As A Friend Of
Mine Said To Me The Other Day, 'Unless You Give A Man Of That
Kind Something To Kill, His Own Life Is Not Worth Having.'
This, To Be Sure, Is All He Has To Think About.
CHAPTER XLVIII
FOR eight or nine years, while my sons were at school, I
lived at Rickmansworth. Unfortunately the Leweses had just
left it. Moor Park belonged to Lord Ebury, my wife's uncle,
and the beauties of its magnificent park and the amenities of
its charming house were at all times open to us, and freely
taken advantage of. During those nine years I lived the life
of a student, and wrote and published the book I have
elsewhere spoken of, the 'Creeds of the Day.'
Of the visitors of note whose acquaintance I made while I was
staying at Moor Park, by far the most illustrious was Froude.
He was too reserved a man to lavish his intimacy when taken
unawares; and if he suspected, as he might have done by my
probing, that one wanted to draw him out, he was much too
shrewd to commit himself to definite expressions of any kind
until he knew something of his interviewer. Reticence of
this kind, on the part of such a man, is both prudent and
commendable. But is not this habit of cautiousness sometimes
carried to the extent of ambiguity in his 'Short Studies on
Great Subjects'? The careful reader is left in no sort of
doubt as to Froude's own views upon Biblical criticism, as to
his theological dogmas, or his speculative opinions. But the
conviction is only reached by comparing him with himself in
different moods, by collating essay with essay, and one part
of an essay with another part of the same essay. Sometimes
we have an astute defence of doctrines worthy at least of a
temperate apologist, and a few pages further on we wonder
whether the writer was not masking his disdain for the
credulity which he now exposes and laughs at. Neither
excessive caution nor timidity are implied by his editing of
the Carlyle papers; and he may have failed - who that has
done so much has not? - in keeping his balance on the swaying
slack-rope between the judicious and the injudicious. In his
own line, however, he is, to my taste, the most scholarly,
the most refined, and the most suggestive, of our recent
essayists. The man himself in manner and in appearance was
in perfect keeping with these attractive qualities.
While speaking of Moor Park and its kind owner I may avail
myself of this opportunity to mention an early reminiscence
of Lord Ebury's concerning the Grosvenor estate in London.
Mr. Gladstone was wont to amuse himself with speculations as
to the future dimensions of London; what had been its growth
within his memory; what causes might arise to cheek its
increase. After listening to his remarks on the subject one
day at dinner, I observed that I had heard Lord Ebury talk of
shooting over ground which is now Eaton Square.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 202 of 208
Words from 103217 to 103731
of 106633
