Victorian Worthies

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Side by side with these masterly vignettes are full-length portraits of
great rulers such as Alfred, Elizabeth, and Cromwell, and vivid
descriptions of religious leaders such as Cranmer, Laud, and Wesley.
Strong though Green's own views on Church and State were, we do not feel
that he is deserting the province of the historian to lecture us on
religion or politics. The book is real narrative written in a fair
spirit, the author rendering justice to the good points of men like
Laud, whom he detested, and aiming above all at conveying clearly to his
readers the picture of what he believed to have happened in the past. As
a narrative it was not without faults. The reviewers at once seized on
many small mistakes, into which Green had fallen through the uncertainty
of his memory for names and words. To these Green cheerfully confessed,
and was thankful that they proved to be so slight. But when other
critics accused him of superficiality they were in error. On this point
we have the verdict of Bishop Stubbs, the most learned and conscientious
historian of the day. 'All Green's work', he says, 'was real and
original work. Few people beside those who knew him well could see,
under the charming ease and vivacity of his style, the deep research and
sustained industry of the laborious student. But it was so; there was no
department of our national records that he had not studied, and, I think
I may say, mastered. Hence, I think, the unity of his dramatic scenes
and the cogency of his historical arguments.'

Green himself was as severe a critic of the book as any one. Writing in
1877 to his future wife, he says, 'I see the indelible mark of the
essayist, the "want of long breath", as the French say, the jerkiness,
the slurring over of the uninteresting parts, above all, the want of
grasp of the subject as a whole'. On the advice of some of his best
friends, confirmed by his own judgement, in 1874 he gave up contributing
to the _Saturday Review_, in order to free his style from the character
imparted to it by writing detached weekly articles. The composing of
these articles had been a pleasure; the writing of English history was
to be his life-work, and no divided allegiance was conceivable to him.
But we may indeed be thankful that he resisted the views of other
friends who wished to drive him into copying German models. This class
Green called 'Pragmatic Historians';[58] and, while acknowledging their
solid contributions to history, he maintains his conviction that there
is another method and another school worthy of imitation, and that he
must 'hold to what he thinks true and work it out as he can'.

Green was a rapid reader and a rapid writer. In a letter to Freeman,
written when he was wintering in Florence in 1872, he admits covering
the period from the Peasant Revolt to the end of the New Learning
(1381-1520) in ten days. But he was writing from notes which represented
years of previous study. In another letter, written in 1876, he
confesses a tendency to 'wild hitting', and perhaps he was too rapid at
times in drawing his inferences. 'With me', he says, 'the impulse to try
to connect things, to find the "why" of things, is irresistible; and
even if I overdo my political guesses, you or some German will punch my
head and put things rightly and intelligibly again.' It is this power of
connecting events and explaining how one movement leads to another which
makes the stimulating quality of Green's work; and to a nation like the
English, too little apt to indulge in general ideas, this quality may be
of more value than the German erudition which tends to overburden the
intelligence with too great a load of 'facts'. And, after all the
labours of Carlyle and Froude, of Stubbs and Freeman, and all the
delving into records and chronicles, who shall say what _are_ facts, and
what is inference, legitimate or illegitimate, from them?

[Note 58: Pragmatic: 'treating facts of history with reference to
their practical lessons.' _Concise Oxford Dictionary._]

Whatever were the shortcomings of the book, which Green in his letters
to Freeman called by the affectionate names of 'Shorts' and 'Little
Book', it inaugurated a new method, and won a hearing among readers who
had hitherto professed no taste for history; and, financially, it proved
so far a success that Green was relieved from the necessity of
continuing work that was uncongenial. He had already given up his parish
in 1869. Ill-health and the advice of his doctor were the deciding
factors; but there is no doubt that Green was also finding it difficult
to subscribe to all the doctrines of the Church. He took up the same
liberal comprehensive attitude to Church questions as he did to
politics, and opposed any attempt to stifle honest inquiry or to punish
honest doubt. He was much disturbed by some of the attempts made at this
time by the more extreme parties in the Church to enforce uniformity.
Also he felt that the Church was not exercising its proper influence on
the nation, owing to the prejudice or apathy of the clergy in meeting
the social movements of the day. If he had found more support, inside
the diocese, for his social and educational work, the breach might have
been healed, or at any rate postponed, in the hope of his health
mending.

Relieved of parish work, he found plentiful occupation in revising his
old books and in planning new; he showed wonderful zest for travelling
abroad, and, by choosing carefully the places for his winter sojourn, he
fought heroically to combat increasing ill-health and to achieve his
literary ambitions. Thus it was that he made intimate acquaintance with
San Remo, Mentone, and Capri; and one winter he went as far as Luxor in
the hope that the Egyptian climate might help him; but in vain. Under
the guidance of his friend Stopford Brooke he visited for shorter
periods Venice, Florence, and other Italian towns. He was catholic in
his sympathies but not over-conscientious in sight-seeing. When Brooke
left him at Florence, Green was openly glad to relapse into vagrant
pilgrimage, to put aside his guide-book and to omit the daily visit to
the Uffizi Gallery. But, on the other hand, he reproached Freeman for
confining his interests entirely to architecture and emperors while
ignoring pictures and sculpture, mediaeval guilds, and the relics of old
civic life. It was at Troyes that Bryce observed him 'darting hither and
thither through the streets like a dog following a scent'--and to such
purpose that after a few hours of research he could write a brilliant
paper sketching the history of the town as illustrated in its
monuments--but in Italy, as in France, he had a wonderful gift for
discovering all that was most worth knowing about a town, which other
men passed by and ignored.

Capri, which he first visited at Christmas 1872, was the most successful
of his winter haunts. The climate, the beauty of the scenery, the
simplicity of the life, all suited him admirably. On this occasion he
stayed four months in the island, and he has sung its praises in one of
the 'Stray Studies'. Within a small compass there is a wonderful variety
of scene. Green delights in it all, 'in the boldly scarped cliffs, in
the dense scrub of myrtle and arbutus, in the blue strips of sea that
seem to have been cunningly let in among the rocks, in the olive yards
creeping thriftily up the hill sides, in the remains of Roman sculptures
and mosaics, in the homesteads of grey stone and low domes and Oriental
roofs'. And he found it an ideal place for literary work, restful and
remote, 'where one can live unscourged by Kingsley's "wind of God".'
'The island', he writes, 'is a paradise of silence for those to whom
silence is a delight. One wanders about in the vineyards without a sound
save the call of the vinedressers: one lies on the cliff and hears, a
thousand feet below, the dreary wash of the sea. There is hardly the cry
of a bird to break the spell; even the girls who meet one with a smile
on the hillside smile quietly and gravely in the Southern fashion as
they pass by.' No greater contrast could be found to the conditions
under which he began his books; and it is not surprising that in this
haven of peace, with no parish business to break in upon his study, he
worked more rapidly and confidently--when his health allowed.

From such retreats he would return refreshed in body and mind to
continue studying and writing in London and to sketch out new plans for
the future. One that bore rich fruit was that of a series of Primers,
dealing shortly with great subjects and commending them to the general
reader by attractive literary style. They were produced by Macmillan,
Green acting as editor; and notable volumes were contributed by
Gladstone on Homer, by Creighton on Rome, and by Stopford Brooke on
English Literature. Here, again, Green was a pioneer in a path where he
has had many followers since; and he would have been the first to edit
an English Historical Review if more support had been forthcoming from
the public. But for financial reasons he was obliged to abandon the
scheme, and it did not see the light of day till Creighton launched it
in 1886.

In 1877 he married and found in his wife just the helper that he needed.
She too had the historical imagination, the love of research, and the
power of writing. Husband and wife produced in co-operation a small
geography of the British Isles, well planned, clear, and pleasant to
read. But, apart from this, she was content, during the too brief period
of their married life, to subordinate her activities to helping her
husband, and her aid was invaluable at the time when he was writing his
later books. There is no doubt that his marriage prolonged his life. The
care which his wife took of him, whether in their home in foggy London,
or in primitive lodgings in beautiful Capri, helped him over his worst
days; and the new value which he now set on life and its happiness gave
him redoubled force of will. There were others who helped him in these
days of perpetual struggle with ill-health. His doctors, Sir Andrew
Clark and Sir Lauder Brunton, rendered him the devotion of personal
friends. The historians gathered round him in Kensington Square, the
home of his later years, and cheered him with good talk. Those who were
lucky enough to be admitted might hear him at his best, discussing
historical questions in a circle which included Sir Henry Maine and
Bishop Stubbs, as well as Lecky, Freeman, and Bryce. He had many other
interests. Such a man could not be indifferent to contemporary politics.
His heroes--and he was an ardent worshipper of heroes--were Gladstone
and Garibaldi, and, like many Liberals of the day, he was violent in his
opposition to Beaconsfield's policy in Eastern Europe. Hatred of
Napoleonic tyranny killed for a while his sympathy with France, and in
1870 he sympathized with the German cause--at least till the rape of the
two provinces and the sorrows of disillusioned France revived his old
feeling for the French nation. Over everything he felt keenly and
expressed himself warmly. As Tennyson said to him at the close of a
visit to Aldworth, 'You're a jolly, vivid man; you're as vivid as
lightning'.

Particularly dear to him was the close sympathy of Stopford Brooke and
that of Humphry Ward, to whose father he had been curate in 1860 and who
had himself for years learnt to cherish the friendship of Green and to
seek his counsel. Mrs. Ward has told us how she (then Miss Arnold)
brought her earliest literary efforts to Green, how kindly was his
encouragement but how formidable was the standard of excellence which he
set up. She has also pictured for us 'the thin wasted form seated in the
corner of the sofa... the eloquent lips... the life flashing from his
eyes beneath the very shadow of death'. His latter years, lived
perpetually under this grim shadow, were yet full of cheerfulness and
of hope. However the body might fail, the active brain was planning and
the high courage was bracing him to further effort. Between 1877 and
1880 he published in four volumes a _History of the English People_,
which follows the same plan and covers much the same ground as the
_Short History_. He was able to revise his views on points where recent
study threw fresh light and to include subjects which had been crowded
out for want of space. But the book failed to attract readers to the
same extent as the _Short History_. The freshness and buoyancy of the
earlier sketch could not be recaptured after so long an interval. In the
last year of his life he began again on the early history of England,
working at a pace which would have been astonishing even in a man of
robust health, and he completed in the short period of eleven months the
brilliant volume called _The Making of England_. He had thought out the
subject during many a day and night of pain and had the plan clear in
his head; but he was indefatigable in revising his work, and would make
as many as eight or ten drafts of a chapter before it satisfied his
judgement. His last autumn and winter were occupied with the succeeding
volume, _The Conquest of England_, and he left it sufficiently complete
for his wife to edit and publish a few months after his death.

The end came at Mentone early in 1883. Two years of life had been won,
as his doctor said, by sheer force of will; but the frail body could no
longer obey the soul, and nature could bear no more.

If in the twentieth century history is losing its hold on the thought
and feeling of the rising generation, Green is the last man whom we can
blame. He gave all his faculties unsparingly to his task--patience,
enthusiasm, single-hearted love of truth; and he encouraged others to do
the same. No man was more free from the pontifical airs of those
historians who proclaimed history as an academic science to be confined
within the chilly walls of libraries and colleges. We may apply to his
work what Mr. G. M. Trevelyan has said of the English historians from
Clarendon down to recent times; it was 'the means of spreading far and
wide, throughout all the reading classes, a love and knowledge of
history, an elevated and critical patriotism, and certain qualities of
mind and heart'.[59] Against the danger which he mentions in his next
sentence, that we are now being drilled into submission to German
models, Mr. Trevelyan is himself one of our surest protectors.

[Note 59: _Clio and other Essays_, by G. M. Trevelyan, p. 4
(Longmans, Green & Co., 1913).]

CECIL RHODES

1853-1902

1853. Born at Bishop's Stortford, July 5.
1870. Goes out to Natal.
1871. Moves to Kimberley.
1873-81. Intermittent visits to Oxford.
1880. First De Beers Company started.
1880. Member for Barkly West.
1883. Commissioner in Bechuanaland.
1885. Warren expedition: Bechuanaland annexed by British Government.
1887. Acute rivalry between Rhodes and Barnato.
1888. Barnato gives way: De Beers Consolidated founded.
1888. Lobengula grants concession for mining.
1889. British South Africa Chartered Company formed.
1890. Prime Minister of Cape Colony.
1890. Occupation of Mashonaland.
1893. Second Rhodes ministry.
1893. War with Lobengula. Matabeleland occupied.
1895. 'Drifts' question between Cape and Transvaal Government.
1895. Jameson Raid, December 28.
1896. January, Rhodes's resignation. Visit to England.
1896. Rebellion in Rhodesia.
1897. Inquiry into the Raid by Committee of the House of Commons.
1899. D.C.L., Oxford.
1899. Outbreak of Great Boer War.
1902. Dies at Muizenberg, March 26.

CECIL RHODES

COLONIST

The Rhodes family can be traced back to sturdy English yeoman stock. In
the eighteenth century they had held land in North London. Cecil's
father was vicar of Bishop's Stortford, a quiet country town in
Hertfordshire on the Essex border; he was a man of mark, wealthy,
liberal, and unconventional, with the rare gift of preaching ten-minute
sermons which were well worth hearing. Of his eldest sons, Herbert went
to Winchester, Frank to Eton; Cecil, the fifth son, born on July 5,
1853, was kept at home. He had part of his education at the local
Grammar School, but perhaps the better part at the Vicarage from his
father himself. The shrewd Vicar soon saw that his fifth son was not
fitted for the ordinary routine of professional life at home, and at the
age of seventeen he was sent out to visit his brother Herbert, who had
emigrated to Natal. Cecil said good-bye to his native land for the first
time in 1870, and thus early elected to be a citizen of the Greater
Britain beyond the seas.

[Illustration: CECIL RHODES

From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]

The brothers had certain points of resemblance, being both original and
adventurous; but they had marked differences. The elder was a wanderer
pure and simple, a lover of sport and of novelty. He could follow a new
track with all the ardour of a pioneer; he could not sit down and
develop the wealth which he had opened up. The management of the Natal
cotton farm soon fell into the hands of Cecil, now eighteen years old,
who noted every detail, and studied his crops, his workmen, and his
markets, while Herbert was absent in quest of game and adventure. It was
this spirit which led Herbert westward in 1871, among the earliest of
the immigrants into the diamond fields: before the end of the year Cecil
followed and soon took over and developed his brother's claim. It was no
case of Esau and Jacob; the brothers had great affection for one another
and fitted in together without jealousy. Each lived his own life and
followed his own bent. As Kimberley was the first field in which Cecil
showed his abilities, it is worth while to try to picture the scene. It
remained a centre of interest to him for thirty years, the scene of many
troubles and of many triumphs.

'The New Rush', as Kimberley was called in 1872, was a chaos of tents
and rubbish heaps seen through a haze of dust--a heterogeneous
collection of tents, wagons, native kraals and debris heaps, each set
down with cheerful irresponsibility and indifference to order. The
funnel of blue clay so productive of diamonds had been found on a bit of
the bare Griqualand Veld, marked out by no geographical advantages, with
no charm of woodland or river scenery. Here in the years to come the
great pits, familiar in modern photographs, were to grow deeper and
deeper, as the partitions fell in between the small claims, or as the
more enterprising miners bought up their neighbours' plots. Here the
debris heaps were to grow higher and higher, as more hundreds of Kaffirs
were brought in to dig, or new machinery arrived, as the buckets plied
more rapidly on the network of ropes overhead. In the early 'seventies
there were few signs of these marvels to be seen by the outward
eye--everything was in the rough--but they were no doubt already
existing in the brain of 'a tall fair boy, blue eyed and with somewhat
aquiline features, wearing flannels of the school playing-field,
somewhat shrunken with strenuous rather than effectual washings, that
still left the colour of the red veld dust'.

Here Cecil Rhodes lived for the greater part of ten years, finding time
amid his work for dreams: living, in general, aloof from the men with
whom he did his daily business, but laying here and there the
foundations of a friendship which was to bear fruit hereafter. Rudd,[60]
of the Matabeleland concessions, came out in 1873; Beit,[61] the partner
in diamond fields and gold fields, the co-founder of the Chartered
Company, in 1875; and in 1878 there came out from Edinburgh one whose
name was to be linked still more closely with that of Rhodes. Leander
Starr Jameson, a skilful doctor, a cheerful companion, gifted with a
great capacity for self-devotion, and with unshakeable firmness of will,
was now twenty-five years old. Rhodes and he soon drew closely together
and for years they were living under one roof. While his casual and
rather overbearing manners repelled many of his acquaintances, Rhodes
had a genius for friendship with the few; and it was such men as these
who shared his work, his pastimes, and his thoughts, and reconciled him
to spending many years in the unattractive surroundings of the mines.

[Note 60: C. D. Rudd (1844-96), educated at Harrow and Cambridge.]

[Note 61: Alfred Beit, born at Hamburg, 1853; died in London, 1906.]

But his life at this time had other phases. Not the least wonderful
chapter in it was the series of visits which he paid to Oxford between
1873 and 1881. The atmosphere of a mining camp does not seem likely to
draw a man towards academic studies and a University life. But Rhodes,
who had a great power of absorbing himself in work, had also the power
of projecting himself beyond the interests of the moment. Seven times he
found opportunity to tear himself away from the busy work of mining and
to keep terms at Oxford; and they made a lasting impression upon him. It
was not the love of book-learning, still less the love of games, which
drew him there. To many he may have seemed to be spending his time
unprofitably. He indulged in some rowing and polo, he was master of the
drag-hounds, he worried his neighbours by nocturnal practising of the
horn. The examinations in the schools, and the more popular athletic
contests, knew little of him. But his sojourn in Oxford was a tribute
paid by the higher side of his mind to education and to the value of
high thinking as compared with material progress; and no one who knew
him well in later life could doubt that the traditions of Oxford had
deeply influenced his mind. On these things he was by nature reticent,
and was often misjudged.

Between the years 1878 and 1888 must be placed the struggle between him
and his rivals for predominance in Kimberley. It had begun with small
enterprises, the purchasing of adjoining claims, the undertaking of
drainage work, the introduction of better machinery. It attracted more
attention in 1880 with the founding of the first De Beers Company, named
after a Boer who had owned the land on which the mine lay. It culminated
in 1887 in the battle with Barnato,[62] his most dangerous competitor,
when by dexterous purchasing of shares in his rival's company Rhodes
forced him into a final scheme of amalgamation. In 1888 was founded the
great corporation of De Beers Consolidated mines. The masterful will of
Rhodes dictated the terms of the Trust deed, giving very extensive power
to the Directorate for the using of their funds. He was already laying
his foundations, though few could then have guessed what imperial work
was to be done with the money thus obtained. The process of amalgamation
was not popular in Kimberley. It resulted in closing down many of the
less profitable claims and in reducing the amount of labour employed.
But it brought in better machinery and it saved expenses of management.
Above all, it curtailed the output of diamonds and so kept up the market
price in Europe and elsewhere. Many people refused to believe that
Rhodes could have outmanoeuvred a man of exceptional financial ability
without using dishonourable means. But there is no doubt that it was
masterful character which won the day, that strength of will which
decides the issue at the critical moment. Many others have been
prejudiced against him merely from the fact that he spent so much time
and energy in the pursuit of 'filthy lucre'. We must remember that
Rhodes himself said: 'What's the earthly use of having ideas if you
haven't the money to carry them out?' We must also remember that all
witnesses of his life agree that the ideas were always foremost, the
money a mere instrument to realize them. The story was told to Edmund
Garrett by one of Rhodes's old Kimberley associates 'how one day in
those scheming years, deep in the sordid details of amalgamation, Rhodes
("always a bit of a crank") suddenly put his hand over a great piece of
No Man's Africa on the map and said, "Look here: all that British--that
is my dream".'[63]

[Note 62: Barney Barnato, born in Houndsditch, 1852; died at sea,
1897.]

[Note 63: Perhaps the best character sketch of Rhodes is that
printed as an appendix to Sir E. T. Cook's _Life of Edmund Garrett_
(Edward Arnold, 1909). Garrett's career as journalist and politician in
South Africa was terminated by illness in 1899.]

But long before this struggle was over, Rhodes had embarked on new
courses which were to carry him still farther. His dreams of political
work began to take shape when Griqualand was created a British province
in 1880. Two electoral divisions were formed, Kimberley and Barkly West;
and it was for the latter that Rhodes first took his seat in the Cape
Parliament in 1880, a seat which he retained till his death. The Prime
Minister was Sir Gordon Sprigg, a politician with experience but few
ideas, more skilled in retaining office than in formulating a policy.
Rhodes was at first reticent about his own projects, and spent his time
quietly studying commercial questions, examining the problem of the
native races and making friends among the Boers. If these friendships
were obscured later by political quarrels, there is no reason to suspect
their genuineness. His sympathy with the Dutch farmers had begun in
1872, when he made a long, lonely trek through the Northern Transvaal,
and it lasted through life. He was interested in farming, he liked
natural men, and was at home in unconventional surroundings. One of the
closest observers of his character said that to see the true Rhodes you
must see him on the veld. So long as the supremacy of the British flag
was assured, there was nothing that he so ardently desired as friendly
relations between British and Dutch, a real union of the races, a South
African nation. It was for this that he worked so long with Jan Hofmeyr,
leader of the Cape Dutch, and earned so many unfair suspicions from the
short-sighted politicians of Cape Town.

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