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Various - "Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890"

Alphonse Daudet - "Lettres de mon moulin"

Various - "The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12,"

Charles Foster Kent - "The Makers and Teachers of Judaism"

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Occasional Papers by R.W. Church

R >> R.W. Church >> Occasional Papers







XXXII

LORD BLACHFORD[36]


[36]
_Guardian_, 27th Nov. 1889.

Lord Blachford, whose death was announced last week, belonged to a
generation of Oxford men of whom few now survive, and who, of very
different characters and with very different careers and histories, had
more in common than any set of contemporaries at Oxford since their
time. Speaking roughly, they were almost the last product of the old
training at public school and at college, before the new reforms set
in; of a training confessedly imperfect and in some ways deplorably
defective, but with considerable elements in it of strength and
manliness, with keen instincts of contempt for all that savoured of
affectation and hollowness, and with a sort of largeness and freedom
about it, both in its outlook and its discipline, which suited vigorous
and self-reliant natures in an exciting time, when debate ran high and
the gravest issues seemed to be presenting themselves to English
society. The reformed system which has taken its place at Oxford
criticises, not without some justice, the limitations of the older one;
the narrow range of its interests, the few books which men read, and
the minuteness with which they were "got up." But if these men did not
learn all that a University ought to teach its students, they at least
learned two things. They learned to work hard, and they learned to make
full use of what they knew. They framed an ideal of practical life,
which was very variously acted upon, but which at any rate aimed at
breadth of grasp and generosity of purpose, and at being thorough. This
knot of men, who lived a good deal together, were recognised at the
time as young men of much promise, and they looked forward to life with
eagerness and high aspiration. They have fulfilled their promise; their
names are mixed up with all the recent history of England; they have
filled its great places and governed its policy during a large part of
the Queen's long reign. Their names are now for the most part things of
the past--Sidney Herbert, Lord Canning, Lord Dalhousie, Lord Elgin,
Lord Cardwell, the Wilberforces, Mr. Hope Scott, Archbishop Tait. But
they still have their representatives among us--Mr. Gladstone, Lord
Selborne, Lord Sherbrooke, Sir Thomas Acland, Cardinal Manning. It is
not often that a University generation or two can produce such a list
of names of statesmen and rulers; and the list might easily be
enlarged.

To this generation Frederic Rogers belonged, not the least
distinguished among his contemporaries; and he was early brought under
an influence likely to stimulate in a high degree whatever powers a man
possessed, and to impress a strong character with elevated and enduring
ideas of life and duty. Mr. Newman, with Mr. Hurrell Froude and Mr.
Robert Wilberforce, had recently been appointed tutors of their college
by Dr. Copleston. They were in the first eagerness of their enthusiasm
to do great things with the college, and the story goes that Mr.
Newman, on the look-out for promising pupils, wrote to an Eton friend,
asking him to recommend some good Eton men for admission at Oriel.
Frederic Rogers, so the story goes, was one of those mentioned; at any
rate, he entered at Oriel, and became acquainted with Mr. Newman as a
tutor, and the admiration and attachment of the undergraduate ripened
into the most unreserved and affectionate friendship of the grown
man--a friendship which has lasted through all storms and difficulties,
and through strong differences of opinion, till death only has ended
it. From Mr. Newman his pupil caught that earnest devotion to the cause
of the Church which was supreme with him through life. He entered
heartily into Mr. Newman's purpose to lift the level of the English
Church and its clergy. While Mr. Newman at Oxford was fighting the
battle of the English Church, there was no one who was a closer friend
than Rogers, no one in whom Mr. Newman had such trust, none whose
judgment he so valued, no one in whose companionship he so delighted;
and the master's friendship was returned by the disciple with a noble
and tender, and yet manly honesty. There came, as we know, times which
strained even that friendship; when the disciple, just at the moment
when the master most needed and longed for sympathy and counsel, had to
choose between his duty to his Church and the claims and ties of
friendship. He could not follow in the course which his master and
friend had found inevitable; and that deepest and most delightful
friendship had to be given up. But it was given up, not indeed without
great suffering on both sides, but without bitterness or unworthy
thoughts. The friend had seen too closely the greatness and purity of
his master's character to fail in tenderness and loyalty, even when he
thought his master going most wrong. He recognised that the error,
deplorable as he thought it, was the mistake of a lofty and unselfish
soul; and in the height of the popular outcry against him he came
forward, with a distant and touching reverence, to take his old
friend's part and rebuke the clamour. And at length the time came when
disagreements were left long behind and each person had finally taken
his recognised place; and then the old ties were knit up again. It
could not be the former friendship of every day and of absolute and
unreserved confidence. But it was the old friendship of affection and
respect renewed, and pleasure in the interchange of thoughts. It was a
friendship of the antique type, more common, perhaps, even in the last
century than with us, but enriched with Christian hopes and Christian
convictions.

Lord Blachford, in spite of his brilliant Oxford reputation, and though
he was a singularly vigorous writer, with wide interests and very
independent thought, has left nothing behind him in the way of
literature. This was partly because he very early became a man of
affairs; partly that his health interfered with habits of study. It
used to be told at Oxford that when he was working for his Double First
he could scarcely use his eyes, and had to learn much of his work by
being read to. The result was that he was not a great reader; and a man
ought to be a reader who is to be a writer. But, besides this, there
was a strongly marked feature in his character which told in the same
direction. There was a curious modesty about him which formed a
contrast with other points; with a readiness and even eagerness to put
forth and develop his thoughts on matters that interested him, with a
perfect consciousness of his remarkable powers of statement and
argument, with a constitutional impetuosity blended with caution which
showed itself when anything appealed to his deeper feelings or called
for his help; yet with all these impelling elements, his instinct was
always to shrink from putting himself forward, except when it was a
matter of duty. He accepted recognition when it came, but he never
claimed it. And this reserve, which marked his social life, kept him
back from saying in a permanent form much that he had to say, and that
was really worth saying. Like many of the distinguished men of his day,
he was occasionally a journalist. We have been reminded by the _Times_
that he at one time wrote for that paper. And he was one of the men to
whose confidence and hope in the English Church the _Guardian_ owes its
existence.

His life was the uneventful one of a diligent and laborious public
servant, and then of a landlord keenly alive to the responsibilities of
his position. He passed through various subordinate public employments,
and finally succeeded Mr. Herman Merivale as permanent Under-Secretary
for the Colonies. It is a great post, but one of which the work is done
for the most part out of sight. Colonial Secretaries in Parliament come
and go, and have the credit, often quite justly, of this or that
policy. But the public know little of the permanent official who keeps
the traditions and experience of the department, whose judgment is
always an element, often a preponderating element, in eventful
decisions, and whose pen drafts the despatches which go forth in the
name of the Government. Sir Frederic Rogers, as he became in time, had
to deal with some of the most serious colonial questions which arose
and were settled while he was at the Colonial Office. He took great
pains, among other things, to remove, or at least diminish, the
difficulties which beset the _status_ of the Colonial Church and
clergy, and to put its relations to the Church at home on a just and
reasonable footing. There is a general agreement as to the industry and
conspicuous ability with which his part of the work was done. Mr.
Gladstone set an admirable example in recognising in an unexpected way
faithful but unnoticed services, and at the same time paid a merited
honour to the permanent staff of the public offices, when he named Sir
Frederic Rogers for a peerage.

Lord Blachford, for so he became on his retirement from the Colonial
Office, cannot be said to have quitted entirely public life, as he
always, while his strength lasted, acknowledged public claims on his
time and industry. He took his part in two or three laborious
Commissions, doing the same kind of valuable yet unseen work which he
had done in office, guarding against blunders, or retrieving them,
giving direction and purpose to inquiries, suggesting expedients. But
his main employment was now at his own home. He came late in life to
the position of a landed proprietor, and he at once set before himself
as his object the endeavour to make his estate as perfect as it could
be made--perfect in the way in which a naturally beautiful country and
his own good taste invited him to make it, but beyond all, as perfect
as might be, viewed as the dwelling-place of his tenants and the
labouring poor. A keen and admiring student of political economy, his
sympathies were always with the poor. He was always ready to challenge
assumptions, such as are often loosely made for the convenience of the
well-to-do. The solicitude which always pursued him was the thought of
his cottages, and it was not satisfied till the last had been put in
good order. The same spirit prompted him to allow labourers who could
manage the undertaking to rent pasture for a few cows; and the
experiment, he thought, had succeeded. The idea of justice and the
general welfare had too strong a hold on his mind to allow him to be
sentimental in dealing with the difficult questions connected with
land. But if his labourers found him thoughtful of their comfort his
farmers found him a good landlord--strict where he met with dishonesty
and carelessness, but open-minded and reasonable in understanding their
points of view, and frank, equitable, and liberal in meeting their
wishes. Disclaiming all experience of country matters, and not minding
if he fell into some mistakes, he made his care of his estate a model
of the way in which a good man should discharge his duties to the land.

His was one of those natures which have the gift of inspiring
confidence in all who come near him; all who had to do with him felt
that they could absolutely trust him. The quality which was at the
bottom of his character as a man was his unswerving truthfulness; but
upon this was built up a singularly varied combination of elements not
often brought together, and seldom in such vigour and activity. Keen,
rapid, penetrating, he was quick in detecting anything that rung hollow
in language or feeling; and he did not care to conceal his dislike and
contempt. But no one threw himself with more genuine sympathy into the
real interests of other people. No matter what it was, ethical or
political theory, the course of a controversy, the arrangement of a
trust-deed, the oddities of a character, the marvels of natural
science, he was always ready to go with his companion as far as he
chose to go, and to take as much trouble as if the question started had
been his own. Where his sense of truth was not wounded he was most
considerate and indulgent; he seemed to keep through life his
schoolboy's amused tolerance for mischief that was not vicious. No one
entered more heartily into the absurdities of a grotesque situation; of
no one could his friends be so sure that he would miss no point of a
good story; and no one took in at once more completely or with deeper
feeling the full significance of some dangerous incident in public
affairs, or discerned more clearly the real drift of confused and
ambiguous tendencies. He was conscious of the power of his intellect,
and he liked to bring it to bear on what was before him; he liked to
probe things to the bottom, and see how far his companion in
conversation was able to go; but ready as he was with either argument
or banter he never, unless provoked, forced the proof of his power on
others. For others, indeed, of all classes and characters, so that they
were true, he had nothing but kindness, geniality, forbearance, the
ready willingness to meet them on equal terms. Those who had the
privilege of his friendship remember how they were kept up in their
standard and measure of duty by the consciousness of his opinion, his
judgment, his eagerness to feel with them, his fearless, though it
might be reluctant, expression of disagreement It was, indeed, that
very marked yet most harmonious combination of severity and tenderness
which gave such interest to his character. A strong love of justice, a
deep and unselfish and affectionate gentleness and patience, are
happily qualities not too rare. But to have known one at once so
severely just and so indulgently tender and affectionate makes a mark
in a man's life which he forgets at his peril.


THE END


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