Henry Holland

“ HOLLAND, Sir HENRY THURSTAN, first Viscount Knutsford (1825–1914) , belonged by descent to the family of Holland, derived, through the Hollands of Clifton and Mobberley, from the Hollands of Upholland. His ancestors owned various estates for many centuries in Lancashire and Cheshire. He was the elder son of Sir Henry Holland, first baronet [q.v.] , a leading London physician, by his first wife, Margaret Emma, daughter of James Caldwell, of Linley Wood, Staffordshire, and was born at his father's house, 72 Brook Street, London, 3 August 1825. ”

“ Henry then related to the astonished Charles Holland all that had occurred, from the first alarm of Flora, up to that period when he, Holland, caught her in his arms as she was about to leave the room.
"And now," he said, in conclusion, "I cannot tell what opinion you may come to as regards these most singular events. You will recollect that here is the unbiassed evidence of four or five people to the facts, and, beyond that, the servants, who have seen something of the horrible visitor."
"You bewilder me, utterly," said Charles Holland.
"As we are all bewildered." ”

“ Holland died of old age, after being bedridden for a year, at Coventry, on 9 Feb. 1636–7, aged 85, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church. A Latin epitaph penned by himself is still extant on the south wall of the choir. He never wore spectacles in his life, and until his last illness was ‘most indefatigable in his study.’
Holland married in 1579 Ann, daughter of William Bot, alias Peyton, of Perry Hall, Staffordshire. She died in 1627, aged 72, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Coventry, where a Latin epitaph by her son Henry is still legible. ”

“ A manuscript copy of Holland's rendering belonged to Mr. Thomas Sharp of Coventry in 1871. In 1649 Henry Holland also prepared for the press, with appendices by various writers, ‘Regimen Sanitatis Salerni, or the Schoole of Salernes Regiment of Health ... dedicated unto the late high and mighty King of England from that University. ... Reviewed, corrected, and inlarged, with a Commentary by P. H., Dr in Physicke, deceased,’ London, 1649, 4to. Other translations of the work had already been published in 1579 and 1607. Henry Holland dedicated his father's translation to Sir Simonds D'Ewes ”

“ His loyalty as a Whig secured recognition when his party triumphed in the struggle for parliamentary reform, by his appointment as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster in the cabinet of Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne, and he was still in office when he died on the 22nd of October 1840. Lord Holland is notable, not for his somewhat insignificant political career, but as a patron of literature, as a writer on his own account, and because his house was the centre and the headquarters of the Whig political and literary world of the time ”

“ Clarendon styles him “a very well-bred man and a fine gentleman in good times.” [1] He was evidently a man of shallow character, devoid of ability, raised far above his merits and hopelessly unfit for the great times in which he lived. Lord Holland married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir Walter Cope of Kensington, and, besides several daughters, had four sons, of whom the eldest, Robert, succeeded him as 2nd earl of Holland, and inherited the earldom of Warwick in 1673. ”

“ The duke soon convinced the king of his innocence, and advised the friar's detention in Holland's custody. The night before the date fixed for the inquiry into the matter, Holland and Sir Henry Green caused the friar to be butchered in prison (Hist. Angl. ii. 113–14) .
During 1385 Holland was undoubtedly guilty of a crime which illustrates the violence of his temper. In that year he accompanied Richard on his way to Scotland. While the army was near York an archer of Ralph, eldest son of Hugh, earl Stafford, quarrelled with and slew one of Holland's esquires. ”

“ Holland's explorations in America were less important than those of any of her rivals. The thrifty Dutchmen were more anxious to secure trade than to find new countries, and seemed content to allow others to spend wealth and precious lives in penetrating to the interior of the New World and in planting settlements, which almost invariably succumbed to disaster.
Early in the seventeenth century a company of English merchants sent out a skillful navigator named Henry Hudson to hunt for the elusive northwest passage. He took with him only eleven men, one of whom was his son. ”

“ Throughout the 17th century maritime enterprise, naval prowess and world-wide trade had, by the help of skilled diplomacy and wise statesmanship, combined to give to the Dutch Republic a weight in the council of nations altogether disproportionate to its size and the number of its population. In the memorable period of Frederick Henry the foundations were laid of an empire overseas; Dutch seamen and traders had penetrated into every ocean and had almost monopolised the carrying-trade of Europe; and at the same time Holland had become the chosen home of scholarship, science, literature and art. ”

“ Primary education is free, but not compulsory. Religion is not established, but about two-thirds of the people are Protestants, the remainder Roman Catholics. The birth of Holland as an independent European power took place in the 16th century, when, after an heroic and protracted struggle, it freed itself from the yoke of Spain, then the most powerful nation in the world.
Holland, Henry Richard Fox Vassall-Holland, Baron, statesman, born in Wilts; succeeded to the title in 1774; entered on a public career as a Whig under the patronage of his uncle Charles James Fox ”

“ He then settled in his native town, but afterwards removed to the Hague, where he now lives. He is the author of a great number of short stories, mostly more or less naval, and one or more novels, of which the principal is “The Burgomaster’s Inheritance” (Leyden, 1873) , and frequently contributes to Eigen Haard and Elsevier’s Geïllustreerd Maandschrift. He is not remarkable for the subtleties of humour, his genius being more akin to the rattling fun and boisterous spirits of such writers as Captain Marryat and the late Henry Kingsley. ”

“ In her solitude she craved for someone to love and cherish her, and one whom she might love in return. ‘I strive to repress, but often feel a strong desire to be dependent upon another for happiness’; but it was not till 1794 that the ‘other’ appeared upon the scene. Devoted friends she had had, but none had touched her heart before she met Lord Holland.
Henry Richard, third Lord Holland, was born in November 1773. His father, Stephen, second Lord Holland, died the year after his son’s birth, and his mother, a daughter of John, first Earl of Upper Ossory, only lived until 1778. ”

“ Through all this Aldrich passes, the centre of the bitterest strife, the point at which all movements cross and crowd and jostle each other, yet himself calm, dignified, gentle, unruffled. Nothing angers; no one can fret him. Throughout he is self-possessed in the heart of turmoil, child-like in the midst of bewilderment. ”

“ Purify yourself as He bids you Who is pure. Then the old will drop away from you, and the new wonder will begin. You will find yourself already passed from death to life, and far ahead strange possibilities will open out beyond the power of your heart to conceive. ”

“ Brethren, today these two moods which we have rehearsed are peculiarly ours— the mood of violent recoil, the mood of quiet continuity. Today the white light of Pentecost pours itself around us, and we know ourselves to be in the possession of the first fruits of the Spirit. Yet the white light breaks itself against the blackness of a closed coffin, flung up before the eyes of all, to embody the irreparable disaster of a death which has touched the very heart of our National life. ”

“ The long, horrible silence that follows when we become aware of what we have lost out of our daily intercourse by the withdrawal of the immediate presence will cut its way into our souls. We shall feel it impossible to keep at the high level without a word, without a sign to reassure us of its truth. The blank veil will hang on unlifted, unstirred. Not a glimpse to be had of the world inside and beyond! How black, how relentless, this total lack of tangible evidence for the certainty that we believe in! Once again the old terror will come down upon us. ”

“ It simply traverses every line on which life runs, cutting across every hope on which life feeds, and every intention which gives life significance. It makes all we do here meaningless and empty. “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Everything goes to one place, good and bad, just and unjust, happy and unhappy, rich and poor, all lie down together in one common ruin. All are cut off by the same blind inexorable fate. ”

“ It is difficult to say whether the freedom of the Netherlands was served better by the death of Farnese or the recognition of Henry as King of France by the principal persons who had intrigued with Philip, had taken his money, and were now negotiating with Henry for more money and place and pardon. Certainly a more rapacious and shameless crew never existed than the French nobility. Fortunately for Holland, the miller and the weaver, the sailor and the trader, were in the ascendant in the Dutch Republic. ”

“ Dare we make the awful venture? Who can endure such a sight and not die? Who would not shrink from so fierce a test? So this unknown experience which awaits us on the far side is charged with the terror of the unknown. We flinch from it as we look merely at the isolated coffin awaiting its last burial, the symbol of disaster. ”

“ It is a curious contrast: the one battered with hatred, worn with struggle, seared with strife; now 'floating in a sea of glory,' now 'left weary and old to the mercy of a rude stream that must for ever hide him:' the other, moving in peaceful settled ease along the even tenor of his way, enjoying the calm pleasure of graceful culture, the smooth placid flow of genial friendship and of unbroken affection, here among the dreaming spires and quiet meadows, admired, esteemed, beloved unto the end. ”

“ So stated it is inexplicable, so ruthless, so blundering — this death that we must die. It is the cruel ambush into which we are snared. It is the pit of destruction. It wrecks, it defeats, it shatters. ”

“ Grim and ghastly as our grey weather renders it, there is a grandeur in the simplicity of the lines, a dignity in the elevation, a majesty in the ease with which the pilasters rise from the basal story, which no wind can beat out or rain wash wholly away. ”

“ It is that which first comes down to us, perhaps, as we look down upon the quiet face, so cold and white, of one who has been very near and dear to us. There it lies in possession of its own secret. It knows it all. So we seem to feel. And what the face says to us in its sweet silence to us as a last message from the one whom we loved is: “Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. ”

“ Only we know that all which is already ours, by living experience, by intimate attachment, will be gone. The warmth of the present companionship, the comfort of familiar habits, the loving intimacy of deep and dear associations, the tender presence of this fond earth, the joy, the love, the hands that touch, the voices that charm, the hearts that beat. ”

“ To-night I have to bring before the memory of the House a character of a far different type; the character of a quiet, humble, home-like scholar, of a gentle, modest musician; of a man, born indeed into stormy times, but round whose peaceful life and temper storms and tempests broke in vain; of one who seems ever to shrink from such publicity as his high qualities compel him to assume ”

“ Nor is he left to tread the quiet ways of the scholar; the fierce energy of political life and religious strife plucks him out of the cloister and clamours to him to act—to deal with the dangers of Rome and the difficulties of science, to succeed the expelled Massey and to banish Locke. He acts as determinedly as men can wish—but there is a something in his modesty, in his calm, in his soft kindliness, which disarms anger and shames malice. ”

“ I suppose all of us hover between two ways of regarding death, which appear to be in hopeless contradiction with each other. First, there is the familiar and instinctive recoil from it as embodying the supreme and irrevocable disaster. It is the impossible, the incredible thing. Nothing leads up to it, nothing prepares for it. ”

“ In them we see how the big principles of history are resolved down into, and reconciled with, the life that all men live; they are the media between abstract law and common things; they fill up the middle distance; they are the underground working by which the heart and the brain of humanity hold communion. The life of Dean Aldrich transforms hard history for us into something possible, conceivable, loveable: and men might well be content that their names should drop out of the roll of public glory, could they leave behind a memory as gentle, as pleasant, as beautiful as his. ”

“ We go out stripped of all that has made us intelligible to ourselves, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Death, then, must retain its terror, even though it is but a stage in our growth, the terror of the unknown, the terror of loss, the terror of finality to what have been hitherto the movements of our very life. ”