Part 12

It is impossible to connect the memory of Freddy Leveson with the idea of ambition, and it must therefore have been the praiseworthy desire to render unpaid service to the public which induced him to embark on the unquiet sea of politics. At a bye-election in the summer of 1847 he was returned, through the interest of his uncle the Duke of Devonshire, for Derby. A General Election immediately ensued; he was returned again, but was unseated, with his colleague, for a technical irregularity. In 1852 he was returned for Stoke-upon-Trent, this time by the aid of his cousin the Duke of Sutherland (for the "Sacred Circle" retained a good deal of what was termed "legitimate influence"). In 1854, having been chosen to second the Address at the opening of Parliament, he was directed to call on Lord John Russell, who would instruct him in his duties. Lord John was the shyest of human beings, and the interview was brief: "I am glad you are going to second the Address. You will know what to say. Good-morning."

At the General Election of 1857 he lost his seat for Stoke. "Poor Freddy," writes his brother, Lord Granville, "is dreadfully disappointed by his failure in the Potteries. He was out-jockeyed by Ricardo." All who knew "poor Freddy" will easily realize that in a jockeying contest he stood no chance. In 1859 he was returned for Bodmin, this time by the good offices, not of relations, but of friends--Lord Robartes and Lady Molesworth--and he retained the seat by his own merits till Bodmin ceased to be a borough. Twice during his Parliamentary career Mr. Gladstone offered him important office, and he declined it for a most characteristic reason--"I feared it would be thought a job." The gaps in his Parliamentary life were occupied by travelling. As a young man he had been a great deal on the Continent, and he had made what was then the adventurous tour of Spain. The winter of 1850-1851 he spent in India; and in 1856 he accompanied his brother Lord Granville (to whom he had been "précis-writer" at the Foreign Office) on his Special Mission to St. Petersburg for the Coronation of Alexander II. No chapter in his life was fuller of vivid and entertaining reminiscences, and his mind was stored with familiar memories of Radziwill, Nesselrode, and Todleben. "Freddy," wrote his brother, "is supposed to have distinguished himself greatly by his presence of mind when the Grande Duchesse Hélène got deep into politics with him."

A travelling experience, which Freddy Leveson used to relate with infinite gusto, belongs to a later journey, and had its origin in the strong resemblance between himself and his brother. Except that Lord Granville shaved, and that in later years Freddy Leveson grew a beard, there was little facially to distinguish them. In 1865 Lord Granville was Lord President of the Council, and therefore, according to the arrangement then prevailing, head of the Education Office. In that year Matthew Arnold, then an Inspector of Schools, was despatched on a mission to enquire into the schools and Universities of the Continent. Finding his travelling allowances insufficient for his needs, he wrote home to the Privy Council Office requesting an increase. Soon after he had despatched this letter, and before he could receive the official reply, he was dining at a famous restaurant in Paris, and he chose the most highly priced dinner of the day. Looking up from his well-earned meal, he saw his official chief, Lord Granville, who chanced to be eating a cheaper dinner. Feeling that this gastronomical indulgence might, from the official point of view, seem inconsistent with his request for increased allowances, he stepped across to the Lord President, explained that it was only once in a way that he thus compensated himself for his habitual abstinence, and was delighted by the facile and kindly courtesy with which his official chief received the apologia. His delight was abated when he subsequently found that he had been making his confession, not to Lord Granville, but to Mr. Leveson-Gower.

Looking back from the close of life upon its beginning, Freddy Leveson noted that as an infant he used to eat his egg "very slowly, and with prolonged pleasure." "Did this," he used to ask, "portend that I should grow up a philosopher or a gourmand? I certainly did not become the former, and I hope not the latter." I am inclined to think that he was both; for whoso understands the needs of the body has mastered at least one great department of philosophy, and he who feeds his fellow-men supremely well is in the most creditable sense of the word a gourmand. Freddy Leveson's dinners were justly famous, and, though he modestly observed that "hospitality is praised more than it deserves," no one who enjoyed the labours of Monsieur Beguinot ever thought that they could be overpraised. The scene of these delights was a house in South Audley Street, which, though actually small, was so designed as to seem like a large house in miniature; and in 1870 the genial host acquired a delicious home on the Surrey hills, which commands a view right across Sussex to the South Downs. "Holm-bury" is its name, and "There's no place like Home-bury" became the grateful watchword of a numerous and admiring society.

People distinguished in every line of life, and conspicuous by every social charm, found at Holm-bury a constant and delightful hospitality. None appreciated it more thoroughly than Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, whose friendship was one of the chief happinesses of Freddy Leveson's maturer life. His link with them was Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, who, in spite of all Whiggish prejudices against the half-converted Tory, was one of Gladstone's most enthusiastic disciples. In "Cliveden's proud alcove," and in that sumptuous villa at Chiswick where Fox and Canning died, Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone were her constant guests; and there they formed their affectionate intimacy with Freddy Leveson. Every year, and more than once a year, they stayed with him at Holmbury; and one at least of those visits was memorable. On the 19th of July, 1873, Mr. Gladstone wrote in his diary:

"Off at 4.25 to Holmbury, We were enjoying that beautiful spot and expecting Granville with the Bishop of Winchester,[*] when the groom arrived with the message that the Bishop had had a bad fall. An hour and a half later Granville entered, pale and sad: 'It's all over.' In an instant the thread of that precious life was snapped, We were all in deep and silent grief."

And now, for the sake of those who never knew Freddy Leveson, a word of personal description must be added. He was of middle height, with a slight stoop, which began, I fancy from the fact that he was short-sighted and was obliged to peer rather closely at objects which he wished to see. His growing deafness, which in later years was a marked infirmity--he had no others--tended to intensify the stooping habit, as bringing him nearer to his companions voice. His features were characteristically those of the House of Cavendish, as may be seen by comparing his portrait with that of his mother. His expression was placid, benign, but very far from inert; for his half-closed eyes twinkled with quiet mirth. His voice was soft and harmonious, with just a trace of a lisp, or rather of that peculiar intonation which is commonly described as "short-tongued." His bearing was the very perfection of courteous ease, equally remote from stiffness and from familiarity. His manners it would be impertinent to eulogize, and the only dislikes which I ever heard him express were directed against rudeness, violence, indifference to other people's feelings, and breaches of social decorum. If by such offences as these it was easy to displease him, it was no less easy to obtain his forgiveness, for he was as amiable as he was refined. In old age he wrote, with reference to the wish which some people express for sudden death: "It is a feeling I cannot understand, as I myself shall feel anxious before I die to take an affectionate leave of those I love." His desire was granted, and there my story ends. I have never known a kinder heart; I could not imagine a more perfect gentleman.

SAMUEL WHITBREAD

The family of Whitbread enjoyed for several generations substantial possessions in North Bedfordshire. They were of the upper middle class, and were connected by marriage with John Howard the Prison-Reformer, whose property near Bedford they inherited. As years went on, their wealth and station increased. Samuel Whitbread, who died in 1796, founded the brewery in Chiswell Street, E.C., which still bears his name, was Member for the Borough of Bedford, and purchased from the fourth Lord Torrington a fine place near Biggleswade, called Southill, of which the wooded uplands supplied John Bunyan, dwelling on the flats of Elstow, with his idea of the Delectable Mountains.

This Samuel Whitbread was succeeded as M.P. for Bedford by a more famous Samuel, his eldest son, who was born in 1758, and married Lady Elizabeth Grey; sister of

"That Earl who taught his compeers to be just, And wrought in brave old age what youth had planned."

Samuel Whitbread became one of the most active and influential members of the Whig party, a staunch ally of Fox and a coadjutor of Wilberforce in his attack on the Slave Trade. He was closely and unfortunately involved in the affairs of Drury Lane Theatre, and, for that reason, figures frequently in Rejected Addresses. He died before his time in 1815, and his eldest son, William Henry Whitbread, became M.P. for Bedford. This William Henry died without issue, and his nephew and heir was the admirable man and distinguished Parliamentarian who is here commemorated.

Samuel Whitbread was born in 1830, and educated at Rugby, where he was a contemporary of Lord Goschen, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where one of his closest friends was James Payn, the novelist. He married Lady Isabella Pelham, daughter of the third Earl of Chichester. In those days Bedford returned two members, and at the General Election of 1852, which scotched Lord Derby's attempt to revive Protection, "Young Sam Whitbread" was returned as junior Member for the Borough, and at the elections of 1857, 1859, 1865, 1868, 1874, 1880, 1885, 1886, and 1892 he was again elected, each time after a contest and each time at the top of the poll. Had he stood again in 1895, and been again successful, he would have been "Father of the House."

It may be said, without doubt or exaggeration, that Samuel Whitbread was the ideal Member of Parliament. To begin with physical attributes, he was unusually tall, carried himself nobly, and had a beautiful and benignant countenance. His speaking was calm, deliberate, dignified; his reasoning close and strong; and his style, though unadorned, was perfectly correct. His truly noble nature shone through his utterance, and his gentle humour conciliated the goodwill even of political opponents. His ample fortune and large leisure enabled him to devote himself to Parliamentary work, though the interests of his brewery and of his landed estate were never neglected. He was active in all local business, and had a singularly exact knowledge of all that concerned his constituents, their personalities and desires. A man thus endowed was clearly predestined for high office, and, in 1859 Lord Palmerston, who believed in political apprenticeship, made Samuel Whitbread a Lord of the Admiralty. But this appointment disclosed the one weak joint in the young politician's armour. His circulation was not strong enough for his vast height, and sedulous attention to the work of an office, superadded to the normally unwholesome atmosphere of the House of Commons, was more than he could stand. "I cannot," he said, "get a living out of the London air;" and so in 1863, just on the threshold of high preferment, he bade farewell to official ambition and devoted himself thence-forward to the work of a private Member. But the leaders of the Liberal party did not resign such a recruit without repeated efforts to retain him. Three times he refused the Cabinet and twice the Speakership; while every suggestion of personal distinctions or hereditary honours he waved aside with a smile.

The knowledge that these things were so gave Whit bread a peculiar authority in the House of Commons. His independence was absolute and assured. He was, if any politician ever was, unbuyable; and though he was a sound Party man, on whom at a pinch his leaders could rely, he yet seemed to rise superior to the lower air of partisanship, and to lift debate into the atmosphere of conviction. The St. James's Gazette once confessed that his peculiar position in the House of Commons was one of those Parliamentary mysteries which no outsider could understand. He seemed, even amid the hottest controversies, to be rather an arbiter than an advocate. Once Mr. T. W. Russell, in a moment of inspiration, described him as "an umpire, perfectly impartial--except that he never gives his own side out." Whereupon Whitbread, with a quaint half-smile, whispered to the man sitting next to him: "That hit of 'T. W.'s' was not very bad." A singular tribute to Whitbread's influence, and the weight attaching to his counsel, is found in the fact that, in the autumn of 1885, before Mr. Gladstone had announced his conversion to Home Rule, Whitbread was one of the very few people (Goschen was another) to whom he confided his change of view. Of the estimation in which Whitbread was held by his neighbours, even after he had ceased to represent them in Parliament, the present writer once heard a ludicrous, but illuminating, instance. Among the men sentenced to death after the Jameson Raid was one connected by ties of family with Bedford. For a while his kinsfolk could not believe that he was really in danger; but, when ominous rumours began to thicken, one of his uncles said, with an air of grave resolve: "This is becoming serious about my nephew. If it goes on much longer, I shall have to write to Mr. Whitbread."

In the general course of politics Whitbread was a Whig, holding to the great principles of Civil and Religious Liberty, Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform; but he was a Whig with a difference. He stuck to the party after it had been permeated by Gladstonianism, advanced in Liberalism as he advanced in years, and became a convinced Home Ruler. His political prescience, founded on long experience and close observation, was remarkable. Soon after Lord Salisbury's accession to power in the summer of 1895, he said to the present writer: "I fancy that for two or three years the Government will go on quietly enough; and then, when they find their popularity waning, they will pick a quarrel with somebody, and go to war. It is always difficult for an Opposition to attack a Government which is conducting a war, and I think Chamberlain is just the man to take advantage of that difficulty."

In religion Whitbread was an Evangelical of the more liberal type, mistrusting extremes, and always on the friendliest terms with Nonconformists. As regards the affairs of common life, he was a most hospitable and courteous host; a thorough agriculturist, and a keen sportsman. His size and weight debarred him from hunting, but he was a first-rate shot, whether on the moor or in the stubble, and a keen yachtsman. At home and abroad, everywhere and in all things, he was a gentleman of the highest type, genial, dignified, and unassuming. Probity, benevolence, and public spirit were embodied in Samuel Whitbread.

VII

HENRY MONTAGU BUTLER

The loved and honoured friend whose name stands at the head of this section was the fourth son and, youngest child of Dr. George Butler, Dean of Peterborough, and sometime Head Master of Harrow. Montagu Butler was himself-educated at Harrow under Dr. Vaughan, afterwards the well-known Master of the Temple, and proved to be in many respects the ideal schoolboy. He won all the prizes for composition, prose and verse, Greek, Latin, and English. He gained the principal scholarship, and was Head of the School. Beside all this, he was a member of the Cricket Eleven and made the highest score for Harrow in the match against Eton at Lord's.

In July, 1851, Montagu Butler left Harrow, and in the following October entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a Scholar. He won the Bell University Scholarship, the Battie University Scholarship, the Browne Medal for a Greek Ode twice, the Camden Medal, Porson Prize, and First Member's Prize for a Latin Essay, and graduated as Senior Classic in 1855. Of such an undergraduate career a Fellowship at Trinity was the natural sequel, but Butler did not long reside at Cambridge. All through his boyhood and early manhood he had set his heart on a political career. He had a minute acquaintance with the political history of modern England, and his memory was stored with the masterpieces of political eloquence.

In 1856 he accepted the post of Private Secretary to the Right Hon. W. F. Cowper, afterwards Lord Mount Temple, and then President of the Board of Health in Lord Palmerston's Administration. In this office he served for two years, and then, retiring, he spent eleven months in foreign travel, visiting in turn the Tyrol, Venice, the Danube, Greece, Rome, Florence, and the Holy Land. During this period, he changed his plan of life, and in September, 1859, he was ordained Deacon by Bishop Lonsdale of Lichfield, on Letters Dimissory from Bishop Turton of Ely. His title was his Fellowship; but it was settled that the College should present him to the Vicarage of Great St. Mary's, Cambridge; and till it was vacant he was to have worked as a classical tutor in Trinity. Then came another change. "Dr. Vaughan's retirement," he wrote, "from the Head Mastership of Harrow startled us. We all took quietly for granted that he would stay on for years." However, this "startling" retirement took place, and there was a general agreement among friends of the School that Vaughan's favourite pupil, Montagu Butler, was the right man to succeed him. Accordingly, Butler was elected in November, 1859, though only twenty-six years old; and, with a view to the pastoral oversight of Harrow School, he was ordained priest, again by Bishop Lonsdale, at Advent, 1859.

In January, 1860, Montagu Butler entered on his new duties at Harrow, and there he spent five-and-twenty years of happy, strenuous, and serviceable life. He found 469 boys in the School; under his rule the numbers increased till they reached 600.

Butler's own culture was essentially classical, for he had been fashioned by Vaughan, who "thought in Greek," and he himself might almost have been said to think and feel in Latin elegiacs. But his scholarship was redeemed from pedantry by his wide reading, and by his genuine enthusiasm for all that is graceful in literature, modern as well as ancient. Under his rule the "grand, old, fortifying, classical curriculum," which Matthew Arnold satirized, fought hard and long for its monopoly; but gradually it had to yield. Butler's first concession was to relax the absurd rule which had made Latin versification obligatory on every boy in the School, whatever his gifts or tastes. At the same time he introduced the regular teaching of Natural Science, and in 1869 he created a "Modern Side." An even more important feature of his rule was the official encouragement given to the study of music, which, from an illicit indulgence practised in holes and corners, became, under the energetic management of Mr. John Farmer, a prime element in the life of the School.

In January, 1868, Butler admitted me to Harrow School. My father had introduced me to him in the previous September, and I had fallen at once under his charm. He was curiously unlike what one had imagined a Head Master to be--not old and pompous and austere, but young and gracious, friendly in manner, and very light in hand. His leading characteristic was gracefulness. He was graceful in appearance, tall and as yet slender; graceful in movement and gesture; graceful in writing, and pre-eminently graceful in speech. He was young--thirty-four--and looked younger, although (availing himself of the opportunity afforded by an illness in the summer of 1867) he had just grown a beard. He had a keen sense of humour, and was not afraid to display it before boys, although he was a little pampered by a sense of the solemn reverence due not only to what was sacred, but to everything that was established and official. To breakfast with a Head Master is usually rather an awful experience, but there was no awe about the pleasant meals in Butler's dining-room (now the head Master's study), for he was unaffectedly kind, overflowing with happiness, and tactful in adapting his conversation to the capacities of his guests.

It was rather more alarming to face him at the periodical inspection of one's Form. ("Saying to the Head Master" was the old phrase, then lapsing out of date.) We used to think that he found a peculiar interest in testing the acquirements of such boys as he knew personally, and of those whose parents were his friends; so that on these occasions it was a doubtful privilege to "know him," as the phrase is, "at home." Till one reached the Sixth Form these social and official encounters with Butler were one's only opportunities of meeting him at close quarters; but every Sunday evening we heard him preach in the Chapel, and the cumulative effect of his sermons was, at least in many cases, great. They were always written in beautifully clear and fluent English, and were often decorated with a fine quotation in prose or verse. In substance they were extraordinarily simple, though not childish. For example, he often preached on such practical topics as Gambling, National Education; and the Housing of the Poor, as well as on themes more obviously and directly religious. He was at his best in commemorating a boy who had died in the School, when his genuine sympathy with sorrow made itself unmistakably felt. But whatever was the subject, whether public or domestic, he always treated it in the same simply Christian spirit. I know from his own lips that he had never passed through those depths of spiritual experience which go to make a great preacher; but his sermons revealed in every sentence a pure, chivalrous, and duty-loving heart. One of his intimate friends once spoke of his "Arthur-like" character, and the epithet was exactly right.

His most conspicuous gift was unquestionably his eloquence. His fluency, beauty of phrase, and happy power of turning "from grave to gay, from lively to severe," made him extraordinarily effective on a platform or at a social gathering. Once (in the autumn of 1870) he injured his right arm, and so was prevented from writing his sermons. For three or four Sundays he preached extempore, and even boys who did not usually care for sermons were fascinated by his oratory.

In the region of thought I doubt if he exercised any great influence. To me he never seemed to have arrived at his conclusions by any process of serious reasoning. He held strongly and conscientiously a certain number of conventions--a kind of Palmerstonian Whiggery, a love of "spirited foreign policy;" an admiration for the military character, an immense regard for the Crown, for Parliament, and for all established institutions (he was much shocked when the present Bishop of Oxford spoke in the Debating Society in favour of Republicanism); and in every department of life he paid an almost superstitious reverence to authority. I once ventured to tell him that even a beadle was a sacred being in his eyes, and he did not deny the soft impeachment.