The story of William and Lucy Smith

Preface

" I think I can trace the growth of his opinions, from the little delicate boy who read his Bible and prayed the more resolutely because of the jeers and taunts of his companions at the first school he went to; the thoughtful youth, who, very early sent to Glasgow University, and while under the spell of Chalmers's eloquence, ' got thinking' over metaphysics ; the poet in nature and aspiration, chained to the dull routine of a lawyer's office ; the mature mind, to which the incompatibility of the theory of punishment as held by theologians and by jurisprudence grew more and more intolerable ; through all and in all the same elements — unflinching search, honest unbiassed striving toward truth, and unshaken devotion of the whole moral nature toward the Supreme Wisdom — the Highest — God ! Sometimes I think, Surely some kindred nature will one day take the threads I could supply him with, and weave them into a whole. Sometimes I resolve to write out, only for myself and the nieces, all I know ; or for myself only, the sweet eventless record of — indeed, indeed, — a great untroubled happiness."

This passage, from a wife's letter soon after her husband's death, may be taken as the key to the present volume, which attempts the portraiture of both husband and wife. He was a man of genius and rare fineness of nature ; the associate in early years of Mill, Sterling, Maurice, and Lewes. Pie was a constant contributor to " Blackwood's Magazine " from 1839 to 1871, and that journal said at his death : " No better type could be found iv PREFACE.

of the true man of letters, the student, scholar, and critic of our days." But his reviews were anonymous, and he was withdrawn from society and an active} career by a retiring disposition and the fascination of thinking purely for the sake of thought. His very name, William Smith, the commonest name in England, seems like a passport to oblivion. His personal history, quite devoid of external adventure, has yet for thoughtful minds an interest comparable to that which attends the fortunes of a Stanley or a Livingstone. For he too was an explorer, and in realms whose secrets have an attraction for our generation beyond those of the Dark Continent. And his researches were fruitful. " Thorndale," the book which won for him the greater part of such modest celebrity as attached to his name, gives an inadequate measure of the degree of solid conviction and clear light he attained. " Gravenhurst," his later and probably less known production, brings the world's latest thought to the study of the world's oldest problem, with results which contribute not a little of clearness to philosophy, energy to religion, and peace and strength to the heart.

This volume includes extracts from his writings, dramatic, critical, and philosophical, — writings which various causes, external and internal, seem to have hindered from due recognition. A biographer may be considered too partial an advocate to set his estimate against that of the world, though, on the other hand, that final judge sometimes nods, and when afterward roused may shape his opinion differently. Be that as it may, this author, by no means indifferent to the world's good opinion, was very far from depending on it for his happiness. One might w r ell apply to him his own words, written of a man of like spirit with himself, Arthur Clough : "It was not till after he had left the scene that the world at large knew that there had been a poet amongst them. Then there was much clapping of hands. Could he who had passed

PREFACE. v

in behind the veil have returned at our summons, to receive our plaudits, we feel persuaded that for such a purpose he would not have re-lifted the fallen curtain."

The idea which the wife intimates, of writing herself some story of her husband's life, was so far carried out that she did write a sketch of him for their friends only, which afterward she hesitatingly allowed to be published, as the prefix to a reprint of some of his philosophical works, a connection not favorable to any wide circulation. This exquisite memoir is the basis of the present volume. No other hand could approach hers in fitness for the task she undertook. But that task did not include any history of her husband's intellectual development, nor any statement of his final views ; it was the beauty of his personal traits that at that time filled her heart and inspired her pen. A fuller exposition of the subject is here essayed ; and with it there is blended a portraiture of her who brought completion and happiness to his life. Her charming personality unconsciously portrayed itself in her letters and writings, with a vividness which makes her a living figure.

" No woman yet," said " The Spectator " recently, " has ever really told us the history of her life as Eousseau and Pepys have told theirs, — that is, without any attempt at concealment." It adds the suggestion that a refinement, a delicacy, and sense of the sacred seclusion of the heart might restrain any woman's mind from the necessary introspection. Certainly any conscious selfdisplay to the world would have been quite impossible to the womanly nature of Lucy Smith. But to her own friends one of her many and great charms was the transparency with which to those she trusted she expressed her real and inner life. It was an openness which sprang from a generous confidence, and from her constant disposition to share her best possessions with others. Especially in writing of her husband, the love which in her was vi PREFACE.

almost a worship inspired a frankness of utterance in which her own traits reveal themselves. In self-foi ■■_ fully picturing him, she has delightfully pictured herself. Of literary ambition she had not a particle ; when she made a translation or a sketch it was to "turn an hoc penny ; " and when she dashed off verses, it was to ease her heart of its fulness of joy, of struggle, or of playfulness. Rare charms of intellect, feeling, and character were combined in her. The ardor and depth of her nature were matched by its disciplined fidelity and winning grace. It is in her private letters that her genius shines brightest, if genius be the right word for such a union of insight, tenderness, sympathy, and vivid interest in everything about her. One can scarcely imagine a creature more brimming over with life, a life as pure as brilliant.

Such self-revelation, of such a woman, we have here. And it is to be added that this life is displayed to us under all the great typical experiences of womanhood, except only that of mother. This story ends not at the marriage-altar ; it goes on through the every-day experiences of a most happy wedded life ; still on, through the midnight shadows of bereavement, and the sacred and sublime experiences of love stronger than death.

One other element of interest is present. The wife, fully sharing the husband's thought, is like him led to relinquish much of the traditional creed, comes into full presence of all the new thought and the new doubt, and while the problem which engaged him was an intellectual one, on her it falls to find a place under the changed conditions for her heart in its supreme needs.

Whatever value belongs to this story is largely due to the extraordinary openness and transparency of the woman who is really its author. It is not inconsiderately, nor without sense of possible animadversion, that such full self-disclosure is set before the general public. But " Wisdom is justified of her children," and they who

rightly reading shall understand this royal woman, and appropriate her as a personal possession, will need no excuse for letting her show herself as she was. One who opens the pages at random may light on passages which come to him like secrets overheard without right. But whoever reads the whole, and understands her who is speaking, will scarcely wish to spare a word.

The contributions of many of her friends — and no one had more devoted friends — have given material for this volume. Of the best part of the book, she is the author ; but it has been wrought into form by the hand of one, an American, of that number who without ever seeing her knew her and loved her. No word better sums up the double story than an inscription on the inner wall of Durham Cathedral, centuries old, following the names of a husband and wife : —

" We once were two, We two made one, We no more two

Though life be srone."

Part I. Chapter Pa.gb

I. Morning 3

II. Clouds 19

III. Light Breaking 25

IV. "The Wool-Gatherer" 33

V. " Wild Oats — A New Species " . . . .40

VI. Work and Associates 54

VII. Counter-Currents 62

VIII. "Given Self, to find God" .... 69

IX. "A Discourse on Ethics" 77

X. The Reviewer 92

XI. "Athelwold" 110

XII. The Traveller . . . . . . .127

XIII. Solitude 139

XIV. Approaching Unseen .... . . 152

XV. "Thorndale" . . 172

Part II

XVI. Meeting 219

XVII. Nearer and Nearer 235

XVIII. United 247

XIX. " Gravenhurst " 267

XX. Switzerland 301 x CONTENTS.

XXI. Mother and Daughter 310

XXII. Abroad and ai Home 324

XXIII. Among Friends 339

XXIV. Pkn Portraits 355

XXV. Beside the Ska 373

XXVI. Ripening Years 391

XXVII. Thinker and Lover 404

XXVIII. Parting 426

TART III.

XXIX. Bereaved 453

XXX. Readjustment 473

XXXI. "Love Others too" 487

XXXII. Not as without Hope 496

XXXIII. Led Onward ■ . 516

XXXIV. « He restoreth my Soul " . . . .531 XXXV. The Mountain Rill 547

XXXVI. This Friendly World 560

XXXVII. The Religion of To-day 583

XXXVIII. Sunset Lights 592

XXXIX. Reunited 617

PAET I.

These men were philosophers, not from the desire of fame, not from the pleasure of intellectual discovery, not because they hoped that philosophy would suggest thoughts that would soothe some private grief of their own, but because it was to them an overpowering interest to have some key to the universe, because all even of their desires were suspected by them until they could find some central desire on which to link the rest ; and love and beauty and the animation of life were no pleasure to them except as testifying to that something beyond of which they were in search. — Quarterly Review.

" Led by the Spirit into the wilderness."

Chapter I. Morning

That must have been a happy home at North End, Hammersmith, into which, during the January of 1808, William Henry Smith was born, the youngest of a large family. His father, a man of strong natural intelligence, after having made a fortune sufficient for his wants, early retired from business, in consequence mainly of an asthmatic tendency, which had harassed him from the age of thirty. The impression I gained of him from his son's description was that of one peculiarly fond of quiet and of books, but whose will gave law to his household, and was uniformly seconded by the loving loyalty of his wife. The large family had a recognized head, a condition I have often heard my husband insist upon as essential to all healthy domestic life. Whatever the spirits of the children might prompt, it was an understood, a felt law, that " Papa's " tastes and habits must be respected. And these, being interpreted by so gentle a mother, were never viewed in the light of unreasonable restraints. This dear mother seems to have been a woman of a quite primitive type, full of silent piety, wrapped up in the home and the family. She was of partly German extraction ; her mother had been an eminently saintly character, and I have caught glimpses too of a grandfather devoted to the study of Jacob Boehme, whose folio volumes, and the tradition of the veneration in which they had been held, still existed in the Hammersmith home.

How often, by*the divination of love and sorrow, I have tried to conjure up that home before my mind ! My husband once took me to its site, but the good old house had been cut up into shops, and the large garden was all gone, — the large garden, that had seemed so large to the happy child playing there by the hour " under the scarlet and purple blossoms of the fuchsias." under the benignant eye, too, of a well-remembered old servant, gardener, and groom, who kept the plants and the sleek discreet horse " Papa " drove in his gig in equal order. It was an e very-day delight to play in that garden, a high privilege to ride in that gig. I think I can see the father, very tall, a little worn by asthma, with black eyes of peculiar piercing power, and a certain stateliness and natural dignity which were wont to receive from officials at public places a degree of deference, noticed with some amusement by the little observant companion and sight-seer. What he must have been at an early age a miniature then taken shows. It represents a fair, yellow-haired child of about three, with great black eyes full of the new joy and wonder of life, and a smile of singular sweetness, of almost benignity. No wonder that, as his eldest surviving sister affectionately recalls, " he was the pet of both parents," though his exceeding mobility did sometimes a little agitate the valetudinarian father, who would lay down a half-crown on the table and say, " William, you shall have it, if you will only sit still for ten minutes ! " A child with such an expression as the picture shows would surely have complied had it been any way possible ; but he did not remember that the half-crown was ever won. One day, when he was very small, a canary bird belonging to a sister died, and was buried beneath a flower-bush in the garden ; and on that occasion, when the bright and restless creature lying suddenly motionless on the palm of some young hand had given the happy child his first experience of wonderiug sadness, he wrote his first verses.

. . . 1 The cheerful drawing-room in the Hammersmith home had a window at both ends. Round the one that looked into the garden clustered the white blossoms or hung the luscious fruit of a surpassing pear-tree — a swan-egg — the like of which was never met in later years. From the other window the children could watch the following spectacle, which my husband evidently enjoyed recalling in a notice of Mr. Knight's " Reminiscences," published in 1864: —

" . . . We are transported in imagination to a baywindow that commanded the great western road — the Bath Road, as people at that time often called it. Every evening came, in rapid succession, the earth tingling with the musical tread of their horses, seven mail-coaches out of London. The dark-red coach, the scarlet guard standing up in his solitary little dickey behind, the tramp of the horses, the ring of the horns — can one ever forget them ? For some miles out of London the guard was kept on his feet, blowing on his horn, to warn all slower vehicles to make way for his Majesty's mails. There was a turnpike within sight of us ; how the horses dashed through it ! with not the least abatement of speed. If some intolerable blunderer stopped the way, and that royal coachman had to draw up his team, making the splinter-bars rattle together, we looked upon it as almost an act of high treason. If the owner of that blockading cart had been immediately led off to execution, we boys should have thought he had but his deserts. Our mysterious seven were still more exciting to the imagination when, in the dark winter nights, only the two vivid lamps could be seen borne along by the trampling coursers. No darkness checked the speed of the mail ; a London fog, indeed, could not be so easily vanquished ; but even the London fog which brought all ordinary vehicles to a stand-

1 The Memoir is sometimes slightly abbreviated in this reproduction.

still could not altogether subdue our royal mails. The profession came flaring with torches, men shouting before it, and a man with a huge link at the head of each horse. It was a thrilling and a somewhat fearful scene."

The first sorrow that left a trace on my husband's remembrance was the going to school, at the age, I think, of eight or nine. He did not go far, indeed, but to the sensitive and much-petted child the change from the atmosphere of love and joy that filled his home was simply appalling. He was sent to a clergyman of the name of Elwal, and found himself surrounded by a good many older boys, who appeared to him, and probably were, boisterous and brutal. At all events the little fellow, to w T hom the Bible his mother so loved was the most sacred of all things, could not read it, could not kneel night and morning beside his little bed, without jeers and taunts and rough dissuasives. He only read and prayed the more resolutely. The unflinching spirit that throughout life followed after truth at any cost, was even then awake in the lonely and sorrowful child. Then, too, the comparatively coarse fare, the inevitable fat, for which he had a constitutional loathing, somewhat impaired his health. Yet he probably kept back — with the strange reticence that belongs to childhood — the full amount of his unhappiness, or he would never have been left at this school ; and no doubt, too, school-life to one so quick to learn, so active in play, must also have had a pleasant side. . . .

The next school to which he went was in every way a contrast. Mr. Elwal taught well, but disregarded — as was indeed almost universal at that time — the material comforts of his pupils. At Radley, near Abingdon, the latter were well attended to, but the standard of learning was not high. But the two years or so spent there were always cheerfully adverted to. It might jar the High Church susceptibilities of the present inmates of Radley Hall to know that early in the century it was a Dissenting school — the head-master a Dissenter, who seemed to have little vocation for his office beyond failure in some former business. However, he had a fair staff of masters, and an amiable^ popular wife, who liked William Smith to drive with her in her little pony-carriage, which he appeared to have liked too. In fact, at Radley, so far as I could discern, he did nothing but what he liked. A religious profession was supposed to be in the ascendant there, would have insured approval ; one is not therefore surprised to find that the feeling of devotion, which opposition had only stimulated, now retired out of sight. He very soon learned all that the masters could teach him, was at the head of the school (a distinction which he carefully impressed upon me implied but mediocre scholarship), and had his time almost entirely at his own disposal. I have become indebted to the Rev. H. H. Dobney for a further glimpse of these school-days. Mr. Dobney was at Radley at the same time, a younger boy, in a different class ; the personal contact of the two was therefore slight, and they quite lost sight of each other. Yet Mr. Dobney writes me word that he never took up " Gravenhurst," " ever one of my favorite books," or " Thorndale," " without thinking of the William Smith whom he knew as a boy, and wondering whether their author could possibly be he." He vividly remembers him, " a lightlymade boy, not joining much in boisterous amusements " nor " mixed up in scrapes ; " but even then, one "to whom it was natural to speak with something of an almost deferential manner," — one "who seemed the student rather than the school-boy." Radley was then a noble but still unfinished house, standing in beautiful grounds. There was one room especially fine in its proportions, with rows of stately pillars, and looking into the park, — a room originally destined for a library, but almost unfurnished, and with a scanty choice of books ; and this room was the boy's favorite and undisturbed resort. And among the few volumes it contained be found Byron! And pacing

u}) and down that pillared room, book in hand, the potent spell Wrought in tbe young poetie heart. No sketch of his youth eould be faithful that omitted this Byronic phase. He has often described its sufferings to me, but I prefer to give them in words of his own, written in 18G4. Throughout the long series of his articles on various subjects I can trace occasional allusions to this morbid influence : —

" The youth of the last age were battling blindly and passionately against fate, were full of gloomy mysteries, great devotees to beauty, which after all was but to them the rainbow in a storm which they thought might abate, but which never ceased, — rainbow always upon clouds which broke up only to reunite in darker masses, — rainbow of beauty, not of hope, incongruous apparition in a troubled and chaotic world.

" Our Byronic fever had more than one phase ; sometimes it exhibited itself in a mere moody fantastical misanthropy, combined with a reckless pursuit of very vulgar pleasure ; but in a less numerous and more meditative order of minds it displayed itself in a morbid passionate discontent with themselves as with all others. These were not pleasure-seekers, they had a great scorn for human life." ... It is needless to point out to which of these two classes the writer could ever have belonged.

But although the first reading of Byron's poetry dated as far back as the two years spent at Radley school, it was later that the Byronic spirit was fully developed. Certainly the germ must have lain dormant during the brief and happy period that the boy passed at Glasgow College (1821-22). He was young to go there — only fourteen ; but a brother, eight years older than himself, — his favorite brother Theyre, a keen logician even then, remarkable throughout life for worth and charm as well as intellect, and still remembered as the eloquent preacher at the Temple Church from 1832 to 1846 — was at that time a student at Glasgow, and it seemed desirable that William, who had evidently absorbed what of learning Radley could afford, should share higher advantages under his brother's care.

He always remembered this session at Glasgow with peculiar interest, and more than once described to me the passage from London to Leith, made in foggy weather (in a sailing vessel of course), the impressions received on landing, the introduction to Scotch collops, and the ambrosial sweetness of the first glass of Edinburgh ale. A clever student (now a dignitary of the English Church) shared the lodgings of the two brothers ; John Sterling was one of their intimate associates, and much eager conversing and debating went on, to which I cannot doubt that the boy contributed many an apposite illustration and subtle argument. His elder brother in one of his home letters writes : " The opinion which I have formed of William's abilities is confirmed and increases. . . . He evinces at certain periods a very superior capacity. I may be mistaken, and I should be sorry to strengthen an unfounded expectation ; but if I can converse with him on almost any subject without a difficulty from his want of apprehension, lose sometimes the idea of a disparity existing between us, and forget that I am talking to a boy, surely I may be permitted to infer that his understanding is above the level of ordinary minds."

It was now that for the first time William Smith fell in with Scotch metaphysics, that, to use his own words in talking over the subject with me, " he got thinking" As a consequence, the old theological foundations became gradually disturbed, at first perhaps insensibly, for his supreme enjoyment was still found in hearing Dr. Chalmers preach. That fervent eloquence always remained one of his most vivid memories. At the time I write of, the three friends and fellow-students were all Dissenters,

1U WILLIAM SMITH.

but my husband was the only one of them who throughout life not only firmly adhered in theory to the Voluntary system, 1 but as a matter of taste preferred the simple Presbyterian service. The large family in the Hammersmith home was indeed in the habit of attending the parish church once a day, — the father had the old-fashioned Church-and-King reverence, — but it was in the Independent chapel that the younger members had their strongest emotions roused. It is easy to trace the influence of early associations in the passage I am about to extract from a notice of Sheridan Knowles, written by my husband in the summer of 1863 : —

If a French actor or Italian opera-singer retires from the stage to a convent of La Trappe, there to dig his own grave in silence and seclusion, we hasten to throw round the incident a halo of poetry. If we do not altogether admire and applaud, we stand aside in submissive, respectful attitude ; we look in mute amazement at this man who is so palpably forsaking earth for heaven. No poetry hovers over the Dissenting meetinghouse. Neither the pew nor the pulpit of the Baptist chapel presents anything attractive to the imagination. Good Prclestants as we are, we sympathize more readily with the Trappist than with the less ardent but surely more rational devotion that takes shelter in the walls of the little Bethel. Yet this should not be. In reality that little Bethel may be the scene of a pious enthusiasm as remarkable as any that demonstrates itself, under more poetic circumstances, in the convent of La Trappe. We have but to throw ourselves into the heart of the true worship-

1 Neverthek ss I give a little anecdote which I owe to my husband's gifted brother-in-law, Mr. Weigall, to prove that long before the Glasgow days, indeed at a very early age, William Smith could look upon both sides of a question. "His brother Theyre," writes Mr. Weigall, " always predicted to me his future distinction. I remember his mentioning as an evidence of his quickness that when he (Theyre) was driving him in a little pony-carriage of rather fragilelooking construction, kept chiefly for the use of his sisters, William said to him, ' I don't like riding in this thing. I never feel secure. I always feel as if I were being supported by voluntary contributions.'"

per, and the most unsightly edifice of brick and mortar that ever glared on us from the dusty street of a provincial town will become invested with a poetry of the highest order. See the well-regulated methodical tradesman enter such a building. Leaving the cares and gains of the week behind him, he walks at the head of his family up the narrow passage, which we will not call the aisle ; he needs no verger to usher him into his seat ; his hand reaches over to the familiar button that fastens the door of his pew ; he opens the door, lets in wife and children, then establishes himself in his accustomed corner. He deals out from some secret depository, perhaps from a drawer under the seat, the Bibles and the hymn-books, calf-bound, and the oldest of them not a little soiled and dog-eared. These he distributes, and then prepares for the morning devotion. One great sentiment he more or less distinctly recognises, — the sentiment which, differently modified, constitutes the essence of religion in all churches and in all hearts, that he and his family are then and there doing homage to the Lord of all, are pledging themselves to obedience to whatever is just, and wise, and good, because His ways are perfect, and He requires of us, His rational creatures, what poor attempts at perfection we can make. After some interval of silence, a man in spotless black coat and white neckcloth rises from the deal pulpit opposite ; a square deal box, with a reading desk on it, which desk has no other ornament or furniture than the one large book, on which the minister reverently lays his hand. That one book sanctifies the whole place. Take that away, and all is dirt and dinginess. But our man in the corner of his pew could tell you that from that central spot there has emanated, he knows not how, a subtle influence that has pervaded the whole building, so that its very plastered walls are sacred to him. There is a knot in the un-~ painted wood-work of his pew on which his eye has often rested as he followed the worthy preacher. Were our man to travel, and to be absent in foreign kingdoms, that knot in a piece of soiled deal would rise before his imagination, and suggest holy memories to him. His hand would be again on the button of that pew, and he would prepare himself for solemn meditations. Oh, believe us, the poetry comes from within.