Life & correspondence of John Duke Lord Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice of England

Front matter

(Sift of

Cornell University Library KD 631.C69C695

V.I

Preface

I AM indebted to many persons, friends or representatives of friends, of the late Lord Coleridge, for the right to publish in these volumes letters to him which remained in his possession, and letters from him which passed into their hands at once, or, afterwards, came into their possession.

My thanks and acknowledgments, on this score,

are due to the executors of Cardinal Newman; of

Cardinal Manning ; of the late Master of BaUiol ;

of Dean Stanley ; of Lord Blachford ; of Mr. James

Russell Lowell : to Mr. Richard Arnold ; Lord

Acton ; Mr. Charles Chauncey Binning ; Mr. Arthur

Benson ; Lord Brampton ; the Rev. the Hon.

W. E. Bowen ; Mr. John Brown (of Edinburgh

University) ; Miss Edith Coleridge ; Mr. Richard

Dana ; Mr. Coningsby Disraeli ; Mr. Drew ; Sir

Mountstuart E. Grant Duff ; Miss Hawker ; the

Earl of Iddesleigh ; Mrs. Jake ; Lord Lindley ;

Mrs. Prichard ; the Marquis of Salisbury ; Sheriff

Shairp ; Mr. Goldwin Smith ; Mrs. Temple ; Lord

Justice Vaughan Williams ; Sir Spencer Walpole,

K.C.B.; Mr. Ellis Yarnall ; Lord Young.

I have received valuable assistance, and information, from the Editor of the Guardian with regard to Lord Coleridge's contributions to the paper. Mr. Arundel Esdaile, of the British Museum, has viii PREFACE

greatly assisted me in reading the proofs in slips, and in verifying references to books quoted in the text or in the notes.

Among those who have assisted me in preparing and completing the notes, I desire to mention the names of Miss Hastings and Miss Peacock, and Mr. Bailey Kempling.

Papers by Lord Lindley, Lord Justice Mathew, and Mr. Goldwin Smith will be found at the end of the second volume. It is difficult to overestimate the value and importance of these contributions to the Life of Lord Coleridge.

I cannot sufficiently express my obUgations,

I have received from Sir Francis Mowatt, G.C.B., and from Mr. W. P. Courtney, author of the BiUiographia Cornubiensis, &c., advice and assistance in the preparation, and with regard to the materials, of the work, which, I trust, I may be permitted to publicly acknowledge.

I would add that my warmest thanks are due to Mr. Egerton Baring Lawford, Master of the Crown Of&ce, for constant and unvarying assistance in the arduous and difficult task of sorting and arranging the vast collection of letters and papers placed at my disposal.

Of these, the great majority remain, and perhaps will always remain, unpublished. Even the names of many correspondents, some of them old and valued friends, others of greater or lesser note in Church, or. State, or the world of letters, are not mentioned in the following pages. Their name is legion, and I am compelled to make a selection, and then only to give excerpts from the selected letters of selected correspondents.

PREFACE ix

The letters or parts of letters now published are either of direct biographical importance as a record of events, or indirectly bear witness to and illustrate the mindj the tastes, and the character of the man by whom or to whom they were written. Tastes differ, and others might have made a better or, at least, another selection, I can but hope that after long and careful consideration I have made a good choice.

ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE.

October i8, 1904.

Contents

CBAP. PAGE

I. A Devonshire Idyll i

II. Laleham 17

Chapter I A Devonshire Idyll

St. Mary Ottery, my native village.

Charles Lamb.

John Duke Coleridge was born in London, at No. 7, Hadlow Street, December 3, 1820. He was the second child and eldest son of John Taylor Coleridge, who was born July 9, 1790, and died February 11, 1876, when his son was fifty-five years of age and in the fourth year of office as Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. The mutual relations of father and son were so intimate and so peculiar, the parental tie was so unusually close and remained so long unbroken, that it is necessary to preface the son's life with something more than an outline of the early years and character of the father.

The two lives are, in a measure, inseparable and both lives remain to be written.

John Taylor was the son of James Coleridge, a Captain in the Army, and his wife, Frances Duke Coleridge, born Taylor. After his marriage (February 27, 1788), Captain Coleridge, who had retired on half-pay, settled, in the first instance, at a house in St. Peter's Street, Tiverton, and, secondly (1796), at Heath's (or Heath) Court, Ottery St. Mary.

Five children, James Duke, John Taylor, Bernard Frederick (d. 1806), Francis George and Frances

VOL. I A

Duke (Lady Patteson), were born at Tiverton : a sixth son, Henry Nelson, was born October 25, 1798, and a seventh and youngest child, Edward, was born May 11, 1800, at Ottery St. Mary.

The late Master of Balliol (Benjamin Jowett) used to say that there were as many Coleridges as there were Herods, and that it was impossible to remember how they were related to each other. If the reader will bear in mind that James, the father of John Taylor and grandfather of John Duke Coleridge, was the progenitor of most who bear his name, and that the sole exceptions are the descendants of James' nephew, WilUam Hart Coleridge [Bishop of Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands,] and James' youngest brother, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, it may help him to thrid the maze.^ If he seek to know more he will find a genealogical table at the end of the second volume.

James, who maybe regarded as the second founder of the family, was the third surviving son of the Reverend John Coleridge (1718-1781), a self-made man who began hfe as Master of a village school at Clyst Hydon, took orders, and, after eleven years' service as Master of Squire's endowed school at South Molton, was appointed, September 6, 1760, Master of the King's or New Grammar School at Ottery St. Mary, and, about the same time. Vicar of the Parish and Chaplain Priest of the Collegiate Church of St. Mary the Virgin. Of the Vicar's father, woollen draper, or woolstapler (his son entered him-

1 The descendants of William Hart Coleridge in the male line are his grandson Rennell Coleridge of Salston, Ottery St. Mary, and three great-grandchildren ; the descendants of S. T. Coleridge are his grandchildren, Edith Coleridge, Christabel Rose Coleridge, Ernest Hartley Coleridge, and four great-grandchildren.

Colonel James Coleridge, Grandeather of John Duke (Lord) Coleridge

A Pastel Drawing ill the possession of the Right Honble. Lord Coleridge. K.C

1748 A DEVONSHIRE IDYLL 3

self on the books of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, March 18, 1748, as " filius Johannis textoris "), nothing is known save that he lived at Crediton, and that before his death he was " reduced to extreme poverty." The sole authority for these facts or, rather, "dim traditions of times too remote to be pierced by the eye of investigation," is the poet who knew but little and recorded the little he did know, as a poet should, with a view to poetic rather than historic fidelity. It may, however, be taken for granted that " Johannes textor " was a son of the soil, and that if he could claim kinship with those Exeter Coldridges or Coleridges whose wills are preserved in the diocesan registry, he was a poor relation. There is a village named Coleridge three miles to the west of Lapford Station in the North of Devon, a Hundred of Coleridge in the South, and an ancient building named Coleridge House not far from Kingsbridge, but whether John of Crediton or the other mid-Devon Coleridges came from the Parish in the North or the Hundred in the South is uncerteiin. They were not of sufficient importance to have been name-givers, and the inference is that they were emigrants and brought their name with them. A time comes when even " the low beginnings" of a prosperous family are eagerly sought after and inquired into, but, at first, and before the prosperity is a fait accompli, there is a conspiracy of silence. If Captain Coleridge could have pointed out " the hole of the pit whence he was digged," he kept his knowledge to himself. His personal record was fine and honourable. He was educated in his father's school, and, after a few months' apprenticeship to an Exeter tradesman (an ironmonger, according to his brother Edward, who was pleased to add that " the iron had entered into his soul "), he obtained a commission in the sixth regiment of infantry through the influence of a Mr. John Hamilton.

His son John Taylor Coleridge, in an unfinished chapter of family history, records the " natural pride" with which his father maintained that on joining his regiment eight guineas sewed into his waistcoat, and speedily repaid, constituted the sole allowance of pocket money he received from home, at once his outfit and his patrimony.

An elder brother, who held a command of Sepoys in the East India Company's Service and had amassed money, helped him to buy his steps, and, in his twenty-ninth year (February 27, 1788), he was married at St. Mary Arches Church, Exeter, to Frances Duke, younger daughter of Bernard Frederick Taylor of IsUngton, merchant, and his wife Frances, born Duke, the youngest surviving child of George Duke of Oldhalls, Colaton Ralegh, and co-heir of her brother Robert, who was one of the last male representatives of his family in the direct line.

There is a tradition that the marriage took place against the wishes or without the assent of the lady's family. Miss Taylor, at least on her mother's side, was of gentle blood, and must have been already in possession of substantial means. James Coleridge, apart from the fact that he was an officer in the army, could offer his wife but Uttle beyond good looks and a good character. In any case the opposition could not have been serious, for a Mrs. (or Miss) Duke stood sponsor to the eldest son James Duke

1788 A DEVONSHIRE IDYLL 5

Coleridge, and John Taylor was named after a godfather, his maternal uncle George Taylor.^

Be that as it may, the marriage of James Coleridge with Frances Duke Taylor not only laid the foundations but built up and established the position of the elder branch of the family. The Dukes of Otterton, Budleigh Syon, Colaton Ralegh, Duke's Colaton and other manors, belonged to the second order of Devonshire gentry. They are not in "Prince's," but they were of ancient descent. A Nicholas Duke was sheriff of London in 1192, a Roger Duke was seventh mayor of London ; an ancestor was high sheriff of the County of Devon in the reign of Elizabeth, and, in the time of the second Charles, a Duke of Otterton corresponded with and was on terms of the closest intimacy with his neighbour a Rolle of Bicton. In later times they intermarried with Walronds and RoUes and Ayres, and Yonges and were seized of rich and numerous estates.

George Duke of Oldhalls, Colaton Ralegh, who had married an heiress, Dorothy Ayer, daughter of Marshall Ayer of Fen Ottery, was the father of one son, Robert, and five daughters, Dorothy (Mrs, Doidge); Ehzabeth, who married John Yonge of Puslinch-on-Yealm, the great-grandmother of the authoress Charlotte Mary Yonge; Sarah, <?. unmarried; Anne, d. unmarried; and Frances, who married Bernard Frederick Taylor. On the death of Robert ^ Duke, the estates devolved, in the first place, on his

1 Samuel Taylor Coleridge was named after a godfather, a tradesman of Ottery St. Mary. Uncle and nephew were both called Taylor, but the nephew was not named after the uncle, or the uncle's name-giver.

* See Polwhele's History of Devon.

uncle Richard Duke, and, secondly, on his cousin John Heath, henceforth known as John Duke, and, as John Duke died sine prole, they reverted to Robert's right heirs, viz., his four sisters. Frances Taylor, the youngest of the co-heiresses, was the mother of three children, George Duke who died unmarried, Dorothy Ayer, who married Henry Langford Brown of Combe Satchfield, and Frances Duke Coleridge, who, on her sister's death in 1830, inherited the second moiety of her mother's fortune.

James Coleridge turned his wife's money to good account, bought a small estate, devoted himself to county business, and to the raising of companies of Volunteers. He was a Lieutenant-Colonel of Volunteers, a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Devon, and Chairman of the Committee of Expenditure, and his sons, who had been educated at Eton and the Universities, started in life as the sons of a county gentleman of reputation and standing, and with prospects and ambitions beyond their surroundings and circumstances. On his father's side John Taylor Coleridge was " uncontaminated with one drop of gentility,"' but his mother came of a different stock and transmitted an hereditary strain.

James Coleridge gave up his house at Tiverton and moved to Ottery St. Mary, August 27, 1796. His new property. Chanter's House according to the title-deeds. Heath's Court as it had been re-christened by the townsfolk, consisted of a small but compact dwelling-house almost abutting the

'■ " The time may come in which it will be useful to prove myself a genuine sans culotte, my veins uncontaminated with one drop of gentility." — S. T. Coleridge to Thomas Poole, Feb. 1797.

1796 A DEVONSHIRE IDYLL 7

north-west corner of the churchyard, once a portion of the Collegiate buildings inhabited by the Chaplainpriests, and some thirty or more acres of meadow and farmland. One room known as the Convention Room, then and now the dining-room, witnessed a meeting between Cromwell and Fairfax.

House and land were, no doubt, a good investment for a portion of his wife's money, but he had other reasons for settling at Ottery. His mother had found a permanent home under the roof of her son Edward, who had recently married a cousin, Anne Bowdon,^ and was, I beheve, at this time an assistant to his brother George, the newly appointed master of the King's School. George after a long bachelorhood was married to a Miss Jane Hart, who, some fifteen years before, had been betrothed to an elder brother William, and, with her, came, as a life-long inmate, her sister Sarah, the widow of another of the Coleridge brothers, Luke Herman, who had died at the age of twenty-four in 1790. A little knot of kinsfolk was gathered in and near the old home, and it was, doubtless, with the desire to renew old associations, that James resolved to plant his roof-tree where he had spent his childhood and boyhood and his father's name was still honoured and remembered. A day had been when the family had been minished and brought low, and now that their well-being, and his, seemed to be assured, he would take his place in their midst as a man of substance and position, " bringing his sheaves with him."

A younger brother who " stood apart," but marked

1 His first wdfe was a widow, a Mrs. Wagg. She is buried in the cloisters of Salisbury Cathedral.

the scene, has celebrated this drawing together of the clan :

A blessed Lot hath he who, having past

His youth and early manhood in the stir

And turmoil of the world, retreats at length,

With cares that move, not agitate the heart.

To the same Dwelling where his Father dwelt ;

And haply views his tottering little ones

Embrace those aged knees, and climb that lap

On which first kneeling his own Infancy

Lisped its brief prayer. Such. O my earliest Friend !

Thy Lot, and such thy Brothers too enjoy.

At distance did ye climb Life's upland road.

Yet cheer'd and cheering : now fraternal Love

Hath drawn you to one centre. Be your days

Holy, and blest and blessing may ye live ! '

The elder boys James and John were placed, at once, under their uncle's care. More than thirty years afterwards, in recording the death of his " Aunt Luke," John Taylor Coleridge relates an anecdote of his childhood. " To me at one period of my life she was as a mother — when James and I first went to school at Ottery we slept in a bed by her side in the Bell Chamber. William Coleridge slept in a crib on the other side, and (such was the simplicity of the time) my dear uncle (George) used to come in every morning and ring the bell in the room to rouse the school." George Coleridge, who had watched over the tumultuous youth of his brother Samuel and bemoaned his errors and shortcomings, now turned with renewed hope to the education of his nephew whom he designed from the first for a distinguished career. So long as he was under his care he gave him of his best, and, after he went to school and college, corresponded with him on points of scholarship, and, in all ways, trained

*■ Dedication, to the Reverend George Coleridge. " Poems by S. T. Coleridge." Second edition, 1797, p. vii.

i8o3 A DEVONSHIRE IDYLL 9

him in the way he should go. To his uncle George ^ he owed much, and he repaid him with unbounded devotion. Perhaps, too, he owed to " this dear good excellent man," as he called him, his one defect, an over-anxious temperament tending, at one and the same time, to self-depreciation and a sUghtly censorious attitude to the world in general.

John Coleridge was removed to Eton, June 13, and elected on the foundation in August 1803. Dr. Goodall, the genial and courtly Provost of later days, was headmaster and " his excellent friend and relative," Charles Yonge, the father of Charles Duke Yonge, was his tutor. Of his Eton days I know but little, but his letters home and to his uncle George have been preserved and bear testimony to a scholarly and strenuous youth. The " annals " of a colleger at Eton, an hundred years ago, were simple though not monotonous. I have heard Sir John Coleridge say that most days he had to fight for his dinner, and that never, or hardly ever, did the number of plates and the number of boys correspond. Of the mutton he said nothing. Once, too, he fought for an hour with a schoolfellow, Horace Mann, the descendant of Walpole's friend and correspondent, and so, I have been told, was almost at his last gasp, when Goodall interposed and stopped the fight. Whoever won or was on the point of winning, it was a famous fight and has its place in history .^

1 To quote his own words : " There (Ottery School) the boy remained till 1803, and to his excellent training received under his uncle, a most conscientious teacher of unceasing industry, accurate learning and excellent taste, he attributed in great degree whatever success or reputation he attained in future life." — The Judges of England, by Edward Fosse, F.S.A., 1869, ix. 172.

* My informant with regard to Coleridge's approaching discom-

He was superannuated for " King's," and, accordingly, as a pis alter, sat for and was elected to a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, April 2 1 , 1809. Here, as he somewhat quaintly testifies, he "had the singular felicity of enjoying the friendship of Charles Dyson, John Keble,and Thomas Arnold." His university career was one unbroken triumph. He won the Latin Verse prize — (his subject being "Pyramides ^Egyptiacae" — see "Etoniana," 1865, p. 95) — June II, 1810 ; was placed in the First Class in Literce Humaniores, April 13, and elected a Fellow of Exeter College, June 30, 1812. In December of the same year he was appointed Vinerian Scholar, and. May 24, 1813, won both the English and the Latin Essay Prize.^ In 1814 he travelled on the Continent with Charles Dyson and Nathaniel and Noel Ellison, and passed some months at Geneva.^ I gather from allusions and reminiscences in his diaries that when at Geneva he fleeted the time merrily, if not always as discreetly as his later standard of conduct and propriety demanded.

fiture was the late Rev. Charles Noel Mann, who possibly took a filial view of his father's prowess.

1 The subjects were " Etymology," and " The Moral Effects of the Censor's Office at Rome."

2 Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff reports an incident of this Swiss tour which Lord Coleridge must have found recorded in one of his father's journals : " He [Lord Coleridge] told me that Whately called Keble, whose portrait is over the chimney-piece in the room which I am occupying [at Heath's Court] a 'caged eagle,' and quoted a saying of Madame de Stael's to his father which was new to him. Sir John had gone on a visit to Coppet, when the Continent was opened after the Great Wars, and remarked to his hostess that none of the changes in France had done much for personal Uberty — the citizen as against the State was almost as helpless as before the Revolution. ' The difference,' she answered, ' between you and us seems to be mainly this : you are a proud people, and care for Uberty, we are a vain people, and care for equality." — Notes from a Diary, 1904, ii. 2, 3.

i8i9 A DEVONSHIRE IDYLL 11

His faults, if faults they can be called, were venial, and I doubt not that then, as always, he did well and finely. But youth and age are alike inevitable. He had already in 1812 entered at the Middle Temple, and in the latter end of 1816 he began to practise as a special pleader. He was called to the bar June 36, 1819. He was married August 27, 1818, to Mary, second daughter of the Reverend Gilbert Buchanan, LL.D., Rector of Woodmansterne in Surrey and Vicar of Northfleet in Kent. Her loyal and punctilious husband does not record her age, but she was, I believe, a year or two his senior.^ Her father was a well-beneficed clergyman, possessed of some private means and she herself had " expectations " from an uncle which were soon realised. She was a tall, elegant woman, of a refined but frigid demeanour. She was sufficiently well educated for her position, and could, to some extent, appreciate the influences and the aspirations of the family and society into which she was entering. But from the first year of her married life to the end of her days she was an invalid, a real, and, what was worse for herself and others, an imaginary sufferer. Nervous and highly-strung, she made hfe extremely difficult to an over-taxed, over-conscientious husband who was given to balance one duty against another, and to take all things to heart. Nothing could be more admirable or, in its way, more pathetic than his untiring devotion to a wife who must have tried his patience to the uttermost. To judge from her letters she gave him all the love she had to give, and, unquestionably, in pubUc and towards society, she comported herself with dignity and a certain air of distinction. And in some of her letters to her children, as they advanced in years and station, there is an overflow of maternal affection together with a touching and almost excessive humility and self-depreciation. But she was neither a happy nor a happy-making woman, and she possessed a remarkable faculty for implanting a sting in a seemingly innocent remark. The first Lady Coleridge was not a persona grata to the family at large, but she had, at least, one champion in her eldest son, who repaid his mother's fondness and partiality with admiration and with love.^

The third volume (the first which has come under my notice,) of John Taylor Coleridge's MS. diaries opens with a restrospect of the year 1819. It was the second year of his married life, and one child, Mary Dorothy Frances, " an unmixed blessing," was now six months old and it was time to forecast and lay plans for her future education and upbringing. Financially it was not altogether easy to make both ends meet, but he was able to supplement his modest fees earned on circuit and at sessions by taking piipils at Chambers and by writing for the Reviews, The British Critic, and, thanks to Southey's recommendation and influence. The Quarterly Review.

On January i, 1820, he sums up the gains and losses, the joys and sorrows of the previous years and strikes a balance. The following sentences, which are extracted from a longer and more detailed

1 At her death her son wrote in his diary : " Her affection, her generosity, her kindness in a thousand ways, were wonderful. To me she poured out for more than fifty years a stream of love always fresh, always the same, always abounding."

i82o A DEVONSHIRE IDYLL 13

narrative, depict the man as he then was, and with little change or development, remained for fifty-five years of duteous, humble, honourable, and successful liveUhood. " Morn into noon did pass, noon into eve," but " the ordering of the good man," his virtues, his self-discipline, a mind set upon leading the higher life, suffered no check, no stay, and " knew no shadow of turning."

The year that has just passed away has been full of trials and events for me ; during the first half I was in continual anxiety and distress on account of my dear wife's illness. . . .

My child has hitherto been an unmixed blessing to me. She is healthy, intelligent and pretty ; how strange are the feelings of a father ! even now I can hardly fancy sometimes that I am really one. I must begin and will do so even at this early period to prepare myself for bringing her up properly.

In the former part of the year my profession languished. I had no pupil, and little to do : in June I was called to the bar, went the summer assizes and had no brief. On the circuit I was more successful, and at the Michaelmas sessions I reaped an uncommon harvest, and laid the groimd, I trust, for future success. ... In London of course I do little. . . , In November I got a pupil. Upon the whole I am well satisfied, for I think I have made great g-dvances in general professional skill and knowledge.

At home I have employed myself a good deal in writing for the Reviews ... a review of Shelley's " Revolt of Islam" in the Quarterly ; of Hallaxn^s Europe, Wordsworth's " Peter BeU," and " Waggoner," Lettres sur le Bonheur, James Coleridge's " Sermon,'" and Evans's " Statutes " in the British Critic ; and I have written some others which have not yet been published. These have been written more for profit than anjiihing else (for, if I could, I would rather read than write), but I cannot charge myself with having indulged an unchristian spirit in any one of them. . . .

Independent of professional reading, and that which is necessary for reviewing, it cannot be supposed that I have done much in the way of study. Somewhat I have read to my wife, and I have got on in divinity a Uttle.

My dear relatives and friends, tharik God, have all been preserved to me ; my father in health and activity and spirits of body and mind. . . . My uncle George continues well, but, somehow, our correspondence has slackened. He is tmcommonly kind when we meet, and this slackness shall not be for the future. My school and college friends too, all kind and flourishing.

These are a heap of blessings ! My own heart has, I hope, not gone back in the path of improvement ; I think my temper is softened, and that I have more habitual and practical reliance upon and submission to God. . . . Still, in many things, I am as deficient as ever, especiallj^ in fervency of devotion. Nor am I satisfied with my religious management of my servants.

The chapter or paragraph ends with a prayer for divine assistance and an invocation — " especially bless my wife and child."

In this record or testimony there is nothing piquant or original or even markedly intellectual, but it has the note of sincerity. The writer was, even then, a finished scholar, a man of letters, a popular and promising lawyer, but he is careful for none of these things in comparison with selfgovernment and duty. There was, perhaps, a lack of nerve-power in his physical and mental constitution which depressed his actual attainments below their promise and apparent capacity. The burden of conduct weighs hea\dly on his spirit as well as his conscience. He takes himself and his career and his family too seriously, and there is a deficiency or, rather, a "fearful minus quantity" of humour. When he was a boy at Eton, George Coleridge cautioned him not to be led astray by the influence and example of his uncle Samuel. But there was no danger. John Taylor Coleridge was not a genius, but he was a man of parts and worth, a good man and true, who won the double guerdon of attaining what he merited and meriting what he attained.

i82o A DEVONSHIRE IDYLL 15

Since this chapter was written I have found, in Lord Coleridge's handwriting, a sketch of his father's character, intended, no doubt, to find a place in some future biography or memoir. If it had been printed it might have been altered or modified, but, when the truth is so beautiful, surely the truth may stand. It is said that " love is blind." Say rather that it perceives all things, but looks again on whatsoever things are lovely and of good report.