Froude was not only the most fascinating lecturer, but the most charming
companion and friend. His conversation was like his writings. It never
tired one, it never made one feel his superiority. His store of
anecdotes was inexhaustible, and though in his old age they were
sometimes repeated, they were always pleasant to listen to. He enjoyed
them so thoroughly himself, he chuckled over them, he covered his eyes
as if half ashamed of telling them. They are all gone now, and a pity it
is, for most of them referred to what he had actually seen, not only to
what he had heard, and he had seen and heard a good deal, both in Church
and State. He knew the little failings of great men, he knew even the
peccadilloes of saints, better than anybody. He was never ill-natured in
his judgments, he knew the world too well for that, and it is well,
perhaps, that many things which he knew should be forgotten. He himself
insisted on all letters being destroyed that had been addressed to him,
and from a high sense of duty, left orders that his own letters,
addressed to his friends, should not be divulged after his death. Though
he left an unfinished autobiography, extremely interesting to the few
friends who were allowed to read it, those who decided that it should
not be published have acted, no doubt, wisely and entirely in his
spirit.
My friend Charles Kingsley was a very different man. He was a strong
man, while Froude had some feminine weaknesses, but also some of the
best feminine excellencies. His life and his character are well known
from that excellent biography published by his gifted widow, not much
more than a year after his death. This Life of hers really gave a new
life to him, and secured a new popularity and influence to his writings.
In him, too, what I admired besides his delightful character was his
poetical power, his brilliant yet minute and accurate descriptions of
nature, and the characters he created in his novels. With all the
biographies that are now published, how little do people know after all
of the man they are asked to love or hate! In order to judge of a man,
we ought to know in what quarry the marble of which he was made was
carved, what sunshine there was to call forth the first germs of his
mind, nay, even whether he was rich or poor, whether he had what we
rightly call an independence, and whether from his youth he was and felt
himself a free man. There is something in the character of a man like
Stanley, for instance, which we have no right to expect in a man who had
to struggle in life like Kingsley. The struggle for life may bring out
many fine qualities, but it cannot but leave traces of the struggle, a
certain amount of self-assertion, a love of warfare, and a more or less
pronounced satisfaction at having carried the day against all rivals and
opponents. These are the temptations of a poor man which do not exist
for a man of independent means. It is no use shutting our eyes to this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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