James Stephen

“ And there is one thing which, as I venture to believe, no one can deny, or deny to be worth considering. Whatever may be thought of Fitzjames's judgments of men and things, it must be granted that he may be called, in the emphatical and lofty sense of the word, a true man. In the dark and bewildering game of life he played his part with unfaltering courage and magnanimity. He was a man not only in masculine vigour of mind and body, but in the masculine strength of affection, which was animated and directed to work by strenuous moral convictions. ”

“ Stephen condescended to enliven the little society by her musical talents. The prisoners in general welcomed Stephen as a champion of liberty. A writ of 'Habeas Corpus' was obtained, and Stephen argued his case before Lord Mansfield. The great lawyer was naturally less amenable to reason than the prisoners. He was, however, impressed, it is reported, by the manliness and energy of the applicant. 'It is a great pity,' he said, 'but the prisoner must be remanded.' James Stephen's son, James, a boy of twelve, was by his side in court, and a bystander slipped five shillings into his hand ”

“ I have now to speak of the generation which preceded my own, of persons who were well known to me, and who were the most important figures in the little world in which my brother and I passed our infancy. James Stephen, the Master, was survived by six children, of whom my father was the third. I will first say a few words of his brothers and sisters. The eldest son, William, became a quiet country clergyman. He was vicar of Bledlow, Bucks (for nearly sixty years) , and of Great Stagsden, Beds, married a Miss Grace, but left no children, and died January 8, 1867. ”

“ Nothing can be more masterly or more effective than the method employed by Sir James Stephen to explode and demolish, by the force of a carefully-laid train of proofs, the loose fabric of assertions, invectives, and ill-woven demonstrations upon which the enemies of Hastings and Impey based and pushed forward their attacks, and which have never before been so vigorously battered in reply. ”

“ We have the satisfaction of perceiving everywhere traces of skill and power, proving irrefragably that there are among us men 'who ennoble nearly every walk of life, and would have ennobled any.' A similar tone appears in the short life of his father, written in the following year. True success in life, he says, is not measured by general reputation. Sir James Stephen's family will be satisfied by establishing the fact that he did his duty. ”

“ Fitzjames had passed the winter of 1871-2 in Calcutta with Henry Cunningham; his wife having returned to England in November. He followed her in the spring, sailing from Bombay on April 22, 1872. To most people a voyage following two years and a half of unremitting labour would have been an occasion for a holiday. With him, however, to end one task was the same thing as to begin another, and he was taking up various bits of work before India was well out of sight. He had laid in a supply of literature suitable both for instruction and amusement. ”

“ A circuit bar, adds Mr. Lushington, 'may be roughly divided into three classes: those who are determined to make themselves heard; those who wish to be heard if God calls; and those who without objecting to be heard wish to have their pastime whether they are heard or not. Fitzjames was in the first category, and from the first did his utmost to succeed, always in the most legitimate way.' No attorney, looking at the rows of wigs in the back benches, could fail to recognise in him a man who would give his whole mind to the task before him. ”

“ Almost all men have to acknowledge that they have spent a great portion of their energy upon tasks which have led to nothing, or led only to experience of failure. A man who has succeeded in giving clear utterance to the thoughts that were in him need care comparatively little whether they have been concentrated in some great book or diffused through a number of miscellaneous articles. Fitzjames's various labours came to a focus in his labours upon the Criminal Law. During his short stay in India he succeeded in actually achieving a great work ”

“ Nothing really stands in the way of a practically complete code of maritime and commercial law for the United Kingdom but the difficulty of finding time in the House of Commons for non-contentious legislation; and whenever this is achieved, the result will in substance be largely due to Sir James Stephen's efforts. Meanwhile, in addition to his other occupations, Stephen was an active member of the Metaphysical Society (see Knowles) , and he carried on an intimate corre- spondence with Lord Lytton, then viceroy of India, during the critical period of the second Afghan War. ”

“ But he did not take advantage of his opponent's weakness. He would only give him up as unsuited to play the game in the proper temper. In short, he represented what is surely the normal case of an alliance between manliness and a love of fair play. It is the weaker and more feminine, or effeminate, nature that is generally tempted to resort to an unfair use of weapons.
When, therefore, Fitzjames found himself in a position of authority, he was keenly anxious to use his power fairly. [439] He became decidedly more popular on the bench than he had been at the bar. ”

“ At Easter 1841, my father visited the Diceys at Claybrook, and thence took his boy to see the great schoolmaster at Rugby. Fitzjames draws a little diagram to show how distinctly he remembers the scene. He looked at the dark, grave man and wondered, 'Is he now reading my character at a glance?' It does not appear that he was actually entered at Rugby, however, and my father had presently devised another scheme. The inconveniences of the Brighton plan had made themselves felt, and it now occurred to my father that he might take a house in Windsor and send both Fitzjames and me to Eton. ”

“ Others are to deal with martial law, insanity, and the relations of England to India and the colonies. Beyond these he looks at an 'awful distance' upon a great book upon law and morals. He is beginning to doubt whether literature would not be more congenial than law, if he could obtain some kind of permanent independent position. Law, no doubt, has given him a good training, but the pettiness of most of the business can hardly be exaggerated; and he hardly feels inclined to make it the great aim of his life. He had, however, risen to a distinctly higher position on his circuit ”

“ Jowett's, at Little Dunham and at Cambridge, and had been a curate of John Venn, of Clapham. He belonged, therefore, by right, to the evangelical party, and had been more or less known to my father for many years. His children were specially intimate with my aunt, Mrs. Batten, whose husband was a master at Harrow. Emelia Batten, now Mrs. Russell Gurney, was a friend of Cunningham's children, and at this time was living in London, and on very affectionate terms with Fitzjames. He used to pour out to her his difficulties in the matter of profession choosing. ”

“ Fitzjames came down to look at a model, and Wills said, 'Your Lordship will see,' &c. 'He got hold of the hand next his own, gave me a squeeze which I did not forget in a hurry, and whispered, "If you ever call me 'my lordship' again, I shall say something!"' That hand-grip, indeed, as Wills remarks, was eminently characteristic. It was like the squeeze of a vice, and often conveyed the intimation of a feeling which shrank from verbal expression.
It is plain enough that a man of such character would not find some difficulties smoothed for him. ”

“ For one reason or other he declined the only serious offers, and was 'not sorry.' He could not get over 'his dislike to the whole affair.' He 'loathed elections,' and 'could not stand the idea of Parliament.' Disraeli soon came into office, and 'the new ministry knew not Joseph.' Fitzjames had quite got over his disappointment about the judgeship, though he admits that he had at first felt it 'bitterly.' He has not known how to find favour with chancellors or ministers. He therefore resolves to make his own way; he cares more for what he is in himself than for the position he holds ”

“ Fitzjames calls himself 'self-contained'; and the epithet is quite appropriate if it is taken as not implying any connotation of real selfishness. He was, that is, sufficient for himself; he was contented so long as he could feel, as he always had a right to feel, that he was doing his work thoroughly to the very best of his abilities. He could dispense with much appreciation from outside, though it was unaffectedly welcome when it came from competent persons. He had too much self-reliance to be dependent upon any endorsement by others. ”

“ Fitzjames had done respectably at Eton, and had been among the first lads at King's College. He probably came up to Cambridge with confidence that he would make a mark in examinations. But his mind, however powerful, was far from flexible. He had not the intellectual docility which often enables a clever youth to surpass rivals of much greater originality—as originality not unfrequently tempts a man outside the strait and narrow path which leads to the maximum of marks. ”

“ His bill for hats at Sanders' must have amounted to a stiff figure, for my visions of Fitzjames are of a discrowned warrior, returning to Windsor bareheaded, his hair moist with the steam of recent conflict.' My own childish recollections of his school life refer mainly to pugilism. In October 1842, as I learn from my mother's diary, he found a big boy bullying me, and gave the boy such a thrashing as was certain to prevent a repetition of the crime. I more vividly recollect another occasion, when a strong lad was approaching me with hostile intent. ”

“ To Fitzjames himself the legal career always represented the substantive, and the literary career the adjective. Circumstances made journalism highly convenient, but his literary ambition was always to be auxiliary to his legal ambition. It would, of course, have been injurious to his prospects at the bar had it been supposed that the case was inverted; and as a matter of fact his eyes were always turned to the summit of that long hill of difficulty which has [135] to be painfully climbed by every barrister not helped by special interest or good fortune. ”

“ Fitzjames has been writing in the 'Saturday Review,' in 'Fraser,' the 'National Review,' and elsewhere, besides having on hand a projected law-book. Is he not undertaking too much? 'No variety of intemperance is more evidently doomed to work out its own ill-reward than that which is practised by a bookseller's drudge of the higher order.' He appeals to various precedents, such as Southey, whose brain gave way under the pressure. ”

“ This, then, was Stephen’s Cousin Amos, the same who, when he was a little boy, had figured so bravely in the witch affair. Although he was a sea captain now and dwelt in England when he was ashore, he visited Hopewell as often as it was possible, and was Stephen’s most well-beloved playmate in spite of the difference in their years.
“Now,” he said, when he was seated at the boy’s bedside, “what is this I hear of your climbing King James’ Tree in defiance of the British Army and then falling out of it through turning to gape after a retreating enemy? We must have no more of such doings.” ”

“ In January 1876, Lord Lytton [174] was appointed Governor-General of India. In February, Fitzjames dined in his company at Lord Arthur Russell's. They went afterwards to the 'Cosmopolitan,' and by the end of the evening had formed a close friendship, which was only to end with their lives. Some of Fitzjames's friends were surprised at the singular strength of attachment between two men so conspicuously different in mind and character. Some contrasts, as everyone observes, rather facilitate than [387] impede friendship ”

“ I am content to observe that in the earlier book Fitzjames had been content with the existing law, and that the change of opinion shows very careful and candid consideration of the question, and, as I think, an advance to more moderate and satisfactory conclusions.
The moral view of the question comes out in other relations. He intimates now and then his dissatisfaction with the modern sentimentalism, his belief in the value of capital and other corporal punishments, and his doubt whether the toleration of which he has traced the growth can represent more than a temporary compromise. ”

“ The explanation is given, I think, in some remarks made by my father to Mr Watson. My father held that the University system of distributing honours was very faulty. Men, he said, wanted all the confidence they could acquire in their own powers for the struggle of life. Whatever braced and stimulated self-reliance was good. [111] The honour system encouraged the few who succeeded and inflicted upon the rest a 'demoralising sense of failure.' I have no doubt that my father was, in fact, generalising from the case of Fitzjames. ”

“ England is a 'centre of indifference' between the two poles, India and the United States. At each pole you get a system vigorously administered and carried to logical results. 'In the centre you get the queerest conceivable hubblebubble, half energy and half impotence, and all scepticism in a great variety of forms.' The homicide bill was delayed by Russell Gurney's departure for America on an important mission in the following winter, but was not yet dead. One absurd little anecdote in regard to it belongs to this time. Fitzjames [305] had gone to stay with Froude in a remote corner of Wales ”