them when you get back, and give them a kiss ; they will 
 be so pleased. Goodbye, little gossamer thing. 
 
 2. Tyn-y-bryn, Bettws-y-Coed. — It is so lovely, here : I 
 think it the most beautiful spot in the world ; it is so furry 
 like your head once was in the old polo-pony days — brown 
 and croppy and nestly and snug, with warm human kindli- 
 ness about it, and soft friendly colours, that feed you with 
 peace — not savage and gawky and green and cold and 
 spiky and mangled, like those Alps which some people 
 like so much. And, then, it is crowded with tender memories 
 of dear old days when I was a really nice little boy ; and 
 that must be a tremendous time ago, you will say. And 
 voices of old friends talk and whisper in the waters to me, 
 where we played and swam and laughed when we were 
 young. Oh dear ! Anyhow, you are young, still, my 
 Winny. That is a comfort. It does you immense 
 credit. 
 
 3. It is a great relief to us all to learn that the unhappy 
 business was not entirely made in Germany, but much of 
 it is of good British origin, wholesome and patriotic, of 
 some fine old Yorkshire blend, straight perhaps from dear 
 old Brig-gate. It would have been awful if our very 
 measles were not our own, but were supplied by the horrible 
 German competitor for our custom. We should have had 
 to get up a Guild of members sworn to have only English 
 
LETTERS OF FANTASY, AND TO CHILDREN 261 
 
 measles, with Winny as Lady Dame-Superior of the Rose- 
 Pink Habitation. Think of this. The badge would be a 
 rash rouge rampant, crowned by British pimple emergent 
 floriated : supporters, Mrs. 'Uty on either side with bottles 
 proper : below, finely modelled in bronze, very stout German 
 Lady prostrate under attack of her native measles, returned 
 under compulsion from England. It would have a great 
 effect on Home Industries. 
 
 4. Gayton Lodge, Wimbledon. — How is the " beastly " 
 musical exam ? Have you been the first, the solitary 
 plough ? So solemn. To think that since the creation of 
 the world, no soul had ever ventured to be ploughed at 
 that exam ! until Lavinia Talbot dared the heroic deed. 
 Alone she did it. Alone she stood, testing the new experi- 
 ence, which no human flesh and blood had ever known before. 
 The first plough — is it so ? I shall hear to-morrow, when 
 I hope to turn in, steaming with perspiration, after preaching 
 my volunteers off their legs, and seeing my entire congre- 
 gation carried off in ambulance-vans. They fall and 
 dwindle as I speak : at the close, I and the drums remain : 
 the drums rumble with hollow echoes to my lonely cries. 
 
 To Miss Gladys White 
 
 1. My Gladys — no, Gwladys — that is much jollier. 
 It is like a gurgle of water out of a bottle with a narrow 
 neck. It is like the dying sigh of a lamp going out. It 
 is like a gargle that has failed to come off and has ended 
 in a splutter. It is full of all happy noises as of birds 
 gloating with joy over early worms ; and of bubbles 
 that burst ; and of odd watery gulps where a rat has 
 dived. . . . 
 
 2. High House, Winchester. — Here we live on the top 
 of a sheer hill, looking down into the very chimneys of the 
 town. We could pea-shoot the Dean and Canons. It is 
 a most lovely view : with the Cathedral like a queer old 
 sea-beast that has crawled on shore to dry itself in the 
 sun, and then stuck, and could never get back. It is 
 crammed to the nose with history and bones : and is thinking 
 all the time that it might have been the capital of England, 
 and then it would have been St. Paul's, only it isn't. 
 
 3. I was just wondering into what silent gulf you had 
 sunk away, when your letter broke in, and the silence 
 
262 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 laughed aloud. There you were, speaking with the old 
 tones and fairly happy out in the blessed country, with the 
 skies and birds and grass and flowers, and one delicious 
 little maid. Is it not lovely ? Can you stand the drunken 
 joy of the larks ? And we have nightingales shouting for 
 sheer gladness, with liquid bubblings of rapture. And all 
 the hedges are joining in with their sweet greenery ; and 
 one and all agree that there really is no time like the Spring. 
 We will meet somewhere in the wilderness. I go back 
 on Monday : when do you ? But " things " will be beastly, 
 and will step in. They always do. Why should there be 
 " things " ? Who wants them ? What are they ? They 
 think themselves so vastly important. And, after all, they 
 are only " things." 
 
 4. Yes, it is years : we certainly must manage these 
 things better : it was the Flood, when last we met. And 
 what a Flood that was ! How well I remember the last 
 look of the elephant's tail, as he turned-in for the night ! 
 Our boatmen on the Nile used to sing a song full of taunts 
 at a daughter of Noah's, whose name is never mentioned 
 in our record, who refused to get in, and was left behind 
 on the retreating shore, while the crew jeered at her with 
 an " I told you so." Can you have been that unfortunate 
 girl ? No, no : get in with us : please do. . . . Dear 
 child, lay hold of the secret of life, and win its joy, and 
 don't let London cloud you down. We don't meet, 
 but I remember you each day, and pray for your 
 gladness. 
 
 5. I quite remember the man you lately asked me 
 about : a poor fellow of little account, but, as I always 
 said, with some good at bottom, though no one would 
 believe me. He called himself Canon of St. Paul's : and 
 often professed to have some affection for you. But, of 
 course, nobody could trust a word he said. He disappeared 
 about a fortnight ago ; and, with all these funerals about, 
 may have got buried himself. But I had some faint news 
 of him yesterday ; he was showing signs of re-emerging : 
 he may yet turn up, and be himself again. And, if he 
 does, I am sure you will find that he still talks of you, and 
 has the same heart that he always bore. If so, would you 
 consent to see him again ? Say next Friday at tea ? Why 
 not ? I would get him to meet you. And all might yet 
 be well. 
 
LETTERS OF FANTASY, AND TO CHILDREN 263 
 
 To Miss Marjorie Speir 
 
 The Lodge, Selwyn College, Cambridge. Oct. 1892. — ^This 
 is a good place. It tries to copy Oxford as weU as it can, 
 poor dear. And some bits are really not bad. But oh, 
 the river ! with slummy slime mixed up with slimy slum, 
 and a dim sense of dead cats, and greasy spots of shining 
 glutinous matter on it, and smeUs abounding, and bewildered 
 flies, and seedy straws, aU floating in it. An unhappy 
 ditch. But up above the town it is pretty, with a sweetish 
 bathing-place where we plunge, and cows, and willows, 
 and fish, and sun. We have eight children in the house : 
 so I cheer up. 
 
 To Miss Cecily Ady 
 
 [He is with her people, at Charing in Kent.) To think 
 that I should be sitting here for a whole delightful week, 
 waiting for you to turn up under the blossoming cherry-tree, 
 and yet you never come. All the birds are shouting for you : 
 and the larks twitter " Cecily ! Cecily ! " in the sky, until 
 they drop with despair : and the nightingales pipe long 
 low notes of astonishment : and even the old duck who has 
 waddled up from the Colonel's pond, and is sitting, in a 
 daze, on her eggs in your garden under the warm brick 
 wall, now and again winks one of her foolish eyes at me, to 
 show that she enjoys the fun of my bewilderment. 
 
 In 1902, he was staying at Chollerton, Northumberland, 
 where his friend Dr. Hornby, Bishop of Nassau, was rector. 
 One of the Sunday school children, Annie Coxon, had 
 knitted him a purple muffler, or as she called it, a moofler : 
 he was delighted : he thanked her, and wore it in triumph, 
 and later wrote to her from London. " She could not 
 read it," says Bishop Hornby, " her mother could not read 
 it, her father could not read it, the schoolmaster could not 
 read it : at last it came to me." * At the children's harvest- 
 festival, he preached to them : " He said to me, as he 
 
 * Certainly, his handwriting is hard to read at first sight : but, as 
 one goes on reading his letters, it becomes much clearer : only, in the 
 last few years, it becomes harder to make out. There is a letter, in 1897, 
 
264 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 went to the pulpit, ' What shall I preach about ? ' I said. 
 Don't preach : tell them what London is like/ And he 
 did." 
 
 To Miss Annie Coxon 
 
 Dear Annie Coxon, I've been thinking what I should 
 wear at the King's Coronation. Why ! I'll wear my 
 purple miiffler. And what if the king meets me at the foot 
 of the St. Paul's stairs, and says, '' Why, Canon Holland, 
 where did you get that purple miiffler ? " And I shall go 
 on my bended knee and say, " It was made by Miss Annie 
 Coxon of Barraford by Chollerton " ! And what if a foot- 
 man in scarlet and gold lands up at Chollerton station and 
 cries, " Where lives Miss Annie Coxon ? for the king cannot 
 sleep at nights until he gets a purple miiffler like Canon 
 Scott Holland's " ! 
 
 Among the last of his letters, is one to Clifford Cock, 
 a godson, aged twelve : Dec. 26, 1917 : " Dear Cliffo, How 
 good and sweet of you to write to me. I am so glad to 
 hear of you. I wish I could see you. I am sending you a 
 little book about Francis : because though he was a Saint, 
 he had such heaps of fun about him. And he, and all his 
 Brothers, loved laughing : and were always cracking jokes. 
 He showed how happy a thing it is to love and serve God. 
 Far the happiest thing in the world. I am still ill : but 
 hope to get better. Give my love to your dear father and 
 mother : and to the new bicycle." 
 
 to Miss Evelyn Holland : " This is written with your pen. What more 
 can I say ? Do you not recognise the rounded forms, the luminous out- 
 lines, which it has given to my hand ? How spacious its sweep : how 
 grandiose its measured movement ! And it is all with the pen. It is 
 beautifully poised for the rhythmic swing with which the large Roman 
 letters sail out on their appointed task. You have endued me with a 
 new reputation. You have saved countless ' swears ' in my correspondents. 
 Tempers all over England are sweet and calm, because you have given me 
 a pen which can almost make me legible." 
 
II 
 
 LETTERS TO A YOUNG COUSIN 
 
 This cousin's home in Scotland was a place where he 
 delighted to stay. The letters begin just before her coming 
 out, and cover a period of about fourteen years. She 
 remembers the after-tea readings, started by him when 
 she was sixteen : — 
 
 I read aloud to him whatever book he happened to have 
 on hand : among them were Tennyson, Browning, Pater, 
 " lonica," Kipling, Maeterlinck, and Mr. Balfour's Essays 
 and Addresses. " lonica " led him to talk of his beloved 
 Eton. There seemed nothing he did not know, down to 
 the latest play. Whatever was going on, he entered into 
 it whole-heartedly. Cricket he loved, but golf he never 
 cared for ; he hit out wildly when he tried to swing ; and 
 said he " ploughed the fields and scattered," as he replaced 
 the divots of turf. He used to shout with excitement over 
 fives on the billiard table. Once, in a hurriedly got-up 
 version of the Rose and the Ring, which my brothers and 
 I acted to the household, he appeared as Hedzoff, in a 
 Deputy-Lieutenant's uniform ; and in the intervals read 
 aloud the Bab Ballads. He loved riding ; but did not 
 shine on horseback. After his visits, there was a very 
 fiat feeling : " Scott is gone. Woe, woe," is one entry in a 
 diary. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, whom I was brought up to consider 
 the incarnation of evil to the country and the Empire, 
 was his ideal ; and he used to chaff me over this, when he 
 wrote from Hawarden : and once he sent me a nonsense 
 letter, crammed with Irish phrases, and purporting to come 
 
 265 
 
266 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 from Mr. Dillon, whom he represented as having converted 
 me to Home Rule at a dinner where I had sat next to him. 
 Lord Haldane usually came to meet Scott at our house. 
 Another friend of his and mine was Mr. Asquith ; whom 
 I remember appearing unexpectedly on Sunday in church 
 and carrying us off in his motor to the house where he was 
 staying. On Sunday evenings, Scott usually preached in 
 the chapel in our house. 
 
 He had times of depression : but it is his high spirits, 
 and sparkling wit and humour, and above all his extra- 
 ordinary power of sympathy and insight, that are most 
 deeply graven on my memory. 
 
 1. I cannot but wonder how it was that a young, bright 
 creature like you should have shown so much affection and 
 tenderness to an ugly battered old parson like me. And 
 I hope you will let it continue as you leave the last of the 
 sheltered years behind you, and begin, next year, to take 
 your plunge into the big life, outside, where so many 
 difficulties may get so quickly about you, and it is so hard 
 to find one's way, and things get anxious. Do ask me 
 anything whenever you wish it : and believe always that 
 my love will be at your service, to do anything it can to 
 clear your way, and save you trouble, and help you to 
 discern between good and evil in the strange mixed world 
 of men, which you will be touching and handling. It is 
 sometimes so difficult to know what to trust, and what to 
 distrust, in a life which is apparently bent on pleasing you, 
 and attracting you, and showing you its very best face. 
 
 2. Haw ar den. — Just now, as you first break out of the 
 old lines, I cannot but watch, with affectionate interest, to 
 see how you take the harbour-bar, and how the taste of 
 the free salt winds strikes you, and how you breast the 
 dancing waves. It is the loveliest sight in the world, I 
 think, to see a ship, with its flag flying, and sails set, and 
 all its paint gleaming, dragged by ropes up between two old, 
 brown piers, until it plunges at the first touch of the open 
 sea, and the ropes fall off, and it dips its jib in the kicking 
 waters, and scatters the foam, and then feels the wind in 
 its sails, and shapes its course right away, for where ? A 
 few old, broken tars look after it, with spy-glasses, from the 
 old pier head : and the faithful old piers follow it far with 
 their lighthouse lights : but it is gone right away — and 
 
LETTERS TO A YOUNG COUSIN 267 
 
 the old tars shut up their glasses, and feel a bit sad, and go 
 home to bed. 
 
 And I feel rather like an old tar — with my spy-glass 
 still up — and I can follow her a little, before the big seas 
 receive her out of sight : and very beautifully she goes : 
 and it is delightful to watch her : only she must always be 
 getting a little further off. 
 
 3. Will you let me tell you, at your start in coming- 
 out, something about men, which is very apt to lie dark, 
 and be hidden by their talk and ways ? A girl is sure to 
 see that men are attracted by bright spirits, and fun, and 
 chaff. That is clear enough : and, of course, she will also 
 see how strongly they are drawn by beauty. But I believe 
 that deeper even than their admiration of beauty, lies 
 their belief in a girl's goodness : and it is this which is so 
 often kept secret. Yet every man feels it. Not the 
 " parsons " only, but, often, quite the other sort ! Half 
 a man's love of beauty has this for its secret. To him, a 
 girl's beaut}^ always seems to mean her goodness. 
 
 A man needs the help of a girl to keep up his standard 
 of right and wrong. He feels somehow that he is doing 
 very little good to anybody : that he thinks of nobody 
 much but himself : that school and college have knocked 
 all sentiment about " ideals " out of his head : that he 
 has seen, and heard, and said, many bad and vile things : 
 and that he does not know much about religion and " all 
 that sort of thing, you know." But he wants to beheve 
 in goodness : he wants some one to back him up, to help 
 him to stick to high and pure things. 
 
 As I long to say this to every girl I know, so I doubly 
 long to say it to you, for whose happiness I care so 
 much. 
 
 4. Holywell, Oxford. — It would be sweet to be off to 
 your blessed home, and to all your kindness, and to hear 
 you read to me, and to gather from you the news of your 
 flight into our poor, flat wet land : and to learn how it 
 was that the young English boys had the grace given them 
 to win this immortal victory and to persuade you that, 
 even south of the Tweed, there were lads worth knowing. 
 This is news indeed : I waved my hat three times round 
 my head. I should have loved to have just looked in, 
 and seen you all sailing about, and spinning, and smiling, 
 and happy. Are you coming to London ? Shall we see 
 
268 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 you ? The Queen is on the look-out, and ought not to be 
 disappomted. 
 
 5. Tyn-y-Bryn. — How I wish I could come. But it 
 may not be. I am tied by both hind legs : and back I 
 must go to my funny old post, to stare again at the old 
 white wall in front of the windows, and to wonder how 
 the starving poor are ever to be fed ! How are you ? and 
 what were your general reflections on a London season ? 
 and what have you been reading, or thinking ? Oh dear. 
 I should like a talk. 
 
 6. I am not making too much of it : I know how 
 thoroughly you enjoy the bright things that come : yet 
 you had a touch of anxiety as you pondered, or looked ahead, 
 as if you were not sure of yourself : or of what you were 
 to do. Now, there is no clever dodge by which to get 
 round such anxieties. They cannot be dismissed by a 
 dose of wise advice. It is only that, being very fond of 
 you, I cannot help wishing to lighten things a little. 
 
 Perhaps, it might help to remember that life is always 
 a long pause in which we are preparing for some crisis or 
 other : and these pause-times only get a meaning from the 
 crisis when it comes. In themselves, they look meaningless 
 and useless : but when the crisis or change arrives, we can 
 judge of the pause, whether it was put to profit, or no. 
 A girl cannot tell whether the crisis that will settle things 
 into a definite line, will be marriage, or not. Yet that 
 would make all the difference in determining her aim. 
 
 What can she do ? She must be content to be vague, 
 and in suspense : it is impossible for her to put any strong, 
 definite purpose into her life, as yet : all she can do is to 
 make the pause-time such that, looking back upon it, when 
 the crisis of decision comes, she may be able to say " It was 
 not wasted : that pause prepared me, enriched me, endowed 
 me for what I now am : I am better able to be what I 
 am required to be, because I had that interval of suspense." 
 And the thing for you to do, now, is just to save yourself 
 from ever having to say hereafter, " Oh dear ! what a fool 
 I was to let those days slide away unused." Here is a sermon 
 for you, dear ! Forgive me. I will never do it again — 
 unless you ask me. 
 
 7. I have just got a letter from Haldane, asking me to 
 one of his little dinners, to meet John Morley, Sidney Webb 
 the Socialist, etc. Haldane himself is to lecture to us in 
 
LETTERS TO A YOUNG COUSIN 269 
 
 the Chapter House next Tuesday on " Industrial Legisla- 
 tion." I am looking forward keenly. 
 
 And the wedding ! The Horse Guards : the clanking 
 swords : the jingling spurs : it was splendid ! But how 
 dully the gay world dresses. No colours ! You would 
 have thought it a funeral, if it had not been for the brides- 
 maids. The bridegroom very young : the bride shimmering 
 gracefully : the service beautiful. So the great deed was 
 done. It is always impressive. The courage of the girl 
 always overwhelms me. Such a plunge, into such unknown 
 seas : such adventures before her, such risks, such anxieties, 
 such heights and depths. And with no available retreat. 
 Most wonderful ; and most inspiring — inspiring to recognise 
 how true it is that life is, for all its apparent hum-drumness, 
 in reality an heroic venture. 
 
 So moralises the aged bachelor, gazing out of his ivy- 
 bush, with blinking eyes, at these bright brides that pass 
 along the splendid Way of Honour. You mustn't jeer at 
 the poor old boy for taking it so solemnly. 
 
 And did your mother actually dream that I could offer 
 myself to be torn to bits by those raging lions of Unionism ? 
 It is most kind of her : but I should never have dared to 
 creep out from under my bed. 
 
 8. Of course, anyone who, like Lord Hartington, refuses 
 office, offers an honourable proof of his sincerity which 
 cannot be mistaken. But not everyone, who is ready to 
 take office, is therefore any less honourable. Only, he 
 cannot prove it so visibly ; he must be judged on his 
 general character. And what I mean about Mr. Gladstone 
 is that it is quite impossible to know him, and to doubt 
 his moral worth, his moral dignity. There is no one who so 
 obviously appeals to, and works by, his conscience. He 
 is possessed with the earnest conviction that he must answer 
 for every act before God. 
 
 But his convictions are passionately strong : far stronger 
 than Lord Hartington's. He is compelled to assert them ; 
 he cannot but believe himself responsible for asserting them. 
 He cannot hold them without desiring to carry them out 
 into action. Hence what you call " his love of power." 
 No one could possibly be more free from the meaner ambi- 
 tions of place, etc. He is utterly unworldly. But he is 
 prepared to act on his convictions : and he ardently seeks 
 opportunities to do so. This is where he so differs from 
 
270 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 the shy, bored, honest indifference of your friend. In this 
 ardour of beUef in his own convictions, Mr. Gladstone is 
 liable to be dreadfully mistaken. He thinks he is right ; 
 he thinks others wrong : and this, with passionate reality : 
 but this is not the desire for place, or a readiness to swallow 
 principles for power. As to the Newcastle programme, 
 there is nothing that does not accord with his con- 
 victions there : though he does not care for some of 
 the points half so much as some of his followers do. So 
 there ! 
 
 9. {A friend proved false.) I long to think that the 
 sorrow has opened, and not shut, the doors and windows 
 of the heart. This is the crisis of such a blow. It must 
 do one thing, or the other. You must emerge from out of 
 its shadows a bit softer, or a bit harder, than before it. 
 Either you look out on the world with the eyes of a woman 
 who has become kinder, tenderer, more unselfish, more 
 forgiving, because of the touch of suffering that has made 
 the whole world kin : or you face it with the look of a woman 
 who has recoiled into a' more self-centred isolation, and has 
 felt the touch of distrust, and of sharpness, and of intoler- 
 ance, like a blight, like a frost. Dearest child, these are 
 harsh words : only, I put them strongly because it would 
 be so terrible to me if anything were to freeze up your 
 kindlier humanities, and to imprison and to stiffen the 
 natural outflow of your charities. 
 
 10. I could understand a wounding trouble, like last 
 year's. With all the stir about you that you are bound to 
 cause, such wounds must be possible. There are risks, 
 and they are cruel. There may be blows and griefs that 
 wiU be bitter. But I cannot endure that you should be 
 clouded, as by a settled failure, or should have faUen into 
 a careless indifference to what life may yet bring you : as 
 if there were no surprises, no lifts, no wonders, no glories, 
 no splendours awaiting you, as yet unguessed. Surely, 
 they are coming : surely, they would arrive. What is it 
 that hides them ? that blocks their arrival ? 
 
 Forgive me for writing like this : but it seems to me 
 serious : and I cannot but care with all my soul about it. 
 Happiness is never a thing to aim at : but it is a true index 
 of whether we are on the right way. And you ought to be 
 so much more happy. With all your beautiful gifts, life 
 ought to feel a joy, and a privilege, and a reality, and a 
 
LETTERS TO A YOUNG COUSIN 271 
 
 hope. It ought to be happy 1 It ought not to be heavy- 
 loaded. Can we not win the way out into the hght ? 
 
 Somewhere — close at hand, in your home, at your side — 
 is there not the possibility of some gladness ? Is there not 
 a treasure hid in the field ? What is it ? I don't know. 
 Each must find for himself. But every hfe has its oppor- 
 tunities. Every life hides a treasure, something which 
 can be unearthed, close at our feet. How can you look 
 for it ? How may you find ? It always lies in some un- 
 selfish interest in other people : but that is all I know. 
 
 11. Tyn-y-Bryn. — How I long for life to become tenderer 
 to you, and more inspiring, and satisfying, and full-filling. 
 So much you could do, and be, dear, if you found the way. 
 Yet you seem to yourself to have not found it. And that 
 is what holds you back from finding it. Ways open, when 
 we don't think about them but walk straight ahead in hope, 
 and in kindhness, and in unselfish trust. But there ! This 
 is rapidly dropping into a dreadful sermon. You must 
 forgive it, for at least it tells you how much I care. If 
 you were but here ! You might even confess that there is 
 loveliness outside Perthshire. So delicious, and delicate, 
 this exquisite colour and line of Welsh hills. I roam alone, 
 and mourn over old days. Some of the happiest in all 
 my life, for twenty-five years, have been here. And the 
 waters all know it, and go talking on about it : and the hills 
 remember, and are quiet and silent. 
 
 12. [After Lawrence Holland's death.) Death is an 
 impossible thing. That is the only fact that is clear. 
 Straight into it, we all move ; with faces set forward : 
 nothing can defeat us : we take death in our stride. Some- 
 thing happens, which makes us pass out of sight : and what 
 that is, no one understands : and what is done on the 
 far side, no one can say. But, for aU that, it is quite certain 
 that it belongs to what we did here. That is what grows 
 to be a certainty which every reasonable faculty asserts. 
 Only, the vanishing is so pitiful : and the silence so quelling. 
 
 ... I was grateful to see you moving about the house 
 so happily, and cheering your mother, and assisting her. 
 Do these things come easier ? Home is our test ground, 
 isn't it ? What can we make of it ? What can we do for 
 it ? How can we give it good heart ? It is our nursery 
 of faithfulness. And then, if we can be loyal there, we 
 may deserve to be tried elsewhere in a new task. 
 
272 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 13. Every book in which I have ever been interested, 
 every poem, every life, every picture, all have said the same. 
 No nobility of character has been gained without suffering. 
 Somehow, literature and art confess it : we are only drawn 
 towards those lives and souls which have passed to their 
 happiness through much tribulation. 
 
 This is not morbid : it does not deny the intense value 
 and reality of happiness : it is the proper goal. But yet, 
 in fact, it seems never to be touched in its highest form 
 without this discipline. We are soldiers : life is a war : 
 we battle through to the peace : not without dust and heat, 
 are we crowned : this is the old, old burden of every song. 
 
 Yet it is bitter to learn it ; we have witnessed to it by 
 our attraction to it in books : but, as we wake to find it 
 actual and true in ourselves, and our own turn has come, 
 and we have to taste this cup from which those others all 
 drank, it is just as fierce and repugnant a reality as if we 
 had never heard of it before. 
 
 Surely, pain of this kind compels prayer : compels you 
 to pray that you may see your way, and may have courage, 
 and hope, and patience, and endurance, and, if it may be, 
 victory. Pray that you may find a clue through the maze : 
 and may take the right road : and may apprehend the 
 directions given. Prayer is an effort to walk with God. 
 Not easy, dearest, I know well. I am not preaching at you, 
 as if it were a light thing. Only, it is the one road, which, 
 stumble and groan as we may in finding it, does at last 
 reveal itself as peace. I shall be thinking of you so often. 
 
 14. Hawardcn. — I am certain that the situation you 
 describe is desperately unwholesome. Nothing can be more 
 spirit-killing, or demoralising, than to go on and on with 
 things that assume throughout that they are merry and 
 pleasant, when pleasure is the last thing you find in them. 
 The strain of keeping it up hurts, damages, sours : it is 
 unreal itself, and so breeds distrust of your fellow-creatures 
 through disgust at yourself. It is sure to provoke bitterness, 
 and cynicism, and all the cruelties. ... I dread your 
 trying to fight down your unhappiness by keeping j^ourself 
 incessantly "at it." This can only harden : it makes you 
 more sick at heart. The one security lies in occupying 
 yourself in the interests of others, so as to help you to 
 forget your own sorrows. In caring for others' joys and 
 griefs, one can make one's escape good out of the ring of 
 
LETTERS TO A YOUNG COUSIN 273 
 
 distressing self-reflections and pitiful regrets. A self- 
 centred Hfe is the hopeless curse. It is doomed to sterile 
 pain. One must break out of it by violence, if circum- 
 stances tend to create it. Anything, to get out of the 
 ring-fence of self-preoccupation. 
 
 15. Abinger Hatch. — You have been lonely in Scotland, 
 have you ? It must be serious : those long enclosed winters. 
 And London, certainly, is warm and human, with its teeming 
 life for all who can throw their lot in with the swarm of the 
 hive. 
 
 Yet no winter in Scotland can ring a soul round with 
 the loneliness that is so terrible for thousands in this big 
 London — thousands who, in the thick of these jostling 
 throngs, are aware that no one cares a fig whether they 
 are alive or dead ; that no single creature would stop to 
 ask why they had dropped out ; that every one of these 
 multitudes, struggling for place and room and food, would 
 feel themselves relieved a little because there is one less in 
 the world. 
 
 That is the loneliness that maddens, the loneliness that 
 can only be felt in the midst of a huge city. So give these 
 poor souls a thought, and a gush of good hope, when you 
 are down at heart, dear child. Let relief come in the 
 memory of others, who touch a note of sympathy in you, 
 which your own feeling of loneliness makes you aware of. 
 
 We had such a merry ding-dong philosophic dinner the 
 other night, in a certain " Synthetical Society " which has 
 started on the task of pulling everybody together. Arthur 
 Balfour opened the discussion, after dinner, in full Cabinet 
 Minister's get-up for the Speaker's levee, which was on 
 that night. And you ought to have seen Haldane making 
 a speech about Hegel, in a Court suit of black velvet. Fred 
 Myers was there, and Gerald Balfour, and Wilfrid Ward, 
 and a job lot of us : rather fun. 
 
 16. Do I know, you ask, what it is to wish to "go out," 
 and " have done with it all " ? Yes, dear : but I know 
 quite well, too, that when I feel like that, I am letting my 
 weakness get the better of me. It is a deep-seated desire, 
 with a long history to it : it has inspired whole philosophies : 
 and many poems : and one vast religion. But, always, 
 it has been a sign of sterility ; of reaction : of surrender. 
 And, always, it has had in it a note of selfishness. It is the 
 cry of the individual self in its passion for life, for happiness. 
 
 T 
 
374 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 " I would I were dead ! " means (as Grania says), " I 
 would I were alive, alive in all my fulness, uncurtailed, 
 untraversed. " It is the false shadow of the desire to live — 
 which is the deepest desire in man's heart. 
 
 " I shall live." " I will live." That is the root-assertion, 
 which we must all make. That is the spring of all that has 
 ever been said, or done. The only question is, " How shall 
 I live ? " And the answer of hope, and of force, is always 
 " I will live with others, in others, not as my own, but as 
 theirs : sharing their lot : rising, falling, stumbling, breaking, 
 as they do : moving with them, at whatever cost to my- 
 self ; towards a good which is theirs, as well as mine." 
 
 Did you ever read Carlyle ? " Sartor Resartus " is a 
 queer wild book : but it said for me, and for many in my 
 young days, the last word on all this. It taught us to go 
 forward, and live, and not surrender, and never despair, 
 and not demand our own happiness, as a thing alone, but, 
 blessing it when it came with a full heart, still to go forward 
 as brave soldiers in the vast campaign. Dearest, this is 
 tough, hard teaching. And I do pray that you may be 
 spared its hardest ; and be given joy. But I count on your 
 bravery, and your hopefulness, and your goodness, even 
 though you wait in bitterness for a joy now denied. God 
 help you to keep a good heart. 
 
 17. The world of suffering humanity wants you : it 
 needs your help : it craves your sympathy. Carry to it 
 a heart purged by suffering. You understand now : 
 you can feel for all who mourn. Look out upon them. 
 Remember them. You are here, to lend a helping hand : 
 to verify human brotherhood. There is time. You can 
 do it. Only, you must shatter self. Only, you must 
 trust the large, deep love of God. Only, all small longings 
 for revenge, or for hate, must be stripped off. Love is the 
 sole key to life : love that trusts, believes, forgives. Love 
 men and women : those about you, those nearest at hand : 
 think of them, of their wants, of their good-cheer. Take 
 trouble to brighten their days. Then, the heart grows 
 sweet : then, the spirit forgets its wounds : then, life loses 
 its rubs and its provocations : then, the dumb heaven 
 begins to speak. God help you, dear, to grow in tender 
 charity, through your sorrow. 
 
Ill 
 
 LETTERS OF CRITICISM AND OF PORTRAITURE 
 
 These letters are put in order of time ; but the dates 
 of three or four of them have been guessed, not known for 
 certain. 
 
 Among his earhest letters of criticism, one is on the 
 St. Matthew Passion-music, given in Cathedral on March 20, 
 1873 : " The recitative is wonderfully sustained and direct, 
 but a little wearying with its Protestant determination to 
 tell you all you ought to know : and the dramatic choruses, 
 marvellous as they are, do not suit English words and tone 
 and atmosphere : they become burlesque. But the strength 
 and force and earnestness of the whole is astounding : the 
 chorales are as perfect, in their simplicity and unending 
 freshness of beauty, as religious music can possibly be, it 
 seemed to me. . . . And the last chorus has all the flooding 
 effect that a touch of beautiful melody has, after the long 
 development of pure musical harmony hardly ever softening 
 into ' tune ' throughout the whole of the piece." Another 
 letter, in 1876, is on the B minor Mass : " The depth of 
 religious feeling is so thrilling through that noble music. 
 This is what gives it its more searching and entrancing 
 power than old Handel with all his dramatic vigour can 
 achieve. Handel can treat the dramatic side of religion ; 
 but not the inner depths. He knows them not. I do 
 not beheve he knew much what a Creed meant ; while in 
 
 - 275 
 
276 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Bach you felt a personal living sense of what Resurrection 
 meant — ' Et exspecto Resurrectionem ' : and then the 
 finer subtler feeling for spiritual life with its manifold and 
 quickening motion — how that broke out in the wonderful 
 * Cum Spiritu Sancto.' I do thoroughly joy in the intensive 
 power of Bach's chorus : the working-out of part woven 
 into part, growing and growing, and twining in and out,- 
 with ever richer and fuller intensity, till they mingle and 
 mingle, and rise climbing one above another, and clash, 
 and break off again." It is to be remembered, that these 
 two performances belong to the beginning of the revival 
 of Bach in this country. 
 
 Another of his earhest letters of criticism (? 1876 or 
 1877) is to Heywood Sumner, on Daniel Deronda : — 
 
 Gwendolen, of course, carries the entire book along 
 from end to end, a study full of help and wonder and marvel- 
 lous minuteness of discovery : she discloses the tissues of 
 life, fibre by fibre, all distinct and numbered and noted. 
 I know nothing in literature more powerful than that 
 sense of the mastery of the man over the woman, of Grand- 
 court over Gwendolen ; loathed, despised, silent, inexpres- 
 sive, it yet nips her like a vice closes dumbly and blindly 
 on a quivering rabbit ; the resolute, unswerving, unfeeling 
 bite of the horrible teeth that nothing can escape, nothing 
 delay or relax. It is most awful ; it oppresses you like 
 a nightmare. Yet how easily, how invisibly it is done. 
 No mechanism, no tangible necessity for it. Yet there 
 it is, cold and naked as iron ; and she feels it as an animal 
 feels a shuddering sweating terror in the dark ; and she 
 crouches and cringes under it as if it were a veritable whip. 
 
 But there is another letter to Heywood Sumner (? 1880), 
 on Blake ; it displays that more quiet, more incisive style 
 which made Holland a prince among critics : " Blake had 
 an eye such as reads through and through the last secrets 
 of life with the directness and force of ancient days, when 
 minds were fresh and pure as Abraham's at Ur of the 
 
LETTERS OF CRITICISM AND PORTRAITURE 277 
 
 Chaldees. He is so often strong with Biblical strength ; 
 marvellous as the earliest tales are marvellous. He 
 meditates like Isaac in the fields at evening." 
 
 Browning 
 
 Oct. 1882. To J. W. Williams. — Our poet is essentially 
 dramatic, and universal in his drama. He notes and 
 watches aU : and struggles to insert himself into the heart- 
 secret of all lives. He is always worming himself into 
 the recesses of strange nooks, and vividly reproducing 
 this or that mode of temper. 
 
 In the course of this dramatic progress through the 
 human world, he has produced three very short, rough, 
 unimportant side-pieces, which present us with the temper 
 of the demi-monde ; and has left these pieces standing, 
 unexplained. " Respectability " is one, " Confessions " is 
 another. And he has tried to make this temper dramati- 
 cally intelligible. He has sent into it the breath of a sort 
 of justification — he has brought out " the fun of it," the 
 daring, the vividity — he has declared that there is a joy 
 obscurely hunted in it all, and so protests against the 
 assumption that it is aU " dust and ashes." The wild 
 protest against smug respectability is allowed its force. 
 
 If you want to read a justification of this, read Words- 
 worth's approval of Burns' poetic treatment of drunken- 
 ness, quoted in Myers' Life of Wordsworth. Browning 
 has a strong feeling for the immense value of living action : 
 he likes to follow this out in shapes which by themselves 
 are condemnable : cf. The Statue and the Bust. His own 
 justification of himself is given at length in Fifine : 
 cf. especially the passage about Raphael and Gustave Dor6. 
 He is so firm in his belief in the true absoluteness of the 
 wedded love, that he can afford, he pleads, to let his study 
 and his fancy try to disentangle the web of lust : and, to 
 do this, he must for the moment let his thought and imagin- 
 ation go afield — yet the true wife need never fear : no 
 touch of her real hold is gone. 
 
 It is surely impossible to doubt Browning's true treat- 
 ment of love in its perfect purity. Just conceive the 
 proportion of these three pieces to the large and momentous 
 studies of pure love — Pompilia — James Lee's Wife — In a 
 Balcony — Any Wife to any Husband — By the Fireside — 
 
278 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 One Word More — and a hundred others. His whole power 
 and soul have gone out to portray the one ; a few stray 
 whiffs of imaginative amusement have been allowed to the 
 other. 
 
 A Retreat at Keble 
 
 Oct. 17, 1885. To Dr. Talbot. — This is to reach you as 
 we sit breakfasting in Keble Hall, after the old familiar 
 celebration in the Chapel — with all the well-known backs 
 bowed in front of one — " featureless organs " perhaps, 
 but yet backs which gather up into their sloping shoulders 
 and slowly-increasing waists the memory of all the buried 
 Terms which have grouped themselves about and around 
 the backs of old Freeling, and of Livingstone, and of Nance, 
 and of all those first caught sight of, at each first Saturday, 
 kneeling in front of one in Keble Chapel. One familiar 
 and dear lump will be gone — the muffled and lumped-up 
 back of Edward King. But the arrowy head of Paget will 
 take its place, with its locks washed back into a thin keen 
 wisp. And there will be fresh-coated backs of the newly 
 ordained, to fill up ranks. And only one loss can never 
 be retrieved — the loss of the long-backed Warden, with 
 the drooping surplice and the loose-draped hood. Dear 
 Man, would you could be there. 
 
 Tennyson 
 
 Feb. 17, 1886. To Miss Arnold-Forster. (" Tiresias, 
 and Other Poems " had been published in 1885.) — I do not 
 think I can leave England, and not explain my rude and 
 rough words about Tennyson, which distressed you. 
 
 Certainly he is himself strongly Christian. I did not 
 mean to deny that. But like many a man, his reasons 
 for his creed may greatly differ from his creed : and when- 
 ever he offers me his reasons for religion, I recognise a line 
 of argument, familiar enough in philosophy, and which 
 I always, when I meet it, feel to be a form of thinking 
 uncongenial to Christian logic, and unable to arrive at 
 Christian conclusions. 
 
 This proof of the Unknown and the Nameless is an 
 excellent and essential piece of philosophic discipline. A 
 
LETTERS OF CRITICISM AND PORTRAITURE 279 
 
 philosopher is bound to follow it out : it is part of his 
 apprenticeship : his proper part is to strip off outward 
 forms, and arrive at the abstract and the general. He 
 must do this before he can begin any fruitful work. 
 
 But it is very fruitless, negative, empty. It is an 
 intellectual gymnastic that he ought to practise : that is 
 aU. 
 
 And I cannot ever believe that the remote and empty 
 abstraction so arrived at can possibly be a fitting subject 
 for poetic treatment. A poet is not a philosopher : in 
 some ways, he is the very opposite : and especially in 
 this, that he is never abstract, always concrete, full, rich ; 
 he loves to spiritualise the outward, not to strip it off : his 
 familiar work is to reconcile the inner spirit with the out- 
 ward expression it takes. He, and religion, are employed 
 in correcting the philosopher : they both cling to the concrete 
 forms : they abhor empty and remote abstractions. They 
 cannot breathe in that artificial atmosphere. They over- 
 leap the speculative difficulties, they laugh at the dilemma 
 and antitheses of slow-paced, hesitating, patient, plodding, 
 lagging Reason. 
 
 I am disappointed with my poet when he lags behind, 
 too, with foolish old Reason, who is stiU stumbling about 
 at the first step of all. 
 
 Christian thought has left all the bothering dilemma 
 behind, which tries to discover God by intense abstraction 
 from aU manifestations. It says boldly, " The Word is 
 made flesh : find God, in the flesh : do not be afraid of the 
 old-world subtleties and timid scruples of the philosophers." 
 
 This is why I feel Tennyson's argument to be pre- 
 Christian, non-Christian. I do not think it would ever 
 really lead him home to the convictions that I gladly and 
 thankfully see that he holds. 
 
 Dr. Temple 
 
 1886. To Miss Evelyn Holland, after her brother's 
 confirmation. — I rejoice that you love that strong lion of 
 a Bishop, with his hoarse roar, and his jungle of whiskers, 
 and his rock-like face : yet so noble, and tender, and true, 
 and powerful : he always makes me cry with joy that 
 earth holds any one so spiritually great. He is especially 
 
28o HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 noble at confirmation. I heard him at St. Paul's on the 
 Monday after Bryan's confirmation, when a most sweet 
 Japanese boy was confirmed whom I had been seeing : 
 and I thought the Bishop as great as it is possible to be. 
 I tingle under him. He is like a tiger hungry for righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 Mr. Bradlaugh 
 
 May, 1886. To Dr. Talbot. — Bradlaugh is silly, and 
 very weak, certainly. We have exposed him, I think, 
 so far as we go. We should never have thought he was 
 so contemptible a creature intellectually, or so hopelessly 
 uneducated. However, we must go on pretending : 
 evidently, he is pleased at being taken seriously : and is 
 very kind, and courteous. 
 
 The Gospel Record 
 
 Jan. 5, 1889. To J. W. Williams. — I had an interesting 
 Jew come to me the other day — an Oxford graduate, of 
 Balliol and Clifton : and he said, "It is curious, but I 
 have gone through exactly the reversed process of Robert 
 Elsmere : I began where he leaves off, in a broad Jewish 
 Theism ; and I have slowly become convinced of the 
 absolute reliability of the Gospel narrative." He had shut 
 himself up with the Gospels : he was an historical student, 
 in the History School : he concluded that he must deny 
 his historical instincts if he did not give credit to the Gospel 
 evidence. That was nice. 
 
 Lux Mundi 
 
 October, 1890, To Bishop Copleston. — I was glad and 
 refreshed to get your last dear letter, and to know how 
 kindly you were to us poor Luxites : we feared furies : 
 and dark rumours were abroad : but your criticism was 
 most temperate, and friendly, and equitable. Poor old 
 book ! I look at it and wonder. I thought it so dreadfully 
 heavy and dull when I first read it : I never thought that 
 we should induce anyone to read it outside the circle of our 
 aunts and mothers, and a few patient-minded clergy. The 
 
LETTERS OF CRITICISM AND PORTRAITURE 281 
 
 old book itself looked conscious of its own dead weight : 
 and never dreamt of this stormy and excited career, I 
 suppose that this lack of anticipation shows how small 
 are the circles we each live in, and how impotent we are to 
 estimate the effect of our words on those a little further 
 off. We ourselves seemed to ourselves to have been saying 
 these things for years ; and to have heard everybody else 
 saying them. Now suddenly we find it all spoken of as a 
 bomb, as a new Oxford movement, etc., etc. We wonder 
 who we are. 
 
 Herbert Spencer 
 
 Dec. 1890. To a lady who wanted to read some 
 philosophy ^ and thought of beginning with Herbert Spencer. — 
 As to Herbert Spencer. I own that I think philosophy 
 an almost impossible subject to read, without special 
 training. It is the hardest of all special studies : and it is 
 hopeless to make a plunge into it far down the line. For 
 the movement of philosophy is historical : its last steps 
 are unintelligible except to those who have arrived at them 
 by the way by which they actually were reached. Spencer 
 himself has suffered helplessly by lack of previous apprentice- 
 ship ; he makes a hopeless muddle whenever he does more 
 than thread together the systematic conception of the 
 evolutionary idea. In metaphysic, and, above all, in 
 moral philosophy, he is the clumsiest and most blundersome 
 of guides. I know no one who has such a terrible stupidity. 
 I do not mean that Spencer has not done a great deal in 
 the way of showing us how wide is the ground covered by 
 the formula of evolution. But outside that, he is most 
 barren : and he has a way of stunting the growth of mind 
 in those who yield to him, which is dismal. 
 
 Two Poets 
 
 May, 1902. To W. H. Savile. I do indeed thank you 
 for your most graceful and tender poems. They touch 
 the true chord, and they do so with artistic success. The 
 handling of the technical form is wonderfully easy and 
 effective. It is evidently your natural instrument. I 
 have enjoyed them much. If you happen to read " Songs 
 
282 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 of Childhood/' by Walter Ramal [Walter de la Mare], 
 will you tell me what you think of them ? Several of them 
 appear to me to possess perfect magic, e.g., the Englishman, 
 and The Ogre, and The Supper. They are by an old choir- 
 boy, and Henry Newbolt is greatly struck by them. 
 
 The Natural Man 
 
 April 7, 1904. To Dr. Lock, Warden of Keble. — As to 
 the development of goodness in the natural man. Don't you 
 think that the special aim of our Lord's mission on earth 
 was to convict that very goodness of its failure at the pinch ? 
 This seems to me to be the force of St. Peter, St. John, and 
 St. Paul. It is the conviction of the good, that His presence 
 brings about. The development leads up to the consum- 
 mation, but does not attain without convicting itself of 
 final failure just as attainment is in sight. Have you looked 
 at Lex Orandi, by the Jesuit Tyrrell ? He is very good 
 on our old point, that the natural man is an abstraction 
 which never really existed : so that what we mean is, 
 that man so far as he is really natural has the nature of sin : 
 but man as a fact has never been anything else but super- 
 natural. 
 
 Newman 
 
 May 22, 1908. To W. H. Carey, thanking him for a 
 little bust of Newman. — It has got the old touch in the 
 face and the beautiful forehead. You remember the 
 sculptor who said that everybody else's head after Newman's 
 felt like a turnip. It is very gentle, and the face has a look 
 of the old labourer at the cottage door, which Arthur 
 Lyttelton noticed in Cardinal Newman long ago, the sad 
 quiet wistfulness, and a little bewildered at a world which 
 had been so odd to him. 
 
 Christianity a Romance 
 
 July 10, 1908. To Mr. Cheshire. — Stratford tells me 
 that you want to know why Christianity is a romance. 
 There could be no better week to ask why than this one, 
 
LETTERS OF CRITICISM AND PORTRAITURE 283 
 
 while the Gospel of last Sunday is still in our ears. There is 
 romance pure and simple, is there not ? It appeals to the 
 elemental instincts that make great ventures and daring 
 experiments, and risk all losses and count no costs and live 
 in paradox, Christianity trusts those basic emotions which 
 defy calculation, which abhor convention and fling behind 
 them that which is safe and secure. All the ninety and 
 nine go for nothing. Is not this romance ? And yet it 
 is the very heart of the Gospel and holds the secret of the 
 Incarnation. Pity, adventure, sacrifice, self-abandonment, 
 these are the driving forces which are always to carry us 
 past the sanities of the orderly reason. 
 
 Then again there is the trust that Christianity puts in 
 the release of the individual character : which is the note 
 of romance. The individual life is caught into the great 
 paradox, " I live yet not I, Christ liveth in me," and it can 
 fling the whole universe away under this inspiration, and 
 must always be setting out on fresh ventures under the 
 compelling force of Him who said, " Behold I ma.ke all 
 things new." 
 
 Then, take St. Paul and aU those vehement, volcanic 
 contrasts — " as dying and behold we live," " sorrowful and 
 yet always rejoicing," " as poor yet making many rich," 
 •' having nothing and yet possessing all things." Or again 
 the great string of adventures " in perils by the sea," etc. 
 Life is for him one long romance, just because it is lived in 
 Him in whom he is already dead, yet alive. All life is 
 paradox to St. Paul. 
 
 And then, think of the romance that belongs to a Creed 
 which has for its living heart the tremendous adventure 
 and tragedy of the last night in the upper room, and which 
 lives for ever in the present memorial of a Body broken and 
 Blood shed. Is not this romance in its deepest sense, with 
 all that is mystic and suggestive and inexhaustible and 
 magical and unlimited ? 
 
 Good Workmanship in London 
 
 (?) 1908. To Dr. Percy Dearmer. — Look at all the 
 decoration on our best City buildings, or on new big houses 
 on the Embankment, Finsbury Circus and Pavement : it 
 is most delicate. And gaze on my Norwich Union cherubs. 
 
284 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Is not Paul Waterhouse's Nurses' Home in the Adelphi 
 an admirable building ? Macartney tells me that in wood- 
 carving we could reproduce our stalls, if they were burned. 
 I am sure that in a lot of work we have got a very high 
 standard. The ladies in the spandrels of the new archway 
 from the Board of Trade to the Local Government Board 
 buildings are exquisite : not the panel, which is common- 
 place. 
 
 A Bit of England 
 
 The Bowling Green Inn, Ludlow. Aug. i6, 1910. To 
 Miss Winnie Talbot. — It is woeful to have left you, and to 
 feel that the happy spell is over. We must go to Mozart 
 together, and celebrate the blessed summer. Oh, oh, oh ! 
 England ! Yesterday ! Paradise is not in it. I never 
 saw such wealth of gorgeous beauty — laid out on end for 
 happy trains to glide through, laughing with joy. That is 
 surely the one and only way in which to see and enjoy the 
 country. The harvest stood up and shouted at us all the 
 way — with the gold in its throat. Here we are, in a fairy 
 cot, white and high, with a speechless view in front of us, 
 over Ludlow, and the Clees, and sliding rivers, and bridges 
 in dreams, and a motherly tower reigning over the red- 
 roofed chickens of houses like a transfigured hen. 
 
 Two Bishops 
 
 May 5, 1911. To Dr. Talbot. — I was made quite miserable 
 by the sight of Oxford and Birmingham at our Pusey House 
 meeting. I never saw two men look so tired or so forlorn. 
 Frank was so thin that one could have shaved oneself with 
 his head and face. 
 
 Theosophy 
 
 March 4, 1913. To Miss Annie H. Murray. — This 
 theosophy business always bothers me, and I really do not 
 know the literature about it. It irritates me, and I do 
 not follow it up. There is a book which indirectly meets 
 it very well, I think, called " Christ in India," by Lucas. 
 It takes the Hindoo business up with great sympathy, but 
 
LETTERS OF CRITICISM AND PORTRAITURE 285 
 
 also showing its hopeless inadequacy, especially in the form 
 of re-incarnation, and Karma. It fails to give reality to 
 history, or any corporate social purpose to life. It is an 
 interminable private drama of the individual soul. It 
 establishes no bonds, and allows for no remedies. I wonder 
 if Marion has still got the paper book, on Karma, by Hogg, 
 which we had for the Guild of the Epiphany. I think it 
 exhibits the weakness of the whole theory of life, which 
 seems to be so logical, and yet so entirely fails the facts. 
 I ought to be able to give you a lot of books, but I have not 
 got them in my mind. I will write again after a little 
 inquiry. I have always pushed it off in irritation at its 
 emptiness. 
 
 I think reaUy that any theory of re-incarnation totally 
 fails to give reality to the body, just as Hindoo re-incarna- 
 tions of God totally fail to interpret the Christian idea of 
 Incarnation, in which that bodily life, which is taken in, 
 becomes part of the actual personal life for ever, and cannot 
 be detached or changed like a mere cloak. 
 
 All that we mean by body is impersonations, that is, 
 is included in the personality and inheres in it as essentially 
 as the spiritual elements do. Re-incarnation always 
 assumes the purely spiritual personality that can slip in 
 and out, and divest itself, and go on, and adopt another 
 transitory form, which in turn fails to belong to it. We 
 Christians will have nothing to do with anything that makes 
 the bodily side of life a mere illusion. Spirit takes up and 
 quickens body, so that it is spiritualized and acquires the 
 reality of spirit. This makes it impossible for a spirit to 
 have many bodies to put on like petticoats. 
 
 The Gospel Record 
 
 I. May 17, 1913. To Harold Anson, during their joint 
 editorship of Commonwealth. — I am writing rather at length 
 
 to on a long letter that he sent me. He was very 
 
 nice and frank ; but to my mind it means that he is not 
 really facing the actual Gospel record. However much 
 you may shift the emphasis from off miracles, the presenta- 
 tion made of Christ is one that holds in it inherently and 
 inevitably this supra-normal element, and we have got to 
 take this element ; and if we try to form a judgment on 
 
286 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Jesus Christ as recorded for us in the one story we know 
 of Him, omitting this supra-normal factor, I think the whole 
 record falls to pieces, and there is really nothing left that 
 has stability enough to count. This affects the whole life, 
 and culminates of course in the Resurrection : and I feel 
 strongly that this instinctive desire to get away from the 
 facts to their spiritual meaning somehow just reverses the 
 spontaneous temper of the Gospel itself, in which the 
 spiritual truth reacts on the fact and endows it with ad- 
 ditional reality and value. This is because the Incarnation 
 is above all things not an idea but an act, not an illuminating 
 thought but a deed of the Divine Will. 
 
 I am anxious about this with Commonwealth, because 
 historically for all these years we have steadily voted against 
 the tradition that to be a social reformer you must be 
 shadowy in your creed. The old Broad Churchman has 
 made this superstition common. To care about drains 
 was supposed to mean that you sat loose to the Creed ; 
 and we have upheld the counter-position all these years, 
 that the more you believe in the Incarnation the more you 
 care about drains. I cannot do anything now that will 
 traverse this our motive and effort, so you will see why the 
 whole matter is rather near my heart. 
 
 2. December 22, 1913. To James Adderley. How idiotic 
 these people are. As if anybody could die unless he has 
 first lived. And St. Paul, as you say, rested absolutely his 
 whole case on nothing but the Death, at a certain moment, 
 in a certain way, upon the Cross, for a certain purpose, at 
 a fixed historic moment up to which everything had been 
 leading and by which the whole course of history was 
 transformed. So He died once for aU for our sin ; and 
 the value of the historical Death flows from the historical 
 life and character of the Person who so died. He and no 
 other could by His death have changed men's life ; and 
 He was a Person Whom St. Paul loved as a master and 
 friend and adored as God. What more can you want for 
 historicity ? The life is included in the death, and must 
 be. If the one is historic, so is the other. . . . Then as 
 to the reason why the historic fact is important. It is 
 because Christianity is a gospel not of illumination but of 
 power. If it was merely a question of knowledge of God, 
 then the idea in the fact would be sufficient, and the fact 
 might drop off. But if what we want is not knowledge 
 
LETTERS OF CRITICISM AND PORTRAITURE 287 
 
 but power, that is, an act, an energy of God put out on our 
 behalf to change us from what we are, then the fact is the 
 act. That is our Gospel : that at a certain moment in a 
 certain way God did do something which changed the 
 situation. The fact is everything. Did He do it ? Only 
 if He did, have we a Gospel at all. The Will of God is only 
 revealed in and by an act, and a will is only a will so far as 
 it acts. That is what St. Paul is always proclaiming. 
 God in Christ did something : He put out powers, energy, 
 might ; and that is the whole matter. If it did not happen, 
 then God did not do it and has never done it. Is not this 
 all that you want ? 
 
IV 
 
 LETTERS OF ENCOURAGEMENT AND OF CONSOLATION 
 
 Comme d Vingt Ans 
 
 To Miss Evelyn Holland. — Dear Child, you believe 
 that I care, don't you ? as your birthdays come round : 
 and that I watch you with deep and tender interest : and 
 that I shall do so all the more, as the years thicken, and 
 childhood drops away behind, and the decisions and growth 
 and directions and affections of womanhood begin to press 
 upon you. Dear me ! twenty years old ! And the pranks 
 and the practical jokes will be all vanishing as their stage 
 ends : and the poor unhappy Queen's English, so long 
 repressed, will be seizing her chance of coming forward, 
 and of pressing her claims on your consideration. Poor 
 old lady ! she has had a hard time of it, we must confess. 
 And no wonder her curls are all of a fluster, and her back 
 slightly up. However, we will do our best for her now : 
 and cheer the old girl's heart a little. Anyhow, God bless 
 you always, my Enie : and let me thank you for all your 
 good affection to me : and sometimes, when you can, say 
 a tiny prayer for me ; and I will remember you. 
 
 To Miss Gladys White. — i. Dearest Chick, pull yourself 
 together. My few rernaining hairs are all strewn about 
 the floor at my feet. It is hideous. But on the 31st, I 
 am nailed to a Chair in Holborn Town HaU. For months, 
 that nail has been piercing my vitals : but I had forgotten 
 it. Nothing on earth can drag me off it, I fear. It is an 
 annual and glorious hullabaloo over my beloved Universities 
 Mission to Central Africa : and we whoop and shout and 
 sing like merry niggers. Oh dear ! and it will be the burial 
 day of your happy teens. ... Do not think yourself 
 useless. You are of " use " to all who love you : and 
 
 288 
 
LETTERS OF ENCOURAGEMENT 289 
 
 you are waiting, and learning, and gathering in stores, and 
 strength and skill and character, which God will know how 
 to use, if you let Him, when His Day comes. We are of 
 use if we but grow ; if we refuse to come to an end. This 
 day will not put a close on what you are becoming : you 
 will go on right through it : it is but a beginning. Let 
 that be your resolution, your confidence. God bless you 
 for your dear love for me, for which I do nothing. God 
 bless you for yourself. God bless you for Himself. 
 
 2. Jenny Lind was a wonder and a joy. She passed 
 through life. That is what she made one feel : she was on 
 her way somewhere else : it was a movement across a 
 scene — her life. On she passed : often in perplexity and 
 surprise at what she found here. Never quite at home : 
 never comfortable, and settled, and at rest. On she went 
 travelling : and as she passed, she left all eyes following 
 after her, and all hearts wondering over her, as after a sudden 
 vision. 
 
 And you, dear child, you may do something like this. 
 Keep the head up and the eyes fixed on something dreamed 
 of, anticipated, never seen. Keep the youth fresh in the heart, 
 and the innocence, and the purity, and the truth. Hold 
 by the reality of God, and of goodness : and demand much 
 of life. She never let her young dreams go. She believed 
 that they were the truth of things. 
 
 Someday, you will feel how the world suffers : how 
 the poor moan. And you will feel how great a boon it is 
 to a weary earth for you to bring to it a fresh young heart, 
 and a pure laugh, and a brimming gaiety, and a bright 
 hope. Keep bright and good : and then you wiU have the 
 best gift to give that can be given — yourself as God made 
 you. 
 
 Work 
 
 1882-83. 1^0 a friend, appointed Headmaster of a public 
 school. — I. I begin to think that it does not much matter 
 where one is : and that we had better not think too care- 
 fully about what would most befit us. People seem able 
 to do what they have to do, almost anywhere : and in spite 
 of circumstance. I think it is practically surer to ask. Is 
 this a clear offer, and proposal, which comes unasked ? 
 Is it work fitted ? Is it work which I have no positive 
 
 u 
 
290 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 reason to refuse ? Never mind, much, the rest. The 
 kind of work that one can do, this a man must settle for 
 himself : and must resolutely set himself in the way of it, 
 and struggle against all that draws him away from it. 
 But this once fairly settled, then the great thing seems to 
 be to accept " calls " to it, from whatever quarter, without 
 asking too many questions about place or opportunities, 
 
 2. Whatever happens, it will be right to have attempted 
 it : and, above all, to have stuck loyally to it. I am sure 
 of this : and less and less does it seem possible to pick 
 and choose in this " wild disordered scene " ; it grows 
 daily less important what exactly it is that one is doing, as 
 long as one does it. I find myself in a post which I had 
 sworn not to take ; a^^d for which I am greatly unfitted : 
 and the years are flying : and nothing is real. Yet it 
 must be right. It is a time when it is everything to be 
 able to push along, and give others a shove in the right way ; 
 and, rough and broken as it all becomes, it is impertinent 
 to be troubled over it too much. Only I long that when 
 the apprenticeship is served, and one has taken one's part 
 in shoving weary shoulders against muddy wheels in the 
 dark and rutty lane, and done it unrepiningly, one may 
 be given a year or two of blessed time to think a little and 
 read possibly one book through. It would be such wonderful 
 
 joy- 
 
 3. Work has to be done at a venture : I learn that 
 more and more : it does not come out clear and good : 
 it is all done amid dreadful disorder, with grievous and 
 patent inefficiency. Nothing of what was to be, seems to 
 come off. It is hugger-mugger : it is scrappy : it is poor 
 and thin : and the horrible gaps in it are hideous to behold. 
 I suppose, the one thing is to struggle on with desperate 
 penitence, and believe that someday, far hence, looking 
 back over it all, it will take some form and fashion upon 
 it, it wiU show itself with some touch of harmony and j 
 wholeness to grace it and justify it : it will be known to ' 
 be taken into the large, sure handling of God. You speak 
 of a deeper sense of the power of evil. That is a growing 
 manifestation. I have felt it proctorially. Not with any, 
 new light, or surprise, exactly. The evil is not larger than 
 
 I should have supposed. It is not worse • but it is felt to I 
 be so rooted, so resolute, so firm, so radical : it does not 
 propose to repent ; it does not deplore its own frailty and 
 
LETTERS OF ENCOURAGEMENT 291 
 
 suggest a change to come. It remains ; and proposes to 
 remain : in spite of all our efforts, it will have its way. It 
 does not feel appeals : it lives its life out, unabashed. This 
 is the sort of evil that one's own life does not prepare one 
 to meet or expect. 
 
 Marriage 
 
 To a friend. — I am sure that the secret lies in what you 
 said, i.e., in giving more than you get. Each gets so much, 
 that it tempts each to be overjoyed with the getting, and 
 to rest content with the preciousness of the gift received. 
 It is very blessed to receive so much. But it is still more 
 blessed to give. And everything that is received ought to 
 spur one up into an effort to give back yet more. " How 
 can I give more than I get ? " That is the question that 
 should haunt. And, at the start, the woman seems to 
 give everything : the man to get everything. And this 
 has to be made up for, afterwards. The man's turn of 
 giving comes. He must respect her, serve her, cherish 
 her : at cost to himself : with self-denial, with restraint. 
 Marriage often asks a very great deal of severe discipline 
 from the man, as time goes on. There will be opportunities 
 enough for him to practise self-sacrifice. 
 
 The Church of England * 
 
 March, 1897. To a friend. — Newman might be excused, 
 in the heat of the first revival, for deeming it an experiment. 
 But it has long ceased to be an experiment. It has shown 
 itself to be a vigorous historical fact, in the strength of 
 which people can live out their lives, stiU assured that the 
 Real Presence which they ever sought, with all its boons 
 
 * This letter was written when Father Maturin had just been received 
 into the Roman Church. There is a story, by Mr. Wilfrid Parker, of a 
 later saying about the Church of England : " Dr. Holland, the Archbishop 
 of York, and I were driving out from Oxford in a motor to Cuddesdon, 
 for the College Festival, in June 191 1 . When we got to the top of Horsepath 
 Hill, at the point where the beautiful view of the Chilterns opens out, a 
 large shapeless flight of starhngs flew rapidly over our heads. Dr. Holland 
 looked at them for a moment, and said, ' How like the Church of England ! 
 Nothing apparently keeping it together ; and yet somehow getting along 
 all the time. Dear little Anglican birds ' 1 " 
 
292 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 and energies, had never failed them on the Church's altars. 
 All this is ours ; though perplexities becloud, and un- 
 certainties beleaguer, and cross-voices clash, and dead 
 obstruction withholds, and worldliness chokes. 
 
 This is always what the Church has been in the world, 
 on a large scale. Looking on at the great Roman Church 
 from the perspective of history, it offers just the same 
 spectacle of doubtful struggle. The claim to Infallibility 
 only intensifies the strangeness of a sight in which the 
 existence of Infallibility is itself so profoundly difficult to 
 verify or make good. Struggle there must be : anxiety 
 there must be : peril, confusion, contradiction. There is 
 no escaping this. Only, through the cloud, the heart that is 
 true finds the light reach it. In the thick of the trouble, 
 the power is holding us fast. Asleep the Lord seems to 
 those of little faith : but only to those. I never was more 
 sure of the Grace that is with us than to-day. 
 
 Human Kindness 
 
 i8gy. To a friend. — ^Never throw over the mass of your 
 fellows as hollow and vain and hypocritical. Never hold 
 aloof from them in contempt or condemnation. Byron, 
 with all his splendid gifts, left us such a sterile message : 
 because he tried to despise those whom, as a poet, he was 
 bound to love. He was himself quite as vain and selfish 
 as the world which he decried. Everyone who denounces 
 his fellows in hate and scorn, instead of in the fervour of his 
 love for them, convicts himself. We are what our brothers 
 are. We and they stand and fall together. If they are 
 contemptible, so are we. If we are struggling after higher 
 things, so are they. If we see visions, so do they. One 
 fate ; one flesh and blood ; one story ; one strife ; one 
 glory — this is the underlying secret of humanity, and the 
 poet is only a poet so far as he recognises and interprets 
 this deep unity. He must knit faster the human brother- 
 hood. He must enter by force of pity and love into the 
 heart of his brethren. 
 
 Circumstances 
 
 Aug. 1899. To a friend. — I have kept your plaintive 
 letter : and hardly know how to comfort you. Only 
 
LETTERS OF ENCOURAGEMENT 293 
 
 consider how useless and utterly profitless must have felt 
 to our Lord the pinched and cramping restraints of that 
 poor Jew life in Nazareth. Outside, the splendours and 
 treasures of Greece and Rome : all untouched by Him. 
 What weapons, what materials, what instruments His 
 Church was to find in those Gentile arts and philosophies. 
 What would He not have made of them, done with them ? 
 Such good wealth, for the very purpose of His Life ! Yet 
 the petty resources of a bigoted Jew village were to be 
 His only stock in trade. 
 
 And for 30 years — out of 33 — He had no more ! And 
 could not even put these to use. Is not this unprofitable 
 cramping ? Is not this nasty, and damping, and meaning- 
 less poverty ? 
 
 Yet, in accepting the limitation, He made it all His 
 Sacrifice. He lifted it into Divine Acceptance. He gave 
 it meaning, and value, in its very meanness and contempt. 
 
 As the Master, so the servant. It was not glorious 
 endurance : it was hidden, stupid, barren poverty of environ- 
 ment. No one saw or knew. Can you not place yours in 
 His, your hard stupid restraints within His ? So give 
 glory to God. 
 
 To Miss Arnold'FoYster 
 
 Athens, April 22, 1886. Death of Mr. W. E. Forster. — 
 Life is stretching itself out now for you, life with its old 
 habitual needs, with its common tasks, with its necessary 
 business ; and all is to be without him, without the dignity 
 and honour and interest and shelter of that dear presence, 
 under the shadow of which you have for so long found your 
 joy. There comes a silence, a dryness, a blank, a flatness, 
 as one settles down to the new and poor and thinned 
 existence. 
 
 Yet Easter, with its Passion and Resurrection, will 
 speak to you with full meaning — speak not only of women 
 sitting all day preparing spices for the beloved dead, or 
 seeking him before dawn among the tombs — but of women 
 sent back with a message of hope, of activity, of life, from 
 the tomb itself — of women who must drop their spices and 
 myrrh, and go back to urgent business, to rouse faint- 
 hearted men, to bid them believe, and rise, and act, and 
 
294 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 go to Galilee, and obey, and hope. " Woman, whom 
 seekest thou ? " The Lord is risen : is alive, is strong. 
 He has work to do, and needs workers : and all who die in 
 the Lord must send back to us the same message, " Woman, 
 whom seekest thou ? Go and tell those others what to do. 
 Woman, why weepest thou ? Ye men of Galilee, why 
 stand ye gazing ? " Back we must turn, to work, to life. 
 Back, not in forgetfulness of the dear dead, but in loyalty 
 to their honour, to work in the silent undying thought of 
 them, to work in obedience to their desire, to live as they 
 would have us live, busy, urgent — more busy, more urgent, 
 because they are gone : and their name goes with us, and 
 their love follows and urges and inspires us. God bless 
 you, and Mrs. Forster, in this your holy work, in this loyalty 
 to him who was so dear to you. 
 
 To Miss May Talbot 
 
 May 26, 1897. Death of Mary Burrows. — ^There is no 
 speech that is tolerable, in face of such a deadly blow. 
 These are the things that force us to be silent and to feel 
 for God's Hand, to hold by and to press. There is no lower 
 comfort, short of the very highest. It is no good to take 
 refuge in pleas and hopes. It is sheer ruin, so far as this 
 world goes : it wrecks the brightest and most pure and 
 healthy hopes imaginable. Everything demanded that 
 she should live : God's work, man's joy. And she is dead. 
 There is no trifling with sorrows like this. We must walk 
 straight on, without a question, without a look behind. 
 God is so good : and life is so small. That is all that we 
 know. We cling to that. We refuse to fall back on any- 
 thing else, but that. The thing is sheer unmitigated evil : 
 but God can force even that to become good to those who 
 trust Him. Now is His time. He alone can bring it out 
 into victory. We watch : and pray : while He acts. 
 
 To Miss May Talbot 
 
 November, 1900. Death of Helen Paget. — Go near it. 
 See the Dean, and the children, and dear Mary Church : 
 and you are abashed by your own dismay. They, who are 
 hit hardest, seem to know best what it means : they have 
 
LETTERS OF ENCOURAGEMENT 295 
 
 some secret : they see their way. There is hope, and light : 
 faith never shakes. This is always the wonderful thing : 
 that the nearer we go to sorrow, the more divine it becomes. 
 The actual disaster itself is horrible : is cruel. There is 
 no denying that. But God works His victory through the 
 disaster itself : and wins His grace out of the very cruelty. 
 He does not abolish it : but He smites it through and 
 through with His transfiguration. Someday ! Someday ! 
 we shall know. Come and talk. You had the joy of 
 loving her, just before she passed. 
 
 To Mrs. Spencer Holland 
 
 Aug. 27, 1907. Death of Mary Coleridge. — I knew 
 her so little : mainly, through you. But there was so 
 much that was intimate, I should think, and distinct : 
 with a quiet tender touch, that went home. Oh dear ! 
 Death is strangely troubling and sad. It traverses, it 
 arrests, it defeats : it is cruel : it is aimless. Yet this 
 cannot be its last word. It would be so hopelessly un- 
 meaning, and irrational. And so we come round, with a 
 swing, to the great deep beliefs, that are so terribly curtailed 
 and veiled, and yet assure us that they have got somehow 
 possession of the true secret which underlies it all. It 
 must be very simple, and natural, over there. 
 
 To Mrs. Henry Powell 
 
 May 30, 1915. — This week has been simply terrible. 
 The only strength comes from taking up all the old words 
 of the Psalms and the Prophets, which tell of the wars and 
 the terrors of unknown days long ago, and then giving 
 oneself to take one's place with them, in their ranks. They 
 knew it all. They went down into the deep waters. They 
 suffered just these pangs of our's. And their record is 
 inside the book of God's manifestation : it is part of His 
 revelation. His light. His life, came to us by this road 
 of pain. 
 
 They took their places in the heroic succession. So 
 must we. Then we are, and not till then, on the road by 
 which the Christ arrived. We must not fail them, or Him : 
 we must fare as they fared : we must take their cries on 
 
296 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 our lips. We stand with them : the mystery of God em- 
 braces us both. Let us not be afraid. Where they passed, 
 we too can pass. 
 
 To Mr. Ivo Ward 
 
 Feb. 15, 1916. During the last illness of his father, 
 Mr. Wilfrid Ward. — Every day as it passes is one more 
 boon to thank God for, and has its added preciousness 
 because of the peril and pain by which it has been won. 
 " Sufficient unto the day " — there is the perpetual refrain 
 in one's ears at such times. We can shut ourselves up 
 inside the day, inside the hour, inside the moment, and 
 make it eternal by refusing to go outside it, and by deeming 
 it enough to find God within its limits. We can shut 
 ourselves up inside it with Him : not asking why, nor how 
 long, nor where, nor what will follow. It is enough that 
 the moment itself is our own, and can be lived through 
 and is our possession, and carries its own sufficing grace 
 with it. So we can move from point to point, master of 
 each and mastered by none. For God is always sufficient 
 for the evil that is, and will always be too strong for any 
 evil to snatch us out of His Hand. 
 
PART IV 
 
FROM 191 1 TO AUGUST, I914 
 
 He was sixty-four, and had been for twenty-six years 
 in London, when he came back to Oxford. His house in 
 Tom Quad, " Dr. Holland's lodgings," was next the Deanery, 
 on the side facing the Hall. He put his name on the door : 
 it was the first brass-plate in the Quad : he was warned that 
 he might be rung-up to attend a confinement, and he said 
 that Miss Hancock would be able to act in that emergency. 
 He was charmed with his new house ; especially, with the 
 garden behind it. His brother writes : — 
 
 The drawing-room upstairs was a splendid lofty room, 
 with long windows facing both the Quad and his garden : 
 a fine replica of the portrait of Wolsey in the Hall was over 
 the fire-place : there was the piano which had been chosen 
 for Miss Gifford by Otto Goldschmidt : and comfortable 
 settees : and tables strewn with books. In the dining- 
 room were portraits of former Regius Professors of Divinity ; 
 which belonged to the house, not to him. The study was 
 a delightful room : panelled walls, long rows of books, a 
 big writing-table crowded with papers and with photographs 
 of friends and of god-children ; and a cottage piano. Beyond 
 the study, was his prayer-room. 
 
 But the garden was the great novelty of Scott's last 
 home. He had never before shown much interest in flowers 
 or plants : but his garden here was a new pleasure for him. 
 He watched carefully the planting of some rose-trees from 
 Longworth : the creepers, the full border of annuals, the 
 massive old fig-tree, the little garden-strips belonging to 
 
 299 
 
300 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 the maids, and Miss Hancock's famous chicken-run, all 
 were objects of his interest : the hens had their nicknames, 
 and wonderful histories of egg and chicken triumphs. 
 In 1 917, he writes, " You will see the wonderful chickens. 
 Eggs pouring in. Three broods of chicks, expanding." 
 And in 1918, " Eight eggs from nine pullets. An avalanche." 
 He would rush visitors straight out into the garden on their 
 arrival : and here on the long white seat he would sit and 
 work and read, as he never could in London. The thrushes 
 and blackbirds were a great attraction : there was a bird- 
 bath on the lawn : a supposed mesalliance between a 
 blackbird and a thrush was much commented on, but the 
 female turned out to be only a rusty-brown blackbird, 
 and the scandal was averted : natural history was not 
 his strong point. A thrush sang beautifully in the tree 
 near his bedroom window, as he lay dying : and he used 
 to call our attention to it. 
 
 He was happy enough, up to August, 1914. He felt 
 the Cathedral services, after St. Paul's, " rather limp and 
 worshipless " : and he obtained leave for a week-day 
 celebration in the Latin Chapel, at which the communicants 
 came up, in the usual way, to the altar. (At the chief 
 service in Cathedral, the bread and wine are carried round 
 to them.) He found many changes in Oxford ; but he 
 was prepared for that : indeed, he had helped to start 
 them, thirty years ago. Nor was he without the devotion 
 of younger men : though he pretended that he had only 
 one disciple. Of his lectures. Dr. Strong has written : — 
 
 As a lecturer, Dr. Holland did not attract a large class : 
 he lectmred on central problems of theology, rather than 
 subjects which are useful for the schools. He was always 
 interested in the connexion of natural and revealed religion : 
 in the historical basis of the faith, and its relation to Christian 
 doctrine : in the ethical results of Christianity. The sub- 
 jects of lectures announced by him reflect these interests. 
 It is in this part of his work that the war has caused the most 
 serious disturbance. He always exercised a wonderful 
 
FROM 1911 TO AUGUST, 1914 301 
 
 attraction upon the undergraduates who came in contact 
 with him : and if it had not been for the war, one can 
 hardly doubt that he would have come to his own, and 
 would have been recognised as the great teacher he really 
 was. 
 
 As Regius Professor, he alone decided the acceptance 
 of theses for the divinity degrees : he exacted a very high 
 level of attainment, and thus raised the standard of the 
 degrees. He was in favour of instituting a diploma in 
 theology : this was the subject of his last speech in Con- 
 vocation. And he worked hard at the plan to provide 
 training, in Oxford, for candidates for holy orders. But 
 the one episode which aroused public attention and over- 
 whelming opposition (191 2-13), was his proposal to throw 
 open the divinity degrees. He held resolutely to it, that 
 " a University, composed of all sorts and conditions without 
 regard to any fundamental principles of faith cannot, of 
 course, undertake to act on behalf of any one particular 
 religious body, or give a preferential right in its degrees 
 to any such body," He states his position, in April, 1912, 
 in Commonwealth : — 
 
 The Oxford Professors of Theology, together with the 
 Dean of Christ Church, have taken the initiative in proposing 
 to the Hebdomadal Council that the degrees in divinity, 
 and the examinerships in the divinity school, shall no longer 
 be confined to priests of the Church of England, but should 
 be laid open to all who can approve themselves to the 
 University as having attained to a certain scientific standard 
 of knowledge in this special department of human expe- 
 rience. This is the only ground which the University, as such, 
 can take. It can apply an intellectual test, without any 
 reference to belief. The Professors and Lecturers will give 
 instruction in whatever matters that belong to the subject : 
 and they can do this in full and free regard to the creed 
 professed by the body to which they individually belong. 
 The Anglican Chairs will expound the Anglican position. 
 
302 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 The Roman, the Congregationalist, the Unitarian, will 
 declare, their own reasoned convictions. The Student of 
 Comparative Religion will say his say. Only, the examina- 
 tion in the school and for the degree will have but one 
 standard to apply to all the work brought before it — the 
 standard of intellectual efficiency. This is perfectly practi- 
 cable and intelligible and reasonable. It will clear the air 
 of all subterfuges, and the stage of all vexatious preferences. 
 It will rescue the Church of England from the odium of 
 special privileges, and from the very doubtful position of 
 having her representative exponents certified for her by a 
 body that has ceased to be qualified for the responsibility. 
 It will be helpful all round if the Church itself volunteers to 
 get rid of the limitations which, while doing it no honour, 
 exclude others who have, on the intellectual side, as good 
 a right to win a University recognition as any of those 
 whom the Church can produce. 
 
 In July, 1912, he emphasises this distinction between 
 the teaching of divinity and the examining in divinity. 
 " The University has no conceivable right to step in at any 
 point, and determine for the teacher what and how much 
 of his creed he may teach. It can examine the subject, 
 and appraise it. It can judge who is qualified to teach 
 in his own subject. But there it stops. ... If the teaching 
 given is to be in any way controlled and directed by the 
 dogmatic or undogmatic preferences of the University, all 
 sincerity and all vitaHty will die out of it." In January, 
 1913, he writes hopefully : " The policy of opening the 
 divinity degrees, which was initiated by the Oxford Pro- 
 fessors, has now taken some real effect at both Universities. 
 The first vote has been passed at each place by very large 
 majorities, at Cambridge in a very big House by a majority 
 of 104, at Oxford in Congregation by a vote of 184 to 35." 
 He explains carefully, this January, and again in April, 
 that the Professors and Lecturers are to be absolutely free, 
 and that the University is to be asked simply for " an 
 
FROM 191 1 TO AUGUST, 1914 303 
 
 intellectual valuation of work offered to its scientific judg- 
 ment " : — 
 
 We are considering the conditions under which a learned 
 University, open to members of every possible creed, can 
 properly handle theological questions. It cannot omit 
 them, for, by so doing, it would cut itself off from the highest 
 and most vital department of human experience. It cannot 
 take up a dogmatic position without abandoning its claim 
 to be a national educational institution. It certainly can 
 no longer be asked to ignore the existence of all theology 
 that is not produced by priests of the Church of England. 
 It cannot confine itself to Christianity without undertaking 
 to define what Christianity is. It cannot adopt the un- 
 denominational minimum of all the Christian bodies : for 
 then it would leave out all that makes Christianity full, 
 rich, and varied. It cannot select any test without falsifying 
 its profession of being open to all, whatever their belief. 
 What then is it to do ? There is no ground left for it but 
 that of pure knowledge : and that ground is clear, and 
 firm, and adequate for academic purposes. 
 
 There was an outcry against this weU-balanced plan : 
 Convocation was summoned, and came plunging into its 
 intricacies, on April 29, 1913 ; and upset it, for the time 
 being, by the largest majority seen in Oxford since the 
 days of the Tractarians. He writes to Mrs. Spencer 
 HoUand : — 
 
 I had got to accepting the blow, before it came. It 
 was inevitable : we had asked too much of the outsiders, 
 who cannot understand the situation here. But I did not 
 think that it would be quite so dowmright and smashing. 
 And I do think that they might have shown some faint 
 trust in our not being mere weak betrayers. It was too 
 stupid of them. Our whole record seemed to go for nothing. 
 Their timidity shames me : and their total lack of generosity 
 and justice towards those outside the Church, in their 
 rejection of the statute about the examiners. Up here, 
 that hardly needed discussing. Everybody knew that it 
 
304 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 was a mere matter of equity. We are " done " for a time. 
 Now what I dread is a compromise — so easy, on the word 
 " Christian," I mercifully kept very well : and for a wonder 
 my nerves did not "go," as they usually do now under 
 any worry. Alice fed me up on mysterious treacles. I 
 am really very well again. 
 
 In 1 91 1, he pubhshed " Our Neighbours," one of the 
 Handbooks of the Christian Social Union ; and contributed 
 to a series of essays and sermons published in book-form, 
 under the title " Miracles," in reply to Mr. J. M. Thompson's 
 book, " Miracles in the New Testament." 
 
 During 1912-1914, he shared the editorship of Common- 
 wealth with Mr. Harold Anson, who had for some time been 
 helping him. In March, 1912, he writes, " I am going to 
 make a big proposal to you : and that is that you should 
 seriously consider whether you could not take on Common- 
 wealth. I do not think I can possibly go on doing it from 
 here, and the time must come very soon, when I give it 
 up ; and it would be perfectly splendid, I think, if you could 
 manage it. Now don't be staggered by the proposal, but 
 consider it kindly. We cannot possibly let Commonwealth 
 die out. I think it would be a betrayal. It has got a 
 position which it would be wrong to abandon." In Nov. 
 1 914, he writes of some difference of outlook between them : 
 " Commonwealth has many tendencies which are far re- 
 moved from the old position : but these have all come to 
 those who were Tractarians once. It has tried to express 
 the opening-out which has come to the old situation : and 
 this has been its motive and inspiration. We started from 
 a point back there : and I have always felt this to be its 
 office, to show how the old Sacramental position held in it 
 these new possibilities." 
 
 There is a group of letters, in 1911, on the story of the 
 healing of the man born blind (St. John, ch. ix.) . Mr. C, H, S. 
 
FROM 1911 TO AUGUST, 1914 305 
 
 Matthews had sent an article to Commonwealth, in which 
 the literal meaning of the story was called in question. 
 
 To Mr. Harold Anson 
 
 April 28. — Why, oh why, should he select that particular 
 miracle, of the man born blind, as a type of what may be 
 left uncertain ? Surely it is the very best story in the world. 
 I cannot conceive anybody really reading it and doubting 
 it. Every detail is a joy and an assurance, and the writer 
 is revelling in the mere detail itself as a human document. 
 It is the cardinal case where he shews his passionate love 
 for fact and history. A great deal of the story, in fact 
 the whole of it, has no allegorical meaning of any sort. It 
 is impossible for Loisy to discover the faintest ghost of a 
 spiritual allusion. It is fact for fact's sake, and fact in its 
 most delightful form. He never requires to go behind the 
 fact ; he finds satisfaction in the fact as such. Just read 
 about the parents and all that they say. Where are you 
 going to find theology in that ? And of course, as to the 
 particular miracle, it is just one of the symptomatic wonders 
 which we all believe to be perfectly possible now.* You 
 are never going to strip our Lord's life of the healings. 
 You cannot do it without destroying the authority of the 
 whole story. Just consider the absolutely authentic saying 
 of the Lord asking how it mattered whether He said " Thy 
 sins are forgiven " or " Arise and walk." 
 
 I think the line Matthews has taken is perfectly fatal, 
 and he has chosen the very worst instance in the world 
 in the story of the blind man. I would like him to re- 
 consider this particular tale and the suggestion that you 
 can lightly drop all the healings. I can quite understand 
 cases which are much harder and where it is well to tell 
 people that they need not worry. 
 
 * No doctor would admit that the miraculous healing of a case of con- 
 genital blindness could be regarded as a " symptomatic " wonder. But any 
 doctor might well admit that the Pharisees did " go into the case." The 
 whole feel of the talk is hke the feel of question and answer in a Hospital 
 out-patient department. 
 
3o6 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 To Mr. C. H. S. Matthews 
 
 May 6. — If this incident of the bhnd man really did 
 happen, then this is just the way in which it must have 
 been told. It hangs together at every point : and if this 
 is not a genuine story, then I think we have no test by 
 which to say what is. Just consider the psychology of the 
 blind man himself, how he is driven on from point to point 
 by the opposition ; and then the fun of the thing, as the 
 opposition come round and round time after time to the 
 same thing, and ask him to say again what had happened. 
 This is just what we always do when we are in difficulties. 
 And he is driven to say, " I told you before : if you did not 
 believe me then, what is the good of telling you again ? " 
 And the funk of the parents, and the way they shove it 
 off, etc., etc. To me it is extraordinarily convincing as a 
 document. 
 
 In 1913, in a series of essays on " Property, its Duties 
 and Rights," edited with an introduction by Bishop Gore, 
 he published an essay on " Property and Personality." It 
 is a notable example of his use of philosophy in 
 economics : — 
 
 Personality lies in the relation of person to person. A 
 personality is what it is only by virtue of its power to 
 transcend itself and to enter into the life of another. It 
 lives by interpenetration, by intercourse, by communion. 
 Its power of life is love. There is no such thing as a solitary, 
 isolated person. A self-contained personality is a contra- 
 diction in terms. What we mean by personality is a capacity 
 for intercourse, a capacity for retaining self-identity by 
 and through identification with others — a capacity for 
 friendship, for communion, for fellowship. Hence the 
 true logic of personality compels us to discover the man's 
 personal worth in the inherent necessity of a society in which 
 it is realized. Society is, simply, the expression of the 
 social inter-communion of spirit with spirit which consti- 
 tutes what we mean by personality. Fellowship and 
 Individuality are correlative terms. 
 
FROM 1911 TO AUGUST, 1914 307 
 
 . . . And if the individual is to identify his personaY 
 claim with the claim of the fellowship, he must have the 
 assurance that the fellowship is not arbitrary or absolute 
 in the demands that it makes upon him. And this assurance 
 he can only have if the exercise of its ownership by the 
 fellowship, within which his own right of ownership is 
 exercised, be itself the expression of that absolute owner- 
 ship which is the sole prerogative of the God Who made the 
 earth and all that is in it. Back to God all rights run. 
 Back in Him, the ultimate Creator, producing and sustaining 
 and justifying every capacity and energy that His will 
 has set in action, all ownership stands. All claims are 
 made by Him, through Him, to Him. His righteousness is 
 the bond of all human fellowship. And this is so, just 
 because property in outward goods is but the outcome of 
 personality ; and all human personality is the issue and 
 image of the personality of God. In the Divine Fellowship 
 in which God realizes Himself, lies the source and justifica- 
 tion of every fellowship into which man can enter. Man's 
 authority to say of anything " That is mine " rests, finally, 
 on his power to say " I am God's." 
 
 In 1 914, there are two letters to Dr. Talbot ; one a 
 birthday letter, the other on Arthur Holland's sudden 
 death : — 
 
 Feb. 19. — Is it really true that you are seventy ? It 
 is simply ludicrous. I remember when you were seventy. 
 It was about 40 years ago. Since then, you have been 
 steadily taking off decades : every year has found you 
 younger than the last. Taking 40 years from 70, this would 
 make you just 20 now. And I think that is just about right. 
 That is what it strikes me to-day, as just representing your 
 temper and vitality. It is a delicious retrogression to watch 
 — a glorious Recessional, full of good cheer, always recoiling 
 for a better leap into futurity. 
 
 Nov. 13. — He had hurried to a Board meeting ; and 
 had strained his heart. It was merciful that the end should 
 come that way. He knew his risks, and had made all 
 ready. He was the most unselfish creature in all the world. 
 He was made to dedicate himself to some one whom he 
 loved : he could not live except in this mood. And why it 
 
3o8 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 was not a wife and child, God knows ! We had such a 
 specially happy holiday together this August. Earth is 
 emptying fast.* 
 
 His holidays, in these later years, were mostly with 
 his brothers and Mrs. Spencer Holland, in some quiet corner 
 of England : he writes of the Bowling Green Inn at Ludlow, 
 " white and delicate like the dream of a Christmas card " : 
 and of Caerdem, near Barmouth — " the loveliness of this 
 place, hung-up like a dream in the most beautiful corner 
 of North Wales, with the sea creeping over the sands 
 under the wooded hills " : and of Abinger Hatch — " this 
 place is far lovelier than any dream, and runs Paradise hard. 
 Just perfect. And people leave it to go to Switzerland. 
 So I am credibly informed. Well, I never ! " 
 
 On these holidays, he delighted in motoring : he had 
 at last left off bicycling, nor could he take long walks. 
 His brother remembers, that " Writing and reading occupied 
 the mornings, and for this my wife became a constant 
 resource ; she read aloud the heavier books engaging his 
 attention : my part was reserved for the evening readings 
 of novels or biographies, in which my brother Arthur 
 gallantly assisted. Places of interest were visited : but 
 Scott was very rapid in sight-seeing ; the points of churches 
 
 * His brother's body was cremated : and he wrote a prayer, which 
 was said at the burial of the ashes : " Almighty and most merciful God, 
 Who hast made us out of the dust, that we may live in the Spirit : Whose 
 love is a consuming fire, to cleanse and purify : we commend to Thy 
 keeping the soul of Thy servant Arthur, that he may abide in Thy pardon 
 and peace. And here we lay, in the kindly earth, ashes to ashes, dust to 
 dust, all that is yet left in our hands of the body in which he showed himself 
 alive, to our love and deUght. Grant, O dear Lord, that in the day of 
 Thy coming, he may be reclothed in spiritual vesture : so that once agam 
 we may know him as of old, and may see his face, and hear his voice and 
 touch his hand : that he may be to us all that he has ever been : only 
 changed and hallowed by Thy transfiguring power : in the one Body, 
 by the one Spirit ; that, together, we may praise Thy Holy Name for 
 ever and ever. Through Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and our King." 
 
FROM 191 1 TO AUGUST, 1914 309 
 
 were quickly grasped, and monuments and windows quickly 
 disposed of. At Stratford-on-Avon, he raced through 
 Shakespeare's House far in advance of the custodian and 
 his party, and we found him in the motor, impatient to be 
 off and shouting * Arpon, Arpon,' his name for Arthur, 
 who was laboriously studying every relic. Scott disliked 
 castles and their dungeons and blackholes ; and at Ludlow, 
 only the mediaeval house in the castle-yard engaged his 
 attention." 
 
 Especially, he was fond of Crossways, the Spencer 
 Hollands' house on Berkhamsted Common, which Paul 
 Waterhouse built for them. He helped to choose the site, 
 and buried a penny where the first earth was turned, and 
 blessed the site then and there ; and wrote, before his 
 first visit, " Are you in it ? Is it true ? God bless you 
 both in it. Blessings on your going-out and your coming-in. 
 Blessings on doorposts and hearth. Blessings on roof and 
 lintel. Blessings on the days and on the nights in it." 
 He preferred its Georgian style to the Early English style : 
 " Your's is real, right, more true to our present nature, 
 more entirely homelike, more natural. It is a better thing. 
 And it has a singular power in it, which belongs to the steady 
 shapely residential look of it. It is so good, so right- 
 minded, so satisfying. Every year, it will become more 
 loveable, as it lays itself alongside to Nature, and takes 
 on her spirit of growth." Besides, Mrs. Holland gave 
 him good music : as he wrote after a stay there, " The 
 enrichment of the music, flowing through it all, fed the 
 bones." 
 
 Musicians have said that his listening inspired them. 
 His love of music is in his letters, his notes in Commonwealth, 
 his books : for instance, his sermon on " The Spirit and its 
 Interpretation " {Logic and Life), and his description of 
 Elgar's Gerontius, in " The Dignity of Death " {Vital 
 
310 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 Values). Among his work for Church music,* he was part- 
 editor of the EngUsh Hymnal (1906) and of the New 
 Cathedral Psalter (1908) ; and he introduced, at St. Paul's, 
 the use of Brahms' Requiem. In " Appreciations," Miss 
 Gregory writes — 
 
 Ahke at home and in the Cathedral, Canon Holland had 
 no greater delight and refreshment than music. If he could 
 not get it made for him in his house by a friend, a neighbour, 
 a choir-boy, a secretary, he would make it for himself : 
 and on summer evenings, with the windows open, strains 
 from the little red-bound volumes he entitled "The Simple- 
 minded Organist " would float through Amen Court. The 
 invitation. Come to a concert, found an instant response. . . . 
 Little notes of congratulation to all concerned would run 
 round after a newly adapted Palestrina Mass, or a specially 
 glorious Passion-music. His joy in an anthem would be 
 flashed across stalls and choir to a sympathiser. " The 
 collects for the Queen and Royal Family," he said, " are 
 the bannisters whereby you slide back to earth in time to 
 pray for the clergy." 
 
 He passionately enjoyed the good things of art ; but 
 he never gushed or flattered : as Philip Waggett says of 
 him, " there was a certain ruthless incorruptibility of 
 judgment." He would go quickly through a picture-gallery, 
 rush through a book, and be " ecstatic " over a concert ; 
 but he would not fail to detect anj^hing second-rate or 
 insincere. He got keen delight from all that was best in 
 the art of his own time, nor was he frightened of " art for 
 art's sake " ; but he laughed at modernity for modernity's 
 sake : he had lived in the company of the Immortals, and 
 he did not admire the strange gods that were coming into 
 
 * There is a letter, in 1907, to Mr. Martin Shaw, " I was much struck 
 by the strength and decision of your Te Deum. It seemed to be framed 
 exactly on the hnes of true ecclesiastical music ; and to possess dignity, 
 massiveness, and reserve. Everything about it was wholesome and 
 manly, and there were no fanciful or artificial episodes." 
 
FROM 1911 TO AUGUST, 1914 311 
 
 vogue toward the end of his life. In poetry and music, 
 at the last, he rested in Wordsworth and Mozart. So far 
 back as 1869, he had said of Don Giovanni, " Such melody 
 has never been written since, or ever will be " : and on his 
 last Christmas Day, 1917, he gave to Mrs. Spencer Holland 
 the Life of Mozart, by Holmes, with this inscription — 
 " Music and magic in the soul. That is Mozart. That is 
 Home. That is Memory. That is Love. And all this has 
 come to me through Crossways." 
 
 Other inscriptions, in books that he gave her, may be 
 noted here. In Paracelsus, " For Alice, to lighten the dark 
 days with the news of one who aspires and attains." In 
 Aucassin and Nicolette, " Far from bed and from bacilli, 
 these two children of romance tottered out on their adventure 
 of love long ago. We can do just as well, in spite of all 
 the beds and bacilli." In a rather over-illustrated edition 
 of The Blessed Damozel, " You can cut out the pictures, 
 and leave the poem better. So let youth's pictures go, and 
 the poem of life will but deepen." Last of all, to Spencer 
 Holland, in a Life of Dante, " In grateful thanks for patient 
 loyalty to the heart of brotherhood, kept alive and warm 
 in a stricken Earth. Xmas, 1917." 
 
II 
 
 FROM AUGUST, I914 TO MARCH, I918 
 
 To Laurence Stratford 
 
 Aug. 26, 1914. — War is Hell. We cling to that, whatever 
 else comes out of it. Christ can harrow Hell. But it is 
 Hell that He harrows. I have said what I have to say in 
 ' Commonwealth.' You will see how we agree. Only I will 
 not allow that all the weary idiots have been right. My one 
 comfort now is to remember that I never insisted on War 
 as inevitable, never shouted Armaments, never saw the 
 Kaiser as the one unspeakable devil. It is just this which 
 I denounce in the Germans. By talking like this, they 
 have made war inevitable. Our folk who did it are open 
 to the same damning charge. The White Paper shows 
 how easily this war could have been avoided. It was 
 within an ace of being avoided. Only, the ruthless and 
 sudden bolt from the blue of the German Kaiser did it. 
 And the wicked Austria : the wickedest of all. It could 
 have been saved. Grey all but saved it. It was not in- 
 evitable. This is my strong comfort. I never helped to 
 make it inevitable. They did. 
 
 To Neville Talbot 
 
 Sept. 6. — We spend the days in sickening fears : and 
 still the authorities keep everything back, and tell us nothing. 
 It is a most stupid and cruel policy. We are ready to hold 
 on like grim death. We must secure a Torres Vedras, and 
 clutch, and never loosen our grip. If only the French 
 had had a firmer strategy. If it had not been for our left 
 wing, they would have crumpled up. Oh dear! how 
 
 312 
 
FROM AUGUST. 1914 TO MARCH, 1918 313 
 
 ghastly it is. Only, every day reveals the black blind 
 horror of Prussianism. It is the very devil. It has to be 
 fought : and killed. It is the last word in iniquity. I 
 could not have believed that man could be so diabolical. 
 
 To Frank Thome * 
 
 Sept. 10. — Don't say there is no soul in fighting. Do 
 you see how much the individual intelligence and self- 
 control have enabled us to do so gloriously in open order ? 
 Spirit wins. And the character built-up in Peace is the one 
 that counts in War. The paradox of Christianity and War 
 falls within Christ Himself. He is dumb before his shearers : 
 yet a sharp sword goes out of His mouth. He yields : yet 
 he judges. On His cross of surrender, he strips powers 
 and principalities. He binds the strong man, and strips 
 him of his armour. He rides out conquering and to 
 conquer. 
 
 War is right when it is fought on behalf of Peace — to 
 rescue the honour of Christian Peace — without which 
 
 * Mr. Frank Thome was reading for ids Final Schools when the War 
 came and he enlisted. He writes of Dr. Holland, " There he was, in the 
 corner of Tom, always the same, always ready to receive us and laugh with 
 us if we were happy, or to inspire us afresh. I have countless memories 
 of hilarious lunches with him, when in the eagerness of talking he would 
 quite forget to carve, or make a sudden dart at quite the wrong end of the 
 beast. And better still, there were quiet dinners with him alone, and 
 long evenings in the hbrary afterwards, with music and talk and poetry 
 read aloud — particularly T. E. Brown, in whom he deUghted — and, at 
 the end, a few short prayers in his Uttle oratory. ... I remember going 
 once to a Bach Choir festival with him, and at the conclusion of a triumphant 
 chorale he, quite carried away, himself burst out into song, to the amazed 
 amusement of all near him. . . . But of all memories of him, those con- 
 nected with the Cathedral are the dearest. The Tuesday celebrations 
 in the Latin Chapel (which he started when he came) — at which he made 
 the words live as no one else did, and after the consecration stood with 
 his arms flung out above his head or wide from the shoulder, carrying us 
 up in the strength of his spirit — were a consummation of all that he was to 
 us." Mr. Thorne remembers an evening in August or September, 1914 : 
 " After dinner, we were talking of Germany and all that she had done 
 that made it so difficult to do anything but hate her and her people for 
 ever. Suddenly he said, ' Do you want to love the Germans ? ' I said 
 yes, and he rushed ofi to his piano, and began to play the tenderest German 
 folk-songs, crooning them over the while, in the way he had, his face alight 
 with joy — you know how music carried him up to heaven." 
 
314 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 honour it would be no Peace of Christ. I keep singing 
 " I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour 
 more "... Be comforted, dearest child. You are in 
 Him. My whole heart is crying after you. 
 
 To Neville Talbot 
 
 Nov. 25. — Urquhart was all wrong. This surrender of 
 the vindication of God's Righteousness here on earth is 
 desperate. We are eschatologists. God must win. We 
 cannot have anything less. And it would be horrid to take 
 this life as merely measured by its usefulness for our own 
 personal soul's good. This is sheer individualism. / am 
 made the centre : and can adapt all this world-anguish to 
 my own spiritual development. Kings and nations may 
 welter in blood : but I have got profit for my own soul 
 out of it : and that will justify it. That won't do, will it ? 
 We have got to go one better than the Jew. We can afford 
 to suffer and fail. But we do not abandon his great un- 
 conquerable demand that God's good Name shall verify 
 itself here and now. This earth is to be redeemed. We 
 must cling to this. 
 
 Dec. 13. — I can understand your wails from the trenches, 
 as you feel the frightful stress. But you must not think 
 so hardly of the workers at home. The men are still pouring 
 in, 30,000 a week : even from the centres where trade is 
 rising and even roaring. Manchester is giving them in 
 swarms, where work is to be had in good plenty. In the 
 Durham Pits, pits are closing down, for lack of men gone 
 to the war : though prices run high. And the Wales tin- 
 plate trade is trying in vain to keep men from joining by 
 bribes of wages at 6, 8, and even ;^io a week. We have 
 all that we can house, feed, or drill. They are drihing 
 splendidly : they are of good grit : they are coming fast 
 to the scratch : they will be^ ready for the times given 
 them by Kitchener. . . . We must remember how hard a 
 venture it is for the artisan : into whom it has been burned, 
 by many a bitter experience, that to join the army is to 
 wreck himself for the labour market, into which it is so 
 difficult for him to recover his footing. The old soldier 
 too often has found himself a displaced outcast. 
 
 \ 
 
FROM AUGUST, 1914 TO MARCH, 1918 315 
 
 1915 
 
 To Frank Thome 
 
 March 14. — Don't be troubled about the spiritual aloof- 
 ness. It is all right. You are greatly pre-occupied. You 
 have to hold on faithfully and loyally : and not ask why and 
 when you feel, and why and when you don't feel. There 
 are times and times : they come and go : they are beyond 
 our bidding or control. Only our will is our own, and our 
 loyalty in adherence to the living Christ. God will bless 
 you with his own blessing in His own way and time, dear. 
 . . . You will laugh, if you hear that I am going across 
 to Havre to talk to Tommies in Easter week. I half think 
 I shall. But I am a poor old dotty crock — and it may be 
 absurd of me to think that I can do it. 
 
 He had only a week in France : doubtless his friends 
 were anxious over his health, and would not plan for him to 
 stay longer. He set himself to tell men that we at home 
 were indeed thinking of them and caring for them. His 
 letters to Miss Alice Hancock were just to assure her that all 
 was going well with him : — 
 
 Boncourt, Monday night. — It is 8.30, and I have drunk 
 small beer and eaten an omelette. We get to Rouen at 
 midnight ! Think of that ! The passage was splendid — 
 with a bubbling sea, and cold wind, but all well. Destroyers 
 curled round us. I got out safety waistcoat : but it is too 
 silly : and I shall give it away. The inventor presented 
 it. Goodbye. Be happy. 
 
 Havre, Thursday. — Here at last, 7.30 last night. Have 
 got nice rooms : and an airy street : quite decent food : 
 civil gushing woman to wait, etc. I have settled up my 
 days of work here, just each evening, in varying huts : a 
 good deal of talking. I am quite weU in spite of every 
 mischance on the journey. We got to Rouen at just past 
 midnight : walked in pouring rain to a very poor hotel : 
 wretched rooms : however, no fleas : saw the glories of 
 Rouen. . . . Now I have come all the way, I must make 
 it worth while. Be quite happy over me. Friday. — Did 
 
3i6 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 the first hut last night. I am keeping very well : the sea- 
 air is splendid : we do capitally at the lodgings, so you need 
 not fret : food and beds quite right. 
 
 Base Camp, Harfle^ir. Sunday. — I came off at 7.30 to 
 celebrate in Camp : and two Parade sermons at 9.30 and 
 10.30 : and now sit resting and writing in this nice hut, 
 with people infinitely kind to me. I am waiting for an 
 evening address in a hut at 7, before being whirled back 
 in motor to Havre. I think I must risk the straight passage 
 home : it is far the easiest journey : the railways are quite 
 awful. This is perfectly easy, if only the weather holds : 
 it is perfect now : with exquisite sun in this beautiful 
 valley, in the thick of an enormous Camp. You never 
 saw anything like it. Very finely organised : and Tommies 
 in thousands, quite divine. I am keeping splendidly well : 
 and survive cold motor rides over rolling stones at night, 
 after hot talks. So all is right. Keep very well : don't 
 worry over the house. 
 
 In July, " A Bundle of Memories " was published. 
 He writes to Mrs. Talbot, July 9 : — 
 
 I hardly thought that I should be brought to book or 
 bed again, and have yet another little pledge to send to 
 your faithful and pardoning welcome. But the thing had 
 to be born, after all. It could not help itself. It is " the 
 Gilbert " of the flock. And so, with Gilbert in our heart, it 
 may go its way to you, just to pray a blessing on your own 
 latter-day child. It is something to be able to give you 
 anything which may witness to my loyal affection for you 
 in this your hour of stress. We have had so many joy- 
 days to remember together. Now, under the cloud, we may 
 feel, with an even deeper sense, the bonds that bind, and 
 the memories that can never die. This poor Bundle is 
 charged with sad irony, because it is trying so hard to be 
 happy. But you wiU forgive it its quips and quirks, if it, 
 also, speaks to you of the love that, now, when sorrow 
 presses, lays itself down at your feet. 
 
 On July 26, he writes to NeviUe Talbot, who had urged 
 him to write an account of his life, especially of- his early 
 Oxford life : — 
 
FROM AUGUST, 1914 TO MARCH, 1918 317 
 
 How nobly you play up to me, my own and only disciple. 
 It is so comforting and strengthening. But I could not 
 do what you want yet awhile. I must think. It was all 
 very ordinary, I fancy : with some very fortunate arrests 
 when I was declining down a wrong road. Anyhow, if I 
 never do it, it is beautiful of you to want it done. I am 
 quaking and praying over Gilbert in his crater. . . . Was 
 not the end of the strike merciful ? Could anything have 
 shown up the limitations of compulsion more absolutely ? 
 The Government is terribly afraid of acting on the coal 
 prices and the profits. Yet everything turns on this. I am 
 sending you the most delicious volume of Chesterton. At 
 aU dark hours, you can read the lyric on F. E. Smith, and 
 be cheered : then, the Nativity hymns are gorgeous, " The 
 House of Christmas " : and the Wise Men who are so 
 afraid they will miss the way because it is so plain : and 
 the Vigil of Earth — all glorious. I saw him last week, so 
 far better than he has ever been. 
 
 To Frank Thome 
 
 Sept. 23. — Here, we poor troubled ghosts stiU haunt 
 the ancient shades, creeping moodily round forlorn courts, 
 and longing for a whoop in Peck, or a scurry of running 
 feet round Tom at night. . . . There is a wonderful poem 
 in the Spectator for Sept. 11, which I must get for you, 
 ' Christ in Flanders.' If only we can pull off the dreadful 
 Dardanelles ! I lie in bed quaking over it. Then things 
 might begin to end. Come back alive, dear child, to my 
 heart. 
 
 Dec. 5. — It was delicious to hear that the Mediterranean 
 Sea did not disappoint you, but that it did its plain duty, 
 and was actually blue. It was noble of it to inspire you 
 so generously : and it must have done its very best to atone 
 for the War which enabled you to see it. Did you run 
 under Crete or any of those long brown sun-burnt Isla nds ? 
 so bare, yet so responsive to sunlight, clothing themselves 
 in every delicate colour, and lifting fabulous cliffs high in 
 air. They turn so cold and grey when the sun is o ff : as 
 the colour comes again, it is just like the transfiguration of 
 a smile on a worn face. Where are you ? How I Jong to 
 know. There are such possibilities : and such risks : and 
 
3i8 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 such adventures : and such surprises. Here, we plod on 
 in rain. Everybody is gone to something. We old crocks 
 carry on oiu pretence. The Dean is amazingly effective. 
 The choir is shrinking visibly before our eyes : all the basses 
 are in khaki : soon, we shall stop singing. Keep what you 
 are, dear boy, my son. My heart travels with you, my 
 prayers follow after you. Come back, if you can. Goodbye. 
 May Christ seal you His. 
 
 Jan. 4, 1916. — The Dean reports you to be in sight of 
 the Home of the Gods. So we conclude Salonika. All 
 the Islands are round you. They go in and out : and lose 
 all their souls in a grey nothingness : and then the sun is 
 out and they are shining like living creatures — topaz and 
 jacinth and amethyst. Never were there such swift incar- 
 nations. But you — are you booted and spurred ? and 
 muddy and hoarse ? Can you combine Tommy and the 
 Gods of Olympus ? I long to know. . . . We are sound 
 at home — for all that they may say. And the workers 
 are absolutely resolute on the main policy of the War. 
 Don't believe anything else. There is a lovely little volume 
 of Morris' Socialist poems out : and Robert Bridges' 
 Anthology is a fine appeal. Keep in Christ, dearest lad, 
 wherever you are. 
 
 1916 
 
 To J. W. Williams, Bishop of KaffraHa 
 
 June 5. — We are just recovering from the agonies of 
 last Saturday, when the lirst news of the awful losses at 
 sea fell upon us. Personally, we have lost the most noble 
 fellow in Christ Church, our Senior Censor, a glorious and 
 heroic figure, Charles Fisher, our pride and joy and power.* 
 ... At home, we hold together well : and Labour is play- 
 ing up nobly. It is really exhausting itself in the terrible 
 
 * To another friend : "I always fell under the sway of his splendid 
 presence. And he looked as if there was so much to come. That Admiral's 
 face of his found its way to the right place, and he was plajnng his part 
 in the very central action of the ship, to the last moment, in the conning 
 tower, by the side of a captain whom he adored. He has ended gloriously. 
 Only, we are thinned down, and cheapened, and robbed of our hght and 
 joy." 
 
FROM AUGUST, 1914 TO MARCH. 1918 319 
 
 strain of work, night and day. Our chaplain, Parker, 
 who has been in Egypt against the Senussi, gives a splendid 
 account of your South Africans. They are the best colonial 
 soldien of all : and so far better behaved and under control 
 than the Australians. They made a great impression in 
 Egypt, by this contrast. 
 
 During July, he was at Comrie, near Crieff, in Perthshire : 
 he took duty at the church, and preached twice every 
 Sunday : the little church had not a pulpit, and he used to 
 stand or pace up and down in front of the altar rails. He 
 writes from Comrie to Mr. Donaldson, vicar of St. Mark's, 
 Leicester. The National Mission was to be in October : 
 he was distressed over a series of pamphlets prepared for 
 it by a group of High Churchmen — the ' spiky ' papers, 
 as he calls them : and he consented to edit a better series : — 
 
 The spiky papers are very repellent, and often stupid. 
 I quite see how important it is to hurry up a better set, 
 to represent the true Catholic Faith. I am trying hard. 
 It will work, I think. Carey has written me a very good 
 paper on " Forgiveness." Would you try a human paper 
 on the Saints ? not unreal : nor " ecclesiastical " : but 
 giving them their natural places in the praying and witness- 
 ing Body ? Could this not be done in a way that would 
 commend itself as reasonable and right ? We must not 
 pretend that we know everything about the " Far World,'* 
 when we know so very very little : and we must not rest 
 our case on fanciful speculations as to what happened to 
 Enoch : or what we should like to believe. But a true 
 full recognition of the continuity of the Body of Christ 
 would give us our Saints in action. Could you ? Would 
 you ? Quite short. Do.* 
 
 * The supervising editors of the series were Dr. Holland and Dr, Stanton; 
 Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge : the general editor was Mr. 
 Xj. K. a. Bell, chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The series was 
 entitled ' New Tracts on the Creed.' Fourteen papers were published ; 
 including one by Dr. Holland. They were afterwards published in book- 
 form, " The Meaning of the Creed." 
 
320 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 To Neville Talbot 
 
 July 31. — This murder of the Brussels' captain revolts 
 me more than Nurse Cavell. The blinded conscience, 
 that has lied itself out of life, is an appalling phenomenon. 
 All moral perspective has ceased. There is a readiness to 
 use a lie, as a lie, and to use it to oneself, to deceive one's 
 own conscience, which carries one outside all human ex- 
 perience. It is done, too, in such cold blood, a year and 
 a half after the possible offence : there is no panic or rage 
 to be urged : for, after all, the submarine was never touched. 
 These lies, all along, have utterly baffled me. They betray 
 an abyss which I have no means of measuring. 
 
 We are growing to the Mission, I think. And the idea 
 of corporate sin is slowly laying hold. What will exactly 
 happen, no one can say. It is all hidden work, as yet. 
 Gore came back from a conference at Mirfield more full of 
 hope than at any time in his life. So he told us. We do 
 not cohere at the Central Mission Council ; and I came 
 out rather miserable from all its discussions : we generally 
 get hopelessly at sea : but the separate Committees are 
 working well, with heart and joy. . . . Next week, I take 
 one of the five retreats for Gore's clergy : mine is in Queen's : 
 120 clergy. Gore is at Radley, for another. Tommy still 
 sits on the whirlwind, and controls the storm. He is perfect. 
 
 To Frank Thome 
 
 Oct. 6. — I am really in retreat at Cuddesdon : which 
 must sound incredibly remote from all that you are seeing 
 and enduring. So let me, out of its blessed peace, send 
 you one little word of greeting and affection. ... I had a 
 month in Scotland, taking charge of Comrie, the loveliest 
 spot on earth. Do you know Highland glories ? At the 
 end, old Haldane came for a two hours' talk : and un- 
 burdened his soul : and let me record his record of all the 
 interviews with Kaiser and Tirpitz and Chancellor, etc. 
 His case is absolutely good. He was perfectly frank over 
 them. When the papers come out, we shall all confess 
 ou. sins. And we owe it to him that we had the finest 
 little army ever put into the field ready to sail the moment 
 it was wanted. He is easing his soul now with philosophy, 
 
FROM AUGUST, 1914 TO MARCH. 1918 321 
 
 his first love. Oxford begins next week : and we shall be 
 more entirely a Camp than ever. Our 200 flying-men keep 
 Ch. Ch. alive : and now and again Peck wakes to quite 
 its historic noises. We are all at the Mission, and are 
 placarding our clerical failings on every high hill. There 
 has been a great effort. Every parson has been swept 
 into retreat. If only something follows ! Goodbye, dear. 
 Keep your true self just what it was ; and you will do. 
 Come home safe, if you can. God is yours, and you are 
 His. 
 
 To Walter H. Carey 
 
 Exeter, Dec. 16. — I have been ordered off for rest and 
 am on my way to Newquay with dear Winton and his 
 wife, both crooked by 'flu. We are all to recoup together. 
 I shall have to go slowly. I expect I am very, very old. 
 Mercifully, you are young. We will keep our Pagets and 
 Moberlys. But you cannot be like one of them ; can you ? 
 Only, you can keep your heart open to their worth. That 
 is a great thing to do. We want all sorts : we want the 
 joy of infinite variation : we want to do our own bit all the 
 better, because there are so many other bits to be done 
 of which we cannot even grasp the secret. All along the 
 past we have got into tricks of hugging our own : seeing 
 nothing but the beauty and glory of what we see : and using 
 our own vocation so as to make us blind to other types 
 of calls. Now, we are hungering for rich comprehension. 
 
 As to cheerfulness. I read in my favourite V (Euvre des 
 Jeunes ' of the Dominican ideal — so austere and high, yet 
 with a great insistance on the necessity of always retaining 
 the note of joy, supreme and unbroken : the joy of having 
 come through : the joy of knowing that nothing can beat 
 you under, 
 
 Marius the Epicurean always haunts me with its picture 
 of the blytheness of Christians, who had faced all the 
 evil facts, and disguised nothing, but abode blythe over 
 against the anxious, strained, cheerless virtue of Marcus 
 Aurelius. 
 
 Have you read your Quick ? He is our real young man : 
 the best of them all : ' Essays in Orthodoxy.' He flings 
 over the Streeter impasse. 
 
 I will send you a tiny lecture on eschatology, which I 
 
 Y 
 
322 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 rather believe in.* Bless you for Xmas. Christ is born, 
 after all. 
 
 He and Dr. and Mrs. Talbot were at Newquay for three 
 weeks : invalids, all of them. But " the weather was so 
 kindly : and the hotel so friendly and hospitable : and the 
 books we read so brilliant and repaying : and we all three 
 kept getting well." He writes, on Christmas Eve, to 
 Mrs. Spencer Holland, " You ought to have seen the roaring 
 seas of yesterday : superb. To-day it is all gentleness : 
 purring over yesterday's thrills. So Christmas comes. We 
 can warm our own hearts' hands over each others' hearts' 
 fires : he, you, and I, the little knot — with dear Lilly felt — 
 that is all that remains. But we are very close and near 
 and dear. And can build up a very good Christmas between 
 us. God bless you both." Back at Christ Church, he 
 writes to Mrs. Talbot, Jan. 19, 1917, " It was a delicious 
 sample of what Providence can do, if she tries. She so 
 seldom puts out her best. She lies back, and gives no 
 sign. But this time, something had roused her into activity : 
 and she really surpassed herself." 
 
 1917-March, 19 1 8 
 
 To Bishop Williams 
 
 July 5, 1917. — We have got past the terror of trying 
 our hands at reprisals [for the air-raids]. Labour is 
 very disturbed, and strained. But it holds itself in with 
 great self-command. It has been very sorely tried by 
 
 * On June 19, he gave the Liverpool Lecture, to the Bishop and Clergy 
 of the Liverpool Diocese. He took for his subject Eschatology, the study 
 of the last things of all. To him, in 1916, eschatology consisted not in 
 fanciful thoughts about the Day of Judgment and Heaven and Hell, but 
 in the final vindication of God on earth. As he wrote in the first winter of 
 the War : " We are eschatologists. God must win. We cannot have 
 anything less." 
 
FROM AUGUST, 1914 TO MARCH, 1918 323 
 
 mishandling. It will keep its temper, if only the profiteering 
 can be got under. That really maddens it : and there is a 
 dreadful lot of it about. It is very difficult to come to 
 grips with. But we feel it acutely everywhere. . . . We 
 have just had our ' Longworth ' at Cuddesdon : very 
 happy, and the garden a dream of beauty and potatoes. 
 But over two matters we could see no light, i.e., training 
 of clergy, and religious education in secondary and primary 
 schools. Both these things are in a desperate tangle. For 
 the women — we shall give them the full rights given to the 
 laymen, in time. 
 
 Dr. Alexander Gibson, who attended him — Sir William 
 Osier and Dr. Collier saw him with Dr. Gibson on this or 
 that occasion — writes that up to August, 1917, Dr. Holland's 
 health caused him no anxiety : but he then began to lose 
 strength, and to complain of restlessness, and of loss of 
 sleep : and there were signs that the action of the heart 
 was beginning to be defective.* He was too ill to finish 
 his lectures to the Summer School in Oxford. During 
 August and September, he was with the Spencer Hollands 
 at Beacon Lodge, Upper Colwall, near Malvern : Father 
 Russell, Philip Waggett, and other friends, helped to cheer 
 him : he got some gentle motoring, to Ledbury his birth- 
 place, and elsewhere : and there was an arbour in the 
 
 * " It may not be out of place," Dr. Gibson writes, " to make one or 
 two remarks about his character from a doctor's point of view. I have 
 never had a patient who so wholeheartedly trusted me to do whatever 
 was needful. He never suggested or appeared to wish to have a second 
 opinion : and when such became necessary his reply was always the same, 
 that if it was necessary or I wished it, let it be so, and I should ask whom- 
 ever I wished. He welcomed my visits, and was glad when the necessary 
 examinations and directions as to treatment were over, so that we could 
 turn to general conversation for a few minutes. He was then deUghtful ; 
 his wont was to get me to talk on some medical or scientific subject which 
 had a human interest, and his keenness in being told some of the problems 
 which were being attacked is one of my most precious memories. He 
 professed no knowledge of science, but in so far as it had a beneficent 
 motive he showed more than a passing interest. The suffering caused by 
 the war was a source of pain to him ; and it was abhorrent to him to be 
 told of any individual case of interest that happened to be in hospital." 
 
324 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 garden, where he could sometimes enjoy to sit and 
 write. 
 
 To Dr. Talbot 
 
 Malvern, Sept. 2. — Dearest of men, Your love is ever 
 with me, calling me to myself. It is a hard bad time, this 
 recovery. Heart and things gain strength, and are very 
 steady. But the recovery of the shaken nerve-power is 
 horribly slow : and the physical problems are endless. 
 Nights are a great trial. And I can simply do nothing 
 by day, but get " through it." I am very shaky, and 
 must shut myself up into the moment, and not look ahead 
 at all. These teeth difficulties hamper me so dreadfully. 
 I hope I have learned something about myself. I try to 
 hold fast by the light. But so much of oneself is dead, at 
 these times. I think, above all, of the trust and love of 
 my dear, dear friends, and of you, and your beloved wife. 
 Your prayers and your faith are my joy — in the blessing 
 of God, and of His Son. 
 
 To Mr. Percy Hartill 
 
 Malvern, Sept. 20. — God's good mercy go with you in 
 your priesthood. You may be enabled to do so much, if 
 you are loyal to the grace given. Open all your soul to its 
 meaning. Looking back on all that I have so hopelessly' 
 failed to do since the amazing opportunity of priesthood 
 was given to me forty-three years ago, out of my shame I 
 implore you to hold fast by the light shown you now, when 
 you are young and at the start. Just not to fail what now 
 you see, will mean everything. May the Power of the 
 Name uplift and bear you unto the end. 
 
 To Mrs. Talbot 
 
 Malvern, Sept. 23. — Dearest Lady — Dearest Friend, I 
 have just read over your tender beautiful letter, which 
 Alice kept for me until I ould bear it. How can I thank 
 you for it ? How can I thank God for it ? How is it that 
 I have been given such wonderful boons, as a love like yours ? 
 I feel so humbled : abased : ashamed. I see how much 
 of my life I have left absolutely loose, and ungirt. 
 
FROM AUGUST, 1914 TO xMARCH, 1918 325 
 
 My eyes have been opened, in a strange way, to the 
 amount of sin of which I never took account. It was hid 
 from me. Now, I see. I suppose that nothing but this 
 shock would have opened my eyes. So I am thanking 
 God for the humiliation. But I cling, all the more, to any- 
 thing that assures me of the love of good people, that has 
 been given to me throughout my days in such amazing 
 abundance. And here is the proof, in my hands, of your 
 trust, and confidence, and affection, and joy. And you 
 are — you ! There is no one like you 1 
 
 So here I sit, in a little arbour, with the rich Hereford 
 countryside rolling for miles and miles to meet the dark 
 slumber of the Welsh hills. And I bless God for all good 
 things, and, above all, for you, and Edward, and your 
 beloved children. Goodbye ! With all the love in my 
 heart. 
 
 In October, he was back in Oxford : he writes to Miss 
 Evelyn Holland, Oct. 4, " I crept in to the tag-end of the 
 retreat to-day : it is going on in Oriel, close by. It is the 
 retreat to which I have gone all my life." Forty-five years, 
 from 1872 to 1917. 
 
 On Oct. 5, he writes to Bishop WilHams, " I shall be very 
 little good for this Term, and shall give up lectures, and try 
 to achieve the long-delayed Introduction to the Fourth 
 Gospel. If only I can manage that ! I can crawl about, 
 and begin to take up things, as they come. Goodbye, dear 
 man. May God keep hold of us both in Christ." And, on 
 Dec. 26, "I ought to be thankful I have no pain : and I 
 must wait : and pray. I got to Cathedral for my Christmas 
 Eucharist yesterday : a great comfort, though very tiring. 
 I do not think that Henson is to be called ' heretical ' over 
 the central creed of the Incarnation. The War is heart- 
 breaking — Russia ! Italy ! I see no end. And poor old 
 London is shaken horribly by the cruel raids. Goodbye. 
 God ever bless you." And to Frank Thome, on Christmas 
 Eve, " It has been blackness visible, here at home. And 
 
326 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 we both look out, over the narrow seas, and nothing happens, 
 for all our deaths : while the curse of the raids hangs heavy 
 over poor London : and the very blood grows cold for the 
 broken poor, and the old, and the sick, who lie quaking 
 under the cruel horror. Goodbye, dear son. God's gracious 
 mercy be with you, in this blind year. My love is 
 yours." 
 
 On Feb. 28, 1918, he wrote his last letter to Mr. Cheshire 
 about Commonwealth : " Our number looks splendid. It 
 really keeps up wonderfully. Old Wardman is pushing 
 along with great courage and skill : and you are most happy 
 and successful. We seem to have lots of stuff." On 
 Feb. 29, his last letter to Dr. Talbot : " And you ! 74 ! 
 Incredible. Your splendid strength lasts wonderfully. But 
 we all are nearing the hour of closing. Only the great 
 mercy of the Pardon can sustain. It is dreadful how little 
 of real spiritual effort is possible, while the weakness is on 
 us. I can make so very little of it : with this languor and 
 barrenness. Goodbye, dearest of friends." On March 2, 
 he took his last walk outside Christ Church : just into the 
 Meadows, and along the sheltered path under Merton wall. 
 On March 6, he had a bad heart attack : Canon Ottley 
 gave him the Holy Communion : Mrs. Spencer Holland and 
 Miss Hancock received it with him. " I am sitting here 
 waiting for the end," he said. He had hoped that he might 
 be moved to Crossways, He could still enjoy to see intimate 
 friends, and to be read-to and played-to ; he said Mozart was 
 " so refreshing — ^pure joy " ; he listened gladly to Morris's 
 " The House of the Wolfings " and to Sir Sidney Colvin's 
 Life of Keats : and on March 10 he had a thesis for a divinity 
 degree read to him, and dictated some notes on it. 
 
 The worst day was Monday, March 11 : he was terribly 
 restless and breathless. After that day, he remained free 
 
FROM AUGUST, 1914 TO MARCH, 1918 327 
 
 from distress : he wandered in his mind a little, now and 
 again : he was quiet and happy. Mrs. Spencer Holland 
 noted in a diary that " on Wednesday we thought that he 
 was sinking, and I called-in Canon Ottley, who prayed with 
 him. That evening in bed he recited a verse or two of 
 ' There is a green hill far away,' and then * Yarrow Revisited,' 
 in quite a strong voice. He said after Canon Ottley had 
 been with him, ' It was so wonderfully peaceful : why, I 
 am quite quiet now : better, much better, than the doctor's 
 visit.' He understood quite well a message from Miss Enie 
 Holland, and sent her his blessing. On hearing news of 
 his elder sister, he said, ' Give her my fond love.' I said, 
 ' And your blessing ' : he replied, ' Yes, and my blessing.' 
 On Friday, he spoke about countersigning the cheque for 
 the Maurice Hostel ; which he did quite easily. That 
 afternoon, he suddenly began to say the Nunc Dimittis, 
 and then the psalm, The Lord is my Shepherd ; and some 
 prayers : all in a strong voice. On Saturday, he said 
 quite suddenly, ' Well, you see the end is not come. It is 
 extraordinary.' I said something about his being sur- 
 rounded by love and peace : and he said at once, ' Yes, 
 yes : that I believe profoundly.' I reminded him how 
 he often had said, ' God's time is the best ' : (the Bach 
 cantata he used to like me to play). He said, ' That too I 
 believe most profoundly.' " 
 
 On the Saturday evening, when his brother said good- 
 night to him, he said, " Dear boy, you have been so good to 
 me." Later, Mrs. Illingworth, Miss Hancock, and his 
 night-nurse, happened to be in the room together : and he 
 gaily said, " What a lot of people ! We must have a dance ! " 
 When Miss Hancock was leaving him, he was so drowsy 
 that she thought it would be better not to have the prayer 
 which they were accustomed to have every night : but he 
 put his hands together for it : so she said it : and he said. 
 
328 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 " Goodnight, dear," and she said, " Goodnight, Sir." He 
 died quietly, about i a.m., Sunday, March 17. 
 
 They put in his hands a cross which the Serbian students 
 in Oxford had given to him. His robes were used as a pall 
 for the coffin. His body was placed in his little prayer- 
 room. Early on Wednesday, it was carried into Cathedral, 
 for a celebration of Holy Communion. The day was 
 brilliantly fine : a company of air-men, who were lodged in 
 Christ Church, stood at attention : and an aeroplane circled 
 low to salute him. At the funeral service at mid-day, the 
 Cathedral was filled with a great crowd. From Cathedral, 
 his body was taken to Cuddesdon for burial. There was no 
 crawling black procession : he would have disliked that sort 
 of funeral : there was a motor-hearse, with motors following • 
 so that it seemed as if he were going ahead swiftly, still 
 able to enjoy the sunlight and the country, and signalling 
 with his red robes to the friends who were behind him. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 This list includes only his more important writings : not all his 
 prefaces or introductions to the books of his friends, contributions 
 to collections of essays, sermons published singly, and so forth. 
 It is characteristic of him, that no less than twenty-eight writers 
 asked him, and none in vain, to write introductions to their 
 books. The chief of these are in Canon Richmond's " Economic 
 Morals " (1890), " Lombard Street in Lent " (1894), and Miss 
 Carta Sturge's " The Truth and Error of Christian Science " 
 
 (1903)- 
 
 Where two dates are assigned to a book, thus, 1888 [1887], 
 it means that the later year is the date on the title-page, but a 
 copy of the book was sent to the British Museum Library in the 
 earlier year. In this memoir, the earlier year is reckoned as 
 the date of publication. 
 
 1. Impressions of the Ammergau Passion-Play." By an 
 
 Oxonian, pp. 31. J. T. Hayes, London, 1870. 
 
 2. Dean Aldrich : a Commemoration address. Clarendon 
 
 Press, Oxford, 1872. 
 
 3. The Apostolic Fathers, pp. 233. In " The Fathers for English 
 
 Readers." 1878. New edition, 1893. 
 
 4. The Sacrifice of the Cross. Rivingtons, London, 1879. 
 
 5. Justin Martyr. In the Dictionary of Christian Biography, 
 
 1882. 
 
 6. Logic and Life ; with other sermons, xii, 320. Rivingtons, 
 
 1882. Third edition, 1885. 
 
 7. Sermon to the Co-operative Congress in Oxford. Central 
 
 Co-operative Board, Manchester, 1882. 
 
 8. Good Friday : addresses in St. Paul's, viii, iii. Rivingtons, 
 
 1884. Second edition, 1889. 
 
 9. Creed and Character : sermons, xviii, 343. Rivingtons, 
 
 1887. Second edition, 1888. 
 329 
 
330 HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND 
 
 10. Christ or Ecclesiastes : sermons in St. Paul's, ix, 144. 
 
 Rivingtons. 1888 [1887]. Second edition, 1888. 
 
 11. Faith. In Lux Mundi. John Murray, 1889. 
 
 12. On Behalf of Belief : sermons, xv, 285. Rivingtons, 1889 
 
 [1888]. 
 
 13. (With Mr. W. S. Rockstro.) Memoir of Madame Jenny 
 
 Lind-Goldschmidt : her early art-life and dramatic 
 career, 1820-1851. 2 vols. John Murray, 1891. Third 
 edition, 1891 : abridged edition, 1893 : translation into 
 Swedish, 1891. 
 
 14. Pleas and Claims for Christ, x, 323. Longmans, 1892, 
 
 Second edition, 1893. 
 
 15. God's City : and The Coming of the Kingdom, xvii, 342. 
 
 Longmans, 1894. New edition, 1897. 
 
 16. Church and State. In Essays in aid of Church Reform. 
 
 1898. 
 
 17. Obligation of Civil Law. In Good Citizenship. 1899. 
 
 18. Old and New : sermons: x, 218. S. T. Freemantle, 1900. 
 
 Second edition, 1903. 
 
 19. Personal Studies, viii, 288. Wells Gardner, 1905. 
 
 20. Vital Values : sermons, vi, 227. Wells Gardner, 1906. 
 
 21. The Optimism of Butler's " Analogy." Romanes Lecture. 
 
 Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1908. 
 
 22. George Howard Wilkmson. In Biographies of Eminent 
 
 Churchmen. 1909. 
 
 23. Brooke Foss Westcott. In the same series; 1910. 
 
 24. Fibres of Faith, v, 120. Wells Gardner, 1910. 
 
 25. Fundamentals : an address at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon 
 
 Street, by invitation of the London Congregational 
 Board. Mowbrays, 1910. 
 
 26. (With other writers.) Miracles. Longmans, 1911. 
 
 27. Our Neighbours, pp. 176. A Handbook of the Christian 
 
 Social Union. 1911. 
 
 28. Property and Personality. In a series of essays, " Property, 
 
 its Duties and Rights," edited with an introduction by 
 Bishop Gore. 1913. 
 
 29. A Bundle of Memories: viii, 321. Wells Gardner, 1915. 
 
 30. The Real Problem of Eschatology. Liverpool Lecture. 
 
 Liverpool Diocesan Board Publications. 1916. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aberdeen University, Hon. Degree, 
 
 220 
 Acland, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur, 120, 157 
 " Act of God," 286 
 Acton, Lord, 11 1 
 
 Adderley, James, 169, 202, 203, 205 
 Ady, Mrs. (Julia Cartwright), 77, 86, 
 
 97. 147 
 Ady, Miss Cecily, 263 
 Ady, W. H., 10, 37 ; letters to, 23, 49, 
 
 61, 92, 99, 100, 237 
 JEgean Islands, 162, 317 
 Ainger, A. C, 10 
 Aldrich, Dean, 58 
 Alexander, Canon, 141, 155, 158 
 Allesley School, 8 
 Altar-vessels, St. Paul's, 148 
 Amen Court, St. Paul's, 143 
 Ammergau, the Passion-Play (1870), 
 
 47 
 Analysis, the fallacy of, 90, 105 
 Anson, Harold, 285, 304, 305 
 Anti-Sweating League, 230 
 Antonelli, Cardinal, 119 
 Arnold- Forster, Miss, 161 ; letters to, 
 
 278, 293 
 " Art is not for use," 46 
 Asquith, Mr., 236, 266, 268 
 Athens (1886), 163 
 Awdry, Canon, 120 
 
 B 
 
 Bach, 117, 275 
 
 Baker, Pacha, 181 
 
 Balfour, Mr. A. J., 273 
 
 Balfour, Mr. Gerald, 273 
 
 Ballaignes, Vallorbes, 165 
 
 Balhol, 18-53, 80, 167 
 
 Bayne, T. V., 88 
 
 Beauty in Nature, secondary to 
 
 human interests, 163 
 Bedford, Mr., 8 
 Bel Alp, 160 
 Bell, G. K. A., 319 
 Benson, Archbishop, 196 
 Benson, Godfrey R., 200 
 Bertie, A. E., 10, 14 
 
 Bettws-y-Coed, North Wales, 26, 87, 
 
 129, 130, 260, 271 
 Bickersteth, Cyril, 169 
 BirreU, Mr., Education Bill (1906), 
 
 227-229 
 Birth, the wonder of, 257 
 Blake, William, 276 
 Body, Canon, 120 
 Booth, Mr. Charles, 148 
 Boutflower, Bishop, 129 
 Bradlaugh, Mr., 280 
 Bradley, A. C, 25 
 Bramwell, E., 224 
 Bray, Reginald, 232 
 Brighstone, first " holy party " at, 
 
 (1875), 85 
 Brown, T. E., 313 
 Browning, 277 
 
 Browning Society (Oxford), 80 
 Bryce, Lord, 229 
 Buckland, C. E., 10, 14, 20 
 Bulgaria and Turkey (1876), 87 
 " Bundle of Memories " (1915). 3^6 
 Butler's Analogy, 49, 233 
 
 Campbell, Dr., Bishop of Glasgow, 221 
 
 Carey, W. H., 282, 319, 321 
 
 Carlyle, 28, 274 
 
 Carter, John, 169 
 
 Censorship, Christ Church (1882), 108 
 
 Charity-children at St. Paul's, 139 
 
 Cheshire, Christopher, 153, 207 ; 
 
 letters to, 282, 326 
 Chesterton, G. K., 317 
 Children, 232 ; letters to, 257-264 
 Choir-School, St. Paul's, 142, 149 
 Christ Church, 49-54. 80-83, 126-135, 
 
 229 
 " Christ in Flanders," 317 
 " Christ or Ecclesiastes " (1887), 165 
 Christian Social Union, 169-173, 203 
 
 205, 216, 240-251 
 Christianity and the War, 313 
 " Christianity a Romance," 282 
 " Christianity, the central fact of," 
 
 48 
 Church, Dean, 113, 140, 155 
 
 331 
 
332 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Church, Miss, 139, 294 
 Church of England, 229, 291 
 Citizenship " as unto the Lord," 29- 
 
 33 
 Cock, Clifford, 264 
 Collier, Dr. Wilham, 323 
 Commemoration Address (1872), 58 
 " Commonwealth," 206, 304, 326 
 Communion, letters on, 21, 29, 91, 
 
 215, 231 ; services in Christ Church, 
 
 300. 313 
 
 Communion of Saints, 78, 319 
 
 Comrie, Perthshire, 319, 320 
 
 Confession, letters on (1872), 60, 63 
 
 Confirmation, 11, 15 
 
 Conington, John, 24, 40, 43 
 
 Cookson, Charles, 18 
 
 Co-operative Congress in Oxford, ser- 
 mon to (1882), 105 
 
 Copleston, Bishop, 69, 77, 99, 107, 
 114, 280 
 
 Coptic Church, 178, 190 
 
 Courthope, W. J., 40 
 
 Coxon, Miss Annie, 263 
 
 " Creed and Character " (1887), 165 
 
 Creighton. Bishop, letters to, 194, 209 
 
 Cremation, prayer for use after, 308 
 
 Criticism and Portraiture, letters of, 
 275-287 
 
 Crossways, Berkhamsted Common, 
 
 309 
 Crum, Miss Mary, 197 
 Cuddesdon, 62, 76, 291, 320, 328 
 " Culture and the International " 
 
 (1869), 42 
 Curzon, Earl, 231 
 
 D 
 
 Dalmally, Loch Awe (1867), 20 
 Dasent, Manuel, 55, 57, 71 
 Dearmer, Dr. Percy, 169, 216, 282 
 Death, letters on, 8, 43, 57, 76, 199 
 201, 220, 231, 235, 271, 293-296, 
 
 307 
 De la Mare, Walter, 153, 282 
 " Democracy rising into power " 
 
 (1872), 61 
 Dependence, bodily and spiritual, 91 
 Deterrence, under the Poor Law 
 
 (1909), 234 
 Discipline, 30, 134, 247 
 Disestablishment, 211, 212 
 Divinity at Oxford : examinerships in, 
 
 (1883), 109 ; degrees in (1912), 301- 
 
 304 
 Dolling, Robert, 207 
 Dominican ideal, the, 321 
 Donaldson, Canon, 153, 319 
 Dorritz, Canon, 255 
 
 Drew, Mrs., 162, 165, 198, 233 
 Drewitt, Dr., 174, 176, 179, 181 
 Dumbleton Hall, 3, 8 
 Durham Cathedral, 102 
 
 Ecclesiastical Discipline Commission 
 
 (1906), 230 
 " Economic Morals," Canon Rich- 
 mond's lectures on (1889), 169, 172 
 Education Bill (1906), 227 
 Egypt, journal of three months in 
 
 1890.. 174-193 
 Ellerton Essay (1873), 70 
 Encouragement and Consolation, 
 
 letters of, 288-296 
 England, the beauty of, 284, 308 
 English Hymnal, 219, 230 
 Englishmen, Elizabethan and 
 
 Georgian, 217 
 Eschatology, 322 
 
 " Essays in Orthodoxy," Quick's, 321 
 Eton, 8-17, 32, 79, 265 
 Eurydice, wreck of the (1878), 94 
 Everitt, Lieut. -Col., letter to, 146 
 " Every man his own grandmother," 
 
 248 
 Eves, Miss, 214 
 Examinations, 1. H. Green on, 41 ; 
 
 Holland on, 132 
 
 " Faith, Hope, and Political Eco- 
 nomy," 81, 171-173 
 
 Fantasy, letters of, 255 
 
 Fathers, the Apostolic, Holland's 
 book on (1878), 97 
 
 Ferguson, Ronald, 17, 118 
 
 " Fibres of Faith " (1910), 239 
 
 Fisher, Charles, 318 
 
 Fletcher, G. C, 169 
 
 Forster, Mr. W. E., 161 
 
 France, a week in (1915), 315 
 
 Fremantle, Stephen, 10, 20, 25, 35, 
 57 ; letters to, 62, 70-75 ; death, 
 76 ; memorial in Cathedral, 83 
 
 Frere, Sir Bartle, 118 
 
 Friendship, a letter on, 94 
 
 Fry, Captain, 320 
 
 Furse, Canon, 169 
 
 Gayton Lodge, Wimbledon, 11, 115, 
 
 233 
 General Election of 1895. .205 
 Gibson, Dr. Alexander, 323 
 Gifford, Edward, 94 
 Gifford, Lady, 4, 8 
 
INDEX 
 
 333 
 
 Gifiord, Lord, 4 
 
 GifiEord, Miss, 26, 121 
 
 GifEord, Scott, 4, 12 
 
 Gilbert, Alfred, letter from, 149 
 
 Gilbertson, Minor Canon, 149 
 
 Gladstone, Mr., 87, 102, 198 ; in con- 
 trast to Mr. Ruskin, 93 ; in con- 
 trast to Lord Hartington, 269 ; 
 his edition of Butler, 233 
 
 Glasgow, Bishopric of, 167 
 
 " God's City ; and the Coming of the 
 Kingdom " (1894), 203 
 
 Goldschmidt, Madame Lind- (Jenny 
 Lind), 117, 170, 197, 289 
 
 Goldschmidt, Otto, 117 
 
 Gooch, Miss, 175, and pt. ii., oh. 3 
 
 Goold-Adams, Sir H. J., 222, 223 
 
 Gore, Bishop, 80, 118, 167, 237, 284, 
 320 ; and pt. ii., ch. 6 
 
 Gospel Record, the, 280, 285, 304-306 
 
 " Graves are empty things," 123 
 
 Green, Thomas Hill, 24-26 ; letters 
 from, 19-65 ; letters to, 30-63 
 
 Green, Mrs. T. H., letter to, 113 
 
 Greenwood, F., 76 
 
 Gregory, Dean, 150, 238 
 
 Gregory, Miss Eleanor, 153 
 
 Guild of the Epiphany, 174 
 
 Guild of St. Matthew, 169, 242 
 
 H 
 
 Haldane, Lord, 266, 273, 320 
 
 Hall, J. C. 224 
 
 Hancock, Miss Alice, 225, 300, 327 ; 
 
 letters to, 315 
 Handwriting, a note on Holland's, 263 
 Hankey, Wentworth, 118 
 Harcourt, Sir William, 211 
 Harrington Bey, 181 
 Hartill, Percy, letter to, 324 
 Hartington, Lord, 269 
 Haw, Mr. George, 214 
 Hegel, 49, 244, 273 
 Henson, Bishop, 325 
 " Historicity " and the Gospels, 280, 
 
 285, 304-306 
 Hohdays, in later years, 308 
 Holland, Miss Amy, 4, 213, 230 
 Holland, Arthur, 4, 243, 307, 309 
 Holland, Edward, 3 
 Holland, Miss Evelyn, letters to, 231, 
 
 256, 264, 288, 325 
 Holland, George Henry, 3-12, 18, 
 
 120, 198 
 Holland, Mrs. G. H., 4-9, 121,213 ; 
 
 letters to, 8, 11, 40, 46, 78, 107, 198 
 Holland, Henry Scott. At Eton, 
 
 8-13 ; at Balliol, 19-52 ; choice 
 
 of vocation, 12, 21, 40 ; Final 
 
 Schools, and Senior Studentship at 
 Christ Church, 46-49 ; lectures, 
 55, 82 ; ordained deacon (1872), 
 62 ; street-preaching in Hoxton, 
 69, 75 ; first sermon in St. Paul's 
 (1873), 74 ; ordained priest (1874), 
 76 ; first visit to Hawarden, 87 ; 
 Select Preacher in Oxford, 98, 208 ; 
 Senior Proctor, 10*4 ; Censor, 108 ; 
 Hon. Canon of Truro, 108 ; Canon 
 of St. Paul's (1884), III ; founder 
 of the Christian Social Union 
 (1889), 169 ; founder of " Common- 
 wealth " (1896), 206 ; founder of 
 the Maurice Hostel (1898), 214; 
 visit to South Africa (1903), 220 ; 
 Romanes lecture (1908), 233 ; Hon. 
 D.D., Aberdeen, 220 ; Hon. D.Litt., 
 Oxford, 231 ; Regius Professor of 
 Divinity in Oxford (1910), 236 ; 
 proposal to throw open the divinity 
 degrees, 311 ; visit to France 
 {1915), 315 ; failing health, and 
 death, 323-328 
 
 Holland, Lawrence, 4, 21, 119, 200 
 
 Holland, Miss, 4, 73, 89, 144, 162, 
 213 ; letters to, 29, 75, 87, 102, 146, 
 208 
 
 Holland, Spencer L., 4, and pt. i., 
 ch. 6; letters to, 13, 89-92, 94, 
 103, 222 
 
 Holland, Mrs. Spencer, 309, 311, 327 ; 
 letters to, 223, 295, 303 
 
 Holland, Swinton, 3 
 
 Holland, Thurstan, 8, 157 
 
 Holman Hunt, Mr., 148 
 
 " Holy Party," the, 85, 96, loi, 195 
 
 " Home is our test ground," 271 
 
 Home Life, at Gayton Lodge, 115- 
 124, 233 ; at Amen Court, 144, 
 224 ; in Christ Church, 299 
 
 Hon. Degrees, Aberdeen and Oxford, 
 220, 231 
 
 Hornby, Bishop, 263 
 
 Horner, George, 23 
 
 Horton, Dr. R. F., 109 
 
 Houblon, Archdeacon, 71 
 
 Howard, Monsignore, 119 
 
 Hoxton, street-preaching, 69, 75 ; 
 Maurice Hostel, 214 
 
 Huxley, Prof., 170 
 
 Hymns and Hymnals, 145, 219, 230 
 
 Illingworth, John Richardson, 80, 82, 
 
 86, 195 
 lUingworth, Mrs., 257, 327 
 Independent Labour Party (1895), 
 
 205 
 
334 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Industrial Christian Fellowship, 250 
 Infallibility, Papal, letters on, 56, 93 
 Inter-denominational union, 251 
 Ireland in 1882.. 107; in 1887.. 166 
 Isaacs, Prebendary, 196, 215, 256 
 
 Jarrow, Bede's chapel at, 102 
 " Jesuitry," letters on (1878), 29-33 
 John Bull, an obsolete figure, 217 
 Johnson Pacha, 181, 185, 188 
 Johnson, William, 9-18 
 Jowett. 19, 27, 33, 37, 80 
 Jubilee Procession (1897), 210 
 Justin Martyr, Holland's article on, 
 97 
 
 K 
 
 Keble College, 61, 80, 168, 278 
 Kennion, Bishop, 10, 15 
 Kilbracken, Lord, 23, 153 
 King, Bishop, 235 
 
 Labour, 171, 205, 241, 250 ; Labour 
 and official Liberalism, 212 ; 
 Labour and the Education Bill 
 {1906), 230 ; Labour and the 
 Church, 212, 250 ; Labour and the 
 War, 314-322 
 
 Lang, Dr. J. M., 220 
 
 Laundries, Government inspection of, 
 162 
 
 Lee, PhiHp E., 10, 37 
 
 Legard, A. G., 10 ; letters to, 33, 38, 
 
 46, 47. 50 
 
 Leo XIII, Coronation of, 163 
 
 Liddell, A. G. C, 23 
 
 Liddell, Dean, 50, 80, 99 
 
 Liddon, Canon, 74, 87, 107, 140, 155, 
 160 ; letters from, iii, 145 
 
 Lightfoot, Bishop, 84 
 
 Lock, Canon, 80, 109, 282 
 
 " Log of the Water-logged, The," 176 
 
 " Logic and Life " (1882), 104 
 
 London, 34, 70, 88, 159; "the one 
 thing set before us " (1872), 61 ; 
 London and the South African 
 War, 215, 219 ; multitude and 
 solitude, 217 ; good workmanship 
 in London, 253 ; London and the 
 raids, 159, 326; L.C.C. election, 
 1907.. 231 
 
 Longworth, 195 
 
 " Lux Mundi," 168, 280 
 
 Lyttelton, Bishop, 80, 100, 220 
 
 Lyttelton, Sir Neville, 15 
 
 M 
 
 Marius the Epicurean, 321 
 
 Marlborough, Bishop of, 169 
 
 Marriage, letters on, 167, 269 
 
 Mason, Canon, 170 
 
 Matthews, C. H. S., 305 
 
 Maude, Mrs. Raymond, 117 
 
 Maurice Hostel, 124, 214, 251 
 
 Mead, Mr., 225 
 
 Merriman, J. X., 222, 223 
 
 Meynell, Mrs., 162 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 24, 41, 45 
 
 Mill, W. H., 82, 244 
 
 Miners' strike (1894), 202 
 
 Minimum wage, 202 
 
 Miracles, 165, 244, 304 ; letters from 
 R. L. Nettleship, 62, 64 ; from 
 T. H. Green, 66 ; from Holland, 
 84, 280, 285, 305 
 
 Missions and Missionaries, 126, 197 ; 
 Junior Clergy Missionary Associa- 
 tion, 196 ; Universities' Mission to 
 Central Africa, 196, 288 ; Christ 
 Church Missionary Association 
 (1876), 126 ; Mission of Help to 
 Church in S. Africa, 221 ; National 
 Mission (1916), 319-321 ; Poplar 
 Mission (Christ Church), 127 
 
 Moberly, Canon, 69, 75, loi, 321 
 
 Moore, Aubrey, 80, 114, 168 
 
 Morley, Lord, 268 
 
 Mozart, 29, 34, 284, 311, 326 
 
 Murray, Mr. John, 117 
 
 Murray, Miss, 73, 154, 174 
 
 Murray, Miss Annie, 284 
 
 Music, 34, 141, 152, 275, 309 
 
 Myers, F. W., 273 
 
 N 
 
 " Natural Man," the, 282 
 
 " Nature," T. H. Green on, 67 ; 
 
 Holland on, 34, 163, 232 
 Nettleship, R. L., 24-78, 162, 199 
 Nevinson, H. W., 83 
 Newbolt, Canon, 147 
 Newcastle-on-Tyne, 102 
 New Cathedral Psalter, 310 
 " New Century Problems " (1901), 217 
 Newman, Cardinal, 29, 215, 282 
 Newquay, Cornwall, 76, 322 
 "No man can serve two masters," 105 
 
 Oakley, Dean, 70 
 " Old and New " (1900), 215 
 Ordination, letters on, 62-68, 76, 324 
 Osier, Sir William, 323 
 
INDEX 
 
 335 
 
 Ottley, Ganon, 127, 130, 168, 326 
 " Our Neighbours " (191 1), 304 
 Oxford and Eton, 19 ; Oxford and 
 
 London, 61, 69, 88, 112; Oxford 
 
 and Cambridge, 263 
 
 Paget, Francis, Bishop of Oxford, 72, 
 76, 168, 278, 284 
 
 " Pain, the world of," 145 
 
 Palmer, Archdeacon, 18, 19 
 
 " Parish church of the British Em- 
 pire," St. Paul's during the War, 
 141 
 
 Parker, Wilfrid, 291 
 
 Parry, Sir Hubert, 10 
 
 Passion-Play at Ammergau (1870), 
 Holland's account of it, 47 
 
 Past and Present, in 1897. .210 
 
 Patmos, a visit to, 162 
 
 Paton, J. B., 84 
 
 Patriotism, real and sham, 103, 210, 
 215, 219 
 
 Peace night, 1902. .219 
 
 " Pesek," 100 
 
 Peterborough, Holland at, 59, 84 
 
 Philosophy, as opposed to poetry, 
 279 ; philosophy and religion, 65, 
 97 ; " the final test of aU philoso- 
 phies," 90 
 
 Plato, Holland's lectures on the 
 Repubhc, 82 
 
 " Pleas and Claims for Christ " (1892), 
 200 
 
 Political Economy, the change in, 81, 
 171, 241 
 
 Pollock, Canon, 118 
 
 Poor Law, " deterrence " under it, 234 
 
 Portal, Spencer J., 133 
 
 Porter, Dr., 175-189 
 
 Post-Impressionists, 237 
 
 Preaching in St. Paul's, 140, 153- 
 169 ; letters about sermons, 33, 74, 
 ' 78, 98, 209, 316 
 
 Prestige, the " fatal blackguardly 
 formula " of (1881), 103 
 
 Primrose, Everard. 10 
 
 Proctorship, Holland's, 104, 108, 129 
 
 " Property and Personality " (1913), 
 306 
 
 Pusey, Dr., 107 
 
 R 
 
 Randolph, Mr., 102 
 Reading-parties, 71, 75, 86, 128-134 
 Real Presence, letter on the, 215 
 Reay, Lord, 113 
 Reservation of the Sacrament, 208, 215 
 
 Richmond, Canon, 86, 153, 169, 172, 
 
 22S ; letters to, 195, 198, 212 
 Richmond, Sir WiUiam, 148 
 Riddell, James, 19, 59 
 " Ritualism," letters on, 92, 208 
 Rockstro, W. S., 197 
 Romanes Lecture, Holland's (1908), 
 
 233 
 Rome, visits to, 5, 56, 163, 194 ; the 
 
 Roman Church and the Church of 
 
 England, letters on, 93, 291 
 Rosebery, Lord, 10-18, 197 
 Ruskin, Mr. : lecture in Oxford 
 
 (1870), 46 ; visit to Hawarden, 93 ; 
 
 letters from, 106 
 Russell, Father, 323 
 Russell, Mr. G. W. E., 125, 153 ; 
 
 letters from, 225 ; letters to, 152, 
 
 233 
 Russia and England in 1878. .94 
 
 " Sackcloth," Holland's article in 
 
 Commonwealth, 1897.. 211 
 St. Andrew's, Wells Street, 120 
 St. Barnabas, Pimlico, 14, 57, 122 
 St. Bernard Hospice, 161 
 St. Francis, 264 
 St. Matthew, Guild of, 169, 242 
 St. Paul, 229, 283 
 St. Paul's, 111-114, 139-159 
 St. Peter's, Eaton Square, 56 
 St. Saviour's, Hoxton, 61, 68, y^ 
 Savile, W. H., 281 
 Savonarola, 89 
 Self, the unity of, 90, 105 
 " Self-preoccupation, the ring-fence 
 
 of," 273 
 Senhouse, H. P., 14 
 Serbian Students in Oxford, 328 
 Shakespeare Society, at Balliol, 25 ; 
 
 at Christ Church, 126 
 Shaw, Mr. Martin, 310 
 Shute, Richard, 89 
 Smith, Mr. A. L., Master of Balliol, 
 
 104, 108 
 Smith, Miss Constance, 241 
 S.P.C.K., 97 
 S.P.G., 196 
 
 " Song of Paule's Children," 151 
 Sons of the Clergy, annual festival, 
 
 146 
 South Africa, visit to, 221 
 South African War, 215, 217 
 South Africans in Egypt, 1916. .319 
 Speir, Miss Marjorie, letters to, 256, 
 
 263 
 Spencer, Herbert, a letter on, 281 
 Spilhammer, J. R., 197 
 
336 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Stanton, Dr. V. H., 84, 319 
 
 Stratford, Laurence, 224 ; letters to, 
 
 238, 312 
 Street-preaching in Hoxton (1873), 
 
 69, 75 
 Strong, Dr., Bishop of Ripon, 215, 
 
 236, 320 
 Suffering and character, 272, 295 
 Sumner, Heywood, letters to, 148, 
 
 195, 206, 255, 276 
 Sweated Industries Exhibition (1906), 
 
 230 
 Switzerland versus North Wales, 120, 
 
 260 
 Synthetical Society, dinner of the, 273 
 
 Talbot, Dr., Bishop of Winchester, 50, 
 
 61, 86, 168 ; letters to, passim 
 Talbot, Mrs., letters to, 168, 226, 256, 
 
 316, 322, 324 
 Talbot, Miss May, letters to, 210, 221, 
 
 258 
 Talbot, Neville, Bishop of Pretoria ; 
 
 letters to, 312-320 
 Talbot, Miss Winifred, letters to, 221, 
 
 259 
 Temple, Archbishop, 41, 170, 196, 279 
 Tennyson, a criticism on, 278 
 Theatricals at Gayton Lodge, 118 
 Theosophy and Re-incarnation, 284 
 Thorne, Frank, 313-325 _^ 
 
 Tintern Abbey, 38 
 
 Town and country, revelation in, 232 
 Trade Unions, 97, 169, 220 
 Trafalgar Day, 146 
 Transvaal War, 102 
 Tuckwell, Miss Gertrude, 251 
 Tyndall, John, 161 
 Types of Englishmen, Ehzabethan 
 
 and Georgian, 217 
 
 U 
 
 " Undenominational " teaching, 25 
 Unemployed, the : march from 
 
 Leicester to London (1905), 226 ; 
 
 at St. Paul's, 227 
 
 V 
 
 Vevey, 161 
 
 Vidal, Mr., 16 
 
 " Vital Values " (1906), 227 
 
 W 
 
 Wage, the minimum (1893), 202 
 
 Waggett, Philip N., 134, 158, 310, 323 
 
 Wakefield, Dr. Russell, Bishop of 
 Birmingham, 214 
 
 Wales, 38, 77, 87, 260, 271 
 
 Walter, A. F., 26, 37 
 
 Ward, Ivo, 296 
 
 Ward, Wilfrid, 273 
 
 Wardman, G. W., 207, 326 
 
 Waterhouse, Paul, 284, 309 
 
 Watts, Mr. G. F., 147, 210 
 
 Webb, Sidney, 268 
 
 Wellesbourne Hall, 7, 116 
 
 West, Sir Algernon, 197 
 
 Westcott, Bishop of Durham, 59, 84, 
 169, 247 
 
 White Cross League, 127, 247 
 
 White, Miss Gladys, letters to, 261, 
 288 
 
 Wilgress, Prebendary, 235 
 
 Wilkinson, Bishop of Truro, 56, 113 ; 
 with Holland in Egypt (1890), 174- 
 193 ; with Holland in South 
 Africa, 220 
 
 Wilkinson, Miss Constance, 174 
 
 Wilkinson, Miss Margaret, 1 74 ; letter 
 to, 258 
 
 Wilhams, J. W., Bishop of Kafiraria, 
 100 ; letters to, 277, 280, 318-325 
 
 Williams, Dr. Vaughan, 230 
 
 Winchester Cathedral, 261 
 
 Wood, F. G. L., 10, 16, 162 
 
 Wordsworth, John, Bishop of Salis- 
 bury, 104 
 
 Work, letters on, 289 
 
 York, Archbishop of, 291 
 
 Young Cousin, letters to a, 265-274 
 
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