George Spencer

“ Such a character is George John Earl Spencer! A nobleman, not less upright and weighty in the senate than polished and amiable in private life; who, cool and respected amidst the violence of party, has filled two of the most important offices of state in a manner at once popular and effective; and who, to his general love of the fine arts, and acquaintance with classical literature, has superadded the noble achievement of having collected the finest private library in Europe! ”

“ Lord Spencer was always favourable to Catholics, but it was in the spirit of generosity to a fallen, or justice to an injured people. He never dreamt his own son would be one of the first to reap the benefit of the measures he advocated in Parliament. The letter he received from Leicester in January, 1830, must have been a shock indeed. Besides, a member of this aristocratic house descending to such a level {201} must be considered a family disgrace—an event to be wept over as long as there was one to glory in the name of Spencer, or feel for its prestige. ”

“ Saies, With the grace of God and St George of England,
The feild this day shall goe with mee.
'I haue noe forgotten,' Spencer sayd,
'Since there was feild foughten att Walsingam,
When the horsse did heare the trumpetts sound,
He did beare ore both horsse and man.'
The day was sett, and togetther they mett,
With great mirth and melodye,
With minstrells playing, and trumpetts soundinge,
With drumes striking loud and hye.
The first race that Spencer run,
I-wis hee run itt wonderous sore;
He [hitt] the knight vpon his brest,
But his speare itt burst, and wold touch noe more. ”

“ Before the days of Spencer the world of scientific thought was mostly without form and void. The orthodox voyagers who set out to sea steered by a compass which always veered to a Jewish pole, and none who sailed with them knew where they were. Rival theologians constructed dogmatic charts, increasing the confusion and peril. Guided by the pole star of Evolution, Spencer sailed out alone on the ocean of Speculation and discovered a new empire of Law—founded without blood, or the suppression of liberty, or the waste of wealth—where any man may dwell without fear or shame. ”

“ Spencer formed the acquaintance of Sir Thomas Fremantle while they were both at Dunton under the charge of Mr. Blomfield. Fremantle went to Oxford and he to Cambridge, but they continued the intimacy, begun here, to which Spencer pays cordial tributes of unfeigned gratitude. Sir Thomas was a welcome guest at Althorp; he and George used to spur each other on to renewed exertions in the pursuit of literary honours. Spencer formed a plan for the long vacation, and went, on March 25, to Oxford, to lay the subject before Fremantle ”

“ From the little weight Father Spencer laid upon human learning in the work of conversion, one would be tempted to suppose he undervalued what he did not possess. No greater mistake could be made. He was a Cambridge first-class man, and must therefore be a good mathematical and classical scholar. He spoke Italian and French almost without a grammatical fault, and conversed very well in German. He was well read in the English Protestant divines, and knew Catholic theology with accuracy, and to an extent which his academical course would not lead us to expect. ”

“ Spencer was first known to London thinkers by being found the associate of economists like Bagot; philosophers with a turn for enterprise in the kingdom of speculation—as George Henry Lewes, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall ”

“ Spencer planned the history of the rise and growth of a mightier, a more magnificent, and more beneficent Empire—that of Universal Law—and for forty years he pursued his mighty story in every vicissitude of strength with unfaltering purpose, and lived to complete it amid the applause of the world and the gratitude of all who have the grand passion to understand Nature, and advance the lofty destiny of humanity. ”

“ Father Spencer had preached a sermon somewhere on the conversion of England, and he gave benediction after it. Pugin came into the sacristy. The famous Goth saw Father Spencer in a Roman cope, and he comes up to him in a kind of nettlesome mood, saying, "What! convert England with such a cope as that?" Father Spencer says in a letter written at this time, "I am not possessed with the enthusiastic zeal for correct forms (Gothic) which some are. ”

“ Spencer is growing younger with the years. He really looks brighter and more enjoying than he ever did before, since he was in the really young, happy time of fresh discussion and inquiry. His is a friendship which wears well, because of his truthfulness. He always asks with sympathetic interest how you are going on. ”

“ Spencer, we can form a tolerable conjecture of what he thought and intended when he took deacon's orders from Dr. Marsh, Protestant Bishop of Peterborough, on the 22nd December, 1822. He makes no preparation whatever, nor does he seem to fancy that it is an action that requires any. He gives an account of the ordination, which he was pleased to call, "talking of business," when making his arrangements for it, a few pages back in the Journal, and, as a piece of business, it is gone through by him. ”

“ Herbert Spencer's views, like every other man's views, could not have existed without the substratum laid by his predecessors. But perhaps you mean something that I fail to perceive. Your bit of theology is very fine. Here is a delicious Hibernicism in return. In a treatise on consumption, sent yesterday, the writer says: "There is now hardly any difference on this subject—at least I feel none." Our life has no incidents except [279] such as take place in our own brains, and the occasional arrival of a longer letter than usual. Yours are always read aloud and enjoyed. ”

“ Spencer's mind at this time may be called, are, a certain self-sufficiency and rank spiritual pride. It begins with self and ends with self. From self springs the assurance of salvation, for self's sake, too, and every one must feel himself in this mood before he can rely on himself. When this fancy gets possession of a person's mind, they forthwith turn apostles, borrow the language of inspiration even for table-talk, and no person is in the way of salvation at all who does not completely fall in with the stream of the new flood of ideas this notion brings into the "regenerated" mind. ”

“ They both travel through Wales, visit Snowdon, Carnarvon, and meet a body of Cambridge men reading with a tutor at Conway.
September 29th, he took the mail to London, and thus ended his long vacation. He stays at Wimbledon with his own family until the time for returning to Cambridge again. He relates in the journal that a man comes to teach Lady Spencer, his mother, how to bind books. This may be thought a strange kind of recreation for a lady of high rank ”

“ Spencer's opinions and his own, and is rather uneasy lest he might be wrong, yet does not see {136} the use of troubling himself, as it is all the same in the end, when one tries to do what his conscience tells him is right. ”

“ Industry is not a virtue in itself; over-work is blameworthy.
In the second place, Spencer made it a rule never to force his thinking. If a problem was not clear to him, he let it simmer. "On one occasion George Eliot expressed her surprise that the author of Social Statics [Pg 67] had no lines on his forehead, to which he answered, 'I suppose it is because I am never puzzled.' This called forth the exclamation: 'O! ”

“ Blomfield's, and he may have induced Mr. Spencer to patronize it. When Mr. Spencer saw how well it worked in its department, he thought of a scheme for improvising something of his own. He does not give particulars {121} of what it was; but he submitted it to his Bishop, who "threw cold water on it," and Mr. Spencer simply thanks God for being thwarted. He is completely wrapped up in his clerical duties, so much so that he does not give the full time to his summer vacation in Ryde; he is always impatient to get back to his parish when some pressing business requires him to leave it ”

“ Spencer and individually made the same enquiry, which evoked the same reply. His Grace could scarcely believe his ears, although he had every confidence in their veracity, and especially of his co-workers and fellow churchmen. ”

“ It is high time that we should turn from the abstract consideration of Mr. Spencer's views, and test their efficiency by the great standard of good and evil—facts. The facts, bearing upon our subject, which the Journal gives up to this period of his life, the close of 1826, and beginning of the next year, may be summed up in few words. One old woman was the only one of whom he could say, "she seems fully established in religion;" and it is remarkable that this very person, Mrs. Wykes, became a Catholic later on. ”

“ Spencer is very anxious to vindicate himself from neglect of the logical necessity that the evolution of the abstraction "society" is dependent on the modified action of the units; indeed, he is very sensitive on the point of being supposed to teach an enervating fatalism. ”

“ He says that, "I never can for one moment admit that any one is more anxious for my happiness than I am myself, nor that any person has a greater right to decide than I have by what means that happiness shall be sought. A man's own conscientious judgment is the proper guide in such cases." He then refers Mr. Spencer to others more learned than he for the discussion of those matters, and mentions the Bishop of Chester and John Rose, "whose qualifications for the task are incomparably superior to mine." ”

“ This visit {478} he looked back to with a great deal of satisfaction, and his joy was increased when Lord and Lady Sarah Spencer returned his visit in Highgate, when he happened to be there, the next year. The friendly relations between him and his family seemed, if possible, to become closer and more cordial towards the end of his life.
He told us one day in recreation, when some one asked what became of the lady he was disposed to be married to, once in his life: "I passed by her house a few days ago. I believe her husband is a very excellent man, and that she is happy." ”

“ Walsh, who dissuaded him from becoming a religious by saying that, though it was a better state, a secular priest could be more useful in England. Others differed from this opinion, but F. Spencer heard in it the voice of his Superior, and resolved to obey it for the present. This settled matters for the time, but his view could never be got out of his head. He gets thoroughly engrossed now with his approaching ordination. It grieves him to see souls lost in heresy and sin in a way that few grieve ”

“ Vigoreux, Rector of Brington, sent in his resignation of the living to the Bishop towards the close of the year 1824. The letters which are found among Father Ignatius's papers show this transaction to have been very creditable to the Spencer family. The old rector was on the continent,—he seems to have been very much in debt to Lord Spencer, and upon his resigning his living, Lord Spencer not only cancelled the debt, but made him so far independent for life, that the old clergyman, in sheer gratitude, ordered £7. 10s. to be distributed every year among the poor of the parish, whilst he lived. ”

“ Could any man or woman with a {129} grain of common sense, go on thinking and talking this kind of unreality, which we commonly call cant? As a fact, they do, and we have proof positive of it in Mr. Spencer himself. It is astonishing to see a man of his position, good sense, and education, talk and write in the strange way he does, whilst this mood of mind lasted. ”

“ Yesterday Herbert Spencer brought his father to see me—a large-brained, highly informed man, with a certain quaintness and simplicity, altogether very pleasing.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 25th June, (?) 1852.
After all, I begin to hope that our next number will be the best yet. Forbes is good; Froude ditto; and James Martineau, if I may judge from a glance at a few of his pages, admirable. Lewes has written us an agreeable article on "Lady Novelists." There is a mysterious contribution to the independent section. ”

“ After thus magnifying the importance of his subject, he neither agrees nor disagrees, but discountenances Mr. Spencer's practices on prudential motives. He staves off the whole matter of doctrine, and talks about discipline.
The next quotation will be from a bishop. He very wisely and keenly observes:—
"Amidst a great deal that is excellent and of right spirit in your observations, there is a presumption and self-confident tone, which is altogether new in you, and in my opinion not very consistent with real humility. ”

“ Horner got out of there very quickly. He took a cab home, which was unusual for him. If George and his nameless friend had been playing an elaborate practical joke, they had also been playing hob with Horner's digestion. For now a hot sensation flooded his middle—his damned ulcer acting up. Ulcers, he thought with a sudden wry smile, ulcers and what else? You're forty-seven, Horner. A mildly successful life, a good marriage, a middling business, no children, no outstanding debts—any regrets? ”

“ Those who expect to find nothing in the lives of holy people but goodness and traits of high spirituality, will be disappointed when they read this. Those who are accustomed to read that some saints indeed have lived rather irregularly in their youth, but find themselves left in blessed ignorance of what those irregularities were, will also be disappointed. They shall find here recorded that young Spencer was not a saint, and they shall be given data whereon to form their own opinion too. ”