Reminiscences of bishops and archbishops

Preface

IN Lord Acton's Letters to Mary Gladstone there occur two suggestive sentences : " But this is true : history does not stand or fall with historians. From the thirteenth century we rely much more on letters than on histories written for the public." ^ " You have an excellent idea about those letters.^ If you go on and arrange them, it will be very precious to him some idle day, if that should ever come, and to you all. The inner reality of history is so unlike the back of the cards, and it takes so long to get at it, — which does not prevent us front disbelieving what is current as history, but makes us wish to sift it, and dig through mud to solid foundations.''^

There is a very large truth here, which is susceptible of many illustrations. No one who has read any history, whether secular or

^ Letters of Lord Acton : The Macmillan Company, 1904; p. 127 * These would seem to have been letters written to Miss Gladstone's

father, the Hon. W. E. Gladstone, by men of light and leading in the

political world of his time. ^ Ibid., p. 131.

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ecclesiastical, can be unmindful of the way in which, from time to time, it is rewritten. First it was the work, on the one hand or the other, of strong partisans ; and it is not necessary to accuse them of dishonesty in order to demonstrate how, often quite unconsciously, they exaggerated facts which made for their own side of a critical issue, or minimised or even quite ignored those that made against them.

Next to these come the historians who, out of the rubbish, or the hiding-places, of history, disinter those pages in it which make not only for its accuracy, but for its comprehensiveness.

And yet there remains another element, often the most interesting, and always the most valuable of all, — the element I mean of personality^ or individuality. For history is not, if it be history of real or enduring value, the story, alone, of events, but, most of all, of men. The passionate eagerness with which we peruse legends of illustrious people, — and, indeed, often create them out of material as mythical and shadowy as the imaginings of fable — does not spring alone, nor chiefly, from that merely vulgar personal curiosity which is little better than the love of gossip. It is essentially a sound instinct which declares that you cannot know a man alone by what he did preface v

in his supreme moments. His lighter moments are as verily an integral part, and as actual a revelation of him ; and we have not trulygrasped and apprehended the personality of the great leader, or ruler, or teacher, until we know, not only his official side, but many others ; the disclosures of which, it may easily be, are more essentially revelations of the man, because mainly, if not utterly, unconscious.

All this was brought home to me by an experience which, I may frankly own, is largely the occasion of this volume. On Decoration Day, 1903, as some of my readers will remember, there was unveiled, at the south-eastern entrance to Central Park, in New York, the imposing equestrian statue of General W. T. Sherman, wrought by Mr. Augustus St.-Gaudens. In the evening of that day a distinguished journalist and man of letters^ invited a few friends to meet the sculptor, quite informally, at his table. Most of the guests, and with them the host, had known General Sherman in the field, or had served with him in our great Civil War. Naturally enough, — especially after the ladies had left us, — the conversation took a reminiscent turn, and recalled scenes and incidents

' The Hon. Whitelaw Reid, late Ambassador to France, and, at present, Anabassador to the Court of St. James, vi preface

connected with the Hfe of the great soldier whom New York had sought to commemorate. It is not enough to say of the recollections which were then exchanged that they were interesting— they were a great deal more — they were illuminative ; and while driving home, that night, past that stately equestrian statue, I found myself exclaiming to my companion, " What a regrettable fact it is that all the incidents we have heard to-night, or almost all of them, will disappear with those who have related them ! They are all educated men who told us what they remembered of Grant, and Sherman, and Sheridan, and the rest ; but they will never put it down on paper, I fear."

But, alas, I had not gone a great way in this pharisaic judgment of my fellows, when I was seized with the memory of official relations of my own with a distinguished and interesting body of men, the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, with which, in one way or another, I had been connected for nearly forty years ; and with the members of which for nearly half of that time my relations, both personal and official, had been especially intimate and unreserved. The histories of many of these men have already been written ; and I gladly own my indebtedness to them. But that per-

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sonal note, to which I have already referred, has not always been conspicuous in them ; and in some cases has never been recognised. And in this fact must be found the explanation of the Reminiscences which follow. In no sense do they presume to be biographies. In no light can they be read as embodying the graver material of history. But they will furnish some of those side-lights by means of which individuality in human portraiture may be detected ; and in the often lighter and more playful quality of which are recognised or recalled those more endearing characteristics which make men widely remembered and genuinely beloved.

H. C. P.

New York, December i, igoj.