Various
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453
The life which Niebuhr led after returning to Germany, was not remarkable as to incident, but it abounded in useful and noble pursuit. He still shunned Berlin; and, on the whole, the university of Bonn appeared to him as the best and most suitable residence for the family, now consisting of five children. He did not take any actual professorship, but he lectured and he wrote. Here he became the centre of a circle of the highest minds of Germany. All prized him; all, young and old, felt the benefit of his presence, his labours, and example. He regularly worked at the history of Rome; but he cultivated his garden, taught and played with his children, and built himself a house. The time was not all passed at Bonn; in 1829, the family visited Holstein and Mme Hensler. A twelve years' absence had produced many alterations, but the love of country and early home was wrought into Niebuhr's heart, and he enjoyed this renewal of youth. A sad calamity, however, awaited him at Bonn. On the night of February the 6th 1830, the new house he had built with such pleasure and care, was burnt completely down. Very little could be saved—excepting, indeed, that the books, being the first object to which his neighbours were attracted when the family were rescued, were for the most part preserved, and also the manuscript of the second volume of his Roman history. The whole correspondence with his father, and many other letters and papers, were destroyed.
This event, though a great shock, he bore with much calmness, and set himself to restore what was lost. Foreign politics did not lose their interest; on the contrary, the French Revolution of 1830 excited all his ardour. At first, he was alarmed, anticipating fresh horrors; but the welcome he gave to Louis-Philippe was most enthusiastic. Dr Arnold describes him as being made quite happy by this turn of the page of present life, and deeply indignant with the Bourbon ministers. His ardour in this cause was indeed the immediate occasion of his fatal illness; for while the French trials were pending, he would go every evening, through severe cold, in the depth of winter, to the news-rooms, and by this exposure caught the inflammatory cold of which he died. On the evening of Christmas-day 1830, this formidable attack began; and on the 1st of January 1831, the excellent man breathed his last, fully conscious of his impending fate, and not less so of that of his beloved partner, who had nursed him during the first two days, but was afterwards too ill to leave her bed. When her husband was informed of this, he turned his face to the wall, and was heard to murmur: 'Hapless house! to lose father and mother at once!' Then, 'Pray to God, children; He alone can help us'—and his attendants saw that he himself was seeking comfort in prayer. Poor Mme Niebuhr survived him but nine days. She had her children with her, and tried to give them counsel; but the shock had been too great for her broken health; she rests in the same grave with him, not far from the glorious river. The king of Prussia erected a monument to his honour.
Niebuhr was only a few months more than fifty-four. Mrs Austin, who saw him in 1828, says: 'His person was diminutive, almost to meanness, but his presence very imposing. His head and eye were grand, austere, and commanding. He had all the authority of intelligence, and looked and spoke like one not used to contradiction. He lived a life of study and domestic seclusion, but he conversed freely and unreservedly.' His habits, we are told by another writer, were temperate and regular. 'He entered with earnest sympathy into all the little interests and conventional jokes of his family and friends; and he writes with quite as much eagerness about Marcus's learning great E; or Cornelia's flowered frock for her birthday, as about consuls or cabinets.' Niebuhr himself says: 'I shall teach little Amelia to write myself, for her mother has no time for it; and the poor little thing might be jealous of Marcus, if one of us did not teach her.' His consideration for his dependents may be illustrated by this remark: 'I wish I had taken the governess's room when we got into the house first; but, anti-revolutionist as I am, I am too much of a democrat to turn her out now in right of superior rank.'
Of his character, some faint idea may be formed from our sketch and extracts; but of the beauty of his thoughts, his soundness, sagacity, the perfect simplicity of his whole style of character, a large acquaintance with his free outpourings to his friends can alone give an adequate notion. We regard them as among the very best private letters we know—of their kind, we mean—for they are not witty, not playful. The reader will not find lightness and grace, but strength and manliness, and, in a remarkable degree, affectionateness. They are the charming utterances of a clear and honest mind, and have made us thankful for the privilege of knowing the inner life of one whose outward works have long had our admiration.
THE TATTLETON ELECTION
There never was a contested election in the borough of Great Tattleton that I remember but one, and it took place on what was termed the last appeal to the country in the matter of the Reform Bill. Staid and substantial fathers of families doubtless recollect the strife of parties and opinions which filled those times, and in which themselves took part, with all the bootless haste and fervour of twenty; feeling especially indignant that they were not yet householders, as their incorruptible votes might save the nation. England has floated safely through many a conflict of the old and new since then, and more of the kind are coming; but no event in our national history ever appeared to the denizens of Tattleton of half such magnitude as that contested election. Tattleton was an ancient and respectable borough. It has a railway station now, but looks much as it did at the time of my story—a small, old-fashioned country town, situated among corn and orchard lands in one of the cider-making counties, with a newspaper, a sheriff's court, and sundry quiet shops and alehouses. There is an old church there, with high Gothic windows full of painted glass, quaint carving, strange tombs, and a suit of knightly armour hanging between two tattered banners, which the sexton says were carried some time in the wars. Tradition says also, that there is a fine old painting in fresco, whitewashed over from the Reformation, but of that I know nothing. The town had other antiquities. Its stocks were a marvel of age and efficiency. A ducking-stool for scolds yet remained in the courthouse, beside the beam with which they weighed witches against the Bible; but the oldest thing in Great Tattleton was its charter: a native antiquary demonstrated, that it had been signed by King John the day after Runnymede; and among other superannuated privileges, it conferred on the free burghers the right of trade and toll, ward and gibbet, besides that of electing their own mayor and one loyal commoner, to serve in the king's parliament.
We all believed that Palladium of Tattleton to be kept somewhere in the church, and generations had returned their representatives according to its provisions. But the bounds of the borough were so devious, and the free burghers so thinly scattered among us, that all elections within the memory of man had been quietly managed by the mayor, the town-clerk, and the sheriff. Moreover, an old gateway and two crazy posts had something to do in the business by right of ancient custom. In short, Tattleton was what the advocates of the whole Bill were apt to term a close and sometimes a rotten borough. Its representation had become hereditary—some said, since the Long Parliament—in the Stopford family, who owned at least half the soil, and were supposed to be as old as its charter. One of their ancestors had built the church, another wore the armour and captured the banners that hung in it. The family pew and vault were there; and they had been squires and justices of peace from father to son, dispensing hospitality, work, and law, at their seat of Fern Hall—a great old manor-house, standing deep in a thickly-wooded dell not half a mile from Tattleton. So far as I could learn, the Stopfords had given no ornaments to state or church, but theirs was pre-eminently a safe house. Its martlets were generally fortunate in their connections; and its chiefs had supported the character of moderate reformers, each in his generation. At home, they were lenient magistrates and prudent landlords, never overtaxing their tenantry, and rarely enforcing the game-laws. None of them ever took a first step; but all improvements in the neighbourhood, if once commenced, were certain of their countenance; and in parliament they always voted for any measure of reform which it was evident the people would want no longer.
It was, therefore, in accordance with family principles and practice, that the then reigning squire and M. P., Levison Stopford, Esquire, should take his seat on the ministerial benches, and vote in and out of parliament for the Bill with which all England rang. Levison Stopford did not make brilliant speeches, but he had a fair share of prominence in county business, was a middling landlord, a respectable head of a family, connected by marriage with a Whig peer, the father of a promising son, and, as the newspapers said, four lovely daughters. All these recommendations to public favour could not secure him against division in his native borough. There were Conservatives among us, who clung to the time-honoured institutions of Tattleton, and could not consent to see their ancient privileges, charter, old posts, and all, submerged in those of two adjoining boroughs—Little Tattleton, whose constituency consisted of the beadle, and Lumberdale, to which the earl always nominated his second son; for people already understood, that on the passing of the Bill these three should become one, at least in elections.
Sir Jonas Underwood, of Little Tattleton Park, did not like that prospect—he had been regularly returned by the loyal and independent beadle ever since his majority, a period of some forty years—neither did the Earl of Lumberdale, as the present state of things made his second son's canvass by no means difficult. Both the earl and the baronet possessed some property, and more influence, in our borough, by help of which they warned the loyal Conservatives that their country was in danger, and exhorted Great Tattleton to rush to the rescue. The mayor said, that though he respected birth and breeding, yet, if a country gentleman like Mr Stopford would so far disgrace his family as to vote for a measure which must break down the British constitution, and utterly ruin England in less than twenty years, he, for his own part, felt called upon to oppose him. The town-clerk always said as the mayor did: all the Tories in Tattleton took them for examples, by degrees a party was formed against Stopford on what had hitherto been his own ground; and long before the dissolution, it was known that they intended, as the phrase is, 'to start' Sommerset Cloudesly, Esquire, as an opposing candidate in the Conservative interest.
Sommerset Cloudesly occupied a large but neat brick house on the verge of our town's liberties, with a meadow-like lawn in front, and acres of orchard in the rear. His father had been a small farmer, who bettered his fortune by all manner of money-making speculations—the last of which, a cider-manufactory, and a mill, together with a house he had built, the orchard he had planted, and a handsome strip of landed property, descending to his only son, made him the second man in Tattleton. Sommerset had been what is called carefully educated: ten years of his life had been spent in the house of a clergyman, who received select boarders as part of his own family; five more at a college in Oxford under the direction of a staid tutor; and the residue in a series of fidgets through the house and land left him by his father; for at the time of our story, the worthy cider-maker had long gone to his account.
Sommerset was a tall, thin, genteel-looking man, in his thirtieth year. Motherless, sisterless, and wifeless—strange to say, under such circumstances, he was restless too. It was not a weight of crime that pressed upon his conscience. Cloudesly's life had been as harmless as those of his own apple-trees. It was not inordinate ambition that disturbed his days, for though, like most of us, Sommerset would have rather preferred being a great man, could greatness be easily come at, he lost no labour in its pursuit. Neither was it love that besieged his peace; for, except Miss Lily Prior, old Tom the brewer's daughter, who sat in the same pew at church, Sommerset had never been known to look on one of womankind with attention. Perhaps the carefulness of his education might have done it. Life could not be entirely folded up like a napkin, and put into its proper drawer; and everything annoyed Sommerset Cloudesly. The coming off of his waistcoat button was the destruction of Messina. The world was going to ruin if his horse lost a shoe. Like the idle family in the Eastern tale, he could draw a disturbance from the future also, and many a heart-quake had he regarding what might happen. His Oxford tutor had made him a strong Tory; old Cloudesly had averred, that was the only politics for a gentleman; and though Sommerset believed in all the alarms of his time, his faith being particularly strong for terrors, he had always supposed himself to be somebody. Sir Jonas and the Earl of Lumberdale assured him he was the hope of Tattleton; and, in an evil hour, he consented, in electioneering phrase, to contest the borough.
With his relations, who regarded Sommerset as their top branch, the step was in high favour; and all his friends came out strong in approbation, excepting old Tom Prior. He had been the consulting friend and boon-companion of old Cloudesly forty years before, when the one began to brew beer and the other to make cider. Tom's brewery had not paid him so well as old Cloudesly's apples. He had been the first to establish a business of the kind in Tattleton. There were three there at the time of the election; but the townspeople still knew him familiarly as the brewer, though he had long become a sleeping partner, having saved enough for himself and his old wife to live on in a cottage covered with grape vines, at the end of a long green lane in which the main street of Tattleton dwindled away. There was, besides, a thousand pounds for Lily, the heiress-apparent, moreover, of his interest in the brewery. Tom said 'he had no notion of politics, being entirely given to beer; and who was right about that there Bill he couldn't say, but he never knowed an honest man as made money by a contested election.' Old Mrs Prior always echoed what her husband said, besides knitting a perpetual stocking that was her only occupation; but Tom and his wife were old people now, and in small intimacy with the college-bred young Cloudesly, though they sat in the same church-pew, and some thought their daughter Lily was also a friend to our proposed member. Lily was as pretty a girl as could be found in all Tattleton, which, together with her prospects, rather insured admirers; but Lily took no trouble with any of them, and it was believed that the old folks rather wished she should not be in a hurry.
That was no wonder; for, in this fidgety world, Lily Prior was a treasure. Nothing ever disturbed her. Her hair might go out of curl, or her friends out of humour; her bonnet might take unbecoming fits, as I am told bonnets sometimes do, but her equanimity remained unruffled, and her days were spent in knitting beside her mother in the little oak parlour, taking quiet walks, and hoeing peacefully in her own flower-garden. Spiteful people said, that Lily was beginning to look old-maidish, but I never saw it in her calm face. It was also said—what didn't they say in Great Tattleton?—that her muslin dress and crimped collar were more carefully arranged when Sommerset Cloudesly might be expected to walk that way; but Lily's strongest demonstration was 'Dear me!' and that she said on hearing of his intended contest. A perilous contest it seemed for Sommerset Cloudesly. Stopford was by far the richer and more influential man; the interest of his party, his aristocratic connections, and his individual pride, all determined him to keep his ground; and the generally prudent man had been heard to declare, that he would spend to the last sixpence of his property, rather than see himself unseated by an upstart simpleton.
Sommerset and his friends had, of course, the accredited weapons of their party wherewith to attack the adversary, and Stopford was called everything, from Radical up to Atheist. Thus the battle began, and fiercely was it fought; but suffice it to say, that all the usual means for obtaining the independent suffrage of freeborn Englishmen were put in requisition. Voters suddenly emerged from corners wherein no freeholds had been previously dreamed of; others were unaccountably absent on the polling-days; the alehouses abounded in trade, and the town in all disorderliness. There was everlasting controversy over claims of residence and ownership, with numerous appeals to our famous charter; and prosecutions for assault and battery occupied our town lawyers the whole succeeding year.
What spites and quarrels are still flourishing among my old neighbours which owe their origin to that election! How many long friendships it split up, and how much family peace it disturbed, I cannot precisely state; but the like did happen. Neither is it within my memory's scope to enlarge on the Countess Dowager of Lumberdale and her seven charming daughters, in elegant morning-dresses, appearing at the poll, where they shook hands with everybody, and shewed a singular acquaintance with family history; nor to relate how Lord Littlemore, Stopford's brother-in-law, and the proudest peer in England, made calls on small shopkeepers and farmers, perhaps to shew what rank could do on important occasions. No manœuvre was left untried by the rival factions, nor any cause of dispute omitted, and the strife increased in bitterness every day. Readers, can any of you explain why people so generally run into the way of whatever they most fear? I never could; but the case is common, and Sommerset Cloudesly was a striking instance. What waves of worry passed over him! and what heaps of annoyance were piled on his spirit during that county election!—a rather tedious business in those unreformed days. His peace was killed with cabbage-stocks on the hustings; his days were devastated by groans; and his soul harrowed by hisses. Nevertheless, both his friends and enemies were amazed to see how well Cloudesly acquitted himself; his speeches, when they could be heard, were models of neat eloquence; and his colours—pea-green and white—were sported with genteel triumph. By and by, however, it became evident to his most sanguine supporter that Sommerset had no chance; Sir Jonas and Lord Lumberdale themselves advised him to give up the contest; but the man had been persuaded that the safety of Great Tattleton, if not that of the British nation, depended on him, and a persuasion once in Sommerset's head was not easily got out. He believed on, in spite of them and fortune. I never found out precisely what the business cost him; nobody dared inquire, and he burned all the accounts; but at length the last day's poll was taken, and amid cheers, yells, and a newly-begun row, Levison Stopford, Esq., was declared duly elected.
Men cannot have Waterloos of their own every day. No wonder, then, that the honourable member's glory was too great for his prudence: scarcely had the poll closed, when it became generally known in front of the Stopford Arms, that there were two barrels of strong beer, which his liberality had devoted to the populace. On the publication of this intelligence, the ancient ceremony of chairing went on with more than usual vigour. It was a quiet autumn evening, but there was no peace for Tattleton. The shops and houses of Stopford's friends were lighting up in every quarter for a grand illumination, while the opposition and the stingy were closing as quickly as possible. Half the rabble of the county were gathered in the streets; all our own respectability occupied doors and windows; and forth from the town-hall, in a substantial armchair, decorated with bunches of ribbons, blue and red—the Stopford colours—borne in high triumph by his most zealous and noisy adherents, came the newly-chosen senator (a rather stout gentleman, and father of a hopeful family), scattering coppers and silver with no sparing hand, from a large canvas bag, among the crowd, who roared and scrambled in all the might of beer. Old politicians said it was a great victory for Whig principles, and many a joke was cracked at the unsuccessful candidate's expense. Some believed he had retired behind bolt and bar; others that he was defying fortune at a late dinner. If the latter statement were true, Sommerset's company must have been small. The Earl and Sir Jonas had long since washed their hands of him, as incorrigibly obstinate. The more influential of his supporters kept out of sight, being rather ashamed of the losing side; and, I grieve to say, the barrels had utterly shaken the faith of many a voteless adherent, the freeholders of our streets and lanes, who now shouted Stopford instead of Cloudesly for ever. Some there were, nevertheless, with souls above barrels—men who had votes, and men who had none—and they collected their forces at the foot of the main street, as vantage-ground from which to groan at the above-mentioned procession, and inform Mr Stopford of their intentions to unseat him for bribery and corruption.