Chapter 25

WIT AND WISDOM

WHEN, at the age of twenty-three, Sydney Smith was offered by the village squire a handsome salary to do nothing but tour the Continent with the young heir to the estates, imbibing at the various seats of learning the best that the most eminent European professors could impart, he felt that the gates of Paradise had suddenly opened. He could scarcely believe his ears. To travel with Michael, his favourite companion! To see Europe! To study at the best universities! It seemed incredible. To Mr. Hicks-Beach, the squire, his son was the light of his eyes; he coveted for him the best that money could buy. As he contemplated the handsome physique, fine features, polished behaviour, and magnetic personality of the youthful curate who had recently settled at Netheravon, he felt that if he could be secured as his son’s companion, Michael’s future would be assured.

For the next few months the two young men could talk of nothing else; every moment was spent in roseate anticipations and busy preparations. But, just as they were about to embark on the superb adventure, the unexpected happened. Napoleon Bonaparte arose; and the gates of the Continent were slammed in their faces. Instead of crossing the Channel, they set out for Scotland; and anybody who scans the subsequent career of Sydney Smith will recognise that Edinburgh contributed far more to the making of the man than the capitals of Europe could have done. The journey north, taken in easy stages, was itself an entrancing experience. In this atmosphere, Sydney’s mind and personality developed amazingly.

It was in Edinburgh that Sydney Smith met Francis Jeffrey; and, during a wild, wintry evening by the fireside, suggested the establishment of the Edinburgh Review. Jeffrey was dubious, but eventually the journal was brought into being and was soon able to command the services of the most brilliant writers of the day. It was in its pages that Macaulay inaugurated his notable career. But, among all these able contributors, Sydney Smith was never thrown into the shade. He wrote in all about eighty articles for the Review; they were universally recognized as among the best; indeed, Professor Minto describes them as the very perfection of journalism. He was, moreover, the most brilliant talker of his time. From his youthful days in Edinburgh, when Sir Walter Scott revelled in his company, to his later days in London when Charles Dickens delighted in his society, the outstanding figures in Church and State embraced any opportunity of spending an hour with him. No visitor was more welcome at Holland House. Statesmen, poets, soldiers and bishops alike coveted the opportunity of meeting him.

As Lord John Russell, Thomas Moore and a score of others have recorded, he never monopolized the conversation, never talked other people down, never allowed his scintillating wit and fondness for fun to degrade his dignity; and, whilst the most caustic of critics, he never became venomous or malicious. Possessing a fine sense of other people’s feelings, he never uttered a word that rankled. His victims often laughed most heartily at his clever jests. Later in life, he became one of England’s most popular and most powerful preachers. The humour that, at ordinary times, sparkled in every syllable of his conversation, was kept under severe restraint; he developed a power of pathos by means of which, on suitable occasions, he moved his congregations to tears. His entire utterance was marked by elegance, the toric, and fervour. His stately figure, snow-white hair, finely-chiselled features and piercing eyes, aided by his musical and perfectly modulated voice, created an impression which could never be forgotten. Many of his sermons aroused general interest, whilst his pulpit appeal to the newly crowned young queen to abhor war and dedicate her commanding authority to the enthronement of peace was regarded as a classic.

Yet, although a popular idol and the glittering ornament of the princeliest drawing-rooms, Sydney was a great home-bird. In his masterly Smith of Smiths, Hesketh Pearson shows that it was in the home that Sydney was at his golden best. His wife and family hated the days on which his duties tore him from them. He used to say that he reached the summit of earthly felicity when, for two hours at a stretch, he could keep the children and their mother in fits of laughter. The death of his boy, Douglas, nearly broke his heart; he never recovered from that desolating blow. His servants worshipped the ground he trod and would never leave him. A podgy little girl whom he nicknamed Bunch, and whom he engaged for his first rectory, remained with him to the last, attending him on his deathbed. Was there ever a gem of so many facets? He learned farming, and actually worked a farm, that he might sympathize with the farmers in his parish; he studied law that he might settle the people’s quarrels; he pursued a medical course that he might help the sick; he educated his own boys, and, in Yorkshire, he built his own vicarage.

All through life, he loved London and found it difficult to be perfectly happy anywhere else. Country life was, to him, mere vegetation. But towards the end, his emotions changed. The loveliness of rural England enchanted him. He detected a beauty in trees and fields and birds and flowers that had previously escaped him. One bright sunny morning he stopped suddenly to admire a crocus lifting its head above the snow. He gazed in rapture. ‘The resurrection!’ he murmured ecstatically, ‘the resurrection!’ And, shortly afterwards, his death caused more sorrow, among high and low, rich and poor, young and old, than any death since Byron’s.

Dr. F. W. Boreham