'■■J ■ •' 't ''audiivjiu' ^^OFCAi ^ "^kmmii^' s^lOSANCElfXy^ = 10 ( ^%a3AINJ13WV^ ^ ^.SOJIIVJJO^ ^OfCAllFOftj^ '^ "^OAaViJim "^aaAir., C THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF ALFRED AINGER aij-'ui-:d Ai.N(ii-;R. PROM A PORTRAir BY MR MUOll RIVIIERE. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF ALFRED AINGER BY EDITH SICHEL NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 1906 » • Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty - f C < ' TO MARGARET ROSCOW THE NIECE AND COMPANION OF ALFRED AINGER February 1906. O t. J" «^ sl5 O O PREFACE The only reason for writing any preface to this little volume is that it provides me with a means of giving thanks to those who have helped me by criticisms and suggestions, and by their memories of Canon Ainger. I therefore take this occasion of expressing my great gratitude to Mr. Birrell, to Dr. Ward (Master of Peterhouse), to Mr. Gosse, to Mr. Horace Smith, to Mr. R. C. Browne, to Mr. Birdwood, to Canon Beeching, and to Mr. E. V. Lucas, for the valuable assistance they have given me. I have also to convey my thanks to those who have enabled me to print so many letters from Canon Ainger, as well as some written to him ; and in this connection I should like to acknowledge the courtesy of Mr. A. C. Swinburne in allow- ing me to publish a letter written by himself. My thanks are no less due to Messrs. Murray, and to the Editor of the Quarterly, for consenting that I should embody in this book some parts of an article, ' Canon Ainger,' which I wrote for that periodical in January 1905 ; and to Messrs. Macmillan for giving me permission to make use of extracts from Canon Ainger's published works. Also to Miss Johnston, who has allowed me to reproduce the photographs privately taken by her — the two of Alfred Ainger in his youth, as well as the one of his father. February 11, 1906. CONTENTS CHAP. I. EARLY YEARS, II. CAMBRIDGE, . . . , III. THE LION, IV. BEGINNINGS OF LIFE, V. ALREWAS AND SHEFFIELD, VI. AT THE TEMPLE : 18G6-1873, VII. LONDON AND ITS FRIENDSHIPS : 1873-1876, VIII. AT HAMPSTEAD : 1876-1880, . IX. DU MAURIER, X. LETTERS : 1880-1892, XI. LECTURER AND CRITIC, XII. AINGEr's HUMOUR, XIII. ALFRED AINGER AND CHARLES LAMB, XIV. CORRESPONDENCE ABOUT CHARLES LAMB, XV. LETTERS : 1892-1896, XVI. LIFE AND LETTERS : 1897-1903, XVII. THE PREACHER, XVIII. LATER WRITINGS, . XrX. THE END, INDEX, PAGE 1 32 51 62 73 87 103 117 133 149 185 206 216 237 257 282 310 326 340 351 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ALFRED AINGER, ..... FvOntispkce From, a portrait by Hugh Riviere. AT PAGE MR. AINGER (ALFRED AINGER's FATHEr), . . 4 From a •photograph. MRS. AINGER (ALFRED AINGER's MOTHEr), . . 9 From a miniature. ALFRED AINGER AT SEVENTEEN, . Frcrni a photograph hy Miss Johnston. ALFRED AINGER IN YOUTH, From a photograph hy Miss Johnston. 25 32 ADELINE ROSCOW (ALFRED AINGER's SISTEr), . . 90 From a pihotograph. ALFRED AINGER AT FIFTY, . . .185 From a photograph by Messrs. Elliot and Fry, CHAPTER I EARLY YEARS Alfred Ainger was born on February 9, 1837. On his father's side he came of French Huguenot stock, as, indeed, we might have expected, when we recall the gifts that made him unique — his Gallic power of being serious without being solemn — his union of grace and quickness with an almost Puritan sobriety. He himself found pleasure in his descent. ' As you say,' he wrote to a connection ^ in 1898, ' there is not much inducement just now to wish to provide ourselves with a French origin ; but I confess the idea of having some Celtic blood in me is not displeasing. I wish indeed you may trace us up a little closer to the events of 1685. There can, I think, be no doubt whatever as to our Huguenot origin. The coincidences (of craft and calling) are too marked to be merely coincidences.' His forebears had been silk-weavers, and he was delighted when, one day in Spitalfields, two French weavers, who recog- nised him, came up and claimed relationship with him on the strength of their name being Anger. From the fact of this traditional craft he drew scientific conclusions of his own. ' It is very interesting,' he says to the same correspondent, William Ainger, ' to trace the Huguenot trade of silk occupy- ing the family so long. It is perhaps this inherited associa- tion with silk gowns that has brought about, by a subtle association, my now long connection with the Bar.' And he writes elsewhere to Mr. Ainger: — ' I discovered a curious fact in connection with our name when 1 Mr. William Ainger. He and Alfred Ainger had a great-great-grandfather in common. A 2 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER I was (for the first time in my life) in Ireland this autumn. In the Huguenot quarter of Dublin is a street called "Aungier Street," and it certainly looks as if some namesakes of ours, if not relatives, must have given the street its name. Were you avv^are of the fact ? I presume we hail from the city of Angers — of which later spellings are perhaps attempts to represent the pro- nunciation of the French. ... I am very sensible indeed of the services you have rendered and are still rendering to those of our name. I hope your children thrive, and will hand it down still further. ... I thank you sincerely . . . for the charming por- traits of your two boys — who seem, among other things, to partake of the esprit gaulois, to which our Huguenot descent should entitle them, as they appear to have a fine sense offim.' There is little to be known about Alfred Ainger"'s forebears and relations, and it seems part of his remote and fay-like personality that it should be so. But his own saying that ' one must never talk of one's relations, or one might at any moment become a bore,' has doubtless something to do with our ignorance. The uncle and aunt who are ' characters ' — the old-world grandmother of biography — are here lacking, though the names of his predecessors, Samuel and Nathaniel Ainger, suggest strong wills and snuff-boxes and fixed ideas about the French Revolution. The only traditional presence we can find is that of the nurse common to all distinguished persons, the devoted soul who charms her nursling's infancy by her stories. Such an one, ' Lem,' cheered Alfred's early days, and, settling in her age in Staffordshire was faithfully visited by him till her death. And when, only a few years after- wards, he himself lay dying, he constantly murmured her name, wandering, as it seemed, among the tender pieties of childhood. His father, Alfred Ainger, was a very remarkable man, the son of Samuel Ainger, an architect settled in London, who had but one other child, a daughter, Margaret, afterwards Mrs. Nicol, Alfred Ainger, the elder, pursued his parent's pro- fession and was well-known in his day, especially for the building of University College Hospital and the palm-house at Kew, which caused a stir in its time. Perhaps it was he who endowed his son with that love of form which always characterised him, in his life and talk as well as in his writings. EARLY YEARS 3 Another bequest that the elder made the younger was wit. Mr. Ainger had a racy tongue — there was plenty of salt in his conversation. Many of his sayings, as old friends record, passed into household proverbs, though the deplorable lack of setting down experiences has made it impossible to rescue even one of them from out the gulf of oblivion. ' I can see his funny twinkle when he said them — it is a pleasure to think of him always,' says one, who was often in his house ; and his sallies told the more because of his quiet, dreamy manner and easy- going ways. People were often misled by them and imagined him to be 'soft' — a fact which would at once have been refuted by any one who had business dealings with him. Generous and sensitive and shy, he did not reveal himself easily, except in intimacy, over a keen game of chess (he was a fine player), or in talking about his favourite pursuits. He loved books and art — belonging to the Fine Arts Society and boasting several of its medals — but, before all else, he loved science. Mathematics on the one hand, the microscope on the other, absorbed his mind and his leisure, while his friendship with Faraday was an important fact in his life. His scientific out- look told, doubtless, upon his thought. An attentive student of the Bible, as his marginal notes testify, and nominally a Unitarian, he practically maintained a free attitude to all religious bodies and attended neither church nor chapel. ' Why have we been told so much, and yet so little .^^ he used to exclaim regretfully; and thus he remained — in the realm outside conviction of any kind. Those that knew him did not forget him, and his calm but astute personality stamped itself upon the memory of the young friends whom Alfred brought home. ' His father,' writes one of these, ' I can only recall as a quiet figure, receiv- ing his son's companions kindly, but with a certain nervous aloofness — a diffidence akin to Colonel Newcome's in like circumstances. I, the least effervescent of that youthful band, was, perhaps, alone in my consciousness of an observant eye noting our " tricks and manners." In my remembrance I think of him as of Milton's father, keenly interested in his son, guiding without interference, and always ready to withdraw 4 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER into his own elder thoughts, as the other old gentleman did to " his rest and devotion," and like him, I think, " without the least trouble"" imaginable — none certainly that his son could spare him."" The face that his portrait shows us has something of the actor, a good deal of the tliinker, still more of the artist about it. It is massive, with full lips, shrewd eyes and a broad brow, framed by thick hair growing high as if it had visible vitality, and, whatever else it may be, it is essentially the face of a humorist. Yet, in spite of this fact, it bears not the slightest resemblance to the frail fantastic countenance of his son, and is as solid and as literal, if we may say so, as the other is ethereal and elusive. While still young he came to London, and in 1828 he married Miss Jagger of Liverpool. The Jaggers were a musical family, the mother possessing a remark- able voice, while the four daughters were gifted musicians, and two of them taught their art with considerable success. They were all skilful verse-writers, too, and used to amuse their leisure moments by writing poems to one another. Mr. Ainger and his wife settled first in Doughty Street, then in John Street, Southampton Row. At 10 Doughty Street his four children were born — a much-loved boy who died at five years old ; then two girls, Adeline in 1830, and Marianne in 1835; lastly Alfred, in 1837. When he was only two his mother died, and the sensitive spirit that most needed her never knew what her love would have meant. ' ' If any excuse will be allowed to a man at the great day of judgment, will it not be to him who can say, " Lord, I never knew my Mother"?' — so he wrote in his notebook twenty-four years later. All the more did his elder sister, Adeline, seven years his senior, take her place and inspire in his childish heart a feeling which swayed him more than any other, and which, from his infancy onwards, took on it the tinge of romance. In these first days he was the pride and pleasure of his father, who delighted in this responsive little boy. He took especial pleasure in his movements, and used to flick him with his handkerchief to make him dance, an accomplishment which the baby excelled in, tripping and EARLY YEARS 5 turning like a fairy with quick, windlike motions. The child in this was father to the man, for the gift never left him, although in his clerical days he had not the same scope for it. It was the counterpart of his other attainment, his whistling — shrill, silvery and birdlike — which also began in early days, as if the fairies had bestowed an elfin pipe upon him at his christening. Little letters signed 'Your affection- ate Scaramouch'; round-hand records of how high he swung and how he got on with his Latin ; ' Villain,"' the playful nickname by which ' Scaramouch ' retaliated upon his father — all these signs, small in themselves, show the ease and good- fellowship between them, and their jokes together made the merriment of the household. But Mr. Ainger married again, and this fact, coupled with the speedy advent of a second family, doubtless made some difference in his subsequent intercourse with the first. Alfred's childhood continued, however, to be a happy one, as outwardly eventless and in- wardly eventful as childhood is wont to be. One real episode was a trip that he took at seven years old with his stepmother and elder sister to Coblentz, to visit his Aunt Nicol there. It was his first peep into foreign lands and it may have left with him that love of the Rhine which he always kept, and some sweet echo of German music to haunt him in after years. One of his cousins can remember how he sketched ; how eagerly he listened to the story of Ulysses with which she beguiled his walks with her; and how she tried to teach him German, all in vain, the only words he mastered being Du hist ein Schwein, which he picked up for himself and used as repartee to those who vexed him. But he soon returned to England and normal life, and a letter that he wrote this same year to his crony, ' Jocky,' shows the pursuits that filled his days. ' My DEAn JocKY, — I should like you to come and see me very much, for I have got a very nice studio to take all ray friends in when we want to have a little private conversation. ' I have got a statue and some very fine oil-paintings in it, and a I'eading-desk and a pair of globes. I heard the other day it was your birthday, it is only a few weeks since mine. I was 7 on the ninth of February. 6 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER ' I have just finished writing a book^ which I have called Rambles in Wales, it has 14 pages in it you shall read it when you come here. I have got a delightful book called the Rejected Addresses. I have read it through a great many times. I think you would like it too. — Your friend, Alfred Ainger.' The ' I have read it through a great many times. I think you would like it too ' — the settling, bee-like, inside the book he loved till he had got all its honey — the quickness and sobriety of judgment, above all the need of a companion with whom to share his enjoyment — these traits of his at seven years old remained as characteristic at sixty-seven. Indeed his tastes, man or child, at any period of his life, are summed up in this little note — talk and space and tranquil privacy, diversified by the pangs and joys of authorship and the pleasure of holiday rambles in Wales or elsewhere. His choice too of Rejected Addresses was significant of what came after. Parody is a sympathetic rather than a creative gift, and, if it count at all, must mean strong literary sympathies, and actual identification with the authors parodied. From the first Alfred showed signs of his parodying wit and of the strong literary affinities which, as the years went on, became like personal partialities. He used to say that he owed his love of literature to Elegant Extracts, which he constantly studied as a child, and that the other book which then fascinated him was a cookery-book to which — so he liked to say — he ascribed his knowledge of food. His fancy played round all that he read and lent a second life to his reading. But Lamb's Tales soon led him to Shakespeare, and a new world opened before him. Books, however, were not his only resource. From the first his literary sympathies found another outlet — in his youth the main one — that of acting. When he was still quite small he loved to act a part, and to mystify, even in the commonest domestic incidents of life. The only story of his childhood still extant is characteristic enough. His stepmother had sent him upstairs to see what the baby of the moment was about. He returned with a grave but unconcerned air : ' The baby,' he said, ' is sucking needles, sitting with its legs hang- EARLY YEARS ing over the window-sill.'' As he grew older, the actor in him grew more conscious — more polished is perhaps the better word — and he and his sisters were always acting. Their Christmas plays became the events of the neighbourhood. Adeline, the elder sister, was a musician and had besides a pretty gift for versifying, while Marianne, the younger, was more like him in wit, although her tongue was more caustic than his. Presently Alfred became playwright as well as actor, and the programme of his Midas, a drama written in his early teens and famous in his own circle, is, as it were, an epitome of youth and festivity. As such, it is worth reproducing here, unchastened by any excision. NEVER ACTED THEATRE ROYAL, CARLTON HILL This Evening Tuesday, April 27th, 1852 Will be produced (First Time) an entirely New and Original Grand Comico-Classicalj Romantic, Pathetic, Moral, and Musical Burlesque, composed expressly for the Carlton Hill Company by Alfred Ainger, Jun., with entirely New Scenery, Dresses, Decorations, and Appointments, entitled MIDAS Dramatis Personce Midas (King of Phrygia) . Silenus (a Satyr, a little overcome) Apollo Mercury . Genius oj Burlesque Attendant . Court Executioner Anaxyra (a blooming Princess) Mr. A. Ainger, Jun. Mr. Charles Dickens, Jun. Miss Stone. Miss M. Ainger. Signor Pasquinado. Mr. W. Elderton. Mr. John Ketch. Miss Julia Smalls. Dresses by Miss M. Ainger. Scenery by Miss Ainger. Sole Lessee and Manager, Mr. A. Ainger, Jun. Previous to the performance, a Brilliant Overture will be performed by Mrs. and Miss Ainger. Vivat Regina, 8 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER The play did not only boast a programme, but pen-and-ink illustrations behind the scenes by Miss Stone, the artist of the group — illustrations full of Hessian boots and pompous ' pro- perties' and obscure jokes which must once have set a troop of young people laughing. The manuscript, carefully tran- scribed in a feminine hand, is much what might be expected from any brilliant boy of fifteen — full of squib-like allusions and extravagant brilliance, some of it rather elaborate, as youthful wit is wont to be. Alfred's acting must have been much more remarkable than his writing, and his power of transforming himself was, from the beginning, unique. His powers in this way were striking enough to disturb friends as well as amuse them. In Hampstead, where the Aingers often took summer lodgings, there was a certain old gentleman of strict views and regular habits, whose large family of boys and girls often claimed Alfred as master of their revels. His acting had, however, so subversive an effect upon the sobriety of the house, that its head, perhaps himself affected, found the results unendurable. ' I won't have that damned tragedian in the place!' he cried, and his objurgation is the highest testimonial he could have offered to the innocent actor of fifteen. The Aingers had other friends in Hampstead, chief among them the Johnstons, whose town house in Bayswater Terrace Mr. Ainger had built for them. Then, and for nearly forty years afterwards, they made a country home of the Manor House at North End, whose hospitable walls and garden have, under their reign, listened to so many notable guests. The Hampstead of those days Avas a little rural town, with its own local life and its own Assembly Rooms, where it held its choice Conversazioni. The Miss Johnstons were about the same age as the young Aingers, and the two families set up one of those close relationships, full of daily meetings and neighbourly runnings in and out, so much more possible then than now. Neighbours still existed as a I'ace, not a name, before district railways and other machines abolished them and their reality, nor was it yet the fashion to pack the day so full with distant engagements. Distraction is a great leveller of character, and Mrs. AiNGEK. (alkred ai.\<;ek's moiher. ) l-'roin a )niiiiature. EARLY YEARS 9 sixty and odd years ago there was more originality than now. Directly we strive for a quality, as nowadays we strive for originality, we may assume that it is dead or dying ; and the social circles of the forties and fifties showed more unconscious independence of mind, stronger prejudices, and more concen- trated warmth than are at present common. The Johnstons can still remember delightful escapades and excursions with the Aingers : an expedition to Kew by carriage with postilions riding before ; quips and quizzings, exquisitely funny to youth and impossible to preserve; or innocent impromptu escapades — rhymed letters to unknown recipients, and valentines, models of epigram, in which Adeline especially excelled. Of course all were alike the accomplices of the inspiring Alfred, but she had a vein of her own and would sometimes start forth on independent jokes. More serious matters also occupied the brother and his sisters. There were books as well as play, and constant keen literary discussions over the new works of Kingsley and of Tennyson. And there was a great deal of music. This was Mrs. Ainger's chief bond with her step-children, and she her- self was no inconsiderable musician, so that Alfred's love of music was early fed on the right food and his gift, expressed in singing, found due training from the outset. AVhen he was twelve years old, there came a great change in his life. His health was always delicate, necessitating constant care, and till now he had been sent daily to University College School, which was close to his second home in John Street. There is not much to record of him there beyond the fact that, at eleven, he gained the first prize for French. But some time in 1849 his parents moved to St. John's Wood; and that same year they sent him away to a boarding-school at Carlton Hill, an event that bore unlooked-for results affecting his whole course. It here becomes necessary to sum up in as few words as possible the religious conditions under which he had been brought up, because his attitude in this respect was always the keynote of his career. These conditions were unusual. His father, as we have seen, was nominally a Unitarian, and 10 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER so, at first, was his stepmother, though not much more devout than her husband in the profession of her creed. In later days, under the influence of Mr. Bellew, the well-known flowery preacher, Mrs. Ainger transferred her affections to the Church of England and had all her family baptized according to its rites ; but, in childish days, the little boy was taken to Uni- tarian services and was brought up amid a Unitarian society. The atmosphere of his home was not religious, and both he and his sister Adeline had sensitive and spiritual natures, yearning for faith and discipline, for warmth and light, and finding the climate of home uncongenial to their instincts. The school at Carlton Hill to which Alfred now went was kept by a man remarkable both for his scholarship and char- acter, and he and his three daughters, soon Alfred's greatest friends, were keen admirers of Frederick Denison Maurice, whom they regularly went to hear at Lincoln's Inn Chapel. Hither they took Alfred every Sunday ; and it was here, under the religious spell of that great personality — the double spell of the preacher and of the beautiful ritual now his, as it were, for the first time — that the boy at last found what he had wanted. The religion which was to last him his life, to com- fort and restrain and uphold him, thus came to him not as to others. It came as a great emotion, making all things new, and IMaurice remained its representative. The remembrance of his sermons did not fade with time. * There is,' he wrote long after, ' one among them, on the raising of Lazarus, simpler, I think, than his wont, and presenting fewer of his peculiar difficulties of thought and style. It is sixteen years since that balmy summer afternoon when I heard him deliver it in the solemn, quiet chapel of Lincoln's Inn ; and even as I write I see the " prophets blazoned on the panes" of the ancient windows, and look up to that living prophet-face which no one who ever saw it could forget, and hear once more ' " The trembling fervency of prayer With which he led our souls the prayerful way." ' That same prophet inspired him till the last days of his life. ' Go upstairs and look at Maurice's portrait ; it will do you EARLY YEARS 11 good to see his face,' he said to a young man who, shortly before his death, had been sitting by his bedside writing his letters for him. Mr. King, his schoolmaster, had methods of teaching far in advance of his time. An enthusiast for the classics and for literature, he could not bear mechanical lessons, and tried to make learning part of life instead of making life into learning. To his pupils he was ever a man first, not a pedagogue, and more than one of them has since made a mark in the world. Here Charles Dickens sent his sons, and so did Macready the actor — their appointed lessons are set down side by side with those of their schoolmate Alfred Ainger ; here, too, Frederic Harrison began life, and others more or less distinguished. There was no academic mustiness in the school atmosphere, for the Kings had interesting friends and their Thursday evenings were frequented by people of note, by Charles Dickens and Sir Edwin Landseer and by Keightley, the writer. Mr. King's younger girl w-orked with the boys, and began and continued Greek with Alfred ; her elder sister, Louisa, a polished and deeply-versed scholar, taught Greek in the school and was, beside her father, the only teacher of that tongue there. She had never had a readier pupil than the boy who now entered her class, for Alfred, hitherto confined to Latin, was enchanted by the Greek language and, spurred on by his girl companion, who vied with him in zeal, over- came the rudiments with remarkable speed and quickly plunged into Euripides. Their occupations, however, were not always scholastic. As quickly as Alfred mastered Greek did he grow to be one of the family, and his Sunday evenings with them remained, as his letters testify, ' green places ' in his memory long after. ' Where 's Alfred ? ' Mrs. King would ask at any meal at which he was a few minutes late, and Alfred would enter soon after, often with some little dainty that he knew she fancied. ' Where's Alfred ? ' became indeed a constant refrain on the lips of every member of the house- hold. There still remains a frolic sermon, inscribed to his playfellow, Gertrude King, on the text ' Do sit still and be quiet ' — a homily divided into headings and directed against 12 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER too much unselfishness. The same ' Gertrude' keeps a lively memory of a churchgoing not so solemn as usual, an occasion when they did not go to hear Maurice and when the preacher took the Woman of Samaria as his subject. ' She was,' he said, ' a Avoman of remarkable energy. She had had five husbands.' Alfred's companion never forgot his face, nor his form trembling with suppressed laughter at this climax of eloquence, and the clergyman's words were that day unforgotten by at least two members of his flock. Alfred Ainger's school-life had some unexpected results, and not the least important of these was his friendship with Charles Dickens, whose sons were Alfred's comrades at school. ' I have seen him and have touched him,' was all that he could say on his return from spending the evening for the first time at the great man's house. The relationship in itself was epoch- making in Ainger's life, but it had a more direct effect. It moulded, perhaps we should rather say fashioned, his literary humour and his outlook upon men ; evoking a ready response from something that lay already there, waiting for the magician's wand to spring into life; and, once for all, shaping his dramatic talent. From his schooldays and for several years onwards, Alfred took part in all the play-actings at Tavistock House, with the emperor of fun, Boz himself, as stage- manager, and sometimes as fellow-actor. Charles Dickens found an apt learner, one who could follow nimbly his will-o'- the-wisp leading, flashing back some of his own light upon him, answering genius in its own coin — smaller change, natur- ally, but stamped in the same mint. Dickens delighted in teaching him and used to say that he had never seen so docile a pupil. And Ainger's acting at sixteen or seventeen must have had the real electric quality, since his singing of ' Miss Villikins' in the part of Lord Grizzle, on Twelfth Night, 1854, caused Thackeray to 'roll off his chair' in a burst of laughter that became ' absurdly contagious.' The play was Fielding's Tom TJmmh, and was acted at Tavistock House — it is Forster, in his Life of Dickens^ who chronicles the episode. Nor does Forster speak without authority, for he used to take part in these high revels. Alfred Ainger himself has EARLY YEARS 13 recorded his impressions in a paper that was written some eighteen years later, soon after the death of Charles Dickens, when sorrow had sharpened and concentrated the remem- brance of those early days,^ ' What niffhts have we seen at the " Mermaid " ! ' What even- ings were those at Tavistock House, when the best wit and fancy and culture of the day met within its hospitable walls ! There was Thackeray, towering in bodily form above the crowd, even as he towered in genius above them all, save only one : Jen-old, with the blue convex eye, which seemed to pierce into the very heart of things and trace their subtle resemblances ; Leech, with his frank and manly beauty, fresh from the portrayal of " Master Jacky," or some other of the many forms of boyhood he knew so well: Mark Lemon, "the frolic and the gentle" (dear to all us younger ones, irrespective of blood-relationship, as " Uncle Mark") : Albert Smith, dropping in late in the evening after a two or three thousandth ascent of Mont Blanc, but never refusing, at our earnest entreaty, to sit down to the piano and sing us " My Lord Tomnoddy," or his own latest edition of " Galignani's Messenger " : Augustus Egg, with his dry humour, touching from contrast with the face of suffering that gave sad presage of his early death : Frank Stone, the kindly neighbour and friend, keen as any of us boys for his part in the after-piece : Stanfield, with the beam- ing face, ''a largess universal like the sun," his practised hand and brush prompt to gladden us with masterpieces of scene- painting for the Lighthouse or the Icefields : and last, but not here to be dismissed with a few lines only — our bountiful host, like Triplet, " author, manager, and actor too " ; organiser, deviser, and harmoniser of all the incongruous assembled elements ; the friend whom we have so lately lost — the incomparable Dickens. ... In one sense our theatricals began and ended in the school- room. To the last that apartment served us for stage and audi- torium and all. But in another sense we got promotion from the children's domain by degrees. Our earliest efforts were confined to the children of the family and their equals in age, though always aided and abetted by the good-natured manager, who improvised costumes, painted and corked our innocent cheeks, and suggested all the most effective business of the scene. Our first attempt was the performance of Albert Smith's little burletta ^ Macinillan^s Magazine, 1 871. 14 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER of Guy Fawkes, which appeared originally in the pages of his monthly periodical, the Man in the Moon ; at another time we played William Tell, from the late Mr. Robert Brough's clever little volume, A Crac/cer Bon-bon for Evening Parties. In those days there were still extravaganzas written with real humour and abundant taste and fancy. The Bi-oughs, Gilbert a Beckett, and Mr. Planche could write rhymed couplets of great literary excel- lence, without ever overstepping the bounds of reverence and good taste. . . . Mr. Brough brought up before Gesler for "con- tempt of hat " ; Albert, his precocious son, resolving that, as to betraying his father, " though torn in half, I '11 not be made to split" ; and when he comforts his father, about to shoot at the apple, by assuring him that he is "game," the father replying, " Wert thou gatne, I would preserve, not shoot thee." This is drollery, it seems to us, not unworthy of Sydney Smith or Hood, and in no way to be placed in the same catalogue with the vulgarities and inanities of a later brood. ' Another year found us more ambitious, and with stronger resources, for Mr. Dickens himself and Mr. Mark Lemon joined our acting staff, though, with kindly consideration for their young brethren, they chose subordinate parts. In Mr. Planche's elegant and most witty fairy exti-avaganza of Fortmiio and his Seven Gifted Servants, Mr. Dickens took the part of the old Baron Dunover, whose daughters so valiantly adopt man's attire and go to the wars ; Mr. Lemon contenting himself with the role of the Dragon, who is overcome by Fortunio's stratagem of adulter- ating the well, whither he usually resorted to quench his thirst, with a potent admixture of sherry. What fun it was, both on and off the stage ! The gorgeous dresses from the eminent costumier of the Theatres Royal; our heads bewigged and our cheeks rouged by the hands of Mi*. Clarkson himself; the properties from the Adelphi ; the unflagging humour and suggestive resources of our manager, who took upon him the charge of every- thing, from the writing of the playbills to the composition of the punch, brewed for our refreshment between the acts, but "craftily qualified," as Michael Cassio would have said, to suit the capacities of the childish brain, for Dickens never forgot the maxima reverentia due to children, and some of us were of very tender age : the comedian who played (in a complete jockey's suit and top-boots) Fortunio's servant Lightfoot was — we are afraid to say how young — but it was somewhere between two and three, and he was announced in the bill as having been EARLY YEARS 15 " kept out of bed at a vast expense." The same veracious document represented the sole lessee and manager of the Theatre Royal, Tavistock House, as Mr. Vincent Crummies, dis- guising Mr. Dickens himself in the list of dramatis personce as the "Modern Roscius/' and Mark Lemon as the "Infant Pheno- menon" — an exquisitely conceived surprise for the audience, who by no means expected from the description to recognise in the character the portly form of the editor of Ptmch. The time, by the way, must have been the winter preceding the commence- ment of hostilities with Russia, for Mr. Dickens took advantage of there being a ferocious despot in the play — the Emperor Matapa — to identify him with the Czar in a capital song (would we could recall it !) to the tune of " The Cork Leg," in which the Emperor described himself as "the Robinson Crusoe of absolute state," and declared that though he had at his Court "many a show-day and many a high-day," he hadn't in all his dominions "a Friday!" Mr. Planche had in one portion of the extravaganza put into the mouth of this character for the moment a few lines of burlesque upon Macbeth, and we remember Mr. Dickens's unsuccessful attempt to teach the performer how to imitate Macready, whom he (the performer) had never seen ! And after the performance, when we were restored to our evening-party costumes, and the schoolroom was cleared for dancing, still a stray " property " or two had escaped the vigilant eye of the property-man ; for Douglas Jerrold had picked up the horse's head (Fortunio's faithful steed Comrade), and was holding it up before the greatest living animal painter, with " Looks as if it knew you, Edwin ! " ' Another time we attempted Fielding's Tom Thumb, using O'Hara's altered version, further abridged and added to by the untiring master of our ceremonies. Fielding's admirable piece of mock-heroic had always been a favourite of Charles Dickens. It has often been noticed how rarely he quotes in his books, but the reader of Pickwick will remember how in an early chapter of that immortal work Mr. Alfred Jingle sings the two lines : — " In hurry, post-haste, for a licence. In hurry, ding-song, I come back." They are from Lord Grizzle's song in Tom Thumb. Mr. Lemon played the giantess Glumdalca, in an amazing get-up of a com- plete suit of armour and a coal-scuttle bonnet ; and Mr. Dickens the small part of the ghost of Gaffer Thumb, singing his own 16 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER song, on the occasion, a verse of which may be quoted, if only to illustrate the contrast between the styles of the earlier and later burlesques. In O'Hara's version the ghost appeai-s to King Arthur, singing : — " Pale death is prowling. Dire omens scowling Doom thee to slaughter. Thee, thy wife and daughter ; Furies are growling With horrid groans. Grizzle's rebellion What need I tell you on ? Or by a red cow Tom Thumb devour'd ? Hark the cock crowing, [Cock crows.] I must be going. I can no more ! " [Vanishes."] Mr. Dickens's substituted lines were, as nearly as we remember, the following : — " I 've got up from my churchyard bed. And assumed the perpendicular. Having something to say in my head. Which isn't so very particular ! I do not appear in sport, But in earnest, all danger scorning — I 'm in your service, in short, And I hereby give you warning — [Cock crows.] Who 's dat crowing at the door .'' Dere 's some one in the house with Dinah ! I'm called (so can't say more) By a voice from Cochin China ! " Nonsense, it may be said, all this; but the nonsense of a great genius has always something of genius in it. ' The production next year, on the same stage, of the drama of The Lighthouse, marked a great step in the rank of our perform- ances. The play was a touching and tragic story, founded, if we ai-e not mistaken, upon a tale by the same author, Mr. Wilkie Collins, which appeared in an early number of his friend's weekly journal. Household Words. The principal characters were sus- tained by Mr. Dickens, Mr. Mark Lemon, Mr. Wilkie Collins, and the ladies of Mr. Dickens's family. The scenery Avas painted by Clarkson Stanfield, and comprised a drop-scene representing EARLY YEARS 17 the exterior of Eddystone Lighthouse, and a room in the interior in which the whole action of the drama was carried on. The prologue was written, we believe, by Mr. Dickens, and we can recall as if it were yesterday the impressive elocution of Mr, John Forster as he spoke behind the scenes the lines which follow : — *' A story of those rocks where doomed ships come To cast their wrecks upon the steps of home : Where solitary men, the whole year through, The wind their music, and the brine their view, Teach mariners to shun the fatal light, — A story of those rocks is here to-night : Eddystone Lighthouse." Here the green curtain rose and discovered Stanfield's drop- scene, the Lighthouse, its lantern illuminated by a transparency. . . . The main incident of the plot — the confession of a murder by the old sailor, 'Aaron Gurnock, under pressure of impending death from starvation (no provisions being able to reach the light- house owing to a continuance of bad weather), and his subsequent retraction of the confession when supplies unexpectedly arrive — afforded Mr. Dickens scope for a piece of acting of great power. 'The farce of Mr. Nightingale s Dianj, the joint production of Dickens and Mark Lemon, wliich followed Mr. Collins's play at Tavistock House, was well calculated to exhibit the versatility of the principal actor. Mr. Dickens played one Mr. Gabblewig, in which character he assumed four or five different disguises, changing his dress, voice, and look with a rapidity and complete- ness which the most practised "entertainer" might envy. This whimsical piece of extravagance had been before played by the same actors in the performances for the benefit of the Guild of Literature and Art, but has never been printed, except privately for the use of the original actors. What portions were contri- buted by the joint authors respectively we can only surmise ; but there were certain characters and speeches which bore veiy clearly stamped upon them the mark of their authorship. One of the characters played by Mr. Dickens was an old lady, in great trouble and perplexity about a missing child ; of which character (being nameless in the drama) he always spoke, when he had occasion to refer to her off the stage, as Mrs. Gamp, some of whose speeches were as well worthy of preservation for droll extravagance of incongruity as the best of her famous prototype in Martin Chuzzlewit, In addition to her perplexity about the B 18 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER missing infant, she is further embarrassed as to the exact surname of Mr. Nightingale, whose name she remembers to be that of a bird, but cannot always refer to the correct species of that order. A quotation we make from memory will leave no doubt as to the fertile and singular fancy from whose mint it came : — ' " No, sir, I will not leave the house ! I will not leave the establishment without my child, my .boy. My boy, sir, which he were his mother's hope and his father's pride, and no one as I am aweer on's joy. Vich the name as was giv' to this blessedest of infants and vorked in best Vitechapel mixed upon a pin-cushion and ' Save the mother ' likewise, were Abjalom, after his own parential father, Mr. Nightingale, who no other ways than by being guv' to liquor, lost a day's vork at the wheelwright business, vich it was but limited, Mr. Skylark, being veels of donkey-chaises and goats ; and vun vas even drawn by geese for a wager, and came up the aisle o' the parish church one Sunday arternoon by reason of the perwerseness of the animals, as could be testified by Mr. Wix the beadle, afore he died of drawing on Vellinton boots to which he was not accustomed, after an 'earty meal of roast beef and a pickled walnut to which he were too parjial ! Yes, Mr. Robin Redbreast, in the marble fontin of that theer church was he baptized Abjalom, vich never can be unmade or undone, I am proud to say, not to please nor give offence to no one, nohows and noveres, sir, . . . Ah ! ' affliction sore long time Maria Nightingale bore ; physicians was in vain ' — not that I am aweer she had any one in particular, sir, excepting one, vhich she tore his hair by handfuls out in consequence of disagreements relative to her complaint ; and dead she is and will be, as the hosts of the Egyptian fairies ; and this I shall prove, directly minute, on the evingdence of my brother the sexton, whom I shall here produce, to your confusion, young person, in the twinkling of a star or humin eye ! " 'Scarcely had the old woman quitted the stage when Mr. Dickens reappeared as "my brother the sexton," a very old gentleman indeed, with a quavery voice and self-satisfied smile (pleasantly suggesting how inimitable must have been the same actor's manner as Justice Shallow), and afflicted with a "hardness of hearing " which almost baffled the efforts of his interrogators to obtain from him the desired information as to the certificate of Mrs. Nightingale's decease. " It 's no use your whispering to me, sir," was the gentle remonstrance which the first loud shout in his ear elicited ; and on the question being put whether " he had EARLY YEARS 19 ever buried " — he at once interrupted to reply that he had brewed; and that he and his old woman — "my old woman was a Kentish woman, gentlemen ; one year^ sir, we brewed some of the strongest ale that ever you drank, sir ; they used to call it down in our part of the country (in allusion, you understand, to its great strength, gentlemen) 'Samson with his hair on.' . . . A third character in the farce, sustained by Dickens, was that of a malade hnaginnire, for the time being under treatment by a new specific, "mustard and milk," the merits of which he could not highly enough extol, but which, nevertheless, was not so soothing in its effects but that the patient gave every minute a loud shriek — explaining apologetically, "That's the mustard!" followed immediately by a still louder one, "That 's the milk ! " We are afraid to say in how many other disguises our manager appeared, but there was certainly one othei-, a footman or waiter, in which character the actor gave us a most amusing caricature of the manner of one of his own servants ; and we remember with what glee, one night at supper after rehearsal, Dickens learned that the man in question had been heard imitating his master in the part for the amusement of his fellow-servants, in utter ignorance that he himself had sat in the first instance for the portrait.' Meanwhile, amid all this social stir, Alfred was maturing and quickening his pace towards manhood. Charles Dickens and Frederick Maurice sound incongruous names to couple, yet both played an equal part in his existence. For Dickens was the other great influence which at this, the most impression- able moment, more or less formed Alfred's life and, to some extent, his career. And this is no chance effect of his fortunate contact with the two men, it springs from a deeper cause. For they represent, as it were, his dual nature, the two distinct sides of his character which he always kept strictly apart ; on the one hand the sober and spiritual, on the other the humorous and dramatic. In most complex persons the varied elements are so fused that the conflicting threads in the woof are almost indistinguishable. In his case there was never any fusion ; there was, instead, a clear-cut contrast, and his differing tendencies ran alongside of each other on parallel roads to the end. Dickens, as we have said, defined and gave 20 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER voice to his tastes ; Maurice, whose teaching took even stronger hold upon him, satisfied his spiritual instincts and his great need of seriousness; and, early crystallising his beliefs, probably turned his thoughts towards the possibility of taking orders. The counsels of the elder Miss King, whose advice weighed considerably with him, also drew him this way. But the idea came gradually ; as yet it had taken no shape, or assumed any permanent hold, and other plans intervened. Many causes, public and private, made Maurice about this time the most prominent person in his thoughts. When Alfred was sixteen, he left Mr. King's school and proceeded to King's College, London, where Maurice was at that time Professor of Divinity and of English Literature. It was just then, in the year 1853, that his volume of Theological Essays appeared. What happened thereupon will be remembered : how the Council of King's College condemned certain passages in the book concerning a future life and eternal punishment as heterodox and harmful, and on that charge dismissed Maurice from his professorial chair. Alfred Ainger's boyish wrath knew no bounds at this catastrophe to the College and to the master who inspired its students — whose only crime had been to rob religion of its terrors and make God more accessible — the man whom he regarded as the revelation of true Christianity. Miss King still remembers how he looked as he came into her room with the first news of the verdict, all his indignation fresh upon him ; and how, under the pressure, as it were, of his anger, he suddenly broke into a lightning-flash of verse. He was strong in his defence and in later years he formulated it. ' It is/ he wrote long after, ' a remark of Maurice's own (I forget where) that the man who is most careful about the precise and accurate meaning of the words he uses is sure to be accused by those who do not understand him of juggling with them. This has been his own fate. Because he went back to the fountain- head of Christian doctrine for the primary meaning of life, death, eternal, sin, miracle, and other apparently simple, and really all but unfathomable words, he was supposed by those who were EARLY YEARS 21 repelled by his method to be using them in an arbitrary sense of his own, invented by him to justify some foregone conclusion. . . . After all, the key to understanding the writings of Maurice is one of a moral rather than intellectual kind. It is an appreciation of, and sympathy with, his spiritual temper which soon finds his language clear and his method reasonable. The often-quoted lines of his favourite Wordsworth are as ajiplicable to him as to the imaginary character of whom they were written — that we must love him, ere to us he will seem worthy of our love. The old editors of Shakespeare had perhaps the same vague idea of which was cause and which was effect^ when they used language about their great dramatist which I venture here to apply to Frederick Maurice : " If you do not like him, you are in some manifest danger not to understand him. . . .'" In these College days, we see Alfred Ainger very much as he was to be, his gifts full-grown, his tastes and qualities almost developed. And that faculty for friendship which was to mean so much to him now began to take a prominent part in his life. At King's College he found two, at least, of his lifelong friends, and another whose own death in middle life alone cut off the intercourse between them. This was William Elderton, already his schoolmate at Mr. King's, a serious-minded, thoughtful lad and the confidant of Alfred's spiritual reflections, who became his chief correspondent when Ainger left town for Cambridge. Of the other two, one was Richard C. Browne, his comrade-at-arms in letters and his literary counsellor, a position which he always retained although he lived away from London ; and the last, not the least, was Horace Smith, the dear familiar companion, in- separably linked to Alfred, first here, then at the University, later still at the Temple, where his name is known and loved in many capacities — whether as Bencher or ' Beak ' — poet or writer of essays. ' I first/ he writes, ' became acquainted with Alfred Ainger when we met at King's College, London. We were of the same year in College, and of the same age within a month or two. I remember that, at first, before I knew his name, I called him " the whistling boy." He used to perch upon a desk in one of the class-rooms, always in some impossibly contorted attitude, generally whistling a 22 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER sonata of Beethoven^ or the " Carnival of Venice " with variations, perhaps humming the same in a low, sweet, tenor voice. He was always full of fun, even of some mischief, but he had no physical strength for sports of any kind ; and so fragile was he in appear- ance that people would wonder if he could live through the year. During the three years we were together at King's College, I don't think we did much woi-k, except in the English Literature class, where we were graciously pleased to write essays for Professor Brewer, whom we enthusiastically admired ; and we were frequently called upon to read our essays out loud to the class.' But if he was not garnering many data, he was certainly gathering experience. ' In the lecture-room,' writes another King"'s Collegian, ' he was rather an observer than a learner. The proceedings were to him in the nature of a spectacle, and the mirth they sometimes afforded him was but too infectious.' Sometimes it was a joke, sometimes an imper- sonation, sometimes a verse dashed off, that made a whole class helpless with merriment. And his fun, even his mimicry, never offended anybody. Now he would ' elicit shrieks of laughter by his delicately accented reproduction of the way in which a student, entering the College Hall with books under his arm, was wont to look up at the clock — a slighter thing could not be — but it was irresistible, and the original enjoyed it as much as any one.' Now again he would break into a skit on some event of the moment — such as was suggested by seeing ' Mr. and Mr. engaged in the irrelevant pastime of Tit-tat-to during a lecture.' Ainger instantly wrote on a sheet of paper, scrawled over with mathematical calculations : — ' Life is a game at Tit-tat-to With all its gains and losses — But not to all men : some I know Ne'er meet with aught but crosses. I know the wise may toil in vain. And when their labour's past May profit nothing by their pain ; Tom Fool gets all at last.' But directly the theme of the academic lecturer had any EARLY YEARS 23 connection with Literature, Alfred ceased to be an improvisor, and became a concentrated listener. It was characteristic of him that he only developed upon the lines he had chosen from the first, and that he made no effort to branch out into by-paths of learning. To literature he gave most of his time, both when he worked and when he played. His actual achievements were not so remarkable in this direction as was the maturity of his taste. Charles Lamb he discovered for himself, and early made himself acquainted with every corner associated with EUa. Crabbe he already knew and loved, a choice even more unexpected in youth. Contemporary writers — Kingsley, Ruskin, Thackeray, Dickens — naturally absorbed him, and there now came into his ken the poet who was to mean most to him, the poetic influence which certainly most affected him. It was in the early fifties that he came across In Memoriam, and felt he had discovered a world. He and his friend, Richard Browne, together with two others, would take the book out on spring afternoons to the terrace of Somerset House and read it together there, 'sitting by the stone lions and looking across the river to the Surrey hills.' And after that some volume of Tennyson's was never far from Alfred's hand. The other pursuit that absorbed him in his leisure moments was music. Music-haunted he had been since his birth. From first to last beautiful music moved him to a kind of ecstasy; he lived as if on some Prospero's island, surrounded by ' music in the air,' This love, which was apart from performance, would always be surprising in a schoolboy and was doubly so in those early Victorian days, when it was anything but fashionable for men to be musical and it required something like courage for a lad to proclaim himself exceptional. Alfred found two or three companions in this taste and they used to resort together to Fentum's, a music- warehouse in the Strand, there to play and to sing, trying over the music they cared for, Mendelssohn and Schubert and Schumann, to their heart's content. Alfred was usually a listener on these occasions and here laid the firm foundation of that well- stored memory which stood him in good stead through later 24 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER years. A gift for the piano, however, was his by nature — a gift which he only used for light purposes. He soon was able to accompany the songs and sketches of his own which he now began to perform. They were sketches in the manner of Corney Grain, or of his greater predecessor, John Parry, whose musical feats delighted Mendelssohn. One of these entertainments of Ainger's, given in youthful days, is memor- able. It is one of the audience who describes it ^ : — ' The Rev. Dr. Camming, of Crown Court, was the interpreter of prophecy most generally acceptable to persons wholly in- competent to deal with the subject. He had, therefore, a very numerous following. He was given to predicting the end of the world at some date near at hand. The date was, from time to time, unavoidably postponed, and it was unkindly remarked that the Doctor had his stock of coal replenished as usual. The approach of the Great Tribulation had been announced in his work bearing that title. In one of A. A.'s chronicle songs, the author was commemorated as : — ''the eminent Low-Church Divine Who is putting us up to a proximate sign. And tells us, without any ha-ing or hum-ming, What a very great Affliction is — coming!" ' One evening, the singer had passed to the next verse and was looking at his audience, when into the brighter light around the piano a figui'e emerged from the comparative gloom. It was the Doctor, who took the matter sensibly and good-humouredly.' Wherever Ainger went his songs and improvisings seem to have left an echo. He and Horace Smith, who lived in Bayswater, always started on their homeward walk together, and Alfred would be not infrequently persuaded to turn his steps away from St. John's Wood and return to his friend's house. ' He was as full of frolic, fun and noise,' as the ' Country Fair ' of which he used to sing. In these days his high spirits simply bubbled up incessantly, although he suffered from relapses at times, possibly from sheer exhaustion. He had frequent headaches and sickness. His power of throwing off these attacks and becoming wildly excited and ^ Mr. R. C. Browne. V \, Alfred Aingkr at eighteen years of age. /•"ro;« « /'hotos:raph by Miss Johnston. EART.Y YEARS 25 amusing in a moment, was astonishing. Everybody who came into contact with him spoilt him and he was like a spoilt child. If in a mixed company one or two persons were not quite to his taste, he would retire into himself in com- plete silence; but as soon as these one or two persons left the room, he would jump up, cut most fantastic capers and shout ' owio let us have some fun.' In his failings, as in his gifts, the boy Avas father to the man. This wayward moodiness of his, which those who loved him later knew so well, acted from the first like a spell which he himself seemed powerless to break. Even as a boy at school his silences were alarming and his dislikes were apparently unaccountable, dependent on some habit, some gesture, or chance word that offended his fastidious taste ; and if he once took objection to a person he did not get over it — his feeling crystallised into prejudice. Never, in these early days, even while he was at the Kings', could he be brought to like the husbands who carried off his friends, and he showed an almost feminine caprice in his attitude towards them. There was an element of freakishness about him which always made him unique, but which, as the years went on, became softened and mellowed by the sympathies which grew with experience and by the judgment which they brought him. His whims, however, did not mar his lovableness, or the sunny sweetness of his nature. The qualities for which he was spoilt were just those that were beyond spoiling. The finest memorial and the most impressive that he left behind him at King's College was one which was droller than his play and more truly educational than any academic work. He was, we have said, music-haunted ; he was Shakspeare- haunted too. He was a deep and constant reader of the poet, helped, where his ignorance of life limited him, by the actor's insight and an acute literary perception. His Shakespeare readings were never forgotten by his contemporaries, and one who heard them has recorded the effect they produced.^ 'In 1855, the King's College Shakespearian Society was founded. He was its first President. The readings began with 1 Mr. R. C. Browne. 26 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER Romeo and Juliet (Nov. 25th). He filled the parts of Gregory and the Nurse, and the rendering of the latter was ideal. On December 5th the Society presented As You Like It, with A. A. as Touchstone, in the manner of Compton, then the accepted repre- sentative of the " fool i' the forest." But it was in Twelflh Night that he showed the full power of his interpretation. Sir Andrew Aguecheek was " after " no one except Shakespeare, out of whose page he sprang alive. And his dealing with this character was remarkable in another respect. Excellent as his reading always was, its effect was not unfrequently a little impaired by his amiable desire immediately to share his own exuberant delight therein with his hearers. The indications of this desire were apt to interfere with its realisation. They imparted to the impression produced a certain duplexity, which was 7iot stereoscopic. You would gladly have deferred your participation in his pleasure in the interests of his success. This was notably the case with his Dogberry, while he was affording you rapturous glimpses of the depths of the learned constable's stupidity. There came in a glance, or even in a tone, the reader's ecstatic, triumphant question: "Are they not abysmal .> " They were; but the question broke the charm of the dramatic situation. Not so with his Sir Andrew. There A. A. was totm in illo, and what admirable fooling it was ! what a wealth of suffffestion ! Your mind's eye saw the loose-hung, limp, shambling figure. You noted the almost pathetic attempts at lively repartee ; the haunting suspicion that they missed fire ; the feeble rallying to the attitude of what was almost, but not quite, conceit ; the occasional gleams of self-knowledge, all unavailing for guidance or encouragement, having only the power to depress that weakly body and flickering mind ; all this, and all the so much more in the ''foolish knight," lived and moved before you, stirring you to laughter — and to pity. 'For in all A. A.'s renderings, there was (once more to pervert the trite quotation) that " touch of nature" that "makes the whole world kin." The images presented to your mental view were all from "^ewi/e Shakespeare" cut — as an engraver copies from an artist. Stephano might be brutal ; but he was loyal to the " poor monster." Dr. Caius might be fussy and tiresome ; but you felt he was an alien, whose learning and common sense were not dis- cerned by his Windsor neighbours through his broken English, though the ridicule of his wooing might be borne with for the sake of a substantial jointure. Shylock's appeal to the common EARLY YEAKS 27 humanity was driven home, in spite of a certain lack of physical force in its delivery. This sympathy he allowed to put him at some disadvantage in Jaques, whose inherent rascality he appre- ciated, but did not fully express. . . . Falconbridge again, was, for him, scarcely a success. He was not convincing when he simu- lated the robustness of the sturdy Plantagenet. Nor can I recall anything salient in his Cassius,' Young Ainger's gifts as actor and interpreter were more striking than his literary achievements. His writing did not come so spontaneously, nor was it ever an easy matter to him. His music, indeed all his other faculties, showed a greater facility. And little of his writing is left from these his early years, only what may be found in a small periodical. Our Paper^ printed for private circulation in 1855, to help the Royal Patriotic Fund, a charity destined for those who had suffered by the Crimean War. There are happy phrases in his contributions — paragraphs, too, worth the quoting, if only to show the influence that Dickens had upon him. Here, for instance, is his skit on a ' correspondence page ' in his essay on ' Penny Literature,' which, unlike so many jokes, has as much point now as then. ' An ejiquirifig mind. Yorkshire is a large county in the North of England. Etymologist, The i in China is long. Augusta Ayin is thanked for her beautiful and touching poem, which will appear in our next. Her simile, "like rain-drops pattering upon angel's wings," is singularly happy. She should, however, pay greater attention to orthography. . . . Chesterfield. Your friend is unintentionally deceiving you. It is not etiquette to ask more than three times for soup. Antiquarian. Milton's father was not a potato-salesman. Constance B. Slap his face. A Curate. Tell her business requires you at Hackney. Received. P,Q., Plato, Berenice, Tomkins,' Or here is a picture of a rising suburb : * There are many, not tied to London by business, who like to grasp the country without letting go the town, , , , Ours is a new neighbourhood, one of the growing offshoots of the growing metropolis. . . . Art is contemplating further encroachments 28 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER upon Nature, Slices of turf are already cut from the surface, rolled up like jam puddings, and piled in heaps. . . . New roads are permeating in all directions, apparently made of dust-bins, for a substratum of oyster-shells and decayed shoes is plainly visible. An adventurous young lark sometinaes comes and sings over the doomed land, but it quickly scents the scent of building, and flies away countryward.' In another paper, A Feio Musical Friends, we can trace the future friend of du Maurier as well as the lover of Dickens. Mrs. Spencer Tompkins, ' who herself sings and plays remark- ably well,"* asks the writer to a little musical party, and he accepts her invitation. ' The torture of dress ' (he writes, and the words sound strange from a person of eighteen) ' is not so cruel in these cases as on those other occasions, when we leave home at the time we ought to be going to bed, and return just in time for breakfast; but every earthly pleasure has its alloy. And even music requires its dress-boots. . . . '. . . It was in the course of this delightful evening, that we discovered that the company present we had assuredly met before. It is true we remembered none of the faces, but with the different types of humanity present we were strangely familiar ; and then it struck us for the first time, that these were but representatives of the different classes of musical people, and that others perhaps recognised them as well as ourselves. If, in describing any one of the guests we met at Mrs. Spencer Tompkins's, the reader shall exclaim, " Dear me ! how like — ," our end will be attained. ' As we enter the room, most of the company have arrived. A knot of young ladies is congregated before the piano, engaged in a little pleasant contention as to who shall open the evening. At length a bolder spirit than the rest volunteers to take part in a duet if she can find a fellow-sufferer to join her. This is soon forthcoming, and the soiree is inaugurated by a grand Pot- pourri from the " Huguenots." The duet is performed amid a din of conversation, which the audience kindly interrupt at the conclusion to applaud. An interval of ten minutes elapses. Then do we not know the diffident young lady, with ringlets, who requires half an hour's persuasion to favour the company — not always on the plea that she has a cold, which superstition seems to be sinking before the stride of civilisation, but for the avowed reason that she "would rather not, dear, please." EARLY YEARS 29 However^ this seldom avails her, and does not in the present instance, for she is obliged to yield, and remarks that she has left her music downstairs. An assiduous young gentleman immedi- ately leaves the room in search of it, and returns in triumph with an implement resembling a claret-coloured rolling-pin. The diffident young lady, referring to the rolling-pin, which proved to be a ease of music, selects a song, and sitting down to the piano, commences "Childhood's Bowers" (composed and respectfully dedicated to the pupils of Mangnall House Academy, by Mr. Savage Brest, R.A.M.) The melody of this song, which was announced by the public press, the day after its first appearance, as "sure to become a favourite," is not soul-stirring, and the words are inaudible ; but this last is perhaps all for the best. The diffident young lady begins in a low and tremulous voice, but encouraged by the approbation which follows the first stanza, she gains confidence, and brings the lyric to conclusion with a shake that makes the stoutest man change colour.' It does not appear that Ainger ever thought of writing as a calling. The stage about this period, and for a short time onwards, was a powerful attraction to him ; but though he fitfully considered it as a possible career, his delicate health soon compelled him to abandon any such notion ; and when, as was soon to happen, he went to the University, it was the Law that occupied his more serious thoughts. The idea of the Church had for the moment receded, possibly for family reasons, probably because of the vagueness as to a profession felt by most young men when 'the world is all before them where to choose.' It was not that his mind was less serious than before — so much we may learn from a letter that he wrote to his friend, Horace Smith, not long before he left King's College. ' You don't know, my dear fellow,' he writes, ' how glad I am to find you like Kingsley so well. I felt sure you Avould if you read him, but I doubted whether you would bring yourself to make a beginning. I feel quite convinced myself that both these writers, Kingsley and Maurice, are earnest and sincere in their endeavour to draw people to the Spirit and the truth — feeling what indeed is most manifest, that the English Church is clinging desperately to the letter — and trusting to the bruised reed of forms and conventionalities. Maurice says he is convinced that 30 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER a theology which does not coiTCspond to the deepest feelings of our hearts is not a true theology, and I am sure he is right. People say that all speculation and inquiry are futile, nay impious — that we are commanded to receive the truths of the Bible on faith. So we are ; and have reason to be deeply grateful that that command was given to us. Since those words, from the lips of God himself, " He that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live," changed the whole current of the world's thoughts, and gave to man that hope which, thank God, is his life indeed^ now and for ever — nothing but faith ever quickened that command in a man's heart. But there is nothing in the Bible that forbids man to increase his knowledge of his Father in heaven.' These words, written when he was barely eighteen, might stand for a complete summary of his religious views on the last day of his life. In thought he matured early, but he did not grow much afterwards. Changes were coming upon him and stern realities. In 1854 Mr. King died suddenly — a personal shock and sorrow, doubled by his sympathy with the daughters of his old friend and master. His faithful heart clung to them, and he was constantly with them, especially with his old companion. 'My dear Gertrude' (he wrote to her, just before he left King's College), — ' ihe twenty-sixth of March is to me a day of peculiar interest. In the first place it is the birthday of a very dear friend of mine, and in the next place it is the anniversary of my first having the pleasure of her acquaintance. For these two reasons, then, I send out to our milkman's and mark this day with the whitest of white chalk. ' Let me then first wish you many, many happy returns of this auspicious day. The phrase is hackneyed, but it seems to me to include every good wish, and I therefore hope you will accept it in its most comprehensive sense. * Six years ago, this day, I came as a stranger, and you took me in. For three years and three months I was constantly with you, and I do not believe that we were ever at variance for more than two minutes at a time. It seems but yesterday that we, colla- borateurs, like Liddell and Scott, or Brady and Tate, elucidated a chorus of ^schylus, or rendered into elegant Latin such sen- tences as "The pious Queen devours the noble Centurion," or EARLY YEARS 31 " Balbus denied that he swallowed the sugar-tongs." . . . Will you oblige me by accepting the accompanying slightest of slight tokens of my friendship and esteem and omnia verba amandi, aestimandi, diligendi, approbandi — vide Ainger's Latin Primer.^ He was in a mood for reviewing the past. Events were also happening in his family circle which made him feel that life was moving on. In the same year that Mr. King died, his sister Adeline was married to Dr. Roscow and went to live away in Folkestone, a fact which altered home for her brother. His own London life was soon to close for a time — the first chapter was finished. ' At the beginning of Easter term (1856), A. A. was absent,' writes Mr. Browne, ' I think from some slight illness. We had resumed — or were about to resume — our readings of In Memoriam, when on April 9th the sharp news fell on us that the poem must be finished without him. He was leaving King's College for Cambridge earlier than we — or possibly he — expected. I wrote to him in some distress. He replied in a letter now before me : — ' Your letter and L's have made this a very sad morning to me ; and hke the girl in the Arabian tale, I hear voices continually calling to me to look back, but with this difference that, when I do, I am very far from being turned into stone.' Other voices, voices of youth, were urging him to look forward. CHAPTER II CAMBRIDGE ' He is a born man of the world.** When Alfred Ainger was twenty-three, this was an old friend's verdict on him. It was unexpected, but it was true. The ease and the grace, some- times gay, sometimes formal, with which he moved among many sorts of men, his acute perception of their motives and manners, his skill in dealing with them, were his from his start in Cambridge as a freshman at Trinity Hall. But a man of the world and a worldly man are very different per- sons, and from worldly aims and actions young Ainger was entirely free. His looks, too, were anything but mundane, and perhaps a more striking figure never broke academic conventionalities. ' I try,** says one who knew him then, ' to retrieve and gather up some fragments of those far-away days. The figure that moves through them is very much that which his latest acquaintance knew. The hair was colourless even then, and changed only for the better when it became dis- tinctly white. The face never altered ; nor the gait ; nor the circular swing out of the left arm ; nor the tossing back of the lock that would fall forward; nor the quick, bird-like turn of the head. Time had no power over the steady blue eyes, nor over their glint of merriment heralding the expressive twitch of the mouth, as it delivered some sportful jest or caustic com- ment.' As for his figure, so strangely convertible, so incor- poreal (if the term be allowed us), at one moment altogether fantastic, at another impressively dignified, perhaps nothing better evokes it than his own description, written about now, of the various vicissitudes he put it to. ' In the course of my chequered career, I have slept at different times under a sofa, in an armchair, before the turf, fire in a Highland cottage. 32 Alfred Aincer in youth. From a fhotos.'raph by Miss Johnston. CAMBRIDGE 83 Once while reading in my bedroom I fell asleep over the back of the bed, and was found the next morning hanging in that position like fine things airing.' When Ainger went up to Trinity Hall, Latham and Leslie Stephen were tutors there ; Henry Fawcett was a fellow ; George Trevelyan, Horace Smith, W. C. Gully, J. E. Gorst, G. P. Bidder, W. Jack (now Professor Jack of Glasgow), and A. W. Ward, the present Master of Peterhouse, were among his university contemporaries. At that time the Crimean campaign was not yet over. The spirit of heroism and self-sacrifice called forth by the war was in the air ; sorrow was all around and a feeling of insecurity prevailed. It was a religious moment — when the need of faith and of discipline had come home to the hearts of men, and when such personalities as Maurice, Robertson, and Kingsley were making 'belief attractive. The love of the spiritual, the reaction against commercialism were evident. Tennyson, Carlyle, and Ruskin were the prophets of the day ; in art, the Pre-Raphaelites were rising into prominence, while the Heir of Redclyffe was the novel most demanded by the wounded officers in Hospital. 'At that period,' writes Mr. Leslie Stephen, in his Life of Fawcett, ' the more sentimental youth learnt Tennyson by heart, wept over Jane Eyre, and was beginning to appreciate Browning. If more seriously disposed, he read Sartor Resarius and The French Revolution ; he followed the teachings of Maurice and had some leaning to " Christian Socialism." But there was also an influential set of young men with opposite views. The sterner Utilitarians looked to Mill as their great prophet. They repudiated Carlyle as reactionary, and set down Maurice as muddle-headed.' Ainger belonged heart and soul to the other party, and the two groups had little in common between them. Such were the intellectual conditions of 1856, and such the mental atmosphere in which Alfred Ainger found himself. At that time entrance scholarships did not exist and the scholarship examination took place at the end of the first year. Ainger was bracketed 'first' with a friend, with whom c 34 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER he also sliared the Chetswode Exhibition, which carried with it the duties of Chapel Clerk. But his triumphs were short- lived. Academic ambitions were not for one whose delicate health soon compelled him to draw in and to renounce the race for honours. For the first two years of his University life he read for a mathematical degree. But it was gradually borne in upon him that mathematics suited neither his taste nor his powers, and in 1858 he finally decided to abandon them and to embrace the Law as his profession. From the day of his arrival in Cambridge, he made friends in all directions. ' Sunday I breakfasted with Ainger, and in the evening he took tea with me, as also Ward, Jack, Davidson, Bidder ' — so runs a passage in the diary of a con- temporary.^ ' That entry,' he tells us, ' recalls those Sunday walks which used to be such delightful incidents of our Cambridge life — walks after breakfast and generally lasting till the afternoon service at Great St. Mary's . . . walks to Madingley, or over the Gogmagogs, or to Byron's Pool, if the day was hot, or in the fens towards Ely.' Ainger's closest friends were naturally those who thought like himself, but he had others and from different circles. Foremost among these was Henry Fawcett, to whom he often read aloud, and whose gaiety, as well as his courage, endeared him to all who came near him, Alfred not least among them. Nor were all his comrades book-men. ' He loved,' says the same writer, ' the quiet life and the quiet country walk ; but none the less ... he took the keenest interest in all college sports ; and so it was that he drew men of all kinds by the attraction of his innate manliness as much as by the charm of his conversation, ... It was to one of these . . . Henry Davidson, who had achieved greatness as " Stroke" in the Trinity Hall boat, that I owed my introduction to Ainger, at a Trinity Hall boat-supper, which was to me a memorable festival, raised above the level of all other entertainments of the kind, first by a scholarly speech in praise of cricket by Mr. Matthew Kempson . . . but . . . most of all by a recita- tion by Ainger, descriptive — as I remember well — of the 1 Dr. H. Bird wood, C.S.L CAMBRIDGE 35 sights and sounds of an English fair, which revealed to many of us for the first time, his fine faculty of ohservation . . . his frolic and abounding sense of humour, and that most precious gift of clear, resonant and sympathetic speech. . . .' Excepting for the record of such events as these, there is no need to tell the story of his Cambridge days in other words than his own. His letters to William Elderton, who had remained behind at King's College, give the truest picture of his thoughts and doings and are best read in due sequence. He could not at first get rooms at Trinity Hall and took lodgings in King's Parade whence his first impressions are dated. ' Saturday Evening. ' My dear Willy, Here I am as comfortably established as if I had been born on the place. I have got capital rooms. ... I am over a respectable fancy-stationer. ... I think I shall like the life immensely. . . . The tutor, Mr. Latham, is a capital fellow, most obliging and conversational. ... I think you would have smiled to see me this morning in chapel in a white surplice which the whole University wears on Sundays and Saints' Days, and gives one the appearance of an angel just out of bed. There is a story afloat of a freshman, who was detected going out to a wine in his surplice, because it was a Saint's Day ; but his bed- maker providentially informed him in time. ... I have got Horace Smith up hei'e.' ' King's Parade, Friday Night. 'Having adjusted the furniture, made up the fire, and arranged everything in a snug manner for the evening, I sit down to write to you with infinite satisfaction. I have been writing like a steam-engine this evening, at a book-work paper in mathematics, given me by my tutor, and my brain requires a little friendly gossip to restore it. ' Thank you very much for your speedy reply — I know you will be hard at work, so I cannot expect you to find me much time. ' This is a most delightful life — most various, and most charming. A man can very well choose his "set"; and when he has once picked out his style of friends, he is not interfered with by the others. I know a very large number of men in the University, and am gradually making new acquaintances at my own College. 36 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER I am glad to tell you that Trinity Hall, though a small College, stands very high in the opinion of the University, as a nice body of men, and is much respected. It is also high as a boating College ; and it holds the second place on the river : St. John's being at the head. ' I have heard to-day of the Celebrated Characters that have been at this College. ' Sterling was here ; Selden (the table-talk man) ; Bulwer Lytton ; Lord Chesterfield (I believe) and last, not least, the Rev. F. D. Maurice, who was here for two years, and then migrated to Oxford. — I am becoming quite proud of the institution. We have got, I think, a very nice set of freshmen up. They seem all very good fellows. Men say that Trinity Hall has the best set this year. One gentleman told me that at his college, they had six freshmen come up, and four of them squinted ! ' Ours do not display obliquity of vision ; with us, the " lisp " is the prevailing pecularity. I tell my friends that " they lisp in numbers," for which I am very properly scouted by every well- regulated mind. ' You really must come down to Cambridge some time or other. Do come while I am here, and see the Lions. Trinity College Kitchen is not one of the least interesting. The one at the Reform Club is nothing to it. At Trinity they dine six hundred men every day. The head-cook keeps his carriage ; and his perquisites are something enormous, making his salary altogether larger than that of the Master of Trinity, — Whewell. ' Cambridge is remarkably full of Churches — you step upon a sacred edifice wherever you turn. At the largest of these Churches, St. Mary's, is preached every Sunday afternoon the University sermon. Different celebrated men are appointed at different times to preach these sermons. Next month, November, our friend Trench is coming down, and I anticipate a great treat. I shall generally go in the evenings to hear Harvey Goodwin, the author of Goodwin's Course of Matheinatics, which I dare say you know ; he preaches in his Parish Church here, and jDreaches remarkably well. ' I don't know that there is anybody you know here besides old Horace, whom I see constantly. ' Write again soon, old boy, and tell us all you are doing, what you have been reading, and etc. I will return the compliment whenever I can find time. I have been reading again that grand Epic, Alto7i Locke ; which I find I have been rather underrating. CAMBRIDGE 37 It is most fine in parts. The chapters about Cambridge have a fresh interest for me now. I have also read a splendid sermon of Kingsley's called The Message of the Church to the Working-man. I don't know that you would like it. It tends to put men on an equality, which I think you would find a difficulty in stomaching, my blessed tory friend. ' I have just finished Philip II., and to my taste, I think, for sustained interest and graphic, nay, even brilliant narration, it will bear comparison with any history I know. ' Don't tell the fellows at College that you have heard from me this time; for I have not written to Browne yet, and he may think me neglectful — I am going to write to him. — Believe me, ever your affectionate friend, Alfred Ainoer.' ' Cambridge, Saturday Xight. ' I repeat, I am going to write you a most idiotic note,^ for I feel dull and stupid, and unfit for anything but my pillow. Many thanks for your speedy response to my last. If I might suggest any alteration in your letters (which are otherwise immaculate), I would mention that they might be a little longer ; and they would possess very great interest to me, if you would tell me of any- thing that has struck you particularly in the course of the last week ; or since you wrote last ; any opinions you may have formed, any you have changed, anything you have seen in a new light, etc., etc. I intend always to do this to you ; and I hope you will do it to me. 'I saw Proctor yesterday. He told me he had heard from you and he mentioned the premium you offered for an essay. It is worth trying for — I think I shall go in for it. ' Nothing of any importance has occurred, I think, since I last wrote. There have been some boat-races this week, which I witnessed from the bank of our beloved river. A boat-race is the most exciting thing you can imagine, I will not attempt to de- scribe it, for it has been done admirably in Alton Locke, in the chapter headed " Cambridge." I will lend you the tale, if you have not had it, when 1 am up at Christmas. ' After the race yesterday, there was an amusing incident, which afforded considerable merriment to those not concerned in it. A ferry-boat which was crossing the river had taken a great many too many men on board, and she had hardly left the bank, when 1 'Ah, poor dear, he is much the same.'— W. A. E. ij6&585 38 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER she began gradually to settle down. About fifteen men took to the water. Some of them, freshmen, not knowing the depths of that classic ditch, the Cam, plunged vigorously in, thinking to swim to the shore. But the water only came up to their waists ; and a Trinity Hall gentleman, of great length, who was one of the sufferers, appeared when in the middle of the stream, only as if he were in a footbath. But if you can conceive a number of young men, in every conceivable costume, of every conceivable colour, wading about in a narrow stream amid shrieks of laughter from the banks, you will picture a spectacle, highly gratifying, as I before observed, to those — not in the water. 'I am thinking of writing a poem on this spirit-stirring subject, beginning : "Toll for the brave," after Cowper. ' Richard Chenevix Trench preached here last Sunday. The result, I am very sorry to say, was universal disappointment. I have not been able to find one man yet who could discover what the Sermon was about. It is needless to say, / could not. He chose, too, one of the grandest and deepest texts in the New Testament. The 1st verse of 1st chapter of St. John. And he talked a great deal about St. Augustine ; but any more I cannot tell you. He attracted an enormous congregation by his reputa- tion as a writer ; but there will be a great falling off to-morrow. I confess I think Trench's forte is rather as a linguist and an etymologist — and, I would add, as a writer of very sterling English — than as a Divine. ' I cannot agree with you and Mackay that Kingsley and Tennyson are "imitators" of that other gentleman (F. D. Maurice), I rather think that both these writers had shewn the tendency of their teaching to the world before the other. But whether or no, there is so much distinctness of form, if there is the same end sought, in these writers, that I cannot hold that they are anything but original, ' Perhaps you may say that Kingsley takes and applies to the concrete what M. and others have taught in the abstract. I be- lieve that this is so ] and Alton Locke appears to me the most search- ing and the most earnest application of the laws of Christ to the present condition of society, that I ever read in fiction. ' The more I read, and the more I see of the world, the more am I convinced that the great secret of the faithlessness of this age is in the separation of classes. I often think of those lines CAMBRIDGE 39 your sister wrote one evening at Blindley Heath ; and think how they express a great national want. So long as the rich and the poor are separated, by mutual pride and by the covetousness of the rich and the envy of the poor, so long, I say, there will never be a lively faith felt by this nation in the words of Christianity. ' And those whose worldly interest it is to keep them separated — those traducers ; those SiafSoXoi, to use the name which the Greeks gave to the Father of Lies ; whether it be the mob-orators, who tell their poor fellow-men that the rich are all tyrants, are all vicious, dissolute, and sordid, or whether it be the delicate-handed political economist, who says the "Masses" must be kept down — why these do a wickedness, the results of which are quite incalcul- able ; and they will answer it before a Higher Court than they can be arraigned before on Earth. ' The rich should know how much of virtue there is among the poor — virtues, moreover, which the rich truly have need to exer- cise. They should know how much of sorrow, of suffering, of patient endurance, of family love, strengthened too often by a community of hunger and destitution, there is in a world of which they have no experience. And the poor need just as much to be told that gentlefolks who ride in their carriages ai-e not, of necessity, exempt from all cares ; that both rich and poor have their sources of joy and grief; that both must be perfected by suffering if they would enter the mansions prepared for them. 'And now I really must finish, or I shall make the letter over- weight, and I am sure it is not worth twopence. ' If you love me, tear this up directly, or burn it. . . . — Ever your affectionate friend, Alfred Ainger.' * Thursday Night, Nov. 20, 1856. 'I have just returned from dining with the Master of Trinity Hall, who is a hospitable old bird, and has all the freshmen to dine with him every Michaelmas Term. Horace Smith remark- ing to me after dinner that he had heard from you, I asked him^ if your letter contained nothing private, if he would let me see it, . . . And I feel myself obliged, though it is not my turn to write, to tell you how much I enjoyed it, and at the same time how much of it surprised me. 'I think that what you say of a too exclusive study of the writers and the train of thought induced by the day in which one lives, is very just, and worthy of much remembrance. We are too apt selfishly to confine our attention to our own day, and neglect 40 IJFE OF ALFRED AINGER to seek the great method of understanding it, and all time, by studying other times, and the men they produced. But still there is this to be said, that every man (always of course after the great object of his existence) is to live for his own time, and for suc- ceeding times, and that therefore he does well to study those Seers of the day, whoever they be, who may interpret to him those failings and those yearnings — those doubts and heart-sinkings which the contemplation of his existing time will have produced in his heart. "Why is it," says Kingsley, '^that the latest poet has generally the greatest influence over the minds of the young ? Surely not the mere charm of novelty ? The reason is that he, living amid the same hopes, the same temptations, the same sphere of observation as they, gives utterance and outward form to the very questions, which, vague and wordless, have been exercising their hearts." ' I am sure it must be this which causes me to have so intense an admiration of Tennyson, and a feeling towards In Memoriam, which is like an affection towards a personal friend, because I found in it an expression of so many of the doubts and difficulties which have beset me at different periods of my life. But I agree with you that that is not enough, that man's mind must be trained, and his nature fed by the knowledge of other times, that he may acquire an experience (the living experience of men and women before him), which he may apply to the time in which he is placed. So far, so good. But now, I confess that I do not know how you have got the notion that Tennyson gives to reason a higher place than to faith. As far as I have understood the poem, in In Memoriam he does exactly the reverse to this. I have not the poem by me ; but numbers of passages crowd upon me, to say the reverse to what you say. I believe that in one place he talks of faith — "and reason, like the younger child." I am quite certain that if you read it again you will find that he considers faith as the highest lore of the human intellect, and that in this, as in everything else, in the words of Bacon, we conquer by obeying. ' I will undertake to convince you of this in five minutes, with the poem in my hands. Again, I do not, with you, look upon Tennyson in the light of a dreamy, or enervating poet. I believe that, rightly read, he is as eminently a practical teacher in his way as Shakespeare. . . . 'Again, thank you for your letters. I assure you that, placed as I am out of the pale of any literary thought, I learn much and think much by their aid. . . , CAMBRIDGE 41 ' I send you herewith the Idylls of the King. . . . Their merits are very great, and greater than any one would suppose who had not some acquaintance with tliat large cycle of romances which formed almost the only popular literature of the feudal times. The immense value of these old romances is not so much in their intrinsic merits. The great interest they have for us is rather fi'om the people who first read them, than from those who wrote them. . . . They show us the rude virtues and the rude vices. They do not, it is true, exhibit one of the fundamental evils of the time — the degradation of the lower class, the great body of villeins — and therefore in some respects it is not a true picture. But it is evident that the ideal of a gentleman was in the minds of the knightly readers, and when we read of the bravery, the truth, the chastity, the gallantry, and the scorn of all that is mean, that is held up for imitation in these romances, we may be inclined to blush for our more minute civilisation, which with its many refinements and improvements has lost some of its broader and healthier features. . . . The third and fourth idylls are, I think, the best. The fourth and last is perfect. If you have an opportunity, read them aloud, and so lose none of the effects of the versification. (N.B. Private.^ Don't read the " Vivien " aloud. There are certain passages in it which are not pleasant to read before ladies, though the poem itself is perhaps more powerful than any of the others. There is more of the Shakspeare-mind in it.' ' Cambridge, Monday Night. 'The constancy with which you answer my letters, in the midst of all your hard work, is most good of you — and I feel compelled to write to you yet once more, though I shall be in London, I hope, this day week. ' I am tired to-night, and feel very disinclined for reading : and had " I the tediousness of a king, could find it in my heart to bestow it all on your worship." ' The principal new character that I have become acquainted with since I have been up, is that of Socrates. Have you ever read any Plato ? You will be filled with admiration of the philosophy of that old Athenian, who knew the soul was immortal, and met his death without a pang. The practical nature, and the conscientiousness of his arguments are wonderful. There are strong points of resemblance between Socrates and Bacon, in the method in which they conducted the search after truth. Both 42 IJFE OF ALFRED AINGER effected a reformation in philosophy, both brought down vague and intangible theories to an investigation of existing things — though one was the reformer of moral philosophy and the other of physical. We will have a glance at some of the Socratic methods, some day. ' " My dear Mary, I will now conclude " ' " That 's rayther a sudden pull up ; ain't it } " said Mr. Weller. '" I don't know," said Sam, "she'll wish there was more, and that 's the great art of letter-writing." — Dear Willy, ever yours, Alfred Ainger.' The following note is to his old friend, Gertrude King, and belongs to these early Cambridge days : — 'Sunday evening, a time which calls up before me the pleasantest evenings of my life. You are all constantly in my thoughts, but this is a time when regrets are hardest to be dispelled. Sunday is a very delightful day to me here. The extreme quiet after the noise of the week is refreshing. . . . Everything goes on much the same. I like the life very much indeed, and don't know that I was ever happier. I know an immense number of men in the university, but I do not find myself incommoded by them. — Believe me, your affectionate brother, Alfred Ainger.' The bachelor formality of the last phrase — piquant from one so young and social — and the wistful tenderness of the opening words are alike characteristic of the writer. In spite of all his fun, he made a serious impression on his contem- poraries. ' A true man,' says one of them,i ' who might in any circumstances be relied on to do what was right, nor count the cost — a man firm of purpose, reverent, and loveable.'' And his thought and his character were one. There is a passage from a University essay of his, sent, like the letters that follow, to his regular correspondent Elderton, the set thought of which is typical of the man. ' Trinity Hall, Sunday Evening, Nov. 1857. ' . . . There are some writers at the present day who look back with an excess of veneration to the reign of Elizabeth. The time has yet to come when England shall fully recognise the worth of the Puritans. In this remark, be it observed, we ^ Mr. Birdwood. CAMimiDGE 43 say nothing against the worthies — the Raleighs and Sidneys of Ehzabeth's reign. The essentially practical character of the monarch gave a work — a high and ennobling work — to her devoted servants, and directed that wild fervour and restlessness which under another ruler might have proved a dangerous element. But the men of the time are seen by us in the light of the time, and win a glory from the national prosperity. It is in the same country, in adversity and mourning, that we look back on the Puritans, fighting strongfully and prayerfully in her defence. Divested of all the brilliancy with which it shone when Shak- speare wrote and Drake fought, the reformed religion had still more surely to prove its strength and endurance in the time of the Stuarts. The man who fought most bravely, prayed most earnestly, counselled the most wisely in those times was Oliver Cromwell. ' . . . We are going to do Mozart's Requiem Mass at the Musical Society next week. Sterndale Bennett is coming down to conduct. As the choruses are very hard, I shall not sing in it, but place myself in a snug corner of the hall, with the vocal score in my hands, and enjoy myself immensely. It is a sublime Mass.' ' Cambridge, Sunday Night, Nov, 17. *. . . You know what Swift says : — '"That is excellently observed," say I, '^when I meet with an opinion that agrees with mine." ' In this way, I say your remarks are most just and most fat- seeing. . . . With regard to the consequences of a reformation in religion it was quite necessary that there should be corre- sponding reformations in Philosophy and Politics, or any other branch of knowledge. The emerging from darkness into light disclosed to men many things, besides their true relation to their God. You know my favourite old doctrine that true faith instantly places a man, as it were, upon a height, from which he has an infinitely wider view than the many who are wandering through life without a clue. The Bible was a key to an infinite number of problems, which, without it, must have remained unsolved to this day. ' What you say of the difference between the religion of ancient times and our own, deserves more notice. Maurice, in his lectures on the religion of Ancient Rome, has shown how the bond which held the votaries of that religion together, was the common Fatherhood, which was the foundation of it. Man was bound 44 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER to his fellow-man by the ruling faith in an infinite power^ of whose nature and attributes there was no difference of opinion. The religion was false, but it had this power of binding men by an artificial chain ; which was only to be broken when the true Faith began its certain and steady growth. *■ Maurice shows that whatever there was of greatness, of nobility, of disinterested faith in the religion of Ancient Rome, had its origin in a common Fatherhood. ' This is, indeed, exactly what you say, applied to the particular instance. " Unity is strength " is a truth, in a deeper, more universal sense than the other maxim, " Union is strength." You see it is an eternal fact that there can be no union amongr men, if only that which unites them is something in themselves. The bond that encircles them is no true bond if it does not bind them to something. Pray forgive me for merely interpreting your own words, but it is a great pleasure to me to work out for myself what is good of another man. ' The tendency of this age is divergent rather than convergent. We go on straggling into numberless paths, and bye-paths, and get away from the high road — lose ourselves. God grant we may all of us find our way back ; yet here again comes in the absence of " Unity," the cause, as I believe, of all the Avorld's troubles. I believe, with you, that the Trinity in Unity is the highest form of a Universal Truth — the unity of all good men — the unity of all that is true ; of all that is beautiful ; of all that is good ; of all that is evil ; so that, as we came to see it more clearly, the boundary mark between what is good and what is vicious would become more and more defined ; and the true rights of all men would be more clearly acknowledged. This, I believe, is what we are in too much danger of forgetting. ' This is awfully metaphysical, and I dare say you have not any idea what I mean. Write and tell me. ... I find that in one of the sentences in this letter, at least, I am perfectly unintelligible. I mean the one about unity. My meaning is that if we could more distinctly see the unity of the good ; that is, the same nature pertaining to all things good ; and also a common nature existing in all things evil ; there never would be a blending of the two, and a man would never want an amalgam of the two, but would instantly separate them and find their parts in any sub- stance, as King Hiero did with the Crown. ' I fear I am talking egregious bosh — but I think I have some faint idea of what I mean.' CAMBRIDGE 45 Ainger very seldom read modern books of thought that went against his own opinions — perhaps we should rather say temperament. His mind was of so strong a ' complexion "* (to use an old word) that it hardly acknowledged the presence of belief discordant with his own. When, however, The History of Civilization appeared, he made an exception and read it. ' I am going to read Buckle's book ' — he says. — ' It is very well reviewed in the Edinburgh by Sir James Stephen's son. I believe Buckle is the representative of the positive philosophy school in England. There is no God, and Buckle is his prophet.' ' Cambridge, Saturday Evening, May 9, 1858. '. . . And now you will be surprised, I know, to hear that I have given up mathematics, and am reading Law, in which I shall take my degree. My reasons for this step were several. I never cared for mathematics ; I have not the mathematical power to take a good degree ; on the other hand. Law, History, and such subjects I always took a great interest in, and when I leave Cambridge I shall have acquired, I hope, something of Law, which I should have had to read subsequently. So I am devoting my energies to Roman Law : Gaius and Justinian, and English Constitutional History. We have a Law Professor at Trinity Hall, and I attend his lectures. As yet I like the change immensely. . . . < I see is a moderate tory, and unless a man is to be of no party, which is impossible, I suppose he had better be that than anything.' A ' moderate Tory,' ' if anything,' was what Ainger always remained, but politics were not his strong point. He turned away from them with weariness, and could no more be brought to take an interest in them than in anything else that was not natural to him. In his eyes they meant dust and futility, and a less public-spirited person, except in moral questions, it would perhaps be hard to find. Even University affairs, such as the discussion about abolishing religious tests, which was agitating Cambridge when Ainger first came there, find no mention in his letters, and the brief extracts that follow 46 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER contain the only political allusions to be found in his early correspondence. ' I do not know what's to become of the new ministry. Coali- tion is ca very good things if the various members can agree ; and I hardly see how Pam, Lord John and Gladstone are to work in the same crew. The last-named gent voted for the late ministry, and now takes office with the conspirators who overthrew it. All this finesse and plotting is rather dismal to contemplate, while all Europe is in a blaze.' ' I assure you that your fortnightly letter is one of my pleasantest anticipations at College, and, indeed, wherever I am. I wish I knew more about politics ; but what you said about Peel seems to have given me some idea of a man, of whose character I was before profoundly ignorant. I have, I fear, left your letter behind me at College, for I should like to have it by me. I forget if you asked me any questions. I will ask you one in return {a la Quaker) : " What is the difference between a cow and a ricketty chair .^" "Because one gives milk and the other gives whey ! " ' Riddles, more congenial than politics, were always a favourite game of his. To the end their ingenuity amused his brain, and his letters to Elderton are full of them and of verbal quips. The last letter and the three that follow are written in vacation time, from London ; the fourth from his sister"'s home at Folkestone. '23 Carlton Hill, Sunday, August 2". ' . . . I have no law to occupy me, and shall, I hope, get through some work the next few weeks. There is not much temptation to leave the house. Everybody, it is needless to say, is out of town, and the neighbourhood looks as if it had gone to bed and forgotten to get up again. . . . ' '' Nothing is so difficult as a beginning," says Byron, and the truth, I vow, never appeared to me so clear as now. I don't know really what to tell you — I have been reading Carlyle's French Revolutio7i ; a wonderful book it is ; quite Thomas's masterpiece. You should read it. I have also been airing my English History CAMBRIDGE 47 by means of Hume, with whom I become more and more dis- gusted, he being, as I think, shallow and flippant, ' I have been to see Robson in the burlesque on Medea — a com- bination of the most harrowing tragedy and the most ludicrous farce — the result being the Sublime-ridiculous with no step between, I must read it to you some day — ' Everybody is cutting away from the Modern Babylon — Luard goes to-day — I have seen him lately, and Moore, and Heath, and Darlington, and some other of our old friends. Excuse this Electric-jerky, fragmentary style of Epistolary correspondence, which you must attribute to the Electricity in the atmosphere, I suppose. Anything like original composition is a preposterous attempt. I looked in Cook's letter-writer to see if he suggested anything. The only examples I could find were " a letter to a lady proposing marriage " (beginning " Madam ") ; and '' from a father to a gentleman apprenticing his son to the oil and Italian business," in neither of which could I find any help in my present wants. ' I am going to see Piccoloraini in the Traviata. Your sisters will tell you that she dies in a consumption on the stage. Shocking, is it not ? The Decline of the Drama I call it — after this, I had better pei'haps shut up. — Ever yours, 'Alfred Ainger.' * PS. — Remember me most kindly to all your circle. 'P.P/S".— Write soon. *(2) PS. — Give us a little intelligence in your next letter. Your last was singularly slight. Quite an ice- wafer of a letter, *(3) PS. — The kitchen fire is just gone out; and the mutton is hung on a tree to roast.' 'Monday Morning, August. ' Many thanks for your long and literary letter. You say you cannot tell why I call Hume shallow and flippant. I '11 tell you, *1. He gives us facts, but seems unable to see real motives. He rarely looks deeper than the surface of men's actions. If they are from religious motives, I always find a lurking sneer, and something murmured about superstition (you know Hume was a Sceptic). His history always sounds to me more like a story-telling, with little or no analysis of men or minds. You may think (and I 'm not at all sure that you 're not right), that it is a merit in an historian to tell his tale and leave you to form your own judgments. At all events we are accustomed to find 48 LIFE OF ALFRED AINGER some analysis in our historians ; and a want of it shows, I think, a lack of earnestness on the part of the historian. You are mistaken in thinking that Macaulay is my model historian. I believe that to those who do not like the trouble of judging for themselves (and according to Puff in the Critic these are very small indeed), he is by no means to be recommended. ' The Travestie from Medea does not come direct from Euripides. The story was dramatised by the French Legouve, the Italian Montenelli, the Enghsh Thomas Williams ; and lastly burlesqued by Brough. This polyglot story is thus alluded to in the Burlesque : — " Sangue, Sangue, spezziar, spezziar sue cuore " Which means, translated, something red and gory. " Anche di spavento atroce strano " Murder in Irish ! no ! Italiano. " aiat" Sia jxov K€(f>a\a