by Grant Allen
The wire grating to which you refer has long ago disappeared, if it ever existed. The old distich painted on an ancient pane of glass in a window in Mob Quad ran —
Oxoniam quare venisti? præmeditare:
Nocte dieque cave tempus consumere prave.
This bit of glass was broken into fragments by some young Vandal a few years back, and the pieces, roughly put together, are now in my possession.
The unknown lingerer’s question came home to Allen, and leaving Oxford ‘with a decent degree and nothing much else in particular to brag about,’ he ‘took perforce,’ as he had intimated to his friend Nicholson, ‘to that refuge of the destitute, the trade of schoolmaster.’ In his ‘Sign of the Ship,’
‘Longman’s Magazine,’ December 1899, Mr. Lang says: ‘Others have written of Mr. Allen’s genius, the most versatile, beyond comparison, of any man in our age. Had he been able to devote himself entirely to physical science, as he desired, it is not for me to conjecture what he might have added to the sum of human knowledge. But his education at Oxford had been classical, and he was an unendowed student of his favourite themes. He had to live by his pen, and by scientific work he could not live.’ In Allen’s own words, ‘to teach Latin and Greek verse at Brighton College, Cheltenham College, Reading Grammar School, successively, was the extremely uncongenial task imposed upon me by the chances of the universe.’ Between his engagements at Cheltenham and Reading he was up at Oxford in 1872 as tutor to the sons of Lord Huntly, and it was then that he met his future wife, Miss Ellen Jerrard, at the house of her brother-in’ law, Mr. Franklin Richards, then Lecturer of Trinity College. The union to which that meeting led was charged with a quarter of a century of unalloyed happiness for husband and wife. During that long time, Allen, never in robust health, was often prostrate with serious illness, aggravated, in the earlier years, by privation, and embittered by struggle, but the brave heart and helpful hand of his wife sustained him through it all. And when ‘The Woman Who Did’ was published, this was the inscription: ‘To my dear Wife, to whom I have dedicated my twenty happiest years, I dedicate also this brief memorial of a less fortunate love.’
The meeting with Miss Jerrard was a case of what Allen calls ‘that divinest and deepest of human intuitions, love at first sight’ (‘Falling in Love; with other Essays on more exact Branches of Science,’ p. 7). But to declare that love was another matter: Allen’s affairs were at a low ebb; Miss Jerrard was portionless (had she been dowered, that would have been a fatal bar, since Allen declared that he would never marry a woman who had money), so he possessed his soul in such patience as the heart allowed. But in the spring of 1873 an offer of marriage had warrant in virtue of his successful candidature for the post of Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at the newly-founded Government College in Spanish Town, Jamaica, and in June of that year, before the honeymoon had ended, he and Mrs. Allen left England. Judging from the few examples that survive, his letters from Jamaica are the fullest that he ever penned. He was not a great letter-writer.
The larger number which have been sent to me, or which are in my possession, are brief and personal; hence the small space filled by illuminative material, so far as letters go, in this memoir. The explanation of their sparseness is that ‘time is money.’ In a short note from Algeria to Mr. Edmund Gosse, Allen says: ‘I am so often ill that moments fit for writing are too precious to be used for anything but bread-winning.’ He gave a jocular turn to this view of the matter one Whitsuntide at Aldeburgh. The party included three philologists, Canon Isaac Taylor, Professor Rhys, and the late Dr. Richard Morris, and one day the talk fell on the number of words used in their common avocations by country working folk. Professor Max Müller was cited as authority for the statement that ‘some agricultural labourers have not three hundred words in their vocabulary’(‘Lectures on Language,’ i. 308). Allen at once challenged this, and in his measured, sonorous tones, twirling, as was ever his wont, his little platyscopic lens between finger and thumb, began recounting all the things, and all the parts of things, with which a peasant has to deal every day. Ere the list was half through, Allen had well-nigh reached the stated limit, when he suddenly called out, ‘Look here, you fellows, my price is two guineas a thousand words, and I’m not going on any longer.’
Letters, except when composed with an eye on the printer, are of the highest value, because the writer comes before us in undress, putting on ‘no side,’ as the phrase goes. In Allen’s case, however, the lack of letters is of less moment because of the personal, familiar element which pervades all his work, bringing him into direct touch with his readers. ‘I like your essays,’ said Henri III. to Montaigne. ‘ Then, Sire, you’ll like me. I am my essays.’ So might Grant Allen have replied.
In the letters written to his mother-in-law there are some interesting passages about the coloured population of Jamaica, and about the College which had, as its chief object, their education. It will be remembered that he is writing seven years after the negro rebellion, in the suppression of which Governor Eyre took so prominent a part
The negroes, under Sir John Grant’s administration, are contented and peaceable. It seems that before the rebellion the whole political power in the Island was entirely in the hands of the planter class. How that class still regard the negroes I have had plenty of opportunity of observing already; and though you know I have no exaggerated sympathy with blacks, yet I must say the way they are regarded by the whites is simply shameful. You know how English magistrates have decided in cases between employer and labourer, even when no distinction of race embittered the class feeling, and you can imagine what planter justice was like when dealt out to negroes. Besides this, the laws between master and servant were so bad that servants found it almost impossible to claim their wages in a Court of Law; and consequently the wages were perpetually in arrear for weeks together. At last the negroes rebelled, but only, says Sir John and Judge Ker (who was here at the time), when human nature could stand it no longer. Then came the Commission, etc., which I need not recapitulate, and then Sir John Grant was sent out as an absolute autocrat — the old representative Government was abolished, and the whole power vested in the Governor, who is responsible only to the English Colonial Office... The negroes are deeply attached to the new system; they speak of the Governor as ‘Papa Grant.’ The whites, of course, are all up in arms against him, but nobody minds them. Their newspapers are brilliant specimens of uneducated vituperation. Chadwick [the Principal of the College] and I will come in for lots of it as soon as we get started. But to resume: the negroes, say those who know best, are never pugnacious; they only rebel when they are absolutely driven to it: but as long as they are kindly treated and have justice dealt out to them, they lie contentedly under mango-trees, and don’t care a brass farthing who governs them. In 1830 the Island must have been quite as advanced in all material civilisation as England was at that time; now, it is as much a ruin as Greece or Egypt. Everywhere one sees splendid houses going to decay, solid bridges falling to pieces, deserted canefields or coffee plantations, overgrown with aloes and cactuses, in short, one vast sheet of desolation. It would be happy if one could set off against all this any improvement in the condition of the negro, but I see no difference between his condition here after forty years of freedom and his condition in South Carolina before the war — intellectually and morally I mean, of course. The country is fatally fertile. A negro earns nine shillings a week by labour which even as a Communist I consider easy; of this he spends two, and saves seven. After a few weeks of work he has done enough for the quarter, and lies by in absolute idleness, mental and bodily, till he has spent his savings. But I am wandering from the personal question.... The College opens definitely on the 22nd Sept. (1873).
Of the prospects of this College Allen never spoke hopefully. Located in the old Government buildings, it was laid on ambitious lines, whereas, to quote his words years after, ‘it should have been run as a Board School.’ Three months after it was started,
he wrote as follows to Mrs. Jerrard: —
The general prospects of the College look very black. On Friday last we were to examine intending students who entered their names for next term, but only two boys presented themselves, and they were both so ignorant that we had to turn them away; so we shall have to go on for another three months with our original three. One of these (they are all quadroons) is a solitary boarder, and occupies to himself a dormitory of sixteen cubicles, a large study, and a dining-hall with six long tables. Fortunately, the idea that it is lonely does not yet seem to have penetrated his pericranium. I had hoped that a good number of fellows might have come at the New Year, but we have been disappointed, and I am now inclined to give up all hopes of our success. A new Governor is coming out early in February, and it seems probable that soon after he comes he will inquire into the state of the College, and finding it a failure, break up the whole affair. In that case Judge Ker assures us most positively that we shall be no losers, and that care will be taken to provide for our interests in some way or other. I confess I was of opinion till very lately that if time was given to see how it turned out, people would begin sending their sons by twos and threes, but I fear now that it is hopeless. The people don’t want education, and won’t take it even if it is literally given away to them. I should not be surprised if you were to see us home again by next June.
As the sequel shows, the College was not abolished till 1876, Allen, in the meantime, succeeding to the Principalship on the death of Mr. Chadwick.
In the same and in other letters some persistent illusions about the tropics are dealt with: —
We take our ideas of the Tropics from the hothouses at Kew, just as though a West Indian took his ideas of English dwelling-houses from a picture of York Minster. Tropical scenery, in its ordinary aspect, is English scenery minus the green grass, the hedgerows, the singing birds, and the idealisable rustic or genuine Hodge. But in these mountains behind us (some six miles off) it is pretty much what one sees it in pictures, after making due allowance for the violent exaggeration of artists, who everywhere see things of extraordinary colours (e g purple sea) invisible to ordinary folks. My own private impression, as a mere idiotes, is that there is no more colour in the tropics than in England, only there ain’t so many people to tell one a tropical picture is overcoloured.
Speaking of the flora, he says: ‘The fruits, of which one hears so much, are stringy and insipid; the flowers don’t grow; and the “tropical vegetation” is a pure myth.’ As for the fauna, he was wont to remark that there were fewer dangerous and venomous creatures in the tropics than in the British Isles!
There are relics, unfortunately, for the most part, only in fragmentary form, of correspondence on philosophical subjects between him and his brother-in-law, Mr. Franklin Richards. A few extracts from one of these letters have interest as containing the germs of the treatise on ‘Force and Energy’ (first printed for private circulation in 1876, and published in enlarged form in 1888), and also as indicating his course of reading
‘You say, “You must remember that Evolution is not a philosophic system; it is only the highest Empirical generalisation yet reached.” The word I have wave-lined suggests the idea that you are on the lookout for a Cartesian or Leibnitzian “à priori” intelligible system. For such, I at least have long ceased to look. Your remarks in the review of Fraser (Le of his edition of “Berkeley”) seem to show that you also have done the same, though here you object to Evolution for hot being such an “Explanation” of the universe as you believe impossible. I mean “Explanation” in its popular sense — something rendering the universe more intelligible and “à priori” cognisable, as distinguished from a subsumption of individual facts under a single ultimate law or synthesis of laws. I cannot quite understand your standpoint. In your purely scientific capacity you seem to be a Positivist (in the best interpretation of the word), while in your metaphysical phase you seem to be hunting for a self-evident cosmos-formula. I should agree with you that Evolution is not an ultimate philosophic system, but probably on different grounds. Herbert Spencer’s second volume of Psychology ought to have been the first of the series. In the system which I am evolving for myself (for every man “must” make his system, good or bad), I begin with analysis of everything down to the empirical ego (G. A.), his sensations and ideas. I then build up from these the other egos, human and animal, in a sliding scale of intelligence, and I then proceed to Matter as an unknown substratum; after which I get to the law of Evolution, though I differ from H. S. as to its statement, especially as regards “integration of matter and dissipation of force,” for which I would substitute “concentration of attractive and dissipation of repulsive energies.” But that field is too wide for rapid treatment. To return, surely you would allow such a creed as I have sketched out to be a “philosophic system,” whether right or wrong. I find no such break between my metaphysics and my concrete sciences as you do. Analysis leads me down to the ego. Thence I build up other egos and the non-ego. Finally, I get to the uniformities observed in the non-ego. I have already worked out the greater part of this scheme on paper. Berkeley, Hume, Mill, and you have sufficiently done the analytical part for me, and I frankly acknowledge its necessity. In the beginning of my “Philosophy of History” (I fear an abortive book, or one requiring many years for its development) I have worked out the second step — the existence of other egos. In the paper I sent you the other day I have started from self and the other egos, and worked out the existence of the non-ego. Granted which last, I accept in the main H. S.’s statement of its laws as phenomenally known. So that, whether I am right or wrong, I at least “have” a system which is thoroughly consistent throughout. I know, of course, where you will find the flaw in it — at the first introduction of anything beyond the empirically known, namely, the other egos, and there we must for the present agree to differ. I will, however, pay you one compliment, that you are the “only” man who has ever seen that the real question was as to the existence of other minds; that another mind is an idea transcending consciousness just as much as matter does. There I am wholly with you. By all means, let us be pure individual egoists, or let us be transfigured realists; but don’t let us hang between as mere idealists, transcending consciousness to prove (or to accept without proof) other minds, and refusing to transcend to prove matter. That was the strong point I clutched at when I wrote my first paper on Idealism, and I have never seen it grasped by anybody else except you.
‘With respect to my correction of H. S. in the matter of attractive and repulsive force, I believe it is a real and important discovery, but one of which I shall never be able to make any use, because, like all my discoveries, it’s only a “glimpse.” Every day, in every science I know anything of, I am catching “glimpses,” but I don’t know enough to articulate them. Some day some other fellow will find them all out and be a great man. I tried to articulate this one to Fisher, but he merely wrote back that he didn’t understand me, and didn’t much believe in molecular physics treated “à priori.” I shall try to state it to you.’ (Then follows an outline of the theory of ‘two powers in the universe, of opposite nature to one another — force and energy. Of these, force is attractive, or “aggregative”; and energy repulsive, or “disjunctive,” the action of these powers producing that alternate rhythm of phenomena which we observe in the universe around us.’ The theory met with adverse criticism from physicists, but Allen’s faith in it as interpreting cosmic dynamics remained unshaken. His son tells me that in the course of his fatal illness he said, ‘I want no memorial over my remains; tell those who care for anything that I may have done to buy a copy of “Force and Energy.”’)
The letter continues:— ‘I have been reading a great deal lately. I have done a good deal of Merivale, whom I find intolerably dry and wanting in philosophic comprehensiveness of view. With the earlier part I read Cæsar (B.G. I haven’t the B.C.), and with the later I am reading Tacitus. When I have finished him, I mean to read Gibbon,
whom, I am ashamed to say, I have never yet tackled. I have also gone in for a course of Comte, whose vulgar and ignorant dogmatism, contradicted at every turn by the results of later science, has given me a great distaste for him. I find in almost every case, alike in Astronomy, Physics, (especially Acoustics and Optics), Physiology, and Sociology, he is bitterly adverse to the “only” investigations which seem to me worth making. I must read more Physics. I have also been engaged in dissecting a couple of brains and spinal cords (one of them a hanged murderer’s) which our doctor got for me. (So, you see, I am not idle, but the thirst for truth still impels me. When is there ever a chance of its being sufficiently slaked?) Our doctor is no anatomist, and less of a physiologist, but I only wanted ocular demonstration of what I had already learned from diagrams. It is dirty work, and I felt indisposed to eat my dinner the three days I was engaged on it I mean, if I can, to borrow Maudsley’s “Physiology and Pathology of Mind” from the Public Library in Kingston, so as to follow out my facts while they are fresh.
‘Through the term I have been lecturing on the Senses, with special reference to Pleasure and Pain, and on the Æsthetic Emotion, which seems to me a part of the same subject. I find it very useful, as forcing one to formulate one’s latent ideas, and I think I shall write another rejiciend paper on the question as soon as I have finished the “Analysis of Poetry” which I have now in hand, and which proves a tough customer, needing much revising and recasting....
