The Online Library of Liberty

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• Herbert Spencer’s Works.
• Note By the Trustees.
• Preface.
• Note.
• Family-antecedents.
• I.: Extraction.
• II.: Grandparents and Their Children.
• III.: Parents.
• Part I.: 1820—1837.
• Chapter I.: Childhood. 1820—1827. Æt. 1—7.
• Chapter II.: Boyhood. 1827—33. Æt. 7—13.
• Chapter III.: A Journey and a Flight. 1833. Æt. 13.
• Chapter IV.: Youth At Hinton. 1833—36. Æt. 13—16.
• Chapter V.: A False Start. 1836—37. Æt. 16—17.
• Part II.: 1837—1841
• Chapter VI.: Commence Engineering. 1837—38. Æt. 17—18.
• Chapter VII.: Life At Worcester. 1838—40. Æt. 18—20.
• Chapter VIII.: Some Months At Powick. 1840. Æt. 20.
• Chapter IX.: A Nomadic Period. 1840—41. Æt. 20—21.
• Part III.: 1841—1844
• Chapter X.: Return to Derby. 1841—42. Æt. 21—2.
• Chapter XI.: A Visit and Its Consequences. 1842. Æt. 22.
• Chapter XII.: Back At Home. 1842—43. Æt. 22—23.
• Chapter XIII.: A Campaign In London. 1843. Æt. 23.
• Chapter XIV.: At Home Again. 1843—44. Æt. 23—24.
• Part IV.: 1844—1848
• Chapter XV.: A Brief Sub-editorship. 1844. Æt. 24.
• Chapter XVI.: A Parliamentary Survey. 1844. Æt. 24.
• Chapter XVII.: An Interval In Town. 1845. Æt. 24—5.
• Chapter XVIII.: Another Parliamentary Survey. 1845—46. Æt. 25—26.
• Chapter XIX.: Inventions. 1846—47. Æt. 26—27.
• Chapter Xix A.: Suspense. 1848. Æt. 28.
• Part V.: 1848—1853
• Chapter XX.: Begin Journalism. 1848—50. Æt. 28—30.
• Chapter XXI.: My First Book. 1848—50 Æt. 28—30.
• Chapter XXII.: An Idle Year. 1850—51. Æt. 30—31.
• Chapter XXIII.: A More Active Year. 1852. Æt. 31—32.
• Chapter XXIV.: Leave the Economist. 1853. Æt. 33—34.
• Part VI.: 1853—1856
• Chapter XXV.: Two Months’ Holiday. 1853. Æt. 33.
• Chapter XXVI.: Writing For Quarterly Reviews. 1853—54. Æt. 33—34.
• Chapter XXVII.: My Second Book. 1854—55. Æt. 34—35.
• Chapter XXVIII.: Eighteen Months Lost. 1855—56. Æt. 35—36.
• Chapter XXIX.: Some Significant Essays. 1856—7. Æt. 36—37.
• Appendices.
• Appendix A.: Skew Arches.
• Appendix B.: Geometrical Theorem.
• Appendix C.: Velocimeter. an Instrument For Calculating Velocities On Railways, &c.
• Appendix D.: Scale of Equivalents.
• Appendix E.: Ideas About a Universal Language.
• Appendix F.: Remarks On the Theory of Reciprocal Dependence In the Animal and Vegetable Creations As Regards Its Bearing Upon PalÆontology.
• Appendix G.: Levelling Appliances.
• Appendix H.: On a Proposed Cephalograph.
• Appendix I.: Registered Binding-pins, For Securing Music and Unbound Publications.
• Appendix J.: the Form of the Earth No Proof of Original Fluidity.
• Appendix K.: Letter to the Athen Æum Concerning the Misstatements of the Rev. T. Mozley.

FAMILY-ANTECEDENTS.

• I.Extraction.
• II.Grandparents and their Children.
• III.Parents.

I.

EXTRACTION.

Most persons recognize the vanity of genealogies which, singling out one ancestor, perhaps quite remote, ignore all those other ancestors—8, 16, 32, 64, according to the distance back—whose shares in forefatherhood are equally great. But there are genealogies for which something is to be said. Among men, as among inferior creatures, there occasionally arise individual constitutions of great persistence, which impress themselves on many generations of posterity; and in such cases a statement of extraction may not be uninstructive. Other cases there are in which, through many generations may be traced, not the traits of some one marked individual, but family-traits which have been common to several lines of ancestry, and have hence become well-established in descendants common to them all. In my own case there are certain ancestral traits of this kind which are not without significance. Those ancestors concerning whom not much is to be said, may first be named.

I know little about the line of my grandmother on the paternal side, further than that the family, named Taylor, was of the lower middle class, and was resident in Derby.

Nor have I anything definite to say respecting the extraction of my mother’s father, whose name was Holmes—a name which may have had a topographical origin, for there is, or was, a tract of pasture bordering the Derwent, called “the Holmes.” But there seems some probability of a connexion which I have been unable to establish. In a diary kept by my mother during her girlhood, there are mentions of visits to the Holmeses of Brailsford, a village eight miles from Derby. These Holmeses seem to have been, and are still, small landowners, farming their own land. Inquiries made some dozen years ago failed to show any relationship. Yet it seems unlikely that there should have been interchanges of visits between families residing near one another and of the same name, who were unrelated.

Probably I might have gathered more about these lives of ancestors had I in early life been curious in such matters. Or had our family been prone to gossip, some knowledge of byegone Taylors and Holmeses might have been unawares conveyed to me.

A good deal may be set down concerning the line of my maternal grandmother. The name was Brettell—a name which I find otherwise spelt Brettyl, Brethull, Brettal, Brettle, Brittle. In the Herald and Genealogist, vol. I, pp. 421-6, Mr. Sidney Grazebrook, himself a descendant of the family, gives some account of it: having first indicated the foreign origin of neighbours named Henzey, with whom the Brettells intermarried.

Concerning the Brettells he goes on to say:—

The family of which Mr. Grazebrook then proceeds to treat is, by implication, that which was located in Oldswinford parish, or otherwise in the better known place, Stourbridge, which has grown up within it. The Oldswinford register records the marriage of Joshua Henzell with Joan Brettell, and, as above implied, the register also shows the marriage of John Brettell with Mary Henzey in 1617. Further, about 1740, there was a marriage of Thomas Brettell to Sarah Henzey, as shown by the registry of their son’s birth shortly after; and then, on June 15, 1740, is registered the marriage of Joseph and Elizabeth Brettell, my great-grandfather and great-grandmother: Joseph and Thomas being not improbably brothers. The question is—Were these Brettells who married in 1740 descendants of the John Brettell and Mary Henzey who married in 1617? From the fact that in the reign of Elizabeth Old Swinford contained a hundred families, we may infer that in 1617 its population was not more than 600; and it is a reasonable estimate that between that time and 1740, it did not increase to more than 2000: the growth of its numbers up to 5000 at the beginning of this century being doubtless mainly due to its manufacturing activity. But in a place with a population growing during 120 years from 600 to 2000 there could hardly have been more than one clan of Brettells. Hence the inference that Joseph Brettell, living in the 18th century, was a descendant of John Brettell living in the 17th century, becomes very probable. If this inference be accepted, then it follows that my great-grandfather and his children inherited from the Henzeys a dash of Huguenot blood. A further inference may be drawn as not improbable. In the French genealogical dictionary above quoted, published in the middle of this century, it is stated that these de Hennezels, coming from Bohemia, had been settled in Lorraine about four centuries. This takes us back to the middle of the 15th century. Now the Hussite wars lasted from about 1420 to 1436, and the persecutions, doubtless continued after the subjugation of the Hussites, were such that the movement had ended soon after 1450. Is it not then highly probable that these de Hennezels, who came from Bohemia about 1450, were refugee Hussites? In the absence of another natural cause for their migration into Lorraine at that date, we may rationally assume that sectarian animosity was the cause. If so, it follows that in one line of ancestors of these Brettells, there have twice been resistances to religious authority, and flight in preference to submission.*

If any ingrained nonconformity of nature is to be hence inferred, it may have gone some way to account for that nonconformity which, however derived, was displayed by the children of my great-grandfather Brettell. For, apart from this probable genealogy, there stands the significant fact that out of a family of seven, five were among the earliest Wesleyans (of whom my maternal grandmother was one), and two of these were among the earliest Wesleyan preachers—John Brettell and Jeremiah Brettell, born respectively in 1742 and 1753. Of these the youngest, Jeremiah, seems to have been somewhat intimately associated with John Wesley, who spoke approvingly of his work; and at one time he was appointed to the Epworth circuit: Epworth being Wesley’s native place. Of John Brettell there exists, in the Arminian Magazine for 1796, a brief biography written by his brother; and there is a portrait of him in the same periodical for March 1784. Jeremiah, of whom there is a portrait in the Arminian Magazine for February 1784, and another in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine for August 1823, and a third in the Methodist Magazine about 1796, wrote a memoir of himself, which was published after his death in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine for October 1830.

As in those days, when Wesley and his followers were persecuted, it required both pronounced convictions and considerable courage to dissent from the established creed, and disregard the authority upholding it, there must have been in these two men more than usual individuality of character.*

Concerning the genealogy of the Spencers, the question of chief interest is whether any connexion exists between the Spencers of Derbyshire and the Spencers of Northamptonshire; for, of course, were there proof of common origin with the poet, I should gladly give it. But, so far as I know, there is no such proof. The spelling of the name presents no bar to the supposition of kinship; for, in early days, modes of spelling were unsettled. Of this, curious proof is afforded in the present case on tracing back the Spencer-ancestry to the middle of the 17th century. At that time, apparently by a clerical error (probably in a double sense), the spelling of the name was changed in the register of baptisms of the same family: the father’s name being spelt with an s in the entry of the baptism of his son Anthony in 1657, and with a c in the entry of the baptism of his son William in 1659. The spelling with a c was thereafter uniformly used.

The name Spencer is by no means uncommon in North Derbyshire, and is prevalent in the neighbourhood of Wirksworth. Indeed, in the village of Middleton-by-Wirksworth, it occurs so often that, when passing through the place years ago, I observed that out of the shop-signs the majority bore the name Spencer. Among places in which the name is of long standing is Kirk-Ireton, about three miles to the south-west of Wirksworth—a secluded village seated high, and just where the undulating portion of Derbyshire begins to pass into the more mountainous portion. Here our family had been settled for generations. A series of extracts from the parish-register, which I obtained some 20 years ago from the rector, shows that the name existed there in the latter part of the 16th century, if not earlier. On tracing back the entries, it appears that my grandfather, Mathew Spencer, was born there in 1762; that my great-grandfather, Mathew, was born there in 1735; that my great-great-grandfather, William, was born there in 1702; and that my great-great-great-grandfather, William, was born there in 1675. Before this date the line of descent is not traceable, because the entries extending over a period of more than 50 years after 1600, have been rendered illegible by damp. Next preceding that period comes the name of Anthony Spencer, baptized in 1597, and then a little before that comes the earliest legible registry of the name, in the marriage of Thomas Spencer with Agnes Heane, in 1581.

The oldest family document which has been preserved, is a deed of settlement on my great-grandfather when he was about to marry Elizabeth Soar, who is, in the deed, represented as having “expectations.” Most likely it was the desire that there should be an equivalent to these expectations which led to the tying of a small property, consisting of two fields and four cottages, on my great-grandfather. It would seem, however, that Elizabeth Soar’s expectations were disappointed, for there is no sign that any increase of possessions accrued to the family from the marriage. The next oldest document I possess, is a letter written by this great-grandmother Elizabeth Spencer, to her son, my grandfather, asking him to send an easy vehicle to convey her to Derby, that she might take up her abode with him: her widowed life at Kirk-Ireton having become wearisome in her old age.

Of these village-ancestors, two traits may be noted—one inferred and the other known. The dates of their marriages imply that the Kirk-Ireton Spencers were a prudent race.

Beginning with Anthony Spencer, the remotest identifiable ancestor whose birth is registered, we find that the interval between his birth and that of his grandson (the date of his son’s being lost in the illegible part of the register) is 60 years. Unless there were three generations, each following its predecessor at an interval of 20 years, which is very improbable, the son and grandson must have respectively married at the average age of nearly 30. My great-great-great-grandfather appears to have been 26 when he married. My great-great-grandfather did not marry till he was over 30. Again, 26 was the age my great-grandfather had reached before he undertook domestic responsibilities. And like caution was shown by my grandfather.

A more pronounced manifestation of prudential feeling was habitually given by my great-grandmother, Elizabeth. During their boyhood, her grandsons from time to time made visits to Kirk-Ireton, and my father told me that always when he came away the last words of his grandmother took the form of a message to her daughter-in-law, Catherine—“Be sure you tell Kitty to forecast.” So unusual an injunction, repeatedly given, seems to imply a very predominant tendency to consider the future rather than the present.

As said at the outset, facts of lineage may have significance where there are pronounced family-traits, and especially where these traits are manifested along both lines of ancestry. This seems to be the case here.

The nonconforming tendency—the lack of regard for certain of the established authorities, and readiness to dissent from accepted opinions—of course characterized, in considerable degrees, the earliest of Wesley’s followers; and, like the Brettell family, the Spencer family, the Holmes family, and the Taylor family, were among these earliest followers. Beyond the relative independence of nature thus displayed, there was implied a correlative dependence on something higher than legislative enactments. Under circumstances indicated by the bearing of persecution for religious beliefs, nonconformity to human authority implies conformity to something regarded as higher than human authority. And this conformity is of the same intrinsic nature whether it be shown towards a conceived personal Deity, or whether it be shown towards a Power transcending conception whence the established order proceeds—whether the rule of life is derived from supposed divine dicta or whether it is derived from ascertained natural principles. In either case there is obedience to regulations upheld as superior to the regulations made by men.

A further trait common to the two lines of forefathers is regard for remote results rather than for immediate results. Relinquishment of present satisfactions with the view of obtaining future satisfactions, is shown alike in that prudence which by self-denial seeks terrestrial welfare and by that prudence which by self-denial seeks celestial welfare. In both cases, proximate gratifications which are seen to be relatively small are sacrificed to future gratifications which are conceived as relatively great. In the family-traits above described were visible both these aspects of the self-restraining nature. The elder Brettells, described by their son Jeremiah as moral and church-going people, gave such indications of this character as well-conducted life implies; and the Wesleyans among their children, displayed it in the form of preference for the promised happiness of a life hereafter to various pleasures of the present life. Exhibiting the same trait in their creed and corresponding conduct, the Spencers exhibited it in other ways. The relatively late marriages indicated, and still more that emphatic advice to forecast, imply that the readiness to sacrifice the passing day for days to come was a family-characteristic. And this was recognized by some members of the last generation; for I remember in a letter of one uncle to another, a failing which they were said to have in common, was described as a tendency to dwell too much upon possible forthcoming evils.

Has there not been inheritance of these ancestral traits, or some of them? That the spirit of nonconformity is shown by me in various directions, no one can deny: the disregard of authority, political, religious, or social, is very conspicuous. Along with this there goes, in a transfigured form, a placing of principles having superhuman origins above rules having human origins; for throughout all writings of mine relating to the affairs of men, it is contended that ethical injunctions stand above legal injunctions. And once more, there is everywhere shown in my discussions of political questions, a contemplation of remote results rather than immediate results, joined with an insistence on the importance of the first as compared with that of the last.

These analogies are so clear that it can scarcely, I think, be fancy on my part to regard them as implying a descent of family-characteristics.

II.

GRANDPARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN.

Pursuing the same course as before, I will here describe first those members of the grandparental group about whom there is least to be said. For this reason I commence with my mother’s parents.

Of John Holmes, my maternal grandfather, the earliest record I have is an indenture of apprenticeship to John Evatt, a plumber and glazier in Derby, dated 1765, and which identifies him as the son of Frances Holmes, widow, of the same place: the probability being that his deceased father had left wife and child with but narrow means. Save the possible relationship before named, to the Holmeses of Brailsford, this is all I know of his antecedents.

I infer that he succeeded to Mr. Evatt’s business. At any rate he carried on with success the specified trade for many years, and became a prosperous man. This is shown by the fact that when my mother was 20 (in 1814) he had a suburban house in addition to his place of business. Soon after, however, he illustrated the truth that men who are prudent in small matters are apt to commit extreme imprudences in large matters: their caution having prevented them from gaining those experiences which lead to knowledge of dangers. He was induced to enter into partnership with a man named Aucott, as a pin-manufacturer; and he supplied most, if not the whole, of the capital. The enterprise was a failure and he lost nearly all of his property: partly through non-success of the business and partly by becoming security for his partner. The result was that the latter part of his life was spent in narrow circumstances; and after my grandmother’s death his last years were passed in our house.

In common with all members of both families in that generation, he was a Wesleyan, and an active member of the connexion in Derby. From my mother’s diary, kept during her teens, it appears that the Wesleyan preachers were frequently entertained at his house, and he was himself “a local preacher.” We may not suppose that the ability to preach such sermons as served for rural congregations round about Derby, was an indication of any ability calling for mention; and I remember my father speaking of him as “a slow-coach.” Nevertheless, he appears to have had a little more than the ordinary amount of faculty. Among my mother’s letters are some verses addressed by him to her when she was away on a visit, urging her to return. Taking the familiar shape of a parody, and substituting “My Harriet” for “My Mother,” they diverge a good deal in idea from their prototype; and, being fairly good in rhyme and rhythm, as well as in choice of words, exhibit some small power of literary expression.

I saw much of him during my early boyhood, when he had partially lost his faculties and wandered a good deal—wandered in a double sense, for his failure of memory took the form of supposing that he had matters of business to look after, and led to rambles through the town with a vain desire to fulfil them. Joined with the remembrance of this goes the remembrance of his peculiar walk—a walk which seemed about to break into a run, as though he were hurried. Eagerness in the fulfilment of duty survived even after mental decay had gone far.

Of my maternal grandmother, née Jane Brettell, there is not much to be said. A portrait of her which is shown in this volume probably flatters her unduly, for I remember my mother said that it was not a good likeness. As however she must have been something like 50 before my mother’s recollections of her became distinct, her appearance had doubtless diverged a good deal from that which she presented in her early days. That she had, however, some attractions, mental or bodily or both, is shown by verses addressed to her, and signed Sarah Crole, expressed in the high-flown style of eulogy common in those days. They were written in Richmond, Virginia, to which place, some time after 1780, she went to take charge of the house of a “Carter Braxton, Esq.,” to whose care is addressed a letter from her brother Jeremiah, dated at the beginning of 1787. From an expression in the letter accompanying the verses I have named, it seems that Sarah Crole was a governess, and that the verses were addressed to my grandmother on her departure for England in July, 1788. The marriage to my grandfather must have been rather late. Her birth being in 1751 and her return from America being in 1788, she must have been something like 40. My mother, born in 1794, was the only child.

Such evidence as there is implies that this maternal grandmother was a commonplace person. Indeed, my father described her as vulgar-minded. His estimate was doubtless influenced by her persistent opposition to his marriage with my mother: an opposition founded, as it seems, on worldly considerations. That she took a purely mercantile view of marriage, I find further evidence in a letter to her from a nephew—John Bromley, a London auctioneer—expostulating with her upon this opposition, and implying that she ignored altogether the sentimental element in the relation. Perhaps this was not, however, then so decided an evidence of character as it would be now; for in those days there still survived the ideas and usages which subordinated the wills of children to the wills of parents, in the choice of husbands or wives, and made motives of policy the exclusive, or almost exclusive, determinants.

In justice to her I should add that her disapproval of the marriage was in part prompted by the belief that her daughter would be too much subordinated; and in this she proved to be right.

A tolerably distinct image of my grandfather Spencer remains with me. It is the image of a melancholy-looking old man, sitting by the fireside, rarely saying anything, and rarely showing any sign of pleasure. The only smiles I ever saw on his face occurred when he patted me on the head during my childhood. When, some 40 years ago, inquiries prompted a reference to Dr. Biber’s Life of Pestalozzi, I was struck by the resemblance between Pestalozzi’s face and my grandfather’s, or rather between the expressions of the two faces; for my grandfather had evidently been a handsomer man than Pestalozzi. But both faces had the same worn and sad look. Not improbably religious fears had something to do with this chronic melancholy; or perhaps these merely gave a definite form to the depression caused by constitutional exhaustion. His mature life had been passed during war time, when taxes were heavy and the necessaries of life dear; and the rearing of a large family on the proceeds of a school, augmented to but a small extent by the returns from his little property at Kirk-Ireton, had been a heavy burden upon him.

Leaving the Derby Grammar School out of the comparison, his school was about the best in the place. In my early days I remember hearing sundry leading men of the town speak of having been his pupils. But in addition to teaching his own school, he played the part of a master at the Grammar School. He was not a classical master, but he undertook the commercial division of the education given there. As one of the masters he had some of the Grammar-School boys as boarders, and from his account book I see that one of them was a son of Mr. Nightingale of Leahurst: not, however, an ancestor of Miss Nightingale, for the present Nightingales assumed the name on the property coming to them. This must have been before increase of his own family filled all available space in his house.

There was no decided mark of intellectual superiority in him. He must have been a teacher entirely of the old kind—a mechanical teacher. Nor does he seem to have had any intellectual ambition or appreciation of intellectual culture. So far from encouraging my father in studies lying beyond or above the routine work of teaching, he spoke disapprovingly of them: wondering how my father could waste time over them. If he possessed mental faculty above the average, it must have been latent, or must have been rendered dormant by the labours of his hard life.

But if nothing in the way of intellectual superiority can be ascribed to him, there may be ascribed a marked moral superiority. He was extremely tender-hearted—so much so that if, when a newspaper was being read aloud, there came an account of something cruel or very unjust, he would exclaim—“Stop, stop, I can’t bear it.” His sympathetic nature was well shown, too, by his conduct towards a Derbyshire notable of those days—an eccentric man named John Hallam, of whom some account is given in Robinson’s Derbyshire. As I gathered from the remarks dropped concerning John Hallam by my father and uncles, he was one of the few men who have attempted to carry out Christian ethics with literalness. That his unusual character produced a great impression in the locality, is shown by the fact that there exists a mezzotint portrait of him, and is further shown by a passage contained in a letter by my Aunt Mary to my father. Speaking of a conversation with some pedlar who had been named to her by John Hallam, she said that the man expressed his feeling by saying that when John Hallam died he should put on his worst clothes: meaning, as it appears, that lacking other means of going into mourning, he should mourn in that way (a curious reversion to a primitive form). My grandfather so far sympathized with this John Hallam and his eccentricities, that he invited him to take up his abode at No. 4, Green Lane (my grandfather’s house) whenever his wanderings brought him to Derby.

I was nearly 11 at the time of my grandfather’s death at the age of 69, and I have a vague impression of having heard that he was found dead on his knees.

My paternal grandmother, Catherine Spencer, née Taylor, was of good type both physically and morally. Born in 1758 and marrying in 1786, when nearly 28, she had eight children, led a very active life, and lived till 1843: dying at the age of 84 in possession of all her faculties. Her constitutional strength was shown by the fact that some writing of hers which I possess was written at the age of 80 without spectacles.

Like her husband she was a follower of John Wesley. She knew him personally, and was among the few who attached themselves to him in the days when he was pelted by the populace. At the time of her death she was the oldest member of the Wesleyan connexion in Derby.

Of her original appearance there exists no evidence. Of her face in old age the portrait gives a fair idea. It is reproduced from a pencil sketch I made of her in 1841, when she was in her 83rd year. This sketch shows her as wearing the plain Methodist cap, which she adhered to all through life: this being a part of that wholly unornamented dress which, in the early days of Methodism, was, I think, de rigucur—a point of community with Quakerism.

Nothing was specially manifest in her, intellectually considered, unless, indeed, what would be called sound common sense. But of her superior emotional nature the proofs were marked. Unwearying, compassionate, good-tempered, conscientious, and affectionate, she had all the domestic virtues in large measures. How far this was due to her strong religious feeling, and how far to original character, I am not prepared to say. No doubt the two factors co-operated; but, in the absence of high moral endowments, no religious feeling would have sufficed to produce the traits she displayed. There are two ways in which a superior creed may act. Either the subordination-element in it may impress, and there may be great observance of prescribed usages, an habitual expression of reverence, manifestations of fear and obedience; or there may be more especially operative the ethical element associated with the creed. In the case of both these grandparents, while the subordination-element, which Christianity involves was duly recognized, the ethical element, revived as it was in Wesleyanism, was more especially appreciated. Their innate tendencies were mainly the causes of their high moral manifestations, while, no doubt, these innate tendencies were strengthened by the religious sanction. From an account of my grandmother written by my uncle Thomas, and of which I possess a copy in my father’s hand, I quote the most significant passages:—

There is an obituary notice of her in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine for January, 1844.

Family-traits are of course likely to be displayed in other lines of descent, as well as in the particular line under inquiry; and the identification of such traits may be facilitated by comparing the various lines and observing what they have in common. Hence it becomes desirable to give some account not of grandparents and parents only, but of the other children of grandparents. Here, therefore, I shall devote some space to sketches of my father’s brothers and sister.

Nothing, of course, is to be said of the two who died in infancy. Of the six remaining, the first in order of age was the only surviving daughter, Mary Ann Spencer, born in August, 1788. I have but few data for a description of her; and what description I can give is not particularly favourable. She was living during my early boyhood, and I remember her as a bedridden invalid, woe-worn and fretful—a mere wreck, apparently, of one who had originally been well-grown and fine-looking. The opinion of my father was that a disappointed attachment had originated the invalid life which ended in this miserable way; and it may be that the unamiable mood habitually displayed originated from the disappointment. But, judging from her letters written in youthful days, it seems to me that she had a strong sense of her own claims and not a duly proportioned sense of the claims of others. I do not know that she differed much in this respect from the average of people; but she differed from most other members of the family. In these the egoistic elements were kept well in check by the altruistic.

After her in age came my father, born in February, 1790. Of him, of course, I say nothing here; but reserve all that is to be said for the chapter which follows.

Henry Spencer, the next eldest of the family, was a year and a half younger than my father. In several respects he was a favourable sample of the type. With no lack of that self-assertion which shows itself in independence, he joined an unusual amount of sympathy, displayed in various ways.

A letter of his written from Macclesfield when he was about 21, describes an artisan-riot and the suppression of it by the soldiery, which was going on while he wrote: an artisan-riot reminding us of the Trades-Union riots with which we are now familiar, and, like them, utterly regardless not of the masters’ interests only but of the interests of poor and unconcerned persons. The letter describes how he had been himself, to some extent, implicated. It says that some of the riotous artisans, gathering round women who were selling potatoes in the market-place, and demanding to have them at half the price asked, eventually threw over some of the women’s sacks; and the letter adds that he helped one of the women to pick up her scattered potatoes. Correspondence of later date exhibits him as having actively espoused the cause of some ill-used man in the establishment in which he was engaged, and as having suffered in consequence. On one occasion he took the proverbially unwise course of defending a woman against her husband, and, as usual, met with no thanks from her. There was clearly a strong dash of chivalry in him.

Gratitude, too, was a marked trait, if we may judge from a letter written when 22 to my father. He had been apprenticed to a draper, and at the time in question was, I suppose, playing the part of journeyman, evidently dissatisfied with his position, and not seeing his way towards future success in life. My father, who had accumulated a good deal by his teaching, had offered to furnish him with capital to commence business, and this letter, declining the offer, is quite pathetic in its display of feeling. But at the same time that he expresses his thanks in language which, though extreme, is manifestly genuine, he says:—“In the first place I could not like at all to take so much money from you which I perhaps should never have it in my power to return.” Evidently his gratitude was not of the kind sarcastically defined as a keen sense of favours to come.

When some years later he did, however, commence business, he proved very successful: quickly accumulating a considerable capital. But by him, as by many others, was exemplified the truth that unusual success in routine business may become a snare, by prompting enterprizes not of a routine character, for which a different capacity is required. He entered into the lace-manufacture at the time of its great prosperity, and he also speculated in house-building. By both of these he lost—by the first heavily; and, led at the same time as he was, by domestic unhappiness, to spend much time away from home and neglect his business, he ruined himself and died early.

But various facts besides those named show that from boyhod up he had displayed a fine nature. What intellectual powers he possessed beyond such as his career implied, I cannot say, further than that I remember when a boy, listening to his denunciation of poor-laws as being bad in principle: showing that he was given to independent thinking about social affairs. Indeed he was a hot politician, going to the extent in those pre-reform days of wearing a white hat, which was a symbol of radicalism and exposed the wearer to insult. In his nonconformity, too, he was very decided; even going so far as to blame his brother Thomas for entering the Church, though the Wesleyanism in which they had all been brought up, did not imply dissent from Church-doctrine but only from Church-discipline. But I suspect that his leanings were anti-ceremonial.

One other fact may be added. He had a marked sense of humour; differing in that respect from his brothers, in whom the sense of humour was but ordinary. This trait was inherited by his eldest son, W. A. Spencer, who has written some good squibs á propos of local affairs.

Of John Spencer, the son who came next in succession, I have nothing good to say. Along with an individuality of character which he had in common with the rest, he had none of those higher traits without which the display of individuality becomes repellent. In letters, I have nowhere met with favourable references to him, nor do I remember to have heard during my boyhood any word uttered in his praise. He was entirely egoistic, and in pursuit of personal advantage sacrificed the interests of other members of the family without scruple: pushing his claims in some cases—especially in the case of his brother Henry’s widow—to the extent of cruelty.

He was a solicitor, and one or more of his brothers attributed the inequity of his conduct to converse with the law. This was, I think, an error. There is proof that in boyhood unamiable manifestations of character were frequent. In letters of his elder sister, there occur references to him as “boasting John” and “blustering John”—descriptive names indicative of deficient sympathy. Throughout life he was eminently self-asserting. An early illustration is furnished by the fact that he headed a group of his companions in playing at soldiers during the war-times which filled the beginning of the century. Boys then formed themselves into regiments which took the names of French and English, and he was captain of one of the regiments. In later years he gave evidence of this trait by his secession from the orthodox Wesleyans for trivial reasons. He disagreed upon a minor point of doctrine. A letter to his brother Thomas shows what the point was:—

This disagreement resulted in the formal separation of himself and some adherents. For the propagation of his belief he built, or rather I suppose obtained the funds for building, a large chapel, still standing in Babington Lane, Derby. In this he preached: his doctrine obtaining, I heard, the nickname of “the Derby faith.” How long the business lasted I cannot say—some few years, I fancy.

Whether it was that his energies were in this way too much diverted from his profession, or whether it was that by this secession he alienated clients, who probably most of them belonged to the Methodist connexion, or whether both causes operated, which seems probable, I cannot say; but after a time his non-success as a lawyer caused him to emigrate with his family to America: first of all to Illinois, and then years later to California, where he died after outliving all his brothers.

Thomas, born in 1796, the member of the brotherhood to whom I now come in order, was the one who became best known to the public—at one time widely known. His youth, or at any rate part of it, was passed as a teacher in Quorn School near Derby. It was then a school of some local repute. Energetic and not without ambition, he presently succeeded in obtaining sufficient funds for a university career: loans from my father constituting part—I believe the larger part—of the resources furnished him. St. John’s, Cambridge, was his college, and he achieved honours. His successes were the results not of any unusual endowments but rather of a good memory and hard work—work which undermined his health temporarily, and I think permanently. His appearance as a young man may be judged from the photoprint, given in this volume as reduced from a life-sized crayon portrait made of him by my father.

In his Reminiscences, chiefly of Towns, Villages, and Schools, an account of my uncle is given by the Rev. T. Mozley, author also of Reminiscences of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement. Mr. Mozley was well known in the last generation as one of the reactionists in the English Church; well known, too, as editor of their quarterly organ The British Critic; and perhaps still better known as one of the leader-writers in The Times in the days when it was called “the Thunderer”: the chief leader-writer I may say on the authority of Sir George Dasent, who had been one of the staff, and who told me that they looked up to Mozley as their head. He read mathematics with my uncle during the long vacation of 1827, and, as preliminary to my own characterization, I cannot do better than quote some passages from Mr. Mozley’s description of him:—

Either Mr. Mozley’s information or his memory is in this matter at fault. My uncle had previously been curate at Anmer in Norfolk, where he was at the same time tutor to the squire’s son, and after that he held, for awhile, the college-living of Stapleford near Cambridge.

“His college friend then gave him [after his residence at Clifton] the small living of Charterhouse Hinton, between Bath and Frome, and with two very steep hills to ascend from the former.”

Here I may interpose the remark that the “living” was scarcely to be called one in the pecuniary sense. It had recently been endowed, partly from Queen Anne’s Fund, with an income of about £80 a year: not having had since the Reformation an independent existence, ecclesiastically considered. Strangely enough, the last incumbent, a Roman Catholic priest, was named Thomas Spencer. Concerning my uncle Mr. Mozley goes on to say:—

“He was a decidedly fine-looking man, with a commanding figure, a good voice, and a ready utterance. So the church was pretty well filled. He always worked himself up into something like a passion, and came home exhausted.” If this was so, he must have changed greatly in the course of the subsequent six years; for, from 1833 to 1836, when I constantly heard his preaching, I cannot recall any sign of excitement. Indeed I should have described him as uniformly calm.

“Mr. Spencer was not at home in his village. He had none of the small coinage of courtesy. Mrs. Day, the lady at the mansion, was a woman of the world, and prepared to make the best of everybody, and he got on well with her. But even with her he had a ruffle.

“The truth was poor Mr. Spencer was born before his time. He was a reformer in Church and State, and he really anticipated some great movements. He did not quite break out till after our brief acquaintance, but his heart was full and ready to overflow. He kept up a long and busy warfare against the vicious administration of the Old Poor Law. He was an agitator for Temperance before even the Temperance Societies. He was early for the commutation of tithes, and for the more equal distribution of Church funds. He published some exceedingly crude ideas for a radical change in Church services, in utter defiance of all liturgical sentiment and principle.”

Other passages from Mr. Mozley’s description I do not quote, partly because they are spoiled by exaggeration. Probably his long-continued habit as a leading-article writer encouraged the tendency to overstate, common to all of us; for a leading article which kept within the strict limits of truth, would lack the point and vigour for which readers look. But these extracts from Mr. Mozley’s chapter, represent the facts fairly well. They form a good preface to what I have myself to say.

The above-mentioned Mr. Spencer was the leader of the evangelical movement in Cambridge—a movement inside the Church, which seems to have been parallel to the Wesleyan movement outside of it. At any rate the two were akin in their asceticism. Public amusements were tabooed by both. My uncle was never, I believe, within the walls of a theatre; and I never heard of his attending a concert. As to dancing, something more than abstention on his own part was implied by the answer he gave when, during my youth, being with him at an evening party in Bath, the hostess inquired why I did not join some young people who were waltzing. His explanation was—“No Spencer ever dances.” But the evangelicalism of that day, with its asceticism joined philanthropy; and my uncle quickly exhibited this by his activities at Hinton. There were no appliances for teaching, and he forthwith had a school built and a master appointed. For the more educated adults and those who were taught to read he provided a village-library. After a time he induced one of the chief landowners to let out a tract in allotments. For the increase of comfort, as well as the encouragement of providence, he, with the co-operation of my aunt, established a clothing-club. There were few, if any, good cottages, so he presently built some—four, I think. And soon after his marriage he went to the extent of having, at the parsonage, a meat-dinner on Sundays for labourers: now one group and now another. In course of years, however, he became conscious of the mischiefs done by aid inadequately restrained; so that when the New Poor Law was passed he forthwith applied its provisions to Hinton, and, notwithstanding great opposition, reduced the rates from £700 a year to £200 a year; at the same time increasing the comfort and prosperity of the parish. When the Bath Union, including Hinton, was formed, he became the first Chairman of the Board of Guardians. Besides sharing actively in various public movements in Bath and the neighbourhood, he wrote numerous pamphlets on Religion and Politics, Ecclesiasticism, The Prayer Book, Church-Reform, National Education, Corn-Laws, Poor-Laws, People’s Rights, Legislative Meddling, etc.: twenty-three in all, many of them having wide circulations, even to the extent of twenty-eight thousand.

At this stage of his career, and during my visit to Hinton in 1842, I modelled a life-sized bust of him—my first and only attempt of the kind. But I had no technical knowledge whatever, and my plan for strengthening the neck to support the head, failed: the neck cracked across. The detached head, as shown in the photoprint in this volume, supported on a cushion under some silk, of course looks rather odd.

As his name became better known, my uncle’s sphere of activity extended, and he was frequently away during the week in distant places, speaking on one or other of sundry topics—temperance more frequently than any other. Always, however, he returned home, even when one or two hundred miles away, in time for the two Sunday services which he gave.

Differing profoundly from those Church of England priests who think their duty consists in performing ceremonies, conducting praises, offering prayers, and uttering such injunctions as do not offend the influential members of their flocks, his conception of the clerical office was more like that of the old Hebrew prophets, who denounced the wrong-doings of both people and rulers. He held that it came within his functions to expose political injustices and insist on equitable laws. Hence it happened that he took an active part in the agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws—attending meetings, giving lectures, writing tracts. How conspicuously active he was is shown by the fact that he said grace at the first Anti-Corn-Law banquet, and that, continuing his relations with the league to the end, he said grace also at the last Anti-Corn-Law banquet. Among the State-appointed teachers of rectitude there was, I believe, one other avowed Free-trader, though not an active one; but with this qualified exception my uncle was, strange to say, the only clergyman out of fifteen thousand who contended that the people of England, mostly poor, should not be compelled to buy corn at artificially-enhanced prices to enrich English landlords. This was not his only endeavour to further political equity. He entered with energy into the movement for extending the franchise. He was a member of the first conference held at Birmingham to initiate the Complete Suffrage movement, and was a delegate to the subsequent conference, also held there, to frame, if possible, a basis of agreement with the Chartists—a futile experiment.

Here let me interrupt the narrative for a moment to indicate the personal results of his conscientiousness. Between 1840 and 1845, one who will hereafter figure as E. A. B., kept up with me a correspondence. An elder brother of his was then an undergraduate at Oxford, preparing for the Church. From one of E. A. B.’s letters to me here is a passage:—

Certainly, quite mad from the clerical point of view. What could be more mad than offending his bishop by writing a pamphlet on Church reform and so shutting out all chances of preferment? Or what could be more mad than endeavouring to get carried out, in political reforms, the Christian principles he weekly emphasized from the pulpit? This was not the only criticism, however. A subsequent letter from E. A. B. contains the passage:—

These then are lessons for men who disregard the interests of sacerdotalism as well as their own interests. They may have to suffer not from a falling short of the truth but from an absolute inversion of the truth.*

After more than twenty years’ residence at Hinton my uncle resigned his incumbency and took up his abode for a time in Bath. Among several prompting motives, one was the desire to establish a Church-Reform Association. He was in correspondence on the matter with a liberal-minded clergyman who agreed to co-operate; and, among his papers, I find a printed programme setting forth the objects in view. But before the final step was taken, his co-reformer either did not agree to some of the proposed measures or else his courage failed him. At any rate he declined to proceed, and the project dropped through. Some two years later my uncle moved to London. There, besides editing the National Temperance Chronicle, a large part of which he wrote himself, he preached and lectured without ceasing—overtaxing his system so greatly that in 1853 there came, after minor illnesses, an illness which ended in his death at the age of 56.

Some of his warm admirers were anxious that obituary notices of him should be published, and a meeting was held at his house to arrange. I was requested to undertake one of the biographical sketches, but resisted; explaining that I did not approve of biographies which contained only laudatory things and omitted all drawbacks; and that, probably, some of my comments would be disliked. Those present agreed that unqualified praise is to be reprobated, and wished me to say whatever was requisite to make a true representation. Still I resisted, feeling sure that this theoretical agreement would come to nothing, and that any indication of a defect would be considered offensive. My resistance was finally overruled, however. I wrote the requested sketch, in which, as I considered, I emphasized fully his many admirable traits, and touched as lightly as truth demanded on points not so much admired. Here it is:—

That this characterization met with the full approval of his surviving brothers, my father and my uncle William, is sufficient evidence of its truthfulness; but entire truthfulness is not in such cases permissible. At a subsequent meeting of his admirers the sketch was read to them. The result was as I expected. No positive disapproval of it was expressed, but it was received in silence. Along with other sketches it was, however, sent to the printer, with the understanding that it was to appear in The National Temperance Chronicle. But a few days afterwards, while it was still in the printers’ hands, my aunt came to me in a state of some agitation, and asked whether I would withdraw this sketch. “Certainly,” I replied; “you know that I did not wish to write it—resisted, indeed, and I am perfectly ready that it should not appear.” She went away with the implied assent to withdraw. What resulted, however, was this:—all its eulogistic parts were published, while those which contained anything in the shape of qualification were suppressed. And thus I was defeated.

But the small drawbacks having been allowed for, my uncle was very greatly to be admired as an absolutely sincere man, whose almost exclusive aim in life was the public welfare. In evidence of the feeling with which he was regarded by those who had many years’ experience of him, I may add that when he was taken from London to Hinton to be buried, I was witness to the fact that, quite unexpectedly, the inhabitants of the Parish, en masse, met the funeral carriages on their approach, and formed a long procession.

Of the youngest son, William, there is not very much to be said. Though he had sundry traits in common with the rest, he had, on the whole, a less pronounced character. Of natural ability scarcely exceeding the average, he was distinguished less by extent of intellectual acquisitions than by general soundness of sense, joined with a dash of originality. He carried on the school after my grandfather had ceased to teach; and, when he had recovered from a breakdown in health, which lasted some years, resumed it for a period: a fact to be named because I was, during this second period, one of his pupils.

Naturally pleasant-tempered, he was, I suspect, in early life a little repressed or perhaps snubbed, by his brothers, as being the youngest; and having, like the rest, an independent, self-asserting nature, this generated a tendency to take offence at slights, and, with him, offence once taken was lasting. This trait led from time to time to coolness with some members of the family, as well as with some friends; and it tended to reduce him to a solitary life which proved eventually injurious. There were sundry fine traits thus obscured—a good deal of generosity, an active interest in the welfare of relatives, on whose behalf he many times took great trouble, and a similar readiness to give his attention to the affairs of friends. Indeed he became with sundry of them a trusted adviser.

I think he was generally considered somewhat odd. Partly this estimate of him was consequent on the ill-judged remarks he made in the effort to say good things. As described above, Henry, an elder brother, had a great deal of humour. When I was a boy he had always something jocose to say to me, when we met. William had the same desire to be facetious without the power of being so; and his endeavours sometimes ended in giving offence—offence altogether unintended, however, for there was no tendency to sarcasm in him.

Taking, like his brothers, an active part in politics, he was not so extreme a liberal: preserving, rather, his connexions with the Whig party than verging into radicalism. And though in religious opinions a nonconformist, his nonconformity did not lead him to diverge from current opinion so much as it did the rest.

Certain marked traits were thus common to all the brothers. Individuality was very decided; and, as a consequence, they were all regarded as more or less eccentric. The implication is that there was in them a smaller respect for authority than usually exists, or, what is the same thing, a greater tendency than usual to assert personal judgment in defiance of authority.

Along with this characteristic, and partly perhaps as a result of it, there went a general absence of reticence. These brothers were in the habit of saying very much what they thought, whether on impersonal questions or on personal ones. Necessarily there continually arose differences of opinion among them, which, expressed without much restraint, caused disputes. In a letter from my uncle Henry to my father, I find a passage indicating this:—

The tendency to disagree, here implied, persisted throughout life. Whenever they were together, some discussion or other, mostly religious, or political, or ethical, or occasionally scientific, was sure to be raised, and as, although at one in their chief views they diverged in details, there arose arguments which not unfrequently ended in warm words. Doubtless a part cause of this was a strong regard for truth. While very many people do not care much whether the opinions they hear expressed are correct or not, members of the Spencer-family usually cared a great deal. Nothing concerning right and wrong, truth and error, was indifferent to them. Of course there were apt to result hot controversies.

Nevertheless the brothers had much regard for one another; and, in early days, as in later life, there were many expressions of mutal regard. “What a privilege it is to have such a brother,” says Thomas in one of his letters written in youth concerning Henry; and in another place I see Henry speaking of “the noble Thomas.” Moreover, they appear to have had in common an affectionate respect for my father, who had insensibly come into the position of head of the house, in consequence of the early abdication of my grandfather, rendered passive by his melancholy mood. Says Henry in one of his letters:—

The above-described tendency to discuss, and to diverge from one another, was naturally accompanied by a tendency to diverge from the beliefs in which they were brought up. They severally deviated into further nonconformities. Brought up as Wesleyans, they dissented more or less from that form of dissent; and, in the case of my uncle Thomas, where there was at first a change towards conformity, the constitutional tendency was subsequently shown in a very pronounced opposition to ecclesiasticism. So was it politically. Though all of them Whigs, whose creed at that day was relatively uniform, they did not adopt party-shibboleths, but had special opinions of their own. And they habitually criticized current views respecting manners and customs.

Among negative traits which accompanied these positive traits, I may name one—a comparatively small interest in gossip. As a boy I rarely if ever heard among them any talk about royal personages, or court doings, or anything concerning bishops and deans, or any agents of the ruling powers. Their conversation ever tended towards the impersonal. As a further negative trait I may mention that there was no considerable leaning towards literature. Their discussions never referred to poetry, or fiction, or the drama. Nor was the reading of history carried to any extent by them. And though in early life they were all musical, the æsthetic in general had no great attractions. It was rather the scientific interpretations and moral aspects of things which occupied their thoughts.

To sum up, the traits common to them of most import to be here noted were—independence, self-asserting judgment, the tendency to nonconformity, and the unrestrained display of their sentiments and opinions; more especially in respect of political, social, religious, and ethical matters.

III.

PARENTS.

My father, born in 1790, whose Christian name was William George, but who was distinguished as George, because there was a younger brother named William, was the eldest of the surviving brothers. A passage quoted at the close of the last chapter, will justify the remark that he was “the flower of the flock:” to use a mixed metaphor which, absurd though it is, has gained general currency. To faculties which he had in common with the rest (except the humour of Henry and the linguistic facility of Thomas) he added faculties they gave little sign of. One was inventive ability and another was artistic perception, joined with skill of hand. In some respects, too, he was morally their superior. To exclude misinterpretation of my motive for saying this, let me join with it the confession that in sundry respects I am his inferior. Save in certain faculties specially adapting me to my work, inherited from him with increase, I consider myself as in many ways falling short of him, both intellectually and emotionally as well as physically.

Though not robust in the full sense, he had a constitution which was well balanced and capable of considerable endurance as witness the fact that he, when a young man, in company with two of his brothers, walked sixty miles in a day. Standing six feet when shod, he was noteworthy for a well-built figure and a carriage which united dignity and grace in a degree rarely equalled. I never saw anyone walk better. This trait was so marked, even after he was 70, that ladies turned around to watch him when he had passed: a fact I recently verified by appealing to one who had done so. But there is independent testimony on this point in the second series of the Rev. Thomas Mozley’s Reminiscences, &c. Here is his description:—

Now that I have quoted Mr. Mozley on this point, it occurs to me that I may with advantage quote him on various other points. Before he studied under my uncle Thomas he was a pupil of my father, and he has said a good deal about him. In the Reminiscences of Oriel College, &c., there was given in vol. I, pp. 145-9 an incidental description of his ideas and sentiments, to which I found it needful to take exception publicly. The result was that in his second autobiographic work, Reminiscences chiefly of Towns, Villages, and Schools, Mr. Mozley made a reply to my protests; and, in doing so, devoted four short chapters to an account of my father. Before utilizing his statements, it will be well to indicate the extent to which many of them must be discounted: the needful caution being measured by an example. Incidentally referring to my works, he describes them as an “imposing system which occupies several yards of shelf in most public libraries” (vol. I, p. 146). The least number connoted by the word “several” is three, and at the time Mr. Mozley wrote, the volumes I had published occupied 21 inches, or less than a fifth. Picturesqueness and vigour are doubtless achieved by over-statements of this kind, which are common with Mr. Mozley; but obviously, in many cases, they must be seriously misleading. Premising this, let me now give sundry passages from his two series of reminiscences; making, on some of them, the requisite qualifying comments.

After introducing his account in the second series by the statement that “Mr. George Spencer was a considerable factor in my education, and consequently of my being,” Mr. Mozley presently says:—

Speaking of 1818-19, during which my father gave lessons to his brothers and sisters but not to him—lessons, however, at which he was sometimes present, he goes on to say:—

Had my father been a man of independent means, this, though not very probable, would have been possible; but considering that he had been born to his occupation rather than had chosen it, and considering that his income was derived almost wholly from it, the supposition was a very wild one.

In his first series of reminiscences Mr. Mozley had described my father as “a strenuous upholder of truth, justice, and purity, but without any faith or religion whatever, as far as one could see” (vol. ii, p. 267). Referring in his second series to my protests, he says:—

I had given to Mr. Mozley quotations from various letters which yielded clear disproof of his statement, but had apparently no effect on him: his explanation being that religion, as he understood it, included those outward demonstrations which my father did not make. He had said:—

This being so (and in large measure it was so) Mr. Mozley, as he says in his second series, came to the “conclusion that Mr. Spencer had no religion in the sense I then attached to that word” (vol. ii, p. 146). This implies the belief that without such forms as are used by most Christians, there can be no substance of Christianity—implies the belief that the Quakers, for example, are not Christians.

Concerning other opinions of my father here are some further passages of interest:—

Everyone may see, especially from its closing lines, that this statement should be largely discounted. The truth which it adumbrates is that my father in all cases advocated self help and independent exploration, rather than passive recipience. The following also requires toning down:—

Here is another passage which is but partially true:—

My father was a pronounced Whig or something more. If, instead of describing him as having “to avoid the politics of the day,” Mr. Mozley had said that he had little interest in personal politics, he would have been right. But his statement is wrong as it stands. The following passage, too, though partially correct, needs a good deal of qualification:—

That there is much truth in this statement, is implied by the fact that my father would never take off his hat to anyone, no matter of what rank, and by the further fact that he could not be induced to address anyone as “Esquire” or as “Reverend”: all his letters were addressed “Mr.” While ignoring those forms of Christian worship which Mr. Mozley thought essential, he did his best to carry out what he thought Christian principles, in the direction of class-relations as in other directions. But his views were less extreme than is here asserted; for I remember that when a young man he shook his head at the anti-monarchical views I sometimes uttered.

One further extract only will I give. It well illustrates Mr. Mozley’s biassed judgments. After saying how weary my father must have been in “having to go over Euclid day by day for half a century with all sorts of pupils,” he speaks of receiving from him late in life “a little work likely to surprise anyone not familiar with the author’s character.”

To show the quality of this representation I will, in the first place, state the fact, observed by myself, that boys may become so eager in seeking solutions for these problems as to regard their geometry-lesson as the chief treat in the week. I may add the kindred fact that, among girls carried through the system by my father, it was not uncommon for some to ask for problems to solve during their holidays. Again there is the fact that my father’s little book has been adopted in more than one of our public schools, and is widely used in America. And then comes the still more conclusive fact that Mr. Francis C. Turner, B. A., who had twice asked me for permission to issue an edition of the Inventional Geometry in a form better fitted for use in schools (which I did not grant), read a eulogistic paper on the system at the “Oxford Conference of the Teachers’ Guild” in 1893, in which he described it as “of the greatest value” and contended that “this pre-Euclidean geometry . . . ought to enter into the curricula of all schools in which mathematical studies are begun, and should replace, in the elementary schools, the didactic and unsuggestive teaching of South Kensington.” To which add that Prof. Hudson, of King’s College, London, on the strength of his own experience “agreed entirely with Mr. Turner”; and that his opinion was endorsed by two other male teachers and by three female teachers: no dissent being expressed by anyone.*

The origin of the perversions of judgment thus exemplified in Mr. Mozley, is not difficult to perceive. Under my father he had been led into independent ways of thinking, and had carried the ignoring of authority to an extreme. When he came in contact with the leaders of the Oxford Movement, whose aim was to re-establish authority, they presently caused in him a violent revulsion, and accompanying repugnance to the early influences he had been subject to. In the above opinion of unauthorized geometry versus authorized geometry, we see the bias strongly pronounced. It affected all his views, and necessarily warped his conceptions of my father’s nature and his teaching. Probably he was himself aware of this, and conscientiously endeavored to guard against it, but with only partial success.

Nevertheless this portrait he has drawn (called a caricature by his younger brother, the Rev. Arthur Mozley, also a pupil of my father) serves to bring out certain pronounced traits; some of which I might have overlooked, and others of which are better indicated by a non-relative than by me. I feel indebted to Mr. Mozley for furnishing me with so good a basis for my own portrait, to which I now pass.

My father’s career as a teacher dated from boyhood—beginning, I suppose, in his father’s school; and he was not out of his boyhood when he gave private lessons. I have heard him speak of the pride he felt when, on going over to Chaddesden Hall, where he had as pupils the children of Sir Robert Wilmot, he was promoted from a boy’s jacket to a coat. He commenced teaching elsewhere while still only seventeen; notably in the family of the leading physician, Dr. Fox, when but little older than the young Foxes: the relation then initiated between him and them being such that throughout life they continued to call one another by their Christian names. It seems probable that his natural tendency towards non-coercive treatment, was accentuated during these early days, when the attitude of master was scarcely practicable, and the attitude of friend in a measure necessitated. At any rate his policy continued always to be thus characterized. Among illustrations was his method of dealing with trangressors, during the years in which he carried on a school in addition to his private teaching. This method was to form some of the boys into a jury, and to have the offence investigated in a judicial manner; finally leaving them to decide on the punishment. The result was that usually he found it needful to mitigate the sentence. Of course this conduced to friendly relations between him and his scholars. The kind of feeling entertained for him is well shown by the following passage in a letter from one who had been for some years a private pupil of his—Lady White Cooper. She writes:—

“Looking back on those lessons, the feelings of reverence, love and gratitude remain, while the special subjects have vanished from my mind; but I still possess wonderfully neat copy books, full of algebra, questions on Euclid, astronomy and physics, which at that time I well understood; and perhaps without much difficulty could re-learn. Mr. Spencer was remarkable for his calmness, patience, and punctuality; we used to think he had power over circumstances—nothing ever ruffled him—being myself brought up in a strictly evangelical school the new ideas he suggested on religious subjects were more interesting, and his facility in quoting scripture was evidence of his knowledge of the Bible. He was so truly sympathetic too, and never though it a trouble to listen to complaints or grudge time, to help one’s little difficulties, suggesting ideas which seemed to expand as one’s own. As a girl I quite worshipped Mr. Spencer, and shall ever be grateful to have known and had the friendship of so truly great and good a man.”

Absolute punctuality in his teaching-appointments was one of his traits—a trait naturally resulting from that regard for others’ claims which he displayed in all ways. But while he was punctual in commencing his lessons he was not so in leaving them off; but, supposing other engagements permitted, would often continue long beyond the hour—a habit which, late in his life, I used to observe with some annoyance, for he had then no spare strength to spend. How dominant was the thought of other’s improvement was shown by the fact that, on some occasions, he gave gratis instruction. A young man of the artisan class, of whom he had formed a good opinion, he would invite to come occasionally in the evening, to receive an informal lesson of one or other kind. I can recall the faces of three such. This he did though he ought rather to have been relaxing.

His sympathy for those of lower position was curiously shown by his behaviour to an old Quaker pedlar, who perambulated the Derbyshire villages, supplying the aged with spectacles. My father invited him, whenever Derby fell in his rounds, to come to our house for tea and an hour or two’s conversation. Altruistic feeling was shown, too, in the care of his tenants (he had a number of small houses) whose health he looked after and for whom he frequently prescribed. Always he would step out of his way to kick a stone off the pavement lest someone should trip over it. If he saw boys quarrelling he stopped to expostulate; and he could never pass a man who was ill-treating his horse without trying to make him behave better.* The wish to advance human welfare, taking an impersonal form, sometimes prompted extravagant acts. Two instances I well remember. The Society of Arts brought out an educational microscope at a low price—two or three pounds, perhaps. He bought one of these, though he had no appreciable use for it, for he was then getting old. When I asked why he had done a thing he could so ill afford to do, the reply was that he considered the undertaking a very useful one and wished to encourage it. The other extravagance resulted from the issue of Dr. Vaughan’s work The Age of Great Cities. He was greatly pleased with this, and, thinking it would do good, he bought three copies to lend about among friends and others.

Great firmness in carrying out what he considered to be right was a marked trait. I cannot recall any instance of yielding. Those unconventionalities in respect to forms of address and forms of salutation which I have named as illustrating one of Mr. Mozley’s statements, were adhered to without exception. There were kindred ones in which he similarly persisted. He never would put on any sign of mourning, even for father or mother: holding, I believe, that such signs were in so many cases insincere that they should be discouraged. So was it with his dress in general. There was no change in it during all that part of his life which I remember. A style of coat and hat which satisfied his own tastes in respect of convenience and appearance, was adhered to throughout all changes of fashion. Indeed, the thought of any consultation with his tailor respecting the style of the day, raises in me a smile by its incongruity. Among various other deviations from usage I may name his resistance to canvassing at elections. He disapproved the practice and invariably refused to give any intimation about his voting. Yet his persistence in unusual courses of conduct, some of them (as addressing everyone “Mr.”) liable to offend people, never seemed to produce alienation. Partly because his suavity was great and partly because his sincerity was manifest, he was accepted by all on his own terms and invariably treated with friendliness and courtesy.

Respecting his intellectual powers something has been said. Unusual keenness of the senses, which is one factor in discrimination—the basis of all intelligence—characterized him. Joined with quickness of observation and skill of hand, this gave that artistic faculty I have already noted. He would have made a first rate portrait-painter, judging from what little he did without any instruction, and with scarcely any practice; for his life was too much occupied to permit much. The portrait given of him, made at the age of 28, was taken by the aid of two looking-glasses. Among other products of his pencil was a sketch, taken in court, of Jeremiah Brandreth, a man tried for high treason—a sketch afterwards engraved. That he would have achieved reputation as a sculptor is also probable, judging from kindred evidences. He did very little, but that little was good. The delicacy of manipulation implied by these successes, distinguished him in various directions, down to small details—even to the cutting of a pen or pencil, which had a certain ease and finish about it I never could approach, though I am not awkward. As an experimental investigator he would have been admirable, as was often shown when performing electrical and pneumatic experiments for the instruction of his pupils. But that he would have been a correspondingly good physical explorer, I am by no means certain; for there was a constitutional defect of judgment about which I shall presently say something. Along with this trait of manipulative skill may fitly be named the trait of inventiveness. Though not answering to Mr. Mozley’s exaggerated description, it was doubtless marked, and while otherwise exercised in small matters was exercised habitually on his Inventional Geometry.

Closely associated with his artistic and inventive faculties was his ideality. Improvement was his watchword always and everywhere. One curious manifestation was his particularity of expression, even in small matters. He could not despatch a note concerning an appointment without first writing a rough draft and, after making erasures and interlineations, copying it. Emendations in books were prompted by this desire for perfect fitness. I have a copy of Chambers’ Euclid which is full of words crossed out and marginal substitutions. He thus made corrections not only where some advantage might possibly result, but exercised his critical faculty on things of no value. One of the concomitants was a partiality for revising dictionaries. A copy of Walker’s, which I have, is full of amendments. When Webster’s came out he adopted that instead, and has left scarcely a page without some addition, or some modification of a definition. This love of ideal completeness not only often caused wasteful expenditure of time and energy, but in some cases led to serious evils—more especially the endless delay over his Lucid Shorthand.* He never knew when to cease making alterations in details—prefixes, affixes, arbitraries, and ways of writing certain words; and the tendency thus exemplified in an extreme degree, led to the sacrifice of large ends to small ends. The photoprint here given is enlarged from a carte-de-visite, taken when he was over seventy.

There remains only to name the one great drawback—he was not kind to my mother. Exacting and inconsiderate, he did not habitually display that sympathy which should characterize the marital relation. His uniform habit of deciding on a course of conduct and persisting in it regardless of circumstances, was here injuriously displayed. He held, for instance, that everyone should speak clearly, and that those who did not ought to suffer the resulting evil. Hence if he did not understand some question my mother put, he would remain silent; not asking what the question was, and letting it go unanswered. He continued this course all through life, notwithstanding its futility: there resulted no improvement. Of course behaviour variously influenced in analogous ways, tended towards chronic alienation. It was not that sympathy was absent, but it was habitually repressed in pursuance of fixed determinations; for when my mother was unwell there was due manifestation of tenderness. Indeed, during the closing years of her life his solicitude about her was great; and I believe that the depression caused by his anxiety, joined perhaps with an awakening to the fact that he had not been so careful of her as he ought to have been, had much to do with his death: rendering him less capable of resisting the illness which carried him off in 1866.

Three causes co-operated in producing this conduct so much at variance with his usual character. He had a great deal of that “passion for reforming the world” ascribed to Shelley; and, as is implied by Mr. Mozley’s account, was ever thinking either of self-improvement or of the improvement of others. I doubt not that during their engagement my mother displayed interest in his aims—a factitious interest, prompted by the relation then existing between them. After marriage she gave little or no sign of such interest, and my father was doubtless much disappointed. His disappointment was the greater because he was not aware that intellectual activity in women is liable to be diminished after marriage by that antagonism between individuation and reproduction everywhere operative throughout the organic world; and that hence such intellectual activity as is natural, and still more that which is artificial, is restrained. The remaining cause was that chronic irritability consequent on his nervous disorder, which set in some two or three years after marriage and continued during the rest of his life. Letters show that he was conscious of this abnormal lack of control over temper; but, as unhappily I can testify from personal experience, consciousness of such lack does not exclude the evil or much mitigate it.

While not ignoring this serious defect (which in the absence of these causes would probably never have been manifested) I contemplate my father’s nature with much admiration. On looking round among those I have known, I cannot find anyone of higher type.

Concerning my mother, nće Harriet Holmes, in 1794, the fact first to be named is that no signs were manifest in her of that small infusion of Huguenot blood and trace of Hussite blood, along one line of ancestry, which we have inferred. So far from showing any ingrained nonconformity, she rather displayed an ingrained conformity. It is true that, brought up as a Wesleyan and adhering to Wesleyanism throughout life, she might, according to one understanding of the word, be classed as a nonconformist. But she simply accepted and retained the beliefs given to her in early days, and would have similarly accepted and retained another set of beliefs. I never heard her pass any criticism on a pulpit-utterance, or express any independent judgments on religious, ethical, or political questions. Constitutionally she was averse to change. Still, there may have been a tendency, necessarily small in amount, of the kind to be expected. In conformity with the general principle of the limitation of heredity by sex, it is possible that this tendency manifested itself only in the males of the line; or, otherwise, as happens in many cases, it may have been latent, and ready to be manifested under fit conditions.

The engagement between my father and my mother, extending over a period of six or seven years, was, as before indicated, persistently opposed by my maternal grandmother; and, during a part of this interval, my mother, in pursuance of the ideas of filial duty still prevailing at that time, broke off the engagement. How it came to be renewed I do not know; but most likely the interdict ceased only when my grandfather’s great loss of property took away my grandmother’s chief ground of opposition. In those days valentines were not, as they have since become, mere compliments, or else practical jokes, but were written in all seriousness; and, among family papers, I have three written by my father to my mother—all of them acrostics on her name. The verses do not show in my father any marked poetic power, nor are the pictorial decorations by which they are surrounded as artistic as I should have expected, judging from other products of his.

When talking, some years ago, to an old lady of eighty or more, who had known my mother before marriage, the trait specially named was her sweetness. The portrait in this volume, reduced from an oil-painting taken when she was under twenty, is not inconsistent with this trait; and I can well believe that it was from the beginning conspicuous. Early correspondence and friendships implied it, as well as conduct throughout later life. Indeed, when trying to recollect a display of unamiability, I cannot do so. Generally patient, it was but rarely that she manifested irritation, and then in a very moderate manner—too moderate, indeed, for her submissiveness invited aggression. A trait which injuriously co-operated with this was an utter absence of tact. Unlike women in general, she was too simple minded to think of manœuvring; or if, exceptionally, she attempted it, she showed her cards in an absurd way. Benevolent feeling was displayed, as by my father, but it was less diffused. In him it caused an interest in the welfare of all he came in contact with; in her it did not show itself so much towards unknown persons: save, perhaps, in her membership of a Dorcas Society throughout life, and in the active part she took in getting up petitions during the Anti-Slavery Agitation. The subordination-element of religion was more dominant in her than in him, and strongly reinforced the ethical element; so that the sense of duty, doubly rooted, was very powerful. One result was that throughout life she perpetually sacrificed herself unduly, notwithstanding the protests I often made, until she brought on, during her latter years, a state of chronic exhaustion.

Along with these traits went much attention to religious observances. Obviously in her case, acts of worship and the anticipations of a happier future accompanying them, formed a great consolation under the trials of a life which in itself was not enviable. She well illustrated the truth, ever to be remembered, that during a state of the world in which many evils have to be suffered, the belief in compensations to be hereafter received, serves to reconcile men to that which they would otherwise not bear. Habits of thought and feeling continued through many years, had made organic in her the two dominant ideas of fulfilling domestic obligations and the ordinances of her creed, and during her last years, when her faculties had in considerable measure failed, it was pathetic to see the way in which consciousness oscillated between the two: each recurring at its appropriate part of the day. In this volume appears a photoprint enlarged from a carte-de-visite taken when she was approaching seventy.

Of my mother’s intellect there is nothing special to be remarked. In letters written to my father during their long engagement, there are passages showing grace of thought and grace of expression. During all those years throughout which her mental manifestations were known to me, circumstances did not favour display of her natural powers, and justice was not done to them. There is ground for believing that she had a sound judgment in respect of ordinary affairs—sounder than my father’s. This may have been consequent on that aversion to schemes of every kind, caused by distressing experiences; for her father, as well as her husband, and sundry of his brothers, had variously suffered from speculative courses. An attitude of opposition to enterprise, joined as it would be with the assigning of difficulties and the expression of scepticism, would naturally give the appearance of judicial-mindedness. My own proceedings and plans she always criticized discouragingly, and urged the adoption of some commonplace career. In nearly all cases her advice would have been wise; and it may be that her natural or acquired way of looking at the affairs of life, was really a manifestation of good judgment. She had no interest in nature, and never gathered any scientific ideas from my father or from me, though truths pertaining to this or that division of natural knowledge were frequently matters of conversation. There was, however, precision of thought in simple things, as was shown by her style, which in later letters as in earlier letters was always clear. She understood what constitutes a proposition; and was not in the habit of running one sentence into another, as very many so-called educated women, and sometimes even men, do. Her reading furnished, perhaps, the best test of her intellectual tendencies. Such kind of matter as makes up Chambers’Journal, interested her—articles of popular information alternating with short stories. Throughout the earlier part of her life she never read novels; being prevented by her ascetic creed, which practically interdicted pleasurable occupations at large. But in later life I think she read a few, including those of George Eliot. No books of travels or history or biography were looked at by her; nor any poetry, unless, indeed, fragments of religious poetry. That she knew some of my essays I gather indirectly, though I have no recollection that she ever spoke about them; but my larger works were not, I believe, attempted, or if attempted were promptly given up as incomprehensible. Probably besides the difficulties they presented, the consciousness of their divergence from the beaten track repelled her; for, as already implied, she was essentially conservative. In this the contrast between her and my father was very strong. While he remained plastic to the end of his life—so plastic that he changed his religious opinions after he was seventy, her mind finished its development by the time she was five and twenty, and thereafter she never modified her views.

Briefly characterized, she was of ordinary intelligence and of high moral nature—a moral nature of which the deficiency was the reverse of that commonly to be observed: she was not sufficiently self-asserting: altruism was too little qualified by egoism. The familiar truth that we fail properly to value the good things we have, and duly appreciate them only when they are gone, is here well illustrated. She was never sufficiently prized. Among those aspects of life which in old age incline the thoughts towards pessimism, a conspicuous one is the disproportioning of rewards to merits. Speaking broadly, the world may be divided into those who deserve little and get much and those who deserve much and get little. My mother belonged to the last class; and it is a source of unceasing regret with me that I did not do more to prevent her inclusion in this class.

[*]That these two names are of foreign derivation, is a conclusion confirmed by the fact that they have undergone on the Continent contractions like those which they have undergone here. The name Bretel now exists in Normandy; and in Switzerland, as well as in France, the name Henzi is found. Curiously enough, the first of the two is used to distinguish railway-stations both in France and England. There is a station at Breteuil on the Northern of France; and there is the Brettell-Lane station between Dudley and Stourbridge.

[*]In the course of these genealogical inquiries I discovered that my great-grandmother’s maiden surname was Hemus. The name struck me as odd, and decidedly un-English: prempting me to make inquiries respecting its existence elsewhere. Examination proved that it is not to be found in the London Directory; and as, in so large a city, recruited from all parts of the kingdom, the name does not occur, its scarcity is manifest. It turns out, however, that there are persons of the name in Birmingham, which is but 12 miles from Stourbridge: a fact congruous with the supposition that Stourbridge was its centre of diffusion. Hence there arose a suspicion that in this group of Huguenot immigrants, Hennezel, Tyttery and Tyzack, there may have been another named Hemus. From Mr. Joseph Úlehla, who translated one of my works into the Bohemian language, I gather that there exist names allied to it in Bohemia. The one approaching most closely is Hemiš (pronounced Hemish). Now between Hemiš and Hemus there is a divergence much smaller than many familiar divergencies in names; and hence it is a reasonable supposition that Hemus was in Bohemian Hemiš. But why Bohemian? Well, if one of the Hussite refugees who fled with the rest into Lorraine, was named Hemiš, and if one of the Huguenot refugees who, during the later religious persecutions, migrated to England was a descendant of his, who joined the other descendants of the Hussites, then it seems possible, or even probable, that this great-grandmother Hemus had a genealogy in this respect like the others.

Further inquiries, made since the above paragraph was put in type, have yielded verifying evidence. One of the six Hemuses residing in Birmingham says all the others are his cousins or second cousins, and further says that his father was a farmer at Hanbury near Droitwich, which is but 13 miles from Stourbridge. Seven of the name are in the Worcestershire Directory, and to my questions one of these has referred to a cousin in Birmingham, while another says that all the Worcestershire Hemuses seem to be connected, and that until lately the name was limited to the county: facts implying recent divergence from a common root. But perhaps the most significant discovery is that one member of the family possesses an ancient sword (or hunting-knife thirty inches long) on the blade of which is engraved one of the hunting rhymes “much used by the Germans,” says a German professor, who also says that weapons of the kind “were much used in the forests of Bohemia and Germany.” The vicar of Stoulton, where one branch of the family has lived since 1748, says of a recently deceased “Farmer” Hemus that “he used to say ‘’Ch oonder,’ for ‘I wonder,’ a very interesting survival in modern days of the old ic-ich-I.”

[*]Further evidence of constitutional nonconformity among members of the Brettell clan, is worth adding. In the account of the Wesleyan preacher, John Brettell, given in the Arminian Magazine for 1796 by his brother, it is said that he was “converted by a local preacher named Brettell.” If we infer, as before, that there was probably but one clan of Brettells in Stourbridge, it seems most likely that this Brettell was a distant relative—a common descendant of the John Brettell who married a Henzey in 1617. Another example exists. In the Dictionary of National Biography there is an account of a Jacob Brettell, a Unitarian minister, who died in 1862, whose father, Jacob Brettell, having first become, at the age of 17, a Calvinistic preacher, afterwards became an Independent minister, and ultimately renouncing Calvinism, opened a separate meeting-house. His father—that is the grandfather of the first named—was an Independent minister at Wolverhampton, which is only ten miles from Stourbridge.

[*]As to my uncle’s retention of his office as clergyman, I may remark that, in the first place, he thought it unwise to leave the Church, for the reason that by doing so he would lose all power of effecting any reform in the Church; and he instanced the Rev. Baptist Noel, a man of much influence, who, having seceded, lost all his influence. But respecting the insinuation of unconscientiousness, made by E. A. B., the conclusive reply is that my uncle expressed no dissent from the doctrines which, in taking orders, he had subscribed to. I do not know of any such, and certainly E. A. B. did not. My uncle’s efforts were not at all to change doctrines, but to reform administration, and I am not aware that by taking orders he was bound to abide by the organization established for diffusion of those doctrines.

[*]See The Journal of Education (Supplement) for June 1, 1893.

[*]This reference to his habit of expostulation recalls an anecdote he told of the reply which once resulted. While he was travelling (between Derby and Nottingham, I think) there got on to the coach a man who was half intoxicated. My father entered into conversation with him, and sought to reform his habit by pointing out the evils resulting from it. After listening good-temperedly for a time the man replied—“Well, y’see, master, there mun be sum o’ all sorts, and I’m o’ that sort.”

[*]The name he chose for it was Legible Shorthand, but when, many years after his death, I published it, I found that this title had been appropriated, and had to choose another.