The Cambridge "Apostles"

Preface

I HAVE not attempted in this book to write a complete or collective history of the Cambridge '* Apostles." Such a work might prove of interest to individuals but hardly to the world at large. Nor have I presumed to pick out from the register of that distinguished band the twelve indisputabty the most brilliant and renowned. Such would be an invidious and pretentious task, and in any case beyond my powers. All I have tried to do is to give a few sketches of such of the " Apostles " as were friends of the late Wilham Henry Brookfield, of whom accordingly I have family traditions and literary records. I was pleased and flattered to find, after having made my selection, that it tallied with the list of illustrious " Apostles " mentioned by the late Lord Houghton on the occasion of the opening of the new Cambridge " Union " in 1866. In my selection of letters from these eminent men I have endeavoured to choose those which should reveal, not so much the intellectual mission of the man as the humanity of the intellectual missionary. For remarkable as were the mental powers of each one of this dazzling group, it is not his genius which strikes one first and most forcibly, but his greatness of heart,

vii viii PREFACE

his extraordinary capacity for loving and need of being loved.

For helpful assistance in this work I am greatly indebted to the generous co-operation of Mrs. Venables, the Misses Spedding, the Misses Blakesley, Miss Judith Merivale and Mrs. C. B. Johnson (author of William Bodham Donne and his Friends) . Also to Maj or-General Sir Frederick Maurice, K.C.B., Major-General Sterling, Colonel Kemble, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, W. L. Courtney, Esq., Messrs. Methuen ; to the Rev. C. B. Donne and W. Mowbray Donne, Esq., who lent me the valuable letters in their possession, and to the author of Charles Lowden, who kindly permitted me to make use of his Life and Memorials of Archbishop Trench, to whom and to all I tender my truly grateful thanks.

Frances M. Brookfield.

High Wycombe,

October, 1906.

ix

Index To Illustrations

William Henry Brookfield Joseph William Blakesley Charles Buller .

Arthur H. Hall am John Mitchell Kemble Frederick Denison Maurice Richard Monckton Milnes .

James Spedding .

John Sterling Alfred Tennyson Richard Chenevix Trench .

George Stovin Venables

•

Frontispiece

To face page

XI

THE CAMBRIDGE "APOSTLES"

Chapter I The " Apostles "

The first ripe taste of manhood's best delights, Knowledge imbibed, while mind and heart agree, In sweet belated talk on winter nights, With friends, whom growing time keeps dear to me, —

(MONCKTON MiLNES).

Brothers, who up Reason's hill

Advance with hopeful cheer, O ! loiter not, those heights are chill.

As chill as they are clear ; And still restrain your haughty gaze.

The loftier that ye go, Remembering distance leaves a haze

On all that lies below.

{Ihid.)

The third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century found together at one time at our great universities an extraordinary number of exceptionally gifted men : men of keen wit, of sohd thought, of brilHant achievement. But while we acclaim these giants of the past, we are constrained to compare them with the pygmies of the present. By comparison, the undergraduate of to-day appears dull, mediocre and unpromising. There is excellent and

abundant reason to rejoice over and take pride in I— (2318 ) 1 the rare talents of the youth of that bygone era — for they glowed with energy, they set forth with steadfast purpose, and they arrived long ago at their goal. Yet parents and guardians in those times had their day of doubt. It is we, of the next generation, who can appreciate their children's careers — just as it is our descendants who must sit in judgment on our contemporaries. The tide of thought in a great university is constantly flowing, although, like the stream of a wide river, its course is hardly visible ; imperceptibly, however, it seems to have made further progress at Cambridge during the past century than during any similar period of time. Each generation has had its distinctive features — mental, psychical and social. In each " set " the highest mettled has struck his spark which in due time has glowed into a guiding luminary. May we not hope that in the apparent dullness of to-day there lurks here and there an unperceived ember which will one day burst likewise into flame ? The light of genius seems certainly more diffused to-day than it was seventy years ago. We are no longer dazzled by a few blazing beacons, but illumined by rows upon rows of twinkhng lanterns. Still, one of these may continue to burn more and more brightly as his fellows flicker out, until he shall beam upon a generation to come with as brilliant an effulgence as was shed by the shining hghts of " those dawn-golden times."

There was in the air of Cambridge, in the spring of the nineteenth century, a spirit of intellectual freemasonry, a tendency of bright wits to recognize each other and to drift into sodalities more or less informal and undefined. Some of these remained mere " sets " — that is to say, groups of friends united by nothing more than a community of likes and dislikes. Some developed into " societies " with a definite object — the pursuit of some special quarry or the riding of some particular hobby ; but the most important, distinguished and lasting result of this gregarious tendency of sympathetic souls was the constitution of a fellowship commonly known by its cant name of " The Apostles."

The conditions of life at that time were such that they caused men who were in possession of greater than ordinary ability to float towards each other ; to become, by right of a community of interests, fast and abiding friends ; and the friendship that existed between a certain set of undergraduates at St. John's in the year 1820 — men of high promise and higher hopes — undoubtedly led to the forming of this distinguished " Society." Attracted towards one another by an equality of mental attainments and similar tastes in Hterature, the thoughts of each acted and reacted upon those of his fellows until all were fired with the same intellectual desire. This took the form of a common craving for further investigation than was permitted by the opportunities given by the University, into higher philosophy. In order to achieve this, they, with the venturesomeness of youth and a prodigious beUef in self — and also^ be it said, in face of the fact that they were looked on coldjy by more conventional minds — formed themselves into a society for the writing of essays upon subjects on which they required larger and wider information. To this end, and to promote and provoke discussion upon their favourite themes, they arranged that members should meet together once a week for these objects.

Henry Tomhnson (afterwards Bishop of Gibraltar) was of this gifted band — and one of the founders of the Society — which was called " The Cambridge Conversazione Society," which name remains its title to this day ; the more familiar designation, " The Apostles," having been originally applied to them in a spirit of banter. A member of the Society might belong to any college, but he was bound to have more than ordinary talents, and as well a distinct and original personality. Once elected, a new member would urge the claims of his own close friend to be the next ; he himself having been raised to the dignity by others already his friends.

The common idea has been that membership of this sodahty of itself bestowed glory, but that was not so, at least in early days. In its prime, from the year 1 824-1840, each member took to the Society his laurels ready plaited, and it was the individual brilliancy of its members which caused this Society to shine so brightly.

The " Cambridge Conversazione Society " carried on its work with more or less success, until it was observed that Trinity was giving to it all its best talents; accordingly, its meetings thereafter were held in that college. Then began its golden era ; and then it was that its members (limited to twelve) came in gentle raillery to be called " Apostles/' a term meekly — and, according to some of themselves — appreciatively accepted ; and which was met by a sinking of all allusion to their high distinction when in the company of those not of the '* Society." The eminence achieved in after life by almost every one of those early Cambridge " Apostles " shows that collectively they must have possessed, besides their talent and genius, a keen and critical perception of promise very remarkable in men so young. The most stringent of their rules enacted that the absolute freedom of thought and speech they one and all desired should be respected by every member and in all circumstances ; and, in order that no one of them in his ideas or convictions should in any way be trammelled or hampered, minutes of their meetings were never published.

The life of an " Apostle " at this time was, as Carlyle says, " an ardently speculative and talking one." The method of the young enthusiasts was first of all to strip tegument from tegument, until the very heart of their subject was laid bare ; next, to reveal to the world the secrets their scalpels had brought to light. The ambitions expressed and the business performed at their assemblies give a lively impression of the ebullitions of a group of congenial spirits on the same intellectual plane, proud with the florescence of youth, which in a first ordering of life for self had gained what it required — in this case, opportunity for the expression of seething thought and new-born speculation.

The usual procedure was to meet every Saturday night in the rooms of the one whose turn it was to read the essay; essays being read by each of them in regular succession. After preliminary precautions such as the "sporting" of the "oak" or outer door, as well as the locking of the inner one, the host of the evening would provide his guests with light refreshments, which invariably included coffee and anchovies on toast — called " whales," even in those days — after which he gave to them his own thoughts — frank and free. Then the others replied, agreed, disproved, criticized, as conscience or as humour dictated.

There was no prim ordering of the day ; each " Apostolic " essayist read his best, and polished his material under the encouraging murmurs or the sympathetic ejaculations of friends as he went along ; while each of his hearers imbibed the information given him at his ease, lounging in easy chairs, on sofa or hearthrug, until discussion became heated or interesting enough to demand a more vigilant attitude.

Theological and political investigations, as became the time and the place, abounded ; sometimes the theme was purely metaphysical, sometimes scientific or literary; but each and every subject which they took and pondered over was discussed, criticized and settled fearlessly for themselves.

Where once we held debate, a band Of youthful friends, on mind and art, And labour, and the changing mart.

And all the framework of the land ;

When one would aim an arrow fair, But send it slackly from the string ; And one would pierce an outer ring, And one an inner, here and there ;

And last the master-bowman, he Would cleave the mark,

is Tennyson's masterly description of these intellectual assemblies.

For a period poetry ruled supreme, and this perhaps was their favourite subject ; all of them being poets or having, at all events, the poetic temperament. But on poetry, as on every topic chosen, they turned their searchlight of philosophy and reason. Landor and Southey inspired them and gave them zest in criticism ; for some time they lived under Shelley's influence ; they brought Keats to the knowledge of mankind ; and Coleridge and Wordsworth, both beloved by them, gave them painful as well as joyful moments. They would have only that which they considered to be the highest ; they dismissed with disdain everything that seemed to them to savour of humbug or of " pill " ; and, however heated their " instructive hours " sometimes became, they permitted no difference of opinion, however wide, to shake the soHd and steady affection which existed between them. This affectionate interest and friendly intercourse between the "Apostles" was once, by one of themselves, likened to the description of friendship given so long before by St. Augustine :

" To talk and laugh with mutual concessions, to read pleasant books ; to jest and to be solemn, to dissent from each other without offence, to teach one another somewhat, or somewhat to learn — to expect those absent with impatience and embrace their return with joy."

But they were all through and first of all '* modern " and modern with the first bloom and freshness of the changing times upon them ; therefore they took and used, whenever and wherever they found it, the thought which seemed freshest and newest and which best blent with their own. Niebiihr for them was a god, who for a lengthy period formed all their sentiments. Bentham, Mill, and others took them in their turn and whirled their thoughts this way and that ; these intellectual bouts leaving them sometimes confused and sometimes dissatisfied. Yet with such strength of character were these " Apostles " girt, that they emerged from their wrestHngs with these Titans with but little loss of individuality.

Above their ardent yearnings to clear the abstruse, and to make the world see with their eyes — which endeavours, after all, were the end and aim of the ''Society " — must be placed the wish of all of them that each should use for all it was worth the talent entrusted to him ; that he should shape a straight and definite course and walk that course directly and in satisfaction to success.

In just presumption many of them attempted the fulfilment of this pleasing expectation, making their effort in advantageous circumstances, surrounded by minds great enough to give them a sense of their own greatness, and encouraged as men in this life were seldom encouraged. Were there not in these days, to mention only a few of them, Trench, Sterling, Alford, Maurice, Kemble, Spedding, Buller, Blakesley, Milnes, Henry and Edmund Lushington, Alfred and Frederick Tennyson, Venables, Allen, Garden, Thompson, Merivale, Hallam, Heath, Donne, Monteith, Thirlwall ? Was there ever of late centuries, at one given time, so formidable a phalanx of talent ? Does it not compel comparison with the similar rush that came with the last years of Elizabeth ? and do not our later and not lesser lights meet on common ground with Spencer, Marlowe, Donne, Sidney, and Jonson ?

Our " Apostles " could have dispensed, had they chosen, with authority and precedent and the opinions of the ancients. They had enough of contemporary material on which to form their opinions and whet their critical curiosity ; they had their own friends' burning thoughts and robust methods to attack or acclaim — thoughts and methods born often of their own inner consciousness and fostered by friendly comment.

The dissimilarity in style of the " Apostles " adds to the interest of the Society. The primary aim of the Society had been, it is true, to associate together those of the loftiest and solidest thought ; but its members who possessed these attributes in the highest perfection were those who demanded admittance for friends of gayer and lighter vein ; men who had cultivated nimbleness of wit as well as originality of thought, who should brighten discussions which evinced a tendency to become dull in their profundity. Trench and Kemble, Maurice and BuUer represent opposites, amongst the earlier lights ; and by and by Arthur Hallam and Spedding relaxed their deeper interests and heavier weighted minds — and bandied nonsense with Blakesley and Monckton Milnes.

Two of the Society's most brilliant members did not long shed their light upon it. Alfred Tennyson, too lethargic to have his essay prepared when his turn came and it was demanded of him", was asked to resign. The subject of this essay was " Ghosts/' and he had partly finished it, but unfortunately only part of the proem remains. Monckton Milnes, on the other hand, was only elected a member a few terms before he went " down." Yet these two did much to bring the Society to the high prominence it attained during the early years of its existence.

Merivale gives a quaint picture of their apostolic mission :

" It was with the vague idea that it should be our function to interpret the oracles of transcendental wisdom to the world of Philistines or Stumpfs, as we designated them, and from time to time to call forth from this world the few souls who might be found capable of sympathizing with them, that we piqued ourselves on the name of the ' Apostles,' a name given

THE "APOSTLES" ii

us, as we were sometimes told, by the envious and jeering vulgar, but to which we presumed that we had a legitimate claim, and gladly accepted it. We lived, in constant intercourse with one another, day by day, meeting over our wine or our tobacco, but every Saturday evening we held a more solemn meeting, when each member of the Society, about twelve in number, delivered an essay on any subject, chosen by himself, to be discussed and submitted to the vote of the whole number. Alas ! alas ! what reckless, joyous evenings those were, what solemn things were said, pipe in hand ; how much serious emotion was mingled with alternate bursts of laughter ; how every one hit his neighbour intellectually, right and left, and was hit again, and no mark left on either side ; how much sentiment and how much humour ! Who is the poet who says, and how aptly he might have said to us :

Witty as youthful poets in their wine,

Bold as a centaur at a feast, and kind

As virgins that were ne'er beguiled with love.

The style of our lucubrations may be illustrated perhaps by a saying of one of our profound philosophers, Jack Kemble : ' The world is one great thought, and I am thinking it.' "

Regular meetings for the expression of definite thought had at least the effect of helping an " Apostle " to " see himself." The effort to show his best to anxious adorers, to speak his soul before his peers, to shine as bright as other stars, were acts that gave the ablest of them a serene confidence in himself and his own genius. It is scarcely surprising that some of them, stimulated by such surroundings, nursed on such applause, should afterwards have come to look the whole world calmly in the face — and even to have dared to play with it.

Monckton Milnes once wrote : '' We have had some capital debates in our Society called ' The Apostles,' we attacked Paley last night." But that subjects were not always so stiff as Paley is proved by Sir James Fitz- James Stephen's paper entitled : '' Is a little knowledge a dangerous thing ? " And that the manners of the " Apostles " were not always dignified and reposeful is proved by the following : " Last Saturday we had an * Apostolic ' dinner . . . most of them stayed till past two. John Heath volunteered a song : Kemble got into a passion about nothing, but quickly jumped out again : and Thompson poured large quantities of salt upon Douglas Heath's head, because he talked nonsense."

*' Apostleship " did not end with college life, and members resident or visiting Cambridge could, by giving notice to the host of the evening, attend a meeting of the younger men ; and this they often elected to do. The particular *' Apostles " dealt with in this volume all took in after life every opportunity for meeting their old fellow " Apostles " in the company of the new. They never relaxed their affection for the Society; to their last days ''its membership constituted a bond of friendship which revived in them the freshness of youth." Many were the occasions when they brought the tale of their newest success and latest laurels to add interest to the many interests that met together at the yearly " Apostolic " dinner ; a festival held for years at the Star and Garter, Richmond. With old " Apostles " only the most imperative calls prevented their assisting, for to have each other's society in convivial intercourse was part and parcel of the scheme of life laid in early college days.

" Kemble, Sterling, the two BuUers and all the stars of the first magnitude are announced as having promised to shine." This was at a meeting at the Freemason's Tavern, another haunt of the " Apostles." It was at this feast they had the " inadequate consolation " of drinking the healths of those forced to be absent. It was Sterling who, at another merry meal, gave " a melancholy account of the coldness produced at Trinity by the late controversy." This when a war was waging concerning the question of admitting Dissenters to university degrees, and when fears had been expressed in Parliament as to the effect of free theological discussion amongst undergraduates — and comment had been made upon the meetings and the freedom of speech of the '' Apostles."

But witty Connop Thirlwall, then a tutor, on that occasion took up the cudgels for his fellow " Apostles " and spoke eloquently in their favour, saying :

" You may be alarmed when I inform you that there has long existed in this place a society of young men — limited, indeed, in numbers, but continually receiving new members to supply its vacancies, and selecting them in preference amongst the youngest, in which all subjects of highest interest, without any exclusion of those connected with religion are discussed with the most perfect freedom. But, if this fact is new to you, let me instantly dispel any apprehension it may excite by assuring you that the members of this society, for the most part, have been and are amongst the choicest ornaments of the University, and that some are now among the ornaments of the Church, and that so far from having had their affections embittered, their friendships torn and lacerated, their union has been rather one of brothers than of friends."

For this he was called upon to resign his tutorship, but a living was given him, and he went away with the applause of the University and the love of the " Apostles," and afterwards became Bishop of St. David's.

It was an age of early development and of early perfection, and some of the *' Apostles " — all of them workers — accomplished their best work in those Cambridge days. When The Athenceum fell into the hands of Sterling and Maurice it was produced almost entirely by the " Society," but the material with which they then filled its pages, and which reads so well to-day — failed in its own time to interest. Trench said of the paper :

" Should it obtain an extensive circulation, it is calculated to do much good. It is a paper not merely of principle, but what is almost equally important, of principles — certain fixed rules to which compositions are referred, and by which they are judged. In this it is superior, not merely to contemporary papers, but to the Reviews of the highest pretension."

There were always those who gently scoffed at what was deemed the " pretensions " of the " Apostles," and the scoffers were sometimes of themselves. Merivale, one of the breeziest of their critics, says humorously :

" Monteith and Garden are indignant and wild at being forbidden by their governors, who appear to be as identical as they are themselves, to go abroad. I leave them each writing a letter in his respective style. How inconsistent with themselves are Human faculties ! The genius that can presage the fulfilment of the -Apocalypse overlooks the specks and motes in futurity, and is taken by surprise by a paternal admonition."

These letters, however, had the effect of procuring for the two " identicals " the desired tour ; a tour which took the usual '' Apostolic " form of a pilgrimage to Venice, and a romantic lingering beneath the windows of a palace in the hope of seeing some philosophical metaphysical maniac such as he of whom the poet Shelley wrote in Julian and Maddalo.

Sometimes " Apostles " were scorned by men of genius as great as their own, men who afterwards came to the front and stayed there ; and there were even those who attacked them, and one of themselves — who shall be nameless — who sought to '' betray them," and by his conduct caused commotion and emotion. " A Judas," he was termed, '* who could not or would not understand the principles on which the Society was based."

But trivial assaults the " Apostles " could afford to ignore, for if they had detractors, they had also admirers and imitators. W. E. Gladstone founded an Essay Club at Oxford on the model of the " Apostles " and boasted of it — though he owned it never quite satisfied him. '' The Apostles," he said, " are a much more general society." Blakesley leaves it recorded that it was Arthur Hallam who founded this Club, and he probably thought this because Hallam had given Gladstone help in the drawing up of its rules. " The Sterling " was certainly inspired by the " Apostles," as were numerous other societies ; and, indirectly, the London Library, an institution of an entirely different kind, grew out of it.

It was, however, close brotherhood, and not societymaking which the " Apostles " strove to attain, and that which they successfully achieved — the affectionate bond between them being strengthened, not only by the frequency and fervency with which they encouraged each other in their work, but by the perseverance with which they advertised that work when done. They were in all cases the first and strongest champions of each other's claims to public attention, and their mutual assistance and admiration were reckoned to have been '' stimulating to them in youth and advantageous to them in manhood."

Almost without exception their joyous anticipations for each other's future were fulfilled, and the friendship which commenced in the bud and flourished in the flower withered only with death.

*' Those Cambridge ' Apostles ' of whom Brookfield was one," said Kinglake (but here he was mistaken. Brookfield was in the habit of saying, " I was an acting Apostle, though never rated as one on the ship's books") ^^and with whom he lived a great deal, were all of them men highly gifted, and Brookfield was still closely associated with several of their number when at length, after a few years of conflict, they forced their opinions, their tastes and their crotchets upon a puzzled and reluctant world. Thenceforth it happened, from time to time, that some modest ' Apostle ' woke up and found himself famous, and great was then Brookfield' s delight ; but he always repudiated the notion that any of ' the initiated ' should allow the least feeling of surprise to mingle with their joy, saying proudly and exultingly : * As if we did not know that this would come ! ' "

With close friendship and tried brotherhood came a laudable wish to right all wrong. As an example of spontaneous charity and a picture of unbounded enthusiasm, the conduct of the " Apostles " who took part in the Spanish business of 1823-30,^ stands unique ; for neither personal ambition nor profit were concerned. The young men were sure that their heroes were oppressed, and wrongfully, and that was enough. They offered their goods — in some cases their lives — to the cause, and lost the former, and were prepared to lose the latter, without a murmur. Nothing came of this their great romantic effort, but it was a brilliant failure — as much to the credit of those young men as

1 See Chap. XIII. {2—2318)

many of their dazzling achievements. It also sheds light upon the whole " Apostolate " — it shows they had hearts as well as heads, and that *' free discussion " in their case had in no way narrowed their wide sympathies.

Monckton Milnes, (Lord Houghton), who was as proUd of being an " Apostle " as he was of being an English gentleman, at an inaugural address at the opening of the new Union at Trinity in '66, spoke enthusiastically and admiringly of the friends, contemporaries of his own, who had tested their powers in the old debating club ; these old friends being, strangely enough, all of them with the exception of Kinglake, " Apostles." His Lordship said with feeling :

" Charles Buller, whose young statesmanship you will find recorded in Westminster Abbey, but whose charm of character and talent belong to the domain of personal regard, and John Sterling, whose tumultuous spirit and lofty character still live — and will long live in the biographies of Hare and Carlyle. My lot was cast with a somewhat later generation. ... I believe that the members of that generation were for the wealth of their promise — a promise in most cases perfectly fulfilled — a rare body of men, such as this University has seldom contained. . . .