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Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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All went well for a time. The spirit of inquiry is not considered an
evil spirit so long as it only leads to agreement with established
doctrines, and as an advanced form of Protestantism was preached in
Burnley Church, I was at liberty to think boldly enough, provided I did
not go beyond that particular stage of thought. Not having as yet any
disposition to go beyond, I did not at all realize what a very small
degree of intellectual liberty my teachers were really disposed to allow
me.

One occasion I remember distinctly. Mr. Bardsley was at Hollins, where
he spent the evening with us, and in the course of conversation, as he
was leaning on the chimney-piece, he spoke about German Neology, which I
had never heard of before, so I asked what it was, and he described it
as a dreadful doctrine which attributed no more inspiration to sacred
than to profane writers. The ladies were shocked and scandalized by the
bare mention of such a doctrine, but the effect on me was very
different. The next day, in my private meditations, I began to wonder
what were the evidences by which it was determined that some writers
were inspired and infallible, and what critics had settled the question.
The orthodox reader will say that in a perplexity of this kind I had
nothing to do but carry my difficulty to a clergyman. This is exactly
what I did, and the clergyman was Mr. Bardsley himself.

He was full of kindness to me, and took the trouble to write a long
paper on the subject, which must have cost him fully two days' work,--a
paper in which he gave a full account of the Canon of Scripture from the
Evangelical point of view. The effect on me was most discouraging, for
the result amounted merely to this, that certain Councils of the Church
had recognized the Divine inspiration of certain books, just as certain
authoritative critics might recognize the profane inspiration of poets.
After reading the paper with the utmost care I felt so embarrassed about
it that (with the awkwardness of youth) I did not even write to thank
the amiable author who had taken so much trouble to help me, and I only
thanked him briefly on meeting him at a friend's house, where it was
impossible to avoid the interchange of a few words.

This autobiography is not intended to be a book of controversy, so I
shall carefully avoid the details of religious changes and give only
results. I do not think that anything in my life was ever more decisive
than the receipt of that long communication from Mr. Bardsley. The day
before receiving it I was in doubt, but the day after I felt perfectly
satisfied that the Divine inspiration of the books known to Englishmen
as the "Scriptures" rested simply on the opinion, of different bodies of
theologians who had held meetings which were called Councils. The only
difference between these Councils and those of the Church of Rome was,
that these were represented as having taken place earlier, before the
Church was so much divided; but it did not seem at all evident that the
members of the earlier Councils were men of a higher stamp,
intellectually, than those who composed the distinctly Roman Catholic
Councils, nor was there any evidence that the Holy Spirit had been with
those earlier Councils, though it afterwards withdrew itself from the
later.

The Protestant reader will perhaps kindly bear with me whilst I give the
reasons why I ceased to be a Protestant, after having been so earnest
and zealous in that form of the Christian faith. It appeared to me--I do
not say it _is_, but it appeared to me, and appears to me still--that
Protestantism is an uncritical belief in the decisions of the Church
down to a date which I do not pretend to fix exactly, and an equally
uncritical scepticism, a scepticism of the most unreceptive kind, with
regard to all opinions professed and all events said to have taken place
in the more recent centuries of ecclesiastical history. The Church of
Rome, on the other hand, seemed nearer in temper to the temper of the
past, and was more decidedly a continuation, though evidently at the
same time an amplification, of the early Christian habits of thinking
and believing.

With this altered view of the subject the alternative that presented
itself to me was that which presented itself to the brothers Newman, and
if I had found it necessary to my happiness to belong to a visible
Church of some kind, and if devotional feelings had been stronger than
the desire for mental independence, I should have joined the Church of
Rome.

There were, indeed, two or three strong temptations to that course. My
family had been a Catholic family in the past, and had sacrificed much
for the Church of Rome when she was laboring under oppression; for a
Hamerton to return to her would therefore have been quite in accordance
with those romantic sentiments about distant ancestors which were at
that time very strong in me. Besides this, I had all the feeling for the
august ceremonial of the Catholic Church which is found in the writer
who most influenced me, Sir Walter Scott; and there was already a
certain consciousness of artistic necessities and congruities which made
me dimly aware that if you admit the glories of ecclesiastical
architecture, it is only the asceticism of Puritan rebellion against art
that can deny magnificence to ritual. I had occasionally, though rarely,
been present at High Mass, and had felt a certain elevating influence,
and if I had said to myself, "Religion is only a poem by which the soul
is raised to the contemplation of the Eternal Mysteries," then I could
have dreamed vaguely in this contemplation better, perhaps, in the Roman
Catholic Church than in any other. But my English and Protestant
education was against a religion of dreaming. An English Protestant may
have his poetical side, may be capable of feeling poetry that is frankly
avowed to be such--may read Tennyson's "Eve of St. Agnes" or Scott's
"Hymn to the Virgin" with almost complete imaginative sympathy; but he
expects to believe his religion as firmly as he believes in the
existence of the British Islands. Such, at least, was the matter-of-fact
temper that belonged to Protestantism in those days. In more recent
times a more hazy religion has become fashionable.

My decision, therefore, for some time was to remain in a provisional
condition of prolonged inquiry. I read a great deal on both sides, and
constantly prayed for light, following regularly the external services
of the Church of England. Here the subject may be left for the present.

The reader is to imagine me as a youth who no longer believed in the
special inspiration of the Scriptures, or in their infallibility, but
who was still a Christian as thousands of "liberal" Church people in the
present day are Christians.

Before resuming my religious history, I ought to mention an influence
which was supposed by my friends to have been powerful over me, but
which in reality had slightly affected the current of my thinking. Our
medical adviser was a surgeon rather advanced in years, and whose
private fortune made him independent of professional success. As time
went on, he allowed himself to be more and more replaced by his
assistant, Mr. Uttley, one of the most remarkable characters I ever met
with. In those days, in a northern provincial town, it required immense
courage to avow religious heterodoxy of any advanced kind, yet Mr.
Uttley said with the utmost simplicity that he was an atheist, and the
religious world called him "Uttley the Atheist," a title which he
accepted as naturally as if it implied no contempt or antagonism
whatever. He was by no means devoid of physical courage also, for I
remember that at one time he rode an ugly brute that had a most
dangerous habit of bolting, and he would not permit me to mount her. He
was excessively temperate in his habits, never drinking anything
stronger than water, except, perhaps, a cup of tea (I am not sure about
the tea), and never eating more than he believed to be necessary to
health. He maintained the doctrine that hunger remains for a time after
the stomach has had enough, and that if you go on eating to satiety you
are intemperate. He disliked, and I believe despised, the habit of
stuffing on festive occasions, which used to be common in the wealthier
middle classes. I confess that Mr. Uttley's fearless honesty and steady
abstemiousness impressed me with the admiration that one cannot but feel
for the great virtues, by whomsoever practised; but Mr. Uttley had a
third virtue, which is so rare in England as to be almost unintelligible
to the majority,--he looked with the most serene indifference on social
struggles, on the arts by which people rise in the world. Perfectly
contented with his own station in life, and a man of remarkably few
wants, he lived on from year to year without ambition, finding his chief
interest in the pursuit of his profession, and his greatest pleasure in
his books. He so little attempted to make a proselyte of me that, when
at a later period I told him of a certain change of views, concerning
which more will be said in the sequel, he was unaffectedly surprised by
it, and said that he had never supposed me to be other than what I
appeared to the world in general, an ordinary member of the Church of
England. My intimate knowledge of Mr. Uttley's remarkable character must
have had, nevertheless, a certain influence in this way, that it enabled
me to estimate the vulgar attacks on infidels at their true worth; and
though my own theistic beliefs were very strong, I knew from this
example that an atheist was not necessarily a monster.

The only occasions that I remember in youth when Mr. Uttley might have
influenced me were these two. Being curious to know about opinions from
those who really held them, and being already convinced that we cannot
really know them from the misrepresentations of their enemies, I once
asked Mr. Uttley what atheism really was, and why it recommended itself
to him. He replied that atheism was, in his view, the acceptance of the
smaller of two difficulties, both of which were still very great. The
smaller difficulty for him was to believe in the self-existence of the
universe; the greater was to believe in a single Being, without a
beginning, who could create millions of solar systems; and as one or the
other must be self-existent the difficulty about self-existence was
common to both cases. The well-known argument from design did not
convince him, as he believed in a continual process of natural
adjustment of creatures to their environment,--a theory resembling that
of Darwin, but not yet so complete. I listened to Mr. Uttley's account
of his views with much interest; but they had no influence on my own, as
it seemed to me much easier to refer everything to an intelligent
Creator than to believe in the self-existence of all the intricate
organizations that we see. Still, I was not indignant, as the reader may
think I ought to have been. It seemed to me quite natural that
thoughtful men should hold different opinions on a subject of such
infinite difficulty.

The other occasion was, when in the vigor of youthful Protestantism I
happened to say something against the Church of Rome. Mr. Uttley very
quietly and kindly told me that I was unjust towards that Church, and I
asked him where the injustice lay. "It lies in this," he replied, "that
you despise the dogmas of the Church of Rome as resting only on the
authority of priests, whereas the case of that Church is not exceptional
or peculiar, as _all_ dogmas rest ultimately on the authority of
priests." To this I naturally answered that Scriptural authority was
higher; but Mr. Uttley answered,--"The Roman Catholics themselves
appeal to Scriptural authority as the Protestants do; but it is still
the priests who have decided which books are sacred, and how they are to
be interpreted." His conversation was not longer than my report of it,
and it occurred when I met Mr. Uttley accidentally in the street; but
though short, it was of some importance, as I happened at that time to
be exercised in my mind about what Mr. Bardsley had told us concerning
"German Neology." Subsequent observation has led me to believe that Mr.
Uttley attributed more originating authority to priests than really
belongs to them. It seems to me now that they take up and consecrate
popular beliefs that may be of use, and that they drop and discard,
either tacitly or openly, those beliefs which are no longer popular.
Both processes have been going on, for some years very visibly in the
Church of Rome, and the second of the two is plainly in operation in the
Church of England.




CHAPTER XIV.


1851.

First visit to London in 1851.--My first impression of the place.--
Nostalgia of the country.--Westminster.--The Royal Academy.--Resolution
never to go to London again.--Reason why this resolution was afterwards
broken.

In the year 1851 I went to London for the first time, to see the Great
Exhibition. Our little party consisted only of my guardian, my aunt, and
myself.

My first impression of London was exactly what it has ever since
remained. It seemed to me the most disagreeable place I had ever seen,
and I wondered how anybody could live there who was not absolutely
compelled to do so. At that time I did not understand the only valid
reason for living in London, which is the satisfaction of meeting with
intelligent people who know something about what interests you, and do
not consider you eccentric because you take an interest in something
that is not precisely and exclusively money-making.

My aunts knew nobody in London except one or two ladies of rank superior
to their own, on whom we made formal calls, which was a sort of human
intercourse that I heartily detested, as I detest it to this day.

Our lodgings were in Baker Street, which, after our pure air, open
scenery, and complete liberty at Hollins, seemed to me like a prison.
The lodgings were not particularly clean--the carpets, especially,
seemed as if they had never been taken up. The air was heavy, the water
was bad (our water at Hollins was clearer than glass, and if you poured
a goblet of it beady bubbles clung to the sides), there was no view
except up street and down street, and the noise was perpetual. A
Londoner would take these inconveniences as a matter of course and be
insensible to them, but to me they were so unpleasant that I suffered
from nostalgia of the country all the time.

The reader may advantageously be spared my boyish impressions of the
Great Exhibition and the other sights of London. Of course we fatigued
our brains, as country people always do, by seeing too many things in a
limited time; and as we had no special purpose in view, we got, I fear,
very little instruction from our wanderings amidst the bewildering
products of human industry. I remember being profoundly impressed by
Westminster Abbey, though I would gladly have seen all the modern
monuments calcined in a lime-kiln; and Westminster Hall affected me even
more, possibly because one of our ancestors, Sir Stephen Hamerton, had
been condemned to death there for high treason in the time of Henry
VIII. I was also deeply impressed by the grim, old Tower of London, and
only regretted that I did not know which cell the unlucky Sir Stephen
had occupied during his hopeless imprisonment there.

The rooms of the Royal Academy left a more durable recollection than the
contents of the great building in Hyde Park. Those are quite old times
for us now in the history of English art. Sir Frederick Leighton was a
young student who had not yet begun to exhibit; I think he was working
in Frankfort then. Millais was already known as the painter of strange
and vivid pictures of small size, which attracted attention, and put the
public into a state of much embarrassment. There were three of these
strange pictures that year,--an illustration of Tennyson, "She only
said, 'My life is dreary,'" the "Return of the Dove to the Ark," and the
"Woodman's Daughter." I distinctly remember the exact sensation with
which my young eyes saw these works; so distinctly that I now positively
feel those early sensations over again in thinking about them. All was
so fresh, so new! This modern art was such a novelty to one who had not
seen many modern pictures, and my own powers of enjoying art were so
entirely unspoiled by the effect of habit that I was like a young bird
in its first spring-time in the woods. I much preferred the beautiful
bright pictures in the Academy, with their greens and blues like Nature,
to the snuffy old canvases (as they seemed to me) in the National
Gallery.

The oddest result for a boy's first visit to London was a quiet mental
resolution of which I said nothing to anybody. What I thought and
resolved inwardly may be accurately expressed in these words: "Every
Englishman who can afford it ought to see London _once_, as a patriotic
duty, and I am not sorry to have been there to have got the duty
performed; but no power on earth shall ever induce me to go to that
supremely disagreeable place again!"

Of course the intelligent reader considers this boyish resolution
impossible and absurd, as it is entirely contrary to prevalent ideas;
but a man may lead a very complete life in Lancashire, and even in
counties less rich in various interest, without ever going to London at
all. A man's own fields may afford him as good exercise as Hyde Park,
and his well-chosen little library as good reading as the British
Museum. It was the Fine Arts that brought me to London afterwards; the
worst of the Fine Arts being that they concentrate themselves so much in
great capitals.




CHAPTER XV.


1851-1852.

The love of reading a hindrance to classical studies.--Dr. Butler
becomes anxious about my success at Oxford.--An insuperable
obstacle.--My indifference to degrees.--Irksome hypocrisy.--I am nearly
sent to a tutor at Brighton.--I go to a tutor in Yorkshire.--His
disagreeable disposition.--Incident about riding.--Disastrous effect of
my tutor's intellectual influence upon me.--My private reading.--My
tutor's ignorance of modern authors.--His ignorance of the fine
arts.--His religious intolerance.--I declare my inability to sign the
Thirty-nine Articles.

The various mental activities hinted at in the preceding chapters had
naturally a retarding effect upon my classical studies, which I had
never greatly taken to. It seemed then, and it seems to me still, that
for one who does not intend to make a living by teaching them, the dead
languages, like all other pursuits, are only worth a limited amount of
labor. It may appear paradoxical at first, but it is true, that one
reason why I did not like Latin and Greek was because I was extremely
fond of reading. The case is this: If you are fond of reading and have
an evening at your disposal, you will wish to read, will you not? But
_construing_ is not reading; it is quite a different mental operation.
When you _read_ you think of the scenes and events the author narrates,
or you follow his reasoning; but when you _construe_ you think of cases
and tenses, and remember grammatical rules. I could read English and
French, but Latin and Greek were only to be construed _à coups de
dictionnaire_.

The case may be illustrated by reference to an amusement. A man who is
indifferent to rowing cares very little what sort of boat he is in, and
toils contentedly as peasants do in their heavy boots, but a lover of
rowing wants a craft that he can move. This desire is quite independent
of the merits of the craft itself, considered without reference to the
man. A sailing yacht may he a beautiful vessel, but an Oxford oarsman
would not desire to pull one of her cumbersome sweeps.

I was at that time a private pupil of Dr. Butler's, and was getting on
at such a very moderate pace that he began to be anxious about his
responsibility. My guardian and he had decided together that I was to be
sent to Oxford, and it was even settled to which college, Balliol; and
my dear guardian expected me to come out in honors, and be a Fellow of
my college and a clergyman. That was her plan; and a very good scheme of
life it was, but it had one defect, that of being entirely inapplicable
to the human being for whom it was intended. I looked forward to Oxford
with anything but pleasure, and, indeed, considered that there was an
insuperable obstacle to my going there. In those days most of the good
things in life were kept as much as possible for members of the Church
of England, and it was necessary to sign the Thirty-nine Articles on
entering the University. This I could not do conscientiously, and would
not do against the grain of my conviction. I looked upon this obstacle
as insuperable; but if I had been as indifferent on such questions as
young men generally are, there would still have remained a difficulty in
my own nature, which is a rooted dislike to everything which is done for
social advancement. I might possibly have desired to be a scholar, but
cannot imagine myself desiring a degree. However, I might have taken the
trouble to get a degree, simply to please my guardian, if there had not
been that obstacle about the Thirty-nine Articles.

From this time, during a year or two, there was a sort of game of
cross-purposes between me and my guardian, as I had not yet ventured to
declare openly my severance from the Church of England, and my
consequent inability to go to one of her universities. The enormous
weight of social and family pressure that is brought to bear on a youth
with reference to these matters must be my excuse for a year or two of
hypocrisy that was extremely irksome to me; but besides this I have a
still better excuse in a sincere unwillingness to give pain to my dear
guardian, and in the dread lest the declaration of heresy might even be
dangerous to one whom I knew to be suffering from heart disease. I
therefore lived on as a young member of the Church of England who was
studying for Oxford, when in fact I considered myself no longer a member
of that Church, and had inwardly renounced all intention of going to
either of the Universities, which she still kept closed against the
Dissenters.

The inward determination not to go to Oxford or Cambridge had a bad
effect on my classical studies, as I had no other object in view whilst
pursuing them than the intellectual benefit to be derived from the
studies themselves, and I had not any very great faith in that benefit.
The most intelligent men I knew did not happen to be classical scholars,
and some men of my acquaintance who _were_ classical scholars seemed to
me quite impervious to ideas concerning science and the fine arts. Even
now, after a much larger experience, I do not perceive that classical
scholarship opens men's minds to scientific and artistic ideas, or even
that scholarship gives much appreciation of literary art and excellence.
Still, it is better to have it than to be without it. There is such a
thing as a scholarly temper,--a patient, careful, exact, and studious
temper,--which is valuable in all the pursuits of life.

Mr. Butler had been for some time my private tutor--which means that I
prepared my work at Hollins in the morning, and went to read with Mr.
Butler in the afternoon. The plan was pleasant enough for me, but it was
not advantageous, because what I most wanted was guidance during my
hours of study,--such guidance as I had at Doncaster. However, I read
and wrote Latin and Greek every day, and learned French at the same
time, as Mr. Butler had a taste for modern languages. This went on until
he became rather alarmed about my success at Oxford (which for reasons
known to the reader troubled me very little), and told my guardian that
she ought to send me to some tutor who could bestow upon me more
continuous attention. I was as near as possible to being sent to a tutor
at Brighton,--a reverend gentleman with aristocratic connections,--but
he missed having me by the very bait which he held out to attract my
guardian. He boasted in a letter of the young lords he had educated, and
said he had one or two still in the house with him. We had a near
neighbor and old friend who was herself very nearly connected with two
of the greatest families in the peerage, and as she happened to call
upon us when my guardian received the letter, it was handed to her, and
she said: "That bit about the young lords is not a recommendation; the
chances are that P. G. would find them proud and disagreeable." As for
me, the whole project presented nothing that was pleasant. I disliked
the south of England, and had not the slightest desire to make the
acquaintance of the young noblemen. It was therefore rather a relief
that the Brighton project was abandoned.

It happened then that my dear guardian did the only one foolish and
wrong thing she ever did in her whole life. She sent me to a clergyman
in Yorkshire, who had been a tutor at Oxford, and was considered to be a
good "coach,"--so far he may seem to have been the right man,--but he
was unfortunately exactly the man to inspire me with a complete disgust
for my studies. He had no consideration whatever for the feelings of
other people, least of all for those of a pupil. He treated me with open
contempt, and was always trying to humiliate me, till at last I let him
understand that I would endure it no longer. One day he ordered me to
clean his harness, with a peremptoriness that he would scarcely have
used to a groom, so I answered, "No, sir, I shall not clean your
harness; that is not my work." He then asked whether I considered myself
a gentleman. I said "yes," and he retorted that it would be a good thing
to thrash the gentility out of me; on which I told him that if he
ventured to attempt any such thing I should certainly defend myself. I
was a well-grown youth, and could have beaten my tutor easily. One day
he attempted to scrape my face with a piece of shark's skin, so I seized
both his wrists and held them for some time, telling him that the jest,
if it was a jest, was not acceptable.

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