DURING all these years of struggle and , his Father's household at Knightsbridge had stood healthful, happy, increasing in wealth, free diligence, solidity and honest prosperity: a sunny islet, towards which, in all his voyagings and overclouded roamings, he could look with satisfaction, as to an ever-open port of refuge.
The elder , after many battles, had reached his field of conquest in these years; and was to be regarded as a man. Wealth sufficient, increasing not diminishing, had rewarded his in the Times, which were now in their full flower; he had influence of a sort; went busily among busy public men; and enjoyed, in the form attached to and , a social consideration and position which were abundantly gratifying to him. A singular figure of the ; and when you came to know him, which it was easy to fail of doing if you had not eyes and insight, a , truly gifted, and manful figure, of his kind. We saw much of him in this house; much of all his family; and had grown to love them all right well,—him too, though that was the difficult part of the . For in his Irish way he played the conjurer very much,—"three hundred and sixty-five opinions in the year upon every subject," as a wag once said. In fact his talk, ever ingenious, and spirited in detail, was much in earnestness, at least in clear earnestness, of and outcome; but went tumbling as if in welters of explosive unreason; a volcano heaving under vague of scoriae, ashes and imponderous pumice-stones, you could not say in what direction, nor well whether in any. Not till after good study did you see the deep molten lava-flood, which simmered enough, and showed very well by and by whither it was bound. For I must say of Edward Sterling, after all his daily explosive , and fallacies of talk, he had a stubborn sense of what was manful, strong and ; recognized, with quick feeling, the under his solemnest ; knew as clearly as any man a tailor in buckram, an under the lion's skin, and did with his whole heart despise the same.
The sudden changes of in the Times, which failed not to excite loud and indignant in those days, were first to you when you came to interpret them as his changes. These sudden whirls from east to west on his part, and total changes of party and articulate opinion at a day's warning, lay in the nature of the man, and could not be helped; products of his , of the combined impetuosity and limitation of an intellect, which did nevertheless continually gravitate towards what was loyal, true and right on all manner of subjects. These, as I define them, were the mere scoriae and pumice of a steady central lava-flood, which truly was and explosive to a strange degree, but did rest as few others on the grand fire-depths of the world. Thus, if he stormed along, ten thousand strong, in the time of the Reform Bill, indignantly denouncing Toryism and its insane ; and then if, after some experience of Whig management, he discerned that Wellington and Peel, by whatever name entitled, were the men to be depended on by England,—there lay in all this, visible enough, a deeper far more important than the superficial one, so much clamored after by the vulgar. Which is the lion's-skin; which is the real lion? Let a man, if he is , that before speaking;—but above and beyond all things, let him ascertain it, and stand to it when ! In the latter essential part of the operation Edward Sterling was honorably successful to a really marked degree; in the former, or prudential part, very much the reverse, as his history in the Journalistic department at least, was continually teaching him.
An amazingly impetuous, hasty, explosive man, this "Captain Whirlwind," as I used to call him! Great sensibility lay in him, too; a real sympathy, and affectionate pity and softness, which he had an over-tendency to express even by tears,—a singular sight in so leonine a man. Enemies called them and hypocritical, these tears; but that was nowise the complete account of them. On the whole, there did lie a dash of , a self-consciousness apt to become loud and , over all he said and did and felt: this was the of the man, and you had to be thankful for the abundant gold along with it.
Quizzing enough he got among us for all this, and for the singular manner of procedure, like that of an Archimagus Cagliostro, or Kaiser Joseph , which his known-unknown thunderings in the Times in him; and much we laughed,—not without explosive counter-banterings on his part;—but, in fine, one could not do without him; one knew him at heart for a right brave man. "By Jove, sir!" thus he would swear to you, with radiant face; sometimes, not often, by a deeper oath. With persons of dignity, especially with women, to whom he was always very gallant, he had courtly delicate manners, towards the wire-drawn and elaborate; on common occasions, he bloomed out at once into jolly familiarity of the kind, reminding you of mess-rooms and old Dublin days. His off-hand mode of speech was always precise, emphatic, ingenious: his laugh, which was frequent rather than otherwise, had a of , but no real depth of sense for the ludicrous; and soon ended, if it grew too loud, in a mere scream. He was broad, well-built, of ; had a long lowish head, sharp gray eyes, with large strong face to match; and walked, or sat, in an decisive manner. A man; and playing, especially in those years 1830-40, a remarkable part in the world.
For it may be said, the emphatic, big-voiced, always and often strongly Times Newspaper was the express of Edward Sterling; he, more than any other man or circumstance, was the Times Newspaper, and thundered through it to the shaking of the spheres. And let us assert withal that his and its influence, in those days, was not ill grounded but rather well; that the loud manifold unreason, often enough vituperated and over, was of the surface mostly; that his conclusions, unreasonable, partial, hasty as they might at first be, gravitated towards the right: in of which grand quality indeed, the root of all good insight in man, his Times found acceptance and influential audience, amid the loud whirl of an England itself logically very stupid, and wise chiefly by instinct.
England listened to this voice, as all might observe; and to one who knew England and it, the result was not quite a strange one, and was honorable rather than otherwise to both parties. A good judge of men's talents has been heard to say of Edward Sterling: "There is not a of equal to this in all my circle. Sterling rushes out into the clubs, into London society, rolls about all day, talking nonsense or sense, and listening to the like, with the multifarious miscellany of men; comes home at night; redacts it into a Times Leader,—and is found to have hit the essential purport of the world's immeasurable that day, with an accuracy beyond all other men. This is what the multifarious Babel sound did mean to say in clear words; this, more nearly than anything else. Let the most gifted intellect, capable of writing , try to write such a Leader for the Morning Newspapers! No intellect but Edward Sterling's can do it. An improvising faculty without parallel in my experience."—In this "improvising faculty," much more nobly developed, as well as in other and qualities with unexpectedly new and improved figure, John Sterling, to the accurate observer, showed himself very much the son of Edward.
Connected with this matter, a remarkable Note has come into my hands; honorable to the man I am writing of, and in some sort to another higher man; which, as it may now (unhappily for us all) be published without , I will not here. The support, by Edward Sterling and the Times, of Sir Robert Peel's first , and generally of Peel's statesmanship, was a fact in its day; but the return it met with from the person chiefly interested may be considered well worth . The following Letter, after through I know not what intricate conduits, and of the Mysterious whose address it bore, came to Edward Sterling as the real flesh-and-blood , and has been found among his papers. It is marked Private:—
"(Private) To the Editor of the Times.
"WHITEHALL, 18th April, 1835.
"SIR,—Having this day delivered into the hands of the King the Seals of Office, I can, without any of an interested , or any impediment from feelings of , express my deep sense of the powerful support which that Government over which I had the honor to preside received from the Times Newspaper.
"If I do not offer the expressions of personal , it is because I feel that such expressions would do to the character of a support which was given exclusively on the highest and most independent grounds of public principle. I can say this with perfect truth, as I am addressing one whose person even is unknown to me, and who during my of power studiously avoided every species of which could throw a suspicion upon the by which he was actuated. I should, however, be doing injustice to my own feelings, if I were to retire from Office without one word of acknowledgment; without at least assuring you of the with which I witnessed, during the contest in which I was engaged, the daily exhibition of that extraordinary ability to which I was indebted for a support, the more valuable because it was an and support.—I have the honor to be, Sir,
"Ever your most obedient and faithful servant,
"ROBERT PEEL."
To which, with due loftiness and diplomatic gravity and brevity, there is Answer, of Answer in Edward Sterling's hand, from the Mysterious Entity so honored, in the following terms:—
"To the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, Bart., &c. &c. &c.
"SIR,—It gives me sincere satisfaction to learn from the Letter with which you have honored me, bearing yesterday's date, that you estimate so highly the efforts which have been made during the last five months by the Times Newspaper to support the cause of rational and Government which his had intrusted to your guidance; and that you appreciate fairly the motive, of regard to the public welfare, and to that alone, through which this Journal has been prompted to pursue a policy in accordance with that of your Administration. It is, permit me to say, by such motives only, that the Times, ever since I have known it, has been influenced, whether in defence of the Government of the day, or in constitutional resistance to it: and indeed there exist no other motives of action for a Journalist, compatible either with the safety of the press, or with the political morality of the great bulk of its readers.—With much respect, I have the honor to be, Sir, &c. &c. &c.
"THE EDITOR OF THE 'TIMES.'"
Of this Note I do not think there was the least whisper during Edward Sterling's lifetime; which fact also one likes to remember of him, so ostentatious and little-reticent a man. For the rest, his loyal admiration of Sir Robert Peel,—sanctioned, and as it were almost to his mind, by the great example of the Duke of Wellington, whom he always with true hero-worship,—was not a journalistic one, but a most intimate feeling, apparent in the very heart of his mind. Among the many opinions "liable to three hundred and sixty-five changes in the course of the year," this in reference to Peel and Wellington was one which ever changed, but was the same all days and hours. To which, equally genuine, and coming still oftener to light in those times, there might one other be added, one and hardly more: fixed contempt, not unmingled with detestation, for Daniel O'Connell. This latter feeling, we used often laughingly to say, was his grand political principle, the one firm centre where all else went . But internally the other also was deep and constant; and indeed these were properly his two centres,—poles of the same , negative and positive, the one presupposing the other.
O'Connell he had known in young Dublin days;—and surely no man could well another less! It was his deliberate, unalterable opinion of the then Great O, that good would never come of him; that only , and this in huge measure, would come. That however showy, and in and management, he was a man of commonplace intellect, and of no character but a hollow, blustery, pusillanimous and unsound one; great only in maudlin patriotisms, in speciosities, astucities,—in the gifts for becoming Chief Demagogos, Leader of a deep-sunk Populace towards its Lands of Promise; which trade, in any age or country, and especially in the Ireland of this age, our indignant friend regarded (and with reason) as an extremely ugly one for a man. He had himself advocated Catholic , and was not without his Irish , very different from the Orange sort; but the "" was not admirable to him, and grew daily less so to an extreme degree. Truly, his scorn of the said Liberator, now riding in on the wings of blarney, devil-ward of............