The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the History of Penny Postage, Vol. 1 (of 2)

The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the History of Penny Postage, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Sir Rowland Hill, after his retirement from the public service, as soon as prolonged rest had given him back some portion of his former strength, satisfied a mind which had always found its chief happiness in hard work, by taking upon himself the task of writing the history of his great postal reform. In a Prefatory Memoir he gave, moreover, a sketch of the earlier part of his life. It had been his hope that he might live to bring out his book himself; but, for reasons which the reader will find set forth in his Preface,[1] he at last, though with reluctance, came to the decision that the publication must be delayed till after his death. Though he had, as it seemed, really finished his work, and had even gone so far as to have a few copies printed, yet he spent many an hour on its revision. He went through it more than once with the utmost care, sparing no pains to obtain complete[x] accuracy. In the year 1872 he asked me to examine it carefully, and to point out whatever might strike me as being defective either in its method or its execution. I found, as I told him, that the Prefatory Memoir was too short, and The History of Penny Postage too long. Too little was told of the way in which his character had been trained for the hard task which awaited it, and too much was told of the improvements which had been effected. In the case of inventors it is not so much what a man does, as how he learns to do it, and how he does it, that we all care to know. We so soon come to think that what is has always been, that our curiosity is not much excited about the origin of the conveniences of modern life. Though the improvements themselves we accept as a matter of course, yet if in getting them adopted there was a hard struggle with ignorance, routine, indifference, and jealousy, then our interest is at once aroused. In his book there were very many passages which I had read with the strongest interest, containing as they did the history of a great and a very curious fight. In these there was scarcely any change that I could wish made. But mixed up with these there were accounts of improvements which, though important in themselves, were of little interest to an outsider. I suggested, therefore, that certain parts should be altogether struck out, and[xi] that others should be gathered either into one Appendix at the end of the History, or into Appendices at the end of the chapters. Though he did not by any means adopt all my recommendations, yet he entrusted me with the duty of writing the history of his early life. In the course of the next few years he drew up many interesting papers containing the recollections of his childhood and youth. In this he was aided by his brother Arthur, in whose mind, though he has seen more than fourscore years, the past seems to live with all the freshness of yesterday. These papers he put into my hands some months before his death, and, together with them, a large number of old letters and a manuscript history of his life which he had begun to write when he was but seventeen years old. In fact, the abundance of the materials thus placed at my disposal was so great, that my chief difficulty has been to keep my part of the work at all within reasonable limits. If the Prefatory Memoir in which his early life was told had really been an Autobiography, I might well have hesitated, and hesitated long, before I ventured to rewrite it. So much of a mans character is shown by his style, that even an imperfect life written by himself will, likely enough, be of far greater value than the most perfect life written by[xii] another. But, as will be seen later on,[2] so far as the style goes, this Memoir was in no sense autobiographical. It was, indeed, told in the first person; but I had, he said, to devolve upon another the task of immediate composition. I may add that his brother, who thus assisted him, had not at his command many of the materials which were afterwards placed at my disposal. My uncle had not at that time wished that a full account should be given of his early days, and he had not, therefore, thought it needful to lay before him either the letters or the fragment of an early autobiography which I have mentioned above. He had a strange unwillingness to let this history of his youthful days be seen. In a memorandum which he made a few years ago he says, These memoirs of the early part of my life having been written, for the most part, when I was very young and ill-informed, contain much which I have since known to be ridiculous; and for this reason I have never shown them to any oneexcept, I think, a small portion to my wife. After some hesitation I have decided to preserve the memoirs for any use to which my executors may think proper to put them. A far greater value is added to them by the fact that the author intended[xiii] them for no other eye but his own. None of his brothers, I believe, even knew that he was writing them. He used, in late years, often to speak to me about them; but it was only a short time before his death that he could bring himself to let me read them. When he gave them to me he bade me remember that he was very young and ignorant when he wrote them. You must not, he said, judge me harshly. Happily I was soon able to tell him that, though I had been a great reader of autobiographies, there were few which had interested me more than his. I found nothing to dispose me to ridicule, but much that moved my pity, and still more that roused my admiration. I need scarcely say that the Prefatory Memoir has been of great service to me in my task. It is not for me to say how well it is written, or to praise the work of one to whom I owe everything. I may, at all events, acknowledge my debt. I have, as the reader will see, largely drawn upon it. That it was, however, imperfectnecessarily so, as I have shownwill be at once recognised by any one who considers how much I have quoted from my uncles Memoirs and from the letters. It contained, for instance, no mention of the visit to Edgeworth-Town, and not a single extract from a letter. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 59390
Author: Hill, George Birkbeck Norman
Release Date: Apr 29, 2019
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Hill, Rowland, Sir, 1795-1879