2 - Edward A. Freeman in America and ‘The English People in its Three Homes’

Summary

On November 1, 1881, the English historian, Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–92), began a series of lectures in the Library Hall of Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York State. An interview, published earlier that Fall by The New York Herald, October 8, 1881, to coincide with Freeman's arrival in America, gives us a pen-portrait of the great man. The Herald's London correspondent had met the historian shortly before his departure from England, and the article gives us something of his character. ‘Mr Freeman,’ we are told,

is a man of very diffident manners, and, if I may use such irreverent slang, of somewhat crusty temper, intolerant of the ignorant shortcomings of other people, and so painfully exact in his own knowledge of general history that one almost trembles to refer to any event for fear that he will be down on some error of fact or date or even in the expressions made use of in conversing with him.

In 1881, Freeman was in his fifty-ninth year, and, according to the Herald, ‘short of stature but stout and robust looking and wears a long, full beard, now growing somewhat gray, which gives his massive head a dignified appearance’. After discussing the weather, the issue of Home Rule for Ireland, and Freeman's support for Gladstone, the conversation turned to Freeman's abhorrence of ‘prince worship’ and his preference for republican democracy. Asked why he did not take a more active part in government, Freeman explained that he had made an unsuccessful attempt to become a Member of Parliament,

‘but my habits are retired and I love a quiet life’ and, added he as he stroked his grizzled beard and gazed out of the window at the pouring rain, ‘I am growing old now and don't think I could stand the wear and tear of Parliamentary life’.

The conversation continued on a political theme with Freeman comparing the constitutions of Britain and the United States. These subjects seem to have brought on some disagreement and the correspondent suggests that his subject became decidedly taciturn, until the tense situation was defused by a comic interlude involving the Freeman family cat.

[S]o we drifted back into the peaceful waters of archaeology, (the correspondent wrote), to which our attention was recalled by the cat jumping on an open book with valuable architectural plates.