SECRET SOCIETIES

When Lord Scamperdale was angry with Mr. Sponge for riding over his hounds he called him "a perpendicular Puseyite pig-jobber"; and the alliteration was felt to emphasize the rebuke. If any Home Ruler is irritated by Sir Robert Anderson he may relieve his feelings by calling him a "preaching political policeman," and each word in the title will be true to life. Sir Robert combines in his single person the characters of barrister, detective, and theologian. He began life at the Irish Bar, was for many years head of the Criminal Investigation Department in London, then became Assistant Commissioner of Police, and all the while gave what leisure he could spare from tracking dynamiters and intercepting burglars to the composition of such works as "The Gospel and its Ministry," "A Handbook of Evangelical Truth," and "Daniel in the Critic's Den."

A career so diversified was sure to produce some interesting reminiscences, and the book[2] which Sir Robert has just published is as full of mystery and adventure, violence and strategy, plot and counterplot, as the romances which thrilled our youth. In those days some boys thought soldiering the one life worth living; some, in fancy, ran away to sea. Some loved tales of Piracy, and were peculiarly at home in a Smugglers' Cave. Others snatched a fearful joy from ghosts and bogies. Others enjoyed Brazilian forests and African jungles, hand-to-hand encounters with gorillas and hair-breadth 'scapes from watchful tigers. The present writer thought nothing so delightful as Secret Societies, and would have given his little all to know a password, a sign, or a secret code. Perhaps this idiosyncrasy was due to the fact that in the mid 'sixties every paper teemed with allusions to Fenianism, just then a very active force in the political world; and to Smith Minus, in the Fourth Form at Harrow, there was something unspeakably attractive in the thought of being a "Head Centre," a "Director," or an "Executive Officer of the Irish Republican Brotherhood," or even in the paler glory of writing the mystic letters "F.B." or "C.O." after his undistinguished name. It is in his account of the earlier days of Fenianism that Sir Robert Anderson is so intensely interesting. He traces it, from its origin in the abortive rebellion of 1848 and that "Battle of Limerick" which Thackeray sang, to its formal inauguration in 1860, and its subsequent activities at home and abroad; and the narrative begins, quite thrillingly, with the biography of the famous spy Henri le Caron, who played so striking a part before the Commission on Parnellism and Crime. Those who wish to learn these incidents in our recent history, or as much of them as at present can properly be disclosed, must read Sir Robert's book for themselves. I will not attempt even to epitomize it; and, indeed, I only mention it because of the "sidelights" which it throws, not on Home Rule, but on the part which Secret Societies have played in the fortunes of Modern Europe.

As far as I know, the only Englishman—if Englishman he could properly be called—who regarded the Secret Societies as formidable realities was Lord Beaconsfield. As long ago as 1844—long before he had official experience to guide him—he wrote, with regard to his favourite Sidonia (in drawing whom he drew himself):—

"The catalogue of his acquaintance in the shape of Greeks, Armenians, Moors, Secret Jews, Tartars, Gipsies, wandering Poles, and Carbonari would throw a curious light on those subterranean agencies of which the world in general knows so little, but which exercise so great an influence on public events."

Those were the days when Disraeli, a genius whom no one treated seriously, was uttering his inmost thoughts through the medium of romances to which fancy contributed at least as much as fact. Then came twenty years of constant activity in politics—that pursuit which, as Bacon says, is of all pursuits "the most immersed in matter,"—and, when next he took up the novelist's pen, he was a much older and more experienced, though he would scarcely be a wiser, man. In 1870 he startled the world with "Lothair"; and those who had the hardihood to fight their way through all the fashionable flummery with which the book begins found in the second and third volumes a profoundly interesting contribution to the history of Europe between 1848 and 1868. One of the characters says that "the only strong things in Europe are the Church and the Secret Societies"; and the book is a vivid narrative of the struggle for life and death between the Temporal Power of the Papacy and the insurrectionary movements inspired by Garibaldi. Every chapter of the book contains a portrait, and every incident is drawn from something which had come under the author's notice between 1866 and 1869, when he was the leading personage in the Tory Government and the Fenians were making open and secret war on English rule. He was describing the men whom he knew and the things which he had seen, and this fact makes the book so extraordinarily vivid, and won for it Froude's enthusiastic praise. Every one could recognize Capel and Manning and Antonelli and Lord Bute, and all their diplomatic and fashionable allies; it required some knowledge of the insurrectionary movements to see in "Captain Bruges" a portrait of General Cluseret, commander-in-chief of every insurgent army in Europe or America, or in Theodora the noble character of Jessie White-Mario, whose career of romantic devotion to the cause of Freedom closed only in this year.[3]

"Madre Natura" in Italy, Fenianism in America and England, the "Mary Anne" Societies of France, and the mysterious alliance between all these subterranean forces, are the themes of "Lothair," and the State trials of the time throw a good deal of light upon them all. Even more mysterious, much harder to trace, and infinitely more enduring were the operations of the Carbonari—- beginning with a handful of charcoal-burners in the forests of Northern Italy, and spreading thence, always by woodland ways, to the centre and north of Europe. They promoted the French revolutions of 1830 and 1848. Even Louis Napoleon allied himself with them in his earlier machinations against Louis Philippe and the Republic; and in the Franco-German War of 1870 they rendered incalculable service to the German troops by guiding them through the fastnesses of the Ardennes. It is one of the characteristics of the Secret Societies that they attack the established order, without, apparently, caring much what that order represents. Their generals fought against England in Canada and in Ireland; against the Northern States in America; against Russia in the Danubian Principalities. It is not to be supposed that in 1870 the Carbonari had much sympathy with the military absolutism of Prussia; but Prussia was attacking the French Empire, and that was enough for the Carbonari.

Of course, as a general rule, the Secret Societies of the Continent were anti-monarchical and anti-Christian; but he who loves these mysterious combinations can find plenty to interest him in the history of organizations which were neither Republican nor Atheistic. Nothing could be more devotedly monarchical and orthodox than the "Cycle of the White Rose." This Society, profoundly "secret," was founded about the year 1727. It had for its object to unite all the Cavalier and Nonjuring families of North Wales and Cheshire, with a view to concerted action when next the exiled Stuarts should claim their own. The headquarters were always at Wynnstay, and the Lady of Wynnstay was always Patroness. The badge was a White Rose in enamel, and the list of members was printed in a circle, so that if it should fall into the hands of Government no one should appear as ringleader or chief. The Cycle was for some fifty years a real and definite organization for political ends; but, as years went on and the hopes of the Jacobites perished, the Cycle degenerated into a mere dining-club, and it expired in 1850. Its last member was, I believe, the Rev. Sir Theophilus Puleston, who lived to see the second Jubilee of Queen Victoria; and the last Lady Patroness died in 1905.

Another Secret Society which once meant practical mischief of no common kind was that of the Orangemen. Though Orangemen are nowadays vociferously loyal, their forerunners are grossly misrepresented if it is not true that, under the Grand-mastership of the Duke of Cumberland, afterwards King Ernest of Hanover, they organized a treasonable conspiracy to prevent Queen Victoria from succeeding to the Throne of her ancestors and to put her uncle in her place. For sidelights on this rather dark passage of modern history the curious reader is referred to "Tales of my Father," by "A. M. F.," and to a sensational rendering of the same story, called "God Save the Queen."

My space is failing, and I must forbear to enlarge on the most familiar and least terrifying of all "Secret Societies." I hold no brief for the "Grand Orient of France," even though Pius IX. may once have belonged to this or a similar organization; but I must profess that English Freemasons are the most respectable, most jovial, and most benevolent of mankind; and I trust that they will accept in its true intention Cardinal Manning's ambiguously worded defence of their craft, "English Freemasonry is a Goose Club."