Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, vol 1 - George Otto Trevelyan (which ebook reader txt) 📗

a light purse, he certainly possessed that element of felicity. Among the earliest economical reforms undertaken by the new Government was a searching revision of our Bankruptcy jurisdiction, in the course of which his Commissionership was swept away, without leaving him a penny of compensation. “I voted for the Bankruptcy Court Bill,” he said in answer to an inquisitive constituent.

“There were points in that Bill of which I did not approve, and I only refrained from stating those points because an office of my own was at stake.” When this source fell dry he was for a while a poor man; for a member of Parliament, who has others to think of besides himself, is anything but rich on sixty or seventy pounds a quarter as the produce of his pen, and a college income which has only a few more months to run. At a time when his Parliamentary fame stood at its highest he was reduced to sell the gold medals which he had gained at Cambridge; but he was never for a moment in debt; nor did he publish a line prompted by any lower motive than the inspiration of his political faith, or the instinct of his literary genius. He had none but pleasant recollections connected with the period when his fortunes were at their lowest. From the secure prosperity of after life he delighted in recalling the time when, after cheering on the fierce debate for twelve or fifteen hours together, he would walk home by daylight to his chambers, and make his supper on a cheese which was a present from one of his Wiltshire constituents, and a glass of the audit ale which reminded him that he was still a fellow of Trinity.

With political distinction came social success, more rapid and more substantial, perhaps, than has ever been achieved by one who took so little trouble to win or to retain it. The circumstances of the time were all in his favour. Never did our higher circles present so much that would attract a new-comer, and never was there more readiness to admit within them all who brought the honourable credentials of talent and celebrity. In 1831 the exclusiveness of birth was passing away, and the exclusiveness of fashion had not set in. The Whig party, during its long period of depression, had been drawn together by the bonds of common hopes, and endeavours, and disappointments; and personal reputation, whether literary, political, or forensic, held its own as against the advantages of rank and money to an extent that was never known before, and never since. Macaulay had been well received in the character of an Edinburgh Reviewer, and his first great speech in the House of Commons at once opened to him all the doors in London that were best worth entering. Brought up, as he had been, in a household which was perhaps the strictest and the homeliest among a set of families whose creed it was to live outside the world, it put his strength of mind to the test when he found himself courted and observed by the most distinguished and the most formidable personages of the day. Lady Holland listened to him with unwonted deference, and scolded him with a circumspection that was in itself a compliment. Rogers spoke of him with friendliness, and to him with positive affection, and gave him the last proof of his esteem and admiration by asking him to name the morning for a breakfast-party. He was treated with almost fatherly kindness by the able and worthy man who is still remembered by the name of Conversation Sharp. Indeed, his deference for the feelings of all whom he liked and respected, which an experienced observer could detect beneath the eagerness of his manner and the volubility of his talk, made him a favourite among those of a generation above his own. He bore his honours quietly, and enjoyed them with the natural and hearty pleasure of a man who has a taste for society, but whose ambitions lie elsewhere. For the space of three seasons he dined out almost nightly, and spent many of his Sundays in those suburban residences which, as regards the company and the way of living, are little else than sections of London removed into a purer air.

Before very long his habits and tastes began to incline in the direction of domesticity, and even of seclusion; and, indeed, at every period of his life he would gladly desert the haunts of those whom Pope and his contemporaries used to term “the great,”

to seek the cheerful and cultured simplicity of his home, or the conversation of that one friend who had a share in the familiar confidence which Macaulay otherwise reserved for his nearest relatives. This was Mr. Thomas Flower Ellis, whose reports of the proceedings in King’s Bench, extending over a whole generation, have established and perpetuated his name as that of an acute and industrious lawyer. He was older than Macaulay by four years.

Though both Fellows of the same college, they missed each other at the university, and it was not until 1827, on the Northern circuit, that their acquaintance began. “Macaulay has joined,”

writes Mr. Ellis; “an amusing person; somewhat boyish in his manner, but very original.” The young barristers had in common an insatiable love of the classics; and similarity of character, not very perceptible on the surface, soon brought about an intimacy which ripened into an attachment as important to the happiness of both concerned as ever united two men through every stage of life and vicissitude of fortune. Mr. Ellis had married early; but in 1839 he lost his wife, and Macaulay’s helpful and heartfelt participation in his great sorrow riveted the links of a chain that was already indissoluble.

The letters contained in this volume will tell, better than the words of any third person, what were the points of sympathy between the two companions, and in what manner they lived together till the end came. Mr. Ellis survived his friend little more than a year; not complaining or lamenting but going about his work like a man from whose day the light has departed.

Brief and rare were the vacations of the most hard-worked Parliament that had sat since the times of Pym and Hampden. In the late autumn of 1831, the defeat of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords delivered over the country to agitation, resentment, and alarm; and gave a short holiday to public men who were not Ministers, magistrates, or officers in the yeomanry.

Hannah and Margaret Macaulay accompanied their brother on a visit to Cambridge, where they met with the welcome which young Masters of Arts delight in providing for the sisters of a comrade of whom they are fond and proud.

“On the evening that we arrived,” says Lady Trevelyan, “we met at dinner Whewell, Sedgwick, Airy, and Thirlwail and how pleasant they were, and how much they made of us two happy girls, who were never tired of seeing, and hearing and admiring! We breakfasted, lunched, and dined with one or the other of the set during our stay, and walked about the colleges all day with the whole train. [A reminiscence from that week of refined and genial hospitality survives in the Essay on Madame d’Arblay. The reception which Miss Burney would have enjoyed at Oxford, if she had visited it otherwise than as an attendant on Royalty, is sketched off with all the writer’s wonted spirit, and more than his wonted grace.] Whewell was then tutor; rougher, but less pompous, and much more agreeable, than in after years; though I do not think that he ever cordially liked your uncle. We then went on to Oxford, which from knowing no one there seemed terribly dull to us by comparison with Cambridge, and we rejoiced our brother’s heart by sighing after Trinity.”

During the first half of his life Macaulay spent some months of every year at the seat of his uncle, Mr. Babington, who kept open house for his nephews and nieces throughout the summer and autumn. Rothley Temple, which lies in a valley beyond the first ridge that separates the flat unattractive country immediately round Leicester from the wild and beautiful scenery of Charnwood Forest, is well worth visiting as a singularly unaltered specimen of an old English home. The stately trees; the grounds, half park and half meadow; the cattle grazing up to the very windows; the hall, with its stone pavement rather below than above the level of the soil, hung with armour rude and rusty enough to dispel the suspicion of its having passed through a collector’s hands; the low ceilings; the dark oak wainscot, carved after primitive designs, that covered every inch of wall in bedroom and corridor; the general air which the whole interior presented of having been put to rights at the date of the Armada and left alone ever since;—all this antiquity contrasted quaintly, but prettily enough, with the youth and gaiety that lit up every corner of the ever-crowded though comfortable mansion. In wet weather there was always a merry group sitting on the staircase, or marching up and down the gallery; and, wherever the noise and fun were most abundant, wherever there was to be heard the loudest laughter and the most vehement expostulation, Macaulay was the centre of a circle which was exclaiming at the levity of his remarks about the Blessed Martyr; disputing with him on the comparative merits of Pascal, Racine, Corneille, Moliere, and Boileau or checking him as he attempted to justify his godparents by running off a list of all the famous Thomases in history. The place is full of his memories. His favourite walk was a mile of field-road and lane which leads from the house to a lodge on the highway; and his favourite point of view in that walk was a slight acclivity, whence the traveller from Leicester catches his first sight of Rothley Temple, with its background of hill and greenwood. He is remembered as sitting at the window in the hall, reading Dante to himself, or translating it aloud as long as any listener cared to remain within ear-shot. He occupied, by choice, a very small chamber on the ground floor, through the window of which he could escape unobserved while afternoon callers were on their way between the front door and the drawing-room. On such occasions he would take refuge in a boat moored under the shade of some fine oaks which still exist, though the ornamental water on whose bank they stood has since been converted into dry land.

A journal kept at intervals by Margaret Macaulay, some extracts from which have here been arranged in the form of a continuous narrative, affords a pleasant and faithful picture of her brother’s home-life during the years 1831 and 1832. With an artless candour, from which his reputation will not suffer, she relates the alternations of hope and disappointment through which the young people passed when it began to be a question whether or not he would be asked to join the Administration.

“I think I was about twelve when I first became very fond of my brother, and from that time my affection for him has gone on increasing during a period of seven years. I shall never forget my delight and enchantment when I first found that he seemed to like talking to me. His manner was very flattering to such a child, for he always took as much pains to amuse me, and to inform me on anything I wished to know, as ho could have done to the greatest person in the land. I have heard him express great disgust towards those people who, lively and agreeable abroad, are a dead weight in the family circle. I think the remarkable clearness of his style proceeds in some measure from the habit of conversing